Dickinson College officials created a set of Halloween costume guidelines that are designed to stop students from engaging in “cultural appropriation.”
Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has encouraged students to reflect on their Halloween costumes this year to avoid violating the “social justice” sin of “cultural appropriation.”
The guide, which was highlighted this week by Campus Reform, is entitled “How to Assess the Appropriateness of a Halloween Costume.” The guide was published by Dickinson College’s Women’s and Gender Resource Center.
The college posted a series of questions to their website that ask students to consider how their Halloween costume might be “offensive.” Some of the questions suggest that students should avoid wearing culturally insensitive costumes. Others encourage students to avoid costumes that are “borrowed” from a culture other than their own.
The guide suggests students ask the following questions:
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Is it offensive to any race, religion, culture, belief, group of people?
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Does it mock/make fun of/or represent a certain group of people/culture/belief?
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Does it reinforce stereotypes?
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Did people from the other culture endure negative experiences that people from your culture have not?
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Do you think that because your favorite celebrity/icon/whoever is wearing it, that makes it okay?
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Why are you “borrowing” this?
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What is the source? What does this item mean to them?
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How respectful is this to the culture? What would someone from that group feel about it?
The guide was originally written for an educator toolkit that has been provided to colleges around the country. Breitbart News reported in 2016 on an infamous exchange between a leftist student and Yale professor Nicholas Christakis. The student told Christakis to resign over his decision to defend a letter published by his wife that argued against university guidelines on Halloween costumes.