Hampton Dean Defends Ban on Dreadlocks, Cornrows

The dean of business at Hampton University has since 2001 banned male students in the five-year undergraduate/M.B.A. program from wearing dreadlocks or cornrows, WVEC 13 News reported. Some students at the historically black college have criticized the rule, but Dean Sid Credle said he believes that the ban on some hairstyles has helped students get good jobs. He also rejected the idea that the styles being banned were a part of black culture. "When was it that cornrows and dreadlocks were a part of African American history?" he asked. "I mean Charles Drew didn't wear it, Muhammad Ali didn't wear it. Martin Luther King didn't wear it."