Sensibilities so heightened, I get a nose bleed thinking about them

There's been a kerfuffle at Princeton because one hispanic group unwittingly insulted another hispanic group:

The International Festival (IF) Committee has apologized to the Chicano Caucus for an advertising slogan some Caucus members called insensitive to immigrant communities. The slogan on the posters that were put up around campus read, 'Meet the Aliens ... the legal ones.' The Caucus will meet today with members of Accion Latina and the International Consortium, which sponsored the festival, to arrange a lunch discussion about the situation. The controversy comes during a period of heightened tension in the local Hispanic community, which has experienced several immigration raids in recent months. 'Try to understand why a phrase such as: 'come meet the aliens...the legal ones,' evokes unpleasant feelings of international student elitism, disgrace and disrespect for our hard-won rights as immigrants in this country, disregard for our immigrant ancestors, and a mockery of something so dear and poignant to us,' Chicano Caucus president Juan Lopez '06 said in an email. 'Again, my issue is not with the IF's harmless intentions but with their continued lack of sensibility and respect for our feelings and their continued attacks upon our response to their phrase.' *** Marek Hlavac '08 of the International Committee explained the origins of this slogan in an email he sent to the Chicano Caucus on Friday. "We thought that people, after hearing 'Meet the Aliens,' would first think of extraterrestrial aliens and be surprised," he said. "We added ' ... the legal ones' to suggest that we are dealing with students and not extraterrestrial beings. We thought this was a funny and eye-catching slogan. We did not realize the other connotation of this slogan, however — that it could instead mean 'legal' as opposed to 'illegal' rather than 'extraterrestrial.'"

I'm still struggling with the Caucus's objection. Here, I'll write it again: "'Try to understand why a phrase such as: 'come meet the aliens...the legal ones,' evokes unpleasant feelings of international student elitism, disgrace and disrespect for our hard-won rights as immigrants in this country, disregard for our immigrant ancestors, and a mockery of something so dear and poignant to us,' Chicano Caucus president Juan Lopez '06 said in an email." I'm a pretty binary person myself in many areas. It seems to me that people from other countries are either here legally or illegally. Is the Caucus complaining because all of its constituents came here illegally and it doesn't like being reminded of that fact? And if they came here illegally, shouldn't that be more a point of concern than a point of pride? And if they didn't come here illegally, why are the all fussed about a silly slogan? Would anyone like to hop on board here and explain to me what's going on, and why it's so important it's generated threats of boycotts, meetings, and an article in the Princeton school newspaper? All I can say is that maybe someone needs to order this crew a whole bunch of those t-shirts that say on the front "Don't sweat the small stuff" and add on the back, "It's all small stuff." And while we're at it, maybe we could send some of those t-shirts to the Harvard gay, lesbians, etc., who were so upset by Jada Pinkett Smith's heteronormative speech making. And lastly, will someone who has been around a whole lot longer than I let me know if American colleges and universities in the pre-1960s era were also so obsessed with non-academic sensitivities, or if this is solely a by-product of our politically correct, therapeutic culture.