The Yale Herald Volume LIV, Number 1 New Haven, Conn. Friday, September 7, 2012
From the staff We don’t know about you, but we at the Herald think it was a pretty lucky week. The weather was beautiful, Book Trader was serving the hummus wrap, and Richard Levin gave us a perfect piece of news for our first issue. The bottom line is that we’re happy, especially that we’re starting off a new year with you all. Welcome back! You may have worked at a start-up in Ethopia this summer, or crunched numbers at Goldman Sachs, or done research with the Sterling Professor of Something in the Beinecke. But we’d like you to know that we at the Herald had a big summer too, and we didn’t have to leave our desk chairs. You guessed it: we’ve entered the digital age! Thanks to the tireless work of Ariel Doctoroff, SY ’13, and the valuable inputs of Evan Walker-Wells, TD ’14, Carlos Gomez, SY ’13, Marcus Moretti, BK ’13, and John Stillman, SY ’14, we are the proud parents of a beautiful new website. You can now read all of our print content, daily online exclusives, and constant Bullblog posts in style, and from the privacy of your own wooden chair in WLH. But don’t worry, we’re still our same old selves. In this week’s issue, Marcus Moretti, BK ’13 (remember him from paragraph two?), examines the story of social activism at Yale, from the Black Panther protests on the Green in 1970 right up to the petition filed this week to affirm the place of
The Yale Herald Volume LIV, Number 1 New Haven, Conn. Friday, Sept. 7, 2012
EDITORIAL STAFF: Editor-in-chief: Emily Rappaport Managing Editors: Emma Schindler, John Stillman Senior Editors: Sam Bendinelli, Nicolás Medina Mora, Clare Sestanovich Culture Editors: Elliah Heifetz, Andrew Wagner Features Editors: Ashley Dalton, Sophie Grais, Olivia Rosenthal Opinion Editor: Micah Rodman Reviews Editor: Colin Groundwater Voices Editor: Eli Mandel Design Editors: Serena Gelb, Lian FumertonLiu, Christine Mi, Zachary Schiller Photo Editor: Julie Reiter Copy Editor: Laura Cremer BUSINESS STAFF: Publishers: William Coggins, Evan Walker-Wells Director of Advertising: Shreya Ghei Director of Finance: Stephanie Kan Director of Development: Joe Giammittorio ONLINE STAFF: Online Editors: Ariel Doctoroff, Carlos Gomez, Lucas Iberico Lozada, Marcus Moretti Bullblog Editor-in-chief: John Stillman Bullblog Associate Editors: Alisha Jarwala, Grace Lindsey, Cindy Ok, Eamon Ronan, Jesse Schreck, Maude Tisch
the humanities on the presidential search committee. In Features, Aaron Gertler, TD ’15, takes a look at Yale-New Haven relations under President Levin’s tenure. In Voices, Nico Medina Mora, SM ’13, describes his experience as a foreigner working at the New Haven Independent, and in our newly-revived Opinion section, Leland Whitehouse, SM ’14, and Andrew Koenig, JE ’16, each give their take on the new school year. In Reviews, Alexander Saeedy, TC ’15, reviews the new Animal Collective album. As you can see, we’re still us. But we figured the World Wide Web was probably ready for a piece. So follow us! Like us! Read us! Hang with us! We’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a lucky year.
—Emily Rappaport Editor-in-chief
The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office. If you wish to subscribe to the Herald, please send a check payable to The Yale Herald to the address below. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 20122013 academic year for 65 dollars. Please address correspondence to The Yale Herald P.O. Box 201653 Yale Station New Haven, CT 06520-1653 Email: Emily.Rappaport@yale.edu Web: www.yaleherald.com The Yale Herald is publishsed by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of The Yale Herald, Inc. or Yale University. Copyright 2011, The Yale Herald, Inc. Have a nice day. Cover by Zachary Schiller YH Staff
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
IN THIS ISSUE
COVER 12 Marcus Moretti, BK ‘13, takes a look back at student activism at Yale in light of President Richard Levin’s announcement that he will retire at the end of the year.
VOICES 6
Ashley Dalton, ES ‘15, sits down with Tamar Lerer, LAW ‘13.
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Nicolas Medina Mora, SM ‘13, describes his American education at the New Haven Independent.
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OPINION: Leland Whitehosue, SM ‘14, and Andrew Koenig, JE ‘16, give different takes on the new school year.
FEATURES 10 16
Claire Zhang, DC ’15, takes us to a FUN-raising party for the People’s Arts Collective of New Haven. Gareth Imparato, SM ’15, talks to catering company, The Northern Greening.
Aaron Gertler, TD ’15, examines the relationship between Yale and New Haven during President Levin’s tenure.
REVIEWS
CULTURE 18
Matthew Nussbaum, SM ’15, explores the foreclosure crisis in Fair Haven.
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Alexander Saeedy, TC ’15, on the new Animal Collective album. Also: Lawless, Two Door Cinema Club, Tomatillo, and Mount Eerie.
The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY The Herald’s week in review: what rocked, what sucked, and who took the lead in IM bowling.
CREDIT/D/FAIL Cr: Regulations Remember the sixth book of Harry Potter, when Dolores Umbridge takes over Hogwarts and implements those infantilizing, demoralizing, draconian policies? Well, Mary Miller is Yale’s new Umbridge—and I bet these off-campus party regulations are just the beginning. I see a not-sodistant future in which the residential colleges are renamed after Mayan deities and three people must officially register as a crowd. But—and hear me out—I think this is actually a good thing. Parties are now going to take on that special thrill reserved for the subversive, the illicit. Getting drunk with friends will feel like gchatting during a seminar or sneaking into the Q’uq’umatz (Berkeley) dining hall on Family Night because let’s be real, the pasta. Hear me, friends: we’ll be outlaws! Desperados! At any moment, the cops might burst in and do a headcount! Sure we’ll get in trouble, but we’ll get in trouble together—and isn’t that the true meaning of friendship? Let’s find out if we can fit more than 50 people in the ExComm room. —Jesse Schreck
D: Being an Upperclassman The arrival of the Class of 2016 has given the rest of us a prolonged opportunity to wax poetic about the selves we could have been if, as freshmen, we had done it right. We would have done DS; we would have dropped DS; we would have rushed or not rushed a cappella or auditioned for more or less theater or, delusion of delusions, taken a legitimate science credit. But guess what: while you’re sitting in your Davenport single or cozy off-campus apartment, reminiscing with friends over a bottle of wine you purchased legally, the Class of 2016 is getting lost on their way to a drug and alcohol workshop in WLH. Is that really what you want for yourself? To be a freshman again and not know who your real friends are? To have to pretend to be happy because you’re surrounded by a thousand happy people you’ll only later find out were also pretending? (If you’re a freshman and you are actually happy at this early stage, please share your secret.) Of course not. So don’t worry that you don’t have a 4.0 and a perfect significant other and a totally satisfying major; you may have learned what to avoid at GHeav the hard way, but at least you learned. —Jesse Schreck
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
F: Seminars Trying to get into a competitive seminar brings out the absolute worst in people. Some will scour their social networks for anything resembling a connection with the professor—or, failing that, with the professor’s family/acquaintances/hometown/lucky number. Those with suck-up tendencies tend to laugh at every joke the prof makes— and sometimes, painfully, at things that aren’t actually jokes. Section assholes get acute, stressinduced diarrhea of the mouth. Even the best people, those with otherwise abiding integrity, feel no qualms about dropping their most minimal and tangentially related accomplishments (“Definitely I’m very passionate about rivers, I used to swim competitively in high school.”) Disagree? Take an hour during shopping period next semester and attend an oversubscribed seminar. I may never have watched a bunch of blind, over-caffeinated dogs attempt a hedge maze, but I imagine it would be a similar experience. Just make sure it’s a class well outside your area of interest, that way you can avoid getting sucked into the competition—you don’t want to find yourself fumbling through the story of how you knew the professor’s best friend’s daughter in middle school. —Jesse Schreck
BOOM/BUST
BY THE NUMBERS TYNG CUP STANDINGS
INCOMING: Dr. Dre Forbes Cash King List reports that Dr. Dre has dethroned Jay-Z as the richest star in hip-hop. Largely thanks to his bestselling Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, Dr. Dre raked in $110 million. Diddy and Jay-Z follow close behind at $45 million and $38 million. Clearly, what counts now is not what you listen to, but how you listen to it.
OUTGOING: How was your summer? You traveled to Central Java, you went to 46 different concerts, you founded a small country in South America. We’re over it. It’s time to find a new question to ask everyone you see. Speaking of, how’s shopping period going for you?
College: 1. Berkeley 2. Branford 3. Calhoun 4. Davenport 5. Ezra Stiles 6. Jonathan Edwards 7. Morse 8. Pierson 9. Saybrook 10. Silliman 11. Timothy Dwight 12. Trumbull
Points 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
INDEX 1,300,000
TOP FIVE
total social media mentions for the first night of the DNC
Ways to Reunite
503,000 total social media mentions for the first night of the RNC
5 4 3 2 1
73,225 Hug to the point of rib-crushing. Run at each other screaming. Collide at top speed. Dance around each other ecstatically.
total number of views on YouTube of Romney’s nomination acceptance speech
273,225 total number of views on YouTube of Clint Eastwood’s “empty chair speech”
7,500,000 number of people who watched Bill Clinton’s speech on ABC and CBS
Tackle your missed one from behind.
21,000,000 Ask for a tissue. It’s just too much.
number of people who watched the NFL season kickoff on NBC
Sources: 1, 2) Caffeinated Politics 3, 4) Huffington Post 5, 6) The Atlantic Journal-Constitution —Laura Cremer The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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SITTING DOWN WITH TAMAR LERER by Ashley Dalton (Julie Reiter/YH Staff) Tamar Lerer, LAW ’13, runs the Pro Bono Network at Yale Law School. In the legal world, pro bono work generally translates into unpaid, voluntary consulting on behalf of underrepresented clients. During her time in law school, Lerer has done pro bono work through the LGBTQ Rights Litigation Seminar, the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program, the Criminal Defense Project, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Herald sat down with Lerer to learn more about the pro bono opportunities at Yale Law, and how they reflect Yale and the United States legal system at large.
YH: Why did you get involved in pro bono work? TL: A lot of Yale students—the majority, I think—come into law school thinking they’re going to do public interest work when they graduate. I did. I can’t say I thought that I’d be a practicing lawyer doing pro bono work on the side [only], but I knew I was interested in doing [some kind of] public interest work. The public interest world is broader than pro bono; no matter what kind of law you do, you are contributing to the public interest somehow. YH: So, in your view, legal work is public service whether or not the lawyer gets paid? TL: Well, I think it depends how you define public service. Certain people say that if you’re a lawyer, you’re upholding the rule of law—and functioning within the law is an important service to a society. I agree with that, but generally when you’re talking about public service in the pro bono sense, you’re talking about helping people or organizations that are less fortunate. You can’t say every lawyer, by the very virtue of being a lawyer, is helping people in this way even if they are in some great sense upholding the rule of law. YH: Do most Yale Law students view and value public service work “in the pro bono sense”? TL: Most Yale Law students will be in a clinic at some point, which…all [provide] direct client services for less fortunate or underrepresented populations. So I’d say public service is definitely part of the culture here.
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
YH: Do Yale Law students tend to carry their public interest attitude, as expressed in their pro bono work, into their professional lives? TL: Yale has a very strong presence in the public interest world in general. All the higher-profile public interest organizations are [well-staffed] with Yale alums. YH: There are some law schools where pro bono work is a requirement. Should it be that way at Yale? TL: Certainly an institution with a commitment to the public interest is admirable. But individual state bars have pro bono requirements, even though Yale doesn’t. You can’t, for example, be eligible to be a lawyer in New York without 50 hours of pro bono work over the course of your three years in law school. So there are other institutions, beyond Yale, that have decided normatively that lawyers have a responsibility to do pro bono work, and they have ways of enforcing that. YH: You’ve done lots of pro bono work during your time at Yale Law already. What experience has impacted you the most? TL: Direct client services obviously are the most impactful experiences. I think any Yale Law student [who] has done direct service work with a clinic would tell you that. I was particularly impacted by working in the Criminal Defense Clinic. I got to work in the New Haven Public Defender’s office, and on one project, I got to speak in court for a serial rapist. YH: Was it difficult for you to defend a serial rapist? TL: I really have faith that everyone deserves the best representation possible and that the truth will win out only if everyone has the best representation. The system only works when there’s vigorous advocacy on both sides. And there’s no class of people that doesn’t apply to. YH: Can you honestly say that you, and other lawyers, would defend a probable serial rapist as vigorously as someone charged with a less heinous crime? TL: It is a lawyer’s ethical duty to fight just as hard for those cases. You hope lawyers stand by their ethical duties, though there are a lot of problems in the field
of law with non-vigorous representation on the side of the defense. YH: Say you had the opportunity again to defend a serial racist pro bono—this time after you’ve graduated. Would you take time away from your job to do it? TL: I don’t think the identity or crime of the client would affect whether or not I choose to do this kind of work again, though what I really hope to be doing at some point in the future is criminal justice reform work. It’s really hard to do good criminal defense in this country because the structure is underfunded. Defendants often don’t have the money to hire good attorneys and conduct the investigation that they need to. But that’s not the only type of reform that needs to happen. We also need to look at how long some prison sentences are and what is defined as criminal—just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it should be. YH: Where does your public service spirit come from—a place, person, or event that inspired you? TL: Definitely my undergraduate experience at Swarthmore, which was a very social justice-oriented school. They really impressed upon me that we all have an individual responsibility to do good in the world. People were always talking about it or chalking— YH: Chalking? TL: There was always chalk on the ground about current issues—in front of the dining halls, for example—which led to dialogue about social issues in the dining halls. YH: Do you notice a silence on social issues here? TL: While I can’t fully speak to the undergraduate experience at Yale, it’s very clear that Swarthmore and Yale are not the same. Certainly, there’s also a large community of people here interested in social issues and public service work. You can do it in different ways—doing volunteer work, or running for office. But certainly it seems that there’s less commotion about the issues here. There’s a lot of commotion at Swarthmore—all over the place. And I do think that if you think there’s a silence about a particular issue, you should be making some noise.
AN AMERICAN EDUCATION by Nicolás Medina Mora Less than a week into my internship at the New Haven Independent, I found myself emptying my pockets for a security guard at the city’s federal courthouse. The newspaper had received a tip that an important hearing would take place that day, but we did not know the details. I arrived at ten in the morning, carrying my ridiculous reporter’s Moleskine, not quite knowing what to expect. As I placed my empty wallet on a little plastic tray, the lady operating the X-ray machine asked me if I was an attorney. Her question made me chuckle at the time, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense. Almost all the white men in that crammed marble vestibule were lawyers. The rest of the crowd—the vast majority of people there—were black women. They had gone to the courthouse because the police had told them to when they asked about their missing loved ones. I approached several of them, hoping to get some idea of why we were all there, but they knew just as little as I. Their sons—or their husbands or boyfriends—had been arrested earlier that morning. Many of the women had been waiting there for hours, trying to find out what had happened. Their moods varied from subdued anxiety to rage. The white men, most of them wearing suits and carrying briefcases, were all calm. They had arrived around the same time as I had and were now seeking out the relatives of the defendants the state had assigned them to represent. Whenever a lawyer found the mother or the girlfriend of his client, he would take her to the side of the room. I didn’t dare go near enough to hear what was said, but from afar I could see the women’s faces turn from confusion to despair. I had lived in Mexico for most of my life, and I had never been to an American court before, so I had no standard against which to judge what I was seeing. Only after visiting the place on a regular day did I realize just how out of the ordinary the events of that morning were. That vestibule is generally empty. None of us knew it yet, but this was the beginning of the largest federal drug case in Connecticut’s history. For over a year, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, and the NHPD had been listening in on the phone conversations of a group of young people who they claimed formed the New Haven set of the Bloods. That May morning, just before dawn, the police had stormed Fair Haven and Dwight with bulletproof vests and 105 arrest warrants. The same officers now roamed the courthouse, wearing black jackets with “Operation Bloodline” spelled on the back.
In hearing after hearing, I scrambled to note the names of the prosecutors and judges (all save one of whom, by the way, were white). The first few proceedings were incomprehensible, but soon a pattern began to emerge. Five handcuffed blacks or Latinos, almost all under 30, would be escorted into the courtroom. A clerk would then read the charges, one of which was repeated ad nauseam: “Conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, carrying a minimum sentence of ten years and up to ten million dollars in fines.” The judge would ask each defendant if he or she understood what was happening, and then take his or her not-guilty plea. The prosecutor would then state that releasing the defendant pending trial posed risk of flight or violence. The defense wouldn’t argue. In the visitors’ benches around me, women would begin to cry. For the most part, the many hearings of that day blend together, but one of them stands out. A woman one year younger than me was on the stand. After hearing that she had a child to care for, the judge agreed to let her walk on bail until her trial started. Her own mother was sitting next to me, and she saw me taking notes. “Are you with the newspaper?” she asked. When I told her I worked for the Independent, she closed her eyes tight. “I know you have to do your job, but please don’t put her name in the paper.” The Independent has a policy of not publishing the names of defendants unless they give their explicit permission, but her request still struck a nerve. Paul Bass, JE ’82, the Independent’s editor, had insisted that I get comments from the defendants’ family members. I had almost managed to muster the courage to begin asking questions, but this woman’s request sent me back to square one. The feelings of the people around me were overwhelmingly real, and I simply did not know what to say to them. I had spent my Yale career reading books—most of them written by dead Germans—that try to explain how society is structured, but none of that served me now. My first-class American education had left me with no understanding of America itself. Later that afternoon, I dictated to Paul a series of terse declarative sentences over the phone, trying to reduce the morning’s madness to a handful of facts. The article that appeared in the Independent that night was clear, but it did nothing to capture the tragedy of the morning. As the summer unfolded, I tried to understand how Operation Bloodline had come
to pass. I was dealing with a history more than with a story—an invisible history that reached far into the past, beyond the closure of New Haven’s factories, or even the bans on narcotics. Many nights, as I sat down to write my copy, I felt that same inadequacy I had experienced at the courthouse. The task of writing this history, of which my articles were nothing but fragments, appeared impossibly large and complex. The easy way out would have been to simplify, to declare Manichean divides between good cops and bad gangsters, or fascist police and underprivileged Lumpenproletariat. Yet it became clear that in this story, everyone was guilty, and that it was not a matter of good guys and bad guys, but of winners and losers. Some of the young people from Dwight had almost certainly dealt drugs, but the Yale students who snort coke were at fault too, as were the manufacturers willing to move their factories an ocean away to save a few cents in wages. Everyone was guilty, but somebody had come out on top. And despite what Yale’s admissions brochures would lead one to think, there hadn’t been a fair contest in which the worthy won and the unworthy lost. The winners were us, and we had won by chance. Not all of my experiences in New Haven this summer were disheartening. My repeated visits to the Latino communities of Fair Haven left me with hope for the future struggles of undocumented people in this country. The tenants of Amistad Apartments, a low-income cooperative on State Street, invited me to a block party where they treated me to some of the best BBQ ribs I’ve had in my life. And the endless public hearings of Board of Aldermen— though flawed in many ways—proved to
me that New Haven is far more democratic than my own country. When my internship ended, I left with an unpayable debt to my editor’s patience, an accurate mental roadmap of New Haven, and 60 articles published under my byline. Most of all, I left with the certainty that local journalism is a worthy project. In comparison to the great international newspapers, the work of the Independent may seem humble. But in writing the stories of the here, the now, and the local, the Independent’s journalists are in fact writing the history of the future. If this history is told properly, it has great emancipatory potential. This is not to say that local journalism is the answer to the world’s problems, or even New Haven’s. But it seems clear to me that the first step towards substantive change is to tell the invisible side of history. Otherwise, the only story that gets heard is that of the winners, be it a melodrama in which the poor are so because they are evil, or a meritocratic lie in which they are so because they are lazy. The history of the winners is soothing, that of the losers unsettling. Insofar as the winners—and in enrolling at Yale we all joined their ranks—remain willing to ignore their own guilt, our legal system will be an instrument of power and not of justice. The question then becomes how to transform guilt into an impulse for action, or how to transform culpability into responsibility. And if four years at Yale can’t burst the “Yale bubble,” our American education has failed to fulfill its promise. —graphic by Zachary Schiller
The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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OPINION FALLING BACK IN LOVE by Leland Whitehouse
The first week back at school is, for a good portion of us, a season for stress and complaint. We’re reminded of what it’s like to deal with all of the wildly inefficient bureaucracies that run this place (hell, always) and what the dining hall food tastes like (turds, mostly). We’re incessantly forced to have pissing-contest conversations about how we spent our summers. We pucker up to ass-kiss, lie, and cheat our way into ridiculously competitive seminars, spurred on by the stabs of fingernails as classmates claw their way up our backs and off of wait-
to go?” They were about to be students at one of the best and most beautiful schools in the world, and they were psyched. I remember walking home to Silliman late at night in early September of my freshman year and stopping mid-stride on the College Street sidewalk, knocked out by how damned pretty Cross Campus is at night. It was lit up and silent and, by my standards, impossibly grand. I was the luckiest kid I knew. I’d never been in classrooms so full of people who both dressed and spoke so well. There were coffee shops everywhere,
We jaded veterans would do well to take a shot of the brew that’s still got a few hundred Yalies punch-drunk. ing lists. We have to read things written by Dean Mary Miller. It doesn’t help that we’re hungover and broke. But despite what a shit parade coming back can be for those of us who’ve been there and done that, I think we jaded veterans would do well to take a shot of the brew that’s still got a few hundred Yalies punch-drunk. When my FOOTies, all of them exhausted and smelling like a week’s worth of White Mountain butt sweat, got their first looks at Yale from the window of our bus, they lit up. Behind me, one of them looked at the guy next to him and said, “Holy shit, man, we’re in college.” It was Christmas morning for the ambitious and intellectually curious. Their enthusiasm went so far as to prompt unanimous and excited praise for the churches on the New Haven Green: “Wow, yeah, that stained glass is so beautiful! Are we allowed
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
packed to bursting with avid readers and thoughtful writers. I could Google my professors. I could Google my roommate! I drank Dubra like water and couldn’t wait to get covered in soap and try to make out with someone at Toads. It blew my mind that there was both arugula and tofu at the salad bar. Of course it wasn’t all “Livin’ On a Prayer” and wheatberry salad, but it was a hell of a lot better than anything I’d ever been part of before, and I dug it. Yale kids are generally hard to please and easy to stress. It’s why we got good grades and started clubs and wrote our memoirs as 17-year-olds and did all of the other impressive shit that seduced admissions officers nationwide. But it’s a shame to let our insatiable, critical dispositions rub all the shine off of this place. The honeymoon might be over, but we’d do well to light a couple of candles and give love for Yale another go.
REFLECTIONS ON CAMP JAIL by Andrew Koenig
If I were asked to reduce Camp Yale to two sentences, they would be: “Hi, what’s your name?” and “Where are you from?” But even though the obligatory inquiries got very old very quickly, there have been moments of friendships budding, conversations flowing, and fears settling over the past week. One common thread bound these moments together: I always felt overwhelmed. Here I was, thinking that camp was supposed to be lackadaisical and best enjoyed with floaties in a lake. Instead, the whirr and rush of activities, bazaars, and parties made
effect backfires, just as watching TV with your family is a comfortable but ultimately ineffective way to bond with them. I understand the rationale behind the profusion of events. They are a way to help us settle in, feel a purpose, and develop a sense of belonging. But the overload wound up paralyzing me to the point where I felt too anxious to try anything. Camp Yale’s anxiety-fueled atmosphere gave me a gnawing and unpleasant feeling, leading me to the conclusion that there just isn’t enough time. Incoming students are pressured to start carving out their niche
Here I was, thinking that Camp Yale was best enjoyed with floaties in a lake. me feel as though I was constantly missing out on something. And since I didn’t feel like I would have the chance to do everything, I ended up doing almost nothing. I already have regrets—missing a Dramat audition, sleeping through a comedy showcase, and skipping out on countless other possibilities I was too frenzied to pursue. The Camp Yale calendar I received in the mail this past June was a sensory overload on its own, but turned out to be only a taste of the anxiety to come. It contained an overly detailed block of all the activities, colorcoded for maximum anxiety. This is not to mention the barrage of emails I received from Toad’s, the YPU, and countless other campus organizations over the first few days of orientation. If you have something going on in front of you at all times, it saves you the anxiety of putting yourself out there and talking to strangers. My beef is this: in the end, the
before they’ve even begun acclimating to college. Yale pressures its freshmen to flesh out an identity for themselves before school even starts, making us forget that college should be a time for trial and error. On the other hand, when I blew off yet another a cappella showcase or open house, the world felt full of possibilities. I felt strange and giddy after indulging in three scoops of Ashley’s espresso-chip ice cream with some fresh faces and talking as though we’d known each other for ages, or after ending up in someone’s suite and talking for hours about the Constitution, the Homeric world or favorite YouTube videos until 3 a.m. So of the organizers and planners of Camp Yale, I have one request: give us time. Looking ahead to the next eight semesters, it seems there will be enough of it—so don’t scare us into thinking we have to figure out college (and ourselves) in the first week. —graphic by Serena Gelb
Going under Fair Haven’s foreclosure crisis by Matthew Nussbaum
A little boy and girl, clad in summer garb, stood on their front porch and blew streams of bubbles that wafted over passersby. Grills were ablaze in backyards and music pumped from driveways as men nursed beers and tended the meats. On every street, families sat together on porches in the late afternoon summer sunlight. Fair Haven does not feel like the heart of a citywide foreclosure crisis. But it is. “It’s falling apart,” said Maurice, 20, a Fair Haven resident who asked that his last name not be used. “It looks like the whole street is abandoned houses.” Connecticut has the highest foreclosure rate in the northeastern United States, and New Haven property owners are facing the largest number of foreclosures in Connecticut. Through the first two quarters of 2012, the number of foreclosure filings in New Haven reached 474, up from 231 over the same period in 2011, and more than double the number of filings at this time last year. That’s more than double the number of foreclosures in Stamford, a nearby city with roughly the same population. In New Haven, there have been 36 foreclosure filings for every 10,000 residents; in Greenwich, only 45 miles away, that number is one. Fair Haven alone accounted for 40 of the 209 foreclosure filings in New Haven in the first quarter of 2012, despite the fact that it houses only about a tenth of the city’s population. Many blocks of Fair Haven, though, are vibrant and bustling, with some even showing signs of
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
growth. In many ways, then, the crisis is a hidden one. The construction of 19 new housing units is underway on Wolcott Ave., as part of the Fair Haven Scattered Sites Project. The 13 million dollar project is receiving funding from several sources, including Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. A total of 44 housing units will be built or rehabilitated in Fair Haven once the project is finished—which was originally slated to happen last spring. Fair Haven is a place of contrasts, stark and clear. BMWs sit parked before white picket fences a few yards from desolate properties that have been abandoned for years. Across from the new development, at 187 Wolcott St., there stands a decrepit home with boarded doors and windows, the white paint slowly fading away. The backyard is a jungle of unencumbered plant life and trash: a broken baby carriage, discarded shirts and jeans, empty bottles, plastic bags, torn paper, empty dog-food cans, and a much-weathered game of Yahtzee. Behind all this stands the overgrown frame of a garage. From the doorframe hangs torn fabric, like a battle-beaten flag. A tray of deli meats, visited only by flies, has been left in the driveway. A pair of blue jeans dangles from an un-boarded second-story window, as though to dry. I returned to the lot 24 hours later. The deli meats had all been eaten, the jeans no longer hung from the window, and the back
door, once padlocked, was ajar. When night falls, as the owner-occupied homes that breathe life into the neighborhood go dark, new life awakens in the abandoned homes. Drug addicts and the homeless take refuge in the boarded-up houses, which are also used by prostitutes. “Crime, social disorder, and population turnover are common in areas of mass foreclosure,” reported the Real Options, Overcoming Foreclosure project (ROOF), started by New Haven Mayor John DeStefano in 2008. As far as some residents are concerned, though, these nightly denizens are of little import. For Maurice, the “bums and drug addicts” are not a pressing issue. “They just want somewhere to sleep,” he said. “They’re not a threat to anyone.” For New Haven, the foreclosure crisis is a threat. “The foreclosure crisis affects everyone living in New Haven,” commented Ward 1 Alderwoman Sarah Eidelson, JE ’12. “It is both a cause and an effect of the economic inequalities that our community faces.” The national foreclosure crisis that triggered the recession in 2008 persists here in the Elm City even as much of the nation slowly climbs from recession. Many New Haven homeowners, forced by unemployment and under-employment to exhaust their savings, now face the frightening prospect of foreclosure. Aside from providing grounds for illicit activities, abandoned homes blight entire neighborhoods in a ripple effect. Coupled
with the loss of security that comes with increased crime, the scattered emergence of boarded-up homes can drive down property values for an entire block. Falling property values can, in turn, force other homeowners into foreclosure when the house becomes worth less than the value of the loan. In New Haven, though, the problems are deeper. “The current crisis in New Haven is as much due to structural issues in how the housing is managed and occupied,” said architecture professor Elihu Rubin, SY ’99, who teaches “New Haven and the American City.” “Many of the homes are already abandoned and owned by ‘absentee landlords’ who not only fail to manage or maintain the properties, but also evade payments.” The foreclosures, then, “are symptomatic of larger problems in the ownership and maintenance of housing in the city, and not simply the failure of a few people to make their mortgage payments,” Rubin continued. The jump in foreclosures this year can also be traced to a more aggressive policy pursued by the Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA). The Greater New Haven WPCA, over which the city has limited control, collects payments from property owners for the disposal of waste water. When unpaid fees reach 1,000 dollars, the WPCA begins foreclosure procedures against the property owner. These practices have drawn anger from many city residents and political leaders. New Haven’s leaders approach the prob-
lem of foreclosures and abandoned homes with a limited tool set. The city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative, has undertaken work to rehabilitate neighborhoods, one house at a time. Developers have been brought into homes in the Hill, the New Haven neighborhood home to Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Yale School of Medicine. The hope is that these developers will compete for the right to repair the homes, which the city can then sell.
“Unemployment has been the major cause of foreclosures over the past few years, and the towns around New Haven have felt the effects, as well,” said Carla Weil, Executive Director of the Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund. Unemployment in New Haven currently stands at 13.6 percent. “I am very hopeful that the Jobs Pipeline will connect hundreds, if not thousands, of residents to good jobs and career paths,
Church of Christ in New Haven since 2005. “Anxiety, when it goes on, turns into cynicism and bitterness.” As much despondence as it breeds in the neighborhoods, the foreclosure crisis is unlikely to touch Yale students where they live. “College life at Yale is pretty well insulated from New Haven and its very real dayto-day problems,” Rubin said. For Yale students, the foreclosure crisis
“Anxiety, when it goes on, turns into cynicism and bitterness.” —Reverend Sandra Olsen In recent months, ROOF, the New Haven-based project that works to assist home owners facing foreclosure, has ramped up its efforts to reach more residents and now serves 15 towns in south central Connecticut. The organization also compiles important foreclosure data, and works to “prevent or mitigate the effects of foreclosures on families and communities” in the area. The city government points to its strategic plans for a Jobs Pipeline Program as critical to stemming the crisis. The Board of Aldermen approved the program in a unanimous vote on Tuesday. The plan calls for the creation of an agency called New Haven Works, which will connect residents with jobs through its partnerships with employers.
which could make all the difference in New Haven residents being able to pay taxes and keep their homes,” Eidelson said. Eidelson also said that Yale has committed to be a partner of the program. President Richard C. Levin has long made it known that improving relations between Yale and New Haven was a top priority for him. “The boundaries between the university and the city should be soft ones. No hard edges,” Levin said in an interview with the New Haven Register on Thurs. Aug. 30. Regardless of the city’s ability to bring in more jobs and potentially stem the foreclosure crisis, many feel that the effects of the crisis have already sunk deep. “I see a lot more anxiety,” said Reverend Sandra Olsen, 62, who has led the First
and its related problems can feel abstract and foreign. No boarded up houses line the walk from Davenport to Sterling. “Foreclosures can be a difficult thing for students to comprehend,” said Jacob Sandry, BR ’15. “It’s tough to understand that someone a few blocks away is losing their home they’ve lived in for a decade. It’s much easier to focus on a p-set.” Sandry, though, was wary to simply analyze the data and prescribe solutions. “We need to begin by being citizens of our city and getting to know the people that those numbers represent.” “I think it’s easy to see how Yale students wouldn’t notice the foreclosure crisis,” commented Alan Sage, SM ’14. “On campus we hear about foreclosures and
violence in very abstract terms, but in reality the Elm City is an incredibly dynamic and fascinating environment.” Through his organization on campus, Middleman, Sage is seeking to create the relationships that will enable Yalies to engage in the dynamics of their city. In many ways, the community service that so many Yale students perform does not establish much of a relationship with the city. “There should be a relationship beyond service as well,” Sage said. “Through my work, I’ve been lucky enough to meet residents who’ve taken me around the city and showed me their neighborhoods, both the good and the bad.” Even among the abandoned homes and rising foreclosures, the citizens of Fair Haven remain resilient. On a late summer afternoon, Julio, a young man who lives with his parents in Fair Haven and asked that his last name be withheld, sat on the front porch of the family’s Exchange Street home. Down the street foreclosure proceedings have recently begun on a home, and two houses across the street are abandoned. Another has recently been restored. But Julio merely shrugged at talk of rising crime and falling property values. The properties across the way mark the exception to him, not the trend. “The rest of the street, I mean,” he said, waving a hand in an arc tracing his block, “everybody’s living here.” Residents are not eager to give up on their neighborhoods. For Julio and others throughout the city, home is still home. The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
Acting up Marcus Moretti surveys the presence—and absence—of student activism on campus.
n Tuesday morning, Yale panlists began circulating a website. It ran a large headline, “Choosing a president,” before a letter to alumni concerning the Yale Corporation’s presidential search committee. It stated, “The committee thus far includes only one current practitioner of the liberal arts, none in the humanities—and 5 corporate executives.” “Plus,” it went on, “we are troubled that although we have been invited to nominate four faculty members to join this committee, those nominations are open only until Tuesday 9/4 (TODAY) at noon. That’s less than one business day of public input.”
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A scroll-down revealed the mission: to mobilize alumni to write the Yale Corporation Senior Fellow and urge him to appoint professors in the humanities and science to the search committee, and to spread the message to as many Yalies as possible. By the end of the day on Tuesday, 3,600 Yalies from all over the world had visited the page, according to Paul Selker, DC ’08, one of the organizers. Thursday night, Edward Bass, SY ’67, ARC ’72, the Corporation’s senior fellow, emailed the student body to announce that he had received over 800 letters from student, faculty, and alumni. Of the four faculty appointments to the search committee, one was a professor of economics, one of English, and two of science. It’s impossible to say without asking Mr. Bass himself whether the Corporation already had such professors in mind. But the fact that 800 people wrote to him in such a short amount of time suggests that the website worked. Four of the site’s five organizers are recent alumni, and the last is a current student. Taken by itself, this example of successful activism suggests a
vigilant studentry ready to challenge the any and every perceived injustice. But a broad look at Yale undergraduate activism suggests that we aren’t that disruptive, especially compared to other Ivies. Undergraduate Organizing Committee (UOC) member Kenneth Reveiz, CC ’12, told the Herald in January, “Yale is probably the hardest place to organize in New Haven.” IN SEPTEMBER 2010, THE YALE CORPOration announced it had voted to sponsor a university in Singapore, to be co-established by the National University of Singapore (NUS). In the hyphenated appellation, YaleNUS, Yale’s name anti-alphabetically came first. The mission was to expand the university’s influence in the emerging East and introduce the liberal arts into a principally vocational education system. Administrators promised that Yale (New Haven) would not be affected: professors and alumni donations would stay here. Soon after the Corporation announced its plans, professors began to speak out. Some faculty (not many) were invited to a meeting to discuss (not vote on) Yale-NUS. Professors criticized the university for neglecting to consult the faculty beforehand. Several raised concerns over Singapore’s illiberal laws, such as limitations on free speech and a ban on homosexuality, which they claimed were profound obstacles to
liberal education. The same day of the announcement, the Yale Daily News ran an editorial recommending that students “talk about” Yale-NUS. According to Andrew Squire, SM ’12, who was a YDN opinion editor from October 2010 to September 2011, there was little undergraduate interest in Yale-NUS during the months after the announcement. Several faculty and alumni continued to air concerns; their opposition gradually loudened like an approaching far-off ambulance. Students eventually spoke up. “It took a little time for steam to build,” said Alex Klein, DC ’12, who was Squire’s co-pilot. The YDN published its second editorial on Yale-NUS in April 2011, the month President Levin announced the launch of YaleNUS. Klein said that by this point “many [undergrad] voices were rising in opposition and support”—but it took some prodding from the elders to get Yale College thinking and talking. This has been the trend. In 1996, Local 34, the union that represents Yale dining hall workers, organized a strike after contract negotiations with the university broke down. With almost two months of school left, the dining halls shut down. Students on meal plans were reimbursed and given vouchers to local restaurants. Local 34 had been striking since Febru-
The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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ary, but by April, when many undergrads’ food source disappeared, Yale undergrads had taken positions on the Local 34 strike. Gordon Lafer, GRD ’95, worked as research director for the coalition of Yale unions after he got his Ph.D. He attributes undergraduate support pre-dining-hall-closure to the administration’s “bare-knuckle” tactics and the greater publicity of New Haven poverty. Even Yale undergraduates in the late ‘60s needed other people to start their protests for them. Yes, Yale had its own Democratic Societies, Black Panther branches, Liberation Fronts, Revolutionary Youth Action Nows, etc. But undergrads largely rallied around national figures and other leaders. New Haven’s own political apotheosis came in April 1970. After a Black Panther member was accused of murdering a man he falsely identified as an informant, the
and sit-ins through the ‘60s that other places were having.” Jim Sleeper, DC ’69, a political science lecturer, remembers a similarly tranquil Yale. At Harvard in 1969, Cambridge police had to bludgeon student protesters to evict them from University Hall. “Nothing like that happened at Yale,” Sleeper said. He attributes Yale’s non-violence to its more peaceable studentry. “There’s an ongoing culture at Yale that is different.... It really is on the whole a relatively more civil culture.” Consider the way the university deliberated the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) question. Students who opposed the war wanted the military completely off their campus, while others thought that all American college students had the right to train as officers. As Sleeper tells it, in 1968, about 2500 students assembled in Ingalls Rink to debate whether the university
dents were around today, it seems, they would protest us. WHEN DID THE SPIRIT OF ’68 OR ’85—AS tepid as it was—die? David Brooks, in 2001, visited Princeton to find out what the modern Ivy League student was all about. He titled his essay, “The Organization Kid,” after the person he found, alluding to the sociologist William Whyte’s term for the corporate bureaucrats of the 1950s. Brooks observed that the generation before us—undergrads at the turn of the 21st century—made up a singular generation in American history. “To understand any generation, or even the elite segment of any generation, we have to keep reminding ourselves when it was born and what it has experienced,” Brooks wrote. Students who went through college a decade ago had grown up when economic growth was high and military con-
“It’s not up to the administration to create activist fronts for us and ways to communicate with them.” —Marc DeWitt, ES ‘15 federal government pursued two prominent Black Panther leaders whom it claimed to have ordered the murders. Panther leaders, members, and friendlies across the country planned a blitz on the New Haven Green to protest the trial. Yale’s proximity to the Green forced university president Kingman Brewster, TD ’41, to act. Other Ivy League presidents such as Columbia’s and Harvard’s, anticipating a coming political storm, closed the gates to outsiders. Brewster decided to keep the gates open. He granted protesters entry to Old Campus. Students aligned with the Panthers found an ally in him. In a speech just before May Day, he uttered what may be his most famous words: “I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States.” Paul Bass, JE ’82, the current editor of the New Haven Independent, co-authored a book on the 1970 Panther Trial. “There was a lot of student support for the Panthers, and they shut down classes at the end of the spring semester in 1970 because of all of the student protests and faculty member support.” Yale students were proud to join in the readymade movement to defend black activists they judged to be falsely accused. In this case, as in the others aforementioned, undergrads waited for outside groups to launch a protest before taking action. They were not so radical in other ways too. Some of the Panthers who spoke at Yale advocated violence; when they did so, they were often booed. When Yale undergrads did protest, their activities were meager compared to those of their coevals. “During the Vietnam war, when other campuses were radical, Yale wasn’t that much,” Bass said. “We didn’t have a lot of the same Vietnam protests
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
should continue to offer academic credit for ROTC. Students voted. President Brewster and other administrators were in attendance to make sure the organizers followed protocol. The count was announced—1,286 for, 1,286 against—and everyone burst out laughing. It was not a tense crowd. Throughout the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, radical Yalies exhibited a self-restraint that saved the university from violence. Often they had to rely on outside parties to motivate activism, but Yalies sometimes did initiate their own demonstrations. These demonstrations, almost always non-violent, chiefly responded to issues that directly affected them—draft cards, for instance. During the Vietnam war, all college-aged Americans were legally required to carry draft cards. Beinecke Plaza used to be the place where Yale undergrads met—50 at a time—to break the law by handing their draft cards to the University Chaplain. The Yalies of the late ‘60s used modest methods of political expression. This type of protest continued on Beinecke Plaza at least until the mid-‘80s, when, according to Bass, students erected a shantytown to protest the Yale Corporation’s investments in companies that did business in South Africa. Those protests started a conversation that led the Corporation to send a committee to South Africa, which ultimately recommended partial divestment in companies that did business in South Africa. Protests like these are absent from recent memory. Occupy set up camp on the New Haven Green, but it did not catch on among undergraduates in any impactful way. I asked Dean Mary Miller, GRD ’81, who has been on campus since 1977, what was different before the ’90s. “Students were different in the ’80s,” she said. “They were less focused on their careers, more involved in self-development.” If these stu-
flict rare. They began to read the news and think about the world after the Berlin Wall fell. They were coddled by parents who, as former ‘60s kids, didn’t want to parent as theirs had. These students didn’t make a fuss. “They seem like exactly the sort of young people we older folks want them to be,” Brooks wrote. That generation was also the first one that had to share the revolutionary spirit with adults. Some of the people who taught Generation Y to read rolled in the mud at Woodstock. As Brooks observed, “[College students in 2001] grew up in a world in which the counterculture and the mainstream culture have merged with, and co-opted, each other.” A Princeton administrator he encountered had a poster of the Beatles’ Revolver on her wall. These things at the turn of the millennium all forced the impulse to rebel to the back of students’ minds. The late ’90s and early aughts saw minimal conflict on campus. Yet there were things to protest; we hadn’t reached the end of human evolution. Brooks published his essay in April 2001, when today’s college students were then approaching teenagehood. Later that year, the event that
would define our political maturation claimed thousands of lives in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Penn. We were the first people to grow up in “the post9/11 world.” And later in our adolescence, we saw the country plunge into an economic recession that many have called the worst since the Great Depression. In short, we and the organization kids grew up in different worlds. In our post-9/11 world, national issues sometimes drew protests from Yalies—the Iraq War, for example. At Yale in the spring of 2001, anti-war outbursts in classes were not unheard of. And it was not rare for political tensions to break into controversy. One student hung a flag upside down outside her window, according to Sleeper. Another student managed to take it down after breaking into her room. (The college was not decisively liberal.) Urgent but complicated national crises like 9/11 and the economic recession forced kids our age into a political conversation, or at least to overhear it. These crises possessed the minds of our parents, teachers, and news anchors. The topic of discussion was American decline and its various solutions. Politics post-9/11 assumed much higher stakes. As we listened, we were steeped in the language of advocacy. This may explain the timing of an undergraduate activism surge in 2003-2004. It was around this time that undergraduates began to play a huge role in the administration’s financial aid policy. Dean Miller was the master of Saybrook College at the time. “One of the strongest points of student activism in recent years was in 2003-2004,” she said, “when students became very engaged in pursuing an amplified financial aid situation.” Students came out with placards advocating for a greater financial aid contribution from the university. “That was one of the clearest points when student activism had a profound outcome,” Dean Miller said. So we’re not silent. Our generation does speak up, sometimes, when something happens that we care about. ACCORDING TO MILLER, THE ADMINIS tration does seek out our opinions. It does want to hear our ideas, even if only two or three people are behind the idea.
Former YCC President Brandon Levin, DC ’13, said that during his tenure, he met with the dean’s office regularly and the president’s office weekly. At these meetings, Levin said, “We weren’t afraid to bring up even the most ostensibly trivial things with those administrators.... The one filter was: is this something we can do something about?” Undergraduates also have the option of applying to one of the many university standing committees. One of these is the Dean’s Advisory Standing Committee. Twelve students, nominated by the YCC and confirmed by the dean’s office, meet monthly to discuss various issues with Dean Miller. She calls these meetings “exceptionally helpful.” Marc DeWitt, ES ’15, thinks that university-sanctioned channels are insufficient. “We have to create our own avenues,” he said. “It’s not up to the administration to create activist fronts for us and ways to communicate with them.” The Title IX complaint is one example in which university-sanctioned channels— among others—weren’t working. “The Title IX complaint was a last resort after years of public advocacy,” said Alexandra Brodsky, DC ’12, one of 16 signatories. “Protest, public calls to the administration, petitions, promotion of faculty reports—all of these methods were tried first by feminists at Yale. We filed the Title IX because—for this problem, in this context—they weren’t enough.”
Kate Orazem, JE ’12, another signatory, agreed: “Demonstrations and rallies hadn’t resulted in any real change in the way sexual assault was handled or in the sexual culture on campus.... It was clear to us that the administration needed a wake-up call.” She also noted that the legal complaint did not obviate or exclude other forms of protest. Not all solutions are alike. A boon that comes with filing a Title IX complaint is the publicity it brings. Even if a federal Title IX investigation is inconclusive (as it was in Yale’s case), a complaint brings strong media scrutiny to the university and its policies. This in part explains the various changes in sexual misconduct policy announced over the summer. For Nathan Harden, BK ’09, author of Sex and God at Yale, media scrutiny is the stone for your slingshot if you’re up against a Goliath of bad university policy. In his book, Harden details—really details—some of the events that were part of Sex Week 2008, while he was a junior. One of these events was the Great Porn Debate, held in a ballroom above Hula Hanks. On one side, Ron Jeremy and another pornstar advanced the motion that porn was merely an innocuous, casual amusement; on the other side, a pastor and an anti-porn advocate argued that it was immoral, deceptively lucrative, brutalizing, and dangerous industry that by its nature objectifies women. This was one of the least licentious, and most (intellectually) stimulating events hosted that week. But oddly, the university decid-
ed to banish it to Hula Hanks, even though it offered classroom space to the CEO of a sex toy company called Pure Romance. As Harden wrote, It turns out the reason was publicity. “Yale officials got nervous about how the Great Porn Debate might affect Yale’s public image,” Harden wrote in his book, “due to the fact that it was going to be nationally televised [on ABC’s Nightline].” “For this reason, they would not allow the event to take place on campus, even though they had provided free use of Yale classrooms and lecture halls for every other Sex Week event.” The Herald asked Harden whether he thought this was the administration’s modus operandi. “There’s no question that the Yale administration has been preoccupied with protecting its own reputation in recent years,” he said. “It’s clear that when these controversies become widely known, it’s only then—often—that the administration springs into action.” On this rationale, the Title IX complaint was partially successful, even though the investigation it prompted was closed without a finding of non-compliance, because of the administration’s concern over its public image. Student activists, heed Harden: the media is your friend. EVERY UNIVERSITY CARES ABOUT ITS IMage, if only because a better image brings brighter students. They’re “the administration” because the quality of university life is their responsibility. Even some of the university’s biggest critics respect the empower-
ing corollaries of this responsibility. Harden and Sleeper both say that the administration must decide for itself what is best for the university. “Yale is not a democracy,” Sleeper said. “The Yale Corporation is a self-perpetuating body, and the president answers to the Yale Corporation.” Harden told the Herald, “I wouldn’t say that in all things officials should never take into account student opinion, but I think there has to be a reckoning that goes beyond student opinion.” One of President Levin’s favorite instances of student activism came when three students during the 2003-2004 academic year sent him a proposal to make the university more sustainable. They had spent hours researching and preparing their report, which contained specific data and instructions. President Levin told the Herald, “They really got into looking at the potential for new building technology, retrofitting our existing buildings, improving our recycling—it had a lot of fact-gathering and a lot of data.” Activism like this is successful because it demonstrates devotion—something that will distinguish the activist, given Yale’s history of piggy-backing. That’s one half of it. The other half is that it appeals to the administration’s interests. “I read this [proposal] and I was totally persuaded,” President Levin said, “I thought this was great.” The initiative reduced the university’s costs and placed it atop national lists of the most sustainable colleges. “I was sympathetic to the idea anyway,” he added.
The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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Levintown Town-gown relations under Yale’s 22nd President by Aaron Gertler
ew Haven is a city. Providence is a city, too. And Baltimore. Even Cambridge. Their friendly neighborhood universities—Yale, Brown, Hopkins, and Harvard—have meant little to their overall urbanity, at least since the dawn of the 20th century. Over those one hundred years, the cities acted like cities anywhere in the United States: an industrial blossoming at the turn of the century, migration until 1950 or so, followed by the suburban craze, the service economy and slow depopulation, with bubbles of tension periodically bursting. Why am I telling you this? Because when you saw Yale for the first time, whether live or in a recruiter’s PowerPoint presentation in your hometown, you heard, with certainty, the words “college town.” Someone sang the praises of the campus, the quads, the Frisbee. Maybe you took a quick detour onto Broadway, even Crown Street—but Yale, a kind of shining city on a hill, stuck in your mind. Not New Haven. Well, maybe New Haven, if you are for some reason reading the Herald at Princeton or Stanford after declining to matriculate here. When I went home to Wilmington, Delaware for winter break, my friends already knew the factoid: “Highest crime rate in America!” (This was no longer true: in terms of violent crime per capita, the FBI ranks New Haven fifth, behind Detroit, Camden, Flint—and Wilmington.) I shrugged and talked about walking through Silliman Castle on the way to breakfast. But New Haven is changing. Jay Gitlin, CC ’71 MUS ’74 GRD ’82, who teaches “Yale and America”, has been an Elm City resident since his own freshman year in
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
1968. He pointed to a lump sum payment in the late 1980s from Yale to the city by then-President Benno Schmidt, TC ’63, as the first sign of a thaw in town-gown relations that had been frozen for half a century—due in part, Gitlin believes, to the introduction of residential colleges in 1933. Unfortunately for Schmidt’s legacy, his attempts to integrate Yale into its urban surroundings suffered serious setbacks with the 1991 murder of Yale student Christian Prince, PC ’91, by New Haven resident James Fleming. If Schmidt’s term was a thaw, however, then the 20-year tenure of Richard
gural speech, he declared his intentions to work towards New Haven’s transformation into “a place where human potential can be fully realized,” and over the years, he and DeStefano have formed a strong partnership while working towards this goal. Shortly after the retirement announcement, DeStefano told Richard Pérez-Peña of the New York Times that Levin’s tenure had been a major success for city-campus relations: “Yale was a campus that physically and metaphorically relied on hard edges—hard edges around the campus and hard edges in relationships with the community. With Rick, those edges have
have been replaced by national chains ranging from Apple to J. Crew. The foundation of University Properties in 1996 allowed Yale to become a major commercial landlord within a few years. Our castle walls no longer mark the limits of our influence on the city, but should private enterprise really be the university’s chief link to New Haven? Drew Morrison, BR ’14, head of campus organization New Haven Action and a fierce advocate for the city’s under-resourced population, surprised me with his cool acceptance of the expansionist trend. “Building the tax base is essential,” he said. “People
Our castle walls no longer mark the limits of our influence on the city, but should private enterprise really be the university’s chief link to New Haven? C. Levin—who recently announced he will retire at the end of this academic year— was an avalanche, marked by a flooding of funds and manpower into efforts to secure New Haven’s welfare. “His administration came to realize...that the health of the city and of the university go hand-in-hand,” said Gitlin. Levin once claimed his first act as President would be to shake then-Mayor John Daniels’ hand. Though Daniels lost the election shortly thereafter, Levin did certainly did join forces with his successor, Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. In Levin’s inau-
become very soft.” A statement DeStefano made to the New Haven Register, that “the best thing [Levin] did for New Haven was to grow Yale,” might seem a little strange. Gentrification always garners mixed reviews. While New Haven’s residential vacancy rate was America’s lowest in 2011, some local citizens worry they’ll soon be priced out of their homes on Dixwell Avenue or Monterey Place thanks to the new residential colleges and expanded graduate programs. Visiting alumni mourn the loss of family-owned Broadway favorites, which
have a right to be angry about some of the stores that have been lost [to UP’s acquisitions],” he said. He stressed, however, that whatever sentimental losses have been felt as a result of the changes, there has also been an increase sales revenues and a feeling of community engendered by a street full of businesses that stay open late and encourage visitors from around the state. Morrison still worries about the psychological impact of growth: “The fear is no longer ‘Yale doesn’t care about us,’ but ‘Yale took over so much!’” But he
praised other Levin initiatives, from Yale’s New Haven Homebuyer Program, which incentivizes employee investment in local homes, to New Haven Promise, which pays much—and soon, all—of the college tuition for over 100 seniors graduating each year from local public schools. Professor of Architecture Alan Plattus deemed the Homebuyer Program the “centerpiece” of Levin’s administration. Under the initiative, which was implemented just months after Levin took office, Yale employees are eligible for up to $30,000 over a 10-year period towards the purchase of a home. Since 1994, Yale has given some $25 million to over 1000 real estate buyers, resulting in owner investments more than six times the cost of Yale’s disbursement. Plattus expressed concern that new homeowners were exposed to the risk of foreclosure during the recent housing crisis, but still called the program a net positive. Foreclosures, he said, along with general societal inequalities, are “some of the core challenges that America faces”—and not things Yale can solve on its own. Gitlin discussed this theme as well: “It’s not that the local context doesn’t matter, but there are these larger trends that cities are a part of.” Levin has been “on the edge” of these trends, he argued, quickly promoting development in certain neighborhoods through facilitating homeownership and attracting young professionals to work, live, and pay taxes in New Haven, or at least stay in the city after graduation. Unlike the ill-fated Chapel Street Mall, which opened in 1962 and was bankrupt
by 1980, Levin’s Homebuyer Program, according to Gitlin, recognized that “what you need is not so much big department stores; what you need to do is get people to live in the city, and stores will follow!” One such store was Campus Cus-
is a gentleman who starts by being a gentleman—a gentleman in the 60s, a gentleman today.” Levin inspires a lot of those compliments—whether from current students in the Elm City or those, like Michael Mo-
Most importantly, though, Yale’s standing in the city has been altered in a fundamental way. Gitlin mentioned an incident from his days as a pianist for one of New Haven’s private orchestras. Reform candidate Frank Logue, BK ’48 LAW ’51, was
If Schmidt’s term was a thaw, however, then the 20-year tenure of Richard C. Levin was an avalanche, pouring funds and manpower into efforts to secure New Haven’s welfare. toms. When space opened on Broadway, founder Barry Cobden merged his many Yale-themed stores into a single shop. He praised UP’s decision to standardize Broadway’s long business hours—largely because Campus Customs “set the standard.” “You get business by being open,” Cobden reminded me. “When you are closed, you can do no business.” Cobden dispensed this logic with a gleam in his eye, and I thought to myself that he’d succeed under any Yale president. But then, without my saying a word, he went on to praise Levin, whose initiative to build community relations led to “a very historic moment” just a few months ago—the first billboard advertising “The Shops at Yale.” Cobden sees the ad as the first step towards a world in which tourists see New Haven and Yale as a single unit, the way they might visit Harvard and Cambridge, or even Paris and the Louvre. And what does Cobden have to say about the president whose “town and gown embracement” made it happen? “Rick Levin
rand, SY ’87 DIV ’93, who stayed after graduation to work alongside him. Morand, former associate vice president for the Office of New Haven and State Affairs (another Levin creation), quoted humorist Calvin Trillin, SM ’57, in calling Levin a “mensch”, and praised the president’s talent for “combining grand strategy and talent with awesome attention to detail and execution.” NEW HAVEN IS A CITY. YALE HAS come a long way since the 1991 murder of Christian Prince on Hillhouse Avenue, and Levin is unquestionably in part to thank. There is still crime, and a wealth gap bigger than most, but in many ways, New Haven now serves as an example to other urban areas. Calling for additional funds from Brown University, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras pointed to Yale’s growing generosity. Meanwhile, Hartford and Bridgeport are planning their own versions of New Haven Promise.
about to announce his entry into the mayoral race. Hoping to de-emphasize Logue’s Yale ties before he declared his candidacy, Logue’s campaign manager asked the band to avoid playing anything college-related. The band leader, who had close ties to a rival of Logue’s in the local Democratic Party—looked Gitlin in the eye and told him to play the Yale fight song. He played it. But in 2001, after Yale’s 300th birthday party, Mayor DeStefano proudly hung a picture of himself and Levin shaking hands in front of a giant pastry, outside his office for all to see. The photo symbolizes a promise fulfilled (the significance of the pastry still alludes me), though Levin himself might hesitate to use a word like fulfillment. After all, he’s a reader of Rabbi Tarfon, whose famous saying Levin applies to the ongoing project of urban renewal here in New Haven: “We cannot complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it.” —graphic by Christine Mi The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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CULTURE Art and activism in New Haven by Claire Zhang
hen I arrive with my friend at 212 College St. on Saturday night, I walk into an empty room and face a large white wall covered with the greeting: “Hey Friends!” I have arrived for a party for “FUN-raising,” hosted by the People’s Arts Collective of New Haven (PAC), a new organization devoted to arts and activism in New Haven. After a few more words of brief explanation about what PAC is and what they are trying to accomplish, the wall invites me to “play.” I follow the direction of a black arrow through a doorway, where I am asked to take a ticket. The ticket tells me to “swap shirts with someone for keepsies” in order to redeem a button from the bar. My friend draws “show your mouth to someone,” which she does, receiving a colorful little button in return. Beyond the doorway is another small room with two futons on the side and a bar. Through that room and down the stairs, there’s a dark basement with loud music and a dance floor. To my immediate right are two small converted dressing rooms, their mirrors now covered with drawings and phrases (“YOU BETTER WERQ”). At the bar, Kenneth Reveiz, CC ’12, wears butterfly wings, a backwards cap, and a shirt patterned with fruit. Gabriel DeLeon, JE ’14, wears a purple wig. The atmosphere is what you’d expect at a party organized by an arts collective—quirky, creative, and, well, artsy. PAC describes itself as “an inclusive public space and a workspace for artists”—a union of “artists and activists.” They operate out of a small building on the corner of College and Crown streets and aim to use art as a common ground to push for wider social change in New Haven. It is organized by three Yale students, two of whom graduated last year: Reveiz, DeLeon, and Diana Ofosu, TD ’12. DeLeon is currently taking a semester off to work on the collective. Originally conceived as a theater, PAC developed into its current incarnation through conversations and hangouts between the friends. At the moment, the organization is focusing on three main projects: “Peer Critiques,” weekly meetings for literary and visual artists to discuss their work; “PAC Free Skool,” a workshop where members of the community teach each other assorted skills; and “PACtivist Corps,”
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2011)
a collaboration between activists and artists on projects for social change. The Corps will head several so-called “interventions,” such as “New New Haven Tours,” in which Corps members lead personalized explorations of the city. The interventions aim to bring a critical viewpoint to the community. Some, such as the “Queer Visibility” intervention, promote queer activism in particular. Collaboration is a key theme in all these projects. Ofosu describes her vision for partnership with other local creative groups, such as MakeHaven, an open woodshop and metal shop. She points to the Peer Critiques, which provide a much-needed collaborative forum. “[The critiques bring] together all the different artists just to talk, because they don’t necessarily have a space where they can all meet,” Ofosu says. When I ask who will be teaching the workshops, Reveiz corrects me. “We like to think of it as more facilitating than teaching,” he says. “We really want to emphasize mutual learning—that everyone can learn from other people in different ways.” Reveiz and Ofosu believe that PAC will be a powerful resource for New Haven residents. Ofosu explains that the Free Skool is focused particularly on “skills that give people agency to live independently,” such as composting, bike repair, and urban gardening. She stresses that art can also serve as a source of empowerment. “Art, or making things, is a creative endeavor,” she says. “For disenfranchised people to gain creative skills or understand creative agency is almost a revolutionary act, because a lot of disenfranchised people are left out of conversations about the most basic ways that cities are run.” The PACtivist Corps, meanwhile, seeks to tackle current issues in New Haven more directly and broaden artists’ horizons. “Activists will be doing a lot of research on campaigns, whether that’s reforming sexual culture in New Haven or food justice in school, like managing waste,” Reveiz says. “They’ll be teaming up with artists, who will help make the actionable components of campaigns, to blow them up into a big art project.”
“What’s exciting about that from an artist’s standpoint for me, is challenging artists hyper-socially,” Ofuso adds. “It’s about their works being political as opposed to a studio-based, ‘I’m in my own space,’ isolated world.” The FUN-raising party gathers a diverse group of people, from graduate students, to undergraduates, and some New Haven residents, a reflection of the organization’s aim to bring various people in the city together in a common place. “I think that there has been a burgeoning of different arts communities in the past several years in New Haven,” Claudia Calhoun, GRD ’14, says. “I was happy to see that there was another instance of that.” Calhoun’s friend Kim Baker, a local resident who attended an arts high school in New Haven, shares her perspective. “I feel like there’s always been a strong arts community in New Haven,” she says. “But anything adding to that I feel like is a good thing.” Like the organizers, many of the attendees are optimistic that PAC will have a positive social impact. “I think New Haven has had a dearth of the kind of organizations that will reach out to the community,” Michelle Morgan, GRD ’15, says. “The more that we can become involved in the arts especially, and in New Haven, the better.” For now, Reveiz, DeLeon, and Ofosu are committed to ensuring that PAC makes a positive contribution to the city and its residents. In the collective space, PAC offers a pile of clothes, books, and art supplies, free for the taking. There are two bulletin boards, one for visitors to sign up for working groups like dance workshops and visual art critiques, and another cluttered with assorted magazine cutouts and drawings, inviting people to add their own designs. It is clear that the organization is passionate about their mission. “This is something I really want,” says Reveiz. “I think it can have a really big impact, and a lot of it is just like making sure that people know it’s a resource available for them, but also that it’s guided and focused and actually doing concrete work.” ` —Graphic by Julia Kittle-Kamp
A playlist for everything “Music is an alone type thing,” singer/songwriter Sarah Solovay, BK ’16, a featured artist on the newlyfounded website Tracks in the Stacks, told me. The success of the new website, however, rests on the hope that Solovay’s take on music as a solitary pursuit isn’t always true. In fact, the Yale music scene really isn’t centered on independent music made by students; we hear a lot less about student bands than we do about a cappella groups. But the founders of Tracks in the Stacks are attempting to connect these sometimes disparate pieces of the Yale community. And they’re doing it with the simplest of ideas: the music playlist. “A lot of pockets of Yale don’t understand how the other pockets work,” founder Tess McCann, SY ’15, said. The founders envision different performance groups on campus—for example, Rhythmic Blue, or theater groups—making themed playlists as a way to educate other Yalies about their activity. Current playlists on the site aim to “capture the Yale experi-
ence” with titles like “Berkeley Mash ‘n’ Cheese” and “Toad’s Pregame.” As founder Andrew Sobotka, JE ’15, pointed out, people who come to support performances on campus are often just friends and parents. He hopes the new site will get people excited about sharing between groups. But Tracks in the Stacks also maintains its goal of becoming a resource for campus musicians. Solovay said the website has already helped her promote her music: She’s been contacted by 17O1 Records and Yale Radio, and hopes the site will continue to connect her with other musicians and musical opportunities. Of course, said Adrian Chiem, JE ’15, “the site’s still changing and growing.” It seems like the challenge for the new site will be whether Yalies with strong individual music tastes will give up their own pregaming/studying/jogging playlists and get excited about sharing new combinations of songs. But the founders are optimistic, and hope eventually that “regular people” will also share their favorite tracks with the site by making playlists. With that in mind, Tracks in the Stacks may be moving toward a greater form of music sharing altogether. —Ariel Katz —Graphic by Lian Fumerton-Liu
A local recipe The Northern Greening represents Yale’s latest foray into the wild world of sustainable, delicious, food policy. Unlike institutions such as the Yale Farm, however, the fledgling company takes an entrepreneurial perspective. Founded as a pop-up bake stand last spring by Hallie Meyer, SM ’15, Emma Schmidt, BR ’15, and Aily Zhang, SM ’15, Northern Greening is quickly expanding into a more lucrative and predictable catering market on campus. They’ve inked a deal with the Association of Yale Alumni, and some residential colleges have even contacted them about catering study breaks and similar events. Their plans for expanding remain decidedly local—a philosophy echoed in their approach to food. The food is the star of the show at Northern Greening. Their bake stands, the first of which was held last spring and the second on Aug. 27, have relied on a minimalist aesthetic accented by a Chairigami stand and
baking sheets to hold their goods. At the most recent bake sale, campus gourmands snatched up brown sugar shortbread tartlets with crème fraîche and rhubarb, along with both mini and maxi peach crisps. The fruit was local, and the rest of the ingredients were organic. For their more extensive catering jobs, the trio intends to further its commit to local ingredients. But for now, Schmidt and Meyer, both of whom have professional kitchen experience, have been improvising and inventing their recipes within the constraints of available ingredients. The baking pair then carefully craft their food in the Branford kitchen and serve it fresh. According to Meyer, the mission of the Northern Greening is to “share food literacy” in an immediate fashion that transcends the “limits of an environmental studies classroom.” So far, the mix of rhubarb, brown sugar, and cream has been enough to make a delicious impact. —Gareth Imparato YH Staff —Graphic by Serena Gelb
The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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REVIEWS Animal Collective and Centipede Hype by Alexander Saeedy YH Staff ince the turn of the 21st century, popular music has essentially ruptured into two distinct factions, indie and pop. While this division has its roots in the underground music scene that first blossomed in the late ‘60s, the separation of these two categories of music has itself become a distinct cultural phenomenon made possible by the college student’s best friend: the Internet. While pop music flourishes on the radio and Billboard Top 40 lists, and in pop culture generally, the indie scene rests more squarely within the confines of the blogosphere and small concert halls. But something is changing. As the Internet has claimed an unquestioned dominance over 21st century life, this once exclusive and underground world has come to the forefront of serious popular interest, and the success of indie band Animal Collective reflects that shift. Animal Collective has never gotten significant radio airtime, won a Grammy, or been featured as a guest artist on the latest season of American Idol. Nonetheless, there’s no question that the music world is abuzz with Animal Collective fever. Stereogum called their 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavillion “one of the landmark American albums of the century”—big words for an album that most Americans don’t even know about. Even though the group has been together since 1999, it wasn’t until the 2009 release of Merriweather Post Pavillion that the group would truly ascend to indie stardom. This isn’t to say that their preceding albums were inferior or less sophisticated than MPP, but the nearly universal (and at times, tyrannical) power of indie music blogs like Pitchfork and Stereogum at the close of the last decade made Animal Collective the group to know about. This isn’t an exaggeration—Pitchfork alone has been credited with the success of Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and many more. Still, we must consider the origins of this “indie” fan base and evaluate its lasting power. Merriweather was undeniably a masterpiece, with its grand synth beats, dramatic style, and visionary experimentation, but how long can the moniker “Pitchfork’s Best Album of 2009” sustain interest
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
(Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
in the indie music world? Centipede Hz, Animal Collective’s newest album, will answer this question. Centipede Hz isn’t a particularly groundbreaking album for the group, drawing heavily from the more experimental style of their past. The return of Joshua Dibb (known as Deakin) after a five-year hiatus also suggests a turn back towards Animal Collective’s more humble beginnings. While there are significant strands of Merriweather Post Pavillion’s aesthetic in Centipede Hz, it is by no means its successor. There are the fun and upbeat tracks like “Moonjock” and “Applesauce,” full of the playful expressionism that characterizes much of Animal Collective’s work. Also found in Centipede Hz is an emphasis on exotic and supernatural sounds, hinting to previous songs like “Peacebone” and “Brother Sport.” Centipede Hz makes more with less. Through the album’s bizarre mix of electronic and industrial sounds, the harmonies tend to clash with each other and create a disjointed and alienating ethos that extends through most of the work. However, every song demands to be treated in its own right. “Today’s Supernatural” and “Monkey Riches” emphasize a melodic confrontation of vocals, electronics, and percussion, while still bestowing a distinct sound on every piece. What truly separates Centipede Hz from its predecessors, however, is the fast-paced, overwhelming structure of the album. Each track pummels you in jarring and unexpected ways; there’s never really a chance to take a breath before delving in again. Merriweather’s endearingly soothing tracks, such as “Bluish” or “No More Running,” find no second home in Centipede Hz. After a dizzying 53 minutes, the album closes with “Amanita,” whose lyrics ask unanswered questions and lament, “What have we done, what have we done? / Fantasy is falling down,” all while a tumultuous and scattered hodgepodge of sounds climaxes and abruptly drops into silence. At its core, Centipede Hz wrestles with Animal Collective’s future in a world where they’ve won it big but are destined to disappoint. The critics won’t like Centipede as much as Merriweather. Nonetheless, the album is a good listen and worth your time, but don’t expect the delicacy of Merriweather. Centipede Hz forces Animal Collective to evaluate itself after a decade of creative evolution and growing popular interest— a reflection full of acrimony and frustration. On “Monkey Riches,” Avey Tare sings, “Why am I still looking for a golden age? / You tell me that I ought to have a golden wage… it makes a monkey wretch / it makes a monkey rich.” In a world where fame is gained through the approval of a musical oligarchy, wretchedness and wealth seem to define exactly where Animal Collective has found itself after a dizzying odyssey of success and an uncertain future in the age of the Internet.
Movie: Lawless
Food: Tomatillo
Lawless chronicles the bloody hijinks of a team of brothers producing illegal moonshine liquor during the American Prohibition (think Scarface meets Roadhouse). I was excited for this film primarily because Tom Hardy appears in it, and he doesn’t disappoint: Hardy’s performance further secures his status as one of the most talented actors in American cinema today. Similar to his character in Warrior, here Hardy portrays the stoic tough guy. Just like in The Dark Knight Rises, he communicates equally well with his eyes and body movements as he does with his gravelly voice. Shia LaBeouf, a regular target of criticism and parody for his acting in the Transformers series, plays the role of Hardy’s scrawny younger brother well. The cinematography, as well as the set and costume design are, in a word, flawless. For all the excellence in the acting and historical authenticity, however, the film does not probe deeply enough into the supposedly true story of the Bondurant family and the rebellious Virginia moonshine culture. With all the rich dialogue provided by screenwriter Nick Cave, the end product is essentially a film whose plot is held together by its acts of violence, like an old Western. You’ll be pleased if you are looking to watch burly Hardy kicking ass, but I left the theater feeling a lack of closure. Lawless is slick and entertaining, but largely a missed opportunity for a modern western hit. —Jackson Blum
I just have to be honest: I am not part of the cult of Chipotle. As in, I have eaten in that hallowed establishment fewer than ten times. I thus was able to approach Tomatillo, the latest “taco joint” on Elm Street, with an open mind. The prices are reasonable (around $7 for a burrito) and the décor is that weird pseudo-Mexican style that seems to be all the rage these days—giant forks and woven wall hangings. My chicken burrito was delicious. The guacamole was fresh, the chicken was juicy, and the cilantro-lime rice was fluffy and wellcooked. They were too generous with the tomatillo salsa for my taste, but the burrito remained flavorful despite the extreme spice. My friends had similarly positive experiences with the burrito bowl and tacos, but the $4.25 strawberry-avocado smoothie contained just the barest trace of avocado and was deemed disappointing. Ultimately, everyone I was with agreed that Chipotle is a slightly better experience, though I honestly couldn’t taste the difference. Despite this, I predict Tomatillo is a keeper, because apart from the Moe’s near TD, there aren’t any cheap Tex-Mex restaurants around. In conclusion, if you want real Latin American food, go to Ay! Arepa. If you have a Chipotle fetish, drive to Milford. But if all you want is a late-night spicy bowl of cilantro-lime rice, Tomatillo is for you. —Alisha Jarwala
Music: Two Door Cinema Club The sophomore album: It’s a hurdle every band must face, the eternal challenge of striking the perfect balance between sticking to a formula and venturing into unknown musical territory. Two Door Cinema Club’s latest offering, Beacon, straddles this tension awkwardly: Songs like “Handshake” and “Someday” might as well be bonus tracks from Tourist History, their quick tempos and surfing guitar lines easily recalling the first album (“Handshake” notably repurposes the bassline from “Come Back Home”), while other tracks deviate slightly from the norm. “Settle” finds the trio in triple meter, and new producer Jacknife Lee peppers songs with quirky details, like the sparkling synth sequence at the end of “The World is Watching.” Unsurprisingly, the best song, “Beacon,” is the one that finds the right equilibrium. Retaining the fun of the first album and adding the dynamics that were missing from it—a lovely electric piano break, for example—makes it a clear highlight. Beacon has its missteps, but luckily it’s all held together by Alex Trimble’s trembling vocals. He sounds like he’s hanging off a cliff, as if he’s not confident in anything he’s saying. Trimble provides the charm to unite an album that, though less cohesive than its predecessor, is a fine entry into the Irish band’s discography. —Will Adams
Music: Mount Eerie From his days as The Microphones to his more recent work as Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum’s music has always sounded like the Pacific Northwest: brumes and cascades, creaking lumber and waves of noise. Elverum is an alembic for that fertile Cascadian scene; he distills twee’s honesty from its stupidity, lo-fi’s intimacy from its sloppiness, black metal’s roaring excess from its sappy cheese. His output is consistent and coherent enough that I’m willing to be generous with his more indulgent albums—like his latest, Ocean Roar—because they bring into relief the restrained accomplishment of his triumphs (The Glow Pt. II or this year’s Clear Moon). While Ocean Roar contains some quieter Mt. Eerie fare—the beautiful title track is a standout in that genre—it tends to alternate between dark soundscapes and wrenching fuzz. As with much of his recent work, Elverum here echoes Norwegian idiot savant Burzum. Burzum is a dangerous predecessor: he’s a fascist pig who somehow released a couple of excellent, genre-defining albums before sinking into a morass of tired hate and vapid synth-pad noodling. Elverum has as yet adopted only Burzum’s best elements—crushing walls of guitar and punishing drums—but the instrumental tracks on Ocean Roar ring of ambient dross (especially lamentable are the diddling flutes, ripped from the “mystical” scene of a National Geographic special). Ocean Roar is generally solid. It coheres as an album, and it’s hard for me to write a bad thing about Phil Elverum, but one hopes his next effort will show a little more restraint. —Dylan Kenny
The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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BULLBLOG BLACKLIST To hug? To wave? To head-nod? How was your summer?zzzzzzz We were born first. Go find somewhere else to shop.
I’m six months older than them, goddamit! 50% attack on Ricky; 50% not-so-subtle declaration of one’s own intelligence; 100% nauseating.
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Freshmen wearing clothes like us You’re shopping, that’s cool. Just don’t be a diva about it.
school greetings Being asked if I’m a freshman
Dramatic exits from seminars
That group of people shopping all the same classes as you
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Santorumrelated Facebook statuses FellFe
Durfee’s prices increased over the summer
The Yale Bookstore We get it. You are a monopoly owned by a monopoly that doesn’t care about our happiness.
The activities bazaar You don’t know their names but you do know an awkward amount about their academic interests.
In a captive lunch swipe market, this feels exploitative.
Just unpleasant enough to overcome feeling guilty about not stopping when asked whether I care about cancer.
The Yale Herald (Sept. 7, 2012)
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