Hundreds of students of Bahria University protested at the main entrance to the campus against the ban on wearing jeans in the university on Tuesday.

The circular pertaining to the ban said, “It has been observed that in due course of time students coming to university are wearing jeans of all sorts/indecent in appearance. It has, therefore, been decided that henceforth male students are only permitted to wear shirts and trousers ( dress pants with shirts properly tucked in) and should be decent looking. The following attire will remain forbidden:

Shalwar Kameez, Slippers, Jeans and indecent dressing of any kind

In a video circulated on facebook a number of students were seen chanting full-throated slogans like “We want Jeans” and the whole campus was filled with students shouting in protest. After around five minutes of footage a faculty member who, according to the students, was the Director Bahria University, announced the lifting of the ban on wearing jeans.

However, when the students came to campus in Jeans the following day (Wednesday), they were not allowed to enter the campus and Rangers were deployed at the main gate of the university. Most of the students could not attend classes and others went back home, changed, and returned. “No university in Pakistan has banned jeans. Inspecting everyone’s clothes every morning, standing in queues is a bit too humiliating for a university student and we had to take a stand”, a Bahria University student said on condition of anonymity while talking to The News.

The series of bans on different sorts of clothing started with the ban on wearing Shalwar-Kameez on the campus and students were fined Rs500 for wearing Shalwar Kameez on the campus. After a lot of agitation by the students, wearing Shalwar-Kameez was allowed only on Fridays. The students claim that, the subsequent changes in the management lead to bans on different types of attire and removal of the ban on others, despite the fact that in no other university of Pakistan is any sort of clothing banned as long as it doesn’t violate any moral standards or the religious cultural values. “ It is our constitutional right to wear Shalwar-Kameez. It is perfectly formal. Then why are we not allowed to wear our national dress on the campus. I am not violating any law. Why then such a rule?”, another student said in condition of anonymity while talking to The News.

According to the students the ban on Jeans only exists on the Bahria Karachi campus while nothing like this exists at the Bahria university Islamabad. Another student who supported the protest told The News,“ It’s been three years since I am here and all I have seen is changes in the dress code. What good will it bring us? We spend a lot of time on the campus and we should be allowed to wear what we feel comfortable in”.

Students of Bahria university are perturbed by the excessive attention of the management to the dress code while it remains neither in the state of denial or acceptance in this case. When The News tried to contact the Bahria University , after the call being diverted to different sources, Ms. Ayesha Mairaj , Head of Students Resources Centre, Bahria University, said, “We don’t want to discuss this matter with anyone The news