Among the Intellectualoids/A Monument of One's Own
West, Diana
AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS A Monument of One's Own by Diana West In 1718, the 17-year-old Collegiate School changed its name to Yale College, in spite of the fact that neither eponym Elihu Yale...
...Of course not...
...The women, who did not go to Yale must not have not gone there in vain...
...Jamais...
...past," the piece has come to emphasize the historic exclusion of women, not any current achievements...
...Sort of a thank-you for being you and thank you for being here—and thank you to the anonymous alumna who donated a hefty sum to get this project off the ground...
...Thirteen years later, some alumnae justify the Women's Table as a counterweight to such campus landmarks as Commons, which they describe as a monument to men...
...The commemorative monument becomes a commemorative accusation...
...To men...
...It's like an old-fashioned waffle iron, only I'm in the middle of it, and there are powerful lamps and a fan to cool me...
...The memorial honors all the men who ever went to Yale and died for our country because they went to Yale and died for our country—not because they were men...
...For all of my sins, especially the ones against People of Gender...
...Diana West is a writer living in Washington, D. C. It wasn't until last November that most Yale women discovered they were about to be commemorated in rock...
...There were no women attending Yale in 1701...
...And, you know, it would be nice if we were at a point where, you know, we could really celebrate some major accomplishment of increasing the presence of women in all aspects of Yale's life...
...The lights went out, and I felt a draft of cold air coming down over me...
...Say that last part again...
...Yale's neoGothic spires, antiqued by crafty artisans early in this century for that half-a-millennium-old look, are finally showing bona fide signs of age that only one billion dollars' worth of work over the next decade can reverse...
...But there's more...
...President Schmidt called on Maya Lin, '81, of Vietnam Veterans Memorial fame, to do the honors...
...Nada on the woman thing...
...Who can imagine Vassar, for example, celebrating its addition of male students by reducing the years men were excluded to a legacy of zeros...
...Now that the university has commissioned a monumental sculpture to remind us, maybe we won't...
...The time is fitting for a prominent tribute to women at Yale," wrote Diana Dwyer Brooks, '72, president and CEO of Sotheby's, in the fund-raising campaign kickoff...
...Literally...
...In 1914, Yale alumni erected a statue of Nathan Hale, even though no colonial coeds graduated with the Revolutionary War hero in 1773...
...As symbols go, the water and the oval are easy enough to interpret in terms of general life-giving femaleness...
...I lay there wondering for a moment, and then—pop...
...According to a telephone fund-raiser, the piece will rotate 22 degrees—one for each year women have attended Yale...
...He didn't specify anything in particular to celebrate beyond the fact that Women at Yale were...
...While this is unlikely to bear too strenuously on the nation's comfort index, it does show just how thin the ivy on Yale's walls has grown...
...When I open my eyes I can't see anything...
...Maya Lin's emphasis on the individual, rather than the 58 The American Spectator May 1992 group, helps fuel the emotional power of her Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but the Women's Table, as described by Yale spokesmen (Lin begged off an interview) will portray its subject in bulk, as a batch of statistics...
...Plans for the sculpture call for a polished stone tabletop cut from Cold Spring green granite in the shape of an oval (very ovular) over which water will gently flow...
...exclaims Emily Honig, self-described "chair" of the Yale Women's Studies program...
...The Bad Place...
...Since the campaign began, alas, fund-raisers have pragmatically opened the contribution pool to deep-pocketed Dads...
...Not the most opportune time to raise $400,000 for a table you can't even eat at...
...Yale alumni agents received an accompanying letter to underscore that "only women are being solicited...
...Then again, it's difficult to punch up the heroic qualities of attendance records...
...Isn't it easier to forget...
...After a yearlong observance of the twentieth anniversary of "Women at Yale" (once known as "coeducation"), in 1990 Yale President Benno Schmidt commissioned an artwork to celebrate women at Yale...
...We must not forget...
...B etween budget deficits and curriculum cuts, these are tough days for Old Eli...
...Can this be it...
...Come May, Lin's piece will be installed across from Sterling Library on Cross Campus, the quadrangle at the heart of Yale...
...The table will be mounted on its base at a 69-degree angle to commemorate the historic year 1969, when women broke the sex barrier...
...And, as Elizabeth Spencer of the Yale Development Office puts it, "The detail in the sculpture is more fascinating than actually looking at it itself...
...As for the walls themselves, they're not a pretty sight...
...And I feel dizzy...
...But remember we must...
...There's a hot breeze blowing over me...
...Yale marked its first decade of coeducation in 1979 with a conference at which female grads reflected on their Yale experience—"the overwhelming sense of patriarchy," as one woman put it, "with male portraits hanging everywhere...
...That's right...
...In fact, it's almost heaven...
...It would be nice if we were at a point where we could really celebrate some major accomplishment .. . Although Maya Lin was quoted in 1989 as saying, "The monument is more about the future than commemorating the Thursday Where am I? I can tell that I'm lying down, and that it's hot...
...Or 1801...
...In other words, this monument was to be dedicated to Yale women, designed by a Yale woman, and paid for by Yale women—A Monument of One's Own...
...women, at Yale...
...The Women's Table, on the other hand, has been commissioned precisely to honor a group of women for being a group of women, a rather prosaic inspiration for art...
...Not exactly uplifting imagery...
...AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS A Monument of One's Own by Diana West In 1718, the 17-year-old Collegiate School changed its name to Yale College, in spite of the fact that neither eponym Elihu Yale nor any of his Yalies was female...
...But it will be engraved...
...Brooks briefly described the granite piece Lin calls the "Women's Table" and followed with a plea for funds that reveal a singular bias: "We are writing and calling women alumni of the College, Graduate, and Professional Schools, and current students...
...Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in Malibu, California...
...Most people never make these connections...
...One of the more troubling signs is that Commons, the school's awesome war memorial cum freshman dining hall, has closed its kitchens to the freshman class...
...I mean, it's wonderful to have something that is a, you know, something that will be a major physical presence on campus that, you know, that celebrates the presence of women, and at the same time, you know, the status of women at Yale, particularly, and I say this as a faculty member, particularly as chair of Women's Studies, you know, the status of women on the faculty is not one that—I mean, it's an issue that a lot of attention'sbeen given to and a lot of reports have been written about, but, you know, it's an issue that there's a lot of dissatisfaction over...
...There will be a lot of zeros...
...I can't hear anything, except Elvis Presley singing "Peace in the Valley...
...I'm in the tanning room at Giovanni's Hair Salon in Point Dume, Malibu, getting my first-ever artificial suntan from a "tanning cocoon...
...Get it...
...Last spring, George Bush addressed Yale's 290th graduating class, even though Bush earned his bachelor's degree in the exclusively male class of 1948...
...And each of those engraved zeros, which will stretch from 1701 until Yale's graduate programs began to admit women in 1892, will serve not as a tribute to Yale's history of women on campus but as a reproach to Yale's history of educating men...
...A tight spiral of machine-inscribed numbers will emanate from the center of the table, recording the number of women in attendance at Yale from the school's inception in 1701...
...Chair Honig, when telephoned to discuss the sculpture, did not profess to know much about it, although she was willing to oblige the press and make an ill-advised attempt at a sound bite: "I guess all I can say is, that, you know, I think it's—what's the word...
...In fact, it feels like it might be Hell...
...But some token token of esteem was probably inevitable...
...Now I know it's not hell at all...
...Of course, being a Maya Lin monument, the Women's Table will be engraved with the names of all the women who ever graduated from Yale in chronological . . . Just kidding...
Vol. 25 • May 1992 • No. 5
