Yale Daily News

Amen.

Admittedly, I have trouble parsing Mr. Martin's flowing prose, but I couldn't find in them anything approaching a rebuttal of anything that Dean Miller wrote. Instead, he seems angry with the way that she wrote it, and with the fact that the News printed it all. Putting aside his juvenile screed against Dean Miller's style, Martin's essential argument is that the News is the "students' newspaper," and that if Dean Miller wanted to convey her views to the student body, she could just have just sent a college-wide email. Fair enough, but that's hardly an appropriate motto for a newspaper. If the student body's demand for news and opinion could be met by mass email, then what's the point of having the News at all? The founding premise of any news organization ought to be that the free exchange of ideas is good. Why should Dean Miller's views be any exception? I suspect his gripe is really with the fact that Yale has not yet flayed the email's authors. I would expect much better from someone as closely connected to the YDN as Martin.

More to the point, while Martin found the column to be "1,038 words of bureaucratic junk," I found it supremely comforting. It showed me that, (unlike, say, Duke) at the highest levels of administration, Yale follows through on its commitment to due process and fairness. And it gave me confidence that should I ever be accused of assault, Yale would protect my rights, even in the face of public criticism. Bravo, Dean Miller! I hope to read many more of your columns in the future.

They aren't seeking to chastise---the entire administrative mind-set is based on Cover-Your-Ass mentality. I am ashamed to say the my first master degree is in something called "Student Personnel Services and Administration in Higher Education" (M.Ed. '72 Kent State). It is the most bogus of the bogus "education" degrees. A former Yale president, A. Whitney Griswold, had it right; he ABOLISHED Yale's Graduate Department of Education saying, "It is unnecessary to teach teachers how to teach". I would add only, in agreeing with Mr. Martin's (and his over-30 ,I presume, father's)premise, that it is unnecesary to teach bureacrats how to bore. Deadening the English language comes naturally. They actually enjoy this arid stuff!! (AND they think it means something!)

BTW: It is true: You can't trust anyone over 30 OR anyone who owns property. They have sold their soul--and their future-- to Mercantilia. Even I.

Paul Keane, M. Div. '80
M.A., M.Ed.
http;//theantiyale.blogspot.com

I agree. In fact, I don't think any YDN article should feature quotes from adults. Adults make me nervous, and they always lie. I like it best when your reporters just manufacture quotes and assign them to their roommates.

Your position on the two pieces you attack is inconsistent and misleading: Miller's comments on the scouting report matter (though, yes, bureaucratic and familiar) addressed the restrictions which impede the Executive Commitee from making its rulings public (a recurring complaint given expression in the YDN); the Masters/Deans letter acknowledged the fun of bladderball and then recalled the legitimate reasons for the ban. Power for the sake of itself? C'mon. Your dad, drunk on nostalgia, is doing you a disservice. Banning Op-Ed pieces by oppressive adults? How about, instead, someone taking the time to write a substantive editorial counterpoint, and running it alongside? That might do the community the YDN serves a greater service.

In the meantime, stay true to your newfound convictions, Pete. At least until you're 30.

Are you likely to be accused of assault, #2? If so, I'm not sure you're the sort of person we want to listen to on this subject, given you probably don't see anything wrong with the Scouting Report in the first place.

I don't think this article was ever meant to be a rebuttal to Miller's article. It was exactly what it reads as and what its title indicates: an objection to using student space to print material written with the aim of "putting us in our place." I felt the same way about this and the bladderball columns...why use this forum? Why not make sure everyone does see it by having an e-mail pop up in each students' inbox? It's unfair because many students do have respect for the deans and masters and for Dean Miller, and it's hard to justify writing a rebuttal, particularly if that rebuttal warrants harsh criticism of the administration.

Ultimately, Martin's right: administrators should administrate from their own platform, and allow us to protest (if necessary) from ours.

...I'll stick to the decaf.

A bit of an ageist response, don't you think, Mr. Martin?

1) Dean Miller's response was ridiculous.
2) Dean Miller's response was not an opinion's piece but an attempt to outline a administrative policy, that is flawed.
3) The idea that pursuing disciplinary action on the PSSR authors should be secret does nothing to discourage a culture of sexual harassment.
4) Miller's horribly written essay was a policy discussion meant for Yale students - why she chose the YDN is beyond me.

I just love legacy admits...

Just to make sure we're not misinterpreting what this piece is about .... Martin simply says that the Opinion Page is not the most appropriate location for a statement of policy. This seems to be especially true given that Dean Miller has other (perhaps more appropriate) avenues at her disposal through which to outline policy to the student body.

I completely agree with Pete here. Dean Miller just used the YDN editorial page as a forum to copy 1000 words or so of rules out of the undergraduate regulations, and then not bother giving an adequate summary at the end for those of us who had better things to do with our time than troop through that whole article. I'd imagine many students had the response to that article that I did; skim it, and ignore it.

There should be no punishment for the authors of the "PSSR" - this is a free speech issue. Should I be afraid of an ex-comm the next time I email a few friends about a hot girl I meet at Toad's?

The University has been the scene of three murders and one missing person (never found) since 1983, and its administrators are dilly dallying with memos about bladderball! This is kafka-esque.
PK http://theantiyale.blogspot.com

ROFLCOPTER is of course correct; there should be no punishment for the PSSR unless the administration is willing to enforce rules against spam emails on a more consistent basis. But there is nothing wrong with the administration publishing a column in the YDN, particularly when the column responds to criticisms that have themselves been published by the YDN.

The basic problem is not that Dean Miller submitted a response to the YDN but that, as usual, it is so lead-footed. Dick Brodhead would have done it with panache and clarity and Peter Salovey with some measure of sensitivity and humility. Alas, Mary Miller is just a pedant.

"Dick Brodhead would have done it with panache and clarity"

LOL. Indeed, I think we know from his handling of both Van de Velde and the Duke lacrosse non-issue that he clearly is the best qualified to handle these sorts of cases...

I am afraid many of the critical comments above misinterpret this letter as a rebuttal or attempted rebuttal of Dean Miller's column. In fact this letter makes no pretense at attempting to refute any of Miller's claim. Instead in questions the wisdom of ceding a unique, allegedly independent student platform to the end of disseminating the administration's point of view. While age alone is not necessarily a disqualifying factor (the author's father's age would disqualify him according to this rule) it is important to recognize that administrators represent the administration's point of view. They are very much bound to the reigning order and to the preservation of their power. By printing their opinions as authority, we are stifling an opportunity for organic intellectual development in the student body. Now we allow Dean Miller or other administrators to set the terms of the discussion, rather than ourselves.

Brodhead??? Hell, he would have opened the offenders' email accounts to the New Haven police for rapid arrests within two days of Bladderball.

The same panache with which [President] Dick Brodhead handled the Duke belly-dancer (stripper) scandal? Sounds like sexist nostalgia for the Yale Good Ol' Boys' Club. Boola Boola.

Pedantry requires some academic text or subject over which one hovers with obsessive focus.

Administrivia is definitely not pedantry. I can't think of a word to adequately describe its tiny-mindedness and its dis-interestedness in pusuing truth. You'll have to forgive me.

Perhaps referee? No, because that would imply that the Administration had the possibility of being ruled "foul" or "out" and that never happens.

It is a mincing miracle of Administrative language that within 24 hours after the Kent State slaughter the Kent State administration started calling it the "Kent State tragedy" and "the Kent State Affair" draining the murders of both blood and human life until they are now a dry blotch of inked letters in a history book 40 years later under the heading "Protest" or "Anti-War"

It is quite possible your readers don't even know to what event I refer, and that is the ultimate triumph of Administratese (ever read "Politics and the English Language"?), the non-pedantry of the Dean X's of the world.

Bitter? Cynical? No. Just weathered.

http://the antiyale.blogspot.com

Dear Paul Keane:

Go away.

Sincerely,
The Yale Student Body

Pete Martin Forever!!!!
And now, with biases available to all to see, I must write that I found Miller's article to be a little legalistic and procedural for my tastes, and I enjoy reading regulations. It boiled down to: Don't expect to hear anything about this thing anytime soon.

who cares what people put or dont put in the ydn. or in emails for that matter.

does anyone else think discipline at yale is either absent, or super harsh? never in the middle? we have basically no discipline system in place on the regular (curfews, enforced rules on drinking/smoking/etc in the dorms, opposite sex in bedrooms ....like the schools all our friends are at back home at X state university) I get so many funny emails and texts about getting written up or fined for drinking or being out too late or something similar. we dont seem to have this gentle, yet constant reminder of rules. as a result, the generally lax attitude of the +30 crowd, i would say, lead the student body to believe rules arent so serious anyways, so do u as you please, we trust you! (they shouldnt). that, coupled with students applying their brain power to party planning, pranks, and whatever else, it always goes tooooo far; hence the overly authoritative miller words.

im not saying i want anyone doing random midnight bed checks, but reaching a middle ground between no rule enforcement and prison could probly do some good.