Salon’s esteemed advice columnist, Cary Tennis, on the Ivy League:

I know what it is like to befriend the moneyed and beautiful sons and daughters of the Ivy League and to watch them drive off when the fun is over; I know the sickening flush you feel when the historic room you are standing in, where canapes are served on silver platters by obsequious caterers of unknown descent, becomes a room in which you are the very thing that does not belong — a thing to be removed, a thing to move away from lest unpleasantries erupt. One awakens in such a room as one awaking from a dream for the first time seeing with dizzying clarity the occupants as they are: sycophants of the court, transparently hungry for a crumb, self-hating, malnourished, their gazes cold as a lizard’s gaze, their winter fingertips the temperature of junkyard metal.

Apparently Mr. Tennis has never heard of financial aid. Or irony, given that the advice-seeker goes by “J.A.P.” and the address suffix is “slave_narrative.”

Still throwing up from basking in the afterglow of the 02138 launch party, we opened this week’s New York magazine only to find that we’re not as wily as we thought. “Exclusive” Harvard locales in Manhattan are as easy to get into as Vassar! From “The Best Free Workout in Midtown“:

“‘I didn’t think sneaking in would work, ’cause, you know, it’s the Harvard Club,’ says the Boston University graduate [Barton Jeffrey], who was rejected by Harvard when he applied. ‘But they didn’t check I.D.’s, and we strolled right in and up to the gym.’ Raves another non-Harvard grad who also crashes the club, ‘The facilities are fantastic. Excellent squash courts, steam room, and sauna — the works.’ “

In response, the Harvard Club is beefing up desk security and telling staffers to “keep an eye out for random types.” There goes our chance to towel-snap Rivers Cuomo in the ass.

After slumming it up with flipping through a back issue of UVA’s alumni mag recently, we noted that it carried a few letters unlikely to appear in the Yale Alumni Magazine, an assertion we pulled halfway out of our ass. It got us thinking–what kind of letters do run in the nation’s oldest alumni publication? Are they really that different?

I am upset to read about the fate of “Geronimo’s” skull in Notebook (May/June). Whether or not it belongs to Geronimo, its continued presence demonstrates arrogance and insensitivity on the part of Skull and Bones toward other human beings, especially Native Americans.

By keeping this skull and other bones in their possession, Skull and Bones continues to venerate the original act of desecration by Prescott Bush and his friends. In 1983, I was given a short tour of the society. At that time, the skull was locked in a safe along with some other longish bones. There were also two or three smaller skulls on tables in the library, perhaps the plunder of other graves. How would Bonesmen feel today if a fraternity plundered Prescott Bush’s grave and kept his skull as a trophy for the next 90 years?

I suspect Mr. Bush and Mr. Davison never offered the Apache representative, Ned Anderson, what they believed to be Geronimo’s skull. According to the article, he was shown only the skull of a ten-year-old. The skull that was identified to me in 1983 as Geronimo’s belonged to an adult. Mr. Anderson, moreover, was never shown any femur bones. It is possible one of the smaller skulls sitting in the library was substituted.

The return of “Geronimo’s” skull and the other remains in Skull and Bones to the communities from where they came is long overdue. As the society has the chance to reflect on its past and present actions, I hope it will do so.

Stuart D. Sears ‘83
Westport, MA

Fuck yeah secret societies!!! That’s what I’m talking about in an alumni periodical!

Do The Right Thing [Yale Alumni Magazine]