You can search on the internet to see some of her classmate’s reactions. Many do not agree, but they are not willing to say a word about it.
They are afraid to confront the issue; for many of them there is really nothing to be gained. They are there to get an education and do not want to participate in this sideshow.
Here’s the thing, though. This student, if traditionally aged, is about twenty, give or take a couple of years on either side. Twenty-year-olds are not noted for their sterling judgment. They get overly invested in trivial issues, alternately resent authority figures and run to them expecting them to solve all their problems for them, have difficulty distinguishing between reasoned disagreement and personal attack (both when they’re on the receiving end, and when they’re trying to disagree with someone themselves), have trouble staying polite when they’re emotionally invested in a cause, are timid about confronting people with whom they disagree one-on-one but turn into extremists when they have a mob of peers for support, and generally act like silly, oversensitive twits a lot of the time. This is what college students are like, and it is good and right that they are like this.. They are still learning how to disagree with people productively and how to advocate for a cause. And it is, frankly, good that they are passionate about something, and see themselves as having sufficient agency to accomplish their goals. (I teach at a university that is about as far from elite as you can get, and I wish more of my own students saw themselves in those terms.) Someone who is a silly, oversensitive twit at twenty can become a sincere and thoughtful activist at thirty. The university should not give into the students’ demands that the Christakises resign, but neither is extreme punishment for the students appropriate. What is appropriate is dialogue, mentoring, and, in the case of the student who is openly yelling and swearing at the administrator, some milder form of discipline, which should be carried out in private.
What concerns me about organizations like FIRE (which is a political advocacy group, so I’d take their reporting with a grain of salt), is that they take campus tempests-in-a-teapot and splash them all over the Internet, inviting people who ought to be older and wiser to heap contempt on the students involved. Quite frankly, I’m glad that the Internet was in its infancy and social media nonexistent when I was in college. My generation had the luxury of indulging in twenty-year-old twittitude in private. Hers gets complete strangers calling them a “piece of garbage excuse for a human being” and calling for them to spend the rest of their life as janitors, dismissing the possibility that they can grow and learn.
I support Erika Christakis’s response in Part 2 and believe it is quite civil and even wise. This type of thing is exactly what many of us are referring to when we complain about Political Correctness run amok. I have heard the inflammatory and inaccurate translation repeated back as “Just admit you want to be an asshole/racist/bigoted/sexist” or whatever other insults they can fit into the ultimate straw-man amalgam. That isn’t it at all and never was.
It is time to realize that there are neo-authoritarian activists of many stripes that want to control free speech and behavior as much as any regime in history. They tend to defend themselves from this by by claiming that “free speech” only refers to government actions. That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Constitutional protection of free speech is certainly part of it but only an extension of a deeper ideal. That true ideal is to allow by default any public speech or expression, no matter how offensive, unless it directly and immediately affects the safety of others (the yelling fire in a crowed space exception).
These aren’t isolated cases either. We have a thread in ATMB where some are complaining that the SDMB encourages “hate speech” because certain controversial thread topics are not banned no matter how they are presented. I have no idea what happened but many people have never understood the quote “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
Apparently some people are under the delusion that targeting Halloween costumes, Confederate flags and other token symbols that often don’t mean what they think affects real social change. They are mistaken in exactly the same way that religious wingnuts that ban or burn Harry Potter books makes Satan less powerful. I make that comparison all sincerity. The left-right political spectrum is actually a closed loop that end up with the same type of ill-conceived authoritarian thought once you move too far in either direction. The only difference is the preferred targets of each brand of fundamentalism.
Come on, we are talking about Halloween costumes for kids and college students! They are supposed to be provocative, creative and entertaining. I think there is better things to be worried about this morning than that just like there were for exactly every day in history. The people that think otherwise are going to get a rude awakening when they have to step out of the sheltered confines of a college campus and colleges themselves are doing their students a disservice by pandering to these fringe idiots like they have some sort of valid point.
Please explain further what is erroneous in particular about the Fire coverage. I have read many articles on the subject, and they all give a similar description. I have provided the original and subsequent e-mails, as they are.
If you have or are are aware of coverage of the story that shows things differently, please provide it - I think it would be an interesting addition to this thread.
Also, I do not agree with your assessment that along with the privilege of attending an elite university which will have the ability to open doors for high level positions in society that there is no responsibility.
It is logically inconsistent to me to say “oh, they’re just 20 year old kids and should not be held responsible for their actions so much” and then to also call them the best and brightest, offer them the prestige and access to opportunities that an elite education gives etc.
In other words, if the system is such that we have criteria for making judgements about people based upon how they behave as teenagers in the positive - thus giving them admission to an elite university, we should also apply the same standards when they do something not reflective of being the best and brightest instead of just writing it off as “oh they’re just young and not mature yet.”
More simply, if they are praised for the behavior and actions that allowed them to be admitted to an elite university, they should be equally be condemned for poor conduct that is against the principles of the university. By your logic, if someone doesn’t get into an elite school they should be able to say, “You should let me in; I was young and immature a couple years ago when I didn’t study enough and got a C average, I shouldn’t have that held against me.”
I think there’s a valid distinction over who the offense is directed against. Are you using offensive humor to challenge power or to assert power? Are you pushing the boundaries outward or are you pushing boundaries to enclose somebody else?
You can’t deny that reality imposed by numbers. When a minority asserts itself by a public demonstration, the message is “We exist. Don’t ignore us.” and there’s an element of risk involved. But when the majority asserts itself by a public demonstration, it can’t claim it’s doing it just to be seen - nobody isn’t aware of the existence of the majority. So the message becomes “We’re bigger than you. Don’t forget that.” and it’s more like a warning than a risk.
I never said anywhere that the students involved shouldn’t be condemned for poor conduct. The one who was verbally abusing the administrator should. But, at the same time, 1) it doesn’t make her a piece of human garbage, just a typical twenty-year-old being overdramatic and showing poor judgment; and 2) holding her up as a poster child for Everything Wrong With These Kids Today, on the basis of a one-and-a-half-minute video clip, is unfair to her. Everyone in the entire world has behaved badly for a minute and a half when they were twenty. Most of us were lucky enough not to have it captured on viral video.
The fact that it is an elite college is immaterial. Yale students may be academically smarter than the average twenty-year-old, but that doesn’t translate to better judgment or greater maturity.
And I don’t know whether the FIRE coverage of this specific incident is accurate or not, just that they have a track record of going “LOOK LOOK EVERYBODY LOOK AT THIS STUDENT DEMONSTRATING EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THESE KIDS TODAY” about incidents that should probably be ignored outside of the specific campus on which they took place.
The fact the it is an elite college is very material. The reason that it is material is that 1) There is a highly selective process at an elite university, this process of selection goes far beyond academics; I don’t know why anyone would even question that. They are looking for leaders and 2) Much more importantly, the elite university opens doors which will put these students in positions of greater power; this is what concerns many people.
I do not agree with holding her up as a poster child - why you are saying this makes no sense to me. If you think that is the issue reread the thread and the links, I have tried my best to present the meat of the matter in an easily digestible format.
You keep wanting t say 20-something and dismissing everything she does because of that. 20-somethings vote, go to war sometimes even start families.
If you want to dismiss everything someone does because of their age and also negate the fact that elite universities confer significant advantages in life be my guest - I don’t agree with that, nor do I want to go further down that particular rabbit hole.
Huh? I’m not dismissing everything she does. The person dismissing everything she does (and, incidentally, everything she might conceivably do in the future) is Stringbean, who states right here in this thread that she is a piece of human garbage, and that she ought to be condemned to working as a janitor for the rest of her life – with the implication that she is incapable of learning, growing, or directing her anger into more productive channels. My earlier post was primarily a response to him, not you.
Again, I think this student is in the wrong, and the Christakises, unless there is more to the story than has been reported, are in the right. But I also think that colleges, and the media, should exercise a certain amount of restraint and tolerance when dealing with students who are in the wrong.
I realize it’s all the rage to infantilize humans up into their mid-late 20’s these days but I think that’s a mistake. This pass encourages young people to develop toxic levels of entitlement and contempt which is counterproductive to reasoning together. The level of maturity we look for in mid twenty somethings these days is less than what were expecting out of 16 year olds a few decades ago.
Reaction?
Breaking news! Professors arrogant and condescending! A few students angry, loud and rude!
Really, nothing to see here.
You want to talk about the issues?
It is reasonable (albeit sad that for it to be necessary) for University administrators to state:
No that request is not beyond the pale. Again sad that you have to ask intelligent people to consider the feelings of others but apparently you do.
Professors have every right to express their thoughts that being offensive to others should be okay and to do so in very condescending language about “young people” and about how being a former preschool teacher is pertinent to the discussion, and to go on about how “speaking as a child development specialist” it should be fine to go and knowingly do things that offend others within your community.
They want to defend offensive costumes as something that the administrations should make no comments about … and include people getting dressed up as hook-nosed Jews with money in their pockets, a priest with a stuffed dummy child attached as if being buggered in front in that list … they should be allowed to do so. They feel that there should be “room for the … offensive”, that universities should be about having a “regressive, or even transgressive experience” … well they are entitled to be stupid.
And the student wants to tell that teacher in as colorful and loud of language as possible that they are completely fucked up? Just as acceptable free speech even if just as poor of a choice from my perspective. Maybe that student took the words to heart and was behaving in the recommended regressive and transgressive manner that the expert in child development prof believes is what “young people” in university should be doing?
Each fail as effective communication tools, albeit the fails are in different ways. The student fails loudly but then again the student just learning effective communication. The professors though are professionals and supposedly well trained in the tools of rhetoric. Thus their fail stands out more to me.
Amazingly smart people can be awfully dumb. Professors and students alike.
I can agree with that, however, the petition with 740 signatures calling for the firing of Christakis tells me that this is material and substantial, and highlights the concrete effects of some of these issues.
Some other news (since you’re not a fan of the Fire :
I cannot see anything in this response that indicates that you have actually taken the time to read the articles.
This part is so jumbled I can barely makes sense of it - It appears that you think the professor the student is yelling at is the same as the professor who wrote the e-mail.
Did we read the same email?
Read (and quoted from) email 1. College requests that students think about others’ feelings as they choose their costumes.
Read and quoted from the prof’s email - which reads to me as highly arrogant and condescending. Essentially that as a former preschool teacher and as a child development specialist I understand more than you do what you young people need … and being offensive to others, regressive, and transgressive, is part of what the college experience should be about.
Saw one young woman yelling loudly and swearing.
Petitioning as a means of expressing an opinion? That is a very reasonable means of expressing a POV. That letter actually seems to express a point of view extremely calmly and well. It states what seem to me a fair portrayal of the events.
Not sure if *you * actually read the letter though … pretty sure you did not. Since you stated that it called for the firing of the profs and it states no such thing. It merely articulates the POV that
The behavior of the professors seems odd to me. They falsely portrayed a simple request to use some common sense and to be considerate as “censure … from above” … they do indeed promote the coddling of the majority to have a chance to engage in developmentally appropriate offensive, regressive, and transgressive play while telling those not of the majority that they need to grow up just “look away.”
His intent was fairly clear re the generalized notion of students and professors behaving in somewhat condescending, clueless and ham handed fashions.
You’re imputing a lot of stuff here to set up some odd strawman.
The professor argues that the university experience is about students being transgressive and should be.
That one student was following that advice and behaving in the advised regressive and transgressive manner.
Both are engaged in free speech. Both doing a poor job of it .
We live in a time when virtually no speech is really, effectively suppressed. No matter what your point of view, you can find a forum through which to broadcast it to anyone who wants to listen. Every viewpoint imaginable (plus some unimaginable) is a click away on the Internet. I think that people who have grown up in this environment don’t really see the defense of free speech as a pressing issue anymore — not in the U.S., anyway.
Not sure. I read the ones linked to in this thread. Which one did you read?
No; I just don’t think it is clearly written, there is nothing else I am implying or mean to infer.
There are 2 different and unique individual professors, who have given separate comments. Why take away their individuality? Why generalize when you can specificize?
There’s plenty of material to get specific about, no need to use the less accurate means of analysis such as generalization (stereotyping etc.) to arrive at an opinion or have a discussion on this topic.