Well, I googled “shrieking girl at Yale,” and her name and bio is all over the internet. Apparently she comes from a rather privileged background.
Her mother owns a PR firm, so I doubt she will go jobless.
@PragmaticMom that one particular young woman cursing and screaming is not really what posters are focusing on. She has simply become the symbol for tactics that many people find objectionable. Sure, these tactics get a lot of press and may produce some short term results. In the long run, reasonable people simply are not going to respond to or reward abusive speech or the disruption of institutions or corporations.
Adults with real life experience have some responsibility to assist these young students in finding appropriate methods to communicate. It’s not really about her anymore, it’s about the general abusive and disruptive tactics that she represents. Academia is a lot more forgiving than the real world, and I fear that these students are graduating with a lack of communication and negotiation skills that will be necessary for success.
You are one step ahead of me here because I believe the main issue is actually an erroneously forgiving home or a home that did not teach them how to behave in the real world.
I still cannot believe they were allowed to leave home for college behaving like this. This type of behavior did not just pop up, as it looks second nature to them, as they do it as if it is normal. In the different protests, the similarities of the cadences and the bullying and finger pointing at people and finger snapping are uncanny. This is learned behavior.
If I behaved like that, I probably could not go back home for a long time; my Dad’s corporation would have lost a lot of business because I would be seen as a liability to other people’s money; and I know my chances at a top grad school would have been shot full of holes.
Someone let them behave like this for a long time without consequences - I start and end with the parents.
^^Agree with @awcntdb that political and social discourse has devolved into something no one should be proud of. It makes me wonder who raised the screaming/ shrieking political candidates and the pundits who promote the circus on the airwaves. I don’t think today’s kids are exhibiting a new low for poor behavior in public spaces. More than likely, they are mirroring what they see adults do: Congressman Joe “you lie!” Wilson, Supreme Justice “Sicilian hand gesture” Scalia, whose tantrums include boycotting President Barack Obama’s state of the union addresses and Pope Benedict’s speech to Congress with fellow supreme pouters Thomas and Alito. President Obama has suffered far more indignities and disrespect, from adults who should know better, than any president in recent memory because of the color of his skin and the audacity of his politics. I grant that he’s not the only victim. Pouting, whining, shrieking, finger-pointing, foul-mouthed temper tantrums – from older people with authority and influence is on display on the airwaves for all to see 24/7 and no political party is immune from the insult. I believe this older generation did have better upbringing, and that they should know better. I don’t blame the mothers of Rush Limbaugh or Joe Wilson for their child’s outbursts.
But I do blame Rush Limbaugh, Joe Wilson and the other adults in power and in the media, who aren’t setting a good example for the next generation.
Probably can start a whole new thread on this subject alone.
^ post of the thread, IMO.
Curious I see you give 7 troublesome examples - most would consider “conservative” and a “no political party is immune” comment as an aside.
Interesting.
Also your statement:
“One of them was a 57-year-old white CEO who screamed, “things will not change until we change the color of the white house” post-election in 2008 to a group of stunned executives, some of whom were not white, including me, who crouched in silence.”
I would like to know if you later made some attempt to bring correction to the CEO’s behavior and as you put it were “setting a good example for the next generation” ?
I was in a somewhat similar situation and brought correction privately, it was an awkward but ultimately had a positive result.
I do think you are projecting what you want to believe is the cause and placing your adult world on younger people.
Frankly, I do not know any liberal / progressive high schoolers who listen to Rush Limbaugh. They know of him as a personality, but that is quite different than to say that they are so in tune with him that he influences them. And I know fewer such kids who actually follow congressional news to the level you cite.
Do you really think that liberal progressive students, like at Yale, are listening to and then following the examples of conservative talk radio and other conservatives? And I bet money that Rush is probably not played openly on any college campus, so they did not learn anything from him there. And I darn sure know he speaks at none.
But let’s go one step further - you are actually saying that liberal progressive high school and college kids are gullible and stupid enough to follow bad examples of conservative figures.
However, if conservative figures are the cause, why do we not see conservative students acting like this on college campuses? Therefore, you are basically saying that liberal / progressive kids are too dumb to distinguish proper behavior from uncivil foolish behavior because the conservative kids seem to distinguish between such behaviors just fine.
The overall logic of your post is this - the liberal / progressive kids get their bad behavioral cues from conservatives talk radio, conservative congressmen, and from white. conservative CEOs, but they get their liberal beliefs and values from liberal and progressive figures. And that makes sense to people?
Your post does prove my main point - the parents of these liberal / progressive kids lack parenting skills. For the end logic of your post only indicates that the liberal / progressive parents were not adept enough to correct their kids behaviors before they got to college. So, the problem still remains with the parents.
Overall, we agree on discourse problem, but I do think it is a red herring to give conservative talk radio and politicians power over the family that they do not have. The liberal / progressive parents flat-out are failing their kids in the behavior mode because you will rarely, if ever, see a conservative group of students behave like that.
And, more importantly, those well-behaving conservative students actually do listen to Rush and do follow conservative congressman. Maybe you might want to look at whom the liberal / progressive students are following to get their info and from whom they are learning their ideology in order to get a better handle on their behavioral issues.
Okay, you got me. I’m guilty of liberal bias in my examples. Feel free to add liberal examples of outrageous behavior to balance the ones I posted.
To be fair, kids of all political stripes, are exposed to outrageous behavior from adults of all political stripes. I stand by my point that the Yale episode mirrors what we see it all the time from adults in powerful, influential positions. And we have ourselves to blame.
“Why do we not see conservative students acting like this on college campuses?” What evidence do you have to support this statement?
Let’s assume politically conservative students are better behaved compared to politically liberal students. Why is that the case? Are they brought up better by superior conservative parents? Because they are white? Because their cause is more noble? Because they can ignore Rush Limbaugh? What is the differentiator?
That “liberal/progressive parents are flat-out failing their kids” is an over-reach that should not be put forth without evidence.
The Conservative/Libertarian-right activists at Columbia certainly were just as/more in your face, obnoxious, and sometimes screamed at passersby whom they felt didn’t agree with them or in response to criticisms of their points/manner IME.
However, most of the mass media…especially right-leaning partisan ones prefer to cover the radical progressive lefty students behaving badly…most likely due not only to ideological biases by the right-leaning mass media…but overall due to greater likelihood from generating greater ratings from a mainstream national audience which tends to lean right-of-center politically…especially when compared with other Western European/Canadian democracies.
Especially among older demographics who are more likely to watch commercial US network/Cable TV news or many mainstream newspapers. Incidentally, this was one reported factor among some pundits as to why many folks under 40 tend to reject TV news or mainstream newspapers as their main/only sources of news.
The older demographics were the students protesting in the 1960’s. We grew up and matured.
1541 - Harvestmoon
I think we are being manipulated by the media which is showing a very slanted view of events, and continue to believe the media firestorm was orchestrated by Lukianoff, and FIRE, which receives quite a bit of funding from the Koch brothers. You might be interested in some of FIRE’s stand on campus sexual assault.
Like others I agree we are being distracted, and am reminded of the media spin in the early 70s about shrill and angry bra burners.
Contrary to stereotyping from many conservative/libertarian-right circles/mass media, the commercial mass media along with academia* are actually much more interested in maintaining the status quo than such stereotyping gives them credit for.
In that respect, both groups are quite conservative in their practices on the ground.
- Some college classmates currently/formerly in academic graduate programs are currently encountering this very issue with their proposed dissertation topics with their supposedly "liberal" Profs/advisers and universities...including the elites.
Most common reason for their dissertation proposals being turned down. “Too radical politically”** which means they’re unlikely to be supported by most of those Profs or just as importantly, get funded by outside grant foundations.
** Their political topics and sometimes personal politics tend to be well within the Oberlin mainstream when I attended within the mid-late '90s…which means they would be considered extremely radical left on most mainstream US campuses…including stereotypically ones like Berkeley or Brown.
@ahl I have been thinking about your comments in an earlier post linking these protests to the sexual asault threads . I am just not making the connection. Can you elaborate?
FIRE’s positon on sexual assault has no bearing on my thoughts relative to recent campus protests. I don’t really have any political alliances- I evaluate issues independently. I often find myself at odds with individuals on one issue and in total agreement with them on others. I am not gong to evaluate Lukianoff based on his affiliation with an organization that happens to take a position contrary to my own on sexual assault.
FIRE serves a legitimate purpose as it’s goal is to defend individual rights on college campuses. I don’t always agree with them but they do bring public awareness to issues that might be otherwise swept under the rug.
Calling out and confronting rape culture challenges the status quo.
Calling out and confronting racism does the same.
If you don’t believe in rape culture or racism, there is no need to change the status quo. The world is just fine. Those who say otherwise are shrill and unreasonable and unbalanced.
During the Clarence Thomas hearings, I spent a lot of playground time with female attorneys trying to wrap their heads around how to best deal with workplace harassment, behaviors taken for granted at that point in time, something women were expected just to deal with. In the past few decades we have changed the workplace status quo in that regard.
Systemic racism is a much more serious issue than the sorts of workplace harassment my playground friends had to figure out how to deal with. Second wave feminists were a pretty elite group. This makes sense, since those in a position of power and privilege will usually have more luxury to speak out. That includes college students. Speaking out helps all of us, if we want to change the status quo. If we don’t, they look threatening or ridiculous. I think what they are saying is important and look forward to change.
When I was a very junior associate at a law firm, there was a senior partner who frequently screamed and even threw things. I confess that I made no effort to “correct” him, because, you see, he had lots of power and I had no power.
Look at the discussions about excesses of frats/sororities. I think you’ll find (in general) that those tend to be “groups of conservative students”
@T26E4 In defense of protests for ‘conservative issues’ I think it is a fair point that they are executled differently, at least on a college campus. The greek system is a whole other ball of wax.
sure – but since that poster took pains to broadly paint “liberal parents”, I also wanted to point out how outrageously self-blinding he/she was…
Not the ones friends and I seen while grad students at Columbia.
Some of the conservative/libertarian-right activists there behaved in the exact same obnoxious imprudent ways you and others associate with the “liberal” activists.
There was one senior equity partner at a NYC biglaw firm a paralegal friend worked at who was notorious for being abusive to junior attorneys and paralegals/legal secretaries.
One of my paralegal friend’s colleagues got hit in the head with a heavy law book thrown by said senior partner in a fit of rage due to the negative message the paralegal was assigned to deliver from another partner on a case they were working on.
Due to the firm’s desire to sweep the issue under the rug, the senior equity partner’s great influence and power in the firm which meant the firm leaned more towards supporting him, and the victim paralegal’s lower status in the firm…all that happened was the firm’s disciplinary committee gave the senior partner an effective slap on the wrist by sending him to a few weeks of anger management courses and let the paralegal go with what was to them a nominal settlement with promises of great references to subsequent jobs.
It’s true students with a conservative point of view “protest” differently. I would argue that those methods are equally, sometimes more, dangerous to society. Even if you agree with their point of view, the words and gestures used to convey that view is not something to conservatives should crow about.
Because the hate contained in their message is so abhorrent and shameful, students with conservative points of view have been forced to veil their message behind “free speech” on anonymous online boards, on social media, in their fraternities/sororities. They consider these safe places to spout off, and they usually are - until someone witnesses it and shares it with the civilized world. I think these veiled methods are more dangerous than a public protest because anonymity encourages an escalation of language and anger – on par or worse than you see on the Yale video – and easy threats of physical harm and death.
Most of the adults here who follow such things already know of the examples below, but I’ll link them for the benefit of younger posters who think it’s “rare” for students with conservative points of view to act out.
Taunts
http://abc7news.com/education/principal-berkeley-student-confesses-to-racist-rant/1069980/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/10/us/oklahoma-racist-chant/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/25/us/virginia-old-dominion-university-sigma-nu-offensive-banners/
Waving dildos, yelling obscenities and throwing eggs at anti-rape marchers:
http://www.rawstory.com/2014/12/san-diego-state-bans-fraternity-over-dldo-stunt-during-anti-rape-march/
Threatening physical assault or death
http://nypost.com/2015/03/31/black-people-should-be-dead-bucknell-students-expelled-for-racist-radio-rant/