FIRE
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2015–2016
1:21 · 1.9M views · Nov 6, 2015
A short FIRE-published video of Yale students confronting a faculty member over a Halloween costume email in 2015. It documents a heated campus protest.
HN mostly uses it as a reference point or negative example in debates about campus politics and online codes of conduct.
3 comments from Hacker News
Yeah, me too. -1. There is legitimate trolling, harassment, drama and d!ck moves that need to be handled with decency, common-sense and least bad measures... in open societies in real life, specific laws and enforcement haven't yet been able to eliminate #sshole behavior... it's usually handled socially. Sure it's different, but there's got to be some common sense and due-process, rather than instahellban of a core dev because someone new makes a bogus accusation. 0. Folks should try to calmly stand up to bullyvictim behavior and excessive microagression drama. 1. On large projects facing mostly public / non-enterprise / younger users, there could be need for formal training of project leaders or designated third-parties in conflict resolution / mediation to make peace, where possible. (Maybe open source conflict resolution as a service would be a viable startup? IDK, or a pockethotline perhaps?) 2. 37signals showed less anonymous participation increased kindness and reduced toxic behavior... perhaps projects should link accounts to G+ / Facebook / Github? 3. A risk of blindly adopting CoCs is that a new, amorphous bureaucracy of unknown persons/governance itself gains a foothold into many projects, and may come back and start asking for compliance reports, more control and more changes. Some of this might be good, but it could become more about browbeating others into bending to their will a-la Yale screaming girl this video 4. Popularity of a behavior or trend is not necessari
Gad Saad and Jonathan Haidt bring sensibility to causes and effects of the Karpman drama triangle that displaced actual, past revolutionary action on college campuses / social sciences with mostly an imposter, going through the motions but stuck bikeshedding (i.e., microaggressions, SJWing) rather than attacking major social problems. There's also helicopter parenting, lack of movement leadership, fall of SFDS, extended adolescence, for-profit universities catering to student whims and other aspects which compound the situation. Critical thinking skills, respectful debate without onerous preconditions (i.e., demanding apologies/subservience) and proportionality of response could be emphasized more in education. See also: - "ABOLISH ALL SCIENCE 'COS ITS RACIST! -SJW University Student" [LINK] - "Yale University Students Protest Halloween Costume Email (VIDEO 3)" this video - [LINK] - [LINK]
I think this is the video: this video Along with some NYT coverage on this general topic: [LINK] This issue of students complaining about trigger warnings and the need for safe spaces certainly seems to be increasingly prevalent, but that could just be due to the media giving it more attention.