"Students at Texas College 'Celebrate' Martin Luther King Jr. Day by Throwing Stereotype Party"

From FNC:

Last week, while the nation paused to remember the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a group of students at a Texas college outside Fort Worth marked the day by throwing a party that featured black stereotype costumes — including a student dressed as Aunt Jemima — a main course of fried chicken and cases of malt liquor.

The insensitivity didn't end there. The students then brazenly posted their party photos on the popular Web site Facebook.com for all the world to see.

School administrators at Tarleton State University in Stephenville told FOXNews.com they are investigating an off-campus Martin Luther King Jr. Day student party held on Jan. 15 that the school's president called "reprehensible."

"I am personally insulted by these photographs and am disappointed that Tarleton students have demonstrated such insensitivity," university President Dennis P. McCabe wrote in a letter to students and faculty posted on the school's Web site Wednesday.

"I regret that any of our students have been hurt by the display of these photographs. The students involved have removed them and have expressed regret over offending their fellow students."

"I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance," Donald Ray Elder, president of the school's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told the Associated Press.

Photographs posted on students' personal Facebook pages showed party attendees donning Afro-style wigs, fake gold jewelry, 40-ounce bottles of alcohol in brown paper bags and mock silver teeth. The photos have now made their way around the Web via TheSmokingGun.com.

In one picture, a student dressed as the character Aunt Jemima holds a bottle of maple syrup in one hand and a bottle in a brown paper bag that appeared to contain malt liquor.

I agree with Mr. Elder. There is no excuse for this type of ignorant behavior, and these kids should know better than to (a) be that stupid and (b) post this shizit to a web site. This is reprehensible and disgusting.

However...:

Wanda Mercer, the school's vice president of student life, said an investigation into the party is ongoing.

"We need to find out more about the event, and determine if there were policy violations. Then we'll go from there," Mercer told FOXNews.com.

The university's code of student conduct dictates that students can be punished for their behavior at an off-campus party, depending on the behavior.

This might come as a surprise to some of you, but I feel the need to state this: the university should butt out.

Look, the First Amendment gives us a right to free association and free speech. I know, the right to free speech does not mean freedom of consequences of said speech. For example, go call your boss and #sshole and see if there are any consequences.

However, colleges and universities like to fancy themselves as bastions of free thoughts and exchanges of such thoughts. As such, the university should step off and let the chips fall where they may. It looks to me like the chips are falling exactly where they should: the kids are getting roundly criticized and being publicly humiliated, and rightly so. Trust me, their "free speech" is being met by consequences! Seriously, I can't fathom what went through their peabrains when they came up with this idea.

This is political correctness in the form of a witch hunt. If you disagree, try to picture this:

Let's say that the black student organization decided to have a party where they were going to make fun of their perception of "Southerners", complete with overalls, moonshine jugs, fake buck teeth, confederate flags, plaid shirts and overalls, straw hats, blaring bluegrass music, and faux drawls. Do you think that the university or the MSM would have given a wet fart on a dry January Monday if any Southern white guys were offended by the stereotypes? In this scenario, I would have been equally mortified as I am with the stupid white guys doing the MLK party, but I would have also equally defended their right to have such a party without fear of university-administered punishment.

Racism sucks. Political correctness sucks just as much, though.