TYH LVI 10

The Yale Herald Volume LVI, Number 10 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Nov. 15, 2013

From the staff Don’t get me wrong, I love food. But I’m not really sure I could call myself a “foodie.” I hate mayonnaise and mustard, most sauces, many spices, and all things from the ocean. I’ve never thought about being a vegetarian because I’m honestly not sure what I would eat without chicken in my diet. When I think about why I’m so limited in my food choices, I can trace most of it back to my mom. She never cooked fish, so I never ate fish. She never made heavy sauces, so I don’t like heavy sauces. She hates mayonnaise, so my elementary school sandwiches never featured the mysterious white condiment.

At college, all my friends make fun of me because I’m picky. No one ever wants to share with me because I only want to order to the chicken pad thai at Thai Taste or the chicken quesadilla at Geronimo’s. I’ve always wondered how I can learn to expand my palette, to get over my guttural fear of fish so I can eat sushi like the rest of the world.

In this week’s cover story, Austin Bryniarski, CC ’16, introduces us to the upand-coming study of food at Yale. Currently, programs exist only in interdisciplinary majors like American Studies and Environmental Studies that encourage students to study food. But no singular track exists for those wishing to expand their passion for chow into the classroom. Enter the Food Studies program, a proposed initiative by faculty and students to streamline the classes and opportunities related to the academic interpretation of food. Education could be my one shot at getting over my bizarre, juvenile eating habits.

The Food Studies program isn’t the only initiative waiting to be unpacked in this issue. Azeezat Adeleke, BK ’17, looks at Yale and New Haven prison reform initiatives in light of activists’ victory to keep the women of Danbury Women’s Prison here in the northeast. And in culture, check out blurbs on Yale’s Hack-athon, which drew coders from universities nationwide to the Elm City last weekend. And if you’re still hungry for more, check out Lucas Sin’s, DC ’15, review of Roía, one of downtown New Haven’s new, upscale, trendy restaurants.

And there’s always more, more, more. So pick your favorite meal (I like breakfast—Cheerios or Crispix, always) and settle down with your favorite weekly campus publication. And if you’re also looking to expand your palate, maybe we can shop a Food Studies class together next sem.

Ciao? More like, chow!

Lara Sokoloff Features Editor

The Yale Herald

Volume LVI, Number 10 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Nov. 15, 2013

EDITORIAL STAFF: Editor-in-chief: Maude Tisch Managing Editors: Micah Rodman, Olivia Rosenthal Senior Editors: Sophie Grais, Eli Mandel, Emily Rappaport, Emma Schindler, John Stillman Culture Editors: Austin Bryniarski, Katy Osborn Features Editors: Kohler Bruno, Alisha Jarwala, Lara Sokoloff Opinion Editor: Andrew Wagner Reviews Editor: Kevin Su Voices Editor: Jake Orbison Design Editors: Madeline Butler, Julia Kittle-Kamp, Christine Mi, Zachary Schiller Assistant Design Editor: Madeline Butler Photo Editor: Rebecca Wolenski BUSINESS STAFF: Publishers: Shreya Ghei, Joe Giammittorio Director of Advertising: Steve Jozkowski Director of Development: Thomas Marano Director of Finance: Aleesha Melwani Executive Director of Business: Stephanie Kan Senior Business Adviser: Evan Walker-Wells ONLINE STAFF: Online Editor: Colin Groundwater Bullblog Editor-in-chief: Micah Rodman, Jack Schlossberg Bullblog Associate Editors: Kohler Bruno, Austin Bryniarski, Navy Encinias, Lara Sokoloff, Jessica Sykes 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 2013-2014 academic year for 65 dollars.

Please address correspondence to The Yale Herald P.O. Box 201653 Yale Station New Haven, CT 06520-1653 Email: maude.tisch@yale.edu Web: www.yaleherald.com The Yale Herald is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of The Yale Herald, Inc. or Yale University. Copyright 2011, The Yale Herald, Inc. Have a nice day.

Cover by Zachary Schiller YH Staff

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

IN THIS ISSUE

COVER 12 Austin Bryniarski, CC ‘16, chews on the ways that new scholarly programs are changing the Yale College experience in light of the recently proposed program in food studies.

VOICES 6

7

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FEATURES

Carly Lovejoy, BR ‘16, sits down with Todd Lyon , co-founder of Fashionista, to discuss the store’s unique style, its origins, and the love tunnel.

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Mary Mussman, BK’15, considers the similarly endless, mindless, and pleasureable work of a child at play, and a college-age farmhand and reader.

Azeezat Adeleke, BK ‘17, traces the activity of Yale and New Haven’s prison reform movement, while also highlighting the larger problems facing the American penal system.

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Aaron Z. Lewis, SY ‘16, treks to Newhallville to examine the grassroots revitalization efforts going on in one of New Haven’s most crimeridden neighborhoods.

OPINION: Jordan Ascher, SM ‘14, looks back at his relationship with theater, while Cody Kahoe, CC ‘15, remembers his grandfather in light of Veteran’s Day.

REVIEWS

CULTURE 18

Gareth Imparato, SM ‘15, gives us the scoop on Junot Diaz’s visit to Yale. Also: Stiles Rope Day, the Yale Hack-at-hon, and a 36-hour journey through the NYC subway system.

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Lucas Sin, DC ’16, on Roia’s place in New Haven’s fine dining scene. Also: Lady Gaga, Nguzunguzu, 12 Years a Slave, and our weekly staff list.

The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY The Herald’s week in review: what rocked, what sucked, and who took the lead in IM Soul Cycle.

CREDIT/D/FAIL Cr:

Pumpkin miso soup They say college is a time for experimentation, so even if you like your miso straighter than a Drew Brees Wrangler commercial you might want to take a trip down Howe Street and check out what’s brewing over at Miya’s. Yeah, yeah, whatever, pumpkin miso isn’t really miso, but just hear me out. This stuff is perfectly warm, kind of spicy, and infinitely more effective than Nyquil. We’re in that post-midterms pre-thanksgiving middle child moment of the semester—throw your miso trepidations to the wind. I have no interest in Miya’s dried fruit and brie wrapped in seaweed, but I’ll take three bowls of pumpkin ‘zo, a big slab of ginger, and I will live forever.

D:

F: Skype interviews This is simple: Skype interviews are unchill.

While it’s hard to complain about getting any kind of interview, and I’d probably agree to a Tinychat song-and-dance routine if it gave me a shot at an NBA internship, you’ve got to wonder what’s up when a supposedly reputable company wants to see what’s going on in your college bedroom. Skype is for teaching kids in Mongolia English or dragging summer flings out to the fall…not for upping your hustle. Sure, you can revel in the private knowledge that you’re wearing a shirt and tie but no pants, but that’s amusing twice at best. The fact of the matter is that you still got kind of dressed up to sit in your room and bullshit someone about hot stocks. Sry, my webcam is brkn.

—Joe Giammittorio YH Staff —Graphics by Christine Mi YH Staff

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

Cuffing season Let me start off by saying I like superficial relationships as much as the next guy. I once dated a girl in middle school because her last name was hilariously longer than mine. No qualms about it.

This is why cuffing season, a cultural tradition of ambiguous origins that amounts to wife-ing up for the winter, is awesome. Let’s be real, settling down with someone to bake kale chips and watch Wes Anderson movies until darty season comes ‘round sounds real appealing. My complaint is that I didn’t find out about this until fall break, after #timetosettledown according to multiple cuffing season calendars. Not only did I miss out on a great opportunity to be superficial with my peers, but I was also completely oblivious about a seasonal trend. That is unlike me. Next time, cuffing season, I’ll be ready.

BY THE

NUMBERS

BOOM/BUST INCOMING: what-would-i-say.com Which recent Herald EIC said the following: “The Herald’s got to emphasize just an idea.” TRICK QUESTION. Not me, but also me. I didn’t say it, but I also said it, thanks to what-would-i-say.com. Our newsfeeds are filled with “what would i say?” statuses, which apparently are generated by something called a Markov Bot, based on a “mixture model of bigram and unigram probabilities derived from your past post history.” Bigram and unigram probabilities, oh my! Another thing I said but also didn’t say: “glad my secret is out. it’s a butthole!” I’m not going to spoon-feed you a greatest hits list (go procrastinate on your own time), but I will share a Facebook status made by an actual person, not a Markov Bot, whom I am friends with, but don’t know and so assume I was once in a high school model congress committee with: “MY NEWSFEED HAS NEVER BEEN MORE ENTERTAINING. FIGURES IT’S BECAUSE NOBODY’S WRITING THEIR OWN STATUSES.”

OUTGOING: Midterms More than halfway into my second-to-last semester at Ye Old Yale, I still haven’t wrapped my mind around the definition of “midterm.” Every time a professor is shocked to hear we still have midterms when the turkey is essentially already in the oven, I feel validated. Because honestly it’s a huge bummer. Don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure a girl in one of my seminars said she had five Chinese midterms.

Like, what? Isn’t this an institution that values language? What ever happened to the power of words? Can we use them with care please? Words have the power to hurt people—remember? And also my GPA. So, sorry to the girl with all the Chinese midterms, but personally I’m saying a big fat goodbye to midterm season hell. Now get me to a turkey ASAP. —Emma Schindler YH Staff

TOP FIVE Ways to fight the early darkness 5 4 3 2 1

Invest in a good pair of night vision goggles. These should also come in handy at Toad’s and Bass Library.

Go to Foxwoods. Casinos don’t have windows.

Eat all of the glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty you can get your hands on.

Go see Gravity, then try to tell me that you are “struggling” with darkness.

Sleep on a tanning bed.

— Caleb Moran

#

TYNG CUP STANDINGS! 1. Jonathan Edwards 2. Davenport 3. Trumbull 4. Ezra Stiles 5. Pierson 6. Berkeley 7. Saybrook 8. Timothy Dwight 9. Branford 10. Morse 11. Silliman 12. Calhoun

329 296 247.5 240.5 220 207.5 199 188 184.5 172 124 56

INDEX 418 American public high schools where condoms are available to students (out of almost 100,000).

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Percentage of newly HIV-infected 13-24 year-olds.

26 States that teach abstinence as the main method of pregnancy prevention in high schools.

0

Amount of impact that abstinence-only education has on rates of abstinence.

55 Births per 1,000 girls in Mississippi, the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, where abstinence is taught, if sex ed is taught at all.

Sources: 1) Advocates for Youth 2) Centers for Disease Control 3) Guttamacher Institute 4) Mathematica Policy 5) CNN ­— Cindy Ok YH Staff

The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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SITTING DOWN WITH TODD LYON

by Carly Lovejoy YH Staffil.google.com/ Located at 93 Whitney Avenue, the Fashionista Vintage & Variety has been establishing itself as a staple of the Yale and downtown New Haven communities for over three years. Glittery and cluttered, neither the store nor the clothing of its inventory can pass the eye unnoticed. Fashionista is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. as well as, the website advises, “additional hours by appointment—just call or email if you have a fashion emergency.” This week the Herald sat down with Todd Lyon, who, with Nancy Shea, owns, operates, and founded the shop.

YH: When and how did Fashionista come about?

TL: Almost 10 years ago, my friend Nancy Shea and I were drinking wine on my giant purple sofa in my apartment on Clark Street.

I had a ton of vintage clothes that didn’t fit me anymore because my other job was a restaurant reviewer, so I had gained 10 pounds per year. And so I had the most ridiculous wardrobe—I had every size there was, from 4 to 14. I had no hope of ever fitting into my old vintage clothes. I had been in a swing band for years—that’s why I had all these great 1940s clothes; I had a tiny waist then. Nancy had a whole different kind of vintage than I did; she collected cowboy boots and really cool sunglasses—and she happened to be living in a storefront on State Street, so we said “Hey,”—this was before any pop-up stores— “Let’s pretend your apartment is a store and let’s have a vintage sale, and we’ll make some coin for Christmas.” We sent our boyfriends on the street with cards, sent out a bunch of emails, and borrowed racks from Christopher Martin’s homeless coat drive. It was so much fun and everyone loved it. A ton of people couldn’t make it and we had a ton left over so we did it another weekend.

For three and a half years, about one weekend a month, Nancy and I turned her apartment into a store and sold vintage clothes.

During that time we took in some consignment, we bought an estate, but we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. We had no intention of ever having a store. It was supposed to be a onetime thing. There was one point when a giant rack tipped over and trapped Nancy when she was alone, under heaps of winter coats, and it was completely out of control. We just needed to put this all away. She still had to live there so all our closets were jammed.

You opened my closet and things would come bursting out, and we were exhausted. So we opened a store.

YH: Were you always interested in fashion, vintage or otherwise?

TL: You know, our name is sort of unfortunate. It started out as a joke. People didn’t used to use “fashionista.” The word was a 1980s term for these really awful people in the fashion industry, also known as garmentos, who were these horrible, cut-throat people, who would know who you’re wearing, what season it is, whether you got it on the after-market. Just awful. They would completely judge what you’re wearing: Those are fashionistas; they’re awful. Now the meaning has softened. The joke was that we wanted people to know we were selling clothes so it was the “Fashionista Tag Sale.” No fashionista would ever go to a freaking tag sale, so it was funny. And it just stuck.

The thing is, I’m not into fashion, and Nancy’s not into fashion. What we’re into is creative dressing: a whole different thing.

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

And using things from the vintage world and mixing it with modern stuff, and delving into things—it’s a form of self-expression.

It has nothing to do with fashion; it has nothing to do with trends, nothing in the magazines. None of that crap. We’re totally not interested in that. We’re totally interested in inventing. We’re not followers of fashion. Never were.

So that’s why our name is misleading—we’re not fashionistas, we’re much more art than we are fashion. Fashion, to me, is an artificial world, and what we do here is real.

YH: Could you talk a bit about your creative background?

TL: I hopped around art schools, looking for the most avant-garde art education I could possibly have, I kept moving around cause they kept being too wimpy for me. Like Skidmore—get out of here! I love the school and I love Saratoga, but trying to make me a well-rounded young lady? No, I’m afraid not.

YH: Can you describe the collection?

TL: We’ll pull in things from all different eras. We’ve got stuff here from the 1930s up to about the ’80s. And we hand-pick everything in the store, because it’s fascinating, it’s weird, it’s beautiful, it’s different, it’s classic—it’s all these different things.

And that’s how we end up with the collection we have now. But we also are really nuts and we have all these costumes, and I mean you’ve seen our giant animal heads—you know, the place is nuts. But it has to be: we’re nuts.

Our motto is, “we don’t need no stinking business plan”— and we don’t have one! We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants all these years, but it’s all about the passion for the things that we collect.

We still do some consignment, but we do mostly buy things outright, and we try to buy low. A perfect example of how we end up with our stuff: about two years ago, we went to an auction.

A costume bazaar was going out of business and they had a big international auction. Nancy and I went, and we had no money, so we only got the stuff nobody else wanted. We called our collection “the costume bizarre.”

YH: What is your favorite thing about acquiring pieces?

TL: Well, there’s a load of stories behind every one of these pieces. Once, we got a batch of dresses from a woman who was a swing dancer, and these were some of the most amazing dresses I ever saw. We had to court her. They were also these extremely beautiful 1940s dresses. A gal came in the first day that we got them, and I found out later she was in the Divinity School. She bought one of the woman’s dresses that fit her perfectly. She still has a dress on hold—this is one of the dresses, exquisite with these birds on it, and this suit. I didn’t know what she was using them for until later, but it turns out, the gal had been shopping for what to wear to serve mass from the altar. She’s a priest. These dresses inspired her, and they were removed from the current timeline. They were to her, completely timeless. So that’s what she’s doing with these dresses, she’s preaching in them.

And we have the most beautiful collection of vintage Harris Tweed jackets—you know, Harris Tweed is a fabric sewn or woven by these families on these islands outside of Scotland. They’ve

Carly Lovejoy/YH made it for generations and generations. So every jacket has a serial number on it. Right now, you can go online and ask Mr. Ralph Lauren if he could kindly sell you a Harris Tweed jacket, same fabric, same family, same sheep, and it would be 1,250 dollars.

You can go down Broadway to J.Crew, there they are I think 780 dollars right now. We have vintage Harris Tweed for 65 dollars.

And as you can see, we hand-write all of our tags, so we have the opportunity to tell these stories too. Like, here’s one right here—this thing is wild, a 1980s, nautical-themed jumpsuit.

Here’s the tag: “Oh that wacky Mrs. Cant—she can! In this white cotton, nautical onesie! Pure 1980s, complete with honking shoulder pads.” Her name was Mrs. Cant, and she was the head of the garden club. And we all tell these stories. It’s history by the inch, that’s what we call it. Everyone has different characters that they do—Sarah, for instance, has Pam. Pam always starts out really good but ends up doing brown acid, or losing her virginity to some guy.

YH: Pam has the best intentions.

TL: She just tries so hard! But something happens to Pam on every tag! Pam goes downhill every time, and she gets back up again.

YH: Where do you find most of it—at these auctions or what?

TL: We generally don’t go to auctions. Most of it we get from households. We don’t go to thrift shops; we don’t do any of that stuff. We like to know where our stuff is from, so we buy from households. People make appointments, and often there’s death involved. Grandma has passed away, and they find all this beautiful stuff in a cedar chest, and it doesn’t fit anybody, and they don’t know what to do with it, and its too nice for goodwill. They bring it to us and we make them some offers. We are very picky.

We tell them we pay bottom dollar and we do; we take the stuff and we fix it if need be, and we put it back out there to have a wonderful time. And we want the stuff to have a wonderful time, and usually the people who bring it want that too. You know, that dress that grandma wore to her prom in 1964, they love the idea of some great 24-year-old girl going out and having a great time in that dress, it’s a wonderful thing.

YH: Do you have any special gems you would have a hard time selling?

TL: Oh plenty, and we make them completely expensive. Eventually, we come to our senses and have to part with them.

YH: Is there any particular order behind the way you set up the store or the different rooms you created?

TL: Well, this is the hall of the animal spirits. This room—this is our cabin in the woods. With the moccasins and this country painting, and this “Bear Scouts in America” poster.

And that’s the “Tunnel of Love.” But it’s loose. And we have our “dirty secrets room.” There’s a constant, huge influx of clothes. We cannot keep up with it. We are drowning in inventory, but we have to keep our price points good, but we have this room of overflow from just this week.

—This interview was condensed by the author

WEEDING AND READING

by Mary Mussman

T

his past July, I worked in a bookshop in Paris; in August, I worked on an organic farm in the rural west, on the cusp of Bretagne. Neither job was paid, but each job involved an exchange in kind: at the bookshop, my time and effort for literary company and access to a library of well-worn books; at the farm, my time and effort for meals prepared from vegetables harvested straight from the earth and for a warm and silent place to sleep at night.

These jobs were volunteer exchanges on top of academic research and courses. My shifts were short—four hours at each place—and consequently my efforts were all but limited to simple, endless tasks. A given moment never required wearying thought, but in their endlessness they were truly work.

I wrote to a friend that my work at the bookshop felt like an effort against entropy. I alphabetized whole sections. I strung together emptied cardboard boxes for recycling and cleared them out of the shop basement, and mugs of tea upstairs to carry down to the main floor at the end of my breaks. I spent the majority of my time taking piles of books from stock, re-stacking them at the front of the shop, and putting them away onto the shelves, directing customers in the process towards titles they were already convinced they would love and collecting the ones they had decided against to put away later. I shelved, I shelved, I shelved.

There was no concrete way to calculate my work at the shop. But I would pretend to do so anyway, measuring imaginary stacks of books, summing kilometers of pages. According to the whims of my arithmetic, I always left the shop in better order. At closing, one of the employees—one of the full-time workers—would always take a moment to thank me, to articulate that I had done so, so much work in the past four hours, really. I would say that it was nothing, that I was happy to do it.

A THERAPIST ONCE TOLD ME THAT WHEN HER DAUGHter was a toddler, she would sit on her highchair and pick up crumbs one by one and drop them onto the floor and revel in watching them fall until all of the crumbs were gone. While of course the crumbs scattered all over the floor caused irritation for the mother, for the daughter the endless task of watching crumbs fall brought an immense and immeasurable pleasure.

For those moments, she needed nothing else. Perhaps there’s a theory to this anecdote—in infancy a way of finding bliss in work. Maybe it isn’t until we begin to use language that we disassociate work and play. Once we do so, we spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture that first pleasure of doing work, of performing a task and not of creating a product.

There is, at least, an etymological grounding for such an argument: ‘labor’ derives from the Latin verb labare, to totter

and to fall; ‘toil’ is linked to the Latin tundere, which means crush or pound. Travailler, the French verb for work, originally meant torture. But these are associations with work and not the word itself. The Proto-Indo-European werg- connotes a successful performance of a function and also the motivation to do so; the gerundive form ‘working’ means that something is not broken. ‘Work’ might translate more closely and universally to the French verb faire, to make or do. Faire often performs a similar—although not identical—function to that of copular verbs, which is to say that its contexts imbue it with its nuances, or, inversely, that the word itself accords way of being or an existence for its context.

THE MORNINGS OF WORK ON THE FARM ACCORDED their own entire existences. Like my therapist’s daughter with her crumbs, the work under early sun engrossed me and I would be wholly lost in the small forests of weeds that crowded the rows of lettuces and parsnips.

Like the bookshop with its constant shelving and re-alphabetization, the farmwork had its own endlessness. The morning collection of courgettes, the watering of the smallest and newest lettuces once the last watering had been drunk into parchedness, the harvesting and weighing of thirty-eight or twenty-nine kilograms of tomatoes for markets, and the weeding of the cabbages, leeks, parsnips, celery, carrots— neither the corn nor the beetroots, since those were hardy— and green beans, and lettuces. Without work, disorder would ensue. And although many plants would survive despite the theft of sunlight and water, after weeding, verdure would replace weak yellow leaves and stems would reach upwards vigorously and starkly against vacated and tan earth.

During my second week, another girl on the farm—another volunteer—calculated the amount of weeding she and her sister and I had done all together: more than a kilometer of rows. I considered the uncounted wheelbarrows we had taken turns carting away and the seconds of work that would go into caring for a single leek before it would be harvested and sold and left in a bowl in some kitchen until cooking prompted a definitive ending. Yet the work put into growing a single leek says little about the work of a farm. The cabbage-devastating weeds I picked on my first morning had grown in only ten days and would grow back in ten more.

The season of weeks prior to my arrival had consisted in kilometers of weeds, and in the work tilling and sowing.

Nor does a harvest adequately represent the kaleidoscopic thoughts that accompany the work that goes into it. The kilograms of tomatoes will never reflect my recurrent delight of how incredible it was that my eyes could perceive the precise

red of ripeness out of hundreds of red hues in the greenhouses. And I valued, too, the feeling of cleaning the driest skins off of the onions with my sore and torn-up palms—a feeling that, for me, has never translated to the wincing tears of cutting them to cook. On a plate, courgettes look and taste harmless. Still, for weeks after my second morning’s collection of courgettes there were deep scratches across my forearms that have since scarred into sun-browned, lasting remnants. So of course, as I collected the courgettes, I would curse them, silently, over and over again.

The Greeks believed that their cursed resided in a pit in the underworld called Tartarus, and among the most celebrated residents of Tartarus are the Danaïdes, sisters who killed their husbands on their wedding night. The Danaïdes are condemned to fill sieves with water for eternity, and like Sisyphus with his rock, never complete their task. I cannot suggest, as Camus does in his Myth of Sisyphus, that Sisyphus might be entirely happy in his work—who would share in his jokes?—but I can imagine that the Danaïdes might be, all together.

The time I spent in the fields with the other girls on the farm brimmed with laughter. We would conduct sketches of hospital radio shows and anthropomorphize vegetables and model our dirt-caked clothes as if there was a fashion week to be discovered in rural France, and laugh and laugh and laugh. This was a laughter that spilled past our hours of morning work into afternoons and late into nights. Laughter as endless as the work. And when laughter was too much, I could turn to the work, to the beans I would be picking, to my wrists as I raked dirt close to weeded rows, and to the smell of earth and sky. A reprieve. But when I think of the Danaïdes condemned to an endlessness of work together, I can only laugh again—a joke of a curse.

Or a blessing. The soreness in my tendons and across my shoulders told one story, my state of being told another.

I felt so good, and so much of that goodness came from the work I was doing. But I don’t expect that my life’s work will consist in shelving or weeding—I think of my existence as more deeply rooted in my academics. I do expect that I will revel in whatever it is that I do. More than that, I expect that I will revel in the variations and progress that work brings in spite of its endlessness. The thousands of books that have been read since July. The harvest itself, with all of its laughter.

When I left the farm, I found it difficult to look back, even though I had loved living there. The school year was imminent. The school year meant a season of a new type of endless work. I was excited. I was happy to do it.

—graphic by Maude Tisch YH Staff The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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OPINION EXITING STAGE RIGHT

VETERAN MEMORIES

byJordan Ascher YH Staff

by Cody Kahoe YH Staff

Last weekend, I think I may have performed in my last play. At least for the forseeable future. Events may yet prove me wrong—there’s always next semester. But the exigencies of being a second-semester senior make it unlikely that I’ll perform a real, ol’ fashioned play at Yale again. As for what lies beyond: methinks realizing theatrical dreams takes a little more “talent” and “commitment” than I possess. For all this to mean anything to you, reader, you would probably have to know me or care about me, and I would never be so irresponsible to assume that you do.

However, I wonder if you might be able to relate to me, as I stand at a major moment of reckoning in my life, about to toss aside the thing that’s sustained me to this point.

The last 10 years of my life have been defined by a slavish devotion to theater, or, if you’re less charitable, a ceaseless need to make others pay attention to me.

In middle school and high school, I wore the “theater kid” nom-de-guerre with pride (though I didn’t have much choice about it). Theater punched my ticket to this particular university, by way of six pretentious paragraphs about how a steady theatrical disposition is the A-1 way to make friends. I was, of course, an authority, as are all 17-year-olds.

One time in middle school, I played a character who was beheaded at the end of the play— great material for preteens, I know. The big moment went like this: the executioner would raise his axe high, and right as it began to fall, the lights would cut out. This, of course, would tastefully imply the removal of my top-part without the need to find another person to play my part the next night.

One night of the show, the poor sixth grader in charge of lights forgot to cut the spot. So there stood my dear executioner above me, blood-lust upon his face, axe in the air, for between ten and twenty seconds. Dead air. It became clear that help was not on the way—we two had to find the best way to kill me.

I seized on what seemed the only option at the time, but may not, in hindsight, have been the most elegant move.

I feigned a heart attack and fell dead.

So it goes.

Two years ago, I played Macduff, who at a pivotal moment must decapitate the Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth, himself. The strategy here was not too different from middle school. I swung the axe as lights

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The Yale Herald (Nov 15, 2013)

fell, then I sneakily dropped a cabbage Last Monday, November 11, was Veterwith a wig on it onto the stage below ans Day. Unlike other holidays, for a college in order student, Vetto creerans Day is ate the fairly easy “thud” to miss. I that a could not human skip class to h e a d attend Yale’s presumceremony a b l y at Beinecke makes Plaza.

I when it somehow meets even mant h e aged to ground breeze right a t by the Vetspeed. I erans Day was Google Doo“Neil Matz poses with a friend (Cody Kahoe / YH)” supposed

dle, usually to drop the vegetable behind the set. my primary aid for remembering holidays.

During one dress rehearsal, the lights It was not until my cousin tagged me in a rose at the end of the play to reveal a Facebook post about our grandfather that I wigged-cabbage in the middle of the realized what day it was. The post featured a stage. So it goes. familiar photograph of my papa, Neil F. Matz, I have suffered greater embarrassposing with his World War II flight crew somements on stage. I have also experienced time in 1944. From his high school graduamoments of sweet pride. I resent moraltion in 1943 to early 1945, my grandfather izing about theater—and I’m allowed to served in the 8th Air Force, stationed in the talk, as one repeatedly guilty of the ofrustic town of Lavenham in eastern England. fense. But sometimes it’s hard to resist.

My grandfather died in 1999, when I was I’ve always felt like theater is such a six years old. My memories of him are few. great thing to do because it mirrors life.

Having suffered a stroke and heart attacks It gives young people a chance to exalong with other complications, he was ill for plore and understand relationships and the final few years of his life, when I knew personalities and situations they might him best. The photograph my cousin postnot encounter for years otherwise. But ed, of a handsome young man with olive I think for the purposes of this piece, skin, dark eyes, and curly black hair, is not I might use the beheading stories to the man I remember, but it is one I know say simply that theater often has been nonetheless. Like many, he did not like to the only source of spontaneous joy in talk about the war. However, in 1994, with my life. It’s unpredictable. It’s fun. It the 50th anniversary of his service and the gave a gangly, pimply teen the chance unpleasant knowledge that, with each year, to take ownership of something and feel one or two fewer veterans returned to relike an adult. unions, my mother insisted that he sit down I’ll miss it so much. I’ll miss the long and make a tape recording of his experience nights of tech. I’ll miss the audible hum for his family. This is how I know the man in of the lights rising at the beginning of a that picture. scene. I’ll miss the micro-second after He was 18 when he volunteered for the that one line on which the whole show Air Force, younger than almost everyone on turns when you can sense the audience this campus. As a gunner on the formidable leaning forward. I’ll miss falling in love B-17 Flying Fortress, he flew 33 missions, with a dilapidated, little theater. I’ll miss bombing strategic German factories and airthe way a cast and crew can feel like fields. Each mission, my papa and men like their show is the only important thing him flew for hours inside a cramped, metal in the world and will give of themselves tube, in the freezing cold, at altitudes around utterly in order to make it a success.

25,000 feet, wearing oxygen masks and firI’ll miss cabbages with wigs—in so ing machine guns at fighters attempting to many ways, that’s what it’s all about. shoot them out of the sky.

Sometimes, those fighters succeeded.

On a Christmas Eve mission to relieve Al-

lied troops trapped during the Battle of the Bulge, his plane, the “Miss Behavin’,” was stricken. For some reason, the Miss Behavin’ had missed her fighter escort that day. They were flying unprotected. After three deafening booms, my papa turned to see his fellow waist-gunner lying on the floor, apparently dead, and a fire on the right side of the fuselage. With the plane’s interphone shot, my papa grabbed his parachute, pulled the escape hatch, and tumbled out into the cold December air, 20,000 feet above Europe.

In a mistake that changed his life, he pulled the ripcord early and caught a fateful headwind that pulled him from German airspace back to Allied terrain, where the 125th antiaircraft artillery found him. “Are you American?” the approaching troops shouted.

“Yes. Are you American?” he answered.

“Yes. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

With that, after losing half his crew in the crash, his friends, he was whisked back to England, where he flew 16 more missions before returning home to Pennsylvania. In the coming years, he became a husband, a father, and an insurance agent but only occasionally revisited his memories of this “most memorable mission.”

It is impossible to share the entirety of my grandfather’s story on this page. While it includes the familiar cinematic drama for which World War II is known, it also features snippets of comedy, unsuccessful (in my papa’s case) foreign romances, superstitions from relatives back home, a whole world. Sometimes, what I most remember about his story is the end. In the final moments of the recording, memories drift from the riveting to the routine, from warzones to “what happened to those beautiful French girls” to “what the hell is the score in this game” to how long he takes to brush his teeth. Mom, true to form, had accidentally left the tape recorder running long after the war’s discussions had ended. Unaware, their voices fade into other rooms, moving on to “ watch a football game or tend to something in the oven, while somewhere in the background, the familiar tune of the Westminster Quarters chimes indifferently from a clock in my nana’s house, an uncanny yet fitting reminder that, with time, even these memories pass, that life perseveres, bearing with it both the solemnity of war and the normality of those events of a veteran’s life not portrayed with triumphant soundtracks in films but just quietly lived. When I saw my papa’s picture, it was that side of Veterans Day I recalled, and doing so requires neither a commemoration ceremony nor a Google Doodle—only a story.

Evensong for All Saints at Christ Church Episcopal with

yale schola cantorum David Hill, conductor

Music of Britten, Howells, Jackson, and Victoria

friday, november 15 · 5 pm

Christ Church Episcopal, 84 Broadway (at Elm)

The Evensong service at Christ Church is open to the public.

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Anna Caterina Antonacci soprano

Donald Sulzen, piano

Dall’antichità al verismo saturday, november 16 · 8 pm

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Sprague Memorial Hall · 470 College St., New Haven Free; no tickets required. Info at www.yale.edu/ism.

Presented by Yale Institute of Sacred Music, celebrating 40 years at Yale

Poems for a Sunday Afternoon Witold Lutoslawski: Trois poèmes d’Henri Michaux Tawnie Olson: Les Voyelles (world premiere) and more

sunday, nov. 10 / 4 pm / trinity lutheran church, 292 orange (at wall)

Yale Camerata marguerite l. brooks conductor and

Members of Yale Concert Band thomas c. duffy music director

Free; no tickets required. www.yale.edu/ism Presented by Yale Institute of Sacred Music celebrating 40 Years at Yale.

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Yale Schola Cantorum is supported by Yale Institute of Sacred Music, celebrating 40 years at Yale

Behind bars The Yale community joins Elm City activists to fight the relocation of Danbury prison inmates

by Azeezat Adeleke

Y

ou don’t find a lot of people who care about what happens to people in prison,” said Barbara Fair, founder of prison activist group My Brother’s Keeper. Fair has been advocating for prison reform in New Haven for over four decades, but when she spoke to the Herald, she was neither resigned nor bitter about the lack of progress. Instead, she was optimistic.

In mid-Oct., Fair lead a press conference at the New Haven Federal Courthouse, bringing together activists from New Haven, Yale College, Yale Law School, religious organizations, and the Yale Divinity School. Armed with protest signs and bullhorns, the diverse group drew important attention to a common cause­—preventing the move of federal prisoners from Danbury, Conn. to Aliceville, Ala. The protesters were united by a sense of indignation at a surprise plan announced this past Aug. The Bureau of Prisons, an arm of the Justice Department, quietly announced its intentions to transform the Federal Correction Institution at Danbury, the only women’s prison in the northeast, into a entirely men’s facility.

If this proposal became a reality, over 1000 female inmates would be sent south to Aliceville, over 1000 miles away. In response, a diverse coalition formed to take on the Bureau of Prisons and fight for the right of the Danbury women to remain. Among the supporters were current Senators and former inmates; community activists and popular journalists; and a dedicated group of Yale students and faculty.

Before the relocation plan was announced, Danbury’s claim to fame was its role as the setting of Orange Is the New Black, the much talked about Netflix series about a well-off woman who finds herslef

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

shipped-off to federal prison. Fiction aside, in the months following the announcement, the Danbury activists made it their business to get the plight of the real-life inmates into the national consciousness.

The ramifications of moving the female inmates to rural Ala. would have been severe. “Aliceville has no airport, there’s no train station, and there’s no bus connections,” explained Beatrice Codianni, a New Haven prison reform advocate who was incarcerated in Danbury for 15 years.

The 1,139-mile journey would have made it very difficult for prisoners’ families to visit, including visits from over 700 children.

“Fifty-nine percent of the women who were going to be moved had children under the

leased prisoners. If inmates were sent to Ala., the Danbury women, some of whom are from New Haven, would be entirely removed from this initiative’s opportunities. “We tried to do the press conference to embarrass the prisons into doing the right thing,” Williams said.

MUCH OF THE ACTIVISM AT YALE BEGAN with professors from the Law School calling for further scrutiny of the Danbury proposal. Law professors associated with the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program, which focuses on issues of social justice, worked with the media to spotlight the troubling announcement.

Judith Resnik, the Arthur Liman Professor of Law, published articles in Slate and the Boston Globe in July and Sept. respectively decrying

Shaheen, Schumer, and Warren–ended their letter curtly, requesting that the Bureau of Prisons suspend the plan immediately. It did.

At this point, one could have said that the Danbury inmates had friends in high places.

But the movement was missing a crucial element: “There was a lot of movement at the grass tops but not at the grass roots,” said Nia Holston, JE ’14, Advocacy Chair of the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project (YUPP). The students of YUPP, made up of a core group of 60 who tutor and mentor at New Haven prisons in addition to advocating for prison reform on a wider scale, came to play a vital role in Danbury’s story. They began by writing letters to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, Charles E. Samuels, publishing Op-Eds in the

“We tried to do the press conference to embarrass the prisons into doing the right thing.”

— Greg Williams, DIV ‘15

age of 21 who were regularly able to visit them,” said activist Gregory Williams, DIV ’15. Williams agreed that strong connections to family and community are important to decreasing recidivism, the rate at which released inmates are sent back to prison.

To support this idea, the Office of the Mayor in New Haven has begun a program called the Prison Reentry Initiative, which works for “reduced recidivism, increased employment, access to continued education and the long term self-sufficiency of returning citizens”— both for current inmates and recently re-

the Bureau of Prisons for “sending hundreds of women on a long hard trip to Aliceville.”

United States Congressmen have also begun advocating on behalf of these women in need of crusaders. In July, 11 northeastern Senators sent a letter to the Bureau of Prisons, grilling the agency about the cost of transportation to Aliceville, the percentage of female inmates who have children, and whether or not Congress was even informed of the plan before it was announced. Theses Senators– Blumenthal, LAW ’73, Casey, Leahy, Gillibrand, King, Markey, Murphy, Sanders,

Yale Daily News, and attracting press attention following the Oct. protest.

By Mon., Nov. 4, the combined grassroots and “grasstops” coalition had succeeded. The current Danbury prison will still become a men’s facility, but a new women’s prison will be constructed adjacent to it. The current lowsecurity prison located near Danbury will remain open for female inmates as well.

The rescue of the Danbury Women’s prison took place over only a few months, having benefitted from a quick response at high levels of government and a bright media spotlight dur-

ing the waning days of summer. In the larger arena of prison reform, however, clear victories are fewer and farther between. To improve the situation of prisoners in New Haven, Yale students, University professors, and New Haven community members have banded together to support of this population in need of leaders and advocates.

YUPP, YALE’S STUDENT HUB FOR PRISON activism, was originally founded as the Manson Prison Education Initiative and has recently expanded into other facilities. “Most of us are concerned about social justice and the ills of our system,” said Will Portman, TC ’14, co-president of YUPP. YUPP members now tutor at the Whalley and Manson prisons, mentor inmates at the Manson and York prisons, participate in pardon sessions at City Hall, and hold a weekly discussion group devoted to issues of prison reform.

The YUPP students strive to bridge the gap between two “campuses,” Yale and the Manson prison, by encouraging student to connect to the youth they tutor on a personal level.

Portman worked with one particular inmate, whom I will call Timothy, during his freshman year at Yale. Over several months, Portman tutored Timothy toward completing his GED and formed a close bond with him. “We would talk about our lives and our families. We talked about why he ended up there. We talked about football, and the game that weekend, or politics, and who was running for office,” Portman said. Timothy was released by the end of the year. Since the prisoners are not allowed to exchange contact information with their tutors, Portman hasn’t spoken to Timothy since then. But he does remember what Timothy

wanted to do after he was released: head straight to Arby’s and order a beef and cheddar sandwich.

As Holston explains, YUPP’s goal is for Yale students to break out of the Yale bubble and engage with the broader community. “Yes, Yale is a privileged space,” said Holston. “But I’m not only [a part] of Yale.” Holston sees Yale students’ advocacy in New Haven as “using the space that you’re in to promote change but not necessarily being of that space.”

forts have contributed to keeping the Danbury inmates here in the northeast, the systemic issues that corrode America’s criminal justice system remain and require the attention of activists nationwide. Foremost among them is the incarceration rate, which stood at 743 per 100,000 people in 2009 and remains the highest in the world. In 2012, CNN reported that 60 percent of criminals were behind bars for nonviolent offences at a cost of $17 billion per year. Recidivism is another large problem:

think there’s really a spectrum of options for them, including halfway homes and drug addiction treatment centers.”

Jessie Garland, DC ’15, recalls being incensed on a visit to a courthouse near her home in Washington, DC. “What happens is [the prisoners] get transferred from [the jail] to the courthouse in their jail clothes,” said Garland. “If they’re not guilty, they have to walk home. They aren’t driven back to the facility.” Garland pointed out that by leaving

“My eyes were opened to the system and how bad it had gotten when my son went there.”

— Barbara Fair, prison reform activist Yale students also promote change by working with activists in New Haven who have spent years, often decades, fighting for prison reform.

One of them is Fair, who joined the prison reform movement over 40 years ago when her brother was sent to jail. Over the years, she has formed a coalition with a small but dedicated group of students, through YUPP, Black Students at Yale, the African American Cultural Center, and the Divinity School organization Seminarians for a Democratic Society. “They want to feel like they’re part of the New Haven community and they don’t want to feel isolated,” said Fair. “I’ve been really grateful for that.”

STUDENTS AT YUPP ARE WORKING TO break out of the Yale bubble and engage with broader prison reform in Conne. While their ef-

as reported by the Council of State Governments, nearly four in ten released prisoners are incarcerated again within three years.

“Now they’re just warehousing people,” said Fair. “My eyes were opened to the system and how bad it had gotten when my son went there. Most people there were for nonviolent drug offenses, and the conditions were horrible.” Fair commented that the prison her son was in did not have even have enough beds for all the prisoners it was holding. Members of the YUPP believe that the solution to reducing the recidivism rate and lightening the load that criminal justice expenditures place on taxpayers may lie in one idea: reducing the number of people sent to prison. “It’s not just like you need to lock them away and throw away the key, or let them run free,” noted Portman. “I

them with nothing but their jailhouse jumpsuits, the American prison system washes its hands of the prisoners. That is, unless they get caught up in the criminal justice system again.

Without sweeping reforms to federal and state law, the U.S. criminal justice system is not likely to change, but the accomplishments of the Danbury coalition demonstrated the ability for a diverse grassroots movement to influence policy. Still, sizeable hurdles remain. For Fair, this was just one battle within the context of a larger struggle aimed at giving incarcerated men and women a voice. “Every little victory inspires me to not give up,” she said.

—graphic by Jin Ai Yap YH Staff The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

—graphic by Jin Ai Yap YH Staff

Food for thought Austin Bryniarski, CC ‘16, ruminates on the possible emergence of a food studies program at Yale, and its implications for the way we direct our educations.

T

here is no militancy in this room!’

‘Who cares about your iPhones and blog posts?’ ‘What is this resistance?’” Justine Appel, ES ’15, recites back to me some of the things she recently heard at Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners, a conference organized by a group called Black Urban Growers. Appel’s trip to the Brooklyn meeting was recommended by her professor as a supplement to her course, “Social Justice in the Food System.”

It’s a volunteer day on the Yale Farm, just off of Prospect on Edwards Street, where Appel interns as a farm manager. She consults the whiteboard of weekly tasks: the start of the winter season is traditionally marked with planting garlic, so boxes of the pungent cloves sit patiently in the propagation house, waiting to be planted. Appel’s priorities are with the volunteers, as they tend to Hakurei turnips and Chioggia beets. “We’re putting the turnips to bed,” she proclaims as she blankets the row with fabric.

Appel is an Environmental Studies major concentrating in Food and Agriculture.

She credits her time on the farm and her connections with the Yale Sustainable Food Project (YSFP) for sparking her interest in learning about farming in the classroom— her coursework includes the requirements of the major, but she has creatively woven a few classes from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies into her curriculum like the one she is taking right now.

As soon as next year, the Blue Book might contain a new section for the Food Studies Undergraduate Scholars program. The program was recently proposed in an effort to bring an organized means of studying food, like Appel’s, to anyone in any major. But now she has exercised caution with choosing her academic path. “Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I shouldn’t be studying food, but embedding myself in a community

and enacting change that way.” The aforementioned militancy that one conferencegoer urged struck a chord with Appel: is the best way to help an ailing food system one that comes from direct action, or is it actually worth studying academically? Whatever the case, Appel’s Yale education will be defined by her study of food.

COURSE SELECTION PERIOD AT YALE REquires a bit of creativity in choosing which classes to “shop.” While the suggested concentration of “Food and Agriculture”—one of six explicitly designated concentrations— lives in the Environmental Studies major, other majors allow for a more informal focus, like Psychology, American Studies, and some language majors. Among different departments there are many classes about food, and “Women, Food, and Culture” is one such class, taught by Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Professor Maria Trumpler, GRD ‘92.

For the past five years, Trumpler has noticed that students who complete her course were hungry for more. “When I started teaching ‘Women, Food, and Culture,’ students started to say, ‘Well, what can I take next?’” The online version of the Blue Book has made it easier to answer this question with a simple keyword search, replacing the meticulous perusal that finding such courses used to require in the print form of the Programs of Study.

Search results might turn up the following. Classes like Paul Freedman’s “History of Cuisine” evolved from small seminar to large lecture course due to popularity. Professor Kelly Brownell, who recently left Yale to pursue a deanship at Duke University, taught “Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food,” which was always well attended. This semester, Karen Seto is teaching an Environmental Studies seminar titled “Urbanization, Food Systems, and the Environment.”

As it stands, all of these chances to study food remain unlinked in any formal way; determined students have constructed creative food-centric curricula outside of the Environmental Studies major, where the abundance of pre-existing possible concentrations reflects openness in defining one’s specialization. “Some students on their own started putting together interesting combinations of courses and doing interesting senior projects in a variety of departments,” explained Trumpler.

Enter Emily Farr, BK ‘14. A Geology and Geophysics major, her studies have centered around a way for agriculture to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and reduce carbon emissions. As a senior adviser for the YSFP, she participates in monthly meetings where the organization crowd-sources student input on the future direction of the YSFP. Given her background in studying food and farming within her major, she had the idea to host a panel on exactly that.

The panel, taking place Nov. 16, will showcase methods of studying food—independent study, extracurricular activity, or summer research fellowships, for example—at an institution that lacks any formal regimen. The event’s goal is to inform freshmen and sophomores about opportunities to learn about food, makeshift as they may be.

“It’s important to have some sort of framework so they know it’s possible,” Farr said. If students know their options earlier on, they might choose different paths.

THE PROPOSAL FOR A PROGRAM IN FOOD studies is the work of professors and leaders across various schools, disciplines and organizations. Trumpler cited YSFP Director Mark Bomford’s 2011 arrival at Yale as the impetus to bring food from the Yale Farm into the classroom. As members of the search committee for a new YSFP director,

Trumpler and her colleagues were excited to bring someone who would import the practicum the YSFP provided into a more academic context.

As students started crafting their own foodrelated paths, professors tangentially connected to food merely bumped shoulders, but in the semesters following Bomford’s appointment, the group of about 112 faculty members have started a conversation about how to structure collaboration from even the farthest corners of the University.

Now, the School of Management finally had an excuse to talk with the School of Public Health about nutrition research where it may not had necessarily before.

With the successful passage of the inherently interdisciplinary Energy Studies Undergraduate Scholars program last semester, it established a model that the proposed Food Studies program now seeks to emulate. “A number of us who teach these classes would see each other casually and say, ‘Hey, we really ought to do this,’” Trumpler said. And they did. A food systems studies proposal was created and submitted over the summer to Dean of Yale College Mary Miller, GRD ’81, for faculty approval. A decision is expected to be made as early as this winter.

The proposal is straightforward: three courses related to food, a relevant summer experience (suggesting opportunities at the Yale Farm or Rudd Center), a seminar on research and practice in food studies, meetings about internship and “career-building” opportunities, and privileges to dine at events with speakers and at conferences in the field.

The YSFP would provide some of the administrative backbone of the program.

Last semester, Miller convened an adhoc committee to establish a framework that would standardize existing and future special programs. The programs, all with different focuses, are first defined by the The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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fact that they are separate from any major that a student can select.

Exemplified by the energy studies program—the first to be created in this framework—all future special programs will now operate following this model. Even the pre-existing Education Studies Scholars

Majors, the faculty decided the introduction of minors would undermine Yale’s educational philosophy and resources.

“By emphasizing credentials,” explains the report, “Minors might discourage the free-ranging approach to a liberal education traditionally encouraged at Yale.”

Yale Climate and Energy Institute (YCEI)— but this is one of few designated physical spaces for this “virtual” institute.

According to YCEI Executive Director Mike Oristaglio, BR ‘74, in 2008, a group of faculty members got together and decided to establish an interdisciplinary institute to

“In laying the foundation of a thorough education, it is necessary that all the important faculties be brought into exercise... a costly edifice ought not to be left to rest upon a single pillar.”

—Yale College Faculty Report, 1828 program was revised to conform to these new standards.

As it stands, the Yale College Dean’s Office officially recognizes two somewhat analogous special programs: the Yale Journalism Initiative (YJI) and the Global Health Scholars Program. These programs have been grandfathered into the purview of the Dean’s Office without having to conform to the new mold.

All of these programs exhibit a tendency towards pre-professionalism in that they seek to prepare students for specific careers, like one in journalism or teaching.

According to an 1828 Report by the Yale College Faculty, “A liberal, is obviously distinct from a professional, education.” As the story goes, students try out a variety of disciplines; in the process, they develop the creativity and problem-solving skills that might be demanded of any career. Pre-professionalism is much more limited in scope.

Yale College has a longstanding history of upholding the values of a liberal arts education. “In laying the foundation of a thorough education, it is necessary that all the important faculties be brought into exercise…a costly edifice ought not to be left to rest upon a single pillar,” continues the report.

Ironically, when Yale received reaccreditation in 2009, the University was commended by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) for the exchange between its professional schools and the College. According to Dean Miller, “One of the things that NEASC pointed to about the Yale undergraduate curriculum was the success of taking advantage of having such strong and diverse professional schools.”

This is especially true for majors that are closely aligned with professional schools; notably art or architecture, whose established professional schools on campus provide vital resources for undergraduate programs. However, Yale’s graduate programs are limited. For example, students with an interest in journalism participate in the YJI because it offers resources that otherwise might be provided by a journalism school if Yale had one.

At the surface, these programs—smaller than majors, but important enough to warrant a title—look like what most other academic institutions call minors. But Yale’s present academic philosophy doesn’t seem all that different from that of 1828. In a 2010 report issued by the Committee on

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

On Mon., Apr. 29, 2013, an ad hoc committee of the Dean’s Office released a report that established the requirements of these special programs. Conscious of the confluence between these special programs and minors, this document set out to distinguish the differences. “We see these programs not as minors—that is, less intensive versions of existing majors—nor as trial balloons for new majors, but rather as interdisciplinary or interdepartmental programs not feasible within a single major, enriching the academic opportunities available to Yale students.”

Even with special programs, students must take 36 courses, fulfill distributional requirements, and complete the requisites of a major—still completing a liberal arts education. Special programs are designed to add to the educational experience without necessarily detracting from it.

look at the multifaceted issues of energy and climate. Thus, they created the YCEI as an institute to foster an academic dialogue. Initially, two seniors approached then-Deputy Director Gary Brudvig in order to introduce the institute’s offerings into Yale College.

After about four years of planning, the proposal for the Energy Studies Undergraduate Scholars program was ready for formal approval by the faculty.

“There were a lot of energy courses they could see that were popping up in different departments,” Oristaglio said. When students realized the breadth of courses offered, they went so far as to suggest the possibility of a potential new major. That’s a lot of paperwork—an entirely new department would need to be founded to house a program of that rigor. But beyond these practical difficulties, pedagogically speak-

cute,’” said Hallie Meyer, SM ’15, who introduced herself as an English major. “It’s seen as fluffy. Food is ubiquitous, so people never take the chance to think about it critically.”

This semester, Meyer is working with Freedman on an independent study of the history and politics of school food—more specifically, of the school lunch program in the United States. If the food studies program were to become a reality, it would look a lot like what she’s doing right now.

“Thinking critically about food is so important,” Meyer said. “Food is a lens to look at so many subjects.” Her own project is no exception. It combines political science, economics, and lots of history to tell a story.

Bomford agrees. “You find food everywhere,” he said. “In the arts, the sciences, the humanities, the social sciences. It is such a great convener, is such a common ground, and such a source of horribly cheesy metaphors, and because of that it means that it gives you a fresh, ready and relevant perspective for the study of almost anything you can find in Yale’s majors.”

Much like Meyer’s independent project, Bomford envisions a holistic approach to the study of something that does not fit neatly within the domain of any single department.

“I would like the study of food systems not to be constrained by disciplinary boundaries,” he said. “I feel that the most proper approach to an introduction to complex food systems is to have the breadth that allows you to understand the intersections between food systems and pretty much every discipline of study that you would find in a liberal arts environment like Yale College.”

Meyer’s independent study consists of a few papers in the classroom and organizing scholarly speakers to come to campus and

“For food studies, the question is, how are we going to feed everybody and do it in a healthy and sustainable way?”

For instance, a cornerstone of these programs is a fall seminar that allows students to digest and reflect upon their summer experiences in the discipline, instead of letting the experience remain unexamined. These secondary tracks are changing the academic landscape of a Yale education, smoothing out a potentially abrupt transition between summer and academic year.

These programs allow students to structure their liberal arts educations around central questions facing our world today. “The way I think of these special programs is not that they’re fields of study, but they’re really big problems that are facing our world,” Trumpler said. They answer the big questions: how do we revitalize the free press when journalism is declining? How do you solve the crisis in our schools? What do we do when we run out of fossil fuels?

For food studies, the question is, how are we going to feed everybody and do it in a healthy and sustainable way?

NEAR THE FARM ON PROSPECT STREET stands Kroon Hall, a central hub of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. On the second floor of the building sits the office of the executive director of the

ing, Oristaglio said, “You don’t want to have it as a major.”

Now the model for forthcoming special programs, including the proposed one in food studies, the program requires six courses distributed among three categories (the sciences, social sciences and the environmental implications) and a final “capstone” project. This inaugural semester has been, according to Oristaglio, so far so good.

“We expected 25 to 30 students,” he said, but last spring nearly twice that number applied. About 50 students are currently enrolled in the program. High interest has been met with high proactivity. “Many students requested advisors that were distinctly not in their major,” Oristaglio said, an explicit example of the different perspectives from the fledgling program.

“Interdisciplinary tracks like this are the wave of the future everywhere,” continued Oristaglio. “Once you get out of university, you’re in an interdisciplinary setting working with people in different fields. More and more, I think that’s going to become an important component of the educational system.”

“WHEN I TELL PEOPLE I’M STUDYING food, a common reaction I’ll get is, ‘Oh, that’s

discuss their experiences studying food. On Nov. 19, she will host Simone Cinotto, a historian at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy, who focuses on Italian food.

As an added perk that comes with the study of food, Meyer’s catering operation will be serving treats at this event.

While Meyer enjoys studying food, she also loves making it, which she does through her company, the Northern Greening. Bringing food into the academy, she fears, might strip the fundamentally tangible aspect of food and turn it into hard-to-grasp theory.

“Academia can tend to over-theorize anything,” Meyer said. “Students will go through the program and learn a lot of concepts, but at the end of the day may not know what to do with a butternut squash.”

GIVEN THE SUCCESS OF ELI WHITNEY, YC 1792, the inventor of the cotton gin, you might imagine a deep history between the University and the study of agriculture. But in reality, it was the land grants, founded by the Morrill Acts of the 1860s, that gave rise to agriculture’s place in higher education.

Land-grant institutions were—and still are—the institutions of higher learning that teach agriculture. Private universities, such as

­— Madeline Butler YH Staff

those in the Ivy League, that sought to provide a liberal arts education, were not. As the name suggests, land-grant colleges are defined by the federal government’s granting of plenty of physical land. Agriculture could actually be practiced at these institutions, where it was impossible in more urban setting.

Cornell University is the only Ivy League institution with an agricultural program, its College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

However, its existence does not attest to its pedagogical difference from its peer institutions, but instead expresses its origins as a land-grant institution. The teaching of of food and agriculture at a university like Yale, without the historical underpinnings of its land-grant peer, is less obvious given its own institutional history.

“Coming to Yale, with the complete absence of an agricultural school, has actually been incredibly freeing and has opened up a big opportunity, as far as I can see,” explained Bomford. “We have the opportunity to study food right, because we didn’t start out by creating a food, food science, or agricultural science department.”

If the conventional way of studying food is wrong—in a focused, pre-professional, vocational way—then Yale doesn’t want to be right: it’s the breadth in educational experience surrounding agriculture and food that Bomford hopes the food studies program can provide.

“If you look at—to me—what the biggest problems in the food system are today, it’s what I think is the deficit of broadminded leadership and the ability to connect and synthesize all of these different elements,” Bomford said. “If you look at what the food system needs the most and what Yale produces the best, to me it’s just a wonderful match.” Maybe Yale’s role in agriculture, though initially unclear, can fill a niche that the field lacks.

Other liberal arts schools are finding their way into what purpose they will serve to food and agriculture. “Middlebury is try-

ing to hire a senior person to develop a food studies curriculum there,” Trumpler said. Otherwise, inspiration for a food studies program at Yale has come mainly from graduate programs.

IF THE UNDERGRADUATE ENVIRONMENtal Studies program has a food studies concentration then it would logical to assume that the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies would have one.

However, this is quite the opposite.

Founded at the beginning of the 20th century, school aims to prepare students for careers in forestry and related environmental fields. The incorporation of food into the curriculum at FES is an underwhelming phenomenon—and one only of the very recent past.

Zoe VanGelder, FES ‘14, wondered where the food was. “At a school that focuses on the environment, it would make sense that food would be a major component.” But student demand seemed to outpace the faculty’s supply of food-related opportunities in the classroom.

VanGelder is one of three leaders of the Coalition on Agriculture, Food and the Environment (CAFE), a student interest group dedicated to linking the environmental issues of agriculture and the school’s curriculum of ecosystem studies and management.

Composed entirely of FES students, the group most recently put on the Yale Food Systems Symposium, which was held from Oct. 18 to Oct. 19 to bring a combination of practitioners, academics, and experts to debate and discuss the intricacies of complex food systems. “[The symposium] is the product of momentum that’s been building for the last 8 years,” VanGelder said, referring to CAFE’s founding nearly a decade ago. “The idea garnered quite a bit of momentum because there was support across Yale.” The organizers realized there were plenty of voices that had simply not taken the opportunity to

converse at Yale, and the symposium could provide that platform. They reached out to the YSFP, the International Studies program at the MacMillan Center, the School of Public Health, the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity—all voices with different takes on the food system.

VanGelder, who staffed an earlier conference from Sept. 14 to Sept. 15 entitled “Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue,” said that at the conference she saw a meaningful discourse between different critical perspectives on the same issues— an interaction similar to those that would occur in a more established discipline. Together, these meetings realize Bomford’s philosophy: “You need to have some theoretical backing in order to make any practical difference.” These conversations lay the foundation of food system theory that is so influential and impactful to the practice in which Appel and Meyer are eager to immerse themselves.

“My motivation for the symposium was to set the tone for what food studies should look like at Yale,” VanGelder said. Organizers are hopeful that the symposium will become an annual affair, and this tone would be influential given the relative youth of food studies at Yale.

SPECIAL PROGRAMS ARE A HARBINGER of a changing Yale experience; one where students are driving the curricular offerings.

These programs only add to the Yale College experience, as they provide a source of practical skills without inhibiting a comprehensive liberal arts education. The programs centralize resources that are otherwise scattered and hard to find. With more meaningfully examined summer work, the educational landscape is smoothed, but will continue to evolve as professors develop courses with these programs in mind.

Providing a framework with which faculty members can work with will bring forth new proposals. Miller foresees a revitaliza-

tion of a dormant urban studies program or some combination of courses that would specifically take advantage of the museum collections on campus.

Because these scholarly tracks are not major specific, they bring together students from all academic interests—English majors and Engineering majors might talk in the dining hall, but rarely do they get to interact in the classroom. “The [energy] industry used to be siloed—geologists working together and economists working together and engineers working together, but they didn’t communicate very much,” Oristaglio said. “That’s changed dramatically in the last two decades.” Specialization is important, but then again, the real world is interdisciplinary. These interactions in fact enhance a liberal education.

Bringing practical, real-world problems into academia might at the surface seem counter to encouraging the intended culture of learning for the sake of learning—this could be misconstrued as a dangerous deviation from the liberal arts into pre-professionalism. Conversely, some may believe only theorizing about these pressing issues can mean fewer boots on the ground working to actually solve them.

Special programs promote favor of these arguments and alleviate both of these fears. The happy medium of practice and theory so important to complex systems like food is embedded into the structures of these programs; Appel’s initial dilemma of whether to choose between theory and practice shouldn’t cause concern so long as she is doing both.

The future of the proposed Food Studies Undergraduate Scholars program will be uncertain until it is voted on. With the departure of Brownell, Miller said she is unsure that right now is the best time to go through with it. But if the faculty votes to approve it, the program will cultivate an academic experience unlike any other.

The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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Caught in the crosshairs Community activists strive to rid Newhallville of its stigma of violence

by Aaron Z. Lewis

L

ast month, I met Kali Williamson in a backyard in Newhallville, the New Haven neighborhood with the City’s highest homicide rate. Dilapidated houses surrounded us on all sides. Williamson, a community organizer, works with Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS), a non-profit organization that finances homeownershiip and revitilization in the troubled

ville, approximately a mile and a half north of Cross Campus, when two teenagers assaulted him from behind, knocked him to the ground, and robbed him of his wallet. He survived the attack, but ties between Yale and Newhallville suffered irreparable damage; fearing for the safety of students and faculty, the University abandoned its architectural projects in the neighborhood.

alluding to the gun-violence that wracks the neighborhood. “We decided the time was right to take on a more challenging neighborhood,” Paley said.

SINCE ITS FOUNDATION IN 1979, NHS HAS located in Newhallville during the height of the subprime mortgage crisis. The organization has developed a clustered approach to

[Levin made the mistake of abandoning a project, and then adding to the misconception that this is a community full of people who are okay with criminal behavior.”

—Tammy Chapman, Newhallville community organizer New Haven neighborhood. Yale bears next to involved in this program. “[The University] kind of wrote us off,” said Williamson.

Yale architecture professor Paul Brouard’s trip into New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood on the morning of Thur., May 9, was supposed to be an uneventful. The 83-yearold professor helped manage the Vlock Building Project, a program that gives architecture students the opportunity to design and build elegant, affordable homes around New Haven. The morning of the ninth, Brouard was surveying the progress at a Vlock Building Project site at 32 Lilac Street, in Newhall-

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

“[Levin] made the mistake of abandoning a project, and then adding to the misconception that this is a community full of people who are okay with criminal behavior,” said Tammy Chapman, a Newhallville community organizer, said about the divestment.

In the School of Architecture’s absence, Newhallville was left with an undeveloped lot on Lilac Street and a $62,500 severance gift from the University. Into the void stepped NHS, which offered to complete the construction at the abandoned site.

“Newhallville is caught in the crosshairs,” said NHS director Jim Paley, unintentionally

neighborhood revitilization—acquiring homes from the city that are in close proximity to one another, to then rehabilitate and sell them to low- and middle-income families. Clustering is a more holistic approach than other homerehabilitation programs, which only restore one house before moving on to the next town.

These homes are designed to at least be one of the nicest homes on their blocks as a way of inspiring private investment in the neighborhood’s other homeowners. Paley hopes that the clustering strategy will give Newhallville the sense of community it needs to get back on its feet, he said.

Despite his optimism in the program, Paley acknowledged that it has been difficult for NHS to acquire inexpensive properties.

Bureaucratic regulations oftentimes pose obstacles to the organization’s general functions, while funding for their housing programs is not always easy to come by.

Still, NHS’s initiatives extend far beyond home renovation and financial assitance. At its Sherman Ave. campus, the organization runs educational workshops for new homeowners, organizes leadership development programs, and operates an energy conservation laboratory. Paley sees his work as more collaborative than interventionist. “We stand alongside community organizers in their attempts to take back their neighborhoods,” Paley said.

Near the end of Sept., I met Paley and Brandi Marshall, another community organizer, in the backyard of Marshall’s home.

Seeming to represent the diversity of the grassroots initiative, the two made for an unlikely duo. Paley wore a fashionable suit; Marshall, sweatpants and a t-shirt. The embroidered quote on her shirt was just barely visible behind her long braids: “Will alone that I set my mind in the right motion.” This quote seemed a fitting caption for the work that she, Paley, and other activists are doing for Newhallville.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, NEWHALLville was one of New Haven’s industrial hubs. The nearby Winchester Repeating

Arms Factory employed 25,000 locals and was the city’s largest factory. In 2006, after years of inactivity, the plant officially shut down, leaving an employment and productivity void in its absence. “Once our manufacturing and jobs left, not much remained,” Chapman said. “The community was vulnerable and neglected.”

Since the factory’s closing, the neighborhood has struggled to re-establish itself as a city center. Despite its close proximity to luxurious neighborhoods and Yale’s central campus, Newhallville remains crime-ridden and still seema unable to shed its stigma.

As is made clear through their activism, Paley and his colleagues at NHS think that a grassroots effort will breathe life back into the community. “It all comes down to people,” Paley said. “Residents can really transform this neighborhood.”

which 80 children biked the streets with police officers. Chapman organizes exercise groups and well-attended street cleanups that aim to empower people to help beautify their neighborhood. NHS also works with Solar Youth—an after school community service

change and feel uninformed. “Sometimes, people feel they’re not getting their fair share of work. Some people are not hopeful for the future,” Cremin-Endes added.

“They’ve seen people try to make changes, but they personally haven’t seen change.”

“Newhallville is caught in the crosshairs. We decided the time was right to take on a more challenging neighborhood.“ —Jim Paley, NHS director programs that promotes environmental health through student-led projects. And the neighborhood, once infamous for having the city’s highest homicide, rate now boasts the highest concentration of community gardens.

While urban gardens and block parties help to foster an internal sense of community, they alone cannot turn around a neighborhood with a long history of violence and crime. In Aug., 2013 the New Haven Police

“If we stop, the criminals win. We’ve all fought. We just have to keep trekkin.’”

—Brandi Marshall, community organizer And indeed, they have begun to. Chapman, Williamson, Marshall, and others have started organizing local gatherings with the help of NHS to jumpstart the neighborhood’s revival. Local pastor Donald Morris, for one, set up a festival celebrating Newhallville in

Williamson, Marshall, and Paley maintain that those resistant to the changes do not faze them. “If we stop,” said Marshall, “The criminals win. We’ve all fought. We just have to keep trekkin’.”

Despite the recent success of these programs, certain community members have been resistant to change, according to NHS Community Building Specialist Stephen Cemin-Endes. He shared that some individuals are concerned about the current pace of

Department kickstarted a new community-based policing initiative. By stepping up police presence and increasing Newhallville foot patrols, Cremin-Endes said he thinks the City will be able to more effectively stamp out crime in the area.

BEHIND MARSHALL’S YARD IS AN EMPTY home that was once an epicenter of crime in the community. The building was overrun by drug dealers, who would set up on shop on the porch and cause commotion in the area. The owner of the house lived elsewhere, and didn’t much care about the problems it was causing for the Newhallville families. Over the course of the last year, community members decided to take a stand against the blot of criminal activity on their block. They’d call the police whenever there was trouble and, slowly but surely, the loiterers began to leave.

“You hear that?” asked Marshall, pointing at the abandoned building she’d been talking about. She paused for a moment, soaking in the silence. Not a sound could be heard from the once-raucous house.

—graphic by Maude Tisch YH Staff The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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CULTURE Hacking Yale 5

000 hours of energy (1000 x 5 hour energy drinks), $20,000 in prizes, pizza and cookie boxes piled high: amped up from last year’s 35-student event, the 2013 Yale Hackathon saw almost 1,000 tech-savvy students flock to Yale from universities across the US, Canada, and even England. With just 24 hours to conceptualize and program a “hack,” this year’s finalists worked with everything from Google Glass to lightbulbs and Wikipedia.

1st Place: Rainman The pair behind Rainman, the winning hack at this year’s Hackathon, is the definitional “dream team.” Geoffrey Litt, SM ’14, and Seth Thompson, SY ’14, have been best friends and hacking partners since their sophomore years. “We have similar thoughts on design, aesthetics…” Litt begins, “…the morals, ethics of technology…” Thompson continues. Yeah, they also finish each other’s sentences. No stranger to the intense 24-hour hackathon experience, the two completed their project in just 16 hours: they went to the senior masquerade ball, napped, and won a $10 thousand cash prize on Fri., Nov. 9.

In the past, Geoff and Seth have made what they call “silly but technically impressive hacks,” (like a breathalyzer that prevents programming while drunk). This time, they tell me, they’ve made something they’re serious about releasing: “Should we just show you?” they asked. The two lean into Geoff’s MacBook and click on a New York Times article link, then on a small green “R” in the corner of the browser. Suddenly, the screen is transformed. A sleek new version of the article appears, with a sidebar containing image snippets and Wikipedia articles on the article’s key concepts. “The hack tries to predict what you might search for by identifying important phrases,” Thompson explains. “Without leaving the page you get all the context and background you could want.”

The appeal is hard to miss. “A lot of the judges said, like, ‘I want this tomorrow,’” Geoff says. “It’s made for people who are curious about the world.”

—Sarah Holder

3rd Place: Subtle Glass Squeezing into a Yale-only cast of finalists, the creators of Y-Hack’s third place prize, Subtle Glass, hail from the University of Maryland. The app, created by Yoshio Fujimoto, Zach Jiroun, Katharine Larson and Neel Mistry, can be used with Google Glass to translate speech to text in real time. It

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

2nd Place: Lux Sean Haufler, JE ’14, and Matthew Rajcok, BR ’16, quite literally put the “lux” into “lux et veritas” with their second place hack—they designed a lightbulb with a built-in app that varies hue and brightness according to time of day. “At first, I wanted to make an alarm clock that wakes you up by varying the brightness of its light,” Haufler told me. “I figured lightbulbs are more relevant.”

Though Haufler began to conceptualize the bulb two days before the competition, having learned from the stressful scramble of past hackathons, the final product was the lovechild of what Haufler described as a “truly serendipitous” partnership. Struggling with the technical details of the bulb’s hardware, he brought it to the student tech office in Bass Library, where he met Rajcok. Together, they worked through the project’s kinks. “There were definitely moments of tension,” Haufler recalls. “For a while nothing worked, but fortunately, in the last hour or so everything began to make sense.”

The Lux bulb was received with much acclaim—“The judges loved the app, and Dustin Moskovitz [co-founder of Facebook] personally requested one,” said Haufler. The team has plans to improve and maybe even eventually market the project2. Still, Haufler left the weekend with one point of confusion: “One team made an app that turned beer cans in Facebook photos into Coca-Cola cans. I couldn’t understand why the judges didn’t like it as much.”

—Yupei Guo

holds numerous possibilities for real-world application: from improving communication for hearing-impaired individuals, to conversation transcription and—with the interface the team is currently working to develop— language translation. Think Google Translate—on steroids.

In addition to working towards a winning app, Fujimoto also produced some winning tweets over the course of the 24-hour competition. At 8:02 p.m.—while the team was still scrambling to come up with an idea for their project—he entered his “nerdiest pick

up line” into a Y-Hack wide competition for a nexus tablet. “Is your name Google?” he wrote. “Because you have everything I’ve been looking for.” At 9:10 p.m.—project still pending—he asked Y-Hack for cookies: “Room number C32-20601 COOKIES PLEASEEE.” By 12:47 p.m. on Sat. afternoon, a launch video for Subtle Glass was up and running on Youtube. Finally, a 3:28 p.m. photo of Fujimoto sporting Google Glass wielding some sort of sword, captioned, “the team works while I troll.” #fanfavorite —YH Staff

Brief wondrous visit Ties that bind

by Gareth Imparato YH Staff

The afternoon of Tues., Nov. 12, a group of Yale students crowded into a largely unknown venue—the spacious auditorium in St. Thomas More was packed, with attendees overflowing into the back hallway. Junot Diaz, however, here at the invitation of Catholic priest Eddie de Leon, did not seem quite as enthusiastic to be visiting Yale.

Diaz began his talk alternating between Spanish and English, calling for everyone in the audience who shared an identifying characteristic with him to raise their hands: Dominicans, immigrants, people from New Jersey, people who hadn’t gone to a school like Yale. What followed was an hour long, multi-lingual, profanity-seasoned exploration of Ivy-league psychology, leftist politics, and antiMFA polemics that could only have come from the mind responsible for the Pulitzer Prize winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. To an audience largely in attendance because of Oscar Wao, Diaz’s political preoccupations came as a plot twist. Over the course of the conversation he repeatedly returned to political themes, at one point launching into a 15-minute critique of the “instrumental logic of neoliberalism”: the average college experience, he claimed, has become a competition for accreditation and a ticket to a profitable job. Later, when a Yale student asked Diaz about the symbolic meaning

of mongoose in Oscar Wao, he responded by saying that he sees the novel as sci-fi, but that critics “always think that if somebody with a “z” in their name does anything, it’s magical realism.” For Diaz, the artistic and personal always have political resonance.

In Diaz’s fiction, he often inhabits multiple worlds simultaneously; he is the sci-fi nerd, the impoverished immigrant, and the post-modern provocateur all at once. His novels and short fiction rapidly switch voices, transitioning effortlessly from the nerdy outcast Oscar Wao to the bro-ey ladies man Yunior. In person, the same tendency to change register became immediately obvious, though more complicated when performed live. As he shifted rapidly between discussions of “retrograde anti-black xenophobia” and Spanish language asides directed at a group of high school students of Dominican heritage in the audience, it was hard not to wonder in which mode he was more comfortable.

What is powerful about Diaz’s fiction, however, is that it reminds us that traditional divisions of identity don’t apply to the complicated realities of contemporary society. In his talk on Tues., Diaz brought the many perspectives he includes in his fiction to life.

The event provided a window into the life of a man, Yale fan or not, who is one of the premier chroniclers of the modern American experience.

Down the line

by Dalia Wolfson

The New York City subway has a language of its own: a Helvetica orthography of letters and numbers, circles of colors winking from dark tunnels. There’s a phonology of sneezes and snatches of conversations, and the syntax of arranging one’s limbs in cramped cars. For punctuation marks, there are stops—468 of them, to be exact. On Dec. 7, 2013, Stephen Blum, BR ’74, will immerse himself in this language for 36-hours: carrying out an ambitious plan to travel the subway system in its entirety.

“This idea has been about 54 years in the making,” said Blum. As seven-year-olds in New York City, he and a friend had a favorite weekend activity: tokens in their pockets, they would select a new subway line and ride it from end to end. Each station holds a memory for Blum: five-cent Nathan’s hot dogs at Coney Island or Shea Stadium en route to the World’s Fair. As the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Association of Yale Alumni and Branford Resident Fellow, Blum is now fulfilling his childhood dream—and he’ll be taking Yale undergraduates and alumni from across the region with him.

Whereas the Red Line of the Yale shuttle may not be a prime spot for group gatherings, the subterranean networks of New York seem especially appropriate for a Yale event. Blum explained: “Subways represent immense human optimism and arrogance. At the time it was built in 1918, The 7 passed through farmland.

The structure of the city represents a degree of fore-

sight that no longer exists: Brooklyn Bridge was built when there were no cars to speak of, but it handles rush hour without breaking a sweat.” With a bit of mindfulness, taking the A train can be an opportunity to remember how to be visionaries and dreamers. For a community of creative but critical thinkers, the subway is a model to consider.

When we met, Blum discussed the adventure with the air of a seasoned straphanger. He anticipated the dreaded scaffolding at a station entrance—a friend linked to the MTA will send updates on construction work—and recognized the need for naps. He also hopes to have time to inspect the tile work from the Metro’s early days under the private operation of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. What about those infamous delays? “In case of emergency, we could eliminate a borough,” Blum said, half-joking.

Unlike the typical commuter, Blum rejects the idea of a specific destination. The overarching idea is one of what he calls “geographical continuity,” following the railway veins of New York up to their ends and getting a long, good look at the city’s underbelly. Like any language, the subway is both a means to an end and a world worthy of celebration in itself. As Blum put it: “It’s not the trip, it’s the travelling.” It’s about the moments inside the sliding doors of NYC’s glinting grey trains; the state of moving ever forward toward the end (or, perhaps, the beginning) of the line.

by Anna Meixler

A

t Yale tailgates, no sartorial choice is strange. I spotted neon tutus, mismatched sneakers, and a snowsuit before the game against Brown last Sat., Nov. 10. Amongst those who love to dress up and get down, however, were three students sharing a particularly unusual accessory—a rope, in which I found myself entangled.

“It’s Rope Day!” Carolyn Forrester, ES ’15 shouted, kissing the cheek of one of the students to whom she was tied. White twine was looped around each girl’s wrist, connecting Forrester to Sara Hamilton, ES ’16 and Brit Sharon, ES ’16 like handcuffs.

“We’re tied together all day,” Forrester explained, “Or at least until everyone else gives up. In that case, we win.”

Forrester and Sharon were one of 15 randomly coupled pairs of Stiles students contending for Caseus gift cards and a basket of miscellaneous items from the Salvation Army. The task: to be the last pair standing—or rather, tied. Hamilton, though she hadn’t intended to participate, attached herself briefly to Forrester and Sharon for what she called “added levels of difficulty.”

“We wanted to plan a random, quirky activity to bring people together,” said Student Activities Committee member Audrey Shen, ES ’16. Forrester suggested the idea, remembering a reality TV show in which people tied to goats competed over who could spend the longest time tied to his animal companion. Though only two teams of the 30 students who signed up participated for the whole day, those who did went all out. The winners, Jeemin Kwon, ES ’17, and Anna Ware, ES ’17 were tied together from 8:42 a.m. until 9:00 p.m..

Cheesy comestibles and thrifted duds weren’t the only incentives for participation. “I didn’t know Brit until today,” said Forrester. “But she’s awesome.” Enjoying one another’s company, Sharon and Forrester only disconnected when Sharon had to attend Kappa initiation, to which she wasn’t allowed to bring her sidekick.

To ensure fairness, partners sent photos to SAC every hour. Evidence abounds of couples maneuvering with ease. “Going to the bathroom really wasn’t a problem,” said Hamilton. She confirmed this fact with selfies of the two standing outside of a port-a-potty, while their third member used the facilities. Participants danced, ate in restaurants, attended a soccer game, and even napped together.

Most successful, though, was the socializing forced by tether. Forrester and Sharon met one another’s friends, and, though they received a few skeptical looks, were lauded by amused spectators. “Adults seemed to think it was pretty weird,” said Forrester, “but a lot of people found it hilarious.”

Later Sat. night, I found Forrester at Box. Still in her tailgate lipstick and windbreaker, she was free from her sidekick. Pleased with a successful Rope Day, she vowed, however, that next year’s will be “bigger, better… more cutthroat.”

The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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REVIEWS Fine dining with finesse

by Lucas Sin YH Staff

N

amed after the river that runs along the Franco-Italian border, Roia promises to draw inspiration from both countries’ culinary traditions. As a result, its menu demands a certain caliber of contemporary creativity in combining the two, very different culinary styles—creativity that is currently lacking in the New Haven restaurant scene. Thankfully, Chef Avi Szapiro has proven himself up to the task; while Roia’s offerings ultimate end up closer to the Italian side of the border, its success lies not in perfectly fulfilling the metaphor of its name, but in the grace and precision with which it brings to New Haven’s aging fine dining scene a much-needed modern sensibility.

Roia opened in the 100 year old Taft Hotel dining room after months of demolitions and reconstructions. The lobby, once a New Haven landmark of nobility, has been stripped of decades’ worth of renovations. What remains is a 1912 marble tiled floor and original wood paneling. The grand staircase, too, is gone, but the second signature relic of this historic building, the coffered ceiling, has been restored and repainted to its former glory. The yellow lighting from hanging bulbs gives off a slight sense of sentimentality and subdued class. The usual dress of the patrons, one could imagine, might involve tweed.

Just as the space revitalizes Taft Hotel’s aged architecture with a hint of modernity, Roia’s menu also tastefully updates traditional fare. Restaurants such as Skappo and Barcelona showcase authentic cuisines within a similar price range, but feature menus that are relatively straightforward as compared to Roia’s. Chef Avi Szapiro makes his

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The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

changes with a delicate touch and a great deal of restraint. The seasonal dinner menu fits on one single-sided page. At a glance, the limited menu items show no surprises: nothing as strange as spheres on spoons or as gaudy as gold flakes here. One might already begin to see, then, that the menu design is indicative of Szapiro’s leanings towards modesty and minimalism, traits inherited from the Italian side of things.

My meal began with an amuse bouche: Tuscan bean purée with chives over crostini. It was chilled and carefully seasoned, with earthy undertones balancing precariously on a couple grains of salt and the tang of fresh chives. Quite effortlessly, it set the tone for a smooth, clean meal. The bread that was served shortly afterwards had a tough crust and is a little dry, but it does have the type of whole-wheat bite that many restaurants aim for but do not quite reach.

On the menu, the sautéed mushrooms and arugula salad appetizer did not seem particularly enticing, but Szapiro’s careful hand marries fresh mushrooms and tender arugula with a light sherry vinaigrette. Every dimension—the acid from the sherry, the sodium from the parmigiano, and the umami from the mushrooms—was barely there, but together, they came in perfect harmony. A second appetizer, the salmon tartare, also demonstrated a similar degree of elegance: wild caught coho salmon marinated gently in a citrus vinaigrette, served with a petite poached quail egg and a bowl of potato chips, and not a thing out of place.

The entrée of the evening, Duck Alla Diavolo, had some surprises for the palate. The breast was charred, sliced, and served on a slightly grainy polenta cake with swiss chard. The toughness of the polenta cake was redeemed by a punchy and spicy reduced tomato sauce that highlighted the gamey, somewhat robust duck breast. On a not so traditional route, the pappardelle was prepared with rosemary and black pepper mixed into the eggy pasta dough. Thick ribbons of the pasta, cooked assertively al dente, were paired with a hen ragu stewed with vegetables to superb effect. The underwhelming pasta portions were redeemed by the full flavor Szapiro manages to pack into the seemingly straightforward dish.

Though Roia promises to derive its cuisine from dual traditions, the food ultimately comes off as more Italian than it is French. The meal is structured in accordance with Italian tradition: antipasto, primo, secondo, and dolce. The dishes are barely dressed in delicate sauces and precise garnishes, relying chiefly on the ingredients to sing for themselves. The weight of French haute cuisine is deliberately withheld until dessert, where very traditional Belgian chocolate custard was served, decorated with a bright sprinkle of sea salt. One gets the sense that Roia’s cuisine knows very well the French qualities it gives up: the complicated techniques, the butter, and the cream. And it does so because, as every modern restaurant should, it prioritizes extracting flavor over adhering to strict borders. Szapiro’s ingenuity lies here: in the understanding of his ingredients, their seasonality and their localities. He leaves the ingredients unfussed, letting the flavors stand out on their own. Roia doesn’t need to bother itself with reconciling Italian and French traditions as long as it continues to demonstrate, as it does now, that culinary excellence is derived from fundamentalsfirst, honest cuisine.

Music: Lady Gaga “My artpop could mean anything,” Lady Gaga intones on the title track of her fourth album. It’s a vague cop-out that’s strange to hear from her; perhaps her reputation as an elaborately costumed artiste has worn her down. This would help explain Artpop, a mostly enjoyable album that falters when Gaga’s artistic statements rehash her past ones instead of explore new territory.

Artpop reaches its highest highs when Gaga integrates fresh political statements into solid pop writing. She does this best on the glorious R. Kelly duet “Do What U Want.” Over a silky electro-R&B groove, Gaga lashes back at the media while crooning next to Kelly; “do what you want with my body” is simultaneously an assertive come-on and a sharp blow to critics It’s a fascinating elision of love and fame. Elsewhere, “Swine” finds Gaga exposing the ugly side of dancefloor sexual politics—“You’re just a pig inside a human body”—as appropriately filthy basslines scream along with her. Artpop slips, however, when the concepts feel rote rather than riveting; dull tracks like “Fashion!” and “MANiCURE” do little more than restate the Gaga ethos and verge on self-parody.

Despite these weaker moments, the whole album gets a lift from the sparkling production by DJ White Shadow, Zedd, and Madeon. The highlight “Gyspy,” produced by Madeon, is euphoric, bounding along at breakneck speed as Gaga longs to be a wandering spirit. It’s Artpop’s most vulnerable moment.

“Gypsy” is followed by lead single and closer “Applause,” a mission statement in which Gaga commands you to “put your hands, make ‘em touch.” Her selfawareness here and elsewhere is an integral part of her artistry; while living for applause is implicit in any pop star’s life, her willingness to explore that dependence so openly makes her all the more admirable.

—Will Adams YH Staff

Film: 12 Years a Slave Steve McQueen is not known for making comfortable films. His previous work has dealt with prison abuse, hunger strikes, and sex addiction, all in an explicit manner. In his remarkable new film, 12 Years a Slave, the British director brings his unrelenting vision to the pre-Civil War American South.

Based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir, 12 Years a Slave follows Northup’s hellish journey from free man to plantation slave without clichéd sentimental cues. Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofer), who lived in upstate New York with his wife and children, is lured to Washington D.C. by a promising job offer. He is then kidnapped, transported to Louisiana, and sold into slavery.

Despite the tragic circumstances of the story, the film examines humanity’s profound optimism more than its evil. Northup’s affecting spirit and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt’s beautifully framed compositions work to counter the horrors of slavery witnessed in the film.

That’s not to say that McQueen holds back in regards to the film’s brutal content. Many of the film’s most vicious instances of violence are captured in one take, denying the audience the comfort of a cutaway. The relentless brutality of Edwin Epps, the owner of the cotton plantation where Northup works, is sublimely captured by Michael Fassbender. His terrifyingly convincing portrayal of inhumanity is reminiscent of Ralph Fiennes as SS Officer Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List.

In one scene near the end of the film, Northup and other slaves on the plantation sing a spiritual lament for a laborer who died in the fields. McQueen allows the song to build organically until Ejiofer’s voice rises above the rest.

As a scene that is not directly related to the plot, it’s an artistic risk. As his small, yet significant, filmography has shown, McQueen not only takes these risks, but thrives on them.

—Daniel Kemp

Music: Nguzunguzu The first thing you might notice about Nguzunguzu is their mouthful of a name, almost daring you to try and pronounce it (for the record, it’s “en-goo-zoo en-goozoo”). The alienating name masks producer duo Asma Maroof and Daniel Pineda, who share an unabashed love for just about any and every type of dance music, from dubstep to trap to R&B. Accordingly, instead of devoting themselves to any singular genre, Nguzunguzu create songs that gleefully mix-and-match dance sounds. The resulting tracks are exhilarating—dance music that is at once viscerally charged and coolly cerebral.

Their latest EP, Skycell, finds Nguzunguzu adding futuristic, quasi-sci-fi elements to their sonic repertoire. Opener “Foam Feathers” is a minimalist, percussive-heavy track built around a menacing bass line, conjuring up images of a technological dystopia. The song’s looping wind chimes only underscore its haunting quality. “Skycell” is similarly spare, chopping up samples of human voices until they’re incomprehensible, in turn transforming them into rhythmic elements. The song’s focused beat and chilling atmosphere sounds like it belongs on an other-worldly dance-floor. “Break In” features R&B flourishes to the rhythms of UK grime. Above it all, Nguzunguzu add a horror-movie synth line that could have come straight out of a John Carpenter film and whose effect is at once beautiful and frightening. These tracks find Nguzunguzu pushing the boundaries of club music, making songs that are just as likely to alienate as they are to make people want to dance.

The best song, however, might be “Vision of Completion,” which finds Nguzunguzu fully embracing both their dance-floor and their contemplative sides. With a speedy, in-your-face bass rhythm, its one of the most aggressive and energizing songs on the album. “Vision of Completion” captures Nguzunguzu at their best: making dance music that is both of this world and somewhere far out of it.

—Andrew Wagner YH Staff

Staff list:

Here’s what we’ve been up to Where all our time is going: Jason Deruo’s “Marry Me” music video. It took me a long time to get over the “40 Days of Dating” fallout—but then I found this, and I’ve been gushing ever since. Yes, marriage is a privileged institution. Yes, this video features a weird amount of product placement and age progression technology. But also, yes, I want is to watch Jason Derulo dance around on his knees and serenade the beautiful Jordin Sparks from now until the end of time.

Where all our time is going: Reading The Goldfinch. Or really, thinking about reading The Goldfinch—about what it would mean to have time to read all 771 pages of The Goldfinch. A personal favorite: calculating how long, at my current rate of productivity, it would take to write all 771 pages of The Goldfinch. The future’s looking grim.

Where all our time is going: “What would I say?” I’ve never so consistently cracked myself up than with the click of that magical little “Generate Status” button. Every brooding song lyric status, cute-but-crafty life update, and shameless Herald promotion has been building up to this moment, and it feels so right. My only concerns: who is “Clay’s dead wife,” and why did I ever think it was okay to use “Epilepsy” as a nickname?

Where all our time is going: Deciding who to invite to Herald Crush. Maybe you’ll make the cut ;)

—Katy Osborn YH Staff

The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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write for the Herald make new friends email maude.tisch@yale.edu

BULLBLOG BLACKLIST Cute name—but otherwise, these suck.

We don’t need to take a class to know that ours was better.

Froyo World’s “Frookies”

TA

And my fucking art collection too?!

The fact that we don’t like anyone’s “what-would-i-say. com” results as much as we like our own

In case we didn’t know: we’re self-centered.

Some rights should be inalienable.

When your objectively better viral video doesn’t go as viral

Not being able to take a shit in your own home because your water is turned off

Pressure to start my personal library now

If you’re not going to read it, why do I have to write it?

This fucking Mambo essay The fact that Ibuprofen and alcohol cause stomach bleeding.

Drinking when it’s cold out

People who pretend to wash their hands after going to the bathroom

Also the fact that we just learned about this.

This is not a scenario where you get credit just for showing up.

Because it’s always sad.

The Yale Herald (Nov. 15, 2013)

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