So Wesleyan College in Macon, GA , the oldest Women's college in the nation, announced that they are going to be dropping one of their longstanding traditions. For decades, incoming classes have given themselves names, choosing from a roster of possible monikers inlulding the Green Knights and the Purple Knights.
I found this news in today's paper under the headline
"Some Alumnae Unhappy About End of 'Knights' Era."
And sure, when you change a tradition that goes back over a century, naturally some people are going to be upset. So why do it? Why end the tradition of incoming classes choosing little nicknames for their groups? Well, the Atlanta Journal Constitution did a little digging. And here's what they came up with:
Class names first appeared on campus in 1909 when that year’s seniors called themselves the Ku Klux Klan.
Okay, but. . . I mean, surely. . . They can't possibly have. . .That was just that one horrid class, right?
right?
The class four years later utilized the Ku Klux Klan name and that year’s yearbook was titled Ku Klux.
Seriously? The Ku Klux? That was the yearbook you took home to show your parents? That was the book your friends wrote "have a great summer, stay cool!" in? The Ku Klux?
I mean, I know it's turn of the Century Georgia, but Christ sakes! The Ku Klux?
Eventually the name changed to the Tri-Ks, then morphed into the Tri-K Pirates before the school dropped Tri-K and simply used the Pirates
. . . the school dropped Tri-K and simply used the Pirates
starting in the 1990s.
via GIPHY
The 1990's? THE NINETEEN NINETIES?!?!?!
What the fuck, Wesleyan?
Other class names created after the Klan moniker included the Green Knights, the Purple Knights and the Golden Hearts. For nearly a century, each new incoming class adopted one of the four names on a rotating basis. The freshman adopted class colors, cheers and went through an initiation process that for years incorporated hazing.
Oh, hazing. Oh my God, that's the first normal thing I've heard about this school. Hazing! Wow, what sort of harmless fun the hazing must have been, being carried out by the delicate Southern Belles an this upscale Methodist university populated by only the finest young ladies, and. . . I'm about to be disappointed and horrified, aren't I?
- In the 1950s (photo above), hazing rituals for new students (run by students) featured women with painted faces and carrying nooses.
Actually, I'm a bit relieved. I was expecting blackface, not KISS Army.
Oh, fuck.
- As recently as 2006, a student group wore hooded purple robes for an initiation event for new students -- and that robed activity ended only around 2010 or 2011.
Purple hooded robes? Were they like. . . you know? With the pointy hoods?
Like other first year students corralled in Wesleyan College’s auditorium in Macon, Dana Amihere didn’t know what to make of the spectacle unfolding on stage.
It was fall 2006 and the freshman had been awakened in the dead of night. A group of sophomores stood on stage yelling, screaming and cheering as part of a hazing ritual that seemed part pep rally, part seance, she said. But one feature struck Amihere, an African American, about the young women on stage tormenting the first year students: They wore purple, hooded robes.
“They looked just like Klan robes,” she said. “It was kind of like bells and whistles going off.”
Judi Durand was in the freshman class of 1991 that opposed the use of the Tri-K Pirates name and fought the use of nooses during the school’s initiation rituals. The college got rid of the nooses and dropped the Tri-K from the Pirates name during her time on campus, but refused to eliminate the class names altogether.
They got rid of the nooses.
Between NINETEEN NINETY ONE AND NINETEEN NINETY FIVE!
Stay Klassy, Wesleyan!
Fuck. Seriously?
So let's hear some of the objections to Wesleyan trying to FINALLY - in Two Thousand Eighteen! - sever the last of its ties to the Ku Klux Klan, because if there's one thing today's media climate has taught us it's that racist retrograde revanchists must always be heard and have their bullshit taken seriously lest their feelings be hurt and then they're forced to vote to re-elect Trump or something.
Yes, it is so unfair that people who thought that enslaving their fellow human beings was somehow "good" are now being judged by the standards of basic human decency!
LIBERAL MS13 SNOWFLAKES CONTINUE TO BE OFFENDED BY EVERYTHING! PLEASE KEEP IT UP! TRUMP 2020!!!!
Yeah, because you know who are a bunch of "liberal snowflakes?" These guys:
Don't erase history, learn from it so it's not repeated!
Sure. And the best way to learn from history is to keep honoring the worst aspects of that history by naming your class. . . wait, that can't be right.
If you did your research then, and you knew this info, you would have chosen NOT to attend that college. If you knew this stuff and you still went there because you were going $free, then don't wait years to complain about it. You are responsible for the choices you made. You could have transferred at any point. We can't change history and those of us today should not have to apologize for attitudes and actions before our time. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
You should have known better than to attend a racist school! I guess. If racism bothers you, then you can just go somewhere less racist? I guess? Also, I'm assuming that whoever I'm addressing went to college for "$free," because of reasons having nothing to do with racism, which was a thing that happened in the past before I was born. I guess.
Yeah, quit blaming white people for. . . the Ku Klux Klan? Um. . .
Also, whitey has said "sorry" long enough, apparently. I mean, I've never heard him say it and I've never heard of anyone who heard him say it, but he must have said it at least once and that is long enough!
And anyway, how can you blame whitey for this?
I gotta think there's plenty of blame on both sides. As there are many fine people on both sides of the Klan debate.
Oh, one last comment. I don't really get what this person is trying to get at here, but I'm fairly sure it's proof that racism is a thing of the past:
