TYH LVI 5

The Yale Herald Volume LVI, Number 5 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Oct. 4, 2013

From the staff Every day I’ve been going to a different library. Since I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now, they are on rotation: SML, Bass, Law, Berkeley, A&A, Classics, Law, Berkeley—you get it. There’s nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. Just as I thought I’d escaped the grimy smallness of L-Dub, I landed last pick in the housing lottery (98).

I’m out of spaces, people!

Still, I think I’m wrong because I can’t remember a time in my life when something wasn’t being renovated. First, from the ages of zero to nine, everything was completely new and changing all the time. Then it was 2004—I turned ten, entered my ’tween years, Bush was reelected, and Hey Arnold! was cancelled. Since then, I have gone up the rungs of the educational ladder: middle school, high school, college, year-by-year and day-by-day falling into rhythms that repeated regularly and varied slightly, just as often. All the while, I’m pretty sure the West Side Highway, which took me to school in the Bronx and takes me to New Haven, has been under construction since I was born.

It turns out, as it often does: I am wrong—things at Yale are also are about to be expanded and renovated in a big way. This week, President Salovey sent the entire Yale community an email (serious shout out to Charlie) celebrating a $250 million dollar “gift commitment,” the largest donation in Yale history. In this week’s front, Daniel Stern, SY ’16, and Eric Boodman, BR ’15, bring you separate profiles of two seemingly marginalized spaces of Yale: the HGS basement and the Peabody Museum’s Environmental Science Center storage room, respectively. We hope they serve as two snapshots of Yale’s unique physical space, space off the center of campus that have survived our inattention and might be altered in the eminent, large-scale, campus overhaul.

Maybe you prefer the smaller snapshots. In the Culture section, you can read blurbs about six senior art majors and their work. In Features, Isabelle Taft, SM ’16, investigates the Freshmen Scholars at Yale program, in which 33 freshmen, mostly firstgeneration college students took Yale courses over the summer to get acclimated to the collegiate life and work-load. Kevin Su, MC ’16, of Reviews <3, argues that the script of coming out is written exclusively for the role of the upper-middle-class white male.

As always, there are some gems in the Voices section: Cody Kahoe, CC ’16, sits with Ambassador Marc Grossman and Cory Myers, BK ’15, travels across spacetime and the Internet.

I hope that over your brunch, study-break, or final days of summer basking, you can relax with the Herald and take solace in the fact that, whatever’s being renovated, we are going to print this fucking paper.

Love, Jake Orbison Voices Editor

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The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

The Yale Herald

Volume LVI, Number 5 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Oct. 4, 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 Jin Ai Yap YH Staff

IN THIS ISSUE

COVER 12 In light of the recent announcement of a

$250 million gift towards renovating and expanding Yale’s campus, we’re turning our gaze on often overlooked University spaces. Eric Boodman, BR ‘15, steps into the storage room for the Peabody’s Environmental Science Center storage room, and Daniel Stern, SY ‘16, goes below ground and scrutinizes the disease that’s infecting the HGS basement.

VOICES 6

7

8

Cody Kahoe, CC ‘15, sits down with former Ambassador and current Jackson Institute Fellow Marc Grossman to discuss what it’s like to lead a life in foreign service.

Cory Myers, BK ‘15, taps into his favorite childhood literature to contemplate the negative effects of Facebook time and space travel.

FEATURES 10

Isabelle Taft, SM ‘17, evaluates the success of the Freshman Summer at Yale program, which brought 33 first-generation and lowincome students to campus early to ease the transition to Yale.

16

Aaron Mak, BK ‘16, explains New Haven’s new prescription drug discount program and examines its long term effect on Elm City residents given recent government initiatives.

OPINION: Kevin Su, MC ’16, questions the universality of the expectation of coming out.

Rafi Bildner, DC ’16, argues for the tangible merits of Justin Elicker’s campaign.

REVIEWS

CULTURE 18

Culture writers check out some of Yale’s senior art majors and what they’re working with this year—astroturf, selfies, clowns, and much more.

20

Erica Leh, MC ’15, looks back on what made Breaking Bad so addictive. Also: Deltron 3030, Lorde, Maison Mathis, and our weekly staff list.

The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 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 Scattergories.

CREDIT/D/FAIL Cr:

Morse/Stiles Morse/Stiles has finally managed to beat the curve after 50 years of consistent Ds (saved from failure only by its acceptable freshman housing and brick oven pizza.) This remarkable ascendance in rank is not due to any sort of extra credit work on the part of Morse/Stiles. No, they are still as inconveniently located and off-puttingly modern as ever. It’s just that now there are going to be two brand new colleges that are even more inconveniently located and more off-puttingly modern. (I obviously don’t know this for sure, but I’m thinking no angles at all—just a bunch of circular rooms smashed together in a giant honeycomb.) The new colleges are like the kids who sleep through your Psych exam when you forget to study.

You might not care to interact with them, but you are nonetheless thankful for their existence as it relates to grade distribution. And everyone knows Yalie’s never pass up an opportunity for grade inflation.

So thanks, Charles B. Johnson. You’ve earned more than just a congratulatory e-mail and your descendants’ gratitude. You’ve earned Morse and Stiles’ eternal thanks for finally achieving mainstream status.

D:

Yale football culture If Friday Night Lights has taught me anything, it’s that football unites a disparate community through the celebration of a time-honored American tradition. If Mardi Gras has taught me anything, it’s that drinking during the day is awesome. Tailgates and football games combine both of these things and are thus objectively must-attend events. So why, this Saturday, did I spend my time hitting the books in Sterling stacks rather than hitting the booze in stadium stands? I’ll tell you why— because no one I know goes to tailgates. (It has been brought to my attention that some people at Yale do in fact go to tailgates. However, I am from Texas, by Texas standards, no one at Yale goes to tailgates.) My crippling fear of going places alone overwhelmed my desire to bond with fellow Yalies by getting day-drunk together. However, conformity is terrible, so let’s all not conform together and go watch guys display their masculinity by tackling each other while Baton Girl leads a group of girls in the Single Ladies Dance.

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F:

Spring Fling surveys If you’re like me, then your iTunes consists of Dixie Chicks albums, alternative rock from middle school years, and songs from your spinning class. Chances are you are not like me but that is not the point. The point is that even though everyone likes different music, everyone hates when people make them feel lame for not knowing about the cool underground artist they found on Pitchfork. (I don’t know the names of hipster music blogs, so I googled “hipster music blogs” and this came up.) The Spring Fling Survey is that feeling-lame-phenomenon times one million.

Yes, I realize that no one can know every single name on the survey. But when I can’t even determine whether the name I’m reading refers to a band, an artist, or a laptop that plays dubstep versions of Beyoncé songs, I’ve hit a new low. (CHVRCHES, I’m looking at you). In my opinion, the only way for the Spring Fling Committee to turn this fail into a credit is if Robyn is the headliner for Spring Fling because Robyn is the greatest. (if you haven’t heard of Robyn, I realize this assertion might seem like a contradiction. But in reality, I think it is a wake-up call.)

—Jenny Allen YH Staff —graphics by Claire Thomas & Christie Ramsaran

BOOM/BUST

BY THE

NUMBERS

TYNG CUP STANDINGS!

INCOMING: Apples The advent of fall means the advent of seasonal fruits, and—save decorative gourds, which I still consider a vegetable—no fruit is more autumnal than the humble apple.

It should thus come as no surprise that apples have taken over Yale, colonizing our campus in a way that would vaguely indicate the presence of Johnny Appleseed were he not an unremarkable historical figure (and also were he not dead). Old John Chapman was right, though: apples are versatile little fuckers. I, for one, have spotted apples in a variety of exciting locations—crisps, cobblers, tarts, ciders, pies, sauces, and juices. I’d also like to commend apples for their successful digital strategy.

Seriously—if I see another Instagrammed photo of smiling suitemates, clad in Fair Isle zip-ups and jaunty autumn accessories, gazing at apples in some sort of orchard and/or field, I will fade to black. My residential college is too poor to go apple picking, and I also forgot to register online, so I will have to settle for chaider instead. Sorry, pumpkin. You’re still a vegetable to me.

#

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

105 96.5 82.5 76 69.5 66.5 63.5 61 55.5 30 11 6

OUTGOING: Shitty media coverage Though the saga of the poopetrator seemed prime to never end, it seems as though this feel-good story of the month has finally jumped the proverbial shark. Did you see New York Magazine? Gawker? Time? Now that our dirty laundry has been publically aired, it’s time to simmer down. Coco Chanel once said something about women and accessories and discretion, and I wonder, in that vein, if we have more important things to discuss on this campus than feces—if, perhaps, a fixation on defecation leads to the obfuscation of discourse. I concede that perhaps I’m speaking too soon, but a look around campus suggests I’m not the only one who’s just done with this shit.

—Marissa Medansky

TOP FIVE

INDEX 3 Number of days since the U.S. federal government shut down.

18 Ways to fail your midterms

Number of government shutdowns in U.S. history.

21 Number of days in the longest shutdown (Sat., Dec. 16, 1995 through Fri., Jan. 5, 1996).

5 4 3 2 1

Make a crane out of your blue book. Then do an interpretive dance inspired by said crane..

Write down your phone number and politely return the exam to your TA.

27 Margin of votes by which the House of Representatives rejected the Senate’s budget.

800,000

Flashmob of one.

Number of federal workers sent home without pay.

Show up blackout and take a shot for every answer you don’t know.

533

Slowly and silently remove your clothes.

Number of members of Congress still getting paid despite causing the shutdown.

— Sarah Levi and Thomas Yabroff Sources: 1) N/A 2) USA Today 3) USA Today 4) Wall Street Journal 5) The New York Times 6) Wall Street Journal — Jesse Schreck YH Staff

The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

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SITTING DOWN WITH MARC GROSSMAN

by Cody Kahoe An eminent U.S. diplomat and new Kissinger Fellow at Yale, Ambassador Marc Grossman has served in a range of positions since 1977, including U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and, most recently, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He currently teaches a course entitled “Creating a 21st Century Diplomacy” here at Yale.

YH: Could you tell me a little about your career trajectory? At what point, if any, did it become apparent that this was what your life would be like?

MG: Sure. I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara. Luckily for me, in my junior year there, I had a wonderful professor, a real mentor, say, “You know, it would really be to your advantage if you went out and saw some of the world.” The University of California had a wonderful education abroad program at that time, and I was lucky enough to be selected for it. I spent my senior year of college in the University of Birmingham in England. I loved it. I thought being abroad was great. I turned out to have a curiosity about how other people live their lives, a curiosity about how other people organize themselves. I was then lucky enough to be accepted to do a master’s degree in international relations at the London School of Economics the very following year, and by then, really, I had the bug. I wanted to find some way to live abroad and follow this curiosity about how others live. I returned to California for a couple of years and worked at a business and on some political campaigns. And then one day, at the UC Santa Barbara career center, I saw a poster that said, “Take the Foreign Service Exam!” I peeled off the card and sent it in. I had really never thought of it much before.

It hadn’t been a goal. But I took the test, and I passed. In the spring of 1976, I moved to Washington DC and joined the Foreign Service. And being from California that was a big deal. I had never been to the east coast of the United States before.

For me, it just turned out to be a perfect career. It allowed me to pursue my curiosity, represent and serve the United States. The people I worked with my whole career were fantastic. The issues I got to work on were great. And though maybe I didn’t know it at the time, it turned out to be kind of an act of patriotism as well.

My first post was to Pakistan, 1977 to 1979. Then I had a wonderful, lucky series of jobs that took me 29 years, and I retired in 2005 as Under Secretary of Political Affairs after serving as Ambassador to Turkey and Assistant Secretary for European Affairs. And then I worked in a business in Washington DC from 2005 to 2011. In 2011, after Richard Holbrooke died, I was called to service, and I spent 2011 and 2012 back at the State Department as the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

YH: Could you explain a bit about what your job is as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP)?

MG: This was a job that was created by President Obama and Secretary Clinton for two really important reasons. One was obviously to get the policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan coordinated throughout the government. But secondly, Secretary Clinton believed that the SRAP organization could function

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as a real proof of concept for her idea of the “whole of government approach” to foreign policy. She believed, as did I, that this was a fantastic chance to show that this new approach to diplomacy was the right way to go about it. Richard Holbrooke had set up and I continued this office with people from USAID, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Defense, Justice, Treasury, Agriculture, all sitting in the same place, all working on Afghanistan and Pakistan. We were really lucky.

YH: As a diplomat, how did you try to balance a coherent, continuous foreign policy with an atmosphere of partisanship and changes of administration at home?

MG: Nonpartisanship is important all through your career as a diplomat. You have to remember that the oath you took on becoming a Foreign Service officer was to the Constitution. Presidents change. Secretaries of State change. Policies change. But we’ve signed up to be that continuity as a professional foreign service. One thing I’ve found through my career is that, the foreign policy of the United States goes down a basic broad avenue. There are some changes, but the broad policies are really the same. The second thing is that, lucky for us as citizens, our leadership is also very careful to make sure that career officers are not put in a compromising position. For example, as Undersecretary for Political Affairs, I spent a lot of time at the White House, and I will say that not once did anyone ever cross a line that said, “Let’s talk about what this would mean politically,” or “Let’s talk about how this would be in the election.” People were really careful to make sure that there was never a discussion of those kinds of issues in front of military officers, Foreign Service officers, or civil servants. I think, by and large, citizens would be really proud of that distinction. It’s a matter of professionalism. It’s a matter of continuity.

YH: Over the course of your career, what would you say was the biggest change you witnessed in the way the US has carried out diplomacy?

MG: When I joined the foreign service, the basic job of the diplomats was to go out, observe and report on what they saw, send back that reporting to Washington, and then have Washington decide what to do next. Of course, this was under the overview of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. Everything was observing and reporting and connected somehow to that great struggle. After the Cold War ended, two things happened. One is that the job of diplomats shifted to more frontline, programmatic activity because the challenges to the United States have changed so much. Today, we ask them to promote sustainable development, to stop the trafficking of women and children, to fight drugs, to promote pluralism around the world. We ask them to work on nuclear nonproliferation questions. You name it.

And second, we ask them to do so multilaterally as well, because these are the types of problems that one country on its own can’t fix. So what we’ve asked our diplomats to do is to become much more front line exponents of American policy, and we’ve given them these larger issues to solve.

It’s not that reporting is not important; it is. But there has been this added dimension to diplomacy, which is so impor-

tant. These changes are reflected in the job of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

YH: Do you have any thoughts on Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s criticism of the U.S. approach to Syria?

MG: Prime Minister Erdogan can speak for himself about Syria. I think there has been more of a convergence of views between Turkey and the United States over the past few weeks, as President Obama has come to the conclusion that we should support the rebels militarily. However remarkably it got there, this arrangement with the Russians to get chemical weapons out of Syria ought to be a positive thing for Turkey.

Where I think the Turks and the Jordanians and the Lebanese have a point, though, is that there is really not enough international focus on the refugees. There are hundreds of thousands of Syrians in those three countries. Turkey does a fantastic job with refugees, but even for them it’s a strain.

For Jordan and Lebanon, this is really tough. I would hope that the next phase of this for the international community would be a more systematic focus on the refugee questions because those people are stuck out there for years and years.

One of the things I learned as a Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan is that there are still a couple of million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. Who pays attention to them anymore? Hardly anybody.

YH: Do you have any thoughts on the future of the Gezi Park protest movement that occurred over the summer in Istanbul and around Turkey?

MG: You have to hope that Turkey is going to continue on the path to being a more pluralistic, more tolerant society. I think what you saw in the protests this summer was people, especially young people, who said, “Hey look, we’re connected to the rest of the world. The economic opportunities that we’ve had over the last 15 years in Turkey have opened us up to all different ways of thinking and looking at the world. So we want to make decisions about our own lives.” I think that was a good and positive thing. I was very interested to see Turkish President Gül say in New York the other day that he was proud of the people who had demonstrated. What I hope is that it is a long-term trend that you can see in Turkey since the 1980s, which is, little by little, progress towards a more open, more pluralistic society.

YH: Do you have any specific advice for someone interested in pursuing a career in diplomacy?

MG: First of all, I hope people will. It has been a great life and a great career and an honor to represent the United States.

By and large, there’s no specific course of study. You have to be really a generalist, interested in our society, interested in how people abroad live. I always recommend certainly taking the Foreign Service Exam. It’s now given free, a few times a year, online. And it’s no great disaster if you don’t pass it the first time. Many, many Foreign Service people took it once, went back and did it again, and then did fine. My advice to people is that, if you’re interested, does it. Take the test. It’s a great career.

—This interview was condensed by the author

AGAINST THE TESSERACT

by Cory Myers THE DAY AFTER I GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL I deleted my Facebook profile. I don’t say deleted lightly. It had been over a year since I’d had a publicly visible Wall, and during that time I’d systematically erased both the messages I’d received there and those I’d left on other people’s Walls. Back then this was the only way to delete your Facebook account rather than merely deactivating it so that you would—Mark Zuckerberg fervently hoped— feel compelled eventually to reactivate it. The hassle of bailing out, the seductive one-click ease of rejoining the fold: Facebook’s familiar ways of preying on our fear of social irrelevance.

BUT SOCIAL IRRELEVANCE WAS ALMOST EXACTLY what I had in mind. Already by this time I was using Facebook only as I would have once used a phone book: to look people up. And now I meant to leave behind not just my high school but my whole world. In a week’s time I would cross the country to join an intentional community in a Manhattan-shaped crevice in the mountains two hours northwest of Death Valley. For the next two years phone calls and Internet access would be unreliable afterthoughts involving various combinations of radio and satellite links, all of them outdated and some of them not fully legal. The population of my home-to-be: fifty. What could Facebook possibly do for me there?

AS A KID I READ AND REREAD MADELEINE L’ENGLE’S novel A Wrinkle in Time, in which space-and-time-travel is possible through a five-dimensional construct called a tesseract. We never get a good explanation of this fifth dimension, but the geometry is elegant even so. A tesseract folds the relativistic fabric of spacetime so that otherwise

distant points are brought close enough to “tesser” between them. In one early scene, Charles Wallace, the novel’s precocious five-year-old hero, sits on his living-room floor blithely explaining a plainly three-dimensional model of a tesseract to anyone who will listen.

I LEFT FOR CALIFORNIA TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO. Our desert valley was less cut off from the outside world than I’d originally expected—indeed, I spent whole months there cobbling together new communications equipment out of spare parts and eBay salvage—and only my hubris had let me think that I wouldn’t keep up with at least some of my high-school friends. Still, our isolation in the desert was real, and so was the intimacy it engendered within our community.

When I came back east last summer I knew I’d have to make some sort of technological reentry too. I’d already started carrying an iPhone, and I was at least passingly familiar with Spotify. Returning to Facebook seemed like the natural next step, a way of becoming visible again.

I was right—so I was surprised when I lasted not quite three hours.

From the home page’s undying siren-song— SIGN UP: IT’S FREE AND ALWAYS WILL BE—it began auspiciously enough. All Facebook needed from me were my first and last name, a password, my date of birth, my assent to their terms of service, and my e-mail address. Here I made my fatal mistake. I was so sure of my clean slate that by force of habit my fingers tapped out the same e-mail address I’d used with my high-school account, the address I’d kept all along. I clicked the bright green SIGN UP button and settled into my long-accustomed wait for

the next page to load—only here, back in civilization, there was no such wait. I was presented immediately with my brand-new profile, about as empty as the one I’d left behind twenty-four months ago and if possible even shinier. So far so good.

By way of dipping a toe back into these social waters I searched for my sister and sent her a friend request, which she accepted immediately. The first test of social relevance: passed.

But my relief was short-lived. When I returned to the home page I was alarmed to discover that it was no longer so empty. My sister and I had gone to the same high school and known many of the same people, a couple hundred of whom Facebook now listed prominently as “people you may know.” Uh-uh.

And then the messages began popping up. The first was from my sister, who was pleasantly surprised to find me back online. The next few, from that handful of friends I’d kept up with by other means, were much the same. But the rest—a veritable deluge—were from people I hadn’t spoken to or in most cases thought about since the day before I’d last been on Facebook: graduation day itself.

The guy I sat next to for years in the orchestra’s cello section. A fellow editor of the literary magazine. That girl from AP European History. Almost to a one they asked the same question, no less impossible for being perfectly reasonable: how was it? and what was I doing next?

I understood and reciprocated their curiosity; I was even flattered by it. They had all left home too, but I had fallen off the face of the earth. And now they wanted to tesser me back.

Instead I quit—again. I had nothing to delete this time, and by now there was an easier way: a big red button marked DELETE MY ACCOUNT. NOTWITHSTANDING FACEBOOK’S UBIQUITY—OR MAYBE because of it—there are some trendily philosophical reasons for fleeing Mark Zuckerberg’s fiefdom. Conterculture, anti-commercialism, neo-Luddism: take your pick.

I’ve flirted aggressively with several of these ideas, and on some level I still agree with their principles.

But this second retreat, especially, was not about principles. It wasn’t theoretical: it was personal, even visceral. It was about desires.

Tools take on the intentions of their creators; a wellmade tool fits those desires like a glove. Facebook is upfront about the desires it channels: CONNECT AND SHARE WITH THE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE, blares the home page.

Mark Zuckerberg wants to tesser. He’s clearly not alone.

It’s an admirable impulse.

But it’s not the only one. In the two years since I’d last used Facebook I’d hardly teleported halfway across the cosmos. But I had lived a very different life, and it had taken me far away not just geographically. Distance implies a border, and borders enclose a world. I want to believe you get more than one, if you’ve ever spent much time in more than one place. Here Facebook was offering to collapse the distance and trample the boundaries that defined not just the worlds I’d left behind but also the one in which I now found myself, and I wasn’t about to let it. I didn’t want to tesser.

—graphic by Madeline Butler YH Staff

The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

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OPINION NO-CLOSET-FITS-ALL

CAMPAIGN WITH A HEART

by Kevin Su YH Staff

by Rafi Bildner

Coming out to my parents was always just something I assumed I had to do.

Somehow it felt like my responsibility to myself as a gay man, as though I were a little gay butterfly still trapped in the cocoon of adolescence, not ready for my fabulous adulthood. With two words —“I’m gay”—I had the power to start my parents and myself on the magical journey of familial healing and love I had read about and seen in so many tear-jerking tales and “it gets better” YouTube clips, and it was somehow my duty to go through with it eventually.

Contemporary narratives of coming out promise that coming out will lead to a better, more honest sort of love founded on total openness to ourselves and to the people around us. And it was easy for me to believe that this was true for every relationship. After all, coming out not only brought me closer to my friends and to my sisters, but also taught me to love myself; it taught me to recognize that the palpable weight I felt in my chest right before the first few times I came out was not from fear of my friends’ reactions, but rather from a feeling—a feeling I’ve since rid myself of—that my asserting who I am was a worthless endeavor.

But when it comes to my parents, I simply do not want to come out. Here, the narratives I know fail me; all the typical reasons I can think of for why one might not want to come out to their parents feel completely alien. My parents never made me sit through sermons about sin or instilled in me a fear of a homophobic god.

My dad never made any particular point of teaching me some notion of being a “real man” that involved throwing footballs around and charming women. My mother never hid us from her gay coworkers in the garment industry in some fear of their corrupting us, and, in an endearingly confused moment, once even showed my sisters and me a coworker’s calendar of him in drag.

Instead, my parents taught me that they came to the United States with very little in the hopes that their children would have more. The names of their gods were clunky phonetic translations of “Harvard” and “Yale,” and their Bibles the folded pamphlets of admissions materials. Before any notion of individual manhood was the notion of family, of obligation, of one’s work for the whole. And no calendar of a

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male coworker in woman’s clothes could override the importance of having a coworker at all, of having a secure job and a steady income.

What is keeping me in the closet, then, is how unequipped I am to communicate how the words “I’m gay” fit into the narrative of my parents, the narrative of Chinese immigrants and their American children.

In fact, I literally lack the language; if I were to tell my parents that I am gay, it would have to be in English, a language that after more than 27 years in the United States is still foreign to them. It would be in the language of their jobs, of parent-teacher conferences, of the station my sisters and I would change the car’s radio to every time we took a drive. It would not be the language of holiday dinners, of calls to check how I’m doing at Yale.

To hinge my relationship with my parents and our capacity to love each other fully on one moment that I cannot even properly express is ultimately dishonest to our kinship. That is not to say that we would not stand to grow as a family from my coming out and opening up to them; rather, our care for each other is grounded in values beyond openness, values that my parents brought with them from their village in rural China and kept alive in raising my sisters and me.

What I’ve come to realize is that the scripts I used to come out apply only to relations that are particularly American— American in a way that excludes my Asian upbringing. Coming out, as an act that involves so much more than who we are attracted to and who we tell about it, still deserves more stories that are honest to the diversity of origins and relationships that exist in this country. In our eagerness to launch into an age of impeded opportunities for queer people to pursue love, success, and happiness, we must not forget that these goals take so many forms in so many languages, so many creeds, and so many homes—that the queer experience, and by proxy the coming out experience, is not one-closet-fits-all.

—graphic by Jin Ai Yap YH Staff

I remember the first time I stepped foot in 390 Whalley Avenue, Justin Elicker’s mayoral campaign headquarters. I’ve worked on political campaigns before, mostly where I grew up, in New Jersey, and the campaign offices I’ve worked in looked much the same: blank walls except for a few posters, district maps, sign up sheets. This office was no different—in fact, it seemed even more barren: only a couple of “I Like Elicker” signs, a detailed map of the Elm City, and canvass sign-up sheets graced the walls.

As soon as I first met with Justin , it became immediately clear that he is not a politician, and this was no ordinary campaign. He’s a brilliant organizer, policy wonk and activist who knows exactly what this city needs to grow.

For the first time in twenty years, voters in this city have a meaningful decision to make when they vote for their next mayor on Nov. 5. Either they’ll chose a career politician beholden to special interests, or a community organizer who’s devoted every ounce of his being to finding solutions for his constituents.

Justin spent that first meeting elucidating policy position after policy position, each carefully thought out to address New Haven’s challenges. Even more impressive, I encountered a campaign that wasn’t just assisted by volunteers; they ran it. Not paid lobbyists, political contractors, or special interests, but ordinary citizens of New Haven.

Some volunteered regularly to work on the campaign’s digital strategy, others helping with communications, and still, even more were aiding our fundraising efforts. Every volunteer in the office was acting like a senior campaign staffer, the true hallmark of a campaign rooted in everyday citizens taking action to elect someone they believe in.

Justin’s plan of attack on the three most important issues to New Haven residents— public safety, job growth and education—is firmly rooted in fact and evidence. On safety, Justin has been at the forefront of pushing data-driven, predictive policing, with community policing a top priority. This past summer, while working on the campaign, I witnessed Justin work with the New Haven

Police Department to take illegal dirt bikers off our streets in a massive sting operation (catalyzed by a constituent complaint). On this note, Justin is considered one of the most responsive elected officials in this city—if someone tells him something he or she wants him to work on, he will do everything in his power to make that happen. I’ve seen him interrupt meetings to take constituents’ calls (on his personal cell phone), and then find solutions to their problems.

On education and job growth, Justin has detailed policies laid out to ensure New Haven thrives. Standing outside the Wexler-Grant School this summer, Justin boldly announced the first of what were ultimately 75 detailed policy solutions released over the course of 75 days leading up to the primary. These solutions, again, are practical, evidence-based approaches to solving the city’s challenges. Throughout the entire campaign, no other candidate released such a detailed (and fact-based) platform. I remember seeing Justin in action at the Varick Memorial AME Zion Church during a mayoral debate on education, where he was the sole candidate prepared with a specific platform to address Elm City’s educational challenges. It was sad to see some of the other candidates go up to the microphone and say nothing more substantive than “we need to invest more in our children.” Each time Justin got up to speak, he brought up specific ideas: to reform early childhood education, implement a no-wrong door policy (parents can enroll their students in educational programs at any school in the district), cut out devastating bureaucracy, and reform the board of education by turning it into a hybrid committee (half appointed, half elected).

More than anything else, this election is a decision between two very different types of leaders. Spending so much time working in New Jersey politics has made me aware of the type of politician Justin Elicker is not: a career politician that is merely a figurehead for powerful special interests, a machine candidate at its finest.

Justin is a 180-degree turn from the type of politician that has plagued New Haven politics for so long. Spend any time with Justin and the warmth and accessibility he exudes becomes clear. For him, being mayor isn’t about checking off a box on a political career resume, but about bringing innovative ideas to a city that desperately

Summer scholars New Yale initiative aims to prepare low-income and first-generation students for university life.

by Isabelle Taft

M

ELINDA BECKER, TC ’15, WAS the first student from her high school in rural Kansas to attend an Ivy League university. The transition to Yale was rockier than she expected. “I felt behind in everything,” she told me. “I took English 114 my freshman year and I’ll never forget getting my first draft back and my teacher was like, ‘This is not at all what I was looking for.’” Becker said her freshman year went well overall, but that she would have benefited from an earlier introduction to Yale’s resources and support systems.

Yale’s admissions office trumpets its outreach to schools in low-income neighborhoods, its holistic reading of applications, and its determination to create a freshman class composed of students with a diverse array of backgrounds and experiences. But the emphasis on diversity means that students come to Yale with vastly different levels of academic preparedness. In order to mitigate this sometimes-bumpy transition, Yale introduced the Freshman Scholars at Yale program, or FSY. After turning down Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania, Frederic Nicholas, SM ’17, was coasting through his last weeks as a senior at Renaissance High School in Detroit when he checked his new Yale e-mail account and found what he called “a very sketchy” message. The e-mail explained that Yale would waive Nicholas’s financial aid summer contribution, pay for his flight to campus, and house him for free in a residential college for five weeks, allowing him to get a headstart on freshman year by taking English 114 as one of 33 participants in the inau-

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The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

gural Freshman Scholars at Yale summer program. “I was like, ‘Sure, Yale, I will trust you and this sketchy email, and I will come early,’” Nicholas said, jokingly recalling the message’s scant details. “It was the best decision I could have made.”

FSY was first conceived five years ago, but at that point the University was reeling from the effects of the 2008 recession and administrators decided to table the relatively costly program.

“The bottom had fallen out of the economy,” Yale College Dean Mary Miller explained in an interview with the Herald. Only this year did the University have the financial wherewithal to

and it pays for the one credit of the course that they’re taking,” Whobrey said.

The faculty committee that had begun planning FSY five years ago reconvened at the beginning of the 2013 spring semester, at which point much of the work to design FSY had already been completed. Faculty and administrators researched bridge programs at other universities, including Princeton and Stanford, which launched its program in 2012. The committee chose to offer English 114 based on in house research finding that students who took the course during their first semester at Yale showed the most positive outcomes in their

men to attend, aiming to bring to campus the first 30 students to respond to the email Miller said Yale chose for FSY students who had not only taken advantage of every resource their community had to offer but also created new opportunities for themselves when those resources were limited. “They have exceeded in many ways the environments of their school, their community, their county, and are now about to be plunged into the resource-rich environment of Yale,” Miller said.

Yale’s new Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, Jeremiah Quinlan, said that when 33 students responded to the invitation, most

“[These students] have exceeded in many ways the environments of their schools, their community, their county, and are now about to be plunged into the resource-rich environment of Yale.”

— Mary Miller, Dean of Yale College

launch FSY as a three-year pilot program, with the possibility of renewing funding for later years.

Dean of Summer Session and Special Programs William Whobrey, who oversaw FSY, said the program costs about $300,000 per summer, for a total pilot program cost of $900,000. “Almost all of it is directly provided to the students in the form of a scholarship, which is to say the money pays for room and board, it pays for their airfare,

writing over the next four years. “The principle reason then that we chose English 114 as the class is that if it’s good in the first semester, it would be even better in the summer before you actually matriculated,” Miller said.

Given limited space, to make the decision of which students to invite to the program, Yale’s admissions office identified potential participants and invited 60 incoming fresh-

within 48 hours, administrators decided FSY could accommodate all of them. Although Quinlan had expected a few students to change their plans and opt out of FSY, all 33 arrived on campus on Mon., July 8.

Kerry Burke-McCloud, MC ’17, said he never considered turning down the offer.

Throughout his college application process, keeping costs down was a primary focus,

and although Yale’s financial aid was generous, he was concerned about making $1,600 to meet his required summer contribution. “It’s cheaper if I go to FSY, and then I’d be able to get accustomed to a new

idea that, given the chance to adjust earlier, students can gain greater benefits from their time at Yale, administrators said.

Quinlan said leveling the playing field is particularly important as Yale seeks to ex-

tion is what can we do? What can we do to improve?” Quinlan wondered.

To meet this need, this summer, as FSY students were experiencing life as college students for the first time, Yale Admissions

“It’s cheaper if I go to FSY, and then I’d be able to get accustomed to a new environment and learn to live on my own.”

— Kerry Burke-McCloud, MC ‘17 environment and learn to live on my own,” Burke-McCloud explained.

During their five weeks on campus, all 33 FSY students lived together in Morse College.

Each was randomly assigned to one of three English 114 sections: American Documentary Film, the Farm Bill, or the American Dream.

They ate meals together, went on field trips to New York City and Manhasset Beach, attended workshops, met with Yale faculty and administrators, and hung out in the Morse buttery.

Although all the FSY participants I spoke to said the academic experience was positive overall, condensing a semester-long course into five weeks was a challenge, particularly because much of the students’ time outside of class was filled with workshops and faculty meetings. Whobrey argued that this intensity helped prepare FSY-ers for their course load at Yale, which he said was the primary goal of the program.

FSY’s overarching motto, said Whobrey, was “shortening time to engagement.” Regardless of their background, students tend to adjust to Yale’s challenges gradually; FSY is built on the

pand its outreach to applicants from lowincome and first-generation backgrounds in response to a March, 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research study that found that most high-achieving, low-income stu-

launched a new outreach supplement for lowincome students. The initiative consists of two new mailings that aim to explain how to apply to Yale and demonstrate that parents in families with annual income under $65,000 are not

logical extension of efforts to reach students from all backgrounds. “We’re so excited about FSY because it takes our initiatives on the admissions end and brings them forward to the actual Yale College experience of these students,” he explained.

On the morning of Aug., 24, the 33 students, now FSY alumni, sat scattered across Woolsey Hall among their new classmates to hear President Peter Salovey’s, GRD ’86, first welcome address. Salovey focused on a theme that was particularly familiar to 11 of the FSY students from their English 114 class: the American Dream. He told the story of his family’s climb up the ladder of social mobility, a tale distinctly similar to the story of Nicholas’s parents immigrating to the United States from Jamaica. Salovey was speaking to an entire

“We’re so excited about FSY because it takes our initiatives on the admissions end and brings them forward to the actual Yale College experience.”

— Jeremiah Quinlan, Dean of Yale Undergraduate Admissions dents do not apply to top-tier universities.

The study found that these students tend to be unaware of financial aid possibilities and to choose schools closer to home. “The research showed us that there are certain thematic cultural things that are preventing these students from applying, and the ques-

expected to contribute to paying their child’s college costs In Yale’s database of 90,000 rising seniors, which includes standardized test scores and biographical information students provide during testing, 16,000 met criteria indicating they’d be eligible for a large financial aid award. Quinlan said he views FSY as the

freshman class and their proud parents, but his message that Yale serves as an equalizer between its students may have been particularly reassuring to those who had already wildly defied social expectations simply by sitting in the wooden chairs at Woolsey Hall.

—graphic by Zachary Schiller YH Staff The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

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Illness Daniel Stern, SY ‘16, looks underground to get an understanding of what’s been plaguing the Hall of Graduate Studies.

T

HE BASEMENT OF THE HALL OF Graduate Studies exhibited symptoms of mesothelioma long before a biopsy was ordered.

First, there was the atrophy of protective tissue: the walls of all the claustrophobic classrooms in the basement became thinner as plaster cracked and peeled to reveal rough patches of lath. Then there was the fever: suffocating heat from the boiler room congested the labyrinthine hallways.

Then there was the bowel obstruction: ceiling pipes in each room, clogged by years of rusting, emitted a soft hum as water and sewage passed through.

But it took two floods, last September, for medical experts to deliver a diagnosis.

Because after the water-stained tile flooring was removed and samples of the building material were extracted and analyzed, the Yale Environmental Health and Safety Department found the culprit: asbestos.

PEOPLE DON’T MUCH LIKE TALKING about the ill old HGS basement, and mostly nod indifferently when they’re asked about it. Even former friends of the basement wonder why it—in its current state of cockroach-infested beige corridors and motion-activated lighting that flickers before defecting—deserves the attention.

“There are better places to write about,” Diane Hovey, an executive assistant to the Graduate School’s Dean Pollard, says with a bemused laugh. “You really couldn’t find a nicer spot?”

When the Hall of Graduate Studies was first built, in 1932, all its levels had polished spaces for classes to meet. But over time, as more and more symptoms of the basement’s illness came to light—a typical asbestos-caused disease, medical experts say, can take over 40 years to present it-

self—fewer and fewer people wanted to associate with the bottom floor.

First to leave were the facilities staff: “The building is much nicer up there,” one facilities operations employee, tells me, pointing up the stairs with his back turned to the rest of the basement. He holds a mop that he’s just picked up off the ground, where it’d been haphazardly left. “So we spend more time maintaining those rooms.”

The Slavic department—who’d once held classes in the basement—left as well, after growing tired of their room with the carpet that had a fusty barn-like smell.

“They moved on from the basement,” administrative assistant Sandra Foley says, “but they left the carpet in the room. We went down there once to try to remove the stench, but we couldn’t, so nobody uses that room anymore.”

Even students began to turn against the basement: against its “terrifying” laundry room, with moldy walls stained by smudges of white paint; against the signs (taped below the thermostats) that demand, in caps-lock, that students not set the temperature below 74 degrees, lest the air conditioner ice up.

“This building is old and being renovated,” Foley informs me. “It’ll be better for everyone when they do that.”

WELL, MAYBE NOT FOR EVERYONE. HASmik Tovmasyan and Sarab Al-Ani are professors in the Arabic department. They wear vibrant bright clothing and have faces that look as young as those of their students.

They’ve kept their offices and classrooms in the HGS basement since they started teaching, and they’ve stuck with it through its diagnosis.

“At the beginning, I thought the basement was scary,” Tovmasyan says, chuck-

ling. “But then I really started to like it. If you ignore the things that make it scary, it’s easier to take the whole class into an imaginary place down here because there are fewer people; it’s calmer.”

Al-Ani and Tovmasyan appreciate those sickly qualities that others prejudge: because the halls of the floor are so easy to get lost in, they can greet late students with an empathetic smile; because the rooms are cramped, they can justify limiting the size of their classes; because there are no windows in the rooms, they can ask students in their language classes, with honest curiosity, about the weather outside.

“I know I felt like a nomad when they made us move last year so they could remove the asbestos,” Al-Ani says. “I felt like I’d lost my home for that semester.”

“I took the year off last year,” Tovmasyan starts, nodding. “And I was missing everyone. Missing the four people in our department, of course, but missing the basement, too! Even missing the pipes.” She looks at Al-Ani, who’s staring back at her with a grin. “It’s like the film Sex in the City—where there are four girls, and then the fifth friend is New York, the city itself.

The basement is the fifth character in our department’s little film here.”

MY GRANDMOTHER, IN OLD AGE, IS DIagnosed with a condition that causes her fingers to become discolored and paralyzed, curled in a pallid claw. And, at first, the whole family looks past it, rallies at her side. She seems still so young and so well and so alive.

But as she gets older and sicker—as she loses more weight and is put on feeding tubes—some members of my family begin to distance themselves from her.

One relative can’t bear to watch my grand-

mother, desperate to taste flavors that her stomach can no longer swallow, chew her food before spitting it back out. Another finds it hard to read my grandmother’s twice-weekly letters, letters that she once had the strength to handwrite, but now instead types. As her state has deteriorated, this is all to say, many people have removed themselves. And I don’t need to tell you that this is tragic.

Consider this, though: my grandmother’s story and the basement’s story (which you probably consider to be less worrisomely tragic) are one and the same.

The asbestos has, technically, been removed from the basement’s pleura. The diseased walls are no longer contagious.

But if you stand in the basement, you will still see its thinning, feel its fever, and hear its bowel obstruction. You will still understand that it is ill. And you will have a choice. If you are like many of us, you will choose you to distance yourself. [e.g.

“When will they paint over the discolored blots on the walls? When will they hire professionals to remove that old smelly carpet? When will they get around to buying a new air conditioner, one that doesn’t “ICE UP’?”] This distance is normal; it is a part of the story for most.

If you are like Al-Ani and Tovmasyan, though, you will grow even closer to the basement. For these ladies, our distance is not a part of the story. As the rest of us wait for the basement to be renovated, these two stay with it. They give to it laughter and use, and they take laughter and use from it, too. They are there for it, even in its illness, while we have abandoned it. And all of a sudden, it seems that it’s us—not the basement—who need the renovating.

—Graphic by Christine Mi YH Staff The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

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Mabel’s room Eric Boodman, BR ‘15, makes an unlikely eight-legged friend in a storage space at the Peabody Museum’s Environmental Science Center.

I

KNOW A LOT ABOUT MABEL BEFORE I ever get to meet her. I know that she is close to 1600 miles from home, and that she might not be completely comfortable in New Haven, even though she did most of her growing up here. I know that she prefers to eat meat, and that she is something of a night owl. And I know that she can be antisocial—aggressive, even—and that, if upset, she might lash out viciously. So it is with some trepidation that I go to visit her for the first time.

She lives on the northern edge of Yale’s campus, near the end of a hallway of locked doors. As I get closer and closer, I begin to picture the ways she might react to my presence. She might try to scare me off by stridulating, rubbing her legs together so that they rasp loudly. She might try to sting me with her urticating hairs, which she can release from her abdomen with a flick. Or, if I have really overstepped my bounds, she might give me a nip, injecting my hand with venom and turning my sinews to soup.

Mabel is a tarantula, a Haitian Brown Bird-Eater. My job as an assistant at the Peabody Museum is to make her feel at home.

MABEL ARRIVED AT THE PEABODY LAST year, in a little plastic container that might be better suited to bringing leftovers for lunch. She was with two fellow Bird-Eaters, each about the size of your thumb-nail. As they grew, Mabel quickly outshone the two males she was with—she would become the biggest and pinkest of the three, with a dusty rose body visible beneath her brown bristles. When I come to visit, she is almost as big as my entire hand.

She is destined to join the leafcutter ants and bearded dragons in the Peabody’s “Discovery Room”, where she will be the centerpiece of a corner devoted to arthropods. In the meantime, she lives in a storage space in the Environmental Science Center.

To most people, this room is an amalgam of nightmares. It is the kind of room where a Stasi interrogation might take place: white walls, low ceiling, bright lights, the incessant hiss of ventilation. At any moment, a dour official of the GDR could enter and begin talking you to death. Alternatively, the arthropods that line the walls could make for excellent instruments of torture. While Mabel and her fellow tarantulas are the only ones that can truly inflict harm, the others are just as fearsome looking. There are red-eyed flightless fruit flies whose maggots squirm on the walls of clear containers. There are tailless whip scorpions that look like huge armored ticks. There are meal worms as fat and long as my little finger, walking sticks with sharp-looking black jaws, and big hissing cockroaches from Madagascar.

But if you can put aside your claustro-, arachno-, and entomophobias for long enough to venture inside, you will realize it is a masterpiece of planning, a collection of perfectly curated little universes. Holly Hopkins, a retired grade-school teacher from Stony Creek, Connecticut, is one of the people responsible for keeping these worlds in balance.

“I was one of those kids who always comes home with fireflies and butterflies, and salamanders in my pocket,” Holly says.

Her mother had to carefully pick through clothes before doing the laundry to make sure that none of Holly’s creatures was clinging in a fold.

Now, she keeps her charges in much cushier environments. Mabel lives in a dollar-store terrarium carpeted with dark wood chips. They give off an earthy, tangy smell, like that of a forest floor, and they create the same kind of rough terrain. There are little dips and gullies where crickets can hide while she is stalking them; there are dimples into which she can nestle when she wants to sleep. Holly also thought Mabel might like

some privacy, and so brought her a toilet paper roll devoid of all its paper: Mabel likes to crawl into the cardboard tube and sit with her eight legs scrunched together, the way you might curl up in a bean bag chair. If she read the Sunday Times, this is where she’d do it.

Mabel’s crickets are purchased every Friday, and brought from the pet store in a clear air-filled plastic bag. They live in a terrarium smaller than hers, decorated primarily with egg cartons. Three times a week, Holly reaches in, shakes off the turd-flecked cartons and sets them on the counter.

The space is nearly empty now, and she can easily reach in to snatch a few crickets one by one. Not only does she ferry them across the room, trapped in a tiny container; she also prepares them, dusting their bodies with “Herptivite: Multivitamins for All Reptiles and Amphibians.” This powder is whitish yellow, and reeks of rotten fish, but apparently does nothing to hinder tarantula appetites.

The crickets themselves are well-fed.

They get fresh organic greens, and Cricket Food Bites, which “gutloads any insect into a power building health food!”

Holly has perfected this feeding ritual down to every last move. When changing Mabel’s water, she even squishes a paper towel into the bowl—it breaks the surface like an iceberg—to make sure that the spider does not fall in and drown.

MABEL DOES NOT STRIDULATE AS I APproach the see-through walls of her home.

She does not urticate, or rear back like a startled horse, as she sometimes has when Holly is trying to feed her. She just sits there.

I had seen none of this when I was told I would be designing the Haitian Bird-Eater display. All I had was Phormictopus cancerides, Mabel’s Latin name.

What does a tarantula want? How was I supposed to know? I was a sheltered Jewish boy from Montreal now living at Yale. What contact had I had with tarantulas? So I did what any undergraduate would do: I consulted Wikipedia. I hoped that its reference section on P. cancerides would point me to more scholarly sources. I found, instead, that it pointed me towards Kovarik Frantisek’s Chov Sklipkanu, a tarantula-keeping manual in Czech, and what seems to be a list of spider species found around the world. The only peer-reviewed paper on this species explains that if you cut off its food supply its metabolism slows.

Jewish Montrealers, on the other hand, have been written about extensively. You can log on to Google Scholar and find out about the risk I have of contracting colorectal cancer, about the way my English differs from that of my waspy neighbors, about the politics of my community institutions.

It was by calling up tarantula-keepers around the world that I learned what I know about Phormictopus cancerides. I learned that coconut mulch, sphagnum moss or peat all would work as alternate substrates but not sand, gravel, or rock. I learned that red or blue lights might show her off better, making the daylight hours look like night.

Beside her terrarium are others, now empty, a sprinkling of dirt or sand the only reminder of their last occupant. There are piles of drinking bowls, the plastic striated to look like algae-slick rock. I cannot help thinking of my own past rooms. They are not so far from here, each furnished by a keeper who knows exactly what I need: a writing desk, a chair, a bed, a dresser, some book shelves. And I wonder what those people would think if they were to peer into my window to watch me for a few minutes.

After a while, Mabel’s legs begin to twitch, and I know it is time to go.

—Graphic by Julia Kittle-Kamp YH Staff The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

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Town of cards Elm City’s new prescription drug discount program expands access to affordable medication

by Aaron Mak

A

s the federal government shutdown is in full effect due to the opposition to President Obama’s signature healthcare law, some New Haven residents are set to see a discount in their prescription drug costs. On Sept. 17th, New Haven announced its plan to join the statewide pool of municipalities that have part-

“Many poor or undocumented folks with chronic illnesses end up skipping doses of medication or not taking prescribed medication at all, which can come back to haunt them.”

—Katherine Aragon, TD ’ 14

However, some remain skeptical about the extent of the benefits provided by the program to the New Haven community. To Dr. Mark Schlesinger, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, the program is decidedly more underwhelming. Dr. Schlesinger, whose research deals with policymakers’ relationship with the public regarding the creation of healthcare laws, counters that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act could render this program unnecessary. Many currently uninsured residents could find that their insurance under the Affordable Care Act provides a discount deal better than the card. Subsequently, as the pool of consumers using the card decreases, so too will the discounts.

nered with ProAct, a private pharmaceutical company, to implement a discount prescription drug program to extend coverage to its uninsured residents.

According to the New York Times, in 2012, almost one in two Americans without prescription drug coverage failed to obtain necessary medication because it was too expensive. This Elm City initiative aims to both broaden access to prescription drugs for thousands of the city’s poor, and extend municipally-funded discounts to undocumented immigrants living in New Haven. Moreover, some of the city’s lower middle-class resi-

PROACT INITIALLY LAUNCHED THIS same program in 2005 in New York.

Since implementing the program, they have filled over four million prescriptions and saved residents over 140 million dollars. Terrence O’Neill, the Discount Card Program Manager at ProAct, told the Herald, “Medical costs are really expensive, especially prescriptions. We found a way for residents to obtain their prescriptions at a cheaper cost. So we worked with our pharmacy network to go into counties and municipalities to allow residents to live a healthier lifestyle.” The program then grew to cover 51 counties of New York,

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The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

dents, who do not qualify for government subsidized healthcare, have the potential to benefit most from the new initiative.

From September onwards, Elm City residents with a USPS address will receive a card in the mail giving them a 45 percent discount on certain prescription medications. The card is also now available on

ProAct’s website for residents who want to redeem this discount now or who lack a permanent address. ProAct is a Syracuse-based company that primarily manages pharmacy benefits for employers that use self-insurance through buying generic medicines in bulk and offering them at discount prices.

The only information required for an individual to receive the benefits of a ProAct card is a legal name and current city of residence.

New Haven collects this information about its residents and sends it to ProAct, who mails the cards. The card provides discounts on generic brand medications, in addition to

Lasik surgery, hearing procedures, and prescription lenses. Residents can also use the card to receive a discount on pet prescriptions for drugs that treat both humans and animals, such as the epilepsy medication Phenobarbital.

Currently, the lack of regular access to prescription medication creates a serious

problem for many New Haven residents.

“Many poor or undocumented folks with chronic illnesses end up skipping doses of medication or not taking prescribed medication at all, which can come back to haunt them when their body simply cannot regulate itself anymore,” said Katherine Aragon, TD ’14. Aragon is the moderator of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), a Yale student organization dedicated to social justice and New Haven community empowerment that has advocated in favor of free community health care.

and ultimately reached cities in New Jersey, Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Nevada.

The Connecticut Council of Municipalities (CCM) discovered ProAct in 2012 through the New York County Association, the first state to agree public-private partnership. After looking at other providers of similar programs, CCM ultimately decided to sign on with ProAct because of the free offer. In September, 2012, CCM invited Connecticut municipalities to participate, and now 105 out of the 169 use the card, New Haven being the largest. “This program has saved Connecticut residents over 1.4 million dollars in prescription costs. It has been a win-win situation for both Connecticut residents and pharmacies,” said Gina Calabro, Director of Member Services and Marketing at CCM. ProAct comes at no cost to both card claimants and the City of New Haven. ProAct pays for the printing of the cards and provides customer service for clients with questions about the program. Although ProAct does not financially profit from a relationship with New Haven, O’Neill said that they are excited by the prospect of building a relationship with the New Haven city government.

The city currently has no self-insured employee prescription plans, and O’Neill hopes ProAct would be hired should the city implement a plan in the near future.

Now that the card has gone into effect, all residents of New Haven have access

to its benefits, including individuals who have personal prescription drug cards— they can present their current card along with a ProAct card to pharmacies to see

Ideally, the use of these cards will lead to a profit bump for local pharmacies. Despite the reduced cost, participating pharmacies expect to see a substantial rise in

in the right direction, it may not be the most effective way to promote long-term health reform in New Haven. Schlesinger states, “[The ProAct card] is a mildly use-

“This program has saved Connecticut residents over 1.4 million dollars in prescription costs.“ —Gina Calabro, CCM Director of Member Services and Marketing which offers a better deal on medication.

But who ProAct benefits most are the New Haven residents who tend to slip through the government’s cracks, said Maggie Zhou, SM ’15, Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Medicine and Law. “People who are very, very poor can usually afford drugs,” she said. “[The problem] is just that awkward gap when you’re not covered

by Medicaid either because your state can’t afford it, you’re just right over the [income] threshold, you don’t have children, or you’re male.”

The poorest Connecticut citizens already have access to programs like Medicaid and Husky Healthcare, a state government funded healthcare program for Connecticut teens and adolescents. But citizens with moderately higher incomes who do not qualify for these programs still struggle with affording prescription drugs.

the number of New Haven residents buying pharmaceuticals, ultimately increasing profits. Kawa Chan, owner of East Rock Pharmacy, a small, independent community pharmacy on Orange Street, predicts an increase in sales based on his experience with other discount drug programs.

Further, he hopes that this will be an opportunity for his pharmacy to give back to the community: “Whatever we can do for the neighborhood to cut down the cost of medications, we’ll gladly do it,” he said. An employee of Berney’s Pharmacy near YaleNew Haven Hospital asked to remain anonymous, but told the Herald that this program is harmless or possibly ineffective. “People will bring the card in and we can always see what happens,” she said. “[These sorts of cards] usually don’t change anything.”

Both Schlesinger and Zhou argue that although the ProAct card represents a step

ful program. It doesn’t do harm. It might deflect people from doing better things like buying affordable insurance, but it’s clearly better than leaving people off on their own.” Zhou proposed that a more effective way to promote a health-conscious city would be to educate individuals about nutrition and exercise--“to make sure that people don’t get sick in the first place,” she said.

WHILE THE GOVERNMENT IS LOCKED in a stalemate over funding the Affordable Care Act, New Haven has found a bandaid solution to control healthcare costs, the sustainability of which has yet to be seen. Only once the ACA is in full effect will the relevance of ProAct be tested and possibly rendered obsolete. But it’ll work for now.

—Graphic by Claire Thomas The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

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CULTURE

The art of being a senior

You’ve seen them in Book Trader. Maybe you’ve seen their works in Green Hall. This week, Culture puts names to pieces with an inside look at six senior Art majors and their distinct creative flavors.

Wesley Chavis Clumps of soil and melting wax are molded within the hollow between the two palms of Wesley Chavis, TC ’14. Another clump, another, and another. “I picked wax because it’s fleshy.” Forty clumps, 50, then 60.

“Almost alive, like humanoids,” waiting to awaken. Over 100 clumps.

“Muttering, talking to each other.” Two hundred. “Work that hearkens back to the beginnings.” Four hundred and eighty. “Primitive people trying to find ways to honor God.” Six hundred clumps of soil and wax.

“A repetitive motion, like meditation.”

Chavis calls them “little physical prayers.” Though concentrating in painting, he strays away from “a precious approach to art” and instead follows his visceral instincts—whether to painting, digital media or the earth. With this piece, he’s woven a narrative through roots, soil and the human form.

“I wanted to create a metaphor for a story around my faith,” Chavis said of his reenactment of Man’s creation. “I wanted something I could physically grasp on to.”

—Edward Dong —image courtesy Wesley Chavis

Jen Mulrow Pale smoke drifts from half-eaten birthday cakes; ripples gently sway across a pond; balloons languidly brush the ceiling. What Jen Mulrow, DC ’14, captures in an instant as she crouches under the dark cloak of the four-by-five view camera is “photographic-reality”—the vivid imagery of those fleeting moments of tension, tranquility and melancholy that unexpectedly strike us. “People around me are always trying to put their best images on social media outlets,” Mulrow explains. “I want to explore the vulnerability and melancholy behind the scene.” Pastels seem to have a trademark presence in her art. From bright streamers that flutter silently down from a ceiling; pink ribbons that wind intriguingly around a brutally snapped chair, Mulrow elaborates, “These palettes of pastel colors are my interpretations of dreams and memories and fantasy. Who knows; maybe it’s just a subconscious thing.” Photography, too, has always been the natural choice for Mulrow’s mode of expression. “It’s the best means I have to understanding my disappointments and dreams.” Just as her photography blurs the line between dream and reality, so she remains undecided and playful over her next steps. “I only know I’ll be taking photographs. It’s my voice.”

—Yupei Guo —image courtesy Jen Mulrow

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The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

Hannah Flato “I took a trip to Home Depot, and I fell in love.” Hannah Flato, DC ’14 and former design editor for the Herald, has spent much of this fall working with a medium that most artists haven’t explored: AstroTurf.

Flato, an Art and Humanities double major, roots her work in the topography of the Texas Hill Country where she grew up. The turf hangs tapestry-like from a wall, or forms a cavernous boulder, or becomes a surprisingly plush lining of a sleeping bag. Her senior project will revolve around this concept of the “plasticity of landscape,” but on a larger scale. “I’d love to build towards a massive eight-by-twelve tapestry where you think, ‘What is this?’” While, for Flato, her work evokes nostalgia for the hilly, grass-carpeted landscape of her hometown, “The fun thing about place and nature is that people always put where they’re coming from into it,” she said. “I’m into that. I like that.”

—Charlotte Weiner —image courtesy Hannah Flato

Larissa Pham “If you want to know about my art, you should probably just Gchat me,” said Larissa Pham, CC ‘14, closing her chat windows and Twitter tab to flip her laptop around so I can see her portfolio. Her most recent works are oil paintings of photographs of what she calls “digital ephemera.” They are pictures from her iPhone, she explains, “the stuff you accumulate that are pretty mundane, artistically.” We scroll through lurid images of naked pictures, dinners, mirror shots of haircuts, screenshots of Gchat conversations that overlap like windows on a computer screen.

It’s all there—the performativity, bright colors, weird cropping, and bad composition of iPhone photos—all unabashedly intimate, and somehow, far from mundane. When I mentioned my discomfort with selfies, Pham smiled. “I consider them acts of critical resistance,” she said, followed by a moment of silence that brings to mind those ellipses that show up while someone is typing a response. “Broadening our definition of what we consider worthy art is important,” she added.

—Justine Appel YH Staff —image courtesy Larissa Pham

Martina Crouch Martina Crouch, CC ‘14, spent her past summer in Berlin, where she was “mainly there for the junk shops and the things you would find in them.” She brought back with her a series of impressions: she photographed mannequins (“people that were not people and their disjointedness”); she bought seven clown figurines, one of which she accidentally shattered while dancing and inspired a small installation—“a meditation on what it meant to ‘step on clowns,’ to step on the ‘small incidents of happiness’ in life,” she explained.

Lately, Crouch has been thinking about the future of her career as an artist. “Ultimately, I think I’m headed to a very exclusive world,” she told me—namely, the world of museums and galleries. “I want to be as inclusive as possible right now. I’m giving access to everything.”

In her most recent work, this inclusivity means an open questioning of the three parts of the artistic process: “the source, the artist, the audience.” Using photographs of a deceased woman named Marion Christ that she bought at a junk shop, she curates a narrative for someone she has not met and never will meet. “I’m bringing her back as an icon,” she told me. “Some people might find this very disgusting,” she added, highly aware of the dynamics

of power between her as an artist and Marion as a nonconsenting subject.

In a contrasting series of pieces, she’s offering her skills as an artist to strangers who have no prior art experience. She called the project “Building relationships to make something with them or through them,” and they through her. In this series, her aim is to mediate art rather than create it, letting these strangers come through more than she, the artist, does. “It’s my very specific attempt to be invisible,” she explained. It’s an attempt to recapture the feeling she had walking through Berlin’s stores and homes—a feeling of “traveling through someone’s brain.”

—Kevin Su YH Staff

Zach Bell Zach Bell, PC ’14, credits the artist Matthew Barney, BR ’89, as his inspiration. Barney, while at Yale, “strapped himself into different contraptions in Payne Whitney and tried to make drawings.” Bell explained that his own work “has a lot to do with effort, and trying really hard to do something.” That something, whether video, photography, painting, or sculpture, seeks to “construct a different world from repeated forms.” This year, Bell will create a series of telephone booth-shaped boxes large enough to fit one person. Inside, one of Bell’s videos will be projected onto a surface in the box’s interior. “If you’re in the Louvre trying to look at the Mona Lisa, you can’t travel through time in the same way that you would if you were totally alone,” Bell rationalized.

By emphasizing isolation, Bell hopes to build a playground not unlike Matthew Barney’s contraptions. But unlike Barney, these playful experiences are tailored for his viewers—who will walk into booths of singlesized “alternate realities.”

—Charlotte Weiner —image courtesy Zach Bell

The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

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REVIEWS Crystal blue precision

by Erica Leh

T

wo episodes short of the finale, Walt, the chemistry teacher-turned-drug dealer anti-hero of Breaking Bad, rolls a cash-filled barrel across the barren desert to the whimsical tune of “Take My True Love By The Hand,” by The Limeliters. In classic Breaking Bad fashion, the light-hearted music plays off the darkness of the shoot-out of the previous scene, with the lyrics adding to the initial air of irony. “Times are getting hard, boys, money’s getting scarce,” croon The Limeliters as Walt pushes nine million dollars across the scorching plains of To’hajiilee.

In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, Walt wheels the barrel by the pants he threw off in the very first episode of the series. That pair of dusty beige trousers harkens back to one of the first scenes of the show, when a pants-less and guilt-ridden Walt records on video what he believes may be his last words to his family. The pants reappear to give us perspective, to remind us of Walt’s ever-continuing transformation and to force us to compare Walt with his past self, knowing that he had just recorded another video, a false confession meant to absolve him of blame.

The scene also draws parallels to when two DEA agents are watching security footage of—unbeknownst to them—Walt and his accomplice Jesse as they struggle to carry a heavy barrel of methylamine—a key ingredient in methamphetamine—from a warehouse. One laughs as he yells at the two dark figures on the screen: “Hey, try rolling it, morons! It’s a barrel. It rolls.” Reflecting on this scene, the audience now sees it through a different lens; ultimately, those “morons” indirectly cause the agents’ deaths.

The barrel-rolling scene reveals a large part of why Breaking Bad is so highly regarded by its devoted followers: its meticulous attention to detail. At times, every sentence of dialogue seems to have a double meaning, every object a symbolic significance, every frame a parallel.

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The Yale Herald (Oct. 04, 2013)

While it has received major critical acclaim for its precision, however, Breaking Bad, isn’t alone in this; period dramas like Mad Men pay fine attention to every prop and piece of costume, while comedies like Arrested Development keep a log of running jokes that transform casual viewers into cult followers.

When show-runners put that level of commitment into their work, it enables audiences to become dedicated to the point of obsession. With the advent of DVR and online streaming, viewers can watch, re-watch, blog, and Tweet about every shot and still.

It now takes a matter of minutes before any Walt-Jesse moment becomes a series of gifs on Buzzfeed. Sites like Television Without Pity create communities for TV addicts to muse on episodes and speculate on future plot twists. PoetryGenius (a spin-off of RapGenius) allows fans to transcribe and mark up entire scripts of episodes, highlighting repeated lines and subtle callbacks.

Breaking Bad was perhaps the most successful of this current crop of cable shows at perfecting this level of meticulousness to create a deeper understanding between its audience and its characters. Viewers will notice that Walt, for example, assumes the quirks of his victims after he kills them: he becomes careful to cut off his sandwich crusts, to place a towel beneath his knees before vomiting, and to ask for his drinks on the rocks. The show’s creator Vince Gilligan is no less kind to other characters (supposedly, he once spent hours choosing the perfect shade of gray for one character’s shirt), constructing them so that they seem to exist off-screen, shaped by a past that the viewer only catches rare glimpses of. Because of this, the audience becomes so involved and invested in the outcome of the characters whose personas have been so carefully crafted, that they happily spend hours online discussing their predictions and sympathies and tune in religiously to prove themselves right.

What distinguishes the Breaking Bad series finale from other series endings is not that it was especially mind-blowing (in fact, many other episodes in the series were far more shocking). The beauty instead lies in how appropriately natural—predictable even—the ending was within the logic of the universe and characters so painstakingly created by the show’s writers. By the finale, it seems as though Walt’s character is so fully-formed that it is he, not the writers, who dictates his fate. Everything about the final scene, from the shoot-out that the season has been building up to since Walt opened his trunk in the first scene to Walt’s last stroke of the chemistry tools, feels like a fitting reward for loyal followers of the show. It is moments such as these, packed with details like the parallel shots of Jesse and Walt meeting and departing, the way Walt’s age is written in bacon on his birthdays, and of course, the khaki pants, that will keep fans watching the show for years to come and finding something new to obsess over every time.

Music: Deltron 3030 Deltron 3030, a hip-hop group composed of rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, producer Dan the Automater, and turntablist Kid Koala, released their self-titled debut album in 2000. This concept album depicted the heroes Deltron Zero and Automater fighting the evil corporations that had taken over the human race in the year 3030. With its intricate rhymes and its forward-thinking production, I would not have been surprised if someone had told me that the album was actually an artifact from the future.

Thirteen years later, Deltron 3030 has returned with a second album, Event II. The story of the second album follows our two protagonists again. This time it is 10 years after the events of the first. In Deltron 3030 the concept was simply a jumping off point for Del’s lyrics as he loosely formed a plot that he would come back to every now and then. However, the narrative is the entire focus in Event II, which features Del much more embedded in the world he has created. His consistently complex rhymes, which he delivers in his patently smooth flow, paint images of the future that are more vivid than an IMAX screen, or whatever they watch in the year 3040.

The sequel is admittedly less revolutionary than its predecessor, as in 2013 there is a place for nerds in rap that didn’t exist in 2000 thanks to the Nerdcore movement pioneered by MF Doom, Talib Kweli, and Del and then continued by OFWGKTA, Childish Gambino, and even Kanye West. The album still sounds like it’s from outer space, with robotic buzzes and techy beeps serving as the crux of beats (most notably in the epic song “The Return”, which features Del’s rhymes soaring over what sounds like whirrs of an interstellar transmission). But with the influx of electronic production in rap, Dan the Automater’s melding of acoustic and electronic sounds are not revolutionary anymore. So while Event II is definitely from the future, it’s from one that sounds closer to us than it did in 2000.

—Otis Blum YH Staff

Food: Maison Mathis Maison Mathis, the hotly anticipated Belgian café and bakery on Broadway, is a luminous space. The glorious autumn afternoon sun floods the restaurant through floor-to-ceiling windows, shining even brighter against exposed pipes painted white and dainty wooden furniture arranged thoughtfully throughout the café. The sweet smell of freshly baked bread, a handwritten menu, the muted tunes of indie pop, and the attractive staff in pristine white t-shirts all make for a beautiful, clean, and awfully elegant aesthetic.

Unfortunately, the café’s food fails to live up to its supposedly Belgian origin, which is meant to blend French quality with German quantity. The cuisine of Maison Mathis has neither; the food is disappointing overall, and the portions are small for the price you’re asked to pay. Their signature item, the Belgian waffle ($6-$8), begs for fine-tuning; the surface was pleasantly crusty, but the insides remained undercooked and gloopy. The farm chicken salad with pesto ($8) was cold, dry, and generally unpleasant. Only the gruyere croque ($8) was moderately tasty, but it was also little more than an open-faced grilled cheese.

The space is gorgeous, though, and a visit for a casual study break or date with a drip coffee ($2.25) and a small cream cheese brioche ($2.50) could certainly be enjoyable. Just remember in that case, you’re paying more for the floating sunflower petals at your table than you are for your food.

—Lucas Sin YH Staff

Music: Lorde Against all odds, Lorde is poised to be a pop star. The 16-year-old New Zealander combines sparse electro beats with smart lyrics refined beyond her years; her goth aesthetic is indifferent to trends; she has said that if she could, she’d stop doing interviews altogether (too awkward, she says, and too shy). Nothing about her screams chart-topper. But when her first single, the absurdly catchy luxe-life takedown “Royals,” broke the iTunes top 10, it became clear that Lorde was on a path towards the very lifestyle that her hit song tries to subvert.

Most of her debut album Pure Heroine has Lorde coming to grips with her fears of death, of fame, and of growing up. The opening track “Tennis Court,” a hazy meditation on imminent celebrity, is a fitting introduction. In “Ribs,” the ambient track that follows the cutting minimalism of “Royals,” Lorde’s typically low, husky voice sounds panicky and high as she repeats, over and over, “I’ve never felt more alone / it feels so scary getting old.”

What’s most exciting about Pure Heroine is the of-the-moment groove that runs through every track. Lorde’s lyrics are unmistakably young, but her beats are grimy and her voice is mature. Album standout “White Teeth Teens” has a driving drumbeat that begs to be put on loop. “Team,” a love note to everyone hailing from “cities you never see onscreen,” would sound trite on any other album, but encased in soft, looping buzzes and a restrained beat, it’s moving and bittersweet.

Making nuanced art within the frame of radio-friendliness is difficult, but Lorde makes dark, complicated pop sound effortless. She might be an unlikely heroine, but if Lorde is pop’s new queen bee, I’m ready to bow down.

—Olivia Valdes

Staff list:

Here’s what we’ve been up to What we’ve been saying: “word.” “This weather is amazing!” Word. “Fuck midterms.” Word. There is really no context in which this word does not apply.

Word. Your friends might think it’s annoying at first but trust me it really really isn’t. Word.

What we’ve been listening to: “Ego” by Beyonce. Leave it to Queen Bey to make having an ego totally okay. And by totally okay, I mean she makes me feel like I should have an ego like that. Which I obviously shouldn’t, so I’m getting conflicting messages and it’s messing with my head.

Where we’ve been studying: elevators. I couldn’t pick a floor in the stacks so I just stuck around for the ride.

What we’re wearing: underwear. Sometimes.

What we’ve been doing: adding emojis to our contacts. Some people are just snakes! And others are just chickens! And then some are so darn cute and actually deserving of the monkey sequence! Just do it. Calling your mom will never be the same.

—Lara Sokoloff YH Staff

The Yale Herald (Oct. 04, 2013)

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BULLBLOG BLACKLIST Say what you wanna say, not what everyone else said.

This is stupid looking, but we can’t find a way around it. (:()

Give us something to work with.

SOMESOM

Smiley/frowny faces in parentheses

When we were 15 we were also at Yale Law School.

But he was an asshole and wanted to hang out with the older kids.

Allusions

That it is truly unpredictable which Instas will get over 40 likes and which won’t

40 years too young for that, but then why do I not have a fever?

TA

When your friend’s mom sends you a LinkedIn invitation

Ronan Farrow’s Wikipedia Page

Hot flashes

Just make sure to also add your son.

Tap to snooze on iOS7 Hand, foot and mouth disease Friends without midterms

Really should not be this easy to snooze.

The name alone makes us hurt.

Why don’t you just got fuck yourselves? Oh wait. You can because you have the time to.

The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

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