There is an article in the daily beast that includes an interview with some of the fraternity brothers of sae who are accused of white only admittance of girls. I think 19 of the 48 frat brothers are minorities. It also stated that the party did not begin until 11:00pm that night. Also the cops were called that evening whereby the frat was ordered to perform crowd control. I havent seen any mention of this information on this thread.
The link for the quote BoolaHI posted:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/us/racial-discrimination-protests-ignite-at-colleges-across-the-us.html
This from Kristof in the Times today.
Thanks CF.
Something else that no one is talking about anywhere this week is the socio-economic divide at Yale–a divide that crosses the boundaries of color and that should be part of any discussion of privilege.
I’ve spent most of my professional career teaching first generation college students, many of them URMs, and their lives are very different than the majority of my son’s friends and classmates. Many (not all, but many) students of color at Yale are far more privileged and grew up far safer than the average kid in America, than the mostly white kids in my small town, than the ethnically diverse kids I teach.
From my students of color, “Sorry I missed class, but my cousin was shot” is a much too regular excuse. Far too many of my students come to college from high schools that prized their athletic abilities but didn’t teach them that sentences should have periods. From that perspective, I have to say that the language of hurt and fragility coming from Yale’s students wears a little thin.
And it rankles my kid, with his second-hand clothes and old phone, who works year round, who worries all the time about the economic burden he puts on his parents , who couldn’t afford to join SAE if he wanted to. Why? Because recently, he can’t turn to Overheard at Yale or the Yale Daily News without reading some off-hand or snarky comment that takes for granted that white, athletic males are oppressive, racist, and clueless “bros.” And this from kids who often, in many ways, are far more privileged than he.
None of this is to dismiss the very real racism that runs deep in our culture and yes, absolutely, affects people of color in all economic brackets. It’s obnoxious and wrong, and it needs to stop. And because of where and how he grew up, my kid is well aware of the extent of his own privilege. Still, it’s interesting that nowhere in the discussion of the events of the past few weeks–or even in the thoughtful letter recently issued by Salovey and Holloway–have I seen a reference to the socio-economic divide between students that crosses boundaries of color and that creates its own, very real, stresses, hurts, and fragility.
@CardinalFang The idea that the mastership was part of a package put together to lure him to Yale was suggested in one of the comments on the Crimson article about their departure from Harvard, where they occupied a similar position. Interestingly, the article indicated that they were very well liked at Harvard, with numerous flattering quotations from house members about their warmth, availability, and so forth. A few critics posted complaints in the comments.
Thanks, Consolation. That’s where I read the rumor, but it is merely an unsubstantiated rumor.
Political Correctness has gone way to far.
As a parent of a white male Yalie '15, I hear this. But this, all of this, I think, is the price to be paid for engaging with each other, for lifting our heads out of our own realities - that very diversity we expect (recently expect, relative to Yale’s long history) colleges to actively provide.
I teach at a high school where most of the kids will not go to a four year college, start working at 15, and will always feel the “stresses, hurts and fragility” of the economic instability @classicalmama mentions. Graduating from both that school and Yale, my son may never feel he fits in whatever socio-economic milieu he finds himself - and I don’t think that’s the bad news. More perspectives, more engagement, more interactions, positive and negative, are necessary for our students to survive in the global culture we hope for them to thrive in as well as for their maturing as people. Isn’t that what we call education?
I am optimistic Yale and Yalies will learn from this, although I am deeply sorry the publicity has harmed students.
@classicalmama Thank you for pointing out yet another facet of this very complicated discussion. All too often we are bound by our stereotypes and prejudices…all of us! And until we accept that fact no amount of marches, yelling profanities, and pontificating will help.
I had a chance to read the protest letter signed by hundreds of Yale students. I’m not sure if it has been posted on public domains, but I am taking the liberty of posting an excerpt here. Frankly, I had a little more sympathy to the students after reading the letter. It helped answer the question I asked earlier on this thread, which is what is the bigger “systematic problem” in Yale that makes minority students feel unwelcome or even painful.
I am not a fan of counterarguments to a complaint that basically seek to invalidate someone’s problem just because there are far worse problems in the world. Our problems are our problems and they do matter a lot to us even if they’re not as bad as someone else’s. Yet, classicalmama’s post above makes an important point: can’t we all think of ways we were hurt or mistreated or overlooked that seem just as bad to us as being offended by an e-mail? I know both of my kids experienced the discomfort and sometimes outright insensitivity resulting from the economic divide at college. (We never felt it was the college’s problem to address, and still don’t. I think their schools did more than enough to help by offering generous merit aid so they could attend.) In other words, once people start making a huge ruckus about what we think are micro offenses, I think it can easily tempt us all to chime in about our own social injuries. After all, we reason, if they can get so riled up about that small thing, then surely OUR bigger thing should be given attention too! In essence we say, “Wait, what about my hurt?” Then before long, what results is an unproductive, negative environment around us, and even silly competition over how truly offended we were, or whose offense was greater and more worthy of sympathy. Therefore, for communities (or marriages) to thrive, we have to be very careful what we make a big deal about.
The second reason classicalmama’s post hit me is that right now we REALLY, honestly do have far more important and pressing causes to worry about than whether an e-mail was insensitive. This week we saw footage of a line of children–children!–kneeling shoulder to shoulder being massacred by ISIS. I hope that after the Yale students settle down, they will put their top minds toward solving truly serious problems.
Note: I think the master’s e-mail itself is a minor offense. That opinion does not equate to saying slavery, racism, genocide, racial oppression, or blackface are minor offenses, even though posters want to say it does.
Deleted-- I tried to link the entirety of the students’ open letter, but for some reason the link isn’t working. You can easily Google it though.
^^ Thats even better. Thanks.
The little girl in the video is a clear example of why Christakis is wrong - she was not capable of self censure and not capable of ignoring something that bothered her. She was not mature enough to have this kind of debate with a person in authority. I was the same as a college freshman and I suspect lots of college students are equally immature. Christakis was just wrong.
The comment quoted by panpacific makes me feel less sympathetic, not more. As someone pointed out up thread, these students chose to attend Yale. No one twisted their arm, and no one is forcing them to take any “Eurocentric” classes either. Presumably one reason they matriculated was Yale’s prestige and long history of academic excellence. History is history. It sounds like they want everyone to remember history on one hand, eg. when they want to dredge up the sins of the past, but at the same time they want to obliterate the names of slave owners on building? Hmm, wouldn’t that be acting as though white men didn’t get rich off of slave labor and donate buildings with some of the money? Seems counterproductive to their goals. Secondly, the statement is misleading because it implies students actually dressed in very offensive Halloween costumes, which did not happen this year.
@TheGFG Calhoun never gave a cent to Yale. From Wikipedia
To be a student of color on Yale’s campus, it is more challenging to find a date. So, to be a student of color is to exist in a space that was not created for you. /sarcastic
However, the reaction of your kid and your description misses a critical point about how privilege is viewed and discussed within academia and among student activists and their allies.
It is possible to be privileged in one context such as SES and simultaneously be marginalized in another context such as race.
A good case of this is an older college classmate who despite coming from a higher SES background with a doctor and senior executive of a fortune 500 company as parents, suffered frequent incidents of police profiling from adolescence onward on account of his being Black and thus, constituting enough suspicion for townspeople in his upper/upper-middle class near-all White suburb to call the cops on him.
This continued after HS graduation when his inclination to dress in formal suits(partially due to the fact he was a conservatory double-degree student) and the fact he drove a nice BMW* caused him to be stopped frequently by LE with some cops openly questioning how he/his family could afford such a fancy car if he/they weren’t dealing drugs or by extension being involved in some other sort of criminal activity.
Worse, this continued to follow him to grad school at H where I got to witness in person him getting stopped several times by campus police for ID checks. Very odd considering he was not only a bona-fide H PhD student, but that neither I nor any other Asian/Asian-American or White H student I asked were ever stopped for such ID checks. And in my case, I wasn’t a student for the majority of my frequent visits to the campus while living in the Boston area. It was also interesting that in the same time period, a group of Black H undergrads hanging out and enjoying an afternoon on their house’s quad was considered suspicious enough by other H undergrads to call the cops on them. An incident which prompted much outrage on campus and a factor which caused senior HUPD officials to publicly concede that their department had a serious issue on that score and needed to do better.
- Graduation present which if given to a White or Asian-American student, wouldn't likely provoke this level of scrutiny or rude negative comments derived from stereotyping from law enforcement.
You don’t need to give your BMW example yet again. We got it the first few times .
There is no one on this board who is unaware that a black man driving a BMW in a nice neighborhood is, sadly, under more scrutiny and suspicion than a white man doing the same. It’s patronizing to suggest that we all aren’t aware of this and that you’re enlightening us.