The Airport-Terminal
sized Kent State
University
Student Union Building
built after
the 1970 Killings.
New Haven
(The Walking City):
Chapel Street is
Yale's Student Union
Good, clean fun
on Old Campus
Chaplain’s Office
hosts safe space
By Sam Greenberg
Staff Reporter
The Yale Daily News
Published Monday, March 29, 2010
Friday and Saturday nights on Old Campus just got a little more wholesome.
With the launch of a new event called Global Grounds, the Chaplain’s Office is working to create an opportunity every Friday and Saturday night for students to hang out and meet new people in a social environment that is not focused on drinking. The Office tried out the new program this past Friday and Saturday, setting up the Dwight Hall common room with tables, art supplies, board games, coffee and snacks. While organizers said the weekend’s test run was successful, they added that they hope to see students...
#1 By Omission or Commission? 5:15a.m. on March 29, 2010
What an excellent idea.
It never occurred to me until this moment (despite a lifetime in and around and back and forth and to and from Yale), that YALE DOES NOT HAVE A STUDENT UNION.
What an interesting omission, and omisssion (or commission) it must be since Yale is not oblivious to what's going on at other schools.
After the Kent State killings in 1970 that university built a new Student Union (replacing the 1950's snack-bar version) the size of a modern airport terminal!
PK
#2 By Yale 08 8:54a.m. on March 29, 2010
Isn't Sharon Kugler a Catholic?
The Catholic Sun
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!
~Hillaire Belloc
#3 By Yale mom 11:19a.m. on March 29, 2010
BRAVO and thank you!! Hopefully the masters of the residence colleges are talking this up to students. What about initiating a competition to see which college can muster the highest attendance percentage?
#4 By yalemom 11:20a.m. on March 29, 2010
This is the BEST idea I have seen yet!
Thank you Chaplain’s Office, you might actually be saving lives and building wholesome relationships.
#5 By ES10 11:54a.m. on March 29, 2010
Really excited for this. They have cookies and baklava! and an open-mic! and scrabble!
#6 By TC 00 2:32p.m. on March 29, 2010
Checkers, art supplies and snacks? REALLY? I am SHOCKED that students aren't falling all over themselves to revert to their 12-year old selves instead of creating (and erasing!) memories at crazy parties. Certainly when I think of my Bright College Years, I look back on all the times I played Chutes & Ladders while stone cold sober.
#7 By Goldie '08 3:40p.m. on March 29, 2010
This won't be taken seriously, and it is made in jest, but I believe the point is somewhat valid:
Smoking pot is a fun activity for friends to partake in as an alternative to alcohol!
#8 By Auntie PK 3:49p.m. on March 29, 2010
There has never been a need for a "student union": One's college (PK: a.k.a. a student's more or less permanent dormitory or even alma mater) provides endless variations on the theme, limited only by the energy and imagination of its residents. Any student (or graduate) of Yale College knows that the common room, the dining hall, the buttery (PK: a "buttery" is where Yalies go for camaraderie, food, and fun), etc., fill (and more) the purpose of a "student union."
This is not to criticize Old Campus (PK: Old Campus is where a Yalie lives during freshman year before progressing to his or her "college"), efforts by the Chaplain's Office to provide some centralized entertainment are... fine (although they will be made superfluous should Levin get his way and dismantle the Old Campus system, but that initiative is outside the scope of this comment).
The Chaplain's effort does, perhaps, reflect poorly on freshman, as they seem to need some external motivator to "withstand" the evils and allures of drugs, drinks, & sex (well, drugs & drinks, anyway) that clearly pervade the campus mind (well, the Chaplain's, anyway).
That said: I myself *love* cookies and Scrabble(tm)!
[Note to future English teachers: the phrase "1950's snack bar" should be correctly written "1950s snack bar" or even "1950s' snack bar," but let us not stand on peder..., er, pedantry or points...]
#9 By Yale 09 4:00p.m. on March 29, 2010
Great idea. Wish something like this had come sooner
#10 By Y12 5:37p.m. on March 29, 2010
Great! If people go to that, I WILL get into a secret society.
Certainly not the chess champion.
#11 By Skeine 7:44p.m. on March 29, 2010
This is a great initiative by the Chaplain's Office. Even if the Yale administration turns a blind eye to alcohol use (and abuse) by freshmen, it doesn't mean that every freshman chooses to engage in this kind of illegal behavior. Moreover, because drinking culture is so pervasive, it can be difficult to find people who want to have fun without alcohol. It's absurd that at Yale, a school that celebrates the diversity of opinions, any student should feel pressure to drink in order 'truly' experience his or her 'Bright College Years.'
#12 By From Ralph Waldo Emerson's Hobgobblin and PK 8:00p.m. on March 29, 2010
Taken from UsingEnglish.com
English Language Poll
Poll: Do you use an apostrophe in plural dates?
1970's
1970s
Votes: 1279
Comments: 12
Added: September 2003
Caleb Talati - 29th May 2007 19:57
In the "Penguin Guide to Punctuation"(1997), I read that the apostrophe is not needed for forming the dates of plurals in British English. However, according to the author, it is needed in American English. I find it easy writing both "1970s" and "1970's".
#13 By Walking City: Yale's Student Union 12:26a.m. on March 30, 2010
New Haven is a good, old-fashioned "walking city" and Chapel Street is Yale's Student Union.
PK
#14 By Auntie PK 1:52a.m. on March 30, 2010
I unsurprised that you are unaware what Yale recommends:
http://www.yale.edu/bass/1tools.html#StyleManual
Big boys play with the MLA (you can look that up, can't you?) and the Chicago Manual of Style...
#15 By Emma Woodhouse 10:38a.m. on March 30, 2010
At least Yale is acknowledging that the drinking in Old Campus is out of control. But will chess and cookies without music draw the students who are apt to drink? Haven't experienced it, but the chaplain's effort sounds a bit too tame. In spite of the college system, a student union with bowling, pool, snack bars etc. would be a plus at Yale.
#16 By Yale 11 2:28p.m. on March 30, 2010
Anyone who mentions a Student Union is clueless about the social greatness of Yale.
The residential colleges are tremendously safe and students LOVE the communities in those walls.
Yale boasts the best undergraduate experience and some of the happiest students because of this system.
A student union is a relic from another era of education. We don't have any need for something like that.
#17 By Fortress Mentality 133 on March 30, 2010
The residential colleges, whatever their social benefit (or "social greatness") to the insiders, are an architectural snub to the outsiders (townies), facing INWARD as they do with their gothic buttoxes extended outward, protected by modern portcullises, fortresses of privilege, excluding the civilians on the sidewalks
from even the illusion of participation in the Yale experience.
The elitist smugness of this architecture seems to escape the University, which throws a few "social outreach" scraps to the townspeople now and then ( a soup kitchen here; a concert there ) and has even decided to replicate the model in its two new Gothic Palace colleges, contiguous with the section of New Haven off Prospect Street which oozes poverty.
Crime creeps ever closer to the University year by year, and dumfounded, the University is clueless as to why the impoverished who live on its borders might possibly be angry, envious and driven.
My, my, my.
This fortress mentality speaks loud and clear in all that Yale represents in New Haven.
Paul Keane
The Anti-Yale
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