What did these students expect, face time with Hillary Clinton?
The College Fix reports:
Columbia students call Hillary Clinton class huge disappointmentHillary Clinton’s fall class at Columbia University felt more like being in a “late-night talk show” audience than a college course, one of many complaints from underwhelmed students, according to a Huffington Post op-ed published Sunday.Clinton did not read students’ assignments, attend discussion sessions, or hold office hours, and students complained that their questions about controversial topics were avoided, according to the piece.The column by student Cate Twining-Ward was headlined: “I Thought Taking A Class Taught By Hillary Clinton Would Be Empowering. I Was Wrong.” Twining-Ward expressed her disappointment about the class and interviewed a few of her peers, one of whom said, “I could have learned everything just from reading her memoir.”The class, “Inside the Situation Room,” taught by Clinton and international relations Professor Keren Yarhi-Milo, focused on “how to analyze and understand the complex interplay between individual psychology, domestic politics, public opinion, bureaucracy, the international environment, and other factors which feed into decisions about foreign policy,” according to the course description.But Twining-Ward said it “wasn’t really a class — it was a production.”A filming crew recorded every class, and their equipment tear-down cut half an hour from every session, she wrote.“Together in class and on tape, we acted much like an audience at a late-night talk show, distracted by the cameras and yet immersed in the vanity of the production,” Twining-Ward wrote. “We followed an unspoken script where we were both active and passive at once — expected to laugh at certain anecdotes, but not encouraged to raise our hands.”Every week, students waited in line for hours for a coveted seat near the microphone, all for the chance to ask Clinton a question, she wrote, adding it became known as “the Hunger Games Q&A.”Yet, when difficult topics came up, such as the Israel-Hamas conflict, “the discourse was often neutralized and students were referred to panels and events outside the lecture hall for answers,” she wrote.What’s more, students had been told Clinton would spend the last day of class answering students’ questions, but two days before the final class, they learned most of the questions would be selected in advance, she wrote. One was: “What’s your favorite Taylor Swift song and why?”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY