Students are demanding that Yale University fire two administrators who failed to speak out against offensive Halloween costumes. This is just one of the grievances of activist students—many of them people of color—who claim Yale is not a safe space for them.
On Thursday, the students surrounded Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway—a black man—in an outdoor space and chided him for failing to take action against a fraternity that had allegedly prevented black women from attending its party. (It’s not at all clear the allegation is true, according to The Daily Beast . )
After giving Holloway his comeuppance, they moved on to Nicholas Christakis, master of Silliman College. What was Christakis’s crime? His wife, an early childhood educator, had responded to a campus-wide email about offensive Halloween costumes by opining that it was inappropriate for the college to tell students how to dress. According to The Washington Post :
“Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that,” wrote Erika Christakis, an early childhood educator and the wife of Nicholas Christakis, the Silliman College master. Both later took to social media to defend the e-mail, incensing students by tying it to debates about free speech and trigger warnings. At a Wednesday night forum hosted by the Afro-American Cultural Center, Erika Christakis sought to leave the meeting during a discussion of her e-mail, further provoking student anger. …
Students grew distressed, with one shouting at Nicholas Christakis to be quiet and questioning why he took the position at the university. “You are a poor steward of this community,” the student said. “You should not sleep at night.”
As it so happens, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education President Greg Lukianoff was at Yale on Thursday in order to speak on a panel about free speech [ Update : the panel was hosted by Christakis, according to The Yale Daily News ]. Lukianoff recorded several videos of the confrontation between students and Christakis. The Post described Christakis as “frustrated,” but it’s important to keep in mind that he patiently listened to the students’ litany of complaints for hours. Toward the end of the shouting session, a student made the following comments:
“As your position as master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?”
When Christakis replied that he didn’t agree, the student thundered back, “Then why the fuck did you accept the position! Who the fuck hired you?”
Christakis began to say that he had a different view of his role at the college, but the student cut him off, saying:
“Then step down! If that is what you think about being a [inaudible] master, then you should step down. It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here! You are not doing that. You’re going against that.”
It is not about creating an intellectual space , the students claim; it’s about creating safe spaces. This is as clear an articulation of students’ desires as they come, and it summarizes everything that's wrong with the modern college campus.
Students should of course feel free to challenge university administrators—this is the essence of free speech. Students have every right to publicize their concerns and work to make Yale a more welcoming place for marginalized people (and administrators should listen). But a great many students, it seems, don’t actually desire a campus climate where such matters are up for debate. By their own admission, they want anyone who disagrees with them branded a threat to their safety and removed from their lives.
If these students get their wish to turn Yale and other campuses into zones of emotional coddling, they will succeed only in destroying the very point of college.
It is not about creating an intellectual space, the students claim; it’s about creating safe spaces. This is as clear an articulation of students’ desires as they come, and it summarizes everything that's wrong with the modern college campus.
Sums it up nicely.
It's wrong to exclude minorities. Learning Institutions should be safe places.
No. They should be learning places.
Wow just wow.
As a college student in a predominantly black area I am no stranger to this discussion. But that doesn't make this video any less upsetting to me.
To begin, I completely agree with the accompanying article. A university like Yale is not about cultivating a safe space. It's about preparing you for the real world with an intellectual world view that makes you better able to handle situations like this. If these are Yale students reacting in this way, then Yale is doing a piss poor job of completing that objective.
Difficult topics like this are difficult for a reason. There are many different views on the role that cultural appropriation should play in our daily lives. My personal opinion is that people today (especially of my generation) are too sensitive and need to learn to take a joke. I do not completely understand what happened with the costume situation, but from what I do know I agree with the dean completely.
One last point: I know many people who are backing various movements to gain civil respect for minorities. Many of them say that it is wrong to talk about HOW to discuss the issues instead of discussing the actual issues. This video is exactly what is wrong with that view. In a world that is so pc, where people can't even wear certain Halloween costumes how can we not discuss the how? Further, if people supporting these movements can do things like yell at and curse at their superiors (even telling them to shut their mouths) how can they think that anything will be accomplished? It will only leave any people with other viewpoints with a sour feeling about the whole interaction - and they will not walk away with an important take-away from the conversation as an intellectual conversation should accomplish.
Geeeeeeeezzzzzz!!!!!!!
Wonder if these people ever look at their video recordings and wonder why it is a narrow video in the middle of the screen?
Or it could be only the idiots make these videos?
I really don't get
1. How college kids want to be told what they can or can't do and say by those in authority.
2. How administrators take this seriously. Laugh at these babies , tell them to grow up and move on. The fact that this can put a campus in crises is truly pathetic. Are there no adults at these schools?
The Yale administrator showed remarkable self restraint . The usual response to someone shrieking like that is : "Security !" .
This story would be better with tasers.
And then we have the black members of a Missouri football team who refuse to show up for any more practices or games until the administration is replaced because some drunk drove by them in a truck and yelled racist slurs at them, and the administration did nothing about it.
Yep. (They have no idea who the drunk was, by the way.)
Political correctness and unearned hyper-sensitivity will ensure that these "students" will fail to learn anything and will inevitably become a burden to society. Their sense of entitlement is as breathtaking as it is ignorant.
I watched the video twice and I realized something... that's how blacks get shot by cops.
Jump my case if you will, but by damn, when that rude, screaming, hostile woman, in the middle of her tirade, slung her backpack off her shoulders, even her fellow supporters began to move away from her and the administrator as though they feared there was about to be a physical attack by the hysterical female.
Had she been addressing a police officer who was attempting to calm her down, and she had told him to shut his mouth then violently flung the backpack off her shoulders, the officer would probably have drawn his weapon and fired at her, fearing she was about to pull a weapon of her own from the backpack... and based on her hysteria, vocabulary and behavior, he would have had a case for it.
I watched the video twice and I realized something... that's how blacks get shot by cops.
Only Blacks? And being angry (even that angry) does not deserve the death penalty. I am not defending her, but your solution is not a good answer. Cops should know better then to shoot just because they are faced with a screaming Black brat.