However, according to the individual rights group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire), Erika Christakis - who is an associate master at the university's Silliman College - responded to the student body with an email of her own on the topic of Halloween attire.
One student wrote, in a student publication, of friends who found an associate master's defense of the right to experiment with costumes to be so painful that they were unable to eat, lost sleep, and were close to having breakdowns.
Her teaching resignation comes about six weeks after she sent an email in her capacity of associate master to Silliman students in October urging them to be more open about the right of people to wear Halloween costumes that some might deem offensive.
It is about creating a home here!" Dr. Christakis is the master of Silliman College, an undergraduate residence at Yale, and his wife is associate master.
At Yale University, Associate Master Erika Christakis landed herself in the midst of a controversy for questioning university guidelines on Halloween costumes.
And so it's not entirely surprising that minority students in Yale's Silliman College were upset that their master, Nicholas Christakis, and his wife, Erika, the associate master, defended the rights of students to wear offensive costumes at a Halloween party, while counselling those bothered by such behavior to "look away".
On the free-speech thing, there's plenty of faculty who themselves are either free-speech purists, or who believe deeply in civil discourse and don't want to disrupt it, or see a friend of theirs being treated discourteously — it could be any number of these things — and feel that the master and associate master have been thrown under the bus, because no one has come to their defense.
With holdings like the Cordon Bleu, Katherine Gibbs School and American Intercontinental University, it offers associate, master's and bachelor's courses in areas like business, culinary arts, information technology and visual communication.
Though Erika Christakis will go back to working with children and families, Yale's president, Peter Salovey, told the Post that she would remain associate master of Silliman.
He and Kelly alluded to an incident on Halloween weekend of this year during which Erika Christakis, who holds the title of "associate master" of one of Yale's residential colleges, emailed students at the college to suggest that they engage in discussions or look away if they saw potentially offensive Halloween costumes.
The same weekend, Erika Christakis, who holds the title of "associate master" of one of Yale's residential colleges, emailed students at the college to suggest that they respond to potentially offensive Halloween costumes by engaging in discussions or just looking away.
