Calling All ’69ers who were in the Yale 5-Year BA Program or took a “Gap” year

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 take a “gap year” of your own making?
  • Do you know a roommate or classmate who did?

We are reaching out to any “Fiver” from ’69 (and adjacent classes) who is interested in meeting with kindred souls to share memories about “what a difference a year made.”

The intention is to invite all Fivers 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 by registering below.   Or, if you are unable to attend, but wish to remain in contact on this theme, simply register anyway and let Mark McCormick (mark.mccormick565@gmail.com) or Tim Weiskel ’68 (tweiskel@gmail.com) know.

Register Here

Those of us who spent our undergraduate years at Yale in the late 1960s and early 1970s experienced a remarkable period of tension and conflict in American and global history. Those who entered in the Yale Class of 1968, for example, already shared a common national experience before they even began their college careers.

During their Senior Year in secondary school they had all experienced the traumatic assassination of President John F. Kennedy, just as they were formulating their plans to attend college. When they arrived on “Old Campus” in September 1964, therefore, they already had shared a common tragedy unprecedented in their lifetimes or those of their parents.  Perhaps, — they might have thought — the college years would assist them to sort out these events and help them make sense of their experience.

As it turned out, the times were not very tolerant of those stopping to wonder about life and what was happening to the country or the world. Because of the Vietnam War, those who took time away from their role as full-time students, lost their “Student Deferment” status and swiftly became subject to a military draft to enter the Vietnam War as a combatant.

A few students thought this was unjust and thought as well that the Vietnam war itself was unjustifiable. Some chose to craft their own time away from Yale through taking a “year off” — some sort of “gap year” that they hoped would enable them to make better use of their time at Yale once they could see their way clear to what was occurring around them.

President Kingman Brewster recognized the enormous and awkward pressure placed upon undergraduates at the time and responded by initiating “A Five Year B. A. Experiment.” Under the Direction of Professor Prosser Gifford of the History Department, the program invited sophomores’ from the Class of 1968 to submit proposals for work in a self-supporting job to be located in “a cultural environment which contrasts sharply from any developed western society.” Twelve students were chosen from these applicants and in September 1966 Yale officially announced the first cohort of students to participate in Yale’s “Experimental Five-Year BA” program.

For these members of the program Yale certified the continuation of their student status to their respective Draft Boards.  The program was funded by a grant from the Carnegie Foundation by which the students received assistance for the cost of  their health insurance and travel expenses to and from the points of their employment in the foreign culture where they had found a self-supporting job for the year between their Sophomore and Junior years at Yale.

This program continued to operate under the successive direction of Dr. Sidney Mintz (Anthropology Department) and his wife, Jackie Mintz, and subsequently under Dr. William Foltz (Political Science Department) and his wife, Anne Marie Foltz, until it came eventually to an end during the 1970s.

If you have any memories, reflections or thoughts about “what a difference a year made” please share them on Thursday, 26 September 2024 at 4 PM Eastern Time. 

Click here to register.

Read details here.