The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
Man, people will get offended about anything nowadays. Quote:
Stevenson College is apologizing to its students for serving Mexican food during “Intergalactic†night.
In a letter sent out to students, the college apologized for having “a Mexican food buffet,†while also featuring spaceships and aliens. The college received complaints saying the combination was racist because of the association between Mexicans and illegal immigrants.
Yes, yes, I know. LolDailyCaller, right? Huh. At first I assumed that had to be a hoax or joke. But apparently, it's not. What's stunning to me, beyond the basic ridiculousness of anyone being offended by this in the first place, is the letter written by Dr. Carolyn Golz. Not sure what she's a doctor of, but common sense, sanity, and anything related to writing obviously ain't it. Just a few obvious bits of low hanging fruit:
Quote:
This incident demonstrated a cultural insensitivity on the part of the program planners and, though it was an unintentional mistake, I recognize that this incident caused harm within our community and negatively impacted students. As a result of this incident, I will require cultural competence training for Programs staff, in addition to implementing mechanisms for future program planning that will ensure college programs are culturally sensitive and inclusive.
No. It didn't demonstrate anything insensitive at all. Her letter demonstrates that she has no freaking spine though.
Quote:
As an ally for students of color and, in particular, undocumented students, I am committed to ensuring that student life staff receive the training necessary to make sure that this type of incident does not happen again at Stevenson. I am working closing with Donnae Smith, Coordinator for Diversity and Inclusion for Colleges, Housing and Educational Services (CHES) to continue to increase the cultural intelligence (CQ) of our staff.
Wait? What? Does she actually understand what "undocumented" means? It's not a synonym for "latino" or "hispanic". It means "someone who is in the country without any documentation". How can she be an "ally" for undocumented students? Can there even be undocumented students attending a college? I'm honestly curious how that happens. What do they put on their applications? I suspect an extreme level of dumb on her part here. Oh. And does that mean that undocumented students who aren't "of color" don't earn this special ally status?
While I get that "closing" is certainly a typo and/or spellchecker error, maybe if you're writing a letter on behalf of an institution of higher learning (haha, yeah), you should edit the letter before sending it out?
Oh. And the "Q" in IQ stands for "quotient", not "intelligence". Using "CQ" as an abbreviation for "Cultural Intelligence" leads one to suspect this woman got her PhD out of a cracker jack box or something. Again, it's unclear if the college itself came up with such a silly abbreviation, or if she just wrote the meaning incorrectly. Given that this is UCSC, either possibility could be true.
Quote:
I care about the individuals in our community and I want everyone to feel respected, included, and affirmed.
Except, of course, all the students/staff who aren't complete idiots. Them, we send to sensitivity training until they adopt the same level of stupidity shown by Dr. Golz.
Edited, Apr 23rd 2015 2:23pm by gbaji