The Tripod

You probably know Will Yale as the ever-present campaigner who can't stop talking about politics. On the high school stage, he's been shot with his pants down in bed with the shooter's fiancé, and in Trinity musicals played the drugged out guy who sleeps with two girls a night. Just this past weekend, he played a Boy Scout with an unfortunate erection. He has played so many sexualized and druggie characters in all the shows that he's done that maybe he is being a little typecast. However, the shows he does make him feel alive. He can be anything he wants and not be limited by the so-called real world. In reality, you can live your whole life in the real world, and never really know yourself. You can just get by with living like a zombie, never knowing what you're passionate about, what you're capable of.

Above all Will is truly passionate about this school. He joined the SGA his first semester, and immediately began work on After Office Hours, a program designed to reimburse students who take their professors to dinner. Having personally used its program, I can say from experience that it is a fantastic way to further meaningful dialogue between students and professors.

Will also knows what he's capable of. Last spring, he assumed the chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. He was one of two freshmen on the Steering Board, a body of committee chairs and vice-presidents that form strategy. While he was chair, Will realized that a leader's primary responsibility is to facilitate individual senators' passions - not to impose an agenda. Learning to listen has been a key element of his political education.

Will's experience with leadership is as much formed by positive revelations as negative examples. One example is highly contentious with other senators and the administration, the other, overly conciliatory. Will believes in a middle course to challenge the administration, but "towards productive ends," realizing that all members of the college community have the same goals and mission.

Will's history of political organizing informs his understanding of campus organizing. He realizes that in order to get an agenda past administrators, the SGA needs to rally students and faculty behind popular causes. He knows that the SGA is infinitely more likely to succeed in its goals if senators walk into meetings with surveys of student opinion, better examples at peer institutions, and budgets of money saved. This, combined with goals that set high standards, are what will make the SGA a better advocate for students.

Perhaps in order to make a difference you have to shatter reality and live beyond conventional expectations. Will Yale and many past politicians have aspired to do this. Theodore Roosevelt called it "the strenuous life."

Musical theater isn't just a hobby Will happens to enjoy on the side. It is central to his experience. It informs every action he takes. Is he living a comfortable, staid life? Or is he seizing every opportunity and changing how the game is played? Midway through high school, he realized that maintaining the status quo in life would result in just the status quo and a perfectly ordinary life. This is fine in and of itself-he's told me that he grew up in a perfectly ordinary family with perfectly ordinary parents, but he clearly feels an innate drive to seek higher challenges and to aspire to greater possibilities. Will truly believes in the potential of his work to improve students' lives at Trinity and he has genuine concern and love for our school.

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