Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email controver

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Indy
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Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email controver

Post by Indy »

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/ ... ontroversy

A white Ivy League lecturer has resigned following an uproar over an email she sent in October suggesting students should have the freedom to wear whatever Halloween costumes they like, including those that may be culturally insensitive.

Is this as crazy as it sounds? Are kids this crazy now (and apologies to Dan for saying he was nuts when he said this a couple months ago).

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Nodack
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Re: Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email contr

Post by Nodack »

Ms. Christakis’s email was sent in response to statement made by Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee, which suggested students should not don costumes depicting Native Americans, Asians, and African Americans that could offend fellow students.

Following this guideline was probably a good idea. The teacher basically said don't listen to these guidelines and do what you want because it's free speech. It is free speech for a white guy to dress as a black guy or an indian, just not very nice. Also not nice to dress like Hitler or the KKK but perfectly legal.

The teacher tried to stand up for free speech and wrote the email to counter what the school put out as a guideline basically giving the middle finger to the school who employs her. I can see both sides. People complained about the email she sent and people stuck up for her as well. They offered her her job back too it sounds.

Are we too sensitive now and are we crushing free speech? I guess it depends on who you talk to. Millions of Americans hate Obama and make fun of him and his race all the time in the meanest most disrespectful ways imaginable. Saying it from home on the internet is different from being a CEO and saying it on the job in front of a mic. Being in a public position of trust and saying or doing those types of things opens yourself up to trouble because you are representing a group, company or school when you say it. Those places don't like it when employees take it upon themselves to make policy for the school or company without their approval.

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Mori Chu
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Re: Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email contr

Post by Mori Chu »

Not worth getting fired over.

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Indy
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Re: Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email contr

Post by Indy »

The teacher basically said don't listen to these guidelines and do what you want because it's free speech.
That is not what she said. She said that you should use your best judgement in choosing your costumes, but she wasn't going to come out and provide a list of all things that are offensive to someone and say you can't wear it. You could literally find an excuse to be offended by nearly every single Halloween costume.

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Indy
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Re: Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email contr

Post by Indy »

From: Erika Christakis
Date: Friday, October 30, 2015
Subject: Dressing Yourselves
To: "All Silliman Students and Admin."

Dear Sillimanders:

Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween-wear. I’ve always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may be aware, I teach a class on “The Concept of the Problem Child,” and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween – traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people – is also an occasion for adults to exert their control.

When I was young, adults were freaked out by the specter of Halloween candy poisoned by lunatics, or spiked with razor blades (despite the absence of a single recorded case of such an event). Now, we’ve grown to fear the sugary candy itself. And this year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween.

I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. 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.

It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue “signalling.” But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.

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. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. 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. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.

Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? I’ve always been a good mimic and I enjoy accents. I love to travel, too, and have been to every continent but Antarctica. When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others’ cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.

Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people's capacity – in your capacity - to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you? We tend to view this shift from individual to institutional agency as a tradeoff between libertarian vs. liberal values (“liberal” in the American, not European sense of the word).

Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.

But – again, speaking as a child development specialist – I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?

In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It's not mine, I know that.

Happy Halloween.

Yours sincerely,

Erika

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pickle
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Re: Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email contr

Post by pickle »

This is a very well written letter. Why was there any uproar over this...? What was the controversy?

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Indy
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Re: Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email contr

Post by Indy »

That she didn't tell people in her dorm to not wear offensive costumes... it is so stupid.

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Re: Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email contr

Post by LazarusLong »

For more about a disturbing trend on college campuses, read "The Coddling of the American Mind" from the Atlantic Monthly.

"In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health..."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nd/399356/
Window is open again ... blue skies ahead?

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Indy
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Re: Yale lecturer resigns over Halloween costume email contr

Post by Indy »

LazarusLong wrote:For more about a disturbing trend on college campuses, read "The Coddling of the American Mind" from the Atlantic Monthly.

"In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health..."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nd/399356/
Generation Xers are doing a bad job raising millennials.

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