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I've been noticing a proliferation of terrorist theme parties on Facebook. As I look at the pictures of turbans, patterned bandanas across faces, fake machine guns, etc., I worry that the students promoting these parties are soon going to find themselves protested by Middle Eastern and Muslim student organizations.
This is something I remember well from my undergraduate days at Indiana.
Back in the mid-80's, the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity chapter at Indiana had, arguably, the year's biggest and most lavish party – Arabian Nights. They had been having this party for years, and it was a well-known event. Women would come dressed in veiled garb. Men would dress like sheiks. They even rented camels. How the hell they found camels within driving distance of Bloomington, Indiana, I'll never know.
They would import tons of sand. Kegs were delivered by the truckload. For an entire week prior to the party, they would play Arabian music from the windows.
But, then one year, the crap hit the fan. Indiana's sizeable Middle Eastern student population decided to file formal complaints against the event for its promotion of stereotypes. The campus became polarized, primarily between the Greeks who defended the party, and everyone else who found it sophmoric, culturally insensitive, and a glaring example of the ridiculous expenditures of money made in the interest of reckless alcohol consumption.
It was front page news in the Indiana Daily Student for a month. Administrators got involved. Marches and protests were held. Even the animal rights activists got involved on behalf of the camels.
In the end, the party went on, but it was permanently shelved after that. The firestorm had been too consuming and the toxic repercussions outweighted the fun. I recall many sensitivity workshops that followed, lots of apologies by the Phi Psi's, and declarations of the value of the teachable moment by the campus faculty and administrators.
Which brings me back, 20-some years later, to the terrorist parties I'm starting to see online.
If you think there was an uproar about veils, turbans and camels, imagine the uproar that is coming for fatwah parties with machine guns, hostages, and suicide bombers.
I advise you to immediately confront these theme parties immediately, even going so far as to outlaw them premptively. Some dummy will have the idea, if it hasn't happened already. As a general rule, any party theme that centers on a societal subculture is a bad idea. In this case, you run the risk of pushing some very sensitive buttons and becoming the center of a huge debacle like the one at Indiana in the 80's.
It's just not worth it. Address it now, aggressively.
