Yale students march over concerns of racism

According to Zachary Young, president of the Buckley Program-writing at the Yale Daily News-the disruption at the conference began when a student rushed to the front of the lecture hall during a panel and began taping posters across the wall of the room.

“This recent movement of university students to use administrative procedures to punish speech with which they disagree should be called by its rightful name: proto-fascism”, Barlow wrote in the Harvard Law Record.

One might even see this as the proper role for a university in the 21st century: to teach all its students how to coexist respectfully in an increasingly multicultural world. Copy may not be in its final form. And while students, undergraduate and graduate, definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.

Have there been other racial issues at the school?

After an email from a college administrator, telling them to “look away” if they were offended by racially insensitive Halloween costumes, Yale students have been protesting this week.

A fraternity member of the school’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter allegedly turned away a group of women of color at a Halloween “white girls only” party, according to viral Facebook posts written by Yale student Neema Githere and Columbia University student Sofia Petros-Gouin. Monday’s crowd of a thousand chanted slogans including, “We are unstoppable, another Yale is possible”.

The Missouri protesters’ demands included a strong dose of ideological diktat, such as a mandatory “racial awareness” curriculum for students, faculty and staff. But at least in that case, the protests were in response to racial incidents on campus: a swastika drawn in a bathroom, a rehearsal by black performers being interrupted by a white student shouting racial slurs, allegations of excessive force by campus police toward demonstrators.

“No matter what type of soldier you are, we’re all in this fight together”, said Ward.

Bill Barlow, a third-year law student at Harvard, wrote an op-ed calling certain Yale protesters “fascists”.

LEX BARLOWE: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

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. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. “We have to respect each other enough to stop yelling at each other and start listening, and quit intimidating each other”. You have to wonder what your place is here and what got you to Yale.

Shortly before they departed Harvard several years ago, in a Time op-ed about free speech, the Christakises had criticized College administrators for their response to a controversy involving a flyer that seemed to satirize final clubs and offended a few students. Yet you respond not with an apology. “Is it OK if you are eight, but not 18?” I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes now. You can not go anywhere without hearing about it. There are events about it. There are so many conversations about it. A lot of people want to say, ‘Oh, they’re whining. 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…” Because then, I could just leave if you’re not going to say that. Christakis’ husband, Nicholas Christakis, is master of Silliman, and is responsible for establishing the tone of residential life there.

“What good is the First Amendment when people are shamed for holding dissenting views?” asked Young at Yale.