"The founders of the New Haven colony, like those of Massachusetts Bay, cherished the establishment of a college as an essential part of their ideal of a Christian state, of which education and religion should be the basis and the chief fruits."
Thus in 1700 AD the citizens of New Haven, tired of contributing to the support of an institution of decided Crimson hue in far-off Cambridge since the year 1644, decided to "educate ministers in their own way," and ten clergymen, Harvard graduates all, convened to do the job. Not until 18 years later, however, in 1718 when a certain Governor of the British East India Company saw fit to contribute his fortune to the Arts and Sciences, did the embryo college become financially secure, and in gratitude they immortalized the name of Elihu Yale.
Reactionary from the outset, in comparison to "their radical neighbors in Cambridge," the Elis in 246 years have fought off such liberal trends as dismissal in 1722 of President Timothy Cutler for "Episcopism," the abolition just prior to the Revolution of corporal punishment ("cuffing" of an offender's ears by the President), and an early nineteenth century uprising against the present student government, known mysteriously as "the Conic Sections Rebellion," to emerge in the twentieth century as the richest corporation in Connecticut, over the second-place Skull and Bones.
This all too brief history is furnished by the Encyclopedia Britannica, and brings us to the present day, with the emphasis in great centers of learning no longer on the problems of right and wrong, but rather on the problems of right and left. Let us look at conservative Yale today, with the Skull and Bones and the Book and Snake hinting of the secret caucus, and the New Haven Railroad still running two hours late.
Architecturally, unlike the long sequence that led from Harvard Hall to the Houses on the river and produced such works along the way as Memorial Hall and the Indoor Athletic Building, Yale stands almost entirely as the result of a mammoth 100-year plan laid down in 1924 to promote unanimity of design.
Of course, there remain the original college buildings like Connecticut Hall, where abode such luminaries as Nathan Hale, Yale '73, but the bulk of Eli construction has taken place in the past two decades.
The plan first produced the central quadrangle, built in Gothic style, with its maze of passageways and courtyards and its myriad of minute designs in stone, over which reigns the Harkness Memorial Tower. Here we find a peculiar liberal trend, for the Tower sexton mounts thrice daily to sound the chimes, not at the hours ordinarily prescribed for the sounding of chimes, but at noon, 6, and 10 o'clock. Those accustomed to the bedlam let loose over Cambridge every quarter hour, and sometimes at 20 minutes to the hour, might note this with approval.
Also in Gothic is the Payne-Whitney Gymnasium, a cathedral-like structure which houses among other things, the original Handsome Dan, stuffed and mounted, and one of the country's finest indoor swimming pools with excellent seating accommodations for spectators. So numerous are the tiers of seats, placed almost vertically one above the other, that from the bottom one feels sunk in an enormous pit and from the top one has the sensation of an aerial view of the water below.
Tacked onto these and other Gothic edifices are several buildings in Colonial style, an incongruity heightened in the courtyard of one particular College which is half Colonial and half Gothic. And one finds, too, in the midst of the University buildings, a plain red-brick New Haven high school, from whence sprung Levi Jackson.
For Scholars of Distinction
On the sudsier side is Mory's, cited as a center of gentility and wealth as opposed to the rowdier patronage of the Oxford Grille and Cronin's Bar. White-coated waiters circulate through small smoky rooms amidst photographs of athletic greats of years gone by, and generations of Elis have left their marks on the old wooden tables. Focal point of the club, of course, is the Whiffenpoof table, where congregate those who made Mory's famous, the names of all past Whiffenpoofs being stylishly inscribed thereon.
Highly conservative, the establishment from the outside is a plain unmarked building save for the small inscription "Mory's" on the door. Inside, money rarely changes hands, payment being made by the signing of checks. To enter this exclusive group, an Eli pays only a small fee, but must be nominated by two present members and voted on by the board, a process which usually takes several weeks, or even months.
The Squeaking Doors
Conspicuous around the "campus" are the mysterious sanctums of the secret societies. No living soul, supposedly, knows the membership of these organizations save the members themselves, and no person of the outside world has even seen a member in the act of entering the building. The Book and Snake sanctum, as an example, is a plain white stone cubical structure surrounded by a massive iron fence and having no visible means of entrance. Meetings it is rumored, are held at midnight, but that's only hearsay.
Most secret of the secret groups, perhaps, are the Followers of Hogan, of whom little is known. Some say their patron saint is a common domestic animal, maybe even a cat. Be that as it may the clan, though it rarely convenes, is summoned with the immortal words: "The Followers of Hogan will meet at Hogan's Grave at midnight tonight. Hogan would want it that way."
