It’s that time of year again, and by “that time of year,” I mean the weeks leading up to Halloween when fliers start cropping up around the halls of my school, warning students to avoid cultural appropriation when they plan their costumes.
I walked by one such sign today, of an Asian girl standing next to a photograph of a white person dressed as a geisha. The sign proclaimed, “This is not who I am, and this is not okay.” Several similar signs are posted around the school, including one of a group of four students glaring at a guy dressed in a poncho with a black mustache.
My school is not the only one attempting to prevent students from wearing offensive costumes, of course.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a threat assessment meter for Halloween costumes this year dubbed S.C.R.E.A.M (the “Simple Costume Racism Evaluation and Assessment Meter”). Posters ask students whether their costume represents a person who is not a member of their own race, or whether the costume can only be understood in the context of “controversial current events or historically accepted cliches” to determine its threat level, according to Campus Reform.
The University of Florida recently issued school-wide emails discouraging students from wearing offensive costumes, although the school did not provide its students with guidelines to help them distinguish between offensive and inoffensive costumes. The school has also indicated that their Bias Education and Response Team will be fielding complaints from students about offensive costumes, and that it may reach out to students who wear offensive costumes as well.
University of Florida administrators maintain that this policy would not violate the free speech of students. According to a university spokesperson, “No one is required to talk to BERT. If the individuals involved desire further conversations with us or each other, we would help facilitate this.”
While it is understandable that the university would institute cautionary measures since students have worn overtly racist costumes in years past, the bias response team policies could lead students to police one another for wearing costumes that are, at most, dubiously offensive. Of course there are overtly racist costumes, but I’m not convinced that a college girl dressing up as a geisha—or, in that same vein, a young white girl wearing a Mulan costume—is as offensive as someone wearing blackface.
I am also not sure if encouraging students to report costumes they consider offensive to a bias response team is the best tactic for approaching this situation. By using this approach, the university has eliminated the possibility that students might discuss Halloween costumes among themselves, and that students with different views might express their differences and develop common understandings. As I have said before, of course there are some costumes that are indisputably racist, but it is not unreasonable to expect adults to confront one another over racist costumes, instead of inviting a panel of administrators to step in.
The fliers being hung up around my school are not a very extreme approach, especially when compared with what these other universities are doing. However, I think it’s interesting that the signs assert that, if a person dresses up in a kimono or sombrero, they are helping to reinforce negative stereotypes. If dressing up as Donald Trump does not make a broad statement about how all white men behave, why should wearing a fake mustache mean that one is making a statement about how they view all Hispanics? These are important things for all college students to consider as we head into costume season.
