Halloween is a night where students should pay more attention to who their costumes may be mocking and offending. While dressing up can be fun, this holiday is not an excuse to poke fun at real life struggles.

Many students do not see the harm in their costume choice and look at costumes as a joke.

“While someone may be offended a great deal, I don’t believe their mental health could be significantly harmed,” said Alex Roland, junior double major in marketing and political science.

Abuse victims

Students must be aware of how costumes meant as a joke could be a trigger for victims of crimes and abuse. Anyone who has been victimized in a traumatic sexual encounter would most likely not appreciate a costume meant to poke fun at widely publicized cases of sex crimes such as Jared Fogle, former spokesperson for Subway.

Fogle was convicted of posessing child pornography and crossing state lines to have sex with minors, according to a Nov. 19, 2015, CNN article.

Transgender community

Costumes portraying transgender individuals such as Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner, are transphobic and undermine the transgender community’s struggle for a socially accepted identity.

Dressing up as a member of the transgender community essentially mocks their struggle to go outside of society’s common labels and be themselves, said Molly Holmes, Director of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center.

“[Costumes that] portray people dressing up in a gender that they don’t identify are for humor,” said Holmes. “Outside of costumes and Halloween, when we look at somebody’s gender identity as humorous, it really actually degrades the person. [It] inevitably is bad for [transgender] people because they’re targeted on their gender identity.”

Costumes resembling transgenders are cruel and harmful.

Professionals

The issue with career costumes is not the abundance of skin that shows, rather it disrespects the people who earned their position in these careers. Sexualized costumes with blinged-out badges and short skirts make it harder to respect actual professionals, especially women, who, even without these degrading costumes, are still fighting to be taken seriously, respected and equally paid.

Students should consider those who have gone through schooling and training to earn those uniforms and professions, rather than just picking them up at a costume shop.

“Picking a Halloween costume is just using some critical thinking,” Holmes said. “What image do you want to put out there? What’s right for you? There are lots of unique and fun ideas for costumes which don’t come at the expense of other’s identities. And people still have plenty of time to think about that now before they go out on the town for Halloween.”

I recommend costumes such as food, everyday items or fictional characters. Some fun examples could be a DIY pumpkin costume, Scooby Doo, a favorite candy bar or a clever pun costume such as a basketball jersey and a large doughnut to represent Dunkin’ Donuts. Don’t be inconsiderate this holiday. Hurting others and degrading their identity for your own amusement doesn’t become OK because the date is Oct. 31.