Boola, Boola, Eli Yale!

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that, "If the Princetonian had wanted to assert in sturdy chorus that his college...was deliberately and passionately America's norm in ideals of conduct and success, he would have gone to Yale."

Even though F. Scott was Princeton's literary poster boy, he couldn't help marveling at "Yale's hard, neat, fascinating brightness." For him, Yale "evoked the memory of a heroic team backed up against its own impassable goal in the crisp November twilight, and later, of half a dozen immaculate noblemen with opera hats and canes standing at the Manhattan Hotel bar. And tangled up with its triumphs and rewards, its struggles and glories, the vision of the inevitable, incomparable girl."

Yale is nestled off Long Island Sound, rising, an oasis of dreamful spires, out of the pits of New Haven. There is something magical about Yale. It is a place where Harkness Tower rings out "Bohemian Rhapsody" across the entire campus, where lifelong friendships gel slowly over years of nights at Naples, where people of mettle are forged and sent into the world to act "For God, for country, and for Yale."

Yale's physical beauty is of the same stock one encounters scurrying through Oxonian pathways to ancient College courtyards. Richly detailed gargoyles and grotesques touched daily by the hands of future presidents, the blast of electric guitars shaking lead-framed windows, and colorful cloth Dramat banners flailing in the crisp New England breeze are all the stuff of Yale.

A Yale graduate knows how to put her nose to the grindstone and get something done, even if it means breaking a fingernail. Four years of living in New Haven have toughened her up, given her an edge on life, made everything after Yale seem like a piece of cake. She could wrestle down a wild boar to save her children, brush herself off, and still be the epitome of wit at a dinner party at the Harvard Club that night.

There is a certain bond that Yalies feel for each other, born of an experience at once more unifying and similar. The pains of having to unlock seven separate sets of gates to get in, dodging bullets and stepping over used needles to arrive in Yale's cloistered civility instill in students a sharp sense of the duality of responsibility and privilege. This lesson is not wasted. Yalies never take what they have for granted.

Rooting for Yale has a distinctly subversive flavor here, and that's part of its appeal. I like rooting for Yale. It is perpetually that second-or third-best alternative, that underdog (no pun intended) school with just the right amount of respectability with a difference.

The combination of blue-blood elitism and real world grime. Mass housing randomization. The sweet, gentle sounds of Yale kids being harassed by the townspeople. It's hard not to find this a romantic escape from the serene perfection we enjoy at Harvard.

In the final analysis, Yale's service to Harvard is to provide us with a neatly packaged, trendy alternative subculture. By praising Yale, we rise above the petty comparisons of Nobel laureates and U.S. presidents. We become another incarnation of the Harvard elite. And we have more fun barking "Boola Boola" than by singing "Ten Thousand Men..."

Lauding Yale has become a fad here, the mark of the ultimate Harvard smugness. It says, "I so tire of Harvard, that I'd rather go to Yale." Forget that Fitzgerald also wrote that "Harvard men were 'Bostonians with affected accents.'" Cheer for Yale at the Game today.

Patrick S. Chung's column appears on alternate Saturdays and is syndicated in the Yale Daily News.