Most of you have probably already heard of the incident that took place last week at Yale, involving members of the DKE fraternity who marched in public spaces chanting offensive slogans. Here is a brief passage from the description of the episode in a post over at the Feminist Philosophers's blog:
"Last Thursday night, pledges to the DKE fraternity at Yale marched through various central and public spaces on the Yale campus chanting. Among the slogans they repeatedly shouted were “no means yes, yes means anal.” Footage of the incident is available online both on the Yale Daily News website and YouTube."
Since then, the episode has received ample attention in at least some corners of the blogosphere. There has been some sort of public apology issued by the fraternity, but many feel that the Yale administration has not been sufficiently forthcoming in taking disciplinary measures. What is particularly disturbing is the fact that there seems to be a recurrent pattern of such events at Yale, which take place every other year. Naturally, many feel that Yale's failure to take appropriate measures is at least part of the reason why the events keep occurring, since clearly the young men involved do not seem to have much to fear.
As I see it, the absence of disciplinary measures has two main consequences: on the one hand there is the specific problem of misogyny, and the fact that Yale appears to have a women-unfriendly environment to start with, with alarming rates of harassment etc. The lack of appropriate official measures is sending the wrong signal about an already ongoing problem. On the other hand, there is the fact that these young men, who are already among the very privileged social and economic elite of the US and thus likely to be among its future political leaders, are getting the message that they can 'misbehave' and still get away with it. (The second problem is not particularly related to misogyny, it might as well have occurred with racist or other kinds of inappropriate behavior.) Either way, many feel that the fact that nothing but feeble excuses have been publicly formulated and that Yale as an institution seems to consider the matter closed is ultrageous. See in particular this insightful blog post by a female graduate student at Yale.
There is also a petition going on for Yale alumni and Yale-affiliated people in general to express their discontent with the reaction by the Yale administration.
(There are many more important implications to this whole story, but I am on holiday right now, so for now I will have to content myself with just bringing up the whole issue here.)
Recent Comments