A number of students from the University of Slough were forcibly removed from a Halloween party, at their halls of residence, last weekend for wearing ‘inappropriate’ costumes. But the strange thing is, they weren’t kicked out for wearing too little clothing, dressing as villainous historical characters, Nazis, or anybody recently deceased. The students dressed as classic Halloween characters but their warden bizarrely decided that their costumes may cause offence to disabled people.
“They were all imitating people with serious handicaps” the warden said, although it has since become clear that they were all dressed as popular characters from fiction and horror stories. The warden tried to explain his decision to remove the students:”there were some dressed as armless people (Edward Scissorhands), some as blind folks (Cyclops from X-Men – one of a large group of those superheroes at the party), somebody dressed as someone with a serious head injury (Mr Bump!) and one girl even came with a fake machine gun prosthesis. We couldn’t tolerate this.”
It seems like a case of able bodied people over thinking things here. Perhaps the greatest sin that they committed was that their costumes were so bad that staff couldn’t recognise the popular characters they were dressed as. The girl who went with the machine gun leg has since said so much herself.
Not only were the kids kicked out for something so silly, they then had to attend a hearing on Friday in front of the University’s Disciplinary Committee. Luckily for them the committee quickly decided that there was nothing much to discuss and let them go back home to bed.
“We really don’t see what the problem was.” said one of the students, after the hearing, who had gone to party as Freddy Krueger. “It was a character from a horror film. Maybe the warden hasn’t seen it.”
Another unnamed student who had gone as Gandalf, who was told he ‘mocked people who need walking sticks’, was equally perplexed by the affair: “the weird thing was that there were some genuinely offensive costumes there. Two girls came as the Twin Towers… One guy blacked up.”
Adding to the absurdity of the situation, a young man in a wheelchair was asked to attend the hearing. “I went as Professor X from the X-Men” he told the hearing. “I tried to explain to the security at the party that I needed the wheelchair but they wouldn’t believe me. Like, why would I go as him if not because of the lack of wheelchair using costumes? Why him of all X-Men? I mean…. Wolverine!”
One student, who had come as Long John Silver, had the sense of humour to laugh about the situation, even whilst being unceremoniously dumped out of the party. “I’ve only pretended to lose a leg.” he shouted at the bouncers. “I saw a guy in there without his head. Surely he’s worse than I am!”
Since the debacle unfolded, the halls of residence have tried to clarify what went on. “We didn’t want to cause a fuss but you never know what you can and can’t allow these days.” A university halls spokesperson said. “We didn’t want to be pilloried in The Daily Mail or The Guardian – between the two of them it’s hard to know where to turn. If we let them stay The Guardian would be on our backs, I thought. And the Dean reads The Guardian. It’s like walking on eggshells; it’s a minefield. It won’t happen again.”
“We were just concerned after that mental health patient costume scandal happened.” she said, referring to an incident in which Asda were found to be selling offensive costumes online. “When that happened we just didn’t know what to think. I mean, how do you know where to draw the line?”
You just use common sense really. You just use common sense.
This is a BBS Spoof but it doesn’t seem too hard to believe. Sometimes able bodied people are too wary about offending less able people and start treating them purely as ‘less able’ rather than as ‘people’!
OMG I thought it was true until I read the end! So plausible!