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MAGAZINE

RULE OF THREE At Yale, Claremont McKenna and Mizzou, students fight to keep movements going against all odds.

BY JON VICTOR

Inside: Depicting Mass Incarceration

A Portrait of Muslim Life at Yale

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JE Deemed Slytherin

TABLE OF CONTENTS Editors’ Note Dear Wunderkinds,

Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside

by Quincy Carroll (BR ‘07) Everybody wants to think they’re the only foreigner in China.

“[An] insightful reflection on the expatriate experience.” — Kirkus Reviews

Published by

Inkshares #upMdownC

Welcome to the May issue of the Yale Daily News Magazine!

In this issue, Jon Victor reports straight from the campuses of University of Missouri and Claremont McKenna, where protests, resignations and media firestorms have slowed into administrative baby steps. At these campuses, and at Yale, how do students feel about the future of their movements, months after the glare of the national spotlight has faded?

Also in this issue, Ahmed Elbenni portrays the challenges and hopes of Muslim students at Yale, writing from his own experience and telling the stories of others. Annelisa Leinbach depicts the complex interaction between the war on drugs and mass incarceration through a tremendous art feature.

And our intrepid statistician Graham Ambrose found that if Yale were really Hogwarts, we’d all consider ourselves Gryffindors and still hate JE. (This JEbased editorial pairing will reserve our opinions.)

We’re so glad you’ve stuck with us to our last issue of the academic year. Hope your summers are, well, wunderful.

Abigail and Liz

F TS

table of contents

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4

profile

Calling on Miss Patty EVE SNEIDER

20

21

view

A Year in Canons

THE DIVIDE

AVIGAYIL HALPERN

Feature by Ahmed Elbenni

fiction

The Swimming Pool LILLIE LAINOFF

23

bits and pieces

Growing Pains

I

NICOLE CLARK

28

10

BENEDICT ARNOLD

Short Feature by Jacob Stern

personal essay

Hallowed, Hollowed

Photo Essay by Robbie Short

MONICA HANNUSH

39

bits and pieces

If Yale Were Hogwarts GRAHAM AMBROSE

14 MY SON IS IN A CAGE Art by Annelisa Leinbach

DAILY NEWS

MAGAZINE Magazine Editors in Chief Abigail Bessler Elizabeth Miles Managing Editors Hayley Byrnes Lillie Lainoff Associate Editors Gabriella Borter Brady Currey Frani O’Toole Editor in Chief Stephanie Addenbrooke Publisher Joanna Jin Center cover photo by Aydin Akyol Left and right cover photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Magazine Design Editors Emily Hsee Amanda Mei Design Editors Mert Dilek Eleanor Handler Tresa Joseph Samuel Wang Photography Editors Elinor Hills Kaifeng Wu Illustrations Editor Ashlyn Oakes Copy Editors Martin Lim Chris Rudeen Grace Shi

STAFF: Graham Ambrose, Charlotte Brannon, Teresa Chen, Edward Columbia, Elena Conde, Ahmed Elbenni, Avigayil Halpern, Emily Hsee, Eve Houghton, Madeline Kaplan, Emma Keyes, William Nixon, Aaron Orbey, Tsedenya Simmie, Eve Sneider, Oriana Tang, Claudia Zamora DESIGN ASSISTANTS: Quinn Lewis, Jacob Middlekauff, Lisa Qian, Victor Wang, Julia Zou BUSINESS LIAISON: Diane Jiang

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WHO’S BEHIND THE LINES? Feature by Daniela Brighenti

32

RULE OF THREE Cover by Jon Victor

Yale Daily News Magazine | 3

feature

A PORTRAIT OF MUSLIM STUDENT LIFE AT YALE.

THE DIVIDE

by Ahmed Elbenni

I

shrat Mannan ’17 stood by a lonely table, pamphlets in hand. Her disinterested classmates streamed past her, lining up to attend the event of the day: a talk by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, titled “Clash of Civilizations: Islam and the West.” Even though the physical distance that separated them could not have been more than a few feet, Mannan found that she and her fellow Yalies might as well have been in different ideological worlds. In one, Islam was a symbol of peace and a way of life. In the other, it was a foreign relic of a bygone era, interesting to study but not to take seriously. “That huge divide,” recalls Mannan, “just felt really, really disheartening.”

The divide was not some “civilizational clash” between Islam and the West. It was not between Muslims and Yale; indeed, that was the false narrative that Mannan and her companions wanted to speak out against. The real divide, as is often the case, was between what Islam meant to her and what it meant to others. Most people, including Yalies, may 4 | May 2016

not know much of Islam beyond what they have watched on CNN and read in The New York Times.

I’ve answered many questions about my Islamic faith since setting foot on campus: whether I pray, when I fast and what I think of terrorism. They are questions my eightyear-old self would have been able to answer just as well. The reality I see, that Muslim students are part of the Yale family, leading fascinating lives, may not feel as real to my classmates.

There exists no prototypical Muslim student; they all come from backgrounds as diverse as the Yale community, bringing with them unique cultural and personal perspectives on how to practice their faith and live their lives. There are those who spent their entire lives in a non-Muslim environment, and so were pleasantly surprised to find a ready-made, closely knit community here.

Others knew nothing but Islam their entire lives, and felt challenged by the new world Yale represented.

Courtesy of Sarah Yazji

feature

Courtesy of Nadeem Mirza Muslim students carry their faith with them wherever they go, a guiding presence that helps keep their spiritual and material lives balanced. Many of them have a fundamentally different view of a day’s structure than most students do, courtesy of the Islamic mandate of five prayers a day.

There is the large chunk of time between the morning (Fajr) prayers and the noon (Thuhr) prayers, the briefer period between the noon and afternoon (‘Asr) prayers, the even shorter span of time between the latter and the evening (Maghrib) prayers, and the final segment between the evening and night (‘Isha) prayers. Since Yale does not recognize these prayers, it is up to the responsible Muslim student to find a way to craft a class schedule that still permits some time, however brief, to fulfill these essential religious commitments. Muslims can pray anywhere, mosque or no mosque, as long as the setting is clean. Of course, that does not always mean the setting is ideal.

“The other day, I was praying in a stair-

well,” Zaki Bahrami ’18 recalls. “I was praying with two of my friends. It was funny, because someone opened the door and slammed my knee, while I was kneeling and praying.”

Finding the space and time for prayers is just one example of the challenges that Muslim students at Yale may face on a daily basis. They also abide by dietary restrictions, eating only halal food, which sometimes affects the dining hall experience; the pang of disappointment that greets me whenever the chef shakes his head about the delicious-looking chicken on the counter doesn’t get old. Drinking is also prohibited, as is premarital sex. Still, these tests are not necessarily unique to Yale. “I don’t think that Yale itself has an effect on an individ-

“There exists no prototypical Muslim student.”

Yale Daily News Magazine | 5

feature ual’s practice,” says Ahmad Aljobeh ’16, former Muslim Students Association president and aspiring medical student.

“Wherever you are there are going to be some kind of challenges, and Yale isn’t special in that regard.”

If anything, Aljobeh believes the abundant resources available to Muslim students, such as the Chaplain’s Office, make Yale more supportive of Islamic practice than many other colleges. Yale’s Coordinator of Muslim Life Omer Bajwa affirmed, “You can be a practicing, committed Muslim and also be an excellent Yale student and have a wonderful Yale experience.” The question seems not whether Muslims can be Muslims at Yale; it is whether other students can accept, and appreciate, that fact.

Acceptance can be hard in a place as secular as Yale. Students discuss God largely in the abstract, perhaps as a literary symbol or as an interesting thought experiment. In a philosophy section, my classmates spoke of religious people in the third person, as people that are perhaps a little less “rational” than everyone else. I sensed, as I often did at Yale, that my classmates shared an unspoken but tangible understanding of religion as a mold that everyone outgrew a long time ago. I sat there awkwardly then, wondering if that made me a child who had accidentally wandered into a room of adults.

The abandonment of serious religious belief is doubly difficult for Muslims, who also have to deal with the constant scrutiny of a restless media cycle hell-bent on making “Islam” synonymous with “terrorism.” Considering the image of Islam seared into the American public consciousness, it probably is not surprising that the religion is most commonly spoken of at Yale in that context.

Whether it is in Global Affairs or Modern Middle East Studies, Islam is usually taught from the specific viewpoint of radical violence and national security. It’s not that good classes about Islam don’t exist at Yale. Rather, it’s that students choose not to take them. “[Classes about Islamic civilization] 6 | May 2016

are not the popular, sexy classes that get high attendance,” says Bajwa. “Muslim civilization, Muslim history, intellectual history, social history, Muslim culture’s contributions to society, those are the classes that have anemic attendance.”

There is no doubt that the content of the media’s Islamic coverage has popularized classes about war and fundamentalism.

The dangerous consequences are equally obvious: After constantly learning about Islamic extremism, people may come to understand the religion through that lens only, ignoring over 1400 years of history and culture in the process. Professors often frame Islamic issues in provocative fashions that “sell,” according to Bajwa.

Yale’s general academic attitude toward Islam is just the tip of the iceberg. If anything, it is reflective of subtle Islamophobia on parts of campus. This tension between the Muslim and nonMuslim Yale communities has manifested itself more than once in Yale’s recent history.

Seven years ago, the master of Branford College invited Kurt Westergaard, one of the 12 Danish cartoonists who drew offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, to a Master’s Tea. Westergaard’s cartoon depicted the Prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. The event caused more than a little controversy, drawing in the Yale administration and sparking the Muslim community into action. “When we attended the event, we had all of these polished questions,” says Umar Qadri ’11, a junior at the time and a current medical student at Duke. “We tried to [challenge him] from an academic perspective.” The questions were meant to force Westergaard to defend his actions before his audience, and Bajwa thinks they succeeded in that regard. As such, despite the initial negativity surrounding Westergaard’s appearance, Bajwa ultimately views the incident positively, as it was an effective showcase of the intellectual prowess of the Muslim student body and its willingness to engage with divergent ideas, even if it finds them offensive.

Courtesy of Omer Bajwa Then in 2012, the New York Police Department’s massive spying operation on at least 15 Muslim student organizations across the country came to light, and with it the revelation that Yale students had been the unwitting targets of extensive surveillance, suspected solely on the basis of their religion. The incident hit hard, but fortunately the Yale administration issued a statement of support for the Muslim community on campus, with former University Vice President Linda Lorimer telling the News that Yale “supports [the MSA’s] goals and aims and is grateful for its leadership on our campus,” adding that she had been “both inspired and educated by the MSA.” Perhaps the toughest blow, though came last year, with the William F. Buckley Jr. Program’s invitation of Hirsi Ali, a well-known anti-Islamic speaker. Several students were offended that someone without Islamic scholarly credentials was coming to testify specifically against the religion, and they protested the invitation. A few proposed inviting a second speaker with contrasting views

feature to Hirsi Ali, so that the audience could receive a more balanced overview of the issues at hand. The Buckley Program saw the MSA’s actions as attempts to control its activities and curtail its rights, and it resisted.

What started off as a small event exploded into a raging firestorm that drew in the national media and numerous student organizations across campus. Arguments were made, op-eds were written, letters were sent, and before anyone knew it, Hirsi Ali’s event had somehow evolved into an epic showdown between protecting free speech and preserving a safe space. In some ways it was an eerie foreshadowing of the student upheaval that took place last semester, which resulted in the formation of Next Yale. “A lot of people have become very open about how disillusioned they are with Yale,” says Mannan, who handed out dissident pamphlets at the Hirsi Ali event. “It feels like echoes of what I was feeling as a sophomore.”

Unlike last semester, though, the controversy never snowballed into something greater. In contrast to the show of support shown in the aftermath of the NYPD spying controversy, the Yale administration never got involved. The event proceeded without a hitch, with over 300 students attending. The MSA did not interfere, settling instead for handing out pamphlets critical of the event outside of its entrance. Still, the overwhelming consensus amongst the Muslim community was that it was a loss to them and yet another hit to their already nationally fractured image. Muslim students still recall the incident vividly, and it seems that raw and bitter feelings still linger.

“It was such a dated [concept],” says Didem Kaya ’16, a senior from Turkey majoring in American Studies, referring to the talk’s central theme of a civilizational clash between Islam and the West.

“It was kind of a sad moment to see that my Yale classmates were so far behind.”

Despite the support shown by multiple organizations toward the MSA, much

of the wider Yale community appeared to disregard the opinions of Muslims about an issue that concerned their own religion. “I think our voices were not important,” says Bahrami. “Each individual Muslim, I think, has [non-Muslim] friends that really care about what that Muslim has to say … but outside of those very close immediate friends, most people don’t care what Muslims think.”

But even as Muslim students continue to push to have their voices heard, there are signs that the Yale community is becoming more receptive to their complaints. The MSA, backed by administrative support, has become much more active, especially since the appointment of Bajwa to the position of Muslim chaplain in 2008. Before Bajwa, the MSA was entirely student-run and had a membership of 30 students, roughly the size of the MSA’s freshman class today.

In the absence of a strong support system, board members had to find creative ways to accommodate the needs of the Muslim student community. During Ramadan, the holy month of fasting in which food and drink is prohibited from sunrise to sunset, the board would arrange suhoor packets of food that students would consume in the early morning in preparation of the hungry day ahead. They would also put together an iftar meal at the end of the day for breaking the fast, and sometimes schedule impromptu prayers late in the night.

Students would take on the responsibility of delivering the weekly Friday sermons and prayers, a task of immense importance in Islam. “[Bajwa made] the MSA a more ‘legitimate’ organization,” says Qadri.

“The needs of the Muslim community became more known to the larger administration with him as our chaplain.” Attendance at Friday prayers has more than tripled during Bajwa’s tenure. He has become the face of the Yale Muslim community, issuing important responses on its behalf while also reaching out to other faith-based organizations. Whether being interviewed

by graduate students studying Islam or offering advice to troubled individuals, Bajwa functions as both a Muslim authority and a personal mentor; in his own words, “a pastoral caretaker.”

The MSA now holds several major Muslim events throughout the year, from the lavish Eid Banquet in Commons (which Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway attended this past October) to the Yale-hosted spring Ivy Muslim Conference, which brings together hundreds of Muslim students from across the Ivy League for two days of spiritual reflection and social activities. A halaqa, an hourlong Islamic gathering headed by the chaplain, is held every Monday, and students enjoy a halal dinner at the Timothy Dwight dining hall every Wednesday. The MSA also runs ordinary social events like trips to a bowling alley and stargazing. And, most importantly of all, the MSA strives to be a safe space where members can be brothers and sisters, helping each other remain spiritually grounded in their shared faith.

In addition to hiring a Muslim chaplain, students say Yale’s senior administration is making an effort to increase collaboration with the Muslim community. Holloway recently held a meeting with members of the MSA, hearing their concerns and proposed solutions to long-standing issues. Yale is looking to hire a new religious studies professor for Quranic Studies, an initiative which represents an opportunity to diversify Muslim faculty representation and improve the academic diversity of the institution’s Islamic education.

With these steps, it is not impossible for Muslim students to imagine that Yale could someday truly rise above the Islamophobic paranoia that characterizes so much of modern American politics. And many hope for a future where the Muslim community can continue to grow and thrive.

“I’m just waiting for our own building.

Our own Slifka Center, our own dining hall,” says Aljobeh with a laugh. “I dream big.”

Yale Daily News Magazine | 7

profile

CALLING ON MISS PATTY

by Eve Sneider

by Eve Sneider illustration

by Ashlyn Oakes Illustration by Ashlyn Oakes

“My gifts are not for myself... ...This is a job I was put on this earth to do.”

F

ebruary is a strange time of year.

Some burrow into bed, some get a new haircut and some drink themselves into a stupor, all in the name of staying warm. I began reading my horoscope.

What started as a joke, a funny link sent my way by a friend, has become a part of my daily routine. Now, every morning, I wake up and proceed straight to Elle. com (for the comprehensive, astrological mumbo-jumbo) or astrology.com (for cutand-dried tips on what to expect in school and in my love life), scrolling until I see my fate spelled out under the simple heading “Sagittarius.” Most of the time I can somehow convince myself the horoscopes are applicable. All the world was definitely supposed to be my stage last Tuesday, when the cosmic copilots Venus and Mars flowed into an auspicious 120-degree angle fire trine, and I got a job offer!

Occasionally, though, they really miss the mark. There’s no way I got sentimental on the fifth and sixth of the month because everyone was talking about “the good old days” — I’m 19. I can’t say that getting in touch with my star sign has measurably improved my life. Still, I can’t get enough.

All of this does and does not explain

8 | May 2016

how I ended up at the West Haven home of Miss Patty, psychic healer and adviser, on a Monday afternoon in early April. I found her online. I was looking to talk to a psychic, not to be read necessarily, but to get a sense of the work that they do and how they feel about doing it. I have always thought, selfishly, that a psychic would make a fantastic character study. The truth is that I had wanted to meet with Attila the Psychic Advisor on Edgewood (mostly because of his name), but he never answered my calls. Miss Patty did, and her voice was warm and milky, with a light accent I couldn’t quite place. She sounded like the product of another time, words clearly enunciated but softer around the edges, and with a slight hint of old-school Hollywood mob wife. She said it would be her pleasure to speak with me.

The house is nondescript, off-white and right near I-95, two cars parked in the driveway. It’s a family home. I am met at the door by Patty’s sister, who ushers me in over a pastel pink and blue “Live, Laugh, Love” doormat. Inside it is dark. The lights are off, the blinds are drawn halfway, and the room reeks of cigarette smoke. One wall is covered halfway in a very large

mirror. I’m led to an armchair; it squeaks when I sit down. Patty’s sister tells me the psychic herself will be out shortly and goes back to her vacuuming. I can’t help but feel like I am intruding. I am also thrilled.

I want an encounter that is either meaningful, creepy or some combination of the two. I have an image in my head of what psychics are supposed to be like and I am confident that she will deliver.

And true to type, Miss Patty looks just as I imagined. She’s middle-aged, and she has meticulously coiffed dark hair and smudged-around-the-edges eyeliner. She wears a long dress and a black fleece jacket (after all, it is a cold day), and the frames of her glasses are bright red. Her eyes are kind, but when she talks her eye contact is unwavering in a way that makes me feel nervous. I do what I can to not look away.

The accent is still there too, but when I ask her where she’s from she tells me she has always lived in Connecticut. The voice, I assume, is all part of the act. After all, speaking to spirits is nothing if not a performance. (I think.)

Miss Patty is not your average conversationalist. She listens patiently to my questions, but is fantastic at deflecting them.

profile

Instead, she speaks in vaguenesses. “My gifts are not for myself,” she says again and again. “This is a job I was put on this earth to do.” She is not interested in telling anecdotes, even when I prod. I assumed that someone whose calling is revealing information would be prone to oversharing.

But Miss Patty does not take any of my bait. She will not tell me about her family or about her clients. When I ask about the moment she first felt the spirit, she does not have an elaborate “first time” story, offering only that when she was five or six she played outside, “seeing people and seeing their whole lives.” When I ask her what she does for fun, she scoffs: “readings,

prayers, meditation — that’s it.”

I look at Miss Patty and I want to see someone committing to a character, adopting a persona. But I don’t think she is particularly interested. “My mother said I was born with a special veil,” she tells me.

I get the sense that she prides herself on her detachment from the world. She tells me that some people who come to her for guidance keep coming back, just as friends, but this I do not quite believe. I can’t really imagine her chatting with a friend, much less that friend being me. Miss Patty lights up most when she speaks of the spirit. Say what you will about the existence of other worlds, she seems to be more engaged in those than in this one. I cannot decide if

her act (if that’s what this is) is a nuanced and highly compelling performance, or every psychic cliché personified.

Either way, I find her captivating. Miss Patty says that the people who come to her are looking for something. “My people trust me,” she says plainly. One thing she is willing to speak about at length is the truth in her talents. Unlike others in her field, she doesn’t advertise herself; she isn’t a sideshow. “When my phone rings, the spirit tells me either I can help them or I cannot. If I can’t, I don’t let them come.”

This is a sentiment I appreciate, but I don’t really believe it.

Charging $60 for a full reading, Miss Patty is a businesswoman even if her business is dictated by the powers that be.

And yet, I feel special when she says the spirits must have told her she could help. I can’t help but think that Miss Patty chose me.

My basic feeling is that many people like being told who or how to be. There is something nice about identifying with a horoscope, or a Myers-Briggs personality type, or even your results for a BuzzFeed quiz that tells you what kind of potato you are (for what it’s worth, I am sweet potato fries). It’s affirming to see or hear yourself in something else, to be able to say yes, this is me and this is what I am supposed to be doing.

As I approach the end of my freshman year at Yale and my first year living away from home, I can see that much of my growing pains in the last few months have revolved around looking to new sources for affirmation and guidance. Even when I don’t really listen to them.

I don’t believe what Miss Patty says, but I do believe in the value of her work.

I spend a lot of time feeling overworked, underslept and generally manic. It is comforting to think that in spite of all of this there is a pattern guiding my life and, better yet, that I have access to it. Part of me hopes this is true. Most of me thinks it isn’t.

Yale Daily News Magazine | 9

short feature & photo essay

I Benedict Arnold

by Jacob Stern photos by Robbie Short 10 | May 2016

â&#x20AC;&#x153;If the keys are not coming within five minutes, my men will break into the supply-house and help themselves. None but the Almighty God shall prevent me from marching.â&#x20AC;?

Yale Daily News Magazine | 11

short feature & photo essay

S

eventy-five soldiers clad in knee breeches, scarlet waistcoats and either bearskin shakos or feathered chapeaux march three-by-three down the center of Church Street shouldering muskets and sabers. A fife-and-drum corps plays an authentic-sounding rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” A pair of police cars leads the cavalcade, while a third brings up the rear. All along the sidewalk, incredulous passersby stare or frantically unsheathe their iPhones from their pockets to capture on video what must look to them like a scene from the American Revolution — and that’s because it is.

Today, New Haven celebrates the 241st anniversary of Powder House Day. These soldiers have gathered to re-enact the events of that day and to pay tribute to the patriotism of the Elm City’s first Revolutionary War hero, a businessman and militia captain who lived on Water Street: Benedict Arnold.

When word of the battles at Lexington

12 | May 2016

and Concord reached New Haven on April 21, 1775, a town meeting voted to withhold support until news of further developments arrived. Disregarding that decision, 58 members of the 2nd Company Governor’s Foot Guard resolved to march on Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they would join the gathering colonial army. Without official authorization, though, the company would receive neither ball nor powder.

The following day, the soldiers — under the command of captain Benedict Arnold — stormed Beer’s Tavern, where the town selectmen were meeting, and demanded the keys to the New Haven Powder House.

Reluctant to act in open defiance of the king, the town’s selectmen demurred.

Arnold, however, would hear no such equivocations.

“If the keys are not coming within five minutes,” he reportedly bellowed, “my men will break into the supply-house and help themselves. None but the Almighty God shall prevent me from marching.”

And none did. The selectmen surrendered the keys, the triumphant Arnold led his newly equipped men off to Cambridge, and the town of New Haven — against the more cautious sensibilities of its people — entered the American Revolution.

Since 1904, the Elm City has staged an annual re-enactment commemorating the heroics of Powder House Day and the courage of its champion. The volunteer soldiers of the 2nd Company — which has continuously existed since its 1774 establishment and which now fulfills a strictly ceremonial purpose as a Historical State Military Organization — perform the re-enactment of their forebearers’ deeds 241 years prior.

“It’s important for us as members of the foot guard, now 241 years later, to remember what these men did,” says Major Commandant Richard Greenalch, this year’s Benedict Arnold and an assistant deputy state’s attorney by day. “The men and women of the foot guard are just proud to commemorate what we think was important in New Haven’s history.”

In the nearly two-and-a-half centuries since its founding, the 2nd Company has undergone a number of changes. This Powder House Day, the company is joined by fellow volunteer soldiers hailing from all across the eastern seaboard, some of whom journeyed from as far as Charleston, South Carolina to participate in the festivities. In addition, the company now includes women such as Executive Officer Alice Cronin, Greenalch’s second-in-command. For Cronin, the event has become something more than just a historical re-enactment. “[The different units] all usually show up this time of year [and] they all come to this event,” she says. “And the family and friends of all the members all show up for today as well.”

“Sort of like a reunion?” I ask.

“Exactly,” she says. “Exactly.”

At the corner of Church and Elm, the parade proceeds to Center Church on the Green, where Jonathan Edwards Jr., son of the eminent revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards, class of 1720, gave Arnold’s men his blessing. After sitting for a sermon, the company circles back to City Hall.

Then comes the re-enactment. Mayor

short feature & photo essay Toni Harp sportingly recites her lines as a selectman in full character before presenting the keys to Greenalch. Across the Green, without warning, an artillery unit booms three times.

As Greenalch descends the steps of City Hall, he pauses to snap photos with excited children. For one day, Benedict Arnold — the man whose name is a synonym for “traitor” — is a hero.

“This is your parade,” Cronin shouts from below. “We can’t start without you.”

Greenalch takes his place at the head of the formation and the company marches back to the Green for the re-enactment’s final phase, the Battalion Review. After overseeing the review, he discharges his company.

The soldiers locate their friends and family in the audience and begin to disperse from the Green. Some return to their hotel rooms at the Holiday Inn to shower. A hungrier contingent heads for Buffalo Wild Wings, shakos and chapeaux, muskets and sabers in hand.

Yale Daily News Magazine | 13

art

14 | May 2016

art

D My Son Is in a Cage

BY ANNELISA LEINBACH ART BY ANNELISA LEINBACH

uring my sophomore year, one of my best friends was charged with 22 years in prison for a nonviolent LSD offense. After that, I began doing research on the drug laws that govern our society’s criminal justice system. Drug laws increased drastically in America during the 1970s, leading to the “war on drugs” and harsh mandatory-minimum sentences that have filled prisons with nonviolent drug offenders. Fifty percent of US prisoners are in jail for nonviolent drug offenses (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2014).

We have the highest official incarceration rate in the world, with a disproportionate rate for people of color despite similar drug use rates across all races. These laws have been largely ineffective, as the U.S. still outstrips many countries in drug use today (World Health Organization, 2008). Thankfully the charges were dropped against my friend, who escaped prison time, but I realized that the picture I had in my mind of American drug policies was far from the reality.

I have spent the past year researching these dynamics, interviewing people about the war on drugs. I spoke with Yale students, residents of New Haven, police officers and professors. These illustrations are based on themes and quotes taken from their stories.

art

16 | May 2016

Yale Daily News Magazine | 17

art

18 | May 2016

art

Yale Daily News Magazine | 19

view

A Year in Canons

by Avigayil Halpern illustration by Catherine Yang

T

wo days before I started my freshman year, I joined the international Jewish project of daf yomi, the daily study of a page of Talmud on a synchronized schedule. Jews around the world, for almost a century, have participated in daf yomi — a page of Talmud is dense, written in Aramaic and can take hours to study properly. Daf yomi focuses on quantity over quality; the idea is to get through a page a day, even if some of the more complicated concepts escape the studier.

When I began daf yomi, my tractate of Talmud was not the only weighty book I was spending time with daily. I was also immersed in reading the Iliad in preparation for starting Directed Studies. Since then, my freshman year has been spent swimming — sometimes drowning — in ancient texts. These texts began as foreign, but they are becoming mine.

Tomorrow, I will return to the first page of Talmud that I ever studied. This page, which I encountered in my freshman year of high school, discusses obligations of children to parents and parents to children.

Fathers are only obligated to teach Torah to their sons, not their daughters. The impact of this principle has reverberated in Jewish law from its composition until the present.

It still has significant consequences for the role of women in traditionally observant Jewish communities. Women’s exemption, observance and education are subjects that sting for many, myself included. This page of Talmud provokes pain and alienation

20 | May 2016

in myself and others. But when I read it tomorrow, it will feel like home.

These past eight months, my life has been consumed with books that invite me in and then reject me. I’ve spent hours in the library enthralled by thinkers only to be caught off-guard by their anti-Semitism, from Augustine’s direct claims that the Jews killed Jesus to Burke’s throwaway comments about Jewish bankers. This rejection of me as a Jew has been coupled with another tension — of me as a woman reading books whose authors could never have imagined a woman studying their work. The Aramaic tractates I’ve been studying include those about divorce and marriage, and I’m reminded daily that women in that Jewish legal context were considered less than men. The Talmud, too, stings.

These two semesters have been about giving myself to two canons, and the canons giving themselves back. I remember the events of my freshman year of college in terms of what Talmudic tractate I was studying at the time, and which philosopher I was just discovering. I’ve made conversation with strangers alternately about “the daf” they too were learning, or about the Western canon they too studied in college. Daf yomi and DS both contain deep wells of knowledge. There is power in being part of a community of people who value the study of an ancient, flawed canon.

The community becomes at least as central as the books, and that community can

encompass anyone who enters it.

Directed Studies and daf yomi share a breakneck pace. The emphasis of both is not on deep understanding, but broad knowledge, on encountering a vast tradition. There are days when I spend an hour on Talmud and understand very little, or only read a quarter of the literature assignment. These are frustrating days. It smacks of failure not to devote myself fully to what I read. Part of each project is learning to be at peace with incompleteness. The full daf yomi cycle — during which the participant studies the entire Talmud — takes seven years to complete, and DS barely scratches the surface of the Western canon. I’m slowly learning to embrace this.

Building my life so intensely around books that hurt is hard, but it feels like reclamation. When a work of Western thought rejects me as a Jewish woman, the sting is less sharp because I feel like the ideas in the work are mine to take, part of a tradition I have a right to. I take the texts into me, and they become mine. The page of Talmud I will return to tomorrow, a page that debates my place in the Jewish community, will feel like home because the entire Talmud feels like home. There is power and beauty and love in an educated woman studying a passage that debates the legitimacy of women’s education. It is mine because day in, day out, I study it. I would not be the same without it.

I belong to the texts, and the texts belong to me.

fiction

The Swimming Pool by Lillie Lainoff H

e was drowning; airless, breathless, limitless. The bubbles of carbon dioxide floated up, up and away from his face, expanding, then contracting, then bursting. I knew that from where he was, under the water, everything was shades of blue and green and grey. That his body felt like a balloon weighed down by stones.

My brother and I used to play a game when we were younger, forcing our respective heads underwater and seeing how long we could last before breaking the surface, gasping for air and clutching at each other, our faces a brilliant mosaic of crimson and scarlet and baby-fat cheeks. It was a game only for the hazy afternoons of summer, when tree shadows ensconced our figures in strange semblances of an embrace as we jumped over cracks in the sidewalk on our way to the neighbor’s pool, our parents always close behind us. The days were too hot to just sit outdoors. The pool was all ours — at least until August ended and

the Carlsons returned, the two of them complete with sunburned shoulder blades in the shape of crescent moons and the weary burden of travelers’ suitcases filled with stained button-up shirts and pictures of activities they’d forgotten in the time it took them to fly home.

One day when I was 13, my brother eight, we were playing — I was counting, my body resting against a rung of the ladder, he was wordless in the depths of the pool. 15, 20, 25, 30, 35… The air was thick with humidity and I could see the top of his head, brown hair faint and murky in the fragmented light. His arms and legs were spread out like a star. His toes grazed the floor. At that point, my mother screamed and my father jumped in, fully clothed. My mother rushed to the edge. Right before my father reached my brother’s submerged body, he leapt up, as if propelled by a spring, his little face morphed in a gleeful grin. My father let out a breathy sigh, sounding like a cross between a laugh and a sob, water

photo by Elinor Hills

dripping from the frames of his round glasses. My mother shouted something unintelligible. I just stared at him, my little brother, his soaking-wet hair plastered flat to the sides of his head behind too-big ears.

I can’t remember much of what happened immediately after, mainly just the urge to be far away from the water, moving as fast as my cane could take me. When we got back home, my father left his sopping shoes on the generic welcome mat, his fingers grasping at his shirt as if every time the fabric touched his skin it burned. He went upstairs to take a shower and Christian was sent to his room, though not before my mother made him sit on top of one of the kitchen counters and examined him, looking at his pupils with a miniature flashlight, at the irises a shade in between mud and chocolate. Then she used it to check his airway. She touched the side of his face like it was pieced together with shards of glass, painful to hold but too fragile to let go. He tried to pull away. I went to sit in my room

Yale Daily News Magazine | 21

fiction

Shhh, she said, and then her arms were around me, pulling me close, comforting me. Her perfume was sweet.

You’re too weak, you’re too weak, you’re too weak. because it seemed like the right thing to do.

Later, I wanted to see him. When I tried to enter his room, raising my fist up against his bedroom door, my mother shouted at me from her spot in the shadowed corner of the hallway, telling me that he was resting, that all of this could have been avoided if we weren’t playing that stupid game, or if I’d tried to pull him up out of the water before my father jumped in. Her outburst wasn’t about what happened, not really. It was everything all at once, everything we had been through because of me. No, it was about what I was doing to Christian. And then I was yelling right back, tears on my face and the taste of blood on my chapped lips, screaming how could you say that, don’t you know that I would do anything for him.

Anything for my little brother. Shhh. Shhh, she said, and then her arms were around me, pulling me close, comforting me. Her perfume was sweet. You’re too weak, you’re too weak, you’re too weak.

The next morning I watched my father throw away the clothes he’d worn the previous day into the trash, holding them out in an awkward, extended fashion, as if to keep them away from his body. T-shirt, jeans, underwear, all enveloped in folds of black plastic. He didn’t touch the shoes, though. They just waited by the door, dried and cracked with dirt. A few months later they ended up in the coat closet, tucked away behind faded neutrals and fleece and polyester, and the year after they were in my mother’s Goodwill box. The week after New Year’s my father loaded the box into the car, and then it was gone.

When my mother went upstairs after breakfast and my father was out in the backyard with Christian, I headed to the trash 22 | April 2016

can in the kitchen and fished around for the shirt. It smelled of chlorine and sweat and my dad, the fabric snapping and crinkling as I pulled it over my small frame. It was easy to pretend that it fit me, even though it hung off my shoulders like a shroud. For a moment I stood there, unsteady and on tiptoe, as if the added inch or two would make me an adult, and wondered with a clench of my sternum what it would be like to dive into the water, just like my dad. Unable to process or think, just knowing you had to do something, anything. To be my little brother’s savior. To jump in front of a bullet headed his way. To absorb the stab of a knife into my chest cavity before it reached his. To push him out of a speeding car’s path, only to be crushed myself, into a fine, dusty pile of calcified bones.

A part of me had expected to be caught.

For my mother to thunder down the stairs, a flurry of smudged mascara and admonishments, and pull the shirt away, hide it somewhere she couldn’t even find it. The house was still, though, hushed. The only sound came from the dust motes swirling in the beams of light shining through the bay windows. I could see Christian, still perched on the old tire swing, unmoving.

My father at his side. I didn’t think anyone had sat on that thing for years. Maybe I’d forgotten about it, or just hadn’t ever noticed when Christian did. When they exited out the back door earlier that morning, when the sun had just started to move up into the sky and the air was cool and soft, I almost followed them. But then my father looked at me in a way he never had before — not like he didn’t want me to follow them, more that he didn’t know if I should — so I stopped and just watched

them grow smaller and smaller in my vision until they were no bigger than the size of my thumb.

After a few moments my skin burned and I hurried to remove the shirt, my fingernails scratching lifelines on my inflamed forearms. The fabric didn’t look any different. The room around me didn’t look any different. I examined my hands. They shook as I held them in front of my face, expecting to see raw blisters or scorch marks, but all I could see were scraped knuckles and stubby fingers and scarred skin.

We didn’t go back to the pool until the end of the summer, a few days before the Carlsons would return from a faraway, exotic-sounding country, a few days before Christian and I would return to our respective schools and classrooms and homework and teachers and friends. I watched my brother as he grinned, dunking his head under the surface, then wildly shaking it back and forth so water splashed in violent arcs. I didn’t swim. I didn’t bother putting on the bathing suit. I told my mother that I wanted to sit, maybe just stick my feet in, which I never did. I just waited. I would be ready this time. But he was never gone for longer than a few moments. Sometimes, when I thought my heart had beat already a hundred times over, I would struggle to my feet. I would square my shoulders and my eyes would narrow and I would be ready.

I would picture myself in a perfect diver’s form, my arms pressed together tight above my head. I wouldn’t survive the depths. But he would always surface, his brown eyes locked on mine, water dripping off his eyelashes and earlobes, and smile at me, like he didn’t know that I’d do anything to save him.

bits and pieces

GROWIN G PAINS

OF WIKIM

Romeo and Juliet had given me my sexual education. In sixth grade, my classmates and I saw our first live production. The rolling bed was the most utilized set piece in the show, and our two leads would crawl into it before the stage went black. My friends would giggle and look away, much like the day we went to the ballet for the first time and saw men in white tights. Wow, the ceiling is so interesting, was the sudden consensus, except for Lauren Rosenberger who did not look away. It was unclear whether she was more or less mature than the rest of us.

I’m sure she had her reasons.

I didn’t understand why my friends kept giggling. I thought consummation? What are they consuming and why are they always so hungry? Finally I swallowed my pride and asked Mrs. Smith. She started talking about birds and bees, which had nothing to do with the play, so I asked Duane Austin instead. He made me hold my hand in the shape of an “o” and oscillated his finger in and out of it, whispering I am the penis and you are the vagina. I had a huge crush on him, so the field trip was ruined.

The first time Storm came to my house, we played Scrabble on my bed. Mid-round he sensually brushed his fingers across my lips. When he went in for the kill he panicked and closed his eyes too soon, landing somewhere on my chin. The second time he got the location correct but used his tongue like a Swiffer. I pulled away on the brink of suffocation, having stayed long enough to reassure him that I was really enjoying this.

COURTES Y

R

omeo and Juliet may be a classic, but it screwed up my concept of love.

I’ll spell it out for you. You have your Montagues and you have your Capulets — they don’t really get along. Romeo is your typical angsty teenager. He broods until he sees a hot, new underage thing.

Juliet, at the delectable age of twelve, enters the scene. They chat. They exchange scribes.

His life is changed forever.

I can still remember the sweet aftertaste of my first R&J reading. No, I’m not talking about the general lameness of all the characters except for Mercutio. I’m talking about the part where Romeo loves Juliet so much he is willing to leave it all behind. The part where he’s really into her back porch.

The part where he’s really into the way the light through her yonder window breaks.

It didn’t matter that he was dumber than a gerbil. I thought to myself I can’t wait to have a love like this. And then I waited.

At fifteen I finally had my first boyfriend. Not quite Juliet’s twelve, but three years don’t make much of a difference. His name was Storm. Storm Hawk DowdLukesh. He liked fixing pinball machines and watching anime children’s movies. His sisters were named River, Summer and Zephyr. His dog was named Howard.

Storm Hawk Dowd-Lukesh and I were star-crossed because he was from Rancho Cucamonga and I was from San Dimas, and neither of us had a car. But we both went to Claremont High, so we sat together in classes that didn’t have assigned seating. I wrote him a poem about Mr. Webner’s history class, and he made me a mix CD. The opening song was a Cake cover of Doris Day’s “Perhaps.” I took it as a sign.

EDIA CO MMONS

BY NICOLE CLARK

I turned my head before he tried to hit the triple word score.

After the kiss he said I’ve never kissed a girl before. I very meaningfully responded I’ve never kissed a girl either. He wasn’t amused. What I should have said was the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.

At some point I realized we weren’t progressing physically or emotionally. I was always studying and he’d get mad. But at least we didn’t die. I guess I could have also married him. But if I had stabbed myself he still probably would have stopped talking to me.

What I’m saying is that young love is not eternal. If it was, Adele would not be making so much money saying hello and I would not have to keep going on so many shitty coffee dates. Romeo and Juliet found romance but the real world is much harder. I may not be separated from bae by an ancient family feud. But that is mostly because I don’t have a bae. Until I find a suitable victim, I’ll keep thinking that this “love knows no age” thing is bullshit. Love clearly knows an age. I just haven’t found it yet.

Yale Daily News Magazine | 23

feature

WHO’S BEHIND THE LINES? EXAMINING SUPPORT FOR GESO

BY DANIELA BRIGHENTI

PHOTO BY JENNIFER LU

24 | April 2016

feature

S D

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NG

O

ENTI

PHOTO BY FINNEGAN SCHICK

L

ast October, hundreds of members of Yale’s Graduate Employees and Students Organization — now known as GESO-Local 33 — marched toward Woodbridge Hall, the office of Yale University President Peter Salovey.

As they walked, the marchers held up plaques as high as 10 feet tall, spelling out the names of individual departments within the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Religious Studies. Psychology. Economics. Astronomy. Their intended message was clear — whole departments, entire segments of the Graduate School, were all in support of GESO’s cause.

“Four times in the last 18 months, a majority of us have demanded a no-intimidation vote,” GESO Chair Aaron Greenberg GRD ’18 said. “I’m tired of waiting.”

GESO believes Salovey and other top Yale administrators should extend union status to graduate students, who also work as teaching assistants during some of their time at Yale. Though GESO dates back to the 1990s, their work has ramped up in recent months since close-neighbor NYU became the first private university in the country to officially recognize a graduate student union in March 2015. According to a GESO press release, the group’s main concerns involve “long-standing issues” such as insecure teaching assignments, inadequate mental health care, lack of access to child care and race and gender inequities.

Yale’s graduate student population hovers around 2,800, with GESO members being only a partial share of that number.

PHOTOS BY IRENE JIANG

That means that when compared to the overall New Haven population of nearly 130,000, the percentage of those in the Elm City who would be directly affected by union status for GESO is, at most, 2 percent. And yet, alongside the students who marched last fall, a diverse coalition of New Haven residents, undergraduate students and members of other workers’ unions also showed up to support the group’s cause.

Supporters included Mayor Toni Harp, Gov. Dannel Malloy and Sen. Chris Murphy, among others. Other New Haven groups such as Students Unite Now and New Haven Rising also came out in support, in addition to the two Yale unions that have partnered with GESO — Locals 34 and 35. According to Greenberg, Local 217 — the union of hotel and food service workers in Connecticut — and the Yale Unions Retirees Association were also present at the event. After arriving at the President’s Office, multiple government officials from both the city and state spoke to the crowd, solidifying their support for the not-yet-official graduate students union, while standing on a large stage covered in pictures of graduate students who already support GESO. “I understand how hard it is, [and] it takes a brave bunch of people … to say we go no further without our rights being protected and recognized,” Malloy said at a previous GESO rally in October 2014.

“You do the hard work of this University.

This is a state that stands up for workingclass people. We have to stand up for you.”

The number of attendees and the leaders’

public statements seem indicative of strong support for GESO. But the origin and extent of that support are still unclear. Do supporters truly feel invested in the causes GESO is so tiringly fighting for?

T

he rally last October was the fourth time in 18 months that GESO called on the University administration to accept their right to unionize. Though it was not the first of its kind, the rally was the largest the union had held so far. The New Haven Independent estimated that around 2,000 were present; the New Haven Register reported a similar number. On its official website, GESO claims that there were 1,500 protesters present.

However, the website does not specify how many of those 1,500 were actually GESO members, stating only that “1,500 members of GESO and allies” attended the rally. Most other news organizations that reported on the rally also did not specify the actual number of graduate students present at the event. The Hartford Courant, for example, states only that “hundreds of Yale University graduate students” attended the rally.

When asked the number of graduate students currently in GESO, Greenberg did not provide a specific number. Instead, Greenberg responded that, on five occasions in the past two years “a majority” of graduate employees have demonstrated that they want a union. That uncertainty in numbers may be indicative of GESO’s standing within the graduate student community. Though it is unquestionable that Yale Daily News Magazine | 25

feature the organization has garnered significant attention and support from its fellow students, GESO has also come under scrutiny for the way it has attempted to attract and retain its members.

Notably, an open letter written this January by female graduate students, LGBTQ graduate students and graduate students of color at Yale alleged that the organization utilizes coercive methods when trying to bring new students into its ranks. The letter claimed GESO utilized tactics such as using students’ schedules to force meetings, following students to their homes and using “physical force” to continue speaking to students.

“We are concerned that while the union has committed to supporting underrepresented students and faculty in its racial and gender equity campaign, its organizing practices fundamentally deny the different ways in which we move through Yale,” the letter read. “We emphasize here that these organizing issues are structural, not isolated instances that can be blamed on individual organizers.”

According to Charles Decker GRD ’17, a member of GESO’s coordinating committee who is a person of color, the committee released a letter in response to the first letter with specific action steps to address the students’ concerns. He highlighted the creation of a committee dedicated to ensuring race and gender equality within GESO, so that it can be the just space it aims to be within the University.

So if it’s not all graduate students, where does the larger base of support for GESO stem from? According to Greenberg, part of it stems from city and state leaders and the community around New Haven — all the relevant parties in the community who recognize the group’s cause.

“Except for Yale’s administration,” Greenberg lamented.

sity’s blue-collar union which represents dining, custodial and maintenance workers.

Together, these unions are part of a coalition called UNITE HERE. Yet it is unclear whether this support from the two Yale unions is due to GESO’s platform itself, or the consequent benefits that any gains by the graduate students could bring to Locals 34 and 35.

“Being a union member we feel any one or group deserves recognition if they want to unionize,” Silliman chef and Local 35 Treasurer Stu Comen said. “I also think there’s strength in numbers, so the more unionized members we have on campus the better we can negotiate with the University.”

Similarly, in an interview with the News in October 2014, Local 34 President Laurie Kennington said a threat to any one of Yale’s unions was a “threat to all of us,” essentially integrating the three groups’ missions into a single one.

“We stand here today, 5,000 strong, ready to support our brothers and sisters that do the teaching and the research and carry the mission on for Yale,” Local 35 President Bob Proto said at the rally last fall. “For many years we have been giving Yale a message. So hear this, Peter Salovey, hear this, Yale Trustees, if you have a coordinated campaign, if you intimidate your graduate teachers and your researchers, we as union brothers and sisters in 34 and 35 are going to consider that a line in the sand with us.”

Decker highlighted that Locals 34 and 35 have “incredible” and long-stand-

ing experience in making Yale a more just environment, and that GESO only stands to gain in allying itself with those who have been part of the movement for longer. Locals 34 and 35 have been bargaining with the University for decades on issues such as job security and health care. Their most recent contention was with Yale Dining, when many dining hall workers were moved from their individual residential colleges to a centralized location — a change the administration saw as necessary to streamline food production, but which workers saw as a demotion from leadership positions to a windowless room.

“It’s common for unions to support one another in their collective desire to bargain as organized units with employers,” Mayor Toni Harp said in a statement to the News. “GESO seems to be well-organized and it seems to have broad support from those who would be members — and certainly from Yale’s other unions.”

When asked why she had chosen to support GESO, Harp did not provide specific reasons, instead noting that she had “steadfastly supported” workers and their right to organize throughout her career.

Similarly, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen — who was also present and spoke at GESO’s November rally — said in a statement to the News that solidarity and strength in numbers lie at the core of trade union activity, and that it should come as no surprise that graduate students would receive support from other union members.

“I was a teaching assistant in two courses

F

rom its early days, GESO has had the support of the two other labor unions that bargain with Yale University — Local 34, Yale’s white- and pinkcollar union representing technical and clerical workers, and Local 35, the Univer-

26 | April 2016

PHOTO BY IRENE JIANG

feature when I was a law student and graduate student, [and] I know firsthand the challenges of juggling studies, teaching and affording tuition and personal expenses,” Jepsen said to the News. “The right to organize is protected by law and is an effective tool for improving the lives of workers.”

Other groups in both the New Haven and Yale communities have also been standing alongside GESO. For example, New Haven Rising — a citywide grassroots organization that is pressing Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital to hire more local residents — and Students Unite Now have both been present at GESO’s events. Members of Students Unite Now and New Haven Rising did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Though these local groups differ in structure from GESO and other unions, they also want to bring Yale and its top leadership to the bargaining table. “We are all pressing Yale for the same things, for a more fair university,” Decker said. “This way, we press together. It has to do with the fact that we are pressing for Yale to be a better member of the New Haven community, and that is a benefit to all in the community.”

A

s a former graduate student and law student, Jepsen can empathize with GESO members’ concerns and motivations. But it is not as clear that many of GESO’s other supporters can do the same.

According to a student in Yale’s Graduate School who wished to remain anonymous so as to “not get on GESO’s radar,” it is difficult to organize supporters in the community and integrate GESO’s mission because of the disparity in experiences and living qualities between graduate students and other New Haven residents. “[It’s] very upsetting to knock on doors looking for supporters when your head organizer wants you to talk about, for example, that Yale graduates don’t get good dental insurance,” the student said. “Many of the people in the local unions do not have health insurance, period. Many of them make far less than graduate students do.”

While all Ph.D. candidates at Yale receive a full tuition fellowship of $38,700, the average salary for a blue-collar worker in New Haven in 2016 was $35,000.

On behalf of Director of Labor Relations Marcus Paca, City Hall spokesman Laurence Grotheer said that New Haven’s Office of Labor Relations is not at all involved in the “GESO matter.” Grotheer added that each individual union should be contacted to determine whether or not they were involved with GESO. Only two of the city’s eight unions could be reached for comment last week.

James Wankowicz, the president of Local 71 — New Haven’s blue-collar union — said he only “vaguely” knows what GESO is and what it stands for. He added that there is no partnership or any type of support between his union and GESO. Similarly, president of New Haven Police Elm City Local Craig Miller had not previously heard of GESO and had not been contacted by any members in request for support. Miller added that though the other members of his union are also not familiar with the organization, he would be likely to support GESO’s cause because “everyone has the right to organize.”

Still, Greenberg, who also serves as the alder for Ward 8, which encompasses Wooster Square, said that from talking to his constituents, he believes residents from “all around” recognize the situation involving GESO and have asked him how they can be supportive of the cause. But given the overall disparity in experience between residents of the Elm City and Yale’s graduate student community, some graduate students have questioned whether the external support for GESO is primarily a result of some ulterior motive on the part of GESO’s supporters.

“Other unions like the idea of having grad students on their side just as much as GESO wants to claim it has widespread community support,” the anonymous student said. “When push comes to shove, will [graduate] students really help Local 34 members negotiate, especially if it means tabling our own concerns during negotiations? Will Yale’s clerical workers really go

on strike to help [graduate] students get paid to take classes?”

Malloy’s support for GESO itself might be similarly questioned, though in a different context. When speaking in support of GESO at their October 2014 rally, the now-governor was campaigning for his second term in office. In 2010, when he first edged out Republican businessman Thomas Foley by a relatively small margin of 6,404 voters to win his governorship, Malloy relied extensively on urban communities like the Elm City, and counted on strong support from labor union members across the board.

M

oving forward with their battle, GESO will have to face the challenges of maintaining its base of support while facing continuing resistance from a body as large as Yale. The group took a significant step in solidification earlier this year: In March, GESO officially rebranded itself as Local 33, after UNITE HERE’s governing body unanimously voted to allow the graduate student organization to join its ranks as a chartered union.

Locals 34 and 35 have been members of the same coalition for over 30 years.

Regardless of the support it is getting from outside, internally, GESO is ready to continue treading its way to official union status within Yale.

Decker said GESO will continue to press Yale for a no-intimidation vote. He added that it is important to continue to press Yale to grant graduate students a fair election without an ensuing “anti-union campaign by Yale,” and ultimately give them a seat at the bargaining table. Greenberg highlighted that Yalies are not the only ones pushing in this fight. At universities all around the nation, including the University of Chicago, Harvard and Cornell, graduate students have also gathered to rally.

“Yale is the only authority that doesn’t recognize us, and that adds to the pressure [on them],” Decker said. “Other unions, the community and politicians — they all recognize us. The question now is on Yale.

When are we going to get the non-intimidation vote?”

Yale Daily News Magazine | 27

personal essay

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Lip-syncing hymns with my family, I consider that I would be bored in Heaven and I would be bored in Hell.

â&#x20AC;?

Hallowed,

by Monica Hannush illustration by Ashlyn Oakes

personal essay

HOllOwed I.

I

sit in a pew of Langhorne Presbyterian Church between my little brother and my father, who squawks with the suburban Pennsylvanian congregation: Woooorld without ennnnd, Aaaamen, Aaaamen. Per custom, using the LPC-provided dulled-down mini-pencil and today’s Order of Worship brochure, I doodle a crucifix made of various unholy items: pistols, cigarettes, penises. Underneath, I scribble a sacrilegious limerick.

There once was a narcissist preacher They thought him a God and a teacher His megalomania Reached Pennsylvania And doomed us to celebrate Easter.

Pastor Bill looks with disdain upon my fall from grace as he preaches. Just a year

ago, he laid a hand on my 14-year-old head at my youth group’s confirmation ceremony after I delivered a Statement of Faith that I genuinely believed: The thing that moves me most about coming to know Christ is that I don’t have to die, nor do I have to live in fear. To be taught that all I must do in return is love God and live according to his will, gives me the strength to do just that, because Jesus has saved me from the unthinkable measures of an eternity without him. I don’t have to live alone.

(Cute, right? But also sad.) The appeal of faith isn’t about craving to believe in a second life. It’s wild to me that people want another one of those — was this one not rough enough for you? — so desperately that they live every day in fear of one sort of afterlife and hunger for another.

Lip-syncing hymns with my family, I consider that I would be bored in Heaven and I would be bored in Hell. The appeal of faith is about fear of being alone.

My mother sits to the other side of my brother. She makes me stop doodling only to stand up for hymns — she understands. Born in Mexico City, she grew up a default-Catholic; their scheme is to end up at least believing in God, if not believing that Jesus is magic. Since my birth, she’s flown me down to receive my Catholic sacraments in the same chapel as every relative has before me: Parroquía de la Santa Cruz. I’ve told my mother I don’t believe in God. In Spanish, she stammers, Pues, tienes que creer en algo: Well, you have to believe in something.

My father glances at my defiled church pamphlet and furrows his brow in his forefinger and thumb. I’m breaking the tradition of Christian martyrdom that Yale Daily News Magazine | 29

personal essay defines the Hannush lineage; “Hannush” translates from Arabic to “follower of John.” My grandfather wrote in his unpublished but printed-andleatherbound autobiography, That You May Have Life and Have It Abundantly (what?), about uncles slain before his eyes in Turkey before it was Turkey, forefathers chased off their land before the Ottoman Empire was the Ottoman Empire. Less than 20 years after my grandfather moved the family to Beirut, a civil war: shellings, prayers, living on moldy bread (the price of Christianity). My grandmother tells stories of Muslim militants raiding public buses and asking for IDs, which included religion; she would pretend to be preoccupied with her three rowdy teenage sons, making sure to say my uncle’s name — Yasser! Yasser! — with extra emphasis, so that our family might be mistaken for Muslim. My father, the oldest of them, escaped the fray when he was accepted to an American university at age 16. Now, in our pew, my father sighs a how-dare-you sigh as I move to shade my crucifix doodle. I am tanking my role as the first child of two first children; my little brother, two years my junior, looks at my illustration and giggles.

30 | April 2016

My grandmother, foaming at the mouth with pride, reminds me of my Statement of Faith in almost every conversation. “Monica, habibti, you have every reason to be happy, because you believe in God.” And I think, Damnit, Tata — I don’t believe in God. Homilies sound dead to me, holes in the logic, I don’t understand, I should understand, someone make me understand. But I slowly and politely nod my head. Wouldn’t that be nice? Believing in God? II.

I

’m making the hourlong drive on I-95 to visit a new friend from Yale.

I’ve slept four hours — the average amount the Drs. Hannush have slept nightly as long as I’ve been alive. I try to prop open my red eyes by blasting my favorite song of the moment, Azealia Banks’ “212” — I WAS IN THE TWOONE-TWO / WHAT ’S YOUR DICK LIKE HOMIE, WHAT’RE YOU INTO?!

— to no avail. The cochlear ducts of my inner ears detect my white Honda CR-V driving on a tilt along the grassy highway median, with the long, narrow medianforest inches to my left. Frenzied, I crank my wheel clockwise and my car spins in the middle of those four lanes.

Mid-revolution, I spot a sedan approaching from my left. In the blank calm of imminent death, I think at 87 miles per hour: Ah. This is how I die.

I’m cool with this setup. I’ve lived a pretty alright life. This meets all of my criteria for a satisfactory death: quick, painless, unexpected. None of the guilt of suicide or decay of age. Unselfish, sober, blameless.

I’m a mammal with programmed reflexes, so I think up a way to stop spinning: the trees. A witness describes my entry into the median-forest: “It’s like you were pullin’ into a driveway of all the twiggiest trees. A couple’a inches to the left and BOOM, yer dead.” I exit the car with a stupid serenity. I have no scratches on my body, but the car is tangled in twigs that crunch under my feet as I join the small, awestruck crowd. I do not call

my mother, I do not call my father, I do not think to call AAA, which we totally have. No — some rando towing company receives a call from the police and wrecks my little Honda while tearing it out of the trees. When I finally call my mother, she does not ask whether I’m okay, but rather, why I didn’t call her sooner. I try to apologize, she sputters, I don’t want to hear your voice. She knows I hate it when she speaks to me in English.

When I get home, I log onto Tumblr (Tumblr!) and write — of all things — a sonnet, the first I’ve written since eighth grade. The title: “Who Writes a Sonnet When They Crash Their Car?” I spun, I spun, I thought, what would they do — for every revolution, one more flash of black, salt water, flowers — but I knew I stood a chance to see beyond the crash.

No flames. No wounds. Just spectators and lights.

One red instead of blood, one blue for all the faces I’d see later on that night.

My knees shook as I failed and failed to call.

They say your life flashes before your eyes, but all I saw were trees, and cars, and sky.

This is what brings men closer to their gods — there must have been a reason to survive.

If “Christmas miracles,” so sickly sweet, exist, then one has now happened to me.

(Forgive that final couplet — my sonnet skills are rusty.) I return to school, where I willingly go to Mass with my very Catholic boyfriend. I put technical effort into my hymn-singing — breathing with my diaphragm, opening my sinuses, fixating on the vowels — and zone out into the giant backlit crucifix.

The mild faith that sprang from the crash is only akin to my Statement-ofFaith confidence in that I suspect someone might be looking out for me metaphysically. But to triumph over death means different things at 14 and at 20.

personal essay A Patch of Bricks

By Elias Bartholomew

A patch of bricks in a neighborhood wall reminds you of one year ago.

You would read in the sun corrupt and small poems in Latin.

Memories, if you turn them over, might bare words and a corresponding image like diagrams explaining the flavors of animal gummies — Pineapple, orange, funny grape.

The brick-patch seemed carefree maybe “sad as a clown.”

The books were warm to the touch inviting, life-like and distant akin to a bright sunny island.

The poems seemed infinite.

You loved fifty and eleven.

Take them out of the package.

Refer to the diagram.

Look at the diagram in a confused way.

It hasn’t been marked clearly.

Your fingers shiny with sugar — is that the taste of funny grape?

You were laughing then, weren’t you?

And whatever wasn’t funny could be stacked, shelved, for later, among the bricks.

At 14, triumph over death meant absence of death; at 20, triumph over death means absence of fear. At 20, I know more about God; Her likeness is best approximated by any artist on Spotify’s “Independent Ladies — R&B: The Women” playlist. She has dethroned the white-bearded God of yore.

If She deliberately kept me alive when all temporal circumstances said I should have died, She will kill me when I am meant to be eliminated.

III.

A

t 22, I’m the youngest in a circle of 30 people gathered on the dirt floor of an open-air temple around a bonfire in Tepoztlán.

I’m here with my Mexicousins; they’ve done this before. The object of the game: take four shots of a psychedelic tea made from sacred forest plants, see God, vomit, cry, exorcise our demons, and leave reborn.

My first shot of Ayahuasca has worn off after a lame, lowdouble-digit number of minutes spent in a trip where the embers floated up and became tiny seahorses with lion heads.

Everyone has lined up for their second shot — but man, that taste was so, so vile. Like cafeteria coffee that turns into sour milk that turns into cocaine. I resolve to stick out an entire night of rudimentary-polyphonic guitar. Usually, I’m that chick who’s down for another shot, tab, line, toke. But at this party, I’m the sober girl on the sidelines. I’d wanted at least one adventure during spring break of my junior year. No Coronalogo bikinis or beer funnels in Fort Lauderdale for me — just

Hi-Def constellations, a forest chorus and Ayahuasca from an unwashed shot glass.

For a few minutes, I attempt a performance for myself where I physically pull my thoughts out of my chest and send them through the ground to the fire where they float up in embers and vanish. This does not work.

The longer I lie awake, the less I believe in the spirit to whom the shaman sings, in his tricorner crown-hat with its tall red shamanly plume. I am a slowly disintegrating sack of flesh lying on some fibers on top of some dirt, and the sky is just a sky that goes on forever, and everything around me is a chemical reaction. Science and God are not mutually exclusive.

But one feels real and one does not.

This is not my Langhorne teenage atheism; here, I no longer find God ridiculous. I’m jealous of believers. But I simply cannot think of anything I have encountered in this universe that has shown enough consistency to be believed in. Since age 15, I’ve lived on the tipping point between atheism and Diet Agnosticism Lite. But this ceremony is flicking me into a spiritual vacuum. The sun rises and the shaman’s son hails it with a conch. The shaman passes around a bumpy gourd, the way we used a talking stick in kindergarten, for each participant to offer a few thoughts on the experience. People tear up with joy as they speak; they can’t find the words to describe their gratitude for their shared belief, for their gods. They choke on faith.

As soon as I receive the gourd, I pass it on without a word. I choke on frustration. I’d die to trade their silence for mine.

Yale Daily News Magazine | 31

cover

A t Ya l e , C l a r e m o n t M c K e n n a a n d M i z z o u , students fight to keep movements going against all odds.

THE RULE OF THREE

by Jon Victor photos by Jon Victor 32 | April 2016

cover

I

t’s Thursday evening in Columbia, Missouri, and I’m sitting in one of the back rows of Room Seven in Hulston Hall, a building located squarely in the middle of the University of Missouri’s campus. Tonight, the university’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force is meeting. The matter at hand: an update on “Phase II: Expanding Membership.”

All University of Missouri students (of which there over 35,000), faculty (over 3,000) and staff (over 12,000) were invited to attend this meeting. There are around 20 people in the room.

The people who did come seem to be either professors or student journalists, and they’re scattered around the room looking vaguely bored. At the front of the room, David Mitch-

ell, the task force chair, is fiddling with his laptop, preparing to give an address that will discuss the process by which students and faculty can apply to be on the task force.

One attendee, Director of Residential Life Frankie Minor, tells me it’s his first time going to such an event, and he hadn’t come in with any expectations about attendance.

“It’s St. Patrick’s Day on a college campus,” he says.

This is what the situation looks like now that The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major media outlets have packed up and left the University of Missouri just as quickly as they came. Mel Carnahan Quadrangle, which is right outside, would now be unrecognizable to most people without the tent city and masses of students once pictured all over the national media. Students stroll unceremoniously across the quad; it could be that of any campus in America.

Last fall, a string of protests took place, revolving around incidents of racism at Mizzou. The final and most intense protest ended with a weeklong hunger strike, a threat by the football team to boycott a game and the resignation of two of the University of Missouri System’s top administrators. But the protests have died down in recent months, as conversations on campus race relations move to closed meetings of university decision-makers and open campuswide forums like the one I’m attending.

November’s protests were the beginning of a series of events that has thrust the entire University of Missouri System into crisis mode. After the two administrators resigned,

Yale Daily News Magazine | 33

Claremont McKenna

cover an interim president and chancellor, Mike Middleton and Hank Foley, were appointed. They have yet to be replaced.

Mizzou faces a budget crisis brought on by a drop in enrollment and plummeting donations. And to make matters worse, the Missouri House of Representatives recently announced budget cuts to the university totaling over $8 million.

Mizzou was just one campus out of dozens nationwide that became hotbeds of student protests last fall. At Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, Dean of Students Mary Spellman chose to step down amid student furor over an email she sent that suggested one student of color didn’t “fit our CMC mold.” At Yale, an email from Silliman College Associate Master Erika Christakis defending students’ choice to wear offensive Halloween costumes, as well as an alleged incident of racial discrimination at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, sparked widespread demonstrations against discrimination on campus. In the Ivy League and elsewhere, students marched, protested and submitted lists of demands designed to improve college life for students of color.

Yet five months later, students studying, working and living on these same campuses are split over how much has really changed.

“I

hesitate to use the word ‘progress,’” said Jonathan Butler, a graduate student at Mizzou who waged the hunger strike that led to the resignation of University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe. “We’re not where we need to be, but we’re not where we used to be.”

Butler became interested in activism at an early age, participating in community organizations throughout middle and high school. He has a soft-spoken demeanor, but an intense devotion to progress. “I don’t fear death because I believe in God and I feel that whenever it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go,” he told me, recounting all the hate emails and other forms of backlash he received as a result of his involvement with the protests.

During Butler’s first semester at Mizzou in 2008, another student wrote “nigger” 34 | April 2016

on the door of his room. He had also been called that slur and others while attending parties in Greektown, the section of Columbia that houses the majority of the school’s fraternities and sororities. He says his decision to launch a hunger strike “really just came down to the fact that I’ve really been fed up with the status quo of the university, its leadership and policies.”

Students at Mizzou, including Butler, said they’ve noticed greater sensitivity on campus since the protests. The administration is more loath to brush off something it might once have interpreted as simple vandalism, according to Mark Schierbecker, a student journalist who took video of the protests in November. At the beginning of March, a student wrote “Hitler rules” on a piece of paper in a hallway, he said, which was then treated as a sign of racism rather than an isolated incident.

But at Mizzou, students are still waiting for more concrete changes. Concerned Student 1950, the group that led the protests in the fall, has since issued a revised list of demands to the administration, which call for an increase to 10 percent faculty of color by 2017 and comprehensive racial awareness curricula across all departments, among others.

“Concerned Student’s demands and everything they’ve listed as things that need to be considered haven’t been considered,” said Denajha Phillips, a black student who marched with the group in the fall. “There’s been word that change is going to happen but nothing has yet been put into play.”

On Nov. 9, the Board of Curators — the University of Missouri’s governing board — announced a series of initiatives to address “diversity, equity and inclusion.”

These initiatives included the appointment of a chief diversity officer, a review of all UM System policies as they relate to staff and student conduct and additional financial resources for hiring a more diverse faculty and supporting students and staff who have experienced racial discrimination. The initiative also set up a task force to report on the racial climate throughout the University of Missouri System’s four campuses.

But Kendrick Washington — a senior and one of the current leaders of Con-

cerned Student 1950 — dismissed the task force as idle talk, designed to placate the protesters. Others agreed.

“I feel like that was put into place kind of like a Band-Aid,” Phillips said. “[The task force] fixed the whole uprising for the moment, but I feel like that kind of totally disregards the initial demands.”

This is also true at Yale and Claremont McKenna, where some students remain frustrated with the pace at which reforms are moving.

Ivetty Estepan ’18, one of the organizers of the student demonstrations at Yale, acknowledged that the effects of concrete changes, like a $50 million initiative to increase faculty diversity and a new center dedicated to the study of race, will not be felt until much later. But certain demands — the renaming of Calhoun College and relabeling the term “master” — have taken much longer than she would have liked, given that Harvard and Princeton both made their decisions about a month after students pushed the issue.

I

n most cases, it’s not that what students want isn’t being considered. It’s that universities and students can’t agree on how best to move forward.

According to interviews with current and former administrators at Claremont McKenna and Mizzou, including R. Bowen Loftin, who resigned as Mizzou’s chancellor following the protests, the barrier to faster, more tangible change is the glacial pace at which university policy moves. Both bureaucracy and sheer diversity of opinion can make it difficult for decision-makers to achieve any consensus.

“There is an impatience — understandably so — on the part of the students who have been subject to racial discrimination on this campus to see change,” Loftin said.

“That’s the tension we have to deal with: How do you effect lasting change when most people believe that change which is lasting will take some time to craft and implement?”

Among the demands of Concerned Student 1950 were mandatory ethnic studies courses on the school’s curriculum, which Loftin said was not a reform that

cover University of Missouri

could be implemented quickly. Concerned Student 1950 also called for a floor on the number of minority faculty teaching at the university, a practice that Chuck Henson ’87, the school’s newly appointed Interim Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, said would be illegal in an open letter to the group.

Henson declined to comment for this article. Interim President Middleton, Interim Chancellor Foley and Title IX Administrator Ellen Eardley also declined to be interviewed.

Washington lamented the fact that, in his view, much of the action has taken the form of preparation: search committees, task forces, administrative appointments, working groups, internal reviews.

And while administrators continue to assure students that real change is coming, student movements have slowed down in recent months, their organizers awaiting developments on initiatives they are skeptical will meet their expectations.

A

t Claremont McKenna, the dorms are literally within spitting distance of the college’s main administrative buildings. This isn’t an accident, or because of space constraints. This is the kind of school where the dining staff rolls your burrito for you, then asks if you’re having a good day.

As one might expect at a school with a total enrollment of 1,328, students and faculty are accustomed to a greater degree of communication than would be found at Mizzou, for example, where a majority of students are sequestered in housing complexes a 10-minute drive from campus.

“If someone demanded these things at big schools, that would be kind of ridiculous,” said one Claremont McKenna student who supported the protests. “I guess since we are at a small college, we deserve to expect a lot of personal attention.”

But the closeness of students and faculty did not exempt Claremont McKenna from a similar wave of protests in November, led by a student group called “CMCers of Color.” The students demanded a permanent resource center, the immediate creation of two diversity officers for student affairs and faculty and a general education requirement for ethnic, racial and sexuality theory, among other reforms.

Claremont McKenna administrators, in particular President Hiram Chodosh LAW ’90, agree that student concerns should play an integral role in shaping college policy, though some said that didn’t necessarily mean implementing their demands without subjecting them to scrutiny. “Students should be empowered to grow awareness of their experiences, their observations about the world, their normative views on how the society or any particular college can change for the better,” Chodosh said. “I think that we also need to recognize that those views need to be engaged critically, thoughtfully, openly — and, in a phrase, any particular view, extreme, moderate, controversial or noncontroversial, needs to persuade.”

Claremont McKenna Dean of the Faculty Peter Uvin toed a similar line. Ultimately, he said, the administration’s goal is

“ I H E S I TAT E T O USE THE WORD ‘ P R O G R E S S .’

WE’RE NOT WHERE WE NEED TO BE, BUT WE’RE NOT WHERE WE U S E D T O B E .”

Yale Daily News Magazine | 35

cover

“WHO ARE THOSE C E R TA I N F E W ? ” not to respond to the demands of the students — it is to do what is best for the college as a whole.

In Uvin’s view, a college has many constituents: small groups shouldn’t single-handedly be able to drive the decision-making.

But when do student demands go beyond the mission of the college, or the scope of what it can reasonably achieve? W. Torrey Sun, who has served as acting dean of students since January, said he would work to implement any demands as long as they were reasonable given logistical limitations like timing and budget constraints. But these last two points have been the biggest points of disconnect between students and administrators, who, like Loftin, say students sometimes have an unrealistic or incomplete vision of how their reforms will be implemented.

D

enys Reyes, a senior who led the student protests at Claremont McKenna in the fall, believes the administration can do more to hear the voices of students of color. She said the search for a replacement dean has yet to begin, and as a result, the college is missing out on prime time to search for applicants, as people in higher education typically look for work during the spring. Furthermore, she said, decisions about the college’s new resource center for students of color are being pushed to the summer, when students will not be around to provide feedback.

Reyes believes that since the protests, the college could have included students in the conversation who feel marginalized, rather than those who already had ties with the administration.

“One of our demands is that we be included in the dean search,” Reyes said. “They chose students at their own discretion to be part of that search. Some of the students feel perfectly fine at CMC, or they’re white-passing. There should have been a better selection process, and students of marginalized identities should have been included in that selection process.”

Administrators see it differently. Nyree Gray, assistant vice president for diversity and inclusion, said Claremont McKenna has been com-

36 | April 2016

municating with students. An email went out to all students inviting them to be part of a steering committee, she said, in addition to hosting open forums and updating a website with details of the administration’s progress.

But Reyes’ complaint was also noted by Washington at Mizzou, and Estepan at Yale. Estepan has felt frustrated that only one undergraduate serves on the Yale Presidential Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion, which was formed shortly after the protests. “There’s this separation between the student body and administration that maybe is bridged by a certain few, but who are those certain few? At the end of the day, I think we’re all students and we should be asked for feedback before something is completely decided.”

Gray, at Claremont McKenna, agrees that student involvement in the decisions surrounding matters of inclusion is critical: “Students need to feel that they are part of these outcomes, and having them on the committees, having them make proposals, having them as part of our evaluation process and our feedback loop lets us know that we are assessing the issues correctly and that we are being responsive to their needs.”

But Washington did say that while students want additional support from the administration, students should not have to resort to protest to have their needs met.

“We shouldn’t have to tell the administration how they should be doing their job,” he said.

T

he administration would respond that their job is more complicated than it seems.

Loftin was quick to point out that some demands, like reforms to the school curriculum to require ethnic studies coursework, do not fall under the jurisdiction of the chancellor but rather the faculty. This is also the case at Claremont McKenna, where the faculty are widely split on whether the college should implement such a requirement or not, according to Uvin.

Hiring minority faculty, too, is not a reform

cover that can happen overnight, administrators say. While there are limited funds for faculty salaries and a comparatively smaller pool of faculty of color from which to hire, Gray said the college has plans for more diverse hires once positions at Claremont McKenna open up. Of 52,749 doctorates conferred in the United States in 2013, just 2,167, or 4.1 percent, were earned by African Americans, according to the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates.

“What is frustrating for me, being one of few minority faculty members, is that one of the demands that the group has is to increase minority hires,” said Cynthia Frisby, a black journalism professor who has taught at Mizzou for the past 18 years. “One of the things I know for certain is that that’s good ideally, but there’s not a lot of us that are going on for higher ed degrees. It’s like fishing in a pool where the fish aren’t there.”

It has become increasingly clear that while students champion immediate

reforms, certain barriers, like the inherent exclusivity of a working group and the level of consensus required to change policy, create frustration for those anxious for change.

“Yes, the resource center is happening.

Yes, the dean of students is working more actively with affinity groups,” Reyes said.

“It’s just moving so slowly.”

A

s proposals move from the minds of campus protesters to the desks of high-up administrators, questions remain about how to make sure students are happy with the reforms. The activist groups that were once active are starting to disintegrate, and support has waned.

At Mizzou, just two of the 11 founding members of Concerned Student 1950 remain, with many having dropped out to give younger students an opportunity to lead. Even Butler, around whom Concerned Student was formed in its earliest days, has distanced himself from the group.

And Next Yale, a collective of student

groups that marched on University President Peter Salovey’s house in December to submit a list of demands, has not held any other protests in recent months. Shortly after the demonstration, Salovey sent an email to the Yale community announcing a list of inclusion initiatives. But his email did not address all of the students’ demands, and there has been little, if any, follow-up on specific requests like the implementation of an ethnic studies requirement for undergraduates. “[Students] get tired of hearing the same voices on campus all the time,” Schierbecker said of Concerned Student 1950.

“So a lot of the novelty of the group has worn off.” Time has had the same effect at Yale, with Next Yale’s list of demands fading from the Facebook group “Overheard at Yale” and campus bulletin boards. Estepan said this has been largely due to students’ need to recuperate emotionally after a demanding second half of the fall semester. But she also noted that the nature of

Claremont McKenna Yale Daily News Magazine | 37

cover the group’s activism has shifted, and that it is ongoing in different forms. Now, instead of protests, there are teach-ins about race as well as other informal talks about issues coming out of the events of last fall. The caveat is that these events are organized largely by students, not the administration. But Estepan was optimistic that the protests had incited a new dialogue about race on campus that had previously been lacking. In the African studies and ethnicity, race and migration courses she shopped this semester, all were filled to capacity or above.

But it is not necessarily so at Mizzou.

Sensing that conversations about issues of race on campus had been slowing down in the beginning of a new semester, Washington saw an opportunity to stir the pot.

Along with Washington, around two dozen protesters interrupted a Board of Curators meeting in February to read a list of demands for improving the racial climate on campus. The protest was intended to remind people that the group’s efforts are ongoing, and that issues related to inclusion have yet to be resolved, he said.

“Those conversations should have kept happening,” Washington said. “We felt that people were not conscious about what was still happening on this campus. It was so much bigger than Tim Wolfe leaving office. We want people to know that it’s a movement, not a moment.”

S

tudents of color interviewed at Yale, Claremont McKenna and Mizzou don’t agree on whether they feel any differently now about being a minority on predominantly white campuses. But aside from influencing policy, the protests have served to show some students that they aren’t alone in feeling out of place on campus. Although a campus revolution is yet to come — and may be for some time — Washington and others said that part of what has come out of the protests is a greater sense of belonging among students of color.

“Now that Tim Wolfe isn’t in the position he is, there’s more comfort knowing that if something is going to happen it would be taken care of correctly,” said 38 | April 2016

Rachel Cheever, a black student at Mizzou. “Walking on campus, there’s more of a feeling that your color and your life is valued.”

Even as affinity groups have solidified, many students and faculty at Mizzou spoke to an animosity that fall’s unrest has stirred up among the student body. Stephanie Shonekan, director of the Black Studies department at Mizzou, said the amount of backlash the protesters received raised pre-existing tensions to another level.

In the weeks immediately following the protests, matters were tense even among minority students. Some black students at Mizzou said they felt pressured to take part in the demonstrations, even though one student said that joining Concerned Student 1950 meant separating yourself from the rest of campus. Cheever said there was a binary on campus, with little room in between for students who were conflicted or uncertain. “It was either you were protesting or you weren’t.” Yale had its own share of these troubles: during the weeks of unrest, a minority student who attended a free-speech conference claimed he had been labeled a “traitor” by other minority students.

Frisby noted that in the weeks following the protests at Mizzou, people would assume that people of color, including herself, were in support of the demonstrations. She added that the racial climate on campus is more tense than it used to be: she said some of her black students would walk around campus unsure of whether they were supported or hated.

“It’s not that white people have become more racist,” Schierbecker said. “I can see a lot of white people that wouldn’t be racist otherwise have dug in and their inner racist has started to show.”

And these tensions transcend campuses.

“I don’t feel any better,” Reyes, the Claremont McKenna senior, said. “If anything, I feel worse. I don’t even feel safe on my campus anymore. A lot of people don’t feel comfortable talking about race because there’s been so much backlash.”

Perhaps this division is one of the protests’ most concrete, universal, lingering

effects. It’s unclear whether anything at the ground level has improved for students of color. But it’s obvious that those who are not convinced of the protesters’ cause are not afraid to make that fact known. As Washington stood and left the table where I had interviewed him, a white student who had eavesdropped on our conversation made a fart noise with her mouth and smiled, content in her mockery.

4:00am, Wind-Up Ode

by Roger Pellegrini

I wake where a moment ago the book began to fold shut.

I blink and can’t make out my hands.

Night’s behind my eyes.

Space is a kind of panic, searching and collapsing, a span of empty fields heaving and heaving among each other.

And us awakened under thick cloud in a car we meant to return.

My eyes anger for light, insisting in the dark, resurfacing, until a single point makes out — a single prick, extinguished star, the lone origin, and all the world, and us, one thread drawn through it.

With my thumb, I blot it out.

bits and pieces

If Yale Were Hogwarts, We’d All Be in Gryffindor and Still Hate JE

BY GRAHAM AMBROSE GRAPHIC BY SAMUEL WANG Few sentences evoke such passionate responses as the campus adage, “Yale is just like Hogwarts!” The same axiom that attracts starryeyed high school seniors to New Haven triggers in deadeyed senior undergraduates a gag reflex more powerful than any curse of the dark arts.

To lay bare the oft-recited comparison, YDN Mag wondered: To what extent does Yale really resemble the magical wizarding world of Harry Potter? We asked dozens of students from all 12 colleges to liken each Hogwarts house with a residential college. And according to a statistically enormous number of responses from current undergraduates, recent alumni and dining hall workers, if Yale were Hogwarts, everyone would be in Gryffindor.

Which is to say that the vast majority of respondents listed their own college as the most Gryffindor-like. As shown in the nearby graph, the Gryffindor distribution was nearly perfectly uniform across the 12 residential spaces.

The Gryffindor data, consistent with perennial complaints of endemic student egocentrism, supports the theory that most Yalies place themselves at the center of their undergraduate universe.

In other words, Yale students tend to equate their social standing with that of Harry Potter, the Chosen One. By contrast, in the YaleHogwarts universe, undergraduates overwhelmingly identify a single college as Slytherin: Jonathan Edwards.

Every JE student interviewed, including current and former freshman counselors and multiple JE student leaders, paired the oldest and smallest residential college with Slytherin.

Even the ignorant confessed the likeness. “I’ve never read or watched Harry Potter, so I can’t answer,” said one JE junior who responded to the poll. “But I keep hearing that we’re Slytherin, and from what everyone says I’d probably have to go with that.”

To many fans of the bestselling saga by J. K. Rowling, more unsettling is an association with Hufflepuff, a house connoting intellectual shallowness and characteristic flatness. Saybrook, Calhoun and Trumbull, colleges that respondents tellingly described as “underrated,” received the lion’s share.

Finally, Ravenclaw lacked a consensus sister college, having been equated with each residential college by at least a single respondent.

How’s that, Sorting Hat?

HOGWARTS HOUSE COMPOSITION, BY RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE 15

Gryffindor

12 9 6 3 0

50

JE SY CC TC BK PC BR MC ES SM TD DC Hufflepuff

40 30 20 10 0

25

JE SY CC TC BK PC BR MC ES SM TD DC Ravenclaw

20 15 10 5 0

100

JE SY CC TC BK PC BR MC ES SM TD DC

Slytherin

80 60 40 20 0

JE SY CC TC BK PC BR MC ES SM TD DC

Yale Daily News Magazine | 39

Christopher Buckley ’75.

Marie Colvin ’78.

Samantha Power ’92.

You?

R