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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “Everyone I know spent shopping period wishing for time-turnyaledailynews.com/opinion
GUEST COLUMNIST MICHAEL MAGDZIK
Assume the best of strangers W
hen you first came to tour Yale, your guide probably emphasized just how safe you would be in this place. With a private police force, blue-light outposts never more than a drunken stumble away and our friendly neighborhood Predator drone, affectionately dubbed M.A.M.A (Miller Always Monitors Adolescents), how could you not feel protected? That last example is in jest, but the point should be clear — we go to great extents to build up the image of Yale University as an impenetrable castle. This is not only for the sake of architectural comparisons to Hogwarts, but also to instill a strong sense of personal security in students. Maybe that emphasis is necessary to persuade some to matriculate, those who would otherwise be swayed by sensational lists ranking the most dangerous cities in America. But it is worth reflecting on the trade-offs we make when we consistently approach the world beyond our walls as one filled with danger, not opportunity. University President Richard Levin’s belief in opportunity led to a decision that will endure as the defining aspect of his legacy. At the time he became president in the early 1990s, New Haven was awash in violent crime. A Yale student had just been murdered on Hillhouse Avenue. Levin understood that Yale could — no, had to — meaningfully engage with a mistrustful and beleaguered city instead of building Yale’s walls ever higher. Security was stepped up, yes, but Levin also set in motion the work of the Office of New Haven and State Affairs, a department that has spearheaded a number of initiatives designed to revitalize the city. These have included partnerships with local schools to provide enrichment programs, subsidies to University employees purchasing New Haven homes and real estate investment strategies designed to create an attractive and active downtown environment. These days, no one questions that the fates of the University and city are inextricably tied. Countless students have joined the administration’s efforts by working tirelessly through the programs of Dwight Hall and other student organizations to improve neighborhoods and assist residents. Ultimately, it is in large part thanks to Yalies that the city has seen such a drastic renaissance from its 1990s nadir and continues to blossom today. This is the view of New Haven as a place of opportunity — a space where
we can create our vision of what the world should be, if we set our minds to it. But the allure of that other narrative, the one that sees danger instead, is still strong. It grows more powerful every time an upperclassman abuses his standing and warns a naïve freshman that “Dixwell is dangerous” and that they should stay near campus to be safe. Many of us peddle fear with little thought of the mentality the narrative of danger inculcates in our student body. Sadly, fear-mongering is not unique to Yale and New Haven. An increasing number of neighborhoods across America are turning to video surveillance, security guards and electronic gates in a bid to promote social isolation from anyone they perceive as dangerous. Often, this means immigrants, minorities, the poor, the young. Residents claim this is the price of safety but fail to realize that gated communities carry a high hidden cost. Gates promote a full-fledged retreat from civic responsibility. Residents are less likely to pay for more municipal police or parks if their own needs are being met; it is harder to care about social ills when you only see perfectly manicured lawns. When we avoid New Haven and keep to our castle, we run that same risk. True, contemporary American cities are frequently plagued by drugs and crime. But these cities are ours to inherit, and they are populated by our countrymen: people of character and strength, sometimes in need of assistance, sometimes simply in need of understanding. When we concoct Conradian tales about cities and crime, we demonstrate our failure to learn one of the most important lessons the liberal arts try to teach. As another Yale president, Kingman Brewster, Jr., cautioned, “The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. In commonplace terms, it rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger.” So behave responsibly, but stop fueling the hyperbolic narrative of danger. Carry less money and shed the J. Crew threads for a day. Explore the culture and vibrancy this city has to offer. Assume the best of your New Haven neighbors. When we never walk outside them, our gates become our cages. MICHAEL MAGDZIK is a senior in Berkeley College. Contact him at michael.magdzik@yale.edu .
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‘PENNY_LANE’ ON ‘LEARNING DOESN’T STOP AT 36 CREDITS’
Honor without a code
here’s a problem with cheating in the Ivy League, and Dartmouth students want to fix it. They’ve proposed an honor code that will obligate students not only to confess to their own academic transgressions but to reveal the dishonestly of others, too. Their proposal has created a wave of discussion. Princeton students want to implement a similar policy. Brown students are adamantly opposed. And Yalies? They “support the code,” according to the Harvard Crimson — in, mind you, 1950 — citing its appeal to “a Yale man’s morality.” Sixty-two years later, cheating is still a problem. As you read this, Harvard is investigating some 125 undergraduates implicated in a mass plagiarism ring. Jonah Lehrer, a 2003 Columbia grad, stepped down from his job at the New Yorker over the summer when it was revealed that he had fabricated quotes in a recent book. And here at Yale, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria resigned from his position on the Yale Corporation in the wake of a plagiarism scandal. America craves stories of smart kids doing dumb things. To them, the Ivy League is a foreign entity: distant, majestic and unknowable. When their kids fail, it is a disappointment, but when those kids fail — those lucky, lucky Ivy League kids — it is Greek tragedy, and the major news media is all too eager to play the chorus.
Academic dishonesty is bad no matter where you choose to pursue your degree. But it could cerMARISSA tainly be MEDANSKY argued that, given our relSidewinder ative privilege, Yalies have a particular imperative not to do so. We’re lucky to be here; Yale gives us so much. It’s a little presumptuous to bite the hand that feeds. The recent scandal at Harvard has prompted the Associated Press to ask whether an honor code would help rein in potential plagiarists. Author David Callahan told the AP that when a school like Harvard doesn’t have an honor code, then “someone’s not paying attention.” “This is a major failure of leadership in higher education,” he mourned. This mindset is not new; the 1950 Crimson article proves as much. Just last year, Harvard endured a firestorm when it asked freshman to sign a so-called “kindness pledge” encouraging them to “sustain a community characterized by inclusiveness and civility.” In 2008, News columnist Julia Knight proposed instituting an honor code at Yale to “introduce valuable information and inspire
important discussion.” The idea of an honor code is inherently appealing. After all, everyone likes honor, and code evokes sexy Round Table-era mystique. It is an easy fix — one that sates those critical outsiders reading the New York Times and IvyGate. It makes us look like we’re fixing things. Reputation restored, right?
AN HONOR CODE WON’T PUT AN END TO CHEATING OVERNIGHT. WE NEED BIGGER CHANGES. Not so fast. When it comes to instating an honor code, Harvard and her peer institutions should reject such an impulse. Universities must take care to avoid top-down approaches to eradicating dishonesty. This, to many university administrations, is counterintuitive. Yet Harvard’s freshman pledge endured mockery due to its authoritarian tinge (be nice or else). When it comes to punishing cheaters, bureaucracy has its place. But deterring them? That’s a shift in culture, not policy. Schools where honor codes
succeed — like Washington and Lee or William and Mary — have policies seeped in tradition. When their students uphold the honor code, they are connecting with the past in a meaningful, visceral way, the same way Yalies feel a tingle of pride when they drink a Mory’s cup or study in Sterling. These honor codes don’t succeed simply by existing; they work thanks to the weight of the past. And when universities heavily market their honor codes to potential applicants, they create some degree of self-selection in the incoming class. Institutional shifts don’t occur overnight; they’re the result of generations of social engineering. If we really want to address academic dishonesty once and for all, we need to look at its causes, not the Band-Aids that hide them. Address the pressure-cooker culture at Harvard and Yale; address the perception that grades are somehow correlated with moral worth; address the prevalent I’ll-justdo-it-at-the-last-minute attitude. Only after looking at these underlying causes can we seriously consider the implications of an honor code. Maybe there’s a place for an honor code at Yale, but it should come from deliberation and discussion, not reputational anxiety. MARISSA MEDANSKY is a sophomore in Morse College. Her column runs on Tuesdays. Contact her at marissa.medansky@yale.edu .
G U E ST C O LU M N I ST M AT T H EW L L OY D -T H O M A S
Yale without expectations W
e all have expectations of Yale. High grades, good friends, brilliant professors. Perhaps we even expect, during our time here, to become a certain person, an ideal version of ourselves. Last week I, along with 1,355 other freshmen, arrived on campus with unbounded expectations. In the months since our acceptances, we’ve collectively spent thousands of hours daydreaming, pondering, imagining what Yale might be, setting expectations both for this place and for ourselves. I suggest that we drop these expectations. Two short weeks in, we may still be reveling in Yale’s brilliance, in the excitement of shopping classes, meeting new people and living our lives as near-adults. In these first weeks, we allow the expectations of life-changing classes, beautiful friendships and idyllic college life to drift to the backs of our minds, our internal deadlines still far off in our Yale careers. But as the long, warm summer
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days spent playing Frisbee on Old Campus give way to the dark of winter and long nights spent in Bass, the deadlines for these expectations will come into sharper focus, drawing nearer and nearer.
WITHOUT EXPECTATIONS, WE CAN REMAIN IN AWE OF YALE BEYOND THE FIRST WEEKS OF FRESHMAN YEAR. Some of us may have already noticed this. At this point, most of us have probably shopped at least one bad class. A suitemate may have come back late Saturday night and vomited, adding
In defense of DS
Sam Cohen (“Redirecting Directed Studies,” Aug. 31) reprises some of the standard objections to DS that I have heard now for over a quarter of a century. I would like to respond to two of them. Cohen complains that the “History and Politics” section “is really about political philosophy.” Really? What, then, are Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus doing on the syllabus? The purpose of the section is not simply to provide “context” or background to the study of the works, but to show how these books shape and inform our understanding of politics and history. The point is not simply to learn about these works but to find out what we can learn from them. Second, Cohen complains that DS is a “wholly Western program” and would benefit from writers from “other traditions.” This year History and Politics has introduced readings from Alfarabi and Maimonides to show how the works of classical philosophy were transmitted through the Arabic and Jewish world. More to the point, however, no class can be about all things. To complain that DS doesn’t deal with non-Western works sounds to me like complaining that a class in biology doesn’t deal with the stars and the planets. As Isaiah Berlin — that great DSer — reminded us: Everything is what it is and not another thing. There is a profound truth located in that simple statement. STEVEN SMITH Aug. 31 The writer is the Alfred Cowles professor of political science.
cracks to our increasingly fragile perception of Yale as perfect. Later, our expectations will shatter and come crashing down around us. Perhaps it will be after the first failed test, the first moment of pure exhaustion or the first broken friendship. Regardless of what or when it is, there will come a moment in which our expectations, which we built so thoroughly through spring and summer, will cease to be expectations and instead become failures. It is here that the real danger lies, because it is precisely at this moment that Yale will cease to be what it is meant to be, a place of excitement, learning and growth. It is at this moment that Yale will no longer be something perpetually fresh and filled with a sense of mystery and wonder and will instead become something mundane and old — in essence, just another place. We, the class of 2016, are lucky to be here. There are perhaps thousands of others equally deserving of our places. But, by some luck of the sorting hat, we
wound up here. And because we are lucky, we have a responsibility to give to and take from this place all that can be given and all that can be taken. But we cannot do it if we let unfulfilled expectations transform Yale from the wonder with which we behold it in the first weeks to just another school or just another collection of buildings. Rather, if we dive into Yale without fear, trepidation or expectations, we might just find that we will continue to make Yale a place of perpetual thrills for the next four years because we have nothing to be disappointed by and nothing to lose. We might never lose the sense of wonder and unexplored mystery that drew us here. Only then might we give all we have to give and take all Yale has to offer, making our time here truly worthwhile.
Liberal arts and political hostility
ance, I would encourage those who oppose organized religion to take a religious studies course or attend a religious service. Those who favor traditional gender roles should take a course in the WGSS department. Yale’s academics, in theory, and I hope in practice, facilitate provocative discussions in a diverse community of leaders-in-training; we should not miss out on the opportunity to grow from interactions with our peers. Both Sex Week and Rick Santorum can be healthy parts of our intellectual community. A demagogic volley of opinions in the News simply adds to the cacophony of competing echo chambers and in my experience, hateful intolerance is not a problem specific to Yale. Rather, it is one that a place like Yale can solve.
Like Alec Torres (“The onesided campus,” Aug. 30), I would love to see more thoughtful discourse between conservatives and liberals. But Torres nullified legitimate points by the hypocrisy of his own hostility. While our campus does lean somewhat left, Yale students are generally not ignorant or hateful, and it’s important for everyone to challenge his or her own beliefs. More introspection and breaking down biases would no doubt make Yale — and the world — better. In an age of party line gridlock, our politicians are too distracted by attack ads and races to deal with the real tasks at hand, like dealing with a coming fiscal cliff that might have frightening economic consequences. Even in government, people turn to derision and hostility over issues like abortion and gay marriage. At Yale, too, we tend to see things in black and white. Deconstructing this mindset is difficult, but not impossible, and this is why we are lucky. Our liberal arts education teaches us to think critically and introduces us to different points of view — in short, it offers us a way out of the mud. As an exercise in toler-
MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS is a freshman in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at matthew. lloyd-thomas@yale.edu.
EMILY HONG Aug. 31 The writer is a junior in Pierson College.