Victor Ashe Sues Yale

Caption digresssing: The Yale Alumni Association offices building, now called “Rose Alumni House,” was built for the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and like countless other architecturally-distinguished buildings erected by alumni for the use of undergraduate societies was crassly gobbled up by the evil Yale Administration during a period when fraternity membership and finances had fallen on bad times during the latter decades of the last century to be subsequently devoted to use of one more arm of the endlessly-expanding University bureaucracy.

DKE used to hold a party and dance for the entire campus in this building on Harvard Game weekend. In the current century, DKE has been a continual target of negative stereotyping and persecution by the intolerant campus Left. It formerly rented housing on Lake Place, and more recently acquired a property on Lynnwood Place.

Last year, paradigmatic insider Victor H. Ashe ’67 ran a professional and well-funded petition campaign as an outsider for a seat on the Yale Corporation.

You would have thought offhand that Victor would have been a shoe-in Corporation candidate. Victor is a millionaire with a top-end boarding-school background (Groton and Hotchkiss), a Bonesman, a Marine Corps veteran and long-time mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, a former candidate for the US Senate (who lost to Al Gore), and quondam Ambassador to Poland. Yes, Victor is a Republican, sort of anyway. But Victor is your classic Liberal, Me-Too, Ripon Society, Country Club kind of Republican. Victor, in my own experience, always hated conservatives as passionately as any democrat.

Victor is wealthy and a hard-core pro politician and Victor was evidently determined. His effort was well-funded and quite professional. Victor reached every single Yale alumn repeatedly by mail, Victor appeared on television, and he ran a non-politically-partisan campaign focused entirely “opening up the process of selecting board members.” People I knew at Yale who’d been Victor’s principal opponents in Young Republicans were persuaded to buy into Victor’s idealistic campaign rhetoric and actually voted for him.

Victor undoubtedly brought as much political talent to the table as anyone possibly could, and he spent his own money lavishly. I’d say the likelihood of anyone in the lifetime of today’s undergrads coming along and running a stronger outsider candidacy is nil.

But Victor the Rebel clearly put the fear into the Self-Perpetuating In-Group that actually runs dear old Yale. Despite slaughtering Victor with a 64-36% landslide, the Secret Coven was so shaken by Victor’s Insurrection that they followed up their election victory by promptly changing the rules, banning such outsider petition candidacies for all time. So, there!

The latest news from the Oldest College Daily tells us that Victor and a classmate retired legal luminary (Cadwallader Wickersham & Taft, no less) are suing the bastards. Read the rest of this entry »