I just handed two unbound copies of my senior essay into the Office of New Haven and State Affairs in order to be judged for the "New Haven Prize."



Having thus placed my work in the colonial tradition of Robert Dahl, R. Wolfinger, and Douglas Rae, i feel profoundly dirty. My essay will not win the New Haven prize, not simply because of my own doubts about its quality, nor solely because it is intended as an attack on everything the office stands for, but also because Rae is one of the judges, and i take several potshots at his recent self-important account of New Haven's decline. While some have advised that i take a perverse solace in the fact that Rae et al. will wade through all 80 pages of me writing about how New Haven beat them, I'm somewhat afraid that they'll somehow try to use it against the federation -- not that there's anything in there they couldn't find on their own in manuscripts and archives or SML microfilm, but it still almost feels like a betrayal.



At least it was all rained on when i handed it in. And now i'm emailing it to some union people to restore karmic balance. Or at least, I would be, if Yale's email server wasn't conspiring against me...