I’ve always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may be aware, I teach a class on “The Concept of the Problem Child,” and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween – traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people – is also an occasion for adults to exert their control.
I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.
She is expressing an anti-authoritarian view that Halloween costumes don’t need “sanction” or “approval” from administration because Halloween is traditionally a subversive holiday where young people get to play dress-up and push the boundaries of every-day decorum.
Her view is valid, drawn from experience, and offered in defense of the individual growth of students in an environment where this growth is critical to becoming well-rounded, functioning adults.
That shrieking piece of garbage is the only one who forewent reasonable discourse and she deserves contempt, not feckless defenses that 20-somethings at an Ivy League school can’t control themselves. If she can’t control herself, she belongs in community college. Yale deserves better.
I read the first email. Seeing as it didn’t do what the second email accused it of doing, the second email was invalid. Furthermore, by sending it to the entire student body instead of talking to the people who sent it directly, it does not come off as a legitimate complaint but a desire to stir things up.
All the original email did was say “be mindful that how you dress may offend people. People will not be less offended just because it’s Halloween.” This is just general good advice. Turning that into policing what people wear is just a persecution complex.
Read the damn thread. No one is asking anything about her views. We’re asking why she accused the college of doing something they didn’t do. What led her to believe that the college was going to police what costumes people wore? They said nothing remotely like that.
And stop calling someone human garbage because she passionately screamed an opinion you disagree with. I disagree with her, too, but she’s still a human being. That type dehumanizing insult of someone you disagree with is what is garbage.
The correct response to all of this is “You misunderstood what our email said. We never said anything about policing what people wear. And, next time, if you have a problem with how we say something, please contact us directly first and give us a chance to remedy the situation. This whole misunderstanding could have been avoided if you had done so.”
Perhaps there were emails whining about either that they are being told that the costumes they wanted to wear that they thought were just good fun minority bashing should be reconsidered … or some complaining that the email was misplaced because no one at Yale would ever do anything to make fun of their minority members.
As to the latter, well I cannot say how often and how pervasive, but Yale has had problems with Black face costumes on Halloween before.
They were specifically what provided the impetus to the creation about seven years ago of the Intercultural Affairs Council (IAC) that had put out the “reasonable and non-censorial” email.
If there was that swath of emails then there were many possible responses the professor, the spouse of a Master of a Residential College and a former Master as well, who was there when the IAC was created and who should remember why it was, could have made. Stating that being offensive, regressive, and transgressive, is part of normal developmental work, and that the IAC is out of line to attempt to execute their mission of promoting the need for intercultural sensitivity, is certainly allowable expression. A right to express it exists as official policy. And a right to call it out idiotic does as well.
Shag I am confused. One should “[f]eel free to raise your voice and scream if you ever find yourself in a debate with Donald Trump” but screaming at the Master of your Residential College at a college protest rally over what you perceive as a failure of him to do his job is disturbing the peace and not the exercise of free speech?
I did not listen to her whole rant and couldn’t make out many of the words anyway… did she threaten him with physical violence? Or merely diminish the actual value of her points by expressing them in the form of a tantrum?
Yes Stringbean I read her email, the whole condescending I am a child developmental expert so I know what you young folk need glurge of it.
I’ve offered up some potential hypotheses as to why she felt the need to send it out, in reply to all fashion, in response to the email from the IAC (formed as a result of student, not administration/“adult” concerns) which politely requested that students think about the offense they might cause before they dress up in Black face or the like. Especially since as BigT notes, it was a response to something that was not said.
You answered your own question. She is a Yale undergraduate and not a kindergartner. There is no evidence that “he didn’t do his job” and no reasonable person would be led to believe that based on the evidence at hand.
I never said she should be arrested or charged with a crime for it. I am sure that you have had to deal with hysterical, illogical and emotionally charged people in your professional capability as well just as I have. It doesn’t mean that they should be judged permanently incompetent but it does mean that their behavior at that specific place and time is completely inappropriate.
Again, this is Yale we are talking about. I went to an Ivy League school myself not that long ago and such things we not allowed at Dartmouth even in the 90’s. The appropriate response is to ask for a meeting with the person you have disagreements with and give a persuasive presentation about how you think their viewpoints are incorrect. Almost all people will at least listen to your criticisms civilly and academically. They may not agree at the end but such discussions are always more enlightening than the style today that is little more than a bunch of monkeys throwing fruit and screaming anytime they see or hear something that scares them.
Yale undergraduates are presumably going to be in a leadership position just a few years after graduation. Do you think that type of childish outburst is going to be encouraged let alone allowed at all among her most likely future employers? I can give you the answer. It will not be whether it is the State Department or a mega-corp. It won’t be tolerated because most people will not tolerate childish behavior among adults for long in most settings.
What I am criticizing here is not her ideas or the plain message of her speech (although I think they are completely wrong). The criticism is specifically about her psychological meltdown and inability to control her temper in a forum in which it wasn’t appropriate or warranted.
I’m in agreement with the consensus here. The whole business is idiotic. Everyone handled it badly, but the student who screamed insults and profanity at Christakis is the one who looks the worst. She gives the impression of being a spoiled brat, accustomed to getting everything she wants and completely incapable of understanding that other people have free speech rights. She’s the prototype of the politically correct student, in other words. Honestly, if this incident hadn’t happened in real life, Fox News would have had to make it up. No fictitious story could show the anti-intellectualism of Ivy League liberals any better.
That said, I’m also amused by the fact that it occurred at “Silliman College”. Not since Anthony Weiner put his penis on the national news has there been a more appropriate name.
I have read Prof. Christians’ letter and I do not see anything about it that could be called trolling. It is a polite, serious letter. Christakis was trying to provoke students into thinking about what they believe and why they believe, to organize and justify their thinking logically rather than just following herd mentality and attacking a (possibly nonexistent) plague of racially insensitive costumes. She’s a professor. Her job is to provoke students into thinking. I don’t see why you think she did anything wrong.
[Quote=BigT]
Read the damn thread. No one is asking anything about her views. We’re asking why she accused the college of doing something they didn’t do. What led her to believe that the college was going to police what costumes people wore? They said nothing remotely like that.
[/quote]
Having read Christakis’ letter, I don’t see any place where she said that the college was going to police anyone’s costume.
It wasn’t sent to the entire student body. It was sent to one residential college, of which her husband is master, and whose residents they had heard from about the original Yale-wide email. If they’ve been hearing from many of their students, it is absolutely appropriate to send an email to the residential college addressing the concerns.
You say that now, but the consensus among the intellectual elites and the powers that be is that racism and white privilege are the worst evils imaginable and must be eliminated by any means necessary. There is no room for “discussion” or “disagreement.” Logical debate itself is considered to be a mere tool of power by which white heterosexual Christian men preserve their privilege, and asking others to buy into it is a form of oppression.
Yup. She didn’t make any false accusations. She provided an opinion, after discussion with some of her students, that the school might be sending the wrong message with such an email.
This was just a dissenting opinion, respectful and insightful, that this piece of human garbage lost her sanity over because it didn’t tightly tow the PC line.
People don’t respect this kind of nonsense. Academia is creating these pissy-pants over-sensitive monsters and now they are seeing the result. Open discourse is considered oppressive. Even by faculty who spent their careers dealing with developing minds.
Not understanding how your post has anything to do with my comment.
You are fine with all sorts of free speech as long as it is peaceful. Screaming at Trump would be considered peaceful I guess but yelling at a student protest rally is not?
Again, the value or efficacy of the speech is not the point of the question.
Addressing the validity of her perception that he failed in his stated duties as Master is also immaterial to the simple reality that it was what she believed and wanted to express. That she did so in an offensive, regressive, and transgressive manner … well again, that is how the female Professor Christakis believes university students should behave as part of the experience is all about.
Again … shocking that a professor is arrogant and condescending and shocking that an individual student expresses themselves poorly.