@cobrat: Yes, some of the shrinkwrap cases found those contracts enforceable. Others did not. That’s usually why these days software requires you to click “agree” (clickwrap licenses–clicking agree was a major component in several of the shrinkwrap cases as it was an objective manifestation of consent to be bound. Others involved writing on the cover of the CDs stating that licenses were enclosed, which put the purchaser on notice).
That’s not really applicable to the Yale situation though, because no one provided Lukianoff a license at all. The theory is that he should have gone and looked it up before visiting, I guess. I took a look at the Yale Visitor’s Center website and couldn’t find any mention of rules or regulations. Maybe he was supposed to be bound even though he didn’t look and no one else gave it to him?
IMO, all the discussion over whether the quad was public or not is irrelevant posturing. If I whip out my video camera and catch you shoplifting, you still did wrong. The fact that I shouldn’t have been filming does not excuse the moral wrongness of your behavior. But let’s all find excuses for the girl in the quad, who was clearly not engaging in anything remotely resembling constructive dialogue or openness to adjusting her point of view.
@Pizzagirl: I think the argument the other side is making is that people behave differently in public and private spaces and deserve to be judged accordingly. Even if we think the student behaved badly (which I do), maybe our response would be different if she was badly behaved in private. I agree with you that it isn’t relevant so much to the question of whether the student’s ideas had merit.
@Demosthenes49, I think the only way the Yale policy could even be arguably enforceable against Lukianoff is if he was filming for a commercial purpose. I think it is possible to argue that Yale has the right to bar filming of its campus either because of the potential disruption, or because they could be entitled to compensation for the use of their space and images of their architecture and grounds.
I think that the only way the 1st amendment is implicated here is in the context of a free press, not free speech. That said, I think Lukianoff could successfully defend a suit about his filming by saying he was filming and released the video for a journalistic rather than commercial interest.
There are a jillion reasons why colleges seek to enforce provisions of their rules against visitors to a campus, none of which have been raised by anyone associated with Yale or are even arguably implicated here.
I assume the argument that Lukanioff is somehow in the wrong goes something like - the students had an expectation of privacy because the residential college itself, not just the dorms, was a private living space not a public square. This expectation was furthered by the Yale policy prohibiting filming. I believe the argument proceeds to impute knowledge of this expectation to Lukanioff through the professor (who has been described here as a friend). I think there are those here who feel Lukanioff, or at least the professor, took advantage of the student’s assumed expectation of privacy and goaded her in to ill advised actions. As I have said numerous times, I don’t agree with that argument at all, but I believe that is the reasoning.
@Demosthenes49 by the way is right about the shrink wrap cases. I actually was involved in some of them for a client some years back.
Yes. For the life of me, I don’t know why it’s so difficult to say “Yeah, you’re right. She shouldn’t have acted that way”, or “She was the only one who reacted that poorly. Everyone else was debating things civilly. Let’s talk about the substance of the matter”. In my opinion, not being willing to do this just makes someone look impervious to facts or reason.
To me, it just seems like a clearly unserious attempt to distract from the real issues. What I can’t decide is who are really acting more foolishly - those making the attempt or those engaging seriously with it. (As you can tell from my posts, my only responses to this attempt have been sarcasm or parody).
@dstark, weren’t you arguing just a few pages ago that the entire residential college was a home? What did you mean by that if not that the kids had a right to assume some privacy. And again I will refer to the video and point out to you that shrieking girl herself says the professor’s job is to make her feel safe. What do you think that means other than that she at least expected Sillman College to be a safe space?
@Pizzagirl, you are right, but it is what they have. When you have the law, pound the law. When you have the facts, pound the facts. When you have neither, pound the table
FWIW, I was on Columbia campus the past 4 days and there were thousands of people milling around and at least a few hundred were taking pictures and filming whatever they wanted. I had not seen a single security person or campus police (there were many of those) who stopped anyone.
@Ohiodad51: That’s a good point about the commercial aspects–I hadn’t considered that. I do think you’re right that it’s not implicated here.
I also agree that the imputation to Lukianoff is unpersuasive (not least because if anyone actually looked at the [url=<a href=“http://yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/URegs_14-15.pdf%5Dhandbook%5B/url”>http://yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/URegs_14-15.pdf]handbook[/url] they’d see it explicitly and on the cover states that it applies to students) because who on earth invites someone only after giving them a lecture on the rules?
My point was that visitors to campuses like Columbia are bound by University rules and regulations from the moment they step on the campus grounds and the private U reserves the right to kick out or even temporarily/permanently ban anyone…including visitors it found in violation of university rules/policies.
Stepping on the campus is taken by the U as implicit agreement to be bound by the rules even if a visitor didn’t sign or affirm agreement with such rules.
And some some campuses are more strict about restricting filming of even public parts of their campuses than others. For instance, some Harvard alums and I recalled a few instances of some filmmakers being chased off the Harvard campus because their policies required filmmakers to obtain permission and sign some contractual agreements before filming on the Harvard campus.
It’s a reason why many filmmakers use other universities as stand-ins for Harvard’s campus.
Ok, let’s be clear. The main reason a famous university bans filming its campus is because they don’t want people profiting off of their brand. In this particular case, Yale likely would be unsuccessful in prohibiting the dissemination of the video because Lukanioff could argue persuasively that the film served a journalistic purpose, and the first amendment guarantee of a free press (not the prohibition on restricting speech) meant a court could not compel him to compensate Yale before he used the images. That is the only possible way Yale or anyone else could even remotely stop the dissemination of this video.
In my opinion, no one could have stopped the filming in the first instance, despite what it says in the handbook, because others were doing the exact same thing, and there is no evidence that the filming was disruptive. Additionally, as I and others have mentioned, cell phone cameras are all over the place now. Unless Yale wants to ban all such video taking ( a practical impossibility) it is unlikely they can just ban some absent some evidence of disruption.
There’s no prohibition of a fellow student using a video camera in the quad. And guess what? It would have shown exactly the same thing. The prof trying to have a calm reasonable discussion and the girl making it clear that unlike what was asserted above about mutual understanding and refining her thinking, her safe space was violated by the mere presence of a person who thought differently from her on the role of the u in regulating Halloween costumes. Not even an actual offensive-costumed person in front of her! Just the IDEA of a person who felt differently.
God forbid she had to share Yale’s campus with a person who felt differently on abortion, or gay marriage, or affirmative action, or who should be the next POTUS, or Israel v Palestine, or any number of issues.
It’s as stereotypically special snowflake as it gets.
@MOMANDBOYSTWO You’re welcome. I found the perspective of the two students on the administration and the state of free speech at the university, quite interesting. I suspect similar conversations are happening on campus now
@Ohiodad51@dstark
Having returned from dropping my kid off atYale and having been brought into a conversation, through orientations and RC mixers, I can assure you RC are intended to be “home away from homes” and the Head of school a proxy parent of sorts. It is a very unique situation and unless you’ve really been there it may be difficult to understand. The fact that the head of school couldn’t remember the student’ name (shrieking girls as some have named her) seems odd to me. My son’s head of school greeted him by name at first glance on move in day.
Additionally the inner quads are not open to the public. You need a key card to enter them. They are considered the private home of the students.
Considering all of this I have come to change my mind on the culpability of the head of Silliman and his wife…along with their friend from FIRE who filmed the scene.
Certainly as a parent I was upset to see the way in which the student addressed the head of school but I suspect there may have been a history there we are not privy to…
I would expect some level of civility in any exchanges…BUT the head of school and his FIRE friend seem to have betrayed a trust that went beyond the initial email debacle.
It’s very unfortunate as all the players in this episode seem to have lost out…student leaving school, professors leaving.
What is apparent to me is that the sense of community and discourse is alive and well despite the happenings of the past academic year.
And as usual…the media makes more of these episodes than really exists.
