Yale Wimps Out Again
It was the source of an athletic taunt that could only have originated in the Ivy League:
“I want to go to Princeton,” said Amory. “I don’t know why, but I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as wearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes.”
Monsignor chuckled.
“I’m one, you know.”
“Oh, you’re different — I think of Princeton as being lazy and good-looking and aristocratic — you know, like a spring day. Harvard seems sort of indoors — ”
“And Yale is November, crisp and energetic,” finished Monsignor.
“That’s it.”
They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Princeton X ’17, This Side of Paradise
Take a look at that passage. Can you identify the part that was recently deemed too offensive to repeat on an American college campus? Look hard.
Give up? Let’s go to the Yale Daily News:
The [Freshman Class Council] has decided to change the design of its shirts after the original design, which was submitted by students and voted on by the freshman class, sparked outcry from members within the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. …
The original design, which won out over five other entries, displayed an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote in the front — “I think of all Harvard men as sissies” — in bold white letters. The back of the long-sleeved, navy blue T-shirt said “WE AGREE” in capital letters, with “The Game 2009” scrawled in script underneath it.
That’s right — a T-shirt calling Harvard men “sissies” proved too offensive for Yale students and administrators, who seem to have somehow come by the impression that a college football game is an occasion for behavioral civility that the rest of us would reserve for a funeral. One student, who would clearly be beside himself were he to attend a Philadelphia Flyers game, pointed out that the word “sissies” was “offensive” and “demeaning,” and added that he considered the word to be a “thinly veiled anti-gay slur.”
Well, one of the MIT drinking songs goes…
Princeton’s run by Wellsley,
Wellsley’s run by Yale,
Yale is run by Vassar,
…and Vassar’s run by tail,
Harvard’s run by ***********,
the kind you raise by hand,
but Tech is run by Engineers,
the finest in the land.
The next verse is worse
I hope they haven’t banned any of them…
What a bunch of sissies…
Clearly, it is the Yalies who are the sissies.
[in addition to the Harvard boys]
Looks like the Yale adminstrators and students are the real “sissies” here for giving into the PC BS which has infected our whole culture. Time for our society to “man up” or soon we will all be living under tyranny!
Isn’t the Ivy League where we get most of our national political leaders (except Sarah Palin)?
We are in deeeeeeep do-do.
Beauxdog
So it is ivy league sissies then?
Yalies calling Harvard dorks “sissies”? Holy cow, talk about the pot calling the kettle black…. They’re ALL sissies.
It would seem that Yale “men” are in fact the sissies. I hope some of their students can grow a pair and have the shirts printed anyway.
Harvard & Yale are both sissies. The Ivy League has no backbone.
The inability of some people to take a joke is incredibly immature. When I was younger, I was constantly teased for being short (I’m 5’1″), my last name was made fun of, and before I had braces in ninth grade, someone made fun of my smile. Putting up with that crap, I believe, strengthened my character; and gave me empathy for others with shortcomings. THAT must be what’s wrong with liberals–they have no noble character.
And these are the ‘Davos Men’ who insist they know how to handle the Kim Jong Ils and Bobby Mugabes of the world. Bet half of ‘em couldn’t change a tire. Sissy? Hell, pansy or pantiwaist sound more apt.
In the context of airline safety, Christopher Hitchens writes (http://www.slate.com/id/2239935/),
“Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can’t—or won’t. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to “feel safe.” The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens’ toothpaste.”
A similar dynamic is at work at Yale. The administrators do not have the guts to take on the real threats to healthy university life–a faculty composed solely of overweening and intolerant liberals beyond accountability, anything-but-abstinence sexual license turning dorms effectively into brothels, formation of drug and alcohol dependencies that last a lifetime–so they bully their freshmen who have the least to resist with and the most to lose. Making the compliant comply–that’s really courageous.
Back in the day (sez Wikipedia), Yale freshmen were required to study ancient Hebrew so they could read the Law, Prophets and Wisdom books (i.e., the Old Testament of the Bible) in the original language for themselves. Phrases like “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof” and psalms extolling the LORD as a mighty warrior were perhaps even more impervious to pansy PC indoctrination in ancient Hebrew than in English. Maybe that’s still true.
Perhaps the freshmen could get a Jewish classmate or a counterculture Hebrew professor to translate F. Scott Fitzgerald into Hebrew for their T-shirts. Even more daring would be an actual quote from the Bible. The Yale administration would remain happily clueless.
The Ivy Leagues are intellectual whorehouse unworthy of respect. Fraud is rampant and is the normal state of affairs within the soft science departments of these universities. Even Harvey Mansfield threw in the towel and now gives his students unearned grades. Affirmative action policies were instituted some forty years ago—and have resulted in a sharp decline in the value of the liberal arts degree. Only the hard science degrees are of undisputable value. It is of mandatory importance that the wider American public realizes the extent of the Ivy League’s lack of integrity and scam jobbing. The intellectually shallow and poorly read Barack Obama is president of the United States because few voters knew that his Harvard credentials are a cynical joke.
Yale has no sissies. As I pointed out here, Yale prides itself on being at the very point of controversy. Just as the publication of a Yale University Press book minus the offensive cartoons was a good way to bring political correctness out into the open, so was this!
Oh. How do they separate the men from the boys at Harvard?
While all of the descriptions here of the Ivies are true, and in fact much worse could be said of them, those who imagine that these diseases are limited to the Ivies ieither n kind or degree are in for a shock.
There is nothing that goes on in the Ives does not go on in our state universities or private colleges outside of the Ivy League.
Sending a child to what we today pretend is “higher eduication” is an experience similar to sending a chlid off to war. It is an mostly a matter of hope and of faith that they will survive it intact.
The leaders of large and wealthy academic institutions must constantly ask themselves this most important question: do our professors really have the better arguments—or are they simply able to intimidate dissenters by threatening them with financial troubles and second rate social status? This almost certainly explains the disgraceful career of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. His arguments defending Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies are idiotic and easily refutable. And yet, this famous Harvard “elite’s” views dominate our intellectual and cultural landscape. Most Americans still believe the myth that FDR saved American capitalism. Those historians who dared take Schlesinger to task were severely damaged. Many of them paid an awful price.
Wow.
Only a bunch of liberal sissies would get their panties in a bunch over something like that.
“There is nothing that goes on in the Ives does not go on in our state universities or private colleges outside of the Ivy League.”
The state universities and private colleges are usually followers—and not leaders. Whether we like it or not, The Ivy League schools set the pace for all the other academic institutions. The lowering of standards within their liberal arts departments decades ago eventually became the norm throughout the rest of the country.
‘I’m a ramlin’ wreck from Georgia Tech and a Hell of an engineer…
‘To hell with Georgia’
(University of, that is)
I have been bored by Ivy nonsense for 40 years…I expect them to continue to bore.
I was hoping for an intellectual discourse about political correctness, instead I see a bunch of bitter people complaining about Obama and the liberals and the Ivy Leagues (which they probably couldn’t have gotten into) … contrary to your beliefs, the standards for getting into and succeeding at these institutions are higher than ever, especially now that Jews, gays, women, blacks, etc, are admitted. But I digress …
I do think that getting up in arms about the word “sissies” is overboard, and I generally disapprove when people get offended about pretty innocuous stuff. Picking fights over petty issues is not only a waste of time, but it works against your cause by irritating everybody else. That being said, anybody who thinks that PC’ness and moral self-righteousness is somehow a liberal disease is woefully mistaken.
As a Sissie myself I find the term offensive and I find the notion that I must me Gay because I am a Sissie (not that there’s anything wrong with that) offensive as well. So stuff it. :: ))
Cyrus T Elk,
Getting in is not easy, or at least was not back in 1959. Staying in, on the other hand, is not all that difficult. The attrition rate tends to be far less than at many other universities.
“…contrary to your beliefs, the standards for getting into and succeeding at these institutions are higher than ever”
Nonsense. The undisputable facts contradict your assertion. Harvey Mansfield publicly admitted to finally capitulating to the pressure and often awarding his students unearned grades. Jews and Asians must truly earn admittance to the Ivy Leagues, but this is not true of most blacks, some women, and other so-called oppressed minorities. However, you are half right! One can still be proud of obtaining a hard science credential in an Ivy League institution. Thankfully, the postmodernist left-wingers haven’t yet been able to convince the majority of Americans that 2+2=5.
#20. Chill. I easily met Ivy admission,,,could not abide the self righteousness I found during campus visits. I choose to be an ordinary guy in a warm climate.
Else, PC has jumped the shark. Intellectual discourse has run its course (ouch).
That it is a PRIMARILY liberal disease is self evident.
Sheesh
Yo, Cyrus, (#20), hold it right here: Political correctness is not a “liberal disease”? Say again?
Au contraire, my friend. The Mickey Mouse Stalinism that is “political correctness” was INVENTED by the left. It’s the left’s modern version of Orwell’s thought-control, and was entirely created and is enforced exclusively by and for the benefit of the liberal/left.
As Jonah Goldberg has presciently written: “Political correctness isn’t literally terroristic; but it does govern through fear. No serious person can deny that the grievance politics of the American left keeps decent people in a constant state of fright – they are
afraid to say the wrong word, utter the wrong thought, offend the wrong constituency.”
Harvard & Yale also show they have no humor. Harvard for not taking the “sissy” joke & Yale for backing down on the “sissy” joke. Liberals really need to go find their humor & be able to laugh at themselves without be vindictive pricks. I think this shows where Barry got his thin skin…
it’s no surprise that when so many of our high schools and colleges spend so much time teaching students that they have an imaginary “right not to be offended,” . . . whether expression is “offensive” cannot be conditioned on the feelings of the most sensitive member of the audience.
This isn’t about sensitivity, it has a social and political objective. They don’t give a damn about YOUR sensitivity, this is political repression for favored groups. The author of this piece obviously understands that. The impulse of conservatives to generalize what is specifically political is an attempt to avoid confrontation.
I’m proud of Yale, and think they did the right thing.
Clearly, it would be the epitome of hypocrisy for them to refer to anyone else as a sissy.
The pussification of America continues
Bloody Christ what pathetic crap!
@ wGraves
“and if there is a Harvard man,
who thinks he’s in our class,
he can pucker up his rosy lips,
and kiss the ******’s ***”
Ah, old times.
#19 Michael
My dad play end at Tech from 1939 to 1941 and as a senior, broke UGA’s QB’s jaw. His first job was island hopping as a SeaBee in the Pacific. In the battle for Guam, he captured a Japanese soldier not with his .45, but by tackling him as if he were a UGA QB.
In 1951, the navy sent him to Harvard where he earned his MBA magna cum laude. Harvard football games were free. We went to one and only one. Running backs lateraled or ran out of bounds to avoid being tackled. Certainly the term “sissy” applied then.
I attended the US Naval Academy when it was still a mens institution and sissies needn’t apply. Our QB was a good football player named Roger Staubach. I also went to Oklahoma where sissies were not all that popular.
My son earned his AB at Dartmouth in 1990, the only College left in the Ivy League. Got a great education and a great job. He’s a rabid Oklahoma fan.
The Harvard – Yale annual football game (The Game) has been going on since 1875. After the 1894 Game, seven people were carted off the field “in dying condition”. Not many sissies then, living in that era.
Now, many generations removed, it seems that the entire nation is a bunch of sissies. We’ve greatly improved the living conditions for our new generations, technologically speaking, but in many ways our modern whelps can’t hold candles (or torches) to their predecessors. Emotionally, we are spoiled, weak, morally bankrupt and, if things continue to decline, we will see a ‘correction’ in the next 100 years.
The Age of Sissies is not one that will be long-lived.
And yet we continue to defer to Harvard and Yale academics and graduates as if they are minor deities. When will the sheeple recognize the cloistered incestuous nature of these institutions and how they have contributed to the current situation we are in?
My kid went to Harvard, and got a disinterested, substandard education at an institution more interested in bragging than growing young minds. Here’s the proof.
A few years ago, the Harvard kids made a t-shirt for The Game that read as follows: “What do all Harvard and Yale students have in common? They were both admitted to Yale.”
And, of course, no one — student or administrator — ever caught the embarrassing grammatical mistake in that simple sentence. Correct elementary English is clearly not part of the requirement any longer. If these kids are the elite, the elite ain’t what it useta be.
Cyrus:
As a graduate and holder of several degrees from one of the so-called “Public Ivies” I can assure you that while there are many fine and serious students who attend Ivy League Universities these universities lack the rigor of top flight state institutions. If you do not work at an Ivy you will most likely end up a “C” student, like Al Gore, John Kerry or even George W. Bush. If you don’t work at a top rank state school you flunk out. In fact, it is very unlikely that any of three aforementioned individuals would have been admitted to a Cal Berkley, Michigan, Illinois or North Carolina in their day.
My son was admitted to Princeton and on his visit he found that “…Princeton as being lazy and good-looking and aristocratic…” and so gave up his chance to play Division 1 golf and headed off to the University of Minnesota where he is majoring in the hard sciences and is competing against students with SAT scores in excess of 1400 and ACT composites of 34+.
And you blush at what the Gophers call their arch-enemies the Wisconsin Badgers.
Those Davos boys are sissies,
each new Press Release makes clear;
We’ve seem no greater wussies
since warm Wine replaceed Cold Beer.
Ivy League males are “pussies”! Sissies doesn’t do Harvard or Yale “males” justice.
Judging from the Ivy League grads I have known, the best single word description of them is Useless… they are unfit to lead, and too full-of-themselves to follow.
“Oh. How do they separate the men from the boys at Harvard?”
With crowbars.
Remember Tom Lehrer’s “Fight Fiercely Harvard”?
JFK would be proud, I’m sure.
They are their own parody.
When I was at Duke in the early nineties, a student was ordered to stop selling t-shirts promoting “Greek Week” (a sort of carnival event sponsored by on-campus fraternities and sororities) that featured a picture of Beavis and Butthead saying, “It’s Greek Week, and it doesn’t even suck.”
The offense? A female student complained that the word “suck” was sexist.
Also note that this is the same campus that, years later, would be ready to crucify an entire lacrosse team based on the allegations of rape from what would later be shown as a liar.
Overreacting to a (real or perceived) offense on a college campus doesn’t surprise me.
The great thing about this issue is it exemplifies Yale’s death knell spiral as it fades into nothing more than a trendy prep school. Clueless Cyrus only proves the point. Currently, the Elis would need to step up a few places to even become sissies. Little chance of that happening, though. They are too comfortable in their insolence to comprehend the end of their assumed “status” in life. Bon voyage.
i was at “the game” this year, and for the 7th year in a row, yale failed to win.
in fact they lost horribly.
Ray:
Your reference to Harvard-Yale as “the game” demonstrates Ivy League pretentions. This game is not the oldest rivalry, Minnesota-Wisconsin is; it is not the second oldest, Kansas-Missouri is; and it has long since be eclipsed by Ohio State-Michigan as “The Game.”
I went to a state school Cal-State Fullerton (B.S. in ME). We were taught two things regarding speech by a liberal arts prof:
You have the right to be offended by my speech.
I have the right to offend you with my speech.
That’s America, deal with it.
I graduated from a state college and at one point worked on wall street. Lots of Harvard MBA’s that were interning of which we use to say none of them could find their way out of a paper bag with one end open. They usually were worse than useless, but all got high paying jobs because of daddy’s connections.
My dad (#32) always told me that any college has more to offer than I can learn. The point is it’s up to the student to take advantage of the opportunity – Ivy or Community College. He was certainly correct.
For those with bright children or grandchildren thinking about the Ivy league, go for it without regard for cost. If you look at Princeton, their endowments total about $1.6M per student! Last year, I think they stopped giving financial aid in the form of loans and just gave grants based on need. They also reduced the requirement for off quarter work earnings.
Go for it.
It’s what you get when you attend http://www.Indoctrinate-U.com
Given that Yale, Harvard, and Princeton hae produced such folks as George Bush and John Kerry, I’ll suggest that not everyone from each school is a wuss…
The inability of some people to take a joke is incredibly immature.
Yup.
Its not the school you attend, its simply you. Its all about the individual and what they make of themselves.
My son chose Dartmouth over Yale after he heard the Yale fight song at a lacrosse game.
“Are they serious?” he asked. Yes they were. No surprise here.
the very existence of a bunch of pervert groups at my alma mater y70 led me to change my gifts to yale long ago.they really do suck.so does harvard
Hey Vranesic, Harvard blows in addition to sucks,and assuming my kids arent perverts, I would no longer wish my children to be exposed to the trash at either one
And these are the children who will grow some day into, one hopes, productive citizens, perhaps even leaders?
For their lack of intellectual and cultural courage, it’s they who are the sissies.
I hope David Brooks reads these comments. When that big sissy starts carrying on about Ivys he makes me puke & he makes himself ejaculate in his panties. The Ivys are not exceptional except for high tuition, P.C. & sissys.
Certainly. . . They are well-known to work on your body such an efficient way that it’s mainly the bad cholesterol that will gets eliminated from your body with out any type of effect on good cholesterol or even Hdl cholestrerol levels.