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Campus Scenes
To Yale and Back
The 1984 edition, produced by Obama Administration Studios.
“History repeats itself,” said Karl Marx. “The first time as tragedy. The second time as farce.”
I am thinking about this as I contemplate the Obama administration’s latest ventures into the land of “1984.” Here is how it basically goes.
As any informed person knows, in the postwar period, there was serious racial discrimination against blacks in this country. The discrimination took on violent forms, including murder, in the Deep South.
The racism in the Deep South was so ingrained, though, and the reluctance of the federal government to get involved in antagonizing white southerners was so extreme, that it took literal murders to get the federal government involved.
It took, specifically, the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner in Neshoba County, Mississippi in June of 1964 by Klan members to get laws passed protecting the civil rights of blacks and getting the feds to actually act under those laws.
Again, it took violent torture and murders to get the federal government to investigate civil rights violations.
Even then, it took decades to bring perpetrators to justice.
That was then and this is now.
In 2011, the following literally unbelievable scenario is being played out. At Yale University, one of the absolutely most liberal schools on the planet, with an undergraduate student body that is more than half women, with a woman dean, a fraternity played a prank on a few women students by coming up to them with a placard that said “NO MEANS YES.”
Some other students posted a prank online in which they said how many drinks it would take to make a man want to have sex with various students.
And, in a far more serious vein, a woman student complained she was raped by a male student. This is serious indeed, although one can hardly imagine how often false rape charges are filed in colleges for a variety of reasons.
At Yale, there are myriad procedures in place for calling people to account for sex harassment. Of course, the state of Connecticut is fully empowered to investigate and prosecute a charge as serious as rape. So far as we know, Connecticut has not charged anyone with rape in the case I mentioned above.
However, the New York Times has been avidly following the cases of supposed sexual torment at Yale.
Now, the United States government has gotten involved. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education has opened an investigation as to whether there has been a violation of federal anti-discrimination laws about sexual discrimination, and as to whether Yale created an atmosphere hostile to women.
That is, the Obama administration has tossed the might of the federal government into a case of fraternity pranks and a completely unproved rape allegation. In a campus thick with political correctness, where the Orwellian vision of Thoughtcrime has been made real, the Obama administration believes it has found a tiny smidgeon of insufficient kowtowing to the Anti-Sex League. ALERT THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL! Send the Tomahawk cruise missiles onto the Freshman Quad! Send the 101st Airborne into the Sterling Library!
About the Author
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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Appleby| 4.18.11 @ 7:14AM
In days of yore, real men would have stepped in and stopped this stuff. In days of not so yore, rea women would have stepped in and stopped this stuff the way their mothers had taught them to do.
Today everyone stands around taking pictures with their binkies, and whining.
I eagerlyanticipate the Eschaton.
Tomas| 4.18.11 @ 3:08PM
I was talking the other day about the Dean Martin Celebrity roasts. About how everyone knew a joke when they heard a joke. About how the Jews laughed at Jewish jokes, how the blacks laughed at black jokes, how the drunks laughed at drunk jokes, especially when told by Foster Brooks.
We've forgotten how to laugh at ourselves. We seem too preoccupied with the notion that we have a RIGHT not to be offended. And we also have the RIGHT to decide what will, or will not, offend us.
Offense is now the new standard for sexual harassment. Was it joke? Who cares. I didn't find it funny, so... welcome to court.
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Occam's Tool| 4.18.11 @ 3:37PM
It should be pointed out that Ben Stein adds to this type of crap himself, by supporting Liberals. For example, he wants tax hikes.
Pierce Harlan | 4.18.11 @ 7:37AM
Horrors! Frat boys acting like . . . frat boys! My guess is that the typical Yale woman's reaction to these crude and vulgar antics is the equivalent of a mildly perturbed roll of the eyes. But then again, unlike the 16 students and alumni who filed the complaint that drew the federal government into to the melee, the typical Yale woman does not have skin resembling the model of the translucent woman in the school's biology lab.
It's just another in an endless cavalcade of puerile, ritualistic gender passion plays at vaunted American universities, staged by the chronically offended purveyors of misandry who insist on dominating the public discourse on all things gender. These gender warriors stand ever vigilant to blow any hint of male sexual misbehavior, the more trifling the better, into evidence of "rape culture" they can cite to vilify an entire gender.
So what else is new?
Put it this way: for the past four decades, women's activists have insisted that our mass media portray women not as helpless pawns or victims but as doers -- forces who can throw punches, kick male butt, and overwhelm evil at least as well as the guys.
So, what message do the chronically offended Yale gender feminists send to the world? That a little mindless frat boy activity -- and take a deep breath, that's all it was (aside from the possible rape -- although Mr. Stein's take on the prevalence of false claims is dead on) -- is enough to cause not just eye rolling but conniptions; to warrant not just a rebuke, but the aid of the cavalry.
The message they send is another self-inflicted setback for women: that women need extra-special protections to shield them from the slightest, most trivial, most inconsequential offense. That message does all women a grave disservice -- because women can't be empowered by insisting they are powerless.
Intelligent Design| 4.18.11 @ 7:57AM
Yale is clearly a dangerous place, hostile to the rights of women and minorities. I recommend that students everywhere avoid Yale. Don't apply. Or transfer to a better college if you are unfortunate enough to be there already. Go to a conservative, law-abiding school.
Occam's Tool| 4.18.11 @ 1:09PM
You know, Ben, I support the Tomahawk missiles, 101 Airborne and the rest of the intervention---because these clowns are Liberals, and they need a spankin'.
Bill| 4.18.11 @ 8:53AM
The U.S. government, under Barack Obama, will take steps to act against a fraternity at Yale because they have no reason to fear any retaliatory action.
That is not the case with the New Black Panthers.
beebop| 4.18.11 @ 9:16AM
Not to mention that many of them are underage and aren't having deductions withdrawn from their paychecks a la union dues payable directly to the Democrat party ...
JimH| 4.18.11 @ 9:25AM
I think Ben’s history is a bit off, claiming that Federal civil rights legislation did not start until 1964. Actually the first substantial legislation was passed under Eisenhower. Before then, northern progressive Democrats, even had they wanted such legislation, did not dare try to pass it as they relied on southern Democrat votes. Often forgotten or ignored is the fact that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed with a larger Republican majority than a Democrat one.
Seek| 4.18.11 @ 1:32PM
It was Southern Democrats, and they alone, who opposed the act. The idea that Democrats opposed the legislation more than Republicans does not imply "liberal racism," that absurd bogeyman invention of the Jonah Goldberg types. The Dems are the party of favoritism toward blacks, and for that reason alone must be opposed.
Petronius| 4.18.11 @ 9:39AM
Do you mean to tell me there's some guy at Yale who can actually get it up?
Purple Lips| 4.18.11 @ 9:52AM
"To Yale and Back Again", an Kenyan tale...
nikitas | 4.18.11 @ 10:38AM
I love this:
'Now, the United States government has gotten involved. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education has opened an investigation as to whether there has been a violation of federal anti-discrimination laws about sexual discrimination, and as to whether Yale created an atmosphere hostile to women.'
No, Yale did not create that atmosphere. This was created by the left and has been around since the 1960s when women were reduced to whore status, the destruction of the nuclear family began and guys like Bill Clinton were starting to feel totally empowered.
USSAlabama| 4.18.11 @ 12:15PM
Feminism reduces all women to that status.
Seek| 4.18.11 @ 1:37PM
Feminism began as a movement against expression of sexuality, not for it. The idea that feminists reduced women to whore status is utterly preposterous. Feminists did quite the opposite, embodying in the process a distinct strain of Left-Puritanism. Conservative Midge Decter some 40 years ago wrote of full-length critique of these women called "The New Chastity."
Skippy| 4.18.11 @ 3:46PM
Not as far as I can see they didn't.
Feminism has completely reduced women to whore status. A few examples.
Men will screw them and father their children, but not marry them.
Dating is simply hooking up, AKA meaningless sexual functions devoid of emotion.
Reproduction is a reset with free tax-paid abortion.
The ideal totally liberated women are the sluts on Sex & The City.
Google Rainbow Party re: teen girls.
Feminism is just slavery to men with all the profanity capitalized.
Seek| 4.18.11 @ 4:55PM
Wild woe-is-us generalizations can't undo reality.
"Hook-ups" have been around from around the time our species first evolved, whether or not connected to dating, the latter being a rather civilized version of the mate selection process. As for female "victims" of male sexual desire, the process works in reverse, too. Plenty of women initiate mating, regardless of their beliefs.
Perhaps the problem with radical traditionalists is that they don't get asked on too many dates. Too bad for them that life is passing them by.
Tina Trent | 4.18.11 @ 11:35AM
Campus feminists march lockstep to the "root causes" theory of crime, in which society, or some part thereof (frat brothers), is responsible, not the individual criminal. If they were actually serious about the crime of rape, they would demand police investigations, not mass sensitivity trainings or administrative intervention. But in my years of lobbying for real anti-rape measures (recidivism laws, minimum mandatory sentences) I found that the campus feminists were disinterested, at best. The issue of child molestation is also ignored. Convicted molesters still routinely receive mere probation for this crime (sometimes in violation of sentencing statutes), and yet the feminists have not a thing to say about it.
Most people don't know that at its inception, the N.O.W. was hesitant to even include violence against women in their platform because they did not want to anger the Left by appearing insensitive to potential minority defendants. Marxist orthodoxy was so prevalent among early movement leaders that only certain types of victims (preferably minority, later gay and lesbian), and certain types of offenders (preferably non-minority, most desirably police or prison guards, later frat brothers) were deemed politically useful to them.
But there are other women, and men, who have not behaved this way, and they have made enforcement better on this crime.
Too Many Tims| 4.18.11 @ 11:51AM
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
Occam's Tool| 4.18.11 @ 1:10PM
I hate it when my ankle ulcer acts up. Let's me know the Liberals are plotting something.
Peppermint Tea| 4.18.11 @ 12:36PM
Ah yes, it's 1984 and the "Ministry of Justice" will look into it.
Don't we really need another? The "Ministry of Love" ?
play nice| 4.18.11 @ 1:18PM
"Yale University Appoints Advisory Committee on Campus Climate"
"The committee, chaired by former Massachusetts Supreme Court chief justice Margaret Marshall, will recommend ways to combat sexual harassment, violence or MISCONDUCT of any kind on campus."
(can we just kick the boys out?)
matthew s harrison| 4.18.11 @ 3:04PM
Ben-
1) Was the rape allegation taken seriously? If not-WHY?
2) Signs that say "no means yes" should have been quashed by the university-and frankly those students who take rape so lightly should be expelled..
3) Who gives two shits what happens at Yale? Unless it was rape-then I side with the above commenter that says lets send in the cruise missiles-though, just the threat would make all those libtard sissies cry and stop their behavior.
But, again-I say-who gives two shits about what goes on at any Ivy League school? You can't flunk out of them, and they are bastions for affirmative action and hatred of America-so I say let them burn.
Seek| 4.18.11 @ 5:01PM
I gather you never got accepted into an Ivy League school; otherwise, your threats of redneck violence would be a bit more muted. So you don't give two shits about what happens to Yale? Maybe Yale doesn't give two shits about what happens to you either.
By the way, since when have Yale and liberalism meant the same thing? A quarter or more of National Review staff over the decades, from Bill Buckley onward, came out of Yale.
Negro X| 4.18.11 @ 7:08PM
Seek,
Your posts are that of a white guilt "independent" fence sitter. Go grovel at your poster of eric holder.
Seek| 4.19.11 @ 12:53PM
Independent people like me don't sit on fences. We build bridges. You don't like that? Go sit on a snow cone.
Occam's Tool| 4.18.11 @ 3:43PM
You know, Yale's Physics program, its Chemistry program, its Biology program, its Mathematics program---all of these are solid programs that you don't hear squat about. And the Medical School is superb, too.
It's the damn Law School and the Humanities which suck on toast. And I'm NOT talking about the Classics program, which should be a required minor for ALL Liberal Arts majors---make them read Suetonius and Tacitus and Xenophon and Thucydides and Julius Caesar.
These clowns need a dose of intellectual rigor. They get none.
CalMark| 4.18.11 @ 11:57PM
The stupid Yale boys should know better than to provoke stupid feminist Yale girls. They deserve pity from the "rule of law" standpoint; however, a point of perspective: most, if not all, of these boys are probably politically correct idiots reaping the whirlwind.
As for the alleged rape, the idea of a cover-up job at an elite Establishment school should surprise no one. After all, it is run by the same Lefties who abetted Clinton's crimes against women.
With elites, cowardice is always fashionable. Nay, laudable.
Johnny| 4.19.11 @ 6:32AM
Hehe the silver spoon crowd is offended again. Call out the National guard! Let's make a big story of all these improper hooligans and give them all forty lashes, or maybe they have enacted sharia law and the girl needs at least four male eye witnesses. Thanks for the entertainment, goof offs.
Ned| 4.19.11 @ 11:12AM
Have none of you heard of the various feminist assaults against men on campus? Things like the "Take Back the Night" protests and marches, which explicitly accuse all men of predation and sex crimes, and operate under the premise that women are unsafe anywhere on campus after dark, and need to be escorted to move safely around campus.
It's my view that the "No Means Yes" stunt was merely a retort to that entire anti-male genre, that the men were finally fed up with the PC atmosphere and decided to toss some of the mud back over the fence. More power to them, and if the shriekers and screamers can't deal with it, so much the better.
ShortNSweet| 4.19.11 @ 1:01PM
...And who was the black professor that was breaking into his home, and then hurled racial comments, and hatred at a police officer who was trying to protect the man's home from possible burglars...and then our Pres jumped in there with both feet and mouth before he use his brain, and called the police officer "stupid" on national television!!!! ...And whatever happened in that situation, other than it disappeared quietly in the night?...because our good ol' Pres is an idiot, and needn't have the light shown on that Idiocy too much! Typical! Typical! Typical! of the left.
ShortNSweet| 4.19.11 @ 1:05PM
P.S. If a rape occurred - catch the guy and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. The rest of it is typical behavior, and if our kids aren't happy where they are - Move!
9000LBS electric winch | 4.20.11 @ 4:19AM
This articles helps me more.Thanks for your sharing,I will pay more attentions to your blog.Looking forward to your better and better articles.See you next time.
Dee see| 4.20.11 @ 4:36AM
-----ALL we need to know about Yale and, for
that matter, Harvard and Princeton, is that
they long, long ago departed from their Calvinist
roots and were bought out by the China opium
free-traitors.
Follow those bloodlines and you'll have more
than a light bulb moment. In fact you'll find
most of what you were taught about the last
century and longer has been DIS-info and worse.
The 20th Century from WWI to the Wall Street/London set-up Bolshevik coup d-etat on down ---was staged!
It's becoming overwhelmingly OBVIOUS.
"Free Trade' really is TREASON ---and that's
its bright side!
weddingdresses | 6.27.11 @ 5:01AM
P.S. If a rape occurred - catch the guy and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. The rest of it is typical behavior, and if our kids aren't happy where they are - Move!
Amicus Voice | 7.26.11 @ 9:09PM
My hope is that my kids will at least see the day when racial discrimination has been completed eradicated. I reside in Philadelphia and find myself embarrassed when I come across instances of discrimination based on one's skin color. How have we advanced so far in technology, but when it comes to humanity, we are way behind the times. Recently I met a very sharp attorney, Leonard Hill, who specializes representing victims of police brutality in Philadelphia. Some of the stories he told about the blatant misconduct of officers in and around the city were downright atrocious. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to get pulled over simply because I was a black male, driving a nice car. And for some of those victims, the unjust traffic stops were compounded with assault--more often times then not, racially motivated. Come on world, it's time to recognize we are all part of one race...the human race.
keating willcox| 9.1.11 @ 12:40PM
There is a practice in New York at the locations where gangs have taken control, to have a massive increase in police stops, and about 8% produce an arrest for firearms, drugs, or outstanding warrant. Most of the stops have been black males, and charges such as "a furtive glance, or suspicious behavior" are the excuse given for the stop. The result is a massive reduction in crime, the gangs no longer control the area, but there is a massive intrusion into the freedom of these young black males. If you were mayor, would you continue this practice?
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 10:09PM
is good
keating willcox| 9.1.11 @ 12:17PM
I disagree. Yale has a duty to permit free academic speech, but as to behavior which is sexual harassment, even if humor, they have a right as a private university to uphold reasonable standards of behavior.
I tell my own kids that attending college requires a contract, and that if you disobey the rules, in particular the social rules, they have every right to discipline you. And that is OK.