TYH LVI 6

The Yale Herald Volume LVI, Number 6 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Oct. 11, 2013

From the staff Everyone needs a safe space—someplace where you can be totally comfortable with your thoughts, to process them or let them all go. Maybe that’s a chair in the corner of your room, maybe it’s a certain library, maybe it’s someplace on your run to East Rock. Mine is the Grove Street Cemetery. Really it doesn’t matter where it is, so long as your personal universe slows down when you’re there.

Those places are particularly important this Friday, because let’s be real, this week sucked. Midterms and papers reached the first high-water mark of the year, and all that academic negativity trickled down and contaminated the rest of life at Yale. Everyone was tired and crabby, dining hall food tasted worse than usual, and the sky stayed grey throughout. But when you go to your safe space, none of that matters. You’re comfortable, you’re where you belong.

But what happens when you try to institutionalize a safe space? Alisha Jarwala, PC ’15, offers an answer this week as she explores cultural houses at Yale. It’s an important look into how having a space to call your own shapes and shelters identity.

Of course, a personal haven isn’t the only way to find comfort. Meredith Redick, ES ’14, offers up her opinion on how Peter Salovey can foster a better environment at Yale for mental health. Alessandra Roubini, JE ’16, investigates comfort of a different kind, looking into new e-cigarette research at the Yale Medical School.

And as always, the Herald still offers up the usual bag of goodies. Will Theiss, BK ’16, chats with Nancy Kuhl, the Beinecke’s Curator of Poetry, Sarah Holder, SY ’17, talks about brothel law in Connecticut, and Will Adams, CC ’15, dives into the controversy surrounding Miley Cyrus.

After you read it all, take a moment to go where you feel safest. You’ll be glad you did. And if you don’t feel like you don’t have that place at Yale, remember there are only eleven days before fall break. Just hold on, we’re going home.

Keep breathing, Colin Groundwater Online editor

The Yale Herald

Volume LVI, Number 6 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Oct. 11, 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 Christie Ramsaran YH Staff

2

The Yale Herald (Oct. 4, 2013)

IN THIS ISSUE

COVER 12 Alisha Jarwala, PC ‘15, explores

Yale’s prime real estate— cultural houses­—and considers the evolving role they play in campus life.

VOICES 6

7

8

FEATURES

Will Theiss, BK ‘16, sits down with Nancy Kuhl, Curator of Poetry, to discuss the unique capacity Beinecke has for illuminating the life story of its rare books and manuscripts.

10

Margaret Schultz, ES ‘16, taps us into the inner workings of her mind, memory, and Yale Farm work schedule through her favorite quotations and almond desserts.

Jacob Osborne, DC ‘16, bikes through New Haven’s Edgewood park and examines the park’s recent public safety problems along the way.

16

Alessandra Roubini, JE ‘16, sheds light on Yale’s new federally funded nicotine research center, which aims to reveal the mysteries behind new electronic and flavored cigarettes.

OPINION: Jesse Schreck, CC ’15, shares his process to embracing queerness. Meredith Redick, ES ’14, discusses why Salovey is uniquely capable of dealing with Yale’s mental health culture.

REVIEWS

CULTURE 18

Alicia Lovelace, BR ‘17, ruminates on a screening of The Act of Killing. Sarah Holder, SY ‘17, busts the myths surrounding brothel laws and off-campus housing.

20

Will Adams, CC ’15, looks through the buzz for Miley Cyrus’ artistic evolution. Also: Gravity, Sleigh Bells, Panic! at the Disco, and our weekly staff list.

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

3

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

CREDIT/D/FAIL Cr:

Mandarin oranges Canned fruit is normally janky – remember those slimy, under-ripe peaches from elementary school fruit cups? But mandarin oranges are my jam. And on two rare and joyous occasions over the past two weeks, they have appeared in the salad bars. If you haven’t taken advantage of the opportunity yet, I encourage you to carpe the shit out of that diem and find some way to incorporate them into your eating experience. They’re delicious in the salads they’re intended for (chicken+dried cranberries+walnuts+goat cheese? Yes.) But they also just taste great on their own, so don’t be afraid to shamelessly pile them onto your plate sans-lettuce. Just keep in mind that they will leak all over everything else you’re eating, so maybe put them in a separate dish. No need to thank me for that advice.

F:

D: Study room squatters This is it, the vaguely defined “midterm season.”

If you haven’t started doing work by now, you probably should be—and by the looks of it, a lot of you have (A+, kiddos). The distribution of library space now is just not what it used to be. Remember when you could just take your pick of whatever quadrant of upholstered chairs you wanted? Those days are over. Now, if you and your posse of peers are looking for a place to study socially, you may have to consider splitting up. Or, if you can’t possibly bear to part ways, you can try reserving a study room, which presents its own series of complications. Even when you’re on top of it and think to reserve the room days in advance, it’s likely that it will be occupied by the time you get there. And unless you’re the type of person who gets off on flaunting authority, this can be awkward. After all, do you really deserve the space more? You did reserve the spot, but maybe the other group is larger than yours, or has a more pressing exam, or just generally more deserving of the space?!? Maybe they’re older than you. Maybe they just look really, really focused. No matter what the circumstances are, it can be hard to ask someone to leave. Though it might not completely ruin your day/night/study sesh, it’s just that kind of annoyance we all really don’t need this time of year.

4

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

Dwindling daylight hours Unless you’re one of those chipper dudes who call themselves “morning people,” you’re probably quite familiar with the essential truth that waking up early blows. And the only thing worse than waking up early is waking up when it’s literally still dark out. There is nothing more demoralizing than glancing out the window as you try feebly to drag your sorry ass out of bed, only to find that even the sun itself can’t muster up the energy to rise and shine. I’ve had this experience a number of times lately, and it’s finally hit me that I’m about to spend the next couple of months getting colder and sadder while the sun is off gallivanting somewhere in Australia, I bet.

—Emily Patton —graphics by Christine Mi YH Staff

BY THE

NUMBERS

BOOM/BUST

TYNG CUP STANDINGS!

INCOMING: Flannel shirts The bright reds, yellows, and oranges of the leaves stick out against the dark and cooling autumn air. But let’s be real—are they really sticking out? No, because they blend perfectly with the warm colors of our fall flannels. Now that we’ve officially entered that awkward period when it’s a little too cold for shorts but not quite jacket weather, it’s time to channel your inner-lumberjack/mountaineer. So next time you’re getting ready in the morning and you become flustered trying to acclimate your outfit choice to the unpredictable autumn weather, remember with relief your autumn body armor: your plaid flannel.

­

OUTGOING: Excessive coffee drinking Hours of reading, highlighters and Post-Its. Study groups, study breaks, studying. Late nights staring at a computer screen and bottomless cups of coffee. It’s been real, midterms, but it’s really, really time for us to move on. As the remnants exams begin to straggle away, this campus slowly returns to a more equilibrated state between pressurized and laissez faire. Many of us are now down to our typical single cup of coffee in the morning rather than the hourly prescription our syllabi have forced upon us these past few weeks. We put down our study guides, term sheets and mugs for now and silently hope that the next “incoming” will be some well-deserved sleep.

—Emma Speer

TOP FIVE

#

Tips for the Inaugural Ball

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

217 184.5 165.5 157 153.5 134 129 126.5 119.5 115.5 102 56

INDEX 5 Number of original categories of Nobel Prizes: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.

555

Number of Nobel Prizes awarded since it was first granted in 1901.

44

5 4 3 2 1

Take Linda Lorimer to Toad’s. Or get classy with it and hit up Lilly’s Pad. Every event leading up to the ball is an excuse to pregame. See you at the YCBA Tea time with a flask.

Dance battle your TA. But like don’t win because that midterm’s not going to grade itself.

Twerk with Mary Miller. Twerk Mary Mary Mary.

Add a selfie video of you pinning the mustache on the Salovey to your Snapchat story.

— Josh Isenstein

Number of Nobel Prizes awarded to women.

3 Number of Nobel Prizes turned down by their recipients.

50 Number of Nobel Prizes awarded to Yale graduates and faculty members.

25 Age of the youngest laureate thus far.

Sources: 1) 2) 3) http://www.history.com/news/7things-you-may-not-know-about-the-nobel-prizes 4) and 5) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ about/amounts/ ­— Carly Lovejoy

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

5

SITTING DOWN WITH NANCY KUHL

by Will Theiss YH Staff Michael Marsland

In addition to co-editing Phylum Press, a small poetry publisher, and being the author of two chapbooks and a collection of poetry, Nancy Kuhl is the Curator of Poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library. This week she sat down with the Herald to discuss what it means to curate a manuscript and rare book library as well as some of the unique resources the Beinecke has for writers, researchers, and book lovers.

YH: Can you talk a little bit about your history at the Beinecke, and why you first wanted to work there in the first place?

NK: I’ve been at the Beinecke for about eleven and a half years, and I started here as an assistant curator in American literature.

My background is in American literature and American poetry, and I’m also a poet myself—I have an MFA in poetry in addition to other graduate work in literature. And I have a Master’s in Library Science. So my work here has evolved over time. When the curator of the collection retired, the director, Frank Turner, decided to divide the duties of the collection by genre. So I then became the Curator of Poetry, and I have a colleague who’s the Curator of American Prose and Drama. We work very closely together, and the distinction is often unclear—obviously many American writers write many things. But it gives us a way to think about organizing the collections, and so that’s when I became the Curator of Poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature, which I’ve been now for a few years.

The Yale Collection of American Literature is one of several main collections here. There’s also the Yale Collection of Western Americana, which is an historical collection about westward expansion, primarily, the Yale Collection of German Literature, the Collection of Modern European Books and Manuscripts. These are all kind of broad categorical areas, and my colleagues and I all have principal areas of responsibility, but there are many areas of overlap.

YH: Can you talk about some of your favorite pieces or favorite time periods within the collection?

NK: The Yale Collection of American Literature includes the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African-American Arts and Letters. It is one of the most important collections of its kind anywhere in the world, and it’s a very dynamic and exciting collection to work with. There are many engaged, interested scholars and students using the collection, so that’s a particularly exciting. It includes the archives of terrific writers and poets like Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson. And because it’s articulated as a collection of “Arts and Letters,” it also includes a lot of not strictly literary material, but dance, for instance, and political movements, and where politics and the arts intersect and interact, and that’s a favorite part of the collection for me.

The other great holdings in American literature and American poetry specifically are in the modernist period­—so we have the papers of, for instance, the poets H.D., Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy, and many others. Gertrude Stein’s papers are here, which is a collection I love to work with and did an

6

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

exhibit from last year, and so that’s a wonderful sort of historic literary period, but it’s still a very reachable past, it’s still a very attainable kind of past, it’s not the distant past. In many ways it feels very much present and alive, and part of what I mean by that is—you know—we are still building our collections, and the modernist period is a period where things are still in peoples’ attics and steamer trunks, you know. So that’s a period where I do get phone calls from time to time, where someone says, you know, ‘So I know my grandmother knew Langston Hughes, but she just passed away, and I found this box of correspondence — would the library be interested?’ And so that’s a wonderful period where we have much to look at and think about, but we also are finding new things all the time. So I love that about that period and those collections.

YH: What do you think an undergraduate or researching scholar can gain from specifically these types of documents, beyond the published poem?

NK: Well that’s exactly right. There are at least two ways I would suggest a young scholar start thinking about using the kinds of materials in the Beinecke. On the one hand, if one is interested in the writing process and the creative process, what we mean by “inspiration,” then looking at writers’ manuscripts and the many different things we might call manuscripts gives us a really interesting way of thinking about the creative process and the writing life. One can look at a writer’s process through the development of a single text through a writer’s process. That’s a wonderful thing. One can also see how a writer is interacting with other writers, with an editor, with a friend who’s a poet, or a partner who’s a poet. A manuscript can have multiple layers of notes and changes from one or many annotators, so one can begin to understand something about how a writer, editor, or friend is interacting with the text over time. Alternatively, if one were interested in the text itself and how a text operates in the world, not so much how it came to be, but how it came to be read and understood once it left the writer’s hands, then looking at first editions, publicity materials, clippings, early reviews, all of those things can give a sense of how something that we now take for granted as a great piece of American literature came to be understood as a masterpiece.

YH: For instance?

NK: For instance I meet often with English 127 classes, that’s the Introduction to American Literature, and most of those classes read Moby Dick, which you can look at over time and see different ways the book is published and received. It was a kind of a failure when it was first published. Herman Melville was already at the time a popular writer, but this was a real departure for him, and so it wasn’t as well received. When the students come to visit the library, I show them a first American edition, which is significantly different from the first British edition, which came out around the same time. At this time in American literature, you know, we’re talking about the middle of the 19th century, Ameri-

can literature was still a new idea: what was it going to mean to be ‘American?’ What made a literature an American literature?

It was in development, many readers and critics in the States were looking to Great Britain to see how something was received there, what did their critics think. And so the reviews that came out of Moby Dick there have something to tell us about how it was read here. And then, you know, the book falls out of print, and it never really catches on, but then begins to be recuperated at the turn of the century, when people like D.H. Lawrence and Carl Van Vechten—and others, there are many people who are involved in this—but different people began to return to this text and become interested in it and then it starts to be picked up.

By the mid ’20s and early ’30s the book has been reprinted and is coming into its own, but by the ’40s it’s being printed in various different abbreviated versions. When we refer to Moby Dick, there’s an idea that we’re talking about a particular text, but the truth is that a text affects a culture in many different ways, at many different times. And so a library like the Beinecke can give you access to some of those points of contact with the readership and criticism that don’t necessarily have a one-to-one connection with the published initial first edition, or with what you read when you pick up the Norton Critical Edition.

YH: You touched on this a little bit, but can you talk a little bit more about the acquisitions process, especially with these more modern texts?

NK: The curators all sit on an acquisitions committee, and we work together to think in long-term and long-range planning for how the collection is building over time. We’re always interested in what scholars are reading and thinking about right now, and we have the pleasure and luxury of interacting with scholars and writers who are using our reading room and collections often years before they publish something, years before their work is in print.

In that way, we have a little window into what scholarship is going to be like in a few years and what people are going to be publishing and reading. So that gives us some sense of the paths of different critical trajectories. Keeping those things in mind, we also have a very clear sense that we’re collecting for the future, for many years out ahead of us now, when I’m no longer here and maybe you’re no longer here, and scholars are doing research we can’t even quite imagine yet. When we’re presented with a possible acquisition, we try to think about what its value might be in the broadest possible terms, not just, ‘Oh, this is a perfect fit with these other things we have.’ We’re also keeping an eye out for new collecting areas that might be of interest down the road, and we think about, how might these things reveal stories and information to scholars. We’re also very interested in publishing, especially American literature, which has a very rich and compelling history of very small press publishing and non-mainstream, non-commercial print outlets. The Beinecke has to think about how to document those kinds of communities, so all of those things come in to the discussion as well.

—This interview was condensed by the author

EATING QUOTATIONS

by Margaret Schultz

LAST WEEK, MY SISTER EMAILED me a picture of some cookies she had just baked—she wrote that she was sorry she couldn’t share them with me, and that she missed me, and that a picture might be the next best thing. They were your basic cookies—peanut butter morsels with a half-melted chocolate kiss on top—but the sight of them, arranged on a metal baking sheet over the familiar blue and floral patterned table cloth with a disorganized pile of papers visible in the corner, disarmed me; I teared up during section, and mumbled “midterms” to a confused TA. Later that day, I revenge baked an apple Bundt cake in the Stiles kitchen with a friend, spilling a bowl of egg whites, beating butter into flour, fighting over who got to lick the brown sugar glaze off of the spoon. The end product was gorgeous —glistening and crumbled. I took 12 pictures of the cake to send to my sister, knowing she couldn’t eat it. It is longstanding joke/ lament between us that teleportation is not possible with today’s technology. Along with them, I sent her a passage from Sappho, to make up for an inability to express the sentiment myself: as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch high on the highest branch the applepickers forgot-no, not forgot: were unable to reach.

We still pretend to exist in a world of shared comestibles, our emails full of false synesthesia like, “Looks delicious!”—things that seem cheerful but belie distress and an inability to reach. At home, we always bake together—it’s hard not to turn to her for feedback on my cooking, to give her a bite and ask her what she thinks.

On Sunday night, I eat the remnants of the cake on the floor of my room. Bundt in one hand and pen in another: I am trying to write this week’s required poem, to be turned in on Monday for critique— by midnight the cake is gone, the poem still nonexistent. I look at the empty plate and the empty page: the plate holds memories complex with sensory detail, clear images, and emotional significance; the page has nothing but blankness, quotations, and a horrifically expectant stare. The cake took about an hour to bake—I spend all night not writing the poem. The next day the exigencies of my class require me to turn something in, but what appears on the page has all the semblance of a poem and none of its substance. It is as much a real poem as the picture my sister sent me were real cookies.

ture night when I think back to this. Now I know and might soon forget: latent in almonds through pro- and re- lapsed structures of taste and memory, connected via the olfactory bulb and the thalamus in the neurons of my brain, is the thought, “structures of taste and memory connected via…”. I remember nothing of the language I regurgitated on the test but everything of the foods that bookended it—the dry toast and moist pastry, and the opposing emotions they kindled in me of anticipation and relief.

EARLIER THAT WEEK, I SAT AT BREAKFAST BEFORE my neuroscience exam and stress-ate four pieces of jammed rye toast. They were dry and unhelpful, only evoking other times I had sat in the dining hall, my brain failing to learn about itself. “The lonely man—who’s been in prison—goes back to prison/each time he eats a piece of bread.” Cesar Pavese writes that simple sensory associations have the power to reform or recall reality. Language can perform the same function, can take one to prison as easily with the mention of it as with the piece of bread, and therefore, according to Pavese, should be used with caution, if at all. The exam was tedious—I didn’t know what some words meant but used them anyways, arranging terms in an order, hoping that order was correct. (i.e. The somatasensory cortex has six layers consisting of pyramidal and stellate cells, which convey signals to the thalamus, and GABBAergic interneurons of both the inhibitory and disinhibitory variety.

Right?)

After the exam our professor gave us powered-sugar covered, almond-and-apricot filled pastries as consolation.

Facing so many baked goods, Mark Strand came to mind: “behind each word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more behind that one.” I propose as an addendum: behind each pastry there is another pastry, and hundreds more behind that one. Chains of associations, authors, and desserts open up as I walk across old campus, eating my post-exam pastry; I taste the farmers market from weeks before and wonder what I will be eating some fu-

THIS SUMMER I REGULARLY brought home a bounty of food from the small farm where I worked: fragrant basil, braids of garlic, peppers lined up by size and color – more than I or my family could eat. In particular, I was overwhelmed by zucchini, by the task of harvesting 250 plus overproducing plants every day, my arms scratched, back aching, and clothes covered in the sticky zucchini goo. Both picking the zucchini and finding ways to consume it slowly obsessed me; I thought about abundance, about questions of “enough” and “too much”.

Lately I’ve been spending time processing herbs on the Yale Farm, securing bunches of mint and lemon verbena with rubber bands, plucking the spotted leaves off, hanging them from the ceiling to dry. I consider Freud (last one, I promise), who thought that the brain worked through excessive stimuli by a series of repetitive actions, a deliberate binding of experience. His solution was psychoanalysis; mine has been farm work and food and concrete comforts like making 16 jars of pesto. They are more helpful than the frightening abstraction of words, anyway. I am sacred of words: a strange confession for someone who cares a lot about language to prefer pesto to poems, stranger still that I can’t express it in pesto, but only in words, and mostly the words of others, at that. Here is the point in the essay where I look down at my hands and sigh.

Sitting on my desk right now is a bag of small purple carrots from the Yale Farm. When I bite into one I am surprised - on the inside, the carrot is ringed with red and orange, concentric circles of color “clearsoundingly” delineated. Before I eat, I take a picture for my sister and snapchat my friend, who is eating too, in another dining hall, and she sends me a picture in return, all of it in concert: her and her food and me and my food, and my sister, and October, and sixteen jars of pesto along the farm office’s basement wall.

—graphic by Julia Kittle-Kamp YH Staff The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

9

OPINION SUNNY IN ALASKA

MENTALLY OPEN

by Jesse SchreckYH Staff

by Meredith Redick

This summer, I dated a guy who occasionally rocks lipstick and gold hoop earrings, booty shorts and black leggings, nail polish and glittery face cream. His name is Taylor, and he’s a senior at the Evergreen State College, in the radically queer community of Olympia, Washington (if you search “queer youth” on Google, the first suggested image is of his friends). My first thought upon meeting him was, “that guy is gay.” Looking back, it’s clear to me that I was actually a little embarrassed: I felt like his affect was giving gay people a bad name. It took me a long time to understand that this embarrassment came from a deeply internalized homophobia, the subconscious belief that feminine gay men are somehow lesser than their more masculine counterparts. People who share that belief more righteously are the ones who tease young boys for preferring dolls to sports, cooking to wrestling. They’re the ones who call Taylor a fag sometimes.

I’ve always thought of myself as being into capital-m “Men”—men who are big, and tough, men who play football and lift weights and eat steak. I imagined meeting my first boyfriend at a frat party, not as co-counselors at an arts camp in overcast Alaska. Taylor does not fit into what I used to think of as my type: he’s an on-and-off vegetarian who slept underneath a flowerpatterned quilt for the duration of camp.

(That quilt is what came to mind on the second day of the summer, when one of my friends said, “I bet you’re going to hook up with him,” and I felt a little slighted.)

The person I actually wanted to date was my roommate, a bisexual modern dancer from Miami who played soccer in his free time. We didn’t have anything in common, but I didn’t care. He performed the easy, confident brand of masculinity to which I thought I was attracted.

With my roommate, I would bike to the water and feign interest in starfish. With Taylor, I became friends. Eventually I realized that this was the real connection, and that I was developing romantic feelings for him. But even when we started dating, I was secretly embarrassed when he wore a blouse, because that made him more like a woman, and I was secretly proud that he had dated women, because that made him more like a man. It took me a while to see that I was treating gender as something that could be tallied, with the misguided goal of scoring as many points as possible. It took me even longer to then stop tallying, to realize that I liked it when Taylor wore dangly fish earrings, and to wish

8

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

more guys would wear dangly fish earrings, because they really did look cute.

By the time I left Alaska and its rain, I had learned how important it is to differentiate between what you actually want and what society tells you to want, and to be proud of the differences when they exist. I’m not claiming that this is an easy process, or even one I’ve completed for myself. Constructs like masculinity and femininity are stitched into our cultural fabric and individual psyches far too deeply for a quick excision. But when I finally, fully, thankfully got over my reflexive discomfort with Taylor’s affect, I felt more in touch with my desires—and more like myself—than I had before.

For me, the essential paradox of queerness is that it is a catch-all label of individual expression and empowerment, far more inclusive that gay or straight, which still have normative concepts of gender in tow. I feel like I wasted a few years chasing after some idea of what a man was, but now know better: I’ve learned to be queer instead of gay. Because the thing is, having confidence and pride in your desires is far more important than the objects of those desires, be they manly women, or womanly men, or men who dress like bison, or women who eat like giraffes, or all (or none) of the above.

Maybe in the end, I’ll end up with a football-tossing frat bro who takes our children to the gym on Tuesdays, or maybe he’ll wear eyeliner and a floral dress to the grocery store. All I can tell you for sure is that I’ll know who he really is, and he’ll know who I really am, and we’ll love each other immensely.

—graphic by Julia Kittle-Kamp YH Staff

In his inaugural address, Richard Levin, GRD ’74, quoted from a Greek tragedy to show what Yale meant to him. “Like Antigone, the University stands for transcendent principles, those which permit the preservation of culture and the advance of knowledge,” Levin said.

In 1993, New Haven had seen the murder of Yale student Christian Prince, PC ‘93, just two years before. Violent crime rates remained exceptionally high. At the same time, faculty-administration relationships were tense, buildings were crumbling, and fewer students were applying to Yale. Yale’s story was getting a little too close to the end of a Greek tragedy.

This weekend, Peter Salovey will officially assume the role of Yale’s president. Many of the problems Levin faced are no longer issues. Endowments are back up despite the economic crisis, two new residential colleges are now in the works, and violent crime has decreased substantially since the time when Levin took the presidency. Salovey is not inheriting an embattled Yale. Instead, he is inheriting a Yale with the opportunity to make a new kind of change.

I’ve benefited from the changes of Levin’s administration. Yale has amazing financial aid. I live in the beautiful (or thoughtfully designed) Ezra Stiles, a residential college with stellar facilities that include a gym, a recording studio, and a brick pizza oven. Yale has provided for my material needs wonderfully.

Where Yale has left a hole and where, I think, President Salovey is particularly wellequipped to make changes, is in communication. Not just transparency, although the president-elect website and Salovey’s hosting of public forums have certainly contributed to Salovey’s emergence as a public figure. No— in addition to transparency, we need to have a culture that actively values openness.

Here’s an example: Yale’s Student Mental Health and Counseling department has about 25 clinicians.

That’s a lot. They have a beautiful building, lovely offices, baskets of free rainbow condoms everywhere you look. And yet, a student calling to get an evaluation for anxiety or depression has to wait up to six weeks to receive an appointment.

Six weeks is a dangerously long time for someone suffering from depression. And it’s an odd flaw for Yale—my professors e-mail me back quickly, my administrative concerns are resolved properly, the financial aid office has always been willing to work through my financial incompetence. But Yale’s mental health problem—and other problems, like the hostile sexual environment and under-re-

ported rape that has infected Yale’s reputation for the past several years—is telling. The poor infrastructure of the mental health system sends the message that mental health is not a priority of the administration.

It doesn’t help that Yale already has a grin-and-bear-it culture. We like to talk about Fulbrights, internships, and Chicken Tenders Day. People don’t like to talk about mental health, but half of the student population will visit Yale Mental Health before they graduate, which is reflective of a culture that disvalues open discussion of failures and imperfections.

In order for students to change that culture, though, the administration has to admit that mental health is a problem at Yale.

Under Salovey, we need a Yale that builds on Levin’s substantial improvements, but that also embraces conversations about real, productive doubts and concerns. We need substantial administrative support not only for the physical and academic needs of students, but also for their emotional needs. We need to admit that mental health is a problem here before we can move towards a solution.

Salovey’s work in the study of emotional intelligence, which has addressed the importance of acknowledging unpleasant or painful emotions in order to facilitate personal growth, makes him uniquely equipped to make Yale a more emotionally open campus.

Part of that is about policy—reforming the student mental health system—and part of it is about shifting Yale’s rhetoric from one of shining, immutable principles into one of reflection and personal growth.

In his brief time as president so far, Salovey has been cheerful, garrulous, and inviting with students and faculty members.

He has also already spoken out on a number of serious issues, including the importance of socioeconomic diversity within Yale and immigration reform. But being a campus personality isn’t enough. Facilitating open discussions about flaws—including about mental health—is the only way that his ad“ ministration will be successful. Making these changes means creating an efficient and thoughtful mental health system.

When Levin took the presidency, Yale perhaps needed the promise of guiding principles that transcended low faculty morale, crumbling buildings, and a troubled city.

Levin saved Yale financially, but in order to do this, he maintained an insitutional culture without adequate open discussion. In 2013, Yale’s greater challenge is in recognizing that the path to “light and truth” is one of obstacles. The most substantial change that Salovey can make to Yale is in rediscovering that culture.

148 York Street New Haven, CT 06511 203-776-8644 www.zaroka.com Catering for all occasions

Fine Indian Cuisine “Amid elegance, a variety of Indian dishes” - New York Times “A treat for the senses” - Hartford Courant Lunch Mon - Sat: 11:30 am - 3:00 pm Sun: 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm Dinner Sun - Thu: 5:00 pm - 10:30 pm Fri - Sat: 5:00 pm - 11:00 pm Every Day Lunch Buffet Sunday special brunch with North and South Indian food

The edge of safety Grassroots organization vows to reclaim Edgewood Park following a set of assaults this summer

by Jacob Osborne

I

n April 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted famously submitted a plan for what was to become the vast, green heart of New York City—Central Park and 52 years later, his son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., took on the task of designing a significantly smaller public park outside the center of New Haven. This one was to be called Edgewood Park.

The park is now a 120-acre ribbon of forests, ponds, and clearings straddling the boundary between the Westville and Edgewood neighborhoods. Since the days of Olmsted, the communities have added a gazebo, a skate park, a basketball court, seven tennis courts, and a paved path for walking, jogging, and biking that people still call the “carriage road,” which runs the length of the park.

This past summer, a series of attacks disturbed the tranquility of the Edgewood Park community. Two similar, unresolved attacks occurred in daylight on an isolated section of the carriage road only seven day apart. On Fri., July 26, a 63 year-old resident of Beaver Hills was assaulted by a group of teenagers on bikes while he was taking a jog. They beat him up without a clear motive, as he had no valuables with him, then fled on their bicycles. The New Haven Independent reported that the man sustained a broken arm and required stitches in his forehead.

A week later, on Fri., August 2, an adolescent struck a jogger in the back of the neck with his arm as he and his friends were passing by on bikes. The jogger continued on, and when he came upon the group again they be-

10

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

gan to taunt him. He decided it was unsafe to confront the teens and turned back towards the duck pond where there would be more park visitors.

Following these incidents, a stigma attached itself to Edgewood Park, with residents anxious about safety and traveling alone in some of the park’s more secluded areas. In response to this shift, the Friends of Edgewood Park, an organization created over thirty years ago to advocate for the park’s health and safety, hosted a rally

riage road was deserted as I accelerated downhill towards the center of the park. I knew Edgewood closed at sunset, and I began to think I was trespassing.

As I reached the base of the hill, a pond appeared to my left. I barely tapped my brakes.

In only a minute and a half, the quiet park had filled me with an anxiety that my Vermont mind usually reserves for Manhattan. My head pivoted back over both shoulders every few pumps of the pedals.

ment as the Outdoor Adventure Coordinator since 1999, has witnessed the decline in park safety firsthand. “When I started working for the New Haven Parks, we used to have 104 full-time employees,” he said to me. “Now, we’re less than 50. Every time we lose staff, everything suffers a little bit.” He said he remembers when there used to be two park rangers assigned only to Edgewood Park, whereas now there is one that three different park facilities share.

“The park’s essential function is for the overall health of people and the city—to be able to have a piece of nature and have a space where people can relax in different ways. That’s kind of its heart.”

— Willie Hoffman, acting president of Friends of Edgewood Park

on Tues., October 1. At the event, the group announced a new campaign to reclaim public perception and citizen involvement surrounding this recreational space. They’re calling the campaign “Take Back the Park.”

THE OTHER NIGHT, I FOUND MYSELF pedaling through the Edgewood Park entrance at the corner of Chapel and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard (an intersection 16 blocks west of Cross Campus). The car-

As I approached the underpass below the great stone bridge that carries Edgewood Avenue over the West River, I came to a stop. The next stretch of the carriage road was fifty feet of shadow followed by several hundred yards of empty straightaway lined by stands of tall hardwoods. This was the segment creating all the stir; this was where the attacks occurred over the summer.

Martin Torresquintero, who has worked for the New Haven Parks and Recreation Depart-

I pushed off on my bike towards the site of the attacks. I worked myself into a frenzy, checking blind spots as if assailants might collapse on me from the trees. Just as my sensations of fear and vulnerability reached a peak, a clearing opened on my left. I almost laughed out loud. Here, on the banks of West River, where I was feeling more unsafe than at any other place in New Haven, was a group of adults sweating through a game of volleyball. I slowed and

watched the ball float back and forth over the net.

Just then, a man emerged from the woods on my right, catching me off guard. The blood rushed fast to my face as I prepared for every

but argued that the concern is not based in fact: “Crime data shows that maybe once a year something happens, but for the most part we’re one of the safest parks in the city. So it’s taking back that perception.”

any further assaults in Edgewood Park,” Forte said. She explained that while crimes can occur at any time and for any reason, an increase in police bike patrol and civilian reporting has been helpful in calming

The attacks over the summer had distorted this place, painting it as some criminal hotbed in my mind before my first visit. possible confrontation in my head. He smiled at me and walked across the width of the road, throwing his athletic bag down next to the volleyball court and exchanging greetings with the other players.

I continued on towards the west end of the park, and with each new runner, dog walker, and family on bikes, I became increasingly embarrassed. The attacks over the summer had distorted this place, painting it as some strange criminal hotbed in my mind before my first visit.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE FRIENDS OF Edgewood Park are attempting to battle. Willie Hoffman moved to New Haven two years ago with his wife and two young children, and now he acts as the organization’s president.

“It’s a grassroots rallying of all people and all neighborhoods of the park to take ownership,” he said of the Take Back the Park Campaign.

Hoffman said that the park’s change in public image following the attacks is understandable,

The New Haven Police, like Hoffman, are confident that Edgewood Park is a safe community space. Sergeant Renee Forte,

the anxieties from last summer.

Proof of this can be found any weekday evening at Edgewood’s west end—the skate

to be able to go and recreate, and have a piece of nature, and go outside, and have a space where people can relax in different ways. That’s kind of its heart, I would say— the health aspect.”

AS I BIKED BACK ALONG THE FULL LENGTH of the carriage road, I thought of 67 yearold New Haven resident John Ellis, who lives on the perimeter of Edgewood Park.

While walking his black lab around the edge of the park, he commented, “I would feel bad if we were going to say, ‘If you’re young and riding a bike then you have to get out of the park.’ That’s not what I’m about. That’s not what New Haven’s about.”

“Since we made the public aware, and it made the news, we have not had any further assaults in Edgewood Park” — Sgt. Renee Forte, District Manager at the Westville/ West Hills New Haven Police Department the District Manager at the Westville / West Hills New Haven Police Department Substation, said that although no arrests were made following the attacks to joggers, there is no reason to stop visiting the park. “Since we made the public aware, and it made the news, so maybe the suspects were made aware, we have not had

park, tennis courts, and jogging paths are full with New Haven residents seeking to play and plug back into the landscape. The Take Back the Park campaign is in its early stages, but the vitality of the park reflects a promising community energy. “The park’s essential function,” Hoffman said, “is for the overall health of people and the city—

I climbed back up the first hill and pedaled out through the gate onto Chapel Street. Leaving Edgewood Park, I was suddenly very glad that I would be allowed to return.

—graphic by Maude Tisch YH Staff The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

11

12

The Yale Herald (Sept. 20, 2013)

—graphic by Claire Thomas YH Staff

Space for identity Alisha Jarwala, PC ‘15, examines the role of cultural houses at Yale and considers the ways to build and sustain a campus presence.

W

hen Woolsey Hall was built in 1901, no one envisioned that its stage would showcase diversity like this. On Oct. 19, prospective Yale applicants will watch Sur et Veritaal (Hindi a cappella), Blue Feather (Native American drums and dance), and Sabrosura (the Latin Dance Team) perform at Yale’s Multicultural Open House. High school students, primarily underrepresented minorities, will be treated to performances, meals, panels, and meetings with top Yale professors. It’s the best Yale has to offer in resources—academic and cultural.

At the center of the Multicultural Open House are Yale’s four cultural houses: the Afro-American Cultural Center, La Casa Cultural Julia de Burgos, the Asian American Cultural Center, and the Native American Cultural Center. Unique to the Ivy League, these institutions serve a dual purpose: first, to foster a sense of cultural identity through providing a space for minority students, and second, to educate the larger Yale community. For a university with a history of exclusion, the creation of these programs and their dedication to diversity is a radical change in policy. The majority of students attending the Multicultural Open House will have never been to Yale before; their first interaction with the school will be framed through the four cultural houses.

Through the Multicultural Open House, Yale Admissions is making a clear statement: as a minority, you are different from other Yale applicants. This is the experience you will have at Yale, and these cultural houses will provide a space in which you will feel comfortable.

WAR PROTESTS, WOMEN, AND THE DEparture of ROTC all happened in 1969, a

year of accelerated cultural change across the Yale community. Among the notable events of the year was the emergence of the Afro-American Cultural Center (known to students and alumni simply as “the House”). Fourteen black students in the same class—then a record number—had matriculated to Yale in 1967 and sought a designated place to talk about social and political issues. They formed the Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY) and began to meet at 1195 Chapel Street.

“From the sexual revolution, to the women’s movement, to the black students’ movement, there was just so much going on in the 1970s when the Afro-American Cul-

hen, Yale College Assistant Dean and current director of the Afro-American Cultural Center. “There was a series of conferences and meetings around the country—this was not just a movement at Yale, but a national movement.” Cohen and Chears also note that the Af-Am house owes its origins in part to the initiative of then-President Kingman Brewster, SY ’41. Chears commented that Brewster “regularly took on the establishment” to drive change at Yale.

In 1970, the House moved from 1195 Chapel Street to a prominent on-campus location on 211 Park Street. The current president of BSAY, Patricia Okonta, MC ’15, stated that this move reflected the re-

’79, and Grant Din, BR ’79, rallied support among the Asian-American community in 1978 to arrange a meeting with then-President A. Bartlett Giamatti, SY ’60. “It was our dream to have a cultural center,” said Din. “We had this dark little office in the basement of Durfee, and then a slightly larger little room in the basement of Bingham. Nick [Chen] was really smart and came up with the idea of having Giamatti come to our office, instead of us going to him.” Chen and Din asked attendants to leave their shoes in the hallway, a traditional Asian practice. When Giamatti arrived, he was greeted by a sea of shoes. He was forced to acknowledge the discrepancy be-

“We all had a vision for the center—we wanted it to be a home away from home, but we also wanted it to be a place for other Yale community members to come to learn about our history and culture.” ­—Martha Chavez, former assistant dean of Yale College tural Center got going,” said Victor Chears, TR ’74. Chears, a former chair of the AfroAmerican Cultural Center Board, has attended every five-year reunion of the House since its inception and plans to return this year for its 45th reunion. When looking back at the establishment of the House, Chears emphasizes that even with the political momentum of the era, student involvement and activism were essential in securing a space for black students.

“This whole concept was new in higher education in the 1960s,” said Rodney Co-

lationship between black students and the University. “We’ve been getting closer ever since then,” she said. The House has enjoyed consistent and sustained alumni support for the past 40 years, showcased in 2006 with the completion of its 3 milliondollar restoration project.

1969 was also a significant year for Asian-American students at Yale, who organized the Asian American Students Alliance (AASA). In the early 1970s, AASA began looking for an independent space to organize and hold events. Nick Chen, PC

tween the size of the community and the quality of the facilities.

Following talks with Giamatti, the Asian American Cultural Center (AACC) opened at 295 Crown St. in 1981, sharing the red brick duplex with the MEChA, the Chicano (Mexican-American) student group, who at the time had also been petitioning for an on-campus space. It was known as the Asian Chicano Cultural Center—for groups that had been seeking independent, physical space, the name alone exemplified the problem.

The Yale Herald (Sept. 20, 2013)

13

Previously, Latino students on campus had two separate cultural centers: Puerto Rican students gathered in La Casa Cultural Julia de Burgos (“La Casa”) at 305 Crown St., founded in 1977, and MEChA was headquartered at 79 Howe St. “The [MEChA] house was in extremely bad shape and was about to be condemned,” reminisced Martha

Yale history. “We found the original mission of ANAAY and we’ve been able to accomplish almost all of it,” Bobroff said. “They wanted to establish more classes about Native Americans, bring more Native American students to Yale, have a Native American advisor, and get our own space. Having a space was key.”

overlooked,” said Christian Brown, PC ’15, a NACC peer liason. “I think bringing those issues to the forefront of people’s minds is important.” Every year, the NACC celebrates Indigenous People’s Day, a counter-celebration to Columbus Day that highlights Native History and traditions. For Okonta and members of BSAY, the Af-Am house also serves

“The NACC and the Afro-American Cultural Center are beautiful, but La Casa and the AACC need to be brought to the Yale level.”

—Saveena Dhall, AACC director Chavez, GRD ’92 and ’04, who served as an Assistant Dean of Yale College from 1979 to 1985. “Sometimes, I still have dreams of walking to the third floor and the floor caving in on us.”

The property on 295 Crown St. was marginally better, though Chavez remarked that Yale students themselves finished the renovating and laid the tile and flooring; despite the precedents set in Yale’s other construction projects, the University did not provide support. “We all had a vision for the center,” Chavez said. “We wanted it to be a home away from home, but we also wanted it to be a place for other Yale community members to come to learn about our history and culture.” The center provided students with access to educational and work-study opportunities, while also serving as a hub for the minority community in New Haven through programs such as English classes for recent Asian and Hispanic immigrants.

In 1999, MEChA moved out of 295 Crown St. and combined with the Puerto Rican cultural center to form the current La Casa. Rosalinda Garcia, current director of La Casa and Assistant Dean of Yale College, explained that the choice to combine the centers came following the realization that many Latinos on campus weren’t being served by either of the two organizations.

“They wanted to be recognized as one community,” she said. They moved to 301 Crown St. after demanding that the University renovate the space. Many alumni opposed the move, which meant the loss of a Dean and decreased funding. However, Garcia stands by the decision, citing the increase in number of students supported.

Similarly to La Casa, the Native American Cultural Center (NACC) began as part of the AACC. In 1993, members of the Association of Native Americans at Yale (ANAAY) established the Native American Cultural Center (NACC) on the third floor of the already packed Asian Chicano Cultural Center. Twenty years later, this fall, the NACC moved into its own house at 26 High St., in a process Yale College Assistant Dean and NACC Director Theodore Van Alst described as “arduous.” ANAAY Co-Presidents Dinee Dorame, ES ’15, and Reed Bobroff, ES ’16, pointed out that the acquisition of the house comes alongside a jump in Native student admissions—the class of 2015 currently holds the record for highest number of Native American students in a class in

14

The Yale Herald (Sept. 20, 2013)

For minority groups, space means a guaranteed place to be comfortable. In the past, this extended to physical safety. It also means acknowledgement of existence from the University and the community at large.

But as they no longer have to fight to be accepted, the mission of the cultural houses has changed from political to social. AACC Director and Assistant Dean of Yale College Saveena Dhall reminisced that students in the 1980s and 1990s had different priorities. “They mobilized, they wrote papers, and they organized on an intercollegiate level,” Dhall said. “Now, the majority of our students host social and cultural events.”

Is this because the needs of the population have changed? Partly, Dhall told me, but she also attributed it to a lack of anxiety about claiming space. “When there’s so few of you, you focus on activism and awareness.

to remind students of minority struggles in the past. “We’re lucky that discrimination isn’t as big of an issue now, but that past needs to be remembered, and the cultural house preserves that memory.”

For students coming to Yale from primarily minority communities, Deans Cohen and Garcia point out that the Yale experience can be both challenging and alienating. To address these problems, each cultural house provides a peer liaison program, which matches freshmen with upperclassmen mentors. “You go through culture shock,” Garcia said. “Having the resources we have is important for students because it gives them a place to get comfortable at Yale while everything else is still unfamiliar.”

The cultural houses also fill an important niche in supporting and addressing the issues of comfort and identity that aren’t the focus

pus events widely attended by Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.

With 1,300 students on campus who identify as Asian, the AACC doesn’t worry about student involvement, but instead has the unique problem of establishing a cohesive pan-Asian identity. “One of the interesting things about the Asian-American identity is that it’s political,” Dhall said.

“There’s no linguistic or ethnic commonality. It’s something that we Asians in America experience as the US placing the category around us.” The AACC now serves as an umbrella organization for over 50 independent organizations that often view it as little more than a gathering space. One of Yang and Ting’s current goals is to emphasize pan-Asian identity through increased group collaboration.

WHEN I ARRIVED AT LA CASA AT 6 P.M. sharp for their weekly Cena a Las Seis, it was empty. “People get here on Latino time,” joked Michelle Piñon, DC ’14. Sure enough, the chairs and tables were full around 6:30 p.m. and heaped with food.

Melendez gave me a tour of the facilities: crumbling exterior, crumbling interior, dimlylit spaces for student groups, worn couches, and a basement full of boxes. “There’s a lot of space that could be used here, but we just don’t have the money to make it usable,” he said. “La Casa faces a budget crisis which limits the activities and programming we can do. For example, we have to cap Cena, because there’s not enough money to offer food to everyone.”

Funding for each cultural house differs: each receives money from the Yale College Dean’s Office, but also draws upon other sources, such as alumni gifts or en-

“I see cultural houses a vestige of the old Yale. I think there needs to be support for minorities, but it needs to come from a more inclusive source.”

—Alex Bae, BR ‘14 Today, you come in and take the presence of other minorities for granted.”

While the social and performing arts aspects of the cultural centers may be the most well known (after all, these are the aspects showcased at the Multicultural Open House), the houses have always played a large role in academic life. According to Cohen, “The Afro-American Cultural Center laid the foundation for Afro-American studies to be established at Yale and around the country,” and during her tenure as a Dean, Chavez pushed for the establishment of Chicano Boricua studies, which became the Ethnicity, Race and Migration (ERM) major last year. For students interested in studying their cultures, the cultural houses provided access to materials, faculty, and speakers even before Yale College recognized the African-American Studies and ERM majors.

Students involved believe that their cultural houses raise awareness about pertinent social and political issues in the broader Yale community. “For example, Native American reservations are some of the poorest areas of the country, and they’re often

of the University overall. “I grew up being the Puerto Rican kid in school and the American cousin in Puerto Rico. It was always something I grappled with,” said Chris Melendez, ES ’15, a peer liaison for La Casa. “Then you come to Yale, and it’s amazing to find that there are other students who understand what you’re trying to figure out.”

IDENTITY ISSUES ARE COMPLEX, BUT the entanglements they bring when institutionalized are messier still. Cultural houses face challenges, including clarifying their dual missions—which are sometimes at odds— and maintaining administrative support.

Mendy Yang, PC ’15 and James Ting, DC ’15, the student directors of the AACC, acknowledge that the missions of the cultural houses don’t necessarily align. “There is a tradeoff in targeting the audience of people who aren’t informed and targeting those who are entrenched in the community,” Ting said when I sat down to meet with him and Yang.

Many students involved with the centers, including Ting and Yang, aspire to the model set by the Slifka Center, which hosts cam-

dowments. It’s a well-known fact that the Afro-American Cultural Center has the largest endowment and the most discretionary funds. The Asian-American Cultural Center also has an endowment, but it’s significantly smaller. (Dean Dhall declined to give me exact figures, but said that it is still working towards the goal of 100,000 dollars.) The Native American Cultural Center received a large gift from alumni in 2007.

The generosity of that gift is apparent when visiting the NACC, which has a state-ofthe-art kitchen, gleaming facilities, and a room specially devoted to Blue Feather, the dance and drum group.

However, according to Garcia, La Casa has no endowment and lacks strong alumni financial support, partly because La Casa’s alumni outreach program is still very young.

“A lot of our alumni hated Yale, because it was a very racist place, and when they left, they never wanted to come back,” Garcia told me. “We’re slowly bringing them back and they’re seeing what their struggles have yielded, but we wanted to make our first appeal about coming together, not do-

nations.” For Garcia and Dhall, the fight to secure funding and staff is a priority. Dhall pointed out that the AACC was designed for a population of 150 to 200 students, but with 1,300 students and counting, the AACC serves nearly an entire Yale col-

THE LARGEST CHALLENGE THE CULTURal houses face is proving that they are still relevant to the broader Yale community today. One common objection is that through creating communities that focus on a particular culture, Yale promotes minority iso-

Yale students would be more likely to explore new opportunities in addition to cultural groups.

Other universities have embraced multicultural centers as an alternative to individual cultural houses; these provide a central

“We can either socialize based on things we have in common that we’ve chosen, or we can choose to socialize based on things we have in common because of accident of birth. I think there’s something inherently healthier about option one and it baffles me that Yale embraces option two quite so wholeheartedly.”

—Alex Fisher, MC ‘14 lege class without the resources to do so.

“The NACC and the Afro-American Cultural Center are beautiful, but La Casa and the AACC need to be brought to the Yale level,” Dhall said. The AACC has worn furniture and needs renovations, but from what I saw, La Casa most desperately needs a facelift. The topic is near and dear to Garcia’s heart; when asked about it, she pulled out her phone and immediately showed me pictures of La Casa’s wear and tear. “Look at the columns!” she pointed to a photo.

“They’re rotting. The wood is spongy. It makes my blood boil to see how much money is put into other spaces on campus.

We’re just not a priority.”

Garcia and Dhall both agree that the cultural centers have not been an administration priority, but are hopeful that this will change under President Salovey. “President Salovey was a Dean of Yale College, and he’s familiar and intimate with the centers,” Dhall said. “He’s been to them and sees what they need” Garcia added, “I do feel a commitment from him, and I’m hopeful about it.”

Notably separate are the voices of Deans Cohen and Van Alst, each of whom stated categorically that cultural houses have always been and remain a top University priority. “Each of the four centers is equally supported by Yale,” Cohen told me when I asked about the clear differences in quality of facilities. “I don’t think there’s a disparity of programming or that endowments come into it,” Van Alst added. “Students are given exactly what they need.” In any case, the sizeable endowment of the Afro-American Cultural Center and the newness of the NACC make it clear that some cultural houses are getting exactly what they need.

Cohen and Van Alst also emphasized the breadth of their role as deans—“We’re not quarantined in the center,” Cohen said— and discussed their roles in admissions recruitment, alumni outreach, and cultural scholarship. While Van Alst claimed that the Deans have all the staff and assistance they need from Yale to run the centers, Dhall pointed out that Yale is the only school in the country with cultural centers that operate with one administrator and no other fulltime adult staff. She’s pushing for resources that match the size of the community the cultural house serves.

lation and self-segregation. Alex Fisher, MC ’14, lays out the problem: “We can either socialize based on things we have in common that we’ve chosen or we can choose to socialize based on things we have in common because of accident of birth. I think there’s something inherently healthier about option one and it baffles me that Yale embraces option two quite so wholeheartedly.”

Cultural house supporters point out that the houses represent only one of many available communities for Yale students, and that they are unfairly scrutinized when other tight-knit communities, such as acappella and Jewish life, are not. According to Cohen, “Any time someone says that it’s self-segregating, that’s the opportunity for a teaching moment. That’s like saying that St. Thomas More or the Italian Department is self-segregating.” However, students involved in the houses acknowledge that is difficult to combat the stereotypes of their centers as unwelcoming. “I can see how the AACC can feel exclusive, and I think

location that hosts and administers all cultural and minority student groups. Alex Bae, BR ’14, is a strong proponent of multicultural centers. “I don’t understand why Yale has these four, arbitrarily defined cultural houses instead of a multicultural center that would serve to promote all kinds of culture,” he told me.

Garcia claimed that the main problem with multicultural centers was that larger minority populations tend to dominate the space, making it easy for smaller communities to fall through the cracks. Van Alst agreed. “What’s important is that Yale recognizes that distinctive cultures within the US bring a unique perspective,” he said.

“The problem with a multicultural center is that it basically becomes a well-defined student union, like UConn has. I don’t think it’s a valid approach right now, not for this institution.”

Student cultural house leaders agreed that they prefer the individual houses to a comprehensive multicultural center. Af-

there needs to be support for minorities, but it needs to come from a more inclusive source.” Bae pointed out that through the cultural houses, Yale attempts to divide the population into categories and provide resources for each individual category, rather than embracing similarities between people and fostering dialogue. “There’s no space right now for people who share your views or experiences but come from different backgrounds,” he said. “For example, having parents who were immigrants is a very different experience from having parents who were not immigrants. A Japanese-American whose grandparents were interned probably has a closer cultural experience with someone who is AfricanAmerican and experienced several generations as a minority in America, compared to my experience as a child of first-generation immigrants.”

Bae also believes that a multicultural center would provide a better space for students to discuss culture in the context of the broader human experience. Overall, he sees discussions of race and culture as more productive when they strive to be inclusive. “Eventually you might realize that, wow, maybe it sucks to be Korean or Jamaican, but it also kind of sucks to be a person, regardless of the color of your skin and cultural background,” he said. “We have that in common, and we all have hardships to deal with.” Without a multicultural center, this understanding is harder to come by.

EVERY CAMPUS COMMUNITY SEEKS A space in which to have dialogue. Last year, Yale activist group Students Unite Now circulated a petition to create a center and peer liaison program for students on financial aid. Their aim was to provide a setting for discussions of issues surrounding socioeconomic class. Although the plan hasn’t progressed, it raises several questions. Is there a need for campus-sponsored houses not rooted in cultural heritage? If this is the

“Any time someone says that it’s self-segregating, that’s the opportunity for a teaching moment. That’s like saying that St. Thomas More or the Italian department is selfsegregating.”

—Rodney Cohen, Af-Am House director it’s the burden of the people there not to make it exclusive,” Yang said.

For students like Fisher, it isn’t so much the existence of the cultural houses as the University’s support of them over other organizations that poses a problem. Fisher, a member of the Yale Political Union, told me that the YPU has faced a constant struggle to find space on campus after losing its house in the 1960s. “[Cultural houses] have spiraled to a position on campus that is somewhat out of proportion,” he said. “Let’s level out the playing field so that whatever your passion and interests are, you’ve got a fair crack at the University’s resources.”

With equalized funding, Fisher believes that

ter all, experience has taught the cultural houses the value of independent space.

Yet, as Okonta pointed out, “We are still able to have collaboration and intercultural relations between the groups.” Yang and Brown remarked that the cost of converting to a multicultural center would be losing the tight-knit student relationships and alumni connections fostered by the houses.

“Obviously, cultural centers are a PR minefield—getting rid of them would be a problem, but it should be addressed as a consolidation of resources. Why frame it as a zero-sum game when there are absolute gains?” Bae asked. “I see cultural houses as a vestige of the old Yale. I think

case, have the most pressing divisions between students become centered on socioeconomic status?

To a student walking by this hypothetical house, the dedicated space would force an examination of class and its role at Yale. That is the very nature of space: it prompts discussion about its purpose and its use. Despite their stated goals, this is the deepest and most immediate effect cultural houses have had on Yale. There’s no ignoring it.

The Yale Herald (Sept. 20, 2013)

15

Lighting up New federally funded research at Yale aims to uncover the science behind new nicotine products

by Alessandra Roubini YH Staff

Y

ou can definitely get away with it,” said Nicholas, talking over the phone from an airport in Baltimore where he was waiting for a flight. A senior in Silliman who requested that his last name not be printed, Nicholas didn’t have his electronic cigarette with him, but he said that he would puff it “discretely” there in the airport terminal if he did. For smokers seeking a nicotine fix without the constant flow of carcinogens into their lungs, these once rare

creation of the Yale Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science, one of 14 similar centers across the country.

Tobacco addiction remains the most common preventable cause of death in the United States today, a startling statistic that helped spur this new effort to provide the investigation necessary for future regulation.

The various grants funding the program are part of a larger effort on the part of the FDA to better regulate various tobacco products.

The introduction of new nicotine delivery systems such as E-Cigarettes has left a gap in the necessary research required for federal regulation. Electronic ciggerette tech involves heating a nicotine-infused liquid until it evaporates, creating nicotine water vapor that can then be drawn into the lungs. Other ingredients in this mixture often include vegetable glycerine, artificial flavoring, and propylene glycol, a common ingredient in asthma inhalers.

“With Blu, you can smoke at a basketball game if you want to, and how about not having to outside every 10 minutes when you’re in a bar with your friends?”

—Blu eCig advertisement E-Cigarettes are becoming increasingly present in popular culture. But what do we really know about these nicotine machines? As it turns out, the answer is not much at all, and the federal government is hoping a team of Yale researchers will be able to unpack this recently popularized technology.

On Sept. 19, scientists at Yale received a federal grant from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Health to study the effects of flavored tobacco products and electronic cigarettes. The five-year, $20 million allocation will go towards the

16

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

The FDA’s effort is concentrated on seven research goals, some of which include looking into the diversity of tobacco products, reduction of addiction, reduction of toxicity and carcinogenicity, and adverse health effects.

Marina Picciotto, professor of psychiatry and one of the core members of Yale’s research team, explained that new nicotine products required the FDA to update its research.

“The FDA has new regulatory oversight over tobacco products, and they need to get the science that is appropriate so that they can regulate these products rationally,” she said.

“They are looking for strong scientific support for regulatory decisions they are trying to make,” said Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, associate professor of psychiatry and co-director of the project. One such decision involves the legality of smoking electronic cigarettes indoors. Nicholas was speaking to me from the Baltimore/Washington International Airport, and if he had lit up an electronic cigarette while we were on the phone he would have been breaking Maryland state law. Had he been talking to me from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Missouri, however,

smoking his FIN brand electronic cigarette would have been perfectly legal. In fact, one Blu E-cig advertisement features the actor Stephen Dorff saying to the camera, “With Blu, you can smoke at a basketball game if you want to, and how about not having to go outside every ten minutes when you’re in a bar with your friends?”

THE RESEARCH EFFORT AT YALE WILL be multidisciplinary, combining programs from the perspective of different departments, including psychiatry and the school of public health. “Each level of investigation will interact closely with the others, so that we can use the science at each level to determine what we will study next,” Picciotto said. The center also features a program that addresses FDA’s changing interests over the five-year period. Benjamin Toll, associate professor of psychiatry and program director of the Smoking Cessation Service at Smilow Cancer Hospital, will head this effort: “We will begin with five pilot programs that will change on a yearly basis,” he said.

The pilot project programs are intended to give Yale’s researchers the capacity to alter the focus of their investigations based on the fluctuating needs of the FDA. As the results begin to flow in, it is expected that the necessary areas of research required for the FDA’s intended regulations will shift based on the findings.

The main focus of Yale’s research will be on what Toll calls “modified risk products,” such as E-Cigarettes and flavored tobacco products, including sugar additives and

menthols, an additive that triggers cold-sensitive nerves. The center will seek to explain how these products affect the brain in both adults and adolescents. “There is very little research on the effects of menthol on consumers,” Sven-Eric Jordt, associate professor of psychology, said. “Data shows that sales of menthol products have increased over the years, which is not necessarily true in other countries.”

E-Cigarettes in particular remain somewhat of a mystery to the scientific community, given that limited research has been done on these relatively new products. Though they are sometimes marketed as an alternative option for smoking or even as a method for eventual quitting, there is little scientific evidence to back up this claim, according to the World Health Organization. Because the nicotine is delivered using vapor instead of carcinogens, E-Cigarettes are widely considered to be healthier, though no formal research has been conducted to support these claims.

ALTHOUGH IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN what the center’s research will reveal over the next five years, the investigators have several working hypotheses about the outcome of their efforts. The researchers expect to find that flavored tobacco works to intensify the effect of nicotine on the brain: “We think that when sugars or other flavors are combined with nicotine, there is an additive or synergistic effect to increase the addiction,” Picciotto said. The concern is that smokers are experiencing an entirely different bio-

logical effect when using these products, an effect that has not been studied and therefore has unknown effects on humans. “We can’t really say what we will find, but there is the hypothesis that in these new products, added flavors can change consumer behavior,” Jordt added. “Certain consumers may

the larger initiative, is the study of the effects of these products on younger populations. “We are developing a bio-behavioral understanding of the effects of tobacco on adolescents,” Krishnan-Sarin said. “Flavors can be very attractive forms of initiation of smoking in children and adolescents, and

only growing. In the past year, the number of middle and high school students who tried alternative nicotine products doubled to 1.8 million. One fifth of those adolescents had never smoked before, reinforcing KrishnanSarin’s hypothesis that these products serve as methods of initiation.

“We think that, when sugars or other flavors are combined with nicotine, there is an additive or synergistic effect to increase the addiction.“ —Marina Picciotto, professor of psychiatry favor certain flavors over others and they might also work pharmacologically to drive consumption.” The FDA can’t address any additional risks potentially associated with these unknown effects until more data has been collected.

If this is indeed the case, it certainly would not be the first time that tobacco companies manipulated various nicotine products to increase the possibility of addiction and thereby increase profits. In 2007, Harvard researchers released a study that showed that tobacco companies knowingly increased the nicotine content in their products steadily over a seven-year period between 1997 and 2005 and the increase in nicotine led to skyrocketing levels of cigarette addiction.

Another critical aspect of the research, headed by Krishnan-Sarin, who co-directs

can actually enhance how much adolescents like these products and increase the likelihood of initiation and addiction.”

The regulation of tobacco products has always been largely focused on adolescents.

This is in large part due to the interest in tobacco companies of gaining long-term users at a young age, which they achieve by targeting adolescents through marketing and advertising. Yale’s research may provide scientific evidence that flavored tobacco products serve as another means to this end.

Through this interdisciplinary approach, Yale researchers seek to present the federal government with the necessary tools for better regulation of these presently mysterious products. E-Cigarettes, now comprising 10-15 percent of overall cigarette sales, is a massive two billion dollar industry that is

A RECENT FIN E-CIGARETTE ADVERTISEment featured young men and women in bars and restaurants dressed in 1950s clothing, coolly smoking their E-Cigarettes.

The narrator recalled a golden age of smoking, when no one concerned themselves with the health consequences, but did it only for the social appeal. He announces that e-cigarettes promise to return smokers to this age of nonchalance. The ad embodies the efforts of E-Cigarettes to reverse the toxic stigma surrounding smoking that has been built up over the last four decades and return smoking to its former ubiquity.

And the efforts of Yale researchers hope to combat this campaign with hard science.

—Graphic by Jin Ai Yap YH Staff The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

17

CULTURE

Indigestible truths Last Friday evening, Yale students crammed into Loria lecture hall for a screening of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing. Dressed in black, microphone held in humble prayer, Oppenheimer himself opened the screening, approaching the front of the room and thanking us for our presence. “I will not tell you to enjoy the film,” he added.

Far from your typical Friday night flick, The Act of Killing revolves arounda an Indonesian anti-communist genocide that followed the country’s 1965 coup—more specifically, its playful reenactments by the gangsters (now celebrated as national heroes) who did the killing on behalf of the Indonesian government. These reenactments—drinking, singing, cowboy costumes and all—are, as Oppenheimer explained to us in the Q&A following the screening, the gangster’s opportunities to “tell their story in whatever way they wish.” The result, accumulated by Oppenheimer over five years spent in Indonesia, is a tale all its own: how we use storytelling and lies, in

18

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

his words, “to escape from the most bitter, indigestible truths.”

The film offers little escape. In fact, “indigestible” seems like the most appropriate descriptor of the evening. The auditorium struggled to accommodate our bodies, let alone comply with fire codes—seats were filled and stairways sat five across. The director’s uncut version stretched on 240 minutes, 140 minutes longer than the wide-released documentary. Scene after scene featured a struggle to process both history and its reenactment.

Children can’t seem to stop crying after the gangster director yells “Cut!” One gangster dances where he once killed, and later almost vomits upon staging this same killing. Subtitles translate his Indonesian into, “bad dreams came from what I did—killing people that didn’t want to be killed.”

The film’s production, perhaps as much as the content itself, did little to help the audience settle into any sort of comfortable rhythm. Scene changes are startling.

Quick cuts from intense action to silence mirror transitions from the killers’ action to reaction. Editing cuts the film mid-laugh, mid-music, mid-noise, mid-monkeyseating-fake-blood. This fake blood permeates the film, leaving an uneasy tension between the truth of atrocity and its sadistic approximation. I could hardly imagine how the crowd for Saturday’s 9:30 a.m. screening would process the event alongside their morning coffee.

As the credits rolled, we struggled to break the silence with applause. Our sense of the expected was gone. We clung to some reassurance Oppenheimer had offered before pressing play, four hours earlier. He was explaining to the audience that it was okay to laugh— he’s found that Indonesians laugh the most out of any audience when viewing the documentary, but accordingly leave the most impacted. “The film is about how we commit evil,” he reminded us, “but it’s also about what it means to be human.”

—Alicia Lovelace —graphic by Jin Ai Yap YH Staff

Brothels and sisters O

n any given New Haven Saturday night, there are plenty of seedy places to explore. Maybe Catwalk, the strip club on the east side of town, or the inside of the dancer’s cage at Toad’s. But a quick walk down Crown street could bring you to a brothel, at least in urban legend: the sorority house. Wait, what?

Merriam-Webster defines a brothel as “a building in which prostitutes are available.” But one ubiquitous rumor skews the definition to include any house where more than seven unrelated females live. An institution as old as Yale has its fair share of mysteries, most of which are eventually unraveled: this one, however, has been oddly pervasive on Yale’s campus, and has yet to be answered in any conclusive way.

Off-campus sorority houses have historically been home to only seven or eight people, but are they deserving of being called “brothels”?

Like all good rumors, this one is rooted in fact: it’s hard to tell if sororities that house their members are brothels, because a law did indeed once refer to them as such. These laws, generally cited as the basis for this illegality, are the 17th century Blue Laws, which originated in Connecticut and became widespread throughout the Northeast. They were devised to regulate moral behavior centuries ago, but are still reflected in some college towns’ zoning codes. In 2011, Northwestern students gathered to protest Evanston, Ill.’s outdated and previously unenforced law that limited the number of unrelated people legally allowed to be housed together to three.

In New Haven, city zoning requirements “limit the number of residents in a single dwelling unit to four unrelated individuals,” as specified by a document released by the City of New Haven on Zoning Accommodations.

The requirement stands for anyone, regardless of gender. Still, fraternities and sororities fall outside of these regulations. According to the City of New Haven’s Residential Occupancy Inspection FAQ, bedroom occupancy in larger houses is limited based on square footage. For one occupant, a sleeping room must be at least 70 square feet, and for four, 200 square feet. An additional 50 square feet must be added for each extra occupant.

Real estate firm Pike International, owner of several off-campus residences where Yale students live, also emphatically stated that their policy has nothing to do with gender and, under New Haven’s regulations, has more to do with

space. “No more than two individuals can stay in each bedroom,” a representative said, but as long as the bedrooms exist, each one can be filled. Pi Beta Phi’s house has six bedrooms, so, in keeping with the actual zoning laws, they are filled with only six upperclassman members. Kappa Alpha Theta’s seven beds are also filled. If they had a bigger house, Pike says, they could have more residents.

Katie D’Andrea, BC ’13, a Pi Phi alumna, says that her only knowledge of the myth came from her years as a Connecticut resident, and that no one in Pi Phi really took it seriously. The small house wasn’t conducive to the huge parties fraternities throw, but she says most agreed that was for the best.

“We never could invade it like boys in the fraternity did,” she explained. Not particularly unhappy with the lack of Saturday morning vomit scrubbing, Katie says their sorority house was used for more “sister-hoody events” like TV show watching and birthday parties— not your typical brothel fare.

“Invading”—or, mass arrival and attendance at open parties—is easy to do at frats, which usually have doubly large houses: at least 13 brothers live at the SigEp house on High Street at any given time, and brothers crash on every couch and bed at the ADPhi house on Lake Place. A typical week ends with the floors of fraternity basements soaked in beer and sweat, while basements in sorority houses are less battered.

“It seems to me that the national sorority organizations impose more restrictions on sororities that operate at Yale than the fraternities at Yale,” says John Meeske, Associate Dean for Student Organizations and Physical Resources. Meeske and Dean of Student Affairs W. Marichal Gentry have met with several sorority and fraternity leaders to encourage a dialogue about issues and concerns regarding Greek life on campus. In doing so, Meeske has become aware of several sororityspecific regulations about “what sort of events they can hold, whether alcohol can be involved, and where they can be, [which could come from the antiquated idea that] women need more supervision,” he says. “There is definitely a greater oversight of the sororities by the national [organizations].”

Estacia Brandenburg, an Account Executive at MJ Insurance, a home insurance company that covers the houses of several sorority chapters nationally, explained that national protocol regulates where men can be in the building and what visiting hours are. At some Yale sororities, males are only allowed in the common area of the house and are restricted from sleeping over.

Laws specific to each organization and chapter restrict men from hanging out on the second floor late at night.

Sorority members would only speak to the Herald on the condition that they remain anonymous due to publicity policies from their respective national

organizations. One sorority member believed that fraternities are asked to abide by the same rules but decide to handle the repercussions if these rules are broken. After throwing a party, “Fraternity presidents run the risk of going to the Executive Committee and just kind of deal with it,” she said, while sororities choose not to. “Everyone knows the aftermath of a big party like that,” she laughed. “I don’t think anyone in a sorority house is jealous.”

She felt that Yale students have an overwhelmingly negative opinion on Greek life, and wondered if being able to hold more campus-wide events would positively affect their reputations. Inhouse parties have to be more exclusive because of smaller space, and are usually limited to sisters and their close friends. Sororities do sometimes rent out venues for events, but their houses are off limits. Fraternities and sororities can enforce gender roles on bigger campuses, she says: the guys throw the parties and the girls show up. Since there are fewer sororities than fraternities, however, this is not as evident.

It’s comforting to know that in the 21st century, unmarried women living together are not actually considered prostitutes in the eyes of the law. Adding a couple of stairs and a front door does not make a seven-person house any more illegal than a 12-pack dorm. ­— Sarah Holder —graphic by Zachary Schiller YH Staff

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

19

REVIEWS Miley, please stop

by Will Adams YH Staff

I

t’s easy enough to look at the cover art of Bangerz and say, “Oh, she’s just being Miley.” But a closer look reveals how strange the image is: Cyrus stands facefoward, head cocked and staring daggers at you; her lower legs are truncated with a sharp line, as if she is a cardboard cut-out; behind her hang fragmented postcards of palm trees and the album title scrawled in a garish neon font. It’s a surreal image, and the past six months of Cyrus’ career have felt just as surreal. Since the success of “We Can’t Stop,” every move she’s made seems engineered to get people’s tongues wagging (and when they don’t, she’s more than happy to do that herself): grinding with Robin Thicke, performing regularly with little people, and starting Twitter feuds with Sinead O’Connor are among some of her shenanigans. For some, this isn’t surprising; it was only a matter of time she broke fully from her Hannah Montana upbringing (despite the fact that she already had her good-girl-gone-bad narrative completed by Can’t Be Tamed). Still her relentless persistence in asserting that she is a badass is jarring. A title like Bangerz anticipates more of the same “crazy kid” behavior. But the album doesn’t open with “We Can’t Stop.” It opens with “Adore You,” a pretty but pretty boring ballad that wanders aimlessly for almost five minutes. This unexpected opening sets the tone for the rest of Bangerz, an album so purposeless and unfulfilling it’s near impossible to get through.

Bangerz is enough of a chore thanks to Cyrus throwing any aspirations to consistency out the window, but the resulting hodgepodge of tracks couldn’t be less suited to her strengths. Cyrus’ voice carries a gritty twang that can and has served her well, though on the ballads it becomes shrill, and on the club tracks (the “bangerz,” as it were) she affects a snotty tone and ends up sounding like Kreayshawn (if you can’t remember: no one’s favorite ironic hipster rapper whose one-off “Gucci Gucci” spread like a rash on YouTube two years ago). The only moment Cyrus sounds at home is the countryinflected “4x4,” though her claims to rebellion are undermined by how hokey the whole arrangement is.

Elsewhere, Bangerz is lazy. The Pharell-helmed “#GETITRIGHT” might as well have been called “Slurred Lines,” given Miley’s vocal performance against the midtempo bump that recalls Robin Thicke’s cocksure summer hit. Meanwhile, if “Do My

20

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

Thang” doesn’t prove once and for all that will.i.am (who penned and produced the song) has nothing to say, I don’t know what will. Bangerz’s worst moment, though, is “FU,” which supplies whatever little demand existed for dubstep-showtunes. The song finds Cyrus howling about texting an ex those two letters, as well as “SMH” and “LOL.” It’s cartoonish in the worst sense, an abject failure that can’t even commit to convincing parody. And in between all this mess sit the mellower songs, which vacillate noncommittally between adoration and rebuke. The songwriting falls flattest here. In fact, “Wrecking Ball,” as if to spite its obnoxious video, ends up being the album’s highlight thanks to its strong chorus.

The complete lack of any unifying themes suggests that Cyrus just doesn’t care.

In that respect, Bangerz could be seen as a success; it matches the persona that Cyrus has been crafting this whole year. Yet it’s still unsatisfying. This sentiment, most clearly manifested in “We Can’t Stop,” isn’t new. The past year of pop has seen a surge in songs that expand upon the model set forth by Drake’s “The Motto.” From fun.’s “We Are Young” to Ke$ha’s “Die Young,” YOLO-pop prioritizes not caring as the best way to seize the day. Even a more recent entry into this micro-genre like Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” which adds some venom to its hooks, feels liberating. “We Can’t Stop” just sounds miserable and sad, and it’s not just because of Mike WiLL Made It’s sludgy production and Cyrus’ garbled delivery.

The key difference is the extent to which Cyrus embodies this DGAF ethos. Perhaps what makes her such a fascinating and repellent figure is how she thumbs her nose at everything. Perhaps it’s jarring to hear the sound of someone who truly doesn’t

give a damn. Beneath the sharp-tongued veneer of “I Love It” lies sincerity; they act like they don’t care, but when they shout that title, they show their cards. But Cyrus takes things a step further, not caring to the point of neglecting to create a coherent artistic image. Bangerz fails hardest because of this. While a whole album of ham-fisted club raps wouldn’t be so appetizing, leading off with a single like “We Can’t Stop” and then delivering an album that is by and large straight-faced is even less appealing. It reads as a bait-and-switch, a cheap ploy to get the public talking with inflammatory content, only to then back down and offer an olive branch in the form of more serious material. In doing this, Cyrus demonstrates a lack of commitment to both bangers and ballads. After enduring Bangerz, it’s hard to know where Cyrus stands as an artist, and it’s harder to decide whether she’s doing this – any of this – for anyone but herself.

Music: Panic! at the Disco

Music: Sleigh Bells Bitter Rivals, in signature Sleigh Bells fashion, starts off sounding like a fight; the first and titular track on the duo’s third studio album features guitarist Derek Miller’s angry electric guitar tearing through a loud kick-pattern and Alexis Krauss’ husky lo-fi vocals skating on high-voltage synthesizers. This sound is tried and true, dating back to Sleigh Bells’ 2010 debut, Treats, an album whose brand of fuck-the-world spirit still remains more or less unmatched today.

But Bitter Rivals isn’t all snarling cheerleader chants over sledgehammer powerchords. The focus has shifted away from Miller and towards Krauss; Miller’s guitar gives way to Krauss’ vocals more than ever, and Krauss herself opts for candycoated superstar vocals in place of the sultry whispers and brash screams that were near ubiquitous in the band’s previous work. The new full and high vocals are much more tuneful, lending variety to Sleigh Bells’ once rather monotone sound.

These melodic tunes are most prevalent towards the end of the album. And indeed, it’s the less belligerent tracks, such as “To Hell With You” and “24,” that are the most memorable. In the former track, the kick pattern slows down, and there’s a marked sense of delicacy. In the latter, an airy riff parallels the soaring, clean vocals.

In Bitter Rivals, it sounds like the brawl from the previous two albums is finally ending. Early album tracks “Bitter Rivals” and “Sugarcane” don’t pull any punches, but soon enough, Krauss swoops in to kiss the wounds. Halfway through the album, “Young Legends”, arguably the most promising track on the album, demonstrates perfectly the evolution of Sleigh Bells’ sound, with its sing-song melodies floating over urgent, do-or-die synths. They might be walking away from the fight, but their knuckles are still burning.

—Lucas Sin YH Staff

Film: Gravity There were many ways Gravity could have gone wrong. On the surface the new film from veteran director Alfonso Cuarón seems little more than the story of Sandra Bullock stranded in space. Even in Cuarón’s capable hands, Gravity ran the risk of becoming some strange fusion of Castaway and Barbarella. Fortunately, the magnitude of Gravity’s successes outweigh its shortcomings.

Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical researcher turned astronaut sent on a one-off space expedition to install some ambiguous prototype system.

Her character’s inexperience is balanced by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). When the Russians randomly decide to blow up one of their own satellites, a rapid storm of space debris is thrown into Earth’s orbit, destroying everything in its path, including Stone and Kowalski’s shuttle. The remaining 75 minutes of film present our protagonists’ fight for survival.

Nothing about Gravity’s plot is particularly exciting. Indeed, the movie is at its weakest when it tries to foreground the story. Dialogue is poor, character development is blunt. Clooney’s performance as Kowalski is just too George Clooney, and is probably the low point of the film.

All that aside, Gravity is a tremendous visual triumph. The heart of this film is the brilliant positioning of the action relative to Earth. Cuarón consistently frames shots with stunning images of the blue planet looming the background.

The camera often pans from within the characters’ helmets to capture an insider perspective of outer space, perhaps one of the most effective uses of first person perspective in film history.

In all regards, the cinematography is beautiful. Gravity cultivates a respect for the depth and isolation of space equal parts compelling and terrifying.

Critics have already begun to hail Gravity as a movie ten years ahead of its time, a landmark work. On the whole, that’s not true; the dialogue is too clumsy, the plot progression too overt. While it might not be a landmark for cinema, however, Gravity may be a landmark for cinematography.

—Colin Groundwater YH Staff

Panic! at the Disco’s fourth album Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! is an ode to front-man Brendon Urie’s hometown of Las Vegas. The city’s glitz and dinginess are captured in the album’s alternating moods, as the music moves from fast-paced, upbeat anthems to darker, heavier songs.

In the album, P!ATD shows off its new 1980’s leanings with heavy use of synth and electric drums. While the band mostly manages to use these inspirations well, particularly in the tracks “Vegas Lights” and “Far Too Young To Die,” they also lead to the album’s biggest disappointment, “Girl That You Love.” This monotonous and repetitive song sounds flat and adds little to the album; with its overbearing drumbeats and odd synth effects, the song combines every aspect of 80’s music in a hard-to-listen to mish-mash– think Depeche Mode trapped in a cheesy horror movie. Even worse, the auto-tuning in the song does little to honor Urie’s powerhouse of a voice.

The best songs on the album showcase the deep level of introspection and emotional honesty that Urie’s songwriting can achieve. “The End of All Things,” possibly the first ballad the band has ever delivered, is a notable example (Urie wrote the song for his wife before their marriage). Combining Imogen Heap’s lullaby-like qualities and Urie’s ability to produce complex harmonies, “The End of All Things” is the perfect closing for the record because of its simple, bare-bone lyricism and its ability to put the album to rest.

Despite one or two slip-ups, the album is largely satisfying and appeals to both the carefree, dance-floor partygoer and the angst-ridden teenager in all of us. With just the perfect mix of glitz and grime, Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! is a testament to P!ATD’S versatility.

—Chloe Tsang

Staff list:

Here’s what we’ve been up to What we’re watching: Adventure Time. On repeat since I’ve seen every episode already. If you don’t watch it, you are missing out on what might just be the best show on television now that Breaking Bad’s gone. Equal parts magic, equal parts heart-wrenching emotion, and most definitely not just for kids.

What we’re listening to: Kelela’s Cut 4 Me mixtape. Worth downloading just for the incredible title. 13 tracks of impeccable R&B that sounds like it’s from the year 3000.

What we’re wearing to the inauguration ball: All denim everything. I hear denim is in, so if you really want to stand out a jean tux is the only way to go.

What we’re cleaning: Our bedrooms, now that midterms are (kind of) over.

Maybe I will finally be able to see my floor again!

—Andrew Wagner YH Staff

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

21

BULLBLOG BLACKLIST 1. What is it?

2. Why are you emailing me?

3. Where did you come from?

4. Why six?

5. When will this end?

6. What’s up?

1/2. How are...

Like are we still friends? Who else do you see?

6 and 1/2 questions

It actually makes buying a consumer-grade catheter seem more appealing.

Running into friends whom you haven’t seen in two weeks

Peeing getting in the way of studying because you’re constantly hydrating Warm seltzer

Do you like warm bubbles?

I guess this is what we’re paying for.

When the section asshole is the TF

Waiting for packages

Fluid identities

When non-Yale friends post about the Poopetrator on your wall

Just give us our stuff.

Why are you bothering to identify??

I guess I have to like this, right?

The Yale Herald (Oct. 11, 2013)

23