Faculty at Yale University are recieving a heated backlash and pressure to resign after expressing the contravercial position that elderly, out-of-touch people should not be telling snake people what to do. In an email to students at Sillimans College, a college in Yale University which she supervises, Early Childhood Education lecturer Erika Christakis told students that it was not her place to issue specific guidelines on what halloween costumes are appropriate, and that as mature adults, the students are able to make informed choices for themselves. In her email, the former preschool teacher courted contraversey by refusing to treat college students like preschoolers. "I don't, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others.", Christakis said in her email. "[...]Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It's not mine, I know that."

In the days since, Mrs. Christakis and her husband Nicholas have been attacked, sometimes literally, by hoardes of students apparently demanding that adults exert more control over their lives. A particularly spectacular example occurred when Mr. Christakis was yelled at and cursed at by a mob of enraged students. We at News from Rockettopia assume that the Christakis' have been constantly thinking "I can't believe this is happening. I'm surrounded by idiots." over the past week, but it's possible that they are somehow above that. Certainly, Mr. Chistakis' tweet in response to the video, in which he says, "No one, especially no students exercising right to speech, should be judged just on basis of short video clip.", suggests so.

Tensions only escelated after, in a private conferance about free speech, author Greg Lukianoff said, "Looking at the reaction to Erika Christakis's email, you would have thought someone wiped out an entire Indian village." The remark quickly found its way onto social media and when they left the conferance, attendees were met by hundreds of students and chants of "genocide is not a joke". Apparently, the students failed to realize that Lukianoff's statement wasn't so much a joke as a completely accurate description of the events of the preceeding week. The crowd was held back by Yale police but hurled insults at the conferance attendees and spat on them (I wish I was making this shit up). One minority attendee was called a 'traitor'.

None of this is in any way to discount actual racial issues that still pervade America, even at an institution so aggressively multicultural as the 72% &lt; white Yale University. According to one report from a week ago, which is actually AFTER this whole mess got started, minority students attempting to attend a frat party were barred from entrance and told that the party was 'white girls only' The fraternity in question? Sigma Alpha Epsilon, because of course it was, they're awful. (On the other hand, the bouncer was arguably doing the minority girls a favor, as SAE is notorious for its rape culture.) Maybe the student groups should be doing something about this instead of swearing at faculty who dare treat them like responsible adults. Just an idea.

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