Lighten up, it's a costume

Halloween has come and gone, but the attempts of several universities to narrow the options of what students can dress up as still haunts me.

Students at Ohio University, University of Minnesota, University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Birmingham in England were told to avoid wearing any costumes that were potentially offensive or perpetuated racial stereotypes.

Many students and staff said costumes that alluded to any ethnicity, culture or nationality were not to be worn this Halloween.

As Hoosiers, we should be proud that IU didn’t attack the freedom of its students to wear whatever they wanted for Halloween.

First, there is no consensus or law in place that enforces the demands limiting one’s freedom to dress up however they please on Halloween.

The people running the “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume” campaign at Ohio University, for example.

I’m sure they mean well, but they are technically authoritarians telling you what you can and cannot wear just to make themselves feel more secure.

More important, shouldn’t these folks be concentrating on tackling true systematic oppression against particular groups of people instead of fighting costumes?  

Halloween is the opposite of Christmas in that it’s the day of the year when we don’t necessarily have to live up to or conform to other people’s expectations and act like perfect little angels.

It is a time when we are encouraged to spend the night with friends, exit our comfort zones and prank people, even if it means wearing a potentially discomforting costume.
Some of the folks who condemn such costumes might have an unrecognized problem with the holiday itself.

For the most part, I don’t understand how these sorts of costumes are taken so
offensively.

As a Mexican-American, I am proud of my Mexican heritage, but people wearing ponchos and mariachi costumes for fun doesn’t even come close to bothering me.
It’s not like silly people wearing certain outfits one day each year is truly enough to degrade an entire nationality, ethnic group or culture in the slightest.

The only way I would feel offended by people wearing sombreros on Halloween was if I was embarrassed to be reminded of my heritage.

The call to ban seemingly offensive costumes at American universities unfortunately shows how we live in the most racially conscious country.

Regularly keeping race in mind to placate the paranoia of possibly offending others is a step in the wrong direction because it supports the dividing notion of “us” and “them.”

This oversensitivity puts race-centered identity and organization before basic human unification.

College students don’t need to be pointed at and told to avoid certain behavior because it could hurt other people’s feelings, as if this was elementary school.

As adults in a free society, individuals have the right to dress up as whatever they want at their own risk.

­— edharo@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Edgar Haro on Twitter @EdHarodude.