New Haven: "They're not homeless, they're anchoritic."

Monday, cigarette #1
On Chapel St., 9:15am

Yale takes the indoctrination of freshmen very seriously, and the proper way to handle the New Haven homeless gets its own paragraph in the orientation handbook. Still, in spite of every freshman counselor's insistence that one should never give money to a street beggar ("If you want to help, there are plenty of places to volunteer"), most of the students I know have worked out their own systems:

"I won't give them money, but I'll offer to buy food for them."

"I usually give cash if it looks like they really need it, but I stay away from the ones I know are going to spend it on drugs."

"I won't give money, but I always offer a cigarette instead. And then another cigarette for the road if they say yes." [me]

The man who approached me on the street this morning didn't try to disguise what he needed the money for. "I'm really hung over, honey. Do you have any money so I can buy a drink?" Most people who I've asked say the right thing to do in this case is to offer to buy a sandwich for the guy instead, but Housemate Will and I had the same instinct: give him money for a drink. If you have time, go have a drink with him.

I'm not sure why Will thinks so (my guess is that it has something to do with "the will to badass"), but the only way I can explain why I only give money to beggars when I think they will spend it on booze is this story from Sayings of the Desert Fathers (and I don't just mean that it articulates my reasons why, I mean that I read the story and changed my policy):

Three old men, of whom one had a bad reputation, came one day to Abba Achilles. The first asked him, ‘Father, make me a fishing-net.’ ‘I will not make you one,’ he replied. Then the second said, ‘Of your charity make one, so that we may have a souvenir of you in the monastery.’ But he said, ‘I do not have time.’

Then the third one, who had a bad reputation, said, ‘Make me a fishing-net, so that I may have something from your hands, Father.’ Abba Achilles answered him at once, ‘For you, I will make one.’

Then the two other old men asked him privately, ‘Why did you not want to do what we asked you, but you promised to do what he asked?’ The old man gave them this answer, ‘I told you I would not make one, and you were not disappointed, since you thought that I had no time. But if I had not made one for him, he would have said, “The old man has heard about my sin, and that is why he does not want to make me anything,” and so our relationship would have broken down. But now I have cheered his soul, so that he will not be overcome with grief.’

In other New Haven news, Reihan neglects the real problem with Yale's ambitious renovations: when the A&A building is under construction, the Party of the Right can't hold debates on the roof.