Rumbled: Sabbs show their true colours

As many of you will know, the Guild has been playing Gok Wan recently. Oding their own version of What Not To Wear: Racist Edition. This basically means kicking anyone in any outfit deemed insensitive out of Fab. A Basketball team wearing sombreros, a man dressed as the Native American from The Village People and someone being Sacha Baron Cohen’s character from The Dictator were all turned away.

One thing is clear, the Guild hates “racist” costumes. Or does it?

Many of you will already have seen the official Guild video of the official VP for Housing “Dominos” Dave Charles officially wearing a sombrero, advertising the official JoesPlus Card and generally looking official.

And why wouldn’t he? With that stylish outfit and passion for providing cheap housing he’s got everything he needs to be a wrestler with a terrible backstory.

But he isn’t alone. This Mexican Wave of Sombreros has now spread to a picture of Hattie Craig (VPE), chatting away to a guy in a poncho and hat, apparently forgetting to casually mention to the guy that he’s a piece of racist scum.

“By the way…”

But pictures of people in Sombreros can get boring after a while. If only I had, for instance, a picture of the former Ethical and Environmental officer in Lederhosen.

Wow. Well it’s not so bad. The banning seemed to concentrate on ‘oppressed’ peoples. Like, you know, Native Americans.

I’m pretty sure that’s a Native American headdress. If that isn’t enough for you then here’s another picture of her and a fancy dress group so large they look like a multicultural version of The Avengers.

There’s so many happy drunk people there representing different countries it’s like a gangbang at the UN.

Come to think of it, what was current VP for Welfare Jethro Lee’s election campaign?

Oh yeah, he went into lecture halls and seminar rooms in so much Karate gear that I thought the lecturer was starting a coup.

So, that’s one former and two present Guild Officers in “racist” clothing already. These photos were all made publicly available on social media.

Usually, pointing out the hypocrisy of a rule as a way of proving how bad the rule is, is a form of logical fallacy. But in this case, it speaks volumes as to how ridiculous the policy is, that those who enforce it would usually break it.

And the more ridiculous it gets, the more it undermines any real effort the Guild make to combat racism. The Tab witnessed a clubber being turned away from Fab for wearing blue face paint. (He was an X-men character.)

It only goes to devalue any genuine efforts the Guild may be making to try and combat racism on campus. Only weeks ago Dr Julius Garvey, son of Jamacian civil rights leader Marcus Garvey, visited the campus. What would he make of this story? I’d like to think his first reaction wouldn’t be “Yeah, fuck the Blue Man Group”.

Racists!

Of course, it’s easy to see where the Guild is coming from. We don’t want to go back to the days when Smurfs had to sit on the back of the bus. Or when the US government allegedly introduced crack to the creatures from Avatar. And we all remember the work of civil rights leaders, like when Sonic did the Blue power salute at the Mario and Sonic Olympic Games.

The Guild hates “racist” costumes, but its members seem to love them. The hypocrisy of these officious fun police is simultaneously funny and irritating. But it also illustrates the perfect irony of their bizarre anti ‘racism’  campaign –  even the Guild can’t understand what the rules are,  or why we have them.