Casimir Pulaski Day is a big holiday here in Chicago. (Look it up.) Would they be guilty of hate speech or offensive conduct if they celebrated by making pierogis?
Can they eat bagels and lox? How about the WASPy frats? Can Sigma Chi ( sons of Christ) serve bagels and lox too?
Look, I’d advise my kid not to hold a fried chicken party for MLK Day. It sends bad optics. But bad optics and hate speech are not the same thing.
It’s idiotic to put a bunch of adolescent boys whose brains are half baked into a house without any real adult guidance and expect them to behave decently. This isn’t a “boys will be boys” either excuse. It’s just such a bad idea. I have a boy that I really tried to raise with an empathic awareness. He really dislikes the fraternity idea. I have a girl and initially she wouldn’t even look at colleges that allowed fraternities/sororities on campus. And I never said that they were bad- more of them reading about them and discussing them with family and their peers.
It’s pretty offensive stuff but I won’t get into the free speech debate and leave that yp to personal opinion although I do enjoy the dialogue brought about by this issue.
The movie Borat has songs about killing Jews, a scene in which Jews are portrayed as cockroaches, a scene in which a gun owner is asked which gun is best to kill Jews, etc. Would there be a move to keep that movie off campus? Why or why not? Would it differ if it were sponsored by the college as part of an ongoing series of films, versus sponsored by an individual fraternity or group for their members only?
"It’s just such a bad idea. I have a boy that I really tried to raise with an empathic awareness. He really dislikes the fraternity idea. "
I have a son who is the very definition of empathy. He’s probably in the top 1% of guys in terms of empathy. He was in a frat and enjoyed it.
Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.
Well, if you think the Palestine joke is that offensive, than I’d contend you should argue for banning ethnic/race affinity housing and “segregated spaces” on college campuses. After all, in a diverse society like ours, the stated point of those houses is to give kids a “safe space” and home-away-from-home, and to promote bonding with peers over common culture and shared experience. The earliest of these houses to be established were for blacks (at my college it was called “The Black House,”) who presumably bonded over their shared culture. Let’s be honest–that shared culture includes having been oppressed by white people and for many, the strong belief they are still being oppressed by white people. However, not every Caucasian will agree African-Americans are truly oppressed any more in our society and would claim their negative attitudes toward modern whites, who never owned slaves, are racist.
Similarly, among a group of Jewish kids you are likely to find many who don’t think Israel is wrong in their policy toward Palestine, even though people of other backgrounds might. Ethnicity is inextricably tied to politics and history, and that includes opinions about other peoples.
Maybe Greek houses should go back to the days of discriminating by religion like they used to. That’ll be safer.
Genuine gentlemen do not make racist statements against minority groups…especially after a fellow fraternity member who is a member of a minority group targeted by such statements repeatedly asked for a cessation of such statements on grounds of basic human decency.
That and one should realize that postcards…or the electronic equivalent…unencrypted email shouldn’t be relied upon if one’s concerned about keeping one’s correspondence private.
And in so doing, violate various anti-discrimination policies by the private college and possibly opening themselves up to discrimination suits as religion is one of the protected classes.
This has admittedly been taking to some extremes as one Evangelical family friend recounted how the Evangelical Christian religious student organization was forced by his elite LAC’s admins to allow non-Christians*…even those who opposed many of their basic tenets to be allowed access to the organization’s leadership positions on pain of being denied student organizational funding and access to meeting spaces on campus.
@Cobrat "* Original policy was that regular membership was open to all, but leadership positions were only open to those who were baptized Evangelical Christians and accepted the basic tenets of their brand of Christianity. "
The way I think about this is by reversing the situation. If the secular group leaders could not have been baptized and had to reject the basics tenets of Christianity, would that be fine for an on campus group? I think that many people will think that your example is silly, but if it were reversed, they would think that it was completely unacceptable.
Personally, I am okay either way, as long as they are consistent.
“Genuine gentlemen do not make racist statements against minority groups”
How about making offensive and biased statements and stereotypes against wealthy people, suburbanites, people who were Greek in college, non-engineers, etc - all of which you have repeatedly done? Nice double standard. It’s ok for you to say rude and offensive things about those groups, and stereotype them til the cows come home.
Did you read what they also said about women in their house rules? I still stand by my statement that it is a stupid idea to put a bunch of male adolescents living in a house with no adult guiding them. Group think in the lowest common denominator will take over and in this instance there was no moral compass guiding them. I don’t have trouble with service oriented fraternities that get together for a project or social event- it’s the living together and free for all because we can do this now and get away with it mentality. There are no brakes in this system. It’s been repeated over and over again.
I’m a student, not a parent, so my apologies for posting here in advance: I just wanted to say that I found this thread interesting because Brown’s former AEPi chapter decided to change its name back in November, a decision that was reported on about a week before the Buzzfeed article broke:
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2016/01/27/fraternity-formerly-known-as-aepi-becomes-beta-rho-pi/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2016/01/27/owens-17-why-we-disaffiliated-from-aepi/
Their reasons, outlined in the second link, boil down to disagreements with national leaders over how sexual assaults should be handled, [alleged] discrimination against non-Jewish members, perpetuated using Jewish stereotypes, and easing the financial burden that dues placed on members. I might be derailing (and my apologies if I am), but I just find it kind of noteworthy that these stories came out so close to each other.
The original linked article makes no reference to any action by anyone else that threatens anyone’s freedom of speech. Of course, freedom of speech (in the legal context) is freedom to let others judge you (in the social context) by your speech.
Definitely not appropriate to call a bed of weeds Palestine.
Just curious. How do you know they were Jewish? Did they say so, or was it a supposition based on their first or last names? Talk about stereotyping.
Actually, they all stated their Jewish affiliation.
The White alum being dismissive of BTech Black students complaining of anti-Black incidents stated it to argue he knew “what real discrimination was like” back when he was a HS student in the '60s.
In turn, his fellow classmates from the same era who were also Jewish openly stated their Jewish affiliation to call him out for his hypocrisy in using his Jewish affiliation to be dismissive of the Btech Black students rather than being sympathetic to their concerns and complaints.
In some ways, this dynamic resembled the vociferous back and forth between the pro and anti-BDS alums on my undergrad’s online alum forum. Some of the most vociferous voices on both sides of the debate happen to be alums who openly identified themselves as Jewish.
What is your argument, cobrat? What - Jews are obligated to be sympathetic to every single concern expressed by a black person? Here’s a concept. Jews, blacks, whites and people who are polka dotted get to have, form, and express their own opinions about anything. I know you “expect” Jews to hold certain opinions but guess what, they aren’t obligated to conform to your expectation.
Because of course the world is all comprised of entitled, power-mongering, bossy rich people, cobrat,
who live in a world of 20 years ago. Moving on…
When the incidents have to do with incidents of racism and discrimination against a marginalized minority group, being as dismissive of those concerns as that '60s era self-proclaimed Jewish alum was does mean he can’t later complain as he did when many alums call him out for it.
Especially Jewish classmates from his HS years calling him out for that and his hypocrisy for trying to use his Jewish affiliation to claim “he knew what real discrimination was like” and thus, make several dismissive comments about the concerns about anti-Black racism from the Black Btech students on the forum.
Every minority groups is made up of individuals with individual opinions. They do not represent the group as a whole just because of their background or affiliation or possible similar shared historical experiences… Nor are they obligated to rally to one’s defense because of a history, as a group, if a similar experience. Overgeneralization is not helpful. By the above argument, African-Americans should be supporters of Jews and should be pro Israel. Not realistic.