WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015

T U O G N I K SPEA Can student voices change the way Yale understands, discusses and treats mental health?

By Elizabeth Miles and Caroline Wray //Page 3

PRIZES

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GONE WITH THE WINDHAMCAMPBELL Coryna Ogunseitan looks into the mysterious workings of Yale’s much-discussed literature prizes.

PARTICLES

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POLITICS

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THE END OF PHYSICS

YURIY SERGEYEV

“Particle Fever” tells the story of the Large Hadron Collider. It’s a pretty good one, but there are a few too many numbers.

WKND continues to bring you the latest in geopolitics: this week, an interview with the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

ARBUTHNOT

WEEKEND VIEWS

SEXUAL HEALING // BY LEAF ARBUTHNOT College is widely understood to broaden one’s sexual horizons. For many students at elite universities, high school was a whirlwind of books and extracurricular activities — not a time for the languid afternoons and audacity conducive to sex.

At college, it won’t necessarily be dispensed to all, but a comfortable majority will enjoy the spoils at last.

Some college students do end up having lots of sex: at parties, in libraries, on Sundays when others are finishing their essays. But a significant number don’t. Either they have no sex at all or they have some, though not nearly as much as they’d like. The former category often includes people who purposefully forgo sex for personal, cultural or religious reasons; fair enough. But what about those who get to college happily anticipating some sort of four-year orgy, and end up realizing halfway through that their experiences haven’t lived up to the hype?

I did my undergraduate work at Cambridge in the UK, where sex was in the air but seldom between the sheets. You were constantly aware that people were having sex, and regularly, but it just didn’t seem to happen to many people you knew. A few people did the heavy lifting for the rest, having sex three or four times a week and tossing bawdy anecdotes to their sex-starved friends. Everyone would pretend to find these stories unappetizing, but in reality we would delightedly return to them for weeks.

It wasn’t that my Cambridge friends and I didn’t want to have sex; we all did, male or female. It

was more that we were cowed at every juncture by feelings of paralyzing awkwardness. How to get from hanging out with a boy or girl in a classroom, to actually having sex with them? How to stop talking to one’s partner at the end of a date, in order to lean in and kiss his or her previously articulate mouth? How to phase banter out of interactions, to make room for sexual tension? The transition from verbal communication to physical intimacy was — is — a minefield.

The luckiest of my peers proved adept at bridging the divide, or were such smooth operators that they saw no divide at all. Yet many preferred to give up the pursuit of sex entirely, in order to live the quiet life, unperturbed by rejection and end-ofdate key-fiddling. It was easier not to go chasing after sex; for all but the fortunate, the pursuit augured humiliation and uncertainty.

At the heart of the issue, I think, is the hallowed “otherness” of sex. The more it is held up as the great activity we should all be doing, as redblooded students, the harder it is to actually undertake. They say sex is casual nowadays, and while it is for some, it absolutely is not for most. Asking for it is difficult; dealing with the consequences of it is difficult; knowing whether it was good or bad, once finally done, is also difficult. With sex in the picture, feelings can get hurt, insecurities magnified, friendships tested.

But that isn’t always how it works. Sex can also be a lifeaffirming and liberating force; it can buoy confidence, not knock it down. Good sex benefits both

the mind and the body; it is an efficient way to increase concentration and emotional wellbeing. And I suspect that life would be simpler if we stripped sex of its taboo status — if you could just suggest sex to another person, as nonchalantly as you would ask to borrow their pen: “Hey — do you want to sleep together? If not — cool.”

OK, so maybe it will never be that simple. There are some very good reasons why the social taboo around sex has developed. When we have sex, we expose a side of ourselves that is not brought to the fore when we dance or eat or express our literary preferences. Sex is often at its best when conducted in a familiar environment, with someone you trust and know well. And if the road leading to physical intimacy was entirely smooth, sex might lose its allure, becoming just another humdrum time-passer.

But if social norms loosened up a bit and allowed us to talk about sex more freely, much suffering would be prevented.

Think of the time that would be saved — instead of trying to decode text messages and sidelong glances, you would be able to find out swiftly whether physical intimacy with the desired other was a feasible option. We are all aware of what people we find attractive. It seems ludicrous that so much effort has to be funneled into establishing whether they also have feelings of physical attraction for us. So let’s stop being so coy, and start asking — plainly, politely — for sex.

** * In another class, I watched

a documentary chronicling the life and work of Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei.

Some might be familiar with his series of photos showing famous landmarks, including Tiananmen Square, with his middle finger raised in a sarcastic salute.

In his art and his life Ai Weiwei constantly challenges the status quo: Defacing priceless Neolithic vases with the Coca-Cola logo or smashing them to highlight the fragility of history and tradition are par for his course. For him, even something old or venerated might still need to change.

This idea is the heart of his activism against the Chinese Communist Party: with every act and every video recording and every piece of art, Ai Weiwei faces down what he sees as a decrepit, bloated structure. In a country known for burying its mistakes, Ai Weiwei constantly confronts

a “corpse” of his own.

In 2008 Ai Weiwei uncovered the names of over five thousand children killed during the Sichuan earthquake because shoddily-built government schools collapsed: five thousand corpses, with names and families, that the government refused to acknowledge to his satisfaction.

Later, attempting to testify at the trial of Tan Zuoren, who also investigated theww earthquake, Ai Weiwei was assaulted by a police officer and later required an emergency operation on his brain. He filed claims against several government offices only to be turned away.

In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested, jailed and, upon release, forbidden to leave Beijing.

In the West, it can be hard to understand why anyone would voluntarily stare at a corpse; it often feels like people train themselves to avoid thinking about the “foul.” I know when I’m guilty of this: Avoiding a conflict or an awkward text message is oftentimes easier than forcing myself to examine the situation in its cringe-worthy minutiae. Those aren’t national crises, but they’re the little corpses — or maybe small pieces of one, like a dismembered hand — that I need to face.

At Yale, I don’t think the “foul” is given enough weight.

We have the unparalleled privilege of critiquing any aspect of this institution we want, any “corpse,” without fear of reprimand. No police officer will hold us under 24/7 surveillance for months without explanation, like they did for Ai Weiwei, if we

question Yale’s mental health policy. As a result, we often look away from the “foul,” accustomed as we are to aimless criticism with no follow-through.

What’s foul at Yale is the “corpse of fine.” As in the typical conversation: “How are you?”

“Oh you know, fine.” It’s a cultivated culture of fine-ness: when everyone else seems “fine,” it’s hard to admit when you’re not, even to yourself. Yet for once we’ve done a good job of staring down this foul concept in demanding reforms to Yale’s mental health policies. The next step is to challenge ourselves, face our own fears and corpses. We might not be Buddhist monks or radical artists, but we can smash convention in our own way.

cally pressing her hand against the side of her face and saying something like “Maybe he got busy and couldn’t get out of the office,” although I don’t remember the exact words. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have gotten off my new bike to walk through rows of vintagemeets-shabby-chic-meetshalfway-house couture, but something about the painting (or probably print, as I now realize) had caught my attention from the street. I liked that the blonde woman’s emotions were instantly recognizable; a speech bubble told me exactly what she was thinking, and the bright colors and comic-style print exaggerated her loneliness, causing her despair to burst off

the page.

A year before, I had wandered through the Prado in Madrid, completely befuddled as my audiotape informed me that a picture of a woman sitting in a lake represented female oppression, sexual desire and also probably genocide. Looking at that woman’s face — masklike, composed and impassive — I was forced to admit to myself that the canvas made me feel nothing, that I couldn’t get past the surface. Lichtenstein’s woman was different. There was nothing to get past, she was all surface and the surface told me everything I needed to know.

As I fished three crumpled dollars out of my pocket, I looked one last time at the woman, to

be sure I was ready to make such a hefty investment. I was; it was worth it. When I offered Bargain Bin Santa Claus the three dollars, he laughed in a somewhat spiteful way, and informed me that he needed at least ten. Even by garage sale standards I was tragically underfunded.

I rode my bike away, devastated in the all-encompassing but completely transient way unique to 9-year-olds.

But I did have one thought to console myself. A painting (or print or whatever) had actually made me feel something.

I had finally seen real art.

GARCIA-KENNEDY

WILLIAMSON

//CAROLINE TISDALE

Contact LEAF ARBUTHNOT at leafarbuthnot@googlemail.com .

The Corpse of Fine // BY CLAIRE WILLIAMSON

There is a type of Buddhist meditation that requires monks to find a corpse and meditate over its decay. This decay has ten stages — ten “foulnesses” — that a monk can contemplate, beginning with “the bloated” and ending with a dried-out skeleton. To do this, a monk journeys to a charnel ground, a dumping place for corpses, and finds a corpse that fulfills the specific foulness he wishes to meditate on. He then sets about observing its shapes, colors, concavities and convexities in the hopes of eliminating attachment to the physical world and attaining enlightenment.

In my class “Buddhist Traditions of Mind and Meditation,” we watched a time lapse of a decaying corpse. The head turned black, like charcoal, and collapsed into itself while the abdomen swelled, turning the

color of a fading bruise, until it too suddenly collapsed — almost like it had exploded. From then on the body seemed to wither instead of grow as ribs and bones became more prominent and skin dried up and was sloughed off. The face had long ceased to resemble anything human.

This form of meditation is ancient, of course, but even contemporary monks contemplate corpses in morgues. More than just examining the body, the goal of this meditation is challenging fears and coming to love and treasure the very thing that first appeared so unpleasant. Reaching this point allows monks to change not only themselves, but also their view of the surrounding world.

***

Contact CLAIRE WILLIAMSON at claire.williamson@yale.edu .

Pop Art // BY IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY I once tried to buy an original Roy Lichtenstein at a garage sale. I was 9 years old and when I asked the owner “if the piece was authentic,” he laughed for a moment before becoming deathly serious and telling me that, yes, indeed it was. He had a vaguely Santa Claus-ish belly and a beard to match, so I figured I had no reason to doubt him. I had also found that one could never go wrong at garage sales. The bike I was riding on that very day had been bought at a garage sale the previous week, and once my tetanus shots had been brought up to date, I rode it everywhere.

The piece in question showed an impossibly glamorous blonde woman, theatri-

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YALE PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL

Morse Crescent Theater // All WKND A presentation of student work: “Fiction,” “Sunday Morning,” “Dream of a Dragon Woman,” “Anoush” and “Exception to the Rule.” WKND is performing in all of them.

Contact IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY at ian.garcia-kennedy@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Girl, Interrupted. Not interrupting girls. Duh.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

COPING WITH MENTAL ILLNESS AT YALE

// BY ELIZABETH MILES AND CAROLINE WRAY

y amazing psychologist knows that she is willfully violating your rules.”

Caroline Posner ’17, buoyed by members of a nodding audience, challenged a panel of administrators, including Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway.

She explained that she had long since passed the 12-session limit imposed by MH&C. MH&C Director Lorraine Siggins pushed against the accusation.

“We do not have an absolute limit of number of sessions,” she said, adding that each case is handled on an individual basis.

“When someone comes back from the fall semester and things are still not going well in January, we would not stop treatment.”

She asked that patients who have been given this misinformation reach out to her.

Posner then addressed the audience, asking those same misinformed students to raise their hands. Roughly 50 hands shot up.

Siggins began to explain that the MH&C website doesn’t mention any such limit, when a voice sounded.

“My therapist told me in every single meeting where we were in our 12 meetings.”

“Mine too.”

“Same.”

“M

“P-Set or Mental WellBeing” Eugenia Zhukovsky’s weekend has been a little surreal. She hasn’t been back much on campus since electing to take time off earlier in the semester. She decided she needed to focus full-time on managing her anxiety and depression. Technically a visitor, she has no ID card to access campus buildings.

Seconds after being guestswiped into her residential college dining hall, several of her friends materialize, and hug her.

“How is it, being back in the hellhole?” one asks.

Zhukovsky squints a little.

“Weird.” She says she’s happy with her decision. “But it’s not fun. It sucks.”

For Zhukovsky, being a Yale student and managing her mental health were mutually exclusive. Panic attacks, medication adjustments, subsequent side effects and bouts of depression — all with little help from relatively infrequent sessions with Yale Mental Health & Counseling — simply took up too much time in an unyielding, rigorous academic environment.

“No one was explaining how I could do it at Yale,” she said, “We’re not given the ‘our health comes first’ [message] as directly as we have to be.”

Instead of feeling that her health was of primary concern, she felt like it was another, unsolicited, course or extracurricular. She added that the same has been true for other Yale students; friends have admitted feelings of anxiety to her but added that

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they “didn’t have time” to see a counselor. Zhukovsky calls this notion absurd.

Posner and Zhukovsky each described a “P-Set or mental well-being” dilemma: nights when they had to decide between sleep-inducing medication and studying. In other words, they had to choose between missing a deadline and facing the repercussions of a mental illness left untreated.

In Zhukovsky’s eyes, Yalies are high-achieving perfectionists. She likes that: their energy, success and drive drew her to the school to begin with. But that same energy can heighten the effects of anxiety.

Julie* said that when she arrived on Yale’s campus last fall, she found her brilliant peers inspiring, but that they also caused her high school confidence to shrink. During her freshman fall, she began to doubt herself and started to experience intense anxiety.

She described her daily routine: class, practice for her varsity sport, and then crying while doing her homework in her single. Meanwhile, she felt that everyone around her was gaining confidence and accolades.

Julie felt increasingly inadequate, weak and alone — but she kept her feelings secret.

Almost all of the students interviewed who have experienced anxiety or depression at Yale said that finding and maintaining a supportive social network was one of the most, if not the very most, important way to cope with mental illness on campus. But several have found that the majority of Yale students seem more focused on their own schedules than on the well-being of their friends.

Monica Hannush ’16, who has experienced severe depression at Yale, has felt this on a personal level. In moments of profound despair, she has resorted to sending her friends desperate text messages. Those texts, she said, follow less desperate messages. Often, when she texts her friends less urgent messages about feeling sad, she receives ostensibly empathetic but distant responses: “so sorry! writing an essay, sending you hugs.”

“About to go on a date, but you’re beautiful!”

A News survey on mental health resources, completed by 233 students, found that although 61 percent of students have experienced symptoms of depression, anxiety or other psychological conditions, only 28 percent have sought formal treatment, either on campus or elsewhere.

Julie recalled the moment in her freshman year when she felt like she couldn’t take it anymore. She decided to visit Yale Mental Health & Counseling. On her walk over, she was wracked with paranoia and shame. Afraid of being seen, she kept her head down in the waiting room — but she felt comforted by the presence of other people in nearby chairs. She was not alone.

Breaking the Stigma

Once, when Posner went to her chemistry professor to explain why she had been having particular struggles in the class, she ended up in tears. Posner said that when she told him about her severe anxiety and depression, he simply responded, “T.M.I.” Although diagnoses have been rising steadily for years — a Harvard study showed that the number of patients in the U.S. increases by about 20 percent each year — many still consider mental illness an uncomfortable, even taboo, subject. While 60 percent of the News survey respondents confirmed that they felt comfortable talking about their own mental health with others at Yale, 27 percent of survey respondents said that they were not at all comfortable with such discussions.

And that mindset, according to Posner and Zhukovsky, perpetuates a culture of undeserved shame for the suffering. Anxiety disorders affect nearly one out of every five American adults, a 2014 statistic listed by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.

Zhukovsky feels that Yale, specifically, needs to better educate its students.

“I didn’t really know what depression or anxiety were until I had them,” she said. “There was this time when I felt alone, and like there was nothing I could do about it, and it was the worst time in my life … it’s so important to me to talk about this, and to help people from getting stuck in that place. It can be treated. It can be helped.”

Following the death of Luchang Wang ’17 in January, members of a shocked and grieving community have resolved to push for the changes they feel are necessary. Concerned students have been speaking up, demanding that Yale reevaluate resources and policies, and that the community take steps to break the stigma surrounding mental illness.

Many have begun fighting for

ROSHNI CULTURAL SHOW Woolsey // 7 p.m.

An annual celebration of South Asian Culture, in North America!

change on campus — people like Posner, or like Geoffrey Smith ’15, who co-authored a pledge to boycott the Senior Class Gift along with six other seniors.

Smith suggested that alumni and the administration regard participation in the Senior Class Gift as a bellwether for student opinion, and so he called on seniors to abstain from what he sees as an endorsement of University policy. Nearly 97 percent of seniors donated to the Gift in 2014. This year, 78 percent of seniors chose to participate.

A few days after Wang’s death, Posner, Korbin Richards ’15 and Charlotte Storch ’15 created “Nox Et Veritas,” a Tumblr blog, where they publish stories, sometimes written anonymously, about MH&C, withdrawal and readmission. With this new forum, they hope to bring untold stories of mental illness to light and foster dialogue on campus. Already, seven entries have been posted, and Posner said that the blog has between two and three dozen followers.

According to Richards, the problem is not that Yalies do not want to talk about mental illness.

“Once the topic is introduced, everyone wants to join the discussion,” she said.

Rather, she believes that the problem lies largely with the Yale administration. She feels that the administration has been less open and eager to converse with students. After Wednesday’s forum, she said she was proud of the active and vigorous student participation, but disappointed in the continued administrative distance.

“If the panel’s job was to not answer questions, then they did exceptionally well,” Richards said.

Even if students are engaged in the conversation on mental health, Genevieve Simmons ’17 worries the renewed discussion may be short-lived.

“The prevalence of talking about mental health has been sensationalist — movements

when we hear about a horrible mistreatment behind the scenes, or a loss of one of our peers,” she said. “Then the discourse fades into the background.”

Moments like this have come before. MH&C Director Lorraine Siggins recalled, for instance, student meetings similar to Wednesday’s event that took place in the 1970s. She said that in her more than 40 years of working on campus, she has seen interest in mental health on campus wax and wane.

To many students, like Zhukovsky, letting this moment of heightened discourse slip away is not an option. She said she could not overstate the importance of creating mental health reform: this, she said, is about quality of life, and life itself.

Phone Tag When Richards was evaluated at MH&C during her freshman year, she only told one lie. She said that she hadn’t been having suicidal thoughts.

She called this self-defense, as some of her friends had been sent home because they had expressed suicidal thoughts. These stories frightened her — withdrawal was a financial impossibility for her family, and would worsen her condition. Richards says that the fear of MH&C forcing students to leave campus, or keeping them from returning, prevents those with suicidal thoughts from expressing them. And that, she believes, is dangerous.

Holloway agrees that the fear surrounding the treatment policies of MH&C is unsafe. Before Wednesday’s panel, he told the News that he worries many public perceptions of treatment at MH&C are incorrect, and that he hoped the event would clarify misconceptions and alleviate unfounded fear.

Richards told the panel about her lie. She explained that the fear she had felt was pervasive on campus — a statement echoed by the snaps around the room — and

asked how the panel planned to address it.

Siggins responded by pointing out that MH&C sees around 2,500 students each year, and that the vast majority of students who withdraw on medical leave do so voluntarily. Later, she described circumstances that might lead to a forced withdrawal. She said that a patient would need to have a plan for self-harm, as well as the means to execute it — “in other words, if we’re concerned imminently that this person in the next 24 hours may be at great risk.” She added that the individual in question would be hospitalized, and never simply sent home, under such circumstances.

Zhukovsky, for instance, withdrew without any pressure from Yale administrators or MH&C clinicians. She said that MH&C could not provide her with weekly therapy, which she needed, and so she saw no alternative to leaving. It was not until she withdrew that her mental health began to improve.

The thought of other students continuing to wade through the support provided by MH&C saddens her.

“I know that they’re struggling, because I struggled through it, and it wasn’t helping,” Zhukovsky said. “The care I was getting was just okay, and ‘just okay’ is not an option.”

Others remember experiences of MH&C therapy that were worse than mediocre.

Richards called her first and only appointment after her initial consultation “one of the worst experiences [she’s] ever had with another person,” recalling how her doctor skipped the handshake in their greeting. “He didn’t shake my hand, didn’t ask about how I was doing. He went straight into ‘Why are you here?’ and then ‘When’s the last time you menstruated?’”

Julie, initially comforted by the presence of other students in the SEE MENTAL HEALTH PAGE 8

WKND RECOMMENDS: The Bell Jar. “I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.” Same.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND READS

WINDHAM IN THEIR SAILS // BY CORYNA OGUNSEITAN Tuesday morning, Beinecke Library staff set up a small, modestly lit stage and 40 chairs upstairs to prepare for the announcement of this year’s Windham-Campbell Literature Prize winners. The prize awards $150,000 to each of nine writers — three in drama, three in nonfiction and three in fiction.

Though this certainly makes for a noteworthy accolade, few people attended the ceremony. Almost all those who came worked at the Beinecke. University President Peter Salovey read a short speech: He named the winners, summarized their careers, thanked listeners and left. The whole thing took less than 20 minutes.

Despite the small reception in New Haven, the event attracted a much larger audience than could be contained in the Beinecke.

Michael Kelleher, program director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, opened proceedings by saying, “We’re being watched all over the world live right now.”

Indeed, the announcement was live-streamed over the Internet.

The ambitions of the Windham-Campbell Prize certainly merit global attention. It aims to reward writers in the English language from all over the world for demonstrating achievement or promise in their respective genres. In an interview with the News, Kelleher said, “For the first time, more than half the winners knew what Windham-Campbell was.” At the awards ceremony, he joked that he was happy that no one thought the phone call notifying them that they’d won was a Nigerian Prince scam. But in all seriousness, the vast scope of the award has attracted international attention, and though it was created only three years ago, the Windham-Campbell Prize has quickly acquired significant prestige.

The ambitions of the Windham-Campbell Prize certainly merit global attention. It aims to reward writers in the English language from all over the world for demonstrating achievement or promise in their respective genres.

In an interview with the News, Kelleher joked that he was happy that this year was the first when over half the winners already knew what the Windham-Campbell Prize was, and that no one thought the phone call notifying them that they’d won was a Nigerian Prince scam. But in all seriousness, the vast scope of the award has attracted international attention, and though it was created only three years ago, the Windham-Campbell Prize has quickly acquired significant prestige.

The prize was created by Donald Windham who, upon his death in 2010, left the majority of his estate to Yale in order to fund the Windham-Campbell Prizes. Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, Windham moved to New York City soon after graduating high school to become a writer. There, his career took off when he collaborated with Tennessee Williams on “You Touched Me!,” and he went on to become a critically acclaimed novelist.

Windham’s success never came easy. He never went to college, and as a young, financially struggling writer, he worked odd jobs in New York City. It is perhaps because of this difficulty that Windham wished to create a prize that would not only honor well-known

authors with impressive bodies of work, but also — and perhaps more importantly — provide younger, less established writers with the financial opportunity to focus on their craft.

Eugene V. Kokot, co-executor of the Windham-Campbell estate, says he ensures that the selection committees choose winners that match Windham’s goals. “It was Donald’s intent to give someone the prize who would really benefit from money to aid [their] writing, without having to work a second job to make ends meet,” he said. In keeping with this mission, last year’s winners have expressed their gratitude for the prize, which has enabled them to stop looking for temp jobs and worrying about money, and to finally focus on establishing themselves among literati.

The newfound ease of the prizewinners is the result of a long and complicated process. Each year, Kelleher travels to a different part of the world to familiarize himself with the region’s literary circles.

He then chooses 60 nominators — usually writers or academics — who will each choose one “established” writer and one “up-andcomer” to nominate for the prize.

He cited the importance of having what he called a “saturation” of nominees from a particular part of the world, so that every year selectors can closely examine the literature of a given country, rather than annually comparing literature from all over the world.

Selection committees choose winners not based on a single masterpiece; instead, they look at the writers’ entire bodies of work.

Judges on the committee then pick a book they think is indicative of the overall quality of an author’s work to send to a panel of jurists, who decide on the final winners.

It’s a long process, and usually takes an entire year. In fact, Kelleher begins searching for new nominators the day after winners are announced.

This involved procedure yields promising results. “The proof that the selection process works is in the people who are selected,” said Richard Deming, an English professor at Yale who teaches the popular creative writing course Daily Themes. “By and large, they aren’t household names, but they have been very impressive.”

The names of the nominators are never made public, and nominees do not find out they’ve been nominated unless they win.

The selection committees, also composed of anonymous members, work in seclusion throughout the process to determine the

best nominees. Even after their term ends, previous judges cannot reveal their identities to the press.

“The process is anonymous because we wanted to avoid conflicts of interest,” Kokot said. “We want nominators to nominate purely on the basis of their review of authors who deserve a wider audience.”

This could explain the modest reception that accompanied the announcement of the winners; unlike prizes such as the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award, there is little fanfare surrounding the selections. While other literary prizes have celebrity judges and long processes involving publicized longlists, short lists and finalists, the Windham-Campbell doesn’t make a show of its procedure. As J.D. McClatchy, editor of “The Yale Review,” puts it: “The Windham-Campbell has prestige, like the Bollingen, more than glamour, like the Pulitzer.”

McClatchy is not the only person to compare Windham-Campbell to more established prizes.

Though the Windham-Campbell program is still in its infancy, members of the literary community have high hopes for its future.

The prize was profiled in a Foreign Policy article about prestigious global literary awards, along with the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Man Booker Award.

Unlike these accolades, the Windham-Campbell does not allow almost-winners to benefit from being named finalists. However, Teju Cole, one of this year’s fiction winners, says he wouldn’t have wanted to know had he been a finalist. For him, the anonymity de-emphasizes the competitive nature of literary prizes. “Making art is not about rivalry,” he said.

Most commonly, interviewees compared Windham-Campbell either to the Macarthur Genius Award, as the decision processes are similar, or, perhaps more aptly, to Yale’s Bollingen Prize, which is essentially Windham-Campbell’s poetic counterpart.

The Bollingen Prize has awarded literary excellence ever since its inception in 1948, when Ezra Pound was the first winner.

Also affiliated with the Beinecke, the Bollingen selects American poets who have published the best book of poetry in the two years preceding the prize’s announcement. It also takes into account lifetime achievement that the judges deem particularly impressive. Its goals, then, are somewhat different than those the Windham-Campbell — the Bollingen is not international, and is rarely given to a junior poet without a

significant body of work.

Nancy Kuhl, curator of American Literature at the Beinecke and Program Director for the Bollingen Prize, thinks that, because of these different functions, the Bollingen and Windham-Campbell will mutually inform and enrich one another.

“The two prizes together highlight Yale’s deep investment in great literature,” she said. “This isn’t just a deep investment in research, but also in the creation of great works of art.”

The relationship between Yale and the prizes is, in a sense, symbiotic: The prize enhances Yale students’ experience of literature, and association with Yale lends the prize automatic prestige. Kuhl went on to explain how awards such as these impact students and aspiring writers who are considering entering the field: “When we give an award to a writer, we don’t know what’s going to arise from their imagination, or how that will spark the imaginations of others at a distance.”

The Windham-Campbell has already put significant effort into sparking young imaginations.

Since its inception, the prize has maintained a partnership with Co-op Arts and Humanities High School in New Haven. Each year, six students concentrating in creative writing or theater coordinate a panel and workshop with one of the winners.

Lynda Blancato organizes the cooperation between the Beinecke and Co-op High School. “This program shows students that the prizewinners have very diverse paths to their careers as writers,” said Blancato. Even just meeting new people who aren’t from New

Haven, she said, is exciting for students — so working with writers from all over the world was especially rewarding.

The high school’s affiliation with Windham-Campbell winners is, in a sense, indicative of the realization of Windham’s goals — for many writers, especially those from outside the U.S., local recognition in New Haven is the first step to recognition abroad. “I’m literally trying to bring these writers to the world,” Kelleher tells me.

According to him, the WindhamCampbell Prize intends to bring acclaim to writers who deserve it and whose art should be appreciated by literary enthusiasts around the world.

That said, fame is not the ultimate goal of most writers. “I think making art is about having a voice — prizes are not the reason we do this work,” said Cole. (This was, of

//WINDHAM-CAMPBELL

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YALE PHILHARMONIA: BEETHOVEN AND BARTÓK Sprague Hall // 7:30 p.m.

The two biggest B’s of classical music.

Did I get that wrong? My b.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Hamlet: “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!”

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND ARTS

“LEAF”THIS EXHIBIT OFF YOUR CALENDAR // BY ERIC LIN

// PATRICE BOWMAN

“Marsh Botanical Garden: Yale’s Hidden Jewel,” is, in fact, only a slideshow advertising the garden. I had expected touch screens, interactive displays, and some informational value. But the so-called “media exhibit” at the Center for Science and Social Science Information provided only a series of photos shown on nine screens pulled together into one larger rectangle. Woe to anyone who walks up Science Hill in the snow just to see it. Nevertheless, for those working hard at the CSSSI during the winter, it creates a pleasant ambience.

You won’t see anything special at this exhibit. Google “beautiful plants,” and you’ll find photos just as good as, if not better than, those on view. And although the photos are well shot, they sure don’t bring anything special to the subject. I confess that I’ve never been to the Marsh Botanical Garden, but I’m certain that seeing the plants in person would be a more engag-

ing experience than watching them dance across a screen. (Both the exhibit and the garden itself offer free admission, and the trek to each is about equal.)

You won’t really learn much from the exhibit either. Yes, the photos are labeled; yes, I learned that Ylang Ylang is used to make Chanel No. 5 and that Yale offers some really hands-on environmental studies classes; but aside from that, the exhibit doesn’t offer much educational value.

There are some photos documenting the garden’s historical roots, but they don’t say much. A letter of correspondence between Darwin and O.C. Marsh is pretty cool, as are some slides showing Marsh’s other notable acquaintances: Chief Red Cloud, Thomas Huxley, Alfred Russell Wallace. It’s interesting that Marsh knew these people, but that’s all you learn from the slides.

Beyond this brief history, you’ll

also learn how much fun some staff members have at the garden. In one slide, Curator of Greenhouse Plant Collection David Garinger holds a cat named Eli. How adorable. (Interesting note: In the bibliographic slide at the end of the slideshow, the botanical garden’s Wikipedia page is referenced as a source.)

However, I would be wrong to gripe about this exhibit just because it doesn’t deserve its spot on the Yale Arts Calendar. Even though most of the students working at the center didn’t seem to think much of the slideshow, I thought it was a pleasant addition to the study area. It wasn’t really calming, but the nature provided a nice counterpoint to the otherwise academic surroundings. I did notice one guy look at it for five seconds while waiting for his documents to print.

Although underwhelming, the slideshow was nice, and nice things

can always fit into our lives.

“MARSH BOTANICAL GARDEN: YALE’S HIDDEN JEWEL,” IS, IN FACT, ONLY A SLIDESHOW ADVERTISING THE GARDEN. But even after accepting the exhibit’s limitations, I still have one complaint. The screen in the center of the display has a thin line running through it, distracting viewers (if there are any) from the images flicking across the screen.

Sometimes the line is red, sometimes it’s green, but whatever it is, it needs to be fixed. I can’t imagine that the Louvre staff would find

it acceptable to have a green line drawn through all their paintings.

Then again, as we’ve established, the CSSSI isn’t exactly the Louvre.

Kind of unfortunately, the exhibit closes soon or is closed already. The Yale Arts Calendar says it ends Friday, February 27, whereas the poster in CSSSI says it ends in March. In any case, the timing is interesting. Maybe it’s ending because we can visit the garden now that it’s spring. However, that would be a mistake on the part of the curators. The exhibit is not a wintertime replacement for the garden, and if it’s meant to be that, it’s a failure. The only thing the exhibit does is brighten the CSSSI. But this is all just speculation.

In the end, I don’t know why this exhibit is here — it remains an enigma. A nice enigma, though.

Contact ERIC LIN at eric.v.lin@yale.edu .

Catching “Particle Fever” // BY PATRICE BOWMAN

// CAROLINE TISDALE

Science and math are the bane of my existence: After biology and calculus, it was all downhill for me. So, when I heard that the Whitney Humanities Center was screening “Particle Fever,” an independent documentary about physics, I felt conflicted. I love movies, but my high school physics class gave me a brain aneurysm. In the end, I shrugged my shoulders and decided to watch it, hoping to learn something new. Not only did I find “Particle Fever” to be educational, but it was also funny and mostly accessible.

In “Particle Fever,” physicistturned-filmmaker Mark Levinson follows a team of scientists as they work with the Large Hadron Collider and search for the Higgs boson — aka the “God Particle,” which supposedly holds the key to understanding the origin of all matter. This is something out of an epic science-fiction picture, and indeed, the film’s introduction to the LHC makes you feel the magnitude of the endeavor.

In wide, high angle shots, the machine looms over the hundreds of scientists: Compared to

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it, they look like ants.

T h a t being said, a film just about the LHC wouldn’t be enough for the average filmgoer.

We need the human element to emotionally invest us in the story.

Wisely, then, the documentary follows a couple of scientists with compelling personalities.

There’s David Kaplan, the theoretical physicist (and film producer, who approached Levinson with the documentary idea) who introduces us to the LHC and its history while peppering the picture with dry humor. During a lecture on the significance of the LHC, a self-described economist asks Kaplan “What’s the point?

What’s the financial gain?”

“What is it good for? Could be nothing except understanding everything,” Kaplan replies.

Post-doctorate Monica Dunford is the one who, throughout the film, excitedly tries to explain

t h e whole experiment to us commoners using simplified physics concepts. She’s also the most energetic. When the LHC fires its first particle beam, she exclaims, “We rock! First beam? We destroyed that shit!”

In contrast, theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed remains more cautious about the whole situation. He contemplates whether the Higgs Boson supports the idea of intelligent design or of sheer randomness. If it is the latter, he posits that our

SONGS OF LEAR

Iseman Theater // 8 p.m.

Tickets are sold out — but you can get on the wait list by showing up an hour before!

whole world is built on chaos. If that’s the case, Kaplan responds, “In a sense, it’s the end of physics.”

These are heavy questions that the film doesn’t answer — and how can it? The documentary doesn’t linger on the philosophical for too long. It knows that its strengths lie in humanizing physics. And it does that well, for the most part. In what other documentary would you see physicists popping champagne bottles in celebration of colliding particles?

Or rapp i n g physicists, clothed in lab coats and Einstein masks, spitt i n g rhy m e s about the LHC? Still, we eventually have to dive into all of the jargon and equations that come with physics. Animations by MK12 Creative Studio attempt to translate the complex concepts into colorful illustrations complete with streamlined designs, but as informative as they were, they couldn’t make sense of all these ideas. About half way into the movie, the discussions of variables and constants began to really test my patience.

The musical score by Robert Miller was also frustrating.

Too often, the score throws subtlety out the window and bombards the audience with violins and drums, overdoing the drama when the visuals are already dra-

matic enough. This kind of scoring may work in a Hollywood action flick or thriller, but it doesn’t work in this documentary. At other times, the score sounds too bouncy and silly, something out of a cartoon short.

Following the screening, New York Times science columnist Carl Zimmer ’87 moderated a discussion with Levinson, Kaplan, film producers Carla Solomon ’75 and Andrea Miller ’75, and physicist Fabiola Gianotti, who was featured in the documentary.

The panel expressed their hopes that the film would reach a wide audience via word of mouth and, as Levinson put it, “convey the excitement of the scientific community.” And indeed, despite its flaws, “Particle Fever” is the kind of film that can help those ignorant of science grow more comfortable with it. Who knows — maybe if “Particle Fever” was around when I was growing up, I would have become one of those rockstar physicists!

Probably not.

Contact PATRICE BOWMAN at patrice.bowman@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: The Sorrows of Young Werther. Definitely werth a read.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND COURTS

Her Take

AND YOUR WINNERS ARE...

// BY GENEVIEVE SIMMONS I had been to Soul de Cuba on a date once before, but not with a stranger. After my date introduced herself as Rose, we eased into the usual small talk of colleges, classes, and life goals. Rose stopped me when I mentioned my philosophy lecture — she was also in the class! So it turns out that my second date at Soul de Cuba wasn’t with a stranger, either. Because I sit in the back row of the lecture hall, I know the procrastination habits of my classmates well.

“You’re the girl who plays solitaire!”

I exclaimed. She nodded shyly and proceeded to assure me that she still listens to our professor intently — not that I was judging.

Rose is a Computer Science major (looking to make that a double major alongside Linguistics) and plays trumpet in the Yale Precision Marching Band, although she doesn’t do it for her love of sports. Discussing one of her classes that I’m not in, “Science

WKND concludes this year’s iteration of the eternally amorous Blindest Date contest. Our two dates ventured to Soul de Cuba and Rubamba on WKND’s dime. They report the results of their star-crossed, WKND-arranged rendezvous below. See you next year, WKND lovers! Thank God February is over.

Her Take // BY ROSE SLOAN You would think that, having grown up in Chicago, I would either know how to walk on icy sidewalks in ballet flats or have enough judgment not to wear ballet flats on icy sidewalks. However, based on the number of times I almost slipped and fell while walking from Silliman to Soul de Cuba last Sunday, you would be wrong.

Needless to say, I was the second to enter the restaurant. At least I wasn’t wearing heels. Then I might not have made it there at all.

As I sat down at the table, Genevieve told me that she’d never done anything like this before, and I said that I hadn’t either. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this date. I had technically been on a blind date before, Freshman Screw, but then my friends and my date’s friends had served as a buffer between the two of us.

We started by asking each other the standard questions: name, year, major and so on. When she said that she was a Cognitive Science major, I mentioned a class I had taken on the cognitive science of language. We then began to discuss this semester’s courses and discovered that, in a way, we had met before, since

we are both currently taking “Philosophy of Language.”

In fact, it turned out that Genevieve and I share a love of language, and we found plenty to talk about, from language to food to books. We swapped movie recommendations, discussed the oddities of the public boarding school I attended and agreed that the plot of “How To Get Away With Murder” was completely implausible. (How could a law professor constantly abandon her class to work on her own cases and always call on the same five students? The world will never know.)

The differences between our home states, Illinois and California, provided a jumping-off point for a number of discussions.

I was more or less accustomed to the t e m p e ra t u r e that night (around freezing), a n d

Genevieve was not. In fact, she was shocked to hear that during last year’s winter break, Chicago had a wind chill of -40 degrees, a temperature we agreed was horrifyingly cold. In turn, I was surprised that she didn’t consider Science Hill a “real hill”, as it was significantly larger than the largest hill in my hometown: an artificial hill built for the train.

While there were occasional awkward pauses in the conversation, for the most part, we spent an enjoyable evening. The food was excellent, and the conversation was interesting, even if we did wind up talking about our difficulties with the latest philosophy paper. By dessert, we were discussing the lack of visibility of queer women at Yale and joking about her brave struggle to reach the plantains at the bottom of her flan dish. We left the restaurant happy, even though she was shivering in the cold, and I was slipping on the ice in my flats. As we parted ways — she was attending a friend’s Oscar party and I had to finish an English paper — we hugged and said we’d see each other in class.

Fiction,” got us chatting about our favorite books, and then onto our favorite movies and television shows; Rose got hooked on “Buffy” while at public boarding school in Illinois and cited her all-time favorite novel as “Pride and Prejudice.” After having overanalyzed Jane Austen in AP Lit, I couldn’t agree quite so wholeheartedly. (If any readers happen to be interested in my own reading habits, I recommend my personal favorite, Marcus Zusak’s “I Am the Messenger.”)

I found myself struggling to think of more questions in order to keep our conversation flowing. I learned about sleep-away math camps and how much colder Chicago is than New Haven, something I cannot begin to fathom, since I’m from California. As we enjoyed our respective delicious dinners — a meat dish for her, the eggplant milanesa for me

and flan for dessert — I found myself relaxing into the conversation more.

After all, blind dates are scary. Even when you kind of know the person!

I had figured that I would recognize my date (since I’m so popular), but I truly enjoyed getting to know someone whom, in other circumstances, I could have spent the semester just sitting behind without ever holding a real conversation. I don’t know if I’ll see Rose around campus much (except in lecture), but at the end of our walk back I gave her a genuine hug!

I was

I t w a s n e a r ing 7pm. As is depressingly common this winter, it was bitterly cold outside. Despite the fact that (as my trusty iPhone informed me) Rubamba is roughly six minutes and 0.3 miles away from Pierson, I’d never actually been before. In flagrant violation of the unspoken conventions of Yale Standard Time, I got there a afew minautes early and was greeted by a waitress and promptly shown to my seat. For a few minutes, I had the run of the restaurant — no one was there on a Sunday night at 7 — and then Skyler, my date, arrived. Contrary to all those popular stereotypes about gay men, my fashion sense is pretty atrocious (no doubt exacerbated by my colorblindness), but Skyler was dressed sharply, with a nice tie and snazzy shirt. Don’t ask me what color they were, because I can’t tell the difference between blue and purple, and I was honestly too focused on not making a total fool of myself to fulfill my reportorial duties to the fullest.

Anyhow, Skyler sat down, and then we perused our menus. Skyler had been to Rubamba before and recommended the arepas, so I ordered a shrimp arepa. He

Contact ROSE SLOAN at rose.sloan@yale.edu .

happy to spend evening with good food and a new friend.

Contact GENEVIEVE SIMMONS at genevieve.

His Take // BY SCOTT REMER

ordered a chicken arepa. He also said that their horchatas were excellent, so I got a horchata too, because honestly, why not?

Having ordered our food, we started chatting in earnest. The conversation and food were both good — the venue and context were welcome changes from the dining hall routine. We mostly focused on your basic Yale conversational standbys. Skyler is a junior in Morse and hails from Stamford, Connecticut, which is conveniently located quite close to Yale (although Yale’s proximity made it less attractive when he was choosing where to go to school). He’s a history major especially interested in material culture, and his classes this semester reflect that passion: he’s taking Beer in American History, The History of Food, Public Schools and Public Policy, Theory and Practice in American Education and Sondheim and American Musical Theater.

You wouldn’t think it, but beer is actually linked to a lot of labor relations issues. Skyler is interested in the relationship between different shapes of glasses and shifting patterns of economic and social organization.

We take the things around us for granted, but, as Skyler explained, they’re contingent, reflecting the influence of specific historical trends and events. His education-related classes sounded fascinating, as did Sondheim and American Musical Theater. Skyler and his classmates actually got to meet Stephen Sondheim a few weeks ago, which Skyler considered a highlight of the class.

The Sondheim course, I discovered, dovetails well with Skyler’s interests. He’s extremely involved in the theater scene and acts on a regular basis. I actually saw him in “The Importance of Being Earnest” earlier

this semester, and we discussed the wondrous abundance of drama (theatrical, not day-to-day) on campus.

I asked him a question that I’ve often puzzled over: What is the experience of being on stage like? Contrary to my expectations, Skyler said that acting isn’t about fully becoming a character and suppressing your self; rather, it’s all about maintaining your individuality while responding to situations on stage as if you were your character.

Acting is an act (pun intended) of constant imagination, and repeated rehearsals help make the character’s responses natural to the actor. Skyler explained with eloquence why he loves acting and has acted since the age of seven, when he first performed at a summer camp. He views acting as a way of exploring the full depth and breadth of human emotion and cultivating empathy. Skyler said that he’d like to work as a theatrical producer in the future, although he’s potentially interested in law school, and we commiserated about the grad school grind hanging over our heads as juniors.

In addition to his acting and classwork, Skyler is a tour guide for the admissions office, does a fair bit with the mock trial team, and somehow finds the time to watch a very respectable amount of TV (he likes Game of Thrones, The Newsroom and Looking, among other shows). He says that he doesn’t get a lot of sleep, and I believe it! He’s a very interesting guy, and we had a pleasant evening. I’m not sure our paths would have crossed otherwise. Perhaps they’ll cross again.

Contact SCOTT REMER at scott.remer@yale.edu .

His Take // BY SKYLER ROSS Who needs Tinder when you have the YDN? When I entered the Blindest Date contest for the third year in a row, I was expecting to end up emptyhanded as in the previous two years.

I didn’t even bother checking the list of possible bachelors that you, the YDN readership, could vote on to see if I was on it. I simply thought that an iPhone app (Friendsy, anyone?) would have to remain the best last resort for finding a date in the Dirty Have.

But I was wrong!

When I got the email on Saturday announcing that I had a date the following day, I freaked out a little bit.

Who would it be with? What would

I wear? What would we talk about?

What if I knew him already?

Then I remembered that it was a blind date, meaning that the stakes were literally as low as they could possibly be. Except that I had to publish my thoughts in the YDN. Whoops.

I met Scott at Rubamba at precisely 7:01, thinking that I was so suave for arriving a minute late. He was there already, sitting at a table marked with a “Reserved” placard despite the restaurant being almost vacant. I sat down and we immediately got to the task of getting to know each other.

In retrospect, we did a pretty good job. We spent almost an hour and a

half discussing theater (my possible vocation and his avocation), politics (his possible vocation and my avocation) and culture. We talked classes and majors, interests and hobbies, siblings and life at Yale. There were few awkward moments during our dinner together.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel like I was grasping for straws. The conversation proceeded like a checklist. Once one topic was exhausted, I would ask yet another question that two acquaintances might discuss on their way to becoming friends. As a result, the “date” felt more like “a meal” with one of the myriad people that I promise to reach out to each

week. We rarely laughed and never flirted.

I certainly don’t blame Scott for the dullness of our dinner. He is perfectly nice and intelligent. He was well-dressed and seemed present and engaged. Perhaps we just have different energies; I am almost obnoxiously boisterous whereas he is a bit more taciturn. In any case, I didn’t feel the “spark” that I had hoped for.

I am not sure how to define “chemistry,” but I am confident that I will recognize it when I feel it. Until then, I guess I just have to keep swiping left!

Contact SKYLER ROSS at skyler.ross@yale.edu .

// PATRICE BOWMAN

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THE CLYDE LAWRENCE BAND 216 Dwight St. // 8 p.m.

You haven’t heard of the Clyde Lawrence Band? Wow.

WKND RECOMMENDS:

SATURDAY FEBRUARY

The Clyde Lawrence Band.

28

HÄNSEL UND GRETEL

Harkness Memorial Auditorium // 7:30 p.m.

See it if you’re feeling crumby. Witch you probably are.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Frankenstein.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REFORM // BY ELIZABETH MILES AND CAROLINE WRAY

MENTAL HEALTH FROM PAGE 3 MH&C waiting room, gave up on MH&C after a couple of unsuccessful visits. She said that the therapist she was assigned to was cold, clinical and impossible to open up to, and so she turned to long-distance communication with a therapist from home.

Still, others have had positive experiences at MH&C. Adriana Miele ’16 has been regularly seeing the same therapist since the beginning of her freshman year, an experience that she said has “kept her afloat in a lot of ways.”

MH&C also allows patients to request a change in therapist if they are dissatisfied, a process Posner went through at the beginning of this academic year.

She’d seen a therapist throughout her freshman year, but found their sessions unproductive, so requested a change. Even though she had to wait for six weeks for MH&C to process her request, Posner said that her new therapist has made a tremendously positive impact on her mental health.

On Wednesday, when Posner publicly praised her new therapist’s violation of the supposed 12-session protocol, snaps and murmurs of accordance echoed throughout the forum: evidence, perhaps, of her belief that MH&C’s largest problems have less to do with the quality of therapy that most of its practitioners provide than with its difficult bureaucratic system.

As the MH&C system stands now, according to Posner, students must advocate for themselves in order to obtain quality care. She equated communicating with MH&C to a game of “phone tag,” with constant missed calls and miscommunications. At the forum, when Šimon Podhajsk ’16 asked why MH&C does not utilize email communication, students banged their desks in agreement.

Siggins responded that she “couldn’t agree more” with students that communication between MH&C and patients needs to be improved. She explained that the system currently does not allow email correspondence because MH&C had been concerned about the security of emails, but that it was cur-

rently pursuing ways of legally incorporating email communication.

She and Genecin have announced their commitment to reforms at MH&C. In an attempt to hear student voices, they held a series of “listening sessions” in the residential colleges last spring. Last week, Genecin sent an email to the College with a set of MH&C improvements, including an increased staff size and expediting the period of time between a consultation visit and a first appointment.

In the News survey, 54 percent said they believed that Yale’s mental health resources are insufficient for those who use them, and 30 percent of students responded that they felt dissatisfied with the reforms described in Genecin’s email. One survey respondent commented that “there were no concrete numbers given to the proposals, which makes me deeply skeptical.”

Indeed, it appears that students crave more numbers and facts from MH&C. At the forum, multiple students asked the panel for more statistics and greater transparency from administrators.

Holloway and Genecin emphasized, though, that many specifics cannot be discussed because federal law mandates strict confidentiality. Holloway told the News that his inability to be fully forthcoming is “totally appropriate,” though he added that he is always as transparent as possible.

For instance, Holloway said that the withdrawal and readmission committee he formed in January cannot disclose information about its discussions until the committee finalizes its recommendations. He expects this to happen in four to six weeks.

Given such legal constraints, Holloway said that he did not believe assertions that the administration has been silent or unresponsive were fair.

At Wednesday’s forum, English professor John Rogers, the chair of the committee, mentioned that one of its six members was a student. He also pledged to take seriously the recommendations and complaints that students had expressed to him.

Zhukovsky worried that administrators would view Wednesday’s event as a way for

complaints to be aired, rather than attempt to get to the roots of the grievances. She simultaneously felt that complaints alone would not lead administrators to make changes.

“I’m all for talking,” she said. “I just think that there has to be more push from students to make a specific change. There’s been a lot of reaction, and a lot of opinion, but there needs also to be initiative.”

Alternatives, and new options Natalie Wolff ’14 suffered from depression between the ages of 13 and 21, and credits her recovery in large part to the care she received at MH&C while she was an undergraduate. At Wednesday’s event, she presented a list of 10 recommendations to streamline MH&C’s system — recommendations that included using the medical program MyChart to schedule appointments, administering screening questionnaires and hiring more secretaries to field more phone calls.

The panelists expressed gratitude for Wolff’s recommendations, asking for her written list, but Siggins noted that some of the items, such as mandatory follow-up phone calls if a patient misses an appointment, are already MH&C policy.

She encouraged students whose therapists have broken MH&C policy by sharing misinformation to contact her. She said that, in those cases, she would remedy the misunderstanding.

At the same time, several students said that MH&C policy was so obscure that they would not know if their therapist had misrepresented it. Siggins admitted that MH&C has not done an adequate job in the past of educating Yale students on its policies, but she added that administrators are working to increase transparency. She then cited the MH&C advisory committee, a liaison between the department and students convened at the beginning of the spring semester in 2014.

Corinne Ruth ’15 and Olivia Pollak ’16, currently serving on the committee, seconded Siggins’ view. Pollak recognizes that communication between students and MH&C can often seem “starkly two-sided,” but hopes

that both sides can listen to each other.

“They [MH&C] want students to be happy, they want them to be successful, they want them to come back. The discussion then comes to ... how do we best listen to each other?” Ruth said.

The Mental Health Advisory Committee began at the end of last spring, as part of the Coalition for Mental Health and Well Being, a larger umbrella student organization. The committee members convey to the administration their impressions of campus culture.

She cites the coalition as key, a way to bring together students in organizations concerned with wellbeing. Last year, the committee updated the YCC resource sheet and the FAQ section of the MH&C website.

Ruth and Pollak assert that the relationship between MH&C and students is a difficult one to navigate — they echoed Holloway’s comment on confidential-

“IT IS TOO MUCH TO EXPECT [FRIENDS] TO...

PROVIDE SERIOUS HELP WITH A SPECIFIC CONDITION,” HE SAID. ity, as did the forum’s panelists, but asserted that some channels between the administration and students have opened in the past few years. Ruth cited last year’s listening sessions with Dr. Genecin, which fewer students attended than was expected.

Ruth and Pollak also pointed to resources outside of MH&C that they feel are underutilized, notably Walden Peer Counseling, the Chaplain’s Office and the Peer Liaisons.

One day in the fall of 2014, as Natalie Rose Schwartz ’17 wrestled with new symptoms of depression amid long-standing anxiety, her mother told her over the phone that she had to find someone to be with, if she could. Schwartz’s dean, who had been very helpful during

regular weekly meetings, was unavailable, so she walked into the Chaplain’s Office. Schwartz knew Sharon Kugler, the University chaplain, from “Cookies and Coloring,” a weekly study break held in the Welch basement.

“I just went to her office, and she happened to be free, and she immediately took me in, and hugged me, and let me talk,” Schwartz said.

In the News survey, only nine students reported they had used the Chaplain’s Office as resource, while 72 students had gone to MH&C and 82 had relied on residential college deans, masters and freshman counselors. Twelve students had gone to Walden Peer Counseling as a resource.

Pollak believes Walden’s minimal visibility on campus is a necessary result of its policy of anonymity. Because confidentiality restricts peer counselors from reaching out and putting a face to their services, students may have misconceptions about the issues that Walden addresses. Pollak worries that students think they shouldn’t call Walden unless they have a very acute problem, although she asserts that this is not the case.

Zhukovsky, on the other hand, said that while Walden allows students to reach out to peers, peer counselors could not and should not replace mental health professionals. She has suggested that Yale implement a its own version of “Let’s Talk,” a drop-in program started at Cornell University, and that 25 other universities have adopted.

Like Walden, “Let’s Talk” offers drop-in hours for students to talk or seek advice. Unlike Walden, though, “Let’s Talk” employs certified counselors.

This would provide immediate professional advice — on medication, for instance — that Zhukovsky believes MH&C does not currently offer and that a peer counselor cannot give.

Other students are also considering ways to widen the University’s network of resources.

Joseph Cornett ’17 recently proposed an initiative in a News column to implement mental health fellows in residential colleges.

Representatives from MH&C, masters and deans would select upperclassmen to serve as fellows. The main job of a men-

tal health fellow would be to refer students to mental health resources, explaining their nature and functions.

“The mental health fellows should be someone who everyone knows they can talk to about emotional health.” Cornett said.

“It will end up normalizing discussion about mental health and destigmatizing it, much in the way CCE’s have destigmatized discussion about sexual health.”

At the forum, Wolff proposed a safe space to discuss mental health, in the vein of the Sexual Education Literacy Forum, a suggestion greeted with snaps and applause.

Ruth and Pollak believe that friends sharing correct information with each other may be the most long-lasting, effective improvement to the current mental health climate.

Smith believes that while friends can complement professional help, they cannot replace it.

“Friends will ideally be capable of listening and providing love and kindness, but it is too much to expect them to ... provide serious help with a specific condition,” he said. *** After reading out her ten recommendations at Wednesday’s forum, Wolff turned to the audience.

“Anyone can be an advocate.

You also need to be an advocate for yourself. So when they tell you that it’s going to take two months to switch your therapist, say no,” she said. “Just don’t give up.”

The applause was deafening.

But before Wolff’s recommendations, and before the applause, Holloway opened the forum. He explained that he wants to close an information gap between students and the administration, to make sure that students have enough faith in the system to get help when they need it, instead of being afraid.

“The floor is now yours,” he said. “Raise your hand. Speak loudly.”

Contact ELIZABETH MILES and CAROLINE WRAY at elizabeth.a.miles@yale.edu and caroline.wray@yale.edu .

NEWS SURVEY MENTAL HEALTH AT YALE Do you feel that Yale's current mental health resources are sufficient for those that use them?

52%

To what extent have you suffered from feelings of unhappiness (i.e., depression, anxiety, other psychological conditions) while at Yale?

I have not used any.

45% Residential College resources 36% Yale Mental Health & Counseling

No abnormal experiences with feelings of unhappiness.

41% 34%

Somewhat regular unhappiness, but I have not sought formal treatment.

31%

Regular unhappiness, causing me to seek formal treatment.

33%

27%

Debilitating unhappiness to the point of hospitalization.

14%

Which of the following mental health resources have you used since coming to Yale? Please select all that apply.

Other

15%

1%

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THE TELL-TALE HEART WHC // 9 p.m.

True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

(Yalies should relate.)

Peer Liaisons Walden Peer Counseling

8%

5% 4% Chaplain’s Office

WKND RECOMMENDS: À Rebours — Dorian Gray’s favorite book. An unrelatable story of decadence and delectation.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND RENOVATES

WHEN THE ENEMY SURROUNDS YOU // BY IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY

In terms of layout, the house was as bizarre as any I’d ever seen. Its hillside location meant that one entered through the top floor/garage, only to go down into the rest of the house. It had previously been rented out to multiple families at once, so the house had been broken up into self-contained sections. A door with a dead bolt would spring up in the middle of a hallway; there was not one, but two laundry rooms.

Additionally, the previous owners had been u n ce re m o niously evicted, and had taken t h e

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window provided by their 30-day notice to spray paint every mirror in the house with obscene phrases written in a drippy blood red. The writing was on the wall, literally.

The house would be the site of a different kind of education. This was fitting, as my official education was the reason we had moved. I had been accepted to a high school in Oakland that couldn’t be matched by any of the local schools in San Francisco. We decided to buy a fixerupper near the school, move in, flip it and use the profits for my tuition. For this to work, we couldn’t pay for contractors. My father and I would be renovating and remodeling the entire house ourselves. He was an experienced builder who had tamed entire bungalow complexes by the time he was sixteen. I was his apprentice. The whole time, my parents told me not to worry about the upheaval, not to worry about my dad’s newly elongated commute, or my mom’s newly strained relationship with her friends, who used to be just down the block. My school and the house were all that mattered.

The rooms all had pockmarked ceilings that I swear to God changed in pattern every time you looked at them.

The pockmarks also created a strange, vertigo-like effect where the ceilings appeared to pulsate s l i g h t l y.

When I woke up in the

night, I had to remember not to open my eyes or I would spend hours half-awake and mesmerized by the ceiling’s seemingly organic movements.

The house was surrounded on all sides by a thin forest. Deer wandered through our yard in the early morning, eating everything in sight. The roses we had planted as one of our first projects lasted fewer than 24 hours.

Squirrels loved the house for its wild, convoluted railings, which jutted out at odd, geometric angles, which for the squirrels made little highways.

All day, every day, their scurrying could be heard. One early morning, my mother woke up to find two squirrels on our front porch. Their throats had been torn out by some wild animal.

She waited for me to get up and take them to the garbage (my mother is squeamish), but by the time I was awake, the bodies were gone.

The entire east wing of the house, another self-contained unit, was filled with wall-towall carpeting and had a massive loft. Tearing up the carpet by hand, my parents and I were shocked to find that the only thing holding it to the floor was a series of small staples, another unorthodox home décor decision taken by the previous owners. I was supposed to climb the loft and take out the carpeting that had been stapled up there as well, but the platform groaned so ferociously that I instantly changed my mind. The whole house seemed to rumble in fury as I descended to the floor.

Some days after we began work on the house, a conversation with the neighbors revealed that the previous occupants had been a sex cult. I wish I was kidding. Suddenly the pervasive wall-to-wall shag carpeting took on an uncomfortable new significance. I started wearing shoes at all times and changing socks while sitting on my raised bed. My mother and I began waking up with our bod-

A SPACETIME GENDER CONTINUUM

ies covered in tiny red bumps. I became convinced that we had contacted an STD from the rug.

Dad blamed gnats. Work, however, continued.

My great-grandfather, his wife and their family once walked into the New Mexico wilderness and built a house.

The floors had been dirt and the walls barely resisted water. He would spend weeks at a time out in the plains, tending to his herd of sheep. He slept under the stars and hunted his food and once defended his family against a rabid coyote. This man had tamed nature and called it home. I imagined him, sepiatoned, gliding through this new house, frowning at what still remained to be done with the place. Qué lástima. Qué lástima.

After a few months in Oakland, we had stripped several rooms down to the studs. The dirty conditions and constant sweat made my face a mess of blackheads and acne. A downstairs television room was revealed to have no insulation, explaining its bizarre temperature differential with the rest of the house. The pipes in my parents’ upstairs bathroom were so rusted that running one’s hand along their surfaces left a thick red coating resembling war paint. I had torn my parents away from home, and the house I had led them to was in fullblown rebellion.

In Oakland, I lived in the only bedroom on the bottom floor.

My room was massive. Truly, people came to my house and remarked on the sheer square footage of my room and its sheer square squareness. As one friend put it, “I’ve never seen a room so big, and so square.” They also commented on the tiny, mysterious door in the corner. Someday I would have to pass through it, but I preferred not to think about that. An extra large Home Depot rug covered the immediate area around my bed and desk, still leaving about three quarters of the wood floor uncovered. I

had the closets of the type most people only dream about. Two of my room’s four walls were entirely hollow, closets hidden behind floor-to-ceiling sliding mirrors. I filled up about a third of one of them, another daily reminder of my inability to inhabit the house. Similarly, my minimalist taste in decoration resulted in swaths of endless negative space. The mirrors created an eerie parallelism in the already somewhat surreally empty and symmetrical room. I had to deliberately position myself away from them if I didn’t want to see my increasingly acne-scarred reflection at all times.

It had been six months since move-in, and we had been making progress on our renovations.

Then it started to rain, and continued to do so for days. Since we needed the porches for work (you can’t cut a closet door down to size in the closet), our various projects ground to a halt. Worse, we were trapped in the house.

The entire building seemed to constrict around us. The swirly ceilings became more insistently animate. The floor-to-ceiling windows that dominated almost every space cast the shadows of trickling raindrops across the rooms. Kaleidoscopic silhouettes played across the walls, as though the house was crying.

At some point during all this, we noticed that our various wooden decks were collecting a lot of standing water. As my mother and I, clad in full-body rain suits, swept the decks with push brooms, we could see that the wood had already started to rot. Pulling up some of the paneling to check the structural supports underneath, we could smell the decay before we saw it. One beam had a nest of maggots living in it. As they fell out of the wood like fresh popcorn I recoiled in horror. My great-grandfather had shot a rabid coyote on his front porch; baby insects made me scream.

But eventually I noticed they

weren’t moving. They had all drowned.

A week later, my mother was demolishing a patch of drywall in her bedroom when she hit a randomly placed bit of springy mesh embedded in the wall. Her hammer flew back into her forehead, knocking her to the floor and shooting a small, Pollockian spray of blood across the wall. She lay dazed for half an hour before my Dad found her.

I was not crazy. I was not overreacting. The house was trying to kill my family and I was the pied piper who had led them to die.

Soon the day I had avoided thinking about arrived. I had to squeeze my way through the tiny hatch in the corner of my room (I was the only one who fit) and into the neighboring open space. I would have preferred not to know what I was sleeping next to. Outfitting myself with a headlamp and toolbox, I kept telling myself that my task was easy, that it was just to check that the door hid nothing horrible, like mold or termites or a sex dungeon. Squeezing through the door, using my hands and knees to push myself into the open space, I felt dirt beneath my fingertips. The air tasted stale and the darkness felt cavernous. As my headlamp illuminated small shafts of air in the room, I saw a tree, surrounded on all sides by pitch black. It was a small tree, about my height, growing inside our house, next to my room. It was the heart of the house, the source of its life force. I had found the veins that made the ceilings move. I remembered the dead squirrels and my father’s commute and my acne and my mother’s head, bleeding, and my great-grandfather defending his home against the wild. I seized the tree by its roots, and tore it out of the ground. After that, the house stopped fighting us and I began to call it home.

Contact IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY at ian.garcia-kennedy@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Calhoun Cabaret // 8 p.m.

Brought to you by Bad Romantics at Yale, easily the best-named group on campus.

The Magic Mountain: a more relatable story of decadence and disintegration in the Alps.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COLUMNS

WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG // BY NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH

//LAURIE WANG

Rock ’n’ roll hasn’t had a great twenty years. The genre itself barely exists anymore, and what we might have called rock in the 1990s now gets shoehorned into “indie” or “Americana” or the great condescension of “poppunk.” But some bands have held out, proudly clinging to a fading genre. The Killers are one of those bands. They broke out of Las Vegas with an album of quasidance music in 2004, then developed a Springsteen fixation three years later and never really shook it. Despite all their inconsistency and their many failures — or precisely because of them — The Killers remain a singularly fascinating group, maybe the best purveyors of rock ’n’ roll we have today.

The Killers thrive on drama.

Each of their songs carries an overwhelming sense of immediacy and doom, a fate from which their glitzy rock seems the only deliverance. Their songs tell the same stories Americans have always told — of savage borderlands, empty dreams, shattered promises. They have a flair for the visual, too, impressing vivid

NOAH DAPONTESMITH CRITIC OF NOTES images into the minds of listeners. “I saw the devil wrapping up his hands / He’s getting ready for the showdown,” Brandon Flowers sings in “A Dustland Fairytale,” and that knife fight instantly appears to the listener, terrible and stark in its clarity. Lyrics that shouldn’t work succeed anyway: “We’re burning down the highway skyline / On the back of a hurricane,” goes one particularly opaque lyric from “When You Were Young.” The best line in The Killers’ discography is the prayer-like refrain from the biblical “All These Things That I’ve Done.” “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier,” frontman Brandon Flowers intones, backed by a gospel choir. I have no idea what it means, but he sings it with such faithful conviction that it simply must be some great truth. Such is

the power of rock ’n’ roll.

The Killers have faith in a certain version of America that shouldn’t, or perhaps even can’t, exist anymore — a world of muscle cars and roadside bars, county fairs and antiquated romances.

It’s nothing new, of course: just the American archetypes that this country refuses to leave behind, the well-trodden territory of Jackson Browne and Tom Petty.

The Killers refuse to believe that America has lost its thunder, and somehow, in their own heavyhanded, overdone style they’re still singing those great American epics: “Silverado” duked out on the dusty streets of Las Vegas, stories of starry-eyed young men rushing towards some distant glory while red-lipped girls lean on their shoulders as the nighttime desert wind blows through their hair and the Cadillac speeds down the interstate.

Brandon Flowers looks the part, too: in his black leather jacket and crew cut, with that wry smile and flashing eyes, he’s the slick chrome American prince he once sang about. He’s Springsteen at Passaic in the 1978 Indian

summer; in an instant he’s both Jesse James and Brigham Young, an outlaw and a prophet; he’s Jack Kerouac riding a flatbed across Nebraska. He sings like a man defeated, who knows he has nothing left to sacrifice. Only the Now matters — there’s no future imaginable and the past contains only ghosts. Brandon Flowers plays the character of a man who understands the meaninglessness of life but looks past it: he’s got rock ’n’ roll, and what else really matters? The Killers’ brand of music offers that tantalizing promise of total salvation, holds it right before your eyes and demands that you come snatch it.

Just as the quest for the Holy Grail consumed Arthur and his knights, so the search for that American redemption wholly preoccupies The Killers.

Do they find it? I venture to say No. Some artists have, of course — “Me and Bobby McGee,” Janis Joplin’s magnum opus, found salvation out on the turnpikes, where with just a dream and a Chevrolet you can reach the elusive Zion. Tom Petty probably found it, too, in “American Girl,”

where all the hopes and failures of this broken land lie within the heart of a girl. And so did the Irish transplant Van Morrison, who in “Saint Dominic’s Preview” looked into the Rapture and glimpsed the American soul. But The Killers fail. Their music pulsates with a magnetic flashy exuberance, but it rings hollow and insincere. It aspires to greatness but only makes it halfway there.

It clashes with American modernity, a world that so palpably detests the Killers, rejecting their vision as too white, too masculine, too romanticized.

Or maybe it’s not so much a clash as an uncomfortable reflection. The endless suburbs and developments of the American West, just humans playing at civilization in a vast wilderness, seem as tinselly as the Killers. I remember my father driving east from the Great Salt Lake, through Syracuse, Utah, while I sat in the passenger seat and looked up at the Wasatch Mountains and thought: People really live here? Brandon Flowers sings about Jesus in “When You Were Young,” but can anyone really imagine Satan

standing with Christ on Route 66, tempting the Son of God with the petrified glories of Monument Valley? Or John the Baptist baptizing converts in the Great Salt Lake? Or Saint Paul evangelizing along the Union Pacific line? No: as a land America defies the gods of the Continent. We create our own images here.

And so The Killers make music with their own particular vision of a higher power. In their music there is no God, only rock ’n’ roll and its burning intensity, which gives men the will to keep on. The Killers inspire faith like few other groups do: I can only venture to say that My Chemical Romance and LCD Soundsystem have had such fanatical fanbases, for whom this music becomes a matter of decay and survival. The Killers do the same for me. They inculcate in me a hope for America, for the promise this country once offered but might never hold again. It’s a fake hope, yes, the product of a stylized recycling, but it’s hope nonetheless.

Contact NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH at noah.daponte-smith@yale.edu .

An “Onion” That Brings Tears of Laughter // BY SCOTT STERN

SCOTT STERN READING BETWEEN THE LINES

//LAURIE

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Few historical figu re s a re as sexy to modern academics as the legendary abolitionist John Brown. Brown, who looked and talked like a biblical prophet, who claimed to commune with God and who brutally murdered many, who attempted to foment a slave uprising in Virginia and ended up swinging from a hangman’s noose, who did more than almost any other person to spark the Civil War, was a complex and heroic and tragic and endlessly fascinating figure. Some historians consider him a shining beacon of compassion, others a monomaniacal lunatic.

Nor is Brown new to American fiction. Authors ranging from Herman Melville to Marilynne Robinson have taken a crack at Brown. But few have done so with the humor or the perceptiveness of James McBride in his latest novel, “The Good Lord Bird.”

McBride, a journalist and

YALE REGIONAL POETRY SLAM WLH // 10 p.m.

Apparently it’s a competition. Unsure how poetry can be competitive, but apparently it can.

acclaimed jazz saxophonist, is best known for his 1995 memoir, “The Color of Water,” which describes the relationship between himself, the other members of his poor, black and biracial family, and his white, Jewish mother. “The Good Lord Bird” is likewise informed by knowledge of racial passing, interracial social dynamics and a deep understanding of the past. It is obviously inspired

by Southern classics, such as “Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Yet it also has an awareness of history that is all its own.

“The Good Lord Bird” tells the story of Henry Shackleford — a funny, lazy, 10-year-old slave when the book begins. Henry’s father is giving haircuts in a holein-the-wall saloon in frontier Kansas, when a talkative Irish stranger gets a little too fanatical with his evangelism. The Shacklefords’ owner bursts in, the Irish stranger drops his accent and he reveals himself to be the notorious outlaw John Brown. A gunfight breaks out. Henry’s father is killed, and Brown whisks Henry out of the saloon and off to freedom.

Because of Henry’s curly hair and delicate features, Brown mistakes him for a girl — Henrietta. Brown hands the understandably thunderstruck Henry a gnarly, old onion, which Henry quickly devours, hoping to make

a good impression. Brown tells young Henrietta that the onion had actually been his goodluck charm — having resided in his pocket for more than a year.

Now that it was inside of Henry, he would be Brown’s new good luck charm. Henry, or Henrietta, becomes “Little Onion,” or, more casually, just “Onion.”

Brown kindly provides Onion with a new dress and bonnet, and Brown’s ragtag army of followers — including several of his 21 children — quickly adopt Onion as a mascot and beloved compatriot.

Onion is decidedly less comfortable with Brown’s crew and often considers returning to the familiarity of slavery. Yet “she” remains.

Onion remains with Brown’s band until the eve of the infamous Pottawatomie Massacre, in which Brown’s men murder five pro-slavers in a single night, resulting in months of retaliatory raids. Onion gets separated from the men and ends up in a Kansas saloon and whorehouse. For two years, Onion just sweeps the floors and gets drunk a lot; the madam starts implying, however, that she — Onion — might soon have to start earning her keep.

Onion is rescued by one of Brown’s sons and rejoins the “Old Man.” She travels with Brown to Boston and Philadelphia, attending an abolitionist rally where “everybody got to make a speech about the Negro but the Negro.” Eventually, they rejoin Brown’s band and begin to make their way deep into slave country, toward death and immortality.

“The Good Lord Bird” is impressively accurate in many ways: the idioms of the characters, the realities of slavery and

so many of the small details of Brown’s crusade. Yet McBride is willing to ignore reality for the sake of hilarity. At one point, Onion meets a bumbling and egotistical Frederick Douglass, who tries hard to sleep with her and ends up passing out, drunk.

Earlier, confronted by a group of pro-slavery vigilantes, Onion evades capture by crying and saying, “I just don’t know where I belongs, being a tragic mulatto and all.”

Remarkably, though, so many of the hilarious details are accurate: Brown tries to team up with Harriet Tubman, whom he calls “General Tubman”; Brown often halts his army’s progress to loudly commune with God; Brown’s men eventually hold hostage a pompous nephew of George Washington.

Reviewer Hector Tobar joined so many of his colleagues when he likened “The Good Lord Bird” to “Huckleberry Finn.” Both novels feature endless humor and wisdom from the mouths of cheeky children. But to Tobar, “The Good Lord Bird” lacks the “humanity” of Huck Finn. I think this is ungenerous. Satire can be more powerful than elegy; fiction can zqbe more informative than hardcore history.

Little Onion, the cross-dressing, spit-shined narrator, is unafraid to see the evil and pettiness around her — in everyone from slaveholders to slaves themselves. Brown emerges a hero, but no one emerges unflawed. This is not a gilded portrait; it is reality. Irreverence, in the end, is a touching tribute to the icons of the past.

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

WKND RECOMMENDS: Alice in Wonderland. Take a peek through the looking glass.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND THEATER

A NEW VOICE FOR SHAKESPEARE // BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE “Well, that was weird.” That was what the Yale student sitting next to me said when the lights went up on the Iseman Theater Thursday evening. After watching “Songs of Lear” alongside her, I couldn’t disagree — it was definitely odd.

But, when audience members in the front few rows began to stand and applaud, I didn’t disagree with them either.

The show is part of the Yale Repertory Theater’s “No Boundaries” series — a collection of works from across the world that attempts to explore the “frontiers of theatrical invention.” “Songs of Lear” was brought to Yale from Poland by the Song of the Goat Theater, an ensemble renowned for its ability to connect with audiences on a multisensory level. The production I saw on Thursday first found success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2012, where it was rated the top production of the summer, and it has since garnered rave reviews. When walking down Chapel Street toward the Iseman, I overheard an apparent theater expert tell his friend that the production would be like nothing she had ever seen before. He wasn’t kidding.

When I found my seat, I was facing nine chairs arranged in a semicircle, and nothing else. Instead of an actor stepping into the spotlight to start the show, the director Grzegorz Bral spoke. He told the

//ZBIGNIEW WARZYNSKI

full house — tickets to the show are sold out, but a wait list opens an hour before each show — that we “might need a bit of guidance” with the performance. So he painted an opening picture for us, telling us that Shakespeare’s “King Lear” is only the starting point for the work. The production, Bral hoped, was to be a theatrical conjuration of different images in an art gallery that would paint the untold stories of Lear. However, while Bral used the analogy of the art gallery, my experience was much more auditory than visual.

As a Yale student, I should never be surprised by a cappella, but I definitely wasn’t expecting to ever see “King Lear” explored through that medium. I couldn’t quite imagine the Whiffenpoofs trading snaps, smiles and bow ties for the tears of a Shakespearean tragedy. But, to my surprise, it worked.

I could not understand the words of the actors enough to tell you how many languages were woven into the production, but as I reflected on the piece afterward, I realized that I really didn’t need to understand what they were saying to experience the production to the fullest.

In a way that is difficult to explain, I knew exactly what they were singing about.

The sounds they made evoked the emotions appropriate for any given scene,

and I experienced the catharsis of tragedy as Aristotle intended it.

The production at times felt like a cantata. There was little movement, and uniform costumes made it difficult to interpret which characters the voices were supposed to represent. The director’s interludes after each movement were jarring at first, but without them, I would have been at a loss.

Within Gregorian chants and sacred Ave Marias, the theater group managed to find a contemporary voice. They played with sound in a way no traditional “Lear” production probably could have. At times, voices were accompanied by instruments from Africa, India and Scotland, and the actors — none of whom were classically trained vocalists — joined in harmonies that could rival the talent of both contemporary a cappella groups and church choirs.

“Weird” may not quite be the right word for this production. I feel like I may have to see it a number of times before I completely understand the story line, but the precision and overwhelming energy of each actor on stage meant that the standing ovation was definitely deserved.

Contact STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE at stephanie.addenbrooke@yale.edu .

“Bad Jews” is Good News // BY JACOB POTASH “Bad Jews” is a full-blooded modern comedy. Long Wharf Theatre’s new production of the 2012 play by Joshua Harmon runs through March 22 and turns a sharp script into a comic tour de force.

For 80 uninterrupted minutes, “Bad Jews” gives the domestic melodrama a humane and uproariously funny update: Four characters sprawl, walk, lounge and lunge across three futons in a studio apartment. The simple set plays host to an intra-family showdown over prized heirlooms and religious identity.

The show’s outrageous turmoil is absent from the opening sequence, which introduces Jonah (Max Michael Miller) and Daphna (Keilly McQuail). They’re Jews, we learn. They’re cousins. They’re college students. They’re in his apartment in Manhattan. They’ve just come back from their grandfather Poppy’s funeral. For this

stretch, “Bad Jews” is basically a one-woman show, as Jonah, catatonic, plays video games and says nothing, throwing into relief his cousin, a Vassar student who regales him with her newfound Jewish fanaticism. Daphna plans to become a rabbi, find a vegan mentor, make aliyah to Israel, join the army, marry her Israeli boyfriend, and on, and on, and on.

The force of McQuail’s performance easily sustains the play: She’s an archetypal Jewish-American princess, at once vain, overbearing and sympathetic. She kvells, she kvetches, she pontificates, all with exaggerated Orthodox-Jewish enunciation. Her long, icy glares at Jonah elicit peals of laughter from the audience. She extracts humor from throwaway lines like, “I’m not even saying, I’m just saying!”

Daphna’s presence is a dramatic conflict in itself, capable of keeping the play’s gears in motion, but

the impending arrival of Jonah’s brother Liam promises to raise the stakes. Daphna is furious at Liam (Michael Steinmetz) for skipping Poppy’s funeral to go skiing in Aspen with his girlfriend Melody (Christy Escobar).

Also, she wants Poppy’s gold necklace, inscribed with the Hebrew word for “life,” which he carried through the Holocaust.

As it happens, Liam intends to propose to Melody with the same necklace.

Murmurs passed through the audience as Liam and his blonde, blue-eyed girlfriend entered. A strong-willed and hardheaded Daphna finds her match in Liam, and from the moment he walks in, the two bicker. She harangues him for missing the funeral; he sneers at her religiosity; she mocks his doctorate in “contemporary Japanese youth culture” and his pert, goyish girlfriend. The stage is set for an epic showdown.

When the men leave for some fraternal bonding, Daphna doesn’t disguise her skepticism of Melody, whom she proceeds to interrogate. The result is an incredible comic bit that touches on Melody’s calf tattoo of a treble clef and moves on to her cultural heritage.

Daphna asks what the derivation of the name Melody is, to which Melody replies, “Caucasian.”

Prodded about where “her people” are from, Melody offers “Delaware,” setting Daphna on a tirade that ends with: “I’m asking, where did your family come from before they came to Delaware to perpetrate genocide?” It’s a warm first impression for the future in-laws.

(Full disclosure: My dad is Jewish and my mom, originally Episcopalian, is from Delaware. The older woman sitting next to me had recently lost her father, known as Poppy, who had willed his gold “Chai” necklace to a grandchild.

We agreed that between us, we

could have written the play.)

When the brothers return, Daphna and Liam’s antagonism explodes into a full-fledged screaming match, and the play becomes a glorified exchange of insults. Liam’s five-minute-long verbal takedown of Daphna met with the audience’s sustained applause. When Daphna has her turn to retort, she accuses him of being a self-hating Jew who preys on bimbos.

The male characters’ apathetic, teenage-y mode of social interaction rings true but doesn’t make for gripping theater. The women are more dynamic and fortunately get the lion’s share of stage time.

Everything builds toward the most dysfunctional marriage proposal imaginable, but the play’s underlying tensions over the family’s property and heritage find no real resolution.

Liam and Daphna both command sympathy: Shouldn’t he

be free to marry the girl he loves?

Isn’t she right to value her culture and religion? Their depth, the cousins’ grief and the recurring mentions of Poppy’s Holocaust experience lend the play moments of seriousness and elevate it above farce.

Does “Bad Jews” trade in stereotypes? Not more than any raucous comedy might. Besides, the characters feel substantial and unpredictable, even when they’re telling jokes and espousing big ideas. (Apparently you don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate “Bad Jews” — out of hundreds of audience members, I was the only one to laugh when Daphna sassily enunciated the Hebrew word for “sorry.”) Daphna and Liam may be bad Jews, but they’re also young people doing their best to grapple with the questions of growing up.

Contact JACOB POTASH at jacob.potash@yale.edu .

Behind the Scenes’ Change // BY RHEA KUMAR If I were to sum up my experience of watching “Seen Change!” in a word, it would have to be celebration. The musical at once celebrates the history of New Haven and the Shubert Theater, and the spaces and figures we tend to overlook — the backstage and people behind the scenes.

The show is a production of the New Haven-based A Broken Umbrella Theatre, which specializes in site-specific performances that draw on local histories. In keeping with this tradition, “Seen Change!” — their newest musical — opens in the lobby of the Shubert Theater. After about five or 10 minutes of theatrical chaos and frantic action, the performers take the audience to the Taft Hotel next door for Act II of the play.

“Seen Change!” tells the story of an out-of-town theater ensemble performing an adaptation of a fictitious musical, “Your Heart is in My Hands.” The adaptation, made in 2015 with an entirely new cast, production and lyrical team, hopes to restore the unfinished musical to its rightful place by finishing Willoughby’s finale. But when a theater apprentice breaks the “ghost light” — a charm against bad luck — things go haywire, and ghosts from the past version of the musical suddenly appear.

As the past and present composers unite after much conflict to

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put together a finale for the play, “Seen Change!” captures the action and chaos that takes place before any performance. The theater apprentice Lisa, the lyricists Willoughby and Dana Wasserman, and the stage manager Jane, all backstage people rather than actors, take center stage. An energetic tap dance routine by Dana Astmann and Aric Isaacs, perhaps my favorite part of the performance, highlights the role of theater technicians: to ensure that the actors “are not dancing in the dark.” Mary Jane Smith and Michael Peter Smith , the present and past producers of the show, are wealthy and domineering.

“Seen Change!” innovatively uses all parts of the rooms the actors perform in, as well as the multiple levels of the Shubert Theater, where they return for the third act. They converse now and then with the audience, which is supposed to play the role of the play-within-the-play’s sponsors, with the actors mostly apologizing and confidently reassuring the audience that “everything is absolutely fine.” The first two acts were slightly chaotic and lengthy. Characters emerge from different directions and shout out fast, sometimes incomprehensible dialogue, and the audience is left standing (which I found to be a little uncomfortable). “Seen Change!” nevertheless promises to keep the audience actively

engaged throughout.

Through its interactions between characters from different eras, “Seen Change!” makes for a meta-theatrical musical comedy. The competition between Willoughby and Wasserman as they struggle to put together a finale allows for some occasional laughs. The play also effectively explores the drastic changes in culture and etiquette across time.

The proud Willoughby is highly offended when he is told that he cannot smoke in his own theater, or, as a matter of fact, outside it.

One of the characters from the past sneers at the audience in the Taft lobby: “They went to a night at the theatre dressed like that?”

A series of cross-era “showmances” also adds humor and entertainment.

Despite these differences, some things never change with time, and nothing exemplifies this more than the theater. Each of the characters yearns for a second chance, whether it’s Willoughby, who wishes that he could have written his finale to the musical, or Lisa, who wishes she had not broken the ghost light. Ultimately, though, very little is in their hands. As the producers aptly put it in their musical duet, “Nothing is certain except the curtain will go up.”

Contact RHEA KUMAR at rhea.kumar@yale.edu .

DPOPS 10TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

//LISA DALY

WKND RECOMMENDS:

First & Summerfield Church // 8 p.m.

Davenport’s college orchestra celebrates 10 years.

Go Ask Alice. When she’s ten feet tall.

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FRIDAY 27, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

DIPLOMACY UNDER FIRE: YURIY SERGEYEV // BY SKYLER INMAN

Y

uriy Sergeyev has quite the resume. Since 2008, Sergeyev has served as Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations, a role that has grown increasingly important since the Crimean crisis last year. From Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 to the ongoing conflict with separatist forces in eastern Ukraine this year, Sergeyev has worked to build solidarity and political support for his country. Fluent in Russian, French, and English on top of his native Ukrainian, Sergeyev avoids coming off as a stuffy diplomat. Rather, he is thoughtful, quick on his feet and eager to connect with anyone who wants to speak about Ukraine’s future. He sat down with WKND to discuss the crisis in Ukraine, the country’s cultural and religious ties to Russia, his expectations for the most recent peace agreement with Russia, and his hopes for the international community’s involvement in the conflict.

A: I guess now, Americans are more informed on the situation in Ukraine. Not only experts, but the ordinary people whom I’ve met.

Even the doormen in our house, they know what’s going on in Ukraine. They’re sharing our concerns while demonstrating their solidarity. It is very obvious what is going on. It’s not just Ukraine that is explaining what is going on. The presence of the international media in Ukraine. Openness is important, and the truth is important.

Q: In addition to being physically near one another, many families have ties on both sides of the Ukrainian/Russian border. How do these close personal ties complicate the current state of affairs for both Ukrainian and Russian citizens?

A: Well, it’s really a challenge to both of them. Some of them … keep these ties, and they do understand each other. Many of them are in so-called cognitive dissonance. They have different cultural and political perceptions.

So those who are on the Russian side, they do believe that what Putin is doing, he’s doing for the sake of a nation, whatever means he uses. Well, in Ukraine, they are commenting on what Russia is doing against Ukraine as war — a war against their brothers and sisters, people of the same faith, the same culture, the same history.

Q: How do these close ties complicate plans for future relationships between the two countries?

A: It will be difficult to reestablish the confidence that was lost.

It will take generations. ... We do believe that society within the Russian Federation will change, and it will be a democratic society.

Q: How do you expect that to happen in Russia?

A: Well, I don’t know how long that will take. But they are also in a crisis. They are in a crisis of cultural perception. They are isolated now. They understand now that, all-around, with the exception of their closest allies like Zimbabwe, like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Belarus, North Korea, nobody supports them.

Their leadership is also isolated.

Putin is no longer a member of a club with G8 [now known as the

G7 since Russia’s suspension]. So they do understand.

They do, inside, have this same kind of cognitive dissonance in their society, between the imperialist ideal, to control the world, and the nationalist ideal, to have a Russia for Russians. So they have to overcome the cognitive dissonance, reach cognitive consonance, and return to their European perspectives. But it will be a long story.

Q: Ukrainian army pilot Nadia Savchenko, who was seized by separatists last year and is currently being held in Moscow, has been called “Ukraine’s Joan of Arc.” You’ve spoken out in support of her release over Twitter. Why do you think she has become such a symbol, and why is it so important that she be released?

A: First of all, her imprisonment is illegal. She was taken from our territory; she was brought to Russia; she was accused of two crimes she never did. First, for killing two Russian journalists, and her [lawyers] brought evidence to Moscow that she could not have done this, because she was in another place at the time. The second, for illegal appearance in a Russian territory, which is also not true. Why is she perceived as a hero? It’s because she’s struggling. She won’t take any food, and her physical condition is very hard. But she has the courage to make very serious statements, to blame Russia, to reject any accusations, to appeal to international society [for help].

She’s imprisoned, tortured, and still she has a strong character, and that’s why she’s a symbol of resistance.

Q: When Russia’s Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, visited campus earlier this month, WKND sat down to speak with him. When asked about international allegations that the Russian government is funding Ukrainian rebels, he said: “[O]ur Ukrainian colleagues tend to explain their own failures on the military field by referring to an alleged military campaign by Russia in the region. It’s nonsense.” But just yesterday, the critical Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published what they say is a Russian government document, suggesting the Kremlin had preexisting plans to annex Crimea.

How certain are you that Russia is backing the separatists, and why is this an important issue to settle?

A: We discovered Russian involvement in supporting the separatism and disorder in Crimea from the very beginning, when the so-called

“green polite man” without insignia [masked, unmarked Russian soldiers] appeared in Crimea.

We raised the borders because we treated it from the very beginning as evidence of aggression.

In the Security Council exactly one year ago — it was on the 28 of February — we brought all of the evidence that Russia performed aggression in Ukraine. Then they sent heavy artillery, then they sent helicopters, then they sent the army. We brought all of this evidence to the Security Council. They rejected it. Then, Putin, when he gave the medals to military men … said openly that the army was there. What they denied in the beginning, they confirmed in the end. It is the same with eastern Ukraine. The only state in the United Nations who keeps denying they’re there is Russia.

Q: Russia and Ukraine signed a peace deal about two weeks ago.

What are Ukraine’s hopes and concerns about the recent peace agreement?

A: The new agreements … were encouraging, because what the Russians said in Minsk was encouraging, but they were also discouraging, because when the leaders were sitting in Minsk, the separatists were still shelling our territories after the agreed date of ceasefire, from Valentine’s Day to Saturday the 15. So they kept fighting, they kept shelling, and they’ve kept shelling until now.

This is a demonstration that whatever Russia agrees upon has the same value of the paper they put their signature on, nothing more. We’ve lost confidence, and we’ve lost trust.

Q: What is your position regarding foreign aid? What sort of involvement from international players would you like to see?

“

A: Ammunition for defense. We need anti-tank systems, we need the things we do not produce in Ukraine. Ukraine was in the top ten armaments producers in the world, but we don’t have what we need now to stop the aggressor. So this is what we keep waiting [for].

The most important help, which we got from the very beginning, is political and moral support. Last February, everybody in the security council — there are 15 members — 14 supported us. Even China’s abstention we counted as support.

Q: Thinking ahead, are there any concerns about the long-term, internal effects of international involvement in Ukraine?

A: That’s a serious question. What we’re afraid of now is letting the conflict in the east of Ukraine to become a frozen one. Because if it is a frozen conflict, it will take a lot of time to settle it, and naturally, we’ll for sure be affected, because one part of our territory will not be contributing to our budget, our economy and so on. We don’t want to have a frozen conflict, but Russia is pushing us in that direction. It’s favorable for them, both internally and externally. Internally, Putin will demonstrate to his nation that he’s still controlling something. And externally, it’s the argument of how to deter the West [from Ukraine] with all of these factors of instability and so on. And we don’t want that. To avoid the dramatic consequences of the aftermath of conflict, we have launched reforms — economic, financial, general reforms within society — and we need to move quickly. The quicker we move, the better the situation in the aftermath.

In any crisis, you have the choice either to survive or be killed. This crisis gives us a

chance to modernize our society.

This is a good chance. We ought to move with that, and if we do, the consequences of this crisis will be softened. If not, then we will face difficulties. Our success will be attractive for the territories now under occupation to come back [to Ukraine]. That’s why the success of this story is so important to us. Not just to bring the territories back, but to improve our society.

Q: How would you describe the future Ukraine after the conflict?

How does the Ukrainian identity form itself to encompass all of the non-ethnic Ukrainians inside of the country’s borders?

A: In the constitution of Ukraine, it was written clearly: free development and free circulation of Russian language, as well as other languages of minorities.

No problem existed. What Russia is spreading around is artificially made. The governmental approach in that situation is to give more liberties to the local governments in their linguistic policies. If they want to have additional signs in the streets — now, it is in Ukrainian and English — if they want to have it in Hungarian, it will demand more money from their local budgets.

But they will have this opportunity to proceed. So, Ukraine will be a unitary state, the Ukrainian language will be the only official one, as it is provisioned by the constitution and other languages will be free circulation around Ukraine. They will not be official languages because we have 126 nationalities — it would be a Tower of Babel.

Naturally, we cannot separate ourselves from our historic roots, from our faith, Christianity, but again as I keep saying in all of these Security Council meetings, addressing [myself] to the Rus-

sians: You are calling us brothers and sisters in Christ. Don’t kill us.

We’ll be united within Ukraine as well based on our historical past, the values of that historical past, and definitely, this crisis will put a full stop on our Communist past.

It’s done.

Q: What does Ukraine want from the United States going forward?

Are there any concerns that heavier US involvement could cause the situation with Russia to escalate?

A: As I said earlier, we are very grateful to the United States and to the United Nations, because from the very beginning we got strong political and moral support. The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, is a strong fighter — not for Ukraine, but for the global values, which were absolutely neglected and destroyed. What we got from the United States was a lot of sympathy, a lot of governmental assistance. We addressed the United States with a request for special status as an ally outside NATO. But it is something that we can’t demand.

The second request was for defense weaponry. We know there are a lot of discussions going around. But again, we don’t have any commands. We are grateful for what we are getting. But to be clear, we are not demanding something within the offensive weaponry. We are not going to attack anybody. We are producers, but what we have is covering only 20% of our need. But what we need generally is the moral support of American politicians and the average people.

And I’m using this opportunity to thank all of the Americans, the students who are doing their studies in Yale University, the cradle of the American political elite.

Contact SKYLER INMAN at skyler.inman@yale.edu .

IT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO REESTABLISH THE CONFIDENCE THAT WAS LOST. IT WILL TAKE GENERATIONS. ... WE DO BELIEVE THAT SOCIETY WITHIN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION WILL CHANGE

“

Q: Is there anything you wish Europe and America understood better about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine? Are there any fundamental misunderstandings about the situation, in your mind?