{"id":3132,"date":"2007-01-27T12:08:35","date_gmt":"2007-01-27T19:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/01\/27\/uconn-law-students-hold-racially-offensive-party\/"},"modified":"2007-01-27T12:08:35","modified_gmt":"2007-01-27T19:08:35","slug":"uconn-law-students-hold-racially-offensive-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3132","title":{"rendered":"UCONN Law Students Hold Racially Offensive Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: If you want to see the video and hear a Tarleton State administrator talk about the party at Tarleton you can click on this <\/strong>MSNBC link<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 P. Moore also has a good local newscast up.\u00a0 I have to say I am impressed with the young man who hosted the party at Tarleton.\u00a0 He actually gave a real apology, not those half baked ones we have been seeing lately.\u00a0 I’m also impressed with the administrative responses at the two schools.\u00a0 It also struck me that the young man who hosted the party at Tarleton had a Black roommate for two years, so much for <\/strong>the contact hypothesis<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0although it could account for his seemingly genuine apology.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: P. Moore over at <\/em>The Think<\/em><\/a> has some of the pictures from two recent “ghetto” parties–you know the parties where whites dress up in costumes and try to imitate African Americans.\u00a0 The pictures\u00a0include one that was supposed to be a Martin Luther King party at Tarleton State in Texas and another one thrown by University of Connecticut law school students called “Bullets and Bubbly.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I figured I would focus my attention on UConn case (You can check out the photos here on the Smokinggun<\/a>.).\u00a0 For those of you who don’t know, I graduated from UConn.\u00a0 I was a graduate student there, not at the law school\u00a0but at the main campus in Storrs.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since\u00a0I am a UConn grad and I know that several UConn grad students read my blog, I thought this would also be a good time to note that the graduate student representative to the Board of Trustees was at the party.\u00a0 Here’s a quote of\u00a0from him in\u00a0the Hartford Courant<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Michael Nichols, a graduate student member of the UConn board of trustees, attended the party along with several other student leaders. He wore a tuxedo, he said.<\/p>\n

“At the time we felt that nothing was wrong or mean-spirited. Since then we have learned that many of our friends and fellow students were hurt. For this I am truly sorry,” he said, adding that he hoped the discussion would raise sensitivity to other students’ feelings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not going to call for Nichols to step down from his position because I’m not a student anymore and because he didn’t dress up like this.\u00a0 However, he was at the party, and I do find it\u00a0troubling that he would participate in this kind of behavior.\u00a0 At the very least, people should write him a letter letting him know that his behavior does not reflect the concerns of graduate students at UConn.\u00a0 If you are a UConn student, you can send Nichols a letter letting him know that this behavior is unacceptable.\u00a0 Here is his trustee office address:<\/p>\n

Mr. Michael J. Nichols (Student Trustee)<\/strong>
\nc\/o 352 Mansfield Road
\nStorrs, CT 06269-2048<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr Nichols is an elected representative; thus, he needs his constituents to hold him\u00a0accountable for his behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It may also be time to revisit the fact that the law school has had a virtual lock down on the graduate student trustee position over the years.\u00a0 I remember this being a big controversy when I was at UConn.\u00a0 In either 2002 or 2003, the main campus fielded a candidate for student trustee who was trying to challenge the law school grad students, who are usually preparing for their political careers and don’t have the interest of the vast majority of graduate students in mind.\u00a0 It may be time to revisit this, and see if the Graduate Student Senate can find a good candidate from the Storrs campus.\u00a0 There were somewhere around 70 law students at this party, so this is not an isolated handful of people, and it may be a symptom of a need for change in that position.<\/p>\n

It is not easy to get into law school these days, and UConn is fairly good law school, so we are talking about some well educated people, which leads me to ask–do these people really not know that this is offensive?\u00a0 Haven’t they learned about this?\u00a0 One side of me says, I’ll take their claims at face value.\u00a0 Maybe they genuinely don’t know.\u00a0 On the other hand, another part of me says, they have to be lying because anybody who has come of age in this country should be aware of the offensive nature of blackface and general mockery of African Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I remember being taught that it wasn’t right to say “bad things about black people” when I was a kid.\u00a0 In fact, I distinctly remember one incident, when my brother was in his early elementary school years, and we were sitting at the dinner table.\u00a0 My brother hauled out with the n-word.\u00a0 He must have picked it up at school.\u00a0 My Dad said, “What did you say?” My brother was acting like a little smart alec and came out with\u00a0the n-word again, like it was funny. (He knew what he was saying was wrong, but he seemed to think this was a funny thing to say.) At this point, my Dad whooped his butt.\u00a0 Yeah, my parents taught me this was wrong.\u00a0 And it was wrong enough to result in an “ass whoopin'” to use my Dad’s terminology.\u00a0\u00a0Now, I couldn’t figure out why nobody said anything when my parents\u00a0went to\u00a0visit\u00a0our relatives,\u00a0and a few of them liberally used the n-word and made disparaging remarks about black people.\u00a0 I tried to ask my parents about this a few times, but never really got an answer that made sense to me.\u00a0 I supposed that is fairly typical of the hypocrisy of growing up white in the US.\u00a0 We often get mixed messages about race.\u00a0\u00a0However,\u00a0when I was younger it seemed fairly clear to me that blackface and the n-word are wrong. I pretty much knew that was bad.<\/p>\n

Which leads me back to those UConn students, I don’t really know what kind of messages they grew up with, but I am glad to see that the University is using this as an opportunity to let them know that this behavior is offensive, inappropriate, unbecoming, and unprofessional.\u00a0 The new dean, who started just this week (what a welcome!), expressed dismay over the incident, as did the interim dean. As educators it is part of our role to explain why this behavior is offensive,\u00a0and I’m formulating a post on this for a later time.\u00a0 However, you’ll have to pardon me being suspicious about these claims of ignorance.<\/p>\n

It is truly sad to see that these folks are our future lawyers.\u00a0 The criminal justice system is arguably the most racially biased institution in the US, and these students represent the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update: If you want to see the video and hear a Tarleton State administrator talk about the party at Tarleton you can click on this MSNBC link.\u00a0 P. Moore also has a good local newscast up.\u00a0 I have to say … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}