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Oh, for Christ's sake, they were just wearing hats. If I were one of those girls, I'd tell the dean to sharpen both ends of it and shove it, and then have my parents call the attorney and sue the damned college.
That's the problem with this story, IMO. These sorority sisters decided to hold a party for themselves and their non-Mexican friends that parodied and stereotyped Mexican culture only because the alcohol being served was tequila. There was no celebration of Mexican culture, just drinking. The sorority is linked to Bowdoin, and its actions reflect on the school, so it's very different than if 10 friends got together and had a tequila party where some wore sombreros.
As someone who is partly of Italian ancestry, I'm offended by the near universal portrayal of identifiable Italian-Americans in movies and on TV as Sicilian Mafasios. That's not even what 1% of Italian Americans are or have been, but that's what we're always shown as in the media. So, yeah, I can see where some/many Latinos would be offended that a bunch of well-off non-Latinos in a school sponsored sorority decided to make a mockery of their culture.
So you just signed that you are a snowflake. Somehow Germans are not portrayed as mafia, even though there are 3 times more people with German ancestry than people with Italian blood in the US. Your people managed to show this part of Italian way of life, eat it.
Maybe it's not that serious. Maybe it is. Either way though, you can't control people getting upset.
Further, some people don't want others dabbling in their culture when they feel those same people don't respect them. The fraternities and sororities at my school.would throw parties like that and then come Hispanic Heritage Month, they paint racial slurs all over the frat bridge. So there may be more to it...
Colleges are cultural pressure cookers. Students may be officially 'young adults', but many are still adolescents for the first couple of years. It's the first time in many student's lives that they are on their own, away from the social controls of their family, home town, church and all the other stuff.
It's also the first time some will encounter kids of other races, cultures, and other social and financial strata. Kids are kids; all kids learn about other folks from stereotypes they see on TV, read about in books, etc. Most stereotypes involve differences in how a person dresses, how they style their hair, and other physical details, along with accents and the cultural differences that always exist between town and country living.
Some always behave badly when encountering new cultures for the first time, while most tend to self-select who they associate with. Most often, they all group with others most like them because of familiarity. This tends to increase the social pressures in some places, and not in others.
That's why PC is so prevalent in college. It's a way of keeping the peace by establishing limits of behaviors that can disrupt the purpose of attending college- to study, learn, and get the knowledge one needs to begin a career.
What is PC in one school may not be PC in another.
But no parent wants to send their child to a school where they will be harassed, beaten up, or denigrated in some way. No one, student, teacher, or parent, wants their child to be in a school where learning becomes impossible and wastes the money of attending it.
College students have a lot more independence and freedom now than when I first went to one, 50 years ago. Back then, there were many more rules that could get a student expelled, and many of the rules were much harsher and more arbitrary than they are now. PC has replaced much of this, and is a gentler way of keeping harmony.
It is good? Not particularly. Can it be overdone? Certainly. But I think it's still better than wrecking a young person's chances of going on with their education than being kicked out for something that was as silly as a skirt's length for girls, or failing to wear a tie to class for the boys. I saw both happen in 1963.
We may think that's ludicrous now, but for the kids who just lost their chances of getting a degree, it was a life-changing event that was damned serious.
Pardon me but a College Sorority throws a Party where Tequila is served and the big issue is that some non Hispanic party goers wore Sombreros? Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the LEGAL drinking age 21? Unless the IQ level at that college is really low a 21 age group would be MOSTLY composed of Seniors and Grad students.
Another thought. We are told that we need to celebrate diversity and be accepting of everyone but I guess that means we are supposed to admire another culture from a distance? What better way to appreciate another culture than immersing yourself in that culture?
One would think that a college of all places would teach the students this?
So according to the rules of the college any and all celebrations and holidays may be celebrated by the people as long as they have a blood connection to the culture that started said celebration... What nonsense.
As pointed out earlier someone said they enjoy Vodka but they are not Russian. That is OK, drink up as long as you don't put on a big furry Dr Zhivago hat...
It is insane to think of the difference a few generations make. The great grand parents of these molly coddled kids that can't seem to handle anything outside of their tiny comfort zone experienced WW2.
These kids are offended at the "drop of a hat" and Meanwhile halfway round the world their peers are getting shot up in the middle east and living gruesome scenes everyday.
Maybe there is hope for our future after all. Thank goodness for the tough American soldier.
I read that Harvard is dropping the term "house master" because some people mistakenly thought it had something to do with slavery, although it actually doesn't.
I understand the point of not using offensive terminology but it would help to get the facts straight.
PC is really annoying. It forces us to censor ourselves in multiple aspect of our lives for having opinions. There is a limit to how anti-PC one can be and expect no consequences, but extremely minor developments like the one in the OP are a complete joke. It's ruining the idea that people don't need to agree with other people and that's okay. I despise PC. And no, there is a huge difference between PC and just being prejudice or racist.
Colleges are cultural pressure cookers. Students may be officially 'young adults', but many are still adolescents for the first couple of years. It's the first time in many student's lives that they are on their own, away from the social controls of their family, home town, church and all the other stuff.
It's also the first time some will encounter kids of other races, cultures, and other social and financial strata. Kids are kids; all kids learn about other folks from stereotypes they see on TV, read about in books, etc. Most stereotypes involve differences in how a person dresses, how they style their hair, and other physical details, along with accents and the cultural differences that always exist between town and country living.
Some always behave badly when encountering new cultures for the first time, while most tend to self-select who they associate with. Most often, they all group with others most like them because of familiarity. This tends to increase the social pressures in some places, and not in others.
That's why PC is so prevalent in college. It's a way of keeping the peace by establishing limits of behaviors that can disrupt the purpose of attending college- to study, learn, and get the knowledge one needs to begin a career.
What is PC in one school may not be PC in another.
But no parent wants to send their child to a school where they will be harassed, beaten up, or denigrated in some way. No one, student, teacher, or parent, wants their child to be in a school where learning becomes impossible and wastes the money of attending it.
College students have a lot more independence and freedom now than when I first went to one, 50 years ago. Back then, there were many more rules that could get a student expelled, and many of the rules were much harsher and more arbitrary than they are now. PC has replaced much of this, and is a gentler way of keeping harmony.
It is good? Not particularly. Can it be overdone? Certainly. But I think it's still better than wrecking a young person's chances of going on with their education than being kicked out for something that was as silly as a skirt's length for girls, or failing to wear a tie to class for the boys. I saw both happen in 1963.
We may think that's ludicrous now, but for the kids who just lost their chances of getting a degree, it was a life-changing event that was damned serious.
Good post.
It reminded me of myself back around 1970. I had grown up in an all-White town in western NYS. Our only minority was a dentist and his family who were Jewish. Then I went to a state college in western NYS, which was also predominantly White...very predominantly White. I don't remember a single Black or Latino in any of my classes. What it did have was a surprising number of (mostly) White students from the New York City region. We were going out on a geology field trip one day and one of the NYC kids screamed stop the car, stop the car! He saw 2 cows out in the field mating. He couldn't even imagine what they were doing. We all laughed at him for what we saw as his naivety. Later I got to thinking that how naive would most of the rest of us have looked had we been plopped down in the middle of New York City. Different cultures, different environments, not better or worse, just different. And what I see here on C-D is an awfully lot of posters who have lived a very sheltered life in their own little world...never gotten out into other environments...most never traveled to a foreign county (Canada and Mexico don't count)...never spent any time in a location where they were in the minority...and yet they think they have all the answers. The dumbest people are the ones who don't know how little they actually know.
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