Tuskegee University President Mark Brown says the dress code banning durags and bonnets is about workplace readiness, not respectability politics.
Page A4From§Eachthe late evening edition — 30 August 2026
Tuskegee University raises its dress-code bar the same week FBI lowers hiring bar on prostitution, theft.
As it ran on the front
The Federal Bureau of Investigation's newly revised hiring standards, which no longer automatically disqualify applicants with histories of engaging a prostitute or stealing from a previous employer, represent nothing more than a modernization of an outdated screening process — a bureau adapting its recruitment pipeline to reflect contemporary realities, the same kind of institutional flexibility this column would defend at any federal agency, in any year, without hesitation.
It should also be said, in fairness, that a single lapse in judgment from decades past should not disqualify an otherwise qualified applicant from a career in public service. People change. Records are records; character is character. The Bureau has simply decided to evaluate the whole person rather than a single line item, and that is, in this column's professional opinion, a defensible personnel philosophy.…
…(cont) Although — and this column will say this only once — 'stealing from a previous employer' is a fairly specific line item to relax for an agency whose entire mandate involves investigating theft, fraud, and public corruption. That one does land a little close to the agency's own job description. This column did not draft that bullet point and would not have phrased it that way.
Meanwhile, down in Alabama, Tuskegee University's president is defending the school's student dress code against student criticism with the memorable formulation that if you 'raise the bar, students will reach it.' A fine sentiment. This column endorses raising bars generally, as a philosophy of institutional life, in the abstract, at all times — which does make the same week's news out of the Bureau somewhat awkward to reconcile, bar-wise, since one federal institution is currently doing the precise opposite of raising anything.
That is not this column's contradiction to resolve. Tuskegee sets its own bar for its own students. The Bureau sets its own bar for its own applicant pool. That the two bars moved in opposite directions during the same seven-day span is, this column maintains, a coincidence of scheduling and nothing more — though this column notes for the record that it did not expect to spend six hundred words defending a lowered federal hiring bar and a raised campus dress code in the same column, and yet, here we are.
“One institution tells twenty-year-olds to tuck their shirts in to 'raise the bar,' and the federal government's top investigative agency quietly lowers its own bar on theft and paid sex to fill seats. Guess which bar actually protects your wallet.”
“The Bureau's revised standards are about evaluating the whole candidate, not excusing specific conduct — though 'stealing from a previous employer' is, fine, a specific conduct the Bureau usually investigates in other people. Moving on.”
The receipts
The FBI has revised its hiring standards and no longer disqualifies applicants who admitted to hiring prostitutes or stealing from an employer. The new guidelines come following the retirement, resignation and termination of scores of FBI…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.