Word: heeler
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...every three students "heels" strenuously for hard-won posts on the Yale News, the athletic manager hierarchy, or even the Student Laundry Association, in eye-blearing competitions that often demand 70 hours a week. The word "heel" perhaps refers to that part of the clothing most evident as the heeler hustles down streets selling ads, rushes through New Haven collecting bills, and bends over to swab floors and dump trash buckets. Or, as one heeler suggested last week, it may derive from a dog's heeling...
...heeler makes the grade, his reward is "prestige." That's a word often heard around New Haven. When a man breaks onto the Yale Record he is admired by everyone, not because he can write well, which he often can't but because he has achieved success and become a wheel. As one Eli explained, he "fought and conquered." Ask a Yalie who the "big men on campus" are, and he'll reel off a dozen or so names and positions. Year-book polls show that 70 percent of the students "admire students who occupy important extra-curricular positions...
Yale's definition of success excludes the man who too ardently seeks to get ahead. Elis frown on the "pusher." A heeler is thus in the disconcerting position of working night and day on an activity, and at the same time exuding the impression that he really isn't interested. As a result, Yalies often look apathetic and uninspired in performing their extra-curricular functions...
Besides keeping up advertising accounts he has long been unofficial trainer, coach and father confessor to the hard-working team of freshman "heelers" who compete every year for the two dozen coveted positions on the News board. He has also seen many a promising but needy heeler drop out because he couldn't hold a part-time job and still work the 10 to 12 hours a day that heeling calls...
...Busta handled his campaign with the skill of an old ward-heeler. Convinced that urban Kingston with its higher percentage of literates would go against him, he stayed away from the capital and worked the rural areas...