Daily Snap

Scenes on campus
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Hero’s welcome

When Dink Stover, the protagonist of the 1911 novel Stover at Yale, arrived on campus for his freshman year, he passed through Phelps Gate alone, “hearing above his head for the first time the echoes of his own footsteps against the resounding vault. . . . ‘And this is it—this is Yale,’ he said reverently, with a little tightening of the breath.”

If Dink were arriving as a first-year this morning, he would have a different experience. As this year’s new arrivals pull up to the curb, students in matching residential college t-shirts greet them with the kinds of cheers and shrieks usually reserved for teen idols. College mascots dance nearby to pulsing music, and student movers commandeer their belongings with the efficiency and enthusiasm of a five-star hotel. “And this is it—this is Yale.”

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