Time and change shall (not) avail....

The controversy about the Yale admissions office video has spilled over into the pages of The New Yorker this week. A brief item, with poisonous intent, quoting a number of Old Blues, including one of my classmates, with a lot of tsk tsk tsk, Yale's heading into the dumpster, etc etc. As I joked last night to my pal Jeff, the admissions dean, there will always be a large number of alumni who, if you reduced the point size in the alumni magazine class notes by a quarter point, would howl in protest. Some of us just don't like change, right? (Maybe I'm one of them, to some extent.)

Jeff previewed the video for me during an overnight visit to NYC a few weeks ago, and I thought it was one of the freshest and most innovative recruiting tools I have seen in a long time. Keeping in mind that the piece is targeting potential university admissions candidates and is not a development office donor cultivation effort, you have to give the creators (i.e., students) wide berth and a lot of credit for trying to paint an offbeat, tongue in cheek portrait of an elite institution that, by its very nature, can appear intimidating and off-putting to many.

Yale always felt like a welcoming place to me, which is why I fell in love with it during my campus visit with my parents many years ago. The university has evolved in every way to maintain world class status, and competes for the best candidates in a global talent pool. It's thrilling to know that we're setting the pace for deploying visual media to remain competitive. And doubly thrilling that a dear friend is the leader of this success.

Here's a link, if you want to see for yourself. It's fun ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGn3-RW8Ajk