The Yale Herald Volume XLII Issue 8

The Yale Herald Volume LXII, Number 8 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Nov. 11, 2016

FROM THE STAFF Last week, the Herald sent out a pitch asking someone to review election night like a movie. The idea was that on Tuesday at 8:00 p.m., we would all be sitting down for a screening. In an election season hijacked by television entertainment, reality shows, and round-the-clock news, we would finally get something scripted. Sure, the run-time risked going long. Sure, there would be moments of suspense, surprise, and unease. But throughout it all, we could expect to watch something produced and directed, handled by the invisible gaffers and grips of American democracy. Credits would roll.

On Tuesday, the movie we watched unraveled away from its actors. Neither campaign anticipated the results. Newscasters touched at their screens, redfaced, flustered. We saw journalism, normally the apparatus delivering a clean and polished story, blushing and wanting the camera to be turned off of itself.

As a weekly campus newspaper, our coverage can be different. Our spotlight roves, not fixed on any one moment or figure or feeling. In this issue of the Herald, Emma Chanen, BK ’19, sheds light on a class called Performance Behind Bars, in which Professor Ronald Jenkins teaches Dante’s Divine Comedy to inmates at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Facility. Everest Fang, ES ’19, argues that Yale’s drug policy should be the same as its alcohol policy. Oriana Tang, SY ’19, considers what the election results mean for climate change, and Nic Harris, BC ’18, reflects on voting for the first time.

Tuesday night was also my first time voting in a presidential election. My hope was that it would look and feel like the last scene in The Breakfast Club. And although it certainly wasn’t Judd Nelson’s triumphant fist punching the air, it wasn’t without a determination of its own kind.

Together & always, Frani O’Toole Features Editor

The Yale Herald Volume LXII, Issue 8 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Nov. 11, 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: Bix Archer Insert Editor: Marc Shkurovich Audio Editors: Phoebe Petrovic, Korinayo Thompson Copy Editors: Dimitri Diagne, Drew Glaeser, Hannah Offer ONLINE STAFF: Online Editor: Hannah Offer Bullblog Editors: Jeremy Hoffman, Caleb Moran DESIGN STAFF: Graphics & Design Editor: Haewon Ma Executive Graphics Editor: Claire Sheen BUSINESS STAFF: Publishers: Russell Heller, Jocelyn Lehman, 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 Haewon Ma YH Staff

2 – The Yale Herald

THIS WEEK In this issue

Incoming Spray-tans They say artificial UV light causes skin cancer. What will a president who doesn’t believe in climate change do?

Outgoing Pantsuits We were with her, and we’re still with her, but we’re probably going to stop wearing monochrome business casual.

Cover 12 – Emma Chanen, BK ’19, visits a theatre class in a local prison, where a Yale professor helps inmates use art and poetry to transcend their situation.

Voices 6 – Isaac Scobey-Thal, CC ’19, reflects on the death of a peer through the space of theatre. Catherine Yang, TC ’19, crafts a love story in three stages.

Opinion Friday Solidarity Rally New Haven Green 5:30 p.m.

Fri. - Sat. Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale Linsly-Chittendon Hall and Luce Hall

Saturday Football vs. Princeton Yale Bowl 12:30 p.m.

Tuesday School of Music Special Event Warren Lee, Piano Sprague Memorial Hall 7:30 p.m.

8 – No more double standard: Everest Fang, ES ’20, advocates for making 9 – Yale’s illicit drug policy the same as that for alcohol.

Nic Harris, BR ’18, and Oriana Tang, SY ’19, reflect on the election.

Features 10 – ER&M and its professors often get overlooked by the University—Haylee Kushi, TD ’18, brings them into view.

16 – Meghana Mysore, DC ’20, investigates mental health-based approaches to solving gun violence.

Culture 18 – Join Alex Zafran, ES ’19, as she confronts the failure of political truth.

19 – Before you watch The Young Pope, see what Robert Newhouse, CC ’19, has to say.

Reviews 20 – Find out why The Girl on the Train falls flat for Joe Kuperschmidt, CC ’17. And allow Adam Krok, SY ’19, plug you into HBO’s new series Westworld.

21 – Water by the Spoonful brings joy and heartbreak for Sanoja Bhaumik, MC ’19. And let Lina Goelzer, DC ’19, explain why Doctor Strange delivers.

Nov. 11, 2016 – 3

TRUMP’S CABINET

THE NUMBERS

Since Tuesday night’s stunning results, pundits have been speculating as to who President-elect Donald J. Trump will tap for his Cabinet. Trump alienated many of the old-guard conservatives in the GOP during his campaign; by the election’s final weeks, only a close cabal of loyalists remained. Insiders claim that Trump will in fact fill the seats with some of his closest advisors, but he is also rumored to be considering nontraditional candidates. Here are a few of the Herald’s predictions for the incoming Trump Cabinet: For Secretary of Homeland Security, we see Sauron getting the nod. We at least know that Vice President-elect Mike Pence is bullish on the tyrant from Middle Earth. In a recent interview, Pence addressed Sauron’s potential appointment: “It’s well known that one does not simply walk into Mordor, and that goes for our great country, too. And let’s not forget the good-paying manufacturing jobs Mr. Sauron brought back to forges of Mount Doom.”

Sauron will likely be working in close coordination with the exhumed skeleton of Andrew Jackson, who is Trump’s #1 choice for Secretary of Defense.

The next Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, we think, based on sheer credentials alone, will be Myron Ebell, chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition. Ebell was the visionary who first identified the benefits of global warming in a 2006 Forbes Op-Ed: “Life in many places would become more pleasant [were global warming not a hoax]. Instead of 20 below zero in January in Saskatoon, it might be only 10 below. And I don’t think too many people would complain if winters in Minneapolis became more like winters in Kansas City.”

Index 15 characters I have to cut from my anti-

Trump Facebook post so that it does not have the “See More” link.

755

seconds Hillary Clinton spent conceding the race, like a bad-ass, while facing the objectively most debilitating existential crisis since discovering that Rick and Morty are voiced by the same actor.

2

hours CNN did not call the election are you serious Pennsylvania just flipped make it end.

35 days until recreational marijuana

becomes legal just a two-hour train ride from New Haven.

32 medium-sized dog years in one term of Trump’s presidency. I refuse to quote a value for two terms.

The Trump campaign, we think, hopes to place the Treasury in the capable hands of King Midas. Many pundits are expecting Trump to reward his campaign financier, Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs executive, but he might surprise us all once more and opt for the original gold man himself. Secretary of Veteran Affairs seems poised to fall to Ret. Gen. David Petraeus, who, Paul Ryan said, “knows a ton about both veterans and affairs.”

99 years since the Bolshevik Revolution.

The Department of Energy will be nixed in service of Trump’s promise to cut back on government expenditure, and because Trump has all the energy the country will ever need flowing between his corporeal form and his psychic aura. Along those lines of downsized government, sources say that the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Housing and Urban Development will be combined into a single new Apartment, whose lease will be held by a racist grandfather from the Bible Belt.

– Matteo Rosati

Chief of Staff has been all but promised to Rinse Peinus, the chair of the GOP (Grand Old Penis), descendent of the Roman god Priapus, deity of male genitalia, who is known to be one of the few who holds Trump’s ear. However, the coveted Communications Director position appears to be in contention between Brexit champion, and Trump lookalike, Boris Johnson and Sandinista mole James Comey.

Other positions we have heard rumors about include: Director of the Secret Service, which we believe will go to Meechum from House of Cards; Personal Chef, perfect for Chris Christie; and Antonin Scalia’s unfilled Supreme Court Seat, which right now seems to be a toss-up between the ghost of Joffrey Baratheon and a deputized Twitter troll from the alt-right.

Sources: 1) My own gigantic ego 2) Youtube and all the attempts to hide the despair 3) CNN, obviously 4) The Boston Globe and amtrak.com 5) Dog Age Calculator, cordially offered by pedigree.com 6) The inescapable march of history towards a communist utopia

Eight headlines you might have read this week 1. Kremlin Mail Service Halted by Overflow of Foreign Leaders’ Bet Money 2. College Sophomore’s Facebook Status Convinces Trump to Concede 3. Melania Trump Accuses Anderson Cooper of Prolonged Cyberbullying 4. James Comey Posts Instagram of Relaxing, “Well-Deserved” Bubble Bath 5. Trump Mistakes Listening Device for Strawberry in Congratulatory Edible Arrangement Sent from Kim Jong Un 6. D.C. Private School League Gears Up for Reign of Barron Trump 7. Hillary Spotted Buying Hennessy in Bulk on the Road to Los Angeles: Says She Has to “see about an old flame from Toronto” – Josh Tarplin

– YH Staff 4 – The Yale Herald

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

rachel.strodel@yale.edu

VOICES

Remembering Elliot

by Isaac Scobey-Thal

T

wo weeks ago, I received news that a boy I went to high school with—I will call him Elliot—had been tragically killed in a car accident in our hometown. Elliot was 17.

I knew him because we had done theater together during my senior year.

In the days following Elliot’s death, I found myself trying to define exactly what role he played in my life. I recounted seeing him every day for a year of high school, visualized the personal quirks that I knew well, but realized that I had not spoken to him once since my graduation. I can still hear the rhythm of his voice, visualize his glowing smile, but I don’t even know that I would think of us as friends. In truth, I did not know him outside of the space of theater—a space that meant a great deal to me during that part of my life. And so, in hopes of clarifying the way to best honor him in grief, I began to think about how that space connected me to Elliot—what it could tell me about him, the capacities in which I knew him, and the weight of his death. I searched for some voice—in a song, a poem, a film, or a friend—who understood my thought landscape, and could perhaps reflect it back to me in more concrete ways than I could articulate it to myself. It was not long before I found that voice in James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work: For the tension in the theater is a very different, and very particular tension: this tension between the real and the imagined is the theater, and this is why the theater will always remain a necessity.

One is not in the presence of shadows, but responding to one’s flesh and blood: in the theater we are re-creating each other… We are all each other’s flesh and blood.

One is not in the presence of shadows, but responding to one’s flesh and blood.

Our director used to tell us before every show that

theater mattered because it was a singularly human experience. In a world governed by technology, the act of standing on a stage and baring your own flesh and blood to an audience was an extraordinarily brave and essential action. Our theater was small enough so that every audience member could see the naked emotions, mannerisms, and slight mistakes of every actor. The joy and pride we took in our work was rooted in this intimacy, both to the audience and to one another. I suppose it has comforted me to house memories of Elliot in that theater, to be assured that we walked together in a space that fostered risk, vulnerability, and immense joy.

We are all each other’s flesh and blood.

The shared risk of performance is inherently selfless: it is upheld by each and every person for each and every person. The fate of our bodies on that stage depended on the actions and reactions of the bodies that surrounded us. It was not only that me and Elliot happened to share in creating an experience that mattered; it was that, inevitably, we did so for each other. He had made my body his priority, I made his mine, and, implicitly, we both promised not to let the other fall. In The Devil Finds Work, Baldwin gave a name to the way I related Elliot to theater; just once, through theater, I had not taken Elliot’s breath for granted, but had rather cherished it, loved it, made its support my task.

of his friendship in my life—a significance that was difficult not to construct after his sudden and tragic death. I hear Baldwin honoring the fluidity between these spheres, rather than attempting to define their boundary. In fact, this tension between the real and the imagined is, for Baldwin, the basis for the beauty of the theater itself. When we see an actor play a role, we cannot define exactly how much of the performance is the character, and exactly how much is the actor. Elliot performs this way in my memories, and I have spent a few weeks trying to navigate this tension: Baldwin affirmed that one can appreciate it.

We are re-creating each other In the days after Elliot’s death, I struggled to accept the fact that he was gone. What can one do when you realize that someone you spoke to every day will never breathe, kiss, dance, or cry ever again? How could someone much closer to Elliot than I navigate that uncertain space? Baldwin lent a place to start.

When students back home mount the stage this month without Elliot, they will be paying a great homage to his soul. For when death takes one of ours, we must search for a way to carry him with us—to recreate him, and to tuck him into some small pocket of our life. In the wake of Elliot’s passing, Baldwin affirmed for me that theater may do just that—it may help us, heal us, force us to be vulnerable in the face of tragedy, lend us visceral moments of joy, and, indeed, honor those who have now passed on.

The real and the imagined As I mourned his passing, I worried I might turn Elliot into a martyr in my mind, remember him as something or someone other than what he truly was.

I didn’t want to construct a relationship that had not truly existed, and did not want to appropriate a grief not my own. I spent a lot of time evaluating the real and imagined roles that Elliot played in my life; I thought about our very real shared passion for theater, but also the possibly imagined personal significance

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff 6 – The Yale Herald

Three-Part Romance by Catherine Yang

I In my city of questions, you wove all the answers into the seams of your umbrella and set the rain in motion.

I turned the corner and fell into the mist, as I have been lost in you before.

II Remember when the wind made you cry?

III Take your wet hands off my throat.

Was I supposed to ask permission to breathe?

If I had known, I might have stayed in the dark of the belly, where the air was my own.

Tomorrow I’ll wear your lies on my face; maybe then, I’ll look the part.

It didn’t whisper melancholy in your ears, no it cut through you, and you could not stop the tears from falling in line.

I told you to shut one eye, but you kept them both wide open looking for soft things in the breeze.

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff Nov. 11, 2016 – 7

OPINION Criminal disease

by Everest Fang

F

reshmen will remember from Camp Yale that, on campus, alcohol is treated as a medical issue. This policy encourages students to report friends who are suffering from alcohol-related health problems. We are reassured that if we bring a student into Yale Health for fear of alcohol poisoning, no one will be disciplined. This policy has undoubtedly benefited Yale’s campus. No longer afraid of the consequences, several students I know have called Yale Health to help an excessively intoxicated friend, potentially avoiding disastrous scenarios. Yet, at Yale, use or possession of drugs other than alcohol results in disciplinary action (provided that they are not prescribed). In most cases, punishment for smoking weed is fairly lenient. Possession of other drugs, however, almost certainly results in severe legal consequences.

This policy makes no sense. Yale ought to treat all drug-related offenses as medical issues, not warranting punishment.

Alcohol is simply one of many drugs categorized as a depressant. If alcohol consumption is indeed a “medical issue,” so is usage of any other drug. Yale’s illicit drug policy is especially nonsensical given its current alcohol policy. Drug use comes in two forms: casual use and addiction.

Casual use on campus usually involves occasional marijuana smoking and is about as dangerous, if not less so, than drinking. It causes no harm to others and so should not be punished as if it does. Addiction to drugs is a personal health problem, not a crime intentionally committed against society. As such, punishment for drug addiction is also completely unwarranted. Punishing addicts produces no benefit for any party involved. An individual who finds a need to escape into the euphoria of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, Xanax, marijuana, codeine, or any other drug is not attempting to harm anyone in society. Rather, they are fulfilling a deeply personal and private need. That need is not solved by punishment. Indeed, punishment is more likely to enhance one’s need for drugs than diminish it. Many drugs act as a painkiller, an artificial way to deal with personal issues. Punishment via school suspension or expulsion greatly amplifies someone’s personal problems. For addicts, the perfect solution to those problems is an escape into the safe, lighthearted elation of a high. Thus punishment fuels drug usage, creating a vicious cycle of pills and pain. The unfortunate victims of addiction are locked into this cycle. Their recourse to drugs is a cry for help in a world where they happened to come up short. Their punishment is not only a failure to answer that call, but also a kick while they are down.

There is an obvious alternative to the current model of drug regulations. The basic outline of this is seen in Yale’s alcohol policy. Drugs are a medical issue. This sentence seems redundant since alcohol itself is a drug. Yet, the current rules don’t reflect this chemical categorization.

Like students who drink excessively, students who are discovered to be using drugs ought to be required to go to Yale Health. If Yale Health deems it necessary, a student would be required to attend a rehabilitation program. Not all students will be diagnosed with an addiction just

as not all students who go to Yale Health are alcoholics. However, for actual addicts, rehabilitation helps someone move past an addiction: it allows people who have fallen down to get back up and reconstruct a productive life. In the same way that mental health problems are treated with rehabilitation, addiction ought to be treated this way. This sentence seems redundant given that addiction is itself a mental health problem.

Yet, unfortunately, our laws do not reflect this fact. It is obvious that we would not punish a person for suffering from ADHD, depression, schizophrenia or PTSD. Why, then, would we punish someone for suffering from addiction? Drug usage at Yale should be completely decriminalized.

All drug issues should be treated as a health problem potentially requiring rehabilitation.

Whether rehabilitation is needed and the extent of that rehabilitation is at the discretion of a health professional. Light drug use, such as occasional smoking of marijuana, is unlikely to require rehabilitation.

Like moderate drinking, moderate smoking does little harm to the user.

Therefore, it ought to be allowed as a recreational activity akin to drinking alcohol. The common response to this position is that decriminalizing drugs will lead to an increase in usage. I find it hard to believe, however, that the illegality of drugs is what has motivated most abstainers to choose against usage. For most people, social and personal factors, rather than legality, motivate their decision regarding drugs. Furthermore, mandatory rehabilitation is an unpleasant prospect. The requirement of spending extended periods of time in a rehabilitation program is undoubtedly a strong deterrent. My argument is that not that drug usage should be free of consequence; just that it should be decriminalized.

Yet, even if usage increases slightly, those users will have help under this policy. Conversely, if punishment is enforced, users risk expulsion, losing the opportunity to earn a college degree for a personal problem.

If rehabilitation is put in place, all users have potential of breaking out of this habit completely. The result is that total usage is more likely to go down than up.

Mental health patients were once treated as criminals. Thankfully, our society has moved past that misunderstanding, yet one mental health issue was left behind. Drug dependence remains criminalized by our society. As a result, addicts are abused by a broken system,ß and casual users are punished for a harmless act. Our drug policies are reflective of an old mindset, one that restricts unconventional behavior. Not all deviance from the norm is criminal. Yale’s lenience on alcohol is simply the result of its mainstream use. Drug users should not be targeted for being atypical. Drug addicts are suffering from a condition that is not only devastating in itself, but also penalized by our society. These people deserve the opportunity to live a meaningful life. It’s time for us to extend recognition to drug addicts; it’s time to answer their call for help.

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff 8 – The Yale Herald

Election & beyond A new climate

by Oriana Tang YH Staff

First things first

by Nic Harris

A

few days ago, I felt prepared to express what voting for the first time in a major election meant to me. I was going to write about the pride I took in being able to affect the direction of our country’s future; to revel in sharing the deep purpose I felt when I called my grandmother right after casting my ballot and let the wisest, most loving person in my life know that I had done my small part to ensure our country continued moving away from the kind of divided world an African-American woman like her grew up in.

But then, in a matter of less than 24 hours, all of that pride was eclipsed by an overwhelming sense of shock and disgust. I’ve been struggling since to collect my thoughts and emotions. What follows is an attempt to explain what voting for the first time in this election means to me.

I’m not exaggerating or lying to myself when I recall that throughout the morning and early afternoon of Election Day, I experienced an extraordinary feeling of lucidity and focus. It may sound cliché, or fabricated, but it’s the truth.

And that feeling persisted even as I cast my ballot. I was aware that votes would be counted later, and that news media outlets would inundate those willing to watch. But I didn’t fixate on the result.

Instead I shifted my attention to other aspects of my life. Everything was clear.

Fast-forward to around midnight on Tuesday, and it was as if I hadn’t voted

at all. Before the results started becoming clear, I had thought that regardless of the final tally, I had made my voice heard, that I had done a praise-worthy deed and could relax. What became brutally apparent that night is that, when you sustain so crushing a blow, there is little consolation in knowing you’ve done what you feel is right Looking back, I think that the lofty ideas I held about what my vote meant were shielded by a false sense that the outcome—a Clinton presidency—was certain.

Until Tuesday I had avoided politics, particularly American politics, because of the kind of ugliness we have recently seen it engender. But what I’ve realized is that it is not enough to recognize that something is ugly, to say that the nation is divided, and then to do nothing. Now more than ever voting and social activism will matter in this country.

I haven’t lost faith in the democratic process. To be able to vote, I still feel, is both a privilege and a valuable opportunity to effect change. Yes, there will always be a bitter taste in my mouth when I recall my first presidential election. But that frustration will remind me how crucial it is to get out and vote, and to work on fixing the national problems laid bare by this election. In that sense, although my first time voting was not nearly as satisfying as I expected it to be, it mattered more—and in a more lasting way—than I could have imagined.

I

was eight years old when I learned what global warming was. I had come across the term in a science workbook and asked my dad what it meant. His explanation—that the earth was slowly heating up due to activities like the burning of natural gas and coal—was the most frightening thing I had learned in my short life. In my mind, global warming was occurring with great drama and speed: shorelines rising before our eyes, hurricanes whipping along the coast, sheets of ice breaking into pieces with polar bears still astride them. For months I religiously monitored my family’s water use and refused to turn lights on to read at dusk. On Earth Day I planned to walk to school instead of riding a car, and I cried when I woke up too late.

Over time, the fear passed. My support for environmental preservation became more passive. Climate change and all that it entailed—mass extinctions, natural disasters, rampant disease—lost its vividness, pushed into the background by more immediate concerns. And while prominent climate change deniers occasionally reared their heads, I was more heartened to hear about the positive measures that were being taken against global warming. Last April, I rejoiced when President Obama signed the Paris climate agreement to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which officially went into effect last week.

With the election of Donald Trump, the fear of climate change has become urgent to me once more. Upon waking to the news of his triumph, I ricocheted among fury, disappointment, shock, and sadness.

Like so many others on this campus and across the U.S., I grieved that a sexist, racist bigot like Trump could win over someone as qualified to lead as Hillary Clinton. I was disheartened that half the population of the country I call home did not believe that I, and so many others I love, belonged in their vision of America.

But I remained hopeful that our presence, our votes, and our voices would prevail. I remained hopeful that even if we have to live for the next four years with a govern-

ment that condones sexual assault, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and xenophobia, with time and resilience we would be able to undo the damage caused by a Trump-led world. Legislature, after all, can be overturned.

But climate change cannot be overturned. Scientists have predicted that a 3.6-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature would lock the planet into “an irreversible future of extreme and dangerous warming,” according to the New York Times. Trump has stated that he views climate change as a “hoax,” that he will stop funding U.N. climate change programs during his first 100 days, and that he plans to “cancel” the Paris agreement, which may encourage other countries like India to follow suit. He has nominated Myron Ebell, a leading climate change denier who claimed in a Forbes op-ed that global warming is good because everyone wants milder winters, to head the EPA transition. And Trump’s goals to revitalize the coal industry involve potentially dismantling the Clean Air Act or even the EPA itself. Such a drastic measure would affect a host of protective policies currently in place, including the Clean Water Act, which prevents cities and towns from dumping sewage into U.S. waterways.

We only have one planet and not a lot of time. We can’t escape climate change by moving to another country or by combatting Trump’s legislative and executive decisions with the next election. If we wait until the end of Trump’s term(s) to act, it will already be much too late. Though this election season has in large part been characterized by divisiveness and disconnect, climate change, at least, should not be a partisan issue. Now more than ever we must acknowledge the urgency of taking action. Those who don’t believe that the earth’s temperature is rising can assert their denial as much as they want—it doesn’t change the facts. And it doesn’t change the reality that if we do nothing, the consequences of this presidency will soon hurt everyone, whether we voted for Trump or not.

Graphics by Haewon Ma YH Staff Nov. 11, 2016 – 9

FEATURES

Ethnicity, race, and marginalization Haylee Kushi, TD ’18, confronts the University’s history of ignoring ethnic studies and its professors

I

didn’t see any reason to submit my materials for review and rejection,” said Alyssa Mt. Pleasant (Tuscarora), a professor of Native American studies at Yale from 2006 through 2013. “I decided to leave because through the years I had seen patterns of denying promotion to women of color faculty in the History Department.”

In the 2015-2016 academic year, ethnic studies professors Jafari Allen, Karen Nakamura, Vanessa Agard-Jones, Elizabeth Alexander, and Birgit Brander Rasmussen left—many of them for reasons related to tenure. “It’s often their excellence that makes them hard to keep,” said American Studies professor Stephen Pitti. These professors tend to do extra work for the University, and many choose to leave because they feel overworked or underappreciated. Others are not promoted to tenured positions, often because they devote time to addressing the needs of underserved students rather than spending time on research.

Rasmussen, a former assistant professor, was celebrated by her students and peers in her field but did not receive promotion to associate professor on term from the University. Rasmussen’s case is not an isolated one. Whether ethnic studies professors leave Yale voluntarily for other institutions that provide them opportunities, or are forced to leave because they are not promoted for tenure, the tenure process and the broader way that professorships work at the University discourage the growth of ethnic studies.

Say you are hired as an assistant professor. You spend four or five years doing research for Yale. You are evaluated by a departmental committee made up of tenured faculty who teach in the same department as you. For ethnic studies professors, this usually means the History and American Studies departments, as most committee members do not have work in ethnic studies. If the departmental committee approves your work through a majority vote, you’re evaluated by the humanities divisional committee: the Dean of Faculty, a graduate school dean, a representative from one of

10 – The Yale Herald

the other five academic divisions, and between seven and nine faculty in the humanities division make up the divisional committee. Thus, most people evaluating your ethnic studies work have no training in your field. Three committee members (the deans and outside representative) are not even humanities faculty.

The American Studies Department, which houses most ethnic studies faculty, is quite small compared to large departments like History, Humanities, and English. A variety of other departments without clear relationships to ethnic studies can be represented on the humanities board, including Classics, Film Studies, and different European languages.

If you are approved again by the divisional committee, you will be promoted from assistant to associate professorship, and continue to work on your research while also providing more labor that will not count for much toward your tenure case for another three or four years. Then, another round of new departmental and divisional committees will evaluate your research to decide whether you will be promoted to full professorship and receive tenure. Ethnic studies professors must get their research approved four times over the course of eight years by mostly white committees which are dominated by large departments with little knowledge of ethnic studies. At most universities, unlike Yale, junior faculty can receive tenure on year five or six, not on year nine.

As Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone), the only tenured Native American professor at Yale, put it, “How will a scholar of Chaucer evaluate the quality of work on the history of Chicano activism?”

Rasmussen agreed that the Humanities Tenure Appointments and Promotions Committee is often composed of professors who have no education in ethnic studies, and thus lack the proper expertise to evaluate work in ethnic studies. American Studies professor Stephen Pitti said, “It’s common for people who have some proximity to a project to have strong opinions about the work under review. If I’m listening to a re-

port about a different part of the world using a different methodology, I’m less likely to feel connected to it, or like I can weigh in on it.”

Chair and Professor of American Studies, Matthew Jacobson, said that interdisciplinary scholars are at a disadvantage when it comes to promotion because “more traditional forms of scholarship are more legible” to older departments like English and History.

For example, an interdisciplinary scholar in anthropology and women’s studies may face opposition from both the departments, since faculty with traditional anthropology training may fully not understand or appreciate the women’s studies aspects of the work, and vice versa. Blackhawk said that because of this lack of familiarity, “emergent fields of study” face difficulty, making Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (ER&M) vulnerable due to its newness and its interdisciplinary nature.

“SOMETIMES THE NUMBERS OF HOW MANY OF US are there don’t reflect the full spread of labor we provide to the university,” said American Studies professor Mary Lui. Both Pitti and Lui serve as heads of residential colleges, managing student life for around 400 undergraduates. Pitti has also been involved with the Freshman Scholars at Yale program, helping students from high schools without lots of mentorship or college preparation resources transition to Yale. This, in addition to supporting ethnic studies through his role as director of Center for Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.

Pitti and Blackhawk both said that faculty members have agency in choosing what to spend their time on—they can turn down offers to give keynote addresses at ethnic studies events, serve on committees, or take on administrative roles. However, they also expressed a sense of responsibility to students.

Pitti said, “I knew that if I didn’t say yes to the admissions committee then there wouldn’t be a certain perspective.” Mary Lui expressed similar feelings of responsibility to student activities and ethnic studies

events on campus, “In my right mind I probably should’ve said no [to attending many ethnic studies and events regarding Asian American studies].

But on the other hand it sort of feels like, ‘who else is going to do it?’”

Ned Blackhawk was recruited to the University with tenure upon arrival on account of outstanding leadership in his field. In Yale’s history, no Native American studies professor has gone through the full tenure process. Blackhawk serves on various committees and is heavily involved in the Native American undergraduate and graduate student communities. He is the Faculty Coordinator for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America, served as the Director of Undergraduate Studies of American Studies for three years, and was an advisor for Mellon-Bouchet Fellowship students for five years. He has also advised many senior theses, and since as the only professor in Native American studies, he is the most qualified to advise any advanced work in Native American and Indigenous history.

Albert Laguna, an assistant professor in American Studies currently on the tenure track, is similarly faced with feelings of responsibility toward students while he works on research for the University, and will be evaluated in 2018 for an associate professorship with tenure. Laguna taught Introduction to Latino Studies, the only Latino studies class at Yale in the Spring 2016 semester, because all of the other professors who work on Latino studies—Alicia Camacho, Pitti, and Dixa Ramirez—were on sabbatical. Laguna is also the Director of Undergraduate Studies of ER&M this semester, which is unusual for junior faculty, but necessary because “faculty affiliates are spread too thin across multiple departments and programs.” Similarly, Lui served as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the American Studies

Department during her time as junior faculty because “there was no one else who could.”

Ethnic studies professors and professors of color at Yale are often recruited away from the University with promises of tenure upon arrival (and thus job security and higher salaries) and cultures more respecting of their fields of study. A professor in American Studies, who asked to remain anonymous, said, “when ethnic studies professors feel like their work is not valued and there are more obstacles for [them], they are easily poached.”

Despite the structural barriers presented to ethnic studies professors, students and faculty have continued to advocate for growth of ethnic studies at Yale. In 1995, the precursor to the ER&M program was born when a group of students called the Coalition for Diversity organized for more ethnic studies classes and majors. In response, the University allowed the American Studies department to hire three more part-time lecturers: one in Asian American studies, one in Native American studies, and one in Latino studies.

The next year, the University committed to upgrading the three temporary positions to full-time professorships. Yale also committed to establishing ER&M as a secondary major, meaning that ER&M could be declared alongside another established major, so students would have to complete the requirements for both in order to graduate.

“They thought that ER&M was too soft a major and didn’t merit a Yale degree or they thought that Yale didn’t have the resources to offer a full ER&M major, or both,” said Pitti.

American Studies Professor Michael Denning said that while he and his colleagues asked for more department resources to be allocated to ethnic studies, student activism was what brought about change. Following explicit student demands for an ethnic studies department in the fall of

2015, Yale created the Center for Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. While it provides resources for speaker series and graduate students in ethnic studies, the Center does not represent any commitment toward the growth of ethnic studies as a structurally supported department: in the 2015-2016 academic year, the University offered fewer courses in ethnic studies taught by tenured faculty than it did 19 years ago.

YALE UNIVERSITY PRIDES ITSELF IN BEING ONE of the world’s leading educational institutions, yet scholars with new and interdisciplinary work are systematically denied promotion. Despite teaching the course with the highest enrollment in all of Yale College during the Spring 2016 semester (Race and Gender in American Literature) and receiving one national and one Yale College award for her work in American Studies, Rasmussen was denied tenure by her divisional committee.

The tenure process is a window into what Yale values and whom it prizes. Though these examples of exclusion are the result of institutional practices that are, on face neutral, it’s hard to imagine that the Yale administration is unaware of their effects. For KZ, YC ’16 , a recent graduate in ER&M, the question is about the integrity of the liberal arts education—an education that is about “being able to challenge the material, that is a space of academic innovation.” In its treatment of ethnic studies faculty and allocation of academic resources, then, “the University is strategic in who it eliminates.”

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff Nov. 11, 2016 – 11

Poetic justice

By Emma Chanen YH Staff

12 – The Yale Herald

I. “‘Let us descend into the blind world now,’ the poet, who was deathly pale, began; ‘I shall go first and you will follow me.’” Inferno, Canto IV

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he drive from Yale Divinity School to MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution takes a little less than an hour. This gives Professor Ronald Jenkins enough time on the bus to meet with each of his five students—four from Yale Divinity School and one senior undergraduate—to talk about the pieces they will present in their class, “Performance Behind Bars: Sacred Music, Sacred Texts, and Social Justice.” On Nov. 7, I boarded the Hy’s Limo Service bus with Jenkins and his class and rode the hour north with them to Windsor Locks. As we drove away from Yale’s campus, the fall palette of East Rock Park gave way to the gray of highways and the pink and blue of the fading cotton candy sky.

I could just barely see Jenkins’s two bushy, gray-black eyebrows above his seat at the front of the bus, where he and his teaching assistant Nicole gave their students feedback on the poems, raps, and dialogues they had written to perform for their inmate partners at MacDougall-Walker.

Professor Jenkins, Visiting Professor of Religion and Literature from Wesleyan, has taught Performance Behind Bars over a dozen times. Though the course has had various names and iterations, whenever Jenkins teaches it, he teaches Dante’s Divine Comedy. He has taken his class across the globe to York Correctional Institution and Sing Sing Correctional Facility, as well as prisons in Indonesia and Dante’s hometown, Florence. No matter where he teaches, Jenkins said the inmates identify with Dante’s story.

“It’s always a great adventure to read Dante and see how deeply people connect to him in dire circumstance,” he told me. He said he learns something new every time. “Everyone is going on some kind of journey in their life from someplace that may not be so great to someplace they hope is better, but in prison that journey is more urgent.”

Divina Commedia—The Divine Comedy—follows Dante on his journey to God through three books: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The story opens with Dante lost in a dark wood, having strayed from the moral path. Dante Alighieri, the poem’s author, was a Florentine politician bitterly opposed to Pope Boniface VIII, and when Boniface organized a military coup, Dante was exiled and could not return home on pain of death. A poet and new outlaw, Dante filled the circles of hell that his fictional surrogate navigates with his political enemies, and deposited his late, lifelong love in heaven. He does not make his voyage alone, though. The ghost of Virgil, the classical poet, meets Dante in the wood and acts as his guide through the circles of hell and the layers of Purgatory. Virgil himself is a permanent resident of the Inferno. He resides in the first circle, Limbo, with pagans and those who died before Christ could take on their sins. Limbo houses generations of great poets and intellectuals, trapped for reasons beyond their control.

It’s dark and cold when we get to MacDougall-Walker, and Professor Jenkins leads us into the yellow-tinted reception area where a single uniformed officer and a walk-through metal detector greet the prison’s visitors. Jenkins approached the officer and said, “We have an extra guest tonight”—though, having gone through a background check and approval process, my visit was no surprise to them. We proceed through the metal detector and make our way through a series of holding chambers where the doors lock behind us before they open on the opposite side to let us out. After a long, tall corridor, and up a flight of stairs, we reach what looks like an elementary school with no windows. Quotes from prominent African-American writers and activists pepper the walls: “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. –Malcolm X.” We file into Classroom #4, above which is written, “Time doesn’t change things. You actually have to do it yourself.”

Change is exactly what Professor Jenkins has in mind. “The mix of theater, and Dante, and prison, they seem to work well together because they’re all about transformation,” he noted when I spoke with him a few weeks earlier.

“Dante’s poem is a poem of transformation. How do you transform your world from hell to heaven?” Jenkins himself is an agent of transformation. Here within this classroom, away from the blocks and the chaos of incarceration, Professor Jenkins creates a circle of poets who, on Dec. 7, will perform their interpretation of Dante’s Inferno for their fellow inmates. If only for three hours on a Monday evening, Jenkins guides his poets through Limbo to understand, and maybe transcend, the Inferno.

While we wait for the incarcerated students to join us, Professor Jenkins passes around the assignment that the class will be working on for next week. It’s based on a quote from Ulysses’s speech in Canto 26: “You were not meant to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” The Yale students read over the assignment quietly, as their incarcerated peers, all black and Latino men, trickle into the room.

II. “Great grief seized my heart when this I heard because some people of much worth I know, who in that Limbo were suspended.” Inferno, Canto IV Yale’s Divinity School sits atop “Science Hill.” Up the steep incline of labs and classroom buildings, the green quadrangle is framed by red brick buildings and, at the far end, a tall, white-domed steeple. I’m meeting Professor Jenkins for the first time in the small café in the back corner of the school—the refectory. The refectory does not live up to the solemnity of its name; a tiny pumpkin decorates every table and early 2000s alt rock blasts from ceiling speakers. Professor Jenkins walks in wearing a long coat and a long face. He has a large frame but soft features and a softer voice. I have to lean in close to hear him over The Fray’s “How to Save a Life.”

Sept. 16, 2016– 13

He explains to me the structure of his class. Every week, he asks his students to read an excerpt from The Divine Comedy and write a reflection—a poem, a rap, a letter, a story—on a theme taken from the passage. The next week, they present their pieces to the class, and by the end of the semester, each incarcerated student will pick the piece of theirs they like the best, and, together, stitch a new interpretation of Dante’s story.

Jenkins has honed his sense of direction over many years of wandering. In college, he wanted to be a child psychiatrist, so he worked at Bellevue Hospital in New York with autistic kids. He didn’t like what he saw there, though. “The psychiatrists there, all they did was inject the kids with drugs and then note the changes. So they were using them as guinea pigs for drug experiments and that was really disillusioning to me. I didn’t want to go to medical school to learn how to do that,” he recalled. That revelation, as horrifying as it was, set him on his proper journey. “I did, in the course of working there, see that when these nonverbal autistic kids were with me they would respond to nonverbal games, especially if you could make them funny. So this nonverbal clowning

WHEN THE INCARCERATED STUDENTS SETTLE INTO CLASSROOM #4, Jenkins notices that someone’s missing. “Where’s James?”1 he asks. Carl answers: “He went to the Box.” Some of the inmates laugh; Jenkins looks confused, so Carl elaborates. There was a fight, he explains, and though James did nothing wrong, it was he said/he said, and they both got thrown in the Box. He stresses that it isn’t a big deal, perhaps in an attempt to soften it for us, the outsiders. “Politics,” someone interjects. Jenkins asks if James will be gone for a long time, but nobody knows. He doesn’t let it derail him. The week’s assignment was on justice or injustice as inspired by Cantos 18 and 19 from Paradiso. “I was gonna write about justice,” George admits to the group, “but I went to court last week...and I wrote about injustice instead.” He tried to be positive, he said, but he couldn’t keep in his rage. Professor Jenkins tells him he’s glad he didn’t. He asks if anyone wants to volunteer to share their assignment first, and Greg raises his hand.

Greg takes the stage in the middle of the circle. Jenkins suggests he simply stand in front of his chair so that he never has his back to anyone, but Greg insists he’ll deliver to the entire audience. He starts his piece with an original song—just him snapping and singing—performing, as promised, to the entire room. He then launches into a spoken word poem. “To leave this place unsuccessful is my only fear, and my heart is full of pride,” he reads from his page at one point. “Done so much good in my life why won’t you set me free?… Comes down to a dollar bill. If I was a wealthy man I’d have the right to kill?” At the end of his piece, Jenkins calls for what he terms “echo back,” where the students each repeat back a line that resonated with them. “If I was a wealthy man I’d have the right to kill?” a few intone back to Greg, nodding or shaking their heads.

Kamal goes next. He wrote a story about meeting his grandmother, who died of breast cancer before he was born. She tells him that she’s been watching him his whole life like a guardian angel. He goes to respond but finds he can’t speak; this, she says, is so he will listen with ears wide open when she tells him it was she who put him in jail. “The path you were on was going to lead to you to get killed by another man’s gun,” she claims; she did it because she loves him. “Son, don’t cry. Good is definitely going to come from this experience...It’s already started.” He finishes his piece. The class echoes back.

“You remind me of your grandfather.”

“I’ve been watching you your whole life.”

“I’m the one who put you in jail.”

“It’s already started,” Jenkins echoes, nodding.

“Dante was someone who was condemned to death, convicted of crimes, but we don’t remember him as a convict. We remember him as poet.”

—Prof. Ronald Jenkins, Visiting Professor of Religion and Literature became the way to make contact and get them to look in your eyes, and it’s a very human connection.” Jenkins left Bellevue and dropped out of college to become a clown. He went to a clown school in Mexico for a while but then won enough prize money on a TV game show in Los Angeles to enroll at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. He wanted to learn how to make kids laugh, he said.

He toured with the circus for a bit, but after a while it wasn’t satisfying anymore. He was tired of doing the same thing over and over again and wanted to take what he had learned from the hospital and clown school and apply it elsewhere. So he went back to school, still a young man in his early twenties, and upon graduation went to Bali for a year to study the clown traditions in villages and temple ceremonies. “The clowns there were really responsible for taking the ancient texts and updating them based on what the needs of the village were and what the audience needed to hear in that moment,” he explained. When, in 2002, Bali experienced terrorist bombings that killed 202 people, the clowns performed stories about coping with disaster. “In that culture it’s built into the tradition that theater is an art of transformation that is part of the survival of the community. And here it’s not built in, but you can try to find ways to help your community survive through theater.”

Like theater, prison is supposed to be about transformation and rehabilitation, but it hardly ever is, Jenkins explained, so those “who honestly want to experience some kind of transformation when they’re in prison really appreciate the opportunity to read about Dante because he’s a role model for that and they sense that.” Dante is the perfect model for Jenkins’s belief in this type of transformation because of his own identity as a felon. “Dante was someone who was condemned to death, convicted of crimes, but we don’t remember him as a convict,” Jenkins said. “We remember him as a poet. He, in a sense, transformed his identity through writing, and in the course of this work, the men who we work with in prison are also transforming their identities.”

III. “My guide and I came on that hidden road to make our way back into the bright world; and with no care for any rest, we climbed—he first, I following— until I saw, through a round opening, some of those things of beauty Heaven bears. It was from there that we emerged, to see—once more—the stars.”

Inferno, Canto XXXIV Though the incarcerated poets do reflect on their own lives and experiences, they don’t ignore the fact that they are at the mercy of a flawed system. “I can’t say only God knows because only the judge knows,” Martin recites. In Mason’s piece, the lion of justice cowers in the face of the snake of injustice. The snake hisses, “I’m easier for everyone to get along with. I appeal to the side of people they don’t want to admit they have, the side they keep hidden behind closed doors. Lucky for me courtrooms, jails, and prisons have plenty of doors.”

Henry also used an animal to speak for injustice, but he chose a gorilla, which he included in a drawing he did for the show’s poster. The gorilla, missing an eye, sits on top of the globe with a cruel grimace and an uneven balance in his hand. “Why is the U.S. so quick to answer problems in other countries 1 Names of inmates have been changed.

14 – The Yale Herald

but can’t handle their own backyard?” he asks the gorilla. “I can’t answer that; the truth will leave you damaged and scarred,” Injustice responds. Henry follows up, “Why are people voting for Donald Trump? After Nov. 8, we won’t have to worry about that grump.”

Martin describes the cycle of going in and out of prison as “a revolving door,” an image that reminds me of one of the many eternal tortures endured by the damned in Dante’s hell. “Everything is money in the Justice Department,” someone explains.

“If you don’t have money they won’t let you out.”

“Money is justice!” they all agree. Though everyone calls for criminal justice reform, someone notes, nobody listens to an inmate’s perspective. “We’re felons!

Our voices don’t matter,” someone else adds. “Our system is so distorted. They don’t care if you’re innocent or not.”

“The world needs drastic change, especially in the judicial system. But Rome wasn’t built in a day. Our country wasn’t built in a day,” George mused later.

Martin offers the hope that brought the men to Classroom #4 in the first place: “As long as you educate yourself, no one can ever take that from you.”

After the men have all shared their pieces with the group, they sit with their partners to prepare for the next week’s assignment. One of the inmates, Mason, was in the class last year, but is taking it again now. He says that people who saw the performance last year call out to him around the prison to tell him they liked his work. People call him “Black Moses,” he tells me, and, though he keeps to himself for the most part, people seek him out for his wisdom. “There are a lot of people who don’t belong here but they got smoked by the broken system. I’ll be reading a magazine and someone comes over to talk. They just want five minutes of positivity from me,” he says. He goes to church and to class (he’s working towards an MBA and plans to start a company); he’s not about the bullshit, he says. Mason is tall with deep, dark eyes and what sounds to me like a vaguely Midwestern accent. This is not his world, and he’s going home. Carl asks if he’ll stay home. Mason says yes.

Professor Jenkins roams from group to group, offering guidance for what’s next and reflections on the day’s work. When he gets to Greg, he compliments his musical element and suggests he add even more when he revisits the piece.

Greg asks what grade Jenkins would give him for his performance, the one that started what Jenkins describes as “a powerful group session.” You would absolutely get an A, Jenkins tells him as he heads over to another group. “I got an A at Yale,” Greg smirks after him.

LIKE PROFESSOR JENKINS HIMSELF, JENKINS’S TEACHING ASSISTANT, Nicole Klosterman, has followed a winding path to teaching Dante in prisons.

Though she is in the same year at Yale Divinity School as some of her current students, she has some years of experience on them. She took a decade off after school, bouncing around different work and life experiences the way sage adults who went to grad school always advise but don’t always do themselves. Though still young, she has a collection of shallow smile lines at the corner of each honey-brown eye. She ended up at divinity school through yoga teacher training.

It put her in the position of being a student again, which resonated, she said. “It also opened up my access to my spiritual existence in a different way, and that just changed my experience in the world and what I wanted and what I wanted to be doing.”

I asked her about Professor Jenkins, and she, like most of the other students, released an affectionate chuckle in response. “I guess it should be obvious that he’s not doing it for fame and glory—that his heart is so completely into it,” she said. “I’ve seen him brought to tears so many times talking about the men and women, and there’s a line of Dante that he always quotes. I don’t remember the first part of it, but it’s ‘I was surprised to see that there were so many people of such worth held in this place’ in Limbo. And he always tears

up when he says it.” She has a slow manner of speaking, and as she hunted for the quote and began to deliver it, the Divinity School’s church bells had begun to ring outside.

A few days later, when I meet Jordan Lorenz in the Divinity School’s common room—a carpeted hall with a grand piano and armchairs by the fireplace—he’s in a Yale Divinity School quarter-zip sweatshirt, khakis, and boat shoes. He’s a classic New England boy from Maine, but after graduation he worked only six weeks at a tech startup before quitting to work with conservative Muslim refugee youth in Lewiston. “And why I’m here? I don’t really know,” he mused. “I felt like I had a call to be studying divinity sort of out of my own profound struggle with my faith.”

When he talked about Professor Jenkins, he spoke with an incredulous reverence—to him, Jenkins is a miraculous character, hard to pin down or describe. “I guess when I saw that we were studying Dante I had this image of a very stodgy, old theater professor who’s really into this one incredibly esoteric discipline and I assumed that the workshops would be really dull, and it’s not,” Jordan said. “He’s not in this because he’s an academic who thinks he’s going to get something academic out of this. Let’s be honest: this is the mother of all academic projects, but I don’t think he does it for that. He seems to genuinely want to keep going back after enough has been written.”

He paused for a moment before he came to a conclusion. “He’s Virgil. He’s still down there.”

AS I PACK UP TO DESCEND SCIENCE HILL AFTER OUR MEETING, NICOLE shares one more anecdote about Professor Jenkins. After she took his class, she saw him speak about his work as a temple clown in training in Bali. The talk, she said, gave her a whole new insight on what they were doing in Performance Behind Bars. Jenkins shared that the clowns acted out stories of the gods or situations that mirrored politics or current events. They came into existence, the story goes, when Shiva and Uma were fighting.

“Shiva had read this book with all the future [in it], and he shouldn’t have done that because he saw this one little part about Uma being unfaithful to him.

He just flips into his destructive self and she turns into Durga and they’re fighting and DESTROYING THE UNIVERSE because they’re so epic and so large,” Nicole narrated. The clowns then start to put on a play about them in order to process the events. The gods look down and see the shadow play of their destruction of the world and realize the consequence of their actions. “And so the purpose of the temple clowns was, through this play, to reveal the true self to the gods, to the king, to the priests in the temple. And that’s what I see this theater project doing. Through it they are revealing their true selves to themselves, and to the rest of the prison, and…” she trailed off, looking up toward the steeple as she searched for the right words. “And to the world outside as well.”

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff

Nov. 11, 2016 – 15

FEATURES

Arms (and minds) in “America’s Arsenal” Meghana Mysore, DC ’20, investigates mental health-based approaches to solving gun violence.

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he Winchester Repeating Arms Company closed its gun factory in New Haven, on the corner of Manson Street and Winchester Avenue, in the spring of 2006. This closure marked the end of a centuries-long relationship between arms manufacturing and the Elm City, which acquired the moniker of “the Arsenal of America” during the Civil War. And as developers vied to redevelop the factory into high-end apartments, government officials and New Haven locals countered the prospect of job loss that accompanied the closure with optimism: that Winchester’s shutting might make the city a safer, healthier place.

On Oct. 24 in New Haven, two men were shot at the Hess gas station on Ferry State Streets. In the span of one year—2011—167 shootings occurred. And in the last six years cumulatively, 65 deaths have resulted from murder or homicide. This, in a city of just 130,000 residents.

16 – The Yale Herald

The Connecticut Mental Health Center, located on Park Street here in New Haven, sees patients every day who experience trauma-related disorders that stem from gun violence. According to the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, 34 percent of middle school youth in the city report, as of 2010, having seen someone get shot or stabbed—thus placing them at greater risk of suffering from mental illness. In New Haven’s low-income neighborhoods, too, between 67 and 77 percent of adults do not feel safe walking the streets at night.

This sort of violence outlives gunshots—it is the ensuing trauma, spurred by guns, that plagues New Haven residents and their communities at large. But this same violence has moved to the forefront of conversations surrounding Second Amendment rights and gun usage here in the Elm City. Perhaps, some advocates, police officers, and government officials argue, a more effective solution lies in looking at mental health.

“THE VERY PRESENCE OF GUNS CREATES AN ATMOSPHERE OF concern and fear,” says Alfred Marder, founder of the Amistad Committee, which addresses issues of social and racial inequality in New Haven. The former chair of the city’s Peace Commission (and also of the United Nations International Association of Peace Messenger Cities and the U.S. Peace Council), he notes that there is a great concern among the community about the violence that guns have wrought. “There has to be a national institution of restrictive legislation,” he maintains.

Achilles Generoso, Assistant Chief of the New Haven Police Department, adds that even when they are acquired legally, guns are often moved informally into the hands of others: “A criminal might acquire a gun from his parent or grandparent, for example.”

The subsequent violence that occurs when these people illegally acquire firearms has proven detrimental to the mental health of Connecticut, Generoso holds: “It affects every citizen from the victim to the neighborhood to the city and beyond.” In particular, he notes that many more people might come to New Haven to explore restaurants or shop, but—because they associate the city with violence—decide to go elsewhere.

Generoso also highlights a more concrete manifestation of gun violence on the wellbeing of locals: “It affects the children in the city, and people in the neighborhood where violence occurred suffer from PTSD. It is incredibly traumatic to people when they see what is happening, and it becomes a mental health issue.”

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, EFFORTS TO LIMIT GUN VIOLENCE in New Haven have been largely successful. In November 2012, the New Haven Police Department, in cooperation with the state and federal government, instituted Project Longevity, which focuses on contacting gang members and making them aware of guns’ effects on their communities. This initiative takes a comprehensive and psychological approach to gun violence—and since its enactment, gun violence in the city has decreased dramatically. Michael Sierra-Arevalo, an affiliate fellow at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), and a graduate student affiliate of the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course (CIQLE), studies the patterns of gangs residing in impoverished neighborhoods in the context of urban violence. He emphasis that Project Longevity is not “stop and frisk style policing, but a focused approach that concentrates on those men that are engaging in violence.”

Initiatives like Project Longevity, as Assistant Chief of the New Haven Police Department Anthony Campbell notes, look at the underlying causes of gun violence. He emphasizes the strong link between gun possession, mental health, and violence: “Feelings of invalidation and disrespect escalate, leading to this violence.”

ing and social order. “The proximity to gun violence is often a traumatic experience, especially for young people and people who know those involved. It is stressful to have police looking through your streets and it’s harder to live in these neighborhoods,” Grotheer says.

It is for this reason that Mayor Toni Harp has engaged with each of the government’s departments to provide additional programming for young people: to give them spaces where they can feel safe after school and during summer vacation. This programming uses statistics and data to identify at-risk youths and to match these youths to tutoring, counseling, and anger management programs.

New Haven has also partnered with the Yale Child Study Center to counsel young trauma victims. Local public schools are offering wrap-around services to address any other issues that affected students might have.

YET IN SPITE OF THE SUCCESSES OF THIS MENTAL HEALTHbased solution to gun violence, the majority of New Haven’s initiatives continue to work by targeting those who illegal possess firearms.

“Keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is our priority,” Campbell says. “The mayor wants expanded background checks, prohibition of assault weapons, and gun safety laws. There are too many guns and they are too readily accessible,” Grotheer notes.

Harp has piloted efforts like “Shot Spotter,” which uses a series of antennae to record the sound of gunfire. Shot Spotter allows for the police to monitor three times more of New Haven than they could before—and instead of waiting for a 9-1-1 call, officers can respond to gunfire directly and launch an investigation within minutes. The technology is highly accurate: it can determine the number of shots fired and triangulate the sound to pinpoint the incident’s location and the caliber of weapon fire.

Additionally, the NHPD has begun to offer gun trade-in and buyback programs, which are now commonplace across the United States.

Campbell says that locals have turned in over 100 guns thus far.

But these more conventional efforts miss the mark, claims SierraArevalo: “We need to think long and hard about the purpose of the criminal justice system and focus resources not on arresting more people, but on helping the right people. We need to reduce the number of people who come in contact with criminal justice system altogether.”

Efforts like Project Longevity—that is, efforts that treat New Haven’s gun violence epidemic in relation to issues of mental health—are a start.

MANY OTHER INITIATIVES ARE INTENDED EXPLICITLY FOR children. “Parents are afraid to let their kids ride their bikes outside for fear that they will be shot,” claims Laurence Grotheer, Director of Communications for the City of New Haven. Sierra-Arevalo elaborates: “The exposure to continued violence engenders negative cognitive outcomes for children.”

For these children, gun violence is linked to broader issues of polic-

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff Nov. 11, 2016 – 17

CULTURE

Sorrentino’s misstep

by Robert Newhouse

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hough most may recognize the Neapolitan au- universe of satire—or even satire aimed at the Church. teur, Paolo Sorrentino, for his luscious visual The Great Beauty features a side story about a Mother style, outlandish characters, and general affin- Teresa-like character, who is presented as a highly-toutity for the absurd, another motif informs the di- ed yet seemingly impotent figure. But then something rector’s work: satire. This is true of Sorrentino’s first film unbelievable happens: the main character, Jep, stumto gain national recognition, Il Divo—a dense political bles upon the Teresa-like woman performing an actual drama in which Sorrentino presents a window into the miracle. And so what begins as a tame, vaguely comitoxic bureaucracy of the Italian political system. This is cal representation of the Church becomes a portrayal true, too, of Sorrentino’s most successful film to date, smacking of nothing short of reverence. the Felliniesque La Grande Belleza. While not as overt Then Sorrentino released the pilot of The Young in its critique as Il Divo, The Great Beauty (La grande Pope, an episode that, without giving too much away, belleza)—which, it should be mentioned, was awarded concerns (as promised) a young and exquisitely petuthe Academy Award for Best Foreign Film—has at its lant Pope, Lenny Belardo (played by Jude Law). With heart an uncompromising derision of the vapidity and the exception of a single—if imaginary—speech in artistic emptiness of the Italian intelligentsia in Rome. which he fantasizes about proclaiming from the papal Another, less prominent satirical thread in The balcony a sermon of remarkable (and, no doubt, deeply Great Beauty is Sorrentino’s commentary on the appar- sinful) progressivism, Belardo is an insufferable pig, a ent materialism of the Catholic Church in Rome. What chain-smoking, rude, thoughtless, absolutely irredeemseemed in that film like a comic aside has become the able broken promise of a human. And this, I think, is primary subject matter of the director’s latest creative supposed to be the show’s charm. endeavor: The Young Pope.

But The Young Pope isn’t surprising just because The show, which stars Jude Law and Diane Keaton, of Sorrentino’s history of mild reverence toward the will air on HBO on Jan. 15. But if you’re like me, and Church; the show is also surprising because of Soryou can’t wait to see the latest from the man who rentino’s history of making good cinema. In other brought us that eeriest and most gorgeous of films The words, the pilot is awful. Its critique of the Church is Great Beauty, you can find streaming options through superficial—pornographic, even, relying on the cheap a Google search. What you’ll see in the first episode shock factor of having a Pope drink diet coke and make (admittedly, the only one that I’ve seen) is Sorrentino’s nuns cry for no reason. This is awful for two reasons: most daring, blatant, and exciting—yet ultimately least first, it’s pointless, frivolous comedy; second, it’s pointsuccessful—satirical effort. less, frivolous comedy about, of all things, the CathoLet’s establish some context. The Young Pope is lic Church—an institution that, it’s pretty safe to say, not, as I’ve mentioned, Sorrentino’s first foray into the has invited some real ripe opportunities for satirization

throughout its multi-century history. The Young Pope is offensive for all of the wrong reasons, chasing after insipid gasps instead of thoughtful commentary.

South Park is a show that has often been called offensive. And, of course, it has been offensive. But in South Park the offensiveness is layered; in Sorrentino’s show, it is not. That is to say that when someone is offended by something in South Park, it is not only (when the show is successful) that they have heard or seen something shocking, but also that they have been forced to consider an alarming yet undeniably real and painful aspect of society. The same cannot be said for the humor of The Young Pope, which relies purely on superficial gags to convey its perverse, mean-spirited brand of televised trolling.

I would have expected better from the man who brought us the subtle Il Divo, the enlightening The Great Beauty, and, if we’re going to name all of them, the plain fun Youth. I’ve only seen the one episode of The Young Pope, but if Sorrentino continues the baseless mocking tone of the pilot throughout the rest of the 10-episode miniseries, then the auteur will no doubt lose many fans, including me.

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff

18 – The Yale Herald

The political untruth

by Alex Zafran

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n the morning of Wed., Nov. 9, the American Studies Undergraduate Registrar sent out an email advertising an event to “students who are wondering what happened yesterday.” I decided to attend, hoping that I might get some answers.

I haven’t fully processed what happened on Tuesday night. I also haven’t fully processed what happened on Wednesday night, at “Truth in the Internet Age,” the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism’s inaugural symposium. The event was like a microcosm of the campaign season: journalists talked over each other; people recalled being targeted online; the audience cheered, snapped, and scoffed. CNN’s Tanzina Vega said she was called a “beaner cunt” on Twitter earlier in the evening, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald laughed. Vega paused. “I actually don’t think it’s funny.”

The event description promised a lot of things.

“Influential professionals from the news media, social media, and academia” would be brought together “to illuminate how the ongoing revolutions in journalism and social media are threatening the integrity of the democratic process.” One of those professionals, Scott Carpenter, the manager of Jigsaw (previously known as Google Ideas), was one of the only panelists to raise interesting points about technology, but the most salient thing he said was that “this talk is not about the Internet, really.” An understatement, to say the least.

Why didn’t the panels dive into questions about truth and the Internet? Perhaps because no one really

had any answers. Instead, the moderator, former Fox are “struggling day to day” that they need to be “conNews anchor Greta Van Susteren, who was thoughtful cerned with microaggressions.” Arturo responded: and judicious for so much of the evening, steered the “I come from a working class background,” he said. final student panel, “What Now? Seeking Solutions,” “Both of my parents are immigrants. I know what it’s into a lecture on microaggressions. She told the stu- like to grow up going from paycheck to paycheck. I dent panel that the world is hard—she said that she think you pose the question as though the two are didn’t want the panelists, the “leaders of tomorrow,” mutually exclusive. I can care about microaggressions to be too sensitive. She also repeatedly emphasized and also struggle in this way.” Not everyone at Yale that she hoped she was not being ignorant in her lines can speak to this experience. And definitely not all of questioning. She genuinely wanted to understand, the panelists on Wednesday could. she told us.

I left the Law School with no better sense of what After three hours in the Yale Law School audito- happened on Tuesday or what’s going to happen next. rium, I felt even more upset and confused than I had And how could I? No one who spoke on Wednesday before. It wasn’t that the panelists didn’t offer ex- night saw the election results coming. So many of planations—they did. Some identified themselves as us at this school had never seriously considered our complicit: Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal present reality. and Eliana Johnson of the National Review both adBy the time the event drew to a close, three quarmitted that they had constructed coherent sentences ters of the audience had already left. Even some of out of Trump’s unintelligible ramblings, allowing him the panelists didn’t wait to hear the closing remarks. to be more easily understood. What upset me most Salovey ended the night with a reminder that Yale is was that this was a group of incredibly intelligent peo- an institution built on the understanding that “facts ple explicitly attempting to engage in civil discourse, are important.” Reconciling this ideal with our presand they weren’t failing, but they weren’t succeeding, ident-elect seems impossible. This event was supeither. The event was a reminder of how hard it is to posed to be a meditation on political truth, when in generate productive dialogue. The results didn’t seem reality, I’ve never felt farther from it. real to me, but the disconnect between those of us in the room and the rest of the country certainly did.

Sometimes, this disconnect manifested even within the room. During the final audience Q&A, Arturo Pineda, SM ’19, answered a question that Kurt Eichenwald asked without being called on. Eichenwald wanted to know how you convince people who

Graphic by Haewon Ma YH Staff

Nov. 11, 2016 – 19

REVIEWS TV: Westworld

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s flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods, / They kill us for their sport.”

It’s hard to fathom the utterly pessimistic outlook on life imbued in these words. Spoken by Gloucester in King Lear, a nobleman who has had his eyes gouged out by his enemies, the sentiment comes from a time when cruelty and caprice ruled the day: when an infected scratch, harvest failure, or the whim of an aristocrat meant certain death. For people in these times, evil and callous gods provided an explanation for the arbitrary horror of existence. In HBO’s new series Westworld, we come closest on television to reliving this terror. The show is a smashing success of drama, intellect and aesthetics. It’s the new show you need to watch.

Westworld is set in a future where society has perfected artificial intelligence and 3-D printing. Tired of societal constraints imposed on them, the ultra-rich pay thousands of dollars to visit Westworld: a sprawling, Western-themed amusement park, populated by perfectly-humanlike AI “hosts” with their own unique histories, emotions, and storylines with which attendees can engage.

Just like the Grand Theft Auto videogame series, the rich (called “guests”) can do anything in this amusement park: murder, rape, pillage aimlessly, or complete hosts’ storylines. The guests’ consciences are soothed by two facts. Hosts are not sentient and have their memories wiped clean after each sequence. Immune to harm from other participants and hosts, the guests commit unspeakable atrocities. The real intrigue of the show begins after a glitch mysteriously causes irregularities in the AI hosts. Ethical concerns become apparent from the first episode as several hosts develop their own consciousness.

The show is a hit on so many levels. It’s terrifying to watch hosts hosts become conscious and remember what occurred to them in past games. Once characters enter Westworld the series feels

like a real, if slightly exaggerated, depiction of the Old Wild West. Evan Rachel Wood (Deloras) admirably portrays a heartbreaking role of love doomed by tragedy, while Anthony Hopkins mesmerizes viewers as a somber, but eccentric, Shakespeare-quoting scientist. Though most of the acting is superb, some performances do come across as forced, particularly the park managers besides Hopkins. The plot is nonetheless compelling and alluring. The near infinite variety of alternative quests and self-consistent storylines make the gamer within me envious. Westworld is full of Easter eggs (hidden clues that lead to additional plotlines) and allegedly has a secret, final level that has never been accessed by a guest.

Westworld is a combination of action, drama, and sci-fi that exceeds on every front. It is also a deep philosophical reflection. The exploration of AI consciousness, and how we should treat sentient robots should be the show’s long lasting intellectual contribution. After watching the show, you might think again about what it means to be conscious, regardless of being human.

-Adam Krok

Film: The Girl on the Train

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he Girl on the Train, a flatly mediocre movie based on a bestseller, bears a title practically built for unforgiving criticism. “This film is a trainwreck, a one-way ticket to the wrong side of the tracks, a choo-choo that chugs along but runs off the rails before it even leaves the station,” I could say to placate the pun god, Pun (a pun on Pan). But in truth, that sort of wordplay would give this movie far too much credit. Despite the promise of juicy suspense, The Girl on the Train follows a fairly predictable course—albeit a grim one—that leaves about as much of an impression as a ride on Metro North.

To be clear, the “girl” in the title is a grown woman named Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt). Divorced, unemployed, and struggling with alcoholism, Rachel spends her days taking the train to and from Grand Central Station with a bottle of booze at her side. She does this mostly to catch passing glimpses of Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett), a young, beautiful stranger who enjoys a seemingly perfect life in a house by the tracks. A stranger who (of course) lives next door to Rachel’s ex Tom (Justin Theroux) and new wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), and who (of course) goes missing.

Before Megan even disappears, The Girl on the Train starts to sink in the morass of its convoluted premise, and the “thrill ride” that follows never builds enough momentum to climb out of it. New information arises so often that nothing feels like a twist.

It doesn’t help either that director Tate Taylor (The Help, Get on Up) seems out of his depth with this material. Unwavering darkness bogs down every scene and character, and without any breathing room, that humorlessness verges on comedy.

For better or worse, the film is saved from Lifetime-movie absurdity by a committed performance from Emily Blunt. Blunt—a well-liked star one knockout role away from solidifying her reputation as a Serious Actress—hardly ever leaves the screen and gives her all to Rachel. Blunt is helpless to elevate the script or direction, but she keeps a fragile, wounded character from becoming a punch line.

Landing somewhere between camp and earnestness, the film does one thing well, which is satisfy the curiosity of people too lazy to read the book. The mystique surrounding The Girl on the Train, the suspense novel du jour (c. 2015), eclipses anything in the movie itself, but those invested in pop culture may still want to know just what it was this “girl on the train” saw. The impulse many of us have to find out is exactly why Hollywood made this movie in the first place, but be warned, the answers may leave you cold.

-Joe Kuperschmidt YH Staff

Lower left image courtesy of HBO Upper right image courtesy of Universal Studios 20 – The Yale Herald

Theater: Water by the Spoonful

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n a late Thursday evening, a combination of random furniture and jazz music filled the Underbrook.

A stove and dining table stood in one corner opposite a desk and decrepit computer. Lone chairs, couches, and desks aligned themselves in seemingly arbitrary spots, giving arriving audience members no concrete sense of setting.

The confusing stage arrangement reflected the uncertainty depicted by Quiara Alegria Hudes’, YC ’99, in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Water by the Spoonful. The Yale Drama Coalition production (directed by Abbey Burgess, TC ’19, and produced by Alec Mukamal, SY ’19) focused on two intersecting storylines of Elliot, an Iraq war veteran recently returned to his home in Philadelphia, and Odessa, also known by her online alias Haikumom, a recovering crack addict. Elliot struggles with his transition to civilian life and often relies on his cousin Yaz, a brilliant musician and adjunct teacher. The cousins navigate not only their own lives, but also their complicated, and often ill-fated, Puerto Rican family.

Haikumom spends her days moderating a chat room of former crack addicts; she works from an old, dusty desktop, conversing with Orangutan and ChutesandLadders, chatroom members who communicate from different sides of the world. All comes together on stage, connecting the virtual presences of the three online chatters.

The random assortments of furniture turn into separate spaces, accompanied by masterful production and lighting. The three recovering addicts, later joined by Fountainhead in the chatroom, bring the play’s most comedic and tragic moments. They engage in jokes and banter, but they also carry the immense emotional and physical burdens of addiction, including the difficulties of relapse. Haikumom and Elliot’s stories become one in the second act, where their relationship is revealed and the play reaches its real breaking point.

Dealing with tragedy, relapse, and the questions of family bonds, the performance created a palpable intensity in the room. Hudes’ play, a beautiful exploration of human struggle, and the Yale Drama Coalition production brought the scenes to an incredible form. The characters in the play were separated from each other in geographic locations and times, but they all occupied the same stage. Between scenes the actors, in character, rearranged the furniture in the darkness, providing audience members no relief from the storyline. In one of the play’s most intense scenes, Fountainhead and ChutesandLadders physically move their chairs towards each other as they talk in a chatroom, suddenly breaking the barriers of the computer screen and experiencing a shared outbreak of emotion.

The production beautifully communicated its lack of chronological and spatial continuity to enhance the original work’s underlying feelings of anxiety and desperation. It highlighted the importance of diversity in live theater. The play centers on a Puerto Rican family, but it goes beyond the two-dimensionality so often seen in storylines concerned with multiculturalism and develops its characters as full, complex humans. The work portrays people as emotionally isolated but physically together: a conflict that we can all relate to in tumultuous times.

-Sanoja Bhaumik

Film: Doctor Strange Another season, another Marvel blockbuster. Doctor Strange, released on November 4th, aims to be different from its counterparts, and is successful enough to make it worth a watch. Despite a few plot holes and moments of cheesiness, the film delivers trippy visuals and supernatural elements that are unexpected from Marvel’s superhero factory.

Doctor Strange is the story of an extremely successful, skillful, and arrogant surgeon named Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) who thinks he has lost everything after his hands are practically destroyed in a car accident (don’t text and drive!).

Then, upon receiving a tip from a man who was miraculously able to recover from paralysis, Strange travels to Kathmandu, Nepal to seek healing from a mystical sorceress named The Ancient One, played by an otherworldly Tilda Swinton. She introduces him to new dimensions and spiritual realms while teaching him how to use magic. The film follows his quest to deal with the great responsibility, as well as the threats and darker aspects brought by his newfound power.

The most poignant moments in the film come from Strange’s origin story. The viewer learns nothing about the surgeon’s childhood, but his mental and emotional struggle to find a sense of worth and purpose after his crippling accident, which prevents him from doing the job around which his whole life is centered, is a heart-wrenching roller coaster. This very human struggle successfully garners audience empathy for an otherwise cold and cocky Strange. There are also some touching scenes with Dr. Christine Palmer, played by Rachel McAdams, who is one of the most intelligent and genuinely good love interests that Marvel has brought to life, despite the fact that her screen time was limited.

In the more emotional scenes, especially at the start of the film, Benedict Cumberbatch’s acting shines. However, there are several moments throughout Doctor Strange when the script feels cheesy. It is strange to see such a talented cast of actors have to deliver lines that would be awkward for anyone. A scattering of plot holes is another flaw of the film, but such is usually the case in fast-paced action movies.

Director Scott Derrickson distracts from these pitfalls with a winning formula of magic, action, and stunning visuals. While dramatic battle scenes in cities like New York, London, and Tokyo are expected from Marvel’s superhero movies, Doctor Strange ups the ante. The Ancient One folds buildings, moves streets, distorts space, and conjures weapons from thin air in an epic battle against Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), a pupil gone rogue, and his cronies. The characters manipulate time, energy, and space. They travel through dimensions and exit their corporeal forms. This lends itself to psychedelic imagery and elements of the supernatural and spiritual that Marvel has never fully explored. The fact that Dr. Strange is a somewhat tangential character in the Marvel universe allowed Scott Derrickson a greater level of freedom to experiment, which adds novelty and freshness to Doctor Strange. If you’re in the mood for a supernatural and action packed superhero film or just two hours to appreciate the charm of Benedict Cumberbatch, then Marvel has a Thanksgiving gift for you.

-Lina Goelzer YH Staff See this film and others at the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas New Haven, 86 Temple St. Call (203) 498-2500 or visit www.BowTieCinemas.com for advance tickets.

Upper right image courtesy of the Yale Drama Coalition Bottom left image courtesy of Marvel Studios Nov. 11, 2016 – 21

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

WRITE FOR THE HERALD

BULLBLOG BLACKLIST i feel like we could just spice things up a little bit

what the founding fathers said when they created the electoral college

What we hate this week

Anthony Wiener what the founding fathers said when they created the electoral collge

the dick that keeps on giving

now ya did it

white women voting Trump

and the big-budget American remake

Brexit

red baseball caps

swing states

any hat

swing right outta here, pal

when it wasn’t yours in the first place

white supremacy

wanting to take something back cartoon frogs are over

Sep. 16, 2016 – 23