The Harvard-Yale Issue

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Th eHa r v a r d Y a l eI s s u e I n s i d e : Ba l l s , Ba nd s , a ndBu l l d o g s

11.21.13 VOL. XLV, NO. 12

The Harvard-Yale Issue 11.21.13

Inside: Balls, Bands, and Bulldogs

The Indy is beating down Yale, one column at a time.

Cover Design by ANNA PAPP & ELOISE LYNTON

CONTENTS FORUM 3 Battle of the Balls 4 Fale-Proof Travelling NEWS 5 Wheelin' and Dealin' ARTS 7 Elite Reading 7 Banded Together 8 Finding Comic Relief 9 The Sister Act SPORTS 10 The Comforts of Home 10 The Dangers Abroad 11 A War for the Ages

As Harvard College's weekly undergraduate newsmagazine, the Harvard Independent provides in-depth, critical coverage of issues and events of interest to the Harvard College community.

The Independent has no political affiliation, instead offering diverse commentary on news, arts, sports, and student life.

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The Harvard Independent is published weekly during the academic year, except during vacations, by The Harvard Independent, Inc., Student Organization Center at Hilles, Box 201, 59 Shepard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Copyright Š 2013 by The Harvard Independent. All rights reserved.

President Albert Murzakhanov '16 Editor-in-Chief Sean Frazzette '16 Director of Production Anna Papp '16 News Editor Forum Editor Arts Editor Sports Editor Associate Forum Editor Associate Arts Editor Associate Design Editor

Milly Wang '16 Caroline Gentile '17 Sarah Rosenthal '15 Shaquilla Harrigan '16 Aditya Agrawal '17 Eldo Kim '16 Travis Hallett '14

Cartoonist John McCallum '16 Illustrator Eloise Lynton '17 Business Managers Frank Tambero '16 Manik Bhatia '16 Columnists Aditya Agrawal '17 Michael Feehly '14 Jackie Leong '16 Andrew Lin '17 Madi Taylor '16 Shreya Vardhan '17 Senior Staff Writers Christine Wolfe '14 Angela Song '14 Sayantan Deb '14 Michael Altman '14 Meghan Brooks '14 Whitney Lee '14 Staff Writers Manik Bhatia '16 Xanni Brown '14 Terilyn Chen '16 Lauren Covalucci '14 Clare Duncan '14 Caroline Gentile '17 Gary Gerbrandt '14 Travis Hallett '14 Shaquilla Harrigan '16 Yuqi Hou '15 Cindy Hsu '14 Theodora Kay '14 Eldo Kim '16 Chloe Li '16 Dominique Luongo '17 Orlea Miller '16 Albert Murzhakanov '16

Forum

indy

The Great American Pastime Play ball.

By LAUREN COVALUCCI

Photo by Lauren Covalucci

D

on’t like football? Too bad. If you go to Harvard or Yale, you like it this weekend. The Game is one of those precious times — like presidential elections or pirate vs. ninja debates — where you get to pick a side and stand by it adamantly for no significant reason whatsoever.

Let’s face it: no one actually cares whether Harvard or Yale wins this year. We’ve been playing this game for over a hundred years because it’s right before Thanksgiving and there’s nothing better to do.

So much attention gets diverted away from the real problem at hand.

We stand around and wave our beers and drink our flags and shout at people and feel American. But we overlook a dilemma: what really is America’s pastime? Do we find the heart and soul of this great nation on the field... Or in the diamond? The title of ‘great American pastime’ has been bandied about for too long, and we should take this football weekend as an opportunity to set ourselves straight.

Football, I think, can claim the wider audience, and it brings us great things like wings, dip, and beer guts.

The roots of football can be traced back to the roots of ‘Murica itself, when European settlers began using aggressive, semi-violent tactics to gain ground from Native Americans. As The Harvard Independent • 11.21.13

Team Genocide expanded and gained popularity, the push intensified and both sides were forced into developing more advanced strategies to compete.

Kids, you know how the rest goes: we settled the territory dispute in a diplomatic manner and absolutely no one else got hurt. That’s why we eat turkey and celebrate violence every Thanksgiving in the biggest television event of the year. It doesn’t get much more American than that.

But there’s more to America than genocide, you say. That was so 1830.

What drives our country now? America today is a game with just a few people on the playing field, all of which can look wildly different depending on your location and team budget. At bat, you get a limited number of chances to make something of yourself and no guarantee that a good pitch will come your way. In fact, half the world wants you to swing and miss at the opportunities presented to you. How are you supposed to get ahead, then, in a complicated system of rules that are sometimes only haphazardly upheld?

‘Roids. Lots of ‘roids. Bring on the juice to cheat the game, and let’s get swinging.

Each of these noble sports captures an important aspect of American culture and should be duly recognized.

Neither, however, is a perfect fit, which I find worrisome. We tend not to take

kindly to men in shoulder pads and shiny pants, the fashion signature of football; or brain damage, the medical signature of football. Baseball is a game that involves patience and subtlety, which both go against the American ideal, and its lack of cheerleaders cheats us out of a chance to objectify the female body. That’s as unpatriotic and un-American as King George III on a U-boat.

You know what? I give up. There is no pastime. We just want there to be so that we can justify seven mimosas and a gallon of chili at the Harvard-Yale tailgate and pretend we’re taking part in something with even a modicum of importance. The idea of the great American pastime seems to have gone the way of the great American novel: having emerged from a misguided attempt to find paradigms in a shifting world, it tries to impose generalizations on topics that can’t be simplified.

Thus, the great American pastime is not football, nor baseball, nor activity involving tight pants and ball handling. Nay, the great American pastime is oversimplification—it is the continual search for the great American whatever and we keep losing, like an angsty teenager trying to figure out what subculture he wants to fit into. This is what happens when Photoeven

by Lauren Covalucci your country hasn’t made it to

three hundred years old. Most of our ancestors haven’t even been on this continent longer than a few centuries.

Now just think about how long the Russians have had vodka or the Irish have had beer and compare that to how long we’ve had football. I rest my case. We’re amateurs. Give us another thousand years of wearing funny outfits and throwing balls around and then maybe we can claim legitimacy to a true classic pastime.

Oh well. Until then, go Red Sox, beat Yale, and keep the mimosas coming.

Lauren Covalucci ‘14 (covalucci@college) would like you to know that, according to Wikipedia, baseball is the de facto national sport of the United States of America.

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Fair Warning

A guide to surviving at that other school.

By WHITNEY GAO

H

ello, students at the most wonderful school on earth. It’s finally Harvard-Yale weekend, and this year, Yale has the privilege of hosting us.

I know, going to Yale to celebrate the game is a little like having to go to your weird Aunt Lisa’s house in the middle of nowhere to celebrate Christmas when you’re used to rocking the holidays in beautiful New York City with just about every celebrity on the planet. But, hopefully with the right guidance, it can be just as illuminating and enjoyable as spending the weekend here in Cambridge. (Doubtful, but maybe.)

It all starts with the ride there. Spend this time with the people you love and enjoy; remember that they, too, shall be there when you take your first steps in New Haven, and allow that fact to comfort you when the first Yalie you encounter begins to spout Shakespeare spontaneously. I also advise you to take some time to lower your expectations during the last half-hour before you arrive on the campus for all non-Harvard interactions you will be having this weekend. If you set the bar low, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Make sure to eat solid meals. There’s nothing like some good food to put you in a good mood. If New Haven does anything right, it’s their pizza.

Take advantage of this — starting off well in the city will probably make you more tolerant of the disappointments that will follow. Plus, once you find your favorite pizza place, you can always have something to look forward to. Always.

Make sure you don’t eat alone. I don’t have anything against eating by yourself, but you definitely don’t want to walk back to campus without a buddy. Here, I speak from personal experience, as I have indeed made the mistake of wandering more than thirty seconds off Yale territory and ending up in a significantly more terrifying part of the neighborhood. Everything looks like either a parking deck or a secret meth lab. Just don’t do it. Find a friend. Any Harvardian would be more than happy to stuff his or her face with you. Like me. I like pizza.

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Photo by Whitney Gao The (Old) Yard where freshmen often live is not close to campus. Do not be fooled. It is really, really, really far away from everything else. Where do you think you are? You’re a long way from Cambridge, Dorothy.

Spend some time appreciating the architecture at Yale. While Harvard is charming with its characteristic red brick, Yale brings a more oldEnglish vibe with its monumental stone buildings.

Though Yale does have the occasional red-brick building, the majority of campus is composed of mottled gray-scale stones, as if white-washed and then weathered. While it may not carry the visual comfort and appeal of our ivied gates, the effect is still pleasant for the most part. But still, Yale does triumph in the small courtyard department.

While the courtyards in Leverett and Lowell do hold special places in my heart, Yale’s nooks and crannies take the cake when you need a romantic date spot or an isolated corner to finally finish (read as: start) your Gov reading. That doesn’t technically fall under the traditional definition of architecture, but landscape and urban planning most definitely are well-developed extensions of the category.

If you’re a morning person in the slightest, you’ll absolutely adore the mornings at Yale. Now, I know that — for various reasons — Saturday morning probably won’t find you wanting to wander the streets around campus; however, if you ever get a chance to walk around in the first few hours of the morning, you’ll discover that mornings at Yale are all that a morning should be. Mist rises from the ground slowly in tendrils that you just ache to run your hand through. The sun struggles to poke through the atmosphere. But the biggest difference of all is the silence. You could go a steady while without running into another soul. I’m not saying that Yale people aren’t morning people, but New Haven is just not a morning city. The occasional jogger will cross your path, but that’s about it — no tourists willing to wake up at 6 a.m. to rub a pissed-on foot, no shops hurrying to open to catch the first wave of morning commuters, no cars honking with drivers late to work because of the already accumulating traffic.

Nothing. It’s sort of beautiful. If you’re staying until Sunday, bite the pain and get up earlier than noon so you can experience it for yourself. Plus, you know campus won’t be hopping Saturday night after Yale suffers a loss on their home field, so catch up on the sleep you didn’t get on Friday!

But in all seriousness, don’t squander the chance to meet new people and visit a new place. If you have close friends at Yale, spend some quality time with them; if you don’t, make some. The potential for these friendships to last a lifetime are much higher than you might think. While it’s fun to poke fun at each other and playfully foster a rivalry, it’s more important to realize that we can learn so much from each other. It doesn’t matter who wins or loses the game or who is actually the better school (although we know the correct answer to that both of those questions). What matters is what we get to take away with us when we return to the land of the red bricks and early morning tour buses.

Lose your voice screaming while cheering at the game. Come decked out in all your obnoxious Harvard swag. Take pictures with celebrities sitting in the stands. Be invested in the game. Know the score at all times. Put away your cell phones.

Bring sunglasses and dress in layers. Connect and celebrate.

We’re going to win anyways, so you can’t have too awful of a time there.

Whitney Gao ’16 (whitneygao@college) just knows that she’s going to eat way too much this weekend.

11.21.13 • The Harvard Independent

News

indy

Not Just Bartering The art of negotiation and how it helps us all.

By MILLY WANG score as many points for yourself as possible in a n Saturday November 16th, Alonzo Emery set amount of time by touching the backs of your of Harvard Negotiation and Mediation partner’s hands to the table. Participants start off Clinical Program, and Dan Shapiro, in the arm-wrestling position. Many of the pairs Director of the Harvard International Negotiation were locked in a stalemate, each trying to force Project, in conjunction with the newly created their partner’s hands down onto the table. But Harvard College Conflict Resolution Program, some pairs took turns first touching one partner’s hosted a negotiation workshop for undergraduates hand to the table, and then touching the other of the College at Rothenburg Conference Room in partner’s hand to the table.

“What is the lesson here?” He asked.

Stone Hall. The event ran from 1:00pm to 4:00pm The truth is, many assumed that the game with the first half focused on Negotiation Skills and the second half focused on dealing with Emotions could only have one winner. It was the “either I win or you win” mentality, which is just another way in Negotiation.

But first, what is negotiation? Emery presented of saying that we often view negotiations as zeronegotiation as any communication between people sum. But in actuality, if both partners took turns touching their hands onto the table without such with the intent to persuade.

Emery went to Yale as an undergrad and is now fierce competition, then both could have won the a tutor in Kirkland. He spoke about the importance game.

Secondly, Emery discussed how we often have and application of negotiation skills in many contexts of our lives, whether it is communicating no framework for preparing as we don’t know what with family members, mentors or professors, or if impact our decisions or choices will have on we ever decide to consider a career with the UN. His others. This is especially true for cross-cultural

presentation was a taste of what is offered at the negotiations, where we could be limited by full Negotiation Course taught at the Harvard Law institutional and cultural norms.

More importantly, we need to watch out for the School. The main focus was viewing negotiation through the lens of daily life experiences and in a three E’s: Ego, Emotions, and Escalation. To avoid cross-cultural communication context. As someone these, we should first attempt to look for mutual who has lived in China, Emery offered many gain, emphasize with the other party, be aware of personal examples and experiences to enhance the the norms and customs that each party follows and learn to approach the negotiation in a systematic key points throughout the presentation.

The presentation focused mainly on providing way to prevent it from spiraling out of control.

Currently, there are two different approaches to a framework for preparing for negotiations and finding ways to create more value in those negotiation: the haggling approach and the seven negotiations. Emery started off with a round elements approach.

The haggling approach begins with opening of group introductions. Workshop participants came from all kinds of different backgrounds and offers from two sides, one very high, the other very concentrations that ranged from government and low, and eventually, the two sides meet somewhere economics, to computer science, mathematics, in the middle. One advantage of this approach and East Asian studies. Many were interested in is that it is quite easy to understand that very little preparation is needed ahead of time. It has business, law and US-China relations.

One key point that Emery emphasized was that been widely used in the past, and thus is well we are not born with negotiations skills, but rather understood by many across different cultures. One always seems to get something out of it in the end. learn and hone them over time.

“Talent is only 10 percent of the equation,” he However, the major disadvantage of this approach is that the results might be based on lies. Because said.

The rest comes from hard work and practice. both sides realize that they will meet somewhere But there are many problems that arise with in the middle, their opening bids are going to be negotiation. Sometimes they fail, we could waste ridiculously high or ridiculously low with no regard time and money, and relationships could be to the real value at stake. Another disadvantage is damaged. At other times, we’re unsure about the that this approach fails to generate creative options best approach and side disputes are constantly as you are only approaching it from a price point ongoing. Yet what is the root cause of all these of view. You could possibly hurt the relationship by the offers that you make, if you potentially offend problems?

Emery demonstrated this through an interactive the other party. And there’s always the risk of Photo bywalk-away Madeline McMahon doubts and you may end up wondering activity called the “hand game.” Workshop participants were paired up, and their goal was to if you really have gotten a good deal.

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Another approach is called the seven elements model: interests, options, criteria, alternatives, commitment, communication, relationship.

Interests focuses on the why behind the what.

Often, we are more focused on the what as opposed to the why. If we think about the interests of both sides and why it might not work for the other party or you, it is possible to come to an agreement that satisfies both party’s interests in a new way.

It is also important to consider options, which are possibilities that are developed at the table together, where a potential agreement is interest maximizing. Always remember to get ideas flowing and don’t shoot down ideas in the brainstorming stage. Next, we need to maintain an objective criterion, which is justification for a particular option and is independent of either party. We can often use criteria as either a sword or a shield, to advance our offer by stating “My offer is fair because...” or why asking, “Why is that a fair offer?”

Continued on page 6.

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News

Continued from page 5.

Alternatives are steps that you can take without the consent of the other party. A key point to remember is not to go to a negotiation without having considered your alternatives. After all, you want to come to a final agreement that is better than your best alternative.

And lastly, commitment. This is an agreement on what the parties will or will not do and is the final step of the negotiation process. The framework of negotiations is all well and good, however, oftentimes, we have difficulties following the framework due to other factors, one of which are emotions.

That is where Dan Shapiro came in. He led a workshop on dealing with emotions in negotiation for the second half of the session. Shapiro has been based in the Law School and the psychology department in the Medical School for 15 years now. He once taught negotiation to undergraduate students through a Freshman Seminar and some of his past students were amongst the workshop participants.

Shapiro began with an emotional story of the poplar tree that grew between the borders of North Korea and South Korea. This infamous poplar tree caused great conflict between North and South Korea. Even the US became involved and the extremely volatile situation almost lead to a potential World War III. Through this story, Shapiro was able to demonstrate the role that emotions play in the negotiation process. His focus throughout the workshop was the present a framework to better understand the emotional dimension of negotiation.

How do we deal with the emotional dimension more effectively? Many of the possible ideas regarding negotiation come from research and studies.

Roger Fisher, often know as the grandfather of the field of negotiation, came up with several of them.

Unfortunately, he passed away roughly a year and a half ago. He taught a Freshman Seminar at the College during his time here, as well as a course on international conflict for beginners, the content of which he later turned into a book.

A common suggestion for dealing with emotions is not to get emotional. But that’s pretty much impossible. Emotions will always be there and there is no way for us to get rid of them. But how can we deal with them?

Well, we need to learn to validate them and to work with them. There are several core concerns that we should look at: appreciation, autonomy, affiliation, status, role. Throughout the presentation, Shapiro focused on demonstrating a sense of what each of these are and how you can practically use them. Get a sense of what they are and how you can practically use them.

Appreciation is something that everyone wants.

To really emphasize the impact of appreciation, he talked about a study that was done on newlywed couples. The couples are led into a room and asked to talk for two minutes about a recent conflict that they had. There were cameras in the room to monitor the couple’s reactions and displayed emotions.

With the data collected, the scientists were able to predict extremely accurately which couples tended to last over time.

It turned out that couples who communicated with a ratio of 5 appreciative to 1 depreciative statements in their conversation tended to stay together, whereas couples with only a 1 to 1 ratio tended to get divorced. Of course, appreciation doesn’t always have to be expressed verbally. We can also demonstrate appreciation through the things that we do and through our body language.

There are three elements to appreciating someone: understand the other’s point of view, find merit in what they think, feel or do, and communicate your understanding. Shapiro has worked with the FBI hostage investigation team before and shared his experiences on a case that he had been on.

“An excellent negotiator,” he said, “has an ability to connect with the other person.”

Autonomy, the next core concern, is about the freedom to make decisions. Most of the time in

negotiations, it’s not about the content, but rather about the process. A key step that Shapiro shared was ACBD: always consult before deciding. It is very important for the both parties to feel involved in the decision making process. Even if the end result is the same as what the party could have come up with individually, including both parties in the process helps to make both sides more open to accepting that final result.

Affiliation is the emotional connection between you and another and has an important impact on emotions. It turns out both physical and emotional pain stimulate the same region of the brain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Therefore, in a negotiation, it is imperative to make everyone feel welcome and to turn an adversary into a colleague.

One key example of this was the Ecuador/Peru boundary conflict. In an effort to reach an agreement between the two countries, the newly elected President of Ecuador, who also happened to be a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School and had taken classes on negotiation there, approached the President of Peru to negotiate. The President of Ecuador not only attempted to connect with the President of Peru, but he also asked for advice on how to deal with the situation. Increasing their personal connections and working side by side on solving the issue eventually meant that they were able to resolve all issues over just 72 days.

All in all, the Negotiation Workshop offered and elucidating combination of historical and scientific data about an art form that is used much more than many realize.

Milly Wang ’16 (keqimillywang@college) feels like she could now take on Professor Dershowitz.

Photos by Milly Wang

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11.21.13 • The Harvard Independent

Battle of the Books

While Harvard and Yale deck it out on the gridiron, their literature decks it out on the shelves.

By RAYNOR KUANG

“

Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend – the weekend of the Yale game.”

So begins J. D. Salinger’s book Franny and Zooey; and the time of our own annual rendition of the Harvard-Yale game is as good as any to visit the storied tradition of books involving characters from our fair Harvard and that (less) fair Yale.

To start with, in Franny and Zooey (strictly speaking, just “Franny” — the book is a combination of a short story and a novella), Franny’s boyfriend Lane Coutell is a boorish intellectual implied to attend — where else? — Yale. The two meet up for lunch at a diner often frequented by the “intellectual fringe” for the game, but that lunch consists mostly of Lane boasting about an A paper he wrote on Flaubert. As Franny grows increasingly agitated, Lane misses the cues and instead tries to look “attractively bored.” The lunch culminates with Franny fainting on a trip to the diner bathroom before reaching a moment of spiritual ascension while lying on the diner floor. Lane doesn’t seem to get it and hopes Franny might come back with him to his room.

On our side of things, Harvard has its Quentin Compson — not to be outdone in moments of individual crisis — a member of the dysfunctional Compson family of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. In the part of The Sound and the

Fury in which he appears, Quentin spends much of his day wandering about Harvard and Cambridge, mulling over his family in typical Faulknerian fashion — that is to say, nearly incomprehensibly.

Quentin is a true Harvard man, getting into fisticuffs and pondering his mortality while looking into the Charles from the Memorial Bridge. Though his death isn’t mentioned in this chapter, it’s known from elsewhere in the book that Quentin commits suicide that day by leaping off the bridge. His thoughts race through his head a mile a minute, but he’s not neurotic — he’s tormented (can we say the same of Lane?).

It wouldn’t be a discussion of Harvard and Yale without some prep, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby obliges. Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan are Yale students before their East and West Egg residencies, and although Nick is a nice, mild-mannered guy, Tom emanates 1920s nobility, notwithstanding a little aggression as well. He plays polo, has a mistress, and just oozes class; but he also gets a little frustrated when the upstart Gatsby dares to rise above his social stratum and nearly steal his wife, working to get Gatsby killed.

In the end, Tom is sort of a cowardly blowhard — when push comes to shove, someone else shoots the gun.

On the other hand, Patrick Bateman of Harvard College and Harvard Business credentials takes care of things himself. The protagonist of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is sort of a, well,

psycho. He’s a capitalistic Wall Street yuppie by day who represents all the materialistic excesses a Harvard AB and MBA is supposed to, a contrast to Tom Buchanan’s Yale degree dignity. Bateman, however, moonlights as a serial murderer who chops up prostitutes. Unlike Tom, Bateman does this of his own initiative, letting his own hands grasp the chainsaws. Likewise, he makes his own money on Wall Street rather than inheriting it. Yes, Bateman may be crazy, but isn’t it admirable to live a little on the wild side?

Last but not least, there’s all the rest; by which I mean all the other books that co-opt Harvard or Yale as their settings, whether the books only glancingly have a character with an Ivy degree or are yet exposés on life at Harvard/Yale. There simply isn’t time to go through every single such book, though. Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy metric: searching for “Yale” in the Books section of Amazon gives 53,772 results. Searching “Harvard” gives 84,349 (including a second-ranked result for a book entitled Harvard Hottie that promises it “is NOT a Christian romance”). So that settles that.

But wait, we can do one better: “How to get into Yale” — 31 results, but “How to get into Harvard” — 113 results.

Raynor Kuang ’17 (raynorkuang@college) has been promised

by Amazon that delivery of Harvard Hottie will take 3-5 business days.

How the Other Half Lives

An abridged interview with Ally Freedy ’14, the Harvard Band manager.

By WILL HARRINGTON

A

lly Freedy is a senior currently holding the position of manager of the Harvard Band. I sat down with her this past week over lunch to ask a few questions about the Harvard Band and the upcoming domination of the Yale football team.

Will Harrington: As a scramble band, how do you go about writing your shows? Do you write one for every single game?

Ally Freedy: So the way that a scramble band works is that we write a show new every week. We have three jokes, and then we have two “bangs” which are formations, we have a gun that goes “bang,” it’s our slang. We’ll perform formations on the field, sometimes words, sometimes silly things, like a cowboy hat. And then we’ll have written text, which is jokes, and three songs, one in between each paragraph of words. We practice the formations on Saturday morning, and perform the show on Saturday afternoon.

Our typical gig, when we’re not doing fight songs, we do fight songs,

and then we also have a repertoire of approximately 70 pop songs right now, and they’re all student arranged.

And some weeks we’ll arrange new songs for the games. It means that we’re able to keep up with the times.

We have songs as old as “Born to Run” or “Born to be Wild,” but then we also have “Dynamite” and “Party Rock Anthem,” and I arranged “Accidentally in Love.”

WH: What does the band manager do?

AF: I spend around 20-25 hours a week on managing; it’s a huge time commitment. I am the official president of the student organization.

And the thing which is interesting about that band is that we do have a band director, but the band is very much student run. For instance, this morning I went to an athletic department meeting and I was treated as an equal in that meeting, along with people whose professional job is to run the football game, but I’m a student and I’m in that role as well. I communicate directly with university

officials to co-ordinate our university functions, handle all of our finances, and meet with our alumni. We have a very active alumni base.

WH: What sort of extra meaning does Harvard-Yale hold for the band?

AF: So before the Penn game we chose the new senior staff. The band’s been around for almost 100 years and that means 100 years of these senior staff members so you really feel connected to these people in the past. I’ve met managers from the 70s, I’ve met managers from the 60s.

When I officially resign is at the half-time of Yale; the entire band staff switches over in the third quarter of Yale. We have 5 major senior staff positions (Manager, Drill Master, Stud Con, Drum Major, Schneider) and 25 junior staff positions. All of these transition at Yale (hand over the keys, baton, whatever the position consists of). The last thing I do as manager is half-time. I give over my keys, I give over my credit card, and hand over my hat, which is part of my uniform. The same is said for the

student conductor, the drum major. It has a special meaning for us.

WH: Do you have anything special coming up for the game? Or new arrangements?

AF: I do know our student conductor is arranging two new songs right now. We sometimes have done an arrangement of a classical piece at Yale, so we’ll see if that comes out. A pop song is being arranged, but I’m not sure which one, so we will premier a new song. Typically our thing with Yale is that people like to see us destroy a giant bulldog, so we’re going to do that, in some form. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We’ll probably have around 100 people on the field, which is really nice for us. The Yale band does something similar — I don’t think they really can destroy a Crimson, so… But our thing is destroying the bulldog.

Will Harrington ‘16 (harrington@college) is looking forward to the 7th consecutive victory

by Harvard in The Game.

Errata: In the 11.14.13 issue of the Harvard Independent, we incorrectly named Pauline Ryan as the artistic director and director of the Donkey Show. The artistic director and director of the Donkey Show is in fact Diane Paulus.

The Harvard Independent • 11.21.13

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Breaking the Fourth Panel Million Year Picnic and the ‘real indie.’

By JACKIE LEONG

I

discovered Million Year Picnic by chance. It was early August, and I was taking the long way back to Eliot from the main square. And I don’t know what it was — the colors? The light that happened to be hitting the shelves at the right angle? You imagine it — but I stopped in the middle of Mt. Auburn and looked down at my feet.

And there it was — a window that looked in upon a dusty-looking alcove of a shop filled with what I could only imagine were more books than I could have thought one space could possibly fit. “Million Year Picnic,” a poster read. It was a promotion of some book whose title, unfortunately, I cannot recall beyond the fact that it looked suspiciously like a graphic novel. And as I peered closer, ignoring the likely confused pedestrians who streamed around me, I realized that I was looking at something I had only read about, and had resigned to a culture of years past, back in their glory days. I was looking at a comic book store.

If you’ve been, you’ll know that MYP is sequestered away in what I imagine to be an almost frustrating manner if you’ve never had to pick up a coursepack at Flashprint. But I had, and so I descended into the strange little basement area, a bit uncertain. At the door, I nearly bolted.

For some reason I had this idea that the doorjamb was all that separated me from another realm.

Comic books, you see, are a strange, strange world.

Forget what you know about nerds. Forget that Harvard by definition tends to house many such people — this isn’t about being consumed by a love for chemistry or an obsession with Hellenic literature. Comics are a stranger strain that breed a separate ‘scene.’

I took a deep breath — and the plunge. The place smelled like paper and ink, and for some reason that was comforting. The windows to MYP don’t do the place justice, because it was stuffed from wall to wall with titles, not just a bit haphazardly.

“Check your bag at the front,” a sign read. I could understand why.

I shuffled past the standard-issue Marvel and DC, and quickly found that MYP is both organized and disorganized beyond belief. The store is mostly set up in chunks based on genre — to one side, the stereotypical comic books I’d just slid past, to the other, a sizeable amount of Japanese manga. Even as more or less of a mainstream comics layperson, I could respect the volume of volumes of both of those types that MYP offered. I’m sure that one who’s more ‘in’ on the hard-core comics scene might have understood and would likely have been excited at the collection this place had. Unfortunately, I remain largely ignorant, and moved on to the shelves that wrapped around back.

Yet outside those genres, that is, beyond the

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comics and into the realm of graphic novels, there wasn’t much to say in terms of organization. But that was part of the charm. Because the gems of this store, to me, were the collection of more indiestyled works. Digging through to find treasures was part of the fun. I never knew what I’d find tucked away in the nooks and alcoves between shelves. Sometimes, I’d stumble upon something great that turned out to be part of a series, which of course I wouldn’t be necessarily able to find. And yet, without context, flipping through was still a joy.

Browsing through a conventional book is to skim sentences, to read for artistry and style. No one scans to the middle of an unknown book for the plot. To thumb, though, through a graphic novel is quite the experience. Comics can be viewed in infinite directions. The imagery gives some semblance of framework, and yet none at all; a novel can only be linear. Yet throw in the visual element, and one can imagine any storyline to fit the images. Taken out of context, a graphic novel presents possibilities that extend beyond the scope of the story etched into the paper. It’s the universality of expressions, the fact that body language is a common currency. Going through the stacks of graphic novels at Million Year Picnic was half-reading, half-imagining. I admired the art, and had my own bit of fun with it.

It should be noted that Million Year Picnic’s a far cry from Newbury Comics, which to me was more of a gift shop. MYP is the real deal, with more books than promo merchandise, and a more bookish feeling in general. Granted, I’m guilty of browsing Newbury as well, but I walked out with a pair of socks and a gag gift for a friend. At MYP, I was considering leaving and coming back sans wallet, just so I wouldn’t do anything I regretted.

When I was a kid, I’d go to the bookstore eagerly and often. I’d sit between the shelves and devour novels right there. And perhaps it’s because I became busier as I prepared to apply to college, or that I simply lost time in general, but the feeling of browsing simply for the joy of the experience was one with which I was pleasantly surprised to be reacquainted. And though there were big titles like Persepolis and American Born Chinese, the fun of the whole thing was not in finding things I knew about, but in discovering titles that I knew few others did know about. MYP’s comics were dwarfed only by the sheer amount of indie material there.

That’s something you certainly don’t see on a usual basis, and a treat to be able to come across.

In the end, I walked out without buying a thing, but it took severe restraint. MYP is one of those days-of-old brick and mortar stores that makes you want to forget Amazon, forget your two-day

shipping, and shell out the extra cash just because you can. Because you’ve forgotten what the real experience of browsing for something to read is like, without resorting to scrutinizing the reviews and shopping around with the mouse and arrow keys. Because you miss the mindless perusing and the tickle on the pad of your thumb as you page through.

Forget what pop culture tells you about indie, about geekdom, or nerd culture. The geek culture that’s the current rage is watered down, consumerized, reduced to a print on a T-shirt and a quote on a mug. The logo of a movie poster. And I will not pretend I haven’t bought into that, a bit — I think that on some level, everyone who’s been exposed to pop culture has. But the real indie doesn’t flaunt itself. It can afford to be hidden in the underground, because those who understand it will come, and those who stumble upon it will be hooked.

That person could be you. So descend the steps and turn to the strange, beautiful little world that is Million Year Picnic. Just remember to come back up.

Jackie Leong ’16 (jacquelineleong@college.harvard.edu) doesn’t visit MYP as often as she’d like, for the sake of her paycheck, and probably for her own good.

11.21.13 • The Harvard Independent

When the Curtains Rise Revisiting the March family.

By SHREYA VARDHAN

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hairs about a fireplace, a piano in the corner, an old wooden clock on the wall — it is a warmlooking, homely little parlour, though one you would certainly expect the formidable Aunt March to look upon with some disdain. The very setting of the stage reflected the loving detail that clearly went into every aspect of HRDC’s musical retelling of Little Women, from the costumes and lyrics to the performances themselves. The musical, adapted from Louisa May Alcott’s original 1868 novel, was written for stage by Allan Knee, with music by Jason Howland and lyrics

by Mindi Dickstein, and was directed at Harvard by Ally Kiley ’15.

A large part of my enjoyment of this play was the joy of recognition, of revisiting a well-loved set of characters and their stories. I realized, however, that the effect of a musical like this one is centrally about a feeling of recognition even in those unfamiliar with the tale. This is true of any story to a certain extent, but especially so of one told with the help of songs that are simultaneously specific to its events and general enough to fit into the lives and memories of its listeners. In fact, Little Women lends itself to this feeling of recognition with unusual readiness: the March family and their friends form a considerably large body of markedly distinct characters, and it is hard not to see more than a shadow of someone you know in a number of them. The story is set in 19th century Boston, where the sisters Jo, Beth, Meg, and Amy grow up with varying degrees of impatience and reluctance; it’s always interesting how such distances in time interfere very little, if at all, with these attempts to relate.

One can, however, see the challenges that must have come up in the attempt to adapt the book to this form. The story follows the lives of complex characters over a period

The Harvard Independent • 11.21.13

of several years, during which the relationships between them and their individual goals and ideas gradually evolve. Moreover, it is a community where all possible pairs of people interact and have their own unique relationships, and the central characters sometimes go through different pivotal experiences at the same time in separation from one another, while inextricably tied together by the consequences of their decisions.

Clearly, the best that a three-hour enactment can hope to do is describe the more significant turns of the tale, although even the development of these is impossible to fully describe, and to add emotional immediacy — thoughts and feelings, almost by definition, are harder to capture in narrative prose than in dialogue. The songs were used very effectively as an alternative way of expressing the thoughts and feelings that brought about the transitions — while it was hard to talk of the numerous everyday instances as a result of which Laurie Lawrence, their young new neighbour, became inseparable from the March sisters, the song that followed his unofficial induction into the family very successfully expressed the spirit of his relationship with them.

However, the need to make the characters vivid and immediately relatable did lead to the depiction of less nuanced personalities than the characters in the book. Sweet and shy Meg, for instance, was more thoroughly sweet and shy than in the book, but we did not see the poise and prudence that one came to associate her with in the book. Laurie’s character retained its impulsive liveliness, but the altering phases of Jo and Laurie’s relationship, which could have been the most challenging part of the story to depict, were simplified by making him an unshakeable admirer of her from the

very beginning of their acquaintance.

The courtship of Meg and Mr. Brooke, Laurie’s tutor, was also more in the nature of a whirlwind affair than the subtle process that the book softly threw light on. These simplifications did provide a number of opportunities for humour, however, which were well-exploited in the script, and the three-hour show would probably have been a less colourful and entertaining experience without them.

The one relationship whose vicissitudes were described remarkably well despite all the limitations of time and form was the romance between Jo and Professor Bhaer, the impecunious German master she met while working as a governess in New York. Interestingly, the play chose his response to one of her enthusiastic sensationalist stories as the opening scene (This also emphasized Jo’s dream of being a writer as one of the central themes of the story.). The fact that this association weaved in and out of the otherwise sequential story provided an impression of a relationship growing over a period of time, even though the actual amount of time taken up by the scenes was not larger than the other aspects of the story. A song where the Professor considers ways of responding to the question “How are you?” in her letter was one of the several instances in the play where the lyrics brilliantly and delightfully captured a theme. The dialogue in their shared scenes was crackled with wit and energy (even if this meant that the arguments were rather more frequent and heated than in the book), and this side of the play was certainly one of its triumphs.

This reading of Little Women reproduced nearly all the images from the story that at least for me were central to it. You could see the audience gasp as Amy jealously threw Jo’s manuscript into the fire,

laugh at Joe’s earnest and hopeless attempts to acquire poise and grace in order to win formidable Aunt March’s unforthcoming approval, and collectively smile as the unsmiling Mr. Lawrence (Laurie’s somewhat crotchety grandfather) offered to let Beth play his beautiful piano.

The energetic performances were no doubt responsible for this effect to as great an extent as the well-paced and seamless script. Towards the end, you had a sense of having been through the endless alterations of hope and despair that characterize our own days -- the precise feeling that the book leaves you with -- and the eventual triumph over despair could not fail to give you the wholesome final smile that this story promises.

Shreya Vardhan ’17 (shreyavardhan@ college) especially loves the less well-known last book of the series, Jo’s Boys, which was probably the most complex and touching of the lot.

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Sports

Cambridge Conquers

By SEAN FRAZZETTE

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he Game is approaching, and the weekend that encompasses the oldest football rivalry promises to be great, as usual. Starting Friday afternoon, fans from both schools will, um, get well hydrated en route to belligerence in the name of school pride. People who cannot even identify a single position on the football field will be able to explain exactly why the Crimson will defeat the Bulldogs — we’re better, that’s about it…

But the question that still remains is: Where is The Game better hosted? At Harvard’s lovely city of Cambridge, or Yale’s hellhole New Haven? I admit that this is not too tough of a question to answer. Let’s break it down to major categories: food, atmosphere, danger factor, and miscellaneous additional categories.

First, for food, one may be inclined to say the great city of New Haven reigns supreme due to their incredible pizza joints, such as Pepe’s, Sally’s, and Modern. But after pizza, New Haven is just your average terrible excuse for a city. As in, its food is fine, but nothing to brag about. Meanwhile, we all know what Cambridge offers. Sure, we have Noch’s and Otto’s, which honestly cannot begin to compete with the aforementioned Connecticut pies, but we also have an abundance

Why going to New Haven sucks.

of cheap places for burgers and burritos, places for sit-down service or take-out fast food, and, of course, drunken Chinese food glory at the one and only Kong. Point: Harvard.

While I cannot technically speak to how bad of an atmosphere Yale provides when hosting The Game, I can only imagine they’re equally as unaware about football and tailgating as Harvard.

We can call this one a draw, as it really only underlines how embarrassingly bad the Ivy League schools are at the whole sports weekend thing.

Point: Neither.

The next category is the danger factor. Now, I like my weekends with a little danger. I don’t mind if tutors bust a party. I don’t even mind if cops are called, but what I do care about is if there is a possibility of me being attacked. New Haven offers a new level of danger. There’s just something about New Haven that is off. Then again, the whole state of Connecticut is kind of off. I think everyone can agree on that. Maybe it’s just my native Masshole bias, but that state is just a big let down in my eyes. It has potential with the pizza, and then falls off at every other level, especially the crime rate. New Haven has a violent crime rate of 13.54, while Cambridge’s is a friendly 4.70. I like foot-

ball. I don’t like knives. Sorry, New Haven. Point: Harvard.

Finally, we get to the additional points that can’t quite fit into the other categories above. This includes the feel of the school. For example, would you rather look at the beautiful ivy-covered gates and redbrick buildings of our college, or the old English-style, dungeon-esque, white-stoned buildings of Yale. I think your rational mind can sort that out. Sure, a Bulldog is probably a better mascot than a color, but we’re better at football, and I feel like that should factor in somewhere. Hey, Bulldogs, how do six straight losses and one win in the last twelve Games taste? Point: Harvard In the end, maybe I was too harsh on New Haven. Actually, no, I wasn’t. Harvard wins in a shut out, 3-0, across the hosting categories. But Yale should be used to shut outs; Harvard’s had nineteen in Game history. Expect number twenty on Saturday.

Sean Frazzette ’16 (sfrazzette@college) thinks pizza may be the only redeemable quality of Connecticut, let alone New Haven.

A Battle Abroad

Describing foreign victory and its spoils. B

y

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h, New Haven. The scent of high crime rates wafting across pretentious yet strangely boring Connecticut, the cold austerity of grey stone buildings, a nip in the air from the chill of second place status — Yale in November is lovely.

So lovely, in fact, that Harvard students should consider it a treat to jump on a bus down to New Haven this weekend, if not to admire the campus, then to revel in the glory of defeating Yalies on their home turf. While this particularly vengeful pleasure is the real reason crimson-blooded Harvardians savor the biannual New Haven invasion, there are lesser reasons to appreciate the Game at Yale as well. Let us enumerate them: First, half the attraction of any Harvard-Yale weekend is the fun that happens off the field.

Although a tragic tailgating death in 2011 has caused Yale to tighten its alcohol policies to match Harvard’s, there will be nary a keg in tailgate village this year — Yale’s tailgating scene is generally larger and rowdier than Harvard’s. The old college dream of achieving peak drunkenness by ten a.m. is fully possible in the shadow of the Bowl. More to the point, however, is the unfortunately superior 10 harvardindependent.com

quality of their Game’s Eve entertainment. As much as riverside seniors love the rooftop bar at Daedalus, the magnificently ‘divey’ atmosphere of New Haven’s Toad’s Place has no such Cambridge equivalent. A genuinely decent music venue as well as the best place in Connecticut to pick up an STD, Toad’s Place promises watery drinks and a good time for all. There is something magical about sleeping on the dirty common room floor of a Yale “College” after a night of ill-advised New Haven clubbing only to wake the next day, not shower, and then chase down breakfast with peppermint schnapps.

As for the conditions of the Game itself, the Yale Bowl has two distinct advantages over Harvard Stadium. First, due to the high walls of the Stadium, the student section is plunged into a freezing shadow as the sun moves across the sky. The Yale Bowl remains fully exposed to the sun (or as this weekend might have it, rain), throughout the Game, which should result in equitable temperatures for all. Moreover, when it comes time to rush the field after our seventh consecutive win, the drop down to the grass is significantly shorter at the Yale

MEGHAN BROOKS

Bowl than at Harvard Stadium. If Saturday brings broken legs and shin splints at all, they won’t belong to spectators.

Most importantly, while Harvard-Yale at home is certainly convenient — most of us can hop out of bed and get to the tailgate in half an hour flat — Harvard-Yale at Yale is triumphant. Much like the Greeks sailed to Ilium to defeat Troy from within its own walls, so too will Harvard spring from Cambridge to destroy the Yale Bowl. Like the Golden Horde trampling Central Asia to overtake Eastern Europe, so too will Harvard sweep down the coast to overwhelm Yale. Our team a Trojan horse, our quarterback a Khan, the victory we seize on foreign soil is all the sweeter for the adventure of its capture. On chartered coach buses, we carry the spoils back to Cambridge, sowing Yalie humiliation in our wake.

Meghan Brooks ’14 (meghanbrooks@college) has absolutely no personal knowledge of any of the events, places, or traditions described in the second paragraph. She also does not recommend peppermint schnapps in hot chocolate, even if you sprinkle cinnamon on the whipped cream.

11.21.13 • The Harvard Independent

Sports

Game Time

indy

By DOMINIQUE LUONGO

The History and Essentials for the 130th Meeting of Harvard and Yale.

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very year students from the two most prestigious schools in the world come together to witness one of the world’s most famous college rivalries. It is a time for having fun, socializing, and fraternizing with the enemy friends and peers who preferred to attend that school in New Haven. In honor of The Game, the Indy is giving you an overview of the history and traditions of Harvard’s biggest football game.

A Brief History: The first Game was held on November 13, 1875 in New Haven and was won by Harvard. The rules of football weren’t as clear back then, but Yale hadn’t managed to score any field goals or touchdowns, so it was safe to give the win to Harvard. Over the next ten years, Harvard suffered a string of losses and ties, at times for confusing reasons (Really?

A loss for having four more safeties than the opposing team? This happened in the 1881 Game).

Harvard decided to ban football outright in 1885, but popular demand brought the sport back (perhaps a UC referendum was used?) and Harvard was able to pull out a win in 1890, its first in 15 years. The Game of 1894 was reportedly so violent that the annual melee was not held for the next two years (recovery time).

Harvard won the last game hosted on Soldiers Field in 1901. When the Crimson started playing in Harvard Stadium in 1903, the team had a losing streak that was not broken until 1908 when Harvard Coach Percy Haughton was rumored to have “killed” a bulldog effigy in a successful bid at rousing his team.

The Game was not held in 1917 and 1918, as the football programs at Harvard and Yale were suspended during World War I. During World War II, only Harvard suspended

its football program, which also resulted in the Game not being held for two years. Harvard rebooted its football program just in time for the 1945 Game, which was held at Yale, reversing the long-standing tradition (started in 1897) of Yale hosting the Game on even years, and Harvard hosting the Game on odd years. The 1945 Game redefined the tradition so that now Harvard hosts on even years and Yale hosts on odd years, a pattern that continues to this day.

Notable Players and Coaches: • Larry Kelley (Yale ‘36) and Clint Frank (Yale ‘37) – Heisman Trophy Winners • Gerald Ford (Yale Law ‘41), as an assistant coach – United States President • Ted Kennedy (‘56) – United States Senator • Tommy Lee Jones (‘69) – Academy AwardWinning Actor • Brian Dowling (Yale ‘69) – NFL Player • Calvin Hill (Yale ‘69) – NFL Player • Ryan Fitzpatrick (‘04) –NFL Player • Kyle Juszczyk (‘12)—NFL Player (In)Famous Pranks: The first large-scale prank took place during the 1961 Game at Yale. A mock edition of The Yale Daily News was published and circulated by The Harvard Crimson. One of the major news stories “reported” that President John F. Kennedy would be in attendance for the Game. On the day of the Game, Crimson President Robert Ellis Smith dressed as the Commander-In-Chief and walked on the field flanked by colleagues dressed as Secret Service officers to the accompaniment of the Harvard Band playing “Hail to the Chief,” resulting in thousands of spectators being hoodwinked by the elaborate ploy.

In 1933, Yale’s mascot Handsome Dan II went missing on the day of the Game (in a suspected kidnapping perpetrated by the Harvard Lampoon), only to be discovered the next morning licking the feet of John Harvard, which had been slathered with hamburger meat.

During the 1982 Game, MIT was responsible for the placement of a large weather balloon that inflated until it eventually burst open and expelled talcum powder all over the field.

MIT students struck again in 1990 when they launched a rocket over the goal posts just as a kicker was getting ready for a field goal. Four hundred and eighty feet of wire came out of the rocket, hanging an MIT banner over the goal posts.

In 2004, signs were distributed to Harvard fans

by Yale students that when lifted, spelled out “WE SUCK.” Thankfully, Harvard fans were wise enough to not readily accept the prompting of the strange college-aged fans and ensured that the prank was not carried out completely.

Two MIT students went streaking across the field during the Game in 2006 and exposed a tiny bit more than just their immaturity.

Tailgate and Parties: Perhaps among the most quintessential aspects of The Game are the parties that accompany it.

Promising a good time for all who are willing to set aside their dueling gloves, The Game is one of the only opportunities for so many of the most delightfully over-worked college students to have a good time and enjoy one of the greatest sports traditions in American history.

Dominique Luongo ’17 (dominiqueluongo@college) is stoked for this weekend and hopes that everyone has a terrific time!

Photo by Dominique Luongo

The Harvard Independent • 11.21.13

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