General

Mark McCormick and Tim Weiskel, (Yale ’68), were in the first cohort of an experimental “Five Year B.A.” program formally funded by the Carnegie Foundation, approved by the Yale Faculty in 1965 and brought into the Yale College curriculum in 1966-67.  In conversations with other members of that program, Tim and Mark found that many participants viewed the experience as having a significant and enduring effect on their lives.

Some quick questions:

• • Where was your head during the ‘60s and ‘70s?  Did you decide to take “time off” from Yale?
  • If so, did you sign up for President Brewster’s “Experimental Five-Year BA” program?”  Or, did you think about it?
  • Or did you take a “gap year” of your own making? Or did you know a roommate or classmate who did?

We are reaching out to anyone from the “Boom years” who is interested in meeting with kindred souls to share memories about “what a difference a year made.” 

The intention is to invite all Boomers who would be interested in exchanging recollections and thoughts about the Yale 5-Year BA Program along with others who devised their own “gap year” experiences as part of their Yale undergraduate years.

To begin these conversations Mark McCormick (Yale ’68) and Tim Weiskel (Yale ’68) have scheduled an open access Zoominar for an hour on Thursday, 26 September 2024 at 4 PM Eastern Time. Please join in with your memories and reflections.  Or, if you are unable to attend, but wish to remain in contact on this theme, click the registration box as well, and let us know. 

Register Here

• We are an ad hoc group of class leaders (see below) of the Yale Classes of 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1973.
• Each class organizes events, but here, “on the back nine” of life, we recognize that our numbers are dwindling, sometimes below the threshold for a successful event.  Inviting Yalies of “our generation” creates a viable audience, especially for specialized subjects,
• Friendships often span class-year boundaries: It’s common to be friends with people a year or two ahead … or behind … your graduating class.  And, the generational glue that binds all of us who came of age in “the Sixties” makes sharing our events even more sensible. 

So, “Yale Boom” is born, a group defined as Yalies who came of age during the counter-culture and the reactions to it; during psychedelia and the Nixon prohibition; during The Beatles; during racial unrest and anti-war fervor and Kent State and so on.  This generation of Yalies was different from the Brooks-Brothers-buttoned-down group that preceded us and the “proto-professionals” who succeeded us.

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Today at WYBCX – Yale’s streaming student station – the leaders and managers are mostly women. But that was very much NOT the case when the first female undergraduates arrived at WYBC in 1969 and after. So what was that transition like? And how did it affect the women and men who were there … and the station?

Find out by joining us on Sunday Nov 13, at 7 pm ET / 4 pm PT, for a special Zoom event titled “The First Women at WYBC.”

The New Journal began in 1967, the brainchild of Yale Daily News expatriates Pete Yeager and Dan Yergin, both ’68.   It was student-run and free — one of the first serious, college publications that didn’t require a subscription. A few of us ’69ers joined that first year:  Paul Malamud, Howard Newman, Jean-Pierre Jordan.  (Any others?

Although the people who rewrite history have been busily rewriting that period of time known as ‘The Sixties’ (in actuality primarily the years between 1965 and 1973), those of us who came of age back then know that, whereas politics and protests were a part of it, in the end they were only, at best,