In 2014, a group of students at Bowdoin College thought it would be fun to dress up as Pilgrims and Native Americans for a Thanksgiving-themed party. This is not the first or last event like this, nor is it unique to one college.

Attendees later told me that, at the time, they did not understand why others might find the theme offensive. After all, many had dressed as Native Americans as children. One student told me he chose a Native American costume for the party “because it was way cheaper and I didn’t have to wear a shirt.”

The college privately disciplined the students who dressed up as Native Americans but chose not to discipline all of the partygoers.

My research shows that this selectivity sent a message to other students: Bowdoin saw racism as a problem affecting individual students, not a broader issue.

I am a sociologist at Bowdoin and studied this and two other racially charged costume parties at the college in 2015 and 2016. I wrote a book about this topic in 2024. On each occasion, students, mostly white, dressed up using harmful racial stereotypes.

As national movements for racial justice gathered momentum a decade ago, students on campuses were also becoming more aware and outspoken about racial harms. At Bowdoin, too, students began to speak up after these parties.

And after each party, administrators sent emails to students and staff that condemned partygoers’ behavior. Yet, some students still didn’t understand why the parties could be seen as offensive. And other students just didn’t care.

Asked for comment from The Conversation, Doug Cook, Bowdoin’s director of communication, wrote in an email: “We work hard to build community at Bowdoin and respond to all forms of intolerance in thoughtful and serious ways.” He also noted that the parties took place more than a decade ago.

But an April 2026 report from the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education cited a 2015 Halloween costume controversy there, noting, “At Yale as elsewhere, such events became identified with "cancel culture”: The idea that one wrong word or departure from campus orthodoxy could yield outsize punishments and social sanctions.“

At Yale and elsewhere, old questions about costume parties are........

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