To the Editor:
I am writing to express my amazement and indignation over the flyer used by Gamma Delta Chi fraternity to advertise their "South of the Border" party on Saturday night. This flyer was blatantly racist and prejudiced, even if its distributors did not realize it. It depicted a Mexican man, drunk or drinking, in the desert and seating next to a cactus tree, as though THAT was what Mexican culture was all about. This type of stereotyping has been going on at Dartmouth for too long. Starting with the now infamous Beta poem, the racist names that were written on Asian students' doors, the Kappa Kappa Kappa poster last term and the recent comic strip in the D, almost every minority community at Dartmouth has been offended and stereotyped on this campus in some way, somehow. This has got to stop. Enough about talking and furthering talk; People need to take action. They need to think before they write or draw something that will be based on old prejudices and misconceptions.
I would like very much for GDX to explain itself. I don't think that they intentionally drew this flyer because they wanted to offend the Latino community. More likely, they just wanted to have a fun time at their party. The fact is, however, that this flyer does offend me, as a Latino, and here I speak as an individual and not for the entire Latino community. Hopefully you will hear from them too about this issue. In any case, at the very least I think GDX should apologize to Mexican-American students and to the Dartmouth community in general. Let us deal with these issues of stereotyping, racism and prejudice forcefully and candidly, and let us resolve that on this campus such racist misconceptions will not have a place in our parties, our classrooms, or simply our daily life.
