Even if a student doesn't go after prestige, and many of them don't, Yale's social values set his undergraduate life "and in all probability much of his future life"Jaccording to the sociological study mentioned before. "Every student who comes to Yale is faced with a major decision as to what sort of adjustment he is going to make to this prestge series. The men at the top of the series set the norm at Yale. The attitudes actions, and achievements of the men in the other groups are in some way adjustments to the attitudes, actions, and achievements of the men in the top groups." The study, which most Elis agree is incisively true, divides all students into the wheels, the pseudo-wheels, the ordinary guys (who seek extra-curricular participation as an end in itself), the pushers, the non-entities ("nice guys who don't stand out"), and the outcasts (because of nationality, religion, or sloppy appearance).
On Stone, in Hearts
Since most Elis have the same values and seek the same goals, they are far less individualistic than their Harvard companions. Some Harvard students haven't seen a class all term; others burn midnight oil. But almost all Yalies hit the middle road. The same comparison holds in politics; there are no "Communist-front" clubs in New Haven. The ideal of all Eli students is a single mythical "Yale Man," the target of almost everyone's aspirations. The Yale Man must be a success and he must be all-round: athletes are not admired unless they are good in other lines. There is much more pride behind the words "I am a Yale man" than behind "I am a Harvard man," and much of Yale's spirit comes from this attitude.
Since a Yale man is the best kind of man to be and since only Yale can produce one, Yale graduates stick together in business and friendship. Editor Whitelaw Reid of the New York Herald Tribune has a staff composed largely of his Yale '36 classmates. Even the college's almamater stresses this spirit:
... Time and change can naught avail To break the friendships formed at
Yale ...
Oh let us strive that ever we
May let these words our watchword be:
Where'er upon life's sea we sail:
"For God, for Country, and for Yale!"
The last phrase, probably the most anticlimactic periodic sentence in American literature, is engraved on Gothic walls and Yalemen hearts. "By God, that really means something here," says a professor who switched recently from another college. "I thought it was a gag until I saw it in stone. It is enormously strong as a symbol."
Despite the cohesiveness that Yale-manism brings the administration is against it. "Emphasis tends to be put in extra-curricular activities more or less apart from personal worth or intellectual achievement," says a housemaster. "Success for the sake of success is blowing up an artificial coin. Harvard is a good step above Yale and Princeton in university maturity." President A. Whitney Griswold, who once turned down a Skull and Bones bid to become Wolf's Head, agrees. "We could learn much from Harvard's independence," he says. "But the administration is like a cork floating in a whirlpool. It can't change this tradition."
Even if it could, Yale probably wouldn't. Its administration, like Harvard's believes strongly in letting the student go his own way. No one has ever tried it but Dean of the College William C. DeVane says he would sanction a "Young Communists of Yale Club" if students formed one.
Sweat in the Cathedral
"Suppose they wanted to publish a magazine, the Yale Monthly Worker," he was asked.
"I think we could work it out," said DeVane. Yale meddles little in the student's life: it bans cars for freshmen and limits classroom cuts for freshmen and sophomores, but little more. In many ways it is more liberal than Harvard, enforcing parietal rules with benevolent laxity and spiking a few bowls of College-dance punch.
Though not conservative, Yale is paternalistic. When a student strays off the road, Yale steps in long before Harvard does. "We spend an awful lot of time to keep guys from getting into trouble," explains a master. The Master, and not the dean, is the chief law-on-forcemeat agency. He may have from a campus cop that so-and-so has been