Yale's dumb rules laid bare

The World According to Carp
    By Benjamin Carp

Two and a half years ago, I was napping on a couch in Cross Campus Library when all of a sudden the Pundits came streaking through the library. As a freshman, I found this somewhat disconcerting. What was worse, a few seconds after the crowd had passed, a lone straggler--naked except for a backpack and shoes--entered the room. He was holding a gigantic bag of Jolly Ranchers.

"Hey, does everyone here have candy?" he asked, and he began to toss the Jolly Ranchers around the room...still naked.

A librarian walked up to him. Mr. Naked Pundit is standing there with his backpack and a bag of candy. With her hand on her hip, in that tone of admonishment that librarians have perfected, she said,"Um, excuse me. Out with the candy." And that is the reason I failed all my finals that semester.

But there is a moral to this story as well. The "no food in CCL" rule is so poorly enforced that everyone tends to forget about it completely. The rule seems even sillier when a librarian reprimands a totally nude Pundit for his stash of sucking candies.

If you have even a trace amount of guile, you can sneak your candy bar and soda into CCL for munchies. Despite the rules, I see no reason why this practice of conscientious objection shouldn't continue. I'm not saying we should eliminate the rule completely; Yale's books are valuable, and I would never want to see people eating five course meals in CCL, or sticking gum all over their favorite book on Russian literature. However, the rules should not be so strictly enforced that I couldn't munch quietly on a Snickers while I study. I'm not doing the books any harm, and it's a hell of a lot more convenient than going to that noisy, greasy machine city.

There are plenty of other rules which Yale enforces inefficiently (although as a freshman counselor I'm technically considered an employee of Yale College, and I'd get fired if I exposed them all). It's easy to avoid the rules about wall hangings and coffee pots, the rules about loud music in the dorms, and, as we all know, the rules about alcohol.

Bending the rules from time to time doesn't hurt anyone, and makes college life a little bit more bearable. No one likes a bitchy bureaucracy. Yale's problem is not that it has silly rules that aren't enforced; we all understand that they're liable if they don't have such guidelines.

The problem arises when Yale annoyingly insists on enforcing some of the regulations that it should ignore. The classic case is the rule about storing toiletries in the public bathrooms. An informal survey has revealed that this is the only thing that Yalies truly care about, outranking the "Yale Four," world hunger, crossword puzzles, finding true love, campus security and United States race relations. I'll postpone solutions to these peripheral problems for future columns. In the meantime, I know you're dying to hear my method of getting around your number one concern, the Toiletries Problem. Unfortunately, it involves wide-scale bribery that you may not feel able to coordinate or afford. Email me if you're really curious.

Here is my message to Yale, my kind employer: on the books, ban microwaves and halogen lamps. But then refuse to enforce the rule. That way, if someone burns their room down, Yale can punish the individual student and disavow all responsibility. The rest of us, meanwhile, can lead normal lives in well-lit rooms.

As long as the police, the faculty and the administration are willing to look the other way in some cases, there's no reason why they shouldn't look the other way in others--common sense is a good rule of thumb. As long as no one's getting hurt (which is the only major goal stated at the beginning of the Undergraduate Regulations), there's no reason why the University should enforce patently dumb rules. We don't want idiots falling off towers or flinging tomato sauce at the stacks, but we can allow responsible people (i.e., Yalies) to break the rules. Thoreau refused to pay his taxes because of the Mexican War--all we want to do is leave our shampoo in the bathrooms or enjoy the view from the roof of SSS.

Yale has never made much sense. Otherwise Commons' workers would place the bowls nearer to the cereal at breakfast. Yale does, however, care about its students. The Administration should pay less attention to the rules that no one should have to follow. You've all read that email forward about state laws no longer enforced because they're antiquated and dumb. Yale is more antiquated than most states and its rules are twice as dumb--so we can certainly afford to let things slide from time to time.

I mean, as long as I was going to fail my finals, I deserved a Jolly Rancher.

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