Talk:Yale University/Archive 4

Harvard?

It seems rather strange to me that this article about Yale is in fact about harvard, shouldn't we change that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mersennelein (talk • contribs) 14:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Library

As best as I can tell, Yale has only the third biggest library collection, not the second. Both Harvard (to which the footnote refers; I think they meant in the united states) and the UofT have larger collections. 216.121.230.246 (talk) 02:06, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Dummy

Is it true, that the University should have be named after Mr Dummy but because of his name it was named after Mr Yale? Stern 00:50, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

• A-lie;who said so? But it doesn't Mather. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:32, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It was actually Nehemiah Poopypants. Is Stern thinking perhaps of Harvard not having a Hoar House? - Nunh-huh 05:12, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

• • • Oxford does, however, have a Pusey House.

According to our Elihu Yale article

In 1999, American Heritage magazine rated Elihu Yale the "most overrated philanthropist" in American history, arguing that the college that would later bear his name (Yale University) was successful largely because of the generosity of a man named Jeremiah Dummer, but that the trustees of the school did not want it known by the name "Dummer College".

However, the Jeremiah Dummer article says this: "The most significant contribution of Jeremiah Dummer to the school was his work on persuading Elihu Yale to donate a large sum of money." btm _talk 07:16, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

American Heritage was being a little silly, and we're being a little silly quoting it, as "overrated" implies that most people think Elihu Yale was a great philanthropist rather than someone who gave some books and a little money to Yale and got a great bargain when it named after him. I'd submit that most people don't think about it that hard. In any case, the present article enumerates his contributions and doesn't overrate them<g>. Jeremiah Dummer gave £60 and over 600 books he collected from "sundry gentlemen" to Yale in 1714. Yale certainly gave more money than Dummer. - Nunh-huh 17:16, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Payne Whitney: world's largest gym?

Is Payne Whitney Gymnasium the largest in the world or the second-largest? PRRfan 04:41, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe that Soviet Russia built a facility that was slightly larger for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, leading to Payne-Whitney's revised status during the 1980s as being "largest in the free world." Not sure whether the Russian facility still exists, and if it still exists whether it is classified as a gymnasium. Status of the Russian facility would help clarify the answer to this question.Mahnmut 03:48, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Payne Whitney reclaimed its position as world's largest by recently opening an addition. The Yale Daily News ran articles on this matter. CK —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.175.113.139 (talk) 23:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

"Consistently ranked"

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, a reference to a single year of U. S. News and World Reports rankings cannot serve to support the statement that certain Yale graduate programs are "consistently" ranked top in the nation. The referenced page is a popup menu, incidentally, and I haven't actually checked to make sure all the programs mentioned really were ranked #1 in 2007. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Safety at Yale

I wanted to drop a note to explain my recent deletion of certain arguments being made in the Safety at Yale section. Some useful articles are being unearthed by some of the recent contributors, but we should be careful about drawing sweeping conclusions without proper support. In the most recent example, contributor 205.234.156.33 found some interesting information that a security watchdog group called Security on Campus was accusing Yale of under-reporting sexual assaults on campus, which could be affecting the DOE statistics under the Clery act. However, the same contributor later jumps to the conclusion that there has been a resurgence of violent crime on campus in the mid-2000s and cites several articles (I have since removed this text, so please refer to earlier saves). The first article only compares three years of data - 2001 to 2003 - and seems to largely be based on data on non-violent crime such as drug and alcohol violations. And I'm not sure what "trend" emerges from the three years of data - 2003 seems similar to 2001. The subsequent four citations deal with individual (and of course unfortunate) incidents, but do not place them in context. I suspect that most campuses, especially urban campuses, experience some muggings and assaults each year. A quick Google search on Yale's peer Harvard shows many newspaper articles about violent crimes on campus, and even murders of Harvard students over the past two decades. Are Yale's specific incidents unusual relative to Yale's peer schools, unusual relative to earlier periods in Yale's history, or even unusual relative to any community of Yale's size? The citations don't answer these questions, and therefore it seems unsupported to conclude that there has been some sudden surge in violent crime. I am not trying to suppress legitimate information, but if this section is going to paint the picture that Yale is unusually unsafe for a university, or that the Yale administration routinely engages in cover-ups of violent crime, then the burden is on the contributors to create a bullet-proof case backed up by lots of cited evidence.Mahnmut 01:51, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

The edits were probably a canard by someone from Harvard, looking to do something about the fact that Yale now has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard. Yale is one of the safest campuses in America and according to Harvard's own police department, at stalcommpol.org, Harvard is significantly more dangerous.

I go to Yale and anyone who says that Yale is one of the safest campuses in America is deceiving themself. Students here are terrified of walking alone at night, more so than at any other University I've encountered with the exception of ones in Philadelphia. Yes, this is my opinion, but I assure you it is shared by a large number of Yale students. For perspective, there are muggings on campus at hours as early as 8PM on a fairly regular basis; those are simple facts and it's hard to interpret that as "safe". Cazort (talk) 03:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Again, just my opinion, but Yale certainly does not cover-up crime; quite to the contrary it's ridiculously diligent at broadcasting a summary of every violent crime to the entire Yale community shortly after it happens. Cazort (talk) 03:40, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Birthplace of New Criticism?

I'd personally contest the statement that "Yale's English and literature departments were the birthplace of New Criticism." Obviously, it is valid that Robert Penn Warren was a major influence in this movement and he was indeed a professor at Yale. But many credit the birthplace of "New Criticism" to the time Robert Penn Warren was at Vanderbilt in literary groups such as "The Fugitives". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitives

Yearly expenses

A more interesting figure than Endownment (money which you doesn't spend on research) is the actual figure what the university does spend on research and teaching. Please add it to the page.

Opening

I think the Atlantic Monthly citation is in poor taste; it's conspicuous references to the "two universities" and its failure to actually name Harvard shows an attempt to establish prestige while not wanting to bring in its competitor. It's some quote from the 1800s, too, which doesn't say much about Yale's standing in the world today. I don't think an article about Yale should say explicitly that it and Harvard are popularly considered the two best schools in the country. Leave that for the article on the "Big Three," or create a page on the Harvard-Yale rivalry. Yale's page should be about Yale. It doesn't need to establish its prestige or be a battleground for the Yale-Harvard rivalry. I'm taking the sentence out.

Grade Inflation and Teaching Assistants

Given that none of the articles referenced suggests that there is any grade inflation at Yale or an over-reliance on teaching assistants at Yale, and given that it is generally believed that Yale suffers far less from these afflictions than many of her competitors, I am modifying the relevant sections. If anyone has Yale-specific references that can support either of these notions, please feel free to contribute them. Rschon 14:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I should have added that the NY Times article that is referenced, which I am about to remove, is completely non-germane, leading me to wonder about the motivations of why it would have been added. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E5D71130F933A1575AC0A9649C8B63 Rschon 14:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Finally, on further close examination, I have discovered that the article from the YAM supposedly claiming that there is an over reliance on TAs was from an infamous, tendentious, and statistically flawed GESO study. I have left in the reference but attempted to put it into NPOV context. Rschon 14:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

User:Rschon's edits about the GESO study (which can hardly be described as "infamous, tendentious, and statistically flawed") were hardly, in my view, NPOV. I hope that the wording I've crafted is better. 71.77.12.236 23:57, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the best information on this topic is from YDN (Yale Daily News). They conducted a survey, and the median gpa of those surveyed was between 3.6 and 3.7. Considering that this is significantly higher than the median for Harvard (3.4), and that a large portion of the Harvard article is devoted to grade inflation, I do not see why this is not even mentioned in the Yale article. Here's an article from the Daily Princetonian discussing this survey: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/10/11/news/16142.shtml

Agreed, thanks. 129.2.175.110 06:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

3 Forms of Urim & Thummim

Previously the hebrew on the logo was hotlinked to the article entitled "Urim & Thummim" as such is the standard translation/transliteration of the hebrew on the logo. But the "Lux et Veritas" on the logo is a translation of the same thing. Nowadays we generally translate Urim & Thummim as "Lights and Perfections," but in various Latin Bibles it is translated as Lux et Veritas, and thus the reference. Anyway, I moved the hotlink from the hebrew to the English for that reason. Any disputations? --Mrcolj 23:35, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Founding location

Old Saybrook, Connecticut and Saybrook College say the institution was once located in Old Saybrook, but this article says it was originally located in Killingworth, and moved from there to New Haven. -- Beland 04:41, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Resolved, but references are still needed. -- Beland 06:35, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[1] Killingworth: Kelly, pp. 13-15. Yale's first student, Jacob Heminway, arrives at Rector Pierson's house in Killingworth in March 1702. The first commencemen (of Nathaniel Chauncey and Stephen Buckingham), however, occurs in Saybrook 16 September 1702. Also Pierson, Founding of Yale, p. 18-19

[2] Old Saybrook: Kelly, p. 16-19. Last commencement in Saybrook was 12 September 1716.

[3] New Haven: Kelly, pp. 20. First commencement in New Haven was 11 September 1717.

Classes were also held in other towns besides Killingworth and Old Saybrook, such as Milford. - Nunh-huh 02:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Graduate teachers, contingent teachers, and the new AAUP report

This morning I placed the following sentence at the end of the paragraph about the prevelance of graduate teachers' teaching their own classes: "A 2006 study by the AAUP found that 33.5% of full-time faculty (24.4% of full-time, instructional faculty) were not on tenure-track, and that graduate employees and contingent (adjunct) teachers made up 72.0% of all Yale instructors. To make just one comparison, 45.4% of Harvard's full-time faculty are non-tenure-track, and graduate and contingent instructors make up 76.0% of its total.[1]." User:Mahnmut removed the sentence with the justification "AAUP data, which indirectly touches upon numbers of TAs, doesn't seem very relevant to how much undergraduate teaching TAs are actually doing". I dispute that the data only "indirectly touches" on the question--indeed, the prevelance of contingent and graduate instructors cuts directly to the heart of the matter. I am happy to make this a separate paragraph or change the wording, but I think it is a key piece of data in the question addressed in the paragraph, and simply replacing it with the administration's spin doesn't do the same thing. I'm open to ideas about where to place the AAUP data. 71.77.12.236 03:47, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this onto the Talk Page - it is an important issue to discuss. I think that one of the reasons this is such a contentious issue for many of us is that many undergraduates and alumni intuitively find the GESO claims that TAs do a majority of the teaching at Yale to be completely inconsistent with our own learning experiences at Yale. There has always been a major disconnect between how the "customer base" (i.e., the undergraduates) view this issue, and how GESO (which has a clear economic interest in its point of view) sees it. To my knowledge, GESO has never cited a credible survey or study establishing student dissatisfaction with the use of TAs and professor accessibility. Quite the opposite, searches of the Yale Daily News and Yale Herald show that accessibility of even Yale's most famous professors is frequently cited by undergraduates as one of Yale's core strengths.

Let me also speak to why I specifically disagree with the AAUP numbers. First, it is misleading to lump graduate instructors and adjunct/contingent instructors together in the same statistic. Many of the adjunct/contingent instructors are some of Yale's most distinguished teachers with unique areas of expertise - like David Swensen, the Yale endowment manager who teaches a popular portfolio management course in the economics department, but who is not on tenure track. Second, it is misleading to lump "support" TAs - those who primarily grade exams, administrate course logistics and lead optional discussion sections for large lecture courses - with TAs who have primary responsibility for developing a curriculum and driving the teaching process forward. I know that support work is important and necessary work. However, let's say a professor spends 2 hours a week lecturing and teaching course material that she developed over several years, and TAs in aggregate spend 20 hours/week grading homework and exams behind the scenes under the professor's guidance. GESO would argue that TAs are doing 10 times as much teaching as the professor in this course, but most undergraduates in the course would be completely bewildered by that claim, especially given that many of them will have never met or interacted with the TAs in question.

The raw number of graduate student TAs floating around (as indirectly reflected in the AAUP data) does not shed light on this issue either. What matters is, how many of Yale's 2,000 undergraduate courses are primarily taught (i.e. curriculum developed by, lectured and taught) by graduate students? And what percentage of undergraduate enrollments are in courses that are primarily taught by graduate teaching assistants? And, do any studies or surveys exist that establish undergraduate student dissatisfaction with professor accessibility, or over-reliance on TAs? GESO argues (from its own financial interest) about how much teaching it is doing, but where are the undergraduates, the actual customers, who see the situation through the same lens? By the way, if you would like to keep this discussion going, it would be helpful if you adopted an identity rather than just signing an IP address. Mahnmut 23:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

(First, about the fact that I don't have a user name: It's intentional, it's thought-out, and it should have absolutely no baring on my opinion and my arguments. One of the key parts of Wikipedia is that it's the encyclopedia anyone can edit, so the fact that I do so without a user name is irrelevant. See my talk page if you'd like to see my reasoning, since this has come up before.) Now to the issue at hand. You instictively bring up GESO, which is entirely besides the point in this question. It happens that, yes, I support GESO (I did as an undergrad and I do as an alum). But we're not arguing about GESO here--we're talking about the way to describe the amount of teaching done by TAs and other contingent teachers. So let's dispense with that. Further, studies about undergrad disenchantment are not the issue, either. First, In the absence of any studies at all, you can't very well claim the hypothetical ones would go in your favor. Second, the question is not whether people are satisfied. The question is whether or not Yale is reliant on graduate and other non-faculty labor in teaching its classes.

Your substantive points, as I understand them, are (a) TAs don't do real instructional work, and (b) the AAUP data aren't relevant. Let's take them in order: To (a), I can only say, again, if you think grading, leading discussion, and the like is not real teaching, is not substantive, does not affect the quality of instruction, you must never have taught. Grading and leading discussions are fundamentally two of the most important parts of teaching. Grading essays, for instance, is how students learn to write. Discussion sections (and, let me tell you, when I was there--not too long ago--in every one of my classes with sections they were mandatory) are an integral part of courses, and the way they are led is deeply important. To dismiss this as merely "support work" is simply silly.

As for (b), I think you're wrong, as I've said. I don't have data, but you'd be surprised how few of the contingent faculty at Yale are of the sort you're describing. Many more of them are language teachers. Look at the Blue Book: anyone listed as a lecturer, at any rank, is contingent faculty. You'll see that they aren'd David Swenson. They're people without job security, with relatively low pay, without say in the way the department they work in operates. This cuts to the heart of GESO's (and others') criticism about casualization. If you're dissatisfied with the way I've presented the data, it's all right there in the AAUP report (the data of which comes from the U.S. Department of Education, by the way) and rephrase it. But it is absurd not to use this verifiable, independent data in discussing this criticism. 71.77.12.236 03:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Let me start by saying that I am fundamentally sympathetic to GESO's desire for fair living wages. Yale has plenty of money, and everyone associated with Yale should receive enough compensation to make a fair living. For me, this discussion has nothing to do with whether Yale is paying fair wages to its employees. Rather, this issue is fundamentally about GESO's claim (and your own claim) that the Yale undergraduate teaching process is somehow built around graduate students and TAs.

There are a lot of arguments I can make here, but I want to keep this simple, so let me make an intuitive argument. If Yale is truly over-reliant on graduate students for undergraduate teaching, then shouldn't this show up in some metric related to the customer base, the undergraduate student body? At Harvard, for example, there is a lot of documented evidence from multiple sources that students are dissatisfied with the quality of undergraduate teaching and with the availability of tenured professors. At Yale, most of the documented evidence (such as the many student surveys published in annual college guides, articles in the YDN and Herald, etc.) is at the other end of the spectrum. Undergraduate focus and faculty accessibility are universally cited as core strengths of the Yale undergraduate experience. Student satisfaction with the academic experience runs very high. And so, I pose the following question to you: if graduate students are really doing the majority of undergraduate teaching at Yale, why isn't anyone noticing it except GESO? Why are the students, the customers who are paying upwards of $100,000 for a Yale education, praising the academic experience and the accessibility of even the most famous professors? I would suggest that student satisfaction with undergraduate teaching stands in direct contradiction to the claim that graduate students do a majority of teaching at Yale, and student satisfaction with teaching is the very heart of the matter.

With respect to AAUP, my issue is not the credibility of the source, it is the relevance of the data. There are roughly 5,000 graduate students at Yale, and many of them are by definition going to be classified as TAs. The real question is how much teaching all of these TA/graduate students are actually doing, and the AAUP data sheds no light on this question whatsoever.

My other issue with the AAUP data continues to be that it lumps non-ladder faculty together with graduate students, and there does not seem to be any way to break the numbers out. I disagree with your assessment that the majority of non-ladder faculty fall in the same boat as graduate students, and if you are going to argue that point, you will need an independent source to back you up. Most of the non-ladder faculty that I knew at Yale were accomplished individuals (often alumni) with special areas of expertise that allowed them to teach unique courses. Many of them were recognized to be among Yale's most gifted and sought-after teachers, and their unique areas of expertise allowed Yale to offer a much broader range of courses in more diverse areas of interest (for example, the residential college seminars). In my experience, non-ladder faculty are an asset to Yale undergraduate teaching, not a problem in the same way that courses primarily taught by TAs would be. If you want to argue differently, you need to find independent sources.Mahnmut 17:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Should the term "Elis" be included somewhere?

I've seen the term "Elis" used in place of Bulldogs for the sports teams of Yale. I understand the context (since the disambig for Eli also notes the usage as a nickname for Yale students, but it's surprising to not find it here in the main article (maybe near sports?). Someone with a better familiarity with the article might want to work it in. --Bobak 21:26, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

It definitely should be included and I'm surprised it isn't. For what it's worth, literally yesterday I was working a crossword puzzle with the clue "Tigers foe," for which the answer was "Elis." (The New York Times: Sunday in the Park Crosswords; ed. Will Shortz; #14, "Drop it!"; 58 down).

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, in Chapter 2, we find:

...at each performance of “Ha-Ha Hortense!” half-a-dozen seats were kept from sale and occupied by six of the worst-looking vagabonds that could be hired from the streets, further touched up by the Triangle make-up man. At the moment in the show where Firebrand, the Pirate Chief, pointed at his black flag and said, “I am a Yale graduate—note my Skull and Bones!”—at this very moment the six vagabonds were instructed to rise conspicuously and leave the theatre with looks of deep melancholy and an injured dignity. It was claimed though never proved that on one occasion the hired Elis were swelled by one of the real thing.

Google Book searches on "elis yale" turn up numerous relevant hits, both in "full view books" (which are mostly prior to 1923), showing that the usage is old, and in all books, showing that the usage is still current.

A Google search on site:www.yale.edu elis turns up 153 hits, mostly relevant; one on site:www.yaledailynews.com elis yields seven thousand, mostly relevant, and show that "Elis" refers to Yale students in general, not just athletes: "Elis stress local HIV impact," "Five Elis win Rhodes," "Elis experience weightlessness in NASA research, "Elis open Coxe season," "More Elis go overseas," etc. etc.

Dpbsmith (talk) 03:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Yale opened in 1701, with one student and two teachers

I read on the first page of the 2002-2003 Information and Application brochure of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences that Yale opened with one student and two teachers. I find that so compelling in terms of the spirit of educational entreprise, that perhaps it should be added in the article. Anyone in support of this idea? (MidwestAl 11:48, 18 January 2007 (UTC)).

While I appreciate the noble effort to personify Yale's first 3 monkeys, I think it's a highly suspect POV to suggest that they classified themselves as two students and a teacher. 129.2.175.110 06:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

---

But the Yale Alumni magazine says:

In the beginning, Yale was a simple place: one teacher, one student, no campus.

Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, the college that would become Yale opened for business in March 1702, when a young man named Jacob Heminway arrived at the parsonage of Abraham Pierson in Killingworth (now Clinton), Connecticut, paid his 30 shillings for a year of tuition, and began his studies. Heminway, the first student to receive instruction at Yale, graduated three centuries ago.[2]

So, instead of "The ideal college is Mark Hopkins at one end of a log and a student at the other," I suppose Yale would say "The idea college is Abraham Pierson at one end of a log and Jacob Heminway at the other."

I am intrigued, however, as to what would be the optimum arrangement of two teachers and one student on a log. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

P. S. An acquaintance of mine who attended Columbia University in the 1930s said that it was policy—perhaps now, I don't know—that if four students said they wanted to take a course, they would find someone to teach it. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:53, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Sex Week at Yale

I added this section that was created as a new article. While it doesn't justify a separate article it seems to merit a section. It is properly sourced regular event of some importance. Bridgeplayer 17:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Your contribution is properly sourced, but you have not established relevance or importance. There is limited real estate in the main article on Yale, and there is not room to establish a separate section on every event/speaker/activity that happens on campus. If we include Sex Week, it opens the door to the article getting out of control with lists of every last activity that happens on campus each year. My initial instinct was to move this to the "Miscellany and Traditions" section, but given its short existence, I am not sure it even warrants inclusion there, since four years is hardly enough time to establish a "tradition". Mahnmut 17:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It's actually a fairly notable event as demonstrated by the provided sources. Would you like us to provide some more citations? --ElKevbo 17:30, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

BTW - I don't really care where in the article it lives. I'd be happy with it under "Miscellany and Traditions." --ElKevbo 17:31, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I have less of a problem with the contribution being a bullet in "Miscellany and Traditions" than if it carries its own section in the article. However, the contribution would be stronger if some context was established around it; e.g. the fact that it is a fairly unique event among colleges and universities, that it has generated some controversy, and that it has become a recognized student organization. Mahnmut 17:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Trojan (the condom company) evaluated American universities in 2006 and gave Yale the #1 ranking on their 'Sexual Health Report Card'. Sex Week at Yale was mentioned in the press release announcing the rankings. Antelan ^talk 03:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

External links

Am I the only person who thinks the "External links" section is *way* out of hand? I don't think it is in line with WP:EL and I would further assert that Wikipedia is not a directory. --ElKevbo 17:35, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Long/Lat

The longitude and latitude shown are of the sports complex, not the University. Shurely shome mishtake, ed? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.254.64.5 (talk) 04:04, 12 February 2007 (UTC).

Admissions

Does anyone know if Yale accepts anything less than a first class honours degree for entry to their graduate programmes?

Hi. This isn't the appropriate place to ask such a question; talk pages of articles serve as a discussion place on how to improve the article, not on factual questions about the subject of the article. For that, please see Wikipedia:Questions. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 15:59, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Removal of cleanup tag from article

I removed the cleanup tag from the body of the article and placed it on the Talk page. The cleanup tag mentioned concerns with the length of the article and the number of external links. Those are relevant and helpful for editors of this article, but it is unnecessary to display that warning to the visitors trying to access information about Yale itself. Antelan ^talk 03:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for doing this. I have also removed the tag asking for a clearer method of citation in the Yale and Politics section. This tag has been sitting there for months, and no one has stepped forward with a better way of formatting the citations in that section. Regardless, citations are used inconsistently throughout the article, and hopefully someone will step forward to make all of the citations consistent.Mahnmut 15:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Criticism

This criticism:

"The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has criticized many of Yale's peer institutions for grade inflation, notably failing to mention Yale, thereby supporting the generally understood notion that this affliction has not been as pronounced at Yale."

is of Yale's peers, not Yale. Therefore, it does not belong under the "Criticisms of Yale" heading. If anybody disagrees, please comment on why. Thanks. Wikipediarules2221 23:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

(Re)moved text

I moved the paragraph about the KGB file of Sakharov published by Yale University Press to the article Andrei Sakharov. dima 17:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Smashing clay pipes

In the 1990s, Yale graduation literature explained that although new graduates once smashed clay pipes smashed underfoot, the tradition had been ended so as not to seem wasteful. Has the smashing resumed? PRRfan 00:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

We definitely smashed them last year, and they smashed them in 2005, as well. Antelan ^talk 00:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Doops, LGBTQ

The paragraph looks fine, but I'd cut the final sentence about the schools of music, drama, etc. Stereotyping is great and all, but that's really not necessary unless we're going to put the time in to actually attribute that crap. Antelan ^talk 18:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. Beyond that, maybe the real issue is that the "Student Life" § should be longer and have more in it so that LGBTQ ¶ doesn't loom so large. Doops | talk 04:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Labor Unions

The complete lack of mention of labor unions at Yale was a very serious omission in this article. I added the section but it is only a stub; the section ought to be greatly expanded. There are many articles on the history of labor disputes and strikes at Yale, and a large number of these are available with a simple google search. In addition, I added a reference to the official website of the labor unions themselves. That website contains a wealth of information, some of which could be added to this article, if anyone feels up to it. Cazort 14:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but the info in the attribution is incorrect. There are more than 3 unions at Yale. There are also the campus cops' union and a small number of teachers in AFT.

All in all, there are 14 (IIRC) categories of "persons" at Yale (as of 2002), and each category has rights, privileges and duties separate from the other - that includes the union "persons" who are governed by contracts. If you want to get this right, Just email Yale's HR Technology and Decision Support. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.61.50 (talk) 16:48, August 26, 2007 (UTC)

Though it doesn't merit changing the article, the record should show that although John Kerry is indeed a Former President of the Yale Political Union, the Union is certainly not "advised" by him. He is regarded by many as one of the worst Presidents the Union has ever had.

"Secret" Societies

There are still references to "Secret" Societies. As a graduate and member of a Senior Society, I can assure you that no one of my era ever used the term Secret Society. In fact, I was specifically told upon initiation that the proper term was Senior Society.

Have things changed since 1961? If so, I'll rest in peace. If not, could someone replace the use of Secret with Senior?

Donnernv 22:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It's actually a notable point that you're raising. Yes, the societies are now called "secret", but I am also well aware that they were formerly called "senior societies", as you pointed out. When and why this transition occurred would be a useful addition to this article. Antelan ^talk 23:08, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Since I'm doing a lot of work on these, I thought I'd add my understanding. IIRC, senior societies are the general term for the organizations that admit only seniors. "Secret societies" is often used to refer to organizations with tombs that do not admit outsiders -- at least in theory -- ever. Again, my understanding is that these always include S&B, Wolf's Head, and S&K, although the term is loose; often, all the landed societies are called "secret societies". The categorization is not very well defined, though, since I know St. Anthonies, which either is or is not a senior society, reserves part of its building for members and has secret rituals or whatever. Apollo (talk) 21:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Yale Lectureships

Why are they not mentioned here?

• The Dwight H. Terry Lectureship
• Past Lectureships 1923-1988
• [3]

Austerlitz -- 88.72.10.255 06:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Because Wikipedia is not an announcement board for the Terry Lecturships. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 11:47, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

YALE

HOORAY 4 YALE —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.196.64.81 (talk) 05:58, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't you mean "Boola boola?" Dpbsmith (talk) 01:45, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

split

A suggestion was inserted suggesting that the history section be removed from this article and placed in another. This seems a bad idea to me. Frankly, the history presented here is already quite concise; while it would clearly be possible to write a much longer article on the history of Yale, it would still have to be summarized here, and that summary wouldn't be much shorter than what's here now. The user who made the suggestion should place some argumentation supporting it here. If no discussion is forthcoming, I'll remove the tag. - Nunh-huh 19:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Having a separate history article allows for a more verbose treatment of the history, while keeping the history section of the main article rather concise. See Category:History of United States colleges and universities for existing relevant articles. —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 19:28, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

As I mentioned, I think this article's section is quite concise enough. - Nunh-huh 19:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The point is that a history article allows one to be more verbose. Although, IMO, the "Administration" subsection is somewhat irrelevant to the typical reader. —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 23:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I certainly understand that when a section is expanded it can be spun off into a subordinate article. There's nothing stopping anyone from writing that detailed history article; this one doesn't have to be cannibalized beforehand. - Nunh-huh 04:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

In general terms, I am in accord with what was expressed by User:Nunh-huh for the grounds on which he/she rested. -Soft carebare (talk) 01:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Concise or not, it's one of the largest sections on a page that is far too long. Also, most of the information there has little or no relevance or interest to the general audience that would be viewing the main Yale page. Cazort (talk) 03:35, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I urge very very strongly to split. The Yale page as a whole is WAAAAY too long, and the history section is one of the largest sections. IMHO, Most of the information there is not interesting/relevant to a general audience and does not belong on a main page. I say we keep at most two paragraphs of text giving a very brief summary, and display a link to the full page. Cazort (talk) 03:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Disagree that there needs to be a split, for the reasons Nunh-huh gave above. The History section is the most interesting part of the article and is compactly written. Perhaps the only section that needed trimming was the "Administration" sub-section, as some of this information was duplicated in another article. I do not agree with the logic that "this is the longest section in the article, therefore it needs to be split off"; any article in Wikipedia will have a section that is relatively longer than its sibling sections. I would actually propose splitting off the section "Yale Architecture" into its own article. The "History" section is fine as it is.

SootAndBroom (talk) 19:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I support the split. In fact, I created the article History of Yale University. Now, it is a redirect. The history of Yale is just too long. This university has produced a number of notable politicians. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 08:59, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

"Producing notable politicians", then, is the section that needs spinning off, as it's distinctly peripheral to Yale's history. - Nunh-huh 10:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

This article's History section (including all of its subsections) consists of approximately 1678 words. The intact "Career" section of 20 year old Novak Djokovic is approximately 1104 words (he just won the Australian Open within the past 72 hours); the intact "Career" section of 51 year old Martina Navratalova is approximately 1612 words; the intact "Career" section of 55 year old Jimmy Connors is approximately 1649 words; the intact "Career" section of 26 year old Roger Federer is approximately 2298 words. The length of the History section of this article, by comparison, seems acceptable.

SootAndBroom (talk) 18:54, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what would be lost if the page were split. If the material is interesting to people, they will read it on the other page. The problem is not so much that the history section is too long, but that it is the longest section on a page that is too long. Having very long wikipedia pages makes the site harder to use and makes it harder to gather information. Would the people who oppose the merge kindly explain what is gained by keeping it the way it is? This is what I am failing to see. Cazort (talk) 23:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This is not a college brochure. The history belongs in the article. There's no need for a split. - Nunh-huh 00:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The claim that "this page is too long" is contradicted by longer articles on Wikipedia with longer sections that have been Wikipedia:Featured articles. For example, while this article consists of approximately 6990 words (with its History section, including all of its subsections, consisting of approximately 1678 words), the Featured Article of February 3, 2008 History of American football consists of approximately 8386 words; its "Intercollegiate football" section consists of approximately 4177 words. Wikipedia states that "A featured article exemplifies our very best work and features professional standards of writing and presentation." A split for this article is unnecessary. SootAndBroom (talk) 17:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I still disagree. Cazort (talk) 17:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

You'll still have a history section, but the one in this article will be a more condensed version, while the one in the subarticle will be able to fully cover the subject. —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 16:22, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no need for a split.

In the early days Wikipedia urged a limit on article length as a courtesy to users of a few antiquated browsers--which, even in 2001, were in very rare use--which could not open a text editing window with more than 64K in it. That issue became almost entirely moot once section editing became available, and entirely moot a few years later, as the browsers in question were virtually gone from the Internet browser population.

There's no need for any split on stylistic grounds. Personally I think much is lost when an article is split; why should one have to look in several different articles for closely related information on the same subject? Wikipedia is not paper; a long article doesn't weigh a gram more than a short one, and a text search within an article is instantaneous and accurate regardless of article length, while text searches using either Google or Wikipedia's search facility are slow and relatively unreliable. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:29, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Propose Deleting Poorly Sourced Statement About Lack of Unity at Yale

I propose deleting the first sentence under the Campus Life section, "Yale has no student union, and this has been cited as a cause of the lack of unity within Yale as a whole, with community centering on the undergraduate residential colleges." This sentence asserts "the lack of unity within Yale as a whole" as if it were a widely-accepted fact. However, the citation leads to an 11-year old article in the Yale Herald about the music club scene in New Haven, written by one undergraduate, which in passing states: "But since Yale has no student union, and the residential college system fosters unity within colleges but not within Yale College as a whole, such a space (a venue to promote independent music) isn't likely to be built anytime soon." This citation is flawed for three reasons. First, the citation is more than 10 years old. Second, its source is a single student at Yale, and does not establish a widely-held opinion. Third, the quote from the citation does not in any way assert or establish "the lack of unity within Yale as a whole" - it simply implies that there is no central student location to build an independent music venue. Mahnmut (talk) 03:47, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Per the above, I removed the content here. Viriditas (talk) 04:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I still think it's true. But you may be right that that one source alone is not adequate. I do think the fact that Yale has no student union, however, deserves mention. It's an oddity among colleges. Cazort (talk) 22:21, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

William F Buckley Jr

There should be some mention of him here, maybe in notable alumni or in books on Yale, since he wrote "God and man at Yale" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.19.173.207 (talk) 18:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

"making it, according to Yale, the world's second-largest university library system"

I think the qualification "according to Yale" is important here. There's a neutral party--the American Library Association--that has a list of The Nation's Largest Libraries, but I don't know of one for the whole world.

I think everyone agrees that Harvard's library is bigger than Yale's. But the University of California makes a claim--a totally bogus claim IMHO--that "Collectively, the UC libraries make up the largest research/academic library in the world, with over 34 million volumes in their holdings."

Now, when you start to consider the University of California's claim, you realize how slippery the whole things is. It seems insane to consider holdings at Los Angeles and at San Francisco to be part of the same library, particularly when they undoubtedly have many duplicated titles between them.

But then you start to wonder how far apart the two farthest-distant libraries at Yale are. And how libraries count "volumes." Do three physical bound volumes on the shelf, labeled "Volume II, Fascicle 1," "Volume II, Fascicle 2" and "Volume II, Fascicle 3" count as one volume or three? Do ten copies of the same title count as one or ten? Who does the counting and how? How do you measure non-paper resources?

Anyway, I don't think we need to waste time in the article or even in a footnote noting rival claims, but I do think that if the claim is being made by Yale itself, that should be noted, Yale not being a disinterested party. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Vacuous boosterism

Admission to the university is highly competitive and it is consistently ranked among the top three national universities by U.S. News and World Report as well as among the top universities in the world by other college and university rankings.

This doesn't belong in the lead. "Member of the Ivy League" already says all that need be said.

I considered moving it to "Ranking and admissions," but decided that both of these statements were almost information-free. What does "highly competitive" mean? What does "consistently" ranked among the top three mean?

Worse, it is a non-neutral statement. If, as a piece of neutral information, we think it is very important to mention where Yale ranks, then it is equally important to mention that it is often outranked by H*****d (for example, on all three lists mentioned in the "Ranking and Admissions" section). A factual statement that is carefully worded to emphasize the aspect that is flattering to Yale ("among the top") while minimizing the aspect that is unflattering to Yale ("...but not quite as high as H*****d") is biased. I was about to say "worthy of an admissions office," but I think Yale's admissions office is better than that. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:20, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

It was placed back in the lead with the edit comment "The academic ranking of Yale belongs in the beginning as it is part of the identity of Yale and relevant to those who don't know what Yale is. Most other top universities also have rankings in Wikis." None of my remarks above have been addressed.

U. S News and World Reports' opinion of Yale is hardly "part of the identity of Yale." Yale was founded in 1701, U. S. New and World Reports in 1933.

Re "most other top universities also have rankings in their Wikipedia pages," well, if they do, they shouldn't, at least not in the lead. Harvard doesn't. Princeton doesn't. My alma mater, MIT, not quite in the same league but a very good school nonetheless, doesn't. Brown doesn't. Stanford doesn't. In my opinion, leaning on rankings for support makes a university look weak and insecure. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Freddie Cougar???????????? WTF????????????????

Campus Safety

In 2006, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Freddy Cougar tortured and killed 27 students. They were never caught.

Yeah, I'm not going to take something out because Wikipedia hates when I try to edit stuff (it's "not constuctive"), but I think this doesn't belong here! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.54.22.188 (talk) 02:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

It's gone now. - Nunh-huh 03:04, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Rankings and Admissions

For such a long time, we have managed to keep any reference to college rankings out of this article, and I would like to propose that we revert the "rankings and admissions" section back to just an "admissions" section. It is hard to assign credibility to any of these rankings when they have been so visibly criticized by so many sources, including many of the universities that they rank. I know that some may disagree because they will argue that "U.S. News is a credible news organization and I can find a citation, so it belongs in the article." But in answer to that (anticipated) reaction, any of us could find plenty of credible source citations with opinions on Yale, but that does not mean they deserve to be published. For example, would any of us seriously consider citing the National Review college rankings, which ranked colleges based on their supposed adherance to Western values and conservative ideals? I found a link that offers 23 different college rankings based on different criteria ( http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankgen.htm )- for completeness sake, shouldn't we cite all of these rankings if we are going to cite the three listed in the article? I'm not sure when the rankings found their way into this article, but I think we should remove them. Mahnmut (talk) 03:32, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry about that. It's my fault. I moved some boosterism into that section of hopes of keeping it out of the lead. I agree with you completely and have now removed the rankings and changed the section title back to "Admissions." Dpbsmith (talk) 01:25, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

User Hesse1235 ignored this discussion and reinserted all of the ranking information back in the article. At least two of us (myself and Dpbsmith) disagree with any decision to put rankings in this article. If Hesse1235 disagrees, the discussion page is the right place to build consensus, before putting the rankings back in the article. I have reverted all of Hesse1235's ranking insertions until we have resolved the issue here. Mahnmut (talk) 05:42, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Should Yale graduate Milton Adolphus get an infobox or not?

Several people from musical Wikiprojects are systematically deleting infoboxes from biographies that are covered by their projects:

• "Rmv infobox as these are not used for classical musicians per Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music#Biographical_infoboxes)
• "Rmv infobox as these are not used for composers, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers#Lead section)"

Here is an example at: Milton Adolphus, the infobox is currently deleted and needs to be restored to be able to see it.

The discussion is here at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Individual_wikiprojects_are_deleting_infoboxes_from_articles. As best as I can sum up the argument is that: classical composers as creative people can't be defined by the simple labels used in Musical infoboxes, and as creative people transcend the traditional People infobox which can't capture the essence of what makes them an artist. And of course, some people are just philosophically opposed to any infoboxes, no matter what information they contain.

Milton Adolphus was a Yale graduate. So please help decide if he gets an infobox or not. People interested in the university have as much to contribute as other wikiprojects that want the box deleted. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:57, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. This campaign to remove infoboxes is without a doubt the dumbest thing I've seen serious people advocate here on Wikipedia. If an IP address pulled something like removing an infobox, I'd roll it back without a second's thought. The infobox obviously provides useful information to someone quickly browsing. I don't understand how providing a distilled list of important facts is "disinformation," as one editor put it. I find no merit whatsoever to this movement. And I don't believe that a WikiProject gains authority over an article such that it can ignore earlier consensus on structural aspects of articles. Removing a quick index of information about the subject of the article on philosophical grounds, in order to force readers to delve more deeply into the content of the article, strikes me as incredibly arrogant. Qqqqqq (talk) 03:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• The arguments distill down to: creative people shouldn't be pigeonholed into genres, and the infoboxes force artists and other creative people to be stuffed into categories. Being a composer isn't an occupation, it is a creative process. It would be like capturing wind in a bottle and putting it on a shelf. I also think that some of people just hate infoboxes in any article because it represents the dumbing down of the information into a bitesize piece, when readers should be studying the whole article. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, well.. first they came... for the linked dates, and I said nothing.... then they came for the infoboxes.... - Nunh-huh 03:37, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• I agree. I usually come to Wikipedia for a specific fact rather than for recreational reading, or researching a person from scratch. Almost all the time, what I need is in the infobox" the name of a spouse or child, or where a person died. The standardized information in infoboxes also makes "natural language" searching possible so you can Google "Who was George Washington married to?" or "Where did Abraham Lincoln die?" and get an answer. If anyone has a strong opinion add it to talk:Milton Adolphus. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

op. cit., etc.

In response to a (presumably purposefully) obnoxious manual of style tag on the article proper, I've removed the offending "op. cit." reference, as it in fact contained no information. I didn't replace it because the information that it "footnoted" is in my judgment too obvious to require one (that the Yale-Harvard game is annual shouldn't need one, but I imagine references could be found), though something being obvious makes it harder to find a succinct statement of it. - Nunh-huh 17:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Good call. Makewater (talk) 20:15, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Conciseness and relevance

I have spent some time reading this article with a fresh eye, and I want to compliment the community on creating what is arguably one of the better university articles in the Wikipedia. Some of the best attributes of the article in my opinion are that it is broadly informative without being drowned in unnecessary information, that it maintains a consistently professional tone, and that some of the unnecessary POV (both positive and negative) that plagued earlier versions has now been removed.

The article has been fairly stable for some time, and I wanted to challenge the community to try to take the article to the next level. We should look at each part of the article, and ask ourselves whether it is meeting the standard of being informative without providing unnecessary, inappropriate or superfluous information. Conciseness and relevance should be our guiding principles.

For example, the Safety at Yale section (many parts of which I personally authored) feels like it has become an uneasy and over-long compromise between those who want to list all of the crimes that have happened at Yale and those who want to put out statistics showing how safe Yale is. In my opinion, it doesn't rise to the standards of the rest of the article because it reads like two different POVs going head to head, rather than a relevant and concise view of the topic.

In fact, I would suggest that we need to examine why this section even exists in the Yale article. If there was a crime that meaningfully changed the course of history at the University, it should go in the history section with a clear explanation of its historic relevance (rather than a laundry list of every major crime at Yale, some without any context of why they are historically relevant). On the other side, if Yale's safety statistics are not worse than its peer schools, then why do we need an entire section defending how safe Yale really is?

Similarly, Yale in Fiction and Popular Culture is starting to feel like a laundry list of every last pop culture reference that anyone can find. Some of the more literate references may be interesting, but does mentioning "Grounded for Life" or "The Skulls" really add anything to the reader's understanding of Yale? This section is starting to feel like the famous alumni section did when we listed every last Edward Norton or Ron Livingston.

I'm not trying to single out anyone's specific contribution as not being worthy of inclusion (many of my own contributions may not warrant inclusion), but rather I'm challenging the community to look at the article with a fresh and neutral eye, and start making tougher decisions about what should stay in and what should either be moved to separate articles or removed altogether. Mahnmut 19:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Popular culture certainly should be hoed out, with the full knowledge that the weeds will be replaced. I'd keep only literate works noted for being set at Yale (Stover, Gatsby, Merriwell), and relegate the television and movie references to the daughter article. The gratuitous dig at John O'Hara could just disappear :). In fact, I will be bold and make it so. - Nunh-huh 18:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

ADMISSION COMMENT: Yale uses legacy admission and it should be noted in the wikipedia article. Someone, or several, keeps removing this objective fact. Yes, it may bring shame upon this institution, but wikipedia is no place for advertising. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.215.163.99 (talk) 00:50, 11 August 2009

Are you kidding me?!?! You are clearly biased against Yale!!! Yes, "legacy status" is one of many factors used in admissions and Yale will not deny that there is a small bump. However, it is generally agreed upon to be a very very minor factor relative to SATs, extracurriculars, etc, and more of a "tiebreaker." But most importantly, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and nearly every elite college use legacy as a minor factor and there's absolutely no evidence that Yale uses it any more than those other colleges. Moreover, none of those university wiki articles have any mention of it. The bottom line is that it is not relevant enough to include in the article! Please take your bias elsewhere.

As a note, if a school uses it, and a verifiable and reasoned source can show this to be true, it should be noted. As the original commentor stated, Wikipedia is not for advertising. That being said, I seriously question whether you will be able to find evidence of "legacy status" being used in all four schools you noted there (with nothing to be said for the "nearly every elite college" comment), and if I could, I would very much like to call a [citation needed] on that statement.

Introduction of the article

I think the intro of Yale University's article is too long. Someone closer to the University should trim it. I can do it, but I don't want to upset anyone upon removing information. Thanks.Andrewire (talk)

I agree that editors closer to Yale should make the cuts. The intro is much longer than for leading universities (see below). - Pointillist (talk) 23:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

• 556 words: Yale University (this version)
• 368 words: Cornell University
• 323 words: University of Heidelberg
• 315 words: Harvard University
• 229 words: University of Oxford
• 202 words: University of Paris (La Sorbonne)
• 152 words: Stanford University
• 147 words: University of Cambridge
• 76 words: University of Tokyo

I've cut it down a bit, mainly by moving superfluous crap to footnotes. Frankly, I'm not sure that an intro that is roughly equal in length to the "info box" is "too long"; in fact, it seems just about right. - Nunh-huh 07:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I should have explained that it isn't just the length. If you look at the examples I listed, none of them has more than four paragraphs in the intro (whereas Yale University currently has eight) with fewer statistics and footnotes. This isn't an attack on the overall article, or Yale itself—I'm just trying to encourage someone to make the intro here a bit more inviting, per the Lead section guidelines. BTW if you are a Yale alumnus/a, you can say so by adding yourself to Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Yale University. Thanks. - Pointillist (talk) 08:03, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I understand that someone has laid down a rule on how long a "proper" introduction is, but I think that one-size-fits-all writing-by-the-numbers is fundamentally silly and that the rule is fetishistic rather than anything that actually improves articles. By all means, go ahead and show us how a shorter intro improves the article, and how to make the opening more inviting. - Nunh-huh 09:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

If I have offended you, I apologise: that was not my intention. - Pointillist (talk) 09:58, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not offended in any way, so please don't feel you have to apologize. I just think that the idea that unless an article's introduction is a certain arbitrary number of paragraphs, the article suffers, is [1] fundamentally silly, and [2] unsupported opinion. But I'm willing to be educated, if, say, the person who tagged the article wants to actually work on it and show us how his suggested changes would actually improve anything. Far more useful than urging that we should cater to the short-attention span crowd, would be a "list of things that are now in the introduction that I think shouldn't be". But that would require more thought and effort than a hit-and-run tag-without-discussion. - Nunh-huh 10:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Given that I have carefully engaged on this Talk page, declining to claim specific expertise and citing a guideline that you (an administrator for over five years - per [4]) have apparently not previously challenged, your statement that I was applying or supporting "a hit-and-run tag-without-discussion" appears to be deliberately offensive. Was that your objective? Do you believe that pattern of behaviour is consistent with holding the office of Administrator? - Pointillist (talk) 01:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I would say that it's inappropriate for you to take personal offense at remarks directed to someone else. And given that you [1] didn't tag the article and [2] participated in discussion, it's hard to imagine why you'd feel targeted by remarks objecting to [1] tagging the article [2] without discussion. As to guidelines: they're not commandments, and this one is particularly silly when treated as one. - Nunh-huh 02:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I removed the tag. It definitely needs cleanup, but it isn't too long. Viriditas (talk) 01:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the quote from Yale President Rick Levin belongs in the lead section. Viriditas (talk) 01:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Paragraphs should be merged and grouped by related topics and there is a bit of overlinking going on. Viriditas (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Since the lead is supposed to be a summary of the article's most important points that are already sourced in the body, we don't need that many citations. Of course, if these points do not appear in the body, then they should be moved there and the lead should be rewritten. Viriditas (talk) 01:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I've moved Levin's quote to what I hope is an appropriate place in the body of the article. - Nunh-huh 03:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Why did Viriditas removed the tag? Wikipedia has certain standards that should be followed by users. The intro of the article is three paragraphs longer than the official suggestion of four paragraphs. I will tag it again until one user trims it. I don't want to do it because I'm not very familiar with Yale University. Andrewire (talk) 15:00, 28 April 2009 (BST)

One user has already trimmed it to less than the length of the Cornell intro. - Nunh-huh 14:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the offending carriage returns, and the tag. -Nunh-huh 14:57, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Andrewire, it is generally extremely poor form to tag war while the issue is being actively discussed. In the future, please focus on the discussion rather than the tagging, as that is what the template is supposed to encourage. Viriditas (talk) 08:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I am a current student and think the old introduction was TERRIBLE. It was way too lengthy relative to other universities and didn't highlight the right information. I have done a rewrite. You can probably remove/fix the citations, clean it up further, etc, but I think that it is an improvement. Looking at Harvard, Princeton, etc, I was embarrassed at how lengthy and obfuscating the old intro was. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.198.146.42 (talk) 06:10, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the current intro is all that better than the previous one, particularly in the removal of several refs and wikilinks. Also, the phrase "Yale University has matured into one of the world’s great research universities," for example, strikes me as rather peacockish. Qqqqqq (talk) 04:51, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Removed peacockish terms in the introduction. The references are cited in the body of the article so no need to duplicate excessively. Please make further improvements as necessary... and are all of the article tags necessary? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.198.146.42 (talk) 06:33, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup

Can't we just move the section "Yale in fiction and popular culture" into a link to Yale in popular culture in the see also? It seems unimportant. And what about using a two column reference layout instead of one? Viriditas (talk) 09:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that the "Controversy over Peruvian relics" section belongs in a Yale-related subtopic or subsection. I doubt it deserves its own section. Viriditas (talk) 09:05, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the "Books on Yale" section is appropriately titled. Why not just merge it into a bibliography or further reading section? Viriditas (talk) 09:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I think those are fine suggestions. Will you make it so? - Nunh-huh 14:33, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I will try to help out as time permits. Viriditas (talk) 08:55, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Reorganization and cleanup

I've gone through and implemented a format that reasonably approximates WP:UNIGUIDE by merging and removing content as necessary. Furthermore, I've also made a first attempt at hacking away through the more egregious instances of boosterism in the article; remember to assert facts, not opinions. The article is hugely deficient in a wide variety of necessary material on academics and organization which I've indicated on the respective sections. Furthermore, large passages of the article suffer from recentism or other types of undue weight such as "Yale & modern politics" section in history and campus safety. In the former case, this section is largely redundant with respect to the later notable alumni section and in the latter case, I suspect that the section could be wholly removed as violent crimes on campus are prevalent and these don't seem to be especially encyclopedially notable. Madcoverboy (talk) 16:49, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Notable Alumni

I've tried to expand the notable alumni list beyond just the U.S. Presidents which are already covered in the "Yale in Politics" section. I hope that this will call attention to notable alumni in other fields without requiring the reader to click through to the quite long List of Yale University People. I would welcome someone adding another paragraph on notable faculty.

Please add to or remove from the list as appropriate (but please don't add random alumni whom you are familiar with - please try to restrict the list to truly distinguished alumni. For example, Academy Award nominee Edward Norton might warrant inclusion, but I would think that actor Ron Livingston would not warrant inclusion even though he is famous). Mahnmut (talk) 20:16, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

In fact, if I remember correctly, we used to have a list on the main page which got too long, which is why the list was split off into the separate "List of Yale University People". So another guiding principle should be to keep the list short and focused on the most distinguished alumni. The Harvard University article is a good example of how this can be done.Mahnmut (talk) 20:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The notable alumni list needs to be diversified. Makewater (talk) 22:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Exactly -- the list from time to time gets too long and kludged with too many notables that (while they are notable) are just not known to most people. Meaning no disrespect, Harvey Williams Cushing just isn't as well known as Clarence Thomas and really doesn't add anything to the article. Markvs88 (talk) 14:37, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Peruvian relics

What happened to that section? I think it deserves its own section because it's a current legal case against the University started by a foreign government over something that is widely known and public. Andrewire (talk) 14:16 7 May 2009 (BST) —Preceding undated comment added 13:18, 7 May 2009 (UTC).

If you search for "Peru" you will find that it is still mentioned in the article, in the section about Yale's museums' holdings, which is about the right level of prominence. Devoting a whole section to it would be overemphasis in this article. If you want to write a complete article on the dispute, a link could be added to it from this article. Note that the article already links to the Machu Picchu article, where the matter is covered in full detail, and to the Hiram Bingham III article where the dispute is covered in about a paragraph. - Nunh-huh 18:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I thought it was relevant because it's a conflict between the University and a foreign government. That government is accusing Yale of something, therefore, it should be in Yale's article in my opinion. I'm assuming good faith here, a section about a controversy isn't harmful if it's redacted objectively, but I have noticed in this particular article that there are hidden agendas promoted by certain users. Not accusing anyone in particular though. Sections about controversies are common in Wikipedia's articles and Wikipedia even supports the inclusion of such information; Am I wrong? --Andrewire (talk) 10:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Per NPOV, best practice is to merge criticism and controversies into the body of the article, not to separate it. First the tag warring over the lead while ignoring discussion, and now the accusation of "hidden agendas promoted by certain users" while claiming to AGF and ignoring the previous discussion on this topic. You also blanked your user talk page when I tried to discuss your behavior. Next stop, ANI. Viriditas (talk) 11:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I gave up the discussion with you, that's why I deleted what you wrote in my talk page. I'm not talking about creating a new page about criticism of Yale University. I didn't ignore the discussion with the tag about the introduction of the article. It had seven paragraphs and you removed it because you didn't like it but didn't edit the intro and it was still too long. I tagged it because I was trying to call someone's attention to do the job. I didn't do it because I'm not too familiar with Yale University. You are suppose to remove a tag when the problem is solved, not when the problem is still there and you thought it was not appropiate. If you didn't want the tag, why you didn't edit the intro to fit Wikipedia's standards? --Andrewire (talk) 12:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't too long, and I discussed ways to improve it, and others helped implement the changes. That's called discussion - please try it some time. You added the tag back in while we were solving the problem. Tags are not the end result of editing, they only call attention to the problem, as I previously explained on your talk page. Likewise, the Peruvian relic section was discussed just below the same thread. Are you seeing a pattern here? Viriditas (talk) 12:14, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Do whatever you want. You discussed with yourself the removal of the section about the relics. Users like you make me feel that improving Wikipedia is useless. Thanks. --Andrewire (talk) 12:26, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary, I proposed a suggestion in Talk:Yale_University#Cleanup, User:Nunh-huh replied that he agreed, and somebody (presumably Nunh-huh) implemented the change. Based on these facts, do you care to revise your above comments? Or am I going to hear more about my so-called "hidden agenda"? Viriditas (talk) 13:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Enough; to neutral corners, please. --ElKevbo (talk) 15:25, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above appears to be a civil disagreement. I don't know why you'd think it helpful to imply it wasn't. Disagreement is permitted here. Your suggested solution - less discussion - is a bad thing, not a good thing. - Nunh-huh 16:52, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Rankings and Tags

I feel that we have had the discussion on numerous occasions about including rankings in this article, and always come out on the side of not including rankings in the article. And yet, somehow these rankings always find their way back into the article. I am removing the THES-QS ranking from the introduction, because putting it in such a prominent place pre-supposes that these sorts of rankings are scientific and valid and somehow merit being cited (and there is certainly ample controversy on this front). If the person who re-inserted the rankings disagrees, please argue it here, and also please refer back to the discussions we have had on this issue in the past.

Also, I am concerned about the numerous tags/flags that have been put on the article recently. If the person who put the tags feels they should remain, I would ask that he/she lay out specific suggestions for improvement for each section that would make the article more compliant on the talk page, where we can address them one by one. Tagging long-established sections (e.g. Yale and Politics in the Modern Era) as being non-compliant without coming up with specific suggestions for improvement makes it difficult to work with these tags Mahnmut (talk) 23:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I also think that many of these newly embedded references/sources are sometimes silly and inappropriate and make the article difficult to edit. Do we really need to cite a not-particularly helpful quote from the Chicago Tribune in the first paragraph to establish a basic and widely known fact such as "Yale has graduated 5 U.S. Presidents"? Mahnmut (talk) 23:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I am the editor responsible for marking up much of the article. Sadly, the quality of the Wikipedia article is grossly disjoint from the reputation of the institution. I would second Mahnmut's assertion that the single ranking for one year by any one organization has no place in the lead of the article and would recommend that any and all rankings be confined either to a section under academics or, even better, summarized in an infobox like Template:US university ranking. The templates about missing information already delineate the improvements that need to be made to that specific section with regard to including more content, look to university featured articles such as University of Michigan, Duke University, and Georgetown University as examples.

• Regarding the "Yale and politics in the modern era" section, this reads either as non-neutral marketing trope through a historical lens or as potentially neutral content through the lens of notable alumni. If it's the latter case, it seems that the section should be summarized and integrated with the existing alumni section. In the case of the former, it should be removed and replaced with content describing episodes, eras, and trends of historical importance, not the least of which include the impact of WWII, post-war funding and expansion, racial and gender integration, student activism and unrest, adaption to declining gov't support in 70s-80s, surging admissions competitiveness and growth of campus from 90s onward, none of which are mentioned in the article.
• "Notable non-residential campus buildings" needs to be prose-ified rather than being an embedded list.
• "Campus safety" gives entirely undue weight and seems to be a coat rack for a recentist and biased/POV discussion about campus safety. If there are incidents of particular historical importance they should be in history and if Yale has a substantially higher crime rate than other urban universities, then perhaps this may merit a sentence or two of discussion, but surely not five paragraph about disparate incidents. Wikipedia isn't a police blotter.

I hope this discussion as well as the missing information templates provide some structure moving ahead to bring the article up to a baseline level of quality befitting the institution. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:25, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, Madcoverboy. Here are my thoughts on what you wrote:

• On rankings, I fundamentally believe they should remain out of the article altogether, no matter where Yale is ranked. All of these rankings are based on questionable methodology and are controversial, and citing them gives them a validity that they don't deserve. I think we are agreed unless someone feels differently and is willing to argue it here.
• I react to the Yale and Politics section differently than you do. I find this section to be well-documented and quite interesting, and it represents to me one of the ways Wikipedia can be really different from Encarta or Britannica. I can see where the section may have gotten a bit too long, but the only paragraph that seems to be of questionable importance to the overall story is the paragraph with the Bush/Dean quotes (I contributed the Dean quote, but I'm not sure what the paragraph adds to the overall story). The rest of "Yale and Politics" draws out and tries to explain a significant historical trend that has impacted both the University and the country at large, and it cites numerous different perspectives that illuminate different facets of Yale during the post-Vietnam era. Note that not all of the explanations reflect well on Yale (e.g. elitism, history of unmerited legacy admissions). The other historical episodes you describe probably also warrant inclusion - if you feel strongly, go ahead and write about them!
• On the sections that need to be prose-ified, that seems pretty straightforward. Why not take the time to edit these sections yourself, rather than tagging them and waiting for someone else to do the work?
• On campus safety, I agree with you completely. The section was originally a list of murders and bombings that the author felt strongly should be included, and we later added the crime statistics to balance the story. But you are right, Wikipedia is not a police blotter, and Yale's peers have had similar crimes on campus (e.g. Harvard in the 90's had a student murder-suicide, etc.). I have no problem removing the section altogether, but want to give the original author a chance to defend why it should be included.
• Regarding the tags, I don't want to keep them up much longer. If you feel strongly about some of the formatting changes, go ahead and make the changes and then remove the tags. If you feel strongly about deleting a section like Yale and Politics or Campus Safety, let's come to agreement on the talk page and then move forward. However, I don't agree with you that we should "Britannicize" this article. Wikipedia is built on well-researched and relevant views that may not fit in a traditional encyclopedia, whether it is someone writing passionately about a favorite sports team or Star Trek. I can find a dry factual summary in Britannica - I can only find "Yale and Politics" in Wikipedia. A lot of effort has gone into this article over the last few years, and I don't want to see the article get neutered. Mahnmut (talk) 23:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
• Has anyone reached a follow-up decision on the rankings and campus safety? I too read the article and felt the campus safety section to be out of place, especially compared to the articles of other universities. At the very least, it shouldn't be a laundry list of incidents. Can we revive the discussion on how to move forward with this? Labeltube (talk) 13:26, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
• As for the rankings, would it help to include more sources such as rankings from Princeton Review or Newsweek? The rankings cited in the article seemed fairly arbitrary and not widely read in the States. Labeltube (talk) 13:32, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Residential colleges merge

I have proposed merging the individual articles about residential colleges to Residential colleges of Yale University because I believe they do not fulfill the notability guideline as stand-alone articles. Moreover, the wide variance in practices for citing claims to reliable sources as well as including cruft, non-neutral content, and various forms of peacockery and other unencyclopedic tone and content, suggests the need for a modicum of standardization and quality. I would remind editors that Wikipedia is not a webhost and that if they feel that the omission of such information is somehow deleterious, that they put it up on their own websites rather than Wikipedia. Please go comment on the proposal at Talk:Residential_colleges_of_Yale_University#Merging. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:25, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

You might have a point. Makewater (talk) 19:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Missing Information

This article is missing crucial information in a variety of sections which have already been noted. Due to concerns about tag-bombing, they are reproduced below. Madcoverboy (talk) 00:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

• History: Impact of WWII, post-war funding & expansion, racial & gender integration, student activism & unrest, adaptation to declining gov't support in 70s-80s, admissions competitiveness & growth of campus from 90s
• Academics: Carnegie classifications, accreditation, enrollment distributions, academic calendars, academic honors, tuition and fees.
• Administration: leadership, governing board, relationship with faculty, student governance, faculty governance, constituent schools, endowment, and fundraising
• Faculty & research: research expenditures, government support, physical research plant, notable faculty, notable research programs or groups.

crime on campus

Maybe its a good idea to include crime on campus as it seems to be more applicable in the recent week. Isn't it ironic that the individual harmed and killed was the one who wrote about safety on campus? Maybe this is a good place to discuss the issue of policing and safety of yale. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.32.31.254 (talk) 03:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Global relations

IRAN: Intelligence Ministry blacklists Yale and dozens of other Western institutions. (Source: LA times). The questions is why all departments? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.182.5.148 (talk) 13:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Photos of Street Hall

Would someone at Yale be so kind as to take some photos of Street Hall that can be used in the new article on its architect Peter Bonnett Wight? ChildofMidnight (talk) 03:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Currently Street Hall in under renovation and covered in scaffolding. Ask again in 6 months. --Tsbshb (talk) 14:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

suggested photo - Eli Yale

How about a photo of Eli or a statue of Eli or some other depiction of the namesake? I think it would be a nice addition to the other (excellent) images. --Mdukas (talk) 06:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

There's a picture in his article, there are nicer portraits (in color) on the net. I don't know if it would add much here:l though he's the namesake, he's fairly peripheral to the institution proper. - Nunh-huh 06:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Statistics

You should include some statistics like average GPA for graduating classes over several years. Over half the grades awarded at Yale are A's. etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.80.18.242 (talk) 08:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Add The Goose-step

Could you add a link to Upton Sinclair's book The Goose-Step (book) which said all universities, even Yale, were set up to "keep America capitalist"? Stars4change (talk) 06:28, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yale was set up to keep Connecticut Congregationalist, and pretty much failed at that. Rjensen (talk) 06:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

In retrospect you may be right. Makewater (talk) 14:16, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Behavioral sciences

This whole paragraph is written as an undergraduate paper style discussion of a single published paper. The whole paragraph should probably be deleted (not every paper written about Yale can get its own paragraph; Yale's behavioral sciences work should be written about from an encyclopedic point of view), but I've removed just the sentence that is an explicit description of just a single article.MayerG (talk) 03:41, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

It's important to keep tone consistent. Makewater (talk) 14:16, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States

I believe this to be true, but do we have a good reference? Only because if we don't, someone might remove it. A lot of true information gets removed from wikipedia because there is no reference, so better to get the reference in fast.Makewater (talk) 17:32, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Latin Motto (Lux et Veritas)

Isn't there an argument to be made for translating "Lux et Veritas" as "The Light of Truth"? The rhetorical device is hendiadys. Cf. "vi et armis" "by force of arms"; "O tempora! O mores!" "Oh, the customs of the times". Rickythesk8r (talk) 02:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Argument or not, Yale has opted for "Light and Truth" and not any other possible translation. - Nunh-huh 03:44, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Rubbing the Toe

I have information about why they rub the toe that I received on a campus tour; however, I do not have a source. Should I still include it? It was told to me that the sculls team would only win when Woolsey pushed them off with his boot.--Ryan Vesey (talk) 05:18, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Introductory Paragraph

I have to say that I am really disappointed to see how the introductory page has become overly laudatory of the Yale brand. I have removed a sentence that read "Yale is widely considered to be one of the most prestigious universities in the world." There is absolutely no reason to mention this. If a university is indeed so universally well regarded, its reputation should be implied. Even if this might be true about Yale's reputation, it is ultimately a subjective qualification. In this vein, I strongly suggest references to the "slew" of billionaires be removed, as this really does not speak of Yale in any way that adds to its intrinsic value, nor does it correlate with Yale academic prestige in any meaningful way; several "lesser ranked" universities have a similiar number of billionaires or more. It is one thing to mention the number of U.S. Presidents and U.S Supreme Court Justices, but mentioning the number of Yalies who became University/College Presidents does not very tightly connect with Yale's academic and research reputation on the whole. Columbia University's introduction section does a lot of such boasting, and I had thought Yale wanted to distance itself from this self-promoting practice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Milkbaba (talk • contribs) 18:35, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Statements such as "I had thought Yale wanted to distance itself from this self-promoting practice" are a bit of a non-sequitur on Wikipedia, considering that the content of the encyclopedia is open to all and is written collaboratively. Whatever "Yale" wants—and I am unsure to whom you're synechdochically referring as such—is irrelevant to the question of what the article should state. My view as a third party is that the prose you removed was quite laudatory and might be best placed outside of the introduction, but it (or something like it) is still warranted in the article. Whether their reputations are warranted or not, Harvard, Yale, and (to a lesser extent) Princeton have a special place in American culture, and it is not uncalled for to recognize that fact. I write this as someone who has never attended any of those three schools. —Bill Price (nyb) 19:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

This same question was raised about the Harvard piece, and I argued for removing such a statement, preferring instead to let the facts speak for themselves. I was outvoted on that. I would prefer removing such language here as well, but obviously, it's up to the majority of editors. MarmadukePercy (talk) 20:01, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

To say that my statement is a "non-sequitur on Wikipedia" because "Wikipedia is open to all" really doesn't make any sense. Sure Wikipedia is an open source system. How does that have anything to do with maintaining objectivity, which should be both the stated and implied goal of any true encyclopedia? As MarmedukePercy said, the facts should speak for themselves. Wikipedia is not to read like a brochure or persuade the reader towards any singular opinion. Any determination of article content should be based on this simple mission. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.15.62.121 (talk) 03:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

You have conflated two separate points in my response. It is a non-sequitur to talk about the concerns of a particular institution because no one here is revising the article under the direction of—or on behalf of—Yale University. (If anyone is, they are in violation of our policies regarding conflicts of interest.) It is true that there is a general principle to show, not tell, but when a characterization is supported by neutral, reliable external sources, it's generally fine to include. Examples would be this from The Beatles: "The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music.", this from Citizen Kane: "The film is often considered the greatest of all time and is particularly praised for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure.", and this from Albert Einstein: "His great intelligence and originality have made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius." All of those quotes are unambiguously laudatory—superlatively so—but are appropriate because they are verifiable. It is a verifiable fact that "Yale is widely considered to be one of the most prestigious universities in the world." This statement would not be a fact for my own alma mater, but it's true for Yale University. If nothing else, keep in mind that "prestige" is separate from a university's actual effectiveness; prestige is a measure of how a thing is perceived. —Bill Price (nyb) 05:03, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Anti-semitism institute

The university was home to the first U.S.-based institute for researching anti-Semitism, which announced closure plans in June 2011.

Campus Life

That campus life section stinks. All it appears to be is propaganda for the gay lifestyle. Surely there is more to campus life than that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hockey16 (talk • contribs) 01:05, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

conflicting claims on place of death of Elihu Yale

This article says "Elihu Yale was away in India when the news of the school's name change reached his home in Wrexham, Wales, a trip from which he never returned", implying that he died in India.

But the Elihu Yale article says "Yale died on July 8, 1721 in London, England". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.113.37.9 (talk) 16:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Unless his epitaph in Wales is wrong, he certainly died in London: "Born in America, in Europe bred / In Africa travell’d, and in Asia wed / Where long he lov’d and thriv’d in London dead". Perhaps he never returned to Wales (while living)? - Nunh-huh 19:39, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

File:Dport.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Dport.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Media without a source as of 19 October 2011 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 13:45, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Image request

Not related to this article, but maybe somebody from Yale University is passing by and could help with this request. Thanks. bamse (talk) 22:32, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

History of Yale University

article is long, a new section necessary?--Levineps (talk) 06:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Big Three

Resolved

Should Big three be placed on this article? It appears that another editor disagrees. Abhijay (☎ Talk) (✐ Deeds) 11:14, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any good reason why it can't be included in the lede. IMO it's more pertinent than "Yale became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900" which should be in the history section. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 13:27, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Alright, agreed. Maybe the editor who removed it just didn't like it in place. But whatever. Abhijay (☎ Talk) (✐ Deeds) 13:38, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Wait a sec. The best ref we can find for "Big Three" is a web site by the Harvard club of southern California, which says, "The Big Three was the name given Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in the days" they ruled college football, which ended in 1919? If that's the best we can do, then there's no way this belongs in the intro. PRRfan (talk) 04:01, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Another set of references: ([5]), and ([6]).Sensible enough? Now just leave it alone. See Big Three (colleges) for a further set of references. Abhijay (☎ Talk) (✐ Deeds) 05:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I have no issue at all with the content in the article. The "football" reference is, however, nothing to do with a statement about Yale being in the top 3 US Universities. If we're going to cite this at all, which we may not need to, if there's coverage elsewhere in the text, or the possibility it's "accepted fact", then we must at least use a reference that actually supports the content. Begoon ^talk 06:42, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I can understand your point clearly Begoon, but see ([7]). The rankings may be stratified. Since we are not writing an entire essay about how yale became a big three college, it is noteworthy to put Yale is a Big Three college in the lead because it is concise and straight to the point. Yale may have dominated Ivy League football for a long heck of a time, but consider looking at the reference provided. We cannot really determine the actual ranking of Yale because every website says different things about every university in the world, but this reference is reliable. Begoon, as you've said about an "accepted fact", well it is accepted almost everywhere and almost everyone uses it, antd theres pretty much nothing we can all do about it. I'd think that other anonymous users/people would find it useful to get to know that Yale is a big three college when they use Wikipedia to research about Yale. Abhijay (☎ Talk) (✐ Deeds) 09:57, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The real thing you need to decide first is whether this is a term in common usage for the Big 3 Universities or whether it's being "stretched" here and only really relates to sport/football. I can't help you with that, because I don't know. It does seem odd, though that you would have trouble finding a source if the usage was so common.

As I said above, I'm not suggesting the content needs removing. If it's an accepted fact it could probably be stated in the lead, I agree. What I am saying is that if we add a reference, it needs to support what the content says, not something else. The MSNBC ref you have there now does mention the concept, but not substantially, just in passing, so it's not really very good in that sense - it doesn't discuss the concept, just mentions it. The aafla ref doesn't seem to be any use at all - looks like 1920s football again... What would be ideal is a reference actually discussing the concept of the Big 3 as Universities in at least a little depth. I realise the term came from football - but it's used differently here.

However, I'm not the best one to help you with this, because I don't know enough about the subject matter to say what is correct. I only removed the reference I did because it was obviously unsuitable. I'd say editors would first need to decide whether this is a correct term to use in this way, then if it needs sourcing at all, or can depend on sources (existing or new) in the main article. It might even be the case that no source would be necessary here, because "Big Three" is wikilinked to its own, sourced article, but some may not feel that is sufficient, or the right usage of the term. If you are struggling for a reference, I quite like the Nathaniel Burt quote on Big Three (colleges) - but that might not be considered enough on its own, and that one is almost 40 years old - I'm not familiar enough with this subject to know if the usage is still current. I understand it's only a source for a very short statement, but a source needs to be relevant and reliable no matter the size of the content it supports. Begoon ^talk 10:55, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Not sure how to use this talk feature. I agree with the comment above that "Big Three" is a stretch usage and is not commonly found. Additionally, the article implies its big three of US universities, which is clearly not true. Big three in the rare instances found, relates only to ivy league schools. For this to be in the first paragraph of a university's summary is very misleading. There are few/none recent sources and it's inaccurate in its current form. Megapixel ^talk —Preceding undated comment added 01:27, 10 February 2012 (UTC).

Yes, and frankly, if we're not even sure about the usage, then having it in the lead is even more problematical. Begoon ^talk 09:43, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Alright, so let's undo the changes then shall we? Thank you Begoon for being a valuable contributor with me on this matter. The lede is supposed to summarize content of the article; since the term "Big Three" is not mentioned in the main article text, let alone explained, it doesn't belong in the lede. Even if a brief blurb is inserted into the article text, having the current phrase in the lede without a brief qualifier such as "a term originally used to describe their dominance in the early days of football" is pure peacockery. So excellent, call on with the reverts. Abhijay (☎ Talk) (✐ Deeds) 09:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Very good - nice when a sensible discussion ends in a good consensus. Thanks for making the edits. Begoon ^talk 09:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Abhijay likes this.