Erika Christakis, who is also an administrator at a residence hall, wrote that students should be able to wear any costume they want.
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As one can imagine, this response has gone viral and received a huge amount of negative backlash, inciting an argument about how the university handles issues of racism and sexism on a grand scale. It’s a tall order; in the 2014-2015 academic year, just 22.5 percent of the university’s 4,410 faculty members were minorities, according to CNN Money, while nearly 43 percent of the students enrolled at Yale are minorities.
As students’ outrage over grew over the past week, Yale President Peter Salovey said in a November 6 message to the community that he was “deeply troubled” by accounts of distress over racial issues. It doesn’t matter what they’re politics are, the two are promoting free speech and civil discussion, which is pretty logical.
The recent debates over free speech and “safe spaces” in the academy may have reached a watershed with last week’s debacle at Yale University, where a group of students had a meltdown over an email defending culturally “insensitive” Halloween costumes. “Program, were given an unscheduled demonstration of the threat that college students pose to higher education today as they were harassed and spat upon by protesters”.
You may have heard about Erika and Nicholas Christakis, the associate master and master of Yale’s Silliman College. “It’s that they are trying to voice their pains and have other students say “I understand and I will try to do better” and hold other people accountable in trying to do better”. Being the butt of someone’s joke is undoubtedly demoralizing. A little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? Can you talk about what is concerning students at Yale? Christakis also questioned that, if offensive costumes were to be banned, who would have the right to decide what was offensive?
“This event on the MU campus shows other students how much power we actually have when we come together as a campus”, Brooks said.
But general administrators like Christakis should know that their position matters, and she recognizes how great her influence at the university is.
The conversation is at first tense but calm, but it escalates rapidly after a student accuses Christakis of creating an “unsafe space” at Yale.
“In your position as master it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman”, one student says to him in a video of the incident on November 5. She comes from the wealthy town of Fairfield, CT, and now attends one of the world’s elite universities, but still feels oppressed. An era of acceptance has to begin somewhere, and if we work to create accepting environments in college, maybe people can learn to be kind to each other in the real world.
“I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick”.
The 1,000-demonstrator strong “March of Resilience” followed several racially charged incidents at Yale, including allegations that a fraternity turned away minority students from a “white girls only” Halloween party and video of an impassioned student screaming, “Who the f-k hired you?” at a professor over their disagreement. They’re about real experiences with racism on this campus that have gone unacknowledged for far too long.
It would be easy to watch that clip and think the female student of color is being “unreasonable” or “aggressive”.
Now, you might be thinking-Nick, didn’t you call us all racist for wearing shitty costumes, like, a week ago?
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“I believe listening is the right way to make that happen”, he said. The problem is more people in the offended category want to take a hammer and scythe to the idea of free speech because it doesn’t caused a “safe space”.
