Whenever I think of Halloween, two things come to mind: candy and costumes. Of course, my take on Halloween is quite westernized and modern. I don’t really think of Halloween as a holiday that originated from a Celtic tradition called Samhain, and neither do most people who celebrate it.

Although costumes seem pretty ingrained into Halloween, the practice started becoming popular in America only after a large wave of Irish immigrants came to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century — and in recent years, costumes have caused more damaging effects to the holiday than beneficial.

Growing up, I wasn’t really aware of how insensitive some of the costumes I saw were. For example, while this costume has been largely condemned in recent years, “being a Native American” for Halloween wasn’t that rare. Obviously, the concept of dressing up as a race is horrific, to say the least, but it seems as though various cultures have always been exploited during the holiday season, which is pretty disgusting.

Even in third grade, during “Woodland People’s Day”—now known as “Woodland Activity Day,” I didn’t realize how complacent I was in this insensitive practice when I, along with my classmates, put on a handmade headdress.

As I reflect more and more on costumes, it seems that it’s quite hard to avoid costumes that are not culturally insensitive. Whether it’s someone dressing up in traditional Asian garments with an Asian rice hat or as a Rastafarian by wearing artificial dreadlocks, costumes seem extremely susceptible to acts of cultural appropriation.

Plagued by this mass normalization of cultural appropriation, I searched what companies and other organizations have done in recent years to prevent insensitive costumes from being worn. At numerous colleges, they have created special task forces with a panel of students who are able to pre-screen costumes in order to prevent such controversy from occurring.

While this may seem a bit extreme at first, I think that it is highly important that this pre-screening system for costumes be implemented at Parker. Since Parker is a PWI, a predominantly white institution, often practices that may be insensitive to non-white students and faculty go unnoticed. This pre-screening system would consist of majority non-white students and faculty in order to prevent the same systematic suppression of opinions that traditional Parker institutions — like Student Govrnemnt — have been accused of.

Personally, I like Halloween and the atmosphere that accompanies it. But I would hate for the holiday to cause more harm to the Parker community than good, so I believe that it’s essential for this costume panel to be assembled in order for the holiday to properly and appropriately practiced at our institution. Also just a note, if you are asking yourself, ‘is this costume an act of cultural appropriation?’ — my guess is that it probably is.