Sorry to all, but I am bothered by the obsession with levush. The subject is not meaningless. We all know that the external has an effect on the internal. Yet, the visual presentation is a terribly inaccurate measure of someone’s true greatness. It is one thing to seek a uniform dress code to avoid the competitive issue, though that is often expected more in girls than boys. In my bochur days, there was nearly zero attention paid to the subject. And my generation, those on my class and the classes above and below me include quite a number of Roshei Yeshivos, Megidei Shiurim, Mechabrei Seforim, etc. All of these dressed in normal garb, not black pants with white shirts.
The focus on the external detracts from the focus on the internal, and that devastates the entire young generation today. The sheer number of adults in today’s population that are so superficial in their Avodas Hashem is staggering, despite the chumros of yoshon and bedikas tola’im. And the internal weaknesses translate into a failure to imbue the children to grow in Ahavas Hashem. I am on a front where many of these problems are exposed to me, and I am not presenting a theory. If any yeshiva invested as much effort into helping each and every talmid develop and nurture the cheishek to learn and follow mitzvos, as is given to the discipline over the dress code, our community would look vastly different. Kol Torah would not be measured in decibels but in the pervasive passion in learning.