Yale elitism: alive and kickin'

Pie in Your Face
    By Sheela V. Pai

On Fri., Aug. 20, The New York Times ran an article with the snappy headline "Eli Chic or Boola Boorish?" The probing piece exposed the latest controversy to rock the Yale community. Last month the Yale Club of New York City became the first Ivy League club to allow members to go casual on Fridays, throwing away the traditional jacket-and-tie requirement for all five weekdays in an effort to attract more young members.

Throughout the article, members of different Ivy League clubs sputtered about the dangers of this rebellious policy. The reporter even noted that the other Ivies saw themselves as engaged in a "last stand for manners." While there were quite a few notable remarks, the one that truly stuck out came from a 32-year member of the Harvard Club. He proclaimed, "Even in the late 1990s there should be a few havens for proper attire and decorum...I wouldn't expect the rowdies from New Haven to understand."

Actually, sir, Yale Club members do understand. Though a red-blooded New Haven rowdy like myself was a member of the Yale Club this summer, taking full advantage of the dress code revolution and committing other faux pas of my own, my elder Elis never hesitated to put me back in my place. In fact, to ensure that my beloved bastion of Yalie-ness was still also a bastion of crusty traditionalism and elitism, I created a few "tests" of my own. I'm proud to say that the club passed with flying colors. Let me share my results with you.

One Friday I showed up at the Yale Club sporting not just an "allowed" casual wear item—a pair of dark blue flared jeans—but also one of the "forbidden" items—a T-shirt, specifically a gray one from the Gap. Though an alarm didn't go off as I strolled into the club's marble lobby and the staff didn't bar my entry, members enforced the dress code with an assortment of gestures and pained facial expressions. I traipsed through the Tap Room, past massive oil portraits of Presidents Bush and Ford in the lounge as women in black cocktail dresses with feathered hats winced and packs of men in gray pinstriped suits backed away in fear. The palpable alienation was enough to drive even the most hardened rowdy back to the traditional skirt and blouse.

I also conducted a bit of guerilla generational warfare. I always had noticed that though the magazine rack in the club gym was filled with copies of Robb Report, Travel & Leisure Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly, it also lacked standard light-hearted gym reading fare. Exercise magazines like Fitness and Shape and fashion magazines like Vogue and Elle were conspicuously absent. I decided to tempt my fellow exercisers into getting a taste of fluff by placing a copy of Vogue in the rack. The next day I found all the other magazines in good condition, but the copy of Vogue had a piece of gum stuck between its pages. By the third day the copy was gone. Perhaps another rabble-rouser was responsible, yet the whole thing somehow smacked of elitist conspiracy.

Another touchy Yale Club issue was the presence of three TVs that hung in front of the exercise bicycles and treadmills in the gymnasium. All three always seemed to be tuned to CNBC or CNN. If a younger member dared to change the channel to watch a drama or a sitcom, an older member would immediately grab a remote control and change it back in time to catch the stock price of Microsoft. One day I made a bold move: I put on a soap opera. Groans and moans resounded. A week later a dramatic change in the TV policy was announced—the televisions were to be fixed on three different channels, CNBC, NBC, and VH1. One group of members planned to petition for CNN to replace VH1.

As any stuffy Cantab can see, the creation of casual Fridays hasn't made a dent in the spirit of decorum that pervades the Yale Club. If anything, the policy has put older members on guard to ensure the young don't get carried away with their newfound freedom. Try as it might to be hip to the Yale of the present, the club cannot help but remain a shrine to the Old Yale, to the days of George and George W., to a time when Skull and Bones was respected rather than mocked and flamboyant elitism was rampant. And the club isn't willing to change. Believe me, there is no way anyone can ruin all that tradition just by wearing jeans on Friday.

Back to Opinion...