from Inside Higher Ed
It’s hard to understand why Reed would not immediately expel students who disrupt academic classes. This is a required class for all freshmen. The malcontents could easily have learned this in researching the school and did not have to go to Reed. They can raise concerns and protest without disrupting other students, who are in most cases paying lots of money and investing lots of time in their educations. No one is stopping them from doing this.
Reed has a nice campus in a terrific city. There are many great people at the school. Going forward, what family/student would pay to attend a school where a few extremists are allowed to run roughshod over the rules, civility, and basic human decency?
I also wish Reed and other schools would expel or suspend student protestors that disrupt classes or harass professors. I say that as someone who considers himself moderately liberal.
On the other hand, I don’t buy into the idea that these kinds of protests are rampant on colleges campuses. It’s the exceptions to the norm that get reported rather than the norm. Plus, you get the far-right trying to whip people up into a frenzy about these kinds of incidents.
EXPEL?! Really? Seems a bit heavy handed. Surely there is something in between unbridled acceptance and expulsion.
“On the other hand, I don’t buy into the idea that these kinds of protests are rampant on colleges campuses. It’s the exceptions to the norm that get reported rather than the norm.”
Exactly.
I guess I’d cut them some slack after the first offense. But if they kept repeating the behavior, it’s “See you later.”
If I were teaching it, I would have the college police come, instead of leaving myself. I would also report it to the dean and have the administrator(s) to deal with those students who interrupted my class. They can protest outside of my class quietly, but they cannot interrupt my teaching and violate my other students’ right to receive their education when they paid the tuition and fee.
Deny, deflect, minimize … wash, rinse, repeat.
Here is a video of the incident referenced in the original article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=279&v=mg3i6-J6zI8
This kind of stuff has been going on for so long and so frequently that its surprising few mainstream news outlets has picked up on it. Here is another one from two years ago that should have gotten some attention too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC2yB2Zusyg
It just makes a lot of parents wonder where they can send their kids nowadays for college education where there is still freedom of thought and inquiry without harassment. At Princeton, Stanford and other elite schools segregated housing is back in full force by the demand of minority students. Woodrow Wilson and Jim Crow must be smiling in their graves.
A few theme houses that most students of the associated ethnicities do not live in hardly makes the housing racially segregated, and a few smaller universities are hardly reflective of the whole.
Indeed, what is likely the greatest degree of student housing racial segregation has been flying under the radar in sororities and fraternities at many prominent large state universities, including some where the participation in sororities and fraternities is high enough that they seemingly dominate the social scene there.
At some point, doesn’t intellectual honestly require that we all acknowledge that this is not just an ever lengthening string of unrelated, isolated incidents?
I can’t comprehend the vanity, entitlement and selfishness that would allow someone to disrupt others’ ability to get an education. Tarring and feathering comes to mind.
I read the article. It doesn’t seem the protesters are disrupting the class in an ongoing manner. They did once but were shut down and haven’t again.
That video appears to be of the pre-9AM intro thing they did…meaning, before the class began.
Did I miss something?
[quote]
But in the interim, throughout last year, a group of 12 to 15 students has occupied the class – surrounding the lecturing professor in silent protest – for each session.[/quote
I find this very inappropriate, and do find it disruptive and ongoing.
I wonder if Reed would be as patient if a group of students entered a gender studies class holding up signs that said “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Grievance Studies have go to go!” or “Everything you are learning in this class is wrong”.
I’d split hairs even further: I can live with silent protest around the sides and back of the room. Protestors being on stage – making them co-equal with the professors and ensuring that students who want to direct all their attention to the professor cannot do so – is over the line. Kudos to the prof who refused to lecture under those circumstances.
A second video in which students in the audience yell at the protesters. It gets interesting at the 7:00 minute mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgyb8dH5vFQ
The Economist has a piece on the protest.
white cisheteropatriarchy? :-??
Maybe we need to come up with an abbreviation or acronym for this terrible group…how about WCHP? Don’t be a tool of the WCHP!
Clearly a lot of the students don’t appreciate having their class hijack by the protesters. If Reed doesn’t get a grip on the situation, the student vs student situation can quickly get out of hand.
If you do not want to take Hum 100, do not go to Reed.
My D is a Freshman at Reed and witnessed this firsthand. Humanities 110 has been a Freshman requirement at Reed since the 1940s, every living grad under the age of 90 took it. A wonderful continuity, I think, though the texts required have evolved over the years. The lectures are given by various faculty members, and then the students break into groups of 16 or so to discuss the texts. The leaders of these small groups also heard the same lecture as the students, at least on days when malcontents are not wrecking the class.
Hum 110 meets MWF. and the first week both Monday and Friday lectures were cancelled. However, the class members were able to break into their small groups and discuss the material. Epic of Gilgamesh, and current texts are Egyptian poetry. (Perhaps the protesters had forgotten that Egypt is in Africa, or maybe never learned it. Were they going to lectures last year and reading the texts? Or griping and shouting then as well?)
Every Reed Freshman was either in the auditorium or in an overflow room. (Reed had a bigger than average yiled this year, as have many other colleges from what I read on CC). The consensus of Freshman (at least by anecdote) was that the protesters should remain outside and hold up signs, and continue to dialogue with staff, rather than disrupt the classes. Maybe the protesters should have gone to different colleges, like the ones with open curricula, like Smith, Brown, etc.
From communication from the college President to parents of students, I would say I have complete confidence that Reed staff will (or already have) get the situation under control.
http://www.reed.edu/humanities/hum110/syllabus/2017-18/fall.html#schedule