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

[Simfan34]

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.

I was also accepted everywhere I applied except for Yale. Therefore, Yale is racist against black people and is serving the white chauvinist patriarchy.

[jaichind]

Several thoughts about this since I lived this 20 years ago.  I attended Yale back in the early 1990s and there was a battle back then around PC (political correctness).  The list of demands on the Dartmouth list seems very similar to the radical PC demands back then as well.

1) If what I saw at Yale is any guide, many of these student activists will graduate, work for investment banks/hedge funds/law firms, buy a house in the suburbs, have children and then vote GOP in their 40s.
2) There were a lot of racial polarization on campuses like Yale and other Ivies which I think feed these sort of protests.  One has just to walk into the dining room to see that people tend to dine in their own ethnic groups.  There were some mixing between Asians and Whites.  The main reason for this is affirmative action.  Many of the underrepresented minorities who ended up attending places like Yale were not as prepared academically relative to the rest of the Yale student body.  Mixing socially between different groups made this fact quite obvious to all.  The way underrepresented minorities deal with this uncomfortable fact is to withdraw in their own ethnic enclave. 
3) I recall there was a movement in my freshman year to create a Puerto Rican Dean to support Puerto Rican students which was claimed was very different from Latino students.  I toyed with an idea to have a movement to create a Bulgarian Dean knowing quite well there were no Bulgarians in Yale.  I planned, when asked that there  are no Bulgarians on Yale campus, to reply "see, this is the result of Yale's institutional and cultural barriers to Bulgarians which in turn creates a hostile environment for Bulgarians."    Much to my annoyance, in my junior year in college I actually meet someone at Yale from Bulgaria. 
 

[AggregateDemand]

I was also accepted everywhere I applied except for Yale. Therefore, Yale is racist against black people and is serving the white chauvinist patriarchy.

Yale's African American student body is not 700% higher than the national population rates for African Americans and 300% higher than the Connecticut population rates for African Americans.

You have no reason to assume reverse-racism via quotas. Asians do have reason to assume reverse-racism, and I'm inclined to agree with them regarding Berkeley and several other California schools.

[Simfan34]

People who think that they're capable of judging an acquaintance's college application better than an admissions committee - so well, in fact, that they can explain precisely why their friend was rejected - are hilarious.

Anyway, college students ought to be outraged about how, for example, most universities ignore rampant sexual assault on and around their campuses. Yet somehow I can't help thinking that this group would have been more effective without the neologism-laden manifesto of demands that reads like something written by one of the loopier faculty members from the English department.

This is one of the things, I think is actually quite important. I distinctly remember hearing about a truly awful incident at... Yale? I think, where some students went marching shouting "No means yes! Yes means anal!", a truly atrocious show of... atrocity. But from my experience here, the student movement to force action has been bogged down in the same kind of self-important rhetoric and... if not exactly partisanisation, then something like it, where the issue has moved to a talk about "rape culture" (of which dress codes apparently promote) and equally alienating tone that requires you to hold a sort of radical stance in order to be seen as truly supportive of supporting the problem. I mean, for example, a student organisation of whicch I am a part of a student organisation which was one occasion asked, rather confrontationally, what we "were doing to help fight rape culture", which presupposes a certain understanding of what construes "rape culture" is and how it is combated, which obscures the fact that we're talking about being anti-rape here, which is a shame.

The sort of... political environment, like I said, shifts much like a pendulum. Today we are on a swing towards the left- but I think we're reaching the end. I don't think it's started swinging the other way, or that it's even reached the end, but it is deaccelerating. It might be a decade or more until we reach the middle, and another one before it becomes right wing, but I think it will shift back- just as it did in the eighties, sixties, fifties, thirties, etc, etc. I think it's gotten to a point where it has become alienating with the sort of endless navel-gazing, compartmentalisation, and hyper-relativism, just as the sort of "cigar parties" held by conservative college types in the 1980s alienated people from the sort of rhetoric they used.

When someone like Bacon King says this sort of thinking is "the future" of politics, for me such a statement is disingenuous. It's as if someone in the 1990s deeming liberalism dead (which happened), or in the 1960s proclaiming that the New Left would dominate political discourse or in the 1930s thinking that the future would be Trotskyist. Certainly the sort of spirit will live on, and a few will espouse these views lifelong. But to think that this is going to become a permanent part of the mainstream is a leap too far.

These aren't majority opinions in these communities, I think it might be worthwhile to remember. The tone here whenever similarly minded people (those who like to talk about chauvinism, the patriarchy, oppression, and so forth) raise a heckle is increasingly dismissive- we had an "incident" recently when members of a sorority dressed as Mexicans for a mixer, wearing fake mustaches and sombreros. The Chicano organization got very prissy, writing a long letter about "cultural appropriation" and such things, which was treated by most people as rather ridiculous- the Mexicans I knew didn't mind in the least. Then it turned out that this organisation had, on another occasion, held an event with cut-outs of... mustaches and sombreros. It was less the blatant hypocrisy than the fact that they saw no contradiction that came as alarming, and indicative of the sort of navel-gazing I mentioned earlier. It's become unrelatable.

[jaichind]

I think Simfan34 does make a good point about rape.  I know about the Yale "No means yes! Yes means anal!" scandal.  While I insist on said organization's right to make such a statement as part of free speech, I find it in very poor taste and do not approve of such behavior.  I pretty much disagree with the entire list of Dartmouth student demands with the exception of "Expel any students convicted of sexual assault/rape."  Which does seem self-evident that if a student engages in something that is a felony it makes perfect sense for the university to expel this student.  It is a surprise that this is not policy already.  

The only reason I can think of is really around the vague definition of rape among radical feminist movements.  Again, using my own college experience back at Yale, I recall having a conversation with another student who was a women's group leader.  She told me that one out every three women students at Yale have experience rape.  I told her that I found that number hard to believe but if it true then the problem is serious indeed.   Upon further discussion with her I found that her definition of rape to include a couple having sexual relations and up to months later when (perhaps the relationship has broken up) the women views having such sexual relations as a mistake.  If this were the definition of rape I can see how one in three Yale women students were raped.  Of course I cannot support the university expelling students based on this definition of rape.  What is interesting is that this (absurd in my view) definition of rape fits nicely with the Indian definition of rape in some states.  In some Indian states, having sexual relations with a women under the pretense that one will marry her and then not marrying her counts as rape and the women can seek legal redress.

[jaichind]

I was also accepted everywhere I applied except for Yale. Therefore, Yale is racist against black people and is serving the white chauvinist patriarchy.

I am very sorry my alma mater declined to accept you.  It is their loss.

[Cassius]

Well this is bizarre.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Did I wake up in 1968

Yes, but instead of Prague, the Communists have occupied Parkhurst.

That President Hanlon is a saint. 

[bore]

Several thoughts about this since I lived this 20 years ago.  I attended Yale back in the early 1990s and there was a battle back then around PC (political correctness).  The list of demands on the Dartmouth list seems very similar to the radical PC demands back then as well.

1) If what I saw at Yale is any guide, many of these student activists will graduate, work for investment banks/hedge funds/law firms, buy a house in the suburbs, have children and then vote GOP in their 40s.
2) There were a lot of racial polarization on campuses like Yale and other Ivies which I think feed these sort of protests.  One has just to walk into the dining room to see that people tend to dine in their own ethnic groups.  There were some mixing between Asians and Whites.  The main reason for this is affirmative action.  Many of the underrepresented minorities who ended up attending places like Yale were not as prepared academically relative to the rest of the Yale student body.  Mixing socially between different groups made this fact quite obvious to all.  The way underrepresented minorities deal with this uncomfortable fact is to withdraw in their own ethnic enclave. 
3) I recall there was a movement in my freshman year to create a Puerto Rican Dean to support Puerto Rican students which was claimed was very different from Latino students.  I toyed with an idea to have a movement to create a Bulgarian Dean knowing quite well there were no Bulgarians in Yale.  I planned, when asked that there  are no Bulgarians on Yale campus, to reply "see, this is the result of Yale's institutional and cultural barriers to Bulgarians which in turn creates a hostile environment for Bulgarians."    Much to my annoyance, in my junior year in college I actually meet someone at Yale from Bulgaria. 
 

One question- where did you go to college?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

     If we have to undertake some kind of language reform, I would probably opt for a return to Middle English, for the sheer absurdity of it. Write with thorns and such.

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.

     Considering that the words for "he" and "they" (general "they", though there is a feminine "they" that is a homophone with "she") are homophones in French and the words for "she" and "they" are homophones in German, I rather like the idea of a third-person singular "they" in English. It would bring us more in line with our closest linguistic relatives.

[Simfan34]

I was also accepted everywhere I applied except for Yale. Therefore, Yale is racist against black people and is serving the white chauvinist patriarchy.

I am very sorry my alma mater declined to accept you.  It is their loss.

So I like to think.

[jaichind]

Several thoughts about this since I lived this 20 years ago.  I attended Yale back in the early 1990s and there was a battle back then around PC (political correctness).  The list of demands on the Dartmouth list seems very similar to the radical PC demands back then as well.

1) If what I saw at Yale is any guide, many of these student activists will graduate, work for investment banks/hedge funds/law firms, buy a house in the suburbs, have children and then vote GOP in their 40s.
2) There were a lot of racial polarization on campuses like Yale and other Ivies which I think feed these sort of protests.  One has just to walk into the dining room to see that people tend to dine in their own ethnic groups.  There were some mixing between Asians and Whites.  The main reason for this is affirmative action.  Many of the underrepresented minorities who ended up attending places like Yale were not as prepared academically relative to the rest of the Yale student body.  Mixing socially between different groups made this fact quite obvious to all.  The way underrepresented minorities deal with this uncomfortable fact is to withdraw in their own ethnic enclave. 
3) I recall there was a movement in my freshman year to create a Puerto Rican Dean to support Puerto Rican students which was claimed was very different from Latino students.  I toyed with an idea to have a movement to create a Bulgarian Dean knowing quite well there were no Bulgarians in Yale.  I planned, when asked that there  are no Bulgarians on Yale campus, to reply "see, this is the result of Yale's institutional and cultural barriers to Bulgarians which in turn creates a hostile environment for Bulgarians."    Much to my annoyance, in my junior year in college I actually meet someone at Yale from Bulgaria. 
 

One question- where did you go to college?

Ha Ha Ha.  Funny.  You do have a good point.  Thanks for the feedback.  Sorry for coming off so pompous. 

[Sol]

     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.

Oy vey. I thought you believed in science...

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

     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.

Oy vey. I thought you believed in science...

I believe you misread his post (I read "word" as "world" too), unless I'm missing something here.

[Sol]

     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.

Oy vey. I thought you believed in science...

I believe you misread his post (I read "word" as "world" too), unless I'm missing something here.

Nah. Basically, whining about people using "alumni" instead of alumnus or whatever, and then claiming that they have a poor grasp of English basically violates the established tenets of linguistics.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

Oy vey. I thought you believed in science...

I believe you misread his post (I read "word" as "world" too), unless I'm missing something here.

Nah. Basically, whining about people using "alumni" instead of alumnus or whatever, and then claiming that they have a poor grasp of English basically violates the established tenets of linguistics.

     So should I complain about them having a poor grasp of Latin? I'll be happy to go that route instead.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

     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.

Oy vey. I thought you believed in science...

I believe you misread his post (I read "word" as "world" too), unless I'm missing something here.

Nah. Basically, whining about people using "alumni" instead of alumnus or whatever, and then claiming that they have a poor grasp of English basically violates the established tenets of linguistics.

Ah, I didn't see that original side debate. Anway, that argument is almost as absurd as the Latin@/womyn thing .

[Sol]

     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.

Oy vey. I thought you believed in science...

I believe you misread his post (I read "word" as "world" too), unless I'm missing something here.

Nah. Basically, whining about people using "alumni" instead of alumnus or whatever, and then claiming that they have a poor grasp of English basically violates the established tenets of linguistics.

Ah, I didn't see that original side debate. Anway, that argument is almost as absurd as the Latin@/womyn thing .

Mine, or PiT's?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

     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.

Oy vey. I thought you believed in science...

I believe you misread his post (I read "word" as "world" too), unless I'm missing something here.

Nah. Basically, whining about people using "alumni" instead of alumnus or whatever, and then claiming that they have a poor grasp of English basically violates the established tenets of linguistics.

Ah, I didn't see that original side debate. Anway, that argument is almost as absurd as the Latin@/womyn thing .

Mine, or PiT's?

PiTs (not that I am dissing him, as he is one of my favorites, but sometimes you gotta disagree with your own side).

[AggregateDemand]

Your point?

If you read my posts, you'll figure it out.

[Simfan34]

The etymology is certainly not the most interesting part of this story.

[Simfan34]

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.

This will not happen.

This will not happen.

This will not happen.

This will not happen.

I explained why earlier.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

So what happened with the students that stayed overnight in the office?

[MalaspinaGold]

Your point?

If you read my posts, you'll figure it out.

AggregateDemand: I do hope you realize that "peerless" at your school would probably be considered "average" here at mine.

Also, Yale rejected me. UChicago and Cornell wailtlisted me. Therefore they are antisemitic according to your logic.

Colleges really are that random, you must understand. One person at my school got Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, but not CalTech. Is CalTech all of a sudden racist against half asians/half whites? Of course not.

EDIT: And if you bothered to look up the statistics, you would find that Berkeley is 3% black, while California is 13% black...