Yale Law School Student Accused of ‘Triggering’ Classmates With Federalist Society Membership, Using ‘Trap House’ in Invitation
“Just 12 hours after the email went out, the student was summoned to the law school’s Office of Student Affairs, which administrators said had received nine discrimination and harassment complaints about his message.”
A Yale Law school student who is a Native American and a conservative, was recently accused of racism and called out by diversity administrators over a friendly email.
That is not an exaggeration. The student, who is a member of the Federalist Society, sent out an email invitation to fellow students, and some ignorant members of the student body who received it, claimed it was racist and triggering.
Aaron Sibarium writes at the Washington Free Becaon:
A Yale Law Student Sent a Lighthearted Email Inviting Classmates to His ‘Trap House.’ The School Is Now Calling Him To Account.
Administrators at Yale Law School spent weeks pressuring a student to apologize for a “triggering” email in which he referred to his apartment as a “trap house,” a slang term for a place where people buy drugs. Part of what made the email “triggering,” the administrators told the student, was his membership in a conservative organization.
The second-year law student, a member of both the Native American Law Students Association and the conservative Federalist Society, had invited classmates to an event cohosted by the two groups. “We will be christening our very own (soon to be) world-renowned NALSA Trap House … by throwing a Constitution Day Bash in collaboration with FedSoc,” he wrote in a Sept. 15 email to the Native American listserv. In keeping with the theme, he said, the mixer would serve “American-themed snacks” like “Popeye’s chicken” and “apple pie.”
The student, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, is part Cherokee, the Indian tribe that was forcibly displaced during the infamous Trail of Tears.
Within minutes, the lighthearted invite had been screenshotted and shared to an online forum for all second-year law students, several of whom alleged that the term “trap house” indicated a blackface party.
The term “trap house” has been integrated into pop culture, so objections to the term are moot, as Sibarium points out:
“Trap house” has been a term used in progressive pop culture since at least 2016, when the socialist podcast “Chapo Trap House” burst onto the scene. Hosted by three white men, the podcast has received sympathetic profiles in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Guardian, none of which suggest that there is anything racial about its name. Once associated with inner city crack dens, “trap house” has also become generic slang for any place where young people can score beer.
Less than a day after the email was sent, this student was called to a meeting with the associate dean and the school diversity director, where he was told that his membership in the Federalist Society triggered some students, and this is key.
The student recorded the meeting, which you can listen to here.
This excerpt from Sibarium’s report says it all. I want to have this framed and hang it on a wall:
The episode also offers a peek into the culture of campus diversity offices that claim to be a resource for all students. Behind closed doors, the leaked audio suggests, these bureaucracies are less ecumenical than their public messaging lets on: Their goal isn’t to make universities more inclusive, but rather to wield the threat of exclusion against disfavored groups.
Lawyer turned writer David Lat posted a long thread about this on Twitter. Here are a few of his tweets:
1/ Assuming even the partial accuracy of what @aaronsibarium just wrote (apparently based in part on leaked audio), what's going on at Yale Law School is deeply disturbing.https://t.co/SXJB9xxbsG
— David Lat (@DavidLat) October 13, 2021
2/ You don't need to be a Federalist Society fan to be troubled by what reportedly happened at YLS.
See, e.g., @mjs_dc—definitely no @FedSoc fan—who explains why handling such situations in this way is actually counterproductive:https://t.co/8iIH0Z0JuL
— David Lat (@DavidLat) October 13, 2021
7/ As a @YaleLawSch alum, I just sent Dean @GerkenHeather an email "putting in a good word" for freedom of expression and intellectual diversity at the law school (which maybe one shouldn't have to do, but this is academia in 2021). pic.twitter.com/oLq4WoZQYI
— David Lat (@DavidLat) October 13, 2021
8/ I just received the following statement from Yale Law School (@YaleLawSch), which emphasizes YLS's "strong free speech protections" and states that no investigation was initiated (unlike that @StanfordLaw situation a few months ago): pic.twitter.com/V9r1lxOAWC
— David Lat (@DavidLat) October 13, 2021
This entire affair was an exercise in misinformation, false accusations, and ignorant people using power just because they can.
If leftists at Yale want to fight racism, they should start with their school’s namesake, who was actively involved in the slave trade industry.
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Comments
This is what snowflakes do when they are not being brainwashed
“he referred to his apartment as a “trap house,” a slang term for a place where people buy drugs.”
Well, I learned something today. What the phrase means to me is a structure on a skeet field that houses the target launcher. Or, I might have considered that the kid was hosting an “escape room” party and used the wrong term.
I thought a trap house was a mansion in Austria we’re a bunch of kids who sang live.
Oh, you mean then one with the bear on us.
I do?
bear on us = baroness
Your puns are better!
UserP: you’re trying too hard.
or maybe he can use any term he wants. If a man can be a woman, then his apartment can be a independent republic.
How about the Federalist Society sponsoring a lecture by Mollie Hemingway a great journalist whose articles s and books are always must reading?
These people are going to be actual attorneys? As in practicing law? Are they going to cry and be triggered if they’re in a courtroom and the other attorney says something “triggering”? This is just sad.
“I don’t understand this word, so it must be rayciss!”
–The Niggardly Scholars
I am a retired attorney with approximately 1,000 trials completed. I joined the Federalist Society in law school at U of Montana. We were definitely looked down upon by the liberal professors but left alone for the most part. Times they are a changing’ (to borrow a saying), and the legal profession is slanting hard left as the other misguided institutions are as well. When will those people run out the true scenarios and foresee the inevitable conclusions?
Paraphrased: Our university believes in Free Speech, unless somebody says something we disagree with.
Too many, formally top flight universities, are flushing their reputations down the toilet.
From the fire article, “While Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Yaseen Eldik told Colbert early on that the process was not “adjudicatory or punitive,” This is how he should have known it would be just that.
My BS meter tells me that the proper response to being called to take part in such a process is a flat out “No.” Then let them know you shall await a formal written notice of any proceedings and at that time exercise
the rights outlined in Yale’s policies especially the right to be represented during any such proceedings.
The other thing is to frame their action on your own terms. “Are you telling me my freedom of expression is to be limited according to whether it causes any controversy and the only defense is to apologize for exercising that right?” and “Are you threatening me with retaliation not just now but post graduation should I not meet your demands?” Tell them you will only accept a yes or no response. In writing.
Lastly, Never apologize to the woke brigade. It is like throwing chum to sharks.
If I were accused of triggering, I would claim that the term itself evokes the explosive, violent, hostile employment of firearms; thus traumatizing me and creating an unsafe environment.
My trigger phrase is “Niagara Falls!”
I genuinely have difficulty seeing how what the Democrat Party is qualifies as “socialist” instead of “fascist”
That’s because you don’t understand that fascists are socialists. The Nazi party was a socialist party — their name explicitly says so. So was Mussolini.
The defining difference is not what people think it is — it is that “communists” tend to be international socialists who identify with “the working class,” while “fascists” are national socialists (ooh, see?) who identify with a nation and its government.
What you mentioned (national vs international) is a very big difference.
Change the location to 1930s Germany and Federal Society to Jews and the situation bears and uncanny semblance.
OK Yale alumni, are you ashamed of what your alma mater has become? And does the institution reflect your beleifs and ideals?
Stop all donations to Yale!
It’s beyond the point that, when I employ people, if they got beyond high school I don’t hire them.
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
George Orwell