 |
||
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
Comment on this article The words “nigger school” spray-painted on a Pierson College wall, and “drama fags” on the University Theatre. Students costumed in blackface for Halloween. Fraternity brothers posing for a photo with a sign saying “We Love Yale Sluts.” A swastika, in snow, swabbed onto a tree trunk on the Old Campus. An unusual spate of degrading speech and expression broke out on campus over the past year, causing the university to ask itself whether such acts are thoughtless pranks or signs of lingering prejudice. The incidents have roused the attention of administrators and activists alike, and student groups are clamoring for new university action to address hate speech. After an earlier string of incidents last year, students from Yale’s ethnic cultural houses and several other groups on campus banded together to form an umbrella organization called the Coalition for Campus Unity, or CCU. The group reached out to administrators to discuss the incidents, resulting in a new requirement for incoming freshmen to read Beverly Tatum’s book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and to participate in discussions about racial sensitivity. Yale College dean of student affairs Marichal Gentry says the college plans to set up an Intercultural Affairs Council (IAC) that will promote awareness of the need for intercultural sensitivity. In addition, over the past year, the Graduate School and the college dean’s office organized four public faculty-led panel discussions on the history, politics, sociology, and psychology of hate. CCU has also proposed a new grievance board that would hear complaints about offensive speech. CCU member Robert Szykowny '08 says students currently don’t know where to go for help, and “people are intimidated.” Gentry says the IAC planners are considering the CCU proposal, but he adds that the college has existing student complaint procedures for cases of harassment or discrimination. He says the IAC will help promote awareness of the existing grievance policy. But Yale has not indicated that it will back away from the Woodward Report, a 1975 document on free expression that was adopted as official university policy. That report defends “the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” Meanwhile, the campus is left wondering why the number of such incidents has climbed over the past year or two. No one has a conclusive explanation, though Marianne LaFrance, a professor of psychology and women’s and gender studies who spoke on one of the four panels about hate, suggests that the rash of recent incidents may be part of a copycat pattern encouraged by the “hothouse atmosphere” of a college campus. She notes that, even if they were intended as jokes, such incidents can have serious effects on members of the target groups. And “one of the best ways to actually quiet or silence people who have been hurt or ridiculed by humor is to say, ‘Oh please, it was just a joke.’” This explanation rings true to CCU member Thomas Meyer '11, who says that as a freshman, he has been surprised by the volume of offensive incidents over the past year. “I think part of it is the very fact that this campus is considered so liberal, so tolerant,” Meyer says. “They're not constantly thinking of Yale as a place where bigotry happens. So doing something like that might seem okay—might seem funny, at the time.” Fifty to a hundred years ago, it was common and more or less acceptable to attribute unfavorable characteristics to groups, as in “All Blacks, Italians, Irish, Catholics, Jews, Females are this or that” and to use insulting terms while referring to these groups. Happily, such practices are no longer tolerated. While isolated episodes exist, they are almost universally condemned, and more important, rarely involve bodily harm, and are certainly without force in the workplace or education. In our enlightened modern age, we have also made the discovery that all of the very bright men and women chosen for Yale can be categorized as obtuse clods requiring sensitivity training before being allowed to enter our community of scholars. Progress, indeed.
|
Campus Clips Personnel records from the Yale Police Department will be released in accordance with a ruling by the state’s Freedom of Information Commission, the university announced in April. Yale had previously argued that, although its police are sworn in as New Haven officers and have arrest powers in the city, they are not bound by open-records laws. (For more, see “Lux et Privacy,” March/April.) But the university decided not to appeal the commission’s ruling, saying it recognizes “the unique and public law enforcement role that its officers play in the City of New Haven.” Yale’s engineering departments just got a promotion: the university announced in April that it is reorganizing them as the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Engineering was a separate school at Yale until the 1960s, when it was absorbed into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). FAS will continue to direct the awarding of degrees and the appointment of faculty in engineering. The admissions rate for the Yale College Class of 2012 represents a new low: 8.3 percent, or 1,892 of the 22,813 students who applied. The Graduate School also had an extremely competitive year: about 7,800 applicants competed for 480 places in PhD programs. The medical school, following the lead of Yale College (Light & Verity, March/April), is extending more financial aid to middle-income families. Beginning next year, families earning less than $100,000 a year will be exempt from the requirement that parents contribute. The previous cutoff was $45,000 a year. A student who was arrested last summer for having illegal weapons in his off-campus room in a fraternity house (Light & Verity, September/ October) pleaded no contest in March and is now serving a one-year prison sentence. David Light '09 is under administrative suspension from Yale. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
||
©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
||