Th
YALE’S MOST DARING PUBLICATION SINCE 1986
9/14/18
d al
e l H a e Y r e
from the editors Come on in! It’s great to see you! How was your summer? Anyways.
THE HER AL
VISIT US ONLINE AT YALEHERALD.COM
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THEAD S A M
EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MANAGING EDITORS
Jack Kyono Fiona Drenttel, Nurit Chinn
EXECUTIVE EDITORS Emma Chanen, Emily Ge, Marc Shkurovich,Eve Sneider, Anna Sudderth, Oriana Tang, Margaret Grabar Sage, Nicole Mo FEATURES EDITORS Marina Albanese, Trish Viveros CULTURE EDITORS Sara Luzuriaga, Tereza Podhajská VOICES EDITORS Julia Leathem, Allison Chen OPINION EDITOR Eric Krebs REVIEWS EDITORS Everest Fang, Kat Corfman STYLE EDITOR Molly Ono INSERTS EDITORS
Addee Kim, Sarah Force
DESIGN STAFF CREATIVE DIRECTORS Julia Hedges, Rasmus Schlutter DESIGN EDITORS Merritt Barnwell, Paige Davis, Charlotte Foote, Anya Pertel, Audrey Huang
Sorry the place is a bit messy, we just got settled in :) Pens lined up, textbooks stacked, computer charged. It’s been a crazy week. Let’s recap– I got my class schedule figured out, made TONS of new friends, saw a grey, panicked mouse scurry across our common room floor, and felt true, pure, joy. Ah gosh, I’m digressing! Just take your shoes off, and let me show you around the place. Wait, speaking of place, let’s talk about the Green. The New Haven one, that is. Right? Totally. Turns out it has a weird and layered history, filled with intrigue, legal loopholes, and a complex relationship between incorporated private-public entities that I just know you can’t resist reading about. Just turn to page 14! Eve Sneider, MC ’19, has got it all on lock for you. On with the tour. Here’s my bedroom, by the way. Well, it’s a bit dark in here, isn’t it? Let me turn on the lamp. Oh, speaking of lamps, flip on over to page 12, where Danielle de Haerne, MY ’22, shines light on how First-Year Scholars at Yale helps low income and first-generation students transition to the Ivy League. Well, that’s all the time we have with my room. Let’s review what else we’ve got in this here house– oh wait, Reviews! Yeah, so Nicole Mo, BK ’19, is ready to talk about showing off and being vulnerable in The Cowboy, you know it! Check that out on page 20. And that’s the house! Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you come back soon. Just don’t forget your shoes! See ya, friend, Rasmus Schlutter Creative Director
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THE YALE HERALD
The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, non-partisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office. If you wish to subscribe to the Herald, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at eve.sneider@yale.edu. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 2017-2018 academic year for 65 dollars. 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 2018 The Yale Herald.
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IN THIS ISSUE 6
OPINIONS Spencer Hagaman, MY ’21, predicts the fall of his California congressman in the first edition of the Herald’s new series, “Stomping Grounds: Local Stories That Will Define the Election.”
VOICES
9
In a story by Hubert Pach, SY ’22, a young man’s curiosity about a person on the street turns into an obsession, until a chance encounter between them reveals the false fantasies we project onto strangers.
STYLE
12
Mariah Kreutter, BK ’20, sheds light on an unlikely source of sartorial inspiration: men’s button downs.
In the wake of the recent overdoses on the New Haven Green, Eve Sneider, MC ’19, asks the question: what does it look like when a public space is privately owned?
10, 16
Contemplating college tattoos, Molly Ono, ES ’20, reflects on the decision to permanently mark one’s body in the transition to adulthood.
COVER
WEEK AHEAD Pride March
FEATURES
18
Elise Lieberman, GH ’21, considers a man’s unwavering fight for exoneration as she looks at the message and making of 120 Years, the student documentary about a New Haven man wrongfully convicted of murder.
CULTURE
Nurit Chinn, DC ’20, interrogates the Yale community’s lack of discourse over the Israel-Palestine conflict, an issue that dominates and divides college campuses across the nation.
Danielle de Haerne, MY ’22, interrogates the role First-Year Scholars at Yale plays in forming communities among low income Yale students. Laurie Roark, ES ’21, discusses the nuanced portrayal of Western America on display in the Beinecke’s exhibition, Eye on the West: Photography and the Contemporary West.
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Saturday, Sept. 15 @ 2:30pm New Haven Pride Center
REVIEWS
Yale Herald Launch Party/Cocktail Hour
Nicole Mo, BK ’19, finds unlikely harmony between showmanship and vulnerability in Mitski’s Be The Cowboy.
Saturday, Sept. 15 @ 8:30pm 216 Dwight Street
Tuesday, Sept. 18 @ 12:30pm YCBA
IT’S MIDTERM-SEASON, BITCHES!
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FLIPPING HOUSES
GOIN T U FLIPPING HOUSES
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Art in Context | Picturesque Propaganda: Photography and Tea in Colonial India and Sri Lanka
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M O IN C
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Saturday, Sept. 15 @ 10:00 PM Email cntrlgrp@gmail.com for details
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The Control Group Presents: “Party” (A Recruitment Show)
Mohamed Karabatek, JE ’19, takes you on a tour of Travis Scott’s sonic playground, ASTROWORLD, and Vy Tran, BR ’21, works through the complicated messages of Spike Lee’s Blackkklansman.
DIDN’T ONE OF THE PROPERTY BROTHERS GET ARRESTED?
INSERTS
SUBLET Y
esterday, I attended the broadway debut of “Sublet.” This rollicking rock-opera is the sequel to Jonathan Larson’s swansong, “RENT.” I entered Shubert Theatre dubious, but after the opening number, I was pleasantly surprised by the familiar guitar-heavy overtures, and the complex intersections of the protagonists’ lives. SUBLET features 5 white Yale students who decide to stay in New Haven for the summer. They have all been awarded fellowships paying them sums between $4,000 and $10,000. The soundtrack is punctuated by that little sound Venmo makes when someone pays you money; synchronized perfectly with each time the characters are slightly inconvenienced. In RENT, what unites the leads is a valiant struggle with HIV, drug addiction, and the startlingly universal burden of just being. In SUBLET, what unites the leads is the cold they all got from a juul they found in the bathroom of Rudy’s. Colorful lights crash onto the stage, as SUBLET pays homage to the first number of RENT. 104 beautiful days of summer 104 days of pretending to be poor 104 beautiful days of summer We’ll roll our own cigarettes like we’re prisons of war In Act I, we witness the triumphs and turmoils of Chris. His father is the CFO of TD Bank. But he tells everyone his dad runs “a company that was featured during NYC Pride.” Sarah is a 20-something who vandalizes public buildings with Jenny Holzer quotes. She sings in melancholy ballads, trying to
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THE YALE HERALD
AUGUSTE WHITE, SY ’21
put the finishing touches on her YDN op-ed about catcalling. Her identity and sense of self fractures when she realizes the “perpetrator” in her testimony was actually a homeless man warning her about her untied sneakers. Micah, perhaps the anchor of the ensemble, seeks love in New Haven on Tinder. He has a personal rule of swiping right on every other black guy there after he realized his matches looked like the 1939 german military draft. Micah’s pick up lines are invitations to discuss inequity in the textile industry and his tips on how to make the most of your local farmers market. Melissa braves the cruel streets of New Haven each day atop her bike. She suffers many sleepless nights, she lays there, naked at centerstage, monologuing in fear that her friends will discover her favorite pair of Goodwill pants were purchased at full price from Anthropologie. Mimi struggles under the weight of capitalism. She is feisty, like her namesake, a 19-year-old puerto rican stripper battling HIV. But unlike her, Mimi is a 20-year-old Berkeley College Aid battling the urge to watch Girls. As her financial situation worsens, her credit card is declined at Crepes Choupette. Broken by the weight of her poverty, and moved to take action, she shares a Buzzfeed News article about wealth distribution.
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ays t o W e v Ma i F k p e o T
S n i ecti s d on n e i r ADDEE KIM, JE ’21 F YH STAFF
5.
Take the seat at the corner of the table, but make sure everyone knows the major inconvenience you have placed yourself in. Everyone loves a martyr.
Respond to everyone’s pronouns with “NICE,” “SAME GIRL,” or “INTERESTING!”
3.
When you are asked to introduce yourself with your name, year, and residential college, use the opportunity to say that you live off campus, and do not feel wedded to any residential college. How evolved!
Be generous: lend your pencils, notes, and gum to those in need.
1.
4.
2.
Through the same means, spread your strep to the class; a bacterial infection is the binding agent of any solid friend group.
I Didn’t Believe in the Sophomore Slump Until it Happened to Me
W
hen my older friends warned me at the end of my first-year, I didn’t believe them. I’d managed to dodge senioritis in high school and the “freshman fifteen”; no way I’d get hit by the sophomore slump. But I was wrong: I got the slump. The signs were clear early on that my second year would not live up to the ease and novelty of the first. I had to carry my own bags to my fifth floor room on move-in day. So much for “Saybrook movers.” I called my FroCo at my first Woad’s of the year to pick me up and she said she can’t keep doing this. I went to the first-year dinner, but I was barred from entering and ended up eating someone’s leftover steak tartare.
job was everything I hoped it would be. It required little effort, and I was making that good Yale minimum wage. But then things went south. I developed the most extreme back pain, forcing me to contort my body in a hunch-like manner. Then, my employers locked me in Harkness Tower, where I’ve been trapped for five days. With each passing night I spend on the stone floor, my kyphosis is worsening, and my will to live is dwindling. Add to all of this, I’ve fallen in love with the most beautiful girl I saw walking around campus, but I can’t communicate to her from so far up and so buckled over. Throughout all of these unfortunate events and physical impairments, the only silver lining is that my french has improved exponentially.
I thought things were turning back around for me I now understand what my peers were saywhen I scored a job ringing the campus bells in Hark- ing: There’s no avoiding the sophomore slump. ness Tower, but the slump only got worse. At first, the
SARAH FORCE, SY ’21 YH STAFF
The Shameless Pirate 6 THE YALE HERALD
HUBERT PACH, SY ’22
T
he answer to Julius’s prayers came on a Wednesday back in February when he saw an old man walking toward the supermarket. Even though it was snowing, the man wore only along sleeve shirt and a scarf that was in truth just a long, patchy rag with splashes of color. From then on, Julius began to take note of the man and document his peculiarities. For example, the man always stepped as to avoid the lines of the sidewalk. He never took his hands out of his pockets, and in them he endlessly fidgeted. And always, he was plugged into an outdated Walkman, nodding his head to whatever music was playing. His appearance was a reflection of his strange mannerisms, though Julius could not say whether the man’s actions bent to match his aesthetic or vice versa. He had a scruffy orange beard perpetually trimmed to the same quarter-inch cut, dark inked lines on his bare head, and to top it off, he wore an eyepatch, which seemed to cover the other eye every time Julius saw him. The more Julius saw the character, the more invested in him he became. Unless he had somewhere else to be, he would always come to the supermarket at five to three, the time he usually saw the peculiar man. Of course, the man was not always there, but as time progressed, Julius became better at predicting the days he’d see the Shameless Pirate, which had become Julius’s nickname for the stranger. The nickname always gave him a good laugh. Running parallel to his intrigue, Julius's quality of life skyrocketed. He took up cooking and jogging. His guitar, which had gathered two years of dust sitting in the corner of his room, finally played melodies again. Everything which had previously been in shambles seemed to be miraculously restored. Often, Julius’s girlfriend would come with him to the supermarket. As they pulled up into the parking lot, he would try to catch glimpses of the Shameless Pirate without her noticing. Inevitably, though, disaster struck. In mid-March, she spotted the Pirate, and laughed. “That guy is what we all aspire to be, isn’t he Julius?” she joked. But this did not go over well on her lover, gripped by his ad-
miration of the man. He felt offended even, as if his girlfriend had stolen part of his secret joy. “There’s nothing special about him,” Julius said that day, “Go downtown, there will be thousands like him.” He knew what he just spat was a sheer lie. There was everything special about the Shameless Pirate, but he felt his heart pound, nearly shattering his ribcage, that horrible day when his girlfriend came so close to ruining the Pirate. Julius spent months as a sponge, absorbing more oddities as his Pirate run-ins increased: the way he rolled a twig between his fingers when deciding between items, the way he pointlessly extended his arms in front of himself when walking toward the automatic door as if he thought it wouldn’t open without a push. Around the tenth month, Julius heard the Pirate speak for the first time, from two people behind in the Express Lane. Though the sign said four items or less, the Pirate had five: tissues, bananas, a flashlight, a plastic jar, and batteries. The cashier, who seemed to hate his job was completely indifferent to the fact that the Pirate had one item over the limit and rang him up without any question. Julius laughed to himself at the queer combination of items. Then, he heard it. “Would you like a receipt?” the monotone teenage worker asked. “No, thank you,” the Pirate answered, waving his hand. His voice was subtly croaky but still extremely soothing. Julius was giddy with joy and decided that the next time he saw the Pirate, he would be ready to strike up a conversation. Four times Julius would follow the Pirate into an aisle, but he could never find a pretext for striking a conversation. The closest he had gotten was saying “excuse me” while passing, but the Pirate never seemed to hear it. The fifth time he saw the Pirate, Julius prepared to ask him how he was. He had practiced it the whole way into the store, and he continued to practice it to the very aisle the Pirate was at, the candy aisle. He walked slow-
ly, ready to engage his obsession, when suddenly, the man turned toward him. “Young man, would you be able to help me out here?” he asked in his mollifying voice. Julius grinned. The phrase ‘young man’ made him warm inside, as if somehow he had always known the Pirate would use it to refer to him. He moved closer to his idol, who was holding a bag of Almond Joys in one hand and a bag of Snickers in the other. “Need help choosing?” Julius asked, The older man looked at him, dazed, as if he had forgotten that he had called him over in the first place. “What? Oh, no, nothing like that. In truth, young man, I just need to know how these two are different. Or how, for that matter, they are different from any other candy here,” he waved his hand to present the wide array of candies before them. “Well, they’re very different in taste. Snickers are more—” “Different in taste? They’re both sweet, are they not?” the Pirate interrupted, chuckling. Julius laughed too, though he was confused by this observation. “Yes, but two things can be sweet and be different. And if you’re so certain that they’re the same, why ask how they differ?” Julius asked. The Pirate put the candy bags back and placed the earpiece of his Walkman around his neck. Julius could just barely make out ferocious piano music. The Pirate then turned and faced Julius. “My point is: we are all different, different to our very cores! But, when you look at humanity in a broader sense, like with the candies, we are all similar in the ways that matter. Sure, the Almond Joys may have a coconut taste while Snickers have caramel, but they’re both sweet! And—” This time it was Julius who interrupted the Pirate. “What absolutely pointless generalities! How could you even begin to speak such nonsense! And to a stranger, one who thought you had more to contribute than this garbage!” he cried. He had almost lost his mind.
illustration by Merritt Barnwell
“I beg your pardon, young man?” The phrase ‘I beg your pardon’ also warmed Julius up inside. His face betrayed a red color, feeling horrible for having lost his temper on his savior. “I’m sorry, it was totally inappropriate for me to go off like that. That was not like me,” he said, inching closer to the Pirate, who stared at Julius for a few seconds, then smiled. Julius saw that one tooth was whiter than the rest. “Well, young man, what do you think? We do put too much emphasis on our differences and not our similarities. What do you think of my theory?” he asked, eager for praise. Julius frowned again. “Well, to be frank, it’s neither an original idea, nor a sound one. And your analogy to chocolate bars is ridiculous. How can you compare the complexity of being human to… a chocolate bar? And your conclusion is what? That we are all sweet inside? How about murderers, cheaters, liars? Are they sweet too? Are we too unforgiving of them? Shall we free all of the inmates because we put ‘too much emphasis on our differences and not our similarities?’ Is that what you want, you complete moron?” He was screaming now. The Pirate just stared at him, no words, no expression, just shock. “And to think I imagined you a godsend,” Julius continued, “I’d hoped for so long to speak to you, drill at you, to mine your golden philosophy, to find the answer to your each of your oddities. I never considered that you would spill it all out at once, and that it’d be so fucking.... stupid! Some revolutionary!” Julius spat on the Pirate unintentionally, but it happened as if it was fate. He stormed out of the store. Muttering under his breath on his walk through the parking lot, Julius cursed the day he met that idiotic man. Before he got into his vehicle, he looked back at the market that hours wbefore had been his holiest place. He spat on the ground, this time with full intention.
VOICES
n i C s t a e lifo S n r u n S SPENCER HAGAMAN, BF ’21, PREDICTS THE FALL OF HIS CALIFORNIA CONGRESSMAN IN THE FIRST EDITION OF THE HERALD’S NEW SERIES, “STOMPING GROUNDS: LOCAL STORIES THAT WILL DEFINE THE ELECTION.”
D
ana Rohrabacher, Republican U.S. Representative from California’s 48th Congressional District, finds himself in unfamiliar territory: political uncertainty. The Congressman has faced little resistance over his 32 year career in California’s 48th Congressional District, which comprises Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, and my hometown, Huntington Beach. The district is situated in Orange County, often referred to as the last Republican stronghold of California. I cannot remember a single contentious election in my 18 years in Orange County—Democrats were too unorganized and underfunded to effectively campaign, and Republicans never needed to. On Election Day, many people, my mother included, simply went through the ballot box in streamline fashion, voting for every candidate with an ‘R’ next to their name. In 2016, Rohrabacher won with 58 percent of the popular vote, and Republicans’ Camelot appeared safe. However, for the first time since FDR, the county voted for a Democratic presidential candidate— Hillary Clinton. Shockingly, even CA-48, the “heartland of Orange County Republicanism”, narrowly voted for Clinton. Democrats saw the shift as a repudiation of Trump Republicanism and smelled blood in the water. The path to regaining the house lay in Orange County, and the name at the top of their list: Dana Rohrabacher. A former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, 15-term Rohrabacher is a familiar face in Washington. Early in his elected career, Rohrabacher served as a reminder of the Reagan resurgence Republicans flaunt to this day. However, the Congressman has shifted further to the right in his time in office. In recent years, he has garnered national attention for his extreme skepticism of manmade climate change, his support for Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, and his strong anti-immigration stance. However, Rohrabacher’s eccentricities made little difference in the Republican heavy 48th Congressional District. Rohrabacher faced little resistance from weak, unknown Democratic challengers. Rohrabacher has retained his seat with at least 55 percent of the vote in 14 of his last 15 elections. Rohrabacher was an avid surrogate for Donald Trump, proudly displaying his “Make America Great Again” hat as he made his way from one Memorial Day event to another in May, 2016. Rohrabacher was even rumoured to be a potential dark-horse appointment for Secretary of State following Trump’s victory. However, since Hillary Clinton’s triumph in Orange County, there is reason to believe Rohrabacher’s days are numbered. He faces a formidable former Republican-turned-centrist-Democrat in Harley Rouda, a former real estate executive. Rouda, to many, embodies a new democratic strategy: turnout Democrats with a populist message and attract centrist voters with the promise of prosperity and good government. At the end of June, Rohrabacher trailed Rouda in both fundraising and cash on hand. In previous cycles, Democratic events garnered a few dozen attendees at most; at a July canvassing event in Huntington Beach, an estimated 800 supporters of all backgrounds were in attendance, all motivated to help “Flip
8 THE YALE HERALD
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OPINION
the 48th.” Democrats even sent their strongest surrogate, President Barack Obama, to Orange County.
Even with the growing Democratic momentum in the 48th District, Rohrabacher’s foremost challenges have been within his own party. Many Orange County Republicans are fatigued with Rohrabacher. In the primaries, Rohrabacher was challenged by a one time ally, former Assemblyman Scott Baugh. In 1995, Rohrabacher’s wife Rhonda pled guilty to two felony counts for assisting Baugh in a ballot fraud scheme to split Democratic voters. Rohrabacher himself was fined almost $50,000 for campaign finance violations. Baugh’s entry into the primary race revealed the growing divisions within the local party. Though Baugh was unable to advance to the general election in the district’s primary, he siphoned over 30 percent of the Republican vote, illustrating the growing hesitation within the party for Rohrabacher. Since June, Rohrabacher’s public image has further deteriorated due to a number of scandals. The Congressman has been named repeatedly in the Russia investigation. Rohrabacher lost the financial support and endorsement of the Orange County Association of Realtors after stating that homeowners should be able to refuse to sell to someone based on their sexuality. In July, Rohrabacher appeared on Sacha Baron Cohen’s new Showtime series Who is America?, seeming to support “Kinderguardians,” a fictional program made up by Baron Cohen, proposing to train and arm talented elementary school children. While it is unclear of how November will play out, one thing is clear: Win or lose in November, this will certainly be Dana Rohrabacher’s last election. The Congressman has made no comment on the issue, but even if he defeats the Democratic advance in November, Rohrabacher will likely lack the support to run for a seventeenth term. A growing number of local party leaders and voters are dissatisfied with the Congressman while some Orange County Republicans are already eyeing potential 2020 House runs, regardless of this election’s outcome. The 48th Congressional District illuminates the Republican Party’s greatest woe in the 2018 election: the alienation of middleof-the-road Republicans struggling to identify with the party that once was defined by the principles of Lincoln and Reagan. Many people back home are frustrated and beleaguered with the antics of Congressman Rohrabacher and want a change. However, Rohrabacher has mastered the first rule to power maintenance: to maintain your mandate, you can either be a good ruler or prevent your constituents from learning of better leadership. Rohrabacher has a history of helping to thwart the viability of alternative candidates, but this election is different. Rohrabacher and the Republican Party have failed to dismantle Harley Rouda’s candidacy. Rouda’s campaign is knocking on 6,000 doors of registered voters every weekend, educating voters that—yes, indeed—there is an alternative to voting for Rohrabacher. And when the voter base has learned that, Rohrabacher’s reign will be over.
Rohrabacher has mastered the first rule to power maintenance: to maintain your mandate, you can either be a good ruler or prevent your constituents from learning of better leadership… This election is different.
STYLE
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The Life-Changing
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lot of items of clothing are off-limits when you have—pardon the vulgarity— gigantic tits. Strapless dresses, bathing suits that lack underwire, almost everything that Urban Outfitters sells: all were off limits to me from about seventh grade onward. And, for a long time, button-down shirts were on that list too. Each one that I tried just didn’t quite work. Either it was too sheer, or it rode up when I lifted my arms, or (almost universally) it gapped at the bust. It didn’t matter whether I was at the clearance section of Nordstrom Rack, the clearance section of H&M, or a thrift store. Nothing worked. I was haunted, though, by images of women in perfectly crisp, perfectly fitted button-downs. I obsessed over them. It was the only look I wanted to emulate: wide pants; loafers or mules; earrings made from wire or acetate; and that white whale of a shirt, loosely tucked in, unfussy, and elegant. The outfits that inspired me were masculine, but with subtle nods towards femininity. They were the kind of thing you might wear to sip rose at a sidewalk cafe in Barcelona, or to your job as a ceramics curator at MoMA PS1, or to be Joan Didion. I restarted the hunt. I had always assumed that women’s shirts would fit me better, but on my mother’s advice—a woman who spent her college years in Dr. Martens before they were cool, wearing men’s clothes fished out of Salvation Army bins—I broadened my search to the men’s section. Immediately I felt a difference. The fabric was thicker and more robust. Even at the same price point, the men’s shirts seemed sturdier and better made than the women’s. But I was wary of the fit. After all, weren’t these designed for a demographic that was generally boobless? How could they possi-
Magic of Men’s bly accommodate my chest when the shirts that were specifically made for the purpose couldn’t? Here’s the funny thing, though: when a garment is designed to fit a woman’s body, it is designed to fit exactly one woman’s body, and if that woman isn’t you then you’re shit out of luck. From the size and shape of the cups to the curvature of the hips, a piece of clothing can only conform to one possibility. That was why I either bulged out of or was swallowed by women’s button-downs. Different sizes were just scaled up versions of the exact same proportions.
Button Downs
. . .
When I tried on the men’s shirts I could let them consume me and still look cute. All it took to make a men’s Large look like it was made for me was tucking it in at the waist. I couldn’t believe it was that easy. I bought four of them. Shopping in the men’s section may be a tiny act of resistance against an industry that tries its darnedest to convince us that there’s one right way to exist in a female body, but I don’t think it’s meaningless. Of all the lines that fashion draws in the sand—of price, of size, of accessibility in general—gender is perhaps the categorization that can be crossed with the most ease (at least in a purely practical sense). You can’t buy a shirt you can’t afford. You can’t buy a shirt that doesn’t physically fit your body. But you can always head to the other side of the store and try something on that wasn’t made for you, and look amazing in it anyway.
MARIAH KREUTTER, BK ’20 YH STAFF
Yale Ink AMALIA ONO, ES ’20 YH STAFF
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hen I walk around Yale, I don’t see many tattoos. Yes, there is sometimes the odd line tattoo on a forearm, but generally, Yale folk roam the earth uninked. Given the pre-professional bent that colors any Ivy League campus, this wealth of virgin skin is somewhat unsurprising. And yet, a girl I met last year—whose conventional style, demeanor, and desire to pursue consulting seemed to declare, “I would never get a tattoo”—caught me by surprise as she slowly rolled up her shirt and showed me not one but two: a snowflake and a detailed phoenix. And then tattoos began popping up, occasionally but consistently. On his 18th birthday, the boy across the hall crushing on my roommate went and got a string of Chinese symbols down his spine to celebrate his family. My good friend, with a single cuff of her pant leg, revealed the
smiley face on her ankle that I’d been ignorant of for the year I’d known her. The Timothée Chalamet wannabe (bless his outcasted British soul) had small “x” symbols peeking out from his tricep. My sophomore-year suitemate came back from the summer with a fresh troop of tiny numbers and symbols scattered across his body. And of course, every sort of person in the art school seems to have some mottled stick-and-poke slapped onto a calf or a wrist. I’m certainly no different. At the ripe age of 20, I marched my previously unmarked self down to a studio in Brooklyn and got an approximation of a green squished abstracted eye permanently etched into my back. I felt triumphant, rebellious. (My fairly anti-tattoo parents still have no idea.) I had changed my body in this small, secret way, and I owned it completely.
And college really is the perfect time for tattoos. For perhaps the first time, you are simultaneously owner of your time, actions, and body. Tonight, you could meet your lifelong friend in a suite across campus, or you could commit to being English major, or you could secure the internship that takes you on a one-way path to Wall Street. Choices like these are crazy because they are lasting. In the face of solidifying the rest of your life, and the newfound freedom of matriculation, putting ink onto your body seems not only to be a permanent avenue of self-expression, but also a small manifestation of the choices we make during our college years that will be with us for the rest of our lives. So if you’re on the fence, definitely get that tattoo. And make it a good one.
FEATURE Fighting for Freedom, Finding Forgiveness ELISE LIEBERMAN, GH ’21
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“When I read about Scott,” says Nadel, “it was the first time I had ever felt a story was truly jumping out of the page at me—that this was a story that needed to be told. And when I got to hear his story in person, I knew that this story needed to be told on screen—that nobody would ever be able to tell it with the same emotion and candor as [Lewis and] the people who went through it [with him] for 20 years.”
n Apr. 15, 1991, driving home to New Haven from Milford, Scott Lewis made a left on red without signalling. Moments later, he was pulled over and charged with murder. At 29 years old, he was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he did not commit, and would spend the next 20 years desperately fighting to prove As he talks to the camera, Lewis does not sound like a man who has spent 20 years in prison, found guilty of a douhis innocence. ble homicide he did not commit. He makes his experience On Sept. 8, 2018, Luce Hall is filled to capacity. Those lucky seem brief; time, in his words, flows quickly. As he details enough to get off the waitlist line the aisles. We’re here to his arrest and time in prison with strikingly good humor, I watch 120 Years—the documentary that Matt Nadel, GH struggle to laugh when he does, asking myself how he isn’t ’21, Keera Annamaneni, TD ’20, and Lukas Cox, BK ’19, angry or bitter. have made to tell Lewis’s story. Nadel, too, was amazed by Lewis’s lack of resentment. 30 years after his arrest, Lewis comes into focus on the screen “Throughout the entire process of filming, I was most in Luce Hall as a free man. He is no longer 29—that much struck by Lewis’s forgiveness and empathy,” Nadel recalls, is clear. Crow’s feet and a salt-and-pepper beard betray the adding that one day Lewis even mentioned that he felt baddecades that have passed. Yet his eyes shine, and he is full ly for Detective Raucci. Astounded, Nadel and Cox asked of life. He laughs and waves his arms, giving us smile after why. “I know what it feels like to do things you regret,” Lewis replied. “And that’s gotta suck.” Nadel explains how smile, and begins to tell his story. “Scott’s laser focus on winning his innocence and ensurLewis was framed by a dirty cop, and he knew it, too. Fol- ing that truth prevailed led him to do what seems to me, lowing his arrest, he stood, shell-shocked and handcuffed, at least, impossible: to intellectually filter out that anger as in the elevator of the New Haven precinct. As he rode up- unconducive to his goal.” wards, the man by his side turned to him and uttered a sentence that would both haunt and push Lewis forward for the next 20 years: “You should have never stopped selling drugs in Fairhaven.”
If he hadn’t taken matters into his own hands, he wouldn’t be out today.
This man was Vincent Raucci, an infamously corrupt detective involved in New Haven’s drug trade as both user and seller. Lewis himself had recently decided to leave that very world—he stopped dealing drugs after watching his cousin get hooked. Raucci, working with Lewis’s infuriated superiors, framed him as a result. A nightmarish trial quickly unfolded. Melanie Carr, a private investigator later hired to work on Lewis’s case, reports that she has seen many issues with police investigations throughout her career of working on death penalty and civil rights cases. But never, she says, had she “seen [a case] that was so clearly a frame-up job.” Raucci threatened potential witnesses and blackmailed others into giving false, incriminating testimonies. Despite such threats, Lewis’s boss testified that Lewis punched into work at the time of the crime; the court knew Lewis’s alibi was sound. Another man even confessed to committing the double homicide in question. Yet a justice system designed to protect white police and and incriminate black youth prevailed. A corrupt cop walked free and a young black man went to jail, sentenced to 120 years. 10 THE YALE HERALD
In addition to choosing forgiveness, Lewis studied the law extensively as a means to pursue his own freedom, spending endless hours in the law library, accumulating reams of information relevant to his case, and even taking a paralegal course. “Never in my life,” says Darcy McGraw, director of the Connecticut Innocence Project (CIP), an organization that works to free those who have been wrongfully convicted, “have I met another individual who took it upon himself to learn the law to the extent that Scott did...He is the only convict I have ever met who did not rely on lawyers, and instead felt like he was his own best advocate [and] did a huge amount of the work.” Lewis also took creative writing classes with Yale Professor Sarah Stillman, PC ’06, as a way to get in touch with his emotions and spend his time productively while behind bars. Stillman tells me that Lewis was the most tenacious and optimistic person she had ever met. For the four years he spent as her student, Lewis was “the single most bright spirited person in the class—a testament to what it looks like to be able to preserve your sense of spirit and sense of
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illustration by Paige Davis
self while fighting against an injustice so enormous it is barred from participating in many areas of society. almost unfathomable.” While his classmates preferred to discuss mass incarceration and the criminal justice As Lewis’s face fades off the screen at Luce Hall and system, Lewis would come to class with love poems. the lights flicker on, Annamaneni takes the stage. She asks all those who have been wrongfully convicted to For 20 years Lewis appealed to attorney after attorney stand. Roughly five men do, all but one black. One and even the FBI. All of his letters concluded with wonders what these men have lost and what they, too, the same, short signature: “Scott Lewis, an Innocent will never get back. Man.” Lewis, Stillman maintains, “refused to let bit••• terness corrode him… and all of the people who saw that devotion in him became equally devoted to fighting that fight side by side with him.” McGraw recalls As Lewis speaks of his exceptional path to freedom, he how Lewis “was absolutely not going to take no for an doesn’t allow the loss of 20 years to cloud his new life. answer.” Indeed, he eventually succeeded in catching Instead, he has desperately made up for lost time: fallthe attention of the FBI and Brett Dignam, a power- ing in love, getting married, starting a business, having house attorney and Yale Law Professor who agreed to a child. He speaks graciously and eagerly about stepping into the roles so long denied to him. On screen, take up his case. he relaxes in his home, kisses his wife, and makes sure Every professional who worked tirelessly to free Lewis to be the first person his daughter sees every morning. speaks of him with awe. “The whole community of people around him,” Stillman reveals, “were there in As a free man, Lewis has chosen a career to help othpart because they could see how much Scott had been ers like him. Today, he runs a real estate business dewronged, but also because they could see what a unique voted to clients who ordinarily would not have access person he was, fighting a battle completely uphill and to home ownership: ex-convicts, women of color with single-handedly and refusing to get dejected.” “That low levels of education, single mothers. Unlike most someone who is in jail can get the attention of the FBI realtors, he walks clients through a two-year accreditaand have them do an investigation into their case is, tion program that will rapidly decrease their interests in and of itself, remarkable,” explains Melanie Carr. rates, and throws in a portion of his own commission “It is something I have never heard of before or since.” to make their housing prices more affordable. In 120 She stresses how for most innocent convicts, the fight Years, Nadel takes care to highlight the story of Chris to prove their case is fruitless—like “shooting blanks.” Butler, an ex-convict who, with Lewis’s help, secured ownership of a house that provides a stable place for In February 2014, after a lengthy struggle, Lewis was his estranged son to visit him. “This isn’t just about released from prison. “If he hadn’t taken matters into house ownership,” explains Nadel. “This is about inhis own hands, he wouldn’t be out today,” Carr says. terrupting the cycles of family fragmentation that dis“That much is totally clear.” On Aug. 5, 2015, the proportionately plague communities of color.” court finally dismissed all charges against him. Lewis Nadel’s words become yet more powerful with the aphad won his freedom. pearance of Scott Lewis Jr. on the screen. Only five years old when his father was sentenced to life in pris••• on, Lewis Jr. speaks quietly and emotionally, lacking “We know that there are wrongfully convicted folks,” his father’s vivacity. He speaks first of his excitement Nadel remarks, “but most people think that they are at Lewis’s release, of a childhood spent missing his faone in a million. In fact, some estimates put wrongful ther. He reveals his struggle to connect with the man conviction rates as high as 12.6 percent, of which a he never knew; of how difficult it was for him, now disproportionate number are men of color.” Further- a father himself, to become a son. He laments Lewmore, all involved lawyers stress that Lewis’s victorious is’s fixation on his new life and job, accusing him of ending is the exception, not the rule. Of the estimated not checking in on his old family enough. Professional 250,000 wrongfully convicted prisoners in the Unit- success, he says, cannot replace the father-son bond ed States, roughly one percent have been exonerated. the two were denied. Stefon Morant, another young black man framed by Raucci for the double-homicide, unfortunately does Lewis’s unfaltering self-assurance, too, wavers at the not belong to this group. While Morant was released mention of his son. The hardest part of adjusting to alongside Lewis after serving 21 years of his 70 year free life, he says, is being a father to a son whose childsentence, he was not exonerated. As a felon, he remains hood he missed entirely. The two remain, in many
respects, strangers. Nadel remarks that Lewis Jr. is indeed “the living, breathing ramification of a dangerously flawed system.” 120 Years is a story of incredible resilience, but also one of loss. ••• After Nadel and I speak, I can’t help but return to one of his comments: “Lukas and I were angrier in our Yale dorm room than Scott ever was from his prison cell.” Aside from illustrating Lewis’s remarkable forgiveness, this remark raises a question for us: what does it mean for Yale students to be roused by Lewis’s story? From a distance it’s easy for students to immerse themselves in Lewis’s story and become enraged. But many members of our community do not have the privilege of distance. How do Yale students fit into this narrative, using and not abusing our status as privileged occupants of the City of New Haven? “The documentary,” remarks Claire Elliman, DC ’20, secretary for the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project, “definitely moves you. But on this campus, we are constantly stimulated and it is very easy for these feelings to just stay at anger.” When I ask Nadel what he hopes people will do after watching 120 Years, he has three answers. First, he hopes that everyone will cherish their time with their loved ones. Second, he would like everyone, especially white students like him, to hold authorities accountable so that they for do their jobs truthfully and expeditiously. Lastly, Nadel hopes that all viewers of 120 Years spend just fifteen minutes reading the website for the Innocence Project. “99 percent of wrongfully convicted prisoners in the United States,” he adds, “have stories we’ll never hear, and innocence we will never know.” Nadel, together with Annamaneni, Cox, and Lewis himself, has told the story of one man. An estimated 249,999 stories remain.
TO HAVE OR TO HOLD EVE SNEIDER, MC ’19 YH STAFF
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ast month, in the span of 48 hours, 95 people overdosed on the New Haven Green. First responders arrived at the Green to treat one overdose, then another, and then another. Paul Bass wrote in the pages of the New Haven Independent, “For a day or two, the New Haven Green became a scene out of the Night of the Living Dead.” As the news circulated, community members were left wondering what could have caused the chaos on the Green.
The Committee of the Proprietors of the Common and Undivided Lands of New Haven (also called the “Proprietors of the Green,” or, more often, just the “Proprietors”) had come together for what was supposed to be a routine conference.
On Aug. 15, the Committee was meeting to discuss some amendments to their official Regulations Governing the Use of the Green – they fixed some phrasing here and a typo there, and added a clause prohibiting smoking. Typically, they meet every six or weeks, according to Arterton. That the timing of their meeting aligned with what Arterton called the “Great K2 Catastrophe” was an unexpected and ironic twist. In that meeting, and in the ensuing weeks, “Our level of dismay was huge,” Arterton said. “How did this happen?”
The Proprietors make up a group even older than Yale. They are a private organization and a committee of five, serving life terms and electing their own successors. Their organization has only one role, but it’s The drug to blame for the overdoses was K2, a syn- a role that the Proprietors, the City, and its residents thetic cannabinoid that is unregulated and whose have been parsing and refining almost since the group’s chemical composition varies dramatically from batch inception: the Proprietors own the New Haven Green. As with many things where the Green is concerned, to batch. In an email to the Yale community, Ward 1 it is hard to say. Practically by definition, a privateAlder Hacibey Catalbasoglu, DC ’19, wrote that an At present, the Chair of the Committee is US District ly owned public space creates situations that are loindividual was reportedly handing out free samples of Judge Janet Bond Arterton. The other Proprietors are gistically complex and without legal precedent. As the drug, hoping to acquire new clients. While no one former Albertus Magnus College President Julia Mc- Arterton herself is quick to point out, “although Namara, retired banker Robert B. Dannies, Jr., social five proprietors hold this land in trust for the pubdied, the incident put all eyes on the Green. justice advocate Kica Matos, and Anne Tyler Cal- lic, that’s what we are – five people.” The PropriThe first day, Aug. 15, there were 76 overdoses. abresi, a philanthropist and descendant of Theophilus etors work closely with the City and rely on it to While many rushed to the Green to provide help, Eaton, one of the founders of New Haven. tidy, care for, and police the Green. In essence, the another more official meeting was underway nearby. arrangement between New Haven and the Propri-
photo courtesy of CTpostcards.net
etors hinges on treating the Green like a public park. According to Daggett, the Quinnipiac people “asAt the same time, though, both parties must readily serted in their recitals that they had an absolute and acknowledge that it isn’t one. independent power to give, alien, dispose, or sell the lands.” That said, he wrote, they noticed that othThis set-up is not without its faults and convolutions. er native communities living in close proximity to The news of last month’s overdoses and the result- colonists enjoyed secure alliances and protection. For ing conversations make this an opportune moment this, they agreed to sell the land for what amounted to revisit the history, both recent and distant, of how to pocket change. On Nov. 24, 1638, a written deed the Green has fit into the fabric of the city. For, as confirmed the purchase of the New Haven Colony. lawyers, city officials, and the Proprietors themselves will all tell you: there is no other arrangement like The same year, Davenport and Eaton laid out a design this in the country. for the village at the heart of the colony: the famed Nine Square Plan of New Haven. The story goes that *** Ezekiel’s Israelite Encampment in the Bible inspired In 1638, minister John Davenport, merchant The- Davenport to create an ordered, symmetrical, utopic ophilus Eaton, and around 500 other colonists arrived city – a square of squares, each identical in size. Eight at Quinnipiac land on the shore of the Long Island squares ring one 16-acre plot in the center, what we Sound and decided to call it their own. As Leonard now know as the New Haven Green. M. Daggett, a New Haven lawyer and a Proprietor himself, wrote in his 1942 history of the Committee, “The Proprietors’ Committee of New Haven,” these men “came by consent of the Massachusetts Bay but so far as I know without any reservation of jurisdiction or control in that company. They simply chose their home and settled here.”
As more colonists came to New Haven, the eight outer squares and the land surrounding them were divided up and settled by newcomers. As Daggett explained, people with some claim to the land – i.e. male members of the Church – would set up their home lots on one of the squares and then allot plots in the outlying fields. The land that was not divvied
“There is no other arrangement like this in the country.”
up, including the central square, was deemed “common and undivided” and was owned jointly by all of the landowners in the colony. “As we use the term, ‘proprietors’ were the original grantees or purchasers of a tract of which they and their heirs or successors and those whom they admitted afterwards to their privileges held absolute ownership and control,” Daggett wrote. However, as ownership of the common and undivided lands was passed down from generation to generation, the number of owners became unmanageably large. In 1805, the many owners voted to put together a self-perpetuating committee of five that would be responsible for maintaining and preserving the common and undivided lands – the Green chief among them – as open, common space. Five years later, the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut officially recognized Jeremiah Atwater, Levi Ives, Abraham Bishop, Francis Brown, and Thomas Painter as the first Committee of Proprietors. In colonial New England, most town greens had a similar proprietary model. What sets the New Haven Green apart is that it has remained in private hands since its establishment more than 300 years ago. “Most New England towns had commons when they were colonies but all have been subsumed into city ownership” except New Haven’s, Arterton said. As such, the City’s distinctive arrangement has long induced head scratching. When Daggett wrote his history of the Proprietors in 1942, he did so in an attempt to explicate and legitimate the group’s existence. “Mr. Burt, Examiner of Public Records, asks what authority our Committee has, stating that no such committee exists in any other town of the State and that he cannot find authority for our Committee,” he offered as an explanation of his purpose. Even today, it seems, aspects of the Proprietors’ history are mysterious or ambiguous even for those most intimately involved in the Green’s affairs. The regulations that govern the Green were initially adopted in May of 1973, and it is unclear what, if any, guidelines were in place before then. Arterton said she’s not even sure what the impetus or context for drafting the 1973 regulations was. *** “There is no other piece of property in the United States that is similarly managed and maintained. It is a unique land use,” Norm Pattis offered as he leaned back at his desk chair, long gray ponytail swinging behind him. With a laugh, he added, “And when you said earlier that you had difficulty understanding it all, I still do, okay?” This is a strong statement coming from Pattis, a criminal defense and civil rights attorney who has been practicing in New Haven since 1993. More than anyone else, he is aware of the legal oddities surrounding the Green, as the only person to ever bring a case against the Proprietors. On Oct. 15, 2011, a group of Occupy New Haven protesters established a tent city on the up-
per Green. To the surprise of many, the tent city persisted through winter. Just as springtime thaw began, the City and the Proprietors jointly sent a memorandum to the thirty-odd protesters requesting that they pack up and leave on Mar. 11. The note concluded: “Both the City of New Haven and the Proprietors of the Green appreciate the dedication you have brought to the cause of economic justice, and we wish you well as you move forward elsewhere.” From there, new questions arose for the protesters, who had no intentions of leaving. “Clearly if the city owned the property, it could ask the people to leave,” Pattis pointed out. “But what if the city didn’t? And then who had the authority to make decisions about the Green? And regardless, didn’t the First Amendment protect the right of tent cities to exist as a [form] of symbolic speech?” The more Pattis read about the Proprietors (whom he called “a secret society that is repulsive and obnoxious”), the more he wanted to take them to court. He even found reason to dispute the legitimacy of the proprietors’ claims of ownership in general. “I’m a sucker for a David versus Goliath fight,” he said. “I want to be standing next to David throwing pebbles.” Pattis represented the protesters in a case they brought against the city, then-Mayor John DeStefano, then-Police Chief Dean Esserman, and the Proprietors. In the end, both the US District Court and the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit ruled in favor of the City and the Proprietors. Pattis’s clients’ tent city was forcibly dismantled on Apr. 18, just in time for Yale’s Commencement. As Pattis wryly noted, “there’s always this great Potemkin exercise in the spring.” Arterton, for her part, said the Proprietors appreciated the protesters’ right to free speech but eventually became concerned about the delicate trees their tents sat atop. Plus, she said, after four months the Occupy protesters had become “not altogether law-abiding.” In theory, the protesters could have requested a permit from the Proprietors and the city to continue their work, although this would no doubt have required them to do away with their tents and stick to daytime hours. Instead, most chose to take their fight to new places. Pattis said there was talk of bringing a case against either the City or the Proprietors “to determine once and for all who owns [the Green], and what the responsibilities were.” But Pattis had poured hours of pro-bono work into the Occupy case, and didn’t think he could do that again. “That was not a fight that I was willing to take,” he said. “I don’t know if someone else has.” No one has taken up that fight, at least not yet. Despite the eventual outcome, the decision of the late Judge Mark Kravitz at the District Court makes an interesting attempt at picking apart some of the confusion surrounding the ownership of the Green. Kravitz did his part to acknowledge, on paper and in a court of law, some of the contradictions inherent in the Green’s dual public-private status.
In particular, he parsed the arrangement whereby the City is expected to help enforce the Green’s regulations even though they differ from those of public parks. “These are, admittedly, murky matters,” he said in the decision. “It is one thing, legally, for the Proprietors to establish rules governing the use of land they claim to own. It is another and more troubling thing for a private group to require a public official to enforce those regulations and, especially, to do so in a manner and on a schedule decreed by the Proprietors.” The Occupy case may not have interrogated the existence of the Proprietors. But it identified the importance of thinking and talking more concretely about their relationship to the City, and to day-to-day life on the Green. *** When John Rose, Jr., LAW ’66, assumed the role of Corporation Counsel for the City in 2015, he quickly realized his law school connections were going to come in handy. At the time, he said, Mayor Toni Harp was hoping to apply for money from the state to make improvements to the Green. Drew S. Days III, LAW ’66, former Solicitor General, was then a professor at Yale Law and the Chair of the Proprietors. The hope was that Rose would be able to reconnect with a former classmate and thereby mobilize the City’s capital improvement plan. It worked out just as planned. Together with the Proprietors’ legal counsel, Rose wrote a Memorandum of Understanding between the City and the Proprietors. When it was made official on Sept. 30, 2015, the Memorandum marked the first time the relationship between New Haven and the Committee had been formalized on paper, according to Arterton. Among other things, the document states plainly, “the Green has historically served as a public park and has been administered as such by the city.” Importantly for Arterton, it “confirmed the Green as a private space [where] we have approval authority on what would go where.” The main objective of the memorandum was to ensure the support and cooperation of the Proprietors during each stage of the city’s improvement plan, for which New Haven received $1 million from the state. So far, Arterton reported, the Green’s electrical and sewer systems have been redone, and wifi has been set up for the first time. But, there are other plans whose status she was unsure of; there was talk of appointing a permanent project manager for the capital improvements but, she said, “I’ve never heard about him since.” And while the memorandum may have clarified the relationship between New Haven and the Proprietors in writing, it did not eliminate the challenges that arise when two organizations are each overseeing different aspects of the same space. Rebecca Bombero, Director of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Trees, explained, “obviously the Proprietors would like to see more maintenance on the Green, but we have to balance what we can do in relation to the
“Given that the Proprietors really are just five people, one can’t help but wonder why New Haven needs them at all”
photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
other spaces that we manage.” Bombero understands the wishes and workings of the Committee of Proprietors better than most. In her role as Director, she also serves as their point person at City Hall, attending meetings and working closely with the five Committee members. Arterton urged that the Green “needs [its] priorities to be taken care of when there’s an extreme shortage of money.” But, as Bombero pointed out, budget cuts and a shrinking staff (the department currently has half the employees it did in 2001), make even everyday tasks a challenge. It is also worth noting that, while the Proprietors collaborate on and assist financially with many projects each year, the cost of maintaining and policing the Green falls on the City’s shoulders. “They have not supplemented our operating dollars at all,” Bombero said. Arterton pointed out that the Committee regularly meets with the Engineering and Parks departments. The Proprietors also works on supplementary projects, many of which focus on beautification. They have spearheaded planting initiatives to enhance the Green’s springtime bloom. They bought wrought iron trash cans for the Green because the white plastic ones that had been there were, she said, “singularly ugly.” And this year, they will set up lighting for 14 trees on the upper Green. In the words of Arterton, “[We’re] using our trees as sculpture.” *** At the moment, however, the City, Proprietors, and New Haven community members must deal with more than just making the Green beautiful. They (if we’re being honest, we) have to think carefully about how to make the Green safer and more livable for all. In the wake of August’s overdoses, this would be a tall order even without the Green’s complicated ownership.
In the last month, the Proprietors have been brainstorming and crowdsourcing new ways to invigorate the Green and make it a better public space. The Mayor and the Police Chief have agreed to have six permanent officers just for the Green, according to Arterton. And Bombero added that one of the main goals of the Proprietors going forward will be to increase events on the Green. “They’re going to be working to program the Green with more positive activity,” she said. In the seven years since she became a Proprietor, Arterton said the way the organization functions has changed dramatically. When she was first appointed, they met four times a year; in recent years, they’ve been meeting every six weeks. And, she added, “we have become more active, inviting many representatives of organizations and the community to our meetings.” She said the Proprietors see themselves as catalysts to get people thinking about their community space. After all, “looking at five people for blame or ideas is limiting and limited.” She’s right. But given that the Proprietors really are just five people, one can’t help but wonder why New Haven needs them at all. Pattis has his
own theory about the Committee’s continued existence. “The city has never made a takings claim to the Green as it should and could, and I suspect that’s because it doesn’t really want to own it,” he said. That way, “it can avoid ownership of some of the problems that might occur there.” As for the Proprietors, Pattis said, “[their] interest in continuing to manage this as a public space struck me as quaint and bizarre.” Paradoxically, that’s one thing Pattis and Arterton can agree on. “It’s archaic,” Arterton said of the Committee. But, she added, the organization “has a purpose, and that purpose has maintained the Green as an open urban space for a long time.” As she sees it, the Green would have been built up and commercialized long ago were it not for the continued existence of the Proprietors. Whether you see the Proprietors as integral or vestigial, attentive or insidious, the sentiment she is trying to get us to agree on is true. 16 acres of untouched, green land can be hard to come by in any city.
The Discourse Dilemma A version of this piece first appeared online at yaleherald.com.
I
n February 2017, 50 demonstrators gathered outside Lerner Hall at Columbia University. They were protesting a speech given by the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, at an event hosted by Columbia’s Students Supporting Israel, and co-sponsored by the Columbia Chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi. Around the same time, Jewish students from UC Berkeley demanded the resignation of Hatem Bazian, a lecturer in the Ethnic Studies department and the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), after an anti-Semitic tweet of his sparked outrage. All over American campuses, the issue of Israel-Palestine has become a central political cause, polarizing student bodies and communities. But here at Yale, we are relatively silent about Israel-Palestine. Last year, Yale University’s SJP and J Street U (a left of center Israel-Palestine advocacy group) chapters dwindled into non-existence. Beyond the lack of activism, there is a noticeable absence of discourse surrounding the conflict compared to similar campuses. What makes Yale different? Ellie Boswell, TD ’17, is the former Regional Vice President for J Street U’s National board, and currently works as a development and program assistant at the New Israel Fund in New York City. She sees this silence as a Yale-specific “cultural phenomenon,” that largely has to do with “the lack of infrastructure” for national or global campaigns. She explains, “even if we have people who are ready to do radical activism, either on the right or the left, there’s no organization or infrastructure to fund that activism here, it doesn’t exist in Yale in the same way.” Student organizing around Israel-Palestine is most effective when orchestrated through campus chapters of national organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace ( JVP), or SJP. Each chapter coordinates with other campus chapters to put pressure on their institutions and ultimately the American government. At Yale, however, the emphasis is on university-specific organizing. Although Yale divestment organizations, such as Fossil Free Yale and Yale Prison Divestment, communicate with other student divestment campaigns around the country, on campus they specifically target Yale’s endowment and Yale’s investments in fossil fuel companies and private prisons. Other organizing campaigns follow similar goals and standards: Students Unite Now (SUN) works to eliminate Yale’s student income contribution; the graduate student union, Local 33, campaigns to negotiate with Yale. And when Yale does expand outwards, it rarely goes much farther than the city limits. New Haven, with a strong activist network and demand for community organizing, invites Yale students to focus their attention on the city. Over the past year, for example, Yale students have organized with New Haven activists through Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), a grassroots organization dedicated to protecting immigrants’ rights. One reason for this is strategic: local campaigns have clearer goals, and a greater likelihood of realizing them. Many Yalespecific campaigns been successful in recent years. The Next Yale campaign, which took place in Fall 2015, saw increased funding for Yale’s Cultural Houses, the elimination of the term
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NURIT CHINN, DC ’20 “master,” and established the Change the Name campaign, which succeeded in renaming Calhoun College to Grace Hopper College in 2017. Boswell notes that Next Yale opened the doors for movements dedicated “to disrupting campus stability,” and addressing “controversial campus discourse.” In some ways, Next Yale set a precedent for what could become an open conversation around Israel-Palestine. If Yale students tend to organize locally, focusing on issues with tangible and specific goals, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a less than ideal object for attention. Elisabeth Siegel, PM ’20, former Co-President of Middle Eastern Resolution through Education Action and Dialogue (MEREAD), emphasizes that the conflict is incredibly intractable—“you look up that term in your textbook and you find the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” she quips—and that people are drawn to issues with clearer paths forward. Although intractability may explain why activists are reluctant to focus their attention on Israel-Palestine, it does not explain why campus discourse is so lacking. Other campuses across the US are impassioned over Israel-Palestine in a way that Yale is surprisingly not. J Street U, for example, failed at Yale precisely because Yale students are not heated over the conflict. J Street U’s organizing principle is to occupy middle ground between the polarizing spaces of pro- and anti-Israel factions (often groups such as SJP on one side and those supporting AIPAC on the other). Boswell notes how the lack of polarization meant “there was nowhere for [ J Street U] to go, and nobody cared because there was no immediate goal…J Street U is premised upon this being something people cared about and were divisive about.” Often, at Yale, global conflicts are designated academic attention, where students treat the subject in terms of intellectual debate instead of confronting it as an object for political action, with agenda-based engagement. Daniel Yadin, MC ’21, who attended the Jewish Voice for Peace National Student Organizing retreat, comments on how often conversations between American Jews over the conflict “treat Israel as an idea, just an idea; same with Palestine. I think that if you relate to Israel as a real place, with millions of people and a distinct culture and history and something that’s lived, the way you can talk about the conflict is different than if you’re really detached from it.” The Peace and Dialogue Leadership Initiative (PDLI), a student-run initiative that seeks to educate students about the intricacies of the conflict and coordinates a trip to Israel and the West Bank, also treats the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a subject for academic study and intellectual engagement. Boswell comments that PDLI espouses the idea that “we’re not going to change anything as students right now, but the way that we change the world is by becoming the next set of diplomats.”
Much discourse surrounding Israel-Palestine also takes place at the Slifka Center, Yale’s Hillel, which, among other things, seeks “to promote a living connection to the State of Israel.” Yonatan Millo, the former Director of Israel Education and Engagement at the Slifka Center, acknowledges that although “the culture of debate [around Israel-Palestine at Yale] might be a little more lacking”, Slifka “really tries to foster as much dialogue as possible.” He also perceives that Yale students engage with the conflict as a subject of “intellectual discourse,” which “for [him] as an Israel educator, eases the challenge of talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by having that high level of intellectual discourse that students of different opinions can actually engage with.” Boswell adds that “Slifka would love if people gathered from different political perspectives, but Slifka is just really not down to engage seriously with anything that has an agenda, which activist organizations inherently have, which is also the case with most Hillels across America.”
For some Yale organizers, fear has succeeded in demotivating or halting radical activism. The former member of SJP described how hostility from the administration made it increasingly difficult to organize around Israel-Palestine, noting that “there have been times when posters have been put up and they’ve been suggested to be taken down, there have been times when Yale hasn’t made it easy for us to bring in speakers. And that definitely made the atmosphere a lot more cold to something like SJP than to other organizations.” But beyond the administration’s resistance to SJP, the former member repeated that “people are just scared to engage in this topic. And I think the only way to change that is if louder voices are around, on either side, and they aren’t.”
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Although frustrating, the reluctance towards making IsraelPalestine a central political concern at Yale is understandable. Columbia University, for example, has an active and lively activist community, built of several organizations and dedicated to discussing and organizing around Israel-Palestine. But this Slifka, in theory, is a place where a conversation can happen. engagement has created vicious, divisive debate that has—in But the conversation is also limited by the fact that Slifka is a some ways inevitably—taken a turn for the personal. The debate supposedly apolitical organization that restricts controversial has divided the community at Columbia, and is likely to divide campus discourse. By remaining apolitical Slifka avoids a community such as Yale’s. Yadin remarks, “I’m happy that becoming a vehicle for radical agendas on either side of the there’s no Israeli activism here. Talking to other universities conflict. This is not the case in other campus Hillels which are that have diversity of thought, it’s so toxic; it’s horrible and it more politically charged, such as Columbia’s, which is known doesn’t do anything.” The former member of SJP quoted above as a bastion for right-wing organizing, or UPenn’s, which also acknowledged the threat discourse poses to the cohesion of Ivanna Berrios, a sophomore there, calls “a staunchly Zionist Yale’s community: “Israel-Palestine is known to be how you lose organization.” your friends. You say your stance on Israel and Palestine, and they go.” However, to be apolitical is a political choice in itself. Siegel points to how the “apolitical” quality of Slifka has even graver The potential disruption of campus harmony may also explain effects on the state of discourse around Israel-Palestine, why current leftist activist groups, like FFY or Yale Democratic as it allows the more Zionist factions of Yale to promote Socialists of America (DSA), have avoided expressing solidarity their position while avoiding a “political” response. She with SJP or other Palestinian justice groups, or why they have calls attention to how Slifka and other groups that affiliate not sought to expand their goals into the political territory of themselves with Israel predominantly interact with the conflict Israel-Palestine. It is less than strategic for other activist groups by hosting Israeli “culture events.” This allows students to to express solidarity with Palestinian causes precisely because of interact and engage with Israel as a subject divorced from the how polarizing and thorny these issues are for many students on conflict: one may attend Israeli music events, or eat hummus campus. But it goes beyond strategy. It is hard to incorporate in a pita, without having to consider the harsh realities of the organizing around Israel-Palestine into other activist campaigns Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Siegel notes that “you could because the goals of its advocacy are unclear. For activist groups, never claim a Palestinian event on campus to be apolitical incorporating such organizing would require educating one’s without raising some eyebrows. Some Israeli stuff has the members, understanding the intricacies of the conflict, and privilege of being able to cast itself in an apolitical light.” considering which paths of advocacy to take. It is difficult for campus activist groups to shape global conflicts, but complexity But institutional deficiencies cannot account for the lack of should not lead to stasis. The former member of SJP sees this engagement with Israel-Palestine on Yale’s campus. Many solidarity as an essential path forward for bolstering Israelstudents, primarily those who sit in more radical factions of Palestine advocacy at Yale, where other activist communities are the left, have expressed a kind of fear in organizing around much stronger than SJP ever was. They stated that, “optimally, Israel-Palestine. A former member of SJP, who requested to what would happen is the people in Fossil Free Yale, the people remain anonymous, expressed how there “is a lot of baggage in Engender, and the people who are doing activist-leftist work, around SJP,” stating that “once you get involved in the world who say in theory that they support SJP, would actually team up of SJP, you grow extremely conscious of other places that exist and create a community in SJP that is robust because they have specifically to harass SJP members.” They listed the Canary a lot of these activist experiences that are overlapping.” Mission, a website dedicated to publishing the names, faces, and personal information of those deemed anti-Semitic, as There are many visions for what an optimal path forward could one of these places. Among the targets of the Canary Mission look like. Of course, we can argue that Yale already presents are many student activists involved in SJP and other radical the ideal vision for how a campus should interact with Israelleft organizations around Israel-Palestine. Siegel commented, Palestine, with its current chosen path of minimal engagement. “as a person of Jewish heritage myself, I’m very conscious of But many voices have called for action, for a community when activism strays into the anti-Semitic realm. For what it’s dedicated to organizing around Israel-Palestine. Most students worth, my opinion of Canary Mission is that they just exist interviewed for this piece express that whatever the means, the as an organization to bully and harrass people who believe in future of discourse around Israel-Palestine must include more justice for Palestine.” open and forgiving conversations within the Yale community. Siegel remarks, “what’s going to do the most work for this conflict is radical empathy.”
FEATURE
w t ee n e B
St r
CULTURE
n a
W h eat f o s d
T
he American West: cowboys, Steinbeck, tumbleweeds, Hollywood. These are the stereotypes that come to mind—but the new exhibition at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is set to prove us wrong. Eye on the West: Photography and the Contemporary West, on view through Sunday, Dec. 16, 2018, captures portraits of the rich tradition and possibility in the vast land known as the American West. Curator George Miles, of the library’s Western Americana Collection, shies away from painting a comprehensive narrative of the entire Western region, instead peeking into moments of life and landscape through the diverse photographs of 20 artists. This Beinecke exhibit features 158 photographs, displayed throughout both the main floor and mezzanine of the library. As much as it is an exhibit on photography, Eye on the West is also about the photography book as a medium. Miles frames stunning portrait and landscape displays on the library’s mezzanine with photobooks, rounding the perimeter of the exhibition space and placing the photographs in conversation with their method of distribution. The exhibit asks: how do we see the photograph which has become a part of a book? How do we create narratives of a region through photograph collections, and what happens when these collections exit these regions? How do we understand the West when we see photographs in our library, in our museums, on our coffee tables—without experiencing the expansive land itself, the colors and grit in their honest forms? The perspective the exhibit offers is inevitably voyeuristic, observing a strange and foreign wild land. Yet, Eye on the West, in lacking a clear narrative, avoids a reduction of the rich region into stereotypes, showcasing a West which includes a Black fisherman in New Orleans, Native American teenagers playing basketball in the Dakotas, and vivid rainbow fjords in Alaska. Rather than painting the West with wide brushstrokes, the exhibit carefully dives into the work of its photographers to paint honest, detailed portraits. Kim Stringfellow’s “Sage and Ted Quinn (Musician), Joshua Tree, California” (2014), displayed flat in a case on the main floor, shows a father and son sitting on their red living room couch, a set of drums behind them. The atmosphere is hushed as golden light peeks through the windows. Ted’s arm is wrapped around his son, and he looks directly into the camera, at the viewer, his blue eyes seemingly saying, “...this is my home, this is where I have found my family and my work, this is where I belong.” This same evocation of home is present in Lee Marmon’s “Eagle Dancers and Eagle dancers [from above],” which is hung along the
18 THE YALE HERALD
LAURIE ROARK, ES ’21
stacks on the ground floor. In these portraits, taken in Laguna, New Mexico, young men in elaborate feathered costumes stand with concentrated faces, ready to break into dance at any moment. In the next photo, they run, flying across the desert, in silent conversation with the land. And in Miguel Gandert’s “Voces de la Tierra: Planting Winter Wheat San Luis, Colorado,” (1997) people work with the vast land at their disposal. Between tall wheat plants and clouds of dust are two farmers, one driving a tractor which pulls the other man, sitting upon a reaper. Here we can see the intimate relationship between the land’s natural resources and its people. Gandert’s subjects are framed within strands of wheat, as in real life they are framed within the tradition of cultivation. This is the tradition creates and informs the cultures of the region and thus makes the West a home. More than anything, the exhibit evokes the tensions between past and present, nature and man, destruction and recreation. It showcases grand landscapes and honest portraits, highlighting the land’s simultaneous senses of loneliness and freedom. It paints the West as a place in which we may both create ourselves and lose ourselves. The often-emotional portraits present not only the mythic land of the Hollywood Western film, not just the land of the Gold Rush and the Trail of Tears and cowboys, not merely the myth of our past, but a contemporary land, a land where real people live and work. The photographs in Eye on the West speak to a tradition of tension and borders, of the physical work of traveling and developing open spaces, the work of creating followed by the work of surviving. What these images rely on is imagination of the rich world surrounding them, and Eye on the West grants us this ability to imagine the beauty and work of the region we call the West as it extends beyond the Beinecke’s walls, in both our imaginations and in breathtaking physical reality.
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Hidden Behind the Statistic T
o be relegated to a statistic is unsettling: One of 1,578 enrolled first-years at Yale. Existing within the 53 percent of first-years receiving need-based financial aid. 20 percent of us are Pell Grant recipients at an institution where this amount of Pell Grant recipients is double what it was five years ago. The Pell Grant is a government subsidy paid to an undergraduate institution of the student’s choice to help cover their cost of attendance, and the general rule for qualification is demonstrating “financial need.” The maximum amount awarded by the Pell Grant—received only if your Estimated Family Contribution equals zero—is $6,095, which is only 12% of Yale’s $53,430 tuition. I’m part of the 18 percent of Yale College students who are the first in our families to attend a four-year college. This is the largest percentage of first-generation college students that Yale has accepted onto campus in its history—284 students creating this new legacy for their families. I’m one of 284 students fumbling through this massive, life-changing experience with no elder guidance. Some of us can’t even talk to our parents about college because explaining all of the intricacies we’ve had to teach ourselves is exhausting—and that’s before we even get to describing college as an experience in itself. The numbers alone do not do justice to our experiences. Living in a low-income household goes beyond such simplistic terms as “Pell Grant” or “financial aid.” Yet institutions seem to regard us in those terms. For the past six years, the Yale Office of Undergraduate Admissions has been nominating a batch of incoming first-years for a program called First-Year Scholars at Yale (FSY ). Students qualify for nomination through a combination of having low or zero expected family contribution, analysis of the quality of the high school we attended, and having little to no access to college prep resources. We are among the 1,578, and we exist within the 53 percent, the 20 percent, and the 18 percent. FSY is a five-week program spanning the end of June through July of the summer prior to the fall semester at Yale. As of now, over 120 students are sent a nomination letter for the program, with an anticipated yield of 60 students. In the year of its conception, 33 students attended FSY; the committee wanted to start small before expanding depending on what went well, according to Michael Fitzpatrick, Summer Session and Academic Affairs Associate Director. FSY was invented a decade ago, but the 2008 Financial Crisis resulted in a significant delay in the
DANIELLE DE HAERNE, MY ’22 program’s realization. It simply wasn’t feasible to give away thousands of dollars per head invited onto campus for a summer program that Yale wasn’t even certain would be a boon to its campus. (Fitzpatrick informed me that the FSY Advisor Committee collected data in cooperation with Yale’s Office of Institutional Research. The data demonstrates students who went through FSY had comparatively higher GPAs, were more likely to take on leadership positions on campus, and are more connected with campus communities than the control group. This data has been presented to the Yale College Dean’s Office and the Office of Development.) Today, the program is as elusive and as it is desirable to first-generation, low-income (FGLI) pre-frosh at Yale. FSY is like if you took summer camp, boarding school, and the first truly hard class you’ve ever taken and blended it up into an enriching, if sometimes hard to swallow, smoothie that you sip daily for five weeks straight. Also, there’s no air-conditioning. Yet nominees face a heavy choice: give up their last carefree summer at home to spend five weeks away from their friends and family, or stay home and lose the chance of experiencing five sponsored weeks of Yale. “In many ways, for FGLI students, beginning college can feel like entering a whole new world,” Fitzpatrick told me. “As a first-generation, low-income college graduate myself… I didn’t really understand why I didn’t always feel at home at my college, and so, it is my great privilege to help students, in any small way I can, to develop strategies for college success and to feel more at home at Yale and New Haven.” For some people, the choice between “home” and FSY is easy. Escaping a household troubled with the adversities of poverty for the cushioned free room and board offered at Yale is exactly how they’d like to spend their summers. Some, homeless at the end of their senior years—if not prior to that—also find this choice simple to make. In this way, FSY saved my life. FSY students spend their summers under the tutelage of upperclassmen counselors (alumni of FSY themselves), Deans, and other Yale faculty, many of whom become part of their primary Yale network. Each person’s experience at Yale is inherently unique, yet many others in my FSY cohort can identify a no-
ticeable difference between being at Yale during FSY versus being at Yale for Yale. During FSY, everyone was on this level playing field in terms of background. We knew that whoever we met came from a place similar to our own: not in terms of geography, but socioeconomically. This created an atmosphere where we weren’t afraid to speak to each other about who we were, where we came from, and what we had experienced, the good and the bad. We trusted each other with information so sacred, people in our home towns may not even know it all. However, all of us have shouldered on through periods of immense struggle, usually caused by finances. We all grew up through the disastrous recession, which took more from our families than we could have ever expected. Because of this, many of us feel a financial obligation to our families. At Yale, we must become adults who will be able to give back to our families. For some, that is their sole motivator—yet others struggle to reconcile the desire to provide for their families with the desire to utilize the liberal arts education solely for their own individual growth. We often don’t think of ourselves as part of a greater whole, a small sliver in a pie chart, one of many sharing the same human experience. It’s once we begin to recognize the shared aspects of our lives that we begin to establish community. This special body of Yale students on campus is united by virtue of shared perspective. To date, six generations of us exist. We have less in common than not— yet we all share a facet to our identities that makes us simultaneously unique within Yale and utterly typical in the context of the greater world. Our existence on this campus feels like a riddle to be solved. In the end, the solution is simple: “Yale is ours.” This mantra has been drilled into us by the alumni who persevered before us, fighting through similar experiences decades ago, by our friends still questing through their undergraduate studies, walking among these halls with us today, and by the students we shared FSY with this summer, who need to be reminded that Yale is for them, too.
REVIEWS
Be the Cowboy “Y
NICOLE MO, BK ’19 YH STAFF
ou’re my number one / You’re the one I want”—those are the first words that Mitski Miyawaki sings on Be the Cowboy. “Geyser,” the opening track and first single off of the artist’s fifth album, unfolds brilliantly and turbulently, forgoing a verse-chorus structure to instead build layer upon layer. “I will be the one you need / the way I can’t be without you / I will be the one you need / and I just can’t be without you,” Mitski declares, just before emphatic guitars and percussion close out the song. It could be about a lover, her music, or herself, but it hardly matters what the specifics are. Mitski has captured the alluring, violent escalation of a universally-felt longing, the strange jam that sees Mitski at her most blissful as she proclaims sense of power we find in moments of desire. her loneliness into the ether. “I know no one will save me Be the Cowboy may be about longing. It may be about / I’m just asking for a kiss / Give me one good movie kiss artistry, or identity, or freedom. You could probably argue and I’ll be alright,” she sings before entering the dizzily that it’s about literal cowboys. The album clocks in at joyous chorus, which is composed of nothing more than a trim 32 minutes, but it covers an entire spectrum of the word “nobody.” It’s one thing to sing a happy song emotion and personality. Lo-fi guitar rock transitions into about a happy feeling; It’s another to turn a song about country-tinged melancholia. Songs about anxiety segue desperate loneliness into a giddy dance number. The latter into songs about fictional marriages. In a press release, is comparable to the subversive power of laughing while Mitski explained that the album’s narrative is of a “very crying: with each “nobody,” it feels like Mitski gets a little controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. lighter, her smile a little wider, her relationship with being Because women have so little power and showing emotion relationship-less a little better. is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount Mitski’s last album, the acclaimed Puberty 2, was about of control she can get.” the growing pains of adulthood and reckoning with the We see this character construct play out on the album’s inherent transience of the very emotions we spend our cover, an up-close shot of Mitski wearing a white floral lives chasing. Be the Cowboy seems in many ways like the cap and bright red lipstick, head turned toward us as a reincarnation after such a quarter-life crisis, the stability hand reaches to tweeze her mascara-covered lashes. The of adulthood we assumed we’d find immediately after our photo is startling, an image of Mitski in a moment of teenage years. Emotions don’t get easier, but experience both showmanship and vulnerability, a moment of both makes them easier to deal with. The same themes of love, confession and performance. Ultimately this album is one work, anxiety, and doubt that spanned Puberty 2 are still that speaks rawly, but also one that has been scripted and being interrogated on Be the Cowboy: what’s different controlled—Mitski, it seems, wants us to remember that. is the method of approach. “A Pearl,” a chaotic song It’s futile to seek perfection; it’s naive to assume nobody about learning to move on from a toxic love, nonetheless features Mitski singing with a clear-headed strength that tries anyways. cuts across the lo-fi guitars. A steady reassurance underlies Mitski has nailed this balance between the vulnerable even her most heart-wrenching track, the elegiac closer and the spectacular. Be the Cowboy is sleeker than her “Two Slow Dancers,” which reflects on the tragedy of lost previous works, doing away with much of the guitar innocence over a haunting piano accompaniment. “We’re distortion and vocal harmony that dominated past two slow dancers, last ones out” Mitski repeats as the song albums. Besides resulting in a higher-production sound, fades away, lines creeping with existential dread but also Mitski’s vocals are in the spotlight more than ever, and she the comfort of company: we’ll have to exit eventually, but rises to the occasion magnificently, projecting confidence at least we can exit together. even as her bare voice exudes a palpable fragility. The throbbing “Washing Machine Heart,” with vivid lyrics like “Toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart / Baby bang it up inside,” could have been a fiery song of distorted romance. But Mitski’s delicate lilting (“Do mi ti / Why not me?”) instead turns the track away from hardened angst and towards a bittersweet sentimentality.
“...it feels like Mitski gets a little lighter, her smile a little wider, her relationship with being relationshipless a little better.”
Be the Cowboy dives into more genres than Mitski’s past albums, definitively proving there’s more to her than “just” indie rock. The many musical styles reflect a multiplicity of experience, a running theme on the album. Our emotions don’t always make sense, and we don’t always respond to the same things in the same ways. The minor-key “Old Friend” might be exactly what you need to lament a bygone love. But a jaunty pseudo-country song about “winning” a broken relationship—“Lonesome Love”, which features the excellent lyric “Nobody butters me up like you / And nobody fucks me like me”— could be equally therapeutic. A highlight on the album is the fantastically catchy “Nobody,” an airy disco/synth-pop
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In an interview with The Outline, Mitski revealed that the album’s name is in part inspired by the Marlboro Man, the all-American cowboy who branded a tobacco empire with his masculine swagger. “I would always kind of jokingly say to myself, ‘Be the cowboy you wish to see the world,’ whenever I was in a situation where maybe I was acting too much like my identity, which is wanting everyone to be happy, not thinking I’m worthy, being submissive, and not asking for more,” Mitski said. “Every time I would find myself doing exactly what the world expects of me as an Asian woman, I would turn around and tell myself ‘Well, what would a cowboy do?’ Be the Cowboy offers a refreshingly nuanced take on the diverse Asian American experience by offering representation, not in terms of large-scale visibility like Crazy Rich Asians did, but in terms of resonant relatability. The submissive stereotype facing so many Asian American women can feel inescapable, both externally and internally—on the other hand, the urge to retaliate against meekness with an antimodel-minority mentality can be as equally unpleasant. What Mitski has done with Be the Cowboy is find a way to reject both extremes and revel in the complex middle ground, reconciling rawness with control, spectacle with vulnerability, happiness with loneliness. It’s not that the album only speaks to Asian Americans, or that it was only made for Asian Americans. In fact, it reaffirms that the complex emotions and manifold experience Mitski lays bare on Be the Cowboy are generally universal. For the most part, we’re all trying to be and feel a little better. And for some of us, that looks like embodying another character, even just for a minute, to remind ourselves of who we really are.
MOHAMED KARABATEK, JE ’19
T
o hip-hop purists: Stop Trying to Be God.
Is he a traditionalist? No. Did he move 537,000 albums in a week? Yes. Was it his first No.1? No, but he’s two for three. Despite criticism, rapper Travis Scott (nom de plume for Houston native Jacques Webster) finds himself at the apex of his career. He achieved Gold Certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with over half a million units sold of ASTROWORLD. The album, a masterful mix of crisp transients and distorted 808s, boasts collaborative efforts from 40 artists, from Thundercat and James Litherland to Gunna and Tay Keith. While preparing the album for Spotify, Scott tweeted “BUCKLE UP @spotify,” so fasten your seatbelt. The first three tracks drop the listener into Scott’s world of drugs and clout like the drop tower at the ASTROWORLD park. The next two tracks lead the listener through a slow boat ride into Cactus Jack’s memories and counsel. Everyone jumps into the bumper cars for the next song, “NO BYSTANDERS”: an unwritten law at Scott’s park mandating the eternal turn-up. Everything can be seen in the park from the top of the ferris wheel, where you can find Kevin Parker of Tame Impala playing the following collaboration, “SKELETONS.” Join The Weeknd in
VY TRAN, BR ’21
V
ivid, violent, and vehement, Blackkklansman struck me from beginning to end with clear and highpitched messages about police brutality, white supremacy, and Blackness in America. Spike Lee wields his latest film like an angry finger pointed at the brutal systematic problems centered in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and persist today. Blackklansman is so blatant that it’s uncomfortable—as it should be when watching racism unfold, whether on a movie screen or before my eyes. Shortly after becoming the first African-American officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department, Ron Stallman ( John David Washington) leads an investigation to infiltrate the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and expose their record of hate-fueled violence. He joins forces with fellow undercover detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), who clumsily pretends to be the white version of Stallman and is inaugurated into the KKK. As a member, Stallman learns the white supremacists’ secrets while trying to balance his involvement in the growing Black Power movement. The film’s greatest strengths are its main actors, Washington and Driver. The duo finagles its way through the KKK
ASTROWORLD
trying to win an overpriced plush for the boo, all the while beat changes over five minutes. For those with a nostalgia for 1970s hits like “Superstition” and “Isn’t She Lovely,” bumping “WAKE UP.” revel in Stevie Wonder’s harmonica harmonies and La Awaiting the listener, Slim Thug—always reppin Flame’s allegorical wisdom narrating “Stop Trying to Be Houston—stands in front of his tribute ghost coaster for God.” Other songs, including “ASTROTHUNDER” and “5% TINT.” In close competition with Slim Thug, 21 “STARGAZING,” feature basslines sitting low in the mix, Savage raps “NC-17” and commands a ghost coaster of snares and hats panning across the melodies, and Scott’s his own (for those over 17). The following two tracks are flow carrying the momentum. the most scenic of the park, leading the listener through natural greens and white rocks on a rickety wooden While this album is a cut above his past works, including coaster designed by Thundercat and Gunna. Then, make Days before Rodeo and Rodeo, ASTROWORLD carries on a loop back to the drop tower for “CAN’T SAY” and the classic Cactus Jack tone heard in Scott’s discography. “WHO? WHAT!” because you forgot your Yale ID. While he pointed out that the group “Screw[ed Up Click] In the distance, the listener sees real Houston, from the found international sound,” Scott is the harbinger of a new Rockets to the Astros; “BUTTERFLY EFFECT” and era, the future of the hip-hop sound. As one of the genre’s “HOUSTONFORNICATION” chronicle La Flame’s titans, he participates in fashion collaborations involving adventures and misadventures in Missouri City. After Louis Vuitton’s artistic director, Virgil Abloh, and Nike’s a long day at the park, in the car ride home, looping signature brand, Jordan. “COFFEE BEAN” sobers up the listener, reflecting on But the story of ASTROWORLD isn’t just a story about their demons and ambitions. Travis Scott’s success. In it, Scott focuses on his fatherhood The ringmaster of the ASTROWORLD, Cactus Jack, and relationship. There are numerous allusions to his love pays homage to New York Ambassador Biggie Smalls and for Kylie Jenner and their child, Stormi, serenading them HTown’s Screwed Up Click icon, Big Hawk. Swae Lee’s throughout the album. Let ASTROWORLD serenade you, melodic hooks punch through lean-drowned synths and and remember to BUCKLE UP. chopp’d n screw’d vocal chops in “R.I.P. SCREW.” Keeping the same energy, Scott outshines the Toronto 6god, Drake, Original Image from Stereogum.com in “SICKO MODE” as both rappers flex through three
Blackkklansman with some of the greatest musical bops of the ’60s as its backdrop, such as James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud” and Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose’s “Too Late to Turn Back Now.” Washington portrays a Black man who feels both liberated and exhausted from constant conversations of racial politics and racial strife, especially when attempting to explain it to the white characters in the film—a daily experience many people of color share. Blackkklansman ambitiously tries to unfold two stories at once: one depicting the police force infiltrating the KKK, and another following Stallworth as he struggles to align himself with both the Black Power movement and its enemy, the cops. The attempt to join these two narratives gives for a rocky, unsmooth pacing throughout the movie, one that occasionally lost my attention. The film also evokes a pro-police perspective in which the policemen are the heroes of the anti-racist movement. In light of today’s glaring problem of police brutality, I’m not sure if I was supposed to feel empathetic for the police force. I was left confused and conflicted about what Lee might have been trying to say. Maybe it was an attempt to offer “the other side” in the conflict to encourage critical thinking; maybe it was intended for comedic effect. Whether I was
supposed to find the point of view ironic or educational, the attempt fell flat. With that said, Blackkklansman redeems itself with a ludicrous David Duke character (Topher Grace) who made me laugh uncomfortably, cringe because it’s David Duke, and then cringe again at the character’s likeness to Donald Trump. There are, in addition, touches of subtle symbolism: in the police chief ’s office, a clock ticks noticeably in the background. While the chief says, “This case is closed because there are no more credible threats [of the KKK] in the area,” the clock ticks on, loud and ominous. The irony in this scene, paired with the final montage of real-life footage of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, coldly reminds audiences that the fight is never over. Most importantly, Lee reminds us that there’s so much more to the African-American existence in America than power struggles, “politics,” and protests; in truth, it also includes love and celebration of Black life and Black beauty via music, dance, and solidarity.
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THE BLACK LIST Citibank coffee chats at Maison Mathis “Hey, uh, can I get a croque ma- mon- mmmortgage?”
Using a “satchel” or “messenger bag” Calling your satchel “a messenger bag”
Ariana Grande naming a song “pete davidson” Imma be happy!
Yale Health giving me hot chocolate mix instead of antibiotics Good thing I’m an anti-vaxxer
People in seminar who disagree with your unconfident, poorly phrased comment because they can smell weakness The meek shall inherit the earth
Interiority Get out!
Constipation I said get out!
Peter Salovey’s performance at the Windham Campbell lecture Jennifer Nan...Nansu..buga? Maak..kumbi ?
New Uber logo We hate Trump!
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