I have seen something recently which has made me very upset. It was a flier. This flier was for promotion of a volleyball game that is being put on by the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Coalition. The game is also being SA funded.

I have no trouble with the game, the players or the sponsors until I read their flier. What makes my stomach turn and my blood boil is their poor sense of tact and sensibility when choosing the teams names and the use of those names in the fliers.

This is how the flier reads:

COME OUT AND PLAY!!

VOLLEYBALL

FAGS VS. DYKES

SUNDAY OCT. 10

8-10 P.M.

REC CENTER

SPONSORED BY LGBC.

Like I stated before, I believe that the names for the two teams were chosen in very poor taste to say the very least.

Aren’t these words taboo and generally agreed upon to be derogatory? Could they not be taken in the wrong way and possibly seen as insulting toward certain people of our campus community? Or am I completely crazy?

Now I would not consider myself an ardent advocate of political correctness, but I do subscribe to the notion that particular words in our language have no place on publicly funded space.

I pose a few questions to the people who put out this flier.

What unspoken rule says that these words are only bad if someone not a part of the group says them? Because I must assume that had this volleyball game not been set up by the LGBC, the names of the teams would not have been okayed. In fact, I would bet that if another organization had proposed these same words for team names it would have been immediately sent off for 40 hours of intense sensitivity training. Obviously this same rule does not pertain to the LGBC because its use of the words was okayed.

Also, how does this group that chose the names know that the flier does not offend other homosexuals? Although it may be true that the members who chose the team names were not offended by the words, why did these people assume that everyone would agree with them? Being a part of a group does not automatically make one an expert on what will offend others in the group. (I learned that lesson the hard way, so believe me!)

I also want to ask the SA what it is thinking when it puts out fliers such as these. I was under the impression that it is the SA’s job to see that things such as these do not get out. By okaying the flier, what type of impression it is posing about its own policy on abusive words and who can use them? If there were a group of white students and a group of Latino students who were playing some sort of match and wanted to use the team names “Specs” and “Honkies” would the SA be okay with that? With the precedent it set with this flier I would expect the answer to be yes.

Finally, let’s have a little class and a little self-respect, people. When people make arguments about how they want to be treated fairly and respectfully, they should not then turn around and use the same derogatory words they denounce. How can people expect to be respected by others who do not show respect to themselves?

We are at a university where we are supposedly learning to think. Some thinking could have prevented these fliers from being made and distributed. Different witty and ingenious names could have been thought of for the two teams.

We are intelligent university students who should be creative and not crude.