WEEKEND

// FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

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// BY STEPHANIE ROGERS AND TYLER FOGGATT // Page 3

MANUSCRIPTS

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MS.

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MINIONS

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BOOKS AND BOOKS

FLOUTING CONVENTION

DESPICABLE ME

Rachel Siegel meditates on books’ yesterdays and tomorrows.

Emily Xiao gets on a feminist film series that celebrates bad girls.

An interview with Cinco Paul, the genius who helped invent the omnipresent yellow troublemakers.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND VIEWS

R U O L AL

DS O O G Y L D L R O W

EL

IEG

SIEGEL

// BY

When my grandparents moved into a four-bedroom Houston home in 1965, they brought only a modest collection of prized possessions: the record player and its dozens of classical records, the sepiatoned photographs of relatives from the old country, the piano and its reams of sheet music.

Their home must have felt impossibly empty with only a 5-year-old in tow.

Over time, though, the house became filled with other items: two more growing boys and in-laws who would come to stay for a few months out of the year. What had once been a cozy nest for the young parents now became the venue for after-school basketball scrimmages, synagogue charity meetings and traditional Passover Seders. A black-andwhite three-channel television appeared in the corner of the living room; various newspapers and magazines accumulated on my grandfather’s desk.

But even as the collection

of items common to everyday life — neckties, tuna fish sandwiches, footballs — slowly filled my grandparents’ home, a whole other category of prized belongings became the most cherished of all: the books.

American history and biography. Sports memoirs and European post-war novels.

Religious commentary, religious texts, and my grandfather’s writings on Texas history.

These books hold the story of life inside my grandparents’ cottage-style home. It was books that most inspired Thanksgiving table conversations, phone calls with grandchildren and handwritten postcards to family scattered worldwide. While I imagine some homes become overrun with plants or cats, my grandparents’ home is overrun with books. Shelves line every inch of wall space, bearing volumes with titles such as “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit” and

RAC

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“The War for the Union.” My grandparents commissioned an iron worker in Houston to make special bookshelves for the house’s narrow hallways.

But while my grandparents’ books have maintained their sturdy spines and have not yellowed with time, the same cannot be said of my grandparents. With each return to Houston, my parents and I are reminded of my grandmother’s unsteady gait, my grandfather’s failing eyesight, the burden the crumbling house has become. In hushed tones my dad and his brothers talk about moving their parents to an assisted living facility as each hurricane season leaves a new path of destruction in its wake.

But when that day comes, what will happen to the books?

I ask this question with the uncomfortable feeling that I will be asking it again 30 or 40 years from now. My mom says she bought our house in Dallas 18 years ago because of its floor-to-ceiling built-in book-

shelves, shelves already filled beyond capacity. Stacked horizontally on top of one another or packed together in neat rows, the books range from a collection of New Yorker pieces by Woody Allen to volumes on codebreaking during World War II. Then, there are the books that tell the narrative of my parents’ own lives together, like “Riley’s Love Lyrics,” which my dad purchased on my parents’ honeymoon and inscribed with the words, “To Lisa, who I love so dearly.”

Perhaps one day, when my parents’ house becomes too quiet and the burden is too much for them to bear, my siblings and I will speak in hushed tones about my parents and their precious books.

It is strange to realize that the individual items collected over my grandparents’ 62-year marriage will one day mean little to anyone, reduced instead to a list of items once cherished because of “that time when …”

Who today would jump at the possibility of acquiring my grandparents’ beloved book collection, or that of my parents or perhaps, one day, mine?

When I called my grandparents earlier this week to ask about random books they have collected over the years, my grandmother casually mentioned William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. The title, famously taken from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” is excerpted from the end of Macbeth’s soliloquy, in which he concludes that life and its struggles are devoid of any meaning: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow,

a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

As I wonder how many tomorrows my grandparents’ books will have, I hold onto some belief that there was meaning in the collection, and that the books themselves contributed meaning to the years my grandparents have spent in that house since 1965.

But as the books’ yesterdays seem so much more in number than their tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows, I am less sure. I glance across the shelf to find Iréne Némirovsky’s “All Our Worldly Goods,” and I am sad.

Contact RACHEL SIEGEL at rachel.siegel@yale.edu .

Camp Kesem, a Gentle Reminder MCCULLOUGH

// BY DAVID MCCULLOUGH It’s an old tradition: at the sound of the year’s final school bell, kids of all shapes and sizes burst through heavy double doors and sprint into freedom. They dodge flying lab reports in the hallway, and upon reaching home they slip

by Mom’s inevitable “How was the last day, honey?” And off they go to the pool, or the baseball park, or the supersecret treehouse left over from last summer.

All except for a lucky few.

They bolt straight to their rooms, dust off their old L.L. Bean duffels, smack them onto the floor, and begin to pack.

Into the bags they throw bug spray, bathing suits, sneakers, sandals, a red bandana, several pairs of socks and one

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glistening white t-shirt that they don’t intend to take off for the next two months because where they’re going, that’s okay.

For they are off to camp. And for the next five to eight weeks, they will enjoy every form of outdoor bliss one can imagine. A childhood summer as if it were taken from a Norman Rockwell painting.

Every summer, Yale sponsors one such camp, one that on its surface seems to fit all the old clichés. It’s called Camp Kesem, and it’s run, from top to bottom, by Yale student volunteers. (Well, all except for two very pretty nurses we bring in from elsewhere, but even they fit into this Rockwell masterpiece.)

Students raise funds, plan events, handle administrative duties and, of course, work as counselors at Kesem’s rented home: Camp Laurelwood in Madison, Connecticut. Kesem is a national organization that hosts summer camps at universities across the country.

The camp runs for just under a week, and during that time, it functions much like a normal camp. In fact, were it not for one hidden reality of elephantine proportions, Kesem would be highly normal.

But the reality remains.

Kesem admits only those campers whose parents have had traumatic encounters with cancer. Many students have lost a parent. Some are the children of breast cancer sur-

vivors; others lost their mom or dad when they were four; others live part-time with their grandparents to let their remaining parent work. One father arrived to drop his sons off, hardly able to walk because of the three types of stagefour cancer that had spread throughout his body. Another girl’s grandfather doesn’t believe in chemotherapy, so he comes home from the hospital with holes in his skin. Another camper has no living parents.

Every camper had a story like this. Counselors were expected to be their friends amid all the fun, but we had to be wary of simple things, like asking, “Is your mom coming to pick you up?” Or even “What did you do last week-

end?” At least, we felt we had to act that way. The kids, however, acted like, well, kids.

Laughing, jumping, bellyflopping and beaming from ear-to-ear, even though they had every reason not to.

On the second-to-last night of camp, the evenings of singing, dancing and candy-hunting come to an end, and the entire camp congregates for an event that separates Kesem from the rest called Empowerment. There, we sit in a circle in the dining hall, and every age group, from 6-year-olds to 18-year-olds, shares their experiences. It’s not too long before the tears start to fall, from campers and counselors alike. In the middle of this solemn, gut-punch of an experi-

9/11 REMEMBRANCE CEREMONY Beinecke Plaza //8:30 a.m.

Never forget.

A moment of silence.

ence, a 13-year-old girl who hardly looks over the age of ten stood up and said, “Cancer sucks. And I know there’s not a cure, but what we’re doing here, having so much fun and making all these friends, seems to beat it to me.”

Cancer is a condition, not a way of life. If nothing else, that is what Kesem preaches.

Kesem takes overburdened kids and uses fun as an antidote, perhaps the most powerful antidote. And in doing so it gently reminds us all never to take for granted a beautiful summer day, or that little kid in all of us that is eager to charge out the door.

Contact DAVID MCCULLOUGH at david.mccullough@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND WOMEN

THE LANDSCAPE OF FEMALE LEADERSHIP // BY STEPHANIE ROGERS AND TYLER FOGGATT c c o rd i n g to Alexa Derman ’18, an active member of the Yale theater scene and a playwright, it only takes a couple of minutes on the Yale Drama Coalition website to understand the shows that Yale favors — shows without women’s voices and creative visions.

Last year, 78 percent of the plays performed at Yale were written by men. The Yale Dramatic Association, the theater company responsible for the most highly funded undergraduate shows, only produced plays written by men.

Meanwhile, women dominate the positions of producer and stage manager, dominating 76percent and 82 percent of their ranks, respectively.

“The common Yale theatre trope is women facilitating the vision of men,” Derman said.

This year, she added, the Yale theater scene is still on track to produce a majority of shows written exclusively by men.

Michaela Johnson ’17, a female director on campus, believes that she has had decent success on campus, but even she feels behind many of her more privileged male peers. While she has had trouble getting her foot in the door of Yale’s theatre scene,

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Johnson said she can only imagine the difficulties for other talented female writers and directors who are pigeonholed as stage managers or producers, even when they desire more artistic and creative control.

And so, Johnson and Derman together created Future Tense, a semester-long workshop series crafted to encourage women playwrights and directors. During the week, playwrights and directors will be paired with one another to produce a staged reading of an original play.

They got an overwhelmingly positive response to their initial emails about the project. While they expected many women to demonstrate interest in the workshop, they did not expect this degree of enthusiasm or relief.

“It’s been really encouraging, but also terrifying that so many people on our campus are malcontent with the way things are,” Derman said. *** This problem — women playing supportive parts to the men’s leading roles — extends beyond Yale’s theater community, plaguing various other extracurriculars. The position of Yale College Council president has been a particularly notable instance of gender inequity on campus.

Since 2000, only two women

have been elected to the position of YCC president, the last in 2007. Even though the majority of YCC representatives are now women, 13 of the last 15 presidents have been men.

YCC Vice President Maddie Bauer ’17 ran an uncontested race last spring, assuming her position as a key student representative. Bauer said that, during her campaign, she was consistently questioned about her decision not to run for the top position in a presidential race dominated by three men. She felt that some students believed that she was taking the path of least resistance.

But Bauer insisted that she made an informed choice — the role of vice president fits well with her personality and leadership type, she said. She added that she was prepared to run a good race regardless of whether or not she had adversaries.

YCC President Joe English ’17 acknowledges that the masculinization of his position is a problem. But he finds it reassuring that women make up the majority of the executive board and that both the junior and sophomore class presidents are women. In addition, the board represents a diversity of races and sexualities.

“This is and always will be an important conversation to have,” English said. “We are so far from having real equality.”

Rebecca Taber ’08, the last female YCC president, was the first woman to hold the position in seven years. While Taber was aware that most of her predecessors were male, she did not want this inequity to be “too strong of a consideration” during the elections.

“I wanted to be elected based on my platform and my experience, not because people thought it was ‘time’ for a female president,” Taber said.

This gender imbalance exists in several other extracurricular activities on campus. The Yale Mock Trial team, for instance, has 19 competing members: five female and 14 male. While the team’s external president, Eleanor Runde ’17, is a woman, and the team’s executive board achieves gender parity, Runde was surprised that the dearth of women competitors made gender so important to decisionmaking.

“It’s really thrust gender into the spotlight in a way that I was not prepared for,” Runde said, explaining that gender must be taken into account during member and captain selection.

Just this month, many Yale students encountered an instance of alleged gender inequity during the Woolsey a cappella jam. As per the official rush rules, every group only sang two songs — every group except for the Whiffenpoofs, the all-male

senior a cappella group. They sang three. While this may seem like a very minor infraction, the musical director of Whim ’n Rhythm, Lucy Fleming ’16, sees the allowance as a subtle instance of institutionalized sexism.

In many ways, Whim ’n Rhythm is the female equivalent of the Whiffenpoofs: Both are senior groups that tour the country and the world. Yet while the Whiffenpoofs’ Facebook page has about 8,200 likes, the Whim ’n Rhythm’s has only 1,500.

The Whiffenpoofs have confronted the question of whether or not to let women into the group several times. Just two years ago, several women auditioned.

Former Whiffenpoof Justin Young ’16 said the group in his year has only discussed opening auditions up to women a couple times. The major argument for maintaining an allmale group is that their music is composed entirely for male voices. Still, Young said there is hope for a future co-ed Whiffenpoofs, which he would support if there was a year that was actively in favor of changing the group’s composition.

“The reason that the Whiffenpoofs get more money and have more prestige is the same reason that the wage gap still exists in this country, which is that women’s rights and the recognition of their work is a relatively recent

phenomenon,” Fleming said. *** Joan Rhee ’16, director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra, characterizes her leadership style as “both aggressive and assertive.” Loud and honest, she is not afraid to share her opinions as she leads the largest undergraduate musical group on campus.

Several people have told her she can come across as “scary.”

“I would argue that if a male student had those same characteristics, he would not be considered ‘scary,’” she said.

As an Asian woman, Rhee experiences “overwhelming cultural and social expectations” to remain more silent, passive and lenient than her male counterparts.

Unlike Rhee, Tiwa Lawal ’17, who co-founded the club Medicine in the Arts and Humanities Collective at Yale, has struggled to find her voice. She fears being labeled “too pushy” by the people she supervises and therefore is hesitant to make requests of her peers. In her time at Yale, she has made a conscious effort to be more forward and direct about her desires.

Lawal, who aspires to be a doctor, thinks frequently about how life after Yale will treat her.

As a woman of color, she worSEE WOMEN PAGE B8

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT

Joan Rhee, Hiral Doshi, Sophie Dillon, Tiwadeye Lawal, Irene Chung, Lucy Fleming

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YALE FARM TOUR Yale Farm // 5 p.m.

Join the agri-counterculture.

WKND RECOMMENDS: EVERYONE’S WORK IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FEATURE

FOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY AND...

WHAT WAS THAT OTHER THING? // BY VIVIAN WANG On most 36-degree days, Yalies retreat to their dorm rooms and libraries, turning up the heat and hiding out in preparation for the impending New Haven winter. November 18, 2014 was different. On that day, hundreds of Yale students abandoned the warmth of their classrooms and bedrooms — not to mention their lectures and problem sets — to wait outside Payne Whitney Gymnasium for several hours in the frigid cold, all in the hope of securing a coveted ticket to the annual Harvard-Yale football game.

Tickets sold out by 3:30 p.m. Hundreds of students were turned away. Secondhand tickets sold online for as much as five times the original price.

Four months later, nearly 200 students gathered in the cold again, this time on Cross Campus, to criticize Yale for a whole host of problems, from neglected cultural centers, to continued investment in fossil fuels, to the maintenance of a student income contribution in financial aid packages. Sebastian Medina-Tayac ’16, one of the rally’s organizers, said at the time that the event represented the voices of students who had been “historically disenfranchised by … certain elements of the institution as a whole.”

“It showed that there is unity among students and that students deserve to be heard,” he said.

For many, tradition is at the heart of the Yale College experience, whether in the form of annual events like the Harvard-Yale football game or storied customs like singing “Bright College Years.” But at a time when 28 percent of the student body is a racial minority, many of these traditions have drawn scrutiny for their roots in a society and a university once dominated by white men. Students who identify as anything other than that say that the University does not make a place for them among its Gothic spires and vinedraped walls. They say they must forcibly carve out a space for themselves during their four years here.

And as students protest, it seems that Yale’s traditions might not hold the same status they once did.

Just last weekend, hundreds of freshmen crowded into Woolsey Hall — this time in the sweltering humidity of a late summer afternoon —

for Yale Up!, a grammatically excited program that trots Yale football players and cheerleaders onstage to the tune of traditional Yale and residential college chants and fight songs.

The necessity of an event like Yale Up!, inaugurated last year as a part of freshman orientation, suggests that Yale’s traditional markers of school spirit may not be the campus mainstays they once were.

But at the same time, tickets for The Game continue to sell, and a walk around campus reveals no shortage of navy blue gear.

In short, students’ attitudes are complicated.

“There are moments when I have felt angry with certain portions of the University,” Javier Cienfuegos ’15 said.

Cienfuegos frequently takes to social media with critiques of Ya l e , a n d he says that many peop l e a cc u se him of hating the University — an accusation he denies. “I’ve felt angry with the administration, or I’ve felt angry with other student groups on campus,” he acknowledges. “But I don’t think I’ve ever felt ashamed of Yale as a whole.”

Cienfuegos’s words exemplify a common sentiment among Yale students, who are quick to find fault with the University’s day-to-day workings but still profess allegiance to Yale itself— whatever that might mean. I myself am often asked how I can reconcile the myriad problems on campus with the peppy speeches I give to starry-eyed prospective students in my capacity as a campus tour guide.

For God, for Country, and for Yale, the saying goes. But what does it mean to be “for Yale”?

paint at raucous tailgates, fight songs sung by heart — does not exist at Yale.

Eli Baum ’19 said many high school seniors likely apply to Yale for its brand — the “HYP mentality,” he called it — rather than any kind of fervent attachment to its history or customs.

“When I originally was looking at colleges, I wanted somewhere with a lot of school spirit,” Lily Marmolejo ’19 said. She laughed. “Yale traditionally does not have a reputation for school spirit.”

If there

port for Yale sports teams. But even Lowet acknowledged that the various niches into which Yalies divide themselves can detract from a wider University spirit.

“I do think that a lack of school spirit vis-à-vis athletics translates to a lack of identification with Yale as a whole,” he said. “Yale does a great job sorting students into communities in which they can feel comfortable. Where it doesn’t do quite as well is translating that sense of belonging into Yale-wide community and spirit.”

But even these micro-categories of identification have become the subject of controversy recently, with renewed debate about the namesake of Calhoun College and a separate but related conversation about the title of “master.”

Sara Tabin ’19 said she actually identifies more with Yale as a whole than with her college, Calhoun, because of the controversy over its name.

Both of these debates center around painful legacies of racism that are inextricable from the University’s history. But some students and alumni argue that changes will undermine tradition and history. And, they say, if we rename Calhoun because of its unsavory namesake, what do we do with Elihu Yale, who was also a slave owner? Do we rename Yale, too?

I HAVE SOME SORT OF ROMANTICIZED, ABSTRACTED IDEA OF YALE THAT I TEND TO SEPARATE FROM EVEN THE ADMINISTRATION.

*** For many of the freshmen who attended Yale Up! last weekend, “school spirit” as it appears in the movies — packed stands at football games, face

JAVIER CIENFUEGOS ‘15 is a sense of passionate attachment to anything at Yale, many would argue it is to the residential colleges.

In fact, Marmolejo said she was struck by how much of Yale Up! — which was conceived of by the athletic Captain’s Council, likely to promote University-wide support for school athletics — revolved around the individual residential colleges.

“Everyone had their [college flags]. No one was wearing anything Yale, they were all wearing their college colors,” she said.

If anyone would know how school spirit does or doesn’t manifest itself; at Yale, it might be Adam Lowet ’18, communications director for the Whaling Crew, a group dedicated to generating sup-

*** Yet, he seemed to have a stronger sense of “school spirit” — a sense of what Yale means and why he loves it — than anyone else I interviewed.

“None of the traditions in question contribute at all to make Yale the place that it is,” he said. “Master is just a title.

Calhoun is just the name of one college. Even the name of Yale has nothing to do with what makes the University special.

I think that first and foremost, it’s a community that people manage to foster in a variety of different

environments.”

But Cienfuegos admits that, ultimately, it is not even the friendships and communities formed inside Yale’s gates that propel him to declare his love for the University. It’s that, for all his criticisms, Yale as an idea seems to stand apart from the day-to-day controversies that spark rallies and op-eds and petitions.

It’s a sentiment expressed by everyone I interviewed: Yes, school spirit in its stereotypical sense is lacking; no, I don’t go to all the football games; but there’s something else I can’t quite pinpoint that makes me love this place.

“I think school spirit at Yale is less about physical acts and more about a sense of community, of loving your school and being there for your classmates,” Tabin said.

And according to Cienfuegos, “I do think that I have some sort of romanticized, abstracted idea of Yale that I tend to separate from even the administration. Controversies are a part of Yale, but I also feel like my love of Yale has nothing to do with these events.”

“Yale makes it easy to feel like you belong here,” Lowet said. “Like Yale is home.”

I agree: Yale is home to me.

But that’s part of the reason that I don’t agree with Cienfuegos. I don’t know if I would support changing the name “Yale,” because for me, that name is part of the way I identify my home. I am romantically, perhaps stupidly, attached to it. Yale is the name on my t-shirts and sweatshirts and scarf and pennant; it is the name I dreamed of when I was a little girl; it is the name on my admissions letter. To quote “Bright College Years,” the word Yale is part of the memories I will look back on when I remember my “happy, golden, bygone days.”

I had to Google the lyrics of “Bright College Years” to find what they say about the undergraduate experience. So would most of the students who attended Yale Up!, I’m sure, even after that session of manufactured college cheer. But I don’t think that means we love Yale any less.

“I’m sure Yale Up! was overthe-top positive,” Tabin said.

“But I thought it was fun, so I didn’t mind.”

Contact VIVIAN WANG at vivian.y.wang@yale.edu .

// TERI BARBUTO

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TEETH PERFORMANCE

Trumbull Theater // 7 p.m.

For all the freshman slam poets cutting their teeth: Go see how it’s done.

WKND RECOMMENDS: ROMANTIC LOVE WAS INVENTED TO MANIPULATE WOMEN

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

AT HOME AND AT PEACE IN JAPAN // BY CAROLINE WRAY

Between 1603 and 1868, Japan — then a conglomerate of 250 autonomous mini-states rather than the nation we know today — experienced a long peace, one that history has deemed Great.

The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock; Japan was at peace. Thirteen American colonies declared independence; Japan was at peace. Our then-34 states turned on one another in civil war, and Japan, all 250 “states,” remained at peace.

When you get to the end of “Samurai and the Culture of Japan’s Great Peace,” the temporary historical exhibit recently installed at the Peabody, you learn how the Great Peace ended.

The rest of the world, beginning with the U.S., landed on Japan’s shores and pressured the islands to open to international trade, breaking their isolation.

Let in the world; give up your peace.

The exhibit leads visitors through this era, two-and-a-half centuries of a nation turned in on itself. At first blush, the objects on display are as foreign as you’d expect, and the effect as transporting as you’d hope. Music from the period plays through speakers. The relics on display — clothing and armor and accessories — are ornate, beautiful and clearly from a different age. Still, at first, there seem to be few surprises. Visitors are greeted by a collection of swords and kimonos that could have been taken from a Hollywood set.

But it’s worth looking a little closer. The exhibit winds towards the back of a large room and then around to the front, escorting visitors deeper into the past and into more surprising territory.

Visitors learn, for instance, that samurai used to see faces of their drowned brethren in crab shells.

In an enchanting print reproduction of “The Sea Bed at Daimatsu Bay,” fearsome, armored soldiers loom amongst crustaceans. The caption beneath a displayed shell asks if you can see the “angry samurai face” in its hollow casing, and you’ll think that maybe there is some semblance in the wrinkles.

Personally, I am struck by the ancient books on display, whose accompanying touchscreens allow you to flip through the translated stories. One in particular, about a family’s fall from grace after an abortion, haunts me later. Illustrated with sketches of shriveled infants and crazed women, it is meant to be scary, the exhibit tells me.

Although centered on one par-

ticular mountain village, it was commission to condemn the widespread practice of infanticide.

I am also surprised to learn that the royal family lost all power during the Great Peace, and spent it hidden away in a disintegrating palace. A merciful baker took pity on one of the period’s first emperors, delivering food to him daily. It later became tradition for townspeople to deliver the emperors’ breakfasts. I am struck by the story, and by the decidedly unappetizing reproduction of the fallen ruler’s meal: a bowl of six rice cakes and bean paste.

I wonder how many emperors were born and died during the Great Peace — how many emperors knew nothing except the rickety walls of their palace and meals delivered by pitying

peasants.

But, for all the period’s geographic and temporal distance, some of its aspects seem a little more familiar. I am especially drawn to a flushed, alarmingly vacant-looking 17th century theater mask: “that of a sh jõ, a water sprite from Chinese mythology with an apelike body and a human face …

That of an adolescent male, but with a gentle smile reflecting the creature’s friendly personality.

Strands of hair seem to be plastered to the forehead, as if it had just emerged from the water. The red pigmentation suggests the sh jõ’s remarkable fondness for drink and perpetual state of mild intoxication.”

Gazing at the mask, I am reminded of late Saturday nights at a hollowed New Haven institution: the Delta Kappa Epsilon

house.

In all, the exhibit’s success lies in its ability to portray a remarkably different time and place in a faithful yet accessible manner.

Certain objects surprise, excite, sadden or stir reflection. Others are similar to what you’ve seen before. But visitors leave feeling as though they’ve experienced 250 years of cultural history in a single room.

At the end of the day, it’s a little unclear whether you’ll learn much from this exhibit that you won’t in the popular spring “Japan’s Great Peace” lecture.

But, for those of us without space in our Bluebooks, “Samurai and the Culture of Japan’s Great Peace” is more than worth the free admission.

Contact CAROLINE WRAY at caroline.wray@yale.edu .

“Arresting patterns”: Illustrating injustice // BY SARA SEYMOUR

Despite having gone to school in New Haven since I was six, even I usually fail to leave the Yale bubble. When I do, it tends to be rewarding, though, and my excursion to Artspace at 50 Orange St. to see “Arresting Patterns” was no exception.

The exhibit features work from Titus Kaphar ’06 MFA, 16 New Haven Public School students and a carefully chosen group of other socially conscious artists. The works on display used a variety of media to convey a potent message about racial disparities in the American criminal justice system.

Kaphar, a New-Haven based artist, had mentored the students for three weeks through Artspace’s Summer Apprentice Program, which allows a group of students to apprentice for an established artist. Their work displayed an unusual level of awareness, and forced viewers to acknowledge some troubling realities.

Each artist’s works occupied a section of Artspace’s gallery, and

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the students got a section as well.

One such area features letters from a campaign through Tamms Ten Year, a prison reform organization that allowed inmates in solitary confinement to ask for a single photo to decorate each of their cells. The simplicity of their requests — one man asked for a picture of a woman fishing — illustrated how solitary confinement can force people to yearn for the ordinary.

Another section is a room showcasing videos of six black men each stating how many times they’ve been stopped by the police. While they wait to speak, the men shift their weight from one leg to the other, but it’s unclear whether the discomfort one perceives is theirs or one’s own. One man says that he’s been stopped over 100 times.

I can’t claim to approach this exhibit with an artistic background. Instead, my perspective is one of indignance and frustration about the state of our criminal justice system. I often write

about criminal justice and civil rights, so I entered the exhibit thinking I knew what to expect.

Still, some information caught me off guard and surprised me.

Throughout the exhibit there are “takeaway” cards with relevant statistics regarding race and prisons. Citing statistics from the U.S. Census & International Center for Prison Studies, one such card states that though the U.S. has less that 5% of the world’s population, it has almost 25% of the world’s total prison population. I had already known that the U.S.’s prison population was the world’s largest, but the numbers were a stark reminder.

Only upon my second trip to the exhibit did I notice the outlines of a prison cell in black tape on the floor of the student section. Outlined were the dimensions of the bunk, the toilet, the table and the shelf that adorn a cell. You’re invited to listen to a recorded monologue and write on the wall as you spend some time in the cell. Instructions on the

DESERT HEARTS WHC // 7 p.m.

What happens when Miss Lonelyhearts goes to the desert? She finds her true love. (Synopsis may be inaccurate.)

wall ironically invite you to stay for years.

I comforted myself with the thought that one would have to do something truly terrible to end up in a prison cell. But then I remembered the article I wrote just this week about Bobby Johnson being released from prison after spending nine years there for a crime he didn’t commit. And then I remembered a report last year released by Connecticut Voices for Children stating that petty offenses like tardiness, swearing and disruptive behavior result in 11 percent of student arrests. So the thought that someone has to do something terrible to end up in jail — it comes with a lot of asterisks.

Over the summer, Kaphar brought the students from the Summer Apprentice Program on a field trip to a prison, perhaps so that similar thoughts might occur to them. He explains the thought process behind the trip in a video produced by Artspace and Travis Carbonella, which plays on repeat

in the students’ section. Kaphar says that most people don’t even know what the inside of a prison looks like. He argues that, given how many people in the United States are sent to prison, everyone should visit one to see where we send our convicts. Kaphar’s apprentices succeeded in making at least one viewer consider what the experience of prison is actually like.

If you didn’t get a chance to visit Artspace over the last two months, you still have a chance to confront these tough questions.

This weekend, “Arresting Patterns” is ending with a two-day conference featuring guest artists, policy makers, scholars and activists who will address the questions raised by this exhibit.

The conference and the exhibitions are free and open to the public. I’m not done thinking about the questions I faced at “Arresting Patterns,” so I plan to attend.

Contact SARA SEYMOUR at sara.seymour@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: RAISE BOYS AND GIRLS THE SAME WAY

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND WORD

WKND went around campus asking (mostly) real Yale students real-life questions about real life at Yale. Our answers ran the gamut: from anxious to excited to anxiously exicted to sort of anxious and sort of excited. And so much more. SWUGs, frosh, shopping and all the hottest topics are explored in this week’s Double Truck, a bellwether of campus opinion.

What’s the best part about camp Yale?

How was your shopping period?

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FRI D AY SEPTEMBER

11

CAT POWER

College Street Music Hall // 8 p.m.

WKND loves to have Cat Power. But we’d much prefer to have cat powers.

WKND RECOMMENDS: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR CONSTITUTING THE MEANING OF THINGS

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER

12

WHAT A LOVELY DAY WHC // 9 a.m.

A One-Day Conference on Mad Max: Fury Road and Interstellar.

WKND has canceled all other plans for the WKND.

WKND RECOMMENDS: DISGUST IS THE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO MOST SITUATIONS

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND WOMEN

WOMEN FACILITATING THE VISION OF MEN? // BY TYLER FOGGATT AND STEPHANIE ROGERS WOMEN FROM PAGE B3 ries that patients will question her capabilities. Consequently, Lawal has to think about how she presents herself when interacting with people in professional situations.

“As a woman, you take all this extra effort to be presenting yourself as serious,” she said.

Amelia Ricketts ’17, a chairof the Women’s Leadership Initiative’s Leading Ladies Gala, said female leaders are often “pigeonholed.” They must walk the fine line between assertive and compassionate — if they stray too far to one side they can become the “bitchy boss” in the eyes of their peers.

The WLI, founded in 2006

by Taber and several others, is an organization that focuses on supporting and mentoring female leaders on campus.

According to its website, the initiative “fosters relationships across the undergraduate student body, graduate students, Yale alumnae and professionals from around the world.” For the past two years, the WLI has hosted an annual Leading Ladies Gala; female leaders on campus are invited to attend and commended for their work.

On the other hand, Bauer hasn’t noticed any such pressure since becoming YCC vice president to adhere to gender stereotypes.

In fact, while men dominated the YCC presidential elections last spring, other YCC statistics tell a different story. Six out of the 11 people on the organization’s executive board are women and eight out of 14 residential college council presidents are women. Bauer said that, in this environment, she doesn’t necessarily “see gender.”

While Runde does feel that the Yale Mock Trial team is inclusive — she noted that either the internal president or the external president is usually a woman — she mentioned at least one time when her team members misconstrued her actions because of her gender.

“I do think with female leaders in Mock Trial, at least from my experience so far, things can be misunderstood sometimes. I’ve had one experience where I was doing something for the general happiness of the association, but it was misunderstood as a message to men,” she said.

Runde added that this was difficult for her, because while she didn’t want to renounce feminism, she had not meant for her action to be considered a feminist “power play.”

Anna Russo ’17, co-editor in chief of The Globalist, recognizes that many women at Yale occupy leadership positions, but she commented on the organizations’ appointment processes.

Russo did not participate in a formal election prior to assuming her role. The previous leaders had a conversation with Russo and her current co-editor Skylar Inman ’17, a staff reporter for the News, and told them they were suited to the job.

“It’s a general Yale trend that a lot of leadership positions are ones you get ushered into,” Russo said. “There are a few high-profile organizations where you have to run, but for the most part, I think people are just appointed.”

While Russo would have run for co-editor even if the position had been contested, she acknowledges that other women may be more reticent to put themselves forward.

Of the female leaders interviewed for this piece, the majority ran in an uncontested election, or were appointed to their position.

Russo also points out the gender differences between The Globalist and The Politic, two similar publications. Despite the resemblance, most of The Politic’s staff members are men, while most of The Globalist’s staff members are women. And while The Globalist makes a concerted effort to recruit male students, many of these men nevertheless end up at The Politic.

Hiral Doshi ’17, president of the WLI, believes that while Yale’s campus is perhaps a more

women positive environment than other parts of the world, there still exist subtle, minute microaggressions that need to be changed. She cites “man up” as one such problematic phrase.

And Sophie Dillon ’17, director of the sketch comedy troupe Red Hot Poker, agrees with Doshi: Yale is a more supportive environment than most of the world.

She dropped by a comedy club this summer, and was shocked to find the show dominated by men making sexist jokes.

When Dillon was a freshman, many of Red Hot Poker’s sketches relied on similar tropes and conventions — men wrote most of the pieces — but since then, she has noticed a shift. More women writers in the group, including herself, have taken a clear lead. *** One of Dillon’s favorite sketches, “Moonshine”, dramatizes a woman’s menstrual cycle in Ancient Egypt. She loves the sketch, and not only because her fellow actors perform it so well. She also loves to watch the extreme discomfort on the faces of men in the audience. Dillon believes that unsettling and uncomfortable humor has power that can be useful in promoting meaningful progress.

She admits that she once wrote an offensive sketch that the group wouldn’t perform. The piece focused on four women having a conversation at brunch.

Despite its comedic value, the characters ultimately devolved into outworn female stereotypes. This mistake helped Dillon understand that specificity is crucial to undermining sexism in comedy — by creating believable characters, as opposed to caricatures.

Alicia Lovelace ’17, co-editor in chief of the Yale Rumpus, agrees that comedy has a special power to promote feminist ideals. Like Red Hot Poker, Rumpus encourages a subversive comedy that disrupts traditional patriarchal norms.

Rumpus is not exactly known as Yale’s feminist hotbed. For instance, their annual 50 Most issue seems to reinforce outdated gender conventions. But Lovelace believes that Rumpus can be a catalyst for change — possibly more so than any other campus publication — thanks to its extreme satire. Indeed, despite its apparent superficiality, the 50 Most issue satirizes the very ideas it seems to support, poking fun at campus conceptions of sex and beauty.

“Rumpus capitalizes on [the Yale student body’s] overzealous idiot tendencies. As a woman, it’s a great opportunity to explore why [Yale students] suck,” Lovelace said, adding that the anti-establishment tone of Rumpus is one of the greatest equalizers.

With a diverse board in race, gender and sexuality, Rumpus can be a safe space for more meaningful conversations and female empowerment “beyond inserting more female genitalia jokes alongside [their] fabulous dick jokes,” she added.

However, some publications and organizations may allow for more subversion and productive discussion than others. For example, when leading The Globalist, Russo cannot typically assert a “feminist agenda” in the way that other female leaders can.

“With Rumpus obviously there’s a lot of gender norms that you can subvert, but with The Globalist, it’s pretty traditional reporting,” Russo said.

For Fleming and her fellow singers, who also don’t have comedic tools at their disposal, the “most stable and fulfilling way” to combat institutional sexism is to excel. Women are not as likely to get credit or acknowledgement for hard work, Fleming said, adding that she hoped this year to encourage a culture of positivity in the group.

Oftentimes, the public assumes that if a female leads a student organization then the group is not sexist, but the presence of one female does not

immediately erase the presence of sexist undertones, Fleming said.

In contrast, Annemarie McDaniel ’16, who works for the SPARK movement to end underrepresentation and violence toward women in media, believes that even an organization without women can still promote feminist viewpoints and even has the social responsibility to do so.

She believes that fraternities and other all-male groups should try to break down preconceived gender roles: Assertive masculinity is not the only approach to leadership.

Taber had many such non-traditional mentors during her time at Yale. In fact, she attributes her decision to run for YCC president — and her eventual success — to the support and mentorship she received from upperclassmen, both male and female, during the election.

“Here’s my theory,” Taber said. “I think that a predecessor of mine said that you don’t get to be YCC president by climbing there, you get there by being pushed up. It was really the support and the mentorship and the encouragement I received that convinced me to run, including from the two former male YCC presidents and the female cofounders of WLI.” Taber shared her hypothesis that male upperclassmen in leadership positions rarely act as mentors to female underclassmen; she noticed this as a student. Still, Taber said, the solution to this problem isn’t simply to elect a female YCC president — the solution is for men in leadership roles to be more aware of the potential unconscious bias they may have when engaging with the classes below them.

“Everyone needs to be aware that there is a slight tendency to form mentorship bonds with people who share similar demographic backgrounds,” she said, adding that “the only way to ensure diverse candidates is to encourage mentorship across genders.”

According to Taber, though

there were certainly many women in leadership roles during her time on campus, the leadership climate did feel “slightly more male-dominated.”

Taber believes that Yale has come very far since she graduated, and she is optimistic about the future of female leadership at Yale. *** Henry Tisch ’16 and Christopher Homburger ’16, president and vice president of the Yale Dramat, recognize that an entire season of shows by male playwrights is problematic. Every year they have the same conversations in board meetings about how to incorporate more female voices.

Unfortunately, the board only chooses productions from a list of suggestions made by the public. Male playwrights usually comprise the majority of the list. This is a byproduct of a gender imbalance within the larger theater community. Still, Tisch believes that there is hope for improvement.

“With voices like Alexa [Derman’s], I expect to see these lists change in the next couple years” he said. In fact, the Dramat will produce a play written by a woman this coming year.

Prior to this semester, whenever Derman advocated for female voices, other students agreed with her position, but then questioned the specific possibilities. Who were the major female playwrights? So, this summer Derman took on a special project — she read 50 plays written by women.

Now, whenever her peers express skepticism, she can rattle off names of numerous female playwrights who haven’t yet been performed on Yale’s campus.

“They exist. They’re writing.

They’re making incredible stuff.”

Contact STEPHANIE ROGERS at stephanie.rogers@yale.edu and TYLER FOGGATT at tyler.foggatt@yale.edu .

WOMEN IN THEATER AT YALE Stage Managers

Playwrights

6

28

43

12

2

14

21

7

6

6

Female Male

FRI D AY SEPTEMBER

11

WORD PERFORMANCE

WKND RECOMMENDS:

WLH // 8 p.m.

In the beginning was the . . . words, words, words. Word up. We’re done.

CONFUSING YOURSELF IS A WAY TO STAY HONEST

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND FEMINISM

GRRLS RUN THE WORLD // BY EMILY XIAO

In the streets of Los Angeles and Tehran, in black-and-white and sepia-tinged footage and in Technicolor, in the Wild West and the woods of Japan, you’ll find women wreaking all sorts of havoc. They’re the troublemakers of the world captured on 35mm or 16mm film or VHS, and they’re making their way to the big screen at Yale.

The Yale Film Colloquium, curated by graduate students in Yale’s Film and Media Studies program, will showcase these characters over the course of the semester in a series titled “Bad Girls.” The screenings are tied together by the theme of — you guessed it — bad girls, or what the event flyer describes as “witches, bitches and bad-ass dames.”

Many of the films, unearthed from collections at the Yale Film Archive and Sterling Memorial Library, are being screened for the first time on campus. They’ll be complemented by the “Groundbreaking Lesbian Filmmakers” series, also running this semester.

As Kirsty Dootson, doctoral candidate in History of Art, Film, and Media Studies and head of programming for the colloquium, explained to me, “The Bad Girls in the series aren’t just bad because they misbehave, but because they flout conventions of femininity, whatever they may be in a given time and place.” As such, the lineup features female characters in an unlikely but incredible range of contexts, representing both distinctly radical and radically distinct approaches to feminism.

“We’ve had films [sent in] from Australia, Ireland and Pakistan, as well as a lot of films from the U.K. and U.S.A.,” Dootson said, describing the female short-filmmaker showcase that will round off the series. “They range from short documentaries about transgender rights to fiction films about girls fighting at school. We’re still whittling down the submissions, but it’s going to be an incredible program.”

Evidently, there are a lot of ways to be a “bad girl,” wherever you might be in the world. The series kicked off on Sept. 1 with “Suspiria,” Dario Argento’s 1977 Italian horror film set in a Ger-

SUND AY SEPTEMBER

13

man dance academy. Its American protagonist, played by Jessica Harper, finds herself entangled in a candy-colored, M.C. Escheresque visual delirium as she evades the sinister dealings of a coven of witches.

Other offerings include Rita Hayworth’s classic femme fatale character in “Gilda,” a 1946 American film noir, and Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 crime thriller “Jackie Brown.” Also on the docket are old-school kungfu film “Challenge of the Lady Ninja” and “Persepolis,” based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel about growing up during the Iranian Revolution.

“PUNK IS NOT DED (sic),” reads the back of Satrapi’s teenaged self’s jacket. Indeed, punk — or at least a certain impetus to rebel against societal norms, to make noise — lives on.

Bad Is Better A series as political and activist in its nature as this one prompts certain questions: How do these images of the “bad girl” translate to life at Yale? What can we learn from a magazine-editor-turnedserial-killer (“Office Killer”) or a saloon-keeper in Arizona (“Johnny Guitar”)?

Dootson makes an important distinction between women simply “being bad” and those “doing things that they as women are not expected to” — though, of course, there can be considerable overlap depending on contextual definitions of “badness.” Likewise, Broad Recognition Editorin-Chief Fiona Lowenstein ’16 questioned whether the terms “bad” and “radical” are necessarily interchangeable, although she pointed out that those who try to enact radical change are often labeled “bad,” particularly feminine-identifying people.

At Yale, it’s hard to miss the more colorfully radical manifestations of feminism. Last week, I listened to a neon-clad student discuss metaphors of penetration in the relaxed antebellum ambience of the Pierson Common Room. Though her female peers nodded as she spoke, her words prompted incredulous — almost disapproving — glances

from three other students playing chess a few feet away.

There exists a variety — a collage, really — of ways whereby the images of the “bad girl” considered by the film series can translate to academia, to the classroom and the seminar table. Some of the baddest girls on campus, Dootson believes, are those who question the gender-based assumptions of their peers and teachers. She cited one example: Male colleagues who believe women are particularly wellsuited to administrative roles, as opposed to intellectual labor.

“If Kathleen Hanna can say ‘girls to the front’ at a show, then we should be able to do it in the classroom at Yale,” Dootson said, referring to one of riot grrl’s main proponents.

Likewise, Isis Davis-Marks ’19 has noticed that, although women do talk in class, the predominant voices tend to be male.

She said she hoped we can deconstruct the paradigm that the people who are most willing to talk aren’t always women.

“One of the ways you can be a ‘bad girl,’” she believes, “is to combine discourse with activism.” Asserting that there are more radical forms of activism than simply talking and writing, she plans to contribute to campus publications on issues like elitism and sexism while also engaging in community outreach and the Black Women’s Coalition, among other endeavors.

Sometimes, moreover, a personal feminism may not fit within established spaces on campus.

As a black student, for instance, Davis-Marks expressed her concerns that feminism at Yale may be too narrow and hopes to build a stronger culture of activism.

Crystal Liu ’16, who identifies as a queer woman of color, has sought for answers beyond the walls of the Yale Women’s Center or the Asian American Cultural Center. Though she applauds the work undertaken by both organizations, there seemed to be something missing.

“I couldn’t find a place for my response to these issues in controlled spaces,” Liu said.

She joined the Bad Romantics of Yale, a drag, burlesque and

SYMPOSIUM, ARRESTING PATTERNS

cabaret troupe, and also writes and performs with the Sphincter Troupe, an all-feminineidentified sketch comedy group.

Many of her feminist discussions take place in the context of queer activism, in which, she believes, there is more common ground.

Zine Queens The flyer for “Bad Girls,” designed by artist Mike Zimmerman, evokes a time and place remembered for its confrontational feminism. With a bold near-whimsicality that wouldn’t be out of place in the Chem 101 notebook of a teenage girl with a closet full of patched denim jackets, Zimmerman’s design hearkens back to the collage-y, do-ityourself aesthetic of the ’90s riot grrrl movement.

A subculture centered around female punk artists from Bikini Kill to Sleater-Kinney, riot grrrl became known for its emphasis on political and personal expression over technical ability and its rebellious take on issues such as female empowerment and sexual violence.

In his design, Zimmerman said, he sought to pull together rich imagery from all the films in order to capture the overall spirit of the series. “This specific interplay of type, imagery, collage is characteristic of a style I do often working for bands [and] promoters on posters,” he explained, “so that would probably play up the punk feel of things.”

Though they had been around for decades, zines became a staple of the riot grrrl movement.

Small, easily distributable DIY publications (think scissors, Elmer’s glue, Scotch tape and Xerox) featuring visual art and writing, they allowed the communication of explicitly activist themes outside the venues of mainstream media and were also adopted by queer activists and activists of color.

And as the “Bad Girls” poster indicates, this aesthetic persists among artists and illustrators today — something Zimmerman describes as “an ever-evolving nod to DIY and riot grrrl.” Zines thrive on the shelves of independent bookstores and on the Etsy

handmade goods marketplace, and they thrive at Yale, expanding creative possibilities beyond the traditional format of campus publications.

In the spring of 2012, former Broad Recognition editor-inchief Isabel Ortiz ’14 had an idea to start a zine; the first issue of Fatale was published on the magazine’s website the following fall.

The undertaking was “a way of investigating and acquiring fluency in a feminist language (both visual and verbal) that originated in zines and is now experiencing a huge comeback online, through Tumblr and other blogs,” Ortiz said over email.

Though Ortiz and her collaborators were fans of the ’90s feminist zines created by Le Tigre and others, Fatale wasn’t simply going to be an object of nostalgia. Rather, they wanted to move forward from the medium’s history and create a new kind of zine to represent new voices in new ways. Fatale’s earliest issues cobbled together influences and iconographies from a variety of times and places: bell hooks and Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, Lillian Gish and characters from the television show “Adventure Time.”

“What always excited me about Fatale was that it served as a space for play and creative experimentation,” former Broad Recognition zine editor Andrew Wagner ’15 explained. That approach, he believes, “is in many ways very related to the politics of feminism and its insistence on breaking down social constructs, gender norms and so on.”

“FIGHT BACK!” reads the first issue of Fatale. “WE ARE STRONG. WE ARE UNAFRAID. WE ARE HERE TO STAY.” Feminism(s) For Everyone Manifestations of feminism at Yale vary in their artistic and political approaches, in the questions that they address and the ones they leave out, but they have a shared zeal for advocacy on campus. Yale Women’s Center Public Relations Coordinator Alexa Derman ’18 expressed her hesitation to speak in the capacity of a representative of an

umbrella organization for a variety of different feminist groups and sensibilities.

“We try to encourage people to examine and discover their own feminisms rather than prescribing our own belief structures on activism and visibility,” she explained in an email.

Similarly, Lowenstein emphasized Broad Recognition’s collaborative ethos, noting that she reaches out to many campus organizations, from cultural centers to performing arts groups, in order to publish a wider range of opinions on feminist issues.

“Our board and staff are comprised of CCEs [Communication and Consent Educators], Women’s Center staffers, Sphincter Troupe performers and Coop members, among many others,” she said.

In a climate of considerable hand-wringing over the demonstrations and “political correctness” of campus leftists, there seems to be a general assumption — even among those with basically progressive beliefs — that an approach based on radicalism necessarily limits accessibility and inclusivity.

“Bad Girls” suggests, however, that we can talk about a multiplicity of ways to be radical, and that’s reinforced by the multiplicity of feminisms that exist on campus. The films present contexts that are ostensibly alien to one another, yet each with its own possibilities for transgressing boundaries of identity and behavior — and every transgression, however minor, is at least a little bit radical. In doing so, they remind us that while the “bad girl” might not appeal to a great number of girls and women out there, she has the power to resonate with a great many types.

As Dootson says, “We need to keep asking ourselves what it means to be a strong woman — what does that look like? Our series offers a lot of different answers.”

More information about the Yale Film Colloquium can be found at http://www.yalefilmcultures.com/ Contact EMILY XIAO at emily.xiao@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

YUAG // 9 a.m.

An open conversation about race, criminal justice, artistic expression and community.

THE IDEA OF TRANSCENDENCE IS USED TO OBSCURE OPPRESSION

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

THE RIGHT STUFF LIKE THAT THERE // BY GRAHAM AMBROSE

// WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

It’s an old gift in a new package.

In late August, Yo La Tengo, the 31-year-old lo-fi group from northeast New Jersey, released another full-length studio album, “Stuff Like That There,” to little fanfare save for the hordes of aging diehards that frequent the coffee shops looping their records.

“Stuff Like That There” doesn’t stray far from the brooding plaintiveness that America’s quintessential indie rock band has developed for over three decades. The band’s fourteenth studio session evokes the discomfort of shoeless walks down a worn road. It’s 45 minutes of dour Americana that

succeeds by unevenly toeing the line between loneliness and solitude, or not even recognizing the division at all.

For a band that’s older than Taylor Swift and whose members were born before our sitting president, “Stuff Like That There” proves satisfyingly consistent. After decades of dabbling in soft rock’s shadowy underground, Yo La Tengo’s an old dog that hasn’t learned new tricks. Fans and new listeners alike will dig the tricks they have come to master, namely that they’re still “Murdering the Classics.”

The group’s famous penchant for covers intensifies on “Stuff Like That There,” an album

dense with borrowed songs — megastars like The Cure (“Friday I’m in Love”), doo-wop groups like The Parliaments (“I Can Feel the Ice Melting”), and fellow indie devotees like Antietam (“Naples”). These seasoned veterans, who are unafraid to buck convention, respect the irony of an iconic indie rock band producing an album half of whose material isn’t original. Across every wistful lyric and ballad, Yo La Tengo carries the unique selfconfidence of a band that’s been around the block.

Their most recent release is a thoughtful concept album that traces the familiar arc of loss, grief, recovery and hope. The record opens post-trauma, in

media res, as the protagonist pines for a recently-departed lover. She distracts herself, lusting defensively after other men although her “heart’s not in it.” Isolation overwhelms her — “I’m so lonesome I could cry,” vocalist Georgia Hubley wails. Momentary hope twinkles in “The Ballad of Red Buckets,” a swift number that sails atop melancholic guitar swells lifted straight from “Help!” Mid-album, though, the veneer of optimism cracks when the heartbroken protagonist “stopped to think” about the pain of it all. Brought low in “Automatic Doom,” a cover of Special Pillow, the despondent woman asks incredulously what

horrible fate awaits her.

And then things get better. Night turns to morning and the mood lifts. The protagonist comes to a vague understanding that she “doesn’t need anyone” to fill the void, all the while refusing to abandon reconciliation entirely. Soon, she “feels the ice melting” and a thawing winter gives way to springtime.

During “Somebody’s in Love,” the singers, like nesting birds, chirp in the outro.

As the album fades, Yo La Tengo reaches a resolution: love is here to stay, bruised and unrequited. And that’s okay. It’s where the album began, and it’s as good a place to end as any.

“Stuff Like That There” rep-

resents this long-awaited return to the beginning, both in its own musical narrative and in the thematic trajectory of Yo La Tengo’s catalogue. The album doesn’t so much recast the sounds and ideas first broadcast in their 1990 album debut “Fakebook” as recreate wholesale the ambient yearning the musical act first expressed in the year Prince and Madonna were topping the Billboard 200. The band still grasps for that easygoing aesthetic, which is weighed down by an understated worry, by a nighttime heaviness that evaporates by morning.

Contact GRAHAM AMBROSE at graham.ambrose@yale.edu .

One Hit Wonder No More // BY WAYNE ZHANG Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”— the most digitally downloaded song in history—has long graduated from being 2013’s “Song of the Summer” to becoming a pop culture artifact. Carly Rae Jepsen, however, is far from a household name. The public’s perception of her still has less to do with any artistic talent that she might have and more to do with her friendship with Justin Bieber, her brief stint on “Canadian Idol,” and the countless lip-syncs and covers set to her music done by sports teams, schools and even the Cookie Monster.

EVERY SONG ON E*MO*TION IS ABOUT LOVE .

Legitimizing Jepsen as a real pop star is the raison d’être of her third studio album, E*MO*TION. Jepsen accomplishes this difficult task with class, rising to the occasion sonically, aesthetically and lyrically. This time around, there are no gimmicky cameos from Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber, or Owl City (although Academy Award winner Tom Hanks stars in the “I Really Like You” music video). The cutesy but often overbearing and cloying eccentricities that permeated Jepsen’s previous album, Kiss, have crystallized into a concrete style that Jepsen owns.

Every song on E*MO*TION is about love.

Katy Perry’s magnum opus Teenage Dream is undoubtedly an influence here. Unlike Perry, who explored rawness and bliss in the context of teenage love, Jepsen throws the essence of Perry’s sugary daydream into a real world where love isn’t so simple as California sun and cotton candy. Emotion is a fluid construct. Every song has a different metaphor for what emotion is — it’s a color or it’s a destination or it’s XYZ. On the gorgeous opener “Run Away With Me,” emotion is a destination Jepsen runs to, pleading, “Take me to the feeling!” On the last track “Favorite Color,” emotions are a “kaleidoscope” of colors—à la Taylor Swift’s “Red”—that inspires Jepsen to chant “Paint me up!”

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The sonic glue that holds E*MO*TION’s 15 disparate tracks together is an 80s-saturated sound crafted by a roster of seasoned producers. Changes in sound mirror shifts in emotion: siren saxophones sound like lust come to life in “Run Away With Me” (produced by Shellback; Taylor Swift’s “1989”); punchy percussion reinforces Jepsen’s desperate oversharing in “I Really Like You” (produced by Peter Svensson; the Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face”); glossy textures underscore the ultimatum of “Gimme Love” (produced by Mattman & Robin; Tove Lo’s “Queen of the Clouds”). Of course, an ‘80s sound lends itself well to danceable tracks such as “Warm Blood,” “Making the Most of the Night” and the aptly titled “I Didn’t Just Come to Here to Dance.” The atmosphere is stylish, but skews nostalgic—something like what you’d hear in a modern day John Hughes film.

In a recent interview with NPR, Jepsen told a reporter that she “didn’t want to make another ‘Call Me Maybe,’” and that the success of the song left her “feeling a little frightened.” Her apprehensions about fame show on the album. While Jepsen’s songwriting is crisp, in contrast to stars like Kanye West, Lady GaGa or Rihanna, whose songs are extensions of their highly publicized lives, you can listen to all of E*MO*TION and fail to learn anything concrete about Jepsen as a person.

Oddly enough, it’s Jepsen’s anonymity and the album’s general vagueness that allows E*MO*TION to succeed as one-sizefits-all pop music. On the titular track Jepsen croons: “In your fantasy, dream about me, and all that we could do with this emotion.” There is no effort to qualify what kind of emotion she’s experiencing, how it is experienced, and to what end—and there doesn’t need to be. Emotions are complicated, contradictory, and discursive, and Jepsen’s understanding of this fact elevates E*MO*TION from a simple pop album to an ethnography of humanity’s most visceral and important experiences.

Contact WAYNE ZHANG at wayne.zhang@yale.edu .

BLOCK PARTY KBT // 12 p.m.

Block off some time for this funky fresh community-building(block) event!

// ZISHI LI

WKND RECOMMENDS: IT CAN BE HELPFUL TO KEEP GOING NO MATTER WHAT

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

// MIKE FRANZMAN

// MIKE FRANZMAN

E LM S HAKE S PEAR E “TWELFTH NIGHT” ACHIEVES GREATNESS // BY CONNOR SZOSTAK

As the sun set on Sunday night, orange and blue lights bathed a stage set up like a marble coastal villa.

Children ducked around my seat during a game of tag and a family behind me loudly discussed the challenges of buying furniture at Ikea.

There was neither a suit nor a tie to be found in the audience, and those who did not have lawn chairs sat on blankets in the grass. Having only seen London-, Stratford- and Yaleproduced Shakespeare plays, the relaxed atmosphere unsettled me at first. Was I about to sit through three hours of garbled Shakespeare from an unqualified community theater?

Fortunately, the actors and crew of the Elm Shakespeare Company’s production of “Twelfth Night,” directed by James Andreassi, quickly proved my suspicions baseless, forcing me to reevaluate my biased views of community Shakespeare productions.

After an introduction by Barbara Schaffer, the company’s development director, the play opened with an overacted and overwrought monologue by Aaron Moss as Duke Orsino, who took many a needless pause and used his arms to accent words that weren’t particularly important to the monologue.

This was followed by the introduction of Viola, played by Lydia Barnett-Mulligan, who had a voice so bright I thought it might pierce my eardrums if the sound tech did not adjust her microphone. It seemed like the actors had no sooner stepped

out of their cars than into their costumes and onstage, and the lack of warming up made for a noticeably slow opening.

However, the team of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Maria, played by James Andreassi, Jeremy Funke and Paula Plum, respectively, saved the energy of the show from the moment they stepped on stage. With a natural comedic energy, Andreassi and Plum bounced surprisingly tasteful phallic jokes and well-controlled slapstick back and forth, which brought many audience members into the action in a way the quieter opening exchanges of the show hadn’t. They exited to the sound of laughter and staggered applause, and the momentum carried through to Barnett-Mulligan’s return: She brought a rejuvenated energy to her performance and paid greater attention to dialect.

For the next two hours, I was uncharacteristically on the edge of my seat, my notebook lacking comments, my mind engaged with the play as it never was in my study of it. Raphael Massie’s Malvolio and Jacob Heimer’s Feste were the most notable performances of the night. Massie danced and gyrated in bright yellow cross-gartered stockings, generating belly laughs and the loudest applause of the night, and resultantly, an uncomfortable silence during his final appearance.

As he runs off vowing revenge, the audience found their sympathies hard to place. The moral ambiguity of Malvolio’s character present

in the text of the play was obviously discerned by Andreassi, who offered a clear-eyed view on bullying that the children present in the audience could easily understand. (Some of the children sitting near me fidgeted while watching his mistreatment.)

The complication Heimer brought to Feste was a welcome addition as well; handsome and gifted with a beautiful voice, his role in the demise of Malvolio was an uncomfortable fact that was all too easily forgotten as he played and sang the play’s final song. In the text the song focuses on the problems of the play, but when performed by Heimer, it seemed a triumphant sendoff to the audience given Feste’s intriguing combination of likability and moral infirmity, the production’s strong emphasis on his role as an entertainer overshadowed this conflict, potentially neutralizing one of the most interesting discussions that can arise from “Twelfth Night.”

For the Shakespeare buffs in the audience, these two performers offered nuanced takes on controversial characters, and left audience members with something to debate on the ride home.

Still, though the performances were unexpectedly well done, the presentation of Shakespeare in a small park can put off those of us more comfortable in indoor theaters.

Though it was an unfamiliar setting, I do not believe I’ve ever engaged so actively with a Shakespeare production before. After all, isn’t this how

Shakespeare was meant to be experienced? Not in ornate theatres, but in a warm, slightly crowded pit? Is Shakespeare best understood being analyzed in a wood-paneled classroom, or are the Bard’s crude jokes and silly, almost unbelievable plotlines meant to be taken in live, our appreciation rooted not in some pretentious understanding of Elizabethan meter, but in hearty laughs and the enjoyment of a fun, classically comedic plot?

The Elm Shakespeare Company understands that Shakespeare shouldn’t be a divisive figure, and while their use of uncomplicated comedic devices could seem juvenile to some, they are truer to the spirit of Shakespeare’s time than any frilly interpretation might be.

By choosing plays that can appeal to a wide audience and directing them in an unpretentious manner, the Elm Shakespeare Company narrows the gap between the Netflix addict and the Shakespeare geek, offering big laughs for children and those new to Shakespeare. It explores interpretations of situations and characters that are thought-provoking, and offers those more committed to engaging with the plays outside of the theater ample material to discuss. They don’t want to make Shakespeare scholars out of us, they just want to keep one of theater’s greatest traditions alive.

Contact CONNOR SZOSTAK at connor.szostak@yale.edu .

Summer TV Was Awesome This Year // BY MADELINE KAPLAN The old adage goes: Summer television is the Nick Lachey of programming — it doesn’t usually have a whole lot going on, and what it does offer is more entertainment than art. You could be forgiven for tuning out the thin veneer of diversion that covers the small screen three months a year — every year before 2015, that is. Because unlike most summer hiatuses, this summer offered plenty of inventive and addictive television. Here are some of the best shows from summer 2015 to binge-watch before midterm season: “UnREAL” The following sentence is not a lie: Lifetime produced one of the most modern, sharply focused shows of 2015. “UnREAL” is ostensibly a behind-the-scenes look at life on the set of a “The Bachelor”-type competition series. Called “Everlasting,” the show-within-a-show is just as schmaltzy and sinister as its inspiration. But “UnREAL” isn’t just a soap opera with a spine.

Rachel and Quinn, two producers responsible for keeping ratings high and necklines low, are faced with issues of morality, mental illness and femi-

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nism. Plus, this being Lifetime, there’s plenty of sex, drugs and dramatic music cues.

“BoJack Horseman” The second season of Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman” is darker, funnier and cleverer than the first one, if that’s possible. Washed-up ’80s sitcom star BoJack, having gotten what he really wanted in the first season finale (a starring role in a Secretariat biopic), finds himself increasingly unable to cope with the anxieties of life.

The resulting 12 episodes make for one of the most nuanced accounts of depression to air on television in recent memory.

That sounds like a bummer — and it often is — but “BoJack” is still chock full of zany pop culture references and plenty of animal puns.

“Show Me a Hero” “Show Me a Hero” is a sleek, sure HBO miniseries about one of the knottiest political issues of the modern era. Oscar Isaac stars as Nick Wasicsko, the young mayor of Yonkers, New York, faced with implementing a public housing project in the late 1980s. Municipal government is not a glamorous busi-

ness, but the David Simondirected miniseries manages to draw quite a bit of intrigue and intensity from the lives of its ordinary subjects. The six-part series focuses not only on Wacsisko’s bureaucratic nightmare but also on a sizable cast of Yonkers residents — those who live in public housing, those who oppose it and those who are paid by the city to find a compromise.

“Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp” Everything old is new again, at least according to the tidal wave of reboots currently threatening to drown us all. But every so often old titles prove themselves worthy of a second look. Fourteen years after the release of “Wet Hot American Summer,” David Wain and Michael Showalter reimagined their little summer-camp comedy as a Netflix miniseries. Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper direct a musical about the death penalty. Paul Rudd smolders his way through every episode. H. Jon Benjamin reprises his role as a talking can of vegetables. It’s summer perfection. // ZISHI LI

Contact MADELINE KAPLAN at madeline.kaplan@yale.edu .

GROVE STREET CEMETERY TOURS

Grove Street Cemetery // 12 p.m.

Unearth New Haven’s morbid past.

IT’S NOT GOOD TO HOLD TOO MANY ABSOLUTES

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

CINCO PAUL: FAMILY-FRIENDLY FUN // BY MICHELLE LIU

W

KND first reached out to screenwriter Cinco Paul ’86, best known for his work on the “Despicable Me” series, upon discovering that he wanted to stage his 2013 musical “Bubble Boy” here on campus.

When we found out that Paul was also the wordsmith behind “The Lorax” and “Horton Hears a Who!”, we thought: Why not a Backstage? Paul chatted with WKND about his love for Bill Murray, his writing process, and his time at Yale.

Q: So what did you do while you were on campus?

A: I actually wrote for the Yale Daily News — I had a record review column, a regular weekly column where I reviewed music — and I was in the Yale Precision Marching Band — I played trombone, and I also wrote the halftime scripts. I was involved in the Yale Dramat Children’s Theater for several productions, and then I played piano for a lot of musicals.

Q: Did your musical background help you write “Bubble Boy” the musical?

A: Yeah, I actually started off as a music major at Yale and then — it’s a very demanding major and I felt like I was a little out of my league, so I ended up switching to English but I still took composition courses while I was there, and some other music classes. I had always intended to be a pop musician — that was my career choice. “Bubble Boy” the Musical was nice because it merged two of the things that I love: writing and composing.

Q: What made you think of wanting to stage “Bubble Boy” at Yale?

A: Well, because I’m a Yalie! I would love for it to happen there, because I learned a lot about musical theater here at Yale when I was playing piano for these different productions, like “Pippin” and “Godspell” and … and

Q: I pulled this off your Wikipedia page — it says you used to sing story pitches to film producers. True?

A: Just to clarify, we wouldn’t sing the entire pitch. We wouldn’t go: [singing] and this is the story about a guy who … We wouldn’t do that, but we would often, because we loved music so much, put a musical scene in our pitch where one of the characters was crooning to the other, or they were singing some sort of duet. So, singing was almost always a part of our pitch but not the whole pitch because that would have been a nightmare.

Q: You had experience writing jingles, right? Did this help with your pitches?

A: I think so. I think all my musical experience — my desire to be a pop musician and writing jingles and all of that — made those pitches more fun. That was the goal because people in Hollywood have heard a billion pitches and so you want to go in and entertain them in some way.

Q: What is screenwriting with a partner like? Do you guys have a tag-team process, do you sit down side by side and go through each line together? How does that work?

A: We’ll get together and we’ll discuss a chunk of pages: for instance, the next 30 pages, we’ll talk it all through and get it outlined, and then we’ll assign the scenes. We separate to write. We’re able to write a lot more quickly that way rather than side by side, just like hovering over one keyboard. Ken will do half and I’ll do the other half. We go off on our own and write and then once we’re done, we’ll get back together and read them aloud. The goal is to prove that your pages were better — it’s very competitive. But that actually drives us in a positive way to get to where we need to go.

Q: You have credits for “Horton Hears a Who,” “The Lorax,” the “Despicable Me” series — how do you maintain that line between these positive, upbeat movies without becoming too saccharine?

A: We end up having to be told what is not going to fly in the movie. You want to push it. The idea is that you never write a movie for kids. Ever. You just write it for yourselves. I’m writing it to make Ken laugh and he’s writing to make me laugh — you sort of do whatever it takes, and then, if you need to pull things back, you do. But also, we’re both dads and so generally we don’t lean towards the dark side. That’s just not how we’re made.

Q: Why animated movies — how did that become what you’ve been writing all these years?

The idea is that you never write a movie for

“

“

I don’t know if this is still the case but when I was there, there were theatrical productions all over the place. And I thought, it would be really fun if Yale did [“Bubble Boy”]. We started to get some productions here and there in high schools, but we haven’t really had a full college production — I thought it would be great to have one at Yale.

kids. Ever. You just write it for yourselves.

A: It was actually kind of an accident — we had no intention to write animated movies. We were really writing straight comedy, and then we got pulled into “Horton Hears a Who” because Chris Meledandri, who runs Illumination now but was at Fox at the time, read one of our scripts and really loved it. When he formed his own company, Illumination, he brought us in and the first idea he had was “Despicable Me.” We found it a comfortable and fun place. I think it’s actually been very fortunate for us because comedy is pretty much disappearing from motion pictures. These animated movies for the entire family are one of the last bastions of comedy — that way we’re able to still make com-

edy movies. The Pixar movies and the Dreamworks movies are pretty much the only non-R rated comedies out there.

Q: How is this different from writing liveaction scripts?

A: It takes about three or four years to make these animated movies. It’s really a marathon because you have all this time, so you just continually rewrite all of the scenes. And that can be exhausting but also it gives you opportunities that you wouldn’t have with live action shoots, which only last 8–10 weeks.

After that, there’s not much more you can do.

Q: What are your thoughts on the Minions taking a life of their own, especially this summer? I know you didn’t write the most recent Minions movie.

A: Yeah, we didn’t write that movie but it is amazing how these Minions have taken off. Never in a million years would we have imagined them becoming so omnipresent. Every store you go into, everywhere you look, there are Minions — there may be too many Minions now, actually maximum Minion-osity, but it is pretty fun to realize that this movie has impact all over the world now. It’s crazy. “Minions” was the biggest movie Mexico’s ever had, and no one expected “Despicable Me” to be even a modest hit.

Q: Have you had any starstruck moments?

A: I will tell you that Julie Andrews plays Gru’s mom in the “Despicable Me” movies. I grew up with just a massive crush on Julie Andrews. I loved her so much, and so when I got to be in the studio with her, I was totally starstruck.

There is Julie Andrews, right there in front of me. That was pretty amazing.

Q: Speaking of celebrities, I also found this gem on your twitter: “Last night I dreamed I was hanging out with Bill Murray. We played Madden.” So, favorite Bill Murray movie?

A: “Groundhog Day” is one of my alltime favorite movies. My master’s thesis script at [the University of Southern California] was this genius idea I had called “Stuck in Monday.” It was a guy who ended up stuck in the same day over and over. I turned in the script and that night, I went to the movies and

saw the trailer for “Groundhog Day.” It killed me. It was the most devastating thing that’s ever happened to me because I was so sure that this genius idea was going to be my ticket to success in Hollywood. I realized that there was no way I could do anything with that script, so I had to toss it out and I started from scratch and wrote a new script for my thesis. That one ended up being optioned, which got me an agent, and everything worked out okay, but it was a horribly low moment. When I finally saw “Groundhog Day,” I loved the movie. It’s one of my top 10 movies of all time — I just think it’s brilliant.

Q: What role would you write Bill Murray into?

A: In every movie Ken and I write, there’s always a part that we would love for Bill Murray to play. I would love him to be a villain in the next “Despicable Me.” He would be great. But the problem is that it’s impossible to get ahold of this guy.

It’s like, he doesn’t have an agent, he just has an answering machine, and you leave a message. Maybe he’ll respond.

You kind of have to know somebody who knows him or something like that. He’s working on the new “Ghostbusters” with Kristen Wiig so maybe we have an in that way. We’ll see.

Q: What do you think Yale students should take advantage of while we’re here, in terms of the theater or the film communities in particular?

A: When I was at Yale, there was barely any sort of film program at all. And there certainly wasn’t any program for making movies, or screenwriting classes, nothing like that at all. But there was a little bit of a movement to start that.

George Hickenlooper ’86 was a big part of that — I knew him and some other people who were trying to get things going back then. But I think you just have to get involved in as many things as you possibly can. You’re only [here] for four years, and it goes by so crazy fast.

If you don’t take advantage of it, it’ll be too late. I don’t know, that sounds grand, doesn’t it? I had the greatest time when I was at Yale. It was one of the best things that happened to me. Dive in; lap it up.

Contact MICHELLE LIU at michelle.liu@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FEATURE

FOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY AND...

WHAT WAS THAT OTHER THING? // BY VIVIAN WANG On most 36-degree days, Yalies retreat to their dorm rooms and libraries, turning up the heat and hiding out in preparation for the impending New Haven winter. November 18, 2014 was different. On that day, hundreds of Yale students abandoned the warmth of their classrooms and bedrooms — not to mention their lectures and problem sets — to wait outside Payne Whitney Gymnasium for several hours in the frigid cold, all in the hope of securing a coveted ticket to the annual Harvard-Yale football game.

Tickets sold out by 3:30 p.m. Hundreds of students were turned away. Secondhand tickets sold online for as much as five times the original price.

Four months later, nearly 200 students gathered in the cold again, this time on Cross Campus, to criticize Yale for a whole host of problems, from neglected cultural centers, to continued investment in fossil fuels, to the maintenance of a student income contribution in financial aid packages. Sebastian Medina-Tayac ’16, one of the rally’s organizers, said at the time that the event represented the voices of students who had been “historically disenfranchised by … certain elements of the institution as a whole.”

“It showed that there is unity among students and that students deserve to be heard,” he said.

For many, tradition is at the heart of the Yale College experience, whether in the form of annual events like the Harvard-Yale football game or storied customs like singing “Bright College Years.” But at a time when 28 percent of the student body is a racial minority, many of these traditions have drawn scrutiny for their roots in a society and a university once dominated by white men. Students who identify as anything other than that say that the University does not make a place for them among its Gothic spires and vinedraped walls. They say they must forcibly carve out a space for themselves during their four years here.

And as students protest, it seems that Yale’s traditions might not hold the same status they once did.

Just last weekend, hundreds of freshmen crowded into Woolsey Hall — this time in the sweltering humidity of a late summer afternoon —

for Yale Up!, a grammatically excited program that trots Yale football players and cheerleaders onstage to the tune of traditional Yale and residential college chants and fight songs.

The necessity of an event like Yale Up!, inaugurated last year as a part of freshman orientation, suggests that Yale’s traditional markers of school spirit may not be the campus mainstays they once were.

But at the same time, tickets for The Game continue to sell, and a walk around campus reveals no shortage of navy blue gear.

In short, students’ attitudes are complicated.

“There are moments when I have felt angry with certain portions of the University,” Javier Cienfuegos ’15 said.

Cienfuegos frequently takes to social media with critiques of Ya l e , a n d he says that many peop l e a cc u se him of hating the University — an accusation he denies. “I’ve felt angry with the administration, or I’ve felt angry with other student groups on campus,” he acknowledges. “But I don’t think I’ve ever felt ashamed of Yale as a whole.”

Cienfuegos’s words exemplify a common sentiment among Yale students, who are quick to find fault with the University’s day-to-day workings but still profess allegiance to Yale itself— whatever that might mean. I myself am often asked how I can reconcile the myriad problems on campus with the peppy speeches I give to starry-eyed prospective students in my capacity as a campus tour guide.

For God, for Country, and for Yale, the saying goes. But what does it mean to be “for Yale”?

paint at raucous tailgates, fight songs sung by heart — does not exist at Yale.

Eli Baum ’19 said many high school seniors likely apply to Yale for its brand — the “HYP mentality,” he called it — rather than any kind of fervent attachment to its history or customs.

“When I originally was looking at colleges, I wanted somewhere with a lot of school spirit,” Lily Marmolejo ’19 said. She laughed. “Yale traditionally does not have a reputation for school spirit.”

If there

port for Yale sports teams. But even Lowet acknowledged that the various niches into which Yalies divide themselves can detract from a wider University spirit.

“I do think that a lack of school spirit vis-à-vis athletics translates to a lack of identification with Yale as a whole,” he said. “Yale does a great job sorting students into communities in which they can feel comfortable. Where it doesn’t do quite as well is translating that sense of belonging into Yale-wide community and spirit.”

But even these micro-categories of identification have become the subject of controversy recently, with renewed debate about the namesake of Calhoun College and a separate but related conversation about the title of “master.”

Sara Tabin ’19 said she actually identifies more with Yale as a whole than with her college, Calhoun, because of the controversy over its name.

Both of these debates center around painful legacies of racism that are inextricable from the University’s history. But some students and alumni argue that changes will undermine tradition and history. And, they say, if we rename Calhoun because of its unsavory namesake, what do we do with Elihu Yale, who was also a slave owner? Do we rename Yale, too?

I HAVE SOME SORT OF ROMANTICIZED, ABSTRACTED IDEA OF YALE THAT I TEND TO SEPARATE FROM EVEN THE ADMINISTRATION.

*** For many of the freshmen who attended Yale Up! last weekend, “school spirit” as it appears in the movies — packed stands at football games, face

JAVIER CIENFUEGOS ‘15 is a sense of passionate attachment to anything at Yale, many would argue it is to the residential colleges.

In fact, Marmolejo said she was struck by how much of Yale Up! — which was conceived of by the athletic Captain’s Council, likely to promote University-wide support for school athletics — revolved around the individual residential colleges.

“Everyone had their [college flags]. No one was wearing anything Yale, they were all wearing their college colors,” she said.

If anyone would know how school spirit does or doesn’t manifest itself; at Yale, it might be Adam Lowet ’18, communications director for the Whaling Crew, a group dedicated to generating sup-

*** Yet, he seemed to have a stronger sense of “school spirit” — a sense of what Yale means and why he loves it — than anyone else I interviewed.

“None of the traditions in question contribute at all to make Yale the place that it is,” he said. “Master is just a title.

Calhoun is just the name of one college. Even the name of Yale has nothing to do with what makes the University special.

I think that first and foremost, it’s a community that people manage to foster in a variety of different

environments.”

But Cienfuegos admits that, ultimately, it is not even the friendships and communities formed inside Yale’s gates that propel him to declare his love for the University. It’s that, for all his criticisms, Yale as an idea seems to stand apart from the day-to-day controversies that spark rallies and op-eds and petitions.

It’s a sentiment expressed by everyone I interviewed: Yes, school spirit in its stereotypical sense is lacking; no, I don’t go to all the football games; but there’s something else I can’t quite pinpoint that makes me love this place.

“I think school spirit at Yale is less about physical acts and more about a sense of community, of loving your school and being there for your classmates,” Tabin said.

And according to Cienfuegos, “I do think that I have some sort of romanticized, abstracted idea of Yale that I tend to separate from even the administration. Controversies are a part of Yale, but I also feel like my love of Yale has nothing to do with these events.”

“Yale makes it easy to feel like you belong here,” Lowet said. “Like Yale is home.”

I agree: Yale is home to me.

But that’s part of the reason that I don’t agree with Cienfuegos. I don’t know if I would support changing the name “Yale,” because for me, that name is part of the way I identify my home. I am romantically, perhaps stupidly, attached to it. Yale is the name on my t-shirts and sweatshirts and scarf and pennant; it is the name I dreamed of when I was a little girl; it is the name on my admissions letter. To quote “Bright College Years,” the word Yale is part of the memories I will look back on when I remember my “happy, golden, bygone days.”

I had to Google the lyrics of “Bright College Years” to find what they say about the undergraduate experience. So would most of the students who attended Yale Up!, I’m sure, even after that session of manufactured college cheer. But I don’t think that means we love Yale any less.

“I’m sure Yale Up! was overthe-top positive,” Tabin said.

“But I thought it was fun, so I didn’t mind.”

Contact VIVIAN WANG at vivian.y.wang@yale.edu .

// TERI BARBUTO

FRI D AY SEPTEMBER

11

TEETH PERFORMANCE

Trumbull Theater // 7 p.m.

For all the freshman slam poets cutting their teeth: Go see how it’s done.

WKND RECOMMENDS: ROMANTIC LOVE WAS INVENTED TO MANIPULATE WOMEN