ydn magazine

Plus, Whiffenpoofs Face Fame with an Expiration Date on page 9.

yale daily news magazine

Vol. xxxix · Issue 3 · December 2011 · ydnmag.com

page 28

Harvard and Princeton claimed early admissions kept disadvantaged students out and dropped the program. Now they’re bringing it back.

Was Yale right?

Christopher Buckley ’75. Fareed Zakaria ’86. Samantha Power ’92.YOU?

join US: [email protected]

viSit US: YDNMAG.coM

shorts

Around the CollegesQ’s with Mark Schoofs

Top 102

small talk

Temple of Mindfulness 50,000 Words, 30 Days

Moving the Music6

personal essay

Routine Maintenance austin bernhardt

16

crit Revolution in New Haven

edmund downie

18

photo essay

A Day in the Life of a Freshman

sarah eckinger 36

observer

Westville Renaissance william hall

42

poetry

Could Mope27

Feral40

more than just the music

table of contents

ydnmag.com | Yale Daily News Magazine | 1

by scott stern

28curl crazyby esther Zuckerman

unlocking early admissionsby daniel bethencourt

sunday marketby sanjena sathian

39

9

21

Cover Photo by Kamaria Greenfield

2 | Vol. XXXIX, No. 3 | December 2011

Subscriptions: To subscribe to the Yale Daily News Magazine, please contact us by email at [email protected].

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AROUND THE COLLEGES

Which of these shirts would you give the Tyng?

Jonathan Edwards

Silliman

Saybrook

Trumbull

Morse

Timothy Dwight

Davenport

Branford

Pierson

Ezra Stiles

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CalhounBerkeley

MagazineExecutive EditorsEliana Dockterman

Molly Hensley-ClancyNicole Levy

Deputy EditorsDaniel Bethencourt

Madeline BuxtonEdmund Downie

Lauren OylerSophia Veltfort

Design EditorsRaahil Kajani

Lindsay PatersonYoonji Woo

Design AssistantsMichael DiScala

Eli MarkhamScott Stern

Christian Vazquez

Photography EditorsBrianne Bowen

Emilie FoyerVictor Kang

Yale DailY News

Editor in ChiefMax de La Bruyère

PublisherPreetha Nandi

ydnmag you knew early helps, but it took three Har-vard economists, thousands of counselors and years of regression analysis to say so. Also the book is subtitled “joining the elite.” Srsly? #elitism

book review tweetthe early admissions Game

by Christopher Avery

VOCab•yAle•ary

PROFESSOR RECS What is your favorite holiday tradition?

Hook up ||hoÖk p| noun 1) connection to a public electric, water, or sewer line, or to a similar service — The cam-pus maintenance system involves several hundred sewer hookups; 2) a good or service given as a favor — Bob gave me the hook up with those free passes to Toad’s!; 3) A highly disputed level of intimacy exchanged between two people — Wait, did you hook up with my ex last night? I mean, it’s fine. A “hook up” is just a dance floor make out, right? RIGHT?!

shorts


HYP Admissions*: visualizing the story, p. 28

“Every year since 1911, at 5:30 on Christmas Eve, residents of my building have gathered, each with a candle, to sing carols on the front steps. No one, of course, is left from the earliest years of the caroling, but there are several residents who have been singing for over 60 years. It is best when it is snowing, but the caroling, now with many if not most of the singers not exactly celebrating Christmas, provides an annual reminder of how traditions at their best can create new communities that were unimaginable when the ‘tradition’ was first begun.”

David Scott Kastan, George M. Bodman Professor of English

“My favorite holiday traditions are (1) giving gifts and (2) sleeping in.”

GerShun Avilez, Assistant Professor of English and

African American Studies

e

Early Action:730

Regular Decision:1,210

Waitlisted:932


Waitlisted:Harvard does not release the number of students it waitlists


Waitlisted:1,451

*based on the class of 2014

shorts


Mark SchoofS

Writing today needs more ... It doesn’t need more, it needs less. The Internet is a vast plumbing system for logorrhea. Mothers should update how they admonish their children: if you can’t say something sub-stantive or witty, don’t say anything.

You can’t live without ... Dark chocolate and mountains.

If you could ask President Obama one question, what would it be? Can I interview you, one-on-one, on tape, with no handlers present, for an hour every week until the end of your Presi-dency?

What’s the most difficult piece you’ve ever had to write? My first eulogy.

If you could go back to college now, what would you do differently? Everything.

What is your favorite word and why? A painter once told me that any color — any at all — could be beautiful, depending on its context. The same is true for words. My favorite word is the one that’s perfectly, absolutely apt.

The most embarrassing moment of your career was ... For a series on Medicare fraud, a Wall Street Journal researcher, a fellow reporter, and I had identified a medical provider whom I’ll call John Michaels. Not only did he have suspicious billing patterns, but he had also been convicted of manslaughter in 1981 in South Carolina. So my colleague and I did a meet-and-greet, showing up unannounced at his home. Michaels wasn’t there, but his wife was. I gave her my card, and she gave me her husband’s cell number. I called it, and he promised to call me back. He didn’t. Over the next couple of weeks, I called him again and again and again. He never answered. I also called his wife, who kept assuring me that she

still had my card, and that her husband would call me back. By this time, I had retrieved

court records and newspaper articles about the manslaughter conviction. Michaels had shot a man I’ll call

Peter Green with a .22 caliber rifle. I had also interviewed the judge and one of the lawyers, as well as some of Michaels’ relatives. So I knew a lot. Certainly, I knew why he was avoiding me. One day around lunchtime, I called and Michaels finally picked up. But as soon as I introduced myself, he said, “I can’t talk to you now because I’m in line at a bank.” “OK,” I replied, “but do call me back, because I really am not pre-judging you for what happened in South Carolina.” “What do you mean?” he said. “I mean manslaughter!” I replied. “In 1981 you shot a man.” “Impossible,” he said. “In 1981, I was still in high school in Delaware.” Oops.

Most importantly, why is Yale bet-ter than Harvard? Flair. Look, let’s give the devil his due. Harvard has a few heroes, sure. But who among them had style? We’ve got Nathan Hale. Not only was he a charmer “to chums and more than one lady friend,” as Yale’s online biography delightfully puts it, but when his time came he knew how to shame the tyrants, inspire his chums, and go out with panache.

for Mark Schoofs ’85Mark Schoofs will teach English 467, Journalism, this spring. Win-ner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for international reporting, he has worked as an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a staff writer for The Village Voice. He currently serves as a senior editor at ProPublica, a non-profit online news organization devoted to investigative reporting.

shorts

Things noT To say To your parenTs

over break

TOP

1. I mean, a B+ is pretty good. I went to lecture, like, twice all semester.

2. I’ve really learned to appreciate new lifestyles.Guys, you don’t need to fast-forward through Jack-drawing-Rose-reclining-on-an-opulent-turn-of-the-century-sofa

anymore. After all those naked parties, this stuff is like second nature.

3. Animals (and gluten) have rights, too!You made my favorite baked macaroni and cheese for dinner? Aw, that’s so sweet. But, er, I don’t eat dairy. Yeah,

or eggs. Or gluten, actually. I do eat certain species of fish, though! No, I’m kidding. I would never do that to a

living organism.

4. So, spring break?Oh my God, I want to go on this awesome service trip to Ecuador for spring break! It’s not that expensive, and it’s sponsored by the best fraternity!

5. Wait, the detergent goes in the washer ?I can’t wait for you to do my laundry. I haven’t washed my sheets since you put them on for me in August.

6. Oh no! I guess I didn’t realize what “bursar” meant.

7. I’m learning a lot. Did you see that interview with Natalie Portman where she said she gained more from parties than lectures at Harvard?

8. Yay, my nightly email!Aw, it’s so nice that the Yale Chief of Police sends us email notifications of stabbings in the area even over break! They’re really dedicated to keeping us updated.

9. What, my eBill? So, you might have noticed an extra $2700 charge on the eBill this month. I called them, and they said “Yale Health Hospitalization” is actually supposed to say “Yale Dining.” Weird.

10. Umm ... I kind of have a boyfriend ...

— TaoTao Holmes and Lauren Oyler


Nothing about the waiting room of the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, where Jud Brewer teaches addicts to meditate, quiets my mind. I’ve meditated with Jud before as part of a weekly group he leads in Dwight Hall, but here harsh lights hum above off-green plastic chairs while patients and nurses negotiate paperwork and urine samples. It’s the kind of setting that inspires leg-tapping and clock-staring, not unattached self-awareness. Yet Brewer has managed to transform this clinical scene into a temple of mindfulness, where patients come to kick their bad habits simply by learning how to pay attention to their next breath.

Brewer, now a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, was engaged to be married and about to head to medical school after graduating from

Princeton in 1996. “On paper, everything looked pretty good,” he says. But when he and his fiancée broke up that summer and he found himself unable to sleep, Brewer picked up some meditation cassette tapes. He needed to get through his break-up and first semester of medical school without “becoming a jerk,” he says.

Fourteen years later, after giving up animal research in accordance with the Buddhist precept of non-harm and coming to the field of psychiatry because “it’s all about mindfulness,” Brewer now devotes his professional life to studying the medical uses of mindfulness training.

He seeks to help smokers, cocaine addicts, and alcoholics reshape their relationship with their cravings through meditation. Over as little as four weeks, Brewer teaches his patients to pay attention to the physical sensations that make up a craving — tension, tightness, clinging — as well as how to bring an attitude of acceptance towards that experience.

Your mind will wander, he says. You will crave. Don’t battle your thoughts, just watch them. In the isolation of silent meditation, the addicts begin to realize that their heads won’t explode if they fail to act on these sensations. “They see it’s impermanent,” says Brewer. “Craving is a sensation in the body. I don’t have to act on it. I have freedom to choose what to do.”

The results are striking. “One guy went from 30 to ten cigarettes in two days because he started paying attention to how habitually he would smoke,” Brewer says. “It was so automated … He just needed to pay attention.”

Brewer shows me a model that explains this shift. It’s a diagram mapping the connection between our inner experience and our behavior. A brain is fed sensory information, processes it as pleasurable or not pleasurable, and then turns either emotional response into a desire. Your girlfriend texts you, you want more. You get a bad grade, you want a cigarette. The craving becomes behavior, habit, personality.

Traditionally, psychology tells us to resolve this inner churning by substituting carrot sticks for cigarettes. It acknowledges and leaves alone our impulses, instead telling patients to talk through their negative thoughts and find healthy coping mechanisms.

But Brewer says the Buddha teaches something different: “That was the big breakthrough that the

Temple of mindfulness D50,000 words, 30 days D moving The music

victor kang/photography editor

Small Talk


small talk


Buddha had. Say there’s a fire burning. You can’t just take your burning logs and put them into a different fire. You have to pull the logs out so the fire burns off on its own.” Instead of reacting to one fire by starting another — resolving your anxiety by eating more chocolate, say, or even going for a run — the Buddha asks that you detach yourself from the fire and watch it die down on its own.

As I sit in one of Brewer’s recent mindfulness sessions, I’m looking for new fires for my own burning logs — food, motion, anything to save me from the dangerous terrain of my wandering thoughts. I’m not alone. We all struggle with craving, especially in an age when Facebook, Twitter, and texting have us constantly looking for the next unpredictable hit.

At the end of the session, I leave with a sore butt and a slightly elevated heart rate, as I usually do. Yet as I walk out from the dark calm of Dwight Hall with a group of fellow cravers, I realize that it’s not just the addict who, as Brewer says, “speaks the language of the Buddha.”

– Benjamin Mueller

It’s nine o’clock on November 1 and there’s a pink Post-it note on the door of the Branford dining hall. On the slip of paper someone has written a phone number for “NaNo-ers” to call to be “let in.”

The scene seems secretive and puzzling. It’s the wrong hour for yellow light to be leaking out of the dining hall windows. It’s cold to be standing outside in front of a locked door, and the words on the note seem to be in code.

I dial the number, and a voice on the other end says she’ll be down to open the door in a second. A moment later, a brown-haired girl lets my friend and me in. “We’re in the middle of a ten-minute word war!” she says as she jogs up the stairs.

Before I have time to ask her what she means, we’re in the dining hall. Some 15 students are seated around a long table against the wall, typing away on laptops. On a table in the middle are boxes of Oreos and biscotti.

I sit down and open my computer. I close various emails and syllabi that remind me of the hundreds of pages I should be reading for the week. Then I do the last thing I should be doing at nine o’clock on a Tuesday night: I start a novel.

This novel-writing extravaganza isn’t just a Yale quirk. Worldwide, around 200,000 people started a novel on November 1 as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. People in the midst of working, raising families, and studying set aside their obligations to attempt the breathless creative sprint that is writing 50,000 words in 30 days.

But NaNo-ers looking to write the next great American novel in those 30 days would be better off adjusting their

expectations. Zeke Blackwell ’13, a first-time NaNo-er, puts it this way: “[NaNoWriMo has] gotten me to write.…Granted, this is also not the best writing that I’ve ever cranked out.” Churning out 50,000 words in 30 days doesn’t allow you to carefully construct sentences, edit them, and rewrite them, as you might under normal circumstances.

For that reason, as I sit down to write my novel, I’ll need to give myself what Ari Susu-Mago ’13, who founded Yale’s Noveling Club in 2010, calls “the permission to suck.” My goal isn’t to create something good; it’s simply to create.

I find that focus on quantity liberating. Noveling becomes less of an effort to unmask great truths and attempt stylistic breakthroughs and more of an attempt to merely tell a story, one that can incorporate all sorts of pieces of my life. Nat Harrington ’14, treasurer of Yale’s Noveling Club, is writing a novel that, at this point, includes “two French essays, a German paragraph, and a fable,” all originally written for class, he says. “One of the French papers even makes sense where it is.”

Blackwell’s novel incorporates material from the people he knows at Yale. “A few times, I’ve written in my common room and have taken inspiration for my story from talking with my suitemates while in the middle of stagnant writing sessions,” he says. “One of my suitemates actually makes a cameo in my novel based on something he said that I thought was really funny.”

Writing under NaNoWriMo’s constraints starts to change how I relate to the text. When there’s time to craft and to edit, ego enters the work, and I think too

much about how the quality of the piece reflects on me. NaNoWriMo shifts the focus from myself to the story. Susu-Mago underwent an extreme version of this in one NaNoWriMo stint in 2009. Her writing process “became like reading a book rather than writing a book,” she says. “I didn’t know what was going to happen and it didn’t seem to matter that my hands were the ones doing the typing because the words were appearing on the page.”

When I first followed Susu-Mago up the stairs to the dining hall, I told myself I’d stay for half an hour, but my novel demanded more. I kept extending my time limit by five minutes, or 200 words, or the end of a scene. Next thing I knew, it was almost midnight. True, the writing was not my best — but I felt enveloped in a story in a way I hadn’t in a long time.

– Ariel Katz

My goal isn’t to create something good; it’s simply to create.

small talk


Though the lights are dim, it’s still easy to make out the many photographs scattered throughout the one-floor apartment. In one shot is Debbie Reynolds, in another Shirley Jones. Then there is Lady Gaga, Will Smith, and Doris Day. The only thing that the photographs have in common is Pierre Patrick, a man of medium height with stringy, shoulder-length brown hair, often dressed in a tuxedo. Five years ago, Patrick relocated from Los Angeles to this apartment, just a few blocks from the New Haven Green.

Born in Canada, Patrick fell ill at 18 months and spent the next ten years in and out of hospitals with failing kidneys. During this time, he says, his “universe was television and film and music,” and he became enamored with it. In Canada’s small entertainment industry, he “could sing okay” by age 14, he readily admits — good enough to record a hit single — but Celine Dion was still killing him on the charts. Around age 16, Patrick decided to start life anew and moved to the entertainment hub that is Los Angeles, in search of more exposure and new challenges.

Despite his early success in Canada, life in L.A. wasn’t easy. Patrick worked as a busboy in a French restaurant until he found his big break through a series of lucky encounters with Gene Kelly’s daughter. She frequented the restaurant because she adored people with French accents. After several conversations, she invited Patrick to her birthday

party, which featured, among other celebrities, an aging Fred Astaire. Patrick gained some insight into how Hollywood works and, he says, “started meeting the right people.” Later, when his earlier hit reached the United States, he was invited to the Grammys, to which he later returned as a nominee.

Patrick began writing for the Television Chronicle in Los Angeles, and his first chosen assignment was a piece on the legendary actress Doris Day. She had always intrigued him, and, after contacting her repeatedly, she finally agreed to an interview with Patrick. Something clicked. They became close friends; she even gave him a pet dog named Breezy as a gift. In 2008, at the 50th celebration of the Grammys, Patrick accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award on Day’s behalf, since the actress has become hesitant to expose herself to the public. He always signs his letters with the unforgettable ending, “Have a Doris Day.” Even after his relocation to New Haven, Patrick still receives penned letters from the celebrity and flies to see her from time to time.

It’s odd that a man who speaks so fondly about his connections to the entertainment industry left L.A. for New Haven. Patrick remains adamant that he came to New Haven five years ago at the insistence of his friend and mentor, Jerry Goehring. Goehring urged Patrick to work with him at the National Theater of the Deaf and connected him with the Theater Department at Sacred Heart University. Patrick excitedly relates how, since starting there, he has brought in people like 1970s pop singer David Cassidy and has booked bands including ABBA, who will play at an upcoming event.

Patrick isn’t just bringing the Hollywood industry to Connecticut. He’s also looking to cultivate new stars in the unlikely locale. He is currently collaborating with New Haven resident Mikel Beaukel, a singer and model. Patrick gets an eager gleam in his eye when he mentions that name, and he is clearly of the opinion that Beaukel will do great things in the music industry. He is also passionate about William Suretté, another artist from Connecticut. Patrick produced Suretté’s nationally-sold album, “Dance Party.”

In Patrick’s apartment, celebrity photographs are hung from wall to wall and stacks of magazines in which he is featured are piled high in one corner of the living room. His 15 minutes of fame are well and good, but he has work to do: there are still blank spaces left on the wall.

– Victor Macrinici

zoe gorman/contributing photographer

ydnmag.com | Yale Daily News Magazine |9

More than Just the MusicD by scott stern D

“Our next competitors carry on the storied tradition of the first ever college a cappella group,” said Nick Lachey, the host. “With over 100 years of history behind them, these Ivy League singers are keeping the legacy alive while making their mark in the 21st century.”

Photographs by Tory Burnside Clapp

feature


The spotlights settled on center stage. For the next few seconds, the men, decked out in tuxedos

and white gloves, sang solemnly. Then Brennan Caldwell ‘12 stepped forward and took the song to a whole new level with falsetto, flourish, and verve. And so the Yale Whiffenpoofs introduced themselves to America — with a performance of Mika’s “Grace Kelly” that judge Ben Folds called “sassy” and “fantastic.” They had arrived.

It was the second season of “The Sing-Off,” a reality television show in which ten musical groups from around the country compete for a major record deal. The Whiffs had been invited to perform without even having to audition. Though they were only the fourth group eliminated, their performances gave them a chance to redefine the group.

“We recognized that unless we

started pushing our boundaries, we would be sort of doomed to obsolescence,” explains Caldwell, a Whiff from last year. “‘The Sing-Off ’ made that threat real to us and encouraged innovation.”

Their performance on the show was met with solid reviews across the board. It “gave us a lot of great publicity,” says Ben Wexler ’12, another of last year’s Whiffs. According to former Whiff Stephen Feigenbaum ’12, the performance was so well-received this year’s crop of Whiffenpoofs, who never set foot onto the stage with Lachey, “almost have to pretend to be” their counterparts from the hit TV show.

Months after “The Sing Off,” the Whiffenpoofs came back to Yale after a world tour that took them to more than 27 countries. They returned just a few days before Camp Yale. One week

after a concert in Iceland, they were shopping classes.

“By the end of the year, we were ready to go back to being civilians,” says Adam Begley ’12. But returning to academics after a year without exams or essays is “truly horrible. In the course of that year, you get so used to the freedom of doing only music.”

For the Whiffenpoofs, the contrast between then and now is stark: in a matter of days, they went from national celebrities back to being regular college students. “When you’re in the Whiffs, in a certain niche, you’re very famous,” says Begley. Occasionally, “you felt like the Beatles.” But then the fame is gone.

Every year, 14 Yale men are chosen to be the prestigious Whiffenpoofs of Yale. In a

process similar to that of other a

feature


cappella groups, junior men try out to be Whiffs with a simple audition. Before the audition, the prospective Whiffs must sign a contract saying they will promise to join the group if they are chosen. Then, on Tap Night, the 14 new members are selected. The Whiffs spend the next 12 months singing prolifically, giving hundreds of concerts in dozens of locations.

The Whiffenpoofs got their start on a frigid New Haven evening in 1909, when five Yale Glee Club members entered Mory’s Temple Bar to escape from the cold. At the urging of Mory’s barkeep Louis Linder, they serenaded patrons to rousing success. They returned the next week for another performance, and again the week after that.

These first five singers performed at a time when singing was “in demand” as never before, according to “An Authentic Account of the Founding of the Whiffenpoofs,” by Rev. James Howard, class of 1909. They were sought to liven up many of the notoriously staid functions of old Yale, including a typical banquet in which one Yale faculty member gave his address “completely in Latin,” Howard recounts.

As the small group became more famous, they cast around for a name. In keeping with the ensemble’s light-hearted tone, early member Denton “Goat” Fowler, also class of 1909, suggested to his fellow singers the word “Whiffenpoof.” Originally found in the 1908 musical comedy “Little Nemo,” the word signified a mythical fish and met with everyone’s approval.

T h e Whiffenpoofs were born.

Over the next few years, the group expanded to its current size. The ensemble is and was all-male, with the exception of an early member’s spunky “prom girl,” who “sang us a swell song and was duly elected an Honorary Member” in 1910, according

to Howard. For many years, being a Whiffenpoof

was less of a commitment than singing with the Yale Glee Club; the ensemble sang only at Mory’s, with the exception of an occasional holiday performance. Over the decades, the Whiffenpoofs earned a national following. They just might be the most famous collegiate musical group in the world. Members

h a v e included legendary musician Cole Porter, class of 1913, and its fictional alumni are equally impressive: Rory Gilmore’s grandfather in “Gilmore Girls” and the title character in Mel Brooks’s musical “Young Frankenstein.” The famous

“Whiffenpoof song” — “To the Tables Down at Mory’s” — has been recorded by singers from Bing Crosby to Elvis. The Whiffenpoofs themselves can be heard singing it in the 2006 movie “The Good Shepherd,” and they’ve also appeared on television shows like “The West Wing” and “Gossip Girl.” Despite their fame and a new weekly gig at the swanky Union League Café, they

“The challenge of this year is trying to achieve that same sense of significance through your own work, rather than by riding the coattails of the group you’re a part of.”

feature


remain loyal to their

weekly show at Mory’s.“There’s something really fun about

being part of a group that’s so big,” said Begley. Current Whiff Michael Blume ’13 agrees: “People just love us — in a bizarre way.” Blume qualifies, “People don’t love me. They love the Whiffenpoofs.”

D

The Whiffenpoofs begin their “Whiff year” based in New Haven, but they travel far and wide to perform. So far, this year’s class has been to numerous grade schools, churches, colleges across the country, and even to Mexico. Their food and travel is covered by the group.

On the road, the Whiffenpoofs enjoy opportunities available to very few other college students. They might drive go-karts, go bungee jumping, climb Mt. Si in Seattle (in the pouring rain), or scale ancient temples in Mexico — just a number of activities they’ve crossed off their list

this year.Beginning in late

March, the Whiffenpoofs embark on their world tour. This year the Whiffs plan to, as current Whiff Alexander Oki ’13 puts it, “sing for some penguins” on a cruise to Antarctica, where they will get to camp on the mainland. The group will also give concerts in Nigeria, Kenya, and maybe even Egypt, though that one is still up in the air for obvious reasons.

Last year’s Whiffenpoofs traveled to Norway, Australia, and Thailand. They sailed a boat across the North Sea and sang from a moving streetcar in Europe. They performed for a man who started Japan’s own version of the Whiffenpoofs, and they jumped out of a plane over the New Zealand terrain where “Lord of the Rings” was filmed.

“If the Whiff year were any longer, you’d probably die,” says Begley. The members develop a certain routine: “getting on airplanes, eating fast food, losing contact, drinking too much, staying up too late.”

The world tour was Wexler’s favorite part of the year: “You wake up in a different place every three

days.”

This is the first year in Whiffenpoof history that all 14 members have deferred the

year, postponing their graduation date until 2013. It makes for a paradoxical relationship with Yale: in the year they take off as students, they become symbols of the institution they’ve temporarily left.

Decades ago, hardly any members took the year off; now, the trend has become so iconic it earned itself a name, “the Whiff year.” According to former Whiff David Mraz ’80, only a few Whiffenpoofs deferred 30 years ago. “The year off was just emerging then,” he says.

Many Whiffenpoofs say that the Yale administration is against

the Whiff year on principle. In 1980, Mraz had numerous conversations with one of the administrators, who, he says, expressed displeasure that the Whiffs were deferring the year: “Yale was considering banning the use of the Yale name in its association with the Whiffenpoofs.” To this day, “a lot of administrators don’t support the Whiffs taking the year off,” Wexler says candidly.

Nevertheless, Whiffs like Wexler proudly acknowledge that “the Whiffenpoofs are an awesome vessel for spreading Yale’s name.” Indeed, Wexler noted how after hearing one concert a woman donated $100,000 to Yale.

The Yale name comes at the price of shouldering elitist stereotypes. Performing on the “The Sing-Off ” may have been “pretty sweet,” says Feigenbaum, but “there was no chance we were going to win — the American public wasn’t going to vote for the Yale Whiffenpoofs.” Numerous Whiffs claim that they were trivialized as the “Yale” group, citing excessive footage of them wearing their “penguin suits” and a random shot of them out golfing.

“A reality TV show latches on to

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whatever it can find,” says Begley. In this case, “‘The Sing-Off ’ latched on to the traditional Yale stereotype.” When the Whiffenpoofs had finished their rendition of “Grace Kelly,” a snarky Lachey remarked: “Somewhere out there, George W. Bush is smiling.” Judge Shawn Stockman thanked the Whiffs for “inventing a cappella. We would not be here if it were not for you. And we appreciate you gracing us with your presence.”

Stockman’s jibe rang true, though not in the way he intended. The Whiffs are always pressed for time, and their presence on the show is one reason so many singers took last year off. In recent years, it hasn’t been so much a matter of how many take the year off as how many do not. Last year, all but two deferred. Current Whiffenpoof and musical director Ben Watsky ‘13 says all 14 members deferring this year is simply a coincidence: “It just so happened that all fourteen of us wanted to take the year off.” Watsky says he guesses the same will not occur next year, but many juniors interested in applying to be Whiffenpoofs say they plan to take the year off. “You’re only in college once,” says Spizzwinks(?) memeber Alec Torres ’13. “So why waste the opportunity for a free year of singing and travel by taking on a full course load? I have a whole lifetime of work ahead of me, so I think it would be really smart to take time off while I can.”

That all 14 members are taking this year off has given the group some unprecedented opportunities. As Oki noted, “This year we have added about two months’ worth of domestic touring that couldn’t happen if some of the singers were in school.”

Away from campus even more often than in previous years, the Whiffs miss some key social events at Yale. For current Whiff David Martinez ’13, missing his last Safety Dance and Masquerade Ball with his

own class was disappointing. Current Whiff Eliot Shimer ’13 is preparing for next year, when all of his 2012 friends will be gone, by “trying to spend as much time with them as I can while I am on campus this year.” But the Whiffenpoofs are primarily in New Haven only on weeknights, and while they may not have the burden of schoolwork during the week, their friends do.

So the Whiffs spend a lot of time around each other, both on tour and at Yale. “The social dynamic of the Whiffenpoofs is a crapshoot,” Begley says. But Whiffenpoofs from both last year and this year say their respective groups were unusually “socially cohesive.”

“You get to know a group of fourteen people really well,” says Wexler of the tight-knit community. “You see them at times when they don’t want to be seen … There’s so much more to the Whiffenpoofs than just the music.”

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When they’re not singing, most Whiffs are working nearly full-time in New Haven. As Begley recalls, “When you tell your parents, ‘I’m going to take a year off,’ their reaction is, ‘That’s fine, but you’re paying for it.’” So the Whiffenpoofs must find jobs. John Yi ’13, for example, is a recruitment coordinator for the admissions office, which is a nine-to-five job. Yi says that the one downside to him about the Whiffenpoofs is how busy you are: “I literally spend tops six hours a day in my apartment — to sleep.”

Other Whiffenpoofs tutor, do research for their senior

essays, give tours, audit classes, write or arrange music, and work for companies in their areas of interest. And, of course, many of the singers also have to plan a tour, and the group tries to practice six hours per week. Last year, Wexler taught music part-time at Amistad High School. This year, he passed that job on to Blume. Wexler said that he hopes a Whiffenpoof continues this tradition every year.

One New Haven tradition that the Whiffenpoofs have kept alive since 1909 is the weekly concert at Mory’s. The concert takes place in the dim light of the landmark bar, where oars from past Yale crew teams hang from the ceiling and tables display the carved initials of more than a century of Yalies.

On the evening of

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November 11, at first, the

Whiffs could be heard warming up in the distance. As they trooped downstairs, their sound swelling, they sang “Aj Lucka Lucka Široká,” the traditional first song of every Whiffs concert. Instead of their iconic tuxedos and gloves, they wore suits and ties. As they walked through the sea of tables — Mory’s is always packed when the Whiffs perform — all conversation ceased, and everyone turned to look. When the Whiffenpoofs sang their last line, the

applause was thunderous. “We are the Yale Whiffenpoofs,”

one announced, and they immediately began their second song, “Rainbow Connections.” All Mory’s patrons sat enraptured by the music. While some of the older diners’ mouths hung open in amazement, waiters walked by as if the concert were nothing. To them, it

must be: the

Whiffs are there every week, as the maître d’ proudly whispered to a large woman in a red dress who entered late.

After they finished their second song, the Whiffenpoofs abruptly sat down. The weekly concert at Mory’s is not an uninterrupted string of songs — the Whiffs sing a few songs, then sit down to eat, then sing a few more songs, then eat some more, for hours. Traditionally, according to Caldwell, the Whiffenpoofs sang for liquor, but these days they sing for food.

Every now and then, for the rest of the night, the Whiffenpoofs rose and

sang another song or two, walking around Mory’s so that all could hear. At one point, they ventured over to a table and serenaded a blushing woman with “Happy Birthday.”

The post-Whiff year — the renewed pressures of student life, the need to figure out a

post-Yale path, the fame suddenly lost — is so difficult to describe that only metaphor can suffice.

“I joke that the post-Whiff year experience is best encapsulated by the end of ‘The Return of the King,’” says Caldwell. “The hobbits are back in Hobbiton, sipping ale in the pub, glancing at each other knowingly. They don’t really need to talk, because they’ve been through hell

together. It’s a similar feeling for me, running into a Whiff.”

And that does happen, of course. “We try to get together on a pretty regular basis,” Wexler says about his fellow Whiffenpoofs.

After a year of singing and traveling, Begley says, getting back to normal life is a challenge — “trying to achieve that same sense of significance through your own work, rather than by riding the coattails of the group you’re a part of.”

Being a Whiffenpoof “is the kind of experience I know I’m never going to have again,” agrees Watsky. “A year of this recognition, this prestige, the opportunity to go to places you could

never have any other way … It feels really lucky.”

At every single concert, the Whiffenpoofs sing the famous “Whiffenpoof song.” If you listen carefully, you will hear them say: “We will serenade our Louie while life and voice will last. Then we’ll pass and be forgotten with the rest.”

“I joke that the post-Whiff year experience is best encapsulated by the end of ‘The Return of the King.’ The hobbits are back in Hobbiton, sipping ale in the pub, glancing at each other knowingly. They don’t really need to talk, because they’ve been through hell together. It’s a similar feeling for me, running into a Whiff.”

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Even after their Whiff year, the members stay involved in music. They may return to their past a cappella groups, perform in plays, or sing with the Glee Club. Caldwell recently played the title role in a Dramat production of “Sweeney Todd,” for which Begley served as music director.

Every now and then, former Whiffs get a taste of their year as stars. When the Whiffenpoofs recently appeared on “The Daily Show,” only last year’s members performed. Whenever current Whiffenpoofs are out of town, past Whiffenpoofs do the concert at Mory’s. “Everyone wins,” says Wexler. “We get a free meal; the restaurant gets better business.”

“I hope that by the time this year ends, I’ll feel ready for it to end,” says Watsky. “I think being a student again will take some getting used to.”

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Earlier this year, during what was only their second week as a group, the Whiffenpoofs ventured down to Mexico for a short tour, singing at the embassy and other destinations.

On the last night, they were to give a concert at a very upscale party for a magazine. “It was so, so lavish,” recalls Watsky. Their hosts wanted them to perform the Whiffenpoofs’ “Sing-Off” rendition of “Grace Kelly.” When the ensemble rehearsed the song for them, the Mexican hosts were shocked. “Where’s Brennan?” they asked. The Whiffenpoofs explained that he was no longer a member of the group, which the hosts found unacceptable.

So the hosts paid to fly Caldwell down to Mexico City for one day. For one show. For one song.

“He’ll never be able to get away from that for the rest of his life,” says Feigenbaum, of Caldwell’s solo on “The Sing-Off.” “The whole thing was ridiculous.”

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Begley compares his experience with the Whiffenpoofs to the AC/DC song, “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock ‘n’ Roll).” In the first half of the song, a musical group gains fame, living the hard and fast rock ‘n’ roll life. In the second half, after living on the road, the group gets old and tired.

For one year, college seniors are Whiffenpoofs and celebrities. As Watsky says of the extravagant Mexico show, “It felt like being famous.” And then you’re not famous anymore. But, as AC/DC sng, “that’s how it goes, playin’ in a band.”

By band, AC/DC surely meant an a cappella group.

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On a Saturday afternoon in September, in the waning brilliance of the summer sun, you might have seen my mother’s convertible — a cobalt blue,

mid-90s BMW — gliding past on one of the picturesque roads of Long Island’s Gold Coast. “There goes summer,” you might have said, “cruising along without a care in the world.” But you’d be wrong. Driving my mother’s 1994 Le Mans Blue 325i may waft wind through your hair and the bucolic buzz of bees to your ears, but it is hardly carefree.

It typically takes at least two or three attempts to start the engine, largely because turning the key requires a secret combination of jiggling, hitting, and yelling at the steering wheel. If you get that far, a dull, urine-hued light on the dash suggests that you “CHECK ENGINE,” regardless of whether the engine has been checked or not. The LED display on the console will politely inform you that the taillight is out, but you shouldn’t worry, because it’s lying. (Probably.) Once you actually start driving, you

can relax and take advantage of the car’s state-of-the-art, touch-screen audio system, specially designed to play classical music, static, and Spanish language Top 40 hits on a suicidal loop no matter how many times you jam your index finger against the display. The interior panel in the back seat is held in place by pure luck, so the next time you make a sharp turn or slam the passenger door (which comes apart unless opened from the inside), the panel will most likely pop out again, revealing a spaghetti tangle of yellow and white wires and the concentric black ripples of a speaker head.

Life used to be better for the Beemer. Its original owner, my maternal grandfather Harold, purchased it off the lot in San Diego on an impulse in 1993, back when the car was a metallic burgundy — or, as BMW calls it, Calypso Red. Harold, recently retired at 66, mostly went for spins around the neighborhood or to the supermarket to stock up on his favorite sugar-free coffee candies. Grandma Bea

Personal Essay

madeleine witt / staff illustrator


Routine Maintenance

D by Austin bernhArdt D

refused even to ride in the car since the suspension was too low. As a result, when it was driven to our house on Long Island in the back of a flatbed truck in 2002 following Harold’s death a few months earlier, its odometer sported a modest 63,000 miles, most of which had been driven on the smooth, flat asphalt of my grandparents’ sunny suburb. The transition couldn’t have been easy. San Diego receives nine inches of rain annually; Long Island gets about 45. In a storm, the convertible slaps its windshield wipers back

and forth in such a manic frenzy that they either collide or contort so as to become completely useless. At the first sign of snow, the brakes begin to groan and any hope for traction goes out the window. That is, if you can manage to open the window — the driver’s side can be temperamental.

We’ve had all of this fixed on multiple occasions. About four years ago, my father even commissioned a holistic makeover as a present for my mother — thus the Le Mans Blue. And yet, after each visit to the service station, new problems inevitably arise (the trunk only opens, nonsensically, when the convertible top is positioned at the right angle), and old ones inevitably get worse (the gearshift must now be navigated by feel rather than by sight). At this point, we barely take it out of the garage. Nonetheless, we’ve kept it alive, which is strange given the amount of time, money, and energy necessary to do so, but not as strange if you consider that, until a few weeks ago, we also kept a piano in our living room for nine years even though no one in my family can play “Chopsticks.”

There isn’t a lot left of the family my mother was born into. Harold passed away almost a decade ago, and Bea recently followed, succumbing to complications from pneumonia after suffering the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s for several years. My mother spent a long time estranged from her brother for reasons that are too deeply rooted in the siblings’ lifelong history for me to fully understand, and the two have only recently begun to reconcile. But their childhood home is now inhabited by someone else. Even my grandparents’ old house in San Diego is gone, consumed by a Californian forest fire. My mother didn’t have a functional relationship with her family growing up — she was often neglected by her mother, and her father spent most of his time traveling — but now that both of her parents are gone, she and my uncle are left with the task of reckoning with those remnants.

I think we continue to maintain that clunky relic of an automobile because the rest of us are acutely aware that we don’t really know how else to help. My father’s mother has become less lucid over the past few years, and his father is still recovering from a bout with tongue cancer, but neither of them are close to the condition Bea was in the last time I saw her. And my siblings and I are too young even to begin to understand what it’s like to have a past life with a different family, let alone what it’s like to lose one.

So when the sun is shining and we’re not in a rush and we don’t mind the possibility of needing to be rescued from wherever we’re going should the Beemer crap out on us, we put the top down (praying that it doesn’t get stuck midway) and go for a drive. When the aliens come to Earth and ask me to explain this human concept of “love,” I think the absolute best I could do would be to point at that heap of junk and tell them to take care of it until it stops running.

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personal essay

Driving my mother’s 1994 Le Mans Blue 325i may waft wind through your hair and the bucolic buzz of bees to your ears,

but it is hardly carefree.

page 17 is BLACK AND WHITE!!!!!

madeleine witt / staff illustrator


REvolution in nEw HavEnD by edmund downie D

O f all the things that make a trip to New Haven’s Apple store so unique, the most arresting feature has to be the white, white light that pours out

each evening from the store’s floor-to-ceiling glass faÇade, as though challenging the blackness of night in a hand-to-hand combat to the death. It wins the sidewalk and pushes out to the middle of Broadway, setting up a perimeter that puts the more demure lighting of J.Crew and Gourmet Heaven to shame.

Every evening on my walk back to Stiles, I pass through the Apple store’s light-demaracted zone of control, and, every evening, I want to go inside. Apple’s lighting illuminates a smooth aesthetic package: gray walls with seamless joints, tables laid out in neat rows, employees whose bright Mac shirts make them stand out like Pacman figures. Inside, I don’t need to wait in lines. When I need help, I get to talk to a real person — not some slimy sales stooge, but a regular old guy in

khakis and white New Balances, or an approachably scruffy kid with a knit beanie, or a pleasant-looking girl who looks like she could be my classmate. All of them know their stuff, or can at least direct you to someone who does. It’s as if Apple pulled their staff in from the street. handed them an iPhone and a bright t-shirt, and, poof, they’re instantly transformed from normal people to technological Geniuses. Goodbye, old corporate world. Hello, employees of the future.

DOn a Sunday afternoon in mid-November, I head

down to the Green to see one of Occupy New Haven’s general assembly meetings. Nothing’s really happening when I arrive. Occupiers chat among the fifty-odd tents scattered haphazardly across the Green. The assembly was supposed to start at 2:00, but it’s nearing 2:10.

Finally, one of the Occupiers speaks up. “Mic check!”

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Karen Tian / sTaff illusTraTor

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It’s a phrase common to all Occupy movements that calls on everyone in the vicinity to repeat whatever the speaker is saying so that more members can hear. The Occupier explains that, due to a procedural error, there won’t be a General Assembly today. He suggests an informal discussion instead.

The discussion deals mostly with areas in which various speakers accuse the movement of falling short: camp safety, the movement’s Internet presence, personal pet peeves. The earnest camaraderie of the discussion astounds me. The circle includes a staid grandmother-type, a kid in a flat-brim Yankees cap, a kid in a purple velvet suit, a Goth, a bald homeless woman. When one speaks, the rest listen.

DApple and Occupy New Haven come to the city in one

of its most troubling times. As of the end of November, New Haven had seen 31 murders, one fewer than the city record posted in 1994. The latest figures from October put unemployment at 12.4 percent, well above the statewide average of 8.7 percent. This July, concerns over New Haven’s long-term solvency prompted credit rating agency Moody’s to downgrade the city government’s ratings outlook from “stable” to “negative,” citing concerns over its high debt burden and shrinking financial reserves.

In the midst of this gloom, both Apple and Occupy New Haven seem to act as powerful symbols of hope. The arrival of the Apple store has benefited other retailers on Broadway by increasing foot traffic; A-1 Pizza enjoyed a 15-20 percent increase in sales in the first three weeks after Apple’s arrival. Broadly speaking, no brand can match Apple’s sheer cool — it’s topped Fortune’s list of “Most Admired Companies” for four years running. Occupy New Haven, for its part, speaks out against many of the issues that most threaten New Haven: income inequality, police brutality, unemployment. One could say that, in certain ways, they complement each other. Apple brings in commerce; ONH reminds us that

all should benefit from this commerce. To an extent, there’s no reason to think Apple and

Occupy can’t work together for the betterment of New Haven. Chatting with customers outside the Apple store the Friday before Thanksgiving, I sensed little animosity towards Occupy and its efforts. “I hope it continues to grow,” said Ryan Davis, a fourth-year graduate student at the Yale School of Drama who was looking for a new

cover for his phone. Meanwhile, ONH’s November 16th general assembly saw a number of attendees typing away on their Macs. One of them, Southern Connecticut State University student Todd Saunders, was arrested the next day for civil disobedience in New York at Occupy Wall Street.

Yet we fool ourselves if we consider Apple and Occupy without considering the larger context that prompted their arrival in New Haven this fall. The two represent very different visions of how this city should look.

To understand Apple’s place in New Haven’s development, we need to start with the 1950s, when postwar white flight gutted many of the neighborhoods to the north of Yale. The Broadway district continued to house mostly downscale tenants until the 1990s, when the university’s real estate arm — with encouragement from City Hall — bought up 16 properties downtown, including a number of locations on Broadway. Yale has spent much of the last decade carefully cobbling together a more upscale look for Broadway, mixing chains like J. Crew and Barnes & Noble with a handful of local mainstays like Cutler’s Records and Yorkside Pizza; urban scholar Gordon Lafer calls it “gentrification by central planning.” Apple, whose retail sales per square foot are almost twice those of any other chain in America, represents the pinnacle of this effort.

Bringing tenants like Apple to Broadway isn’t an end in itself. Apple’s presence “will draw in more people and also sends a signal to other investors that New Haven is a good place to be,” said Michael Morand, Yale’s director of metro, state, and alumni communications, in an email to the News in October. Reshaping Broadway and the rest of New Haven’s downtown retail district will bring some jobs, but not nearly enough to drive economic growth. But by making the downtown more livable, these efforts can attract major employers who will spur growth.

Unfortunately, the firms attracted by this gentrification won’t necessarily help New Haven tackle its most pressing problems. Take Science Park, a mixed-use complex on the edge of the Dixwell and Newhallville

neighborhoods northeast of Yale. The property was once home to a series of factories owned by Winchester Rifle Company that employed 15,000 New Haveners, but after Winchester’s departure in the 1960s, the space fell into disrepair. Over the last few decades, City Hall and Yale have partnered with a number of private developers to redevelop the area into a mixed-use complex offering upscale office and residential space. Today, Science

In the midst of this gloom, both Apple and Occupy New Haven seem to act as powerful symbols of hope.


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Park’s businesses include biotech firms as well as financial services company Higher One, a New Haven startup whose remarkable growth over the past few years has made it a poster child for City Hall’s vision of economic development.

It’s not clear what Science Park is doing for the current residents of Dixwell and Newhallville. Just 12.6 percent of adults 25 and older in Newhallville and 8.6 percent in Dixwell have bachelor’s degrees or higher, a basic qualification for the vast majority of jobs on offer. Even for the few working-class jobs available, Science Park companies have been hesitant to partner with the community. The most recent Science Park project involves a $40 million renovation of an old factory that, when finished, is slated to include the headquarters

of Higher One. So far, however, its most successful attempt at community hiring has been the provision of 15 jobs for asbestos removal. The influx of higher-end residential properties will also raise surrounding rents, squeezing the poor black residents who comprise most of the neighborhoods’ populations.

DOccupy New Haven alone is not going to fix

these problems. Its limitations stem in part from its consensus-based model of decision-making, an approach rooted firmly in the movement’s allegiance to direct democracy. Since the excitement accompanying its launch in October, the movement has struggled for consistent participation in decision-making. At several consecutive general assemblies in November, the movement failed to meet its voting quorum and, as a result, was unable to pass proposals on key issues like management of its finances.

Even under a different system of decision-making, however, it’s not clear how much Occupy would engage with New Haven proper. “A lot of the [issues Occupy looks at] have been more national,” says Ronnie Neuhauser, an occupier from East Haven who helps facilitate the movement’s Direct Action activities, like protests and marches. This national focus reflects the demographics of the movement. Though New Haven’s population is more than 60 percent black

and Latino, the Occupiers are overwhelmingly white. Many live in the city now but come originally from other parts of Connecticut and even the country. Occupy New Haven emerges not so much from New Haven’s struggles as from the struggles of communities nationwide, or, at least, regionwide.

But many of those national and regional issues — especially income inequality and unemployment — coincide with New Haven’s own challenges. As a result, Occupy has gained support from a wide range of labor leaders and community organizations, including Yale’s unions, a political heavyweight whose supporters will form a majority on the Board of Alderman for the next two years. “I think you’re only going to see increasing collaboration between us,” says Local 34 president Laurie Kennington ’01. (Local 34 represents more than 3,400 clerical and technical employees at Yale.) Over the past few weeks, Occupy has joined community groups New Haven Against Police Brutality and the New Elm City Dream in marches confronting police brutality and youth jobs.

DA famous Apple ad from 1984 shows a brainwashed

crowd seated before a screen displaying a giant head, who intones on the wonders of the “garden of pure ideology” he has created for his people. A woman sprints into the middle of the room and hurls a sledgehammer at the screen. The screen explodes, the face disappears, and we hear a new voice. “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce MacIntosh,” it says. “And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”

The ad portrays buying a MacIntosh as an act of rebellion. Today, too, Apple presents itself as a better kind of corporation, with none of the stuffiness that repels so many from American corporate culture. That’s ludicrous. Apple’s supply chain gets low marks for environmental stewardship and labor conditions, while Apple is using fewer and fewer universally standardized components in its new products in order to retain a monopoly over production.

An ad does not a revolution create. Nor does an Apple store, or Science Park, or, for that matter, a group of protesters on the Green. Real change in New Haven demands a development vision that includes every citizen of this city. Apple, the capstone of Yale and City Hall’s joint efforts to gentrify Broadway, can’t provide this. Occupy won’t provide it, at least not while its link to New Haven remains fragile — but it’s a start.

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An ad does not a revolution create. Nor does an Apple store, or Science Park, or a group of protesters on the Green.


cURL cRAZYD bY ESTHER ZUcKERMAN D

There once was a girl with one little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead

And when she was good she was very good

And when she was bad she was horrid.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (as told by my mother)

selen uman / staff photographer

‘What product do you use?” Dickie Ferriuolo asked just moments

after I entered his salon last October. He turned away from the woman whose hair he was cutting and pointed his shears and gut in my direction.

What product did I use? I barely remembered. Walgreens had run out of what I usually purchased — Curls Up, a clear, sticky serum that, contrary to its name, kept my hair weighted down — and I bought the first bottle I saw with the word “curl” on its label. It was a slimy cream that made my hair hard and left white flakes in my crunchy ringlets. I knew whatever answer I told Dickie was going to be the wrong one. I was abusing my curls.

“I don’t even know the name,” I fibbed.

Dickie blew off my response and touched my hair. He looked at me over his nose. “Of course, we’re going to cut your hair.”

‘You’ve got to find something else to fixate on,” my friend told me as we primped

in the mirror of a movie theater bathroom. Like me, she has a head

of brown curls, though less defined and frizzier. I had met Dickie a few days earlier and was smoothing my hair before the latest Clint Eastwood movie started. “That’s why I started flossing,” she suggested.

Most of my life has been spent figuring out how to deal with my

curls. I barely had hair until the age of three. Then, once it started growing, it became long and stringy, like angel hair pasta that had been overcooked and fried. When I was eight years old I had my hair cropped to match my mother’s thick pixie cut. With each snip, the hairdresser at the chic Beverly Hills salon grew increasingly worried. At the last moment he decided my hair needed extra oomph. When I looked in the mirror there was an undefined pouf, a hair tumor, growing out of the front of my head. That, I thought, was the end of short hair for me.

I let it grow over the next few years. In freshman year of high school it stretched to the middle of my back when wet. Knots gathered just underneath my skull, and each night — in a Louisa May Alcott-esque ritual — my mother brushed my hair and braided it before I went to sleep. The following morning I tied it up in a frizzy bun. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I got the courage to shear it again (not as short as before). Every morning after I showered, I twirled each curl around my index finger with a hefty dose of leave-in conditioner to maintain a Shirley Temple-bounce. By college I thought I had it figured

out. I learned that scrunching with at least four handfuls of product after I shampooed and conditioned every morning worked to hold my springy curls in place. It wasn’t perfect, but it sufficed.

I have never straightened my hair, partly out of a fear that I’d

end up looking like Roseanne Roseannadanna, and partly because I have always taken — or at least pretended to take — a firm “I love my curls” stance. I dealt with my curls the way after-school specials and episodes of Degrassi told me to deal with defects: love them and embrace them for what they are. Still, I was never entirely happy with my hair. Throughout the course of a day the beast above my eyes became dry and unruly. Friends teased that the more stressed I was, the more fro-like my hair became. Of course, whenever asked about my curls, I would respond gushingly (oh my gosh, I love them, I’m so lucky), but I always felt my tresses were what stopped me from being pretty. What boy would want to run his fingers through my rough mop when there was some chick with silky smooth locks just ready to be petted?

‘You got a boyfriend at Yale?” Dickie asked me. I shook my head. “Well, after I cut

your hair you’re going to thank me.” Dickie tells his clients that he’s not

a “chi chi hairdresser,” and despite his pricey products and $50 women’s haircuts, no one would mistake him for one. He got into the business by chance. After he was picked up by a New Haven police officer for taking bets on football games, his lawyer advised him to tell the judge he was going to barber college so he wouldn’t have to face charges. He opened his first shop, Gentlemen’s Workshop, in New Haven in 1964. In the Elm City’s radical years, Dickie’s place was the only one in town that would deign to serve men with long hair. Soon the word “Gentlemen’s” became irrelevant, and he began serving women as well. Dickie moved his business to its current location in 1984.

The Workshop is in a tiny converted apartment over one of New Haven’s many Thai restaurants.

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When I looked in the mirror there was an undefined pouf, a hair tumor, growing out of the front of my head. That, I thought, was the end of short hair for me.

The shop is filled with tchotckes: an old-fashioned cash register, a Camel cigarettes clock, a harlequin mask from when Dickie was the kind of guy who ran around New York City with the Studio 54 crowd. When you climb into the hydraulic styling chair, all proprietary boundaries disappear. Dickie will put his hand on your back or knock you gently on the chin. If he knows you well, he’s not afraid to give you a peck on the cheek, and he always feels free to touch your hair.

The survivor of three divorces, Dickie is happy to talk about your love life — as long as you’re not married. “You’re never going to get advice about marriage from me,” he told a client with a sparkling stone on her left hand. “I’ll even talk about your vagina. I’ll talk about anything else but.” He breezily drops names from his forays into high fashion. “My favorite is probably Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell,” I heard him once confide. “I don’t know her that well, but she’s gorgeous.” And he expresses his fondness for his clients through cheerful insults. When one of them complained about the sharp pick with which he had lifted her

heavy curls off her scalp, he said jokingly, “Will you stop bitching, please?”

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Little curly hair in a high chairWhat’s your order for today?

Little curly hair in a high chairI’ll do anything you say.

— Fats Waller

On my third visit to Dickie’s salon he cut my hair.

Before we began, I asked Dickie to keep my bangs and the length of my hair intact. After he fastened a smock around my neck, he pinned the front section of my hair on top of my head. He then began his massacre.

Dickie’s body plodded around me. His fingers moved seemingly without purpose, snipping hair, which fell like rain onto my lap. He likened his cutting style to “Eddie Scissorhands.”

I looked at Dickie’s own hair next to mine in the mirror. Coarse gray filaments poured out of the sides of his head. Despite the straightness of his hair, there was something curly about Dickie, and it wasn’t his

rotund stomach or the looping letters of his faded tattoo. He was unruly, unconventional. He was too touchy-feely, too erratic, too much of a free spirit, too prone to do whatever he liked and be damned with it. Like my hair, which he clipped with abandon, Dickie was a bit frightening.

As he cut, Dickie told me about Tony Curtis and Eli Wallach and the time he worked for Mike Nichols and Joseph Papp. My stomach clenched as I watched the red and blonde highlights from a summer trip to a salon in Los Angeles fall to the floor and the curls close in around my neck. Dickie shuffled from side to side and unpinned sections of my hair, continuing to cut. I politely answered his questions about my family and my studies even though I really wanted to grab the shears out of his hands and scream, “No! Stop it!” When nearly all my hair lay about me on the floor, he asked me to reach up and style it the way I wanted. It was too puffy on the top, so I patted it down and he cut some more, switching shears as he went.

As he washed my hair, his face — gnarled like one of Maurice Sendak’s

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Brianne Bowen / PHoToGraPHy ediTor

Wild Things — hung over me, and he punched his stubby fingers into my scalp. He sat me, dripping, under a dryer and handed me a stack of his salon’s user reviews. The first one I read was from “kellycal02,” who was

disappointed that Dickie didn’t listen to her and had “chopped” her hair. I empathized.

Once dry, I obediently bought the products that Dickie told me would be best for my new cut and hurried down the Workshop’s short, carpeted staircase. I was on the verge of tears. My hair was gone. The curls were tight and bouncy, but I had visions of my eight-year-old self leaving the salon in Beverly Hills: hair short, pouf protruding, looking like a cross between a French poodle and Prince.

D

Her unadorned golden tresses woreDisheveld, but in wanton ringlets

wav’dAs the Vine curles her tendrils, which

impli’dSubjection, but requir’d with gentle

sway,And by her yielded, by him best

receivd,Yielded with coy submission, modest

pride,And sweet reluctant amorous delay.

—Paradise Lost, Book IV, Lines 305-311

Milton’s Eve had curly hair. And she was responsible for the fall of mankind.

In other words, we don’t have a

good precedent. But I’m not being totally fair. Curly hair has gone in and out of style since Eve bit that apple. Don’t you recall the Roman busts with their masses of marble corkscrews or Marie Antoinette’s

silver wigs? In the movie “Clueless,” the Austen-inspired heroine Cher gives her less fashionably inclined friend Tai a makeover, transforming Tai’s frizz to ringlets. “She looks like one of those Botticelli chicks,” Cher says. Yes, Botticelli’s women, including his Venus emerging from a clamshell, had long red waves. But in the 20th and 21st centuries, most girls with curls are the best friends, the comedians, or the children. Curls come with oversized noses (take certain Streisand performances or Jennifer Grey in “Dirty Dancing”) and high voices (Shirley Temple and Little Orphan Annie). Sure, there are the occasional glamorous exceptions, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s: Cher in “Moonstruck,” Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally…”, Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman”, Sarah Jessica Parker in “Sex and the City” (but in order to remember Carrie Bradshaw we must also remember Patty Greene). No one ever considered Lucille Ball a sex symbol, though.

On my first visit to Dickie’s salon, he handed me the first edition of a book called “Curly Girl,” which outlines some of this curly-haired history. The book features testimonials about curly hair and “potions,” a.k.a. home remedies, for those who feel comfortable

putting fruit and potatoes on their scalps. A corporate human resources administrator writes: “I hope that I can find another man who understands that dealing with my curls is a major part of my existence.” Joy Behar, the talk show host and comedian, discusses the process of straightening her hair in high school. Like an article in Seventeen, the book asks: “Which curl are you?” I’m corkscrew.

Lorraine Massey, the woman behind DevaCurl, a curly hair product line, method, and lifestyle, co-wrote Curly Girl. When I talked to her on the phone not too long after I had my hair cut by Dickie, she spoke about curly hair as if it were an endangered species or a repressed population. Massey, who has a British accent I can’t quite place, called herself an “evangelicurl.” She said it would be “politically incorrect” for her to straighten hair and that the “biggest question of every single person on this planet” has to do with frizz. “Hairdressing today is, take every single head of hair and reduce it to a straight line,” she said. “It’s all we know. It’s a mass interpretation of a belief system that we have just succumbed to. Everybody wants to be free.” I learned from watching Dickie that when it comes to curly hair, there are a lot of rules I have to follow in order to be free: I shouldn’t shampoo it, shouldn’t dry it with anything other than a microfiber towel or cotton t-shirt or pillowcase, should have it cut dry, and, of course, should use Deva products.

When I came to Dickie’s, I admit I wasn’t unfamiliar with Deva. I had been to two Deva salons, but the methods didn’t click. It all seemed like too much work, and the idea of not shampooing my hair was distressing. Dickie first heard about Deva in the early aughts. He signed up for a class to learn the method, even though he hadn’t been given any sort of lesson in nearly 40 years. Lorraine refers to

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Milton’s Eve had curly hair. And she was responsible for the fall of mankind. In other words, we don’t have a good precedent.

Dickie as one of Deva’s “long-term” followers. His certificates from Deva hang in a corner near the sinks. He has two: one for “Dickie” and another for “Gaetano,” his real name. Dickie sells the sulfate-free Deva products in his own salon to clients like me. Instead of shampoo, which dehydrates hair, Deva has “No-Poo,” a “zero lather conditioning cleanser.” Instead of gel, a curly girl is supposed to put “AnGEL” in her soaking wet hair, designed to hold curls in place without the crunch. She should spray her hair with “Mist-er Right,” a lavender mixture, to keep it looking

fresh. I was instructed to use “One Condition,” a daily Deva conditioner, “AnGEL,” and “Mist-er Right.” Dickie tells clients that he worries about sounding like an advertisement. “That’s why you don’t hear me talking about products,” he said. “I’d rather show you.” He’ll show you and then sell you everything on the shelf for a discounted price.

Once I left Dickie’s after my cut, I couldn’t stop looking at myself in the mirror. My

hair was darker, back to its natural color, which I hadn’t seen since my

freshman year of high school. It was fluffier, but wrong. My hair is supposed to be a weight — a constant reminder of my major physical flaw.

Later that day I sat down next to a friend. “You look like … who do you look like … is it Annie?” he said.

Typical. Another friend passed by: “I love your hair. You got it cut, right? It’s gorgeous!” Really? I thought. But I just thanked her. The next morning I decided I would try the Deva regimen. I took my Aveeno shampoo and conditioner out of the shower and replaced it with the stylish green Deva bottles. I applied generous

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amounts of Deva “One Condition” in the shower, washed it out, flipped my head over when finished, shook the water off the way a dog would, pounded on the Deva gel, dried with an old t-shirt, let it sit. I emerged, hair sopping, confidence wavering.

I stole glances at myself whenever I could. This is disastrous, I sometimes thought. As soon as it starts to grow out it’s going to look weird. It’s going to start to feel greasy without

shampoo. Plus, my signature dance move involves shaking my hair around, and that just doesn’t work now. But sometimes I thought: This is it. This is what I was waiting for.

I went back to Dickie’s salon two days later. He looked at my hair and told me, “Right now, I love it!”

“Yeah, I like it a lot too,” I said. “But I was nervous it was too short…” I said. In those early days post-haircut, the curls piled themselves on the top

of my head, making a curly faux-hawk. Dickie told me to scrunch, and once I did they jumped back in place. Still, I realized my haircut wasn’t perfect. It lost its shine late at night, and expanded when I was stressed. If I applied the wrong amount of product, it bent in odd ways, leaving curls askew. But I liked my hair. I liked touching it without the fear of sticky fingers. I liked the way it made my face look — longer and thinner.

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My new hair made my eyes bigger and browner. I continued to follow the Deva steps laid out for me, and my hair obeyed. It had become a beast I could control.

That weekend was Halloween. Growing up, Halloween was a difficult holiday for me because my hair always prevented me from having a convincing costume. Every time I tried to look like someone else, I always ended up looking like a

version of me. I spent many evenings answering the question: “Who are you supposed to be?”

This year I tried to think of a costume that I could adapt to my new hair. Harpo Marx (or, rather, Lucille Ball as Harpo Marx) was an option, but as I started to dress for a party, all I wanted to do was wear a pretty dress and boots. I put on long earrings, which were now visible without my mass of hair, and sprayed

“Mist-er Right,” until the floral scent overpowered my tiny room. I looked in the mirror of the dirty bathroom my suite shares with the four boys across the hall. My hair was shiny and soft. I looked good.

What was I going to say when asked who I was pretending to be for the holiday? “Esther Zuckerman.”

D D D

profile


could mopefor Jamie Hubley

From falling height the great & it is despairinterchangeably muffins noshing buttered and chipped climb toasted warmwaiting for, for instance, a kiss soft hard any really glance at alltry, says worth & untradeable, try, try.

To barter with the ghost of rationality is to milkshakedrinkingly despairsittingly class coffee sleep work click eat, and then to die. In other words height. Ihegemonate small in the powerless world, speaking, municipal elections.You come to the thing because you can.

Justify the presence. Being. Apparent use value. I. Wantto die with ruin around my face, sighingly numen spreadsheet,kissing, for instance, boys; Model, for Fuck instance death.

&T h eo n L y th I n

G t o P l A y w I th i S r? its not th eW a y th eG a m its so hard, Im

E I sun I cor ningly P l a yEd & so we shall with lesser heights f til resourceless all

– Kenneth Reveiz



UNLOCKING

kamaria greenfield / staff photographer

In 2006, Harvard and Princeton made a bold move: they ended a program that had sustained

college admissions for decades.They claimed their early

admissions policies were leaving behind students at large, underfunded public schools, who often don’t apply early because they may not know about the option or are discouraged from applying early by misinformed counselors. For two Ivy League schools that had placed a large emphasis on recruiting diverse student bodies over the last decade, that gap had become a serious concern.

Yale’s admissions office, under sudden pressure, had to ask itself what fair admissions really looked like.

A few weeks later, the University of Virginia announced they too would end their binding early program. Pressure to follow increased at colleges across the country. But after four months of deliberation, in January 2007, Yale’s admissions office said they were keeping their early plan, and

the policy has remained the same ever since.

No other schools followed the three who ended their programs. In 2010, UVA brought back an early plan, this time nonbinding. This February, within two hours of each other, Harvard and Princeton announced they were bringing early admissions back. While Harvard reinstated its old single-choice early action program, Princeton made the switch from a binding to a non-binding early plan.

The statements that followed the return of early admissions were carefully worded. Officials claimed they changed the policy because students were losing a chance to apply early to Harvard when it was their first choice. Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds assured that Harvard’s “commitment to including first-generation, low-income, and historically disadvantaged minority students in the full spectrum of admissions options is a key feature of this new early action option.” But their

statements seemed like an odd contradiction. When Harvard first abandoned its early program, the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, William Fitzsimmons, told the Harvard Crimson that their move was “certainly a win for students in the bottom quarter and bottom half of the income distribution.” Even Harvard’s then-interim President, Derek Bok, said, “We feel that if anybody is going to step up and take the lead to try to get rid of something which is really doing more harm than good, it’s us.”

Private admissions counselors and high school counselors across the country, including a former Harvard admissions officer, overwhelmingly suspect that Harvard and Princeton felt like they were losing qualified applicants to schools that kept their early programs, including Stanford, MIT, and especially Yale.

This year’s volume of early applications to Yale, released in November, show that changes at other schools have a substantial effect: early applications to Yale


EARLYADMISSIONS

bY DANIEL bEthENcOuRt

fell 18 percent, from 5,217 one year ago to 4,310, while Stanford saw a drop of less than 1 percent. (By contrast, Yale’s numbers had stayed virtually the same the year before.) Yale Dean of Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel says of the newest numbers, “There’s usually no point in speculating about what’s causing small changes in application counts, but it seems pretty obvious that Harvard and Princeton restoring their early admissions programs had a significant effect.”

Now, a week before Harvard and Princeton will admit their first class since the switch, the question of unfairness raised in 2006 still lingers. Harvard and Princeton may have sacrificed their hopes of aiding underprivileged applicants in favor of competing with other schools for the most qualified students. It raises the unsettling possibility that Ivy League schools are choosing competition over greater equality.

“[Harvard and Princeton] really wanted to change the world,” Christopher Avery, a Harvard professor and co-author of “The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite” now says. “Obviously, that wasn’t completely sustainable.”

Early programs can become unfair when two very separate processes happen

at once. One is that early action provides a slight but real advantage for any applicant, and the other is

that wealthier students at private high schools tend to use that advantage more often than the rest of the pool.

But these effects are sometimes misconstrued as a single process, especially at schools with few resources. When Arrice Bryant ’15 was a junior at Renaissance High School in Detroit, MI, a magnet school whose profile lists about a third of its students as “economically disadvantaged,” the school’s counselors told Bryant’s friends that early applications were only for wealthy or legacy students. The counselors even advised one friend of Bryant’s to apply to his favorite school in the regular round, because, they said, if he applied early he “would either get deferred or rejected.” Bryant applied early at the urging of her mother and a coach, and she got in despite the counselors’ advice. (The principal of Renaissance High School, and Antia Williams declined to comment.)

Measuring the objective advantage of applying early for an average applicant is close to impossible. But three Harvard economists spoke with thousands of students, counselors, and admissions officers, and crunched the data to produce a startling conclusion in the 2003 book, “The Early Admissions Game”: applying early gives an applicant an objective advantage that is roughly equivalent to scoring 100 points higher on the old SAT (on

the 1600 scale). Yale’s admissions office says it would never admit a student early that could not get in during the regular round. But the authors note that applying early shows some proof of a student’s enthusiasm. Admitting students early also makes more sense for colleges; it allows them to gauge class size more accurately, since even in non-binding programs, many students accept the offer before the regular deadline. Without such estimates, they are forced to make their waitlists larger in May, giving students false hopes. Even though admissions officers would rather not consider those incentives, the book’s data shows that the incentives exert pressure as long as the early program exists.

Harvard claims that its most recent early admissions pool was much more diverse than the early pool four years ago. But Princeton President Shirley Tilghman said in 2006 that early applicant pools in general are less diverse, and Yale President Richard Levin confirmed that Yale’s early round often attracts more affluent students from better resourced and often private high schools. He added in an interview last month that Yale’s early programs themselves were not unfair.

“The Early Admissions Game” also found a gap along race lines. After collecting data from 14 of the most selective colleges around the year 2000, the authors found that just under 12 percent of African American applicants and 13.5 percent of Hispanic applicants applied early action; conversely, 20 percent of all applicants apply early action.

The demonstrated inequalities in early admissions meant that

Yale’s admissions office faced a tough decision after Harvard

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Harvard and Princeton bringing back early admissions raises the unsettling possibility that Ivy League schools are choosing competition over greater equality.

and Princeton dropped their early programs. According to Brenzel, Yale admissions officers read Avery’s book and “studied it carefully.” But Levin said in an interview that Yale’s data on the advantages of early was not as pronounced as the book claimed, and it was too hard to measure variables like a parent’s interest in higher education.

With these issues in mind, Yale’s admissions hoped they could address any disparities in early action with other measures. “Because our program [is] non-binding and our financial aid extraordinarily generous, our early program was attracting more and more of the country’s best minority and low-income applicants,” Brenzel told the News in an email at the time. “It was working very well for us and for those students as well.”

But whether or not it was intentional on the part of Yale admissions, several counselors noted that by keeping their program, Yale attracted students who would have applied early to Harvard or Princeton. In the first year after Harvard and Princeton disbanded their early programs, Yale’s early volume jumped 36 percent. Jon Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School and a Stanford admissions officer from 1985 to 2000, says that when those schools first undid their early programs, Stanford “just licked its lips and said, ‘We’re gonna make out like bandits.’ I don’t think Stanford had even a brief internal debate about this — they kept it and sailed on.” Reached by email, Stanford Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, Richard Shaw, says, “We certainly did not ‘lick our lips’ because, in fact, we were not locking anyone into a commitment until they were

able to consider all their options through the early and regular cycles.”

Suddenly, Yale had months to court its most qualified applicants before Harvard and Princeton could admit them. While all counselors do not agree whether or not this actually happens, Sean Logan, a former Harvard admissions officer, said he noticed it while reading applications for Harvard’s Class of 2015. Logan spoke with four successful applicants who knew they had been admitted elsewhere in December. He claims that their admission to Harvard months later, in April, caught them off-guard, even if Harvard was originally their top choice at the beginning of the process.

One student from Europe, who was one of Logan’s “favorite kids in the pool,” got into Yale early and saw the campus in February on his gap year. But when he got into his original choice, Harvard, he visited in a rushed weekend when a decision was looming in a few weeks. He finally chose Yale, partly citing the timing. Logan feels sure that if Harvard had an early policy, the student would have used it, gotten in, and matriculated there instead. “He told me his first choice was Harvard the summer before, and Yale won him over,” Logan says. (Both Harvard and Princeton’s admissions offices declined to comment for this article.)

Logan, who was not involved

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Applying early gives an applicant an objective advantage that is roughly equivalent to scoring 100 points higher on the old SAT.

Selen uman / Staff photographer

in the discussions for Harvard’s new early plan, emphasizes this scenario was rare, but still could cause shifts in policy. “If it’s 15 kids, it’s 15 kids,” he says. “But [colleges] don’t want to lose out.”

If Harvard and Princeton brought back their early programs to compete with

schools like Yale, it would make perfect sense in the light of history. The programs were supposed to help schools gauge their class sizes in the post-World War II rise in college attendance, but quickly became a way to strategically accept the best students early. This worked in part because students wouldn’t think as much about

other schools when an offer was sitting right in front of them. These strategies began as early as 1954 with the “A-B-C” system, which let Harvard, Yale and Princeton admit students from feeder schools early and on a separate scale from general applicants. It graded those students with an “A,” or near-certain acceptance, “B,” maybe, or “C,” rejection. When Yale and Princeton dropped their programs while Harvard kept its, Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr., in a 1966 Yale Alumni Magazine article, called the system both unfair to students who did not come from those feeder schools and unfair to Yale and Princeton because a student with a nod

from Harvard would be likely to withdraw their other applications. Harvard’s dean of admissions countered with an argument that schools still use today: “If you’re really careful about [accepting] fellows you’re absolutely sure will be admitted in the spring, there’s nothing at all unfair about it.”

The competition only increased in the early 1990s, when students started realizing that early programs actually brought an advantage. Admission rates have since plunged and financial aid has expanded, but the competitive consequences of early policies at Ivy League schools remain the same. The return of Harvard and Princeton’s early programs mark

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A Closer look: 12.9%of students in the class of 2014 have parents who are alumni of Yale College or Graduate/Professional School.

56%of students in the class of 2014 went to a public high school.

3000

4000

5000

6000

’03 ’05 ’07 ’09 ’11

Harvard and Princeton

end early admissions.

Yale experiences

36% increase in early applications.

Harvard and Princeton

reinstate early admissions.

Early applications

decline by 18%. 1028

1011Admitted:

Enrolled:

697

647

Admitted:

Enrolled:

Admissions stAts FreshmAn ClAss 2014

only the latest phase of what has been a 60-year arms race over early admissions. “After doing the research, we’re really in the same world,” Avery says.

Yale’s admissions office swtood firm by the early plan because it claimed the

policy disadvantaged no one, and that any differences between their early and regular pools reflect national issues with education that one Ivy League school cannot fix. Yale removed its binding early decision policy in 2002 to address similar inequalities. Binding early programs, administrators said, were unfair, since a student accepted with a binding policy

cannot compare financial aid offers from other schools. (A student can still decline an early decision offer if a family can’t meet that school’s financial aid package.) Since 2002, Yale’s policy has been “single-choice early action:” it does not require a student to matriculate, but it does prevent a student from applying to other schools early.

“To the extent you can, you want to give students the right to choose,” Brenzel says. “The point of [single-choice early action] is to allow a student to put a chip on the table for the school he or she would most like to attend. If a student is admitted there, great. If not, it helps to focus a student on broadening the search.” Brenzel

adds that Yale’s early program is not designed to give an advantage to any applicant. “We’re going to get our share of the world’s most qualified students,” he says. “If you can afford to offer an early admission without binding the student, you should do it.”

But after Yale switched to a non-binding plan, Levin said he was disappointed that more schools didn’t follow: apart from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, every Ivy League school offers early decision. “I thought it would be the kind of liberalization that would benefit everyone,” he says, “and it didn’t turn out that way.”

Yale decided it was doing the best that it reasonably can in an

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The Class of 2014’s RaCial BReakdown White

Asian

Non-residents

Hispanic

Black

Multi-racial

Native Americans & Other

Class of 2014 geogRaphiCal BReakdown

Sources: Yale Office of Institutional Research and Yale Daily News

< 5 students

5-20 students

20-50 students

50-100 students

+150 students

entrenched admissions world. “Realistically,” Levin says, “we are going to have [early programs] with us. Making it available in a non-binding program is probably the best solution, so I think it’s good that Harvard and Princeton have come to that conclusion.”

The still-larger problem, Levin says, lies in public education. The scope of what one Ivy League school can do seems uncannily small in a national debate about teaching students equally. “The real issue in America is not whether colleges admit people fairly. The issue is that public schools are not performing up to their potential,” Levin says. “We don’t have as many kids from low-income families getting the preparation that they need. That’s a big social problem that requires public resources and a major social commitment.” He adds, “We try to find these kids. We do what we can. The issue is much better addressed through public schools, and not through tinkering with admissions policies at Ivy League schools.”

Now that early policies are the same at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, it

is unclear whether bringing back an early policy at the expense of applicant diversity was worth the boost in competition.

In February, when Harvard and Princeton announced their new programs, college counselors thought Yale would lose a serious advantage. Private counselor Amy Sack told the Harvard Crimson in [March], “I think this will be the most earth-shattering for Yale.” Dean Brenzel and President Levin both say that Yale probably benefited somewhat from the few years when Yale had a larger early pool, but added that the difference had only had a small effect on who ultimately arrived at Yale each fall.

Yet after early applications to Yale dipped 18 percent, that shift is quietly reflected in high schools across the country. Though private high schools declined to share specific numbers of students applying to any one school, Logan, the former Harvard admissions officer who now serves as the director of college counseling at

Phillips Academy Andover, says the number of early applications Andover students sent to Stanford and Yale dipped noticeably. Other schools saw little or no change — college counselors at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn., as well as the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, N.J. and Bronx High School of Science in Bronx, N.Y. all saw little change in who was applying to each school early. If any shift in these applicants exists, it is small.

But at Roxbury Latin School, which is known for sending large numbers of students to Harvard, the transition was extreme. Roxbury Latin has a policy to address the competition of early action: even in non-binding programs, its students are required to accept early admission offers. The policy assures schools like Yale and Stanford that Roxbury Latin applicants do not see their school as a second choice.

But now that Harvard and Princeton have early plans again, the school’s director of college counseling, Tom Walsh, says that the share of the school’s 50 seniors applying early surged from below 50 percent early to about 86 percent. A lot of that jump is “absolutely” due to the new early programs — “We predicted it would have a fairly dramatic effect,” he says.

Former Stanford admissions officer Jon Reider claims that shifts in early programs are just another effect of unnecessary Ivy competition. “There’s enough good kids to go around. But [colleges] don’t act that way. They act as if there are only so many good kids to fill their class. And I think that’s conceited. I don’t think that’s true.” Of his time at Stanford admissions, Reider says, “I was a heretic. Everyone wanted more applications. I just wanted

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34 | Vol. XXXIX, No. 3 | November 2011

Selen uman / Staff photographer

the right kids to apply. What I did not realize was that I was a businessman.”

Richard Shaw, Stanford Dean of Admissions, said in an email that Stanford wants to provide the right information to students, but is not trying to simply increase the number of applications. As to whether Yale is too competitive about its applicants, Levin says, “We’ve tried to make decisions about our policy in ways that take into account the welfare of the students, but we’re going to get exceptional students no matter what.”

M isinformation about the early application process is still a national

problem. David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, witnessed this disparity firsthand when he spoke with high school counselors of low-income students in New York. He was surprised at how many didn’t know that a student could easily withdraw from an early decision program if the student couldn’t meet the cost of tuition — in fact, many of them thought that disadvantaged students simply shouldn’t apply early. “It’s incumbent upon colleges to determine how publicized those [early and financial aid] policies are,” Hawkins says. “But to hear counselors tell it, it sounds like it isn’t happening in a way that’s as broad based as we hope.”

For counselors at public high schools who are often responsible for hundreds of students, the details of early plans can get lost. Connie Loggins, a counselor at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, oversees 700 of the school’s approximately 5,000 students. She and doesn’t see any clear way for overworked counselors to correct

widespread misinformation. “I think [colleges] are doing the best they can to get the information to us,” she says. “[But] you don’t always have time to dig for it.” Loggins notes that counselors can’t

do it all themselves — “Until the student realizes that information is relevant to them, they’re not going to hear it … The onus is on the student to follow through.”

Shannon Wilson, a coordinator for advanced classes at West High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, is also unsure of how much help she can be to her students. West High School has just over 2500 students. Some 200 students drop out or transfer between freshman and senior year, and about 60 percent of the students qualify for free lunch. Despite these hardships, one or two students every year in the last three years have gone to Stanford, Princeton, and Yale, and about three each year are given help through Questbridge, a nonprofit that helps prepare disadvantaged students and link them to colleges.

Wilson hopes she is doing what she can to speak with disadvantaged students who need help with college applications, but she isn’t allowed to know which students get federal aid out of privacy concerns. So she meets with kids as frequently as she can and hopes that if any of them really need help, they will let her know. “I need to pay more attention,”

she says. “It’s paying attention and noticing who those kids are.”

Wilson adds that the problem of misinformation cannot be solved through colleges’ outreach efforts. A visit from an admissions officer

from a faraway state that students have never been to can be far more uncomfortable than useful. Even though the officers are trying to help, Wilson points out that her interested students will likely be afraid to ask about financial aid details, because their questions might reveal how little they know about the admissions process. “[College information] is more important coming from people they know than universities that swoop in and try to tell people to make a decision, and say, ‘This is the best thing for you,’” Wilson says.

But Wilson still deals with misinformation on a local scale. Every year she sees many students who are confused about the early process; about ten show her the early acceptance rates for their favorite schools and wish they had known to apply then.

She knows that applying early most likely would have delivered the same outcome. But, she says, “They feel as if the world might have looked different if they had acted sooner.”

D D D

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We don’t have as many kids from low-income families getting the preparation they need ... We try to find these kids. We do what we can.”

photo essay


a day in the life of a freshman by Sarah Eckinger

photo essay


Sunday Market

By Sanjena SathianIllustrations by Aube Rey Lescure


Sunday morning. He comes early, by four o’ clock, to sweep the brick-lined plaza. He’s been doing it for years — a fixture as much as the dark stone colonial church in the far

corner, with the spires so tall they pierce the sog-gy morning sky for miles across the yellow valley. When he bobs his way into the center of town, he sidles up to the back of the gloom-stained church and plunges his arm behind the loose brick just above his eye level where he balances his favored yellow broom, just high enough so the dogs don’t get to it and gnaw it all to pieces.

He holds it close as he sweeps clean every brick in the central plaza.

The stones have years, he can count them like the rings of an ancient tree trunk, and he can feel the bris-tles pushing back against the thickly formed adobe bricks on every sweep, he feels the years in every whisking wrist flick, his knobbly hands and brown stained fingernails curled stiffly around the yellow broom he always uses. Wrist flick, the broom jumps a moment across a bump in the brick — his hands ache from years of lining up his spoon next to his saucer every afternoon at tea — another flick, his tendonitis burning a little — and from years of snapping his hand too fast to tie the final knot in the laces of the shoes he bought ten Christmases ago from the market stall two spaces over from his own little pork stand.

Like a metronome, dipping his wrists back and forth, his ashy elbows knocking into his waist, he feels the rings etched into the earthy bricks and — the rings of his own thick torso.

DThe market builds in odors, trades in taste. The

meat and fish, their heavy scents relegated to the far corner, closest to the northern mountains — far away so they won’t bump into the smell of cloistering, drip-ping mangoes. Across the way, the dirt earth smell of the potato hawker, her wares spread out on a bright pink and green shawl draped across the bumpy bricks, a private scent for only him when he stops there on his way out from the market — holds calloused after calloused potato — smells like the punch of cold air, winter left just behind.

And always, in the corner near the teal painted city hall where all the fruit stalls line up, the woman with the mango cart and always too many mangoes. In the mornings she unloads the back of the dark green truck, full of cardboard boxes with barely ripe man-goes, her papery fingers rubbing coarse against the boxes, and she whispers to them a moment or two as she removes each meaty green and orange fruit

from the pile, places it with care onto the fruit stand. He’d bought them once — at many points really, en-tire boxes at one go, passing over the thick scent of green plantains — and not again since, not since a long while.

A little girl with a floppy blue sun hat sees the man-go cart, spies the lone round fruit that’s rolled to the ground, out of the sight of the woman who owns the cart, and he watches her lean to pick it up, her floppy hat winking at him — the last time he tasted a mango, he had sucked all the meat off, licked it clean, waved the peel at his wife like a war medal in the middle of their chess game and she laughed and threw him a cloth napkin before calling, checkmate, her mouth cor-ners all tucked up into her dimples as he looked down bewildered, not remembering she’d taken his queen while he sat suckling the mango, and he remembers how she said I love you, stupid pig, her voice turning from husky to a crackling prepubescent boy’s.

D=

fiction


He slips out of the plaza by noon as it starts to fill up and smiles out at the buzzing crowd as they haggle over fresh trout from the lake, over a bargain price for a chocolate brown bowler hat. The sloshing, bump-ing colors, the mob of mingled scents — tinge of beer, smelled through sweat of hulking farming men, like the beer he keeps tucked into his pocket in the mornings that he sweeps, like the charred smell of tobacco stuffed into his other pocket.

He watches the fruit stalls, walking backwards away from them ’til he’s far enough that the hands poking through them make them look like flowers with soft brown petals sneaking out all around them. The mar-ket is abloom, but they do not know that he’s the one who prepared the plaza — that he makes the market happen every Sunday. His swaying yellow broom, his metronome, is the center of it all, begins it every week, clock clock clock clock — like the rhythm her foot used to make when she tapped it, stirring quinoa soup for lunch in the big beaten pot. This — his orchestra; he — the silent conductor.

D

On the edge of the market, he climbs up the lad-der on the abandoned house next to the church and sits slowly on the tin roof and watches … making the sounds in his head that he wants to, sounds the way he remembers them sounding — the soft bubbling of little girls’ voices around the candy stand and their tiny hic-cupping giggles when they first put the little hot pink sweets into their mouths and it starts to melt all over their tongues. And now he can hear even more: a POP when the sugar starts to break onto the pointy front part of their tongues, a little hiss as their back molars crunch onto the last gritty bits of candies.

The POP of her heart stopping, the sudden gasp of her veins, the glug glug glug of her blood swirling and then having, suddenly, nowhere to swirl to; her face frozen his whole body and voice all caught hers, too, hers blocked and choked and —

Gasp gasp gasp.

fiction


FeralThe cats came to us having forgotten everything: feral under the leaves, mange-stripped,fierce bones in knotted crouch.We were still peelingplastic from the windows, stacking boxes in their rooms.

We were surprised to feel this new, lost along the back roads, everything so green and tangled: black haw, huckleberry, Virginia creeper,yellow forsythia glowing in the yard.Food on the back porch, milk and tunain white saucers your mother bought us.Even the wild ones ate.

In the summer storms, the many limbs slunk belly-low under rhododendron. In the back yard, a river grewbeside the footpath. The kitchenstreaked with grey light, the bedroomswashed clean in the thrash of storm.The raw wood of the deck was still unsealed,so that it became sponge-soft with the rain.After, we found footprints—yours? mine?— dimpled on the boards.

When I woke in the night, I heardno rain and the hum of the house gone into deep stillness.What is cool concrete, and what is the absenceof the storm, and what are the boxes of napkin rings,fitted sheets, selvedged tablecloths, trivetsfrom Arizona, the blue bowl speckled like an egg,the books I have already forgotten fittedinto each cardboard volume so as to becomea solid block.

And then the eyes,against the glass of the high window,from the deepness of the window well,the eyes glinting, looking in,wanting everything with the purehunger of the body tied to itself,wanting the tablecloths, the sheets,the unformed objects in the shadows,the light spilling through the doorway,the flashlight that holds the light,the hand, the tendons, the thump of blood, the breathing in an upstairs room,the dark sleep without dreams,the rooms still empty, the emptiness itself. – Amelia Urry

fiction


Can’t hear. Can’t speak.

D

From the room, walking through the mar-ket, he sees a woman, maybe twenty, and a man, maybe 25 — walk stop kiss stare whis-per laugh, he shudders, their gazes locked on the other’s face; her wide cheekbones and red tinged skin pulled into a constant smile, shy and her braids skipping around her face when she nods and laughs and shakes her head. His broad shoulders, upright and stiff, grant, with not a moment of a hunch.

The invented conversation — makes him laugh:

— Taste this. A slice of mango, he places it delicately in her mouth, shakes his hand out to get rid of the pulpy juices.

— Too sweet! A siiisshh as she swallows the fruit and laughs.

Clock clock clock clock their gait is regular, they clop across the clean bricks, her tough-soled leather boots knocking a beat against the ground, glug glug glug

— A game of chess, perhaps? And they sit on a quiet bench in the shade near the edge of the market, and he extracts a newly-bought wood-en chess set from her bag, and they marvel at the little marble pieces, and as they set them up they laugh at the soft clink the pawns make as they put them all in place — and it’s all louder than it ever really was in reality, clink clink clink clock clock clock, but it seems right, and he yells out, a noise like a wounded animal, just want-ing to hear that soft clinking clocking sound again, just wanting to move and hear some echo from the world that says yes, yes, I can hear you, you’re moving.

The couple look up, breaking their locked gazes for the first time, confused at the wailing coming from the top of the abandoned house by the church.

“Are you all right?” she cups her hands over her mouth like a megaphone.

He cannot read her lips. He closes his eyes, feels the couple still calling out to him, con-fused about who this strange yelling man is — he feels their voices like soft rain hitting his skin and the tin roof. Clock clock clock. He be-gins to conduct his next symphony.

D D D


When Thea Buxbaum told her cab driver that she was moving into New Haven’s Westville neighborhood, he was shocked. The

neighborhood was one of New Haven’s most troubled, split between some of the city’s wealthiest homes and its poorest.

“Why would you want to move here?” he asked, incredulously.

“That’s why,” she said, pointing. “Do you see that leaded glass window?”

It was then that the cab driver saw what Thea Buxbaum sees — what she calls “gorgeous details in the poorest neighborhoods.” He went out of his way to drive her around his neighborhood, showing her his own favorite details, like columns on old porches. “He thought he hated New Haven,” Thea says. “But he noticed these details.”

In 1996, Thea and her husband, sculptor Gar Waterman, eventually bought a house in Westville — for $1. (Thea, with the help of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, had convinced the Board of Aldermen to sell it, but she never expected the price they offered.) It was a worn-down industrial warehouse owned by the city,

occupied by feral cats and gang members, both of whom were using its top floor as a hangout.

Now, after years of renovations, Thea’s home is a big, open loft space, with walls that she and her husband use to display his sculptures. In the corner of the room there is a small kitchen; a door leads to her son’s room, which was once both the master bedroom and the couple’s office. Today, it is filled with Lego sets that her son, Geffin, is busy assembling.

But Thea’s preservation work has expanded beyond just the renovations of her home. She wants to revamp all of Westville.

DSince Thea began her first renovation, Westville

has become a haven for poor artists and a “growing artistic community,” according to Yale’s website. Thea attributes these changes to Westville’s characteristics: its proximity to Yale, its diversity, and, above all, that it is a neighborhood, but not a suburban one. “Artists hate suburbia,” she tells me. “They prefer big Greek revival houses. Artists like porches.”

And thanks to Thea, the neighborhood now offers

Westville Renaissance D by William Hall D

Observer

All photos by jAcob geiger / stAff photogrApher

observer


many opportunities for artists to showcase their work. Thea went to the Friends of Edgewood Park — a pre-existing volunteer organization that works to preserve the large park adjacent to the Yale Bowl — to ask if they would support something called ArtWalk: a day in which Westville artists could display and sell their work in storefront windows and on the sidewalk. The first ArtWalk, in 1996, drew around 400 people. Last year, the 14th annual ArtWalk drew between 10,000 and 15,000 attendees.

After the first ArtWalk, Thea and her neighbors founded the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, which continues to promote the arts in Westville. In 2008, the neighborhood was named a “Connecticut Main Street Community” by the Connecticut Main Street Center, a non-profit organization geared at revitalizing downtowns by promoting development on main streets. Since the first ArtWalk, Thea has helped local artisans open stores on Whalley Avenue. One she is particularly proud of is the local gallery, run by her friend Gabriel DaSilva, who finds and displays local art. Manjares, a tapas and coffee bar on Whalley, is also a Westville success story; it is owned by another of Thea’s friends.

Thea Buxbaum is not the first urban planner to stress the importance of preservation and beautification in developing communities. Although the City Beautiful movement — which influenced the planning of big cities like Chicago and Detroit in the early 20th century — is more often associated with the construction of monuments, its philosophy of urban renewal stresses that the appearance of buildings and neighborhoods has a lot to do with how well the surrounding communities function. Thea holds that there are two components of how good a neighborhood feels: the first element is porches, and the second is how much trash there is on the street. As for the latter: “When I am driving down the street and I see someone throw litter on the ground, I stop them and ask that they pick it up. I’m convinced I will be killed that way.”

DIn 2003, Thea was driving down Whalley Avenue when

she saw a “For Sale” sign in front of an old bank building. She called (“out of pure curiosity”) to ask about the building, and she learned that Dunkin’ Donuts and CVS had already made bids.

“Despite the fact that there were already Dunkin’ Donuts and CVS locations two minutes away,” she says with scorn, “this one had drive-thru potential.” Thea then met with Paul McCraven, a Westville resident who worked for the National Savings Bank, to see if she could get funds to purchase the building. Working with her friend Roberta Gratz — whose mother was an urban planner herself — she was able to turn the building into artists’ housing.

“Roberta knows about neighborhood revitalizations and Paul can see opportunity,” Thea said. “Like all good things, there was a confluence of factors that allowed it to happen.”

observer


Thea was at the center of these “factors,” drawing them together with the gravity of her personality. “It is an affront to my sensibilities when I see a McDonald’s on Whalley Ave,” she says.

Today, the artists’ residential building that Thea worked to build is fully occupied. Artists who want to live there are required to submit resumes and portfolios. Still, artists who Thea says are “virtually homeless” constantly approach her looking for a place to live in Westville. Thea already hosts artists in the two top floors of her home, but she is always trying to find new places where artists can live and work. “I hold their hands,” she says. “And I try to find clients.” Most of the clients Thea finds for artists, she says, are her own friends, and most of them are artists themselves.

DAt their home, Thea eagerly shows me her husband’s

studio — she is also his agent. His most recent work, she explains, is based on his study of Nudibranchs, a tiny kind of mollusk that lives in coral reefs and comes in 3500 species, each with its own brilliant colors. They are threatened by global warming and could potentially cure cancer. “And they are very toxic,” she says. “I forgot that part.”

Thea’s eight-year-old son, Geffin, wants to be an artist. Geffin has shoulder-length blond hair and carries with him customizable dice made out of Lego bricks. “I might

be a sculptor,” he says. Thea prompts Geffin: “Tell him what it is you do when

you draw.” Geffin doesn’t want to tell me — he doesn’t like that his mom is putting words in his mouth. “I’m trying to get you to say stuff because Will is interested in our family,” she tells him. “And your art is very interesting.” This reasoning satisfies Geffin, who proceeds to tell me about his art: he draws grasshoppers. Thea gives him a dollar for every time he draws one.

“I had 88 dollars once,” Geffin says. “Although mom doesn’t believe me.” Thea explains that the detail on each grasshopper he draws is better than that of the last, and that, because he focuses on a different part each time, his grasshopper keeps getting better. Although Geffin thinks that his first drawing is the best one (“because it is the most raw”), it is clear, looking at some of the pictures, that the final grasshopper is much improved.

Before I leave, Thea and I sit down in the front room of her home. She is getting a few things together to go on a trip to see friends in the Berkshires, and her husband is making banana ice cream. Westville, Thea admits, is in need of a lot more than just art to overcome its woes. “It’s about having a good economy as well,” she admits. “But art is engaging and beautiful. I can’t draw the whole grasshopper. I focus on my part.”

D D D

Christopher Buckley ’75. Fareed Zakaria ’86. Samantha Power ’92.YOU?

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