Haverford college bullying issues

Colleges and Universities A-Z Haverford College
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I’d be very surprised if Haverford did not have some sort of code of student conduct governing how people should treat each other. A lot of colleges do. The irony is that a lot of them were enacted in the wake of reactionary attacks on POC and liberal professors. Dartmouth Review v. Dartmouth College, 709 F. Supp. 32 (D.N.H. 1989) :: Justia

To be clear, personal attacks and harassment are wrong no matter what the underlying political motivation may be. The problem is that we are now in a period of digital and anonymous communication where one or two cowards can impersonate an entire college. I don’t think it’s right when it’s conducted on campus; I don’t think it’s right when it’s conducted on an internet discussion forum. But, I am utterly stymied when it comes to arriving at a solution for it except to say, that transferring to another college doesn’t sound like a rational way to avoid it.

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Sounds like Smith College is having similar problems. Not every school does, and it seems more of an issue at NE LACs than other schools

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It’s an issue everywhere, it’s just that the students at the highly selective LAC’s tend to be:

  1. more intelligent,
  2. more motivated to engage in “causes”,
  3. stimulated by finding opportunities to express both

Couple that with communities that desire to promote fairness and equality, and the issues eventually swallow up a fair amount of the oxygen within a small space.

Larger schools (and society as a whole) have larger issues…it’s just rare they generate the involvement for such a high percentage of those on campus (administration, professors, and students).

Haverford is a Quaker school. Quakers have been leaders in equality for centuries. The culture and engagement to address these issues is as high as anywhere. The bullying mentioned on this thread (which persists with generalizations, not incidents) shouldn’t be tolerated within the community, but appears to be somewhat isolated. These issues should be addressed by the community, within the community. Coming to CC and closing each statement with “Don’t come here” feels like retribution, not information.

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Intelligence has nothing to do with it.

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I too am amused by the ignorant assertion that selective LAC students have more “intelligence”. Really? In any event, OP there are many great schools to which you could transfer, including UPenn and Penn State if you wish to remain in PA. No one should be wasting their time and money for your experience.

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It is not retribution, it is genuinely giving other students the information and advice I wish I had while choosing the college to go to.

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UPenn might not be far enough if you’re looking to reject the boycotting of classes and the potential blowback of prioritizing classes over social justice and student well-being.

Happy Valley…another story.

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Our high school had a senior skip day too, but it was usually in the Spring

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Those following this issue might be interested in taking a look at the NYT today, for an article about Oumou Kanoute, the African-American Smith student who accused school workers of racism when she was asked to leave a closed dormitory lounge. I won’t go into detail. Read the article - it’s an eye opener. What is of importance, aside from the student’s slanderous actions, is the reaction of the administration, and how it has harmed people, and affected the entire campus community.

This country has a long and unfortunate history of racism. It’s obvious that Haverford’s president rightly urged students not to leave the campus to join the protests, in order to keep everyone on campus safe from coronavirus, not out of racism. This was exploited into a Cultural Revolution style nightmare, where students were deprived of the education that they had paid for, and were pressured to sign a manifesto supporting the strike. The incident at Haverford is not isolated - there have been similar episodes at many campuses across the country - Yale, Oberlin, Smith come to mind.

Voluntary conversations about discrimination and privilege are appropriate. Interfering with the school’s functioning, and students’ ability to attend classes and get the education that they are paying for, is not.

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So… basically this is further proof that one should not base their admissions decisions on the USNews rankings.

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Sorry for the delay in my response @Econpop. I wanted some distance before I responded, and reread- so as not to let my knee jerk take over. Glad I did, I don’t think your post was nearly as personal as I read it the first time around. While I think there are other things I need to clear up, this one is most important to me: [quote=“EconPop, post:59, topic:3502287”]
“You say you understand the “burden” African-Americans have been under in America since its inception, and you say you want bridge the divide, yet as soon as something about the conversation makes you (and I’m using “you” more as all-non-POC-who-feel-offended-by-the-conversation than as you specifically) feel a little uncomfortable, you want to put up more rules concerning the conversation. “
[/quote]

This is not what I said. What I said was:
“I get - at least I think I do - the exhaustion and the unfairness of POC having to constantly educate non-POC about history and systemic racism. It is a bonus burden on people who are already burdened. It should be on me to educate myself. I don’t want you to have to walk the slow walk with me or anyone else.” (emphasis added)

I would never ever ever presume to know what it is like to walk around in an African American body, or what hundreds of years of abuse and mistreatment does to families, communities and cultures. But I do have experience about how exhausting it is explaining the same thing over and over (me more around issues of gender), especially when people put the burden on me to tell them rather than them doing work to figure it out themselves. I don’t think it is your job to educate me, though I appreciate your willingness to do so. That’s all I was trying to say there.

As far as my privilege goes, I am born into the body I am born into, into the circumstances I am born into. That doesn’t make me evil. It makes me oblivious to some things. As everyone’s unique circumstances make them oblivious to things. We all have a duty to learn as we go and be open to our weaknesses (and strengths) and those of others. And to be decent to one another. I don’t pretend to know the answers to things I have no experience with. Or at least I try not to. I know that it is a privilege for me to be able to choose how much I want to pay attention to civil rights issues. All I can say is I am trying. I can’t speak for anyone else.

I am trying to focus on what happened at Haverford (because that is what the thread is about and race discussions get squirrelly and shut down on CC), though I think the discussion has value in a bigger sense. If you want, with the mods permission we can start a separate thread. I am game. There is a lot to talk about.

I am especially interested in this statement of yours: “Yet, instead of non-POC using that outburst of lifetime-repressed emotion as an excuse to complain about and exit the conversation, it would really be helpful if non-POC made an attempt to understand why that emotion is bursting through the dam that has held it back for so long.”

I perceive two things going on at Haverford: one is the “primal scream” (for lack of a better term) you are describing. I for sure see the dam bursting and don’t think it is appropriate or even possible for me or anyone to try to plug the dam. Pulling out of the race context for a sec, though - as a general proposition, people don’t do their best negotiating in an emotionally heightened state.

The second thing I see as happening at Haverford is a negotiation. Strikes are a negotiation tactic. So if we are talking about one of the most emotionally charged contexts imaginable, what is reasonable to expect for people to do with those emotions in a negotiation - not just the student protesters, but those responding to them? My hope for the sake of success of the negotiations (based on my years of professional experience) is that the extreme emotions can be kept outside the room. And to the protesters’ credit, that seems to be what they did and why they had success.

But there are allegations that things happened outside the room, in the name of the people in the room, to people who didn’t have representation in the room, that I would hope the people inside the room think aren’t ok and recognize don’t help the negotiations. I think you agree because you say: “If your life and/or safety was threatened, you should certainly point out those messages to the administration.” and “Does that make it okay for anyone to make you feel assaulted? I say no, it is not okay.” I think we are basically on the same page. We might disagree with what it means to be assaulted, but not that all people have a right to their emotions so long as they don’t hurt anyone else.

I do not object to the discomfort or the strike, as you suggest I do. My concern is narrow: did the alleged bullying behavior against other students help? It is an open, sincere question. From everything I have read and watched (and that is a lot at this point), the strike was about the administration’s positions on a list of concerns related to the BIPOC student body. Shouldn’t the protesters/administration want the non-protesters to have the opportunity to express their discomfort, if only to have it thrown in the mix and collectively concluded that the needs and demands of the protesters outweigh the non-protesters’ discomfort? If it is true that harassment silenced the voices of non-protesters, then the decisions about how to move forward weren’t made by the entire community, and create a new set of problems.

Maybe that is how progress is made, lurching forward in awkward steps. Maybe it is ok that Haverford shifts in a way that makes a different subset of the students feel unheard and unvalued for a while. Based on the comments here, that seems to be what Haverford chose, hopefully mindful the consequences.

I have a lot of thoughts about the Smith situation and the consequences of students not feeling like they belong on their campuses generally. Summed up as: we all perceive events through the lenses we have developed over our lifetimes, especially powerfully on issues of identity and belonging. Should we expect police and campus administration to anticipate people’s misperceptions? I just have gone on long enough for now - that is a convo for another day.

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I’m in the exact same position you are: trying to assess events at a distant place on a distant occasion through the prism of one allegedly representative point of view. Giving all of the information the most generous possible interpretation it would appear that the non-protesters were outraged that the protesters somehow gained a victory of sorts even though it is in no way clear what exactly it is that they “won”. According to one post there were 33 demands. What happened to them? We don’t know. The consensus seems to be that in the two weeks leading up to the school packing up and leaving for the semester something happened: a number of classes were suspended on a campus where arguably half the classes were being taught remotely; an undetermined number of students engaged in online name-calling. The campus has been back in session for little more than a couple of weeks. What are conditions now on campus? We don’t know.

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@circuitrider - this might help:

The protesters’ website, including the demands:
https://www.hc-strike.com/index.html

The Clerk’s announcement that the strikes was over, with imbedded links to communications from strike leaders:

Many of the demands were met, some were not legally possible (like returning the land the school is on to the tribe that originally was on it). But the school coughed up funding for various projects among other things.

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Thanks, @CateCAParent. It took a little digging, but here it is in the striking students’ FAQ:

"Haverford students are adults: if their actions, in this instance crossing the picket line, lead them to be socially ostracized then that is their responsibility and they are always welcome to reevaluate their behavior; we will not physically or psychologically attack anyone for their views, and if an adult–here, a Haverford student–chooses to espouse views that alienate them from the broad majority of their community, they are entirely responsible for those consequences and this is not a violation of their free speech rights. I would like to quote an instagram post by @alyssahowritings, entitled, “What To Do & Not To Do When Being Called Out/In For Racism Or Cultural Appropriation,” quoting Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos, a doctor of sociology “There is no ‘nice’ way to talk about racism,” and “As [BI]POC point out all day, every day, [w]hite people put more effort into policing discussion of race so they don’t have to work on themselves.” Please stop reframing this discussion to center non-BIPOC and non-FGLI students. Further, insinuating that these students are being oppressed is not only disrespectful and disgusting, it’s flat out false. "

So, the issue was joined. They saw their opponents as “strikebreakers”. This explains but perhaps does not excuse the intimidating behavior that may have followed. It does however beg the question, what happens now that the strike is over?

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Thanks for pulling that quote out. I have to admit I don’t understand it.

Yes, I agree. What comes next? The BIPOC issues are not over. New issues exist on top of them. I am curious what will happen with admissions this year. If you are BIPOC, are you more or less interested in Haverford now? If you are conservative or moderate are you more or less? Does Haverford make any overtures to the students who allege they were bullied? Does Haverford try to reach out to the whole spectrum of potential applicants, or focus on a particular profile of students? How will alums view how Haverford was treated in the press? How will Haverford give comfort to prospective parents that academics won’t be disrupted again?

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Oh, adjustments will be made. Maybe, certain high schools will not get quite the same favorable treatment they received in years past. Troublemakers eventually age out.

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Some campuses thrive on acrimony and contentiousness. The causes change.

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How are Oberlin and other schools faring that have been in the news the past few years?

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I would say that Oberlin has lost some of their alumni support, that they have become less selective in admissions, and that they are running a major deficit, and are on the way to financial trouble. Oberlin College finances part of national trend for liberal arts colleges

I cannot say for sure that this has to do with what has gone on at the college over the past few years. I only know that the alumni I know, who would all call themselves liberals, who supported Oberlin previously, have dropped their financial support of the college and voiced their concern over the events of the past few years.

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Unpopular Opinion: Why don’t you just go to class and not pay attention to them. Just let them be them and you be you. And your their to get a degree not to do anything else.