The same story could be told about Princeton, Stanford, or Harvard of course:
When I arrived at Friday’s Sophomore Holiday Dinner, I was stunned at how the already-striking Commons had been transformed. The chandeliers that illuminate the dining hall were dimmed to set an elegant scene, and the wooden tables and chairs that usually fill Commons were replaced by massive buffet lines. Meal stations with copious amounts of food lined the walls, and a dessert table featuring an ice sculpture dragon sat in the middle of the space....
The event’s emcee...took a moment to note the sheer abundance of food at the dinner — 1,000 shrimp, pounds and pounds of fish, crab, lobster, lamb, turkey and pork and cakes with too many layers to count — all for Yale. Once his speech ended, the Parade of Comestibles began. Dining hall workers, most of whom were Black, marched around Commons carrying the flags of the 14 residential colleges and carrying elegant food displays as a local drumming band, all Black, played triumphant beats. They circled Commons several times touting, among other things, a 10-foot loaf of bread, an ice-sculpted sleigh stuffed with the aforementioned shrimp and a rack of lamb decorated with mint and berries. Students swayed to the beat of the drums, excitedly watching the performance and recording it on their cell phones.
The food had to go somewhere, so people started taking it by the pound. Students lined up near the meal station back of Commons, waiting to grab entire crabs and lobsters to take home with them. They grabbed turkey legs the size of my forearm and munched away at them too. We all feasted like royalty.
Just two blocks away, on the city’s Green, homeless people froze and starved in the bitter New Haven night....
Yale’s stated mission...goes, “Yale is committed to improving the world today and for future generations through outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice. Yale educates aspiring leaders worldwide who serve all sectors of society….”
Universities like Yale and Princeton operate under the assumption that only a small group of remarkable people can push humanity forward. Thus, Yale’s goal is to become a training camp for the world’s elite, so that they can go out and make life better for the rest of us. As a Yale Daily News editorial puts it: “Yale serves as a site of elite class reproduction, funneling well-heeled youth into positions of power….” But this view of the world is misguided because, more often than not, change has been made by groups instead of individuals....
Nevertheless, Yale continues to commit this elitist view of change-making, closing the doors of the university to anyone who isn’t deemed capable of becoming a world leader. Yale’s acceptance rate keeps ticking downward as the years progress. In last year’s admissions cycle, only 4.6 percent of applicants were offered a place in the incoming class. Though Yale acknowledges that a vast majority of its applicant pool is qualified to attend the University, and though Yale has the money and power to expand its student body, it continues to manufacture scarcity for spots on campus.
This idea of individual-driven change reeks of false meritocracy and trickle-down theory, and gives the University the cover it needs to hoard wealth and resources. Indeed, University Provost Scott Strobel’s justification for Yale’s grotesquely swollen endowment is that, “Yale is committed to tackling the most significant human problems of the day. The endowment helps Yale’s people … carry out this mission..” As the reasoning goes: the best and brightest must have access to all the resources they desire — how else would they lead the less intelligent, less talented and less wealthy masses to a better society.
Among the Yalies who "improv[ed] the world today and for the future" and "serve[d] all sectors of society" have been George W. Bush, Wilbur Ross, John C. Calhoun, Joe "no insurance company left behind" Lieberman, J.D. Vance, Amy Wax, Dick Cheney, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas.
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