Rumpus

You asked and we answered! After much research we have, to the best of our knowledge, assembled the list of juniors tapped for two of the “big three” societies. We’re going to leave the list of Boners up to the Herald – Cindy Ok, a Bullblog Associate Editor and prestigious private school graduate got a nod from Skulls this year.

UPDATE (4/15/13, 8:30PM): Either we underestimated our own sleuthing skills or overestimated those of our friends over at the Bullblog. Either way, we now present the list of all 2014 taps of the “big three”: Skull and Bones, Wolf’s Head, and Scroll and Key.

A few observations about this year’s tap class: First, a MAJOR tap line for YD“N” Editor-in-Chief was broken for the second time in three years. This year, there was no tap for Tap! What’s the deal, DLB!? Second, it seems like becoming Calhoun froco is one way to get on the short list to be a Boner.

Skull and Bones

Chandler Rosenthal

Terrence Chin Loy

Josh Kalla

Leah Sarna

Cindy Ok

Kyle Hutzler

Frankie Costa

Beau Palin

Katie Aragon

Katie Leiby

Gabe Murchison

Jan Kolmas

Sesenu Woldemariam

Wazhma Sadat

Becky Aston

For the first time in recent memory, Wolf’s Head departed from the practice of tapping several well-connected and successful members of the rising senior class. Instead, with the exception of Gwen Tilghman (who shows us that the Women’s Squash tapline is indeed alive and well. #prepschoolsports), they tapped many members of one pre-existing friend group.

Fun exercise: guess what percentage of them went to prep schools? Here’s a hint: it’s way higher than the Yale average.

Wolf’s Head

Chelsea Lane

Cody Wilkins

Brandon Levin

Bryan Epps

Alda Pontes

Beth LaBossiere

Ethan Karetsky

Ifeanyi Awachie

Julie Aust

Gwen Tilghman

Harry Graver

Isaac Wasserman

Geoffrey Litt

Raquel Zepeda

Andrew Winter

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Scroll and Key went for a group of people with seemingly few pre-existing connections (presumably because some may never have left their suites – we spy a couple of Junior Phi Beta Kappa inductees). Way to go, Scroll and Key, for keeping it traditional this year!

Fun fact: to get into Scroll and Key, all you need to do is be named Millie! Now we know what we’re going to name our firstborn.

Scroll and Key

Alec Joyner

Ava Kofman

Nia Holston

Jun Luke Foster

Maddy Yozwiak

Liang Yu

Millie Chapman

Millie Tomlinson

Andrew Hendricks

Zora Howard

Eli Mandel

Deniz Uz

Michael DiScala

Katherine Lawrence

Michael Rosen

By Jackson

The two candidates for YCC Treasurer this year are Eugene Yi and Leigh Hamilton. Since many of the top elected positions are uncontested, the spotlight on positions that may have been overlooked in past races is wider than expected. Here is Rumpus’s evaluation of Yi and Hamilton, who both think they have what it takes to manage an annual budget of $265,000. May this serve as an informative guide as the clock ticks away to their fight to the death once polls open. Here are our observations, broken now into arbitrary attributes.

Dedication:

As main features of their respective platforms, both candidates explicitly emphasize their desire to release the YCC budget publicly and on time. This is apparently supposed to happen anyway, so the need for these two to state that they will achieve the basic makes Rumpus slightly curious about the performance of past treasurers. Of course, stating the obvious is usually a good start for political statements. Adequacy is what Rumpus continuously strives for as well.

Extra Plans:

In addition to his stated position-specific responsibilities, Eugene has revealed plans to bring internet connectivity to the currently wi-fi-less auditorium in the Art Gallery, as well as allowing Yale students to change their student ID photos. This earns him support from two critical communities at Yale: people who prefer Facebook chat to listening to their Food Psych lecture and Yalies who were ugly ducklings until they got to college and finally learned how to be hot. Leigh’s YCC baby seems to be the 10K project, which never really got off the ground in recent years. Rumpus is delighted to see a candidate who is committed to giving us the chance to make our dreams of turning Cross Campus into a petting zoo a reality.

Facebook Swag:

There’s not a huge amount of variety among the campaign photos Leigh has posted. They show her holding a simple blue sign displaying her signature (Rumpus has an eye for details like this; we may enter the field of identity theft if we cannot marry into wealth after Yale). Not a lot of elaborate online visuals overall. Perhaps this is inevitable; after our interview with her, Rumpus made the easy observation that Leigh is more electrifying in person than any photo can portray. Eugene’s cover photo is simply his last name with a blue background. It’s simple in a provocative way, like the I Am Legend poster. An unsubtle sign of his taste for the dramatic, the dude’s profile picture shows him in a tux exhibiting some sort of wink/grin/expression of sheer awe, coupled with the tagline “This is gonna be Euge.” If Eugene had to transport a bag of YCC money across campus, Rumpus guesses that he would opt for strapping it to his chest and skydiving to the delivery point, Felix Baumgartner style. He also has an album full of Yale students all flashing the same gang sign in support of his candidacy; if elected, Eugene will surely come into the position with a ready army of enforcers prepared to collect debt payments owed to the YCC.

Humility:

Rumpus asked each candidate for their favorite characteristic of their opponent. They both casually avoided describing anything relevant to the role of YCC treasurer. Leigh appreciated how “enthusiastic” Eugene is. Eugene highlighted Leigh’s beauty (internal and external) and her quality choice in current boyfriend. Solid attributes if Leigh were auditioning for a role as an extra on Mad Men.

Our Verdict:

We’re going to have to throw our roses into Leigh’s corner here. In addition to possessing the intelligence and tact that being Treasurer demands, she’s got a natural charisma that would make her a solid representative of the YCC. We asked her how she would manage the inevitable task of saying no to some of those who would beg her for a larger slice of the YCC’s pie. Leigh claimed that as a girl, she excels at setting limits and rejecting. Rumpus assumes that weighing the pros and cons of a funding request submitted to the YCC E-board is similar to undertaking a risk-benefit analysis on a booty text received at 1:22 on a Saturday night.

By David

YCC elections are here, and although in come cases the choice is clear (meaning, the race is uncontested), many races remain up in the air. Rumpus weighs in on how you should vote. And if you ignore us, Rump Chat will be gunning for you.

A YD”N” endorsement is a terrible thing to happen to a political campaign, but Andrew Grass JE ’16 has taken it in stride in his run for YCC Secretary, aka “Email Czar.” And yet he’s a benevolent czar, because he actually believes we should get fewer emails from the YCC, thereby de-escalating the arms race between our spam filters and the YCC’s every-evasive email headings. Grass’ plan to make the YCC more effective could start by making it effective in the first place (although the YCC Salad Report was truly excellent), and he told Rumpus why he’s the man for the job.  Despite being a DS scholar who claims to do “most” of the reading, Andrew actually seems like a fairly approachable human being, and his boundless knowledge of the political classics will doubtless make him into a more effective politician and administrator (LOLOL).  Grass was the FCC’s chair this year, but when we asked how it felt to have the entire FCC sitting on him, he just gave us a weird look. He did say that herding 24 freshmen, each with presidential aspirations, is actually less difficult than herding cats, which he knows, because as an ex-cat sitter, he has actually herded cats, which he says is “difficult, especially given that they were outdoor cats.” Grass’ professional campaign website (check it out here), his contribution to the FCC’s first annual Stress Reduction Day, and his work in creating an IMs website make him a clear choice for YCC secretary. Despite an institutional mandate to always do the opposite of whatever the YD”N” does (for example, publish issues), Rumpus endorses Andrew Grass for YCC secretary.

Our relationship with Grass’ opponent, Rohan Goswami, is a sob story. Having read his profile on the “News,” we weren’t sure what to think, and so sent him an email to schedule an interview. Only problem was, the hacks over at the YD”N” spelled his name wrong, so our email – to Rohan Goswani, who doesn’t exist – never got through, although for some reason our Email Delivery Services didn’t think this was information we might like to know. We thought he just hadn’t gotten back to us, and not answering an email when running for email czar is like getting a job as a Classics major: it’s just not what you do. So we had condemned his campaign, only to realize that it wasn’t he, but of course, the YD”N” who was at fault. Nonetheless, we’re sticking with Grass. Goswani has a campaign manager, which sort of seems like a way to make “helped put up posters” look good on a resumé, and that’s just about all we know about him.  He does have some great ideas like dinner swipes at Durfee’s, and HBO GO for Yale (as if our productivity weren’t fucked enough – thanks, Tivli) , and we’re sure that, unlike us, he’s a very nice guy. But we’re sticking to our guns: Legalize Grass!

By Nick

If there’s one thing all the YCC UOC Chair candidates can agree on, it’s that no one knows what UOC stands for or what the position of Chair would entail. Sure, Rumpus asked all of them, but to be honest, it was a beautiful day, spring was in the air, and it’s been well-documented by scientific evidence that Vitamin D makes it impossible to give a fuck about politics. That’s why Election Day is in November. Look it up.

At any rate, each of the candidates elaborated his platform in detail, but what’s most telling about their political aspirations are their takes on those three mysterious letters: U-O-C. They each broke it down for us:

Brian Lei (CC ’16): Unusually Outstanding Committee

Ben Ackerman (TD ’16): Unbelievable Octopus Council

Grant Fergusson (BR ’16): University Of Cannibals

Zenas Han (DC ’16): Universal Orgies Campus-wide

The choice is clear for Rumpus—who can resist a good orgy? Plus, those other things are either very vague or just uncomfortable. From the moment the word “orgies” left his lips, we knew Han was our man.

That’s the thing about Han—he thinks differently. When asked about a slogan for his campaign, he even suggested the legendary Apple ad line: “Think different.” Han thinks differently, but by blatantly plagiarizing arguably one of the most well-known ad campaigns of all time, he demonstrates a firm commitment to think in a way that is both boldly different and comfortably lazy and ill-thought-out. That’s the kind of leadership Rumpus demands from the Chair of Yale’s highest group-sex-focused undergraduate committee.

Sure, Ackerman’s got the firmest handle on puns with his “who doesn’t want more Benjamins?,” and Fergusson and Lei think slogans trivialize the important issues at stake in this campaign. But to the voters, we ask this: would you vote for someone who couldn’t think of five words that rhyme with “book” (Ackerman)? Would you vote for someone who wouldn’t tell you (in this case, Rumpus) if he was single (Lei)? Would you vote for Grant Fergusson? To these questions, we say no. Yale deserves better. Also, under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t support Han, who is lactose intolerant. But he promised orgies—and arguably one doesn’t need whipped cream for a good orgy.

This is one of the most hotly contested, divisive elections for UOC chair Yale has ever seen, and York Street is red with campaign bunting and the blood of lesser candidates. Angry rallies have thrown undecided voters into the pit in Bienecke Plaza. President Levin has begged pitchfork-wielding, leather-and-human-teeth-clad throngs of E&EB majors for peace. It’s time to end the horror. This campus needs to heal; only one person can chair a UOC. Rumpus thinks only one thing can bring rival UOC-Chair-factions back together: a universal orgy, campus-wide.

The time for peace is now. Vote Han; vote orgies; vote peace.

And if you don’t—just vote, okay? Brian, Ben, Grant and Zenas deserve a campus that pretends it cares—they’ve worked really hard, we promise.

The Editors-in-Chief of Rumpus would like to apologize for a hookup bingo square that said “Low income, first generation college student” in our 50 Most Beautiful People issue. We were referencing an op-ed article in the Yale Daily News, but our commentary was out of context in the issue. It was not tasteful and we’re sorry to those we offended.