Bicker Warning: Colleges with Rich Students see more Protests Against Speakers

[Zinhead]

From The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21719814-disinvitation-campaigns-correlate-high-sat-scores-and-wealthy-parents-colleges

Across the country, colleges with richer, high-achieving students are likelier to see protests calling for controversial speakers to be disinvited (see chart).

Following the work of Richard Reeves and Dimitrios Halikias of the Brookings Institution, The Economist analysed data on student attempts to disinvite speakers since 2013 collected by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an advocacy group. Matching those numbers with information on SAT scores and wealth, measured as the fraction of students with one-percenter parents, shows statistically significant correlations. Even among selective universities, those with better-credentialed and wealthier students were likelier to mount protests. They were also likelier to mount successful attempts to block speakers.

[ucbalumnus]

No surprise. Poorer students are less likely to attend better known residential colleges that are more likely to have big name potentially controversial or inflammatory speakers in the first place. Such speakers probably do not have schools like CSUDH on their preferred list of school to have events at.

[techmom99]

At my commuter college, which had only lower and middle class students (i never met anyone I would consider rich in my time there), there were no demonstrations but one, which revolved around a popular teacher. I honestly can’t remember what the deal was, although I did join the protest. As I do recall, most of us students had to work so we set up a shift system for the protests, which lasted about 2 days.