The Spike article showed the “Amanda” student as a real person, not just a caricature. But it also showed Hunter as a real person, a first generation student who carried with him the hopes and dreams of a family that had never sent anyone to college before. He was driven off campus and out of college completely for mildly questioning the protesters. The article made me both sad and hopeful.
What happened to Hunter Dillman is awful. I certainly hope people at the highest levels of Reed, including the Board of Trustees, are trying to figure out how to make things right for him. A different person might have been able to tough it out, but he wasn’t a different person, and wasn’t required to be.
@Ohiodad51 : What do you mean? You don’t understand that is precisely what was happening? The means chosen to do that were completely unacceptable, but fundamentally it was a dispute about appropriate curriculum that is replicated to some extent at practically every college in the country, and has been going on for a generation.
The means are the message @jhs. Of course students can agitate/advocate for “appropriate curriculum”. And yes, that is not uncommon or new. What is new is refusing to listen to other voices, to shut down speech with which you disagree, and to intimidate other students into silence. It is in a completely different category.
And did you really just intimate that Dillman should just “suck it up, buttercup”? There is no way you would have said that if he were not a white male.
@Ohiodad51, I read the comments of @JHS to be sympathetic to Hunter’s plight. I think you are mis-reading his post
^it could be. If so, @JHS, I apologize.
Yes, of course I feel terrible about Dillman. He was badly treated by both sides, as far as I am concerned, although in the case of the protesters it was a sin of commission, and in the case of the administration (and a lot of the students) a sin of omission.
I do think he overreacted. He was in a really vulnerable position and no one was looking out for him at all in any meaningful way. So overreacting was predictable, and he shouldn’t be blamed for it.
Approximately 50 weeks to long, in my book.
If I was a Reed parent, I’d be demanding a refund for the course in small claims court.
Apparently about half the students are full pay at $70,000/year. Hard for me to see how this is worth $70,000/year.
“If I was a Reed parent, I’d be demanding a refund for the course in small claims court.”
Oh, the cost of even that one course probably exceeds the limit of small claims court.
College professors and adjuncts should feel physically safe and not have to deal with this kind of in your face, aggressive behavior at their workplace i.e. the classroom.
I would say that anyone causing this kind of disruption in a classroom should be expelled.
My D is a freshman at Reed. Yeah, we could have saved a ton, sending her to the community college 10 miles up the road, where half the admitted kids actually return for Year 2. I won’t say what we pay, but it is worth every penny, when she finishes and goes to work or to grad school. Believe or not, the school is up and running. The Hum110 courses has had some lectures disrupted, but the small groups of 15 or 20 have been meeting 3X a week, discussing the texts, doing papers, etc.
It is a shame that Reed accepted a few agitators who have no business at that college or any. @MommyCoqui is exactly right that instructors should feel physically safe and not have to deal with aggressive behavior.
“The right to speak freely is not the same as the right to rob others of their voices.”
This. A million times, this!
Bunch of bologna
PetuliaClark, I am glad that your student is doing fine in that atmosphere, which sounds very stressful.
Others did not seem to weather the storm as well.
I certainly would not want my kid in that situation. And I would worry about the school’s reputation, maybe not with grad schools but with employers. I hope the administration can get a handle on it and steer the campus toward resolution.
It’s all about power, folks. At what point do the groups who are fighting tyranny and injustice become what they purport to be fighting? Right now, I guess.
My daughter is a freshman at Reed and absolutely loves the place. We live in the Northeast and I’ve visited the elite colleges here (my husband went to Harvard, too), and we are so much more impressed with Reed than any of our New York and New England schools. This situation at Reed is getting a lot of press, but it doesn’t reflect what is happening on campus on a daily basis, and it doesn’t affect my daughter anymore. Plus she’s learned from it. Pres. Kroger is an amazing guy. Reed is a unique place, beautiful campus, really smart students who are truly motivated to learn. So if that’s not a good fit for your kid, don’t send them there, but certainly don’t make that decision based upon a few outliers.
From a nytimes article on The Paradise Papers:
" Underscoring endowments’ reliance on hydrocarbon holdings, 10 schools invested in a Cayman Islands partnership in 2012 known as EnCap Energy Capital Fund IX-C, part of EnCap Investments, a private equity firm known for the acquisition and development of North American oil and gas properties.
Among the investors were the University of Alabama, DePauw, Northeastern, Pittsburgh, Purdue, Reed College, Rutgers, Syracuse, Texas Tech and Washington State."
The most liberal college in the country invests in fossil fuels through offshore tax-avoidance vehicles? Perhaps the protestors are targeting the wrong issues.
How many of these protesters are actual students at Reed? I wouldn’t guess too many.
@Mandalorian They are all students at Reed.
My sophomore found the protests interesting for about a week this year. He was not bothered by the silent protesters last year and it didn’t detreact from the course when he took Hum 110. These days he is working too hard on his courses to actually notice much else. Reed is being Reed but I wouldn’t send my kid anywhere else. He loves it. His friends love it. It is home. I would encourage anyone who has a student who loves exceptionally intense academics to look into the school. I think media is blowing things a bit out of proportion.
@RoseTyler9 and @LKnomad I’m curious to know whether you think the Reed administration adequately supported the faculty, including Professor Lucia Martinez Valdivia who wrote the WaPo opinion piece? And did the administration adequately support Hunter Dillman, the first generation student who was ostracized and driven off campus and out of college altogether? I think students who are sure they’re in the right place and have lots of family support can shrug these things off better than those who are more vulnerable. And the same goes for faculty. Professor Valdivia contends that faculty who were POC, immigrants and/or non-tenured felt intimidated and silenced. Do you think her concerns are valid?