@Hanna: I’m afraid I’m not really seeing the distinction. FIRE fights for, mostly, free speech rights in education. For decades this has been a left cause, though recently it seems to have shifted. It’s also something the ACLU fights for. How is it left for the ACLU to do it but right for FIRE to do it? Plus, I’m still not sure why the politics matter here.
I think the 1L course is generally about the constitutional aspects of criminal law rather than the crimes themselves. That’s usually covered in the voluntary courses, making the decision not to include rape all the more sad.
@al2simon: Another fun example from law school: After the Eric Garner killing, law students at Columbia demanded that the school recognize their trauma (from, it seems, reading about the incident) and postpone their finals.
@Pizzagirl “So “afraid of an assault” when you’re already going to institutions that espouse the values you have. Sorry, that’s ridiculous to me. It’s like my worrying about an elite college not being supportive of women having the right to vote.
What are they REALLY afraid of?”
You obviously HAVE NO IDEA what k-12 school and college is like for LGBT students… please eyeball all you want BUT don’t make light of what LGBT students are really facing at schools today
"Despite historic gains in visibility and equality for lesbian and gay people, youth who do not identify as straight continue to face high levels of violence, bullying and sexual assault, according to a new study.
The findings provide an unprecedented look at the torment some lesbian, gay and bisexual youth experience compared to their straight peers. The study also marks the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has asked about sexual identity in its national Youth Risk Behavior Survey of high school students."
"…is the degree to which LGBT students report being victims of sexual harassment. According to the survey, LGBT and non-heterosexual students last school year experienced significantly higher rates of sexual assault and harassment, as well as violence from an intimate partner, than their heterosexual peers.
Overall, three in four LGBT students reported experiencing sexual harassment. Nine percent of LGBT-identifying respondents said they experienced sexual assault involving penetration (compared to 7 percent of women). Such assault—rape that can entail either force or incapacitation—is considered the most serious type of sexual harassment, according to the AAU report. When categorized by gender, those who didn’t provide an answer or identified as transgender, genderqueer or non-conforming, or questioning experienced such rape at the highest rates, too."
I understand from other recent posts that the policy is not new, so it’s a moot point, but if this had been a policy change, I think the university would be saying “These are our ideals, but we recognize that implementing them may cause suffering for some people, such as rape victims and veterans with PTSD, so we want to give them a chance to move to a different educational environment before the policy goes into place.”
I would hope that compassion is part of the university’s ideals, too.
“It is a fact this young woman suffered serious repercussions because this film was posted.”
Agreed. And the threats made against her are unconscionable. But what does that have to DO with anything?
It doesn’t make her position or her actions “righter,” better or more appropriate just because bad people then decided to threaten her afterwards. I’m sorry, the logic makes no sense.
Lame analogy warning, but if my parent gives me a blue car for my 16th birthday and I throw a temper tantrum because I wanted a red car instead, and someone films it and it goes viral and people then make death threats against me for being a spoiled brat, that doesn’t mean that I was “right” in having whined that I wanted a red car. In evaluating whether I was justified in complaining about the blue car, the presence of a video camera and/or the presence of bad people has zero bearing on that.
We are discussing whether she was right for having behaved the way she did in the quad. So likewise, the camera presence and the presence of subsequent bad people are irrelevant.
There was a student in a classroom who repeatedly talked about sexual assault issues during class. The class was not about sexual assault issues. The student was making other students very uncomfortable. Plus…education costs a lot of money and the student was preventing others from learning the subject matter in the class.
The student who repeatedly talked about sexual assault issues should be protected by free speech?
While racially exclusive “safe spaces” are dubious and probably not within the original more narrow intent of “safe spaces”, it is possible that many white students may be unconsciously seeking them without announcing that, if one believes the statement by @Hanna that most white students [url=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18416978#Comment_18416978]“do not consider universities where they will not be in the majority”/url.
PG: The reason some are discussing whether “she was right for behaving as she did in the quad” is because the video is available.
That video should never have been available. Some posters are defending the fact the video is available.
My narrative:
The fact the video is available makes some of us believe, already, Christakis failed in his responsibility as Master of the college. This is relevant because, essentially, that is what she is yelling at him: that he has failed in his responsibility as Master. She is addressing him as the person in charge of her college, her home, where she should feel comfortable (or bug word - safe) He is the college" parent". She is not addressing him as a professor in the class room.
Maybe some of you have kids that never screamed at you. I don’t.
She is telling him about her hurt, and she is exploited. She is made the poster child for rude, entitled brats. Some of us don’t think this was an accident. If it was deliberate, I think we need to be focusing on something much different than her behavior.
The Chicago statement does not appear to be an actual policy change with respect to “trigger warnings” (since they were neither required nor prohibited before and after the statement). At most, it can be seen as a statement that there is no intent to change existing policy. Of course, it did a good job at generating political chatter, whether or not that was the intent.
So if the law students end up being judges, prosecutors, or defenders on a rape case, how will they handle it? Will more odd results (e.g. Brock Turner) result?
“I think the 1L course is generally about the constitutional aspects of criminal law rather than the crimes themselves. That’s usually covered in the voluntary courses, making the decision not to include rape all the more sad.”
The opposite was true at the law school I attended and where I was an administrator, though of course there is overlap. As 1Ls, we learned the definitions of crimes, the concept of proving elements, theories of punishment, etc. 2L criminal procedure was far more focused on 4th and 6th amendment rules, etc.
“How is it left for the ACLU to do it but right for FIRE to do it?”
The fact that FIRE is a pet cause of the Koch brothers tells you a lot. There are right and left perspectives on which threats to free speech merit concern. For example, FIRE rates private schools on their free speech practices…but not religiously affiliated private schools. Their practices are just exempt from FIRE’s examination or critique. It happens that these are schools where liberal speech is a lot more likely to get shut down. The ACLU wouldn’t view one private school differently from another because it happened to be religious.
You are right that left-right divides in this area are not so simple, and are not directly relevant to the core of this thread. But when FIRE’s actions come up, it’s relevant to look at the context of who they are and what they do.
What I don’t understand is -If this isn’t a change in policy for U Chicago and this has been what the school is known for all along, why risk further marginalizing already marginalized groups on campus?
@dstark: Do you have any details about the case you cite? Even a school would help as it’s hard to google “guy talked about sexual assault in class.” But just going off what you posted, what does that have to do with either “safe spaces” or trigger warnings?
@ucbalumnus: A substantial portion of the students crying out for “safe spaces” are white. I don’t think they deserve them any more than the black students. From what I’ve seen, demands for “safe spaces” are mostly about avoiding contrary ideas, rather than ethnicity (though there are definitely racially segregated “safe spaces”).
@Hanna: Looks like it really was the 1L course. That’s absurd.
FIRE rates schools on their honesty about speech restrictions. Schools that are upfront about restricting speech, so long as those schools are private, FIRE exempts. So does the ACLU, of course, because private institutions may restrict speech far more broadly than public. That’s why the ACLU isn’t stepping in to sue in the cases you cite. FIRE doesn’t hide the ball on this, it’s explained upfront on their [url=<a href=“https://www.thefire.org/spotlight/using-the-spotlight-database/%5Dwebsite%5B/url”>https://www.thefire.org/spotlight/using-the-spotlight-database/]website[/url].
In short, he was banned because Twitter found he had went beyond “free speech” and actually played a critical part in inciting a wave of vicious racist harassment against Leslie Jones on twitter which violated their TOS.
In that context, his ban is more akin to someone being ejected from a private club or business for viciously harassing another member/customer and/or inciting other like-minded members to do the same…which they are free to on the basis of “freedom of association” and maintaining civility for the smooth running of the club/business.
@dstark: I asked “what does that have to do with either “safe spaces” or trigger warnings?” I’m still curious. That’s what this topic is about, not about free speech in general.
@dstark: That’s still not an answer. We’ve talked about free speech in the context of “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. I’m happy to keep doing that. I’ll address your classroom example, which involved neither, if you can tell me why it’s relevant.
