Telling people that they are perenially oppressed when they are not and that they have the right not to be offended can cause mental health problems, and it also makes them less prepared for life after college. What would the students do if asked to read something by Charles Murray or Heather MacDonald?
Yale’s Halloween Advice Stokes a Racially Charged DebateBy LIAM STACK
New York Times
November 8, 2015
The debate over Halloween costumes began late last month when the university’s Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an email to the student body asking students to avoid wearing “culturally unaware and insensitive” costumes that could offend minority students. It specifically advised them to steer clear of outfits that included elements like feathered headdresses, turbans or blackface.
In response, Erika Christakis, a faculty member and an administrator at a student residence, wrote an email to students living in her residence hall on behalf of those she described as “frustrated” by the official advice on Halloween costumes. Students should be able to wear whatever they want, she wrote, even if they end up offending people.
Erika Christakis left Yale because of the strident reaction to her email, as she explains in a recent essay. I would have reservations about sending a child to Yale. It appear that unpopular views are not argued against but shouted down.
My Halloween email led to a campus firestorm — and a troubling lesson about self-censorship Washington Post
October 28, 2016
The right to speak freely may be enshrined in some of our nation’s great universities, but the culture of listening needs repair. That is the lesson I learned a year ago, when I sent an email urging Yale University students to think critically about an official set of guidelines on costumes to avoid at Halloween.
I had hoped to generate a reflective conversation among students: What happens when one person’s offense is another person’s pride? Should a costume-wearer’s intent or context matter? Can we always tell the difference between a mocking costume and one that satirizes ignorance? In what circumstances should we allow — or punish — youthful transgression?
“I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation,” I wrote, in part. “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.”
