Author Archives: Christian Vazquez

Yale-NUS is a wager, but the fruits of this experiment could redefine the role served by American colleges in the next century — that’s a gamble worth taking.

When students apply to Yale, they rarely list college sports as one of the main draws.

A dictator is a dictator, and with a 14-year track record, it’s safe to say that Chavez was a terrible one.

Our residential colleges still function as microcosms of Yale. Without the residential colleges it’s unlikely that I would have lived with a Sigma Alpha Epsilon rugby player, a former Dramat board member, a Yale Daily News editor or two members of Mixed Company. I probably would have lived and interacted with the people that do »

When President Rick Levin began his term at Yale in 1993, close to half of the undergraduate student body had yet to be born and Yale was quite a different place. As I’ve heard from alumni of the 1980s and 1990s, our facilities and dormitories were in absolute disrepair and New Haven was an awful »

Last weekend, I traveled to Washington, D.C., with about 20 other Yalies to attend to the Conservative Political Action Conference. I wasn’t sure what to expect. The week before, I had grown disillusioned with the infighting present in the GOP and the dragged out contest the primaries seemed to become after a string of Rick »

Once again, all eyes are on Florida. As a Florida Republican, this has become routine to me. For the last month, the state with the third-greatest number of electoral votes has been the subject of intense campaigning on the part of not only GOP presidential hopefuls but also the president, who has visited Florida more »

The contest is familiar; it’s happened every year since 1875. But this 128th meeting of the boys of Harvard and the sons of Eli is different. Although we hold the series record over the Cantabs (65 victories to their 54), their repeated successes in the last decade spur us on to outplay them tomorrow. Yale »

As you walk along Beinecke Plaza, you can’t help but notice the neoclassical behemoth that we all call Commons. But few of us pay attention to the words inscribed along the top of the dining hall that we all lament no longer serves us dinner. The words Thierry, Cambrai and Somme that are inscribed along »

I was enjoying one of the most old blue of Yale traditions two nights ago, when Cole Porter’s name tag appeared in the YSO Halloween Show. “Who is that?” the kid behind me asked. The question made me wonder how much of our Yale history has been lost. He also asked what Vassar had to »

Brazil is a huge economic player in our world today. That much is undeniable. But for some reason, Yale has overlooked the growing giant to the south. As we continue our mission to become a truly global university, we must reassess our relations with Brazil and South America as a whole. The 2010s could be »

At around half-past four this Saturday a beloved tradition that was banned 29 years ago made a resurgence for the second time in the last three years: bladderball made a comeback. But unlike the hour-long game that brought traffic to a halt in fall 2009, the game lasted an underwhelming 11 minutes. Bladderball, for the »