Dartmouth Students Storm President's Offices, Seriousness of Demands Unclear

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Wait, why did they say "Latin@"? What does that even mean?

@ has elements of both an 'a' and an 'o' in the way it looks so it's intended to be a (sadly unpronounceable) gender-neutral shorthand for situations where for whatever reason people don't want to use the word 'Hispanic'. I'm seeing it more and more often these days.

I hadn't seen it before, but I understood it.  It would seem to me however if one wants an explicitly gender-neutral way to express the idea in English that "Latin" would be better than "Latin@".

Or one could not care.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Wait, why did they say "Latin@"? What does that even mean?

@ has elements of both an 'a' and an 'o' in the way it looks so it's intended to be a (sadly unpronounceable) gender-neutral shorthand for situations where for whatever reason people don't want to use the word 'Hispanic'. I'm seeing it more and more often these days.

Huh. I only see the a, thus defeating the purpose. Can't they just say Latino/a?

Are they seriously that anal over being as non offensive as possible that they want gender neutral spelling with symbols, and not letters???

The irony is that in Spanish, the male pronoun is always used when dealing with mixed genders or an unknown gender. A group of male and female Hispanic Americans is always going to be referred to as Latinos. So in their ham-handed attempt to be politically correct, they willfully disregarded another culture's linguistic conventions. RACISTS!

That reminds me of my reaction when seeing a "alumni/ae" hall in our journalism school. My cringing reminded me that the Latinophone in me was not yet fully dead... By the way, what's the problem with "Hispanic"?

Averroes, I'm thinking the ones with six figure salaries will be the ones who tried to speak in defense of the administration.

Some people feels like the term ties Latin@s (?) to their colonial Spanish oppressors, when their genetic identity is predominantly Native American.  I've never known a Hispanic who minded the term, but I've of course not met that many of them.

I’d be willing to bet that most "Latin@s" who use that term (or "Chicano/Chicana) are definitely descended in part from the Spanish, whether they like it or not. Just like the Holocaust is a scar on the German cultural identity, or slavery is a black mark in the history of America, so is the Spanish oppression of the indigenous peoples of the New World on that culture. Isn't it a little ironic that they are belittling their own ancestors? If they are angry at the descendents of the Spanish for destroying their culture down to their very own name, are they not also to blame?

[Indy Texas]

Well I'm 1/64th Native American. Does that mean I should get mad at the other 63/64ths of me for oppressing that 1/64th of me? (Really 31/64th actually since my father's family are very recent immigrants).

[Vosem]

Meh, they'll all be Republicans a decade from now.

[MaxQue]

Meh, they'll all be Republicans a decade from now.

Wishful thinking.

[Simfan34]

Wait, why did they say "Latin@"? What does that even mean?

@ has elements of both an 'a' and an 'o' in the way it looks so it's intended to be a (sadly unpronounceable) gender-neutral shorthand for situations where for whatever reason people don't want to use the word 'Hispanic'. I'm seeing it more and more often these days.

I hadn't seen it before, but I understood it.  It would seem to me however if one wants an explicitly gender-neutral way to express the idea in English that "Latin" would be better than "Latin@".

Or one could not care.

You did ask.

[MalaspinaGold]

This is what happens when the Ivy Leagues have artificial quotas on the number of Asians that can attend.

It's a California thing. My Asian friends were only deferred or denied from California universities, particularly Stanford and Berkley. They had no problem with acceptance from Ivy League schools.

I hope these Dartmouth kids are having fun.

Nice try. Berkeley does not utilize affirmative action. As for privates, it IS the free market after all.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Wait, why did they say "Latin@"? What does that even mean?

@ has elements of both an 'a' and an 'o' in the way it looks so it's intended to be a (sadly unpronounceable) gender-neutral shorthand for situations where for whatever reason people don't want to use the word 'Hispanic'. I'm seeing it more and more often these days.

I hadn't seen it before, but I understood it.  It would seem to me however if one wants an explicitly gender-neutral way to express the idea in English that "Latin" would be better than "Latin@".

Or one could not care.

You did ask.

I suppose I did bring this upon myself, didn't I.

[Donerail]

Meh, they'll all be Republicans a decade from now.

Wishful thinking.

Around 15% are legacies, and 40% are from private prep schools. 50-55% white. The Dartmouth Review has spawned people like Ingraham and D'Souza, and it was the second-to-last Ivy to admit women. Trustees include a Hoover Institute fellow who wrote speeches for Reagan, a former Clarence Thomas clerk, and a GMU professor. Certainly the most conservative of the Ivies - a good portion of them will probably go on to be Republicans in a decade.

[Simfan34]

I mean you're right- there are conservatives there (I know a few myself)- but they are the ones in the second video speaking in defense of the administration. The ones protesting are unlikely to experience some sort of epiphany and switch sides... likely they'll stop talking about "ableism" or "womyn" at some point but they'll always be very liberal- just as the baby boomers or those who came of age in the 1930s.

It's a generational cycle- I personally think we're on the cusp of one. The flood of articles I see people share on Facebook lamenting the "decline of dating" or the "tone of discourse", for example, seems to indicate a certain discontent with the way things are. It doesn't amount to much, but I think the pendulum has swung very far in one direction for decades now and it is deaccecelerating at the very least. The point being that it's intergenerational rather than intragenerational.

[MaxQue]

I mean you're right- there are conservatives there (I know a few myself)- but they are the ones in the second video speaking in defense of the administration. The ones protesting are unlikely to experience some sort of epiphany and switch sides... likely they'll stop talking about "ableism" or "womyn" at some point but they'll always be very liberal- just as the baby boomers or those who came of age in the 1930s.

It's a generational cycle- I personally think we're on the cusp of one. The flood of articles I see people share on Facebook lamenting the "decline of dating" or the "tone of discourse", for example, seems to indicate a certain discontent with the way things are. It doesn't amount to much, but I think the pendulum has swung very far in one direction for decades now and it is deaccecelerating at the very least. The point being that it's intergenerational rather than intragenerational.

In Quebec, I'm seeing the same phenomena from people my age (and, also, they are much more likely to support new parties politically), and the current teenagers are even more radical than people my age.

Funnily, we could continue what you said about the 30's. Both those groups came of ages during recessions. It's also fitting my theory of the elastical politics. At a point, it snaps and goes to the other side. Left from 45 to 80, right since 80.

[Bacon King]

Wait, why did they say "Latin@"? What does that even mean?

@ has elements of both an 'a' and an 'o' in the way it looks so it's intended to be a (sadly unpronounceable) gender-neutral shorthand for situations where for whatever reason people don't want to use the word 'Hispanic'. I'm seeing it more and more often these days.

Huh. I only see the a, thus defeating the purpose. Can't they just say Latino/a?

Are they seriously that anal over being as non offensive as possible that they want gender neutral spelling with symbols, and not letters???

The irony is that in Spanish, the male pronoun is always used when dealing with mixed genders or an unknown gender. A group of male and female Hispanic Americans is always going to be referred to as Latinos. So in their ham-handed attempt to be politically correct, they willfully disregarded another culture's linguistic conventions. RACISTS!

These student activists would no doubt point to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and link the notion of machismo to the Spanish language's treatment of gender. You are (speaking to the collective of Atlas here, not just IndyTexasTexasIndyTexas) quite surprisingly uptight about a simple ampersand, along with other minor points of contention, to such a degree that it suggests subtle unconscious fear of these strange ideas you don't understand.

I think it's pretty nifty, it looks like an A and an O at the same time so you don't have to put either gender in front of the other! I've never seen it before but I'm going to start typing Latin@.

Well I'm 1/64th Native American. Does that mean I should get mad at the other 63/64ths of me for oppressing that 1/64th of me? (Really 31/64th actually since my father's family are very recent immigrants).

This is the whitest possible comment: discussion of racial fractions as if your blood quantum suddenly means you're not racist, a cheap joke automatically discarding these strange and apparently silly ideas, and a display that indicates utter ignorance at how oppression functions. I don't mean to pick on you Mr. Texas because others miss the point just as much as you but your posts make good examples to respond to. I am speaking to all y'all whities and that phrase includes Simfan who has assimilated quite skillfully into the cultural hegemon and can maintain the perfect facsimile of a middle aged white dude.


I don't understand the problem people have at all. Sure, some of the points aren't very well thought out. You could criticize that, but that's honestly just splitting hairs when the big picture here is honestly pretty impressive. These are kids, basically, and the level of cringe is comparable to any of the essays anyone that age writes for their classes. But these are kids who have done something, who have taken action to make sure their voices are heard, to an extent that nobody here has ever done about anything. This group composing of a lot of white guys has lodged a very loud protest in favor of gender, racial, and cultural equality. The tides are turning and these beliefs are becoming mainstream in tomorrow's leaders: like it or not but we're about to give way to the tumblr generation

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Very cogent, except that '&' is the ampersand, not the '@'.  Indeed, there is no single name for the symbol.  I suspect that Dartmouth students who made this manifesto would recoil from calling it the "commercial at sign".  They might go with some of the more fanciful names that have been proposed such as "ampersat".

[Associate Justice PiT]

Wait, why did they say "Latin@"? What does that even mean?

@ has elements of both an 'a' and an 'o' in the way it looks so it's intended to be a (sadly unpronounceable) gender-neutral shorthand for situations where for whatever reason people don't want to use the word 'Hispanic'. I'm seeing it more and more often these days.

Huh. I only see the a, thus defeating the purpose. Can't they just say Latino/a?

Are they seriously that anal over being as non offensive as possible that they want gender neutral spelling with symbols, and not letters???

The irony is that in Spanish, the male pronoun is always used when dealing with mixed genders or an unknown gender. A group of male and female Hispanic Americans is always going to be referred to as Latinos. So in their ham-handed attempt to be politically correct, they willfully disregarded another culture's linguistic conventions. RACISTS!

That reminds me of my reaction when seeing a "alumni/ae" hall in our journalism school. My cringing reminded me that the Latinophone in me was not yet fully dead... By the way, what's the problem with "Hispanic"?

Averroes, I'm thinking the ones with six figure salaries will be the ones who tried to speak in defense of the administration.

I just get annoyed when 99% of people say "I am an alumni of XYZ University" as opposed to an alumnus/alumna.

     It annoys me too. These people are allegedly educated, and yet their grasp of language and its use is execrable. Most of them probably couldn't even identify the origin of that word.

[Sol]

These student activists would no doubt point to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and link the notion of machismo to the Spanish language's treatment of gender.

Which would be a very inaccurate idea - grammatical gender doesn't necessarily entail sexism (see German, or even a lot of Spanish-speaking countries) nor is the inverse true (see Farsi). The Strong version of Sapir-Whorf is a huge load of crap, basically.

[Bacon King]

These student activists would no doubt point to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and link the notion of machismo to the Spanish language's treatment of gender.

Which would be a very inaccurate idea - grammatical gender doesn't necessarily entail sexism (see German, or even a lot of Spanish-speaking countries) nor is the inverse true (see Farsi). The Strong version of Sapir-Whorf is a huge load of crap, basically.

I agree with you that the stronger proponents of linguistic relativism don't really have much in the way of supporting evidence, I'm just pointing out that there's definitely a logic behind the students' espoused beliefs and it's not really fair to dismiss them out of hand by claiming that they don't understand one of the basic rules of the most widely studied foreign language in the country. And regardless of the accuracy of the explanation I suggested, anecdotal evidence from the couple of diehard feminist Hispanics I know suggests that the Spanish language's grammar rules are a major point of contention within that community nonetheless.

[Indy Texas]

Well I'm 1/64th Native American. Does that mean I should get mad at the other 63/64ths of me for oppressing that 1/64th of me? (Really 31/64th actually since my father's family are very recent immigrants).

This is the whitest possible comment: discussion of racial fractions as if your blood quantum suddenly means you're not racist, a cheap joke automatically discarding these strange and apparently silly ideas, and a display that indicates utter ignorance at how oppression functions. I don't mean to pick on you Mr. Texas because others miss the point just as much as you but your posts make good examples to respond to. I am speaking to all y'all whities and that phrase includes Simfan who has assimilated quite skillfully into the cultural hegemon and can maintain the perfect facsimile of a middle aged white dude.

It was a joke dude.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

     It annoys me too. These people are allegedly educated, and yet their grasp of language and its use is execrable. Most of them probably couldn't even identify the origin of that word.

Yis, hou darth peple not stiketh to thi originale Latin formes whanne writinge English! We wolde al duse welle to writen iliche Chaucer.

[Simfan34]

It annoys me too. These people are allegedly educated, and yet their grasp of language and its use is execrable. Most of them probably couldn't even identify the origin of that word.

Let's talk about the use of "they" as a singular pronoun... that's a permutation I don't mind. Better than the hideous "he/she".

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

It annoys me too. These people are allegedly educated, and yet their grasp of language and its use is execrable. Most of them probably couldn't even identify the origin of that word.

Let's talk about the use of "they" as a singular pronoun... that's a permutation I don't mind.

Good. It's actually been in occasional use for a really long time, and it's better--more immediately understandable and more euphonic--than pretty much any possible alternative. It sometimes makes subject-verb agreement a little tricky but that's really a small price to pay.

[Sol]

Yeah, I've heard that -@ as a gender marker is a sort of thing like the various made-up gender neutral pronouns in English- not something used often, and sort of politically correct in people's minds.

[AggregateDemand]

Nice try. Berkeley does not utilize affirmative action. As for privates, it IS the free market after all.

Berkley can say whatever they want. My friend's credentials, references, and connections were peerless. He was deferred because of his last name.

[Simfan34]

Nice try. Berkeley does not utilize affirmative action. As for privates, it IS the free market after all.

Berkley can say whatever they want. My friend's credentials, references, and connections were peerless. He was deferred because of his last name.

You must realise that when you're dealing with acceptance rates rapidly approaching 5% you're inevitably going to have to cut out some qualified people.

[AggregateDemand]

You must realise that when you're dealing with acceptance rates rapidly approaching 5% you're inevitably going to have to cut out some qualified people.

40% of the UC Berkeley student body is Asian. He was insta-accepted everywhere he applied, except Berkeley.

I'm not accusing Berkeley of moral-injustice, but I don't believe the official PR, either.

[Хahar 🤔]

Nice try. Berkeley does not utilize affirmative action. As for privates, it IS the free market after all.

Berkley can say whatever they want. My friend's credentials, references, and connections were peerless. He was deferred because of his last name.

Well, you can't argue with anecdotal evidence that strong.