Word: hrbsa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1977-1977
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association (HRBSA) charged the Lampoon this spring with featuring "tasteless" characterizations of blacks in recent issues, including a recent cover picture of a black man shining the shoes of the statue of John Harvard in the Yard. The Lampoon editors argued that its use of stereotypes was meant to poke fun at the characterizations rather than to lend credence to them, but HRBSA was not satisfied with the explanation and took the issue to Archie C. Epps III, dean of students...
...that fierce, suicidal competition between the societies has created most of the problem. Keane complains that too many other clubs show films to make money, and they take away business from the film societies. "I can think of so many groups who showed films this year--the fencing team, HRBSA, the Democratic club, the Republican club--and I'm sure there are more," Keane said. "We're in the business of presenting films; they are not," Izkowitz said...
...tragic in seeing humor in a tragic event. (I could do this all day.) The argument has been writhing through history since Aristophanes angered Athens. Epps would have the Lampoon become an institution devoted to the cause of social irony, poking fun at the Law Epps represents, and HRBSA would have the Lampoon send a few haymakers the way of the Black sellout, or Uncle Tom. Uncle Tomfoolery is just what the Lampoon was doing in two of the three cases cited by HRBSA (in the case of the "Negrosis" article there seems to be a better case...
...Epps and HRBSA may be correct in pointing out possible instances of Lampoon racism, but even if they are correct in this, they will not eradicate "Lampoon racism," and have wholly disregarded the nature of the organizations with which they are dealing. Humor will always deal in the explosion and/or extension of stereotypes; comedy does not deal with subtle gradations so much as subtle degradations; if any charge is to be leveled against the Lampoon it is the charge of a lack of perspective on itself--a refusal to recognize and overcome its own limitations...
...Epps would not have been asked to arbitrate an inter-organizational dispute among students--they believed he had sold out to the "oppressive" institution of Harvard University. This year it seems these former adversaries have sold out to him. This conservative trend indicates a fear on the part of HRBSA and Epps to question the organizations in which they have ensconced themselves. This is another example of the '70s' Soul on Crushed Ice effect, in which a facade of liberal action hides an indolence and stagnation matched only by the indolence and stagnation of liberal rhetoric. The Lampoon...