the hipocrisy of dogead (?)

During a recent class discussion, someone brought up ethnic holidays at Colby. There have been several incidents in the past few years during which students have felt that their respective culture was not appropriately celebrated or revered during an ethnically themed celebration.

Although I believe that those claims are quite legitimate and deserve attention, I thought our class might turn its attention to the most recent "holiday": Colby's celebration of "Doghead".

For those of you who have been living under a rock, Doghead is Colby's celebration of St. Patrick's day. Students stay up all night Friday night, drinking and partying until they run (or stumble) to the steps of Miller to watch the sunrise on Saturday morning. Traditionally, students all go to breakfast at Dana intoxicated Saturday morning, go off campus Saturday afternoon, and continue their festivities through Saturday night.

Obviously, this agenda is generalized. Not every Colby student even participates in Doghead, and there are certainly a significant number of students who participate but do not consume alcohol. However, no one who wandered the halls of Dana/the Apartments last night or was present for the sunrise could deny that alcohol played an enormous role in the festivities. And although alcohol consumption is a normal part of a weekend at Colby, I dare say that alcohol consumption is higher than normal this weekend.

My question is the following: why is it okay to take this particular holiday (St. Patrick's day-- which is obviously linked to the Irish country and culture) and turn it into a themed drinking marathon with very limited accurate ties to Irish culture, if the whole school seems to freak out when the same thing is done to a minority culture? And, why isn't the administration all over this festitivity, when they claim to be making every effort to reduce the racial/ethnic stereotypes and prejudice? Granted, the administration does not officially sponsor Doghead, but it did not officially sponsor the majority of the parties that caused outrage in previous years.

Is it the in group/out group issue? Is it because St. Patrick's Day is a "white" holiday, and the majority of Colby students are white, it's okay to disgrace a national and religious holiday with drunken debauchery?

And although many of us might not think about it this way, when you consider it, Doghead really somwhat enforces stereotypes about the Irish. Colby students arguably drink more on Doghead than any other day of the year. And what is the stereotype about the Irish? That they're drunks.

I'm interested to hear the opinion of the class on this issue. What do you all think? Do you think likening Doghead to the previous parties is a fair comparison? And if so, why do you think this particular facet of this issue is so largely ignored when others are so incendiary?