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amazing. standing up for freedom of expression at one of the nation's top universities will result in frothing hysterics and calls for you to be fired
Quote:
Tensions at Yale University hit a boiling point yesterday after an email about Halloween costumes created a week-long controversy on campus.
Students called for the resignation of Associate Master of Silliman College Erika Christakis after she responded to an email from the school’s Intercultural Affairs Council asking students to be thoughtful about the cultural implications of their Halloween costumes. According to The Washington Post, students are also calling for the resignation of her husband, Master of Silliman College, Nicholas Christakis, who defended her statement.
....
But the students’ demand that the Christakises lose their jobs for their dissident opinions represents another strong example of the phenomenon Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talked about in their September cover story for The Atlantic, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” In their article, Lukianoff and Haidt argue that students are increasingly engaging in a culture of “vindictive protectiveness” that seeks to control campus speech in a way that not only limits free expression and chills candor, but that can also promote distorted ways of thinking. https://www.thefire.org/yale-student...lloween-email/
what a nation of hypersensitive, entitled whiners we're raising.
OP did not post the response whiched fired up those students.
here it is:
Christakis drew on her experiences as a child development specialist to question whether a university should dictate what students should and shouldn’t wear on Halloween:
"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."
In addition to expressing concerns about how policing students’ costumes can limit the exercise of imagination, free speech, and free expression, Christakis asked:
"Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition."
I was expecting an authoritative type F-off or Grow Up response from her in the email but instead she wrote them a gentle puff-ball type response[like consoling a child] and they got all fired up.
Hopefully these students shape up quickly once they graduate and secure employment.
Yep, these whiney as$ libs are gonna have a tough time when they get into the real world (with their Yale degree, by the way) and they realize that they're employer only cares about one thing: Job performance.
Your boss isn't going to care about your delicate sensibilities, your color, your background or anything else that you want to use as an excuse for acting like an entitled little brat.
Yep, these whiney as$ libs are gonna have a tough time when they get into the real world (with their Yale degree, by the way) and they realize that they're employer only cares about one thing: Job performance.
Your boss isn't going to care about your delicate sensibilities, your color, your background or anything else that you want to use as an excuse for acting like an entitled little brat.
Well, in the 'real world,' you can bet your last dollar that businesses wouldn't dare allow their employees to act in racist/sexist ways. People have gotten in trouble for doing culturally/racially insensitive things such as wearing offensive halloween costumes.
So in regards to this specific instance, I don't think it's about being entitled, since again, in the 'real world,' organizations usually have a zero tolerance to anything perceived to be racist and the like.
There are always rules we have to abide by, and that has nothing to do with sensitivities or being an overly sensitive liberal.
By the way, I wonder how some on here would feel if students burned American flags on campus, or did things perceived to be anti US military and the like. Is it still free speech and stop being so sensitive now?
It's not matter of being liberal. I'm liberal and I side with Christakis. Judging by my Facebook, so do many other liberals. My thinking is that if someone wants to reveal themselves as a racist by their choice of Halloween costume (ie, wearing blackface), that is their right as guaranteed under the First Amendment--keeping in mind that it is also the right of others to call the racist out for being a racist.
I'm not sure why Yale's Intercultural Affairs Committee felt compelled to send an email reminding people to be sensitive in the first place. They note that in the past some students have worn insensitive costumes. Well, welcome to the real world. There will always be insensitive people. That's why it's best that students iron this out for themselves, because this is where the real education here lies, in conflict resolution and learning how to make themselves and their concerns heard with each other--through their student body organizations, editorials in the student paper, or in real-time as the situation arises, contentious though it may be. The school should only intervene if there is an incident that got violent or otherwise destructive and counterproductive.
Well, in the 'real world,' you can bet your last dollar that businesses wouldn't dare allow their employees to act in racist/sexist ways. People have gotten in trouble for doing culturally/racially insensitive things such as wearing offensive halloween costumes.
So in regards to this specific instance, I don't think it's about being entitled, since again, in the 'real world,' organizations usually have a zero tolerance to anything perceived to be racist and the like.
There are always rules we have to abide by, and that has nothing to do with sensitivities or being an overly sensitive liberal.
Organizations, like jobsites, might have input for themselves, but the fact remains that we all encounter insensitive or ignorant people nearly every day if we venture out into the public. The school stepping in doesn't teach the students the skills they need in terms of running into such costumes at a party or out on the street.
It's not matter of being liberal. I'm liberal and I side with Christakis. Judging by my Facebook, so do many other liberals. My thinking is that if someone wants to reveal themselves as a racist by their choice of Halloween costume (ie, wearing blackface), that is their right as guaranteed under the First Amendment--keeping in mind that it is also the right of others to call the racist out for being a racist.
I'm not sure why Yale's Intercultural Affairs Committee felt compelled to send an email reminding people to be sensitive in the first place. They note that in the past some students have worn insensitive costumes. Well, welcome to the real world. There will always be insensitive people. That's why it's best that students iron this out for themselves, because this is where the real education here lies, in conflict resolution and learning how to make themselves and their concerns heard with each other--through their student body organizations, editorials in the student paper, or in real-time as the situation arises, contentious though it may be. The school should only intervene if there is an incident that got violent or otherwise destructive and counterproductive.
Our over-structured, and overly-intrusive society can only accommodate so much sensitivity; that is what so many of those who seek to pontificate on this issue don't seem to understand.
Sooner or later, the thought-control apparatus will break down under the weight of its own inertia; common sense will set the new standards, as it always has. Why does any institution need an "Intercultural Affairs Committee" to begin with, save to placate those who dream of sitting in judgment on everybody else?
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 11-09-2015 at 09:34 AM..
OP did not post the response whiched fired up those students.
here it is:
Christakis drew on her experiences as a child development specialist to question whether a university should dictate what students should and shouldn’t wear on Halloween:
"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."
In addition to expressing concerns about how policing students’ costumes can limit the exercise of imagination, free speech, and free expression, Christakis asked:
"Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition."
I was expecting an authoritative type F-off or Grow Up response from her in the email but instead she wrote them a gentle puff-ball type response[like consoling a child] and they got all fired up.
Hopefully these students shape up quickly once they graduate and secure employment.
Perhaps I am being naive, but I agree with her. Essentially any costume can offend someone. Girls dressing up in scantily clad outfits would easily offend the deeply religious as well as many women that believe all that does is perpetuate the belief that women are objects.
There are very few halloween costumes that would be offensive to literally no one. That is what I took away from that email. Not, blackface and dressing up as if you are a racist should be seen as "a child or young person being obnoxious or provocative". How many costumes of priests with little boy dolls popped up everywhere several years ago?
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