WEEKEND

// FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014

The Sharper Image Lavinia Borzi and Vivian Wang look for clarity in Yale’s approach to tech innova-­‐ tion. // page 3

HOPE

B4

HUNGER

B6, B7

HUMANS

B9

GREAT CAESAR AIMS HIGH

WE GRAPH OUR FOOD

THE LIVES OF NEW HAVENITES

David Whipple discusses the band’s latest music video.

WEEKEND charted all our favorite Yale delicacies so you don’t have to.

Jennifer Lu and Alex Schmeling take portraits of small business owners.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

THE LIES WE TELL BUT THE SECRETS WE KEEP // BY EMMA PLATOFF High school small talk was always themed. During junior year it was the SATs. The next fall was nothing but college applications.

At prom, no one could think of anything more intelligent than “Omigod, you look amazing!” to say to their acquaintances.

During college breaks, as it turns out, the theme becomes even more specific: “Imply (or explicitly state) your hatred for all things hometown-related by overenthusiastically expressing how excited you are to go back to school.” At every party I went to, “When do you go back?” came before “How are you?” Reactions were standardized and immediate. “Tomorrow” was always met with jealousy while a weepy “Next weekend” garnered a sympathetic groan. Instead of enjoying each other’s company, we wanted to prove how exciting, challeng-

ing, amazing our new lives were by complaining that we weren’t currently living them.

But spending a month describing our impossibly perfect college experience conditioned us to believe it actually was that way, and when we came back, we were struck by disappointment. When you’re far from people it’s easy to forget their imperfections. Complaints you were raging about as recently as finals week — your roommate’s annoying ringtone, that one friend’s constant relationship problems, your stand partner’s habit of coming late to rehearsal — are forgotten in light of your desire to go back.

These new lives are great, of course, but they are hardly perfect. I have problems at school that I would never have to deal with at home — empty fridges, no available washing machines, midterms that

Deconstructing the Section Asshole

TSANG

ADDENBROOKE

PLATOFF

WEEKEND VIEWS

// BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE

are actually hard. Screw dates will fall through and tears will be shed.

The emergency chocolate stockpile will be raided. The toilet paper will run out. Your free time evaporates in ways you never could have predicted.

These are issues we didn’t have in high school, so it only follows that we often have trouble understanding. Most of us have never had to live with our friends, to jointly clean common areas, to balance our need for sleep with our desire to be the roommate who’s always available as a therapist. For 18 years, we were used to cohabitants who were slightly more accommodating: Our parents always turned down the volume when we asked them to. We never realized that it is impossible sometimes to work in our own bedrooms. We didn’t have to make dinner plans every night.

We forgot to mention these issues to our high school friends over break — we must have been too busy assuring them that we always have somewhere to go out on Wednesdays. We also forgot to mention how stressed we sometimes get, how sometimes a seminar can feel like getting run over (then reversed over and run over again) by an 18-wheeler; how we never sleep enough; how there’s never time to go to the gym.

It’s okay though — we’re freshmen. We haven’t yet learned to balance, so instead we overcompensate. We pregame. We reevaluate.

We remember. Maybe over spring break, we’ll tell our friends a different story.

Contact EMMA PLATOFF at emma.platoff@yale.edu .

What dirty dishes taught me about people // BY CHLOE TSANG

So, be prepared for the emergence of your section assholes this semester. But, before you light your torches and begin the witchhunts, remember that we have all evolved from the same originating force. We don’t like to admit it, but there is a bit of the section asshole in each of us. Maybe that’s why we’re so obsessed with hating him — his charm, style and cunning are, ultimately, enviable. I’m probably someone’s worst nightmare in section. You might be mine. Bring cookies and we can come to an agreement.

It’s true — college bathrooms suck. But you want to know what sucks even more? Dirty college bathrooms.

Sharing two showers and two sinks with 16 other girls is by no means an easy feat. This daunting activity is only aggravated by the fact that an unknown girl has been leaving her dirty dishes on our bathroom counter for weeks.

The cleaning staff leaves them untouched; my floormates leave them untouched; I leave them untouched. So there they remain — completely, utterly untouched.

The dishes have certainly been a conversation starter whenever I find myself in the bathroom with another.

Here’s how our tête-à-tête typically goes: “These dishes are disgusting. Who keeps leaving them here?”

“I don’t know, but whoever is doing this is so rude and selfish and annoying. I really hope someone cleans this up.”

Fin. This exchange has taken place between virtually every girl on my floor, which means one of two things: Either the culprit doesn’t live on the second floor of E and is going out of her way to walk up or down the stairs and meander into our bathroom to use it as her personal dish drop, or the culprit is among us and simply unwilling to own up to it. My money is on the latter. Everybody knows the dishes are a nuisance, yet we’re all perfectly content with letting them sit there, hoping they’ll magically disappear one day.

Some girls have even gone so far as to place Post-it notes on the dishes, begging whoever is responsible to clean them up.

I often find myself sympathizing with and relating to both the girl who is leaving her dishes and the girls who suffer at the hands of this wrongdoer. In my “Intro to Psychology” class last semester, we learned about theory of mind, which is the ability to recognize one’s own desires, intentions and knowledge as different from that of another person’s. In essence, instead of just assuming one’s actions are reflective of character, we have to consider the context.

Sometimes, I think back to this concept and choose to imagine the culprit as the typical Yale student who has no choice but to scarf down her meals and ditch her dishes in the bathroom because she has no time before her six classes or shift at Bass or Model UN meeting. Other times, I shake my fist at said student and complain about her dishes, only to leave them there so the next person can pick up where my frustrations left off. A part of me feels like I (and, by extension, the other girls on my floor) choose to tolerate these dishes because we appreciate the message it sends — that we, as the blameless bystanders, refuse to cave and clean up the mess for her.

We all have elements of both parties in us: the girl leaving her dishes and the girls who refuse to compromise their innocence. On the one hand, our lives as Yale students consistently verge on the chaotic, and we forget the direct ways in which our actions may impact others. On the other hand, we become so consumed in our finger pointing and criticism of others that we forget to consider the whole story, that the so-called wrongdoers are real people who, occasionally, slip up.

Or, more importantly, we forget to consider that we ourselves could be the solution.

I’d like to believe a Yale community is a collaborative one in which we are able to call on one another for help when we make mistakes — without fear of disapprobation. So to my fellow floormates: try to acknowledge that the “wrongdoer” is indeed one of our own and that your character is not compromised by lending a helping hand (in fact, it might be strengthened). And to the owner of the dishes: Please try to step up to the plate (pun intended) and refrain from leaving your mess so that our bathroom can be tolerable — or, at least as tolerable as college bathrooms can be.

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

Contact CHLOE TSANG at chloe.tsang@yale.edu .

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

There is one part of our history and tradition that the tour guides frequently leave out of their “guide to Yale.” Yale is home to a strange, rare form of mythical creature. It has haunted the classrooms since Yale’s founding in 1701, and lives among us: eating in our residential colleges, and taking up much-prized space in Bass Café. Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, this monster is much more fearsome.

The section asshole takes many forms.

As spring semester gets underway, and discussion sections begin to take shape, I can’t be the only one wondering who in the room is the embodiment of this mythical being.

Part of the fear comes from the section asshole’s great manipulation and power, as he waits until sections are locked in place before revealing himself, leaving you with no time to escape.

And unfortunately, you can’t guess who he is from an initial glance. Even the most unsuspecting of students can turn into this deadly creature when his favorite passage from the Iliad becomes fair game. Moreover, Yale Facebook doesn’t offer a “section asshole” filter, making the search that much more elusive.

But in my short time at Yale, through observations in seminar and section alike, I have come to identify the two distinct types of this foreign species.

The Know-It-All This section asshole reads every word, and then some. They will usually dominate conversation with cross-references and discussion of obscure and arguably irrelevant comments on historical background. They seem to know more than everyone else in the room, and usually evoke a sense of “How on earth did I get into Yale?” We “laymen” should probably aspire to reflect their hard-working nature, but the Know-It-All separates himself from the average Yalie by trying TOO hard. They read the entire syllabus (not just the paper syllabus, but all the books on it, too!) during reading period, “just to make sure they were going to enjoy the class.” You can count on them to reference one of the minor footnoted texts in the optional supplemental

F R I D AY JA N UA RY 3 1

reading during section. Among most Yalies, there is a gentleman’s agreement that we will do what it takes to get that 25% participation grade, and nothing more. But unfortunately, the Know-It-All breed of section asshole has taken it upon himself to break this honor. It remains unclear how they even have the time.

The BS-er In contrast to the Know-It-All, this particular species of section asshole never reads, yet always seems to get away with it. His most popular weapon is the “general statement,” often recognizable as the first line of the introduction to the text in question. He combines this with a charming nature that convinces the professor that he spends all day in the study carrels of Bass and that the SAE sweatshirt was just borrowed from a suitemate. A special technique you may notice in a subdivision of this form of section asshole can often lead to them being mistaken as a “Know-It-All.” They’ll continually reference the first, and probably only, text they read. Alternatively, they’ll just reference random texts that probably showed up in previous courses, on the New York Times Bestseller List or on their Amazon Recommendations.

You’ll fear them because their confidence is so convincing that you may find yourself mesmerized by what they’re saying — even if your conscience is telling you that it’s all a farce.

“THE YOGIN AND THE MADMAN”

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Sterling Memorial Library, International Room // 2 p.m.

Learn the Tibetan method and make Special Agent Dale Cooper proud.

Rounding up

A 3.8 is basically a 4.0, let’s not be stingy here.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

ACCESS DENIED // BY LAVINIA BORZI AND VIVIAN WANG

When Charlie Croom ’12 picks up the phone, he is in the middle of his morning walk to work. This phone call has been hard to schedule — Croom’s job at Twitter takes up most of his time, and it took hard work to get there.

Before Croom arrived in Silicon Valley, he had acquired extensive experience with technology in college. In addition to codeveloping Yale Bluebook, an application for sorting course information that was later bought by the university, he also helped found HackYale, a series of free student-run lectures to teach other students how to program.

Croom is one of many tech entrepreneurs who emerged out of the Ivy League, but his alma mater is not a university that’s usually associated with cutting edge education in technology — especially recently. While many other elite institutions have been at the forefront of discussions about state of the art tech education, Yale has lagged behind.

“In comparison to the noise that’s coming from Harvard, Stanford, MIT a lot of people might ask, ‘When is Yale going to have a Zuckerberg or Gates?’” said Rafi Khan ’15, the current co-director of HackYale.

But, as Croom and Khan can attest, innovative Yalies do exist. They build apps and design websites, often on their own time. But at the curricular and administrative level, these students needs are not fully met.

Yale’s Computer Science department is currently oversubscribed. In a Jan. 24 interview with the News, Director of Undergraduate Studies Stanley Eisenstat pointed out that enrollment in Computer Science 223 has nearly tripled in the last three years. This surge has not been matched by a similar increase in computer science faculty.

More pressingly, students in Yale’s tech community face concerns about their freedom to design new programs in the first place. Yale’s data policies have come under fire recently, prompting calls for more openness and less University interference.

Although Croom — speaking from Silicon Valley — acknowledged some deficiencies back in New Haven, he said he believes that the administration has shown interest in trying to support innovation. It has simply lacked a clear idea of how to do so.

“Yale has shown that it wants to get involved, but I think they underestimated how quickly tech culture can move forward,” he said.

And if Yale does want to catch up, it must take a closer look at both its policies and its approach.

FORCE QUIT

Two weeks ago, Yale’s administration set off a firestorm when it blocked Yale Bluebook+ (YBB+), the popular course shopping website designed by brothers Peter Xu ’14 and Harry Yu ’14. Without any warning, over 1000 students suddenly found themselves locked out of the application. Classroulette, another student-developed course website, became unreachable on the same day.

Xu and Yu said that University Reg-

istrar Gabriel Olszewski had contacted them a few days before shopping period began, citing concerns about their violation of the University’s data policies.

The brothers offered to revamp YBB+ to meet the administration’s demands.

Instead, they woke up on Monday to find the website blocked.

“We thought they’d work with us to resolve the problems,” Yu said, reflecting back on the experience. “But they just shut it down.”

The brothers did not hear back from the registrar for several days. In the meantime, students expressed their frustration with the shutdown in various forms: Some took to Facebook, while others emailed Yale College Dean Mary Miller. The story was picked up by the Washington Post, and several days later, the New York Times.

On Jan. 17, four days after the shutdown, Miller released an open letter to the Yale community in which she acknowledged that Xu and Yu had acted with “good intentions,” but maintained that they had violated Yale’s acceptable use policy. She said that the administration and developers were working toward a “positive outcome.”

Students didn’t buy it. Over the next three days, outrage increased. Students continued to email Miller and expressed their thoughts via social media. Xu wrote an op-ed in the News, as did Geoffrey Litt ’14, the developer of Classroulette.

But, for Sean Haufler ’14, this wasn’t enough. On Jan. 19, Haufler wrote a post on his personal blog denouncing the administration’s actions and announcing that he had created a Google Chrome extension that replicated the features of YBB+ — but without violating the copyright concerns the administration had cited.

His intentions in developing this extension were twofold: first, to show that Yale did not have the right to specify the way in which students view data, and second, to demonstrate that blocking websites is futile.

“It started just as a thought experiment — what if we built a piece of software that was completely kosher on the trademark and data security end but still presented data in a way that Yale didn’t like? What would they do then?”

Haufler said. “And then I said, ‘I’ll build it.’”

His “thought experiment” was shared on Facebook 376 times and tweeted 1,627 times. It also climbed to the front page of Reddit.

Miller released a second open letter on Jan. 20, again maintaining that the University had acted within its rights, but acknowledging that it could have been more patient with its actions.

“Questions of who owns data are evolving before our very eyes,” she wrote. In addition to promising the formation of a committee to further investigate the issue, she promised to “state more clearly the requirement/expectation for student software developers to consult with the University before creating applications that depend on Yale data,” and to “create an easy means for them to do so.”

What this administrative openness

will look like still remains to be seen.

TRAVELLING BYTES To say that the YBB+ shutdown has sparked conversation outside of our gothic walls would be an understatement.

In the past two weeks, the YBB+ story has been analyzed along several different narratives. So much so that the issue is no longer YBB+ itself, but a wider debate on student rights, data policy and all the rules in the student tech game.

On Jan. 21, the New York Times called the story a “local campus issue” that turned “into something of a civil rights cause.”

The Times also put the issue into a new, provocative light. After all, Yu and Xu had built a better version of the course catalogue; only a few years ago, a Harvard student by the name of Mark Zuckerberg had come up with the idea of a better student directory.

This and other portrayals of the YBB+ shutdown questioned the life of student tech developers at Yale, and the severity of the administration’s response.

Brad Rosen, a lawyer who teaches Computer Science at Yale College, was contacted by the Times for the YBB+ story. And, days later while sitting at a corner table at Claire’s, he explained his viewpoint in more detail.

To Rosen, this specific issue is not, as many — especially those on the outside — have perceived it, about privacy and data access broadly. This was an anomaly, a problem that emerged from an unfortunate clash between an outdated policy on course evaluations (which had not been discussed since 2002, when the faculty first agreed to publish said evaluations) and the fact that students take this information particularly (and aggressively) to heart during shopping period.

Rosen said that people misperceived the YBB+ issue as an unjust repression of data freedom in general. And that many, even those who advocate for totally open access to data, are asking for more than they would enjoy.

Rosen gesticulated with enthusiasm — he joked about students claiming to want complete openness who would be angry if Yale published all the information it collected on them. This would include when they go to the gym, which dining halls they swipe in at and even where they sleep.

The result of this hyperbole? A possibly misrepresented, overly blown-up debacle. “It’s not a sexy issue!” Rosen concluded.

Both in accordance with and in opposition to Rosen’s view, outside onlookers have painted yet another issue — one which relates Yale’s management of the YBB+ shutdown to a larger trend of bureaucratic oppression.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been a particularly vocal participant. Just a few days after the Yale Bluebook+ shutdown, FIRE released a report on free speech on college campuses. Yale fared comparatively well in the report, although it was called out for a handful of restric-

tive policies.

Harvey Silverglate, a trial lawyer, author and self-defined “civil liberties ‘activist’” (he hates the word but “it works”), works both with FIRE and independently to defend the rights of students.

At the start of the conversation, he said he has not directly been involved with the YBB+ issue. He did, however, speak to how the shutdown fits within student rights issues in general. “[What happened] absolutely does not surprise me. Not because Yale is worse than other institutions,” he said.

“But it is certainly at the worst end of the spectrum. It’s out there with the most controlling.”

But according to Silverglate this issue is neither specific to Yale, nor is it just about course evaluations. For him this shutdown is a small problem that points to a much larger one. According to Silverglate, this is just the beginning of a large-scale trend of increased bureaucratization and control across college campus.

All of this is makes universities more like for-profit corporations, only interested in protecting their public image.

He pointed out that as soon as wider criticism arose, the university reversed its position on YBB+.

Silvergate added that he could not imagine any other university’s administration responding differently. Even Harvard, where he said the General Council has “its dirty fingers on everything.”

THE CYBERSPACE BATTLEFIELD But that’s not what the folks in Cambridge think.

Zachary Hamed, an ex-student programmer, former president of Hack Harvard, and now head of design and business development at Bowery in New York City, spoke with confidence about his college’s support for tech culture.

His positive, bubbly attitude was only shaken by his “shock” at what happened at Yale. To him, in Harvard’s perfectly “open and supportive environment” YBB+, or any similar innovation, would never have been shut down.

According to Hamed, students at Harvard never have any problems with the administration because all the data they need to develop college-centric websites and apps is handed to them.

Additionally, tech officers visit student incubators frequently to offer guidance and technical support.

Harvard’s tech community has a “tight bond with the administration” — but that is not the only source of the university’s success. According to Hamed, Harvard programmers directly benefit from its “really open data policy.”

“In the past four years I’ve seen Harvard establish itself as a leading destination for students interested in startup tech entrepreneurship,” he said. “It would not make sense for them to get in the way of innovations”.

But Harry Lewis, who currently works at Harvard as a Computer SciSEE THE SHARPER IMAGE PAGE 8

YBB+ Timeline Jan. 6

Jan. 10

Jan. 13

Jan. 16

Jan. 17

Jan. 19

Jan. 20

Peter Xu and Harry Xu are first emailed by registrar.

Xu and Yu meet with the registrar on campus.

YBB+ and Classroulette are shut down.

The Washington Post publishes a story about YBB+.

Dean Mary Miller issues first open letter.

Sean Haufler releases a Google Chrome extension. His blog post reaches #2 on Reddit.

Dean Miller issues second open letter.

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LUNAR NEW YEAR

Everywhere // Until Feb. 14 May your happiness and longevity be complete!

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Ambiguous awards, miscellaneous honors

“Sam Samson, Jr. Scholarship for Service to the Community.”

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

GREAT CAESAR DREAMS BIG // BY DAVID WHIPPLE

Calling a band “ambitious” isn’t necessarily a compliment; It was, after all, the word critics used to describe U2 in the 1980s, when Bono claimed that God wrote his songs. Bands like fun. and Foster the People face charges of skipping basement shows to play Madison Square Garden without first paying their dues. It offends a critic’s sensibility when a band blatantly aims high and then gets there. But it’s safe to say that Brooklyn’s Great Caesar, featuring frontman John-Michael Parker ’10 and saxophonist Stephen Chen ’09, couldn’t care less.

“I think we are ambitious people,” Parker says. “Dream big, dream boldly and jump at it. We think that if people live that way, they can live lives of integrity and” — he searches for a word — “consequence.”

Great Caesar have taken their` own advice, and it’s already paying off. Tackling homophobia in the video for their new single “Don’t Ask Me Why,” released on MLK day, the group has racked up close to 150,000 Youtube hits and kudos from the likes of singer Wyclef Jean and Def Jam founder Russell Simmons. Juxtaposing scenes of interracial and homosexual couples, the video compares the African-American civil rights movement to the current LGBT struggle for equality.

The power of its message and its instant success are no accident. “‘We can do better than that,’” Chen remembers thinking while going over early ideas for the video, among them a hipster love story set in Brooklyn. “Let’s do something that’s actually going to change the world.”

Such aims might seem surprising for a band that only a few years earlier wrote a song called “Sweet Banana,” and Parker admits with a laugh that the themes of their

first music video, shot on Old Campus, “couldn’t be further” from the messages of “Don’t Ask Me Why.” But band members say the change isn’t as drastic as it might seem. They never wrote throwaway songs, “Sweet Banana” included (“I could give you an hour-long dissertation on that song,” Parker tells me.) They wrote what they knew, and when they wrote “Sweet Banana,” they knew they wanted to have fun.

But today, surrounded by people making their mark on the world, the band strives to keep up.

Chen recalls the thought process that led to “Don’t Ask Me Why:” “How can we actually make this impactful? And why would we settle for anything less?”

It’s apparent from the first frames that questions like these led to the video’s lofty ambitions.

Great Caesar’s in-your-face, danceable rock is toned down and honed into something tighter and more professional. The music has shifted to the background, Parker’s lyrics taking center stage.

Unlike other indie bands, whose words are sometimes hard to parse, Great Caesar make no effort to be obscure: The song is a love story. The lyrics are ambitious and unafraid, their ambition and boldness impossible to miss, and the song oscillates between refreshingly frank and distractingly literal as a result. The video is similarly uncompromising: as McGill, the song’s other protagonist, endures a brutal beating, a rope of blood hangs from his mouth. Great Caesar pulls no punches, but this bluntness can lead to peculiar results. With the song’s narrative represented directly onscreen, one sometimes gets the feeling of watching a play rather than a music video. Great Caesar’s Bandcamp even cred-

its guest singer Rebecca Ryskalczyk “as Marie”; the singers have become actors .

The first half of the video mirrors the song’s narrative, but it departs from the lyrics to call for equality and civil rights. It’s here, where the visuals are distinct from the lyrics, that the two work together most powerfully.

It’s tough for a music video to be more than the sum of its parts when those parts are the same, when the images onscreen are a verbatim representation of the music. And early in the video, it seems that Great Caesar have bit off more than they can chew. But as the song and the video move apart, they become complements instead of components. And while the final shots — of the video’s cast frolicking in a field with their arms outstretched — might not be your cup of tea, the video’s overall effect is a powerful one.

It’s fitting, then, that the band is named for Caesar, because power is what they were after.

They came, they saw, and while they might not have conquered homophobia yet, they’re doing what they can. The important role of music in the cohesion and propulsion of social movements is no secret, and few social movements today have the immediacy of LGBT rights. Macklemore’s “Same Love” garnered a Grammy nomination for its willingness to address the issue head-on, but Chen thinks music still has much work to do.

Thanks to that song, “You can hear [a statement for LGBT rights] in your car across the entire nation,” Chen says. “If our video can help those conversations, then I think we’ve done our job.”

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

// GREAT CEASAR - “DON’T ASK ME WHY”

Between Real and Make-Believe // BY PATRICE BOWMAN

Currently at the Yale Center for British Art, the animal and human creations of British sculptor Nicola Hicks exist in an oxymoronic space. The exhibit’s program describes her lifesized creatures as both “realistic and mythical by turn.” The sculptures, which consist of either plaster, straw and plaster, or bronze, look so messy that, at first glance, they no more resemble real beings than hazy pencil sketches. The bits of straw left uncovered by plaster and the bumps on the bronze render these figures unfamiliar, even while we recognize their shapes. Yet this strangeness lends more realism to the sculptures’ textures — more so, even, than if they had been as smooth as the Greco-Roman busts that also populate the museum.

The exhibition contains seven works, the most compelling among them being those that portray animals with uncannily human expressions; still, the two busts of people are well-crafted, too. The exhibit includes: “Aesop” (2011, plaster), an earthy-toned bust of the animal skin-clad ancient Greek storyteller; “Limbic Champion” (2003, bronze), another bust of a glowering minotaur (evoking images of the Daedulus labyrinth

F R I D AY JA N UA RY 3 1

that caged the man-bull hybrid); and “Black” (2012, plaster and straw), a full body sculpture of a bear whose stance suggests both strength and wariness. Most of the collection is fantastic — its only weak element is “Foal” (2009-2010, painted bronze), a creature with a horse’s head and a man’s torso. Here, Hick’s disordered approach to sculpting loses its control and finesse, so the resulting product lacks the detail and emotional presence of her other pieces.

The most affecting piece is “Who was I Kidding” (2011, plaster and straw), which depicts the donkey from Aesop’s fable “The Donkey in the Lion’s Skin.” The sculpture represents the animal’s state after his lion guise is discovered and he is exposed as a donkey. His head droops, his body slackens and the lion’s skin hangs pathetically from his back. Fittingly, the eyes are not as visible as they are on the other sculptures. The addition of weepy eyes would have Disney-fied this alreadyanthropomorphized creature.

Hicks displays the emotions and the magic of her animals without resorting to cartoonish sentimentality.

The exhibit not only showcases Hicks’ work, but also

// YALE UNIVERSITY

Animals have feelings, too.

places it in conversation with the YCBA’s more traditional human and animal paintings.

The animals in the artwork, with emotions in their eyes ranging from humility to affection, are appropriately touching.

But viewed alongside Hicks’ at once realistic and otherworldly sculptures, the gallery’s human portraits appear almost unremarkable. Then again, it is perhaps more striking to see human emotion depicted in animals than in humans themselves.

What works as a better accompaniment for Hicks’ sculptures are the various landscape paintings that inhabit the same space. Their beautiful, almost fantastical imagery successfully places her beings into a mystical yet natural space.

But in truth, Hicks’ works at the YCBA do well on their own — any additional artistic support or context is simply an adornment for the vivid world she has created.

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

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

Morse College Theater // 8 p.m.

So much sexier than that forlorn Verona pair.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Yale Summer Session

On the beaches of France, dried up like a raisin in the sun.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B5

WEEKEND NEIGHBORHOODS

NINTH SQUARE GOES BACK ON THE GRID // BY DAVID BLUMENTHAL

Nearly three years ago, Adele Ricciardi MED ’18 GRD ’18 moved to New Haven after having been a New Yorker for just under a year. After searching for housing in East Rock — an area popular among Yale graduate students — she settled in a neighborhood that reminded her of both her Big Apple home and her Albany, NY. roots.

From the beginning, New Haven’s Ninth Square Historic District struck her as surprisingly Brooklynesque: a “charming, small” locale with galleries and a diversity of restaurants — a place with few chain stores.

“I was really happy when I found [the Ninth Square], because it was familiar.” she said.

“I started looking in East Rock, but the Ninth Square definitely felt more like home.”

As one of the first five tenants in her apartment building near the intersection of Crown and South Orange Streets, Ricciardi has witnessed the neighborhood develop steadily in the last few years. The district’s location conveniently situates her between her two workplaces at Yale Medical School and the University laboratories on Science Hill. Located in the downtown’s southeast section, its proximity to commercial areas and relatively low cost make it attractive

F R I D AY JA N UA RY 3 1

to graduate students.

The Ninth Square also offers encouraging proof that New Haven can thrive on its own, despite a much smaller investment from Yale and University Properties (UP), which oversees the school’s commercial real estate assets in the city. In contrast, the company holds a virtual monopoly over the downtown area, where it owns enough property on Broadway, as well as Chapel, York and Howe streets to pay over $4 million in taxes annually.

“I think it’s New Haven without Yale, which we don’t really see a lot of,” Ricciardi observed.

“The local community hasn’t been completely overrun yet.”

But it is a community on the edge of change, fueled by expansive commercial and real estate developments in recent years.

“In the time I’ve been there I can tell that we’re on the verge of a transformation,” she said. *** Inside the Adae Fine Art Academy, the notes of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” filled a large, sunlit room where house plants sit under painted portraits.

“I read the news today oh, boy/About a lucky man who made the grade/And though the news was rather sad/Well I just

had to laugh and/ I saw the photograph.”

The school’s director and founder, Kwadwo Adae, wore a navy-blue bowtie with a matching blue suit. His demeanor — kind, soft-spoken — reflected the nurturing environment he strove to create.

Adae explained that the music functions as far more than a mere affect.

“You have to have the mind occupied with music while you paint,” he said. “I learned that way, so I teach that way, too.”

An artist once described as “a mix of early Jackson Pollock, Keith Herring and Thomas Hart Benson,” Adae arrived in New Haven in 2005 after receiving a master’s in fine arts from New York University. In search of higher education teaching jobs, he received “no answers, no calls, no nothing.” So when an art store went out of business in his current space on 817 Chapel Street, he decided it was time to open a school of his own.

Eight years ago, the district was a different place. Rob Greenberg, owner of ACME Furniture and a third-generation New Haven resident, recounted how the popularization of the automobile precipitated the prevailing “urban renewal” philosophy of urban planning at the time, favoring large roads like Route 34 and modernism over some cities’ perceived “ancient” downtowns. However, then-New Haven mayor Richard C. Lee’s championing of these policies led to the destruction of some 20,000 buildings, and the Ninth Square, along with New Haven, “dropped off.”

“The problem that they had not accounted for was that when they tore out the city’s mom and pop stores and all these little shops — it was hundreds of years of evolution,” he said. “What they didn’t account for was that when they knocked out all the evolutionary forward motion, if it didn’t work, there was no backup plan.”

Thirty-five years after Lee left office in 1970, Adae was still feeling the effects of the mayor’s policies, as he dealt with “squatters” in his building and various other aspects of a depressed neighborhood that were decidedly unhelpful for “creating a nurturing environment.”

“The neighborhood was a lot rougher on the edges when I first started out,” he said. “A couple of my adult students were concerned with taking class, getting out at 8 p.m. and walking to their cars.”

But while residents were fearing for their safety in Ninth Square, city officials were already sowing the seeds of the neighborhood’s revival. Long before the arrival of district mainstays such as 360 State Street, Elm City Market or New Haven State Street Station, former New Haven mayor Biagio “Ben” DiLieto pushed a plan originally designed by Economic Administrator Will Ginsburg to reverse the march of urban renewal.

The McCormack/Behring Project, named for the design firms who pursued it, focused first on redeveloping residen-

// KAMARIA GREENFIELD

The Brooklyn of New Haven?

tial areas — occupancy reached a passable level around 1994-1995 according to Stefano — and then moved to help businesses occupy available retail space. The first business to occupy these spaces was the now New Haven favorite Benatra, which opened in the Ninth Square in 1997.

“The values of property went down and they lent themselves to redevelopment,” DeStefano said. “That came at the end; after every downtown building was vacant, the market liked the older stuff.”

DeStefano said the sort of urban lifestyle to which Ricciardi and her fellow grad students aspired was a sign that times had changed since he and his wife were of that age. The pair married when DeStefano was 24 years old, when “cheap fields and cheap land” led many of their generation to the suburbs.

Today, he noted, young people in their twenties are less likely to be settled in their career and life direction. As a result, “You tend to live in cities,” he said. *** Just a block away from the New Haven Green stands the state’s largest residental building, a looming glass skyscraper constructed on what was once the site of Shartenberg’s, the one-time largest department store in Connecticut. Designed

by Bruce Becker ARC ’85 SOM ’85, 360 State Street houses a large number of Yale affiliates, many of whom study or work at the medical school.

According to Becker, retail vacancies have been “dramatically reduced” since Yale students began migrating to the area after the opening of Elm City Market and the State Street Station in 2005.

The 360 State Street Project opened in 2010, along with the Elm City Market in 2011 — a co-op founded in the midst of the recession and collectively owned by approximately 200 New Haven residents, according to Becker. Both the 360 State Street and Ninth Square have a significant percentage of Section 8 housing, a type of public housing that authorizes payment of rents with help of the federal government — a little over half of the Ninth Square is composed of this affordable housing.

But the neighborhood is not without its pricier establishments. Residents of 360 State Streets are within walking distance of some of the city’s most popular bars and eateries, including the gourmet food store Skappo Merkato and Bentara, a Malaysian fusion restaurant.

Chris Ortwein, economic prosperity manager for the Town Green Special Services District, has been involved with revitalization efforts since the 90’s, beginning in the Commonwealth of Pennsylania’s Main Street Program. As a resident of the Ninth Square herself, she understood better than anyone how far the neighborhood has come —

when she first arrived, the Ninth Square had the highest vacancy rate of any neighborhood in New Haven. She said that the Ninth Square had been able to thrive as a “business district” despite its enclosed nature, a reason for which she now “goes carless”.

Despite the district’s burgeoning success, its mixture of one-way streets and hip restaurants is something of a concern for former New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr., who noted that they create the atmosphere of a “dead end” with very little street traffic. Through streets, he added, are more conducive to economic and human development.

Ortwein agreed with the former mayor’s transportation assessment, saying the district would be better off with a more comprehensive and convenient public transit system.

“I think one of the things that would really help us is if we provided a better user experience for people who use the bus system,” she said.

And while DeStefano agreed that the Ninth Square district has been undergoing a revitalization, he pointed out that Yale students almost single-handedly sustained the housing market with what he termed “Med School East Rock.” *** It was around noon at Adae Fine Arts Academy, and a miniature Maltese dog named Bird had wandered in from next door to join Adae for lunch.

Bird belonged to Margot Broom, the owner of the neighboring Breathing Room Yoga Store.

“SWIMMING & DIVING AT YALE”

Contact DAVID BLUMENTHAL at david.blumenthal@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Sterling Memorial Library // 3:30 p.m.

Abs you could picnic on!

Bird, despite her lack of opposable thumbs, seemed an apt representation of the ethos of the Ninth Square’s businesses — collaboration, coexistence and a friendly neighborhood feel.

“I’m there to support them and support the businesses in this community that engage the public,” Adae said. “All the business owners — no matter what they’re doing — have a vested interest in having a community that is aware.”

Neville Wisdom, the manager of a nearby dress shop, said he has similarly formed partnerships with other stores. He often includes their merchandise in his store as a form of advertising, and others do the same for him.

At the moment, ACME’s Furniture and Adae’s paintings forge this “spirit of collaboration.”

The road to revitalizing a neighborhood is famously paved with adversity, the adversity that comes with revitalizing a neighborhood needs no mention. But, Neville Wisdom said a culture of community has made it possible for these business transplants to sustain themselves — he estimates he sells 300 percent more dresses in the Ninth Square than he did at his business’ previous home in Westville.

“The boutiques also bring us good clientele — even the yoga studios,” Wisdom said. “I think the combination of having businesses that bring a lot of people around has also made [our success] possible.”

Entrepreneurship

We’ll sell our souls for a dime and a half, our lives for a quarter.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FOOD

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MATRIX In the grand scheme of analysis there are two schools—the empiricists and the intuitionists (who knows if that’s actually true, but it sounds good, like a David Brooks column). Here at WKND, we tend to favor intuition—freedom, art, love—but every once and a while you have to embrace your Apollonian side. So, for the love of food, for the love of reason, please enjoy our incredibly accurate ranking of all the best—and worst—eats at Yale.

TODAY’S MENU

Pretentious

Booktrader sandwiches

Holiday Feast

Quinoa

Like th e can’t r section assh efute. ole you

The “Emperor’s New Clothes” of foods.

Tofu Tacos

Chicken Tenders

Slifka Chicken Tenders

“fis h”

Fage Yogurt

Durfee’s Sushi Things Made by “General Tso”

Slifka Bagel Brunch Lox

to Harder e, easier nc pronou . st to dige

Chobani Yogurt

Vegan Waffle Batter Waffles

Study Break Pad Thai Dining Hall Rice

Purple Flavor Ice Cream

Low Quality

/PNO 8\HSP[`

in Always Why. n.

Pierso Pasta with Dubra Vodka Sauce

Literal ly the ing , re said “D dients ubra vo dka”

A happy medium.

Raspberry Sheet Cake Hardboiled Eggs

Entreés Based on Pork

Vegan Ravioli (Saybrook)

Natural Light

It’s sti ll taste good, it just like it’s d saved oesn’t your lif e.

Wenzels (noon)

Vegan Ravioli (Morse/Stiles)

t Eh, i

S A T U R D AY F E B RUA RY 1

Magic Bars

mmm..

.grits

Grits

ne. o d b

o

ej ts th

ge

Wenzels (midnight) Cracklin’ Oat Bran

Tofu Apple Crisp

Dubra

Suck it, Smart Start.

Plain

LUNARFEST

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Whitney Avenue, New Haven Museum, Luce Hall // 10:00 a.m. — 5:00 p.m.

Arts and cultural events in celebration of the Chinese New Year!

“Case in Point”

It’s what all the cool kids are reading.

// KAREN TIAN, MOHAN YIN

S A T U R D AY F E B RUA RY 1

HIGH SEAS AND HIGH TEA

Yale Center for British Art // 10:30 a.m.

— 12:00 p.m.

“Come dressed as your favorite princess, pirate, pirate princess or creature from the deep blue sea.”

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Post-Networking Thank You Letters

Fine-tune your execution with UCS’s handy guide.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

REBOOTING

SHUTDOWN 2,983 unique visitors 8,500+

2,493 worksheets created 1.2+ million courses viewed

THE SHARPER IMAGE FROM PAGE 3

ence professor, credits Harvard administrators — not just its policies — for allowing conversations about innovation.

After years of grappling with student innovation, Lewis believes the best approach comes on a case-by-case basis.

In an email he sent to the News agreeing on an interview time, Lewis attached links to a few of his blog posts. One was about the YBB+ issue itself — titled “Yale’s Power Grab.” Following it were two posts written by Lewis about his term as dean of Harvard College. The first is called “Bits and Pieces: My Real Contribution to the Birth of Facebook,” and the second “Bits and Pieces: My REAL Contribution to the Birth of Facebook.”

Yes, when Mark Zuckerberg was a Harvard student, Lewis was his dean.

Lewis denied any explicit analogy between Facebook and Yale Bluebook Plus. He did, however, speak to similar grapplings between Zuckerberg and his university’s administration.

The initial project Zuckerberg had come up with — Facemash — for instance, had to be modified under Harvard’s policy, because it granted public access to the photos of students. The final project was the product of a conversation, and mutual agreement, between Zuckerberg and the administration, Lewis said.

And these issues, Lewis went on to argue, depend most on individual reaction, not on policy. Indeed, a uniform data policy is difficult to imagine not only across institutions but also within them.

“It really depends on whose lap it falls,” he admitted. One university might send a cease and desist letter, he pointed out, while another might resist acting with such force.

And Harvard’s policy isn’t even designed to account for every eventuality. Universities, Lewis said, “have better things to do” than trying to anticipate every possible issue and being there to provide students with every possible resource. Harvard acts on an ad hoc basis just like every other institution. They just happen to have a really good track record.

BACKLOG ON THE YALE SERVER With its ivy-draped walls and Gothic architecture, Yale does not look like a hub of technology. It is no Silicon Valley — and for the most part, it does not try to be. Yale is a school renowned for the humanities, more known for teaching its students how to think than how to program.

But as President Peter Salovey acknowledged in his inaugural address, technological and educational innovation have become inextricably intertwined.

And if Yale wants to stay on the forefront of the latter, it must capitalize on the former.

But for Litt, the question of whether or not Yale is an environment that fosters technology is not so clear cut.

“Yes and no,” he said slowly. “Yale’s efforts at STEM recruitment are paying off. [The Center for Engineering Innovation and Design] is really awesome. But fostering a culture of openness and innovation is not easy.” He paused, and then began talking faster, bringing up the need for “an active commitment” on the part

S AT U R D AY F E B RUA RY 1

of the administration. “The first step is to avoid actively damaging the situation — but I think that’s exactly what these past few weeks have done.”

But what about before these past few weeks? Before the YBB+ scandal erupted, was Yale an environment that promoted student innovation in technology?

Again, the answer seems to be yes and no.

On one hand, opportunities are available for students to try their hand at app development. Students can apply to the popular HackYale program, which provides free lectures in programming, design and web development. Last November, Yale played host to Y-Hack, a 24-hour hackathon. Over 1000 people traveled from England, Canada and all over the United States for their chance to develop an app in 24 hours and win $20,000 in prizes.

On the other hand, the key word for both the student-led HackYale and student-led Y-Hack is “student-led.” Neither HackYale nor Y-Hack is associated with the administration, which has played a very passive role in encouraging student entrepreneurship and technology development, Litt said.

For Mike Wu ’16, that’s not necessarily a problem.

Wu, who was in charge of Y-Hack, said that his only interaction with the University in planning the event was to get permission to use school property. While he had to navigate some bureaucracy to secure that permission, he did not attribute that obstacle to an inherent problem in Yale’s attitude toward technology.

“It did take some convincing, but that’s not unique to Yale,” Wu shrugged. “With other hackathons, too, other colleges’ administrations are hesitant to have that many students sleep over or be responsible for that many students at a time.”

For Croom, the administration’s lack of active involvement was not so much a hindrance as an added incentive for creativity.

Croom and his fellow HackYale cofounders decided to start the program to teach their fellow students a different side of computer science. Seeing that Yale’s computer science department focused on the theoretical aspects of the field, they wanted to explore more practical applications, such as how to build websites.

“The University provides web space for students, but only lets you do static content,” he said. “That means you had to go out on your own to do the really dynamic stuff.”

Yalies, he continued, have a “natural desire to innovate,” which means that, whether the administration provides support or not, people will continue to push the bar higher and higher.

But while University support certainly couldn’t hurt, student developers at Yale are more interested in maintaining a hands-off policy than asking for more attention.

Litt said that students, who will always be “ahead of the curve” compared to the administration when it comes to technology, need to feel like their efforts will not go to waste.

“After all, if you want to develop a website or do anything else that’s a little bit outside of the box, but you think you’re

just going to end up getting shut down by the University, then why bother applying that creativity here, you know?” Litt reflected.

Litt knows that frustration of dealing with University policies firsthand.

He had rushed in five minutes late to our interview, straight out of a meeting with the registrar. The registrar had told him that there was a possibility Classroulette would be allowed again, if he put in a formal request for University data. Litt said he had no idea how long that request would take to process.

“Honestly, if I had known that it would take a data request like this in the first place, I never would’ve built Classroulette,” he said.

These restrictions aren’t stopping everyone, though, as evidenced by Haufler’s viral Chrome extension. People will continue to innovate, despite — and perhaps even because of — bureaucratic barriers. Yale’s tech culture at the moment, then, is a bit of a paradox — at once marred by words like “censorship” and “shutdown,” but also a resilient breeding ground for independent student innovation.

“It’s kind of a mixed result for Yale,” said Matt Rajcok ’16, who helped Haufler proofread his blog post and check for bugs on his extension. “People see the administration as not so encouraging of tech culture, but on the other hand, you see Sean developing this Chrome extension in 24 hours. The fact that there are people at Yale who can do that is kind of a good thing for Yale’s image.”

Rajcok and Haufler were spending a late night at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute when interviewed, their desks the only spot of activity in the otherwise empty room. When we concluded our interview, they immediately turned back to the work at hand, tinkering with some numbers on Rajcok’s laptop.

LOADING… What comes next? Will real change emerge out of all this debate, or will this be another issue where student-driven outrage flares up and then quickly dies?

Many of the players involved are determined not to let that happen.

Early on, when the brothers had just received notification that there might be trouble with YBB+, Xu and Yu reached out to the Yale College Council for support.

On Jan. 27, the YCC released a set of Open Data Policy Recommendations. The report included suggestions for an administrative liaison to the developer community, rewording of certain clauses in the University’s information policy, the creation of a clear procedure to deal with violations of the information policy, a published list of what data is and is not restricted and the creation of application programming interfaces (APIs) to facilitate developer access to unrestricted data.

The YCC has a history of supporting student technology on campus — it promoted the original Yale BlueBook and has hosted multiple app challenges. According to YCC President Danny Avraham ’15, fostering a tech culture at Yale is a goal that he believes the YCC will continue to emphasize.

“We see the promotion of student

entrepreneurship as part of YCC’s mission, and we are very supportive of independent efforts undertaken by students,” he said.

One element of the YCC’s recommendation — the suggestion for Yale to implement APIs — has been echoed in the tech community, both within the University and outside of it.

An API is essentially an easy way to provide data in a format that can be read by computers. Because Yale does not provide APIs, when Litt was building Classroulette, he had to translate the human-readable data that he scraped from Yale OCI into a language that could be read by a website.

Not only would an API make programming apps more convenient, it would also — and perhaps more importantly — make it easier for Yale to regulate its information.

“APIs would allow the university to expose some of its data in a structured way,” Croom said. “That way, students are allowed to use data in novel and unique ways, and in return, the University says it’s fine and can regulate it. Developing APIs would formalize a contract of explicitly stating what data is okay to use, and for the University to track who’s using it.”

Harvard provides APIs for its students to use — in fact, students enrolled in CS50, an intro-level computer science course that caters to practical application, are often encouraged to take advantage of the university’s APIs for their final projects, said Ray Kim, a Harvard student majoring in computer science.

But whether or not Yale chooses to implement APIs, or indeed any changes in data policy at all, will be a matter for ITS to decide, Miller said.

“I say — and I want to be clear here — that the decisions that ITS would make would be the University’s decisions,” Miller said. “I don’t want to get out in front of any kinds of decision making that ITS might be making.”

According to Miller’s open letter of Jan. 20, the Teaching, Learning and Advising Committee has also been tasked with examining instructor evaluations in light of the fact that technology has enabled students to take evaluation data into their own hands. ITS, along with the University registrar, will also review the University’s responses to violations of its policies.

For undergrads with a stake in Yale’s tech culture, this is the time for decisions to be made, when attention is truly on Yale innovation. How the issue of the administrative crackdown — and the larger debate about whether or not the University appropriately fosters openness — plays out will largely depend on the actions taken to resolve it. Those actions will depend on how much people continue to care.

“We’re in a bind right? This needs to be a conversation that goes on for some time and with some care — but who has time for that kind of conversation?” Khan said. “I think that’s the big tragedy. This is a hot issue for students now, but who knows what it’ll be like next week?”

Contact LAVINIA BORZI and VIVIAN WANG at lavinia.borzi@yale.edu and vivian.y.wang@yale.edu .

YALE WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

Sterling Law Building // 11:00 a.m. — 4:00 p.m.

Listen to women like Janet Robinson and Amity Shlaes speak on the theme “It Starts With Us: Paths from Yale to the World.”

CLASSROULETTE

YBB+

Course Website Usage Statistics

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: ACTION VERBS

Don’t you dare turn in that resume without a healthy sampling of “revitalized”s, “pioneered”s and “cultivated”s.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND LOCAL

HUMANS OF NEW HAVEN: SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

// ALEX SCHMELING

idiom Boutique

// BY JENNIFER LU AND ALEX SCHMELING

Owner Kimberly Pedrick Owner of idiom Boutique Kimberly Pedrick told the News, “I’ve had the store for eight and a half years and I think Chapel Street and New Haven … is a great place to have a store,” citing “the vibrancy … downtown.”

// ALEX SCHMELING

Merwin’s Art Shop Rob Muller (owner) and Teah Muller (manager)

“It’s essential to be in a university town if you’re involved in anything to do with the arts or culture.”

-Rob Muller Rob Muller mentioned the various art he receives from his clients and the “little stories behind everything, behind every piece of work.” // JENNIFER LU

Star Shoe Repair Owner Richard Purpora, Sr. // ALEX SCHMELING

Richard Purpora and his team repair shoes, bags, luggage, belts; anything with leather — and they can repair it.

Purpora is the third-generation owner of a family business, which he started helping out with 33 years ago when he was 14.

He says his uncle taught him everything to do with the shop, and when his uncle became ill with leukemia in 2007, he came down to help out with his treatment and with the store, ultimately taking over when his uncle passed away. Best thing about running his business? “It’s great to be on College Street, New Haven is great.” Hardest thing? Trying to take over after his uncle died, and having build on his legacy on his own. He has two boys and one daughter, and his daughter is currently interested in taking over the business someday — she’s 19 and taking business classes in college — and he hopes she can someday be the fourth generation owner of the store.

Union League Café Owner/Chef Jean-Pierre Vuillermet

“I think it’s a great city and we love having Yale here because of how Yale supports all the businesses.”

Vuillermet said that after Levin became President “Yale started to get more involved in New Haven” and the number of restaurants increased.

“I came to New Haven in ’86. We just celebrated 20 years last year.”

// ALEX SCHMELING

Book Trader Café Owner David Duda

“New Haven is great. I moved here to do this from Pennsylvania. It’s been more successful than I could have hoped.”

“We are a Yale property … it’s been fair with us.”

He joked that the Tempesto sandwich might fund his kids’ college educations.

“We’ve been here 15 years so we must be doing something right.” // JENNIFER LU

Claire’s Owner Claire LaPia

“The most painful thing is wanting everyone to have access to the good food we have access to.”

The best thing? “The people.” At the end of the day, LaPia says, it’s they who matter, the lives she’s witnessed and the relationships she’s developed with her customers. // JENNIFER LU

College Street Cycles Owner Bob Jacobson

Bob Jacobson has owned College Street Cycles since October 2004, and he’s been working in bike shops since 1995.

Asked what the hardest thing is about owning a small business: “When you work in a job, your biggest fear is losing the job. When you run a business, you’re afraid of losing your reputation, of what people think of you and the business.” Jacobson additionally worries about providing people with jobs, especially in a seasonal business like his, and trying to keep people around in the winter when business is slow.

// JENNIFER LU

Yurway

Owners Marcia Calisman and Ronen Yur Hardest thing about running Yurway? “There’s not enough promotion done in New Haven for the visitor’s shopping experience.” There are great stores, they contend, but a lack of people and visitor foot traffic, which can hurt sales. Ronen feels Yale has something to do with that — it’s often seen as a separate entity, and if there were more integration between Yale and the businesses around New Haven, everyone could ultimately benefit.

S AT U R D AY F E B RUA RY 1

YALE MEN’S HOCKEY VS. COLGATE

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Ingalls Rink // 7:00 p.m.

WE ARE GOOD AT THIS SPORT.

Endorsing your friends on LinkedIn It matters. A lot.

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

TIME WILL TELL // BY STEPHANIE TOMASSON

William Kentridge defines a new dimension in his latest installation.

His “The Refusal of Time,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until May 11, is a fascinating but conceptually challenging immersive experience.

The South African artist collaborated with Peter L. Galison, a history of science and physics professor at Harvard. Galison discovered that both Albert Einstein and Henri Poincaré, late 19th century mathematician and theoretical physicist, concluded that time is a relative experience rather than a universally fixed phenomenon. Whether we take this claim to be true, Kentridge does his best to convince us of it.

Kentridge is best known for his animated films in which he repeatedly draws, erases and modifies to produce narrative. I expected a twodimensional display when I turned into the dark closed-off room, leaving behind the bright and loud artwork of the Modern and Contemporary wing.

Instead, I entered what looked like a storage space with broken screens lining all four black walls.

Tape and paint spills cover the floor in incomprehensible patterns, and chairs are scattered throughout.

The scene converges upon a central wooden machine, pumping and churning with precise, continuous movements but without ostensible purpose.

Suddenly, massive projections

STEPHANIE TOMASSON PUSHING THE PALETTE KNIFE of a metronome materialized on all four walls, ticking loudly and with increasing speed, quickly changing from hypnotic to alarming. The projection changes abruptly, maps of Africa popping up and fading away. Clock faces spin out of control, as if to say that time is entirely obliterated — or perhaps irrelevant — in the artist’s nondescript space.

In typical Kentridge fashion, drawings appear and erase themselves, only to be redrawn again in slightly different iterations. Here, he represents the human ability to defy time by correcting past mistakes or versions of reality with even the simplest of tasks.

However, Kentridge simultaneously challenges the assumption that everything can be rewritten. He alludes to European colonial attempts to transplant Western culture onto African societies, which possessed strong local identities that could not be erased. African figures dance and stride across all four walls of the installation, weaving their own story.

The lines are blurred between art and observer, as visitors are wel-

comed to take one of a haphazardly grouped set of chairs in the center of the composition. Each visitor’s experiences differ based on seat location. Each wall bears a different video projection, and the central machine blocks some parts of the narrative from view — what the visitor is able to see depends on where she has chosen to sit. Kentridge appears to be making a statement about industrialization altering the experiential narrative. He simultaneously comments on its role in history as well as on the increasing disconnect that accompanies technological advancements.

Though the experience is immersive, the exhibit is not interactive.

Visitors are invited only to view, not to engage. The video depicts no cohesive storyline, and everyone in the room experiences the exhibit differently. Based on the chair arrangement, no two visitors can come away with the same understanding.

When I returned to the brightly lit Metropolitan atrium, I was silent.

I had no idea how to comprehend the overwhelming scene I had just left behind. I could not believe that only 30 minutes had passed, as the exhibit’s time warp seemed much longer. For but a moment, I believed what Kentridge strove to argue: that time was only relative.

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

// CREATIVE COMMONS

If We Were Llewyn

Dating Advice Even I’ll Take

// BY ALLIE KRAUSE

// BY REBECCA LEVINSKY

Dear Rebecca, I’m hopelessly in love with a guy in my English seminar from last semester. We’re friendly, but it is clear I need to make the first move to make things happen. I want to text him, but I’m scared. What should I do?

Sincerely, Desperate Danny *** Dear Desp., Wow, what a great question. I would love to send you a list of all the successful texts that I have sent, but my phone went on a trip through a washing machine last June and I lost all of my text history. And anyway, who am I kidding?

Even if I had all my texts back from my seventh grade flip phone days, I would not have an example of a successful initial text.

We’ve all been there, though. Especially at the start of a new semester. You saw that beautiful guy/girl/whatever every week during seminar last semester, and your banter was promising. But now, you worry if you don’t take matters into your own hands, you’ll never see them again, ever. So you want to text them — the question is: How? Well, as I’ve admitted, I honestly have no idea. One of my friends just sent me a link to “100 Ways to Flirt With Guys,” and though I think the advice is intended to be a joke, I am so oblivious that I would probably actually do some of these things. (Number 71 on this list reads: “It’s easy to flirt if you’re famous.

Become famous.”)

So, I’ll make a deal with you. I’m going to follow my own advice as soon as I write it. At the end of writing this column, I will text someone that I’m interested in.

I’ve done some recon for us, and I’ve come up with an adaptable game plan. I’ve talked to some of my friends and two baristas at Blue State. A lot of them have been in more relationships than I have. Here’s what they said.

I asked one girl, who is in a pretty new relationship, about the first text she received from her boyfriend. She said he started by saying it was great to run into her. But then he cut right to the chase: “Are you free on Saturday night?

If so, would you want to get dinner with me? It would have to be a bit late, but I think it could be fun!”

This was aggressive. He was direct and clear about his intentions from the start, and now they’ve been dating for a few months. I guess they’re not into playing games. She gave him a dictionary for his birthday, and things seem to be going great for them.

In a poll I conducted of the two baristas in Blue State on Wall late Tuesday night, the results supported the importance of making your intentions clear when asking someone out. They said that you should be “practical” and “direct.” One barista said you should invite them to do something you know you’re both interested in. The other said just ask them out

S U N D AY F E B RUA RY 2

REBECCA LEVINSKY ASK REBECCA for drinks or dinner.

But the thing is, I’m not willing to be so bold (and I bet you’re not, either). I get nervous, start to shake and blush a lot, even if the guy I’m texting is on the other side of campus. One of my friends always wants to touch my cheeks when I get flustered like this. “No, you cannot touch them.” If I’m about to initiate anything, I need a low-risk option.

Another way to get things going with someone is by initiating flirtation, which puts the ball in their court. Think of something small and funny that reminds you of them. Make sure to choose something that can segue into a longer conversation — you don’t want to just get an “LOL.” If things go well, maybe they’ll get the message, and ask you out, though this might take a few days or weeks.

Alternatively, you could just say, “Hey,” and see where it goes. But be careful of sending a completely ambiguous “let’s hang out” text, because then your intentions are not clear.

Also, be sure to choose your platform carefully. Consider the differences between Facebook chat and text. On Facebook, you can see if they’ve read it. On both, you’ll see a chat bubble if they’re struggling to respond. If one of you doesn’t have an iPhone, that’s kind of quaint, but you won’t know if your message has been delivered, or if they’re typing a response.

I’ll be going with a text, because I’m currently off Facebook (see my past column, “A Different Kind of Face Time”).

Oh, and always have a friend (or three) read over your message first. Typos are embarrassing. Weird autocorrects are worse.

Finally, once you’ve crafted the perfect text, just man up. Press send. It will probably be worth it.

So, here goes nothing.

My iMessage has been “delivered.”

Yikes, Rebecca Contact REBECCA LEVINSKY at rebecca.levinsky@yale.edu .

Have more questions?

Email WKNDadvice@gmail.com or submit them anonymously on the Yale Daily News website.

This week, I finally got around to watching the Coen Brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis.” The film depicts a week in the life of titular character Llewyn Davis, a hard up singer-songwriter in New York’s 1960s folk music scene.

Davis is struggling: His musical partner, Mike (voiced by Marcus Mumford), recently committed suicide; he has had little success with his solo album “Inside Llewyn Davis;” and he keeps off the streets only by couchhopping at the homes of friends and acquaintances.

“Inside Llewyn Davis,” which is loosely based on Dave Van Ronk’s autobiography, has had critics raving since its screening at Cannes Film Festival last year, where it received the Grand Prix. Many lauded it as the best Coen Brothers’ film yet, perhaps even the best movie of the year. However, the wider response to the film has been mixed, with some calling it out for its unlikable hero and absence of a coherent plot. Nonetheless, the appeal of a film focusing on folk music and its renaissance was too great for me to resist, and so this past Saturday night I dragged a friend along with me to Bow Tie Cinemas to watch it.

I walked out of the theater with an overwhelming sense of frustration.

Having purchased the soundtrack the week of its release, I had fallen in love with each and every one of the songs.

From the shiver-inducing duet “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)” featuring Marcus Mumford to Oscar Isaac’s melancholy rendition of “The Death Of Queen Jane,” each song beautifully evokes the soulful origins of the Brooklyn folk scene. Yet I felt let down.

It wasn’t just Davis’ prickly nature that put me off; his inaction and easy acceptance of defeat made me furious.

No! Go do it! Agh! I wanted to shout at the screen.

It took me a while to comprehend my frustration with “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Beyond being bothered by Davis’ bad choices or the fact that he was repeatedly thwarted in his efforts, I saw aspects of Davis’ inertia in myself.

That split-second moment when you have to decide whether to make the harder, greater choice that might change your life, or not to. Because that’s what it is — a choice. Of course, there are obstacles and limitations that can get in the way, and Davis’ bohemian poverty is no exception to this.

YALE SWING AND BLUES WEEKLY DANCE PRACTICUM

But over and over again we see him choose not to act: the chance to follow the sign to Akron; the occasion to make things right with Jean; even the opportunity to save the stray marmalade cat — all lost.

And we do it, too.

With this new insight, it dawned on me: “Inside Llewyn Davis” is pure brilliance. The film itself is composed like a folk song: We are presented with an incident, completely out of context and with no such explanation to help us — here, a violent encounter with a shadowy figure in a dark alley.

We then embark on a journey with the singer, a tale of woe and mishaps and wrong turns, seemingly unrelated to this first-told scene. Though we do not always agree with what our singerstoryteller chooses to do — in fact, at times we may downright dislike him — we share his emotions down to our very cores: His setback is our disappointment; his pain is our anguish. It is only at the end that the first incident is explained, and we finally understand the path to where we are now.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” is a triumph.

It is not a film with clutch-the-edgeof-your-seat action, nor is it your typical tale of overcoming hardship in the face of great adversity. It’s much more visceral than that. It’s impossible not to lose yourself in the 1961 New York of the Coen Brothers, a blue-grey world of cigarette smoke and overcast skies, and you feel every sung performance (which are, in fact, played live) as if you’re sitting right there in the Gaslight Club. “Inside Llewyn Davis” is the kind of film that grabs onto your gut and refuses to let go long after you have left the cinema. Llewyn Davis is not a Ulysses reunited with his beloved Ithaca. But as the final scenes draw to a close with the heart-wrenching solo rendition of “If We Had Wings” and the final frame of a poster for “The Long Journey,” we see that perhaps our lost hero is not so far from home.

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

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Slifka Center // 8 - 11 p.m.

More stylish than freshman screw (and probably less awkward).

ALLIE KRAUSE HER GRACE’S TASTE

Proofreading

Theirs nothing more embarassing than a missed typo.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B11

WEEKEND THEATER

COMMINGLING: EXPLORING THE DREAM DEFERRED // BY STEPHANIE ROGERS

Langston Hughes once wrote “What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore — And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over — like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”

I choose to believe that dreams deferred tend to explode. Not in the sense that they disappear, forgotten from the dreamer’s mind, but that they become so unbearably beautiful they must be seen, heard, felt — must explode — within the hearts of audience members and visionaries.

On Tuesday night, countless dreams were heard echoing off the walls of Sudler Hall at Commingling: A performance arts commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coordinators wanted the commemoration to be thought-provoking, and the performers delivered on that promise. The show began with an explicit directive for the audience — to question and think. The poems, recitations, jazz pieces and songs were orchestrated to make us ponder the true nature of Dr. King’s legacy and how we can reduce the forms of segregation that still arise today.

The Premier Jazz Ensemble as well as other jazz musicians captured the soul of Harlem Renaissance music inspired by the centuries of hardship for the African-American race. Young students from the Betsy Ross Magnet School paid tribute to the trials and tribulations of Langston Hughes. Shades — the Yale a cappella group that values

the coming together of a diverse set of members — sang melodic slave spirituals calling for hope and triumph over pain.

The slam poet performances, overall, stood out in their pointed tackling of larger themes of social injustice, such as segregation. The room shook with thoughtful bouts of silence immediately followed by hums, snaps and moans of appreciation after each performance.

Ifeanyi Awachie ’14 of the slam poetry group Teeth spoke about marrying a revolution through the eyes of Correta King, spouse of MLK. The piece conveyed the idea that we celebrate MLK’s birthday — not his death — because we celebrate life and the continuation of his work. We all grieve for his loss, along with the perpetuation of racism today, but must carry his torch because, like Correta, we are now wedded to a revolution.

The poem made tears stream down my face in the moments Awachie described standing over the grave at Dr. King’s funeral. The poem ultimately grabbed the audience with the power of loss, but fueled everyone to persevere.

Members of Word, another slam poetry group, voiced concerns on segregation’s transient nature and the stark lines between black and white in the city of Chicago. Rianna Johnson-Levy ’17 spoke to the reality that segregation does not derive just from institutional laws, but rather from our own socially constructed view of ourselves. Strug-

// CREATIVE COMMONS

gling with issues of weight and beauty, she defined what it means to feel comfortable in your own skin, even when the world effects a standard of white, skinny and blonde.

Continuing along this theme, Olivia Klevorn ’17 painted the portrait of her beloved Chicago, a city in which the purity and fortune of whites are geographically contrasted with the uneducated, crime-ridden, ganginfested ghettos of black neighborhoods.

The show’s most powerful message was found in the enlightening and energizing Frank Brady of the Future Project, a group which allows kids from New Haven to explore passions for what they love. He took the audience on a fast-paced journey through the alphabet, vilifying society’s harsh punishment of race, gender and minorities. We cannot abandon MLK’s cause, he said, until popular culture is a true reflection of all of humanity, allowing all races and nationalities to see how beautiful they truly are.

Sweet dreams were thrust out into the open, spilled into the air of that hall. Each poem was delivered like a dried up raisin from the sun into the mouths of audience members. The words burst open with the succulent juices of truth, exploding from a dream deferred and hopefully empowering the continuation of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy and revolution.

Contact STEPHANIE ROGERS at stephanie.rogers@yale.edu .

The Dichotomy of Love and War // BY AKASH SALAM

//STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE

When Cleopatra (Ali Viterbi ’14) learns of Antony’s (Iason Togias ’16) marriage to Octavia (Marianna Gailus ’17), she transforms from a seemingly innocuous queen to an unforgiving gladiator. Her disbelief is clearly at display as she threatens to kill Ledipdus (William Viederman ’17), the poor man who delivered the message. As she beats Lepidus, Cleopatra insists that what she heard cannot not be the truth. Eventually, the disbelief turns into a grave realization as Cleopatra tries to reassure her maids and most importantly, herself, that Antony is bound to return back home. Unfortunately for her, their relationship fails to blossom further.

“Antony and Cleopatra,” a tragedy written by William

S U N D AY F E B RUA RY 2

Shakespeare and performed at the Morse-Stiles Crescent Theater, begins with a fruitful relationship between Cleopatra and Antony in Egypt. Yet this relationship is short-lived, as Antony receives news of his wife’s death and political upheavals. Returning to Rome, Antony marries Octavia to unite two competing families and bring peace back to Rome. As the play progresses further, the relationship between the three characters – Cleopatra, Antony and Octavia – escalates into thrilling heights. The dichotomy of the love affairs and deathly wars pushes the narrative and the excellent chemistry between the characters.

Cleopatra, played by Viterbi, is deemed as one of Shake-

speare’s most sophisticated female characters. Viterbi certainly lives up to this standard in her interpretation of Cleopatra’s polar and often very complex moods. Viterbi’s facial expressions — a playful lady or a vicious queen — are easily the highlights of her performance.

Her chemistry with other characters, especially Antony and Ledpidus, are undeniably realistic (when I watched her opening romantic scene with Antony I turned away, much as I do in any movie.) Viterbi’s mere presence on the stage brought forth a sense of excitement and anticipation for what was to follow.

While Cleopatra shines in her expansive, definitive role, Enobarbus, played by Otis Blum ’15, suffers from a lack of exposure,

especially in the first half of the play. When Blum first spoke, I was pleasantly surprised — his voice, full of authority and zeal, energized the theater. From then on, I wanted more of him, but my desire was never fully satisfied. Blum had very few lines and often was seen in the background — shining his knife or looking onward with wide eyes.

Seeing him readjust the set after almost every scene was infuriating because I knew he wouldn’t play a major role in those scenes.

I just wanted more of his monologues and less of him standing around and contributing nothing to the scenes. Ultimately, Blum’s talents were drastically underutilized.

Contact AKASH SALAM at akash.salam@yale.edu .

Stage decorations were nonexistent apart from a solid rectangular ornament, which served as a podium, a battleground and conversely, even a bed. The ornament had seen so much use by the play’s end that I wondered if they got a new one after

GROUNDHOG DAY

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

all day // winter/spring Do that pset over and over and over again.

every showing. Lighting was the biggest distraction — there was simply too much of it. I don’t know if I just picked a woeful spot, but there was almost always a bright light opposite of me. Much worse, the lighting distracted from the events on the stage. The lights should only add to the experience, not take away as much as they have in this case.

The second half of the play dramatically advances the narrative’s pace. This, along with some unbelievable play-acting

by Viterbi and Togias, made the show a success, even with the stage decorations and lighting issues. “Antony and Cleopatra” is ultimately a thrilling adventure, brimming with tragic moments, a fulfilling narrative and an entertaining, if somewhat underutilized, cast of characters.

Work/life balance Lol jk we go to Yale.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

SARAH MIRK: Bitches Get Stuff Done // BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER

W

hen Sarah Mirk spotted a headline in Ebony Magazine this week that read, “The Average 27-year-old: Educated and Broke,” she thought, “Hey, that’s me.” Mirk, 27, is the online editor for Bitch Media, a nonprofit magazine, website and podcast that seeks to apply feminist perspectives to pop culture. In 2008 she graduated with a degree in history from Grinnell College in Iowa — having taken time off to intern for the alternative news weekly, The Stranger, in Seattle, Washington. Mirk’s first book, “Sex From Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules,” hits the presses this August. WEEKEND sat down with Mirk to talk about the word “bitch,” feminist media, the direction of journalism and her relationship advice.

A. Using the word “bitch” for the title of the magazine is a pretty good inroad to getting people to talk about and think about sexism and the different words we use for women and men. Especially if I’m talking to a group of people who don’t think a lot about sexism, you can say, “Who is bitch used to describe?”

It’s used to describe specifically women who are aggressive or who ask for what they want.

We would never use the word to describe men who exhibit those same characteristics. That’s something that really clicks with a lot of people. They’re like, “Oh yeah, you’re right — there is a difference there.”

Q. So is it an effort to reappropriate the word?

A. It’s an effort to think about why we use that word — and who we use it to describe. It’s not an effort to say everyone should feel comfortable calling themselves a bitch, but to ask everybody, “Who do you think of as a bitch?” What do you think of as bitchy behavior? And what are the issues behind that? And if you come away from that being like, “Yeah I want to call myself a bitch,” then sure, do it.

Q. How did the magazine come about?

A. It was started in 1996 in Oakland. Now we’re based in Portland. It was initially a zine that people photocopied in their basement and distributed. It’s a noun and a verb, it’s an action. It’s saying, “We’re bitching about pop culture,” and women who do speak up for what they want are often called bitches.

Q. What do you see as the target audience?

A. Anybody who has an interest in pop culture and social justice.

If you’re the kind of person who watches TV and starts shouting at the screen, then it’s the type of magazine for you. Or if you watch music videos and you say, “I really want to talk to somebody about what these Beyoncé videos mean,” then Bitch is for you.

Q. Do you have to self-identify as a feminist?

A. It’s all about pop culture, which is a niche in itself. It’s not necessarily for people who self-identify as feminists. You don’t have to have taken a gender studies class or have been a gender studies major to be able to get it. It’s pretty practical, real-world stuff that people understand. It’s for people who think about issues of sexism and racism and class in pop culture.

Q. What does it mean to write about news with a feminist perspective?

A. You keep an eye on a lot of things. One is keeping an eye on what perspectives are included and what voices are being left out. What sort of big picture issues are driving the stories in the news?

Q. So how would Bitch cover the State of the Union?

A. We listen to the State of the Union and say, “Well, what is Obama saying about race or inequality and gender?” What

was missing from his speech? He didn’t mention sexual assault of women in the military. He didn’t talk about race. But he did talk about the minimum wage, and that’s cool to put the minimum wage on the national agenda. And why is the minimum wage important? Because it’s a big inequality issue.

Q. Do you think that’s the way journalism is headed — toward more specific, niche-oriented coverage?

A. Journalism is so fragmented.

Because it’s easier now for anyone to make their own media than it’s ever been, you can get a lot more of those voices out there. It’s been cool to see people starting their own blogs or speaking up on social media. The ideas aren’t just coming from people who are in charge of newspapers. There are fewer gatekeepers, which is a good thing.

Q. How’s the magazine doing? Is it financially stable?

A. Bitch has had to adapt a lot.

Since 2008 it’s actually been a nonprofit magazine. It’s called Bitch Media because it’s a magazine and a website and a podcast.

We’ve been shifting away from having all of the costs be covered by subscribers and newsstand sales. Now we’re more donorbased.

Q. Who are the donors?

A. It’s lots of individuals. Our average donation is eight dollars. I couldn’t tell you the demographics of our donors. It’s not a lot of super rich people giving $10,000. We don’t get any grants from the government either. It’s people who have felt alienated by other media and love Bitch and are really excited to support it.

Q. You have a book coming out in August. The title is “Sex From Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules.” What does that mean — “sex from scratch?”

A. Whenever I go look at relationship guidebooks, they’re always really bad. And they’re like “how to snag a man and get married to him.” And that’s not really what I’m interested in. I’m interested in developing an ethical framework for relationships that doesn’t hinge on religion or tradition. If you don’t want to do what your parents did and you don’t use the Bible as your moral guidepost, how do you make decisions in relationships? Lots of people are doing that on their own.

But there aren’t a lot of spaces to talk about it. Whenever I’ve gone through trouble in relationships, I’ve wanted there to be a book of collected wisdom of people who are smarter than me and older than me.

Q. How much can we learn from guidebooks and how much does it just depend on personal discovery and making mistakes on our own?

A. Well, it’s kind of weird writing a book that’s just like, “Do what you want.” But we don’t have a lot of role models in our culture for doing relationships in any other way than being straight and middle class and being married and having kids. That’s assumed to be the same goal for everybody.

But that’s not what a lot of people are doing. My goal was to find other people who are doing relationships in different ways. And to say, “Look, these people can be

// WILLIAM FREEDBERG

role models, too.”

Q. It’s based on a lot of interviews; you traveled all over the place.

What’s the best story you heard?

A. There’s this interview I start crying in where this friend of mine who is gender queer — she is the pronoun ze — and ze was talking about ze’s grandmother. And writing to the grandmother about gender. And the grandmother getting this letter — she’s a conservative Montana grandma. And calling up my friend and saying, “You know, whatever you want to do, as long as you’re happy.”

As long as this Montana grandma can be that smart, that just really made me so happy to hear about someone being accepted by their family.

Q. What about a bad story?

A. Everybody has a bad story — about shit they screwed up. The worst are just stories of people being in relationships for way too long. That’s what I’m afraid of in my own life. I don’t want to get to a point where I’m resentful and angry toward somebody I’m dating.

Q. How much of it is based on your own personal experience?

A. My personal story goes through it. It’s me trying to figure out what I want to do, and how I want to be in the world.

Q. So what have been the major elements of that? What aspects of your own life make it into the book?

A. I started writing the book when I was 25 and in a long-term relationship with my boyfriend and trying to figure out whether we should keep dating or not.

And that basic question of like, “Should we work through our problems or break up?” How do you know when to break up with somebody?

Q. Did you break up?

A. Yeah, we wound up breaking up — and it was really good. It took us two years to figure that out. We dated four years altogether. That process of breaking up — of figuring out what I want to do — it was sad but we had really honest conversations. That’s one mantra from the book: Be more honest.

Q. Why did you break up?

A. There are so many issues there that I can’t even go into it. Why do you think people break up?

Q. I don’t know — probably a lot of

reasons. Why did you break up?

A. We felt like we weren’t super attracted to each other, and the root of that is insecurity and our own issues about ourselves and how we interact with the world.

There’s not a simple answer.

Talking honestly about relationships has always led me to a harder road, and more compli-

“

cated feelings. But that’s a good thing.

Q. So are you involved with someone now?

A. I’m involved with a couple of people.

Contact ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER at isaac.stanley-becker@yale.edu .

EVERYBODY HAS A BAD STORY — ABOUT SHIT THEY SCREWED UP.

“

Q. The name of the magazine — my first question is why?