A close reading of a stupid party theme helps no one. Will you examine an "under the sea" themed bar mitzvah, chastising them for including pirates when piracy remains a real threat to sea trade?

wow. That just made my blood boil. What the FUCK?

@ Tepsidell - I would assume an under the sea party would be fish-themed, not pirate themed. Either way pirates may be a threat to sea-trade, but that's not quite the same thing as committing genocide, now is it?

I would also point out that by identifying "bros" with conquistadors and "hos" with the indigenous community they've used colonialism to imply forcible sex. Maybe they know those kids at Yale?

Yes: fratboys are insufferable dbags even at Harvard. (Cf.: "The Social Network.")

FYI the Social Network is a fictional movie - an exaggerated dramatization of events if you will..

The only redeeming aspect of this is the little note down at the bottom saying, "Come dressed to explore the New World... or defend it." So at least they're acknowledging that the First Nations were here first and the conquistadors were outright thieves...

No, wait, if the men are "conquistabros" and the women are "Navajos," then the men are supposed to explore the "virgin lands" and the women are supposed to protect what's theirs. That adds an unsettling sexual undercurrent: "We the men will come in and take what we want. It's up to you women to stop us if we go too far."

I retract my earlier statement. There's nothing redeeming about this.

Replace one form of oppression (white invaders) with another (male.)

Did NO ONE spot the uncomfortable "We're conquering women..." thing? Sigh.

This is an outrage! I demand greater sensitivity and historical accuracy from frat parties!

Look, I went to a pretty prestigious university. Now, I like to think that I'm a pretty smart person. But trust me, you don't have to be smart, let alone culturally sensitive, to get into a school like that. IMO, all of the "Oh no, entitled behavior from Harvard students?!!" stuff in the article was kind of silly.

This is disgusting on so many levels. The fact that they are using my tribe's name as a pun on women, which makes it all the more disgusting and degrading, is amazingly offensive. I don't expect these aholes to ever care or understand (because chances are they won't) but the name of Navajo people being brought down to a degrading term makes is beyond stupid and insensitive. At the very least, I hope they understand that there are real people and families behind such an identity.

Apparently Sigma Chi wants to be known for rape and disease.

Sigma Chi? Not surprising; they don't have a good reputation on any campus I'M aware of. And Ivy League? I've heard more racist, sexist, homophobic and ESPECIALLY classist bullshit out of the Ivy League than I have from Ole Miss or something like that. I believe it was a Harvard fraternity that went storming around chanting about rape outside a women's dorm. A student at Columbia University thought it hilarious to hang a noose on a black professor's office door. At least twice in recent memory (as in, as long as I've been in college, about 2.5 years), Harvard and Yale newspaper columnists have gotten national attention for spewing racist and homophobic nonsense unapologetically. The Ivy League nowadays is very little about the best and the brightest, as opposed to the richest and most connected. And while rich and connected kids very often have high grades, they don't always have any practical knowledge, either by virtue of retaining basic 3rd grade history and geography (Navajos from the American Southwest and Conquistadors mostly from South America?) or by virtue of basic social skills (don't scream about how you're going to rape women outside a women's dorm. Don't have a racial stereotype themed party. Etc). It's also worth noting that Ivy Leagues and other big-name private schools with a lot of legacy children are probably less likely to punish these activities than public schools or smaller-name schools. No matter what students do to 'make the school look bad,' names like Harvard and Yale are always going to inspire admiration and will always have way more students applying than they have seats for. Since such a large population of the students have parents or other family members who may base any financial support of the school on how happy their kid is, Harvard would rather sweep things like this under the rug. When the outrage fizzles out, they still have grants from rich alumni and they still have plenty of applicants to choose from. A public university does not have the same kind of obligation to any small group of students, and smaller private schools can't afford to have bad publicity like that, so they're much more likely to ban certain types of parties or kick misbehaving greek organizations off campus, or even ban greek life entirely. I can hardly say the fraternities on my campus are more socially conscious (generally; different fraternities have different goals, and each chapter of each different fraternity is different, of course), but they typically do need to be aware of which behaviors they display to the general public lest they suffer some pretty severe consequences.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I heard about this site at the party from some hawt Navajo squaw. She said that I seemed totally like sensitive and stuff and I should check it out.

1) Really? It was a party. It's a LOT better than many other themes
2) It was all in good humor. Seriously people? If you want to rant about something, send a letter to Congress about the fact that Columbus Day is still a **national holiday.** Don't focus on parties. If you're that concerned with it, there are much bigger issues at hand.
3) For people taking it out on the frat itself, the guys at Harvard Sigma Chi are a lot nicer, and a lot smarter than you're making them out to be, and in fact they do a lot of great things for philanthropy as a fraternity. Don't generalize people that you have no connection with because of one clearly opinionated story.
4) If you're ranting about the Ivy League as a whole, you're probably not well informed or just biased. Come meet us -- we're just college students looking to do well and have fun like you.

As I believe, the point of commenting on blogs is to be open minded. By assuming that you are a "humorless bitch" you've put words into my mouth (so to speak since this is text). I respect your opinion. However, I fell that it is biased--Ivy Leaguers are not as bad as the previous comments make us out to be--and unfair to a group of people. Yes, the name was a bit insensitive. But it was a frat party, held by a group of wonderful guys. That one would go so far as to analyze a frat party, and give it more significance because of stereotypes associated with our university is just silly, and just creates more negativity. If this is a cause that is near and dear to you, send a letter to Congress. Tell them to remove Columbus Day from our national holidays, and to instead celebrate someone you feel is worthy of the cause.

Lots of things have humor in them somewhere. Some are more appropriate to joke about than others. But the appropriateness of a frat party at a school of less than 7000 hardly seems like something worth being so hateful about. It was wrong, and they've probably heard it. They likely won't make a mistake like that again. If something offends people as much as this obviously did and generates responses like these, a frat probably wouldn't want to go through the consequences again. After all, it was, like "None" said, all "in the name of shallow entertainment" and probably not worth it at that.

Why is anyone surprised here? Have fraternities ever had a more significant purpose than maintaining power structures? By their nature, they are about as unprogressive as organisations get.

Um, I'm pretty sure that they're aware of how offensive this is, and that they a) don't care and b) enjoy riling people up. If they saw this whole argument, they might laugh at it and, guffawing, lament the political correctness of concerned citizens in our society (except probably with more demeaning terminology). To some extent, I think, they do things like this BECAUSE they're offensive, and making a big deal about things just adds fuel to the fire. (You know how when, growing up, another kid would bother you and you were supposed to ignore it, and he'd sometimes quit. It's like that.)

Guys who would say this sort of thing prolly aren't going to hear these arguments about how it's offensive and think, "Oh, no? It is? I was unaware and will reform my ways!" And people who would think it's offensive likely already do, and don't need anyone to explain why.

Plus, on a list of objectionable things frat boys do, I think I'd put being verbally obnoxious and ignorant on the list somewhere under hazing, drinking themselves to death, valuing people based on superficial standards, endorsing date rape, and performing date rape. And those happen at way more than at one Harvard party.

I'm a Harvard alum and I work at Harvard in a place where undergrads congregate.

So first, Harvard doesn't officially have frats. They have "finals clubs" which seem to be elitist frats. No one I knew ever went to their parties.

Sigma Chi initially failed to buy the house they're currently in.

Which is not to defend their actions, but more to say "most people were probably ignoring their nonsense."

The Harvard student paper ran an article talking about the issue and student response against the party.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/10/12/native-college-harvard-americans/

I could be wrong but ... isn't it part of the point to piss people off? I'm trying to picture the guys from 'Animal House' throwing a culturally sensitive, PC, inclusive party and it just doesn't seem to click. I was never in a frat myself but I had friends who were and it seemed to me that one of the ways they bonded with each other was by doing stuff that they knew would get them in trouble with the administration or piss off the rest of campus. Sort of a "we're in this together" mentality. This site is assuming, falsely in my opinion, that cultural sensitivity and inclusiveness are universal values.

Disturbing to me is the thought that the goal is (sexual) "conquest" (Oh hey! We can make racist *and* rape-cultured puns at the same time!!!) as victory over defense. This is basically to say that all the girls at the party won't want to have sex, but it won't matter in the least to the men, and they'll forcibly invade their vaginas anyway! (Don't get me started on the fucked-up virginity imagery behind "New World" in this context. See Valenti, Jessica: _The Purity Myth_) Hey, come to the rape party! It'll be fun, and funny! Blech.

I also have to vehemently disagree with Tepsidell's comment: a close reading of this theme party is absolutely necessary to show just how deep privilege runs! This is an opportunity to teach all the ways in which race, class, and gender privilege intersect with myriads of other privileges. Let's take it, even if Harvard won't.

I never joined a frat in college, but give me a damn break. Its a party flier. Could you pick a more stupid and inconsequential thing to analyze and find fault in?

Please explain how racisim among the privileged elite is inconsequential and why discussing it on a blog devoted to sociological analysis is stupid. Show your work!

You guys need to lighten up. Sure, frat boys are annoying, but I'd much rather go to this party than be caught dead with you "progressive" finger-wagging scolds. I know you live off the vapors of PC self-righteousness, in an insular world of humanities grad students and embittered baristas, but surely you can find a more worthy target than this (?) Yes, I understand the gratification you derive from verbosely parading your moral superiority in an echo chamber such as this. I also understand that your moral inferiors succeed in business, medicine, law, etc. while nobody whatsoever cares about how damn smart you think you are, and that it hurts real bad. But as far as racists and "classists" go, I'm sure if you look real hard you'll find some real ones. In the meantime, support recycling: use your thesis for toilet paper.

s there really nothing better to do that to loquaciously discuss a poorly chosen theme for a party? One of the issues presented in the original post regarded the atrocious generalization of societal groups. Depicting the Navajos as the monolithic representatives of the Native American tribes is poorly incorrect; but considering that this was a desensitized attempt at a "creative" party theme, I can't imagine it represents anything deeper in the sense of oppression or genocide. Having an understanding of history can afford any critic the connection from a modern act, taken out of context, to a historically heinous act, which was very much in context. This was a college party with petty intentions, nothing more. College students, no matter their academic aptitude, are subject to poor choices. If you are going to generalize this poor choice to a group or fraternity, then you must generalize to the academic institution, which can be furthered to academia, and even to society as a whole. Openly discussing in diatribe a poor decision with outlandish generalizations as to the acts' underlying representations only exacerbates the situation. You aren't remedying the situation, you are confirming it with your assertions, assumptions, and generalizations. Asserting this a "sexual conquest" or "promotion of rape" is idiotic. Sexual innuendos are present in all faculties of life and represent neither of those two assertions. Do you really believe that the theme of this party is for males to conquer females forcibly? By discussing these issues at length, you aren't being a saving grace, you are fulfilling your self-serving, solipsistic need to magnify the theme of a party in order to read your post. This can't have been the most offensive party that has been publicized (considering the plethora of academic institutions in existence, all at which parties are abundant) and hope that reading these posts isn't the highlight of your day. It was a college party after all. Ever been to one?

This party is clearly wrong on multiple levels, and of course it's disappointing to see this at Harvard.

But Lisa, how do you get off making a snarky comment like "Perhaps it’s too much to expect student in the Ivy League to be sensitive, but Harvard students are supposed to be smart, right? Not so much."

That's quite a reductive take on the Harvard student body, considering that the offense was committed by a single frat.

We should call out people whenever they do something as ugly as this party, regardless of their pedigree. But reflexive contempt for anyone who's ever been affiliated with an Ivy League is ugly too.

What I find most offensive about this is the fact that women are intended to fill the role of the indigenous peoples while the men are to take on the role of the conquistadors... this perspective is unfortunately the very same perspective the conquistadors took towards the indigenous peoples when they raped their women, beginning the mestizo race.
The declaration of "conquistabros and navajos" brings to mind La Malinche, the Amerindian lover/slave of Cortes who served as a translator for the Europeans, eventually leading to the fall of the Aztecs. In Mexican history she is looked upon as both a mother and a whore...

When I read that it makes me think they are being historically inaccurate on purpose as a joke. One which I find funny and have no problem with. People are too thin skinned sometimes.

Another Harvard alum here, with a couple of points:

1. While the theme is offensive, I am 100% positive that it was not deliberately racist (Deliberately sexist - with the Bros and Hos thing... definitely). Some idiot thought he came up with a clever pun. The frat didn't have a racial sensitivity overseer. Can this be a surprise to anyone? What percentage of college fraternity members are aware, let alone frequent, a blog such as this? I'm not saying it makes it right - just that it's unsurprising.

2. There are assholes at Harvard. There are assholes everywhere. These assholes are young and ignorant, and some will learn. Some won't. Again, this is not Harvard specific.

3. In an aside, the depiction of final-club parties in "The Social Network" is fairly accurate from my experience. But not all the final-clubs were like that. Fox and Fly: yes. Porcelian: no. There was definitely a tenor to final-clubs in my day, just like with different frats at another university. (And as others have pointed out, Harvard does not recognize any fraternity)

Overall, I think this is an offensive and pathetic party theme, but it's an unworthily insignificant topic for this blog. The flyer didn't undergo the scrutiny applied to public statements like ads, which make a more valid statement about public attitudes. Nor should it have. It's a private party for a stupid fraternity with at least one stupid member. To me, picking apart this flyer and then pointing a finger at Harvard for being sub-standard (or at least not being as super-standard as expectations would demand) is akin to overhearing a racist remark at a grocery store in Iowa and concluding that Iowans aren't as polite as they're made out to be. Or, better yet, seeing an adult bookstore in a Mormon community and concluding that they're not as chaste as they claim.

Polite does not always equal accepting/open-minded.
Devout does not always equal chaste.
Smart does not always equal sensitive.

Again, I'm not saying the poster was OK. Just that most college-age people are insensitive in one way or another, and Harvard students are no exception. I would think the writers of this blog could grasp the difference between immature insensitivity and willful racism. Some racial issues are more emphasized in US education than others - these guys certainly would know better than to have a "lynching" party - and it takes time and experience for some people to become attuned to the oppressed populations that were glossed over in high school. These kids need to learn what is and is not OK, but in the long run, this site is about exposing cultural biases, usually in an interesting and enlightening manner. An article about insensitive college students is about as interesting and enlightening as an article about someone whose great-grandmother still uses the phrase "colored people." Regrettable, yes, but not surprising.

To those who are offended by these images: what do you prescribe? Are you simply trying to turn people away from cultural insensitivity by critiquing this piece? Or do you recommend censorship?

Personally, I believe that people have (and should have) the right to be as racist, misogynist or insensitive as they want to be. I find that freedom of speech to be one of the cornerstones of modern liberal democracy. I feel deeply threatened when people suggest speech should be moderated out of concerns for people's sensitivity (for the record: I'm an ethnic minority, male, relatively well educated but fairly poor). The issue for me is: how do we determine what is acceptable and what isn't? Who determines that? Should anti-religious rhetoric be off the table?

Do we decide what is culturally acceptable democratically? That is what the Supreme Court suggests re: pornography with its "community standards" idea. Of course, there is the problem of the "tyranny of the majority." I doubt most commentators here support a democratic decision-making process in determining what type of speech is acceptable and what isn't considering how culturally conservative most of the US is.

So how do we make that determination? On this blog I see a particular demographic (or, rather, a series of overlapping demographics ... I think it would be fair to say that this blog skews liberal and its readership tends to be female, well educated and probably has a higher queer readership than the average blog) determining what is acceptable and unacceptable speech from their perspective. This perspective is then posited as The Truth. Anyone who disagrees is either a raging misogynist, brainwashed by our rape culture or too mired in the patriarchal system to be able to understand themselves sincerely. Only those who agree have escaped The Matrix and are capable of seeing reality for what it is. It's a self-reinforcing, inward-looking perspective that sees itself as infallible.

I've actually come to view sociology with a bit of derision after reading this site for an extended period of time (and, yes, I know someone will inevitably pop up and point out that no one asked for my opinion ... as someone else said, this is a blog and the purpose is to exchange opinions so tough luck). I don't see sociology arriving at its principles through social observation and analysis, rather I see that sociology arrives at its principles depending on what is politically and rhetorically expedient. Cue the whole "mansplaining" meme. The idea that a male could be correct and a female incorrect seems inconceivable and is always invalidated with this trope when no other response is possible. Identity and group identification matter more than observational and analytical accuracy here. The idea that the feminist / liberal / post-structuralist perspective represented here is itself rooted in a particular social context is not taken seriously here: this is the only valid reality, ladies and gentlemen.

What I really see here are two clashing demographics. The posters who point out how trivial a party leaflet is really *don't* get it. They don't get that Gwen, Lisa and the readership here aren't really offended by the leaflet as much as they're offended by the frat demographic and the cultural associations that go along with the frat demographic. They don't like "fratboys" and they really don't like the type of masculinity they represent. The "cultural criticism" angle is just a way for them to give their antagonism an academic veneer and a sense of authority.

Personally, I challenge the first principles underlying many of the arguments presented here. Who said inclusiveness was a good thing? Who said racism was bad? Who said gender equality was superior to inequality? Did God descend from the sky and proclaim this while I wasn't paying attention? Did I miss something in my observation of "nature"? Because when I last checked the natural environment was quite cruel, not particularly amenable to peaceful co-existence and, in many cases, one gender bore much more of a burden than the other. Is it just because you feel that way? What makes you so special? Let's be honest: we're all arguing from a point of radical subjectivity.

And the stuff about how illogical it is to pair Navajos with conquistadors ... I just cringed. This is from a supposedly academic blog?

Re: ManInBlack's Post:

No one has yet suggested censorship, and I'm guessing they won't. I certainly wouldn't. People have every right to be racist and misogynist ... but that also has to mean that we have every right to point out when they are.

You're absolutely right - we are making assumptions. One of the central assumptions is, as you correctly point out, that we will benefit from a world in which people aren't excluded, belittled, attacked, shamed (etc.) for being non-White. We do assume that we will benefit from a world in which 1 in 4 women won't be raped during her lifetime. This is, you are right, a non-trivial assumption, and it's important to point it out. There are, however, rigorous theoretical backings for it (see Gloria Steinem, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and many others). It is acceptable to dismiss those rigorous theoretical backings - but that's dismissing a lot of very powerful scholarship in one fell swoop, and that's *always* something to be wary of. Not necessarily because it shouldn't be dismissed - after all, eugenics is a branch of scholarship no longer practiced - but because it sets a dangerous precedent to dismiss a cluster of opinions out of hand.

I happen to agree with the scholarship and activism that's been done on this issue, as I'm sure you can see from my posts.

This is part of the reason that I don't phrase it as a question of sensitivity (which, while often a worthwhile pursuit, can be a bit of a dicey concept to use for a flier/other public medium) but as a question of respect. I wouldn't want to live in a world in which, simply because of how I happened to be born, a large part of my identity was repeatedly made fun of. It would make me feel very hurt, and it would make me feel on some level as though I didn't matter. That's an incredibly detrimental thing to tell a person over and over again, every day of their life (and that, I'm afraid, is a point that is backed up by science and will be difficult to refute). Going from that, which is knowledge about myself and about the way human beings work, I assume the following: other people won't want to feel that way either. I also know based on a great deal of research data available to me that for many people this is in fact the case. Based on that, I conclude that it's a worthwhile goal to work towards a society that doesn't engage in the kind of discourse that the above flier is an example of, because it tells many people who have suffered far more than I could ever imagine: "I don't care, go home, cry yourself to sleep, we don't want your kind here because it's easier not to deal with you. And don't expect any support from us, or god forbid any compassion."

And that response, that way of belittling someone else's experience is to me unacceptable. It may be the case that's it's an evolutionary adaptation to act that way, that it's somehow "human nature," but even if it is - we've gotten over things like that before.

You're right that I have a world-view and a way I want the world to be - so do you. I don't see my point of view as infallible by any means. In fact, I used to see the world a great deal more like you seem to see it than as I do now. But I asked myself why I was looking at the world that way, and realized that the reason was that I had a hard time connecting with people about their real suffering and experiences, and once I was able to do so, the fact that the world is, as you say, quite often cruel and unfair became something that was no longer quite so cavalierly acceptable. The reason for this is that I saw that a lot of people have it harder than I do for completely random reasons (where they were born, who their parents were, etc. - things beyond their control), and that we have the tools to change at least some of that.

It's worth challenging the principles we base our philosophy on, definitely. And there's a lot of work coming from self-described feminists that's been doing that and questioning the way feminism works. (See Lila Abu-Lughod, Shandra Mohanty, Gloria Anzaldua, etc.) But, by the same token, isn't it just as important to question history and the status quo? Why is it that *so many women* are raped in the US, whereas if a man can stay out of prison, his chances of being raped are relatively low? Is the reason for this something you are okay with? Because all the reasons I've found are ones that I'm not okay with. Why is it that we allow people to judge those they haven't met based on some question of pigmentation? Is it fair to assume that the world just *is* one way? Who's doing the assuming? What context am I in that's making it easy for me to write or say what I'm saying? (And that last question goes for everyone.)

I appreciate where your comments are coming from, and I'm grateful that you decided to share them. I really hope that they can contribute to meaningful and honest discussion. That's how I hope to change the things the societal forces that shaped the flier.

So many things wrong with that poster... SO MANY!
But in case you can't see it:
    1) Our future leaders/ "educated" adults are spending their valuable time... getting wasted.
    2) These educated people are spending ridiculous amounts of money to do so.
    3) Yet for their expensive tuition/ lifestyle they can't get the regions of the United States/ correct tribes correct.
    4) They probably don't give a rat
    5) Promoting sexism AND racism all in one!
Need I go on?