Skip to main content

Volume 14 - Issue 1

Page 1

YALE


The New Journal thanks: Sam Austin Tom BachTTUln Tony Barthekmy Eric Bibler Carter Caldwell Henry Chauncey, Jr. Roger Cohn Peter Cooper Charles Davis John Etra Gary Friedman Susan F riedTTUln Melissa Gray

John Guillory David GuzTT14n David Henson Mamesba Hill Jane Jervis Sue and Barclay Johnson Corby Kummer Lewis LehrTTUln Bemrice Mitchell Al Murowsky William Palmer Bill Pomputious

Nicholas Rizopoulos Jamie Romm Bill RuhensUin Dick Sears Richard Shields David Sleeper Milce Solovay Tom Strong Eus14ce Theodore Prof. Werner Wolf Bill Wright

•

The Miami Herald

•


September 19, 1981

TheNewJournal In this issue

4

Comment: Music campus; student aid

8

DOD Funding and Yale Research

14

Charles Black: Portrait of the Law Professor as Artist

19

Henley: The Greatest Show in Rowing

24

The But Seriously Folks in Hollywood

YALE

-t)l'l~ "'\U~

b' b'

YYl3 IS N~'t }'t eory ~

The Nnt.J Journal, a monthly magazine of news and comment, is published by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. Ten thousand copies of each issue are distributed free to all members of the Yale University community. Send all correspondence to The NewJournal, P .O. Box 1704, New Haven , CT. 06507. Publisher Ed Bennett; Editor-in-ChVJ Andy Court; Designer Geoffry Fried; A ssoruue Publisher Jeff Foster;Photo Editor Sam Wilkins; Skiff Jane Hinson , Paul Hofheinz, Walter Jacob, Geoff Pope, Eddie Phillips, Julie O'Neill , Betsy K olbert


Comment What's ahead for student aid?

Betsy Kolbm

BUY'EM AT

1012 CHAPEL S TREET • NEW HAVEN. CT 06$11

Fall Pipe Special Stan the academic year right with a genuine sandblast briar. Good Selection of shapes to fit every whiman outstanding value at $14.95 Made in Italy especially for

With the federal budget signed into law, it is now clear that many students will not be able to obtain financial aid from the government next year. What re. mains to be seen is how the cuts in aid will affect students and universities. Over the summer, Congress approved substantial reductions in two major federal aid programs, Guaranteed Student Loans, (GSL's) and Pell Grants. Approximately 25 per cent of the 6,000 Yale students expected to t~e out GSL's this year will be ineligible for future loans, said Donald Routh, University Financial Aid Director. If your family income is over $30,000, you will not receive further GSL's unless you pass a "needs test." Criteria will include the cost of the college you attend and the number of siblings you have also enrolled in school. Recent estimates indicate that a student at a public institution with no brothers or sisters in college will probably be ineligible for a GSL if his family earns between $30,000 and $45,000. The same student attending a highpriced private school may be eligible with a family income up to $60,000. Families with two children attending costly private schools may qualify for partial loans despite incomes of over

$100,000. In the Pell Grant program, at least

100 of the more than 800 Yale students

TOBAC

ONISTS

a landmark in New since 1934

Hat~en

268 College Street New Haven, ConnectiCut 06510 Telephone (203) 624-3250

currently receiving the grants will lose them under the new requirements, the Financial Aid Office said. Pell Grants fonn the basis of federal financial aid packages. In the past you might have received a Pell Grant if your family income did not exceed $25,000; now you can probably expect no money if your family earns over $19,000. Since most students already received fmancial aid for this year under the old rules, it is difficult to assess the full impact of the cutbacks. "The key question is: will educational decisions change?" wd a lobbyist with the Consortium for

Higher Educaiton. "At the Yale level, the answer is 'no."' Small private liberal arts and religious colleges with largely middle income students and little endowments will probably "feel the brunt" of the cu ts, said Dallas· Martin, executive director of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. More · and more students will opt for less expensive public universities, ·community, and junior colleges, he sai~. But somehow students will manage to fmd the money to cover h igh tuition costs at the nation's most prestigious universities, most experts agree. Some students may choose less expensive institutions over Yale because of the aid reductions, but "not a significant number," said Yale's Budget Director Janet Ackerman. Ultimately the question of whether or not students of all incomes can continue to attend Yale may rest with the university and its decision to fill in the gaps left by the federal aid cuts. For example, the recently instituted five percent origination fee on all GSL's will mean that even students whose aid packages appear to meet their financial needs in full will fmd themselves short $50 to $100. It may not sound like a lot, Routh said, but it could be significant to students attending Yale under severe financial constraints. "$90 buys a semester's books." Yale's administration is committed to continuing to provid e financial aid packages that leave students with no unaccou nted-for costs, R outh said . Unless the university reverses its policy of admissions without regard to need, this commitment is likely to cost at least several hundred thousand additional dollars next year. Both R outh and Ackerman insist that there has been no talk of revising the admi~ions procedure; instead the financial aid office will request a higher level of funding for next year. "I am assuming they (the ad-


ministration) will make every effort to provide the money," said Routh. At this point it is unclear where the university will find the extra money for fmancial aid. "It's not that the issue isn't being thought about," said Ackerman, but policy decisions will not be made until the Budget Committee meets this fall. One option is simply to raise tuition more than usual. "Tuition may go up a little more. Maybe next year's will be up an extra $100," said Routh. The Budget Committee may also choose to compensate for additional aid costs by cutting back on programs and faculty. Or it may decide to dip into Yale's endowment in order to provide bigger grants or new jobs for students. Questions of which programs should receive more money and which should be cut certainly are not new to the Budget Committee. But this year's financial aid cuts may force it to make

some particularly tough decisions. Since the Middle Income Student Assistance Act of 1978, Congress has offered government aid to an increasing number of students. With this aid abruptly cut off, Yale may have to reexamine priorities which were established when government money flowed more freely. The Reagan Administration claims that the student aid cuts were designed not only to reduce federal expenditures, but also to renew emphasis on the "traditional" roles of parents and students in paying for higher education. Families may have to borrow more money under a variety of relatively high cost loan programs available to parents. Three years ago, Yale introduced its own Parent Loan Program (PLP) which offers annual loans of $2,000 -$7,000 at 12 per cent interest. Budget Director Ackerman anticipates a rise in

THE UTilE STORE THAT COULD Known for our large selection and low prices.

FEATURING Bargain-Priced and Used Records Rhymes is an employeecontrolled business.

59 BROADWAY

UPSTAIRS

5


Music's new "home"

Carol Lam the number of Yale parents participating in the program. The government expects its parent loan program, Auxiliary Loans to Assist Students, to triple. Parents and independent students can borrow up to $3 ,000 annually from private banks at 14 per cent. The federal government subsidizes the difference between this rate and the regular consumer loan rate now about 19 per cent. Many educators, however, say that these parent loans are too costly to be used by many of the families that have participated in the GSL program. "The [parent loan] program is not going to get off the ground or be as widely used as people think," warned Dallas Martin. The bleak picture painted by many fmancial aid experts is brightened somewhat by the possibility that more imaginative ways of financing higher education will be found. In Illinois, for example, several schools are trying to issue tax exempt bonds and use the proceeds to finance aid programs. In the future, industry may play a greater role in funding education. Federal cutbacks have created the necessity; the invention must come from students and universities.

At first glance, the plans for a new music campus at Yale seem quite refreshing. Perhaps the most prevalent of the performing arts, music for years has been steadily growing at Yale without a proportional increase in new facilities. Deteriorating building conditions are a major headache, but the real problem, Yale School of Music officials complain, is that music has no home; it is scattered throughout a number of buildings including Hendrie Hall, Stoeckel Hall, 140 Prospect Street, Sprague Hall, and 143 Elm Street. Now, after years of debate and fundraising, the university is beginning to construct a new "music campus" on the block bounded by Wall, College, Temple and Elm Streets. This year, the old Gothic undergraduate admissions building will be converted into practice and teaching studios, while practice modules from the Prospect Street Annex will be moved to Hendrie Hall. In the next several years, the music school will build a new music library and recital hall. Then, determined to unite the hopelessly diverse architectural styles, the university will construct skylighted corridors linking all the music buildings. Music, at last, will have a home. But amidst the ensuing kudos and congratulations, there is something to be said for music's "homelessness"especially among Yale undergraduates. From the rock band to the symphony orchestra, the dormitory stereo to the electronic music studio, music penneates the width and breadth of Yale. Wherever it can, music grows and thrives, earning itself a reputation for hardiness by sprouting in the most unlikely places: college basements, cocktail parties- even in a little brownstone on Prospect Street, squeezed between the computer room and the engineering building. The omnipresence of music stands to suffer

with the construction of the music campus. The roots of the new music campus can be traced back almost ten years to a time when public support for the arts was growing. Summer arts festivals were flourishing. New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, just over a decade old, was leading the way for the construction of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Virginia's Wolftrap Park. Centralizing the performing arts was clearly the order of the day, as universities, public and private, were building their own monster arts complexes. Finally recognizing the need at Yale for relief from insufficient practice space, a cramped music library and makeshift rehearsal quarters, university officials enlisted Cesar Pelli, dean of Yale's School of Architecture, to design new music facilities. He drafted plans for one massive building that would house almost all the activities of the Yale School of Music and the undergraduate music department. Yale's own arts monster-an imposing, three-story glass building- would have consumed the Naples Pizza building and smacked its lips on the Silliman Annex for dessert. That original plan has now been abandoned in favor of a plan to renovate existing buildings, with supplementary construction of small building connectors. The news is good. Even putting aside the issue of architectural preservation, the prospect of an all-in-one music building was never very appealing. "Thomasjefferson," notes architectural critic John Russell in the New York Times ( 12/1 17 7), "very soon discarded the notion that what he calls 'one immense building' could possibly make a good university." Russell himself adds, "What chills the blood in buildings of this sort is the all-of-a-pieceness-or, to be blunt, the totalitarian look."


300 YORK STREET • NEW HAVEN

•

Russell's term "the totalitarian look" could aptly be applied to Pelli's original design. But with the new music campus plan, said Project Designer Robert Charney, the "hodgepodge of architectural styles" on the block will be saved. The plan preserves "sound buildings," and hence "the look of Yale," according to School of Music Dean Frank Tirro. Even the most drastic alterationsrelocating the admissions office and building a new music library-seem mild compared to the original proposal to construct one entirely new building. The new plan sits better with almost everybody, but it does nothing to remedy the fact that Yale's music community is alienating itself from the rest of the university. It would certainly not be the first time that architectural design and planning has sent shock waves shuddering throughout Yale's academic disciplines. Foremost m mind is the example set by Science Hill, a pretty spot atop Hillhouse Avenue where the natural sciences are grouped together. They now have ready access to each other- but, alas, to no one else. The resulting rift between the sciences and the humanities has only accelerated an already noticeable drift at Yale away from the truly liberal education. Preprofessional specialization has reached a peak . Add to this the pressure exerted by graduate schools for their own building facilities, and the result is inevitable: Yale undergraduates are becoming a little more square and a little less wellrounded. Not surprisingly. the School of Music is delighted with the plans for the new music campus. "One principal advantage," says Tirro, "is greater contact between students and faculty. Another 1s the convenience- if facilities are centrally located, there is an increase in their use." He is puzzled by the suggestion that a "music campus" might threaten, through increased

specialization, Yale's traditionally interwoven disciplines. "There are some people who subscribe to the virtue of [architectural] dispersion," he concedes. "I don't think there's any real advantage to that in music. If you're dispersed there are people who never see each other." The spirit of centralized art lives on. Indeed, as things have tumbled and stumbled along now for almost a decade, it seems that the original plan for one large music building was abandoned for financial- not aestheticreasons. The oil cr1s1s of the mid-1970s, according to Dean Tirro, "made that type of building not feasible" because of the prohibitive costs of heating it. Moreover, the initial capital outlay for the proposed music center would have been a hefty S7 .5 million, while current plans allow construction to proceed piecemeal, as funds trickle in. As Yale University evolves, it is caught again and again in an invisible tug-of-war between architectural "hodgepodge" and architectural specialization. Recent winners of the tug-of-war are Science Hill, the School of Organization and Management, and the Medical School. And it may be that they are the rightful winners. It lies beyond doubt that the School of Music needs-and deserves-far better facilities than it has at present. But perhaps a moment of considerationor respect- should be paid to undergraduates, who are gradually losing the relaxed interaction of disciplines that for so many generations has characterized a Yale education.

UPCOMING ACTS .

SEPTEMBER 20 Aztec Two-SteP • 21 John Hammond • 22 Eiaht to the Bar 25c drafts 'til 11 p.m.

24 EYES 25-26 27

Meade Bros. Gil Scott-Heron

. 28 APPlf S.at/as Music 29 Southside JohnnY & the AsburY Jukes RUSTA Tribute to Nell Young

OCTOBER 1 Roomful of Blues

2 3 4 5 11

fountainhead 8 WUiie Smith MartY Balin

Peter Tosh Jonathan Edwards

12 DillY GillesPie The opinwns expresstd in thu stctwn art t.lwst of 1M indiuidual writers. The New journal wtlcomes Comment on Yalt and N~ Haom issues. Send proposals to P. 0 . &x 1704, N~

Haom, CT 06507

18 TAJ MAHAL

20 MuddY waters

•

Indicates free or reduced admission with YALE /D.

7


DOD funding and Yale research David Chappell

In a little room on the third floor of the Osborn Memorial Laboratory, Dr. Walter Tabachnick attends to forty cardboard containers that look like pintsize cartons of generic ice cream. Tabachnick selects one from the rack and reveals that its top is covered by a screen; inside is not rum raisin, but four buzzing mosquitoes. The three raisins on the top are for the bugs to feed on. Tabachnick, a 34-year old pos.t doctoral fellow in the biology department, wears aT-shirt and blue jeans to work. He still remembers the days when, as a graduate student at Rutgers, he protested against U.S. military policy during the Vietnam War. He recalls many occasions when someone would mention a professor's name at a rally. Someone else would jump up and shout, "Oh, him! He's getting DOD money!" The whole crowd would turn against the professor. "It was like the red scare," he says. Tabachnick's views about the military have not changed much since those days, but today the bill for those mosquitoes-and $29,000 of what it costs each year to experiment with them-is paid by the U.S. Army. His work is part of the Army's effort to leam about and control mosquito-transmitted viruses, an area of public health that the army has led for 85 years. Twenty-seven research projects in the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences were .funded by the Department of Defense last year. Though none of the work can be classified, and none of the professors design weapons, a handful of researchers openly admit they could be laying the theoretical groundwork for new weapons technology such as high-power lasers and submarine tracking systems.

How it works

8

To get a DOD grant or contract, a professor submits a proposal to the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force. DOD agencies then provide grants to Yale for basic research, as does the National Science Foundation. Last year, the DOD awarded $3.6 million to Yale for research, an 89 per cent increase over the previous year. That's a drop in the bucket compared to MIT, which received $154.6 million, but it puts Yale at number 186 of the top 500 prime military research and development contractors-above Cornell, Princeton and Brown, as well as Lockheed Electronics, Ralston Purina and War Incorporated of Rockville, Maryland. The Medical School and SOM receive relativdy little DOD money, but the Faculty of Arts and Sciences gets

..


about fourteen per cent of its research money from DOD grants. Without the DOD's support, Yale's research program would "shut itself down," said Richard Chang, an Engineering and Applied Science professor working on three DOD projects. "The amount of research activity would drop so significantly" that many distinguished professors would have to leave Yale, he said. The University would also lose the portion of DOD money that helps pay its general expenses. Chang said 58 percent of DOD money pays Yale's "indirect costs" such as equipment, electricity and heating. -Because a researcher's work may provide only a small piece of knowledge later applied by some other researcher, professors are often left in the dark about the specific military applications of their work. Professor Ira Bernstein, for example, said his research in theoretical physics "has military applications, and that of course is why the DOD funds it. But those applications are classified." So classified, in fact, that Bernstein said he does not know what they are, and, he adds, "I prefer not to know."

Silliman Master William Bennett received DOD funding for laser work in the 'sixties.

Buck Rogers-style contraptions Professor William Bennett has considered the implications of DOD funding. He has done gas laser research on DOD grants since 1962. The Pentagon's principal interest in ~asers lies in three areas: space station weapons, which could shoot down missiles; isotope enrichment, which could make nuclear weapons production cheaper; and target systems, which could guide "smart weapons." Bennett stressed that his work at Yale never had "any obvious military application" in these areas, but he recognizes "an indirect applicability of the stuff." "The sort of research I have done and tend to do in this field certainly is involved as a stepping stone in these things," he said. "It's not aimed mainly at targeting bombs or isotope enrichment per se, although I did have some ideas along the line that were relevent to those problems.". The DOD didn't come up with the idea of ¡laser weapons on its ow.n. In 1959 a former Columbia colleague of Bennett's named Gerald Gould pursuaded the DOD that lasers might have useful applications in shooting down missiles, Bennett said. Bennett came to Yale in 1962, and when he did, _Yale became a beneficiary of the DOD's growing interest in lasers- to the tune of $150,000 to $200,000 a year. Ben-

Walter Tabachniclc conducting mosqur¡to reseq.rch in his lah.

nett's funding dropped in the mid-70s and was cut altogether two years ago, and though he expects the Air Force to approve his proposal for a grant to continue laser work this fall, it will probably be much smaller than in the early years. That does not mean the DOD has lost interest in lasers. In a recent report to Congress, the DOD asked for increased funding of laser research. "A space laser race will be compelling to enter, to lead and to win," the report said. Bennett, however, refers to space lasers as "Buck Rogers-style contraptions" that have little practical value as weapons. The overweening confidence the DOD appears to have in their ability to protect us from nuclear attack worries Bennett very much. He believes it

could lead us to take excessive risks and neglect arms control efforts. He feels no more comfortable with the implications of laser isotope enrichment. By using lasers to separate uranium or plutonium isotopes, nuclear weapons makers could cut their costs dramatically. Currently, the high cost of uranium enrichment is one of the few roadblocks preventing small powers from building nuclear arsenals. But if laser enrichment plans succeed, many more countries would be able to afford membership in the nuclear club. Yale researchers are in disagreement as to the strength of the DOD's influence over the work they do. While most interviewed defended their DOD contracts, saying the DOD never solicited their services, some say the DOD freely drops hints at scientific

9


What the DOD funds Much of the research conducted at Yale with DOD money seems to have little relation to war or weapons. All research at Yale is basic and unclassified. Results of DOD funded projects are published in scientific journals and are thus available to the general scientific community. Here is a sampler of some of the research being conducted at Yale with DOD funds .

Artificial Intelligence Professor Roger Schank has been working on a particular computer program for over twelve years- one that could read and understand newspaper articles, answer questions not explicitly cited in the text and, if necessary, translate it into ''pretty much any language you could ask for ." Shank and his partner Steven Slade receive $340,000 from the Navy to conduct research to discover if computers could conferences, in news releases, and in PR materials routinely sent to universities. Only afterward, they said, do the professors submit their "original" proposals.

Outside consulting

10

Bennett's involvement with the DOD was not limited to university-based research. At the same time he did ultraviolet laser research at Yale, Bennett said, "I also did work as a consultant for a private company that did have a military-oriented contract of actually building a system that would fly a laser. As a matter of fact it happened to be a laser that we had first discovered at Yale years before in a totally basic research application." That consulting project was unclassified, but Bennett said he has "occasionally" done classified consulting. By giving a professor a grant to do research in a particular field and later employing him as a private consultant, the DOD can get his advice on classified projects. At Yale classified research has been forbidden since the early 'sixties. But faculty regulations allow professors one day a week of consulting, and anything discussed then can be made confidential. Some professors object to doing classified consulting. John Zomig, who

communicate with people in natural language. Slade said he and Schank got the money from the Navy because "the military has a great n eed for computer resources" to store their voluminous stock of information. "Natural language processing would make information more available and accessible to users," he said.

teresting and important from an academic point of view, and successful work in the area could lead to applications in communications and other nonmilitary fields , Chang said.

studies underwater acoustics, has turned down offers for classified consulting because "it would hamstring me in the classroom and everywhere else," he said. "Now [E&AS PJOfessor Peter] Schultheiss does considerable classified consulting. The net result is if you go up to Schultheiss and say 'how deep can a submarine go?' he can't discuss the matter with you. If you ask me how deep a submarine can go, I'll say, 'Y'know, mezza-mezz, a thousand feet, eight hundred, maybe deeper, I don't know.' But because he knows he can't even talk that specifically ."

Russian submarines, and four model tanks sit on a nearby shelf.

Mosquitos

Walter Tabachnick, using a $29, 712 Army grant, supplies information to the Army's medical entomologists on Laser Beams genetic differences among mosquito R ichard Chang received $86,800 from varieties and how these d ifferences afthe Air Force last year to develop a solid fect their ability to transmit diseases. state laser that could be tuned to specific ¡ The Army, Tabachnick said, has no frequencies. Chang said his lasers do sinister aims in this work: "The people not have enough energy to blow up who I have met working with the Army missles, nor could they be used to at Fort Dietrich now-even though enrich isotopes for atomic weapons. But that's the old dirty tricks stationthe Air Force is interested in his kind of they're doing very humanitarian things. "Fort Dietrich, Maryland," he exresearch because it wishes to be in the forefront of all state -of-the- art plained, "is where the CIA was shut technology, he said. The theoretical down several years ago. I t's where they problems involved in making tunable manufactured all these gimmicks to lasers with solid state media are in- assassinate: . . . the ~neil that was

Zornig does do classified work for the DOD but in an area totally unrelated to his academic work. Every year, Zornig goes to Washington for a two-week tour of duty as a reserve officer and consults on manpower mobilization. "Now if you start asking me how many reservists would be likely to show up and would be trained and things like that, I can't talk to you.'' he said. "He (Schultheiss] is in the same position on underwater sound. I don't ever want to be in the position of not being able to discuss things I'm responsible for knowing and teaching here." An instructor in Yale's ROTC program, Zornig is bullish on the military. Charts hanging on the wall of his office depict the relative strength and size of

Submarine sounds Zornig's underwater acoustics project, although unclassified, has extensive applications in the Navy's antisubmarine warfare program. The program is one of the Navy's h ighest priorities, one to which it currently devotes $17 billion a year, 16 per cent of its total budget. Zornig's work, currently funded by the National Science Foundation, was funded in past years by the Navy and, according to Zomig, will be funded by the Navy again next year if the NSF cuts it or if Reagan cuts the NSF. (lbe NSF, incidentally, received $ 1.7 million from the DOD last year.) Zomig's project supplies information on how sound bounces around on the irregular surfaces of the ocean, information which could help locate submarines. At least two other projects at Yale contribute to the antisubmarine warfare program. Peter Schultheiss' $54,000 Navy contract, -"Tracking a Moving Source with an Array of Imperfectly Known Configuration," enables him to determine the a ccuracy and potential accuracy of various underwater sonar systems . Franz Tuteur is working this year on a $27,000 Air Force grant. One of the ap-


supposed to have leaked poison gas; boulinin in a Coke bottle. They're doing very humanitarian things there now. It's been turned over and it's opened up. They're working to develop vaccines."

Electron Beams I ra Bernstein lays the theoretical groundwork for Jay Hirschfield's applied work on electron beams. They receive $72,517 for their research which has applications in communications and biomedical technology. It could also be instrumental some day in the development of a controlled fusion reactor.

Differences in human intelligence Robert Sternberg in the Psychology D epartment says the DOD did not pay him $97,626 to conjure up new techni-

ques of psychological warfare. Rather, which their goals tend to make them he uses the money to study the causes obey the rules out of self interest. They and effects of the different levels of in- hope to discover if it is possible to telligence among individuals. The design systems in which it doesn't pay to Navy could someday apply his findings . cheat. These scenarios could help the to improve the learning potential of Navy devise incentive systems and sailors but Sternberg said his work has determine the effectiveness of bargain just as much, if not more, relevance to bids and threats in different kinds of improving the skills of underprivileged conflict. While most of this research has children or assistant professors at Yale. yet to be applied to specific problems, Shubik said he and his colleagues have answered some specific questions in the Game Theory area of economic warfare. For instance, Martin Shubik, economist in the "Would another OPEC embargo disrupt world financial markets?" and Cowles foundation, has a $233,860 grant with the Navy to carry on studies "Could we organize a counter-OPEC in his "Center for Competitive and with, say, wheat?" The answer to ,both Conflict Research." Shubik said his questions, Shubik said, is "probably not work applies to "general problems of very effe<;tively." stratetic analysis" in many kinds of conflict, military and non-military. Shubik -D.C. and his associates at the center design what he calls "self-policing systems," games in which the players have different and often conflicting goals but in and we wouldn't want to risk getting caught with our pants down. This view conflicts, however, with that of a February 1981 Scientific American article which concluded that the Russians do not have an antisubmarine capability and are not likely to develop one soon. Unlike Zornig, Schultheiss says the possible military applications of his work do not concern him very much. In addition to military uses, he points out, his work could have applications in the location of schools of fish and offshore oil deposits. "'ne does not stay out of basic research because of what someone might do with it," he said.

No strings attached? ~

~

~

e

-'l

john Zomig has

done underwaler acoustics research

plications of this work, Tuteur said, is the refinement of submarine tracking methods. Specifically, it would help isolate the sound made by a particular moving source, such as a submarine, from extraneous noise in the water. If successful, acoustic methods to pinpoint underwater sound sources would transform the Russian submarine fleet from a set of well-hidden missile bases into a set of targets that appear as so

wiJh Navy funding.

many broad sides ofbams in the water. Available antisubmarine weapons, currently useless without clear targets, could then make short work of the underwater leg of the Soviet triad. Zornig acknowledges such a development might undermine peace by upsetting the mutual invulnerability of submarines on which deterrence depends. But the Russians plan to develop an antisubmarine capability too, Zornig said,

No matter who funds basic research, there is no guarantee that the military will not use its discoveries for warlike purposes. "You don't have a choice between pursuing knowledge that will do society more or less good. Any knowledge can be used or misused at will," said Derek DeSolla Price, Avalon Professor of the History of Science, who has long been concerned with science policy. He argues that we cannot object to DOD involvement in university research as long as the DOD refrains from making concrete demands in return for its support. '"If the DOD- or the KKK or the

11


PLO for that matter- happen to be wise enough, or foolish enough, to give us money to pursue knowledge with no further strings attached, we should take it," he said. "On the other hand, if the DOD or anybody else wishes to contract with us for the delivery of a valuable good, whether that good be a new death ray- or even advice, where it is valuable advice- then the answer is somewhere between a flat no and ¡ a cautious statement about the freedom of the individual to sell his research." Yet the DOD , unlike the NSF, is not in the business of supporting science for science's sake. Under the Mansfield Amendment, passed in 1970, the DOD cannot fund any research that does not have "a direct and appar ent relationship to a specific military function or operation." The nature of the military's goals raises political and ethical questions¡ about research and development. Bruce R ussett, political science professor and nuclear strategy expert, said antisubmarine research has an extremely harmful potential. I n a crisis situation a U.S. antisubmarine capability would be "worrisome as much for what it might scare the R ussians into doing as what is might tem pt us to do," he said. In terms of "crisis stability," R ussett said the U.S. antisubmarine effort "could be one of the most destabilizing kinds of research going." Laser research has also been criticized by academics. At the January 198 1 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, two p hysicists r eported on the dangers of laser weapons and recommended that their development be stopped. R obert J . Lifton, professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, has done extensive research on the effects of nuclear war and written an awardwinning book on the survivors of H iroshima. H e says the threat of nuclear war is so great that researchers should refuse to do any work that could even remotely increase its chances. He cautions that justifying one's small role as a neutral one is dangerous contagion. "We delude ourselves to think our work is neu tral," he said. Lifton urges scientists to reconsider the effects that their research could have on a politically unstable world. Researchers, he says, "must consider the motives of the people who pay for their research and its possible consequences in the hands of those people."

12

David Chappell, a history major in JE, is writing his smior essay on limited nuclear war.

"Polks are vastly superior to the competition."= Lab and listening tests prove Polks measure and sound better. Exp erts agree Polk speakers will give you the highest quality sound and the most listening pleasure for your money. They will deliver amazingly life-like, boxless, three dimensional sound with breathtaking clarity and detail in your listening room from your hifi system. "Polk speaket'S are so vastly ...-rtor to the competition ... aremarkably well integrated and coherent sound that adapts itself ideally to all

57 BROADWAY

kinds of music ... the kind of open, uncolored , perfectly imaged sound we thought began at twice the price ... Sound quite magnificent with a good mid-powered popular brand receiver... They make the popular speakers in their price range seem dim, colored, boxy and just plain insufficient. Our advice Is not to buy speakers until you've heard the Polks." Musician M agazine Better sound in your home Polk Audio loudspeakers will give you more listening pleasure and greater long term satisfaction from your music, your records and your hifi system. They offer you the best sound for your money and are affordably priced from less than $125 each to less than $400 each.

787-4163


,

..


Portrait of the law profes$or as artist Matt Hamel I give, for one must give before M goes; from "Short Form Will," a poem by Charles Black The Law School class of 1981 finished its class dinner and prepared to hear speeches by Charles and Barbara Black, two professors. *By the time we got around to speaking," Charles Black recalled recently, "they were in high spirits in every sense of the word ." Mrs. Black took the floor first and began to deliver a dry , serious, soporific discourse. Five sentences into her speech, her husband pulled a harmonica from his pocket and, to the delight of the students, broke into song. The well-orchestrated incident set the tone for the couple's address. "At one point we read some lines from CaJ on a Hot Tin Roof, Black said. '"The students seemed to enjoy hearing me say things like 'poontang.'" Acting is just one of the roles Charles Black plays. He is one of the foremost civil rights advocates of our time and one of the lawyers who worked on the historic desegregation case of Brown vs. Board of Educatioo; he is also a painter, a poet, a student of Icelandic, a Sterling Law Professor, and a father. In his 25 years at Yale, he has written a shelfs worth of books, everything from a collection of poetry to an important book on the death penalty. You'd expect someone like Black to have a cluttered office. He doesn't. His harmonica, for example, is in his bottom right-h and drawer. He plays a first-rate r endition of "Goodnight, I rene," and gives credit to Buck Green, *born and raised a slave, who still plays the harmonica through my mouth, having taught me when he was 75 years old and I was 10."

14

Surprisingly, it was music that led Black into the segre gation fray in the 1950s. On October 12, 1931, he went with a "good old boy" from his Austin, Texas h igh school to a dance. The entertainment was "Louis Armstrong, King of Trumpet, and his Orchestra." Black knew nothing of jazz and did not recognize Armstrong's name. But for the flrst time, the 16 year-old Southern boy recognized a black man's genius. Black's classmate, however, "shook his head . . . and pronounced the judgment of the time and place: 'After all, he's nothing but a God damn nigger!'" Many years later, Black wrote about the incident in the Yale Law Review: TM good oW. boy did not await, perhaps fean"ng reply. He walked one way and I W o~Mr. Through many years now, I have ft/J thaJ iJ was just Wn thaJ I started walking toward 1M Brown case, wMre I belonged . . . Every person of decnu:y in 1M South of those days must have had some doubts about racism, and I had mine even Wn -perhaps more than most o~Mrs. B ut Louis opened my eyes wide and put me to a choice. B/tJcks, 1M saying went, were •a[t right in their p/tJce. • What was tM pbut of such a man, and of 1M people from which M sprung? Black's early consuming interest in the plight of blacks did not immediately lead to his career in law. With a bachelor's degree in Greek and a master's degree in English literature, he was at a loss as to where to tum next. *What I can recall of my motivations at 25," he says, "is that I was convinced that my father would pay for me to attend law school and nothing else." Although Black graduated from Yale Law School in 1943, he did not become profoundly interested in law until several years later, when the race problem began to surface and he began to

see how the law could be used as a remedy. Black's flrst case, Swett vs. Painter, resulted in the admission of blacks to the University of Texas Law School and set him on his way. Black said that his best civil rights work was for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, but that his role in Brown vs. Board of Education is exaggerated. "In Brown vs. Board of Edu.caJion, I was one of 30 lawyers. I played a very small part. Everywhere I go people blow my role out of proportion. I t was a profoundly cooperative effort." Black suggested one reason his role is exaggerated: "I was the only white gentile and the only Southerner who was a lawyer. "It was a great case and rm delighted to have been in it. Twenty years later, when another of the lawyers and I were in the same room, there was a current of feeling between us. You're not going to meet that feeling twice in your life. Still , I was not a tactician in that case.• Black's job in the Brown case was to study how to implement the decision, explains Jack Greenberg, a long time friend and colleague of Black's and now the director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "He was important to the civil rights flght then and in just a few years he became a central figure. He worked on briefs for many cases that ended up in the Supreme Court, and he was the author of not only the brief but of the idea in two of the most important cases we worked on, &II vs. Maryland and H amm vs. W City of R ode H ill, South Carolina. • Black developed the so-called abatement argument, which invalidated the convictions of demonstrators jailed before the passage of the Civil Rights Act . "'Charles Black is a giant of a legal thinker," Greenber~ said. -rl'aere are


•

only one or two others of whom I can an anist and claims that he "can't draw say that. He is simply a monumental at all" and is "unsuccessful." Yet his figure.• work is in demand; "The Admiralty Twenty or thirty works of an- pain- Jurisdiction,• a painting of a red and tings, drawings, and sculpture- orange sun sinking below the ocean decorate Black's small office on the se- horizon, adorns the cover of Owls &yin cond floor of the Law School. They do &bywn, the collection of his poems. not constitute clutter. Neatly arranged, He is a much more serious poet than abstracts hang harmoniously next to anist. "Poetry is where I live," he has dreamlike landscapes and realistic por- said . Piles of poems sit neatly on a table traits. A twenty-year-old doodle of in his office for law students to take. Black's wife looks not at all out of place The poems are weighted by rocks. ("I next to a colorful, lively abstract that love rocks; that the very same molecules may hav~ taken weeks to finish. have been in the same pattern for a "Most ofrr.y pictures I give away," he billion years is a mind-boggling fact.") Although Black studied poetry forsays in his gentlemanly Southern drawl. "My children have veto power over mally and did his master's thesis on what I send to people. Most of these Shelley as a translator of verse, he is a self-taught poet. His first collection, a have been approved but not yet dethin volume that was two years in the livered. making, is called T~lescoJ>ts and Isltuui.s -I paint because there is no law against art. I never stopped to consider why. For me it is just divine play, incredible fun . • He was never trained as

and carne out in 1963. Owls &y in Babylon was published last year. The 17 years that elapsed between his only two poetry collections must not be construed as a period of dormancy. "I wrote about 800 poems between those two books," he said. His work is often published in literary and poetry journals for which he considers himself "extremely lucky. I send many poems to four or five magazines before they get printed. Some never get printed." Not surprisingly, his talents in poetry are eclectic. Much of what he wrote between 1963 and 1980 he calls "light, frothy, personal, ephemeral, or just unpublishable," but the poems in Owls &y in &bywn are much more reflective; they deal with such subjects as death, the forces of nature and fate . Black admires Elliot and Pound, and said of Wallace Stevens, "I like his things but I have to confess I don't understand him very well. When I read Stevens, I get the fttl of very fme poetry." Drama is another of Black's passions, though not as consuming as an or poetry. In 1976 he decided that he would like to try his luck on the stage, so he called Robert Brustein, who was then in charge of the Yale Rep. Brustein put him in touch with the director of Julius CtUSar, soon to show at the Rep. Black read for and earned the role of Cicero. "I had only seven and a half lines, but it was a great experience. I enjoyed it.• In 1977 he understudied ten dinner guests in Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Ducic, and portrayed five or six of them on stage. His most recent foray into the world of drama was last spring, when he played Big Daddy in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, a Theater Studies production that went up in Silliman. "That old southern character has many resonances with my life in the south," he said. "''ll be happy

15


UNTO ITSELf

C•

6 ll 1: 4 I

I

( ... ~ "

c w"' . "

I

L I ' I 4

u

114"' I --=>

1\of- Ill CLII ..

916-911 Ch..pd ST•tn • Nrw Havno, CONNlCTKUT 06S 10 RuuuuNT 20J/ 777• 1272 • Ddi 20J/ U 2 · Ddi

e'~ ~....~

You are Invited to

The New Journal's

Organizational meeting Wednesday, September 23 8 pm

~~

~0

. . ~~

D._.o~

Berkeley Common Room

~' ·

- - - -- - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - -- -----------1

MEXICAN FDDD GREAT DRINKS, TOO! OPEN EVERY DAY 161 PARK STREET

NEW HAVEN

562-2499 MASTER CHARGE, VISA, DINERS, CARTE BLANCHE 16

to act in the future, but I don't think I'll go looking for parts for a little while ." Black has been spending increasing amounts of time studying Icelandic. His goal is to approach the rich Icelandic sagas and the intricate legal system they describe "with a good understanding of colloquial Icelandic." His interest in Iceland developed by chance. "R.F.L. is what the sociologists call it: Rabbit's Foot Luck. I wanted to visit someplace very, very cold, with de-e-e-ep snowdrifts. Iceland! What could be better! I bought plane tickets and began to read about the place." He discovered that Iceland has a temperate climate and hardly any deep snow drifts. "By the time I got that far I was interested in the tremendous system they have. Think of it: 230,000 people support a symphony, a theater, a modern hospital, an opera, an airline, a booming fishing industry, an entire government and judiciary, ... That's fewer people than live in Austin, Texas. They hold two jobs each, for the most part, and they're not just getting by, they're thriving!" Today Charles Black continues his civil rights efforts, writing and lecturing against capital punishment, which he calls "extremely racist." His book Capill.zl Punishmmt: The IMViU:lblity of Caprice and Mistahs (which he wrote in just three weeks) is the nearest thing that opponents of the death penalty have to a Bible. '"There were 114 people on Death Row when I wrote the book," he said. '"That seemed like a lot. Today there are 739. Why this hesitation to execute? It's a very strange thing. I see it as the principle reaffirmed, the principle of not taking a human life. My book tries to show that capital punishment is fraught with error, even if you approve in theory of executing criminals. Which I do not." Black has avoided litigating capital punishment cases in favor of writing books and delivering lectures on the subject. "I wanted to avoid any risk of conflict of interest as long as I was writing. "' am in a trough right now in my legal writing. I am discouraged and bewildered by the situation in Washington and I don't quite know which direction to take or where to exert my efforts . . . I am totally reso!utely, and as a matter of lifelong conviction against everything that President Reagan stands for . . . I've been fighting the good fight for 34 years, though, so I guess I have a right to a little time off.• For the moment, teaching is more


#

•

important to him than writing. His major project last summer was a revision of the syllabus for his constitutional law course. "The impressive thing is that the students teach each other law. There is intimate and constant interaction at a school this small. Nobody makes an appointment with me. My door is open; if ~omeone wants to chat, he comes right m. "I know how to work. I work hard. I live four minutes from here by Jeep and have a fine study. I enjoy the isolation of home. I don~t like to see visitors or take calls when I work, except for Yale law students. I want to talk to any Yale law student who wants to talk to me." Black considers himself "a fair professor and a spotty lecturer," and the students in his lectures courses on constitutional law and maritime law concur. Students who have had him in seminars (he teaches two a term) say that he is much better in the informal, round-table format. On a shelf in Black's office sits a sad looking branch of a tree, made to look like a tree itself and adorned with oversized white baubles. David Black presented it to his father for Christmas many years ago, saying that he had made it himself. Like a good father, Black built a small showcase and placed it prominently in his office. "Of course, I had to build a showcase for the gift my daughter had given me, too, even though it didn't really need it." Her gift was an impression of her hands in clay, the kind everyone makes in kindergarten. "Years later I learned that David hadn't made the tree at all, but that his teacher had made it for him. I looked at the two showcases and reflected on how utterly unconnected are facts and love." Charles Black's mind is full of many ideas and of many different kinds of ideas, but they do not constitute clutter. Iceland and Ibsen, Pound and politics coexist harmoniously. He can drive a Jeep, read Greek, and play a harmonica with equal ease. He has spent his life sharing his ideas with others. Still, he has his regrets. "Everybody has loads of regrets. You never do as much as you like to or as much for people as you like to. I've certainly learned one thing from experience that I wish I had known much earlier. I regret things I didn't give away, but not a single thing I did give away."

Mmt Hamel, a senior inJE, is sports editor cifThe Yale Daily News.

TEMPLE TRAVEL CENTER 168 YORK ST. , NEW HAYEN 865-5131 The staff of Tm~pl~ Trav~l Lcri, Dmis~ and &tsy w~lcom~ you (back) to N~w Haven with a Win~ & Chuse R~c~ption Saturday, Octobn- 10, 1981 12:00 noon to 3:00p.m. at our office. Drop by and say hi!

Genuine Cantonese Cooking

No extra charge for dinners put up to take out Air conditioned

for your comfort Near Broadway Phone: 789-9697 New

TELL US WHERE-WE'LL GET YOU THERE OPEN MON.·FRI. 9·5:30 I SAT. 10·3

CHINA

140 Howe St. Near Whalley Ave.

(; llil .,I~ ... S'1, Ill~ I~ '1,

il I .. I..

'rIll~

'1,1)11~

Phil's HAIR STYLES

Complete Styling Services for Men and Women

865-9187 82V2 Wall Street

Appointments

where people who love to cook .. love to shop!

865-9182 284 York Street

CookS

Bazaar

400 Crown Street, New Haven , CT 865-5088

Food cheeses, gourmet cookies, quiches, breads. croissants. coffees. teas, hors d'eouvres Catering

10% off with Yale I.D. 17


SHOW YOUR OARS! Yale Crew License Plate $5 CrewTie $11 Henley T -Shirt With Crew Insignia $7.50 Car Window Sticker $2 Gold Plate Oar Blazer Pin $5.50

I

A PORTION OF AIL SALES IS CONTRIBUTE'D TO THE YALE ROWING FUNDS.


~ The

greatest show in rowing

Sam Wilkins

In every sport there is one event, one competition, which becomes synonymous with excellence. Wimbledon means great tennis. Cyclists speak of the Tour de France with reverence¡and awe. And in rowing, Britain's Henley Royal Regatta has no equal. Henley is not the largest regatta in the world; Boston's Head of the Charles is bigger. Nor is Henley the oldest; the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race predates Henley by ten years. Nor is ¡ Henley even the most competitive; Olympic and World Championship fields are far stronger. But for rowing enthusiasts, Henley is written in gilt script on the clouds because, where

Yale~

ligh1weigh1 crew practicing at Henley.

tradition, character and prec1s1on are concerned, no other boat race and few other sporting events even come close. Henley is an unforgettable experience, more intoxicating than the bitters and stouts served in the public houses that dot the surrounding English countryside. Henley is not the oldest or the largest or the toughest regatta. It is simply the finest. The town of Henley-on-Thames hides in a small valley in the picturesque Chiltern hills about 30 miles west of London. The road from London to Oxford descends out of a cool thick forest into the valley and across the River Thames.

The town sits patiently on the west side of a thirteenth century bridge, waiting for the one week in early July when the tranquility of everyday life is shattered by the arrival of rowers who have come from around the world to do battle on the Henley Reach and thousands of spectators who have come to observe the fray. The Henley course.is nothing short of flawless. Just above the Henley bridge is the longest straight stretch of water anywhere on the Thames, a mile-andone-half expanse of river that flows northeast from Henley before turning east to Windsor and London. At the top of this Henley Reach, as it is known, is

19


A bird's-eye view of 1M H mley course.

a small island on which rests a white marble medieval temple that is just barely visible from the bridge. The starting line for Henley is just beyond the island, and ra~ progress one mile, 550 yards (a distance unique to Henley and longer than the standard courses) upstream to a fmish a few hundred yards before the bridge. Crews race o ne-on-one up a narrow course lined with booms and freshly-painted marker posts, along pastures at first, then along farms and manors, and then finally in front of the main viewing enclosures as the duU roar of the crowd builds to a crescendo at the finish. The P .A . at Henley booms out times to places like "The Barrier" (a fence near an old abbey o ne-quarter of the way down the course) and •Fawley" (a manor house roughly halfway). This is part of the magic of H enley- it even has a language all its own. Barrier, Fawley, R emenham Club, Phyllis Court Croq uet Clu b, Leander. AU racing is single elimination. If you win, you earn the right to face another crew on the next day. If you lose, you hit the pubs and enclosures to drown your sorrows in a big cup of PIMM's I 1. Th«; Stewards who run the race sent out a questionnaire in the early 1970s to representative crews from seventeen foreign countries, asking for possible changes in the format. Perhaps a double elimination or repechage system would be more appropriate, the Stewards suggested. The seventeen forms were all returned blank. The message-leave H enley as it is, a one-of-a-kind racing experience. There are not any formal restrictions as to who may or may not enter at Henley. But since the Regatta is an international showcase for rowing and commands such respect in the sport, the application process i~ virtually self-regulating. M ediocre and less-than mediocre crews usually choose not to compete at H enley so as to spare themselves the embarrassment of losing by curvature of the earth in the opening round. Yale abides by this unspoken rule, allowing only its finest crews to go to H enley. But in 1981 this was no small con tingent since Yale had, overall, the most successful college crew program in the country. The Yale team at Henley

consisted of 40 oarsmen and their coaches, and Yale had entries in five of the Regatta's fourteen events. No crew deserved to be at Henley more than Yale's varsity heavyweight crew. Following a second-place finish in the San Diego Crew Classic, a preseason event for Yale, the varsity heavies fi nished the regular season untouched. They won the Eastern Sprints Title and assured themselves a place m Yale rowing history by becoming the first Eli varsity heavyweight boat in 18 years to defeat Harvard in the armual and legendary four-mile race at Gale's Ferry in New London, CT. Henley was the natural next step. Yale's lightweight and heavyweight junior varsities had equally good reasons for going to Henley . The JV ligh ts wen t undefeated, winning both the H -Y-P Regatta and the Eastern Championships for the first time since 1953. Their win at the Easterns broke a 14-year Harvard stranglehold on theJV lightweight Eastern crown . The JV heavies were also undefeated though disqualified at the Eastern Championships in a highly controversial ruling. Revenge for the disqualification came two weeks later when the crew annihilated Harvard over three miles at Gales Ferry, winning by some five lengths of open water. The Yale heavyweightJV returned to H enley as in the Ladies Challenge Plate, trying for a second successful defense of that title. But the lightweights had gone to Henley only once since 1953. This year's Henley was not only an important one for Yale. For the first time since the races began in 1837, women rowed the Henley course. The Stewards of the Regatta, a group of forty men whose duty it is to preserve the traditions and uphold the integrity of the race, had previously decreed that •events for ladies are not in the best interest of the Regatta.• The World Championships include women, the Olympics include women, but Henley has confmed ladies to the Stewards' Viewing Enclosure . The restrictions on women's rowing finally became too uncomfortably anachron istic even for a traditionconscious group like the Stewards, and this year, on an experimen tal basis, events for women were included. T he fLrSt women's crews to paddle past the grandstand in the Stewards' Enclosure on their way to the starting line drew titters and whispered comments from the ladies and gentlemen on shore. But when those same crews turned and raced upriver with style and power, the titters and whispers died in the throats of skeptics, and were replaced by the

C ustom -Made Moccasins

260 YOlK STU fT NEW MAVIN, CONN. 06.511

QSr.~~~~~rl nters

........... ·-·- .__ PRINTING -

COPYING

e

•

l'lywo

Full 81nclery -

,_

· T~

WE NOW PAINT T-SHIRTS AND CARRY A FULL LINE OF OFFICE AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES.

789-1600 1207 CHAPEL STREET NEW HAVEN, CONN.

RUDY'S RESTAURANT •A short walk from campus." "Happy Hou,.. 4-~ p.m. Mon-Fri

Kitchen open from 11 :00 a .m .-9:00 p.m . daily

FOR ALL T H OSE WHO ENJOY T H E IR FREE T IM£ AT R UDrS:

TilE EltTaA D.INIUN5 I S COMING SOON!

•eva

21


A longtime jan loolcs on. shouts of "Well rowed!" and "Jolly good!" that traditionally accompany the races. The first women to cross the finish line were Julia and Charlotte Geer, two sisters from Dartmouth who won their heat of the Double Sculls event. Though they would lose in the finals to a Canadian crew, the Geers had earned themselves a spot in history, for when their first heat ended, so did 141 years of all-male rowing at Henley.

22

It is Thursday July 2, 1981. The flagpole attendant glances nervously at his watch. Ten seconds before nine a.m. This is the first of the four days of Henley, and the affair is about to begin with characteristic precision . Nine o'clock, and the flagmen hoists the Union jack up the main flagpole in the Stewards' Enclosure. The Queen's Grenadier Guards strike up "Rule Britannia," and as the song ends, the P.A. crackles to life with progress reports from the first of the day's eighty races. Bentham Rowing Club of London wins its heat of the Ladies Challenge Plate by default. Its opponent, the University of Natal from South Africa, has been disqualified for being two minutes late to the starting line. Thousands of miles travelled, the coxswain loses track of time, and the crew is disqualified. Ruthless precision, but necessary if all the races are to be squeezed in between a lunch hour, a tea hour and "God Save the Queen" at 7:30 p.m. The lords and ladies and the well-todo swirl through the four days of the Regatta in the glossy fashion show known as the Stewards' Viewing Enclosure. Former oarsmen line the banks looking silly in gaudy blazers and school caps. Punts and small row boats line the booms of the race course to get a more intimate view of the competition. Vendors hawk the official programs, which are hurriedly printed in the wee hours of the morning to include

Charlolk and julia Cur of DartTTI(Juth were the.first women ever to cross the Hm/ey finish line.

Officio.ls TTI(Jnitor the progress of the races. all results and the next days schedule of races. This year, as in all others, there are surprises, big surprises. Yale's varsity heavyweight eight was looking forward to a rematch aginst the University of Washington, the crew they lost to in the San Diego Crew Classic. But the heavyweights fell victim in the first round of the Grand Challenge Cup to a strong Oxford crew . "Home Crews Triumph,â&#x20AC;˘ the Daily Tekgram proclaimed. Yale'sJV lightweight boat won easily in its first Thames Cup heat, but was outgunned in the next round by a larger and stronger British crew. Because

there are no lightweight events at Henley, Yale's JV was up against heavyweight competition. The race that eliminated Yale was upstream into a headwind against a substantially bigger crew, and though the Elis held on for nearly a mile, the size advantage of the other crew allowed it to pull away in the last 500 yards. For a while, it looked as though Yale's heavyweight JV would be successful in its Ladies Challenge Plate defense . But disaster struck in Sunday's final against the University of Washington's JV heavyweights. Yale had built up a three-quarters length lead by Fawley, but seconds later the


bow man of the Yale boat was rendered ineffective when his seat broke and jammed. The Huskies caught up and BRUSKJN'S moved ahead, and though Yale gallantly challenged, the equipment failure proved too big an obstacle. Washington Est.bllshed t• _. won by a half-length. e 2 HOUR DRY CLEANING The climax of the Regatta came just e ALTERING before tea on Sunday when the Oxford e SUEDE-LEATHER CLEANING boat which had beaten Yale lined up Everything for your bicycle RE-WEAVING against a boat from Leander and Tyrian Boat Clubs. Though it sounds PRESSING WHILE YOU WAIT like an ordinary race, all in attendance 1144 CHAPEL STREET I TEL. 624-0342 . WOMEN'S ALTERATIONS knew better. It was no ordinary Oxford NEW HAVEN I CONNECTICUT 06511 boat. Five of the eight were from the A SPECIALTY. Oxford crew that had easily defeated Cambridge earlier in the year. The ESTABLISHED 1937 82 WALL ST. (9pp Silliman) other three oarsmen were members of ~---------------L-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ England's siver medal-winning Olympic Eight. But the Leander and Tyrian boat was even more formidable; this was the British National Heavyweight Crew, supposedly the best heavyweights in England, rowing under the colors of Leander and Tyrian. One could sense that a classic battle was at hand. The band fell silent, the careless banter subsided and spectators lined the banks of the Thames dozens deep as the grand Challenge began. After a furious start, Leander and Tyrian edged ahead, taking almost a third of a length by Fawley. The crowd • rooted for Oxford, a primarilyuniversity crew with three Olympians that was up against a composite crew of Britain's best. A shame, a pity, "Nice try, Oxford!" the crowd said as Oxford lagged. But the magic of Henley asserted itself once again. Though exhausted and behind, Oxford raised its pace, spurted and drew even. Coming Yale is important to us. Our post-modern office building in into the view of the enclosures, Oxford Fort Lee, New Jersey was designed by a Yale architect. had kept up the same torrid pace and Our corporate identity is largely the work of a Yale graphic had a third of a length on Leander and designer. So it's only natural for us to think of Yale for Tyrian. The national team tried to move back, but Oxford responded by other areas of our business, which is providing employeesprinting even harder. At the win post, related consulting services for many of the nation's largOxford was half a length ahead, and the est companies. In a race fans were almost knocking each series of ads this year, other into the river in excitement. we'll describe the jobs Twenty-four hours later, on the same we have and the skills sight, scores of workmen were dissemthey call for. We hope bling the grandstands and enclosures so you'll get to know us full of life a day before. The townsfolk of Henley breathed a collective sigh of better. relief, but were also proud of the fact that the greatest show in rowing had been held in their tiny community. It had been grandiose, thrilling, stylish, traditional and unforgettable. It had been, in other words, just another • Henley.

ROBEY'S TAILORS

Bicycle Center

e

We know Yale. But does Yale know us?

Sam Wilkins ('81) is aJormn sports tditor of The Yale Daily Newsandwasa member of the lightweiglu crew team tJuu rowed aJ Henley.

23


Kaplan

Mike Kaplan and John Levenstein, the writers of the But Seriously Folks comedy revues, sat in Fitzwilly's last April, one month before their graduation. After producing five original comedy shows in the Silliman Dramatic Attic, and a two-act play in the Yale Dramat, the writers now planned to take six actors and a collection of their best material to a small west Hollywood· theater they rented for the summer. They said they were concerned about

actor. They've been meeting with producers and discussing ideas, Kaplan said. Home Box Office has expressed interest in getting them to write for a new comedy show entitled "That Was the Month That Was." Levenstein, who peforms extensively in But Seriously Folks revues, was cast in the movie Cadds, a low-budget comedy about a military academy. Levenstein said he plays an •asshole cadet commander. It's a good role in what promises to be a dumb movie." Kaplan and Levenstein first met at a Los Angeles Alumni Association gettogether for new Yalies. Surprisingly, they discussed starting a comedy troup at Yale at this first meeting. Even more surprising, they pulled it off. The show they performed in Los Angeles was a compilation of material from most of their previous revues. One skit, "America: An Intimate Documentary," provides a survey of American history in 8 minutes.

The But Seriously Folks In Hollywood making the transition from college audiences to audiences in the real world. "We're kind of worried," Levenstein said. "I'm worried. I'm damned worried," Kaplan said. •aut I try to placate myself by saying I'm going to have a lot of fun this summer, which will be true. But I'm worried." Kaplan explained the purpose of the venture: "Basically there are people in L.A. and it's their job to look for talent and come see shows like this. And possibly someone's going to spot one of our performers or see our writing and figure that there's potential there and that they want to work with it. •u things don't go well by July," he joked, "we may be doing Wild Duck or something. But for the time being we intend to do comedy revues until the end of the summer." And after the summer? "Word processing." It's now five months since Kaplan and Levenstein sat in Fitzwilly's. They didn't end up word processing or performing Wild Duck. Their show- Conuno for Stool and Bmch- ran for ten weekends in Hollywood. The Los Angeles Times called it "some of the best comedy revue writing we've seen in some seasons." "Careerwise, it really got me and Mike more than we could have expected," Levenstein said. The William Morris Agency signed them on as a writing team and Levenstein on as an

as movie ushers, a secretary, a hospital orderly, and an executive for a market research firm. On performance nights, they arrived at the theater, turned on the popcorn machine, and stirred the lemonade for the evening's crowd. They painted the theater's marquis themselves, and producer Rosenblatt served as a one-man production crew. On opening night, Kaplan said, the house was packed and the audience enthusiastic. "For one night we felt like the darlings of Hollywood. Opening night got expectations way up. It made it difficult for the rest of the summer as things slowed down." The Los Angeles audiences were different from the college audiences, Levenstein said. "It was rare that something went over as well with normal people as it did with students." But the show certainly went over well with the L.A. Times critic who wrote, "They are contemporary in the freshest sense, highly literate and incisive . . . . " Variety said the show "bulges with snap and sparkle and promise." The L.A. Weekly, however, didn't like what it saw: "This group is young, just out of their orthodontia, decent, energetic, and entirely unbrilliant . . . It's all too clean-cut with not enough talent to match the toothpaste." Said Kaplan about the review, "I loved it. This was the first time we had ever moved someone to really hate us." The L.A. Times review by itself brought in decent-size audiences for most of the summer. They averaged about 30 people for each performance, Levenstein said. But "towards the end (of the summer] there wasn't quite as much spark to the show," he said. Originally, they plarmed to do a new revue in the middle of the summer but none of them had the time for rehearsals. They decided to close on Aug. 17, a week earlier than plarmed. Kaplan and Levenstein now have time to work on their first screenplay. "It's sort of an '1-hate-kids' movie,'" Levenstein said, but refused to divulge any of the jokes.

Another, "Joke, Right?" is "a game show which matches completely humorless people against professional comedians." In another, Truman, Attlee, and Stalin have an encounter session at Potsdam. They performed the show four nights a week, Thursday through Sunday, at the Shepard Theater Workshop on Santa Monica Boulevard in west Hollywood. Kaplan, Levenstein, and producer Mark Rosenblatt ('81) rented the theater for about $2,000 each, almost all the money they had in the world. "I sold my baseball cards," Kaplan claimed. The Shepard is "small, charming, and seedy," as Kaplan put it. It was chosen for its run-down storefront look which is really very appropriate for the But Seriously Folks' visually-spare humor. The Shepard has ants in the bathroom, and, to make things lively, forty-nine seats from a defunct Elk's Club. The Elk's rows, not being attached to much M tchek Owens contrihuJed 1D this story of anything, offered new meaning to from Los Angeles. audience rapture; when the crowd rollicked, the seats teetered precariously. Six actors from Yale came west with Kaplan and Levenstein. Miguel-Angel Centeno ('80), Paul Frellick ('82), Michelle Granieri ('82), George Roth ('82), and Lisa Willner ('81) had appeared in the troupe's Yale shows, but Wallace Johnson ('82) was a new addition. All the actors volunteered their time, and the three investors had no expectations of making any profit. During the day, the But Seriously Folks worked

~'


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Volume 14 - Issue 1 by The New Journal at Yale - Issuu