A Tale of an HBCU's Discriminatory Dress Code?

It's been a hot minute, but I am back with an interesting story.

This week, there were several things I did that are apart of my usual routine (it does change a bit weekly, since I like a little of variety). Particularly, I watched "Real Housewives of Atlanta" and went to the village luncheon hosted by the Office of African-American Affairs at Columbia College Chicago.

Since I am assuming many of you have at least heard of the "Real Housewives of Atlanta," I'll just explain the village luncheon, which is a lunch in which students of African descent can network with Columbia faculty and staff of African descent over food and lively discussion on hot topics that affect the African-American community at large. This luncheon takes place on a monthly basis.

One of the topics brought up was Morehouse College's new dress code. Morehouse, one of the many historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), is an all-male school in Atlanta that prides itself in molding the "ideal" African-American men. The new dress code prohibits the follow:

• Do-rags, hats, and hoods worn in classrooms or any other indoor venues
• Sunglasses worn in class or formal events
• Jeans at major programs and no sagging pants on campus
• Clothing with derogatory or lewd messages in words or pictures
• Clothing usually worn by women (dresses, tops, tunics, purses, etc) on campus or college-sponsored events

Many of these regulations I understand and I personally do not have a problem with (even though I could argue that there is a sense of "whitening" in some of them, but that's for another posting), but the last one seemed like there was an obvious form of discrimination against gay African-American males (remember how I said I was going to talk about homosexuality in the African-American community?).

Based on what I have seen on "Real Housewives of Atlanta" and also how the Advocate dubbed Atlanta as America's gayest city earlier this year, I know that many of the gay African-American men in Atlanta regularly dress in clothing typically designed for women, not in the sense of cross-dressing. Morehouse College, being an educational institution in Atlanta, must be fully aware of this and for them to make this rule, obviously they have had students that have regularly dressed like this and I assure you most, if not all of them, are gay.

During the village luncheon, one student angrily protested how this rule is discriminatory, while many argued that even though it is discriminatory, Morehouse College has a right to create that rule since it is private.

My question to all of you is, regardless if you think this is discrimination or not, is it wrong for a private institution of higher education to have a rule that may marginalize a group? Would it only affect the institution? What does this say and do to the African-American male that is gay? What positive and negative affects could this have on the African-American community overall?