During an appearance on “The Late Show with David Letterman” on Monday night, Martha Stewart compared her experience of five months in prison to being at Yale.
“I lived through it with flying colors, if you can live through Yale with flying colors,” Stewart told Letterman. “In fact, I probably would have been Phi Beta Kappa at Yale if I had treated it the way I treated [prison].”
While those in the audience accepted this off-hand remark with a wave of laughter, many students at Yale have found her words to be puzzling.
“Martha Stewart went to Yale?” Charles Gariepy ’09 asked the next day while eating dinner in Commons Dining Hall.
No, Stewart did not attend Yale. Stewart, born Martha Kostyra, attended Barnard College, during which time she was named one of the “Best Dressed College School Girls” by Glamour Magazine in 1961. It was also during this time that she met her ex-husband, Andrew Stewart LAW ’62. Aside from a speech at the Law School on April 10, 1996, it appears that this is Stewart’s only connection to the University.
The prison analogy was a point of contention for those students who watched.
“I don’t get it,” Mark Wilson ’09 said. “How can you go through prison with flying colors?”
Rachel Hansen ’09 was also confused by Stewart’s comment.
“How does one excel in prison? Like, what do you have to do? Clean your cell nicely?” she asked.