Today's WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 02, 2012

BY MICHELLE HACKMAN, PAGE 3

HUMANKIND

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HALLOWEEN

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HURRICANE

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ON THE INSTITUTE’S IDENTITY

EYES WIDE SHUT

CABIN FEVER

Five months after the Jackson Institute graduated its first cohort of students in global affairs, Jane Darby Menton examines the evolution of one of Yale’s newest programs.

With an eye for detail, Jen Mulrow captures the essence of Halloween’s costumes, mystery and light.

Apsara Iyer looks the once-in-a-generation storm straight in the eye and tells the stories of students on campus and stranded elsewhere.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

COOK

WEEKEND VIEWS

REFLECTIONS ON FOUNDING ‘ADOPTED YALIES’ // BY JENNA COOK

der if someday we will adopt and/or have biological children.

Many of us question if we should search for our biological parents, and how our web of family relationships might change if we find them.

For those of us who were adopted across borders (international adoption) or across races (transracial adoption), our adoption also makes us wonder, “What does it mean to be X race?” and “To what country do I really belong?”

These big questions manifest themselves in my daily life at Yale: a dining hall worker swipes my card and asks, “How are you Asian with a last name like, ‘Cook’?” My white mother visits for parents weekend and looks nothing like me. I struggle to navigate interracial dating, when my own race is so fluid and slippery.

In the winter of my freshman year, the loss of a dear friend provoked deeper reflection about the loss of my biological family. As I became more confused about this issue, I thought more about the need for a supportive adoption community on campus. More than anything, the club I founded, Adopted Yalies, sprung out of a selfish desire for an adopted role model who might

understand me in this way — like my FroCo, but also adopted!

Although there was no guarantee that by starting this club I would find such a person, I found purpose knowing that at least maybe I could be that person for someone else.

MANY OF US KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO HAVE A DOCTOR ASK ABOUT OUR GENES – AND TO KNOW NOTHING. I needed five people in order to register a new undergraduate organization, so I made it my mission to find more adopted people on campus. I asked everyone I knew in every freshman suite, every club and every class.

When that didn’t work, I sent out blurbs in the Peer Liaison, cultural center, residential college and Women’s Center newsletters.

How to be a Woman (of Color) // BY MILA HURSEY

I am a feminist. I know I’ve probably lost half of my readers with that sentence, but I am. The British feminist Caitlin Moran has the perfect explanation of why I’m a feminist: “a) Do you have a vagina? b) Do you want to be in charge of it?

If you said yes to both, congratulations you’re a feminist.”

I read Moran’s book. I loved Moran’s book. She is exactly what our generation of feminism needs, taking female empowerment out of our lofty academic ivory towers and catapulting the issues back to the streets in a whirl of “breasts” and “lulus” and “cunts.” EQUAL PAY! RIGHTS TO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH! All very important things, right?

THERE ARE NARRATIVES SPECIFIC TO WOC THAT ARE NOT VOICED. But as of last week, her message has been lost because of a Twittersphere controversy.

When asked if she would call out Lena Dunham for not representing women of color in “Girls,” her response was, “Nope. I literally couldn’t give a shit about it.”

As crass and thoughtless as her response was, and as much as it pained me, a woman of color, to read it, I find the backlash to be problematic for two reasons: 1) Just because stories from Caitlin Moran, Lena Dunham, etc., do not encompass the experiences of all women ever (which is an unrealistic expectation to begin with) does not mean that her voice should be discounted.

Feminism has enough to deal with without people saying, “Your perspective about women, as a woman isn’t important because

F R I D AY NOVEMBER 2

you can’t speak to race and classism.” That’s just silliness.

2) How in God’s name could these women possibly know enough to be the representation of women of color in pop culture?

I think the important lesson we can take away from the backlash against middle-class white feminists in popular media is that there is a demand for stories from women of color. There are narratives specific to WoC that are not voiced because of our lack of representation in mass media.

I’m not just talking about stories cushioned in theory, or a casual mention in the greater dialogue to be politically correct. I’m talking about women, wonderful, beautiful, intelligent ethnic women refusing to live in a scary world anymore, reaching across ethnicity and class and saying, “¡¡¡¡no más!!!!”

Yet “pop feminism” hasn’t expressed the seriousness of WoC being objectified in a way that is damaging to how we envision ourselves and our relationships to others. I know this is super cliché, but I do want to have kids one day, and if I should have a daughter, I never, ever want her to be looked at as a hunk of meat with a couple of holes. Yep, people of color, we are still there. That takes us solidly back to pre-second-wave feminism.

It started for me when I was 14 or 15. Grown men following me, yelling after me, pulling up to me on the side of the road while talking a walk and chasing me as I try to run away. I was taught to ignore them: “it’s a cultural thing and laughing it off is the best policy.” When, earlier this month, an older man pulled up to me as I was waiting at a school bus stop for the little girl that I babysit in East Rock, and hit on me in a repulsive manner, mirroring the actions one might take when soliciting a prostitute, I decided to ask questions to my peers, talk about it and take note of how often I’m harassed, and by who. BIG SURPRISE: Aggressive cat-calling

My first time hosting an “event” consisted of me sobbing to my Asian American Cultural Center Peer Liaison because nobody showed up besides the two of us.

After that, I tabled the idea of this new adoption club, but I kept wondering, “How are there six million people adopted in America, and I am the only one at Yale?!!” It just made no sense.

With encouragement from my freshman advisor, Kelly McLaughlin, and Professor Margaret Homans, who teaches the course “Adoption Narratives,” I returned from spring break of freshman year ready to begin again. I became so determined (or desperate) that I began asking random people on paths and in the dining halls if they were adopted. Finally, in the Silliman dining hall I met Bo Reynolds ‘13.

I couldn’t sleep that night — I was so happy.

Then, in fall of my sophomore year, I met a freshman, Hannah Leo ’15, at a Chinese Adopted Siblings Program for Youth (CASPY) meeting. Hannah, like Bo and me, was adopted from China. In the winter of 2011, we registered

as an official undergraduate organization. I served as president, with Bo as Treasure and Hannah as Secretary. CASPY leaders Brian Chang ’13 and Patricia Lan ’14 co-signed. To my knowledge, “Adopted Yalies” is the first group in Yale’s history for adopted students.

Currently, we have 40 members who receive email updates from us. About 10 of these members attend meetings regularly.

Reflecting on how Adopted Yalies changed her, Cassie Tarleton ‘15 wrote that “as someone who knows very few other adopted people, meeting adopted people here at Yale was amazing for me!”

Adopted Yalies is for anyone whose life has been touched by adoption. You don’t have to be adopted! (In fact, many of our members are not.) We welcome people with adopted parents, siblings or friends, people who may want to adopt someday and anybody who is interested in learning more about adoption and meeting adopted people.

Our mission is trifold: first, to create a supportive social community for students interested in or influenced by adoption, second, to orga-

BOWERS

HURSEY

I remember Bulldog Days 2010: as a prospective student, I wedged my way in between bodies at the extracurricular bazaar while wondering, “Where is IT?” Surrounded by singing groups, sports clubs and cultural societies, it seemed there were Yalies of every identity and every interest, but something was missing. I found posters representing every interest and part of my identity, except for one part — my adoption.

My name is Jenna Cook. I was born in China at an unknown time in the winter of 1992, and my American mother adopted me on June 9, 1992. I believe adoption is more than a singular event — more than what happened to me when I changed hands on June 9th. For me, being adopted is an identity category — just like student, scientist, Chinese-American, daughter, sister. I am also adopted. It is a constantly evolving, lived experience.

I believe that adopted people share an unspoken understanding with each other. Many of us know what it’s like to have a doctor ask about our genes, our DNA, our family history — and to know nothing. Our lives serve as evidence that there are many ways of making families, and we won-

is racialized. In my experience as a black woman, the perpetrators are mostly minority men towards minority women. In fact, last weekend I was picked out of a group of white people on the street, and watched as a group of young men pantomimed air-humping me.

Thanks guys, that’s exactly how to get to a woman’s heart.

Just think for a second about the psychological ramifications of being objectified over and over again in such a disgusting manner for years. We’re not just talking about women feeling helpless and inferior to men, but also women of color feeling less respected and important than women who don’t have to tolerate harassment all of the time.

Also, if our family members, friends and neighbors can do it, men outside of our communities can look down on us too, right?

Now I am not saying at all that all minority men are like this to all minority women.

Hey, it might even be just a few guys (unclear), but if the goal is equality, it can’t be laughed off, because you know what? Even if you are a tough broad and you can handle having your personal space invaded or being leered at on a daily basis, you have a moral obligation to the next generation to not tolerate being threatened.

Caitlin Moran isn’t going to do it for us because she’s fighting another battle. She might have something to say in terms of support, but when it comes down to it, we need our own representation in the media. WE NEED MORE VOICES. Contact MILA HURSEY at mila.hursey@yale.edu .

PANEL: HOW SHOULD WE THINK ABOUT VIOLENCE?

Whitney Humanities Center // 2–3 p.m.

Steven Pinker, Stephen Darwall, Inderpal Grewal, Stathis Kalyvas, Laurie Santos drop knowledge about varieties of violence.

Contact JENNA COOK at jenna.cook@yale.edu .

The Hurricane Diaries // BY RYAN BOWERS

Having won the Yale College Council’s Last Comic Standing competition the Friday before Fall Break, Ryan Bowers ’14 and Shon Arieh-Lerer ’14 will be opening for guest comedian John Mulaney at the Fall Show this Saturday. Taking time out from his schedule in the run-up to the Show, Bowers wrote WEEKEND a View about his Hurricane Sandy experiences.

Looks like it was pretty real.

6:30 p.m.: Here we go, Sandy! Irene caught me off guard last year, but this time, I’m prepared.

I went to Stop and Shop to pick up some of my favorite snacks (Smartfood, green apples and a whole pack of chewy Chips Ahoy), and I can’t wait to spend this whole hurricane with my girlfriend!

It’ll be like one big sleepover! I can’t wait!

7:30.p.m.: Boy, this curfew sure started early! It’s only 7:30 and I’m already done with all the work I needed to do. Oh, well! I guess this just means more time to hang out and have fun with my girlfriend!

8:30 p.m.: I just went to eat some of my chewy Chips Ahoy cookies, and it turns out my girlfriend ate all of them. It’s no big deal, though. She said she’s gonna go get me some more.

// KAREN TIAN

nize educational events on campus to normalize discourse about adoption and third, to engage in community service by mentoring younger adopted people and fundraising for orphanages.

Currently, we are involved in a number of exciting collaborations with other campus groups, including: CASPY, A Learning Interactive Vietnamese Experience (ALIVE), Adopted Friends, World Wide Orphans Foundation at Yale, Yale International Relations Association and UNICEF. We hope to ally with the LGBTQ community on campus to host an event about the process of adopting from the adoptive parent’s perspective.

This fall, I felt an enormous sense of pride holding up the Adopted Yalies poster with Hannah at the extracurricular bazaar. I hope that when students touched by adoption passed by, they thought to themselves, “We are represented at Yale. We have a place here. This part of our identity matters.”

Adopted Yalies meets every week. To get involved, please email me or adoptedyalies@ gmail.com.

9:00 p.m.: It’s too windy to go outside, so it looks there won’t be any

chewy Chips Ahoy for Ryan!

Hahaha! Just my luck! We’re about to watch some classic Office episodes, though, so it’s all good!

9:12 p.m.: I can’t focus on “The Office.” All I can think about are the cookies. They would have been so soft and delicious.

9:19 p.m.: I wonder if any stores are still open. I’ll go outside to check.

9:22 p.m.: Loose tree branch.

Head bleeding. Must get chewy Chips Ahoy.

9:45 p.m.: Thought I saw a box of chewy Chips Ahoy across the room. I started eating it only to find it was a couch pillow. Finished it anyway.

10:27 p.m.: Girlfriend keeps saying I should calm down. What does she know? She has a belly full of delicious chewy Chips Ahoy cookies. I’ll calm down when I have tasted their tender saccharine goodness.

11:03 p.m.: WHY HAVE I BEEN CHOSEN FOR THIS? WHY, GOD? 11:58 p.m.: If I don’t get some chewy Chips Ahoy cookies soon, I will literally eat my own foot.

12:04 a.m.: I am not that flexible.

12:13 a.m.: So sleepy. Must keep obsessively chronicling…

10:05 a.m.: The storm has passed. I can finally get my cookies! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA! 11:15 a.m.: These tasted better when I was a kid.

Contact RYAN BOWERS at ryan.bowers@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: The Japanese film The Makioka Sisters playing at WHC at 7pm.

A late-career triumph for director Kon Ichikawa.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

THE ENTHUSIASM CHALLENGE // BY MICHELLE HACKMAN

On a foggy Friday morning 11 days before the Nov. 6 presidential election, Elizabeth Zhang ’16 trudged up the hilly roads of Media, Pa., a suburb outside of Philadelphia. That morning in an Obama campaign office nearby, she had been handed a list of names with corresponding home addresses, party affiliations and previous indications of support for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in a neat chart.

She was now tasked with one of the campaign’s most crucial undertakings: to knock on doors and get out the vote.

peers who are so disillusioned with the process that they’re not voting at all. I just don’t want to be one of those people.” In around 25 interviews with political activists on campus, students said that the excitement surrounding the current election paled in comparison to the overwhelming enthusiasm that marked the 2008 race.

In a survey of 1,362 Yale College students conducted by the News this week, 80 percent of students who are very likely to vote said they plan to vote for Obama on Tuesday, compared with 15 percent who plan to support his

IN AROUND 25 INTERVIEWS WITH POLITICAL ACTIVISTS ON CAMPUS, STUDENTS SAID THAT THE EXCITEMENT SURROUNDING THE CURRENT ELECTION PALED IN COMPARISON TO THE OVERWHELMING ENTHUSIASM THAT MARKED THE 2008 RACE. But door after door, Zhang knocked to no avail. Most voters were not home, and the ones who were did not take kindly to having yet another canvasser at their doorstep. After more than an hour of trying to engage potential voters, she began to sound weary.

“It’s a difficult thing to run on — picking between the lesser of two evils,” she explained, placing a “Re-elect President Obama” pamphlet in another unavailable voter’s door.

So why was Zhang here? She did not wholeheartedly embrace the President — whom she thought had dropped the ball on issues like the Guantanamo prison and immigration reform — but still she sacrificed her fall break to come canvass for him. “Because it feels better than doing nothing,” she said. “I have a lot of friends and

Republican opponent Gov. Mitt Romney. This closely mirrors the results from a similar News survey conducted during the 2008 election, in which 81 percent of students supported Obama and 12 percent preferred Republican Senator John McCain.

On a national level, though, Obama’s support amongst voters under the age of 30 has fallen slightly according to the most recent Pew Research Center survey, from 66 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, the Republican numbers in this demographic have remained virtually unchanged — Romney’s support only lies 3 percentage points ahead from McCain’s 32 percent in 2008.

“The intensity of disdain for politics has increased among young voters,” said Chrissy Faessen, vice president of communi-

cations and marketing at Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan organization that promotes youth involvement in politics. “[Young people] want to be part of something, and they aren’t engaged by all the bickering this time around.”

Despite the diminished excitement, polls show that the youth vote still gives the incumbent a decided advantage. But even among many of those still making phone calls and knocking on doors on Obama’s behalf during this election cycle, enthusiasm for his 2008 candidacy is mixed with dissatisfaction for what his presidency yielded.

THE CANDIDATE OF CHANGE

It was 2 a.m. on Nov. 5, 2008, and a crowd of over 1,000 people had begun to gather on Old Campus. Just under an hour earlier, they had heard that Senator Barack Obama had been named the nation’s president-elect — the man whom many Yalies had helped elect for months. It was a historic moment. Obama was, of course, the first African-American man to be elected President of the United States. But to these young idealists, he was much more than that: He was the candidate of youth, the candidate of reason, the candidate of change.

Almost spontaneously, the crowd burst into a chorus of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They formed a massive circle, holding hands and wrapping arms around one other. The Yale Precision Marching Band even showed up.

“It was an eruption of just relief, emotion and elation. Just thinking about it, just imagining that moment in time is almost hyperbolic,” said David Mogilner ’12, a freshman at the time who is now working on the Obama campaign in Florida. “When it was called that [Obama] was President of the United States, grown men just started bawling. It was that emotional.”

For over a year leading up to Election Day, young politicos on campus were heavily involved in the presidential campaigns. Since the Yale College Democrats does not endorse candidates during primaries, primary-candidatespecific groups began popping up: Yale for Clinton, Yale for Biden and the largest of them all, Yale for Obama. Ben Stango ’11, president of the Yale for Clinton faction and later President of the Yale Dems, said his involvement with the Clinton campaign on campus rendered him a clear political minority.

“It was the closest I’d ever felt to being a Republican on campus,” he recalled. “The vast majority of students were in favor of Obama, and they were pretty darn aggressive about it.”

After the primary, these different factions coalesced into one, and together they created a vast grass-roots campaign, with Dems registering new voters, knocking on other Yalies’ doors, and canvassing in swing states like New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. “[Support for Obama] combined a lot of issues that we were intellectually interested in with the feeling that something could happen that could create real benefits for people,” said Catherine Osborn ’12, who captured the excitement on 2008 Election Day in a video for the News. “Being involved in that campaign [with the Yale Dems] made me quite literally proud to be an American, and I thought that it was what being an American was, at its best.”

That year, youth enthusiasm across the country was equally palpable. Sixty-one percent of Americans under the age of 30 were registered, the highest number in Pew’s 16 years of polling.

“I think 2008 was a real spike in terms of the right candidate, the message, a historical moment, that all aligned to make it a very attractive and inspiring moment

for young people to be involved in politics,” said Jonathan Yang ’13, former president of the Yale Political Union and a member of the Independent Party. “You have less of that in 2012.”

“A CELEBRATION OF MEDIOCRITY”

Amidst the tide of student fervor for Obama in 2008, several students on campus, in fact, did not support him. Michael Knowles ’12, last year’s president of the Yale College Republicans, recalled sitting in a room in Bingham Hall with 10 other Republicans, drinking and watching Fox News.

“We did appreciate the historic moment, but we were still a little disheartened,” Knowles remembered.

Despite this low point, he said, there was nowhere for Yale Republicans to go but up. In Obama’s first two years in office, while he held Democratic supermajorities in both the House and the Senate, he passed several large stimulus bills that steepened the federal debt — none of which, Knowles noted, garnered Republican votes. Obama pushed the Affordable Care Act through a visibly resistant Congress, a decision that Republicans considered an unnecessary intrusion of federal involvement.

And all the while, he didn’t follow through on several of the promises that carried him into the Oval Office, such as environmental regulations, immigration reform and a tax policy overhaul.

For Vice-Chairman of the Yale College Republicans Austin Schaefer ’15, who organized a Yale Republicans canvassing trip in Springfield, Mass. for Sen. Scott Brown, the rhetoric that the president’s campaign has employed reflects a sense of disappointment in his record, even amongst his supporters.

“It was ‘we’re going to turn SEE ELECTION PAGE B8

When it comes to politics, you describe yourself as __________.

29% Very Liberal

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46% Somewhat Liberal

YALE ANIME SOCIETY PRESENTS: KIDS ON THE SLOPE Saybrook TV room // 7:30 p.m.

In the summer of 1966, Kaoru Nishimi, an introverted nerd, moves to a new town and a new school, where he befriends a notorious “bad boy.” We’re intrigued.

9% Neither liberal or conservative

11%

4%

Somewhat Conservative

Very Conservative

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: A theater and election event at WHC at 8.

Also Marie Antoinette at the Yale Rep. (Liberté, égalité, fraternité, cake.)

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND THEATER

THE INCUMBENT: AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH OUR NATION’S LEADER IN‘RICHARD 2012’ // BY JACKSON MCHENRY

How does a good ruler govern? Can one really be better than the other?

While the minutiae of the modern news cycle flurries around the stage of “Richard 2012 or The Body Politic: An Election Event Conceived and Performed by Alex Kramer ’13, Charlie Polinger ’13, and Raphael Shapiro ’13, Based on Richard II and the 2012 U.S. Presidential Campaign,” these are the questions that haunt its core.

There are two characters in the play: the Incumbent, Kramer, and the Challenger, Shapiro. Though nebulous, the characters’ personalities roughly reflect an Obama-Romney duality — though there are hints of the much older rivalry of Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke. The News, however, has yet to endorse either candidate. So that you get a view past or at least of the doubletalk that has defined this campaign, the News sent a determined reporter to interview both candidates.

Our reporter found both the Challenger and the Incumbent consumed by election stress. The impact of Hurricane Sandy has thrown both candidates out of the loop and they struggle, though it would be hard to discern any weakness in their toothy smiles, against each other to reclaim lost ground. While the Challenger, perhaps overwhelmed by trying to spin recent comments on binders and bayonets, was indisposed, our reporter did manage to bring you, our faithful readers, an exclusive interview with the Incumbent himself.

Reporter: Mr. President, what would you say, has your administration accomplished so far?

Incumbent: Well, we have made noticeable progress in the last five years. We have grown, truly come together with a unifying spirit and our administration has worked to build a sense of American identity.

Though there have been tough times, tough years, we have worked through those tough years to engender a sense of unity.

Reporter: Tough years?

Incumbent: Yes, we inherited a tough economy and had to scrape our way out. There was conflict overseas … and other difficult things. But we want our focus to be at home. We have a responsibility to the world.

Reporter: A responsibility?

Incumbent: Our land is a model to the rest, to other, less happy lands.

You could say we stand for something, almost a Garden of Eden.

Reporter: Are you saying that our land is an exception?

Incumbent: No. I don’t want to say exception. Exception is limiting.

No, we have a responsibility to the

rest of the world to infuse their possibility with our hope.

Reporter: Speaking of tough times, do you see any change in your policy if you are re-elected?

Incumbent: Depends on how you frame the idea of change. If change is continuing progress, then yes, I stand by that. I stand by the choices I’ve made, and I stand by how I’ve responded to crisis. Why would we deny what we have done? I would never reverse the change we have accomplished.

Reporter: How would you speak to criticism against you? Were you

making the best of bad conditions?

Incumbent: Yes, the state was in turmoil, I did the best with what little I was given. Do you know the difference between the body politic and the body natural?

Reporter: Elucidate me.

Incumbent: Well, the body politic is the state itself, a representation of everyone, which any ruler is supposed to embody, and the body natural is an individual, which a ruler is also supposed to be. It’s tough to unite the two.

Reporter: Do you think you could resolve the two in a future term?

// ASSOCIATED PRESS

Obama himself is rumored to make a cameo in “Richard 2012” Incumbent: Well…

[At this moment, the Incumbent is swept back into a crowd of whirring cameras and shutter flashes, the standard of the election cycle. He is distracted from his response by a harried assistant. He promises he’ll have one later, someday.]

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

‘8’ makes its New Haven debut // BY KATHRYN CRANDALL On Oct. 22 I sat in the University Theater minutes before a reading of the play “8” was set to begin. The stage was bare, save for a few folding chairs arranged in rows on each side and one long table in the middle. Actors were trickling onto the stage, while several members of the audience continued their conversations. Had it already started? The lights dimmed, more actors filed in and the reading began.

Dustin Lance Black, screenwriter of “J. Edgar” and the Academy Awardwinning “Milk,” based his new play “8” off of the trial to repeal California’s Proposition 8. When California voters passed the referendum in 2008, it officially banned samesex marriage in the state. The majority of Black’s play consists of a verbatim reading of the court case, known now as Perry v. Brown, which was banned from being broadcast when it took place. Black weaved his own theatrical elements into the play, such as intimate conversations between two plaintiffs and their sons. Students, faculty and staff at the Yale School of Drama collaborated with the American Foundation for Equal Rights and Broadway Impact to bring the controversy and the emotion of this trial to the University Theater stage, under the direction of Sonja Berggren.

The play opened with an introduction to the family of Kris Perry and Sandy Steir (Cole Lewis DRA ’14 and Jennifer Lagundino DRA ’13). They were portrayed as your average American family: two loving parents and two teenage sons, concerned with making it to soccer practice on time and keep-

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IPHEGENIA AMONG THE STARS Iseman Theater // 9 p.m.

Greek theater meets astrophysics.

ing up with schoolwork. The only thing not so typical about this family was that the two loving parents were both women. The audience followed these two women into the courtroom where they stood bravely alongside gay couple Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami (Cornelius Davidson DRA ’15 and Justin Taylor DRA ’13) to oppose Prop 8. The trial brought forward many emotional testimonies from Perry, Steir, Zarrillo and Katami, along with more professional opinions from expert witnesses such as Dr. Nancy Cott (Victoria Nolan, the managing director of the Yale Rep and deputy dean at the School of Drama), author of “Public Vows: A History of the Marriage and the Nation.”

I WAS IN THAT COURTROOM. I WAS ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT WITH EVERY TWIST AND TURN OF THAT TRIAL. As the reading progressed, it became clear that the initial confusion during the opening was intentional. The nearly propless stage and the uncertainty as to whether or not the play had commenced were deliberate techniques aimed at ensconcing the audience in this courtroom drama. And they worked. I was in that courtroom. I was on the edge of my seat with every twist and turn of that trial.

Knowing that the screenplay was based almost entirely on quotes from the trial, I expected to leave the theater with a better understanding about the fight against Prop 8 — what I did not expect was to be drawn into the trial. The bare stage transported audience members to that courtroom and refused to let them out. There was no change of scenery, no respite from the trial. The actors didn’t give us much of a break either. Not only did they walk the audience through the intricacies of the legal proceedings, they made the audience a part of the trial.

Passion radiated from every single performer on that stage, from the lesbian couple to the expert witnesses. Even the lawyers dis-

played a certain amount of uncharacteristic emotion. When Lewis, as Kris Perry, turned to her son with quivering voice and trembling hands, to tell him that he wasn’t a accident, that their family was not an unnatural grouping of people, her frustration was tangible.

Ryan Kendall (Mitchell Winter DRA ’14), a fact witness for the case, enraptured the audience as he described his realizations at a young age that he was gay, and recanted the horrors of the reparative therapy he underwent. When he explained with a smile that he was “just as gay as when he started [the therapy],” the audience smiled along with him. When he admitted that if he had to continue with the therapy he “would have probably killed [himself],” the theater grew ominously silent.

It was clear that the audience was very invested in the play — there was laughter, gasps and sighs of disgust and relief. The audience’s devotion and interest in both the play and the issue of gay marriage became even more evident after the play ended, however, when a group of panelists from various disciplines opened the play up for discussion. One couple who had come all the way from Maine discussed their home state’s version of Prop 8, asking if a Supreme Court ruling on Prop 8 could have any effect in Maine. Many audience members expressed a feeling of dissatisfaction with the idea that the definition of marriage will evolve with time, wanting to take a more proactive approach on the issue. Jeannie O’Hare, a panelist and the chair of the Playwriting Department at the School of Drama, expressed similar frustrations regarding her experience entering a civil partnership under British law, a kind of legal union which she deems “a secondary form of equal marriage.”

“It does take a fight. It’s not their [same-sex couples] spiritual lives at stake,” she said. “It’s their lives.”

Past iterations of Black’s play have taken place on Broadway and on Ebell of Los Angeles, with celebrities such as George Clooney, Marisa Tomei, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman being cast as part of these well-publicized productions.

Contact KATHRYN CRANDALL at kathryn.crandall@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Georgian folk music.

A program of vocal polyphony from the Caucasus mountain regions in Dwight Hall at 8 p.m.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND KOCH

WERE YOU SANDY OR DANDY? // BY APSARA IYER

C

lasses were cancelled, curfew was imposed. For two days, Hurricane Sandy kept students locked in their suites, squirreled away in rooms in colleges around campus as the storm raged outside. Emails from Linda Koch Lorimer kept students up to date on the storm’s activity — a fan fell from Malone building, a tree crashed on Grove Street. The following dispatches paint a picture of life inside the dorms — or life stranded elsewhere — as locked-in students bonded in suites, entryways or other out-of-Yale experiences.

Dandy on Old Campus // BY APSARA IYER It seemed like a good idea, at first.

That was the mantra of my weekend with Sandy. That was what we muttered, sneaking out of Durfee past curfew. That was what we repeated, as we walked past the downed wires on Grove Street. That was what we remembered, as “American Psycho” reached its climax. It seemed like a good idea to leave the dorm, it seemed like a good idea to watch that second crazy movie. Sandy made everything seem surreal — the trees bowing low across Old Campus, the leaves whipping by my window in Durfee. And through some combination of her surreal weather and the prospect of being locked in our suite for the next two days, she drove us to be bolder, crazier.

My suitemates and I were frustrated to keep “missing” Sandy. Our Monday morning expectations of pouring rain and thunderclouds were met with a persistent drizzle. Sandy’s arrival on

campus was lost in our movie marathon — running through “American Psycho,” “Mean Girls” and “Titanic” in one seven-hour dash. We wanted action — adventure. We grilled our cheese sandwiches using an iron to melt together the bread and cheese. We were thrilled at the prospect of eating “rations,” excited for the possibility of fire. We went for a walk at 9 p.m. on Monday night, right after Sandy was supposed to hit. It was during our walk around Old Campus, following the long rectangular perimeter, that I saw him sitting on the other side of Phelps Gate. A homeless man crouched in the doorway under Phelps Gate, watching the group of us trip towards that “something fun” going on in Welch.

I heard Sandy rumble overhead.

Contact APSARA IYER at apsara.iyer@yale.edu .

Dandy & Sandy in Austin, TX // BY CHLOE DRIMAL Hurrication: a vacation inflicted on someone because of a hurricane.

On Sunday my flight from Dallas to Newark was canceled, so I booked a flight from Dallas to Boston at 5:00 p.m. Then that was canceled, so I decided to get the fuck out of Dallas, and took a 3 hour Greyhound to Austin to party with a DKE alum. For three days I borrowed men’s clothes so I didn’t smell. My diet consisted of Bota box wine and dice games til 2 a.m.

I bought underwear the first day, a Halloween costume the second day and showered in Lake Austin all three days. I partied with twentynine year olds who put my drinking skills to shame and danced till my feet hurt. On

Sunday, I was annoyed by the situation, but looking back on it, it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.

Sometimes obstacles are put in our paths to help us, not to hinder us, to teach us a little bit about ourselves. I learned more about myself in three days with a luggage full of dirty clothes than I have all year. Fate’s funny like that: It’s always watching us, knowing when it’s time for us to slow down and think for a little.

I wasn’t meant to go back to New Haven. Fate wanted me to become a traveling gypsy and find my way to Austin.

I’m happy it did.

Contact CHLOE DRIMAL at chloe.drimal@yale.edu .

Dandy in L-Dub // BY PHILIPP ARNDT In L-Dub, freshmen unsheathed their creativity: everyone who succeeded at finding some ridiculous headdress for themselves was eligible to strive for eternal glory by participating in the legendary “Hurricane Sandy Office Chair Race” on the fifth floor. With a record time of 35.7 seconds, professional office chair racer Charly Walther ’16 from Germany could ensure victory for Berkeley College. While L-Dub’s varsity chair racers gave their best on the fifth floor, other venturous freshmen dared to risk their ration of the scarce emergency food supplies by engaging in gambling. According to latest information, none of the losers at “Emergency Food Supply Poker” had to starve thanks to Sandy’s considerable mildness in New Haven.

Contact PHILIPP ARNDT at philipp.arndt@yale.edu .

Dandy in Bingham // BY ALEXANDER DUBOVOY While I feel incredible sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Sandy both in the New Haven community and beyond, I have to say that riding the storm out in Bingham Hall was a lot of fun. The freshmen of Calhoun and Trumbull have rarely been closer. As a jazz pianist and singer, I decided that what everyone needed to help ride out the storm was some music. On Monday night, I texted many of the musicians I know in Bingham and had them come over and bring friends. Soon, tons of Calhoun and Trumbull freshmen, musi-

cians and non-musicians alike, were packed into our common room. We had a huge jam session, playing jazz, rock, pop, rap and everything in between. Everyone, even those who normally are afraid to sing, started singing along, and, for probably two and a half hours, we forgot about the raging storm outside and only paid attention to the raging guitar and piano solos. The community was united, spontaniety was bred and, ultimately, these sessions helped us Yalies ride out a hurricane.

Dandy & Sandy in Bingham // BY LILY VANDERBLOEMEN Sandy’s winds died off much sooner than anticipated late Monday afternoon, yet we were still forbidden from leaving our dorms through constant FroCo texts and emails from our master. As night approached we grouped together to eat our sack dinners. We were then informed that our FroCos had braved the storm and managed to order us pizzas — Study Break! Hurricane Edition. A group of about 15 of us then clambered into one of the larger suites — complete with a sectional sofa and large flat-screen TV — to watch “Saw” in lieu of the ominous weather outside. We huddled together, screaming throughout the movie, trying to laugh off the cheesy parts,

but truly scared to death. After it ended, there was no way any of us were going to bed yet.

So what was there to do? The classic late night G-Heav run wasn’t an option, so we decided to play “The Bowl Game.” Everyone wrote down intimate, funny and bizarre questions and put them into a bowl. Everyone then went around the circle and drew a question, revealing to the group their Calhoun crush or how they lost their virginity amongst other questions. Learning such things about each other brought us together in ways we had never anticipated. Thanks, Sandy.

Contact LILY VANDERBLOEMEN at

Sandy in Manhattan, NY // BY DIEGO SALVATIERRA I write this on a Greyhound, leaving Manhattan after four days. After fall break with friends in balmy South Carolina, the airline voided my Sunday flight over a technicality. I weathered a lonely 12-hour Amtrak ride only to arrive in a deserted Penn Station. I cabbed over to a friend’s downtown loft, digging in for the storm. We spent a powerless Monday night sipping wine with his three 20-something neighbors by candlelight, wasting the battery on our phones playing music. Tuesday we lounged at the Yale Club, playing pool and drinking port (I can’t complain). The walk back downtown that night was surreal, with darkened skyscrapers and National Guardsmen watching for looters. It’s what my friends back home must have felt after the Chilean earthquake. As two days turned into three, I felt (or smelt) the need for a shower, and called a Yale friend on the Upper West Side.

I was luckier than many, but it was odd seeing normalcy disappear and only slowly seep back into life.

Contact DIEGO SALVATIERRA at diego.salvatierra@yale.edu .

F R I D AY NOVEMBER 2

“CHINA TOWN HALL: LOCAL CONNECTIONS, NATIONAL REFLECTIONS”

Linsey Chittenden Hall // 4:30–6 p.m.

Forget it, Jake.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: YHHAP PROJECT HOMELESS CONNECT.

YHHAP Project Homeless connect: hair cuts, dental care, other types of care at Episcopal Church Friday early morning.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND CREEPIN’

‘TRICK OR TREAT’

J

en Mulrow ’14 is the newest addition to the WEEKEND team. An art major and ardent photographer, she will be regularly posting photo essays and single shots to the WEEKEND blog, beginning this Saturday. Here she presents a photo essay entitled “Trick or Treat” – we invite you to take your pick (though WEEKEND always goes for the riskier choice).

// Jen Mulrow Artist Statement: I love to see the world through a frame. With photography, I isolate moments I fear might be forgotten or give something a new significance by freezing it in time. I am influenced by memory, mythology, and the people around me. Photography is how I find magic, make mischief, and cast spells on the everyday. Check out my personal photography blog (www.photojenicblog.blogspot.com) and look out for my new online segment in WEEKEND!

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 3

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Law School Auditorium // 2 p.m.

For those who read the Atlantic, Anne-Marie Slaughter.

Being yourself.

Don’t rely on costumes, Yale! (Isn’t WKND the sappiest rag in town.)

S AT U R D AY

CREATIVE DESIGN SOLUTIONS

NOVEMBER 3

Theater junkies, set-builders and future furniture designers, unite. Blueprint for your future.

294 Elm Street // 3 p.m.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Taking an intro art class.

Just pay tuition, then convince your parents to cover the materials fee. The life of an artist!

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND CREEPIN’

‘TRICK OR TREAT’

J

en Mulrow ’14 is the newest addition to the WEEKEND team. An art major and ardent photographer, she will be regularly posting photo essays and single shots to the WEEKEND blog, beginning this Saturday. Here she presents a photo essay entitled “Trick or Treat” – we invite you to take your pick (though WEEKEND always goes for the riskier choice).

// Jen Mulrow Artist Statement: I love to see the world through a frame. With photography, I isolate moments I fear might be forgotten or give something a new significance by freezing it in time. I am influenced by memory, mythology, and the people around me. Photography is how I find magic, make mischief, and cast spells on the everyday. Check out my personal photography blog (www.photojenicblog.blogspot.com) and look out for my new online segment in WEEKEND!

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 3

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Law School Auditorium // 2 p.m.

For those who read the Atlantic, Anne-Marie Slaughter.

Being yourself.

Don’t rely on costumes, Yale! (Isn’t WKND the sappiest rag in town.)

S AT U R D AY

CREATIVE DESIGN SOLUTIONS

NOVEMBER 3

Theater junkies, set-builders and future furniture designers, unite. Blueprint for your future.

294 Elm Street // 3 p.m.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Taking an intro art class.

Just pay tuition, then convince your parents to cover the materials fee. The life of an artist!

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

WORKING AND CANVASSING THROUGH THE BURNOUT

Other

21%

Economy

34%

Abortion

7%

Environment ELECTION FROM PAGE B3 America around,’ and now it’s ‘it could have been a lot worse, we did OK,’” Schaefer said. “It’s a celebration of mediocrity.”

And yet during the four years of Obama’s presidency, Republicans, both on campus and beyond, seemed much more focused on ousting the current president than finding a suitable replacement.

“That’s been the name of the game since the beginning — it’s

“anyone but Obama” attitude has yielded even less enthusiasm for their standard-bearer.

Among those who plan to vote for Romney on campus, 37 percent say they support their candidate very strongly, whereas 62 percent of Obama backers say the same about their candidate.

(The News did not ask a comparable question regarding enthusiasm for the elections back in 2008.) And nearly 10 percent of Yalies who identify as “very conservative” or “somewhat conser-

THERE’S A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THE ISSUES AND OFTEN SPIRAL INTO CYNICISM, BUT I THINK IF YOU DON’T ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, THEN NOTHING’S GOING TO COME OF IT. been ‘almost anybody but Barack Obama,’” Knowles said, with a chuckle. “You’re talking to a guy who supported two other people for the presidency before Romney.” Knowles had organized both Students for Mitch Daniels and then Students for John Huntsman during the Republican primary.

If Obama supporters on campus are not feeling as enthusiastic about their candidate this time around, the Republicans’

vative” plan to vote for the president, while less than 1 percent of people who identify as “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal” plan to vote for the challenger. To supporters like Knowles, though, Romney’s selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate has transformed this election from a “referendum” into more of a “choice election.”

“I feel invested in Mitt Romney being elected because I think the issues we’re facing as young

people are so important, and I believe that Mitt Romney’s vision for America is a better one,” said Elizabeth Henry ’14, chairman of the Yale College Republicans.

“Do I think he’s perfect? No.”

“SITTING ON THE SIDELINES”

Back in the Obama campaign office in Media, Pa., Tyler Blackmon ’16 was preparing to go on a canvassing shift. Before he could walk through the door, he ran into a volunteer. “Can I tell you something that’s worked for me with voters?” she said. “I tell them: You are voting in one of the most important counties in the country. Your vote can decide whether this county swings Pennsylvania for the president, and Pennsylvania can swing the election for him.” Blackmon then went out to knock on several dozen doors, with results similar to what Zhang experienced.

“There’s a lot of people who like to talk about the issues and often spiral into cynicism, but I think if you don’t actually do something about it, then nothing’s going to come of it,” he later said. “A lot of people like to complain — they complain that the president didn’t do enough to solve America’s problems, but then they’ll just sit on the sidelines.”

This tepid response that Blackmon points out is reflected in the current polling numbers.

Fewer young people are supporting the president across

During a typical week, how many days do you... …watch news on TV? …read news online? …read news online?

0 days

1 day

2 days

3 days

4 days

5 days

6 days

7 days

0%

20%

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 4

40%

60%

the country. And perhaps more notably, Pew found that 61 percent of young voters are interested in this election, compared to 75 percent in 2008. Back then, Faessen recalled, the youth vote was split two-to-one in favor of Obama. Now, young voters are in a much different place than they were four years ago, she noted — they’re struggling to find jobs, they’re struggling to pay bills, they’re struggling to thrive in the current economy. Faessen is unsure whether this election will rival the 2008 outcome, citing lower voter registration numbers and lower enthusiasm toward the candidates.

Audrey Huntington ’11 is one of those voters who claims to be “definitely less excited” during this election cycle. In 2008, Huntington left Yale during shopping week of her sophomore fall semester to work on the Obama campaign in Philadelphia because she felt too impatient to just sit by.

“We’ve already elected our first African-American president, and now he has four years of a record to run on,” she explained.

“Take drone strikes, for example.

After that, it’s a lot harder to rally behind him and say, you know, he’s our man.”

If the enthusiasm for the elections has declined on campus and in America this year, it is not evident from the Dems’ and the Yale College Republicans’ activities.

Henry said that the Yale College Republicans has amped up getout-the-vote activities this year, with its small but dedicated team making calls for Romney and knocking on doors for Republican Senate candidates Linda McMahon in Connecticut and Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

For their own part, the Dems’ campaign activity this fall is very much the same as four years ago.

They held numerous phone banks for President Obama and Democratic Senate candidate Chris Murphy. They have sent canvassing delegations all across Connecticut to campaign for Murphy and twice this year sent over 30 students to Massachusetts to knock on doors for the Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. And whereas Stango said the Dems counted with 150 active members, that figure has swelled closer to 250 this year, according to Nicole Hobbs, the Dems’ elections coordinator.

Over fall break, nearly 40 Dems, including Zhang and Blackmon, traveled to Pennsylvania to persuade undecided voters in some of the state’s most contested counties. Lincoln Mitchell ’15, the Dems’ voter coordinator, came along on this trip. While he was not old enough to vote in the last election, he recalls how emotions, rather than issues, drove many young people towards Obama. And like all emotions, these eventually burned out.

“Unfortunately, I cannot say that my expectations for the Obama administration have been met,” Mitchell said. “I think that he was in a tough situation, trying to navigate between the liberals’ criticism of too much bipartisanship and the conservatives’ criticism of his liberal policies.

Granted, I wish that the past four years had done more toward welfare reform, women’s rights, residential segregation and boosting education, but I also recognize that if it took eight years to get America to [how it was before he took office], it will take more than four to get it back on track.”

7% Education Health Care 13% 18%

Of Barack Obama supporters, the most important issues were…

Of Mitt Romney supporters, the most important issues were…

Taxes

7%

16%

Other

13%

MAKING THE CHOICE

Just four days ahead of Election Day, Obama’s campaign seems to be headed for the polls with a decided youth advantage. And this year more than ever, the youth vote could be crucial in clinching the presidency.

According to CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, there are 46 million eligible voters under the age of 30 in 2012, compared with only 30 million in 2008.

For Tobin Van Ostern, deputy director of Campus Progress, the youth outreach arm of the Center for American progress, this means that the percentage of voters headed to the ballot box can decrease, and there will still be more young people actually voting.

More significantly, some of the other demographics that heavily favor the president — including Latinos and African-Americans — partially do so because their populations skew younger than the overall American populace. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2012 current population survey, nearly one-third of all Hispanic eligible voters are between the ages 18 to 29, compared with 19 percent among whites and 25 percent among blacks.

And over the past two months, Obama has been capitalizing on that youth advantage. During that time, he has visited nine college campuses, while Romney has only campaigned at four. Obama has granted interviews to youthoriented media outlets such as MTV, People and Us Weekly magazine. MTV posted a statement on its website saying that it had approached Romney for a similar interview, but he declined the offer.

Van Ostern, who served as

SKETCHUP BASICS

Economy

64%

the director of the Students for Obama division of the 2008 Obama campaign, said that up until recently, the Romney campaign was making a concerted effort to reach out to young voters — much more so than the McCain campaign in 2008. In an effort to attract this demographic away from the president’s camp, this past year Romney has launched a youth advisory committee, held conference calls with young voters and vamped up his tour of college campuses.

“As resources have become scarcer, [those efforts] haven’t quite held up,” Van Ostern explained. “You don’t have to guess who thinks which demographics are important — you just look where they’re spending their money.”

On the other end of the campaign trail, the Dems have kept going with their canvassing efforts. After a long day, Hobbs reclined on her train seat back to Philadelphia. Unlike Blackmon, she had been assigned to a group of previously-designated Obama supporters with the task of turning them out to the polls.

She said that, with Obama’s and Romney’s competing visions for the nation’s future, there was an urgent sense among Democrats that they could not lose the election.

“There are 40 kids here who were okay with giving up their fall breaks to campaign for Obama,” she observed. “I think you’re always going to see some apathy.

But I do think that students recognize there is still a choice to be made.”

Yuval Ben-David and Rishabh Bhandari contributed to this article.

Contact MICHELLE HACKMAN at michelle.hackman@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Davenport Auditorium // 1–2:30 p.m.

Learn a 3-D modeling program. A skill that will get you employed.

Budget Deficit

Gertrude Stein.

Because America is our country and Paris is our hometown.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND GRADLYFE

// KAREN TIAN

WITH JACKSON, YALE EXPERIMENTS // BY JANE DARBY MENTON John Jackson ’67 always dreamed of being a statesman. Entering Yale as a young man, he looked to the example of his great-grandfather, a career diplomat, hoping to follow in his footsteps.

Although Jackson ultimately took a different path, serving in the marines during the Vietnam War and then building a career working for pharmaceutical companies, his passion for the field of diplomacy and international affairs never left him. In 2009, he decided to act on it.

Through the Liana Foundation, a charitable organization he founded with his wife, Jackson gave the University $50 million for the express purpose of establishing an institute at Yale for the study of international relations.

“We felt that strengthening the international relations and international studies efforts at Yale was something that was important given the world situation,” Jackson told the News after the gift was announced.

And so began the journey of the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, an addition to campus that brought Yale into the matrix of globally-oriented and policy-focused educational institutions and reflects how the field has adapted to contemporary geopolitical realities.

According to Jackson student Seyward Darby GRD ’13, the Institute’s very name speaks to a newer conception of what such programs are studying. “[It’s] ‘international relations’ versus ‘global affairs,’” she said. “I think that reflects an idea of the field moving away from nations or states to more non-state actors.”

James “Jim” Levinsohn, Jackson’s director, said in an email that the description “sounds accurate” to him.

Many other elite universities are home to long-established schools concerned with the same field, but Jackson was created in a different world than its peers.

One of the first schools of international affairs was Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, set up in 1919. By the 1930s, other universities began setting up their own schools of policy and global affairs: Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs was founded in 1930; Harvard’s Graduate School of Public Administration, now known as the John F. Kennedy School of Government, came into being a few years later in 1936; and Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) was founded in 1946. These schools take slightly different approaches, but all aim to develop public and international leadership.

However, prior to 2009, while students could earn an academic international relations degree through the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale lacked a comparable program.

Then we got Jackson. The Institute ushered in its first group of students in the 2010–12 school year, and the first cohort to spend two full years of study in Jackson’s Master in Arts in International Relations, which has since been renamed the Master in Arts in Global Affairs, graduated last May. This May, the first class of Yale College students enrolled in the Global Affairs major, an undergraduate program administered by Jackson, will graduate.

“It’s great that Yale has joined the effort to train students for careers in public service,” said Cecilia Rouse, dean

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 3

of the Woodrow Wilson School. “It makes for much more informed public policy.”

Ian Shapiro GRD ’83 LAW ’87, the director of the MacMillan Center, said that pre-Jackson programs in international affairs at Yale lacked focus or a clear identity. Shapiro credits Levinsohn with revamping the program. Levinsohn, a highly regarded economist whom the University had hoped to lure to the faculty for several years, was slated to start job at the School of Management when the Jackson gift came through. Yale now asked him to look at another opportunity: guiding a new initiative.

By the time Jackson opened its doors in 2010, Levinsohn had taken the reins.

The program he directs is among the most rapidly evolving on campus — and the most ambitious. “In five years, I hope and expect that we’ll be running one of the best ‘schools’ of global affairs in the world,” Levinsohn said.

For now, students concur that Jackson’s small class size, relatively minimal requirements and lack of designated concentrations mean that its graduate program offers a more flexible model of study than those at a number of more traditional peer schools.

Rachel Bergenfield GRD ’13, who worked for non-governmental organizations prior to enrolling in Jackson’s graduate program, enthusiastically praised the Institute’s flexibility. She said her experience in the professional world showed her that many areas in which Jackson students hope to work lie at the intersection of multiple disciplines — access to Yale’s wealth of knowledge, she continued, makes Jackson graduates better “interpreters” of the different approaches and languages used in fields outside their own.

While many of its peer institutions are independent “schools,” Jackson is an “institute.” This means it lacks a campus or tenured faculty to call its own. But for students, this potential demerit translates to the opportunity to draw from other departments and schools on Yale’s campus, as well as Jackson’s Senior Fellows program.

Unlike programs such as SIPA’s, in

which students select a “track” of study from a list of set choices and complete extensive requirements, Jackson allows students to design their own concentration of study around particular interests, drawing on classes and professors throughout the University. This distinguishes the program for applicants like Darby, who described herself as “not fitting into boxes well.”

Though students in the first two classes at Jackson followed the same requirements that had existed in the original international relations program, administrators changed the requirements after receiving feedback that labeled them outdated. Now the entire cohort takes three courses — in economics, historical analysis and quantitative skills — together and students are then free to take whatever courses they desire.

But the flexibility has a flip side. Ben Widness GRD ’12 said that because students can almost completely design their own track, personal initiative is crucial, and students who did not immediately take responsibility struggled to determine what they wanted out of Jackson.

Jackson’s flexibility is facilitated in large part by the program’s small size. It is composed of between 55 and 60 students, Levinsohn said. This stands in contrast to the approximately 1,000 at Harvard’s Kennedy School and 900 at Columbia’s SIPA. Ronald Davis, a SIPA student, tempered his praise of his school’s diversity of representation and of thought by adding that his required classes tend to be of lower quality than his other classes because of their size.

Shapiro said Jackson was developed with a “quality over quantity approach,” adding the Yale Law School is an example of the kind of small, competitive highcaliber program Jackson hopes to eventually resemble.

“What is really strong about Jackson is how small we are,” Bergenfield said.

“We’re not competitive at all because we do such different things. I’m a former aid worker casually having a beer with people from the CIA and the military and [who did] economic policy for the Central Bank in China, for us all to be

at a table having conversations in such a non-competitive environment is something unique to Jackson.”

But while flexibility is not unique among graduate programs at Yale, Jackson’s program differs from other predominantly academic courses of study by bringing in specialized practitioners known as Senior Fellows to teach and interact with students.

Though it was not unheard of for practitioners to deliver guest lectures or teach residential college seminars before the institute, Jackson established an institutionalized hiring of non-academic faculty members. Current fellows include David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist who has broken party lines in endorsing same-sex marriage and encouraging Barack Obama to run for president; Stanley McChrystal, a four-star general and former commander of American troops in Afghanistan whose 20-person leadership seminar received 250 applications last semester; and Stephen Roach, a former Morgan Stanley executive who famously said “We should take out the baseball bat” on Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Krugman regarding the latter’s stance on Chinese economic policy.

The opportunity for applicationbased learning with these Fellows appeals to many Jackson students, a majority of whom spent time in the professional world before graduate school.

Christopher Harnisch GRD ’14, who worked in the Bush administration was on active duty in Afghanistan for two years, said he decided upon Yale’s global affairs program after one of the Fellows reached out to him during his decisionmaking process.

“I knew that if a Senior Fellow was willing to reach out to me while I was applying, I’d most likely have an oppor-

tunity to work with them once I was actually on campus,” Harnisch said.

Yet the makeup of the Senior Fellows program contains an inherent difficulty.

Because some Fellows do not stay at Yale for extended periods of time and spend limited time on campus due to long commutes or professional obligations, consistency in advising, teaching and research opportunities can prove elusive.

Additionally, as practitioners, many fellows lack experience in universitystyle teaching, which can lead to difficulties in the classroom.

Darby, who has taken most of her classes with University or professional school professors rather than Senior Fellows, recalled one Fellow who, unaware of traditional practices in academic settings, assigned a 20-page single-spaced paper in the middle of term. Meanwhile, Widness pointed out that, while some Fellows are “phenomenal” in the classroom, others forsake academic rigor to turn class sessions into “story-time.”

“With Jackson money, Yale has been able to do a lot, and it’s helped improve access to interesting people and courses, but I think there have been some growing pains, and I think the sentiment among the students is that not every turn at bat has ended in a home run,” Widness said.

“It’s a process and we’ll see where they go from here.”

Jackson truly is still new to the scene.

Students from other graduate schools said they were less aware of Jackson than many other options during their application processes — they did not, they said, know anyone who had graduated from there.

As Jackson graduates continue to stream out into the wider world, it’s their experiences that will shape perceptions.

Contact JANE DARBY MENTON at jane.menton@yale.edu .

// ALLIE KRAUSE

The Jackson Institute is housed in a number of modern buildings halfway up Science Hill, including Rosenkranz Hall and Henry R. Luce Hall (pictured).

AMELIE

Whitney Humanities Center // 7 p.m.

Whimsy and Audrey Tatou. French and fancy-free.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: We miss Indigo Blue meditation in Battell.

The Miya’s and serenity.

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

‘LAST RESORT’: ALMOST THERE // BY SOPHIA NGUYEN AND GRAYSON CLARY

SN: This week, we look at the first installments of “Last Resort,” which seems to aspire to be the next “LOST”: a massively popular hourlong network drama the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time.

“Last Resort” is about the crew of a Navy submarine armed with nuclear missiles and stealth technology: they’re not afraid to use them, and they’ve gone rogue after disobeying orders to fire on Pakistan. The crew takes refuge on a French island in the Indian Ocean. The upshot is that it comes with a team of hot European scientists; the downside is the menacing local strongman. Oh, and back home, their government has portrayed them as traitors.

Five weeks in, my sense is that everything could afford to slow down.

There’s a lot of fun stuff — kidnappings, firefights, soldiers tossed in the brig — but the dust never settles for long enough. Okay, so there’s a blockade, but what does this mean for the crew’s strategic position, or for the islanders’ way of life? Do I have a reason to care, or am I just biding my time until “Grey’s”?

GC: I know I’m doubling back on the

SOPHIA NGUYEN & GRAYSON CLARY SPLIT-SCREEN criticisms I levied at “Revolution,” but I’m going to disagree on the pacing/ construction. The “headlong-intothe-breach” approach is in the show’s DNA. Sure, it’s a little frenzied, but they’ve been offering up such interesting sketches that I’d rather keep bouncing from one to the next than explore the joy out of the ones we’ve already been shown.

Let’s talk tone for a second, though, which I think is the biggest potential obstacle to “Last Resort”’s forward momentum. Unless I’m seriously misreading things, the show is supposed to be pretty fundamentally fun, even a little hokey — the off-thewalls, geo-political soap opera premise, the banter, the (s)exposition scene explaining the ship’s stealth drive. It’s nuclear war, but it’s not any more serious than “War Games.” And yet the U.S. government is refusing Chaplin’s dead soldier son a proper burial as a

negotiating tool? A character (apparently, though kind of ambiguously) offers herself up to be raped to prevent the execution of another sailor? These are grim, un-soapy things to grapple with, and they struck me like significant tonal discontinuities. I don’t really like mixing the tastes of quinine and cotton candy.

SN: Don’t you think that the incongruousness is because of pacing issues, though? Plot points don’t need to be dragged out over several weeks, but this seems to be a problem of the beat-to-beat structure of each episode.

To be fair, some of that might be because it’s hard to film the action sequences. The naval confrontations mostly consist of people looking at screens and shouting out jargon while the set shakes. Part of that might be a verisimilitude thing — maybe this is how sea battles actually go? — and part of that may be a budget thing.

Underwater scenes are difficult to animate, and I don’t get the sense that they have a lot of money to blow on nice special effects.

Still, other shows have managed to balance action and weighty ideas —

Looking to rage or getting engaged?

HAPPINESS IS WEIRD LIKE THAT; THERE IS NO TRUE DEFINITION, NO MATTER WHAT WEBSTER’S SAYS. I had just come from Houston where everyone had big perky boobs compared to my average uneven ones.

“Yeah … I guess they do sorta.”

“Do you think you’ll get one?” I laughed.

“Of course. Aren’t you going to? I mean, Chloë, your boobs are different sizes.”

I rolled my eyes. I don’t plan on ever getting a boob job. I always thought the lopsidedness gave me character — I guess it’s not the same in the South.

When I got to her sorority house, it seemed that her friends were just like my friends; although they weren’t as accepting of outfits that didn’t

S U N D AY NOVEMBER 4

CHLOE DRIMAL THE UNICORN FILES match, they still talked about boys and were ready to throw back shots of tequila.

Their dinner conversation was slightly different though. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about marriage over nachos at Box. But in Dallas, it was normal for me to be two seats away from a married 21-yearold whose friends’ ears were pressed against her stomach so they could feel her baby kick.

The girls tried on her wedding ring; one stared at the diamond and told me she felt empowered wearing it.

Empowered? How could being locked up to someone feel empowering? How could picturing yourself going into labor instead of having a career be empowering?

But I guess it is. Not to me, but to some people. For some people, a relationship and a diamond ring is the way they find happiness. My friend will work for four years, maybe more, maybe less, but that’s not where she’ll find her smile. She’d rather raise a child and play tennis. I always thought you had to travel to a different country to get a taste of a new culture. Maybe that was ignorant of me: you can just travel to a different state.

My friend knows her entire wedding party. She knows every cut of diamond and told me she wants a “cushion cut” (I still don’t know what that means). She knows the exact dress she wants (it’s on her Pinterest board) as well as the bouquet she will hold (white and pink peonies).

“Wait, you don’t know what diamond you want, Chloë?”

// ABC

“Last Resort” is probably on its way out, but our intrepid columnists still think it’s worth a watch.

out much shame) for “Awake” and “The Cape” all the more because they were doomed and not despite it. “Last Resort” strikes me as the same kind of object. The stakes for the show aren’t really sink or swim, because sinking is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Sure, I’d love a “Last Resort” with a measured tone and pace, a thoughtfully grim reflection on their situation, etc. I’d also like them to bring “Firefly” back, and I want #SixSeasonsAndAMovie for “Community.” Ain’t gonna happen. So I say damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

Contact SOPHIA NGUYEN and GRAYSON CLARY at sophia.nguyen@yale.edu and grayson. clary@yale.edu .

Ladies and gentlemen... er, just gentlemen

// BY CHLOE DRIMAL

When I landed in Dallas to visit my friend at Southern Methodist University, her hair was blonder than I remembered.

In the car we didn’t put the music on, we talked — we hadn’t missed a beat. We were different — she said “y’all” and her hair was bleached, mine was brown and I was still a fullblown Yankee, but that didn’t matter.

“Do you have any brunette friends?” I joked.

“Of course … two.”

“Do a lot of girls have boob jobs?”

I’m thinking of “Battlestar Galactica.”

And I know that everything you’re reading right now is coming out nerd nerd nerd but that show was an honest-to-God Bush-era military drama: a small crew, alone in the universe, faces an overwhelmingly powerful enemy. There were shit-tons of explosions, but what made it work was a constant and extended atmosphere of dread. So far on “Last Resort,” we’ve definitely seen some in-fighting, but not nearly enough fatigue or confusion. I want wariness, strain, mistrust, I want these people to hate each other and love each other all at once while nice quasi-Celtic flutes play in the background because why not. All that dark gritty stuff that makes speculative shows feel real and worthwhile.

GC: I think you’re more optimistic than I am about the show’s long-term prospects. If we’re honest with ourselves, the ratings suggest that “Last Resort” isn’t likely to make it through more than one season. Though I’m probably in the minority, I don’t think that’s a terrible thing; I fell (with-

“No … I thought you had to find a husband first.”

But then again, I am single. She and all her friends have boyfriends. All of them. I have one friend at Yale with a boyfriend, and they’re long-distance.

It started making me think — is she right and am I wrong? Should I know what diamond cut I want? Should I be looking for a boyfriend instead of chugging cheap champagne in the basement of Toad’s with the football team?

Not a chance.

Dancing at Zeta late night and making out on rooftops is what makes me smile.

I can’t judge my friend for her blonde hair or her plan to have fake boobs; I love her too much. In two years, or maybe one, I’ll be in her wedding party. I’ll make sure the flowers are perfect and pull everyone onto the dance floor after she cuts the cake. I probably won’t have a plus one to bring, but that’s okay. Happiness is weird like that; there is no true definition, no matter what Webster’s says.

Happiness can’t be defined by words at all. It’s a notion, a secret chant within our hearts; it just takes a little while to discover it. But once we find it, we need to take it and run, never looking back or asking for approval from friends — if they disapprove, they aren’t our friends at all.

For me, happiness is dancing until my feet hurt and I need to climb under my covers with a glass of water; for her, happiness is dreaming about her future wedding and cuddling with her boyfriend. That makes her smile, and that makes me happy.

TAKING PART: ART AND THE ACTIVE VIEWER

Yale University Art Gallery // 3 p.m.

Intro tour by Tess Smith ’13. Interact with your art. See the’ new space. Our own personal MoMA in New Haven.

Contact CHLOE DRIMAL at chloe.drimal@yale.edu .

// BY ZOE GREENBERG

This past July, the Yale College Council sent an email asking students to vote for a Fall Show comedian from a list of 22 men. Of these, 17 were white men.

That’s CRAZY! On this wide-ranging list of potential funny people, there were zero women? YCC, what’s up?

When I got the email, I was studying comedy in Chicago. I was doing improv five hours a day and watching improv seven nights a week. I’m in the Ex!t Players improv comedy group here at Yale, and I’m also a lady.

When I joined Ex!t as a freshman, there were two female directors, Claire and Tessa. I remember watching Tessa play a preteen girl with a webcam and a LiveJournal account who started a dating show in her basement. It’s hard to explain it after the fact, but guys, it was really funny. I learned how to be funny by watching women like them onstage, acting with them in scenes and generally trying to internalize their confidence and comedic timing. I wanted to be like them — to graduate and go be funny out in the big wide world.

But then the YCC told me that women aren’t funny, or at least not funny enough for the Fall Show. (Which is the center of comedy in America. That’s why I’m concerned!)

When I first got the survey, I had many questions: How could they think this sums up the comedy world? What about all the brilliant female comedians they overlooked? Also, what is the YCC, and why?

Googling guy after guy named in the YCC email made me wonder if there

ZOE GREENBERG SOME THINGS CONSIDERED was any point to my caring about comedy at all. Would any student government ever want me on their short list?!

That list made me feel totally invisible. I assume the YCC didn’t intend it this way. But it sends Yale the message that female comedians are either nonexistent or not worth looking into, and that’s sad, frustrating and untrue.

In Chicago, I saw tons of funny, smart women doing exceptional comedy. Maybe it’s true that fewer women than men are involved in comedy in the first place, but if the YCC wants us to choose from the top 22 best performers that we can afford, there are at least a dozen, and probably a MILLION, women who make the cut. The Fall Show isn’t a gender-specific event, unlike a football team practice or a nogirls-allowed treehouse party, and so it’s absurd that only male performers were on the table.

I am a big fan of John Mulaney, who will be performing this Saturday — he’s sharp, hilarious and coincidentally the brother of Ex!t vet Claire Mulaney, who is a comedy badass AND a lady. Yeah, I’m excited to see him perform. But 22 men? As the sum total of all possible funny people in the country? I’m not so excited about that.

Contact ZOE GREENBERG at zoe.greenberg@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Bloomberg. Who recommends Obama.

Because global warming likely wrought Sandy upon us.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B11

WEEKEND ARTS

HOMER IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN ALICE OSWALD // BY SAMUEL HUBER

British writer Alice Oswald’s appearance at the Whitney Humanities Center on Wednesday was billed in the WHC’s publicity materials as a “reading,” but it was clear from the very beginning of her performance that Oswald had no intentions to read.

Professor Emily Greenwood introduced her as “a classicist, a poet and a gardener, in no particular order,” and her latest book, which she performed from memory in its entirety, leaves me with few doubts about her qualifications in any of these three capacities.

OSWALD REMINDED ME OF NO ONE MORE STRONGLY THAN OF MY MIND’S IMAGE OF HOMER. “Memorial: An Excavation of the ‘Iliad’” occupies that radiant and fruitful grey area between translation and adaptation of the kind that has made Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson famous on this side of the Atlantic. In Oswald’s bold retelling —

described by the author in her book’s preface as “a translation of the ‘Iliad’s’ atmosphere, not its story” — Homer’s capacious epic is stripped down to a brutal and brilliantly direct catalog of the deaths of the tale’s minor characters, alternating with lush and lyrical similes, most of which are drawn from the natural world for which Oswald displays such strong affinity.

Before diving into “Memorial,” Oswald recited for us the brief poem “Hymn to Iris,” saying she felt she could use the goddess’s help: “a threemoment blessing for all bridges / may impossible rifts be often delicately crossed.” I live in New Haven in the year 2012; Homer lived in Greece in the eighth century B.C. I cannot read Greek, and the Classics too often feel impossibly far from my age, my interests, my politics. As Oswald warmed up, gaining momentum with each lovely line, I was eager for her to bridge that distance. With the hymn, she prepared us for crossing.

Oswald then announced that she would be performing “Memorial” in its entirety (with the exception of the long list of names that opens it), which would take about an hour and a quarter from start to finish. Acknowledging this to be unusual for a contemporary poetry reading, Oswald encouraged us to tune in and out at will. I could tell

after the hymn that I would do no such thing, and remained rapt until the performance’s very last line.

“Memorial” has received some overwhelmingly positive reviews since its release, but it has also been met with some dismissive backlash from more conservative Classicists.

“Alice Oswald’s ‘Memorial’ is a translation of the ‘Iliad’ that chucks the dull stuff (the plot points, all that talking) and retains the choice bits (the violence, the similes),” complains Jason Guriel in the PN Review, a semiannual poetry journal. “It is Homer cutting to the chase — Homer cut to the quick.”

These preservationists seem to be baiting us for an argument of which no one, least of all Oswald, is interested in playing the other side; Oswald

Steinin’ at the Beinecke

is clearly committed to the text from which she works, and her project is always a reverent one. If these critics had been at Wednesday’s performance, they may have realized that they have nothing to worry about — this was oral poetry, and Oswald reminded me of no one more strongly than of my mind’s image of Homer. If Homer were a British woman with a passion for gardening, of course.

Oswald’s performance was more oratory than soliloquy, achieving that somber and convincing balance between sermon and political speech that I imagine to have been Homer’s own mode. One soldier, Oswald told us, complained of his bow, “It has proved such a nothingness,” and I remembered the “Iliad” to have been composed as a kind of history, the

// BEN ACKERMAN

Alice Oswald: poet, classicist, gardener.

soldiers’ deaths a kind of fact. With Oswald delivering the news, I was struck for the first time by the event of each soldier’s death. The book earns its title, and I listened as each soldier was rescued from anonymity for his heartbreaking handful of lines and laid back to rest before Oswald marched on to the next. I believed in them; I mourned.

Contact SAMUEL HUBER at samuel.j.huber@yale.edu .

A tribute as skillfully done as it is moving

// BY JAKE ORBISON

// BY CATHERINE SHAW Thorton Wilder ’20 was an intimate friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Having met the pair during Stein’s American lecture tour in 1934, the acclaimed author of “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” and “Our Town” kept a lifelong correspondence with Stein and Toklas. “Thorny,” as he was affectionately known to Stein — the language poet seems to have been inexplicably fond of pet names, like “Papa Woojums,” Stein’s literary executor, known to the rest of the world as Carl Van Vechten — played a primary role in preserving much of Stein’s literary legacy here at Yale. In a letter addressing the couple, Wilder wrote “Dear Gertrude and Alice,” where “Gertrude and Alice” form a circle on the page.

Wilder’s writings are one exceptional facet of a current two-monthlong exhibit on view at the Beinecke.

“Descriptions of Literature: The Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers” consists of two glass cases full of unpublished manuscripts, photographs and personal effects of Stein, Toklas and their close friends.

The arrangement and selection of the display effectively demonstrate the experimental nature of Stein’s writing process, her life as an artistic authority and the immense influence her friends, especially Toklas, had on her.

In titling her memoir “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” it is clear that Stein believes that an integral part of understanding herself is understanding her relation-

S U N D AY NOVEMBER 4

ship with Toklas, her life partner. The two lived as lovers and hosted the famous “Stein salon” together until Stein’s death in 1946. This profound closeness can be found in all letters addressed to Stein, as they are in fact addressed to both Stein and Toklas.

Even in Stein’s own writing she rarely uses the singular “I.” Toklas is also a very clear part of Stein’s writing process. Often, the large, unintelligible script of Stein’s manuscripts has been doubled over by the clear, compact print writing of Toklas’ notes and edits. The exhibition describes Toklas’s role in Stein’s creative process as that of an editor, organizer and muse: Toklas would convert notebooks full of Stein’s writing, and often her own edits, into typeface. The exhibit also presents a waistcoat Toklas knit for Stein, representative of her additional role as the caretaker and homemaker of the relationship.

Stein’s idiosyncratic literary style and philosophy is also heavily displayed. In the manuscripts and drafts, familiar quotes such as “A rose is a rose is a rose” showcase her favoring of humor and repetition as well as her love of experimentation.

Perhaps no manuscript in the collection is more indicative of this

famously provocative line than the early draft of her children’s book, “The World is Round.” This work (printed on rose-color paper) features a main character named Rose: “she would carve on the tree, Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, until it went all the way around.” These pieces display a unique interest in identity, roundness and cyclicality.

The exhibit’s wealth of literary correspondence between Stein and her friends further demonstrates how interconnected Stein’s private life was to her art, and how influential she was to her correspondence in return. The philosophy and literary ideas of Stein and Toklas, the exhibit suggests, were inseparable from their social perception and self-identity.

The exhibit will run through Dec. 14th.

Contact JAKE ORBISON at james.orbison@yale.edu .

// EMILIE FOYER

The exhibit explores the personal and literary interconnections between Gertrude Stein, her life partner and close friends.

Each of us can think back to a teacher that has had a profound, unforgettable influence on our lives. As a freshman, the teachers I can name come from my high school. I know, however, that names of Yale professors will soon earn a place on my list.

I also know, thanks to an exhibit currently mounted at the Yale School of Art, that legendary art professor Bernard Chaet is on the list of many who walked New Haven’s streets before me.

On Oct. 16, Chaet passed away at the age of 88. In his honor, the School promptly put together a show composed of work done by his students through the years. When I visited the tribute earlier this week, I found that it truly lived up to Chaet’s memory.

THE HAND OF THE TEACHER IS MADE MORE THAN CLEAR

BY THE ART OF HIS STUDENTS. I walked in and saw that a portrait of Chaet sat next to a booklet of the professor’s work. Beside it stood a written memorial for Chaet by Robert Storr, the current dean of the School of Art, who told the News earlier this month that Chaet’s time at the helm of the School “coincided with the years when Yale became one of the top art schools in the country.” Although none of Chaet’s original work is displayed here, the hand of the teacher is made more than clear by the art of his students.

Walking into Green Hall’s Middle Gallery, I found walls lined with a series of paintings, drawings and sketches created in Chaet’s classes between 1950 and 1990. All done in muted colors, mostly black and white, with a few in sepia, the works combine each artist’s individual flair with the curving gentle lines and soft focus one quickly learns is

“HIPSTORY: YALE BELLY DANCE FALL SHOW”

Morse/Stiles College Crescent Theater // 2–3:30 p.m.

These hips won’t lie to you. We promise.

characteristic of the instructor’s style.

Perhaps my favorite pieces on display were the fuzzy representations of famous paintings. Particularly notable were the versions of Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Children,” Théodore Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa” and El Greco’s “The Resurrection.” While these paintings were, in many ways, only out of focus, blackand-white versions of the originals, they still managed to convey something completely new. The facelessness of the figures causes any familiarity with the paintings’ original depictions to fade.

All that remains is the beauty of the figures themselves, the power of the students’ own interpretations.

Equally striking were several pen and ink drawings of everyday objects. I particularly liked one representing a garden glove. Using only a series of curving lines, the artist managed to fully emulate the texture and appearance of a leather glove, right down to the tiny hole in the pointer finger.

Indeed, everything in the exhibit speaks of carefully cultivated mastery.

The sketches of female nudes on the right side of the room are as precise as they are beautiful. The female body and its curves are displayed in all their glory without a tinge of idealism or shame.

The figures convey a simple and graceful beauty — and a sense of artistic purpose. Each student-made piece bears the mark of Chaet’s truly transformative teaching.

I cannot think of a more wonderful tribute to a brilliant teacher than this show. Although I knew nothing about professor Chaet before I walked in, I walked out feeling his influence. He took talented, if green, young artists and, year in and year out, helped them produce work of immense quality that retains its power decades on. I walked away from the exhibit feeling as though I too had the privilege of being taught, if only briefly, by professor Chaet.

Contact CATHERINE SHAW at catherine.shaw@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Sandy jokes.

Oh baby. Also power. And heat. And clean water. We’re with you, lower Manhattan.

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

GREAT CAESAR

// STEPHEN CHEN

GREAT CAESAR MOVES TO BROOKLYN, GETS IN TOUCH WITH THEIR FEELINGS // BY KATY OSBORN

Q. What was it like going from the Yale music scene to Brooklyn?

A. There are so many other bands, and you have a lot more competition. We came here with our own interesting sound, which is not necessarily tailored to or influenced by the type of music coming out of Brooklyn right now. [But in terms of] actually being a part of the scene and figuring out... where to play, how you can get paid, what the style is... we sort of did not have our finger on that pulse… at all.

We’re here, and we hear about all these other cool bands in blogs, or newspapers, and then we’ll go and check out the show and there’s like nobody there.

I perceive it to be kind of a weird mismatch between this band buzz and actual ability to play a good show.

[Laughs] Q. What’s the strangest Brooklyn show you’ve seen?

A. This isn’t the weirdest one — but I saw this band called Man Man at Music Hall of Williamsburg. They had like 5 members and 60 instruments on stage, all sort of glued together in this crazy way. Everyone was sitting behind a piano that had a trumpet glued to it.

Q. Have you had any crazy gig stories yourself?

A. We played a show with Laura Zax [SM ’10] where we weren’t able to get our set times right next to each other, and there was a band that played in between us. We saw [the band] loading in and they all had crazy costumes on… a bunch of people were wearing horse masks, one guy had a megaphone strapped to his head.

Q. Classic.

A. The weird thing is they were all like 40 years old. These weren’t a bunch of crazy kids — they were a bunch of old guys who had clearly been doing this for a while. One of our fans came up to us and was like, “Get the horse people off the stage!”

Q. Let’s talk about your music. You’ve been called the “Outkast of Brooklyn indie rock” by ‘Gigmaven.’ In three words, how would you define your style?

A. Boisterous. Honest. Intentional.

Rowdy, actually.

Q. So four words, then.

A. Okay no, you can replace boisterous with rowdy. [Laughs] Q. Your new EP, “Scattered Air,” was just released last week. What was your inspiration for the material?

A. When we first moved to New York, we went on a little songwriting retreat.

We went up to — well, we’ve been telling people it was a cabin in the woods — but it was actually just an empty dorm [at UConn]. It was around the time that Bon Iver was really big… everyone was going crazy about the fact that he went to a cabin or something. We didn’t really conceive of the EP beforehand as a concept. We basically had like, eight songs and we picked four that we thought were going to be most interesting and most worthy of being on a record that would represent our sound. The EP ended up being pretty eclectic; we picked one song that was more our rock n’ roll tune, our kind of indie rock thing… our slow anthem and our weird jazz song.

Q. What does the song-writing process look like for you all?

A. We have played around with communal songwriting and it’s mostly been a failed experiment. The way we write songs is somebody will come up with the majority of it and we’ll build it up according to that person’s vision.

Once the song is pretty much done, then we’ll go back and take it apart and reassemble it again with everyone putting more of their personal flare into it.

None of the songs on the EP really have a traditional song structure. Some of the songs are missing a bridge, some don’t even have a chorus at all.

Q. Were any of the songs on the EP your personal vision?

A. The last song on the EP, actually, “Son.” It’s a totally weird departure from what most songs sound like. I’m a saxophone player and have sort of been picking up other instruments along the way — at a mediocre level.

[Laughs] I’ve found that depending on what instrument you pick up to start writing a musical idea, you’ll come up with something very different just based on your technical ability and how the instrument is built. I was fooling around on the bass, trying

to play “Summertime” by George Gershwin. I came up with this opening riff with chords, which, is not really something you’re supposed to do on a bass.

This really dark and brooding feeling came out of it. I wrote the whole song in one night. The original concept for the song was extremely minimalist — just to have the bass playing and John singing. It ended up being this extended wordplay. It starts out talking about one thing in a sort of weird way that doesn’t make sense at first and then by the time you reach the end of the song, you realize that the whole song has been about something completely different. It’s been a son talking to his parents and apologizing for being essentially being a fuck up.

Q. Looking back at lines like, “She’s a sweet banana” and “Shut up I said, get in my bed,” it seems like there’s been a pretty big shift in your lyrics over the years. What’s been behind it?

A. A lot of our old hits were just written at an earlier time in our life. It’s not like we were stupid kids, but definitely now when we sit down to write lyrics, we put a lot of thought into them.

Our lyrics have evolved, just by virtue of kind of being out of college and I guess just being a little bit older and having a better grasp on how to use

“

words. I don’t want to say we have better vocabularies now, because they’re not. I think it may just be that we’re now a little bit better equipped to put the right words to what we’re feeling.

We’re a little bit more in touch with our feelings… in a mature way.

went on a short tour in 2009 — just like a two week thing during the summer — and we would have bandana checks to make sure that everyone had their bandanas on at all times. We’ve been joking that people are going to need to buy a bandana player.

Q. So this is not just Yale nostalgia peeking through your music.

Q. I keep going back to this image of your ‘Bon-Iver-style retreat’ to the UConn dorm.

A. [Laughs] I must admit we’re definitely nostalgic for Yale, but there is a lot more going on there. I feel like a major lyrical theme in our songs is growing up and reconciling our aspirations and dreams with the realities of the grown-up world. They’re sort of hovering around this central question… whether or not there’s any reason to give heed or respect to [these realities].

Q. On the subject of younger days, you and John-Michael performed as a duo acoustic set at Underbrook Coffeehouse back in September. What does Yale look like from the other side?

A. Well, Ezra Stiles got renovated so now I’m super jealous. [Laughs] No, but it’s refreshing to go back to Yale and see that everyone’s doing what they’re interested in and excited about.

A lot of people now in the city have, you know, fallen into jobs and are just sort of chugging along, doing whatever it is they do for a profession. Many — but not all — of the people that we know [aren’t really doing] something they’re passionate about.

Q. I noticed you’re also selling the EP at your live gigs as a bandana stapled to a download card. Is there a story behind that?

A. The genesis for the bandana was when we were younger, as a band, we would always wear bandanas on stage.

I’m not really sure where it came from — I guess we just thought bandanas were pretty badass or something. We

A. I know I’ve said that we’ve all gotten a little bit more serious, but when we get together as a band, we end up getting kind of wild and crazy and rowdy, or whatever. [Laughs] A lot of times when we’re around the apartment, we’ll sing our songs but replace the lyrics with either really inane or really utterly filthy lyrics. We’re a lot less mature than our real lyrics make us seem. There are a couple of videos of us from that retreat doing chicken fighting with, like, bottles that we found in the… it’s hard to explain.

Q. Speaking of goofing off… I noticed some talk of the Zombie (and Mayan) apocalypse posts on your Facebook and Twitter amidst the chaos of Sandy. Say it’s the end of the world. Where’s Great Caesar?

A. Well, we all [minus Manhattanbound John-Michael] kind of thought that Sandy was going to be the Apocalypse, and the way we ended up spending that was sitting inside drinking whiskey…

Q. Whiskey?

A. Before every show, we pass around a flask of whiskey and talk about what we’re going to do better that we didn’t do last time. At the end of the day, the goal is that when we’re old and unable to play anymore, we’ll have the best possible stories to tell.

Contact KATY OSBORN at katy.osborn@yale.edu .

A LOT OF TIMES WHEN WE’RE AROUND THE APARTMENT, WE’LL SING OUR SONGS BUT REPLACE THE LYRICS WITH EITHER REALLY INANE OR REALLY UTTERLY FILTHY LYRICS. WE’RE A LOT LESS MATURE THAN OUR REAL LYRICS MAKE US SEEM.

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W

ith their dizzying, high-energy hybrid of ska horns, keyboards and bluesy style, Great Caesar’s going maverick in the world of indie rock. Originally gaining Yale fame as darlings of online publication Yale Music Scene, sweating through performances in the airless TD basement and opening for The Decemberists and N.E.R.D at Spring Fling 2009, the sextet has taken their graduated act to Brooklyn. They’ve just released a new EP, “Scattered Air”, and are currently in the running for NYC Artist of the Month in a contest run by music magazine “The Deli.” With vocalist John-Michael Parker ’10 stuck powerless in his Manhattan apartment, the multi-talented Stephen Chen ’09 called via one rare still-working line of communication to talk with WEEKEND about Brooklyn, the new EP, the Zombie apocalypse and naturally, whiskey.