Good luck to students in Brevard County trying to pull up to class donning tails, cat ears, or other animal-like accessories. Under a new dress code policy passed unanimously by the board on Tuesday, the Florida school district will now ban any attire that resembles “non-human characteristics,” which officials said came in response to student concerns over “furries”—or people who dress like animals. Board member Katye Campbell claimed the 5-0 vote was “driven by student voice” as the board sifted through a student survey with over 2,000 comments on the dress code policy. “Otherwise we probably wouldn’t have been having this conversation, but as we read through those comments, that was part of student voice, that they thought was a real problem, a real distraction,” she said. The policy does not elaborate on what it explicitly means by “non-human characteristics” and it’s unclear if the district has dealt with any actual incidents of students dressing like animals. Although the county is clamping down on furries, the dress code adjusted other restrictions deemed to be biased against female students, such as removing vague wording like “modest.”
