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Hazing for Politicos
If you want to go places in the Yale Political Union, first you have to
get through Inquisition Night.
July/August 2007
by James Kirchick '06
James Kirchick '06, assistant to the editor-in-chief of the New Republic, was a vice chair of the Independent Party of the Yale Political Union.
It’s late at night in the basement of Morse College. The room is
completely dark, except for several candles arranged in a triangle on the
floor. Inside this triangle stand Frederick Mocatta '10 and Matthew Klein '09,
both impeccably dressed in suits and ties, with their backs to the assembled
members and adult guests of the Yale Political Union’s Party of the Right. In
one corner behind the POR members is a bar—amply stocked, although the
hors d'oeuvres plate, instead of a knife or a server, has only a plastic ruler.
Mocatta and Klein are candidates for office in the Yale Political Union, and
they are here to be interrogated.
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The exchange turns into a pissing match, with each trying to one-up the other’s conservative bona fides. |
The chair of the POR, resplendent in a tuxedo and wearing a gold
medallion (passed down from his predecessor) around his neck, asks Mocatta and
Klein to name the “three political philosophers who have had the most influence
on your intellectual development.” Mocatta, a UK (and U.S.) citizen and an Eton
graduate, offers the Earl of Beaconsfield, Michael Oakeshott, and Sir Keith
Joseph. “Conservatism is a broad church,” he explains. His Tory moderation
draws snickers and hisses from the audience. Klein names Socrates, Hobbes, and
conservative economist F. A. Hayek.
The chair lets his party members do most of the questioning, calling on
them by titles such as “Chancellor of Cards and Games” and “Necromancer and
Purveyor of High Dudgeon.” After a member asks Mocatta and Klein how each
applies “the philosophy of conservatism to your life,” the exchange turns into
a pissing match, with each trying to one-up the other’s conservative bona
fides. Klein interned for Illinois Senate candidate Jack Ryan. Mocatta interned
for the Shadow Solicitor General. Klein avows his admiration for Newt Gingrich
and Barry Goldwater. “I, too, am a Goldwater man,” interjects Mocatta, and adds
Dwight Eisenhower and Nicolas Sarkozy for good measure.
Toward the end of the interrogation, the two are bombarded with a
rapid-fire list of “dichotomies” and have to make instant choices:
“House of Stuart or House of Orange?”
“My party or my union?”
“Pinochet or Allende?”
“SweeTarts or Smarties?”
“Yale diploma is worth the paper it’s written on or otherwise?”
As a finale, Mocatta and Klein are presented with a concoction described as “the elixir of life.” Mocatta refuses—he has a Chinese exam
tomorrow morning—but offers to drink it after taking the test. The
members of the Party of the Right are not pleased.
This is Inquisition Night, a signature event of the Yale Political
Union, as it took place last December on the Yale campus. Currently comprising
seven parties that span the political spectrum, the mostly student-run
Political Union, founded in 1934 in imitation of organizations at Oxford and
Cambridge, is unlike any other student group in this country. It invites
prominent guests every week to keynote a debate in which students make rebuttal
speeches. Speakers this past year included Supreme Court justice Antonin
Scalia, former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, and Rev. Al Sharpton. Eminent
past members include William F. Buckley Jr. '50, John Kerry '66, George Pataki '67,
and many others.
The union holds Inquisition late every semester, the evening before
elections, so the parties can interview the students running for union office.
Candidates spend the night traveling across the campus from ornate residential
college function rooms to dank basements, where they face a barrage of
questions from members of each party. The questioning starts out as a sort of
tyro Meet the Press, but soon
devolves into an outlandish mix of equal parts academic thesis defense, FBI
interrogation, and the Nickelodeon show Double Dare. Inquisition drags on long into the night, usually
until 2 or 3 a.m., well oiled with copious amounts of junk food, liquor, and
obscure political and pop culture references.
Yes, it’s hazing. But, says Alexandra Charrow '07, a past speaker of
the union, “we haze in a very philosophical and intellectual way.” This is,
after all, a political union.
Every party has its own approach. The Tory Party floor on Inquisition
Night is the epitome of civility. A huge Union Jack hangs on a wall in the
stately Saybrook College Athenaeum Room, and in between interviews, party
members huddle around the board game Diplomacy. One newly inducted member,
Tyler Dos Santos-Tam '10, observes that he’s “heard that the other parties joke
a lot. I’m glad the Tory Party maintains its gentlemanly demeanor.”
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“Name the hottest members of each party. Do not be heteronormative!” |
The Independent Party is the largest in the union, with well over 100
members and a mission to “Hear All Sides.” Perhaps for these reasons, its
members do ask serious questions during Inquisition. They pay particular
attention to candidates for the union’s vice presidency—the office whose
portfolio is the booking of guests and is thus the most important post in the
Political Union hierarchy.
With all of the lights turned off in the Independents' Inquisition
room and with halogen lamps shining directly in their faces, Helen Rittelmayer '08
(POR) and Harry Greene '08 (Tory) exhibit the poise of politicians. Rittelmayer
lists the qualities she'd look for in guests: “Provocative, persuasive, and
prominent.” She suggests anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen
Prejean, the inspiration for the film Dead Man Walking. Greene earns points for humor when he describes
meeting Antonin Scalia. “I got to serve Justice Scalia a glass of port,” he
recalls. “As Tory Party provost, that is the greatest achievement.”
After the business of job qualification is completed, a member from
the IP floor moves that the party segue into “dichotomies and impersonations."
The first task required of Rittelmayer and Greene: “Name the hottest members of
each party. Do not be heteronormative!” (Greene points to a hirsute member of
the audience and says, “I’m sort of a beard guy myself.”) Then Rittelmayer is
asked to impersonate a Southern preacher and Greene to impersonate William F.
Buckley Jr. as a Southern preacher. Both candidates have to demonstrate how
they would “seduce” potential guests into speaking at the union. Finally, they
are asked to name all the spectators in the room, their class years, and
whether each is a “Jew” or “non-Jew.”
The highlight (or low point) of the Independent Party’s Inquisition doesn’t take place until later at night, when Mocatta and Klein are grilled.
One of the party members surprises them—and his colleagues—with
transcripts of the infamous instant-message exchanges between Mark Foley, the
disgraced former congressman, and a teenage congressional page. Klein is
ordered to play the part of Foley, Mocatta the page. “Completely naked?” asks
Klein, doing his best to deliver an auditory leer. The exchange continues for
only a few lines before the entire room erupts in fits of laughter. Eventually,
the chair has mercy and orders the two to desist.
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“We’re discussing the weight of the vice chairwoman’s boobs.” |
For the Progressive Party (“Putting the Ogre Back in Progressive”),
prurience always takes precedence over policy. Last year, the Progs introduced
a novel Inquisition concept: the roving party floor. They rented a large U-Haul
van, loaded the trailer with chairs, blankets, and beer, and drove around
downtown New Haven all night picking up candidates and interested spectators.
That same year they also had candidates drill holes into the heads of baby
dolls, an act that a candidate from the POR (known for converting several
members to Catholicism and its position against abortion rights) was allegedly
unable to bring herself to complete.
This year, the Progs, though no longer on wheels, are true to form. “We're
discussing the weight of the vice chairwoman’s boobs,” one of the members
informs a couple of visitors entering late in the festivities. “They’re 8.6
pounds,” adds another. “It’s a well-known fact.” How the alleged fact was
discovered is not revealed, only the clue that it was not accomplished by water
displacement. One male member of the party is wearing a skirt, a holdover from
a test earlier in the night in which candidates had to reach up and describe
what piece of hardware (hammer, screwdriver, or other) the student was holding
under it.
Of all the parties, the Conservatives are the most deliberately and
ruthlessly intimidating. Like the POR, they make candidates stand in a small
space demarcated by candles on the floor, backs to the audience, and they
administer an “elixir”—of truth, in the Conservatives' case. (How it
differs from the POR’s elixir of life is anyone’s guess.) Candidates have to
knock three times on the door of the Conservatives' Inquisition room, and when
they enter, the party members hiss and stamp their feet in fervent disapproval.
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Members of the party pace behind the candidates, shouting out questions. |
During the questioning, members of the party pace around the room
behind the candidates, shouting out questions: “What is your political
philosophy?” “What is the good?” “What conception of the soul do you accept,
the Aristotelian or the Platonic?” They greet the answers with derision and
raucous laughter. When one candidate mentions F. A. Hayek, a party member
sneers, “Has the gentleman even read The Road to Serfdom?”
Even though everyone expects an inquisition, it’s a grueling experience.
A member of the Class of 2003, who ran as a Liberal Party candidate for the
union’s vice president of debate in 1999, recalls: “The first and only time I
cried in public was on the Con floor.”
Dara Lind '09 (Party of the Left) ran unopposed last year for the
position of the union’s director of campus relations. She likes Inquisition
Night. “I have a weakness for ritual, personally.” She believes, however, that “some
parties”—as a publicist, she won’t name names—“misunderstand the
nature” of Inquisition. It is “more important that candidates know about the
duties of the job rather than the parties know the personal political
philosophies” of the candidates.
But David M. Wagner '80, '84Grd, a POR member who returns periodically
to Yale to sit in on Political Union debates and Inquisitions, argues that “anything
that accustoms people to speak in front of an audience that is demanding and
who does not agree with you is useful for anything—especially politics."
Roger Low '07, who served as union president in 2006, says that in the course
of a two-hour interrogation on the POR floor last year, “I think I gave the
best defense of gay marriage I have ever given. Running for office was
certainly a formative intellectual experience.”
Union members begin casting their ballots at noon the day after
Inquisition Night (just a few hours, in other words, after the interrogations
end). Each party issues an endorsement sheet for its members. Some—such
as the Conservatives' and the POR's—give only the names, thus conveying a
whiff of backroom negotiations and lofty secrecy. Others are rich in
explanatory detail.
In their endorsement of Dan Thies '07 (Tory), who is running unopposed
for union president, the Progs write: “[We] agree that Mr. Thies was that guy
who sat in the front row of your physics lab—the one who explained torque
to you and then let you copy that answer on the homework. … Thies's
optimism and genuine kindness was oddly refreshing.”
The Tories don’t offer up much information on the candidates, but they
do provide an extended commentary on their “divisive and strategic combat” in
Diplomacy. Their conclusion: “With the night waning and the weary British,
French, Italians, and Austria-Hungarians facing total destruction at the hands
of the unrelenting Germans and Russians, and with the brave Turks already
completely wiped out, the Tory Party made their way back to their rooms,
unhappy, perhaps, with the plots of the Kaiser but with high hopes for the next
semester of the Union.”
The fraternities may have their paddles and the athletes their forced
pushups. The secret societies may have their coffins and mud wrestling. But the
Yale Political Union will forever claim Inquisition Night.  |
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