SAN SALVADOR — Oscar Melara, the director of a technical college in El Salvador, stations himself on the entrance gate day-after-day to examine costume code compliance as college students file in.
Melara checks for infractions similar to shirts lacking a monogram or title tag, soiled footwear and lengthy haircuts. He’s following a directive issued by the nation’s new schooling minister, navy captain Karla Trigueros.
Whereas costume codes have lengthy existed all through the nation’s public colleges, Trigueros’ directive provides directors the facility to ding college students’ grades or require neighborhood service if they don’t comply.
“We thank the minister, as a result of this enables us to appropriate and higher our college students,” Melara mentioned.Native media confirmed movies of barber retailers with traces out the door as college students chopped off their locks, with some providing specials to benefit from the brand new order.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele reposted a message on X cheering the brand new pointers, which not enable hairstyles such because the mohawk or the so-called “Edgar minimize,” a bowl cut-like fashion popularized in recent times by younger Latinos, notably within the U.S.
Trigueros herself has toured colleges in current days, typically with a slicked-back bun and wearing navy fatigues.
Academics’ teams have opposed her naming. The Salvadoran Academics’ Entrance, in an announcement final week, mentioned placing a navy official accountable for schooling was “absurd” and that it harkened again to the nation’s a long time beneath navy dictatorship.
Bukele, sharing the memorandum on X, argued that full academic overhaul was wanted within the Central American nation.
The chief is well-liked in El Salvador after launching a widespread gang crackdown that has slashed crime charges, although rights teams say harmless folks have been caught up within the dragnet.
His get together lately handed a constitutional reform scrapping presidential time period limits, which critics say opens the door to Bukele staying in energy indefinitely.
