I think calling the students “crybabies” and denigrating some of the people you disagree with is wrong. I respect each person’s opinion even when I disagree. Since when do we want a college that has no conservative voice or for that matter a more liberal voice? I want a college that encourages kids to think. Many of you have said that by giving an option of a pro-lesbian book, that you are exposing these poor stupid Christian kids to real life because “gay marriage is legal” and we should all be the same I guess. Well, “real life” is filled with co-workers that are different and diverse. Real life has people who do not support gay marriage and those that do. There are people at my office that live with another person they are not married to and there are those that are not comfortable with this because of their faith. It is OK to disagree. It is not OK to basically state someone is dumb or lacking intellect just because they are a person of faith. I think Duke chose this book to shake things up and that they intentionally wanted to challenge conservative beliefs. I do not think it was about this being a fabulous piece of literature. I have only read excerpts and reviews but I think Duke wanted to be “out there”. This concerns me because my son is applying there. It also concerns me that several kids had the guts to say they were uncomfortable and upset and are being ridiculed. I do not know anything about the students who complained but I celebrate their right to do so and you are probably right in that they will have to leave a place the worked hard to get into.
“pro-lesbian”? well if these kids feel that this is a “problem”, they are going to have a hard time at Duke, or pretty much every other elite non-secular school. That is just a fact. There is going to be more “in your face” stuff than a pretty darn innocuous book. Yes I’ve read it.
well I say pro-Lesbian for lack of a better term. Maybe a more permissive view of alternative lifestyles would be better. I know the book was a best seller and I have read the other books spoken about in the previous posts. Like I said earlier…they were not required which is good. There were also other choices. I just think that an 18 year old kid who spoke up is now probably in trouble with certain people and Duke is acting in the article I read like they had no idea this would be controversial (which I think is not true because I am sure Duke is filled with brilliant people). Your point is well-taken however.
Two thoughts-
- I'm an atheist. If I had insisted on not reading books with Christian themes I don't think I could have been an English major (my actual major) at just about any college in the country. You could also cross out philosophy and art history majors, as well as courses in many other disciplines. It's one thing to disagree with ideas, another to be resistant to being exposed to them.
- Students have a right not to read this book, but I think they're missing out on an opportunity to learn something new. I know I learn the most when I'm asked to consider things from a different point of view. Sadly, by refusing to be a part of the discussion these students are also cheating their classmates of a chance to learn something from **them**.
“Sadly, by refusing to be a part of the discussion these students are also cheating their classmates of a chance to learn something from them.”
Actually, the other classmates are learning a lot about them this way. 8-|
"Real life has people who do not support gay marriage and those that do. There are people at my office that live with another person they are not married to and there are those that are not comfortable with this because of their faith. "
There are people who hold sincere religious objections to a lot of things besides homosexuality. Premarital sex comes to mind. Should Duke vet every book it recommends as part of this program to ensure that there is no one portrayed living in sin? Where is the line drawn? Everyone is offended by something. I am not familiar with the book but it appears to be a reasonably significant modern piece of literature and has won critical acclaim. That counts for something IMO.
“well I say pro-Lesbian for lack of a better term. Maybe a more permissive view of alternative lifestyles would be better.”
I hate to inform you but this ship has already sailed. Being gay isn’t any more “controversial” than being left handed. It is what it is.
“I suspect most Duke students would have read most of those in high school.” (great books list)
I am still skeptical that is true. Exceptions for those who are coming out of a certain segment of private schools or homeschool environments, I wouldn’t expect that the most have read more than a handful.
Duke is an extremely pro-lesbian, gay friendly environment. This is a fact. We talk a lot on this board about college fit. If someone doesn’t want to be exposed to LGBT students and faculty, Duke is not a good choice.
https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/csgd
This book is really just the tip of an iceberg. If you are considering Duke for your child, and consider the homosexual content of the book unacceptable, you really should look at the website I’m linking. The university is telling you their values.
“Pro-lesbian”? The book does not advocate, Yay Lesbians! It is a memoir. One person’s experience. If I wrote about my experience growing up in a small house, that doesn’t mean I am pro small house.
And you would expect different groups to be affiliated with the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity? There are now support group for gays in the military, and let me tell you, them’s not the military’s values, but it is reality as others have also stated upthread.
Erin’s Dad: I am not sure I understand your post. Are you saying Duke University doesn’t value supporting gay rights and creating a gay friendly campus environment?
“It is OK to disagree.”
Sure it is. What isn’t OK, in a university setting, is the deliberate promotion of ignorance as a value. These students aren’t in a position to disagree with the book, because they aren’t reading it. They want to remain ignorant of its contents. But the university exists to undo ignorance and replace it with knowledge. Knowledge that’s useful in our world has to include knowledge of ugliness and of wrongness. I have read “Fun Home” and didn’t see anything ugly or wrong in it, but anyone who does think that really ought to read it. “The Communist Manifesto,” mentioned upthread, is a great example of a book that opponents of its tenets need to read if they want to have any clue what they’re talking about.
Biology classes have to cover cancer and fungus and birth defects; history classes have to talk about slavery and genocide; literature classes have to address sex and violence. Students who prefer that everything they encounter in college be uplifting and faith-promoting (or in harmony with feminist or antiracist values) need a gentle reminder of what universities are all about.
^^ =D>
"What isn’t OK, in a university setting, is the deliberate promotion of ignorance as a value.
But the university exists to undo ignorance and replace it with knowledge. Knowledge that’s useful in our world has to include knowledge of ugliness and of wrongness. "
Well said Hanna!!
That eloquent post deserves a standing ovation!!!
=D> ^:)^
Business people seem to have discovered that LGB people can often be worth specifically marketing to.
Biology is the most popular type of STEM major, and some research in biology is about the genetics behind homosexuality. Also, a CS major who enters the work force after graduation will likely encounter LGB co-workers.
I don’t think anybody at Duke or elsewhere has pronounced this graphic novel the greatest masterpiece in the entire history of world literature. Most colleges consciously select books that will not require an enormous investment of time, and ones that all students (including international and, yes, STEM majors) will be able to digest easily. They also tend to choose ones that are likely to stimulate discussions on a variety of levels, not merely about acceptance of diverse lifestyles, but about, say, the nature of Art and whether a graphic novel is Literature or merely an expanded comic book. It also provokes examination of how each individual presents his or her own personal narrative. If, after reading a book, students decided to declare it worthless, that is one thing, but for incoming freshmen to decide that something is unworthy of their consideration is pretty !@#$%^&* arrogant. Unfortunately, this level of smugness might be increasingly prevalent at the most elite colleges and universities, because the high-achieving students believe they know everything. They have spent the first eighteen years of their lives excelling at answering questions. Perhaps they could spend some of the next four years asking questions.
I love the “one book” idea. S’s school does it - his book was the Henrietta Lacks one. Is this now standard operating procedure at all the elite universities?
Looking over this thread, I am a little surprised at the level of ignorance and knee-jerk prejudice about graphic novels. The graphic novel form has been pretty vibrant, and gaining momentum, since most of us were kids. More in Europe than here – the first ones I read were Tintin and Asterix books, and of course Barbarella. (I also loved a hyper-political Mexican book, Los Supermachos, and the absolutely hilarious, lightly pornographic The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist which launched Michael O’Donoghue’s career and kicked Frank Springer’s to a new level.) They were originally pitched at children and genre fans, but nothing especially limits them to that. William Blake produced “graphic epic poetry” 200 years ago, and no one pooh-poohs it at all. His first editions are worth millions.
As far back as the Middle Ages, artists were interested in integrating visual art with text, both in European monasteries and in Islamic universities. Long before that, since the dawn of what we call “literature,” integrating dance and music with verbal art were considered necessary to have a complete work of art, and that concept was revived strongly in the 19th Century. What limited mainstream study of hybrid art forms in high school and undergraduate curriculums was more the expense of reproducing it and disseminating it, not any inherent lack of artistic quality. With the current radical changes in the cost of producing pictures and sound, as well as managing those things as a reader/viewer/listener, and the proliferation of channels whereby that kind of art can be disseminated (and compensated), it’s only to be expected that there will be a lot more of it in the future than there was in the past.
Anyway, graphic novels have had mainstream acceptance as a vehicle for serious literature at least since Art Spiegelman’s publication of Maus as a whole in 1991, when it won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. I think among people who pay attention to contemporary literature, Fun Home is considered the graphic novel most likely to be read and studied 50 years or 100 years from now, because of its depth, technique, and general artistic success. It’s not the first graphic novel, just probably the best so far. There will be more of them.
One of the interesting issues for debate around Fun Home is the extent to which it is a different book as a graphic novel than it would have been as a conventional, words-only memoir. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to discuss, especially with kids who don’t necessarily read or care about literature. The point is, it’s worth talking about, and not (just) because one out of hundreds of its panels shows a penis.
This what I was trying to get at. Imagine these three books: a book that is simply pornographic (with pictures), a book that analyzes the effects of pornography on society, with illustrated examples, and a book that defends pornography on the grounds of free speech (with no pictures). Now imagine a religious person who believes that it is a sin to view pornography. It seems to me that such a person would be entirely justified in refusing to read the first book, and unjustified in refusing to read the third book. The second book is a harder, and it seems to me that it depends on the context. If the religious person wants to be a vice cop, he’s going to have to see some pornography.
I want to emphasize that Fun Home probably doesn’t really fit into any of these categories. But if somebody says he doesn’t want to read it because it includes nude pictures, I don’t think it’s nice to assume that he’s lying, and that he’s really against the viewpoint of the book.