Monday, March 7, 2011

* The Great Stalker of West Egg-- a Jazz Age Neverland?



DKE task force advocates education

Staff Reporters
The Yale Daily News
Wednesday, March 2, 2011




From the Yale Daily News posting board (article link above and posts below)

The first candidate for this training should be The Great Stalker, Jay Gatsby.


@anti-yale What does that even mean? That comment is absolutely irrelevant to any sort of discussion that could take place about this article.




onlineproductmanager:
If I recall correctly, The Great Gatsby was mandatory summer reading for the Yale freshman class a couple of years ago. Gatsby, celebrated as one of America's great novels, has as its central character, someone who --- for lack of a more suitable eupehmism -- stalks Daisy Buchanon in a cloud of ‘new money’ and garish conspicuous consumption whose “foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams.” Today, such behavior could be considered obsessive compulsive “unwanted attention”, i.e. tantamount to “sexual harassment.”
I doubt any of the freshman discussion groups on that summer’s reading presented Jay Gatsby in that unfavorable light.
Do we seek to educate about sexual harassment with the left hand, while celebrating it in literature with the right hand?
Mixed message much?
PK





    Comments

    You've got to be kidding me. All student organizations? Does that include the Women's Center? And LGBT groups? I couldn't imagine a more feeble response with regard to actually fixing the root problems. And yet at the same time it overreaches in bureacratic requirements. As much as I make fun of all these useless committees and task forces for doing nothing better than "promoting dialogue," at least they didn't actively impede every extracurricular group and imply that no Yale student is smart enough to figure out what sexual misconduct is.
    But I suppose this program will do wonders for the actual offenders. I can just see the DKE brothers converting now: "Oh, I get it! What I said was offensive and to women! I didn't mean to disrespect anyone. Gee Suzy, I'm reeeeal sorry about that." Let the chivalry pour forth. I can't wait.
    The first candidate for this training should be The Great Stalker, Jay Gatsby.
    This is the biggest waste of time I've ever heard of. Most committees are pointless; this one especially so. Not everyone is stupid enough to say something as offensive and provocative as DKE did, and those that are aren't even registered organizations to begin with.
    Sounds like a waste but perhaps a benefit will be that stupid offensive speech will not be improperly classified as true sexual harassment but rather simply stupid offensive speech and the perpetrators not classified as sexual offenders but rather simply stupid and offensive.
    WOW. This is an absurd requirement for most organizations. On the other hand, maybe DKE should send more than one delegate...
    @anti-yale What does that even mean? That comment is absolutely irrelevant to any sort of discussion that could take place about this article.
    Branford73 is right. Even if you teach people not to chant "No means yes," you can't teach them through sexual harassment training not to embarrass the university and themselves by making other drunk chants. It takes more than a session to train against stupid and offensive. Perhaps this harassment default position comes from the notion that sex is never stupid or offensive if you don't trip over consent. By that standard, DKE would have been OK if they had left out no means yes.
    Perfect! More things added to freshman orientation! This is a great idea. Is there anything a 3 hour discussion and a student-made movie can't solve? Oh wait...
    Maybe there should be a class for women on how not to objectify themselves. Shortly after the DKE "harassment", the Halloween celebrations downtown resembled the hooker convention in Las Vegas. Many Yale co-eds were barely dressed, wearing stiletto heels, ...parading around downtown. If I see someone in a lab coat and a stethoscope on the street, forgive me if I mistakenly call them doctor...
    I agree with joe29sb. I'm not opposed to discussing this during freshman orientation, but none of the organizations I'm involved in have any sort of hazing or initiation activities, and there's no way they could conceivably be connected to any kind of sex scandal at all. The idea that we need this kind of training on an organization-by-organization basis is ridiculous. I just hope these meetings are short...
    This is stupid. This is going to be a room full of >100 people for a vague lecture on harassment. There's no reason that instructing organizational representatives will do anything, unless Yale means that each officer should have a sexual harassment officer keeping tabs.
    Are frats and other groups with initiations really being treated exactly the same way as campus publication or the scifi society?
    I'm pretty sure the one delegate that actually volunteers to go to this thing will be the one least likely in the organization to commit harassment.
    This is up there on the 'most stupid Yale ideas of all time' list.
    onlineproductmanager:
    If I recall correctly, The Great Gatsby was mandatory summer reading for the freshman class a couple of years ago. Gatsby, celebrated as one of America's great novels, has as its central character, someone who --- for lack of a more suitable eupehmism -- stalks Daisy Buchanon in a cloud of ‘new money’ and garish conspicuous consumption whose “foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams.” Today, such behavior could be considered obsessive compulsive “unwanted attention”, i.e. tantamount to “sexual harassment.”
    I doubt any of the freshman discussion groups on that summer’s reading presented Jay Gatsby in that unfavorable light.
    Do we seek to educate about sexual harassment with the left hand, while celebrating it in literature with the right hand?
    Mixed message much?
    PK
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