Iqra’i

Yesterday’s snow was lovely, except for when it got in my shoes. (I hope I learn that high heels and snowy sidewalks do not mix before I lose a toe.) Unfortunately, it’s warmed up enough that swirling snowflakes have turned to nearly-horizontal rain, and my dinky drugstore umbrella has all but given up the ghost.

I managed to sleep through lunch in my college, as is my wont, but I was hungry enough to make the trek across campus to Commons. I don’t go there often, but when I do the façade of Woolsey Hall always stands out to me beside Beinecke’s “powerful stone geometry…amidst neo-Classical and neo-Gothic neighbors” (and this is a good thing, Yale?^[1]).

There I was, sheltering under the library overhang and feeling very sorry for myself because I was cold and wet from a three block walk and a substandard umbrella, and there was the cenotaph “In Memory of THE MEN of Yale who, true to Her Traditions gave THEIR LIVES that FREEDOM might not perish from the Earth.” They were cold and wet, too, and for much longer than the my lunchtime break from a warm bed and dry pajamas. I’ll take rainy New Haven over Flemish mud any day, and I’m sure they would have too, but being a Yale Man meant something in ninety years ago. The University taught its students to be adults. It doesn’t do that any more.

Dara criticized me last night for knocking Sex Week without going to any of the events, and I agreed that she had a point. She still does, I suppose — Sex Week is not, of itself, the Downfall Of The West. It’s a symptom, not the cause. Rather than teaching us what we should want, the University has reverted to giving us what we do want — which is apparently “intimacy-enhancing products,” screenings of pornography, and talks from VH1 pick-up artists. We don’t need Yale to give us titillation: we get that from television and magazines and the internets. Anyone who wants information about “intimacy-enhancing products” or the Vivid Girls can do his own damn Google search.

I don’t need to go to Ron Jeremy’s booksigning (title — I am not making this up: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz) to say that it’s unworthy of Yale. I don’t need to go to talks with porn stars to say that not only should they not be keynote speakers at this university, they probably shouldn’t even be employed.

So, yes. Maybe I’m painting Sex Week with too broad a brush. There are some worthwhile events. But what do you want to bet they’re a lot less popular than the porn screenings? We need the boring, vanilla stuff — don’t get drunk with strangers, don’t have meaningless sex, and when you do have sex make sure to do it safely — not “The Who Looks Most Like a Vivid Girl” contest. The risqué elements aren’t going to keep anyone around for the important stuff.

^[1] Criticisms of my architectural tastes may be directed to the Department of Aesthetics. Response expected in six to eight weeks.