JESSICA D’NONSENS
Lampoonist
The Black Student Union (BSU) Fashion Show traditionally encourages creativity through diversity on Fredonia’s campus. But this year, Fredonia will celebrate the same thing America cherishes every single day — white people.
A new group on campus, Caucasian Student Union (CSU), has determined that the BSU Fashion Show “made them feel left out.” This came as a surprise to coordinators of the event, as people of all races were encouraged to participate.
“I just feel like there’s all these events telling people to respect black people or Native American people or whatever,” said president of CSU Karen Forewhite, “and it’s like, yeah, everyone’s important, so like, why are we ignoring how white people are important, too?”
Caucasian Awareness Day, an event which celebrated the nuances of white culture — like yelling at your parents, holding the cup with both hands while you drink tea, school shootings and early 2000s pop music — took place instead of the BSU Fashion Show last Saturday.
“Our exhibits on college baseball, Wonderbread and the south were really cool,” Forewhite said. “I think a lot of people left the event like, ‘Huh, wow, so that’s a white person? I had no idea!’ A lot of people learned a lot about us.”
BSU, along with the socially cognizant population at Fredonia, was not amused.
“Yeah, I think something is wrong with people insisting on the necessity of events like this,” said Luka S. Tory, president of an even newer on-campus organization called Stop CSU. “It seems like we can’t even talk about our culture without a white person standing up and saying, ‘What about me? What about us?’
“Honey, open a textbook. We’ve been on you for a while.”
Caucasian Awareness Day booked the Multipurpose Room in the Williams Center the same date and time as the Fashion Show, essentially kicking BSU out. But participants in the event did not lie down and play dead. Instead, they showed up to the event in ball gowns, outfits and costumes all designed after pieces of culture white people have stolen from black people over the years.
“I made this dress, actually,” said Misty Reated, a participant in the fashion show. The dress was made out of fabric woven in different traditional hairstyles of women of color that white women have claimed as their own.
Another participant wore a paper mache tuxedo made out of different pictures of Iggy Azalea.
BSU is always successful at bringing awareness to issues on campus: Caucasian Awareness day is certainly an issue.