Buzzed in the dining hall

People at Yale enjoy making life rough for themelves. After all, there are schools in other places that cost less than Yale, but every year, thousands of students opt to pass their bright college years in New Haven. Then they over-commit themselves, living in tight courtyards and dark dining halls, spending motionless days in front of books and marching uphill to science class. Granted, Yale's rich social environment keeps its students content, but there is still too much self-imposed misery in this ivory tower.

A look at Trinity College in nearby Hartford can show Yale what it's missing. Why compare the two schools? Well, they're the two oldest colleges in Connecticut. Yale's neo-gothic buildings may be famous, but Trinity had the look first. They're two of the best schools in the state.

Life, in general, is much more pleasant at Trinity than at Yale. For example, Trinity's buildings were built to a more human scale, giving its students small, comfortable libraries instead of hulking, slab-like book warehouses with painful chairs and primitive climate control. Built on a hill, the campus allows its residents a large expanse of sky wherever they go, while the large windows in the rooms and dining halls allow light to stream in, something that astonishes Yale students when they travel northward in wintertime to visit their friends. In general, life at Trinity emphasizes human happiness over hard-nosed intellectual achievement.

Most remarkably, Trinity College serves beer in its dining halls. With proper identification, a student may purchase the stuff with dinner, where vigilant bartenders will make sure that older folks don't slip anything to the young'uns. I have a price list.

Anchor Steam $3.00

Bass Ale $2.50

According to Trinity's newspaper, the idea to try a bar-in-a-dining hall came from the school's president. "In response to criticisms that the enforcement of the alcohol policy would drive students off campus," reports the Trinity Tripod, the school's president "wanted to offer them an additional option on campus." Not something Yale sounds likely to try anytime soon.

What has this kind of thinking done for Trinity College? Well, for starters, it has probably kept hoards of students from wandering to dangerous off-campus neighborhoods to drink under the eyes of less-cautious bartenders. Maybe not a noble idea, but pragmatic, nonetheless.

Trinity's alcohol situation does come with its problems, however. Just last year, the Trinity Tripod reported a record number of student arrests in one weekend, all of them alcohol-related. The police arrested one male student for banging on a locked door and yelling while intoxicated. The Tripod reported, "Throughout the incident, the student was not wearing any pants." Hauling in five students in one weekend, Trinity sent half a percent of their student body to the police station. It's hard to imagine 27 Yale students [roughly one-half of one percent] arrested in one weekend for anything besides a sit-in protest at Woodbridge Hall while Henry Kissinger was meeting with President Levin.

Guinness $3.00

Heineken $2.75

To answer the original question, most Yale students came to college to achieve as much as humanly possible. Even those who came to Yale for other reasons find themselves slavishly devoting their lives to course work and extracurriculars instead of tossing around a Frisbee, as much as they might want to engage in the latter activity. Yale students have made the decision to suffer for their achievements, and thus they go along with an institutional attitude that pays relatively little attention to keeping its students happy. It seems that Yalies have seen the alternatives, and they wouldn't want life any other way.