American Taliban in Chicago

Students at Glenbard East High School in Lombard returned home from the first day of school Wednesday with some news that didn’t sit well with parents.

Female students wearing tank tops were publicly called out for violating the student handbook’s dress code and handed bright orange T-shirts to change into, according to parents, kicking off a volatile first week of school that saw TV news crews parked outside the school and administrators placed at the center of a social media firestorm.

“I can tell you outright the students were being shamed,” Deanna Breen, whose daughter is a sophomore at Glenbard East, said Thursday.

Breen’s daughter was not among the students asked to change clothes, but she came home Wednesday “shocked," Breen said, that her classmates were being made to swap their own clothing for bright orange school-issued attire.

“It’s a dunce shirt, really,” Breen said. “They chose bright orange to make them stand out. They could’ve chosen white shirts, but they want to humiliate and punish them.”