• Two students began a hunger strike which forced the Claremont McKenna Dean to resign.
    27 replies, posted
[url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/claremont-mckenna-dean-resigns-following-protests-hunger-strike_56454021e4b060377348868e]Yeah, I know it's the Huffpost, but I'm working from an office there and I can tell you that it is certainly happening[/url] [quote]The Claremont McKenna College dean of students resigned Thursday following criticism over her response to student complaints of racism. Mary Spellman, who had been the focus of protests this week calling for her resignation, said in a statement that she was stepping down "with sadness beyond words." Students had accused Spellman and her office of failing to effectively respond to multiple incidents of racism and hate speech in recent years at the liberal arts school's campus outside Los Angeles. At least one student had begun a hunger strike, demanding Spellman's ouster. The activism came to a head this month after Spellman sent an email to a Latina student, Lisette Espinosa, promising to better serve students "who don’t fit our CMC mold." Spellman later apologized, but the email circulated widely and added to simmering tension. Spellman couldn't be reached for comment after her resignation. A photo posted on Facebook over the weekend of students wearing offensive Halloween costumes -- after an extensive campaign advising students not to do so -- fueled demonstrations and demands for action at a student government meeting on Sunday.[/quote] [img]https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/v/t1.0-0/s526x296/11261030_691388034331225_2148952825955265066_n.jpg?oh=f2c76907495d632138207d42945f97a5&oe=56BA4581[/img] [quote]The junior class president, Kris Brackmann, who was among four other students in the photo, but wasn't wearing a poncho, apologized for associating herself with disrespectful costumes and resigned her office. The photo provided further basis for students of color to talk publicly about hostility they said they experience on campus.[/quote] The Junior Class President pictured also resigned as well. [quote=Wiki]Claremont McKenna College (abbreviated CMC) is an independent, co-educational, and private liberal arts college with a curricular emphasis on economics, government, and public affairs.[4] CMC is also a member of the Claremont Colleges located in Claremont, California, United States. Founded as a men's college in 1946, CMC became co-educational in 1976. Its 69-acre campus is located 35 miles (56 km) east of Downtown Los Angeles.[4] The college focuses primarily on undergraduate education, but in 2007 it established the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, which offers a masters program in finance. As of 2015, there are 1,293 undergraduate students and 20 postgraduate students. Forbes ranks Claremont McKenna as the 18th best college in the nation, the 6th best liberal arts college, and the 3rd best college in the West in the 2015 rankings.[6] Claremont McKenna is ranked tied for 8th with Carleton and Haverford for liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report. The Princeton Review rated Claremont McKenna 2nd in the nation for happiest students; The Daily Beast placed Claremont McKenna as one of the top 25 most rigorous colleges in the nation; and College Factual has Claremont McKenna as the 14th most selective college in the nation. With an acceptance rate of 9.76% for the Class of 2019, the college has the lowest acceptance rate of any liberal arts college in the nation.[/quote] [quote]Student Body 1,349[/quote]
Holy shit. This is getting ridiculous. [editline]16th November 2015[/editline] The junior class president resigned just for being in a photo with people wearing costumes, like that's just guilt by association there.
I should also add that another of the student reps wrote a letter which ALSO came under fire from the student body, specifically the activists [quote]Fellow Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni, and CMC Community, Undoubtedly, the events of the past week have resulted in much pain, anger, and sadness. It is now more important than ever for us to remain a community and family. However, before we begin the reconciliation process, it is our obligation as students, and citizens of this college, to speak our minds free of any fear of retaliation. With the utmost amount of respect for the movement, we ask that you hear us out so that we may begin to resolve the issues that have consumed our campus and the nation. To preface our opinions we would like to state that discrimination is not an aspect of society that we will ever endorse. No matter what form of prejudice exists, we acknowledge that such behavior is harmful to both the victims of it and those around them. We reiterate that such acts of bias and intolerance will be met with the same amount of tenacity that compels you to your activism, and we shall channel that strength to more effective and productive means of resolution. We acknowledge that marginalization is a problem throughout the entire nation, and regardless of the color of our skin we promise to continue to change the status quo until people of all backgrounds and dispositions can live together without any fear of intolerance. That being said, we do not condone many of the actions of the movement this past week. We have tried our very best to listen, and stand with you. In spite of the patience we have shown, we can no longer be silent. Members of the CMC community will always stand by one another, and we have done so, but it is now time to share how we feel. Keep in mind that we are not your opposition, we do not fight against what you are trying to accomplish, nor do we seek to discredit you. Rather, we are another voice, different as it may be from yours. We cannot be silent any longer for this is now an issue that has an impact on all of us. It is of utmost importance that we begin to openly share with each other how we feel so that all voices have the opportunity to be heard. The following grievances listed are those that the signers of this letter reprimand: I. Halloween: While we do not condone the costumes and cultural insensitivity that the girls in costumes displayed, it is not permissible to publicly humiliate and essentially cyber bully girls that have repeatedly apologized. We are young and we make mistakes. Though that does not excuse actions, it warrants forgiveness and understanding that we learn from our mistakes. This letter serves as a petition and a request for you to remove your photos of those girls online. They are already in the news, and were on live television for multiple nights in a row. It is time that you see this from a peer to peer perspective. These girls made mistakes, they do not deserve to be publicly shamed for the rest of their lives. II. A student has opened a federal investigation of Claremont McKenna College. The investigator, Mr. Howard has made it very clear that the consequences are severe whether or not CMC is found guilty. We have already written to Mr. Howard and it is now up to you to decide what course of action to take. We realize that you have a right to do so, and ask that you reflect if CMC’s offenses are so great that you would ask for an audit of every and all programs and resources on campus that could take years. Unlike the movement, we do not publicly ostracize the student responsible, but instead ask you to reconsider what you’re doing for the future of CMC. The future of the incoming class of 2020, and the generations of CMCers to come relies on whether or not you decide to pursue the investigation by the Department of Education, that may indeed cripple CMC. Please, please rethink your actions and ask yourself if you have that much hatred for this school, that you would knowingly soon depart and leave this mess in the hands of those students who inherit it from you. This is not the route to take for resolutions of the issues on campus, and doing so will simply divide CMC further. III. Regardless of how you interpreted the former Dean’s email, it was extremely inappropriate to hunger strike for Mary Spellman’s resignation. A hunger strike implies that you are willing to die for the cause you strike for. Were Mary Spellman’s offenses so great that you would die for her resignation? You ask what the alternative is? It sits in front of you, a petition, a civil and democratic tool. Instead you accuse the Dean of not caring about your health and not listening to you when you chose to starve yourself. If we were to starve ourselves unless you left this campus, how would you feel? The most effective form of government reform comes from petition by the people, not drastic measures by the few. Mary Spellman is a person, a human being, and you put her in a situation where the Dean had to decide to sacrifice her whole career or let you starve. No matter what you think of her, as an administrator of this campus she would do anything to ensure your health and well-being. Your claims of democratic principles through assembly are invalidated by the savagery of your actions. According to sources in the faculty, Dean Spellman was not pressured to resign, nor were members of the administration expecting her to. She resigned of her own accord, showing that she does indeed care about you. Reflect on what you forced her to do as human beings with feelings and emotions. In 2 days you destroyed a career that a woman has worked for years to build, and you have removed a resource from campus that many marginalized students were using as theirs. We pray that someday when you are all in positions of power, and you will be because you are CMCers, that acts such as these will never force your hand and make you feel the way you made Mary Spellman feel. IV. There is not a single college president in the United States, and perhaps even the world, that will not only allow you to call him by his first name, but also allow you to berate and yell at him for more than 3 hours. While you accused him of taking too long to respond, and belittled him for speaking through a microphone, you began to lose the legitimacy the movement had, and the humanity that you had. Did Hiram not open his doors for office hours the night before? Did he not open his ears to listen to all that you had to say? For someone who has listened to so many voices, so many stories, and so many profanities, is it not warranted for him to have a pause before his response? This is not a Presidential debate where an answer is prepared for every possible question. This was an open forum with the opportunity to have constructive criticisms and productive discussions, yet it became an open humiliation of the one of the most important people that will ever be on your side. V. Though you have every right to assembly, the message you preached on Wednesday was tainted by the profanity in both your voices and on your signs. On live television, 3 students yelled profanities and the crowd cheered them on. On live television you told the world that we are too immature to handle these issues on our own. On live television, you compromised your legitimacy as educated students and protestors, and instead appeared as though you just wanted someone to blame. There was no room for discussion or debate at your rally, and voices opposed to yours were silenced. You have the freedom of speech to say what you will, as we do so in this letter, but you have publicly humiliated CMC and tarnished your legitimacy as student leaders. VI. Jeff Huang, you stood idle as Mary Spellman went through all of this. You were content to sit against the Athenaeum wall while Hiram and Mary took every word spoken to them. You are a Vice President of CMC, and Mary Spellman was often under your directive. It is shameful that you are more protective of your position as an administrator than of your employees, coworkers, and the students of which you are an administrator for. You have as much to answer for to the students of this college as Dean Spellman, and we are disappointed in the lack of your response to any of the events occurring. We have not received a single email or note from you, yet you are supposedly one of the most powerful voices on campus. You did not even show up to the Athenaeum discussions on Friday night. Where’s Waldo Jeff Huang? We need your guidance now more than ever, and your absence leaves us one less leader on this campus. VII. Our grievance with ASCMC lies mainly in the lack of representation of your student population. While we realize that you as individuals have the right to the freedom of speech and assembly, some of you chose to utilize your positions to push for this movement, and by doing so marginalized many students who voted for you. In this sense, we do not feel that we are represented by the Executive Board officers and request that more thought be given to your actions as members of the student government, before participating in actions that would cause your constituents to question whether you truly represent them. All these acts were not those of integrity, democracy, and educated CMCers. These actions were the result of emotional and angered students. While your good intentions of reform and change were present, many of your actions proved to have a negative impact on the progress that has been made. Nevertheless, we choose to move on; we have learned from your mistakes and are sure that you will as well. Claremont McKenna College is a special place. The nation praises us for our tight knit community, the quality of our education, and the professionalism that students display as they dip their feet into the real world. Amongst thousands of applicants, you were chosen because of your merits, to attend a school that many pray to receive a letter of acceptance from. Before you even arrived here at CMC, the college began its preparation to welcome you with open arms into its classrooms, dormitories, and dining halls. CMC’s attitude of not having money become an obstacle for your attendance is the first of many resources that were offered to ensure that you could continue your education without interruption. Never have we been more divided as a community. Never have we been more humiliated on national television with profanities being yelled at the only college president who will come out and let you berate him for 3 hours. Never did we think we would regret the day we became “Buzzfeed famous”. Never did we think the day would come where we were scared to speak our minds, where fear of our fellow students’ rage silenced us. Numerous resources have been created in response to the needs of the student body in the past years; the Student Disability Resource Center, the Title IX investigator that now resides on campus, the partnership between the Claremont Colleges and the Project Sister Family Services to provide resources for victims of sexual assault, the Queer Resource Center, and numerous student panels and representative positions. Those are just a fraction of the resources that Claremont McKenna College offers you, and none of these programs and centers resulted from the threats of an angry student movement. You are our friends, our family, and people that we talk to everyday, but out of fear for what you might say to us, we held our tongues. But as of this moment, we are speaking up. It is time for the demonstrations and the hostile rhetoric to stop. Hiram and the rest of the administration are offering us seats at the table to resolve these issues together. It would be foolish and immature to reject the opportunity to discuss the inequality issues on campus. In fact, as a show of faith, we still promise to help improve the lives of every person in the CMC Community by working with you to fight discrimination and racial intolerance. There are student committees we can form, support groups that can start meeting, and open forums where our voices will be heard. If we can organize such student organizations as well as you organized your demonstrations, there is nothing that will stand in our way of reforming Claremont McKenna College. Together, we can shape the future of CMC, and help change the attitudes of the nation. And we will achieve this through progress, communication, and collaboration. “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We are grateful for CMC. 236 Claremont McKenna College students support this letter. Out of respect for a request of anonymity, those students will not be named publicly.[/quote]
[QUOTE=bdd458;49129935]Holy shit. This is getting ridiculous. [editline]16th November 2015[/editline] The junior class president resigned just for being in a photo with people wearing costumes, like that's just guilt by association there.[/QUOTE] Hopefully we'll soon reach the point where the general college population put their foot down and tells them to get fucked.
[QUOTE=CabooseRvB;49129951]I should also add that another of the student reps wrote a letter which ALSO came under fire from the student body, specifically the activists[/QUOTE] These aren't activists any more, they're attention starved fools with victim complexes who wish to gain power over others and their actions have very serious consequences.
Wow, this is literally people essentially threatening to kill themselves unless you comply to their demands. Personally, I would have called their bluff, I doubt they would actually starve themselves to death over this. I honestly don't see what's wrong with those costumes. When I was in high school some people wore costumes like that to the sports carnival and guess what? No one got offended, and even better, they got photographed for the local newspaper. It was all fun and good. No ones feelings got hurt.
All I know about student life in USA comes from these Facepunch threads, and I can't help but laugh about it.
Honestly, I doubt they would have made it past the first serious symptoms of starvation. Their antics are immensely insensitive to people who've never reliably had food on their plate, many of whom live in the US.
College has been ruined.
[QUOTE=bdd458;49129970]These aren't activists any more, they're attention starved fools with victim complexes who wish to gain power over others and their actions have very serious consequences.[/QUOTE] "They're not activists because I disagree with their goals." No matter how much you and I dislike these people's goals they are most definitely activists for those goals, and very successful ones I might say.
This is a very interesting wave of protests going across campuses these days. Though I want to point out that making totalizing statements like "college is ruined" is ridiculous. Colleges in the 60s used to get tear gased when the students were worked up. Not to mention Kent State. This isn't all colleges, nor all students. Let's just hope this transitions into a meaningful step forward rather than another front of ideological warfare.
So please tell me what is appropriate for me to wear EVER so that I NEVER offend someone, and hopefully can avoid some fucking ridiculous backlash from my fellow students when I start college. Seriously these stories make me fucking terrified to even go.
[QUOTE=hippowombat;49130448]So please tell me what is appropriate for me to wear EVER so that I NEVER offend someone, and hopefully can avoid some fucking ridiculous backlash from my fellow students when I start college. Seriously these stories make me fucking terrified to even go.[/QUOTE] You're a man. It's too late. Your very existence is offensive.
[quote]at the liberal arts school[/quote] Found the problem
This is getting beyond stupid now. These guys need to start standing up for themselves. She never should have apologised.
[QUOTE=Darth Ninja;49130026]Wow, this is literally people essentially threatening to kill themselves unless you comply to their demands. Personally, I would have called their bluff, I doubt they would actually starve themselves to death over this. I honestly don't see what's wrong with those costumes. When I was in high school some people wore costumes like that to the sports carnival and guess what? No one got offended, and even better, they got photographed for the local newspaper. It was all fun and good. No ones feelings got hurt.[/QUOTE] the problem of calling their bluff is that if they actually do it it's going to have absurdly negative results, and even if it doesn't get that far but you make it clear you are not relenting is basically publicly stating you don't care about those people hunger strikes are a ridiculous tool that really doesn't offer any actual course of action beyond doing whatever it is these people want that said I do not condone them, and I honestly would've told them to kindly fuck off
[QUOTE=bdd458;49129970]These aren't activists any more, they're attention starved fools with victim complexes who wish to gain power over others and their actions have very serious consequences.[/QUOTE] what's frightening is that these students are the future of america, and yet like junior bolsheviks they are slowly but surely creating a culture of left-wing witch hunts that end in show trials and false confessions that strip guilty-until-proven-guilty victims of any remaining dignity. they are extremists unable to handle dissenting ideas, unable to accept that anyone, anywhere is allowed to disagree with them for any reason, and totally incapable of compromise. the perpetually-offended fascists are the future of america, and they're trying to install miniature totalitarian regimes everywhere they go. and that scares the shit outa me.
[QUOTE=sam6420;49130067]Resigning was a mistake, should've played this one out for the long run and see how far they go tbh.[/QUOTE] I don't think I would want to be the dean who took the "We don't negotiate with terrorists" route with my students, no matter how right I think I am.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;49131394]I don't think I would want to be the dean who took the "We don't negotiate with terrorists" route with my students, no matter how right I think I am.[/QUOTE] Giving up when someone is wrong isn't the solution, it just encourages their behavior. If they want to starve themselves to death (and let's be honest, they won't; these "hunger strikes" are equivalent of little kids throwing a tantrum) that's their decision and it isn't on anyone but themselves.
[QUOTE=DaMastez;49131441]Giving up when someone is wrong isn't the solution, it just encourages their behavior. If they want to starve themselves to death (and let's be honest, they won't; these "hunger strikes" are equivalent of little kids throwing a tantrum) that's their decision and it isn't on anyone but themselves.[/QUOTE] Try telling the media "I was pretty sure they weren't going to kill themselves by starving", it's just bad PR all around. I think it's a Fantastic Four-kind of a stretch to call the email racist, but if you want to protect your career I think it's a pretty bad decision to not step down. Just say something along the lines of "I will not allow my students to harm themselves for whatever reason, even if it means I will have to step down", and hopefully you'll get a job somewhere else. I'm not saying she couldn't have stood her ground, but honestly I think it would just promote their world view ("See! The dean doesn't care if we starve ourselves to death!").
[QUOTE=AntonioR;49130075]All I know about student life in USA comes from these Facepunch threads, and I can't help but laugh about it.[/QUOTE] I really hope this shit doesn't export to Europe but it's probably only a matter of time.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;49131488]Try telling the media "I was pretty sure they weren't going to kill themselves by starving", it's just bad PR all around. I think it's a Fantastic Four-kind of a stretch to call the email racist, but if you want to protect your career I think it's a pretty bad decision to not step down. Just say something along the lines of "I will not allow my students to harm themselves for whatever reason, even if it means I will have to step down", and hopefully you'll get a job somewhere else. I'm not saying she couldn't have stood her ground, but honestly I think it would just promote their world view ("See! The dean doesn't care if we starve ourselves to death!").[/QUOTE] Better than the worldview of "see, all we have to do is threaten to kill ourselves and we can get anything we want". I, for one, do not want to live in a world where this sort of action is considered acceptable. Every time someone gives in it becomes that much of a more legitimate tactic. Though, since letting them potentially starve themselves to death isn't ideal, perhaps instead they could be admitted to a mental health facility instead.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;49130075]All I know about student life in USA comes from these Facepunch threads, and I can't help but laugh about it.[/QUOTE] It's really not as prevalent as these threads make it seem. I've worked on a university campus for over 3 years now and we've never had a situation like this. Every now and then the College of Liberal Arts leaks out but that's unavoidable.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;49131394]I don't think I would want to be the dean who took the "We don't negotiate with terrorists" route with my students, no matter how right I think I am.[/QUOTE] No, you put forth an effort to help solve their issues without giving in to unreasonable demands and tactics. If they don't want to have a civilized discussion about their issues, then whatever happens is on them. Giving into a child every time they throw a tantrum just teaches them to throw more tantrums.
This is going to end up badly for these people... this is basically the white rich hippie students' reign of terror. they're going to end up fighting one another because Muh feelings.
No true Scotsmen.
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