More than 1,200 students filled Renaissance Coliseum Sunday for ACBU’s one-and-a-half-hour long event, “N*gger Wetb*ck Ch*nk,” a comedy show confronting racial slurs.
The skits dealt with each represented race’s stereotypes as well as personal testimonies from when each performer realized they are in a minority group, culminating in a final explanation that “there is only one race: the human race.”
Vice President for Student Affairs Nathan Thomas said he has mixed feelings about the event.
“I think in some ways it was good and in some ways it was bad,” Thomas said. “My fear is that it perpetuates those stereotypes, [but] I found their own personal stories of how those stereotypes had affected their lives to be pretty powerful.”
Thomas said he has heard a lot of conversation amongst students as a result of the event.
“No matter what that dialogue is—good, bad or indifferent—conversation is important,” Thomas said.
After the show, students were invited to Renaissance Coliseum’s lobby for pictures and a Q-and-A session with the group members.
Freshman creative writing major Kali Dodez asked the members their opinions on gender roles because she noticed jokes about women during the performance.
“They said they are against gender stereotypes and they don’t use them in everyday language,” Dodez said. “When they used racial slurs, they kind of explained why those were bad in their dialogue, which was the point of their show, but the gender roles weren’t discussed, they were just thrown out and that kind of bothered me.”
According to ACBU coordinator Rachel Bikshorn, there was a good amount of faculty in attendance because some classes required students to attend the event.
“Earlier in the day, there was a faculty workshop, so we had a lot of teachers and faculty from Bradley attend and talk to the performers to get more knowledge about dealing with it so they could take that back to their classrooms and their organizations,” Bikshorn, a senior family and consumer sciences major, said.
As a part of the annual new member education program, all new members in campus’ greek chapters were required to attend the event. Additionally, if chapters wanted to reach accreditation, 80 percent of the chapter needed to be in attendance.
N*W*C* was being the second of three seminars new members were required to attend because one of the topics that was identified as critical and relevant for greek life was race and inclusion.
“The hope is that … new members can connect with each other to engage in leadership education activities and discussion around these topics in order to generate a larger sense of awareness amongst the new and upcoming leaders in our community and also learn about one another and other organizations, their values, history and traditions,” Nancy Schwartz, assistant director of Fraternity and Sorority Life, said.
This wasn’t the first time ACBU brought N*W*C* to the Hilltop, as the group performed here four years ago.
“We knew people would be a little upset by [the event] and kind of shocked at it, but we knew that that would draw people in, too,” Bikshorn said. “People showed up because they were excited and people showed up because they were pissed, but they still came to get the learning experience.”
This time, ACBU received help from six co-sponsors: the Association of Latin American Students, The Body Project, the Intellectual and Cultural Activities Committee, Sigma Lambda Gamma, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers and Student Senate.
“We wanted to hear from them to see if they had good ideas for marketing so we didn’t upset anyone,” ACBU coordinator Mackenzie Clauss said.
However, ACBU did run into marketing issues. The group decided to advertise the event in Michel Student Center Oct. 22 by stapling fliers to popcorn bags and handing them out to students.
“[The flier] was a last-minute decision, so none of us kind of reviewed it, and what had happened was … the three words beside the first word were not asterisked, words were written out and nobody caught it,” Bikshorn said.
While the flier only made it out to about 50 students, according to Bikshorn, ACBU sent out an apology email to the entire campus.
“It was offensive,” Bikshorn said. “It was a complete accident, it was last minute, we didn’t mean to offend anybody, but that’s what happened.”
Regardless of the marketing of the performance, Student Body President Sarah Handler said she hopes students were able to understand this issue because it impacts those in the Bradley family.
“The stories they told, the pain they felt when telling those stories … is real, and I think that a lot of people on campus have gone through,” Handler said. “I hope it gives people a better sense of respect for others who may be different from themselves as well as I hope it gives people a sense of community and belonging.”
