"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Scarlet Letter"

Once again this year, we stifled a yawn when US News and World Report's rankings listed Yeshiva's religious affiliation as "none." "After all," we thought cynically, "this is only something our alma mater needs to do in order to obtain government grants. Everyone knows that 'under Jewish auspices' actually translates to 'we're frum.' We just have to play along with this obvious farce once a year, and it's easy money. No great outrage here."

We actually got to practice our knowing winks more than once this fall, as the Presidential Search Committee's letter kicking off the great Lamm successor hunt expunged all references to Torah knowledge and religious devotion from its list of required attributes for a new President. "Don't worry," the Yeshiva bigs assured us. "The letter is meaningless, its language is only there to satisfy our lawyers." In on the secret, we played along with the charade that Yeshiva is an equal opportunity employer, dutifully agreeing that in our institution, anyone can grow up to be President.

In our little masquerade, however, the distinction between our costume and real face is not as clear-cut as we would like to believe. Unfortunately, our complicity to the duplicity of Sheldon and his merry men as they take from the government and give to the endowment incurs a higher cost to our institution than any of us will readily admit. When I first came to campus two years ago, seeing a student lounging in public Yeshiva space or sitting in an afternoon class while not wearing a kippa or some kind of head covering was a rare event. This year, though, the only place I feel absolutely assured of not seeing a bare head is in the Main Bais Medrash.

As a new student, I was impressed by Orientation events that drew a wide range of Yeshiva students, including the many from the "Bais Medrash" set. This year, "yeshivish" friends of mine told me that they would not think of going to such activities. "I stopped in on Stand Up YU," one senior told me, "but I was uncomfortable with the way some of the Stern women there were dressed, and left right away."

Any student on campus can automatically rattle off the shibboleth that Yeshiva is polarizing religiously. Most remain unconcerned by this development, however. The different factions are content to remain ensconced in their own little worlds, and never the twain shall meet. But this polarization stems directly from Yeshiva's burgeoning identity crisis. If we play the dangerous game of showing one institutional face to the world, while revealing another only among friends, we run the risk of collectively confusing the two. One extreme on campus will mistake the charade for reality, while the other, convinced of its religious rectitude, will blithely marginalize and ignore its fellow.

Obviously kippas and dress codes are not the underlying issue here, and recent Stern College Student Council attempts at instituting a dress code downtown are not the way out of this bewildering costume party. No one should dress or act a certain way out of compulsion, and two years ago, no one in Yeshiva did. What distinguished then from now was a unifying principle that has since lost its power. A feeling of fellowship as students of Yeshiva University once bridged the two extrema on campus. Agnostics wore kippot on campus because they felt a subconscious desire to identify with their religious classmates. Bais Medrash guys went to Orientation events because there was no "Other" there; they identified with every student in attendance, no matter how religious.

We can only reorient our confused campus by giving it a unifying ideal to follow. I'm not na‹ve enough to hope that Yeshiva will remove the mask of "Religious Affiliation: None" at the cost of jeopardizing funding to its graduate schools. Other options are possible, however. The search committee has a unique opportunity to select a President who espouses some ideal that everyone can get behind, instead of choosing an apparatchik who will administer the University adeptly while continuing to polarize it.

Furthermore, we have to wonder why Yeshiva remains a nonsectarian University, with RIETS as a sectarian affiliate, when it can be a proudly religious University, with nonsectarian affiliate graduate schools.

The masquerade has ended, and Yeshiva needs to remove its paper face. If, because of its administrators and Board members, it continues to wear its mask, it will only doom its student body to further confusion and division.