Clothes and Man at Yale

Yale men, usually a mild-mannered and conventionally apathetic bunch, have worked themselves into a good-sized spell of intellectual activity over a new College ruling requiring them to wear coats and ties at evening meals. In fact, from the amount of serious bitching the Yalies have done over a seemingly trivial issue, something more serious must be lurking beneath the surface of their discontent.

Indeed there is a more serious aspect to the New Haven squabble, one which has compelled many Yale men to doubt the value of their whole educational system. Paternalism is the crime the Yale administration is charged with, and there is a good bit of truth to the accusations. In the past year, the Dean's office at Yale has sent personal letters to all students warning them not to cheat, has like a stern parent snatched the pleasant tradition of Derby Day away from them, has compelled them to attend classes, and has scolded them for slouching and smoking in class.

Trivial as all these restrictions may be, their cumulative force has had a depressing effect on the New Haven community of scholars. Yale men just do not like being treated like adolescent inmates of an expensive, well-run prep school, no matter how good its faculty may be. They have had freedom and they like the taste of it.

The Yale administration may argue, as colleges have argued for centuries, that since its students have acted like children and abused their freedom, they should loose that freedom and be treated as children. It evidently has not occured to Yale that there is something contradictory in its recent answer to Bill Buckley, a passionate espousal of academic freedom--the right of a student or professor to seek his own path to the truth--and the shackles it has imposed on a student's personal life. Dean's offices, both in New Haven and elsewhere, should consider the consequences of treating students as mature men during the day and as obstreperous children at night.