Yale Responds to Swastika Drawn on Campus

[KamaAina]

http://tabletmag.com/scroll/186262/yale-responds-to-swastika-drawn-on-campus

As a member of two special-interest groups who tend to react with great vehemence to incidents of hate speech—Jews and academics—one might think that I would be especially primed to be exercised by the swastikas chalked on the Yale campus last night. Add in the fact that I am a Yalie—I teach at Yale now, and I attended Yale: 22 years today I was probably standing on the exact spot in front of Durfee Hall where the swastikas were found, eating fro-yo and bouncing to Bob Marley coming out of speakers facing the quadrangle from the windows above—and I should be the single most enraged human on the planet.

But I am not. I am saddened, and a bit worried, in case it turns out this is part of a campus trend. But I always treat cowardly, dead-of-night hate speech as the likely work of a disturbed individual, maybe two, as likely to be a drunken bit of demented derring-do as a genuine expression of anti-Semitism. Of course such acts are disturbing reminders that anti-Semitic tropes persist, and that there’s a certain kind of sicko who, when drunk or angry or aggrieved decided to say or write something anti-Jewish (or anti-black, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-immigrant). But a lot of years on campuses have taught me that the first incident is usually not a harbinger of a second. Most students and faculty are horrified, and the perpetrator—who, by the way, may not even be a student, could just be somebody who stumbled onto campus—may wake up the next morning wondering what he or she did....

In an effort to display student support for Yale’s Jewish community, the three students — Javier Cienfuegos ’15, William Genova ’15 and Sebastian Medina-Tayac ’16, a former staff reporter for the News — started drawing a chalk mural reiterating [the dean’s] admonition of hate outside of Durfee Hall.

By 12:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, a group of 15 students had collected outside Durfee. They were passing out chalk to passers-by, inviting them to draw hearts and peace signs under the statement “There is no hate in this house,” a direct quote from [the dean’s] email.

from a member of the Yale College Class of 1985.

[Divernan]

1. My son was Class of 86 - Pierson College

He and his friends wore red armbands at all the graduation ceremonies to protest apartheid and demand Yale divest South African holdings. I have pictures of them at the Shanty Town.

http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/yale-students-campaign-divestment-apartheid-south-africa-1985-1987

In April, students constructed a mock shantytown on the Beinecke Plaza to mimic those in South Africa. The shanty was named after Winnie Mandela, yet the administration considered the mock-shanty to be such an “eye-sore” that it demanded its removal and had several protesters arrested. This response generated much more protest from students, and their demand that the shanty be recreated was eventually met by the reluctant administration.

The Divestment Campaign remained strong throughout the spring, and the students used the 1986 commencement ceremony as a forum to further protest the administration’s slow pace at divesting from South Africa. During the ceremony, graduating seniors held up signs on which were written “Yale Divest” and “Oppose Apartheid”, and several students painted the word “Divest” on the backs of their gowns.

My kiddo graduated summa cum laude with distinction in the major and turned down lucrative career offers to become an environmentalist & an award winning investigative reporter. Yale's motto is "For God, for county and for Yale." (I interpret "God" as moral integrity.) He took that to heart and truly tries to live a life which makes the the U.S. and the world a better place. The motto is not "For Mammon, Wall Street and the One Percenters.

Anyway, I recall that whole graduation weekend as very happy & great fun. I was proud of him then and even more so now.

[KamaAina]

2. They did that the next year, too?

Saybrook '85 here. I declined, though, because old conservative Grandpa was there.

[Divernan]

3. Were you on the soccer team by any chance? Or play ultimate frisbee?

If so, you probably know my son. He did a master's at Stanford and lives in Seattle now, having spent some years in Indonesia and Alaska.

[KamaAina]

4. Heavens, no.

Although, if there were an all-Autistic college, I probably would have been.