the Sam Jackson College Experience

My dedicated readers will no doubt already be aware, but for those who missed a beat: I am currently writing a biweekly column for the Yale Herald about reflections from my return from studying in China last semester. The last column was about the way institutional controls on electricity and dorms affect the lives of students. This week we continue that theme by addressing mealtimes in PKU, though only briefly. Unfortunately, this is not the comprehensive account of all the gustatory delights China has to offer – that’s a post for another time.

Follow all the posts in this series by looking for the tag “a semester returned.”

A modified version of this piece originally appeared in the Yale Herald, February 26, 2010, titled “So much food, but so little community.”

If you want to learn about a place, watch its people eat. At Yale, the magical camaraderie said to characterize the residential college system is manifest best in the college dining halls. At Peking University, mealtimes are no less illustrative of the often quite different dynamic which underlies student life for China’s most elite students.

Consider a ‘day in the life’ of an average student at PKU, compared with Yale. Here, we’ll consider breakfast: At Yale, you roll out of bed and are able to eat breakfast as you please, with only a slight hiccup in the half-hour between breakfast and lunch; your experience is one of groggy leisure marked by free copies of New York Times and Cross Campus.

In China? You must bravely arise early decide what you want to try to eat (and quickly). Your options are many: unlike those hapless students in New Haven, you have hot breakfasts to choose from without needing to go to Commons! Unfortunately, also unlike Yale, you have to be sure to get up early to try to get this food, because many of the dining halls close around 830am and don’t reopen until lunchtime.

Worse, this foreshortened time means that you have to fight swarming crowds of other students for the privilege of ordering food: after opening at 6am, the tastiest breakfast treats are usually gone by 730 at the dining hall nearest our dorm, for example. But, don’t get discouraged just yet. You have so much to choose from! You can have red-bean filled buns, soups, noodles, whatever your heart desires, as long as it’s Chinese and still available, and as long as you don’t need to try to find two seats next to each other to breakfast with a friend!

Not interested in the shi tang chaos? Try one of the abundant carts on the streets or a smaller shop. Here you can get a tasty Taiwanese-style breakfast pancake fried to perfection, or fresh-steamed baozi filled with cabbage or meats. Mission accomplished.

Good work. You’ve made it through breakfast, and all for about 75 cents – if you weren’t too stressed by the ordeal, you’re certainly looking smug compared with that Yalie and his 10 dollar swipe for a bagel and tea, even if he does have relative peace and tranquility. You go to class, where – lucky you! – you decide to stop at one of the snackeries conveniented located in your classroom building and buy some bread and candy to make it through lecture. You then fill up your tea-bottle from one of the hot water dispensers outside the classroom.

The abundance of choices may dull your mind to the dangers of this system. Busy though we are at Yale, we take for granted that our academic schedules allot almost all an hour or more to eat. In China, if one had time at all between classes, it’s generally under 30 minutes.

Asked how to deal with this inconvenient conflict, Chinese students I polled suggested most frequently ‘not eating’ as their solution.

Because students are forced to keep such eccentric schedules,  because the dining halls are so painfully unaccommodating to so many, and because labor is so extremely cheap, there are a fantastic variety of wonderful options that would make zero economic sense to offer in New Haven! You can get spicy-boiled-vegetables and noodles on a stick up till about 11pm on campus; from 6-12, you can get spicy grill-fried meats, tofu, and other delights, or go to the fruit stand and buy all oranges, melons, and tomatoes; after those on-campus shops close, you can head outside the gates to get delicious chuan’r, kebabs fresh cooked for you. The 24 hour McDonalds will deliver to the dorm for about a dollar.

What does this story say about the institutional objectives and mores at Beida? As Yalies, our biggest point of confusion was why no one complained more. With tables bolted to the floor and unable to seat more than 4 people around them, mealtimes often feel like a return to middle school, without the recess.  People do, in fact, complain – in small doses and almost always in mediated, monitored contexts. And even if the uncaring policies of the school created hassles for students, people still try to eat together, cramming several miniature hot-pots onto their tables and catching up.

At Yale in Chinese 140 right now we’re taught how important family meal time is in Chinese culture.  University dining differs greatly from home habits anywhere, but the sheer number of people eating alone in a rush offered a vivid demonstration of the ways Beida – intentionally or otherwise – isolated its students within a built world of schoolwork and other time obligations. Beida is a source of great scholarship, but where student life is concerned, it remains rigorously managed and controlled just like grade school. Mealtimes manifest a philosophy wherein individual student needs are rendered subordinate to the greater group.

Thanks for reading, and please join in by posting any questions you have here in the comments, or anything you’d really like to hear about for future columns / posts. I’m open to suggestions!

I decided to try to write a column for the Yale Herald this spring semester about my time in China, since it didn’t end up working out that I would write one while there. It’s been a strange experience readjusting to Yale, and I’ve come to appreciate many things about it that I once took for granted. At the same time, there are certainly lessons learned from China that are worth applying here, and there is plenty worth missing about Beida. This first article falls more into the latter camp, and is reposted below.

Original Publication: January 29, 2010, in the Yale Herald.

Time spent abroad reveals volumes about the world left behind. I had the pleasure and privilege to study in the Peking University-Yale Joint Program last semester, and my experience both defied expectations and eludes easy explanation. In this column, I will share some of those reflections formed abroad and narrate the everyday rediscoveries in a life newly reunited with Yale.

I’d like to talk about one of the first unique features I noticed at Beida, the school I attended in China. It’s a feature that Yale lacks in a very quantifiable way: animal camaraderie. Yale is lacking in the four-legged friends department, while China’s flagship university has a surfeit of semi-domesticated animals that roam its grounds. Never have I met so many different cats in so little time: big cats, small cats, feral cats, and more recombination still. Outside of campus, I would meet felines in temples, restaurants, and alleys; on campus, they roamed the grounds, as fearlessly and assuredly as any of the students. One cat liked to sit by the window and listen to East Asian demography lectures; another occupied special turf next to a noodle shop. I learned to recognize these different cats by their territory and their habits­—the same was true for dogs, though they were fewer in number.

At Yale, however, our visible animal life appears to center around rodents. During my freshman year, devious squirrels plotted a grand invasion of several Bingham rooms and managed several reconnaissance forays before students rebuffed their advances. Though obnoxious, these Old Campus squirrels are key contributors to the inter-species dialogue here at Yale, and we welcome their presence as a check to impressions of overwhelming urban sterility. Recently passed New Haven ordinances now allow enterprising residents to raise chickens, but I have yet to see any campus examples thus far.

While I was in China, there was one cat in particular that, through charm and good looks, stole the hearts of all who met her. She was called Xiao Huang （小黄）meaning “little yellow,” and she proudly wore her golden-orange coat every day as she and her on-again-off-again boyfriend Xiao Bai, （小白） “little white,” lazed about their turf outside our Chinese class every day. While some of the semi-homeless animals at Beida suffered and begged for the attentions of motivated bystanders, Xiao Huang knew how to work the system to her advantage. The little minx and her beau were fed every day by staff at the building they frequented, and in return they offered their adorable services—usually in the form of purring—as a pick-me-up to anyone who had just bombed a Chinese test. I was a frequent patron.

But there were also the animal-welfare situations that left me at a loss for action. One such recurring experience would pass at night on busy streets: As I walked, I’d spot a small crowd forming, bottlenecking the sidewalk with interested bystanders. Getting closer, the crowd would thin and reveal a man or men in nondescript parkas, vending merchandise from a cardboard box at their feet. Only when it’s too late to escape without heartbreak does the occasion’s interest become clear: puppies for sale. Of course, in Shanghai one could buy live ducks a block outside our downtown hotel. I was discouraged from doing so, perhaps, by the startling variety of other animals—alive or otherwise—available for purchase there. But its being commonplace didn’t erase its impact.

Xiao Huang’s sad story came together in bits and pieces as I learned more about her. She lived outside one of the foreign student’s dorm, and she had originally been rescued by a foreigner, but left behind when that woman’s stay in China was up. Those strays outside Beida appear to manage with their feline wits, but for every Xiao Huang being taken care of, there are a dozen more that struggle. The more helpful comparison between Yale and Beida comes when considering the relevance these cats have for Chinese students. One official club devotes its time creating shelters for—and feeding—the hungry cats on campus: Plenty of people want to help. What do we have at Yale?

I wish there were fewer cats lounging in Beida’s bamboo groves. As Beijing’s winter took a bite, I saw so many suffering—kittens shivering and groups of cats huddled together for warmth. Like so many ephemeral observations about China, closer analysis revealed a more complex problem. I bought catnip and lamb kebabs for my feline friends, but I learned that just because they speak Chinese doesn’t mean Chinese cats like spicy food. I also recognized that it was human feeding of these cats which allowed so many to survive on campus.

What does it mean to surround ourselves with animals? It’s important because it helps to ground us. I appreciated the increased presence of animals not just for the daily dose of adorable cat behaviors, but simply because nature in this active embodiment captures the attention and reminds passersby that no matter what color the sky is, how much homework you have, or what personal struggle you face, nature still exists all around. When you watch animals play, the exigencies of student life fade away like magic.

I couldn’t take Xiao Huang back to Yale, so how can that wonderful appearance of the wild be recaptured? The answer starts with you, readers: If your Master or Dean doesn’t have a pet, start a petition to insist on real-life college mascots. If professors at Harvard can graze cows, why not a real life Trum-bull?）

I will keep this short and focus on the content here, folks, because it’s amazing. A few years back I wrote an angry letter to Yale Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel for not being forward-looking enough with the admissions office. I will soon have to draft him a letter of congratulations for his support of this great  student-led, student-created effort to create a fantastic Yale admissions music video. Much of what I’ve ever said on the blog about engaging branding and effective marketing comes together here in one fell swoop. More analysis of this later, and praise for the enterprising students who developed the video. For now, have a look and share your comments! You won’t regret it.

Hey everyone! I promised this some time ago and am happy that it’s all now finally done: along with the other members of my class, I chose a subject to research using the Yale Manuscripts and Archives collections and then worked to help curate an online exhibit centered around a series of documents that I selected. This was done for my class The Intellectual in Politics, taught by Justin Zaremby.

Here is a link to the online exhibit, and here you can reach my particular section of the exhibit. It was a very short final writing assignment, but it was difficult to write so concisely and to try to capture all the themes and ideas that I wanted to express. I am happy to finally get to check it out with everything in place, and hope you enjoy it too.

Here is the blurb that Prof. Zaremby wrote for the exhibit, reproduced below:

According to the late Edward Shils, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, intellectuals are those members of society “with an unusual sensitivity to the sacred, an uncommon reflectiveness about the nature of the universe and the rules which govern their society.” In this position, intellectuals occupy a position apart from society, working as scholars, writers, philosophers, and social critics. Given their role studying and criticizing society, intellectuals need to balance the need to maintain a critical distance from politics with their desire to influence political life. Some intellectuals attempt to have an impact on society through their writings. Others work as educators in institutions of higher education. Others choose to enter public service. In addition to the value that intellectual engagement might offer to the political world, the decision to enter politics encourages intellectuals to consider their responsibility to society, scholarship, and the intellectual class itself.

The students who curated this exhibit chose topics that reveal the tensions that confront intellectuals in their engagement with society. Students used the holdings of the Department of Manuscripts and Archives at the Yale University Library to illustrate the forms of engagement that intellectuals have attempted, as well as the responses to such engagement from both the intellectual and political worlds. The richness of the collection allowed students to explore a wide array of topics relating to political expertise, higher education, and the role of science and philosophy in society.In each case, the students reveal what lies at the intersection of intellectual life and political action—conflict, risk, and the potential for creative flourishing.

This exhibit is the final project for “The Intellectual in Politics,” a political science and humanities seminar taught by Justin Zaremby. In the course, students discussed authors ranging from Plato and Martin Heidegger to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walter Lippmann in an attempt to understand the relationship between intellectual life and political life. Students attempted to define the needs and goals of the intellectual class, whether intellectuals serve as advisors, teachers, or social critics.

It was a fun class and I really enjoyed getting to work with the archival collections. There is just a huge, amazing treasure trove of papers, photographs, and much more available to students.I had a really hard time choosing a final subject, but I just enjoyed getting to explore the personal notes and letters of important and famous people. It’s a very special opportunity that I hope more Yale students take advantage of — I had gone to the Archives before out of curiosity to do some research into Yale’s history just for fun, and you don’t need to go for class. It’s just at the library, so there is no excuse not to go!

A reader recently wrote me wondering whether or not Yale is in a real crime zone, and I thought I would post my reply here for all to see. Other Yalies, New Haveners want to chime in with comments? I welcome questions in general, so please feel free to send more in. Happy to help.

> Elizabeth wrote:
> Hi Sam
>
> I took my daughter to visit Yale and she loved it. My husband has some
> issues with Yale and I don’t know quite what to believe. He knows two recent
> grads who insist that New Haven is a serious crime haven and getting worse. Is
> it?

I’m glad your daughter liked Yale – it’s a great place! – and I hope she saw New Haven as offering the potential for a good college experience. Then-president Kingman Brewster Jr. said, some 40 years ago, that the problems of New Haven were an advantage for Yale because they promoted community and cohesiveness, which may have been true – today, things are much better both for Yale, New Haven, and the town-gown relations.

So, on to your principal question: the safety of New Haven, or lack thereof. If we’re looking at New Haven in terms of crime statistics, you’ll find it is not so much worse than many other places with well-regarded schools; I’m from the Boston area and would go to Harvard Square ever since I was young with my friends, and there are certainly fewer panhandlers and homeless people around during the day; at night, while Harvard Square felt safer, my Harvard friends receive just as many unsettling crime notices in their inboxes as we do (for one particular comparison which I can speak to from personal experience). New Haven has some risks to it, but it is a very safe place as look as people keep their heads about them.For that matter, while many of my female friends make it a common habit to walk alone in bad places late at night, they have not had any unfortunate incidents – this isn’t to say that none exist, but just to emphasize that your daughter is not going to be seen on the nightly news if just once she goes alone for a falafel pick-me-up at 2 am or to visit a friend on the other side of campus.

While there have been a few unfortunate higher profile incidents at Yale in the two years that I have been here, for the most part incidents involving students occur on the far periphery of campus — graduate students living farther away and the like. Central campus is well protected, well lit, and generally quite safe at all hours. This isn’t Penn, where gangs of children were robbing people in broad daylight. What’s more, our lovely ivory tower environment offers another layer of protection; while it’s not exactly perfect protection, the gated courtyards in which we live our lives really insulate us from any of the city’s jagged edges. What’s more, the University does offer extensive shuttle se rvices both on schedule and on-call; in addition, security is available to act as escorts to take students from point A to point B safely. (This is what tour guides no doubt told you; for students unwilling to wait long enough for these resources to make their way to them in the event of non-emergencies, walking may be the only immediate option).

That said, can bad things happen, and do they?  Of course – but, as I mentioned at the start, general misconceptions about the true dangers of New Haven aside (overstated and outdated) there are good restaurants, there are nice places to go, but there is not *too* much. I would personally be happier in a busier place, but there is something to be said for the fact that everyone cannot so easily melt away from campus after class, as they do in New York City — although many people, including myself, go to NYC often. In any case, I’m not sure what other issues your husband has with Yale — is it just to do with supposed crime problems? Let me know if I can answer any more of your questions, and if you need help finding raw numbers about the safety of Yale, I can try to find the FBI-required reporting statistics for you (flawed though they may be, New Haven’s violent crime numbers are generally on the decline, and segmented geographically are really not so bad).

Thanks again for reading and for asking questions, I really appreciate it!

Addendum: Thanks to a Yale senior friend from the New Haven area who, in discussing the safety of New Haven, mentioned the humorous nickname [largely in jest] which I had never heard before, ‘pistol-wavin’-new-haven.’ Again, not representative.