The bright side of Unofficial.

Unofficial is a lot of things. A lot of terrible things. However, I was taught to always look at both sides of a story and try to at least recognize some of the positives of such events. A day where it's completely alright to act like a total fucking fool doesn't really seem to have many upsides. There's the 'Officially Fucked Up' neon green shirts, the public display of "irish"-ness which by now everyone is completely tired of, the drunk people in class, etc. But let's take a step back and look at Unofficial through a darker set of eyes. Like most moronic things hosted here on campus, Unofficial is sponsored by, with no surprise, white people. White people love to make up a day where they can celebrate being white (kind of like Thanksgiving and every single day here at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). There are some prerequisites for such days. 1)You must pre-order shirts that have a play on words and are an obnoxious color. 2)You must act like your parents never taught you any type of manners whatsoever. 3)You have to brag how much you can do something, usually how much beer you can 'slam'. There are many more but these are probably the most important. White people love this shit. But to be fair, there are a good amount of Latinos (almost called them Hispanics, oh no!), Asians, and African-Americans that partake in the silliness. Actually, scratch that on the black people, I'm not going to accept that they actually wear green shirts for that shit. I can't say that these brown people should be ashamed of themselves because they are trying to fit in and have a good time just like everyone else. But the Jose's and Juan's on campus should get over the fact that the tannest person in Ireland is just 2 shades up from neon-white.

With all that being said Unofficial is officially Brown People Day. On campus, which is mostly white, you can't go anywhere without seeing orange skin, 'blonde' hair, backwards hats, NorthFace, and all kinds of other awesome shit. But on Unofficial we have the reverse effect. While all of these people wait in lines to get into CO's or KAM's, there is a significant absence of fake things in campus facilities. For example, I went to the gym yesterday to get my ripped-thunder on and there were ellipticals that weren't being used! It was surreal. Then I started to look around and began to wonder why I felt so god damn comfortable. There were no babes to check out but there was this feeling that for once (besides in China) I was in the majority. It was an unbelievable feeling. Everywhere I looked there was brown people. Brown people doing pushups, brown people running on the treadmills, brown people running around the track, brown people playing basketball...well I guess there's really nothing new about that. I can't stress how weird/exciting it was. Here a brown person, there a brown person, everywhere a brown person!
So next year maybe I'll make some shirts for our Official holiday. I'm already starting to think of some ideas for the shirts. So far I've got. 'White People Suck. Official Brown People Day". "Now you don't have to hear every detail of the frat brother's sex life in the Undergrad". "Brown people elliptical too!". I guess they're not nearly as clever as the Unofficial shirts but we have a year to come up with some.
But seriously, as I was riding my bike home last night I was beginning to think about how great the majority feeling was. I then came up with the idea that the feeling was so great that we should make a holiday out of it. A day we can go to the bars and show off our unity in the brown people community. Then I realized, the white people already beat us to it! How unfair! I mean, our day would have more police dogs and mass arrests and general harassment but I guess celebrating something like this would be the same sort of ignorance that is praised on this campus. So as I rode home trying to put the day into perspective I heard from a third floor balcony, "Hey check out that ASIAN dude totally riding that red bike! ROCK ON ASIAN DUDE!" Putting it into perspective was never so easy.