<p class="source"><span>Dmytro Sheremeta/Shutterstock</span></p><p class="caption">In a new survey, 53% pf people thought being able to work remotely would increase time available for romance.</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>A new <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/survey-flexible-work-mental-health/">survey</a> of 3,900 people found that 64% of workers think being able to work from home would improve their sex life and benefit their romantic relationship. </li><li>The main benefit is having more time to see your partner, whether they are also home during the day or before and after their work hours. </li><li>But relationship coaches say problems could arise, such as an imbalance where the remote worker takes on all the couple's chores, or feelings of loneliness and isolation setting in.  </li><li>To avoid problems, and to get a boost to your love life from a remote job, follow a few steps, such as establishing who will do what chores and scheduling in date time. </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/prime?module=article&amp;area=summary">Click here for more BI Prime content.</a></li></ul><p>Could working from home help the birds and the bees, ahem, get busier? Most people seem to think so. </p><p>The majority of workers think that landing a flexible job - for example, one that allows you to work from home - would boost their love life, a new <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/survey-flexible-work-mental-health/">survey</a> by career site FlexJobs shows. Some 64% of the 3,900 respondents said it would improve their sex life and benefit their romantic relationship. Additionally, 80% thought having a flexible job would help them be more attentive to their significant other or partner.  </p><p>There's no doubt that getting a job that lets you work remotely, which for most people involves working from home, is a big change. But is it actually a positive or a negative change when it comes to one's personal life? </p><p>I spoke with people who went from working in an office to working remotely, as well as couples therapists and coaches, and the short answer is: it depends. </p><h3>There are some clear benefits, but also the potential for problems. </h3><p>The benefits are obvious and wide ranging. Working remotely can mean more time to be with your partner, to go to your kid's recital, have a lunch date, or sign off early in time to meet your love for a last-minute dinner out. If your partner is also home, you could even have a midday "sex date," according to <a href="https://centerforloveandsex.com/sex-esteem-show/">Sari Cooper</a>, director of <a href="https://centerforloveandsex.com/">Center for Love and Sex</a>, a group sex therapy and coaching practice based in New York City.</p><p>"Spontaneous sex during daytime hours, when the kids are in school, is a favorite of a lot of stay-at-home parents since they're exhausted after a whole day with the kids," said Cooper, who also provides online coaching.</p><p>But working from home isn't paradise. It is still work; and often the boundaries between work and personal responsibilities can get blurred.</p><p>According to <a href="http://www.doctor-ramani.com/">Ramani Durvasula</a>, a licensed clinical psychologist based in Santa Monica, California, a common issue that arises for such couples is one where the partner working remotely takes on all of the household duties. Partner A, the remote worker, runs the errands, walks the dog during breaks, cooks meals, and picks up the kids, while partner B, who works at an office, doesn't deal with most or any of those chores. This could cause stress in a relationship and lead to conflict. </p><p>Durvasula also noted that the remote worker not taking on household duties could cause issues, especially if their partner is a homemaker or stay-at-home parent. "This can create the illusion that the remote worker is shirking duties because if they are in the next room they can hold the baby, change the diaper, play with toddler, tend to the sick child, purchase groceries, make dinner, or clean the house, but this may not be possible. As such, this can create tension," said Durvasula, author of "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Should-Stay-Surviving-Relationship-Narcissist-ebook/dp/B016989HIW">Should I Stay or Should I Go</a>."</p><p>Another common issue centers around what happens when the work day is over, according to Cooper.</p><p>The remote worker, who's largely at home and by themselves, could also feel lonely and in need of more chat time than their office-working partner may feel their partner needs. Cooper said the remote-working partner might want to go out and leave the house at the end of the working day, while the office-working partner may be feeling tired from a long commute or from being in meetings all day. This could lead to distrust in the relationship, since the remote worker may go out more often without the office-working partner. And more distrust could mean a decrease in the frequency of sex, Cooper said. <strong style="background-color: #ff00ff;"><br /></strong></p><p>According to Durvasula, another common problem can arise from what she calls "the sweatpant paradox." On the one hand, a person who works from home gets the benefit of being able to work in pretty much whatever clothes they like. On the other hand, not getting primped and properly dressed like you would for an office job could accidentally dull your sex life. </p><h3><strong>So what's a couple to do? People who work from home, as well as relationship and sex therapists, shared some poignant advice. </strong></h3><ol><li><strong>Set up a schedule. </strong></li></ol><p>Alissa Lopez, who now runs her own personal assistant company, <a href="https://familiesdo.com/">FamiliesDo</a>, from home, left her office days behind in June of 2019. After her first couple of months as a remote worker, she learned how important it is to have specific time dedicated for work, and specific time dedicated to one's partner/family. </p><p>"I think acting like I have a 9-to-5, or creating some other set schedule for work hours, is key to creating work-life balance where I can prioritize my partner. In the very beginning, with all that schedule freedom I started going nocturnal. Waking up around noon and working until 4 a.m. because I could, which was not healthy for myself or our relationship. I was never around in the morning and when he was around in the evening, I was in full-on work mode," she said. </p><ol start="2"><li><strong> Talk about splitting up household duties. </strong></li></ol><p><a href="https://artofworkingremotely.com/spotlight/scott-dawson/">Scott Dawson</a>, a web designer and front-end developer who's been working remotely since 1998, knows a thing or two about how to work from home. In fact, he wrote a book on the topic, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Art-Working-Remotely-Distributed-Workplace/dp/173399131X">The Art of Working Remotely</a>." </p><p>"Work out who's doing what outside of work responsibilities. [My wife and I] are never surprised when the kids need to go somewhere, or dinner needs preparing, or the driveway needs snow shoveled. We have a shared online calendar for the whole family, and there are seldom surprises because we communicate so readily as a family," he said.  </p><p>Having an arrangement of this kind can  help avoid a situation where one person is doing all the chores.</p><ol start="3"><li><strong> Designate a specific workplace, and get out every so often. </strong></li></ol><p>Having a specific area of your house or apartment for work can help prevent your job from taking over your entire life, physically and mentally speaking. And getting out of the house can be beneficial, too.  </p><p>Taking time to work from an outs tide space for some days can help create a psychological boundary between the work mindset and the personal one, Cooper said.</p><p>Working from a coffee shop once a week, for example, is especially good for partners that are both home, the relationship and sex coach said. </p><p>"There's a lot of be said for the potential space of time spent apart to stimulate frisson or erotic excitement in a relationship."</p><p><strong>4. Remote workers, get dressed in the morning. </strong></p><p>"Unless there is video conferencing that may push a person to run a brush through her hair or get dressed up, it is easy to roll down to the desk in last night's pajamas. While this may be comfortable, it may also impede the sort of 'za-za-zoo' that comes from putting on the power suit or power heels or power anything," Durvasula said. </p><p>So put on a nice work outfit on in the mornings, it could make you feel more productive and sexy.</p><p><strong style="color: #000000;">5. Communicate as you figure things out.  </strong></p><p>"Be clear on expectations, and what can be realistically expected. Be clear on noise levels, for example TVs, crying kids, if you need to do calls. Perhaps set up a signaling system, so that when an office door is closed, that means no disruptions whatsoever," the therapist said.  </p><p>And above all, talk things out. </p><p>"Communicate, communicate, communicate."</p>              <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-richest-person-net-worth-billions-2018-12">Jeff Bezos reportedly just spent $165 million on a Beverly Hills estate - here are all the ways the world's richest man makes and spends his money</a></h3>

Working from home changes your sex life and relationship - here's how to make sure the change is positive

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Nicholas and Erika Christakis, the administrators at the center of a racially charged debate at Yale last year, have announced that they will not return to the campus in their roles at Silliman College.</p><p class="p1">"I am stepping down from serving as Head of Silliman College at Yale," <a href="https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/735577662408785921">Nicholas tweeted.</a></p><p class="p1">Nicholas will remain at Yale in a professional capacity, according to <a href="http://news.yale.edu/2016/05/25/yale-university-statement-nicholas-christakis-may-2016">Yale's public statement</a>.</p><p class="p1">Erika, who was the associate head of college at Silliman, also resigned from her administrative role, a Yale spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.</p><p>Last year, she announced that she was stepping down from her teaching role at the Ivy League school. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I will not be teaching at Yale in the future," she told Business Insider in December. </span></span></p><p>The decision comes after months of backlash against the Christakises over an email Erika sent to students suggesting that Yale shouldn't tell them not to wear offensive Halloween costumes.</p><p>That backlash included <a href="https://docs.google.com/a/businessinsider.com/forms/d/1SLBVAdFZYTzAQ_4iHPKuPo7ER_FBmztdtzuD53AxMMU/viewform">an open letter criticizing</a> Erika, signed by hundreds of members of the Yale community.</p><p>In an email announcing his resignation sent to members of the Silliman community - one of Yale's 12 residential colleges - Nicholas did not explicitly mention the strife but alluded to his critics.</p><p>Emma Platoff, managing editor of the Yale Daily News, <a href="https://twitter.com/emmaplatoff/status/735581538650361856">tweeted the email:</a></p><p class="p1" style="padding-left: 30px;">Last week, I gave my resignation to President Salovey and will be stepping down from my role as Head of Silliman College, effective July, 2016. Erika and I have devoted our professional lives to advocating for all young people. We have great respect for every member of our community, friend and critic alike. We remain hopeful that students at Yale can express themselves and engage complex ideas within an intellectually plural community.</p><p class="p1"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><div></div></span></p><p class="embed-spacer">A major part of Yale's identity is its residential-college system. The colleges house students for their entire undergraduate experience and include dormitories, dining halls, and gyms.</p><p>Erika sent the now infamous email in response to an Intercultural Affairs Council email that called on students to be sensitive about the cultural implications of their Halloween costumes, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/11/02/yale-debates-are-offensive-costumes-problem">as Inside Higher Ed reported</a>.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>She questioned if students should be able to dress in any costumes they liked, offensive or not.<p>"Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious ... a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?" she wrote.<em> (See below for the full email.)</em></p><p>Nicholas defended his wife's position and that of free speech, <a href="http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/05/students-confront-christakis-about-halloween-email/">according to the Yale Daily News</a> (YDN).</p><p>Tensions further flared when protesters took to a courtyard to confront the Christakises. The conversation quickly devolved into screaming, with a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QqgNcktbSA">protester telling Nicholas Christakis to be quiet and telling him that he was disgusting.</a></p><p>During commencement ceremonies on Monday, some Silliman students refused to accept their diplomas from Nicholas, <a href="http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/05/25/months-after-controversy-christakises-resign-silliman-posts/">the YDN reported.</a></p><p>Last year, 49 faculty members <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/yale-faculty-members-support-erika-christakis-2015-11">wrote their own open letter</a> defending Erika against allegations of racism.</p><h3>Read below for the full text of Erika's email:</h3><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Dear Sillimanders:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween-wear. I've always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may be aware, I teach a class on "The Concept of the Problem Child," and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween - traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people - is also an occasion for adults to exert their control.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">When I was young, adults were freaked out by the specter of Halloween candy poisoned by lunatics, or spiked with razor blades (despite the absence of a single recorded case of such an event). Now, we've grown to fear the sugary candy itself. And this year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">I don't wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue "signaling." But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably "appropriative" about a blonde-haired child's wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren't a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don't know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Which is my point. I don't, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can't defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? I've always been a good mimic and I enjoy accents. I love to travel, too, and have been to every continent but Antarctica. When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others' cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense - and I'll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes - I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious... a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people's capacity - in your capacity - to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you? We tend to view this shift from individual to institutional agency as a trade off between libertarian vs. liberal values ("liberal" in the American, not European sense of the word).</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Nicholas says, if you don't like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">But - again, speaking as a child development specialist - I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It's not mine, I know that.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Happy Halloween.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Yours sincerely,</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Erika</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-in-crisis-mode-over-race-2015-11"> America's colleges are suddenly in crisis mode over race relations</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Juc3F0eDqYOu_c913lOdA-vilcvDMoQ6" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The married Yale administrators who ignited racial tension on campus have both resigned

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Nicholas Christakis, the administrator&#xa0;at the center of a racially charged debate at Yale, announced he&#xa0;will not return to the campus in an administrative role at&#xa0;Silliman College.<p class="p1">"I am stepping down&#xa0;from&#xa0;serving as Head of Silliman College at Yale," <a href="https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/735577662408785921">he tweeted.</a></p><p class="p1"><span>Christakis&#xa0;will remain at Yale in a professional capacity, according to <a href="http://news.yale.edu/2016/05/25/yale-university-statement-nicholas-christakis-may-2016">Yale's public statement</a>.</span></p><p>The&#xa0;decision comes after months of backlash against&#xa0;Christakis and his wife Erika over an email she sent to students suggesting that Yale shouldn't tell them not to wear offensive Halloween costumes.</p><p>That backlash included <a href="https://docs.google.com/a/businessinsider.com/forms/d/1SLBVAdFZYTzAQ_4iHPKuPo7ER_FBmztdtzuD53AxMMU/viewform">an open letter criticizing</a> Erika, the associate head of Silliman College,&#xa0;signed by hundreds of members of the Yale community.</p><p>In an email announcing his resignation sent to members of the Silliman community - one of Yale's 12 residential colleges - Nicholas did not explicitly mention the strife but alluded to his critics.</p><p>Emma Platoff, managing editor of the YDN, <a href="https://twitter.com/emmaplatoff/status/735581538650361856">tweeted the email:</a></p><p class="p1" style="padding-left: 30px;">Last week, I gave my resignation to President Salvoey and will be stepping down from my role as Head of Silliman College, effective July, 2016.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Erika and I have devoted our professional lives to advocating for all young people. We have great respect for every member of our community, friend and critic alike. We remain hopeful that students at Yale can express themselves and engage complex ideas within and intellectually plural community.</span></p><p class="p1" style="padding-left: 30px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><div></div></span></p><p class="embed-spacer">A major part of Yale's identity is its residential college system. The colleges house students for their entire undergraduate experience and include dormitories, dining halls, and gyms.</p><p>Erika&#xa0;sent the now infamous&#xa0;email in response to an Intercultural Affairs Council email that called on students to be sensitive about the cultural implications of their Halloween costumes, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/11/02/yale-debates-are-offensive-costumes-problem">as Inside Higher Ed reported</a>.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>She questioned if students should be able to dress in any costumes they liked, offensive or not.<p>"Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?" she wrote. (See below for the full email).</p><p>Nicholas defended his wife's position and that of free speech, <a href="http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/05/students-confront-christakis-about-halloween-email/">according to Yale Daily News</a>.</p><p>Tensions further flared when protesters took to a courtyard to confront&#xa0;the Christakises.&#xa0;The conversation quickly devolved into screaming, with a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QqgNcktbSA">protester telling Nicholas Christakis to be quiet and telling him he was disgusting.</a></p><p><span>In December, Erika announced&#xa0;she was stepping down from her teaching role&#xa0;at the Ivy League school.</span></p><p><span> </span>"<span>I will not be teaching at Yale in the future," she told Business Insider. </span></p><p><span>It's not yet clear whether Erika will retain her administration role at Silliman, although the <a href="http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/05/25/months-after-controversy-christakises-resign-silliman-posts/">Yale Daily News</a> has reported she will also step down.&#xa0;<span>When asked for comment, Yale University directed Business Insider to its <a href="http://news.yale.edu/2016/05/25/yale-university-statement-nicholas-christakis-may-2016">public statement</a>, which mentions only Nicholas' resignation.&#xa0;</span></span></p><p>Last year, 49 faculty members <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/yale-faculty-members-support-erika-christakis-2015-11">wrote their own open letter</a> defending Erika&#xa0;against allegations of racism.</p><p>Read below for the full text of Erika's email.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Dear Sillimanders:</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween-wear. I've always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may be aware, I teach a class on "The Concept of the Problem Child," and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween - traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people - is also an occasion for adults to exert their control.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>When I was young, adults were freaked out by the specter of Halloween candy poisoned by lunatics, or spiked with razor blades (despite the absence of a single recorded case of such an event). Now, we've grown to fear the sugary candy itself. And this year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I don't wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue "signaling." But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably "appropriative" about a blonde-haired child's wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren't a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don't know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Which is my point. I don't, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can't defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? I've always been a good mimic and I enjoy accents. I love to travel, too, and have been to every continent but Antarctica. When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others' cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense - and I'll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes - I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people's capacity - in your capacity - to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you? We tend to view this shift from individual to institutional agency as a trade off between libertarian vs. liberal values ("liberal" in the American, not European sense of the word).</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Nicholas says, if you don't like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>But - again, speaking as a child development specialist - I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It's not mine, I know that.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Happy Halloween.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Yours sincerely,</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Erika</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-in-crisis-mode-over-race-2015-11"> America's colleges are suddenly in crisis mode over race relations</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Juc3F0eDqYOu_c913lOdA-vilcvDMoQ6" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The Yale administrator who inflamed racial tensions after an email about Halloween costumes on campus has resigned

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://silliman.yalecollege.yale.edu/people/masters-office">Yale College</a></span></p><p class="caption">Erika Christakis.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Erika Christakis, the faculty member at the center of a racially charged debate at Yale, has decided not to teach at the Ivy League school going forward.</p><p>"<span>I will not be teaching at Yale in the future," she told Business Insider in an email Thursday.</span></p><p><span>Christakis' decision came after weeks of backlash against the lecturer and administrator over an <span>email she sent to students suggesting that Yale shouldn't tell them not to wear offensive Halloween costumes. </span></span></p><p><span>That backlash included </span><span><a href="https://docs.google.com/a/businessinsider.com/forms/d/1SLBVAdFZYTzAQ_4iHPKuPo7ER_FBmztdtzuD53AxMMU/viewform">an open letter criticizing her</a> signed by hundreds of members of the Yale community. </span></p><p><span>Recently, 49 faculty members <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/yale-faculty-members-support-erika-christakis-2015-11">wrote their own open letter</a> defending <span>Christakis against allegations of racism. </span></span></p><p><span><span><a href="http://appliedphysics.yale.edu/douglas-stone">Douglas Stone</a>, a colleague who wrote the open letter, told Business Insider that "aggressive tactics" used against <span>Christakis spurred her to decide to stop teaching. </span></span></span></p><p>"Last year over 300 students expressed interest in her courses, she is an acclaimed teacher, and she was planning extra sections this year to accommodate more students," Stone wrote Business Insider in an email message. "The unfair and ad hominem attacks she has endured have measurably reduced student academic choice at Yale. There is a cost to allowing this behavior to go unchallenged."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anP54GxKgEQ">screengrab via youtube</a></span></p><p class="caption">Yale physics professor Douglas Stone.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Christakis - an associate master at Yale's Silliman College <a href="http://www.aspenideas.org/speaker/erika-christakis">who also teaches child-development and education classes </a>- sent the now notorious email in response to an Intercultural Affairs Council email that called on students to be sensitive about the cultural implications of their Halloween costumes, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/11/02/yale-debates-are-offensive-costumes-problem">as Inside Higher Ed reported</a>. Silliman College is one of 12 residential colleges, also known as dormitories, at Yale.</p><p>Christakis questioned if students should be able to dress in any costumes they liked, offensive or not.</p><p>"Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?" she wrote. (See below for the full email).</p><p>Stone said that as tension on campus rose, he felt an obligation to step in and show support for Christakis.</p><p>"I do not want to stir up angry debate, but felt that the debate up to this point has been one-sided and needed to be balanced," he said.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Philipp Arndt Photography</span></p><p class="caption">Yale students protesting racial discrimination on campus.</p></div><p></p></div></div>When asked if he thought Yale was a welcoming place for students of color, Stone indicated he didn't feel close enough to the issue to opine, but that he hasn't seen institutional racism at Yale.</p><p>"I do not have enough involvement with these issues and personal knowledge to make a judgment," he said.</p><p>"I can say that as a long time department Chair we were very vigorously encouraged to recruit under-represented minorities and be sensitive to their needs. I never saw evidence of the institutional racism that some have charged is present."</p><p>The Christakises received support from Yale's administration in November, after nearly a month of escalating tension. President Peter Salovey and Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway sent an email to students affirming that they "fully support" the Christakises, YDN reported. </p><p>But Stone was disappointed with the platitudes, rather than direct support, that Salovey and Holloway used in their email.</p><p>"I was disappointed that the President Salovey and Dean Holloway did not defend Erika's email explicitly, but restricted themselves to general expressions of support for free speech," he said.</p><p>"I think Erika's email was a useful and important contribution to campus discourse."</p><p>Business Insider reached out to Yale University for comment and will update this post if we hear back. Read below for the full text of Erika Christakis' email.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Dear Sillimanders:</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween-wear. I've always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may be aware, I teach a class on "The Concept of the Problem Child," and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween - traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people - is also an occasion for adults to exert their control.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>When I was young, adults were freaked out by the specter of Halloween candy poisoned by lunatics, or spiked with razor blades (despite the absence of a single recorded case of such an event). Now, we've grown to fear the sugary candy itself. And this year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I don't wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue "signaling." But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably "appropriative" about a blonde-haired child's wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren't a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don't know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Which is my point. I don't, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can't defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? I've always been a good mimic and I enjoy accents. I love to travel, too, and have been to every continent but Antarctica. When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others' cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense - and I'll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes - I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people's capacity - in your capacity - to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you? We tend to view this shift from individual to institutional agency as a trade off between libertarian vs. liberal values ("liberal" in the American, not European sense of the word).</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Nicholas says, if you don't like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>But - again, speaking as a child development specialist - I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It's not mine, I know that.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Happy Halloween.</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em> </em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Yours sincerely,</em></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Erika</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-in-crisis-mode-over-race-2015-11"> America's colleges are suddenly in crisis mode over race relations</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Juc3F0eDqYOu_c913lOdA-vilcvDMoQ6" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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