Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Yale Thug Watch Update

Here's the article in the Yale Daily News as well as an update from OxBlog.

As horrible as this is, I have to admit I was even more shocked by the fact that people were, well, shocked. This isn't my usual round of "let's have fun shooting fish in the Instapundit barrel," I actually mean this quite seriously. Glenn's response is essentially (begin WASPish stick-up-the-ass accent and intone with outrageous incredulity) "Yalies don't DO that type of thing!!?!?" It's fair to be skeptical about these stories until the facts come out, but this went deeper than that.

First of all, students at elite schools, like everywhere else, do all kinds of stupid/brutal/criminal/racist things. Ivy League students occasionally steal things, rape people, commmit murder, get drunk and get in car accidents, commit assault, etc... Neither elite academic performance nor a life of privilege prevents this.

Secondly, I also have no doubt that if this had been an episode of anti-Semitism then Glenn's reponse wouldn't have been "Yalies don't do that type of thing?!?!?" Instead, it would have been "Look at all the anti-semitism on those Leftist college campuses!!!!" If true, then Glenn's original reaction isn't actually that Yalies don't do that type of thing, it's that conservative Yalies don't do that type of thing (implying also a false equivalency between anti-Semitsm and liberalism, of course). There are racist incidents on campuses - including elite campuses - all the time.

Dinesh D'Souza and Laura Ingraham went to Dartmouth, remember...