Why are all of you young men and women allowing this to happen? Why aren't YOU protecting the ones that are being Bullied?
http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/15/watch-a-mob-of-yale-students-bully-a-professor-who-hurt-their-feelings/
(read the LAST paragraph )
'I want your job to be taken from you,' shouts a student. 'Let
us define our own experiences,' another student says. 'Let us tell you if
you're being racist.'
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September 15, 2016
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now you’ve probably seen this video from last fall in which a
Yale student screams at a professor, insisting that a college campus ought not
be an intellectual space, but a space to make students feel safe and at home.
Now, newly resurfaced videos show what happened just
before the aforementioned altercation took place.
“You
should not sleep at night!” a female student shrieks at Yale sociology
professor Nicholas Christakis in that video which has since gone viral. “You’re
disgusting!”
To recap, her cries are in objection to an email Nicholas Christakis’s
wife, Erika Christakis (who is also a professor at Yale), sent to the student
body last fall in response to the administration’s insistence that students
ought to avoid dressing up for Halloween in ways that could be “culturally
unaware or insensitive.”
“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?” Erika wrote. “What does this debate about
Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?
Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not
mine, I know that.”
The
email spurred a firestorm of outrage from the student body — particularly among
minority students living and attending classes at Yale’s Silliman College where
the Christakises served as “master” and “associate master,” a title
for professors who reside at one of Yale’s colleges and are responsible for its
academic and social life. The title has since been changed to “head of college” in the wake of last year’s protests, as many
students thought the term was racist.
In response to the email, a mob of nearly 100 students from
Silliman College surround Nicholas and took turns berating and screaming
at him — demanding an apology for saying things that hurt their feelings. One
of these exchanges between Nicholas and these students is what resulted in
that 1:20-minute-long video that got so much attention last year.
This
week, Tablet Magazine’s James Kirchick wrote
about the incident and included four videos capturing the exchange, which he
obtained from a source at Yale. Altogether, the footage is nearly 25
minutes long — during which Nicholas manages to keep his cool in an attempt to
rationally discuss his wife’s email with a cluster of impassioned students. The
scene is chaotic — students verbally attack Nicholas, demanding he apologize
for his wife’s “racist” comments. Ultimately, he does not decry the content of
Erika’s email, but he emphatically and repeatedly apologizes for any pain her
words caused.
The
first female student he speaks to individually, whom he calls on after noting
that she had her hand raised, demands that he call her by her name before she
will speak to him.
“Sorry,
what’s my name first?” she says with a smirk.
“See, that’s the thing, I have over 500 students,” Nicholas says.
“I
was in your class freshman year,” she continues. “You were my sophomore year
advisor. . . I live here, I eat in the dinning hall for all three meals. And
you should know my name. My name is Mikayla.”
She
goes on to demand an apology for the email and during their exchange, another
student who identifies herself as Lisa interjects before eventually storming
off in tears.
“So then apologize!” she screams before bursting into tears. “I don’t
understand the issue!” Lisa says between sobs.
“First
of all, I would like to apologize for hurting your feelings,” he said. “In addition
I will acknowledge that comes from a very deep and legitimate source of
complaint. I understand it. I understand to the extent that I can some of the
struggles that many of you have had.”
This
apology did not satisfy this group of students who demanded he call wife’s
words racist.
“Let
us define our own experiences,” a student says. “Let us tell you if you’re
being racist.”
“No,
no,” Christakis says.
“Actually,
that is how it works, okay?” shouts another student.
After
another student gets in Nicholas’s face, he tries to calm tension by
embracing the student, who responds nastily.
“The
situation right now does not require you to smile,” he says.
“This
is my home, and you came in here!” a hysterical female student says.
“You
have created space for violence!” another shouts.
“I
do not respect you,” a female student wearing a black headband says after
refusing to shake Christakis’s hand. “I’m looking at the smirk in your face and
I’m disgusted.”
“I
want your job to be taken from you,” she continues. “I don’t want you to have
this job. I’m disgusted knowing that you work at Yale University where I will
get my degree — where I will look back and think I had to argue with you!”
After
several minutes of shouting, the student finally says he will leave the courtyard
to go watch TV when it becomes apparent Nicholas will not say what she wants
him to.
“I’m
going to live my life knowing that you’re going to be the disgusting man you
were 20 second ago, a minute ago, 30 minutes ago,” she says, before she walks
out of the camera frame. “This is sick. I’m done!”
As Kirchick points out in his summation of
the footage, it’s apparent that the video that went viral last year was not
taken out of context like a fellow Yale professor claimed. Based on this
footage, it’s clear the students at Yale were incapable of having a rational
discussion with another individual who dared to push back against their hasty
accusations of racism. Despite what others have tried to claim, it’s plain as
day many of those students who loudly disrupted the campus with their protest
really were crybabies that threw tizzies over an email about Halloween
costumes.
The Christakis
stepped down from their residential positions at Silliman College this May.
