Yale is Imploding over a Halloween Email

Parents Forum
281

@exacademic - Yes, I am aware of what the professors’s position is and setting aside whether I agree with him or not, does he not have the right to express those beliefs?

Are you saying that it is relevant that he had an opposing point of view and thus should have expected the abuse? Or that the students were following his advice and it turned into a battle royale? He wasn’t the one shouting or cursing @exacademic. We all have to be accountable for our own behavior. I perceive that you are attempting to place the blame for the student’s abusive manner on the professor.

I went back and looked at the video again - he didn’t keep cutting her off. What led to her abusive tirade was his stating in a very reasoned tone “I do not agree with you.” She then went ballistic. And you think he should have “predicted” that outcome simply because he voiced his disagreement?

282

“What I don’t get is why you believe your yoga classes and your lunches with the girls are somehow placed at risk because kids at Yale have demanded that the school’s administration do more to address the casual racism they experience on campus.”

What a non-sequitur. I never said anything I had was “placed at risk.”

I would have thought a student bright enough for Yale would be able to say - hey, Bob. You know that costume you wore to the party? I know that you liked it and got a lot of laughs but I see it a different way and let me tell you about it and how from my perspective it wasn’t innocuous. It’s called creating dialogue, really engaging. Not the knee jerk temper tantrumming.

283

The best revenge is success. Lead a successful life. Then you can afford (emotionally) to scoff at the ignoramuses who wear blackface or other offensive costumes.

284

Privilege is much like owning a big tank of a car. So, while it may have all the creature comforts you enjoy, and provide you with a leisurely ride, it assumes much more responsibility. You need to be more aware of how you drive it in tight spaces as it commands and needs more room. Further, it may have “black spots”, that fail to provide an accurate view of all that is behind or coming up on you. Finally, like a big car, when it hits something, it can create much damage to the recipient, without much damage to itself.

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283 Curious you use the phrase "black spots" to describe what we used to call "Blind spots" - but perhaps the latter phrase is offensive to visually challenged drivers.

286

It’s almost as if these kids are looking for something to be offended by. Sometimes thinking you are some ‘social justice warrior’ is a little too much. The problem with these ridiculous students is that they isolate themselves as the “oppressed black students” and use it as an excuse for practically everything. You’re at Yale, not Arizona State. Nit-picking anything that doesn’t seem ‘politically correct’ has rarely done anything for these social warriors. I may consider myself a liberal, but often times embarrassingly so, is a girl in a Cherokee Indian costume really taking you out of your ‘safe space’ (rolls eyes)? Watch as the privileged white man oppresses the unfortunate black Yale student (lol). It’s about time people stop feeling pity for themselves and come together as a community instead of isolating &dividing themselves over ridiculous non-issues.
Narcissism at its finest everyone, can i get some finger snaps for that!?

287

I honestly feel bad for Christakis in this video. The girl is completely off her rocker…

288

@fractalmstr She clearly thinks that it’s OK to attack anyone who doesn’t agree with her “everything offends me” state of mind. She feeds off the idea that she is in someway acting as some social justice warrior. News, nobody is oppressing you or offending you, you are a privileged student at Yale not a struggling single mother on the 8 mile.

What i rlly think

289

There’s one critical difference you’re missing between the non-progressives and the progressives. The former historically and still have far greater influence over the mainstream by virtue of their defending the status quo.

One reason why progressive groups do protest such things is precisely because the status quo in most parts of mainstream US society…including the elite universities is to ignore concerns about marginalized groups and minimize their experiences and accounts. Some of that is happening on this very thread.

Another thing to keep in mind is that up until recently and even to this very day, marginalized groups and those who identify/are perceived as progressives have been targeted much more heavily for violent attacks like the Tulsa riots of 1921, lynchings practiced in many parts of the south and midwest, Civil Rights workers being murdered by the KKK, disparate arrest/treatment* at hands of law enforcement, etc. Did I mention many of those had the assistance of local/regional officials including local law enforcement as they themselves fully supported those acts of violence against the targeted groups?

The advice of the house master’s spouse to “turn away or confront the wearer of the offending costume” epitomizes this as it absolves Yale of its institutional responsibility to shape the campus culture to set a tone welcoming to all students including marginalized groups. In so doing, he’s effectively encouraging Yale to stay out of the way and allow offended students to suffer in silence or to create a hostile environment where both the possible offending costume wearers and offended students have hostile exchanges.

This would create an environment akin to the middle school environment I and several other students were subjected to in a few classes because the teachers concerned didn’t feel it was their place to intervene and felt the students should “work it out among themselves”. Guess what?

When teachers/admins/institutions ditch their responsibilities to set the tone to ensure bullies and those inclined to be ■■■■■■■■ towards groups they regard as “easy targets” are discouraged in acting on their inclinations at the risk of actual genuine social or when applicable…institutional sanctions, you end up either with a Lord of the Flies situation where the bullies/■■■■■■■■ dominate and set the institutional tone or you end up with a class/institutional environment where the students end up fighting each other to “settle the issue”.

In the case of those middle school classes with the neglectful teachers, I and other bullied classmates ended up feeling we had to band together and “settle the issue” in a series of violent after-school fights involving fists and roundhouse kicks to the heads and other vulnerable parts of the bullies we were fighting. Don’t know about you…but if the end result of a teacher/admin/institutional action is either the Lord of the Flies or an all-out knockdown brawl…the supposed educational institution and its leaders have IMO failed and done a serious disservice to their educational mission and the student community at large.

  • Drug arrests. One good illustration of this was how it was interesting my LAC which was 74% White when I attended was never targeted by local, regional, or federal drug raids despite the fact it was well-known being heavily populated with marijuana and psychedelic users who were quite open about it. Couldn't be because most of the student body happened to be White and upper/upper-middle class. Nope..couldn't be.

A few colleagues living near a couple of private Boston area colleges known for being populated with a heavy drinking/partying student body/fraternities wondered the same thing when it seemed nothing ever came of several calls to the police in the respective campus towns over loud alcohol-laden parties and acts of vandalism of their property and those of their neighbors which even the police definitively traced to students/fraternities on those campuses. Similarly, both campuses…and moreso frats also tend to be majority White, skew heavily upper/upper-middle class, and have many alums in high places in the private and public sector…including several local, state, and Federal politicians. And those alums tend to be quite loyal and enthusiastic supporters of their respective alma maters…provided the status quo they remembered from their student days are maintained.

290

I view Christakis as the victim of a racist attack.

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Tolerance goes both ways, whereby dissent of opinion is not making one out to be a villain and shutting out their voice and demanding they lose their job. Freedom of speech and freedom of ideas is what makes our country unique and special. When people begin to stop dialogue and the wheels roll in motion that the expression of ideas and thoughts are behind closed doors out of fear of reprisal we are no longer free. Freedom of speech that is only one directional is called censorship. True freedom does not exist without bidirectional free speech.

292

@applicantcor Completely agree. I’m very glad the SJW drama didn’t exist at my college. I honestly look at the kids in the video I posted above as if they were from another planet… I simply can’t relate to them. Their intense passion for something most people would consider immaterial is very strange to me. Much of it comes across as narcissism, and lack of common sense.

293

This is a bit contradictory. Couldn’t one say that by arguing one not make a villain or demanding they lose their job that one is attempting to suppress the free speech rights of the individuals who feel making someone out to be a villain or demanding they lose their job is justified…whether rightly or wrongly?

Just wondering as this sounds like the"free speech" defined by some politically right-leaning folks as essentially freedom to say whether one wants without criticism or possible negative consequences* not involving prosecution by the government.

  • I.e. Calling one's supervisor/boss an idiot to his/her face, publicly stating the product of a rival to one's employer is superior, using one's position as a public official bound by constitutional mandates to avoid favoring one religion over another to impose one's personal religious beliefs** on one's constituents or to proselytize during work hours***, etc

** Kim Davis

*** A friend who worked in a Post Office had a fundamentalist Christian colleague who’d spent so much time proselytizing during work hours that not only was said colleague unproductive, but also prompted several complaints from customers who felt it was wrong and a violation of the constitution for him to use his position as a government employee to try “spreading the gospel” to non-fundamentalist Christian customers while on the taxpayer’s dime. Said colleague ended up being fired and his termination upheld during a subsequent wrongful termination suit when the judge ruled the colleague had clearly violated the conditions of his employment as a postal employee.

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@Pizzagirl

So, I’m confused. Would you be in favor of the university hanging up posters advising students to do precisely what you just suggested? Or, do you think - as the Christakises apparently do - that the university has no teaching role here at at all?

295

I’d like to see them take a campus-wide poll and see if they can find a single costume that doesn’t offend someone.

296

Larry Summers, then president of Harvard, said something along the lines that the underrepresentation of women on the science faculty might be due to innate differences between the sexes. While I believe in freedom of speech, I don’t think someone who believes the difference between males and females in science achievement is innate should be the president of a co-ed university and that his views should offer justification for its failure to hire more female scientists. If the president of a university believes, in essence, that women just aren’t capable of achieving as much in science as men, I think that’s going to affect his job performance. I think publicly expressing that opinion might make it hard for the science departments to attract female faculty. I’m not going to try to change Summers’ views, but I don’t think someone with those views should be president of Harvard College. If he nevertheless becomes president, I think he should keep his mouth shut about those views until such time as he is no longer Harvard president.

I think people are also entitled to think that genetics and culture play a primary role in obesity and that limiting food intake only gives short term results. However, if I were a shareholder of Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, and the prez said something like that, I’d want him/her fired.

The email at issue herewas an email directed to residents of Silliman College…and only Silliman college…by the associate master. (Translation: the master’s spouse or partner.) If she had sent out exactly the same message in an op-ed or a letter to the Yale Daily News, I’d have more sympathy with her viewpoint. But that’s not what she did. She expressed SYMPATHY to students within that particular residential college who essentially expressed the viewpoint that nobody should be telling them to be sensitive to the feelings of other students when they chose their costumes. Reading the emails from your master/associate master is usually not an optional activity. It really is NOT within the job description to send this kind of email as associate master. Being the spouse of a master isn’t a bully pulpit to broadcast your views.

I think the associate master is entitled to her views. But, I agree with the student, that if that is her viewpoint and that of her H–which she represented them to be–then it IS problematic as to whether they should be masters. I’m not saying they should be fired as faculty…far from it…I just do think though that it was inappropriate for a master’s spouse to do something that is going to limit her and her H’s effectiveness as a master.

I do NOT condone the young woman’s behavior. It was rude. However, the point she was trying to make–that it’s a master’s job to make everyone in the residential college feel welcome–shouldn’t be dismissed so readily.

297

I notice the video posted in #286 is an edited version of the video. In the longer version she threw down her back pack and got inches from his face and threw out several more F bombs.

Interesting that comments were turned off.

She’s really angry. I’m not really sure why. If it’s a composite of years of grievances maybe she needs to be evaluated before she gets herself hurt.

298

Turns out, this young woman is a senior—so perhaps 21 or 22 years old. She lives in the tony suburb of Fairfield, Connecticut, in a 3,300 square foot house worth $760,000. As much as I do not like the opinions of The Daily Caller, I will cite their investigative reporting that turned up these details.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/09/meet-the-privileged-yale-student-who-shrieked-at-her-professor/

Oh, and even though she shouted at Christakis, “Who the f*** hired you,” this young woman appears to have been on the search committee.

299

^^^Priceless.

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cobrat, the elite schools have been cutting edge as far as minority accessibility, financial aid, and miscellaneous support and have been willing to address even minor concerns. As an example, Dartmouth pays to import someone who is trained in ethnic hair to a local salon in Hanover, since the small town did not have such a specialist.