Third-Year Council launched its first ever “Cultures are not Costumes” initiative at Trick-Or-Treating on the Lawn this past Friday. The initiative aimed to educate University students and Charlottesville community members about cultural appropriation on Halloween and how to stand up against it.
Third-Year Council President Lital Firestone initiated the outreach and inclusion committee to ensure University students, faculty and community members do not feel their cultures are being disrespected or marginalized on Grounds.
“A serious need that we found as Halloween was approaching was to make sure that people were not being offensive with their costumes and that they were not culturally appropriating cultures that were not their own,” Firestone said.
Third-year Commerce student Yiming Lin, chair of the outreach and inclusion committee, also helped spearhead the campaign to raise awareness about cultural appropriation.
“Going into [the event], we had the goal of spreading awareness toward more of the third-year members and then the University community in general, but the residual impact of that was that we actually helped a lot kids understand what cultural appropriation is,” Lin said.
On the Lawn, a table was set up for students and others to sign a pledge against cultural appropriation and in support of speaking up when they saw instances of cultural appropriation. There was also a whiteboard reading “Cultures are not costumes” for several people to take their picture against, to help support and spread the campaign’s message.
“We had over 200 signatures,” Yin said. “Even little kids wanted to sign their names.”
Firestone and Lin said they hope to hold the event next Halloween with the addition of more community involvement ranging from other class councils to local elementary schools. Through more involvement, Firestone and Lin hope to reach more students in the University and surrounding Charlottesville community.
“I think people really appreciated that a group that is not affiliated with a particular minority was able to step up and speak up for a cause for which a lot of the minority groups are passionate,” Firestone said.
Read this article translated into Chinese here.
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