<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"\n\tAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below\n\t\n\n\n\nThere are a million briliant ways to celebrate major sporting events, but dressing up in racially offensive costumes will never be one of them. Members of Columbia University's Kappa Alpha Theta threw an Olympic-themed mixer and dressed in outfits meant to represent Mexico, Japan, the Netherlands, Ireland, Jamaica, and other countries. In two of the photos, the sorority girls don sombreros, mustaches, and shirts with Mexican flags and slogans that read \"Down to Fiesta.\" Other photos show a group of students dressed as Germans and a female student holding a sign that reads, \"Kiss me, I'm a famined potato,\" in \"support\" of Ireland.Early Monday morning, Columbia's Chicano Caucusreleased a statement condemning this cultural appropriation:\u00A0\"While we understand that the actions taken by these members may not have intended to be harmful, they were in fact offensive. Stereotypes are used to oppress marginalized communities. These pictures caricaturize Mexican culture and should not be overlooked. The attire trivializes an entire nation's history, its peoples, and its cultures, reducing them to a mere mustache and sombrero. Though the attire was meant to represent Mexico in a game of Beer Olympics, in actuality it perpetuates the American stereotype of the sombrero-wearing Mexican-American migrant worker, distorting the culture into a form of entertainment. That's not to say that members outside of the Mexican culture cannot dress in our cultural garb or partake in our traditions. However, altering the Mexican flag is not the way to participate in a respectful manner.\"\u00A0The incident at Columbia is just the latest in what seems to be a growing trend of college students throwing offensive parties that play on racial and ethnic stereotypes. Other incidents include the \"gangsta party\" at the University of Pennsylvania,\u00A0the \"Chola\" party at California State University-San Marcos, the \"Bloods &amp;amp; Crips\" party at Dartmouth College, and the Martin Luther King Day party at Arizona State University.\u00A0\u00A0Follow Tanisha on Twitter.\u00A0\u00A0"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/news/a21123/columbia-sorority-dresses-as-mexicans/>