College Alumni Dollars Are Flapping Their Wings, Flying Away From Their Crybully-Coddling Alma Maters
I know somebody who knows Nicholas Christakis well, who told me what a great guy he is and how much he cares about students.
Uh, er, rather, cared. He's since stepped down from his position as head of Sillman College at Yale.
Christakis is the professor and college administrator seen in the video from Yale, being screamed at by a hysterical shrew of a college student for the terrible crime of treating college students like adults in a university environment instead of just-born baby kittens in an incubator.
(For a broader view of the insanity -- with the little PC lemmings snapping their fingers instead of clapping, and others such goodies, plus a view of the truly good person Christakis is, check out this longer video. Really worth a look and listen.)
The issue causing the screamer's outburst was an email Christakis's wife, Erika, the associate head of Silliman College, sent to students suggesting that Yale shouldn't tell them not to wear offensive Halloween costumes. (It was Yale's Intercultural Affairs Counsel that sent out the email. More on that here along with some costume no-nos -- after a brief humor bit.)
Yes, that's all this was about.
At Business Insider, Abby Jackson reports on what Erika Christakis wrote:
She questioned if students should be able to dress in any costumes they liked, offensive or not."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?" she wrote.
More from her letter, which makes some very good points:
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 "signaling." 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.
...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 trade off 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 offense 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
The response? Of course, it was as if she had suggested they all go out and fillet live dogs in front of the college. She resigned not long afterward.
And the response to the response?
Many of the alumni (from Yale and other colleges) aren't liking this sort of thing at all -- and when I say "not liking," I mean in the way it counts for campuses: not liking with their dollars.
From Anemona Hartocollis at The New York Times:
Scott C. Johnston, who graduated from Yale in 1982, said he was on campus last fall when activists tried to shut down a free speech conference, "because apparently they missed irony class that day." He recalled the Yale student who was videotaped screaming at a professor, Nicholas Christakis, that he had failed "to create a place of comfort and home" for students in his capacity as the head of a residential college."I don't think anything has damaged Yale's brand quite like that," said Mr. Johnston, a founder of an internet start-up and a former hedge fund manager. "This is not your daddy's liberalism." "The worst part," he continued, "is that campus administrators are wilting before the activists like flowers."
Economist Mark J. Perry blogged about this at AEI, quoting from a tweet I posted with a link to that NYT article:
MP: As Amy Alkon suggested on Twitter, "Free speech-supporting alumni could redirect the money that they would have given to their universities instead to campus free speech defenders like FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education)."
Perry notes that the price of textbooks and also of college tuition is up about 200 percent since 1996.
In contrast, overall consumer prices (based on the CPI for all items) have increased only 55% over that same period, which means that college tuition and college tuition have increased in real terms by about 94% (see formula here) since 1996. Or we could say that after accounting for inflation, the real cost of college and textbooks have nearly doubled in the last 20 years! And what is one of the main reasons that the cost of college has doubled in just 20 years? Professor salaries? Hiring more professors? Increases in instructional spending? Not at all, none of those have contributed much at all to the increased costs of college over time. Rather, it's the increased number of college administrators and the increased salaries for those educrats that have largely driven up the cost of college and therefore college tuition, i.e. "administrative bloat."
It's in the administrators' vested interest to be more compelled by avoiding bad press about the college rather than keeping colleges places where freedom of speech and inquiry are the order of the day.
Is it any wonder that they're bending over to student demands right and left?
As Perry writes:
Let's hope the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut grows louder in the future, and opens the closed minds of college administrators...
Let's. And in the mean time, please give generously to FIRE.
via @Mark_J_Perry
Thanks for that longer video - for it shows what assholes those students really are.
Those students are incredibly dumb, stupid, and just plain fucked in the head. They are not willing to learn that someone might have a different viewpoint than they have.
I hope that NO one ever hires them. For I do NOT want that kind of ignorant person as a co-worker who calls someone "disgusting" who disagrees with them.
If they really want a "safe" space then the school should start with expelling anyone who screams obscenities at another person.
charles at August 14, 2016 5:44 AM
"Let's hope the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut grows louder in the future, and opens the closed minds of college administrators.."
Math isnt their strong suit. By the time they figure out that they cant borrow their way back to solvency they will go the way of Burlington college. .
Isab at August 14, 2016 6:09 AM
Yale (or Harvard for that matter since it also does VC) are not Mizzou. They're not going to be in financial trouble for a long, long time.
http://fortune.com/2016/04/08/yale-venture-capital-investments/
Sixclaws at August 14, 2016 6:34 AM
"Let's hope the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut grows louder in the future, and opens the closed minds of college administrators.."
Probably one of the main reasons for the push for free college for everyone. The money will be taken from alumni in taxes and given to the schools no matter how biased they are. I wouldn't care about donations if I can charge any amount and be guaranteed payment.
Joe J at August 14, 2016 7:14 AM
Joe J
" The money will be taken from alumni in taxes and given to the schools no matter how biased they are. I wouldn't care about donations if I can charge any amount and be guaranteed payment"
Yes. And one of the main reasons for opposing Hillary Clinton is that she would do everything possible to continue and accelerate the crazy and the repressive in American academia.
Daniel Henninger had a good article on this theme at the WSJ.
david foster at August 14, 2016 8:07 AM
$25 Billion is a lot of endowment. I can imagine that its handlers might come to think that the endowment is the true heart and soul of Yale, and that if the piddling academics and bureaucrats spazz out too harshly, the truest core of the beloved institution would need to be protected, perhaps by diverging.
It might be good for both Yale & the money if that happened.
Crid at August 14, 2016 8:47 AM
It would be a fun book or film treatment
Crid at August 14, 2016 8:48 AM
I hope that NO one ever hires them. For I do NOT want that kind of ignorant person as a co-worker who calls someone "disgusting" who disagrees with them.
Why, so they can on welfare and become professional agitators?
Assuming they aren't hired by some NGO to become professional agitators?
I will quibble with this "is that campus administrators are wilting before the activists like flowers."
What makes you think they're wilting, and not willing collaborators? 6 figure educrat salaries aren't going to pay themselves, you know? and the customer is always right!
I R A Darth Aggie at August 14, 2016 9:22 AM
I stopped giving to my Alma Mater (Lehigh) when the University chose to spend the Class Gift on something other than the Class voted on. Since our opinion didn't matter, our dollars went elsewhere. Last I checked, my class was STILL well below the norm on Giving, 20+ years later....
Keith Glass at August 14, 2016 9:48 AM
Even with an endowment, alumni giving can be important to a university. It is a big part of college ranking.
As for me, I decided I'd never give to mine when all the rules on protests went out the door during my last year. They were not allowed in the quad, but for some reason, the invasion of Iraq ended that policy (for a day). The Chancellor decided it was more important for the protestors to scream than for me to hear my math professor.
Since my education was less important, the product of that education, my income, should be less important to him too.
Shannon at August 14, 2016 3:11 PM
I gave up on my alma mater about 15 years ago when their class schedules became all about keeping you there to extract revenue from you, for as long as possible as opposed to giving you an education.
My daughter took off a year, and when she went back to try and see what it would require to complete a degree, they had instituted a series of required classes in her major, none of which could be taken at the same time but had to be taken sequentially.
Instead of finishing the two years she had left, she would have had to be there for another three and a half, assuming she didn't leave for a semester again.
A blantant money grab by a school that was already behing funded by my tax dollars.
Its just nuts.
Isab at August 14, 2016 4:44 PM
Enjoy this animated graph.
Crid at August 14, 2016 10:26 PM
Yeah, the Ivies can survive just fine without any donations. They are pretty much criticism-proof. It's the next tier down that is going to be in trouble. Mizzou is losing money hand over fist. They've already had to lay off faculty (not administrators, natch) and close residence halls. A lot of smaller traditional liberal-arts schools are or will be closing altogether soon.
"I hope that NO one ever hires them. "
The government will hire them. Pretty soon they'll be making choices about how much money we are allowed to make, where we are allowed to live, and which wars our grandchildren will die in. Doesn't that make you feel good?
Cousin Dave at August 15, 2016 7:15 AM
Well, there was serious talk that Conn was going after Yale's endowment for taxes.
Listen, costs for American higher education are unsustainable. Therefore they will not be sustained.
Crid at August 15, 2016 7:56 AM
I use a “clipboard” software program to save my pithy comments for replication. In this case (college PC madness), here’s a comment that I’ve tacked on endless times when this subject comes up:
With rare exception (Hillsdale College, for instance), college campuses today have become progressive propaganda mills — reeducation camps (MIS-education camps) that effectively brainwash students to despise the free market, capitalism, property rights, the rule of law, free speech — indeed, freedom and liberty period. Today’s “college experience” usually includes this concerted effort by the left to mold the young into dutiful leftists who are intolerant of any diversity — of opinion.
GUT the colleges — especially the liberal arts colleges. Don’t give ’em a dime. Wealthy alumni fondly remember hazy halcyon days of campus life — often not aware of how lockstep the PC oppression has become. No mas!
As a college alumnus, what’s the best thing you can do for your college? Send them a letter telling them WHY you’ll never give them money. Send a copy to the campus newspaper. Send a copy to your your local paper. Post it up online.
Still want to donate? Good. Contribute to think tanks that champion Western values and classical liberalism. Ideally include them in your wills and trusts.
I do. Reason, Heritage, AEI, CATO Institute, and Institute for Justice are some of my favorites.
Richard Rider at August 17, 2016 1:28 PM
I use a “clipboard” software program to save my pithy comments for replication. In this case (college PC madness), here’s a comment that I’ve tacked on endless times when this subject comes up:
With rare exception (Hillsdale College, for instance), college campuses today have become progressive propaganda mills — reeducation camps (MIS-education camps) that effectively brainwash students to despise the free market, capitalism, property rights, the rule of law, free speech — indeed, freedom and liberty period. Today’s “college experience” usually includes this concerted effort by the left to mold the young into dutiful leftists who are intolerant of any diversity — of opinion.
GUT the colleges — especially the liberal arts colleges. Don’t give ’em a dime. Wealthy alumni fondly remember hazy halcyon days of campus life — often not aware of how lockstep the PC oppression has become. No mas!
As a college alumnus, what’s the best thing you can do for your college? Send them a letter telling them WHY you’ll never give them money. Send a copy to the campus newspaper. Send a copy to your your local paper. Post it up online.
Still want to donate? Good. Contribute to think tanks that champion Western values and classical liberalism. Ideally include them in your wills and trusts.
I do. Reason, Heritage, AEI, CATO Institute, and Institute for Justice are some of my favorites.
Richard Rider at August 17, 2016 1:29 PM
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