From: Nikola Chubrich Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2019 19:20:19 -0400 Subject: getting better To: Ernst Meyer Dear Dr. Meyer--- I apologize for being out of touch. I caught the flu and have been convalescing; meanwhile my Alma Mater seems to have long-since caught a moral flu. I found out last week that it summarily fired my fencing coach of 49 years, who was one of my most profound teachers. I remember well your advice to write; I did. Have no idea if these kinds of things will ever by read, but some of my teammates at least did. Dear President Salovey: Today I heard that one of my brothers in fencing, upon getting the news of Coach's firing, broke down and cried. I refuse to relay pathos: that was a reasonable reaction. I haven't done as well. All I can do is wonder what kind of world I live in; I am wondering, now, what Yale stands for. What I have to say here is pointed and lengthy----necessarily so. The difficulty of the job of running an entire university, and the shortness of days, weighs on me as I write this. I wish I didn't have to write it. I thank you for your service, and I thank Director Chun (cc'd) for hers. But no matter how tightly packed your schedules are, I hope you will never render your impossible jobs tractable by reducing people to convenient abstractions, and justify how you manage them with pat formulas. Here is some of what we've been hearing: *"Personnel"; "long and careful thought"; "moving forward under new leadership". *I don't know how to put it nicely: these expressions are Orwellian. (See, for instance, *Politics and the English Language *.) Do you remember when an airline passenger was "re-accommodated" a couple years ago? Translation: he was dragged off the plane kicking and screaming. Madness lurks in lifeless phrases. *Moving forward under new leadership* doesn't say what it means, nor has anything else coming out of the Athletic Department. What can *long and careful thought *mean when no explanation for Coach's firing is offered, no input having been solicited? What does *leadership *mean when the constituency for that leadership is ignored? What can *moving forward *mean when there is no replacement for Coach in sight, other than a *pro forma *online job posting? Coach has been treated like the employee of a faceless corporation devoid of tradition. First he was put on a year-by-year contract. Then he was let go without being told why, and a perfunctory announcement was immediately issued. The only written response from the Athletic Department has been: *personnel decisions are private*. (Private to *whom*?) This style of communication seems to be endemic to our world, and I suppose it was bound to take root at Yale. I'm not sure there is a problem of the present day that couldn't be addressed by people sitting down and having an honest conversation. But one reads messages like Director Chun's and instantly grasps that such a conversation will not be welcome. So the cycle goes on. Rhetorical siege-engines are prepared and found insufficient; the like-minded talk to the like-minded, write manifestos like Marx and ultimatums like an Austro-Hungarian, and eventually resort to inking signs or some other low-bandwidth political activity. I prefer not to engage in one-sided conversations, but they're better than the alternatives. The Athletic Department's treatment of Coach is so fundamentally wrong that one searches in vain for a set of common principles on which to erect an argument. Let me simply ask a few questions. I address these to Director Chun. 1. Action taken by fiat presupposes subjects *amenable *to fiat. But an Ivy League college team is neither an army nor a monopoly. The fencing program exists *because students volunteer for it*. As athletic director you have the power to end Coach's career, but not the power to maintain a *team*. Varsity sports require an immense amount of time and effort; they compete with an ever-growing number of other campus pursuits. Plenty of athletes----even recruits----end up deciding to spend their time elsewhere; and at this point, I'd say they may be the *sensible *ones. What is there to justify such an investment other than *passion*? If you won't honor Coach for putting in fifty years, why should a student expect to be valued after *four *years? What do you have to offer a student for returning next year, other than a blank? 2. It seems that Coach's satisfactory replacement is regarded as a foregone conclusion. But given that no fencers we know of have been consulted, who is going to evaluate the candidates? And what caliber of candidates will there be? There is certainly very little time for them to throw their hats in the ring. The best people are busy; who is going to be able to drop everything they are doing and start work this summer? Or will the new coach arrive in September with no time to prepare for the season? And why would the greatest of coaches, who will have many choices where to work, want to work for Yale at this point? Their future status has been revealed; the way they will be disposed of at the end of their careers has been prophesied. 3. The public eventually fills voids left by lack of transparency with speculation. This is especially true during times of scandal. Right now Yale is under fire for corruption in admissions by way of athletics. Still worse, there is terrible news out of the Harvard fencing program. Coach's reputation is being put at risk. In the absence of any substantive justification for a precipitous decision, people are going to wonder whether very grave charges have been made against Coach. This scenario is so unlikely and out-of-character that it is difficult to speak of even in the subjunctive. If there *were *such charges, Coach has not been given a chance to defend himself, nor were his students given a chance to defend *him*. Another possibility the public may consider is that a new administrator barely a year into her job has simply decided to "shake things up". That does not reflect well on the Athletics Department. 4. Where are you going to find funding for the program? Alumni have given generously in the past. You have lost their support. 5. Would you treat the football team this way? * Something is missing here. Director Chun appears to be an eminently practical person, and all these points are quite obvious. What could outweigh them? I don't know, and shadow-boxing is not my sport. It's a good sport though. I might as well try my hand at it. Maybe Coach's firing really *is* just a shake-up. Or maybe the Athletic Department has reacted to the admissions scandal by pre-emptively cutting all coaches down to size, as if they were *a priori *suspect. Maybe Coach is experiencing age-discrimination. But I don't like fighting straw men. I spent my first few months on the fencing team hitting dummies. I have put in my time with straw men. So let's suppose the Athletic Department has correctly determined that objective factors indicate a "fresh face" really *is* going to bump Yale up in the rankings. Given the points raised above I don't see how this could possibly be true; it looks more like a *blow *to the team. But let's suppose this anyway. It would be perfectly valid moneyball then, and the sort of game Yale plays in admitting students: good grades, good scores =3D good people. And if that's the beginning and the end of the argument, the sole accepted ontology, I am afraid I have nothing to offer. There is a very weighty consideration on the other end of the scale, but it is incommensurable with what has been spoken of so far. * Here I must shift gears. I face an impossible dilemma. To get to the heart of the matter, I am obliged to speak in a kind of elevated prose that is no longer read: perhaps because, on the one hand, it is mocked; and on the other, it does not fit under the span of viral thought. Why the complexity, why the novelty of expression, why the lack of concision? This is like asking why weapons of war must be so elaborate. Opposing obduracy requires a supreme effort. Descend from the keep, take your mind out of armor, and I will give you simple prose. All week I have struggled for words; I was unable to find them until I realized *why *I struggle: I am suffering from the reticence necessary for contemplation of the obscene. I hasten to add that what has happened here is surely an *accidental *obscenity, and so far from the usual kind that it is difficult to recognize as such. To indulge in a platitude: *mistakes have been made*. Lest I be seen slinging epithets, allow me to define what I mean. 'Obscenity' is a slippery enough concept as it is, and has sometimes ensnared great works of art while allowing very terrible things to pass by unnoticed. By 'obscenity' I mean: a weapon aimed at the heart of *meaning*, which also corrodes the possibility of *future *meaning. Thus, for instance, pornography unmeans *love*; wanton violence unmeans *life*. Coach's firing has unmeaned the life of service, and the very idea of being a teacher. * The desolation of meaning lies secure in the knowledge that it has blunted all possible tools for restoration. What arrow, then, can I draw taught across the mind, aim at folly: not to make it bleed, but for it to change its heart? Words? But words are a fixative: under language we are commanded not changed, frozen in place, entrenched in our thinking. How many of us walk around encased in abstract nouns, unreachable and sometimes incorrigible, on the blithe road to interchangeability? How, in the time of propaganda's digital apotheosis, is it possible to speak with sincerity? Even our stories are suspect and often astroturfed; and mine is hardly singular enough to be worth the telling. For Coach did not stint in his service, but gave freely, not as a job, but as a calling. I never had anyone else like him at Yale; I have never encountered anyone else like him in life. The fencing team, while it may not be an attraction for tailgaters, is nearly unique among all the sports at Yale. *Any* student can walk on and,, if he is willing to put his faith in the program, put in the time, and listen to Coach,, become a varsity athlete. And not only by attending practice as one among many, but by being *taught *in private. Coach was the best of his profession. It was is if one were to be tutored weekly by a Nobel laureate. There was not another opportunity on campus like it. When I arrived on the seventh floor of Payne Whitney, there was no evidence I had any athletic talent whatsoever. I was therefore surprised, as many freshmen have been, that Coach paid attention to me. Why bother, when he had an ample supply of talented recruits? But something convinced me to stay. And on the strength of that *something*----what was it other than Coach's *presence*?----I devoted the greater part of my undergraduate years to the fencing team. I showed up every day by 3:15, left around 7:30, bolted down dinner as the dining halls were closing, and was rarely able to hit the books before 8:30. It was a heavy price to pay; energy is *conserved, *and having majored in physics on the energy left over from four hours of intense and intellectual exercise, I can say I understand the law of conservation of energy in more ways than one;; but what I got in return was worth every drop of sweat and every bruise to my body. If Coach ever left the building before any of us did, I don't remember it. He certainly arrived earlier in the morning than any college student cared to imagine. There was no such thing as an off-season for him: when I stayed in New Haven through the summers I continued to take a weekly lesson, just as I did throughout the year. I think Coach would have preferred me to take *more*. Though I made varsity and won bouts, it would be absurd to reduce Coach's achievement to a list of titles and trophies. His arena transcended the fencing strip. He was a father to us. If you didn't realize this by being called into his office one day, you learned it at the last banquet senior year. You gave your speech, and then Coach told you the truth about yourself. Nothing could be hidden from him. He was kind, but he didn't mince words. Those who failed to follow his advice were fated to learn how right he was. Yale brims with honored minds: professors, deans, masters, advisers, directors of undergraduate study. Professors of mathematics, professors of literature; professors of the past, professors of the future. Coach was professor of *life*, and a mentor without equal. The university protects its honored teachers from passing fashion and the whims of incoming administrations through *tenure*. We are all aware that, formally speaking, a coach does not have tenure. But I do not think any of my teammates ever expected they would see the *letter *of the law used against the *spirit *of the law. If Coach Harutunian is not to be treated honorably after half a century of dedication ('dedication' is too empty a word), then *every *coach and team at Yale is dishonored with him, and athletics stands revealed as an afterthought in the life of the university. The very department that exists to defend the value of sport has been the one to deliver this blow. It has done it in a total absence of sportsmanship. Here, I think, we can finally point to the missing ingredient in the department's calculations. * The events of the past week have been a blow to the fencing team, and I venture to say, beyond the fencing team. But the blow is not irrevocable. The fencer, whose sport descends from the final stage of human conflict, well understands that art can be found in strife. Honor can be restored; forgiveness granted even after the sharpest exchange of blows;; friendship renewed after the bout. Hope emerges at the last gasp; thrust and parry reveal the outline of principle. Revoke this decision, President Salovey. We all hope that Coach will be welcome on the seventh floor until he lives to be a hundred. But if he must retire, let us take the time for him to do it in the right way. Do this for the students. * When I lived behind the gates of Yale's courtyards, I understood that the life of the academy was one of sacrifices not easily achieved. Leave it to the world at large to ignore human value; those who chose to make their lives within those walls understood they would in all likelihood be paid poorly for their efforts, but in return they would live in *purpose*. Outside the gates the world descends in tumult. Astounding sums of money slosh about with little benefit to those it passes by. The life of service is chosen by the few, and the fewer. The money supply inflates; the money supply crashes. Everyone you meet knows of someone dead of a drug overdose. Is it, perhaps, that *meaning *was the ultimate currency? That the narrow habits of the governors of our wide world have put meaning into retreat? What then rushes in to fill its place? In the world after graduation, tremendous abuses of power come to light day after day. They range from the merely venal to the grotesque. It is not enough to say that they occur only because bad people do bad things. What makes them possible in the first place? What of power *itself*= ? God forbid I should impute ill intentions to the decision makers in this situation. But it has to be admitted that you and Director Chun are what is known as *powerful people*. Anyone who can end a career with a touch of the Send button *is*. We know you have difficult jobs, too little time in the day to do them, and approximations must be made to render the intractable tractable. But sometimes approximations fail spectacularly. There seems to be a misunderstanding at work about what power *entails*. With great power must come great transparency. Being powerful does not mean never having to explain yourself. Being powerful does not mean never having to listen. Being powerful does not mean never admitting to mistakes of action or thought. * If we are to say you cannot make these concessions to tractability, what then can you do? Delegate to those who *know*; discern the honorable advice. Ask questions, and don't accept evasive answers. Ever seek out the critical moment when the flow of time threatens to jump to a wayward channel. You are at one of those junctures now. Nikola Chubrich,