- The Washington Times - Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst has created a handy flow chart for students to help them determine what NOT to wear as a Halloween costume.

Devised by UMass Amherst’s official diversity office, the “’Simple Costume Racism Evaluation and Assessment Meter’ (S.C.R.E.A.M.) … poses several costume-related questions, the answers to which take one to various points on a ’threat meter’ that ranges from green (low) to red (severe),” Campus Reform reported on Tuesday.

For example, “If one intends to represent a person on Halloween, the only way to get a ’green’ threat rating is for the person to be of one’s own race. If one represents a person of another race, the ’threat level’ increases roughly in conjunction with the amount of makeup that one intends to use.”

Halloween season has proven a time of year fraught with peril on college campuses, particularly in the liberal Northeast.

In December 2015, Erika Christakis, a lecturer at Yale, announced her resignation after being hounded for weeks by campus activists after Ms. Christakis sent an email to students defending the freedom of students to wear controversial Halloween costumes of questionable taste.

“I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?” she wrote, The New York Times reported.

Ms. Christakis’ story made national headlines after video of students angrily accosting her husband, Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a Yale sociology professor and physician, went viral.

• Ken Shepherd can be reached at kshepherd@washingtontimes.com.

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