The following list of demands by Oberlin students is not only hilarious but also very pleasing. After seeing each deranged demand, I feel thankful that my students are normal, intelligent people and not these useless brats. Here are some of the crazy demands of the spoiled little things:
The immediate firing of some Oberlin employees, the immediate tenuring of some faculty members, specific curricular changes, a review and possible revision of the grading system (to be overseen by students), the creation of “safe spaces” for black students in at least three buildings on campus, the creation of a program to enroll recently released prisoners from a nearby prison as undergraduates, divestment from Israel, and a requirement that black student leaders be paid $8.20 an hour for their organizing efforts.
The students also demanded changes at Oberlin’s noted conservatory. For instance, the list of demands said that students should not be required to take “heavily based classical courses that have minimal relevance to their jazz interests.” Stating that classical music students are not required to study jazz, the list of demands says that students of jazz “should not be forced to take courses rooted in whiteness.”
Priceless shit. My students throw an occasional tantrum but it’s on an entirely different level than this entitled garbage.
Oberlin’s president refused to discuss the demands. Good for him because it’s demeaning to discuss this kind of thing as if it had merit.
Clarissa's Blog 
Clarissa, I actually laughed out loud reading this post! This has got to be the single funnest thing you’ve posted in ages. 🙂 🙂
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It’s absolutely out of this world insane. Imagine working with these students. They look like adults, they have all the rights of adults, but that’s the way they see the world and act.
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It’s Oberlin. It’s in the middle of Ohio, they have nothing to do, and they don’t believe in merit only scholarships and it’s a very, very white place. So you either get very rich people who can pay full tuition or a handful of scholarship kids who go into shock. : Hence <a href="http://new.oberlin.edu/petition-jan2016.pdf"some of these specific demands are incredibly funny. “I shouldn’t have to take these courses/make other people take these courses/the university needs to pay me for my student activism/hire these people/fire these bureaucrats/hire some more specific bureaucrats/pay people more/why don’t I get more financial aid?” The most current famous Oberlin alum is Lena Dunham. Make of that what you will.
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I interviewed with them back in 2007. They hated me. I’m now thinking I’m better off.
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Hothouse flowers who are the most happening thing in town. Other schools throw endless pointless keggers. (“Whoo, this frozen bale of hay and this Natty Light are soo awesome! Whoo!”) Oberlin starts huffing Tumblr posts and the nearest city is Cleveland. Cleveland! Now, just imagine the fun of being a Bennington professor. 🙂
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I have some questions that may seem completely unrelated to this at first, and I’ll explain why I’m asking a bit later, but first …
Is it possible for American universities to operate without having to follow the regulations specified by “Title IX”?
In particular, if a university chooses not to accept US Federal funding, could it possibly ignore such things as “Title IX”?
I’m asking because I believe that what passes for the American intellectual elite in organisational form may wither on the vine if it doesn’t soon choose survival over inclusiveness, and I am curious whether one way to do this is to create new organisations that do not rely on the passing through of students on government-backed financial aid.
I’ve found some articles via Google about some small mostly Christian universities that have done this, but I’m wondering if any organisation with some clout behind it has made this choice.
Oberlin may be at risk of an internal revolt of the bureaucrats at some point, but if it’s elite enough and if it could survive the transition, it could choose to reject government-backed financial aid as a form of payment, and it could make this choice on the basis that the remaining incoming students would have to want to be at Oberlin and would have to be competent enough or well-off enough to find their own means of support.
Of course, aid gifts that target the remaining functional parts of existing organisations, such as the 50 million USD gift from the Blavatnik family to a specific part of Harvard’s bio-medicine programme and the 50 million USD gift from various members of the Tata Group to the Harvard Business School, can be seen not as giving aid to students but instead as giving aid in spite of students.
Meanwhile, we shall have to cope through many of these “Revolts of the Masses” where the perpetrators forget to include the obligatory “M” … 🙂
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I’m not sure what this has to do with financial aid or Title IX. The students who come up with these demands are all children of very rich parents. Students on financial aid (like my students ) have no time or interest in these things. They all work two jobs and take care of families.
All of these protests organized by students at US colleges right now are a product of very rich and spoiled kids being bored and acting out.
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Speaking of bored and acting out, I stumbled across an interesting post. It’s longish and I wonder if you have thoughts about it
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
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This is comforting mythology. Just like “all pretty girls and athletic boys are stupid” and “all smart girls are ugly.”
In reality, childhood roles are assigned at home. For some reason, this person’s parents wanted an unsociable little nerd, and the child obliged. And from the length and the passion of the piece, we can see it still hurts.
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I read the entire thing you linked to. What a whiny braggart. How can he spend his entire life clinging to the high school label of ‘nerd’ and whinging about how he’s unpopular because he’s smart? Are American high schools really that laden with stereotypes? And even if they are, surely there comes a time to drop the baggage?
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The writing being whiny notwithstanding, I think he has a point that the boredom and popularity stratification have the same root, the fact that much of schooling is just keeping the kids warehoused. It becomes particularly pronounces in middle school; elementary and high schools are good quality where I live (I have a high-schooler) but middle school was awful; my kid is well adjusted, but the whole middle school curriculum is completely vacuous, like the school is there to do nothing but keep them from killing each other while they are all in the worst hormonal throes of early puberty. My kid was bored senseless.
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Hah! That’s what I keep saying and nobody believes me, so thanks for the confirmation! The school curriculum in the US is far from being super demanding. And yes, kids in schools are bored.
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Hah! That’s what I keep saying and nobody believes me, so thanks for the confirmation! The school curriculum in the US is far from being super demanding. And yes, kids in schools are bored.
Is boredom a form of trauma for children? Part of growing up is learning to manage your boredom and I wonder how many people are engaged or even learn to manage it well. I remember being bored out of my skull for long stretches of my childhood while watching my brother freak out because he was bored and frustrated while my parents would appease him with some small toy or game. I remember hating this one babysitter because she literally made me watch tv (to this day I can’t stand musical talent shows) with her and would not talk to me. I wasn’t allowed to do anything but sit on the couch next to her while she knitted. I developed the habit of carrying books around with me to combat this awful boringness.
I wonder how many adults walk around bored out of their skulls and how it affects their day to day functioning. I see a lot of jobs that aren’t very interesting, challenging or fun but repetitious, vacuous and dull.
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Hmm. I can see there are problems with 11-16 education. But I’m sure there are better ways of phrasing his argument.
And to give him his due, maybe it is genuinely harder for clever boys to be popular.
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And to give him his due, maybe it is genuinely harder for clever boys to be popular.
The answer to that assertion is NO. Boys never get some weird instructions or signals that they need to pretend to be dumber or more modest in order not to upset people with their smarts or they just need to display smartness in a socially acceptable way. Weirdly, the few “don’t be smart” messages I got were from teachers and parents, not my actual peers.
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How can he spend his entire life clinging to the high school label of ‘nerd’ and whinging about how he’s unpopular because he’s smart? Are American high schools really that laden with stereotypes? And even if they are, surely there comes a time to drop the baggage?
1)You’d be astonished at how few people mature beyond middle and high school and how these experiences stay with people for years and decades afterwards.
2)Yes.
3)Yes.
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“You’d be astonished at how few people mature beyond middle and high school and how these experiences stay with people for years and decades afterwards.”
Oh yes. Most people retain the psychological age of 12-13. And then they present themselves at the voting polls.
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Between these demands and the “This dish wasn’t prepared to my satisfaction…Cultural Appropriation!!!” student, Oberlin seems to be leading the pack for producing not very sympathetic student activists.
I was heartened to learn the the president responded to the demands with a fairly curt “no”.
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Yes, it’s like a competition for the title of the most obnoxious little brats.
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Oberlin College president to discuss campus anti-Semitism with alumni
Former students say BDS movement has created an anti-Jewish climate at the Ohio liberal arts school
http://www.timesofisrael.com/oberlin-college-president-to-discuss-campus-anti-semitism-with-alumni/
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I was shocked to read:
\ Jewish alumni have taken to Facebook to share examples of activities they witnessed that veered toward anti-Semitism. “The multiple times the Holocaust was referred to as ‘white on white crime’ by my POC peers and hip white Jewish peers,” Oberlin alumnus Isabel Sherrell wrote in a January 11 Facebook post listing numerous experiences that made her uncomfortable as a student.
How can Jewish students buy into this nonesense and participate in erasing their own history by adopting terms from a completely unsuitable (for this case) African-American discourse?
I am not sure I get what ‘white on white crime’ is supposed to mean. That it’s less serious than African-American history since crimes defined as ‘white on black’ always come first? 😦 I am white, even though (neo) Nazis would disagree, but what’s the connection?
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I hope a competition of discomforts doesn’t begin. I’m tired of seeing endless exchanges of lists of grievances. Don’t like what people say, argue, debate, demolish them with the strength of your arguments. But enough with the whining!
Besides, Isabel is unlikely to be an alumnus. She’s probably an alumna.
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The term is related to a by-now very tiresome political debate in America related to race and crime rates. Liberal groups like “Black Lives Matter” rail on about black men killed by white cops. Conservative groups reply that by far more black men are killed by other blacks than by white cops, but that the liberal protestors ignore the high “black on black” crime rate. (You hear this from both sides ALL the time on U.S. political talk shows — be glad these idiotic shows aren’t on Israeli TV.)
Now some smart-alec liberals are mocking the term “black on black crime” by calling the Holocaust a “white on white crime” because it was (white) Germans killing (white) Jews. Not very clever, is it?
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