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Politically Incorrect Party Busted
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By Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune
Last update: February 10, 2007 – 12:02 AM
Macalester College student Paul Maitland-McKinley couldn't believe what he was hearing.
A friend was telling him about a party in a campus house that was built around the theme "politically incorrect."
One student came dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member, accompanied by another student who was in blackface and wore a fake noose around the neck.
"My initial reaction was shock," Maitland-McKinley said. "I thought, this can't really happen on my campus. ... There is no getting past that many people were killed that way."
Macalester is just the latest in a string of colleges nationwide to investigate student parties and incidents this year that have involved racial overtones.
Officials are checking to see exactly what happened at the party, and Macalester will have a campuswide discussion on issues of stereotyping on Tuesday.
"We hope to take the teachable moment and engage our campus community a little bit more deeply," said Jim Hoppe, Macalester's associate dean of students. "We hope we can start a deeper dialogue on ... why these types of activities hurt people and why they get the kind of response they do."
News about the party, held at a campus house on Jan. 16 when few students were around, spread to Maitland-McKinley and other members of the student cultural group Black Liberation Affairs Committee (BLAC) last week.
Their adviser told them college administrators needed to know.
President Brian Rosenberg sent a statement to students and faculty and staff members condemning the offensive costumes and party theme.
Negative stereotypes
"Several of the attendees allegedly wore costumes depicting negative stereotypes of race, religion and gender," he wrote. "It is important to understand that the college condemns and will not tolerate activities of this type. It is deeply disappointing that Macalester students would be so insensitive and demonstrate such a lack of understanding of the college's values and mission."
Earlier this school year, two other very selective colleges -- Trinity College in Connecticut and Whitman College in Washington state -- had parties where students showed up in racially offensive costumes or blackface.
At Texas A&M University, students made a racist video that apparently was intended as satire. A fraternity at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was suspended after a "Halloween in the Hood" party displayed a fake skeleton hanging from a noose.
College is still investigating
Macalester has a reputation as a liberal campus. In a story about the party in the student newspaper, the Mac Weekly, a student who attended the party indicated that it was meant to be a satiric comment on "things that would be considered taboo in most situations."
Hoppe said Macalester is still investigating, and he would not comment on specifics except to say the party was not a large gathering and took place a week before spring classes started.
Today's Macalester students were born in the 1980s, long after the heyday of the civil rights movement. Their parents may remember the events of the 1950s and 1960s, but to students it can seem like ancient history.
"I've heard that a lot," Hoppe said. "Students today are in a different place, and the whole concept of what's appropriate and what's not is being challenged."
Lary May, a professor of American studies and history at the University of Minnesota, is interested in youth culture. He calls the Macalester party a "carnivalesque" activity where students mock the official, sanctioned values of society.
Surveys show that in their attitudes toward race and sex, today's college students are the most tolerant generation in American history, May said.
Yet, he said, the same generation revels in the cynicism and coarse humor of TV shows such as "South Park," where nothing is sacred.
"There is incredible ambivalence about the values of their parents," May said. "They're going to shed the sanctimonious side of things."
Knowing the type of student Macalester draws, May said, "they didn't do it on the public green at Mac. They thought it would be in a group environment and no one would ever know about it."
Support for campus meeting
But Maitland-McKinley, who described his heritage as Afro-Caribbean, said that even on a tolerant campus like Macalester, race is a sensitive subject.
While some students say the party was meant to be satire, he said, "that's looking at history in an uninformed way."
Members of Macalester's student government have rallied behind the campus meeting as a way to talk about stereotyping and other issues.
Maitland-McKinley said that many people think race doesn't matter, but that it does, and that it can be hard to talk about even with people you know well.
"People are caught up in the bubble here," he said. "They say there is no problem here. ... I think it's good that this came out. I just wanted Mac to recognize it. A step needed to be taken."
http://www.startribune.com/1592/story/993494.html
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(begin sarcasm) It's a good thing this was caught. Otherwise, who knows the types of things these students might have been satirizing!(end sarcasm)
At least these kids recognize that stereotypes are something to be mocked. Maitland-McKinley is talking about it like he discovered a secret Klan meeting. I certainly hope no action is taken. The kids holding the party are the least likely to be causing problems later on.
This part is great, too.
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a "Halloween in the Hood" party displayed a fake skeleton
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A Halloween party displaying a fake skeleton!!! My God, man. Why are kids allowed to act out in this outlandish way!
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