On the day after the tragic Virginia Tech shootings, I wrote that "we should guard against costly overreactions [to the event] such as the draconian 'zero tolerance' policies implemented in many schools after the Columbine attacks in 1999."
Sadly, as Eugene pointed out yesterday, at least one school has already succumbed to the zero tolerance temptation: Yale University reacted to the Virginia Tech tragedy by banning the use of "realistic-looking" swords in theater productions on campus. As the Yale Daily News points out in the article linked above, the new rule has already harmed several theater productions which will have to make do with unrealistic props that might reduce the versimilitude of the plays in question. Obviously, many classic plays have battle or duel scenes that could potentially be enhanced through the use of realistic-looking swords. Just think of Hamlet and Henry V. And, as reasons that Eugene cogently explained in his post, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the Yale rule will prevent mass murder or any other kind of violence on campus.
In and of itself, the new Yale rule probably isn't that important (except to the school's theater students). But I fear that it may be the beginning of a broader trend towards enacting "zero tolerance" rules that do little or nothing to reduce violence, but - especially in their cumulative effect - may well reduce the quality of life on campus.
To reiterate an argument from my earlier post, it is essential to recognize that on-campus murders of any kind are extraordinarily rare. We should not, therefore, adopt draconian rules to prevent them unless there is strong evidence that they really will significantly reduce their incidence. Obviously, reducing the incidence of an already highly uncommon event is quite difficult to do. The new Yale rule doesn't even come close to meeting this standard. Hopefully, university administrators at other schools will have better sense than to imitate it.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST WATCH: I suppose I should mention that I am a Yale Law School graduate and therefore have a tie to the school. I doubt that this biases me in favor of Yale's rule. If anything, it probably makes me even more annoyed by it than I would have been otherwise!
Related Posts (on one page):
Ludicrous.
One of the stranger elements on this blog is the strange hostility to any-and-all things "Yale." Based on everything I've read, this was a unilateral decision imposed by Betty Trachtenberg, the Dean of Undergraduate something-or-other (I can't remember, too long ago-Undergraduate Affairs, I think). Based on the YDN article that Eugene Linked as well as more first-hand accounts, it appears that much of the Yale community is actually furious about the rule.
This seems a fairly obvious point from even a cursory read, so why say "Yale did this" and "Yale did that," when it's not yet clear that this decision has any support by anybody in the administration and it is clear that it does not have the support of the student body.
I'm not clear on why the snarling rhetoric on this blog is so frequently used to paint Yale as a monolith of liberal, PC intolerance. I certainly have no love for Betty Trachtenberg's policy. It's stupid, reactionary, counterproductive, condescending - you pick the adjective. I understand that those who self-identify as conservative, particularly posters on this blog, feel jaded by their law school experiences at the Yale Law School.
But the stilted picture of the entire university that frequently appears on this blog sometimes lacks any basis in reality. This is now not one, but 2 threads committed to this same issue. It is one that, frankly, is fairly unintersting both because the rule is so obviously stupid and because it is not representative of the entire university.
Just another instance of using false accusations of anti-Eliism in order to bludgeone legitimate critics of Yale's racist and genocidal policies into silence, and cover up the disproportionate, anti-American and illegitimte influence that Yale and its supports wield on our -- oh, sorry, wrong thread.
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity."
I have a son starting college in the fall; his grades are good. Is there NO college out there that is not run by puerile, vapid, narcissitic adolescents? Is thinking with ones feelings and gonads the essence of the college experience these days?
Surely the Board of Governors can find grown-ups to run the place. Start with the Drama Dept.
The appropriate response is to subject her to cream pie attack and demand that cream pies be banned.
"Everyone was concerned that this tragedy would lead to gated universities. That is a whole lot more serious than what Yale did.
With all due respect, Eli, that idea is just as stupid. It was a student for God's sake. He was and would in the future be INSIDE THE GATE!
Is no one at a University capable of rational thought?
How about they make sure all of the campus security is armed and know what they are doing?
Then, how about checking security files and revisiting reports of stalkings, threats, etc.?
Further, ask the counselors to review their student files and see if they have missed or failed to report someone they think could be violent.
Then, ask the teachers to report students about whom they have concerns that they could be likely to be violent.
These things would be a logical place to start, based on the facts.
incidentally, i would agree that yale qua the administration has to be held accountable. they've set up institutions with authority to make certain decisions, and when those institutions make bad decisions, those delegating that decision have to "take the heat." but just don't pretend that this is some reasoned response by the entire yale community.
It's stunningly stupid but also trivial. What is called for, I think, is action by the thespians to highlight how ludicrous it is. E.g., by using swords that are outlandishly unrealistic looking, perhaps extreme miniatures.
Mr. Holsinger:
See Freud, above:
Since I went to Yale Law School and had a great experience there, I do not have any "hostility to any-and-all things 'Yale.'" I doubt that the other conspirators (several of whom also went to Yale for law school or as undergrads) do either. That doesn't mean we can't criticize the institution when it adopts stupid policies or engages in excessive PC-ism.
Professor axed for VT stunt: Re-enacted tragedy to tout pro-gun perspective
You forgot about the mandatory searches for weapons that would occur at such gates. X-raying backpacks, "wanding" tenured professors, patting down confused graduate students - its enough to warm the heart of any campus judicial administrator. If a conservative suggested this, they would be branded as a fascist. Somehow, when a (presumably) liberal administrator does, its in the interest of safety, even though its a fascist impulse regardless of personal politics.
I suspect that the average campus judicial administrator/dean of students has some real issues. Who would want such a job unless they could gain some sort of gratification from it? Yet, who could gain gratification from such a job? What sort of person would get a thrill from "zero tolerance"? Paging Dean Wormer...
Like any other corporate body, "Yale" cannot make decisions in and of itself. It only makes a decision when the official or officials in charge do so. When we say that "the US" did something or "Virginia" did, we don't mean that every American or every Virginian agreed with the action (or even that the majority did). We only mean that the relevant US or state official in charge of a particular policy issue took the action in question. The same convention of usage applies to Yale. I would have thought that this was obvious, but evidently some need it to be spelled out.
A vital maxim to live by in medicine turns an oft heard phrase backwards: Don't just do something, stand there!
It's obviously not that I don't think you should be able to scrutinize excessive PCness, but a recurring failure to properly acknowledge or identify the institutional agent making a decision. The fairest representation of the article cited is something more akin to: "Yale Community furious with Trachtenberg Theatre Ban," or something to that effect. Instead, and in conformance with what I maintain is a strange pattern on this blog, the decision is presented as though it has the support of the Yale community. My problem isn't a criticism of PCness, which I probably find as odious as you do, but with the attribution of that problem.
A teacher has authority to develop a curricula. If that teacher chooses to replace Virgil with Vonnegut, would we say that "Yale has renounced the canon in favor of pulp counterculture," or would we specify the institutional agent responsible for that decision? The situations are not perfectly analagous, but there is certainly some threshold beyond which "fair reporting" or "commentary" requires the intermediary to acknowledge that this is a decision by a lone bureaucrat.
I didn't forget about mandatory searches, I just assumed they would be about as effective as the ones at NASA this week.
If I were a student and wanted to get a gun on campus, I would shove it under the fence one night (or toss it over) in a secluded spot and go through the gate, searches be damned, and then go retrieve my gun and ammo.
nevins,
I agree completely. Zero tolerance strikes me as grown-ups too imbecilic and afraid to make a judgement. The list of idiot actionns taken in the name of zero tolerance is staggering. Remember the 6 or 7 year old suspended for sexual harassment for hugging an aid? Texas, I think it happened in.
And, you are quite right. Often, it is much better to just stand there, in medicine and in other aspects of life, like legislation.
"and the protagonist did this heroic thing. and then the protagonist did this heroic thing. and then the protagonist did this heroic thing. and by the way he's related to rome which is awesome."
worst. ever.
However, because Dean Trachtenberg is making Yale policy on this issue, she is speaking for Yale University--unless and until someone higher on the food chain rescinds her asinine order.
Does that mean there are blogs for 3 year olds? (Given the vastness of the Internet, I suspect there is at least one). :-)
By the way, my grandson loves the Wiggles--and he just turned 5. Of course, he might just be tolerating me reading it to him.
Note to self, click "Preview" first.
We will see if Yale merits our ridicule tomorrow when someone higher authority either affirms of reverses the decision.
It is one with very strict gun control laws
A UNITED Nations report has labeled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America.
England and Wales recorded the second highest number of violent assaults while Northern Ireland recorded the fewest.
The study, based on telephone interviews with victims of crime in 21 countries, found that more than 2,000 Scots were attacked every week, almost ten times the official police figures. They include non-sexual crimes of violence and serious assaults.
Violent crime has doubled in Scotland over the past 20 years and levels, per head of population, are now comparable with cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and Tbilisi. * * *
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article568214.ece
I'm with you on zero tolerance! The thing that always annoys me about the concept is, why are we paying these "administrators" the big bucks when their job could clearly be done by any minimum-wage worker supplied with the proper flowchart?
Elliot123,
Indeed, if the Dean Trachtenberg were given some kind of obvious public smack-down over this*, I'd definitely be feeling an enormous amount of Strange New Respect for Yale! Not holding my breath, you understand...
-----------------------------
* Not at all necessary to fire her, let me emphasize. Somebody recently, either here or over at Winds of Change, was complaining in relation to the Imus affair about how everything and anything is a firing offense these days. I concur that this is a bad thing.
The freshmen out at Yale get no tail
The freshmen out at Yale get no tail
Just to satisfy a yen
They go out with Harvard men
But the freshmen out at Yale get no tail.
The downside of going to Harvard is of course that you have to learn to speak as if your jaw was wired shut, and to put up with a football team that regularly loses in scrimmages with the Pop Warner League. And once you graduate, you were expected to wear brightly colored bowties with a suit and dress and behave like Oscar Wilde, who would have laughed indecently if ordered to end every pleading with "for the reasons given above, (my client's/my opponent's) motion for (whatever) should be (granted/denied)."
When I went to law school, both were deficient in my fields -- arms and wildlife law, leading men gone to Washington and all that -- so I chose U of Arizona.
The actual object, the weapon, is imbued with magical power. Its very presence magically causes harm. It causes people to behave in evil ways. The rationale commonly offered is that the mere presence of a weapon makes people more prone to violence.
Sympathetic magic is the belief that what one does with an imitation of the thing with magical power will affect the actual thing. For example, in a magical religious context we see the image of a deity addressed, or given gifts or sacrifices. The magical deity is affected through the treatment of its image, and so performs its magic for the one who gives the image a gift.
In the imitation weapon banning context we have first the belief that the object, the actual weapon, is magic and causes those in its presence to behave in an evil manner. The sympathetic magical belief is that by banning the image or the imitation weapon, the magical power of real weapons to cause people to be violent will be lessened, or the real weapons will stay away from the presence of the faithful.
That was wonderful. I sent it to Best of the Web with the title, Yale Dean Believes In Magic!
We shall see tomorrow, although I do want to clarify my point a bit further. To the extent that the argument that this sort of restriction might be the harbinger of PCness to come, the article seems misrepresented. It's pretty clear that the Yale student body - the actor that seems most frequently indicted for its "PCness" - is actually up in arms, pun intended, over the restriction.
In other words, wheras you might expect the ho-hum thoughtless PC yalie students to take this lying down, they actually did not. And when I referenced the misattribution, over-generalization, whatever you want to call it - I did so in the context of a pattern. Harold Koh's walking out of a presentation last year was somehow presented as a broader reflection of "yale;" same goes with the taliban special student, whose presence on campus was (at least for quite sometime) mis-attributed to a decision on the part of the college of arts and sciences (he was, for some time, what yale calls a "special student," admitted by a different bureaucracy).
I understand that "yale" delegated this authority to Dean Trachtenberg, and that it is therefore appropriate to attribute her actions to the university administration.
But none of that nuance is shared, and it seems quite relevant if the argument you are making is the increased amenability of educational institutions to these types of restrictions.
Instead of presenting this as a delegated decision without the specific imprimateur of university or the student body, it seems that you are leaving out information quite relevant to any assessment of whether "yale" (the collection of institutional actors) is succumbing to the evil temptations of PCness.
And, as I said, this is part of a pattern. Yale is home of the evil, anti-israel, PC left, who mindlessly stumble about reality with their ivory-tower ideas of social justice. I really don't care all that much about Yale, or about defending its integrity (it has a lot of real blood on its hands). But this blog consistently seems to offer it up as the symbol of mindless, oppressive liberal zeal. I respect Ilya considerably, but something like this does nothing but feed a caricature. I do not intend offense to anyone, particularly Ilya. It's less a problem with the posters than what their posts signal to other, less thoughtful particapants.
At least the Yankees got swept tonight.
I was disappointed to find today that this may not be an actual quote from Freud.
Sigmund Freud at Wikiquote.
I did a quick search at Google Print myself and didn't find it myself. Perhaps there are different editions?
I agree with you generally (Yale '91 here), but actually want to go further. You seem to be conceding that Trachtenberg (who was even around back in my time) took a "PC" action. In addition to a rather bizarre fixation with painting Yale in a negative light, blogs like this one are so quick to label this "PC" that any reasonable definition of "PC" loses all its meaning.
I, for one, would liken Trachtenberg's action more to an overly protective, and kind of annoying, grandparent, who won't let kids play with sharp objects in the house. Now maybe these days, if you're a center-right blogger, you chastise the old people in your life for being "PC" when they do such things. Passions and partisanship aside, I see a good-old-fashioned generation gap, with the "grown-ups" overcompensating to protect the "children," and the "children" making the correct point that they are, in fact, adults (after all, they can vote and get sent off to National Guard overstay duty in Iraq, even if they can't buy beer).
Steve in CT:
I am also disappointed. I do not recall reading the text -- I read the General Introduction 35+ years ago. I do recall the quote being used by my Prof in class on several occasions. To my recollection it is consistent with Freud's thinking.
I am sure that Prof would no longer be permitted to teach as grown-ups have been banned from campus.
Magic. I think you've nailed it.
Loved it! Thaanks.
(2) With the standard "it's not my blog and of course the bloggers can write about whatever they want to" caveat, it is interesting that we've gotten what, a dozen or so threads on some variation of "what does the VT tragedy mean for the gun control debate?"; and now TWO "Isn't Yale (or Trachtenberg) being stupid for banning swords in theater" threads; but only one "How about that whole Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice thing?" thread.
(3) As a fan of Kovarsky's posts, I'm now unreasonably curious about why he was almost suspended.
Willie: "Brothers and sisters are natural enemies! Like Englishmen and Scots! Or Welshmen and Scots! Or Japanese and Scots! Or Scots and other Scots! Damned Scots! They ruined Scotland!"
Skinner: "You Scots sure are a contentious people."
Willie: "You just made an enemy for life!"
i was 18 and i wanted to throw a big party. my much quieter roommate, unbeknownst to me, made a bazillion fliers and posted them all over the commons dining area. trachtenberg flipped and the residential college administration quite rationally assumed that it was me, rather than my roommate, that was plastering the fliers. anyways, that was like my third strike in the first week, and i got the stern letter.
my mother tries to throw it out every five years or so, but i won't let her, it's just too funny.
"We have to think of the people who might be affected by seeing real-life weapons.”
As someone who generally favors "common sense" regulation of weapons, I see Dean Trachtenberg's decree is an overreactive non-solution that just makes "my side" look stupid. On the brighter side of things, at least she's not the President.
Congratulations!
People should dress up in various fairy-tale costumes and picket her office with signs saying she is unfair to the Easter Bunny, to Druids, to witches, etc.. Believe in Me Too!
They laughed when I started dropping loose change into my router. Now they'll see the light and believe. Oh, wait!
You make us look intelligent. Thanks! Great article, too. Thanks for posting the link, Tom.
OH YEAH, Betty! Shame on them for not USING THEIR OWN INTELLIGENCE!
One of the worst outcomes of 9/11 has been comic opera Homeland Security, imposing on us ineffective, idiotic restrictions while ignoring effective measures that really would help. If you have been following recent changes in security at NASA and other federal agencies, believe me they are comic opera, costing time and money but doing little.
Given that today in High Schools kids have to walk through magnetometers, why do you think it cannot happen in colleges? and yes, you did forget about the dog patrols inside the fences, didn't you??
There was some truth when Homer said "The blade itself incites to violence" (certainly not when wielded in a play though!)
Nevertheless, it is not a stretch of the imagination (nor is it attribution to some magical force) to think that a man holding a weapon thinks differently than a man that isn't - his mind is now acutely aware of the physical weapon and the actions that he might take with it - thoughts that he would not have considered without it.