Princeton Students Take Over President’s Office, Demand Erasure Of Woodrow Wilson

Parents Forum
681

Why name the companies? These are private companies who are growing and making great products, and they have a right to hire people that help in that cause and not to hire people who are potentially disruptive and need to find things to continually complain about, especially when they have shown such a history.

But, I can tell you that there are a lot more companies than what I know that are backing off such hires - this is public discussion number one for companies asking for money, i.e, what kind of talent AND stability are present in your employee pool. That is one of the first things we look at as investors. Princeton does not have to worry about a return on investment for investors, a company does,

And that goes for the white students who took part in the Occupy Wall Street fiasco. Have you noticed that today Wall Street and the banks are bigger than ever? Guess why? Because the OWS students were clueless as to whom they were protesting against - they were protesting the same evil banks that bankrolls the companies that employ their moms and dads. i,e, it is not going anywhere.

You ask a specific question for a general situation.

The question you should have asked is, “Also did you mean specifically students, who behave uncivilly and rudely to other students, and openly break the conduct rules of their own campus?”

The answer is yes.

682

@Hanna, there are so many pages to this thread. Do you mind referencing the post or at least the poster you are responding to above?

683

@awcntb you may want to look at some law books too. Companies do not have the right to discriminate based upon race or national origin. And if they do it intentionally that could lead to significant punitive damage awards.

Is "stability based in the employee pool " code words for race based or national origin discrimination going on by companies you work for or invest with?

Since you are a self proclaimed critical thinker I thought maybe you could answer my question. I will ask it one final time

What do you think should be done to address racism? The Princeton students have an opinion. I would love to hear yours

684

Cultural mores change over time. People need to understand that indeed, some of the things we think and do today will become deplorable in the future.

Do they want their own names debased or even erased when they are gone?

If not, they should reconsider their attempt to tear down the reputations of historical figures.

685

@tiger1307,

awcntb and I are making slightly different points.

Employers are prohibited from discriminating against potential employees for any of the following reasons: Age, sex, race, color, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, or disability (where the disability is unrelated to the work being performed).

Note there is nothing saying that employees cannot discriminate against logic-challenged Princeton students taking over the President’s office, regardless of race.

686

hebegebe You may want to take a look at EEOC v. J&R Baker Farms LLC which is based on the reverse national discrimination you are talking about.

How is one going to identify logic challenged Princeton students or does that describe black Princeton students in general?

687

J&R Baker Farms is a national origins suit, a class that I listed in the EEOC. If you want a defense of that, ask awcntb.

Regarding your second point, I don’t get it. Why would you suggest that every black student at Princeton is logically challenged? That sounds like a racist statement. I would just refuse to hire the students that took over the President’s office. I don’t care what color they are.

688

I actually hadn’t noticed that username anywhere… I would support that poster being sent on their way as well, as I agree they have no place on this message board.

689

.@tiger1307
" How is one going to identify logic challenged Princeton students or does that describe black Princeton students in general? "

In the comments sections of many of the YouTube videos, some protestors are identified by name by other students. I’m pretty sure these will come up on Google searches of the names.

690

There’s actually an Asian Studies/affinity house at Oberlin and several other colleges I know of.

Also, one of the most memorable and loudest campus protests I remembered during my undergrad days was by Asian-American and other sympathetic groups demanding more courses and faculty covering Asian-American history and culture.

Also, such protests and demands weren’t new as such demands were being made by Asian-American groups as early as the late '60s in places like Berkeley.

691

For the majority, it would require no searching because they will be dumb enough to tell us what they did in college, all the while thinking for some odd reason that it was cool or showed initiative.

You would be shocked at how many Occupy Wall Street students actually applied for jobs at major companies and they actually put on their resumes what they did in support of OWS. Cannot tell you how many times I was in a room that just laughed out loud in seeing this.

Broadcasting you are part of OWS and other protests that seem out of whack may work when applying to grad school and may even seem cool to grad school admins, but when applying to a real company, you are marked immediately as a troublemaker. Best go to that non-profit or liberal organizations like the mainstream media or advocates of climate change.

For the others, the internet will sink them.

692

Sure, but most companies are way beyond Google when it comes to scoping potential hires.

Maybe I should say this in a way CC people understand - there is a reason that guidance counselors are now telling high school students to scrub their Facebook, twitter and other social media profiles of ill-conceived comments and pictures. And why do you not think that would not apply to businesses that do much more thorough background checks?

However, potential hires do not have the luxury of just deleting like they think. The Internet is really forever and there is not one page that has ever been posted just once for a few seconds that cannot be easily found by readily available advanced search engines. Cached pages are only hidden to people who do not have access or the ability to find them. Plus, hires forget that they can delete their pages, but that is essentially futile unless ALL their friends and ALL their friends friends delete similar pages as well with their names and pics on them.

My point - finding unwanted hires is the easy part. I guarantee you serious companies have already catalogues names and faces - we just do not need the trouble. We are trying to run business not baby sit people who might get an anxiety attack over artwork in the company cafeteria. These students think they are way more important than they are.

Again, there are tons of non-profits and organizations for these students to go to that do not have to produce an ROI for others.

There is an important distinction to be made here - there are people with true medically-derived anxiety issues. Every company I know has such employees and we work with those employees because they have medical condition and when controlled are just as good as any top employee. And more importantly, we do not hold that against the person when hiring. In contrast, having to deal with people who out of the blue seem to find things that were normal yesterday objectionable today is a great way to make sure your work environment is a not a productive place to be and not rewarding to be there, so best to avoid such hires.

693

Agreed.

694

From the horse’s mouth - what investors are saying out loud:

I do not agree with his characterization of ingratitude that he presents in the article, but as for the above, he nails it on the head.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/112415-782375-college-kids-unamerican-at-thanksgiving.htm?p=2

695

…“A generation that has been drilled since pre-kindergarten that the highest virtue in life is tolerance has suddenly become the least tolerant in history…”

So true of many.

There are still lots of kids whose work ethic and maturity blow me away.

696

http://articles.philly.com/1995-04-21/news/25684738_1_latino-studies-ethnic-studies-princeton-university-students

Incidentally, the first protests of this kind at Princeton were done by Asian-American students.

“Students strode purposefully into Nassau Hall to the president’s outer office, pushed aside a secretary, plopped down, and started singing and chanting.”

“This is a takeover, they announced. And they had no intention of leaving until president Harold F. Shapiro made a good-faith effort to listen to their requests for faculty and courses in Asian American and Latino studies.”

697

There isn’t really any intellectual inconsistency on the Princeton students side. I would argue that the problem is with your thought process. You are clearly not being objective. You are imposing your perceptions of black Americans and your political beliefs to interpret the students actions. Even going so far to relay anecdotes told by your son that are essentially irrelevant to the discussion (anecdotes that might not have been entirely accurate and could have been relayed in a fashion to prove your son’s point).

First get this straight. Black Americans are diverse in thought and not one monolithic group of people. That is the case at Princeton. If you actually were at Princeton, or took time to read critically the available articles you would be aware that:

(1) The sit-in was initially started by 10 students on the Black Justice League (BJL). Not all of them were black Americans fyi. Even then, assuming that was the case, that is about 2% of the Princeton black population. Note, overtime, the students gathered a diverse group of supporters. 300 undergraduate students staged a walk out from classes in protest. It was not just a black American issue. This excludes the graduate students who also took part in the protest, all from diverse backgrounds.

They also had backing from faculty members albeit primarily faculty who were part of ethnic studies departments. It is quite obvious why such protests are good for such faculty since it ensures their relevance.

(2) On the other hand, several black students and minorities disagreed with the requests of the BJL. They rejected the idea that a small number of students should have a right or claim to represent their interest without wider discourse on the issue. Some were appalled by the behavior of some of the students. I don’t blame them due to the tendency to stereotype black Americans for the actions of some.

Nevertheless, there are radical elements in every movement. Why is it necessary to use the presence of these radical elements to attack the ideology of a group?

You can find this by reading news articles. There was also a petition here: https://www.change.org/p/princeton-university-preserve-princeton-s-commitment-to-academic-freedom-pluralism-and-civil-discourse?source_location=update_footer&algorithm=promoted&grid_position=3

Most people opposed to name change stated two overwhelmingly poorly constructed arguments. First, the (A) The “free-speech rhetoric” and (B) claims that this is historical revisionism. I am excluding the racist statements endemic on anonymous social media. Nothing in this incident had anything to do with an attack on free-speech. Wilson is also not being judged harshly since even for his time his views were despicable and set back racial relations several years.

While I do not personally agree that the building name should be changed, I can see why other people’s view points might differ. Clearly Wilson did not want black people there, and the presence of his name is a constant reminder for them.

(3) This is not the first time such a sit-in at Princeton has happened. It happened also in 1995. The participants of the first sit-ins knew the risk to their careers. Guess what 20 years later they are all doing fine. I know some of the students who were in this sit-in and they are going to do quite well. They might not have a wall-street job or work for a F500 but that is not the end of the world.

(4) I do not see what any of this has to do with the Rhodes scholarship. The Princeton students are fighting their battles in their own school where they are likely to be heard. Yes, to some black americans (and all races) accepting a scholarship that came from the purse of an imperialist twat would seem morally reprehensible but some people do not share such beliefs.

However, some black Americans might have no issue with this and this is not the hypocrisy of what you perceive is a “group”. They are acting as individuals. Remember, don’t paint people with one brush.

698

I think it’s time for Princeton to bring back grade deflation. Clearly students have a lot of time on their hands.

699

I thought of this thread and the idea of micro-aggressions and climate yesterday. I’m a HS teacher, and we often have to fill out forms for course changes that involve the names of several faculty members. On yesterday’s form, the list appeared as:

Dr. Jones
Ms. Fretful
Bay-Bay
Mr. Franklin

…where “Bay-Bay” was the childhood nickname of the only AA teacher listed, who is also a young alum of the school. I am sure that the guidance office did not mean to list Bay-Bay in a different/diminutive way, but that was the result. I wasn’t sure how to handle it when I saw the form, and am still not. I did nothing, which I know was wrong, and I’m going to correct later today somehow.

700

I have been thinking about this protest in the context of a senior trying to decide which college to attend. When a student researches a college he or she wants to attend, shouldn’t they look at the college’s history and decide whether or not they like what the college stands for BEFORE attending the school.

So for e.g, if I am a conservative, then I should know that there are a few colleges like Oberlin, Wesleyan, Swarthmore and host of other institutions that probably may be challenging for me to attend because of their population demographics and political leanings of the faculty. If I decide to attend these schools, I should be prepared to have my opinions challenged, ridiculed and ideas questioned, and be prepared to defend them (not a bad thing for any college student, if you ask me)

If I am a liberal, likewise there may be colleges like Liberty University, BYU or some other larger Universities that may have strong ROTC programs that I may not agree with. If I apply and choose to attend such colleges, I am signing up for having those views constantly presented to me till I graduate.

Did these kids not understand that Woodrow Wilson is intimately connected with Princeton? What was their thinking going into the University. Why did they choose to attend Princeton, if such a linkage offended them?

It is one thing to respectfully engage in a larger conversation with the University community about the “idea” that Wilson’s name should be removed from Princeton because of his views. You may or may not win that argument on the merits. You first have to build a coalition, You then have to convince a majority of the students that you are right. Then comes the difficult part of convincing the University. These things take time. That’s the way to institute change in a democracy where everybody’s opinion counts.

If instead I show up on Liberty University’s campus and generate a sit in with a small minority and demand that they abandon their opposition to “Contraception” or “Abortion” or whatever Liberty stands for or worse still demand that Jerry Falwell’s name be stricken from Liberty, because I think he was homophobic or bigoted or whatever, is that really being reasonable? If I hated the guy so much, why did I choose to attend Liberty in the first place?

Wilson’s name is tied pretty tightly with Princeton. Any intelligent prospective student should know this. He did both good and bad things in his life. If you think his racist views are all that matter, then you have a choice to make. You can decide not to attend Princeton, because Princeton has not seen it fit to remove his name from the University yet, or you can attend Princeton. If you choose to attend Princeton, you should be aware that you will again face two choices. Either you can shrug it off and move on, or you can engage the community and work towards converting them to your point of view. Will you be able to do that in four years, who knows?

What you cannot or should not do, is accept the admission offer, then show up on campus and force your opinion on others, even if you strongly believe that “your opinion” is “moral” or “correct”

I have a feeling that if this “Wilson name removal” resolution is put to a referendum, it would go down to defeat by a huge margin at Princeton. Then again, I may be surprised, since Princeton is considered pretty liberal.

The University should definitely allow the students to debate this issue. Maybe even organize a panel discussion around it, but that is where it should end, unless there is a ground swell in public opinion among its various stakeholders and just a handful of students does not speak for all the stakeholders.

Princeton is a private University so they can do what they feel like, but if the University allows itself to be bullied by a small group of students, without determining if there is a large consensus on this issue, they will lose all credibility in my eyes. I for one would definitely be wary of attending a University where the administration does not have the courage or spine to stand up to unreasonable student demands. A part of me doesn’t want to attend a University where a mere sit-in can cause administration officials to reverse course and abandon their principles to engage is vigorous and often uncomfortable conversations. And I am beginning to worry about Princeton, Yale and some other “Fine prestigious” Universities based on the news reports coming from these campuses now.

Just my two cents on this issue :slight_smile: