Volume 3 - Issue 10

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Comment: Tranquility across the Atlantic and transformations in New H aven.

Letter from Cambridge The slope of the temperature curve is so much gentler here that the cultivated grasses stay green all year round.

Beds of yellow winter aconite are blooming now, and down by the Cam, you can see the sap running orange already in the willows. Out in back of our flat, where the Churchill College rugby field stretches for almost a solid, very bright green mile, quantities of birds gather every morning. Sometimes, coming out the back door, I see ihem all turned and gazing in the same direction: I look that way too, curious to see what's going on. But nothing is, at least nothing that I can see, and my cross· ing the field sweeps them into the air, squadron after squadron of rooks, crows, fieldfares, thrushes, black· birds, sparrows ....

The slow peace of this place is such that the news from home comes to us like bulletins from a lunatic asylum. America, at least seen from this distance, seems a society in the throes of a nervous breakdown. The dominant feelings that inform and energize the movements sweeping our country - i.e., rage, outrage- are lacking here. Most people aren't very angry. There is a natural orderliness in the English temperament, a certain calmness that these people must breathe in with their oxygen. You can even see it in the faces, in the way people move: there isn't much tension, voices are low, little encounters are full of easy courtesy.

Even the quarrelling styles are different : a few days after we'd arrived in Cambridge, I was in a small grocery store when a man came in, looking somewhat agitated.

He went up to the shopowner and said in a quietly tense tone : "My wife was in here a few moments ago. I believe you've insulted her."

I stepped out of the way, started putting the bread I'd bought into my overloaded shopping bag. The shopkeeper flushed, replied in a voice tinged with a German accent: "The little boy, your little boy, he was picking everything up and moving it around. I told her she oughtn't to let him behave like that. After all, this is a civilised country."

"Are you implying," inquired the man witheringly, ..that my wife is not a civilised woman?"

At this point, I slipped out of the shop. But I had, as I later realized, overheard what in England is a wild argument. Words, like acts, are taken very seriously here ; short of violence, people are listened to. This seems to me to be a critical difference between ours and the British society, for just as in certain families no one will listen unless you raise your voice to a scream, so in America, short of violence of speech or action, people feel (rightly in some cases, wrongly in others) that they won't obtain a hearing.

One curiosity of living in Cambridge, I find, is that it's much easier to talk to the students. A faculty wife is under no pressure either to play Uncle Tom to youth, sound groovy, swing along with the destruction-andthen-a-great-new-society-will-follow; or, on the other hand, to be the big bad authoritarian mommy. They'll just talk to you; it's nice. Perhaps it's the system of tutorials which makes them accustomed to communicating with people older than themselves. Or it might be that there is truly much less social segregation: we meet and see many more students at parties than we did in New Haven, even though my husband, as an Overseas Fellow, hasn't any students of his own this year.

The town itself isn't only a university town; it's a market town. Produce from the surrounding shire comes in every day, and the fields on every side are full of cabbages and brussels sprouts and long rank-smelling crops of cauliflower. The market itself is in the very center of Cambridge, flanked on two sides by shops, on one side by the town Guildhall, on the last by the stone spires of Great Saint Mary's Church. Cycling down to the center to buy food, I find myself dallying among the stalls, looking at the local pottery, and the cheap trinkets from India, the sheepskin rugs, potted plants, exotically colored tulips.

The students crowding by are wild and wonderful looking, though perhaps not so wonderful as some of the kids one sees in London. In London t here's nothing quite like taking the escalator down into t he Underground, seeing on one side the enormous ads: half· naked girls drooping out of bikinis: "COME AND SEE ME ... (visit Spain)," THERE'S NOTHING I LIKE BEITER NEXT TO MY SKIN THAN .. (and it's a kind of underwear). And then, many ads for restoring men's hair, with coy peeks at bald patches and fascinating·innuendoes about re-sewing(?). And, at the bottom, a really huge advertisement, two people's asses in the same red underpants and blaring declaration: UNISEX. Meanwhile, ascending, pouring off the other side of the escalator are the Russian princesses in their furtrimmed maxi coats, the pseudo Naval officers, the cloaked Counts, Pirates... It's the acting out of a neoRomantic fantasy, and it has its own dreamy beauty.

There's a great deal less pot around Cambridge than around any American campus I can think of; and certainly, pot smoking hasn't around it the religious aura that its American devotees often accord it. (I mean it doesn't represent Truth, Beauty , A Way of Ufe). On the other hand I have seen it around at faculty parties now and then, which I never did in New Haven. A distinguished naturalist told me that he'd taken LSD around seven times; he was a friend of Aldous Huxley's, he hastened to assure me, not one of these scruffy newcomers to the scene. His wife, a beautiful Persian woman, said she wouldn't dream, ever, of taking alcohol; that she came from a hash culture and thought people who drank alcohol had a funny smell about them (I stepped back quickly).

Englishmen seem to tolerate a lot of eccentricities in one another, despite the very present and living power of tradition. I suppose this toleration is a kind of pressure valve: they don't need to turn the coin of conformity to its opposite, Dionysian side. The national tend~ncy is to take things with a twinkle: they've been making fun recently, on the telly, of the Women's Liberation Movement in America. A tall, pretty blonde has been hired to go around pinching men's behinds as a demonstration of women's right to 'do so. Her activities, which are televised, are hilarious: those British men, turning, startled, to see who has assaulted them. Then the girl asking how they.feel about women's right to pinch men on the behind? ..1 don't know; I haven't given it any thought," said one distinguished looking man, caught on the stairs of Parliament. He thought a moment, then added: "Actually, I do think it's rather nice." Then turned, saw the camera, and realized he'd been speaking to the nation.

The news on the telly comes through in a way that is strangely muffled. I suppose that we are actually accustomed to our newsmen making high drama out of every incident; watching the news at home is a kind of shock treatment. Although it's true that here there is little in the way of local violence, the news from abroad still is delivered with no expression, no emotion, virtually no facial movement. There is so much reserve: I mentioned this to a television producer whom we met in London. "Oh we say things in quieter ways," was his reply. And then he asked me, hadn't I noticed the way such-and-such a newscaster always raised one eyebrow when he reported on the Royal Family?

I hadn't noticed.

Before we came over, George Steiner, the literary critic, who is one of the Fellows of Churchill College (Churchill, where we live, is sister college to Morse at Yale) , warned us that England was really a foreign country. I didn't take this as a serious warning; in fact, it is so. While we share a common language, our modes of understanding are profoundly different. One's expectations of certain responses are often bewilderingly unfulfilled; conversations veer off in strange ways; the underlying assumptions are different. Sometimes we come home fiom an English gathering as exhausted as

continued on page 15

Volume three, number ten April 12, 1970 3

All this and P.R. too!

by Dick Corey

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Review of Bergin 's Dante

by Jules Noel Wright

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Confessions of a film freak

by David Freeman

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Long Blue line

by Rod Green

Editors : Herman Hong Paul Goldberger Managing Editor: Dan Mcintyre Executive Editor: Stephen Thomas Business Manager: William Palmer Art Director: Cathy Johnson

Copy Editors: Richard Caples Stuart Kla wans Production Manager: Jack Friedman Advertising Manager : Ch;lrles H.S. Chapman Assistant Editors: Bryan Di Salvatore George Kannar Edward Landler David Meter Sam Miller Circulation Managers : John Callaway Brant Switzler Contributing Editors: Susan Braudy David Freeman Nicki Kalish Mopsy Strange Kennedy Lawrence Lasker Jonathan Lear Michael Lerner Leo Ribuffo Walter Wagoner Staff: Richard Conniff, W. Curtis Francis John Friedman, Patrick Lydon Gus Oli;er Robert Parsons, Manuel Perez. ' THIRD CLASS NON-PROFIT PERMIT: Third Class Non-Profit postage PAID in New Haven, Conn. The New Journal is published by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. 06520, and is printed at The News Press, a division of the West Hartford News. Published bi-weekly during the academic year. Subscriptions for Yale students are S2.00 pee year and for Yale faculty and staff, $4.50 per year. For all others, subscriptions are $7.50 per year ($4.50 for students). Newsstand copies are 50 cents (30 cents for back issues).

The New Journal c copyright 1970 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., a non-profit corporation. No material from this publication may be used in any form without written consent from The New Journal at Yale, lnc.

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3/The New Journal/ April 12, 1970

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All this and P.R . too!

by Dick Corey

Dick Corey, a second year graduate student, was concerned about the Co-op much before he was chosen by the Graduate Senate to represent them on the Co-op's Board of Directors. From his year of experience, often frustrating, occasionally hopeful, he has culled these details in an attempt to explain the Co-op, its organization, and why it is what it is. Though extremely reluctant to write this article he felt it to be one of the few ways to gain notice fo r the suggestions he has to make for a better Co-op.

It's hard to imagine anyone getting worked up over the price of deodorants at MalJey's or the unavailability of some book at Whitlock's. But at the Co-op when you are made to wait two months to get some needed book , you feel a right to get angry. The Co-op is, well, a co-operative.

But it isn't. In a 1965 revision of its articles of incorporation, passed by the Connecticut legislature without any hoopla, the Co-op became a non-stock corporation, wholly controlJed by its twentyfive directors. The articles were changed specifically to exclude membership voting rights, and a revision of the by-laws made in the same year states that "members shaH not be e ntitled to vote on any matter and this corporation shaH be operated under the management of its board of directors which shall be self-perpetuating."

The rather hushed action was designed to make impossible any charge that the Board of Directors had been acting illegally in naming new directors. For if members had a right to vote for directors (as there is reason to believe they had prior to 1965) then many previous Boards may have been elected illegally. The Board may also have acted illegally by failing to have a quorum at various times.

Some nifty work in Hartford, however, has spared subsequent Boards of any nagging suspicion that things aren't being done quite right. It also nicely eliminates the possibility that a group of activated students could directly influence Co-op policy. The Board rests assured.

The present Board is composed of eight faculty directors, eight students, eight alumni, and Charles L Willoughby, President and General Manager. The faculty (of eight, seven are or recently have been Yale administrators) and the alumni are selected by the Nominating Committee, in which Mr. Willoughby

takes an active part though he is not technically a member. This group searches for congenial replacements for retiring members, with very few suggestions sought from the atumni and faculty to be represented. The six undergraduate directors a re elected at the end of their freshman year by their class. They serve three years. The Law School has in the past chosen a director and the Graduate Senate chose one this year.

The selection of at least graduate and professional student directors will undoubtedly be modified later this year.

The Executive Committee recently recommended a change, to be ratified by the full Board , in the proportion and number of student directors. The proposal would increase the number of student directors to twelve and would include the principle of parity between the undergraduate and the graduate and professional students.

But in practice, the real power and influence in the store is centered in the Executive Committee. It is responsible for determining the patronage refund, fixing salaries, and operating the store between meetings of the full Board. It presently consists of eleven members, including Mr. Willoughby and the two customary seniors. As all Co-op meetings include dining at Mory's afterwards, the Executive Committee has pleasant times and common experience to bind it.

In addition, the members of the Executive Committee are similar in temperament, age, and outlook, similarities unlikely to be tempered by the infrequent interaction with the students on the Board.

The store's management centers in Mr. Willoughby. His style is a dominating and controlling one. As the only source of information and analysis of the Coop's operations, he often makes his will Co-op policy, properly ratified by the various boards. Another result of his dominance is that the movement of policy is downward ; hardly ever has policy resulted from the few suggestions made by the student duectors.

The management group comes off as tight-lipped, set, and uninnovative. When considered together with Mr. Willoughby, the management's primary characteristics are an unrelenting secretiveness, a lack of candor, a startling capacity for defensiveness, and, above all , loyalty to the present management. The secrecy in the store is not limited to information

4/The New Journal/ April 12, 1970

which might hurt its competitiveness.

For example, it took student directors a month and a half and a decision of the Executive Committee to gain access to the salary ranges (but not the exact salary) of the executive staff, although this information could probably be gained through a phone call or visit to the Secretary of State.

Once, plans having come to my attention that detailed a major expansion for the book department, I asked Mr. Willoughby to elaborate on them. He looked surprised and said he had no knowledge of any such plans. But within a short time a dossier including the plans and considerations that made their implementation impossible was presented to the Student Board. Nor is this the only time Mr. Willoughby has found it convenient to deny facts to the Student Board.

Beyond this, there has been no great impulse by the board of directors itself to inform the Co-op's membership about operations or significant structural changes.

Mr. Willoughby's self view is missionary. His management does only good.

In reading his answers to suggestions and complaints that the Co-op has recently begun posting (after months of prodding by the student directors) you feel the Co-op is incapable of mistakes because Mr. Willoughby can explain them all into oblivion. He is closed to criticism and anathematizes any conflicting viewpoint.

Once he went to the trouble of Xeroxing a newsletter which suggested that the Co-op's book department was in bad shape and which supported my petition for structural changes. He sent it to all the student directors with a cover note that charged it was "a reflection on the intelligence and integrity of the Board of Directors."

He abhors publicity. At my second meeting with him he told me, "Well, I hope you're not going to talk with the newspapers.... You know how they can distort things and cause trouble."

In the Fall of 1965 the News discovered that the Co-op was using rather extreme tactics in getting Yale students to sign confessions after they had been apprehended as suspected shoplifters.

According to the News reporter who discovered the practice, suspected students "were taken to the Co-op basement and were told that the Executive Committee was already acting in their case ... that they had better sign." The News was amazed and chagrinned and went to Willoughby. The outcome, as some former Newsmen have reported, is that the News agreed to kill any story and the Co-op to kill the practice. But publicity, which can make things so distorted, was avoided.

The news released is often more arcane than informative. Any student during his tenure can count on being supplied with reprints of clippings on shoplifting. A large share of the very few references to the Co-op in the News refer to shoplifting. I 965-66 was typical. '"The figure is startling,' said Mr. Willoughby, 'but he would give no statistics¡¡

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(September 21, 1965). Again, "Although refusing to give figures, he did indicate that there was a noticeable rise in theft this year" (March 11, 1966).

The basic problem with Mr. Willoughby's zeal is that it is tainted by his views of students and of the store's goals. He has an unfortunate tendency to stereotype any student who wants reform as a radical; then he proceeds to ignore the substance of what they want. His Yale man tends to wear Gant shirts jlnd Deansgate suits, snack on Poppycock, and ask Santa Claus for Head skis. His coeds, on the other hand, are John-Meyer-of-Norwalk girls who drool over Dansk pretties.

This view, which is shared by most alumni and faculty directors, is reinforced by his contacts with students, for the student directors have traditionally been jocks or other BMOC's. Willoughby is a trustee at Saint Anthony Hall and eats at Mory's. These patterns help fum his mind about the average Yale man. It's no wonder Mr. Willoughby thinks the Co-op serves the university community.

In addition to his propensity to see every student as a single type, his concept of what the Co-op should be like is further afflicted by a rather disturbingly unclear notion of who shops there. In a December meeting of the Student Board Mr. Willougl1by expressed his conviction that students spent less at the Co-op than faculty and alumni members and that graduate and professional students spent less than undergraduates - both misconceptions.

As with his rather limited definition of the community he serves, Mr. Willoughby's maneuverability is limited by his insistence that the Co-op is to be treated as any other business.

Consequently, he wants it to be successful, which gives rise to his constant concern over profitability, a concern that causes him to lose sight of the Co-op's role as a community service - as a real cooperative. The result is that many departments exist in the Co-op because they allegedly return high profits. But these departments cramp and confine others, like the book department, which are less profitable, but more important to a university community.

To Willoughby the mark of business success is the maintenance of the patronage refund at a high level. But in order to maintain it profits must be high and, understandably, prices must

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be high. Mr. Willoughby's counter is that the Co-op vigilantly insures "competitive prices." But it is interesting to note that the basis of comparison is "Macy's and other department stores,'' to quote Willoughby. Yet other competitors, such as discount stores, exist. In only one Co-op department, the Health and Beauty aids section, has the basis of comparison (recently) been shifted from Macy's to cut-rate drug stores. But the rest of the departments retain the list prices which simply aren't the lowest possible.

The more nefarious method of maintaining a high PR is by confiscating refunds due to late-paying customers.

This boosts the PR rate by two and one half per cent. In addition a credit charge is added after a bill becomes thirty days late. In contrast, at the Harvard Co-op, no member loses his patrona~e refund. He simply pays the credit charge on overdue bilJs. But Mr. Willoughby's attitude is that high PR shall prevail. Thus herefuses to consider reasonable alternatives such as cutting prices to give immediate discounts while retaining some profits for captial needs.

But how is Mr. Willoughby able to maintain such tight control? Don't the student directors do anything?

Traditionally the students, whose gleaming proftles grace the Co-op's walls, have been a "pretty dead group" according to one director. The reason is not that the student directors don't want to be active, at least initially, but

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5/The New Journal/Apri1 12, 1970

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that the thrust of their socialization is toward complacency. The under-

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graduate directors are elected during their freshman year and serve until they graduate. Since they are given little to do, their interest and their activism quickly wither. In addition, they carry the burden of youth, a burden which has nothing to do with their ability to function effectively or productively but instead affects their perception of that ability. The common belief presses on them that the adult directors must be more able and more knowledgeable because they are adults. Most adult directors simply do not think of them as decision-makers in the organization. The cognition that nothing is expected of them, together with the lack of anything significant to do, and the impulse to yield to ttie authority of age, make t he student directors a generally lifeless body.

In addition, Mr. Willoughby tightly controls the monthly meetings. He establishes the agenda, invites the guests, and presides. Typically, after the minutes are read, a financial report will be given by a member of the staff. Next there are reports from the book and advertising departments, an operations report and student inquiries. Most student inquiries concern fuewood and deodorants ; those that involve more substantial issues almost always are explained away by Mr. Willoughby with a statement of "Coop Policy." The directors offer some questions, often minor. Once, twentyfive minutes was given over to a discussion of whether or not the Co-op should stock Marvel comic books.

The function of the agenda and of member inquiries is to create the illusion of having accomplished something as weU a~ to fill up time.

This year, however, the Student Board has begun to assert a good deal of independence and initiative. The meetings have broken away from Mr. Willoughby's control, and significant issues are being discussed without his approval. This has prompted several students to comment , ''At least the meetings are not dull anymore."

But whether the Board will continue in this unusual vein, and in opposition to the Executive Committee and Mr.

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Willoughby on some issues, is problemmatical (given the "advisory" role that Mr. Willoughby and the Executive Committee has assigned them).

The point where the Co-op breaks down beyond belief is in the book department. It is not efficient in getting texts {though this, of course, is most often a professor's or publisher's fault) or in keeping current a good supply of books needed for scholarly endeavor {though if you want to go into gardening or Agatha Christie, the Co-op can help you there). Graduate students strongly registered their dissatisfaction in the recent Co-op questionnaire. A history professor spent fifteen minutes of class time recently agonizing over his difficulties in getting a book he needed. "But at Harvard," he ended, "at Harvard they have all those wonderful books, anything you could want."

The Co-op's Book Committee, assisted by faculty consultants and, since February, graduate consultants, is supposed to make sure that the book department is functio ning weU. The faculty consultant program was established in 1961 as an attempt to keep the basic stock list up to date. There have been and are several professors who give generously of their time, but more whose contributions are minimal.

At the fust meeting of the Book Committee last November, one professor in the social sciences expressed his view of his role : he selected good, scholarly works that he and his colleagues thought valuable and he specifically excluded popularized works and scholarly efforts in areas that did not interest him. Another professor, again in the social sciences, thought that "graduate students do not buy books" and that the Co-op should merely provide books of interest to the faculty. Another phenomenon of the faculty consultants is an almost proprietary concern expressed by a few for the shelves in "their" departments.

The program, after nine years, hasn't been successful. The book department manager, Mr. G. Roysce Smith, and I talked about the problem, and I agreed to recruit graduate students to supplement the faculty consultants. in the departments which had them, and to serve

their function in those departments which did not. On starting to contact the various Graduate Senate members and departmental clubs, I found that in several departments such as political science, economics, and Spanish, students and student groups were very concerned about the books in their respective fields and were about to send representatives to the Co-op to do something about it.

Thus, while initially hesitant about the prospects of recruiting graduate students to work for the two dollars an hour that Mr. Willoughby was willing to pay I found that many students would have been willing to take on the responsibility of reviewing the Co-op's book selection voluntarily.

Different consultants give various accounts of what they were asked to do.

But it is clear from even Mr. Smith's description of their role that in addition to updating the neglected stock lists in their areas, they were at least initially supposed to perform the duties of stock clerks. In essence, the recruitment of graduate consultants was as much an attempt to recruit more labor as an attempt to improve the Co-op's book selection.

But even if the graduates are as successful as they can be, many other problems must be solved before the book department can operate as it should. Ultimately, the Co-op must find some way besides cheap, casual labor on the part of graduate students to maintain a fust-rate book store.

There is definitely a personnel problem. The department, which has a high turn-over rate, must accept a great deal of blame for the failure to revise basic stock lists in the past, to recruit and adequately train personnel , or to seek out specialists who would make sure that the Co-op's book selection was adequate.

There are administrative problems, aggravated this year by a large increase in course changes and a greater popularity of paperbacks. One of the results is an often unnecessary delay in reordering books - clerks have in the past waited for weeks to send in an order.

But the basic problem is one of space. Unless more space is allocated to

What's

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Everyone's talking about It and we have the book.

The Environmental •s •s

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Ecological catastrophe threatens the very base of our sociopolitical structure. The combined scourges of water and air pollution, mismanaged national resources and open spaces, increasing and unplanned populations, urban congestion, and mismanagement of our national energies are creating human despair In the midst of unprecedented technological advances. The papers In this book, representing a lecture series presented during 1968-69 at the School of Forestry at Yale UnJversity, deal with our survival in the face of the rapid deterioration of our natural surroundings.

Man's Struggle to Live with Himself edited by Harold W. Helfrich, Jr.

The contributors are among the most distinguished authorities in the fields of science, law, regional planning, economics, and government. Their commentaries arise from practical experience gained during outstanding careers and each provides a close examination of one of the ecological or ethical problems plaguing mQnkind, which, in their ultimate significance, overshadow wars, ideologles,And races.

A Yale Fastback. 3 Publication date, April 22.

Cloth $7.50 Paper $1.95

Everyone's talking about It and we have the bOok.

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LaMont C. Cole

Professor of Ecology, Cornell University Playing Ruulan Roulette with Biogeochemical Cycles

lan McHarg

Chairman, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania The Plight

David Oatee

Professor of Botany, Washington University Weather Modification In the Service of Mankind: Promise or Peril?

Paul Ehrlich

Professor of Population, Stanford University ~amine 1975: Fact or Fallacy? .

Georg Borgetrom

Professor of Food Technology, Michigan State University The Harvest of the Seas: How Fruitful and for Whom?

Jarnea Q , Hor.fall

Director, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station The Green Revolution: Agriculture in the Face of the Population Explosion

Joseph L Sax

Professor of Law, University of Michigan The Search for Environmental Quality: The Role of the Courts

Emilio Q . Daddario

Chairman of the Subcommitt- on Science. Research and Development, U .S. Congress The Federal Research Dollar: Priorities and Goals

Clarence J . Glacken

University of California at Berkeley Man Against Nature: An Outmoded Concept

Wllllem A. Nlerlng

Professor of Botany, Connecticut College The Dilemma of the Coastal Wetlands: Confflct of Local, National, and Worl d Priorities

Kenneth E. louldlng

Professor of Economics. University of Colorado Fun and Games with the Gross National Product-The Role of Misleading Indicators in Social Policy

Chert.. R. RON

Former Federal Power Commissioner Federal Government as an Inadvertent Advocate of Environmental Degradation

II

Yale University Presa New Haven and London

the book department, every other effort to make it adequate is bound to fail .

There is simply not enough room for books, and if the graduate consultants order many new titles the problem can only increase. Already one consultant reports that "most of the books that have come in for one section have already been sold off the bench in the aisle." Others describe personnel as hesitant to order new titles until the space problem has been solved. (Only one consultant has said he has adequate space to revise the stock list for his department.)

But the tight, cramped, poorly arranged shelves, the tiny storage area and the limited selections are going to remain until Mr. Willoughby giyes up his position that the Co-op must continue to stock Nine Aags cologne and Mont Blanc fountain pens as well as the Loeb Classical Library. While Mr. Willoughby feels such things are a necessary service to the Co-op's clientele, the fact is that they're available all over New Haven and don't require a trip to New York, as findi ng a desired book often does. And the university store, it seems, should try harder to provide books than cologne and posh fountain pens.

In talking with Mr. Willoughby last November every suggestion I had about the present selection of goods was countered by the objection that the Co-op's current merchandise selection was necessary to serve the entire community; and that it would be uneconomical to increase the book department. I asked for data on the costs in various departments and was referred to the annual . report. Then, I asked for a breakdown of costs and profits per department, which is not available in the reports.

Jdr. Willoughby asked what I was specifically interested in, and I told him then, and on several other occasions, that I was interested in seeing how feasible it would be to replace some of the staid and non-student oriented goods with books. I still have not received such data. Who runs the Co-op and the way in which they run it is of great significance to many at Yale. The issue is whether the present structure and organ· ization can lead to a representative governance and responsive management.

Considering the present situation the following steps seem advisable : 1.) Students and other directors should become involved as planners in all decision-making at the Co-op. It is essential that the management and the rest of the Board take the students and the job of director seriously.

2.) Directors should be elected yearly by ballot, provision should be made for membership referendum on important issues, and the Co-op should hold an annual meeting of members.

3.) Meetings should be announced, and agendas and accounts of actions taken should be made available, the press should be invited to meetings.

4.) The general manager should no longer preside at Board meetings. Above all, the existing ethic that keeps organizational loyalty paramount must be replac.e.d

with an orientation towards serving and representing members. The structure of the Board should not isolate students or other directors.

5.) The Co-op should bring in outside consultants to evaluate all aspects of its management and policy. The recent questionnaire is a beginning, at least in assessing wants. A restructuring of operations can only be based upon valid information about present operations and member preferences.

The reconsideration of existing policy should acknowledge the obvious, something the present management has not been able to do. As Milton Brown, President of the Harvard Co-op, said during last year's restructuring of that institution , "Students are just not buying suits and hats anymore." 'I'

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No superlative need apply

by Jules Noel Wright

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Jules Noel Wright is a lecturer in Italilln at Yale and Accademico Associato della Pontificia Accademia Tiberina.

Megon biblion megon kakon: "A big book is a big bag" is a pretty good rule of thumb. Like all rules, however, it is susceptible to exceptions, one of the most notable being the Grossman edition of the Divine Comedy. Dante has found in Bergin and Baskin what Shakespeare did in Verdi and Boito . The presentation is a masterpiece.

To review the Divine Comedy would at this point be rather superfluous. It seems to have stood the test of years pretty well; its medieval impostation notwithstanding, it has a continuingly incisive universality.

Whatever else it is, the Divine Comedy is a personal experience: the present edition is one as well. It is obviously the fruition of a labor of love, and, like all such endeavors, must be viewed in its entirety. The translation and the illustrations are as integral a part of each other as can be imagined in a collaboration. One is reminded by juxtaposition of Fellini Satyricon, which, like the Bergin-Baskin Dante, is the reflection of the individual perception of a classic.

This edition is the culmination of a life-long study of Dante by Mr. Bergin.

Finis coronat opus. There are, of course, those who would quibble with the rendering of certain lines, as, for example, the inscription over the gates of Hell : Through me ye enter in the town of woe, Through me ye pass into eternal sorrow, Through me ye join the nation of the lost.

Justice my lofty architect did move To my creation. Mighty Power Divine Supremest Wisdom, and Primeval Love Established me. Before me there were none Save timeless things, and timeless I shall stand; Bid hope farewell, aU ye who enter here.

These are certainly the most famous lines in the poem, a nd most people are accustomed to Longfellow's rendition of the verb in the last verse as "abandon., But "bid farewell" is in fact more in keeping with the original "lasciate."

This may seem to be a trifling point, but it illustrates the basic quality of the translation, for which the word could be no-nonsense. The choice of blank verse as the medium is an optimal middle way: it avoids the artificiality inherent in attempting to reproduce terza rima in English, while preserving a poetic quality and discipline lacking in the prose and free verse translations.

The other feature of the edition is that it does not make waves. Indicative is the note to Inferno I, 29 as "baffling."

Mr. Bergin makes no attempt to solve the major riddles of the work, like who is the "veltro tra feltro e feltro. " He is content to present the enigmas clearly but as they are : he bears the view of the dispassionate scholar rather than that of the zealot. Where the original is hermetic, so is the translation. Conclusions are left to the reader, rather than being solved by the translator as deus cum aut sine machina.

In considering the translation as a whole one can look in vain for the spectacular passages, but Mr. Bergin's craftsmanship is on another, higher level. He

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is, as it were, the Ciardi of translation.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in his version of Vergil's parting words to Dante the pilgrim.

The temporal and the eternal ftre you've seen, my son, and have come to a place where I can see no further by myself.

With art and reason I have brought you here ; hence forward take your pleasure as your guide.

Out of the steep and narrow ways you've won; see there the sun that shines upon your brow, mark the fresh grass, the flowers and the shrubs which here the soil produces of itself, So sit or go amongst them as you will until in happiness the fair eyes come you with their weeping dispatched me to you; await no more my gesture or my word; your will is free and upright, full of health ; it would be wrong to act not as it bids; mitre and crown I give you o'er yourself.

Complement to the text are the illustrations of Leonard Baskin, extraorrJinary through their sheer strength. These are no maudlin or mawkish sentimentalities.

They function through the edition much as the Leitmotif in a Wagnerian opera.

This is particularly evident in the recurring illustrations of Dante's animal imagery - the leopard, the she-wolf, the eagle. Here more than anywhere else is one reminded of the Fellini Satyricon.

The material selected for illustration is the nexus of each canto, although not necessarily the most pictorial of the poem's offerings. They are stark. This is not, however, a fault, but an almost tactile reproduction of the Dantesque Weltanschauung. Inferno is peopled with fabulous beasts, monsters, and depraved souls whose humanity is underlined by the very portrayal of their desperateness. Purgatory is similarly illustrated but with that implied time of hope inherent in the Commedia. The emphasis in the Paradiso is on the verbal imagery : these are no Sunday School textbook pictures but the medieval company of the blessed in a modern context. The illustrations provide dramatic and visual proof that indeed the work is, as Shelley put it , a bridge between the ages.

Some years ago, when studying the Divine Comedy with Mr. Bergin, one was struck with the frequency of the comment ..Che bello" as a critical remark.

Its simplicity is telling. What else, in fact, is one going to say? One could expatiate in the beauty of the format, on the quality of the book, on the readability of the translation, on the strength of the illustrations, on the sheer weigltt of the three volumes.

One could discuss the synechdochial relevance of Dante to modem times.

One could compare editions from Botticelli and Boccaccio to Ciardi and Dore.

But when all is said and done, no comment more fitting could be made than "Che bello." No superlative is needed because the edition is in itself a superlative . •

The rape of Miss Ginsberg: or, the confessions of a film freak

by David Freeman

The f"nt entry - Monday: I think I am an artist. An artist of movie goma. At work, at my job, they think of me as cold, because I don't have coffee with them or make jokes. I have other concerns. Also they trunk of me as fat , although I am not. They think of me as enormously obese, as a grotesque fat man who waddles and has chafed lep.

They joke about how I can't fit through doors. They have a pool t o see who can guess my weight. The winner gets aU the coffee he wants.

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Second entry - Tuesday: Today I go to the Elpn. The ticket man will not look at me. It is because I am fat . Maybe he thinks I will get my fat on his tickets or I will spill food on him. He is an ass. I Jive him my two dollars and ask for one. He presses his machine and the ticket comes out. He thinks the machine is copper - it's only brass it maybe copperplate. I go in. There are no ushers at the FJgin anymore. Only the ticket man. He used to be the usher.

He went up and down the aisles shining his flashlight up girls' skirts when their feet were up on the chairs. Now he is only the ticket man. He no longer wears the usher's uniform with the rows of copper buttons and the yellow brushes on the shoulders. Maybe I will get a job as usher for the Elgin. They have no popcom there, only some crummy candy bar machines downstairs by the toilets.

In Chelsea, where the Elgin is, there are only crazy people and Puerto Ricans now.

But they have double features. Today is ·Rosemary's Baby and Sh ameless Old Lady. Rosemary's Baby is good. You get to see he.- breasts and her ass. She

David Freeman, a contributing editor, is presently preparing an anthology of his short stories, several of which first appeared in The New Journal.

looks too skinny with her clothes on.

Her- legs are skinny, but her breasts are good. The other- picture is dull - she wears her clothes. But I know what is under- them, and now that I know, I won't forget. In the Elgin there is an old man with his hat in his lap. When she is on the screen he plays with himself.

He's fat and old. He sweats and his legs are chafed. He plays with himself when she is naked, he pretends he is screwing her. He thinks the hat cove.-s him, but be can't fool me. He is disgusting. At the office they take bets on how long he will live. " No one that fat will live," they say. " He plays with himself in the movies." He thinks he is the devil screwing her.

I stay to see Rosemary's Baby twice, but not the other one. The other one is stupid. I go home and sleep and chafe Rosemary's head with my fat legs. She knows I am the devil. She loves the red splotches on my lep. When I waddle on my chafed thighs, she says it is like Chaplin dancing.

Third entry - Wednesday: We leave work early, at 3 :00. They all go to a bar. I am invited, but I say no. It is early and I go downtown on the Lexington Ave. line to the Variety Photo Plays. I love the Variety Photo Plays. It's before f"ave and I can see the double feature for f"lfty cents: The Carpet Baggers and Son of Aubber. I feel goo4 at the Variety Photo Plays. It's full of old men.

They sleep or go back and forth to the toilet. Some drink &om bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. They are all fools.

In the lobby is my favorite picture: a color portrait of Wild Bill Elliot. It is signed, " Your pal Bill Elliot." The best thing about it is that it's always there.

Bill Elliot is always my pal. I sit down front . I am the only one in my row. I sit as far &om the toilet as I can. Martha Hyer is in it. That's alii can remember.

I go cross town to the Loew's Sheridan. Riot. I don't like it. While I am in ·line for my ticket they all say it's aremake of The Informer by John Ford.

They mean Uptight. They are so dumb.

On the marquee it says "Jim Brown in Riot with Mike Killin." Killin. They are so dumb at the Loew's Sheridan. They don't even know it's Kellin. I don't like the movie. The Informer was better. Jim Brown can't act. He only gets parts because be was a football star and because he is black. On the way out I see the marquee again. Killin. lao to a phone booth across the street and caD the manaaer of the Loew's Sheridan. Her-e is what we said: ••b this the JD8D81el' of the Loew's Sher-idan?" " Yes." •"'bis is Syd Ferrullo." (I make up a name and it's mine.) ... represent Mike Kellin the actor starring in Riot. The film you're now showing."

"Oh yes Mr. Ferrullo." (He's hooked IUCkin& up to me. I have him now. Mine.) ..Yes. I'm Mr. Mike Kellin's penoaal maJI8Iel' and I noticed this mominc u I went by the Loew's Sheridan tb.t you spelled my dient's name wronJ on the

marquee. You have an I wher-e an E should be." ..Oh, I hadn't noticed." ..This is unthinkable. You could lose your license. One call from me to the home office and you would lose your license." ..Well sometimes they run out of letters. E's break very easily and sometimes they have to substitute. They only substitute vowels for vowels." ..1 am a very busy man and I must get back to Hollywood. You must correct this indignity, or I will cause you to lose your license." ..I'm sure we can straiJbten it out -" ..We have a very careful P.R. campaign going and this is unthinkable. I want it corrected immediately." ..But I can't do it right a~y - that's a union job , the union man's gone home." ..Fix it immediately or lose your license. I will check it out on my way to Hollywood. Tonight. Goodbye." I hang up and go to a restaurant and watch.

Pretty soon a bald man and an usher with a ladder come out. The usher goes up and _the bald man yells at him. They break up another letter and use it to tum the I into an E . They f"mish and I leave. Mike Kellin has been avenged. I am his guardian. I will be his P.R . man and avenge him. I will go all over- the world for him, searching the marquees of the world for Mike Kellin, protecting his name.

Fourth entry - Friday : They are going to a bar again. After work they all go to The Pub. I have never- been there. This time I am not invited. One of t hem said " Let's go to The Pub, everybody." Then someone else said ..Thank god it's Friday." They say this every Friday, before they 10 to The Pub. Sometimes I am asked specifically to go. But not this time. Once, one girl, Miss Ginsberg, asked me to go. Specif"ICally. I said I was going away for the weekend. She has not asked me again. She is a fde clerk, very young. I got he.- fde . She is 19 and has skinny legs and long brown hair. That is the advantage of being in the personnel department. The files are for me. She can have no secrets from me.

Only I may see the fdes. Miss Ginsberg is 19. I am 34.

I go early to The New Yorker and I see The Pickpocket. It only costs a dollar.

The New Yorker bas the best popcorn of all the t heatres. As usual it is fresh .

Big white kernels. It costs twenty-fave cents. That is not too bad. The lady who sells it is my friend. She smiles at me.

Perhaps she owns The New Yorker-. Or hu husband. She doesn't like to seD candy or ice cream, only to make popcom. She makes it for me. Otbe.-s may have popcorn too, but only when I permit it. The film is good. A pic.k pocket in Paris. He wants to stop but he can' t.

No mattu what, he must pick pockets.

He practices till be is the best pickpocket in Paris. He lives only to pick pockets.

He is an artist of pocket picking. I underand this. In the movie all the doon are unlOcked. There are shots that show this cleuty. It's not an accident. Perbapa it means that even when doors are open be

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cannot walk through them - he cannot stop picking pockets, even though he wants to. I do not understand this. The picture is by Bresson. It is short and I see it twice. Still I do not understand the open doors. On the way out the popcorn lady smiles at me. She says "Nighty Night." I say nothing. Nighty night.

Fifth entry - Saturday: No work today . I go to the movies. I see Shoot The Piano Player. This is one of my favorite movies. But this time something is different . Miss Ginsberg is in it. She plays a small part at the beginning. I didn't know she had been to France. This is not in her file . I must bring it up to date. It will be our secret.

Next I see Reflections in a Golden Eye at the Baronet. It is too serious. The people are all crazy. I do not understand it . Elizabeth Taylor was too fat. I watch only once and leave. I go to see The Killing of Sister George, at the Orleans. It is much better. It is a movie about a fat man with chafed legs. He

rapes a young girl of 19 who works in an office. She is so repelled by him that she dies. She sees his fat stomach and smells his sweat and his chafed legs and dies. He is so fat that the insides of his pants legs are worn through from rubbing together. She sees this, so he rapes her.

She gets sick from his weight on her and vomits. She strangles on her vomit because he wilJ not let her up. He rubs the vomit on her stomach and then he comes into the vomit . It mixes together and makes a devil. Then the devil rapes her.

It is in technicolor. There is also a coming attraction for Secret Ceremony. More Elizabeth Taylor.

Besides being a fale clerk, Miss Ginsberg is in the movies. She is only a r.Je clerk by day. At night she is in the movies.

Not a star, but someday perhaps. She is a starlet. She was in Rosemary's Baby, it was her biggest part to date. She made love to the devil. I saw her breasts and her ass. I will make her a star. I will make her the moon. No one must know of this.

At night I go to the Elgin. I see a double feature of Love in the Afternoon and Breakfast at Tiffany's, both starring Miss Ginsberg. A strange thing happens.

During the fmt one, Love in the Afternoon, Miss Ginsberg was talking quietly with Maurice Chevalier who plays her father, the private detective, and in the next frame, she was ten years older and in bed with George Peppard. In technicolor. Everyone in the audience laughed and then the movie went off. I am not sure what to make of this, perhaps Miss Ginsberg is giving me a signal, it's hard to teD 'if this was an accident or a code.

Sixth entry- Sunday: Viridiana. I will watch it twice, maybe more. It is a great movie. At The Charles. That means dry popcorn, but 1 will go to see Viridiana. In The Charles you can hear people cough and gag on the gluey popcorn. It has no butter only salt.

It was a bad print and the sound track was fuzzy , but it was pretty much in fo-

cus and it was all there. Sometimes it is cut and you don't get to see the scene where Viridiana puts the salve on the leper's arm. That is a good shot. He stares at her white skin and her teeth and she caresses his rotting arm. I saw it three times. I love the banquet scene when the old man fucks the cook and the blind man goes wild. He destroys the banquet with his cane. He hates the man who is fucking the cook. And he hates the cook.

But he can't do anything because he is blind. So he eats some more of the cook's custard, then wrecks everything. And the old man still fucks the cook. No matter what the blind man does the old man will still fuck the cook till he's through . So the blind man might as weD eat the custard. Viridiana has white skin and skinny legs. I will confess to y~u that when Don Jairnie drugs her and tries to Tape her, I play with myself. I use my coat in my lap so no one can know. Don Jaimie cannot do it . He is a coward. I can .do it.

Tonight I saw Miss Ginsberg in Some¡ thing for the Boys at the Thalia, where they are showing funny old movies. The audience is usually full of queers who laugh hysterically at the stupid parts.

In this one Miss Ginsberg played Carmen Miranda who was a lady riveter. It was her job to rivet the airplanes to beat the Japs. She worked on a long line of lady riveters, riveting the bulls of B-47's. The problem was that she worked so hard to beat the Japs that she kept getting metal fdings from the rivets in her mouth, which turned her teeth into a radio . She wore tight denim overalls and whenever The Andrews Sisters carne over her teeth singing " Bei Mir Bist Du Shein," all the riveters would stop working on the B-47's and sing and dance for a while. Miss Ginsberg was very good. In one scene she wore a big hat with apples and grapes on it.

Phil Silvers was also in the picture.

Next I see The Impossible Years at the Coronet. Although she is not on the marquee, Miss Ginsberg is in it . Not the lead, but in it. She plays the daughter of a psychiatrist , David Niven. She is in a bikini. I know it is Miss Ginsberg. I recognize the breasts and the skinny legs. I have seen the devil screwing her and I know her. I go to the phone in the men's room and call the manager. I tell him I am the manager of Miss Sharon Ginsberg and she has not received proper billing.

He is not as scared as the manager of the Loew's Sheridan. He says he has billing instructions and they do not include Miss Ginsberg. He hangs up. Miss Ginsberg is in trouble. Her career is not going weU. Fucked by the devil and no billing at the Coronet. She needs help. I will help her career. I will hijack the IRT and take her out to Hollywood. We will hijack it together. I will drive the first car, battling off Indians and conductors. Miss Ginsberg will bandage my wounds and bring me food to give me strength to guide the IRT across the mountains and over the desert and onto Hollywood.

It is possible that her name was in the final titles - they closed the curtains before I could tell. That is the thing I hate the most - closing the curtains during the final titles. I love good titles. Titles make a movie mean somethlns. Sometimes they

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11/The New Journal/ April 12, 1970

open and shut the curtains at the beginning - right on the movie during the titles, for no reason. They do this at many theatres and it's a terrible thing.

My favorite titles are From Russia With Love. At night I saw Beast That Walks Like a Man at the Variety Photo Plays.

The titles came out of t he monster's mouth . At The Variety Photo Plays they never close the curtain, because they don't have one. That is why I like the Variety Photo Plays. Once at The Winston they shut the curta ins on the last shot of Killer's Kiss. I called the manager to complain. I said I was Darryl Zanuck and their stupidity was ruining my movie.

He didn't believe me. He said if I called again, he'd have the call traced. But I know more than he thinks. I only call from phone booths - let them trace, it won' t prove a thing. Darryl Zanuck knows more than the manage r of The Winston can ever dream of.

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Seventh entry - Monday: After work I go home on the IRT. I see Miss Ginsberg on the train. On the IRT! She shouldn't be here. She should be at rehearsals or making her movie.

I see her but I look into my Post , at the movie clock. Today she came to my desk and said something. She asked me where I live. I couldn't tell her. I didn't know. I said the West side. I tell her I enjoyed her performance in Rosemary's Baby. She laughs. She doesn't remember that I am the devil. She was asleep when I screwed her. She cannot remember, but I do. She is still laughing. She touches my arm. On the IRT she touches my arm. No one must know of this.

Eighth entry - Wednesday : No work yesterday . I called in and said I was sick. I stayed in bed all morning.

Miss Ginsberg may know I am the devil in Rosemary's Baby, but she must not speak of this. This must be our secret .

In the afternoon I go to 66th. St. and fmd her building a nd study it . She lives on the fourth floor. I try to fmd her window. Many people go in and out of the building. None of them are in the movies.

None of them are Miss Ginsberg. None of them know the devil's chafed thighs. After studying her building I go to Yellow Submarine. Young girls no longer scream at The Beatles. During the first Beatles movie they aU screamed. I watched one time from the middle of screaming girls, but none of them touched my arm. The movie is not bad. I take a cab home.

N'mth entry - Thursday : She asks me where I was yesterday. I teD her I was sick. She says if it happens again I should call her and she will bring me chicken soup. Then she laughs. Chicken soup is a big joke to her. This is unthinkable. She will bring me chicken soup, she will bathe my leper's ann and my chafed thighs in chicken soup. After work I follow her. I get in the car behind her and foDow her to 66th. St. It is winter and dark. She doesn't see me.

Tenth entry - Friday: Today in the newspaper. We will sell the film rights to our story. Miss Gins-

berg and I will split the money. It is her story too - our story, together. We will parachute through sides of chicken soup dowb into Hollywood. She will caress my chafed thighs as we faD . We will be in the movies, she and I. My story was in the Daily News and the Post. The Times did not cover it. I don't know if it was on T.V. Perhaps it will be in the newsreels.

Here is our story from the Post : ATTEMPTED RAPE A 24 year old Bronx housewife was attacked early today near her home o n I 67th St. The woman said a man with a ski mask jumped out of an alley and "ripped my blouse."

The woman's scream s apparently drove her assailant away.

Police are investigating.

A perfect disguise. Miss Ginsberg has purposely thrown the police off my trail.

Bambi is out of the flames, the danger has passed. She is on my side, and now I can proceed.

Eleventh entry - Sunday : Today I see Rachel Rachel. It is very good : a boy and a girl carrying a trunk with brass buckles parachute from the sky and fall on the beach. They open the trunk and an old drunk in baggy pants and a sleeveless undershirt gets out. He can't walk straight. He tries, but he can't even get back in the trunk. The boy and girl laugh at him and then make love, only she is very coy and won't let him, because his thighs are chafed. He ties the drunk to a tree and tries to rape her.

But the drunk promises the leper money if he will kill the fat man before he rapes her. The leper hits the fatman on his chafed thighs with the brass buckles, and Viridiana is saved for Don Jaintie 's son. Then they all pick up the trunk with the brass buckles and run into the ocean which is chicken soup. The end. This is a good film. It is the f'lrst one Paul Newman ever- directed.

After Rachel Rachel I go to the Riverside which is near Miss Ginsberg's house.

Sometimes movie stars go to neighborhood theatres to see their films, unnoticed. I look for her, but she doesn't show up. The movie is Hot Millions with Peter Ustinov. lt is about a robbery. I don't like it . During the movie I watch a taU skinny man play with himself. He slumps down in the second row until he is one with himself. He is a very skinny man and his teeth are like a transistor radio .

Twelfth entry - Monday: Miss Ginsberg is at work today. She acts like nothing has happened. This is good, part of the code. She smiles at me and comes to my desk to speak. Here is what we said: " You're so thin - don't you eat anything?" " I'm very overweight."

"Oh yeah, and I'm in Rosemary's Baby."

"Shh. Don't let anyone know."

Then she laughed and went away. This is good. She speaks in code with me. Only I know what she means. She wears a brown mini-skirt today and a tight blouse.

It covers her from the others, but not from me. I am the devil and I have eyes that can see her soul. No one must know of this.

Today I am disguised as a fat man.

No one will know me. I will fmd Miss ~msberg after she gets off the i'RT and we will make our movie. Dumbo will fly tonight. I move quietly through the cars when the train is stopped at Columbus Circle. She is in the car just ahead and I can see her through the doors. I cover my face with the Post , looking at the movie clock. Perhaps afterwards I will see Fireman's BaD at Cinema II. She gets off at 66th. St. as usual, and I follow. I stay in the shadows of the 66th.

St . station and she cannot see me. My disguise is perfect. I am cli1guised as a fat shadow. I can move easily without her seeing me. For a fat man I am very

graceful. I follow her brown hair up 66th .

St . towards the park, and grab her arm from behind. Here is what we said : " Well , hi. Do you live around here?" " We must make a movie." " What's aU this movie stuff with you, anyway?" " I am the devil." " I didn't see that one." " You are Rosemary's Baby and I am the devil with eyes that can see your soul." " Boy you are really nuts."

"Bambi is in the flames. " " Oh I love Bambi. And Thumper. I saw it when I was a little girl. I saw Rosemary's Baby, too. It was scary." " There is no more hope. Dumbo flies tonight." " I live right here - why don't you come up for a while. I'D bet you haven't had dinner yet - from the look of you, you never have dinner."

"No, no. Good-bye."

"I could make a tuna casserole ... " I didn' t hear what she said after that I had to run, there will be no f'ilining tonight.

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/ 12/The New Journal/ April 12, 1970

The long blue line

by Rod Green

I've spent three and a half years in ROTC, and if there's one thing Army officers are proud of it's the long blue line of Yale officers. I recall vaguely that there was a mass meeting last year. Most people seem to think we abolished ROTC then.

But President Brewster and the Corpo· ration seem to feel differently, since Reuben Holden has been energetically negotiating with the Department of the Army for a new contract. So ROTC is still here. And it's busy training officers.

Just what goes on in that training?

From the first day in the program you learn about the sanctity of the chain of command and the absolute necessity for unquestioning obedience to orders - no matter how odd. You are absolved from responsibility either to your men or to yourself in following your orders. This is degrading, but the army makes it up by having individual competitions for out· standing cadet of the week in drill performance, superior cadet of the year for general achievement, expertise in marks· manship, as well as with unit competitions {best platoon for barracks cleanliness each day at summer camp). When you have all this excellence to strive for, it becomes easier and easier to be distracted from considering the nature of the war and the nature of the army. The really frightening thing is that these games we play in ROTC form the core activity in the real army, ofttimes even in Vietnam.

It is reflected in the erroneous body counts we've heard about - it's more important for a unit to win the competi· tion for dead bodies than to fight a war.

You focus on the trivial competition for status within the army - not on the war, since that is not necessarily justifiable, though a game always is.

The ROTC program is designed to put you in command over other cadets. You are constantly told to upbraid your "in· feriors" on points of military discipline and conduct (such as haircuts, shined shoes, tardiness, etc.). The officers stress this particularly at summer camp, where a cadet platoon leader is graded on the amount of military efficiency he can pull out of the cadets "under" him. That the army attaches primary significance to this kind of training is shown in the fact that almost all platoon evaluators (and most officers in local ROTC programs) are higher ranking officers. Actual mili· tary skills are de-emphasized, and they are always taught by junior-grade officers.

You spend only one day learning how to fire the entire arsenal of weapons (includ· ing tanks), and the rest of summer camp is spent learning techniques of control through the military games you play.

Control through gamesmanship, a deadly game of Russian roulette in which every effort is made to detract from the fact that the gun is loaded. That's what offi. cer training is all about.

You also hear all kinds of stories about Gls who deviate from the military norm (go AWOL, desert, steal from the army,

Rod Green is a senior in Timothy Dwight College. Disenro/led from ROTC this January, he was named Superior Cadet of the Year as a freshman. He is a member of the steering committee of Yale SDS.

etc.), and who are ergo deviants. No class is complete without one or two such stories. The proper method of handling deviants is, first, you ask them to straighten up, and then use techniques of punishment- Article IS's, cuts in pay· checks, fines and the stockade. Passes and leaves are to be used primarily for the pw· pose of discipline, rather than as responses to the human needs of Gls. And of course, there must be no nicety about shooting that supreme deviant, the GI who is re· calcitrantjn combat. After all, examples must be set.

One officer explained to me the need to keep the men polishing their boots and shining their brass: if they are allowed to have any time to themselves, they will begin to bitch about the army, and a severe morale problem may develop. Keep them busy, keep them distracted, keep them mindless, because Gls, if left to their own devices, are trouble makers.

Another thing I've noticed in the train· ing is the way blacks are regarded. I've tr:ied discussing my work with the New Haven Welfare Moms with a couple of officers, and I'm always met with the standard myths about black people that they are lazy, violent, like to be on welfare and are undependable. One offi· cer proved his point about blacks by gleefully telling about an all-black regiment in World War II that broke and ran before a clearly inferior German unit in the Battle of the Bulge. The military history course never mentions the role that black regiments played in winning the Revolutionary War. In a three-month course on leadership techniques, we listened to tapes of problems which could arise between the officer and the GI. In about seventyfive percent of the cases, the soldier, who was either drunk, violent or stupid, was black.

Once the future officer is trained in these specific attitudes toward leadership there is the problem of making the latest objective of the army into "the enemy."

We have seen two counter-insurgency fllms, both of which portray the people of an insurgent country as dumb and easily manipulable. Guerilla insurgents are portrayed as hysterical and blood· thirsty, slaughtering peasants right and left. Of course, the dumb peasants fall to the hysterical guerillas, and the evenhanded United States Army has to be called in to save the country from collapse.

One of the few realistic scenes is one be· tween the United States ambassador and the local rulers, in which the ambassador promises all the resources of the United States to support them.

When we are taught about the interrogation of prisoners the instructors point out that the South Koreans, because of their small regard for the value of human life, are the best troops to use for extract· ing information from enemy soldiers. I have heard many a thrilling tale, told with great gusto, about how mercilessly the South Koreans carry out this mission in Vietnam. With the same sort of reason· ing we are also taught that this is why the Chinese Nationalists (under United States command) are so effective in Operation Phoenix - a systematic rooting out of the Viet Cong infrastructure in which each

13/The New Journal/ April 12, 1970

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village is given a monthly quota of bodies to turn in.

Then there are the stories specifically about the Vietnamese. "Gook" is more frequently used than "Vietnamese." Sensational hair-raising stories of atrocities committed by the Viet Cong are examined at length , atrocities which are of course peculiar to Oriental culture. The Vietnamese are beasts, we are told, but very wily beasts, so you must be on your guard and not underestimate their fighting strength. But once you trap the wily beasts, they spill their guts and tell everything they know, because they are essentially chicken.

One particularly cogent experience was the Vietnamese village exercise at summer camp. Since many ROTC officers will be going to Vietnam, the camp provides a simulated village which a platoon practices attacking, searching and destroying.

82nd Airborne Rangers and their children are dressed up in black pajamas and play the roles of Vietnamese citizens. As we walked into the village, they paraded around like apes scratching their armpits and chattering like monkeys. The yellow peril lives.

Utter contempt for the enemy based on his race is useful in popularizing the war. There can be problems, though. One officer told me that he knew of a platoon which was wiped out by the Viet Cong because th e platoon leader had told his men that the Vietnamese people would never get themselves together enough to fight the Americans. The officer told me not to make the same mistake ; that I should point out to my men all the peculiar aspects of the "Oriental" which make him on the one hand inhuman and on the other a clever fighter.

ROTC training is all about controlling people who don't want to be controlled and fighting people who want the United States out of their country. Gamesmanship, contempt for the Gls (an added measure for black Gls) and contempt for the enemy are three primary techniques in the training. Yet, in spite of the fact that ROTC inculcates its cadets with these rath er questionable values and attitudes, the presence of the program on a university campus is apparently justifiable in many regards.

I've heard a huge amount of talk about ROTC, but a lot of it doesn't relate at all to what ROTC actually does, i.e., provide the military with officers to help accomplish "national objectives." Some of the well-meaning but misleading arguments are that the course content of ROTC is inappropriate for a university; the instructors are unqualified; the program is professionally oriented; a binding contract contradicts the premise of a liberal education; Yale ROTC humanizes the military ; and the individual has a right to choose to join ROTC. From the standpoint of th e university, much of what is taught in ROTC is educational. Military tactics, military history, leadership courses, t he political significance of the military are not that much different from clearly legitimate areas such as political techniques and election studies,

technological histocy, management techniques, or industrial relations. There are tests, papers and lectures just as in most Yale courses. In many ways the courses are guts, but remember Margaret Mead?

Ask any senior and he can list a half-dozen guts which receive full recognition t:iy Yale.

The officers who teach the courses have had long experience in various parts of the Army directly related to the courses they teach. Engineers teach courses based on their experience and training which stress technological solutions to man's social problems. In an academic community which stresses freedom for all approaches and views, Army officers logically should have the same right to teach courses which give military solu tions to social problems, solutions which stem from their experience and training.

Professionalism is not only an attribute of ROTC , but also applies to photography, writing courses, and much o f the scientific and engineering curricula. Professional schools abound in the Yale Community; if a student wants to decide a few years early what profession he wants to follow, why should Yale impede him? If Yale will admit students right out of high school into a professional training program in drama, why not allow them to enlist in a professional training program for the military? The professionalism-of-the-army argument also ignores that most ROTC contracts are only for two-year commissions, hardly a lifetime career, and that the army is extremely diverse internally there are fighters, doctors, writers, lawyers, managers, administrators all within the army. And through the ROTC program there are numerous opportunities for graduate or professional training. In many ways the army simply mirrors society at large, something wh1ch Yale is supposedly preparing us to lead.

With the draft facing most male students, it seems that there is already a forced contract between the army and the student, and the ROTC contract is a mere refinement of this. The so-called binding contracts are not that hard to break. If a student wants out, he can usually get out just by talking to the head of the program; the contract will probably be tom up on the spot. Although there is more hassle for a scholarship student, it is still possible.

In the report of the board of officers which interrogated me about disenrollment, there is stated, "Cadet Green, by his action in requesting disenrollment, has demonstrated an immaturity, irresponsibility and a lack of dependability that discredit his proved academic abilities and make his effectiveness in a position of responsibility doubtful and unpredictable." Requesting disenrollment was enough, according to this philosophy, to disqualify me from being an officer.

The point is that if you don't want to be an officer, the army doesn't want you to be an officer. They have enough trouble with the enlisted personnel that the officers are supposed to be controlling. And of course specifically here at Yale, where ROTC has already been partially emasculated by the abolishment of course

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Showings at 7 :00 & 9:30 (unless otherwise noted)

Thursday, April 9 FRITZ LANG DOUBLE BILL: WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS ( 1956 J With Dana Andrews and Rhonda Fleming SCARLET STREET ( I 945 l With Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett Friday, April I 0 Jean Renoir's TONI ( 1934 ) Saturday, April II E. A. Martin 's STEAMBOAT BILL. JR. ( 1928 1 With Buster Keaton (shorts also to be shown l Tuesday, April 14 Jean Renoir's THE LOWER DEPTHS ( 1936 J With J ean Gabin Wednesday, April 15 Donald Siegal's RIOT IN CELL BLOCK ELEVEN ( 1954 J With Neville Brand Thursday, April 16

· NICHOLAS RAY DOUBLE BILL: PARTY GIRL ( 1958 J With Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse BIGGER THAN LIFE ( 1956 l With James Mason Friday, April 17 Robert Aldrich's THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE ( 1968) With Kim Novak, Peter Finch, and Ernest Borgn ine

Saturday, April 18 Federico Fellini's JULIET OF THE SPIRITS ( 1965 I With Giulietta Masina and Sandra Milo Tuesday, April 21 J ean Renoir's THE CRIME OF M. LANGE ( 1935 J Wednesday, April 22 Robert Flaherty's and F. W. Murnau's TABU ( 1931 I

credit and the removal of professorial title for ROTC officers, the question of a binding contract is very minor as the new contract with the Department of the Army will probably have a clause providing for the terminatiqn of the contract at any point.

Ooesn't ROTC humanize the army, especially ROTC at high-class schools like Yrue or Harvard? We know already that the majority of officers in the army are ROTC products, some of them Yale and Harvard products as well, and that the army still is not particularly humane. But let's analyze the argument a little further.

The effect of junior officers is practically nil - they are trained to take their orders and in fact do take their orders or end up in the stockade just as any other soldier. And with an intense training program which emphasizes leadership techniques based upon supremacist, racial and social values, for how long can you expect even a Y alie to remain an even-minded humanitarian? The point is not that all Yalies are humane, but that Yalies may have higher college board scores than other people and thus be "brighter." We all know plenty of inhumane people at Yale wh o are generally quite clever about their inhum anity. (What about the flyer, "Fight poverty - sterilize the Welfare Moms"?) By putting cleverer people in the officer corps, however, the army is streamlined in its mission, which is, as I have been told over and over again , to seek out and destroy the enemy. Junior officers who zero in with more deadly aim or who drop napalm more accurately are the only "humane" results of having clever people from Yale in the army offi. cer corps.

Even if Yale ROTC students were more humane than most people, the majority of them don't end up where they would have to question their roles as "humanitarians."

They are put in non-combat or combat support branches where they can operate and manage efficient machines without having to confront their consciences directly with the uglier tasks of the army.

By putting ''relative humanitarians" in non-combat positions, whether they come from Yale or elsewhere, the army rele9ses the less humanitarian elements to the front lines, where they can go to work with deadly efficient support from the humani· tarians. The army takes the most proficient organizers and managers and puts them in support jobs, and puts the remainder in the infantry. It knows what it is doing. Only seven Yale ROTC graduates will be in the infantry this year, several by their own choice. Actions of "humane" individuals in the army tend to help the army in fulfilling its basic, non-humane function.

The mainstay of the "keep ROTC" attitude is the rubric of academic freedom.

If a man wants to become an officer then he has that right, and why shouldn't Yale provide him with the opportunity? The Yale administration condones the visits of recruiters from the major corporations, professional schools, government agencies and even allows Abbie Hoffman to speak here. So why shouldn't the military be free to recruit and ROTC be allowed to stay?

But in the ivory tower epithets of aca· demic freedom we ignore a basic fact of the human condition, that man is a social animal, that his individual actions have direct consequences for social institutions and relations, and that many apparently ind ividual actions form sp ecific social institutions. ROTC is an example of the latter. So in asking the question about academic and individual freedom, if one is at all serious about it, one must ask, should a person have the right to pursue the activities of a given institution, or more sharply, should that institution exist? Do the tenets of academic freedom justify an establishment which prepares men to execute "national objectives" inimical to most people through means equally destructive to Gls? Should anyone have the right to participate in an institution which inculcates values contemptuous of vast numbers of people? If the value of academic freedom implies that we must accept an institution which acts on such attitudes as "blacks are violent and undependable," "Orientals place no value on human life," o r "Gis tend to be deviants," then we ought to think twice.

The q uestion of individual right and the. social impact of exercising that right are inseparable.

One must also consider ROTC's social role. Simply, how has it been used? It is the main source of junior leaders for the military. And how has this military been used? It has been used against the Vietnamese people for many years, and this utilization is only the most highly escalated example of similar intervention throughout the world by the American military in recent years. The military has been used against ghetto and campus resi· dents when milder ways of rejecting their demands have failed to stifle their mill· tancy. It has been used five times in the last two years to break strikes, as in the current dispute between the government and the postal workers. In each of these situations there are people who feel oppressed and who are trying to alleviate some of that oppression , moving towards greater control over their own lives through group action.

This is the principle - freedom through self-determination - that Yale ostensibly desires for its children. Yet one way it puts this abstract notion into practice is ROTC, a mainstay of the military machine, which even in its own operation, often interferes with efforts at self-determination. It is a paradox, indeed, unless Yale sees that such a military is essential to allowing some kind of self-determination for its few elected elite. I doubt that most students would see things in that light.

Whatever the motivation of the adminis· tration , it has fought every effort to abolish ROTC at Yale. We must be willing to fight also . •

Credits: Leonard Baskin: page 7 copyright 1969 Jo hn Friedman: page 12 David March: pages 8,9,10,1 1

15/The New Journal/ April 12, 1970

APRIL THESIS SPECIAL! At Charlton Press only

Cambridge continued from page 2 if we'd spent the evening trying to communicate in a half-known language. ) Traditions, as I mentioned, are strong here; so is general respect for the law.

While the judgments of t he law may sometimes be questioned, the law itself is a majestic lady. She bears no resem· blance to that tarnished creature, her American cousin; neither has she had to withstand the same sort of attacks.

What still exists here, where the ques• tions of conscience and law have not been so starkly raised, is what Hawthorne called "the general sentiment which gives law its vitality." Right and wrong are somehow less complicated ; a policeman's quiet: "Here, we can't have that," carries more force than the pistol coming out of a cop's holster in New York....

Of Cambridge's 29 colleges, Churchill is the newest ( 1961 ); and therefore somewhat less dogmatic and formal in tone. (There are still colleges in the University which exlude women from High Table.) Nevertheless, dining at Churchill is a pretty formal affair: one marches into the high, mahogany panelled Hall on the arm of one's host - my own husband can only bring me four times during the year; I must go as someone else's guest, and when I am 1 • asked, my husband is expected not to be present - part of a long black-robed r procession . Meanwhile, the several hundred students present, all of them also in rustling black robes, have risen: we file past the rows of uplifted faces (and sotto voce comments), then stand behind our seats at the white, sparkling High Table.

A great hush settles over the Hall : everyone looks toward the Master. ''Benedictus, Benedictatum," he proclaims without enthusiasm.

And with the Lord's blessing, we sit down to eat. .!

Maggie Scarf is the wife of Yale Professor Herbert Scarf who is teaching at Cam· bridge this year.

... Transformations It is common knowledge that young poets

and novelists don't have to publish to grow. But people who write for the theatre must see their work produced to get a sense of what "works" on stage.

Hence the importance of the Yale Repertory Company's newest theatre evening, Transformations, which consists of three plays by Yale playwrights.

The Rhesus Umbrella opens on a very pretty bundle of lights that represent a computer. Frequent black-outs, short scenes, and the deliberately flat style of reading lines makes the play into something of a cartoon. Doctor Harold ., comes on stage worried about his son; he had opened the boy's briefcase and found turkish taffee. The computer (Albert) suggests the boy is in love. The boy eats a banana and says, " I think I'm in 1 # love." And so on. Mr. Wanshel does not • fret over logical connections and neither should we.

If I persist in taking the plot seriously I will be accused of a fearso me lack of intelligence. Unfortunately there is nothing else in the play to think about.

The actors deserve better material - I just know t hat two actors jiving in th.e course of a meal can say funnier and more penetrating things. Mr. Wanshel was think· ing of something when he wrote this the man grows dependent on the machine, the boy grows into a monkey, the machine grows almost human - and these are ideas that could make a play.

They make, instead, half-hearted jokes.

The second play is David Epstein's two-character work, Clutch. It is the most economical and most effective play of the three, and it is more than admirably performed by David Ackroyd and Joan Pape. Aimed particularly at modern personal relationships, Epstein's play centers on the automobile and the open road, seeing them as meta· phors for American life. The couple starts out as a pair of super-patriotic motor-cycle freaks ; they are transformed into a tired middle-aged couple bitchingin a car.

In a play whose world is as ridiculous as it is inescapable, Ackroyd has found just the right style: a mixture of the clown's broad mime, and the dead seriousness of a man tackling the day's work. We recall him as the David Ackroyd who couldn't stand up straight in last season's Story Theatre. But even recog· nizing in his growth as a performer one good reason for having a Repertory company, we have to view the thinness, the weakness, of these plays as a necessary beginning: maybe next year will be a time for seeing how good the writing is.

The third play , Iz She lzzy Or lz He Aint'zy Or l z They Both by Lonnie Car· ter, is the longest, and most demanding play of the evening. In a curious way it tells us more about comedy than the other plays, though it is not any funnier.

Finally, the reason Carter's play does not work has to do with the actors themselves, who are uncomfortable with his zaniness. Superficially, the style of the Marx brothers was a collection of sight gags, chases, vulgar puns, mockery of institutions, and fast talk that commented constantly on itself. Carter has that.

What the Yale Rep actors could not fmd was what Peter O'Toole called "the blink· ered point of view" that lets you know that they could not possibly act otherwise. The Yale actors own their bodies in the sense that a dancer does: they can assume a pace, can get a position right, but we don't believe them; their madness, especially in Carter's play, is not organic.

The theatre Brustein talks about, the theatre of transformations, is one we are all looking forward to seeing. It is unnerving when Brustein thinks such a theatre is there, and it obviously is not.

The playwrights have not transformed the their roots, TV comedy, into anything that threatens, enlightens, or excites us.

The actors, for the most part, have not transformed themselves.

Lou Gilbert

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