What will it be in two months, Lehighton Area High School graduates? Maroon or white?

When I first read the news article on this topic by Staff Writer Jarrad Hedes in the Feb. 15 issue of the Times News, I thought to myself, really, you mean there is even controversy these days over the color of the gowns that male and female students will be wearing on their big day in June.

At the school board meeting that week, Superintendent Christina Fish said she was being “proactive” in suggesting that everyone wear maroon gowns to head off legal problems.

My first reaction was that superintendent Fish was being overly cautious, but it turns out that she had done her homework and was aware of issues on this subject at other schools across the nation going back at least seven years.

It turns out that requiring all girls to wear white and all boys maroon could be a violation of the federal Title IX act that prohibits gender discrimination. As most of you, I thought Title IX applied almost exclusively to sports issues involving parity for female athletes, but it turns out that this is just part of the regulation.

Title IX defines gender discrimination well beyond “unproportionate athletic programs or activities offered to all genders in relationship to enrollment.” It also deals with discrimination or harassment based upon one’s gender, unfair treatment, attitudes or behaviors toward an individual based upon their gender, gender identity discrimination, and sexism, sexist attitudes and sex stereotyping.

After a discussion, it turned out that the Lehighton School Board decided to give each student a choice as to which color to wear at commencement exercises. In other words, if a girl wants to wear maroon instead of the traditional white, this will be OK. Same for the guys if any of them prefer to wear white. The problem is that maybe this decision does not go far enough and still can be perceived to come into conflict with Title IX.

If we were to scratch beyond the surface as to why one sex wears one color and the other sex another color, the only logical answer we can come up with today is tradition. Don’t get me wrong: I love tradition, and I believe it has a very valuable place in our lives, but in our society where we are recognizing the equality of all of our graduates, requiring them to choose an identity based on the color of their graduation gown is problematic.

I was curious as to whether this issue came up elsewhere, and my research showed that it did - multiple times. One of the more celebrated cases occurred at a Connecticut high school in 2016.

At the Nathan Hale-Ray High School, male students traditionally wore blue, while female students wore white. Students who advocated for the policy change to have all students wear the same color argued that the masculine values associated with the color blue imply authority, competence and success while female values associated with white are those of purity, innocence and virtue. On top of this, the graduating females carried flowers.

The students contended that the policy discriminated not only against transgender students and students with nonconforming gender identities who were publicly forced to choose a gender, but also against female students who were literally draped in gender stereotypes.

Title IX came about predicated on the principle that people should be treated as individuals instead of members of a group, especially when the group to which they belong has historically been the subject of disadvantage in society. In addition to Title IX, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment comes into play in this discussion. Both of these laws prevent a public school from making arbitrary pronouncements that classify students by gender.

Other schools in New York, Maine, Maryland and elsewhere have gone the route of the one-color robe, which apparently is more preferred in satisfying the spirit of Title IX rather than forcing graduates to choose their color.

I agree with the view that wearing robes of the same color allows transgender students or students who conform to a single gender to feel more comfortable at graduation. I also realize that this topic will be yet another for those who feel that the “woke crowd” has taken over our schools, regardless of the principle at play.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.