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Charles Finch
Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Game
I'm a moderately proud Yale alumnus.
I had a lot of fun when I went to school there, and formed deep attachments to professors and friends, but I also had serious issues with the school's administration. Yale has an absurd amount of money, but during my time there that didn't stop them from investing in tobacco and weaponry as they sought out more. (I'm not sure whether that issue is still alive.)
Worse, for me, is that the financial aid office figures out precisely what every family can afford to pay, be it $1,000 or $9,000 or $35,000 a year, and then asks for that. As a result many of my friends had to go directly into high-paying jobs against their preference after graduation, or had to work (as I did) a job or even two in between classes. I know that it was profoundly precarious for some families to pay, say, $1,000 a year, and that despite the fact that everyone from now on could go to Yale for free forever while the university still comfortably maintained its endowment at a level beyond any possible practical use. (The school could at least do this.) And then they have the gall to ask me for money every few days, or so it seems, and usually so that disadvantaged children can get scholarships! It's the worst and most dishonest kind of blackmail.
But there's one weekend each year when even the most curmudgeonly, least nostalgic Eli turns as ardent as Dink Stover, and it starts tomorrow: the weekend of The Game. I leave for New Haven tomorrow afternoon, and however irrational it might be I'm desperate for the 8-0 Bulldogs to demolish the 8-0 Crimson. The last time both teams were unbeaten going into The Game was in 1968, when Yale famously "lost" a 29-29 tie. We're looking for revenge this time, and it would be nice to add to our luxurious overall lead of 15 games, and make the total record 66-50 in our favor: 16 more seasons, at the very least, of some silly but meaningful kind of superiority.
I had a lot of fun when I went to school there, and formed deep attachments to professors and friends, but I also had serious issues with the school's administration. Yale has an absurd amount of money, but during my time there that didn't stop them from investing in tobacco and weaponry as they sought out more. (I'm not sure whether that issue is still alive.)
Worse, for me, is that the financial aid office figures out precisely what every family can afford to pay, be it $1,000 or $9,000 or $35,000 a year, and then asks for that. As a result many of my friends had to go directly into high-paying jobs against their preference after graduation, or had to work (as I did) a job or even two in between classes. I know that it was profoundly precarious for some families to pay, say, $1,000 a year, and that despite the fact that everyone from now on could go to Yale for free forever while the university still comfortably maintained its endowment at a level beyond any possible practical use. (The school could at least do this.) And then they have the gall to ask me for money every few days, or so it seems, and usually so that disadvantaged children can get scholarships! It's the worst and most dishonest kind of blackmail.
But there's one weekend each year when even the most curmudgeonly, least nostalgic Eli turns as ardent as Dink Stover, and it starts tomorrow: the weekend of The Game. I leave for New Haven tomorrow afternoon, and however irrational it might be I'm desperate for the 8-0 Bulldogs to demolish the 8-0 Crimson. The last time both teams were unbeaten going into The Game was in 1968, when Yale famously "lost" a 29-29 tie. We're looking for revenge this time, and it would be nice to add to our luxurious overall lead of 15 games, and make the total record 66-50 in our favor: 16 more seasons, at the very least, of some silly but meaningful kind of superiority.
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