Yalephobia

Firestorm over Yale attack
by Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
San Francisco Chronicle
Jan. 14, 2007

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Basically, a male a cappella group from Yale went to a house party in San Francisco on New Year's Eve. They sang a few songs. Some of the other partygoers taunted them, and later two of the singers were beaten up. One of them broke his jaw, and they both got bloody lips.

And this has become a small national scandal.

It happened right in my neighborhood, where I was born and raised. And a bunch of kids from my high school (and our rival high school) attended the party. Who knows: they may have been the culprits. Also, I used to sing in an a cappella group in college, so I know what it's like to be heckled for singing like a girl.

So many things are wrong with this whole fiasco, it's hard to know where to begin.

First, it's not a gay thing, like some people have claimed. The "assailants" (who are actually a bunch of high school kids who picked a fight, let's be honest) called the Yale singers "homos" under their breath, and now the gay rights advocates are saying it was a hate crime. Bullshit. At a certain age, everyone calls everyone else a homo.

Sean Hannity has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the assailants (who are still at large) because he believes this is an American Pride issue. That's because the Yale singers gave a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner early in the evening, before they were beat up. Sean Hannity is calling this a case of rampant anti-Americanism among the San Francisco youth. Again: bullshit. Every choir in America knows the Star Spangled Banner. You can't turn this into a question of patriotism.

But the only reason this event got so out of hand in the first place is because the Yale singers, after they left the city and went home to their East Coast campus and families, decided (after the fact) they had been mistreated. And they raised a stink with the Yale administration and the local papers, who in turn raised a stink with the San Francisco Police Department for not doing enough to protect their boys, and now the Mayor and the Police Chief are giving daily briefings about the status of their manhunt for a couple of high school ruffians. Fuck the Yalies. I hate to see a guy break his jaw, but these undergraduates went home and told their mommies and deans about the mean kids at the party, and now it's a coast-to-coast scandal? There is a serious worry that this event could affect San Francisco's image and damage the tourism industry.

In the articles about this incident, the victims are always refered to as "Yale students," as if it's somehow especially harsh to beat up kids from an Ivy League school. Wookie Kim, a Yale sophomore, is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying: “I couldn't believe that anyone could do that to a Yale student.” Who gives a fuck, Wookie? Beatings are always a bad thing, even when the victim’s family is not paying tuition at Yale University. As one of the editorials in the SFChron points out, there have been at least 11 homicides in San Francisco since the Yale students were beaten up, and nobody is placing those homicides in the media.

But what really chafes my balls is the way people are talking about my hometown. An assumption is being passed around (among the out-of-towners) that nobody ever gets beaten up in San Francisco. The Chronicle quotes another Yale undergraduate as saying, “You wouldn't expect to find anti-gay sentiment expressed so openly in San Francisco, of all places.”

San Francisco gave birth to the gay rights movement, but that doesn’t mean it has become a liberal paradise. In fact, with so much gay pride in the streets, there is bound to be a backlash. It has always been this way. San Francisco is proud of being gay-friendly, but it’s even more proud of being heterogeneous—a place where anything can be “expressed so openly,” as the Yalie says. In this city, “of all places,” people are free with their opinions. That's why it's so easy for things like common homophobia to turn ugly.

So I want to apologize to the Yale students who got in a fist fight. We should not be subjecting them to the perils of real life (San Francisco house parties! What an underworld) until they are in a better position to insulate themselves from it. But this whole mess is based on stupid assumptions about the nature of my hometown. Once this story dies down, I think somebody is going to need a good punch in the mouth.