Professor of Ancient Scripture Hugh Nibley, for instance, found dress and grooming standards (at BYU) a superficial annoyance. "The haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances," he commented in a 1973 campus address.I had several professors who told us upfront to just obey the dress code. They weren't going to babysit us, we were reminded we had signed it. I'd much rather be treated that way than have the fashion police after me. And I guess it was a wonderful day when they allowed women to wear pants made of denim.
A statement in the dress code forbidding women from wearing "levis" met with opposition in 1978 from the Levi Strauss Company. Administrators consequently substituted the word "jeans" for "levis." Three months later in November 1978, a coed who was refused entrance to the BYU testing center because she was "wearing pants of denim material" left the center, removed her pants, buttoned up her overcoat, and was admitted, pantless, without question. In a letter to the editor of the Universe, she added, "There is something strangely perverse and incongruous about a dress code which demands that a girl dressed in nice denim pants [be] rejected from a campus facility, while a girl in underpants and a coat is acceptable. Is it that vital that we expose the lower half of our legs?" (DU, 14 Nov. 1978). This event, which received national attention, may have contributed to BYU's eventual capitulation on the jeans issue less than three years later. Addressing students in the fall of 1981, President Jeffrey Holland suggested that modesty and cleanliness should "govern women's dress on the campus rather than endless debate as to whether a `designer jean' is also a slack, or whether the fabric is cotton, polyester, or denim, or whether it is colored red, white, or blue."
Interesting....