Volume 6 - Issue 3

Volume Six, Number Three 125 January 1973

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The New Journal j2S January 1973j2

Contents Comment: Calendar Reform, Encounter, The AYA The "Whitney": no pets, to say the least.

Have Mercy Money doesn't grow on trees: now they tell us.

Comment Calendar Reform Last Thursday the Yale College Faculty passed the second of two resolutions aimed at implementing a tri-mester program. Convinced of the financial necessity for change of some sort, and suspecting that the plan would become a reality regardless of their deliberation, the faculty took upon itself the responsibility for promoting crucial educational change. Of course, as pointed out in faculty discussions, this is only a pilot program. The faculty may withdraw the step they made last week. But the manner of deliberation and hasty acceptance offers little hope that the reconsideration next fall will be thoughtful enough for reversal. The trimester plan was adopted without debate on either of two alternatives proposed in the report of the faculty's own Blum-Pelikan Committee: a calendar consisting of four quarters, or the "strengthened semester" plan proposed originally by the Dahl Study Group. The plan was endorsed and the mechanism for its final implementation developed without detailed discussion of the plan-partially because at this point no details are known. And yet the faculty acted with all deliberate speed. Resolutions designed to stall implementation were defeated handily, as were proposals for faculty study of an alternative summer program which would not so directly affect the fall and spring terms.

Why was the facul ty moved to accept this version of calendar reform so readily? Beyond their awareness of the economic exigencies, the answers begin to thin out. One can assume they weren't overly concerned with the sophomoric demand for a more satisfying December vacation. Perhaps they were more heavily struck by the favorable terms of the proposal as it would affect them-teaching one summer in six or seven years in return for an extra fall or spring term off the following year, and an extra month off every other year. Perhaps so struck, they were less interested in the educational impltcations and uncertainties of the plan than we-without the benefit of such extensive personal inducement--can afford to be. Here are some of the implications of the trimester calendar which I've heard discussed in the Last few days:

• the change in fall and spring teacherstudent ratio resulting from compensatory faculty leaves for summer teaching • the effect particularly on small departments and majors in those departments of only 1/6 or l /7 faculty presence during the summer • the effect on graduate student dissertation progress (;ind thus job availability) caused by summer T A responsibilities • the possible downward trend in Graduate School financial support caused by increased student earning potential • the week or two likely to be cut off each of the three terms • the effect on personal and class ties of the undergraduate taking his residence in a sequence independent from that of any group • the effect on spring sports • a summertime break-down of the residential college system and the reversion to traditional dormitories • the hidden inducement for the undergraduate to accept the three-year BA • the hidden impetus for the faculty to move to the 32 credit graduation requirement and finally for the original calendar reform enthusiasts, • the educational effect of fulftlling requirements for five courses in a mad rush before Christmas--or, conversely, the likelihood of taking home exams and papers over vacation, in which case nothing much would have changed We can only hope that these and other implications will be carefully considered before a tentative decision by the faculty puts Yale education crashing ahead on automatic pilot.

Joel Krieger

Encounter

"In the newspapers they said that it was five stories high. Do you think it's five stories high?"

"Sure."

"There's no way you can say it ain't five stories high-Right?" " Yeah. " "There's no way you can say it ain't five stories high."

"Nope."

He explained that his brother was no man, but a cat, and had climbed up the front o f the building using the strength of the tips of his fingers and toes, with help from some bricks that were sticking out.

He sat down on the sidewalk and told me to sit down with him. I said I wanted to stand. He raised his voice to tell me that he could still smell his brother's blood on the sidewalk. He went over to the nearby sewer grate and said he could smell the blood in the sewer. He muttered something about how it was appropriate that his brother's blood should be down the sewer. The police drove around the corner and gave us a second look. I thought that if we were both picked up I would probably be released without any trouble. He broke my train of thought: "Why didn't he just get some members of his tribe together, go into the bank with machine guns, kill all the motherfuckers, and take all the money he wanted?

He didn't have to jump from a flagpole on top of a bank."

He was ready to go. He wanted a hamburger 1f all the "pig establishments" weren't closed. I said that we could get doughnuts and coffee.

"I am a meat eater. I'm a man, right?"

We walked passed the Green, up Chapel Street, and stopped in front of the construction site at the Yale Art Gallery. I was in the middle of pointing to the White Tower, and telling him to go there for a hamburger. He broke in and said that all he and his tribe needed were the two caterpillars and some machine guns and the bank would be ·'Knocked off just like that." I agreed. When we got to York and Chapel, I told him I was splitting.

"Hey, I'm gonna give you this medal I got in the marines and I want you to give it to my brother." '"I can't man. I don't know your brother. You give it to him."

"OK." I told him I was splitting. ·'Take this medal and put it on my brother's grave out in Branford."

"But I don't know your brother, man.

You should do it."

I told him I was splitting.

He started toward the White Tower.

I went home.

James Karageorge

Walking home from a downtown bar at two in the morning, I met a black man in his early twenties who wore a black knit cap and an army jacket. He had a few grey hairs in his beard. He asked me for a cigarette and some directions. I gave him one, lit it, and asked him where he wanted to go. "I want to go to the place where my brother died ... just to see it."

He had read about it in the newspapers. It happened at the corner of Olapel and Orange. It had been a long time since he decided that he couldn't stand downtown New Haven. But he wanted me to take him there.

We cut across the Green. I wasn't saying anything. " Man, I can't understand why he didn't tell me what was bothering him.

He was at my house an hour before it happened. I loved him. We rapped _, , ~ about everything."

I rested my arm on his shoulders and AYA told him that he was really bumm10g me out. He said I shouldn't touch him.

The Yale alumnus is one of our classic We got to Chapel and Orange and he conuc archetypes. He is a staple of New told me that his brother had jumped off Yorker cartoons. for instance, and inside of the top of the corner bank building. the Yale Club of New York, a massive

Volume six, n umber 3 Editors: Joel Krieger Ron Roel Associate Editor: Gary Friedman Photography Editor: James Karageorge Design: John Kane Art Director: Susan Warren Production: Nina Glickson Roger Sametz Business Manager: Brian Raub Contributing Editors: George Kannar Jonathan Marks Steven Weisman Daniel Yergin Publisher: Stuart Rohrer

grey structure that frowns down on Grand Central Termmal, there used to be New Yorker cartoons all around - in the lobby, in the bar, in the gym until the place was redecorated recently into a style I heard one alumnus refer to as "Wichita Hilton."

The month I graduated in 1968, the New Yorker ran a drawing on its cover of a middle-aged man, a blue-and -white striped jacket buttoned neatly around his paunch, standing alone in the middle of what was obviously the Old Campus, looking rather mournfully at his bygone surroundings. "Ho, ho, ho," the cover seemed to be saying, " Ho, ho, ho."

Certainly the New Haven crowd jars much mirth from the alumnus, too. When I was a freshman in Vanderbilt Hall, an alumnus knocked tentatively on our door one Indian summer afternoon. He wanted to show his old room to his young son, who is probably at Yale or applying there today. We all thought it was pretty funny, like the fulminating letters in the Yale Alumni Magazine, always calling for the removal of Bill Coffin or Staughton Lynd or a radical sociologist named Robert Cook, who used to speed to classes on a motorcycle and always seemed to be running for Congress.

Last November, when I visited New Haven for the first gathering of the Association of Yale Alumni (A YA), I carried with me enough detachment to continue to be amused at the alumni, even though I was right there with them, my Magic Marker name on my lapel encased in a plastic tag. As I walked awkwardly around the campus, people seemed to stare at me as if I were some kind of interloper, until I realized it was my name tag that was attracting their attention.

Name tags are demeaning, anyway. Once I took off the tag, I could pass as just a Law student, I discovered to my relief.

Of course the older alumni were all some(continued on page /3)

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by Gary Friedman

Mayday, 1970, for those who remember it all, is a confusing and somewhat embarrassing memory, its luster now tarnished by subsequent years of "eerie tranquility," 1950's nostalgia, and perhaps a bit of plain Yale normalcy. But while the students were raising their Mayday fists and "shutting down Yale to open it up to the community," the University was thinking about shutting down part of the community-a~ least temporarily- to open it up for more of Yale. Yale was getting crowded, and to handle the admission of more women, the University either would have to cut back enrollment of its thousand male leaders or it would have to provide more student housing.

The choice was clear. Although he would not make the announcement public until August, John Hay Whitney, '26, had decided to give Yale about $15 million in the form of a trust fund (to be paid upon his death), to build housing which would alleviate undergraduate overcrowding. Early that summer, the Yale Corporation hired Mitchell/Giurgola Associates, a New York and Philadelphia architectural firm, to begin working on a housing program. At the same time, Kingman Brewster asked Elting E. Morison, then the master of Timothy Dwight College, to analyze undergraduate housing needs, and become the chief negotiator be- . tween the University and the architects.

Two years later, Yale University called a full-fledged press conference to unveil the proposed plans for the thirteenth and fourteenth residential colleges-complete with architect's models and statements, a biography of Whitney, and Brewster's jokes about naming the new colleges George and Harry. The colleges' design featured an unusual flexibility in a site . where according to Romaldo Giurgola, the chief designer, "the University merges with the City" to provide "a crossroads for the campus and the community."

The new colleges, situated on the block bounded by Whitney, Grove, and Temple, contained commercial space and parking to help ease relations with the City. ln the months following the September press conference, the initial glow around the proposed colleges began to wear thin. People began to criticize Yale's apparent disregard for the Kingsly-Havemeyer house, a New Haven landmark which seemed destined to fall under the new colleges.

It has become increasingly unclear just how much of a " crossroads" between Yale and the community the new colleges will be. And, in the words of one Yale administrator, negotiations between the City and the University regarding the proposed colleges have become confused "circles within circles, one of the most complicated messes you could imagine."

In October, 1970, Morison decided to call together a group of seven friends

to informally assist him in his inquiries. ln addition to. his wife,. Elizabeth, the group included psychologist Kenneth Keniston, Trumbull master Kai Erikson, Professor Richard Goldsby, graduate student Nancy Vickers, architect Peter Millard, and Dean of Undergraduate Affairs John Wilkinson. He dubbed the group "Afterguard", a sailing term which refers to a group of wise old sailors who sit in the cockpit and advise the skipper, who is free to accept or ignore their suggestions.

Especially in the days when the issue of University governance was under review, the group's popular title, the Morison Committee, may have implied to some that the group was a formally established structure within the University's decision-making framework. The Committee members themselves, however, were not confused about Afterguard's role. Erikson recently empliasized that, "the Committee has to be seen as an advisory board to Morison. That's what its real status was."

Morison and his committee sought to determine, through meetings and conversations with students, whether Yale needed and wanted more residential colleges, or whether it would better be served by alternative housing programs. Certain objective indicators, such as the increasing number .of students moving off-campus, showed that at least ten percent of the students preferred not to live in the residential colleges. The Student-Community Housing Corporation (SCHC) strongly urged that alternative housing be constructed to meet this student demand.

In the spring of 1971, Erikson and Millard offered a Trumbull College seminar in "The Architect and the University." The seminar was not designed specifically as a student adjunct to the Morison Committee, but six of the fifteen students saw themselves in this capacity, and consequently devoted their efforts to producing proposals for the Committee. Erikson and Millard were pleased with such student input, but only on the same advisory basis on which Morison accepted their proposals.

Unfortunately, some of the students believed their suggestions were not given serious consideration and that a legitimate student perspective had been overlooked. ~though Morison apparently was open to all proposals and discussions, he insists, " 1 never got an interesting or useful idea out of all this other than that we want colleges."

While that may have been an unduly harsh evaluation, it is true that the Committee had to make feasible , long-range proposals, and could not embrace opinions or values that might soort change. And , in the years following Mayday,opinions and values did indeed change. John Wilkinson recalls that in the frrst few months of the

The New 1 ournall25 January 197314

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Committee's deliberations, many students expressed an interest in alternative housing, a break with tradition, and the achievement of a closer relationship with the community. However, as months passed and Mayday consciousness faded, the Committee found that more students articulated their appreciation of such traditional amenities as wood panelling and fireplaces for their rooms within the residential colle~e setting.

The february, 1971, SCHC "Housing" report confirmed some of Wilkinson's observations. Most c;tudents, the report said, were satisfied with the quality of life in the colleges. But, the report continues, ..The single most pressing problem with the colleges, most students feel, is the excessive crowding which has set in since Yale became co-educational."

Numerous students favored offcampus life, the report continued, because "many of them feel that their education cannot be total or authentic unless a substantial portion of their time is spent outside the University."

Two years later, such social rationales are rarely advanced.

Granting that students overwhelmingly favor the residential college system, the University, and Morison in particular, came to question whether it was the University's obligation to provide alternative housing for that significant minority of students dissatisfied with college life. Although Morison believes that "the college system properly developed is the most useful instrument of undergraduate education," he also feels that students should not live in colleges for the whole of their Yale career. But, he believes that if Yale provided alternative housing, much of the benefit of such housing would be lost. Wilkinson agrees, claiming that the off-campus movement is partly spurred by an anti-institutional sentiment.

gle, nor the irregular forms and enclosed courtyard plan of Eero Saarinen's Morse and Stiles. In a formal way, they literally open out into the community, thus avoiding the unfriendly "keep-out" feeling generated by some of the older structures on campus.

Trying to make the colleges compatible with their urban neighbors, the architects searched for a brick facing that would match the four different shapes and colors of brick near the structure: three different red colors from St. Elmo's, Timothy Dwight, and Silliman Colleges, and a white stone on the church across Temple Street. As a result, the brick facing will be a completely different color and much larger in size-6" by 8" compared to 2" by 6". An offwhite plexiglass module for the students' desks and window will punctuate this brick-like wall, attempting to match the white of the church across the street. .

The two courtyards will be small, about 120 feet long and I 00 feet wide, and sunken about eight feet below street level. They are bounded by the nine-story high rise with its flat facade on one side and the busy street on the other. A four-foot high wall will separate the sunken courtyards from the street.

The courtyards are not important circulation passages in or out of the new colleges, nor do they function as an actual juncture of the city and the University. But, because they are not cloistered retreats, neither will they provide the gentleness and peace that are characteristics of the older courtyards.

The entryway system. an inefficient and expensive mode of construction, has been abaodqned. instead, eight single rooms are linked to a living room on an alternate level.

The provision of glass enclosures in the hallways offsets the normal drabness of hallways in student dorm~.

Even though the University decided to build two new residential colleges, their philosophical justifications A pinwheel-shaped structure nine differed from those offered in 1930 stories high, the new colleges will resemble neither the traditional courtwhen the first eight colleges were yard plan of James Gamble Rogers' constructed with a gift from Edward Steven Harkness, Yale 1897. Today, original Harkness Memorial Quadranfew speak openly of the virtues of an Now you see it, now you see it: The academic enclave. Architect Romaldo Kingsley-Havemeyer House will be moved Giurgola regards the site of the new from now-glum Grove Street {below) to a more sympathetic neighborhood on Whitney (opposite). Check out the artic.ula tion of the windows.

colleges more as "a vital area where the University merges with the City, a crossroads for the campus and community, a place of encounter." In fact, Mitchell/Giurgola was apparently chosen by the University precisely because Giurgola displays in his work an acute consciousness of the relation of the school to the urban community.

Yet, according to Erikson, the initial conception of the Universitycommunity interface was that of a frontier, not a crossroads. And, indeed, despite the public pronouncements, philosophical underpinnings, and architectural concessions, the new re•idential colloges will very likely remain as isolated from the New Haven community as the existing colleges.

The University's position is more ambivalent than hypocritical. It wants to open itself up as much as possible without undercutting its main function- to serve and protect its students.

The locked gateways in all the colleges are hardly invitations to the community, but they are considered necessary responses to the upsurge of crime on campus in recent years.

Similarly, the iron mesh on the firstfloor windows in Morse and Stiles is an accoutrement depressingly familiar to urban residents. The new colleges will be equally subject to the hazards of urban life, and surely, their gates too will be locked. The necessities of security create an unfortunate, instantaneous barrier to an open Universitycommunity relationship.

The commercial space on the ground floor of these colleges, designed in order to maintain New Haven's tax base, has come to represent most clearly the potential crossroads between Yale and the community. But the realization of that vision is by no means certain. Is Morton's Pharmacy a crossroads? Is the Yale Co-op a crossroads?

It seems that even when students and New Haven residents shop in the same stores, interaction is minimal.

Public walkways transversing the college site are also integral elements of the "crossroads ideology." But architect Fred Foote of Mitchell/ Giurgola, the project director, expresses concern that these walkways will be vastly under-used particularly by · community residents. The glass-enclosed promenades and the glass wall in each living room visually link the new colleges' residents with the rest of Yale and New Haven. However, more likely than not, New Haven will

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become no more to these students than just another pretty view. · Timothy Dwight College, for years surrounded by New Haven on three sides, never became a place for encounter between the University and the community. The tWo new colleges, despite certain structural innovations, will apparently be no more a place for encounter than TD has been.

The only way in which the new colleges- and indeed, Tirriothy Dwight and the other eleven residential colleges-can become a crossroads is through programmatic innovations by the University. If Yale encourages more New Haven residents to partake of University offerings and facilities, then perhaps the University as a whole will become more of a crossroads.

Certain problems result from a single internal contradiction. A Yale residential college cannot be a place of encounter. But residential colleges which allow non-students to use freely their study, dining, ·or recreational facilities would risk depriving their own students of these benefits.

Given the University"s limited resources and the ·constraints of urban America, the residential college system is to a great degree an academic enclave.

Especially' if we want to change these relationships, we should not delude ourselves that the creation of two new residential colleges on Yale's outskirts'will bring Yale and New Haven significantly closer, in any more than tile-most obvious physical way.

This separation between Yale and New Haven has been txemplified in the planning process. As a result, construction faces near-certain delay.

Building was seheduled to start in March of this year, and the colleges were to be ready for occupancy in September, 1975. The Yale Daily News, reporting the unveiling of the new college designs, observed, "Although official presentations to the zoning committees, City Pian Commission, and Board of Aldermen do not begin until November, informal approvals were apparent yesterday."

However, that yesterday was a long time ago. A high city official recently pointed out that the city and the University should have worked together more closely from the start, and charged that Yale deliberately excluded the city from early stages of the planning. Resulting inadequacies in the design have prevented the City Plan Commission from

The New J ournall25 January 197315 }

approving the program. Until the Commission makes its recommendations, the Board of Aldermen cannot act. Ultimate approval must come from Mayor Bart Guida. If Yale then puts the project out to public bid, construction may not begin for another two months after that. It is impossible to pinpoint a starting date, but even if no further hitches develop, the original March starting date appears unlikely.

In a December 18 Memorandum to the City Plan Commission of New Haven, Yale agreed to four modifications of its plans. It will move the Kingsley-Havemeyer House to 33 Whitney Avenue at its own expense.

To conform to legal requirements, it will increase by eight the number of on-site, underground parking spaces.

It will modify the design to improve the deficient off-street loading facilities. Finally , although Yale observes "this is against our better judgement," the University is willing to increase the commercial space by adding 3000 square feet of commercial facility on Temple Street. In a letter to the University advising against the increased commercial space, New York real estate consultants James D. Landauer Associates, Inc., echoed the concerns of numerous observers: "lf you recall, we have never been very bullish on the commercial prospects for the Grove Whitney College.

We have indicated to you that any . commercial development undertaken for this location will have to be most imaginatively marketed to achieve even a modest degree of success." (ln a later development, a Yale Corporation committee headed by Cyrus Vance, indicated to the City that Yale was also willing to pay taxes on the land occupied by the new colleges, as well as the Yale golf course).

This new construction is expected to bolster the regeneration of this area, where empty shops attest to an absence of vitality. But the actual commercial possibilities are still up in the air. Who will rent these spaces at rates more than double current prices? Elting Morison hopes for at least "a damn fine restaurant," and both the city and the University hope for a damn high occupancy rate.

Some members of the city government limit their expectations of the project to such dollars-and-cents

calculations, and eschew romantic visions of a crossroads fostered by nine stories of Yale University atop several thousand square feet of New Haven commercial space. The City Pian Commission still has the matter under consideration, but in a statement of personal opinion rather than official policy, City Plan Director . John McGurty observed, "I do not feel that such a crossroads can be achieved."

Although New Haven's voice may not have been heard throughout the planning for the new colleges, the other participants in the process were more vocal and involved. The architects seemed genuinely eager to ~!'\counter student opinion, though the sampling technique may be questioned. One wonders, for example, how many off-campus students were contacted.

Yet Fred Foote lived in TD for a month, observed Yale, and spoke informally to students whenever possible. He now credits students for proposing the fundamental concepts that guided Mitchell/Giurgola's architectural creation. The emphasis on student privacy- 95 percent of the rooms are singles- and on the individual's relationship to groups of other sizes- four to eight students will share a common, 20 foot by 20 foot living room- is a product of student desires. The value of interaction between two colleges, as Foote observed between Morse and Stiles, was a concept incorporated into the plans for the new colleges.

The essential flexibility of the plans is due to a recognition of changing times and changing student needs.

As the Morison Committee realized, their decisions would have to remain feasible for the long run. Mitchell/ Giurgola similarly realized that its plans, to withstand unforeseen future change, had to be adaptable. The various living units in the colleges bear the same kind of relation to space that modular units bear to time: they may be re-arranged in a great number of ways in order to fit particular circumstances. Moreover, with sustained evidence of such a student preference, kitchens may be installed quite easily, thus converting a college suite into a nearly self-sufficient apartment unit.

Except for the objection that these are residential colleges rather than an alternative housing scheme, there is likely to ~e little fundamental student dissatisfaction with the structure of the housing. Some students may be dismayed to discover that the new colleges lack squash courts. In 1962, when Morse. and Stiles were built without squash courts, their proximity to the gym vanquished most objections. The new colleges, on the other hand, are the entire width of Yale College away from the gym.

But the architects concluded, and the University concurred, that squash courts are an indulgence; and due to spatial and budgetary constraints they could not be constructed. lt is small consolation that the new colleges will have a basketball court.

The other noticeable victims of these constraints are the masters' houses. They are much smaller and less elaborate than the masters' houses in the other colleges, a change which itself may be beneficial. Morison felt that the expensive residences- the homes in Morse and Stiles cost $300,000 each- generate demands on masters that keep them from being ordinary men, let alone scholars. Kai Erikson also approves. In fact, both his first floor living room and dining room, now open to his college public, are not used for strictly family functions .

The constraints, however, pale before the generosity of the $15 million gift. And John Hay Whitney, the key participant in this process, was more than merely a silent and beneficent donor. Fred Foote says, "I can't remember another project we've done where we've seen as much of the donor." The architects still find it hard to forget the sight of Whitney's Rolls-Royce pulling up to the curb on West 97th Street in Manhattan, on the day that Whitney came to visit Mitchell/Giurgola. However, although Whitney was constantly kept up-to-date and personally reviewed the evolving plans, he did not interfere in the planning process. Morison observes that Whitney "never personally expressed a preference."

John Hay Whitney desires an alleviation of the overcrowding in the residential colleges. But, several significant questions remain unanswered, and they are questions that will not be answered by the physical construction of the new colleges.

Who will live in these new colleges?

The answer encompasses broad and interrelated issues: student housing preferences, and the New Haven housing market. These two new colleges should be opened, at least on an experimental basis, to a more equal graduate student-undergraduate mix (with a greater sprinkling of faculty members). Elting Morison believes that the proper development of the residential college system demands such a mix. He was impressed by the workability of mixing all classes, including freshman, in Timothy Dwight College. His extrapolations convince him that the greater diversity achieved via the graduate student mix would be equally beneficial.

Yale graduate students have expressed a strong desire to break their isolation, and live together with the Yale College population. A poll of over 1,000 graduate students conducted by the Graduate Student Senate during the spring of 1972 reveals an interesting set of results: 50 percent (including married couples) indicated they would appreciate the opportunity to live in "undergraduate" housing; 26 percent listed their first preference for housing as a mixture of graduate, professional and undergraduate students; 35 percent expressed a strong preference that the new living units include members of the New Haven community outside of Yale.

What remains to bar the way to the creation of University rather than undergraduate colleges? What prevents us from experimenting with inducements to include Yale employees-or even other New Haven residents?

Another plan for University housingone which has conspicuously lacked the fanfare of the Mitchell/Giurgola project-may become the second part of a mixed-use University housing policy.

Since June, 197 1, a committee headed

by Alfred Fitt, special assistant to President Brewster, has been studying the possibilities for more graduateprofessional housing around the Yale campus. The commit tee is investigating the possibility of persuading commercial developers to build highquality, low-rent apartments on University land bounded by Chapel Street, Howe Street, Park Street, and Edgewood Avenue. The apartments, which could include another 300 units, would not be operated by the (continued on page 14)

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The architects' floor plans. The Lower Level and First floor (below) show the "common" places in the colleges. Where would you put a squash court? To the lo wer right of these plans and that of the Second floor (opposite, top) is the area given over to commercial space. Not

quite another Harvard Square.

In order to make sense out of the 4th Fourth and Seventh Floors and the Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Floors (opposite, bottom), try stacking them in your mind like an architectural Dag·

Dining/Activities Area (Lower Level) 1

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15

16 17

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kitchens? The plans allow for the storage areas adjoining the common or living rooms to be turned into kitchens at minimum cost. (Ninth floor plans not shown here.)

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lobby serving area dining room dishwashing area mailboxes recreation area dr.unat music.: room arts and crafts room darkroom storage area kitchen staff area mechanical room courtyard commercaal area parking r..1ilroad right of way St. Elmo

Entrance Area

'WOod sandwich. Add some provolone staircases, and you have an idea of how the duplexes (actually triplexes) will work. Although taste is always a personal matter, we don't recommend eating your finished product. Why not make a real sandwich in one of the new

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The New J ournall25 January 197317

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Academic Areas/ FeUows Residences {2nd Floor) Lobby seminar room fellow's office library dean's office master's office master's house fellow's residence commercial area open to below St. Elmo

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Livmg Rooms {4th/7th Floors)

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Lobby gallery storage room suite living roorh counselor's residence kitchenette bathroom double bedroom suite vending area laundry room meeting/ seminar room

by Bill Ferris

Parchman Penitentiary stands in the heart of the Delta. Until recently farming was done with mules driven by white and black convicts. Inmates are segregated and one of the largest black camps is near the community of Lambert.

During the summer of 1968 I visited the Lambert camp and recorded and ftlmed black inmates chopping wood to the rhythm of work chants, a tradition which originated in West Mrica. From five to fifteen men cut wood together lifting their axes in unison and chopping on the beat of a work chant called by a leader who faced them. Verses of the chant spoke of escape from Parchman by swimming the Sunflower River to confuse the trailing bloodhounds, of hoes returned to the "Captain" and refusal to work, and of a beautiful woman named "Rosie" who was waiting outside the camp for her man.

In Parchman, as in other parts of the Delta, nicknames are the only names by which a person is known. These nicknames usually reflect either personality or physical characteristics. The following conversation is with a former Parchman inmate called "Have Mercy" who received his nickname when he protested the beating another prisoner received.

Have Mercy described an incident which involved a prison trustee nicknamed "Old Timer" or "Timer" because he was in his nineties. His account describes what convicts call the "innee world" of Parchman Penitentiary: a world of fear in which only the strong and intelligent survive. Like the trickster rabbit, the black man had to move and think faster than his white boss.

Because he was a "high roller" and hoed weeds from [chopped] cotton as fast as most men could walk, Have Mercy gained favor with prison guards and escaped the beatings which others received.

WJren you wn-e up then on the farm, wlult would they /unle you doinK out there?

Chopping cotton. Picking cotton.

Pulling stalks. Ditching. Cutting down trees in the woods. Ufting up and toting logs. All that kind of stuff. We would have a log about that high [eisht feet]. Be as long as from here to the door there. Have six mens with hand sticks. Just like me and James here.

He'd tote right hand and I'd tote left.

And then the man is up there walking, up on the log. He weighed two-hundred and fifty now. He'd say "Better n~t drop this log and hurt me. Better not drop me."

WJren would they get you up in the morning?

Three-o-clock. Eat breakfast at the long table, and at three-thirty we'd be setting on the end [of the field) waiting till it got light enough to see and work.

Cold, ooo wee! That's what be the matter with my foots. My hands, sometimes they just aches all across there, you know, from cold. I couldn't straighten my hand out no straighter than that.

The New Joumall25 January 197316

Now we pulled up the cotton stalks ahead of the folks that was breaking up ground. Every man pulled up cotton stalks and piled them in his own middle from end to end. And the half-trustees come along behind us and burn them up out of the plow hand's way. They would be breaking up ground. Four mules and a great big old plow. They called it a "road plow", a "sand buster" with four mules to it. Just git right up in the top of that row and split that middle of that row, you know. Four mules pulling.

When would you come home from work in the evening?

When it was night. Summer, winter, and fall and spring.

How long were you up there, Have Mercy?

Seven years.

Why did they send you up there?

Well, just following bad company.

Ain't did nothing. A gang of us was gambling in old juke houses, you know.

Ain't nobody staying in them. Just old houses where we'd meet to gamble.

Every Saturday night, why we'd meet there and git to shooting dice. I ain't did nothing.

The gang (was with, they shot about three or four games, and I was with them.

If you followed a gang of people, it makes no difference about whether you did something or: no. If they do something and you with them, why you in the blame too. Right? Somebody got killed and th.ree got wounded. I couldn't git outta there. I was in it, but I hadn't did nar' shoL Did the women up at Parchman work ill the fields too?

No sir. The women, they hoed the vegetable fann and made them stripes what we wore. You see when them stripes come in there, they shipped them in rolls of cloth. And them hard row ¡ women made six suits a day, and them "legs.. made three. You know what a .,eg" is? He way behind. He can't work much. When we be chopping cotton, the leg be way behind. All them hindest folks. why we called them legs. They the same way about picking cotton, pulling stalks. chopping cotton, or doing anything.

Them "high rollers" that git up through the iaeld, weU I was one of them.

Yeah, Boy. I c~ld chop cotton as fast as I could trot along the road. I didn't care about the grass. I hit that grass and (was] gone. Leave that stand [of cotton] and not stop walking.

And they had a lots of them up there was supposed to have been higher roUers than me. But when they got in that grass, by the time they git as far from the end as from here to the store, I was at the other end. They said "Now what kind of lick is that nigger got? Ooo wee, he gone. Great goodness alive."

I'd be trying to stay out the way of that man. I said "White Folks, when you git to throwing that leather, my foots git as light under the bottom as a piece of paper. I wonder when is my time? ..

He say "I ain't gonner bother you.

You's a high roller."

The New J ournall25 January 197319

I be knowing that, but I still clown, you know. If I see his shoes unlaced, I run there and jump on my knees and lace'em up. If I see them nasty on the toe, I git my old rag out of my pocket and wipe them off for him. All that's to make it. You got to do all that. Act the fool. You got to act the fool. You in the penitentiary. You got to act the fool to make it easy on you. They'll look at you and say "Now you know he want to make it. He's a good worker and then he clow.ns too. We ain't gonner bother him".

And it was another thing I could do.

They had about three or four handmade guitars. I could play one of them And I'd git somebody else to play it and I'd dance by it. I can dance, you know.

I can do the buck dance. If you pl~ the music, I'll know it when you play it.

I'd rather buck dance than eat a ball of onions.

Mrat is your real name?

My real name js Johnny Lee Thomas.

My home is Arcola, Mississippi.

Why do they call you Have Mercy?

In the penitentiary, in Parchman, they was beating a man to death one day, and this very man had been chopping cotton.

He told them "Just spare life. Here's the grass and here's the cotton. You can beat me to death, but that's all I can do. I can't do no more."

And the sun was beating down, and I say ..Looka here. Don't you hear the man say 'Spare life' and he doing all he " can? There's more work days than one.

Have mercy on that man and let him up from there. Don't hit him another lick." 路 And they started to calling me that over there in the penitentiary. "Have Mercy." I went there in twenty-nine.

I left in thirty-seven. I got the name there and it followed me on out here.

"Have Mercy.''

What else happened in the penitentiluy?

They beat you half to death, but they give you plenty to eat. They give you a'plenty, but it was half-cooked. They fed us good when folks come on the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving, and Ouistrnas. And after that they fed us like a gang of dogs. That's right. I was up there a gang of years.

And at that time anybody whipped you. It was two drivers at every camp, and a sergeant and a night watchman.

But they tell me now that don't nobody whip but the sergeant, and you have to do a mighty bad crime for him to whip you.

But at that time they'd hit you just as long as they felt like raising up their 路arm. Course me, I never did git marked up, or scarred up cause I could chop cotton as fast as you could walk along the road. If you caught the cage, you lcnow what I mean, the cage you stay in in the camp during the day if you didn't work. If you take what they gived you, why you was welcome to stay in there.

Course me, myself, I never was sick. lf you took a quart of castor oil and a pint of Epsom salts you could stay in there.

Now who wanted all that? You didn't need all of it. I'm glad I never was sick.

I never was a trustee, and I never was half-trustee. They kept me straight up a line (in the field] .

Mrat would they do when they beat you?

They wouldn't do nothing, but had some kind of grease there they'd grease them up with and go to work the next 路day like they ain't hit you nar' a lick.

How would they betzt you?

Well they pull your breetches down.

And that strap was that wide, that tltick, and that long with the handle. And that leather is loaded. The leather, you see is loaded. They have something in there that cut your flesh up. It mark you up.

They didn't have to hit you all that hard with it. It't a certain way they hit you.

They have a man on your head, and they have you flat on your stomach and a man on each arm, and a man on each leg. You can't do nothing but lay there. He gonner hit you seventy-five or eighty licks. And some of them, when they let them up, the clothes would stick to their flesh. I knowed a many a man had to wear padding 'tween his clothes to set down.

All back there was just raw. In other words it was like that when I was there.

But I wasn't marked up cause I could get on out the way. But there's a whole lot of them that's out here today that's marked up. But you gonner work right on. I don't care if you is marked.

And them guards. At that time here is the way they guarded you. It was like that, with their hand on the trigger. Just like over here is "my catch." Over here is yours, and over there is yours. If a man jump and come this way, I supposed to stop him. But if you see l can't git him, why ain't no harm for you to take a couple of cracks at him.

But that guard- 1 don't know. I never was a trustee-but that guard worked as hard as me, because he's all the time looking. His eyes is in a strain all day.

He don't know who gonner try to git away. Them scoundrels will try you to see can you shoot. It was a old man up there. He was ninety-eight years old, a old timer. He'd been there since nineteen hundred. I wadn't even in the world in nineteen hundred. I had done picked him out and said '1ltat old man can't shoot. rm shore gonner run over him." l thought that, but I wanted somebody else to try it. If they'd git away, then it'd be my time. Well, a good friend of mine, I loved that boy, his wife said " Well, John Thomas, l done all I could for you.

I didn't know you had 'natural life."'

See "natural life" is longer than a lifetime [sentence) . A lifetime is just a hundred years. But natural life mean that if you stay two or three hundred years, you still ain't served your time.

And the governor, he don't give no pardon for natural life. Well he had that kind of time. and she didn't know it. She was waiting to try and git him a pardon.

She thought he had lifetime. So after she found that he had natural life, she wrote

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him and say " I'm sorry, but I can't do you no good. You know I been single now for four years. I done married and

I said "That old man's a mess. If Johnny git away, he's a liar. I'm gonner run if Johnny git away." started a new family."

But he didn't git away. He squatted He had a nice learning, and so he sat and throwed that cap good on the side. out in the sun and read the letter. He He said "Wait a minute." shook his head and said "No. I don't You know the woods had a wire like Jt. If she was married, she had no fence around it. And right at the edge of business writing me. I'll tell you what 4 the woods was a great big oak tree. I I'm gonner do. I'm going out there and can't measure with my arms how large kill her. I ain't gonner bother the man. it was. "Wait a minute. He crossing the Then I'll come back." wire fence. Let me make him think I said " Aw naw. You wouldn't come he gone." back."

He was flxing to go around that great big oak tree. He say "There he is right "Yeah I would. I swear cause I there." wouldn't of wrote her no such a letter "Yoow!" as this."

He say "There he is. I saw him when I saw him again and I said " Wait a he fell. Send somebody with the dead minute." wagon to git him."

He said "Wait what?"

I said "Don't you run over that old " Wait till we git in the woods." man. You better stay here. He'll git you."

He say "Aw naw. That'll be a little But if he had of missed Johnny, I too long. We won't git in the woods would of run the next day. Old, old man. until this winter."

He was ninety-six.

We was chopping cotton and had got I said "That old man. Good god across the field. I said " Johnny, I like amighty. He been here ever since nineyou. I don't want you to try and jump." teen hundred. I wadn't even in the He say " I'm gonner jump. I'm going world in nineteen hundred." over 'Ole Timer' cause he's ninety-six So I didn't mess with Ole Timer. If years old, and near about a hundred, and you want to git away from the penitencan't see good." tiary, don't mess with Timer. If you do, I said to myself "I shore hope you git why he got you. So I wadn't glad for away and that will be my go. That way, him to have got killed, but I'd rather for the next day will be my day." it to have been him than me. If he had But that old man, let me tell you. got away, the next day was my day, but You know he wore his straw hat with the you see he didn't git away. He was on screen wore out in the front in the sumhis way out to kill his wife. He say he mertime. He say "Tomorrow evening at three-o-clock when we go out on the end, was coming back. I told him "Ain't no need of you doing that, Johnny. She had I'm gonner take his hat off and throw it to have somebody." as far up in the air as I can git it. And "I don't care. She didn't have no I'm going right on behind that hat. You business writing me such a letter as that just look out for that hat." over here."

And so, sure enough, one of the It was the letter more than it was guards, 'Black Gal', he said " It's gitting another husband. He said " If I three-o-clock.. , knowed you was all hemmed up and About the time us all got us rows couldn't git out, I wouldn't write you started, he throwed that hat up in the nothing like that." air and lit out. He runned over Ole Timer.

So he started crying, but I knowed The captain, he said "Look out, Ole then he was gonner try to git away.

Timer. That's one you just as well to That was really something. let go."

That was more than something. I He said "Oh, no."

He said "I bet you twenty-five dollars." hated that boy got killed. I'm the man went down there and got him. It broke He said "Wait a minute." his neck. If you trying to git away, well I said to myself "Run, Johnny, run. that's where they gonner shoot you at, Run, Johnny, run." in the neck or in the head. That old man, He was aping too, gitting cross that I didn't thought he could shoot good by field. They was still standing up talking.

Old Timer told him "Captain Tom", he being that old. • said, "What this gun sight on here for?

There he is rigbc there on the end of the Bill Fe"is is an assistant professor of gun barrel."

American and Afr(rAmerican Studies.

I said " Run, Johnny, run."

A specialist in American folklore and Captain Tom say " I bet you twentydocumentary filmmaking, he luis frve dollars." published books, films. articles, and He say "I bet you twenty-five." records in American folklore. This So the driver throwed down his interview is part ofa series of convertwenty-five and the guard throwed down sations with blocks in the Mississippi his. Old, old man. Head white as snow.

Delta which he is compiling from He say "I been here ever since nineteen nwny hours of field tapes. The tapes hundred. I ain't shot at a man and represent an oral history of black missed him yet. I'm gonner cut his survival in rural Mississippi jumper collar behind and leave it hanging three inches."

..,

Money doe$n't grow on Tree$

by Susan J. Friedman

•

Along about third grade, perhaps because then I- started getting an allowance, or perhaps simply because some section of my babybrain became eager for that particular form of mastery, it became incumbent upon me to determine the financial situation of the world. Money, I perceived, was beauty, and beauty money.

My allowance, 25 preinflation cents a week, taught me not only did I not need anything, but I hardly even wanted anything, except candy. So every Saturday morning Linda and I took Bus No. 21 downtown, where we proceeded to gorge our fat little cheeks with Milky Ways from Grant's and chocolate doughnuts from the Cottage Bakery, and little else, though we spent a lot of time looking at things like paperback books and lipstick and spent hours trying on rings for under $1.00 while the saleswoman glowered because we never bought anything: they were too cheap. We knew, already, that Grant's was tacky.

There were certain entire economic spheres in which it never occurred to me to spend my money, spheres exclusively inhabited by the grownups: clothing, food, shelter, medical care, i.e.. anything over $2.50. Those things, like coats and shoes and chemistry sets and perfumemaking kits and watercolors, I just asked for. Or else they appeared spontaneously: "I'll pick you up after school and we'll go get shoes," my mother would say ; or she would leave five dresses on my bed and I would select what I wanted.

Or I would ask for a wood burning kit and it would appear. Certainly I am not complaining about this; I had everything my babybrain could think of, plus the essentials. However, it left me in the situation of having a purely discretionary income, and very little discretion, and even less to buy. Not understanding that money might be spent on articles in the real world, I began to save up the quarters and later the half-dollars in a shoebox which I'd cut a slit in, subliminally conscious that I would spend this on something unknown to me but which would bring me happiness, and if I waited long enough, I would figure out what to buy.

So I waited, and after a while, especially since I got birthday money and Ch_ilnukah gelt from my grandparents, when one of my parents would see into the box, they would say, "You have more money than God." I probably did. I was independently wealthy at the age of eight.

All these hints about God's money, added to my ~elief that money was

spent on unknown things which brought great joy, made it abundantly clear that money was ethereal, if not actually religious. After all, hadn't I heard the story of worshipping the golden calf and completely missed the point and thought that was the most beautiful object in the Bible? Didn't God have money? I knew then that money was beauty.

"Do you think that money grows on trees?" my parents would ask when I flew in on the wings of a new request: crayons, a campus jacket, a cinch belt.

Yes, my dear mama and papa, I do (though I was polite enough not to contradict them openly). That's exactly where it grows, and I know because of the Twelve Dancing Princesses who slipped through a secret trap door in their bedroom every night and went out to dance with twelve handsome princes, on their secret, enchanted journey passing through forests where, first, all the trees were of crystal, then, all of gold, then there were emerald leaves tinkling, and silver, and ruby, and I thought I would die from the beauty of it all, the illumined jeweled trees and the lovely princesses in their full velvet gowns.

The horrible part of the story comes at the end when the princesses are found out and prevented from going back.

Their father, the king, noticing their wornout slippers each morning, had offered the hand (and that's not all) of any princess to any man who could penetrate the mystery. And of course, after the routine beheadings of the few who failed, a fair prince did come along who wrecked the whole thing by spying on them from behind his invisible cloak (my first inkling that men were tricky). It ends with a wedding which they said was splendid, but of course didn't compare with the beauty, and the freedom, of the underground kingdom, from which the daughters had been snatched, twelve Persephones ripped from the rich earth.

It was a miserable ending, the women were routed, but the first half was my first hint at the pleasures of a matriarchy, in which, logically, money did grow on trees. Logically, because in the real world patriarchy, i.e .. where the men had ftrst dibs on everything and went out all day to make adultmoney, money did not grow on trees. In fact, in the real world, I couldn't even spend my money.

Despite the risk of capture by a spying prince, and in defiance of all those emperors, obviously without clothes, who said that money did not grow on trees, when I knew it did and if only they wouldn't be so literal and mundane they'd know it too, and out of some urge to restore the pnncesses, and myself, to the lost joys of the matriarchy, I became a Queen.

Every Saturday aftetnoon, haviug wiped the chocolate off our faces and reboarded the No. 21 Bus, Linda, my dearest friend in all the real world, and I came back to my house and sat around saying, ''What do you wanna do?" .. 1 don't know. What do you wanna do?"

"I don't know. You say." "No, you say." Then we'd usually go upstairs into the closet and get out my mother's huge box of silk scarves. We stripped down to our underwear and draped ourselves with the scarves, four for each of us: one on top, one on the bottom, one for a headdress, and one as a shawl. Then we put on as much of my mother's jewelry as we could support, and other assorted bangles, belts, gloves, high heels. Downstairs in the closet was a dark, carved cane which we took turns carrying as a scepter. The other one had to use a yardstick. Both Queens, we led one another on tours of our respective palaces. One week Linda would get the dining room and I the living room, we divided it up somehow, and then I would start leading her from corner to corner, as I had seen my mother do after we moved into the new house, saying in my best Queen voice (which was actually a Hermione Gingold voice), "Your Highness, look at this solid gold ashtray which cost $5000. And over here, you will see the emerald cat which cost a million dollars."

"Well, in my palace we have one which cost two million dollars.¡' "Yah, but my palace has solid diamond windows."

"Well, mine has solid gold floors, Your Highness."

"Your Highness, look at my solid silver lamp with ruby decorations which cost seven million dollars."

"Well, I have a crystal chandelier with diamond lightbulbs which cost fifteen million hundred thousand dollars, Your Lowness."

The game never lasted very long, since we bedazzled each other to the point of mordant jealousy. Sometimes we got so angry that Linda would threaten to go home, and we would run outside on the (emerald) lawn screaming, "Go home, Your Lowness" and "Shutup, Your Stupidness," racing around in our scarves and undershirts and headdresses. That was always the end, the crumbling of the kingdoms in anger and envy: but at least we could do it every week, and neither one of us got snatched and married off to any sneaky prince. Nor did any emperor convince me that money did not grow on trees, did not transmogrify into beauty incarnate: solid gold ashtrays and emerald leaves. ln my kingdom, it did.

That's what was so queer about the Yerows who lived up the street and were the richest people I knew. They practically lived in a mansion, and they owned racehorses and an Alaskan husky named Boris, though no swimming pool. Once I asked my mother how rich the Yerows were and she said, "WeU, their pockets are deeper than ours." But there were too many dark wrong things always happening up there, and I was profoundly confused because money was beauty and joy. Mrs. Yerow was never home, and when she was she was always yelling at Carl not to put so much salt on his food

The New Journal 125 January 1973112

or he'd die young; and Mr. Yerow was never home either, never; and the maid was surly; and once on my way home Boris got out of his cage and bit the arm off my snowsuit; and one night when I was supposed to sleep over there with Barbara I got so homesick that my parents carried me home in a blanket, and I never went back to sleep or even stayed very long. Sometimes it was fun, like when Barbara and 1 played Giant Step in the living room, or when we had the Sunday Club at her grandfather's and ate breakfast there every week, but even that turned bad when he was mean to me once and said that Carl should get something that I wanted because Carl was a boy and his grandson. So I didn't go back.

I think the Yerows were the second half of the story, where the princesses are defeated and everyone, except the king and prince, loses. The Yerows were a patriarchy full of mean dogs and mean grandfathers and absent fathers who had affairs with women and odd brothers who took too much of salt and things I wanted, and even a surly Cinderella maid who always made Carl's sandwich first for lunch. Someone had expelled the Yerow~ from the beautiful kingdom, and I had some idea who it was, but I was too polite to say anything.

As my shoebox treasury of grace grew in magical power, and as I became more certain that someday I would indeed think of something to buy with it, I also became more firmly convinced that this thing would be the likes of an emerald leaf: pure beauty, pure good.

Other people, especially my grandparents, dealt badly, far too grossly with money. For "saying a piece," we would get a pair of mittens or a measly nickel.

"Saying a piece" consisted of reciting a poem, singing a song, or telling a joke in front of the assembled grownups. And as the instant trios of cousins finished a spinechilling rendition of "Rock of Ages" or as one wheeled heavily off the end of an arabesque, they gave us the mittens and a kiss while the adults, the aunts and uncles, applauded and laughed and said, "she looks like a dog at a hydrant." If your piece was especially good, though no one knew what her criteria for good actuaJiy were, Nana would cup her hands over her mouth and show you, and you alone, her false teeth. She'd unthwack them from her gums and eject them with her tongue, then, finding us suitable terrified, she clicked them back in and up, thwack! That was the single most peculiar gift I ever received, and 1 thought it awesome, stupendously unbeautiful. As earthly as a mouth. And once, at our house, my grandfather told me that if I didn't talk at all during supper he would give me a silver dollar. I didn't, and he did. But thinking about it afterwards, I thought he was one very cruel king, who, taking pleasure from his cruelty, reinforced my own beliefs about men, who were fools about beautymoney if good with adultmoney, and about women, who

inhabited the crystal forests of beautymoney. Until they were caught.

When I was younger, around five , I had still thought that men knew about beautymoney. My father had brought me a solid chocolate apple, and that was surely pure goodness. In fact, it was my mother who forbade me to eat it all at once and kept me to one section a day. Thought I: the father giveth and the mother taketh away. But as my wisdom in these matters increased, I realized that I had been mistaken: it is the men who taketh away and are dumb. Though I should say that I had serious doubts about my mother, and hence, of all women, except me and Linda and other princesses I knew existed, because although my mother never, for example, stopped us from playing Queen, and never said anything which indicated she didn't believe in the kingdom of beautymoney, she also disappointed me by saying such things as, ''Why don't you think of something to spend your money on and get it?" When it was clear that I hadn't found the article yet, and could not be content to spend the shoebox on something so sublunary as a game or a toy.

Yet the things which I did finally spend the money on were things my mother understood, which was reassuring. She certainly understood. even if she most ta.rtly disapproved, the black and red lace bikini underpants I brought home one Saturday on the No. 21 Bus. Unda got a pair too. And she understood, and encouraged, when I decided to buy a misty landscape by a Japanese artist.

She even paid to have it framed. I can look at it from the typewriter and ima.gine Japanese princesses walking through it , though they're not actually painted in.

But then, they wouldn't be, since the artist was a man. And my mother even understood, despite some feeling of jealousy at first, when 1. decided to quit teaching in the most Stygian of high schools and use money to support the writing of stories about money growing on trees and dancing princesses. For now writing is the beautymoney, the puregood; the stories all come from the same magical kingdom out of my sometimes shaky matriarchy. Shaky because sometimes I get very afraid that I am being indulged1 am, for now at least, living on money earned by my father, for even if it has been entrusted to me, I still profoundly question whether I can create puregood and beautymoney out of, and living on, adultmoney which adamantly scoffs at growing on trees.

I think it is a moral question. If men refuse the kingdom of silver trees, how can I justify using men's adultmoney to help me reenter that kingdom? Is that • not dishonest?

But then I think of what that king did to those princesses, and realize that it is a war and a matter of consequence; that it is the war my grandfather was winning when he paid me to stop talking or the war Carl Yerow won when his grandfather favored him over me. So I think:

if this is a real war, then I have every right to fight in it and every right to take the money and run to erect whatever kingdom I believe in, and it doesn't make any difference if they keep telling me that I should get married already and settle down, or that I should use makeup and wear a bra, or that money does not grow on trees. It's either them or me , their place or mine. And it's going to be my place, where the money transformed itself into trees twenty years ago and it's just a matter of telling enough people about it now so that they'll support me when I say we belong down there in the earth with the jeweled landscape and the princes who are handsome, but who can't keep us from going home when we want to, and can't make us get married or put us in bondage or convince us that money doesn't grow on trees.

The men used trickery to punish the princesses. The princesses used stealth to enter the magical kingdom. If it's a moral question, then the princesses win. •

SUsan Friedman is a writer living in New Haven. This essay is a chapter from a book which she is presently writing.

¡II

The New Journall25 January 1973113

{continued from page 2) how too strange, too formal, too loud to pass for permanent members of the Yale community. In my mind, I fancied them to be the interlopers.

What torture to be an alumnus! ln two days of conferences in the Law School Auditorium and Harkness Hall, the University tried its hardest to make us feel welcome. But each time Kingman Brewster told us how important we were, I felt more and more like an outsider.

After an arm's-length welcome to the 250 representatives in the AYA gathering that week- arm's-length because some of the alumni cherished their independenceBrewster assured us that the University was to be ultimately "accountable" to the 80,000 alumni we represented. " Accountabiltiy" was "not just a slick word," he said. On the other hand, did the alumni want the students to be polled each time the University was to make a decision? Of course not. Then we could see, Brewster's speech implied, why it was important not to poll the alumni each time, either. So if we could just hold off on our demands, then Brewster would find it easier to deal with the crazy demands of the students, who of course, we all know, are selfish and irrational.

When I was a callow student, demanding immediate curriculum and grade reform, not to mention coeducation, the great grey mass of alumni was always held up by our allies on the faculty as the biggest impediment to action. It all seemed so logical. There the alumni were, like the Republican Party preventing President Kennedy from moving to recognize Red China. They were what told' us to go slow. Now, at Yale, the alumni were being told the same thing about the students. And who to refute it? The University, the alumni know, is in a constant state of turmoil these days. I don't believe all those reports of "eerie tranquility."

Brewster was introduced at the first meeting by someone who portrayed him as the beleaguered, embattled chief executive, residing in a tinderbox, surrounded by a volatile mix of students and faculty.

I must hastily add that this was my own view, prejudiced perhaps by years of watching Brewster's attempt to furnish something for everyone in all the decisions he had to make. To be fair to Brewster, moreover, nowhere did he do this as explicitly as Michael Galliganjunior faculty member, ..architect" of Yale's university council system and selfappointed gadfly to the alumni- who did it inadvertently. Galligan lectured us two or three times, l recall, each time with a condescension that most people found both annoying and amusing. Galligan pouted at one point that if the alumni failed to endorse and increase in the number of women at Yale, students would become further alienated from their elders, and possibly even destructive.

Compared to Brewster, Galligan was the infant who threatened to hold his breath

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The New Journall25 J anuary 19731 14

and turn blue- Old Blue-if he didn't get his way.

Brewster, by contrast, is one of academia's most gifted administrators.

And in a larger sense, he is doing more than just a sellingjob. He is trying to encompass different constituencies that, while they have a lot in common, have a lot in conflict as well. The constant letters we get from Class Secretaries, Class Agents, Class Treasurers, and Yale officials, are testimony to the University's need for us, maligned (and self-maligned) though we are.

Yale's first goal, of course, is to convince us that any differences the University and its alumni have are mere outgrowths of the "failure to communicate."

In his discussion of admissions policy, for example, Sam Chauncey told the AYA that the chief shortcoming in the past had been one of "lousy public relations," which, Chauncey must know himself, is not really a shortcoming at all.

Nonetheless, the very creation of the AY A rests on the goal of greater communications. And communications, in turn, hinge on the importance Yale alumni attach to being alumni.

From my own experience, the alumni's attachment varies widely, but not for those who go to gatherings like the AYA meeting in New Haven. In our discussions of admissions policies, we aU dwelt at length on the importance of Yale's role in producing America's leaders. Every change in admissions policies was argued in this context. Yale ought to admit more women, more blacks, more chicanos, etc., precisely because these groups ought to have their share of Yale alumni to lead them, too. In all the debates, there was little mention of education for its own sake, and it occurred to me that perhaps it was this fact that most of all separates the alumni from the students in New Haven.

The alumni at the AY A were those "leaders of men" types that are easy to make fun of. But if they view things at Yale from a different perspective, so be it. It was Clark Kerr, president of Berkeley during the Free Speech Movt.ment, Brewster reminded us, who said that the University can take care of everything by offering this simple prescription: sex for the students, football for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.

The virtue of that remark is that it brings students and faculty in on the joke, and that is just as weU. Maybe one day the New Yorker will catch up with them, to(\

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(continued from page 5) University and would be available primarily for graduate and professional students. This off-campus structure should be opened to mixed use for the same reasons as should the GroveWhitney colleges. ln this way, no problem would be created by the displacement of undergraduates by graduate students in the· residential colleges.

A fmal consideration is the effect of Yale's housing policy on the New Haven community. The average Yale student can afford to pay more rent than the average New Haven resident seeking similar housing. Additional off-campus student housing provided

by Yale would make it easier for upwardly mobile , lower-middle-income families to fmd suitable housing.

The nature of the residential colleges, and of University housing in general, need not remain static.

A break with tradition may be required to overcome the deficiencies of the academic enclave, and to make the University a more vital crossroads. • Gary Friedman is associate editor of

The New Journal. Steven Hagan and Marc Gunther contributed to the researching and writing of the article.

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