It seems that nearly every year, a new photo of a well-known celebrity in a sickeningly appropriative Halloween costume resurfaces. These choices aren’t confined to Halloween, but the holiday often seems to prompt the most rampant appropriation. From Heidi Klum dressing up as the Hindu goddess Kali, to Julianna Hough darkening her skin to be “Orange Is the New Black’s” Crazy Eyes, to Scott Disik as a sheikh, their thoughtlessness is proudly displayed. Many regular people have been equally distasteful just as recently; most are simply lucky enough that these photos don’t leave their private social media accounts. At Willamette, the housing and residence staff are working to ensure no Willamette students make such insensitive choices.
There are posters in every first-year residence hall detailing what makes a costume inappropriate and culturally appropriative, created by the halls’ RAs, a necessary but somewhat minor step to combat appropriation in costumes. “This is the second or third year that this particular bulletin board content has been posted through the October month,” Director of Residence Life and Housing Aaron Hukari said. “It's our hope that this particular bulletin board allows for reflection on oppressive cultural messages and inspiring costumes that aren't centered around cultural stereotypes.”
Every poster is slightly different; RAs get to decide how the poster looks and exactly what information they include based on the information provided by the administration. “It's like, what do you think is best for your community, how will they best receive the information?” RA Christina Wesel (’27) said. “So there's more creative freedom, but within the same ballpark of information.”
Resident Caitlin Yang (’27) noted how this freedom influenced the quality of the posters. “I've seen halls who maybe put two tiny, hard-to-read blurbs on a board and call it good, and other halls have flyers posted around their hall and they have flyers available to give out.”
The visual quality of various posters certainly seems to have an impact on student response to them, with Terra House resident Leila Paravicini Rovics (’28) noticing the poster in part due to its cute and eye-catching nature. “I gave it a look because I thought the ghost was cute and it was a good message and important,” Paravicini Rovics said.
Many students agree that the posters are well-intentioned and convey a necessary message, but maintain skepticism about how influential the posters will truly be. “I feel like we've kind of passed the point where you could be oblivious about [cultural appropriation],” Paravicini Rovics said. “At this point, if you're choosing to dress up in costumes like that, it's like, ‘Oh, I don't care if this is offensive.’”
In past eras, people could claim ignorance. However, in an age where offensive costumes and garments have been critiqued on such a wide scale, ignorance is no longer a defense. While there may still be gray areas or dubious but not outright appropriative costumes, deciding on a costume rooted in a cheap amalgamation of another culture is generally an informed and active choice.
Yang experienced this with a fellow student at Willamette last year, saying, “[The student is] white, and she wanted to go as Jasmine and Aladdin with her boyfriend, who's also white. There's a lot of options for couples costumes, and it's just like, why do you have to do the one that culturally appropriates on several levels?” Yang and their friends attempted to discourage her, using the flyers on appropriation made by one of their RAs. “One of our friends slid one of those flyers under her door. [It was] completely ignored.”
Aside from the way those intent on appropriation will likely forge forward, another source of skepticism for students is the complexity of cultural appropriation. “The posters that I see, while correct, are most likely not going to have much of a solvent impact, only because they're trying to encapsulate such a complex, intricate topic into a digestible platform,” Edhel Brual (’27) said. “Especially for white people at Willamette, who are very reluctant to learn about white privilege, I imagine it'd be hard.” It’s impossible for the posters to capture such a complicated and historically fraught topic. Cultural appropriation goes beyond a cowboys and Indians Halloween costume; it’s historical and an ongoing concerted effort to commodify the cultures and labors of marginalized people. Although the term was coined in the 1970s, the concept has been present since the beginning of colonialism. Colonial powers forced assimilation and decimation of traditional culture, only to take home exoticized versions of this culture to sell in order to further profit from those they conquered.
This exploitation continues in subtler but equally sinister ways today: the way most American spiritualism is rooted in Eastern religion but its most prominent beneficiaries are white, the prevalence of Indigenous imagery in sports and outdoor spaces while Native people continue to have their sovereignty limited, the way theft of AAVE, Black music, and style benefits white people while Black people’s embrace of this same culture worsens ever-present discrimination. Cultural appropriation isn’t bad because cultural exchange shouldn’t happen. Rather, it’s an active brutalization of tradition, it provides economic benefits for oppressors and it is a modern continuation of centuries of violence.
It’s not feasible for a poster to tackle this, nor is it doable in one paragraph or one article. It is important to remember the posters weren’t created with that intent, though. “As much as I would love for every student to be ready to discuss things like the school-to-prison pipeline, Queer theory, or social constructionism, not every student is at that level of understanding,” said Quinn Sykora, the Matthews residence life coordinator. “Telling folks, ‘Hey maybe on a day where people dress up as monsters and make believe characters, don’t dress like the person who lives down the hall,’ is a much more approachable and accessible starting point for those bigger conversations.”
In the end, the posters are like most efforts to address oppression: necessary, but not sufficient. For students looking to go beyond surface-level conversations about cultural appropriation, there are resources available. “If anyone has any extra questions, the Renjen is a really great resource, especially to talk about this,” Yang said. “For POCs out there looking for other POCs, there's POV as a POC night.” For people who aren’t interested in diving deeper, read the posters and please, don’t go as a different culture on Halloween. Just dress as a sexy doctor or something.