Listen: Principal Defends Dress Code Enforcement Deemed 'Degrading'

The dress code policy needs to be rewritten, but it wasn't degrading, Capistrano Valley High Principal Kevin Astor said.

At the February Winter Formal, about 40 girls were barred from the dance and made to demonstrate their dresses fit properly. The demonstrations were 'degrading,' one student said, with girls required to lift their arms up and down and turn their backs to male administrators.

That's not how it happened though, Astor said. He said female administrators were on the front line deciding what dresses violated the new school policy. 

"There may have been a student that engaged in that behavior themselves, said, 'Hey, look, it's fine, look, I'm walking up and down.' But they weren't asked to do that by any male administrators," Astor said.

Still, he says, about 15 girls violated the dress code policy without realizing it.

The principal has since asked some of those girls to participate in clarifying the existing dress code.

• See the video above for more from Astor.

See some of the dresses deemed in violation of the code in the photos above. After hearing Astor's explanation, do you think the school made the right call?