Quote:
Originally Posted by DeltaBetaBaby
She created a strawman. The initial email was not a "bureaucratic and administrative" exercise of implied control over college students, and categorizing it as such does, indeed, trivialize it.
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I get that you're not calling for or condoning consequences.
But we'll just have to disagree on whether she was wrong. I don't think she created a strawman at all. I can easily see how students might interpret the email from the Intercultural Affairs Committee—signed by what appear to be 13 administrators or staff members, one of whom is a senior associate dean of the College and five of whom are assistant deans of the College—as an "an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students." I think that as a student I probably would have interpreted it that way.
As for the New Yorker article, I get that claims of "free speech" can be used as a deflection of hard discussions about racism. I don't see that being the case in this email, though.