Student voices: feminists at frat parties, and more

Yalies write every day. Their personal essays, critiques of university policy, art reviews, and political op-eds, like journal entries, capture snippets of Yale life. With each incoming and outgoing class, Yale changes—and what better way to understand this shift than through student writing? We will occasionally offer a roundup of such writings on this blog under the rubric "Student Voices." If you want to suggest an article from the student media for inclusion, e-mail us at alumnimag@yale.edu.

Is it a feminist taboo to put on a tight dress, dance provocatively, and enjoy the “campus party scene”? The more you think, the more you worry—until there’s no fun left. An undergrad muses on the “feminist catch-22” of self-objectification in a recent Yale Herald essay.

Twelve percent of this year’s freshman class are “first-generation” college students: the first member of their family to complete a four-year degree. “Yale prides itself on diversity, but the playing field is not even,” notes Hannah Thai ’16, a first-generation student, in a Yale Daily News article by Hayley Byrnes ’16 that examines the success and shortcomings of the Freshman Scholars at Yale program, a new five-week summer bridge program for first-generation students.

Is Yale “cheating” New Haven? Or is it the nation’s most generous nonprofit university? Kohler Bruno ’16 investigates the history of Yale's tax exemption, and efforts to tax it, in the Yale Herald. 

Sterling Memorial Library, Yale’s “cathedral to learning,” is undergoing a $20 million renovation. This is more than a facelift—it is a physical “acceptance of the evolving nature of knowledge and a necessary embrace of digital technology” writes Sophie Grais ’14, tracing   the philosophical shift that underlies the changes to Sterling in the Yale Herald.