A Series of Tubes

A recent party at UC San Diego has sparked a lot of controversy.  The name of the party was the Compton Cookout.  The part was to mark “a very important month in American society. No, i’m not referring to Valentines day or Presidents day. I’m talking about Black History month.”  To read the full invitation see here.  This party decided to honor black history month by promoting a slew of racial stereotypes.  Here is a small section of the party invitation:

For girls: For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks-Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes … have short, nappy hair, and usually wear cheap weave, usually in bad colors…Ghetto chicks have a very limited vocabulary, and attempt to make up for it, by forming new words, such as “constipulated”, or simply cursing persistently, or using other types of vulgarities, and making noises, such as “hmmg!”, or smacking their lips, and making other angry noises,grunts, and faces. The objective is for all you lovely ladies to look, act, and essentially take on these “respectable” qualities throughout the day.

The person taking claim for the party is someone calling himself Jiggaboo Jones (shown below).

If you don’t mind heavy amounts of swearing then you can watch two youtube videos where he takes credit for and also defends his actions for the Compton cookout:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jigga2jones#p/a/u/1/iGfFSZ2kcRg

You can see the display behind him freeze part way through his second speech:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jigga2jones#p/a/u/0/y95G-LH885Y

Sine there were a bunch of Pi Kappa Alpha frat members in attendance, it was assumed to be a frat event.  They denied that they organized it, but did not deny that frat members were there.  Just to show that free speech is alive and well, another person decided to fan the flames of racial hatred by throwing another racially insensitive party soon after the first one.  Yes you have the right to be an ass, but that still makes you an ass.

So there was an administration organized teach in at UCSD which a bunch of students left half way through.  There have been promises by the UCSD administration to increase funding for diversity outreach and promises of an investigation into the event along with an investigation of the student run TV station that aired video in support of the party.  Part of the response to the student run TV station has been to cut funds to the station which some argue is limiting free speech.  To top off everything else that has happened, a noose was found in the library.

UCSD has the lowest percentage of African American students out of all of the UC campuses and the result of parties such as the Compton cookout will be to further discourage African American students from applying and accepting admission to UCSD.

For the most part the official administrative response would be great and highly commendable if you view it without the knowledge of recent budget cuts or with the view that money does not grow on trees.

The UC budget crisis has meant that there have been many cuts to various programs throughout the UC.  Although all programs have felt the pain of the cuts, many of the programs that were cut first or have been cut the most are now the programs that UCSD administrators say they will now pour money into.  Programs such as EOP, education opportunity program, help students who are the first in their family to attend college make the transition smoothly.  Scholarships have been cut as well.  If UCSD decides to return funding to levels that UCSD gave out a few years ago, it would mean that UCSD only makes diversity a priority when racist parties occur.  The messed up part of the situation occurs when it is in the financial interest of diversity programs to increase racist parties in the surrounding communities because that is the only way to secure funding for the programs from the administration.

At the same time the funds that can now so easily move into programs that had originally been slated to be cut (EOP, scholarships etc.) have to come from somewhere.  I will bet you my next paycheck that they will not cut or furlough any administrative positions in order to come up with the funds.  The money will come from the lowest paid staff on campus (janitors cafeteria staff etc.).  Of course all of this will be buried in a long budget report where nobody will find it.

I would talk more about this, but there is a strike coming up on the 4th and there was a riot in Berkeley along with some yelp news that I want to post about as well.