Finding new Blue among the old

BY KAREN ABRAVANEL

The gentlemen songsters came on a spree to Portland over winter break and performed the traditional Yale songs for the Yale Club of Oregon. As I listened to the Whiffenpoof concert, I recognized the division between the old and new Yalies.

I encountered this same division last October at the Yale Club of New York when, passing it on our way back to Grand Central Station, my roommate Amy and I decided to stop by. "You can't come in," the doorman said, looking us over suspiciously.

"But we're current Yale students," Amy said. "Can't we just see if we want to join?"

"You can call the membership office between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays to make an appointment." He recited a phone number and closed the door behind us.

The doorman was only doing his job. The Club offers membership to current seniors only. Why? Many alumni maintain the traditional Yale as the only Yale, and my abrupt rejection from this institution indicated a preference for the old Yale over the new.

I purposely oversimplify my definitions of "old" and "new." The old Yale is the Yale of gentlemen's clubs, fine wine and cheese, mahogany, and dinner jackets. This is the traditional Yale symbolized by the Whiffenpoofs. As they perform in their white ties and tails, the Whiffenpoofs become what one commentator called, "Yale speaking to Yale." It is an image of Yale that pervades popular culture, extending all the way to The Simpsons: "Let Harvard have its football and academics," nuclear power mogul C. Montgomery Burns said in a recent episode, "Yale will always be first in gentlemanly club life."

I do not wish my Yale to be portrayed this way. I attend the new Yale, a coeducational and diverse institution, listed in Link magazine as one of the nation's most politically correct campuses.

My father attended the old Yale, and during my first few months here, I worried that his experiences would undermine my own--that I would merely repeat my father's college years.

It took me a while to realize that my Yale was different, that my experience would be my own, and that my father wanted it that way. But though our Yales will always be separate, they have continued to complement each other.

I rattle off a list of my professors. "Gaddis Smith is still there!" he exclaims. I describe the bike graveyard in the Davenport basement. "My bike was stolen. Keep an eye out, but watch for those wandering strangers."

"What strangers, Dad? Oh yeah, no gates in '68."

I tell him that Professor and former Master Henry Turner still lunches in Davenport. "His class on modern Germany was one of the best I ever took," my father says. "What do you hear about Master Merriman?"

"Merriman?" I ask. "He's the one in the portrait near the toaster, right?" My father groans.

We have developed a new relationship, one that manifested itself when the Whiffenpoofs asked both alumni and current students to rise for "Bright College Years." The song and its corresponding arm-wave are forever ingrained in my father, who was President of the Glee Club. I pretended to know the words as he sang along, but I was lost with the waving arm.

He laughed, gave me a technical demonstration, and tried to explain the origin and meaning of the song--not the false reminiscences of crusty old alums about mythical college life, but the yearning for freedom that accompanied the 19th-century German professors who brought the tune to New Haven, and the remembrance of freedom that the song should always provoke in alumni.

It is that freedom that my father found in college life, and that he wishes me to find. He quotes the contemporary philosopher Sting: "If you love somebody, really love someone, set them free."

When he sent me to away to school, he sent me to the old Yale, the Yale he remembered. But while I've been here I have found a new Yale, my own Yale. And though a rigid institution like a club may only display the divisions between the traditional and the contemporary, the young and the old, a closer look at a different angle can reveal the vast network of connecting lines.

Back to Opinion...