‘Ghetto Fabulous’ Costume Party
Latest Racial Incident at University of Texas
AUSTIN, Texas
A group of first-year law students at the University of Texas at Austin have been chided by the dean for participating in a “Ghetto Fabulous”-themed costume party and posting the pictures online.
It’s the latest racially insensitive incident to emerge from the university, which has struggled for years to boost minority enrollment and make students of color feel welcome.
“Among the many ways to happily party in Austin, this particular one was singularly heedless and odious,” Dean Larry Sager said in an Oct. 6 e-mail to the law school’s student body.
Nick Transier, a first-year student who attended the party in September and posted pictures on his Web site, says nobody there meant to offend anyone of any race.
“We had no intention by any measure to choose a group or class of people and make fun of them,” says the 26-year-old Houston native.
But the photos, in which partygoers carried 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor and wore Afro wigs, necklaces with large medallions and name tags bearing stereotypically Black and Hispanic names, upset some Black law students, says Sophia Lecky, president of the Thurgood Marshall Legal Society.
“I just thought overall that it was kind of insensitive, that it was mocking a group of people or a class of people in just a real stereotypical or negative way,” she says. Lecky’s group aims to improve the academic and social climate for Black UT law students.
