Sounds like Bud Kennedy knows this "neck of the woods" (including B-wood!) pretty well !
Tarleton can take pride in forthright response
By Bud Kennedy
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Tarleton State University, coming soon to west Fort Worth, would usually love coverage on Fox News and CNN.
But not this way. Not because a bunch of partying students drank 40-ounce malt liquors and dressed as Aunt Jemima, belittling black Americans and a Baptist pastor's crusade for equal rights.
When I first heard that some Tarleton students threw an "MLK Day" party last week, I thought that the best punishment would be to publish their photos.
They had already done that themselves.
So let me ask: What's dumber -- throwing a goofy party?
Or putting photos of the party on the Web?
To their credit, Tarleton officials and student leaders responded with horror, both at the stereotypes and the immature snapshots now compiled for the world to see at www.thesmokinggun.com.
In its proud 107-year history, Tarleton has matured into the second-largest university in the Texas A&M system. The Stephenville university is on the verge of opening its sparkling new Fort Worth center on Camp Bowie Boulevard.
Two of the student leaders complaining about the photos -- and now, praising Tarleton's response -- are from Fort Worth.
Spencer Kendrick, 20, a communications senior and former Fort Worth municipal cable TV reporter, said that fellow student D. Ray Elder Jr. probably wouldn't have time for another interview Friday. They and fellow students were getting ready for interviews on CNN's Paula Zahn Now.
But Kendrick, a former student body president at Trimble Technical High School, said that Tarleton officials and students can be proud of the campus response, which included an open student forum Wednesday night. President Dennis P. McCabe sternly called the party pics "reprehensible."
Tarleton student Jeremy Pelz, a party host, has apologized publicly to both students and reporters. He told the campus newspaper, the J-TAC, that students just meant "to have some fun."
His fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, has denied any connection to the party.
One of Pelz's former roommates is African-American. He told the local newspaper, the Empire-Tribune, that he didn't take the insults seriously.
Kendrick and Elder, the top officials of the Tarleton student chapter of the NAACP, looked at Facebook.com and took them very seriously.
"It's not cool to mock someone," Kendrick said by phone from Stephenville. "To mock anyone else's race is not socially acceptable."
He's impressed at the reaction of most students, he said. "Everybody is being very caring and friendly. I think it's very authentic. People are walking up and putting their arms around each other."
That is, except for one man.
Kendrick said he was walking up his apartment steps Thursday when a white couple was leaving. He heard the man mutter only one word.
It begins with an n.
"Stephenville needed this kind of discussion," Kendrick said. "Tarleton State needed it. Some racism still exists."
It has been only a few years since Erath County ended a long debate by renaming a street honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan founder, to Forest Lane.
One town in the next county had a documented history of 19th-century "ousters," where African-American residents were forced at gunpoint to leave town. Another town 25 miles away had a 20th-century "sundown sign" warning, "[N-word], don't let the sun set on you."
Even this week, some readers writing to the Stephenville paper don't see the party pics as any big deal.
A Hico reader called the NAACP student leaders' complaints "hypersensitive" and "trivial." A reader from Boerne completely redirected blame, writing that the complaints "dragged the name of a fine fraternity and a great university through the mud."
Now let me get this right.
A bunch of college students dress up as Aunt Jemima or put on T-shirts reading "I Love Chicken" and pose with fried chicken buckets and Colt .45 malt liquor, then put their own photos on the Web.
And anybody who complains is dragging Tarleton's name through the mud?
Even conservative talk-radio host Sean Hannity called the photos "outrageous" and "an offense." A guest compared them to scenes from the movie Borat.
If you love Tarleton State, it must have been a rough week. The proud Texans were embarrassed by the photos, then again by the Jay Leno one-liners.
But the university's response was strong. Maybe strong enough to earn Tarleton some new friends in Fort Worth.
Bud Kennedy's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 817-390-7538 bud @budkennedy.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/columnists/bud_kennedy/16560388.htm
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