University of Missouri Football Strike

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

She began her email with "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 take that to mean that her email was prompted by conversations she and her husband had already had with students—conversations that were in turn prompted by the first email.

She then very quickly tied the perspective she was offering, and the questions she was raising, to her own academic field. Then she said:

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.

She acknowledged the valid concerns of others and then offered a different perspective on the conversation, based on her own academic expertise. Seems to me like exactly what it is to be hoped will happen in a university community.

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.

Again, I'm not calling for consequences for her, I just think she is wrong.

Also, this:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-d...eech-diversion

[MysticCat]

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.

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.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

I think that as a student I probably would have interpreted it that way.

Really? You would have thought that an email asking you to be thoughtful about your Halloween costume was the university's attempt to control you?

I don't get any sort of implication that there would be institutional consequences for racism from the original email:

https://www.thefire.org/email-from-i...tural-affairs/

I get that there were students who allegedly complained to Christakis, and she was responding, in part, to that. I really believe that it is her duty, as a professor, an authority figure, and a white person, to help dismantle systems of oppression, and validating those students' complaints does just the opposite.

[33girl]

If my RA said "hai no blackface" that would be a suggestion.

But an email from deans and administrators, yes, I would feel I was being ordered not to do this and resistance would affect my schooling.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

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.

And for what it's worth, when I get a memo from the Greek Life office requiring us to register all parties with them and to disclose whether those parties will indeed involve any racial or national sort of component, that is more than slightly coercive.