By Margarita Artoglou

Every year, Halloween breeds opportunities for lapses in judgment.

Halloween shenanigans have led to the suspension of one fraternity at the University of Central Arkansas due to the actions of a member. Photos from the Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity’s Halloween party show the student in question dressed up as Bill Cosby, complete with blackface paint.

University officials were swift in taking action. “This picture is highly offensive and repugnant, and this representation goes against all we, at UCA believe in and stand for,” said university President Tom Courtway in a statement. The student has already been expelled from the fraternity, just days after the party took place.

The Sigma Tau Gamma organization also condemned the blackface photo, according to the New York Daily News.
The student recoiled, taking to his Instagram account to apologize and writing that he feared for his life after receiving death threats for his actions.

It is important to take action in cases like these, and the university’s and fraternity’s speediness in handling the situation should be applauded. However, expelling the student from the fraternity immediately may not have been the best possible course of action.

While blackface is offensive, expelling the student from the fraternity seems like the easy way out. When faced with incidents like this, universities and the affiliated organizations need to address the underlying issues that lead to insensitivities. Often, racial incidents are perpetrated by members of fraternities and sororities. A handful of Greek life parties have come under fire for inappropriate costumes and themes in recent years, including “Black parties” where white attendees dressed up in outfits playing on “thug” tropes and Mexican parties where students wore sombreros, mustaches and ponchos.

Clearly, there needs to be more discussion around offensive costumes of this sort, and why they are significant and harmful to the racial communities they affect.

It is not enough just to condemn and expel. Universities should foster communication about why the student’s or organization’s actions were wrong. The University of Central Arkansas should make it a priority to ensure that this student does not leave without fully understanding the harms caused by his racist actions.

It is clear from his Instagram apology message that he does not truly understand what he has done and why it is intolerable, as he wrote, “I am the farthest thing from discrimination (sic), as a matter of fact I fight for equality every day, I’ve been writing a book for the past two years on what it really means to be a good person.”

While the University of Central Arkansas and Sigma Tau Gamma might be trying to set an example by expelling this student from the fraternity right away, they may also be losing the chance to make students understand the gravity of incidents like this that may seem innocent but are actually very offensive to the African American community.

The situation is not handled just because the vote has punished the offending student and thereby lose its opportunity to ensure that the student and his fraternity brothers understand the error of his ways. Blackface will probably not make another appearance on UCA’s campus, but that does not necessarily mean that students understand why blackface is harmful. Students might instead only avoid it out of fear of being expelled. The university and the national Sigma Tau Gamma organization needs to use this unfortunate instance as a teaching moment to enlighten students who might be ignorant as to why blackface constitutes cultural appropriation and why that is destructive. Educational institutions like universities are responsible for creating change in the mindset of its students.

Fordham has not been immune to accusations of racially-based Halloween costumes. At the Lincoln Center campus, a student put up a window Halloween display that some interpreted as a lynching of a person of color. Investigations concluded that the decorations were not racially biased and represented a traditional Halloween display.

Still, it was smart of Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the university, to notify Fordham students of the incident and note that bias is unacceptable. Even though the NYPD found that no hate crime had taken place, the university took the opportunity to make clear that the display was done in poor judgment and that had the student responsible meant to represent a person of color being lynched, it would have been atrocious.
By making these statements, Fordham is fostering discussion about discrimination to ensure that things like the UCA incident do not happen here.

Margarita Artoglou, FCRH ’18, is a communication and media studies from Queens, New York.