UT Knoxville may be finally laying last month's embarrassing blackface episode to rest, but that doesn't mean other schools don't want to experience it for themselves. The University of Virginia is the newest addition to the growing list of institutions where fraternity members have convulsed their campuses by wearing blackface to a costume party. The short story is that some members donned blackface to dress as Venus and Serena Williams and a black Uncle Sam for a Halloween party, while others wore "brownface" and still others wore costumes "mocking ethnicities" (the Washington Post is distressingly vague about what these costumes were). Pictures were taken and posted to a password-protected web site where visitors could order prints; they have now been removed.

So far, events are unfolding according to pattern. Zeta Psi and Kappa Alpha have been suspended by their national organizations pending investigation, and university officials have denounced the insensitivity of the costumes (in the words of Aaron Laushway, assistant dean of students and director of fraternity and sorority life, "I find such representations hardly fun Halloween costumes, but rather despicable displays of ignorance, intolerance and jocular folly"; in the words of Patricia Lampkin, vice president of student affairs, "This is not reflective of what the University stands for. Anything that makes any statement against another race is absolutely abhorrent.") Now it's time for UVa to show it knows more about free speech than the admins at UT Knoxville initially did; it's also time for the students at UVa to show they understand that the proper response here is not to demand speech codes, sensitivity training, forced apologies, and expulsion of the offending individuals, but to counter expression they deem insensitive with forceful expression of their own.

An editorial in UVa's Cavalier Daily today profiles FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and champions free speech on campus. So maybe there is hope.

UPDATE: John Rosenberg has more.