My co-worker told me today that I should tell my dormitory "daughters" to dress more modestly, because they were a temptation to men.

Backstory: I work in a boarding school as the dorm mother of the girls dorm. This basically means that my husband and I parent around 30 teenage girls (12 - 20). It's a really fucking hard job. One of the on-going issues we have is modesty. We're a school, so there are dress codes that they need to follow even in casual wear, but I think they're pretty relaxed ones. It basically amounts to: Your underwear and your bra should be concealed. Your skirt or shorts should be long enough to cover your butt, plus a couple inches below.

Today, while talking with the dormitory mother of the boy's dorm, she started to talk about the way that my girls dress. She directly said to me that they were a cause of temptation for the boys, and that they should cover themselves so as not to be a temptation. I asked her if she didn't think that we should expect boys to have self-control, and she said something like "Yes, but lets be realistic in our expectations of teenage boys". I get what she's saying, but I really have a massive problem with this whole attitude - I think that if we are encouraging our girls to dress more modestly (and let's face it, we're a school, so there are certain boundaries) then it should be addressed from a perspective of self-respect, rather than from a rape culture sort of angle.

I tried to explain this to her, talking about how it's degrading to men as well to have no expectations about their self control, and about educating all the kids on how to behave, rather than asking our girls to essential dress in hijabs, but she really wasn't understanding this.

So tell me 2X - How do I explain why this isn't an appropriate approach to my co-worker? And how can I talk to my girls about the modesty necessary without slut-shaming them?

EDIT: Thank you all so much for your support and advice. I'm heading to bed now, gotta be up bright and early with the girls, but I'll read any other responses in the morning. Thanks again!

EDIT 2: Well, this blew up while I was asleep! So...things I will be doing:

• Addressing the situation with a superior
• Talking to my girls openly (probably on a case by case basis) about their manner of dress
• Looking into starting something within at least my dorm, where they will have the opportunity to ask anonymus questions, since I think this will be a good opportunity for more advance sex-ed.

Things I will not be doing:

• Removing the dress code. I've re-iterated a few times that this is a school, and therefore a basic dress code is necessary, but some people have been taking issue with our (very slack) guidelines.
• Making the dress code more strict.
• Addressing it with them from the view point that they're a commodity, and flooding the market will do them no good. Seriously, wtf is wrong with people. Someone actually suggested that to me.