Awesome Law School Dean Demands Students Stop Judging Female Professor's Clothes

That's not why she's there.

As the old adage goes, dress for the job you want, not the job you have. But if the job you want is at a law school, does that mean you have to dress like a man?

Adam F. Scales, a vice dean at Rutgers University's law school, thinks not—and after an anonymous student evaluation of one of his professors focused more on her wardrobe than her teaching, he sent a mass email to the student body to prove his point.

Here's an excerpt, via Above the Law

"It has come to my attention that a student submitted an evaluation that explored, in some detail, the fashion stylings of one of your professors. It will surprise no one possessing the slightest familiarity with student evaluations that this professor is a woman. Women are frequently targets of evaluative commentary that, in addition to being wildly inappropriate and adolescent, is almost never directed at men."

Scales, who seems awesome, announced that he immediately deleted the wardrobe comments from the professor's record. The vice dean confirmed to Inside Higher Ed that he sent the email, but declined to elaborate further.  

"I want you to remember that you're writing for the personnel file, and for history," he wrote to students. "If you have any doubts that posterity will somehow muddle through without the benefit of your fashion advice, allow me to dispel them once and for all."

Rock on.

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Megan Friedman
Editor

Megan Friedman is the former managing editor of the Newsroom at Hearst. She's worked at NBC and Time, and is a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.