Herald Volume LXIII Issue 7

The Yale Herald Volume LXIII, Number 7 New Haven, CT Friday, Mar. 10, 2017

EDITORIAL STAFF Editor-in-Chief: Oriana Tang Managing Editors: Emma Chanen, Anna Sudderth Executive Editors: Tom Cusano, Sophie Haigney, Sarah Holder, Lily Sawyer-Kaplan, David Rossler, Rachel Strodel, Charlotte Weiner Senior Editors: Libbie Katsev, Jake Stein Culture Editors: Luke Chang, Marc Shkurovich Features Editors: Hannah Offer, Eve Sneider Opinion Editors: Emily Ge, Robert Newhouse Reviews Editors: Mariah Kreutter, Nicole Mo Voices Editor: Bix Archer Insert Editor: Eli Lininger Audio Editor: Will Reid Copy Editors: Jazzie Kennedy, Meghana Mysore

From the editors

ONLINE STAFF Bullblog Editor-in-Chief: Marc Shkurovich Bullblog Associate Editors: Lora Kelley, Lea Rice Online Editor: Megan McQueen

Volume LXIII, Number 7 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, March 10, 2017

DESIGN STAFF Graphics Editor: Joseph Valdez Design Editor: Winter Willoughby-Spera Executive Graphics Editor: Haewon Ma

Fellow spring breakers, It’s clear that Yale Dining is an endless source of intrigue in the typical undergraduate experience. Shared meals form a collective identity for the student body, framing decisions about how and why we eat in the context of lunchtime ice cream, chicken tenders, and illicit midnightbowls of cereal (some dining halls are better secured than others, okay?). You are what you eat, and yet you’re also what your friends eat.

But although our residential college dining halls provide a seemingly endless stream of either monotony (zucchini, go kill yourself) or bewilderment (teriyaki jackfruit?), few do more than mock perceived blunders. Kudos to Marc Shkurovich, BK ’19, for braving this new frontier with a front that considers Yale’s approach to sustainable food, from inside the dining halls to beyond.

In other news, it seems that the rest of the issue has followed the lead of our nation’s new EPA—who needs actual science when you can have actual not science? Just ask Nolan Phillips, TC ’18, and Rubi Macias, TC ’18, who give us the lowdown on best campus séance locales. Fuck climate change, we bought a ouija board on Amazon. Not to mention those birth charts—I know at least one went to Charlie Bardey, SM ’17, who if you ask me is an Aries in deep denial. Typical fire signs, am I right?

But no matter what your feelings on fruit-as-meat or on Sagittarius / Capricorn compatibility, we hope you enjoy this week’s issue.

Wherever you are for spring break, whether beach or Peruvian volunteer mission, we wish you safe travels and a nice, comfortable hangover.

To freedom, Emily Ge Opinion Editor

2 – The Yale Herald

BUSINESS STAFF Publisher: Patrick Reed Advertising Team: Alex Gerszten, Garrett Gile, Tyler Morley, Bedel Saget, Jr., Harrison Tracy 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 send a check payable to The Yale Herald to the address below. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 2016 - 2017 academic year for 65 dollars.

Please address correspondence to: The Yale Herald P.O. Box 201653 Yale Station New Haven, CT 06520-1653 oriana.tang@yale.edu www.yaleherald.com The Yale Herald is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of The Yale Herald, Inc. or Yale University. Copyright 2017 The Yale Herald.

Cover by Joseph Valdez YH Staff

THIS WEEK’S ISSUE 12 COVER

Incoming Future (the rapper) The Atlanta native dropped two albums in the past month, giving spring breakers everywhere new tunes to play while drinking.

Outgoing Future (America’s) Trump’s substitute for the ACA leaves many of those same spring without health insurance, leaving college students everywhere on their own to deal with alcohol poisoning.

SCHEDULE March 14 Pi Day

March 15

The Ides of March

March 17

St. Patrick’s Day

March 20

Spring equinox

From jackfruit to cape shark: Marc Shkurovich, BK ’19, chews on the relationship among students, Yale Dining, and sustainability.

6 VOICES Sitting on her grandmother’s back porch in Georgia, Mariah Kreutter, BK ’20, reflects on place and home.

Griffin Brown, TC ’18, calls home.

8 OPINION Join Isaac Scobey-Thal, HC ’19, as he unravels the implications of casual Bass Library-hating.

Camille Weisenbach, PC ’17, argues for a more supportive environment for athletes at Yale.

10 FEATURES

Herald staff compiles a brief cultural history of spring break through the years.

18 CULTURE Nolan Phillips, TC ’18, and Rubi Macias, TC ’18, break down the best places to summon spirits at Yale.

Also: wrestling with astrology and fate with Charlie Bardey, SM ’17, and a seance in a dorm room.

20 REVIEWS She’s back! Emma Chanen, BK ’19, returns to explore another season of The Challenge.

Kat Lin, MC ’18, on the analog beauty of the YUAG’s Lumia exhibit; Emma Speer, BK’17, looks at the necessity of Get Out; Sahaj Sankaran, SM ’20, praises the surrealism of Man Seeking Woman; Carly Gove, BR ’19, finds Lorde’s new single disappointingly conventional.

Mar. 10, 2017 – 3

TRANSCRIPT: SOCIETY INTERVIEW Three seniors sit at a table in Rubamba.

Senior 1: That last guy wasn’t really...

Senior 2: ... Society material.

Senior 3: Agreed.

2: Oh, look! It’s just about the time that there’ll be another person outside wanting to answer our questions. Do you want to go and get them?

1: Nose goes!

They laugh. “Nose goes” is a society thing. 3 loses the “nose goes” but is uncomfortable about losing and is the kind of person who would complain about it and so 2 goes.

1 and 3 wait in silence. It isn’t awkward because they are in society together. 1 imagines something but then stops imagining it. 3 knows the thing 1 imagined because it was in 1’s bio, and what 1 imagined was [REDACTED] (I’m sorry, not even this transcript can penetrate that promise of secrecy).

2 re-enters with Junior.

2: Welcome to the interview.

Junior: Haha, thank you. I feel welcome.

1: Good, we want you to feel at ease, because we are very chill people, but we also want you to know that we will judge your character based on this contrived 15-minute interaction, so feel as at ease as you can knowing that.

J: Don’t worry. My Yale experience has trained me for this exact kind of interaction.

2: Let’s get right into it. What is your name and what are your extracurriculars and interests?

J: My name is Junior. My extracurriculars have fun acronyms and are very recognizable. In fact, Senior 4 (who is in this society) is in my extracurriculars.

Here’s an inside joke about this person to show that I am in the “in” group.

My extracurriculars take up a large amount of time, which is great because unstructured time is scary. I’m partly here so that I can structure 12 hours a week next year once I abdicate my extracurricular leadership role, which is so vague that there could be anywhere between 1 to 4 people who hold similar roles in my group, so you don’t know exactly how successful I am. In terms of interests, I am interested in vulnerability and I am being vulnerable telling you that vulnerability is important to me.

1: Here’s a statement meant to show that I identify with you, but because we don’t know each other, might seem threatening. Now, I am going to make a big show of switching to the fun questions. First fun question: What’s your “fun fact”?

J: Oh I’m totally unprepared for this. Which carefully manicured story should I choose to demonstrate my uniqueness and chillness simultaneously? I’ll tell the one that’s vaguely sexual and borderline sociopathic, but I’ll also tie it to my academic interests.

3: That’s great! Last question: why do YOU want to do society?

J: Well, I—I mean I just really feel like it’d be fun to get to know new people in my senior year.

1 spits out their Tequila Sunrise all over the table.

1: That’s the best answer to that question we’ve ever heard!!!

2: You are SOCIETY material!

1 + 2 + 3: So-ciety, So-ciety, So-ciety!

J: Wait, so I’m in?

1 + 2 + 3 laugh. They keep looking at each others eyes to see if it’s okay to stop laughing. It isn’t. It’s a society thing.

1: No, no, no. We’ll invite you to a second round interview, and you’ll think that it went really well, and it will have, but we will pick someone else who does the same extracurriculars as you, but better. But you should absolutely NOT take this personally. We are judging you solely on your character, but don’t let that make you think we are judging you.

J: Okay.

3: Sorry—you have to leave now. We have someone waiting outside.

- Gian-Paul Bergeron YH Staff 4 – The Yale Herald

THE NUMBERS Spring Break 1 billion - dollars spent on spring break by American college students.

1 billion - 1/12 of the cost of Trump’s wall.

Adios, Cancun! SAD!!

32 - percent of the Yale student body who will have to recover from mono, strep, and acute meme addiction during spring break.

184 - tears shed over that last midterm paper you need to write before you get your freedom back.

0.184 - average blood alcohol concentration of Chad, president of the Alpha Moon Sigma Zeus chapter at the University of Chappaqua, while partying in Miami with the boys.

2 - number of sunburns Handsome Dan will get while tanning on the beach in the Dominican Republic.

Sources: 1 billion: Alternet “9 disturbing facts about the Crazy Economics of Spring Break”; 1 billion: Breitbart.com; 32: I did the math; 184: Private source; 0.184: Chad’s brother, Connor, who also said the trip was “lit” before puking on his pink inflatable flamingo; 2: Handsome Dan’s caretaker, who is fed up because his royal highness is allergic to sunscreen - Sophie Menard

Top 5 ways to pass the time in section when you haven’t done the reading 5 Pretend to look for a quote

and actually make a dent in the reading 4 Sketch your TA, add a mustache 3 Count backward from 100 in your head 2 Chug a ton of water, then get up to go pee

1 Practice your cursive

– Emma Chanen YH Staff

sarah.holder@yale.edu oriana.tang@yale.edu

oriana.tang@yale.edu

VOICES

In the garden

by Mariah Kreutter YH Staff

I

t’s 6:30 in the evening. The air has lost its smothering, plastic quality, and with a breeze it’s almost cool. I’m sitting on the back porch, looking out on an empty world. The only things moving are the leaves; the only sounds come from birds and cicadas. Back home, “outside” means tiny patches of grass and dying oak trees linked by asphalt, with stucco townhouses on all sides and the neighbors a constant, cynical audience. Here, outside is where you go to be alone.

I’m not quite alone, of course. Charlie and Luna are out here too. They won’t stop crawling all over me, seemingly fascinated by the jiggling instability of my legs, a drastic change from the hard wood and earth their newkitten legs are used to. Charlie’s occupied with licking his paws, though, so I’m free to type unaccosted.

I can’t count every beautiful thing I can see. There’s a huge lilac bush just to my left, and moments ago a hummingbird was buzzing around it.

In front of me is the old kitchen, a tiny white clapboard building rimmed with pink flowers I can’t identify. Behind it, the old well and the silos, tall and proud and blue as soldiers. There are three of them, plus the burned concrete stump that remains of a fourth, which now overflows with weeds—decades ago, when a random spark ignited the grain stored inside, it became my aunt’s first husband’s funeral pyre.

And I know, just out of sight, there stands the grandest fig tree that’s ever grown, wide and proud as a cathedral, richly adorned with dusky fruit.

There’s a garden overflowing with eggplants and okra and yellow squash.

There’s a poor, stringy little pomegranate tree, and buckeye plants with swollen pods. And more flowers I can’t name, red and purple and gold, irresistibly attractive to the butterflies that hang about them.

It’s almost unbelievable how idyllic it is here. Everywhere around me are living things that grow wild. Everywhere around me, I see a world ripe with life and richness and rawness and history. Even the air has that heaviness. The humidity isn’t any better or worse than up north, but it can also feel oppressive in an entirely different way—like in the church house when the hymns are sung. In small towns, church is where you go if you crave the sensation of being looked at. Especially if you’re an outsider, like I am: Miss Dorothy’s Yankee granddaughter, a figure admired yet unknown.

I can hear thunder rumbling in the distance. The sky’s gone gray. The cats are roaming. I should head inside. This, I realize, is my last time visiting this house as a child. I won’t return before my 18th birthday. In a year, Charlie will be dead, hit by a rare truck driving past Grandmama’s house, and I’ll be away at college, hardly ever calling home. The farm in Georgia will feel even farther away, even more alien and divorced from the life I will be living. But the view from the back porch, I’m sure, will still be beautiful—unchanged, preserved, as it is and as it has been and as it will be. I won’t really know, though. I won’t have seen it in a while.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff 6 _ The Yale Herald

Calling home

by Griffin Brown

Finally, you were standing, walking home from working late, outside for only the second time today.

You told me about the sky: it was grey, almost granite-like, and very bleak. From your high story you had seen pedestrians pass by on the sidewalk below, and you mentioned that they carried themselves in a manner you understood.

I nodded, though of course you couldn’t have known.

Later this evening, another dinner scrounged from the nearly empty fridge— still more than enough for two, you say. I’m prepping mine as we speak, I answer. The recipe is yours; the marinade the same I smelled, so many years ago, from the second floor of our full apartment on our familiar street, lined with birch and oak.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Mar. 10, 2017 – 7

OPINION

OPINION

The psyche of the Yale student athlete

by Camille Weisenbach

O

n Feb. 27, 2017, a Yale Daily News op-ed sent angry whirlwinds through campus by arguing for the end of varsity athletic recruitment into Yale College. Students were quick to ridicule and refute the op-ed for everything from its condescending ableism to its lackluster rhetorical technique. Responses from within the athletic community have been especially robust (see: Vermeer’s “A Message from ‘Dumb’ Athletes,” Stuper’s “Letter: 2.28,” Lainoff’s “I’m A Disabled Female Athlete and I’m Here to Stay”).

The article was the latest iteration in a tired debate about the merit of varsity athletics on Yale’s campus. In fact, as Lowet mentions in “Athletics and Community At Yale,” attacks and responses regarding the academic deservingness of varsity athletes come along every few years (see: Zupsic’s 2011 “Athletes are Yalies, Too,” Sobotka’s 2013 “Equal Athletic Appreciation”). Brian Tompkins, a senior administrator in the athletics department, described such articles as tornadoes—they come along every few years, creating a massive uproar, and then leave as quickly as they’ve arrived.

As aforementioned responses have carefully explained, athletes are clearly capable students. The vast majority of them successfully balance intensive athletic demands with heavy course loads, in addition to all the extra-curricular activities, student jobs, research opportunities, and student groups they participate in alongside their peers. They complete strenuous majors, just like their non-athlete classmates. In the class of 2016, there are 194 listed student athlete graduates. Of the 188 for which academic data are available, 20 percent of them majored in STEM fields, and 15 double-majored. They all negotiate trenchant scheduling conflicts with no additional privileges commonly found at peer institutions, such as afternoon class moratoriums, athlete-specific tutors, or “athletic credits.” Yale student-athletes are undeniably students first, athletes second.

Furthermore, the athletics department knows this fact. Several administrators in the athletics office verified that while recruitment procedures vary by team, the admissions department evaluates each prospective athlete’s academic profile and informs the coach of the applicant’s chance of admittance—not the other way around, as is commonly misperceived. The only significant difference between the experience of athlete and non-athlete high school applicants is a matter of timing: athletes approved by the admis-

sions department often receive “likely letters” in the fall of their senior year, which give them some measure of confidence (not a guarantee) that their application decision will be favorable provided they maintain their current academic standing.

Clearly, student-athletes become influential leaders, just like their nonathlete peers. To suggest that athletes are categorically less likely to become “superb doctors, writers, scientists, lawyers, politicians and engineers” than budding high school debate team captains (assuming the two are somehow mutually exclusive) is not only incorrect, it’s exactly the opposite of reality. Of the 159 student-athletes in Class of 2016 accounted for, 108 are pursuing advanced degrees or careers in finance, consulting, and law. In interviews and conversations with potential employers in the consulting field, I heard firsthand how highly many employers value the traits uniquely athletics instills in young people. Many hold leadership positions in student organizations on campus. Student-athletes are undeniably leaders, and employers know this.

I realize with a grimace how last week’s assault on my presence at Yale would have damaged me if I had read it four years ago as a freshman. Like most other freshman, I struggled for months to find my footing at Yale; I exhibited classic signs of the ‘imposter syndrome’ where I felt like the one mistake that sneaked through Yale admissions. Budding friendships with classmates from Exeter and with non-athletes only exacerbated these daily apprehensions that I, the publicly educated student-athlete, did not belong, that I could not excel here. However, unlike students who find their niches and leave behind feelings of inadequacy, I waged war with self-doubt stemming from my athlete status well into my sophomore year. In fact, I continue to enter classrooms and evening discussion sections as a senior with a feeling that I have something to prove to be respected as an academic equal.

Nor am I alone. Many student athletes on my team and other teams have relayed similar experiences of feeling pre-judged or dismissed until they prove intellectually capable, in a way their non-athlete suitemates, band-mates, and lab partners have not. There is an apparent cultural double standard whereby Yalies make light of skipping class due to post-Woads sleep deprivation, or procrastinating on a problem set, when non-athletes do it, yet construe studentathletes who do the same as caring less about school, as athletes. Athletes realize this perception early, and it burrows into us as freshmen. It took time for me to counteract effects of such internalized un-belonging by developing meaningful friendships with non-athlete peers based on mutual respect.

All evidence considered, the op-ed author shamelessly promoted his narrow vision of what Yale University is and who ought to constitute it. I came across the tornado in question as I walked from my game theory midterm to my constitutional law lecture, and I wondered how anyone could defend this line of reasoning, which would sound blatantly perverse if the term ‘student-athlete’ was replaced with ‘woman,’ ‘person of color,’ ‘disabled person,’ or even ‘Cole Aronson,’ as the Rumpus spoofed. I wish I could convey to the freshmen on my team how they belong at Yale just as much as their suitemates, and that contrary to inflammatory YDN pieces, they are not the five students in the Yale Class of 2020 that sneaked through admissions, that don’t belong, that cannot excel here. They are future writers, scientists, coders, and doctors, alongside all their classmates. I hope my non-athlete peers will continue to see their value and celebrate their contributions, too. So please, let us stop asking every few years whether athletes have the necessary qualifications to attend Yale. Instead, let us focus on empowering each other, athletes and nonathletes alike, to rise to Yale’s mission, both in and out of the classroom, of “improving the world today and for future generations.”

Many thanks to Robyn Acampora, Brian Tompkins, Jess Chrabaszcz, and Johnathan Macey for their input and feedback on this piece.

Graphs & data collection by Camille Weisenbach 8 – The Yale Herald

Stop the Bass hate!

O

*

nce, when I was studying on the upper level of Bass Library, a friend of mine walked up to me and said, “Damn dog, so it’s that kind of night?” He was implying that my choosing to study in Bass signaled that I was under a particular amount of academic stress. Why else would I choose to spend my precious evening in Yale’s Most Hated Library™? In fact, I love Bass. The physical comfort mixed with the sunlight provided by the floor-to-ceiling windows; the malleable line between academic study space and casual social setting; the access both to the Sterling stacks and the Bass café—all of these make Bass a self-evidently good place to study. Yet in spite of this idea, the negativity with which my buddy spoke of this library is vocalized constantly by Yale students. Not only is this opinion misguided: it is also representative of a learned behavior that is dangerously self-defeating. People hate Bass simply because they hear other people say they hate Bass. They reserve it for their most stressful evenings simply because other people claim that those evenings are what it should be reserved for. Bass hate is misplaced, but it also legitimizes a truly reductive form of campus discourse.

The way we speak about our lives on campus is constantly influenced by collective habit, by superficially shared opinions like mindlessly condemning Bass. When asked how they are doing, Yale students routinely include some form of “Good, good. Really tired, but getting through.” Because we have learned, simply through the collective language of our campus, that surviving while exhausted is not just a socially-accepted norm, but the trend that we are urged to apply to our own experience. These shared attitudes shape our expectations—expectations that February will inevitably be a shitty month, that TD is profoundly far from the center of campus, that midterm season is an insurmountable challenge, that Bass Library is inherently bad.

In fact, these expectations are usually informed by a surface-lowel sense of struggle that Yale students feel compelled to feign. If one isn’t claiming their exhaustion and stress, then one is simply not following the trend. But what these performances of anxiety actually do

by Isaac Scobey-Thal

is appropriate—and so devalue—the gravity of the actual struggle that many Yale students undergo. Casually referencing faux-exhaustion during midterms actually reduces the experience of students who are truly struggling to earn a passing grade.

I am particularly struck by the fact that most of my peers who adopt this mode of struggle-speech—who post memes on social media with the caption “me during midterm season”—are affluent white people.

Now, there is absolutely no doubt that affluent white people experience the stresses of Yale in very real ways. That said, I would argue that many of them do not struggle here with the fundamental exhaustion they claim to bear. That profound exhaustion might be saved for those struggling with mental illness, those who must work 12 hours a week in order to contribute to financial aid, those who exist as a black body in an institution built upon the insidious power of whiteness.

In this way, the same learned behavior of blindly following the current campus opinion that fosters this unwarranted ambivalence toward Bass is also deeply careless. In this way, too, the way that we speak to each other around campus, the way we post on social media, the way we joke around in our quotidian existence, truly matters. For it is in these moments that we vocally—albeit casually—construct our modes of understanding collective experience. In these moments, too, we may unwittingly erase the experiences of our peers.

Of course, we should make our own mistakes and cultivate our own avenues of joy—you should hate Bass if you hate Bass. But hate it because it’s dark and underground, not because everyone else does.

Blindly hating Bass is the exact mode of collective behavior that inspires an insensitive language of shared struggle. And if I’m sure of anything, it’s that we do not all struggle here in the same ways. And so we should be mindful of this reality even when it feels insignificant— even when we’re just making a joke to a friend descending those Cross Campus steps.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Mar. 10, 2017 – 9

FEATURE

Spring breakers College’s most infamous holiday through the ages

1935:

The first spring break in recorded history!

The swimming coach at Colgate University was worried that his team would lose their sea legs over the holidays, and took them down to Ft. Lauderdale to train over the break. Other students soon caught on that Florida was a great place to escape from chilly late winter, and the rest is history.

10 – The Yale Herald

1960:

“Where the Boys Are” is released in cinemas nationwide.

The movie, produced by Joe Pasternak, follows four college gals—Merritt, Melanie, Tuggle, and Angie— as they head to Ft. Lauderdale over spring break. Pre marital sex features prominently and it’s a wild time.

Ft. Lauderdale continues to rise to prominence as a getaway spot for college students.

*

1986: MTV covers spring

break for the first time.

They film in Daytona Beach, and Alan Hunter, a VJ, hosts. The Beastie Boys and Starship perform. Think drunken debauchery and funky 80s swimwear.

2005:

Three community colleges in Virginia participate in a joint “alternative spring break,” one of the first of its kind. They volunteer at a food bank, a shelter for survivors of domestic violence, and a teen center. The volunteering initiative has a positive impact on all involved, and the trend of service spring break trips takes hold.

2006: The American Medi-

cal Association (AMA) releases the results of a poll on dangerous behaviors tied to sex and alcohol consumption. They polled women between the ages of 17 and 35.

One in five said they regretted their spring break sexual activities, and 12 percent felt they were pressured to have sex. Ninety-two percent said they had no trouble getting alcohol. Two in five cited cheap alcohol and lower drinking age as important in their decision to go on spring break.

Anonymous:

A group of 11 friends and I are going to Cancun for four nights during the second week of break. We’re renting a house and are just planning to chill, swim, and get fucked up. The drinking age is 18 in Mexico so we’re gonna go out every night and I’m tryna find cocaine and give a blowjob on the dance floor while blackout at some club. I’m hoping it will be a fun break from the stress of midterms and the cold New Haven weather.

Eliza Fawcett, JE ‘19: Last spring break, I participated

in the Slifka Center Mississippi Alternative Spring Break, a weeklong trip to the Mississippi Delta area. We visited a number of synagogues and met with leaders of the Jewish communities in the Delta region, in addition to visiting places of Civil Rights significance like the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn. (located at the Lorraine Motel where MLK was assassinated) and the Medgar Evers House in Jackson, Miss.

We explored the intersection of Jewish identity and the Civil Rights movement, and also worked with a local youth leadership group on repair projects in their community center. A highlight was helping to restore the historic Isaiah T. Montgomery House, one of the surviving original structures of Mound Bayou, a town founded by former slaves who wanted to create a self-supporting refuge for African Americans in the postbellum period. We spent a day working with a local historic preservation group to help gut the house, ripping up swaths of decaying carpets and debris to prepare it for future restoration. It was inspiring to learn about and help preserve a crucial—but under-recognized—part of Mississippi Delta history. The trip was an unusual opportunity to see a part of the country I had no previous knowledge of and a meaningful way to contextualize my understanding of the Civil Rights era, and I’m so glad that I decided to devote part of my spring break to it!

Noah Daponte-Smith, BK ‘18:

“The seminar [William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale’s Spring Break Seminar on Tocqueville] is the latest iteration of the Buckley Program’s ongoing seminar series, which brings intellectuals from across the country to New Haven during breaks to teach subjects broadly relating to Anglo-American history and politics.

This spring break’s seminar is with Professor Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame; he’s teaching on Alexis de Tocqueville.

Previous seminars have dealt with the morality of capitalism and modern conservatism, among other subjects. I think we’ve got somewhere around 20 people enrolled for this one.”

Vicky Liu, PC ‘19 :

If you type Yale into Google Images, you get crisp photographs of tall, immaculate buildings. The sky is bluer than the blue book I wrote my last midterm in. The grass in front of Sterling is just the right shade of green. There is very little sign of human life. When everyone’s gone over spring break, campus looks exactly like those photographs. It’s eerie. I feel like a visitor again, transported back into my prefrosh days when Yale was a dream and I was some awkward Canadian kid who liked to admire architecture on Google Images. This spring break, I’ll be in New Haven a second time. I’m excited to finally walk up to the Divinity School and visit the Peabody, and if all goes well, write my three papers. I may visit my friends in nearby cities. I may lie down in the middle of Old Campus for two whole hours and no one will know, except for a cohort of fellow international students, a tour guide or two, and you, dear Herald readers.

Graphics by Haewon Ma YH Staff Mar. 10, 2017 – 11

COVER

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT JACKFRUIT

Marc Shkurovich, BK ’19, questions why Yale Dining’s culinary and sustainability endeavors don’t get the love they deserve.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff 12 – The Yale Herald

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

- Virginia Woolf

O

desserts!). To parse Yale Dining’s website and press releases is to wade through a bog of buzzwords that sound nice, but fail to cohere into anything meaningful upon a second glance.

The thing is, both culinary excellence and sustainability come under fire when they fade into the commonplace. Yale Dining pledges, among other things, to provide “delicious, chef-centric food,” and promote “food literacy.” These are both worthy initiatives. It’s just that, for some reason, students don’t expect to actually dine well in their own dining halls. It seems that the extent of Yale Dining’s efforts—and their singularity—actually fly by under our noses.

n Thurs., Feb. 23, I ate dinner in Jonathan Edwards College.

The first feature of the night’s meal was served before I even entered the kitchen area. Two cooks, lined up behind portable stoves, were preparing samples of an experimental new dish: teriyaki jackfruit. While ripe jackfruit is sweet, unripe—also called young—jackfruit is savory. It is a staple in some South Asian cuisines, and has been trending in the West as a desirable meat alternative for its semi-plausible mimicry on top of its high-protein yield. Served atop FOOD AT YALE IS MULTIFACETED, BUT HARDLY INEFFABLE. FOR warm white rice, marinated with a tangy-sweet glaze alongside pep- those who are interested in cooking and sharing food, the student poppers and onions, the jackfruit arils (the ovoid petals inside the fruit) up scene is one vibrant outlet, while food education is becoming more took on a fleshy consistency and picked up the flavor of the marinade; and more entrenched in Yale’s academic and entrepreneurial spheres. my fork tore it apart like pulled pork, and my teeth did the same. The Making food and learning about food are, of course, not mutually exdish was flavorful yet simple, familiar yet utterly alien; I had four serv- clusive, but at Yale they are split into different bodies. Michael Park, ings. What was this exotic fruit doing in a Yale dining hall?

ES ’17, is the CEO of Y Pop-Up, a group whose foremost purpose is to Of the many changes rosy-cheeked frosh face as they step on cam- “create a great community among people that enjoy cooking.” The enpus, adjusting to the dining hall lifestyle can be one of the most pro- tirely student-run Y Pop-Up opens several “restaurants” each semester, found. Thrust from the comfort of home-cooked meals and the neigh- serving tasting menus with rotating themes, always at a price under borhood pizza joint, the most of their meals in college will be prepared $20. Here is where “talented people on campus” have “a chance to en masse, served in communal trays rather than on mom’s china. It’s hone their craft, learn something, and have, more importantly, a platone thing to pick a cereal out of your pantry, but another to funnel one form to share their visions with friends, professors, people in the comof the dining hall’s available cereals into your bowl without spilling. munity,” Park says. And they certainly draw a crowd.

In abstraction, the dining hall should exhilarate those among us who Y Pop-Up’s most recent event was this past Fri., March 3, and was salivate over all-you-can-eats—the endless tater tots were the best fully booked. I dropped in to observe the ambience: diners were scatpart of my week at UCLA tennis camp back in the sixth grade. But tered throughout the Grace Hopper Buttery, sitting at round tables in reality, the dining hall is often a source of consternation for some draped in black tablecloths, at square wooden tables left bare, and and irritation for others. Regardless, Yale Dining is omnipresent in even at the bar in front of the cooks. Waiters dressed in sweaters undergraduate life, and yet we don’t seem to think about it beyond cycled through the tables among the soft murmur of contented dinner complaining about the wait until chicken tender Thursday (or, if you’re conversation. The rich scent of the main course—lamb dinner, aclike me, Kale Feta Ball Friday). companied by pomegranate molasses, horseradish cauliflower purée, Yale Dining does not exist to “feed us,” I learned, when I spoke with and marinated fingerling potatoes—wafted through the cracks of the its senior director, Adam Millman. He was quick to point out that Yale door to the buttery. The four course meal was priced at $18. This was Dining’s mission does not include my crude formulation; instead, Yale nothing like my dining hall dinner. Park was busy: wearing a blue-andDining strives to “nourish a culture in which the interwoven pleasures white striped apron, he shuttled back and forth between the kitchen of growing, cooking, and sharing food become an integral part of each and the diners, supervising the preparations and gauging the food’s student’s experience at Yale.” It seems that they would agree that din- reception. ing well is imperative, and that one can dine well only if one’s meal is Earlier this week, Park told me that he’s just grateful that “people prepared well. But more and more, dining well also involves consum- are interested enough to fill the restaurant every week.” Though, from ing healthy, locally-sourced, and sustainable food. And yet the typical a “superficial” perspective, Yale Dining might seem to be antithetical Yalie might not be interested in growing, cooking, and sharing food, to Y Pop-Up—monolithic instead of “kind of niche”—he aspires to per se; they, rather, will be concerned more with eating, and liking, Yale Dining’s degree of discipline and functionality. what’s made it to their plate.

The first thing to understand about Yale Dining is the sheer breadth So, like any good American Studies major, I wanted to problematize of its operations. Yale Dining is but one of Yale Hospitality’s branches, Yale Dining as a paragon of institutional sustainability and culinary which also include a high-end catering service and commercial retail excellence. This desire arose in part because bad-mouthing the din- operations like Durfee’s and KBT Café. All in all, Yale Hospitality eming hall seems to be an inescapable trope of the college experience, ploys more than 750 people: roughly 400 culinary and service employbut also because their self-aggrandizement—the way they thrust their ees, 190 banquet servers, 120 casual servers, and 60 managerial and eco-friendliness and gustatory achievement in our faces—can be jar- administrative staff. ring. We may not be able to choose exactly what we want to eat when Onyeka Obiocha is a Social Entrepreneurship Fellow across the we want to eat it, but at least we can sate the home-sized hole in our Center for Business and the Environment at Yale (CBEY) and Innostomachs with the knowledge that our food is sustainable, right? vateHealth Yale, a program out of the School of Public Health. He’s Yale Dining’s menus, which rotate every four weeks, are developed gotten “pretty intimate with a lot of food entrepreneurs and the way and curated by Ron DeSantis, the Director of Culinary Excellence, one food works at Yale,” and has strategized with Park about growing his of 64 Certified Master Chefs in the world—an impressive distinction “little corner”; in terms of scale, Obiocha likens Yale Dining to Walmart. that Yale Dining will never let you forget, as they append that digni- But, in striving to put good food on people’s plates, Y Pop-Up and fying appositive to his title whenever it has occasion to appear. At Yale Dining share more than one might think: “When you’re a part of brunch, they don’t serve applewood-smoked bacon, but nitrate-free what you perceive to be a common project, you always empathize with applewood-smoked bacon. Outside Commons is a stand with four post- how difficult the job is,” Park says. “In terms of what they do from a ers on it: one is the day’s menu, and the other three advertise, in food standpoint, I can’t imagine...” He trails off. Park is friends with bold typeface larger than the one that lists the dishes, that Yale Din- DeSantis, and with some dining hall managers and cooks: “They would ing is “committed to sustainability,” and to composting, and that 80 tell me war stories of Morse/Stiles dinner rush on a Thursday night, percent of their entrées, sides, and desserts are vegetarian (meatless where they’re serving 1,000. That’s incomprehensible to me. At Pop-

Mar. 10, 2017 – 13

Up—though we’re plating everything and there are multiple courses, so timing is an issue—we’re serving 50 people. And they’re serving literally 20 times that volume, it’s unbelievable.” Through dining halls alone, Yale Dining serves 14,000 meals a day. “At that point, it boils down to professionalism and really good teaching.”

“No matter how well a dining hall is run, it’s never going to be home cooking, or eating at a restaurant, and it’s not meant to be,” Park adds.

“But I think there’s definitely an element of misunderstanding in terms of the amount that people care. I think there’s a lot of pride in what goes on, and attention should be paid to that.”

tion of an experience. Gallegos told me that Yale Dining first introduced jackfruit at a training session for dining hall cooks over winter break.

Though they attempted a different recipe at first, the vegan tree fruit’s potential as a “diverse and exciting protein alternative” was clear: “We knew we needed to showcase this dish in the dining halls,” Millman said.

“Showcase” seems to be a telling verb. If students turn to peers like Park for culinary acrobatics—even when those peers strive to emulate Yale Dining—what is Yale Dining to do? While taste is insurmountably personal, there’s another important aspect to food in 2017 that is more objective. In their biannual surveys, Yale Dining includes some pointed questions that are more rhetorical than inquisitive: “Are you aware that THOUGH I GORGED ON JACKFRUIT IN JE, MY HOME BASE, WHERE I Yale Dining serves local/regional produce (seasonally available); hormone eat nine meals out of 10, is Berkeley. The Berkeley dining hall employs and antibiotic-free (ABF), responsibly-raised, veg-fed poultry and pork; 28, including cooks (split into first, second, and third lines), pantry work- grass-fed grass finished, ABF beef and lamb; over 50% of all purchases ers, dishwashers, and two managers, one of whom is Monica Gallegos. are sustainable; our salads and salad dressing are made daily on campus; Gallegos sees the dining hall not as a Walmart, but as her home. Though and we serve sustainable seafood meeting that is MSC certified and or the Berkeley dining hall soon became a home to me as well (once I got meets the Monterey Bay Aquarium “Best Choice” or “Good Alternative” over the taxidermy buck heads presiding over the common room), its standards?” is a recent example. I bubbled the option that read “Most of kitchen remained foreign; the grill forms a barrier that keeps staff and These,” but mostly out of prickly spite. Again in theory, I understood that students on opposite sides of the operation.

Yale Dining made efforts at sustainability, but had little notion of what On Tuesday, between lunch and dinner, Millman led me through Berke- that meant in practice. ley’s kitchen. The first revelatory detail was that the kitchen is actually In 2010, then-president Richard Levin issued a three-year sustaintwo connected parts: The first extends behind the grill, where, hidden ability plan for the entire university. President Salovey renewed and updated it in 2013, and in 2016, laid out a vision arching through 2025.

He tasked Yale Dining to “establish long-term goals and objectives that integrate and align with research, student experience, and operational execution in seamless and aspirational ways.” In more specific terms, that looks like efforts to increase Yale Dining’s “sustainable sourcing footprint” and integrate “health and wellness as a symbiotic aspect of sustainability.” When bombarded with what, to me (a layman when it comes to food systems) reverts back to wonderful, impalpable fluff, it becomes tempting to ascribe Yale Dining’s sustainability initiatives to the cultural moment—one which will soon be dominated by a generation that, as Obiocha observes, is liable to bring a “reusable spork” to college. He sees Yale Dining, and Yale more broadly, directly responding to what the millennial generation wants to see in the institution. This is true of many institutions that, “because they’re so big, usually react. Yale Dining is just reacting, the market is saying we want to be sustainable, we want to be local, we want to be healthy.”

That’s what I thought, too. But Millman vehemently disagrees: “Everybody is concerned about sustainability,” but “we don’t do it because [everybody is] concerned, we do it because of our fundamental beliefs. We’re not basing our stuff off of student wants; we’re basing it off of what’s good from view, is a second cooking area in which dishes are finished (Yale for the environment, what’s good for the university, and what’s good for Dining does not batch cook and keep food in “hot boxes” until needed— the program.” Those fundamental beliefs have trickled down through the everything is served fresh). Next is a dish cleaning area—the domain of chain of command: Gallegos, of her own initiative, has decided to nix the the “hardest working” employees, according to Millman—and a walk-in rainbow sprinkles from Berkeley’s offerings in order to reduce artificial refrigerator, where the day’s perishables are stored and dated. The sec- flavoring and be more natural. Attached to the ovens of the second line ond section sprawls a floor below the dining hall, where prep cooks, well, of Berkeley’s kitchen is a machine called a variable speed controller. This prep cold dishes and cook hot bulk items. This part of the kitchen also device—which I would have passed over had Millman not pointed it out includes a larger walk-in and the dry storage section, whose label system to me—regulates the speed of the industrial ovens’ cooling fans when blurs the line between organization and obsessive compulsive disorder. unneeded. No students see it, but it quietly reduces Yale’s environmental Down here is where the “engine is running,” as Millman calls it, that footprint, however marginally. “Our focus, our core has been the same,” prepares the food for the “guests,” in Yale Dining parlance, who eat at Millman declares.

Berkeley daily. Everything is pristine. Metallic washbasins reflect light off chrome ovens and stainless steel tables. This is the “degree of profes- BUT YALE DINING IS FAR FROM THE ONLY PROGRAM AT YALE sionalism” that Park alluded to, without which “creativity can’t shine.” engaged with sustainability. The university’s Office of Sustainability opened its doors in 2005, but the Yale Sustainable Food Program (YSFP) I ASKED MILLMAN ABOUT THE MOTIVATION BEHIND THE JACKFRUIT. preceded it by four years. The YSFP’s inaugural mission was to “reform He attributed its appearance in the dining hall to their mission to “keep the way that Yale supplied food to its dining halls,” says Anna Lipin, ES looking for products, recipes, and experiences that are in line with our ’18, who is the YSFP’s Communications Director. And “it succeeded in sustainability, health, and wellness initiatives.” For me, at least, one many ways”: their first experiment was in the dining halls—specifically buzzword took form here: eating the jackfruit was firmly within my defini- in Berkeley. In 2001, in collaboration with legendary chef Alice Waters,

“EVERYBODY IS CONCERNED ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY, BUT WE DON’T DO IT BECAUSE EVERYBODY IS CONCERNED, WE DO IT BECAUSE OF OUR FUNDAMENTAL BELIEFS.” Adam Millman, Senior Director of Yale Dining

14 – The Yale Herald

they launched a pilot program to begin serving some seasonal and sus- halls daily to conceive of the extent of Yale Dining’s impact. In 2016, tainable foods in Berkeley. Students flocked to its doors to partake in Taherian received both the Gold Plate from the International Foodserthe new cuisine and organic salad bar. The program’s immediate popu- vice Manufacturers Association—recognizing the year’s top foodservice larity, and, more importantly, feasibility, garnered national press, and executive, which is rarely a noncommercial operator—and the Elm-Ivy cemented the YSFP’s presence on campus, paving the way for expanded Award—given to exemplary “town and gown” citizens, and to Taherian and more extensive sustainability efforts. An inflection point in the wave for supporting local businesses through Yale Hospitality’s purchases. If came in 2007, when Yale Dining assumed its current form and took over others already recognize Yale Dining as an exemplar, what will it take for meal planning and sustainable food sourcing. Rafi Taherian, Associate students to do the same?

Vice President of Yale Hospitality, has helmed Yale Dining since then as the YSFP evolved and diverged. “The YSFP is no longer focused on Yale ANOTHER NEW ADDITION TO THE DINING HALLS—AND THIS ONE food, but on thinking about food systems,” Lipin says. The distinct roles is to the regular rotation—is cape shark. Much maligned in its short of the two programs—Yale Dining is a “student-faced organization for lifespan as a Yale entrée so far, what most don’t know is that cape shark dining,” as Millman puts it, while the YSFP seeks to grow “food-literate is an inherently sustainable and important product. Yale purchases leaders”—seems to place them on parallel paths. But for those of us cape shark—along with cod, halibut, haddock, and skate wings—from who are not steeped in Yale food-literacy lore, it might seem perplexing a single fishing program based out of Cape Cod. Cape shark is generthat the YSFP doesn’t advise Yale Dining on its daily operations, or that ally bycatch—unwanted fish caught collaterally by commercial fisherYale Dining doesn’t borrow more YSFP practices, especially when your men—that is usually discarded, generating both food waste and finan“next-door neighbor is doing things the right way,” as Obiocha puts it. cial strain. Yale Dining has instead been bringing in cape shark, and, in Mark Bomford, Director of the YSFP, is just that neighbor, and the the process, helping sustain the fishermen’s income while encouraging person who can best evaluate Yale Hospitality’s comprehensive success. further cape shark fishing—itself a critical ripple effect, as cape shark He thinks that they run “the most forward-thinking food service opera- is an overabundant predatory species that, when left unchecked, threattion to be found among any of Yale’s peer institutions… They are viewed ens the balance of its ecosystem. Complicating this environmentallyas being a step ahead of the rest in the industry.” Furthermore, Bomford congenial practice is the fact that cape shark is a “meatier fish,” with a isn’t convinced that there is a fundamental difference between Yale “fisher taste,” according to Millman. “We try to balance initiatives, and Dining’s philosophy and his program’s. The key similarity is that both sometimes we can’t produce stuff that everybody likes.… I think we’re embrace “sustainability as an active journey, not [as] a fixed destina- getting mixed reviews; some people like it, some don’t. But some people tion.” Even Yale Dining’s “foodie” events—a label to which Lipin takes don’t like fishy fish.” umbrage, asserting that nobody who “thinks about food critically” would The reasons why Yale Dining procures cape shark overlap with its want to be called a “foodie” given the basic, Instagram-centric connota- selection principles for peppers and tomatoes: “Our tomatoes don’t tion the term has acquired—serve to illustrate how differences can be need to be perfectly red and unblemished, or perfectly symmetrical. leveraged productively. The highest profile of these was October’s “Food They can be deformed because we’re taking them and cooking them.

Conversations,” the inaugural event at the Schwarzman Center, which Supermarkets buy for color, size, and shape. We’re buying for flavor.” brought renowned chefs to Yale to publically discuss contemporary food Most restaurants pass on a product like cape shark, which is relatively issues; the production mirrored the MAD Yale Leadership Summit, co- unknown outside the Northeast (and whose name can, frankly, turn off organized by Bomford in June, which similarly assembled a panel of less adventurous eaters), but Yale Dining, with an eye on food waste world-class chefs to campus. Bomford distinguishes the two events by even before any food reaches its domain, and an eye on the food chain, their different, but complementary, audiences and objectives: the for- works to bring “underutilized products [into the] mainstream” and make mer was public, and engendered “dialogue in the public sphere”; the “them taste delicious.” latter was “more of a focused learning effort” with a long-term scope.

It’s hard to overestimate Yale Dining’s buying power. According to The events’ natures reveal just where the two organizations diverge.

Obiocha, based on their market share alone, Yale Dining has the ability Still, Obiocha wants to see more explicit collaboration between sov- “to move the dial” to promote “healthy living and healthy eating,” both ereign departments and centers across Yale—he likens them all to “fief- inside and outside the Yale community. An example comes in the shape doms,” reluctant to interact. He points to Monday’s Worn Wear College of a hot dog: Yale leveraged the volume of its guaranteed purchases to Tour event as an example of a successful collaboration: Patagonia’s worn push its hot dog supplier, Hummel Bros, to begin producing a nitratewear repair team came to Ingalls Rink on behalf of the Office of Sus- free wiener. When Yale began buying bread from Whole G, a New Haven tainability, CBEY, and the Post-Landfill Action Network, a startup that artisan bakery, the company upgraded from fledgling to expanding, exeducates students across colleges on zero-waste initiatives. The theme emplifying the symbiosis possible between a large-scale food operation was keeping clothes out of the waste stream; beyond free repairs, the and the areas surrounding it. organizers orchestrated a panel discussion with industry leaders to furHerein lies the complexity of critiquing the practices of a Yale Dinther foster reuse culture on campus. Is this an area where Yale Dining, in ing: on the one hand, their efforts to act sustainably have clearly been particular, can improve? Obiocha wonders what a holistic effort to make felt by local businesses, and their also reflected on the page: last year, “food as cool as possible at Yale” would look like. But 14,000 meals a besides sourcing over 25 percent of its food purchases regionally, Yale day restricts the opportunities to source produce from the Yale Farm, for Dining reduced its beef purchases by 13 percent—and saved roughly example. “We each have a different focus on campus,” Millman says.

38 million gallons of water in doing so. A line deep in Yale Hospitality’s That much is clear. So why is it so easy to lambast Yale Dining? It website seems to anticipate one angle of criticism: “Yale’s commitment might be because, even though they present themselves as the gold to sustainability is more than just a fancy marketing phrase—it’s a comstandard, we don’t really have an alternative. Better questions, I think, mitment and a cultural value.” It just takes a little more than Yale Dinare why it’s so difficult for us to accept that Yale Dining is in fact at ing’s word to reveal the brilliant work that they do, because, on the other the forefront of its peers, and why we students don’t celebrate them hand, not everybody likes fishy fish. for, in Bomford’s words, treating “sustainable dining as the rule rather than the exception.” Perhaps it’s because the extent of their excellence lies behind the scenes, no matter how earnestly they try to show it off, or because it’s impossible for those of us who eat in the dining

Mar. 10, 2017 – 15

CULTURE

by Nolan Phillips YH Staff and Rubi Macias

Seance Bucket List

F

ace it: you’re goth. And you go to Yale.

And today’s the day you want to communicate with the dead in a Victorian-style séance, but you’re stymied by one big looming question: where should I do it? A good séance can be spooky and exciting, so you don’t want to miss out. There are lots of creepy places around this prestigious campus! Let’s have a look at the Herald’s top picks:

The Grove Street Cemetery: This one’s a no-brainer—“The Dead Shall Be Raised” is written at the entrance. And that’s no joke—this place serves some serious Welcometo-the-Black-Parade vibes. If you bring a Ouija board, you might even get some genuine supernatural communication. One time I went to the Grove Street Cemetery, Ouija board in tow, and within minutes I heard a whisper in the wind: Please leave the cemetery, sir. Of course, I left.

Waiting for the restroom buzzer at Popeye’s: Ever gone to Popeye’s? Ever gone to Popeye’s and had to wait for the workers to buzz you into the restroom? If so, you know this is the perfect opportunity to pull out your artisanal galaxy tapestry, courtesy of Amazon.com, and your incense and candles, courtesy of Group W Bench, and get to summoning. Not only is the wait time for the buzzer the perfect amount of time for you to make contact, but the sharp, alarming sound will be powerful enough to draw you back from frolicking in the astral universe with the spirit of Vincent Price to that weird little quasi-

hall outside of the Popeye’s restroom. Also, after the restroom, you will be able to replenish your expended energy and balance your chakras with some delicious chicken and fries. Don’t forget to use that exclusive Yale student discount!

In the Urban Outfitters dressing room: There’s lots of cool stuff you can buy in the Urban Outfitters on Broadway: they have socks with little weed shapes on them, they have two of Lana Del Rey’s three albums on vinyl, and they have those Fjallraven backpacks. But the best part of Urban Outfitters is their dressing room and, specifically, its prospects for a good séance. The lighting is not particularly bright.

And of course there are some very chill ghosts in the Urban Outfitters dressing room—one even taught me how to play hacky sack.

In the new Center for Teaching and Learning™: As you surely know if you are one of the cool folk on campus, the new Center for Teaching and Learning™ is the spot. Not only is this place furnished with outlets and comfy chairs, but I really jibe with those luxurious study rooms (“Bass who?” amiright?). Imagine how much respect the dead will have for you when you share with them the magnificence of the new Center for Teaching and Learning™. Also, bringing ghosts into this currently ghost-free space would make you super powerful and respected in the Yale ghost community, and who doesn’t want that? Make sure to check out the new Center for Teaching and Learning™! You

can drop in and see a writing tutor without an appointment!

At a YPU debate: Listen: I don’t know much about politics.

But if you’re talking séances? Love them. And there’s hardly a better place to hold a séance than a YPU debate. Ghosts have two favorite sounds: banging and hissing. So naturally they are drawn to YPU debates. Although I don’t usually understand the intricacies of the YPU’s passionate discourse, I often attend their events with my Victorian memento mori hair-lace necklace and my hand-dipped whale-fat candle. Resolved: Ghosts are people too!

With Jojo: As most of you know, singer/songwriter Jojo will perform at this year’s Spring Fling. She hasn’t yet answered my DMs with regards to her potential interest in performing a séance, but I have a feeling she could be really bring something to the table.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff 18 _ The Yale Herald

Dorm room summoning

by Sonny Turner

W

e sat in a circle. The window was open, the wood of Nicole’s bedroom floor cold on our rears. It was not even 8 PM and we were high. I mean stoned. I mean sitting-in-a-circle-discussing-what-to-do-and-deciding-on-having-an-impromptu séance zooted. And that’s exactly what we did. WikiHow was consulted, and we were on our way.

But who to summon? The possibilities seemed endless. Probably because they were. Lots of people (infinite, even), real and imagined, have and have not existed. Strangely, however, we made our decision almost immediately. Rather, I decided almost immediately. There really was no other option. It had to be her.

“Nineteenth century scientist who pioneered the study of radioactivity, Marie Curie, that one,” I whispered. But before I could say another word, Alex, the third of our intrepid bunch, butted in.

“Dude! Remember what it said on WikiHow? Do the chant!”

And so we chanted. Again and again (but actually only seven times), “Spirits of the past, move among us. Be guided by the light of this world and visit upon us.”

It actually didn’t work, though.

Look at the stars

by Charlie Bardey YH Staff

L

ike literally everyone, I am in a desperate and obsessive quest to know myself. Here are the main things I have learned so far: 1) I touch my hair a lot, 2) I sometimes wrap the cord of my headphones around my neck, 3) whenever I think about doing something socially unacceptable, I unconsciously mime stabbing myself in the heart, and 4) I will never stop screaming. These are important things to know, and they come up a lot, but I need to know more. Why not look skyward?

In the present moment, tools of self-knowledge proliferate. I could, if I wanted, go to BuzzFeed right now and find out What Song Ed Sheeran Should Perform At My Wedding and If My James Bond Opinions Actually Suck. Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are “I Don’t Care” and “They Definitely Don’t.” I’m not looking for BuzzFeed trivialities: I want to know answers to the biggest questions, like “What Is Wrong With Me?” and “What The Fuck Is Going To Happen?” and “Why Am I Like This Like And How Did I Become This Way?” To answer these sorts of questions, many are looking to the stars. Indeed, astrology is kind of having a moment. It appears in Tinder profiles and Tweets. It dictates dating choices and leaves peo-

ple shook. Frankly, it’s not too hard to understand why: given a world in chaos (planetary environmental crisis and the collapse of the liberal order, if you haven’t been paying attention), a rejection of scientific positivism feels like the only way to find meaning.

Therefore, many are finding solace and meaning in a system wherein everything from your personality to your love life and your professional future can be determined by the ways the stars aligned in the moment of your birth. Star signs have become ironclad personality types, interpreted and explained by online astrologers who know. The sign who will take the longest to reply to your text (according to @poetastrologers, an account with 83,600 followers)? Aquarius. The best sign to dog sit, cat sit or keep your plants alive?

Virgo. I happen to be an Aries. According to astrology.com, that means I’m a “natural leader of the pack,” and “unafraid of stepping into new terrain […] happiest in a spirited soccer match or engaging in the martial arts.”

Here’s the thing though: not really. For better or worse, I just can’t seem to get into it. While I may exhibit some Aries traits sometimes (I did take karate for four months in Kindergarten), I can’t help but find astrology reductive and inadequate.

I’m not brave, I stay to the beaten path, and in a lot of contexts I’m happy to let other people take the lead. I feel like my personality changes with context in a way astrology just doesn’t allow for.

Call me a snowflake, but I can’t accept that my personality is one of a type—like everyone, I have a unique set of experiences and personality predilections not explicable by the stars. Further, I can in no way rationalize that my being born in April has anything to do with my personality. I find no solace in stars.

Maybe, though, that itself is insight: I can’t get into astrology because I’m a huge fucking dork that can’t get over the stodgy rules of science and thinks I’m one in a billion.

Apparently, I can’t just be chill and do the fun star game that everyone else loves so much. Who knew? I didn’t, but I do now.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Mar. 10, 2017 _ 19

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Posing a Challenge

SOURCE: inquisitr.com

O

riginally, I was going to publish this review two weeks ago. For scheduling reasons, I got bumped a few weeks, but it didn’t matter because I only had one sentence at the time. I wrote it immediately after watching episode four of The Challenge: Invasion. It said, “The greatest television event of our generation is happening right now, and you’re missing it.” In hindsight, that was a little dramatic, but to be fair, the Champions had just made the most epic entrance since the alien in Alien. That opening no longer works because the Champions followed up their legendary entrance with a poor showing in the first challenge—they were never going to win four on six, and they weren’t meant to—and now the novelty of having Champions vs.

Underdogs has worn off and it’s just another Challenge. (For those in need of a more comprehensive explanation of the show and it’s background, I explain a lot of it here.)

I’ll rewind a little bit. After last season ruined the Rivals franchise for me, I was nervous about what this season’s format would be. When I realized they were making an All-Star team (and that Johnny Bananas would be returning after last season’s disaster) I was nervous that it would just be a bloodbath, but the new framework is more thought out than I gave it credit for. The season began with only 18 Challengers, either rookies or competitors who had never won. Instead of immediately moving into a gorgeous mansion in an exotic location, they lived in “The Shelter,” a dilapidated cabana on the beach—a move that harkened back to one of the best Challenge seasons “The Island.” To get a pass to the lovely Challenge mansion, “The Oasis,” and meet the fearsome Champions, the “Underdogs,” as they were re-christened, had to either win a challenge or win an elimination; this is what challengers typically call “earning your stripes.” The structure of the show elevates having won a Challenge (capital C, as in a whole season) to godlike status. For the Champions to even deign to compete against you, you need your stripes.

This is genius. It solves the problem we’ve seen in recent seasons of lame game play. If you separate the wheat from the chaff early on, you can demand a higher level of athleticism, which almost guarantees a more watchable season.

The season hopefully has some epic Champion smackdowns in store for us (that’s what they’re there for, right?), but Invasion, surprisingly enough, brings a maturity that we have not seen for a long time, if ever, to the show. There are too many parents for “No parents. No rules. Summer all the time!” to apply to this season—Tony, Darrell, and now CT. Tony’s sobriety story is actually quite touching, and I’m not Tony’s biggest fan. And in CT’s first Challenge since his on-screen love Diem’s death, he is shockingly subdued, cheering on Tony’s rehabilitation and gushing about his son. For every Challenger that is finally growing up, though, MTV has also tracked down a middle-school grade mean girl to stir up drama. We even got the golden “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to win” from Kailah moments before she lost an elimination and went home, and only a few days after she literally peed her bed. After a refreshingly (for the most part) dramaless episode, other than a disappointing blackout episode from Nelson, the gaggle of Underdog girls hell bent on keeping themselves entertained (Amanda, Sylvia, and worst of them all, Ashley) reopen the gossip mill, spilling to the male champions how “Jenna got f***ed on the airplane.” C’mon ladies. This season’s cast is almost comically divided into adults—Laurel, Nicole, CT, Darrell—and teenagers—Ashley, Amanda, Nelson, Zach. And of course, if the adults are oil and the teenagers are water, Johnny Bananas is the dish soap, dissolving the boundaries between them.

20 _ The Yale Herald

by Emma Chanen AFTER JOHNNY BANANAS’S INFAMOUS BACKSTABBING AT THE END OF RIVALS III, I was all out on JB. He was disgusting to me, and I was still in shock on Sarah’s behalf. I unfollowed him on Instagram, and I’m only admitting that I followed him in the first place to demonstrate how upset I was. I was hoping he would retire as the winningest asshole in Challenge history and be out of my Challenge watching life forever.

But here he is, once again, and I’m not surprised. He’s an addict, and I’m not sure he’s capable of doing anything other than Challenges. So far, he’s lying pretty low this season; most of the shots of Bananas are him lahing at the Underdogs’ disastrous attempts at politicking. But I’m wary of Bananas, and especially with a softer CT this season, there may be nothing to temper Johnny’s conniving Challenge prowess.

Maybe we won’t need CT’s raw strength, though. As the Champions were eager to point out, while Johnny has the most wins, Darrell has the best record. Johnny has won six of his thirteen challenges, but Darrell won four of the six he competed in. I’ll say what’s on all our minds right now: I love Darrell. He’s athletic, smart, and he lays low, plus, he’s old school. That could be just what The Challenge needs.

On the Underdog side, I think we’ve all been sleeping on Dario. He hasn’t gotten a lot of screen time, but he’s making successful power moves on Ashley K. and it’s looking like his Challenge game might be as strong as his flirt game. When Dario first emerged from the hell that is Are You the One with his twin brother Raphy, I thought he was a joke, but he is playing a quietly strategic game. (Throwing Sylvia into elimination was obviously the right move.) He could be the Underdog to watch.

I’m treating this ridiculous show with mock seriousness because I actually find it wildly entertaining, and I want to own that. But while I hesitate to elevate this to an artifact of high culture worthy of study, partially because you won’t believe me and partially because I know it’s not entirely true, I do think that the deeply problematic gender dynamics, casual homophobia, and cultural appropriation of the host culture provide a look into an America outside our Ivy bubble. Jenna crawling back to Zach after he, in Laurel’s words, “totally dogged her on national television,” (read: cheated on her) is heartbreaking, and the juxtaposition of confessionals from the two of them (“I miss Zach” vs. “Jenna still has a great butt. Pow!”) is hard to watch. The show is working to showcase queer characters and their authentic storylines, but no one says anything when Bananas says that Nicole has “a lot of testosterone” or when the house tacitly agrees that Shane is a weak player when he’s proven he’s not. When Nelson tells a woman on his team that the boys are going to decide on the vote, and the girls will fall in line, no one calls him out for blatant sexism. But these are real people who really talk this way, and, as my friend lovingly pointed out to me today, “we are not the target audience for this show.” I have a lot of thoughts on this, and would love to engage with my peers about the way the show presents these issues, but none of you guys (except Hannah, shouts out) watch.

I watch The Challenge because I’m a messy bitch who lives for drama, but also because it takes me out of the stuck-up world of prestige (and prestige dramas). This Spring Break, yeah, maybe watch Paolo Sorrentino’s maximalist musing The Young Pope, but if you need a break from high art, reach across the aisle in your own way, and give The Challenge a chance.

Lumia

T

ucked away on the fourth floor of the Yale University Art Gallery is the YUAG’s latest special exhibition, Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light. The exhibition showcases around 16 lumia—or light art—pieces, created by Thomas Wilfred (1889-1968). In practice, this means that the gallery is filled with screens of various sizes and materials with wispy, mystical colors slowly floating across them.

The exhibit can be most succinctly described as an analog set of (beautiful) Windows screensavers bathed in seemingly infinite darkness.

Finding my way around this mostly unlit space was admittedly sometimes a bit difficult. More than once, I struggled to find the actual pieces (which were tucked around corners and

Get Out

F

irst things first: if all I had to say about Get Out was, “Allison Williams. That bitch is crazy! Those white people are insane! But not me. I’m DOWN,” then I would deserve to be impaled with a deer bust, too.

Get Out begins innocuously enough, with lovers Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) getting ready to spend the weekend at Rose’s parent’s house. Chris asks if she’s told them that he’s black; she hasn’t. He seems skeptical, but she reassures him that her parents aren’t like that. Trust her. A little later, Rose proves she is a surprisingly woke bae when she stands up for “her man” and calls a policeman out for racially targeting Chris. And as Chris swallows micro aggression after micro aggression from Rose’s extended, super white family,

Man Seeking Woman

I

discovered Man Seeking Woman at something of a low point for my comedy-watching career. It seemed like every show was the same; everywhere I looked, I found the same bunch of 30-somethings hanging out in a living room delivering one-liners that, past Season 5 or so, began to blur together. Gone were the days of 30 Rock and its innovative meta-style, and it seemed for a time that only in animation, with shows like Archer and Rick and Morty, was there true creativity to be found.

Enter Man Seeking Woman, and with it, the future of liveaction comedy.

Much as I dislike complimenting the Harvard-educated showrunner Simon Rich, I was hugely impressed by his approach, which can be condensed into a simple idea—everyday romantic situations feel like fantastic events, so why not

“Green Light,” Lorde

I

n 2013, Lorde’s debut album Pure Heroine hit stores and slow-burned into ubiquity. Its popularity was both justified and timely; Lorde’s witchy, smooth vocals arrived on the market right as luxe pop was starting to take off, when it still felt fresh and exciting (Lana del Rey’s Born to Die had come out in 2012 and Tove Lo’s sad-stoner-girl jam “Habits” would come in 2014). Her lyrics were a bombshell rejection of capitalistic excess—a sort of defiant resignation to outsider status in the seemingly unattainable worlds of superstardom and unfathomable wealth. Ironic, then, that the lyrics in her latest single, “Green Light,” the first from planned album Melodrama, sound an awful lot like those of a typical pop superstar.

The song starts out promisingly enough: Lorde’s signature slow, lush vocals lead us through a sultry verse and into a refrain that quickly picks up the tempo and raises the pitch

easy to mistake for a staff-only area) and confusedly stared at the ceiling, pondering its incongruity with the rest of the pieces until the security guard kindly directed me towards the actual artwork.

But the lumia that I did see-—immediately or not— were colorful abstractions meant to evoke the sense of all-encompassing wonder that comes with the infinity of outer space. Several of the screens evoked images of how I always irrationally imagined fetuses in the womb, floating baby pink in a sea of darkness, and pieces like “Tranquil Study, Op. 92” or “Counterpoint in Space, Op. 146” seem to be color-tonally complementary nebulas and space debris.

Even the exhibition space itself is meant to untether you from this world. One side of the exhibit features Wilfred’s handdrawn designs for his works, reminding us that the drifting colors are the results of a combination of highly cerebral mathe-

matical calculations, engineering diagrams, and artistic intent.

Some lumia have patterns that will not repeat in nine years, and some cycle through within five minutes and 15 seconds.

In a time before the advent of computers and complex graphical software, the lumia must have been even more mesmerizing. Today, in its anachronistic setting, Wilfred’s lumia evoke a sense of wonder by virtue of being analog; encased within each structure is an intricate set of rotating glass and reflectors that throws light onto a screen in specific, ethereally graceful patterns. While similarly-patterned images could today be easily programmed in graphic video software, lumia are made of real, physical moving parts—and that’s half the wonder. The exhibit, unwittingly or not, forces us to consider a human connection with analog objects in the face of an increasingly digitized world, as well as the role of physicality in our evaluation of authenticity.

Rose supports him, and I started to think maybe she’s taken an AFAM class or two.

Looking back, what the freak was I thinking? Chris knows racism better than Rose ever will. Rose spoke when she should have been listening. She consistently privileged her knowledge above Chris’s. And, fuck me, I did, too. I trusted her surface innocence over his experience. I heard Chris’s fears but I wanted to believe Rose was different. Of course the Hollywood romance could never work in Get Out, for two reasons: 1) Yes, Get Out is a horror movie, but if it met the Hollywood Standards then Chris could not have been the surviving protagonist, and 2) Get Out’s horror isn’t condensed into one fictional “bad guy” like Freddy Kreuger, Hannibal Lecter, or the creepy girl from The Ring. The evil in Get Out is not a singular entity, and it’s not fictional. It’s pervasive racism, and its real, and it’s terrifying.

The whole film led me through Chris’s journey. I was on his side. I screamed for him and I hoped for him. I saw his story and I wanted those crazy white people to die too. But

the ending of the film reminded me of a stark reality: so often Chris’s perspective will not matter. The audience empathizes with Chris because they have put in the time to listen; the cops don’t have to. To them, Chris is just another black body.

Chris, powerless to prejudice, remains “sunken” like the rest of Rose’s family’s victims.

That’s why the title Get Out is horrifically ironic. We can’t get out of racism. Chris can never stop being black, I can never stop being white, and neither of us can stop living in a society where these identity categories and the associated stereotypes affect how we perceive and are perceived ourselves. Chris’s problem doesn’t die with Rose’s body. It doesn’t even end with the movie. That evil was born a long time ago, and it’s there before we go into the theatre and it will be there when we leave and it will take a lot more than a shotgun to kill it. As long as there are some of us who still can’t Get Out, none of us can.

depict them as such? From this credo comes such delights as the protagonist, Josh Greenberg (Jay Baruchel) being set up with a literal troll on a blind date, while his ex-girlfriend begins dating an elderly, charming Adolf Hitler. And that’s just the pilot.

All this works because Man Seeking Woman embraces over-the-top surrealism. A great deal of Rich’s genius lies in making ridiculous situations feel entirely believable by working them into the plot in a way that few live-action shows have managed. Many shows have trouble portraying the ridiculous, awkwardly holding surreal elements separate from the main plot. But for Man Seeking Woman, the ridiculous blends in so well that even a coven of boyfriends planning Kool-Aid suicide in Guyana seems perfectly believable. There is no real attempt at subtlety, because the show’s boisterous, in-your-face surrealism is what gives it such an amazingly funny atmosphere.

Of course, not everything works perfectly. Innovative as the ideas are, sometimes their execution feels a little too much like a CollegeHumor video. But, crucially, every episode feels

like a consistent whole: the transitions are well-executed, and no episode feels like a collection of disparate sketches (a trap easy for absurdist comedies to fall into).

Simon Rich has shown uncanny foresight in his casting choices, especially in those of Jay Baruchel as the protagonist, Josh, and the brilliant Eric Andre as his best friend Mike.

I find that the former’s understated, everyman style harmonizes brilliantly with the latter’s hysterics, creating an exceptional comedic rapport that I believe is one of the strongest parts of the show.

Man Seeking Woman might not be the funniest show ever, but it might just be the smartest funny show on TV. The blend of the mundane and the ridiculous, when well executed, is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time, and I really think Man Seeking Woman could herald a new paradigm of liveaction comedies that turn the genre on its head. One thing’s for sure—Simon Rich is definitely a man to watch.

Even if he did go to Harvard, the snake.

to a vengeful, heartbroken staccato. Up to this point, the song feels well-executed, mostly due to Lorde’s gorgeous vocals and the anticipation-building, rather than jarring, pace change. However, it takes a dramatic dip in quality once the chorus starts. The lyrics become notably cliché (“But honey I’ll be seeing you wherever I go / But honey I’ll be seeing you down every road”), and then backup singers, over a dance-y, newly introduced piano, deliver the titular line: “I’m waiting for it, that green light, I want it.”

I have never heard backup vocals this annoying on a pop track; it’s shocking to me that these grating screeches made it past a single level of post-production. Lorde may expertly pull off the vocal equivalent of a classy (but slinky) velvet evening gown, but you can picture these backup vocals as having been sonically shoved into a several-sizes-too-small, highlighter-yellow nylon skirt.

The song goes downhill from here. The backup vocals continue incessantly throughout the suddenly high-tempo track, and the handful of underwhelming lyrics we hear in the first verse fail to develop into anything interesting. In fact, Lorde

somehow manages to make them even less compelling when she revises the original “those great whites, they have big teeth / hope they bite you” to the weaker “all those rumors, they have big teeth,” in the second refrain. Other than that, we only get two new lines in the rest of the song, which would be fine if the chorus and first verse said anything of substance. Instead, “Green Light”’s lyrics fall flat, leaving listeners confused about where the Lorde who challenges the music industry, instead of just singing for it, has gone.

“Green Light” does have a catchy melody and a danceable beat at times—there’s just not an awful lot to distinguish it from other contemporary pop (other than the backup vocals). That’s a shame, especially from Lorde. If the single is any indication of how Lorde’s Melodrama will play out, the album might have the same incredible vocals that helped earn the singer her star power, but will lose the lyrical sharpness that earned her her fans.

by Kat Lin

by Emma Speer

by Sahaj Sankaran YH Staff

by Carly Gove Mar. 10, 2017 _ 21

OR IA

NA .TA NG C @ ON YA TA LE CT .ED : U

a

BULLBLOG BLACKLIST Elmer’s Tri-Fold Display Board

just looking at me like panneau d’affichage a trois plis

WHAT WE HATE THIS WEEK

smoothies as a concept

but not as a taste

it’s the year of the asterisk, b*tch the only thing that matters is how many times you get back up

~tildes~

the US’s “train system”

gasping so hard you fall down

drafts AmTrak’s run by punks

all kinds

that’s pushing “sustainability” a tad too far

reusing designer water bottles

having already blacklisted Voss especially what that says about us

Mar. 10, 2017 _ 23