When someone is directly disrupting the school's ability to operate and teach, they can act. When someone is doing something that is blatantly in defiance of the law, they can get the police involved. It's not the duty nor should it be the duty of universities to sculpt people or enforce certain political, social, or ethical views.
Students go to school to learn, not to be told how to be.
Granted, but I bet you could agree that the not-insignificant statistical possibility of a woman being raped during her education demands a certain level of intervention. Promoting a particular kind of culture not conducive to rape is certainly a step towards reasonable preventative action. I think championing an environment where it's totally not cool to victimize people or to take that victimization lightly is a pretty far cry from stripping students of ontological agency
It's not a far cry at all when you start academically punishing them or publicly subjecting them to shame and ridicule or outright tossing them out of the institution for it
which is exactly what some people in this thread are calling for.
Well, one person called for that, so far. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I think it's dangerous to roll all the potential consequences people have entertained as reasonable into one group and then insinuate that everyone who has supported one option supports them all.
I’m teaching Shakespeare again in the spring. I had planned on using the lectures that I have prepared on Titus Andronicus, but now I don’t know. Now, I recognize that for at least a few of my students, such lectures, with their balanced, academic approach to what is an inherently difficult topic, just didn’t work.
This professor is a joke.
"Abloo Abloo, one of my former students was acting like a drunk asshole. HOW DID MY ENGLISH LIT LECTURES NOT MAKE HIM A BETTER PERSON?!?!"
I think it's indicative of a virulent and poisonous attitude prevalent in a wide variety of universities and espoused by many students and faculty.
Which is that people go to university to become better people and that they should come out of it more worldly, enlightened, liberal, and understanding.
Instead of simply more educated.
I agree with everything else you've said, but isn't all education, school too, supposed to make people better in some way? Not just more employable? Perhaps that's a debate.
Regardless, even if you do think university is a place where people should learn to be 'better', you don't make people less sexist by treating them like crap for sexist facebook comments and singing.
In the sense that being more educated is a net benefit for basically anyone, unless the basic facts you were educated with are wrong (see: People who study "Creation Science"), going to any educational institution makes you better.
However, when a professor's response to one of his former students being a misogynistic douchebag (and he is, I'm not arguing otherwise) is to say something like
What saddens me is not that the commentary that has followed has not been equally disruptive as last time, nor is it the fact that there are dozens (literally dozens) of students who approve of that message. No, what saddens me is the fact that one of my own students… one of the students whom I taught Titus Andronicus with its graphic images of rape and mutilation… not only did he approve of the message, he decided to add to the song.
I think that points to a really unfortunate viewpoint of the goals of university education. "I taught him Titus Andronicus, how could he not realize how awful he is being!" is such a ludicrously absurd response to this I don't even know how to take the viewpoint seriously.
Going to university isn't going to automatically make a person more liberal or "enlightened". It might, but it's not something it does as a default and nor is it something that should be a lauded or sought out as a goal, because that ultimately leads to a politicizing of education that I think is harmful to endorse regardless of what stripe of the spectrum it falls on.
More importantly, I think the idea that universities should be enforcing this sort of political/cultural/ethical viewpoint on students instead of just teaching them the spectrum of views and allowing them to decide for themselves is incredibly chilling.
Universities are not "enlightenment factories". They're educational institutions. They teach. Students go to them to learn. The conclusions they draw from that knowledge and how it shapes them is for them as adults to decide, not for the schools to enforce.
A quick search reveals that the HREO serves a number of functions and while it does provide "volunteer(s) to assist with the resolution of concerns and complaints", there is no indication that it is only in the business of meting out punishment, or that the professor sought to punish his former student.
When you report someone, you intend punishment.
What do I do? How am I supposed to react? How am I supposed to stop this culture from continuing? I’ve approached the Human Rights and Equity Office at the University of Guelph, though because the site is privately run, there’s probably very little they can do about it. I will bring this topic up at the feminist round table later in the month, to be sure, but what more can be done?
That's what Mr. Bretz wrote. You'll note that he did not write "I brought my concerns about my student to the Human Rights and Equity Office." He didn't mention the student at all. I can understand how one might draw the inference that he reported the student to the HREO for corrective action, but at the end of the day we don't have any credible evidence to that effect. I think, based on the surrounding context, that it is much more likely that the professor brought the whole Facebook discussion to the attention of the HREO with a view to discussing campus culture and ways to address what he sees as a problem.
He intended to name and shame. It would have been trivial to post simply the lyrics and a reference to the fact it was a student he had lectured to. Instead, he posted a Facebook post with all names included. This is exactly what naming and shaming is; attribution of 'shameful' quotations.
I don't know. Maybe this is a distinction without a difference, but I don't think that refusing to scrub someone's identity is the same as identifying that person yourself by name. Omission as opposed to commission and all that.
Had the blog post alone been the issue, the OP would have noted it. It was not, however, and was part of a whole.
Part of what whole? The OP linked the facebook page and the blog post.
We're not concerned with what his intended focus was (insert joke about authorial intent here), we're concerned with the outcomes of his actions.
What outcomes are so concerning? Has the poor besmirched Mr. Poulin been run out of town?
This is just ridiculous. Did anyone take the position that the people singing on the bus were "horrible people"? What does that even mean? I don't see anyone "screaming" about rape culture, so where did that question come from? Characterizing a sort of soul-searching blog post (because what else is there that the OP could refer to?) as "screaming rape culture" reads like an exaggeration designed solely to make it easier to dismiss the issue.
Read the comments to the professor's blog. Condemnation abounds for what is a song more about blues balls than rape.
Maybe the OP was referring to blog comments. You will forgive me for not assuming that, given that the bulk of the OP appeared to be concerned with the professor's behaviour and didn't ever mention the comments following the blog post.
]He intended to name and shame. It would have been trivial to post simply the lyrics and a reference to the fact it was a student he had lectured to. Instead, he posted a Facebook post with all names included. This is exactly what naming and shaming is; attribution of 'shameful' quotations.
I'm totally down with the fact that the university hardly as a leg to stand on for any serious disciplinary action. Maybe they can get a pissy for what goes on a in a bus if they're paying for said bus, but meh. Not worth getting worked up over.
But sharing what's posted on a public facebook forum? It's like saying, I don't know, that shit said on the radio is a matter private matter between the broadcoaster and the listeners right then and there, and that making a transcript is attributing "shameful quotations".
You say it in public, be ready to answer for it. The internet is a pretty public place.
Education is inherently political, pony. there is no way around it.
Attempting to resist that and limit education's sphere of influence is counterproductive. Schools are, in fact, where people are shaped, where their political and personal views are developed. People should - and generally do - come out of university more worldly, enlightened, and understanding. Maybe they come out more liberal, too, but a school with more conservative politics will still end up improving its students as people, to whatever extent that it is a good school.
You say people should just "learn", and should just come out more "educated", but you can't extricate education and learning from political and personal development. They are utterly inseparable. Post-secondary education is where people come to learn about politics and economy and government and ethics and philosophy, it's where they receive - in huge, monolithic chunks - the knowledge and information that shapes policy and frames all the political debates in our civilization. It is impossible to absorb that information without absorbing political stances, and it is impossible to convey that information without doing so.
A good professor, or a good teacher in general, is not going to let you get out of their classroom without challenging your views, especially if they actually disagree with them. We should obviously discourage an approach to education that involves shutting down the opposite view, or enforcing a certain view, or attempting to drown out ideological opposition rather than engage it in discussion for the betterment of all those involved, but when it comes to people just being ignorant assholes - yes, it is education's job to shape people and help make them better. Perhaps it is less so in postsecondary education than in primary and secondary school, but it definitely is. This doesn't mean you kick someone out of school for being an ignorant asshole, necessarily, although if it's egregious enough it can and does happen. (I don't think this was egregious enough for any kind of suspension or expulsion.)
So, I'm just going throw something out in support of Pony here.
Having government run and government supported institutions issuing draconian financial and physically coercive penalties (and if you've never known or dealt with someone who has been involved with disciplinary action at a university, being thrown out of a university is the equivalent of having someone fire you from your job, kick you out of your house, and send you a bill for the rest of your mortgage, all at once) for public speech is perhaps not the best precedent to set in our society.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
I don't know. Maybe this is a distinction without a difference, but I don't think that refusing to scrub someone's identity is the same as identifying that person yourself by name. Omission as opposed to commission and all that.
I think this is equivocation. If you provide evidence that identifies the person, you have identified the person.
What outcomes are so concerning? Has the poor besmirched Mr. Poulin been run out of town?
I got the impression from some of the posts that the student in question had been expelled, but I can't find that in the original content, so take that as me leaping to conclusions from poor comprehension.
If he's just been reported and blogged about, it's a bit stupid, but not significantly stupid. If he's gotten kicked out, it's super-stupid.
Maybe the OP was referring to blog comments. You will forgive me for not assuming that, given that the bulk of the OP appeared to be concerned with the professor's behaviour and didn't ever mention the comments following the blog post.
I assumed that the comments were what the OP was referring to with the "rape culture" point, rather than the blog itself.
After all, he includes "are the people screaming rape culture overreacting?", which would imply that he's talking about people in the content he has linked, rather than the singular person, i.e. the professor.
But sharing what's posted on a public facebook forum? It's like saying, I don't know, that shit said on the radio is a matter private matter between the broadcoaster and the listeners right then and there, and that making a transcript is attributing "shameful quotations".
You say it in public, be ready to answer for it. The internet is a pretty public place.
I'm not saying it's wrong to do so; I'm just saying that it is naming and shaming.
Now if people want to ascribe a negative valuation to naming and shaming, that's another thing entirely.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
The only way to interpret that chant that incorrectly is to force yourself to. Way to go, self delusion is the ultimate protection.
Sadly, this is not an argument, just a sorry little ad hominem.
It's an absurd hypothetical song. "Women don't want to have sex with me; I wish they would stop saying no." Not offensive. Alternative offensive version, "Women won't let me have sex with them; I wish they couldn't stop me."
I tend not to assume malign intent for rawdy poetry; the inventor(s) were looking for a rhyme for penis, found Venus, considered defaced Greek statues and came up with a song about getting shut down when trying to 'get some'.
Unless you want to assert that, via the wonderful principle of rape culture, this song leads to men cutting the arms off of women so that they cannot stop the men raping them. Please, do go ahead. I could do with some more post hoc in my life.
A good professor, or a good teacher in general, is not going to let you get out of their classroom without challenging your views, especially if they actually disagree with them.
I agree with you broadly, but many professors would argue that a major problem with post-secondary ed in this country is that we've come to take on this cloak of objectivity to mask whatever political beliefs we might have. The professor just becomes this arbiter of facts and broad discussion topics in which he or she will not participate in any biased fashion. In doing so, professors believe they're fostering an academic environment free of hostility, when really, by de-politicizing their curriculum (to whatever extent that's possible) they're risking the creation of a much more passive pedagogy wherein the stakes of your beliefs are fairly low. Why challenge your beliefs if no one else will challenge your beliefs either?
The major problem is finding that nice space between "It's okay, bro, your attitude on rape is yours, and I'll respect it" and "Prepare the kindling and the stake." Reasonable discourse between opposing viewpoints is virtually always the answer, and it's what college is ostensibly about, when it works. We shouldn't run from confrontation, nor shut it down with crazy-ass polemics.
I don't know. Maybe this is a distinction without a difference, but I don't think that refusing to scrub someone's identity is the same as identifying that person yourself by name. Omission as opposed to commission and all that.
I think this is equivocation. If you provide evidence that identifies the person, you have identified the person.
In this case, Mr. Poulin attached his name to the comments. He identified himself. I don't think that there is any need to redact that after the fact.
Education is inherently political, pony. there is no way around it.
Attempting to resist that and limit education's sphere of influence is counterproductive. Schools are, in fact, where people are shaped, where their political and personal views are developed. People should - and generally do - come out of university more worldly, enlightened, and understanding. Maybe they come out more liberal, too, but a school with more conservative politics will still end up improving its students as people, to whatever extent that it is a good school.
You say people should just "learn", and should just come out more "educated", but you can't extricate education and learning from political and personal development. They are utterly inseparable. Post-secondary education is where people come to learn about politics and economy and government and ethics and philosophy, it's where they receive - in huge, monolithic chunks - the knowledge and information that shapes policy and frames all the political debates in our civilization. It is impossible to absorb that information without absorbing political stances, and it is impossible to convey that information without doing so.
A good professor, or a good teacher in general, is not going to let you get out of their classroom without challenging your views, especially if they actually disagree with them. We should obviously discourage an approach to education that involves shutting down the opposite view, or enforcing a certain view, or attempting to drown out ideological opposition rather than engage it in discussion for the betterment of all those involved, but when it comes to people just being ignorant assholes - yes, it is education's job to shape people and help make them better. Perhaps it is less so in postsecondary education than in primary and secondary school, but it definitely is. This doesn't mean you kick someone out of school for being an ignorant asshole, necessarily, although if it's egregious enough it can and does happen. (I don't think this was egregious enough for any kind of suspension or expulsion.)
Apparently educating and enlightening can become mutually exclusive. Which is news to me.
Also I think everyone here is relatively in agreement that the professor's reaction was silly, and the student in question shouldn't be automatically dropped out on his ass. However posting something like that in a public place carries the consequence of having to answer for it publicly. If that is too much to bear for the student, or any future students, maybe they shouldn't be posting that kind of stuff on a facebook page to begin with.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
In this case, Mr. Poulin attached his name to the comments. He identified himself. I don't think that there is any need to redact that after the fact.
I know that he identified himself when posting in the public domain.
But the blog post does not require his name to make its point; therefore, to me, this implies the inclusion of the screenshots in question was to provide the identification.
I’m teaching Shakespeare again in the spring. I had planned on using the lectures that I have prepared on Titus Andronicus, but now I don’t know. Now, I recognize that for at least a few of my students, such lectures, with their balanced, academic approach to what is an inherently difficult topic, just didn’t work.
This professor is a joke.
"Abloo Abloo, one of my former students was acting like a drunk asshole. HOW DID MY ENGLISH LIT LECTURES NOT MAKE HIM A BETTER PERSON?!?!"
I think it's indicative of a virulent and poisonous attitude prevalent in a wide variety of universities and espoused by many students and faculty.
Which is that people go to university to become better people and that they should come out of it more worldly, enlightened, liberal, and understanding.
Instead of simply more educated.
I agree with everything else you've said, but isn't all education, school too, supposed to make people better in some way? Not just more employable? Perhaps that's a debate.
Regardless, even if you do think university is a place where people should learn to be 'better', you don't make people less sexist by treating them like crap for sexist facebook comments and singing.
In the sense that being more educated is a net benefit for basically anyone, unless the basic facts you were educated with are wrong (see: People who study "Creation Science"), going to any educational institution makes you better.
However, when a professor's response to one of his former students being a misogynistic douchebag (and he is, I'm not arguing otherwise) is to say something like
What saddens me is not that the commentary that has followed has not been equally disruptive as last time, nor is it the fact that there are dozens (literally dozens) of students who approve of that message. No, what saddens me is the fact that one of my own students… one of the students whom I taught Titus Andronicus with its graphic images of rape and mutilation… not only did he approve of the message, he decided to add to the song.
I think that points to a really unfortunate viewpoint of the goals of university education. "I taught him Titus Andronicus, how could he not realize how awful he is being!" is such a ludicrously absurd response to this I don't even know how to take the viewpoint seriously.
Going to university isn't going to automatically make a person more liberal or "enlightened". It might, but it's not something it does as a default and nor is it something that should be a lauded or sought out as a goal, because that ultimately leads to a politicizing of education that I think is harmful to endorse regardless of what stripe of the spectrum it falls on.
More importantly, I think the idea that universities should be enforcing this sort of political/cultural/ethical viewpoint on students instead of just teaching them the spectrum of views and allowing them to decide for themselves is incredibly chilling.
Universities are not "enlightenment factories". They're educational institutions. They teach. Students go to them to learn. The conclusions they draw from that knowledge and how it shapes them is for them as adults to decide, not for the schools to enforce.
Honestly, it's kind of hilarious that a professor paid to disseminate media depicting rape is whining about people talking about rape. By playing Titus Andronicus, he's guilty of promoting rape culture by his own standards.
Maybe we should do something about Romeo and Juliet promoting suicide culture, Macbeth promoting regicide culture, and Hamlet promoting... honestly, I'm not sure what to call it.
Also, this whole thing plus the "dickwolves" shitstorm and the LEGO discussion has me thinking that gender studies departments around the country have decided that the concept of "specificity" is simply a tool of the manocentric male-ocracy.
More importantly, I think the idea that universities should be enforcing this sort of political/cultural/ethical viewpoint on students instead of just teaching them the spectrum of views and allowing them to decide for themselves is incredibly chilling.
You think "Some people think rape is bad, some people think she was asking for it, decide for yourself!" is a reasonable position for a university to take? They have, if nothing else, a responsibility for the safety of their students.
Expulsion seems like an over reaction in this case, but these guys should probably be dragged in front of a press conference and made to apologize to everyone else on that bus. Or something like that.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
A good professor, or a good teacher in general, is not going to let you get out of their classroom without challenging your views, especially if they actually disagree with them.
I agree with you broadly, but many professors would argue that a major problem with post-secondary ed in this country is that we've come to take on this cloak of objectivity to mask whatever political beliefs we might have. The professor just becomes this arbiter of facts and broad discussion topics in which he or she will not participate in any biased fashion. In doing so, professors believe they're fostering an academic environment free of hostility, when really, by de-politicizing their curriculum (to whatever extent that's possible) they're risking the creation of a much more passive pedagogy wherein the stakes of your beliefs are fairly low. Why challenge your beliefs if no one else will challenge your beliefs either?
The major problem is finding that nice space between "It's okay, bro, your attitude on rape is yours, and I'll respect it" and "Prepare the kindling and the stake." Reasonable discourse between opposing viewpoints is virtually always the answer, and it's what college is ostensibly about, when it works. We shouldn't run from confrontation, nor shut it down with crazy-ass polemics.
I agree, and I think this is exactly why attempting to depoliticise education is misguided. The pretense of objectivity is dangerous, and we should acknowledge diversity of political views and engage in discussion and education mediated by a professor who acknowledges their own stance and biases. If not at school, then where? Certainly politicians themselves won't be frank and honest.
Professors should challenge views, and they should be free to take political stances. The difficulty is in hiring professors with the humility and wisdom to avoid enforcing their own views, and to honestly engage even students who hold wrongheaded or unethical positions, so they encourage students to discuss rather than roll their eyes at a bad mark they attribute to disagreement.
Assuming that reading Titus Andronicus will change your view on gender is clearly goofy, though. I would hope he was more referring to explicit discussions of the social issue in class.
Expulsion seems like an over reaction in this case, but these guys should probably be dragged in front of a press conference and made to apologize to everyone else on that bus. Or something like that.
...That does sound a bit harsh. The real problem with public shaming is that it suggests the perversity of the minority you have selected for the shaming. The larger problem is that these guys aren't freaks. By all accounts, they're probably pretty normal, but had the good fortune of saying the wrong thing in the wrong place.
I know everyone loves to have a laugh whenever the term "rape culture" is used, yet the chapter of a national fraternity (Sigma Phi Epsilon if anyone is curious!) at my alma mater, this past fall, had a survey given to new pledges which included a question If you could rape anyone, who would it be? If that isn't an example of "rape culture," well shucks man I guess people shouldn't be asking for it with the way they dress. The chapter was shut down as a result, coupled with mounting city ordinance violations.
In this case, Mr. Poulin attached his name to the comments. He identified himself. I don't think that there is any need to redact that after the fact.
I know that he identified himself when posting in the public domain.
But the blog post does not require his name to make its point; therefore, to me, this implies,the inclusion of the screenshots in question was to provide the identification.
That's fair enough, but I don't think it has any greater support than the inference that Mr. Bretz simply couldn't be bothered to edit the image to block out the names. In fact, I think that when you consider he evidently did not edit the image at all (i.e. to hide the names of other, unrelated parties) it is more plausible that he was just being kind of lazy.
I think that chant is ridiculously offensive and I would hope the guy gets booted from the college. It's absolutely disgusting.
Are you serious? You want someone to be expelled from college solely on the basis of his posting a drunk song on a Facebook forum for posting random overheard conversations?
I actually think that sexual harassment and underreported rapes are huge problems at colleges, and based on my own experience I assume that anyone I meet who was in a frat probably either raped someone, enabled a rape, or stood by and failed to stop a rape (mostly girls too drunk to be capable of consenting being lead/dragged/carried to bedrooms). I would fully endorse abolishing all frats because of this. But even I would never endorse penalizing someone (let alone expelling them) for posting that song on Facebook. I am also disgusted with this professor for not even having the decency to contact his former student about this. If he was actually concerned about educating instead of grandstanding, then he should have seen this as an opportunity to engage with, instead of punish, someone he seems to think he failed as an educator.
that's pretty fucked up, brah.
I know this isn't a thread about frats, but I definitely think that universities who want to reduce incidences of rape or sexual violence would be much better served by (and have a stronger basis for) eliminating frats than they do for censuring students for singing on a bus.
The only way to interpret that chant that incorrectly is to force yourself to. Way to go, self delusion is the ultimate protection.
Sadly, this is not an argument, just a sorry little ad hominem.
It's an absurd hypothetical song. "Women don't want to have sex with me; I wish they would stop saying no." Not offensive. Alternative offensive version, "Women won't let me have sex with them; I wish they couldn't stop me."
I tend not to assume malign intent for rawdy poetry; the inventor(s) were looking for a rhyme for penis, found Venus, considered defaced Greek statues and came up with a song about getting shut down when trying to 'get some'.
Unless you want to assert that, via the wonderful principle of rape culture, this song leads to men cutting the arms off of women so that they cannot stop the men raping them. Please, do go ahead. I could do with some more post hoc in my life.
This. I dont even get an especially rapey vibe from the song. "Push away my penis" comes off as a metaphor for rejection rather then physically stopping someone from having sex with you. I mean, has anyone ever in the history of man actually pushed away a penis to avoid rape?
And that is not even beginning to address the issue that joking about something doesn't empower or endorse that something.
And even that doesnt even begin to address the fact this guy isnt even necessarily involved in singing the song. He posted about having heard it. Hell, right now we are posting about having read it. It doesn't make us culpable.
I hope nobody is actually advocating a university punishing someone for things that person may have said completely outside of any academic context - it's not that that sort of thing is absolutely unheard of but the idea that a student can be censured for posting something offensive on facebook leads to the exact sort of stifling mentality that led people to decry the PC-movement.
I also suppose that if the goal is to police university-sponsored buses for drunk students as if they were the same as a classroom, then you shouldn't be surprised when students realize how dangerous it is to their academic careers to ride said buses (I've been enveloped by enough brawls on these sorts of things that I'm not even sure I'd feel comfortable if all I did was remain quiet and stare forward) and decide on alternative methods of drunken transport.
Expulsion seems like an over reaction in this case, but these guys should probably be dragged in front of a press conference and made to apologize to everyone else on that bus. Or something like that.
...That does sound a bit harsh. The real problem with public shaming is that it suggests the perversity of the minority you have selected for the shaming. The larger problem is that these guys aren't freaks. By all accounts, they're probably pretty normal, but had the good fortune of saying the wrong thing in the wrong place.
That doesn't make their actions acceptable. The only way to change the culture so this stuff isn't normal is to make an example of people when the opportunity arises.
Besides, I don't think making a prepared statement to the effect of "I realize now those lyrics were inappropriate and I apologize. Rape is a serious issue blah blah" would be all that arduous.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
Apparently, It's a bawdy folk song and he got the line wrong:
Expulsion seems like an over reaction in this case, but these guys should probably be dragged in front of a press conference and made to apologize to everyone else on that bus. Or something like that.
...That does sound a bit harsh. The real problem with public shaming is that it suggests the perversity of the minority you have selected for the shaming. The larger problem is that these guys aren't freaks. By all accounts, they're probably pretty normal, but had the good fortune of saying the wrong thing in the wrong place.
That doesn't make their actions acceptable. The only way to change the culture so this stuff isn't normal is to make an example of people when the opportunity arises.
Besides, I don't think making a prepared statement to the effect of "I realize now those lyrics were inappropriate and I apologize. Rape is a serious issue blah blah" would be all that arduous.
This isn't to dismiss that what they said was crass and inappropriate, I just seriously doubt you're going to promote a healthier attitude about gender and sexual equality by throwing people into stocks. Whatever punishment is appropriate for them, if any, should be done with the discretion of any disciplinary action.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
That doesn't make their actions acceptable. The only way to change the culture so this stuff isn't normal is to make an example of people when the opportunity arises.
I don't think it's this simple.
If you overreact in making an example of people (or to the general populous, you appear to overreact), you tend to end up lionising the person in particular, rather than making them a negative example.
I mean, right now, if someone took Louis CK onto a radio station, and forced him to apologise for making a joke about raping Hitler, because rape is a big issue, what do you think the reaction would be? A take-away lesson for all listeners that rape is bad, or would they instead think that some authority figure is trying to throw their weight around to make a political point.
Expulsion seems like an over reaction in this case, but these guys should probably be dragged in front of a press conference and made to apologize to everyone else on that bus. Or something like that.
...That does sound a bit harsh. The real problem with public shaming is that it suggests the perversity of the minority you have selected for the shaming. The larger problem is that these guys aren't freaks. By all accounts, they're probably pretty normal, but had the good fortune of saying the wrong thing in the wrong place.
That doesn't make their actions acceptable. The only way to change the culture so this stuff isn't normal is to make an example of people when the opportunity arises.
Besides, I don't think making a prepared statement to the effect of "I realize now those lyrics were inappropriate and I apologize. Rape is a serious issue blah blah" would be all that arduous.
This isn't to dismiss that what they said was crass and inappropriate, I just seriously doubt you're going to promote a healthier attitude about gender and sexual equality by throwing people into stocks. Whatever punishment is appropriate for them, if any, should be done with the discretion of any disciplinary action.
On the contrary, it would be far more effective than making them take rape awareness classes or whatever, because the attitudes of these individuals are not what's important, its the culture.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
The only way to interpret that chant that incorrectly is to force yourself to. Way to go, self delusion is the ultimate protection.
Sadly, this is not an argument, just a sorry little ad hominem.
It's an absurd hypothetical song. "Women don't want to have sex with me; I wish they would stop saying no." Not offensive. Alternative offensive version, "Women won't let me have sex with them; I wish they couldn't stop me."
I tend not to assume malign intent for rawdy poetry; the inventor(s) were looking for a rhyme for penis, found Venus, considered defaced Greek statues and came up with a song about getting shut down when trying to 'get some'.
Unless you want to assert that, via the wonderful principle of rape culture, this song leads to men cutting the arms off of women so that they cannot stop the men raping them. Please, do go ahead. I could do with some more post hoc in my life.
This. I dont even get an especially rapey vibe from the song. "Push away my penis" comes off as a metaphor for rejection rather then physically stopping someone from having sex with you. I mean, has anyone ever in the history of man actually pushed away a penis to avoid rape?
And that is not even beginning to address the issue that joking about something doesn't empower or endorse that something.
And even that doesnt even begin to address the fact this guy isnt even necessarily involved in singing the song. He posted about having heard it. Hell, right now we are posting about having read it. It doesn't make us culpable.
Especially given that the part about the girl being a statue is pretty much a perfect strategy for making it so sex without consultation wouldn't be rape, as statues are inanimate objects.
Its a drinking song. Hell at least with the controversial verse, you can tell the school is doing at least some educating. Your average drinking song doesn't usually feature a call-back to the disfigured state of a piece of ancient Greek sculpture.
In fact I think making new verses is a far more productive tangent for this thread to go on. OP can judge winner.
I wish that all the ladies
were related to B Riemann
so I'd know the approximate area
I covered with my semen.
educational and fun to sing while drunk. Win-Win!
tinwhiskers on
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
The song is "I wish women weren't able to stop me from raping them." There's some real mental gymnastics involved in giving it another reading, and I'm not sure why people are trying to.
The song was sung for laughs, because rape is taboo and violating taboos is a staple of humor. But the university would be well within their rights to censure such displays in areas under their purview. I'm not now, nor do I ever plan to be, a young woman, but it's not hard to imagine how one might feel stuck in an enclosed space with young, drunk men who are singing about rape.
Ain't no particular sign I'm more compatible with
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
The song is "I wish women weren't able to stop me from raping them." There's some real mental gymnastics involved in giving it another reading, and I'm not sure why people are trying to.
Expulsion seems like an over reaction in this case, but these guys should probably be dragged in front of a press conference and made to apologize to everyone else on that bus. Or something like that.
...That does sound a bit harsh. The real problem with public shaming is that it suggests the perversity of the minority you have selected for the shaming. The larger problem is that these guys aren't freaks. By all accounts, they're probably pretty normal, but had the good fortune of saying the wrong thing in the wrong place.
That doesn't make their actions acceptable. The only way to change the culture so this stuff isn't normal is to make an example of people when the opportunity arises.
Besides, I don't think making a prepared statement to the effect of "I realize now those lyrics were inappropriate and I apologize. Rape is a serious issue blah blah" would be all that arduous.
This isn't to dismiss that what they said was crass and inappropriate, I just seriously doubt you're going to promote a healthier attitude about gender and sexual equality by throwing people into stocks. Whatever punishment is appropriate for them, if any, should be done with the discretion of any disciplinary action.
On the contrary, it would be far more effective than making them take rape awareness classes or whatever, because the attitudes of these individuals are not what's important, its the culture.
What you're advocating is a top-down, authoritarian attempt to change culture. I'd argue this is bad in general, and very bad for academic institutions in particular.
What happens when the weight of authority and risk of punishment is put behind changes in culture isn't that the culture is actually changed, just that the environment becomes one of fear and uncertainty. After all, the mandate is that "the culture you are familiar with is wrong and expressions of such will be punished" - meanwhile nobody quite knows where to draw the line, since the idea is being imposed on them, and they haven't actually been inculcated with whatever value you want to promote. In this case, they may know that directly harassing another person isn't allowed, but can't figure out what would constitute fostering a generalized "hostile environment" (after all, someone, somewhere, could be offended by damn near anything), so they either don't talk at all or limit their discourse to things that couldn't even be remotely perceived that way. They also would be predisposed to outwardly agree with any punishment, since to them nearly any punishment is largely arbitrary anyway and because they don't know where the line between acceptable and unacceptable now lies. Even minor or non-examples of the behavior in question are thus treated as serious matter because no one is willing to stake themselves on a defense. And yet in private, they still believe the same things they always have.
And we want this sort of mentality in academic institutions that ostensibly promote the free discourse of ideas?
Ah, and now students should be targeted for things they say on facebook or during situations that at best tangentially related to the school. So now, instead of just being on pins and needles while in the classroom, students have to be concerned about promoting some ideal they may not agree with or understand everywhere for fear repercussions may bleed over into their academic career?
The song is "I wish women weren't able to stop me from raping them." There's some real mental gymnastics involved in giving it another reading, and I'm not sure why people are trying to.
Johnathan Swift glorified murdering Irish babies.
So... that makes it ok to sing about how you wish all women were handicapped so you can rape them in public. Your mind works in amazing ways.
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
The song is "I wish women weren't able to stop me from raping them." There's some real mental gymnastics involved in giving it another reading, and I'm not sure why people are trying to.
Johnathan Swift glorified murdering Irish babies.
Are you suggesting that the singer was some daring young satirist making a meta-comment on the lamentable pervasiveness of rape culture? Do you understand what satire is, and how it differs from other modes of expression?
The song is "I wish women weren't able to stop me from raping them." There's some real mental gymnastics involved in giving it another reading, and I'm not sure why people are trying to.
Johnathan Swift glorified murdering Irish babies.
the analogy you're attempting to draw here implies that the song in question is a work of deliberate irony that is, in fact, trying to reveal how screwed up attitudes toward women are, and we should all be much more sensitive to how we treat women as sexual objects
i think we can all agree this isn't what the guy was doing?
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
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Is a far cry from
In the sense that being more educated is a net benefit for basically anyone, unless the basic facts you were educated with are wrong (see: People who study "Creation Science"), going to any educational institution makes you better.
However, when a professor's response to one of his former students being a misogynistic douchebag (and he is, I'm not arguing otherwise) is to say something like
I think that points to a really unfortunate viewpoint of the goals of university education. "I taught him Titus Andronicus, how could he not realize how awful he is being!" is such a ludicrously absurd response to this I don't even know how to take the viewpoint seriously.
Going to university isn't going to automatically make a person more liberal or "enlightened". It might, but it's not something it does as a default and nor is it something that should be a lauded or sought out as a goal, because that ultimately leads to a politicizing of education that I think is harmful to endorse regardless of what stripe of the spectrum it falls on.
More importantly, I think the idea that universities should be enforcing this sort of political/cultural/ethical viewpoint on students instead of just teaching them the spectrum of views and allowing them to decide for themselves is incredibly chilling.
Universities are not "enlightenment factories". They're educational institutions. They teach. Students go to them to learn. The conclusions they draw from that knowledge and how it shapes them is for them as adults to decide, not for the schools to enforce.
I don't know. Maybe this is a distinction without a difference, but I don't think that refusing to scrub someone's identity is the same as identifying that person yourself by name. Omission as opposed to commission and all that.
Part of what whole? The OP linked the facebook page and the blog post.
What outcomes are so concerning? Has the poor besmirched Mr. Poulin been run out of town?
Maybe the OP was referring to blog comments. You will forgive me for not assuming that, given that the bulk of the OP appeared to be concerned with the professor's behaviour and didn't ever mention the comments following the blog post.
But sharing what's posted on a public facebook forum? It's like saying, I don't know, that shit said on the radio is a matter private matter between the broadcoaster and the listeners right then and there, and that making a transcript is attributing "shameful quotations".
You say it in public, be ready to answer for it. The internet is a pretty public place.
Attempting to resist that and limit education's sphere of influence is counterproductive. Schools are, in fact, where people are shaped, where their political and personal views are developed. People should - and generally do - come out of university more worldly, enlightened, and understanding. Maybe they come out more liberal, too, but a school with more conservative politics will still end up improving its students as people, to whatever extent that it is a good school.
You say people should just "learn", and should just come out more "educated", but you can't extricate education and learning from political and personal development. They are utterly inseparable. Post-secondary education is where people come to learn about politics and economy and government and ethics and philosophy, it's where they receive - in huge, monolithic chunks - the knowledge and information that shapes policy and frames all the political debates in our civilization. It is impossible to absorb that information without absorbing political stances, and it is impossible to convey that information without doing so.
A good professor, or a good teacher in general, is not going to let you get out of their classroom without challenging your views, especially if they actually disagree with them. We should obviously discourage an approach to education that involves shutting down the opposite view, or enforcing a certain view, or attempting to drown out ideological opposition rather than engage it in discussion for the betterment of all those involved, but when it comes to people just being ignorant assholes - yes, it is education's job to shape people and help make them better. Perhaps it is less so in postsecondary education than in primary and secondary school, but it definitely is. This doesn't mean you kick someone out of school for being an ignorant asshole, necessarily, although if it's egregious enough it can and does happen. (I don't think this was egregious enough for any kind of suspension or expulsion.)
Did you see the part where I had a bunch of paragraphs accidentally struck through? It was great!
The only way to interpret that chant that incorrectly is to force yourself to. Way to go, self delusion is the ultimate protection.
Having government run and government supported institutions issuing draconian financial and physically coercive penalties (and if you've never known or dealt with someone who has been involved with disciplinary action at a university, being thrown out of a university is the equivalent of having someone fire you from your job, kick you out of your house, and send you a bill for the rest of your mortgage, all at once) for public speech is perhaps not the best precedent to set in our society.
I got the impression from some of the posts that the student in question had been expelled, but I can't find that in the original content, so take that as me leaping to conclusions from poor comprehension.
If he's just been reported and blogged about, it's a bit stupid, but not significantly stupid. If he's gotten kicked out, it's super-stupid.
I assumed that the comments were what the OP was referring to with the "rape culture" point, rather than the blog itself.
After all, he includes "are the people screaming rape culture overreacting?", which would imply that he's talking about people in the content he has linked, rather than the singular person, i.e. the professor.
I'm not saying it's wrong to do so; I'm just saying that it is naming and shaming.
Now if people want to ascribe a negative valuation to naming and shaming, that's another thing entirely.
It's an absurd hypothetical song. "Women don't want to have sex with me; I wish they would stop saying no." Not offensive. Alternative offensive version, "Women won't let me have sex with them; I wish they couldn't stop me."
I tend not to assume malign intent for rawdy poetry; the inventor(s) were looking for a rhyme for penis, found Venus, considered defaced Greek statues and came up with a song about getting shut down when trying to 'get some'.
Unless you want to assert that, via the wonderful principle of rape culture, this song leads to men cutting the arms off of women so that they cannot stop the men raping them. Please, do go ahead. I could do with some more post hoc in my life.
I agree with you broadly, but many professors would argue that a major problem with post-secondary ed in this country is that we've come to take on this cloak of objectivity to mask whatever political beliefs we might have. The professor just becomes this arbiter of facts and broad discussion topics in which he or she will not participate in any biased fashion. In doing so, professors believe they're fostering an academic environment free of hostility, when really, by de-politicizing their curriculum (to whatever extent that's possible) they're risking the creation of a much more passive pedagogy wherein the stakes of your beliefs are fairly low. Why challenge your beliefs if no one else will challenge your beliefs either?
The major problem is finding that nice space between "It's okay, bro, your attitude on rape is yours, and I'll respect it" and "Prepare the kindling and the stake." Reasonable discourse between opposing viewpoints is virtually always the answer, and it's what college is ostensibly about, when it works. We shouldn't run from confrontation, nor shut it down with crazy-ass polemics.
Apparently educating and enlightening can become mutually exclusive. Which is news to me.
Also I think everyone here is relatively in agreement that the professor's reaction was silly, and the student in question shouldn't be automatically dropped out on his ass. However posting something like that in a public place carries the consequence of having to answer for it publicly. If that is too much to bear for the student, or any future students, maybe they shouldn't be posting that kind of stuff on a facebook page to begin with.
But the blog post does not require his name to make its point; therefore, to me, this implies the inclusion of the screenshots in question was to provide the identification.
Honestly, it's kind of hilarious that a professor paid to disseminate media depicting rape is whining about people talking about rape. By playing Titus Andronicus, he's guilty of promoting rape culture by his own standards.
Maybe we should do something about Romeo and Juliet promoting suicide culture, Macbeth promoting regicide culture, and Hamlet promoting... honestly, I'm not sure what to call it.
Also, this whole thing plus the "dickwolves" shitstorm and the LEGO discussion has me thinking that gender studies departments around the country have decided that the concept of "specificity" is simply a tool of the manocentric male-ocracy.
You think "Some people think rape is bad, some people think she was asking for it, decide for yourself!" is a reasonable position for a university to take? They have, if nothing else, a responsibility for the safety of their students.
Expulsion seems like an over reaction in this case, but these guys should probably be dragged in front of a press conference and made to apologize to everyone else on that bus. Or something like that.
I agree, and I think this is exactly why attempting to depoliticise education is misguided. The pretense of objectivity is dangerous, and we should acknowledge diversity of political views and engage in discussion and education mediated by a professor who acknowledges their own stance and biases. If not at school, then where? Certainly politicians themselves won't be frank and honest.
Professors should challenge views, and they should be free to take political stances. The difficulty is in hiring professors with the humility and wisdom to avoid enforcing their own views, and to honestly engage even students who hold wrongheaded or unethical positions, so they encourage students to discuss rather than roll their eyes at a bad mark they attribute to disagreement.
Assuming that reading Titus Andronicus will change your view on gender is clearly goofy, though. I would hope he was more referring to explicit discussions of the social issue in class.
Hamlet banned in Iraq, Shakespeare stoned in effigy.
...That does sound a bit harsh. The real problem with public shaming is that it suggests the perversity of the minority you have selected for the shaming. The larger problem is that these guys aren't freaks. By all accounts, they're probably pretty normal, but had the good fortune of saying the wrong thing in the wrong place.
That's fair enough, but I don't think it has any greater support than the inference that Mr. Bretz simply couldn't be bothered to edit the image to block out the names. In fact, I think that when you consider he evidently did not edit the image at all (i.e. to hide the names of other, unrelated parties) it is more plausible that he was just being kind of lazy.
Agreed on that.
This. I dont even get an especially rapey vibe from the song. "Push away my penis" comes off as a metaphor for rejection rather then physically stopping someone from having sex with you. I mean, has anyone ever in the history of man actually pushed away a penis to avoid rape?
And that is not even beginning to address the issue that joking about something doesn't empower or endorse that something.
And even that doesnt even begin to address the fact this guy isnt even necessarily involved in singing the song. He posted about having heard it. Hell, right now we are posting about having read it. It doesn't make us culpable.
I also suppose that if the goal is to police university-sponsored buses for drunk students as if they were the same as a classroom, then you shouldn't be surprised when students realize how dangerous it is to their academic careers to ride said buses (I've been enveloped by enough brawls on these sorts of things that I'm not even sure I'd feel comfortable if all I did was remain quiet and stare forward) and decide on alternative methods of drunken transport.
That doesn't make their actions acceptable. The only way to change the culture so this stuff isn't normal is to make an example of people when the opportunity arises.
Besides, I don't think making a prepared statement to the effect of "I realize now those lyrics were inappropriate and I apologize. Rape is a serious issue blah blah" would be all that arduous.
http://www.slycreations.com/rollyourlegover.pdf
"I wish all the girls were like statues of Venus
I'd be a Greek with a petrified penis."
This isn't to dismiss that what they said was crass and inappropriate, I just seriously doubt you're going to promote a healthier attitude about gender and sexual equality by throwing people into stocks. Whatever punishment is appropriate for them, if any, should be done with the discretion of any disciplinary action.
Now penis/genus is unexplored territory.
I don't think it's this simple.
If you overreact in making an example of people (or to the general populous, you appear to overreact), you tend to end up lionising the person in particular, rather than making them a negative example.
I mean, right now, if someone took Louis CK onto a radio station, and forced him to apologise for making a joke about raping Hitler, because rape is a big issue, what do you think the reaction would be? A take-away lesson for all listeners that rape is bad, or would they instead think that some authority figure is trying to throw their weight around to make a political point.
On the contrary, it would be far more effective than making them take rape awareness classes or whatever, because the attitudes of these individuals are not what's important, its the culture.
Especially given that the part about the girl being a statue is pretty much a perfect strategy for making it so sex without consultation wouldn't be rape, as statues are inanimate objects.
Google, "I wish all the Ladies", and you'll get dozens of verses for it. Saying that this one is some how extra offensive vs say:
I wish that all the ladies
were holes in the road
and I was a dumptruck
I'd fill 'em with my load!
or any of these others: http://thegoatyakdrinking.blogspot.com/
Its a drinking song. Hell at least with the controversial verse, you can tell the school is doing at least some educating. Your average drinking song doesn't usually feature a call-back to the disfigured state of a piece of ancient Greek sculpture.
In fact I think making new verses is a far more productive tangent for this thread to go on. OP can judge winner.
I wish that all the ladies
were related to B Riemann
so I'd know the approximate area
I covered with my semen.
educational and fun to sing while drunk. Win-Win!
The song was sung for laughs, because rape is taboo and violating taboos is a staple of humor. But the university would be well within their rights to censure such displays in areas under their purview. I'm not now, nor do I ever plan to be, a young woman, but it's not hard to imagine how one might feel stuck in an enclosed space with young, drunk men who are singing about rape.
What you're advocating is a top-down, authoritarian attempt to change culture. I'd argue this is bad in general, and very bad for academic institutions in particular.
What happens when the weight of authority and risk of punishment is put behind changes in culture isn't that the culture is actually changed, just that the environment becomes one of fear and uncertainty. After all, the mandate is that "the culture you are familiar with is wrong and expressions of such will be punished" - meanwhile nobody quite knows where to draw the line, since the idea is being imposed on them, and they haven't actually been inculcated with whatever value you want to promote. In this case, they may know that directly harassing another person isn't allowed, but can't figure out what would constitute fostering a generalized "hostile environment" (after all, someone, somewhere, could be offended by damn near anything), so they either don't talk at all or limit their discourse to things that couldn't even be remotely perceived that way. They also would be predisposed to outwardly agree with any punishment, since to them nearly any punishment is largely arbitrary anyway and because they don't know where the line between acceptable and unacceptable now lies. Even minor or non-examples of the behavior in question are thus treated as serious matter because no one is willing to stake themselves on a defense. And yet in private, they still believe the same things they always have.
And we want this sort of mentality in academic institutions that ostensibly promote the free discourse of ideas?
Ah, and now students should be targeted for things they say on facebook or during situations that at best tangentially related to the school. So now, instead of just being on pins and needles while in the classroom, students have to be concerned about promoting some ideal they may not agree with or understand everywhere for fear repercussions may bleed over into their academic career?
So... that makes it ok to sing about how you wish all women were handicapped so you can rape them in public. Your mind works in amazing ways.
Are you suggesting that the singer was some daring young satirist making a meta-comment on the lamentable pervasiveness of rape culture? Do you understand what satire is, and how it differs from other modes of expression?
the analogy you're attempting to draw here implies that the song in question is a work of deliberate irony that is, in fact, trying to reveal how screwed up attitudes toward women are, and we should all be much more sensitive to how we treat women as sexual objects
i think we can all agree this isn't what the guy was doing?
This applies to both the above comments as well.