Diversity, women elude whitebread YPU

EUGENE WONG/YH

One of the things that attracted me to Yale was the idea of a politically active campus. There are scores of undergraduate organizations at Yale for the politically active student; there are countless anti-sweatshop activist groups, pro-labor groups, pro-choice groups, and many others that fall under the umbrella of either the Women's Center or the LGBT Co-op. All of these opportunities are exciting, and I have availed myself of a number of them. But there is one bitter disappointment, and that is the Yale Political Union (YPU).

Of course, as many will be quick to point out, the YPU is by no means an activist organization; its primary function is to host debates and political speakers. While I realize that there are other outlets on campus for political action regarding specific issues, the YPU remains an important figure in Yale's political scene. The YPU brought, among other people, presidential candidate Ralph Nader to campus, and it is represented, legitimately or not, as the face of campus politics.

The YPU was also a fundamental part of what attracted me to Yale. It was exciting to see all the signs for debates and speakers; I decided that it was definitely something I would want to become involved in. While I am still an activist at heart, I also enjoy the ideological aspect of politics, the discussions and speeches and sharing of ideas.

So I joined the Liberal Party. I eat dinner with the members, attend the debates (more like informal discussions) when I can, and go to social events. There are opportunities for activism, like volunteering in a local soup kitchen. I enjoy being a member of the Liberal Party very much. I must admit, the party is having trouble; due to a lack of attendance by party members at YPU functions, the party is constantly threatened with probation.

I resolved to do my part to remedy this, and I went to a YPU-sponsored debate. The resolution was one that hit very close to home for me—abortion, specifically whether a fetus is a person. However, I soon realized why the Liberal Party is having trouble getting its members to go to YPU functions, and why Yale students, especially those with any kind of interest in politics, should make sure they're fully aware of who's in charge of an organization that, by accident or design, represents Yale.

First of all, the debate was not about the resolution. It didn't even morph into another resolution, as I had assumed it would. It simply degenerated, after Professor Ian Shapiro's speech, into a silly little boys' club. This was no political union of concerned students addressing the issues; it was a group of men (with only five or six women) who got together to discuss an issue about which they have no first-hand knowledge. Instead they ended up making jokes about it. Granted, my anger was in part over the content of the jokes, given that the issue is an important one to me and I wanted to see it treated seriously. But the more disturbing problem was the lack of female participation in general.

From the moment I entered I felt uncomfortable. I was in a room made up predominantly of men, most of them in suits and ties. A few women trickled in as time went by, but all but one of headed for the middle (Independent Party) or right (Conservative Party, Party of the Right) sections of the room. During the question-and-answer session after Shapiro's speech, no women were called on. No women rose to speak either in the affirmative or the negative, at least as long as I stayed. For the entire time I was there, over an hour and a half, only two women were called on to speak. One woman laughingly asked her question in Spanish and the other insisted repeatedly that the "pro-death" speaker explain why it's okay to kill retarded children. The whole thing degenerated into a farce, and I left in disgust before hearing the last speaker.

Of the chairpersons of the parties that make up the YPU, only one, the Conservative Party chair, is a woman. The YPU is dominated by the Conservatives and the Party of the Right, who insist that anyone who gets up to speak use the proper formulations when addressing speakers (i.e., "What does the gentleman think...") and that all speakers wear coats and ties. There was a resolution introduced to require the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of these meetings, but it was defeated, mercifully, by the more leftist parties, who decided to suffer through a meeting just to make sure subsequent ones wouldn't be unbearable.

The problem I have with the YPU is that it is dominated by conservatives and men. As a liberal woman, I can change that, but only marginally. What we need is substantial representation. Until the YPU actively recruits more women and liberals and women show up to more events and take a more active role within the individual parties, Yale will be represented by the same conservative white male faces it is already heavily associated with. It will still be an old boys' club. Minor irritations, like not being called on or heard, or being forced to sit through petty spats over style at the expense of content, will not cease until we take back the YPU and make it an organization that truly reflects the diverse elements that make up Yale.

  Raina Lipsitz is a freshman in Trumbull.

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