WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015

When it comes to minority groups, does the University put its money where its mouth is?

Emma Platoff and Vivian Wang report. //Page 3

ANGELS

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ALT

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ART

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GUARDIANS AND GODDESSES

HOMEOPATHY IN THE IVORY TOWER

WHAT IS IT?

Emily Xiao meditates on dreams of angelic perfection; Jacob Potash reviews a play called “Angels.” Did we mention angels?

The interface between alternative medicine and modern science at Yale.

After all, when you think about it, what really is art? Rachel Paul has some thoughtz.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

XIAO

WEEKEND VIEWS

THE ROAD TO HEAVEN IS A TWO-WAY STREET // BY EMILY XIAO

//ASHLYN OAKES

KIM

I used to know a girl named Kaitlin, or Kaitlyn, or Katelyn — I can’t remember which. She went by Katie, anyway. She moved away on the last day of fifth grade, when the fruit flies and hurricane season were due anytime now in our wooded Houston suburb. But before running off to San Antonio, home of the Alamo and Texan freedom fighting, she wanted me to understand a few things.

She’d been planning a little revolution of her own. She was going to bleach her acorn-brown hair platinum (but not her eyebrows, because she knew better than that); to eat Yoplait every day in order to lose her baby fat; and to become a bona fide Victoria’s Secret Angel. There was even a contract in the works, she insisted, and I promised I’d look out for her name in the fashion magazines.

I can’t find her now on Google or Facebook, but I do remember that she once gargled her strawberry Yoplait in the back of her throat to make me

snort with laughter. She lived with her mother and “fucking” hated her father (the other girls at our lunch table gasped when she said that), and she spent the night at my house whenever her mom had a guy over. Both of us were short and slightly pudgy, awkward-looking even during our preawkward years. We’d talk schoolgirl stuff, zooming from minor humiliations usque ad solar systems. Always, the conversation would wind its way back home to angels and fame and lingerie and halos.

We were only fifth graders, but Katie told me she was heading straight to heaven. She didn’t know what sin was, but she had a lot of hope for the future, and I wanted to believe her. So I did believe her.

I’ve known for a long time that I’m gullible. Katie wasn’t the first friend I’d had who knew how to take me in with glimpses of other ways to live life. In second grade my best friend (or BFFL, as we liked to call ourselves) was

a girl named Julia, who decided one day during recess that she could confide in me. “I can’t tell anyone else this because they’d laugh,” she murmured solemnly, with deep blue saucer eyes the same vivid hue as the Texas sky.

“But I have royal blood in me. My aunt’s a princess-in-exile.”

I didn’t laugh. I said I was convinced — how couldn’t I be, looking at her lovely, lonely eyes and golden hair? We shook on the secret. It bound us now, I thought. In the back of my mind, I wondered whether I too might be distantly related to any empresses of the old Chinese dynasties.

So three years later, when I met Katie, I’d already had plenty of practice giving my friends the benefit of the doubt. Whether that meant believing something about the past, the way I did with Julia, or hoping for a glamorous future, as with Katie, I trusted in possibilities for them that I would have liked for myself.

This sort of whimsical over-imag-

ination wasn’t just an elementary school phase either. In high school, I hung out with a half-Scandinavian girl who giggled loudly and kissed a lot of people and cheated on her soul mates, who took Linear Algebra for fun and knew how to strain baby-smooth almond milk through a cheesecloth, but who couldn’t understand why she sat alone at lunch.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she whispered, more a question than a statement.

“No, there isn’t,” I insisted in response. To me, that was the truth.

She had spun around in her seat on my first day as the new kid, waved and asked, “What’s your name?” I told her. Emily! — the way she repeated my name made me believe I was charming and hip and with it and worth it.

Emily — that was me! I liked embellishment, I liked metamorphosis.

Throughout the years, my gullibility — whether it meant sharing the excitement of beauty, or being in on a

secret of imaginary bloodlines — was less an act of generosity toward my friends than toward myself. I wanted to think that if Katie could get angels and heaven, then so could I. It was the same with Julia, and with my high school friend, who saw me not as I was but as I wanted to be seen.

Katie’s cocoon got lost out there in the wind, and I don’t know what color or how thin her Victoria’s Secret Angel wings are now. I have this hazy gold-tinted version of her stored in my head, which I’ve projected eight years into the future, like those apps that guess how you’ll look when you’re older. And our remembrance of the Alamo is more myth-making than genuine history. I still think of regal Julia sometimes, and I’m still hoping to find Katie’s name on the pearly gates. Because I, too, want the crown.

And I want the halo.

made up. The show forged a powerful connection with me.

For once, I finally knew what it felt like to see my minority narrative broadcasted to the very culture into which I was taught to assimilate. I wanted to go back to all of those times I tried to explain my childhood experiences to non-Asian friends in frustration and show them these episodes. It made me wonder if this was what white people feel when they watch “Friends” or what black people feel when they watch “Scandal.” I wondered if I would have felt more confident in my heritage had I, as a child, seen relatable AsianAmericans or Asian-American stories on screen.

“Fresh Off The Boat” marks an

unprecedented moment for AsianAmerican representation in the media.

A powerful solidarity emerged that day in the theater because, as Asian-Americans, we are all affected by one truth: When America makes assumptions about who we are, it is based on our Asian faces.

For a long time, I have passively accepted the fact that I would have to prove to others that I was more than my media representation, but with “Fresh Off The Boat,” I may no longer have to.

Next time, when my non-Asian friends ask what it’s like to be me, I just might tell them to watch the show instead.

Contact EMILY XIAO at emily.xiao@yale.edu .

Why Asian Americans Need to Watch “Fresh Off The Boat” // BY DIANE KIM The theater in Silliman is bustling with activity. I grab a seat quickly to avoid sitting on the floor. As I look around, I see several familiar faces dispersed in the audience. It’s striking to see all of my Asian-American friends at once, each with their own friends.

Cultural events like this one always make me realize how large we can be as a group, especially at Yale. As I wait for the hosts to finish their announcements, I’m both excited for and hesitant about the screening.

I’ve been looking forward to the premiere of “Fresh Off The Boat” ever since ABC announced its production early last year. Network television rarely depicts Asians who aren’t typecast as competitive nerds, antisocial geeks,

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Tiger moms or Kung Fu masters. Growing up, I didn’t even feel uncomfortable about these stereotypes because I felt so removed from these characters. I never expected to identify with or even remotely relate to the Asians on screen, much less be exposed to a story about my own upbringing in America.

But as the show began, I immediately connected with the main character, Eddie Huang. Like Eddie, a TaiwaneseAmerican middle school boy, I also had to uproot because of my father’s entrepreneurial pursuits. Eddie finishing his after-school homework in the restaurant almost exactly reflected my own childhood days, studying in the back of a one-hour photo shop and a teriyaki bowl restaurant. I too remember beg-

A NIGHT AT THE PLANETARIUM Leitner Planetarium // 7:30 p.m.

Cocktails. Semi-Formal Attire. Telescopes. Come act like old British gentry for an evening brought to you by the YCC.

ging my mother to buy me Lunchables, feeling isolated in my white community and turning to hip hop music for inspiration.

As I saw a narrative that transcended the typical immigrant struggles I was used to seeing, I felt a kind of high that you get from being part of the same inside joke. I got the Huang family.

But I can also see why the show has received so much criticism. Eddie Huang, the producer and author of the original book, recently criticized the network’s distortion of his memoir in an article on Vulture. The show gives off the impression of a typical mainstream production: The scenes feel contrived, the storyline clichéd, the characters flat. Despite these flaws, my mind was

Contact DIANE KIM at diane.kim@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Gin and tonics.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

A CENTRAL CONCERN? // BY EMMA PLATOFF AND VIVIAN WANG

// KEN YANAGISAWA

he first time Giahoa Nguyen ’17 and her mother visited campus, they were struck by its beauty: the dignified stone buildings, the enclosed college quadrangles, the architectural surprises hiding around every corner.

After touring Cross Campus and Old Campus, they made their way south to Crown Street, where they had heard the Asian American Cultural Center (AACC) was located. Having walked a few blocks, they were surprised to find themselves surrounded not by ivy-covered stone but looming apartment buildings. The shabby facade of 295 Crown Street, the home of the AACC, did not match the vibrant image painted in admission brochures targeted at minority students — a jarring experience that many students of color face when they arrive on campus.

“Is this even Yale?” Nguyen’s mother asked her.“You shouldn’t come here. It’s not safe.”

Two years later, Nguyen was one of dozens of students who crowded into LC 102 to share their experiences with Yale’s cultural centers at two town halls on Feb. 15 and 17. The town halls — led by Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway and University Secretary and Vice President for Student Life Kimberly Goff-Crews, with Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley attending the first one — were forums for students to share their thoughts on a November 2014 external review of the cultural centers. But they quickly turned into a space for students to voice their concerns about the University’s approach to diversity in general.

Yale has made major strides in its racial attitudes, not only from its earliest days — its namesake, Elihu Yale, was a slaveowner, as were many of its earliest faculty — but also in recent years. The oldest of the four cultural houses, the Afro-American Cultural Center, was founded in 1969 and was followed by the Asian American Cultural Center, La Casa Cultural and the Native American Cultural Center in the subsequent decades. Yale University, once the bastion of privileged white males, is now 20 percent Asian-American, nine percent African-American, nine percent Hispanic, and two percent Native American.

These statistics do not account for international students, who make up 19 percent of the Univer-

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sity population.

“I think there’s a greater understanding now, more than ever before, that diversity in all of its forms equals excellence,” University President Peter Salovey said in an interview with the News. “You cannot have an excellent faculty or an excellent student [body] that is not diverse.”

But Yale has been slow in realizing Salovey’s enthusiasm for diversity. The report that came out of the external review — the first of its kind for Yale’s cultural centers — detailed nearly 12 pages of criticisms. Of great concern were the myriad physical problems with the houses – ranging from unsafe locations to lack of handicap accessibility to the neglected presence of carcinogens. The report also called for greater administrative advocacy for the centers, equalized and stabilized funding for all four houses and enhanced community outreach efforts.

The report also described the confused leadership structure in the houses as “problematic at best.” Students themselves have echoed these complaints: Earlier this week, 147 students presented a 60-page petition calling for the removal of Assistant Dean of Yale College and Af-Am House Director Rodney Cohen, citing complaints of neglect, poor character and questionable financial management.

But of particular concern were the report’s descriptions of “disjointed and episodic” diversity initiatives, which it said diminish the power of Yale’s stated goals.

“Because diversity is expressed as a major theme in the University’s current leadership agenda, it is essential that cultural centers develop […] a clearer sense of direction that articulates and grounds their work as being mission critical,” the report reads.

These are not new complaints.

Last February, the Yale Diversity Summit — another group of external educators and administrators — released its Report of Discussions and Recommendations, expressing many of the same concerns. The University, it said, is “diversity conscious, diversity sensitive, but not diversity driven.”

Students within the cultural house communities echoed the sentiments put forth by outside experts.

“Yale likes to talk about diversity being a hallmark of the University’s mission and central to its thriving nature,” said Christopher Melendez ’15, a recruitment coor-

dinator for La Casa. “It looks good on paper. It doesn’t always translate to reality.”

A PLACE TO CALL HOME The first of Yale’s cultural centers, the Af-Am House, was founded in 1969 through the efforts of Yale’s small but rapidly growing population of AfricanAmerican students. “[It was] formed out of student protest over lack of representation,” Holloway said. “The mentality was that white students had Yale as their space, and black students wanted something different.”

The next few decades saw a rapid succession of initiatives, driven by administrators and students alike, intended to diversify Yale’s historically monochromatic campus. 1969 saw the creation of the Asian American Students Alliance, which would help found the Asian American Cultural Center in 1981. La Casa was born the same year. Students founded the Association of Native Americans at Yale in 1989, leading to the 1993 establishment of the Native American Cultural Center, although it would not receive its own building for two more decades.

But when the economy stalled in 2008, so did this steady progress.

The University’s endowment fell by 24.6 percent in the fiscal year ending June 2009. Budget cuts were implemented across the board, resulting in everything from layoffs to the postponement of major construction projects. The cultural houses were no exception.

According to Jessica Liang ’17, co-head coordinator for the AACC, the annual budget that the AACC receives from the Yale College Dean’s Office has fallen by $60,000 over the past six years.

In the past year alone, the AACC’s funding has been cut by 40 percent, said former AASA co-moderator Candice Hwang ’16. La Casa’s allocation from the University has also fallen every year that she has been here, said La Casa student coordinator Evelyn Nunez ’15.

Such cuts are felt far beyond the walls of the houses themselves — between the four of them, the centers are responsible for funding over 80 constituent undergraduate organizations.

“I don’t think the cultural centers have been singled out for budget cuts — they’re definitely happening all around campus —

YALE CONCERT BAND

Woolsey Hall // 7:30 p.m.

On the program for tonight’s show: selections from “The Threepenny Opera.” Sold. For three pennies.

but at the same time, I would say we feel it pretty hard,” Liang said.

“Especially when the University, while making cuts, is also trying to recruit more students who are from different ethnic backgrounds and who would identify with these cultural centers — the responsibility that comes with that makes us feel these cuts more.”

Goff-Crews told the News that the cultural houses, like any other space in the University, play an important part in forming the Yale community. But students from three of the houses pointed to the physical condition of their spaces as further evidence of administrative neglect — a point repeatedly raised at the first town hall. James Ting ’15 explained that because the AACC’s basement remains unfinished, there is no room large enough to host cultural performances. Roman Castellanos ’15 said that given the growing number of students affiliated with La Casa, there is insufficient space at the house to hold its traditional senior events, such as a dinner for students and their families. This year, the dinner will likely take place at the larger Af-Am House.

“We grew up here for four years, and now we can’t celebrate in this space with our families,” Castellanos said.

Location is also a concern.

Three of the four cultural houses are located several blocks from main campus, on Crown and High Streets. Several students at the town hall complained that the remote location deters students from attending events and makes walking home at night feel unsafe. This problem will only worsen when the center of campus activity shifts northeast with the addition of two new residential colleges on Prospect Street — nearly a mile away from the cultural houses.

Students’ grievances with the physical condition of the cultural houses also extended to health and safety concerns. Wiring in La Casa’s basement poses the risk of electrical shock, Hwang said, and up until the end of spring 2014, one of the AACC’s conference rooms was contaminated with asbestos — a known carcinogen.

But while members of the cultural houses expressed discontent with the disrepair of their facilities, University spokesman Tom Conroy said the overall condition of space within the houses resembles the rest of campus. He noted that a total of $6 million has been spent on the cultural houses over

the past 10 years, funding both the “comprehensive renovation” of the NACC — formerly used as graduate student housing — and various renovations at the other houses.

He added that the University’s next investment, in the AACC and La Casa, should be implemented by the end of this academic year.

Liang said she had not heard of any of the plans Conroy mentioned but is excited if they are indeed in place.

“I hope it means more than just fixing the heating system,” she said.

But the condition of the houses has a symbolic significance as well. The external reviewers emphasized the importance of physical infrastructure to the promotion of diversity on campus.

“The physical presence of the cultural centers will offer visible evidence of the quality of the institution’s commitment,” the report concluded.

OVEREXTENDED AND UNDERSERVED But beyond improved facilities, the cultural houses also need improved leadership, the report said.

“Because of the range of responsibilities, extensive time demands and community expectations of the position, the current director/dean role is unsustainable,” it said. “The simple analysis is that there should either be additional staff assigned to the centers or the position should be redesigned with more streamlined responsibilities focused on the needs of the centers’ respective communities.”

Concerns about the difficulty of reaching Cohen, the current Af-Am House director, featured prominently in the petition calling for his removal. Cohen, who is also an Assistant Dean of Yale College, is responsible for overseeing the Science, Technology and Research Scholars program and also holds a position as a university fundraiser, said Eshe Sherley ’16, who is affiliated with the Af-Am House and was one of 147 students who signed the petition.

Although Assistant Dean of Yale College and former Af-Am House Director Pamela George suggested that conflicting responsibilities should not be a problem if a director has “a clear commitment and respect for the communities in which [they] are

fortunate enough to serve,” students at the other cultural centers — who emphasized their productive and affectionate relationships with their directors — agreed that the leadership is overstretched.

Nunez said that while Amanda Lynn Hernandez MED ’16, La Casa’s interim director, tries her best to meet with students whenever they request meetings, she also must balance her duties as a student here at Yale.

Christopher Cutter, the NACC’s interim director, also holds an appointment at the School of Medicine.

And according to NACC staff member Leanne Motylenski ’16, “the under-resourcing and enormous amount of responsibility given to the directors has been a factor in some previous directors’ recent decisions to leave Yale.”

Of the four current cultural center directors, all except AACC Director Saveena Dhall did not return multiple requests for comment.

The directors are not the only ones who are overextended. The houses themselves simply cannot support the influx of students of color that the Admissions Office is working so hard to attract.

Dhall noted that the University’s current Asian-American population is nearly 4,000 students, a number which will only grow after the two new residential colleges are completed, increasing the undergraduate population by 12 percent. The AACC’s largest room holds only 40 people.

In recruiting incoming students, Yale markets its cultural centers as a major advantage over its peer institutions, said Crystal Kong ’18, co-community development chair for AASA. Kong said she was disillusioned when she first became active in the cultural community she had heard so much about, only to find out that it was struggling to maintain its finances.

Yale makes a lot of promises about diversity, Liang said. But after students decide to matriculate, the University stops trying to make good on those promises.

For Melendez, who has worked as a recruitment coordinator for the Admissions Office since sophomore year, the problem of false advertising is particularly difficult. Working in admissions, he has watched Yale market its cultural center communities to great effect: the Class of 2018 includes the largest Latino population in Yale’s history. But Melendez wor-

WKND RECOMMENDS: Penny drinks at Toad’s.

SEE DIVERSITY PAGE 8

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND HEALS

A TOUGH PILL TO SWALLOW // BY APARNA NATHAN

Lina Pradeep is always on the move — she shovels the driveway and bustles around the house.

She even plays with her toddler.

Less than a year ago, Pradeep was diagnosed with symptoms of multiple sclerosis, an immune disease that severely affects a person’s nervous system and impairs mobility. Pradeep had constant pain in her legs and was unable to walk for more than 10 minutes when her doctor first identified the symptoms in June.

Rather than follow through with additional testing, though, Pradeep decided to come to the Amadeus Center for Health & Healing in New Haven for acupuncture treatments.

The biweekly visits are a family affair — her husband and son accompany her for the two hour round trip from her home in Woodbury, Conn.

Now, eight months into her treatment, the pain is nearly gone.

While the walls of herbal supplements inside the Amadeus Center hint at its healing philosophy, similar treatments are also in progress in the Yale Stress Center, about a mile away. In the past year, the Stress Center has started offering acupuncture to many conditions ranging from chronic pain to mood disorders.

For Eunjie Klegar, clinician in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, “It’s a way of being able to treat the whole person.” *** This field of medicine has many names: alternative, integrative, complementary, naturopathic, oriental. They all refer to the wide range of non-conventional treatments that includes homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture and even lifestyle management.

However, despite common tendency to use these names interchangeably, Marcia Prenguber, dean of the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine, does not think that all are equally appropriate.

“Calling it ‘alternative’ can put up a barrier,” Prenguber said.

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“‘Complementary’ is better, but can still sound insignificant.”

Though “alternative” may indeed sound alienating, it appeals to some patients who are frustrated with conventional medicine. In Pradeep’s case, for instance, distrust of American doctors drove her to see a naturopathic practitioner. In her native Russia, eastern medicine plays a more prominent role than it does in the United States.

“The effectiveness of acupuncture is a fact there,” Pradeep said. “I want to be cured, not diagnosed. And I don’t see that happening with [conventional] medications.”

Pradeep’s journey is a familiar one to David Katz SPH ’93, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Treatment Center. Formerly involved in the Integrative Medicine Center at Griffin Hospital, Katz often saw patients who had tried all other mainstream options available to them. Integrative medicine provided him with the creativity he needed to effectively treat those who had exhausted conventional treatments.

Integrative medicine can also afford patients a sense of control. Robert Krause YSN ’68, a lecturer at the Yale School of Nursing, incorporates alternative medicine into his psychiatry practice, using yoga and meditation in conjunction with psychopharmacology to treat patients.

He said his patients who pick non-conventional treatments often report feeling in command of their daily lives.

Erin Hofstatter, professor of medicine, noticed similar results when her patients began requesting herbal supplements.

At the Yale Cancer Center, Hofstatter tries to accommodate her patients’ desires — she typically allows the use of herbal supplements as long as they don’t interfere with the patient’s other medications.

“The patients want to feel in control,” Hofstatter said.

“There’s nothing like a cancer diagnosis to make you feel out of control.”

Hofstatter began her research into plant-based therapies in response to her patients’ demand for treatments with fewer sideeffects. She is currently working on a clinical study of black cohosh, a compound with cancer-preventative properties — she hopes that this study will fit into a larger trend of non-conventional clinical trials. *** But elsewhere in the Yale School of Medicine, some clinicians see alternative medicine in a less favorable light. Steven Novella is a professor of neurology and a prominent member of the opposition, termed the “scientific skepticism movement.”

Novella is the founder and executive editor of Science-Based Medicine, a blog that evaluates alternative medical treatments from a scientific perspective.

“Alternative medicine is a term that’s used a lot,” said Jann Bellamy, a contributor to the blog. “But there should just be medicine.”

Medicine is rooted in safety and effectiveness, and according to Bellamy, if a treatment can’t ensure both, then it cannot be classified as medicine. This critique — that non-conventional treatments do not have a scientific basis — is a popular critique among skeptics.

However, many practitioners of alternative medicine maintain that science provides a firm grounding for their work.

Michelle Hessberger is a naturopathic physician who practices at Revive Wellness Center in New Haven. In addition to her doctoral degree in naturopathy, she also has a master’s degree in cellular and molecular biology, a qualification that surprises many people.

“I’m looking at cells and molecules to see how I can make them function better,” she said.

“For example, by looking at biochemical processes, you can help the mitochondria produce more energy.”

Although she carries out conventional lab testing for her patients, she does not take

THE TAPPER GAME

Off Broadway Theater // 8 p.m.

Yes, the title is an oblique pun on the Hunger Games, as a matter of fact.

results at face value, the way a primary care physician would.

Rather than check if a patient’s vitamin levels fall within the accepted range, she determines the patient’s optimal level, given their lifestyle and history; this approach has helped many patients who felt ill despite normal lab results.

For Prenguber, too, science is central to naturopathy. Modern science can explain the mechanisms of ancient treatments, she said.

“We’re blending centuriesold traditions with the backing of more advanced research,” Penguber explained.

The long-standing history of plant-based medicines — including everyday aspirin, which can be derived from willow tree bark — is a common argument for the scientific soundness of naturopathy. Skeptics do not dispute this; they just ask that alternative medicine and conventional treatments meet the same rigorous standards.

Hofstatter has encountered this very dilemma in carrying out her black cohosh study.

While she acknowledged that alternative treatments should be as effective and safe as conventional therapies, she said that a lack of funding and grant money complicates the process.

The large pharmaceutical companies that typically fund studies are less interested in integrative medicine, a less profitable endeavor.

Many School of Medicine researchers attempting to carry out studies on natural treatments echoed this concern.

Ather Ali SPH ‘06, a director of the Integrative Medicine at Yale program, pointed out that many alternative treatments cannot be patented, making them less profitable.

Since there is little funding, researchers have less incentive to pursue studies that could otherwise prove the effectiveness of alternative treatments, Hofstatter said, generating a vicious cycle preventing progress in the

field.

She posed a question to skeptics and fellow researchers alike: “Is it fair to hold [alternative medicine] to the same standards when there’s no feasible way to test the treatments in the same rigorous manner?” *** Although most agree that a gap exists between practitioners and researchers of alternative medicine, successful research could ultimately unite the two groups.

“Theoretically everyone benefits,” Ali said. “If [a study] demonstrates promise, it becomes directly applicable to the small practice down the street.”

At the moment, though, the field is finding it difficult to gain traction in the academic community. In November 2014, the Integrative Medicine Center at Griffin Hospital, a Yale affiliate in Shelton, closed. According to a note on the website, this closure was due to “the changing landscape in healthcare.”

Katz, the founder and director of the Integrative Medicine Center, explained that the facility had difficulties maintaining a cost-effective model of integrative care. Each session with a patient required a team of clinicians and took as long as two hours. The center was losing money for the hospital, Katz said, resulting in its closing after fifteen years of operation.

At the Yale School of Medicine, integrative medicine does not have its own department — instead, the Integrative Medicine at Yale program provides a limited opportunity for students and faculty to collaborate and receive guidance. However, it is not a formal program.

Yung-Chi Cheng, professor of pharmacology at the Yale School of Medicine, thinks that Yale can do better when it comes to alternative medicine. There is a lack of research activity and faculty interest, Cheng said. He did note, though, that Yale is taking action — the School of Medicine has helped found the Consor-

tium for Globalization of Chinese Medicine, of which Cheng is chairman.

“In spite of the limited activity at Yale, our work is being watched carefully around the world,” Cheng said. “If it works, it can be modeled for people to show how they should approach exploring the potential of Chinese medicine.” *** The next generation of practitioners and researchers may have a chance to break the vicious cycle currently impeding the progress of alternative medicine.

There are currently five accredited programs in naturopathic medicine in the United States — one just down the road in Connecticut at the University of Bridgeport, under Prenguber’s leadership. Prenguber admits that her students have trouble getting hands-on experience in the field without the clinical access that medical students enjoy.

At Yale as well, resources are somewhat limited for students interested in alternative medicine.

Vanessa Noelte ’16 has been excited about integrative medicine ever since high school. After hosting a screening of the film “Escape Fire” in order to spark discussion about the healthcare system, Noelte realized that a substantial group of undergraduates shared her interest.

In her sophomore year, she founded the Integrated Medicine at Yale Undergraduate group to invite speakers and host discussions, but she still feels a lack of mentorship for undergraduates interested in integrative medicine. As the only undergraduate director of the Integrative Medicine at Yale program, Noelte acts as a liaison, directing Yale College students to opportunities in non-conventional medicine.

“I think integrative medicine is the future,” Noelte said.

“Hopefully the school and the students realize that soon.”

Contact APARNA NATHAN at aparna.nathan@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Dystopian young adult fiction.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND ARTS

WILL YOU GO SEE ART WITH ME? // BY RACHEL PAUL

Just like the title, “2,015 But Who’s Counting?” the Yale MFA Thesis Exhibition was playful and biting. On my way to the Yale School of Art, I was lucky enough to catch up with this kid I know, Will. Will was just, like, walking around and I convinced him to come check out art for a little bit.

As we entered 1156 Chapel Street, we realized we actually had a lot of interesting things to say about the projects inside.

“Cool,” was one of the first things I said. The first room of the exhibition featured a few paintings that were actually much more than just “cool.” Vibrant colors and abstract shapes splashed across the wall. One painting depicted a tan figure with a hand covering its mouth in one corner, overshadowed by one large, abstract section in tan. This use of abstract shape to evoke a feeling of loneliness, emphasized by blue surrounding the small figure, was intriguing and beautiful.

“Is that an arm?” Will said.

Entering the next room of the exhibition, we were amazed to find that the artists had incorporated sculpture into their pieces, allowing the art to break into the physical space of the venue and share it with us. One such piece contained a print on the wall depicting a demolished room. The demolition poured from the wall into the room in the form of broken glass and crumpled sketches.

“That’s the stuff from the picture,” I said.

Then we walked around more.

“I like this one,” Will said.

Will was referring to a work by Camille Hoffman which hung at the end of the room. We landed here at the end of the exhibition and just stared. It was beautiful, playful and plastic. Hoffman creates her pieces using printed plastic. The one we found ourselves in front of was a scenic mountain vista made from cut-outs of golf courses. Aside from just being

beautiful, the piece had a joking punchiness that made it unlike art I had previously seen. The use of the golf courses gave it a surrealist tone and created a space in which disparate elements were forced to interact with one another.

“My favorite part is the stickers,” I said.

It’s true. I still think that even though it’s been a couple hours since I saw it. The top of the work had a few little, glittery stickers on it. It gave the art an attitude that echoed the title of the exhibition. But it was not without depth. Hanging next to the painting was a large, plastic, holidaythemed tablecloth that stretched about 30 feet. The cloth was made of colorful woven strips. This is a piece Hoffman has exhibited all over the world titled “In the future, they kept alive what ancestral rites they could remember.” The interwoven vibrant strips evoked a sense of family, togetherness, and joined cultures

that I found quite beautiful.

“Haha,” Will said.

That was after I had made a joke. After perusing this exhibition with Will on a picturesque winter afternoon, I felt like I had seen something special. It was art that incorporated the sarcastic humor of our generation without losing out on beauty. By mixing print with paint, one dimensional with three dimensional, and sophistication with attitude, the Yale MFA Thesis Exhibition surprised and delighted me. The exhibition runs through February 25 and is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Sunday.

I definitely recommend finding someone on the street (I admit it works best with someone named Will) to share insights with as you peruse the work of some clever and inventive Yalies.

“Fun,” Will said.

Contact RACHEL PAUL at rachel.paul@yale.edu .

// MICHELLE CHAN

Poems from the Perpetual Storm // BY ELENA SAAVEDRA BUCKLEY

The poet Jorie Graham isn’t a robotic woman. In fact, as she stood in front of a group of Yale students, she seemed to be the most human, vivid one in the room. Her hair, captured like a wild animal in the black and white photos of her youth, fell into a gold wave behind her ears. A blue shawl rested comfortably on her shoulders. Most natural were the words she offered — those from poems written between 1976 and 2014, selected for her book “From the New World.” She shared pieces from its just-released pages on Monday evening in Linsly-Chittenden Hall.

When she read the poem “Fast,” her right hand moved differently than the rest of her body. It jerked with her syllables, twitched up and down with her intonations like a small machine. The poem is about her experience chatting with an online bot (think of Spike Jonze’s “Her”), and the moving hand broke her organic image for a few minutes.

Like that hand-body divide, Graham’s new collection wrestles with, as she put it, a “dismembered sense of self.” Only four poems out of the book’s 105 are previously-unpublished, but she considers it a new body of work. The way she tells it, the book seems to have had a life of its own. “It’s precisely the book you don’t write, but the one your life writes,” she told us. “It uses you to get written.”

The span of the writing reflects

Graham’s impressive track record.

Currently the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, she has won the Pulitzer Prize, taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and been dubbed “one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation” by the Poetry Foundation. Other sources consistently call her “a badass” (for her talent as well as her powerful eyeliner). Her work oozes approachable yet complex philosophy, the kind found in the fibers of quiet, everyday experiences; it gains an iron force when shaped by her voice.

At the reading, Graham recited her poems in the order they were written. She wrote “The Geese” while holding her first teaching position in Kentucky, and in it you can detect the uncertainty of youth and new surroundings: “There is a feeling the body gives the mind / of having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like falling / without the sense that you are passing through one world, / that you could reach another / anytime.” Passing from poem to poem, she seemed to age.

“On Difficulty,” a piece about Adam and Eve, uses history to achieve a universal lamentation. The audience hummed in affirmation, the way one often does, after the last lines: “When you look away / who will they be dear god and what?”

As her self evolves in “From the New World,” so do Graham’s pri-

orities. She prefaced the works on Monday by describing her shift in poetic interests and anxieties, which moved from nature, to war, to climate change (a kind of equation).

The book’s title poem was written during a violent Iowa rainstorm, but “at this point, we are in perpetual war, perpetual storm,” she said.

“Lull” came next, another account of being at the mercy of nature. In it, the speaker prepares for rain that never comes and assumes the identity of a fox. Although written in the first person, the poem feels less centered. It’s a 360-degree view of humans and their greed.

“Fast,” the poem about the online bot, closed the reading. Out of everything Graham read, it was easily the most detached, the most purposefully processed. Short sentences, like “I’m not alone. People come back / again and again. We are less kind than we think” give it at a rapid motion, as if it were information being digested by a computer.

Yet it’s somehow still refined, just like her meditations on geese, Eden and weather. Graham made clear the “dismembered sense of self,” this time in a way more insidious and dramatic than before.

“It’s very interesting to grow up,” she said, a few minutes before we all left the room. “None of us are what we thought we were, are we?”

Contact ELENA SAAVEDRA BUCKLEY at elena.saavedrabuckley@yale.edu .

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

SATURDAY FEBRUARY

21

ANGEL

Morse Crescent Theater // 8 p.m.

A love song to Los Angeles and the heady youth of six teenage beach bums. Like the OC, but art.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Los Angeles theatrical idylls. As of press time, it’s 66 degrees in LA. Take us back.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND MATCHMAKER

THE BLINDEST DATE

Her Take Why did you people vote for me?

I was Bachelorette #4.

The one who would title her autobiography, “I’m Not Mad (Yet), I Just Have Resting Bitchface Syndrome.” Who even writes stuff like that? I expected to get only a few ironic votes. But, here I am, writing about my Valentine’s Day blind date.

I arrived at Barracuda Bistro and Bar ten minutes before 6 p.m. As the server led me to a table for two, I took in the restaurant’s low lighting, warm colors, calm chatter and clinking glasses.

Once seated, I shook off the snow and practiced not automatically reverting to Resting Bitchface. By the time Blindest Date Bachelor #3 arrived, I had managed to work my face into a “calm deer in the headlights” look.

He was wearing a rumpled plaid shirt and a gray jacket. I was wearing a black dress with white hieroglyphic prints and jingling silver earrings.

Well, somebody overdressed.

We shook hands.

“Hi! I’m Jordan,” he said.

“Blindest Date?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Patrice! I think we met before.”

Jordan — I mean, Jordan Konell ’15, as copy style would dictate — had taken “Black Sexuality in Literature and Popular Culture” with me during our sophomore year. Yes, I know how that sounds, but you can stop grinning; nothing sexy happened. I didn’t have too many memories of him, except for the fact that he was the only white male in that class.

// BY PATRICE BOWMAN

His first question was an Old Standard: How are you doing?

“Just trying to survive senior year!” I replied, a harried edge to my voice.

He laughed. “I completely understand. It gets so intense.”

His second question, on the other hand, was a Yale Standard: What do you study?

Upon my mentioning that I was a film studies major (with a concentration in Production), we launched into an extended conversation about movies: favorite movies, least favorite movies, film studies courses, film studies professors, the Oscars race.

I was happy to hear that he was also rooting for “Selma” to win, even if it was only nominated for two awards.

As much as Jordan loved movies, he told me he was actually double majoring in African American Studies and political science. At this point, I had to acknowledge the pink elephant in the room.

“So, exactly why are you doing Af-Am Studies?”

Jordan replied that he was fascinated by race relations in local politics, particularly in his hometown of Philadelphia. He also just loved studying African-American history and literature.

Now that I think about it, that question might have been a bit awkward. If someone likes a subject — no matter who they are — they shouldn’t have to justify themselves.

But I was curious.

During the conversation, we received our food. I had ordered an avocado sashimi, two halves of an avocado topped with raw tuna and drizzled with some special sauce. It tasted a lot better than it looked; the avocado was fresh, and the tuna surprisingly flavorful. Good; I didn’t want bad food to mar an otherwise pleasant date.

As the conversation wound down following our meal, we confronted the Inevitable Question: What are

you doing after college?

Both being seniors, Jordan and I agreed that we were ready to get away from Yale and move on with our lives.

For Jordan, a Rhodes Scholarship winner, that means studying at Oxford University for two years before hopefully heading to law school to focus on social justice. I, on the other hand, plan on diving headfirst into entertainment journalism and video production.

Each of us thought the other’s plans were neat, but I really had to admire Jordan’s goals. They were selfless and devoted to real-world change.

Entertainment is mostly the opposite of that.

After about an hour (during which neither of us pulled out our cell phones!), we left to brave the cold outside. Before we went our separate ways, we thanked each other for the fun time out. I reached out to shake hands again.

“Oh, come on!” he said. “We can hug!”

That happened. We split up.

The experience had felt a bit like freshman year all over again: talking to someone new and getting to know them. As a senior, I mostly talk with friends — partially out of convenience, partially out of unease at branching out, which is always a nervous experience. And so was the Blindest Date, at times. But moving out of my comfort zone, even for an hour, was unexpectedly fun and even educational. And the sashimi wasn’t half bad.

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

Her Take

His Take // BY JORDAN KONELL

A silence ensued. Yet one way or another, we got back on the topic of film — this time talking through those nominated for Oscars. We agreed that “Selma” had been snubbed and that the Academy did not adequately appreciate the contributions of people of color.

Soon, a waiter arrived to take our orders.

Harkening back to my pre-dinner examination of the menu, I decided to order the crab cake sandwich and a mojito. With Patrice having nixed further discussion of film, which I assume she talks about enough in class, our conversation turned to what it’s like to live in Columbus, Ohio (Patrice’s hometown). At this point, it felt like a good idea to keep our date short and sweet. We seemed to be pulling each other through the conversation, checking off topical boxes so we could get out of Barracuda before the hour normally allocated a meal was up. Sparks simply weren’t flying.

Yet I enjoyed chatting with Patrice, and I will remember our celebratory high five over eating a free meal together. At the end of the date, as we parted ways outside of the Pierson gate, Patrice went for the handshake, and I went for the hug. I’m happy I went for the hug.

While our date was a tad awkward at times, it was nice reconnecting with her.

I sat in the Pierson Common Room, at once browsing Barracuda’s online menu and debating whether to further unbutton my shirt to let my chest hair roam free. I was nervous not just because I was going on a blind date — although this was my first since a shot at JSwipe (“Jewish Tinder”) this past summer — but also because I wasn’t sure of how I would identify my dinner partner. Would she be standing or sitting?

Should I wait inside or outside the restaurant?

Was I wearing my lucky underwear? What if my episode of chronic nose bleeds in sixth grade was resurrected?

Fifteen minutes later, as the maître d’ directed me towards a couples table in the back of Barracuda, I saw Patrice. During sophomore year, Patrice and I had both been enrolled in “Black Sexuality in Literature and Popular Culture,” exploring the intersection of blackness and sexuality at 9:25 a.m. every Tuesday.

Patrice was relatively quiet during the seminar, while I had emerged as the token student who claimed that each book contained at least one phallic symbol.

Upon our re-introduction, we immediately delved into her work as a film studies major. I found this interesting, as I had never met a film studies major before, but I also literally had no idea what to say. I therefore embarked on a catalog of questions about requirements for fulfilling the major, a nervous tangent which I regret. Twenty minutes into the date, Patrice assured me that we were capable of discussing things besides the intricacies of film studies.

Contact JORDAN KONELL at jordan.konell@yale.edu .

His Take

// BY MADDIE ADOLF

// BY WILL HARLOW

I was extremely disappointed with my date. Will was great, but this match was a complete and utter failure. I made a list of 10 criteria, and requested that at least seven match.

Seven would have been acceptable.

Ten out of ten and I would’ve had a ring on my finger by dessert. But two out of ten? That’s kind of pathetic, YDN. Let’s start with the fact that this guy was kind, attentive, and cared about people other than himself – obviously not a Republican, contrary to what I had requested. He was even willing to give up some of his hardearned cash for the sake of others (as in, he paid for our date) — an action no self-respecting conservative would ever consider.

He wasn’t a men’s rights activist either. He listened to what I said, let me choose my own food, and even showed me some modicum of respect.

You may ask, “What type of activism is he interested in?” Get this: he spends his free time working on a project to give people in Africa access

to clean water. Obviously not a keeper.

Where’s the misogyny, man? Ugh. When a girl goes on a date, she wants a guy with that has that special something. A guy with an allure, no, a mystique, that tells you he’s a relaxed dude. A mystique that can really only be conveyed through the proud display of a puka shell necklace. But alas, there was no shell necklace to be found. Thanks Obama.

The list goes on. He was not under 6 feet tall. He didn’t share my love of PDA; not once did he reach across the table to hold my hand. And there was no Nickelback song romantically playing in the background. Everyone knows that date night isn’t complete without angsty post-grunge poprock.

Will also did not appear to be a section asshole. He didn’t correct the waiter who accidentally mispronounced his order, nor did he come close to matching the obnoxiousness of kids in my DS lectures. If a lattesipping, overachieving, pink-whalesporting, Deerfield Door can get sass-

ier about Herodotus than you can at a waiter, you’re nowhere near meeting criterion number five: “Be a section, no, a lecture asshole.” What the hell?

At least the YDN got one thing right. Will did have some luscious, golden-blonde locks — almost enough to make him the surfer guy I was looking for. Unfortunately, without that extra something (think puka shell necklace), it just didn’t quite “work.” He was also incredibly, disappointingly sober. I doubt he was even on one drug, let alone on “all the drugs,” as set forth in Criterion #8.

Times like these call to mind the wise words my idol and probable soulmate, Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. In his classic love ballad, “Midnight Queen” he described me perfectly: “I’m just a pony in my own rodeo.” And this pony will ride solo until the day seven out of her ten criteria are met.

Contact MADDIE ADOLF at madeline.adolf@yale.edu .

As 6 p.m. approached, I was still desperately combing through my closet, looking for something to wear.

On three separate occasions I glanced longingly at the heap of dirty clothes I had yet to launder, thinking how easy my life would be if I could only wear a pair of pants located within it. Irresistibly easy, in fact. After donning the dirty pants, completing my preppy outfit, I headed to Miya’s Sushi. Trudging through the snow on Elm St., I nervously wondered what to expect and what my date would expect of me.

Upon arriving at Miya’s, I approached the host, who asked me if I had a reservation. I sheepishly replied that I did not know, but that I was meeting someone. His eyes lit up as he deduced that I was on a blind date, and he led me to a table in the back with perfect mood lighting and three appetizers already prepared. It would appear that I was the first of our party to arrive, so I sat down to wait, hoping my date would show up and save me from the embarrassment of figuring out what to do if she

did not.

I did not have to wait long, and to my great surprise and relief, the girl I found sitting next to me was smiling and pretty. I think we must have introduced ourselves, but I really don’t remember because ten minutes later, I realized I couldn’t remember her name. Only when she began reflecting on the irony of going to Hebrew school with the last name “Adolf” did I relearn at least part of it.

As we were settling in, the waiter came around to ask about dietary restrictions. Although I technically didn’t have any, I had never eaten sushi before, I didn’t particularly like seafood and I was counting on there being vegetarian options.

I let my date speak first, though.

She said she was vegetarian, and the server’s obvious disappointment at this revelation made me keep quiet myself. Anyway, I decided, I wouldn’t mind trying something new on a blind date.

We began to talk about the basics: our academic interests, extracurricular activities and summer plans. I worried about being too boring, but I didn’t really have much else to talk about. We found common ground in a love of Italy and Renaissance art, which provided fodder for conversation until our food arrived, covering the whole expanse of the table. There must have been ten different types of seafood and another ten vegetarian options. We both agreed that the mango sweet potato roll was the best, and I think we were both equally surprised when I

tried the jellyfish sushi.

Soon we had polished off our meal, and it was time to part ways. She, being a freshman, lived on Old Campus, while I lived in Calhoun.

When she asked me how I was getting home, I shrugged and said I would probably walk. She looked at me hesitantly before deciding that she would just take an Uber. I was pretty tired at this point, and still had hundreds of pages of reading to do, while my d a te told me she planned on going to a f ra t e r n i t y party. In my b i t te r n e ss and haste, I forgot to ask for her number or to offer mine.

That might have been for the best. I wouldn’t say we hit it off, and I still didn’t remember her name. She had been entered into Blindest Date by her friends; I had entered for fun. But now I’ve tried sushi, and I have a new Facebook friend.

Contact WILL HARLOW at william.harlow@yale. edu .

SATURDAY FEBRUARY

21

LUNARFEST

Multiple locations // 10 a.m.

Marked as “Family Friendly” by the Yale Arts Calendar. Venue locations are: Luce Hall, New Haven Museum, and the YaleChina Association (442 Temple St.).

WKND RECOMMENDS:

SATURDAY FEBRUARY

Lunacy.

21

YALE CHINESE SPRING GALA Woolsey Hall // 7 p.m.

Song, dance, martial arts, opera and “magic shows by renowned masters.”

Kewl.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Magical thinking. Also kewl.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

PAYING LIP SERVICE // BY EMMA PLATOFF AND VIVIAN WANG DIVERSITY FROM PAGE 3 ries that the environment awaiting students on campus will fall short of what was promised in admissions brochures or at Bulldog Days.

“The administration likes to make a point of this being something that’s not only relevant but integral, but it hasn’t taken the steps to convey that importance to the entire community,” Melendez said.

What frustrates Sherley most about the administration’s lip service to diversity is that these outreach efforts use Yale’s current students of color as a mouthpiece.

While there is nothing wrong with depicting Yale as a “vibrant, happy place,” Sherley said, the University should provide the actual resources to turn its glossy brochures into a reality for the students who are doing the hard work of recruitment. “[Yale] students of color are put in this position where they make promises and say, ‘Oh, there’s a great community here,’” she said. “And there is. But we also feel uncomfortable talking about all the structural challenges we face because we don’t want to scare away other [prospective] students of color.”

“RESEARCH OR MESEARCH?” Those in the know will tell you that if you want to get a Ph.D in Native American Art, you go to the University of New Mexico. But Anya Montiel GRD ’18 — despite being in the know herself — decided on Yale for its superior libraries and closer proximity to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. After doing her undergraduate work at University of California, Davis — with its rare, autonomous Native American Studies department — Montiel was particularly disheartened to see the dearth of course offerings at Yale.

“I had choices, I took all the classes available,” she said of her experience at UC Davis. “But for the young undergraduates [at Yale] who want to pursue Native American art, I don’t know what to tell them.”

Across the University, student concerns about Yale’s commitment to underrepresented groups extend beyond the cultural centers and into the classroom.

With professor Ned Blackhawk as the only faculty member focused exclusively on Native American Studies, students interested in the discipline find themselves with few courses to choose from. This semester, Blackhawk is teaching just two classes, only one of which is geared towards undergraduates. It’s a substantial course load for a professor — especially on top of independent scholarship — but it still leaves student interest unmet. Students

who want to pursue senior theses or other independent work in Native American Studies can, but the process is difficult; with so few course offerings, it comes down to a lot of self-educating, Blackhawk said. Worse still, when Blackhawk goes on leave, there are often no courses available.

“The growth of cultural centers demonstrates Yale students’ tremendous capacity to query issues of inequality,” Blackhawk said.

“But now that we have the centers, we should have the scholarship.”

Meanwhile, student demand for these courses is only growing. Several graduate students in Native American Studies mentioned oversubscribed courses from which tens of interested students had to be rejected. And the problem is hardly limited to their discipline.

American Studies professor Mary Lui is the one faculty member focused exclusively on Asian American Studies — a statistic that Courtney Sato GRD ’19, an AACC Graduate Assistant whose work is in the field described as “appalling.” Lui, who focuses on Asian American history, said she wishes Yale could offer courses in Asian American visual and musical arts, literature and sociology.

She and interested students have been trying to carve out a larger, permanent place for Asian American Studies at Yale since her arrival in 2000.

Students interested in the discipline described the dearth of faculty — and subsequent dearth of course offerings — as the single greatest barrier to expanding ethnic fields of inquiry.

Recently named Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity Richard Bribiescas said ethnic studies are a priority for Yale, and will certainly be included in upcoming conversations about faculty hiring.

But Lui and Blackhawk both said they are not aware of any targeted University efforts to hire another faculty member in their fields. Sometimes, hiring searches in other departments turn up candidates who specialize in one or more niche of ethnic studies. But so far none of these hires have come to fruition, and without a targeted search for an ethnic studies professor, there are no guarantees.

“There is a lot of improvement in terms of what Yale could do to support [this field of study],” Sato said.

Beyond just limited resources, the discipline has to contend with issues of perception. Lui said many people unfairly conflate the academic discipline of Asian American Studies with the cultural concerns of Asian-American communities. While intrinsically related, she said, the spheres are distinct and need to be treated as such so that the discipline can be taken seriously. LiLi Johnson GRD ’19, an AACC Graduate

Hispanics Asians

FEBRUARY

21

Blacks

6.0% 3.7%

Hispanics

5.5%

Asians 16.2%

1980 Assistant and student in the field, said another challenge to Asian American studies is distinguishing it from fields like East Asian Studies. Distinctions like these are crucial if it is to be recognized as an independent, flourishing field of study, she said. But Yale isn’t quite there yet.

“I’ve heard stories about Asian-American students, when they’re trying to work with faculty, proposing something AsianAmerican-related and getting asked whether this is ‘research or me-search’,” said Austin Long ’15, the student director of the Asian American Studies Task Force.

The first step in changing this perception may be demonstrating the groundswell of student interest in Asian American studies.

One of the advocacy group’s most important goals, Johnson said, is to do just this. And bringing visiting scholars who specialize in areas of Asian American studies beyond Lui’s area of expertise will further expose the campus to the vast swath of work being done in the field.

Next week, Lui and other advocates will bring these areas of study to Yale for a day, hosting an Asian American Studies conference. So far almost 200 participants have registered to hear scholars from institutions like Wesleyan, Harvard and Syracuse discuss their work on issues including literature, film, migrant rights and minority empowerment. Lui said she made a point of featuring work outside her own expertise in order to expose students to scholarship they rarely see on campus.

“The hope is to convince programs, departments, administrators of the importance of having the scholarship here on campus on a permanent basis,” Lui said.

Sato said the conference is a tangible result of the student advocacy on these issues, which Johnson said is almost entirely driven by undergraduates. The conference’s turnout will demonstrate that there is unmet student interest in these areas of study, beginning a dialogue surrounding expansion of ethnic studies that Johnson said should never be

BARRY LYNDON WHC // 7 p.m.

A sumptuous adaptation by Stanley Kubrick of the forgotten novel by William Makepeace Thackeray.

6.6%

10.1%

White 80.2%

// ALEXANDRA SCHMELING

SATURDAY

Blacks

White 47.2%

2012 considered over.

Kong, another student activist, said she believes the administration will take action if the Task Force can demonstrate that such action is necessary.

But ultimately, student and faculty efforts can only go so far.

“It’s going to be up to administrators, whether or not [a standalone department] is something they can carve out space for— it’s a question of staffing and faculty, and maybe that’s just not feasible,” Lui said. “But I certainly don’t see why we couldn’t have more Asian American Studies faculty represented across the disciplines.”

DEPARTMENTAL DIVISIONS In the spring of 1970, Yale became the first Ivy League school to offer a course in Asian American Studies. Although Don Nakanishi ’71, along with several other members of Yale’s fledgling Asian American Students Association, convinced political science professor Chitoshi Yanaga — the first Japanese American to receive tenure at Yale — to run the class, the students largely taught it themselves.

But 45 New Haven springs later, there is still only one Asian American Studies course offered this semester.

When it comes to ethnic studies at Yale, not all disciplines were created equal. While some fields of study, such as African American Studies, have their own departments and offer independent majors, others exist as pockets of inquiry or tracks within larger programs.

History has shaped some of these differences. In 1969, African-Americans were conspicuously absent from history books and English syllabi, often only appearing in social science literature where they were represented as a “problem,” African American Studies Department Chair Matthew Jacobson said. In this hostile environment, AfAm Studies grew “out of quite a tidal wave of students’ civic protest,” Holloway said. Over four decades later,

Yale’s department has grown to be one of the foremost such programs in the world.

By contrast, Blackhawk said Native American studies essentially did not exist at Yale before his arrival in fall 2009. Most Latino studies courses are housed in the Ethnicity, Race & Migration program, which was first offered as a major in 1997 but not as an independent one until 2012. And while Lui was not the first Asian American Studies professor Yale hired, she was the first to be given tenure.

But Jacobson added that historical trends are no excuse for Yale’s failure to maintain these areas of study.

“Part [of the problem] is University priorities, say what they will about Yale’s commitment,” Jacobson said. “We have not kept up.”

No one disputes the quality of scholarship put forth by Yale’s faculty in the study of underrepresented groups. But despite its overall strength, Jacobson said Yale is “nowhere near” achieving consistency between different areas of ethnic studies.

Lui said the programs within which Asian American studies exists — American Studies and ER&M — are comfortable places, and Sato said that at least for now, an autonomous Asian American Studies Department might not improve the discipline’s situation.

While Long agreed that it is not yet time to consider an independent department, he said he believes the ER&M program lacks Asian American representation in its curriculum. This sends a strong message that Asian American issues of ethnicity, race and migration are not as valid as those of other groups, he said.

“That’s the wrong message for Yale to be sending,” he said.

These curricular concerns are hardly unique to Asian American Studies.

Montiel expressed a similar concern about the American Studies Department, noting that undergraduates in the major do not have to take any Native American Studies courses. The major does require that at least two of undergraduates’ required fourteen courses are taken in “cultural history/cultural studies,” but these requirements are non-specific, and with minimal choice in offerings, students are unlikely to select Asian American or Native American Studies. This semester, Blackhawk’s only undergraduate offering is a capped seminar, and Lui is not teaching undergraduates. The AfAm Studies Department, by contrast, is offering more than 20 courses in topics ranging from dance and pop culture to antebellum America.

“You can become an Americanist without knowing anything about the native population,” Montiel said. “I don’t understand how that works.”

Melendez said the inequalities between disciplines are hard to deny and especially troubling given that many of those disciplines are housed within Yale’s American Studies program, one of the best in the country.

The uneven allocation of academic resources is yet another way Yale pays lip service to issues of diversity without translating its stated goals to reality, he said.

Still, regardless of the discrep-

ancies in size and scope, scholars in each department emphasized that they are not competing.

Instead of bickering over their individual slices of the pie, they said, they’d rather increase its size across the board.

“I don’t think it does anyone any good to be comparing or trying to reallocate a [budget] that’s already too small,” Johnson said.

“The whole point is that they should all be growing.”

Although such programs seem to have escaped administrators’ attention, some acknowledge the issues facing ethnic studies.

Holloway conceded that Yale is far behind where it should be on courses related to Asian American Studies.

For the first time this year, the Yale Group for the Study of Native America was allocated a small budget — enough to pay for its two lunches each month, Blackhawk said. They are also able to find financial support from areas of the University with deeper pockets, and when the group requests funding, administrators are receptive. But the YGSNA wouldn’t have to make these requests if it had a real programming budget, he said.

Salovey is very supportive of Native American students at Yale, Rogers said, though he hopes Salovey will show that support at an academic level as well. Next week, the Saloveys will host the reception for the Asian American Studies Conference in the President’s House. Several other administrators have also expressed enthusiasm for the event, Lui added.

Still, some students feel that the University is not putting its money where its mouth is on the issue of ethnic studies.

“The money is there — Yale has this massive endowment,” Rogers said. “It’s more so the willpower — that the higher administration doesn’t seem to be behind it.”

LOOKING FORWARD Until Provost Benjamin Polak responds to Holloway and GoffCrews’s recommendations regarding the cultural houses, the future of the centers remains uncertain. Alongside renewed support for the cultural houses, perhaps the University will also turn its attention to ethnic studies. But the growth of underrepresented groups at Yale has historically come through student protest and advocacy. This trend is unlikely to change any time soon.

Blackhawk said he is confident in the abilities of devoted undergraduates to make lasting and meaningful change. And student leaders — even those who are graduating — don’t plan to stop anytime soon.

“When I came in as a freshman, I was taught a lot about the history of these centers and the struggle that students had to go through to secure these spaces,” Melendez said. “That’s why I’m dedicating so much time to this process as a second semester senior — not even for the students who are here currently, but to make sure that the future of these cultural centers are brighter than they are today.”

Contact EMMA PLATOFF at emma.platoff@yale.edu and VIVIAN WANG at vivian.y.wang@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Making peace. With self, with others, with life.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND PLAYS

WHERE WORK MEETS PLAY(WRITING) // BY GAYATRI SABHARWAL

The lights came on, revealing a line of actors seated in front of microphones. A narrator sat on the side of the stage of the Off-Broadway Theater, providing directions while the actors spoke their lines.

Their faces shifted from tense anxiety to comic ease between readings.

They performed scenes that ran the gamut, from domestic drama to laugh-out-loud farce.

Actors, playwrights and audience members had gathered together for the showcase of the O’Neill Playwriting Program, a year-long mentorship program that brings together Yale undergraduates, Yale School of Drama students and Co-op High School students. The showcase, entitled the Annual Festival of New Work, ran from Feb. 6 to Feb. 7, the fruit of many months’ labor. Students from the School of Drama performed 13 staged readings of original scripts developed by high school students and Yalies alike.

Abigail Carney ’15 was one of four undergraduate mentors in the program. She had written a play tackling themes that tested her powers as a playwright. She had to strike a balance between considerations of race, abuse and justice in “Sunday Morning,” which was performed on the second night of the Festival of New Work.

“What do you do when someone hasn’t clearly been raped, but there has been substantial emotional harm done?” she asked me while describing the central dilemma of the plot of her play.

Carney’s play explored blurry and fraught topics of race and abuse, centering on the story of two girls who have recently graduated from college. “One of the girls is abused by the doorman of her apartment.

The abuser is black and the girl is white,” said Carney. “It is the hardest play I have ever worked on.”

Carney has found the O’Neill Playwriting Program to be integral to the development and consummation of this play. The fall semester of her freshman year, she worked on “Sunday Morning” in a playwriting class. She continued work on the play over the summer, finally shar-

SATURDAY FEBRUARY

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ing it during her enrollment in the O’Neill Playwriting program. On this night, all her hard work had come to fruition.

The program, and the high school students she was paired with, brought in a “wonderful element” to the process of completing the play, she tells me. During her time in the program, the play materialized into a script.

// MARY KIM

*** The O’Neill Playwriting Program was founded in 1997. Since its inception, it has attempted to bridge the town-gown divide by dissolving boundaries of age and experience.

Although it has undergone some changes in structure over the years, the program continues to provide a unique playwriting experience to budding playwrights and mature artists alike.

The program began as the “O’Neill at Yale” project, under the auspices of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Its goal: to bring the Yale community and New Haven public school students together over a shared interest in the work of famed American dramatist Eugene O’Neill, whose seminal play “Long Day’s Journey into Night” was famously first published by the Yale University Press. In its earliest iteration, members of the program performed O’Neill’s works and wrote and produced original plays inspired by them.

The program changed in 2005, said Lynda Blancato, current director of the program, coming closer to its current form. At the time, a chance meeting between the program’s artistic director and a high school theater teacher led to a partnership with Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School — an arts magnet school in downtown New Haven.

The collaboration sought to include teachers as well as students.

Blancato explained that the partnership extends to teachers at Co-op High School, who lead writing exercises alongside their students during the week of spring workshops.

“The program isn’t designed explicitly for teachers, but they are a crucial part of its success,” said Blancato. *** Wilfredo Ramos ’15, an English major, got involved with the O’Neill Playwriting Program this year. He heard about the program late in his Yale career and decided to give it go.

For Ramos, the program has become an important outlet for creative expression as well as a place to connect with others. The O’Neill Playwriting Program brought together three different communities that had felt disconnected to him before, through a shared love of writing and a desire to hone the playwright’s craft. Ramos got to connect with students he wouldn’t have met otherwise.

When reflecting on the O’Neill Playwriting Program’s setup and purpose, he emphasized its “distinctive crossgenerational aspect.”

This crossover spills into the art produced by the different groups of students. When three disparate groups come together to share creative space, the work that is done often proves lively and refreshing.

Undergraduate member Dave Harris ’16 didn’t find this to be the case at the get-go: what he found was a hesitancy among his mentees to try something new. “What I noticed on the first day of the program was that the high school students read … mostly Shakespeare,” Harris said. “I wanted a chance to teach them that their voice was significant, and no matter how insignificant they thought it was, it could be turned into art.”

By the end of the program, Harris felt

JON

Calhoun Cabaret // 2, 8 p.m.

It’s a musical. It’s based on a dystopian short story by George Saunders.

It’s a lot of things.

he had partly accomplished his mission, by releasing the students he was mentoring from the artistic restriction they initially felt, and which he himself felt while growing up.

Carney echoes this sentiment. When the high school students finally found their personal voices and embraced those voices with pride, they delivered bold scripts. They came to pursue darker, more emotional themes.

“Reading their scripts sometimes gave me insight into the kind of stuff high school students actually deal with,” she said.

Ryan Campbell DRA ’15 recalls several occasions when one of the high school students he was mentoring had a “breakthrough moment.” They saw how theater could actually relate to their own lives and be a vehicle for their own stories. *** The O’Neill Playwriting Program not only has an artistic purpose — it builds a sense of community that goes beyond dramaturgical considerations.

Robert Esposito, who has been teaching at Co-op High School since 2005, noted the impact the program had on his students — especially his African-American students.

For one thing, Co-op students have found role models through the program: people who look like them, do the things they do and care about challenging them artistically.

Esposito adds that the new, unfamiliar environment of the program confers benefits on the high school students.

Co-op students are able to get out of the house and away from distractions.

They have the chance to engage with

their craft in a secluded, yet supportive community, whose close bond he partly attributes to a program retreat.

“While on retreat, we got really close with the entire group of high school students as well as with the graduate students involved in the program,” says Anya Richkind ’16, an undergraduate involved in the program. The small size of the group made the program personal and intimate. *** Despite the success the program has enjoyed thus far, challenges accompany a Yale-New Haven collaboration like this one.

According to Blancato, “It’s a bit of a trick every year to find the right dates for the Annual Festival of New Work that don’t conflict with other performances and events at Yale or Co-op High School,” she said.

But this might be a good problem to have. New Haven has an incredibly vibrant art scene, Blancato adds, and the O’Neill Playwriting Program is only a very small piece of that. It’s a little fish in a big pond.

The O’Neill Playwriting Program, Harris emphasizes, marks a step toward fostering a lasting relationship between the arts scene at Yale and in New Haven.

Harris hopes that this collaboration will be expanded to collaborations in other fields, such as spoken word poetry.

“It’s a great feeling,” he said.

“Through the program, students can come to Yale and hear their words read

by Yale actors and take that work back to their homes in New Haven.”

Contact GAYATRI SABHARWAL at gayatri.sabharwal@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: The short story “Jon” by George Saunders. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking and perfect.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

Throwing Shade at “50 Shades” // BY SOFIA BRAUNSTEIN

I went to see “50 Shades of Grey” on Valentine’s Day. Some friends and I thought it would be funny to watch such an antiromantic movie on a day devoted to romance itself. “50 Shades of Grey” was expectedly unremarkable: The dialogue was stilted; the acting, mediocre; the plot, vapid.

Perhaps the only saving grace of the movie was its distinct color palette and cinematography.

I was okay with those facts given that I’d come looking for nothing more than entertainment, to laugh uncomfortably at the sex scenes and make snarky comments on the character development. When the movie began, it certainly seemed to fulfill this

purpose with stimulating conversations such as, “I want you to make love to me.” “I don’t make love. I fuck. Hard.”

Yet as the movie progressed, I began to find it less funny and take it more seriously. I found myself salivating at the square jawline and pock-marked six-pack of Christian Grey. His forceful rhetoric and arrogant tone became enticing rather than aggravating.

Midway through the movie, I realized I had fallen for the man I had vowed to disdain.

If you were to read a quick synopsis of the movie, it would read as a disturbing love story of a meek young woman who falls for an abusive, stalkerish, wealthy

young bachelor with a penchant for bondage. From this simple vantage point, this story is anything but appealing.

So what has made this story fuel for the private fantasies of so many?

It’s a simple but depressing answer: attraction.

Had Christian Grey been depicted as an old man with missing teeth or even as a young unattractive man, he would have immediately been described as creepy.

Christian acts inappropriately on many occasions throughout the movie. When he first takes Anastasia back after stalking her at a bar, she wakes up to find her-

self in a completely new outfit that Christian changed her into while she was unconscious. He then proceeds to feed her while she’s in bed, crawling up to her and biting on the piece of toast she is eating.

Later on in the movie, when Anastasia decides that she is uncomfortable with the contract Christian has drawn up, detailing what is and is not allowed during their sexual encounters, she texts him to terminate their relationship. Upon coming home, she finds him in her bedroom with two wine glasses, asking her to reconsider her decision.

Christian becomes progressively more and more controlling.

In an initially seeming romantic

gesture, he buys her a brand new car as a graduation present but sells her beloved old Bug without telling her. At one point, she tells him she’s going to visit Georgia to see her mother; she arrives, and whom should she run into but the man she was fleeing.

Disturbingly, each of these situations leads Anastasia to fall further in love with him when, in reality, they should serve as a red flag. Replace Christian with an unattractive man and she wouldn’t have wanted to be within a hundred miles of him after their first encounter.

By depicting these scenes and Anastasia’s positive responses to Christian’s inappropriate behav-

ior, “50 Shades” condones emotional abuse. It romanticizes behavior that could have legal repercussions in any other context.

But one can also leave the theater with a different message, viewing the movie as a way to reflect on a disconcerting aspect of human nature: our greater acceptance of illicit behavior when the perpetrators are visually appealing.

I left the theater questioning whether it was I, rather than Christian Grey, that was 50 shades of fucked up.

Contact SOFIA BRAUNSTEIN at sofia.braunstein@yale.edu .

WHICH MIDTERMPROCRASTINATION SHOW IS RIGHT FOR YOU? Midterm season is upon us, and thus everything is terrible. Yalies are currently trapped in a vortex of studying for tests and complaining about February. But, like a siren calling to you from a distant shore, TV can distract you from all of life’s most pressing troubles. So cuddle up with a dining hall mug of hot chocolate and a Netflix account and watch a few great episodes. It’ll make your hypothermic limbs hurt less.

Here are the best procrastination shows for …

Pre-Meds: “Jane the Virgin” “Jane the Virgin” is a delightful show on the CW (not actu-

inseminate the wrong patient.

MADELINE KAPLAN MADTV ally an oxymoron), currently in its first season. A telenovela with a healthy, hilarious dose of self-awareness, “Jane” takes up the question: What if a smart, spunky virgin was accidentally inseminated with the sperm of a super hot guy? It’s great for pre-meds, who may be most in need of a light comedic distraction during midterms. Plus, “Jane” imparts some great medical advice: Don’t accidentally

Global Affairs Majors: “The Americans” The Cold War is still going strong, despite rumors to the contrary. At least on FX. “The Americans” is set in the 1980s, in a suburb of Virginia. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are Russian KGB agents who pose as — you guessed it — Americans.

They wear glamorous wigs, craft ingenious disguises and have lots of crazy sex. You know, diplomacy.

wish those adults were children, then you are a terrible person and also you would enjoy watching “MasterChef Junior.”

Ramsay is actually pretty nice to these kids — and it’s not hard to see why. They could be cooking in Michelin-starred restaurants, using absurdly difficult techniques to prepare unpronounceable ingredients. Nothing brings on a Midterm-Season Existential Crisis like watching 11-yearolds who are already more talented than you will ever be.

to that behemoth of a series.

But “Better Call Saul,” which focuses on Walter White’s seedy lawyer, Saul Goodman, is a very different show: more satirical and less suspenseful. It’s a black comedy with a seething core of cynicism, about lawyers, clients and pretty much everyone else. Most important: The show is set in Albuquerque, which is a very sunny place. Remember the sun? Me neither.

Final Cut Also-Rans: “MasterChef Junior” If you like watching Gordon Ramsay yell at adult chefs but

People Sick of the Cold: “Better Call Saul” This one is also great for people who loved “Breaking Bad,” since it is — egads! — a prequel

Everyone: “Freaks and Geeks” If you’ve never seen “Freaks and Geeks,” a wonderful onehit wonder of a series, then the busiest part of the semester is the perfect time to start watching. Starring Linda Cardinelli,

and the Dominos, the band he led at the time. The result was a six-minute epic almost unsurpassed in its extraterrestrial ambition. Whereas Hendrix starts with a smooth groove, Clapton makes his guitar into a trumpet, and begins the song with a stately fanfare, the sharpness of which threatens to puncture the atmosphere.

Then the wondrous lead guitar breaks through, marvelous, ethereal, almost otherworldly in its stark clarity. In its vast reach, it rises above the other instrumentation and floats like a piece of burning paper, transcending the constraints of gravity. The vocals — split between Clapton and keyboardist Bobby Whitlock — are harsh and raw, but as the two singers stretch their ranges, their voices begin to shimmer with a certain brightness. The strangely surreal lyrics, meanwhile, approach incomprehensibility, except for one phrase, haunting in its simplicity: “fly on, little wing.” But soon this proves sadly ephemeral, as that majestic guitar overwhelms all

else and drifts towards another dimension. “CLAPTON IS GOD,” proclaimed graffiti on the London Underground in the early 1960s. That, in short, is “Little Wing” — Clapton’s guitar, aspiring to apotheosis.

Then there’s Stevie Ray Vaughan’s version. Before his untimely demise in a helicopter crash — far, far too many Southern rock guitarists died in transportation-related accidents — he too made “Little Wing” his own. He reduced the song to nothing more than guitar, bass and drums: no singing and little studio production. But this liberates the song rather than limiting it; whereas Clapton’s guitar soared ever higher, Stevie Ray’s sounds resolutely and comfortably grounded. His sixminute version, twice the length of Hendrix’s, has the same soulfulness, but far more feeling.

With his uncanny ability to coax the entire emotional spectrum out of those six strings, Stevie Ray needed no vocals. At one moment he’s quiet, diminutive, strumming his way along, but

then suddenly he explodes into a cacophony of sound, the guitar snarling and sneering, until he’s back in that irresistible groove, where the guitar’s tone rings with a velvety richness. Look no further for a masterpiece of pathos and technical skill: it’s all here, the pride and the joy, the pain and the devastation. Stevie Ray may have better tracks — “Voodoo Child” is a reasonable candidate — but “Little Wing” demonstrates the full extent of his remarkable abilities.

Both Clapton’s and Stevie Ray’s versions certainly seem “better” than Hendrix’s original. The later guitarists succeed because they take Hendrix’s skeletal fragment and imbue it with a new meaning and new life. It takes a particular genius to reinvent the works of another, a certain ambition and confidence — arrogance, perhaps, to think that you might elevate the work of a master to an even higher level. The best songs invite the best covers.

Think of “Hallelujah,” a track which, when Jeff Buckley sang

Jason Segel, Seth Rogen and erstwhile Yalie James Franco, “Freaks and Geeks” follows two groups of Michigan high school students in 1980. The Freaks — sullen, smug and druggy — and the Geeks — dweeby and decidedly pre-growth spurt — struggle through adolescence with a poignant humor. Watch it and return to a simpler time, a time before college, when all you had to worry about was crushing social pressure.

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

Fly On, Little Wing // BY NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH There is a moment in “Mystery Train” when the author, Greil Marcus — the preeminent writer on the connections between music and American culture — pauses, looks around in bewilderment, and wonders why critics have never written about Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” with the same intensity and passion as they have fawned over Dylan or the Beatles. It is, to be sure, a curious omission in rock ’n’ roll’s accumulated literature, as few other songs display such a brilliance, such a wonderful malleability.

Jimi Hendrix was probably the finest guitarist of the 1960s, and “Little Wing” counts among his masterworks. That quick pickup at the very outset of the song and the subsequent deeply soulful notes and chords, reverberating and undulating in their own captivating way, are almost indescribable in their beauty and softly transfixing power.

With Hendrix’s tender singing, “Little Wing” is a love song, yes, but only nominally; it sounds more like a rumination on the

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NOAH DAPONTESMITH CRITIC OF NOTES six-stringed instrument itself.

With its odd two-and-a-half minute brevity, the song is an experiment, as Hendrix probes the outer bounds of his medium.

Like many of the Beatles’ early singles — or the entire album “Revolver” — “Little Wing” has the feel of a quick, preliminary sketch, which Hendrix barely has time to scratch down before shaking his head and deciding to scrap it and move on. Hendrix, evidently, didn’t grasp the song’s enormous potential; instead he allowed it to remain unpolished, leaving later guitarists to retread and build upon the path he had laid.

Eric Clapton was the first of those later guitarists. Three years after the release of “Little Wing,” he decided to remake Hendrix’s original with Derek

HOW TO GET INVOLVED IN THEATER AT YALE

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

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Broadway Rehearsal Lofts // 1 p.m.

Finally, an answer to the question we have always wondered about for the past three years.

it, sounded like a biblical revelation, entirely foreign from Leonard Cohen’s original; think of “Thunder Road,” a song that assumes a new identity every time Bruce Springsteen performs its grand drama on stage; think of “I Shall Be Released,” a tale of confinement and escape that becomes something unique each time a new performer takes it up. The greatest songs must be malleable — they must never sound the same twice and they must offer the tantalizing hope of total reinvention. That is the power and the glory of “Little Wing”: that such a fragmentary palimpsest of a song could give rise to some of the greatest guitar playing ever heard, albeit in the hands of those who had no role in its original creation. And so “Little Wing” shall never perish, for, just as each generation writes its own version of history, each artist can play a fresh version of Hendrix’s masterwork.

Getting involved in theater at Yale.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

SOME DREAMERS OF THE GOLDEN DREAM // BY CORYNA OGUNSEITAN

// ELIZABETH MILES

Edwin Sanchez’s “Icarus“ is a gorgeous and very modern almost-adaptation of the Greek myth. Though the similarities between Sanchez’s production and the original Icarus are mostly thematic — the plot points are radically different — the myth provides a critical framework with which to understand the play’s subtext. The myth even manifests itself in the stage design: a large, golden sun, intermittently illuminated and darkened throughout the play, dominates the set.

The play shares its central themes with Ovid’s myth, and tells the story of five dreamers: Altagracia is obsessed with helping Primitivo, her wheelchair-bound younger brother, become a famous swimmer; the Gloria, a prototypical Hollywood actress who has fallen from favor but still seeks public recognition; Mr. Ellis, or Mr. E (or “Mystery”),

who wants to forget his past; and Beau, a boy in a ski mask also running from his past. Despite apparent differences, all five characters have remarkable ambition, the desire to accomplish what seems impossible.

Altagracia and Primitivo imagine that one day, Primitivo will swim far enough into the ocean to touch the setting sun. The absurdity of this ambition is only heightened by the fact that Icarus himself did not aspire to touch the sun; he accidentally came close to it, and for that, he died. And yet Primitivo and Altagracia view the impossibility of the task as inspirational, not tragic.

Both characters embody, in their own ways, the archetypal outcast: Primitivo is physically disabled and Altagracia has a severely scarred face. They are two Others whose dream to achieve the superhuman is, in a sense, merely a dream to

prove their humanity.

A similar delusion affects the Gloria, who has the affect of a Hollywood actress without the success. Mikayla Harris ‘17 beautifully plays the actress who is always acting, a role that involves layer upon layer of performance. Unlike Altagracia and Primitivo, the Gloria dreams of re-becoming the starlet she once was.

She works to maintain and substantiate her dream-state; she has known fame and she isn’t ready to give it up.

The set embodies these themes of dream and illusion. The characters are divided — physically and, I would assume, metaphorically — by a piece of driftwood in the center of the stage.

Throughout the play, Altagracia, Mr. E and Primitivo remain to the left. The Gloria and her house, with neither doors nor windows, are stage right. We see directly into her dressing room, where

she puts on her mask — the make-up, wigs and gowns that transform her into the Hollywood bimbo. Though the Gloria is constructed, and therefore closedoff to the world, her house is ironically open. In a sense, we witness the creation of delusion. Primitivo’s beloved ocean is also stage right, in front of the Gloria’s house. A surreally vibrant blue line demarcates the sea, and, as Primitivo plunges painstakingly into the water to practice for his Herculean task, the sun lights up. But the sun is stage left, behind him — his dream is so impossible that he swims in the wrong direction.

Mr. E, who carries at all times a suitcase full of dreams that he pretends to sell to people, stands near the sun. When he opens his suitcase, eerie music begins to play and “Icarus” telegraphs an obvious message: Dreams are Mr. E-rious.

Mr. Ellis is preoccupied with “not star-

ing” at things, with avoiding the construction of memory. He seems the thematic opposite of the Gloria, Altagracia, and Primitivo — instead of inventing a future for himself, he erases the past.

The driftwood in the center of the stage creates two territories: No middleground exists between the two. There are no moderate characters; all of them build their identities from the past and future, never from the present. The play is truly about the construction of the self: what events, already happened or yet to come, will fill the autobiographies we one day recite? “Icarus” is an artistic and thoughtful exploration of this very human dilemma.

Contact CORYNA OGUNSEITAN at coryna.ogunseitan@yale.edu .

Fallen Angel // BY JACOB POTASH “Angels” begins promisingly.

A tableau of partiers frozen in red light …A white-winged angel dancing drunkenly around them … an interlude of Los Angeles radio DJ banter as the lights go up on a funny exchange between a pair named Calvin and Helen.

It’s a charmingly surreal opening, and squarely within the realm of what might be expected from a play whose self-description talks of “the intersection between fantasy and reality.” It’s a shame, too, because the angel conceit turns out to be relatively minor and impossibly stupid. Which brings us to the rest of the play.

Calvin is an LA native. Helen is from Spartanburg, South Carolina. They’ve met at Santa Monica College pre-orientation, and he’s enticed her to dip into his lifestyle of relentless oceanside partying before summer is over. One by one, his private-school friends wake up, and impart bits of information. For example, they like summer. (I know because one of them yelled “God bless summer!” to cheers of affirmation.) Furthermore, they all start college tomorrow. (I learned that when one of them said, “We all start college tomorrow.”)

Shaun, Harry, BB, and Pierce — Calvin’s crew — are very hungover, as BB reveals by exclaiming, “Holy worst hangover ever!”

Pierce is the de facto chieftain: He wakes with a traffic cone on his head, from which he extracts a bag of weed before climbing a picnic table and unleashing a torrent of stoner wisecracks and wisdom. It’s 10 a.m., and everyone opens a beer. The party is back on!

Helen is our avatar as she quizzes the Californians on the logistics of their beach-bum lifestyle and gawks in horror at each reply.

She wears a perturbed look during the entire play, but then, most of the actors’ faces seem stuck in one expression.

Draped in an uninspired mixture of neon, Vans, Hawaiian shirts, floral print, plaid cargo pants, aviators, and flat brim hats, our protagonists (we eventually learn) are entertainment executives’ kids who have uniformly decided to cling to LA for another four years — except for Ivy League Harry.

Predictably, they employ the word “like,” to, like, not-so-great effect. Less predict-

SUNDAY FEBRUARY

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ably, they use phrases like “Jesus tap dancing Christ” and say “boink” to designate the carnal act.

When it comes time to clarify Pierce’s hazy backstory, a lifeguard appears onstage to divert the slacker-king while the friends solemnly recount the legend to Helen.

Pierce, actually two years ahead of the others, was a star football player with nationalleague potential who mysteriously quit the sport at the peak of his success. A tangle of subplots explains his current status: a charismatic, perennially inebriated beachdweller enervated by a rotating gang of high schoolers. Otis Blum ’15, who wrote the play, is competent as Pierce but commands no gravitas.

The storyline soon threatens to break down into clichés — first up, sex! BB and Harry flirt hard in a stereotypically hot-girland-nerd-finally-getting-together type of way. His impending departure for The Ivy League dooms their romance, but she spends the interim passionately asking questions like “Do you think you’ll ever smoke weed?”

Helen, for her part, abandons Calvin for a fling with Pierce but has to compete with exgirlfriend Emily, who, whatever her reasons for intermittently popping up at Pierce’s hobo dominion, is a bright spot of subtle acting.

Next up, violence! Somewhere in the twoand-a-half-hour play, we are made privy to the distressing disappearance of 14-yearold Stella Mallick from last night’s rager. Her older brother thinks Pierce is guilty, and so they fight. (Let’s all try to forget the two men staggering about, yelling “Stella! Stella! I want my baby down here”).

The band of partiers is likeable and energetic. That much should be said. But BB’s manic laughter, Harry’s choice to downplay all his important lines, the general bungling of key pieces of dialogue, and the unpleasant sense that actors are lapsing into improvisation will likely test audiences’ patience.

“Angels” should be credited with having a plot, momentum, and some dramatic tension. Looking back, I feel some fondness for the characters, if only because I was in their shoes about 24 weeks ago. But the final point that must be driven home is that a minority

GOLD AND GLITTER

Yale Collection of Musical Instruments // 3 p.m.

Experts in old instruments perform in drag. (Just kidding about the last part.)

of lines failed to induce a cringe or grimace.

Soliloquies about Los Angeles contain epigrammatic nuggets like “No one’s actually from LA. We’re all tourists.” One-liners pack as little punch as “He didn’t die. He was just moderately displaced.” After being compared to trash by his opponent, Pierce challenges him to a fight with the retort, “Bring your rubber gloves and a trash bag. I am trash, and just like trash, I can’t be gotten rid of.” Vouching for the epicness of a party, one guy says, “The girls wear pretty much nothing but the scantiest of outfits!” Climactic moments are punctuated with tortured utterances of “What the fuck, dude?”

To the critic ever on the lookout for an emblematic line, inadvertently an apt commentary on the play itself, one standout was: “Ain’t nobody got time for your theater nonsense.”

I could go on. A neglect of lighting and sound effects … noxious nods to Tupac Shakur … Ivy League Boy whining about being hit on at a gay bar (after going to a gay bar) … Bechdel Test out the window.

“Angels” has an insistent way of not being over.

Perhaps my favorite moment came during intermission in the form of “City of Angels,” a transcendent ode to the city. If you’re looking for more melancholic mythologizing of youthful excess and urban ennui, go listen to Drake’s new mixtape. If you’re looking for a buddy comedy with something to say about entertainment culture, see “The Interview.”

Heck, read “Looking for Alaska,” that cheesy, teeny volume of pseudo-philosophical pulp.

For those of you who choose to see “Angels:” the show runs through Saturday, Feb. 21st.

Directed by Max Fischer; produced by Hannah Sachs; with Colin Groundwater as Calvin, William Viederman as Shawn, Lindsay Falkenberg as Helen, Cody Kahoe as Harry, Charles Margossian as Tyler, Logan Kozal as BB, Otis Blum as Pierce, Naima Hebrail Kidjo as Emily, Gia Velasquez as Stella.

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

//KAIFENG WU

WKND RECOMMENDS: Realizing “all that glitters is not gold.” Shakespeare knew it, but apparently Smashmouth didn’t.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

NO HESITATIONS WHATSOEVER // BY DAVID MCCULLOUGH

E

dwin Sanchez DRA ’94 is a playwright, novelist and teacher. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx, he studied acting and writing in New York before being accepted to the the Yale School of Drama.

His plays have since been performed across the country as well as in Russia, Switzerland and Brazil. Sanchez also writes for TV and has a novel awaiting publication, on top of teaching at the Einhorn School of Performing Arts at Primary Stages in New York City. His play “Icarus” goes up this week at the University Theater as the Dramat’s Spring Mainstage. WKND caught up with Sanchez to chat about his experience at Yale, what he likes about teaching, and whether the Dramat has done “Icarus” justice (hint: yes).

A: YSD was interesting because I had never [gone to college], so getting in was kind of a surprise to me. And when I got the letter of acceptance I skidded because I was intimidated by the idea of going there. I was sure I would not know anything. My interview was pretty bizarre. They asked me what my favorite Shakespeare play was, and I said the one I read was good. There was sort of a pause, and I thought, “Okay.” But it was because of my writing that I got in. I was very fortunate because of the students that I was with. I bet I learned as much from the classmates as from my teachers there. And I had plays there that continue to have a life. So my time there was very fruitful for me.

Q: What made you want to apply, especially without an undergraduate background?

A: I wasn’t going to apply at all. I was in the Circle Reps Playwriting lab back in the day and the person who ran it was Byron Stitch, who was the playwriting chair at Yale at the time. The thing at the Circle Rep was that they had a reading every Monday, and I would always arrive late because of work, so my comment would invariably be, “The ending really works.” And at the big Christmas party, I thought for sure he was going to tell me if I couldn’t get there on time I shouldn’t do it because it’s not fair to other people. But instead he said, “Have you ever thought of applying to Yale?”

And I looked at him and said [sarcastically], “Yeah, every day.”

And he said, “No, no, you should.”

So I did. And when I got in it was really intimidating in the beginning. But I really came to love my time there.

Q: And where would you say these aspirations to be in theater, to become a writer, come from?

A: I had gone to New York when I was 21, when I first arrived, as an actor. I found that all the roles were for drug dealers, pimps or gang members. And I thought that was kind of limited. So I decided I wanted to write the characters I hadn’t seen. That’s when I started getting into

writing. And I really fell in love with it. I had written a bit in Puerto Rico, but that was when it really took hold for me. And then I won a few awards, so that really set me on the path.

Q: You have a very diverse body of work, as you mentioned earlier, between short plays, plays, TV scripts, now a novel.

Would say there is any overlap in these different areas? What are some of the differences? And how do you handle the bits of adversity that naturally arise with each style?

A: Well, the first time you do something different, whether you transition from playwriting, to TV, to film, your reaction is to panic. And then you relax. I remember I went to the Circle Reps film lab, and I would think, “I can’t do this or I can’t do that.” But every night they would play movies there, and they had the scripts to all the movies. And after a while I could actually see the pages of the scripts on the screen. And I could see how it happened. I got it. It’s about approaching it with the rules it has. You find where you can play with the rules, where you can bend them.

Q: Where would you say the inspiration for these stories comes from?

A: I got together with a group of dramatists and we were discussing this. What we came up with is that you have a final captive in your head. And little bits and pieces go in there. And then the trigger happens. And you think, okay, now I’m ready to write the play. When I prepared for “Boy With Shoes On,” the trigger was when I read an article in the New York Times about a teenage boy who lived in a single room with his whole family — like five people living in one room. And they asked him where he would want to go to be alone, and that blows my mind. Every play has a trigger. Every play is different.

Q: As a teacher, do you teach these kinds of ideas? And what difficulties do you confront?

A: The most important thing for me when I teach writing is that a) I want the room to be a safe place that you can try something that may not work and that’s okay. And b) it’s my opinion. You have to

come in with something you’re passionate about, you want to tell this idea. One thing I also tell my students is you never bring in more than ten pages. I always tell them, in case you get off on the wrong track, you start going down the wrong road, you can always turn back. You haven’t committed this entire journey to one direction and after it all you find that’s not where you wanted to go. And sometimes all you need to do is five minutes, and then you step away. One thing I try to do is to take away the idea that you have to set aside an entire day to write.

No! Sometimes you’re waiting in line and a couple of good lines hit you, and you think, “Oh! I want to remember those.”

Q: And what do you find most rewarding in your teaching?

A: I love it when students bring something in that takes you someplace else.

That just bowls me over and I get so excited. And they’re all different voices.

Every class has different people writing. And all at different levels of their writing. And different stories they want to tell. The fun part is when they get to tell it as honestly as they can. And then it becomes a joy.

Q: And do you see enthusiasm from the students?

A: Oh yeah, tremendous. I remember once a student came in and she had written scene after scene and knocked it out of the park, and we kept waiting for the next scene. And when she came in with another scene, she felt it didn’t work.

And she looked to the group she said, “Oh well, they all can’t work.” And I treasure that. That she was that comfortable.

Q: Switching gears, can you tell us a bit about “Icarus”? What are some of the main issues the play deals with?

A: “Icarus” is really my take on “Beauty and the Beast”: when you feel unworthy of love, and two of the characters feel unworthy of love for different reasons.

And it’s getting to that point when you allow that vulnerability. And that gives you a certain strength. So it’s really these two people who have nothing to do with each other who end up falling in love with each other, and it’s because they’re

so different from each other.

Q: What are some of the challenges you had in writing it?

A: Well, it is a gorgeous production, and that’s why I was so struck when I saw it. Especially by how short some of the scenes are, like two lines. And I look at it and say that I applaud the audacity I had at writing them and also how well they did them. One of the great things I discovered as a writer was that, as a writer, I don’t have to worry about how it’s going to get done. I have a design team and a director and actors who are going to bring it to life. My job is to be as honest as I can on stage. I’m thrilled by the other eyes and the other hands that come into the production. My job is just to write the best play I can, then have everybody come in and add their art to it.

Q: And what would you say allows you to have your project and say, “Here’s my art, now you add what you need to it?” That’s a willingness you don’t see too often.

A: You have to feel like your work is being

respected. If you let someone come in and take it apart … then you think they don’t respect the work. If you trust the people then it becomes a joyous experience. At rehearsal you want to be very respectful, and you want to be able to find things. But I want to respect when an actor is stuck in a scene and to see how they will do it. You don’t want to give them a mind reading, that’s insane.

Respect their journey. What makes it weird is that as a playwright, you’ve already gone through the journey, and you want to see them go through their journey. They have a map, I don’t want to take their hand and walk them to it, you want them to get there on their own.

Q: And would you say you saw that level of respect and level of ownership from the people at Yale who have been putting on your show this week?

A: Oh god yes. I’ve been very pleased. I thought it was just so beautifully done.

No hesitations whatsoever.

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

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IT’S ABOUT APPROACHING IT WITH THE RULES IT HAS. YOU FIND WHERE YOU CAN PLAY WITH THE RULES, WHERE YOU CAN BEND THEM.

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Q: Can you tell us a bit about your time at Yale School of Drama?