The Ivy League university, Yale, was in the the spotlight this week. The major issue being that some students were outraged over the administration's handling of a student organization’s request that a notice be sent out prohibiting costumes which were “culturally appropriative”. The response, which to my uneducated computer science student eyes (maybe Yale Humanities students see some hidden metaphors), basically said that they were reluctant to force any restrictions on people because of another person's beliefs.
Emailhttps://www.thefire.org/email-from-intercultural-affairs/
Response https://www.thefire.org/email-from-erika-christakis-dressing-yourselves-email-to-silliman-college-yale-students-on-halloween-costumes/
The outraged students demanded an apology, and standing by free speech, they did not. In response to that, students at silliman decide to protest and petitioned to have the two administrative staff removed.
Studentshttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvIqJIL2kOMefn77xg6-6yrvek5kbNf3Z
Adminhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-VE8r7MSI
How does it come to this, where being an indian chieftain is offensive to people, where being an ethnic princess from a disney movie is cause for exile. If I decide to openly mock the catholic church by being a pedophile priest for Halloween, does that make me a criminal? The cause is very simple. Social media has now evolved to where an it has become an echo chamber. The main offenders, Twitter and Tumblr. These platforms make it so that users only need to see what they want to see. There’s no reason for any dissenting ideas to show up in their news feeds. When all these like minded ideas start to combine without opposition, things quickly radicalize. When a simple idea of equal rights and tolerance is amplified and concentrated, the result is what we saw at Yale. When all your peers are in agreement with you, you must be correct. Your opinion is now the right one, all others are wrong. And that’s what happened when the Yale IAC decided to use their freedom of speech to suppress other’s rights. The outcry some students made was because the administrators didn’t agree with their opinion, they weren’t even against it, they just didn’t want to support it. Now imagine what happens if someone had openly spoken against it, if “no comment” garnered this response.
What happens when these students from Yale take on positions which are influential, as Yale graduates often do. What happens when they start making legislature to make it illegal to do things which are insulting to people? Wait, that sounds familiar, yes, almost all of the countries in the EU have similar laws. In fact, a french law which prohibited the sale of hate or racist paraphernalia brought yahoo down from its heights. When that happens, that’ll be a resounding defeat of the first amendment.
When the time come when I have to watch what I have to say, dress, eat, or do, lest I step on someone’s feelings, I’ll move to a european country like England or Germany, where freedom of speech is nonexistent or severely limited, because at least their social policies are better.
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