“A guide to “inclusive” Christmas decorations created by Cornell University warns that any decorations that remotely evoke religion, which includes stars and mistletoe, are incompatible with the school’s commitment to diversity.” …
Mr. Berry: you’re one of the founders of this site and obviously ginning up more juicy and spicy topics serves your advertisers well – but your recent string of threads is mind numbing and frankly sacrifices intellectual discourse and solid advice sharing over controversy and flaming IMHO. citing “the daily caller”? Look at that site a little more…
Maybe it is offensive because it is a traditional pagan symbol and because the Christian and Jewish symbols were already covered they wanted to throw in another religious tradition. Guessing it is because of the kissing link to mistletoe and they are worried about sexual harassment issues?
Or maybe they need to brush up on their history of holiday traditions.
Is it culturally insensitive to decorate with snowflakes? I live in a place where is doesn’t snow…I am offended that there is little recognition that winter doesn’t equal snow.
Seriously this is getting way out of hand.
You know what I think? These kids need to be given more assignments. I also suggest a mandatory seminar or class - like Harvard’s Writing Expo - called ‘How not to be a baby’. Alternately, it could be called ‘How the real world works’ or ‘The Theory of Growing up’. Next thing you know they’ll be telling you wearing black jeans is racist. Smh
@T26E4 I agree completely. It’s like he’s been posting all of these articles to egg students and parents onto hating these kids. Yes, sometimes people are offending by silly things but I feel this is desensitizing things so that when people are facing real issues we just laugh. I’ve already seen way too much of that on CC
Count me in as also agreeing completely with @T26E4.
In addition to which I don’t really see much to cluck-cluck about in the Cornell memo. How would you feel if your son/daughter were to call you and say that the holiday decorations in his/her dorm’s lounge all revolved around Hanukkah or Kwanzaa and there was not one bit of holiday decor evoking Christmas. Presumably some wouldn’t care, but I expect many would be upset. I would be. So why can you not understand the reverse? In the lobby of the office building where I work, there are holiday decorations evoking each of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, and the inclusivity of it seems perfectly appropriate to me.
My son or daughter wouldn’t call me to tell me that all of the holiday decorations in their dorm revolved around anything. 1. Because he/she would recognize that every individual has the right to use whatever holiday decorations they feel reflects their holiday sentiment. 2. Because in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter if they have to walk by a nativity scene every day for a month because they are not Christians and they don’t really care. It is not a microagression.
Oh good grief.
The sad part for me is that this is a season of deep meaning. A celebration.
And yet the effort to be all including dilutes that special meaning. Whether your Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist whatever…each celebration is a chance for all of us to learn about another slice of humanity.
But correctness is changing the landscape…
Harvard no longer will have “House Masters” because the word “master” has an association to slavery.
So why not propose eliminating the Masters degree … That may be perceived as controlling people beneath you.
This correctness is a terrible thing and I wish our leadership would not be so weak and cowardly as to suppress elements of our human history… We are not one size fits all.
I just don’t get it. If a Christian wants to wear a cross necklace or a Jew wants to wear a Star of David, I don’t think that is offensive at all. Why would a decoration be different from a necklace? If someone wants to put up FSM decorations, that should be fine too.
I can see that in public areas it is dicey. If you put up a nativity scene, then someone else will want to put up a Festivus pole with beer cans. In that case you have to decide if you are letting everyone put something up or not.
“citing “the daily caller”? Look at that site a little more…”
right, NY Times, Huffington Post and Vox, that’s the ticket for integrity - no agenda there…
You can disagree all you want, but your list is much more reputable: The Daily Caller is the only one whose Wikipedia literally lists its political/idealogic leaning in the first line. One has won 117 Pulitzer prizes. The other features an entire section on their page discussing their ideology, with this tidbit included:
Mistletoe has nothing to do with religion in the first place. Shall we ban Santa too? Christmas is a time of unity not discord. Christmas is only religious if you are religious. I know plenty of Atheists who partake in the Christmas traditions and spirit. (I’m an agnostic but still celebrate Christmas) Why does Christmas get all the hate and other religious holidays do not? Let’s keep Christmas a happy time of family and friendship. Then after New Year’s you can continue to live in your hateful and miserable ideology. Grow some skin, you do not need to be offended by everything. We only care about this story because it is Cornell, where (supposedly) the brightest in the country attend. Bright obviously does not equal mature.
Is this a joke? I’m tired of seeing threads about what a couple #sjws at [insert ivy here] did.
Wow, citing the Daily Caller. Your credibility just plummeted.
At Cornell even thirty years ago we weren’t allowed to have an artificial Christmas tree in the dorm lounge. One year some kids found one anyway and told the RA it was a nondenominational holiday bush. It stayed up 
.
It also seems that many people have started struggling to discern the difference between someone telling them “what they should do” and “what they are allowed to do.”
So now count me in as not only agreeing completely with @T26E4, but as thoroughly disgusted by your making this pathetic attempt at rabble-rousing into a “Featured Discussion”. I guess too many people were ignoring it, as they rightly should. I’ve been on this site for over 10 years and this is a new low. Honestly, I don’t know what your agenda is, but please, just stop.
For those that are concentrating on the fact that the link is to the Daily Caller, that is a cheap debating tactic. I don’t disagree that this publication is highly biased and selects stories that support its point of view. Nevertheless, for this particular story only, can you point to anything inaccurate in the story or an omission that makes something out of context? It seems like a pretty factual report to me. If so, then the messenger that brought the issue to our attention is irrelevant.
As far as CC and @Dave_Berry focusing on these kinds of stories, I don’t know about you but the kind of speech codes, restrictions on what can and cannot be done in class or on campus in general, the attitudes that some of these “causes” like the yoga story and the Harvard Masters (and now we have the breaking story of the Harvard place mats. Yeesh), etc. and what that all represents scares me more than a little. It is precisely because there are real issues out there like the Missouri case and what that was about, how to handle sexual violence on campuses, and a small handful of important others that these trivialities and exaggerated senses of harm and fear are so worrisome. The truly important causes are in danger of being dismissed along with the ridiculous ones.
As far as this particular case, with all due respect I have a fundamental disagreement when @cosar says
First, as I read it, at least, it fundamentally misstates the situation by implying, using the office building comparison, that Cornell as some sort of central entity like the owners of the building put up any decorations. These are guidelines for the students and professors and offices to follow for whatever decorations they may choose to put up.
Given that, the second point is that as long as anyone is free to put up what they want (as long as not obscene, etc.) then I would say the answer to the “How would you feel” question as posed is to tell my kid “Then go put up some Christmas symbols. Join in.”. If they don’t want to, then it cannot be that important to them. The guidelines clearly state:
Now if, e.g. any particular Christian student wants to include Jewish and other religions’ symbols in what they choose to hang up themselves, OK I suppose. But it not only shouldn’t be incumbent upon them to do that, they then run the risk of being accused of misappropriation of another culture, as in the yoga case and when anyone dares wear the clothing of another culture, regardless of intent. So what Cornell is advising runs directly in opposition to what other SJW groups say is a major sin. So in any of these kinds of endeavors, and so many others where the complaints are trivial and lashing out against phantom prejudices, one cannot win except to do absolutely nothing. We are inexorably moving towards a society where little is permitted, and less is enjoyable. Instead we can look forward to no joy, no debates, no color. Just fearful quaking at the prospect we will offend.
Because the fundamental attitude I get from this kind of approach is “We would rather kill the right for everyone else to express themselves freely and kill any joy they might get from sharing this with their friends rather than take the chance that one person is offended”. Forget about having satirical comedians on campus, they offend everyone. Forget about showing any of a number of award winning films, they are completely inappropriate. And having a speaker on a subject that some disagree with, be they the minority or the majority? Well, that can’t be what college is for. So what we are left with is lives that are grey and dull, living in fear we will be kicked out of school for saying anything that hints at offense. Of course, under these conditions I have no idea why anyone would want to go to college any longer anyway.
There are fundamental situations where the tyranny of the majority cannot be allowed to trample on the rights and freedoms of the minorities. This is not one of those situations, as long as there is no indication that anyone is being prevented, or intimidated, from expressing themselves. To the extent Christmas might be represented in greater proportion than other religious expressions, well that does represent the reality of the demographics at most schools. That doesn’t mean the minority cannot or should not participate. If they choose not to, then I fail to see that the majority should be punished for it or forced to artificially carry out that inclusion, putting themselves at risk as I pointed out. Absent evidence of harassment or other violations that are clearly wrong, then abrogating the rights of the majority out of some anticipation of wrongful behavior or because of the 1950’s type of experiences is not progress, it is simply a way to instill resentment among those that did nothing wrong themselves. Not to mention, as I already said, basically sucking the joy out of life when every single thing you say or do is open to interpretation, offense, and retribution.
So I definitely disagree that these threads are as banal or whatever it is that some seem to have an issue with them. In isolation, I can see where they can be easily dismissed. But the very thing some are complaining about, that there are “too many” of them, is precisely the very important point. Let me be clear, I am very much in favor of some of these issues that students are concerned about. They are few because it is by focusing on what is fundamentally wrong that we can be most effectual in making meaningful change. My D has even swung me to her side on an issue or two, and I believe I have convinced her that the above is correct in many cases. And to be more clear, I don’t expect a few of you to concede any of this, and so I don’t intend to engage in prolonged debate on any of it. I simply felt that the criticisms being made were wrong on some facts and wrong in their assessment of the situation. I’ve had my op-ed style say, and will most likely leave it at that.