The Dumbest Campus Controversies Of The Last Decade

I'm super late to this, but I love this episode. I'm from Oberlin (the city) and my dad worked at Oberlin College - he ran the student union and taught Bowling I & Bowling II (and yes, Lena Dunham is one of his former students lol.) I remember him coming home from work and talking about being advised not to speak to any reporters over this made up controversy. Wild times. Also, as a side note: fuck Oberlin College. Admittedly, I'm biased. 7 years ago, after he'd loyally served the college for over 30 years and without a single negative performance review, Oberlin forced my dad into early retirement (the day before he was supposed to leave on vacation and about a week before his 60th birthday, which also fucked with his social security.) I'll also mention that at the time of his firing, he was the highest rated Oberlin teacher on ratemyprofessor.com. I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to be saying this - I think there might be some bullshit contract that makes his ability to keep his benefits contingent on us not badmouthing the college, but you can just Google the rally to reinstate Tom Reid if you want to learn more. ...can you tell I'm bitter? All of that aside, though, as liberal and left-leaning as the college tries to appear, it doesn't actually subscribe to any of those values. Even removing the Gibson's scandal from the equation, the college has a long history of ending contracts with vendors that unionize, harassing and disrespecting Oberlin residents (who, I should mention, are generally not as wealthy or white as the college is), and their healthcare benefits are laughable. Do we really have to wonder why students might get upset?

Miriam Reid

I once did a work diversity training where they had a quiz at the end and one of the questions was "which of these words/phrases should you avoid?" And one of the options was "black coffee" and I spent ages trying to figure out if that could be racist in some way (thankfully the quiz agreed it was ok).

Kastrel

I suspect brown bag was just kind of an association someone made without fully thinking about it. There used to be a “brown paper bag test” in some sororities that said you could join if your skin was lighter than a paper bag, but were excluded if you were darker.

Ace

I worked at a school where the acceptable replacement for “beat a dead horse” was “feed a fed horse.”

Kerstyn Desjardin

I can't get past how a student journalist writes well balanced article that actually effects real change.. only to be picked up by national media who proceed to demonstrate every which way to do journalism wrong!

Paul Gallagher

Yeah but it is cultural appropriation to take dishes especially from former colonized country and change the recipe to a bizar point and to be so blunt to say it is a said country dish! It is just disrespectful Guys really not good take from two white guys who don t know that feeling!

Rather than kill two birds with one stone, you can say "feed two birds with one scone". Fabulous episode!

I can’t access any of the most recent episodes. I get the teases on Spotify but the episodes are not on my Patrion account.

Pocahontas. Wow. And yet I worked with a guy who affectionately called me Slum dog Millionaire a few times (over 20 years ago). My background is Indian (I'm Canadian) , but that guy was relatively new to the country and I think I was more confused than offended. That being said if there is a pdf somewhere of terms to not say, should probably add in 'slum-dog-millionaire' because today I would totally shut it down.

Melissa Lobo

Thank you for covering the Smith one - as an alum I had so much secondhand embarrassment for the NYT in its decision to do Serious Coverage of it. I lived on the same street as the dining hall house in the story and the student was in a lounge adjacent to the dining room - if she got in it means it wasn't separately locked or anything. And regardless, Smithies are taught to think of their on-campus housing as their forever home, so it's not weird to me that she was there even if the house was technically closed. I did similar things with my friends when I was at Smith and it was never an issue.

Megan Burbank