Weekend

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013

The Road Less Traveled Hayley Byrnes delves into the experiences of first-generation college students.

//BY HAYLEY BYRNES, PAGE 3

ALDERMAN

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A REPUBLICAN’S HISTORIC CHALLENGE

Nick Defiesta explores the potential of a Republican victory in Ward 1.

AVANT GARDE

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WHERE IS CHASE MICHAELS?

Wesley Yiin finds motivation in an unlikely speaker at the Cabaret.

A CAPPELLA

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THE LIVES OF WHIFFS AND WHIMS

Jennifer Gersten questions the worth of a gap year spent singing.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

DAWE

WEEKEND

WEEKEND VIEWS

MEDANSKY

F R I D AY OCTOBER 4

// BY WEEKEND

Most changes happen gradually. A tree grows with the accumulation of years. The seasons change in time with the imperceptible drift of sunrise and sunset. Big, important changes arrive slowly. Over the course of four years, no one will tell you when you are at the single, defining moment of your college experience — or even if that moment exists.

At WEEKEND, however, we are faced with a change that is impossible to ignore. Three new editors: Yanan, a Canadian cat girl; Elaina, a fierce, high-blessed, girl from Alabama; and Jackson, an over-preppy Californian with a penchant for poetry under the influence.

Will things suddenly become more real and less vague? Will the lounge, now home to birds and belugas, prosper with its new inhabitants?

Last year’s editors dedicated themselves to a wholehearted renovation of the WEEKEND brand. They dived into daring reporting, gave no quarter to the machinations of the administra-

tion and championed both nudity and student activism. They said they were fading, but the thread was strong.

This year, we sit pledged to the changes that our forbearers made. We believe in their causes, and live with the roughness (wot? oatmeal, porridge, slipped) of their language. But for all their greatness, we cannot be the same as they were, and we don’t intend to be.

So here’s to the future — to pitch meetings in the lounge, to Thursday night dance parties, to a redesigned ticker and to interactive doubletrucks.

Here’s to checking our bless and naming our baby bamboo. Here’s to whatever comes next.

WEEKEND, as we see it, is set for another round of changes. We’ve proposed some of them already, having made our champagne-soaked pledge to fight for the good of the lounge. As the year draws on, we’ll build our staff of freshmen and sophomores, find new and unexpected voices around campus and refine our own editorial styles.

Still, the precipice exists — the break that will surely exist before and after our tenures as editors. Maybe it’s just the difference between having our names on the masthead. Maybe editors from years past will return to their home and find other differences: rearranged seats, added decorations, conversations held entirely in Chinese.

But there is one good thing to do when you find yourself balanced on the brink-jump. We can’t stay still forever. We have deadline to make, reporters to email and pages to layout in the future. All this is to say that here at WEEKEND we’re not about to deny the future. It’s coming, not just the drift of seasons and the march toward graduation, but the big moments: our first issue, our first time on the masthead, our first (hopefully not fatal) errors on K4.

The future may seem scary, but up in the lounge, we’re perched and ready.

Contact WEEKEND AT ydnweekendedz@panlists.yale.edu .

RIP ABP, replacement: TBD // BY JAKE DAWE

Au Bon Pain is out, but what’s in? A lot of rumors have been flying around Yale as to what will replace Blue State’s immature, bed-wetting younger brother. Let’s take a moment to break down the possibilities.

Brooks Brothers I’ve heard from many people that this national chain will open soon on the Flower Lady’s corner. All I have to say is no thank you. Doesn’t it seem monotonous to anyone that a Brook Brothers would be across the street from Gant and Jack Wills, down the sidewalk from J. Crew, and a stone’s throw from the new J. Press location?

The world already thinks we’re WASPy. Do we really need a stuffy fifth store for buying cable-knit sweaters to toss over our shoulders and tie around our necks?

Anthropologie Unnecessary. If homeless chic is more your style, why pay? Revolt! Steal your outfits from lost and found bins.

Tear clothes off pedestrians’ backs. In other news, American Apparel is probably going out of business, so maybe there will be more of a market for $45 block tees. Who knows?

Jamba Juice Cross your fingers, people. A Jamba Juice on that corner would be God’s gift to Yalies. Imagine: it’s four o’clock in the afternoon and you’re fading fast after a grueling day. What are you going to get? The same cold brew you’ve had

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

A leap from the brink

from Blue State every day for the past month? Ha! Not anymore! You’re going to Jamba Juice for a motherfucking 30 oz. Caribbean Passion smoothie with a double energy/protein shot. Doesn’t that sound better than a teal cable-knit sweater? Yes. Yes it does.

Chipotle I know what you’re thinking. “We already have a Chipotle. Why have two?” Because reasons, my ignorant tropical fish. Because reasons. Let me paint a picture for you: you’re on your way back from the Criterion. You’ve just caught a matinee with some friends and you’re not feeling a dining hall dinner, so you grab a carnitas burrito from Chipotle. Good move.

You’re walking, you’re walking, and then BOOM. You realize you forgot to buy chips and guac. Bad move. You’re already passing Trumbull, though, and it’s too far to turn back. This is a disaster, seemingly the Hindenburg moment of your day, right? WRONG, because there’s another Chipotle on the corner of York and Elm. So go get your chips and guac. You deserve it, champ.

Rainforest Café Don’t even pretend like this wouldn’t be the best thing to happen to this campus since we went co-ed. We all know Rainforest Café. If you don’t, google it now because apparently none of your 3rd grade friends had awesome birthday parties. Rainforest Café is like James Cameron’s Avatar meets Chuck

E. Cheese, so it’s pretty much the best thing ever. False tree cover clings to the ceiling, fog machines ooze a sweetsmelling chemical mist, and animatronic creatures recreate a mystical yet low-budget tropical environment. For-

THE WORLD ALREADY THINKS WE’RE WASP-Y. get ending the night at Box. Finish off your Saturday with lava nachos, a rainforest burger and a sparkling volcano dessert.

Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament One time my middle school medieval history class went on a field trip to Medieval Times in Lyndhurst, N.J., and up until then, it was the best thing to happen in my young life. The whole place is an attempt to recreate a medieval castle. The bar offers mead and other adult drinks while kids raid the gift shop for plastic broadswords. A two-hour jousting tournament plays out in front of you while you eat a “historically accurate” meal. (The “medieval” meal is curiously made up of chicken, tomato soup, garlic bread, and buttery mashed potatoes. My guess would have been maggoty black bread or horseflesh. Or nothing.) You’re even encouraged to call your server wench

or squire. History, right?! Some of you might not get the appeal of a Medieval Times on the corner of York and Elm, but you just don’t get it. Or at least that’s what I told my middle school friends when I got waaayyyyyy too into it.

Panda Pit On Red Hot Poker retreat in Brooklyn last year we wandered into an abandoned warehouse where we found a giant wooden pen filled to the brim with hundreds upon hundreds of factory-reject stuffed animal pandas. We jumped into it. This speaks for itself.

Touch Tunnel À la interactive science centers. The sort of thing where you can disappear, touch whatever you want, and emerge twenty minutes later after a nervous breakdown in pitch blackness.

A pumpkin spice candle-scented room filled with kittens, sleeping bags, and balloons Give me one reason why we shouldn’t. *** Some of these are more realistic than others (i.e. the touch tunnel, Medieval Times), but at the end of the day, all I really want is a Jamba Juice. Is that too much to ask?

Contact JAKE DAWE at jacob.dawe@yale.edu .

The Drug War According to Vince // BY MARISSA MENDANSKY

On Sunday night, 10.3 million viewers tuned in to watch the final episode of the greatest show that has ever been on television. The drama to which I am referring has been so ubiquitous as of late that I need not mention its name or its plot, but for the uninitiated, here’s a refresher. In this AMC original series, down-and-out chemistry teacher Walter Hartwell White breaks the proverbial bad. He takes on the role of a meth-king, Heisenberg, and peddles truckloads of the blue stuff from El Paso to Prague.

This past Sunday, I dropped everything to learn what would become of Albuquerque’s unlikely Scarface. And let’s be clear: the series finale was a triumph. But as we bid adieu to Breaking Bad, it’s worth reflecting on the show’s nebulous relationship with the war on drugs, and what that might mean for its legacy.

I say war on drugs, and not drugs themselves, for a reason. After all, Breaking Bad is really about a topic truly much sexier than meth: regulation.

Whether Walt’s slinging blue crystal, spilling state secrets or peddling counterfeit goods is irrelevant, as long as it’s illegal. Consider this scene in first sea-

YALE ANIME SOCIETY PRESENTS: COWBOY BEBOP WLH // 7:30PM

All aboard the spaceship Bebop! Starring: exiled hitman Spike Spiegal and his crew of bounty hunters.

son finale: Walt and Hank sit poolside with two Cuban cigars and a bottle of hard liquor. “If we were drinking this in 1930, we’d be breaking the law,” Walt muses. He tips his glass and gives the cigar a puff. “Who knows what will be legal next year?” Walt’s suggesting, of course, that the bright lines of regulation are arbitrary — his brother-in-law, ever the DEA agent, remains skeptical.

But Walter White has a point. The rise of the black market made Prohibition a self-defeating policy. Poolside at 308 Negro Arroyo Lane, Walt invokes its history, and challenges Hank and us with the same question: To what extent is today’s war on drugs similarly misguided? After five seasons, Breaking Bad failed to provide an answer. Fans should have demanded more.

Breaking Bad will be remembered as deeply conflicted on the morality of the drug war. On one hand, the series depicts addiction with unflinching honesty. Episodes like second two’s “Peekaboo” and three’s “Full Measure” illustrate the human cost of drug use and the drug trade in vignettes of families lost and lives destroyed. These are the images we expect from DEA pro-

paganda (the character Wendy — who serves alternately as prostitute, single mother and deus ex machina — comes straight from the script of an afterschool special), but no one would mistake Breaking Bad for a 1980s PSA. The show references libertarian arguments in favor of legalization and pokes fun at political debates about property rights and unlawful search and seizure. In season three’s “Sunset,” Jesse fights for his constitutional rights in a scene that makes viewers cheer — until, perhaps, we remember he’s cooking meth inside that RV. As viewers, we’re conflicted. We swoon when Walt dons his Hazmat to “Crystal Blue Persuasion” and wince when that same blue crystal results in the death of a child. And yes, the drug war raises complicated moral questions. But a show that spent five seasons thinking about drugs and the war on them should have a clearer worldview than the murky mess of mixed messaging Breaking Bad has left behind. As the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, told Vice Magazine: “you’d think I’d have a stronger opinion on [the drug war], but I spend all my time thinking about this

one character and not the politics at large.”

This is from a show that has taken political stances, and responded to criticism from fans. When Breaking Bad fans reacted to a character with such bitter misogyny it warranted an op-ed in the New York Times, Gilligan stood up for strong women in the show’s final season. Similarly, liberals and conservatives have both heralded Breaking Bad as the great parable of the drug war age. They shouldn’t both be right, but show’s ambiguity leaves room for both arguments.

I don’t know the stance the show would have taken, or whether I would have agreed with it. I don’t know what it would have looked like, either, but I’m sure one of the greatest writing teams in history could have figured it out. In the end, Breaking Bad gave many Americans their first taste of realities of the drug war. For a great work of art to introduce these questions, then actively refuse to answer them, is cowardice.

Contact MARISSA MENDANSKY at marissa.mendansky@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Assisted back-cracking.

Real friends step on the achy bones of other friend’s backs.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

GENERATIONAL GAP // BY HAYLEY BYRNES

J

uan Bravo ’16 has had many firsts at Yale. First Commons dance. First chemistry problem set. First snow. But before Bravo came to New Haven, he first bid a final farewell to his California high school: to metal detectors at every door, police officers at every corner, knives in every pocket. In 2011, Bravo’s high school made headlines in the Los Angeles Times when a student stabbed his ex-girlfriend in the school’s cafeteria. The attention that fell on the school was accompanied by neither prestige nor pride.

A 20-minute drive away, Forrest Lin’s ’16 high school had seen its own share of difficulties. Glancing around Commons, Lin was hesitant to describe his high school experience. After a pause, he met my eyes and murmured that the school had four-day cares, serving the children of students.

At Yale, it was more “Good Will Hunting,” and less “Stand and Deliver,” Lin told me, referencing a 1988 film about a crumbling East Los Angeles high school. Lin and Bravo were the first in their families to attend college, and the first in their communities to attend Yale. They came from neighborhoods with large minority populations, few college graduates and high crime. Now, Handsome Dan has replaced their schools’ bands of drug-sniffing police dogs.

In the current freshman class, 12 percent of students will be the first in their family to complete a fouryear college, placing them in the category of “first-generation” college graduates. Their numbers are smaller than that of freshman with a legacy affiliation, who make up 13.8 percent of the class of 2017.

With students like Lin and Bravo in mind, Alejandro Gutierrez ’13 wrote a News column last February. As a first-generation student, Gutierrez lamented the lack of institutional support on campus and encouraged the creation of an academic bridge program to ease the transition to Yale. Two months later, the University announced the creation of the Freshman Scholars at Yale program, a five-week summer bridge program not unlike what Gutierrez proposed. The program targets low-income students from under-resourced areas — of

whom “almost all” are first-generation, according to Dean William Whobry, who administered the program as dean of the Summer Session.

This July, the Admissions Office invited 60 students to participate in FSY. With a cap of around half that number, it accepted the first 33 respondents. While living in Morse College, each student completed a nonfiction-writing seminar (English 114) for credit — with all expenses, including food, housing and travel, paid for by Yale.

Workshops and seminars familiarized students with Yale’s academic resources, including writing tutors and personal librarians.

Outside the academic realm, students took program-sponsored trips to nearby Connecticut tourist sites. In a 2012 APA study, Stanford professor Hazel Markus and four co-authors explored why firstgeneration students perform academically worse than their continuing-generation counterparts.

The authors studied the top 50 ranked U.S. universities, including Yale, and found that campus culture fueled the generational disparity. Most highly ranked schools foster a highly independent climate, a social norm familiar to middle- and upper-middleclass students. First-generation students, in contrast, are often more familiar with interdependent norms. The end result: a “cultural mismatch” for first-generation students. A mismatch which translates, often, to academic subordination.

“We call ourselves the Mistakes.

Sitting, doing our homework, not understanding it: how are we here?” Maxine Dillon ’17 asked.

“It’s a question that’s always in the back of my mind.”

Dillon, a Freshman Scholar and first-generation student, is not alone. Bravo’s high school cafeteria is a far cry from the hallowed halls of Andover, and the smokefilled bathrooms of Lin’s adolescent years paint a stark contrast to the pearl-white pillars of Choate Rosemary Hall.

Still, President Salovey has hailed Yale as a “great equalizer” among students. But for most of the first-generation students interviewed, the pursuit of

the American dream presents an uneven path.

Two weeks after the program’s end, President Peter Salovey addressed the incoming freshman class, his voice raspy with laryngitis. Within minutes, a theme emerged: the American Dream.

Centering the discussion on socioeconomic diversity, Salovey emphasized Yale’s power to further social mobility. He carefully sidestepped the usual admissions labels, with no mention of “disadvantaged” or “low-income” students. Still, it was an evening of firsts, as Salovey breached the issue of class — a subject several students interviewed called “one of the last taboo topics at Yale.”

I FELT LIKE I HAD MORE TO FIND OUT THAN THE AVERAGE YALIE. CHRISTINA BUI ‘13

“Why did I choose to talk about Yale and the American Dream today?” he asked. “To assure you — especially those of you from families that are not affluent — that the dream is very much alive here.”

Perched atop one of Yale’s grandest stages, Salovey’s words echoed through a crowded Woolsey Hall. But in the smaller corners of campus, in the common rooms and the library cubicles, the echoes are harder to hear.

SCALING THE GAP 9:01 a.m.: Trek to WLH, coffee in hand. Careful not to spill.

9:05: Open the door. Sit in the back. 9:06: Grab a syllabus. Follow along. Watch a hand climb up, gingerly. Listen. Eschatological. Phenomenology. Try to spell each in your head. Your question: what, exactly, are the “problems of philosophy”?

So began Jamar Williams’s ’17 second day of classes. “Everyone was asking provocative questions, and it was nine in the morning,” said Williams, a Freshman Scholar and first-generation student.

Most freshmen confront academic intimidation at Yale, but first-generation students may be especially predisposed to this kind of struggle. With so many coming from under-resourced backgrounds, the necessity to play “catch-up” is amplified. “I felt like I had more to find out than the average Yalie,” recalls Christina Bui ’13, a counselor for the Freshman Scholars program and first-generation student.

“A lot of things are open to everyone, of course. But there are all these unmentioned prereqs,” said Ellie Dupler ’16, a first-generation student and QuestBridge scholar.

Some, of course, meet such unspoken requirements with ease. Hannah Thai ’16 described a friend who had taken Greek at her private high school, read Herodotus in the original and memorized it. “She said she tried not to correct a professor when he misquoted it,” Thai recalled.

Asked if intimidation has ever affected her academic choices, Thai nodded. “Yale prides itself on diversity, but the playing field is not even. [For] subjects like English and classics, you have to have such a strong background,” she pointed out. “I feel like that’s why I’m doing economics. I mean, I like it. But also, everyone is starting fresh.”

Directed Studies, the selective year-long humanities program offered to freshmen, embodies such unspoken fears about academic inequality. “I never even thought of DS as an option.

It seemed like something that wouldn’t be open to me at all,” said Jazzmin Estebane ’13, an FSY counselor and first-generation student. Mimi Pham ’17 agreed.

“I felt like I wouldn’t match up to the other kids in the program,” she said.

Professor Howard Bloch, director of DS, denied that the program might be inaccessible to students from certain backgrounds. “It’s no more exclusive than reading the

Western canon, which is everyone’s privilege and responsibility,” he said, emphasizing his belief that knowledge is democratic.

Fidgeting in her seat in Bass Cafe, Thai contested that idea. If knowledge is democratic, education — the basis of how we learn knowledge — is not. “I can understand why people are afraid to apply [to Yale]. There’s such [an academic] disparity,” she said.

But Gutierrez insisted that his academic career, while “needlessly difficult,” was not dictated in content by his background. The academic disadvantage that he felt extended equally across subjects and was not more or less palpable for certain disciplines. “I felt like I had to work a lot harder in any class to stay afloat,” he said.

The “knowledge gap” perceived by first-generation students is not the only challenge they face. Many must also adjust to a rigorous and unfamiliar teaching style. “In high school, it was, ‘Did you read?’

Here, it’s ‘Make an argument,’” Thai explained.

“I’m not that smart. I’m good at asking questions. I’m good at doing what I’m told,” said Kerry BurkeMcCloud ’17, an FSY and first-generation student. But Travis Reginal ’16, who wrote about his experience as a first-generation student in the New York Times this July, is careful not to conflate academic potential with academic performance. Reginal does not think the first-generation community is any less academically capable. “It’s not that you can’t do the work,” he told me, “it’s psychological. It’s how you view yourself in light of others.”

For Reginal, Yale administrators may not have helped that unhealthy mindset. “I have had awkward conversations at Yale, including one with writing tutors who assumed I didn’t know what a subordinate clause was. Adults would ask how I was adjusting to a culture so different from what I SEE BRIDGE PAGE 8

Yale University EXIT 4

Mauk, Georgia

Thompsonville, Michigan

EXIT 3

EXIT 2

Gun Barrel City, Texas EXIT 1

F R I D AY OCTOBER 4

CITY-WIDE OPEN STUDIOS OPENING PARTY

Artspace, 50 Orange St. // 5 p.m.

A festival celebrating the YUAG’s sexier, edgier little sister. Bar closes at 8 p.m.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: The ‘Work Bitch’ music video.

A little Maserati never killed nobody.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

Finding Tenderness in Post-War America // BY ALICIA LOVELACE

America, Men and, you guessed it, Tenderness converge in Laura Wexler’s photographs of treeshaded, picket-fenced microcosms that are the Boston suburbs of her childhood. Fathers come home to children, men chop wood in undershirts, boys ride on bikes and boys play ball, all semi-obscured by low hanging branches, roofs, brambles, or the occasional telephone pole. The gentle stuff of suburbia almost makes you forget that it is 1968: America is in the midst of Vietnam and a year of assassinations. In black-and-white depictions of the places she grew up, a twenty year old Wexler captures the subtle, precarious magic of humans in their home away from the city, away from the madness of the post-World War II world.

The concept of getting away from the city and its inevitable chaos, instead focusing on intimate moments of daily life, pervades Wexler’s 21 triumphant, if barely tilted, frames. Collared shirts imply ironing, and serve as one of many examples throughout the collection of “devotions offered to ‘normality,’ and modest little prayers for peace,” in Wexler’s words. But at the same time,

ties are askew, off-center, as on the “Depositor at Shawmut Bank” who poses, affable in front of the bank, strong white pillars tilted in the photo. There is tension, too, in the furrowed eyebrows of the men who rake a lawn in unison in “Men at Work, #3.” Piles of wood lean against homes and simple, white furniture sit on the lawn carefully placed, in “Backyard,” waiting patiently for people to move them again.

A LESS GLAMOROUS VERSION OF THE CLASSIC MONA-LISA SMILE PARTS HER LIPS, LOOKS US IN THE EYES, AND ASKS US IF WE BELIEVE IN THE TENDERNESS OF THE SUBURBS JUST YET. During her time at MIT, Laura

Wexler studied photography and protested against the Vietnam War and the ensuing suppression of civil rights. This collection is the product of a year-long project to capture the suburbs of her earlier years in an attempt to show the fraying of an American social contract, a post-war crossroads in the heart of outward stability: the silent war of keeping it together in the suburbs. These photographs show the quiet restraint and plea for peace in normal tasks of the home. Every scene hearkens back to a past moment and emphasizes the tenuousness of the future, even the present, in its seemingly hasty composition and off-center subjects. The whim of a moment is stuck forever, perilously in print.

Many times a fence, or a row of bushes acting as a fence, inserts the viewer into the neighborhood as a participant in the scene, as someone peeking through, searching for humanity, searching for tenderness. It also tests the viewer, forces her to put up a front that everything is perfect, to match the furniture, and to conform to a world that tries its hardest to differentiate itself from the outside disorder.

// TASNIM ELBOUTE

Portrayals of Post-war American home life in Laura Wexler’s newest exhibit.

Men and boys largely make up the tender subjects in this exhibit, but two notable exceptions remain: “Self-Portrait” of Wexler herself, and of her mother in “My Mother in her Kitchen.” These two are found at the collection’s end, as the subject matter becomes more intimate in the sense that it turns to the inside of the house, zooming in from “Daddy’s Home” on the outside to an image of her mother to an image of Wexler’s own face. Her face “was the white face of the post-war promise,” she says, her hair slightly disheveled, unwashed and tossed across the front of her right shoulder next to a shirt unzipped only an inch, hardly enough to notice. A less glamorous version of the classic Mona Lisa smile parts her lips, looks us in the eyes, and asks us if we believe in the tenderness of the suburbs just yet.

Contact ALICIA LOVELACE at alicia.lovelace@yale.edu .

Love and Loss: Memorializing Emotion Through the Material Form // BY LEAH MOTZKIN

// KEN YANAGISAWA

F R I D AY OCTOBER 4

Chances are, you have never been to the Institute of Sacred Music’s Gallery for Sacred Arts.

I, along with my dutiful companion, certainly hadn’t, and it seemed as though no one could even direct me (or maybe I’m just bad at remembering directions).

But if you want to start exploring the extent of what the Yale arts community has to offer, I highly recommend taking the pilgrimage through the Divinity School’s heavenly quadrangle to visit the Gallery’s newest exhibit “All That Remains: Material Remembrances in Love and Loss.”

The exhibit showcases the work of four artists who have created physical manifestations of their grief after the loss of a loved one. The Gallery is relatively small, its soft lighting and white walls providing the space’s only physical backdrop. Immediately upon entering the room, you are struck by the exhibit’s centerpiece: a 25-foot reclining, somber, inflatable Buddha, based off of the stone Buddha at Gal Vihara

NOT-SO-STRAIGHT FROSH MEETING Women’s Center // 7 p.m.

We are the 25 percent.

in Sri Lanka. The piece, Lewis deSoto’s Paranirvana (self-portrait), remains inflated by a fan.

The fan is its only life-source, and every night when the exhibition closes, the fan is turned off. In this way, the sculpture undergoes the cycle of life and death every day, providing the most explicit embodiment of the exhibit’s larger theme.

Six paintings, adorning the walls of the intimate space, tell the stories of human pain and recovery. While each piece encapsulates each respective artist’s personal — and perhaps a universal — struggle, one stands out in particular. In one piece

by Rick Bartow, figures and fish bones emerge from a murky grey and blue background. The central figure grasps a supine body that seems to be floating away, perhaps into heaven, in spite of the harrowed protests of his loved ones. Another figure in the corner, a woman, bears the grizzled face of an animal, a depiction of her struggle to transcend the

reality of human mortality. The painting is intensely emotional; and when viewed in light of the title “Give Me Back My Father,” the piece takes on an added layer, as the viewer is allowed a glimpse into the tender experience that Bartow seeks to convey.

Though less of an intimate view of loss, Harry Fonseca’s “Stone Poem” seemed to express a more universal view of grief.

Painted only in blue — the color of sadness — black, and white, the figure in the piece is painted both like a cave drawing and graffiti. This mixture of styles suggests the continuity of generations, but also the destruction of each as it is replaced by the next.

Small crosses, reminiscent of gravestones, appear next to circles that seem to suggest, again, the cycle of life.

Though the exhibit is small, the collection of seven pieces adequately fulfills the curator’s overall goal of exploring manifestations of grief in art. But for a message so powerful, it’s a shame

that the exhibit finds itself constrained to such a small space — given the Gallery’s remote location, a larger exhibit would likely entice a larger audience. The exhibit truly left me wanting more, if only so that I could more easily recommend it to a friend with a free afternoon. Inevitably, for some, it may not merit the schlep.

Overall, the exhibit succeeds in encapsulating likely the most complex human emotions of all: love and grief. For artists, it is difficult to imagine a more daunting task — capturing such platitudes through a convincing material form. But “All That Remains” does just this, albeit in fewer pieces than one might prefer. So if you aren’t up for the walk, jump on the blue line — it’s a ride well worth it.

Contact LEAH MOTZKIN at leah.motzkin@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Getting to know Charlie B. Johnson ‘54.

Even Santa doesn’t have $240 million to give away.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY,OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND POLITICS

A Republican’s Battle for Ward 1 // BY NICK DEFIESTA

I t ’s 8:00 a.m., the morning after Amalia Halikias ’15 turned 21, and she is standing in the Davenport dining hall, deciding whether she feels like eating eggs.

Instead of sleeping in and avoiding any classes that day — the way most Yalies might spend the morning after turning 21 — Halikias was bright-eyed as she worked her way through the servery. As the press secretary for Paul Chandler’s ’14 campaign to represent Ward 1 on the Board of Aldermen, Halikias needs to be alert at the campaign’s hour-long senior staff meeting, one of two it holds every week.

(It was either this time or 11 p.m. — “scheduling with Yalies,” she explains with a laugh.)

As the rest of the campaign’s senior staff, 10 in all, slowly filters into the meeting room, Halikias bounds around the table placing a copy of the day’s Yale Daily News in front of each person. Campaign manager Ben Mallet ’15, taking his seat at the table, reminds the rest of the room to wish her ‘Happy Birthday.’

“I talked to my mom yesterday, typical Asian mom … she told me to be careful now because I won’t get or receive any leniency,” Halikias says to laughs from the group.

Each staff member, directed by Mallet, reports on the status of their individual campaign tasks. The campaign is in full swing: letters are being posted in residential colleges, fundraising is underway, the website is up and policy meetings between the campaign and student groups are planned for the near future.

A detailed calendar lays out each day’s tasks in bright colors, and a surprisingly awake campaign staff gives updates to and receives suggestions from Mallet as others in the room chime in on occasion. The efficiency of the meeting suggests this is far from the campaign’s first, moving far faster than this tired Yalie’s mind can process.

Right now, however, members of the campaign aren’t sure about the new logo.

“What do people think about the tree?” someone asks. The tree is fine, the group decides.

And then, ahead of schedule, the meeting is finished at 8:55 a.m. Each member of the senior staff has a task for the days ahead in their attempt to accomplish what hasn’t happened in over two decades, having long been thought impossible: elect a Republican to represent Yale as a part of New Haven’s circle of lawmakers.

INCEPTION OF A CANDIDACY Chandler’s candidacy started as an initiative of the Yale College Republicans, which has long had a small presence on the campus of left-leaning Yale. According to YCR President Austin Schaefer ’15, members of the organization initially weren’t sure what their aim was in fielding a candidate in Yale’s Ward 1, which has only elected Democrats for years.

At first, he explains, most members thought the organization could simply contribute to the ongoing debate about the Elm City’s future — a “real shame,” Mallet says, that there hadn’t been a proper political challenge — by running a token candidate. The group started to reach out to students they thought

F R I D AY OCTOBER 4

might m a k e a go o d c h o i c e , including Chandler.

At first, Chandler says, he rejected the idea outright. A senior on the track team, Chandler worried about finding a job for next year and knew that being a conservative is “no small deal” on campus.

But then his girlfriend convinced him to reconsider, since Chandler sounded more worried about the campaign than the job itself. On their first date, she reminded him, Chandler had taken her to the top of East Rock and pointed out all the different parts of the city — she encouraged him, “if you want it, go for it.”

Chandler was one of six who applied, and one of four interviewed by the YCR. According to Schaefer, Chandler’s candidacy was convincing.

“We met Paul and thought “wow, this is someone who could really have a shot at this,” he says.

Mallet echoes this sentiment, explaining that the purpose of running a Republican candidate had changed from its inception.

“We had a choice — we could have chosen a known conservative, and it would’ve been a token conservative campaign,” he says. “But we said no, we’re going to run a serious campaign here.”

In front of Mallet at each campaign meeting is his iPad — featuring the Paul Chandler for Ward 1 logo, tree and all — his Blackberry, the smartphone of choice for veteran campaign operatives, and his watch. Having spent two years before coming to Yale working on English political campaigns, including that of London Mayor Boris Johnson, Mallet is no stranger to the day-to-day efforts of political operations. His incredible experience, Halikias says, has inspired the rest of the staff.

Ward 1 will be difficult for a Republican to win, no matter how dedicated the campaign.

Mallet relishes the challenge.

MORE THAN JUST A STATEMENT It’s 10:46 p.m. on a Monday and nobody’s really sure about lapel stickers. Campaign administrative director Tyler Carlisle ’15 wants to know: are they worth spending a chunk of campaign funds? Are they effective?

Would people actually use them?

Former YCR president Elizabeth Henry ’14 isn’t so sure.

“I’m not gonna put a Paul Chandler lapel sticker on my laptop,” Henry tells to the rest of the senior staff, holed up in a Linsey-Chittenden Hall classroom.

“I would,” pipes up one voice.

“I would too!” chimes in another.

“I’ll think about it,” Chandler interjects.

Everybody laughs.

The campaign, says senior staff, has drawn its participants together. It’s also served as a rallying point, many campaign staff note, not just for conservatives on campus, but for moderates and even some liberals as well.

This broader umbrella includes Brendan Harrington ’14, who describes himself as

“more a notDe m o crat” than a Republican. Harrington explains that he supports Chandler because he’s been unimpressed with current Ward 1 Alderman Sarah Eidelson ’12, not having seen her on campus since her last election.

“I don’t really think that Eidelson is actually representing Ward 1 — she has her own idea for the city and I think that’s admirable, but she does not fulfill her role as a student of Ward 1,” Harrington says. “I don’t hear any of her positions on any of the issues … I don’t think anyone knows what she’s going to do until she campaigns.”

Harrington argues that Chandler fulfills this role much better, by virtue of his being a current student (“Sarah won’t know anybody on campus by the time she finishes her second term if she wins re-election,” Chandler says.). As a relatively moderate Republican, he explains, Chandler is actually aligned with a majority of Yale students in terms of his politics.

WARD 1 WILL BE DIFFICULT FOR A REPUBLICAN TO WIN, NO MATTER HOW DEDICATED THE CAMPAIGN. MALLET RELISHES THE CHALLENGE. Schaefer argues that running as a Republican is an important way to differentiate himself from Eidelson. Besides, he adds, a candidate’s personal beliefs on social issues hardly matter in a race for city council, where debate on traditional issues like gay marriage and gun control are eschewed for municipal problems of gun violence and budget deficit — hardly partisan matters. “[Chandler’s] not the Republican who is shutting down the government,” Schaefer emphasizes. “He’s not Ted Cruz.”

Why, then, is Chandler running as a Republican and not, perhaps, as an Independent? Chandler offers two reasons: in order to establish higher name recognition, and because it’s “more honest to who [he] is.”

This argument, Halikias says, has resonated with many of her moderate and liberal friends. While conservatives are naturally drawn to Chandler’s candidacy, she explains, she’s noticed the biggest change among friends who are liberal on a national level but don’t know enough about local politics to hold an opinion.

“They realize halfway through the conversation that they agree with Paul,” she says.

There’s another reason, Mallet explains, for Chandler to campaign as a Republican. As the current Board is made up entirely of Democrats, and with the other Republican alder-

NATURAL DISASTERS MIDTERM

STILL MILES TO GO It’s 7:07 p.m. on a Wednesday, the night of the Chandler campaign’s first casual suite chat.

The event is designed to bring students out to meet Paul in a relaxed setting, to learn about his vision for the city in common rooms over cookies and, in this setting, cases upon cases of Monster energy drink.

Couches line the Berkeley suite, and on them sit four members of the campaign: Chandler, Mallet, Andrea Barragan ’16 and Tanner Allread ’16. Three other students share the couch space, talking with Chandler as they wait for more students to arrive.

“So what exactly does an alderman do?” one Berkeley senior, whose suite is hosting the chat, asks Chandler.

A few minutes later, another Berkeley senior interjects: “I can’t vote, I’m just here to support Paul.” Few, if any, votes will be won tonight.

Members of the Chandler campaign acknowledge that despite the arguments they hold in favor of their candidate, they’re fighting an uphill battle to elect a Republican at Yale.

The campaign’s goal, Mallet says, is to register students who haven’t been registered in Ward 1 before, including moderates and conservatives who have failed to register in the Elm City for previous elections. The math, he says, seems bad for Chandler: Democrats outnumber Republicans by a nearly 14-to-1 margin. But Independent and unaffiliated voters combined outnumber Democrats in Ward 1, giving the campaign a better chance than might seem otherwise.

Even then, however, the Dems have a much stronger organizing presence on campus than the relatively meager Yale College Republicans.

“They have the advantage of numbers,” Halikias explains, “of being able to pack a room with supporters.”

It is now 7:17 p.m., and the common room chat is nearly a third over. Even twenty minutes in, nobody else has arrived, and the campaign staff attempts to find more listeners to join them on the couch.

Even in light of this, Mallet remains hopeful.

“It’ll be steep,” he says, “but we can do it.”

Contact NICK DEFIESTA at nick.defiesta@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Davies Auditorium // 11:35 a.m.

This class isn’t going to pass itself, you know.

m a n i c candidates a c ro s s the city looking like long shots, Chandler would likely be afforded the privileges of being the only aldermen of the minority party.

That means Chandler could decide to which aldermanic committees he is appointed, could force public debate on Board issues that are currently determined in private caucus meetings and would be guaranteed weekly meetings with the mayor (“he’d be like the Senate Minority Leader, but the only one,” Mallet says). All of this, Mallet explains, would accomplish the campaign’s primary goal: give Yale students a stronger voice in New Haven.

Banging like Douglas Plume ‘16.

As in, the gavel?

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND SAYS

PAGE B7

GOODBYE

FOND FAREWELLS

Report on Departure

I

n the span of one week, three college masters and deans announced that they would be stepping down from their posts, and WEEKEND suspects we’re yet to see the end of this exodus. Who will be the next to depart from New Haven’s storied streets? Up in the lounge, we looked into our crystal ball and saw visions of the next emails that will be hitting your inboxes — plus one heartfelt elegy from a fan of the Flower Lady.

Fleeing the Feces

// BY ANDREW KOENIG

From Mary Miller

It is with utmost sadness that I announce to you my departure from the post of Dean of Yale College.

I want to say before I go that I have enjoyed every minute of my tenure. I have met some of your generation’s finest minds. I’ve gotten to experience your infectious spirit of collegial cooperation and idealism, your passion for knowledge and hope for the future.

But one thing I’ve lacked all my years here. And that is what I leave you for.

Yalies, I am moving to the ancient Mayan city of Tikan. Ever since I was a schoolgirl, I had the dream of visiting the heart of the civilization that has given us the greatest excuse for a doomsday rager in recent memory. I’m going where the Sun keeps shining and the votive pyramids of human sacrifice keep climbing.

This departure may strike you as abrupt, but I assure you I have been considering it for a few years now. I remained at Yale as long as I

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 5

// BY YUVAL BEN-DAVID

From Master Hudak

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

Dear Saybrugians, As you well know by now, someone has been exercising his First Amendment rights on your laundry. I suppose there are section assholes and then there are laundry assholes. My guess is that the perpetrator in this case is both, presumably an Arts and German double-major making some installation art about Berlin nightclubs.

Since finding the perpetrator has been such a crapshoot, I have contacted Yale Security and Police. It is my understanding that Ronnell Higgins is on it, and will be vigorously re-tweeting Rumpus updates as they come. Meanwhile, I have asked the hard-boiled investigative staff of that illustrious publication to track down the culprit.

Most of them are currently caught up in a kumbaya of some kind or another, but should get their bearings sometime before the next chicken tenders day. I have full faith in their abilities. (I have also reached out to the Daily News, which was sorry to report it was oth-

erwise preoccupied in tweeting about itself.)

On that note of “passing the torch” — I will be stepping down from my office ASAP. Frankly, it has been unnerving to avoid referring to the culprit as the “poopertrator.” My daily diary has turned into daily diarrhea. I went to IKEA to buy a stool but couldn’t get myself to do it. And this is a more troubling and (frankly) disgusting phenomenon than the recurring problem of people getting shit-faced at the 12-Pack.

We tried everything here at the Master’s Office. We tried a body search, but no one really wanted to go for the tushy.

Then we kind of ran out of ideas. So I thought, “Hey, why not retire? Pensioners only have to worry about crapping on themselves.”

Sayonara!

Master Hudak Contact YUVAL BEN-DAVID at yuval.ben-david@yale.edu .

The Last Petal

// BY WESLEY YIIN

From Julia Zorthian

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 5

From Flower Lady

other ways in student life. But it was not sufficient for her needs. The bread and soup store lacked the convenience of outdoor seating. It was too far from Gourmet Heaven, where she has always bought her flowers. What’s more, only a certain type of student seemed to enter Panera, and it wasn’t the type she liked. Seeing the calorie count on the menu printed under each food item grossed her out, only alienating her further from the establishment. Panera would never fill the void that ABP had left in the Flower Lady’s heart.

Willoughby’s was her next stop, and after that, the corner outside of the Yale University Art Gallery. The Flower Lady became increasingly flustered and increasingly angry at Yale students for not frequenting ABP enough. When she began to resent the students who made up her clientele, she knew it was time to go. She has decided to pack up her business license and stop buying GHeav flowers. The Flower Lady, whose actual first name is Annette, is going home.

She ain’t gonna yell atchu no more.

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

sleep.” I should have remembered that before I signed on here at the News.

Oops.

I hope you aren’t too disappointed to learn that I’ve decided to try my hand at writing for the Herald. They publish less frequently, have fewer words and don’t take themselves so seriously — it’s a perfect fit. I would also like to heel for Rumpus. It’s actually been my aspiration since freshman year to run RumpChat. Who cares about getting first pick of Insomnia Cookies? I could get dibs on the Fifty Most hotties. Sounds like a deal to me.

These are all just some of the many reasons why I’d like to depart from the News. I’ll leave you all to mourn my departure and figure out how to replace me. I’m sure there’s something in the YDN Structure document that explains how to handle this.

Cheers, Julia Zorthian

Contact ANDREW KOENIG at andrew.koenig@yale.edu .

// BY LEAH MOTZKIN

You’ve seen her countless times.

Maybe you’ve bought one of her unnaturally colored flowers, wrapped in a piece of this newspaper, or maybe you’ve given her a dollar or two in the past. Maybe she’s called you princess, or implored you to buy a flower for the princess you’re walking with.

You know who I am talking about: the one and only, the loud and cheeky — the Flower Lady.

But now, unfortunately, New Haven will never be the same. Au Bon Pain and its egg white avocado sandwiches (R.I.P.) are no more. Obviously the reason that changes New Haven has nothing to do with ABP itself being gone — because, really, who actually went there? — and everything to do with the Flower Lady’s decision to pack up and leave.

You heard me right. Robbed of her usual perch outside ABP, the Flower Lady was left with few options. For a while, she was seen in front of the Hall of Graduate Studies. The students who walked by her were normally of the academic, critical theory variety and much less open to embracing her as a part of their social fabric. She began to feel disheartened. She had to look again.

She moved her perch to Panera, which has filled in for ABP in a lot of

Leaving the OCD Dear all, It is with utter elation and selfsatisfaction that I write to you today announcing my resignation as Editorin-Chief of the Yale Daily News.

Yes, I know it’s only been a week.

Whatever. I miss Woad’s, Grey’s Anatomy and the Oxford comma. The lady working the counter at Claire’s yelled at me last night when I pointed out that we’d ordered a Lithuanian Coffee Cake, not a standard vanilla cake. I almost cried, but of course I pulled my shit together.

I was once mildly excited about our largely female staff. I realize now that locking up a bunch of girls in one building for many hours every night — aside from sounding like a reality show premise by Hugh Heffner — is not such a great idea. In a week or so, our few male editors will begin to shave their legs.

The nights are too long here at 202 York. When I graduated from Andover three short years ago, I said, “There’s no other place where I’d rather lose

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

did for a reason none of you suspect — no, it wasn’t your bright-eyed, bushy-tailed enthusiasm; it wasn’t the incredible holdings we have in our prodigious art collections; it wasn’t even chicken-tender Thursday. It was bladderball. Something about the drunken martial cries of dirt-bespattered men and women vying for control of an enormous ball reminded me of the ancient Maya ballgame of pitz, in which a skull was often kicked around as a soccer ball and often injured players. The primal energy of bladderball, the subtle Mesoamerican undertones, the brute physicality of violent struggle — nothing beat it. Once the administration put the damper on bladderball, I couldn’t stop daydreaming of my glory days as a researcher on the field in Guatemala. I knew it was time for me, and my cat Rainbow, to move along.

So, this is my, uh—my attempt to say goodbye. My adieu.

Contact LEAH MOTZKIN at leah.motzkin@yale.edu .

Contact WESLEY YIIN at wesley.yiin@yale.edu .

Q S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 5

JAZZ AT THE UNDERBROOK

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Saybrook basement // 8 p.m.

Get that smooth feel on with a trio of vibraphone, drums and double bass.

Mario Kart.

Easier than Super Smash Bros., but with just as many opportunities to swear at your suitemates.

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 5

THE GREAT AWAKENING

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Jonathan Edwards Courtyard // 5 p.m.

Try to be as bougie as the rest of JE. Plus, WEEKEND hears there’ll be a mechanical shark.

Stonehenge.

A giant granite birthday cake / Or a prison far too easy to escape?

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND COVER

GENERATIONAL GAP // BY HAYLEY BYRNES

J

uan Bravo ’16 has had many firsts at Yale. First Commons dance. First chemistry problem set. First snow. But before Bravo came to New Haven, he first bid a final farewell to his California high school: to metal detectors at every door, police officers at every corner, knives in every pocket. In 2011, Bravo’s high school made headlines in the Los Angeles Times when a student stabbed his ex-girlfriend in the school’s cafeteria. The attention that fell on the school was accompanied by neither prestige nor pride.

A 20-minute drive away, Forrest Lin’s ’16 high school had seen its own share of difficulties. Glancing around Commons, Lin was hesitant to describe his high school experience. After a pause, he met my eyes and murmured that the school had four-day cares, serving the children of students.

At Yale, it was more “Good Will Hunting,” and less “Stand and Deliver,” Lin told me, referencing a 1988 film about a crumbling East Los Angeles high school. Lin and Bravo were the first in their families to attend college, and the first in their communities to attend Yale. They came from neighborhoods with large minority populations, few college graduates and high crime. Now, Handsome Dan has replaced their schools’ bands of drug-sniffing police dogs.

In the current freshman class, 12 percent of students will be the first in their family to complete a fouryear college, placing them in the category of “first-generation” college graduates. Their numbers are smaller than that of freshman with a legacy affiliation, who make up 13.8 percent of the class of 2017.

With students like Lin and Bravo in mind, Alejandro Gutierrez ’13 wrote a News column last February. As a first-generation student, Gutierrez lamented the lack of institutional support on campus and encouraged the creation of an academic bridge program to ease the transition to Yale. Two months later, the University announced the creation of the Freshman Scholars at Yale program, a five-week summer bridge program not unlike what Gutierrez proposed. The program targets low-income students from under-resourced areas — of

whom “almost all” are first-generation, according to Dean William Whobry, who administered the program as dean of the Summer Session.

This July, the Admissions Office invited 60 students to participate in FSY. With a cap of around half that number, it accepted the first 33 respondents. While living in Morse College, each student completed a nonfiction-writing seminar (English 114) for credit — with all expenses, including food, housing and travel, paid for by Yale.

Workshops and seminars familiarized students with Yale’s academic resources, including writing tutors and personal librarians.

Outside the academic realm, students took program-sponsored trips to nearby Connecticut tourist sites. In a 2012 APA study, Stanford professor Hazel Markus and four co-authors explored why firstgeneration students perform academically worse than their continuing-generation counterparts.

The authors studied the top 50 ranked U.S. universities, including Yale, and found that campus culture fueled the generational disparity. Most highly ranked schools foster a highly independent climate, a social norm familiar to middle- and upper-middleclass students. First-generation students, in contrast, are often more familiar with interdependent norms. The end result: a “cultural mismatch” for first-generation students. A mismatch which translates, often, to academic subordination.

“We call ourselves the Mistakes.

Sitting, doing our homework, not understanding it: how are we here?” Maxine Dillon ’17 asked.

“It’s a question that’s always in the back of my mind.”

Dillon, a Freshman Scholar and first-generation student, is not alone. Bravo’s high school cafeteria is a far cry from the hallowed halls of Andover, and the smokefilled bathrooms of Lin’s adolescent years paint a stark contrast to the pearl-white pillars of Choate Rosemary Hall.

Still, President Salovey has hailed Yale as a “great equalizer” among students. But for most of the first-generation students interviewed, the pursuit of

the American dream presents an uneven path.

Two weeks after the program’s end, President Peter Salovey addressed the incoming freshman class, his voice raspy with laryngitis. Within minutes, a theme emerged: the American Dream.

Centering the discussion on socioeconomic diversity, Salovey emphasized Yale’s power to further social mobility. He carefully sidestepped the usual admissions labels, with no mention of “disadvantaged” or “low-income” students. Still, it was an evening of firsts, as Salovey breached the issue of class — a subject several students interviewed called “one of the last taboo topics at Yale.”

I FELT LIKE I HAD MORE TO FIND OUT THAN THE AVERAGE YALIE. CHRISTINA BUI ‘13

“Why did I choose to talk about Yale and the American Dream today?” he asked. “To assure you — especially those of you from families that are not affluent — that the dream is very much alive here.”

Perched atop one of Yale’s grandest stages, Salovey’s words echoed through a crowded Woolsey Hall. But in the smaller corners of campus, in the common rooms and the library cubicles, the echoes are harder to hear.

SCALING THE GAP 9:01 a.m.: Trek to WLH, coffee in hand. Careful not to spill.

9:05: Open the door. Sit in the back. 9:06: Grab a syllabus. Follow along. Watch a hand climb up, gingerly. Listen. Eschatological. Phenomenology. Try to spell each in your head. Your question: what, exactly, are the “problems of philosophy”?

So began Jamar Williams’s ’17 second day of classes. “Everyone was asking provocative questions, and it was nine in the morning,” said Williams, a Freshman Scholar and first-generation student.

Most freshmen confront academic intimidation at Yale, but first-generation students may be especially predisposed to this kind of struggle. With so many coming from under-resourced backgrounds, the necessity to play “catch-up” is amplified. “I felt like I had more to find out than the average Yalie,” recalls Christina Bui ’13, a counselor for the Freshman Scholars program and first-generation student.

“A lot of things are open to everyone, of course. But there are all these unmentioned prereqs,” said Ellie Dupler ’16, a first-generation student and QuestBridge scholar.

Some, of course, meet such unspoken requirements with ease. Hannah Thai ’16 described a friend who had taken Greek at her private high school, read Herodotus in the original and memorized it. “She said she tried not to correct a professor when he misquoted it,” Thai recalled.

Asked if intimidation has ever affected her academic choices, Thai nodded. “Yale prides itself on diversity, but the playing field is not even. [For] subjects like English and classics, you have to have such a strong background,” she pointed out. “I feel like that’s why I’m doing economics. I mean, I like it. But also, everyone is starting fresh.”

Directed Studies, the selective year-long humanities program offered to freshmen, embodies such unspoken fears about academic inequality. “I never even thought of DS as an option.

It seemed like something that wouldn’t be open to me at all,” said Jazzmin Estebane ’13, an FSY counselor and first-generation student. Mimi Pham ’17 agreed.

“I felt like I wouldn’t match up to the other kids in the program,” she said.

Professor Howard Bloch, director of DS, denied that the program might be inaccessible to students from certain backgrounds. “It’s no more exclusive than reading the

Western canon, which is everyone’s privilege and responsibility,” he said, emphasizing his belief that knowledge is democratic.

Fidgeting in her seat in Bass Cafe, Thai contested that idea. If knowledge is democratic, education — the basis of how we learn knowledge — is not. “I can understand why people are afraid to apply [to Yale]. There’s such [an academic] disparity,” she said.

But Gutierrez insisted that his academic career, while “needlessly difficult,” was not dictated in content by his background. The academic disadvantage that he felt extended equally across subjects and was not more or less palpable for certain disciplines. “I felt like I had to work a lot harder in any class to stay afloat,” he said.

The “knowledge gap” perceived by first-generation students is not the only challenge they face. Many must also adjust to a rigorous and unfamiliar teaching style. “In high school, it was, ‘Did you read?’

Here, it’s ‘Make an argument,’” Thai explained.

“I’m not that smart. I’m good at asking questions. I’m good at doing what I’m told,” said Kerry BurkeMcCloud ’17, an FSY and first-generation student. But Travis Reginal ’16, who wrote about his experience as a first-generation student in the New York Times this July, is careful not to conflate academic potential with academic performance. Reginal does not think the first-generation community is any less academically capable. “It’s not that you can’t do the work,” he told me, “it’s psychological. It’s how you view yourself in light of others.”

For Reginal, Yale administrators may not have helped that unhealthy mindset. “I have had awkward conversations at Yale, including one with writing tutors who assumed I didn’t know what a subordinate clause was. Adults would ask how I was adjusting to a culture so different from what I SEE BRIDGE PAGE 8

Yale University EXIT 4

Mauk, Georgia

Thompsonville, Michigan

EXIT 3

EXIT 2

Gun Barrel City, Texas EXIT 1

F R I D AY OCTOBER 4

CITY-WIDE OPEN STUDIOS OPENING PARTY

Artspace, 50 Orange St. // 5 p.m.

A festival celebrating the YUAG’s sexier, edgier little sister. Bar closes at 8 p.m.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: The ‘Work Bitch’ music video.

A little Maserati never killed nobody.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND SINGS

“Tradition, tradition!” // BY JENNIFER GERSTEN

Stephen Feigenbaum ’12 MUS ’13 visited two countries during his first three years at Yale. He had visited thirty by the time he had donned a mortarboard to walk with the Class of 2012 — a year later than scheduled.

In spring 2010, Feigenbaum was tapped for the Whiffenpoofs: the male, all-senior and oldest a cappella group in the United States.

That year, 12 of the group’s 14 members, Feigenbaum included, promptly made arrangements to push their graduation ahead to 2012. After criss-crossing the United States and appearing before ten million viewers on NBC’s “The Sing-Off,” their group made nearly $400,000, entirely independent of Yale funding, for their annual world tour. This intensive gap year schedule financed a summer that included stops in Australia, Norway, Africa, New Zealand, the Middle East and France.

The Whiffenpoofs will celebrate their 105th anniversary next semester, but the gap year tradition is only about ten years old. Dr. Stephen Chapman ’84, a former Whiffenpoof, was surprised to hear that the “Whiffenpoof year” had recently become a trend.

“In my day, I actually thought it was kind of ridiculous that people might take a year off,” he said. “From my perspective, if you’ve got such a performance schedule that you can’t be a student at the same time, then something’s out of whack.”

This year, all fourteen Whiffenpoofs are taking the gap year. Ike Silver ’14, a current Whiffenpoof, believes that the year off is essential to getting the most out of your time in the group.

“If you’re in a class and you get a call from a foreign consulate who says ‘We need to fly you to Bermuda to sing for the president,’ and you can’t go because you’re in class, that obviously takes away from your experience,” he said.

Fellow Whiffenpoof Nick Maas ’14 added that prospective members now expect the gap year to be part of their experience, though it is fairly new. The group is much a product of century-old custom, but it can nevertheless date a number of its current traditions, like the gap year, to relatively recent introduction.

So, in fact, can the institution of Yale a cappella. Whim n’ Rhythm, the female, all-senior a cappella answer to the Whiffenpoofs, will only be turning 34 in the spring.

Women themselves are a relatively recent introduction to campus: of Yale’s 312 years, women have been allowed admission for just 44.

“We have to figure out how we’re going to make Yale’s tradition ours,” said Misty Anderson ’89, a Whim n’ Rhythm alumna. “We’re not trying to be the Whiffs, we’re trying to be ourselves.”

The Whims have been singing themselves into Yale tradition for over three decades; the Whiffenpoofs, for over a century. Next on the program, for both groups, is deciding how they will compose the future.

members, sharp in their swallowtailed coats, sing “The Whiffenpoof Song” — “Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled with their glasses raised on high.” While the song enjoyed national popularity during the 1950s and ’60s, current generations at and outside of Yale would be hard-pressed to recall the lyrics, if they have ever heard them at all. The song stands today as a nostalgic relic of old Yale tradition, though that tradition is no longer representative of Yale’s significantly more diverse student body. But the song, as it is brought forth on stage, continues to bear nostalgic alumni back to fond memories of erstwhile membership.

“People would tell me, ‘My father used to sing the Whiffenpoof Song to me to get me to sleep at night,’” Chapman said fondly. “When people wanted to see the Whiffs sing [the Whiffenpoof Song] … it was to capture a bit of Yale tradition,” he added — a tradition he was interested not only in upholding, but also augmenting. Chapman continued, “When I was at Yale, somebody would do something twice and say we should make it a tradition. I loved traditions. We were always starting [traditions] … the Whiffs seemed like a natural part of that.”

The Whiffenpoofs are only comprised of seniors. As a result, a 100 percent turnover results each year from new members replacing the old. “The Whiffenpoof Song” is a permanent part of the Whiffenpoofs’ repertoire, but otherwise the members have control independent of the previous year’s preferences to choose the songs they wish to sing.

Currently, the song “Saving Ourselves for Yale,” told from the perspective of a woman who has “had [her] squeezes from lots of PhD’ses” but decides to keep herself chaste for Yale men, is under discussion for removal because of its misogynistic tone. *** As the Whiffenpoofs consider revising their historic repertoire, Whim n’ Rhythm is still at work on establishing its own. While their selection has been more variable than that of the Whiffenpoofs, one song has remained their tuneful valedictory of choice: The Roches’ 1979 “Hammond Song.” The song is about three sisters, one of whom plans to abandon her plans for college for the boy she loves “down in Hammond.” The other two sisters sing “Hammond Song” to her, asking her not to leave them and to keep her schooling in sight. Despite their pleading, the song implies that the sister leaves.

Current Whim Julia Hosch ’14 interprets “Hammond Song” as a question to its audience that asks if and how a woman can reconcile chasing the man of her dreams with the

alternative of staying her intellectual course. For the members of Whim n’ Rhythm, Hosch says, the group “is very much the embodiment of that [reconciliation] — getting an education while also doing what you’re very passionate about.”

It hasn’t always been easy for the Whims to sing “Hammond Song.”

While touring Australia in 1984, Whim n’ Rhythm was asked not to perform the song by the managers of a hotel in which they were staying, who took objection to the lyrics.

“The women who founded Whim in 1981 — there were things they really had to fight for. Basic respect, a basic right to have your voice,” Anderson said, came only as a consequence of Whim initiative — even a right to have a place to sing at all. According to Anderson’s fellow Whim Fiona ScottMorton ’89, Mory’s, which hosts the Whiffenpoofs in performance every Monday, was reluctant to extend a similar invitation to Whim n’ Rhythm, citing how “they already had the Whiffenpoofs.” Now Whim n’ Rhythm performs at Mory’s on alternate Wednesdays. The Parents’ Weekend concert, once an exclusively Whiffenpoof affair, is now among the largest domestic concerts on Whim n’ Rhythm’s schedule. “[Whim] had to get out there and shake the tree,” Anderson added.

To write their own traditions, the founders of Whim n’ Rhythm needed to rewrite those of a society that met their presence with unopen arms. Then they turned their focus to the matter that drove their inception in the first place — singing. *** Little besides photographic quality would distinguish a portrait of the Whiffenpoofs of 2014 from any that date decades back. Fourteen apparently white, senior men in tuxedos, sometimes tailcoats, stand in each shot. In most, there is at least one member whose abashed grin strongly suggests he had help fastening his bow tie. Their stiff suits fail to straighten a pervasive, naughty slouch of mischievousness; in the shoot from 1978, the centermost member proudly flaunts the dress code with his conspicuous white oxfords. They poke just slightly out from beneath his slacks, like the ears of an eavesdropping rabbit.

But to dismiss the Whiffenpoof class of 2014 as a repeat performance of a formerly homogeneous Yale would be in grave error. Pointing to the current members’ diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds, Sil-

ver said “to pigeonhole the Whiffs as a white male supremacy does a disservice to the amount of diversity that Yale offers.” He mentioned that current Whiffenpoofs on financial aid have managed to balance their near-professional livelihoods on their gap year with means of selfsupport. All fourteen members have jobs either on or off campus; Silver added that he is living independent of his parents’ financial help while not at school.

Powering the Whiffenpoof gap year, beyond the contributions of its members, is a vast network of alumni and other connections that the group has accumulated over the course of a century. Whim n’ Rhythm, being substantially younger, lacks a network like the Whiffenpoofs’ that would give them as many opportunities to perform.

Their schedule, presently, is not intensive enough to warrant taking the extra year. “[Even] if everybody were to take the year off right this second … it would be so financially unsustainable, it just wouldn’t work,” said current Whim Julie Aust ’14.

Fellow Whim Chandler Rosenthal ’14 mentioned that while she personally would not have wanted to take a gap year, she considers it commendable that the group has been working to establish an alumnae base that would someday permit the option. This year, the group implemented a long-anticipated mentorship program that will further solidify relationships between current and former members.

The interviewed members of Whim n’ Rhythm 2014 had no complaints about staying at Yale for the year.

“It’s nice, being able to do other things,” said Hosch, who, in addition to singing, is a Freshman Counselor and plays the French horn in the Yale Symphony Orchestra.

What frustrates Whim n’ Rhythm’s hope for recognition, both in and out of Yale, is not the lack of a gap year but institutional biases.

Hosch said that, in her experience, potential clients have associated a cappella singing with men’s voices, and are dismayed to find out she leads a women’s group. “People just assume we’re like the Whiffenpoof’s little sister. We get called the ‘Women’poofs … I think it’s just a shadow that Whim has always been trying to get out of,” Aust said.

Whim n’ Rhythm is doing more than trying. When the groups sing

together at President Salovey’s inauguration, the Whim’s pitch, not the Whiff’s, will be directing. In recent years, the groups are performing together with unprecidented frequency, but Whim is also expanding the number of gigs it will be doing on its own. And only a single year separates current Whims from the freedom that a gap year would afford.

They have much to look forward to — this summer will mark their longest and largest world tour yet, a nineweek whirlwind that includes performances in Jordan, South Korea, Hungary and Ireland. Substantial strides will, quite literally, be taken.

The “‘Women’poofs” Whim n’ Rhythm is not, particularly with regard to name recognition on and off campus. But fame, said Anderson, should not be the group’s primary concern.

“When I’m 60, what’s going to make my heart glow isn’t that I was part of something prestigious,” she said. “The fame isn’t as important [as] keeping this tradition available for subsequent generations of Yale women.”

Last year, current Whim Mary Bolt ’14 made Yale Daily News headlines when she auditioned for the Whiffenpoofs. In her subsequent column, she wrote that “We, both in and out of the a cappella community, have to actively keep this discussion alive and work to create some sort of change, because we all recognize that there is a problem and we haven’t tried to find a solution” — among the problems is a society that speaks more about equality than embodies it. Solutions have been suggested, such merging the Whiffs and Whim, or forming a co-ed group independent of the two.

But making changes for the sake of making changes will not improve Whim’s circumstances, or those of female a cappella singers at large.

If biases against them recede, even gradually, it will be to great Whim fanfare. For now, though, what the members are most empowered to do, and what they are dedicated to above all else, is “just, making good music,” Rosenthal said. “That is the first step to contributing to female empowerment.”

If making good music is their most compelling tradition thus far, a listen to their recent recording of “Hammond Song” will verify that they are upholding it in full.

Contact JENNIFER GERSTEN at jennifer.gersten@yale.edu .

*** At the close of every Whiffenpoof concert, the

// THAO DO

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 5

MYSTIC AQUARIUM 40TH BIRTHDAY PARTY!

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WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Stargazing on Science Hill

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PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

HOLMES’ GREAT DISSENT // BY SCOTT STERN Oliver Wendell Holmes is known today for many things: his decades of service on the Supreme Court, his discerning analogies (fire in a crowded theater, anyone?), his magnificent mustache (rivaling that of the almighty Salovey). But his greatest legacy transcends these popular images, found instead in his trailblazing defense of free speech.

He wasn’t always such a civil libertarian. In fact, for the first 78 years of his remarkable life, Holmes was of a decidedly authoritarian bent. He trusted the government and granted it broad powers in a way that, today, would seem absurd. Could a policeman be fired for merely expressing his political views? Yup. Could the government imprison someone for expressing these political beliefs?

Yeah, probably. Was there a right to public expression of controversial opinions, beliefs, or profanity? Nope.

Could the government suppress the writings of someone trying to criticize it? Absolutely.

So what happened? Well, Holmes changed his mind. As law professor Thomas Healy describes in “The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind — and Changed the History of Free Speech in America,” a series of chance meet-

SCOTT STERN READING BETWEEN THE LINES ings and the relentless arguing of his friends convinced Holmes that he had been wrong. So in 1919, in Abrams v. United States, Holmes wrote a dissenting opinion that changed the course of American (and perhaps world) history.

Before Holmes’s dissent in Abrams, which would soon be adopted by a majority of the Court and become firmly ingrained in the American ethos, the right to free speech was narrow, failing to include the right to dissent that we as Americans pride today. In 1915, Holmes himself wrote a unanimous decision that upheld the conviction of a newspaper owner who wrote in support of nude swimming in areas far from the public view — scandalous stuff.

Then, in 1918, a young RussianAmerican anarchist named Jacob Abrams, along with four others, tossed leaflets criticizing America’s involvement in World War I from the roof of a New York office building.

Abrams was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 20 years in prison for bringing the government into “contempt,

scorn, contumely, and disrepute” and for attempting to hinder the war effort.

Meanwhile, Holmes was on his way to his New England summer home when he happened upon a young New York judge with the delightful and erudite name of Learned Hand. Hand, nervously, confronted Holmes about the Abrams case (and a few others) and raised the idea that the defendants’ speech might be covered by the First Amendment.

Holmes quickly dismissed Hand and returned to his seat.

But, according to Healy, that chance encounter spurred Holmes to begin talking to many of his friends about Hand’s then radical idea that controversial speech should be protected. These friends pushed back against Holmes’s conception of free speech, and urged him to consider it from the perspective of the minority.

A year of lobbying and cajoling eventually paid off when Holmes published his dissent in Abrams.

The friends who changed Holmes’s mind were all bright young men nearly 50 years Holmes’s junior.

The childless Holmes maintained intimate friendships — almost erotic in their closeness — with several of the brightest young intellectuals of

the day, including radical Harvard professors Felix Frankfurter (later on the Supreme Court) and Harold Laski, Rhode Island brahman Zechariah Chafee, and Hand (who would later become one of the most prominent lower court judges in American history).

IT IS TERRIFYING THAT THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL DECISIONS OF TH DAY WILL BE MADE

BY A SINGLE AGING MAN IN A SILLY ROBE. Healy goes to great pains to reconstruct the correspondence and meetings between Holmes and these men, and to trace Holmes’s cautious evolution. Holmes was neither a radical nor an ideologue, and his shift on free speech was tentative. Yet by the time Abrams v. United States was handed down, Holmes was ready to write the now immortal words: speeches and writings cannot be restricted or denied “unless they so imminently

threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.”

There are, to be sure, flaws with “The Great Dissent,” Healy’s first book. There seems to be an exultant sense of inevitability with Holmes’s decisions, when, in fact, things could have gone the other way. The United States has the broadest definition of free speech in the developed world — few other countries would include wearing Nazi paraphernalia in public schools or burning the nation’s flag as protected speech. By ignoring the chance that history could have gone the other way, Healy ignores the fragility of rights we now take for granted.

Constitutional protections should never be dismissed as inevitable, and it is terrifying that the most controversial decisions of the day will often be decided by a single aging man in a silly robe. From Oliver Wendell Holmes to Anthony Kennedy, the lesson of “The Great Dissent” seems to hold up. The arc of history is a delicate thing. It so often comes down to chance, folly, and one person’s whim.

Contact SCOTT STERN at scott.stern@yale.edu .

Country Music Makes a Comeback

New York — you’re just my type

// BY ALLIE KRAUSE

// BY STEPHANIE TOMASSON

Last Wednesday, season 2 of “Nashville” premiered on ABC. Needless to say, it was definitely the highlight of my day/week/year, and they didn’t let me down. In case you were unaware, I love Nashville. The concept is fascinating, casting is spot on, and the music is fantastically written.

For those of you poor unfortunate souls who have never had the pleasure of having Connie Britton and her perfect auburn locks grace your screen, Nashville is a country musicthemed drama centred on two rivalling country stars: young, she’sso-hot-right-now Juliette Barnes (played by Hayden Panettiere of “Heroes”) and Rayna James, a fading legend (played by Britton, of “Friday Night Lights”).

Rayna is loveable from the get-go.

Though a big star, we’re exposed to a very real woman; a woman who stares too long at her wrinkles in the mirror, rebels against her father’s constricting influence and worries about how her words and actions will affect her family. Ultimately, we find ourselves identifying with Rayna, if not for her emotional vulnerability, then for her quick, cutting asides to Juliette — a relatable impulse of denied jealousy and nostalgia for what once was.

Though comparisons have been drawn between Juliette and superstar Taylor Swift, their country-pop style seems to be the only similarity between the two singers. Harnessing her knife-sharp edge, extreme ambition and seductive drawl, Juliette finds herself quickly scaling the ranks of country music legends, if not just for her ability to sleep with the industry’s right men. It’s a persona that culminates in the perfect foil to Rayna James — the entitled, shiny young bombshell pitted against the elegant, storied, and down-to-earth country legend.

A secondary storyline focuses on budding musicians/lovers (sorry, spoilers) Scarlett (the niece of Rayna’s lead guitarist and non-marital love interest — sorry, more spoilers) and Gunnar as they build both their songwriting and romantic bonds.

Though I often question the quality of this storyline with its constant inconsistencies and flawed plot logic, it has produced some of my absolute favourite songs of the show. Scarlett and Gunnar — in stark contrast to Rayna and Juliette’s big names in bright lights, the epitome of stratospheric success — represent the scene unique to Nashville, untouched by worldwide renown. While we watch

S U N D AY OCTOBER 6

ALLIE KRAUSE HER GRACE’S TASTE the two female leads wow us in powerful stadium shows, Scarlett and Gunnar’s stage is the much cozier Bluebird Café, a 90-seat songwriters’ performance space and Nashville staple. While Rayna and Juliette ponder how to stay on top, Scarlett and Gunnar merely struggle to be signed.

From the first episode, I was completely blown away by the quality of the music. That and the perfection of Connie Britton’s hair (you just have to look at her gorgeous tresses to understand that she’s a goddess among men). From Juliette’s country-pop chart-toppers like “Telescope” to Scarlett and Gunnar’s quieter, shiver-inducing numbers like “If I Didn’t Know Better,” each song is a standout among the many subgenres of country music. Not only does the show manage to cover this wide range of country styles – from country-pop crossovers and honky-tonk to more intimate acoustic pieces – it does so with a skill and elegance unparalleled in the world of musical television.

This, of course, is no surprise given some of the powerhouse names behind the creation of these songs.

Though pieces are often written by real-life Nashville up-and-comers, having music producer T Bone Burnett (husband of the show’s creator, Callie Khouri) has definitely helped in drawing industry heavyweights like Elvis Costello and current country crooners like Trent Dabbs and Kacey Musgraves. In musical television, where songs seem to take on the inevitable shelf life of a High School Musical brand, Nashville has readily defeated the odds, its music consistently finding slots in the Billboard Top 100 in the last year.

Moreover, Nashville is unique in

// WALL STREET JOURNAL

Juliette Barnes and Rayna James, the epitome of fierceness. its fairly accurate representation of the country music industry, along with its mantra of using only newly composed, not previously released, music, giving exposure to songwriters over recording artists. This in itself adds to Nashville’s grounding in reality, as the show’s operations closely resemble those of a true Tennessee record label, making the producers of the show go straight to the roots of the country music world— that of music writers and publishers — to sift through the dirt to uncover the true gems.

Ultimately, however, the key to Nashville’s success is found in its ability to portray characters with distinct and relatable voices, a depiction unfortunately lacking in television today. Despite their comparability to the real-life personas of country music stars, characters like Rayna James and Juliette Barnes maintain a rawness and vulnerability with which we all can identify. For Nashville’s producers, in tapping into these roots, their fiction reads like reality.

So now I leave you with some parting words: 1. Season 2 came back with a bang (or a crash? potential spoiler alert?) with two new excellent songs. I see great things in this show’s future.

2. You should go watch Nashville.

Right now. Go steal your friend’s Hulu Plus account. You have my blessing.

3. Nashville has changed my life’s goal. It is now to become a Southern country singer. Only problem? I’m British. No matter. Small detail.

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Contact ALLIE KRAUSE at alexandra.krause@yale.edu .

There’s a new king of New York City — and it’s Banksy, the elusive British-based graffiti artist. On Monday, Banksy announced that he would spend the month of October staging an entire show of 31 works, one daily, all over the city’s streets. The show, “Better Out Than In,” takes the New York contemporary art scene out of Chelsea galleries and into new and unexpected territory.

But what’s Banksy really doing in NYC? Mocking the creation and analysis of art, of course, like he always does. Banksy’s art has been offering witty and satirical sociopolitical commentary since the mid 1990s. His global body of work can be anywhere from playful and silly to pointed and offensive, and it’s impossible to know which side we’re going to get. “Better Out Than In” seems to edge on the former — featuring two boys reaching up to an anti-graffiti sign in one piece, a scrawl of “THIS IS MY NEW YORK ACCENT” with the neatly typed “… normally I write like this” below it in another, and finally, a fire hydrant thanking a dog for peeing on it.

Banksy’s works are ephemeral because they’re illegal — somewhere in between art and vandalism — and also play into the hostile, typically stigmatized graffiti culture. There is thus a narrow timeframe in which New Yorkers can see these pieces; Tuesday’s boys have already been painted over, either by the city or a rival street artist. Banksy’s exhibit is a sort of catch-me-if-you-can between the anonymous artist and the anonymous viewers, with the perfectly stenciled figure(s) as the controversial middleman.

So what is it about the middleman that is so captivating? Why are people drawn to engage in Banksy’s scavenger hunt across a city littered with graffiti? Banksy’s muses are so ordinary, so everyday, but there’s also a perfection to them, a certain inhuman quality. Well, actually, this is all part of the Banksy experience. He acknowledges on each work’s accompanying automated recordings — accessed by cellphone — that his pieces are created by “spraying spray paint through a piece of cardboard; or to give it its proper term, cheating.”

Such candidness is likely Banksy’s greatest draw. There’s no artistic talent involved in a dog stencil peeing, but there’s a relatable, even seductive, sense of humor and intelligence attached to the mysterious man behind it. It’s an appeal that has become nearly counter-cultural.

Miley Cyrus has grabbed our attention by leaving nothing to the imagination, Kim Kardashian’s clothing neckline drops lower by the day, and yet Banksy thrives on just the oppo-

STEPHANIE TOMASSON PUSHING THE PALETTE KNIFE site. He leaves everything up to speculation, reminding the public that, at the end of the day, everybody does love a good mystery.

In fact, his audio guide — traditionally a helpful tool in navigating exhibitions — further clouds the meaning behind his work. The automated voice sincerely claims to have no idea what the graffiti means. When describing the boys, he states the obvious, “the children represent youth and the sign represents a sign,” and offers a few pedantic lines such as, “Is this a response to the primal urge to take the tools of our oppression and turn them into mere playthings?” In one recording, the voice is completely drowned out by the annoying sound of elevator music. Banksy thereby ruthlessly mocks contemporary artistic analysis, which he takes to be the random assignment of significance to what may be absolutely meaningless. Oftentimes, as much as we want it, there isn’t one overarching takeaway from a piece. And Banksy’s work embodies this to the fullest. His art is so temporary that you can’t revisit it.

Instead, the conversation he is starting is an immediate one between you and the stenciled figure in front of you, and no audio guide is going to help you discover its meaning.

Yet even with this mantra, Banksy immortalizes art in the most timeless way possible: social media. He tweets, Instagrams and updates a website daily with his works and musings — I’ve already caught a few glimpses of his October escapades on my own feed. In fact, a woman interviewed by BBC said that she hunted down Banksy’s Oct. 1 works because she loves taking pictures of street art and doesn’t have any Banksys in her collection — of iPhone photos that is. Ultimately, this is what makes Banksy’s message all the more confusing: While he touts the ephemeral nature of his work, he simultaneously seeks to preserve it in the eternal time vault of the Internet.

Ultimately, we are then left with the inevitable question: What is Banksy really trying to say about art, culture, New York City and the relationship between the three? I’m going to quote the automated voice on this one and say, “Are you kidding me? Who writes this stuff? Anyway, you decide. Really, please do. I have no idea.”

Contact STEPHANIE TOMASSON at stephanie.tomasson@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Passive Aggressive Post-It Notes.

Because your rommate’s penchant for “Wrecking Ball” just isn’t okay anymore.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B11

WEEKEND THEATRE

Motivational speech, without the speaker

“Anna” rolls Tolstoy with Tobacco

// BY WESLEY YIIN

// BY DAVID WHIPPLE

Chase Michaels is nowhere to be found. For the first 10 minutes of the “The Most Beautiful Thing in the World,” written by Gabe Levey DRA ’14, Carol, an obsessive fan, scrambles around frantically looking for Michaels, the motivational speaker who is supposed to headline the show.

She searches for him onstage, heads backstage, treads through the entire room and then walks outside, shouting his name. Following this maddening first “scene,” full of are-we-supposedto-laugh? moments, she reappears on stage and dejectedly announces, “Chase Michaels isn’t here.”

The lights go down, and Carol starts Chase’s presentation in his place.

You should have seen it coming. The show’s program, plastered with images of Michaels smiling charmingly, contains quotes like “Look around; you’re already here!” allegedly from a book entitled “YOU Are the Only YOU in Your YOUniverse.” The Yale Cabaret website advertises Michaels as “one of the world’s most renowned motivational speakers.” But when you Google “Chase Michaels,” your first result will be the Facebook page of Chase Michaels, a male bodybuilder and pole dancer. The motivational speaker doesn’t exist, but now you wallow in disappointment and you fantasize about sitting in front of the pole dancer instead of the awkward girl shaking all over the stage.

NOW YOU WALLOW IN DISAPPOINTMENT AND YOU FANTASIZE ABOUT SITTING IN FRONT OF THE POLE DANCER INSTEAD OF THE AWKWARD GIRL SHAKING ALL OVER THE STAGE. Carol, played by Kate Tarker DRA ’14, does a terrible job presenting, which of course means that Tarker is doing her job phenomenally.

Although the search drags on for a bit too long — a nearby audience member said, “We should’ve ordered more wine” — for the remainder of the show, Carol is wildly entertaining. She is inse-

cure, fidgety, sweaty and incapable of carrying a proper conversation with the audience.

These moments of Carol-audience interaction are the show’s most hilarious. Midway through the show, Carol begins to engage the audience in what she believes to be Michaels’s “seventh?” step to self-improvement. Her PowerPoint arrives at a slide that reads “The Problem.”

Unsure of how this relates to the previous slide, Carol turns to a woman in the middle of the audience and asks, “What’s your problem right now?”

“Republicans” the woman answers, sending the theatre into a minute-long fit of laughter and snaps of approval. Carol goes down the line, and other responses include “college students,” “airlines,” “politicians,” and “I’m worried that Chase Michaels will show up.” Take the last one how you will.

For the remainder of the show, Carol gradually gains confidence and is able to speak slightly more fluidly with the people sitting nearby. For every response that she gets, she bellows, “YES! GREAT! EXACTLY” Eventually, you and the rest of the audience find yourselves shouting praise alongside her and also — oddly — for her.

Although “Beautiful” is mostly a one-woman show, the irony is that it relies so heavily on interactions with and among audience members. This is also why the show succeeds. After you leave the Cabaret, you’ll feel like you were part of a team that consisted of Carol, the audience, the crew and any other people involved with the show. (In many instances, Carol speaks directly to Anita, the woman working the control booth.) Everyone watches the show together, applauds together, and most importantly, roots for Carol as she grows into her role as the “seminar leader.” At the end of the play, the audience literally shouts in approval as Carol shoots down one of her biggest and most surprising demons.

It’s probable that all of this raucous, jovial behavior had something to do with the casual set up of the Cabaret and its extensive list of alcoholic offerings. But the positive and overwhelming audience support is also definitely a result of Levey writing a truly unique theatre experience.

When talking about the show, the word “motivational” is thrown around a lot, though that’s not the best descriptor. “Infectious” and “uplifting” are more accurate. If Carol did it, so can you.

Contact WESLEY YIIN at wesley.yiin@yale.edu .

// BRIANNA LOO

S U N D AY OCTOBER 6

FALL FOLIAGE SAILS

Connecticut River Museum // 3 p.m.

Take a cruise around the Connecticut River and enjoy the gorgeous colors of autumn. Because, leaves.

The ghostly images that play silently on a screen behind the cast of the Dramat’s “Anna in The Tropics,” which opened Thursday, are at first a mystery. The play is set in a Tampa cigar factory in 1929, and the shots and blurred frames of unidentified lovers seem a strange backdrop. Eventually the clips reveal themselves as scenes from an old film version of “Anna Karenina.” They parallel the onstage action just as the play draws on the novel, in an intricate but satisfying web of adaptation.

Tolstoy’s classic is the seed from which “Tropics” grew, but the title refuses to show how the two are related. Is this just “Anna Karenina” set in the tropics? Or does the billing allude to the play’s focal point, a reading of “Anna Karenina” by a cigar factory lector? The play’s conceit, as it is revealed, is that the reading of “Anna Karenina” precipitates a series of events that mirror the book’s plot — trysts and jealousy, conflict and murder. Juan Julian, Fabian Fernandez ’15, the lector who reads to the workers as they roll cigars by hand, is himself at the center of the affair that quietly becomes the play’s main conflict. His readings win him the heart of Conchita, Rebecca Brudner ’16, a factory worker unhappy with her failing marriage to Palomo, Iason Togias ’16, another worker.

Conchita’s role in the play is the counterpart of Anna’s in the novel, and Brudner makes us believe she could balance two lovers.

The play’s allusions to “Anna Karenina” imbue the fraught relationships onstage with a sense of tragedy, projecting them onto the romances of the novel. The video clips roll as Juan Julian, who Fernandez plays expertly and with an appropriate sense of reserve, reads aloud. The three mediums of “Anna Karenina” blend together until it’s unclear which, if any, is supposed to take center stage. The sum total of the parallel narratives is destablizing, but effective.

BY PLACING EMPHASIS ON A NOVEL AND NOT A TIME PERIOD, THE PLAY LARGELY AVOIDS A HEAVYHANDED CELEBRATION OF NOSTALGIA. The setting of “Tropics” places its characters into another conflict, between the romantic and the modern. Cheché, Tim Creavin ’15, the factory owner’s brother, has brought the future with him after showing up unexpected and uninvited sometime before the play’s beginning. Cheché is from “up North” and seems to symbolize modernization and mechanization — as sales fall, he brings a rolling machine to the factory one day, only to be roundly decried by the workers fearing for their jobs. His machine is a counterpoint to Julian’s “Karenina,” the onrush of hectic modern life against the idyll of aristocratic love. The play comes down in the corner of rose-tinged nostalgia; by paralleling “Anna Karenina” so heavily, the Dramat’s production almost romanticizes itself. But by placing its emphasis on a novel and not a time period, the play largely avoids a heavy-handed celebration of nostalgia.

A few currents of irony run throughout the play’s folded narratives. The first is that the most human characters are those working against the play’s thematic heart. Palomo and Cheché are the only two to oppose keeping the lector, the only two willing to abandon the world of “Anna Karenina” for a world of cars and profits. They are set up as antagonists, but thanks to a pair of the production’s finest performances, from Iason Togias and Tim Creavin respectively, their characters seem three-dimensional and full of grit and sympathy. Togias, for instance, turns Palomo’s argument with Conchita into a moment of empathy for the character, even though he doesn’t seem to deserve one. It’s these characters who, in the end, are most affected by the novel they had tried to silence.

The other irony is that, for a play based on the prose of a celebrated novel, the dialogue can seem stilted and over-wrought at times. Similes protrude at odd angles from otherwise normal conversations, and at one point, Conchita cries, “You don’t make love to me like you used to!” But the cast takes flat lines in stride, and rarely do they distract from the drama taking place behind the words.

In the end, the plot abandons its parallels to “Anna Karenina” in favor of a tangled but powerful ending. The book itself is at one point thrown to the ground. Tolstoy’s sublime romance seems impossible in the play’s modernizing world. The factory produces an “Anna Karenina” line of cigars that represent everything the play celebrates — sex, leisure and tobacco smoke. But we don’t learn whether the new line will save the floundering factory, leaving us to wonder whether love and hand-rolled cigars can survive amidst machines and modernity.

Contact DAVID WHIPPLE at david.whipple@yale.edu .

// WILLIAM FREEDBERG

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Making the first move.

If you’re reading this, it’s a sign. Just do it.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

ROB SHEFFIELD // HENRY EHRENBERG

LOVE IN THE TIME OF KARAOKE // BY LIA DUN

Q. How did you get into writing about music?

A. At Yale, I used to love to sitting around the Stiles dining hall and blathering about it with my friends. It being the 80s, we argued about Prince all the time. I was the class of ’88, so we were the class that entered with Purple Rain and went out with Love Sexy. [Prince] had an album come out every year, and every year was a drastic departure from the last. We would argue about whether Prince lost it this year or if he had ascended to new levels of Princeosity.

At Yale, so many of my friends were in bands. Pierson B11 was basically a boiler room converted into a music space. Lots of student bands would play there, and it was fantastic to see friends of mine from Yale and from New Haven just picking up instruments and doing it. That was mindblowing to me.

A lot of friendships formed over conversations about all these different kinds of music. One of the first people I met at Yale was Marc Weidenbaum ’88.

We were standing in line. He was wearing an REM shirt, and we just started arguing about REM. Another one of my close friends is Andrew Jeffey ’88. He’s an astrophysicicist at the University of London, but we still talk about music all the time. It’s funny — 30 years later, and we’re still really close friends, and we still have these same arguments, except now it’s over text and Twitter.

I also worked on an undergrad music publication back then called Nadine (It was named after the Chuck Berry song)

founded by Joe Levy ’86, now editor of Billboard Magazine, and Julian Dibbell ’86. I’m still friends with both of them.

It was working on Nadine that I started writing all these batshit insane ideas about music.

Q. Your latest book, “Turn Around Bright Eyes,” talks a lot about karaoke. What is it about karaoke that you like so much?

A. For me, karaoke allows anyone to participate in music, even those of us with no talent whatsoever. I’m fascinated with the way karaoke lets people shed their inhibitions about sharing music. “Let their inhibitions run wild,” as Rod Stweart would say. It’s funny — you go to a karaoke place and see all these people who can’t sing get up, but they’re getting up and doing it in front of strangers, and some kind of fierceness comes out of them that isn’t necessarily there in everyday life. For me, it’s exciting to be part of that, and it’s something I wanted to write about.

Basically, what I always end up writing about is music and human emotions — how music tells us about human relationships, but also how music is a part of them. It’s funny how technology is always changing but that fundamental urge to share music is always the same, so my first book was about mix tapes; this one is about karaoke. It’s the same urge to share music with people.

Q. Any favorite karaoke songs?

A. “Total Eclipse of the Heart”— it’s a jam of mine. “Ziggi Stardust” is another one.

Q. Why do you like writing memoirs about music?

A. The stuff I write about are the things I really want to understand better. So my books are basically about music and love — those are the two mysteries that I always want to understand better. I just keep coming back to the idea that you can figure out all the mysteries of love by using music.

All the relationships that I write about in these books — my life as a husband, as a son, as a friend — all of those relationships are inflected with music for me. All those moments have a soundtrack, and it’s funny that I’ll remember a song and it’ll trigger a memory. It’s like you’ll be sitting in the car and a song will come up on the radio that triggers these memories, all these really intense feelings. And so that’ll be what drives the book for me, even if the books are strictly about music.

Q. What is one of these songs?

A. There’s a song by Rod Stewart that I heard yesterday at Starbucks. It’s called “You Wear it Well.” I loved this song as a little boy. It’s about adult heartbreak, one of those things I had no concept of back then. I hear it now, and it’s a completely different song because you know, I’ve been through some of the things the song is about. It’s weird how some music follows you through your life.

Q. In Rolling Stone, you wrote about Miley Cyrus’s appearance at the Video

Music Awards. What did you think of her performance?

A. The article was about how pop music has this undiminished power to polarize people. I was expecting the show to be kind of dull. I think everyone was expecting it to be kind of dull. But then Miley performed, and it’s one of those things when you’re thinking, “Clearly this is insane, but is this insane-awesome or insane-terrible?” I came down strongly on insane awesome.

It’s something people still like to argue about. Nobody can predict that music is going to affect people like that, and that’s the thing I’ve always thought is fantastic about music: it’s capacity for surprise.

Q. What about it made you come down on the side of “insane-awesome”?

A. I liked the way the song has strong elements of sentimental 70s R&B. It was a really beautiful song in terms of the chords and production. It soars.

It’s sweet, and it’s moving. But then the vocal is a dumbass party commando song, and it’s a fantastic karaoke song.

I just thought it was really funny, really

“

surprising.

Q. Do you have any favorite pop singers?

A. I’m really obsessed with the new Kanye West album. I’m more obsessed with this album than I have been with any in a whole. It’s a really amazing, super paranoid electro kind of record.

Then at the last song end, it goes to this retrospective thing about falling in love. It’s full of surprises. Kanye West is kind of like Prince. He puts out an album every year, and it’s always different from the last one. He always keeps that kind of debate going, and the last song “Bound 2” just completely blows me away.

I also think Red, the Taylor Swift album that came out about a year ago, is this incredibly brilliant pop manifesto. The way she’s trying out all these different kinds of pop music—a lot of country, disco, arena rock. I love how she’ll have a song like “Red,” which is disco, but with banjos on it. That’s some serious next-school visionary stuff.

Contact LIA DUN at lia.dun@yale.edu .

IT’S WEIRD HOW SOME MUSIC FOLLOWS YOU THROUGH YOUR LIFE.

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R

ob Sheffield ’88 is a columnist and contributing editor for Rolling Stone, where he writes about music, TV and pop culture. He started at the magazine in 1997, following freelance work for publications like Spin and the Village Voice. A self-proclaimed lover of “pop trash,” Sheffield is a fan of both Kanye West and Taylor Swift. He is the author of the memoirs “Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time” and “Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut.” His latest book, “Turn Around Bright Eyes,” is about love, heartbreak and the power of karaoke. WEEKEND sat down with him to talk about music and writing, Prince and Miley Cyrus.