{"id":12818,"date":"2017-11-04T20:17:42","date_gmt":"2017-11-05T01:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=12818"},"modified":"2017-11-04T20:17:42","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T01:17:42","slug":"perhaps-they-just-shouldnt-have-attended-college-ctd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/11\/04\/perhaps-they-just-shouldnt-have-attended-college-ctd\/","title":{"rendered":"Perhaps They Just Shouldn\u2019t Have Attended College, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing this story about course disruption by Reedies Against Racism<\/em> (RAR<\/strong><\/em>) at Reed College<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, The Atlantic’s<\/strong><\/em> Chris Bodenner reports<\/a> on a counter-reaction:<\/p>\n

\n

This school year, students are ditching anonymity and standing up to RAR in public\u2014and almost all of them are freshmen of color. The turning point was the derailment of the Hum lecture on August 28, the first day of classes. As the Humanities 110 program chair, Elizabeth Drumm, introduced a panel presentation, three RAR leaders\u00a0took to the stage<\/a>\u00a0and ignored her objections. Drumm canceled the lecture\u2014a first since the boycott. Using a panelist\u2019s microphone, a leader told the freshmen, \u201c[Our] work is just as important as the work of the faculty, so we were going to introduce ourselves as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pushback from freshmen first came over Facebook. \u201cTo interrupt a lecture in a classroom setting is in serious violation of academic freedom and is just unthoughtful and wrong,\u201d wrote a student from China named Sicheng, who distributed a\u00a0letter of dissent<\/a>\u00a0against RAR. Another student, Isabel,<\/strong>\u00a0ridiculed the group for its \u201cunsolicited emotional theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two days later, a video circulated showing freshmen in the lecture hall admonishing protesters. When a few professors get into a heated exchange with RAR leaders, an African American freshman in the front row stands up and raises his arms: \u201cThis is a classroom! This is not the place! Right now we are trying to learn! We\u2019re the freshman students!\u201d The room erupts with applause.<\/p>\n

I caught up with that student, whose name is Pax. \u201cThis is a weird year to be a freshman,\u201d he sighed. Pax is very mild-mannered, so I asked what made him snap into action that morning. \u201cIt felt like both sides [RAR and faculty] weren\u2019t paying attention to the freshman class, as it being our class,\u201d he replied. \u201cThey started yelling over the freshmen. It was very much like we weren\u2019t people to them\u2014that we were just a body to use.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The result?<\/p>\n

Support for RAR seems to be collapsing; only about 100 students were involved in this year\u2019s boycott, a quarter of last year\u2019s crowd. There haven’t been any Hum protests since the upperclassmen who participated in the noise parade were barred from lectures. RAR\u2019s list of demands keeps growing, but its energy is now focused on Wells Fargo [for its financial ties to private prisons]. That could change when reforms to the Hum syllabus are announced this fall, but for now, the lecture hall is free of protesters.<\/p>\n

Reed is just one college\u2014and a small one at that. But the freshman revolt against RAR could be a blueprint for other campuses. If the \u201cmost liberal student body\u201d in the country can reject divisive racial rhetoric and come together to debate a diversity of views, others could follow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are the candidates to be future leaders, and they appear to be reacting properly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continuing this story about course disruption by Reedies Against Racism (RAR) at Reed College, The Atlantic’s Chris Bodenner reports on a counter-reaction: This school year, students are ditching anonymity and standing up to RAR in public\u2014and almost all of them are freshmen of color. The turning point was the derailment \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12819,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12818\/revisions\/12819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}