I'm a current Yale student who witnessed this confrontation, and I think the Reddit community is misunderstanding the context of the protest. Our student community has spent several weeks engaged in a complex debate over free speech, and this two-minute video does not accurately reflect the opinions of both sides.

The students in this confrontation aren't attacking the principles of free speech. Instead, they're expressing their disappointment over the recent behavior of Master Nicholas Christakis (the professor in the blue shirt). As the Master of a residential community, his primary responsibility is to support the students emotionally in times of difficulty. When his wife, Erika, sent out an email challenging the university's role in asking students to avoid offensive costumes, a large portion of the student body considered it a de facto encouragement of offensive behavior.

The students in the video are upset because Christakis is supposed to be a community leader who listens to students and helps them wrestle with difficult topics of racism and cultural appropriation. The important thing to remember is that it doesn't matter why a student is offended or hurt — the Master of the college has a non-negotiable obligation to help the student heal.

If a person experiencing depression visits a therapist and says that a coworker said hurtful things to them, the therapist should serve as a supportive person who will listen to the patient's venting and, eventually, help them find a solution. Now, imagine if the therapist immediately cut off the patient and told them that the coworker had a right to free speech and the patient should learn to not be offended — in other words: deal with it. That's basically what Master Christakis is currently doing.

The student community is upset because, while they support the principles of free speech, they expect their residential Master to be supportive of all perspectives, even if those perspectives contradict his personal opinions. So, before you judge the students in the video, please realize that this was never a debate about free speech; it was a protest against an administrator who repeatedly uses the ideals of free speech to ignore the concerns of his constituent students.

Master Christakis is not a university administrator. He is a professor who lives alongside students with an obligation to listen and support.