This WEEKEND by Yale Daily News

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013

KEEPING PROMISES Has New Haven placed its students on the yellow brick road to college? MONICA DISARE reports. Page 3

CAPRICIOUS

CLASSIC

CRAPPY

B6-7

SAYING GOODBYE

CURTAIN CALL FOR COLE

FROM 2REAL TO UNREAL

Tao Tao Holmes talks Willy Wonka and the sudden, unexpected push into adulthood.

Yalies celebrating Yalies: the magic of Cole Porter on stage once more, 100 years after his graduation.

WEEKEND brings you some of our fave course evals – and a couple aren’t even fake!

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

ASCHER

WEEKEND VIEWS

I KNEW HEAVEN IN NEW HAVEN // BY JORDAN ASCHER

I knew heaven in New Haven For Connecticut I rave. Say we college kids, unshaven, “I knew heaven in the Have.”

They’re in. You’re out. Surrender. Drown your woes with smorgasbord. Mop up your tears with feeding. Between each sob you ask the lord Why outside it’s freaking freezing.

Seeing comrades by the bevy, Our hearts are made as light As our shopping lists are heavy. Then begins the ancient rite: We rise as one at sun’s first ray (i.e. eleven thirty, sharp). First class missed? If asked, just say, “I had a change of heart.” That seminar you need to take To satisfy your major: It’s down the hall. A piece of cake. “I’m getting in,” you wager. But not so fast, my little chum. As you round the bend, a drumroll. Turns out it’s packed, like selfsame drum With undeserving bumholes. With boat-shoe’d feet, this priggish choir Proceeds to ably render A state of being undesired:

But in that prayer redemption lies: A faith that beyond doubt, Winter passes, spring arrives, And it will all work out. The world revolves unhindered, So we find ourselves once more Book to nose and pen to finger, Just as we were before. And just as once we all were weary, So we all shall be again. But today I beg you dearly, Keep perspective when you can. I knew heaven in New Haven Coldest winter I would brave, For all that learning I’d been craving. I knew heaven in the Have. Contact JORDAN ASCHER at jordan.ascher@yale.edu .

Not my best years... // BY MILA HURSEY

“Bright college years, with pleasure rife, The shortest, gladdest years of life” Our alma mater brings tears to my eyes, sweet memories of laughter, emotional conversations, late-night debates about human nature and comfort from friends. I’m about to leave this place — a place that has helped form some of my most precious relationships — but to be completely honest, the song’s lyrics do not hold true for me. I hope to God these are neither the shortest nor the gladdest years. College has been an uphill battle, to the point that I am getting the words, “Never give in!” engraved on the inside of my class ring, words used to uplift and inspire a bruised and battered nation in wartime. I am proud to be a Yalie, and I am so grateful for every challenge, victory and defeat I’ve experienced here, but I reject the premise that these are going to be the best years of my life. They cannot and will not be the best. I refuse to let my identity as a Yale graduate be the defining characteristic about myself even for a second.

I CANNOT PRETEND TO BE UNHAPPY ABOUT GRADUATING, FORGING A LIFE OUTSIDE OF THIS CLAUSTROPHOBIC BUBBLE. I know myself; I’m lazy and kind of a scaredy-cat. It would be so easy to move to New York and hang out with Yale people for the rest of my days. Meeting new people is hard. But you know what? I hate rodents with all the revulsion of a 18th-century French aristocrat walking through choleric London, and I literally feel the anxiety tense my shoulders the moment I step off the MetroNorth. I would be miserable. I would have a built-in community, sure, but I would be profoundly unhappy. Relying on Yale to provide all of the employment and camaraderie I could possibly need for the rest of my life sounds so easy, and not growing up sounds so ideal — it removes the uncertainties I have after May.

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There is a Yale community in every corner of the globe joined by common experiences and love for this place. In LAX before Camp Yale freshman year, a man approached me in the airport and asked about my Yale sweatshirt. I told him that I was a freshman and he told me that he was Branford somethingin-the-’70s and, “Welcome.” How beautiful is that? We all have a built-in community almost anywhere we go. It’s such a comfort in a lot of ways, but it is also extremely limiting. We are more than our collective experiences at this institution, and to rely on the Yale banner to provide community prevents us from forging our own paths, which is exactly what maturity means to me. So in the second-semester senior tradition, I will try and collect as many memorable moments as possible, including writing this article while two of my favorite people in the world sing Jewel in the background off-key, but I cannot pretend to be unhappy about graduating, forging a life outside of this claustrophobic bubble. Still, every time I think about not having to come back next year, I want to skip and jump and jump and laugh. Oh joy! I will have to pay for my own everything next year, isn’t that exciting? All of the people out there to meet, the ideas not yet encountered, the stories I haven’t heard. Nothing seems more exciting than to get lost in the chaos of the world and then create a haven within it. For all the fears and reservations I have about not seeing the people I love with all of my heart, I am overcome with a sense of relief about not having to come back to New Haven, and not having to be anywhere in particular, really. Yale, I love you, I really do, but I have had my heart broken so many times because of you, had so many panic attacks because of you, felt the highest highs and the lowest lows, all because of you. I am ready to create my own community and no longer let the lifestyle, beliefs, motivations and expectations of this community influence my opinion of myself and others. (I’ve become rather snobbish in my years here.) Peace be upon you, I wish ye well, I’ll send you a check when I can, but seriously goodbye, farewell, until we meet again (in 10 years at the reunion). Contact MILA HURSEY at mila.hursey@yale.edu .

HOLMES

HURSEY

// VICTOR KANG

Getting in the Glass Elevator // BY TAOTAO HOLMES

When does childhood end? For me, it was on Jan. 14, 2013. In the drowsy hours of that Monday afternoon, my canine brother and best friend wandered off to wag his everthumping blonde tail against the tops of clouds rather than our hardwood floor. If you’d asked me that same question about childhood on Sunday the 13th, my answer would have been a quick and simple one: Never. But childhood does have a definite end, and mine came at the advanced age of 21 with the final day of Orwell Wallabell Holmesie’s steadfast friendship of 95 years (13 and a half by human measures). That’s not to say that I’ve lost my inner child, with her incurable curiosity and penchant for eating things off the ground — no, I intend for her to stick around ‘til I’m just as wizened. But Monday marked the end of an era, with a heavy sense of conclusion. It’s hard to put the sensation into words, but I suppose in that moment, I felt a bit like Charlie Bucket after his spectacular tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory comes to an abrupt end and he’s just sort of standing there, the only schoolkid left. Charlie — simple, scruffy, bright-eyed Charlie — has reached the end. He’s inhaled the wafting aromas of chocolate waterfalls, eyed with confusion the Squares that look Round and questioned the science behind Everlasting Gobstoppers. Industrious squirrels, Oompa-Loompas and a girlturned-blueberry blend into the backdrop when all of a sudden you’re just standing in front of Wonka’s executive desk, waiting for the mastermind to look up. Congrats, you’ve made it — but made it where? Orwell will always claim a

special nook in my left atrium, and at least for a little while longer, large swatches of hair on my sweatpants and fleeces. If you think a puppy can’t substitute for a sibling, you’ve clearly never seen one playing alongside an 8-year-old only child. Over the years, from my first bus ticket closely followed by my first bra, through growth spurts and acne outbursts, Christmases and college applications, Orwell listened as I narrated each phase of growing up. I whispered worries into those soft, golden ears, asked him whether I was making the right decisions, sat on his doggie bed while I embarked on hourlong conversations with whichever invisible guests had lent their company for the afternoon. Friends who did not love Orwell were no friends of mine.

RECENTLY MANY OTHERS – HUMANS – HAVE BEEN LEAVING TOO, AND WITH THEM, A BIT MORE OF THAT INFECTIOUS, UNADULTERATED OPTIMISM OF CHILDHOOD. It’s not just Orwell, though. Recently, many others — humans — have been leaving too, and with them, a bit more of that infectious, unadulterated optimism of childhood. These past few months, I’ve noticed the passing of more grandparents than I have ever before. I lost my last living grandparent in November, and in the months

“ANGLES ON ART, SEARCHING FOR ABSENCE IN PRESENCE AND PRESENCE IN ABSENCE” YUAG // 3 p.m.

If only to understand what the title means.

that followed, it seemed as though every fourth person was sitting beside me in the same dinghy, bobbing slightly more slowly and soberly in the waves. Once you’re past Augustus Gloop and Violet Beauregarde, the Inventing Room and the Television Room, Wonka will finally look up from his desk. He leans forward, squinting, your eyes caught in his gaze. He tilts his head towards the door. It’s time, then, to get in the glass elevator. Many of those around me appear to have made it through Wonka’s factory far more quickly than I did — perhaps they were more eager to reach the end, or didn’t have the luxury of remaining so long. They wipe the chocolate off their chins and tighten their ties, sit down across from Wonka to be sized up and evaluated. Wonka seems to like Yalies; he generally shows them gladly to the elevator door, where they press one of the buttons with a combination of real and feigned conviction and go crashing up through the roof and soaring away. They shoot off, out of childhood and into a new, adult world of employment and voluntarily eaten vegetables — a world equally fantastical, but with less candy and far fewer Oompa-Loompas. At some point, I’m going to have to get in the elevator as well. I can’t hang out in Wonka’s office forever, or keep sneaking back to nibble the edible buttercups along the chocolate river. And while I may not be able to take Orwell with me as I wobble and blast into the sky, I’ll be damned if I don’t bring along a few bars of Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight. Contact TAOTAO HOLMES at taotao.holmes@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Not going to your Monday classes today. Fuck the system.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

THE NEXT GENERATION // BY MONICA DISARE

ollege banners hung from the gym ceiling: Yale alongside Rutgers. Michigan State vying with Princeton. Northwestern. Temple. Duke. Syracuse. Penn State. Seated below them were students who attend Hill Central School, a New Haven pre-K through eighthgrade institution. Each Hill Central student held a smaller flag, celebrating a different college. Looking out from the stage, Connecticut Commissioner of Education Stefan Pryor called what he saw “a storm of miracles and magic.” “It is truly remarkable what has happened in the vast majority of schools in New Haven,” he continued. Hundreds of people, ranging from toddlers to long-serving Mayor John DeStefano Jr., had thronged into Hill Central’s gymnasium on Oct. 21, 2012, for a dedication ceremony commemorating recent renovations at the school. The press scrambled to take pictures of the brand-new gymnasium, the spacious, welllit hallway and the colorful mural adorning the wall of the cafeteria. The school marching band played exuberantly. Excitement was the order of the day. “Why do these people build these buildings?” New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo asked the students. “They build them because they believe in you, believe that you’re going to continue to take your education seriously, that you’re going to prepare yourselves for high school and for college and for the world of work.” Mayo the bureaucrat became Mayo the mascot for a moment: “Raise those banners and wave them!” he declared. The kids waved their flags; the crowd cheered. Students at the revamped Hill Central School will embark on a journey through the New Haven public school system unlike the one experienced by generations of alums before them. Their journey is, to a large degree, a product of a very young program: New Haven’s School Change Initiative, a set of plans the city prioritized in 2009 and has trumpeted at a moment when the nation is enamored with education reform. The initiative, which includes a teacher evaluation system, a school tiering system, new extracurricular programs, efforts towards parental engagement and extensive scholarships, is expanding at a brisk pace. This past Monday, the school board accept a grant of over $100,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which approached the city with an offer for funding to help with improve teacher training. Over winter break, College Summit, one Initiativelinked setup that seeks to foster a college-going culture through-

out New Haven public schools, was introduced into three more schools in the district. Those three join the two schools that introduced College Summit in 2011–’12 and its first school partnership, established at the Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School in 2009. Although it is part of the New Haven Promise, College Summit has not been the center of attention the way Promise’s scholarship has, in the news, in rhetoric or in the public eye. In this sense, it crystallizes the nature of the Initiative: Many of the new moves towards educational success are cultural, subtle and focused on mindsets rather than money. This struggle is not confined to our one small city tucked away in the Northeast. Education reform is increasingly looking like a national imperative for the United States. As cities like New Haven illustrate all too painfully, manufacturing jobs are increasingly scarce in the postindustrial economy and service sector positions, which generally require higher education, form a growing proportion of the jobs available. Meanwhile, though Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development statistics show that the United States spends more than any other OECD member country on each student each year, the organization has also shown that the United States ranks 14th in the world in the percentage of 25–34 year olds with a higher education. It looks like increased education spending does not necessarily translate to effective education spending. New Haven is a test case for what the latter should look like. Six-year-old Devon Steed sat through that dedication ceremony at Hill Central with his mother and sister. Like most 6-year-olds, Devon was more concerned about dancing to the marching band’s music than listening to some superintendent discuss education reform. But the speakers at the front of the room, the Smart Boards that will be in his classroom as a part of the school renovation and other products of New Haven’s School Change Initiative may well determine if, in 16 years, Devon will graduate with a degree from one of the colleges whose names were, for that moment, just words on banners above his head.

‘NOISE’ IN NEW HAVEN

Parents who attended Parent University, a series of workshops for New Haven parents held at Gateway Community College on Nov. 3, made it clear that they see school reform as a complicated and potentially fraught endeavor, one whose success hinges on a broad cultural shift. So when Brett Rayford, the director of adolescent and juvenile services for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, argued

in a discussion entitled “Addressing the Needs of Urban Boys” that education is a beacon of hope for their children, they reminded him that these boys are, in different ways, socially conditioned to dismiss educational success. One of the mothers raised her hand and said academic achievers in local schools are accused of “talking white” and “acting white.” “The boys don’t want to go there,” she explained, “because they want to fit in.” Straight A’s aren’t helpful when it comes to popularity, so achieving them may simply undermine a student’s social standing. The crowd issued murmurs of agreement. Another mother, Carla Chappel, the parent of an eighth-grader, raised her hand and shared an example from her own experience: When her son was younger, he was reading a book with his father when another young boy walked over and told him he was “corny” for reading with his dad.

MOST KIDS NOWADAYS DON’T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. FRANNIE VILLANO

Instead of “corny” activities, students often succumb to the temptations lurking in the streets of New Haven. In the school system’s climate survey from 2009– ’10, which is provided among informative materials on the School Change Initiative’s Web page and which asked questions of parents, students and teachers, 30.2 percent of student respondents reported that gang activity occurs at least some of the time at their school. Such ubiquity means that crime can be discussed as an inevitable future on an everyday basis. At Brennan Rogers, another city pre-K through eighth-grade school, every student participates in crew meetings in the morning, discussing the path to college on a weekly basis. This past Nov. 9. crew leader and teacher Florence Rosarbo decided to talk to her students about addressing “noise” — personal problems they face. She told students to identify their goals and chart two paths, one that described a life with noise and one without noise. “Remember in the beginning of the year when we read the poem ‘The Road Less Traveled’ by Robert Frost?” Ms. Rosarbo asked the class. “Right now, we need to start thinking about taking the road less traveled by some of your peers.” As the stud e n t s

began to think about their two paths, another teacher jumped in to help: “It’s easy to look at your life with noise: Look at the people you know who aren’t doing anything.” Two of the boys in the room started laughing. The teacher guessed the person they were laughing about, a former student. “He’s walking around with a bracelet (the tracking instrument that inmates wear in jail or on house arrest),” the teacher said, in response to the student’s repeated giggles. “You’re laughing, but it was one real bad decision that he made.” One of the boys who had been laughing looked up and said: “My father said all his friends are either dead or in jail.” At the end of the class, when students were asked to put the noise in their life on the board, one of the first things written was “the hood.”

SOLUTIONS THAT DOMINATE HEADLINES

In 2009, city administrators decided that “the timing was really right” for education reform, says Laoise King, who was working as deputy chief of staff to Mayor DeStefano at the time and is now the vice president of education initiatives for the United Way of Greater New Haven. The school district was winding down a comprehensive construction program that renovated almost every educational institution in the area. President Barack Obama had just been elected and had appointed Arne Duncan, a key proponent of school reform in his former role as the Chicago Public Schools superintendent, as the Secretary of Education. Meanwhile, New Haven Public Schools also had a new hire: Garth Harries ’95, who helped design school reform in New York City, and would now serve as one of New Haven’s assistant superintendents. Taken together, these developments produced an impetus for progress — and the School Change Initiative was born. The New Haven Promise would be the diva, the glamorous star, of any film about the Initiative. Much-discussed in the media and seen by some as the key fix built into the Initiative, Promise provides a full-tuition scholarship to any public college in Connecticut (or a partial one to a private institution). “ W h e n Promise was announced two years ago, it generated a reaction of excitement

and hope that I had never seen in my years in New Haven,” recalls William Ginsberg, the CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, a philanthropic organization that administers Promise. The scholarships are funded by Yale, one of the key accomplishments of DeStefano’s close ties with University President Richard Levin, and can be obtained by any student who lives in the city, attends New Haven public schools, has a positive disciplinary record, completes 40 hours of community service, has a 90 percent attendance record and receives a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher. If there is one thing that on its face looks like a silver bullet in terms of students attending college, it’s Promise. It seems like dreamland, a middle-class fantasy. But in a school district like New Haven, a scholarship does not get to the core of the problem, to the issues addressed at venues like Parent University. In 2011, 151 students qualified for Promise and 110 accepted it — i.e., only 10 percent of graduates in the school district actually qualified for the scholarship. In 2012, 172 students qualified, but even that 15 percent increase covers only a fraction of the district’s high school grads. If they don’t turn to the gang culture some students speak of, New Haven’s youth may simply choose to not go the college route. As one parent said at Parent University, to the approval of her peers, not all students in the district may be “suited” for college. The Sound School, a vocational agricultural high school which draws students from the city of New Haven as well as its suburbs, is home to a student population which U.S. News & World Report statistics show is 81 percent proficient in reading and 78 percent proficient in math, far above the district average percentages of 59 percent and 52 percent proficiency. When asked if most of the seniors in their class at the Sound School were planning to attend college, two seniors, Frannie Villano and Dionna Shipman, looked at each other and responded with a resounding “No.” They said that most seniors there plan to attend vocational schools, join the army or enter the workforce. When asked about the New Haven Promise, Villano says, “Most kids nowadays don’t take advantage of it. A lot of kids are lazy and don’t want to do the paperwork.” Villano herself will apply for the scholarship. But she

adds that, in doing so, she is one of the few in her graduating class who is considering the Promise option. Students at another city high school, the High School in the Community, also say Promise is not the ultimate factor in their decision about where they will be after high school. For those like Chastity Berrios, a senior from a single-parent household who is on track to receive a scholarship, Promise may be a relief, but it is not a driving force. “It has been a motivator, but I wouldn’t say it’s been my motivation,” Berrios says. “I’ve kind of always been motivated for college anyway.” And some of her peers, on the other hand, have not been. New Haven is not the first city to offer a Promise-type initiative and find that a scholarship does not overcome students’ attitudes towards college and how they approach educational achievement. In Kalamazoo, Mich., the Kalamazoo Promise — a fulltuition scholarship for students who attend public tertiary institutions in the state — has ensured that, now, 95 percent of high school graduates in the city of Kalamazoo attend college, says the program’s executive director, Bob Jorth. He estimates that prior to the introduction of the Kalamazoo Promise, only 75 percent of high school grads went on to college. Still, the actual proportion of students who do graduate from Kalamazoo high schools has remained fairly static. “It’s the last number that we expect to change,” Jorth said. “There has been an incremental increase, but not a huge increase.” Students who can make it through high school, then, do receive new opportunities. But the scholarship has not proven to incentivize more students in such schools to push up their grades and graduate, much less attain a B average. Implementing nonscholarship changes worked in another instance, the Academy @ Shawnee, a high school in Louisville, Ky. The Academy @ Shawnee became a federal turnaround model and was thus required to replace at least 50 percent of its staff with new hires. Soon after, the school posted gains of more than 20 percent in math and reading proficiency levels, and even made it to Education Week magazine. All this occurred without a Promise-like scholarship program. “I’m not going to turn it down,” says Principal Keith Look, when asked about scholarship options for students. “But in and of itself it is not going to be enough. … [It’s] not changing any of the systems that take place in the school. It’s just changing the incentive.” Without a cultural shift, money serves as a flashy, simpleto-explain fix, but not a farSEE ED. REFORM PAGE 8

// KAREN TIAN

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ICE RAGE

Sig Chi // 11 p.m. A lot of ice and a lot of drinks.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Inauguration drinking game

Shot every time Obama is on the screen.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

KATZ OUT OF THE BAG // BY HAYLEY BYRNES

If art museums are the 180-minute foreign films that few watch, then exhibitions are the awards ceremonies for those unpopular films — the closest a misunderstood artist can get to the glamour of Hollywood awards season, replacing some kitschy red carpet with the edgy, artistic industrialism of concrete. Here, the Oscar went to Alex Katz, who celebrated the opening of his exhibit, “Katz x Katz” at Yale School of Art’s 32 Edgewood Ave. Gallery. In brief Wikipedia terms, Katz has been a prolific artist since the 1950s, with his style sometimes dubbed the precursor to pop art. Passing the paparazzi (several chilly New Haven police officers), I entered the gallery. Given the abundance of combat boots and studded leather jackets worn by visitors, what seemed like a faint smell of Zara lingered in the air, echoing the conscious branding present in Katz’s work. Despite the intimidating sartorial edginess, most people gush to each other. A reclusive minority (myself included) slinked around the walls, assumed “Le Penseur” pose and absorbed Katz’s work. Spatially, the exhibit rejects the familiar linearity of a museum experience. The largest wall displays Katz’s paintings in a kaleidoscopic array. I craned my head to find a large mural of two men about to kiss, one in Sleeping Beauty serenity. Somehow the arrangement avoids chaos, intensifying the experience of Katz’s work as more billboard than Botticelli. Even in his flashiest murals, however, Katz clings to a shred of realism. He avoids the glitz of Lichtenstein and Warhol, never fully embracing the brightness and boldness of pop art. Still, Katz favors a detached two-dimensionality in portraying

the human form — stylistically, but also emotionally. Haunting sideward glances and empty gazes stare at viewers. This indifference seems the most dated and disappointing aspect of Katz’s works. Katz nearly always sets his human forms against abstract or domestic backgrounds. In one piece — a personal favorite of mine — he depicts an idyllic lake with a human head emerging from the water, smiling despite nearly drowning. In another, a couple’s heads are surrounded by a sea of blue, seemingly drowning in bright turquoise hues. His large murals typify, in textbook simplicity, pop art’s stylistic aversion to emotional engagement. For pithy gems of cultural observations, I often look no further than Lena Dunham’s “Girls.” In one episode, the main character Hannah calms her first-date nerves with the following adage: “You are from New York, therefore you are just naturally interesting.” Part of the artistic fascination with Katz, in that same vein, is rooted in his obvious urbanity. With subjects like Allen Ginsburg and other easily recognizable figures (including Yale School of Art Dean Robert Storr), Katz woos viewers with big-name subjects. Bowing my head back down to eye level, I discovered the artist’s less flashy works. Alive with broad brushstrokes and more nuanced features, these pieces betray a sensitivity absent in Katz’s more popular works, such as the four-canvas “Twelve Hours” mural. The breadth of these paintings and drawings saves Katz from any characterization as one-dimensional. One cluster of three pieces depicts the same woman, eyes closed and nearly drowning. Stylistically simple, colored with muted browns in one and gray scale

// JACOB GEIGER

Katz’s work is pop art with a dash of realness, a definite and distinctive pause before the glitz and boldness of pop art heyday.

in another, the pieces strike a depth despite their cartoonish framework, daring to depict darkness (figuratively and literally) more directly. Even more revealing are his landscapes, abstract scenes of bright flowers and lush greenery. For these smaller pieces, Katz visibly loosens his style, crafting less polished and less contrived portrayals of nature that feel more authentic, not in their strict realism, but in their conveyance of Katz’s true artistic identity. Unpredictable in their style, these pieces depart from his more well-known, conventional work. Just before leaving, I walked down a narrow ramp and glanced at the large, polished silver lettering: “Katz x Katz.” I read it as “Katz by Katz.” Entirely the artist’s own. Contact HAYLEY BYRNES at hayley.byrnes@yale.edu .

Société Anonyme, back from the dead // BY MAYA AVERBUCH The Yale University Art Gallery’s exhibition “Société Anonyme: Modernism for America” is what some might call “all over the place.” And it is so — in the best way possible. Showcasing the collection and projects of Société Anonyme, Inc., an arts organization started in 1920 and dissolved in 1950, the exhibit attempts to capture the zeitgeist of the modernist movement. It is not a celebration of any particular artist so much as homage to the organization’s founders — Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray — who made the arts more accessible to the public. The first room recreates the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition, which was held in New York. Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism and Abstraction all find their place side by side on the gallery’s walls. Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes’s curious “Young Woman,” which shows discs, pliers and a furnace-like grate all loosely connected, appears near one of Joseph

// SAMANTHA GARDNER

Tracking the work of an early 20th century organization that helped define modernism, this exhibit is probably not for the classically-minded.

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“ALL OF WHAT YOU LOVE AND NONE OF WHAT YOU HATE” Yale Cabaret // 8–9 p.m.

It would be cooler if they spelled it “h8.” Still, “in her bedroom, a young girl’s universe explodes around her.”

Stella’s hard-lined, angular depictions of the Brooklyn Bridge. On the other side of the room hangs a large, almost alarmingly colorful painting in which a roundhipped figure emerges from a chaotic jumble of hues and shapes: James Henry Daugherty’s cheekily titled “Wall Decoration — The Risen Christ.” Though the diverse mix of artists included in the show had very different roots, they all attempted to claim new ground. Mostly due to the efforts of Dreier and Duchamp, the Société Anonyme amassed over a thousand works, which were given to Yale in the ’40s and ’50s. If the ones exhibited are any indicator, the collection succeeds in embodying the organization’s motto, as stated by Franz Marc: “Traditions are beautiful — but to create them — not to follow.” In line with its attempts to reproduce the original exhibitions of the organization, the YUAG exhibit dedicates part of a wall to each of the artists lucky enough to have had one-man shows in the Société Anonyme’s New York gallery. Both bigname international artists and their less celebrated peers made their American debuts at the venue. Louis Michel Eilshemius was the first to have a solo show there; his hazy, small-scale nature scenes hang in the front room. Wassily Kandinsky’s bright, bold abstract work is just around the corner — his slightly crazy “Multicolored Circle,” which is arresting, with bizarre shapes that seem to float within the canvas, is arresting. Heinrich Campendonk, Fernand Léger and Paul Klee also each have a place in the gallery. Another room highlights the famous 1926 “International Exhibition of Modern Art” at the Brooklyn Museum, which showcased the work of over a hundred artists, in addition to other works that are representative of the rest of the collection. A non-functioning optical illusion machine made by Duchamp dominates the space, along with the elegant, shelllike, marble “Yellow Bird,” by Constantin Brancusi. Other notable pieces include Kurt Schwitters’s beautiful ensemble of found objects, called “Oval Construction;” a dark yellow work by Joan Miró with a funny mustachioed stick-man drawn above the word “Hoo!” and some typical Piet Mondrian pieces. The simi-

larly varied last room’s most impressive element is perhaps Duchamp’s “Tu m’,” in which an accusational hand emerges from a lantern-like shadow, and a bottle brush extends about a foot out of a hole in the center of the painting. The YUAG stresses that the Société Anonyme was not only the organizing force behind many exhibitions, but also a community of thinkers and an educational institution. It hosted lectures, concerts, film screenings, and poetry readings; it published pamphlets, books, and catalogues; and, with the help of Dreier, it took some of its art on the road for other audiences to see. In the narrow, red-walled space between the first two major rooms, postcards, memos, invitations and other Société Anonyme memorabilia lie on display. A television shows “The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” the oldest preserved animated feature-length film, which is made with beautiful, intricate paper silhouettes. Three headphones each play a recording: a stormy, agitated modern piano composition; a sound poem, in sonata form, that bridges the spaces between speech, song and unintelligible, slightly lunatic utterances; and a radio interview with Dreier in which she attempts to explain to her rather skeptical interviewer what modern art is. “What is the difference between a sketch by an ultra-modernist and one by an insane person?” the interviewer asks her, in reference to a confrontation between Dreier and the Museum of Modern Art. “The mad may produce the fantastic — but they cannot produce art,” Dreier says. She defends abstraction — color freed from form — and says, “We play with the imagination of the beholder.” Indeed, the entire exhibit plays with your imagination, whether or not you like all of the artists’ experiments. It explores every niche of modernism, and attempts to fulfill the Société Anonyme’s vision of bringing art to the public sphere, where everyone who takes the time to look can learn about it. Contact MAYA AVERBUCH at maya.averbuch@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Throwing people into the melting snow

Getting out your aggression and making use of the waning white, all in one.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND READS

MCCHRYSTAL CLEAR? // BY BAOBAO ZHANG

For those in the counterinsurgency, it’s a bad time for public relations. Retired general David Petraeus resigned as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) over an extramarital affairs scandal. Journalist Thomas Ricks’ book “The Generals” denounced modern military commanders as incompetent. The enhanced interrogation techniques depicted in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” doesn’t exactly paint a rosy picture. However, retired general Stanley McChrystal’s recent memoir, “My Share of the Task,” read like an oasis amidst much cynicism about America’s “long war” on terror. Those looking for the “real” McChrystal, those who want to dig up juicy bits in a bare-it-all memoir, will be disappointed by “My Share of the Task” — the general took the high road and kept it classy. Writing in a stoic prose occasionally dotted with bloody details, McChrystal recounts his life in terms of leadership lessons. The war he depicts is neither a Pindar ode nor a magazine exposé. To admirers, McChrystal will be remembered as the brilliant and innovative commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Iraq. To detractors, his legacy will be marred by Michael Hastings’ Rolling Stone article, which depicts McChrystal and his aides mocking civilian government officials. McChrystal according to McChrystal is a human who made mistakes — and, nonetheless, a leader devoted to his family, the military and America. The general’s values may seem old-fashioned or trite in our post-modern Yale society, but we must remember that he lived most of his life in the military. The civilians among us may not fully identify with his experience or beliefs as described in the book, but, as readers, we can appreciate his stoicism — or at least, recognize the pettiness of complaining about walking up Science Hill. *** McChrystal’s undergraduate years, as described in “My Share of the Task,” make most of our Yale lives feel like a vacation. The son of Major General Herbert McChrystal, “Stan” entered West Point in 1972. The disciplinarian nature of the U.S. Military Academy was a world apart from the countercultural, anti-war pop culture. “A decade of fighting in Vietnam and a series of scandals like My Lai had degraded the military’s credibility with the country, and as cadets we were periodically reminded that we were out of step with the views, values, and lifestyles of many of our generation,” McChrystal writes. This observation wasn’t merely a plebe’s introspection; he continues to dwell upon the growing gulf between the military and civilian worlds throughout the book. Nevertheless, McChrystal did not try to hide the rough edges of his younger years. Early on at West Point, he earned bad grades and once got wasted in his barracks — a big “no, no” at West Point. As a result, McChrystal spent countless hours marching as punishment. But his antics and energetic spirit made him popular among his classmates and as it turned out, peer evaluations accounted for a significant part of a cadet’s class rank. Maybe there is something to McChrystal’s reputation of being “badass,” to quote Hastings. Even the critical reporter cannot help notice how loyal and dedicated McChrystal’s aides were to the general. Although McChrystal seems to flash his exploits with a secret smurf, his tone is strangely humble. Even generals have a checkered past, he seems to say. Not everyone’s a goody-goody like David Petraeus. “Leaders walk a fine line between self-confidence and humility,” McChrystal later reflects. A fine line indeed, as the general would learn painfully on June 21, 2010 with the appearance of that infamous Rolling Stone article that ended his career.

F R I D AY JA N UA RY 1 8

*** If there is something McChrystal can feel confident about, it’s his grit. He reportedly ran seven to eight miles daily, ate one meal each day to save time and slept four hours at night. These are flat out statistics. Likewise, the general describes his budding military career with a factual tone. For instance, he graduated from the Ranger School, an intense 61-day program known as the “toughest combat course in the world.” How tough? Two Ranger students died in wilderness training a few weeks before McChryst a l ’s class started. His military and academic p re pa ra t i o n for his eventual generalship was extensive. He served as an intelligence and operations officer in South Korea and saw action during the Gulf War. In addition to studying at the Naval War College, he served as a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations. The section documenting the general’s ascendence through the military hierarchy may not be the most exciting read, but the memoir takes a livelier turn at the Iraq War. McChrystal served as the commander of the JSOC from 2003 to 2008, a top secret organization established to eradicate terrorists. Operating out of an air base at Balad, north of Baghdad, the general set up a headquarter that facilitated communication between interrogators, analysts and “operators,” or those who carried out raids and surveillance. One might chuckle at the irony of how McChrystal preached transparency and data within JSOC while the military so neatly kept the organization’s activities under wraps. Perhaps that’s why McChrystal’s account of his JSOC days read like a spy novel. Like George Smiley’s relentless hunt for Karla in the “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” series, the general’s search was for an even deadlier enemy — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. A Jordanian militant Islamist who trained terrorists in Afghanistan, al-Zarqawi moved to Iraq, where he organized violence against Iraqis and Americans alike.

ALL LEADERS ARE HUMAN. THEY GET TIRED, ANGRY AND JEALOUS AND CARRY THE SAME RANGE OF EMOTIONS AND FRAILTIES COMMON TO MANKIND. Through a slurry of bombings and beheadings, shootings and suicide attacks — some by alZarqawi’s men and some not — McChrystal never lost track of his goal to capture the terrorist leader. Although observant readers of current events probably know what led to al-Zarqawi’s targeted killing in 2006, it would be irresponsible for this reviewer to give away the plot. Superficially, the hunt for the master terrorist seems like the

// THAO DO

stuff of Hollywood — but it’s not. War continues after the death of a villain. “We had killed Zarqawi too late. He bequeathed Iraq a sectarian paranoia and an incipient civil war,” McChrystal notes. In his final assignment, McChrystal served as the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, where he hoped to improve a failing counterinsurgency campaign. Quickly, he found himself caught between a Pentagon that requested additional troops and a White House reluctant to allow big-scale escalation. He fought hard to get 30,000 additional troops in November 2009, but also drew the ire of the White House. Although McChrystal sympathizes with military leaders, he never directly pointed fingers when describing the conflict between the Obama administration and the Pentagon. Drawing from political theorist Samuel Huntington’s book “The Soldier and the State,” McChrystal writes, “a military commander should endeavor to operate as

independently of political or even policy pressures as possible … yet I found … the demands of the job made this difficult.” “Rolling Stone” article or not, the general found himself in a precarious political position in early 2010. *** We don’t talk about the political demands of military leadership enough. Go into the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. and you will see an exhibit of Civil War generals. Grant, Sherman, Lee, Jackson. They appear fearsome and resolute, standing or horseback. They developed brilliant tactics and led their men into battle. But war is not some glorified chess game. Often, we don’t remember the dirty, political bits of military leadership. America is a democracy, which means public opinion matters. Battlefield victories matter, but so do scandals. Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire, allegations of torture by the JSOC

HOUSE-WELCOME KICKBACK

Contact BAOBAO ZHANG at baobao.zhang@yale.edu

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

8 p.m.// Afro-American Cultural Center Start off the year right with food, music, friends and culture.

and that infamous “Rolling Stone” article — these all matter. While McChrystal does not brush aside each of these subjects, he does not discuss them extensively either. He does not gush forth apologies, but he stoically accepts responsibility for his actions. “All leaders are human. They get tired, angry and jealous and carry the same range of emotions and frailties common to mankind. Most leaders periodically display them,” he reflects. “My Share of the Task” does not present the intimate close-up modern readers demand of memoirs. Don’t expect an Oprah-esque tell-all because McChrystal lived most of his life as a soldier. Whatever your view of him, a “runaway general” or a military maverick, you should remember he is a man — like Horatius, like Nelson, like those who fell at Gettysburg in the brave days of old.

Not rushing

Greek life is so Dartmouth.

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WEEKEND REALIZES

GLBL 275: ‘Approaches to International Security’

mouth-breathing Popeye’s troll who squeaked the chalk too much when he wrote on the board”? It’s a free country! I have every right to say, “This course was about as much fun as a Lifehouse concert on NyQuil, and I would only recommend it to students who enjoy Lifehouse and taking NyQuil (so nobody).” But no, I had to censor my thoughts because Yale just can’t handle that many truth bombs. Whatever. At least it’s second semester now. Can’t wait to take orgo again, aka best class ever!!

One week, we were told to solve African poverty. Unsurprisingly, we were not able to accomplish that feat. The last third would involve professor Thania Sanchez criticizing our suggestions. While she may have derived some sort of feeling of superiority out of it, I’m not sure how this helped me. In short, she was a professor who had nothing original to say, no command of a classroom and no personality. Going to class was physically painful, and I struggled to stay awake and engaged. Part of it

was the 9 a.m. meeting time. Most of it was the mind-numbingly dull material, the insulting practice of having us solve problems like “African poverty” for 45 minutes of class and the complete lack of understanding of what other students in the class wanted. Call me shallow, but I can deal with a horrible required class if I can do well in it. But the most frustrating part about the class was that in addition to not learning anything, I was also not likely getting an A.

A: TOO UNREAL

PSYC 110: ‘Introduction to Psychology’

book and doing practice problems, since his part of the final was definitely not based on his lectures. If you have to take this class for the major (I heard “Molecular Biology” is slightly better, please consider that!) be prepared to hate lecture, be frustrated at the professors and the organization which seems to have no point to it, and struggle through the semester. At least the quizzes were multiple choice.

ENGL 404: ‘Film and Fiction’

guest appearance compounded my insecurity; with only a few dozen hours of practice, I, too, could memorize decks of cards at will. What’s stopping me? By the midterm, I was a quivering ball of nerves, leaving my room only for lecture, office hours and simple, vegetarian lunches (Animals have brains of their own! Who knew?). But it was all worthwhile in the end. The last review session was just 75 minutes of arguing whether to push a fat man off a bridge (I forget why). Now, if I ever need to relax, I close my eyes and picture the scene: me, the fat man, the bridge, a beautiful sunset. My hands on his back. The scream as he plummets. The massive splash at the bottom. Om... Workload: Same Assessment: Excellent

“Film and Fiction” was an exercise either in generosity or in self-indulgence — your call — on the part of two formidable scholars who happen to share a keen intellectual and occasionally flirtatious fondness for each other. “Our insights and enthusiasms,” said Bromwich to Andrew, back in the tender, hopeful early days of the Obama presidency, “are too utterly goddamn wonderful to perish unheard but by your ears and mine, each the instant after its birth, tossed into the waning flicker of your living-room fireplace. We must share them with the underclass! I mean, the undergraduates! What is the course about? Hah. As Edmund Burke once said, who the

HOW REAL ARE YOUR CLASSES?

f cares?” To which Andrew replied, “Yes,” and he laughed a breathy little laugh as if it were all both very obvious and almost poignantly amusing, like the early Truffaut at its best, a laugh that said, “That’s what I’ve been meaning to say but you are more … well yes, more obnoxious,” and he looked straight ahead for a moment and then looked up at Bromwich and smiled a tentative smile, and it glimmered with all the wanderlust and all the homey Midwestern deference of Iowa City and in that moment he was an ivory-tower Gatsby holding Daisy in his arms and, in that moment, a seminar of ineffable gaudiness unfolded itself in his brain. A: REAL

Wonderful course. Totally recommended. Just one caveat: After Paul Bloom opens your eyes to the light of psychology, you can’t close them again. As I learned many times over the semester, this can be hazardous. It started when my roommate told me about this crazy dream he’d had. “What do you think it means?” I told him the obvious: Deep down, he wanted to behead his father with a ceremonial scimitar and hold his mother’s hand as they relaxed in separate bathtubs on top of a large hill or small mountain, like in the Cialis commercial. “Also, your teeth are going to start falling out.” We haven’t spoken since. Bloom also discusses babies’ innate skill at recognizing evil in the slightest human gesture. Since that lecture, I feel their eyes on me wherever I go. The memory champion’s

People will tell you it is horrible, and you should listen to them. I decided to take this class because I wanted to “learn new things” since I’d already learned what was in “Molecular Biology,” but I sincerely wish I hadn’t. Just preparing for the final, and taking it, I realized there was absolutely no point to studying the lectures. I would have been better off skimming the relevant portions of the

A: TOO REAL

You guys, I am PISSED. Imagine my frustration last week when I tried to curl up in front of the fire with a mug of EasyMac and write my course evaluations, only to receive an error message when I submitted them: “Your evaluation could not be accepted because it is too mean.” Okay, then, I suppose you DON’T want my honest opinion. I don’t see what’s so bad about saying, “This professor’s stupid ties and stupider face made me want to punch kittens” when it’s the TRUTH. So what if I said that my TA was “a

MCDB 202: ‘Genetics’

A: REAL/BASIC

MATH 112: ‘Calculus of Functions of One Variable’

A: UNREAL

y now, we’re a little more than halfway through shopping period. Over here at WEEKEND, we know what we’re taking — “From Picture Book to Graphic Novel,” “Studies in Grand Strategy,” “Stochastic Processes” and “Personal Identity.” Do you? In case you’re thinking about that cool Global Affairs or psychology class, think again. We want you to know all about how bad and how weird your academic situations can get. Before you know it, your ridiculous professor or endless problem sets will have you asking if this is even real. So before you get there, WEEKEND has prepared real and fake class evaluations — see if you can tell the difference.

// KAREN TIAN

S AT U R D AY JA N UA RY 1 9

DONIZETTI’S ‘MARIA STUARDA’ 12:55 p.m. // Sprague Hall

Everything is more dramatic when it’s in Italian.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Knowing your nominees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG2jMY3j3mM

S AT U R D AY JA N UA RY 1 9

// RACHEL PACKER

100 MEN IN BLACK CHORUS: COMMUNITY SING-ALONG

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

1 p.m. // Battell Chapel

We don’t sing, but we’d sing with Men in Black.

“Science of Water” No tests, no problem.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND REALIZES

GLBL 275: ‘Approaches to International Security’

A: TOO UNREAL

PSYC 110: ‘Introduction to Psychology’

ENGL 404: ‘Film and Fiction’

HOW REAL ARE YOUR CLASSES?

A: TOO REAL

MCDB 202: ‘Genetics’

A: REAL/BASIC

MATH 112: ‘Calculus of Functions of One Variable’

A: UNREAL

// KAREN TIAN

S AT U R D AY JA N UA RY 1 9

DONIZETTI’S ‘MARIA STUARDA’ 12:55 p.m. // Sprague Hall

Everything is more dramatic when it’s in Italian.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Knowing your nominees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG2jMY3j3mM

S AT U R D AY JA N UA RY 1 9

// RACHEL PACKER

100 MEN IN BLACK CHORUS: COMMUNITY SING-ALONG

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

1 p.m. // Battell Chapel

We don’t sing, but we’d sing with Men in Black.

“Science of Water” No tests, no problem.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

FIXING WHAT’S BROKEN ED. REFORM FROM PAGE 3 reaching one. Sheila Brantley, who helps facilitate Yale Child Study Center psychiatrist James Comer’s school development program in New Haven public schools, sums up what’s needed with a story about the New Haven Promise. She remembers telling a group of high school students about the Promise when it was first announced. As Brantley excitedly told students they would no longer have to pay for their college tuition, one girl raised her hand and asked, “What’s tuition?”

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PROMISE

While Promise may not be the key to reshaping the attitudes of students already in school and on paths to academic or nonacademic futures, administrators say they hope that it will incentivize the parents of students currently in lower grades to make their children start thinking about college — and the educational success it will take to get there — early on. United Way of Greater New Haven education official King, for instance, calls the city’s school reform effort “a baby” and notes that the program may well have its greatest impact on students who are only in elementary school right now, by influencing their parents’ views of their educational futures. “One of the ways Promise fits in is it’s a quite bold experiment in parent engagement,” says Ginsberg, the CEO of the Promise-administering Community Foundation. “Can we use a significant financial incentive to get parental engagement?” Right now, says Lisa Pressey, the mother of an eighth-grader at Worthington Hooker School, New Haven parents often tell their kids they cannot afford college. That kind of “diminishes your dreams,” she explains. Promise, Pressey says, is “empowering.” That’s because it changes families’ thinking at its roots. Pressey, a single mother, says the financial support Promise offers may be vital to her son’s college career. And that’s a security she now has much earlier, so she’s not scrambling to look for funding options his senior year. Oma Amrit-Singh, the mother of a kindergartner, heard about Promise and the opportunity it could her provide her kindergarten-age daughter and had goosebumps, she says. At least one question about the young girl’s future may be partly solved. Her performance at school now looks that much more likely to result in her attaining higher education — one stumbling block is out of the way. Promise thus tackles New Haven residents’ mindsets, parenting techniques and broader cultural perceptions, which its leaders, like Ginsberg, feel are the reason for students’ currently problematic performance. “The culture of New Haven, with the manufacturing past, was not an economy that required high education credentials. Generations ago, young people could graduate from high school and get jobs in manufacturing, own a home and raise a family and live a life that was economically and socially acceptable,” Ginsberg suggests. “That is just not true anymore.” Promise’s second component focuses explicitly on building a new pro-college culture within schools. The program has cultivated a far-reaching partnership for a number of New Haven schools with College Summit, an

organization that promotes college enrollment among students at every level from kindergarten to high school. Promise Director Patricia Melton ’82 explains that College Summit starts early. She recalls personally going into schools to ask kindergartners what they want to be when they grow up. Then, for kids at higher levels, College Summit’s message is communicated by specially trained educators in the schools themselves, with teachers and peer leaders helping high school students through the college application process. Meanwhile, the non-Promise programs under the umbrella of the School Change Initiative are attempting to develop cultural change using out-of-theclassroom experiences unique to each student. Dr. Rayford for one, the state official leading the Parent University discussion on the troubles faced by urban boys, told the assembled New Haven parents he met that November afternoon that he believes each student has a “hook” that will help her become engaged and invested in education. For some students, he suggested, that “hook” may be connecting chemistry to hip-hop. For others, it is learning about their ancestry, be it Puerto Rican, Cuban or African-American, or being exposed to areas outside their own neighborhoods. At that workshop, a teenage boy raised his hand and told attendees the story of one of his friends. One day, the boy said, his friend’s father left home — and suddenly the friend became a “terror.” Now, that “terror” is a talented basketball player at Wilbur Cross High School, a high school in the New Haven Public Schools system, and just “has this energy,” the teenager went on. Dr. Rayford told him the basketball served a crucial purpose: “They found this kid’s hook.” Boost!, a School Change Initiative program sponsored by the United Way of Greater New Haven, looks for those hooks. It puts together a range of programs that help students succeed outside of the classroom. After an initial test year for their plans, Boost! representatives constructed a needs assessment of which wraparound services certain New Haven schools needed and matched the educational institutions with nonprofits in the community that can provide these services. So, for instance, the school identified as having no after-school programs for sixth and seventh grade girls inspired Boost! staffers to seek out such programs and plug the gap. Boost!’s tentacles are now felt throughout New Haven public schools. At Columbus Family Academy, while teachers were having a routine meeting about their projects, one teacher brought up a student who she described as sometimes behaving like a “goofball.” She explained that to try to jump-start his performance, she emailed representatives of Squash Haven, a Boost!-sponsored activity that teaches kids to play squash and also takes an interest in players’ academics. Her “goofball” student “brought his grade up 30

points in, like, two weeks.” Were students are not engaged in such alternatives to the common path of getting into trouble out of peer pressure, college would be a lost cause regardless of scholarships or academic improvements. “You have to look beyond just a cognitive academic curriculum and instruction,” says Brantley, who implements the Yale Child Study Center’s Comer School Development program for the improvement of students in nonacademic ways. “These students come into the classroom with a whole life experience that’s not even touched.”

SCHOOLS CANNOT REFORM THEMSELVES WITHOUT BEING A COMMUNITYWIDE EFFORT. JACK HEALY

Brantley’s view isn’t just a matter of opinion. Test results confirm that wraparound services are critical. All five of the schools in which Boost! launched in the 2010–’11 school year saw Connecticut state test improvement at a rate higher than the district average. Three of the Boost! schools were in the top 10 most improved schools in the district on the CMTs, Connecticut’s state test for elementary and middle school students. The three schools — Wexler-Grant, August Lewis Troup and Barnard Environmental Studies School — improved test scores by 7.4, 7.2 and 3.5 percent respectively. These figures compare to a district average improvement rate of approximately 2 percent. One of the remaining schools, Clinton, improved test scores by more than 2.5 percent. And Metropolitan Business Academy, a high school which does not administer the CMTs and was the only high school Boost! worked on in its first year, saw 42 percent of students participating in a Boost! activity improve their attendance.

to the streets earlier this year to spread the word about the new approach to schooling. Hill Career Regional High School’s cafeteria buzzed with school reform energy on Oct. 13, as dozens of volunteers, from infants carrying dinosaur lunchboxes to company CEOs, grabbed brochures and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee before heading into neighborhoods to tell people about the new school reform initiatives. This door-to-door canvass was the last of three that the School Change Initiative put together. Each informed New Haven residents about different aspects of education, from entering kindergarten to New Haven Promise. Locals showed up in droves for the kindergarten canvass in particular. Over 200 volunteers knocked on nearly 1,500 doors and talked to about half of the families sending a child to kindergarten in New Haven. The effort to get parents involved in schools needs to feel like a “political campaign,” according to Assistant Superintendent Harries, the school district’s New York-imported education reform specialist. He believes the school district must go after parents with “the intensity and penetration that swing states have just been through in regards to the election.” And Jack Healy, the CEO of United Way of Greater New Haven, sympathizes. Healy was invited to the White House this past October along with about a half dozen other school reform representatives to discuss school change. The main agreement that came out of the meeting, he says, was that community involvement is crucial for successful school reform. “Schools cannot reform themselves without it being a communitywide effort that mobilizes the resources of the public, private and nonprofit sectors,” Healy concludes. Yet while the canvasses are a step in Healy’s desired direction, it is still unclear whether the entire New Haven community understands or even backs school reform. In the

classroom next to Ms. Rosarbo’s, where she was speaking with students about noise in their lives, fellow Brennan Rogers teacher Bryan Merritt also discussed obstacles to college with his students. In addition to peer pressure, the streets, drugs and violence, Merritt says, money came up, “obviously.” When asked why money was still a concern since these children have access to the New Haven Promise, Merritt explains, “We’ve talked about it ad nauseum, but it’s so far away it doesn’t resonate.” The public school system’s 2009–’10 climate survey also showed mixed results about the community’s attitude toward school reform. In the parental survey, the schools did indeed poll well in most categories such as “the school environment is conducive to learning” and “the school has high academic expectations for my child.” Then again, only 23.1 percent of parents in the district took the survey.

NEW HAVEN AS A MODEL

According to Community Foundation CEO Ginsberg, the board of New Haven Promise has been charged with evaluating the city’s entire School Change Initiative. The team, which includes Levin, Ginsberg and DeStefano, is almost finished with the evaluation design. Ginsberg says he hopes the evaluation will take place in 2013. But so far, there seems to be incremental improvement. When asked if he is pleased with the progress of school reform, Harries tells me he thinks there is “potential,” but then adds that the city is “not there yet.” The high school graduation rate, one of the most import a n t indicators for education reform, has

increased by 2 percent in the last year, up to 64.3 percent in 2011 from 62.5 percent in 2010. The percentage of students on track to graduate, which is a measure of whether students have adequate credit accumulated for their grade level, has increased by about 9 percent. And the dropout rate has recently decreased, falling from 27.1 percent in 2010 to 25.1 percent in 2011. Meanwhile, 21 more students qualified for Promise in its second year than in its first, and in 2012, elementary schools came one point closer to closing the achievement gap with the state as a whole. High schools, however, slipped backward from gains made in 2011. The district qualified for a $53 million dollar grant to train and develop educators, but did not qualify for the federal Race to the Top grant, which awards exemplary education reform plans. The results may be mixed, but one thing is certain. In New Haven, there is hope. If New Haven is going to succeed, it will not be because the public was dazzled with scholarships or because educators concentrated all of their energy on one aspect of school change. If New Haven succeeds, it will be because a new team of reformers took an entire city’s educational culture and flipped it upside down. At the end of the dedication ceremony at Hill Central, Sheena Steed turned to her son Devon and said, “Don’t you love school, Devon?” “Yes,” said Devon, who continued eating his Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and dancing to the Spanish music playing in the background. There are thousands of Devons in the United States, in cities like New Haven, craving the kind of real change that lessens the achievement gap and helps them enter college. It is not clear whether New Haven has discovered the solution to Devon’s educational future, but whoever does will not only shape Devon’s future — they will shape the next generation of Americans. Contact MONICA DISARE at monica.disare@yale.edu .

THE SCHOOL CHANGE CRUSADE

Administrators in offices are not the only ones campaigning for school reform. Acknowledging that the larger culture of their city has to change, New Haven residents took

// KAREN TIAN

S AT U R D AY JA N UA RY 1 9

KISS ME, KATE

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

2 p.m. and 8 p.m. // University Theatre Cole Porter 1913 is great (see our review, page 4).

Having a dream À la MLK.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND DRAMATIZES

AT 177 COLLEGE ST., ARTISTS IN THE MAKING // BY ANYA GRENIER

It’s 10:30 on a Thursday morning, and Mr. McAfee’s juniors are warming up for class. “Head voice!” he calls out, then “Chest voice!” and the row of students whooeep and heeay and hiiii, shaking from side to side before they’re told to inhale. “Now say your names, say, ‘Hi, my name is,’ and then the name of your character,” he continues. “It has to be big and full and vibrating, so everyone in the space can hear it without even trying.” “Hi, my name is Polonius.” “Hi, my name is Claudius.” McAfee stops a girl in a blue sweatshirt who he doesn’t think has spoken loudly enough, and asks her to try again. “HI, MY NAME IS OPHELIA,” she shouts. “See you’re going to hurt your voice that way, you can’t be hurting your voice,” McAfee tells her. “You can be that loud without straining yourself. You have a lot of lines so I want to make sure everyone hears them, because you’re doing some great stuff.” There’s a collective “awwwwww” from the other students standing on stage, and after a couple of giggles the group carries on. “Hi, my name is Hamlet.” “Hi, my name is Rosencrantz.” *** These students are putting on “Hamlet” as a class as part of their work at the Theater Department at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School in downtown New Haven (known as the Co-op). The school is located less than two blocks from Old Campus, on the corner of College and Crown streets. While 65 percent of students at Co-op live in New Haven, 35 percent come from outside the city. The Interdistrict Magnet Schools system provides free bus transportation to students, including those from towns such as Guilford and North Branford, and travel can take as much as an hour each way. Like all of the 18 New Haven Magnet Schools, the only way to get into the Co-op is by a lottery which takes place in February of each year. Though no one can audition or submit a writing portfolio, students must select one of the school’s five arts departments to apply to: creative writing, visual arts, music, dance and theater. Infinity Jean, a junior at the school, said that she was so set on working on theater that Co-op was the only school to which she applied. “It’s a good thing I got in,” she added. “Or I would have gone to Hillhouse [her neighborhood public school in New Haven].” Jean was luckier than a lot of students: for each spot in its freshman class, the school is forced to turn away many more students than it accepts. With a total enrollment of 650, Co-op consistently has the longest waiting list each year of any school in the mag-

S AT U R D AY JA N UA RY 1 9

net system, according to Arts Director Suzannah Holsenbeck ’05. A passion for the arts is not the only reason some apply to Co-op. Theater teacher Robert Esposito said that he always begins with a new group of students by asking, “Why are you here?” And for some students, the answer is simply “because my mom doesn’t want me to go to Hillhouse. Esposito can sympathize with the parents: Co-op, he said, has a kinder environment than some surrounding neighborhood schools. On top of the Co-op’s strong academic reputation and sparkling new facilities, Esposito said students are less likely to be bullied there. The school is heavily female, and has a large openly gay community. “I know for me, I have an 11-yearold daughter. I would love for her to come to Co-op,” Esposito said. “I think that says a lot — I totally understand why parents force their kids to come here.” *** While the Co-op offers a standard, college preparatory academic track, students spend an hour and a half on their chosen arts every day — a full 25 percent of their total instructional time, and the largest concentration in any subject matter that they have. For the first two years the theater curriculum strives to expose students to the widest possible range of aspects of theater, with freshmen focusing on ensemble building and sophomores on scene study. In these two years they’ll study everything from the Stanislavski method of acting to technical theater, read “Oedipus Rex” and learn techniques for auditioning. As juniors they’ll split off into technical and acting tracks based on students’ interests, and study Shakespeare before moving into modern drama their senior year. Senior Frankie Douglass said that while she has always liked theater, before coming to Co-op she didn’t consider herself an artist. The Co-op school was her second choice after the Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), also located in downtown New Haven — which selects students through a merit-based, competitive application process. “It was my first time auditioning for anything,” she said. “I messed it up.” After three and a half years at Co-op, she has realized that not only does she belong among the arts, she needs them. “I feel like we all look at the world differently now,” Douglass said. “Now situations, tragedies we go through, we can take all that and we have somewhere to put it.” Despite representing a similar economic demographic as other area public schools, the Co-op can boast significantly higher test scores, and rates of college attendance. Of all the students who graduated from the Theater Department last year, Esposito said that maybe all but two are now in

college, while noting that funding can remain an obstacle for many students from low-income families. “When you’re dealing with any kind of at-risk population you have to give students a reason to come to school,” he said. “When they realize they have a show in a month and people are depending on [them], they’re gonna go to school. The largest step is getting them in the building.” Senior Lyanne Segui thinks having arts every day helps their academics by giving them something to do that requires focus but still gives them a break. Co-op students’ enthusiasm for the arts is palpable. During a break between classes, a girl asks her friend about the student dance show that took place the weekend before while fixing her hair in the bathroom mirror. Later, two boys talk about a visual arts student’s capstone project presented earlier in the day on their way to lunch. One girl in McAfee’s class actually complained that the school had closed the day before, “for just like, two inches of snow,” making the group miss a day of rehearsal for “Hamlet.” *** Because of the lottery system, the students who come to Co-op each year come from very diverse backgrounds, theater teacher Christi Sargent explained: some come from arts magnet middle schools, others have little experience, or interest, in the arts at all. While this range of experience can pose a challenge to instructors, Esposito said that he wouldn’t necessarily change the system. “There would be so many kids we’d miss out on because they wouldn’t have the confidence or savvy to come and audition,” he said. “When I look back, all the kids I think were most special and got the most out of it would never have had the guts to audition, would have had no clue they had any talent.” And Sargent maintains that with enough hard work and focus, everyone can succeed in the theater program. One of her main tasks is simply helping those who don’t come in with a high level of confidence in themselves to grow comfortable with the kind of risk-taking theater requires. “The people you meet in theater class are not people you’re going to meet in creative writing,” senior Yasmari Collazo said. “They’re out there, they don’t care, that weirdness rubs off on you.” Simone Ngongi, a junior, said the Co-op theater program has helped her get used to stepping out of her comfort zone. Esposito said that the Co-op is not immune from problems that plague lower-income schools, such as students who come in with low reading levels, and with a correspondingly low level of faith in their own abilities. Nevertheless, teaching at Co-op is “easy” compared to the Fair Haven

Middle School where he began working as a teacher. The main task for Esposito is to focus on what students do well and build from that, no matter how small the victories may seem at first. He recalled one past student who, when first asked to do a presentation as a freshman, simply lost her breath and ran out of the room. But by her senior year, he said, she was the lead in the class mainstage. Sargent said one of her current freshman initially broke down in tears when asked to participate in class, and she had to work in small increments to overcome her fears. “Every day I gave her new goals to accomplish,” Sargent said, “Tomorrow she’s going to be in her first play.” *** Sargent does not push her kids to go into theater professionally, and doesn’t see that as the purpose of the program. “I want to show students how this can change their lives in terms of confidence,” she said. “These skills transition to all aspects of life, whether you want to be a nurse or a secretary.” When it comes to the future, students themselves are largely pragmatic. According to Segui, most of her classmates don’t plan to pursue theater because they want to be financially stable, not because they don’t

“ANNIE HALL”

At the Co-op high school, students get to choose their own artistic concentration.

enjoy it. Douglass said that she plans to be a culinary nutritionist in college, and perhaps someday later she will go back to acting, perhaps even attend a conservatory. But though Segui is very aware of the uncertainty involved in a career in theater, she is certain that she wants to pursue it nevertheless. “There’s just never been anything else I’ve found as interesting,” she said. Collazo, who recently finished her college applications, said that she used to dream of growing up to be a famous actress and starring in movies, but that over the years her perspective has gotten a dose of reality. “I realized I need a game plan,” she laughed. But while Collazo said acting isn’t the main thing she wants to focus on in college, she was equally apprehensive about quitting it altogether. “How do you let go of something you do every day?” she said. “This school takes the arts and really shoves them into our personalities.” Contact ANYA GRENIER at anna.grenier@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

7 p.m. // Whitney Humanities Center They had angst in the ’70s, and we still have it today.

// ANYA GRENIER

Grapefruit.

Also known as GREATfruit. Oranges pale in comparison.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

MOVES LIKE JAGGER, I.E. WITH A WALKER // BY DAVID WHIPPLE

Dear Mick: It’s time for you to die. I say this not out of hate, but out of love. The Rolling Stones were and always will be an inspiration to drugaddled dropouts and rebellious lovers, denim-clad delinquents and flippers of the middle finger. When the Beatles came back from India strumming their sitars and singing about waltzing horses, you stuck to your guns: three chords, the truth and copious amounts of cocaine. For that, we thank you. Every rocker who ever wore a leather jacket thanks you. Punk thanks you and metal thanks you; Kurt Cobain thanks you and Jack White thanks you; hipsters and bros alike thank you. And now, in return, we ask one thing: We ask that you die.

EVERY STONES SHOW ERODES THEIR LEGACY Watching the Rolling Stones take the stage today is like watching someone take apart the Parthenon stone by stone. Every Stones show erodes their legacy. They perform behind a Botoxed veneer of youth, leaning on their mic stands like canes, trying desperately to inject songs like “Start Me Up” with the energy that they themselves no longer possess. To Mick Jagger, a joint is no longer something that gets you stoned — it’s something that gets arthritis. And when he sings “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” he’s probably just talking about erectile dysfunction. Time, it seems, is no longer on their side. The Stones are hardly alone. The

DAVID WHIPPLE TUNE-UP Who, once famous for their guitarsmashing live shows, have gone just as senile. Their Super Bowl performance a few years ago was as limp as a dead fish inside Keith Moon’s bass drum (he actually did this once, before he had the right instinct to die while the dying was good). It’s particularly pathetic that The Who, whose epitaph will always be the line from “My Generation,” “I hope I die before I get old,” have failed to do just that. The list goes on: The Allman Brothers now tour with exactly one founding member, while The Stooges were in the midst of their reunion when guitarist Ron Asheton came to his senses and dropped dead. It all raises the question: Why continue? Maybe these bands simply can’t bring themselves to quit the stage, or maybe they’re just in it for the money. It’s a tough life to leave behind. But the years they spent as England’s newest hit-makers, taking the world by storm, continue to fade more and more. They were some of the best to ever do it because they embodied the rock ‘n’ roll ethos and expressed it as well as anyone else. They drank too much and smoked too much, played too loud and pulled all-nighters in the studio, and were loved for it. The longer they continue to impersonate their old selves, the farther they get from the real Rolling Stones. The same is true for The Who, for Van Halen, for any other band that lives in denial of its own mortality. After all, the best way to achieve immortality is to die young: Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison will be forever 27, as they said good-

bye before they could begin diluting their own accomplishments. When Mick Jagger eventually lets go, our last memory of him will be of someone who overstayed his welcome but refused to see it. It’s not impossible for rock stars to age with grace; Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have both done so. Dylan recently released his 35th studio album to widespread acclaim, while Bruce continues to stomp across the stage like a man possessed, even as his band ages behind him. One gets the feeling that these two will exit with poise, as some have done. Despite what I’ve implied, it is possible to call it quits by some manner other than choking to death on your own vomit. But Bruce and Dylan never embraced the wild side of rock like the Stones or The Who did, and so there is none of the sour irony that accompanies a group of 60-somethings who have stuck around for too long. According to Steven Van Zandt, Springsteen has never done a drug in his life, and even early on, he showed an uncanny ability to be wistful about things that hadn’t even happened yet. Dylan may have done a few drugs in his time — OK, maybe more than a few — but he’s been a crotchety old man since the day he was born. The point is, you can’t have it both ways. Rock stars who lived large can’t keep pretending to do so forever, and no amount of Botox is going to change that. Contact DAVID WHIPPLE at david.whipple@yale.edu . // CREATIVE COMMONS

Shortened Punchlines // BY JACOB EVELYN In the beginning, there was email. With electronic mail, people could suddenly communicate almost instantly over vast distances. After the obligatory interuniversity and intragovernmental look-what-we’ve-accomplished messages, email began to be a thing that ordinary people used to stay in touch over long distances, to communicate with co-workers and eventually to forward chain emails to everyone in their address books. They say the hardest part of learning a new language is humor. But humor has been quick to worm its way into each “language” of the Internet. Email chains quickly became a way to send funny stories and jokes around the world. Tumblr, originally just another way to blog, is now dominated by streams of animated GIF jokes (if you don’t believe me, sit at the back of a packed lecture — it’s not like you were going to pay attention during shopping period anyway — and then count how many laptop screens are on whatshouldwecallme.tumblr.com). When someone shows you a YouTube video, there’s a good bet it’s filed under “comedy.” Over the summer, I received companywide emails at my internship about a local bear that was caught wandering near the office; the story had been picked up by the local news. Within minutes, someone had created a Twitter account for the bear (“C Line or D Line into town. Decisions, Decisions” and “Can’t a bear just catch some zzzzzs around here without all this paparazzi” were two tweets among many). After two days of sharing its thoughts, responding to questions, attracting 111 followers and itself following 24 others, @Brooklinebear stopped its activity forever. Whether or not our attention spans are actually decreasing, as posited by everyone over the age of 40, is a complex issue. I would argue, at least, that our patience for punch lines is diminishing. What constitutes “funny” is now often a quick image (see: Yale Memes) or line of text, rather than the re-re-forwarded chain emails of yesterday. Among YouTube’s most popular videos are the fivesecond-long “Dramatic Chipmunk” and the sub-one-minute “Charlie Bit Me!” Jokes strive to rise above the crowd only

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JACOB EVELYN THE FUTURE for a few moments before being forgotten by all but icanhascheezburger.com. This doesn’t mean humor is dead; perhaps, in fact, the opposite. We’re being hit by so many funny photons that humorists have to work harder, think more creatively than ever, to achieve even a tiny glimpse of noticeability. To be an audience of the Internet today is exhilarating. Consider the case of @StealthMountain. The Twitter bot is the product of a tireless computer’s efforts patrolling the Twitterverse for a particular grammatical error: Each time a tweet contains the phrase “sneak peak” (note misspelling), @StealthMountain politely tweets back, “I think you mean ‘sneak peek.’” (The Twitter account description calls itself “a sneaky peak.” Stealth mountain. Get it?) The point is, someone is actively paying money — in electricity bills, server time or what have you — to run the computer program that makes @StealthMountain possible. And it’s all so that someone can stumble onto the Twitter page, say, “Huh. That’s really clever,” and never look at it again (it loses a lot of its punch the second time around). Along the same vein, there’s @ big_ben_clock, which tweets “BONG” to indicate the hour, on the hour — “BONG BONG BONG” is three o’clock London time — and a handful of other automated Twitter accounts that earn a chuckle but not much more. Heck, someone even made @OneTweetTony, whose account description is “I nail it on the first tweet every time,” and whose one and only tweet reads, “Nailed it! That’s a wrap!” The point is, humor is evolving. It’s changing along with the technologies we use, and that’s not a bad thing. Standup comedy and humor essays won’t be replaced, just as Twitter hasn’t replaced email. We’re just in a more technologically diverse age, and so are our punch lines. Contact JACOB EVELYN at jacob.evelyn@yale.edu .

“I don’t think I deserve a profile in the YDN.” // BY MAX SALTARELLI AND SUSANNAH SHATTUCK

For each installment of their new column, Max and Susannah will interview and profile a recent Yale alum, in order to show our readers what life after college is really all about.

“The bummer is Yalies trying banking.” Drew Westphal ’10 is adamant when it comes to consulting and investment banking as career tracks for recent graduates. “If the fact that you need something to do is the only reason you’re a consultant, then I don’t think you should be a consultant. I did that for a while, and I had to pay $10,000 to quit.” After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Westphal, like many of his classmates, moved to New York to begin a career in consulting. He was competent at his job, competent enough to earn a $10,000 bonus, which was contingent on his staying with the company for two more years. After nine months in the office, however, Westphal realized he would not make it another 15; working as a consultant had made him despondent. In his own words, “crying in a cubicle gets old after a while.” It was at this point in his career, less than a year out of college, that he decided to throw caution to the wind and quit his prestigious, high-paying consulting job. Where he landed next, no one could have predicted. “Life has a way of surprising you,” said Westphal in a phone interview. “Being a Whiff literally changed my life. For. The. Better.” Westphal described the sequence of events following his exit from consulting as weird and unexpected. By a stroke of fate, a sold-out Whiffenpoofs concert at Woolsey Hall drew audience members from around the country, including geek humor gods John Hodgman ’93 and Jonathan Coulton ’93, the latter an alumnus of both the Spizzwinks(?) and the Whiffenpoofs.

THREESOME WITH MAX & SUSANNAH A year later, during the process of quitting his consulting job, Westphal contacted Coulton, known as an Internet presence and comedic musician. Of the drunken conversations that led Westphal to a job as Coulton’s fan mail answerer, Westphal simply says, “Once a Wink, always a Wink!” adding that if we could see him through the phone, we’d see him giving us a big, warm wink.

I THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE TO BE DEPRESSED TO MAKE JOKES FOR A LIVING, AND I DON’T THINK I’M DEPRESSED ENOUGH. A few months into working with Coulton, Westphal helped the musician design his website and drove his tour van, eventually taking on the title of Coulton’s general manager — or “Scarface,” as he is known to Coulton’s numerous fans. Westphal manages the official Scarface Twitter and occasionally turns up in Coulton’s music videos, including one in which he is run over by a zamboni. Of course, when you spend your time around Internet-famous comedians, you experience your fair share of Web-fueled high jinks. Before a show on one of Coulton’s cross-country tours, Scarface tweeted that Coulton’s tour bus needed a cat and asked fans to bring stray cats to the show for adoption. Coulton tweeted right

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’S LEGACY OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

12 p.m. // Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History There’s a special place in our hearts for drum circles.

back that he didn’t want a cat for the bus but rather a pig. At the next show, one die-hard fan gave Coulton two beautiful, plastic, hand-painted German figurines — a cat and a pig — to that night’s show. Since then, Bus Cat and Bus Pig have been active tweeters (under the handles @RealBusCat and @RealBusPig), and the two have garnered a following that includes such esteemed fans as singer-songwriter Aimee Mann. Westphal’s post-Yale journey has been a dynamic one, and he encourages graduating seniors to think about their immediate future not as a fixed time but one full of change and discovery. “Everyone’s going to make you feel like shit because you don’t know exactly what you’re going do with your life,” he told us. “By the end of the second semester, there’s this atmosphere of who-are-you-goingto-be, as if you have to have an answer — and that’s bullshit.” Westphal is quick to say that his current career — managing musicians — is not what he ever envisioned for himself, and he is not sure he wants to continue doing it forever. “I’ve been doing stand-up in the city for the last couple of months,” Westphal said, “but I think you might have to be depressed to make jokes for a living, and I don’t think I’m depressed enough.” For now, Westphal is content to keep his stand-up on the side while he focuses on managing Coulton and the many adventures that come with his job. We asked Westphal what parting words of wisdom he has for soon-tobe graduates. His advice? “Get good at Excel. And treat yourself to something sugary and scrumptious each day.” Contact MAX SALTARELLI and SUSANNAH SHATTUCK at max.saltarelli@yale.edu and susannah.shattuck@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Screw your roommate with a New Haven local. Surprises all around.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

NOT JUST ANOTHER TEENAGE PLAY // BY VANESSA YUAN

nious demonstration of just how toxic contemporary culture can be for a girl. She is surrounded by magazine cutouts of pop idols, but what would a cutout of herself represent if it were also on the wall? That is, the show raises the question of what a girl is supposed to want or do, given the mixed messages on love, sex and femininity embodied in photos of Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj and the like. The harm that comes from these conflicting thoughts is visually represented by the mess of clothing and furniture around her, disheveled and arranged radially as if exploding out of the room and into the audience. “all of what you love and none of what you hate” does not hold back. As if exemplifying the bombardment of information characteristic of modern society, the entire space of the intimate venue is put to use. Projection designer Paul Lieber DRA ’13 uses notable projections as virtual extensions of the set, offering fleeting digital components that are reminis-

“all of what you love and none of what you hate” is noise. It’s the good kind of noise. You know, the kind of noise you blast from your headphones with eyes closed to block out a culture saturated with stimuli — a culture bubbling with media like music, magazines and social networks. Playwright Phillip Howze DRA ’15 takes us into the mind of a contemporary teenage girl. This character (Zenzi Williams DRA ’15) is trying to find the right kind of noise, or just a friend who won’t put her on hold for Someone-on-the-other-line when coping with the overwhelming pressure from her mom (Prema Cruz DRA ’14), her friend (Tiffany Mack DRA ’15) and her boyfriend (Cornelius Davidson DRA ’15). The show opens with the struggling teen sitting at the center of her room, obviously perturbed by some sort of burdening silence, foreshadowing her struggles with growing up. The set itself, designed by Portia Elmer DRA ’15 and Mariana Sanchez DRA ’15, is an inge-

cent of a browser’s tabs or popups. Key sound choices also add to the effect. The show is visually and aurally loud as it reels you into a teenager’s world as it is about to explode. However, the girl is not alone in this struggle. While the show focuses on the central theme of this teenager’s struggle, it also points to the fact that each character has individual issues — noise — to deal with. A single mother of two children, Cruz’s character is trying to figure out parenthood and a love life of her own after an unsuccessful marriage. Cruz plays an obsessive and lonely

Kissing Cole

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who is the personification of this overcharged society. She is fluent in hasty speech, and functions in the fast-paced world around her with natural ease, facing daily woes (like catching a woman watching pornography at the public library) with a kind of bluntness that will make you laugh. But then there is the poignant moment when she reacts to her troubled friend’s problems with a kind of false sympathy that says, “You should have seen this coming.” Don’t be tempted to brush her off as the ditzy friend just yet. “all of what you love and

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

Just a girl looking for the right kind of noise.

none of what you hate” is a show about questions. Each of these characters raises questions about who we are and who we are expected to be. So expect to reflect. The show is playing at the Yale Cabaret and runs through Jan. 19. Contact VANESSA YUAN at vanessa.yuan@yale.edu .

‘Moonshine & Lion’: bright & wild

// BY JACKSON MCHENRY

Our University loves nothing more than celebrating itself. If nothing else, this weekend’s performance of “Kiss Me, Kate” in concert will be a wonderfully gleeful experience of just that. The read-through I attended lacked the show’s 44-piece orchestra, which will be one of the production’s highlights. But as the show heads into the weekend, it is clear that, at his alma mater, Cole Porter’s 1913 vision will shine through. “Kiss Me, Kate” is planned as part of the Cole Porter Centennial, a yearlong recognition of the famous songwriter that is designed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Porter’s graduation from Yale College. This may seem like a contrived date to focus on, but it’s hard to play down Porter’s Yale connection. While studying English at the University, Porter not only participated in the Yale Dramat: He was also a founding member of the Whiffenpoofs. Whenever you hear the “Bulldog” fight song performed at a football game or wheezed out by old alumni during a drunken night at Mory’s, Porter is the one to thank. Luckily, the songster is just as well-known for his postcollege melodies, and “Kiss Me, Kate” includes some of his best. In addition, the 1948 Broadway musical has the distinction of winning the first ever Tony Award for Best Musical. And while most of the show’s songs remain memorable, its plot is no less virtuosic. Set within a theater company attempting to put on a musical production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” “Kate” features competing egos, old-fashioned gangsters, complicated love triangles and, of course, a play within a play. This weekend’s performance, however, shifts its focus to the music alone. “Kate”’s premiere will introduce, for the first time, a critical edition of Porter’s score, compiled from competing editions by conductor David Charles Abell ’81. Unfortunately for me, without the presence of a full orchestra, much of the intended effect of Abell’s research was lost when the performers rehearsed to

single parent in a way that’s believable — the noise in her world resonates from self-help books and advice columns. The boyfriend played by Davidson tries to be as “cool” as possible and makes hurtful mistakes that he’s not ready to admit to. Davidson plays a crude and idiotic boy, and Williams, an insecure but rational girl. Altogether, it is unconvincing that the two could have been a couple, however temporary their relationship was. Even so, the difference between the struggles of the modern boy and girl is apparent and powerful. Finally, Mack plays a gal pal

// BY SARAH SWONG

the sound of the piano alone. Even without the additional bells and whistles, Porter’s music stands well enough on its own. This is partially due to the show’s decision to imitate a staged reading, as in a radio play: the actors stand in a row before a set of microphones beneath glaring “On Air” signs, the stage directions are read by narrator Geoffrey Owens ’81, and the sound effects (slamming doors, ringing phones and even falling pots) are created in front of another set of microphones by Foley artists (Raphael Shapiro ’13 and Bonnie Antosh ’13). All this lack of motion serves to heighten the focus on the actor’s performances. The show’s leads, Ethan Freeman ’81 as Frank Graham/Petruchio and Sari Gruber ’93, an opera soprano, as Lilli Vanessi/Kate, hold your attention with Porter’s more classical tunes. Gruber, especially, carries Porter’s ballad “I Hate Men” with a neat, trilling flourish. But, while the radio broadcast conceit succeeds in holding your attention during Porter’s ballads, the performance sags during breaks for dialogue. The musical’s slapstick sensibility which, in a pivotal scene, involves some actual slapping, doesn’t make as much sense when the actors stand feet away from each other and never touch. Additionally, Porter’s score includes ample space for dance interludes — in

// TORY BURNSIDE-CLAP

There will be an orchestra on Saturday, promise!

this version, the music plays, but no dancers take the stage. Your ability to hold focus will depend on your tolerance for toe-tapping tunes. The occasional lag notwithstanding, “Kiss Me, Kate” comes across with a classic, old-Yale, old-fashioned wink. The big numbers, “Too Darn Hot” and “Another Op’nin’ Another Show,” bring in a hearty dose of enthusiasm and even the most ardent philistine will appreciate two gangsters (Christopher Durang DRA ’74 and Bobby Lopez ’97) putting their bafflement with the bard to song in “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.” In these best moments, carried away by Porter’s rhyming, ludicrous talent, I couldn’t help but forget everything but the melodies. And, in the end, I guess that was the point. “Kiss Me, Kate” will run at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Jan. 19 at the University Theater. The next event in the centennial celebration will be a Cole Porter-themed swing dance in Jonathan Edwards College.

Dairy Queen was no longer human. Played by Olivia Scicolone ’15, she had transformed into a mute cow grazing in the fields, where Andrew (Derek Dimartini ’13) found her unable to reciprocate his love. He decides to kill himself by poisoning his DQ Blizzard, the drink they used to share in their rosy days of love. A rapid series of 18 vignettes, “Moonshine & Lion Presents: A Night of Excellent Theatre” at the Davenport Auditorium is a wild pastiche of bizarre episodes. As the final products of the students of THST 321a, “Production Seminar: Playwriting,” the scenes had little in common but an emphasis on dialogue and absurdity — including strange circumstances (an anxious tomato that possesses a teenage girl after she eats it), or ordinary situations that become absurd as the plot unfolds (an everyday domestic dispute over eggs involves a ghostly Oprah). As a staged reading — a type of theatre without sets, full costume or much stage movement — the performance emphasized the script itself (fitting for a playwriting class). It is a pedagogical tool for the writers themselves, who must focus on dialogue and pace. Hearing only voice required me to imagine elements of the plot and characters

// PHILIPP ARNDT

Dimartini reads from his script to tell a strange story.

Contact SARAH SWONG at sarah.swong@yale.edu .

Contact JACKSON MCHENRY at jackson.mchenry@yale.edu .

GETTING DRUNK

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

10 p.m. // Everywhere on campus Cherish this opportunity — Mondays without class don’t happen everyday.

that aren’t on stage, and I felt a more intuitive sense of the characters than I’ve had watching fully staged productions. Certainly this was a result of the actors’ strong dialogue and incredible voice-acting abilities — Scicolone played both a bossy porno star director and a blonde with a husky voice — and also of the minimalist approach itself. Characters both ordinary and inanimate took the stage. In one scene, a cucumber (Andrew Sotiriou ’13) disagrees with a tomato’s (Calista Small ’14) anxiety over his impending death on the cutting board; in the funniest skit, a man’s marriage depends on two moths (Ryan Bowers ’14, Nicole Davis ’13) chewing holes in his cashmere sweater. You are thrown into the five-minute scenes immediately — often in a disorienting way such that plot details unfold only as the characters reveal them in their speech. In the tenth skit, Mike, played by Bowers and Dan (Gabe Greenspan ’14) open with Mike saying he “will be fine.” The audience realizes that he’s talking about his kidney stone. But Dan thought Mike had been rejected from the medical profession (Hospital? Medical school?), leading Mike to reveal that he had indeed received a rejection letter. He can no longer pursue urology, and now the fates have played the ultimate joke on him with the kidney stone. The sequential development of the plot gives the skits the pace of improv comedy, with jokes building on given situations. Actors sometimes stumbled as they read off the script — they had not memorized the lines — and often laughed off mistakes in ways that interrupted the skits. They switched between roles in the vignettes that ultimately had no unifying theme, which lost me at times, and it moved too quickly to allow me to process the material. One skit had the characters talk about hiding a waterfall, with the waterfall emerging from upstairs to take its revenge on his captors. Perhaps that was intentional, or possibly comprehensible with more time to perform it before cutting to the next skit. But in spite of the hiccups, they successfully jumped into each character, which served to showcase their talents as performers. “Moonshine & Lion Presents: A Night of Excellent Theatre” isn’t a clean, coherent production with a unified theme. But it is full of inventiveness of unleashed creativity, which Moonlight & Lion wrote and delivered with hilarity, fast pace and strong characterization.

Getting a flu shot

You’re going to infect all of us.

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

JEANINE DAMES

// ALLIE KRAUSE

Reigning over UCS with cautious optimism // BY YANAN WANG

vices, calls the path to her present job a “perfect example of how careers are unpredictable.” Dames came to Yale in 2007 with a unique professional back-

ground defined by fluidity: After she earned her bachelor’s degree in animal sciences from Cornell University and a degree from Fordham University School of Law, Dames practiced law in Connecticut and New York. She made the transition to career services through work at Fordham’s Career Planning Center, where she counseled law students on career options. Dames then directed employment planning at the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management, most recently serving as the deputy director for employment programs in UCS prior to her promotion this week. When WEEKEND sat down with Dames to discuss her vision for the new job, to which she was appointed this past Tuesday, she instinctively asked this reporter about her personal career aspirations, remarking with a laugh that she is accustomed to inquiring about students’ employment goals. Following assurance that this time, the meeting was indeed about her, Dames spoke candidly about the consulting and finance industries (and the allegations that UCS channels students into them), initiatives for students in science and math and ways to meet the demands of today’s uncertain job market. Q. You worked with Allyson Moore both at UCS and at the School of Management. What are some things that you hope to do differently from Moore, and what are the legacies that you want to preserve? A. My hope is to build upon many of the initiatives that Allyson put into place here. One thing that I hope to do, which she didn’t have as much time to work on, is to branch out to the various resources already available across the University. We want to ask: What are the need areas? How can we make the career search a clearer and more streamlined process for students? I look forward to really working across the University — with Yale College, faculty, the Entrepreneurial Institute — to really think about what our students are interested in as a whole. Q. In your interview with the News this Tuesday, you mentioned new initiatives in the works as a result of student interest. Can you elaborate on what these programs will be and where the interest is coming from? A. What I learned from working at the Graduate School is that it is very important for our programming to line up with student interests. Student interests change: They are very different from what they were five years ago and will change in another five years. And as new technologies emerge, so do new industries. Just this semester, coming up in the next month, we have four new programs that are career-recruiting events focusing on the public sector, nonprofits and engineering. Those are areas where students really wanted to see more representation. Q. How are things different from five years ago? A. Five years ago, when we look back, that was 2008 — a very different time. I was at SOM at the time, and that is when the economy really suffered dramatically, and it has been a very

slow recovery. One of the interests that has reemerged for students is not only the interest in entrepreneurship opportunities, but also the tech field, which is building again and becoming strong. It’s a very exciting thing to see, because there was a tech boom and bust in the early 2000s, but now they are slowly coming back, with companies like Google and Facebook. Q. Data released by the Yale Office of Institutional Research in 2010 revealed that 25 percent of employed Yale graduates are in the consulting or finance industries. This became a major topic of conversation following the publication of Marina Keegan’s ’12 WEEKEND article (“Even Artichokes Have Doubts,” Sept. 30, 2011) investigating the recruitment structures of these companies. Why are these companies so accessible to Yale students? A. You know, I’ve heard that number tossed around a lot, and if you look at the actual data you will see that the number is closer to 15 percent. Education is actually our No. 1 field in terms of what one line of work students pursue following graduation. In the past, it might have been that these corporations were more visible than other industries, but we are working to offer summer internships in a variety of fields so that students are aware of all of the opportunities that are open to them. In a continuation of the initiative that I led as deputy director of employment programs, we are offering more internships in STEM, more internships in government, more internships in global health and more opportunities in the arts. Q. For many students thinking about employment following graduation, finance or consulting seem to be the default fields. Why do you think so many students are inclined to seek employment in these areas? A. It’s very hard to say. I think a lot of it has to do with timing and the different forms of recruit-

ing that work for different industries. Finance firms have a very structured recruiting process, so it’s important for students to know about other opportunities with different timelines and procedures. I am also wary about grouping consulting [positions] all together, because there’s nonprofit consulting, and there’s economic consulting and health care consulting — these are very different. Q. STEM students in the past have expressed that they find it particularly difficult to receive career help. Is UCS working on programs that will address these concerns? A. If there is anyone who has been discouraged in the past, I would highly recommend that they come back again. Initiatives in STEM career counseling have changed a lot since the summer, because we have a wonderful staff member, Ken Koopmans, who has taken on the job of reinvigorating this department. Our counseling approach is first to line up the student not only with their majors, but also with their interests, which could be separate. I’m a perfect example of that: I went to Cornell as an animal sciences major, and I wanted to be a veterinarian. But many years later, here I am advising undergraduates. Careers are not necessarily locked up. Q. Your background in animal sciences is very interesting, and, I suppose, comforting for those of us who worry that our majors will determine what we do for the rest of our lives. Can you talk about the process you went through of finding your career, first as a lawyer, and now as a careercounseling director? When you were our age, did you ever imagine that you would be where you are today? A. No [laughs] — not at all. When I was your age — so at this point, in sophomore year — I was deciding if I wanted to go to veterinary school. I realized soon that I was not interested in the medical aspect of things, although I stayed with the major because I loved the animal sciences component. After undergrad, I knew that I had to follow my passion, and the passion for me was policy work: law school and learning about environmental law. If there are any pre-med, prevet or pre-dental students out there are having doubts about whether to go to medical school, I would encourage them to take a step back and reflect. The end of sophomore year often seems to bring with it that epiphany moment. Q. One thing that students are almost universally concerned about across the board, regardless of

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whatever industry they’re interested in, is just getting a job in this kind of market. What kind of advice would you give to undergrads looking for a job after graduation? A. Come meet with us. One of the things I tell students when I meet with them personally is that you should think about your career search as an additional class. What is the time you would dedicate to an additional class? Maybe two to three hours a week — and there’s no exam. And that’s what you should be dedicating to your career choice. Students on campus here are so busy that unless you set aside the time to think, “This week I’m going to look into organizations that are doing interesting work,” “This week I’m going to start thinking about job positions,” “This week I’m going to work on my résumé” — unless you set aside the time to do that, it’s very difficult to keep track. And why I think that’s important is because sometimes, there are amazing opportunities that have very early deadlines. A perfect example is some of those very large government organizations that require a security clearance. If you miss the deadline for the CIA, unfortunately, they don’t really make exceptions. I’m cautiously optimistic about the job market, because, compared to when I was here in 2008, the job market is looking very good. Back then, whole organizations were going away, and the poor nonprofits had no money to hire anybody. Q. In recent years, many undergraduates have left liberal arts education behind in favor of pursuing vocational, job-specific training. With this in mind, how do employers view a Yale degree? A. To put it simply: very positively. Sometimes students are concerned — completely unwarrantedly concerned — that they will be hurt by a liberal arts education. Employers across the board highly value a liberal arts education. The liberal arts education makes students learn to think. You know there’s the old quote that success is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent opportunity — if you have done the legwork, then you will be prepared when luck turns your way. Q. To close, how would you summarize your vision for your time here? A. Open-door policy. Our door is always open to students, and I want students to feel comfortable knowing that we are here to help them. Contact YANAN WANG at yanan.wang@yale.edu .

IF YOU MISS THE DEADLINE FOR THE CIA, UNFORTUNATELY, THEY DON’T REALLY MAKE EXCEPTIONS.

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eanine Dames, the newly minted director of Yale’s Undergraduate Career Ser-