It’s taken five years, but Oswego State finally picked up the Ohio University’s torch and joined the “We’re a Culture Not a Costume” campaign. It’s about time.
In 2011, Ohio University’s Student Teaching About Racism in Society (STARS) created the campaign to encourage students to avoid Halloween costumes offensive to different ethnic groups and socioeconomic classes. It has spread coast to coast over the past five years to different colleges from Richmond University to University of California-Davis.
The campaign has been spread through a series of posters featuring people dressed in costumes representing different lifestyles and cultures. Some of these stereotypical depictions include teen pregnancy and people from regions such as the Middle East, Africa, Appalachia, Asia and Hispanic countries. The posters present such statements as “You wear the costume for one night. I wear the stigma for life;” “This is not who I am, and this is not okay;” or “When this is how the world sees you, it’s just not funny.”
As Halloween approaches on Saturday night, students need to take notice of the campaign and act accordingly. Halloween is about dressing up as our favorite characters from pop culture, an athlete or even a cool animal. It’s not about making fun of a person’s culture or lifestyle.
This campus has heavily encouraged diversity and inclusion this semester and has even seen an uptick in enrollment from underrepresented groups. A story in The Oswegonian on Sept. 11 reported Oswego State saw a 63-percent increase in enrollment of underrepresented groups from 2009 to 2014. As diversity grows on campus, students need to recognize that and respect the entire student body, faculty and staff.
During the spring 2014 semester, there was an incident of a student wearing blackface to an off-campus party. This wasn’t even a Halloween party and the incident sparked outrage. Blackface incidents have historical context causing greater anger, but costumes depicting any ethnic group or a person’s lifestyle are unacceptable.
On the posters, the costume of a Middle Eastern person shows a suicide bomber with a fake bomb strapped to his chest. An Asian person is depicted with a stack of textbooks and a bowl of rice. The pregnant teen is holding a cigarette and wears a look that says ‘I don’t care about anything.’
While some may find these stereotypes humorous, they’re offensive. There are students on our campus of these ethnicities and lifestyles working hard to get their degrees and they deserve more respect than these costumes warrant. For all anyone knows, their costume is making a mockery of the person standing next to them or that person’s friend or family member.
When picking out a costume this weekend, take an extra second to think. Make the wrong choice, and you might be ruining someone else’s Halloween with your poor sense of humor.
