CHAPTER ONE

The new flatscreen, a hundred-inch LED, must have gone up overnight. It was installed at the apex of the student center and stared down ominously from its position beneath the vaulted ceiling.

It flickered as if from a half-connected cable, a vibrant blue like one of those old Windows error screens. Except it wasn’t an error screen. It was a message.

Beneath it, confused students craned their necks to read what it said.

Helen was cutting through the student center on her way to the English building when she saw them.

“I can’t believe this…” One girl muttered.

“Are you kidding me??”

“That’s bullshit!”

Helen was in a rush. The professor still needed to stop by her office before class. But the disgruntled reactions of the students piqued her curiosity, so she peered up to read it.

Against the stark blue background and amidst the inconsistent flicker of the image, the white text was a little hard to make out. She squinted.

“NEW CHANGES TO THE MONROE UNIVERSITY CODE OF CONDUCT.”

So the new Dean was already making his mark. Henry Hearst had been hired not but a week ago, and Helen didn’t have a good read on him yet. As a tenured professor, she’d been apart of the interview committee for his position.

He was a mild-mannered man, older, with glasses and a mustache. He’d charmed the whole committee in thirty minutes. His affable image was bolstered by a dorky little PowerPoint, “Why You Shouldn’t Hire Me.” It was structured as a jokey routine about his lack of history in academia and mismatched experience for the role, turning those weaknesses around into compelling strengths.

Even Helen was a little swayed by it, but in the end, she couldn’t give her approval. Something just felt off.

Despite her lone dissenting “No” vote, he got his offer the next afternoon. And she could see why. He was personable, soft-spoken, and a clear steady hand. But something about Henry’s calm demeanor unsettled her. And now, he was already making waves with a new rule.

And it was only one rule, Helen realized. Just a short line of text beneath the header that read: “Female students are NOT to wear skirts that stop above the knees.”

“That’s fucking draconian!” A girl barked next to Helen.

It was Sheena, a short student with brown skin and a lithe frame. She was in Helen’s 8:00am Shakespeare, where Helen was headed now.

She was, for Sheena, dressed typically, in a skirt that fell halfway down her thighs. It was modest by any standards, but it was already in violation of Hearst’s new rule.

“Sorry, Professor.” Sheena said when she noticed Helen. “I just meant… what gives! Skirts have to go to the knees?”

“That is a little ridiculous, isn’t it?” Helen furrowed her brow. The screen was hard to look at for too long, so she averted her gaze. “There’s a new Dean…”

“Well I’m not changing.” Sheena crossed her arms. “I don’t expect you to. Let’s get to class, shall we? I’ll talk to Henry about this. The Dean. I’ve actually met him a few times. He seemed reasonable.”

“Sure.” Sheena gestured broadly to the screen. “Real reasonable.”

Helen didn’t want to get into her vague misgivings about the man just now. The truth was, he did seem reasonable. She couldn’t imagine him being such a hardliner. Maybe, she bargained, he was just a little out of touch. He was older, after all. He could easily have lost track of social norms.

Before this, he’d been with some electronics company for two decades. It was hardly a direct career transition, as his presentation pointed out.

Helen was starting to feel vindicated about her dissent. Clearly, the man’s experience did not seem to translate to understanding the youth. How did he even get hired, again?

The pair departed from the growing crowd of students. As they left, Helen caught the rising sentiment among the girls that were there.

“Well I don’t care what they do to me. I am not following that rule.”

When she sat down for class, Ali Burke thumbed through her bag and pulled out the green folder labelled “Shakespeare.” Inside was the essay she finished last night, a succinct four-pager on The Tempest.

Carefully, she slipped the crisp pages from their sleeve and set the essay on the desk. She’d been done with it for about a week, but Ali liked to make a habit of staying ahead of her work. Already, she’d begun her outline for the next essay.

Ali was wondering where her friend Sheena was when she entered the classroom with the professor.

Helen Paisley was a younger woman, but she continually impressed Ali with her insights. The professor was very approachable, with long auburn hair and a gentle, dignified demeanor. Beneath her quiet air of authority, she was kind. Helen made the material feel modern, the way she explained the characters and their motivations as if they were real people.

Thanks to her, Shakespeare was quickly becoming Ali’s favorite course, which said a lot. Ali did not love Shakespeare.

Ali at least enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than her Antiquities lectures, which were threatening to become a real slog thanks to Professor Craig Collins. She thumbed to the red Antiquities folder and eyed the outline she wrote inside. Maybe that needed one more pass.

Sheena took her seat beside Ali with a loud scraping of the chair.

“Dude, you’ll never believe what went up in the student center.” She said. “A fucking dress code.”

“A what?” Ali asked. Sheena had a tendency of launching into tirades with little context.

“Not even a dress code, actually. Just a rule about skirts needing to go to the knees. The knees! Like we’re Amish!”

“Then you’d better change.” Ali quipped.

“Helen already said I don’t have to. She agrees it’s ridiculous! You know, I think I’m going to wear a skirt tomorrow, too, until they get rid of the rule.”

“Sheena, you wear skirts every day.”

“And I’m going to keep wearing skirts every day!” Sheena said defiantly.

Ali laughed.

“Oh shut up. Of course you don’t care, you don’t even wear skirts.”

“Well, yeah, kind of.” Ali admitted. She was never a skirt girl. Her style veered towards to the masculine side of androgynous. “Are you sure you read it right?”

“Helen saw it too! Professor, can you tell everyone about the ridiculous rule they posted this morning?”

Helen looked up from her desk. She was in the middle of straightening out her lesson plan.

“Right. Apparently there’s a new part of the dress code for students. Some of you may have seen it already. You’re all adults and I trust you to make responsible choices about your attire. So let’s just say, in this class, we can stick with the usual expectations.”

“They want us dressed like pilgrims!” Sheena said. Next to her, their friend Scott laughed.

“What! You don’t believe me?”

“No, no. I saw it.” He said. “I’m sorry, but it is kind of funny.”

“Just wait until they start policing what you wear. Oh wait, they won’t because you’re a man. You could probably show up in booty shorts and that’d be totally fine.”

“Yeah, I probably could.” Scott shrugged. “I really do sympathize, though. Hey, Ali, thanks for proofreading this by the way.”

He dropped his essay on his desk.

“It’s no problem.” She said.

Proofreading kept her skills sharp, and besides, seeing what other people had to say helped her develop her own ideas. Not that Scott’s thesis was particularly noteworthy. Then again, his work never was.

Sheena was still in her own world.

“You know, I own legit short skirts that I specifically don’t wear to class. The Dean doesn’t even know how much leg I could be showing.” She grumbled.

“Alright guys, let’s get started.” Helen cut in. “Now I know you all have some essays for me. Pass them forward, people.”

But even as Sheena dug through the crumpled mess of papers that made up her course materials, the incensed girl was still muttering to herself. “I’ll show them what short really means. Maybe the red one…”

The students trickled out from class, and Helen gathered her things. She had about two hours until her next lesson, so now was as good a time as any to stop by Henry’s office and ask him about the new rule. She was eager to get the whole thing over with. A weird pit had formed in her stomach about it.

Helen felt like she was blowing the whole thing out of proportion. But still, to the knees?

She shot her friend Colleen a text.

“Hey. Skirts to the knees at a college is a crazy rule, right?”

Colleen was an adjunct professor at a nearby school, and Helen’s best friend. They got their degrees together halfway across the country and somehow ended up living blocks away. If the women weren’t already close in grad school, they certainly were now. The only thing better would be if a spot for Colleen opened up at Monroe.

“Um, yes? Lol!” Colleen shot back. “Why?” q

“The new Dean updated the code of conduct. Students are pissed. I’m going to talk to him now. Keep you posted.”

That was all Helen needed to go forward with this. Since graduating, she and Colleen become each other’s primary supports through the frustrating world of academia. Just knowing they could chat about this later, no matter how it went, made Helen feel better.

Passing through the English building, it was clear that more students had seen the rule. Chatter rippled down the halls as they shared the news and challenged anyone to go see for themselves if they didn’t believe it.

Helen sighed. This was already blowing up way too much. She exited the building and cut through the quad back to the student union, where the late morning rush had formed a massive crowd below the screen.

The vibrant blue LED still flickered incessantly.

“I’ll wearing a skirt tomorrow, that’s for sure.” One girl in sweats said. “A normal length one, down to my fingertips!”

“I mean they can’t punish all of us.” Another piped in.

Helen took a wide berth around the crowd, and even still had to squeeze through the perimeter and the wall. She looped around to the stairwell and made her way to the offices upstairs.

Henry’s door was open. He sat silently at his desk flipping through some pages.

“Knock knock.” Helen said.

“Oh, good morning. Helen, was it?” Henry asked. “You were at my interview. Come in, come in.”

“That’s right,” Helen said as she entered his space. It smelled like mahogany and spice. “How have you been settling in?”

“Just fine, just fine.” Henry said. He gestured to the seat opposite his desk, and Helen sat, smoothing out her slacks. It was warm in here, and she wondered how he got by in that heavy sweater of his.

“I don’t suppose you’ve noticed the crowd downstairs, have you?” Helen asked.

“The girls are making quite a stir.” He said. Fighting through her nerves, Helen figured she’d get right to the point. She swallowed.

“Don’t you think the rule is a little strict?”

“I suppose it is, yes.” Henry said. “Many rules are, that’s just in their nature.”

“Sure, but, it’s not really concurrent with the times. Knee-length minimums, Henry?”

“I fail to see the issue.”

“I mean, it’s a bit paternalistic. It’s common today to give the students a bit more freedom, is all. I’m speaking as a woman, of course, but–”

“Yes, yes.” He cut in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I know very well how the rule comes across. I’m not some out of touch old man. I know this kind of thing is uncommon these days. Still, this is an institution of learning. Students can follow a simple dress code. One designed to minimize distractions.”

“Okay, but, that’s just it. Your average skirt is not a distraction.” Helen said. “I’m just asking you to reconsider, is all. From what I’ve seen, the backlash might be a bigger distraction than the skirts.”

Henry smiled. “I appreciate your concern. I suppose we’ll only have to wait and see. How about this? Let’s give my rules some time, and if they don’t produce some noticeable changes to this campus, I promise I will walk back on them.”

Helen pondered his offer. The way she saw it, the backlash was only going to get worse. If he needed to see it to believe it, then she would let it play out.

“Okay.” She said. “Thanks for chatting, Henry.”

“Of course! I’m glad you feel comfortable approaching me about these issues. I know I’m new here, but I really do think my methods can make a difference.”

Helen nodded politely and took her leave. As she did, she thought back on Henry’s proposal. He had said rules, as in plural. But right now, there was only one on the screen.

What other rules besides the skirt requirements, Helen wondered glumly, did he have in mind?

“Come ooon, girl! Everybody is going to be doing it. We need to make a statement!” Sheena said for the umpteenth time that day.

The sky was beginning to darken, and Ali was looking forward to getting back to her dorm and away from this stupid skirt controversy. She was tired of hearing about it, not only from Sheena, but from every other girl on campus.

“Look, I totally support you.” Ali said. Again. “But skirts are not for me. I don’t wear them.”

“Don’t you care about women’s rights?” Sheena jabbed. She smiled like she knew exactly how Ali was going to answer. Probably because they’d been down this road before.

“Fuck off! That also includes my right to wear baggy jeans, too, you know. I’m not comfortable in skirts, Sheena.”

“Why? It’s not like you wouldn’t have nice legs!” “That’s besides the point, girl. Come on. Can you drop it?”

Ali was tired of the argument. After seeing how word spread today, she was certain that enough girls were going to participate to create the statement they wanted. They didn’t need 100% participation.

Sheena pulled at Ali’s shoulder.

“How about we swing by the student union and you can see for yourself.” She insisted.

“Sheena, I believe you, trust me. I just don’t want to do it.”

But she let herself get dragged off their path anyway, towards the tall illuminated windows of the student center where the infamous rule was displayed.

“Jesus, if I see the dumb rule for myself will you let me handle my own business tomorrow?” Ali asked.

Sheena kicked open the double doors and pulled Ali through. At this hour, most of the crowds from the day had dissipated, but there were still a handful of students checking out the newly installed screen, and its contents, for themselves.

“Fine!” She said. “Just look, will you?” Ali did.

The tv kind of hurt to look at. It was a gaudy saturated blue with white text burned into it, and it flickered, dimming and brightening at random intervals.

For Sheena’s satisfaction, Ali read it out loud. “New changes to the Monroe University code of conduct. Female students are not to wear skirts that stop…”

The screen flickered and Ali lost her place. It hurt her eyes, and she had to fight through a small headache to finish.

“Skirts that stop… Above the knees…” She said, voice drifting away. The screen was so blue.

“See??” Sheena said.

Ali didn’t quite get her point. She knew about the rule. She’d been hearing about it all day.

Except… It was pretty insulting, wasn’t it? Maybe it was the impersonal way it was delivered, on that ugly giant screen that appeared out of nowhere. The sight of it really hammered home the imposition of it all, like the rule was being passed down from On High with no input, and everybody better get on board with it.

Plus, the capitalization of the word “NOT” was so infantilizing.

Female students are NOT…

“Yeah, I got it.” Ali said, not taking her eyes off the screen.

The way it wavered and flickered was the most frustrating of all. They couldn’t even bother to connect it right. It looked like an image from the 90s.

“I’ve been on a mission with this, you know.” Sheena said. “Seeing the screen for themselves has convinced a lot of girls. I think it like, makes it real, you know? Like, it’s not just a vague concept. It’s a real thing! It’s a big screen thing invading our lives.”

“Uh huh.” Ali said.

The “big screen thing” was currently splitting in aberrations of R G B, then the text snapped back to its normal white. “Female students.” What a dehumanizing way to refer to us, Ali thought.

“I even got some girls from the basketball team on board for this, and you know how they are. I really hope you’re in.”

“I’m tired, is what I am.” Ali said. She didn’t want to see this any longer. “Can we go?”

They finally split ways at the third floor of their dorm, where Sheena and Ali both lived. The whole way home, Sheena prattled on about her “skirt revolution,” and Ali was out of energy to talk back. Instead, she zoned out, stuck in her own head and seeing the stark white text burned into her vision.

Ali’s room smelled like the traces of weed. Tonight, it seemed, was one of the rare nights that Danica was here and not at her boyfriend’s. Her roommate sat cross-legged on the bed painting her toenails black.

“Sup.” Danica said.

“Hey.” Ali tossed her bags beneath her desk and collapsed onto her own bed.

“You seem good.” Danica said dryly.

“Just tired.” Ali said. Her mind continued to turn with the rule.

Female students are NOT to wear skirts that stop above the knees.

Well, Ali never did. What did she care?

What did she care?

“Hey.” Ali said after some silence. “You hear about that new rule posted in the student center?”

“Yeah, what the fuck.” Danica chuckled. She flicked a lock of her long black hair out of her face and kept working on her toes.

“A lot of people are doing like, a protest about it. Wearing short skirts tomorrow. Well, not short skirts, but skirts. Normal length skirts. Shorter than the dress code, anyway.”

“Yeah it’s fucking crazy.” Danica said. “Crazy bitches. You go girls.”

“Were you gonna?” Ali ventured.

“Me? Nah. I don’t give a fuck.” She finished her last toe and started cleaning up. “Wait, you’re not, are you?”

Ali grimaced. She felt crazy even contemplating it. Danica and Ali weren’t best of friends, but one thing they both had in common was indifference to gender norms and beauty standards. Danica should be the one person Ali could vent to about this, so why did she suddenly feel on the defensive?

“No! I mean. I don’t know. Maybe. For like, the principle of it. You didn’t stop by, did you? See it for yourself?” Ali asked.

“Nah, just heard about it. Like I said, I don’t really care.”

So she didn’t even see it.

An urge nagged at Ali to take Danica there now, to show her the blue screen in person so she could see exactly what was causing all this stir. This rule affected all of them. They were both “female students.” She should at least bother to see it.

It was strangely difficult for Ali to bite her tongue.

“Kay.” She said.

Ali stared at the ceiling. Maybe there was a bigger contingent of Apathetics than she thought. If tomorrow came and only a handful of girls defiantly wore skirts, then the rule would likely stay in place.

Sitting up there on that flickering blue screen, taunting all of them with its “female students” and it’s capital ”NOT.”

Sheena, as intense as she could be, was still Ali’s friend. Ali didn’t want to see her movement fall apart.

She had one somewhere. A skirt.

It would be shoved into the bottom of a drawer, smothered by baggy band Ts, ratty jeans, and sweatshirts. It was a blue knit skirt gifted to her by a well-meaning distant aunt, which stopped just above the knees. It was perfectly in violation of the rule without being revealing. For this occasion, it was perfect. It shouldn’t be a big deal to wear it for one day.

Ali tried to push the thought away. She had other things to think about, like tomorrow’s workload. But her mind kept returning to the skirt at the bottom of the drawer.

She could balance it out with a long-sleeved sweater, to compensate.

She could wear the big sweater, and the skirt. The skirt. Wear the skirt.

She could wear the skirt, for a day. Just to stick it to this dumb rule, and make Sheena happy to boot. One day of a coordinated skirt revolution would put an end to all this silliness, which is what Ali wanted most of all anyway.

Danica pulled her laptop into bed and put on her massive headphones. Grungy basslines spilled out from the cans while Danica booted up a game. Ali knew her roommate well enough that their conversation was over. She’d be in her zone for the rest of the night.

And she still couldn’t believe that Danica didn’t even see the screen today.

Was it too late to drag her over there and make her look? Maybe there was something to that thing Sheena said, about needing to see it to get it.

The idea was stupid. Ali was already doing more than she needed by wearing the skirt. She didn’t need to proselytize it to others.

Ali groaned and pulled covers over her head. Underneath, she could barely hear the clicking of Danica’s game controller.

Tomorrow, she’d wear the skirt, and all of this fuss would be over.

The next morning, Helen saw a lot of skirts. Not that “a lot of skirts” was particularly out of the ordinary for a college campus. And there were still plenty of female students walking around in jeans, sweats, and long dresses. But when you considered the cooling fall season, the percentage of skirts was definitely irregular. Clearly, there was a concerted effort among the young women on campus to defy Hearst’s new rule.

You could tell by their smug expressions. These weren’t incidental skirts. These were rebellious skirts. In every group of students, Helen recognized at least a couple. Girls in skirts with sly, knowing grins.

So the revolution was underway.

Helen only hoped it would be enough to convince Henry to drop his approach. It was backfiring already.

And then she got to the student union, and saw the real movement.

“Professor!” Sheena called. As promised, she was in a skirt, and it was a provocative one at that, a burning red number that was notably short. It was more appropriate for clubbing than for school, but Helen could hardly blame her for trying to get her message across.

“Pretty good, right?” She said waving her arms at the turnout.

“I didn’t know you were such an activist!”

Skirt rebels were gathering here, at the site of the first shot fired, to send a message back. Helen wondered what Henry would think when he saw them on his way in, the nearly hundred women in skirts above the knees, crowded at the base of his code of conduct.

Sheena shrugged. “People are pissed. I’m not the only one!”

A couple dozen guys were there too, some watching in amusement, others in standing support. Despite the ridiculous of it all, Helen was a little impressed at the students’ involvement.

“There he is!” A voice rang out. Sheena and Helen turned to look. Henry, dressed in his usual argyle and corduroy, holding a stack of books at his side, had entered from the side doors.

The crowd went wild. All at once, they let loose a myriad of protests and slogans. Evidently, they didn’t do too much rehearsing, because the resulting sound was almost indecipherable. Amidst it all, Helen caught a few words.

“Go back to the fifties!”

“We’re not changing!”

“Stay out of our closets!”

Next to her, Sheena yelled, “Fuck off, fascist!” and Helen stifled a laugh.

Henry put a hand up and smiled. He gave a slight nod to the crowd as he passed, ignoring their jeers and traversing his way to the stairwell. As unperturbed as he looked, Helen was sure the message was received. She doubted she’d need to make another visit after this stunt.

Henry disappeared up the stairs, and the crowd applauded their own efforts. They broke into frenzied conversations amongst each other.

“Not bad.” Helen said to Sheena, who beamed proudly. She lifted her skirt slightly and did a little curtsy.

“I’m sure there’s plenty more who wore skirts today and didn’t show up.” She said. “This isn’t going away until that—” Sheena pointed at the screen and stopped mid-sentence. She stared upwards.

Helen turned back to the celebrating crowd, but their jubilations had died down. Right now, many were looking up along with Sheena.

And Helen realized that for a crowd of this size, it was falling strangely quiet. A few stragglers were still chatting amongst each other, but eventually the ripples of movement that spread throughout the crowd reached them too, and they looked up to see why.

The screen had just been updated with a new rule. Helen gazed into the harsh LED light to read it, and what she saw made her stomach drop.

“A reminder that make-up is a DISTRACTION. Female students are NOT to wear it on campus.”

The screen flickered in and out, but the words remained etched into the blue. Helen read them back to herself before she could make sense of what was going on. She couldn’t believe it. Henry was doubling down.