Passion among ivypersons.

PASSION AMONG IVYPERSONS

IF ONE WERE to ask, What are the youngpeople who run the Yale Daily News majoring in? the answer would surely be, Toleration. So engrossed are they in the subject that probably they would not answer the question, What is your minor?-- because the word minor is too close to the word "minority,' and those who major in Toleration can't risk suggesting that there is anything minor about minorities.

The purpose of the endless drive towardequality ought to be a relaxed sense of security. But the seizure of equalitarianism has exactly the opposite effect. One thinks of women at Yale University, for example, as pretty well secure provided they do not insist on using men's urinals: but they are being so frequently reminded of their insecurity that they become convinced of it.

A recent communication from the editor-in-chiefof the Yale Daily News (H. Andrew Romanoff signs himself "Andrew,' as his imperial Russian ancestors might have done) is addressed to former editors of the Yale Daily News, and details "several projects' in which the board is engaged. It comes to the board's Major:

"At the same time, though, we recognizecertain problems the News has had. Foremost among them is the threat of prejudice. To eliminate any discrimination in our paper or in our staff, we created a special panel, initiated discussions, and scheduled meetings with the leaders of different campus cultural groups--The Asian American Student Association, The Black Student Alliance at Yale, Despierta Boricua (a Puerto Rican group), and the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (a Mexican-American group). We plan to meet soon with the Gay/Lesbian Co-op. . . . We will maintain an unswerving dedication to fairness, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that these efforts continue.'

Thirty years ago Randall Jarrell publisheda novel--Pictures from an Institution --designed to make people laugh. Here is a sentence from the narrator about Benton College, whose trendy egalitarianism of 1954 is the meaty orthodoxy of the Yale Daily News in 1987. "And there were what I [the narrator] used to call to myself token students: black students, brown students, yellow students, students who were believers of the major creeds of Earth--one or two of each. If there is in Tierra del Fuego a family of fire-worshippers with a daughter of marriageable age, and a couple of thousand dollars a year to spare, they can educate her at Benton.'

One would think that a single sentencepublished every now and then in the Yale Daily News would suffice. It would say: "Membership in the editorial or business boards of the Yale Daily News is achieved by merit in competitions in which gender and race play no role.' What is it that the editor of the News talks about when visiting with members of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan? A pledge that the News will come out in favor of bilingual education? What is there to say to the gays--that no competitor will be subjected to a Rorschach test? What is there to say to the women's groups?

Ah, plenty. Andrew and his ministershave drawn up imperial decrees on the matter, field trips in Toleration.

"We are committed to eliminating sexism.Through a process of discussion and investigation, we are trying to examine sexual discrimination and end it. Last month, the editorial board voted to change its policy on gender differentiation: We now refer to female first-year students as "freshwomen' and to mixed-sex groups and individuals of unknown sex as "freshpeople' (singular, "freshperson').'

Ah, what the late Randall Jarrell wouldhave done with that. The president of Benton College was so . . . so tolerant that he "yearned for men to be discovered on the moon, so that he could prove that he was not prejudiced against moonmen.' Andrew Romanoff would go Jarrell one better, by insisting that he was not prejudiced against moonpersons.

It is disappointing that in a college thatattracts major talent, the ideology of egalitarianism should, even among aspirant writers, have such a deadening effect on the ear. I predict the revolt will one day come (as surely it must come) not from the cloddish ideologues of the male sex, but from the women. "Don't you call me a freshwoman to my face,' a fresh woman will freshly say to a tone-deaf freshperson, and the bells will ring, and personkind will cheer.