LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
Michelle ma belle,
Welcome, or welcome back. It’s a leap year. This month is the leap month and as you hold this issue in your hands, it might even be the leap day. Leap years, like this year, disrupt the monotonous tyranny of the calendar year. There’s a new day in our calendar and it’s called February 29th and for the past three years or so, it hasn’t been there. 366 is an awfully ugly number, one that I have the urge to divide by 3 and then divide by 3 again and again until it turns into a new number. 365 is so much prettier, or maybe we are
THE MASTHEAD
Editors-In-Chief
Arthur Delot-Vilain/ Rafaela Kottou
Managing Editors
Madeleine Cepeda-Hanley/ Lydia Kaup/Hannah Szabó
Creative Directors
Sara Offer/Etai Smotrich-Barr/ Iris Tsouris
Senior Writers
Madelyn Dawson/Nadira Novruzov/ Jack Reed
Columnists
Joshua Bolchover/Irene Colombo/ Hardy Eville/Lyle Griggs/James Han/ Maude Lechner/Judah Millen/ Joanna Ruiz/Lucy Santiago
Design
Alexa Druyanoff/Georgiana Grinstaff
Angela Huo/Helen Huynh/ Mela Johnson/Grace Kim/Kris Qiu/ Mia Rodriquez-Vars/Claire SooHoo/ Alina Susani/Tor Wettlaufer/ Vivian Wang/Silvia Wang/Miya Zhao
just more used to it. Wouldn’t it be so perfect if the Earth took exactly 365 days to orbit the Sun? That’s what they taught us in elementary school. In elementary school, they teach regularities. Beyond elementary school, there are always trailing decimals, ugly outliers, leap years, et cetera.
In this issue, we celebrate the irregularity of the leap year with our friends the frogs. In Features this week, Rachel Zhu, SM ’25 interviews Akhil Amar about his amicus brief for the Trump v. Anderson
case. Emily Aikens, TC ’26 reports on Newport Academy, an inpatient mental health facility in Connecticut. In Reflections, Seb Wang Gaouette, ES ’24 explores his mother’s brunsli, a Swiss-German Christmas cookie, as both an expression of pride and an object of shame. Read this issue, read its poems and its reviews and everything in between. Be irregular.
Most daringly, Rafi + Arthur
Reviews Editors
Theo Kubovy-Weiss/Natalie Semmel/ Aidan Thomas
Reflections Editors
Eva Kottou/Jack Rodriquez-Vars
Culture Editors
Emily Aikens/Isabella Panico/ Alex Sobrino
Features Editors
Connor Arakaki/ Madelyn Dawson/Jack Reed
Opinion Editors
Ariel Kirman/ Daviana Rodriguez Zamora Arts Editors
Jess Liu/Eli Osei
Voices Editors
Ana Padilla Castellanos/Will Sussbauer
Inserts Editors
(this could be you! email!)
Copy Editors
Dayne Bolding/Zoe Frost/Jisu Oh/ Ece Serdaroglu/ Tessa Stewart/ Alina Susani
Staff Writers
Lillian Broeksmit/Kaylee Chen/ Elizabeth Chivers/Kate Choi/ Krishna Davis/Oscar Heller/ Helen Huynh/Cameron Jones/ Anna Kaloustian/Megan Kernis/ Sophie Lamb/Hannah Nashed/ Jisu Oh/William Orr/AJ Tapia-Wylie/ Amalia Tuchmann/Ellen Windels/ Ashley Wang/Avery Wayne
Web Editor
Kris Qiu
Business
Abby Fossati/Evan-Carlo Fowler/ Avery Lenihan
Calendar
Jess Liu
Photography
Fareed Salmon
This Week's Cover
Sara Offer
This Week's Collages
Georgiana Grinstaff/Mia Rodriquez-Vars
From Visionary to Vulture: The Downfall of Kanye West
Victor Attah, DC ’25
Kanye West’s debut album, The College Dropout, remains a revolutionary album with lyrics that veer from the traditional machismo present among hip-hop contemporaries like 50 Cent and Eminem. West raps about the dangers of materialism, his Christian faith, and his triumph over challenges, including surviving a near-fatal car crash. A year later, two key moments would capture the ideals West stood for. First, in his August 2005 interview with Sway Calloway, he criticized the homophobia far too common in hip-hop at the time, imploring his contemporaries to stop discriminating against gay people. In September of that year, on national TV, he proclaimed, “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” criticizing the slow federal assistance to Black communities struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Early in his career, Kanye advocated for marginalized communities and made sincere music that spoke to many.
The Kanye of today seems to embody the same principles he once detested. Since October 2022, he’s used his platform to spew antisemitism and bring attention to the several alt-right figures he’s surrounded himself with. Previously, West has also claimed that slavery was a choice and undermined the work of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. This shift reflects a radical transformation in ideology from the promising young artist who was once a beacon of progressive thought within hip-hop. vultures 1, released amidst West’s recent controversies, came out exactly twenty years after The
College Dropout. The album is the first of three announced collaborative efforts from the duo ¥$, formed by West and Ty Dolla $ign. vultures 1 is soured by West’s public outbursts, for which he makes no effort to atone for. Unlike his earlier work, vultures 1 lacks introspection, and most lyrics offer nothing of value. People often excuse Kanye’s statements because of his musical genius, but the ¥$ duo trade bars about sex, money, and success that serve no greater artistic purpose. The indulgence of the album is especially striking in contrast with West’s 2019 gospel album, Jesus is King. On songs like “KING,” West references his recent controversies, but instead of showing remorse, he basks in his continued success despite his offensive statements. This lack of remorse is especially troubling, given the influence that artists as popular as Kanye wield. His refusal to acknowledge the damage he’s caused and his irresponsible use of his platform demonstrate that he no longer has anything of value to say at this point in his career. The brighteyed socially conscious rapper we once knew is gone and has been replaced by what Variety described as “a wanton edgelord, intent on saying some of the foulest things imaginable.”
Despite lacking lyrical depth, vultures 1 shows that Kanye hasn’t completely lost the ability to make great-sounding music. From a purely sonic standpoint, vultures 1 is well-produced. The album features production from innovative producers, including jpegmafia, Timbaland, and West himself. While his previous album, Donda, suffered from a bloated tracklist, vultures 1 takes a more concise approach with its 55-minute run-time. Songs like “BURN” and “PROBLEMATIC,” highlight the album’s stellar production. The two songs feature soul-laced
production reminiscent of Kanye’s earlier work.
“CARNIVAL,” the album’s highest-charting song, is extremely unusual. It features a chorus from Rich The Kid, and its instrumental is built around a choir of heavily accented Italian soccer fans. While Kanye’s flow in the song is impressive, his lyrics remain problematic. He compares himself to known abusers R. Kelly and Bill Cosby and, 20 seconds later, raps, “I’m the new Jesus, bitch, I turn water to Cris’.” Verses like these serve as reminders that Kanye is out of his lyrical prime, and the introspection he was once known for has been usurped by an obsessive penchant for provocation. Playboi Carti’s verse, on the other hand, steals the show as he floats effortlessly over the beat. Carti appears again on “FUK SUMN,” where he is the saving grace of a song featuring lackluster production, unenthusiastic performances from Ty Dolla $ign and Travis Scott, and Kanye vocals that are pitched comically high.
On vultures 1, the ¥$ duo paint brilliant sonic landscapes but deface them with vapid lyrics and an unwillingness to take accountability for Kanye’s hurtful remarks. The album’s shortcomings are indicative of the broader fall of Kanye West. Once a beloved superstar who challenged the norms of hip-hop and stood against discrimination, Kanye has become an irresponsible provocateur who no longer cares about the impact his wide-reaching words have. ❧
Atelier Florian
Hardy Eville, DC ’26 and James Han, PC ’24
On a cold day in February, there’s no better way to sustain yourself than comfort food. For us, that’s Atelier Florian…even though we’d never been before.
New Haven is a city by the sea, though I-95 obstructs easy access to the Long Island Sound. Perhaps this proximity is the source of our recent hunger for seafood—specifically shellfish.
We started with one Blue Point oyster each, served with a mignonette (classic), salsa verde (somewhat less classic), and a delightfully tiny bottle of tabasco sauce. The oysters are clean, briny, and delicious. But we want more. Atelier Florian is known for their Moules Frites: one or two pounds of mussels in a broth of your choice with a side of Belgian fries and a lemon aioli. After deliberating between the marinière and lobster broths, we opt for lobster and also order a croque monsieur for fun.
If you thought the relaxed three-martini lunch was a relic of bygone times, Atelier Florian’s— mostly older—clientele would prove you wrong. Flutes of champagne and long-stemmed cocktail glasses adorn most of the tables around us. Between the elegant wood-paneling and patterned tile, it felt like we should have been making some business decisions or discussing the political climate over our lunch. But there we were, between lectures, an anomaly in the dining room. The combination of cozy and classic styles had drawn us in.
When the food came out we dug into the large, steaming pot of mussels. Many of the shells came up empty, their meat falling into the broth below, but we steadily made our way through the pile. While the mussels tasted good, the
broth was the star of the show, and we learned that the mussels were better the longer they stayed submerged. The only thing missing was a spear of crusty bread to sop it all up. We made do.
The croque monsieur is already a hedonist’s sandwich, a stack of ham and cheese, topped with creamy bechamel, before being broiled till golden brown and bubbly. It does, however, improve with the addition of lobster broth, and soon we were both spooning the rich liquid onto our plates. The broth soaked into the bread, melding with the gruyere and bechamel. Thinking back, our antics were a bit much, the kind that a parent would admonish as “playing with your food.” But damn did it taste good.
The joy of moules frites and an extra rich ham and cheese sandwich is that lunch becomes a slow process. Taking time with a meal, devoting a little work to get at a tasty morsel, and enjoying an elegant space has been wiped from the American lunch tradition. Maybe it’s time to bring it back. Picking through mussel shells with a tiny fork, luxuriating in lobster broth, and chasing both with a thick-cut belgian fry is a recipe for great, lengthy conversations. And maybe gout.
Atelier Florian feels comfortable, yet elevated, and has prices that are surprisingly reasonable. All the food was delicious, but the broth was particularly too good to waste. Hardy got a plastic to-go container and sipped what was left in lecture, bringing some warmth and flavor to the concrete halls of the Loria Center.
Atelier Florian is located at 1166 Chapel St, New Haven, CT
Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Saturday through Sunday.
Recommended Dishes: Moules Frite with Lobster Broth, Croque Monsieur, Oysters with accouterments. $25-$40 a person without beverages. ❧
In What We Like, Hardy Eville and James Han explore New Haven’s culinary scene with an emphasis on off the beaten track restaurants, unique cuisines, and the best hangover food.
Answers to This One's Hard! pg 27
Love and Chocolate: Field Notes from a Tragic Mulatto
Seb Wang Gaouette, ES ’24
It always started with the chocolate. My mother would order it in bulk from a couple of Swiss importers in early November; it would arrive in thick, five-pound bars a little after Thanksgiving. Next came the cinnamon, then the cloves, and finally a million almonds, and with the reckless happiness of someone in search of something to celebrate, my mother would begin to bake. The result was brunsli: a delicate Swiss-German Christmas cookie made from sugar, spices, chocolate, egg white, and nuts. Or, as my Jamaican-Canadian father calls them, in a nod to their deep brownblack color, “negro-sli.”
“They’ve got no added fat!” My mother used to joke. “You can eat them forever.”
Brunsli’s Swiss-ness, like my own and my mother’s before me, is a complicated thing. Despite what Helvetic chocolate companies like Lindt or Läderach would have you think, chocolate—one of Switzerland’s proudest exports—is not Swiss at all. Brunsli is Swiss in the way that tea is British, or tomatoes are Italian. These things are the fruits of empire, plucked from the fruit trees of a foreign land. The term “Swiss chocolate” is an impossible contradiction, and yet nearly 200,000 tonnes are pro-
duced each year.
There is something ironic, therefore, about my parents, my sister and me showing up to my grandparents’ house at 30-38 71st Street in Queens with a box full of brunsli every Christmas Eve. After all, we were not exactly the spitting image of the Swiss Family Robinson. While my mother’s mother is from Baden, near Zürich, my grandfather was staunchly Chinese. Both migrated to New York amidst the Warholesque-excess of the postwar era. After meeting at a social event for unmarried foreign nationals sponsored by the Rockefeller family, the couple spent most
of the rest of their life together in Jackson Heights—the most diverse neighborhood in the city. Sure, Christmas Eve dinner ended with brunsli and kirschwasser (a clear cherry brandy), but the main course regularly included lion’s head, glass noodles and tsung-yubing, or scallion pancakes. Running in circles around the living room between dinner and dessert, my sister, my cousins and I felt like cultural pirates: we had lifted culinary treasures from Switzerland and China, and returned to Jackson Heights unscathed to enjoy our rightful bounty, among the wayward Italians and Bangladeshis and Greeks.
Even to my child’s eyes, though, it was always clear that there were also elements of profound unhappiness scattered throughout my grandparents’ house in Queens: the too-loud Chinese Central News on TV, and my bed-ridden grandfather’s pursed-lip silence; my grandmother’s singular practicality, and my aunt’s perpetual frown. When I was twelve, for reasons I could not yet understand, my family started celebrating Christmas Eve alone, at home. The one continuity was the brunsli. My mother’s reckless excitement about the cookies multiplied into a borderline fervor after we stopped spending the holiday with her parents, and by early December there would be hundreds of cocoa-colored cookies spread out across sheets of parchment paper on the kitchen table and living room floor (brunsli must air-dry before it is baked). My sister and I would look on in awe; my father would look on in amused admiration, and the whole house would smell like nutmeg.
It was nine years later—with my grandfather long dead and my grandmother descending into dementia—that I got the full story. As with the cookies themselves, there was blackness at the core of it; or rather, anti-Blackness. We
REFLECTIONS
had stopped visiting my grandparents because my grandfather did not approve of my mother marrying a Black man. My parents had been briefly welcomed back into the Wang household after my birth because my grandfather was desperate for a grandson, even a funny-colored one. But by the time I was born, my parents had not spoken to my mother’s family for nearly a decade. With the exception of one of my uncles, everyone had sided with my grandfather to varying degrees during that time. My sister and I were given Chinese names and taken to a few Christmas Eve dinners in the first twelve years of my life in a failed attempt at reconciliation, but the whole time, unbeknownst to us, we had been bastard children. In 2013, my mother had stolen the family brunsli recipe (along with my great-grandmother’s apron) as an act of final goodbye. Negro-sli indeed: the black cookie for the black sheep, with the redbone husband and the light-brown kids.
Like American hotdogs in Filipino cuisine, or budae jjigae (socalled “American army stew”) in Korea—both of which occupy a liminal space somewhere between imperialism and resistance—my mother’s brunsli are at once an expression of pride and an object of shame. For my mother, making brunsli is an act of defiance through reclamation: the cookies make her Swiss, without needing to interact with anyone. But at the same time, making brunsli is a reminder that, despite her parents’ transgressions, she still wants to be Swiss. In my mother’s mind, the only path towards personhood is the one that cuts directly through the ugliness of her ancestral past. My mind’s not so made up. But I know this: when my mother gives me that recipe I will treasure it, and I will bake those cookies every December until my hands cannot roll the dough. ❧
Long Life and Health
Lu Arie, BF ’26
Someone once told me that the best pieces of creative writing should either feel like a dream or the memory of a childhood summer. One of my earliest memories of my grandmother feels like both.
We’re in Dorset, staying in a cottage with a three-legged cat, surrounded by green hills that stretch out in all directions like the neatly cut ridges of a quarry. To a seven year old, they look enormous. I’m staying in a tiny attic bedroom; the carpet is a sandy white, and
the only wall decor is a palm-sized photograph of a fox in a teal blue frame. I love it. I wish I could live here forever.
My grandmother takes me out on a walk. We wade through the dry waist-high long grass. There are yellow wildflowers everywhere— buttercups and dandelions. The sun is just beginning to set. I pick a dandelion and hand it to her.
“Make a wish!”
She doesn’t even pause to think. She grabs the weed, says, “Long life and health,” and blows the seeds hard.
Boring
She picks one for me.
“Make a wish, Lulu.”
I think as hard as I can.
“Harry Potter’s wand,” I say, decisive. “Because then I can have unlimited wishes.”
She chuckles. I blow the seeds,
thinking I’ve won the game. I don’t remember how old I was when I realized that “Long life and health” was something worth wishing for, something that couldn’t be taken for granted. But I’ve been honoring my grandmother’s philosophy ever since. Now when I make a wish, I don’t even pause to think.
On birthdays when I blow out candles, catching them all in one breath, slicing the knife down until it meets the cake stand.
Long life and health.
An eyelash on my cheek, in the bathroom mirror while I’m brushing my teeth, under the running tap.
Long life and health.
Dandelions in spring, in the park by my old school, drawing in a breath just like a child.
Long life and health. Everything else will fall into place. ❧
203 562 6226
65 Howe St, New Haven, CT 11:30 AM-3 PM, 5-11 PM
Ode to Slack Rope Grrl
I walked along one sunny day
Across cross-campus back in May
And saw a sight that made me stop
A daring Grrl, a daring drop
A sick celeb has graced our town
The Slack Rope Grrl of balanced crown
She ties a line between two trees
And walks above us in the breeze
In sun or sleet, in rain or shine
I’ll love that Grrl n make her mine
We’ll slack 4 days, we’ll slack 4 years
Till the line snaps n we disappear
She’s stupid cool, she’s wicked slick
How does she do her epic trick!?
Way up a full foot in the air
A crunchy chick with godly flair
I ran and begged her from below:
“Oh Slack Rope Grrl, how should I go?”
“How can I too one day ascend?”
She winked and said “just be my friend”
In sun or sleet, in rain or shine
I’ll love that Grrl n make her mine
We’ll slack 4 days, we’ll slack 4 years
Till the line snaps n we disappear
So on we went, in perfect pair
To chase each other through the air
And race and dip and bob and twirl
Me and my best bud, Slack Rope Grrl <3
In sun or sleet, in rain or shine
I’ll love that Grrl n make her mine
Chloe Solomon Shiffman, SM ’26
CULTURE
The Seventeen-Year-Old Girl: A Muse in Music
Mia Cortés Castro, BR ’26
The day before my eighteenth birthday felt like the embodiment of yearning. A grasping onto adulthood that came all too soon. The age of seventeen had been marketed to me as a sweet point of perfect youth, a moment in time when nothing is balanced, when it is normal to feel hysterical, when the tumultuous feelings of youth are romanticized. One can love without consequences, mistakes are welcomed, all leads to something larger than oneself. Nothing you’re experiencing has ever been experienced by anyone ever before. Yet, everything you’re experiencing has been echoed for decades by millions of other girls. Seventeen is paradoxically both lonely and communal.
My year of being seventeen had started as most other girls’ does, with ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” blasting. I had made a playlist appropriately titled “seventeen” at fifteen years old, crafting an idyllic image of what this golden year could look like for me. Which girl would I be? The lover girl? The heartbroken girl? The girl who fights with her mom and rebels? All of these girls were represented in my playlist. As I shuffled, Wallows’s “1980s Horror Film,” released in 2018, asked me “Why are girls in songs always seventeen?” and I believed I had the answer. Seventeen felt sweet in the mouth—the perfect three syllables of dichotomy. There were endless possibilities in the gap that being seventeen provided: enough of an adult to experience things, not enough of an adult to be at fault for the things you experience. It’s a conscious ignorance.
A day before turning eighteen, in a fruitless attempt to grasp the very last seconds of legal childhood I had, I shuffled my playlist. This was the last time I’d be able to relate to these songs, to be a seventeen-year-old girl and listen to songs about being a seventeen-year-old girl. It was almost as though, by turning eighteen, all of these possibilities of the person I could be would disappear. My personality would be solidified once the clock struck midnight and I turned eighteen.
But the girls represented in my playlist were not the girl I wanted to be. They were all over the place— all exaggerated and unattainable versions of seventeen-year-old me, and mostly written by men.
First, there was the mysterious seventeen-year-old girl, the distracted object of attention who seems to be disconnected from her relationship presented in “Cigarette Daydreams” by Cage The Elephant. She “hides behind [her] baby face,” an elusive figure to the male protagonist of the lyrics. She makes the boy in the song fall for her by being coy and slightly mean. Her flirty tactics are admired by the boy, who sees her confusion as something beautiful; she is presented as invincible and perfect. Despite her lack of interest, the boy continues to be obsessed with her.
The 1975 presents another version of this flirty girl in their song “Girls,” but in a much more promiscuous manner. The song insinuates sexual relations between a seventeen-year-old girl and older men, expressing the changes in maturity she undergoes as she
passes from man to man. At first, she’s “worrying about my brother finding out,” next she’s “living in my house.” The girl is unafraid of the consequences her seduction may have. Though the singer tries to resist her, telling himself “she can’t be what you need if she’s seventeen,” he continues to argue with her playfully, unable to free himself from her tactics.
Both of the aforementioned songs were released in 2013; this trend of romanticizing seventeen-year-old girls, however, dates back further. In The Beatles’s “I Saw Her Standing There,” released in 1963, the girl absolutely captivates the much-older singer, suggestively asking “you know what I mean?” after mentioning her age. He refused to “dance with another” after seeing her.
These are just a handful of the plethora of songs about the attractiveness of seventeen-year-old girls. Deana Carter’s “Strawberry Wine” from 1996 compares the loss of a girl’s virginity to the sweetness of wine, Meatloaf’s 1978 rock anthem “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” paints the girl as the ultimate object of sexual desire, and Blink 182’s “Rock Show” presents the lead singer falling in love with a seventeen-year-old girl spotted in the crowd of a concert. At seventeen, when I listened to all of these songs, I didn’t consider myself an object of sexual desire. I struggled with confidence and with making friends. I could hardly talk to boys, most of my attention was on my schoolwork, and hearing these songs made me feel unworthy of my age. As if being seventeen and not seductive was a waste of time. As if I was expected to behave in the ways the girls in the songs did.
Eight months into being seventeen, I discovered a different genre of seventeen-year-old girl presented in music, one who is angry at her condition and pitied by those
around her. Olivia Rodrigo’s “brutal” screams in agony: “I’m so sick of seventeen / where’s my fucking teenage dream?” The 1975’s titular song, placed at the beginning of each of their albums, directs itself to the girl, saying “I’m sorry if you’re living and you’re seventeen.”
Ladytron’s “seventeen” speaks angrily to the feeling of wasting away, “they only want you when you’re seventeen, when you’re twenty-one, you’re no fun.”
Meatloaf’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” presents this anger from the perspective of the seventeen-year-old girl’s boyfriend, who is frustrated at losing her to adulthood. Singing “It was long ago and it was far away / And it was so much better than it is today,” the singer explains that being seventeen is comparatively better than womanhood, triggering fear in seventeen-year-old girls who listen and wonder if they’ve reached their peak in life.
I knew I wasn’t seductive when I listened to this music, but I wasn’t angry either. I didn’t feel the need to be pitied for my age. So I turned instead to the perfectly happy girl representation, one comprised of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers’s “Nothing New.” She was “young and sweet” and has “the kind of radiance you only have at seventeen.” Alessia Cara’s “Seventeen” painted a girl frolicking through fields, enjoying every perfect moment of her age and wanting to “freeze the time at seventeen.”
By the end of the playlist, I realized I had been none of these girls during my year of being seventeen. I was neither desirable nor flirty, I wasn’t angry, and I also wasn’t completely happy. I searched for a median among all of these feelings, a balance that could represent how I truly felt at an age when nothing felt permanent but everything did at the same time. I found none.
What I did find, however, was
REAL AUTHENTIC DAYLISTS:
Microcore indie sleaze Monday evening
Bleep research Thursday evening
Funky house doof doof thursday late night
Soul crushing emotional saturday afternoon
Stimming noise thursday night
Fearful downtown vibes saturday morning
Collaboration 808 thursday evening
a deep sense of alienation. It was impossible to reconcile wanting to stay seventeen forever out of fear of losing public value, and wanting to experience eighteen to its fullest. Acting older than seventeen felt inauthentic to who I was, but acting seventeen felt unfitting to who I thought I should be. I also felt I couldn’t identify with most of the songs that described the experience of being a seventeen-year-old girl, resenting their instinct to fetishize me. At the same time, however, I longed to be the muse. In my mind, once I turned eighteen I would never be able to relate to these songs; my expiration date would have passed. Would I stop being worthy of attention? If I didn’t fit into who these songs told me to be, was I living seventeen correctly?
Why, then, do we present such a polarized, unrealistic version of the seventeen-year-old girl? Why is our society so obsessed with the idea of youth that we feel the need to immortalize it in song, and why are we so blinded by the potentials
of youth so as to represent what it means to be young inaccurately?
Not only is the portrayal of youth incorrect, but it is the portrayal of female youth that is particularly misrepresented. The lack of songs about seventeen-year-old boys, especially songs provoking feelings of angst and presenting sexualized ideals, demonstrates the one-sidedness of fetishizing the sexes in music and media more broadly.
To the media, the seventeen-year-old girl is a lens through which to represent young girls more broadly. The combination of sexualized youth, idealized teenagehood, and exaggerated human emotions that it presents are true of all age groups represented by the media, with seventeen especially being obsessed over both phonetically and conceptually. This general audience of young girls is an impressionable one—an audience aware of its possibility and who is desperately trying to find themselves before they reach adulthood, so its representations are particularly impactful. ❧
On The Art of Rhetoric at Yale
Brennan Columbia-Walsh, TC ’26
I
covet the spoken word. The spoken word has got me this far; I know it shall take me further. I am fascinated by the verbal form. It profits rhythm, makes a man a music, makes a mouth an orchestra. The word, Holy Word, captivates the senses. It does not just perk the ears, but seduces the visual, the political, and the divine. The Question: What is the state of rhetoric today? What is its state at Yale?
The English language lends itself to speech. Something of its vulgar flavor; its mechanical syntax, its rough, commanding consonants; and its tensed vowels invites not just the essayist but the orator. Latin is the language of the lawyer; German the philosopher; Greek the poet; French the lover; English is the language of them all. “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature,” tells Whitman in Leaves of Grass. Their tool is English. English is the spirit of American poetry, politics, law, and love.
Our university used to worship rhetoric. The Yale Political Union was founded in 1934 (stolen from the Englishmen of Oxford and Cambridge): devoted to the swell of speech, political fervor, and rhetorical consciousness at the English-speaking world’s greatest university. As interested in the spoken word as I am, I sought out this Union. Over a year out, I have some observations. I believe the Political Union, the most historic of Yale rhetorical societies open to all students, might serve as an analogy for the state of the spoken word at Yale, and the spoken word
as an analogy for the Yale student. Rhetoric is alive in the Yale Political Union. It is alive in that I am unsure an organization structured around Parliamentary debate can ever fully break with rhetoric. As the linguistic which we employ to persuade others, rhetoric will be “alive” so long as argumentative discourse exists. However, should you look around for the rhetoric studied by the university’s linguists and humanists, particularly that of the classicists, you will not find it on the floor of the Yale Political Union. You will find little meter, littler verse, littlest rhyme—these go without saying. After all, the orators of the Political Union are afforded only five minutes of oration, and there is little time for old forms in such a meager allowance. The speeches of the Yale Political Union exhibit sprezzatura: that is to say, they exhibit calculated apathy. Their speech is calculated, because they care to present intelligently for the educated audience of friends. Their speech is apathetic, because they do not care all that much. Somehow, the YPU speaker has managed to shove intellectual ambition into an organization toward which they feel little love. This is true for both sides of the aisle.
On the left, most speakers present (and, perhaps, live) with less frequent bouts of stringency; their oration is more relaxed, less formal, and thus more honest. One gets the sense of little apostrophe to the old forms of rhetoric. However, without appeal to the rhetorically antique, all that is left is for them to say what’s on their mind— the speakers on the left come
across with much authenticity. They instead gear their content toward un-assumption and sensitivity. As such, they find themselves strewn between rhetorical authenticity and sensitive limitations. These attributes, combined with the general indifference of Union members to the Union, make for speeches which appear calculated in their content, yet apathetic in their form.
On the right, speakers are more likely to adhere to the rhetorical forms of Old Yale. They are more old-fashioned, more antique, and more upright. Their speech, therefore, is presented with greater diction but less authenticity and spontaneity. Their content does not differ from the conformity of the left; they just conform to alternative standards of social presentation. Of course, the speakers on the right realize they are speaking to an audience that is largely unconcerned with rhetoric. To convince them of their argument, they feel they must loosen their ties a little bit, and appear more apathetic to the old way. On top of all this, they are themselves also relatively indifferent to the flourishing of the Union as it is. They are rhetorically calculated but apathetic nonetheless.
In short, members of both the right and left coalitions are careful to project the popular sentiment of the Union in their speeches: relative ideological conformity and rhetorical apathy. In fact, the speech on both sides of the aisle is overwhelmingly similar, in that it sounds as though none of the speakers really want to be there. And yet, I must believe that the membership does want to be there; why would they spend so much time in the Union if they did not have a love for it?
Alexis de Tocqueville, grand high minister of patriotic observation, admired of Americans their unprecedented spirit of liberty and
puzzled at how easily this people forsook such liberty for conformity: “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America,” (Democracy in America). The tide of democracy, though freed from mores and dams, issues forth in one direction. The Political Union, in all its rhetorical and substantive conformity, epitomizes this sentiment. This is not a criticism of the students of the Political Union, but rather an observation about Yale students as a whole. Nor is it a conservative’s whine for antique forms, or a radical’s longing for vitality. It is, hopefully, a vindication: very few YPU members, like Tocqueville’s Americans, actually enjoy such conformity. Contrarily, though they are often unsuccessful, they seek to impress their peers and sway some minds, but the slowburn of institutional decay and democratic myopia has got them down. Here is what I will offer: whether it be toward old or new forms, to apostrophic invocations or revolutionary outbursts, rhetoric benefits the divergent.
The best rhetoricians, practiced and particular though they be, are at heart not classical players but jazz musicians. The jazz band rivals the orchestra in intensity and preparation, but their intensity aspires toward calculated spontaneity, the product of the precise rehearsal of the apparently improvised. They conform to little form, but they present little apathy. They employ, if you will, the element of surprise is an ammonia to the ear. To me, jazz works for its rejection of the common tone: it wakes up some of the slumbering attendees of piano recitals: perhaps it too could wake up those in the back of Union debates. It is up to the Union orator to take up this musical form: to conform their form only to their idea and allow for their own rhetorical spontaneity.
The Yale student of today is not reactionary. The Yale student of today is not radical. They are not Tea partiers, and they are not hippies. As it is with the Yale students of times past (and the youth in general), the Yale student of today largely, barring some outliers, conforms to the motion of the other Yale students of today. As Tocqueville observes, such singular motion is often an outgrowth of a democratic spirit. The citizenry must have faith in its institutions and resolve not to sacrifice the liberty of their thought. So let it be in the Political Union. It is the burden of the rhetorician, of the jazz musician, of the Yale Student, and of the democrat, to diverge in thought and speech from the common form. The Political Union ought to adopt spontaneous and original forms, those which match their form to their content, and it must restore its faith in the value of the spoken word. This is the only way to stave off its apathetic decline.
If we are to fulfill Whitman’s prophecy of an unprecedented poetical nature, if we are to sway the minds of conforming peers and indifferent speakers, if we are to deliver to the English spoken word the fanatical reverence and holy sanctity which it so deserves, then it is time to let slip the tongue of the authentic: to embrace orig inal oration and meet with glori ous zeal the opportunity to speak against the crowd.
If such a task presents too high a risk, there will always be room in Tocqueville’s tide. ❧
NATALIE RECOMMENDS: Let’s
go to sports!
So here’s the thing: I am not a huge sports fan. In middle school, I took advantage of my mild asthma to get out of gym class. I’ve never consistently watched sports on TV. And I am writing this for the Herald, a publication that canceled its sports section years ago. Yale is not a sports school. We know this. Some of us came to this school because of that. However, there are some real pros to watching sports here.
One, while we may not be a typical sports school, that doesn’t mean that our sports teams aren’t good (at least some of them). Two, and this is the real pro in my opinion, we know the athletes. Yes, it’s true that many athletes isolate themselves from us NARPs. But go to a basketball game and try not to say, “That person is in my residential college! That person was in Structure of Networks with me!” So yeah. Go to sports, because also men’s basketball is really good right now and I think sometimes the visiting teams are shook that Yale students actually care enough to watch. Also it’s good people watching.
- Natalie Semmel, DC’25, Herald staff
Let’s Make a Painting
You need no experience to create a good painting. A “good” painting is simply one that you are proud of (a relatively low bar, depending on your skill and expectations)
Before you begin, Gather your colours—
The ones which bring you joy! Or which you believe will make good art, Great art, even Genius art. Such colours may include: The brown stick you used to draw in the sand, The blue of parts of your mother’s eyes, The pink of your own, bloodshot as they are, The black of the boots that carried you through the mud and snow and scattered past-ashes.
Now you have your colours. Now you must pick a subject for your piece. Dig deep! it’s in there somewhere.
Even if you strike a memory you enjoy; Even if you find yourself buried; Keep digging; it’s in there somewhere.
Keep digging until you’ve found the best of ideas; Keep digging even if some dirt falls into your mouth; Keep digging even if something crawls into your ear to lay its eggs; It’s in there somewhere!
Keep digging! until your life must be saved by this painting; Keep digging! even if your shovel breaks and your hands are raw and bleeding; Keep digging! even if the eggs of that something have hatched and begun to munch at your eardrum, each bite a beat in the mantralike chanting of brain-burrowed nostalgia bees;
It’s in there somewhere!
Keep digging! until you hear those bees begin to buzz! Keep digging! even if the eggs lay their eggs and the pattern repeats! Keep digging! even if the sunlight no longer brings to you its—
You found it? How nice.
Did you bring your colours? How nice. Did you bring your brush?
Did you bring your easel? - Will Sussbauer, JE ’27
From the Metro-North
To keep, as we seldom do, the promise of arrival. People expecting then meeting, trained in the rhythm of waiting.
At each stop, working people model city time & press close to the train door before it opens.
Think of diegetic sound: The conductor’s keys jostling This train’s next stops is… those who board & those who stay.
Malleable post-sleep, I grasp at flashing, unknown towns as they fade through my reflection on the train window.
The conductor demands a child’s fare & later searches the train for an old woman’s wine.
Think of mercy, despite.
To lap & crawl & chase the hills each day. Time unspooling in a silver vein.
A ribbon of water.
A town sign. A small girl pointing at another train.
Think about the moon outside, above the train, & the people sleeping while others avoid sleep or take care of their rioting infants or the next email or think of the moon above.
A basketball court lit up, a night fishbowl, as the train sweeps slowly past—homeward bound.
For My Sister, In Winter
To find on this cold shore, something whiter than the sand— from the bench, I watch you walk to the water, see the waves foam a path towards you and away like a small, fast train.
There are things I would have told you if I knew them already. I sit sniffling under my blanket while you run out your camera battery, watch the twinkling city blend into the ocean.
And yes, there are stars and constellations I think I recognize.
Sometimes at night, I look and understand how looking up, people once saw battles and bears and other people, and—
there are houses nearby too, but you don’t film them. You stay sitting by the breaking water, perched silently on the snow-covered sand.
two poems by Ana Paula Padilla Castellanos, SM ’24
Content Warning:
This article contains references to mental illness, sexual assault, self harm, and suicide. All last names of patients have been withheld.
Teenage Life Inside Newport Academy
Emily Aikens, TC ’26, on the troubled teen industry
In October of 2020, Sabrina, a fifteen-year-old suffering from severe depression and anxiety, had just begun her stay at Newport Academy, an inpatient mental health facility for teenagers in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Having been hospitalized twice already, Sabrina was hopeful that Newport would give her the support that she needed.
On her way to the facility, Sabrina gazed at the New England countryside from behind the glass of her parents’ car window. As she neared Newport, trees replaced houses, and highways turned into winding roads.
After hours of driving, Sabrina and her parents finally arrived. Fallen leaves blanketed the stone pathway to the facility’s entrance, providing pops of color against the gray pavement. Although she was used to autumn in Pennsylvania, the season felt different here—
crisp, fresh. Sabrina stepped inside, ready to begin her journey of healing.
Three months later, she would wish that she had never stepped foot on Newport’s grounds.
Newport Academy is one of many companies operating within the troubled teen industry (tti), a network of private, residential treatment programs designed for minors. These programs, which range from therapeutic boarding schools to wilderness boot camps, promise to rehabilitate adolescents struggling with mental illness or substance use. Practices rely on several controversial treatment methods, such as confrontational therapy, isolation, and compliance-based reward systems.
TTI companies often convince parents to commit their children based on brief, online questionnaires. According to the National Youth Rights Association, these
questionnaires, which contain general questions about anxiety and depression, are “almost guaranteed to yield some kind of disorder” given their nonspecific nature. Other TTI programs do not require a diagnosis at all and instead promise to “fix” teenagers’ attitude problems, poor study habits, or other “unsatisfactory” behavior. As minors, the teenagers themselves have no legal say in whether they will attend these treatment programs. At the instruction of the minors’ parents, TTI programs detain anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 teenagers at any given time.
Founded in 2008, Newport Academy is one of the largest TTI companies, with sixteen gender-specific residential facilities around the country. According to its website, the company serves as an alternative to traditional rehabs, focusing on patients’ academic
progress while treating their mental health conditions. Newport staff—including doctors, nurses, tutors, teachers, counselors, and specialized therapists—perform a “comprehensive academic assessment” on patients admitted to the program and “create a flexible plan that meets the needs of the student, family, and school.”
In 2013, Newport pledged to create new facilities in areas of the United States without adequate access to mental healthcare, starting by constructing a new residential facility in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Since then, Newport has expanded significantly, currently boasting eight female residential facilities, eight male residential facilities, and twelve outpatient programs around the United States.
During a typical stay at Newport residential programs, which typically lasts 45-60 days, patients can expect to undergo cognitive behavioral therapy, family therapy, group therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, exercise therapy, outdoor therapy, music therapy, and equine therapy, and more. Newport promises that residential patients will receive at least thirty hours of treatment each week, a combination of clinical and experiential therapy techniques. Outside of therapy, patients at residential Newport locations spend their time in academic programming, one-on-one tutoring, and supervised free time in living rooms, outdoors, common areas, or the computer room. For outpatient clients, Newport therapists design individualized programs with varying intensities to meet each patient’s needs. Some of the outpatient programs listed on their website include partial hospitalization, which provides all-day programming for patients five days a week, intensive outpatient programming, and standard outpatient programming.
According to Newport’s 2022
outcomes report, patients who completed Newport programs experienced significant decreases in depression and anxiety, as measured by responses on patient surveys. Additionally, Newport reports that more than half of their patients who were originally experiencing suicidal ideation no longer reported those thoughts by week five of treatment, and the
“I have still not recovered from what Newport has done to me and my family,” Sabrina says.
place: Disney World. Still, as she recounts her experiences, Sabrina speaks about Newport as if she just left. She remembers small details about her stay, the anxiety she felt when entering the facility, and her surprise when she couldn’t use her phone in the treatment center. She recalls one traumatizing incident in which she was sent to the hospital after passing out from dehydration. She had left her bracelet, a special gift from a friend and constant source of comfort during her stay, on her bedside table. She returned to find it missing. When she asked the staff if they had seen the bracelet, they allegedly said that they had taken it and would only give it back to Sabrina once she stopped complaining about Newport on monitored phone calls to her parents.
“I have still not recovered from what Newport has done to me and my family,” Sabrina says.
number of patients actively planning suicide attempts had dropped by 75% in the same time period. These results have drawn patients like Sabrina to enroll at Newport facilities.
But as Newport continues to expand, former patients and staff members have spoken out about their negative experiences at Newport.
Although Sabrina was originally excited to begin her stay at Newport, she looks back on her experience as one of the worst times in her life. Sabrina’s life is different now. Her hair is darker, she’s started college, and she spends more time visiting her favorite
Another patient, El, describes her experience at the Bethlehem location as “a living hell.” El, who was sent to Newport at age seventeen for anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and PTSD, remembers feeling desperate and trapped at Newport during her two-month stay at the facility. Although El acknowledges that “there were some good staff members who got [her] through pretty tough moments,” she felt neglected by most of Newport’s care team. According to El, Newport staff refused to let her leave the facility’s common areas while she actively had panic attacks, forcing her to suffer in front of other patients.
Breaking Code Silence, a nonprofit that supports victims of the TTI, released a 2021 report detailing allegations against Newport Academy. The report contains over twenty-five testimonies from survivors, parents, and ex-staff members—three speaking directly about the Bethlehem, CT facility.
Stacy, who sent her child, AJ, to
Many TTI programs receive funding from private equity investors who encourage the facilities to maximize the number of patients enrolled while minimizing the number of staff members.
the Bethlehem facility, claims that Newport “falsified information” by housing her child with patients recovering from addiction after Newport promised to house him in a separate treatment pod. After just a week, Stacy pulled her son from the program. “[Newport] left my son even more traumatized with increased OCD, which I am dealing with at the moment,” she said.
Roberta, another parent who testified in the report, expressed disappointment with her experience. “My child’s experience there truly set them back,” she wrote. “Quite a few other attendees left early. From what I could see, very few students actually finish the program. We very much regret sending our child there and are working to rebuild their trust after such a negative experience.”
Statistics back up Roberta’s observations. In 2022, Newport Academy admitted 2,404 adolescents to their inpatient treatment facilities and 610 adolescents to outpatient programs. However, only 1,660 of those original 2,404 patients remained in the program after three weeks, and only 1,240 remained after five weeks. Newport does not report these numbers explicitly but rather reports them through what percentage of patients filled out surveys about their conditions. Newport has not responded to questions about these statistics or allegations of abuse.
For a program designed to rehabilitate teenagers’ existing disorders, some residents found themselves worse off after their time at Newport. Although Sabrina was
not suffering from an eating disorder when admitted to Newport Academy, her room was in the eating disorder pod. By the time she left Newport, she claims that she had developed a binge-eating disorder, bulimia, and atypical anorexia. “Many of the clients taught me how to partake in ED habits, and the staff did nothing to prevent this,” she recalls.
Although Sabrina and El did not take legal action against Newport, at least one family has sued the company for wrongdoing. In February 2021, Brandon Fortier, a former staff member at the Bethlehem facility, was arraigned on charges of second-degree sexual assault, risk of injury to a minor, and providing alcohol to minors. The victim, who was being treated at Newport for substance abuse
at the time of the allegations, confided in a family friend about his experiences with Fortier. According to the police warrant, Fortier “groomed” the patient by providing him with alcohol and nicotine in exchange for oral sex.
After an investigation, the police also found that 35-year-old Fortier had engaged in similar practices with other male patients, including adding alcohol shooters to the coffee he bought them and providing them with personal gifts. Fortier initially denied the allegations, but in September 2023, he pled guilty to illegal delivery of alcohol to a minor, reckless endangerment, and illegal delivery of electronic nicotine devices to those under the age of 21. As part of his plea deal, the sexual assault charge was dropped.
Although Kristen Hayes, Associate Vice President of Public Relations and Communications at Newport Academy, called Fortier’s crimes “a reprehensible aberration of mental health treatment and professional conduct,” other former staff members were not surprised by Newport’s failure to identify and put a stop to Fortier’s actions.
Troy Stewart, former Newport Care Coordinator at the Bethlehem facility, attended Fortier’s hearing and told Waterbury, CT’s Republican American that the quality of care at Newport had declined after the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s understaffed and there is a collective indifference,” Stewart said. “[Newport hires] professional babysitters while they charge 2,500 dollars per day for clients.”
Sabrina recalls how some staff members marked patients asleep on paper without physically checking on them overnight. Without supervision, some patients, Sabrina claims, engaged in unsafe practices like drinking perfume, self-harm, and attempting suicide. After witnessing other patients endanger themselves without the
staff intervening, Sabrina often felt responsible for the safety of her fellow patients. “The majority of the time, [patients] had to check in on other patients or stay up all night to make sure the other[s] were safe,” she claims. “No 13- to 22-year-old should ever have to have that responsibility, especially not one who is already struggling to simply survive.”
Dangerous situations like the ones that Sabrina describes are not uncommon within the TTI
According to The Regulatory Review, “No national accreditation or licensing law exists that governs for-profit [residential treatment facilities.]” Given this lack of oversight, many TTI programs receive funding from private equity investors who encourage the facilities to maximize the number of patients enrolled while minimizing the number of staff members.
Although lawmakers have proposed greater regulation of the industry, no significant legislation has been passed. Instead, pushback against TTI facilities most commonly occurs on a case-by-case basis. For example, Newport’s plans for its latest facility, which will be located in Seymore, Connecticut, have received resistance from locals. In a series of Zoning Commission meetings, Seymore residents expressed concern about the facility’s proximity to Route 34—a dangerous road that runs along a river only 150 feet away from the proposed facility site. “I think that the gentlemen that run this meeting have opened Pandora’s box and they’re going to live and die by their choices,” local resident Joan Firmender told the Valley Independent. “When people start dying on Route 34 and people start drowning in the river, it’s going to be on them.” Despite these concerns, Seymour Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved Newport’s plans for the facility during its meeting on October 12, 2023.
In the absence of legal intervention, most of the advocacy against the troubled teen industry is carried out by survivors. Because the “troubled teen” is stereotyped as needing tough love and strict discipline, many abusive TTI programs do not get media attention or garner public outrage. Though society deems troubled teens “irresponsible” and “unambitious,” the victims of the TTI are the ones who bear the burden of reforming a multibillion-dollar industry.
Sabrina is all too familiar with this predicament. Although speaking out against Newport forces Sabrina to relive her time in the facility, she is committed to spreading awareness and preventing further harm done at the hands of Newport. “I don’t want someone else to walk into it expecting an amazing experience when, in reality, their life will be flipped upside down,” she says.
In a post-COVID world, this advocacy is more important than ever. According to a report published by the National Library of Medicine, rates of adolescent anxiety and depression have skyrocketed since 2020, resulting in increased rates of hospitalization. While only 32% of children and adolescents who underwent emergency psychiatric evaluations were admitted to an inpatient psychiatric facility during the pre pandemic period, over half of similarly presenting patients were hospitalized during the pandemic and post-pandemic period. With this greater demand for youth residential facilities, legislation and oversight of the troubled teen industry are imperative. While survivors like Sabrina can help draw attention to the problems occurring within the industry, awareness is not a substitute for legal intervention—especially for the thousands of patients still in Newport facilities. ❧
True Friends of the Court
Rachel Zhu,
SM ’25, sits down Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Last Thursday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Trump v. Anderson, a case determining Colorado’s right to reject Trump’s presidential eligibility on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3. Nearly 80 amicus briefs were submitted to the Court, one of which was penned by Yale Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Akhil Reed Amar. The case’s expedition gave amici curiae less than a month to file their briefs—indeed, Amar’s was drafted in only two and a half days. The brief argues in favor of Colorado’s right to remove Trump from its ballots, highlighting originalist arguments which draw from Amar’s scholarship on constitutional history. Should they be embraced by the Supreme Court, Amar’s ideas could profoundly illuminate our nation’s understanding of states’ roles in presidential elections. I asked him about his role as an amicus curiae and how he approaches that role as a constitutional scholar.
[RZ] Tell us a little bit about your amicus brief for Trump v. Anderson and why you chose to file it.
[AA] So, it’s a brief filed by me
and my brother, professor and [former University of Illinois College of Law] dean Vik Amar, and what we were trying to do is be true friends of the Court by offering our expertise and analysis in ways that we thought might be helpful.
This is the third brief that we’ve filed in recent years. We, in particular, try to intervene in cases where originalism might be particularly important, where a case is going to be—or should be—decided on the basis of the constitution’s text and history and structure, as distinct, say, from the precedents. Originalism is very hard to do because you need to know a lot of the history. It’s not something that every justice would know automatically because the justices aren’t historians; they’re not full-time scholars. So if the case is just about precedents, well, then, they may not need so much help. But if a case might turn on a constitutional provision that hasn’t been litigated very much and that has an important historical backdrop, that’s a case in which perhaps we might have some expertise to contribute […] Many of the justices say that they want
to take originalism seriously, that they want to be principled, and that they don’t want to be junior varsity politicians. So we’re taking them at their word, and we’re saying if so, every so often, we will try to intervene when we think we have something helpful to say as true friends of the Court.
[RZ] What’s your process like for writing these briefs?
[AA] Well, this one was hard to do because we had very little time because it was on an expedited schedule. It turns out, perhaps coincidentally, that I had researched many of the issues in the case already, in connection with some of my scholarship, and that my brother had also researched some of these issues, so the brief got written in two and a half days. And then our team of amazing student assistants finished it off and filled it out, but the first draft was a two and a half day project.
[RZ] One of the most important originalist arguments you mentioned in your brief was that of the “First Insurrection.” Can you describe that event and its relevance?
[AA] [One] big part of our brief explained that even if what Don-
ald Trump did wasn’t like the Civil War itself, it was a lot like what happened before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, when all sorts of oath-breaking insurrectionists tried to thwart the lawful transfer of power to a duly elected president-elect. And some of them even tried to interfere with Congress’s certification of that president-elect on the equivalent of January 6th, in 1861, which back then was February 13th.
[RZ] You also discussed some refutations to Jonathan Mitchell’s arguments for the Trump side. Can you tell us about some of them?
[AA] Mitchell says that there’s this case decided by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court called Griffin’s case […], and it says states can’t enforce the 14th Amendment without Congress’s approval. Congress has to act first. And Mitchell says that even if that’s wrong, Congress eventually acts on the basis of Griffin’s case and, in effect, embraces it. And I say zero plus zero cannot equal three. So yes, Griffin’s case was wrong, and the person who thought it was wrong was the sitting president of the United States—Ulysses Grant, who was acting completely contrary to Griffin’s case—and was enforcing the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 without a Congressional statute. Grant’s actions, not Griffin’s case, were the backdrop of what Congress did. And what Congress did was pass a law that Grant signed into law. There is no evidence whatsoever that that law blessed Griffin’s case and, in effect, condemned what Grant had done […] So, Jonathan Mitchell takes a case that was wrongly decided, and a Congressional statute that doesn’t say remotely what he says it does, and adds everything together, and adds some magic pixie dust and somehow comes up with the idea that states can’t properly enforce the Constitution, which is a pretty astonishing proposition.
They’re not the only ones, but of course they can enforce it… And Jonathan Mitchell doesn’t know any of that—I suspect he doesn’t because he’s not a historian or a scholar—or if he does, didn’t tell the Court any of that, and why should he? That was up to the other side to argue, and their lawyer didn’t do the job.
[RZ] Judging from the oral argument on Thursday, it seems that both the justices and advocates failed to consider many of the most salient points of your brief. What do you think is the cause of that oversight?
[AA] Yeah, they didn’t play a particularly large role. Remember, also, that this is being heard on an expedited basis. It’s a two-minute offense. It’s hurried, and so it’s not shocking that the justices might not have been able to take a look at all the amicus briefs—there were, I think, 78 that were filed in the case. But it’s at least possible that when they’re actually writing their opinions, they’ll have more time to carefully consider not just what the parties have filed with them, but some of the amicus briefs from academic friends of the court. And not just our brief, but other briefs, including one co-authored by my law school colleague John Witt, there’s another one co-signed by another law school colleague Bruce Ackerman, so there are a series of scholarly amicus briefs in the case that didn’t get much attention at the oral argument but could become important later on. We’ll just have to see.
[RZ] As you mentioned, many more people are writing briefs now than ever before. Do you think that changes the future of amicus briefs?
[AA] So, the justices, realistically, are going to pay attention more to some amicus briefs than others. One would expect they’re going to pay more attention to persons or institutions that they know about, maybe whose work they’ve
found helpful in past cases. I was emboldened to write these amicus briefs because the Court has, in past cases, repeatedly cited my work and therefore sent a signal that they may be interested in my academic views.
[RZ] Are many amicus briefs like yours, from scholars who highlight a very originalist, historical point of view?
[AA] No. We’re seeing more originalist briefs than, say, a decade ago, but if this decision ignores or rejects good originalist briefs—and if that’s true of almost all the other decisions over the next few years—then at a certain point you might see some of these originalist briefs dry up, because people will get the impression that the Court isn’t so interested in this. So, it matters a lot not just what the Court decides but on what basis.
[RZ] Do you think the justices would think differently than they seem to do now if they had a chance to read your brief?
[AA] That’s what every brief writer hopes! Ultimately, the brief is publicly available—it may have influence on our fellow citizens, but it’s written in the moment to be helpful to nine justices and so that’s the immediately goal—one hopes, and it doesn’t always happen that the brief gets read; that’s not automatic for amicus briefs, because there are so many of them. One hopes the brief gets read, and then one hopes it may influence at least one justice. And sometimes, it may influence a justice but there won’t be any definitive evidence of that—the brief might not be cited even though it might be influential, so, sometimes you don’t know. If a brief is cited by a justice, and that happens from time to time, then at least that’s some evidence that the brief was perhaps influential in some way. And again, we would have to wait to see what the actual written opinion or opinions look like. ❧
Books, Addiction, and the Humanities
Oscar Heller, ES ’26
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a student in some way. I’ve had at least sixteen first days of school. Every year, August brings a reluctant photo shoot where I try earnestly to smile so my mom can look fondly back at the photos. I feel too exposed in front of that unblinking void at the top right corner of her phone. I’m used to being behind stuff, not in front of it.
And so the performance begins. Standing in front of the world, writers interpret their surroundings, and offer me some made-up signifier often in the form of an -ism whose referent decays and decays and decays until it ceases to exist at all. And here I am, in a room by myself, waiting until enough time has passed for them to identify and deploy new -isms while my own present morphs unrelentingly into the future. I exist behind things, both in space and time.
That leaves me with two important questions: (1) where the fuck am I, here and now? And (2) what the fuck is going on, here and now? These are the questions that I imagine most Humanities students and academics—at least the good ones—are trying to answer in nicer words after they entangle themselves with these authors and their -isms. The problem is that before these questions are even posed, questions that are really just roundabout ways of asking how to live, many have already made up their minds. And not by choice. Let’s use Patrick P. Pseudonym as an example. He’s an average American
WASP. Age 15. Lives somewhere like Greenwich, Connecticut or Evanston, Illinois. The perfect consumer. Pat is well-off as a kid, and because he sees life as a series of linearly organized, relatively reachable goals (i.e. go to school, maybe play a sport or two, get a degree in something economically relevant, start a family, ad infinitum), he has no reason to ever leave his own world. He may leave it physically, but never morally. By the time he’s a junior in high school, Pat decides he wants to be a doctor or engineer or computer scientist or something else where he can earn enough money so that he too, one day, can live and breathe and die in a suburban town. This is not to say that all “Pats” of the world will inevitably become doctors or engineers or computer scientists nor is it to say that anyone already in one of those fields—or any STEM career, for that matter—was originally a “Pat.” The point is that, for people like him, there exists an almost instinctive tendency to preserve things as they are. And, therefore, a proclivity for the more scientific or objective careers that can circumvent the one question the humanities are built around and the one people like Pat tend to avoid at all costs: why?
But back to our story. Because Pat’s current state of affairs poses no challenges to him personally, he never stops to look around and think about the operation of things on a meta level; he’s never taken out of himself, out of his infinitesimally small yet supremely important universe. He’s exactly what
capital-T “They”—the advertisers, the corporations, the markets— want him to be: a nearsighted kid with an “if-it-ain’t-broke-don’tfix-it” kind of attitude and money to spend.
Maybe out of boredom, but more so because he’s grown accustomed to it, Pat will devote his adolescence to a pursuit of instant gratification. At 18, he’ll join a frat filled with other Pats at some prestigious university and drink consistently enough that his liver will be toast by the time he’s 30. Around the same time, he’ll pick up a vaping habit that’ll send him to the hospital with a collapsed lung after he tries to make that coveted morning buzz last a little longer. And he’ll probably be knee-deep in a porn addiction, all the while thinking he’s free. The Pats of the world don’t know that they exist behind stuff; that all people, whether they like it or not, are instructed and directed and guided in some way by something that can be as obvious as a book or as invisible and amorphous as a cultural ethos. We lead, we follow. Everyone teaches, everyone is taught. The only question is what. ❧
Teach(Ed) is a biweekly column by Oscar Heller where he discusses teaching and being taught.
ARTS
Charlie Kaufman Comes to Yale
Ashley Wang, JE ’27, Herald staff
Charlie Kaufman’s arrival at Yale this January was a latestage diagnosis: the film/poetry literati have unleashed an epidemic of fan behavior and opaque literary questions. We are all so, so sick.
The first symptom of fan behavior: the event was packed. I could spot people rushing out of dining hall dinners to get prime seating. One man sitting next to me on the balcony eagerly showed me his peeling copy of Antkind, Kaufman’s 2020 novel while explaining how Synecdoche, New York had single-handedly saved his life.
The film itself—quite obviously an opener for the main act of witnessing Charlie Kaufmann “in person!”—was entirely fine. Setting Eva H.D.’s poem to video, Jackals and Fireflies falls into a long tradition of sprawling verse dedicated to the Intangible Transcendence and Mundane Beauty of New York City. Ginsberg has done it; many a youth poet laureate has done it. Eva’s verse is also fine. I like her existentialism; I snapped for a phrase here and there. And in the most literal sense, the short manages to bring Eva’s poem to life—the camera playing flâneur as Eva ventriloquizes the city and its inhabitants, her voice spilling out the mouth of a woman with a gleaming silver tooth.
But to pretend that this short film is anything great, anything beyond the twist-reveal that it also happens to be an ad for the Samsung Galaxy S Series camera, is to fall into blind sycophancy. Despite all the fanfare, Kaufman’s direction largely results in vignettes you
could find on a bisexual Bushwick creative director’s Instagram story. Eva, on the other hand, tries too hard to universalize New York, her poem’s attempts at multicultural inclusion often falling into farce: “how the wind whips our hair into a mustache or a burka.”
Like Kaufman, Eva’s poetry falters in her project of clichés, meandering until she too is lost in her own obsession with alienation. “Watch me sway among the fallen,” she says as she walks out of a diner, the film anticlimactically drawing into the dark.
Here was the second glaring symptom: the presumption of greatness—of artistic purity motivated by the muse or innate genius—is exactly where the subsequent Q&A lost its plot. In retrospect, the conversation was predestined to fail, staging a parody of academia with two Yale professors—Charles Musser and Richard Deming—flanking Kaufman and Eva on the stage of the auditorium. Musser sounded the death knell from the start; he spent several minutes asking his first question, laboring through an extensive historiography of prior collaborations between artists and poets. Perhaps this was merely an occupational hazard and Musser’s instincts as a lecturer overcame him. In any case, I do not remember what his ultimate question was. Meanwhile, Kaufman and Eva, wearing two different shades of blue flannel, fielded the professors’ barrage of long-winded, vague theoretical questions with
blithe honesty. Without really intending to, the pair obliterated every question about distance and narrator and artistic instinct with the unrelenting force of shrugs and IDGAF energy.
One particular highlight: upon being asked what she thought a “line of verse” constituted, in Deming’s clear attempt to pose a greater philosophical question about capital-p-Poetry, Eva responded in quite literally the most cutting way possible: isn’t a line of verse just a bunch of words? Again, when asked why she narrated her poem in a whispered, melodic cadence, she answered: I just thought that’s how I was supposed to read it. Over and over again, the interviewers stared back, stunned. It wasn’t clear who everyone was laughing at—Deming or Eva. I started recording the Q&A on a voice memo.
These exchanges between Deming and Eva are emblematic of the event’s problem—the tendency in literary (and film) circles to over-intellectualize craft. Deming and Musser are both practicing artists; you would think that they would be the perfect pair to interview Kaufman and Eva. This is also not the first time I’ve heard an interviewer ask about someone’s philosophy on a “line of verse”; it’s a basic question of poetics. Most poets in Eva’s place would’ve offered thoughtful, contemplative answers worthy of deep sighs and snaps from the audience.
This isn’t a localized issue, either. The poetry world has long
endured an epidemic of effusive, drawn-out praise. Read the blurbs for any chapbook or collection published in the last five years and you will find nothing but compliments crystallized into prose poems—glittering with such verbiage as “galactic tone,” “lustrous clarity,” glorifying each books’ divine capacity to open the reader’s “third eye.” The poetry world is insular with its small presses and Twitter mutuals, and here are the consequences: friends write blurbs for each other, the same names circulating through both the covers and backs of each chapbook. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a staunchly negative review in the annals of online lit mags. In the end, poetry as a medium loses; already, the literary world has alienated regular readers with its sociolect of metonymic praise and theoretical doublespeak.
A guy in the row before me called Eva crazy. Here is what he and the professors on stage should’ve known—despite her publications and status as a winner of the Montreal International Poetry Prize—brief, fleeting emblems of prestige—Eva is a fuckass poet who bartends at a dive bar. Call her esoteric, call her enigmatic, call her pretentious. Maybe even call her style evocative of the #WhiteWomanMFA. But she is the antithesis of the contemporary poetry establishment’s obsession with abstraction and godhood, and for that she has proven herself to be far more authentic than the draped set of self-edification surrounding her.
There were still instances where the Q&A shined. They were the conversations’ most tangible anchors—when audience members simply asked about specific figures or moments they enjoyed in the film. Perhaps the pun about a duck with a baseball hat on, or a grayhaired woman sitting on a street corner. And despite their interview-
ers’ waffling questions, Kaufman and Eva managed to distill runon sentences and buzzwords into their most easily graspable parts, forming a startlingly humanistic treatment of artist practice. When asked about how they felt about this “unique bridging of mediums”, Eva answered plainly: “I was just surprised that Charlie wanted to make a film with me.”
Her response is what redeems Jackals and Fireflies, if only for a few flickering moments.
There is a simple delight in creating anything amid absurd circum-
stances, in producing and mass-distributing a poem on a technology conglomerate’s dime. If it is hard to make a film these days, as Kaufman has often said, it is even harder to publish a 20-minute-long poem. But the incongruity between the two visiting artists and the professors’ questions reveals a fundamental issue in the way we—professors, chronic Letterboxd users, self-professed critics—have disconnected art from its practicalities. So no, I don’t care if Jackals and Fireflies was shitty. Kaufman’s visit was a diagnostic, not a disaster. That is what matters. ❧
Searching in delicacy of a puffin heart
Jisu Oh, TD ’27, Herald staff
The lighting is purple—mainly.
Tinged with a bit of blue on the edges, it fractures through the straight-edged tables and chairs posed on the black stage. The light cloaks the hushed crowd in the University Theatre, slipping into the crevices between the velvety seats and pooling on the concrete floor. We hold our breath as the actress paces on the stage; sways slightly as if savoring the taste of her words; opens her mouth and lets the sharpness clatter out. Every word cuts: they’re desperate and gasping, straining to reach for some kind of meaning we can’t quite hear. She stands still. Silence feels like glass here.
Stefani Kuo’s (PC ’17) delicacy of a puffin heart quivered with vicious emotion from February 15 to 17, presented by the Yale Dramatic Association in collaboration with the Asian American Collective of Theatermakers. Directed by Alistair Rao (SY ’26) and Alicia Shen (PC ’26), and stage managed by Thomas Kannam (GH ’26), this play weaves together two storylines: Meryl (Millie Liao, SM ’27) and Ana Sofia (Angelica Peruzzi, SY ’27) attempt to create a family through in-vitro fertilization amidst Meryl’s mental illness; twenty years later, their daughter Robyn (Jessica Le, DC ’27) and her friend Hadley (Jane Park, PC ’26) struggle to balance their friendship amidst Hadley’s cancer. Mother and daughter move alongside each other in different timelines—both stories are rooted within the unchanging setting
of one apartment, grappling with vulnerability and what it means to ask for love. There’s a particularly funny moment when the scene change from Robyn’s apartment to Paula’s (Chloe Nguyen, SY ’26) is marked by dragging in a single table with an MCAT practice book solemnly lodged in its shelf. The play is earnest, in more ways than this.
The orange lighting envelops Robyn and Hadley in a harmonious warmth; Meryl and Ana Sofia, helplessly stuck in the past, are left in the shadows as they lie together on the couch. The characters cling to each other in a warmth fused from the collective pain/ joy/grief of being a woman and wanting more—to successfully mother a baby; to have a complete family; to not be left alone; to be good at what they were expected to do; to deserve love in spite of their efforts to prove otherwise.
When I went to see delicacy of a puffin heart on Friday, February 16, I was first drawn to the title. A heart of a puffin, delicate and feathered in a mysterious vulnerability—it had to mean something. I walked in, a companion close behind me, and expected to be changed. It was, admittedly, an ambitious goal. How often are you changed by art?
All the characters are searching for something—they’re chained to an obsessive dedication founded by the basis of their heritage, echoing the narratives of because I am Korean/Chinese/Asian I must succeed at this, and I need to do this for my family so I can be seen and understood. Hadley strives to succeed in school for acknowledgement from her traditional Korean father. She’s an interesting character—earnest and helplessly vulnerable to the struggles of people around her. Her shared apartment with Robyn is haunted by memories of mothers who are not her own; her friend Paula
only blabs about her boyfriend; Robyn’s sickness worsens and colors everything between them. Hadley shouts and cries and claws through it all, armed with that Asian tenacity and a weariness of trying to live life. We never see Hadley’s family or Paula’s boyfriend, but the stakes are intensified in their absence: the characters carry on with the burden of a greater reason than themselves to live for.
But sometimes life is too hard. With every question beginning each scene, the characters probe into a world that becomes more flawed, more unrecognizable, more broken. But they try, earnestly as everything in this play is, to offer every part of themselves. Ana Sofia gives her body to carry her child with Meryl, and patiently tends to her partner in spite of the mess of her mental illness. There could be hope, we think. Things could change. But then Ana Sofia leaves, and we’re left with the uncomfortable truth once again: sometimes loving isn’t enough. There are limits to how much we can give, to how long we can stay.
As I left the theater, a headache blooming in my temples, I blinked wearily at the blinding streetlights. Looked up and watched my breath fog towards the shockingly bright moon, clear and white against the night sky. Sometimes loving isn’t enough—I let it mull in my mouth and ripen into the familiar feeling of wanting to cry. The residue of desperation ached in my throat: the familiar plea for someone to be gentle with you— to look at you and keep looking. The warmth of the light clung to the wooden doors of the theater; lapped at the soles of my shoes on the stairs before slipping away. I gripped a hand, warm in mine, and prayed that when I chose love, I would be deserving of it back. ❧
ACROSS
THIS ONE’S HARD!
1. Grandma Moses, for one
11. Crackers eaten at breakfast?
Jem Burch, JE
’25
15. Accessory named for a British school
16. Actress Kunis
17. "To be continued..."
18. Namesake shape of a cricket ground
19. High kicks?
20. Article of Western wear
ACROSS
22. Many a first responder (abbr.)
1. Grandma Moses, for one
23. Like many a dancer
11. Crackers eaten at breakfast?
25. Word for either an herb or its flavor profile
15. Accessory named for a British school
27. Lab holder
16. Actress Kunis
30. Their presence may be an invasion of space
17. "To be continued..."
32. Famously fiddly individual
18. Namesake shape of a cricket ground
Some of them get published in the
Some of them get published in the
19. High kicks?
33. Kit's purpose
20. Article of Western wear
34. Toy that has to be shaken before use
22. Many a first responder (abbr.)
38. Letters of weekly relief
40. In the least
23. Like many a dancer
41. Leaf collector
42. Last-miniute
25. Word for either an herb or its flavor profile
27. Lab holder
45. Mojo Dojo Casa House denizen
DOWN
3. Backstory, as of a relationship
1. Presenting at one end of a spectrum
46. Peter or Paul, for two
30. Their presence may be an invasion of space
47. Some hitters (abbr.)
32. Famously fiddly individual
48. Claims
33. Kit's purpose
50. Unchanging
52. Airport once called Orchard Place
34. Toy that has to be shaken before use
38. Letters of weekly relief
54. Former SNL cast member Meadows
40. In the least
41. Leaf collector
55. Engine sound
57. Get clean
42. Last-miniute
60. In the thick of
62. See 67 across
45. Mojo Dojo Casa House denizen
65. Uber, say
46. Peter or Paul, for two
47. Some hitters (abbr.)
66. Famous British rock group
48. Claims
67. Event with a 62 Across
50. Unchanging
68. Boom operator?
52. Airport once called Orchard Place
DOWN
54. Former SNL cast member Meadows
1. Presenting at one end of a spectrum
55. Engine sound
2. Texter's hedge
57. Get clean
60. In the thick of
62. See 67 across
65. Uber, say
66. Famous British rock group
67. Event with a 62 Across
68. Boom operator?
4. Demonstrates reverence, say
2. Texter's hedge
3. Backstory, as of a relationship
5. Seem to say
6. Place to rest after a flight
4. Demonstrates reverence, say
7. Spa offering
5. Seem to say
6. Place to rest after a flight
8. Sarcastic response to some bad news
7. Spa offering
9. "I totally relate."
10. Lock
8. Sarcastic response to some bad news
11. Type of rock
12. Approximately
9. "I totally relate."
10. Lock
13. Many a T. Rex contemporary
11. Type of rock
14. Peeved, in modern slang
12. Approximately
21. Tube alternative
13. Many a T. Rex contemporary
24. Be a pest
14. Peeved, in modern slang
26. Take a turn
21. Tube alternative
27. Domino of music
24. Be a pest
28. Anti-bulgrary device
26. Take a turn
29. "See you later, alligator!"
27. Domino of music
31. Language family of the Pacific Northwest
28. Anti-bulgrary device
29. "See you later, alligator!"
31. Language family of the Pacific Northwest
35. Just back from vacation, maybe
36. Initials on a Jazz scoreboard
37. Layers
39. Location of many rushed events
35. Just back from vacation, maybe
43. High time
44. Source of a ring, say
49. One saying nay
36. Initials on a Jazz scoreboard
50. One stuck in the corner
37. Layers
51. Spelled a la Shakespeare?
39. Location of many rushed events
43. High time
53. Possessing a range of physical and mental faculties
56. "Divergent" author
44. Source of a ring, say
49. One saying nay
50. One stuck in the corner
58. Stored, as many a jacket
59. As such
51. Spelled a la Shakespeare?
61. Stopper
63. "Bel Canto" author Patchett
64. "Ideas worth spreading" org.
53. Possessing a range of physical and mental faculties
56. "Divergent" author
58. Stored, as many a jacket
59. As such
61. Stopper
63. "Bel Canto" author Patchett
64. "Ideas worth spreading" org.
Jem Burch creates crossword puzzles.
New York Times
Yale Herald
wed. 2/28
ATTEND: Black Children’s Book Week. A panel on representation in writing and publishing, followed by a book signing, from local Black women authors. 5-7 p.m. Possible Futures.
Weaponized Architecture. Discussing two decades of spatial practice in architecture with writer and architect Léopold Lambert. 6:30 p.m. R322, YSoA. Spring Showcase. An open mic performance from members of the Yale Songwriters’ Collective. 7:30 p.m. Hopper Cabaret.
Emanuel Ax. Performing Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata and Schoenberg on piano. 7:30 p.m. Morse Recital Hall. $12. Tickets on music-tickets.yale.edu.
STAKUB. Partial screening and discussion of the first 45 minutes of Kubrik’s 1956 film The Killing. 8 p.m. Never Ending Books, Volume Two.
thu. 2/29
ATTEND: Munch and Kirchner: Expressions of Anxiety. An opening lecture for the exhibition exploring Munch and Kirchner’s use of printmaking to portray a fragmented world. 5:30-6:30 p.m. YUAG.
Black Earth Wisdom. Discussing Leah Penniman’s collection of soulful conversations with Black environmentalists. 5:30-6:30 p.m. Possible Futures.
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971). Dušan Makavejev’s provocative, surreal docufiction film “envisions sexual liberation as a world revolution.” 7 p.m. HQ L01.
Cry It Out. A corporate lawyer enters the unglamorous absurdities of motherhood in this dark-edged comedy by Molly Smith Metzler. 7:30-9:30 p.m. EBM Vintage. $20. Tickets on newhaventheatercompany.com.
New Cardiff Giants / Fafa / Earth Passenger. Celebrate the celestial rarity of the Leap Year with otherworldly music. 8 p.m. Cafe Nine. $10. 21+. Tickets on cafenine.com.
mon. 3/04
ATTEND: The Greatest Showman. Screening the story of P.T. Barnum’s rise to circus fame and fortune. 1 p.m. West Haven Public Library. Register on westhavenlibrary.org.
Kai Bird. A discussion with the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and journalist, whose Oppenheimer biography inspired Christopher Nolan’s biopic. 5-6 p.m. R103, Horchow Hall. Register on jackson.yale.edu.
ENGAGE: Mindfulness Matters Prabha Makayee leads peers in the practice of tuning into yourself and engaging with your awareness. 10:30-11:30 a.m. Wilson Library. Open Mic & Industry Night. Sing, spin a yarn, let some jokes loose, or simply listen in. 6-9 p.m. East Rock Brewing Company. LGBT+ Book Club. Come for literature, laughs, and community discussion. 6 p.m. Never Ending Books, Volume Two.
tue. 3/05
ATTEND: Civita Fra Nuvole e Vento. Brian Stanton’s photography of Civita di Bagnoregio, presented in video form—discussion afterward. 12:30 p.m. Ives Lounge, YSoA. Tafelmusik. This period-instrument ensemble performs “Passions Revealed,” a program featuring music from Bach and Fasch to Vivaldi and Locatelli. 7:30 p.m. Morse Recital Hall. $14. Tickets on music-tickets.yale.edu.
Nathan Elsbernd. Get your steps in with this mobile organ recital—begins at Dwight Hall, then moves to Woolsey Hall. 7:30 p.m. Dwight Hall.
Dresser / Pulsr / Wally. An amalgamation of live art-rock, post-punk, and dream-pop. 8 p.m. Cafe Nine. $9. 21+. Tickets on cafenine.com.
ENGAGE: Let’s Get Growing! Spark your gardening prowess and prepare for spring in this seed starting workshop, featuring a seed library launch. 5:30-7 p.m. Wilson Library.
ATTEND: Out of Exile. A film tracing the life of German-Jewish exile Fred Stein, whose photography documents the mid-20th century—talkback with his son afterward. 5 p.m. HQ L01.
Grand Tour. Elisa Gonzalez discusses her acclaimed debut poetry collection Grand Tour, followed by a signing. 6-7:30 p.m. Possible Futures.
Passages (2023). Paris, an affair between a married filmmaker and young stranger, and the intricacies of passion and power—featuring Ira Sachs in person! 7-9 p.m. HQ L01.
The Brandee Younger Trio. Younger infuses classical, jazz, soul, and funk into a night of harp playing. 7:30-10 p.m. Milford Arts Council. $40. Tickets on milfordarts.org.
From Piazolla to Pléïades. A performance from the Yale Percussion Group, directed by Robert van Sice. 7:30 p.m. Morse Recital Hall.
ATTEND: Dhamaal. A cultural showcase featuring dance, song, and inter-collegiate South Asian talent. 4-6 p.m. Woolsey Hall. Register on Yale Connect.
Double Feature. Screening of Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (1935) by Sadao Yamanaka, followed by Akanishi Kakita (Capricious Young Man) (1936) by Mansaku Itami, on 35mm. 7 p.m. HQ L01.
Live Music Night. Chaotic punk and hardcore from Daughters of Lilith, Film & Gender, and The Problem With Kids Today. 9 p.m. Three Sheets. 21+.
ENGAGE: Indoor Winter Market. Local, organic food from fresh vegetables to handmade bread, courtesy of Connecticut farms. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. 511 Chapel St.
Everyday Angels Brunch. Talking art, poetry, and service with local artist-sculptor Linda Mickens and former CT Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson—mimosas and food truck brunch provided. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Possible Futures. $25. Tickets on possiblefuturesbooks.com.
ongoing
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. Following six New Yorkers whose lives intertwine amid the AIDS crisis and Reagan administration during the mid1980’s. Theater Black Box. Feb. 28-Mar. 2. Tickets on collegearts.yale.edu.
Moon Man Walk. After his mother’s death, Spencer begins to plan her funeral—and, along the way, travels to the moon and back. Saybrook Underbrook. Feb. 29Mar. 2. Tickets on collegearts.yale.edu.
Fun Home. Based on Alison Bechdel’s eponymous graphic novel, this play follows three stages of Alison’s life as she navigates identity, career, and family. Off Broadway Theater. Feb. 29-Mar. 2. Tickets on Yale Connect.
ATTEND: David Chevan with Bassology. Enjoy brunch and listen to live, jazzy tunes. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Elm City Market.
Kyung Yu. Violin music from the YSM lecturer and former concertmaster of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. 3 p.m. Morse Recital Hall.
The Simon and Garfunkel Story. Tracing the duo’s life with vintage clip projections and live performances of their hits. 7 p.m. Toyota Oakdale Theater. $40. Tickets on hartford-theater.com.
Cinema Nite. Get cozy with a surprise movie and hot beverage in a beloved third space. 7 p.m. gather cafe.
ENGAGE: ShamRock & Roll 5K. Destress from midterms with a run, starting and finishing in front of Toad’s Place. 9 a.m. $35. Info on jbsports.com.
Illustration and Original Design by Cleo Maloney
JPEGMAFIA PNGGANG.
Receding hairline
Hey! Stop that. Come back here.
Waiting to be done eating to get the check at the restaurant
IDK my friend Aidan said he hates waiting to get the check at the restaurant. He just wants to leave as soon as he finishes his plate. Aidan, that is an awful take.
Sacramento
Let them eat CAKE.
King Julien
Carried by Maurice.
Negation
Oh that's not...
Electric cars
Stealing valor from the eels.
MGMT
The eels are not happy with us.