Additionally, an email from a faculty member demonstrated a lack of understanding concerning students’ wishes to avoid donning racially insensitive costumes, such as blackface and Native American headgear, during Halloween.
Advertisement
Lewis says almost a week after the Halloween emails, the SAE incident and the now-viral video of a student screaming her frustrations to Christakis, Holloway sent another email to students promising change on campus. As much as we may want to expect that people will use proper judgment in how they treat others, many don’t care about being respectful, and they won’t ever understand if someone doesn’t call them out on their misjudgment. I do this as I hold us all, including myself, accountable to give what we seek: “respect”.
How you analyze this situation depends upon which lens you’re using.
“Then step down! If that is what you think about being a [inaudible] master, then you should step down”. They’re intolerant of any thought that doesn’t conform to the orthodoxy of their identity politics.
“I couldn’t let the joke go”. No one should be fired for sending out an email that simply expresses a different viewpoint but doesn’t involve any kind of hate speech or an obviously actionable offense. It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here!
In an interview with the Yale Daily News, Salovey said that student’s protests must not impinge upon a speaker’s right to be heard. According to Vox, one of Yale’s residential colleges has always been at the center of racial controversy since it is named in honor of former Yale graduate John C. Calhoun, a known white supremacist. Part of learning how to be a community is to develop sensitivity to the needs and perspectives of others. Can you talk about what is concerning students at Yale?
Christakis’ email upset a few because, in their view, she diminished the potential harm that could be inflicted by racist costumes.
Yale isn’t going to tell its students what to wear because they believe that this sort of judgment has its own checks and balances. It invited their reflection on their choices. Christakis wrote in the email.
The following day, Christakis’ husband Nicholas, the “Master” of Silliman College at Yale, met and spoke publicly with students about the affair.
The confrontation quickly escalated into a shouting match with one student, in particular, filmed angrily calling for Mr Christakis to step down. Why is nobody raising questions about the fragility and hypersensitivity of these students?
It is not about creating an intellectual space, the students claim; it’s about creating safe spaces.
The students were heard chanting, “We out here”. In her email, Erika wondered if there was still room for a young person to be a bit obnoxious, inappropriate, or offensive. “American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience”. In the abstract, this seems like a reasonable concern. I am uplifted by the resilience of our students – – joining together and having the courage to speak out. Something as innocent as a Halloween costume, she argued, shouldn’t nourish a culture of “censure and prohibition” on campus. Because that’s what this is about. However, if they chose to take that path, it is theirs to take. Reports said that a frat brother, acting as a bouncer, repeatedly told women that they were looking for “white girls only”, according to student Sofia Petros-Gouin, who was at the scene. Because it’s such a calm and easy thing to face down your bullies and have a “free exchange of ideas” with them.
To criticize this response is not necessarily to say that Erika Christakis was correct. Are we all OK with this transfer of power?
Advertisement
Yale student Aaron Lewis, via the Huffington Post, opines that the protests erupted because Yale administrators waited far too long to respond to students’ concerns. She goes on to lecture him that’s it’s his job to provide a sense of comfort and home to his students. “It’s bad that something like this would happen at a time when students are already so fragile”. I hope that a better conversation is able to take place. When approached by students, Nicholas said he was sorry for “causing pain” but would not apologize for what was said. The students DO want to be coddled and protected in a safe little bubble which won’t offend them.
