I’d like to get one thing straight here: activism, for the sake of activism, has never been something I’ve advocated. It’s true that in the last year, the editorial pages of The Sun — largely under my direction — have decried a lack of engagement at Cornell. And there is a certain sense of apathy on The Hill that is really indisputable; in four years, the only cause to truly unify this campus was the outcry against the creation of the Facebook News Feed.

But twice in the last week, I’ve been impressed by the level of energy devoted to particular issues at Cornell. The first was not your classic, midday Ho Plaza oak-tag-and-marker demonstration with 50 or so onlookers. Rather, the rallying cries came from inside Barton Hall, went on for 12 hours and involved 2,500 active participants. Relay for Life 2007 was one of the most impressive displays of enthusiasm and passion directed toward any problem that’s gone on at Cornell in a while.

To be sure, the issue was also a safe one to advocate. No one is going to argue that defeating cancer is an untimely or irrelevant cause. Relay is a-political; it’s the kind of affair where you might expect to see the editor of Turn Left crack a Red Bull with the president of the Cornell Republicans and enjoy a lap. Moreover, it addresses a topic that affects everyone: nobody is immune to cancer. (Certainly, post Spring Break, most students can think of a few experiences that might increase their overall risk.)

Relay for Life was an example of activism well done; a less successful attempt to incite community-wide engagement occurred yesterday on Ho Plaza. Cornell Alliance for Immigrant Rights, the International Socialist Organization, Cornell Organization for Labor Action and other campus groups held a protest against racially themed fraternity parties, specifically citing two on the Cornell campus. Racist parties are an important issue to tackle, but the mechanism these groups used to address the problem severely diminished the weight of their message.

Racially offensive fraternity party themes are not a new concept at C.U. In March 2004, for example, Zeta Beta Tau fraternity faced bias charges for a “Ghetto Fab” mixer. According to the Interfraternity Council, the chapter was under judicial investigation for having enacted “apparent disrespectful stereotypes regarding people of color.”

Similarly, a “ghetto fabulous” party at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas caused a stir when it produced pictures of white men in shirts reading, “I love chicken,” and a girl dressed in a red-and-white checkered apron posing as Aunt Jemima, according to The Stanford Daily. In fact, racially themed parties are heating up the national climate on college campuses all across the country. In the fall, Johns Hopkins suspended a fraternity after a racially themed Halloween party, and fraternities at the University of Connecticut and Texas A&M are facing comparable challenges after parties at their schools. Given the events elsewhere, it was insensitive when, in recent weeks, Sigma Alpha Epsilon hosted a “Border Patrol” themed party, and Lambda Chi Alpha held its “South of the Border” night. That said, brothers in SAE and party attendees say that they did not hand out fake visas, as was suggested in the pamphlets distributed at the protest. And protesters also seem to have gotten the Lambda Chi facts wrong: invitations to South of the Border did not encourage partygoers to wear “sombreros, ponchos and Mexican mustaches,” as rally organizers claimed.

Potential for factual inaccuracies may have arisen from the fact that most of the organizers did not attend either one of the parties in question. When one of the speakers at the rally was asked why she felt so strongly on the issue, she cited an example from a different fraternity party, not being protested. She described a group of fraternity brothers clothed in what was supposed to be traditional Mexican garb. They were drunkenly attempting to assemble a mariachi band. Because nothing these boys were wearing was actually associated with mariachi music, she perceived the incident as an act of racism.

She’s right — in this case, the fraternity brothers were wearing outfits whose cultural significance they did not appreciate. Not only did they not understand what they were wearing, but they behaved in a way that appeared to mock, rather than celebrate, Mexican culture. When asked which fraternity hosted such antics, however, the protester made an off-the-cuff remark, “I don’t bother to learn Greek letters.”

Therein lies the problem with today’s demonstration: the organizers were inadvertently engaging in the same stereotypical behavior that they were condemning. Criticisms broadcast from the podium had a tendency to lump all fraternity parties together, like tying the failed mariachi performers to the West Campus pledge parties named in the event’s press release.

The protest also had a tendency to lump the opinions of all members of certain ethnic groups together, undermining the diversity of said chapters at the same time. Who is one protester to speak for all Mexicans at Cornell, especially when many of those students will individually voice that they were not offended by the nights’ events?

Pictures of “racist party attendees” pasted to the stand were ripped from Facebook; organizers did not bother to check who the individuals captured were. Ironically, one of the event’s poster girls for racism is a minority student, herself. Morgan Bellows ’08, pictured next to the KKK, is Native American student actively involved in several minority groups.

The pictures, along with the muddled message and the poor research that characterized yesterday’s rally muffled any message emanating from the megaphone. It wasn’t activism for the sake of activism, but with its level of efficacy, it might as well have been.

Erica Fink is the Sun’s former Editor in Chief. She can be contacted at ebf6@cornell.edu. Fink Again appears Tuesdays.