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Archive 1Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Reverting Edits on the Prestige Statement

Greetings,

I noticed that there is an ongoing discussion (see above) about statements of so-called "prestige" in higher education. Meanwhile, until the discussion reaches a consensus, I have reverted some edits that were made on the statement in question. The fact that a school like Yale (and Harvard, which has a nearly identical statement) is one of the most prestigious universities is a pretty neutral and encyclopedic statement that has been documented in numerous sources. Also, it is common practice to place multiple sources on possibly controversial statements (while keeping in mind that Wikipedia is not a mere collection of links), and the sources presented are high quality sources that includes reputable and notable rankings, news sources, encyclopedias, etc. Most importantly, I notice that statements like this have not been changed on articles on Harvard and Stanford. (I'm not trying to bring up school rivalries here; I'm just pointing out the problem of consistency.)

The most important job of a lede is to provide an efficient summary of the article. This article indeed shows the rich history, academic achievements, wealth, and selectivity of this institution. To avoid edit wars, I propose that from now we should discuss any related edits here before making them.

Thank you everyone for your contributions. William2001(talk) 05:16, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Schools like Yale, Dartmouth, other Ivy League schools arguably don't carry the same international recognition as schools like Harvard, Cambridge or Stanford. I think this is pretty clearly demonstrated by the fact that Yale doesn't rank Top 10 in most international university rankings. None of the sources provided support the "prestige" statement. XXeducationexpertXX (talk) 11:53, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
@XXeducationexpertXX: The issue is that right now there are no standards to debate against; as there is a patchwork of consensuses across the project. Until there is a consensus at WP:HED (see talk), it's not going to be helpful to edit war over this: this statement has been here for a month before this editing, and before the relevant discussion got under way, so it might as well be left until consensus is reached there. Continuously trying to force an article change whilst a discussion is taking place could be seen as disruptive editing, and might incur sanctions. As it's not clear that it's promotional given the current discussion, and it doesn't involve WP:BLP, it's really not necessary to remove it. The same would go for any currently being added to schools whilst the discussion is taking place. Shadowssettle(talk) 19:15, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
@Shadowssettle: The edit warring clearly began in response to the statement. The page existed with out such a statement for years without edit warring. No, we are not going to use a highly dubious statement as a placeholder until discussion can be had. The status quo is what the page was prior to addition of the disputed text and this statement is clearly disputed. XXeducationexpertXX (talk) 01:07, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
This discussion was started as a consequence of your repeated effort to remove the statement, so the status quo ante is the version prior to your attempts at removing it. I have reverted as such. Please stop edit warring and discuss the matter here. --Kinu t/c 01:15, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
@Kinu: This discussion was started as a consequence of a highly dubious and unsupported statement being added to the page and it going unnoticed for a short period of time. A similar statement has been repeatedly been removed in the past by previous editors. The "status quo" does not include the highly disputed statement. XXeducationexpertXX (talk) 01:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
The assertion that such a statement has been removed before was not mentioned until now. Can you please provide diffs so others can investigate this further? --Kinu t/c 01:42, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

It appears that the disputed statement about the university's prestige only has one source that actually discusses "prestige:" a very poor CNBC blog post that mostly just quotes other materials. Setting aside the issue of whether this kind of information should be included in the lede of this or any other article, it must be supported by high quality sources - preferably in the body of the article because the lede should be a summary of what is in the body of the article - and accurately represent those sources.

So if we omit that one shitty source - and we definitely should - then it appears that it might be accurate to say that the university is highly ranked by a few specific rankings. And several of those rankings are not reputable, either. Further, there is a serious concern about synthesis if Wikipedia editors combine several sources to draw a novel conclusion.

Editors who really want to include this kind of information should focus their energy on finding high quality sources that explicitly support the statement. If it's true and something that is noteworthy enough to include in the lede of the article, it should be easy to find in multiple high quality sources given the amount of scholarly writing that focuses on US higher education. ElKevbo (talk) 01:24, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Agreed with @ElKevbo:. There are certain universities that have sources, which state explicitly support the "prestige" statement. Yale is not one of the those universities. We shouldn't be synthesizing secondary sources to draw novel conclusions. Let's please remove this statement or risk having every Ivy League school feature this un-encyclopedic information. There have been similar debates on the MIT, Columbia and Princeton University pages. All of these universities have been called "prestigious", "elite" and are ranking Top 10 nationally and internationally, but the justification for including the statement is usually a derivative and subjective conclusion of several sources, which neither directly or consistently make such a claim. XXeducationexpertXX (talk) 01:45, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
@ElKevbo: Although I'm not going to spend any time looking for this information I would be surprised if editors can't find high quality sources to support this kind of statement; there's a reason why there's a long-standing joke that USN&WR has a die with "H," "Y", and "P" on the sides and they just roll it each year to determine which university will be ranked number one. ElKevbo (talk) 02:08, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
That's not a long-standing joke, at least outside of your own circle. However, it does give some good insight into what your agenda is with these prestige statements. According to USNWR, ARWU, CWUR, and QS, Yale is not a Top 10 university globally - that's really significant. The schools that are: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Princeton, UChicago. Very clearly, if you believe rankings, Yale is simply not considered "one of the most prestigious universities in the world" if it can't even crack the top 10. Further, the Top universities in the United States according to USNWR are Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Yale and recently UChicago. Stanford hasn't made the top 3 in over 15 years. The first university rankings ever published in the 1900s had Harvard, Columbia, UChicago and Berkeley ranked as the top universities in the world and the 2nd oldest rankings in 1906 had Harvard, UChicago, Columbia as the Top 3. Princeton didn't make the top 10. The schools with the lowest acceptance rates in order: Stanford (~4%), Harvard (4.5%), Columbia (5%), Princeton (5.8%), UChicago (5.8%), Yale (5.9%), MIT (6.2%). There goes use of the "selectivity" specifically for Yale. Don't even get me started on Nobel Prizes where Harvard, UChicago, Columbia and Berkeley individually have more Nobel Prizes than Yale and Princeton combined. If you really would like to go down the path of citing rankings and "selectivity" measures, I assure you it will be a zero sum game.XXeducationexpertXX (talk) 04:25, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
I would follow whatever consensus the project reaches but I think that Yale is one of the very few schools that can be consistent with the prestige statement in the Harvard article. There is the Harvard-Yale rivalry that is acknowledged by Harvard, second biggest endowment, Yale Law School that is ranked number 1, Yale graduates in politics (Bushs, Clintons and SCOTUS justices). How do we measure recognition anyway? My opinion is to just lay out the facts and let the readers decide without saying anything about prestige but a school's prestige is not just the rankings and I believe that Yale is the only school that can be treated as a rival of Harvard (in the United States). So if we are going to write it for Harvard, I see no problem in writing it for Yale also. But as I have said, my preferred approach is to just lay out the facts for every school. --HamiltonProject (talk) 16:18, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Endowment

It's now $31.2 billion. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/09/25/not-business-as-usual-yale-releases-update-on-the-universitys-financial-situation/ Make correction please. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.215.223.224 (talk) 22:41, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Notable alumni and faculty

I've been going through the section and adding sources for each person, as the maintenance message requests, and some of the listed people didn't graduate. Claire Danes, Paul Newman, Oliver Stone, William E. Boeing, George Weiss, and Ron Darling all attended the University; however, none of them graduated. Considering an alumni is someone who graduates from the school, shouldn't they be removed? I'll leave them for now, considering they were students, but it is still questionable. Additionally, I'm going to WP:Bold and remove Brian Dennehy as any claims to him attending Yale is unreliable and disputed by both his NYT Obituary and his own interviews, where he never mentions the school. Lastly, I think listing this section as both "Notable alumni and faculty" is odd, considering it only lists two faculty members who weren't Yale alumni (John E. Hare and Benoit Mandlebrot). I'd suggest removing them and just keeping it to "Notable alumni"; at that point, there could either be a separate section for faculty or just leave it for another wiki page. PoliticsIsExciting (talk) 21:48, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

"Alumni" does not mean "graduate." ElKevbo (talk) 22:12, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
Fair enough, didn't realize that non-graduates could be included as alumni. Will keep them then and keep adding citations. Thanks for the help. PoliticsIsExciting (talk) 01:35, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Trivial Information Throughout Article

Currently trying to bring this article to a higher quality, and I can't help but notice that this article simply contains poor structure and lots of trivial information. The History section is a complete mess; the first subsection "Early history of Yale College" is mostly fine, besides the odd sentence or two that can be moved to somewhere later and more citations and expansion. After that though, the "19th century" subsection has an odd paragraph about the "ideal prototype of the Yale ideal" (all cited by a single source), which has no place being in the article. The "20th century" is filled with numerous trivial paragraphs (Behavioral Sciences, Biology, Medicine, History and American studies, for instance) that could all easily be removed and nothing of serious substance would be lost. They aren't a broader scope, note-worthy milestones, etc. rather odd anecdotes cited by singular journal or books that are difficult to find. And, all could easily be simplified to just one to two sentences is a larger section, if that The more important sections (Class, Women, Faculty, etc.) are disorganized as well. The section "Town-gown relations" can be moved to the section later down "Relationship with New Haven." Further, the 21st century needs additional work to make it flow, and not just being singular sentences detailing small events. While I've only pointed out issues with the history section, this extends to the rest of the article. Unless anyone objects or suggests a different approach/view, I'll work to reformat the article to resolve this pertinent issue. In the meantime though, to give anyone time to respond, I'll work on fixing citations on this page, as there are many dead links and non-filled fields, as well as fixing grammar issues. PoliticsIsExciting (talk) 23:45, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Since no one objected, I will WP:BOLD and have removed some of the mention information above, as it was purely small historical accounts, typically with only one source, that do not need such weight in this article. This page is long as is; it needs trimming and a more general approach. PoliticsIsExciting (talk) 15:15, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Proposed merge of CancelYale into Yale University

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Unlikely to go in a different direction. Supports are bringing up similar issues with notability and problems sustained coverage. There's also a discussion supportive of merging on the CancelYale talk page. I'm not sure if nominators are supposed to do this, but I went ahead and merged the articles. --I dream of horses (Contribs) Please notify me if replying off my talk page. Thank you. 07:34, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Likely doesn't have its' own notability, but there's enough information to have CancelYale merged into this article. I dream of horses (Contribs) Please notify me after replying off my talk page. Thank you. 00:03, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Apparent vandalism on 216.15.62.121 on 13 January 2014

I'm challenging this edit. The correct idiom in American English is "graduated from" (with persons as the subject and the university as the object), not "has graduated" (with the university as the subject and persons as the object). Most of the results on Google Books for "has graduated" are coming back from the 1910s and 1920s. Any objections before I fix this? --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:27, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

"CancelYale" subsection

Yesterday, I removed the "CancelYale" subsection label and integrated the material in the subsection into the larger section of the history section in which it was already placed. This removed very little information from the article and placed this material into a more readable, understandable context. A few hours later, Filetime reverted my edit with no discussion or an edit summary. He then added one new source documenting the existence and importance of this Twitter hashtag as well as cleaning up some other reference templates and text in the section.

When I asked Filetime on their User talk page why they made this edit, they replied: "Removing an entire subsection of the page, particularly relating to a controversial subject, is a matter that should be discussed and agreed upon in the talk page, rather than unilaterally executed. If you feel this information is inappropriate for the article, please gain consensus in the talk page." The accusation that I "remov[ed] an entire subsection of the [article]" is clearly false and it makes me think that Filetime did not actually look at the edit that I made. The reversion of my edit now leaves us with:

  • A subsection of the "History" section labeled after a Twitter hashtag. We have no evidence that this is actually of historical importance. Moreover, the material in the subsection is very clear that the events it describes predate the invention of this hashtag by a few decades so it's just a bad label.
  • A subsection in the "History" section that discusses, with no preamble and little explanation, events that took place in the late 20th and early 21st century. The problem is that the sections that surround this material are all about the 18th century. So with little context readers are whipped from the middle of the 18th century to the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century only to be flung back into the 18th century in the next subsection. This material can be integrated into this part of the institution's history but it has to be done carefully and with intention; the material that Filetime is insisting remain in this article does not do that.

Filetime, I look forward to your participation in this discussion and your help in resolving these issues. ElKevbo (talk) 21:58, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

AfD for Whitney Humanities Center

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Whitney Humanities Center. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:03, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Women's Campaign School

I'm not sure where to fit in a section on the Women's Campaign School. But it would appear that mention would be in order. See, e.g., [1][2][3][4][5]. If anyone has thoughts as to where, appreciated, and if anyone want to take a crack at it, please do. --2603:7000:2143:8500:A8DD:1194:1F88:AF62 (talk) 20:23, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Few notable college alumni? Or just bad category diffusion?

Hi all! Here's a friendly prod: By my latest very rough calculation, Yale College currently has roughly 2.5 alumni with Wikipedia pages per thousand graduates. That's a rate below Harvard, yes, but it's also below quite a few liberal arts colleges that don't have to diffuse their alumni category, and it's barely a third of the top liberal arts colleges. Either Yale just isn't graduating that many notable alumni (a hypothesis I'm guessing you doubt :P), or there's quite a bit of work to do to make sure alumni of the college are categorized under Category:Yale College alumni rather than Category:Yale University alumni. Anyone want to take on fixing up the category to see if you can get the count higher than Harvard's? Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:54, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Related prior discussion at Talk:Harvard University/Archive 11#Some substantial category cleanup needed. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:01, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Sdkb I would be interested in helping to do this. I think that it would be necissary to do that by graduation year(1930s, 1940s, etc.). If it is still over 200 per decade, I would then recmomend doing it by year. MrMeAndMrMeContributions 23:49, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
@MrMeAndMrMe, fantastic to hear! Going through systematically like that sounds good. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:17, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
Please see prior consensus against such categories by date at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_February_24#Princeton_University_alumni_by_decade. – Fayenatic London 11:14, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

John M. Merriman

Professor John M. Merriman has died. Any help improving his article would be appreciated. Thank you, Thriley (talk) 19:18, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

For Humanity Campaign?

Should campaigns be talked about on Yale's page? According to this: https://news.yale.edu/2021/10/02/yale-launches-comprehensive-campaign-humanity, it seems like some changes can be transformative. Thoughts? Wozal (talk) 15:45, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

We really need independent sources, ideally multiple one, to establish due weight. ElKevbo (talk) 00:11, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Facebook quote in the article

@Magnolia677: You've removed the quote from Facebook twice now. I wanted to discuss this with you, given that several reliable sources have commented on that particular quote. For reference, the quote is:

Dear Yale, I loved being here. I only wish I could’ve had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn’t do it in school, and I couldn’t bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.

Luchang Wang, posted on Facebook in 2015 shortly before her death[1][2][3][4][5]

  • The Miller source said in 2016 in the first sentence of the abstract that: On January 27, 2015, Yale sophomore Luchang Wang made a Facebook post expressing her fear of facing university dismissal due to her depression. Hours later, she jumped to her death.
  • The Washington Post said in 2022: Five years before the pandemic derailed so many college students’ lives, a 20-year-old math major named Luchang Wang posted this message on Facebook: and proceeds to quote the post in full with analysis.
  • The Atlantic also included the post in full in their coverage from 2015, mentioning it in the first sentence, and analyzing it with "The fact that [Wang’s] suicide note specifically mentioned the role of withdrawal and readmission policies was pretty inflammatory among undergraduates," said Caroline Posner, a sophomore at Yale who has advocated for mental-health reform on campus.
  • Yale Daily News in 2015 quoted the post in full and devoted an entire article to analysis of it. The end of Wang’s note — in which she discussed her fears about taking time off from Yale and not being allowed to return — casts new light on a campus debate about how the University handles cases of mental illness, withdrawal and readmission. While some students have criticized the University’s policies as cold and demanding, others have emphasized the complex confluence of factors that led to Tuesday’s tragedy.
  • Boston University in 2015 also referenced the post in their coverage, saying that On January 27, Yale University mathematics major Luchang Wang jumped to her death from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, leaving behind a Facebook post saying that while she was in deep emotional pain, she feared that if she left school to get treatment she would not be allowed back.

The reason why I included the years is that this demonstrates that most reliable sources covering Yale's policies on mental health (as well as mental health in American universities) consider the post to be important. They analyze it and frequently quote it verbatim, with multiple articles over the course of 7 years.
While I understand that you see this as over-the-top and unnecessary[6], the fact that this may be shocking to our readers isn't a reason not to include a heavily analyzed and quoted statement from a student on Yale's mental health policy. At least 3 reliable sources (I can try to find more) considered the quote important enough to include it in their articles, and the other two I've cited still devote analysis to the post. It's necessary for readers to see the post to understand reactions to it.
I'm also not sure what you meant by This article is about a university; it is out-of-scope to post a suicide note on this article.[7] While the post may be a suicide note, it directly criticizes Yale's policies on mental health. It's been subject to at least 5 reliable sources analyzing it over a period of several years, specifically in the context of the university's response to the note. It's very in-scope to include the note, though perhaps we can rework the section to provide the necessary coverage to contextualize the note.
I don't understand why you don't apply this standard to virtually any other part of the article, such as the seven-paragraph listing of every alumnus of Yale with a Wikipedia article, or the athletics section, the frequently unsourced listing of clubs, or whatever else. There are more independent reliable sources covering that one quote than entire subsections of this article, so my belief is that it's not WP:UNDUE. Chess (talk) (please Reply to icon mention me on reply) 22:37, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

  • Chess, I hear you. I'm not going to speak for another editor. What I would suggest is that the section as you had it placed a lot of prominence on the quote, with a quote box, in a paragraph that makes no explicit reference to the person who said that until the third sentence under the quote. So, I think that reorganizing and rewriting is the way to go for me--and I think you need to get rid of a screen-wide quote box that falls in the middle of a paragraph. There are less prominent (less undue) ways to get that material in. Drmies (talk) 22:43, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
    • My concern is that it is undue in a university article. This is certainly a tragic event, but the dramatic quote is unnecessary and unencyclopedic. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:56, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
      @Magnolia677: What's so special about a university that the article must be drama-free? It's a shocking quote, but seeing it improves the reader's understanding of the events surrounding her suicide, Yale's reaction to it, and the culture of Yale's medical withdrawal system. She says she needed more time for her medication to work, but the only option was for the university to kick her out for a year with an unlikely chance of getting back in and so she killed herself.
      It's more encyclopedic to just quote her, than it is for me or you or WP:WikiVoice to try to paraphrase it in a way that removes drama but might sound clumsy or inappropriate (apologies if I just did so above). I'd like you to correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like your position is that we should treat university articles differently from other articles re: drama. I don't share that position per WP:NOTCENSORED, we shouldn't treat universities differently from other articles.
      In terms of the encyclopedia's standards, WP:QUOTEUSE specifically says Editors of controversial subjects should quote the actual spoken or written words to refer to the most controversial ideas. It's a dramatic and controversial claim that Yale University caused her suicide. Policy says quotes are the best way to express that. Wikipedia:Quotations#Formatting also recommends block quotes for quotes over 40 words in length, though I agree that the placing is too prominent and have suggested a right-aligned box instead.
      This is also the most significant criticism of the university by a student. Even treating it as just a quote about the university, it is included in all of the articles covering mental health on Yale's campus, as a representative example of student criticism of Yale's policies. WP:DUE says Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. This is a significant viewpoint, published in most reliable sources covering mental health at Yale, and is prominent in all of them. Chess (talk) (please Reply to icon mention me on reply) 00:36, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
  • @Drmies: Would it be possible to do a right-aligned quote? I've added more information about her death and post that should've been in there before. Apologies. Chess (talk) (please Reply to icon mention me on reply) 00:02, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
    • I think a smaller right-aligned box would be more appropriate, yes, but obviously I can't speak for other editors. Magnolia677, the quote is certainly dramatic, but if Chess is correct in saying that it is treated by secondary sources, then that makes it more valuable. And I think the point here (I don't know if it's just Chess's point or whether they're building on previous material) is that Yale apparently...well, has a reputation (backed by secondary sourcing) for a lack of mental health support. I'm trying to phrase this diplomatically--if my kids were at Yale and I wasn't on Wikipedia I'd use stronger terms. It's that that makes it encyclopedic. I've removed thousands of news bits from school and university articles for precisely the reasons I think you see, but this has context and thus value. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:26, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Wan, William (11 November 2022). "'What if Yale finds out?'". Washington Post. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
  2. ^ Giambrone, Andrew (2 March 2015). "When Mentally Ill Students Feel Alone". The Atlantic. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
  3. ^ Siegel, Rachel; Wang, Vivian (29 January 2015). "Student death raises questions on withdrawal policies". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
  4. ^ Seligson, Susan (9 February 2015). ""Model Minority" Pressures Take Mental Health Toll | BU Today". Boston University. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
  5. ^ Miller, Melissa Joy (June 2016). "Before it's too late: the need for a legally compliant and pragmatic alternative to mandatory withdrawal policies at postsecondary institutions". Southern California review of law and social justice. 25 (3).