Eric Langborgh

    Counselors involved with incoming freshman orientation workshops at Yale University trashed over 700 copies of Light & Truth’s issue criticizing what the publication termed “indoctrination” by the Yale administration.

    “They knew that if Light & Truth got in the hands of freshmen,” claimed the conservative magazine’s editor, Avik Roy, “their ability to indoctrinate them would diminish.”

    Roy, who estimates the cost of the August 27 theft and trashing of his paper at $1000, said that sentiment was shared with him by many of the counselors.

    The incident was precipitated when an unknown number of counselors, all Yale seniors on the payroll, determined that the magazine’s encouragement of freshmen to avoid the sexual education seminar would undermine student safety.

    Light & Truth claimed that counselors tell  freshmen that these workshops are mandatory. “No one takes attendance,”  one counselor said in refutation, who then added, “they [Light & Truth] are undermining our authority of the things we need to get done.”

    In fact, many counselors did maintain that the orientation was mandatory, and some even justified the trashing of the magazine that one counselor termed “rubbish.”

    Yale spokesman Tom Conroy explained that counselors are told to“encourage” attendance, but the seminars are not mandatory and students may leave if they are uncomfortable. 
Nevertheless, the workshops are offensive to the traditionally-minded student.

    According to the article in Light & Truth that drew the ire of many counselors, much lighthearted discussion of types, prices, and accessibility of birth control for sexual “partners”—as opposed to “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”— takes place in the “Safer Sex” workshop.

    This seminar is noted for its “condom race,” in which groups of students race to correctly put a condom on a wooden phallus. According to the article, “Students sit in circles and, when the game begins, pass the phalluses around, each student opening up a condom and placing it correctly on a phallus and then passing it on to the next victim.”

    Responded counselor Peter Friedman, who termed Light & Truth editors as “far right” opponents of diversity, “To me none of it was particularly offensive. I saw it more as informative.”

    Friedman swore off any involvement with the trashing of Light & Truth, but his roommate and fellow counselor, Tom Cantey, was a leader in the action. “I was incensed by their condemnation of programs important to campus safety,” Cantey told the Yale Daily News.
Cantey refused comment to Campus Report, and remains strangely silent on the affair since his initial remarks.

    Many counselors involved who wished to remain anonymous, however, justified their actions by saying the distribution was against campus regulations.

    “If there is such a regulation it is selective enforcement,” scoffed Roy, who noted that the counselors didn’t take “other things” such as advertisements and other periodicals out of the mailboxes.

    “No one can put stuff in everyone’s mailbox,” answered Conroy, “without approval of the master of the (residential) college.”

    “The issue is, what are the boxes intended for?” he added.

    Conroy maintained, Yale is a university where “free speech is treasured.”

    The silence of the counselors, though, indicates that the regulation defense may not be legitimate. “If they did something that is perfectly consistent with student policy,” Roy pointed out, “they would have nothing to hide.”

    Light & Truth scanned the entire 200-page book of Yale regulations and found no evidence of a this mailbox regulation. A  perusal by Campus Report came to the same conclusion.
“If there is one it has never been enforced,” exclaimed Roy.

    Light & Truth is currently collecting facts and intends to file a grievance claim with the Yale administration as soon as they know more. Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg agreed that the counselors’ actions were illegitimate, but has not promised an investigation.

    Still, Roy counts the episode as a victory. Though 700 issues were stolen from freshman mailboxes, most freshmen still received copies of Light & Truth at the Student Activities Fair. The controversy served to stir up interest in the magazine, and consequently, the publication was more widely read, Roy pronounced.

    “That’s the thing about these censorship issues,” proclaimed Roy, “they usually backfire because the resulting action creates more attention and more people want to read it.”