By JOSEPH VITALE
OPINION EDITOR
University of Colorado-Boulder’s Center for Multicultural Affairs began a campaign to raise awareness about potentially offensive Halloween costumes, bringing nationwide attention to the issue. (Photo by Elizabeth Zanghi/The Ram)
Halloween is a yearly celebration on the eve of All Saint’s Day, a Christian feast day. There are countless myths surrounding Halloween, all of which attempt to piece together the holiday’s original purpose and traditions. But, none of that matters in 2013.
Rather, Halloween has been adopted by many in the United States, especially students, as a day to dress up, go trick-or-treating and attend costume parties.
While choosing a Halloween costume can take the form of a long, thought-out process involving acute attention to cultural relevancy (the royal baby!) and/or punny witticisms (the ceiling fan!), this decision might result in a costume that is offensive to others.
This month, students joined administrators at the University of Colorado-Boulder to launch a campaign that directly addressed this issue. CU’s Center for Multicultural Affairs asked for students to consider “the impact your costume decision may have on others in the CU community.”
The Center found that many students have been offended by costumes in Halloween’s past and have expressed their concerns to the administration.
The multicultural group explained that the university’s community has been “impacted” by students who dressed in costumes one might consider inappropriate, such as ”blackface or sombreros/serapes.” Also, there have been individuals who have “chosen costumes that portray particular cultural identities as overly sexualized, such as geishas, ‘squaws,’ or stereotypical, such as cowboys and Indians,” according to CU.
The campaign has been promoted by way of various advertisements around campus, which feature students of various ethnicities posing next to photos of their commonly assigned “stigmas.”
One shows an Asian-American student holding a picture of a woman dressed in a detailed geisha costume. Another shows an African-American student next to a white man dressed in blackface, holding a fake gun and wearing a gold chain. “We’re a culture, not a costume,” the posters read. “You wear the costume for one night. I wear the stigma for life.”
“It’s really a campaign to raise awareness and to create a better sense of community for all of our students and how to have a respectful and inclusive community for all students here at CU,” said Randy McCrillis, CU’s director of the Center for Multicultural Affairs, in a statement.
The response is not unique to CU’s campus, as many other campuses around the country have responded to these complaints, such as University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
CU’s campaign is successful for a number of reasons and should be used as an example for similar campaigns on college campuses, including Fordham’s campus.
This particular campaign is not suggesting a drastic change in policy. In fact, CU writes on their website that it “values freedom of expression and creativity both in and outside of the classroom.” However, they also value “inclusiveness, respect and sensitivity.”
The lack of policy involving this event, however, is perhaps the most important advantage of this campaign, as it asks the students’ to make such decisions on their own. This placement of responsibility allows students to learn about the consequences of their actions, not through being reprimanded by an administrator but by the reception they receive from their peers.
It is the student body that determines what is funny, what is appropriate and what is offensive.
Also, the campaign was neither in poor taste, nor was it overly abrasive. It originated from the ranks of a multicultural group, a student group with the responsibility to be mindful of the interactions of various cultural groups within the close confines of a university campus. The group did not attempt to accuse students of being ignorant. It also did not attack students’ individual rights. Instead, it made use of the group’s right to express an opinion and asked the university’s community to participate in a dialogue. This dialogue attempted to prompt CU’s students to ask questions about their own behavior as adults in America.
Through a brief examination of past costume ideas, this could lead to some students realizing the offensiveness of their costumes. Some students may have realized one of their past Halloween costumes was offensive to an ethnic group to which a close friend belongs. Some students may become more aware of the costume choices of their friends and become more outspoken voices on the topic. If not for this campaign, some students may not have considered it an issue at all.
Whether there is a noticeable change in students’ costume ideas for this Halloween, the campaign brought about some kind of dialogue on campus. That dialogue can go a long way when it comes to divisions in race, gender, religion and sexual orientation on college campuses.
As Fordham students flood the neighborhood in their costumes of choice within the next few days, freedom of expression should remain at the forefront. It is our responsibility as students to decide which costumes are in good taste and which are not, what costumes may offend a friend and what costumes might not.
If a Fordham student chooses to dress in one of the costumes deemed offensive by CU’s student group, it is his or her right to do so. At the same time, a student is also within his or her right to tell that student that his or her costume is offensive.
What comes of a campaign like CU’s is a heightened sense of awareness. Whether or not it impacts our behavior, students immediately become more mindful of the fact that how we present ourselves speaks a great deal to what we value as human beings — even when we are presenting ourselves as someone completely different.
Joseph Vitale, FCRH ’16, is a political science and English double-major from Staten Island, N.Y.
