Last Saturday, I had a wonderful day in New York with some students from my residential college, our dean, master, and some Trumbull fellows. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which in addition to its always wonderful permanent collection had a nice Gustave Courbet exhibition. The real star of the art-afternoon was the Guggenheim and its Cai Guo-Qiang “I Want to Believe” show (unrelated piece below–Cai Guo-Qiang often works with gunpowder to create amazing art).

But that’s not the story that I wanted to write about today. It is fantastic that I can pay $15 to get a nice ride to and from New York, lunch at the Met, dinner at a nice restaurant, and tickets to two museums (the weather was perfect, too). What’s the problem, you might wonder? For some event draws–opera tickets, broadway shows, etc–there is a lottery because of the demand and the limited availability of the tickets. Nick Rosenbaum wrote a great post describing one such trip just the other day. I am not disparaging those kinds of posts at all. However, there is a flip side to this topic, which I think deserves to be explored.

The Sad and Secret Problem of Yale’s Amazing Resources… is that they are often sadly underutilized. Not such a terrible secret, but quite tragic, I feel. This Trumbull trip was the yearly TC “Art Day” to New York City. It was well promoted, I would imagine there would be high levels of student awareness within the college. Yet in the end, there were only about 8 students present. My girlfriend was sick : ( , so she could not go after she signed up, but even if she could have come it would only have made 9.

It’s a beautiful day at the start of spring, and here’s a great chance to go to New York City: why pass up the opportunity, with such nicely subsidized resources? Perhaps you were thinking instead that you would go on the Yale College Council’s “Party Train,” private DJ-party train to New York City, organized the same day. Maybe you have a really big paper due. Is it just that you don’t care for art?

Whatever the explanation, we had a nice bus which was mostly empty. I do not know if this year differed significantly from others–I have sent in a request for some more information on historical numbers. But what I do know is that there are many scenes like this one. A speaker comes, some noted individual is brought for a master’s tea or club meeting, food is bought, a roomful of chairs carefully assembled, and then… no one–a mere handful, rather than the deluge organizers often expect.

I’m not some angel of cultural engagement, mind you. Certainly not this semester. My first semester, it was a problem of having too much to go to, so much to see and hear–I was really heavily engaged. But this semester, I’ve replaced by 4 day weekend of music and public talks with a 7 day workweek. It’s a very sad existence, one whose depressing depths I will plumb another time. Suffice is to say, there isn’t much time to go anywhere fun or interesting.

I was thrilled to have that opportunity this weekend, and had a great time in New York. But for every person trapped in a situation like mine–overloaded with either academics, or some extracurricular–there are just as many who never really seem to access what Yale has to offer up in terms of free and interesting activities. Some turn a blind eye to at least a sizable portion of it.

It’s not all their fault: it can be overwhelming, and one might be inclined to just shut it all out. It can be hard to find exactly what you might be interested in, too. Hunting down flyers and reading for advertisements of new teas and events can be time-consuming. The Yale Bulletin & Calendar lists a lot of goings-ons, but misses a lot. There are few good centralized resources for events. Facebook Events for Yale is a patchwork of parties and other happenings; useful, but certainly not comprehensive.

The message I’m delivering may sound something along the lines of “Yale has so much money and other resources it just doesn’t know what to do with them, and drowns its students in activities!” Partially true. But I’m not saying that Yale atomizes the social scene through its dispensations, or completely kills us with stressful exhortations to go to events. It’s just that there is often a jarring gap between the potential… and the reality, where engagement and turnout is concerned.

This is pretty true anywhere you put college students. I just wanted to write something about it because a) it’s sad and b) when prospective students hear about a special draw for 4 tickets to an Opera or something like that, it might seem overly-perfect as a model of resource distribution. Arguably, more people ought to want to go to the Opera, too. Let me quote Nick, from his post on the Opera:

Every semester, there are about 20 or so outings, and four students get to go on each. In addition to getting to see a fantastic show with our College’s Master, we also get taken out to an expensive restaurant for a very nice meal and beverage. Fall Semester I won a ticket to the Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera, along with two of my friends David and Sophia. I have to say, even though I’m musically inept in every possible way, the possibility of seeing Mozart’s masterpiece at the Met sent chills down my spine. To reiterate: my ticket alone was two hundred and fifteen dollars. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DOLLARS. I’ve never been to any event that cost even close to that much. Multiply that by five (four students and Master Haller), add in the cost of an expensive meal for five, then multiply that by twenty and you have how much JE spends on students each semester, only for Culture Draw. Can you begin to see why I love Yale so much? It’s one thing to have scandalous amounts of money in your endowment, but it’s another thing to actually spend it on students.

Jonathan Edwards college has an especially large amount of money available to it–it is independently endowed in a way which other colleges are not. Thus, they have extra resources to spend on the Opera, or say, donating to the renovation of my (quite poor) residential college–which is still well taken care of, don’t worry!

Does Yale have a giant pile of money? Yes! Does it spend it on students? Thankfully, again, yes! Yet it sometimes seems the average student is less likely to see it spent on opera tickets (or interesting lecturers, etc) than they are to see it reappear through money given to clubs for funding which is then laundered by the clubs and transmuted into… well, not tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. It seems likely that this situation is present at any school which provides similar cool resources–Yale might even be better about it, given certain niches within the student body. Just wanted to deflate any bubbly images (or fears?) of complete cultural bliss for all, though–there are those who are disinterested. You just don’t see them when you’re out having a good time on Yale’s dime! : )