That may or may not be true. Someone mentioned the same happened last year at the chapter. Details aside my point was that these “adults” do stupid things at times and it doesn’t hurt to remind them to be sensitive. No point making it to be freedom of speech issue. Chanting no means yes is also freedom of speech, isn’t it?
Having a hard time parsing this.
- Chanting “no” means “yes” is also freedom of speech …
- “Chanting no means yes” is also freedom of speech …
- Chanting “no means yes” is also freedom of speech …
- “Chanting no” means “yes” is also freedom of speech …
and so on.
Probably doesn’t matter, but I’ve no idea of the intended meaning.
Does anyone actually KNOW the racial identities of the students who complained to EC? Couldn’t there easily be minority students who felt infantilized?
And to say that her email “lambasted” the one from the dean is a gross exaggeration.
I think there has been a lot of misinterpretation of the exchange between JL and NC. Clearly, he and she disagreed about the role of the master. She screamed “Who hired you” not because she didn’t know, or is simply an idiot, as some of the commenters on those hate sites have suggested, but because she was reminding him that as a member of the committee SHE hired him. So in her opinion, her view of the job should prevail.
Maybe she didn’t want him and was outvoted. Maybe she voted for him, and he didn’t turn out the way she hoped. I’ve certainly been on a search committee where the latter was the result.
Their exchange was, one might say, a lot more intimate than it looked. It’s too bad that it took place in the way and place it did. Getting all psychological again, her parents are apparently no longer together, and she and her siblings have their mother’s name. It seems like dad is not in the picture. Maybe she has a stronger need for a father figure than other students, and he just isn’t fulfilling that need for her. In any case, she was obviously deeply, personally distressed, whether or not it was “warranted” by objective criteria. I am very sorry for her. To her, as she made clear, this is not an intellectual matter, it is an emotional one. It is very sad that she has become the object of derision by every racist and hater on the internet.
@50N40W - Here is the background.
http://bigthink.com/focal-point/no-means-yes-yes-means-anal-frat-banned-from-yale
Thanks @Zinhead Although it looks like simple misogyny doesn’t begin to cover it.
@Iglooo I’m not sure the two situations are entirely comparable. No students are chanting slogans in support of lynching or segregation - and if any students were chanting such things, while no power of the law could touch them, I suspect they’d be lucky to have one friend on all the campus in a week’s time. I very much doubt Erika Christakis would take issue if Yale sent a letter to its students discouraging attendance at KKK rallies, or (to use your example) chants of “No means yes, yes means (redacted).”
Halloween costumes straining the bounds of respectability are a problem of far lesser gravity, offering no support for violence against one’s fellow students, and thus the argument may be made that excess is possible in condemning their use. Moreover, Prof. Christakis never supported the use of blackface and the like - she merely suggested that the peers of any student considering such a costume might better discourage the idea than an e-mail from college administrators.
My personal view is that neither the initial e-mail, nor Prof. Christakis’ response, should be considered consequential. I view the students’ demands that a master resign for failing to tender an apology as soon as a student took offense, and what appears to be an unwillingness to tolerate a diversity of opinions, as the greater concern by far.
At the time it was debated as a free speech issue, maybe even by some on this thread now.
I thought it was because the search committee wanted a different candidate, but Christakis was picked as part of a package to lure him to Yale? I read that somewhere, and I thought it was in this thread.
@ahl - if the pledges were chanting what was linked in @Zinheads #705 (My name is Jack…) then I am thinking it rises to the level of “obscenity” which is not afforded protection under the First Amendment. My other thought is that the chants were most likely a violation of a section of the school’s Undergraduate Regulations - probably one of the “harassment” provisions.
This is also a 5 year old incident so unlikely many of the posters on this thread were debating it.
The free speech aspects of the DKE case were discussed at length here. It’s another example of what happens to most free speech advocates when somebody says something they really don’t like.
@HarvestMoon1: There is essentially no way the chant rose to the level of obscenity. Yale is a private institution, however, and so is not bound by First Amendment law. You’re right that the university regs are probably the place to look. I don’t think, however, that the chanting situation sheds all that much light on the current one.
Hunt: Although sometimes I disagree with you, I always respect the consistency of your views.
HarvestMoon: I don’t know how many on this thread were around for that debate, but that event has come up again and again on this board in many different discussions. I wasn’t going to say who was around. I would like to think some view the case differently now than then.
@Demosthenes - do you know on what grounds the frat was banned? That should answer the question. I have no familiarity with the case.
For those interest in who Nick Christakis is, here is a link to his CV. I would have copied it here, but it is 35 pages long and is incredibly impressive.
http://nicholaschristakis.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Christakis_cv.pdf
Sad that he will go down in history as the object of Shrieking Girls ire.
@HarvestMoon1: It looks like Yale kicked it into the “harassment” bucket, which is a real stretch. Seems no one cared to really fight over it in court though, so that’s the end of that.
O.K. so protected under First Amendment but not under the school’s harassment policy. What’s the issue then?
No, they are not, and it’s once pollyanish to think a three generation legacy, that may contribute 8 figures to the institution, has the same parity and associated amenities as a first generation URM. I have been in actual development/foundation meetings with this same scenario, and they are not treated the same. You can fool and comfort yourself to belive otherwise, but the reality is far different…
I didn’t realize he was an author on those paper about obesity and social networks. (If you are overweight your friends are likely to be overweight too.)
In New Haven, Aaron Z. Lewis, a 21-year-old senior at Yale, used to spend his days studying cognitive science and thinking about what he will do after graduation. Now he is devoting his time to protesting and writing about racial injustice, particularly for black women, on campus and elsewhere.
Mr. Lewis and other students said the racism they had experienced or observed was often subtle rather than blatant, but no less disturbing and no less deserving of attention.
“I don’t think it matters what my own personal experiences are with this,” Mr. Lewis said. “What matters is that we all need to have empathy for the experiences that people of color have even if we don’t have those experiences for ourselves.”
He added, “It really is hard to believe because we want to believe that we’re a postracial society, but it’s just not true.”