Ezra Stiles College

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Ezra Stiles College


Motto	? -
Named For	Ezra Stiles
Established	1961
Colors	Black, gold
College Master	Stuart Schwartz
College Dean	Jennifer Wood
Undergraduates	?
Called	Stilesians
Location	302 York Street
Harvard Sister House(s)	Currier House
Homepage	http://www.ezrastilescollege.org

Ezra Stiles College is a residential college at Yale University, built in 1961 by Eero Saarinen. Architecturally, it is known for its lack of right angles. It is adjacent to Morse College.

Stiles College is best known for its recent success in Yale's intramural sports program. The Tyng Cup is presented to the residential college with the best overall intramural sports performance. Stiles won the Tyng Cup in 2003, 2004, 2005, but lost its chance for 4 consecutive wins in 2006 when Silliman College was crowned Tyng Cup Champions.

Despite this, Ezra Stiles has 10 wins overall, with Pierson College and Timothy Dwight College leading that category with 11.

Ezra Stiles and Morse College co-host Yale's annual Casino Night, rumored to be one of the nation's best and biggest organized college parties. Casino Night is a formal affair, featuring a variety of casino-style games and festivities alongside quality live music. The college experienced its most successful Casino Night to date in 2005, with nearly 3,000 guest attending an event organized by SAC chairs David Nitkin ('07), Christina Tubb ('07), and Eric Sandberg-Zakian ('07).

For the past three years, the official Stiles cheer has been "Stiles, yeah. Stiles, yeah. GO F-ING MOOSE."

[edit] Trivia

The mascot is the A. Bartlett Giamatti Memorial Moose. The stuffed moose head that graces the college dining hall was named in honor of a former resident master, "Bart" Giamatti, who in 1977 became Yale's youngest president, and in 1989 was named Commissioner of Baseball. Giamatti's son, actor Paul Giamatti (Sideways) lived in the Master's House on the Ezra Stiles college grounds from birth through age 5.)

It is a popular myth that the building was meant to be covered in ivy but due to the type of concrete used, the ivy never grew. Students often complain that the lack of ivy has made Stiles (and neighboring Morse) more ugly than they were originally intended to be, but contrary to popular belief, there was never meant to be any ivy.

Additionally, because none of the interior walls make right angles, specialized beds and desks were apparently designed by the architect that would fit each room. Although large built in desks complete with bookshelves were installed, because of expense Yale went with ill-fitting standard beds instead. Furthermore, the building was designed with radiant heating embedded in the floors. Due to maintenance troubles, radiators were installed in lieu of the original system at a later date.

Despite such architectural shortcomings, it is widely speculated that Ezra Stiles and its counterpart, Morse College, were constructed for purposes far more complex than the essentially straightforward task of housing undergraduates. Indeed, the common sentiment that they were fashioned after "Italian villas" utterly fails to obscure the far more obvious physical resemblance--nuclear bunkers. Tastelessly thick walls, narrow carefully angled windows, excess storage/closet space, and an underground network of passages all tend to support this view. The timeliness of the colleges' construction, just as the pressures of the Cold War were beginning to rise, speaks volumes about the University's hidden intentions.^{[original research?]}

[edit] Notable alumni

Lloyd Kaufman, director, producer, and owner of Troma Entertainment. (ES ~'70)
L. Paul Bremer III, director and proconsul of post-war Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority (ES '63)
David Gergen, presidential advisor and political commentator (ES '63)
Robert Kaiser, associate editor, The Washington Post (ES '64)
Bob Woodward, asst. managing editor and political reporter, The Washington Post (ES '65)
Dan Froomkin, political columnist and blogger, The Washington Post (ES '85)
Mitch Kapor, founder, Lotus Development Corp. (ES '71)
Linda Jewell, diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador (ES '75)
Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island (ES '78)
Edward Norton, actor (ES '91)
Alexandra Robbins, journalist and author (ES '98)