By Iminza Keboge
Published July 27, 2019
Mount Kenya University becomes the third institution of higher learning in Kenya to dictate a dress code for its students. Martin Mururi, the Associate Dean of Students, has on July 24, 2019 issued a memo advising students against wearing see-through or revealing pieces of clothing.
The memo says any student who comes to school in clothes that indecently exposes private body parts will be disciplined. If the student is caught a second time in the forbidden attire, the student will receive a warning. But if the same student is caught a third time in the wrong dress code, the student will be referred to the disciplinary committee.
Though the memo is said to be based on the Mount Kenya University handbook for students, it appeared to take the everyone by surprise, leading to tongues wagging.
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“Persons dressed in clothes/pants revealing private body parts will be denied access into the University premises and will be required to go back and dress decently,” the memo from Muiruri reads.
While women are forbidden from wearing clothes that show their cleavage, belly, thighs and back, their male counterparts are expected to maintain well-groomed hair while on campus. The memo also forbids students from wearing hats and caps in the lecture room, library, laboratory or when addressing members of staff.
While Mount Kenya, the largest private university in Kenya that also offers virtual courses across East Africa says “Persons dressed in clothes/pants revealing private body parts will be denied access into the university premises and will be required to go back and dress decently,” it specifically directs women “not wear see-through clothing, bare-backs, crop tops, cleavage-baring attire or micro-minis within the university’s premises.” It stresses that “Students who defy the new rules will be given a warning. Three warnings will land one before a disciplinary committee.”
RELATED: Uganda Cracks the Whip on In-Decent Dressing and Exhibitionism
After Daystar (an Evangelical Christian university) and Strathmore (a Roman Catholic institution), Mount Kenya ( a secular college) becomes the third private institution in the country to come up with rules to regulate the manner in which students dress in a country in which younger people, especially the media-consuming urban one, are seen as having taken to exhibitionism.
Among the provocative body-hugging, see-through or private body parts-revealing attire these youngsters wear wear almost everywhere include hot pants, crop tops, sagging trousers, low cleavage blouses and dresses, mini skirts, navel-gazers and bare backs
