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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
Comment on this article Will Mory’s Survive? (And Should It?) Before he became general manager of Mory’s in 2002, Jim Shumway spent 30 years in the hotel business. His first job was at Colonial Williamsburg, the living museum of eighteenth-century life in Virginia. But he didn’t just work in the hotel. “I also was an apprentice engraver in a jewelry shop,” says Shumway. “I’ve had a lifelong interest in history and interpreting it to the public.” What better qualification for running Mory’s? The 147-year-old campus saloon has become a kind of living museum of the old Yale. Governed since 1912 as a private club, with a volunteer board whose resistance to change is both a running joke and an article of faith, Mory’s is a monument to the bygone tastes of a WASP male ruling class at play: ostentatiously humble in decor (and food quality), awash in alcohol, and adorned with totems of athletic competition and middlebrow music, two things Yale culture held dear. Club president Cheever Tyler '59 likes to refer to Mory’s as a “museum of the evocative.” The trouble is: how can a museum survive in the restaurant business? Beset by increasing union labor costs, strict state enforcement of the minimum drinking age, and ever-improving competition from new restaurants in New Haven, Mory’s is in crisis. The club has run annual deficits of around $100,000 or more for at least three of the past four years, and its small endowment is dwindling. Mory’s still has a core of devoted fans, and the club has plans to try to broaden its appeal. But after weathering decades of upheaval in Yale’s social order, has Mory’s finally reached closing time? The block of York Street between Elm and Grove streets is busy night and day. Denizens of both town and gown are buying salads at Au Bon Pain, browsing for books at Labyrinth, lining up to dance at Toad's Place, ordering slices at Yorkside, or hunching over laptops and drinking coffee at the Publick Cup. Amid all the hubbub, at the end of the retail strip, the Federal-style house at 306 York seems strangely quiet. With just a small brass plaque on the door for a sign, it could easily be mistaken for a secret society or another old house converted to offices for a Yale department. You would never guess that inside is an establishment that considers itself, in Shumway’s words, “the place for Yalies.” Whether or not that is still true, Mory’s is inextricably linked to Yale. In function, it is a restaurant, serving lunch, drinks, and dinner six days a week in three dining rooms and a number of private rooms upstairs. In organization, it is a private club open to most people with a Yale affiliation. Students can become members for $40 per year. Faculty, staff, and alumni pay annual dues that now run $250, but around 75 percent of the club’s 15,000 members are non-dues-paying “life members”—alumni who purchased that status as students for a modest sum before the rules were changed in 1972. And in legend, Mory’s is the place where Yale students have met for nearly 150 years for good times and overindulgence, drinking alcoholic punches from silver trophy cups and singing traditional songs. Yale’s a cappella singing group the Whiffenpoofs was founded at Mory’s in 1909, and the group still sings there every Monday night during the academic year. Their “Whiffenpoof Song,” recorded by Rudy Vallee '27, Bing Crosby, and others, put the name of Mory’s on the lips of pop music lovers all over the country from the late 1920s to the late '40s. But in recent years, Mory’s appeal to students has slipped sharply; it now carries a reputation as an expensive, formal place for special occasions. Ironically, the Yale rowers who “discovered” the original Mory’s on Wooster Street in the 1860s were more or less slumming when they stopped in after practice on the harbor one day. The students were smitten by the tavern keepers, Frank and Jane Moriarty, and the place soon filled with Yale students. The Moriartys moved twice in order to get closer to campus, first to Court Street and then in the 1870s to Temple Street. The bar fell into decline after the Moriartys died, but in 1898, a German immigrant named Louis Linder took over. A singer and music lover, Linder encouraged singing groups to visit Mory’s and helped to revive its popularity. In 1912, Linder, whose health was failing, lost his lease on the Temple Bar. The thought of Mory’s closing was too much for students and alumni to bear, so a number of them hatched a plan to convert the bar to a private club. The incorporators explained in the Yale Alumni Weekly that the place was worth saving as “a genuine institution of considerable value to Yale life, because of its atmosphere of spontaneous democracy and hearty comradeship.” They bought a house at 306 York Street—Mory’s current home—and set about transforming it into as close an approximation of the old bar as possible. They moved not just furniture and pictures from the walls, but also wainscoting, the fireplace mantel, and the entire front entrance. So in its current location, Mory’s has more or less been a museum from the beginning, sentimentalized and preserved in amber by long-ago graduates. Old Mory’s hands often repeat with pleasure the legend that it took 20 years of lobbying (or 30, depending on the telling) to get ice cream on the menu. Not all of Mory’s history of resisting change is so benign. For its first 60 years as a club, only men could become members. When Yale began admitting women undergraduates in 1969, some privately run student organizations, such as St. Anthony Hall, went co-ed soon after. Mory’s admitted women in 1972, but only after picketing, a boycott, and a legal challenge to the renewal of Mory’s liquor license by a group of women faculty. Another group that was apparently seen as a threat to the sanctity of Mory’s—students from Yale’s graduate and professional schools—did not become eligible for membership until 1991. And although Yale’s managerial and professional workers can become members, its clerical, technical, service, and maintenance workers cannot. Mory’s current troubles were brought home to members in June, when Tyler sent out letters explaining that the club had been driven “into the red” and that “everyone will have to get involved to keep Mory’s afloat.” Tyler told faculty, staff, and alumni members that their dues would be raised from $165 to $250. More controversially, he asked the club’s local life members to convert to dues-paying members and pay $200 a year. It wasn’t long before the Yale Alumni Magazine heard from a handful of alumni who were in high dudgeon at the suggestion they begin paying dues. Mory’s life members are noticeably proud of their status, and they have fought previous attempts to make them pay. “I signed up in good faith in sophomore year, and I know it’s not a good deal for Mory’s,” says one life member, “but they should have thought of that in 1966.” As it turns out, the conversion to dues-paying membership is voluntary, and no life members are going to be turned out of the club. But the board’s willingness to tinker with life membership is a sign of just how serious Mory’s troubles are. Although it’s too early to know how members will respond to the dues increase, Tyler says he believes it will provide a short-term solution to Mory’s problem and buy the club time to make changes to its menu, hours, layout, and operating procedures. The question facing Shumway and the board is: how much change are they and their clientele willing to accept? Should they heed their motto—“Keep Mory’s Mory’s”—and tinker slightly with their existing model, surviving with the help of charitable contributions, like an actual museum? Or should they make more-dramatic changes in order to try to make Mory’s relevant again? One area in which Mory’s wants to make changes is student appeal. Where Mory’s might have felt as comfortable as an old white oxford buck to a well-heeled Yale man of the 1950s, its atmosphere, prices, and clientele are forbidding to students today. The kitchen closes at nine o'clock, just about the time students these days are deciding what they’ll do that night. The membership structure and the need for reservations are two more hurdles for spontaneously minded students, as is the dress code, modest though it is: men must wear shirts with collars, and jeans are prohibited. All of this sets up a chicken-and-egg problem—a dearth of younger faces in the club that discourages students from considering it their turf. Still, many students report going there once or twice a year with teams, singing groups, and other campus organizations. “It’s really cool to go there and see all the old pictures on the wall and all the carvings on the table and know that people who went to Yale years ago did the same things you’re doing now,” says former women’s crew captain Jennifer Hansen '08. Conservative party chair Adam Hirst '10 says that while his party and all the others of the Yale Political Union still hold weekly lunches at Mory’s, the idea of a spontaneous trip to Mory’s is foreign to his contemporaries. “As a member of an organization called the Conservative Party at Yale, you don’t need to sell me on the idea of Mory’s,” says Hirst. “But the food is pretty expensive for a college student. If it’s between going there or going to Yorkside, where I can get a sort-of-good slice of pizza for two dollars, that’s an easy choice every time.” Even the Whiffenpoofs go somewhere else to drink after singing for their supper at Mory’s on Monday night. “We would usually go to Rudy’s or to the Colony Inn,” says Nathan Reiff '08, who directed the Whiffenpoofs in 2006-07. Of course, Mory’s biggest problem in attracting student business has nothing to do with economics or changing fashions. Since the drinking age was raised to 21 in 1984, one of the club’s raisons d'etre—drinking the traditional alcoholic Green Cup, Red Cup, and other punches from silver cups—has been officially off limits to about three quarters of Yale’s undergraduates. For many years, enforcement of the law was spotty, but the state has gotten stricter recently, and Mory’s has responded by tightening its own rules. Students must show identification cards, which are run through a machine that can detect some forgeries. Those who demonstrate they are old enough to drink are fitted with bracelets and segregated from the nondrinkers in large parties. “I’ve got a law to obey, and I do my best,” says Shumway. Along with the traditional alcoholic cups, Mory’s now offers nonalcoholic versions. Shumway uses these for an event that harks back to his days at Colonial Williamsburg: last year, he hosted an open house for freshmen to introduce them to Mory’s and its traditions. Like a historical interpreter, Shumway demonstrates the cups ritual: the way the cups are passed around the table (without ever being set down), the singing by the group as one member drinks, and the spinning of the upside-down cup on the head of the person who drinks the last drop. “You don’t have to be drunk to spin a cup on your head,” says Shumway. (No, but it certainly helps.) Outreach efforts like the cups demonstration have become necessary, since students don’t necessarily pass down Mory’s traditions to each other anymore. “If we don’t expose this wonderful tradition to the undergraduates, they become alumni who don’t have that frame of reference and are less likely to see Mory’s as their place,” says Shumway. Shumway acknowledges that “Mory’s probably missed a lot of people who are now alums,” but he says he’s not giving up on attracting them to the club. “One of the messages I want to give alumni is that they can come when they’re in town and see what we’re doing to make this place better,” he says. “They don’t have to be members. If we’ve got space, we’ll be glad to serve any alum who’s back in town and wants to see what’s going on.” With student use in decline, alumni have been some of Mory’s most stalwart patrons, and the club has for years relied on lunch and dinner trade from alumni and faculty. The university once used Mory’s as a kind of de facto faculty club (an actual faculty club on Elm Street closed in the 1970s), and the daytime crowd still includes a fair number of administrators and staff attending meetings or celebratory lunches. But faculty seem to have gone the way of students in recent years. Conversations with faculty members in their 40s and 50s turned up few Mory’s partisans. Some complained about the stuffy atmosphere; almost all complained about the food. “I’ll bring out-of-town visitors there now and then for a full dose of Old Yale,” says one of the more enthusiastic, music department chair Daniel Harrison '86PhD. More representative is art history professor Alexander Nemerov '92PhD. “I would enter the place only if it were absolutely a requirement,” says Nemerov. “Mory’s is not me.” Some of the faculty are simply finding places with food they like better, as are a lot of people in the Yale community. The last decade has seen a restaurant renaissance in New Haven, with a dazzling array of choices from Indian to Cuban to Malaysian cuisine. “Our clientele are sophisticated, smart people who know what good food is,” says Cheever Tyler, “and so they tend to experiment and go to all these good restaurants.” What’s more, Tyler points out, almost none of the city’s restaurants or clubs have a unionized staff, as Mory’s does. The club offers medical and dental benefits and a pension to its employees. All this makes Mory’s labor costs higher: in 2006, according to the club’s 990 tax form, Mory’s took in $1,224,340 in revenue and spent $1,392,576, of which $904,942 went to salaries, benefits, and other payroll-related expenses. “That kind of labor cost would bury just about any operation,” says Patricia Dailey, editorial director at Restaurants and Institutions magazine. Labor costs for restaurants typically equal about a third of gross sales; at Mory’s, even when dues and other income are added to gross sales, labor costs came to 78 percent in 2006. Shumway says that although the union contract “is a factor in considering how and when we do new things,” he feels he has developed a relationship with the union that is “a lot more productive than it used to be.” With the increased dues in place to provide a financial cushion, Mory’s is proceeding this fall with a number of innovations recommended by consultants to try to regain the club’s share of the Yale community’s discretionary income. “A lot of our support in the past has come from people who feel very strongly about keeping Mory’s Mory’s,” says Tyler, “and that’s one of the reasons we were slow to react. But we know that there have to be some significant changes.” As this article went to press, Shumway was still experimenting with dishes for a revamped menu. He wasn’t able to say what new dishes might be offered (though he did mention wasabi tuna as a possibility). But he was quick to offer reassurance to diehards: “There will be rarebits, there will be baker’s soup, and there will be liver and lamb chops and all the Mory’s favorites. But we can’t just have club food. We have to be in the mainstream.” The club is also going to start staying open until midnight on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. After nine, Shumway says, the club will serve drinks and a cheaper, more student-oriented menu, perhaps with burgers, chicken wings, and the like. Perhaps more surprising, the building was recently fitted for wi-fi service, and laptop computers may soon be permitted in the upstairs rooms. Further down the line, Mory’s is looking to make significant changes to its home. The early-nineteenth-century building needs a lot of work to update its mechanical systems, and the board has discussed installing a bar and adding conference space upstairs. All this would require a strategic plan and a capital campaign, Tyler says, which will have to wait “until we put the ship on an even keel.” Aside from these changes, when I talked to people associated with Mory’s about how they’re addressing their woes, they spent a surprising amount of time talking about the pictures on the walls. More than one mentioned the fact that they recently began hanging pictures of women's athletic teams in addition to men's, and Shumway suggested that they might branch out more in their choices—he has begun to add singing group photos, and he suggests including pictures from the Political Union (another loyal constituency) and perhaps portraits of Yale Rhodes Scholars. “We may need to reflect more of the richness that is Yale on our walls than we do today,” says Shumway. Such attention to what’s on the walls may seem like rearranging the picture frames on the Titanic, but the importance attached to it goes to Tyler’s characterization of Mory’s as a “museum of the evocative.” Mory’s is slowly realizing that the Yale it is evoking is at best foreign and at worst off-putting to many in the Yale community today. Richter Elser '81, a Mory’s member who has operated restaurants in New Haven and is now general manager of the Quinnipiac Club, says Mory’s “has to figure out which constituency it’s going to cater to. If it’s students, that takes you toward late-night food. If it’s Yale faculty and administrators, that suggests an emphasis on better and quicker dining at lunch time. And if it’s alumni, their interests are more directed toward early evening dining. So my concern is that if they try to do all three at the same time, it’s difficult to do any one of them well.” And the club’s most cherished goal may also be the most elusive, says Elser. “For Mory’s to be Mory’s, they really have to reconnect with the student body. But trying to reach the undergraduates is probably the toughest, because they have to win them back. The Yale Co-op, in its last couple of years, was trying all sorts of things to be a new and reinvented retailer, but none of them really took off. Ultimately it became part of Yale’s history instead of something necessary on Broadway.” It’s tempting to speculate that Mory’s won’t outlive its current aging clientele, that the club’s air of WASP privilege will make even less sense to future, more-diverse generations of students and faculty. But it’s not necessarily true: students from all backgrounds have come to Yale and learned to love faux Gothic architecture, the Elizabethan Club, a cappella singing, and other seemingly arcane traditions. And many of them love Mory’s, too. Moshe Sarfaty '08, who came to Yale from Israel at the age of 21 after serving in the Israeli Army, first went to the club as a freshman for a squash banquet. “I said to myself, ‘This is why I came to Yale—the tradition, the history, all in one place.’” Sarfaty, who is now working in investment banking in New York, has continued his membership. “In my four years at Yale, the only time I ever had tears in my eyes was in Mory’s, when I was elected captain of the squash team. That was one of the most meaningful moments in my life. So this is why I’ll do everything I can to help and support Mory’s.” It was evident to me even in the late 1960s that Mory’s was not delivering the goods. I grew up in New York City, where even families of modest means looked on eating out several times a week as a necessity. While I appreciated the woodwork I had seen better at German beer halls, and I could not for the life of me understand why my classmates would put up with the condescension of the servers, the mediocrity of the food, and the hours that were set for the convenience of the staff and not of the customers. I shared hundreds of green cups as a member of the most traditional party in the Political Union, but Mory’s felt more or less like a shabby hoax. The blame for Mory’s demise does not lie in the loss of love of tradition by Yalies, but by the lack of love of that tradition by those who ran the institution for their own narrow satisfaction. They must have felt that Yale was about them, and that nostalgia would pay the bills no matter what happened. I hope the old Mory’s can be swept away and that it might start anew. Since Stover at Yale, thoughtful people have realized that the future of Yale was to meld its unrivalled sense of tradition and corporate spirit with actual knowledge and intelligence. Mory’s could do that. Partner with the French Culinary Institute and replace unionized time servers with budding professionals learning their craft. Help undergraduates become familiar with the history, craft, and joy of good food and drink. Bring in people of intelligence and passion who will be seduced by the aura of Yale to share in the growth of knowledge and understanding. Let’s face facts. The richest Americans of 1912 could not dine as well as ordinary people today. Mory’s should reflect the fact that it is part of a great university and has one of the best markets anyone could hope to cater to. Mory’s has ever been a theme park. Take its role as a museum of university kitsch seriously, but get some visionary management. If that means using electronics, or rotating exhibits, let smart people (who also love Yale) take some chances—as long as it connects to undergraduates and other members. Tennyson put it well: “That man’s the true Conservative who lops the moldered branch away.” Mory’s deserves to be reborn.
While the closing of Mory’s, however temporary, is sad, the Whiffenpoofs are hardly the only ones who have been left without their regular meeting place. In fact, this year’s Whiffs had only had a short time to enjoy their traditional Monday night dinners before Mory’s closed its doors, so it is hardly much of a “loss” to those individuals. What about the Political Union members who have lunched there on welsh rarebit throughout their Yale careers? What about the athletes who have frequented Mory’s to celebrate team events since they arrived as freshmen? Most notably, the SOBs have also had a standing gig at Mory’s—I spent just about every Tuesday night for four years singing and reveling in Mory’s front room, as have all members of the SOBs over the last 40-odd years. Truly the Whiffs are neither the only ones who have lost tradition with the closing of Mory’s, nor the only group forced to relocate its celebrations.
As a life member of Mory’s since my senior year of 1956, I read with great interest and sadness your article on Mory’s future. It seems clear to me that Mory’s has three challenges to its survival. The first is the most devastating and also beyond its control. The second challenge can be corrected and should be. And finally, the third though a difficult problem, can perhaps be addressed. The most insurmountable problem is Connecticut’s minimum drinking age of 21. Most of the student body are not 21 and thus can’t drink at Mory’s or any other local establishment—at least in theory. The primary reason for Yale students to go out of an evening is to kick back and have a few pops. There’s nothing Mory’s can do about this. The second problem is that Mory’s operates with a union staff. As the article points out, almost none of New Haven’s other restaurants or clubs are unionized. Mory’s numbers speak for themselves. Revenue of $1.2 million versus expenses of $1.3 million equals a loss of $168,236. You can’t make that up with volume. Almost 65 percent of those expenses are payroll costs. As the director of Restaurants & Institutions magazine commented, “That kind of labor cost would bury … any operation.” How Mory’s became a union shop is not mentioned in the article but it never should have permitted itself to become unionized. Mory’s needs to undo that mistake. Perhaps explaining to the staff that unless the union is dropped their jobs are in jeopardy might help persuade them. And finally, Mory’s confronts the fact that today’s Yalies, in my opinion, no longer value Yale’s long history and the traditions which were built up over that long time. Mory’s carries no special meaning for them the way it did for prior generations. These kids are too wrapped up in their iPods, BlackBerrys and text messaging. And concocting modern day non-alcoholic substitutes for Green Cups won’t do it. In my opinion, the old Mory’s is soon to be gone. What a shame.
Strengthen unions, don’t break them I strongly disagree with the Mory’s “solution” proposed by Phil Goodwin '56. He has it exactly backward. Instead of trying to break the union at Mory’s, the Yale community should work to ensure that all the other hotels, restaurants, and clubs in New Haven become unionized. This is what happened in Las Vegas so that none of the hotels there are at a competitive disadvantage with lower-wage non-union firms. This may mean that guests in New Haven may have to pay a little more for its hospitality, but that is a small price to pay to ensure that the employees in that industry receive a living wage.
What happens in New Haven I have just read Martin Evans' letter suggesting that Mory’s be saved by Yale somehow suborning all the eating establishments in downtown New Haven into recognizing unions. That way New Haven could be as virtuous as, say, Las Vegas. This is absolutely priceless stuff. You couldn’t make it up if you sat around drinking beer in a staff meeting all night long. Has it not occurred to Dr. Evans that the union paradise of Las Vegas exists due to the total mob control of the locals? The casino owners are not altruists, they are businessmen making protection payoffs for labor peace. I really liked the touch about the “living wage.” I’m not sure what that is, but I suspect it’s about ten percent more than I make at any given time.
No such thing as a free lunch Who does Professor Martin G. Evans think pays for the above-market wages and deluxe benefits extracted by the tight labor monopolies that he advocates? In Detroit, was it the now-retired management that conceded the inflated wages, Cadillac health benefits, loafing parlors for unneeded employees, and early retirement with high pensions and free health care that have driven the big three auto companies into semi-bankruptcy? Not likely. Is it the pension funds, insurance companies, and other stockholders whose stock values are automatically adjusted by the market to the net earnings left after unions' demands? Not likely. It is the general public, including the middle class and the poor, that pay the inflated prices generated by union demands. Years ago, Milton Friedman calculated that the unions that raise their members' standard of living by 10-15 percent accomplish it by lowering the standard of living of the rest of the population by 4 percent. If the figures are somewhat different today, the principle still holds.
Make Mory’s a class project Solving Mory’s financial crisis: it is easy. Pick several of the “best and brightest” at the School of Management and give them a simple case study assignment: how do you fix Mory’s financial problems? Have at least one committee member a graduate of Yale College; at least two of every three meetings held in Mory’s with no charge for food (but not for “beverages”). By spring, the answer should be apparent.
Step up recruiting I’ve read with interest and disappointment of Mory’s apparent demise. Mory’s needs to reach out to other members of the Yale community. I’ve practiced law in downtown New Haven for over 20 years. Other clubs have recruited me, but I haven’t heard from Mory’s yet!
No question—Mory’s should survive Mark Alden Branch ’86 sounds just like the elitist Waspy old-boy Old Blues against whom he is remonstrating. SHOULD MORY'S SURVIVE? Is the sky high? Is the ocean deep? Is the Pope Catholic? Of course Mory’s should survive. Mory’s IS Yale—as much as the bulldog and Sterling Memorial Library! The food is only passable (having just dined there after the Georgetown football game September 20) but the ambiance, decor, service, and reasonably priced cocktails all were truly favorable. The University must not let this institution founder. If need be, the university should take it over and hand it to its own portfolio manager to run and make a fortune. Or call up the Bass brothers for a bailout. And don’t—don’t—change the interior: tables scarred by years of initials, walls covered with team pictures, ceiling hung with winning oars. Keep it all.
Grad students' fight for inclusion While I was president of the Yale Graduate and Professional Student Senate (1976-77), three of my goals for the better assimilation of graduate and professional students into Yale life and lore were: admission to Mory’s, receipt of the Yale Alumni Magazine, and a welcoming address from the president of Yale parallel with the address to the Yale College freshmen. I and the then GPSS vice-president Sharon N. White '81PhD, both of us members of the Elizabethan Club, were proposed for membership in Mory’s. She was admitted; I was not. When I called to inquire, I was informed that her membership would be revoked because only undergraduates could become members. The alumni magazine, likewise, stated in response to my formal inquiry that its clientele was the undergraduate Yale alumni, that class dues subsidized the magazine, and that there was no easy way of imposing such costs on the graduate and professional school alumni. My arguments about the benefits of full membership in the Yale family bearing fruit down the line fell on deaf ears. Everyone was used to treating graduate and professional students differently from “real Yalies.” I remember the shock of a fellow of the Yale Corporation when we revealed that Yale even went to the trouble to buy single-ply toilet paper for the graduate dorms, double-ply for the residential colleges. The welcoming address from the president of Yale did take place and is now a part of annual Yale ceremonial tradition—but only because, during a Yale Graduate School Alumni Committee meeting, a senior professor, without missing a beat, simply repeated my suggestion right after I had said it—and was given “the credit” for my idea. It was as though I was invisible in the room! Thus, I read with great interest your article on Mory’s predicament. Indeed, I was pleased to learn that Mory’s finally did admit graduate and professional students (and alumni/-ae, I presume) to membership in 1991—apparently a rather well-guarded secret that I had not yet heard. And, of course, the alumni magazine was even slower on the uptake, granting us the privileges of the magazine only in the last five years or so. The incident about the suggestion of a welcome address to graduate and professional students speaks for itself. It should thus come as little surprise that fewer graduate and professional alumni/-ae have responded to both organizations. It would appear that only when at last perceived as potential sources of desired financial contribution were we “elevated” to full citizenship. As Dr. White and I told members of the Yale Corporation during an AYA Assembly: “Yale is a university, not simply a college.” Would that those of us trying to awaken Yale to that obvious fact had been heeded—literally decades ago.
“WASP” analogous to the “N-word” Usually the cover of the Yale Alumni Magazine is interesting and artistic, but not the cover of this issue. To me it is startling, distressing and offensive. I am Catholic. Indeed, the only Protestant in our house was my father who was born in Scotland. Nonetheless, the term “WASP” is pejorative, condescending, and analogous to the “N” word, especially in the context in which it was used. Whether or not Mory’s should be closed is an issue but to call it a “WASP” bastion is beyond the pale. It shows poor judgment on the part of the editorial staff and does no credit to a great university. You could have used a more euphonious appellation such as “post old-boy” or “post-male Mory’s” to convey the idea. I was impressed, and moved, by the remarks of Moshe Sarfaty, for whom this will be forever a part of his life experience. Many others like him will follow. May I suggest this: leave Mory’s open for lunch for the faculty and keep evening hours for the students. The alumni will come and go anyway as they please.
Two birds, one stone To the problems down at Mory’s: Add a Yankee Doodle wing.
Defying Mory’s color line I enjoyed very much reading the article on Mory’s. In 1946-47, when I was a student at the Graduate School, my friends and I “integrated” the establishment one evening. A group of us went for a nightcap one evening. Included were Johnny Buttrick, Sam A. Edwards, Billy Cousins, and a couple other fellows from the Hall of Graduate Studies. Billy was African American, from a distinguished New Haven family of educators. When the waiter said he could not serve Billy a nightcap because he was African American, we said that in that case none of us would have a drink, and that we would leave the establishment demonstratively. The waiter gave in, apologized, and served drinks all around. Although as graduate students we were ineligible for membership at Mory’s, several of our party had been undergraduates and members before the war, and had maintained their membership in good standing.
Offensive to WASPs I compliment the staff and author on the well-written Mory’s article in the current issue. However, the cover puts me off with the labels “Will Mory’s survive? (And should it?”) and the offensive legend “In post-WASP Yale, the bastion of the old-boy Old Blues is struggling to stay afloat.” A more appropriate title” “Our beloved Mory’s is struggling to survive. Here’s what’s going on.” The statement “In post-WASP Yale” and “bastion of the old-boy Old Blues” should have been left out. The acronym “WASP” and phrase “bastion of old-boy Old Blues” are derogatory. Who says Yale is now “Post-WASP?” Does the mission statement of Yale say that Yale has now moved past domination by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants? Are “old boys” and “old Blues” to be ignored? I am a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant and proud of it. Does diversity exclude us? Does my age make me irrelevant? The label “Will Mory’s survive? (And should it?)” would be better left out. You are correct in raising the question. But why not take a positive attitude? I think most alumni want Mory’s to survive.
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