What's Going on at University of Missouri?

Meanwhile, back in New Haven...

In the aftermath of the student protests a few months back, Yale agreed to take a look at the names of the residential colleges as well as the title of the staff member who heads each college.

The residential college controversy centered around three issues:
  1. One of the colleges is named after John C. Calhoun. The student-protestors wanted this changed, but the university said no. They reasoned that keeping the Calhoun name serves as "to confront, teach, and learn from the history of slavery in the United States." Reasonable, imho.
  2. All of the current 12 colleges are named after DWMs. With two new colleges under construction and opening September 2017, the protestors wanted diversity. The university announced that one of the new colleges will be named after Pauli Murray, a black female civil-rights activist who got a PdD in law from Yale. Perfect choice, imho. The other new college will be named after Ben Franklin. The only knock on Franklin is that he never attended Yale (he did get an honorary degree). Ben was chosen because the donor who gave $250 million for construction of the new colleges is the founder and owner of mutual-fund company Franklin Resources.
  3. The professor who oversees each of the colleges is currently called the "master". The protestors demanded that the name be changed, and the university agreed. The masters will now be called "head of college" and referred to as "professor". I have no issue with this.
 
The word master has a variety of meanings. I do not really care if they change it or not, but boy, demanding that change sure sounds ignorant. What word are we going to ban next? Cotton? Field? House?

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-35659685

From the article:

"Harvard has not agreed that the use of "master" represented a link to slavery, but it has accepted campaigners' calls for a name change.

It will mean changing the job titles of 24 members of staff - but will not affect other uses of "master", such as a master's level degree.

Harvard academics say that the word "master" derives from the Latin term "magister" - a form of address for scholars or teachers. It is similar to terms such as "school master" or "head master".

But protesters have argued that whatever its original derivation, the word now has connotations of slavery."

If you are uncomfortable with the word master in 2016 because of slavery connotations, even though slavery has been abolished for 150 years, the word in day to day use is not used in that manner, and the word in the particular use has never meant slavery... you are just a really ignorant person. I perfectly would understand changing it if because the term is outdated (master has been replaced in employment law by employer and I always thought the word "quizmaster" seemed outdated at UT Law). It's the changing it over something it did not mean part that bothers me.

What's troublesome to me is not the change of this word, but the fact people are willing to attach their own, irrelevant meanings to things and then ban them. The whole "ive decided this means something bad that it does not actually mean and it must go" attitude is out of hand.

Good recent example is see the Ted Cruz "new york values" comment. He clearly hit on the fact that often people in the south do not care for new yorkers, of any race, in general. Now, obviously, there is plenty to criticize a man running for president over for saying that. However, article after article kept saying the phrase was "anti-Semitic" which was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard (and some may say Cruz is luificer, but he is not anti-semetic. I sat in a dinner with him one time that a conservative jewish lawyers group was throwing to honor him years ago. He is very pro israel.). There is plenty to lambast Cruz for in that comment, but people made up a different meaning and criticized Cruz for the meaning they made up.

How are we supposed to use language to effectively communicate going forward when people are just going to make up their own incorrect meanings and offend themselves? And apparently if someone says something actually offensive to many people (Cruz and New York), it is not offensive enough and people want to make it up to be even more offensive.
 
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Htown77 said:
The word master has a variety of meanings. I do not really care if they change it or not, but boy, demanding that change sure sounds ignorant. What word are we going to ban next? Cotton? Field? House?
Click to expand...

Are you saying you won't join my movement to rename the card game "Concentration"? "Thinking Really Hard" would be kinder to the millions who died in Nazi concentration camps.
 
NJlonghorn said:
Are you saying you won't join my movement to rename the card game "Concentration"? "Thinking Really Hard" would be kinder to the millions who died in Nazi concentration camps.
Click to expand...

In all seriousness, there is a difference between merely using a word and using it in a context that is reminiscent of the offensive use. For example, renaming the card game "Concentration" would be silly. But calling an immigrant detention center a "concentration camp", or even a "concentration center" would be offensive and inappropriate. Context matters.

The question here is whether it is offensive to require a person in a subordinate position (a student) to call someone in a superior position (the head of the student's college) his or her "Master". I don't think it's a big deal, but there is a viable point to be made and I think Yale made a defensible decision by changing the term.
 
The question here is whether it is offensive to require a person in a subordinateposition (a student) to call someone in asuperior position (the head of thestudent's college) his or her "Master".
Click to expand...

Not really since the word in the college use came from magister and the fact is that slave masters have not existed for 150 years. I do not see how someone can be offended by the word as a slave reference when no one alive today has ever met an american "slave master" and the word at harvard or yale has continued to mean a school master for the past 150 years!

I can see it being changed for being out of date, but changing it for being offensive is just plain ignorant.
 
NJlonghorn said:
In all seriousness, there is a difference between merely using a word and using it in a context that is reminiscent of the offensive use. For example, renaming the card game "Concentration" would be silly. But calling an immigrant detention center a "concentration camp", or even a "concentration center" would be offensive and inappropriate. Context matters.

The question here is whether it is offensive to require a person in a subordinate position (a student) to call someone in a superior position (the head of the student's college) his or her "Master". I don't think it's a big deal, but there is a viable point to be made and I think Yale made a defensible decision by changing the term.
Click to expand...

This might be the first time anyone has posted a reply to his own post.
 
This guy is a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford

Qwabe-post.jpg
 
WTF is a radical non-binary trans black activist? Is that a black Bruce , er I mean Caitlyn, Jenner?

I've heard that waitress has received over $4000 so far in a go fund me that some one started for her in protest of these two ******** treatment of her.
 
the department of justice, that orwellian grab bag of insane confusion and right thinking, will be on this if these haughty waiters aren't careful.
 
Huis
How right you are about the DOJ. I just read they will no longer call people convicted and incarcerated convicts becaue it might hurt their feelings.:whiteflag:
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...ind-racial-differences-in-restaurant-tipping/

So the poster decided to let everyone know he was furthering the "poor tipper" stereotype and he was proud of it?

Anyway, I think the moral of this 9 page thread is the following: When did civil rights stop being about treating people with common decency regardless of race and start being about whatever exactly it is about now? I guess the last 5 years? Now we just have a bunch of young people being dicks to each other.
 
I love this quote:

This widespread negative perception of black peoples’ tipping practices cannot be attributed solely to racism because it is consistent with a substantial body of empirical evidence. A number of different studies using different methodologies and different geographic samples have found that, on average, black people do indeed tip less than whites in U.S. restaurants.
Click to expand...

So it's racist, but not COMPLETELY racist, because it turns out it's actually supported by facts? That kinda sums this whole thing up, doesn't it?
 
OK, consider yourselves privileged. I'm choosing to come out to you all. I've talked about my love for ample bosoms on a few occasions and of course married a woman (she even "self-identifies" as a woman), but after reading this, I think my true orientation is ecosexuality. I love my wife, but what woman can provide the sexual fulfillment that comes from "making love" (whatever that means in this context) to massive amounts of filthy seawater?
 
Is there an annual ecosexual parade? I would definitely attend although having a Grand Marshall might make me uncomfortable..
 
Wow, I hope the Dems don't make ecosexuals their next minority of the month. No telling where they want to go to the bathroom.
 
Idiocy on display at Columbia. Link.

I also read the actual story in the Columbia paper, and I noticed the use of the term "safe." The term "safe" generally suggests being free or having reduced risk of physical bodily injury. When did not being offended enter the equation or become associated with safety?
 
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