Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Sep 01, 2006
Thursday, August 31, 2006, 4:31 p.m.<br><br>We are at the Est Est Est Ristorante located at the corner of Chapel Street and Park Street, at Yale University. It is an Italian restaurant, although the man who took our order for a large pizza, water and orange juice, does not sound Italian at all; h
Thursday, August 31, 2006, 4:31 p.m.
We are at the Est Est Est Ristorante located at the corner of Chapel Street and Park Street, at Yale University. It is an Italian restaurant, although the man who took our order for a large pizza, water and orange juice, does not sound Italian at all; he is likely from the Middle East or Turkey. I am not terribly hungry, so I will pass the time writing this column while the memory is fresh.
Yale has a number of eateries—along Chapel alone, I must have counted a dozen or more, ranging from Thai food, Middle eastern, Indian and others. The restaurants are not big establishments, but cozy eateries where you can sit and eat fried beans while discussing some fine philosophical points. There are equally many bars and liquor outlets, no doubt to provide the student and faculty alike with temporary respite from academic matters.
We have been on the Yale University campus for about an hour now. We arrived shortly after 3:30 p.m. from Danbury, Connecticut, and parked the car beside the First Methodist Church at the corner of Elm and College streets. The immediately striking features of Yale that grabs the attention of the visitor are the imposing architecture. The First Methodist Church for instance has an immense façade facing Elm Street.
The place is all history, having celebrated its 300 years of existence in October 2001. From a very humble beginning as a small educational institution established by a handful of congregational ministers (formerly from Harvard), it has grown into an immense institution sitting on 1.1 square kilometers of land, with more than 11,000 students, guided by a whopping faculty of 2,300 educators. It has an endowment totaling some $15 billion, that’s more than the GDP of many African nations.
According to information available from the Visitor Center located at 149 Elm Street, of the more than 22,000 hopefuls who apply to enter into this august Ivy League university, only a meager 8% is successful—that about 1700 students a year. The competition is understandably very fierce. Successful applicants can lay claim to the rich history of the university and the bragging rights to having attended the same alma mater as famous US presidents including Gerald Ford, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and the current president George W. Bush. The current US president attended Davenport College, located just a mere three minutes walk from where I am sitting this moment. Yale has 12 colleges which are somewhat similar to those found at Oxford. A college builds a tight-knit student community supported by a range of services and advisors. Although they all lay claim to the name Yale University graduates when they leave campus, there is a special attachments to the various colleges.
Bill Clinton attended faculty of law located on the other side at the corner of Wall Street and High Street—if time permits, and it looks less likely now, we might pass by there.
Yale admission policy is to welcome a diverse body of students—I came across some information that says 16% of students hail from another country (it does not say which countries), and at least 30% are students of colour (again this does not tell me whether we are talking blacks, Hispanics, Indians, Japanese-Americans or Korean-Americans). As we walked along College Street and then along Chapel, we saw a number of blacks, some may even from Africa. They could be visitors (like us), students, faculty or workers on campus. The young smiling fellow who served me at the information center located at corner of Chapel and College was black—he could be a student at Yale who works on the side as an information guide. He was full of life and appeared to enjoy himself immensely—I thought to take his picture, but decided to let him do his job.
But my feeling is that there is likely still a fairly small percentage of black students admitted to Yale University which is very much in line with admission of blacks in many non-black universities across United States of America. In any case, the statistics are still very much lopsided against blacks entering a place like Yale University which requires not only scholastic aptitude but also the means. For example, according to the US Department of education, 12% of black students, age 16 to 24, dropped out of high school in 2004 compared to only 7% dropout among whites students. In fact, since 1972 when it began to track drop-out rate by race, US Department of Education has indicated that the number of blacks dropping out of high school has been higher than the number of whites dropping out high school. Part of the explanation is the extreme poverty that many blacks children endure from an early age, and although the average expenditure per pupil in primary end secondary school is $8000, many black students are still attending school on empty stomach, and without the same level of support structures that are evident in white schools.
The other explanation could be that the more established schools serving middle class American families tend to get the lion share of educational resources because the parents in those communities can afford to lobby for more dollars—the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But in order to make the kind of noise that gets results, you have to have an education, and your voice has to matter in the bigger scheme of things such as elections, and blacks are still not being heard in America as much as whites are heard. For goodness sake, a year after Katrina, those blacks washed out of the homes in Louisiana and New Orleans are still out in the cold. Surely those children who fled their homes could not have been receiving quality education. It’s a dead year for them, and they may never catch up with children elsewhere in the USA.
Of course, the level of education determines where the graduate (or drop-out) will land in the larger scheme of things. The wage gap is huge, with those without secondary school diploma earning far less than those who completed secondary school, and even more so when compared to those with a university degree.
But I am here at Yale University, sitting in this restaurant with my family. The boys are very hungry, and the pizza is very hot, so in between writing this piece, I have to stop and blow on the pizza to cool it down. University education is the furthest from the boys’ minds—they could care less that we are here at the famous Yale University.
In a few minutes, we will retrace our steps along Chapel, and then walk through the Old Campus comprising of some of the oldest buildings at Yale University. Then we will try to get back on the road and pass through Danbury to say goodbye to my sister Naomi and my brother-in-law Charles, and thank them for their hospitality, before tackling the perilous journey into New York City. I say perilous because we are slightly behind schedule and will not get into New York before eight tonight, and that’s late for driving into an unfamiliar city as big as New York. Luckily, I have run a MapQuest query for direction which shows me every step to get right in front of the Marriott Hotel at Brooklyn Bridge where UNAA New York 2006 is happening…
Anyhow, so long, and will let you know how we do in our drive to the Big Apple.
Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca
We are at the Est Est Est Ristorante located at the corner of Chapel Street and Park Street, at Yale University. It is an Italian restaurant, although the man who took our order for a large pizza, water and orange juice, does not sound Italian at all; he is likely from the Middle East or Turkey. I am not terribly hungry, so I will pass the time writing this column while the memory is fresh.
Yale has a number of eateries—along Chapel alone, I must have counted a dozen or more, ranging from Thai food, Middle eastern, Indian and others. The restaurants are not big establishments, but cozy eateries where you can sit and eat fried beans while discussing some fine philosophical points. There are equally many bars and liquor outlets, no doubt to provide the student and faculty alike with temporary respite from academic matters.
We have been on the Yale University campus for about an hour now. We arrived shortly after 3:30 p.m. from Danbury, Connecticut, and parked the car beside the First Methodist Church at the corner of Elm and College streets. The immediately striking features of Yale that grabs the attention of the visitor are the imposing architecture. The First Methodist Church for instance has an immense façade facing Elm Street.
The place is all history, having celebrated its 300 years of existence in October 2001. From a very humble beginning as a small educational institution established by a handful of congregational ministers (formerly from Harvard), it has grown into an immense institution sitting on 1.1 square kilometers of land, with more than 11,000 students, guided by a whopping faculty of 2,300 educators. It has an endowment totaling some $15 billion, that’s more than the GDP of many African nations.
According to information available from the Visitor Center located at 149 Elm Street, of the more than 22,000 hopefuls who apply to enter into this august Ivy League university, only a meager 8% is successful—that about 1700 students a year. The competition is understandably very fierce. Successful applicants can lay claim to the rich history of the university and the bragging rights to having attended the same alma mater as famous US presidents including Gerald Ford, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and the current president George W. Bush. The current US president attended Davenport College, located just a mere three minutes walk from where I am sitting this moment. Yale has 12 colleges which are somewhat similar to those found at Oxford. A college builds a tight-knit student community supported by a range of services and advisors. Although they all lay claim to the name Yale University graduates when they leave campus, there is a special attachments to the various colleges.
Bill Clinton attended faculty of law located on the other side at the corner of Wall Street and High Street—if time permits, and it looks less likely now, we might pass by there.
Yale admission policy is to welcome a diverse body of students—I came across some information that says 16% of students hail from another country (it does not say which countries), and at least 30% are students of colour (again this does not tell me whether we are talking blacks, Hispanics, Indians, Japanese-Americans or Korean-Americans). As we walked along College Street and then along Chapel, we saw a number of blacks, some may even from Africa. They could be visitors (like us), students, faculty or workers on campus. The young smiling fellow who served me at the information center located at corner of Chapel and College was black—he could be a student at Yale who works on the side as an information guide. He was full of life and appeared to enjoy himself immensely—I thought to take his picture, but decided to let him do his job.
But my feeling is that there is likely still a fairly small percentage of black students admitted to Yale University which is very much in line with admission of blacks in many non-black universities across United States of America. In any case, the statistics are still very much lopsided against blacks entering a place like Yale University which requires not only scholastic aptitude but also the means. For example, according to the US Department of education, 12% of black students, age 16 to 24, dropped out of high school in 2004 compared to only 7% dropout among whites students. In fact, since 1972 when it began to track drop-out rate by race, US Department of Education has indicated that the number of blacks dropping out of high school has been higher than the number of whites dropping out high school. Part of the explanation is the extreme poverty that many blacks children endure from an early age, and although the average expenditure per pupil in primary end secondary school is $8000, many black students are still attending school on empty stomach, and without the same level of support structures that are evident in white schools.
The other explanation could be that the more established schools serving middle class American families tend to get the lion share of educational resources because the parents in those communities can afford to lobby for more dollars—the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But in order to make the kind of noise that gets results, you have to have an education, and your voice has to matter in the bigger scheme of things such as elections, and blacks are still not being heard in America as much as whites are heard. For goodness sake, a year after Katrina, those blacks washed out of the homes in Louisiana and New Orleans are still out in the cold. Surely those children who fled their homes could not have been receiving quality education. It’s a dead year for them, and they may never catch up with children elsewhere in the USA.
Of course, the level of education determines where the graduate (or drop-out) will land in the larger scheme of things. The wage gap is huge, with those without secondary school diploma earning far less than those who completed secondary school, and even more so when compared to those with a university degree.
But I am here at Yale University, sitting in this restaurant with my family. The boys are very hungry, and the pizza is very hot, so in between writing this piece, I have to stop and blow on the pizza to cool it down. University education is the furthest from the boys’ minds—they could care less that we are here at the famous Yale University.
In a few minutes, we will retrace our steps along Chapel, and then walk through the Old Campus comprising of some of the oldest buildings at Yale University. Then we will try to get back on the road and pass through Danbury to say goodbye to my sister Naomi and my brother-in-law Charles, and thank them for their hospitality, before tackling the perilous journey into New York City. I say perilous because we are slightly behind schedule and will not get into New York before eight tonight, and that’s late for driving into an unfamiliar city as big as New York. Luckily, I have run a MapQuest query for direction which shows me every step to get right in front of the Marriott Hotel at Brooklyn Bridge where UNAA New York 2006 is happening…
Anyhow, so long, and will let you know how we do in our drive to the Big Apple.
Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca