*Poison Ivy Kings: Passing the Blue Blood

Prescott Bush ( Yale's Skull and Bones Secret Society)

George H.W. and George W. (two Blue Blood presidents-in-waiting)

The Divine Right of  Blue Blood?

Today's  NYT Op-ed Page takes on the Constitutionality of "legacy admissions" on the basis of blood (The Divine Right of Blues):


"Affirmative action policies are controversial because they pit two fundamental principles against each other — the anti-discrimination principle, which says we should not classify people by ancestry, and the anti-subordination principle, which says we must address a brutal history of discrimination. Legacy preferences, by contrast, advance neither principle — they simply classify individuals by bloodline."


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/opinion/30kahlenberg.html?th&emc=th

* Goring PK

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/mar/02/who-is-paul-keane-m-div-80/

  Here's One I Missed

"Who is Paul Keane, M. Div. '80?"  This article (link above) appeared in the Yale Daily News almost SEVEN MONTHS ago (March 2) and I never saw it until TWO DAYS AGO ! 


I would never have seen it at all (it's buried in YDN archives) except that I installed Google Analytics on this web site a month ago and it brought the link to this article to my attention as having been "hit" many times.


Google Analytics tells me that since August 29th The Anti-Yale has had 1116 visits from 981 viewers in 63 countries and territories.


I am amazed. And humbled.

*Posting Bond

Yale or jail; Park Avenue or park bench; my posting is dedicated to egalitarianism, not elitism.

Whatever bond I had with The Yale Daily News posting board after two full years and the beginning of this third academic year of posts, ended suddenly with the last word of my final post: EXORCISM (9/21/10).

It's as if writing the word itself put a final incantation on the spell and the Yale/New Haven demons were gone ---- at least from MY life.

My first year, I posted anonymously, contriving an insoucient name for each post.  I can't even recall what drew me to the YDN in the first place, or what names I used.

The second year--when news coverage seemed to have gravely serious and inflammatory topics (such as Yale Press's cowardly collapse under the pressures of terrorism by censoring all of the controversial Muhammed cartoons in a book it published on that very cartoon controversy over images of Islam's Prophet ), I decided it was cowardly to hide behind anonymous posts and started using my name and that of this, then newly founded, blog, The Anti-Yale.

With the murder of Ms. Le on campus during the fortieth anniversary (academic) year of my own witnessing of four murders on an Ohio campus, I felt eerily drawn to stay with the YDN, even though it brought up many PTSS memories.

So too with the subsequent drug-overdose death and then the suicide of promising Yale undergraduates.  At one or two points I even felt as if my comments might have been useful to the community. ("Tragedy" is too trite a word here for any or all these events.)

But the exorcism is over.

My abilities are better utilized elsewhere.

I may have stopped following  The Yale Daily News, but I wish Yale, Yale students, and New Haven well.

I  continue posting on this blog, The Anti-Yale, although, after more than 250 posts in sixteen months, one wonders how much longer the Muse will choose to extend her (could be "his") visit.

Paul. D. Keane (M. Div. '80)
The Anti-Yale

* George's Tongue and His Cheek

Jill Lepore's brilliant article on the biographies of Washington ("His Highness", The New Yorker, 9/27/10), and, in the process, the vanity  and scholarly recklessness of a Harvard president; and finally (and poetically), about the futility of fame itself:  has a facinating bit of trivia in it - - - the kind of image which makes history come alive for me:


"The mar to his [Washington's] beauty was his terrible teeth, which were replaced by unsuccessful transplant surgery and by dentures made from ivory and from teeth pulled from the mouths of his slaves." (Lepore, p. 27)


So, not only is the cherry tree a lie, so too are the wooden teeth.


And WHAT A LIE!


It turns out (also from Lepore's article) that Washington couldn't put two words together on paper with any beauty, and his Inaugural Address and his Farewell Address were written by others  (Madison, Hamilton) but spoken  (which apparently he executed with great effect on all occasions) through the teeth of slaves.


Our original orator, our prime president, our foundingest of fathers, spoke through  ivory imposters imprisoned TWICE: once on George's plantation, Mt. Vernon, and a SECOND time in George's mouth.


Yes, upon his death Washington did free his slaves in a directive in his will, perhaps (Lepore suggests), hoping to set a precedent.


"It didn't."

(she says in a colossal understatement, including six decades, four MILLION human souls, and the Civil War)


One only hopes that when he "freed" their teeth, Washington waited until they NEEDED to be extracted, before appropriating their use to his presidential purposes.


Lincoln said,"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master."

Washington manged to be both.

And one wonders what it does to American history to know that its most famous founding orations were  delivered with the tongue of a master and the teeth of a slave?


1 Corinthians 13:1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of ...

* THE TIDBIT GENERATION: Thinking in Tidbits from Oprah's Digital Throne Room

A Hundred Million BUCKS!

The Smaller Picture (and Shorter Sound)

No one can criticize Oprah for not trying.  She has done more for reading than any person in the last century in America, perhaps exepting the married couple who owned Reader's Digest for most of the 1900's.  Her book club and her championing of kindle are notable, formidable contributions to literacy. (Even I bought a vintage Oprah-discount-special-kindle circa November, 2008 when she offered a 24 hour-only discount of $50.)

And now comes the founder of facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, (the very week an unflattering movie about his  golden-goose-invention, and his personal character, is to be  released) onto the Oprah show with a $100,000,000 check-in hand, offered to the Democractic Mayor of Newark, New Jersey and the Republican Governor of New Jersey, who, miracle of miracle, have agreed to COOPERATE in using Mr. Zuckerberg's hundred million dollar matching grant to "FIX"  Newark's "broken" education system, and make a model of that "FIX" for the rest of the country to emulate.

Both politicians agreed on Oprah's telecast today not to point fingers at parents, teachers, unions, or kids in blame for the "broken"  system, but instead to inspire cooperation from all those parties to rise to the challenge and throw off the bondage of failure.

Nice goal.

The problem is that the failure is a CULTURAL failure as much as it is an institutional one.  And you can't "FIX" a broken culture with matching grants.

I took a "Bibliography" course in graduate school and one of my assignments was to compare an 1869 Harper's Magazine with a 1969 Harper's Magazine and draw conclusions based solely on INTERNAL evidence from the texts of what had gone on in the 100 year interval between their publications.

One of the revealing conclusions was that the juxtapostion  of the two issues documented the increasing laziness and distraction of the human eye.

The 1869 version had narrow, uniform columns, with tiny black and white print and tiny 'headlines' spanning only one column at a time. The 1969 version had flashy headlines splashed across pages with colored ink and photographs, different sized print and text styles, and headings with catch-phrases to draw the reader into the article (as, admittedly, do I, here.)

The 1869 version (due to the primitive state of the printing press) ASSUMED that readers would read it from top to bottom, left to right, regardless of how many times the reader had to return to the issue, and that the reader  would put up with--indeed UNDERSTAND! -- complex sentences with subordinate clauses.

The 1969 version ASSUMED that the reader was BUSY, that his/her eye needed to be lured into and seduced to read the article and that the reader would not be so seduced by complex, subordinate clauses.  If anything, the sub-headline "blurbs' dis-assembled the subordinate clauses and used half of them to hook the reader's interest.)  

Tidbits for the Toothless Brain

Thus, the 1869 eye was required to perform DIFFERENT functions in reading the  text than was the 1969 eye. 

And the major differences were  expenditure of "time" and "concentration": DURATION OF ATTENTION.

Expected expenditures of both qualities had diminished in the readers over that 100 year period.

Now add to this observation new advances in BRAIN science and we can infer that the 1869 brain was exercising different regions of the cerebrum than the 1969 brain.

As with the eye, so too the ear.

Radio, television, the computer, and facebook with You-tube and other video clips, the ubiquitous cell phone,  have redirected the auditory circuitry of the brain, just as the evolution of print-journalism, inferred from Harper's magazines of 1869 and 1969, has redirected the ocular circuitry of the brain.

So inject all the MONEY you want into Newark schools: it will not address the fact that our brains  no longer exercise in lenthy processing of sound and sight inputs, but in a constant barrage of sound and eye-tidbits instead.

It is a telling indeed, that all guests on Oprah's show today announcing the hundred million dollar gift to Newark schools, spoke in short choppy, catch-phrase kind of sentences. That includes Arne Duncan, the pontificating U.S. Secretary of Education , who has given speechs which I have heard with MY OWN EARS in which he uses "infer" and "imply" incorrectly.  (Good goin' Arne! But boy, can he shoot hoops with the Bama!)

The poisonously empty prose documented in George Orwell's " Politics and the English Language" oozes into our brains constantly in ever shortened sound bytes and news headlines, even from the Self-Coronotaed Queen of American Reading's Digital Throne Room: Harpo Studios.

BRAINS simply aren't exercising with the same attention spans with which they used to be required to exercise.  Even Father Mapple's sermon in Moby Dick delivered to an 1841 congregation of rough and ready sailors and their wives and families, requires a level of concentration absent from any media presentations on commercial broadcasting today.

Our modern ears are being trained to stop listening to long sentences.

Brains today are slurping and spasming sounds and sights----not ingesting and aggregating them slowly, calmly and thoughtfully.

This change in brain use, and not  poor parenting or poor teaching or poor study habits or poverty itself, is what needs to be addressed in reversing the so-called education "crisis", not simply in Newark, New Jersey, but in living-rooms across America generally.

We need to unenculurate the unrelenting speed of sensory-inputs children are exposed to in our digitized world if we are to "FIX" the "broken" education system.

I'd say "Slow down and chew before you swallow" except the problem is that there's nothing to chew:

Just tidbits, uendingly competing for our appetites.

* I DARE Yale to Censor Me: AN EXORCISM

(From the YDN posting Board, below.)

"Blah" calls me a two-year transient on Holy Hill:


I was born in Yale-New Haven Hospital ( Grace-New Haven). My grandmother lived two blocks from Yale the first 16 years of my life in a a third-floor ghetto walk-up with no hot water. After ten years in Ithaca and Kent for undergraduate (Ithaca College) and graduate degrees (Kent State) I returned to New Haven for 12 years from 1973-85.
Yes: I took my degree on Holy Hill, but I LIVED one block from Broadway and ate in Silliman. My courses extended from 1976-80. I created Sterling Library's Kent State Collection with the author Peter Davies in its Manuscripts and Archives Division and the Yale Political Union's five-day Colloquium on Kent State to commemorate the opening of that Collection.


I remained at Yale for four years thereafter, dragging Yale onto 60 Minutes (Feb. 84) kicking and screaming over the Yale President's refusal to expose the FIRST DOCUMENTED AMERICAN heterosexual connection to AIDS in the form of a Howe St. prostitute who had passed AIDS on to her infant in the womb and whose baby never left Yale -New Haven Hospital.


I spent four months researching the disappearance of Yale Divinity student Sam Todd, who has never been found. My report to the President's office was published in Connecticut Magazine, Spring '85 under the title "Fugitive from God, Country and Yale: The Disappearance of Sam Todd." You can read it (if you care to bore yourself any further with my FOX/MSNBC banalities) at http://yaledisappearance.blogspot.com/ link text


I was not paid for either of these projects which Yale considered both an annoyance and an embarrassment, and which cost me two years of my life and hundreds if not thousands of dollars.




My pamphlet A.I.D.S. (AIDS Information Dissemination Service) was pusblished at my own expense and distributed to 5000 Yale students over the OBJECTION of the then prissily Puritanical Yale Health Service (because it DARED to describe the sexual practices related to transmission of AIDS in detail and DARED TO POSIT HETEROSEXUAL TRANSMISSION of AIDS, then denied by most Americans).




That distribution to Yale students occurred through the President's Office's intercession which over-ruled the Health Service when I threatened to reveal to the press Yale's obstruction of timely health information to its own in loco parentis students in the face of the possible threat of heterosexual transmission two blocks from Yale.




I grew up in the shadow of Yale. Yale blocked a lot of light and much truth from my childhood and later from my young adulthood at the Divinity School.




I consider these posts an EXORCISM.




Paul D. Keane


M.Div. '80
M.A. (Middelbury '97)
M.Ed. (Kent State '72)


Posted by theantiyale on September 21, 2010 at 12:56 a.m.


PS If you don't like my posting , skip it. No one forces your eyes past the first word except yourself and your own control-freak desire to be Super-monitor. Until your Yale/New Haven resume exceeds mine, kindly refrain from suggesting I am a New Haven transient who brings nothing to the table of free speech.
____________________________________________________________

One of three College Street gunmen still at large


Two others hospitalized; NHPD chief calls police involvement justified
Bullets litter the street in the wake of Sunday morning's shooting.
 Photo by Victor Kang.
The Yale Daily News
By Egidio DiBenedetto, Colin Ross



Sunday, September 19, 2010

Police are still searching for a gunman they say fired at police officers on College Street early Sunday morning.

As clubs on Crown Street were closing at about 2 a.m., three men got into a shootout near the intersection of Crown and College streets, one block from Old Campus, New Haven Police Chief Frank Limon said in an interview. When nearby police officers responded, one of the gunmen shot at the them; police returned fire, but the shooter fled and has not been caught, Limon said.

He added that the other two gunmen were hit by gunfire, though police have yet to determine whether they were shot in the original gun battle or by police as they returned fire. Police are interviewing the two wounded gunmen and other witnesses to gather an accurate description of the wanted man, Limon said.

Both wounded men were transported to Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven Police Lieutenant Joe Witkowski said early Sunday morning. City Hall Spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said they sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

Mayorga said three police officers fired during the shootout. Though Limon said the investigation is ongoing, from the account he has received, he said he thinks the officers' shooting was justified.

"In my experience, when you have officers in uniform and shots are fired, they are trying to protect themselves and protect others in the area," he said.

Limon said the downtown entertainment district was fully staffed when the incident occurred Sunday, with 12 officers and one supervisor on duty.

"You can only do so much," Limon added.

Ward 7 Alderwoman Frances “Bitsie” Clark, in whose ward the shootout occurred, said she is “horrified” by the incident and that it is a “call to assembly.”

Clark said she has been working with local bar and club owners to redress the amount of violence in the city’s downtown nightlife district. She said Mayor John DeStefano Jr.'s current proposal to add a specially trained police detail to district is a good one, and that Sunday’s shootout is an impetus to find a solution.

“I don’t believe that you stop having an entertainment district — it’s very good for our economic development — but we certainly have to do something to prevent this from happening again,” Clark said.

Esther Zuckerman contributed reporting.



.More like this story



Comments

Do other Ivy-League campuses have a drug and prostitute section as close to campus as Yale? I know Cornell and Dartmouth first-hand and the answer is No. Harvard:Maybe. Princeton: No. Columbia: Surely. Stanford: No knowledge.

Thirty-four years ago when I went to YDS and lived near Patricia's Restaurant (across from Payne Whitney Gym), people would try to sell me cocaine in broad daylight on a Sunday morning on the sidewalk.

Gunfights? Not that I recall. But a Yale student was knifed and left to die on the front steps of the RCC Church (St. Mary's) three doors away from the Yale president's house on Hillhouse Avenue.

New Haven is crime ridden. Yale is a lure.

Posted by theantiyale on September 19, 2010 at 9:11 p.m.


Posted by Mikelawyr2 on September 20, 2010 at 7:35 a.m,.

 While this is not good for the city or for Yale, people make it seem that this - as with other incidence - are random acts of violence. Often drug dealers are shooting drug dealers, at Gotham two people with guns got into a fight with each other, and here police disrupted a gun fight in progress between two groups of thugs. While people could get caught in the crossfire, they very rarely due. You are generally save downtown all hours of the day and night if you yourself are not a thug or hang out with thugs.

I have lived downtown for many years and have NEVER seen drug deals or prostitutes. What happened 30-years ago, though relevant, was a long time ago.

theantivy: Harvard: no, Brown: yes, Columbia: yes - Stanford is NOT an Ivy!

Posted by grl8r on September 20, 2010 at 8:47 a.m.

 theantiyale, Harvard is statistically far more dangerous. It is in a much bigger, anonymous city with more random crime.

A shootout in a massive, bustling entertainment district with tens of thousands of visitors every day and 10,000 restaurant seats, like Crown Street, shouldn't be a surprise - similar events happen in all big cities with that number of people crowding into them.

Do the math per capita and, unless you are one of the dealers or prostitutes, you're far more likely to get struck by lightning than to get injured in a busy downtown district.

Posted by Sara on September 20, 2010 at 8:47 a.m.permalinksuggest removal.. Some strange justifications here: "...unless you are one of the dealers or prostitutes, you're far more likely to get struck by lightning..." and "You are generally safe downtown all hours of the day and night if you yourself are not a thug or hang out with thugs..."

Isn't the problem grounded in the fact that we have dealers, prostitutes and thugs in the first place? And that we can't seem to address the issues that give rise to them - a problem of strategy - or police them effectively - a problem of tactics?

Posted by Yalie on September 20, 2010 at 9:55 a.m. @grl8r:

My point was not statistical analysis: It was contiguity (contiguousness?) with campus. The drug and prostitute sections of town practically TOUCH campus at several points.
OOPS! Forgot Brown and promoted Stanford!

What part of downtown do you live in? Let me take you to upper Elm Street or Howe. So forget 30 years ago: You had THIRTEEN murders in New Haven durting the school year LAST YEAR.

Rose colored glasses?

PK

link text
Posted by theantiyale on September 20, 2010 at 11:40 a.m.

Posted by pablum on September 20, 2010 at 11:57 a.m.

theantiyale,

What does "Ivy League" have to do with your point?

Ivy League towns shouldn't have crime? Yale should have evacuated/fixed/cordoned-off from New Haven long ago? Yale's part of a larger post-industrial, poverty- crime- and drug-ridden problem? Swell, keep us guessing; but as a Dartmouth grad and Yale long-timer, I'm embarrassed that it was only Ivy League tit-for-tat that seemed to drive your post, and that moved me to reply.


Posted by amandab847 on September 20, 2010 at 2:08 p.m.

Antiyale,

San Francisco had 100 murders, and that's not including hundreds more right across the bay in Oakland, etc. The Boston area has had hundreds too. What's your point? As a standard-defined metro area, New Haven is one of the safest cities in the country. Every city has a few pockets of social pathology; New Haven's happen to be very small in relation to the city's size overall.

Go to Dartmouth or Cornell if you want to get away from the feeling of an urban area (even Dartmouth and Cornell have had their share of violent murders and robberies, but they may "feel" safer because the density is so much lower).

Posted by Sara on September 20, 2010 at 2:17 pm

@sara

The per capita murder rate in New Haven is much higher than New York or Boston. New Haven has a tiny metro area when compared to New York or Boston.

Posted by pablum on September 20, 2010 at 2:52 p.m.


Sara wrote: "Harvard is statistically far more dangerous. It is in a much bigger, anonymous city with more random crime .1"

What?! Surely you jest... Have you BEEN to Cambridge? It is the super-touchy-feely lib oasis (recently implementing "soft boots" for parking violators, because those nasty hard boots made cars feel bad--and, no, I am not making this up).

The comparative stats are in the other thread on this topic, indicating that Cambridge (AND Boston) are much safer than New Haven.

And for a REAL eye-opener, check out the crime scene at Boston College!

Even inner-city Boston's most notorious neighborhood appears to have a lower crime density than does 2010 New Haven.

1.I will grant you this: Crime in Cambridge may indeed be "more random": why? Because there are targets, at least for, say, robbery, other than relatively affluent, liberally dotty kollidge kidz upon which to prey. Under those circumstances, robbery may indeed happen to someone other than a Cantab, whereas Yalensians might as well be sporting neon "kick me" sweatpants.

Posted by Anonymous Bosh on September 20, 2010 at 4:26 p.m.

 @ amadab847,

I grew up 10 miles from Yale. My grandmother lived two blocks from Yale in a third-floor walk-up ghetto apartment with no hot water at State and Elm streets. I have lived in Ithaca for five years and now live five minutes from Hanover as I have for the last 20 years. I am interested (in a VERY PERSONAL WAY) in how Yale's affluence irritates the poor of New Haven.

@ sara,

My point has nothing to do with statistics. It is anecdotal. I was mugged twice as a Yale student, once at gunpoint. I was an apartment superintendent for an 88-unit low income housing project one block from Yale's Payne Whitney Gym during my four years at the Divinity School. A 90-year old woman tenant of mine was mugged in broad daylight. Another tenant was stabbed by his wife and left blood all over my lobby walls. (He survived.)

I was exposed to muggings, drug deals, a prostitute with AIDS plying her wares one block from my apartment and homeless people, including a 60-year-old woman who defecated in my courtyard in front of 40 tenants' windows on a freezing winter day leaning on a park-bench in the snow because she had no-where else to perform that act. She was pushing her belongings in a grocery cart. This was within spitting distance of the Yale Co-op (now Borders or some such) on Broadway while preppies drove by in their BMW's.

Kindly don't "what's your point" me with your bloodless statistics until you have walked in my (and my dead grandmother's) shoes.

Paul Keane M.Div.'80

link text



Posted by theantiyale on September 20, 2010 at 5:38 p.m.


 i used to enjoy the dialogue between yale students, alums, and the new haven community on the YDN comment boards. however, it seems that perhaps 80% of the comment boards are dominated by Paul Keane, who certainly has interesting things to say about some things, but has essentially become a troll who weighs in about EVERYTHING.

he should realize that as someone who earned a 1- or 2-year degree about 2 miles from the main campus, he will inevitably be a bit out of touch with many current issues on campus that would be better left to people with more recent and direct experience, and more knowledge of the facts. otherwise his opinions basically amount to the kind of ideological generalities that we see enough of on FOX and MSNBC. PK--use your head and use some restraint. Give others a chance to influence the discussions. unfortunately i imagine this plea will fall on deaf ears.

Posted by blah on September 20, 2010 at 9:55 p.m.



I DARE YALE TO CENSOR ME.

Blah calls me a two-year transient on Holy Hill:

I was born in Yale-New Haven Hospital ( Grace-New Haven). My grandmother lived two blocks from Yale the first 16 years of my life in a a third-floor ghetto walk-up with no hot water. After ten years in Ithaca and Kent for undergraduate (Ithaca College) and graduate degrees (Kent State) I returned to New Haven for 12 years from 1973-85.

Yes: I took my degree on Holy Hill, but I LIVED one block from Broadway and ate in Sillliman. My courses extended from 1976-80. I created Sterling Library's Kent State Collection with the author Peter Davies in its Manuscripts and Archives Division and the Yale Political Union's five-day Colloquium on Kent State to commemorate the opening of that Collection.

I remained at Yale for four years thereafter, dragging Yale onto 60 Minutes (Feb. 84) kicking and screaming over the Yale President's refusal to expose the FIRST DOCUMENTED AMERICAN heterosexual connection to AIDS in the form of a Howe St. prostitute who had passed AIDS on to her infant in the womb and whose baby never left Yale -New Haven Hospital.

I spent four months researching the disappearance of Yale Divinity student Sam Todd, who has never been found. My report to the President's office was published in Connecticut Magazine, Spring '85 under the title "Fugitive from God, Country and Yale: The Disappearance of Sam Todd." You can read it (if you care to bore yourself any further with my FOX/MSNBC banalities) at http://yaledisappearance.blogspot.com link text

I was not paid for either of these projects which Yale considered both an annoyance and an embarrassment, and which cost me two years of my life and hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

My pamphlet A.I.D.S. (AIDS Information Dissemination Service) was pusblished at my own expense and distributed to 5000 Yale students over the OBJECTION of the then prissily Puritanical Yale Health Service (because it DARED to describe the sexual practices related to transmission of AIDS in detail and DARED TO POSIT HETEROSEXUAL TRANSMISSION of AIDS, then denied by most Americans).

That distribution to Yale students occurred through the President's Office's intercession which over-ruled the Health Service when I threatened to reveal to the press Yale's obstruction of timely health information to its own in loco parentis students in the face of the possible threat of heterosexual transmission two blocks from Yale.

I grew up in the shadow of Yale. Yale blocked a lot of light and much truth from my childhood and later from my young adulthood at the Divinity School.

I consider these posts an EXORCISM.

Paul D, Keane

M.Div. '80

M.A. (Middelbury '97)

M.Ed. (Kent State '72)



Posted by theantiyale on September 21, 2010 at 12:56 a.m.

PS If you don't like my posting , skip it. No one forces your eyes past the first word except yourself and your own control-freak desire to be Super-monitor. Until your Yale/New Haven resume exceeds mine, kindly refrain from suggesting I am a New Haven transient who brings nothing to the table of free speech.

* Salivating the Burger

Even if Pavlov hadn’t “signed a steak” with an electromagnetic knife at Yale in 1929 after witnessing Dr. Cushing perform brain surgery with that knife*, a hundred million American’s would still salivate every time they pass McDonald’s today,  in September 2010.

Steak is in our blood, figuratively and literally.


Especially Yale blood.


The Whiffenpoof’s serenade “From the tables down at Morey’s to the place where Louie dwells, baaah, baaah, baaah” is so well known even townies sing it.

Morey’s is the (once exclusive) Yale eating club, which almost went bankrupt last year. Louie’s is “Louie’s Lunch”, a tiny restaurant in New Haven where Louie Lassen *(according to the Library of Congress) “invented” the hamburger in 1900.


A small town in Texas claims it is the home of the hamburger’s birth in the 1880’s, and commemorates that claim with a plaque. A Wisconsin town also claims the title.


Louie’s Lunch still exists in its original tiny brick building in New Haven Connecticut, and still serves the same burger, the same way: NO ketchup, white toast, burger, tomato and cheese, grilled in front of your eyes.


I have eaten two rival burgers in my day. In the early 1970’s a small restaurant in Kent, Ohio, served a concoction called the “Garbageburger”. It had everything on it. When the place cloased I even wrote a tribute to the Garbageburger for the Daily Kent Stater (below).

The second rival to Louie’s in New Haven, is an Ivy league hang-out in Hanover called, Everything But Anchovies (EBA’s). Their concoction is called the EBA Burger.


I eat one almost every Tuesday night.

James Beard, the famous chef, when asked to name the ONE meal he would cook if it was his LAST meal, said, “Bacon and eggs.”


I would choose the EBA Burger for my Last Supper.


(Only because the Garbageburger is dead.)
________________________________

*Yale Alumni Magazine Sept/Oct 2010 “Why Pavlov signed a steak” (“Object lesson ‘Pavlov’s beef-steak,’” p.60)

_________________________________________________

Wednesday, March 7, 1973 Vol XVII Number 76 (Daily Kent Stater)

A remembrance: Life and Death of the Garbageburger

by

Broderick Euclid [aka Paul Keane]

The 3000 or so members of the KSU community who have partaken of Carson’s culinary misnomer will find this column entitled “Requiem for the Garbageburger,” a sad sacrament indeed; for it marks the end of an era in Kent, Ohio, and a nostalgic farewell to the non-computerized mentality.


Carson’s Tavern was the white clapboard building --- now called “The Tavern” --- actoss from the Kentwood on Route 59. And its house-special, which people flocked form miles around to try, was the Garbageburger.


What was a Garbageburger. It was more than a mountain-sandwich, held together by the stab of a toothpick; it was an anachronism in culinary hospitality in our culture of assembly-line food. When a Garbageburger was placed in front of you, you’d gasp, “How can I BEGIN to eat it?”


The only thing you didn’t do was take the toothpick out, for you’s soon discover why it sported its provocative name: the inevitable consequence of the first bite into a toothpickless Garbageburger was that all that was INSIDE the G.B. fell OUTSIDE onto your plate, thus becoming garbage. Voila, the Garbageburger.


And precisely what was inside it? Just about everything: thick handmade patty of ground beef dripping with yellow cheese( it HAD to be handmade, a computer would never have been reckless enough to give the customer so much meat); a solid disc of fresh, juicy onion; two substantial slices of authentic tomato (not the artificially colored substitute); a big splatter of gooey, yellow mustard; and a lather of Carson’s special white sauce, all precariously stacked between two buns garlanded with lettuce. And all for only 79 cents!!!


A Garbageburger was all that, but it was much more too.


The Garbageburger was a symbol of its creator’s humanity. No frantic pursuit of the Divine Dollar for him. Indeed, Carson’s had no telephone, rarely, if ever, advertised, and didn’t even have a sign saying “Carson’s” outside its door. It was just “that white building” outon route 59 near the bowling alley and across from the Kentwood. The clientele were more a club than a public. People came from miles around on word-of-mouth and, once initiated into its culinary courtesy and folksy décor (nothing matched in Carson’s, it was as if your Grandmother decorated it from odds and ends), they returned again and again.


Last month I presided over the last rites of the Garbageburger. I entered the now renamed and redecorated Carson’s (it will always be Carson’s to me, no matter what they re-name it) and learned that the G.B. had expired. The couple sitting in the booth next to me asked for the famous sandwich. When they learned it no longer existed either in name or content (oh, there’s a substitute they try to pawn off as heir to the G.B., but it’s nothing like the original) they lamented , “Nothing lasts.”


On that poignant note, I called the young owner of the place over to my table. “I don’t see how you’ll make it without the Garbageburger,” I said, “it’s a tradition in Kent.”


“We’re not interested in tradition,” he replied, “we’re interested in business. And business is better than it’s ever been before.”


He is probably right. Alas, his business probably is better than ever; but the quality of life in computerized-consumerized Kent (this gypsy camp of plastic hamburger stands and beer joints) is immeasurably diminished.


And the voice of Jacob Marley’s ghost, rebutting Scrooge’s famous mercantile rationalization (“But I was always a good man of business, Jacob.”) rings in my ears: Business, Ebenezer? Mankind was your business.”

*Was there a Bono before Bono?

Art As Salvation

One of the remarkable things about Bono and his humanitarian predecessors (Bob Hope and Albert Schweitzer) is that their status as artists enabled them to further their humanitarian goals. Schweitzer would leave his hand-built hospital in Lambarene, Gabon in Africa every decade and give organ recitals in Europe to raise funds for the hospital.

Bob Hope would donate his talent as comedian and entertainer (and his Christmas vacations) for decades to the servicemen and servicewomen in our military to cheer their hearts not only during WW II, but right up until the 1980's.

And of course, Bono's concerts are inseparable from his humanitarian work in Africa and in diminishing poverty globally. Today's New York Times features  Bono's optimistic opinion piece on the ten-year mark in Millenium Development Goals for 2015. It is encoraging to see progress, rather than regress , however slow it may be.

Art may indeed be salvation-----at  least for some of the suffering of our world.

Bono

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960), most commonly known by his stage name Bono, is an Irish singer and musician, best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his future wife, Ali Hewson, and the future members of U2. Bono writes almost all U2 lyrics, often using political, social, and religious themes. During their early years, Bono's lyrics contributed to U2's rebellious and spiritual tone. As the band matured, his lyrics became inspired more by personal experiences shared with members of U2.


Outside the band, he has collaborated and recorded with numerous artists, sits on the board of Elevation Partners, and has refurbished and owns The Clarence Hotel in Dublin with The Edge. Bono is also widely known for his activism concerning Africa, for which he co-founded DATA, EDUN, the ONE Campaign and Product Red. He has organised and played in several benefit concerts and has met with influential politicians. Bono has been praised and criticised for his activism and involvement with U2. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, and was named as a Person of the Year by Time, among other awards and nominations.



Albert Schweitzer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Albert Schweitzer (14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a Franco-German (Alsatian) theologian, organist, philosopher, and physician. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, in the German Empire. Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of Jesus as depicted by historical-critical methodology current at his time in certain academic circles, as well as the traditional Christian view, depicting a Jesus Christ who expected and predicted the imminent end of the world. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life", expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, now in Gabon, west central Africa (then French Equatorial Africa). As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ reform movement (Orgelbewegung).


Schweitzer's passionate quest was to discover a universal ethical philosophy, anchored in a universal reality, and make it directly available to all of humanity.

Bob Hope


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS (born Leslie Townes Hope; May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel. Throughout his career, he was honored for his humanitarian work. In 1996, the U.S. Congress honored Bob Hope by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." Bob Hope appeared in or hosted 199 known USO shows.

* craigskisst

Those kissed by the poison lips of craigslist's "adult services" section include a recent suicide, known as the "craigslist killer," a medical student in Boston who looks so preppy that one almost sympathizes with him, as did  his fiancee in disbelief after he was initially charged with murdering one woman and kidnapping another, both of whom he had met by trolling craigslist.

The self-censoring by craigslist [sic] of its advertisements for sexual services two days ago comes after 18 state's attorney's general wrote craigslist owners protesting that prostitution was not a "victimless crime" and asking craigslist to remove the section entirely which solicits customers for such services.

Instead craigslist slapped a "censored" sticker over the section to protest the infringement on its freedom of expression, while complying with the request.

Persoanlly, I find the craigslist killer incident unnerving.  I like my killers to look like madmen (or madwomen), Charles Manson say, but not Apple Pie and Motherhood in an intern's coat with a gleaming Steinway smile.

Good-looking or mad-looking, he was seduced by technology and betrayed by technology. (The video camera's stationed in the hotels where he attacked his victims dutifully recorded, dated,and timed his presence at the murder and kidnapping scenes.)

The lesson to be taken? 

Technology is a digital  briar-patch. 

Remember (the once beloved and now debunked as racist) Br'er Rabbit?

* GOD (Genome's Obscure Distributor)

Like all good Unitarians and deists, the word "God" irritates me, the eternal questioner. 

Like "love," "God" has come to mean whatever people want it to mean. And it has an anthropomorphic (human face and body) connotation which seems decidedly limiting.

Enlightenment writers and Abraham Lincoln used the terms "Creator" and "Divine Providence" or just "Providence", all with capital letters at the beginning of the words. 

Twelve Step programs use the term"Higher Power" and then fill it in with acronyms: Good Orderly Direction (GOD); Gift Of Desperation (GOD); Group Of Drunks (AA acronym only).

These just aren't modern enough in our cracked-genetic-code world. So I propose this as a more accurate descriptor:

Genome's Obscure Distributor , both a definition and  an acronym for the term GOD.

And for DNA?  Divine Nature's Author.

Emerson would be pleased.


Paul Keane
M. Div. '80


PS:       Dylan-the-force-that-through-the-green-fuse-drives-the flower-drives-my-soul-Thomas might be pleased also.   Might.




Science Dictionary
genome (jē'nōm)

The total amount of genetic information in the chromosomes of an organism, including its genes and DNA sequences. The genome of eukaryotes is made up of a single, haploid set of chromosomes that is contained in the nucleus of every cell and exists in two copies in the chromosomes of all cells except reproductive and red blood cells. The human genome is made up of about 35,000 genes. Compare proteome.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin.


Cultural Dictionary

genome [( jee -nohm)]

The sum of all information contained in the DNA for any living thing. The sequence of all the nucleotides in all the chromosomes of an organism.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.



Cultural Dictionary


deism [( dee -iz-uhm)]

The belief that God has created the universe but remains apart from it and permits his creation to administer itself through natural laws. Deism thus rejects the supernatural aspects of religion, such as belief in revelation in the Bible, and stresses the importance of ethical conduct. In the eighteenth century, numerous important thinkers held deist beliefs. ( See clockwork universe.)

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
_____________________________________________________________

* Why Hate Jews?

The Yale Daily News 

Hershey: A debate to be had, not censored


Comments:


Why do people hate Jews?


I don't get it. Especially when CHRISTIANS hate Jews. Jesus was Jewish for, God's sake, from the days he was born to the day he died. The Last Supper was a Passover meal!


Is it elitism?


They hate the self-advertisement: The "Chosen people"?


That whole elitism is based on the most famous act of SEXISM in human history.


Sarah, Abraham's WIFE, is barren and Abraham wants MALE offspring so he takes a CONCUBINE ( a woman with whom he can stand stud) named Hagar and creates ISHMAEL (remember the famous line "Call me Ishmael"?) Then God (because he has a sense of humor) makes SARAH pregnant at age 90 and she gives birth to ISAAC, future father of the Tribes of Israel.


Here is the KERNEL of the thousands-year-old mid-east conflict, a kernel "conceived" (lol) in SEXISM:


Because Ishmael is ILLEGITIMATE and Isaac is LEGITIMATE, Isaac's offspring (the Tribes of Israel) are eligible for the title "Chosen". This leaves Ishmael's people (aka the Arab people) de facto the UNchosen people whether they accept the description or not.


Ergo 3000+ years of war. Nice going.


The whole things is a house-of-cards based on a SEXIST PREMISE: males and male "blood" (genes) passed on legitimately are BETTER than males and male blood passed on illegitimately.




NB: Herman Melville adds to the irony with "Call me Ishmael" (Call me the UNchosen one) since HIS Ishmael is the only member of the Pequod chosen NOT to be drowned by Moby Dick. Nice job Herman!


PK


Posted by theantiyale on September 4, 2010 at 10:30 a.m.




________________________________________________________
Thank you for such a thoughtful piece.
Posted by yale on September 3, 2010 at 10:32 a.m.


Could someone please explain how Palestinians, whose ancestors were Phoenicians, Nabataeans, Canaanites etc, can be anti-Semitic when they in fact are Semitic?
Posted by JackJ on September 3, 2010 at 3:20 p.m.


re: JackJ
Because over time, anti-Semitism has gained a more specific meaning. It's commonly defined as "discrimination against or prejudice or hostility toward Jews [specifically]," even though many Afro-Asiatic languages/historical peoples can be referred to as Semitic.
Posted by lev on September 3, 2010 at 4:26 p.m.




Hershey: A debate to be had, not censored

The Yale Daily News

Friday, September 3, 2010




A series of complaints has recently been directed against Yale for hosting a conference intended to address modern manifestations of anti-Semitism. On Aug. 30, the U.S. representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Maen Rashid Areikat, denounced Yale for providing a platform for “right-wing extremists” and accused Yale of enabling the dissemination of “racist propaganda.” On Wednesday, Yaman Salahi LAW ’12 asserted that Yale was “providing a haven for bigoted ideas about Muslims and Arabs” by hosting the conference (“Anti-Semitism but not anti-hatred,” Sept. 1). But these charges fail to justify why Yale should be in the business of censoring speech that could potentially engender offense and, more importantly, they exploit legitimate sensitivity towards racism in order to preclude honest discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.



As an institution aimed toward the education of its students, Yale is obliged to expose its students to all points of view, no matter how controversial. Given the emotionally charged nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is unsurprising that some took offense to the statements advanced by the pro-Israel advocates who spoke at last week’s conference. Were Yale to have sponsored a conference dedicated to the cause of a Palestinian state, or were it to finance an event featuring a speaker with strong Palestinian sympathies, many Yale students who support Israel would take offense for analogous reasons. Some might even go as far as to publicly condemn Yale for promoting an apologetic attitude towards Hamas.



The inherently subjective nature of what is considered offensive makes it impossible for Yale to impartially restrict the promulgation of “offensive” viewpoints, and the call for such measures to be taken threatens the free exchange of ideas on campus. To criticize Yale for failing to censor the views of academics is to subject legitimate discourse to the whims of those who are most vocal about their offense. By encouraging the administration to regulate what can and cannot be said on campus, such criticism puts the entire educational mission of Yale at risk — we cannot be expected to learn in an environment that is inimical to free-thinking and free-expression.



Even if one believes that free speech should be curtailed in certain cases, the question still remains as to whether any of the content of last week’s conference on modern anti-Semitism was truly “offensive.” The most controversial feature of the conference, cited in both the PLO’s vitriolic letter to President Levin and Salahi’s recent column, was a seminar titled “The Central Role of Palestinian Antisemitism in Creating the Palestinian Identity.” Of course, no thinking individual would allege that anti-Semitism is a universal characteristic of Palestinians, and though I did not personally attend this seminar, I highly doubt that this characterization was ever made.



Regardless of what was said in this seminar, it is undeniable that the Palestinian leadership has endeavored to inculcate its constituents with anti-Semitism. Hamas’s own charter favorably cites “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and it explicitly labels the Jews as the enemy of Palestine. For some time there was a Palestinian children’s television show, “Pioneers of Tomorrow,” in which a character resembling Mickey Mouse espoused violent jihad and advocated the annihilation of the Jews (excerpts from this program can easily be located via search on YouTube).



All of this is simply to say that there is a legitimate discussion to be had regarding the extent to which anti-Semitism has shaped Palestinian identity in recent years, whether such prejudice is the result of Hamas’s machinations or of some other contributing factor. Academics should be free to dispute the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the Palestinian population, and similarly, they should be equally free to debate the extent to which anti-Muslim sentiment pervades Israel and other pro-Western societies. To take advantage of our society’s sensitivity towards racism by denouncing anyone who is willing to entertain the plausible belief that anti-Semitism may exercise an undue influence upon the lives of the Palestinian people as “bigoted” inhibits meaningful discourse concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is only likely to further enable the very sort of blind, unthinking prejudice that it seeks to criticize.



Ken Hershey is a sophomore in Trumbull College.

* My Mama Done Tole Me . . .

Barbara Ward Keane and son circa 1949 (my brother)

The Yale Daily News

Brodsky: A serious need for casual feminists

Comments
No artist, no musician, no warrior, no statesman, no politician ever created a work as infinitely complex and beautiful as a human baby, especially in the short order of nine months.

Men are, and continue to be, subconsciously OVERAWED by the miraculous capacity of women as artists of the highest order, painting the ENTIRE canvas of CREATION itself.

Sexism is men’s bluff:

A conscious attempt to repress that awe and to overcome the inherently un-level playing-field onto which they are and have been thrust since the Garden of Eden: Women bring them onto the planet and women ensure that their genetic code will endure after their departure from the planet.

Men’s contribution to this process can hardly be called art.

Men could not EXIST without women and they know it.

Sexism is envy.

Sexism is anger.

pk
Posted by theantiyale on September 2, 2010 at 5:40 a.m.

Afterthought: I should add "no athlete and no scholar" to that opening 'catalogue of creators,'
Posted by theantiyale on September 2, 2010 at 5:52 a.m.

antiyale: your comments are an example of exactly the kind of extremism the author means to combat.

Alexandra: Great article, well-crafted, entirely necessary.
Posted by MC13 on September 2, 2010 at 11:05 a.m.


Maybe so. Sadly, it doesn't make it any less true. I wish those well who seek to make a better world. PK
Posted by theantiyale on September 2, 2010 at 4:22 p.m.


It's examples like this that make people not take claims of sexism seriously.
Posted by FailBoat on September 2, 2010 at 4:53 p.m.

Theantiyale: As a woman who does not wish to have children, and on behalf of women who physically cannot have children, I find your comment extremely disgusting.

It is condescending and closed-minded to essentially say that women should be praised because we gestate. I also think it is misguided to say that men oppress women because they are jealous of this talent. And comparing human gestation to human creativity is naive at best.

I'm sorry, maybe this is a reactionary comment, but I am more than a uterus.
Posted by curlysiren on September 2, 2010 at 8 p.m.

 I did not say women SHOULD be praised because of X. I said X makes males envious and angry SUBCONSCIOUSLY

I do not have children and do not wish to have children. Who says women HAVE to HAVE children?

And who says it is a TALENT? The artistry I am talking about is a cosmic artistry.

It is women's CAPACITY (not TALENT) to reproduce another human being and men's INCAPACITY to do so that I am talking about.

I understand that in the not too distant future males will be able to have a zygote implanted in their lower intestine and bring it to term.

Perhaps this phenomenon will end sexism once and for all.


 Okay, Freud. I guess you wanted to sleep with your father too.
Posted by wtf on September 3, 2010 at 10:36 a.m

Trivialize Freud all you want. His is one of the three great minds of the last 200 years: Einstein, Darwin, Freud. This is not even susceptible to a sliver of debate. PK
Posted by theantiyale on September 3, 2010 at 4:06 p.m.

Theantiyale: I understand where you're coming from, I just don't agree with your claim that THAT is the reason men oppress women. Also, I only meant to point out that your statement is incredibly triggering to women who cannot have children and, to a lesser extent, women who choose not to have children.

Freud's theories were, at the time, quite groundbreaking. We should respect him because of that. However, he, and his theories, are not infallible. Both his and Darwin's theories have since been reevaluated and edited.
Posted by curlysiren on September 3, 2010 at 6:18 p.m.

****Hi curlysiren, Your last post was a much friendlier tone. Look, my mother was one of the first feminists in my small community of Mt. Carmel of the 1950's eleven miles up the road from Yale. That's MORE than half a century ago!!!!! Her feminism looks pale by comparison with today's feminism, but we are talking about a woman who wore slacks when to do so raised eyebrows about "lesbianism"; who drove a seatless, stand-up ten ton truck (with a five-gear floor-stickshift) , in an emergency to get plumbing supplies for a plumber, reluctant to abandon a metaphorical dyke he was plugging against a plumbing-flood at our house; a woman AND MOTHER who got a job when I was 14 because raising children was driving her crazy with boredom; who refused to sign a despicable neighborhood petition protesting African Americans moving next door to us in 1961 in our split-level WHITE neighborhood in West Woods and INSTEAD brought a casserole over to their house the day they moved in as she always did to welcome new neighbors on moving day. (My mother didn't give a damn what people thought.) Small but powerful examples of EGALITARIANISM to an impressionable child who adored his mother (moi). My point? I'm WITH you not AGAINST you.

But give me the benefit of the doubt and a little breathing room---I'm probably old enough to be your grandfather!! PK****
Posted by theantiyale on September 3, 2010 at 8:36 p.m.

Theantiyale:
I was never trying not to be friendly. I am also not trying to jump down your throat. I understood in the first place that you understand and respect feminists; I just didn't agree with your point. I respect where you're coming from, and while I can learn from those older than me, those older than me can learn from me as well.


Thank you for sharing about your mother. That was truly very interesting. I love hearing about people who stood up for what they believed in, no matter what.



Posted by curlysiren on September 4, 2010 at 1:21 a.m.

Thanks curlysire,

The reason I post here is I DO LEARN from the give and take of challenging assumptions. Age has zero to do with it. Attitude is the msot important factor, whther 19 or 91/

It's a lot more authentic and intense on the YDN posting-board than the NYTimes posting-board for example which is a bunch of stuffed shirts with ZERO give-and-take. Although I gotta say the new YDN website's posting board format has LOST its ZING .

All the home-made headlines are GONE and the username looks like the "ingredients" section on a Hershey Bar with about as much visual impact.The little genderless shadow-cameo-icons look like Monopoly pieces without their color or charm.

The whole thing is washed out, standardized and cookie-cutter eye-monotony compared with the previous posting-board. WHAT WAS YDN THINKING?

I'll keep an eye out for your username. And thanks for getting past the "disgusting... closeminded...and ... condescending " reaction.

Be well,
PK
Posted by theantiyale on September 4, 2010 at 1:41 a.m.

.. link text



PS: The mother of my childhood (1940's/50's) lived at a time when a man could beat his wife with impunity for not being "ladylike".

Wearing slacks, driving a ten ton truck with stand-up gear shift, clutch, breaks and accelerator, and defying racism DEFINITELY WERE NOT LADYLIKE. See her photo in link above. Unfortunately, she's in a dress!

PK
Posted by theantiyale on September 4, 2010 at 2:43 p.m.permalinkeditsuggest removal..


The Yale Daily News


Brodsky: A serious need for casual feminists



I came to Yale sure I could retire from my role as an angry feminist. I had stumbled across my political inclinations accidentally in my early schooling; I was a bossy, opinionated kid, and couldn’t quite figure out what being a girl had to do with anything. Gender equality struck me as such an obvious, logical necessity and I was sure Yalies would all be on board, so I could redirect my attention to more interesting problems.

However, my first few days proved me wrong. After the old “Sex Signals” workshop — which has thankfully since been changed — one classmate expressed confusion as to why it was OK for a girl to change her mind about sex after taking off her shirt. In Econ 111, I was rejected by two all male problem-set groups. In the Davenport dining hall, I was told that history was determined by great men, and maybe women just didn’t have it in them. I had come to Yale to try on a million different hats, but I found myself forced into an old one, shouting in vain — often literally.

This is a disappointing memory I share with many Yale women and one which I suspect many freshmen will soon carry as well. Unfortunately, it was also no exception to the pattern of subtle, ingrained misogyny, veiled by an air of enlightened liberalism, that I have continued to find for the last two years — a status quo that is both inherently harmful and which lays the foundation for more serious, dangerous sexism.

However, I strongly believe that this need not be the case for the next two. And for this, I turn to the class of 2014: We need you to be casual feminists.

Such a rallying cry might sound anticlimactic, but a large population of individuals each claiming a small stake in combating campus misogyny is exactly what we need. Of course, Yale must have its diehards, and I encourage all freshmen to run for the board of the Women’s Center, join a member group, write for publications like “Broad Recognition” or “Manifesta,” and contribute to discussions about reforming the University’s absurd sexual assault and maternity policies (columns for another time).

But those of you who will probably don’t need my encouragement.

The rest of you have just as important a task: Speak up. Women and men of the class of 2014, protect your friends who are targeted, and call out the insensitive. This doesn’t have to be dramatic; you don’t have to make a sign, change your attitude toward shaving or become a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major. If your entire class keeps an eye out for each other, sticking up for those affected by prejudices based on sexuality or gender, you can make Yale a safer place while debunking the myth of the separate feminist species.

Why do we need to move towards universal ownership of feminist concerns? First, when we leave all the shouting to those who are most offended, the point is easier to ignore. If a casual feminist called out classmates making sexist remarks in the dining hall or sitting around a common room, the disrespectful friend would likely reconsider his or her action. Yet currently, often everyone is silent or the token feminist at the table is forced to take on the responsibility. And when a message from any source becomes repetitive, it fades into white noise. This is particularly true at Yale, where the feminist is seen as a separate type of student, with a concrete wall dividing those who take on the title and those who do not. It is disturbing to see the number of students who genuinely support women’s rights but, because they don’t fit the stereotype, are reluctant to brand themselves as feminists.

The second reason such a shift is needed on campus is that the Women’s Center has better things to do with its time than wage dining hall war. I am not a member of the board and cannot speak to its views, but have as much a stake as any student in its functions. Clearly, the subtle sexism of Yale students is dangerous and requires a response. But seriously, we live in a crazy world and dedicated individuals shouldn’t feel they have to waste their time destigmatizing campus feminism when there are more pressing problems facing women at this school, in New Haven and around the world.

I must admit that, in addition to these two reasons, I hold another hope for this atmosphere of casual feminism at Yale. Fighting for our rights is about expanding opportunities, but for feminists on this campus, it can sometimes seem like each time we speak out, our options are narrowed. Class of 2014, you should be able to forge whatever identity you choose. Your concern for women’s rights should not limit your activities or predefine you in your classmates’ eyes. If everyone does their part in combating misogyny at Yale, feminism can be just another perspective students bring to all corners of campus, rather than a characteristic restricting young men and women to specific circles.


Class of 2014, if you start early, it can be done. We’re counting on you. Casually.

Alexandra Brodsky is a junior in Davenport College