Halloween Discussion Forums, Costumes, Horror!

Yale Lecturer Resigns After Email on Halloween Costumes
Erika Christakis, who had suggested there could be negative consequences to the university’s directive to be sensitive when choosing Halloween costumes, resigned from her position voluntarily, the school said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/us/ya ... tumes.html

Well, I followed the link. It sounds like this is a free speech issue, an attempt to roll back political correctness. And I guess political correctness won, since the instructor resigned her post.

Murfreesboro wrote:Well, I followed the link. It sounds like this is a free speech issue, an attempt to roll back political correctness. And I guess political correctness won, since the instructor resigned her post.

Yeah, I agree. When free speech is beaten in a minor thing like that, eventually it will be completely lost.

There were several threads relating to this topic, and I read them all. It seems the faculty supported this woman (and her husband, a tenured professor). It was the students who turned Nazi on them. They have now resigned several different posts they held at Yale. Sad times.

Murfreesboro wrote:There were several threads relating to this topic, and I read them all. It seems the faculty supported this woman (and her husband, a tenured professor). It was the students who turned Nazi on them. They have now resigned several different posts they held at Yale. Sad times.

Yeah, very sad. I was following it that time too. Then thought about it again today because it is continuing all over.

I feel that some kind of basic (my) human right was somehow indefinitively violated, and demamd some kind of undefined reparation(s), to be paid to me, over an as yet to be determined, but definitely extensive, period of time.

Also ; my counselor said that my comment above triggered mildly depressing feelings in myself, and that you or your descendants should be sent the bill for his (or her, if payment will occur post, their reassignment surgery) services.

If you feel sufficiently guilty for causing me irreparable trauma, you may start a crowd-funded campaign with which to compensate me and my descendants.

In the meantime, I am organizing a protest at my institute of higher education to demand the tar and feathering (organic, free-range, hormone free; unless the hen now identifies as a rooster) of any and all staff who failed to provide me with the skills necessary to cope with those negative thoughts caused by failing to teach to my level.

I accept most major credit cards (sorry, not Discover) or PayPal , or you may mail it to me in small denominations of non-sequential Chinese Yuan, or Bitcoin via electronic funds transfer, to my account at Mossack Fonseca.

Andy, I don't know whether to give you a standing ovation or bow down to you.

I guess I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Yes, I do think we have the right to free speech and I do think that we are overly sensitive on certain topics. One of my friends even said we shouldn't dress up as racial stereotypes like Native Americans. Then I think about my experience in girl scouts where I opted to be an Indian to show pride in my own Native American heritage rather than a cowgirl and I don't see how it's wrong to dress up if it's to honor another person's heritage.
But a "white girls" only club? I think that's going too far, and I don't like excluding anyone.

Murfreesboro wrote:Andy, I don't know whether to give you a standing ovation or bow down to you.

Seeing as how I am a middle-aged, American born caucasian male, I don't recommend doing either.

You could be found guilty by association.

MauEvig wrote:I guess I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Yes, I do think we have the right to free speech and I do think that we are overly sensitive on certain topics. One of my friends even said we shouldn't dress up as racial stereotypes like Native Americans. Then I think about my experience in girl scouts where I opted to be an Indian to show pride in my own Native American heritage rather than a cowgirl and I don't see how it's wrong to dress up if it's to honor another person's heritage.
But a "white girls" only club? I think that's going too far, and I don't like excluding anyone.

I'm a scant, 32nd, Algonquin (Potawatomi).

Blackfoot here I believe, and I don't have a whole lot of Indian blood either Andy, but I'm still proud of it. My Great-Grandmother on my father's side was half I believe and I think that makes me 1/16th. I'm a mix of all kinds of things, including the Jewish blood on my mother's side of the family.

Greatx4 grandpa was a French fur trapper and married (or bought...) an Indian bride a couple of centuries ago, in Canada.