He fields messages from misguided Connecticut mothers who think the team might be able to offer their children surf lessons. Professors, heads of college and other students would stop to shred artificial gnar.įor now, Dorji has taken the helm of the unofficial surf team and primarily oversees the team’s Facebook page. All one needed was a giant blue tarp and a skateboard for “tarp surfing.” Participants rolled on a skateboard across the tarp while others lifted it, simulating an ocean wave in the middle of Cross Campus. There was a way to surf on campus when the team was official, the Facebook page revealed. To team members, the hoops they had to jump through to maintain official status ultimately provided few benefits. It came down to the fact that if the Yale surf team was incorporated as an official student organization, they would have to deal with more restrictions. Yale’s policies required team leadership to schedule transportation in advance and mediate liability concerns well before each “practice.” Even though the University can supply funds to student groups for various activities, such as transportation, the in-the-moment nature of surfing rendered that support moot. Qualifying as an official Yale organization requires no small amount of work. “It wasn’t really compatible with Yale’s way of doing things.” “The nature of surfing is such that we would oftentimes make the decision to go in a split second,” Dorji said. Large, towering beach mansions lean over dune vegetation, like sea oats, where the slate gray Atlantic meets gravelly, slightly lighter-gray beach. There’s one small surf shop and a few restaurants in the small town nearby, along with a bar or two. Two hours of driving brings Yale surfers to a popular surfing location called Matunuck in southeastern Rhode Island. Having class is a nonissue most would rather catch a wave than sit through lecture. When the forecast is promising, surf team members wake up at dawn - or, since they’re sleep-deprived students, usually a few hours later - and hop into willing team members’ cars. “It’s a way for them to connect with each other and access that at a place that doesn’t necessarily offer it as easily as some of the places that we come from.” “Mostly, it’s just a great group of people that has evolved over the years - people who feel most comfortable and at home in the ocean,” he said. The lack of waves forces surf team members to travel southward to Long Island or further east to Rhode Island. Long Island shadows the state’s coastline, preventing swell from reaching southern Connecticut’s shores. New Haven’s location presents several barriers to surfing, Dorji explained, in contrast to the sunny, surfer-dominated West Coast. Today, the surf team is a casual group of Yale undergraduates, graduate students and alumni - completely separate from the University - whose most official connection is this Facebook group. When he came to Yale, he joined the surf team, which was then still formally affiliated with the University. It’s kind of gone in and out over time.”ĭorji, who is now earning his master’s of public health at Yale, grew up surfing in California. “I’m sure at some point in the future, somebody will reinstate it.
#Yes in surfer lingo series#
“Our status as an official organization just kind of lapsed,” Dorji told me in a series of voice memos. Picture credits were given to Mila Dorji ’20.
The caption read “Yew! The boys hit Rhode Island for a successful Saturday strike mission a few weeks back,” followed by a collage of blue-tinted snapshots: the ocean, two cars loaded with surfing gear, a candid moment of a surfer in a wetsuit. The most recent post was from April 28, 2017.
The focal point was a student who, feverishly taking notes in the photo, had propped his navy and cerulean surfboard against the classroom wall. One picture, which I had to enlarge, was of a lecture hall. A grid of photos depicted wetsuit-clad figures on white surfboards, deftly maneuvering across gray waves with their arms extended. The page has garnered 171 likes - including four of my Facebook friends - and 174 followers. “The Yale Surf Team is a club that organizes surfing trips, lessons, and competitions for participation by all members of the Yale community,” the “About” section read. Aimlessly scrolling through Yale-related Facebook pages one November afternoon, half-heartedly searching for Yale Daily News story ideas, I came across a graphic of a bulldog balancing on a surfboard.
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