Halloween cowgirls (but no Indians), Harry Potter and Holocaust victims

I'm celebrating Halloween in Austin this year with my daughter and toddler granddaughter, Caroline, who is dressing up as a cowgirl. "Cowboys and Indians" are offensive, says the University of Texas at Austin, but I think a lone cowgirl should be OK. I will not be dressing up. I think Halloween should be a children's holiday. But my husband has brought his Dracula fangs. He loves his fangs.

Is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter a PC choice?

"President Trump seems to have helped Make Halloween Great Again, writes Simon Olech, a student at Franciscan University of Steubenville, in the College Fix. The push to police Halloween costumes on campus has eased, he writes. College administrators aren't warning students to avoid "unacceptable costumes," such as sombreros, kimonos and Native American headdresses, this year.

"It’s a culture, not a costume” posters used to go up in October on campuses across the country, Olech writes. Colleges held workshops to warn about "cultural appropriation."

The University of Texas at Austin issued a 29-point checklist on banned costume and party ideas, including “Cowboys and Indians,” “tropical” or “fiesta” themes, he writes.

This year only Michigan State reminded students to avoid "racist, sexist, ableist, culturally insensitive and biased" Halloween costumes, College Fix reports.

Halloween can be a headache for K-12 administrators, writes Jennifer Vilcarino in Education Week.

Spider-Man was the most popular costume last year, followed by a ghost, a princess, and a witch, she writes.

But that's too tame for some. Several girls at a New Jersey high school said they planned to dress up as Holocaust victims, earlier this month. One said "she wants to fill one of the other girl's vapes with the smoke from the gas chamber," said parent Tarra Premisler, who saw the social media posts. "And they said they should kill us all."

Who's "the all" who should be killed? The story doesn't say. I suspect this is a childish attempt to be shocking. Teenagers may not know the difference between dressing up as a fictional monster and performing real monstrosity for giggles.

In an informal Ed Week poll, 27 percent of educators said their school doesn't allow Halloween costumes. Many schools ban violent and overly scary costumes, or limit the costume parade to younger students.

After the sixth-graders "showed up as gangsters and street walkers," the school decided that only preschoolers and kindergarteners could dress up, one teacher said.

Some elementary schools tell students to dress like a "storybook character." That seems like a sensible idea. I wonder if Harry Potter characters -- created by trans-critic J.K. Rowling -- are acceptable.