Tribal warfare escalates

The campaign group opposing the SSB theme has finally spoken and it ain’t pretty.

Exeter Students for Social Justice (ESSJ) released a statement this morning which brands the legendary charity ball “racist, disgusting and oppressive”.

The statement says: “The University of Exeter’s Safer Sex Ball has done it again. After last year’s rape “joke”, we thought they could go no further.

The ESSJ statement

“Students across campus are appalled by the choice of theme by the Exeter Student Guild’s Raising and Giving (Rag) society.”

ESSJ’s Campaign Against Racist Safer Sex Ball Theme (“Tribal”) has so far attracted 74 likes on facebook. Exeter University has around 16,300 students.

In one of its more outlandish statements, the group draws a link between Rag’s theme and violent race-hate on campus.

“Rag’s theme statement requested students to be “sensitive of other cultures” while in the same line, calling a Black female celebrity the “Queen of the Jungle”. Such a statement ignores and perpetuates the racially motivated violence that students of colour experience on this campus.”

Click here to read Tab editor Matt McDonald’s view

On Monday, The Tab reported how ESSJ argues the theme is “racist and needs to go”. They define tribal as “a colonialist and racist term used by the white West in the past and present to oppress People of Colour throughout the world.”

Responding to Rag’s facebook page, the ESSJ statement says:

“A statement released on the ‘Rag’s Safer Sex Ball 2012’ facebook page expressed a vision to ‘see an explosion of bright colours and patterns at the SSB.’ However, it becomes clear that the colours they want are not the colours brought by non-­white students at the University of Exeter.

“At an overwhelmingly white university, the only representation that students of colour will have at this event is in the racist stereotypes used to decorate the walls and white bodies on the dance floor.”

The ESSJ campaign page

They even quote one anonymous student who threatened: “Either the Safer Sex Ball theme goes, or I do.”

The statement also refers to last year’s bungled Shag Mag, in which a misguided joke was printed in error.

It says: “This isn’t the first time RAG and the Student Guild have been called out for their discrimination. Last year’s Ball featured a comment that endorsed sexual assault against female-­identified Ball participants.

“This latest development of the “Tribal” theme at a predominantly white institution raises the questions – safer sex for whom?”

Tumbleweed…