A middle school in El Paso, Texas, has banned students from wearing all-black clothing, claiming the color is “associated with depression and mental health issues.”

According to the local news station KFOX14sent Charles Middle School parents a letter informing them that the school’s uniform policy would no longer allow students to wear all-black clothing. Instead, the school’s dress code was rewritten to only allow students to wear khakis or blue jeans, with black or green polo shirts and sweaters.

The changes were necessary to “(eliminate) a look that has taken over campus with students wearing black tops with black bottoms, which has become more associated with depression and mental health issues and/or criminality than with happy and healthy kids ready to learn themselves,” the letter reads according to KFOX14.

“What they don’t allow for students to wear is black from top to bottom,” Norma De La Rosa, president of the El Paso Teachers Association, said in a clarifying statement. “They can wear black shorts to go to PE. And they can wear it on free clothes day, but they just can’t wear it top down.”

The policy was almost immediately met with backlash from parents, who claimed it was unfair and pointless.

“Making students wear a different color won’t magically turn them into a completely different person,” one parent commented online.

El Paso Independent School District officials have appeared to distance themselves from the decision in the wake of the backlash. “The campus prematurely communicated the dress code as a final decision rather than a recommendation. We regret the miscommunication, particularly the intent behind the changes,” a school district statement, obtained by the BBC, read.

This dress code change is one of the strangest attempts to deal with rising rates of teenage depression and anxiety. It is ridiculous to think that clothes are the cause of, rather than a meaningless correlation to, any behavioral or mental health problems a student is experiencing.

This decision reflects a kind of security mindset among school officials. Instead of trying to address the root cause of students’ behavior problems, school officials needlessly interfere with harmless self-expression—exactly the kind of thing that could stave off, rather than create, mental health problems.