Walk on any college campus during the weekend and you are sure to find people running around dressed like police officers, pirates, athletes or a number of other strange ensembles. It seems like people just don’t have parties anymore without some sort of crazy theme.
Everyone is always trying to think of a cute new theme, and I have seen some pretty creative ones. I once went to a party where people were handcuffed to their dates the entire evening. I’ve also heard of someone having a Rubik’s Cube party, where attendees wore all of the colors on a Rubik’s Cube and switched articles of clothing so that they end up in all one color at the ended of the night. Sometimes though, the desperate struggle to be original is a bit much.
One such party, thrown by Santa Clara University students has raised quite an uproar. According to a Feb. 17 article in USA Today, at the party they called “South of the Border,” students dressed as Latino/a gardeners, maids, gang members and pregnant teens. Since pictures from the party appeared online, 250 people at SCU marched in protest, held meetings and a forum was held. The school has done further investigating to decide how to punish these students. And all of these events were reported by CNN, MSNBC and the Associated Press, among other news providers.
I think many would agree that this theme was a bit outrageous, and at a Jesuit university, no less.
A lot of people enjoy dressing like someone else for the night to escape themselves and be someone else, but when this includes mocking an entire race, you would have to expect a backlash.
I don’t personally know any of them, so I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think the students created the theme in hate. I have the feeling it was a misguided attempt to be funny. Stereotypes and racial profiling have become common topics for comedians.
Dave Chappelle and Carlos Mencia, for instance, are constantly using racial jokes to get laughter from the audience, and it clearly works. People find racism funny, so it’s not hard to imagine where this idea would come from.
I can see how hearing about this party would hurt someone and that they would want to speak out against racism in general. But as for punishment, I think it is unnecessary. For one thing, it was a private, off-campus party, so it was not directly affiliated with the campus. Secondly, these people have the right to express their freedom of speech, so whatever they decide to do in the privacy of their own homes should be their business.
This idea of a racially themed party is not new one either. The “white trash bash” or gangster-themed parties are fairly common. If people wanted to speak out against racism, I’m not opposed to it, but they would have a pretty big job on their hands.
They would have to start by cleaning up the comedians’ jokes and then head to television shows, like “Family Guy,” for instance. As long as racism is in the entertainment industry, parties like this will continue to pop up.
As much as it surprised me that students dressed up like gardeners and maids, what surprised me more was the way people reacted to it. A 250-person protest about a party seems a little extreme to me, along with the fact that it received national news coverage. But I guess the whole event will probably deter SCU students from ever having another racially themed party again.
Christi Sobodos is a junior journalism major and a copy editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
