Yale Herald Volume LXII Issue 1

The Yale Herald Volume LXII, Number 1 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Sep. 16, 2016

FROM THE STAFF On Jun. 13, Corey Menafee, a Yale dining hall worker, used a broomstick to shatter a stained glass window in Calhoun College depicting slaves picking cotton.

Twenty-seven shards of glass fell to the ground. Menafee was arrested that same day on charges of first-degree criminal mischief, and second-degree reckless endangerment—a felony—and accused of being a danger to students.

While most Yale students were away from campus, New Haven’s activist communities took to the streets, the op-ed pages, and the even the New Haven courthouse in Menafee’s defense. An intern at the New Haven Independent noticed Menafee’s case while sifting through upcoming court dates and broke the story on Jul. 11. The next day—the day of Menafee’s court appearance—50 demonstrators organized by the Unidad Latina en Acción arrived in his support.

Menafee’s case marks a turning point in which activism in the New Haven community has become intertwined in issues that, until now, have largely remained within the confines of Yale’s stone walls and gothic arches. In this week’s front, Sarah Holder, SY ’16, explores this intersection and its implications—for Yale affliliates and the broader New Haven community alike.

There’s lots more thought-provoking stuff for you in these pages. In one of our features this week, Gabby Deutch, BR ’18 investigates “Leo,” taking stock of the changes that have come with the fraternity’s disaffiliation from the SAE national chapter. In Reviews, Jordan Coley, SY ’16, breaks down Frank Ocean’s new album for us, and in Opinions, Kayla Bartsch, CC ’20, discusses why the Stanford hard alcohol ban might be a step in the right direction.

We’re so happy you’re back, and we hope you’ll join us in considering some of the issues that matter most to our school and city.

Love you guys, Rachel Strodel Co-Editor-in-Chief

The Yale Herald Volume LX, Issue 1 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Sep. 16, 2016 EDITORIAL STAFF: Editors-in-Chief: Tom Cusano, Rachel Strodel Managing Editors: Victorio Cabrera, Oriana Tang Executive Editors: Sophie Haigney, Sarah Holder, David Rossler, Lily Sawyer-Kaplan, Charlotte Weiner Senior Editors: Libbie Katsev, Jake Stein Culture Editors: Emma Chanen, Emily Ge Features Editors: Frani O’Toole, Nick Stewart Opinion Editors: Luke Chang, Nolan Phillips Reviews Editors: Gabriel Rojas, Eve Sneider Voices Editor: Olivia Klevorn Insert Editor: Marc Shkurovich Audio Editors: Phoebe Petrovic, Korinayo Thompson Copy Editors: Dimitri Diagne, Drew Glaeser, Frances Lindemann ONLINE STAFF: Online Editor: Hannah Offer Bullblog Editors: Jeremy Hoffman, Caleb Moran DESIGN STAFF: Graphics Editor: Haewon Ma Layout Editor: Jacob Middlekauff Executive Graphics Editor: Claire Sheen Executive Design Editor: Ben McCoubrey BUSINESS STAFF: Publishers: Russell Heller, Jocelyn Lehman Director of Advertising: Matt Thekkethala 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 2014-2015 academic year for 65 dollars.

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

Copyright 2016, The Yale Herald, Inc. Have a nice day.

Cover by Rachel An YH Staff

2 – The Yale Herald

THIS WEEK In this issue

Incoming The Literati The Windham-Campbell Prizes Festival kicks off on Monday, which means readings, panels, College Teas, and— most importantly—Literary Speed Dating. Last year I made some meaningful eye contact over my Moleskine.

This year I’d like to take things to the next level.

Outgoing Summer I’m not even sad about it because: pumpkin season.

Every year I try to carve a Jack-o’-Lantern that looks just like me. It’s not about companionship. I just want to become a pumpkin.

Fri. - Sat. Styx Songs Yale Cabaret 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.

Fri. - Sun. Pride New Haven Weekend New Haven Pride Center 84 Orange St.

Monday Patti Smith Lecture Windham-Campbell Prizes Festival Sprague Memorial Hall 5:00 p.m.

Tuesday Jackie Ana: Blackness and Beauty St. Anthony Hall 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Cover 12– Breaking glass and building bridges: Sarah Holder, SY ’17, analyzes how New Haven activists have turned campus debates into a city matter.

Voices 6 – Sonia Gadre, SY ’20, tries to make memories new.

7 – Meghana Mysore, DC ’20, reckons with childhood myths.

Opinion

8 – Kayla Bartsch, CC ’20, finds Stanford’s drinking policies not so hard to swallow.

9 – Meghana Mysore, DC ’20, has doubts about Yale handkerchiefs.

Features 10 – What’s in a name? Gabby Deutch, BR ’18, considers what SAE’s rebranding as “Leo” means for its role on campus.

16 – Alex Zafran, ES ’19, questions why the language of kinship is so common at Yale.

Culture 18 – Joe Kuperschmidt, CC ’17, uncovers how meme culture makes meaningless jokes from dead gorillas and fictional teenagers.

19 – Ride along with Will Reid, PC ’19, through the eerily prescient ­­ violence of Taxi Driver. Meanwhile, Yvonne Ye, BK ’19, analyzes the complex global reactions to whitewashing in The Great Wall.

Reviews 20 – Jordan Coley, SY ’17, dives into Frank Ocean’s Blonde.

21 – Alex Chen, ES ’17, fills us in on Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book, and Clara De Pablo, BK ’19, assesses the Internet’s take on the Olympics. Also, Travis Deshong, BR ’19, on Suicide Squad, and Emily Pan, ES ’20, on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Sep. 16, 2016 – 3

CREDIT / D / FAIL

THE NUMBERS Index 100,00

Garamond

Average number of hairs on the human head

Ah­—as is the slight spring breeze that brushes through leaves in the coming of spring; as is the thoughtful carving of a monument —so is Garamond. Delicate yet bold; pensive yet reverent. How the Rs curve so gracefully and the Hs stand so tall. How its weight doth mimic the noble intentions of the human hand and its stolid uniformity doth reflect the microscopic artistry of nature herself, raising B-pluses to A-minuses for all who harness its pulchritude. ’Tis the essence of what is best in this world – the combination of mankind’s elegance and our ambition for perfection through the machine, harmonizing like birdsong in such a marvelous typeface.

95

Strands of hair shed on average per shower

3

Ounces that a single human hair can support

106 Pounds of hair from the average

collegiate head supported by the average college shower drain

244 Aggregate age of the current members of the hair band KISS

Cambria

Sources: 1) Google 2) statisticbrain.com 3) Anatomy textbook I read once 4) Educated guess based on empirical data collected while unclogging the shower drain once 5) Wikipedia + iPhone calculator

If you must use Cambria, then you must use Cambria. But when the proverbial man has given you liberty of choice, do think of superior fonts—say, Garamond. Granted, ’tis not the lowest of lows: Cambria, at the very least, does try for aesthetic consistency. Though cramped and stretched too far in the vertical, its serifs do hit their marks, and while its bland curvatures barely flirt with mediocrity, one can at least credit their effort. Cambria is the bookish aunt who will serve you tea, but deny you a second sugar.

–Nicole Mo

Top five best ways to get into a seminar

“Handwritten” Fonts If you want a neat, legible appearance for your font, look to those that aren’t afraid to be themselves. And if you are seeking a more personal, heartfelt air, take the time to pen out a note! But in what world, according to what logic, would it be better to use typefaces—inherently impersonal and robotic!—to replicate the human art of calligraphy? The only message you send is one that says, I want to look like I care, but I truly don’t care that much.

Perpetual italics do not elegance make. Besides, the only human handwriting these scripts resemble is that of cavemen (see: Herculaneum) and Victorian magistrates.

– Andrew Ballard

5–

Take extra syllabi after the first class. Craft a papier-mâché likeness of your professor. Deposit in their lawn.

4–

Read the syllabus carefully. Send the professor a thoughtful email explaining your interest in the seminar. Complete assignments with zeal.

Persevere until admitted.

3–

Camp in the seminar room until admitted. #LNT.

2–

Bring a cappella rushes to serenade your professor. Tell them it’s a rush event and to wear capes.

1–

Use ancestry.com to memorize the professor’s family tree. Recite said tree on the first day of shopping period.

– Simon Cooper

4 – The Yale Herald

sarah.holder@yale.edu thomas.cusano@yale.edu

VOICES At the tracks

by Sonia Gadre

If I could fill a pool with memories And swim in them forever, I would re-meet everyone I’ve known Some kind, some shrill, some clever.

I would re-watch the chilly football games And re-run every race.

I’d pour my heart into every key And take my bows with grace.

If I could paddle through the moments And relive those autumn nights, I’d witness adults grow young again By glow of bonfire light.

I would re-watch every movie With Kristin and with Chad.

I’d re-drive to that party, Drink the first beer I’d ever had.

I’ve stargazed in a bluegrass field, Swum in Barren River Lake, Spent a midnight at the art museum, And too many at Steak ‘n Shake.

If I could dive into the good old times, Like a falling drop of rain, I’d cause ripples on the surface, Welling up forgotten pain.

I’d re-pull every all-nighter, Feel the gravel in my knees.

I’d hug my mom so tight, so tight

6 – The Yale Herald

After every taunt and tease.

Growing up’s a speeding train, And not all the journey’s bliss.

It moves at such a breakneck pace leaves only memories I miss.

For memories cannot persist, Not even in the heart.

They must be altered, blurred, abridged, Mere plot points on a chart.

In spite of what they tell me, That I’ve been blessed by fortune’s kiss, For now, I’m orphaned at the tracks With only memories I miss.

For now, I’m orphaned at the tracks With only memories I miss

Watermelons

by Meghana Mysore

I swallowed a seed and now it rises, but I am broken, so it cannot live.

Mother, mother, how could I tell you I want to go back, want to grow in reverse,

As a child, I ravaged watermelons mercilessly, ate them quick like candy.

to curl up and become a seed.

How could I tell you that when I throw up these words

And their seeds—swallowing them, my mother said, would birth a million watermelons in me.

they turn to flowers bleeding from my mouth. How can I say I’m home when I ache for the soil,

I swallowed a seed, and now it grows green, leafy hands and flowered veins.

to emerge a body suddenly whole.

Graphics by Haewon Ma YH Staff

Sep. 16, 2016 – 7

OPINION Hard liquor, hard rules

by Kayla Bartsch

B

efore this school year started, Stanford passed a new ban on hard alcohol, or rather updated its student alcohol policy, to address the dangers caused by over-consumption on campus. Stanford’s Office of Alcohol Policy and Education published the new policy, stating that “the University is especially concerned about the misuse of distilled alcohol products (‘hard alcohol’), and the dangers that arise from that misuse.” Some of these dangers the Office listed as “problematic behaviors,” including “violence, assault, and heavy drinking behavior.”

According to the policy, containers of distilled alcohol 750mL and larger (the size of a typical wine bottle) are prohibited from all undergraduate housing, including the residences of undergraduates above the legal drinking age.

Also under the new ban, hard alcohol above 4o proof (20 percent alcohol by volume) is prohibited from any on-campus undergraduate party – effectively limiting students to beer and wine. According to the Stanford administration, the undergraduates of Stanford essentially must learn to be content with playing rounds of beer pong instead of slamming rounds of shots.

When describing their reasons for the ban, Stanford said “our intention is not a total prohibition of a substance, but rather a targeted approach that limits high-risk behavior and has the backing of empirical studies on restricting the availability of and access to alcohol.” With the new policy, Stanford promises “to enhance [their] educational approach, to try different methods of environmental management and to study the effects of [their] various efforts through a system of robust assessment.” Despite some expected administrative jargon, I do applaud Stanford’s new policy. I support Stanford for taking action and trying to do something about the overwhelming culture of inebriation present on its campus, and for holding its students more accountable to the code. Despite student pushback, Stanford’s tightening grip on alcohol policies will, I think, support a safer campus.

In many ways, Stanford’s new initiative is similar to that of AODHRI (the Alcohol and other Drugs Harm Reduction Initiative), which Yale created a few years back in an effort to improve campus culture. Part of this initiative was to educate all incoming freshmen about alcohol on campus, and, as a freshman myself, I was not exempt. Over the summer my fellow classmates and I took a compulsory crash course on college drinking culture titled Think About It; Stanford now requires a similar course for its freshmen. Although Yale’s course offered useful information about the effects of drugs/alcohol in an entertaining way (most notably using a satirical vigilante called Sober Buddy who kept our campus dry), I was struck by the seeming duplicity of the program. For example, the program let me know how many drinks I could consume in a night to remain in the “euphoric” stage of inebriation, then required me to sign an official document stating that I would not consume alcohol under the age of 21. The course contained videos of Yale students acting out scenes about how the right amount of alcohol can make a night more enjoyable, which were juxtaposed alongside fine print reminding me that the possession of alcohol is a misdemeanor.

The incongruities of this summer course remained a theme throughout the rest of my alcohol education. In talks presented by our Deans, FroCos, and AODHRI personnel, my fellow freshmen and I were intimately familiarized with Yale’s alcohol policies. The medical emergency policy was granted especial prevalence—“Students are strongly encouraged to call for medical assistance for themselves or for a friend who is dangerously intoxicated; such a call for emergency help does not in itself lead to disciplinary charges.” We were constantly reassured that Yale treats inebriation as a medical issue rather than cause for disciplinary action, and that no penalties would be incurred if we called for help for ourselves or a friend. Of course, I do not want students to be so afraid of penalty that they do not seek help in emergency situations, but I found that this policy somewhat undermines the institution of alcohol policies in general. If students do not face consequences for their poor drinking choices, what is left to encourage healthy ones? If a university agrees not to enforce their policies, not to discipline those who violate their codes, then why have them in the first place?

In “A letter to President Hennessy on the alcohol ban” from The Stanford Daily, an anonymous student voiced her concerns over Stanford’s new policy, essentially crying out for a policy like our own medical emergency rule. She wrote that, with the new ban, the fear of punishment will be too great for her to seek help when those around her are retching because of alcohol poisoning or sprawled out on the bathroom floor. She wrote “instead of calling my RA for help, I’ll be pushing my friend inside so the RA won’t punish him.” I think this viewpoint is a bit over-dramatized, for after researching Stanford’s potential administrative actions, it seems the most serious repercussions this student might face would be an alcohol education seminar and counseling, with expulsion from university housing for graver misdemeanors. Although I appreciate the compassion and concern behind Yale’s medical emergency policy, I think Stanford’s new policy, more disciplinary than purely medical, is the better way to go. Now, Stanford actually provides some concrete consequences for overconsumption.

So yes, I support Stanford’s decision in holding their students accountable for their actions—for a law without teeth is merely a suggestion. Stanford is working to diminish some of the incongruities present in their program which are also present in ours.

Despite my criticism, I am very grateful towards Yale and the Office of College Deans for their gracious policies and honest endeavors in working to keep their students safe. However, I do support Stanford in their decision to enforce their own policies and hold their students accountable to their own decisions.

I think Yale should follow suit, and enforce at least some inconveniences upon students who choose to seriously violate our alcohol policy. Although it is too soon to determine whether or not Stanford’s new ban will have any lasting effect, I eagerly await to see the effects of their decision. It is up to us, the students, to hold ourselves and one another responsible for how alcohol is treated oncampus, and to define our own campus culture.

Graphic by Alex Swanson YH Staff 8 ­– The Yale Herald

Anthems, songs, and handkerchiefs

by Meghana Mysore

T

his summer, Gabby Douglas became a flashpoint of controversy in the gymnastics world when she did not place her hand over her heart during the national anthem. In response to this action—or, rather, inaction—social media ignited with comments attacking her patriotism.

Why, though, did Americans feel the need the criticize Douglas, and why did some feel that she was attacking tradition? Can a small gesture really capture what it means to be American, or what it means, moreover, to be a part of something?

People cling to traditions like those surrounding the national anthem, and attach undue importance to them, because they reassure us and those around us that we belong. It is almost as if we can grasp these symbols as instant demonstrations of identity, for if we recite the national anthem, stand up and put our hands over our hearts, we can show that we are American, that we are here, and that we are more legitimately here than those who fail to act in a similar way.

I’ve noticed something similar in the traditions I’ve been acquainted with thus far at Yale. At the end of orientation, all of us bright-eyed freshmen gathered in Woolsey Hall to sing “Bright College Years,” a song that is a tradition of Yale and symbolizes true entry into Yale’s gates. As the song finished, we took out our handkerchiefs, decorated with a Y and the year 2020. At the words “for God, for country, and for Yale,” we waved them from the left to the right to the left again, and I’m quite certain I somehow messed up this seemingly simple movement of the wrist and hand. Yale, as I’ve come to learn, is full of such traditions, and while they do remind me of how I’m attending a storied institution, they do not truly make me feel part of Yale. They make me aware of the history that surrounds me, but I still don’t feel like I’m interacting with this history. I interact with the students and people here but feel as though I’m only going through the motions with traditions that feel distant from me.

Tradition fails, at times, to incorporate perspectives and identities, because tradition is not elastic but rather rigid. Considering the controversies surrounding the renaming of Calhoun College at Yale, for example, we see exactly where tradition fails. Tradition, by its nature, is unchanging, while the university itself in terms of diversity and background of students has changed immensely. I understand that anthems, songs, and handkerchiefs are meant to symbolize all of these experiences in one universal act of unity, but sometimes symbols feel reductive, especially when we give them so much weight.

We assume that symbolic or traditional representations of belonging will always be able to represent all people, when in fact they cannot. Songs like “Bright College Years” might suggest a universal identity for the student body in its precise and measured lines and not of the different and yet equally valid stories and experiences of every student. They are inherently positive, and can demonstrate one aspect of belonging, but the problem arises when we see them as the most forceful or valid symbols of belonging. In the first few weeks of being here, it definitely feels as though these traditions are meant to capture everything that it means to be part of Yale, but they do not.

There simply is not enough room on a handkerchief to write down all the meaningful experiences I might have in my next four years here. I recognize the history of traditions and do not resist their existence, but I do not believe that they best represent belonging, for they are unable to change.

With time, the qualifications of belonging evolve, and they should evolve.

Our belonging to a place cannot be constrained to a symbol or a tradition, for often they are shallow and cannot do justice to the incredible color and variety of belonging.

I want to be part of Yale, and I hope I will be. I hope I will take many walks around campus until I understand its geography and until that geography somehow becomes part of me. I hope I will find myself having late night conversations with my suitemates about cereal and religion and everything in between. I hope I will find myself writing pieces like this one.

These are the things, I think, that truly make me part of Yale.

People tend to hold onto symbolic forms of showing the world they belong somewhere, for it doesn’t seem enough to simply belong. It is, however, enough to simply belong, but it’s difficult to believe this in our culture, which prizes symbolic and visible belonging rather than the more real but often tacit kind. Tradition and belonging are not synonymous, and we should not treat them as such.

In four years, I will wrongly wave my handkerchief again—the blue of the “Y” now faded and the fabric slightly tattered—remembering all the experiences I couldn’t fit on it, and I will know I am part of a community.

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff Sep. 16, 2016 – 9

FEATURES

Looking at “Leo” Gabby Deutch, BR ’18, considers whether the move from SAE to “Leo” is a change of name and heart

T

wo stone lions, majestic and male, perch on either side of the steps that rise to the door of 35 High Street, the longtime offcampus house of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. The lions stood guard while several dozen undergraduate men bore witness to a disparaging speech that prompted Yale’s sanctions against the fraternity in 2014, and—more recently—when allegations of a “white-girls only” party ricocheted off the nearby Cambridge Oxford Apartments and across the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. This past June, though, the lions witnessed a different sort of commotion: the rebranding of SAE as “Leo.” The new name, which translates from Latin as “lion,” is a nod to these statues, which greet guests queuing to enter the fraternity house. This use of Latin was purposeful: as Leo President Jesse Mander, BR ‘17, noted, the Romans came after the Greeks, and the Greek letters of SAE are gone, along with its affiliation to a national chapter. In other words, this name change marks a symbolic departure from years of controversy for Mander and his brothers. As the school year kicks off and as a new pledge class climbs past the lions of 35 High Street, Leo hopes to forget about the past—but does the rest of Yale?

AT A RECENT PARTY IN AN OLD CAMPUS SUITE, Anna McNeil, BR ‘20, was talking to a male acquaintance. After several minutes, the conversation turned to last year’s protests on campus. McNeil often makes a point of bringing up the infamous “white-girls-only incident.” For her, it’s simple: she’ll never go to a party at 35 High Street. Her acquaintance sympathized—he had seen The Hunting Ground, a 2015 documentary about sexual assault on college campuses, and self-identified as “woke.” He also shared with McNeil that he plans on rushing Leo in the spring.

“I didn’t think people would consider going [to Leo],” McNeil said. “Social consciousness [at Yale] is not up to par.” She is an activist, and she comes to Yale wary of the elite culture that she says props up fraternities when they do something wrong, like upholding a racist culture. “Frats have so much

10 –­ The Yale Herald

power—literal capital in the form of alcohol. It’s currency on campus, and it’s elitism,” she said.

“They’re the only ones that have that position.”

McNeil has been to other fraternities since arriving in New Haven, but she maintains that she will never venture to Leo. McNeil is not alone: several weeks ago, Ashia Ajani, TD ’19, a sophomore active in the Yale Black Women’s Coalition, was surprised to learn that so many people were going to Leo parties. She found herself on High Street, where she approached the crowd loitering near the lions, and proposed an alternative: “If you aren’t a racist, come party with us.” Ajani led the people that followed—just a few people, considering the size of the group waiting to get into Leo—to her suite in Timothy Dwight.

“It wasn’t surprising [that very few people came]. We weren’t offering alcohol—just a place to dance,” Ajani said. Of Leo’s past, she added: “It is a legacy that cannot be undone…. It is hard to imagine a simple name change can change that.”

Ajani maintains that the fraternity has not done enough to confront its history of exclusivity and, at times, racism. She prefers to find other places to dance besides the fraternities of High Street, such as the parties hosted by La Casa and the LGBTQ Student Cooperative. She is pushing for historically black fraternities and sororities to come to Yale.

STILL, THE FACT REMAINS THAT FOR MANY PEOPLE at Yale, fraternities are the cheapest, easiest way to access alcohol. They are also some of the only venues on campus where nightlife sits beyond the purview of Yale administrators. And even if students continue to protest Leo, these efforts may prove short-lived as those who witnessed the incidents at 35 High Street graduate. After all, it was only five years ago that Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) made national headlines when a video surfaced of its pledges chanting: “No means yes, yes means anal.” Certain students choose not to attend DKE parties, but “DKEmas” and “Tang” have returned as some of the most popular Greek events at Yale.

“An inherent problem with activism at a four-year college is that every year, 25 percent of people are new, and they don’t completely understand the his-

tory,” said one sorority sister of Yale’s chapter of Pi Beta Phi who asked to remain anonymous. By her measure, many Pi Phi sisters think that Leo hasn’t done enough to fix its internal problems and to respond to conversations from last year. She also felt that members of Leo are unaware of the issues at stake: “They don’t recognize problems within their own culture, and they don’t have a willingness. It’s a herd mentality; like-minded frat boys have social capital.”

She did, however, note that Yale has a shortage of social spaces: “The line at Toad’s only seems to get longer, and that will continue with the opening of the new residential colleges. All three fraternities on High Street—Sig Ep, Sig Nu, and Leo—tend to have lines out the door when they host parties.”

By nature, then, all fraternity parties are crowded, loud, and sometimes exclusive.

But this Pi Phi member urges against the assumption that all fraternities are created equal: “There are structural problems with Greek life in general, but SAE has always been worse. It is important to show that we won’t go to that frat.”

Mander, the President of Leo, responds to these objections by highlighting some of the initiatives the organization has undertaken in recent months— initiatives, in fact, that will go far beyond those of other fraternities in promoting inclusivity and safety at an institutional level. He enumerated changes that guests to Leo can expect at parties this year: cases of water inside the house and bottles available at the door as people leave; a paid bouncer to maintain an unbiased system of admission to parties; female bartenders shoulder-to-shoulder with Leo brothers behind the bar; and the registration of each and every party with the Yale Police. And now that fraternity dues no longer funnel into a national chapter, these dues will now be used to offer scholarship to members in need of financial aid.

“Criticism made us want to be more involved with campus life,” Mander said. “We wanted a more inviting and a safer environment for parties…

We saw the change to Leo as an opportunity to be at the forefront of helping people enjoy the social scene.” Mander also noted that Leo plans to con-

tact Yale’s sororities to coordinate on philanthropic work.

He remains hopeful that the sororities will accept his offer—and that they will perhaps even hold mixers with Leo once again. But charity is not just a means to an end: Griffin Smilow, PC ’18, the organization’s Philanthropic Chair, aims to “get as many brothers involved as possible” in volunteer work. He proposed that members of the organization do something for the community, like serve at a local soup kitchen.

These changes have not gone unnoticed. Helen Price, DC ’18, Co-Director of Unite Against Sexual Assault Yale (USAY), said she is “encouraged” by the organization’s plans. Henry Iseman, PC ’18, Vice President of Leo, reached out to her about collaborating with USAY and other groups on campus. She worked with Iseman and other members of his organization over a couple months—“not just a couple times,” she said—and hopes that Leo will continue to expand its horizons by partaking in workshops at Yale’s cultural houses and by changing the pledge process for new members.

THIS AUGUST, YALE LIFTED SANCTIONS AGAINST LEO that had been in place for nearly two years. In the organization, new students encountered a space virtually indistinguishable from less scandal-ridden fraternities. In fact, Mander suggests that Leo was even more inclusive than its peer institutions: “The impression of us being a specific type of person—white and preppy—I think is incorrect,” he said. He noted that members come from numerous countries, and, unlike other fraternities that tend to center around a sports team, Leo members are involved in various campus groups and activities.

Tara Campbell, BR ’20, said that she “couldn’t get a sense” of the fraternity when she visited it during her first week on campus. That night, Campbell was waiting in a long line to get in when she heard shouts decrying members of Leo as misogynists. Campbell was shocked by the comments, but she chose to stay. After all, every fraternity is “big, dirty, and crowded” with the “same people at all parties.” In Campbell’s mind, Leo is no different. If anything, the organization’s rebranding might be a step in the right direction.

Nevertheless, lines still snake down the steps of 35 High Street and onto the sidewalk. Come this fall, invitations to “Leo Crush” will find their way under the doors of the Old Campus dorm rooms of attractive freshmen. When these students tear open their invitations, printed on pretty cardstock, they will have no memory of the upset and anger with SAE that underlay some of last fall’s student activism. They will think of neither DKE’s inflammatory chanting nor the 2011 Sig Phi Epsilon tailgate that resulted in the death of a 30-year-old woman. But in Yale’s lack of institutional memory, there lies an opportunity for Leo, among other fraternities, to start fresh—to reject the tradition of exclusivity that has come to define the reputations of many Greek institutions at Yale and beyond.

Graphic by Shelby Redman YH Staff Sep. 16, 2016 – 11

12 – The Yale Herald

Picking up the pieces

How a broken window brought New Haven activists into the conversation

By Sarah Holder YH Staff

I

t is a hot September Friday in New Haven. Traffic clogs the intersection of College and Elm. Students enter and exit a large stone building, passing the plaque where its name is usually denoted. Some stop and double-take; some ignore; fewer flinch.

Scrawled on a slim piece of silver tape, above the word “College,” is the name “Saddam Hussein.”

When the traffic light turns red, a group shuffles across the street, holding a long, horizontal orange sign. They spread the banner from sidewalk to sidewalk, their heads just clearing the top. It is slightly transparent, and when the sunlight hits the thin fabric, the protestors’ bodies are silhouetted behind four thinly drawn words: “Yale: #CHANGE THE NAME!” The people behind the weekly protests and the duct-taped dictators—meant as a challenge to Yale; you wouldn’t name a college after Saddam Hussein, would you?— are a coalition of New Haven community activists and Yale students. They share a common goal: to compel the Yale administration to change the name of Calhoun College. They will stand on College and Elm every Friday at noon, rain or shine, until the university complies.

These activists aren’t strangers to Yale issues, nor to protesting: many of them are organizers with Unidad Latina en Accióon, a New Haven organization that has taken Yale to task on issues like labor rights and union regulations. And the name they’re protesting is no stranger to dissent: John C. Calhoun was one of the South’s most vocal proponents of slavery; the decision to honor his name on a Yale residential college has been a point of contention for years.

Protests surrounding the naming came to a head last semester, but in an Apr. 27 email to the Yale community, President Salovey announced that Yale would change the term “Master” to “Head of College,” while reaffirming the university’s commitment to preserving the name Calhoun. Instead of removing art that memorialized John C. Calhoun’s racist past, Salovey implemented a Committee on Art in Public Spaces to reevaluate it.

The decision to keep the name Calhoun came as an end-of-year blow to students, after a tumultuous year of open letters, town hall meetings, and sustained protests.

Students and faculty who had sent in recommendations to the contrary were frustrated.

The administration insisted that logistics dictated the late release of the decision, but some students who spoke to the Yale Daily News in the spring suspected that the administration’s decision to release the statement in late April was strategic—it caught student activists at the stressful end of the semester, and gave them less time to organize.

At that point, reading period had started, which gave way to finals period, and soon most students were headed out of New Haven for the summer. The word “Master” was quietly stripped from walls, deleted from email signatures, and removed from plaques.

Quieter still, the name “Calhoun” remained.

But on June 13, Corey Menafee, a dishwasher for Calhoun College, mounted a table in the Calhoun dining hall with a broom in his hands. We do not know if the handle was plastic or wood; how clammy the palms were that held it or how hot with rage; how weighty the thin rod felt when he lifted it over his head. We only know that with a few upward thrusts, Menafee had knocked a stained glass window depicting racist imagery to the ground, and reopened a conversation that had seemed, if not closed, paused.

Until now, the issue of naming on college campuses had seemed relegated to an elite sphere: people at a selective university debating behind closed doors as the world watched, or didn’t.

It wasn’t the act of breaking the window that was significant. It was who broke it, and who noticed.

THE WINDOW IN QUESTION SAT FOR YEARS ON THE FAR RIGHT WALL OF Calhoun dining hall, within sight of the small dishroom where Menafee spent most of the workday. Framed by a rabbit on one side and birds on the other, this window depicted two slaves standing together, balancing large bales of cotton atop their heads. Someone meant for it to be beautiful, once—from inside the dining hall, sun would dapple in through the tinted glass, washing students in the blue of the frame and the lighter blues of the cotton; the ochres of the wheat and the rose of the woman’s basket. At the right angle, the light could simulate a beauty incongruous with the violent past the window represented.

In smashing it, Menafee made legible the violence within. Later, he would describe the image as “primitive” and “degrading.” “I believe one of the figures were actually smiling, which is so condescending, because looking back on slavery, it wasn’t a happy time for African Americans,” he told reporters from Democracy Now.

His spontaneous act was met with swift consequences. Hours after he damaged the pane, the New Haven police arrested Menafee at Yale’s behest. He was charged with second degree reckless endangerment and first degree criminal mischief—a felony— and deemed a danger to students. On June 21, Menafee resigned.

Menafee’s case might have flown under the radar, if Paul Bass, the editor of the New Haven Independent, had not received a tip on the incident in early July. On July 11, the Independent broke the story with an article bearing the headline: “Worker Smashes ‘Racist’ Panel, Loses Job.” Within hours, news had spread.

The case was an immediate outrage, said Kica Matos, the Director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at the Center for Community Change. She didn’t perceive it simply as an issue that pitted New Haven against Yale. Rather, it was about the inequalities inherent in the criminal justice system; about the mass incarceration of black men. It was about a vulnerable person victimized by a system stacked against him. “Yet another African American man from New Haven facing potential felony charges, for speaking out on something that bothered him and his conscience,” recalled Matos. “In its face, it was so egregious.”

For Katherine Dembey, LAW ’16, Menafee’s case was particularly powerful based on her experience with the New Haven courts. “It’s something that’s very common in the New Haven court system, and in court systems generally,” she said.

While Menafee’s arrest situates him in a broader narrative of national injustice, the specifics of his case soon became particularly upsetting for a city whose residents are primarily people of color, for whom the story seemed to confirm assumptions of the university’s inherent racism.

“Many residents were not aware of how offensive and widespread the glorification of slavery was [at Yale] until they saw those images in the New Haven Independent.

People were horrified,” said Matos, referring to Menafee’s window and the others that lined the Calhoun dining hall until earlier this month. “We see glorification of John Calhoun, we see happy slaves picking cotton, we see a minstrel who is playing the banjo… It’s straight up propaganda.”

Matos spoke to Paul Bass to determine the dates of Menafee’s trial, and quickly reached out to New Haven non-profit groups like New Haven Family Alliance and Unidad Latina en Accióon to begin organizing alongside the Center for Community Change. Dembey attended with fellow law students. Dr. Briallan Hopper, a Lecturer in English active in faculty advocacy around renaming, joined her, along with other faculty members. A New Haven philanthropist arrived to act as Menafee’s pro-bono lawyer. In total, 50 friends and fellow dining hall workers; reporters and photographers; students and staff came to support or document the scene.

Menafee had no phone and no way of knowing how much attention his case had received, so when he arrived in court he seemed shocked at the turn-out.

“Menafee’s case brought together groups who have all different concerns: about workers’ rights, criminal justice, Yale University’s racism and lack of concern for students and workers and faculty of color,” said Dembey. “I think it touches on a lot of issues in the New Haven community, not just Yale.” Matos agreed: “To me, what’s striking about this particular coalition is that this is the first time in 15 years that there’s been such a broad cross-section of engagement.”

David Yaffe-Belaney, CC ’19, one of three Yale students interning at the Independent who broke the story, said the afternoon was “surreal.” “It was like a courthouse scene that you might see on TV, with reporters and cameramen gathered on the courthouse steps,” he recalled.

When Corey Menafee approached the judge’s bench that afternoon, he was informed that Yale had asked for the charges to be dropped. But before that, they had one request: they wanted their 27 shards of glass back. The judge was unmoved, recalled Dr. Hopper. “He said, ‘Yale can wait for its broken glass, and I hope it doesn’t put the pieces back together again.’”

The judge’s Humpty-Dumpty-inspired pronouncement was prophetic. After the crowded courthouse scene, activists continued to rally. Bianca Brooks, a Columbia student studying in New Haven over the summer, created a GoFundMe to raise money for Menafee’s court fees. Finally, on July 14, President Salovey emailed the Yale community to address Menafee’s actions. He described the situation as “regrettable for all concerned,” explaining that all charges had been dismissed, and that Yale would be seeking no restitutions for damage caused. On Aug. 1, Yale announced the creation of the Committee to Establish Principles for Renaming, a group of faculty and students that would develop “clearly delineated principles to guide the university’s decisions on proposals to remove a historical name” in the future. And by the time students arrived back on campus, the offending windows were taken down, and replaced by amber-tinted panes.

Sept. 16, 2016– 13 Graphic by Rachel An YH Staff

But the moment the first shards scattered, their sharp edges embedded themselves into the fabric of the city, and on the day Menafee stood in that New Haven courtroom, it was already too late to pick them all out. The window was gone, but left in its wake was a new coalition of activists dedicated to affecting change at the university. Yale’s problem of naming and history and legacy had suddenly transcended the university sphere to become not just a student problem, but a New Haven one.

JOHN LUGO STANDS IN FRONT OF THE CROWD GATHERED AT THE NEW HAVEN PEOPLE’S Center on Sept. 12 and gestures at the room with his black whiteboard marker, speaking in rapid Spanish. He’s running down a list of actions ULA has planned for the week. On one of the walls behind him is a poster honoring “America’s Labor Heritage”; on another is a picture of Rosa Parks. The activists seated around him on metal chairs slowly raise their hands, volunteering their time, their voices.

“Atticus, Thai Taste,” he writes on the board—wage theft. “NHPD”—tomorrow, 5pm, police protest. When he says “policía,” a baby begins to wail, and everyone chuckles. She already gets it.

Lugo is the co-founder of ULA, and has been organizing the group around labor and

comparison he draws is hyperbolic, but not entirely baseless.

New Haven has a poverty rate of 26.4%. Yale University has an endowment of $23 billion. This inequality is reflected in the outsize influence the university has on everything from the physical and social geography of the city (the construction of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin Colleges will contribute to shifting neighborhood demographics and rising property taxes) to the economic stability of its citizens (Yale is the biggest employer of New Haven residents, providing 4,000 jobs as of August 2015).

“The bottom line is, the university has a big footprint,” said Diana Valeta. On Friday afternoon, she is seated in front of the entrance to Calhoun in a red folding chair, a sign resting on her shins that reads: “Yale: Stop Insulting Our Community.” Cee Jay, a New Haven activist wearing a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt, nods in assent, adding, “They don’t even pay taxes!” “I didn’t even realize!” Valeta exclaims. “That’s the community’s money!”

In March, the university opposed legislation that would tax the university endowment on certain academic facilities, a bill that would have brought in much-needed additional revenue. The university does pay $4.5 million in property taxes, however, as well as an annual voluntary payment of $8.2 million.

Matos believes that under this administration, Yale-New Haven associations have worsened. “There’s tension between legislators and university leadership about taxation issues; tension between university and labor over upcoming contracts; there’s every number of issues that you can read about in the paper on any given day,” she listed. “Yale just happens to have relocated in New Haven. We all feel that Yale has a responsibility to the city.”

Thomas Conroy, Director of the Office of Public Affairs & Communications, did not address the assertion that relations were worsening, but acknowledged that “New Haven residents are going to express themselves about many aspects of Yale, and Yale is going to remain a place that wants to work with the city to mutual benefit, and listen to what its citizens have to say about the University.”

In the naming controversy, citizens have found an entry-point into discussing broader issues inherent to the complicated town-gown relationship—an economic tension that activists say is ultimately grounded in a racial one.

“You have to look for the opportunities to bring the issues that matter into public light and seize the moment when people are paying attention,” said Wilder.

“In a broad sense, the protests are about racial injustice and Yale, and in a broad sense, New Haven-Yale relations are about racial injustice and Yale,” said Hopper. “It has to do with relationships between property and people, and what’s more important.”

Menafee’s case showed people how these uneven power dynamics can manifest: An African American employee is forced to work for a predominately white institution in degrading conditions. When he fights back he’s threatened with imprisonment. The destruction of property could lead to the destruction of a man’s life.

“It has to do with relationships between property and people, and what’s more important.”

—Briallan Hopper, Lecturer in English civil rights issues since 2002. After supporting Menafee at the courthouse and subsequent rallies, he and his colleague Megan Fountain continued leading the Friday afternoon protests. “When the students are gone, we will be left to suffer,” he said. “We felt like it was time to engage.”

IN THE FALL, STUDENT RESPONSES TO ISSUES OF RACE AND INCLUSION WERE instrumental in propelling university-wide change. Formal demands from student organizations catalyzed administrative commitments to increase funding for cultural houses, create new systems for reporting discrimination, and renew emphasis on hiring faculty of color.

In the spring, attention shifted to the issue of naming and of visual representations of slavery in campus art. But from the sidewalk outside Calhoun, it’s hard to make out the images that decorate the dining hall windows, even if you’re looking for them. It follows, then, that the students inside were again the ones having most of the conversations.

New Haven activists were watching, said Matos, but not engaging.

In October, a protest organized by a local anti-racism group, the Answer Coalition, called on Yale to change the name of Calhoun College. But besides their 20-member demonstration, the issue of naming, especially, seemed to exist outside the purview of New Haven organizers. After the news of Menafee’s arrest broke, however, Matos wrote an opinion article in the Independent titled “Windows on a Shameful Past.” In it, she argued that Yale’s refusal to rename the college and take down the windows was a direct affront to the New Haven community. “Those who live and work at Calhoun are the ones who most strongly feel the effects of this, a shrine to a white supremacist and a celebration of slavery,” she wrote.“But the building—and Yale University—are not an isolated island. They are located in this city, our city. A city whose population is majority people of color.”

There is a false dichotomy embedded in this statement, however: setting up a divide between those who work at Yale and those who live in New Haven. Menafee, who grew up in New Haven and has worked at Yale since 2007, filled both those categories.

To Craig Wilder, an MIT professor and author of Ebony and Ivy, a non-fiction account of the relationship between institutions of higher education and slavery, the most disturbing implication was that too many people seemed to be relatively comfortable with the idea of having anyone work in front of images of plantation slavery. “We are coworkers, at least in theory,” he said, referring to the faculty and administration who stayed silent as dining hall staff endured.

Yale is not the Vatican. It has built moats and walls, and it has marked its distinct boundaries, but it occupies New Haven land, and its decisions affect New Haven residents—those who work on campus, and off.

There is an inacurrate sense of divide between the campuses of elite universities and the people who live in the surrounding areas, argued Wilder. “As elite universities become wealthier and more privileged, that divide has taken on its own logic,” he said. “It’s rarely challenged, we rarely have to think about it that much. It’s just imposed—it’s just there.”

In the context of Yale, this divide has existed for decades. Lugo moved to New Haven in the 90s, and said he stayed primarily to organize with a campaign to tax Yale. “A lot of people feel it’s not right to have the poorest city with the richest university,” he said. The

14 – The Yale Herald

“CALHOUN DOES NOT DESERVE HIS FAME. CHANGE… THE… NAME!” IAN VALETA, Diana’s son and a thirteen-year-old student at a New Haven high school, plays a somber EFF#F on his alto sax, following the protestors’ rhythm. He can’t join the chant with a reed in his mouth, but he nods along. Cars rubberneck; drivers crane their necks. One yells “A racist!” in assent.

“Yale brings us racist shame. Change...the...name!”

On either side of the street, two Yale students, Caroline Kuritzkes, ES ’18, and Mojique Tyler, ES ’19, pass out flyers emblazoned with John C. Calhoun’s almost comically gruesome visage and wild hair. At the bottom of each page is the same note: “The New Haven community unites today to tell Yale that enough is enough.”

It seems significant that the message of the New Haven community is being disseminated to passersby from the hands of Yale students. Perhaps it means a bridge is being crossed; that lines between student and citizen are being blurred.

This is not the first time students and activists have rallied around a common cause.

When news surfaced of wage theft at Gourmet Heaven in Feb. 2014, student social justice groups helped organize protests, and undergraduate journalists extensively covered the demonstrations and eventual dismantling of the deli. When a young black man was killed by a police officer, Yale students linked arms with New Haven Black Lives Matter activists in a human chain to the court house. When Next Yale organized a town hall to discuss issues of race on campus, UNITE HERE’s Locals 34 and 35 and the graduate student union showed up­—together, they presented a united front in opposing Yale’s “endowment hoarding.”

Still, said Matos, “One critique you hear often from advocates in the city is that Yale students make no effort or very little effort to truly engage the residents in issues that matter as much to students as they do to the city. Students act as though they are not a part of the city—but it goes both ways. There are a set of issues students should care about that are city-based issues, and vice versa.”

Elisia Ceballo-Countryman, CC ’18, says she came to Yale freshman year hoping to engage closely with the New Haven community, but soon found that it was hard enough to keep her head above water on campus. “Yale itself creates this bubble—I mean it’s hard to even get around New Haven; there’s no ‘here’s how the buses work,’” she said.

Entities like Dwight Hall, the Center for Public Service and Social Justice, aim to get students involved in New Haven through community service efforts. Programs like the President’s Public Service Fellowship encourage students to stay in New Haven over the

summer, and partnerships with homeless shelters, food banks, and local schools connect Yale students directly to the city.

But, said Ceballo-Countryman, service is not enough to connect the sometimes disparate experiences of Yale students and community members. “There’s a lot of talk about Yalies helping the poor,” she said. “But not Yalies learning from this amazing city we’re in.”

“Because of wealth of the universities and because of the collective wealth of undergraduate populations, we’ve become more remote from the people who live right next to us than we ever have before,” said Wilder. “The demographics of black students have shifted dramatically in the past quarter century, too—they’re more economically, and nationally, more diverse. Universities need to make more opportunities for all students to engage.”

Tyler, who is positioned at the southern corner of Elm Street on Friday, became involved with both campus activism and ULA last year as a freshman. Before Yale, they were involved with New York City activism, where they learned the value in doing things for the community, by the community. “Service is like… Here’s this thing Yale has, let’s give it to you,” they said.

Ceballo-Countryman said that the African American Cultural House used to be a hub for New Haven/Yale interaction, but that the relationship eroded during Dean Rodney Cohen’s regime. In March, 2015, Cohen was removed from his position aftera petition with 147 signatures called for his removal, and Risë Nelson replaced him.

Nelson is committed to reestablishing community ties, because her own interaction with New Haven came through the house when she was an undergraduate here.

Wilder suggested that engagement can also start in the classroom. “A lot of our students are going to take example from administration and faculty—if they have a three dimensional and respectful relationship with [the city and its residents], it’s more likely that our undergrads will develop similar relationships,” he said. “We have to take a lot of the responsibility for the tone and the texture of our conversations.”

THE NATURE OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YALE STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY activists is important not only because it can work to bolster town-gown relations, but because their coalition has strategic value.

While student activists on campus last semester worked to fight for issues of racial justice, the responsibility of juggling student life and activist life was exhausting.

Matos and the colleagues she collaborated with this summer are full-time social justice advocates, who are able to more fully dedicate their time to the fight. “We don’t have to go back to our jobs, because this is our job,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Instead of cycling in and out of the community every four years, as most undergraduates do, New Haven residents stay put. “One of the frustrations around organization on campus is that there’s always the expectation that students will graduate and move on. The ability to organize depends on student’s strategic planning, and commitment to continuity and legacy,” said Matos.

And while students often go home in the winter and summer, New Haven activists are able to maintain a consistent presence. “The best tools the University has is the fact of the school year breaks,” said Ceballo-Countryman. “Students are indebted to New Haven activists for carrying on this summer.”

That’s not to discount the work students did last semester, and continue to do.

“I feel very strongly that the wrong way to look at the situation is that [New Haven residents] are ‘grown up professional activists’ and Yale students are just students figuring things out,” insisted Hopper. “What Yale students have been able to do is just extraordinary, and had an impact all over the world.”

“There’s also something to be said about fresh energy and youthful energy,” said Matos. “I’ve seen unprecedented levels of commitment [from Yale students].” She hopes that energy can translate into more coalition building—into Yale students getting more involved in New Haven issues, and vice versa.

When Yale hired Ernesto Zedillo, the former President of Mexico, to direct the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, ULA attempted to rally student support in protesting the appointment. “He’s a war criminal!” Lugo explained. They didn’t have luck engaging students last year, but he hopes for reciprocity in future efforts. Of course, he said, he’d be out here protesting either way.

were effective catalysts for change; this summer, a broom handle was.

The 12 o’clock protests, too, are “a brilliant tactic,” said Ceballo-Countryman. The activists are breaking no laws; they’re perfectly positioned for photo opportunities; they get face time with New Haven residents walking near the green or driving through campus, as well as with Yale students, staff, and faculty. Besides, “waking up every Friday to chanting of Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Calhoun has got to go… it’s an experience,” she said. She expects that soon, students will start to complain. “It feels like you’re in a cultural war-zone when you’re living there.” Ceballo-Countryman moved off campus this year.

“Something that’s been profound about the kinds of protests...has been the level of creativity we’ve seen,” said Hopper. Multiple driving agents resulted in multiple methods: symbolic renaming ceremonies; acts of civil disobedience; protests; flyers; chants. No one strategy exists in a vacuum, and it’s hard to say which—if any—will be the one that turns Yale’s hand.

THE WINDOWS IN THE DINING HALL HAVE COME DOWN, BUT THE NAME REMAINS. On Aug. 1, President Salovey announced the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming. In an email to the Yale community, he wrote that, though he remains “deeply committed to our obligation to confront this country’s—and our university’s— past, including historical currents of exclusion and racism,” he admitted that campus conversations could have been bolstered by more expert input. “In particular,” he wrote, “we would have benefited from a set of well-articulated guiding principles according to which a historical name might be removed or changed.”

Though the announcement came after the New Haven protests started, it is unlikely that the two are correlated. To be able to launch a committee of 12 members on August 1, 20 days after the Menafee news broke, suggests preliminary actions had been taken earlier in the summer.

The committee was formed to establish guidelines, not implement change. They are focused on the intellectual principles of the matter of naming, and will not be making decisions on individual buildings. And though the representatives span disciplines, ages, races, genders, and departments, and include two students who are women of color, none of the participants is a non-Yale affiliated community member.

The difficulty of finding a solution to the naming debate has been well-documented.

But Wilder suggested that universities should take the voices in the communities that surround them into consideration. “Universities have been very bad at thinking about engaging the public in a meaningful way,” he said. He paused, then amended his statement.

In 2013, The University of Virginia instated a President’s Commission on Slavery in the University, to investigate the university’s historic relationship with slave labor.

The Commission began by reaching out to its surrounding community—including the African American community—living in Charlottesville, and held events in historically black churches and community institutions off campus to make it clear that the university was not only inviting the community into the conversation, but would also go out into the community themselves. The College of William and Mary, too, engages citizens of Williamsburg in workshops through the Lemon Project, their version of UVA’s commission.

And earlier this year, Georgetown University made a radical step to atone for their past, giving a better chance at admission to students who descended from the 272 slaves off of whom the university once profited.

Georgetown has been criticized for this move—by some for doing too much, by others for doing too little—but that’s part of the process, insists Wilder. Engaging with the past involves dialogue that involves criticism, and, ultimately, emotion.

“Whatever happens at Georgetown, the lesson we should take is that universities have an obligation to deal directly and honestly with their own past, no matter how troubling that past might be,” he said. “Allowing fear of consequences is cowardly and anti-intellectual.”

YESTERDAY, ON SEPT. 15, YALE ANNOUNCED A SYMPOSIUM CALLED “What’s in a Name? The Naming and Symbolism Controversy on University Campuses,” to be held on Sept. 26.

The community is invited. Admission is free.

THE CALHOUN STAINED GLASS WINDOWS HAVE BEEN A FOCUS OF STUDENT protests since the 1990s. After student unrest in 1992, actions were taken to remove one particularly offensive panel depicting a slave kneeling at John C. Calhoun’s feet— even then, while the slave was omitted, Calhoun stayed, presiding over the dining hall for decades. So the administration’s reimagining of the Calhoun dining hall this summer came as a surprise.

When Ceballo-Countryman heard that the windows were coming down, “It was like, fuckin’ Christmas,” she said. “I’ve been screaming about the one stained glass for a solid year but every time I said it people were like, what? [Menafee] made the presence of the glass known—it became not just about the name, but what the college stands for.” Last fall, students’ protests and marches and lists of demands

Sept. 16, 2016 – 15

FEATURES

All in the family

Alex Zafran ES ’19 explores the artifice of kinship at Yale

I

want to unsubscribe from my family panlist. Almost daily, I get neighborhood robbery reports, updates on my kindergarten friends, and forwarded beauty newsletters that I wish didn’t crowd my inbox. I joke about these emails, but I like them. Each one is a notification of whenever my parents are at their computers, thinking of me—and, in turn, I’m thinking of them.

There are other panlists that I genuinely wish I could unsubscribe from. For example, the Yale Record. Recently, I got an email soliciting contributions to their upcoming Family Issue. In it, the editor-in-chief writes, “Some of you love your Record family, while some of you wish they could stop receiving emails from your Record family about contributing to your Record family’s Family Issue.” My Record family? Does

16 – The Yale Herald

my asking to be removed from their panlist three separate times constitute a relationship with the Record, let alone a familial one? Did they think that using the language of family would make me more inclined to write, or more guilty about rejecting their invitation?

The Record is not the only organization to employ the language of kinship to establish community. Think of residential college sibling programs, CC moms and dads, Greek life. According to Professor of Anthropology Louisa Lombard, “the connections that we have to other people that we think of as being the most important are always ties to family.” So when a group wants its members to be close-knit, it describes itself “through the language of family as a way to make people think of it as a connection

that’s important and essential.” Familial language constructs a bond that couldn’t possibly exist. The question is, does it matter?

Yale seems to think it does. Incoming freshmen can participate in a variety of programs designed to ease their transition into the storm and stress of college, and many of them invoke kinship bonds. In the case of Cultural Connections, for example, the language is explicitly familial. Eileen Galvez, Assistant Dean and Director of Cultural Connections says that “[t]he spirit of the program has always been to provide community.

And that has never changed, and I don’t foresee that changing, because the students themselves are so married to this idea that they have these micro-families...

At first I think students think it’s kind of silly but by day three they’re like, no that’s my mom, that’s my CC mom, that’s my CC dad, and this is my CC family.”

The concept of chosen family itself is a complicated one—families, by definition, are assigned randomly and without input. Family labels provide concrete terms for otherwise ambiguous social relationships. They accelerate a sense of community and work as stand-ins until closeness becomes a reality. This closeness can be comforting for many students, especially during the beginning of college, who don’t yet feel that they belong. Professor Lombard cites British anthropologist Mary Douglas’s idea about the “formlessness” of college life: “you don’t have this sense of where you belong in relation to other people.

It’s just this big mess of students. You don’t really have responsibilities to other people and other people don’t really have responsibilities to you in a more social sense.”

The history of Cultural Connections captures the newcomers’ need to find footing in such a disorienting environment. According to Galvez, the present-day CC program originates in the Puerto Rican Orientation Program of the 1970s, a student-led initiative to help smooth the transition for students of Puerto Rican origin coming to Yale. “These students went and recruited potential students, saying, ‘you’re going to come to Yale, we’ll have a family for you, we’re going to do this together.’”

Eventually, the Puerto Rican Orientation Program was so successful that it became, in the 90s, the Pre-Orientation Opportunity Program, an initiative for all students of color under the auspices of the University. The initiative evolved into Cultural Connections in 1999, and was opened to students of all backgrounds in 2004. The program’s website specifically invokes the language of kinship: CC aides are chosen for, among other things, “their willingness to serve as an older brother/ sister to incoming freshmen.”

The language of family is good for students, but there’s no denying it’s good policy for administrators, too. If the university adopts the

language of kinship to facilitate “strong bonds to this place,” perhaps it does so out of self-interest. As Galvez says, “This is a retention program. What better way to retain students than through a family model?” Kate Horvat PC ‘18 says, “I think that particularly in college, here at Yale they want to make you feel at home and give you a family in a place that’s strange and unfamiliar, because it will make you want to give back to Yale both financially and with your time in the future.

It is definitely in the interest of the students, but it’s partially Yale’s own motivation.”

When considering Douglas’ argument, Lombard believes it’s important to note the differences between European and American university life. At American institutions like Yale, there is anthis emphasis on generating programming and supporting student groups that create community and combat disorientation. By contrast, there is less of a focus on non- academic or athletic spaces at foreign universities.

Lombard says the American tradition of Greek life, student groups, and the like is an attempt to “create this sense that you have really strong bonds to this place.”

It seems to work. Think of the feelings of kinship that formed JE’s endowment, or sponsor TD’s annual trip to Llama Land, or generated the “worst name, best college” motto of the Calhoun College community.

I joined several families last year. The first was through my residential college. I remember meeting my Stiles sibs at Book Trader for the first time and being in awe. Later, I joined a sorority and became close to my “big.” Both relationships found their origin the language of kinship, and both fulfilled those roles.

Except in the obvious ways (college-wide e-mails about Sib gatherings, or rush events) these relationships do not feel mediated by the administrative calculations of retention and belonging that brought them into being. The family make-believe becomes reality, and these relationships become real; they feel like Yale, in its own way, becoming home.

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff Sep. 16, 2016 – 17

CULTURE

Harambarb

by Joseph Kuperschmidt YH Staff

Warning: This essay contains major spoilers for the Netflix series Stranger Things. If you haven’t watched the series, stop reading, go heat up some Eggos, and get to work.

been turned into memes, and we’re killing them over and over again.

meme is an implicit way to say, “Here I am, a member of this great, big Internet community!”

IT’S TEMPTING TO TRY TO CONNECT THE WORD n the afternoon of May 28, 2016, Western low- “meme” to “me” (due to the two “me’s”) or to “memory” land gorilla Harambe was shot and killed at the (due to the shared “mem-”). If the latter were true, we’d Cincinnati Zoo to save a three-year-old boy who have an easier time justifying our treatment of Harambe had fallen into the animal’s enclosure. and Barb. One might even say we were “meme-orializing” On a cool autumn night in 1983 (during the second them with our GIFs and Tweets. However, “meme” has episode of Stranger Things), charmingly lame teen Barb very little to do with the self or with memory and everywas abducted from the diving board at Steve Harrington’s thing to do with imitation—those who took French in high pool by an other-dimensional monster. school might remember that the same four letters with an Accordingly, the summer of 2016 was one of intense accent actually means “same.” A meme is something that mourning. The deaths of Harambe and Barb inspired permeates a culture when it is copied again and again. waves of Internet crusaders with the mission to create and With respect to “viral internet sensations,” you could call defend the legacies of these two pop culture figures. Lis- a meme a “virus.” ticles were written, songs were composed, and hashtags In the broadest context, Barb and Harambe, oddly were circulated, all lamenting the passing of legends. enough, actually have the same story. Each was an innoFrom a distance, these passionate campaigns appear cent victim in an effort focused on rescuing a young boy. to be encouraging surges of empathy from a generation The public doesn’t seem to have turned off all compasoften characterized as shallow and detached. Harambe sion for the two children, but Internet culture has graviwas a member of a critically endangered species, and tated toward Barb and Harambe perhaps because the act his death provoked useful debate about the function of paying tribute to overlooked victims aligns closely with of zoos and the treatment of wild animals. Barb, whose the core purpose of memes. People have crafted memes last name is apparently Holland, stood out immediately of Barb and Harambe around the message, “No one cares in Stranger Things as a daringly unglamorous teenager, a about them!” A few steps away from that is the essential relatable side character for anyone who’s ever felt uncool. subtext of meme sharing: “Care about me!” Memes are This actual gorilla and this fake high schooler clearly de- a selfish cultural phenomenon, and fighting for others to serve some attention, especially in a year that feels in get attention is an easy thing to make personal. desperate need of heroes, both real and imaginary. What’s It might be best to think of memes as large-scale inside jokes. the worst that could happen in celebrating them?

An inside joke has a basis in real life, like an event (say, someone The worst that could happen (and is happening) is doing something stupid) or a quote (someone saying something that the sentiment surrounding Barb and Harambe gets stupid), but as it’s repeated ad nauseam, the joke moves away condensed and replicated to the point that anything from its source of inspiration and takes on a whole new meanvaluable attached to their existences disappears, even ing: how fun it is to have friends. Internet memes work similarly, while their ubiquity elevates their status in the cultural originating from an image, a video, a text, etc. As the meme is conversation. Barb and Harambe become “love,” “life,” circulated, the joke of the meme spreads, but the act of sharing and “everything,” which means “Barb” and “Harambe” becomes as significant as the content. Like repeating an in-joke don’t really mean anything at all. That is: the two have reaffirms an individual’s place in a group of friends, sharing a

Let me be clear that memes are not evil or bad, nor is this an argument against memes. Culture exists because people share ideas, and since the World Wide Web makes sharing effortless, Internet memes are a natural product of the times. The danger in memes, especially those like Harambe and Barb, arises when people fail to realize the effect spreading something through imitation has on the source. They don’t seem to mind that what they’re sharing is definitionally empty.

With this type of meme sharing, nuance is lost, fact is blurred, and exaggeration is commonplace. In reality, an endangered animal died in a potentially lethal situation where difficult decisions needed to be made in a matter of seconds, while a fictional high schooler—who upon just a tiny bit of inspection appears to be a pretty thinly sketched character—died in vain in a fictional, albeit entertaining universe. These two events are not equal in gravity. The death of a real animal is clearly more substantial than the passing of a teenage TV sidekick.

But as memes they’re equivalent to punchlines, all about us, a collection of individual “me’s.” Harambe begins to feel as fictional as Barb, and Barb as real as Harambe. More than that, pure coincidence has brought them into the world so close together in time that each feels like an extension of the other, one super-meme with two base copies. We can have our #dicksout for Barb and Harambe at the same time.

Maybe meme culture has gone too far when genitals are out as a show of respect for the dead. Harambe deserved better in life, and less importantly, Barb deserved better in a TV show. While there’s a place in the world for dark and off-color humor, if #WeAreAllHarambe and #WeAreAlsoAllBarb, what’s keeping any of us from becoming a meme when we die? That might not sound too bad to some, but I, for one, would prefer a eulogy.

O

Graphic by Yanna Lee 18 – The Yale Herald

A splash of white on the wall

Wild ride

by William Reid Just after arriving back at Yale, I found myself heading to the Whitney Humanities Center. The Yale Film Club, ostensibly wanting to start the year off with something that would draw a large audience, picked a classic. Fortuitously, it was one I’d wanted to see for a while: Taxi Driver. It’s one of those films I’d always felt bad for not seeing; every “you talkin’ to me?” drew an anxious laugh and a guilty smile. (I’ve seen it, I swear!) Eager to remedy this cultural deficit, I practically whistled my way down Wall Street.

No other movie has left me so unsettled. Perhaps the film’s emotional impact was heightened by its remarkable relevance to the present. After all, its protagonist is a figure with which, tragedy after tragedy, America has become familiar.

Travis Bickle—disturbed loner, insomniac, veteran of a controversial war—fails to win the heart of a woman over whom he obsesses.

Spiraling into despair, he grows spiteful, angry, and nihilistic. He yearns to “do something,” but does not know what. From behind the wheel of his taxi, he encounters some of New York’s more disreputable individuals: prostitutes, pimps, cheating husbands, and vengeful cuckolds. And, gradually, his convictions harden. Someone’s gotta clean this city up, and he’s the man to do it. What results is probably the film’s most famous scene, an orgy of violence that leaves the walls of a Lower East Side tenement building splattered with blood: a mass shooting.

Because he shoots at the right people, the newspapers write of his bravery, not of his inhumanity.

by Yvonne Ye They praise his actions as heroic, not as murderous. But how clear is the line between the two? Taxi Driver criticizes our tendency to allow ourselves to be mollified by news coverage in the face of violence.

The film crystallizes the difference between witnessing violence and reading about it: What we see first hand, the brutality of Travis’ actions and the remorselessness with which he carries them out, negates the possibility that he can be redeemed by a good headline.

In our world of public violence—from police brutality to mass shootings, drone strikes to civil war—some form of killing captures the headlines almost every week. Beneath the bolded lettering, the text attempts to retell what has occurred, to connect causes and effects. In other words, it seeks to wipe away the illogicality of violence, the same illogicality that we experience as witnesses to Travis’ crusade in the film. The simplified narratives that emerge from such coverage are not real; the characters they portray are as fictional as Travis. The instances of violence themselves are infinitely more complex and harder to swallow. That’s the message that Taxi Driver offers us, and though the world has changed dramatically since its filming, it’s a message that continues to ring true.

Recall that before the film’s bloody climax, Travis attends a rally for its fictional presidential candidate with the intention to assassinate him. It’s only by accident that Travis becomes a hero. The impulses that drive him usually make a villain.

I

f you keep up with the intersection of Hollywood and social justice, you might have noticed a blip on the radar at the end of July, when promotional material for a new film reignited criticism of Hollywood’s whitewashing problem. The Great Wall, an epic-historical-fantasy-action blockbuster, stars none other than our favorite Chinese American actor, Matt Damon, who seems to be chronically in need of rescue from dangerous and distant locales (see: Saving Private Ryan, The Martian).

Backlash was swift. Constance Wu slammed the film on Twitter; The Atlantic slotted it into a growing list of whitewashed Hollywood films, including Aloha and The Ghost in the Shell; AngryAsianMan added the film to the ever-growing canon of the “grand cinematic tradition of the Special White Person.” More than a few people have expressed disappointment in the director, Zhang Yimou, past darling of the Fifth Generation of Chinese film, current darling of the Chinese government, and renowned Academy Awardnominated Chinese auteur. Seen as something of a traitor for taking on the project, Zhang has been repeatedly assailed for working with Damon in a film that seems to have no place for a white American actor.

But overseas in mainland China, fans on Weibo—the Chinese equivalent of Twitter— chattered excitedly about the appearance of Chinese starlets like Wang Junkai and Luhan.

To the Chinese movie-going audience, The Great Wall is a bold and unprecedented step into the international film market—which Hollywood has dominated for the past century.

Why the difference? Constance Wu and the indignant voices of Asian-American representation

in the US media are speaking as a minority in a country that seems committed to their continued underrepresentation. Zhang Yimou and the Chinese fans speak from the position of a comfortable majority in their home country, which wields the big stick of “largest population in the world.” One group speaks from a position under attack; the other group speaks from a position of power.

In interviews, Zhang seems to lack an awareness of Asian-American politics; he argues that Damon’s role in the film doesn’t signify a white-savior narrative, and that Damon is merely one in an ensemble of five heroes. In fact, Zhang sees the film as more of an artistic challenge—the English-language Hollywood blockbuster film is a genre refreshingly new to his repertoire—than the political forum it has become.

Does this new information validate the casting of Damon in The Great Wall? In some ways, yes: understanding Zhang Yimou’s perspective troubles the categorization of the film as “yet another white savior Hollywood film.” But just because The Great Wall isn’t as open-and-shut as it seems doesn’t mean that Hollywood’s problem with whitewashing POC roles in film is any less urgent. Damon’s grimy face plastered on giant posters with one of the Wonders of the World in the background should not only remind us of this fact, but also highlight the oft-ignored politics of race, nationality, and diaspora.

Graphic by Sheiran Phu YH Staff Graphic by Julia Hedges Sep. 16, 2016 – 19

REVIEWS Oceanology

by Jordan Coley YH Staff

I

n 2010, four girls were discovered hiding in a dumpster outside a Justin Bieber concert in Germany. They were hoping someone would leave a backdoor open long enough for them to leap out and sneak into the venue. All four of them had willingly submerged themselves in garbage and remained there for hours. All hoped that they would have a chance to see a Justin Bieber show (a show they doubtlessly would have had to enjoy coated in the stench of German arena trash). They were fanatics.

In writing this piece, I had to confront my own fanatical energies and where a disproportionate share of them has gone over the last few years. I’ve always kept a hard nodumpster rule, but in the 1,501 days that separated Channel ORANGE, Frank Ocean’s stunning 2012 debut, from the summer weekend that delivered Blonde about a month ago, I still did things I wouldn’t have typically. I’m talking about the hours spent combing through YouTube videos of his live performances. I’m talking about how when I type “f” into my Safari browser now, it auto-fills to “frankocean.tumblr.com.”

I’m talking about how nearly debilitated with excitement I was when any new thing had been posted to that Tumblr.

I’m talking about how when Kanye West released his own highly anticipated work earlier this year, Ocean’s thirty-eight second contribution was probably the thing I was most eager to hear. I waited on Frank Ocean faithfully, with a reverence and zeal reserved for few others. But why? To better understand this, you must first learn the Ocean mythology.

For the initiated, the “Tumblr Post” is a foundational text, a cornerstone of Oceanology, a central prism through which all things Frank Ocean can be understood. It is the screenshot of a thousand-word note that Ocean published eight days before the release of Channel ORANGE. Originally intended to serve as the thank yous section of the album credits, the note is a tenderly worded essay in which we learn that, at 19, Ocean met and began a secret relationship with a man; a man who, by the end of their second summer together, Ocean was in love with. It was his first love,

and a love that he knew could never be. He was leaving for Los Angeles to pursue a music career. The man had a girlfriend. Neither of them were openly gay. On their last day together, they sat in his car and Ocean tearfully professed how he felt. The man couldn’t admit he felt the same way (and wouldn’t for another three years). Ocean left heartbroken.

It’s an experience he has cited as being both emotionally catastrophic and musically formative. In one of his last interviews back in 2012, he told Amy Wallace, “[Writing music] became effortless. Like breathing. Because now I have something I really need to say. It was Mindfuck.net. It was a floodgate. It opened up the works.” That flood helped Ocean pen his first two albums, and constitutes much of the water he continues to tread on Blonde.

“Ivy,” the album’s second track, finds Ocean recalling the carpet-pulled-out-from-under-you feeling of having his first love reciprocate his feelings three years after the fact: “I thought that I was dreaming / When you said you loved me / The start of nothing”. The song is punctuated by a cathartic meltdown. We hear Ocean’s screeching pitched-up vocals shriek, “I COULD DREAM ALL NIGHT”; moments of buzzing feedback are followed-by what sounds like a guitar being knocked over and a door slamming. “Self Control,” a bluesier number with a Coldplay-esque anthemic close traipses in similar territory. “Keep a place for me, for me / I’ll sleep between y’all, it’s nothing,” he croons heartbreakingly. On “White Ferrari,” an acoustic slow-burner, he reassures, “I care for you still and I will forever.” But for all the gloom it cast, the shadow of his first love is not all-encompassing.

The Pharrell-produced “Pink & White,” a sunnier track carried by its drum kick and an enchanting looped piano riff, is made to fly with a harmony assist from Beyoncé. “Be Yourself,” a rambling voice recording from the mother of one of Ocean’s childhood friends (not his own mother, as has commonly been assumed) about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, is a near identical twin to the speeches my mom begins every time I’m about to get off the phone with her. “Solo’s” infec-

tiously cryptic chorus creeps its way into my head at least one hundred times a day. “It’s hell on earth and the city’s on fire / inhale, inhale there’s heaven / There’s a bull and a matador dueling in the sky / Inhale, in hell there’s heaven.”

Blonde is as enchanting as it is distressing, and just one part of an ambitious and dutifully executed multimedia art experience, the fruit of years lived fully and productively amongst interesting, talented people. The day before Blonde came out, Ocean released Endless, a forty-five minute visual album directed by photographer Francisco Soriano, which features a Tom Sachs boombox sculpture, fifteen new songs, and footage of Ocean alone in a warehouse silently building a staircase. That same weekend, for one night only, Boys Don’t Cry pop-up stores appeared in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and London. Those willing to brave the enormous lines received a free copy of a three-hundred-sixty page Boys Don’t Cry magazine full of photos, essays, interviews with people like Kanye West, Tyler the Creator, and Ocean’s own mother (for real this time), and an alternate CD version of Blonde.

The obsessive attention with which I attended Frank Ocean’s every move for four years wasn’t just about when he was going to release music. It was an angry demand for access into the life of an artist, access I and many others have been made to feel we’re owed. It was an extreme curiosity for a rare artist about whom we seem to know everything and nothing; a person who has successfully granted us access into the most intimate parts of himself, while completely denying us view of all else—the world’s most transparent recluse. The release of Blonde and its accompanying projects are a slap in the face to the increasingly popular notion that experiences are only valuable if they’re widely shared. Where Kanye will tweet about his forthcoming album before he has even begun to make it, Ocean keeps us in the dark, or rather chooses not to conflate creative production with spectacle.

He lives and experiences by himself, for himself. He crafts patiently and diligently. He silently builds his staircase.

Image courtesy of Boy’s Don’t Cry 20 – The Yale Herald

Music: Coloring Book Chance the Rapper gave us a glimpse of what was to come in his verse for the opening to Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo: a challenge to his peers (“This is my part, nobody else speak”), a nod to his inspiration (“This little light of mine/Glory be to God”), and a promise to his fans (“Let’s make it so free and the bars so hard/That there ain’t one gosh darn part you can’t tweet”). The Chicagoan’s Coloring Book delivered.

Looking at Chance’s three mixtapes as a trilogy, you can see a staggering evolution from 10 Day to Coloring Book. You go from a debut that’s coherent, but limited by its subject matter (“I got suspended, ohhhhh you got suspended/For chiefin’ a hunnid blunts”) to a mixtape concerned with everything from fatherhood to social justice to God. The opening track, “All We Got,” is a prime example of the album’s heavy gospel influence: The Chicago Children’s Choir, Donnie Trumpet, and a Kanye feature (distorted to sound like a brass instrument) are combined into a spiritual fanfare for Chance’s religious lyricism: “This the holiest thing/This is the beat that played under the Word/This is the sheep that ain’t like what it herd.” The coherence between Coloring Book’s form and content is remarkable, and the combination of gospel vibes with Chance’s trademark frivolity produces what can only be described as an album of hip-hop glory songs.

Speaking about his life after Acid Rap, his successful second mixtape, Chance said: “I was a Xan-zombie, fucking not doing anything productive…Mind you, this is six months. So think about, like, how could you even do that?” Faced with that question, he decided to move from LA back to Chicago. He returned to religion, his family, and his girlfriend—they had a daughter.

It’s this return home that allowed Chance to find the inspiration that’s made his music inspirational to so many.

In many ways, Coloring Book represents a homecoming: to Chicago, to religion, to music deeply rooted in American history. But the mixtape also looks ahead. It incorporates Kendrick Lamar’s socially conscious lyricism, Young Thug and Future’s musical style, Kanye’s epic production, and combines them into something we’ve never quite heard before. And we can’t wait to hear what Chance has in store for us next, since “It seems like blessings keep falling in [his] lap.”

—Alex Chen

Film: Suicide Squad Suicide Squad boasted a record-busting opening when it arrived August 5th, and to date has raked in $700 million. Even so, it is a poorly executed film. The third entry in DC’s Extended Universe was hyped by both diehard comic fans and casual moviegoers as being the film that would end the search for a serious contender against the rival Marvel Cinematic Universe’s box office dominance. The search continues.

On paper, the plot seems innovative: the United States government assembles a covert black ops team of talented and superhuman criminals to take on supernatural threats in exchange for reduced sentences. It ends up being formulaic and straightforward, relying too heavily on repetitive, rapidly edited battles against generic enemies against an uninspiring backdrop of world-destroying conflict. No portrayal is particularly bad. Will Smith offers his usual sardonic and wisecracking take on a lethal but likeable antihero, Deadshot. Jared Leto’s turn as the Joker vacillates somewhere between Jack Nicholson’s manic rambunctiousness and Heath Ledgers’ cerebral insidiousness, but his character has so little screen time that he fails to leave a mark. Margot Robbie’s performance as Harley Quinn is worthy of its positive reception, as she breathes energy, depth, and comic book accuracy into a character who is relatively multidimensional.

The main issue lies in the writing. Many members of the titular squad, like Rick Flag, Killer Croc, and Captain Boomerang, are static, existing solely to deliver exposition or trite one-liners.

Others, like Katana, barely utter a syllable. The film assembles a cast of characters, à la The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, but fails to make them worth exploring or memorable because there are too many for every character to receive substantive screen time. The movie’s goal of cultivating a team identity and cohesion to overcome the enemy falls short because the generic plot drives the characters instead of any internal development. The climax lacks emotional significance because there is no payoff, only a silly, over-the-top sequence of disappointing set pieces.

Suicide Squad collapses under studio and fan expectations. The producers were too sensitive to earlier criticism about DCEU movies’ humorlessness and excessive destruction. They bank on Smith’s quips and Harley’s unbridled mania to deliver moments of levity to appease the masses, while still pushing the same heavy tone and monotonous, dim-lit, dark-colored cinematography in hopes of achieving hybridity and depth. The result, instead, is incongruous.

The producers should go back to the drawing board, or they’ll risk permanently playing catch up to Captain America and friends.

—Travis Deshong

Book: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Harry Potter and the Cursed Child feels like fanfiction in a way that’s remarkable for a published work.

To some extent, this is expected: after all, Jack Thorne is writing a play set in a world he didn’t create. But Cursed Child also suffers from some of fanfic’s worst tropes and tendencies. Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, now fifth-year Slytherins at Hogwarts, travel decades back in time to prevent the murder of Cedric Diggory. Along the way, they destroy all the rules Rowling ever set for time travel, and their adventure’s adherence to the events of the Goblet of Fire ensures our investment without bothering to create something new. Scattered throughout the story, there’s a conspiracy theory about an illegitimate child of Voldemort, a set of Durmstrang robes that appears without explanation when our heroes need it most, and an original female character with blue-tipped silver hair who reads like something straight out of the infamous badfic My Immortal.

There’s also, in what might have made the entire mess more bearable, a step toward one of fanfiction’s most subversive elements: its capacity to embrace queer romances as fully as straight ones. Throughout the play, Albus and Scorpius exchange longing looks and engage in passionate reunions. Other characters explicitly tell them that they belong together. But Cursed Child, as deeply as it’s steeped in the culture of fanfiction, refuses to commit. Compulsory heterosexuality triumphs in the end. And the wizarding world is left just as strangely empty of queer voices as it’s always been.

There are a few other spots of hope in the dumpster fire: an exploration of the lasting effects of trauma, for instance, that the Deathly Hallows epilogue notoriously lacked. Too often, though, the stirrings of something richer are lost in a story that doesn’t make enough sense for us to care.

So yes, Cursed Child was a disappointment. It was not the eighth story that most of us wanted, and if Rowling sticks to her word, there will never be a ninth to atone for its sins. But that’s the great thing about fanfic: we don’t need her to write another story. We can build a better one ourselves.

Here’s hoping that we can move on from this experience and write the better fanfiction we all deserve.

—Emily Pan

TV: Olympics For about a month this summer, it felt literally impossible to go anywhere or talk to anyone without hearing or seeing something about the 2016 Rio Olympics. And from concerns about unsafe water and lack of sanitation to the misadventures of Ryan Lochte and co., this Olympics cycle was saturated with (often welldeserved) negativity. I watched reporters sitting around a table complaining about the opening ceremonies, listened to commentators using sexist phrases to talk about female gymnasts and swimmers, and read a weirdly detailed list of Aly Raisman’s favorite and least favorite foods. But my favorite article by far that I read during August was a New York Times opinion piece about all that was wonderful about the Olympics.

The Olympics unite us with a feeling of national pride that, for many, only comes around every four years. In Rio, we came together and saw Ryan Held crying on the podium when he won his first Olympic medal, a gold in the 4x100 meter relay. We watched Katie Ledecky complete the 800 meters freestyle almost an entire pool length ahead of her competition. (The only thing better than Ledecky’s finish was SNL’s Leslie Jones’ live-tweet of it, complete with hysterical screaming of “Ledecky! LEDECKY!!!”)

And, in my favorite moment of the 2016 games, we saw images of American Abbey D’Agostino and New Zealander Nikki Hamblin helping each other across the finish line after tripping in the women’s 5,000 meter race – I don’t remember who won that event, but it will be a long time before I forget that.

For the first time, the Olympics were consumed predominantly on computer monitors instead of TV screens. In one of the most heartwarmingly GIF-able moments, a polevaulter stopped his practice run midway through to stand at attention when he heard the national anthem playing elsewhere in the stadium. I would never have seen this on TV—news networks, unlike Facebook Newsfeeds, don’t cover athletes warming up. My enjoyment and understanding of the games were undoubtedly shaped by the stories I clicked on online and the things people shared on my Newsfeed. How could I feel like America wasn’t great after seeing a video of Michael Phelps help Simone Biles adjust her medals?

—Clara De Pablo Left image courtesy of Chance the Rapper Right image courtesy of International Olympic Committee Sep. 16, 2016 – 21

EMAIL thomas.cusano@yale.edu or rachel.strodel@yale.edu

WRITE FOR THE HERALD

BULLBLOG BLACKLIST colonialism

What we hate this week

are you expecting a joke here? that’s fucked up

lamps

“what you spent on that coffee could have bought so many malaria nets”

franklin college

a normal light fixture will do

effective altruism “it turns out what they actually needed was Jesus”

ineffective altruism

sentience worst part of the Canterbury Tales tbh a mistake

fans wtf janet

low interest rates they blow

Sep. 16, 2016 –­ 23