Friendship and advice beyond multiculturalism

BY VENKAT LAKSHMINARAYANAN

I showed up on campus the first day of Freshman Year remarkably self-conscious about my race—not because I felt like I was the only blotch of color on a whitewashed campus, but because in my post-FOOT condition I looked as though I was personally validating an array of comically inaccurate stereotypes.

ZANDER DRYER/YH Lakshminarayanan (l.) with his ethnic counselor Manal Mehta.

Unshaven, unwashed, bedraggled, emaciated, and sleep-deprived, I remember assuring each parent I encountered that "I'm actually very nice to look at when I have regular access to non-drying glycerin soaps" and struggling to explain that my disproportionately ecstatic reaction to the toilet-paper and indoor plumbing of Bingham Hall was merely a result of a week's deviance from an otherwise completely well-adjusted cultural experience.

I guess it's true what they say—you never get a second chance to make a first impression. But I wasn't giving up that easily, damn it. I was going to show them I had class. I got my chance that night at the Freshman Convocation, which was described to me as "fancy dress." However, the only pretty outfit I had packed was my father's pinstriped three-piece suit, possibly left over from his days as an extortionist with the South Indian mafia. Well, if there was one.

So instead of seeming well-adjusted—or, at the very least, even slightly familiar with Western social subtleties—I looked as though I had stumbled off the boat with a clumsy idea of "dressing for successing." The visual impression of a comically overdressed foreigner immediately invokes some kind of '30s immigrant narrative: "Papa, he give-a me a new suit so I can look like a big roller in the New World. I come to study in the University dressed in high fashion."

In my attempt to fit in, I had managed to give my race an unexpected (and uncomfortable) centrality in this minstrelish identity that I was radiating. It was getting late, and I was hanging out on the steps in front of my new home, Bingham Tower, trying to figure out the exact moment when everything had come crashing down. It was then, when I most needed it, that I felt a warm, comforting hand on my shoulder. "No jimmy, no jammy," the well-groomed stranger advised me.

"What?" I said, with an expression of blank confusion.

"What I mean is, don't be silly...protect your willie."

Odd as it might seem to others, this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, if perhaps one I now realize involved, among other things, a great deal of discussion of prophylactics and rhyming axioms that urged their employment during the act of "jammy." The stranger introduced himself as Manal Mehta, my ethnic counselor. My relationship with Manal seemed curiously disconnected from "ethnic issues," focusing instead on just plain old college issues. He also recognized that my lean build, much like his, would be a welcome addition to a rowboat, and peppered his safe-sex rhyming rhetoric with recommendations that I channel my waifishness for the good of the famous Yale lightweight crew team.

Captured within these choice interactions between me and Manal is my entire impression of the ethnic counseling system at Yale. Of course, the system does include more than what I am able to express through my personal anecdotes of triumph in the face of adversity and victory against all odds (or more accurately, my particular experience given the overwhelming lack of ethnic strife on this campus).

A minority at this historically WASPy, stuffy, upper-crust campus, the beloved alma mater of such archetypal icons of whiteness as William F. Buckley, Jr., DC '50, several generations of the Bush family, and every graduating class of Groton since the 1790s, is tempted to define himself by ethnicity, in hopes of preserving his uniqueness given the overwhelming assault of cultural uniformity.

However, the way my ethnic counselor attempted to help me adjust to Yale—with advice that was more specifically freshman-centric than ethno-centric—deemphasized the uncomfortable centrality of ethnicity within our relationship. The unwholesome tendency to identify ethnicity as the defining characteristic of an "ethnic student" generally plagues the traditionally white-washed campuses of the Ivies; our cultural reverence for multiculturalism often cheats these ethnic individuals of their individuality independent of race.

In a world filled with obsessively politically-correct admissions language and empty multicultural lip-service, it was refreshing to find that these "ethnic counselors" deemphasized the ethnic link between us—an approach that reassures the ethnic student that you don't have to concentrate your energy on constantly reminding yourself what your ethnicity is, and that your relationship with other "ethnics" can focus on more important commonalities.

Most importantly, the cultural climate (of which ethnic counselors form a small part) helps all students—regardless of race—realize that you don't constantly have to concern yourself with how stereotypically you act or dress. You don't have to spend your time here trying to represent your entire culture—just yourself. They don't print that up on your admissions letters, but you figure it out quick enough.

Sometimes it takes a short Hindu outside of Bingham Tower extolling the value of the "wrapped willie" (rather than trite inclusive rhetoric) to remind you that "ethnic students" are most defined by their role as Yale students, grades, the opposite sex, friendship, and free stuff as much our motives as any other group of college student. At least for now, we're less immediately concerned with multiculturalism, racial hyper-consciousness, or the threat of ethnic conflict.

Yale is 70 percent white—it's a statistic that makes it seem that the old "good ol' boy" network still holds strong—but the presence of a white majority seldom spells a threat that requires racial self-defense among cultural minorities.

Here's the reason my ethnic counselor (comfortingly) didn't have to deal with divisive racial tension, riots, or ethnic strife: the kind of people that Yale attracts are mature enough with their concept of race-relations that dogmatic ethnic identification is unnecessary to the nurturing of cultural pride They're good people, sharing an enlightened, liberal embrace of diversity. Gentle reader, if you've made it this far in this article with a smile on your face, I'm sure you would fit in just fine. And for everyone else, well, there's always Princeton.

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