Should I Use the Current Student Protests For a Common App Essay Topic?

[alh]

mdorbust: If you haven’t already done so, I really wish you would take the time to read the entire Yale thread that NavalTradition posted. “Yale is imploding…”

[mdorbust]

@alh I’ll take a look at it after I heat up some popcorn :))

[ucbalumnus]

Re #633

Washington Times, not Washington Post, was the one being referred to.

[sorghum]

@mdorbust at post 614 you said you come from a country where people are fighting for basic civil liberties.

Could refer to USA …

[Zinhead]

Tigers response to mdorbust reminds me of the following article recently written by Jonathon Haidt.

http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/

A month before the Yale Halloween meltdown, I had a bizarre and illuminating experience at an elite private high school on the West Coast. I’ll call it Centerville High. I gave a version of a talk that you can see here, on Coddle U. vs. Strengthen U. (In an amazing coincidence, I first gave that talk at Yale a few weeks earlier). The entire student body — around 450 students, from grades 9-12 — were in the auditorium. There was plenty of laughter at all the right spots, and a lot of applause at the end, so I thought the talk was well received.

But then the discussion began, and it was the most unremittingly hostile questioning I’ve ever had. I don’t mind when people ask hard or critical questions, but I was surprised that I had misread the audience so thoroughly. My talk had little to do with gender, but the second question was “So you think rape is OK?” Like most of the questions, it was backed up by a sea of finger snaps — the sort you can hear in the infamous Yale video, where a student screams at Prof. Christakis to “be quiet” and tells him that he is “disgusting.” I had never heard the snapping before. When it happens in a large auditorium it is disconcerting. It makes you feel that you are facing an angry and unified mob — a feeling I have never had in 25 years of teaching and public speaking.

After the first dozen questions I noticed that not a single questioner was male. I began to search the sea of hands asking to be called on and I did find one boy, who asked a question that indicated that he too was critical of my talk. But other than him, the 200 or so boys in the audience sat silently.

After the Q&A, I got a half-standing ovation: almost all of the boys in the room stood up to cheer. And after the crowd broke up, a line of boys came up to me to thank me and shake my hand. Not a single girl came up to me afterward.

The comments sections in which several of the high school students present at the talk post was illuminating.

[mdorbust]

@ucbalumnus my mistake.

[mdorbust]

@sorghum How so?

[mdorbust]

@Zinhead That post was spot on, especially in regards to the finger snapping. It is seriously so terrifying.

[Cardinal_Fang]

@mdorbust, I was confused, because you wrote MRS. Click. That is not the title Ms. Click employs. I hadn’t thought that anyone we’ve been discussing in this thread uses the title “Mrs.”

[tiger1307]

@mdorbust at post 627 I asked you a few questions At post 630 you called me unaccepting and having an agenda However you didnt answer the questions and said the students didnt think critically and were not open minded. Since you are a self proclaimed critical thinker tell us what you think about the issues as I asked

[mdorbust]

@“Cardinal Fang” seriously? I think you knew who I was referring to. Jesus.

[mdorbust]

@tiger1307 Excuse me, but what exactly do I owe you? Please stop trying to turn this into a war. I do not wish you argue with anyone.

[Cardinal_Fang]

Actually, I didn’t know who you were talking about. That’s why I asked. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the Mizzou situation. And then the title “Mrs.” threw me off.

[tiger1307]

@mdorbust you accused the protesters of swearing. In post 644 you could be accused of taking the lords name in vain. I see a lot of similarity

[mdorbust]

@tiger1307 ??? wut

[mdorbust]

@tiger1307 I never accused the protests of swearing. I stated a FACT that the protesters, indeed, DID SWEAR. Please fact check next time you, in the words of our President, “pop off”. There is a literal video of the woman, dubbed “shrieking girl”, screaming expletives at the Master of her residential college.

[mdorbust]

@“Cardinal Fang” I see lol, my apologies. I thought you were being an grammar Nazi just to mess with me

[NYDad513]

OP should write the subject. I also wish he comes back later to show what the admission results look like.

[fallenchemist]

So the issues of the protests themselves can be debated back on the Princeton and Yale threads and any others that were created to discuss those points. For this question by @mdorbust, please confine your replies to if he should use it for his Common App or similar essays. Otherwise I will have to close this thread.

[mdorbust]

@NYDad513 Please offer some actual advice…why do you think I shouldn’t touch on this?