Job Well Done

January 30, 2015 3:59 am Leave a Comment

When I was applying to college, I remember reading the following quote “Studying, Socializing and Sleep: Most students choose the first two.” While I understand that almost all undergraduates struggle with time management, I’ve found that some students have a different equation to consider. Some must decide between four options. They have to consider student work before choosing between the other three.

I face that choice on a day-to-daily basis. When I arrived on campus freshman year, I immediately began looking for a job. I knew I needed one. I was lucky enough to have received generous financial aid from Yale, and part of that package was on-campus work. I was naive — I thought I would find a job right away, that the money would go straight into my pocket and that all my financial problems would evaporate.

And so, during my first semester at Yale, I worked two jobs. One in Sterling Memorial Library, stacking books at 9 a.m. three times a week, and the second in the Admissions Office. As I clocked up over 15 hours a week at work, I was pleased with the paycheck, but not as pleased with my schedule. I was exhausted, frustrated and behind on school work. I had stopped working at the library by December.

* * *

As I spoke to Grace Chiang ’15 in Bass Cafe, I immediately began to relate to her day-to-day Yale experience. Like me, she is an international student who, at one point, worked 20 hours a week. As she described her busy schedule, I thought I fully understood her circumstances.

Then, she told me a story that I didn’t want to believe. Chiang began her junior year as an economics and history double major. However, this May, she will only graduate with a degree in economics. Why? One professor thought she was working too many hours.

In one of her recent history seminars, the professor distributed homework assignments on Monday to be submitted on Wednesday — the three days Chiang needed to work. When she approached the professor, asking if she could receive the assignments earlier in the week, her professor dismissed her need to work three jobs. The professor asked if Chiang was mentally stable and told her she should consider withdrawing from Yale in order to “reevaluate her priorities.”

“Are you cracked? That’s what she said to me,” Chiang remembered. The professor then threatened to report her to her residential college dean.

And this was not the only time someone asked Chiang if she wanted to withdraw for financial reasons. When Chiang asked her dean for advice about paying a required fee, the dean presented her with withdrawal forms instead of the support she needed.

Chiang is not alone.

Sara Miller ’16, a former photography editor for the News, said having five jobs has undoubtedly affected her academic experience. She believes that students from low-income backgrounds may not have the same preparation that some of their peers have, meaning they sometimes can benefit from more hours of studying or tutoring. She told me that she was expecting to be behind when she came to Yale, but that she could not have anticipated how behind she would actually be.

Michaela Johnson ’17 and I became friends when we realized that our paths to Yale were very similar — we had both experienced the consequences of being “low-income.” We both initially struggled to find a path at Yale that followed our academic ambitions, as well as our desire to pursue time-intensive extracurricular activities. The main problem, though, was remaining financially stable.

Johnson said her most difficult academic experiences occur at the beginning of the semester, when some professors fail to recognize that she cannot spend hundreds of dollars on course packets and textbooks. “I don’t have my textbooks for the semester yet,” she told me three weeks into the term. “It’s awkward to explain to a professor why you don’t have the book yet.”

While Johnson has not been asked to withdraw from Yale, she recounted a number of times when professors and advisors have asked why she works so many hours. The answer she gives every time: “I have to.”

* * *

A new Yale College Council task force on financial aid addresses the problems of Chiang, Johnson and many other students. It recently published a report that revealed one scary statistic: 56 percent of survey participants claimed working long hours “adversely affected” their college experience.

“Adversely” is a strong word and not necessarily how I would describe my own experience. Right now, I work for a minimum of eight hours a week, sometimes a lot more, at a job for which I’m grateful. Not everyone is as lucky, and going to work can sometimes be a chore. According to the YCC report, students in this financial bracket could take one or two more classes per semester if they didn’t spend 12 hours a week fulfilling their student effort expectation.

Johnson didn’t say she would take another class. She said she would catch up on sleep.

When I asked YCC President Michael Herbert ’16 about the report, he posed an interesting question, “To what extent do we want students from poorer economic backgrounds to have [their time] constrained by work obligations?”

Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway said he does recognize the limitations put on students who have to work but added that the ultimate decisions about budget are both beyond his control and also encompass many larger questions. Holloway said using student employees in different “important jobs” on campus — for example, in laboratories and libraries — helps contribute to running the University efficiently. Students are “indispensable” in ensuring that the university stays running, he said.

However, several students told me that work has sometimes kept them from the opportunities that led them to Yale. While they might be “indispensable” to Holloway and the University, some feel that they are not able to contribute to campus culture in a meaningful way.

For example, students said that working so many hours prevented them from obtaining leadership roles they otherwise would wanted. In some cases, they said they felt cheated by a system favoring those who don’t have to balance extracurriculars with both school and employment. Some students believe that their peers with prominent positions on campus have a financial privilege that is not representative of the student body. This is because these positions demand a very sizable time commitment.

For instance, current president of the Yale International Relations Association Alessandra Powell ’16 does not currently have a job. She said holding her position while also working would be possible, “but not a great experience.”

Herbert does not hold a student job either. He devotes, on average, 16 to 20 hours a week to his YCC presidency. While he noted that he is a member of NROTC, which pays a generous monthly stipend and requires a similar work commitment, he said “there is no way I [also] would be able to add an on campus job.”

Last year, Miller ran for YCC president. In an opinion article she published in the YDN, she wrote that she would have to take out a loan if elected, in order to satisfy the $3,350 self-help portion of her financial aid package. Chiang said that many of her friends on financial aid have never been able to hold a leadership position in an on-campus organization.

“Yale promises an equal opportunity when you get here, and that simply isn’t the case,” she told me recently.

Over the course of the coming semester, Herbert and the rest of the YCC Task Force will continue working with University administrators. Herbert told me that the discussions have been “terrific” so far, and that he hopes to share good news with students before the end of the year.

* * *

Still, even though many working students are frustrated with the system in place, not everyone has had a negative experience with student employment. In fact, some students have gained important experience from their jobs, including professional connections and skills. Some jobs allow for academic research. Some students can mentor others in their field.

My experience working in an office with adults is a nice change of pace in a student-centric day. It’s a real job in a real office, and my performance can have real consequences for the staff who work there full time. Yes, the job can sometimes involve menial work or manual labor, but then, my post-graduation job probably won’t be that glamorous either. As a freshman, I was able to meet upperclassmen, make some really good friends and, by the end of the year, I had a new, unexpected confidence.

Justin Schuster ’15 spoke with similar enthusiasm when telling me about his three jobs on campus. He is an Arabic tutor, he writes up events for the Macmillan Center and he may have served you that last coffee as a barista at Bass Café. Due to the variety of these tasks, he said he has no problems managing the workload. And, for students who think managing employment and student leadership impossible, he serves as a counter-example. Last year, he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Politic and has also managed a conference for YIRA.

Some students even find jobs that align with their professional interests. To Billy Cavell ’17, who wishes to pursue a career in acting, working as an usher at the Yale Repertory Theater also allows him to meet students in the Yale School of Drama who can offer advice. While he sometimes spends 19 hours a week giving out programs, he does not think it has hindered his college experience in any way.

Enjoying a student job can help some of the problems to dissipate. When midterms come around and tensions rise, I am confident that Cavell and Schuster will remain satisfied with employment. It’s not everyone’s story, but it is one that we can aspire to.

* * *

When Johnson and I inevitably get dinner one day next week, we will both complain that the days are too short. Twenty-four hours aren’t enough. Adding a campus job into the “Studying, Socializing and Sleep” equation is no easy task, and we may be the busiest people we each know. However, I doubt either of us would be comfortable with letting one view of campus culture stop us from succeeding. Each of the students I spoke with conveyed their determination and conviction to ensure that the Yale education they were promised was the Yale education they are going to receive.

“People just don’t talk about this problem,” Chiang said. I think it may be time.

Forestry, Film and Food: Ian Cheney

January 16, 2015 1:48 am Leave a Comment

Q: Why did you choose to make a film about Chinese food?

A: Just after grad school my best friend and I were on our way to Iowa to shoot “King Corn” [his first film]. We stopped at a Chinese restaurant in a small town — middle of nowhere America — in the middle of the night and ordered General Tso’s chicken. It made us wonder, who is General Tso, and why does he have chicken everywhere in America? That’s something we wanted to chase. The idea simmered on the back burner for a few years, and then we teamed up with Jennifer 8. Lee, a nonfiction writer, who has a chapter in her latest book about General Tso.

Q: What’s your favorite thing about making film?

A: Probably my favorite thing about documentary filmmaking is meeting remarkable, smart people in interesting places. Every film is an adventure in its own right. On a film like The Search for General Tso, we wandered into Chinese restaurants all across America and were welcomed into people’s back kitchens to hear their stories about how they came to America, or how they got into the restaurant industry. Even though putting a camera in front of someone’s face changes the interaction, the filmmaking process challenges people to value their own stories. You knock on someone’s door saying, “I want to share your story with the world,” and they take a certain pride in their own life and adventures.

Q: Right, people tend to act differently when they know they’re being filmed. How do you deal with that difficulty?

A: The question is, do you acknowledge that, or keep the camera around long enough that people forget that it’s there? Documentary filmmakers take lots of different approaches to the “truth” question. In some cases it has made sense for me to be in films, to be the narrator, but in others, fortunately, I was not present. I was in the Viola Question at Yale, which was a lot of fun, and prepared me for acting. One of the guys in the group, Jeff Miller, was the editor of “King Corn.”

Q: What’s the most challenging thing about making film?

A: Fundraising is always a challenge, but that’s a boring answer. With this film one of the challenges was balancing the whimsical premise of the film with the stories of immigration, assimilation and repression that were very much a part of the Chinese-American experiences. We heard stories relating to the 1882 Assimilation Act, countless episodes of discrimination that Chinese-Americans have faced in coming to America.

Q: What was your first experience with filmmaking?

A: I did a lot of photography at Yale. I got one of those art grants from the residential colleges that allowed me to buy rolls of film, and I would ride around New Haven at night on my bicycle and take pictures of the stars. It wasn’t until after I graduated forestry school that I starting making film.

Q: Do you have a mission as a filmmaker?

A: I’d be reluctant to say that I have one core agenda that permeates all of our projects. I do try to make films that are entertaining enough that people will want to watch them, educational enough that people gain something from them and beautiful enough that people enjoy sitting in the theater. But the goals change with every film, and the story you want to tell shifts with every film. Each film is a three-year adventure into entirely new territory, and that certainly presents a lot of challenges because there’s a steep learning curve. I always have to learn new material and call upon knowledge from college classes I never thought I would need. But also, each adventure is incredibly rewarding because you meet people who become your lifelong friends or collaborators. We wanted to make “King Corn” because we wanted to tell the story of America’s broken food system; that’s an agenda. But in making that film, our sense of how to tell that story changed dramatically. I didn’t know anything about Chinese-American history when I started making General Tso, then in the process of making and researching, it became clear that we had an opportunity and a responsibility to tell a larger story than one just about chicken.

Q: What topics are most interesting to you?

A: I’ve spent much of the last decade working on films and projects related to food and agriculture, and their effect on their environment. Food is inherently a very interdisciplinary subject — it can get you into politics, chemistry, history, etc. I’ve also had a lifelong interest in the planetary sciences. I’m halfway through a journalism fellowship at MIT, so I’m spending the year auditing classes there and at Harvard, and talking to scientists about their work. I think that’s really crucial for understanding contemporary global issues like climate change.

Q: Do you have any advice for people who want to make film?

A: I did not specifically train in college and graduate school to be a filmmaker, but I do find that in documentary film I call upon all sorts of things I learned throughout college. Documentary filmmaking is a big umbrella, and if you’re prepared to put some long hours into grant writing and fundraising and being broke for a while it’s a really rewarding way to explore your interests. In many ways, it means inventing a job for yourself. It’s a path we’ve had to clear.

Q: Do you consider yourself to be an artist? An activist? A journalist?

A: I would say documentary film is a combination of activism, art and journalism. I got into journalism because of my interest in the topics I wanted to explore, and I had a desire to make some form of art. The combination of art, activism, advocacy, storytelling and journalism makes documentary filmmaking a good job for me.

Q: Thoughts on Yale?

A: I think that Yale was supportive of my interdisciplinary interests. I majored in EP&E and was able to take a lot of classes at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. I didn’t feel like there was a prescribed program that was perfect for me, but Yale gave me the space to invent it for myself. That’s been a really helpful foundation moving forwards with my career. I continue to collaborate with many of the people I met in college — one of my old roommates does the sound tracks for all of our films. I know this is corny, but the people I got to meet were really what college was about.

Q: Was there another career you thought you’d pursue before filmmaking?

A: [Laughing] You’d imagine that I was thinking about having some sort of job, but for the life of me I can’t remember what I wanted! I just thought I would figure it out and that I would make it one way or another. I’m still paying off my college loans, but I do think I’ve figured out how to balance my outlandish interests by making films that get funded and get produced.

Q: So, do you feel like you’ve “made it” as a filmmaker?

A: Whenever a documentary filmmaker tells you that they’ve made it, you should be skeptical. I do feel like I’ve been really lucky in being able to make a number of the films that I’ve dreamed up. None of the films have brought huge financial reward, but they have brought opportunities for me as a person, and I consider that success. But that’s definitely a struggle and a process, and I’m still trying to make that work.

The Road to Rhodes

December 5, 2014 4:00 am Leave a Comment

What does it take to be a Rhodes Scholar?

I asked this of some Yalies selected for this year’s fellowship — Jane Darby Menton ’14, Matt Townsend ’14, Jordan Konell ’14 and Gabriel Zucker ’12.

My curiosity may have stemmed from my confusion regarding college admission decisions. I’ve never understood the cloak-and-dagger proceedings of highly prestigious institutions, whose prestige surely comes in part from the competitive nature of their selection processes.

6.3 percent of applicants to Yale are accepted, but the Rhodes Scholarship only took 32 out of 877 applicants this year — a 3.6 percent admission rate. This is especially notable given that most applicants are highly successful college students.

In addition to the four Rhodes winners aforementioned, there were six Marshall Scholars selected from Yale this year: Rahul Singh ’15, Miranda Rizzolo ’15, Sarah Norvell ’15, Benjamin Daus-Haberle ’12, Ned Downie ’14 and Katherine McDaniel ’14. Unlike recipients of the Rhodes Scholarship, winners of the Marshall Scholarship can choose from among all universities in the United Kingdom.

This year there were 979 applicants to the Marshall Scholarship, and 34 were accepted — an almost identical admissions statistic.

When I asked what it really takes to be a Rhodes Scholar, two of the Yale winners from this year responded:

“Passion,” said Jordan Konell.

“Vision,” said Matt Townsend.

Confession: I usually don’t believe it when people say things like this. But these two seniors really, really convinced me that they meant — and, more importantly, understood — what they were saying.

“I thought I bombed my first interview,” Konell said. “I called my mom and told her to come early. I left and I felt like I hadn’t done my best, but I also felt like everything I said, I meant from my heart … I don’t think the Rhodes Foundation is just looking for impressive individuals. I think they’re looking for people who want to change the world.”

Konell talked extensively about his field of study: race relations in civic policy. Although I kept trying to steer the conversation away from urban Philadelphia (his hometown, of which he hopes, one day, to be mayor), he tied everything back to race.

“What’s your favorite book?” I ask.

“‘Song of Solomon’ by Toni Morrison,” he says.

Besides being a passionate advocate for racial equality, Konell was a Community Health Educators CoCo (Co-Coordinator) and seems to be a particularly dedicated Pierson FroCo this year — he refers to his freshmen as his children. Konell tells me he grew up in a working-class area in Philadelphia with a single mom. Because of that, he says, his family is very close-knit. (The night he found out about winning the fellowship, he ate a Philly cheesesteak and hung out with his mom.)

He talked about his background: an ethnically diverse neighborhood that made him aware of his privilege as a white male, which has had a great influence on his field of study now.

Townsend grew up in Chappaqua, New York. He plays basketball, which he describes as the activity he’s most devoted to — he was recruited for athletics his junior year of high school, and basketball is the main reason he came to Yale. He leads the varsity team here, and has maintained a perfect academic record across the sciences, economics and Latin. Maybe most importantly, he works for Student Rented Fridges. He proudly says that, yes, if anyone I knew had ordered a fridge for delivery, he was the one who made that happen.

Said Townsend: “I don’t think it’s [so] important what change you want to make in the world, because there are so many ways to make a big difference. I think what’s important is having a clear vision of what exactly you want to do.”

In the long term, Townsend’s vision is to go into academic medicine. He wants to explore socio-cultural determinants of health, particularly the causes of obesity. And, of course, he wants to continue playing basketball; he’s on the Yale varsity team now and has been shooting hoops since he was eight. He might even play at Oxford, though he tells me that someone compared the Oxford team to “like, third-and-a-half division.”

The professors who recommended Townsend and Konell have their own explanations for the students’ success.

Professor Crystal Feimster, who has known Konell since he was in a freshman seminar she taught, says, “Jordan was a real firecracker as a freshman. And such a joy to teach — his enthusiasm was contagious.”

“I think Jordan is interesting,” says his advisor Cynthia Horan, who wrote him a letter of recommendation for the Rhodes and has also taught two of his classes. “That’s not to say other students aren’t interesting.” But she still highlights Konell’s unique qualities: “Jordan has a good sense of himself … He can make a good case without getting nervous, because he actually believes what he’s saying. There’s a lot of networking at Yale, but Jordan doesn’t do that in the same way. He does what he cares about.”

Townsend is the first student professor Peter Aronson has ever recommended for a Rhodes scholarship. Townsend took a class and did rounds in the hospital with him, and the professor is a great admirer of Yale athletics. Despite Aronson’s inexperience recommending students for the fellowship, he says, “It did strike me that Matt would be a good candidate because of his well-rounded array of activities and his excellence in all spheres … I was particularly impressed by his well-defined interest — he’s already done work in the area of obesity. He wanted to continue work he’d already started, not have the Rhodes be an honor for its own sake.”

He too goes on to qualify his praise with recognition of other students. He cites the many impressive students he has, and says he wonders whether too much attention is given to those students who win prestigious awards.

Despite the glowing recommendations from their professors, Konell and Townsend remain humble.

What it really comes down to, they both say in conclusion, is luck.

It’s doubtful that this is the only factor. For the past decade, Yale students have won between two and eight Rhodes scholarships per year on average. Only 32 students are selected from the entire country; a disproportionate number of Yalies snag the prize.

A Yale education certainly fosters success: There is an average endowment of $1,700,000 per student, 75 percent of classes have 20 students or fewer and Yale coordinates hundreds of summer internship programs.

Elliot Gerson LAW ’79, who is in charge of appointing members of the scholarship competition’s committees, cannot pinpoint the reason why Yale has so many winners as opposed to other universities — other than the obvious fact that as a selective institution, Yale admits individuals who are high-achieving and ambitious.

Instead, Gerson lays emphasis on the individual above the institution. “Most years, even after 111 years, we have one or more winners from institutions that have never before had a winner. We give no weight on the scale to such applicants, but we promote them specially to help assure that remarkable students apply from everywhere and anywhere.”

Gerson is quite fixed on the idea that the Rhodes Foundation selects individuals with particular qualities that cannot be gleaned from studying at elite schools.

Gerson says it’s not Yale — so does this bring us back to luck? He does acknowledge that the majority of finalists, even candidates, are highly qualified and deserving. Gerson comments that finalists and other applicants who didn’t win the scholarship go on to be successful people who greatly impact the world and their fields of study. This is in keeping with Konell and Townsend’s observations that they felt all of the students in their applicant pools were incredibly qualified and that they met some of the most interesting people they knew during the application process.

Horan acknowledges the influence of luck, saying, “The Rhodes process really seems to depend on the interaction you have with the committee that interviews you. I definitely think at the very end of this long and difficult process, that committee is the one that decides. And that’s pretty unpredictable.”

Still, Gerson isn’t too keen on considering luck as a major factor. He admits that the selection process is rigorous, but that’s for a good reason: The process, he thinks, is ultimately fair. Still, he says, it would be naïve to say luck is not, at least, a small factor.

Townsend thinks a big part is his likability. And he is likable. (“My favorite book is ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ I know, it’s really girly, but I identify with Mr. Darcy. Not because I want to be, like, the main love interest with all the ladies, but because I’m quiet, and some people think I’m aloof.”) But he’s also a superstar varsity basketball player, premed student and volunteer — a host of qualifications he’s too modest to list and, at this point, are probably available on the Internet. Point is, it’s not luck. It’s not Yale. It’s some sort of golden ratio.

What does Ferguson mean?

3:49 am Leave a Comment

There was silence.

Dignified, mournful, resolved silence. Yale community members, from freshmen to faculty, stood up from their seats in seminars, lectures and meals across campus at 12:01 p.m. on Monday. They walked out in tens, and then hundreds, onto Cross Campus. The attendees, who gathered before Sterling Memorial Library, were from many demographic groups.

There was no yelling, there were no screams. A powerful resonance rang in the air, punctuated only by exclamations of hope.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom … we have nothing to lose but our chains,” said Alexandra Barlow ’17 to a crowd of roughly 300.

Barlowe quoted Assata Shakur, a freedom fighter in the 60s and 70s. After the rally on Cross Campus, students marched to City Hall to demand justice.

The Black Student Alliance at Yale with support from members of the Afro-American Cultural House organized the event — Hands Up Walk Out — in response to a recent grand jury decision that shook the black community at Yale and across the world.

THE DECISION

On Aug. 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old teenager, was shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was black. Wilson was white.

On Aug. 20, 12 grand jurors assembled to adjudicate whether to indict Wilson for a crime. In the American judicial system, a grand jury has the power to indict defenders by evaluating the “probable cause” behind a crime. To indict Wilson, nine of the 12 jurors would have had to agree that enough evidence existed to bring him to trial. They did not.

On Nov. 24, it was announced that the grand jury elected not to indict Wilson on any charges.

THE FURY THAT FOLLOWED

“It was one of those situations where you will always remember where you were when you heard the news,” said Dara Huggins ’17, a black psychology major concentrating on law and social justice.

Huggins said that she had been following the case since day one, like many in the black community. That night, she was at the movies watching “The Hunger Games.”

“I knew it would be coming out at 9 p.m., so as soon as I came out of the film, I was constantly refreshing the feed,” she said.

When she saw the verdict, Huggins stopped in her tracks, in the middle of the street. Her heart dropped.

Travis Reginal ’16 was having dinner with his girlfriend’s family when the announcement came on the television. The complex case became one of the first discussions he had with her family.

Following the Ferguson decision, many Yale students came together in their concern for the grand jury’s verdict. A majority of students interviewed said that they were upset but not surprised.

David Rico ’16, who goes by Campfire David and who is of Native American descent, noted that he has experienced many negative interactions with the police, possibly due to his ethnicity.

“I do not know the African-American experience, or what it is like to be an African-American in this country, I just know how it feels to be discriminated against from the police,” he said.

Rico gave the example of the disrespect he was shown when policemen approached him while he stood outside, phoning his parents. The police did not believe he was a Yale student.

Yale student groups have taken to social media to raise awareness about the issue. On Wednesday, the Yale College Black Men’s Union released “To My Unborn Son,” showcasing black-and-white photos of members holding whiteboard signs with messages to their future sons.

“To my unborn son, the world is not yet ready for you, so I will hold you close and make it ready to love you,” reads one. Another simply says, “To my unborn son, I love you.”

The Afro-American Cultural Center has also played a crucial role in shaping the campus response, providing an open space for grieving and reflection.

“All it takes when something like this happens is an email to someone as opposed to reaching out and having to start a relationship. You have hung out with them, had study breaks and also had conversations about police brutality before it happens,” said Micah Jones ’16, president of the Black Student Alliance at Yale.

“I am impressed with Yale’s response … It sends a good positive message about unity,” said President of the Greater New Haven Branch of the NAACP Dori Dumas.

Dumas said that she was impressed with Yalies’ eagerness to work with the New Haven community to protest and emphasized that she did not think that Yale voices would drown out the experience of black New Haven residents.

“[I like] the idea that people are really wanting to engage these really complicated issues and are trying to do it in a public forum — that’s what a university should be about,” said Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway.

Still, Yale students are not of one mind. Some aren’t sure that the grand jury’s decision was unreasonable, or that the shooting was necessarily a matter of race.

Adelaide Goodyear ’17, a white student, agreed that racism plagues relations between the police and the black community, but said that the decision “is not about getting away with murder — it’s that it’s hard to find evidence in cases like this.”

Goodyear explained that the grand jury’s verdict was not an assessment of guilt, but an evaluation of the available evidence. She added that although Michael Brown’s death was a clear case of police misconduct, murder charges require large amounts of evidence to go to trial.

Christopher Taylor ’18, who is also white, agreed with Goodyear, saying, “This is definitely a problem with legal procedure.” He noted that police brutality against blacks is a large problem but that police officers are rarely indicted by grand juries.

Other students went further, noting that Brown’s death may not have been motivated by race.

“I think that people overreach and think that it’s an act of ‘the system yet again’ … A lot of people, especially at Yale, don’t even consider that there might not have been probable cause,” said a right-leaning independent student who wished to remain anonymous. “They think they know more than they do.”

Beckett Lee ’18, who is white and identifies as conservative, called for students to remember Wilson’s humanity. He added that police officers are killed on duty more than people realize and that Wilson could have been in survival mode.

“It is almost impossible for a human being to weigh all of the potential ramifications of what they are going to do,” he said of the shooting.

Still, students holding views sympathetic to Wilson appear to be in the minority.

Goodyear suggested that policemen wear cameras to provide evidence in ambiguous cases. Goodyear’s suggestion echoes that of Brown’s family.

However, the Eric Garner decision — in which a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer who, in a videotaped encounter, killed a black man in a chokehold — on Wednesday prompted many students to question why no action was taken, even with what they described as clear evidence.

Yale students will continue to question the Brown and Garner decisions. Three separate events are scheduled for today — a die-in at the law school, an artistic demonstration on Beinecke Plaza and a #ThisEndsToday event on the New Haven Green.

“My brother is turning 20 next month, which means that he is solidifying his presence in a demographic of young black men between the ages of 19-25 in the United States who are disproportionately targeted by police brutality,” Karleh Wilson ’16 explained. “I worry about [my brother’s] safety under the hands of the law. My brother should feel safe among the presence of policemen, but he does not, and this is the same for all men of color his age in America.”

Dos and Don'ts of Getting Noticed on College Gameday

November 21, 2014 1:42 am Leave a Comment

Let’s face it. Yale is not known for sports. We are not part of the PAC 12 or the Big 10. (I know what those things are.) Our football stadium does hold a respectable 64,000 people, but we don’t sell out every game like LSU or Alabama, each with stadiums seating over 100,000. The movies made about Yale don’t feature football heroes like Rudy, but instead students like Rory Gilmore and her aspirations for journalism.

But the one thing we do have is a centuries-old rivalry which surely won’t disappoint national audiences when we’re featured on ESPN’s College GameDay. So, here is perhaps your one and only chance to get on the big screen. Here is WEEKEND’s guide to what will and what won’t get you noticed this GameDay.

Don’t Flash … Your GPA on a Sign

I know no Yalie would do this, but some poor Harvard souls think flashing their 3.6-or-higher GPAs will get them national attention. They are sadly mistaken in thinking that’ll get them on the air. Unfortunately, their inflated egos can’t handle taking that advice, and the cameras may just catch them for a special segment of “Section Assholes Gone Wild.” Just try to steer clear and make your own vibrant sign of support for the Bulldogs sans personal achievements.

Harvard Sux Apparel

Always wear your FCC “Huck Farvard” shirt. If anyone questions your reading or spelling capabilities, just tell them you attend that lovely community college in Cambridge where everyone relies on spell check. Didn’t buy these shirts before they sold out? The favorite “’Harvard sucks.’ — Gandhi” is always a safe bet.

Yale Spirited Costumes

Packed away all of your Halloween gear? Well, it might be time to unshelve those boxes again, especially if you have any Yale-related pieces. Go all out and be a bulldog — the comfy faux fur might just keep you warm in the frozen hell that is Harvard. Throw the cameramen for a whirl and dress up as Eli Whitney (offensive) or Salovey (inoffensive).

Hissing is a No-No

Sorry YPUers. Substitute your snake-like hisses for some good old-fashioned jeering and “Harvard Sucks” signs this Saturday. Afterwards we can have a spirited debate about what parts of Harvard make it the worst university in the country, complete with gavel of course.

Snapping Has to Go

It pains me to say it, but I don’t think ESPN understands the meaning of snapping in our culture. Hold your soulful finger-play for some spoken word performances. Instead, bring some vuvuzelas to the field and shout your sonnets of devotion for the Yale Defense. May I suggest “Harvard, shall I compare thee to a summer’s wildfire?” or “I took the path of Yale University, and that has made all the difference.”

Properly Learn the Bulldog Fight Song

Remember those tunes we heard once on acceptance day? Well, they are more than just songs meant for waving a napkin. Get someone from the Whiffenpoofs or the Yale Glee Club to teach you how to hold a tune or just get an a cappella friend to stand next to you (we all have at least one) and lip sync with a single tear rolling down your cheek. The cameras won’t be able to stay away.

Storm the Field, Kiss and Tell

We know it will be cold. Last year, almost everyone left after halftime, but make it your priority to storm the field with the hopes of getting your five seconds of fame. When the Bulldogs inevitably win, you need to be there and you need to be the one to lead the charge. After the final buzzer when the Bulldogs crush Harvard, hop that fence and go give the Bulldog quarterback that sloppy, frozen-lipped kiss.

From the Field, Through the Years

1:32 am Leave a Comment

In 1916, Yale head coach T.A.D. Jones gathered his team in the locker room before the game and said, “Gentlemen, you are now going to play football against Harvard. Never again in your whole life will you do anything so important.”

He wasn’t far off.

Yale and Harvard first met on the gridiron in November of 1875 at Hamilton Park in New Haven. A ticket was 75 cents and 2,500 fans showed up. Harvard won. Since that afternoon, The Game has inspired fanfare and history, and Yale-Harvard has become the quintessential college rivalry.

In reaction to the popularity of The Game, in 1903 Harvard built a colossal U-shaped stadium out of reinforced concrete — a novel engineering idea for the time — on the far side of the Charles River, across from the campus. The seating capacity 30,323. In 1914, Yale erected an even larger stadium. Dug deep into the West Haven soil, this structure was the first of its kind: a full, oval-shaped, wrap-around bowl. Since its completion, the Yale Bowl, as they decided to call it, has served as the prototype for modern football stadiums. Its seating capacity: 61,446. The two stadiums marked the permanence and grandeur of the rivalry. Sprawling across their respective landscapes, the structures symbolized each university’s enthusiasm and respect for the game.

Since that November day at Hamilton Park in 1875, The Game has generated an unparalleled history. Presidents, politicians, movie stars, singers, people from all over the world have attended The Game. It is reported that even the governor of Hawaii attended the first Yale-Harvard game played in the Bowl, in 1914. In 1920, 80,000 fans, the largest crowd ever assembled at The Game, made the trip out to the Bowl to witness Harvard goose-egg Yale 9-0. (The Bowl’s capacity used to be higher.) In 1930, The Game became the first U.S. football match broadcast in England. In the 1940s, columnist Red Smith affirmed the popularity of the Yale-Harvard football contest when he dropped “Harvard-Yale,” and capitalized “The Game,” elevating the matchup from normal sporting contest and defining it as the collegiate athletic event par excellence.

Both teams have produced casts of characters of equal historical importance. Walter Camp, “the Father of American Football,” a player and a coach for Yale in the 1870s, ’80s and ’90s, created the modern scoring system, the positioning of players on the field, the system of downs, the line of scrimmage and the snap back from the center. The list goes on, from Tommy Lee Jones, to Stone Phillips, to Ted Kennedy, to Larry Kelly and Clint Frank, to John Hersey, to Archibald MacLeash and Calvin Hill. Players have gone on to become politicians, pioneers in business, Pulitzer Prize winners, poets, actors, television personalities and NFL stars. One can’t help wondering which of the current players will fulfill this legacy.

The cast of characters and the rivalry’s storied history distinguishes The Game. Quarterback Morgan Roberts ’16, who is from North Carolina and played one year for Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) powerhouse Clemson University, said, “In the South, the only Ivy League game people really talk about or think about is The Game. It’s the only game people ever really put any thought into because ESPN puts some broadcasting on it. They give it some national coverage because of the history and legacy of it […] It’s America’s amateur pastime.” Former Yale linebacker Kerr Taubler ’14 added, “It’s our bowl game.” Yale-Harvard is at the forefront of America’s old football rivalries. That November day in 1875 marked the birth of the great Ivy League rivalry, the first of a line of many collegiate rivalries like Michigan–Ohio State, Texas-Oklahoma and Army-Navy.

But despite the Bulldogs’ upper hand in the overall record, 65-57-8, in recent years the Crimson has owned The Game, however one may measure it. Harvard has won 12 out of the last 13 meetings, including the last seven in a row. The Crimson have out-scored the Elis 202-75 in that seven-year span. Last November, the Yale faithful watched as the 8-1 Crimson steamrolled the injury-stricken Bulldogs 34-7.

This year, though, things are looking different.

* * *

The evidence is everywhere. Last year, Yale went into The Game with five wins and four losses. After their victory against Princeton last Saturday the Bulldogs are 8-1 and in contention, with Harvard and Dartmouth, for a share of the Ivy League title — a distinction the team hasn’t enjoyed since 2006. And the improved record comes as no surprise. The Yale offense leads the league in just about every category: passing, rushing, total yards, first downs, conversions and total points.

Asked about the differences between this year’s offense and last year’s, Roberts responded, “Certainly more confident. Once we’ve put some good numbers and score some points and get some guys involved, you get to the point where you become really confident.”

Anchored by a seasoned line that Roberts says “is just unreal,” this year’s offense features a host of Ivy League standouts. Senior Tyler Varga ’15, a two time All-Ivy running back, has had a record-breaking season, leading the Ivy League in rushing yards and touchdowns. His numbers double those of the runner-up in the category.

As for the aerial assault, the Elis feature dangerous weapons in receivers Deon Randall ’15, the team’s captain, and senior Grant Wallace ’15. In his first year as quarterback for the Bulldogs, Roberts is having an exceptional season, leading the league in passing yards, touchdowns, completion percentage and passing efficiency.

Defensively, the Bulldogs have had similar successes. Although the core of the defensive unit is young, starting mostly sophomores and a few freshmen, a number of key players have returned, three of whom — Cole Champion ’16, Foyesade Oluokun ’17 and William Vaughn ’15 — earned All-Ivy honors last year. As sophomore linebacker Darius Manora ’17 — who took an interception into the endzone against Brown — asserts, “We obviously don’t have as much experience as a lot of the teams we’ve been going against […] but we’ve been growing steadily every game. We’ve been getting better and better. Just recently we had our best defensive game against Princeton.” He went on, “We’re very strong up front […] We have guys who like to come up and hit. That’s what we preach, that’s what we strive for in our defense. We want hitters.”

This new success has much to do with to a new approach to training the Bulldogs have adopted. A sign hangs above the entrance to the tunnel that runs under Derby Avenue, connecting the Smilow Field Center and the football practice field. It reads, “One Play Warrior.” Every day before practice, players walk beneath the sign. Its message: Focus, stay in the moment, one play at a time. The team has embraced these ideals since last April when mental conditioning coach Brian Cain began to talk to the team.

Asked about the effectiveness of the mental training, sophomore fullback/tight end Jackson Stallings ’17 noted, “The mental approach is 90 percent of athletics […] Your ability to control the game mentally allows you to do more physically […] It has really changed the culture of Yale football from someone who looks to the last game of the year and says, ‘All right, we gotta beat Harvard like everybody says,’ and instead focuses on a small picture and executes his job each play.”

Manora adds, “[Cain] preached to us to focus on the process rather than the outcome. And our defense tries to do the same thing. So each play we try to play as hard as we can, rather than get caught up in if we gave up a big play or made a big play ourselves. And I think that is the key to us winning games. We don’t get caught up […] We just keep playin’.”

The team adheres to this system of beliefs. And they’ve proven their devotion again and again throughout the season. In the first game, Lehigh scored three unanswered touchdowns in the first quarter. Unfazed, the Bulldogs got to work, creeping back, and then winning the game 54-43. A week later they pulled off an even more stunning feat, upsetting Army 49-43. Since those two games, this faith in the process and focus on the moment have served the Bulldogs well in countless situations throughout the season. One can only wonder how it will help against Harvard tomorrow.

* * *

During halftime of the Princeton game last Saturday, Calvin Hill ’69, likely the most accomplished living Yale football player, stepped out from under the archway at the 50-yard line. Hill had returned to the Bowl as part of the game’s “Legends of the Bowl” ceremony.

When asked how it felt to be back, he smiled and said, “It’s wonderful.” Then he motioned to the field, “I haven’t seen Bruce Weinstein in 40 years.”

Really? That’s it? Here he was: Calvin Hill, perhaps the greatest player in 142 years of Yale football. A guy who played in the NFL for 12 years, four-time all-pro, two-time Ivy-League champion, record-breaking track star, an athlete so good legendary Yale football coach Carm Cozza said he could have played all 22 positions on the field — and this struck him the most upon returning to Yale.

He wasn’t aglow with memories of past glory, his victory over Harvard in 1967, or the legendary tie game in 1968. He didn’t seem awestruck at the grandeur of the Bowl, or the exuberant crowd, or the medal he was awarded as an honorary “Legend of the Bowl” to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the stadium. Instead, Hill was happiest to see Bruce Weinstein, his pal and former teammate, whom he hadn’t seen in ages.

Later that evening a couple more recent alumni affirmed Hill’s statement. When asked what he missed most about Yale football, Kyle White ’14, former Yale defensive tackle, said, “It’s all about the brotherhood. There’s a really special bond with Yale football. It’s really quite unique.”

Former Bulldog left tackle Wes Gavin ’14 said: “The bottom line is that Yale football is a brotherhood. It takes a lot to become a part of it. It has a long history behind it. And it’s something really special.”

Yale football is unique. And the Yale-Harvard game is special. In terms of fanfare, publicity, and hype, Yale-Harvard doesn’t hold a candle to Florida-Florida State, Auburn-Alabama, or USC-UCLA. The Yale Bowl has no jumbotron, there will be no 300-person marching band performing at halftime, Mariah Carey won’t sing the national anthem, and it’s been decades since the Yale Bowl has seen a full crowd.

Nevertheless, ESPN’s College GameDay will cover the Game on Saturday, instead of any of the number of ACC, SEC, or PAC-12 games. As Roberts states, “This game means so much to the community. It means so much to Yale. It means so much nationally […] I think there are great rivalries in the ACC, great rivalries in the SEC, that might get a little more media coverage than we get, but … I think the emotional investment, the equity over 130 years is much greater than any other rivalry. And that is why it’s so special.”

Irrespective of media attention or massive fanfare, this “emotional investment, the equity over 130 years” places Yale-Harvard in the same echelon as any of the great collegiate football rivalries across the country. It also creates the brotherhood Gavin, White and Hill touched upon. A brotherhood, the three alumni suggested, which transcends the final score of the Game, which lasts so long that when they return to the Bowl, after one year or 40 years, their old friend’s face brings back more fond memories than the Bowl, The Game, or the University itself.

There’s no complex explanation to it. “In all honesty … It’s just fun,” Stallings admitted. “It’s fun to go out there and play with your buddies, it’s fun to play with confidence.”

* * *

For Morgan Roberts ’16, Candler Rich ’17, Khalid Cannon ’17, Jackson Stallings ’17, Darius Manora ’17 and the 101 other players on the Yale football team, The Game has an entirely different meaning. For them, the fun comes from playing The Game well, doing the job right, “sticking to the process,” and knowing that, when the clock hits zero, the final tally will take care of itself. It comes from all of their 106 teammates. And the ultimate reward they may draw from The Game will come years from now, when, stiff-kneed and gray-haired, they walk into the Bowl once more.

* * *

When I asked running back Candler Rich if, with everything on the line, he was feeling anxious about The Game. He smiled, almost holding back a wink, and asked, “What’s there to be anxious about?”

Drawing a Blank?

November 14, 2014 4:16 pm Leave a Comment

Every Cards Against Humanity expansion comes with ten blank white cards and four blank black cards. Rather than leave them unused at the bottom of the deck, here are a few WKND-recommended ideas you can use.

Marching into the Unnamed

November 7, 2014 4:00 am Leave a Comment

A little over 50 years ago, Yale underwent a massive change. Two residential colleges were added to the 10 already in place, two colleges whose unremittingly modern architecture was a testament to their newness, and whose names — Morse and Ezra Stiles — felt woolly and unfamiliar in the mouths of their freshly minted undergraduates. To mark the occasion, a time capsule was created and filled with twenty student essays, local and regional newspapers and several copies of Yale publications. The capsule was enclosed in a stone that became a bedrock of the new colleges. It was laid during a ceremony on Alumni Day in 1961, with much pomp and pride; only the colleges’ total demolition would be sufficient to coax the time capsule back into the open air. One YDN columnist, aware that he was writing for posterity, observed, “We’re hoping to do or say something that will be remembered 300 years hence.”

We find ourselves at a comparable moment in Yale’s history. The 12 colleges housing the undergraduate student body are to be expanded t o14, with two more slated to open in August 2017. They have yet to be named. They have yet to be crested. They have yet to be given masters, deans or dining staff. But they have been assigned a space — a scrubby no man’s land between a cemetery and a hospital, whose apparent insignificance seems to pose a haughty challenge to the notion that anything, ever, could be built there. But the donors have been petitioned, the architects consulted; the show is officially on the road. Expansion really is going to happen.

***

Of course, the addition of two new colleges will change Yale. Yet it is a curious mark of institutional life that even the slightest alterations to the “system” are often met with anxiety by those cozily closeted on the inside — students can be unexpectedly conservative.

As plans for the Beinecke neared completion in 1961, for example, the library was condemned as a “decorated box” by a history of art professor. Six undergraduates, one graduate student and one history of art instructor wrote in an open letter to the YDN that the library would stand as “a white elephant to be ridiculed by succeeding generations,” a repository for dead leaves, hand-tossed refuse and a simmering sense of resentment.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, and the Beinecke is the favorite landmark of many Yalies, an obligatory but agreeable stop on the Grand Tour. You present the library to your parent/friend/grandmother, freestyle for a couple of minutes on the fragility of its marble panels, the Tolkeinesque beauty of its innards, and then move on to visit Sterling, a gooey feeling of pride in your gut. The “decorated box” is not resented decades after its construction: It is loved.

Still, in many ways, the addition of two new colleges will be a more significant change to the University than an architecturally radical library. After all, once you’ve built your library and rammed it with books, you can — to an extent — rest on your laurels, much of the marathon completed. New colleges, on the other hand, are another matter entirely. You have to fill them with people, not books — undergraduates who arrive and leave in yearly cycles, who have sweated their way into the University and who are hungry for their slice of the Yale pie.

For Maria Cortez, who just submitted her application to Yale, potentially being placed in the new colleges would not diminish her undergraduate experience.

“I think that students will still feel part of the community no matter what,” Cortez said. “The residential college system itself brings [students] together, so there wouldn’t be feelings of isolation because, from what I know at least, the residential colleges are small communities within the University itself.”

Of the five prospective students interviewed, none were aware of the planned expansion. All five added that they would have no concerns for their social lives if placed into one of the new colleges.

For Julia Kharzeev, another aspiring Yalie, students placed in the new colleges — particularly underclassmen — would bear the responsibility of socializing outside their collegiate community.

“I think it really depends on whether [the students] integrate themselves well on campus in other ways,” Kharzeev said. “It would be awesome to be in these new residential colleges.”

When they finally arrive in 2017, the undergrads at the new colleges will want intimate classes and seminars just as much as we do. They too will expect unhampered access to Yale’s music, drama and gym facilities. And they will want to participate, like the members of the older colleges, in the intramural sports league, amongst lots of other student pastimes.

The two new colleges will grow Yale’s undergraduate community by 15 percent. The student body will thus come to a total of 6,200, an increase of 800 undergrads in all. Of course, the newbies will bring dough to the table – their fees will fill Yale coffers with a net revenue of approximately $30 million per year. According to the University administration, much of that money is expected to help staff and infrastructure to deal with the extra people.

The Yale Corporation made the original decision to expand back in 2008, disregarding the weighty evidence suggesting that students were opposed to the idea. (In a 2008 survey sent out by the News, of the 362 students polled, only 25 percent favored expansion.) Adding more space for qualified undergraduates was a leading factor in the Corporation’s choice — in 1999, Yale College accepted over 20 percent of applicants; now, it admits something closer to six percent. Every year seems to present record numbers of applicants, and it was felt that Yale would best serve its educational mission by getting bigger.

But the recession hit, shelving the development plans until Yale’s economic future looked rosier. The past few years have looked up, with the Yale Division of Finance reporting a surplus of $51 million this year. Now, there are enough pennies in the piggybank to give expansion another shot.

***

For many, enlargement is a cause for skepticism and gloom, not celebration. Some students worry that it might be easier to get into Yale — but perhaps the facts should be allowed to stand on their own. Yale College received a record 29,790 applicants for the class of 2017, of which only about 2,000 were accepted. The notion that increasing this number by 800 each year will lower academic standards doesn’t quite compute, said Eleanor Marshall ’17.

“I find that argument pretty offensive,” Marshall said. “I think it’s pretty elitist and I’m pretty disappointed to have heard people complaining about it.”

Peter Wang ’18 agreed, cautioning that an obsession with the number “800” undermines the fact that many candidates Yale rejects are undoubtedly qualified.

“Letting more students into Yale doesn’t mean that if you set the number larger, you set the standard lower,” Wang said.

In addition to fears of a less gifted student body, many have voiced the concern that the new colleges will be ‘ghettoized’ due to their location by Science Hill — or peopled entirely by sports-mad economists. The plot of land chosen is seen as out of the way, cut off, a gray buffer zone by Ingalls Rink with little commercial activity.

In a 2007 News article, Michael Pomeranz argued that “the new colleges, up on Science Hill, would create a sub-campus away from most of the undergraduate housing.”

In response to such criticism, Dean of Yale College Jonathan Holloway said that campus has changed drastically since the Corporation first proposed expansion. With the addition of the police station, the construction of the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design and the completion of Rosenkranz Hall, foot traffic in the area has increased.

Some students, too, expect that on-campus social life will move with the opening of the new colleges. They reject Pomeranz’s notion of the “sub-campus” as a little over-dramatic.

“[Students in the new colleges] will be closer to the students in TD and Silliman,” Kellen Svetov ’16 said. “We may see a shift of the social center.”

In addition, according to the Yale website “The New Residential Colleges,” the University will create “stepping stones” that connect students to the new neighborhood. These will include an expanded shuttle service and enhanced security. And yet, the freshmen who are parachuted into these colleges will join institutions that have no accrued prestige and no timeworn traditions that they can inherit. Moreover, there is a historical precedent for suspecting that the new colleges will not be respected as much as the older ones, at least initially.

Ronald Allison ’63 recalled the stigma he faced when he transferred from Silliman into the newly created Morse College in the early ’60s. “You were disrespected for being there,” he said. “Morse had less prestige.”

In any case, it seems likely that the first wave of Morse and Stiles undergraduates were particularly sensitive to the sting of perceived inter-collegiate snobbery. Eero Saarinen, the Morse and Stiles architect, explained in a 1959 statement that his team’s primary aim had been to create “an architecture which would recognise the individual as individual instead of anonymous integer in a group.” Many who transferred were introverted types who craved the single rooms that the colleges offered, having been uncomfortable in their original colleges.

Henry Sam Chauncey, an associate dean of Yale College at the time, argues that the two new colleges were strange places to inhabit when they first opened, because most of the volunteers were “unhappy people” — so, “for the first two or three years at least, Morse and Stiles were not the happiest of places.”

The plans for the newest residential colleges suggest that they, by contrast, will not cater largely to “loners”. Designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, the mock-ups show an interlocking series of communal spaces, clearly intended to generate a bustling social hub. The firm has opted not to copy the unforgiving gray modernism of Morse and Stiles, but has reverted to the neo-Gothic style so ubiquitous in many of Yale’s older colleges.

Of the students interviewed, the vast majority agreed that the new colleges look promising. Maia Eliscovich Sigal ’16, YCC vice president, went so far as to call them “very pretty,” noting that she had heard from members of the Morse administration that some undergraduates felt physically oppressed by Saarinen’s design.

As professor of English and American Studies and Morse College Master Amy Hungerford conceded, “Some students come [to Yale] with a dream of gothic architecture in mind, a stereotype of what an Ivy League college should look like.” Judging by Stern’s mock-ups, the 13th and 14th colleges will certainly fit into romantic visions of Old Yale.

***

But even if the colleges fulfill an aesthetic ideal, the expansion poses problems of overcrowding. Ironically, while Morse and Stiles were opened partly to alleviate the pressure on student housing, the new colleges will in fact do the opposite.

Though Eliscovich Sigal has faith that the Yale administration will maintain standards as the university bloats, she feels that overcrowding is already a significant problem. “Many econ classes don’t even have TAs,” she said. “It’s unacceptable. You’d think that if they’re bringing in hundreds more students, they’d sort that type of problem out.”

Still, despite her reservations, Eliscovich Sigal believes that University administrators are hyperaware of the impending problem — “I feel that they genuinely want to sort it out”.

Holloway has acknowledged these challenges. “We’re considering many different aspects of more students coming into campus,” he said. “Over the next 18 months, we’ll be developing plans to address those kinds of concerns.”

Without any concrete answers, expansion naysayers are arguably right to worry about overcrowding. And yet, efforts are being made by the University administration to address the issue. In October of last year, University President Peter Salovey convened a committee to investigate out how best to balance the books, to ensure that the costs of supporting the additional students would not exceed the extra $30 million revenue.

Sections of the Expansion Committee’s report, published this summer, make for potentially worrying reading. The IM league may be split into two separate divisions, for example, to accommodate two extra college teams. In the segment on classroom space, the review found that “the large majority of courses” could enroll 15 percent more students without changing locations. But many undergrads — including Svetov, an econ major who has witnessed the rush to register for Intro to Microeconomics and Macroeconomics — can already attest to the difficulty of finding a seat in many courses.

Shane Kim ’17 expressed similar concerns about overcrowded classes.

“If we have the same number of courses being taught, but now with 800 more students thrown into the mix, it will be a crazy time,” he said.

The report acknowledged that in some large courses, the increase would push course enrollment over the maximum capacity of Yale’s biggest classrooms — but it suggested that individual departments tackle the problem, for instance, by making classes earlier to alleviate pressure points. This has not gone over well with students, some of whom bristle at the thought of getting up early for a class they might have enjoyed at a later time in the morning.

To Qingyang Chen ’17, earlier classes would “circumvent the problem rather than solve the problem.” While he acknowledged that hiring more faculty would be a challenge, he felt that students should not be discouraged from taking classes they want to take.

The influx of 800 more undergraduates may also force the administration to curtail Shopping Period, to better anticipate resource allocation needs. Having shopped oversubscribed seminars, Kim hopes that administrators ensure that shopping period does not become more difficult following the student body’s expansion.

In addition to concerns about the increased number of students, some equally worry about the number of faculty available to teach them.

They are arguably right to do so, given that the Expansion Committee’s report advised that “some flexibility be accorded with respect to class size limits”, whilst allowing for “a small, targeted increase in funding for non-ladder instruction”. In other words, the University doesn’t plan to increase the number of tenure positions, since they have already made new hires in preparation for the expansion.

“The faculty is larger than it’s ever been,” Holloway said. “Unfortunately the growth has been separated from the arrival of the students.”

While the ratio of students to tenured faculty members will inevitably increase in 2017, Holloway said Salovey and Provost Benjamin Polak were “absolutely committed to making sure the quality of teaching doesn’t suffer as the University expands.”

***

Despite these assurances, some students simply feel excluded from the expansion process. After all, the administration never officially asked undergraduates whether they thought introducing two new residential colleges would be a good idea.

As News columnist Scott Stern ’15 puts it, “The idea that there has been any student involvement at all in the process is kind of a joke.”

And yet, as Holloway announced on Oct. 29, a new undergraduate task force is expected to convene at the end of this semester to begin advising faculty and staff on plans for the new residential colleges. Officially called the Standing Committee on Yale College Expansion, the committee will include four undergraduates who can apply for a spot through Yale College Council.

And in February this year, two forums were held with an eye to allowing students to voice their concerns. The first, on the impact of expansion on student life, was moderately well-attended, with approximately thirty students present, alongside Polak and other members of the Faculty Expansion Committee. But only four undergrads showed up to the second forum on the effects of growth on Yale’s academic life.

So, while some undergraduates feel actively shut out of the conversation, others seem apathetic to the changes — after all, 2017 feels pretty far off; they may not be around when the colleges open.

This apparent indifference might be due to the inefficacy of the “open forum” itself — as Hungerford points out, “There’s something about calling an open forum that is either only effective when people are highly educated about the issue or [when they] have strong feelings. They’re not always an effective way of consulting people”. There certainly seems to be a marked schism between the noise some students make amongst themselves about expansion, and what they are actually prepared to do about it.

Perhaps what students tend to lose sight of are the exciting opportunities presented by the expansion plan. The new colleges’ names and crests have captured the imagination of almost all. Nine out of the current twelve are named after slave owners, and every college, except the two named for towns, pays tribute to a white, Christian male.

One favorite contender is Grace Hopper GRD ’34, one of the University’s most accomplished female graduates in engineering, mathematics and technology. Another popular choice is Edward Bouchet GRD 1876, a first-generation student of color and accomplished scientist. Yung Wing 1854 has also garnered some support, as the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university.

The opportunity to name these colleges has been hugely exciting, to both students and professors. Hungerford hopes at least one of the names will be that of a person of color or a woman — “I just think it’s time. We’re living in 2014.”

As to the danger that a college named after a female or a minority graduate will be further stigmatized, Hungerford aptly remarked, “If people worry that the Yale community will ghettoize two colleges named after women and people of color, then we’re in a lot deeper trouble than people think we are.”

In addition to the opportunities offered by the naming process, the chance to create a college culture ex nihilo has enthused many. As Eliscovich Sigal put it, “There’s an opportunity to be part of something new. That’s exciting.”

Besides, no one can deny that college identities undergo radical mutations every few years. For News columnist Joshua Clapper ’16, “The most appealing part of the residential college is that it is ever-changing,” he said. “There are traditions in different colleges that stress residential college independence over a broader University identity. But the flavor of this independence varies from year to year.”

It seems that one of the most vital goals of expansion has been somewhat obscured — which is that by growing so substantially, the Yale experience will be open to more people year on year. If it feels gratifyingly cynical to roll one’s eyes at the planned growth, with its unknown impacts and costs, it takes a little more intellectual integrity to focus on the bigger picture. More people will come to Yale, which will remain the same in some ways, and different in others; more minds from all over the world will be allowed to benefit from the unique Yale experience. That is surely something to celebrate.

The Real World Comes to Yale

October 31, 2014 3:23 am Leave a Comment

Last week my little sib’s laptop and wallet got stolen straight out of his common room. I don’t know whether it’s within my familial obligations to do anything except console him about it, so I don’t think it’s crossing a line to tell you the story. This is what happened: The suite door was propped open with someone’s shoe, Will was in his room with the door closed, and this guy walked in, grabbed what caught his fancy and strolled out. Will didn’t hear anything, and his roommate was asleep.

I found this flabbergasting. My suite is never locked, primarily because I lost my key in September, and I leave everything in the common room. I’ve never imagined this being a problem. And I’d figured that, worst-case scenario, if someone breaks — or rather, walks — in, I would be able to do something about it if I were in the suite. But I guess this isn’t actually the worst-case scenario. It’s like the guy didn’t even think about it, just felt like walking up some stairs in Bingham and maybe making a couple hundred bucks for his trip, #casual.

I think I’m particularly unsettled because at home, I don’t lock my doors and neither do any of my neighbors. I’d walk into friends’ houses when no one was home to pick up textbooks I’d forgotten, reach into neighbors’ gardens to pick tangerines off their trees, walk through parks alone at midnight at the age of thirteen. My town’s most prevalent crime is bike theft, and I never, ever, lock my bike. I am from Irvine, California, the safest city in America.

That said, I am — OK, I try to be — very conscious of being an Irvinian. There are horror stories of eighteen-year-old children, having never left Irvine in their lives, going off to college in Not Suburbia, USA and getting mugged in broad daylight because they were, like, sitting on the curb and counting their money while talking on their iPhone. I don’t want to be that girl.

There are also the stories we tell, which aren’t horror stories, but imply horrifying things about our upbringing. Like, “Oh my god, I was in Compton this weekend, and there was this black guy walking down the street. I thought I was gonna get mugged, I was so scared!” And the response: “Oh my god, that’s so scary, literally I’m never leaving Irvine, hahaha, I can’t handle the real world, hahaha.” Because it’s really funny to be trapped in a 66-square-mile bubble for your whole life.

As the proud possessors of the safest city title, we guard our position meticulously. Once, my neighbor saw one of her gardeners walking around on our street at night. To my knowledge, in the morning, nothing was missing, or broken, or tagged. The next day she organized a “street watch,” and suggested that we have the adults on the block take turns patrolling Perkins Court each night. Every single night.

It’s the little things like these that make me worry I grew up surrounded by psycho-paranoid adults with no concept of what true safety is. And because of that, I reckon, neither do I. When I decided to go to school in New Haven, of course the first thing my mom did was find a statistic labeling it “the most dangerous city in America.” Of course, I said, “That’s definitely not true and you just think that because we live in Irvine.” But upon arrival, I was made very aware that New Haven is not Irvine. Still, I was determined to prove the statistic’s untruth. I found the fact that campus is locked at night dumb and elitist; I refused to participate in discussions about being sketched out by the Green; I thought the existence of Yale Security was over the top and a little ridiculous. Honestly, the instance of the stolen wallet and computer doesn’t change these sentiments. These things happen, but they don’t mean that New Haven merits the title “most dangerous city in America.” Whether in Irvine or New Haven, there are certain precautions we all need to take in the real world — that’s what makes it real.

Robert Lane: The Timid Rebel

3:16 am Leave a Comment

On a Saturday morning, Robert Lane greets me at the door of the Whitney Center in Hamden. It’s a quiet, beige-colored assisted living community, but when either Lane or his friend Stan must move to let the other pass with his walker, I can’t help thinking of the Wild West. They stare each other down for a bit, but then both move aside, laughing. “Stan looks good — and he’s 99!” Lane remarks.

Lane himself is 97, but looks younger — he wears black frame glasses on a remarkably unlined face. Despite his unworn appearance, Lane has a formidable history: stirring up trouble at Yale, leading the national political science academic circle, helping hundreds escape from Nazi-occupied Europe and laying the groundwork for the modern discipline of political psychology. But Lane downplays these accomplishments if given the chance.

“I once had to write a series of essays,” he recalls as we sit down to talk. “I called one ‘The Timid Rebel’ — and that was me.” He rebelled against Kingman Brewster, then University President. He rebelled against Poland, which blocked him from attending a conference because he’d protested the government during the repressive Eastern bloc regime. And he rebelled against Soviet Russia, which he says was “easy to fight — it was such a tyrannous organization.”

Tyranny has always moved Lane to action: He is known for a 1938 effort that brought young refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to study at Harvard and Radcliffe. He then led a grassroots push for universities all over the country to accept refugees. A 2006 article in the Harvard Alumni Magazine praises the project for achieving “three interconnected purposes: the humanitarian goal of rescuing individuals whose education was interrupted and whose lives were in jeopardy; the political goal of affirming American core values of tolerance and democracy; and the academic goal of improving the quality of higher education.” Many of the student refugees went on to become professors, deans and foreign officers.

When I ask Lane about this achievement, he seems to consider it not as a moral undertaking, but rather as something of a successful student club project: just a day in the life, just a normal thing to do.

Lane has always been an activist. As President of the Harvard Student Union in 1938, he organized workers and waitresses in the House dining halls, annoying Harvard’s 1938 administration. “I was a troublemaker,” he now says, then grins and slowly takes another bite of apple pie. Activism, the connections it brought him, and his involvement in the then-unpopular anti-communist left, all came together during a 1938 protest on Harvard’s Crystal Lawn against the treatment of Jews in Europe. Lane recalls a friend there asking him: “So now what? You haven’t done much for them, have you?”

So in November 1938, three students, including Lane, went to the President’s office to get scholarships and visas for students suffering under the Nazi regime. “It went surprisingly well,” Lane now says. “I hardly knew why.” In went — so well that Lane soon left Harvard to lead the Intercollegiate Conference to Aid Student Refugees, the national organization in charge of organizing the growing project. With offices in New York City, it included students from 100 colleges.

Lane worked with three men to run the Conference, including “a law guy deputized to keep an eye on me — who turned out to be my best friend, so [keeping an eye on me] didn’t work so well.” That “law guy” — Abba Schwartz, on his way to a Foreign Service degree from Harvard Law — went on to become Assistant Secretary of State for Security and Consular Affairs. By January 1939, 600 colleges had thrown their doors open to refugees. Scholarships and student visas safely brought hundreds of Central European students to the U.S. Lane and his Harvard buddies were the authors of it all.

Lane didn’t go on to more activism, instead joining the Air Force during World War II, serving as a registrar for an officer’s training school in Florida. From there, it was on to Yale, where Lane’s work would set the stage for the development of political psychology — but not without more troublemaking.

By the time he arrived at Yale in 1950, Lane had served in the armed forces and earned Harvard degrees in economics and political science. But he was more interested in psychology, especially as it pertained to politics. Lane saw most of the political investigation of the time as flat and uninformative — electoral polls, marking only support for Eisenhower or Stevenson. The meaning of that opinion was not captured, making Lane’s research methods a new approach at the time. Borrowing methods from psychology, he wanted to search “for the things a person can’t say.”

He taped subjects talking about their lives so as to contextualize their political ideas. “You don’t understand what a person’s political ideas mean,” he explains, “until you understand how they fit into his life, and what he plans to do with them.” Lane’s essential idea was that ideologies, despite their influence on people’s behavior, were being ignored by the methods of the times.

As political science professor Ian Shapiro puts it, “Bob Lane pretty much invented political psychology. He was revolutionary.”

Shapiro recalls that Lane’s searching led to endless conflict with then-President Brewster, who wanted political science to take its academic cues from law’s more cut-and-dried, standard approach. But Lane prevailed. In the 1950s, political science was an emerging and distinct discipline, but it now reflects influences from psychology, sociology, economics and history.

Lane himself taught a class called “Public Opinion and Political Ideology: Scope and Methods,” which focused on empirical political theory. When Lane began teaching, political theory was just the history of ideas — Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau — but he “didn’t think that would get anywhere.”

Instead, he focused his teaching on theory relating to current problems — a description that would seem right at home in today’s Blue Book, where many political philosophy classes promise discussion of the greats alongside discussion of how their ideas still matter.

Lane taught from 1950 until 1987, as Yale developed one of the nation’s foremost political science departments. On teaching he says, “It’s a marvelous life. If you’re interested in ideas, you have time to elicit from students the best that they have. I can’t see how anyone would want to live any other way.”

These days, life is quiet at the Whitney Center, where we sit in the dining room, opposite a vast wall of windows looking out on a somewhat melancholy backdrop of quickly turning trees. Though Lane is still writing books, he limits his political discussion to playing Risk with his driver. He likes to play as China, and cackles when he mentions it. I wonder what Lane’s China has done lately; I suppose it would depend on his political ideas. In any case, it’s an interesting possibility to imagine: Robert Lane, in his glasses and argyle sweater, on a banner in Tiananmen Square.

I’ve heard about psychology in politics before, in a discussion on the Cuban Missile Crisis. It could have been so different, if it weren’t for people. If John F. Kennedy hadn’t needed to hold fast after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and if Khrushchev weren’t facing intense internal disapproval from Soviet leaders, perhaps the standoff wouldn’t have come so close to the brink of nuclear war. Lane nods at this idea when I bring it up, and makes it even more universal. In his interviews, he’s met many people from powerful families. Their reactions to pressure, he says, have bred a desire to acquire power, in order to undermine their bullies and competitors.

Lane isn’t a trained psychoanalyst, something he’s happy to admit, but his breakthrough was simply in seeing that political science and psychology could come together. Ian Shapiro, when I interviewed him, seemed in awe of Lane’s legacy in academia. For breaking down boundaries between disciplines, he said, Lane is considered one of the primary forerunners of fields like behavioral economics. His academic career has always been guided by curiosity, rebellion within his chosen field and a refusal to play by the rules.

Lane sums it up: “I think you can make any discipline interesting if you don’t allow it to take over — you ask of it interesting questions.” And here, perhaps, is the “timid rebellion” that has been most important to Lane’s life. Today, political science is open to ideas and methods from the study of economics, of human behavior, of culture and thought, rather than becoming a factory line for Brewster’s lawyers.

At 97, Robert Lane has begun working on a new book, on evolutionary theory as it relates to forms of government — “very undemocratic forms, of course.” He’s attempting to picture evolution as an ideology — “a sort of authoritarianism without authority, except nature, or God. There’s no moral criterion in nature.” Rather, Lane focuses on the laws of the jungle, family and compassion. Throughout his career, he’s always been attracted to writing. “I think … I have the natural disposition to criticize. I wrote my first book criticizing the English department, and my last two books criticizing the economics department.” He gruffly laughs, and remarks — “and I loved it.” The rebellion continues.

And We're Off!

October 27, 2014 10:42 pm Leave a Comment

Welcome to our little WKND chunk of cyberspace.

Don’t worry; we’re a little nervous to be here, too. We know as much about the tubes that make up the interweb as a CS major knows about Aristotle. Not that we know much about Aristotle either. But in any case, the World Wide Web is a big and freaky vacuum filled with ones and zeros, secret codes, porn, and Mark Zuckerberg. But now, it also contains the new and improved WKND blog.

Prepare yourselves: the WKND blog is about to spread its golden wings and soar into the great Internet unknown, a world of GIFs, listicles, snarky blurbs and snapshots of what interests you. We’ll review albums for you, and post pictures of Peter Salovey when we spot him at Stop and Shop. We’ll tell you where to eat and where not to eat, where to study and where to procrastinate.

But this isn’t Buzzfeed or the Yale Bubble, this isn’t you scrolling and trolling through comments on the YDN website (yes, we’ve been there too)—the WKND blog is so much more. The WKND blog is a lifestyle. We are “crafting content” and “interfacing” with you, dear reader. If you don’t understand what those words mean, that’s OK: neither does WKND.

So consider this an invitation. Have you seen something weird? Is there a freaky facet of college life that you really need to get off your chest / onto the interwebs? Are you angry about the existence of Gant: the Shirt that Dressed Yale and Jack Willis: Fabulously British? Do you bristle at the use and abuse of colons? Did you listen to an album you loved? Did you eat a thing you hated? Did you do some other activity that made you have feelings? Tell us. WKND cares. We want to dignify and elevate your fragmented thoughts and idle observations about Yale, New Haven, and just like, life, in general. We don’t just want to know, we need to know. Really. We think you’re so cool.

So readers and writers alike: let us tweet at you and speak to you, in the hustle and bustle and in the lulls, for in spite of what everyone says, every day is still —

// WKND //

Yale Daily News

Tag Archive: Yale

Job Well Done

Forestry, Film and Food: Ian Cheney

The Road to Rhodes

What does Ferguson mean?

THE DECISION

THE FURY THAT FOLLOWED

Dos and Don'ts of Getting Noticed on College Gameday

From the Field, Through the Years

Drawing a Blank?

Marching into the Unnamed

The Real World Comes to Yale

Robert Lane: The Timid Rebel

And We're Off!