Stanford pair defends satire in Cal Berkeley - Aimed video - From Today's Oakland Tribune

--Why is it always that someone uses racial stereotypes as the basis for stupid humor? I was told that the reason Dave Chappell stopped his program was white audiences didn't get that he was making a social comment about how African Americans are referred to in America. He believed some took his humor as a serious statement about how blacks are. Unfortunately, many people aren't detaiiled thinkers, and actually learn to be racist from race humor. Not good...Zennie

Perhaps it might have been best to leave the social commentary to Dave Chappelle.
Two Stanford University students who made a video that uses fraternity and racial

stereotypes to mock rival UC Berk-

eley students defended their work Thursday as a comical jab at stereotypes that intends to "bring some levity to a campus that tends to be stifled by contrived political correctness."

A Stanford University dean, on the other hand, called the video "sophomoric, of questionable taste, insensitive and not very funny."

Still, Dean of Student Affairs Greg Boardman said the students are entitled toexpress their opinions and will not get into any trouble.

"Our initial review suggests this video does not necessarily rise to the level of requiring university action," Boardman wrote in a brief statement released Thursday.

The video "does not accurately represent either Stanford or Cal students," the statement said. "That said, we recognize our students' freedom of speech rights, even when we disagree with the form that speech takes."

The video is on the Stanford server, where each student receives space for personal use, the statement said.

The 10-minute video, which hit the Internet circuit just days before Saturday's Big Game between bitter rivals Stanford and Cal, features footage of raucous Cal parties, a man-on-the-street interview of a girl saying "unicorn" when she meant to say "unicycle" and interviews with homeless people and a woman on a street corner waxing philosophical that Cal's "meditative" backbone gives the football team an edge over Stanford's.

But it also flashes a "Baja Fresh" Tex-Mex restaurant logo across the screen as a Latina girl dances and jokes that her hoop earrings were a gift from her 15th birthday, or quinceanera; implies that a student of Indian descent would be better served by a computer science major than an American Studies major; and rhetorically surmises that Stanford keeps losing to the Bears because Stanford's "black people (are) in the audience" rather than on the field.

Alex and Walter, the Stanford students who made the video and who declined to give their last names, said they were poking fun at both colleges' images. They took issue




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with a column by Oakland Tribune columnist Candace Murphy that says the video crosses the line from rivalry into racism.
"One must recognize that the 'racist' jokes that you take issue with are an isolated component of our satiric ambit," Alex and Walter wrote in an e-mail. "We did not invent the stereotypes that we invoke and are just exposing them in the context of two very elite schools — an audience that is mature enough to adequately process such humor."

The students said they've received "positive and supportive" e-mails, many from UC Berkeley students. "Obviously, people recognize the universality of the humor and the undercurrent of social commentary that is completely unrelated to a rivalry which we don't particularly care about."


A handful of UC Berkeley students who had seen the video said they thought it was funny but could see how it might offend some people. They said the video uses old and widely viewed footage from a party a couple of years ago as well as some new footage.

"It started off by them saying, OK, we suck at football, but look at how stupid Cal is," said freshman Jaime Beacom, 19 — who was approached last week by two guys with a video camera who said they were making a video for a student-run television show.

Beacom ended up on the cutting-room floor.

"I said some bad things about Stanford, which wasn't what they wanted," Beacom said.

Still, parts of the video were racist, he said.

"It didn't bother me," he said, "but I could totally see how it would bother some people."


The rumor on Sproul Plaza, by the way, is that a group of Cal students are this instant making a rebuttal video.