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In February of 1997 or 1998 (don't remember for sure) at a small college in the midwest, a fraternity chapter, who were generally regarded as good guys, decided they wanted to do a charity fundraiser for AIDS research. I'll refer to them as *** from here on. For those of you outside the US and Canada, to give you an idea, Fraternities can be described as men's social clubs at college and university campuses modeled after the underground secret socities of ancient Greece. The guys thought AIDS reserach was a good cause and the event would be good publicity for themselves and for the school.
After throwing out various ideas on what to do, they came up with the idea of a date auction. They would basically have an auction like event where they would auction themselves off to the ladies, and all the money they received would go charity. A win/win/win situation. They'd have a successful charity fundraiser and get dates for themselves in the process. Everything was looking dandy. The guys were pumped.
Now they needed a name for the event. After throwing out several ideas, the chapter voted on one that they thought was pretty creative and pretty humorous. They decided to call the event "The *** Slave Auction" (where *** is the name of their fraternity, as mentioned above). The idea was that they were selling the members off as "slaves". After all, the ladies paid for them, and they got to do what they wanted with them.
And so it was dubbed. A week before the event they created posters that said "The *** Slave Auction" and posted them all over campus.
It only took a few hours for all hell to break loose that day.
You see, this all happened during the month of February. And if you live in the USA, you know that at least here and possibly elsewhere, February is Black History Month. Since there was about a 200+ year period in US History where black people were slaves, as you can imagine a great deal of people were upset by this.
As a matter of fact they were furious. The story made the front page of the school newspaper the next day. It made the evening news... in fact it made the national news. "The *** Slave Auction". All over the press.
Wow. What the heck? How did things go so horribly wrong? How did we go from charity event for AIDS research to almost be kicked off campus in one day?
Let's take a step back. Let's think about things.
What was the fraternity chapter's INTENT?
Charity Fundraiser for AIDS research Fun Date Auction event with cool name Good publicity for them and the school Dates for all the guysWhat ended up being their IMPACT?
Many many people offended Almost kicked off campus BAD publicity all over the news Reputation irrepairably tarnishedBasically, the lesson and my point here is that you have to be aware of your impact on other people. When you make a comment and someone else takes offense, "I didn't mean it that way" or "you're just an easily offended idiot" simply doesn't cut it in the world of mature adults. What you say and what you do has impacts on people whether you like it or not. The important thing is to be conscious of those impacts.
So before you say or do something that someone might take offense to, THINK about it. You know your INTENT, but what could your IMPACT be?
