Initially, I did not understand the rage in response to Urban Congo. I was indifferent to the performance and found it nothing more than slightly amusing.
At least, someone who isn’t affiliated with the University, scouring Yik Yak or recent press coverage, would think this.
What does “free speech” mean? Recent campus events have shown that campus is split: columnist Newby Parton writes without qualification that “silencing offensive speech... solves nothing that can’t be solved by growing thicker skin,” while students protest the chapel meeting with signs lambasting the administration’s weak response to Urban Congo and claiming that President Eisgruber wrote, “[Racism] may not be suppressed.” These events, as well as the mixed responses to the University’s new statement on academic freedom, demonstrate that students have very different conceptions of free speech.The two sides of this campus debate basically fall in line with the two competing theories of free speech on the world stage.
In the aftermath of the Urban Congo fiasco and the Big Sean controversy, many of my fellow students have expressed disdain of a perceived boom of liberal sensitivity and outspokenness.
We would like to thank columnist Reva Abrol for her recent article, “A vicious cycle of weak civic engagement,” published last month.
By now, almost all of those reading this will have seen University President Eisgruber ’83’s campus-wide email regarding the recent social media explosions of former student group Urban Congo’s performance last week and of the student-led protest of rapper Big Sean’s upcoming Lawnparties appearance.
On a student panel I was on a few days ago, I was seated before three dozen impressionable young men, ranging from the ages of 11 to 15.
What is home? According to the famous American poet Maya Angelou, it is, “the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” As the semester comes to a close and many students have begun to solidify their summer plans, I have repeatedly asked myself this question.
There is perhaps no way to accurately convey the experience of living with an eating disorder, but over the course of the past seven years the best way I have discovered to (concisely) convey the point has been to describe a pernicious “voice” that is simultaneously mine and not mine that whispers self-loathing offers of faux control into my consciousness.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, rates universities on their commitment to free speech.
This year, I enrolled in the Humanities Sequence, a year-long class that seeks to examine canonical Western literature — from Homer to Virginia Woolf — in an interdisciplinary manner.
My brother and I were on the airplane, the two of us next to each other in a three-person row.
As a recent re-adopter of Yik Yak and a (not so) proud Facebook procrastinator, I, like the rest of campus, have witnessed the explosion of social media discussion of racism on campus over the last few days.
When “Blurred Lines” was released in 2013, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of being both captivated by a catchy beat and turned off by lyrics that seemed to condone sexual assault, categorizing consent as a “blurred line.” Ironically, my mom was probably Robin Thicke’s biggest fan.
By: Elise Backman Last week, a group of students published an opinion piece supporting the Princeton Divests Coalition’s (PDC) referendum to divest from several companies that sell products used by the Israeli and Egyptian military forces in the West Bank and Gaza.
Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 who crashed it into the French Alps on March 24, has made rounds in news headlines.
This past year,the most prevalent statistic for college campuses across the country was the suicide rate — a number that has been re-calculated time and time again.In the past week alone, the LA Times, the Boston Globe and campus newspapers across thecountry have reported increasing rates of student suicides and the accompanying demand for more psychological services.
If “Jackie” wasn’t actually raped initially, she certainly has been victimized now — this time by Rolling Stone, her three friends, the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and the University of Virginia and its administrators. Calling more attention to rape on college campuses and beyond is extremely important; however, it should not be built on the basis of lies.
The results of the “Hose Bicker” referendum are in, with the hosers (no offense to our neighbors in the north) losing 1120 to 868. Adding these numbers, we can see that only 1988 students out of 5391 undergraduates voted.
The Urban Congo group is offensive, distasteful and morally reprehensible. Kudos goes to Achille Tenkiang ’17, who was able to preserve the video of its performance on YouTube before the group hastily removed it.
