The First Rule of Yale Club Is Get the Hell Out of My Yale Club
Anonymous Yalies railed against the "invasions of crowds from such lowbrow places as the Bronx" in a Monday New York Post article. Mrs. Harrison DeSilver (according to New York Magazine's Daily Intel, this is the name of an architecture firm upstate and not a well-chosen pseudonym) says:
I just want to put my feet up here, but instead, weddings are being shipped down from The Bronx
The article contains more grousing about the Bronx as well as descriptions of the Yale Club's exclusive accommodations (beds! a gym! a place to eat! a basement dungeon!). Daily Intel's analysis of the article suggests that disgruntled club members are actually upset about sharing facilities with the UVA Club and the Dartmouth Club and not the occasional plebeian wedding. Daily Intel says:
The tabloid cries snobbery! Except they've got it all WRONG. It makes the Yale Club sound racist or something, because presumably they're not talking about all of the Yale alumni up in Riverdale. But total strangers can only usually use the club when there are weddings or other major events. They're not the ones in the swimming pool or at the gym. No, club members are annoyed by a different kind of crowd — non-Yalies who get in with reciprocal agreements from Dartmouth and UVA. Elis don't have a snobby Bronx problem, they have a perfectly understandable safety-school problem.
Are Yalies upset about sharing their facilities with Dartmouth and UVA grads? Maybe. But in the Post article they're mostly upset about "weddings being shipped down," "the practice of renting out rooms to the public," and outsiders staying overnight and using up all the space.
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Read more: Dartmouth, snobbery, the Bronx, UVA, Yale, yale club
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November 12th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Doesn’t the Yale Club rent out the space used by UVA and Dartmouth… which in both cases is a single floor, if that? If they’re annoyed, couldn’t they just kick them out?
November 12th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Dartmouth and UVA alumni can gain full membership to the Yale Club. All the Ivy Alumni clubs in NYC are literally within 1-2 blocks of each other (near Grand Central). Almost all of the clubs are shared with other schools (including: GASP! non-ivies).
Having been to the Yale/Dartmouth club a few times, and it is very, very nice (rated the best private club in NYC). I’ve heard the opposite reaction to ‘us’ being there, because we supply a larger crop of legitimately interesting people.
Besides, the elitists can’t feel elite if they have nobody to feel better than.
“Thank goodness they allow riff-raff from Dartmouth (ahem) & UVA to become members.”
http://www.yelp.com/biz/yale-club-of-new-york-city-new-york
November 12th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Great comment, D’09. I back it, even though I’ll have to wait another lifetime for Dartmouth to get it’s own club before I can through down some pong in the basement/sewers.
November 12th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
And by through he meant throw.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:23 am
And by it’s he meant its.
November 13th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Can’t we afford our own club in NYC? Why would we want to hang out with Yalies anyway? :P
November 13th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Why don’t you guys write a post about how Princeton was called a “trade school” on Gossip Girl last week? That shit was hilarious.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I think that it’s equally likely that Dartmouth and UVa members feel put upon to have to tolerate Yalies in their club.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
It’s really not their club. Like, really. Take a look at the place.
And really, we need a little more elitism, not less. The death of American aristocracy was a terrible thing. The “meritocracy” we have now sure as hell ain’t making up for the loss.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
If by the American aristocracy you are referring to the Ivy League, remember that our fine institutions were founded by a bunch of cold and wet colonists in the woods–Oxford didn’t come over here and set up shop!! Meritocracy, may you live ever on!
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 am
I don’t know about the riff-raff from the Bronx, but I’m a member of the club and I’ll be honest: the weddings are getting to be a bit much. It seems that every other day the elevators get completely taken over by wedding parties, making it increasingly difficult and annoying to get to the bar and the gym.
And I don’t know how much the Yalies actually resent the Dartmouth people. Since (a) Dartmouth grads have been using the club for a long, long time now, and (b) one can’t actually tell where any of the other members went to school, since most of the time people are dressed in their office clothes.
Furthermore, I’ve never seen anyone in a tee shirt, unless it was the lobby or the gym for more than a few minutes–the staff is rather diligent about kicking out the under dressed.
December 7th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
As anyone who went to Dartmouth knows perfectly well, Dartmouth is NOT a safety school for Yale. Rather, it is a safety school for Princeton. And the only thing really useful about the Yale Club is that it has much nicer bathrooms than Grand Central.