Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Yale Administrators (and the students who back down to them) Are Sissies

I have to quote this from the Huffington Post. Me, quoting Huffington Post! Actually, I'm just linking to Huffington Post, but I'm quoting Greg Lukianoff of FIRE:

It started before the Harvard and Yale teams flailed against each other on the football field last month; Yale's freshman class designed and voted to produce an anti-Harvard T-shirt that actually had some literary merit. According to the Yale Daily News,

The original design, which won out over five other entries, displayed an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote in the front -- "I think of all Harvard men as sissies" -- in bold white letters. The back of the long-sleeved, navy blue T-shirt said "WE AGREE" in capital letters, with "The Game 2009" scrawled in script underneath it.


Unfortunately--and is it any surprise these days?--a couple of Yale administrators decided that the word "sissies" was too offensive because some people interpreted it as a slur against gay men. This was news to the Yale freshmen who, like me, see "sissies" as being funny primarily because it is such a ridiculous, silly, old-fashioned put down, somewhere between "cad" and "toots" as far as insults go. Besides, in context, Fitzgerald actually wrote, "I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be." Does anyone really think Fitzgerald was coming out as a success story of the ex-gay movement, or was he simply calling Harvard men, well, a bunch of sissies (modern translation: wusses, wimps, etc.)? The administrators were gearing up to ban the T-shirt, but the students backed down and changed the design.
Why do people actually pay money to attend such schools?

3 comments:

"Ms. Cornelius" said...

Ha. They should print new shirts and change the "Harvard men" part to "Yale administrators."

Sissies. Wimps. Dorks. Addle-pates. Dolts. Dunderheads.

Ellen K said...

I'm actually surprised that Yale and Harvard haven't banned football as being male-centric and violent. Of course maybe it isn't either the way they play it. I'm just sayin.....

Anonymous said...

"Why do people actually pay money to attend such schools?"

To get the piece of paper at the end of four years. Duh! :-)

-Mark Roulo