It generally does, outrage generates pageviews and clicks and thus revenue.
My kid’s college had a widely covered protest her first fall there and what she was telling me about it and what I was reading online were night and day different.
@Corinthian - I am not a fly on the wall in the administration building and I do not have the ability to bypass FERPA and ask what happened with Mr. Dillman. We can only speculate. Last week was family weekend and while I did not attend, I am a member of the extremely active parent board and was told that all was peaceful and the weekend went well.
We have administrators on our board who keep us posted as best as they are allowed. I know that parents have requested that the Reed administration look into the report of Mr Dillman.
There is a significantly larger issue at play and that is the protection of our children who, due to this constant media attention, may become targets of unwanted groups. A Reedie who had just graduated was murdered on the train in Portland less than a year ago while standing up to protect two young women. I personally don’t care anymore about this protest or that protest. I want the media to stop bringing attention to our children who are young and passionate and sometimes misguided in how they express themselves and I want the administration to hold their safety as more important than anything or anyone else. I believe they are doing that.
If these adults do things that are newsworthy, it will generate media attention. Recognizing that is part of adulthood.
I also think there is a difference between traditional news like WaPo, the Atlantic and the Economist, and “news” sites like College Fix and Campus Reform that sensationalize stories and stir up some of their followers to make social media attacks on individuals. I think that ethical press coverage causes short term discomfort but in the long run brings useful outside perspective to events inside the campus bubble. These students are young and passionate, but also they are adults and they say and do things that have real world consequences for others which is clear in Professor Valdivia’s WaPo piece.
I have a student at Pomona. The 5C’s have definitely had their share of negative press coverage of protests in the last two years, including the CMC protests that led to the resignation of CMC Dean Spellman and the blockade of Heather MacDonald to name just the most prominent in recent times. There is an independent conservative student newspaper on campus and their coverage is routinely picked up by the College Fix and Campus Reform. They’ve run dozens of articles mocking things that student activists at the 5C’s say and do.(The latest is “Student Group Blasts Pomona College for Admitting Too Few Convicts.”) This has led to accusations of doxxing and demands upon the administration to censor the press, especially the student press. Pomona ended up putting an FAQ on their website regarding social media, student press and events on Campus. https://www.pomona.edu/administration/campus-center/reserving-space/faqs-student-media. The FAQ focuses more on student press and also releasing information from private Facebook groups or screenshots of social media. But the basic point the administration was making was that journalists should abide by the journalistic codes of ethics on the one hand, but on the other hand students should be aware that actions they take or statements they make in a public setting can be publicized.
There are two main problems with the argument that permitting media coverage of the irrational actions of far left protesters on campuses leads to at least incipient threats of “hate” being expressed towards the protesters. First, like it or not, free speech, whether as a concept of western thought or as a part of the First Amendment, applies to both the left and the right. The days of the left getting to do what it wants and the right being expected to sit down and be quiet are over, for good or ill. The internet (and many of the purely ideological “news” sites that have proliferated there) has taken care of that. There is no way that you will ever get the majority of the citizenry to agree with the idea that lefty protesters can disrupt classes, hound righty students, or scream at professors but no one should be allowed to say anything about it. We have seen this argument tried at Yale, Evergreen, Mizzou and many other places. It is a flat loser. Remember, “democracy dies in darkness”.
Maybe more fundamentally, the only way the “sometimes misguided” proto-fascists who are inciting the protests learn they are misguided is by exposure to views from outside their bubble. How else are these young adults supposed to learn that the world at large is not (at least yet) primarily concerned with issues of gender identity, racial justice, or the removal of dead white men from our literary and cultural canon? From whence do they derive the knowledge that they are not immune from the consequences of their behavior? Clearly, actual violence, whether directed at Republican congressmen, righties at Trump rallies or lefties protesting monuments, is always and unequivocally wrong. But short of a credible threat of actual violence (and sorry, an alum being killed a year ago by a lunatic in a situation having nothing whatsoever to do with the college is not a “credible threat” of violence in the current situation) I am not sure that there is anything that colleges can or should do. Young people need to learn that there are viewpoints other then their own. At some point, they even need to learn that it is possible to disagree with them without being a racist/sexist/homophobe/nazi. Obviously many colleges lack the institutional will or ability to teach this lesson. The world being what it is, someone else will do so.
@Ohiodad51 At this moment there is no credible threat, but the day you hear a white supremacist declare your child’s classmates a mortal enemy you become very very concerned. Let’s just say, that day came for me recently. These are not normal times.
My child is not a protester. I only want him to be safe.
@lknomad, these are indeed difficult times. Neither side of the crazy spectrum seems willing to pull back, and for that reason, I am very much afraid that things are going to get worse before they improve. In some ways, I do think stories like this one at Reed help, because it illustrates for the 90%+ of students who are not crazy that they do not simply have to knuckle under to the far left. The only way this situation improves is if the rational among us stands up and says enough.
Am I the only one who think that the non-whites that these protests claim to protect and help actually feel even more alienated? I am an Asian, and whenever I see these children protesting “racism” and “discrimination”, I rarely see non-white protesters. Blacks? maybe. I feel like these people are using non-white people for their own agenda, and it stinks.
@paul2752 you will see many more people who are white because the number of non white students is very very low. That is one of the issues. Look up the school in the College Navigator or the CDS and look at the enrollment numbers. Many schools lack diversity and one of the ways to increase diversity is to pay attention to the classes that are being taught and the faculty who teach them. Increasing courses that are inclusive and bringing more faculty of color will lead to a more diverse student body. That is one of the goals.
Re: #47 and #48
https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg06_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=765 says that Reed is 64.2% white among domestic students. Next largest group is 12.5% Hispanic/Latino (some of whom may not “look Hispanic/Latino”). Another 8.6% are multiracial (not Hispanic/Latino). Only 6.9% are Asian and 2.3% are black.
ucbalumnus
I feel the need to point out that Hispanic is not a race.
“Hispanic origin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person’s parents or ancestors before arriving in the United States. People who identify as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be any race.” Census Bureau
@MommyCoqui - we can only go by how the feds request the data. In this case @ucbalumnus is using federal definitions as required by the department of education.
Wouldn’t you think that if this were true we would have seen some evidence of this over the last twenty plus years of increasing focus on gender and ethnic studies, and the long time search for minority professors at virtually all schools?
There is little actual evidence for the statement “Increasing courses that are inclusive and bringing more faculty of color will lead to a more diverse student body.” Doesn’t mean it is not true, but it is more an article of faith at this point.
@turtle17 There is evidence but it is in the academic literature and I am not up to pulling it out. It would send me too far down a rabbit hole never to return. There is more than 20 years of research, and work on increasing diversity is happening at many many institutions. This is a good thing.
I was referring to what is present (or not) in the academic literature.