STEPHENVILLE, Texas
Known for its award-winning rodeo teams, Tarleton State University is a usually quiet campus nestled in the state’s biggest dairy community. But that wasn’t the case Thursday, a day after more than 400 people attended a campus meeting to discuss a Martin Luther King Jr. party last week that many here found racially offensive.
Photographs that partygoers posted on Internet sites showed some fraternity members and others eating fried chicken, drinking malt liquor from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags and dressed in faux gang apparel.
From sidewalks to the student center, discussions about the party and what should happen to the participants were all over campus.
“It was rude and disrespectful,” said Lindsay Springer, 21, a senior from Bronte, who is white. “I think it came off as a group of people trying to have a good time and not offend a particular race. I think things just got out of hand and turned into a bigger deal than they wanted.”
Meanwhile, a school-wide roundtable was planned at the University of Connecticut Law School yesterday after concerns about racial insensitivity were raised about an off-campus party in which students dressed in hip-hop attire and sported 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor. Photos from the “Bullets & Bubbly” party were posted on Facebook.com.
Back at Tarleton, others were angered and said disciplining the students would send a message that racism will not be tolerated on the campus, which is about 10 percent black.
“They did it on Martin Luther King Day - if anything, that made me angry,” said R.J. Chisum, 20, a football player and junior business marketing major from Dallas, who is black. “He’s the reason I get to go to school here today. People may be raised like that and think it’s nothing, but if nobody stops them, racism will never stop.”
One picture shows a young white woman wearing a kerchief on her head and a red-and-white checkered apron and holding Aunt Jemima syrup. Another shows a young white man wearing a kerchief on his head and holding a pitcher and a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. Handwritten on his T-shirt is “I love chicken.”
