This discussion-oriented class type must be a common model for small liberal arts colleges.
In my Freshman Humanities course, there was drama, including screaming, shouting, weeping, storming out and more. Most of it came from the middle class girls and boys who were now finally beginning to get an education.
This is an interesting discussion to me, because it seems like one in which folks tend to project their own preconceptions onto a relatively skeletal fact pattern. Was this kid excluded for his unacceptable views, or for his disruptive behavior? There were facts in the original article that could support either interpretation. As more facts came out, it seems more likely that his overall behavior was disruptive, making it appropriate to exclude him after a number of warnings. If so, I guess I’d say the professor made a strategic error in referring so much to the content of the student’s speech and how uncomfortable it made others. If he had said the student was rude and disruptive, and refused to stay on relevant topics, etc., there would be much less controversy.
At my kids’ college, people refer to the “section a-hole,” the person who monopolizes the discussion, attacks others, and is generally annoying. Occasionally they are bad enough that the prof tosses them out.
Yep, it’s unfortunate that it developed this way. A Professor has the right (indeed, the obligation) to keep order in the lecture hall and to even direct the discussion in the manner he sees fit.
There was way too much attention paid to this person’s unpopular views from the very beginning for me to believe it was about disruption beyond the disruption created by the students who assumed they held some sort of moral or political privilege.
I also have to point out that if you can’t manage your own outrage, it is far more likely that someone will use it against you in order to get whatever is on their agenda.
I agree, Hunt. The kid should not be thrown out of his discussion group because he holds minority views on rape culture. But it sounds like he not only holds minority views, but was perseverating on them and monopolizing discussion when it was time-- in a Classics class, not a Sociology class or a Gender Studies class-- to move on to other subjects.
If you look at True’s change.org petition, you can see the same inability to shut up. True wants to make the case that he was thrown out of the seminar because his views were not PC. But he can’t resist, yet again, the chance to try to make his case against rape culture. He gives paragraphs and paragraphs with statistics and links about rape culture. He can’t shut up, even though the facts about rape culture are irrelevant to his case: he should not be thrown out of seminar for being wrong, but he should not be restored to seminar for being right. He is wasting the time of people reading his petition by dragging in irrelevancies, just as (allegedly) he was wasting the time of people in his seminar by being unable to drop the subject of rape culture.
I’m sympathetic to people who are unable to drop a subject after being told the subject is closed. But at some point, the professor needs to keep order in the discussion section. Maybe there was a better way to handle this: maybe the professor, or another person, needed to be more specific with True about what was and was not permitted in his discussion section, and maybe that would have worked. But at the end of the day, the professor needs to keep order and guide the discussion.
Well stated. It is an academic institution, so while all views are valued, its not group therapy, the order of the greater class is more paramount. I am not a therapist, but it appears the young man has a bit of old fashioned self-aggrandizement affecting him.
And this shows the pitfalls of reading only the first article that comes up. In general, if one’s interested, go look for more and weigh it- not just the retreads, but the evolving info. Just saying.
Good point Looking Forward.
Those who start threads linking to an article or blog, generally chose one that is biased, myself included.
I always do my own research before I decide if it is something I want to learn more about.
There’s been an update in the Willy Week.
http://www.wweek.com/portland/mobile/blogs/blogView/id:33094
Looks like the professor and the students are right.
Well there you go - it wasn’t about free speech after all, it was about someone unable to control himself. There goes his credibility as an “oppressed student”. I always suspected it was a personality problem b/c Reed is not a place where different views are discouraged - as a matter of fact, it may be the biggest repository of unconventional thinking in the US…
This poor kid sounds like he has mental illness. Normal, healthy people don’t walk up and fondle young women they don’t know.
The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Nevertheless, I agree with @CardinalFang.
It seemed to me earlier that it was probably a combination of his mental illness (Refusing to go to other classes? Insisting on the N word in an interview?) and the unpopularity of his views. It is unfortunate, IMHO, that his professor did not make it clear in the email to him that it was his behavior, not his views, that was the problem. (Not, of course, that it was his professor’s fault that he became/was unbalanced, but it certainly didn’t help. Which really made me wonder whether the content of his speech really was the problem for this prof.) In any case, I hope he is able to get help and recover. He is clearly a bright, well-intentioned young man.
And here I thought this was established within about a day of this all coming out.
I must’ve missed something- how do you know the latter?
ETA: I do believe that he is mentally unwell and needs help. But I am not sure where the evidence is for him being well-intentioned.
Well, I am basing it on his statements of concern and empathy for female family members who have been assaulted.
Maybe I an erring on the side of assuming good intentions. Certainly, fondling a young stranger doesn’t fall into this category.
He’s bright or he wouldn’t be at Reed, and he certainly seems to have mental illness. Even before this latest episode, he seemed unbalanced. I hope his family can persuade him to get the help he seems to need. Whether he’s well intentioned or not, nobody deserves mental illness. I wish him the best.
He may be mentally ill but I can’t cut him much slack until I know more. Otherwise, to me he simply seems to be a young SOB in the making.
Creeps do.
Plenty of those out there.
True pleads not guilty:
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/04/reed_college_student_jeremiah.html
This does not sound like just a jerk. Creepy guys who are not mentally ill don’t go up and fondle a girl in plain sight of other people, leave while talking to themselves, then return and paw some girl’s breast in plain sight of other people. It’s not that they don’t want to, but because if they do, they will be arrested, as True was.