Volume 42 - Issue 4

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-I MADE POSSIBLE BY A GRANT FROM

Editor-in-Chief •

Ben Lasman

Managing Editors Haley Cohen, Kate Selker

Copy Editor •

Elsie Kenyon

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Senior Editor

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Laura Zax: •

Editorial Staff Max Ehrenfreund, Sarah Mich, Jacque Feldman, Ari Berkowitz, Nick . .

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Production Staff Timothy Shriver, Samantha Ellner, Helena Malchione, Abigail OwenPontez -

Members and Directors Emily Bazelon, Roger Cohn, Peter B. Cooper, Jonathan Dach, Torn Griggs, Brooks Kelley, Kathrin Lassila, Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, Fred Strebeigh, Thomas Strong

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Advisors Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Joshua Civin, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Daniel KtJrtz-Phelan, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, David Slifka, John Swansburg, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin

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Friends

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Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Emily Bazelon, Anson M. Beard, Jr., Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Brant, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Daphne Chu, Jonathan M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, Masi Denison, Alben J. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang, Walter Jacob, Jane Kamensky, Tina Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Jonathan Lear, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean O'Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Lauren Rabin, Fairfax C. Randal, Roben Randolph, R. Anthony Reese, Rollin Riggs, Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Anhur Sager, Richar~ Shields, W. Ha rnpton Sides, Lisa Silverman, Scott Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulstnan, Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Wilson, Jessica Winter, Angela Stent Yergin Photo Credits P. 4-7, lllustrations by Kate Selker P.lO, Yale University P.l2, P. 25, Haley Cohen P. 15-17, Jess Cole P.13, Google Maps Cover Design by Ben I asman

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THE NEW JOURNAL

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The magazine about Yale

Volume 42, No. 4

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FEATURES

and New Haven February 2010

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MINOR INFRACTION Chika Chika Yeah Fake ID, Fake ID!

by Bob Jeffery

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THE IMPOSTOR'S GUIDE TO YALE Two impostors show us how to make the most of the university, uninvited.

by Ari Berkowitz and jacque Feldman 20

PAINT & SWITCH How one contracting company paints a pretty pic. ture of a risky venture.

by Haley Cohen •

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FALSEMEMORY The Beinecke spares no penny to acquire rare treasures. How do they make sure they're real?

by Sarah Mich •

STANDARDS 4

POINTS OF DEPARTURE Handwriting experts, anime, graduate associates and con classes.

15 PROFILE Risque Business by Jess Cole

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PERSONAL ESSAY Time Out by jake Conway

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ENDNOTE

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Impostor of the Year Award by Laura Zax •

The New Journal is published five times during the academic year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Office address: 305 Crown 5beet. All contents Copyright 2008 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher and editor in chief is prohibited. While this magazine is published by Yale College students, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seventy-five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and Haven community.

Subscriptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One year, $18. Two years, $32. The ew Journal is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and ew Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All lettets for publication must indude address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for pub ication.

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BIG MEN ON CAMPUS Their numbers are small: emails to the administrative offices of the .residential colleges revealed only five names spread across two colleges, Davenport and Saybrook. Few students in the general Yale College student body know of their existence. Unlike masters, deans, or professors, they do not look or behave so differently from undergraduates. Instead, they live among us, as us :Jmost. Though they live, eat, shower and sleep amidst undergraduates, they are no longer in college themselves. Yes, several graduate students, still suspended in a dormitory lifestyle after many of their peers have moved on to independence and adulthood, live among us in the residential colleges.

Dov Fox, YLS '10, however, seems perfectly content with his on-campus residen- . tial situation in Davenport. "I eat most, if not all, of my meals here," he explains, referring to the advisory sessions he schedules with students in the college's dining hall to discuss summer options, career plans, how to develop research projects or get to know professors. Even if he has no official plans to meet with students, he sits with them anyway. ''I'm kind of annoying.

I sit down and introduce myself I try to be a presence, so that students feel comfortable coming to me."

While an undergraduate at Harvard, Fox interacted with the network of graduate students who live in the Upperclass Houses, Harvard's equivalent of Yale's colleges, who advise undergraduates in a range of different fields and academic dis-

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ciplines. Entering Yale Law School, Fox wanted to relate with undergraduates in a similar capacity. He. contacted.the masters and deans of the colleges expressing his background and interest. Though Davenport's Master Richard Schottenfeld and Dean Craig Harwood had never hosted graduate students in their dorms before, they were interested in Fox entering the college's community. Now completing his last year of law school, Fox has been a resid~nt of Davenport for the entirety of his graduate school career. .

Fox, who takes his advising duties as an affiliate very seriously: No doubt, he is a serious guy: a former. Rhodes scholar, Fox is also the author of a book on the admissions process and residential life at Harvard, and has published articles on bioethics and law in multiple academic journals. As intimidating as his resume may be, however, Fox is mild-mannered, soft-spoken and endearingly enthusiastic about Davenport and his fellow residents. so much," he says. "It's been the most serious thing I've done in New Haven for the

formative part of their lives. I think it's neat to be a part of that." Townsend interacts with his undergrad neighbors not only at the dinner table, but also on the basketball court. Talking about his involvement on the Saybrook intramural basketball team, Kenneth mentioned, "The other week, we were playing Calhoun, and some guy on the other team was giving me a hard time, saying, 'Why is there some thirty-year-old fellow on your team?"'

Kenneth is, in fact, nearly thirty. But Rachel Schon, a graduate affiliate in Davenport, is the same age as members of this year's graduating class. A native Londoner, Schon completed her undergraduate degree at Cambridge last year, where college is three instead of four years long. Now a student at Yale Divinity Sch,ool, she lives in Davenport as a Clare Mdlon Fellow, a program that allows for two Yale College graduates live and study at ClareCollege, Cambridge, and two Clare students come to New Haven each year.

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playing Calhoun, a•td past three years." some on the oth He spread the word. A classmate of y et Fox's from Oxford, Kenneth Townsend, tea111 Was giving me a hard · d's suggesres1·dent1·al co11ege at h.1s £nen tion. ''As soon as I decided .to come here,

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Dov said I should email the masters of the colleges about my interest," Townsend explained, his native Mississippi accent not fully erased by a decade pursuing his studies in the UK and New England.

Though Townsend has a stand-alone single room, he shares a bathroom with Saybrook undergrads. "Last Friday, Feb Club had parties on the first through fourth floors of Entryway C." Townsend lives on the fifth floor. "It's times like these that I feel like, I'm 28, I should move on," he says. "But the benefits definitely out:weigh the costs." Townsend receives free room and board in exchange for coordinating the Mellon Forum dinners for the college and managing the scheduling for the Underbrook, Saybrook's theater facility. While room and board are no doubt important, Kenneth enjoys college life for more than its convenience and financial advantages. "Undergraduates are at a very .

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Schon's living experience could not be more different from· that of Fox and Townsend's. Her age, and the fact that unlike the other two, she is not an affiliate of the college with official responsibilities, naturally changes her interaction with Davenport students. "I feel more like an undergraduate. The senior class is really friendly; they've invited me to parties," says Schon, who is dating a senior in Ezra Stiles. "I've made the conscious decision to see Davenport College and Slifka as my social community." As both a college resident and a graduate student, Rachel has received her fair share of blank stares. ''I'm constantly having to explain myself," she told me. ·· It makes sense the concept of a grad affiliate may be' hard to grasp for the Yale senior looking eagerly towards his diTHE NEW JOURNAL •

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ploma and a life beyond the white walls of a crowded dormitory. But for Fox, Townsend and Schon, the decision to live in the company of students up to a decade their junior represe·n ts less a retreat to the past or a fear of the future than a grownup decision to contribute actively and passionately to a collegiate community. Fox, for one, in unambiguous in his commitment to Davenport: "It's definitely my home."

-Helen Knight

THE LETTER OF THE LIE

checks under magnification for the .rypes of retouching and wavering that indicate forgery isn't quite front-page news. But 14 years into the job, Kyle's interest was called to the Lindbergh case and she started spending much of her free time researching it. She began transferring trial transcripts and microfiche notations from The Yale Library and The National Ar:chive in Washington to her little house in Hamden, gathering evidence for her growing conviction that the jury, which sentenced German Bruno Hauptmann to death in 1935, had condemned an innocent man. So began a project that would consume her for twenty-three years.

"These ransom notes read like a story," Kyle says of the handwritten messages, copies of which she has framed on the wall of her study. The first clue that pushed Kyle toward her conspiracy theory (and the subject of her self-published book "The Dead Poets Plus One") was the notes' misspellings redy, mony, shal, gete, wo. "An immigrant who can barely speak English?" Kyle asks, referring to Hauptmann. Her doubt is palpable.

She pulls the The Complete Works of Chaucer from her bookshelf: "These are all words from The Canterbury Tales."

Kyle indicates other match-ups between the text of the notes and texts by Donne and Milton. These concordances convince Kyle that some man of letters, motivated by "money and the desire to deceive the world," had been hired by the Lindbergh ring to write the notes.

As Kyle's case spins out, it gets weirder.

After surveying the handwriting of major literary figures of the time, she landed on Thomas Wolfe, the early 20th century author most famous for Look HomewardAngel. Wolfe's handwriting does look markedly similar to the handwriting of the ransom notes and Kyle finds other links. Wolfe graduate from Harvard; Lindbergh's lawyer graduated from Harvard. The ransom notes were postmarked &om Brooklyn Heights,

Like most people who reach the age of76, Ana Kyle is set in her beliefs. A handwriting analyst, she does not care much for email. She has no doubts that personality can be divined through penstrokes. And she believes, beyond conversion, that the fifteen ransom notes in the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping case were written by American novelist Thomas Wolfe. On the last count, she's not in good ~ompany.

In the winter of 1935, the toddler son of aviator-socialites Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was snatched from the couple's New Jersey home, and a peculiar ransom note riddled with spelling rn istakes and grammatical errors was left in his place. As the search for Lindbergh, Jr. continued, so, too, did the influx of mysterious missives.

The notes ultimately totaled more than n 1,700 words all of them, of course, handwritten. Thus, what journalist H.L Mencken called "the biggest s~ory since the Resurrection" was of particular interest to handwriting specialists. Seven such SO experts were employed during the trial.

Kyle's daily work as a-handwriting specialist was decidedly less glamorous: examining quick claim deeds, wills, and

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ANIMATION NATION

Sometimes people fly. Sometimes they yell. Sometimes they fight, with their f • • feet and their fists, pounding faces. Their VlCWIItg eyes are enormous some opened wide

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where Wolfe made his home. Misspellings from the ransom notes "efery day'' and "wronk" appear in a story, "One of the Girl in Our Party," that Wolfe was writing at the time of the kidnapping.

The more Kyle talks about her theory, the more she uses the word "they." She bought six copies of the Wolfe novel From Death to Morning, because she was worried "they" would destroy it. Wolfe himself was not a killer; "they" hired him to write the notes without telling him what they were going to do. The handwriting on a note from Hauptmann to his broker looks different from his marriage certificate used in the trial: evidence that "they" had Wolfe reletter the document to implicate the young German. In 1998, Thomas Wolfe's old home went up in flames. Who was responsible? They were.

She keeps a leg up on "them" by imagining an intricate life for Wolfe by memorizing passages of his work, keeping the forger in her grasp by becoming intimately familiar with his biography.

"They can do a lot," she warns, ing a stack of handwriting manuals back to her bookshel£ "But they can't change Wolfe."

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and round like cherries, others pointier, almond shaped. There are monsters, on occasion, space creatures or enormous spiders that bleed maroon juices and snarl. Sometimes there are magical elks multicolored shade and stripes of lamp-

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light on dark streets. Sometimes there are swords and sometimes there's sex. There . are·subtitles, in English. If there weren't, you couldn't catch a word. We're watching imported cartoons, shipped through the television waves from Japan. It's Anime. Anime, in Japanese, simply means "animation." For the most part, Anime seems like your average Saturday Morning Cartoon. They're often based on Manga Qapanese comics), just as the Batman and Spiderman series are based on Marvel Comics. With a little television magic, the pictures move. The sketches come ih. all shapes and shades. They're the flat pastels of Care Bears and the primary hues of Loony Tunes~ Yale Anime Society is watching its weekly episode of Cowboy Be Bop in the basement of Branford College. Here at their "viewing circle," there are ten or so figures in hoodies and polo shirts, cargo pants and skirts. Nobody says hi. Shuffling in at 9:30 pm, I'm late, and they're already engaged, save for one young man in the back, who is happily brandishing a homemade wooden sword, and his victim, who is playfully punching him back.

Jazz music slips from the speakers, and there's a rocky spacescape on the screen. · The Anime Society's oldest member, . a graduate student named Josh, explains the show to me in whispers from his spot on a black leather couch. Somebody tells us to be quiet, but Josh responds that he's "pulling rank" as a Viewing Circle veteran and keeps talking. Cowboy Be Bop, he explains, a "genre skipping space western." Each episode of action packed fighter jets and busty romance is set to a different .musical theme. Tonight there are trombones and saxophones making the space cowboys' shuttleships dance.

The Anime Society is an accomplished bunch they are political junkies, students of literature, philosophers and musicians but tonight they're letting their eyes turn blue from the screen, letting their serious daytime world morph into sornething utterly fantastical. You can see the reflection of the cartoon in a few pairs of glasses. Fernando, a senior member, molds his body into the couch as the spaceship lands, and Josh's body is tense in observation, muscles rubberband taut as he watches a man hop out of the ship and onto the bumpy gray surface of 6

"DO YOU HAVE A COMRADE? some distant planet. Alex, a sophomore, In life, darkness looms one inch away has her computer on her lap, trying to manage homework and viewing·simulii~"·~ . from you. This world is truly full of mistaneously, but she's rapt at the screen·. ' ' . · takes ....... now, won't you waste your life In this moment, nobody's a student any away with us?" longer -they're all bystanders to a drama that cannot be missed. By now, they're all -Kate Selker standing on spacerock themselves, and they all fall silent.

The Anime man is wearing a red coat. He is our hero. He rushes towards another young mari, who is lying flat on the crater-land, gasping, big eyes pulled flat into thin, tired lines. Our hero looks on~ kneeling, worried. In the back of the Branford television room, the boy with · his sword has stopped trying to hit his friend. A couple to my left moves closer, · links arms.

But back on the screen, the man lying prone is now just barely talking, exhaust' ed from battle. It had been a spacerocket CLASS CON fight, with yellow explosions and grey smoke, loud snaps and swishes and bangs.

Tucked away in an office on the third His spacecraft damaged, he was forced to floor of WLH, Professor Kirk Wetters is attempt a crash landing but botched it. pulling a con job. While his colleagues in He's hurt. the German Studies department lecture In his last moments, he tells the redon the brothers Grimm and the Weimar coated hero about Julia, someone they Republic, Wetters teaches classes whose both know and miss, and both maybe connection to the studies of his colleagues love; too. is tenuous "Literature, Politics and the "Where is she now?" our hero Public Sphere," "Literature of Travel and asks. The dying man does not respond, Tourism," and, this past fall, "Confidence but he speaks in whispers of the woman.

Games: Fakes, Frauds, and Counterfeits."

He remembers her from bygone days, Wetters' desire to teach a course on there, in the corner seat of the bar. "She confidence games was sparked by Orson always sat there .... she always requested Welles film F for Fake, the famed directhe same song, and smiled, sadly ... tor's late-career meditation about art smiled." It's a cliffhanger. The men's faces as forgery, the artist as forger.

Indeed, fade.

Wetters includes on his syllabus Thomas As the jazz slows, we see a campfire Mann's Confessions of Felix Confiback on planet earth, we're quickly dence Man: 7be Early Years, the famous shuttled back to reality with the glaring novel narrated from the first-person perstereotype: there's an American Indian spective of a con man a doubly unrelichief crosslegged in wild regalia, headdress able narrator. and all, talking to a little boy. They see a But the desire to study such dubious shooting star. protagonists is hardly what drew most stu"That is no ordinary star," the cheiftan dents to the course.

One student discovsays, ponderous. "It is the tear of a warered the class through his interest in psyrior. He who has finished his battle somechology and improv comedy. A graduate where on the planet." student who took the course last semester The scene pans out with the campfire had worked on cases of ID theft, another smoke, to the sky over rockcliffs, then the in advertising. Failed relationships and the sunset, and the jazz gets lonelier, and the sting of betrayed confidence informed ancredits roll. "Next Episode On Cowboy other student's Qecision. Understandably, Be Bop," the screen in Branford flashes. then, the class currency was often personal Cryptic subtitles to prepare us for the inbaggage. Lessons flowed from one personstallment to come:

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al tale of deception to another. And, of course, class discussion itself could be an interactive lesson in conning: convincing the professor that you'd done your homework But the course's academic anchor was Hterature. Wetter uses literary analy- . sis as a means . of seeing the con man not merely for the con, but also for the man. American literature in particular romanticizes the con man as an ideal of ~ individualism, entrepreneurship, and consummate freedom: the trickster is in complete control of his end and identity. ~ Yet in German, the word for con man literally translates .to "high class beggar.'' "" The con man may have you in his thrall, but he's fundamentally dependent: he ~ needs you, desperately, to believe him.

Confidence is a precious resource, and the con man requires it in abundance. ...

As such, being a con man is not something that every Tom, Dick, and Bernie ~ is cut out for. "There are only two things that would make you into a con man," ~ suggests Keith Rubin ' 12, one of Wetters' students. "The first is a man with absolutely p.othing to lose, and the second is a psychopath."

titude towards your relationships the intuitive reaction for many victims or you can choose to accept the stam with a sigh and move on. However, acceptance doesn't mean you've thrown up your · hands and resigned yourself to the con man's insidious ubiquity. On the contrary, it means you've denied the scammer his ultimate moral victory: the destruction of the very idea of confidence.

You've conned the con man. .

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I' things are only • that would m e you tnto 1 con ma11. e first is a tna•l with absolutely nothing to lose, d the second 1 is a psychopath." l In Rubin's opinion, the most sinister

feature of the scammer is the subtleness of his crime. The con man's successful - schemes meld seamlessly into everyday life. The conned does not discover the con until it's too late. Philosophers often address this particularly disturbing quality of cons, arguing that a ~arried man who is totally oblivious to his w ife's infidelity is in worse straits the man signing divorce papers. The authenticity of our experiences is one of the fuJ?.d amental - qualities of a good life, and con s com pletely undercut this authenticity.

But perhaps the most pragmatic lesson this class taught was what to do ifyou have the misfortune (or perhaps fortune) of discovering you've been conned. You can develop a hardened, more cynical atFebruary 20 10

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COPYING &

PRINTING

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Beinecke spares no penny to acquire rare treasures. So how do they make sure they're real?

.By Sarah Mich •

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On the fourth floor of the Art Gallery, them without any authorization from Suzanne Boorsch pulls a print from a black me whatsoever not to mention, without box labeled, "Unauthorized Reproduction, any payments whatsoever.

Tide: Laissez-Faire (Les Affaires)."

The phony print is one of about thirBeneath a red sky, two men are fighting. ty pieces of art fraud kept in the Prints, One is faceless and the ·other has a fedora.

Drawing~, and Photographs Collection at Both wear grey slacks and have giant, rug- · the Yale University Art Gallery. The pieces are stored together in two airtight solander ged hands. To the left, a policeman turns his back to them; he is also wearing grey boxes, separated from sunlight, water, and, pants. The scene, with its swatches of color of course, authentic artwork.

The set is varied. A few are obvious and bantering men, is comically straightforward: aimless rage and controlled pas-. fakes, the words "Facsimile Reproduction" sivity together on a single patch of water- stamped in black across the back. Others don't declare their own disingenuousness color cement.

The work does not speak for itself- or so openly, and simply have "forgery shelf" at least not entirely. Tucked under its matte written in pencil next to the work's year is a note, written by one Ben Shawn, in or- and medium. Their subjects are equally diange marker on a torn sheet of notebook . verse. One shows a grey charcoal ballerina paper, and it is even more blunt and con- sitting bent over with her head between her legs. She is oddly graceful, but you wonder frontational than the work itself: The title (Les Affaires), substituted if Rodin would have thought the same. To- · in panmtheses, is as phony as are the ward the bottom of one of the boxes is a prints being sold by an unauthorized large "Matisse" sketch of a woman with a • • . original print, entitled floral blouse, and above it a simple painting 2aissez-Faire~ was authorized by me to that Suzanne, the Robert L. Solley Curabe made by two competent printmaker·s. tor of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, 7hey went out of business and sold their finds entirely unappealing. "I don't know scr-eens to another· printmaker who has who would want this, even if it were a real been printing them hor"l ibly and selling Whistler!" she says, laughing as she lifts up •

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the glassine paper covering the print.

Yet within this collection, the grey and red print and the accompanying words of Ben Shawn stand out as a self-referential oddity, a work of forgery whose very subject matter is illegal behavior. In the print, after all, the policeman turns a blind eye to public disorderliness. It's a sarcastic allusion to the piece's title, the principle that the government should not interfere with the action of individuals, especially in industrial affairs, trade, and, indeed, the forgery of art. In a field where quotidian processes of authentication are overshadowed by the mystery and sex appeal of a good art scandal, there is something strangely apt about a work that dares to be so blunt and matter-of-fact about the whole thing .

Shawn's piece may be recent history, but documented art forgery dates back at least 400 years.

By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the presence of art fraud, already pervasive throughout Germanic art, was spreading across the Europe. As Yale professor Christopher Wood writes in his book Forgery, Replic~ Fiction, "an attitude of rational skepticism toward the truth claims of a document or a relic" developed extensively

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during the Medieval period. The idea of a fictional work, with a different claim to the truth than the original, had entered into the vernacular.

From there, the history of art forgery began its long and seductive path to the fetishization of fakes and frauds in the modern day: the Vinland Map, an object of topographical intrigue housed in the Beinecke library and known around the world, discovered in 1965; the work of Hans van Meegeren, the rivalrous Dutch painter whose Vermeer-esque works · proliferated in Holland during the Second World War; the constant presence of Dali and Rodin forgeries throughout the twentieth century market. Finding their way into our notions of art and deception, many of these scandals have become household names .

Yet on a practical level, at the places where books and works of art are prized, these concerns are omnipresent. Institutions such as Beinecke Library and the Yale University Art Gallery function alongside this history, their diligence and common sense acting as continuous procedural safeguards against fraud.

Both institutions bring in massive numbers of acquisitions each year from a variety of sources. According to E. C. Schroeder, head of Technical Services at Beinecke Library, the facility acquires almost one thousand linear feet of manuscript material and 15,000 books on an annual basis, ranging from 15th century texts to books published yesterday. It might seem easy for a fake to shuffie in along with the fray.

Yet despite these numbers, Timothy Young, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts says that during his twenty years at the Beinecke the sea ndals have been few. "For those who want to hear about exciting fraud, it's a little boring," Young says. "None are terrifically upsetting or embarrassing."

The reason for this, he suggests, is that the process of verification is in many ways built into the system, starting with the source of the acquired material. "When we are making a purchase, we go through dealers who are truly experienced," he expia ins. "If they make us an offer that's too good to be believed, then we don't believe . " lt.

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the bookseller's responsibility to make sure an item is real that's part of the service you're paying for, and it would hurt their business to make a mistake." Discussion about the provenance of an item, its physical properties, and the terms of sale are all negotiated before purchase. After acquisition, curators will carefully inspect new works, counting pages of books and cataloguing the contents of archives.

But, as with all good systems, this one, too, has had its share of complications.

Boorsch recalls one such time at the Gallery several years ago, when a 15th century print came on the market. "It was incredibly rare maybe one of four or five impressions known in the whole world and I thought if we could get it, the piece would be a wonderful acquisition." Boorsch and a paper conservator from the Gallery took the train to New York to look at the print, and found the paper and watermark to be historically accurate. Yet Boorsch felt uneasy about the piece, and when she returned to work the next day she went through her own dusty drawers, only to find a photograph of an impression, known to be an original, archived in England. She noticed that this picture had the exact same nick on the top right corner of the page as the one at the auction house. This confirmed her unease: the "print," which was clearly a deliberate copy of an impression that was already accounted for, was only as "original" as the photo she held in her hand. "We were very close to buying it," Boorsch says. "I had to go back and tell the dealer what I found."

While the advancement of digital technologies has made the quality of facsimiles far more accurate and difficult to discern, curators often fall back on a much more old-fashioned tool for evaluating a work's authenticity: instinct. "When you've been working with drawings or prints or photographs for a while, you tend to develop almost a sixth sense for when things are offkilter," says Young. "You work with these objects for twenty years, and you can look at a book and say it looks like a book from 1720. If it feels clean and shiny and pretty, how could it have survived 300 years?"

Alex Nemerov, an Art History professor, agrees. "For a connoisseur of art, a lot matters in the first moment of perception," says An History professor Alex Nemerov.

"However one responds in that instant, whatever the gut reaction is, it's bound to •

be right in some way."

Yet even works that don't pass Nemerov's visceral test can have a place in the archives.

At the Beinecke, Schroeder says, dubious materials can sometimes fall into step with the mission of the library itsel£ "They become objects of scholarly inquiry," he says. ''As long a.S they add to the research value of that collection."

In the 1960s and 70s, for example, little booklets of poems by _Gertrude Stein and T.S. Eliot began to sell on the manuscript market. Curators started addirig them to collections, assuming that they had overlooked these little "Butterfly Books." As more and more of these pamphlets appeared, suspicions about their authenticity began to mount, and a novelist and Yale graduate named Frederic Prokosch soon admitted to having forged the booklets. Yet the admission didn't render the pamphlets worthless. They had already achieved an archival value all their own. "We have a complete set of them," says Young. "The objects have developed their own life"independent of Stein or Eliot."

Though the library errs on the side of keeping objects like the Butterfly Books that might add depth to future research, Young laments the possibility that forgeries outshine originals. "People are interested in fakes and forgeries but we have thousands of books that are amazing and unexplored, but there is real, deep scholarship to be done with true artifacts of our cultural and publishing history."

Suzanne and I have moved on to the second of the boxes, and toward the end we find a tan piece of drawing paper with a coffee stain in the bottom right corner.

In the center is a hand-drawn frame, and inside it, a picture of George Washington.

The pencil strokes are faint and simplistic; this Washington appears to be a man of contours over all else. Written below the portrait is the title, "Pencil sketch of General Washington from life taken by Chas.

Wilson Peale, 1777."

And directly below that, in compact cursive at the bottom of the sketch: "This was drawn by P. Tolman for me to show how easy it is to make a fake."

TN Sarah Mich is a junior in Saybrook She is staffon TN]

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Chika Chika Yeah Fake ID, Fake ID!

By Bob Jeffery

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On Saturday, February 6th, Toad's was raided by police. If you're envisioning a SWAT team of NHPD officers infiltrating every entrance of the (in)famous New Haven dance club and going LAPD on the unsuspecting revelers inside, you'll be disappointed. The reality was far less dramatic: the music stopped; someone turned on the lights, and a few cops surveyed the dance floor for minors. Two underage patrons who neglected to put down their drinks were busted for consuming alcohol and potentially using false identification.

This is nothing Toad's hasn't seen before. Eighty-seven Toad's-goers were de. tained when the nightclub was raided back in November 2005. The ordeal landed Toad's a $90,000 fine and a 90-day forced suspension during the summer of 2007 after the case was finally settled. But for current Yalies, many of whom forget that they're not legally permitted to drink as soon as they set foot on Old Campus, this intensification of police activity comes as a surprise in an otherwise lax drinking environment. Toad's in particular seemed to have successfully evaded police scrutiny when it began admitting 19 and 20 year olds in an effort to <:urb fake ID use in January of last year. However, this most recent incident may be just one part of a larger crackdown on underage drinking •

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"But exactly how ma•ty McLovins ·are nervously fingering through their wallets at bars aatd liquor stores around Yale?" '

and fake ID use by police in the greater New Haven area.

Symptoms of an intensified response by both Yale and New Haven police emerged last semester, perhaps in reaction to an abnormally high number of alcohol-related hospitalizations. The Yale Daily News reported that several students who purchased alcohol on Halloween weekend were approached by the police after leaving various liquor stores. Those caught possessing alcohol as minors had their liquor seized and some were slapped with hefty fines .

In that weekend alone, the total number of citations issued last semester by the Yale police tripled, and this heightened police activity ensued for weeks thereafter. Another, slightly more fortunate Yale student who wishes to remain anonymous reports that his fake ID got scanned the weekend of the Harvard-Yale football game at a liquor store where it had always worked before. He was denied, and when he stepped outside empty-handed the police who

had been watching from across the street searched his backpack for the alcohol that he had luckily not been able to buy.

Such stories have become somewhat foundational to the American college experience a staple of being a "not-quiteadult" in a country with one of the highest drinking ages in the world. For the nearly three quarters of college students who are under the legal drinking age, fake IDs are almost commonplace. Part of the success of the 2007 comedy Superbad was its ability to so beautifully (and hilariously) capture a feeling to which many young Americans can relate: buying alcohol with a fake ID for the first time. But exactly how many McLovins are nervously fingering through their wallets at bars and liquor stores around Yale? Who has fake IDs? Where do they get them? And do they work? Do Yale students' smarts make them more likely to curl up with a book than to seek out cheap, alcohol-induced thrills on a Saturday night before they are of the appropriate age? Or has that same cunning made them equally well versed at deception, seeking refuge from endless Cold War reading at the bottom of a handle of · Popov?

A survey of more than 200 Yale students suggests that the number of under.age Yalies with fake IDs is higher than one THE NEW JOlJRNAL

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may expect for a school that hand picks picture on it. The bouncer took a good, long look, darting his eyes back and forth its students from a pool of more than 20 thousand nerds. between the ID and an electronic palmpilot-sized scanner made to help bouncers According to the survey, some 31.5 spot fakes, before he put the ID in his back percent of respondents have a fake ID that pocket and said, "Have a good night." they currently use. An added 28.5 per"Excuse me?" The boy asked, feigning cent have had a fake ID at some point in to take offense as if he had no idea what their lives but either lost it, got it taken, or had gone awry. · turned twenty-one and no longer use one.

Fakes are much more prevalent among · · "Have a good night," the bouncer re. upperclassmen than their younger peers. peated .

Only 20 percent of freshmen confessed At a loss for what to do next, and havto having a fake ID. However, this figure ing paid $150 for that piece of plastic, he jumped exponentially amongst sophoquickly went from tough guy "Hey man, that's my real ID, give it back!"- to, mores polled, 62o/o of whom admitted to ever having a fake. Numbers increased well... this: "Look, I don't even want. to again among the class of 2011, 65% of drink! It's a school night and we just came whom had fakes. Of the seniors polled, to play Big Buck. Can I please have my 85% have had fake IDs at Yale at some ID back? Please?" But the sympathy appoi-nt. The trend suggests that, although peal didn't work and the bouncer paid no most students do not come to Yale with a attention to him. The situation was hope- . less, that is, until the boy desperately cried, fake ID, many are quick to learn the ropes ''I'll pay you!" and soon hop on the bandwagon.

And the dupes work. Over 90% of stuThe bouncer perked up. He leaned in dents with fake IDs at Yale claim success close to the boy and said in a loud whisat least most of the time, while 42°/o claim per, "Here's the deal: I want you to turn their fakes has never been denied in New around, walk out those doors, drop a Haven. twenty on the ground, and I'll meet you So what kinds of IDs work? (Freshmen outside." take note.) Surprisingly, these success rates The young man followed the bouncer's were fairly consistent across the broad catorders exactly and waited nervously for egories ofiDs that Yale students use. 1hose him outside in the New Haven cold. After polled were asked to specify whether they retrieving the Jackson from the floor, the had a real government issued ID that they bouncer emerged as promised and handed got from someone who is now over 21, a the boy his ID back, and then said, "Just so you know, I knew this ID was fake befalsely made ID with their own name and picture on it, or a falsely made ID with cause there's supposed to be a hologram across the bottom" (that's what the palmsomeone else's name and picture on h. As it turns out, falsely made dfivers' licenses pilot must have told him). He continued, "Between you and me, some people fake it with an individual's correct information with a gold marker." · are slightly more successful than those Bouncers aren't the only ones capitalwith someone else's information on them. izing on kickbacks; there's a lot of money Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests in fakes. The fake ID business has become otherwise. Two Yale freshmen who decidan extremely lucrative enterprise for those ed one night to play "Big Buck Hunter," a who have the Photoshop skills and are video arcade game at a certain bar/restauwilling to assume the risks involved in rant in downtown New Haven in which making them. While 40 percent of Yale you shoot enormous animated deer. The students report receiving their ID for free venue requires that patrons be at least 21 from an older friend, Yalies who had their to enter, so our buck hunters needed to use their fakes. The first young man flashed a real New York drivers' license that he had " lilY "

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gotten from his older sister's ex-boyfriend who, save for the fact that he was blonde, looked nothing like him. But the bouncer student handed him a falsely made Mame driver's license with his own name and February 20 10

ID made with their own photo on it paid an average of approximately $110 per ID. Most students with fake IDs at Yale have IDs that are meant to resemble U.S. driver's licenses, and they hail from all over the country. Between the 119 respondents who have fakes, 30 different U.S. states are represented, . the most common being California (24%), New York (15%), and Texas (10%). However, 12 percent of students use fake IDs in ..New Haven that do not pretend to be from the U.S. One junior, who hails from England, had to deal with the freshman year frustration of being legally allowed to drink at pubs back home but not at bars in the state of Connecticut. She did some research online and stumbled upon a U.K. based website that makes fake IDs at a bargain.

For just twenty pounds, approximately 31 dollars, they would mail you a fake U.K. identification card with your picture on it. Of course, until this year, there was no such thing as a U.K. identification cardbut bouncers in ·New Haven don't know that. The junior and her closest friends all placed an order. The fakes have never once failed.

Interestingly enough, it seems that bouncers don't know what to do with themselves when someone hands them a foreign ID. Maybe it's because the date is written differently (dd/mm/yyyy vs. mm/ dd/yyyy), or perhaps its because ID scanners don't have foreign IDs in their databases; but whatever the reason, this group more than any other has the highest success rate with their IDs in New Haven.

When compared to the 91.5 percent of total respondents who say that their ID works "most of the time," 100 percent of those who use fake foreign IDs in New Haven say that it works at least "most of the time," and 61 percent say, "it has never been denied."

So if you can get your hands on a nonU.S. ID, that's the way to go. And you may be able get one for even less than 20 pounds. One Yale sophomore from Mainland China reports fakes on the market for a mere fifty cents.

However, the cost of getting caught with a fake ID is not so inexpensive. According to Connecticut state law, th_e consequences of using a fake ID to buy alcohol, whether it's a falsely made ID or one belonging to someone other than yourself, is a minimum fine of $200 and/or up to •

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unique to New Haven; it is the U.S. college culture that forces these forged identities." thirty days in jail.

The market for fake IDs likely exploded in the wake of the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act that effectively raised the drinking age in the United States to 21. Prior to 1984, the drinking age varied state by state, but the act stipulated that federal revenue be withheld from states that did not comply with the 21 year old minimum drinking age law. While the drinking age is still set by individual states, there is little room for defiance by individual states who needed federal funding to keep their highways flowing.

However, contrary to popular belief, this act did not prohibit the consumption of alcohol outright. Only fourteen states and the District of Columbia specifically outlaw the consumption of alcohol by minors altogether, nineteen states have laws that are somewhat ambiguous, and seventeen states contain clauses that actually permit alcohol consumption by those under the age of 21 in certain circumstances.

In Connecticut, such exceptions can be found couched deep in legal jargon. While possession of alcohol on the street will normally land you a fine upwards of $200 as a minor, you are in fact allowed to "possess" alcohol while accompanied by a parent, guardian, or spouse who is over 21. .

Moreover, just for having a fake drivers license you could be suspended from operating a motor vehicle in the state of Connecticut for two months.

Connecticut state law makes no distinction between IDs that are entirely fake and real IDs that do not belong to the person using it. However, not only does the Yale poll suggest that real IDs are less successful at bars and liquor stores around New Haven, but under federal law, assuming another person's government issued ID is an even nwre severe crime, as it verges on identity theft.

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If you are arrested for underage drinking, it's alway~ better to show your real ID than to flash a cop your fake. Not only do cops tend to value their egos, it is better to be charged with underage drinking than with use of a fake ID, because the former does not result in Jail time while the latter may. .

The fake ID problem is one that is by no means unique to New Haven; it is the U.S. college culture that forces these forged identities. While fake IDs may abound, the truth is that access to alcohol in college does not depend on whether or not you have a fake ID, and cracking down on the latter will not thwart access. One fourth of college students will always be of legal age, and the remaining three fourths will take advantage. So as police everywhere · perpetuate the ebb and flow of harsh enforcement, students will always discover new ways to find fakes and buy booze.

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One man's mission to dress people up without selling out .

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Animal heads surround me. They are stacked on shelves, falling off of counters, staring at me with oversized cartoon eyes. I start reaching out to feel the top of a panda's head when my ·guide appears in the entrance from the parking lot, stomping his feet to get rid of the snow on his boots and leaning a shovel against the doorway. "Those?" he asks with a nod to my furry acquaintances. "We have about 200 of them. And that doesn't include our 97 bunnies."

Meet Jeff Russell, the owner of Costume Bazaar, a cavernous store on State Street that is stuffed with costumes, mascots, face paints, and assorted oddities .. In his baseball cap and a drab pullover, Jeff stands in stark contrast to the sequined mannequins around him_, but he walks through the room with an air of comfort and confidence that makes it clear he feels at home. He ushers me past a row of glitter-encrusted ruby slippers down a set of stairs painted to match the yellow brick February 20 10

road, and into his office .

Once inside, the magic falls away. There are no bright colors, no showy masks. The clutter of costumes upstairs has given way to a different kind of mess downstairs;Jeff's cubicle is completely covered with pictures of family members, playbills, and hockey memorabilia. As we talk, Jeff peers over my head at a t.iny television; the Olympics are on, and, he informs me, he knows several players on the U.S. men's hockey team. Before becoming the owner of Costume Bazaar, Jeff was a college hockey player himsel£ He also spent time as a sports director on an AM station, and a public relations coordinator for a professional hockey team, and is the inventor of the foam goalie pads now in use in the NHL And though becoming the proprietor of a costume store may not seem like the most logical professional choice for someone with Jeff's resume, it was a career move that came as no surprise to his parents. After all, Costume Bazaar is his faro-

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e RtJssells began adding to their collection. acquired Easter B nies, too, and kept them in piles in their garage." ily's business. Jeff's mother, Joan, founded the store in 1964 .

Prior to then, Joan spent much of her time making costumes for her husband, Joey Russell, who played the title character of the Colonel Clown Show, popular at the time on regional television stations. He needed clown suits and Santa suits, which were also coveted by department stores in the area, and so the Russells began adding to a..J.d renting out their collection. They acquired Easter Bunnies, too, and kept them in piles in their garage. Soon, even neighbors and acquaintances began asking for costumes, and Joan opened up a small shop to handle the demand.

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Since then, the shop has moved locations four times and expanded its inventory considerably it's now a 15,000 square foot ,J:>ehernoth roughly twice the size of Toads. As Jeff leads me through the store, I learn that the animal heads that greeted me earlier in the day were just the beginning. Behind a cuttain marked "Employees Orily," I find racks and racks and racks of dresses, tuxedoes, and plastic crowns.

"We own about 40,000 costumes/' Jeff says with a wave of his hand. Costume Bazaar is not for the indecisive. "We ask them to zero. in a bit ahead of time. Look at our website, email us with preferences, just to get their wheels spinning," Jeff answers.

But the Internet is not always a boon for the Bazaar, he explains. While people still enjoy coming into the shop to try on apd buy costumes, they also arrive with a preset sense of their desires based on the image searches that they have already done.

"If someone saw an Alice in Wonderland costume with a white shirt online, that's all they want. Never mind that you have the perfect costume with an off-white shirt."

Overall, though, "coming here is not like going to the dentist or the accountant.

People come in here in a good mood."

The back of the store contains a sewing area with stacks offabric that will be used for the custom costumes the store produces for theat.e r companies. Though these troupes represent· the bulk of the store's long-term cl.ientele, they are hardly the Bazaars only major customers. Corpo. rate rentals are important too: G.E., for example, dresses up about 100 volunteers annually for its employee holiday party.

Additionally, celebrations throughout the year such as Purim and Mardi Gras create small spikes in demand. But nothing, of course, can outdo the seasonal rush of Halloween, For that holiday, Costume Bazaar packs its basement with retail goods and damaged costumes that trick-or-treaters can buy off the rack instead of renting. Halloween accounts for 25 percent of the store's annual gross income, and between Labor Day and Halloween, Jeff works seven days a week to meet the demand. I ask if he is ever shocked by what people come up with, and he slowly shakes his head.

"After a while, nothing surprises me." He motions to a bright, floor-length purple gown: "This could be the 40th time I have seen a guy putting on a purple dress for •

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dren find anything inappropriate in their 'father's store. After all, they can always·put the adult room back when Costume Ba. ' zaar belongs to them.

Halloween has become an even harder • market to corner. In·recent years, there has • been a growth in competition from 'temporary stores that set up in empty store• fronts for the two months before the holiday and disappear right afterwards. Two years ago, he counted 19 of them within seven miles of the Bazaar, and the industry jess Cole is a sophomore in Pierson College. is only expanding. He acknowledges that they are savvy from a profit perspective, but reminds me that he pays taxes yearround and is part of a core.community of New Haven store owners whose rhythms are disrupted by these new arrivals. '~It's been a bigger challenge recently. They definitely take away from our gr~vy."

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He also hints at changes in the demographics of his clientele and, noting a couple of racy Red Riding Hood costumes, I press him for more ~nformation.

"Halloween used to be a kids' industry.

• Now, we target 18- to 30-year-old girls.

Dressing up and the fantasy involved have • • become part of our culture, and its 'the sexier the better."' Young women, then, account for about four out of every ten dollars spent on Halloween costumes, and they also provide a bonus: almost all of the girls · b.dng at least two or three friends to provide feedback or shop for themselves.

Still, Jeff made a personal decision to remove the adult novelty section from the store wh~n his kids became old enough to visit. Jeff feels the financial reverberations of that decision, especially considering the popularity of Very Intimate Pleasures, or V.I.P, an adult-themed store close by. Does he think people ever use Costume Bazaar for more inature self-entertainment?

"I guess some are clean, some are not so clean," he tells me. "40 years ago, people did things like that discreetly. Now, they want a public shock factor at a whole different level." The potential profits, he assures me, are not worth the cost of having his children or anyone else's children find something inappropriate in their father's store. The potential profits, he assures me, · are not worth the cost of having his chil•

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Two imposters (or are they?) show us how to make the most ofYale, uninvited.

by Ari Berkowitz and Jacque Feldman In · 1997, Tonica Jenkins was arrested for faking a resume to gain admission to Yale's School of Medicine. In 2007, it was discovered th_at Shin Jeong-ah, a professor at Korea's Dongukk University had forged a letter alleging that she had earned doctorate from Yale's Graduate School .Two years ago, Akash Maharaj lied about undertaking a rigorous course of study and achieving straight N.s at Columbia to win a transfer into Morse's class of 2008. In all three cases, the repercussions for the outed impostors was severe: In June of 2008, Makharaj pleaded guilty in New Haven Superior Court to · having defrauded Yale of over $31,000 in scholarships, and was ordered to pay the University full restitution or face three years in jail. Shin Jeong-ah lost her job, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and led Dongguk to file a $50 million lawsuit against Yale for mistakenly confirming the ex-professors inflated credentials. Jenkins, for whom a fake Yale application seemed to be only a gateway crime with biting a police officer and attempting to buy $70,000 of cocaine among the others was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempted murder in 2003. .

'While we at 7he New journal certainly to do not condone such acts of criminality, we understand at least in some rethe impulse behind them. Every spects year, thousands high school seniors and transfer applicants are barred from Yale's ivory tower by the crapshoot of college admissions. But while to most of these rejects go gracefully to other schools, the well-informed impostor follows a different path. In the Imposter's Guide to Yale, Ari Berkowitz and Jacque Feldman, bona fide Yalies, show you how to fake it till you make it.

Just don't blow their cover.

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1. If you were given the Student ID number of a pal with an unlimited meal plan, or you stole it when he was up getting his third helping of tofu apple crisp, we offer the following advic~: Use it! Studies by impostors very much like ourselves have found that SID numbers can be used multiple times by multiple people in multiple dining halls if you wait 12 minutes between swipes. While attempts to use unlimited plans to cash in at Durfee's and eat in a dining halls at the same time have failed, the simultaneous swipe officially slides. Which means: give your unlimited SID number out to your friends, they use their Durfee's swipe to get mixers, and then both of you use your SID to get lunch. Impostor: 1, Yale_: 0.

2. The three doors on the north side of Berkeley's dining hall make the college especially vulnerable to access by impostors.

Just make sure Anette is pointing to the Purell disp.e nser before you make your entrance. While she looks the other way in the name of sanitation, you slip past in the name of free food. · 3. Saybrook .is another easy target, as the main entrance is out of sight from the check-in counter. During peak hours, simply sneak inside, claim a table and then assure the dining hall attendant that you already swiped in.

4. A tip for · any hall especially for lunch and dinner: simply offer to bring in the trays of those eating.outside dining halls in common rooms or to come in carrying a plate. No one will ask you to swipe if you're carrying already used materials.

Cutlery is the perfect prop for a culinary con. Take it. Keep it. Use it when you need •

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5. Bring two tupperware containers into the dining hall and collect what cereal you need to stave off late-night hunger. Be bold. Yasha Magarik, a sophomore who speaks openly about his experiences pilfering cereal from dining halls says, "It's not a question of morals." He just gets hun:gry. "Confidence is a big factor," continues Margarik. ''I'm pretty confident when I go to take the cereal. I'm going to get that cereal. And unless they're really opposed

to it, I end up getting it."

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6. As residents of eight-person suites, we attest that we are never bothered, nor even a little perturbed, by the occasional stranger crashing on our futons, or even the occasional stranger still crashed on our futons after Sunday brunch with wine stains all over his shirt. If we don't know him, he must be someone else's friend! So, when you're ready to turn in for the night, simply gain access to the entryway (see below) of one ofYale's bigger suites the TD octet, the Welch 12-pack, or President Levin's house, just to name a few and make yourself at home on its common room futon.

7. To gain access to a residential college or entryway, the would-be impostor can try simply standing outside the door begging passerby to swipe him in. Don't worry about giving yourself away: Yalies do this all the time. To get into Davenport without an ID this morning, the process lasted just 57 seconds and it only took that long because our enabler kept her ID in an especially cavernous purse. A second attempt to get from outside the gate and into an entryway lasted just 49.57 seconds.

8. Some impostors have reportedly succeeded in finding temporary housing in Yale's 22 libraries. Bass is open to the public until 6 p.m. If one is willing to wait it out, it is said that sleeping in a weenie-bin can be quite comfY. 9. Would-be impostors are advised to check out free, open late-night parties thrown by Yale frats on Thursdays (SAE) and Saturdays (DKE). Frat brothers at the door check Yale IDs, but how difficult could it be, really, to get in as a non-Yalie?

"Depends," says one SAE brother. "Male or female non-Yalie? We check IDs, but when it comes to girls, we turn a blind eye." But don't be disheartened, male • Impostors; you can rage, too we suggest cross-dressing. That will make you an . "her "I. rmpost10. If you really can't live without your studies, impostor, just sneak into the back of a big lecture. No one will care. Reportedly Elana Ponet, the wife of Slifka head Rabbi Jim Ponent, chooses one class per semester to sit it on and do some of the assignments for. Last year she committed herself to Daily Themes. Continuing education is possible with or without Yale

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In 2008, a Yale senior made close to $60,000 in one summer painting houses.

As fantastical as it may sound, especially to the many Yale students who see enervating banking and consulting internships as the only way to make m<?ney over the summer, the story of Max Rhodes '09 is no fairy tale. · In an article, seductively titled "Rhodes '09 earns big with paint," published in the Yale Daily News last February, Rhodes described how he spent the summer of 2008 running a painting business through a contracting company called College Pro Painters. He conceded that it is "not an easy job, and it can go horribly wrong if the wrong person is set to do it." But then, as if to suggest that there are very few "wrong" people for the job, he launched into a lengthy list of his previous failures, as if to say "If I did it, anyone can. I wasn't successful with much before I worked with College Pro. I didn't make the debate team, didn't get into the a capella group I tried out for, and got rejected from tour guiding. College Pro really gave me an opportunity to reinvent myself" And, if Yale students needed any more reason to be intrigued, Rhodes also credited his experiences with College Pro for helping :him secure a job at Bain & Company, the prestigious consulting firm, after graduation. $60,000 of income in a single sum1ner?

A resume bullet so impressive it commands a job at Bain? An opportunity for an everyman to transform into an ubermench?

Yale students were sold.

Frank Piasta, YC '09, is perched on the top rung of a ladder leaning against a large, Victorian house in New Canaan. Ornamental carvings, intricate spiral railings and terraces abound - a painter's nightmare. Frank, however, seems unfazed. He swishes his brush methodically across the slats, adding to the Jackson Pollack-esque splatters on his "College Pro Painters" tshirt.

Piasta graduated last spring from Yale, where he played on the soccer team with Max Rhodes, the College Pro legend who also graduated in Yale's class of 2009.

When Piasta struggled to find a job after graduation, Rhodes suggested he sign as a Franchise Manager with College Pro for the summer to pick up some extra money and supplement his resume before searching for a permanent JOb. Piasta thought he had hit the jackpot.

"Max talked about how cool it was to run your own business and made it seem February 20 10

like it would be easy to make a lot of money," Piasta recalls with a sarcastic guffaw.

This afternoon, it's easy to see-that reality's set in. "If you had showed up 20 minutes ago you would have really had a story." .

As I watch him touch up second-floor window frames, Piasta launches into a story just one of many he has to undermine the Rhodes College Pro myth. Laughing, he tells me about how one of his painters, whom he'd found on Craigslist.com, had decided to put that morning's pay towards a liquid lunch of Captain Morgan. Piasta was watching the clock, wondering why his painter was an hour late to come back from a 30-minute break, when a police car pulled up and discharged the mumbling tippler on the steps of the work site: He had been found, the police told him, passed out on the steps of an assisted liv• mg center. .

"Of course I fired him immediately," Piasta assures me. "But it's crazy! Working · for College Pro is very much to be in the real world. You interview your painters, but you can't really tell what they'll be like until they show up at production. You really have to look out for yourself, because nobody else is."

Not even College Pro Painters.

Piasta is one of fourteen current and recently graduated Yale students who worked as Franchise Managers for College Pro Painters this past summer. Instead of fetching coffee for their bosses at internships in New York or Hong Kong, these students were the bosses. They focused mainly on marketing, hiring painters and managing production, leaving the dirty work to hired employees. But when I visited Piasta's final worksite in late September, he and Tom, another member ofYale's class of 2009 who had run a College Pro franchise that summer who asked that his real name not be used for this article, were in fact the only painters.

Piasta was looking to save himself the $8 or $9 an hour he typically paid to employees by painting himself and using only two other painters: Mr. Captain Morgan, who had been let go earlier that afternoon, and Tom. Tom, a friend of Piasta's from Yale, was painting to pick up a little extra cash before moving to Manhattan to search for a finance job. He had closed out his business the week before, barely breaking even after ten weeks on the job.

"It didn't really work out as well for me as it did for other people," remarks Tom of his experience as a Franchise Manager while he picks at paint splotches on his •

Yale sweatshirt. "But regardless, the idea of running your own business at our· age is pretty incredible."

Tom was not alone in his struggles. Six of the 14 Yale students who bought College Pro_ franchises last summer terminated their contracts early and were left in debt in one case for more than $7,000.

Of those who lasted the summer, mo~t . made money, but nobody's earnings . approached what Rhodes had grossed the summer before.

Operating in 32 states and seven Canadian provinces, College Pro Painters is a painting contracting company that hires mostly students and recent graduates to run their own painting businesses. Before Rhodes' first stint at the company in summer 2008, College Pro Painters was not a popular presence on campus - especially wheri compared to ubiquitous banking and consulting heavyweights like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey.

But when last February turned to March and March sent most unemployed Yalies into a frenzy about last minute summer plans, suddenly the name "College Pro Painters" started popping up everywhere. And rumors did too.

You get to run your own business! Did you hear about that Max Rhodes kid? You can make lots of money! He got a job with Bain because of it! It can't be that hard - it's just painting.

Were you to Google "College Pro Painters" you would find that the two top searched results were "College Pro Painters Complaints" and "College Pro Painters Scam" - both clocking in with over 15,000 pages. One reads "College Pro Painting took me out of college, put me in debt and almost ruined my life." Similar hits abound: "I need help guys! I'm caught in a College Pro scam!" The description for a Facebook group titled "College Pro Painters is Exploiting College Students" reads as follows:

1. College Pro Painters is taking advantag~ of students countrywide.

2.Ifyou have bad credit, are in debt, work~d

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as College Pro the ul• • t1n1ate opp ty, or the ultin1ate · how if it was a did Max odes $60,000 in one s " 21

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the whole summer without pay, or maybe even made some money but not the 15, 000 to 20, 000. they said you would earn, then this group is for you.

3. The public needs to know!! These students think that by working 40-hour weeks or more that they will be able to help with the costs of a completing a college degree, but it is not the case when College Pro Painters is the employer.

4. Please do not be afraid to stand up!!

I now had two completely conflicting accounts of College Pro. Was it the ultimate opportunity, or the ultimate mistake? And if it was a mistake, how did Max Rhodes make a killi~g working for the company?

I decided to work from the ground up, learning about the process of running a College Pro franchise from signing to closeout, scraping the false rumors away from the truths like paint off a peeling house.

I started from the inside. .

When we talk on the phone to set up a meeting, Joe Cunliffe, the Vice President of College PrO's New England branch, .sounds strangely suspicious. "What exactly do you plan to write about?" he asks. ''And who exactly have you talked to?" I run down the list- making sure to intersperse the names of those who had positive reviews of College Pro with those whose assessments were less than glowing.

"Wow. Yup, you've gotten to pretty much all of our guys," Cunliffe says.

I ask to be put in contact with College Pro's regional manager for Connecticut, Jordan Driediger, who has had the most direct interaction with the Yale franchisees. Cunliffe refuses. "Lets just see what . we can get through first," he says genially, dismissing the idea without rejecting it outright. He possesses the practiced finesse of a true salesman.

When we meet in person, at the Starbucks where he interviews Yale College Pro applicants, Cunliffe is only slightly less reserved. He is professional, carrying a brown leather portfolio and sporting a navy sweater and khakis. Only 27, he speaks with conviction and confidence of someone much older. But his baby-face and mousy brown hair lend him an unexpected and youthful softness.

I start by asking Cunliffe to walk me through the process of hiring an applicant - how does College Pro recruit its franchisees? How do they convince a recruit that buying a College Pro franchise is a good idea? What qualities do they look for in a .

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Given the company's tide, I was surprised when he told me that one of the answers to my last question was not that the applicant is a college student. Though the company's website boasts "When you choose us, you are investing in the career path of young entrepreneurs through realworld business experiences," there is not actually an age or educational requirement in order to become a College Pro franchisee or painter. In fact, a few of the Franchise Managers and many of the painters hired by College Pro have never attended college. .

Cunliffe explains that the company's name stems not from the fact that College Pro Painters . hires only college students, but that it was founded by a college student in 1971. Applicants are assessed based on eight criteria, he tells me - leadership qualities, organization, strong values, tenaciousness, instrumental ability (the combination of being able to speak well, to present, and to do math), the ability to handle stress and emotions, the ability to set (and hit) goals, and the ability to understand oneself and others .

"We interview twenty...:two applicants for every hire that we make," he boasts.

One past franchisee, however, speculates that College Pro is not as selective as Cunliffe claims. "Jordan signed anyone who wanted to sign," says Dan Li, a former franchisee who graduated from Yale last • spnng.

Li is referring to Jordan Driediger, the General Manager for College Pro's New England Brach who is responsible for signing all of the franchisees in the New England area. "By law, College Pro is supposed to make potential franchisees hold the Franchise Disclosure Document for two weeks before they accept it," Li says, explaining that the Franchise Disclosure Document includes the contract as well as all pertinent information regarding College Pro Painters. "I signed in 48 hours and they back dated the contract, stamping a date that was twelve days earlier than I had actually signed. I guess you can say .

I was overeager but that's the point of the fourteen day wait."

Li, who terminated his contract with College Pro in June of 2009 when he received a job offer in finance, also claims he never received a copy of the contract to keep for his records. "They gave me another booklet without my signature," he remembers.

"There is no way this could have happened," Cunliffe claims when I ask him •

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"Nodding sincerely, his ~ warm brown eyes ~ on mine, he says, 'Max odes is the worst thing1 that could have happened to Yale students.'"

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about it. "We are part of a publicly traded company and as such, are subject to government audits to make sure that we have the proper backup for everything we do including the contracts that we sign and how they are handled."

Cunliffe seems pained that I am at all suspicious of College Pro Painters. This is not surprising he's invested the past nine years of his life in the company, first as a Franchise Manager for three years, then as a General Manager for three years and finally as a Vice- .P resideht for three years. He responds defensively to some of my more probing questions, but he seems more sad than offended, as if I'm insulting his integrity by investigating College Pro. Cunliffe asks me what my take on College Pro is. He poses the question so earnestly I can't help but feel guilty for having my doubts about the company.

Glossing over my apprehensions, I tell him that it seems like a lot of Yale students who get involved with College Pro are blinded by the tale of Max Rhodes, thinking they can easily duplicate his success.

Nodding sincerely, with his warm brown eyes fixed on my own, he says, "Max Rhodes was the worst thing that could've happened to Yale students."

If Cunliffe genuinely laments the effect that Rhodes' story has had on Yale students, he has done nothing to curb Rhodes from heavily recruiting for College Pro Painters at Yale.

For one, Rhodes was responsible for pitching the Yale Daily News article that ran in February 2009 - the same article that initially piqued my own interest in College Pro, along with a slew of other would-be entrepreneurs. An editor at the YDN who wishes to remain anonymous forwarded me an email Rhodes sent to the Yale Daily News on February 6th, 2009. It reads: "My friend Kim Chow (then an editor ·at the YDN) recommended that I speak to you about a story idea I have for the YDN. Last summer I worked as a Franchise Manager for a THE NEW JOURNAL

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company called College Pro Painters. Basically I ran ~ $227,854 exterior painting btisiness in the New Haven area. This year College Pro is undertaking a major recruiting effort on campus."

Ever the salesman, Rhodes goes on to cite four reasons he feels his experience would make an interesting .article: "College Pro has already hired 8 Yale students and has plans to hire as many as 12 more.

I painted the houses of several Yale employees, including professor Paul Bloom and his wife Karen Wynn. I netted around $60,000 in total assets ($46,286 in cash) .

I think that's a pretty attention-grabbing figure. It's an unusual way for a Yalie to spend his or her summer, but with fewer options this year, it's a great alternative to more typical internships like investment banking or consulting."

A subsequent email from Arnir Shari£ the YDN staffer who reported the Rhodes piece, to the YDN editors shows that Rhodes was hell-bent on making the article as prominent as possible.

"Max Rhodes is really intent on h aving "

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Perhaps the most worrisome article 0 ' in the document is a non-disparagement clause that prohibits the franchisee from "at any time, directly or indirectly, OW mak[ing] any statement, oral, written or electronic, or perform any act or omission • n which is or could be harmful or damaging in any material respect to the reputation or goodwill of College Pro or any other perFranchisees must independently cover son or entity related to College Pro." Citthe costs of all of their painting materials, ing this last clause as their reason, many find their own means of transportation to of the Yale franchisees interviewed for this job sites, and personally pay their paintpiece refused to speak on the record or deers. They must also pay College Pro for clined to speak at all. "proprietary" advertising materials such Though the non-disparagement clause as signs, door knockers, uniforms, payroll is lawful, it can also have alarming conseservices, direct mailing postcards sent to quences. "The clause is quite broad and potential customers' houses and telephone might well prevent students from telling answering service. Though they vary on other students if they have poor experia franchise-by-franchise basis, costs for ences," says Ian Ayres, the William K. opening a College Pro franchise can total Townsend Professor at Yale Law School over $10,000. and a Professor at Yale's School of ManIn addition, when a franchisee signs a agement who specializes in contract law. contract with College Pro, he or she agrees "It might have a chilling effect on even to give College Pro 20% of the revenues. If legitimate whistle-blowing as franchisees the franchisee's business exceeds $70,000 would worry about whether blowing the in revenue, the percentage of "royalty whistle would expose them to legal liabilfees," as the contract calls them, decreases. ity for disparagement."

Even with that concession in mind, the On top of all this, if a franchisee ten aainates figures in the Franchisee Disclosure docuthe contract he is required to pay College ment suggest that College Pro ofren ends Pro "expenses incurred in retraining a reup making more money in royalties than placement franchisee, airfare, hotel, meals, the franchisee receives in earnings after telephone and any other direct expense ascovering all the costs related to his or her sociated with the re-training of the

COUrSeS astorywithapicturemaybemorevisible, but they don't teach you and he suggested sending a photographer h . up to East Rock to take a picture of him to tratn your ag~nst ;.pro~essor, Paul Bloom's house, ma11y of whom have never whtch he pamted. d .h The press worked: Rhodes alleges. that patnte ett er. article," Sharif writes. "I mentioned that

he was directly responsible for the recruitment of five out of the 14 Yale students who signed with College Pro for the summer of2009.

"The College Pro administration had us talk to Max before we signed," explains Tom, Frank Piasta's friend wpo made. close to $0 in profit working as a Franchise Manager before closing out his business and helping Piasta paint for a few weeks.

"He told us all about his successes."

What Rhodes didn't mention when recruiting other students, however, was that he would receive $1,000 from College Pro if someone he referred signed a contract with the company. College Pro makes most of its revenue off of franchisees booking jobs and buying proprietary materials.

It makes sense that the company would want to recruit and sign as many as possible. Why franchisees would want to sign with College Pro in the first place is another question altogether. Paging through the Franchise Disclosure document that Cunliffe sent me after our meeting, I was amazed by the terms that signers agree to .

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replacement franchisee; postage, delivery or collection costs incurred in retrieving all information, manuals and materials from Franchisee; and reasonable attorney's fees incurred as a result of Franchisee's termination" or $4,000, depending on whichever figure is greater. . The "State Cover Page," a sheet at the front of the Franchise Disclosure Document that College Pro is required to include by Connecticut State Law, is no more comforting. "Please consider the following RISK FACTORS before you buy this franchise," the document warns, listing six factors in capital lettering. Among the more startling articles are: · '

2. AS A COLLEGE PRO FRANCHISEE, YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO PAY CERTAIN FEES TO COLLEGE PRO EVEN IF YOU HAVE NO REVENUE. 3. APPROXIMATELY 118 FRANCHISEES, OR 28% OF FRANCHISEES WHO SIGNED FRANCHISE AGREEMENTS • FOR THE YEAR 2008, TERMINATED THE FRANCHISE BEFORE THE END OF THE FRANCHISE TERM. OF THE FRANCHISEES WHO COMPLETED THE FRANCHISE TERM, APPROXIMATELY 57% DID NOT MEET THE SALES TARGET WE ESTABLISHED, IN OUR DISCRETION, FOR FRANCHISEES... .

6. THERE MAY BE OTHER RISKS CONCERNING THIS FRANCHISE. '

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According to Professor Ayres, the only benefits that College Pro is contractually bound to provide to its franchisees are a brand name and training. "There are many marketing schemes where the royalty of 20o/o for · the brand name would be in the realm of reason," says Ayres, who is both a trained lawyer and economist. Take, for example, the Big Mac of all franchises: McDonald's. In addition to supplying its franchisees with a highly recognizable name and trusted products, McDonald's offers a rigorous training program called Hamburger University for all of its higher-level employees. College Pro Painters' brand recognizability and training regimen both fall short of McDonalds, yet their royalty fees exceed the chain's 12.5o/o royalty fees by 7.5%. Additionally, a survey sent to 21 Yale professors and administrators in various disciplines suggests that the name "College Pro Painters" might

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when it came to knowing how to . their employees. Hyatt Bailey, a Yale

consumers. It's a total pyr-student who made $1o,ooo working as a franchisee this past summer, rememd scheme from bottombers, ''At first, production is such a mess.

You barely know how to paint and then to top." not be an advantage at all. Fourteen of the Yale employees surveyed asserted that they would not let College Pro Painters paint their houses.

Many franchisees complain that the training provided by College Pro is also sub-par. Franchisees are required to attend a set of training sessions held in the College Pro Painters headquarters, a converted industrial warehouse in Woburn, Massachusetts. Cunliffe sees these four 8-hour classroom sessions held over weekends from February to June and 3-4 day painting workshop hel4 in the field as the "biggest incentives that fra11chisees get from College Pro." It is during these meetings that the College Pro Painters staff attempts to teach franchisees .everything there is to know about paint systems, paint failures, estimating, marketing, 'selling, interviewing, financial management, conflict resolution, scheduling, and logistical items franchisee's need to accomplish to properly set themselves up. Most of College Pro Painters' franchisees have never painted or run their own businesses before signing with College Pro, so it is up to the College Pro staff to educate them completely.

Many of Yale's franchisees, however, complain that the training sessions did not do enough to prepare them for their work in the field.

"Theres ' no way you can teach someone everything about painting and running a business in a month, especially in a classroom using power point slides," says Tyler Schied, another member of Yale's class of 2009 who signed with College Pro Painters as a Franchise Manager last spring.

Schied terminated his contract with College Pro in April 2009, before ever paint- · ing a house, fearing that if he stuck out his term he would lose more money than he would by paying the $4,000 exit fee. "They give you crash courses on how to paint, but they don't teach you how to train your guys- many of whom have never painted e1'ther. , Even those students who had more favorable experiences with College Pro

you have to train your painters when you don't really know anything yoursel£ All the while you have to keep your custom-. ers happy and make it seem like you know what you're doing."

Bailey was so nervous about how unready he felt for his first day of production that he stayed up until five in the morning reading articles on management strategies, trying to devise a game plan for how he was going to lead his painters. He was supposed to wake up a mere hour later at six, but ended up sleeping until he got a call from his painters at nine-thirty.

"I was like 'Oh my God!' In terms of leadership you don't really-realize how bad it is until you're the boss. It's not just like an a capella group, or other school group where you're like 'sorry I'm late guys!' It's real life." .

Despite its manifold risks, College Pro's at;traction is so powerful it even causes some Yalies to put painting before school.

Despite his initial struggles to manage his painting crew, Bailey felt he gained so much from his experience as a franchisee that he is . taking a leave of ·absence for the 2009-20 10 academic year to work for College Pro. While College Pro Painters markets itself as a summer option, Bailey notes that franchisees must start marketing months before May if they are to book a solid number of jobs to produce over the summer.

For College Pro franchisees, marketing consists mainly of "cold calling," or showing up at homeowners' doors unannounced and inquiring whether they would like their house painted. New England is a prime area to be a painter since most of the houses are wood, and so require stripping and repainting every five years. If left untouched for much longer than that, the wood under the peeling paint will begin to rot and the house might begin to leak, or even collapse.

But even here, cold calling is not easy. .....

WTT1hile touching up an eave on a house in his assigned area of Clinton, Connecticut, a middle-income area 30-minutes north of

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New Haven, Bailey tells me how he spent all of his weekends in the spring knock.ing on doors trying to book jobs. If that was his only responsibility, he might have managed, but Bailey began marketing . while taking five courses and singing in one ofYale's.premier a cappella groups, the Baker's Dozen. · "Needless to say, my academics suffered · a bit," he admits. "When I signed again for next summer, my dad didn't want me to be in school while I marketed so it was understood that I would take the spring semester off. Then I decided to take the fall off as well to finish up my College Pro jobs from the summer."

Other franchisees had less of an issue with the time management aspect of mar·keting than the ethical implications of selling a product they didn't believe in.

"It's kind of sickening," says Dan Li, the Yale franchisee who terminated his contract with College Pro in June. "When I was marketing I had to go up to home owners with a shtick about helping college kids, when maybe I was a college kid but neither of my painters had ever been to college. One of them hadn't even graduated high··:school. And many of the painters are a lot older than your typical college kids." · Tyler Schied, the Yale franchisee who quit before ever painting a house, agrees withLi. "Franchisees show up to the first day of production never having painted a day in their lives, with painters who have never painted a day in their lives, all the while marketing a 'professional' painting job," he says, the frustration rising in his voice.

"College Pro is scamming kids that are scamming consumers. It's a total pyramid scheme top to bottom."

At the bottom of that pyramid are the painters, most of whom were hired via Craigslist. According to Piasta and Bailey, College Pro urges its franchisees to pay the painters $8 per hour, exactly the minimum wage in Connecticut, though many Yale franchisees report having padded their painters' salaries by a couple of dollars. .

If College Pro really is as exploitative as Schied and Li insisJ, it is interesting to consider what persuaded them and other Yale students to sign in the first place.

"They never bring up the idea that you could fail at this, and that if you do

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you could get yourself into a lot of debt," Schied explains angrily. "It's all in the contract, but they gloss over all of the bad stuff so you're lulled into thinking, 'Oh man! My own little business. This is going to be fun!' All Jordan, the regional manager, does is paint this picture of Max Rhodes and how working for College Pro made him tons of money and won him his dream job at Bain. Of course my first instinct was ' Where do I sign?'"

Piasta points out that Yalies are particularly susceptible to the College Pro myth. "Corning out of Yale, you feel like because you're smart you'll be able to make everything work out," he says. "Yale kids inherently believe that they are incapable of actually failing at anything." · Like Schied and Piasta, many Yale students signed contracts with College Pro feeling confident that they could duplicate Max Rhodes' success. So far, none have come close, which raises the question: just how did Max Rhodes pull off what he did?

February 20 10

Over the course of October and November, Rhodes and I exchange six sets of emails, each with him promising to call me or answer my questions by email and apologizing profusely for being a "bad . ..

Interviewee.

I resort to tracking Rhodes on "Around the World in 100 Days," the blog he started (username: MaxtheYaliePainter) with his girlfriend to document their travels. Rhodes is handsome in an elfin sort of way - with high cheekbones, a devilish grin, and a haircut that looks like someone put a bowl over his blonde mop· and trimmed away what protruded. I flip through photos of the two lovebirds driving a rental car on the Autobahn, castle hopping in Prague and putting back pints ofbeer in Budapest. On October 14th, the couple stop blogging, but from o_u r email correspondence I know the pair also made it to D~lhi and Agra in India.

Traveling the world with his girlfriend, a desk at Bain waiting for him when he returned. Rhodes was living the dream of ))

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returned, Rhodes was living the dream of many Yale students. He just couldn't be :• bothered to talk about it. : - Since I couldn't pin down Rhodes him: set£ I settled for talking to his Franchise :.Manager disciples, and to his customers. ·}3oth groups agree that Rhodes' success is not undeserved. They testify that Rhodes : 'w.orked 10-12 hour days and managed at least three crews of two to four painters ~ at all points during the summer. By the end <?f the term he had painted or in • • ,,.co~pany jargon, "produced" about 70 r.houses, as compared to Bailey's 40 and ;-Piasta's 12. _He's just ravenous," remarked . Schied. ·,_ · Rhodes also gets rave reviews from ho': meowners whose houses he painted.

"Max was the most professional painter • ~ I ever worked with," says Jack Hitt, a _• freelance writer who owns a house on -East Rock road, one of the nicest streets in New Haven. "He was a crisp, wellnatured business man and a brilliant com.municator. He· made a few mistakes but ' was immediate to correct them."

As I stand watching Piasta and Tom pack up their materials into Piasta's family's minivan, which he had decorated with a College Pro Painters decal, I imagine what I would be like as a College Pro Paintersfranchisee; I picture myself - in paint-blotched jeans, my Blackberry constantly vibrating as customers called to check in or complain. I envision waking up at five in the morning to run to the paint store and distribute the cans among my crews by seven. I imagine how my feet would ache after standing for 12 hours a , and how awful it would feel to fire a • pamter.

I sense myself being sucked in by the challenge of succeeding at something where so many have failed, the possibility that I could be the next Max Rhodes.

I could do this. I catch myself thinking.

Frank begins to descend from his perch on the ladder when suddenly the sole of one of his Timberlands slips, and he misses a rung. The ladder momentarily comes off the side of the building before clattering back against the house.

"Close call," I say, and mean it.

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One player remembers feeling left out of the huddle.

By Jake Conway I

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It was August and hot. The air teemed with the testosterone-fueled excitement of preseason. I had signed up for my West Hartford public high school's football team with about fifty other freshmen, who, like myself, had been coaxed into helmets and pads by nostalgic fathers and then prodded into huddles by even more nostalgic coaches. I was terrified, but eager to prove mysel£ Some of the other players on the · team had been hiking footballs since the Pee Wees, but this was my first time on the field. I didn't even know the positions or the rules. Though I quickly committed those to memory, it quickly became clear how little I really knew about the game when I found myself week after week on the ground, breathless and coughing up •

er, it was about the preening and prancing in the locker-room, the spit-in-your-face trash-talk at the watering hole, the con-

my need . football

to ac on gratul~tory-but-all-too-demeaning slaps reflects the misconception ~ on the ass in huddle, the misogynistic and • • h homophobic epithet-hurling on the side- tn our soctety t at equates ~ lines. It was, in short, about the codes of masculinity with heterobeing a man, the semiotics of manhood. at• n Each jaw-dropping juke, each explosive SeXU tty. hit, each perfect spiral shapes our idealized notions about masculinity, our expectations of how and who a man should be.

But I didn't have dreams of becoming a star quarterback, of leading my team to state championships, trophy on one arm, prom queen on the other. No, football was something much less romantic for me. I was gay and closeted.

dirt.

Football, I soon learned, was about a different set of rules. It was not about knowing that a safety earned two points or that a touchback meant that the offense received the ball at the 20-yard line. Rath-

My tendency fall b k

I never fully subscribed to the style and protocols of my teammates. I did not participate in the sexist banter or the posturing, I hid from the fiercest coaches, and I left immediately after practice was over to

avoid the locker-room towel snappingsweaty, dirt-caked and unshowered. I took pains to remove myself from any situation where my masculinity might be scrutinized and where my true feelings might be exposed. I spent most of my time with the team trying to forget I was there in the hope that everyone else would, too.

This is not to say that I was miserable throughout the season. I enjoyed the competition of the sport and the opportunity it provided for me to stay in shape. But when I signecl up again sophomore year, I doubt it was the sprints, or the camaraderie, or our nearly undefeated season that compelled me to keep playing. More

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likely, it was the fas;ade of normalcy that playing football allowed me to present. Everyday after school that I suited up in pads and ran out on the field ensured that my manliness and, by extension, my sexuality could not be questioned -off the field.

When I came out to my straight male friends from high school during my freshman year of college, one of them remarked that any speculation about my sexual orientation was quelled by my membership on the team. Football had been my closet.

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Football still has, in my mind, an intoxicating allure. It has become my point of retreat, my place of solace. It's my defense mechanism. Whenever I feel that my manliness has been called into question, _whenever I hear a homophobic remark or am unfairly stereotyped, I conjure up my football days. "You think I'm weak? You think I'm a sissy? Are you calling me a faggot? Let me tell you something," I imagine · myself saying. "I played football in high school." Every time my voice slips into affect, or I profess my love for Lady Gaga, wear deep v-neck t-shirts, or spend just a moment too long shopping for shoes, it's okay, I r~mind those present, because "I ..... played football in high school."

I have to admit, I'm reminding myself, too. I refer to my high school football days with such frequency that it has become an inside joke among my friends. After all, I had only played for two years and never even made it to varsity. But though my friends and I kid about my frequent references to my football days, ~omethirig serious underlies them: my insecurities and the societal constructs that helped produce them. My tendency my need to fall back on football reflects the misconception in our society that equates masculinity with heterosexuality.

I only understand my repeated allusion to my high school football days in terms of a combination of pride and self-loathiJ?.g.

Pride for the small rebellions I unleash against heteronormativity every time I strut into the gym with my high school football sweatshirt on, mentioning all of the squats and the deadlifts and the tackle drills and the suicides that I did; pride for the knowledge that I -defy stereotypes, that I contribute a modicum of "normality" to an identity all too often deemed abnormal.

But also self-loathing. Self-loathing for February 20 10

defining myself in terms of an arbitrary notion of normal; for thinking about how manly I appear to others every -t ime I walk down the street with another man's hand in my own, or dance with a man at Toad's, . or sleep with a man; self-loathing for the knowledge that I am undeniably different no matter how hard I hit, how much I benched, how fast I ran a 40-meter split. ·rm gay whether or not I played football in high school. Nothing can change that, not even a two-year stint of heavy-hitting, or rough-and-ready cover. What really matters then is not that I played football, but that I don't play it anymore. I left that locker-room and unsuited those pads a long time ago. And I am all the more a · man for it.

TN jake Conway is a junior in Davenport College.

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war

e . ear ·By Laura Zax

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1he New ]ou,~nal is proud to announce that the aw ard for Imposter of the Year goes t o ...

Jeggings!

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The New Journal explains why this new fashion trend swept the competition by a unanimous vote . .

1. First of all, the alias. Throw around the word jeggings a slippery elision of the words "jeans" and "leggings" quizzical looks. Yet jeggings are everywhere among us. Jeggings, 1 point. Us, 0.

and you'll get

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2. Nice try, Proteus. Jeggings are the consummate shape-shifters. Got junk in the trunk? Suffering from the vitamin deficiency no':l5satall? Jeggings are capable of assuming any and every form .

3. How can so little material sell itself for so much money? Designer jeggings go for $200 make Bernie Madoff blush

pulling off an economic scam yeah, that's why he turns red when he sees a girl in a pair of skin-tight jeggings. +,

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4. These tight-fitters fit in anywhere. They're as at home at home as they are at the club, as good for lounging around as for getting around at the lounge. Not even the skort could pull off a hat

I mean, pant

trick like that . .

5. Remember the good old days when a wolf in sheep's clothing was just a wolf in sheep's clothing? Jeggings escape such neat scientific classification. Experts still can't agree upon whether these pants are jeans dressed up as leggings or leggings dressed up as jeans. Indeed, it is unclear whether jeggings are pants at all.

Congratulations, jeggings. We can pull you up. We can put you on. But we can't seem to pin you down.

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