A piece by a guest opinion columnist from The Crimson.
A sickness is gripping Yale University, far more dangerous than any pandemic or Yague variant. The Bacchic revelry of your Greek organizations has seeped from its hedonistic home base on High Street into every corner of the campus you hold dear. Out of a sincere concern for our inferiors, the Crimson has taken to investigating concerning trends in student life at Yale in the absence of a remotely competent daily newspaper. Recent polling from the Harvard Institute of Politics shows that the Yale student body is having far more “fun” than it did in the “good ol’ days.” A shocking 23.1% of students have reportedly blacked out in front of Society tombs in the past 24 hours (margin of error +/- 1.5%). Indeed, the now-powerless Societies have become hotbeds of drunken nonsense since abandoning their elitism and allowing the masses to join—a blasphemous degeneration we thankfully have resisted in our Final Clubs.
But should we be surprised that our less fortunate colleagues in the downtrodden city of New Haven have adopted such hedonism? Poor education (from the Latin educare, meaning a curation of not only the intellectual but moral fortitude of a person, for those Yale students too dimwitted to understand) leads to poor discipline, and poor discipline to debauchery. From this debauchery come poor citizens—made soft by grade inflation, liberal ideologies, and reasonable work-life balance. Easy times create weak men, and Yale is a cakewalk (take it from me: I participated in the Yale Young Global Scholars program as a rising junior in high school and am thus an expert on the University).
The purported “bright college years” enjoyed by the average Yale student have devolved into a murky, drug-induced haze. Drug abuse and drinking run wild in the poorly monitored cesspool of first-years known as “Old Campus.” Your previously sacred places of learning, such as the grand Sterling Library, are regularly desecrated by sexually deviant students who use them as a garden out of Huxley’s Brave New World. The former seminary now worships pleasure as students gleefully shout their devilish creed from illegally accessed rooftops: For Mammon, For Country, and For Yale.
Perhaps you think this condemnation comes from a place of jealousy. You would be wrong (unsurprisingly). My inability to attend a single non-suite party for the duration of my first two years made me stronger than you could ever be. The nonexistence and exclusivity of fun here, in scenic Cambridge, make such fleeting moments of respite all the more valuable. Have I ever had sex? No. But my moral superiority keeps me warm at night. Have I ever drank anything other than the single cocktail I was allowed at my father’s 30-year Harvard reunion? Of course not. But knowing that I will have “Harvard College” written in shiny letters on my diploma is a far greater pleasure than shotgunning two beers at once outside Toad’s on a Wednesday night.
Thus, I write this piece out of sincere concern. I beg of you: remember the Calvinist work ethic and Puritanical values that made our nation great. Recall the heady truths your university once instilled in you and turn away from the destruction of your almost-promising young minds.
No need to thank me for the wake-up call. I carry the Harvard Man’s Burden with pride.
