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OT: Campus politics - Printable Version

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OT: Campus politics - dabigv13 - 05-24-2016

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/the-new-activism-of-liberal-arts-colleges

Incredibly well written article about topics that have been discussed frequently around these parts.

Tangentially...1) I'm really glad I'm not in college now 2) When was the last time we had a student poster?

Re: OT: Campus politics - SamuelMcF - 05-24-2016

1. Yeah I'm glad I'm graduating.
2. Now  :)

Re: OT: Campus politics - stupac2 - 05-24-2016

That was a really interesting article, thanks for sharing. I'm currently reading a (quite long) book that bills itself as "A narrative history of 1932-1972", and I think fleshing out the differences in the "firebrands" vs my generation as compared to the silents vs boomers could be interesting. It seems like the difference is similar if the scale is a bit off (the depression and WWII obviously dwarf a couple recessions and 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan). If that sort of comparison holds, this could be the start of a bumpy ride, to say the least.

Re: OT: Campus politics - Stymie - 05-25-2016

Thanks for the link, dabigv.  Yet another argument as to why the Cardboard should not censure "political" posts.  Without the Cardboard and its intelligent, passionate and thoughtful contributors, where else are we going to be pointed towards thought provoking articles such as this?  The Bootleg?  LSJU itself?  Unlikely, IMHO.

Re: OT: Campus politics - 2006alum - 05-25-2016

(05-25-2016, 12:43 AM)Stymie link Wrote:Thanks for the link, dabigv.  Yet another argument as to why the Cardboard should not censure "political" posts.  Without the Cardboard and its intelligent, passionate and thoughtful contributors, where else are we going to be pointed towards thought provoking articles such as this?  The Bootleg?  LSJU itself?  Unlikely, IMHO.

Well, you could subscribe to the New Yorker, for one. Or at least regularly visit its website. Or have it in your blog/newsfeed list. This article has blown up all over facebook, and a number of my friends have already sent it to me, so social media is another way to find it. Longform.org has great stuff. So does aldaily.com. Even news.google.com aggregates news sources pretty well. To be honest with you, if you're only getting your "thought provoking" political news from the Bootleg and here, then you probably aren't that interested in political commentaries in the first place. They're all over the web -- and from more varied viewpoints.

And to that, I've generally found that OT political threads that generally get posted here are by right-of-center folks who object to any regulation of speech or norms or anything handed down from the "PC culture" that those posters object to, be that renaming campus buildings named after problematic historical figures, trigger warnings, cultural awareness training, cultural appropriation concerns, diversity or affirmative action movements, Title IX related inquiries, etc. This article is just another example of the many threads along those lines, and they almost always begin with the following premise: here's someone on the left doing something problematic. Let's conclude how ridiculous this is!

Which makes me think, more than anything, that a certain subset of the CARDboard just wants an outlet to rail against a viewpoint they don't like.

And before you assume I just don't agree with y'all, I'm much closer to your position than the one being ridiculed. I just don't find I need to hear about this at the CARDBoard because - quite the opposite of your perspective - I read and see this stuff all day in a million other fora, and the CARDBoard is one of the few places I can go to just enjoy the love of all things Stanford. There is no other place I've found to get BobK's recruiting updates or 81Alum's thorough and amazing recaps of women's BBall games, or to find a group of people to follow our women's tennis team win ANOTHER NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP! play-by-play, round-by-round. This, to me, is the CARDBoard's raison d'etre. The political debates are the talking head stuff I have to put up with in order to follow the Cardinal.

Re: OT: Campus politics - ThePassionOfTheChryst - 05-25-2016

(05-25-2016, 04:08 AM)2006alum link Wrote:And to that, I've generally found that OT political threads that generally get posted here are by right-of-center folks who object to any regulation of speech

What a world.


Anyway, I could probably write a response to that article as verbose as the article itself, but I will refrain and simply wonder aloud if anyone else picked up on the author's snark and condescension, or if it was just me.

Re: OT: Campus politics - Stymie - 05-25-2016

The POC

I think the author was sympathetic to his interviewees but not empathetic.  In general it was a WTF!!! piece on life for some people at Oberlin which, when extrapolated, shined some light on how some people of a certain age view the world.

I have two daughters of this "certain age" and do not claim to really understand what they are thinking, except that it is their own thinking and not that of me or my wife.

2006alum

I've subscribed to the New Yorker several times in the past and know how to access their content now if I so wish.  I'm far more interested in learning what the people on this board think of the article cited above than how they discovered it.  I think it is interesting and thought provoking.  Do you?

Stymie

Re: OT: Campus politics - stupac2 - 05-25-2016

(05-25-2016, 06:17 AM)ThePOC link Wrote:Anyway, I could probably write a response to that article as verbose as the article itself, but I will refrain and simply wonder aloud if anyone else picked up on the author's snark and condescension, or if it was just me.

There was some, but I think that's what you should expect from the New Yorker. Overall I thought it was actually a really balanced take on the issue. I don't think I had ever seen students' motives so thoroughly explored before, and he was clearly empathetic with them on at least a few issues (the paragraph in the middle about being used for diversity but not supported stuck in my mind).