WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014

INSIDE THE CONTROVERSY OVER YALE DINING’S CULINARY SUPPORT CENTER. // BY LARRY MILSTEIN, PAGE 3

FUNERAL

B10

FALLOUT

B9

FINANCE$

B4

10 YEARS LATER

STRUGGLE AND PROTEST

CLASS AND CLASSWORK

Arcade Fire tolls the death of innocence and the advent of contemporary indie pop-rock.

The Graduate Employees and Students Organization still fights for recognition.

Coryna Ogubeistan takes us to the intersection of work-study policy and class distinctions.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

FIVE DAYS FOR TWO

ARBUTHNOT

WEEKEND

WEEKEND VIEWS

// BY WEEKEND

// THAO DO

If you’re reading this, you probably know: WKND is something different. We cuss and joke and make a lot of bad puns. We use the first person. We wear sweatshirts and jeans.

We’re part of the YDN, sure, but we’re up in the attic of 202 York.

For the past year, your WKND editors have upheld a tradition of quirky excellence and excellent quirkiness. They’ve published cutting-edge features, heart-breaking views and side-splitting doubletrucks. They’ve covered all the trickiest topics, from LSD to mental health to environmentalism. In their tender capable hands, the (equally) tender WKND flourished.

But as of today, as of this issue, we’ve turned over a new leaf. We’ve begun a new chapter. (We mostly just love book metaphors). In sum, WKND has three new editors! That’s right — Three. New. Editors.

“I’d like to thank the Academy,” Andy Koenig ’16 says, when asked about his new position. He flashes a radiant smile.

David Whipple ’16 looks up from his computer and pulls out his ear-

buds. “I have no complaints,” he says. Then he replaces his earbuds.

“I’m happy we work on the fourth floor. No one ever comes up to the fourth floor,” Jane Balkoski ’16 whispers. A curtain of dark hair obscures

I AM ALWAYS SUSPICIOUS OF INDUSTRIES BUILT AROUND RIDICULOUS THINGS. BOB DYLAN

her face.

As your new editors, we — David, Andy and Jane — promise to publish the prettiest sentences and the funniest jokes. We solemnly swear to cover controversial stories and Complex Issues. We will keep you, dear reader, informed of all Impor-

tant Happenings. We will also talk about our feelings. A lot. We may be in the attic, but this is not an ivory tower.

This year, we’ll revamp and redesign the WKND blog. (Maybe we should apologize in advance — we’re about to provide the undergraduate community with the perfect procrastination tool.) Pithy blurbs and music reviews and posts about food will flood the world wide web.

We pledge to follow in the footsteps of our predecessors, of course.

But we’re going to get snarkier, and we’re going to publish more fiction and narrative non-fiction. We’re going to keep experimenting and pushing the envelope. Why else does anyone read WKND? Above all, WKND aims to be a safe space. We won’t bulldoze that wacky idea of yours. Instead, we’ll help it along. We’ll encourage all those crazy trains of thought, even at 2 a.m. on a Thursday night. Because perfection has no place in the WKND lounge: Perfection requires total stillness and we’re moving forward, towards the future.

Impact — the Tantalan Thirst? // BY LEAF ARBUTHNOT Like many students about to be pitched into the world of work, I have been thinking — and worrying — about impact. I want to have one, basically, but am unsure how to make one, and know too that wanting one makes me something of a flamboyant cliché. The old recall the idealism of their youth with nostalgia — its molten eyes, its effervescence — yet while I can diagnose my “impact-thirst” as a product of my own naïveté, I remain parched. I want to have an impact even if that makes me unoriginal and smug. I want one really badly.

It’s not just me indulging in the navel-gazing. Having done my undergrad at Cambridge, one of the UK’s biggest feeders into the country’s finance sector, I’ve been struck by how many of my friends have spurned the “City” in favor of projects deemed to be “worthier.” There’s Eric, who interned at Credit Suisse before turning his job offer down so that he could learn how to code.

There’s Peter, who decided not to apply to reams of consulting firms to work for a Cambridge summer school instead.

There’s Joy, who’s working two jobs in London, trying to scrape a living in the world of journalism despite there being no jobs around. If she retrained as a lawyer or a broker, she’d be snapped up in no time by a big firm. But she won’t do it.

You don’t have to scratch your head for long to work out why young graduates are turning their backs on more obviously lucrative careers. We are products of the financial downturn.

Every society has its goodies and baddies, and for better or worse, the UK’s Undesirable Number One is the figure of the greedy banker. You know the type, even if you’re American — he’s white, middle-aged and plump, he gets a fat bonus at the end of every hour and gambles away pensions on hookers and mojitos. He has several offshore bank accounts, a porn habit and a yacht. He works long hours, but only because he gets a kick out of frittering away the nation’s savings and because his wife left him for a bespectacled librarian.

Ever since the crash of 2008 — and possibly even before — media outlets worldwide have hounded bankers as the villains responsible for the “big mess.”

Of course, a significant portion of the blame can and should be

laid at their feet — but not all, definitely not all. While individual bankers should answer to the law, waging a campaign against the profession generally — as many newspapers have done — doesn’t feel right either and has seemingly put many young graduates off the profession. Stock broking might still be a moneyspinner, but it’s no longer “cool”.

Startups are cool, the UN is cool, NGOs are cool. Banks are not.

So finance is somewhat arbitrarily off the table for the impact-thirsty. Even if there are strong arguments to be made for going into banking to, as it were, reform them from the inside, that doesn’t sit well with my peers, nor if truth be told, with me. But that leaves the question even more open — what path can I take after university that will help others, the more the merrier? I’ve agonized about it at length — whilst squirming at the pomposity of my anxiety. Do I set aside my natural interest in, for instance, the fashion industry, in the name of a potentially wavemaking career at the EU? Do I ignore the fact that I don’t enjoy hustling people for donations and join the ranks of a charity instead?

Increasingly, I’ve come to realize that what looks and sounds like terrifying choice really isn’t.

Yes, some jobs do help alleviate suffering. You can work in development and contribute to a project that will actively save the lives of people living thousands of miles away. You can write an app that will assuage the difficulties of Kenya’s ballooning smartphone community. But in reality, you cannot know what you will end up doing or how many people you will help, inspire, change. Our future careers may be more mobile and flexible and varied than those of our parents, but, in consequence, they will be less predictable. Eventually, you will be offered a position in a place that will sound convenient and fun, and, with a bit of luck, “impactful,” and you will take that position. You will discover whether or not that job is indeed a force for good, and whether you like what you are being asked to do. It seems that the best we impact-thirsty can do is avoid sectors that work “against” the morals we uphold, however contingent those morals seem.

Contact LEAF ARBUTHNOT at eleanor.arbuthnot@yale.edu .

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

F R I D AY

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PARADISE LOST

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Iseman Theater//3:30 and 8:00 p.m.

Even WKND couldn’t get a ticket, so good luck with that.

The beginning, a very good place to start.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

A LABOR OF LOVE, OR FOR THE LOVE OF LABOR? // BY LARRY MILSTEIN

When I first entered Yale Dining’s Culinary Support Center in early September, it was just another part of the network of the University dining operations — albeit a shiny, new one. The closing of Commons for hot breakfast largely had overshadowed its announcement over the summer and the facility’s purpose seemed simple enough: to house the new bakery and catering operations, while also consolidating cold food production to one location. In other words, rather than preparing the salad bars and deli stations for 5,500 students across 14 different locations, all the dicing, chopping, mixing and slicing would now be done under one roof. And with University President Peter Salovey and Provost Benjamin Polak calling on the entire University to help curb Yale’s $39 million deficit last year, Yale Dining appeared to have cooked up a solution to the University’s slimming pocketbook.

Executive Director of Yale Dining Rafi Taherian and Director of Culinary Excellence Ron DeSantis met me at the door of the inconspicuous facility at 344 Winchester Ave., which looked like a normal warehouse. After placing a hairnet on my head and securing my notepad and pen, I followed the Yale’s top dining boss and top chef through the inner bellies of the very operation that would now feed the mouth of Yale. With each room, there was aI new newDining’s state of When firstbenefit. enteredThe Yale

lemon bars from the bakery.

But despite the glittering façade of brand new stainless steel appliances, I had missed something: A group of coalition workers were angry — extremely angry. Some were upset about job security. Some were upset about the quality of Yale Dining’s food. Others were simply unhappy about the new location. But administrators have defended the decision to create the CSC, citing improvements in efficiency and quality. While I couldn’t have known it at the time, in just a few short weeks, the tension between union-backed employees and administrators would heat up.

It all started with a letter. On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 16, students and faculty who picked up a copy of the News may have been surprised by something unusual on page eight: a full-page advertisement purchased by Local 35, Yale’s blue-collar union, featuring a photo of Silliman College Chef Stuart Comen accompanied by an open letter.

“Dear Students,” the text began, “As chef of Silliman for 31 years, I look forward to students returning to school. But this year, there’s an edge of frustration and disappointment.” *** For Comen and the Local 35 Dining Hall team that signed the letter, the CSC had become a nightmare. In their view, sity’s slimming pocketbook. rather than providing cold foods for stu-

But the truth regarding the CSC depends precisely on whom you ask.

And here lies the crux of the dispute: The unions have one story, and the university has another. *** Dining disputes are nothing new to campus. For the past century, flaring tensions between Yale Dining workers and University administrators have led to a range of conflicts including a strike in every decade since the 1960s to the 2000s and eight total walkouts between 1968 and 2003. The source of bitterness has changed from generation to generation; however, the sentiment remains largely the same. A 1996 New York Times article, published following a four-week strike in that year, put it best: A Yale Dining dispute “is almost as much a Yale tradition as ‘The Whiffenpoof Song’ and secret societies.”

The most recent incident occurred in 2003, when members of Local 35 — including Yale Dining staff — picketed for 23 days, according to a News article published in September of that year.

Like prior incidents, the issue revolved around contractual conditions and led dining workers to protest on Beinecke plaza by banging pots and pans. After multiple rounds of negotiations, Local 35 and the University reached an agreement, compromising on an eight-year contract in return for concessions on pensions.

Since the agreed-upon bargain was reached, Yale has witnessed a relatively calm front in dining hall relations. The latest contract was forged in 2012 with markedly less acrimony than had been the norm for the second half of the 20th century.

“The strikes … occurred many

years ago and were very difficult on the employees involved and the University,” University spokesman Tom Conroy wrote in a statement on behalf of Yale Dining.

When asked whether any parallels existed between past experience and today’s growing tension, Conroy did not answer directly. However, he noted that the current contract with Local 35 does not expire until early 2017, and as a result, the union is prohibited from being able to strike until then. *** Even if Local 35 doesn’t have the legal right to strike, they have expressed their outrage in other ways.

On the Wednesday following the publication of Comen’s letter to students, Local 35 added fuel to the fire: The union SEE FOOD FIGHT PAGE 8

SALAD BAR OBSERVED DIFFERENCE IN QUALITY

I AM NOT AFRAID TO SPEAK UP IF IT IS THE TRUTH AND IF IT AFFECTS MY CUSTOMER I AM GOING TO SPEAK UP.

44%

44%

SILLIMAN COLLEGE CHEF STUART COMEN

the art dishwashers meantin that workers Culinary Support Center early Sepwouldn’t cleaning plates in scalding, tember, itbe was just another part of the steam room conditions.

A new food pronetwork of the University dining operacesser tions —meant albeitthat a shiny, the new hummus one. The students closwould ing of Commons be eatingfor was hotnow breakfast “smoother” largely than ever before. A its computerized deli had overshadowed announcement slicer would decrease worker injuries over the summer and the facility’s purfrom repetitive motion and keep your pose seemed simple enough: to house turkey andand thin.

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“We are Salovey not opening of anything.

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dents, Executive it presented Director a buffet of YaleofDining problems Rafi for Taherian diningand hallDirector workers.of Culinary Excellence “Yale RonisDeSantis giving inmet to the meworst at the corpodoor of rate practices, reducing of the inconspicuous facilitythe at quality 344 Winyour meals, our staff and chester Ave.,disrespecting which looked like a nordepriving a community of opportunity,” mal warehouse.

After placing a hairnet Comen wrote.and “This is the wrong direcon my head securing my notepad tion, andI undermines the tradition of and pen, followed the Yale’s top dining Yale bossCollege and topdining.” chef through the inner belliesWhen of the very I spoke operation to Comen that would the now day the feedletter the mouth was of published, Yale. WithI each askedroom, him whether there washe a new feared benefit. anyThe backlash new state after of speaking out publicly against hisworkers bosses the art dishwashers meant that and the institution that employed him. wouldn’t be cleaning plates in scalding, He saidroom he knew Taherian and food DeSantis steam conditions.

A new prowould be upset but, is busicesser meant that the“Business hummus students ness.” would be eating was now “smoother” than ever before.

“I am not afraid A to computerized speak up if it isdeli the slicer and would worker injuries truth, if itdecrease affects my customer I am from repetitive motion keep your going to speak up,” Comenand added. turkey nice and thin. The storage room

12%

Improved

Declined

No Difference

DELI OBSERVED DIFFERENCE IN QUALITY

20%

Improved

F R I D AY

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12%

Declined

PARADISE LOST

Iseman Theater//3:30 and 8:00 p.m.

Even WKND couldn’t get a ticket, so good luck with that.

68%

No Difference

WKND RECOMMENDS: The beginnings of the second movement of Dvorak’s “The New World Symphony.” Dat oboe doe.

PAGE B4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FEATURE

MORE WORK THAN STUDY? // BY CORYNA OGUNSEITAN

// ELENA MALLOY

It is 1957, and freshmen are sweating for reasons other than the perpetual nervous energy unique to first-year students at Yale. They’re in Commons, and they’re working hard. Busing dishes, washing them and sweeping are all components of their jobs. These students are “self-supported.” This essentially means that they spend their mealtimes cleaning up after their classmates instead of socializing with them. These students work 12 hours a week, and they comprise 30 percent of Yale’s undergraduate population.

Today, 57 years later, students face similar policies. In 2014, the Provost’s Office created a new work-study policy that echoes many of the marked class difference of Old Yale. Before this, the office paid 50 percent of every student worker’s salary. This year, in order to offset the endowment’s deficit, the office will only give the salary split to students on financial aid — and only for salaries of $15 an hour and below.

In theory, of course, employers are still free to hire students not on financial aid and at wages of over $15 an hour.

But if they do, they will lose at least $7.50 an hour per person. In both cases, many people working on campus do so because they have no other options.

In turn, these workers have student income contributions to meet. This is the tuition percentage the financial aid office requires them to earn during the school year. Without being able to earn more than $15 an hour, effectively a sort of maximum wage, some students have either had to take on multiple jobs or, for lack of time, take out more loans, in order to meet 100 percent of their own demonstrated need. *** Tyler Blackmon ’16, a staff columnist for the Yale Daily News, is one such worker. When he sits down with me for coffee, he is out of breath from running.

He tells me he didn’t want be late, making him arguably the most earnest person I’ve ever had the privilege to interview. He has enormous eyes and an equally enormous capacity for articulating his views. When he found out about this policy late last year, he wrote an article condemning the

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effects it would have on low-income students.

Blackmon grew up on a ranch and comes from a low-income family.

He has been on work-study since his freshman year. Back then, it was still relatively easy for him to earn all of his required student contribution. But as his Yale career has advanced, this component of his financial aid package has become more of a burden.

“One thing that is particularly troubling is that whenever you go from being a freshman to a sophomore, the work expectation skyrockets,” he said.

“The University promises incoming freshmen these star-studded financial aid packages, and then the next year they hit you with something that’s not so great.”

This year, his student income contribution has increased again. Blackmon works for the School of Medicine’s web group and was due for a raise to $16 an hour. However, because of the change in work-study policy, he did not receive this raise — his boss, he said, wasn’t keen on spending what would have come to an extra $8.50 an hour. He has had to take out more loans.

“My schedule is saturated. I didn’t have more time to work. I didn’t have loans freshman year, I had a few sophomore year and this year I’ve taken on a few more,” he explained.

He went on to say that if he hadn’t been working since freshman year, he would have participated in more extracurricular activities. Taken more classes. Gotten more out of his College Experience.

Molly Mullen ’17 expressed a similar idea. “The things we do outside of class are so important to Yale students, and everybody wishes they could do more of them. I think it’s limiting for some people to have another six hours of their week or more already taken away because they still need to pay for their tuition. I think it’s a class issue,” she said.

Mullen works five hours a week in a geology lab, even though her financial aid package this year indicates that she should

work 10.

“My parents are paying more than they’re technically supposed to. They wanted me to join clubs and spend time doing, you know, college things.” *** Laura Kellman ’15, a board member and former staffer at the Women’s Center, shares a different perspective. She’s employed but not on financial aid.

“If this policy had been implemented last year, I would never have been hired.

It’s been a really important part of my Yale experience and community,” she said.

She’s only able to continue working this year because board decisions were made before the policy came out last semester. Otherwise, she thinks she would have been cut.

In part because of this, Kellman feels that the policy isn’t just detrimental to low-income work-study students: It hurts the entire community.

“It’s a bad thing when a certain group of people is working 13 hours a week because they have to, and for another group of people, working doesn’t even cross their mind,” she said.

This is understandable — Yale students are busy. Those who don’t think about work have other activities on their minds, clubs to run, meetings to attend. But Tobias Holden ’17 agrees with Kellman. He thinks we should all be considering our job prospects, regardless of financial aid.

“People will care to learn about ‘high class’ things, like fancy art, for example, but people who already have access to that culture won’t know anything about getting a job. But I think that’s … a really important thing to know,” he said, laughing.

Kellman also takes issue with these differences in priorities, which, she believes, are rooted in class. She thinks the change in work-study policy will only exacerbate the current situation.

And she’s had to put significant

JAZZ AT THE UNDERBROOK

Saybrook basement//8:00 pm Stop by Global Grounds afterward to complete your Friday night out!

thought into class this semester, as she is constituency coordinator at the Women’s Center and therefore plays an important role in hiring.

“We’re probably the only group on campus in which students do the hiring, so we were in the awkward position of asking other students about their financial aid status,” she says. The group didn’t feel entirely comfortable asking directly — “I come from a background where asking people about this kind of thing is very taboo” — and so they instead searched for applicants’ eligibility for the 50/50 split on the Provost’s Office website.

Still, to Kellman and her co-workers, this didn’t quite solve the problem. It only posed a new set of questions: Did this technique violate the applicants’ privacy? Should they check an administrative website or ask an awkward question?

In theory, Kellman isn’t opposed to class conversations, she just thinks the new policy will aggravate the alreadymarked socio-economic differences between students. In fact, she thinks the University should eliminate workstudy.

“The fact that there is a student income contribution at all really contributes to class differences,” she said. *** In late August of my freshman year, the other members of my class and I sweat in Woolsey Hall. This time it’s not because we are washing dishes or busing plates — it’s because the hall is too small for thirteen hundred people, even when they’re completely sedentary. We sit and sweat and await University President Peter Salovey’s speech — today the president of our (our!) university will tell us something that must be important: why we are here, how we got here, what we are to do with ourselves now that we are.

From pamphlets and speeches like this one, it’s clear that Yale is proud of all the progress it has made. 53 percent of students admitted last year receive aid, and the administration raised the financial aid budget to a record $120 million. Today, despite these encouraging facts, Salovey addresses the class of

2017 for the first time to talk about class, inequality and the American Dream.

His narrative is inspirational — granted, it’s not his narrative, but his father’s story. Ronald Salovey was the son of poor, immigrant parents: He grew up in the Bronx, went to Bronx Science, then City College of New York, then Brooklyn College, then (gasp) Harvard, then settled down to marry, raise young Pete in a middle-class neighborhood, and then, finally, voilà, he was the Dream actualized.

Why does Peter Salovey talk to us about the American Dream? Certainly not to brag about his father’s success.

No, it’s “to assure [students] — especially those from families that are not affluent — that that dream is very much alive here at Yale.” Salovey cites the facts: College completion is increasing only for those in the top half of the socio-economic spectrum. He wants to play an important role in changing that statistic.

At this point, I have fallen asleep.

But, in retrospect, I’m certain many of my peers were wide awake and thinking about their American Dream and how Yale would make it possible.

Some of us, maybe, have been dreaming the Yale dream since we were four and learned how to spell it. Some of us probably applied to Yale on a whim.

Some always knew Yale was a possibility. Some never even thought it conceivable. 12 percent of us are first-generation college students. 57 percent of us went to public schools. 50 percent of us are on financial aid.

To be eligible for that aid, families must earn less than $200,000. If that salary is the invisible line separating the top and bottom halves of the income distribution range, then Yale truly is, in Salovey’s words, “a great equalizer.” But the median income in the United States is $51,017.

“Last year’s freshman address was ‘We Should Talk About Class,’” Blackmon says. “If it’s all words and no action, it’s more harm than good.”

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

WKND RECOMMENDS: Beginning afresh, afresh, afresh. Last year is dead.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND ARTS

MORE THAN CONVERSATION PIECES // BY EMILY XIAO

Had you ventured into the courtyard of Jonathan Edwards College any time from the 1930s through the 1970s, you might have noticed a still, plaintive figure kneeling somewhere within the environment of grass and concrete and trees. Perhaps you admired the tentative play of sunlight on the black lead in which the sculpture is cast, or attempted to decipher the time told from the bronze sundial which the figure supports on its head. Maybe you whiled away lazy days studying, or lazy nights murmuring with friends under the starless sky, in its company.

You might even have, with the sort of youthful irreverence present in every generation, etched your name among the graffiti marring the figure’s strained back.

It is with a decidedly different — a more constructive — kind of irreverence, I would say, that this unnamed garden statue of an African-born slave has been placed at the center of one of the rooms now occupied by “Figures of Empire,” an exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art that runs from Oct. 1 through Dec. 14. At first glance, the premise of the exhibition seems straightforward enough: It aims to explore, through a diverse array of portraits drawn predominantly from the museum’s collections, the impact of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade on 18th-century Britain.

However, the core attitude of the exhibition is to look at many of these works in ways that run counter to their creators’ original intentions — hence, the aforementioned “irreverence.” It is rich with examples of dignified portraits and conversation pieces featuring wealthy white members of British society, but our real focus is turned to those fig-

ures in the background, servants and slaves of African descent who have been consciously included as subordinate figures but whom the exhibition challenges us to examine as subjects in their own right. This is a project in reconstructing the historical and personal identities of such individuals through artistic analysis, even if efforts to locate them in official or family records have largely proven to be in vain.

As modern-day viewers, we already naturally feel — I would hope — some degree of discomfort with paintings like these, and as such it is with relative ease that we can adopt the critical eye that the exhibition asks of us. Because of this, it’s tempting to think of ourselves as temporally, physically and emotionally removed from these pieces; after all, it is only by virtue of our distance from them that we can even begin to look at them in the way that we do. This illusion is shattered by specific and notable objects within the exhibition that do well to remind us not only of where we are but also of our connections to this seemingly bygone society.

As it turns out, the garden statue is believed to have stood on the estate of our very own founding benefactor Elihu Yale, who made his fortune from the transatlantic slave trade. A huge and rarely exhibited group portrait featuring Elihu Yale himself, accompanied, among others, by a slave boy wearing a collar and padlock around his neck, hangs at the start of the exhibition.

This is only one way in which curators Cyra Levenson, Esther Chadwick and Meredith Gamer engage the viewers in dialogue with the works on display. As Levenson says, the exhibition itself has “emerged from conversation” surrounding “complicated objects” like the ones

described above, and it is a conversation they hope not necessarily to resolve, but rather to sustain and explore with their audience. Complicated objects give way to complicated questions, ranging from what constitutes a portrait (see, for example, the challenging “Bust of a Man,” which stands in the center of the second room) to how identity is constructed.

In order to foster this kind of dialogue among viewers, Levenson, Chadwick and Gamer curate subtle but productive dialogue among the pieces themselves.

Within the 18th-century framework of the exhibition is a healthy representation of the ways in which people began to grapple with the moral issues surrounding slavery; in the second room, for example, the painstakingly constructed dignity of the conversation pieces belies the shifts which were beginning to occur during this time, as reflected in the abolitionist pieces on the other side of the room. “Figures of Empire” concludes with examples of Anglo-Africans themselves who used single-figure portraiture to construct their own identities much in the same fashion as their predecessors.

The exhibition encompasses a wide range of objects in negotiating an understanding of these “figures of empire,” and many of these objects can be challenging, even perplexing. In setting out such a variety of representations, however — traditional, alternative, satirical, empowering — “Figures of Empire” allows us to formulate a less restrictive view of a disenfranchised population. And that is something worth talking about.

Contact EMILY XIAO at emily.xiao@yale.edu . // ALEXANDRA SCHMELING

Bad Habits // BY LUCIA HERRMANN “It’s not considered alcoholism until after college.” “The Dangers of Underage Drinking and Other Historical Posters” at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library dispels this and other myths with lurid advertising from the 1950s to 1970s. Have you ever drunk alone? On the sly?

Gulped down drink after drink?

Does that sound like your Saturday night? Beware! These are the starting signs of alcohol addiction, the exhibition warns us.

“The Dangers of Drinking” posters amplify just about everything associated with the ’70s: psychedelic typography, bright colors, opposite color wheel spectrum partnerships, a stringy moccasin leather jacket and a sense of over-the-top explicit suggestion coupled with a sense of overwhelming fear.

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On the opposite side of the “Dangers of Drinking” posters are a series of informational comics exploring some of the things that (obviously) (inevitably) happen after too many nights of irresponsible drinking.

A 1943 comic, “I Know All About Woman” features the inside of an army platoon hangout. One of the soldiers claims he can tell if a girl has syphilis just by looking at her, which of course the other soldiers challenge and just have to ask the army doctor about. After showing an informational pamphlet featuring a penis with a chancre (“sore,” the comic makes sure to clarify) and explaining the need of a microscope lens to actually see the syphilis bacterium, the doc puts Curley in his place. “If you can’t stay away from pickups or prostitutes, at least use a pro,”

are Doc’s parting words. (I don’t know what a “pro” is.) Poor Curley. Go pro or go home!

From the Australian island comes an informational poster about the realities of AIDS. Namely, “You don’t have to be a queenie to get AIDS.” Yes, by today’s standards, pretty offensive to the queer population. The campaign does however attempt to destigmatize the disease by addressing it through a “normalized” heterosexual lens. “A man has sex … with someone who has AIDS. He goes back to his wife … who gets AIDS from him. They all get very sick.” A simple plot story that ends with a few gravestones and an impending sense of doom about your night out. What better way to inform people than to make them scared out of their wits? Most people would under-

JAZZ AT THE UNDERBROOK Afro-American Cultural Center//8:00 p.m

Stop by Global Grounds afterward to complete your Friday night out!

standably choose a less painful, drawn-out death and the comic lays it on. Thick.

“THE DANGERS OF DRINKING” POSTERS AMPLIFY JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH THE ’70S” To isolate the drinking issue: When these posters were released, the legal drinking age in New York State was 18. There goes the argument of people binge drinking when they get to

college because of the “exciting illegal factor.” By the late 1980s, traffic and adolescent studies would show that states with a minimum legal drinking age of 21 curtailed alcohol consumption and drinking-and-driving accidents. These results eventually prompted Congress to take action toward a uniform minimum legal drinking age of 21. Even so, the dangers of excessive and abusive drinking have remained on the forefront of many college campuses and administrative conversations. Maybe the real question here is how can we protect against something we don’t understand?

I wish I could say more modern advertisements of “TobaccoFree Kids” or “D.A.R.E” escape the realm of finger-wagging paternalism to reach their target

audience, but how many times have we all rolled our eyes when another one of those melodramatic voice-overs shows up on the television screen? Did these campaigns protect us? The posters from the 20th century don’t seem any less ridiculous and probably did as much (or as little) to protect adolescents as they do now. Something is missing here.

Beyond the hilarity, beyond the sensationalism, if we really want to defend vulnerable populations, there needs to be a sense of true connection to what speaks to them. “The Dangers of Underage Drinking and Other Historical Posters” shows how campaigns might have always been missing their mark.

Contact LUCIAN HERRMANN at lucia.herrmann@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: The beginning of holiday drinks. Pumpkin spice lattes!

Peppermint mochas! Salted caramel anything!

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND SPORTS

WEEKEND DOES SPORTS Sport: Competitive Normalcy

It’s a sportsy time of year. Yale beat Army in a classic game that we will tell our friends we were at even if we weren’t; the NFL is underway and under investigation; the MLB playoffs have started, but no one really noticed because Derek Jeter isn’t in them.

Just look at all that sports knowledge we have! Wow. Surprising, right? You might not associate WKND with sports. It’s true, we aren’t exactly jocks. But that doesn’t mean a competitive fire doesn’t burn deep inside our cultured and sensitive hearts.

WKND will compete with anyone, just not in the traditional ways. We may not be fast, but we’re quick-witted (at least we think we are). We may not be strong, but we have strong emotions, and that has to count for something, right? Anyway, what we’re saying is that WKND gets its adrenaline rush in unusual ways. So here’s a small sampling. After all, anything can be a sport if you’re overly competitive about it.

Sport: Social Climbing // BY LEAH MOTZKIN

Rules of the game: If you have to ask the rules, you’ll never win. But chances are you won’t reach the peak anyway, because, well, looks are everything. Not that there really is a peak. There’s always someone cooler than you.

But here’s how to start!

1. Throw a pregame and intentionally leave out one member of the group! It will start drama and you’ll be talked about, aka relevant.

2. Facebook friend all the “cool kids,” then buy a disposable camera or a Polaroid and start uploading immediately. They’ll figure out how to get in the pictures.

3. Use your vacation home as a tool to get people to like you. Invite them over! Don’t have one? Make it seem like you do! They’ll wonder why they aren’t being invited over! Note: Never commit to any trips to your nonexistent vacation home. This will send you back to square one.

4. Start being mean to one in four people you like. This will create a really favorable social dynamic. It will put the ball in someone else’s court, so they can climb you! (Sports joke alert, because this is a sport, and I’m sporty!)

5. Ignore the underlings. They are like, completely irrelevant. But also this might come back to bite you. Seriously, this is the hard one because it all depends on your own judgment. What if that “smart” kid is actually a hipster? Hipsters are, like, totally in. You have to make the right call. For this one, remember what they always say, judge or be judged.

// BY JACOB POTASH Yalies are good at lots of things, but being normal is not one of them. Molecular biology, playing cello, critical discourse, Irish stepdance: So many things come so much easier to us than Normalcy does. But being Yalies, we are loath to admit that anything escapes us. This is why Competitive Normalcy would be such a draw.

The first round of Competitive Normalcy would require Yalies to sit through a Normal movie, doing Normal things like eating popcorn and texting their friends. But this would be the real bottleneck, as Yalies got caught checking their graphing calculators rather than their phones, not-so-sneakily reading Virginia Woolf on their Google Glass and emailing their professors about office hours rather than communicating with friends. Before they found out whether Katniss hooks up with Peeta, they would have already stormed out of the theater, tortured by visions of their medical degree floating out of reach while they squandered precious Friday-night hours on gladiatorial rubbish.

— Your WKND editors

The second test would also be technology-related, and it would bring the battle directly to the iPhone screen: only Normal texting, snapchatting, tweeting and Facebook posting would permit advancement in the tournament. Sliding into a hedge fund manager’s DMs with tactful inquiries about summer internships would be the downfall of more than a few Bulldogs. Creating new social media startups to compete with Facebook and Twitter is an ab-Normal pitfall worthy of expulsion. And only those with a true flare for Normalcy would successfully conquer the urge to use proper grammar in texts. These lol-ers would be the elite: certainly not Normal, but exceptional at faking it.

A simulated classroom scenario would comprise the final round: a quiz handed back, one menacing letter scrawled in red across the top: B. Participants would be monitored for sweat secretion, heart rate spikes and tears. If they could take the grade in stride, they would be certified Normal. Yessss, they’d think, allowing themselves a moment of satisfaction before moving on to the next challenge.

Play this game and you too can soon be saying, “Hey! You can totally sit here!” And thinking “Tap me for Bones!”

If you think I’m talking about someone in specific, the only response is to quote my man Gucci Mane and throw out a, “Bitch I might be.” If you think I’m talking about you, then I totally am.

Contact LEAH MOTZKIN at leah.motzkin@yale.edu .

Sport: Streaming Netflix Sport: Watching Football

// BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE Michael Jordan said, “Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.” Seeing as the first thought to cross my mind at the mention of Jordan’s name is, “He is very tall,” I’m probably not the best person to comment on sporting endeavors. However, I can somewhat relate to the desire to just play, have fun and enjoy “the game” – whatever that may mean.

// BY CAM LAMOUREUX It’s a fair question: Who’s more competitive, NFL teams or their fans? On the one hand, the players do really want to win — you have to, if you want to go out there and get concussed back to the Stone Age every Sunday for 16 weeks of the year. So the players are probably pretty dedicated.

But they also get paid a ton of money, so if they lose, at least they’re still rich.

But I understand the nature of competition: There’s something I want, but someone else wants it too. For Jordan, that was NBA championships, I think. For me, it’s streaming bandwidth.

With midterms approaching and the weight of the world on everyone’s shoulders, there is only one game I am prepared to play: competing for the title of “couch potato.” But this competition is not easy. Yale Secure is incapable of providing me with my one training tool: Netflix.

Fans, on the other hand, have no backup plan. If their team loses, their life is ruined, full stop.

The sun will never shine as bright, the birds will never chirp as loud. So the stakes for fans are pretty high. And nowhere is that more obvious than when you sit down on the couch for gameday.

Yesterday, “Gilmore Girls” was returned to my home screen. This was a monumental moment for me. I was ready to have fun and enjoy the “game” of an evening of idyllic Connecticut falls, commiserating over my addiction to coffee shops and falling back in love with men who wear flannel. Instead, I was faced with a terrible problem. I wasn’t the only person in this race.

I’m not talking about opposing fans here — that would be too obvious. No, Watching Football gets competitive even between fans of the same teams. Because no one can care more than you do.

It’s not possible. So if someone else curses at the opposing coach on the TV, you have to threaten him to the point that it actually gets kind of uncomfortable for people in the room. If someone screams in anguish when your quarterback throws an interception, you have to cry. If someone else drops the chicken wing they were eating when your running back fumbles, you have to flip the TV over and break it — even if it’s not yours. No, especially if it’s not yours.

I was ready. I had prepared. I had sacrificed my standard diet to use my lunch swipe at Durfee’s and I had made sure I had my lucky pajamas on ready for the fight. Sitting at the foot of my bed, I hit play, and I waited.

Would I reach the goal – would I make it to the end of one episode? Or two? Or, let’s be honest, it’s midterms, can a full season go by without interruption?

I had to fight the competition. With everyone prying for the same streaming bandwidth to get them through the week ahead, it’s not enough to be the best prepared. It really is up to the hands of fate. On Monday, when I approach the same race, will I able to just hit play, have fun and enjoy the game? I don’t know. I guess that’s a question for a student tech…

Because whether your team wins or loses, you can only win or lose if the other football fans on the couch next to you begin to doubt themselves. You can only win if they drive home after the game thinking, “Wow. Maybe I’m not such a big fan after all.” Because winning means someone has to lose. And that’s what Watching Football is all about.

Contact CAM LAMOREUX at cameron.lamoreux@yale.edu .

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

F R I D AY

3

OCTOBER

YALE SCHOLA CANTORUM EVENSONG

Christ Church Episcopal // 5:30pm.

Fuck a capella, WKND only has ears for Schola.

WKND RECOMMENDS: The beginning of Shakespeare’s Sonnet LXI: “Is it thy will, thy image should keep open / My heavy eyelids to the weary night?” </3

F R I D AY

3

OCTOBER

NIGERIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY GALA Afro-American Cultural Center // 8 - 10 p.m.

WKND likes anything with the word “gala.”

WKND RECOMMENDS: The Beginning of Pavement’s “Silence Kit.” So alternative, so grunge, so sexy.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

FOOD FIGHT FROM PAGE 3 filed a legal complaint against the University with the National Labor Relations Board. And with a few pieces of paperwork, a mere food fight became much more than that. *** Union President Bob Proto said that the complaint, the union’s first against the University since 2011, raises two grievances: that Yale violated its contract with the union by relocating jobs without proper negotiation, and that it then failed to provide the union with information pertaining to the CSC. The fear among union workers is that buzzwords like “centralization,” which is what the University calls the relocations, are merely euphemisms for phasing out jobs as workers retire or the contract expires.

Proto called the CSC part of Yale’s “race to the bottom,” in which the University will not replace workers or will fill them only part-time as the CSC has lower demand for labor.

Specifically, he noted the greatest risk exists for those in the position of head pantry worker. These workers, who had previously overseen cold food preparation in the colleges, have seen their jobs moved from the individual residential dining halls to the centralized location.

This seems innocent enough at first. But an anonymous worker in Yale Catering said there is simply not enough space in the CSC to accommodate these relocated workers. He said he takes this to imply that some jobs will eventually disappear.

But Conroy sees no problem with the transfers.

“The position of head pantry [worker] has not been eliminated from Yale Dining, but it is the case that there likely will be fewer of them in the future,” he said. “If the work is no longer needed, the position is not filled — that is attrition,” he added.

Still, he reaffirmed that no Local 35 employees had lost jobs, or had had their pay or hours cut.

Conroy dismissed the NLRB complaint as a tactic that has been employed in the past whenever the unions are upset about a decision. He added that the accusations are without merit since the University discussed the relocations with the Union before the opening of the CSC. But the NLRB complaint is only half of the story. The other half lies with the workers, and how the CSC has impacted their lives. *** “I used to work in a dining hall,” said a head pantry worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Now I work in the factory.” Another worker called the move “devastating.”

These experiences and others suggest that morale is low among employees working at the CSC. Pantry workers feel they have lost the communities they built among the teams in the residential dining halls. Some workers still at the colleges were given only ten minutes to choose a new job

when positions were reshuffled.

But for DeSantis, the director of culinary excellence, the idea of flagging morale could not be further from the truth.

“I see professionals, dedicated and really good culinarians, working as a very good team and with a lot of great personalities,” he said. “No matter what day of the week it is, someone is going to wake up and not be happy.”

Conroy conceded that changes in the workplace can be difficult for some employees, especially those who may prefer the old arrangement. He said Yale Dining has made it a priority to create team-building exercises and have regular meetings with staff.

“Many of the Head Pantry Workers have told us that they are excited about the new team environment at the CSC and the opportunity to work in a state-of-the-art facility with highly skilled chefs,” he said.

Undermining the Local 35 narrative that all workers were irate, a head pantry worker contacted at Conroy’s recommendation said she was largely okay with the changes to the system.

“I don’t have a problem [with the CSC],” she said. “It’s more work than I did before, but I have a bigger team to help.”

When asked why people were so outspoken against the center if it largely requires the same amount of effort, she said it came down to pride.

Some head pantry workers back in the residential college unit had a sense of importance, she said. But in the CSC, all 14 head pantry workers do the same work.

“These people have been in dining halls for years and it’s a change for them,” a dining worker still in the college said. “It is like, excuse my French, taking breast milk from a baby and giving them a bottle.”

Some dining hall workers added that the relocation of head pantry workers to the CSC has created difficulties elsewhere as well.

Comen said the removal of this position means he has lost a third of the leadership within his kitchen, which was previously a trio made up of first cook, head GSA and head pantry.

But this is more than a fight over positions. What makes this dispute between the union and the University unique is that it ultimately comes down to the food. *** The day after I first interviewed Comen, he texted telling me to try the cauliflower salad in the dining halls that day.

“It’s horrible looking and tasting and that’s why I’m speaking up,” the message read.

Some workers worry that delicate items such as roasted vegetables and compound salads will not transport well from the CSC to dining halls. As a result, students may now face soggy potatoes or unevenly tossed couscous.

One dining hall worker explained that while there may be greater consistency among the dining halls under a centralized model, it comes at a cost.

“The food is disgusting,” she said.

“It is the same repetitious stuff, you have ham and turkey every single day.

You used to have differences, salami, smoked turkey, bologna and liverwurst.”

The head pantry worker contacted at Conroy’s recommendation disagreed, noting that the greater equality among the dining halls has improved the food’s overall taste.

However, she feared the products leaving the facility may be different than what arrives in dining halls.

“Right now we don’t know who is handling it at the other end, draining the juice when it comes — are they mixing the product right?” she said.

an improvement in the salad bar, with an additional 11 seeing no difference at all.

David Roeca ’15 said the CSC has most likely improved the efficiency of the dining halls. However, he feared there might be less creative control as a result.

Still, only two students out of seven interviewed were aware of the CSC’s existence — let alone any related drama.

Which underscores the irony of the entire fight between the dining administrators and Local 35. The students on whose behalf both sides are ostensibly fighting are ultimately the ones most indifferent to the outcome

THE STUDENTS ON WHOSE BEHALF BOTH SIDES ARE OSTENSIBLY FIGHTING ARE ULTIMATELY THE ONE MOST INDIFFERENT TO THE OUTCOME OF THE FEUD. One head pantry worker explained that the CSC was meant to use fresher ingredients. But, she said, standards have regressed.

While things like dressings are still handmade, she said they are now produced in plastic bags and on eight times the scale.

“We used to have such high standards,” she said of Yale Dining. “We changed the whole concept of [college] dining, now we have gone back.”

However, DeSantis was quick to dismiss the union claim that the CSC had was a “food factory.” He argued that a food factory does not bring in pallets of fresh ingredients daily, does not purchase 49 percent of its produce regionally and does not prepare foods that are “handcrafted with care.” In fact, DeSantis said, the center was created in response to student feedback.

He said the scaling up has had no impact on the final product served since rather than one person working on a salad, there is now a team.

“The food that we prepare is food I would serve anywhere—believe me,” DeSantis said.

Despite the Union’s claims that the food quality has decreased, students have noticed either little difference or marked improvement.

“The food this year has been pretty good,” Amelie Thouvnot ’17 said. She described the selections as consistently fresh and “completely fine.”

Jiou Yu ’16 said he the quality of the deli bar has stayed consistent between last year and this year. He joins the 17 other students out of 25 surveyed who noticed no difference in the deli bar’s quality.

“This year has gotten a lot better.

There is edamame in the salad bar, not like in the past,” Libby Henry ’17 said. “Since I am a vegan, what I eat is a lot of the cold food and it’s definitely improved.” Henry is not alone.

11 students out of 25 surveyed noted

of the feud.

*** America loves a good kitchen showdown. We can’t help but eat up shows like “Iron Chef” and “Cupcake Wars.” Sometimes, a food fight is just too delicious to pass up.

But there’s nothing savory about the dispute over the CSC. There is no clichéd image of spaghetti being thrown or mashed potato being flicked. It’s a food fight in the most literal sense of the word — a fight over how Yale students should be fed. And yet, the solution may come down to something as simple as table manners: speaking and being a good listener in turn.

“There could be stronger communication between the two sides,” a catering worker said. DeSantis also urged further dialogue among all parties. He added he would welcome sitting down with dining workers to discuss changes to CSC at any time.

When asked what the long term solution could be, Comen was also more optimistic than some of his previous comments suggested.

“If the CSC in the next two months looks good and it looks like something our customers should get, I have no problem coming back to the newspaper and saying that it has improved,” Comen said. “But at this point I don’t think my customers are getting what they deserve and that is the bottom line.”

One dining hall worker summed up the most likely outcome in the near future: both sides waiting it out. She said the migration to the CSC was like buying a new pair of shoes: If after five wears they still doesn’t fit, then maybe it’s time to return them.

With time, a solution may be possible. But it will be up to both sides to come to the table.

Contact LARRY MILSTEIN at larry. milstein@yale.edu .

// JANE KIM

F R I D AY

3

OCTOBER

OKTOBERFEST

Heavyweight Crew House/6:00 p.m Slosh and be sloshed.

WKND RECOMMENDS: The beginning of Fall. WKND is ready to break out those scratchy sweaters.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND PROTESTS

A HOUSE DIVIDED: ARE GRADUATE STUDENTS STUDENTS OR EMPLOYEES? // BY CAROLINE WRAY

// THAO DO

30 years ago last Friday, after a 15-year war that culminated in a ten-week battle, thousands of Yale workers, most of them women, embraced one another and their loved ones in relief and victory. That day, Yale officially recognized Local 34, the union of technical and clerical workers. The movement was lauded as a huge victory for workers and for women in general. They were recognized as breadwinners, as opposed to housewives seeking pocket money.

The Graduate Employees and Students Organization, which is affiliated with Local 34, has been fighting for formal Yale recognition of a graduate student union for a quarter of a century.

They are still waiting.

“In the early days, I used to look at Local 34 and think that if it took them 15 years, it would also take the graduate students around 15. We are now a full decade past that,” said Michael Denning, an American Studies professor and supporter of GESO. By last spring, GESO’s patience was wearing thin.

On a rain-drenched day at the end of April, hundreds of umbrellas clustered together, damp GESO flyers littered the mass. Hundreds of graduate student union supporters gathered to present a petition to the Yale administration asking for official recognition. One of the main tenets of their proposal was increased “fairness and transparency in graduate employment” — something that GESO President Aaron Greenberg GRD ’18 said Yale has already followed through on.

After the submission of GESO’s proposal, for instance, Yale launched a new website that helps graduate students find teaching positions in different departments. It’s a small gesture, but it means something. Yale may not officially recognize the union, but at least they hear the complaints.

The number of signatures on the petition — over 1,000 — represents a majority of graduate student employees (in other words, graduate students who are paid to teach). Greenberg called

SUNDAY

5

OCTOBER

this majority “consensus.” *** But it isn’t a consensus.

Steven Harris GRD ’15, the President of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, for instance, isn’t part of Greenberg’s consensus. He doesn’t think a Yale graduate student union is necessary. He points to the pay grad students receive here: Yale graduate student employee wages are among the highest in the nation.

“Would all graduate students say they’re being underpaid?

Yes. Would [Yale students] say that they’re being paid more than other peer institutions? Also yes,” he said.

There are reasons other than satisfaction with the status quo behind some graduate students’ choice not to be a part of the GESO. One graduate student in the humanities, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, felt “harangued, and then ostracized” when she didn’t want to sign GESO’s petition. She said she knew people who signed not because they particularly cared, but just to avoid harassment from GESO members. *** Greenberg said if the administration recognized GESO, “We would be able to sit across the table as equals.”

But at a demonstration on Old Campus last week celebrating Local 34’s 30th birthday, Greenberg was asked if he would try to speak to University President Peter Salovey, who was shaking hands at the event.

“They know what we want,” Greenberg said.

But Harris noted that GPSS and the Graduate Student Assembly already work with a very receptive Yale administration to improve graduate student life.

It’s worth mentioning the current head of the Yale Health Member Advisory Committee, a committee composed of Local 34 members, Yale Health Staff, faculty members, undergraduates and graduate students, is a graduate student.

“We’re at the table,” Harris said. “Not only that, but the per-

son who’s the head of the table is a graduate student.”

He also cited the administration’s response to a complaint about New Haven housing that GPSS and GSA made together.

Yale took them seriously: The administration confronted New Haven landlords with the concerns, and “things changed immediately.”

In another instance of cooperation, several years ago, graduate students decided that they wanted dental and vision plans.

While GESO was advocating for benefits from the outside, GPSS and GSA were able to bring the issue directly to administrators, who responded. Now a plan is available to students who opt for it.

“Certainly in terms of pay, benefits and quality of life, Yale is average or good compared to other universities,” said Harris.

“It’s hard to tell where [GESO] wants to go from there.” *** Much of what GESO advocates for, though, has nothing to do with wages or the concerns addressed by the GPSS or the GSA. Robin Canavan, a third-year Geology and Geophysics grad student, believes women are highly underrepresented in the sciences. She wants to drum up support for women in the sciences, among other things, and that’s why she’s in GESO. Charles Decker, a fourth-year in the political science department, cited his belief that Yale needs to recruit and grant tenure to more academics of color. That’s why he’s in GESO. With many disparate reasons for membership, a question arises: How much control would a single union wield over these issues, which exists across the nation and not simply at Yale?

Whether or not to acknowledge graduate student unions itself is a national issue. Although there are many graduate student unions in public universities around the country, private institutions are a different story.

Any graduate student union at a private institution would fall

LIEDERABEND

Collection of Musical Instruments//3:00 pm Schumman, Schubert, shoe-in!

under the National Labor Relations Board, which revoked the collective bargaining rights of graduate employees after an incident at Brown. Simply put, the board holds that teaching on the part of grad students is more education than vocation.

According to JoVonne Lane, a public affairs specialist with the NLRB, there are currently no cases regarding graduate student unionization before the board.

Allowing them to unionize, by the telling of the NLRB Brown ruling, would negatively impact the educational process. Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Lynn Cooley is inclined to agree. “It does not make sense to me to consider students as employees,” she said.

graduate student unions at private universities, this was a major breakthrough.

But Harris pointed out that NYU graduate employees had essentially no voice before collective bargaining. At Yale, students do have avenues to access the administration and effect change.

For many, like Harris, these avenues are enough. *** GESO targets graduate students who dedicate a lot of time and energy to teaching undergraduates as “teaching fellows.”

In some departments, TF’s lead a discussion section once a week and grade assignments. In others, they lead class up to four or five times a week, and are responsible for both grading and crafting

THE GRADUATE EMPLOYEES AND STUDENTS ORGANIZATION HAS BEEN FIGHTING FOR FORMAL YALE RECOGNITION OF A GRADUATE STUDENT UNION FOR A QUARTER OF A CENTURY. THEY ARE STILL WAITING. To students — and eventually administrators too — at New York University, it did make sense.

NYU made history last December when it became the first private institution to officially recognize the results of an elected graduate student union. 98.4 percent of NYU student employees voted in favor of forming a union, and collective bargaining began this spring.

Before collective bargaining, “there was a condition in which no graduate employee had any voice in anything that happened to them in terms of their employment,” said Brady Fletcher, a member of NYU’s Graduate Student Organizing Committee.

“Having a union has absolutely changed the balance of power between graduate employees and the university … We now have the ability to sit down as equals with the administration.”

For GESO and advocates of

assignments.

Much of GESO’s platform, then, aims to improve conditions for the undergraduate classroom.

Allison Hadley GRD ’18, a third-year graduate student in the Italian department, said that she teaches five days a week and that the classroom is entirely under her jurisdiction. She joined GESO so she could communicate with administrators to improve the quality of her classroom.

“Yale’s teaching policies can be un-transparent, extremely unpredictable and sometimes very unfair,” Abbey Agresta GRD ’17, said. She described showing up to the second lecture of a course for which she’d been a teaching fellow, and being abruptly sent to teach a different course in a different department, with little to no time to master the material. She also said that she considered teaching to be the most important work she did at

Yale.

Denning said that graduate students do most of the teaching and most of the research at the modern university, so they deserve to be treated not as people passing through but as “a permanent and vital sector of the university, even if their faces change.”

He added that GESO’s solidarity with other Yale unions, and its solidarity across different departments, has led to a greater sense of cohesion on campus and in New Haven.

As higher education continues to evolve, many believe it is important to remain on the cutting edge. Denning believes that graduate student unions are the way to get there.

“Yale looks like a dinosaur on its way to extinction,” he said.

“Unions of graduate teachers know that’s the world that they’re facing, and they know what the consequences of that world will be for teachers and for students.”

For others, a graduate student union remains an unnecessary force.

“We’d be out there in picket lines if we thought there were big things that need addressing,” said Harris. “If we were in a time of dire need, I’d be all for it.”

It doesn’t look like the Yale administration will need to formally recognize GESO anytime soon. As long as they can communicate with other channels — like GPSS and GSA — they don’t need to directly confront a major home of discontent. There will be no dramatic, ten-week strike that will ride a national wave like the women’s movement. GESO is not another Local 34.

Still, GESO has survived for a quarter of a century without recognition. GESO has withstood constant pressure from the Yale administration to disappear.

GESO has not changed its primary goal. Amidst changes at the University and across the higher education landscape at large, one thing is clear: GESO will continue to pressure Yale.

Contact CAROLINE WRAY at caroline.wray@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: The beginning of “The Departed.” WKND can’t resist The Rolling Stones, also Leo.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

COMEBACK KID: “THE SILKWORM” // BY SCOTT STERN What if some authors only have one good book in them?

So wonders one of the characters from “The Silkworm,” a new mystery novel by Robert Galbraith, and therein lies the heart of the story. Maybe some authors only have one blockbuster idea, but maybe not. Robert Galbraith, as many now know, is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling. And “The Silkworm” is about as close to an autobiography as we will likely ever get from the tight-lipped Rowling.

Cormoran Strike, Rowling’s massive, gruff, quietly brilliant detective protagonist is, subtly, Rowling herself. In the first book to feature Strike — “The Cuckoo’s Calling” — the reader encountered Strike living in a state of depression and near-homelessness, barely scraping by. The sorry detective took on a case that seemed far from promising — the brother of a fashion model who apparently killed herself wants Strike to prove that the model was actually murdered. A few hundred delightful pages later, Strike catches the elusive killer and, because of the model’s fame and the high-profile nature the case has taken on, he skyrockets to sudden stardom.

Rowling, the one-time teacher who has spoken publicly — if infrequently — of her own depression and near-homelessness, also found herself an unlikely star: the first author in the history of the world to become a billionaire just by being an author. Hundreds of millions — probably billions — of chil-

SCOTT STERN READING BETWEEN THE LINES dren and adults worldwide read her famed “Harry Potter” series, and Rowling developed one of the world’s most loyal cult followings. (When a rival author gave “The Casual Vacancy,” Rowling’s first post-Potter novel, a bad review a year ago even after admitting she hadn’t read the book, hundreds of loyal Potter fans took to Amazon, giving the author a slew of one-star reviews and vowing to ruin her career.)

Rowling and Strike were both determined to move on. Desperate to show she was more than a one-trick pony, Rowling wrote “The Casual Vacancy,” a dark and complex story of poverty and acrimony. “The Casual Vacancy” received mixed reviews but still sold more than a million copies worldwide. Rowling gave interviews in which she expressed a desire for the book to be judged by its merits, rather than her fame.

The literary world rolled its eyes — sure, good luck with that.

Strike, on the other hand, received more attention than he desired after solving the case of the model’s mysterious murder.

As with Rowling, this brought him fame and some degree of fortune — at least he had more paying clients for his detective agency. But he too seeks to prove himself, even if this desire

remains bubbling beneath his coarse exterior.

Enter Robert Galbraith, Rowling’s pseudonym and Strike’s creator. Through Galbraith, Rowling was able to enjoy a sort of rebirth — with “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” she recreated herself as a solid mystery writer, one who received glowing reviews and middling sales. (That is, until the wife of a professional acquaintance spilled Galbraith’s true identity to the world media, placing “The Cuckoo’s Calling”

“THE SILKWORM” IS ABOUT AS CLOSE TO AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS WE WILL LIKELY EVER GET FROM THE TIGHTLIPPED ROWLING atop worldwide best seller lists and instigating a lawsuit from an irate Rowling.) Galbraith, though, clearly loves his craft and his new character, so Strike continued his detective work. In “The Silkworm,” he finds his next grand adventure in the form of a frumpy English housewife complaining that her husband has gone missing. Let the second great act of two lives begin!

The husband is Owen Quine, a B-list novelist struggling to remain relevant. Everyone from

his agent to his wife thinks that he has merely run away — perhaps to garner attention for his new novel, “Bombyx Mori” (Latin for “The Silkworm”). But after Strike finds Quine’s gruesomely mutilated corpse, many are forced to reconsider their preconceptions of Quine. Strike, along with his beautiful, spunky sidekick Robin — why don’t they see they are meant for each other? — will scour the gritty streets of London in search of answers.

The mystery rolls along, pleasantly, grotesquely, grippingly.

It is, again, an excellent book, in many ways a classic British mystery — evoking the smiling ghost of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But the true joy of “The Silkworm” is its commentary on publishing.

“Bombyx Mori,” the novel within the novel, was essentially a hit piece on everyone Quine knew, painting vicious parodies of authors, publishers, editors and even his own wife. “Writers are different,” explains one editor. “You cannot imagine the crap I am sent,” remarks the editor’s boss.

“The Silkworm” thus doubles as Rowling’s comeback, part two, and also her own not-so-subtle jab at the world of publishing.

Editors are drunken blowhards, publishers are egomaniacal manipulators and agents are cynical has-beens. “If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels,” says one character.

Even Quine, a novelist dismissed as amateurish by many

critics, a one-hit-wonder desperate to prove he can write a good book again, can be seen as Rowling in disguise. But that would be, in my opinion, an incorrect reading. Quine used those around him and descended into the dark world of self-pity.

Rowling is his polar opposite.

Rowling has never stooped so low.

Nor will she. “The Silkworm” continues to prove that J.K. Rowling is one of the best and most important authors in the world.

We have only just begun to watch her second act.

Contact SCOTT STERN at scott.stern@yale.edu .

“Funeral,” Ten Years After // BY NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH

The music industry has produced very few seminal albums in the last 20 years. I do not wish to join the ranks of those who decry the very foundations of modern music — I’m looking at you, Gene Simmons — and proclaim that because rock is dead we will never again see a Great Album. But the modern age still can produce such albums, as rare as they might be, and Arcade Fire’s “Funeral,” which just celebrated its tenth anniversary, is one of those. “Funeral” is a perfect album, one that retains its luster a decade after its creation and which has no flawed song.

In their music, Arcade Fire was a revelation. “Funeral” arrived as pop-punk was treading along on its last tired legs; rock music seemed in desperate need of revitalization, and Arcade Fire provided exactly that. “Funeral” is an album full of huge sound — of swelling choruses, of seven instruments playing as one, of an oceanic grandeur rare in any album, let alone debuts. The obvious antecedent was Neutral Milk Hotel, with “In the Aeroplane Under The Sea” and its anthemic folk-rock sound. But Arcade Fire, surely, looked even further back: Not since “Born To Run” had an album sounded this big.

“Funeral” blended early Springsteen, Joshua Tree-U2, and even some Phil Spector all into one, and the result was glorious.

Perhaps more than any other record, “Funeral” is communal. The name “Neighborhood” graces four of its tracks, and the wordless chorus to “Wake Up” only meets its full realization live, as the full symphonic ensemble yells its way through, and a sense of catharsis grips the crowd. “Funeral” is specifically about the community of youth in the face of pervasive death, where kids swing from power lines in blizzards and walk out into the snowbanks to imagine a greater future than that which has come before. Of course there’s a romantic idealism to this, but it never feels insincere or hollow. Partly this stems from the latent sense that

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this record is the end of childhood. “Funeral” is full of sadness, of mourning for the dead so recently lost and the rapidly ending era of childhood.

Fewer songs have ever carried such a feeling of despair as does “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels),” and “Haiti” plays like a heartfelt funeral dirge for singer Régine Chassagne’s cousins, killed by Papa Doc Duvalier. The brilliance of “Funeral” is in transcending the individual plane of mourning and bringing us into a communal one, where pain seems lost in the mélange of emotions of the crowd, where the joy of togetherness cancels out all despair.

But amid all of this community, individuality still shines.

“Funeral” contains two occasions — one on “Neighborhoods #1 (Tunnels)” and one on “Wake Up” — when I feel like Win Butler is singing directly to me.

These are the moments when Butler’s cracking, crusty voice pierces through the tumult of instrumentation, the neo–Wall of Sound, and reaches out only to me. Maybe those two lines have some sort of lyrical poignancy to me, maybe it was intentional, or maybe I’m just hearing things.

But there I find the greatness of “Funeral” — that it merges the individual and the community into one great coherent whole.

Arcade Fire in 2004 was a

“FUNERAL” IS A PERFECT ALBUM, ONE THAT RETAINS ITS LUSTER A DECADE AFTER ITS CREATION AND WHICH HAS NO FLAWED SONG. vastly different group from what they are today. Then, they were a motley group of musicians from Montreal wreaking havoc on the indie scene. They played hurdy-

gurdies, shouted choruses from megaphones, hit drumsticks on each other’s helmeted heads.

Their chaotic performances always seemed on the edge of total collapse. Today they are quieter, more controlled; they make Kierkegaard-referencing dance music with James Murphy and play arena tours. They have, in essence, learned how to be rock stars. On “Neon Bible,” they ostensibly brought Springsteen to the fore, but nothing on that album sounded quite as big or as grand as “Funeral.” Springsteen is in fact more evident on “Funeral,” with its conception of music as a form of communal release. Arcade Fire have now lost much of their early influences, but in their live shows they still display the Springsteenian notion of concerts as a sort of religious revival, where, like Jonathan Edwards’ parishioners, we should experience all the pleasure and pain not as individuals but as one entity.

“The Suburbs” and “Reflektor,” Arcade Fire’s two most recent albums, bear little resemblance to the maelstrom of sadness and fury and longing that was “Funeral.” Arcade Fire won Album of the Year with “The Suburbs,” a record that addressed many of the themes of Funeral — childhood, lost relationships, the unfortunate inevitability of growing up — but whereas “Funeral” flirted with teetering out of control, “The Suburbs” was buttonedup, perfectly-produced rock at its finest, not a single sound out of place. It was a great album, not as great as “Funeral,” but rarely have albums captured the feel of a geographic place as well as “The Suburbs” did. “Reflektor,” meanwhile, is still well produced but messier, a record of a band in transition, trying to reinvent itself for a wider audience. The album incorporates Haitian rara music with considerable success, and in that stylistic choice we again see the lingering of the past, for Régine Chassagne’s parents fled Haiti in the 1970s. “Reflektor” is a good album but again, not a great one

SCREENING OF THE 1957 WESTERN “FORTY GUNS.” WHC theater//7pm Yee-haw!

// ANNELISA LEINBACK

— the relevant comparison is to the Clash’s “Sandinista!” — and contains many poignant, provoking songs and then some that just make you want to dance.

The enduring legacy of “Funeral” in the decade since its release has been one of wordlessness. That surging chorus to “Wake Up” made us realize that words are no requisite for evoking emotion in rock music.

It’s one of those observations

for which more examples come to light once you remark on it.

Would the extended, Autotunegarbled outro to Kanye West’s “Runaway” have been possible without “Wake Up”? What about the chanted refrain in Titus Andronicus’ “No Future Part III?” Or the instrumental explosion at the end of Mumford and Sons’ “The Cave?” Yes, Pink Floyd did it first on the powerful opening to “The Wall,” but

all these modern artists must surely count “Wake Up” among their influences. That is the path “Funeral” has charted for modern music, and it would do us good to continue to follow it.

Rock may be dead, but the spirit of “Funeral” still burns strong; I pray it may light our way for the decades to come.

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

WKND RECOMMENDS: The beginning of “Middlemarch,” because WKND thinks a lot about time and love and Saint Theresa.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

LOUD AND AWESOME: MY TAKE ON CLASSICAL MUSIC // BY JACOB POTASH

// STEPHANIE ADDENBROOK

I may be the person least qualified to write this review in a fivemile radius. My reviewing contemporary classical music by Yale graduate students is like George Bush having a fine art exhibition.

But that happened. So, let’s call it a Davenport tradition.

My ears are really happy. I don’t think that’s how The New York Times critic would have phrased it, but it’s probably how he would have felt. “New Music New Haven,” held at Sprague Hall on Thursday night, featured four strange, beautiful and wildly divergent compositions — three by current School of Music students and a finale by guest composer Paul Dresher.

One string-quartet piece, by 23-year-old Jesse Limbacher MUS ’15, was billed this way in the program: “Inwardly expressive, elusive, and mystical; its inevitable paradox is its human nature.” Just as unhelpfully, Limbacher introduced it as being akin to walking around an abstract sculpture. But he sold himself short. The music was muted, as though heard through a fog, with flashes of clarity. It summoned up its own cinematic world, dark and in flux, starting with barely-audible scratching. Its moments of lush beauty were brief and powerful.

The first two pieces were only slightly more conventional: The one by Michael Laurello MUS ’15 sounded like a deconstructed rock or jazz band, with indecipherable rhythm but undeniable verve. The trio by William Gardiner MUS ’15 also had bounce and a compelling

arc. The piano was used for percussion at times and like a synthesizer at others. Gardiner’s past as a studio engineer informs his work, which sometimes involves actual electronic media and amplified instruments, according to the program.

The star of the evening might not have dwarfed the Yale students who performed before him, but he certainly made the most bewildering and awe-inspiring impression. Sometimes described as “post-minimalist” but witty enough to prefer the term “premaximalist,” Dresher is a composer, academic, performer and instrument inventor whose mind clearly works at a frenetic pace.

“NEW MUSIC, NEW HAVEN” FEATURED FOUR STRANGE, BEAUTIFUL AND WILDLY DIVERGENT COMPOSITIONS. He prefaced his segment with a whirlwind explanation of the instrument he would use (his own invention), how it works (don’t ask me), what his collaborator would be doing (hitting a black panel with mallets) and how the black panel works (don’t ask me).

The instrument was a sort of oversized electric guitar but with only four strings. Called

the Quadrachord, it was 10 or 15 feet long and hooked up to a laptop. As Dresher began to pick at strings, his collaborator manipulated and intensified the sound with his four electronic mallets, each of which produced its own set of notes.

It was loud, and it was awesome. Vaguely Indian melodic progressions yielded to a wild percussive performance by the duo. The electronic manipulation was complex: There were loops and delays, and at some moments the lag between the men’s movement and the music created a sort of hallucinatory, disorienting experience. The two were wizardlike, to say the least.

Afterwards, the audience members were free to examine the equipment onstage, which, though it had a futuristic shape, was all actually quite simple.

Before the whole thing started, a fellow attendee warned me that I was in for a “weird kind of music that gets boring after 10 minutes.” Presumably he was trying to relate to someone my age, but he underestimated the appeal of the avant-garde music. Though I retired my Stradivarius in fourth grade, the concert held my interest for well over 10 minutes. There are more concerts in the “New Music New Haven” concert series in November, February, March and April, each following the same format. Until then, you can find me building the Pentachord — watch out, Paul Dresher!

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

ALL MY TEARS // BY TYLER FOGGATT

The Yale Dramat opened its 2014–15 season on Thursday in the darkest of ways — with Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” an experimental production that combines elements of classic Greek tragedy with components of modern American theater.

The result is a drama that forces its audience to both reflect upon society and question contemporary ideals.

The play — which is being performed in the Yale Repertory Theater until Oct. 4 — begins in the Midwestern backyard of an apparently ordinary family of three. But while the setting of the play doesn’t vary – each scene takes place in the same

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backyard – the interpersonal dynamics shift quickly, making it clear that the family isn’t ordinary at all, but incredibly troubled.

Joe Keller (Iason Togias ’16), father and head of the family, is infamous for having sold faulty engine parts to the Air Force during WWII, resulting in the deaths of 21 pilots. Although Keller convinced the courts of his innocence, his family and friends still struggle with the aftermath of his crime. And one of Keller’s sons has been missing in action for three years, while the other hopes to marry his brother’s former sweetheart, Ann Deever (Marina Horiates

’15). This budding relationship is especially troubling to Keller’s wife, who cannot come to terms with her son’s probable death.

And Ann’s father — Keller’s business partner during the war — is in jail, doing time for Keller’s crime. While the play has its comic moments, its dark, twisted plot creates a mostly somber atmosphere throughout.

The minimalist set, consisting of a few lawn chairs and a porch, is framed by three rows of thin white curtains on each side of the stage. Because these curtains look like marble columns, the stage is a sort of Greek amphitheater. And the azure, orange and purple stage lights

GILMORE GIRLS

“A TALE OF LOVE, LOSS, WAR AND FAMILY, “ALL MY SONS” IS A PHENOMENAL CHOICE FOR THE DRAMAT’S FIRST PRODUCTION. mimic natural sunlight, transporting the audience back to Ancient Athens.

Still, while the design is intentionally pre-modern, the play could not be more relevant

in the conflicts and concerns it addresses. Togias in particular gives a brilliant performance, struggling between a need to repent and a desire to rationalize a horrible crime. Derek Braverman ’15 also gives an outstanding performance as Chris Keller, the son courting Ann. Chris, a lovable idealist, must question his own sense of morality when he hesitates to condemn his own father, though it is clearly the “right” thing to do.

A tale of love, loss, war and family, “All My Sons” is a phenomenal choice for the Dramat’s first production. Similar to the midterms that most of us are facing this upcoming week, “All

My Sons” is depressing, somewhat stressful to experience, and in no way uplifting. Still, it raises many important societal issues that many lighter works could barely touch upon. And while the play is static, with an unchanging setting and mostly sedentary characters, each audience member (including myself) was completely mesmerized as the play approached its shocking conclusion.

It’s a sad experience, but it’s one that encourages contemplation, making it an experience worth having.

Contact TYLER FOGGATT at tyler.foggott@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Your room// 1pm onwards Fast-talking hometown hokeyness

The beginning of the end; or is it the end of the beginning? or the beginning of the beginning?

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

D

an Chiasson is the platonic ideal of a poet. He majored in classics at Amherst, only to suffer a momentary lapse of reason and acquire a PhD in English at Harvard. Fortunately, he recovered, and now when he’s not writing poems, he’s reviewing them for The New Yorker, or teaching English at Wellesley College with intermittent academic journeys to Boston and Paris. His poetry itself is profoundly sincere and vivacious, dealing with everything from awkward erections to emotional extinction. It’s almost irresistible to the college student: the cover of his latest collection, “Bicentennial,” is a slice of pizza. WEEKEND met with him at The Study, where he burst forth from the elevator with immaculate, glistening locks, splendid facial hair befitting a poet, a debonair jacket and a pair of bright sneakers. One handshake later, we were discussing sex, food and “Ulysses.”

SEX, FOOD AND ULYSSES: DAN CHIASSON // BY IVAN KIRWAN-TAYLOR

Q: Many writers, poets and novelists alike, espouse a life of “difficulty.” Do you find yourself cultivating a difficult life for art’s sake?

Difficulty is so resonant of modernism to me. That whole idea, the value of all things difficult, is kinda throw-backy and retro. It was the ambition of a generation 100 years in the past, and it’s no longer as persuasive for me by argument. Poetry isn’t just writing about all the problems we have. It’s what I think about things. What I feel about things.

When I write a poem, there are surprises and shocks. The poem itself is on the border of intelligibility, and I don’t want to understand too much.

That’s the reader’s job. Part candor, part mystery. Poems are meant to be read (hopefully) hundreds of times, and they have to hold your attention Q: Zadie Smith was here recently, speaking about writing and creativity.

She suggests that creativity necessitates a “refusal.” What does the word mean to you?

Yeah, creativity is having a particularly bad stretch, because business and industry have taken it up.

Now it’s fashionable to invite writers and artists to the corporate dinners. What Zadie said is just right: There has to be some desire to upset the existing idea of a poem, say, or an essay. Literature, or on a more ambitious level, culture, too. I remember Robert Frost said something about

“

poetry … it involves “getting into danger legitimately so that we may be genuinely rescued.” I’m going to use a horrible phrase now, but our “comfort zone” should be challenged by poetry. The novel directs its mimesis toward social life. The poem — the kind I write — directs itself at the inner life and private speech. It depends on what you write. Either way, the content should challenge.

Q: Your work shows your reverence for Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Tom McCarthy in the London Review of Books recently suggested that writing after “Ulysses” can never be the same. How does “Ulysses” make writing different?

I feel exempted from it’s long shadow because I’m not a fiction writer, but here comes along a book which represents every last aspect of being human, and it comes close, it comes very close, to being right.

Being final. He’s made one of the most approachable — on its terms — books you can imagine.

It’s trying to figure out how to represent emotion and experience in language — what writing, in essence, is. As a poet, I feel despair when I read Wallace Stevens. He does it so well that I don’t want to pick up a pen.

Q: Does nostalgia and reading the greats make it harder for you to write?

It makes me despair of doing any-

THE POEM ITSELF IS ON THE BORDER OF INTELLIGIBILITY, AND I DON’T WANT TO UNDER TOO MUCH. THAT’S THE READER’S JOB.

thing as good, but I’m too stupid to be intimidated by Stevens because I was teaching myself things. My family wasn’t highly literary or indulgent of literary stuff. I had to introduce myself to most poetry and literature.

Ultimately I feel alone with my work.

I’m 43, almost 44, an age where you start to think about the arc of your career, and I don’t think there is any arc as triumphant as that of Stevens.

In terms of career — the production of individual poems, a book — Stevens is the model.

Q: On your Wellesley bio page, you say, “I like to give advice about food.”

Can we talk about food?

That’s a great question. Let me give you an anecdote — I think you can print this — yeah, it’s fine. Anyway, I once introduced John Ashbery, and someone asked him, “would you tell me the influence upon your work of food”. He gave an amazing, eloquent and extensive response of all the great meals he’d eaten. Turns out the guy asking the question actually said “Proust.” On another note, my form of cosmopolitanism when I was in high school was to eat. I hung out at a restaurant run by University of Vermont students, where I ate food that wasn’t available at home. I always associated it with expanding my horizons.

Now, my ritual at home involves making dinner. It’s important to cultivate rituals around writing, which accommodate days where the writing hasn’t gone well. Food is great, because my wife will tell me I’ve done a good job, even when I haven’t.

When I think about food, I think about why I’m a critic: I have strong enthusiasm, strong opinions and strong aversions. They need to be communicated, and shared.

I need to share, persuade. Advice about food is continuous with advice about poetry.

Q: You claim you weren’t much of an intellectual in high school. How did you develop a passion for culture?

“

// ELENA MALLOY

I owe a lot to Joyce. I started Greek in college, and I had some Latin, but not as much as the kids from Groton, Andover and Exeter. I did Greek because of Ellman’s biography of Joyce, where he mentioned that Joyce scribbled the first few lines of the Odyssey, in Ancient Greek, on a piece of scrap paper. I thought that was pretty cool. In high school, I used to walk around with a copy of Ulysses. I now have a copy from 1922, which has uncut pages. That’s

ironic, because here’s one of the original copies of a book that people fought so hard to make public after its ban, and it went unread. To some extent it’s still an unread book.

I never really sat down to read it until recently. I think it’s unfortunate the way it opens; the first three episodes are the hardest – the Telemechiad, as they’re called. The book is a compound self-portrait — Joyce was involved in relationships, being a father, grieving: All the things that happen to you whether you plan or not, and these processes work their way into book, which changes as he does. He’s showing his earlier blindness [Joyce’s sight deteriorated as he wrote Ulysses] in the first real character we meet, Stephen Dedalus, before we shift to Bloom.

Bloom has his own lapses, but the main framing lapse is Molly’s. He’s a person who makes mistakes but he’s a person who comprehends lapses.

Q: As a man who makes his living in words, how do you feel about the spread of the word “like”?

It’s funny, one of the hallmarks of being an English professor is that people become self-conscious about their speech around you.

Of course there’s a difference between spoken English versus written English.

The word “like,” in spoken English, specifically in spoken American English, can be used to real expressive purpose. Terry Gross, the NPR host, has this wonderful way, part of her modesty, that she’ll frame a question with a number of “likes,” tics and quirks that seem very expressive and continuous of colloquial English.

When I started lecturing at Harvard, I began to listen to my lectures when they were recorded, and I was appalled by how many “ums” there were in my sentences. One of the most powerful things you can do as a public speaker is pause. You appear to be framing your sentences silently. Even if you have no idea.

Q: You’re fond of the word “fuck,” and as a Joyce fan, you clearly value the power of obscenities. Can a work of art ever be obscene?

Obscene? No. Obscenity can’t apply. You have to imagine that if we have a legal quality for obscenity, it means “having no social value,” which cannot apply to great art.

Nabokov’s Lolita is more transgressive a novel than Ulysses and, with some trepidation, I’ve taught it to

all-female classrooms. It’s a rare person who can see that it’s value as art trumps all potentiality to offend.

In fact, it’s hard to even imagine a work more transgressive than Lolita.

To some desensitized individuals it might be mild now, but in the 1950s it was anything but.

Q: Let’s talk a little about your work as a critic. What are your criteria for a good poem?

I think my failure and strength as a critic is that I have no set criteria. I want to be surprised. I’ve read a lot of contemporary poetry, so if I’m surprised and compelled, it’s a sign that something is working. Linguistic imagination is something I appreciate. I start with a blank slate every time I take up a new poem. But poetry is what’s in your ear. Which poems do you have in your ear when you look at a new poem? Which poets? Which ideas?

Q: Many of your poems contain a great emotional intensity, and deal with “love’s sincerity.” What do you think of the culture of casual sex that goes on at a lot of colleges?

I feel like a dinosaur in relationship to casual sex now. I came from the AIDS generation, so I can’t ever really take sex that lightly. The line you brought up is taken from an idea Donne comes up with: You can block out the universe doing certain things — by closing your eyes for example — but you block out forms of verification, like seeing your lover’s face, when you shut down. I’ve always thought that it’s hard for a straight white guy to write about sex.

Q: Why? I’m not entirely sure. Most writing about sex feels sentimental. I think it borders on the identification of woman as aesthetic, as sexual object. It can be done well; sex is another sensory experience, albeit a more intense one. It’s tactile. It seems that Joyce is always on the side of the tactile — taste, smell, touch.

Q: Are you on the side of the tactile?

I think you have to be. You still can maintain temperament, you can be ironic and intellectual, but there needs to be the tactile part in there.

You have to be.

Contact IVAN KIRWAN-TAYLOR at ivan.kirwan-taylor@yale.edu .