This, naturally, didn't go over well with much of the student body.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
University Of Illinois Students Respond To No Snow Day With Racism, Sexism On Twitter. ** With an Update From the Daily Illini. **
While elementary, high school and college students across Chicago are enjoying a day off because of the severe weather, not everyone is following suit. Downstate at the University of Illinois, Chancellor Phyllis Wise announced that classes would be in session Monday.
This, naturally, didn't go over well with much of the student body.
This, naturally, didn't go over well with much of the student body.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wow. Those are...really, really awful. Despicable.
ReplyDeleteIt's -15 here (wind chill -40) and we're still in session. But then again, on the Frozen Tundra, we know how to put on a coat, a hat, and some gloves. We may bitch about it, but we do it.
Apparently the leakers to the northwest (I'm looking at you, Minnesota) need to stay indoors until noon today.
Yes, these are awful. I hope some of these students learn a lesson, the hard old-fashioned way, about using new forms of social media to be total assholes and engage in discussion that I"m pretty sure is grounds for some sort of consequence if this particular uni has a generic 'student code of conduct' that students have to follow. To be cynical, some of these idiots tweeted from accounts using their real names - how stupid can ya get? The hashtag #youngdumbandonline is very appropriate here.
ReplyDeleteOkay, let's be perfectly clear and get this out of the way: those kids should have had off. Minus 27 degrees is not just an inconvenience; it is a hazard to wellbeing. If someone slipped and went unconscious it is conceivable that they would die. Elderly members of faculty would be particularly at risk. I can tell you, as a student, that if, for some reason, I had to commute in at minus twenty seven, I would react with some sort of divergent behavior. I don't know what I would do, but I would do something or a bunch of small somethings to vent. Nothing I could even get in trouble for, just passive aggressive little things like not flushing, missing the trash can, shutting computers down instead of logging out. I would just stop going out of my way to be a good citizen.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, racism and sexism are never justified even though I'd insist that the Chancellor ' s actions are worse than those tweets. However it is dubious that those tweets arose out of sexism, but rather out of anger. And they simply latched onto whatever they could. If the chancellor had been a white man, people would still have found something to go after, like his religion or social choices or appearance. This lady should be held accountable if people died, however.
I disagree with Conan. Calling the president of the university a cunt, a bitch, and a whore seems worse to me than keeping a school open in cold weather. It's +1 Farenheit in Urbana right now and the windchill is -10 Farenheit. I don't want to get all "old guy" on this, but if you can assure me that young Andrei would have stayed in his warm dorm to study on a non-snow cold day, then I'll carry you around the quad on my shoulders for an hour.
DeleteHiram, exactly. It's 1/28, nobody has midterms or finals they can't possibly miss if in their judgment they need to stay inside to feel safe. Which, as you say, sounds unlikely.
DeleteI suppose I'm just slanted coming from a school where the vast majority of students, faculty, and staff have a really good commute. And a large plurality do so via public transportation. If this same decision had been made at our school it is almost a statistical certainty that someone would have died as a result given the sheer number of students and employees. And someone from our RMI program could crunch those numbers.
DeleteThat being said, I have very strong opinions on racism and sexism and would not tolerate any such behavior in a workplace I was a part of. However, the students did not have a duty of care. The Chancellor did. In the eyes of the law, this woman could be found negligent. The students don't even have the chance of tortfeasance. In my opinion, this Chancellor took a sizable risk with the wellbeing of those in her care by exposing them to temperatures they were entirely unused to. And I value lives literally infinitely more highly than people's feelings. In a hypothetical model, I would injure someone's feelings an infinite amount of times to preserve any measurable unit of lives.
And forcing someone to jeopardize their grade for their safety is outrageous. This is reinforced by the fact that we HAVE excused absences. Encouraging students to risk their well being to attend class is NOT what we want to give an incentive for.
DeleteWhat's the difference between adult students having to come to class--which they can skip if they choose to with few repercussions--and having adult employees come to work?
DeleteBear in mind that these adult students are legally permitted to enlist for Afghanistan if they choose.
They are not in the Chancellor's "care" or anyone else's "care". 18 - 22 year olds NOT in college are going to work today.
Do you actually want me to link you to the veritable mountain of legal opinion stating that universities have a duty of care to their students? And, to a slightly decreased extent, faculty.
DeleteAn 18 year old janitor at University of Illinois has to be there today to clear snow and nice for the students who have to be there today.
DeleteBut Conan, the weather conditions in Urbana today do not constitute a reasonable threat to the safety of anyone who is able to put on a coat. Seriously, I know you're coming at it from your own perspective, but cold weather does not constitute an emergency requiring the cessation of business.
DeleteI believe that those kids bitching about having to be in school are going out for lunch, to the corner store, driving around, etc. Their insanely aggressive hate speech is just a result of a culture that's told them they can have anything they want.
Flamen, the duty to employees is slightly less. Especially if their job description INVOLVES doing work regarding inclement conditions. It is a reasonable assumption that a janitor might have to brave harsh conditions to clear pathways in the event of snow. However, your duty of care to people paying you for a service is always greater than your duty of care to people that you are paying for a service. Is it a reasonable assumption for a student in Illinois that in order to acquire the service that they are paying for that they should have to brave minus thirty degrees? That might be harder to defend in court if someone injures themselves getting to school or while on campus.
DeleteHiram, presumably temperatures of minus thirty would be accompanied by ice, however even if they are not they pose a threat. You can die of exposure quickly in those temperatures, particularly if you suffer an accident making it difficult to get help. And if they choose to go out on their own time, then at least the school can't possibly be liable for them.
As for precedent involving college/student liability, many courts, even appeals courts, are holding colleges accountable for conditions that the colleges knew about and could have remedied causing student injury. There are several in the low level courts involving weather, but the highest profile ones are ones that involve things like hazing that still draw on the same legal idea of the college's knowledge of unsafe conditions and negligent disregard of such. The best one is probably Furek v. U. Delaware.
Hi. Maybe I'm reading this info wrong but there are no temperatures of -30 in Urbana.
DeleteHi Conan, I'm coming at this from the perspective that our uni is (and was) experiencing -4 to +3 F temperatures (without the wind chill) for the last 2 days (and this is during hours where there are classes, not the daily minimum in the middle of the night...), and I'm not at a locale where this is "normal" (this isn't frickin' Winnipeg or Edmonton, just to be totally clear on this). The elementary and high schools were closed on the day where there was also snowfall (yesterday), but open on the day with the same temps but no snowfall (today); the unis were open throughout. As others have stated, uni students are adults, and it is reasonable to expect that adults are going to have the brains to put on a coat, hat, scarf, mitts, and a pair of socks and footwear that is appropriate for the weather, and out you go and you'll be good. If you are dressed like an idiot for the weather, well, that's not the uni's problem. The uni Chancellor is in no way more responsible for anyone dying for having to come to the uni as any other employer that was open these past 2 days. The risks you described are exactly the same risks that the whole rest of the adult population was facing on their way to and from work, and there wasn't a single call from any branch of government telling workplaces to close to keep their employees safe. In my travels yesterday I didn't see one single private workplace close because it was too damn cold, and I haven't seen anyone suggest that a workplace was gonna pay if someone died. Sorry, but I'm gonna call 'student entitlement bubble' on this viewpoint of yours, because its logical extension to the rest of the population is absurd, and it if had any validity then we would have seen reasonable citizens and government make the same sorts of demands of employers and workplaces that you are imposing on the uni. Sorry, but it is NOT "crystal clear" that unis should have closed for the day.
DeleteI looked at the weather history in Urbana. It was between 9 and 13 degrees today. That's about what it was here. High schools were in session, and our kids did part of their athletic practice outside. It wasn't a big deal. We're having a real winter this year, which we haven't had for about 20 years, but most adults can remember that winters used to be cold, a lot. Just because these temps are relatively unusual lately doesn't mean they are unsafe. With Prof. Poopiehead, I call baloney on the "danger" argument.
DeleteA nearby large state Uni a few weeks ago did cancel classes due to cold temps. A rather large number of students went out to the bars to drink. They were perfectly fine and healthy to brave the cold, using public transportation and many even walking to get to the bars, but could not be expected to walk across campus to class.
DeleteII think Conan is being a little overly dramatic that a s student would have to risk his/her grade by opting to stay home. I know I don't speak for every professor in the world, but when these types of things arise at my school I try to be fair/lenient. I have to be at work, so I am going to teach, the students will have to get the notes but I won't worry about attendance. And back in my day... we never missed a class, not once, not ever at my college-and one day we had a foot of snow.
Of course reaching for those particular insults is sexism and racism. Anger doesn't make it not and I'm having trouble understanding why you would make that distinction. Much like we hold people responsible for things they say when drunk, we hold people responsible for things they say while angry.
ReplyDeleteMeh. Huge student body; small, small sample size. Yeah, we cancelled class but I was able to hike outside with no difficulty. I'm surprised that people 35 years younger than I would have a problem.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see this posted here - it's partly what motivated me to post my own thirsty this morning. I do think that these kids are somewhat desensitized to language. I won't make a further pronouncement why that might be the case, but I see this kind of abuse of language all over social media, including terrible use of the "n" word for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteMy casual observation is that, perhaps naively, I think that this abuse of language carries no weight with them, that calling someone a "bitch" has no power in the way that it was originally used as a pejorative. Same with the "n" word, where kids who harbor seemingly no racist or discriminatory thoughts will freely use it to describe their peeps.
Something's seriously wrong here (and no, I don't mean the closing decision; there are valid arguments on both sides on that one, though I'd probably come down on the "bundle up and keep going" side, with some flexibility for anybody whose health or other circumstances made them particularly vulnerable). I do agree with Conan that anger is channeled through available cultural forms, and that the students who used grossly sexist and/or racist language to express their anger probably did so more or less unthinkingly.
ReplyDeleteBut I worry, a lot, about the nature of these students' (and yes, it's a small sample) reaction to what is, realistically, a small frustration (if a student had actually died, or been seriously hurt, trying to come to school, I might give them a pass, on the anger if not the expression thereof. I also don't think it's all that likely that that would happen, at least during class hours; I do hope all college students -- and others -- realize that this is very, very bad weather in which to get drunk, unless perhaps one is already tucked up safe in the warm place in which one expects to spend the night. The people who most often die in such weather are the homeless, the impaired, and the elderly, not student/working-age people going about their daily routines). To some extent, I'm not sure the individual students are completely to blame; they're just channeling the angry, confrontational, consumerist culture in which they grew up (and there might even be a very small part of me that doesn't mind seeing a high-ranking administrator getting a taste of the medicine many proffies endure every day, thanks in part to administrative decisions and administration rhetoric, even as I'm also horrified to see students treat an authority figure, the head of their university, with so little respect. Mind you, if they were getting angry at her for, say, budget cuts, and calling her names that in some way substantively reflected their critique of her decision, I'd be much less horrified. One could argue that both are cases of administrators having to make hard choices for the greater good, so maybe I'm a hypocrite, but in neither case do I think the gender- or ethnicity-based attacks would be appropriate). They've also probably heard far worse yelled at the coach and players of the opposing team in their university's stadium (not to mention at the TV at home by their parents).
But, they're adults, and they chose to do this in public. I'm not sure how I feel about speech codes, but if the university has one, they should be charged with violating it. If not, well, how they react to mild frustration by someone in authority over them has now been immortalized, and in this case I have no problem with it being easy for future employers to find, and to take into consideration when deciding whether this is someone they wish to hire.
Nice editorial, by the way. A bit too student-as-consumer for my taste, but there's room for reasonable, civil disagreement, of the kind the article itself calls for, on that.
DeleteThis nicely summarizes a lot of my feelings. While having school during such conditions, I think, is a bit harsh, complaining impotently complete with racism and sexism is not constructive. If anything, count it as something that you can tell your grandfather when he starts talking about how he walked to school in the snow uphill both ways. And then let HIM say racist and sexist things while you listen.
DeleteThe school needs to hold them accountable (assuming their tweets can be verified). Otherwise, the school is condoning the verbal abuse of its employees. At what point would allowing students to insult faculty, administrators or staff create a hostile work environment?
ReplyDeleteThis makes me sick on all levels, but also because I can envision students I work with saying the same about me and my colleagues. Where does this personal level of anger and hatred come from?
ReplyDeleteThe anger comes from people being mistreated, doesn't it?
DeleteUsually?
DeleteAnger like this does not normally spring from actual mistreatment, but rather from a "feeling" of mistreatment. In my experience, people who are (actually) mistreated in such a singular, inconsequential way as this generally deal with the mistreatment and then complain later. A verbal diarrhea of sexist, personal insults tends to be from irrational nutjobs with little to no self-control. I suspect a perusal of their other Twits might reveal a pattern of this sort of "net rage" against any and everything; I have no desire to engage is such a research project though...
DeleteAnger comes from people feeling mistreated -- and that, of course, is where things get tricky, because feelings of mistreatment are based on assumptions about how people (in certain positions or generally) should treat other people (in certain situations or generally). So, one student might be angry about classes being held in record cold weather (because, in that student's mind, the job of the Chancellor is to minimize the chances that a student might be endangered or uncomfortable due to the weather), while another student might be angry about classes being canceled (because that student has paid for those class sessions, has no problem getting there, and feels the Chancellor is coddling layabout students and/or faculty).
DeleteSimilarly, some of the student anger seems to be predicated on assumptions that they deserve to have a Chancellor who is in some (in their minds) gender- and/or culturally-determined way, "like" them, and/or at least "like" what a Chancellor should be, and/or that a female Chancellor (or any female) should act in certain (cautious, safety-conscious) ways. Those of us who have spent some time professing while female often end up feeling that at least some student anger that we encounter (especially at grades students perceive as bad) seems to be based on similar assumptions about how women are supposed to act (nurturing, encouraging, etc.). I'm sure there are similar assumptions/expectations that plague white males, but I'm not quite sure what they are (maybe greater pressure to be "the sage on the stage"?).
I'm guessing that a white male chancellor making the same decision would not only have gotten less pushback, but would also have aroused less anger (because both male and female students expect a male to be the one saying "toughen up and carry on"). It's interesting to speculate whether a non-white male would also gotten pushback, and in what form (I can imagine "he's not from here; he doesn't understand," even if the administrator was, in fact, from a family with multi-generational roots in the community).
Apparently Myth and I were thinking along the same lines, at the same time.
DeleteAt its worst, social media... offers everyone an unprecedented opportunity to share in collective outrage without reflection. In the heat of the moment, it encourages us to forego empathy.
DeleteRoxane Gay's words, not mine.
DeleteThanks, all. I expect the university will be forming committees to discuss who decides to shut down when inclement weather approaches.
DeleteGood article, SB! I still cannot understand how the grown-ups in that piece didn't know any better than to send such stupid stuff out into the world. *Puts down the rocks.*
DeleteAs a student, I showed up on a miserable cold snowy day to find the power off in the building. Most of the 300 for the massive lecture were there. We demanded the prof give that day's lecture as we sat in the dark. He lectured for an hour before stating he was just too cold and security wanted us to leave.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, it was a damn good lecture.
I once lectured during a power outage - illuminated by the emergency lighting, while the room slowly rose in temperature and the smell of body odour and stinky socks became stronger and stronger. I also stopped after an hour, but that was because I had lost my voice from yelling so that everyone in the 350-seat lecture hall could hear me (no mic power...).
DeleteThe more I know people the better I like my dogs.
ReplyDelete-27 F? That's mild compared to some of the temperatures we put up with here in the Great White North.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was an undergrad in the 1970s, I went to lectures in weather like that. When I was in industry, I worked outside when it was that cold. (No, it wasn't pleasant, but the job had to be done.) I treated those conditions as part of living here.
I thought university students were made of tougher stuff. Maybe not any more.
We tell our Nursing and Allied Health complainers that we close when the hospital closes...
ReplyDeleteWe tell our Nursing and Allied Health complainers that we close when the hospital closes...
ReplyDeleteWe tell our Nursing and Allied Health complainers that we close when the hospital closes...
ReplyDelete