Yale Students protest against Professor's Halloween Email
Quote:
Tensions at Yale University hit a boiling point yesterday after an email about Halloween costumes created a week-long controversy on campus.
Students called for the resignation of Associate Master of Silliman College Erika Christakis after she responded to an email from the school’s Intercultural Affairs Council asking students to be thoughtful about the cultural implications of their Halloween costumes. According to The Washington Post, students are also calling for the resignation of her husband, Master of Silliman College, Nicholas Christakis, who defended her statement.
The Email:
Quote:
Dear Sillimanders:
Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween*wear. I’ve always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may be aware, I teach a class on “The Concept of the Problem Child,” and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween – traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people – is also an occasion for adults to exert their control.
When I was young, adults were freaked out by the specter of Halloween candy poisoned by lunatics, or spiked with razor blades (despite the absence of a single recorded case of such an event). Now, we’ve grown to fear the sugary candy itself. And this year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween. I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.
It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue “signalling.” But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.
As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blonde*haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.
Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? I’ve always been a good mimic and I enjoy accents. I love to travel, too, and have been to every continent but Antarctica. When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others’ cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.
Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin*revealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience;increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people's capacity – in your capacity to exercise self*censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you? We tend to view this shift from individual to institutional agency as a tradeoff between libertarian vs. liberal values (“liberal” in the American, not European sense of the word).
Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.
But – again, speaking as a child development specialist – I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?
In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It's not mine, I know that.
Happy Halloween.
I read the email posted and honestly the person was respectful and gave good points, even if you disagree, he doesn't come across as bitter or authoritarian
With that said students are welcome to argue otherwise
I read the email posted and honestly the person was respectful and gave good points, even if you disagree, he doesn't come across as bitter or authoritarian
With that said students are welcome to argue otherwise
Agreed, everyone should be allow to express how they feel. The email was very well written and it wasn't offensive. The man in the videos is actually the professors husband. People are requesting that both of them be fired for the email though
I don't see how this email has destroyed their "safe space". Free speech is a weird thing, huh?
As someone who is very liberal and progressive and goes to a good "name" school like Yale, I just want to say UGHHHHH.
I'm all for being respectful of other cultures and I understand the cultural appropriation argument, but these students need to have SEVERAL seats. It's not the professor was suggesting people wear black face. The email was very well written and insightful.
Honestly Obama was right about the growing sense of entitlement emerging in liberal college students. It's either the liberal way of thinking or your racist/sexist/homophobic/hate immigrants etc.
(And again I say this as someone who is liberal). Honestly half of my conservative friends can't even voice a different opinion on my campus w/o 10 people jumping down their throats.
I don't necessarily agree with the email, but asking them to resign is too much.
They're wrong to think that dressing as a character can't be appropriation. It absolutely can be. A movie that was written, directed, and voiced by a bunch of white people about a culture they're not familiar with or understand is appropriating in and of itself. Am I gonna blame a young kid for wanting to dress up as a character of their fantasies? Of course not. Children don't have the capacity to understand the complexity of appropriation and it's implications, and it's up to the parents to eventually take on the responsibility of teaching. However, grown ass college students should know that their "sexy native american" costumes are not okay. I thought we all agreed that Blackface is not okay, but apparently not because we had many people in blackface this year. Geisha is not okay either. Sexy gypsy, "Arab" costumes, and "Mexican" costumes aren't okay as well.
And before anyone comes in with the "It's cultural appreciation, not appropriation" bulIshit; how funny that the one night of the year that you pick to "celebrate" other cultures is the same night that people dress up as fictional characters and legends in order to get a spook or a laugh out of people.
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.
Is this guy for real?
He's a college level teacher but doesn't know what a straw man and slippery slope fallacy is? This entire email is disingenuous.
I read the email posted and honestly the person was respectful and gave good points, even if you disagree, he doesn't come across as bitter or authoritarian
With that said students are welcome to argue otherwise
Agreed. I was coming in here expecting to read a cringeworthy email related to this but... honestly, this is too much. The person made some genuine valid points and was respectful.
Really... it's just the "activists" who are in the wrong here. And yeah, I agree with the people saying HOW will they function in the real world? You run into a lot worse than that
I don't necessarily agree with the email, but asking them to resign is too much.
They're wrong to think that dressing as a character can't be appropriation. It absolutely can be. A movie that was written, directed, and voiced by a bunch of white people about a culture they're not familiar with or understand is appropriating in and of itself. Am I gonna blame a young kid for wanting to dress up as a character of their fantasies? Of course not. Children don't have the capacity to understand the complexity of appropriation and it's implications, and it's up to the parents to eventually take on the responsibility of teaching. However, grown ass college students should know that their "sexy native american" costumes are not okay. I thought we all agreed that Blackface is not okay, but apparently not because we had many people in blackface this year. Geisha is not okay either. Sexy gypsy, "Arab" costumes, and "Mexican" costumes aren't okay as well.
And before anyone comes in with the "It's cultural appreciation, not appropriation" bulIshit; how funny that the one night of the year that you pick to "celebrate" other cultures is the same night that people dress up as fictional characters and legends in order to get a spook or a laugh out of people.
What your describing aren't specific characters, though. It's turning the actual culture or race into a costume. That's comparable to going dressed up as "an American" or "a Christian" or "a Muslim." (And yeah, obviously people should know better than to do THAT) Though the person does make some valid points about how you can't force ignorant people not to be ignorant and you're better off calling them on it, and about how different people have different standards for what is and isn't "offensive" and, due to freedom of expression, you can't limit Halloween costumes based on anyone's one definition.
That said, I think one of the points was more that like... a white girl dressing up as Mulan (a very specific character she presumably admires) isn't any more offensive than an Asian girl dressing up as Belle or Sleeping Beauty (that is to say, not offensive at all) There is a fundamental difference between that and between dressing as "Sexy Native American"
SJWs are literally the pits.
