The student head of a collegiate NAACP chapter went snooping on Facebook for offense, and he found some. Now several students are being investigated by Tarleton University officials for being racially insensitive in the confines of their own apartment. Per the AP:


Authorities at Tarleton State University said they plan to investigate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that mocked black stereotypes by featuring fried chicken, malt liquor and faux gang apparel.

“I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance,” said Donald Ray Elder, president of the Stephenville school’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Photographs posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed partygoers wearing Afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students “mocking how African-Americans do step shows,” Elder said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.

“That upsets me,” Elder said. “That’s someone who knows nothing about Dr. King, because Dr. King was totally about nonviolence.”

Wanda Mercer, the school’s vice president of student life, said an investigation was planned into the Jan. 15 party.


The photos are viewable at The Smoking Gun, which explains:


Photos of the January 15 event were discovered on a Facebook.com page by a Tarleton State University sophomore who heads the school’s NAACP chapter. A selection of party photos can be found on the following pages. When he discovered the images, Donald Ray Elder told TSG, he sent an e-mail to Tarleton student Jeremy Pelz, on whose Facebook page the photos were placed in a folder titled “MLK.” In a reply e-mail, Pelz (seen in the picture at right) told Elder that he would rename the folder in which the photos were placed “so it does not bring any disrespect to Mr. King.” Pelz noted that the party was started a few years earlier “because one of best friends is black or African American, whichever you deem politically correct, to be his day not to dishonor him.” He added, “So I do apologize if you felt any disrespect because none was intended.” School officials have launched an investigation into the party and the university’s president, Dennis P. McCabe, has denounced the photos as despicable. In a subsequent post, Pelz–who has yanked the party photos from his Facebook page–stated that the party was not meant to be “racist or discriminating.”


Let’s assume the worst. Let’s assume the party was meant to be racist and discrimination. So what? What business is it of the school or the snoop?

As I said in a previous “Facebook Police” entry, American academe continues to make Orwell seem as if he were soft-peddling that “Thought Police” stuff.