Saturday, February 20, 2010

dear media, you are going overboard.

I don't know if any of you have noticed the uproar at UCSD over the student ad for a "Compton Cookout" party in parody of Black History Month last weekend, but its created an absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary amount of press. In the past week, i've read about it in the LA Times, NBC, San Diego Tribune, Digg, etc. The latest article made me laugh with disbelief. Check it out:

"At a forum attended by hundreds of students and faculty Friday morning, the Black Student Union issued a list of demands, including mandatory diversity sensitivity classes, increased African American enrollment in students and faculty and the creation of space in central campus considered "safe for African-American students."
- article from NBC San Diego, read the entire article here.

Really. Up to this point, I hadn't noticed that we were victimizing African American students to such a large degree on campus. Um, isn't your presented solution basically SEGREGATION? And endorsing the whole controversial affirmative action issue? The media is completely narrowing the focus and spotlighting the black community as victims of this event.... but the solution that the campus comes to? Let's shut down the all-campus TV station!

Like that's going to shut people up. Why don't you shut down the newspaper and radio while you're at it? UCSD, the media, and the public are completely missing the point. You don't punish 27,000 students because a select group of of them have committed an erroneous mistake. The bad publicity has basically now labeled UCSD as a racist institution, when in reality UCSD does not discriminate against anyone (nor do we take part in affirmative action). Low African-American admittance, retention, and graduation rates at UCSD? I highly doubt its intentionally done: the UC system simply takes those who reach the bar and qualify under UC standards. How P.C.


Oh, and get a load of the title of the piece: Racial Tensions Boil at UCSD.

Excuse me, people. As a student at UCSD in the last 4 years, I have never personally witnessed any kind of racial targeting or discrimination by any student group towards another. The drama over this entire thing has become completely overblown way out of proportion (And no, I haven't had my head in a hole for the time i've been at UCSD). In the 2+ years i've been involved in the MultiCultural Greek Council and The UCSD Guardian (all-campus newspaper), racism and discrimination have never been issues that we've had to deal with as a campus. In fact, I think that we've actually made steps towards improvement, admitting more diverse student groups under MGC, and having all of these organizations work together to participate in all-campus events. I highly doubt that the student organization that hosted the event had racism in mind when planning it (targeting their hatred at another group) - they are all diverse organizations in themselves. In the pool of "night-after", "highlighter", "office hoes and CEOs" and countless other themed parties that go on around campus, do "red-neck white trash" or a "chinese laundress" themed parties need to be held in order to counter this one? Students throwing the party were fully aware of what they were doing in their description of the "Compton Cookout." Hate speech? I don't think so... more like gross stereotyping.

Read an article published by the UCSD Guardian here.



1 comments:

Unknown said...

Urgh. People go so over the top, it must be so hard to find a good balance though.

On a different note, your blog = utterly awesome!

I love it! You've got such great style. And you've just got a new follower :)

Have a fab week, and if you're in the neighbourhood, pop by to www.awonderingstar.com

xoxo

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