> With world-altering research to support, graduates who assume positions of extraordinary power, and a $24.9 billion endowment to marshal for better or worse, Yale administrators face huge opportunity costs as they parcel out their days.
or the text surrounding the e-mail
> Erika Christakis reflected on the frustrations of the students, drew on her scholarship and career experience, and composed an email inviting the community to think about the controversy through an intellectual lens that few if any had considered. Her message was a model of relevant, thoughtful, civil engagement.
> It’s hard to imagine a more deferential way to begin voicing her alternative view. And having shown her interlocutors that she*respects them and shares their ends, she explained her misgivings about the means of telling college kids what to wear on Halloween.
It's weird how much someone supposedly advocating having an open-mind are telling you what to think without explaining why. Then you get HN comments saying how respectful her e-mail was, without talking about the issues themselves. It's written for someone that agrees with the premise of the article and won't question all the embellishments. It's apparent even by the title.
Why shouldn't adult students be able to govern themselves with regard to Halloween costumes?
Why do adult students require guidance from administrators to determine what is and isn't allowed?
Why are adult students upset that someone has asked these questions?
2. Bogus premise. The original mass-email offered advice about choosing non-offensive costumes, and that advice was so general that nobody could have mistaken it for "guidance"; it was, rather, a set of questions to ask about your costume choices. It was Erika Christakis who reframed it as a set of guidelines, suggesting at the same time that Yale culture was going to police Mulan costumes.
3. The students are upset that the letter hand-waves away concerns about racial sensitivities and stereotypes by making comparisons between childrens costumes and choices made by adults in a climate where there had been real racist incidents at Halloween.
(I don't agree with the students but you should be able to summarize their arguments accurately if you hope to refute them.)
That the faculty offers guidance doesn't seem to be much of an issue since that is what the article commends Nicholas and Erika Christakis for doing. Why there should be guidance is argued in the original e-mail on costumes [0]. That someone is upset doesn't seem to concern the author much when they don't agree with his viewpoint.
This is the problem with basing discussions on low quality articles. Let's look at the e-mails instead.
The first e-mail is arguing it's point.
> Yale is a community that values free expression as well as inclusivity. And while students, undergraduate and graduate, definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.
The second e-mail offers:
> Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? [...] Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. [...] Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.
https://www.thefire.org/email-from-intercultural-affairs/ https://www.thefire.org/email-from-erika-christakis-dressing...