Indiana U Holds ‘Practice Halloween’ To Help Students Avoid Offensive Costumes

The Daily Wire – by Emily Zanotti

Indiana University’s Housing and Residence Life program recently hosted a “practice Halloween” so that students could learn how to avoid “offensive” and “insulting” costumes when they dress up on October 31.

The College Fix sent a reporter to the “Culture Not Costumes” Halloween workshop, so that their staff could learn precisely what it takes to be as woke as possible ahead of the traditional holiday.  

According to the intrepid reporter, the workshop began with no less than four handoutsdiscussing “what is cultural appropriation?” and walking students through how to tell if a costume borrows inappropriately from a native or traditional culture.

The students were also given a cartoon, which demonstrated a possible path to “wokeness,” a flow chart (similar to this one) which students could use to determine whether their chosen costume was, indeed, offensive, and finally a handout imploring them to “create costumes not stereotypes,” by avoiding decorative accessories that reinforce incorrect assumptions about certain cultures.

Oddly enough, that last handout included a picture of the Mario Brothers (from their eponymous Nintendo video game), as a “safe” costume, even though they aren’t exactly a non-stereotypical portrayal of Italian-American tradesmen.

Once students were successfully educated in the basics of cultural appropriation (dressing as “Pocahotties,” for example, is frowned upon, however dressing as The Fonz, is not), they were given a box of “dress up clothes” they could use to create “dry run” or “practice” costumes for the big event.

Students were then encouraged to choose “appropriate” costumes from the box — superheroes, ghosts, and cats made the cut, according to the reporter — and model them for the rest of the workshop.

“They literally had everything provided for us, and showed us things we could dress up as, and the clothes pretty much matched the costumes and all we had to do was put it together,” the student told The College Fix.

The Daily Wire