Dress Code Controversy

Latest Update: The Dress Code decree by UUM has been retracted. See Sinchew (headlines today) or Oriental Daily for more reports.

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Ah, this must be one of the favourite issue for our Malaysian leaders. If only they have the same amount of passion when it comes to raising academic standards at our local schools and institutions of higher learning. I've written on the tudung controversy at Universiti Islam Antarabangsa previously, and now Universiti Utara Malaysia faces a similar controversy.


I cannot for the life of me figure out what is wrong with the prohibited dress code illustrated on the right above. Can you?

I don't have to say much about the above issue for Clare Ng of UUM had plenty to rant about it here on her excellent blog.

As I’ve ranted and criticised in countless posts before, this university is seriously crappy. Everything here is ridiculous including the rules and regulations especially their emphasis on dress code for their student.

Almost all the non-Muslim female students here wear similar attire to attend lectures, enter the library, see the doctor, dealing with official matter, etc (Yes, it is a MUST!).

She's funny too.

They had the nerve to come up with something this shitty without even conducting a proper survey around the campus. Where to get attire like the fourth girl on the left nowadays? So out-dated fashion where to get?

This is my final year here and I do not want to create any trouble for myself but this kind of ridiculous rules and regulations are getting on my nerves. Why do they have to come up with all these nonsense when they have a lot of other more important issues to skirt?

From the "approved" dress codes above, it appears that for non-Muslims, you are either expected to be suited up entirely, or you'll have to be in baju kurung.

I went to one of the top schools in the UK. Most of the time, I'm in track tops, track pants (badly torn by the final year) and worse, flip-flops. I attend lectures in old t-shirts and torn jeans. And I certainly wasn't the worst dressed nor was I not the norm. I can only speculate that with the decline in the quality of university administrators over the past decades, the focus on form now overwhelms the attention which should be paid to substance.

If anyone out there still insist that there isn't a religious and cultural assimilation (as opposed to integration) agenda and process happening in our country's schools and institutions of higher learning, he or she must be living in a totally different world.

Read also Enki's account of the same issue.

Oh, did you know that students are also "strongly encouraged" to open accounts with Bank Islam? Check out Clare's post here:

As I went about the campus attending lectures and going to the library, I noticed a lot of juniors as well as some seniors from my batch are wearing our Bank Islam ATM card around their necks! Well, the ATM card doubles as our metric card a.k.a. our identity card in the university. From what I heard from the juniors, memos had been passed that students MUST wear the ATM card around their necks like a dog tag! Failing to do so will cause us to become RM50 poorer! WTH!!!

They are absolutely out of their minds.

Footnote: This dress code issue is also reported in Oriental Daily today. However, I'm unable to find the same story online.