You need to upgrade your Flash Player
To fully experience this site you will need to down load
Flash Player.
Users without the Flash plugin or with
Javascript turned off will see this text in the banner area. If you would like to view our alternate html page then
bypass the detection if you wish.
Editorial: Miss TAMUK mix-up hurts everyone
The South Texan |
|
A mishap following the Miss TAMUK contest on Saturday, April 18, aroused anger, rumors and attention to our campus.
The cheers came to a stop for the winner, Stephanie Wright, when she was pulled from taking pictures and told about the mistake.
There had been a mixup. Wright had not won. Lilly Ortiz was the actual winner.
Ortiz accepted the title as winner and Wright accepted hers as the first runner-up with no remorse. Both were given the $1,500 scholarship check, which was a good move by TAMUK officials.
The contestants’ reaction to the pageant’s mistake is not in question here, but the public reactions to the mistake is of concern. Many believe that the pageant should have been stopped mid-announcement or that the announcement of the winners not made at all until certified by pageant organizers.
At this point, no one is sure what would have been a reasonable way of going about this with out causing the friends and family of these young ladies to become upset.
Then again, “upset” may be too tame a word. Anger and disappointment toward “mistakes” like these is understandable. Acceptance of blame for these mistakes lie at the very roots of who runs the contest. Mishaps like this cannot be allowed to happen and then be fixed by rewarding both young women the prize money.
Perhaps the $1,500 scholarship was not the ONLY prize these young women were looking for.
This money would also be no good to Wright if she decides to withdraw from TAMUK and transfer to another university.
While Miss TAMUK is not a high-profile pageant like the 2008 Miss America beauty contest, it is still important for the local contestants.
These women have to tell their stories to strangers, spend money on clothes, prepare for more than three weeks, and in this particular case get crowned, walk the stage, take pictures, only to have the title Miss TAMUK taken away. Somehow, Wright is expected to deal with the disappointment and still walk to class everyday having people remind her of her loss and TAMUK’s mistake over and over again.
The mistake was a defining moment for every contestant, and now they are all involved in the rumors and anger. It has been said that the same thing happened last year and wasn’t corrected, that the judges should have been impartial, and that the whole event was conducted improperly. Whether these allegations are true or not cannot be proved, but one mistake points out that closer attention to details must be a priority for pageant organizers.
Perhaps the pageant next year should be the responsibility of an office that does not involve students that are competing, judges can be brought in from different areas of the community and not from the university, and the host can be told exactly what is needed to be said to prevent the words being wrongly announced. The goal here is to help our students grow and have faith in the university. Perhaps it is time that the events we hold at our university should be evaluated and improved.
While the Miss TAMUK 2008 fiasco now seems to be over, it is time for serious review of the process.