@HarvestMoon1 - Here you go. Safe space defined.
Have to disagree with you on this one.
In Boston stopping in cemeteries are a regular part of the Freedom Trail tours, and in New Orleans they are considered an essential part of knowing the city. And I have been to cemeteries in other countries as well as part of sight seeing, so it is not limited to the USA. It is a way to have history make a strong impression. I think most people have no problem with cemetery tours unless they are done with disrespect in mind.
As a Yale alum and parent, this whole episode makes me sad. It mainly reinforces something I often say, which is that everybody likes free speech until somebody else says something they really don’t like, and then free speech doesn’t look so good any more.
In my mind, the response to the Christakis letter should have been a letter or editorial saying, “No, it’s actually a good thing to remind people about civility, and the value of avoiding offending other people. That’s not the same as banning speech.” The huge freak-out is not (in my mind) justified by this specific thing. I suppose it could be justified by a whole series of events–but I have to say that my observation is that Yale is constantly trying to be more diverse, more sensitive, more inclusive, etc. It’s made a lot of progress in this area since I was there. Obviously, it’s not perfect, and more can be done, but I don’t get the current level of rage among some students.
Also, again as a civil libertarian, I’m concerned about all the rage against the SAE fraternity, when the allegation against them (that somebody said they were only admitting white girls to a party) is far from proven to be true. I’m no defender of fraternities in general, and I wish they hadn’t grown in influence at Yale, but there has to be some due process, even for frat bros.
Maybe something else I don’t understand about Yale. The Halloween cemetery is done as historical and cultural investigation or because it is spooky and you might get to see a ghost?
I understand the history of race relations in this country makes people of color sensitive to these issues, as everyone should be.
Nonetheless, the behavior of the students shouting and cursing at Prof. Christakis is shameful in my opinion, and I believe Yale should address their behavior. I find those YouTube videos very difficult to watch.
Anyone who hasn’t seen them should watch and judge for themselves.
@fallenchemist I looked up that particular tour and it appears to be focused as you described. Halloween seems like a strange day to host it, but it is led by the docents.
Real issue: University of Missouri issues become so large the President resigns. Fake issue of the entitled: unable to see humor in anything (unless, I expect, it’s something you poke fun at).
(BTW, I’m a Yalie.)
Part of life is humor. Part of life is “sick humor” or what I suppose we can no longer call “black comedy” - because a group of people are trying to appropriate all references to the color black as maybe potentially referring to them. The over-sensitization continues.
If you know humor history and particularly Ivy League humor history, which is bound more closely to British humor, much of it is intentionally bad taste. That this could create a non-safe space is idiotic. Except of course in the minds of the over-sensitive.
When I was in medical school at Harvard in the early 1990’s, there was an incident at a Halloween party in which two students dressed up in black face as Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, shortly after the Thomas confirmation hearings had taken place. An African American student was incensed, and a physical alteration resulted in assault to one of the participants, suspension, and prolonged effort to raise consciousness about racial and cultural sensitivity. At least the Yale situation hasn’t escalated to that degree (yet).
This is a sensitive issue, and not one isolated to Yale.
Good thing they didn’t also dress up as Long D*ng Silver…
Great article about this in the Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/:
BoolaHI, your response of implying some of us are ignorant people incapable of understanding history and therefore we need to “stop” expressing our opinions is insulting. It also shuts down dialogue, which ideally is a goal of this forum. I think it’s fair question to ask you, with your allegedly superior knowledge and comprehension, to explain how your D’s friend from Maine has been negatively impacted by the actions of government agents in the late 1800’s in North and South Dakota. No one is saying there are no effects, but we wonder how significant they are.
More freedom of speech at Yale. I hope some poster here acknowledge that spitting is a form of assault.
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/09/students-protest-buckley-talk/
An Excerpt.
Around 5:45 p.m., as attendees began to leave the conference, students outside chanted the phrase “Genocide is not a joke” and held up written signs of the same words. Taking Howard’s reminder into account, protesters formed a clear path through which attendants could leave. A large group of students eventually gathered outside of the building on High Street. According to Buckley fellows present during the conference, several attendees were spat on as they left. One Buckley fellow said he was spat on and called a racist. Another, who is a minority himself, said he has been labeled a “traitor” by several fellow minority students. Both asked to remain anonymous because they were afraid of attracting backlash.
Mitchell Rose Bear Don’t Walk ’16, a Native American student and one of the leaders of the protest, said she has spoken to the fellow who said he was spat on. She emphasized that spitting is “disgraceful” and not the message the protestors were looking to convey, but she confirmed that it did happen.
“The spitting happened,” she told the News Sunday night. “Our movement is founded in the idea that all people’s voices should be heard. We cannot maintain the integrity of this message whilst questioning or silencing other accounts.”
While I think that article in the Atlantic is pretty good, I think the author there makes a mistake that many people with various points of view have made in this situation: thinking that the extreme behavior of specific people is representative of some much broader group, or of some particular ideology. Sometimes there is no iceberg.
Here is a video of the protester at the FIRE meeting the above article references.
https://twitter.com/JamesPanero/status/662764546080264192
and the protesters after the meeting.
This is also from the Atlantic article"
“According to the Washington Post, “several students in Silliman said they cannot bear to live in the college anymore.” These are young people who live in safe, heated buildings with two Steinway grand pianos, an indoor basketball court, a courtyard with hammocks and picnic tables, a computer lab, a dance studio, a gym, a movie theater, a film editing lab, billiard tables, an art gallery, and four music practice rooms. But they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?”
@Hunt - You can apply your comment to the former president of the University of Missouri system. It is hard to see how the actions of a few drunk racists can be applied to the entire university system, but that is what the protesters and football team did in that case.
Entitled little babies.
“Can upper middle class black people dress up as gangsters if they want to?”
Uhhh, Italian? That’s the group the media impresses upon me to have engaged in, and now celebrate, the gangster life.
The Missouri situation has a much wider reach and has connections to the racial situation in that state after Ferguson. The Yale issues are that people conflate Halloween costumes with feeling unsafe.
Jews these days don’t feel safe on many American campuses and not because of stupid Halloween costumes but because of what’s said to their faces. There are websites which collect stories of harassment directed at Jews on campus and none of them involve bad taste in costumes. I’m not even talking about students calling for more stabbings in Israel, but about direct hate.
I see this as an attempt, not a fully conscious one, to shape reality so it fits the most heightened sensitivities. Reality doesn’t bend like that. There are many degrees of callousness and hate and on that scale Halloween costumes are pretty darned low.
Someone mentioned a beef over a Clarence Thomas / Anita Hill costume. That kind of beef, if it doesn’t get violent, is fine: you don’t like a costume, say so. The reason is this: people get into beefs all the time because many, if not most people aren’t all that mature and often drink is involved and things get blown out of proportion. So what? And bluntly if you choose to wear a Halloween costume themed to be jokingly offensive, you should expect that some people may not be mature enough to laugh and that some people may have a few drinks and use your costume as a pretext to fight. That’s the way life works when you’re not trying to bend reality to fit your heightened sensitivities.
You make a good point. It is Jews who are most likely to be the victims of hate crimes and there have been incidents of violence and harassment (more than a few) on campuses. Where are the protests against that?