Alda Pontes, ES ’14, has been tutoring and mentoring for the last three years at the Manson Youth Correctional Institution as part of the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project. Most tutors in this program work through a GED preperation book with the college-aged inmates. Pontes, on the other hand, holds a weekly discussion group for the inmates that covers their hopes, fears, and personal histories, in addition to issues of justice, faith, women’s rights, and class culture. She sat down with the Herald this week to talk about these conversations. 

YH: What do you talk about with the inmates?

AP: I usually start with an awkward “What’s up, anything new?” They always say, “nope.” We talk about stuff that’s happened in the week. They really like talking about anything pop culture related. Things that are related to topics that are super comfortable and familiar to them from their life outside. I would say that things that they get the most out of are deeper questions about morals, but also, I think, the idea of justice. I know that all of them have kind of grappled with that a bit.

We did a program on sexuality. I want them to—as a woman, I feel like I have the responsibility to at least give them some background on which to think about our sex. What they write to me is what means the most to me because that we don’t read about in the book; it’s our way of communicating.

YH: Like prompts?

AP: They are, I always give them an assignment. A page. One of them wrote a beautiful poem that starts, “The young lady told me to write about what’s good. I’m not sure she’ll understand my definition, since I’m from the hood.”

YH: How else do they speak to you about their lives before prison?

AP: They’re all from different cities. They all describe sort of identical, classic, low-income urban America. Concentrated disadvantage is what’s described by them. Specifically, this network of peer pressure that’s kind of intergenerational. Specific examples—one of my mentees was young and sitting in his couch—like very, very young, age six, seven, eight—listening to his dad and uncle say they were at the club yesterday, ‘We were wildin’, buying bottles, spilling it on the girls. Someone’s stepping on my shoe, and I pushed him.’ It’s this focus on a visual display of status, and that can be through essentially chains, good jeans, jewelry, good clothing, shoes. It’s this entire rhetoric that seems to be really similar between these guys, this environment where people want to display a lot of wealth, want to hustle here and there to buy these things that show that they are higher status within this closed, really enclosed, environment.

YH: How do you think that sort of attitude transfers to their time in prison?

AP: Well, it’s difficult because in prison everything from clothing to hairbrushes is institutionalized. You have an expense account within prison, and someone from the outside can add, to a limit, a credit for you to have within prison. And you can also work towards that, too, to increase that limit. But everything is institutionalized. So the shoe options that they have are all non-brand shoes, and they come in black, white, and gray. I think they do that on purpose to sort of standardize the playing field there.

YH: What effect do you think your status as a woman has on the tone and direction of these conversations?

AP: This past week we talked about Miss Universe, and the girls they thought should have actually won over Miss Argentina. They watched it on TV. So we talked about that, that got awkward real fast, so we switched the topic. It just gets awkward because they’re so incredibly—and a few of them have said this to me—they’re so incredibly deprived of their manhood within prison. That’s something that people think about less, because the institution is a punishment for crime, but they’re deprived of very basic instincts and when conversation gets to that, I mean, it gets awkward really fast because you can tell how incredibly tense they are around those topics.

The same happened when we had a talk on their view on females because I wanted to talk specifically about their behavior toward the female gender. It gets awkward because when you’re talking about breaking the basic gender stereotypes of what a guy can, should, and does when he’s talking to a girl, there’s a lot of disagreements there between me and them. Things like, they think it’s okay to say some things to women as they’re walking down the street. You know, hollering and things. Two of them did, the other ones were like, “No, I don’t do that.” I actually have noticed this behavior from two of the inmates: they know by now pretty much where I stand on a lot of things, and they’ve kind of molded the way that they claim they see the world to the way I see the world. And I don’t know if they do that to not offend me.

When we talk about things that we haven’t talked about before, like abortion and women’s rights, I find it hard to believe that they’ve always had the same view as me. I find it that they guess where I lie and then align themselves.

YH: Could you speak more about your discussion on abortion?

AP: A lot of people say this: capitalism is secularizing, but institutional punishment is very—it’s a religifying process to the individual. The first thing you do once you get there is read the Bible, according to the inmates.

Everyone will tell you, ‘You’ll be bugging ’cause you just got in and you’ll realize you have seven years to go, and your cellie will just slide a bible across the cell and be like, Read this. Take a look; you’ll find something there.’ And that’s kind of a rite of passage between them, they claim. So the talk with abortion was weird because some of them are relatively religious.

That kind of develops, especially as their sentences come to an end, into more religious apathy. I’ve seen that happen with three of the five inmates. There’s this process of a lot of meditation and self-reflection that I’ve seen in three cases lead actually to secularization post that initial religious boost. So the discussion on abortion was contentious because two of the guys that are newer, that I’ve only been working with for about a year and a half, are just really conflicted with the idea of “fetus-murder.”

YH: Do you find yourself learning why they’re incarcerated?

AP: The picture forms so slowly because when you first meet these guys, A, it’s all about the formality, and B, the last thing they want is to just give you a terrible impression. You’re here doing service—they don’t want to freak you out, you know? I remember, for example, it took me about five or six times—mind you, that’s five or six weeks—of meeting with an inmate to find out about his homicide charge.

It’s usually fit in in some sort of conversation that we’re having about changing perspective and stuff like that. I mean, some of the inmates do just like to talk, they just want to share their story, you know? For example, the homicide one came out as a fluid part of conversation where he admitted that he has come to understand that people make mistakes, and, though life is priceless, the lives of different people are valued through different spectrums. It’s a function, of, I mean, they come from a place where life is pretty—where some people think life is pretty worthless. And very cheap. Whereas I know in our environments we don’t really assign a value to life because it’s the most priceless thing there is.

YH: Do your tutees speak to you about visions of their lives post-prison?

AP: That’s something that we don’t talk about as much because all of my guys have really long sentences. I’ve had guys that have said to me, I know that once I get out I’m going to have to hustle a little bit to get back on my feet—meaning do illicit activity once more, so I can get back on my feet, get a place—but then I’m going to turn my life around. I’ve also had guys that have said I will never touch drugs again in my life, ever.

YH: What do you think will happen to the group after you graduate?

AP: Hopefully someone comes along in the program with a similar vision and is willing to take on this group with the passion that I have. Because there is no other thing at Yale that I’m passionate about like this. There just is none. There is nothing that is touching me like this is. And I think that it’s something that is about them, but ends up changing me, in so many ways.

The text on the most recent cover of the Yale Alumni Magazine reads, in three descending lines, “Reaching beyond the low hanging fruit,” “Yale College seeks smart students from poor families,” “They’re out there—but hard to find.” This misguided title does a disservice to the article within, which discusses the fact that it is more difficult for the Yale admissions office to engage with potential applicants who don’t attend schools that typically feed into Yale, or who live in areas where Yale isn’t commonly viewed as an achievable goal. It touches on attempts by Yale to bridge this gap, as well as new initiatives and programs meant to prepare students from less rigorous academic backgrounds for the demands of Yale’s course load.

It’s unfortunate, given the admissions office’s apparent intentions—to reach more talented students from low-income backgrounds, and make Yale more accessible—that the cover is reductive to the point that it becomes offensive. People see the cover before they read the article, if they even bother to read it at all. If the school is trying to make itself more approachable to a historically under-represented demographic, the way to do that is probably not to suggest, “it’s pretty darn tricky to find any smart poor kids—but by God, we’re trying!”

That suggestion is especially troubling given that it’s in direct conflict with the article’s claimed goal. The article emphasizes that there are a lot of smart, hard-working students in low-income areas, but that Yale has trouble engaging with them, especially when they live outside of dense urban hotspots. These students are high-achieving; they do have the scores and the GPAs and the extracurriculars. They’re stars, but Yale can’t manage to reach them, or they’re not reaching out to Yale. The reason, at least according to the article, is that Yale doesn’t seem achievable. In other words, it’s too-high-hanging a fruit.

The real problem with the cover is that it only reinforces this image. It makes Yale seem like a place where people need to be persuaded that there really are “smart students from poor families” somewhere “out there,” as though that were some sort of revelation. It makes it seem like Yale isn’t a place where those students from low-income families will be able to fit in, to find a home. Here, it implies, you are wanted for your lack of wealth—because here, that is what will make you notable. It will make you stand out. To me, that sounds frightening.

Yale has plenty of issues regarding class lines and boundaries, but I do believe that there has been a recent, broad, positive push on campus to be more open about wealth. I do think people are talking about class more than they used to, in a different way than they used to; I do believe that we’re beginning to address the socioeconomic disparities on campus in constructive ways. We have a long way to go, and a big part of moving forward will be to build future classes to be more balanced in terms of affluence. That does mean accepting more students from low-income backgrounds—but the way to attract them is by making Yale seem accessible, like a place where they can be celebrated for the people they are and the gifts they bring. It’s not by making them feel unusual for their class. It’s not by identifying them by their money. It’s not by making them feel like numbers. Or fruit.

New Haven doesn’t get a lot of love from those unfamiliar with its charms. Its name, to those who aren’t in the know (and, frankly, many of those who are), brings to mind crime and grime. “People in my grandmother’s generation still can’t believe I live in New Haven,” says Jeffrey Kerekes, who has lived in the Elm City for a decade. “This guy told me he doesn’t go out after dark, and I laughed, because I thought he was joking.” He wasn’t.

To combat that negative image, Kerekes and neighbor Chris Randall created a blog called “I Love New Haven.” The blog features photographs of New Haven events and community life, with recent posts including photos of parties, fundraisers, protests, festivals, and kickball tournaments. “Perception is reality for a lot of people,” says Kerekes. “We wanted there to be positive stuff in the media about positive stuff here.” Since its inception last September, the blog has earned around 2,500 hits on an average day, and its Facebook page has nearly 1,500 likes.

The blog allows Kerekes and Randall to deepen their connections even further with the New Haven community, in which they were already majorly involved. Kerekes, a psychotherapist in New Haven, came in at a close second to DeStefano in last fall’s mayoral election, with 45 percent  of the vote. Randall was the executive director of the New Haven Land Trust until last January, when he began working as a full-time photographer. “The website enables me to have a presence and gives me even more exposure to great people doing great things in communities that I wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to,” says Randall.

Every Wednesday, the website features submissions from a guest contributor. On Wed., Apr. 3, Damian Weikum, CC ’15, posted some of his photos to the site. Most were shot around Yale’s campus in the days after Nemo. “It’s one of my first publications for photos and hopefully it leads to bigger things in the future,” says Weikum, an aspiring photographer.

For the future, the blog’s creators are conjuring up new projects beyond the website—maybe a book, gallery shows, or expansion into neighboring townships. But for now, they are content to create good cheer about their town. “When people start seeing there’s all these cool things happening, it makes them happier, step back, and reassess,” says Kerekes. “They stop and say, ‘Hey, it’s a pretty cool place.’ I had no idea this stuff was going on. It’s a unique opportunity to show people. My goal is to change perceptions.”

Yale’s undergraduate theater community is everywhere; we’re surrounded by countless productions and performance ensembles. There are small stages and large ones, classics and experimental contemporaries; and amidst all the possibilities, some specific pockets form, making something reliable within the overwhelming set of dramatic options.
In an email last fall, Yale’s freshman class received the bios of seven members of a relatively new student organization called Common Room. Meant as an invitation to audition, the group described itself as “Yale’s only undergraduate repertory theater company.” Looking back, Common Room member Ruby Spiegel ES ’15 recalls the email as “pretentious and scary;” still, it convinced about 25 freshmen to audition, with Jacob Osborne DC ’16 finally joining the group.

Members Chandler Rosenthal CC ’14 and Jesse Schreck CC ’14 came up with the idea of the group last September. Rosenthal wanted a performance group that would eradicate the feeling of “post-show depression.” The two thought Common Room could foster communal artistic growth while offering a less transient social experience. “Why not continue to work with the people you love? It can only allow for a tighter ensemble and better theater,” says Paul Hinkes ES ’15, a member of the group.

Every fall since its inception, Common Room has put on one large original production—this past fall, it was Bed Play. They spent last spring workshopping projects and designing the next fall’s endeavor, a schedule they plan to follow in the coming semester. The group has no formal roles and no real hierarchy, though Schreck calls himself the group “logistician.” Different members rotate between writing, acting, directing, producing, and filling any number of the other roles created by putting on a production.

Its small size allows the group to get comfortable enough to give each other meaningful feedback—as Schreck said, their ease with each other “cuts out all the polite, stepping-around things.” Spiegel says it’s immensely helpful “to have a group of people that know how you write, know how to give you notes…and they’re your friends and can tell you, ‘no, no, no.’” For the actors, the commitment to original material means that plays will be written for the number and genders available, and possibly with parts specifically crafted for an actor’s particular voice and traits. “Like, Paul is so tall,” Spiegel said, in reference to group member Paul “Tall Paul” Hinkes. “How funny would it be if we made him this silent, mysterious character?”

With rehearsals twice a week Common Room is a time commitment, but its members recognize the difficulty of time shortages. “We’re not looking to isolate ourselves from the awesome theater community that we love participating in,” Schreck said. “We don’t want Common Room to be a burden, we want it to be an exciting thing.”

The hectic schedules of Common Room’s members are typical of most Yale students involved in the drama community—with many conceding that they feel like their academics are “on the side.” “Theater has kind of always taken precedence,” said Alex Kramer, BR ‘15, of Control Group. “My work has to be done around my rehearsal schedule and when I’m in tech week for a show, there’s really no getting anything done.” Hinkes agreed: “The scale definitely tips in favor of theater. I mean, I’m hardly skipping classes left and right, but I’d always rather go to rehearsal than do homework.”

The combination of the time commitment and the social element of the drama scene has created one of the most vibrant undergraduate communities on campus. As a performance art, it’s automatically one of the most visible student creative outlets, and between the 14 student theaters, various performance groups, and countless independent productions, the theater world can often seem to dominate student cultural consciousness. “That collected group is probably the most prominent non-athletic community at Yale,” said Stephen Feigenbaum, BR ’11 MUS ’13, who’s currently putting up Abyss, of the overlapping theater, improv, and a cappella scenes. “[It’s] certainly the only large off-campus community that’s not athletics or the ‘frat scene’…also because theater are people are very hard to miss.”

Theater might be most notable for the intense, visible passion of its members. Although not all involved students are convinced they’ll pursue theater post-graduation, most agree that they decided a while ago that their time here would be best spent devoting themselves to an activity and community they love. “Yale doesn’t really give you life skills,” Spiegel said. “Theater kind of does.”