The University of Toronto engineering program is in hot water this week after students dressed up in outfits deemed offensive to purple people. These students were seen all around campus, covered head to toe in purple paint and wearing overpriced and rather out-of-season leather jackets. Thankfully, several of the jackets were marked with their owners’ initials and grad years, allowing for their concealed identities to be revealed.
We spoke with several purple students who were impacted by the situation.
“It’s just demeaning,” said Violet Mauve, “I came all the way from another planet to attend this school just for my culture to be mocked. It’s already difficult having to wake up every day and be purple.” Another student, Xistialapatutatianisaka, coming from planet Aslaghatutionialityia, commented on his disappointment with his lack of acceptance on campus, “It has taken us so many years to feel properly represented in the media. With characters like Barney, the Cheshire Cat, Ursula, and Grimace, you would think that this behavior would be frowned upon by the UofT community. What’s next? Dressing up as Avatar?”
We reached out to several engineers, all of which refused to comment. One mechanical engineering major noted that she was busy exfoliating the paint off of her arms. However, the head of Engineering orientation, Edison Thomas, did provide an apology, “We never intended to make anyone uncomfortable. On the contrary, we take every opportunity to make our purple students feel at home. For example, at other orientation events, we made sure to only have purple foods! Unfortunately, it ended up just being eggplants, but our hearts were in the right place.”
The Boundary would like to take the opportunity to say that we support people from all backgrounds. We are disgusted by these poor choices and stand with the purple community at this time.
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