Oh, UofC

It seems like my lovely institution has been in the news a lot lately. A lot a lot. About... well, non-academic things. We are, of course, revisiting the "Straight Thuggin' Ghetto Party." (Link leads to the Chicago Tribune article, which makes a bit more sense of the situation than the Maroon one, I think. Though you may have to sign up to readit). Re-revisiting this. Again. No, really; I was walking through the quads (all uprooted now because we're replacing the sidewalks) and there was this news van, and someone being interviewed. Yes, of course I walked past the camera (because I had no choice, for fear of bumping the cameraman by walking behind between him and the evil fence), and managed not to laugh as the man responded "No, no, there was very little publicity for the party." (So maybe if you were watching the news in Chicago this afternoon, channel 2, I think, you saw me and my bright green bookbag mentally reviewing the subjunctive tense.) Do you see what you've gotten yourself into, UofC? Do you? Because you took a tiny party and held it up as evidence of OMGRACISM on campus, now other news sources are going to take that as their starting point. Good luck making us look good on this one, guys, good luck. Doesn't it already strike you as odd that we are so crazily paranoid about racism that we've flipped out about a one-hour party where they played rap music and wore baggy clothes. (Which I'm not saying isn't in bad taste, but it's not worth stopping the presses over. College kids? Yes, we make off-colour jokes. That's it... I'm writing a letter to Don Randal about all the dead baby jokes people like to make.) Oh! I saw a white kid on campus today and... he was wearing a sideways hat! And his pants were so low I could see his underwear! ... Heck, I saw an emo-looking kid's underwear, too. And during O-Week, I saw a computer-tech's underwear, because he forgot his belt!

Racial stereotypes parties not fun enough for you, though? Because there have also been sixteen armed robberies around and on campus since the start of the quarter. And it's been getting worse lately. So yay, that makes me feel real safe. (Of course, I don't carry a purse, or much more than my ID with me on campus. And until this guy is caught, I think I'll be keeping my laptop in the dorm in the evening.) My campus isn't supposed to be a scary place! And of course this will bring up more race issues. And if there was a way to solve this, I wouldn't mind it, but we're just picking at scabs here, I think. I mean, I've started curiously noting the racial make-up of my classes... I never did that before. Does this make me a racist? (I can't say I don't notice these things, just that I don't actually think much about it. Perhaps it's the obliviousness of a country girl who hasn't had to deal with diversity and whose ideas of how this all works are all wrong.)

Can't we go back to complaining about how BJ and Pierce suck, and how Max P is ugly and how "that girl/guy" in your class is really, really annoying and also wrong?

[Edit: uchicago seems to be blaming this on first-year syndrome, which I think sums it up a whole lot better than I ever could have. Still, this really doesn't explain how this has become such a gigantic issue.]