Has Yale Become a PC Joke?
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Anonymous
If these people support disrespectful behavior and the shutting down of discussion in the name of victim hood and safe spaces then yes, I don't want them working for me. |
Anonymous
You better believe it. |
Anonymous
And some silly, stupid punk white girl who crosses the boundaries of civility should suffer the same fate. |
Anonymous
Do you consider this kid stupid and a punk? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=12ZRuM8UtDA |
Anonymous
I like this kid. Sometimes it just has to be said. The Yale student said what was in her heart also. She said 'fuck.'. The student in the video said 'bitchin.'. Do you think Yale would welcome him? I think so. |
Anonymous
PP here. The student explains why he went off. I still maintain even in his 'unrest', most colleges would take him. Right or wrong, it's about the message which, sadly, has been lost because of Yale student's outburst. On the other hand, the white kid is being hailed a 'hero.' The difference? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LG_0P7YN1vg |
Anonymous
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The message has been lost (outside of Yale, at least) because people don't want to talk about race.
There's no free speech issue here - everybody got to say what s/he wanted to say. The Dean, Chaplain et al. said think about the effect on others before you decide how you want to exercise your right to free expression on Halloween. The Co-Master said The Dean et al are overreaching, Halloween is for subversion and college is a place where kids should have a safe space to be obnoxious and offensive. The House Master/Yale faculty member said I agree with my wife's statement (which paraphrased him as saying people who are offended by a spectacle should either just "look away" or confront the offender and tell him/her what they think. The aggrieved students -- through various means (open letter, chalking on the quads, blog posts, formal and informal statements in public) -- told Yale what they thought -- the Masters of Silliman don't understand their role in the campus community, Yale's everyday racism (in various forms) makes this a hard and alienating place to be a person (and especially a woman) of color, and the Administration's response to this issue has been slow and inadequate. No one has been punished for any of these expressions. Free speech is alive and well at Yale. And, frankly, if you want to talk about respect for authority and how this might play out in a corporate setting, then the Co-Master might well and deservedly have been fired or demoted. She exercised poor judgment and undermined an institutional effort to ease racial tensions on campus that was initiated by university officials with higher status and more responsibility for the project than she had. Imagine a department head who, in response to a corporate-wide missive from HR about how office decor should avoid creating a hostile work environment for women, sent a memo to all her subordinates saying as far as she's concerned your cube is your own space and you should be able to decorate it anyway you want to and anyone who tells you differently is overstepping his or her authority. Personally, I think universities should have higher/different standards than corporations and that, in reality, there's generally less accountability for the real decision-makers in corporate settings than other domains, but, hey, if that's your standard, the Co-Master would probably have been censured before it came to a point where you had subordinates so angry they were screaming obscenities. That's a damage control model. By contrast, Yale's showing what free speech actually looks like when people talk about controversial issues in a context where there are real disparities of power and where those who lack power feel they aren't being heard or taken seriously. |
Anonymous
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That's only a snap shot above.
Last week a free speech conference was disrupted by a protester who did not like a hyperbolic joke that the email response was an overreaction (he said something like by the email response "you would have thought someone had burned down an Indian village"). This prompted immediate social network organizing and a hundred students mobbed outside of the conference -- reportedly led by a native American student group. One white student entered and disrupted the conference -- he was eventually arrested. He is quoted as saying the police used appropriate force, but commented he thought that was only because he was a white student. Others outside yelled at attendees when they exited that they were racists and that they were making a joke out of genocide. Some students were spat upon by protesters. They demanded their speakers be included in the conference -- which was planned 6 months in advance and required preregistration (but had been open to anyone who registered) and was full to capacity. This is intimidation aimed at not only squelching any speech that could be construed as offensive to anyone, but in weaving a consistent narrative of untold oppression and victimhood. While there is room for these perspectives on campus, our future is in a sorry state when it is the dominant theme on our campuses. Children are being killed in stray cross fires by gangs in our cities, ISIS may be blowing planes out of the sky, transgender people face assault and murder at alarming rates, homelessness abounds, etc. But the best and brightest minds of the ivy league clearly have more important things to worry about. If I was their parents paying tuition, I would think twice about sending them back. |
Anonymous
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1. Why not tell students to choose their costumes carefully? Blackface is offensive.
2. Email form Professor saying "be careful who you give your power to" was a good letter, I thought. Thought provoking. Obviously, some were provoked. 3. Young woman screaming in Master's face. Little tough to watch. If she had just yelled and used bad language I would not give one shit. But she took off her backpack and got right in his face. If a male had acted that way to a female, there would be quite the backlash. In fact something like this happened at another college last year. So not cool. 4. Nobody should be punished. Nobody should be let go. This is where free speech gets messy. |
Anonymous
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Sorry, does anyone else remember receiving directives WHILE IN UNIVERSITY about what your Halloween costume could/could not be? Are adult students in university (Yale University for crissakes) not capable of making adult decisions?
Yale has been PC central for a long time. I remember visiting in the mid-80s when college-shopping, and being completely turned off by how PC it was. Separate floors/housing for each conceivable ethnic/racial/sexual identity group. I wanted to go to college to be with a mix of people - the main purpose that colleges are residential in my opinion! To expose yourself to other points of view and experiences, not hunker down in groups of people who are the same as you are. 30 years later and Yale's PC policies seem to have achieved nothing - still segregated, still resorting to uncivil discourse. |
Anonymous
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I'm glad my kid's not applying, but for different reasons. This seems like a campus where lots of non-white students feel marginalized and where their concerns aren't treated with respect until the situation gets out of control. Not an appealing environment.
In fairness to Yale's administration, the President now does seem to be listening. We'll see what happens next. |
Anonymous
U of Missouri's president just resigned in what appears an awful atmosphere that was ignored by the university president. Some of the things the Greeks (frats) were doing were deplorable. |
Anonymous
Grow up, FFS. |
Anonymous
Yes, it's an amazing story. I have a lot of respect for the football players in that scenario. |
Anonymous
And every, single one including the coach stood fast. It really was impressive to see a photo of the entire team, black and white, locked arm in arm. That's how you get the job done (though the school would've lost $1 million if they hadn't played this coming weekend). |