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I am sorry, if you want to be in a ‘cowboy outfit’, please come dressed as an incompetent and dishonest plumber
Why...
Can’t I dress up without a dressing down? I understand the Student Union in Edinburgh have come out with a long list of what is no longer acceptable to wear at fancy dress. Students have been warned that costumes “based on racial or cultural stereotypes” are banned including those portraying Native Americans, Arabs, Nazis, a woman in a Burka, Buddha, a Mullah or a Catholic Priest, (although for some strange reason a nun is OK). They have now added the ‘Cowboy Outfit’! Whoever is President of the Student Union needs to donate his or her body to medical research so we can try and find out how God managed to remove the humour chromosome. This is the thinking that got rid of Kleenex Man Size tissues and will no doubt tell us ‘the time of the month’ is now when females wo-menstruate. Students are meant to be stroppy, rowdy and obsessed with big hopeless causes; saving the polar bear, stopping melting ice caps, ending world poverty or getting Simon Cowell to quit Botox and white T-shirts. They tilt like Don Quixote at these windmills of impossible dreams until the real post graduate world bites. Your bolshy economics student grows up when he has to go spend their cash on white goods (washing machine, fridge, freezer) rather than a few tabs of E. But fancy dress! Is that a needy focus of undergraduate ire?
...and another thing
On top of banning silly dress-up in case they cause offence (other than making the wearer look like a complete dork), it seems perfectly acceptable to now try and ban people from debate whose views unacceptable to some self-appointed gate-keepers. I say “Ban the bomb, sure. Ban the bigot, no”.
I agree no one should grant some foul mouthed racist or possible anti Semite a platform (unless you are the leader of the Labour Party) but the whole point of a debate is to gather people from a wide spectrum and let them put their case.
I cannot see how I could possibly agree with the flat earth society (unless under the influence of some truly mind-altering narcotics) but I would certainly enjoy a lively debate with them trying to convince me if I walked far enough I’d fall off the globe somewhere just past Timbuktu.
But instead, it is democratic debate has fallen off the face of the student globe. Invited guest speakers, who some activists think are not politically acceptable, are either shouted down or refused entry to the campus.
Someone not willing to debate and listen to opposing views is a far greater threat to the fundamental bedrock of modern society than whether I go to a frat party dressed as Wild Bill Hickok and try to pull someone dressed as Eskimo Nell.
...and another thing
Students today are simply getting their priorities mixed. On the one hand they now understand the minefield that any drunken sexual innuendo can get you banned thirty years later from a job, or a picture on Facebook puffing on a funny cigarette can result in a visa revoked but on the other hand, they fail to understand the consequence of not bothering to vote on Brexit and are all calling out “I wasn’t ready that time, can we vote again”.
If students want to make a mark, choose the right targets. Otherwise they should all go around in dunces’ uniforms… oh but they can’t. They’ve been banned too.
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