A new Honors College course was thrown out after students took to social media with angry posts directed at the class and professors.
“What started off as grumbling amongst classmates on the Internet turned into an anonymous mob of harassment with a lot of comments about body parts and sexist slurs passed around like it was nothing,” said Honors 179 undergraduate fellow Shelby Hallenbeck. “It became a very hostile environment, eventually culminating in some of us [the professors included] not wanting to face the students.”
The class examined the global issues of trash. According to director of the Honors College, Rebecca Sipe, the course focused on an exploration of global issues. One of which is the stuff we leave behind.
“It’s the sustainability of the lifestyle we’ve chosen to pursue,” she said. “And that includes the things we throw away.”
The three professors who taught the course were philosophy professor, Margaret Crouch, geography and geology professor, Heather Khan, and English professor, Elisabeth Daumer.
In the 2014 Fall semester, approximately 230 freshman Honors College students were enrolled in the new mandatory first year class, Honors 179 “Interdisciplinary Exploration of Global Issues.”
It was held on Fridays from 9 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. in Pray-Harrold in three 50-minute blocks. Three honors college professors handled most of the instruction while a hand-selected group of 13 undergraduate fellows ran smaller “breakout groups.”
Originally, the class was supposed to continue for another two semesters and cover a range of interdisciplinary topics, but the whole thing was recently scrapped following a controversy surrounding vulgar posts on an anonymous social media platform.
Throughout the semester, a few students reportedly posted complaints about the class on the anonymous social media application which mainly included grumblings about the class as a whole, such as accusations of “unorganized and unprepared” lessons or a general discouragement of class discussion.
But Sipe and Hallenbeck say it went farther than that.
Hallenbeck says she doesn’t remember the student’s name, but that she received some of the backlash after she told him to leave the class for yelling at her when she suggested he put his phone away.
“Several students left in protest, one of whom made a yak about how I was infringing on his classmate's ‘right to yak,’” she said. “I later saw one that specifically addressed me, from the student, that said the words ‘fuck you, bitch.’”
Lois Vasquez, also an undergraduate fellow in the Honors 179 course, said the hostile Yik Yak posts were supposedly brought to the attention of the professors at the end of the first 50-minute period that day who then called an emergency meeting with the undergraduate fellows before the breakout sessions.
“Two out of the three professors were there and they said that there were these awful, awful yaks that they were saying were sexual harassment,” she said. “They said that some of the yaks included the phrases ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt.’”
Vasquez said the professors’ immediate reaction to the incident was one of great concern, especially when it came to the matter of sexual harassment.
“They asked us to speak to our classes about sexual harassment the next week,” she said.
As a result of what is now being referred to as the “Yik-Yak controversy,” faculty reportedly walked out on the class and refused to teach it. But Sipe says the class continued as planned. Grades and credits were given and the professors finished the semester.
According to Vasquez, the undergraduate fellows took on the bulk of the teaching for the remainder of the semester.
The incident brought hard feelings toward the university about student disciplinary action. According to instapundit.com, the faculty union demanded measures against the responsible parties and a campus ban of the application, but it reports that some professors saw it as an exercise in free speech that could have been turned into a teachable moment.
“My understanding is that we can block Yik Yak from our university servers, but that still doesn’t mean that the app won’t be available on phones,” Sipe said. “So I think that what universities and schools are now dealing with is an emerging technology. Let’s say Yik Yak closes down next week. What will take its place?”
Hallenbeck said she believes that it was only a handful of students who participated in what she deems harassment and that most of them were sympathetic.
According to Sipe, anonymity is not a license to be uncivil and November’s incident raises questions about how to help students understand what it means to be responsible citizens in a digital world.
“It’s like the veil of anonymity allows us to say or do things that we would never say or do if we were facing a person,” she said. “So what do we do with that?”
Despite the calamity that Yik Yak has caused, the Honors College will continue to move forward with its commitment to interdisciplinary education.
“Our commitment has not diminished in the least,” Sipe said.
This is a developing Echo story. We are currently waiting on more response from faculty and students regarding this story. Stay tuned to EasternEcho.com for more information as it becomes available.