Yale student screams in anger at professor over halloween costumes (1 Viewer)

[Cliff Clavin]

God i feel terrible for the poor sap that ends up marrying the women.

 

[Tom Skerritt]

We have enforced "zero-tolerance" policies on these kids since they were in kindergarten. Why should they have anything but zero tolerance for anything in life now?

The Coddling of the American Mind

 

[Ilov80s]

We need to get college back to the priorities of the good old days, namely binge drinking and casual sex. Sure, we need to make some adjustments to eliminate the rapeyness, but college these days is starting to sound like a real buzzkill. Do these students have any fun at all?

Students copy/mimic what they see. Kids can't understand "right vs. wrong" or whatever without being shown/taught it. Families tend not to eat dinner together instead putting the tv on and watching that, or the Internet now. Kids copy what they see. Adults are more to blame than the kids.

It's one girl screaming. People trying to make her representative of a whole generation are just officially at grandpa status.

 

[Thunderlips]

I don't know if the girl has a point or not. Where I think she (and many millenials) lose the argument..irregardless of their position is in their use of profanity.

 

[pollardsvision]

What's offensive is a 2-page thread about college students and halloween costumes and no pics.

4,2, 1,3

 

[CowboysFromHell]

Weird how college campuses have swung so far away from the bastions of liberalism that they were in my day.

 

[McGarnicle]

God i feel terrible for the poor sap that ends up marrying the women.

It's not like the hunger games, technically no one has to marry her.

 

[Hang 10]

We need to get college back to the priorities of the good old days, namely binge drinking and casual sex. Sure, we need to make some adjustments to eliminate the rapeyness, but college these days is starting to sound like a real buzzkill. Do these students have any fun at all?

Students copy/mimic what they see. Kids can't understand "right vs. wrong" or whatever without being shown/taught it. Families tend not to eat dinner together instead putting the tv on and watching that, or the Internet now. Kids copy what they see. Adults are more to blame than the kids.

It's one girl screaming. People trying to make her representative of a whole generation are just officially at grandpa status.

You denying that kids are ####### these days?

 

[GoFishTN]

We need to get college back to the priorities of the good old days, namely binge drinking and casual sex. Sure, we need to make some adjustments to eliminate the rapeyness, but college these days is starting to sound like a real buzzkill. Do these students have any fun at all?

Students copy/mimic what they see. Kids can't understand "right vs. wrong" or whatever without being shown/taught it. Families tend not to eat dinner together instead putting the tv on and watching that, or the Internet now. Kids copy what they see. Adults are more to blame than the kids.

It's one girl screaming. People trying to make her representative of a whole generation are just officially at grandpa status.

There's more videos and the rest of them are just as ridiculous, if not as abrasive.

 

[Mjolnirs]

people that aren't interested in debate, ideas, or democracy, they are simply about control. If you can scream at someone and claim that they are somehow threatening you, you don't have to make an actual argument. And sadly enough, many many universities and companies have rolled right over and given them their way.

Loudest person is always right

 

[Hang 10]

What amazes me is the guy just takes it. No wonder these babies feel so empowered.

 

[Cliff Clavin]

God i feel terrible for the poor sap that ends up marrying the women.

It's not like the hunger games, technically no one has to marry her.

True but she'll hide the crazy long enough to suck some poor guy in.

 

[Ilov80s]

We need to get college back to the priorities of the good old days, namely binge drinking and casual sex. Sure, we need to make some adjustments to eliminate the rapeyness, but college these days is starting to sound like a real buzzkill. Do these students have any fun at all?

Students copy/mimic what they see. Kids can't understand "right vs. wrong" or whatever without being shown/taught it. Families tend not to eat dinner together instead putting the tv on and watching that, or the Internet now. Kids copy what they see. Adults are more to blame than the kids.

It's one girl screaming. People trying to make her representative of a whole generation are just officially at grandpa status.

You denying that kids are ####### these days?

Not sure what word you are using so I don't really know how to respond.

 

[Sweet J]

How is this person going to navigate ordinary life when she's not capable of handing a disagreement over something trivial without completely flipping out?

Seriously. I just read up on this. So the university dean sends out an email telling students not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. A female professor and her husband who is the head of a residence hall respond with a suggestion that costume choices be a personal decision and not subject to university regulation, and that students instead discuss their reactions to any particular costume. In response, STUDENTS LOSE THEIR FREAKING ####, are demanding the faculty members' resignations and are stating that they no longer feel safe living in the residence.

:slapsforehead:

This is kind of an interesting issue, and it probably turns on the history of that particular residence hall. It's probably a case where one side or the other could be "right" based on what, exactly, has gone one.

For example, if this residence hall has a history of racism/misogyny, and also a history of bullying behavior (for example, frats wearing blackface on holloween and then shouting down, ridiculing, or bullying objectors), then is it really appropriate to ask the offended party to try and work it out with the offender?

But it also could be entitled brats used to getting their way.

Whatever it is, I'm kind of fascinated.

 

[Tom Skerritt]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

 

[Ilov80s]

How is this person going to navigate ordinary life when she's not capable of handing a disagreement over something trivial without completely flipping out?

Seriously. I just read up on this. So the university dean sends out an email telling students not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. A female professor and her husband who is the head of a residence hall respond with a suggestion that costume choices be a personal decision and not subject to university regulation, and that students instead discuss their reactions to any particular costume. In response, STUDENTS LOSE THEIR FREAKING ####, are demanding the faculty members' resignations and are stating that they no longer feel safe living in the residence.

:slapsforehead:

This is kind of an interesting issue, and it probably turns on the history of that particular residence hall. It's probably a case where one side or the other could be "right" based on what, exactly, has gone one.

For example, if this residence hall has a history of racism/misogyny, and also a history of bullying behavior (for example, frats wearing blackface on holloween and then shouting down, ridiculing, or bullying objectors), then is it really appropriate to ask the offended party to try and work it out with the offender?

But it also could be entitled brats used to getting their way.

Whatever it is, I'm kind of fascinated.

A lot of the most recent anger started over the week before when a frat that has been connected nationally to very blatant racism held a party and supposedly made it "white girls only". This spurred a lot of people to share their stories of being harassed regularly on campus.

 

[Thunderlips]

Weird how college campuses have swung so far away from the bastions of liberalism that they were in my day.

I don't think it's quite as much about swinging away from liberalism as it is a change in the college industries from a place of learning to that of a service industry......and if it's a service industry; then there's an ingrained idea in our population that "the customer is always right". She's the customer. She's unhappy. She's going to vent. Colleges (at least those interested in legitimate teaching) find themselves held hostage by the same people to whom they provide a service.

 

[Jayrok]

What is she upset about?

 

[Ilov80s]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

 

[bigbottom]

How is this person going to navigate ordinary life when she's not capable of handing a disagreement over something trivial without completely flipping out?

Seriously. I just read up on this. So the university dean sends out an email telling students not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. A female professor and her husband who is the head of a residence hall respond with a suggestion that costume choices be a personal decision and not subject to university regulation, and that students instead discuss their reactions to any particular costume. In response, STUDENTS LOSE THEIR FREAKING ####, are demanding the faculty members' resignations and are stating that they no longer feel safe living in the residence.:slapsforehead:

This is kind of an interesting issue, and it probably turns on the history of that particular residence hall. It's probably a case where one side or the other could be "right" based on what, exactly, has gone one.

For example, if this residence hall has a history of racism/misogyny, and also a history of bullying behavior (for example, frats wearing blackface on holloween and then shouting down, ridiculing, or bullying objectors), then is it really appropriate to ask the offended party to try and work it out with the offender?

But it also could be entitled brats used to getting their way.

Whatever it is, I'm kind of fascinated.

Yeah, there could very well be more going on here.

 

[Mario Kart]

Weird how college campuses have swung so far away from the bastions of liberalism that they were in my day.

I don't think it's quite as much about swinging away from liberalism as it is a change in the college industries from a place of learning to that of a service industry......and if it's a service industry; then there's an ingrained idea in our population that "the customer is always right". She's the customer. She's unhappy. She's going to vent. Colleges (at least those interested in legitimate teaching) find themselves held hostage by the same people to whom they provide a service.

This statement is sick, not because it is disgusting but in fact it is disgusting but because that is the country we live in now. Too many people see education as a service when it is the furthest thing from a service. History has taught us too much about education and people actually having it as to how important it is. The education system is screwed up because policies have made it that way... and that is disgusting.

As far as Wisconsin goes... screw the Republican legislature cause they have screwed up education greatly.

 

[Hang 10]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

 

[Ilov80s]

What is she upset about?

One department at Yale sent a mass email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes and that things like blackface or mocking another religion or culture would offend other students. The head of a residence hall mass emailed back disagreeing with the email. I think it is a case where all sides are misunderstood. Yale isn't regulating costumes and this school employee isn't advocating students wearing blackface or mocking Muslims. However, it seems like people on both sides jumped too extreme conclusions.

 

[Ilov80s]

Weird how college campuses have swung so far away from the bastions of liberalism that they were in my day.

I don't think it's quite as much about swinging away from liberalism as it is a change in the college industries from a place of learning to that of a service industry......and if it's a service industry; then there's an ingrained idea in our population that "the customer is always right". She's the customer. She's unhappy. She's going to vent. Colleges (at least those interested in legitimate teaching) find themselves held hostage by the same people to whom they provide a service.

This statement is sick, not because it is disgusting but in fact it is disgusting but because that is the country we live in now. Too many people see education as a service when it is the furthest thing from a service. History has taught us too much about education and people actually having it as to how important it is. The education system is screwed up because policies have made it that way... and that is disgusting.

As far as Wisconsin goes... screw the Republican legislature cause they have screwed up education greatly.

Education absolutely is a service industry now. Charter scools and school of choice have brought out this very negative unintended consequence. If you want a successful school, make it easy, let the kids do whatever they want, pass out inflated grades.

 

[Hang 10]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

 

[Ilov80s]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

The school wasn't telling anyone what to wear.

 

[msommer]

I don't know if the girl has a point or not. Where I think she (and many millenials) lose the argument..irregardless of their position is in their use of profanity.

But bad grammar loses moral high ground

 

[Guest]

How is this person going to navigate ordinary life when she's not capable of handing a disagreement over something trivial without completely flipping out?

Seriously. I just read up on this. So the university dean sends out an email telling students not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. A female professor and her husband who is the head of a residence hall respond with a suggestion that costume choices be a personal decision and not subject to university regulation, and that students instead discuss their reactions to any particular costume. In response, STUDENTS LOSE THEIR FREAKING ####, are demanding the faculty members' resignations and are stating that they no longer feel safe living in the residence. :slapsforehead:

This is just one piece of a long series of racial issues at the school and that hall. There are a lot of students at Yale that feel racism and sexism is accepted and promoted from the top down.

Maturation is a process. It is not an edict. Social media and 24 hour ubiquitous news has amounted to a police state that immediately strikes down independent thinkers and independent expression. It's dangerous. Conform or die, essentially.

 

[msommer]

God i feel terrible for the poor sap that ends up marrying the women.

It's not like the hunger games, technically no one has to marry her.

She could go to China and do a reverse Johnnycakes, though...

 

[msommer]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

tl;dr

 

[Hang 10]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

The school wasn't telling anyone what to wear.

Right, they were telling them what not to wear.

 

[Buzzbait]

Probably that time of the month imo

Yeah, I'm sure she's much better the rest of the month.

 

[GoFishTN]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

The school wasn't telling anyone what to wear.

Right, they were telling them what not to wear.

Pretty much. The email points to a pinterest board which has links to "costumes to avoid".

 

[Guest]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. Ive 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, weve 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 dont 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 blonde­haired childs 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 arent a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I dont 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 dont, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I cant defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? Ive 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 Ill note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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 dont 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

tl;dr

It's an email that seems afraid to make its point, because it's audience is so coiled and ready to interpret any word in its most offensive form. So it reads as distant and intellectual. Really what it should say is, "Lighten up, Francis. It's Halloween."

 

[Ilov80s]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

The school wasn't telling anyone what to wear.

Right, they were telling them what not to wear.

No. They were asking people to think about their costume choices and be respectful of their fellow students.

Yale is a community that values free expression as well as inclusivity. 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.

 

[Ilov80s]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

The school wasn't telling anyone what to wear.

Right, they were telling them what not to wear.

Pretty much. The email points to a pinterest board which has links to "costumes to avoid".

There are no rules from the school on what to wear. They are offering suggestions and some guidance to help students make their own decisions.

 

[Hang 10]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

The school wasn't telling anyone what to wear.

Right, they were telling them what not to wear.

No. They were asking people to think about their costume choices and be respectful of their fellow students.

Yale is a community that values free expression as well as inclusivity. 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.

Yeah, I'm not seeing much of a distinction.

 

[bakes]

Should have tossed her a pacifier after that rant.

 

[Thunderlips]

I don't know if the girl has a point or not. Where I think she (and many millenials) lose the argument..irregardless of their position is in their use of profanity.

But bad grammar loses moral high ground

Thank you, Mrs. Young.

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

We need to get college back to the priorities of the good old days, namely binge drinking and casual sex. Sure, we need to make some adjustments to eliminate the rapeyness, but college these days is starting to sound like a real buzzkill. Do these students have any fun at all?

Students copy/mimic what they see. Kids can't understand "right vs. wrong" or whatever without being shown/taught it. Families tend not to eat dinner together instead putting the tv on and watching that, or the Internet now. Kids copy what they see. Adults are more to blame than the kids.

It's one girl screaming. People trying to make her representative of a whole generation are just officially at grandpa status.

You denying that kids are ####### these days?

He's right.

 

[Mario Kart]

Weird how college campuses have swung so far away from the bastions of liberalism that they were in my day.

I don't think it's quite as much about swinging away from liberalism as it is a change in the college industries from a place of learning to that of a service industry......and if it's a service industry; then there's an ingrained idea in our population that "the customer is always right". She's the customer. She's unhappy. She's going to vent. Colleges (at least those interested in legitimate teaching) find themselves held hostage by the same people to whom they provide a service.

This statement is sick, not because it is disgusting but in fact it is disgusting but because that is the country we live in now. Too many people see education as a service when it is the furthest thing from a service. History has taught us too much about education and people actually having it as to how important it is. The education system is screwed up because policies have made it that way... and that is disgusting.As far as Wisconsin goes... screw the Republican legislature cause they have screwed up education greatly.

Education absolutely is a service industry now. Charter scools and school of choice have brought out this very negative unintended consequence. If you want a successful school, make it easy, let the kids do whatever they want, pass out inflated grades.

I think that was a knowing consequence of "charter schools" and "choice schools" though. The illusion is people still have an opportunity but many are given a crappy opportunity in those two types of schools. (Not saying all charters/choice are bad schools but...) The ultimate goal has been to lessen public education so the state (government in this sense) doesn't have to pay for education. When, in fact, an educating populace is a great thing for society as a whole. Unfortunately, many don't see it that way. To even think that education should be a service is downright disgusting.

 

[GoFishTN]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

The school wasn't telling anyone what to wear.

Right, they were telling them what not to wear.

Pretty much. The email points to a pinterest board which has links to "costumes to avoid".

There are no rules from the school on what to wear. They are offering suggestions and some guidance to help students make their own decisions.

If it's so innocuous, why is that chick flipping her lid when someone questioned it?

 

[bakes]

Hot costume next year: dress up as her and start screaming at everything. Trees, squirrels, the moon...

 

[Hang 10]

We need to get college back to the priorities of the good old days, namely binge drinking and casual sex. Sure, we need to make some adjustments to eliminate the rapeyness, but college these days is starting to sound like a real buzzkill. Do these students have any fun at all?

Students copy/mimic what they see. Kids can't understand "right vs. wrong" or whatever without being shown/taught it. Families tend not to eat dinner together instead putting the tv on and watching that, or the Internet now. Kids copy what they see. Adults are more to blame than the kids.

It's one girl screaming. People trying to make her representative of a whole generation are just officially at grandpa status.

You denying that kids are ####### these days?

He's right.

I definitely wont argue grandpa status with a grandpa.

 

[Buzzbait]

How is this person going to navigate ordinary life when she's not capable of handing a disagreement over something trivial without completely flipping out?

Seriously. I just read up on this. So the university dean sends out an email telling students not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. A female professor and her husband who is the head of a residence hall respond with a suggestion that costume choices be a personal decision and not subject to university regulation, and that students instead discuss their reactions to any particular costume. In response, STUDENTS LOSE THEIR FREAKING ####, are demanding the faculty members' resignations and are stating that they no longer feel safe living in the residence. :slapsforehead:

This is just one piece of a long series of racial issues at the school and that hall. There are a lot of students at Yale that feel racism and sexism is accepted and promoted from the top down.

So you support her response? I appreciate the added insite but despite the added history you mention I don't think it's directly relevant. Her response is completely ridiculous to say the least.

 

[EYLive]

America: Land of the free and the home of the BLOUSES.

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

We need to get college back to the priorities of the good old days, namely binge drinking and casual sex. Sure, we need to make some adjustments to eliminate the rapeyness, but college these days is starting to sound like a real buzzkill. Do these students have any fun at all?

Students copy/mimic what they see. Kids can't understand "right vs. wrong" or whatever without being shown/taught it. Families tend not to eat dinner together instead putting the tv on and watching that, or the Internet now. Kids copy what they see. Adults are more to blame than the kids.

It's one girl screaming. People trying to make her representative of a whole generation are just officially at grandpa status.

You denying that kids are ####### these days?

He's right.

I definitely wont argue grandpa status with a grandpa.

Damn. Which wing in the burn center located in?

 

[Guest]

We need to get college back to the priorities of the good old days, namely binge drinking and casual sex. Sure, we need to make some adjustments to eliminate the rapeyness, but college these days is starting to sound like a real buzzkill. Do these students have any fun at all?

Students copy/mimic what they see. Kids can't understand "right vs. wrong" or whatever without being shown/taught it. Families tend not to eat dinner together instead putting the tv on and watching that, or the Internet now. Kids Lcopy what they see. Adults are more to blame than the kids.

It's one girl screaming. People trying to make her representative of a whole generation are just officially at grandpa status.

You denying that kids are ####### these days?

He's right.

I definitely wont argue grandpa status with a grandpa.

She represents a mob calling not just for one person to be fired for expressing a (rather innocuous) opinion, but for her husband to be fired too for supporting his wife.And she represents inability to fathom that she isn't getting her way, especially when it even vaguely involves a race or gender issue.

Pretty much the face of Millennials. Yes.

:getoffmylawn:

 

[Ilov80s]

This is the email from Erika Christakis that these students are in an uproar about

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 Halloween­wear. 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 blonde­haired 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 skin­revealing 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 self­censure, 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

I don't understand the point of this email. Yale didn't ban anything. Yale isn't regulating costumes. One department from Yale just sent out an email asking students to be thoughtful about their costumes.

Seemed pretty clear to me. Wear whatever costume you want. It's not the schools place to tell you otherwise.

The school wasn't telling anyone what to wear.

Right, they were telling them what not to wear.

Pretty much. The email points to a pinterest board which has links to "costumes to avoid".

There are no rules from the school on what to wear. They are offering suggestions and some guidance to help students make their own decisions.

If it's so innocuous, why is that chick flipping her lid when someone questioned it?

We are dealing with a lot of people who are overreacting. She is looking at it like this:

School: Please be respectful of your fellow students when dressing up for Halloween.

Master of hall: Don't worry about being respectful. If someone doesn't like it they can ignore it.

Her thought process is likely that this guy is in charge of a diverse living place and his job is partly to make people feel comfortable and at home. She feels his response that people shouldn't worry about being respectful of others and those minorities that might be offended should just ignore it is not creating a welcoming environment for many of the people he is responsible too.

 

[Ilov80s]

How is this person going to navigate ordinary life when she's not capable of handing a disagreement over something trivial without completely flipping out?

Seriously. I just read up on this. So the university dean sends out an email telling students not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. A female professor and her husband who is the head of a residence hall respond with a suggestion that costume choices be a personal decision and not subject to university regulation, and that students instead discuss their reactions to any particular costume. In response, STUDENTS LOSE THEIR FREAKING ####, are demanding the faculty members' resignations and are stating that they no longer feel safe living in the residence.:slapsforehead:

This is just one piece of a long series of racial issues at the school and that hall. There are a lot of students at Yale that feel racism and sexism is accepted and promoted from the top down.

So you support her response? I appreciate the added insite but despite the added history you mention I don't think it's directly relevant. Her response is completely ridiculous to say the least.

No, she is behaving like a toddler.