No pictures or videos with this one today. Just cold hard information and a little bit of rage, OK a lot of rage.
I make it a habit to do a Google news search everyday on zombies. It helps keep me informed on what other people are writing about, if there are any recent events related to zombies, and I figure if there is an actual attack, I will be able to get the skinny. Well, today’s blog is going to be an opinion piece of a recent event that happened at the University of Texas at El Paso.
According to an article posted on the website The Prospector written by Aaron Martinez, a recent vote was made to choose what the theme for this year’s Homecoming was going to be. They had several choices such as Medieval, Under the Sea, and wouldn’t you know the reason I write this blog, zombies.
The results of the vote turned out much like The Coolest Thing Ever, and zombies were chosen as the theme for the UTEP Homecoming. Well if it was as simple as that I probably wouldn’t be writing about it now would I.
You see, a bunch of people got their panties in a bunch over this. Administrators and students alike decided that this would be an inappropriate theme for their homecoming, and called forum to voice their concerns. Now I don’t know about your high school or college experiences, but my experience says that anytime any brown nosing, stuck up, stick in the mud administrator has a concern regarding anything students want to organize, changes get made wither it’s fair or not. Period. The result of the forum? No surprise, that the theme for the wedding was changed as a compromise from zombies to A Haunted Homecoming.
Now I have never gone to UTEP. Hell, I’m not even from Texas. It’s really none of my business what their homecoming is themed like, or how they run their student government, but in my humble opinion, this is a crock of shit. If administrators and students didn’t like what was being put on the ballots, they should have changed them before they got to the voting step, not after a decision has been made. The concerns that were brought up included the fact that the results did not account for a large part of the student body, that the zombie theme did not allow for much creativity room for the students, and that they didn’t want to offend older alumni, or alumni dealing with recent losses of loved ones. I have four things to say about that.
1) If you don’t vote, you don’t get to bitch to change the vote.
Guess what guys, I didn’t vote in the 2008 Presidential Election. So I don’t get to complain that they put Obama in the White House instead of John McCain (not that I thought he was the better choice necessarily, just making a point). I can’t cry foul that my voice wasn’t herd because I DIDN’T VOTE. If you don’t want a specific theme, go vote for something else instead of complaining about what was chosen due to your lack of action. For Christ’s sake it was a Facebook pole. It wasn’t rocket science. And if you’re a student, you use Facebook, so don’t try to use the “I don’t have a Facebook account” routine. My friend from China has a Facebook account and she can’t even access Facebook from China!
2) Learn the facts of life. People die every day.
I’m guessing if you’re an alumni from a college, you are educated. You know some what of how the world works and you should be able to tell what’s for the fun of the group, and what should be taken as a personal offence. Here’s a hint, if an entire room of people are dressed up as zombies, they are probably not doing it to poke fun at you. If you think it’s insensitive, go put on some big kid diapers. Of course now we live in this politically correct society where everything has to be watered down and we have to protect everyone from all the bad in the world. It’s this society that makes people offended at the slightest thing. It’s what has created the movement of people who want to take all mention of God out of Government, which is ridiculous as well. I may not be of Christian faith but I am certainly not offended if someone wants to say the Pledge of Allegiance with the word God in it. Grow up and have some fun people.
3) Changing the theme to A Haunted Homecoming is not going to change the fact that people will still dress up as monsters that may offend some other people or make your college look foolish to some alumni.
Seriously? You think that a bunch of kids dressed up like Frankenstein makes you look any more sophisticated than being dressed up like zombies? Get real. Halloween parties are supposed to be silly, that’s why we have them. Don’t pretend to hide your zombiephobiea behind the pretence that everything will be more creative, more sensitive, or more sophisticated if someone comes dressed as Swamp Thing instead of a zombie. Your going to look just as goofy and someone will still cry foul because their 4th cousin three times removed got lost in a swamp once and scraped her knee.
4) I think the zombie community has shown great creativity about their chosen interests.
Zombies are just as diverse as humans themselves. They all died in different cloths, and in a way, still show the individual style of the deceased. But if you don’t want to be a regular zombie, why not a super zombie, like in the video game Left 4 Dead? Or be a zombie hunter? Or even go as a survivor. Heck people could go in SWAT outfits or military outfits and would fit right in to this theme.
If I were a student at UTEP, I would be rebelling at this point. I would start a campaign telling all of the student body to dress in zombie fashion any way. The big wigs of the school could label it how they wanted but it would show student respect for the voting process and send a message to the administrators that you can’t just change something just because you are offended. Learn acceptance, go with the wishes of the majority vote for one night, and if you don’t like it, next time adjust the ballot before everyone gets to vote on it.
Have an opinion on my opinion? Please email me at penguinprince@grimcrew.com, or leave a comment below. You can also follow me on Twitter @PenguinPrince25, or follow Grim Crew on Facebook.
-Till Fate brings our Future
Penguin Prince
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