In Woolsey Hall on the Friday morning before commencement, five men were pushing staircases into place in front of the stage and one man was playing a scale, very slowly, at the organ console. It was a scale in octaves. When he moved down to a new tone, the upper register was sometimes slightly out of tune, and he would hold the notes until they gradually moved into accord -- all by themselves, apparently.

I asked him what he was doing. "Trying to tune the organ in the middle of World War III," he said, over the scraping and rumbling of the staircases. He was Joseph Dzeda, one of the two curators of the Newberry Organ. It was his apprentice, Nathan Smith, high up and invisible behind the pipes, who was adjusting them to correct the pitches. Joe asked if I wanted to go up for a tour, and Nathan showed me the guts of one of the largest musical instruments in the world. Behind the big gilt pipes there are huge pipes made of dull gray metal, and still bigger wooden ones, enormous sugar pine boxes a foot across and 33 feet high. When one of these deep bass notes sounds, the breeze from the pipe's mouth will blow a person's hair straight up into the air.

Being an alumna on campus feels like being at the fair with an all-day pass to the rides.

From moments like these, this magazine is conceived. Because the editor happened to be taking a shortcut through Woolsey when the organ was being tuned for commencement, we may one day publish a photo essay showing the contrast between the ornamental facade and the working parts behind it. Looking upward from the floor of the performance hall, you see the gold pipes with their blue floral designs; standing behind those same pipes, you can look between them down to the hall. You can also see that the gold and blue cover only their fronts. In the back, where the music is made, there's no need for paint.

Such are the unpredictable joys of Yale. Sometimes, being an alumna on campus feels like being at the fair with an all-day pass to the rides. And although the Yale administration these days is very conscious of the need to make Yale friendlier and less clubby than it was in the past, and the amenities of Yale more inviting to all, being a graduate (and working for the graduates, in effect, at this magazine) still makes it easier to interrupt a man at work just to ask what he's doing.

Because being a Yale graduate confers that expectation of welcome -- a sense of membership -- in so many places besides Woolsey Hall, it matters very much who becomes one. This issue of the magazine looks at "membership" in Yale from a few different angles. President Rick Levin '74PhD discusses income and admissions in his interview. (Yale gives financial assistance to low-income students, but the chances they can qualify for admission remain much slimmer than for students from wealthier families.) The Association of Yale Alumni is trying to involve more graduates than it has in the past. And in a piece about Yale College's sexual harassment policies, Emily Bazelon '93, '00JD, examines what the university does to make sure that, once admitted, young women remain full and respected members of the community.

The cover story reminds us that entry to Yale can change not only one's own life, but the lives of one's family. One day in 1996, Yale's fencing coach dropped by to visit David Jacobson '74, and they fenced a little for old times' sake. Jacobson's daughter had never seen fencing before. She would have graduated from Yale this year, but she's too busy training for the Olympics.