JustOneDad: it’ll be interesting to see how large the Stanford protest becomes as finals start to become more imminent. 
Some CC members predictably fall on one side or the other of all similar issue discussions on this board and mostly that’s been true of this one as well.
But something that’s been interesting for me to observe on topics related to these protests are the very different reactions from people who are on campus, or have kids on campus that they are speaking with about this, and those who can only go by what they read in various media. I know that what I’ve read in the “mainstream” media (WashPo, etc., nevermind the right wing sites) looks very different from what I am hearing from my kid about what’s going on at her college, and that’s really affecting how I see this.
I had formed an opinion about one aspect of it based on what I read here and online, and that changed quite a bit after our first conversation, and has evolved as we have talked since then. I look forward to hearing more when she’s home for break. As a parent I’m already grateful to have had such thoughtful discussions with her about these issues. And also glad to have a first-hand account that I trust.
I’d like to point out that Salovey and Holloway also said this:
The Yale students will no doubt want to make sure the administration fulfills its commitments, and I guess Calhoun renaming is also an issue they’ll continue to pursue, but basically they should declare victory and be happy.
Interesting twist about finaid improvement that was not part of New Yale demands.
Was it because it would disproportionally benefit non-black students or the protest leaders are not on financial aid?
In my job, I deal with young 20-somethings all the time that are not self-aware. It is more than a millennial thing because at times I have had other ages to deal with on the issue of reality. If your parents pay for it all, you have clean clothes, a great place to live, books you did not pay for, a laptop, food on the table, a car, a cell phone, friends, a university that has a great reputation that other students would kill to attend, I will have trouble feeling as if your world is falling apart. I am not discounting that there are racists or bigots or sexists. I am not saying that there are not problems at these universities that are more subtle and possibly need to be addressed.
What I am saying is that many of the kids in the BLM movement and the Yale protest group etc. are not self-aware. If they want to make an impact, then they can act like adults or at least act reasonable. They can be grateful to be in college while many students cannot even afford to be there. They can look forward to being able to get out and get a job so they are not a drain on their parents. They can be proud that they are getting a college education and proud of their hard work to get there. What I will not listen to is someone telling me I have white privilege, I am racist just because of the color of my skin, and that there should be “safe places”: where white students cannot go. They paid the fees and they should be allowed to go to the university center like everyone else. If I was in a group that ranted about someone being black and got into the face of a professor, I would run from that group and disavow it. I would never associate with a group that acted hatefully and ranted. I came from nothing and know what it means to be different. Once again…life is hard. Deal.
The student contribution portion of the FA package has been in contention and widely discussed for a while now. When I read that part of the students’ demands, that’s immediately where my mind went as the parent of a student on significant FA. It’s not one of the specific demands, and its omission suggests to me that the protestors were not really in step with what the FA students most want, particularly first gen. students.
(Completely irrelevant aside, but I wonder how they decided they needed exactly eight FA consultants? 
)
Anyway, Salovey’s proposal gives FA students–if not the protestors–the main thing they have been asking for. It may have already been in the works, but this is the first we’ve heard of any willingness to lower the student effort amount. There was a good article in the YDN on this issue last week-end, if you’d care to learn more:
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/13/making-the-effort/
As a recruited athlete, D got FA pre-reads from many schools, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Stanford, Duke etc. Yale gave her the best aid, and it was very, very generous. I am have trouble believing that any Yale student, much less a URM, is not being treated fairly with financial aid by Yale.
Savoy’s announcement went so far beyond the protesters’ demands – with an incredibly thorough, competent, far-reaching, detail-oriented multi-pronged approach (sorry for all the hyphens!) – that it serves as a lesson in a teachable moment.
It goes beyond the demands of the protesters in my opinion and speaks to VISION and putting that vision into practice. It really does an excellent job of outlining multiple practical ways to improve quality of life for ALL students. While especially responding to the current situation. It draws on the years of dialogue about class and race and it concedes financial and policy issues that are not new to this cohort of student protesters. The substance and the process speak volumes. I am so impressed, and so relieved. Hopefully S’s first semester will end uneventfully!
D attends a private college thanks to an opportunity program. It has to share personnel with Multicultural Affairs and resources with International Students. You would not find 13 staff to write a Halloween memorandum urging cultural sensitivity. I don’t mean to belittle the stress of students living with racial tension in any school. But Yale is already light years ahead of her school. And with so many improvements it can only get better.
Well, they did “deal.” They protested that the university wasn’t living up to its promises to them or to its own professed ideals. They held their ground after being vilified in the national press. And, empirically, this proved to be an effective way to make an impact. Similarly, FIRE’s to me somewhat outrageous behavior paid off for the Christakises who apparently will keep their House Mastership. Sometimes, acting in ways that are unreasonable but highly visible forces institutional actors to chose between meeting (some of) your demands or risking further embarrassment.
To me, Lukianoff’s behavior was completely outrageous.
@TheGFG My kids also got pre-reads from other schools. Yale’s offer was certainly among the most generous, though for us, Harvard and Princeton’s offers were better. The difference was pretty insignificant in terms of the parent portion of the FA award. The biggest difference is in the student contribution. .
From what I can see from those pre-reads and from running numerous FA calculators at well-endowed LACs and Ivies–and I hope parents from other schools will chime in and correct me if I’m wrong–all schools require some amount of work study of FA students. Some schools require capped student loans, but drop them for the lowest income students. Y and P–can’t remember H–don’t require loans but do require that students contribute X dollars from summer work. That summer work seems to be folded into the “family contribution” at other schools.
The reason that can make a difference for FA students is that schools will drop both the family contribution and the loan requirement for the lowest income students, while Yale drops the parent contribution but still requires the summer work commitment. This means it can actually be more expensive to go to school at Yale, even though it is ostensibly “free” to students whose parents earn under $60,000.
Another issue is that other schools (I know this is true of Princeton because I talked directly with FA about it) are flexible about dropping or lowering the summer work commitment for students who have school-related activities (such as sports or unpaid internships). Yale, OTOH, requires the same contribution from all FA students regardless of their Yale summer commitments. It will also simultaneously offer generous summer scholarships for travel abroad, for example, but still expect students granted those scholarships to pony up the $3000 summer commitment, which is a bit puzzling. Again, this is hardest on the lowest income students, but is deceiving for all FA families.
I’m not complaining–we are well educated if not very affluent, and had the advantage of FA pre-reads, so we had this more or less figured out before our kid chose Yale (the summer grant thing did surprise us) . However, I can see how other families might be less able to untangle it all.
Some top tier schools do have lower student contributions, some also have programs to allow that amount to be waived for one or more summers if the student takes an unpaid internship, some have grant programs to cover the contribution if the student does community service-type summer work.
Looks like they have invaded Princeton too, with the demand to remove all references to Woodrow Wilson.
good luck with that.
So the Princeton students want a “marked space” for black students on campus. How ironic! Imagine if white people had come up with the idea to have separate places marked just for blacks. Wait, that did happen, it was called segregation.
You know, you don’t have to agree with the protesters, but it’s really not that hard to figure out the difference between safe spaces and segregation. It really just takes a very minimal amount of thought on your part.
^^Hmmm…except I’m pretty dang sure you could go into their marked space, sit down, deliver your ironic quip, and the police wouldn’t come and haul you off to the county jail.
Although I support the goals of the protesters, I can’t go along with belligerence and name calling. It doesn’t work anyway. And I agree that Yale is light years ahead of other schools. On the one hand I felt bad that this happened to Yale, but on the other I was glad that the students were asking for what they needed and not just settling for being better than the rest.
And now South Park has chimed in with an episode about PC and micro aggressions…
I apologize, but I can’t keep up with the pace of the thread.
It is growing like a FIRE that is out of control.
I will try to catch up.
Going back a few hundred posts, someone suggested that we all google “the name of our alma mater + race” to see what was going on.
This is what was at the top of the page for my search request:
Should Yale should try to set up a center like this?
Could it help furnish the knowledge and insights required to play with FIRE without getting burned?