PROVIDENCE — Define: appropriately dressed.
Should Rhode Island's senators be required to wear "blouses, dress slacks and collared shirts with accompanying jacket" when they gather at the State House — or anywhere else — to do legislative business?
A new generation of mostly young(er) senators said no on Tuesday when the sartorial debate that began in a Rhode Island Senate committee last week continued in the full Senate.
But they lost their fight to eliminate the beefed up new "dress code" from the Senate's rules on a 29-7 vote.
The debate centered on the contention of 31-year-old freshman Sen. Jonathon Acosta of Central Falls that the dress code, as written, represents a racially-biased form of oppression.
"It is all stuff that connotes white collar, white people,'' Acosta contended during last week's meeting of the Senate Rules, Government Ethics and Oversight Committee. By contrast, "I look like the people in my community."
“I was not elected to wear a tie or wear a blazer in order to legislate,'' Acosta said.
The debate resumed Tuesday as the Senate took up a new rules package for the 2021-22 session that includes the new and controversial dress code.
Acosta led off the dress code debate, but he was soon joined by several in the new class of younger, more progressive senators.
"When powerful men dictate decorum and make demands over our bodies and our dress, it translates to ... colonization language,'' said Sen. Cynthia Mendes, D-East Providence. "You know it when you see it."
"It is also not lost on me that respectability politics is often something that is used to control Black and brown bodies and female bodies,'' added Sen. Tiara Mack, D-Providence.
She said the debate itself reflects changing norms among "young millenials who are changing the way in which the world works ... which no longer means that we have to have 'power pants suits' in order to be respected."
But Sen. Gordon Rogers, R-Foster, was on the other side, explaining that the hardest accommodation he made when he was elected was to trade-in his "Chippewas" for dress shoes and buy a few second-hand suits to come to the State House.
He said he did so "out of respect for the institution. It's not about equity. It's not about disenfranchising anybody ... It simply to me comes down to respect." (In the backroom, applause could be heard.)
At the start of Tuesday's debate, the proposed rule read: "The president of the Senate shall preserve decorum and order in the chamber. While in the Senate chamber, members, staff and guests shall be required to dress in proper and appropriate attire, such as blouses, dress slacks and collared shirts with accompanying jacket."
On a unanimous vote, the Senate agreed to remove the dress requirement for "guests,'' as suggested by Sen. Meghan E. Kallman, D-Pawtucket.
The proposed new rules also contained a provision, allowing committee chairs to put people seeking to testify under oath.
Veteran lawmakers in both the House and Senate have said they are tired of being lied to.
Opponents warned the oath requirement — even though committee chairmen have discretion on when to exercise it — could discourage average citizens from testifying. But efforts to strike the new provision failed.
The Link LonkMarch 24, 2021 at 06:05AM
https://ift.tt/319gwDQ
Senate dress code survives attempts by new lawmakers to scratch it - The Providence Journal
https://ift.tt/2KksXom
Dress
No comments:
Post a Comment