Journal Article: Outcry's Source

Following are some excerpts from Julie V. Iovine's controversial Wall Street Journal article, entitled. " `Lipsticks' and Lords: Yale's New Look" The piece ran August 4, 1987 in the Journal's Leisure and Arts section.

"I didn't bother returning last summer for my 10th Yale reunion because I still live part of each year in New Haven. I even thought I knew what was going on until Sara Cohen, class of '88, started talking about the `lipsticks' and the `crunchies.' The former, she explains, are Yale's radical-chic lesbians; the latter, 'the granola dykes who have old-fashioned ideas about feminism.' Then there are the assimilationists, gay men mostly, who don't want to draw attention to their sexuality, and a growing number of special-interest factions, like the new Chicano-lesbian group. Suddenly Yale has a reputation as a gay school: Last spring, while most campuswide social activities withered away under Connecticut's new legal drinking age of 21, 1000 students attended the annual gay-lesbian ball."

"Social life on campus has subsequently retreated to a furtiveness last seen during Prohibition. No more huge bashes with dining-hall floors reeking from spilled beer and courtyards given over to the all-night concocting of strawberry daquiris. Students are still drinking as much, possibly more, than ever; only now, they get soaked privately in their rooms before going out. Then, for thrills, they might go to a bowling or ice-skating party. Better yet, they join one of the fraternities."

"Conservative is hardly the term, though, for the Rockingham Club. Brideshead Relocated perhaps. Established in 1981 by then-freshman Lord Nicholas Wentworth Hervey, as the charter says, `to transfer the finest of British traditions to a safe have...,' the Rockingham Club soon acquired a reputation as an absolutely exclusive reserve for the monied or titled--preferably both--young, male Eurocrats."