Trying hard not to laugh, mostly failing.

Sometimes college dining halls are kind of stuck in a bizarre time warp. They do stuff that would be considered kind of dumb and jerky on the rest of the campus.

For example- a dining hall doing a "Black History Month Dinner" of fried chicken. (I have heard of that actually happening.)

While I tend to roll my eyes at the people who get offended at every little thing, I also think there's a point where you have to ask yourself: "Is this cool, what I'm doing? Or is it kind of not cool?"

I will say my old college dorm did a Black History Month dinner of traditional "soul food" - black eyed peas, greens, that kind of thing. A lot of the Black women I knew in the dorm, who were from the North somewhere (Michigan, Ohio, or some were from New England) were like, "Wait, what? I've never eaten this stuff. What's going on?" It was more puzzlement than offense. And I don't think the dinner went over very well. (I like black-eyed peas NOW, after having lived in the south a few years, but I didn't like them then. And I still don't like cooked greens.)

But anyway. A school did a Cinco de Mayo meal with "chocolate mustaches" as the dessert. They also gave away sombreros. And of course, some people are offended.

(I admit, there are probably some HORRIBLE jokes about the chocolate mustaches that were made. I'm not gonna make 'em myself. But I'm saying I can imagine them.)

And while I think the sort of hair-trigger OUTRAGE! makes life today kind of exhausting, I also think.....stereotyping Mexicans as mustache-wearing sombreroed people is kind of a little dumb and not-cool, and maybe wasn't well-thought-out on the part of the dining hall. I mean, especially for Cinco de Mayo, which is essentially a celebration of the Mexicans whupping the tails of the French who were sent there to take over the country. (Wait. Maybe those chocolate mustaches were a joke on the French? Well, carry on then. Though that probably seems a little too subtle.)

(The real joke? The group most offended by they chocolate mustaches....was the Campus Society for the Promotion of Hipsterism.)

I dunno. You have to be so careful, and one person with a candy mold that they can use (but maybe should not) can lead to so many problems.