The Yale Herald Volume LIV, Number 4 New Haven, Conn. Friday, September 28th, 2012
Dead end
From the staff
So this guy I know—this professor, rather—he gives me this deadline. He says it loud and clear, you know, he puts it in ink on the syllabus. It’s Thursday night, 11:59 p.m. That’s when I’ve got to turn this paper in, see. I can’t tell you why 11:59 and not just midnight, but I suspect it’s got to do with the explicitness of numbers. They’re not very forgiving, those numbers. They say: midnight won’t do. So I’ve been working on this paper all week, as I’m sure you have, too. And I’ll tinker with this, tinker with that. Type an outline and then retype it with Roman numerals in place of bullet points. But I know as I’m fiddling around with it, I know exactly when I’ll finish it up and rinse my hands. Because I’ve got those numbers—the 1, the 1, the 5, the 9—looming there, monumental and unmoving like a brick wall. 11:59, The Wall at the doorstep of the Witching Hour. I ran into it. Didn’t go past, just turned my seven-and-a-half double-spaced pages right then and there. Right at 11:59. The wall, for those of you who don’t know, is a real monster of a thing. But you haven’t seen a wall—or read about one, for that matter—until you’ve read this week’s cover story. Nicolas Medina Mora, SM ’13, biked to New Haven’s Brookside housing project, separated from neighboring Hamden by a massive wall. The story explores the way structures like this wall limit the flow of people and resources into and out of designated areas of the city. Also inside, an interview with the frontman of Antlers, as well as with the frontman of Alpha Delta Pizza. A feature on Gateway Community College, an essay on the lived
The Yale Herald Volume LIV, Number 4 New Haven, Conn. Friday, Sept. 28, 2012
EDITORIAL STAFF: Editor-in-chief: Emily Rappaport Managing Editors: Emma Schindler, John Stillman Executive Editor: Lucas Iberico Lozada 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 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 Webmaster: Navy Encinias Bullblog Editor-in-chief: John Stillman Bullblog Managing Editor: David Gore Bullblog Associate Editors: Alisha Jarwala, Grace Lindsey, Cindy Ok, Eamon Ronan, Jesse Schreck, Maude Tisch The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office.
experience of the bassoon, and much more. Thanks for joining us, John Stillman Managing Editor
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 published 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.
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
Cover by Lian Fumerton-Liu YH Staff & Zachary Schiller YH Staff
IN THIS ISSUE
COVER 12 Nicolás Medina Mora, SM ‘13, goes to the Brookside housing project to talk to residents on both sides of the fence between Hamden and New Haven.
VOICES 6 7
8
FEATURES
Cody Kahoe, CC ‘15, sits down with Cengiz Kilic, owner of Alpha Delta Pizza.
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Gabe Levine, TC ‘14, reflects on learning to play the bassoon and the role that classical music plays in his life.
Lara Sokoloff, TC ’16, explores the possibility of collaboration between Yale and Gateway Community College.
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A. Grace Steig, SM ‘15, examines the ins and outs of the newly-resurrected ROTC program at Yale.
OPINION: Marc DeWitt, ES ‘15, examines Yale’s institutional ideology. Kohler Bruno, SM ‘16, connects Mitt Romney’s 47% to the G OP.
REVIEWS
CULTURE 18
Devon Geyelin, TC ‘16, looks at the distinctive qualities of Yale’s architecture major. Also: student band The Teaspoons, and zines on campus.
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Colin Groundwater, ES ‘15, talks to the frontman of the Antlers. Also: deadmau5, Trouble With the Curve, For a Good Time, Call..., and Mumford & Sons.
The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 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 razzle dazzle football.
CREDIT/D/FAIL Cr:
Eating alone in dining halls More often than not, I eat alone in the dining halls. This phenomenon has prompted friends and enemies alike to label me as “strange,” “creepy,” and (my personal favorite) “misanthropic.” Well, let me let you in on a little secret: eating alone is awesome. Besides affording you time to reflect or meditate or whatever, eating alone provides you with endless opportunities to observe the lives of your peers. Why limit myself to one conversation while eating with one other person when I could listen to five while eating alone? While you’re stuck listening to your companion complain about his mountain of coursework, I’m having the time of my life cruising the conversations of my peers. To my left, a group of freshman girls debates the relative merits of American Apparel and Salvation Army in regard to Safety Dance attire. To my right, a male student informs his fellow diners that he and his TF are totally going to hook up, if not this semester, then, like, definitely next. Behind me, another student agonizes over the choice between a bowl of ice cream and a piece of fruit. My ears are in paradise. —Eamon Ronan YH Staff
D:
The Yale bubble Last week, I found myself, along with some friends, on one of Connecticut’s beaches on the Long Island Sound for the first time in my Yale career. It was, surprisingly, quite beautiful. We laughed, we sunbathed, we ate burritos. The weather was serene, and as we left the beach around sunset, I began to think about all that New Haven and its surrounding areas have to offer. I cursed the stupid, unnecessary entity that is the Yale bubble. It promotes narrow-mindedness! It traps students within a tiny area! It destroys town-gown relations! As I fell asleep that night, I vowed not to be limited by some irrationally manufactured constraint. The next morning, I arose feeling determined and refreshed. I opened up my email and was promptly greeted by an email from Chief Ronnell Higgins, informing me of some student who had been punched off a bike or threatened with a knife on the periphery of campus. Suddenly, I am thankful for having my wallet, for having a body without knife wounds, and, begrudgingly, for having the Yale bubble. Staff —Eamon Ronan
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
F: Student representation in the presidential search Don’t get me wrong—I love Brandon Levin as much as the next guy (a lot), but the overall role of undergraduate students on the Presidential Search Committee is abysmal. The University’s alleged reasoning for the lack of undergraduate students on the committee—“No one or two students can represent the full diversity of the Yale student body”—borders on comedic, until you realize… Wait, this is an extremely important decisionmaking process that will not only affect Yale’s trajectory as a university but also the lives of countless students. I came to Yale because the University prided itself on the success and well-being of its undergraduates. The University’s decision to devalue our opinions makes me wonder: What is this? Harvard? — Eamon Ronan YH Staff
BY THE
BOOM/BUST INCOMING: POTUS debates With the first debate coming up — it’ll be moderated by Jim Lehrer on October 3rd — the race is about to get real. Prepare some witticisms (we’ll be referring to Clint Eastwood’s empty chair performance, don’t even think about stealing our material) and get ready to plan to watch but really just kind of end up arguing with your friends in front of the TV. Even though we have our expectations, we still can’t help but hope that Mitt will ride in on Rafalca.
OUTGOING: NFL Refs On the 26th, the NFL reached an agreement with its refs on a labor deal, ending a lockout that had gained huge public notice after a botched call by underprepared stand-ins cost the Packers a victory that should have been theirs. Now it seems like football fans can have their real refs back and nonfootball fans can stop hearing about football.
NUMBERS
#
TYNG CUP STANDINGS 1. Pierson 2. Saybrook 3. Trumbull 4. Jonathan Edwards 5. Timothy Dwight 6. Silliman 7. Davenport 8. Ezra Stiles 9. Branford 10. Berkeley 11. Morse 12. Calhoun
148.5 141 129 126 124 122 109 101 84.5 83.5 77.5 27.5
INDEX 82 Percentage of American teen pregnancies that are unplanned.
TOP FIVE
Small talk topics to replace “how was your summer?”
5 Number of states whose laws allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception on the basis of moral or ethical objections.
49.99 Cost, in dollars, of Plan B One-Step.
5 4 3 2 1
Presidential search — transparency please! GHeav shenanigans (always a fail-safe option)
Midterms already?! So much work! Safety Dance: funny/weird/no recollections. Ugh, can’t believe it’s already fall.
95 Percent effectiveness of Plan B One-Step, if taken within 24 hours of unprotected sex.
14 Number of New York City public schools dispensing free emergency contraception to students.
567 Number of students who received emergency contraception through this program during the 2011-12 school year.
Sources: 1, 2) Guttmacher Institute 3) Walgreens 4) emergencybirthcontrol.com 5) Associated Press 6) TIME —Maude Tisch YH Staff The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
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SITTING DOWN WITH CENGIZ KILIC by Cody Kahoe (Julie Reiter/YH Staff) Cengiz Kilic is the owner of Alpha Delta Pizza at 371 Elm St. Born in the city of Trabzon, on the Black Sea in eastern Turkey. Kilic has lived in Connecticut for more than 20 years. The Herald went to see him in his office at Alpha Delta, a small room that almost disappears behind stacks of supplies and pizza boxes. On the walls hangs a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a decorative Turkish flag, and the jerseys of Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer club. With well-known smells wafting through the door, Kilic sat down to talk about the Wenzel, Turkey, and his 20 years serving Yalies. YH: What brought you to New Haven? CK: I came to America from Turkey over 20 years ago. My uncle was living in Bridgeport, and so I came up to live with him. I was looking for a job, and I met the previous boss who bought this place when it was still called Bulldog Pizza. I asked for a job and they hired me. Eventually he left and I became the owner. YH: How did the Wenzel come to be? CK: The Wenzel is named for one Yale student who used to come here every week named Eric Wenzel. He would come and order a chicken cutlet sub, but he would ask for lots of hot sauce on it. Then, something like seven or eight years ago, he got in a bad car accident. He was in really bad shape, in a coma for three weeks. We were waiting and hoping, but everybody just said, at this point, pray for him. Somehow he lived, but in the meantime, while he was still in the hospital, we put his name up on the board as the sandwich he always ordered, just for his memory. YH: Curative powers aside, what makes the Wenzel so good? CK: We use good chicken. You can’t find that kind of chicken any other place. And the hot sauce is special, too. It’s like the chicken, very expensive. It doesn’t burn in your stomach, it doesn’t make you sick. You can eat as much as you want; it’s like honey. YH: Is there much of a Turkish community in New Haven? CK: Well, at my high school in Turkey, there were 57 people in my class. All 57 are now here. We graduated the same day, we all came to America, and we live here [on the Eastern seaboard]. We’re all connected. YH: What do you think of Turkey’s recent involvement in the Syrian conflict? CK: Syria is our neighbor. You have to negotiate well with your neighbor, because you need them all the time. We do so much business with them, with their country. It’s stupid to fight with your next-door neighbor. I think that the Turk-
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
ish prime minister has some kind of virus. He goes to kiss Gadhafi ; he falls. He goes to kiss Mubarak; he falls. He goes to kiss Bashar al-Assad; something happens to him. I think they must have injected some kind of virus in him to get them down. [Laughs.] Whoever he kisses over there, they fall down! And the Turkish Prime Minister, [Europe and America] like him because he does what they need, not necessarily what the Turkish people need. YH: So you’re not a fan? CK: If you ask me, he’s a toy of Europe and the USA. Believe me though, I like the USA. I’m not saying anything about the USA. I’ve been in this country about 25 years, and I am so happy. I got my U.S. citizenship, and I go everywhere with it. Americans, they are the strongest guys in the world, but nobody likes Americans, even in my country. I don’t know why. Even in Turkey, I don’t use my Turkish passport. I use my American passport because I’m a U.S. citizen. I paid 40 dollars for the visa. I get over to Turkey and they ask me, “Why would you pay 40 dollars?” And I say, “Because I am an American. I would be happy to pay it.” YH: What social differences struck you the most when you came to America? CK: In the U.S., it feels like there is no social life for us. You work 12 hours. You go home for an hour. You have to sleep. Then you come back to work again. You get one day off, and what you have to do then is wash clothes, do shopping, do this, this, this. In Turkey, people don’t work like that, but they still survive. In the Turkish elections, if you buy a guy a packet of cigarettes, he will vote for you. [The educated people] don’t vote for him. But most of the people are poor. So they give them a packet of cigarettes, some salt, some sugar, oil, and they vote for them. That’s the way they think over there. They have no education. Whatever you tell them to do, they will do it. Not most of them, but some. But in the U.S., politicians can’t just do that. YH: How does this relate to the ongoing problems with the Kurdish population? CK: We have a problem. Actually, if you ask me, we don’t have that problem. My father’s mother is a Kurd. We don’t have a Kurdish problem, but they make those problems. YH: Who makes them, then? CK: Who makes them? I don’t know. You find out and let me know. [Laughs.] But you know, if you want to be prime minister of Turkey, you have to act against those
people. If you go to Greece and you want to be president, you act against the Turks. You understand what I’m saying? That’s the way it is, my friend. The Kurds are our brothers. They are good people. Whatever we have, they have it. One head, two hands, two legs, they walk, they sing, they dance, they read, they go to school. Why are we against them? They’re not terrorists, but they have no money, my friend. Listen, you suffer. You have no money, no job, no father, no mother. What are you going to do? If you come over here, and you ask me, “One slice of pizza. Please, I am hungry.” If I don’t give you pizza, what are you going to do? You’re going to break the windows. People have to eat, my friend, people have to eat. YH: Can you recall any particularly interesting late night encounters with students? CK: I’ll be honest with you: Yale kids are very intelligent people. They are very good people. YH: Sometimes! CK: Well, no, of course if you’re drunk, in the mind, everybody’s fucked up. That’s a different situation. But I’ve been here about 20 years, and I’ve never seen one bad person here from Yale. They are respectful. They pay for what they get. That’s it, that’s all we ask for. What are they going to do? They don’t have to hug me. But, you know what they do? A couple years ago, we found we were missing eight chairs. They took them. These kids, they were having a party. They took them, but then they brought them back after four or five days. They said, “We took them.” I just said, “Okay.” I mean, you just say, “Thank you!” [Laughs.] YH: What changes have you seen in people at Yale over your 20-some years here? CK: I don’t see many changes. So many people come by, my friend. So many. I walk down the street, and a guy will come behind me, clap me on the back and say, “Hey! Alpha Delta man!” He recognizes me. That is always a surprise. I was in Istanbul, and there was a British guy who graduated from Yale and got a job there. He came to me and said “You motherfucker! What are you doing here!” He yelled at me and gave me a hug. He didn’t mean anything bad. That’s the way he was talking over here also, you know. [Laughs.] Alpha Delta maybe looks like a small place, but all the kids come here. And I know maybe one day, maybe 20 years later, one of these guys may be secretary of state, who knows? Maybe he’ll run for president. Who knows? —Interview condensed by the author
A BASSOON OF MY OWN by Gabe Levine I think I played piano from the ages of seven to nine, but I don’t recall studying Bach or Satie. The only pages I can remember gracing my instrument at home were those of The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes. The half-hour that my parents gently suggested I practice each day was (when I couldn’t slip away to Calvinball and Spaceman Spiff) closer to this Yom Kippur fast than any pedagogical exercise known to God or man. And oh, yes, I did wail and I did beat my breast. I had chosen the piano for myself, over the violin, my older brother’s instrument, but the choice meant little to me. Music meant little to me—I was seven years old, after all. Three years didn’t change that, so when my parents sensed that perhaps the musical commissar from Petrograd who gave me lessons every week (the Internet tells me she is in fact a “splendid” pianist of “effortless” technique) was growing impatient with the less-than-military precision of my scales, they let me quit. Two years later, and again I was avoiding practicing, this time on the clarinet. With my first foray into music lessons, one might have thought that my loving parents were trying only to secure me every advantage (so goes the lingo) on my way to a respectable legal or medical practice. But that was a ruse. My elementary school offered everyone classes on clarinet, flute, trumpet, violin, and cello. My parents were not terribly subtle about which one I was to choose. Here was the plan: I was to study clarinet for two years. I was to practice more than my friends, and take private lessons outside of school. I was to excel on the instrument. I was (they hoped) to enjoy it. After those two years, I could stick with clarinet, if I really wanted, or I could switch to my dad’s instrument, the one he’d studied at Juilliard before becoming a symphony conductor: the bassoon. The bassoon apologia is an obscure subgenre of music criticism, but like any established literary form, it has its own tropes and conventions. The critic begins by lamenting the neglect the bassoon suffers in the imagination of composers and listeners alike: “The Bassoon! Such an underutilized instrument in music, normally! Love!” (Perez Hilton—actually.) She will then name the handful of pieces featuring the bassoon that have popped up in
movies, or are known beyond the concert hall (e.g. Dukas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from Fantasia, Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from prog rock arrangements), and bewail what NPR critic Lauren Silverman terms the “bassoon as buffoon” treatment these represent. From there, the critic will say that, though the instrument looks like “someone turned a bong into a saxophone” (Silverman’s charming words, again) the bassoon can in fact be a lyrical, versatile instrument. Indeed, even Kanye West can throw “some bassoon on this muthafucka,” if one believes his Twitter account. Perhaps the critic’s inspiration will be a performance of the Elgar Romance, a video by the Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet, two members of which are M.M. candidates with my teacher at the School of Music here. But regardless of its particular content, the bassoon apologia inevitably fails. Yes, some composers have exploited the bassoon’s low register and round, warm sonority, and yes, the solo repertoire for the instrument is limited at best. My experience of playing bassoon, however, hardly resembles that stereotype—one which I suspect journalists spend more time debunking than anyone spends thinking about anyway. When I play and when I listen, even if the music is Grieg or Dukas, I don’t picture trolls snarling “Slagt ham! Slagt ham!” or Walt Disney’s animated brooms. In a good performance, my body and mind go into hedonistic overdrive, undisturbed by image or memory, theory or morality. I delight in inner voices and in bass lines, revealed through meticulous rehearsal or careful listening. I delight in simply singing through my instrument, in a solo like Scheherazade or Tchaik 4 (the synecdoche a product of years of practice and anticipation). IN THE 35 YEARS BETWEEN WHEN MY dad “gave up music to become a conductor” (quoth my bassoon teacher) and when he first showed me how to put the instrument together, my dad’s bassoon had resided in closets in New Haven, New York, Boston, and New York. It had first been played by Manny Zegler, the Principal Bassoonist of the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, then sold to my dad, whose lessons with Zegler ended strictly on the hour with the calling of a cuckoo clock. Now, at the age of 13—yes, two years after I’d started on the clarinet—I was struggling to produce my first notes on that very bassoon. My two years on the clarinet had gone according to plan. I had shown some marginal talent, and some marginal willingness to practice. I had taken lessons privately, and I had even enjoyed them, on the occasions when I was able to play through “Voi che sapete” without
squeaking. But while I had developed a tween affinity for the Beatles and the Doors, even (I shudder at the thought) AC/DC, no matter how many of my dad’s concerts I attended, I got no kick from Verdi or Brahms. There was, however, a certain ich weiß nicht was about das Fagott, as the Germans so charmingly call the bassoon. Perhaps it was the Teutonic heft of the instrument itself, or of its sound; perhaps it was that I was more naturally gifted on bassoon than on clarinet; perhaps it was the patrimonial claim I could lay to my axe. Whatever the reason, while it hardly occurred to me to listen to Vivaldi’s 27 bassoon concerti, I was—perhaps to my surprise—willing, happy even, to practice them. An hour could pass without my needing Calvin and Hobbes (or whatever the 13-year-old’s equivalent was) to distract me. OVER THE NEXT SEVEN YEARS, I FELL IN love. The first stirrings had come when I laid eyes on those eight feet of German maple tubing. Years past and I fell into a blissful domestic routine, ending my day next to the piano I’d abandoned, refining my performance of a work of Telemann or Bach. Eventually it came time for me to audition for an orchestra, and that meant learning the orchestral repertoire. And so my dad bought me Herbert von Karajan’s recording of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony at the old Tower Records by Lincoln Center. I didn’t win the audition that year, but through Prokofiev, I discovered Stravinsky, and soon The Rite of Spring had surpassed “Electric Relaxation” on my iTunes play count. The next year, I worked my way into the New York Youth Symphony, and after having played in public for only small crowds with one wind quintet, I suddenly found myself on the stage of Carnegie Hall, three times a year. But whatever nerves I had in auditions disappeared on the big stage under the bright lights. The stage wasn’t important to me; I was just thrilled to be playing Firebird. While I spent my school-year Sundays at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights rehearsing, I started taking my summers to refine my technique, discovering new musical imaginations under new teachers. Junior and senior years arrived, and at a high school where everybody seemed to be applying to the same five colleges, I was under no illusions that the bassoon wasn’t one of the few instruments that got casually mentioned in admissions viewbooks: “There’s no typical Elite University student. We might be looking for someone who’s hiked the Appalachian Trail, or who can join the bassoon section of our orchestra.” But while I was proud of what I’d achieved, the simple fact that I played bassoon never felt like an achievement. And even admis-
sion to Yale wasn’t a stronger motivation than Mozart. The achievements have come in rehearsal and in concert with the Yale Symphony Orchestra, in sharpening an attack or fixing a balance with my wind quintet. So why don’t I dream— why have I rarely dreamt—of becoming a professional bassoonist? Of playing in the Musikverein in Vienna or Concertgebouw in Amsterdam? I don’t know. I don’t know myself that well. But I can guess. Playing music, and listening to music, has always been for me a matter of beauty, not truth. And while literature and visual art beg me to dissect their viscera, I am ambivalent about music theory and musicology. Of course one can become a better musician through formal study of harmony, counterpoint, and history, but for me, those subjects have been only occasionally interesting, and usually only instrumentally so. In any case, studying music, for me, isn’t making it. It’s a curious psychological phenomenon, and one that might not stand up to analytical rigor: music, as the purest aesthetic I can experience, exists apart from me. It doesn’t inform my ethics, and it doesn’t make me a sharper thinker. I’ve developed no muscles playing the bassoon, except for some odd ones above my right thumb. I’d be no musician if I thought music couldn’t do more for the world than entertain students and seniors in Woolsey and Carnegie. I don’t need to wax rhapsodic about how music can uplift the downtrodden and unite the estranged. That’s all true, and far from trivial. But my psyche restrains me. I remain a bassoonist, humble and hedonistic. I live (or at least try to) by motivations ethical, intellectual, and interpersonal. But artists, no less than doctors or lawyers, face ethical dilemmas. While music can overpower me, it can’t make me forget my fullness as a person. I don’t scorn those for whom music is everything—I envy them. For me, it is one thing. One thing I spend hours thinking about, playing, listening to, singing and whistling as I walk through Cross Campus. But still, one thing, singular and apart. Find your passion, find your passion and follow it, says the wise man at the podium. Well, I have a passion. But it’s not enough. —graphic by Madeline Butler The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
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OPINION THE YALIE, THE COMMODITY by Marc DeWitt I used to write poetry. They were these cheesy romantic sonnets for my high school girlfriend. This came to mind as I sat down to write my college essays two years ago. In Yale’s supplementary application, we were all asked to elaborate on what we believed to be missing from our Common Applications. For me, that seemed like a daunting task. I’d grown up in three countries and traveled the world! I had launched a high school debate team and written for the citywide newspaper. Yale would surely love to hear about all this—but what about the experiences that weren’t so marketable? For instance, the girl I wrote the poetry for had cheated on me after we’d been together for nearly a year. I’m still affected by her betrayal; I still struggle to trust others. Adolescence was so full of joy and suffering, what could we possibly write about in only 500 words. Of course, the answer was not so difficult. We wrote about our achievements, our blue ribbons, our Siemens prizes, and we were accepted. Admissions officers and guidance counselors instructed us to “package ourselves” by presenting a coherent vision of our Self in just two brief compositions. We strived to personalize every aspect of the application, thinking long and hard about how to answer, “What would you do with a free afternoon?” with 150 words that would complement our essay topics. Ultimately, the college application process asked us to overlook the nuances of our authentic individuality and make our Self something sharply defined, comprehensible, distinguishable, evaluated in terms of skills and abilities, and therefore: controllable. The pressure to be marketable only intensified upon arriving on campus. In the orientation performance Kalei-
doscope, upperclassmen from a range of backgrounds and interests speak to the freshmen class about how everyone at Yale is unique in his or her own way. The message is that each undergraduate will find a personalized niche on campus where he or she will excel. Kaleidoscope captured the prevailing mentality at Yale: we continue to “package ourselves” (especially through self-promotion on Facebook) in search of special recognition, thus reducing nuance into a commodity.
And naturally, freshmen are always amazed with how unique and awesome everyone seems. A football bro who does math tutoring! A Spanish kid who parties a lot, but also does DS! We stamp our genuine Self with a virtual identity; we brand ourselves to excel. But sooner or later, this pressure starts to break us down. We begin to represent ourselves in a distorted marketplace of human commodities, worrying about which social institutions will accept us, or which organizations we’ll run by junior year. Everywhere on campus, there is an injunction to “be someone.” This mass personalization perpetuates a pathological state of self-improvement, which only further
alienates us from our communities and authentic individualities. And then we contrive intimacy through hook-ups and seek escape in jungle juice and Natty Lite. This summer I worked as a teaching assistant at a summer business institute in Los Angeles. The director of the program embraced a radical liberalism, encouraging the summer scholars to view themselves as “the CEOs of their lives.” At one point, she claimed that everyone was “individually responsible for their own reality.” To succeed, we were encouraged to construct “a distinctive brand,” and even a personal slogan. None could outdo her own: “Dream big, follow your heart, and have no limitations!” Sure, my boss was at times a parody of self-improvement. But her perversion revealed the dominant ideology at Yale in its nakedness; her bluntness exclaimed that the emperor had no clothes. I don’t make this critique from a position of self-righteousness, but rather from my own vulnerability. As a freshman, I stressed over board elections, applied anxiously for summer internships, and schemed to gain a place in Charles Hill’s DS seminar. I was seduced by the access to power at Yale. Concerned with developing my unique excellence, I streamlined my interests and abandoned my love for poetry. I suppressed my genuine individuality, and not surprisingly, I felt a certain emptiness. After a summer of reflection, I have begun my sophomore year with radical changes. I’m not always “on the go” between “grabbing a meal” and rushing off to the next thing on my iCal. I would rather spend my time as I did last night: smoking hookah with a couple friends and enjoying the new Bob Dylan album. I find fulfillment in sincerity, in showing compassion to others around me, and ultimately to myself. And I write poetry again, even if it’s still shitty. —graphic by Lian Fumerton-Liu YH
WRONG, BUT IN TOUCH by Kohler Bruno The Obama campaign’s Twitter was aflutter at the news. A video had been released that showed Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, discussing the 47 percent of the country he said pays no federal income tax. “My job is not to worry about those people,” Romney said. The video was posted on Mon., Sept. 17, in the afternoon; the next morning, during a span of two hours and 42 minutes, the Obama campaign tweeted about it five times. I know it’s been almost two weeks since the video was leaked, but I’m not ready to let it go. I think this video is the most important thing that has happened in this presidential campaign so far because I think this is about the fabric of the Republican Party today. When Politico asked John McCain in August 2008 how many houses he owned, he answered, “I think—I’ll have my staff get [back] to you.” Obviously, that was bad because average Americans know how many houses they own—in fact, most can count the number one on hand, with one finger. It made McCain look out of touch, and it hurt him. This is different. This video doesn’t exactly make Romney look out of touch—a lot of Americans already feel he’s somewhat out of touch with their interests. Instead it makes him look mean and
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
cynical, and, in a perverse way, completely in touch with the problems his party faces. Well, sort of. On the one hand, his comments are just incorrect. He insisted that those 47 percent of people who don’t pay income taxes—the freeloader class, if you will—will vote for Obama “no matter what.” But more than one-fifth of Romney’s 47 percent are retirees, a group that, according to the most recent Gallup Poll, prefers Romney by almost 10 percentage points. But who are the other “47 percenters?” More than half of them are Americans who still give up a part of their earnings for payroll taxes. An example of this “non-income-tax-payer” taxpayer, given by the Tax Policy Center, is a couple with two children who together make less than $26,400 annually, and still pay the payroll tax. Then there are the real freeloaders: the 6.9 percent of American households who make less than $20,000 a year. These are the people who, as Romney said, “believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to youname-it.” And this is where Romney got it right. The Republican Party, as it stands today, does not care about these people—these plebeians with the gall to feel entitled to food and medicine. The Republican Party today is the party of
invasive vaginal scans, “legitimate rape,” and tax reductions for the rich to be financed by increased burdens on the freeloader class. So, in that sense, Romney was right that the GOP has a problem on its hands with these 47 percenters. More and more, the Republican Party looks like a group of men who cannot be bothered with the petty problems of the poor— why would the 47 percenters vote for them? The real hypocrisy here, though, has to do with Romney’s campaign platform, a major part of which advocates tax decreases for the top bracket of income earners. The rich guys, it turns out, wish they were part of the 47 percent. But Romney isn’t part of the freeloader class—he’s worth about a quarter billion dollars—and the Romney camp knows that releasing too much information about their candidate’s tax returns would bring into sharp focus the magnitude of his wealth. Mitt Romney does pay a tax on his income: 14 percent in 2011. So I have to disagree with Kanye West, who raps in his new song, “I’m just trying to protect my stack / Mitt Romney don’t pay no tax / Mitt Romney don’t pay no tax.” To be fair, Kanye, Mitt does pay some tax. He just wishes he didn’t.
Hours Lunch Mon - Sat: 11:30 am - 3:00 pm Sun: 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm Dinner Sun - Thu: 5:00 pm - 10:30 pm Fri - Sat: 5:00 pm - 11:00 pm
148 York Street New Haven, CT 06511 203-776-8644 www.zaroka.com Silliman’s 2012 Safety Dance!
WHEN? Saturday, September 29, 2012 WHAT TIME? 10:00PM - 1:00AM WHERE? Commons 1. Ticket sales (at all residential college dining halls except TD) at dinner Friday and Saturday, 9/28 and 9/29. 2. Tickets will NOT be sold at the door. 3. One entrance to the dance: Beinecke Plaza Door 4. Doors close at midnight - be there! 5. The best laser light show ever! 6. Wear 80s gear!
Every Day Lunch Buffet Sunday special brunch with North and South Indian food
Crosstown connection Yale and Gateway by Lara Sokoloff oughly 800 people gathered in front of the massive glass and concrete facade of Gateway Community College on Fri., Aug. 29 to witness the official ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the opening of Yale’s newest neighboring institution. The futuristic campus was abuzz with campus tours, speeches by school administrators, and platters upon platters of food prepared by both the cafeteria and local New Haven shops. Located in downtown New Haven, the new Gateway Community College campus combines the student bodies from its previous two campuses, located in North Haven and Long Wharf, respectively. Situated on the corner of Temple and Church streets, the 360,000-square foot complex is a two-year community college with an enrollment of around 14,000. Many of Gateway’s students are in their late 20s and are part-time. Yale’s gothic arches, which loom large in the Elm City, are now accompanied by Gateway’s modern facilities. As Mayor
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
DeStefano remarked at the school’s opening: “While there’s another college downtown, Gateway College is the first college [people] see... And it is the college that will serve our families, our businesses, our possibilities and opportunities.” Now that Gateway and Yale are just blocks away from each other, the question of how, if at all, the two institutions and student bodies will develop richer and stronger connections is unavoidable. But it should be noted that, for years, Gateway and Yale have been connected: the two institutions have an informal financial relationship, and offer a handful of programs that allow the student bodies to interact on a small scale. In this moment of transition, as both schools wonder what this change will mean for their relationship going forward, it’s worth looking at the foundation on which they are building. TWENTY-YEAR-OLD GATEWAY FRESHMAN Lateef Alston heads up College Street towards Sheffield Sterling Strathcona Hall—more com-
monly known as SSS—in a sea of students, many of them in Yale’s navy and white apparel. Endless glowing computer screens greet
gram that was set up by Yale professor of management and political science Douglas Rae over a decade ago. The program
Yale’s gothic arches, which loom large in the Elm City, are now accompanied by Gateway’s modern facilities. him as he enters the lecture hall. He takes his seat and waits for the class to begin. Alston attends “New Haven and the American City” Tuesday and Thursday mornings, a lecture taught by professors Alan Plattus, SY ’76 and Elihu Rubin, SY ’99. “I feel a little behind, I guess, because [Yale students] got laptops and they taking notes down on them,” he said. “I’ve never really been a note taker.” Altson is taking advantage of a pro-
allows Gateway and Quinnipiac students to attend the biweekly lectures alongside Yale undergraduates, though they do not participate in weekly discussion sections. Currently, “New Haven and the American City” is the only class open to Gateway students. Daniel Courcey, a Gateway professor who helped lay much of the groundwork for the partnership, said it is great for Yale students and Gateway students to gain exposure to one
another. Courcey recalled one lecture when Plattus was discussing housing projects and a Gateway student raised his hand and said, “I live in the projects.” Courcey said he thinks that it’s important for Yale students to hear these perspectives, which not always but often are foreign to them. The class is comprised of about 35 Gateway students, 90 Yale students, and 25 Quinnipiac students, and is also open to the New Haven community. According to the syllabus, the class explores topics from “urban development, planning and architecture to questions of politics and governance, [and] uses New Haven as a window to the American city.” Under the high ceilings of SSS, a partnership between the two neighboring institutions of higher education is given expression on the smallest of scales, as students sit next to one another, listen
Gateway students commenting on what Yale students say, and Yale students commenting on what Gateway students say,” Courcey said. Perhaps acknowledging that Courcey’s vision of the lecture may be idealistic, Ragozzino noted that while students often chat before class, but there aren’t many opportunities to exchange ideas once lecture begins. For both Strickland and Altson, the chance to interact with Yale students in the course is not fully realized. The two students said they wished they could observe or participate in a Yale discussion section rather than attending the mandatory sections at Gateway’s campus. “I heard there was a group study that’s more for Yale students,” Altson said. “It’d be better if it was offered to all of us because there are Gateway students in the class, too.” Integrated sections would be the next logical step towards ensuring that Gateway and Yale students not
“I heard there was a group study that’s more for Yale students. It’d be better if it was offered to all of us because there are Gateway students in the class, too.” —Lateef Alston, Gateway ‘15 to the same arguments, and are confronted with the same questions of urban planning. Mark Strickland, a Gateway student who decided to continue his education after retiring, also attends the weekly lectures. He said he particularly enjoys that the class focuses on New Haven. “I go to redistricting committees, I participate in the primaries and the politics. A lot of the things they’re saying, I’m seeing first-hand,” he said. “It’s not just theory.” Altson said he personally has very little interaction with Yale students in the class, although both Courcey and professor Tom Ragozzino, who teaches the lecture’s followup discussion section at Gateway, think that students from both schools do interact: “It’s
only hear the same material, but are able to exchange different perspectives. Courcey said that this class allows Gateway students to attend a prestigious university. For Strickland, it’s not just prestige—it’s something more idealistic: the class represents an opportunity to open up Yale and its gated doors to the surrounding community. “After so many years living in New Haven, you see Yale, you see Yale students, you see the buildings, but you’re not able to participate,” he said. “This is an opportunity that the average person would never have.” With the move closer to campus, Courcey hopes that Gateway students will be able to take more advantage of Yale’s resources, in-
cluding Bass Library, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Yale Center for British Arts. BEYOND THIS ONE CLASS, YALE AND Gateway have been partners in the greater New Haven community for years, even before the college’s move downtown, Gateway Head of Public Relations and Marketing Evelyn Gard said. Some Gateway graduates matriculate into the Eli Whitney program, a Yale University program for students who, at some point in their academic career, have had their education interrupted for more than five years. While some other Gateway graduates end up working at Yale in some capacity, there are also Yale graduates working at Gateway. For instance, Richard Gard, Ms. Gard’s husband, who received his Doctor of Musical Arts and two masters degrees from Yale School of Music and the Institute of Sacred Music and is currently a member of the Yale School of Music faculty, also was an adjunct at Gateway. The opening of Gateway’s downtown New Haven doors this past fall also coincided with the founding of a new program at Yale, New Haven Community Hiring Initiatives. Diane Turner is the founding-director of this organization, which works with the city government and local unions to employ more New Haven residents to fill the university’s some 4,000 jobs. Turner said she has been working closely with Gateway to help Yale employ more Gateway graduates who are not planning to go on to four-year universities. Music also helps to pull the two campuses together. Mr. Gard was the music director at St. Thomas More Chapel, the Catholic Church and community center on Yale’s campus. Ms. Gard said that at some points, the choir has been comprised of both Yale and Gateway students, leading them to form friendships and learn from one another both musically and otherwise. The guitar instructor at Gateway is also a YSM alumnus and has often arranged for YSM students to perform at Gateway, said Dean of Yale School of Music Daniel Blocker. Yale also has a close but informal financial relationship with Gateway, said Claudia Merson, spokewoman for Bruce Alexander, vice
president and director of the Office of New Haven and State Affairs: “Yale is extremely supportive of the school and has helped it out financially on special projects,” she said. Ms. Gard agreed: “I know that when we have events and fundraisers, Yale does participate and has been a partner.” Though the significance of these monetary partnerships cannot be overlooked, the swarm of Gateway students opening the SSS doors twice a week is, of course, the more personal expression of an attempt to bridge the two campuses just blocks apart. Other than his class, Altson said he feels he has very minimal contact with Yale students, and that they are not often discussed on the Gateway campus. Ms. Gard agreed that there is not much interaction between the two student populations, particularly because of the different demographics each institution serves: for instance, 58% of the Gateway student body are white, working females in their late 20s. “There are misunderstandings about who’s here and who’s there, on both sides of the fence. Now that we’re [closer to each other], I hope that the world opens up for both populations.” Ms. Gard said she hopes that the Gateway students take advantage of the rich cultural life that Yale offers now that the campuses are in walking distance. “We expect our students to be enriched by the availability of these things,” she sad. “And we expect Yale students will also be enriched by exposure to other students in the community, who perhaps aren’t doing the same things as they are—or in some ways are doing the same things, just at a different level.” With the opening of Gateway’s downtown campus comes a new opportunity for the Yale community. Over the years, financial support and shared cultural institutions have begun to slightly bridge the gap between the institutions, but the two student bodies have largely kept to themselves. Now that all 20,000 of us roam the same streets of downtown New Haven, it has yet to be seen how these more personal relationships might continue—or rather, start—to grow and develop. —Photos by Rebecca Wolenski The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
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(Serena Gelb/YH Staff)
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
The town and the city Nicolás Medina Mora, SM ‘13, documents the battle over the border fence between New Haven and Hamden
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oe Mygak, who is white, 90 years old, and a veteran of D-Day, lives on a quiet residential street in Hamden, a working-class suburb just north of New Haven. His modest Colonial Revival house is less than five miles away from the Green—but if Mygak wants to drive there, he has to take a roundabout route. That’s because across the street from his house, at the border between Hamden and New Haven, there is a 10-foot tall chain link fence. When I suggested tearing it down, the veteran was not pleased. “No way!” he said, shaking his head with eyes closed. For Mygak and many of his neighbors, the fence is the only thing that stands between their tranquil neighborhood and what they believe are the harsh realities of the inner city. The reason is that on the New Haven side of the wall, just a few hundred feet from Mygak’s front door, there is a public housing project called Brookside Estates. Today, Brookside is a group of colorful buildings surrounded by the lush woods of Connecticut—the polar opposite of the concrete barracks and cinderblock high-rises that people have learned to associate with public housing. Designed to resemble a pleasant suburb, the development is a New Urbanist dream, and the pride and joy of New Haven’s urban planners. It wasn’t always so. The housing project that first stood on that piece of land was also called Brookside, but the resemblance with the current development ends there. Its
name was meant to evoke scenes of pastoral prosperity, but instead the original Brookside became synonymous with poverty and crime. In 1966, in a desperate attempt to keep the residents of the old project away from its citizens, the government of Hamden erected the fence that stands by Mygak’s house today. IN 1937, AT THE HEIGHT OF THE NEW Deal, Congress passed the first of several Housing Acts. As professor of management
The first round of New Haven’s housing projects were built in the ‘40s, close to the center of the city. After the end of World War II, however, the local Housing Authority found that there still wasn’t enough subsidized housing in the city. The agency then began looking for land outside the city proper. Mygak, who had just left the army, moved to Connecticut around this same time—he bought his house in 1950. In those days, Hamden was a rural suburb of New Haven, 20 minutes outside of the city. “All of this
the city needed more public housing, and it owned a large piece of land in a distant corner of its territory, where virtually nobody lived. The urban planners gave their seal of approval, and in 1951 the Housing Authority began building two housing developments in West Rock: Brookside Estates and Rockview Circle. At first, both tenants and landlords were optimistic. As Rae writes, “Little or no stigma attached itself to public housing in these early years—years when reliance on public
The equation was deceitfully simple: the city needed more public housing, and it owned a large piece of land in a distant corner of its territory, where virtually nobody lived. and political science Douglas W. Rae explains in City, his seminal history of New Haven, the idea was to kill the twin birds of housing shortage and unemployment with a single, tax-funded stone: public housing. It was a revolutionary idea, meant to bring urban poverty to an end once and for all. New Haven caught the bug early, creating its own Housing Authority a year after Congress passed its law. With the help of several federal agencies, the city razed parts of its most impoverished neighborhoods, and replaced them with modernist structures designed to house those who’d been most hurt by the Great Depression.
used to be farmland,” the veteran told me, standing outside his house and making a broad gesture with his hand. The Housing Authority realized this, too, and turned its eyes to West Rock, in the northern corner of the municipality’s jurisdiction. According to Bob Solomon, an emeritus professor of law at Yale who chaired the Housing Authority for several years, the city happened to own a tract of land in that area. “There used to be an almshouse in West Rock, so building a development there was cheaper than doing it elsewhere,” he told me in an interview over the phone. The equation was deceitfully simple:
housing was understood universally as a brief phase in a family’s history, followed with any luck by ownership of a private home.” Nevertheless, several factors conspired to destroy that confidence. New Haven’s once-mighty industry began to wane; at the same time, large numbers of African Americans started arriving in Connecticut from the South, looking for the same factory jobs that were about to disappear. The result of these concurring phenomena was that New Haven’s public housing projects quickly filled with unemployed blacks: together, racism and de-industrialization lead to the de-facto segregation of
The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
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New Haven’s housing projects. As more and more impoverished people found themselves living together in isolation, the tax revenue of their school districts diminished. The quality of the schools in those districts soon followed, and children who had grown up in public housing found getting jobs increasingly difficult. Unemployment in these communities thus began to feed on itself—and New Haven’s projects went from being a pit stop on the highway to the American Dream
The situation at the West Rock projects degenerated to such levels that, in the early years of the 21st century, the Housing Authority decided to tear the project down. With a stroke of its bureaucratic wand as efficient as the one that had declared the need for housing projects in the first place, the city emptied Brookside of its last residents in 2005—and, razed the buildings two years later. Mygak and his neighbors breathed a sigh of relief.
AFTER SPEAKING TO MYGAK, I BIKED back to New Haven—then went up the single, narrow road that leads in and out of Brookside. The whole journey took me 30 minutes, but in the end I was less than a mile from where I had started. I locked my bike to a lamppost that smelled of fresh paint and began wandering around the development. Among the first people I found were Samara Redwine, who is black and around 40 years old, and Mary-Beth Whalley, who
Worries about increased traffic, however, boil down to a more fundamental concern—money. Hamden’s residents seem to be afraid that opening roads to New Haven would hurt the value of their properties. to a self-reinforcing magnet of poverty. It wasn’t uncommon for several generations of one family to live and die in the same housing development. THE SITUATION WAS PARTICULARLY DIRE in the West Rock projects, which were far away from downtown New Haven and separated from potential sources of employment by the Hamden fence. By 1992, according to Rae, only 137 of Brookside’s 567 tenants had a stable source of income, and with such dire unemployment came high crime rates. An urban legend, which I was unable to confirm, has it that in the ‘80s, the New Haven Fire Department refused to answer calls in West Rock without a police escort. Not all of that trouble stayed in New Haven, as Mygak and his Hamden neighbors, who tell horror stories of the “bad days” of the ‘80s and ‘90s, can attest to. Some of those incidents were relatively harmless— kids smoking pot in people’s backyards, or throwing eggs at cars during Halloween. Others were more serious. “Our house got broken into in the late ‘80s,” Ebony Belcher, who is black, 32 years old, and grew up a few blocks away from Mygak, told me. “They took our VCR, and several other things.” Mygak’s property was also vandalized. One night, somebody threw rocks through every single window of his house.
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
Their respite did not last. In 2009, New Haven got a federal grant to rebuild the West Rock projects—and immediately started lobbying for Hamden to take the fence down. The city insisted that the new Brookside development, with its interspersion of marketrate homes among subsidized units, had a much better chance of succeeding than its predecessor. A necessary condition for that success, however, was that the project’s isolation come to an end. The government of Hamden never agreed formally to take the fence down, but Elm City Communities, the renamed Housing Authority, went ahead
is white and around the same age. The two women were sitting on lawn chairs behind their houses, enjoying the sun while their young children played around. They invited me to sit with them—but became outraged when I asked them about the fence. “I used to live in Hamden, and now they’re telling me that I’m not good enough to go there?” said Redwine, who works for a women’s clothing catalogue. “I moved here because I can’t really afford market-rate rents.” Whalley, who said that she moved to Brookside after she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis, echoed
in their community. They said that they wouldn’t let the new Brookside go the way of its predecessor. “I intend to raise my child here, and I have no intention of letting this place become a bad environment for him,” said Redwine. Some of the Brookside residents that I interviewed said that they had moved to the development in an effort to escape from crime in other parts of the city. Among them was Edgar Rios, who is Latino, 25 years old, and has two young children. “It’s quiet here, everyone stays in his house,” Rios told me in Spanish at his doorstep, as he tried to keep his naked toddler from getting out of the house. “I used to live in Dixwell, but there was a lot of trouble there, so I moved here.” Joe Henry, who is 27, black, and recently emigrated from Dominica, expressed similar feelings. “I don’t know how things used to be, but everyone coming to Brookside now is new,” he said. “They cleaned the place up. Nobody’s pumping drugs around here.” Many residents also complained of the long time it takes them to get to stores and to their jobs. “I have a friend called Roxanne, and she works at the Stop and Shop in Hamden,” said Redwine. “She needs to take a bus to the Green, and then another one back up here. It takes her almost two hours.” Bob Solomon agreed with Redwine that the fence’s most pernicious effect is that it keeps Brookside residents away from Hamden’s Putnam Plaza, which stands less than two miles away from the development. “The
“I used to live in Hamden, and now they’re telling me that I’m not good enough to go there? I moved here because I can’t afford market-rate rents.” —Samara Redwine, Brookside Estates resident with construction on the newly conceived Brookside project anyway, spending tens of millions of dollars in the process. The result is that Joe Mygak once again has a project in his backyard—and the fence is still there.
her friend’s sentiments. “My family and I, we’ve paid taxes all our lives,” she told me. “I have a medical problem, and the economy made it so that I need some help. I shouldn’t be discriminated against like this.” Whalley, Redwine, and several of their neighbors insisted that they are invested
fact that low-income people from West Rock can’t access the Walmart that’s five minutes away from their homes is a major problem,” he said. The legal scholar, who now teaches at the University of California, Irvine, added that only 12 percent of Brookside’s residents own cars, which makes them de-
pendent on patchy public transportation. According to my own Google Maps calculations, missing a single bus on the journey to Putnam Plaza from Brookside can easily turn a simple shopping run into a six-hour ordeal. The fence that stands behind those inconveniences, however, is on Hamden’s territory—which means that Redwine and other Brookside residents are completely at the mercy of their suburban neighbors. WHEN I CONFRONTED MYGAK AND HIS neighbors with the difficulties that the fence creates for the residents of Brookside, the suburbanites often responded with sympathy—but still maintained that the fence should stay in its place. Slowly, it became clear to me that fear of crime wasn’t the main reason for their position. “The fence’s been up as long as I can remember,” Belcher told me. “It has done nothing to stop crime. If something wanted to get done, it was going to get done despite the fence.” Thomas Wydra, who severs as Hamden’s Police Chief, seems to agree with Belcher. Wydra could not comment for this article—nobody answered the phone at his office over several days—but the chief did tell the New Haven Independent in August that he had “always hated the fence” and that it “didn’t stop crime.” Hamden’s residents, at least the ones
er, boil down to a more fundamental concern—money. Hamden’s residents seem to be afraid that opening roads to New Haven would hurt the value of their properties. One 50-year-old man, who is black and declined to give his name, put the matter succinctly. “Tearing down the fence is not a good idea for us, because we are trying to keep up the property values,” he said. “People here paid a lot of money for their homes, and we paid to live in a suburban environment. If the fence came down, that would change.” Robert Ronald, who is black and 73 years old, echoed his neighbor. “I was raised in the projects, so I have nothing against them,” Ronald said. “But we’ve worked really hard to improve things, and now they want to open a can of worms on us.” THE FENCE HAS BEEN AT THE CENTER of a lively public debate ever since construction began at the new Brookside. That debate, however, seems to have recently come to a stalemate. Initially, the mayors of both New Haven and Hamden unambiguously declared themselves in favor of taking the fence down. In February 2010, Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson—who was not available to comment for this article—told the New Haven Independent that he wanted “to see the fence down,” because he thought that New Haven’s Housing Authority was “doing a
there for a reason.” Mayor DeStefano’s position evolved later, after a raucous public meeting with Hamden residents last August. In that meeting, according to the Independent, a Hamden man told both mayors that if they “put a street through,” they would be “jeopardizing the life of everyone in this room.” Another attendant said that she “slept with a gun and two baseball bats because of all the garbage that walks on the hill on Woodin Street.” The online paper reported that DeStefano replied to such comments with a conciliatory effort. “I don’t want to force this on this neighborhood,” DeStefano reportedly said. “I don’t want a fight between Hamden and New Haven.” I interviewed DeStefano over the phone earlier this week. He told me that, although he still thinks the fence needs to come down, the issue is not urgent enough to merit a confrontation with Hamden residents. “The city said that it would take the issue off the table for now,” DeStefano said. “We said that we were going to start a process that would work out traffic, public safety, and community development, with sub-committees that include both New Haven and Hamden residents, so that the communities can get to know each other and find matters of common interest.” The mayor added that he hoped Hamden residents would come to see that opening
“I don’t think this is a zero-sum game. Hamden property value will increase if Brookside is a thriving community instead of a fenced-off community.” —Mayor John DeStefano that I talked to, want to keep the fence up because they are worried that the added traffic will transform their residential streets into busy thoroughfares. New Haven’s plan for Brookside includes opening three new roads into Hamden, all of which would feed into Woodin Street—the road where Mygak lives. “If they tore down the fence but didn’t build new streets, that would be fine,” said Connie Busch, who is white, 42, and told me she works in “the medical field.” Worries about increased traffic, howev-
great job.” Likewise, in March of the following year, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano told the same paper that he didn’t think the project was “going to be successful” unless the city got “the roads open to Hamden.” As the debate progressed and the extent of the support of Hamden’s residents for the fence became evident, the two politicians softened their positions. In June of this year, Jackson told the Independent that although his record had “always been supportive” of taking down the wall, “those fences [were]
streets into New Haven is in their interest too. “I don’t think that this is a zero-sum game in which some win and some lose,” he said. “I think that Hamden property value will increase if Brookside is a thriving community instead of a fenced-off community.” DeStefano concluded by saying that he hoped that the sub-committees would come to a solution over the next year. Bob Solomon maintained a harsher take on the fence—saying that it might well be illegal. “This is a question of how society
works,” he said to me over the phone. “The lowest-cost stores are on the other side of the fence—and being able to access them is a basic civil right. We are making it difficult for lower-income people of color to access services, and that’s a problem. This is also an issue of the right to travel. We don’t usually have a division between municipalities—where else are people not able to go between municipalities on public streets? They’ll say that they aren’t blocking the public street, but they are preventing the public street from being there in the first place.” Solomon was quick to add that it will be impossible to say for sure whether the fence is illegal until the issue is thoroughly litigated. He also said that the claims made by Hamden residents—that they worry about traffic, and that they are not afraid of crime but of falling property values—are either contradictory or not based in reality. “There are only 450 households in Brookside, only 12 percent of which have cars,” he said. “There just isn’t enough housing in West Rock for it to be a traffic problem. Besides, it’s unlikely that their property values would go down because of an open road. Crime brings values down. Traffic doesn’t. So to say that you don’t care about the crime, but you are worried about your property value, it’s a contradiction in terms.” It seems that, in the end, the battle over the Hamden fence is about perceptions. New Haven has changed radically since Mygak bought his house, over 60 years ago, but Hamden’s residents, still determined to maintain the illusion that they live in a suburb, seem to have no interest in acknowledging those changes. The catch is that if they cling to the illusion, they are endangering precisely what they want to preserve: peace, quiet, and the value of their properties. The new Brookside is more likely to succeed if the fence comes down, and if the project fails, crime will return. And if it does, the fence will do nothing to prevent it from spreading from the city to the town. —graphics by Christine Mi YH Staff
The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
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New Reserves The conditions of the ROTC’s return to campus by A. Grace Steig YH Staff
n Fri., Sept. 21 in Beinecke plaza, the midday sun glinted brilliantly on the spangles of a ribbon that read “ROTC at Yale.” A group of 50 underclassmen in crisp uniforms sat lined up neatly in the front two rows. For these students, it was a big day—their official welcome to the Reserve Officers Training Corps. For Yale, though, it was a historic one. The ROTC program, which dates back to the First World War, provides scholarships for students to go to college, and, over the course of the same four years, also trains them to become military officers. This year’s ROTC class marks Yale’s first since since 1972, when the program was discontinued at the suggestion of a faculty committee’s vote. ROTC had become unpopular in the wake of vehement opposition to the Vietnam War. The program returns now following the 2010 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a policy that prevented openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from serving in the military. With this discriminatory policy overturned, Yale has reaccepted the ROTC program—but only under certain conditions. ROTC participants get full credit for Yale classes, of course, but they don’t get additional course credits for being midshipmen or cadets. The specific classes required by the ROTC program do not count towards graduation from Yale College—a reflection of the school’s concern that the ROTC courses do not meet the University’s rigorous academic standards. When the program was phased
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out in 1970, ROTC classes could no longer earn students course credit. The 2011 faculty committee that advised the school to bring back the program held strong on this one issue, stating that the same concerns that existed in 1970 about the academic rigor of these courses persist today. Every week, ROTC participants have responsibilities beyond their Yale College coursework: Navy ROTC (NROTC) cadets train Monday mornings and attend classes twice a week; Air Force ROTC (AFROTC) cadets train twice a week and take weekly
their training as their presiding military officials do—a less quantifiable one. “I want people to understand that the job is about professionalism; the job is about dignity, respect, integrity, your character,” said Colonel Scott E. Manning, Commander of the Yale AFROTC unit. Students refer to instructors as “sir” and “ma’am.” The teaching of tradition is crucial, as is the development of trust. “Every day we reinforce the concept of not lying, cheating, or stealing,” Lieutenant Daniel Kohnen, a naval science instructor and career advisor
Colonel Manning, part of the curriculum for freshmen in AFROTC is an instruction in military customs and courtesies—including appearance. The girls in the program are allowed to have short hair, or long hair pulled back off their collars; boys must crop their hair so that ears are entirely bare. Military law says that “cross-dressing” is not allowed: boys may not choose to have long hair, even if they pull it back off their collars. Those military customs and courtesies evidently draw stark gender boundaries—as
“Yale’s Equal Opportunity Statement asserts that Yale does not discriminate on the basis of gender identity or gender expression. By sponsoring Naval and Air Force ROTC, Yale aids and abets just that kind of discrimination.” —Gabe Murchison, DC ‘14 classes. All ROTC students have to take a lab, which, for freshmen, entails learning the structure and leadership of their respective institutions. That said, the cadets don’t complain. “Classwork-wise, it’s not too time-consuming,” said John Keisling, BR ’16, of AFROTC. Perhaps they see the same sort of value in
to the NROTC students, explained. In their capacity as representatives for the United States military, he said, ROTC officers teach students to “maintain the highest moral integrity.” OFFICERS ALSO TEACH STUDENTS TO follow a strict dress code. According to
does the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” “The day after the repeal of DADT, I called [Defense] Secretary Robert Gates,” President of Yale Richard Levin, GRD ’74, told the Herald in October 2011, “I told him Yale would very much like to explore reinstating ROTC.” But to say that Yale welcomed back a program that fully supports LGBT rights
is not to tell the whole story. It seems the acronym’s last letter—the “T”—was left out of the repeal: transgender people are still barred from serving in the military. Service members may find themselves discharged for undergoing genital surgery or identifying with a different gender from that which they were assigned at birth. Everyone is prohibited from wearing clothing not considered “gender-appropriate.” Gabe Murchison, DC ’14, objects to the presence on campus of an organization whose policy obstructs the University’s officially stated values. “Yale’s Equal Opportunity Statement asserts that Yale does not
carry herself with a certain dignity as part of AFROTC, she has room to explore intellectually, thanks to a military act allowing cadets to espouse individual viewpoints in an academic setting. “When I’m in class and I’m wearing a uniform, it has to be known that [what I say is] my opinion, and it’s in no way representative of the Air Force,” she said. “It is so important to get the liberal arts foundation with your engineering degree,” said Beau Birdsall, SY ’16, a midshipman and platoon commander for the Yale NROTC unit. He thinks his engineering degree, enhanced by its liberal arts context, will give him the foundation “to communicate and to
“‘It has come into particularly high relief how important it is to have military leaders that have been challenged by the kind of faculty, the kind of students they will come into contact with here at Yale.” —Mary Miller, dean of Yale College discriminate on the basis of gender identity or gender expression,” he explained in an email. “By sponsoring Naval and Air Force ROTC, Yale aids and abets just that kind of discrimination: it contributes resources that can only be used by students with normative gender identities and gender expressions.” Questioned on the exclusion of transgender and gender-nonconforming students, Dean of Yale College Mary Miller expressed that the military has already shown a flexibility to change their policies, but in the meantime compared ROTC to one of Yale’s many restrictive programs: “Just because you want to row with the Varsity Crew, we’re not going to let you. There are many parts of the program at Yale College that demonstrate a certain skill, a certain commitment,” she said in an interview. The question of how gender expression could qualify as a skill or commitment, however, remains—as do the freshmen cadets and midshipmen at Yale this year. IN THEIR TIME AT YALE, THESE STUDENTS will learn not only ROTC values, but also Yale values. For Dean Miller, this is the critical point: “The kind of students they will come into contact with, the diverse cultural experiences that are available on a campus like ours, are incredibly important to build diverse and diversely thinking individuals at the top of military leadership,” she said. Colonel Manning stressed that members of the Navy and Air Force engage directly with world issues, and the education they receive as undergraduates is likely to shape the way they handle diplomatic, peacekeeping, and combat situations. “I think that a student that’s doing ROTC at Yale is going to be able to critically think and analyze the problems of the world faster, and offer better solutions,” he said. The ROTC participants seem eager to accept this challenge of a Yale education. Renee Vogel, PC ’16, says that though she must
think through things in terms of society, culture, what people need.” Their restrictive schedules, however, are impeding them from rising fully to the challenge of taking as many liberal arts classes as they evidently want to. “As scholarship students there are a lot of classes we have to take,” said Jordan Bravin, SM ’16, a midshipman. He is excited to study the more flexible fields of the liberal arts, but, he said, “that’ll come later.” And it will come at a price: because of his intention to major in the humanities, the Navy provides Bravin with the third and lowest tier of tuition assistance. Right now, though their academic schedules are restricted, these students say they are learning from campus life at Yale. Among the four ROTC participants I interviewed, extracurriculars they’d joined included Varsity track, Glee Club, the Tory Party of the YPU, and work at Sterling Memorial Library. Furthermore, many of their friends are nonROTC students. “We’re just students like them, we’re not robots,” said Brisdall. But when they walk around campus, especially in their uniforms, these ROTC students clearly stand out. In their shining uniforms, they hold themselves to commitments that reach beyond those of a student, because ultimately, they are not merely students. They are also midshipmen and cadets, always. And so the girls wear their hair bobbed or pulled up from their collars, and the boys wear their hair cropped behind their ears. They conform to the ROTC standards to which they are held, however discriminatory they may currently be. And like the rest of the students at Yale, these ROTC students are here to learn. “It has come into particularly high relief,” Dean Miller reflected, “how important it is to have military leaders that have been challenged by the kind of faculty, the kind of students they will come into contact with [here at Yale].” —graphics by Serena Gelb YH Staff
The Yale Herald (Sep. 28, 2012)
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CULTURE Inside the architect’s studio t’s 9:30 p.m. on a Monday night in the Art & Architecture Building’s seventh-floor studios. Architecture majors sit in two columns of desks in a long, industrial space, each carving board and plexiglass into models of houses, rooms, and abstract structures. Despite the students’ intense concentration on their projects, the room feels mostly social. Many people chat and show each other their work, while others wear headphones and focus on their projects. Another girl half-watches “Say Yes to the Dress” on her computer while working on blueprints. The students work here for hours, often into the morning. A few will probably stay all night. Yale’s architecture program is small, focused, and notoriously difficult. “[It’s] the most intense major at Yale, without a doubt,” architecture major Max Pommier, PC ’14, said. “I’d say that some of the science-based majors aren’t far behind, but since you’re working with such fuzzy boundaries and in such a way that you could potentially never finish working on an assignment, it’s definitely the most time-consuming.” Students expect to spend hours in the studio, and at least one all-nighter a week is typical. This year there are 17 juniors and 15 seniors in the major, which begins with three required courses sophomore year. The program is designed so that students spend freshman year in non-architecture-related, diverse classes, so that they come to the introductory courses sophomore year having already pursued a range of interests. After sophomore year, students take a mix of required studio, history, and theory classes, as well as several architecture-related electives. Senior year includes a senior project or design studio, depending on the concentration; often students participate in research colloquiums or develop independent studies to personalize their majors in accordance with their interests. Most of these students didn’t come to Yale planning to go into architecture, but instead fell into it. Matthew Claudel, BR ’13, always felt a need to create things, but
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
hadn’t considered architecture until arriving here and covering an architecture symposium for the Yale Daily News. He was fascinated by the visiting architect’s way of thinking. “When I realized what I loved to do could also be pursued academically, I really grabbed onto it,” he said. Now he enjoys how all projects require a functional justification for the aesthetics—good design is valuable because it both “looks nice” and performs well. The students say architecture forces the marriage of design and function, and that, once begun, the study gives a new lens through which architecture students can’t stop seeing the world. Unlike many other undergraduate design programs, the major isn’t intended to be pre-professional—instead, Bimal Mendis SY ’98 ARC ’02, director of undergraduate studies for the major, stressed that it gives students a new way of thinking about the world and an ability to problem-solve. Though design is a significant part of the major, it’s not intended to be the focal point, and majors spend much of their coursework studying architectural theory and history. Professor Alexander Purves PC ’58 ARC ’65, who currently teaches “Introduction to Architecture,” noted that the major “should not focus down into a singularly professional mode but rather open up to a more holistic view of the world.” “At the same time,” he added, “the major should prepare a student to make a winning application to graduate school.” Claudel described it as intensive problem-solving: you’re given a challenge with a set of constraints, and you have to find a solution, present that solution articulately, and defend it in front of a panel of critics. In his view, those skills are applicable to almost anything. Perhaps contrary to expectation, not all—maybe not even close to the majority—of the architecture majors interviewed see themselves going on to graduate school in the field. Of the graduates of the last four years, Mendis said that 50 to 60 percent go on to work in architecture-related fields, with about 23 percent in graduate school for architecture and 35 percent in ar-
by Devon Geyelin
chitecture-related jobs and internships. The remaining graduates pursued areas ranging from art, filmmaking, and set design, to finance, media, start-ups, and even the FBI. According to Mendis, art and architecture students are able to apply their skills elsewhere because “design culture is pervading many professions—businesses and employers value this notion of thinking of things as design problems.” The demands of the major do limit students in terms of what they can do outside of class and studio time. Many students who choose to do architecture can only do one focused extracurricular—among the current juniors in the major, there are only a few varsity athletes and a handful of a cappella performers. And while people do take courses outside of the major’s requirements, the major can limit their options, either by requiring certain types of electives or restricting the amount of time any student can devote to other academic pursuits. One junior girl who wished to remain anonymous said that sometimes those other classes “fall by the wayside”; the demands of the major, she said, mean “you have to love it.” On Sat., Sept. 22, the juniors went on a trip to see two highly regarded examples of modernist architecture, the Bridge House, designed by Jon Johanssen, and the Glass House, designed by Phillip Johnson, both in New Canaan, Conn. Away from the studio, the students seemed relaxed together, sketching and talking in small clumps as they walked through the two estates. Because of its size and the intensity of its coursework, the architecture major creates a tight-knit community unlike most majors at Yale—all the majors know each other. “During those long nights of model-making, surrounded by toxic fumes, covered in paint and trying not to fall asleep with an Exacto blade in your hand, students inevitably become close,” Pommier said. “It keeps us from going insane at 5 a.m.—or rather, we are comforted by the fact that we’re all going insane together.” —graphic by Zachary Schiller YH Staff
Zine fever Since the start of the semester, there has been a noticeable surge in the number of zines on campus. The term might be unfamiliar to some: zines are pamphlets meant to publicize a group’s identity, messages, and goals through handwritten blurbs and collage-like illustrations. So, why zines all of a sudden? What makes them more appealing to campus organizations than magazines, journals, newsletters, or flyers? To Hannah Mogul-Adlin, TC ’13, a member of Sappho, Yale’s undergraduate organization for LGBTQ women, zines are all about personality and frankness. Zines, she said, lack the “barriers to entry” necessitated by the “journalistic standards” of more polished publications. Their “DIYaesthetic and the low-tech [publication] process,” she said, enable them to “convey the subjective in a way that is much more real and raw” than is permissible in the world of objective reporting. Isabel Ortiz, JE ’14, is an associate editor of Broad Recognition, an online feminist magazine at Yale that recently started distributing zines. Expressing sentiments similar to Mogul-Adlin’s, Ortiz said that zines are “much like a diary” in that they contain “personal experiences.” She added that zines not only share such experiences with readers but also go further by “contextualizing personal matters in a more political perspective.” “Zines bring people together,” she said. Like Mogul-Adlin, Ortiz attached much of a zine’s value to its ability to “go beyond” the typical “boundaries” of other publications by allowing its authors to “connect and share,” both with each other and with readers, in a more colloquial and forthright manner. On behalf of Y Syndicate, a student political protest group, Marc DeWitt, ES ’15, said that the zine “was chosen as the publication’s format for its accessibility.” He added that a zine is largely appealing because it is more cost efficient and easier to put together than a magazine. Surely, Mogul-Adlin pointed out, zines contribute further to Yale’s “ridiculous number of publications.” But zines have a unique place at Yale, Mogul-Adlin argues: they touch on topics that are, as she puts it, “inherently as personal as they are political.” —Logan Gregoire-Wright —graphic by Zachary Schiller YH Staff
Folk on the road This past summer, four Yale students spent their summer touring California performing folk music—on Yale’s dime. (Talk about a dream summer.) Jacob Paul, SM ‘13, a member of the folk singing group Tangled Up In Blue (TUIB), had been planning a recreational road trip up the West Coast for some time. But when he brought up the trip to his fellow TUIB members Jenner Fox, BR ’14, Tommy Bazarian, TC ’15, and Lauren Tronick, SM ’15, the four realized that they could turn Paul’s summer plans into something more: a music tour. But to have a music tour, they would need a music group. So, this past spring, they went ahead and formed a folk rock band called The Teaspoons, which derives its name from the acronym for TUIB Side Project, TSP. They recorded a few songs in the Silliman recording studio, and just a few months and one grant later, they booked their flights to LAX. Still, Fox says, things weren’t all that easy. “When we arrived in L.A. we knew five songs and had two days before our first gig,” he told me. But as they travelled up (and then back down) the West Coast, The Teaspoons continued to learn and expand their
repertoire. They used their time on the road—from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Yosemite to Las Vegas, and finally to Sedona—to rehearse. “Jenner has this old school VW van so we’d just open up the back and play,” Bazarian explained. Paul added, “[We] just got to California and played whatever music we wanted to play.” This meant that they could play cover versions of their favorite songs, and that each member could write originals for the group. And now that they’re back on campus, The Teaspoons have continued to write and rehearse. The band consists, as it did this past summer, of Fox on mandolin and guitar, Bazarian on harmonica and guitar, Paul on trumpet and guitar, Tronick on viola and violin. The whole group shares the vocals. “It’s cool,” Tronick remarks. “We all wrote songs before, but now we write with each other in mind.” They’ve also been back in the Silliman studio recording songs that they performed this summer, and they’re planning a show on campus in a couple of weeks. However, one thing is still up in the air: “We might change our name from The Teaspoons,” Bazarian admits. “Something catchier.” Any suggestions? —Sofia Norten —graphic by Zachary Schiller YH Staff
The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012) 19
REVIEWS The Antlers: Q&A by Colin Groundwater YH Staff
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ast Sunday, the Antlers brought their signature style of indie rock to the Center Church. The Herald strolled through the Green with front-man Peter Silberman and discussed going out to sea, Louis C.K., and the emotional power of his music.
Yale Herald: Is this your first time coming to New Haven? Peter Silberman: Yeah. YH: Do you guys normally play churches or is this an unusual circumstance? PS: We’ve played a few churches, but not a ton. We don’t do church tours or anything, but I would say most tours, there are one or two church shows. YH: Is there a notably different vibe when you play that kind of venue? PS: It’s definitely really different than playing your typical venue show. There are pews everywhere, so you don’t know, are people going to sit like they’re listening to a sermon? Are they going to stand up and go into the aisle? YH: So you’re touring for your new EP, Undersea. How did the idea for that project come about? Was it a name you used to describe a sound you’d already created, or did you have the idea for undersea imagery and build music around it? PS: Well when we went into recording it, we didn’t have any plan for what we were going to make. We basically had bonus recording time on our hands coming back from touring. We could have completely taken that time off, but we thought, “We may as well make something and see what we come up with.” After a year of touring Burst Apart, our brains were in a very different place. We wanted to make something relaxing, to have that stress-relief. YH: Is recording a relaxing experience? PS: Well it depends what part of the recording process you’re in. At the beginning, it can be simultaneously freeing and frustrating. The way we start off is just improvising together, so it means it’s a lot of wandering music where we have a 40-minute jam and we’ll listen to it and see where it all comes out. It’s about seeing what you can come up with and starting to edit down, getting all the ideas out and deciding what you want to keep and develop. YH: How do you see this EP fitting in with the rest of your discography? It’s obviously less narrative than your breakout record, Hopsice. Is that a conscious choice or have you just drifted that way? PS: It’s weird you say that, because I don’t think — well Undersea isn’t more narrative than Hospice, because that’s what Hospice is, a narrative, but I like to think of Undersea as one story going back to a larger piece of music. It’s just a bit of a vague story. It’s much more visual than emotional. YH: What is that story then? PS: It’s hard to say because I don’t see it as clearly anymore. I saw it very clearly while we were making it. There was something about it that felt like an escape story. I don’t know, maybe I was feeling like it was kind of an escape from, I mean it sounds stupid, but an escape from the world. You know, the social aspect, civilization. Almost like wanting a vacation, but not where you’re like, “God, I’m so tired, I feel terrible,” but just in the way, “I want to let my mind take a vacation, just drift away.” While we were making this, I think we were all doing that. We were all together in a ship going out into the ocean, looking around 360 degrees at the water. You kind of picture yourself there, what feeling that would produce. It’s funny because the ocean is a fairly common place, but being in it isn’t a very common thing. It’s terrifying to some people, but there’s also something about it, I don’t know, inevitable? YH: Like a sense of immersion? PS: Yeah. And ideally you would just adapt, right? Like Waterworld, you would have gills and be able to breathe underwater.
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The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
(Courtesy CreativeCommons)
YH: You’ve said people describe your music as sad and depressing. When you make music, are you exorcising negative feelings? Do you try to create that sense? Or do people just perceive it that way? PS: It’s all of those things, but I don’t approach it saying, “This is a sad song.” I can tell when it is, but I think people often confuse sad with heartfelt. I don’t consider myself a sad person, but there is a general — it’s weird because this is a depressing thing to say — but I think there is a general sadness about humanity. A lot of things are really dark about it, that we’re all aware of but we do our best not to think about. I think it’s interesting to explore that stuff. I don’t think it has to mean feeling sorry for yourself, but to confront them, there’s some kind of joy in that. If you listen to a lot of comedians, they say a lot of dark, really fucked up things, but the reaction is that people laugh. YH: True! Like Louis C.K.! PS: Yeah, I love Louis C.K. You could definitely take some of it as depressing or morose, but at the same time the reaction is laughter. You can explore those things in music too, really talk about those things that you think about once in a while, about what they mean if they mean anything. Sometimes the reaction is that you just feel sad. Or even just emotional, nostalgic. You know, a lot of happy music can make you nostalgic in a sad way. YH: Is there anything you listen to that particularly exemplifies that? PS: A happy record that when you revisit it, makes you sad. That’s a tough one. Now I’m just trying to think of a happy album. It’s always been funny to me that our music is tagged as depressing, because I feel like if you listen to a lot of lyrics in songs, most of the time they’re about heartbreak or missing someone or being angry at someone. It’s rare anyone is writing a song saying, “Everything is amazing, the world is fine, and I am in an excellent place, perfectly content!” I think it’s in the mood, the music behind the lyrics. The first that came to mind was Belle & Sebastian, but was it High Fidelity where someone puts on the new Belle & Sebastian and says something about it being extremely depressing? YH: I don’t know much Belle & Sebastian, just Dear Catastrophe Waitress, so I can’t really offer an opinion. PS: Ooooo, that’s a great record! And that’s actually the perfect example because it’s a really happy record, and it totally bums me out every time I listen to it. It reminds me of a great time, but it makes me miss that time. Like it would be so interesting to go back to that, when I was first listening to that record, and I was probably 19 after my freshman year at college, and I moved to New York City, and I was so into life. I was exploring and listening to that record every day. If I listen to it today, I’d be like, “Aww, man! Those were good times.” But at the same time, if you’re happy with where you’re at, then you don’t need to be sad about things in the past. YH: And are you happy with where you’re at? PS: Yeah, absolutely.
Music: deadmau5
Movie: Trouble with the Curve
Deadmau5’s acerbic online persona and album titles (Random Album Title, For Lack of a Better Name, for starters) might make you think that he hates his job. But a quick listen to his latest offering, >album title goes here<, reveals a respect for several electronic genres that is surprising, given his irreverent exterior. Get past the album’s low point, the aleatoric opener, “Superliminal,” and you’ll be whisked away on a ride through a diverse range of dance music. Deadmau5 traverses electro-punk on “Professional Griefers,” French house on “Channel 42,” and progressive trance on the euphoric “There Might Be Coffee.” With the sweeping, beatless intros that take up many songs’ first halves, it’s not really suited to an all-nightlong rave. Most telling is the lack of a continuous mix, a 60-minute block without track distinctions that stitches the album into a single, non stop chunk of music. While such a mix came bundled with his last album, 4x4=12, it is notably absent from >album title<. The tension between cohesion and diversity is especially tough to navigate for someone with a responsibility to get people moving on a dance floor. But denying deadmau5 creative space would mean missing out on >album title<’s closing trio of downtempo songs, which are fantastic in their own right. “Failbait” finds deadmau5 teaming with hip-hop icons like Cypress Hill for a bass heavy rap anthem, and the Imogen Heap collab “Telemiscommunications” is a heartbreaking narrative of a long-distance relationship. The album fades out on a lonely piano chord, a far cry from the growling basslines and blustery beats of before—but deadmau5 more than earns the incongruity. —Will Adams
Oh, Clint Eastwood. I want to walk up and shake your hand, but your icy glare would stop me in my tracks. I’d like to compliment your authoritative performance, but you’d probably bark at me for not minding my own business. I’ll admit it—I enjoyed watching your first performance since 2008. You might have recently struggled on the small screen, but few others can match your abilities on the silver screen. You pick films wisely, Mr. Eastwood. At its core, Trouble with the Curve is precisely what the name implies: a clever double-entendre dealing with both old age and a favorite American pastime. Beneath the neat title, however, lies a more compelling story, one that hits on themes of isolation, self-fulfillment, and family. And who better than you to play the role of a cantankerous septuagenarian with a bellicose wit? The plot of Trouble is nothing special, but you knew that. Daddydaughter issues, a flirty romance, a smug baseball prodigy—you’ve done it before. The charm of the film comes from the easy rapport between you and your costar Amy Adams. You two hate each other just enough to make us believe you’re actually related. You also yell often enough to keep me from falling asleep. Trouble with the Curve is no Oscar contender. The film suffers from a noticeable lack of flair, and the plot mostly crawls along at turtle pace. Yet the — story benefits from genuine feel-good moments. Justin Timberlake may never develop the acting chops to play a convincing small-town role, but his easy charm woos the audience well. Overall, Trouble is a unique enough twist on a well-worn story. Bravo, Mr. Eastwood. You’re golden when you stick to the script. —Rod Cuestas
Movie: For a Good Time, Call... Jamie Travis’s latest effort, awkwardly titled For a Good Time, Call…, is not funny—it’s laughable. In trying to meld the gross-out, female-driven comedy (see: Bridesmaids) with hipster, big city, antirom coms (see: 500 Days of Summer), Travis has utterly failed. For a Good Time follows two new roommates, rambunctious Katie (Ari Graynor) and mundane Lauren (Lauren Miller), who unexpectedly (or expectedly, considering comedic formula) form a tight friendship despite initially clashing. Together, they start a phone-sex line, which subsequently leads to chaos, confusion, and betrayal. The film’s problems begin with its screenplay. The dialogue in the first act is cheesy, hackneyed fluff; in the second half, the liberal use of profanity, specifically erotic slang and accompanying, uh, noises, is shocking rather than humorous, and certainly doesn’t help the two leading ladies seem more relatable. As such, the film’s character development is subpar, and I still can’t decide whether to fault the writers or actors. Graynor’s character transitions too quickly from superslut to heartbroken crybaby to vengeful bitch, and it bewilders me that Miller’s character could reject others as “boring” when she herself is so uninteresting. Side players are no better: Justin Long is offensively flamboyant as the gay best friend, and Lauren’s boyfriend (James Wolk) is your typically egocentric and chauvinistic dud. All in all, Travis and company play it way too safe with stereotypes and clichés. Nonetheless, the film has its moments. For instance, Katie’s budding romantic relationship with one client is surprisingly genuine and sweet, but the subplot’s climax (no pun intended) is, yet again, unrealistic. Perhaps that’s the film’s central flaw: its plot and characters are so preposterous that it just can’t be taken seriously—not even as a comedy. Humor requires believability, and For a Good Time is just unbelievably bad. —Wesley Yiin
Music: Mumford & Sons Following their wildly successful debut Sigh No More, British folk rock sensation Mumford & Sons has released a new effort this week. Babel blazes no new territory, but it is a respectable and catchy sophomore album with plenty of memorable songs for fans old and new. The title track makes for a strong opening, and, as always with this group, the lyrics are a gold mine: “I know my weakness/know my voice/but I believe in grace and choice.” The album continues with a mix of bittersweet ballads like “Ghosts that We Knew” and defiant, toe-tapping numbers like “Lover’s Eyes.” The lead single, “I Will Wait,” mixes Mumford-&-Sons-staple guitar and banjo strumming with an extremely catchy chorus. But only this song and “Lover of the Light” truly match the lyrical depth and tuneful heights of “Little Lion Man” and “The Cave” from Sigh No More. “Not With Haste” is the rollicking concluding track of the album, recalling the cheery strumming of Mumford & Sons’ contribution to the soundtrack for Disney·Pixar’s Brave. I recommend, however, splurging for the bonus track version, if only for the affecting cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.” Devotees of the band may be interested to know there are fewer direct references to literature, and particularly Shakespeare, on this album, though “Lover’s Eyes” seems like a good fit for Othello, and “Whispers in the Dark” for Measure for Measure. The layered poetry of the songs, though, surely promises a vast store of hidden gems to be discovered. —Alexi Sargeant YH Staff
The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
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BULLBLOG BLACKLIST We probably won’t like them more when it’s appropriate midterms season, but still.
SOMESOM Early
midterms
Selfdeprecation
I promise you I have nothing valuable to contribute to the presidential search committee. Now leave my inbox alone.
Tho
YDN elections
And the YDN kids complaining about them.
And then having to read everyone’s tweets about how it was the single most life-changing experience they’ve ever had.
Your aggression feels uncalled for, and I prefer my dairy refrigerated, thanks.
You’re almost as bad at it as I am.
Those SUN emails
Not getting tickets to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Yale Dining’s Israel-themed menu on Yom Kippur
TA
People handing out yogurt from canvas bags
It just feels like they missed their target audience on this one.
FellFe
500-pound doors in Commons
Small talk in coffee shops I already walked to Commons for my workout.
If I don’t know what classes you’re taking by now, it’s probably because I don’t care.
The Yale Herald (Sept. 28, 2012)
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