Queen’s Students Grapple with Being Called Out for Their Racist Party

It didn't take long for photos of students dressed as Viet Cong guerillas, Rastafarians, and Buddhist monks, first reported by VICE, to be plastered across national news outlets.

About 150 (mostly white) students from Queen's University in Kingston paid $40 to get into an elite Beerfest party Saturday night. Beneath a giant white tent in a student's backyard, the attendees dressed up as a "country" and competed in a flip cup tournament.

Celeste Yim, a Toronto-based comedian who saw the photos on Facebook and tweeted them out on Tuesday, called the party "shockingly racist." But some students aren't all that shocked. "To be honest I am not surprised at all. I've gone to school here for almost five years and each year another racist incident is brought up," one black female student, who wanted to remain anonymous due feeling uncomfortable after seeing the comments of those defending the party, told VICE over Facebook. Especially disappointing for her was the administration's response to the party. Queen's Principal Daniel Woolf released a statement Tuesday saying the administration would take action if they found it was "a Queen's sponsored or sanctioned event." "I went to bed last night knowing that racism at Queen's is acceptable on this campus as long as it's not an officially sanctioned event," the anonymous student wrote to VICE. Queen's admin have since updated their statement to say they're investigating the incident and will see if discipline is necessary. "The Code of Conduct is applicable to students' off-campus conduct in certain circumstances," Woolf wrote in the statement. VICE reached out to Queen's for further comment, but they said they have no further information at this time. After the story went national, vandals wrote "Make Racists Afraid Again!" in chalk on a number of campus buildings. Students in "Overheard at Queen's"—a Facebook group with over 23,000 members—have been up in arms, either defending the party or demanding punishment for the organizers. One male student who claims to have attended the party wrote that it was "lit" and that the backlash has been overblown. Another student, Lucas Rychlo, commented in the Facebook group the costumes were simply accurate: "So do Monastic Buddhists not shave their heads and wear orange robes?" "CBC. CTV. Globe and Mail. This is what your friends, future employers and family will be reading today and the impression they will have of Queens now… If sucking it up and apologizing is too large an inconvenience for you then do I have news about the privileges you've been enjoying at the cost of others sacrifices towards social progress," Deborah Clarke posted. Jeff Chan responded: "This is such bullshit. No apologies necessary". We are bound by the laws of journalism to make mention that Ben Harper—a random Queen's Commerce student who just happens to be the son of a former Canadian prime minister—was very, very upset with VICE after we reported on the racist party.

The anonymous student VICE spoke with said she wasn't surprised when she saw that most of the party defenders were white.

"Their comments, honestly make me feel uncomfortable and unsafe… This is a small campus and everyone is connected somehow, so you might find that the person sitting next to you in your seminar is someone that said blatantly violent and racist things on Overheard the night before," she wrote. "It's extremely disheartening to know that I cannot trust my fellow students to stand with me, to condemn these actions." VICE reached out to a number of students who attended the party for this article, but all declined to comment. Hmmmm. Racially-charged incidents aren't unheard of at Queen's, though they've ranged from "probably racist" to "definitely racist." Just earlier this month, a production of Othello was suspended after students raised concerns about the casting of a white woman as the titular Moorish character. Long before the party, students of colour have spoken about Queen's alienating white culture. The school's student newspaper has reported on a number of blackface incidents, one of the most striking being in 2005 when a female student dressed up as "Miss Ethiopia" for Halloween complete with blackface and pageant wear. In 2007, there was uproar on campus after a former black professor was forced off a sidewalk on campus and taunted with racial slurs by four male students in engineering jackets. In 2013, six Muslim students were physically and verbally assaulted by a group of men, though the assailants were likely Kingston residents. A 2006 report on the experiences of visible minority and Indigenous faculty at Queen's concluded that "white privilege and power continue to be reflected in the Eurocentric curricula, traditional pedagogical approaches, hiring, promotion and tenure practices, and opportunities for research" at the university. It found that dozens of faculty reported being treated differently because of their ethno-racial status. And as it turns out, Beerfest wasn't even the only country-themed costume party this fall—the other was Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest had been an annual event run by All Year Social, a branch of the Commerce Society, before it was banned following complaints. Ignoring the ban, a group of commerce students, calling themselves "All Your Schoolmates," ran an Oktoberfest event on October 21. A cached Facebook page for All Your Schoolmates shows students wearing Rastafarian caps and dreadlocks and French-style hats and scarves at the event. Bhavik Vyas, the Commerce Society president, attended the unsanctioned Oktoberfest as an observer. "It was not as racist [as Beerfest]," Vyas said. "There was cultural appropriation, but I feel like there was very little direct racism at the event." He knows many of the students who attended Beerfest and Oktoberfest, and said they are "inherently good people" who didn't intend to cause harm. "I personally did not feel very victimized," Vyas, who is of a visible minority, said, adding that social media has created a "rumour mill." "A lot of people who didn't know what was going on, who were not on the ground… were really dishonest and didn't take the time to even learn how this stuff works. That's what created this mess." Second-year student Marion Gonsalves says she thinks students who didn't dress in costumes, but paid money to attend the Beerfest party, are equally responsible for letting it slide. "You don't need everybody to be overtly, aggressively racist all the time. You just need a few people [who are] and a lot of other people who are willing to let it slide, because they feel uncomfortable talking about race." She says she finds it difficult to talk about race on campus because she doesn't know who's going to attack her for it. It's easy to see why: The response to the leaked photos on social media has been ferocious on all sides. It's also still unclear if Queen's will take action and discipline the organizers under the university's Code of Conduct. If they do, they're interfering with students' lives, and if not, students will say they're condoning racism. Either way, it's bound to piss a lot of people off. Photo via Twitter Follow Anisa and Sebastian on Twitter.