The demonstrations and grievances addressed by students at Yale University and the University of Missouri are making race relations in the United States worse, a Google Consumer Surveys poll for IJ.com found Thursday. After players on Mizzou’s football team said they would boycott team activities and a graduate student said he would go on a hunger strike until the Missouri system’s president resigned, president Timothy M. Wolfe stepped down from his post on Monday.
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Trouble began around Halloween, after the Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an email asking students to avoid wearing racially insensitive Halloween costumes. What distinguishes the events at Yale and Missouri is the severe disconnect between student protest and administrators’ responses to that protest. Copy may not be in its final form.
By Tuesday Mr Tai had become famous, with national media, including CNN and The Atlantic, as well as the NY Press Club and the National Press Photographers Association noting how well he acquitted himself throughout the confrontation.
In the wake of all this, the Black Student Alliance has developed a list of demands for the school, including mandatory education on race and gender issues, as well as the removal of
Christakis.
More than 600 students protested on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Conn., demanding an end to what they call a longstanding culture of racism at the school. And during Halloween weekend, a black female student accused the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity of denying her entrance to a party that was for “white girls only”, which isn’t the first racist accusation made against the fraternity. Monday’s crowd of a thousand chanted slogans including, “We are unstoppable, another Yale is possible”.
“No matter what type of soldier you are, we’re all in this fight together”, said Ward.
In an open letter, students pointed to such symbols as visible reminders “that Yale’s history is one of exclusion”.
LEX BARLOWE: Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Yeah, so, I think, as you said, there have been specific incidents this past week, week and a half, that have really been very blatant and obvious about the ways in which the Yale community is really not welcoming or hospitable or even safe for students of color-in particular, women of color-on campus. “Universities send email updates about holiday schedules; about weather forecasts”. “We have to respect each other enough to stop yelling at each other and start listening, and quit intimidating each other”.
One student confronted Yale Professor Nicholas Christakis, Erika’s husband and master of the residential college, in a video that has gone viral. Yet you respond not with an apology.
“Your email equates old traditions of using harmful stereotypes and tropes to further degrade marginalized people, to preschoolers playing make believe”, the letter to Christakis reads. “Is it OK if you are eight, but not 18?” That’s all I want. In the email, she said, “As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blonde-haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day…”
When Christakis tries to disagree, the student shouts, “Be quiet!”
Four potentially problematic types of costume were named; “funny”, “historical”, “religious” and “cultural”, with each followed by questions potential party-goers should ask themselves.
“Why did you accept the f***ing position??”
If you watch the student protests against Professor Christakas in a YouTube video posted by FIRE, an organization meant to defend the rights of individuals at college campuses, one student tells Christakas that if he doesn’t want to protect the safety of the campus, he should leave and take another position.
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An effort to censor dissenting views has evolved as a result of a fight over Halloween costumes at Yale.
