In the midst of St. Bonaventure’s #RaceMatters campaign, students proudly toted a racist symbol across campus and Allegany.
On Saturday, juniors and seniors celebrated the annual Keg Klash event wearing T-shirts with Bona’s former logo, the Bona “B” wearing a Native American headdress.
The event, which is essentially a party for upperclassmen to binge drink kegs of cheap beer, was filled with rowdy college kids having fun. No problem there.
But when my friend and I showed up wearing our official Keg Klash shirts—because you can’t get through the gate without it on—we were nearly rejected because we put a duct-tape X over the headdress, rejecting the racist symbol our peers chose to promote.
We were told we had to take the tape off because “Those aren’t the shirts,” even though the shirt was clearly identifiable by the back and the rest of the front design. We questioned it, but eventually complied and threw our tape out. Interestingly, attendees who cut their shirt’s sleeves, tied their shirts or otherwise modified them weren’t bothered. We were targeted because we were making a statement.
After entering, we taped the X again, and while no one tried to kick us out, we were harassed for it. Our social rejection of a symbol that makes an entire culture into a mascot was met with boos, middle fingers, swearing and a lot of glares.
It was disgusting to experience how comfortable my fellow students are in their open racism—so much so, that most of them couldn’t, or wouldn’t, even see it as racism.
Just days after Sister Margaret Carney, O.S.F., denounced the symbol, Bonnies were proud to wear it.
“There is another form of a racist symbol that’s creeping up on this campus that we don’t talk about,” she said during the Confederate flag talk Sept. 16. “The original mascot of our basketball team was a brown Indian, and people loved that mascot. We gave up the symbol, but it’s creeping back.”
According to The Bona Venture’s report on the talk, Sister Margaret said students need to be sensitive to racial issues and should discourage others from activities like attending basketball games dressed as an Indian in war paint.
Those activities are based in using an entire people—one whom we share a community with—as a mascot. It’s disrespectful to use a cultural symbol in a way it’s not meant to be used—and the war headdress of Native American tribes, the one so commonly used as a generalizing stereotype of the culture, is not meant to be on the T-shirts of drunk college kids.
Hannah Gordon is the Managing Editor of the Bona Venture. Her email is
gordonhr13@bonaventure.edu
