Volume 14 - Issue 5

ewournal Volume 14

February 27, 1982

Number Five

It's called an agreement but the two sides that signed it disagree on what it means both for themselves and for the Yale community.

The state of the union

by Paul Hofheinz

Heinrich von Staden interviews Athol Fugard Toad's' defensive line

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Publisher Ed Bennett Ediwr-in-Chi4 Andy Court Designer Matt Gaynor Business Manager Jeff Foster Production Manager Hilary Callahan• Photography Editor RoiJin Riggs Associau Editors Paul Hofheinz• , Jim Lowe• Associate Production Manager Alex Savich • Staff Serena Collison , Geoff

Hayward, Jane Hinson, Walter Jacob, Tim Misner, Geoff Pope, Sloan Walker, Lelia Wardwell • •elected February 2, 1982

Friends

Does Yale Know Us? the fifth in a series of employment messages Many of the strategic and financial decisions that occur in business are simply an abstract way of dealing with down-to-earth human needs. For example, at Kwasha Lipton, our Group Benefits and Compensation departments use benefit design and human resource skills to help major employers solve a basic problem; how to attract and retain the best possible employees.

Our consultants help employers to design compensation and benefit programs that improve employee morale and productivity and promote understanding and trust between management and its workforce.

If what we do interests you, and you believe you have the capaCompenaatlon bilities to help us, why not contact John Hickey, Partner, Kwasha Lipton, 2100 North Central Road, Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024-1400.

2

Anson Beard Edward B. Bennett, Jr. Nancy R. Bennett Peter B. Cooper Sherwin Goldman Brooks Kelley Lewis E. Lehrman Nicholas X. Rizopoulos Richard and Deborah Sears Richard Shield Thomas Strong Alex Torello Allen and Sarah Wardwell Daniel Yergin

Cover photo by Rollin Riggs

TheNewJournal In thla laaue

5

Comment: Fear and loathing at Career Advisory

by Walter Jacob Towards environmental literacy

by Will Winkelstein

8

The state of the Union

by Paul H ofheinz

14

An interview with Athol Fugard

by Heinrich von Staden

22

The Political Union's identity crisis

by Jim Lowe

26

Toad's' defensive line

by Matt Hamel

30

Profile: John Downey: from C hinese prison to the Senate trail

by Tony Caplan

34

Research: Hopes and concerns over cheap isotopes

by Tim Misner

36

Books: Whodunit? Master Winks

by Lenny Picker Bloom's latest "misreading"

by Elizabeth wahl

1/t

3

TheNewJournal

Members

Peter B. Cooper Sherwin M. Goldman Nicholas X. Rizopoulos Daniel Yergin Board

Upcoming Acts ...

February 27 The Sixties, (formerly Fostfingers)

of Directors

Ed Bennett, ex officio Andy Court, ex officio Matthew Gaynor, ex officio Peter B. Cooper Nicholas X. Rizopoulos Thomas Strong

28 Eight to the Bar March 1 Kenny Rankin 2 Uncle Chick 3 King Crimson 4 t .b .a.

5 t.b.a.

6 Arizona Maid 7 Aztec Two Step 8 Renaissance 9 High Times 10 Roger McGiunn 11 Mose Allison 12 & 13 Meade Brothers 14 Jake & the Family Jewels 15 Steps, with Mike Mainieri, Eddi Gomez, Michael Brecker, Don Grolnik & Peter Erskine 16 Marocka, A tribute to Santana 17 Rust, A tribute to Nell Young 18 Stick & the Shifters 19 The Sixties 20 Apple 21 Cobble Mountain Band 22 t .b .a.

23 Arizona Maid 24 The Fleshtones 25 Blotto 26 Bean Bolero, A tribute to Steely Don

4

300 YORK STREET Concert Line: 777¡7431

The New journal is a monthly magazine of news and comment. Ten thousand copies of each issue are distributed free to all members of the Yale University community.

Copyright 0 1982

by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. 3432 Yale Station New Haven, CT. 06520.

Office hours weekdays 1-3pm 105 Becton Center

The New Journal thanlcs: Ron Amarant

Andy Bn"mmer Chuck Corney Doug Connell W . J. Cunningham T emma Ehrenfeld Robert Fermann Ellen Gibson Mark Mcintyre Frank Prot/ R . A. Shoaf W. Hampton Silks Dtu:~id Teitelman Molly Whalen Christianno. Williams Will Winlcelstein

Yale Daily News Typesetting Service

Jtm Yeadon

About thla laaue One of the biggest editorial challenges we face is matching people with ideas, the right writer with the right story. We were particularly excited when Heinrich von Staden, Master of Ezra Stiles College, agreed to interview South African playwright Athol Fugard whose new play opens at the Yale Rep on March 12 .

Von Staden grew up in South Africa and is a friend of Fugard. The interview, conducted earlier this month at Kavanagh's was an. e motional reunion for the two men who hadn't seen each other in two years.

During the course ¡of their conversation, they were frequently interrupted by people who affectionately praised Fugard and welcomed him back to New Haven.

On another note, we'd like to con- ~ gratulate Paul Hofheinz and Jim Lowe who have been elected Associate Editors. This will be the fifth issue on which they have worked - not only writing articles and editing copy, but also helping with business and production.

Lowe is a freshman in Morse who wrote the article on the Political Union's identity crisis. Hofheinz is a sophomore in Silliman who wrote this issue's cover story on the new union contract. Hofheinz first began covering the labor beat last April . He wrote this story after carefully examining the new contract's terms in an attempt to sort out the union and university's claims and counterclaims.

We think the story of organized labor ,. at Yale is one of the most complex and important stories on campus because it so greatly affects the cost and quality of life.

Hope you enjoy this issue.

¡ Comment---Fear and loathing at Career Advisory Walter Jacob January 18 was a pretty hectic day for the folks over at the Yale Career Advisory and Placement Service. Seems like they had about 43 per cent more seniors than usual lining up for their On Campus Recruiting Program this year, and a whole bunch forgot about the deadline for turning in resumes.

Ed Noyes, Director of Career Advisory, said he was a little peeved when 50 people he'd never even laid eyes on jammed the halls near closing time looking for a steady income. But he was still gratified to find people's opinions changing about his line of work.

"When I first got here," he reminisced, "it really seemed like students ran home, got out of their good clothes and into their jeans so nobody'd fmd out they were coming here."

Times have changed. What with unemployment creeping up near nine per cent and all, Mr. Noyes figures people are naturally just getting antsy about not having a place to h ang their hats come May. And Mr. Noyes has a right to his opinion. Its just that things looked a little different from my point of view.

I guess I chose the wrong day to go pick up an LSAT application form. I'd ignored the resume deadline warnings because I wasn't interested in the program, but if I'd known they were staging a trial run of the Last Judgement, I would've brought popcorn.

I ran into a couple of friends coming would have been holding them beout of the door at 1 Hillhouse and tween their legs.

Inside the windows were starting to mopping the sweat from their brows.

"Hey, can I borrow your typewriter? steam up, but people were in too much o f a hurry to take off their down I've gotta write my resume."

"Hey , what're you going to do next jackets. Those who weren't running to beat the clock were looking at their year, anyway?" shoes as if they wished they could fit They looked pretty pleased with more of themselves inside of them . I themselves, but I had this funny feel- recognized a woman maki'tg herself ing that if they had had tails they small under an enormous recruiting

Walt.,Jecob

poster in the crowded corridor.

"Last chance to get interviewed by Proctor and Gamble," she offered weakly, shielding her interview preference list with a sheaf of papers.

The back room was the main attraction. That's where everybody was going through the job directories in a panic and writing down anything that looked worthwhile, and scribbling names on scraps of paper and holding 5

Towards environmental literacy Will Winkelstein

6

their heads and moaning about lost ideals. Some didn't even have time for that; they just entrusted their fortunes to the fates and copied down somebody else's preference list. I heard some great lines.

"I need a job objective. Gimme a job objective."

"You're into marketing. Didn't you say you wanted to go into marketing?"

"Well, no. I mean yes! Oh, for Christ's sake!"

And then there was the throng that had already finished their applications and could laugh about it, sporting one broad collective grin like the Israelites on the far shores of the Red Sea. One hooted to those still toiling: "Hey, how're you gonna pay the rent, huh?"

Somebody had pinned up a handscrawled sign that seemed to sum up the whole scene.

"Welcome to the real world."

Not that I think most of us are going to see a lot of the real world that most people know after we graduate. After all, Ed Noyes says even students with no technical background who get a job through his service will average around S 17,500 a year for a starting salary.

That's S3,000 ahead of the national average for graduating liberal arts people he says. And those with math or science backgrounds will be landing jobs at between $22,000 and $24,000, first time out.

But it seemed like that sign almost sanctioned what was going on at 1 Hillhouse that day; almost told those folks who were scrambling to make the deadline, to just fill those embarrassing blanks on the application form and pass the damned thing in so they'd still be runners in the race, that it was okay to tum off the brain and turn on the juice.

It wasn't so much a question of looking out for number one, you see. It was all those fears of the unplanned future,

When Fred Krupp, head of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, offered a seminar on environmental law in Pierson last fall, 121 students applied, the most for any college seminar. "Field and Stream" editor, George Rieger, also found a receptive audience for his seminar on "Conservation in America."

Only the most naive administration could ignore the obvious appeal of environmental courses. Yet despite this proven interest, Yale College has no environmental studies program.

Sparse course offerings, inadequate , coordination and insufficient publicity have defeated any attempt to provide environmental education.

Although the American Studies major permits an environmental studies concentration, it presents no grouping of these courses. When asked about future prospects for the program, American Studies Assistant Professor Bryan Wolf conceded, "Rather than say 'improve' it, it might be better to say 'find' it." The school of Forestry and Environmental Studies offers only "Man and the Natural Environment" to Yale undergrads. It presents the course inconsistently, though, and undergrads must search out the few remaining environmental courses, scattered throughout the blue book.

One faculty member dissatisfied is Michael Smith, a history lecturer who says "there's nothing that holds everything together." Stressing the apWaller Jacob, a senior in Sil/iTTUJn, is a parent popularity of the environmental s~minars, Smith admits, "that tells you regular contributor to The New Journal. something important is going on that Yale College is not addressing."

Yale should wake up to the glaring reasons for a responsible environmental studies program. Impending ecological problems demand a more far-sighted and assertive response.

Lounging in the "Land of Plenty," Americans have only recently been

all those prying questions the parents and relatives asked over Christmas break, all those friends getting into nedical school, all those decisions that are so tough to make on your own.

Sure, some people knew . what they wanted in a job and grabbed for it early. But the ones bending over the reference books that afternoon didn't seem to want to know. The hour of the weighing of souls was at hand, and more than poverty, more than humiliation, more than betraying all those principles they had always held dear, the people I saw seemed to fear the responsibility of charting independent courses. They weren't applying for jobs because unemployment was up. They were applying because the deadline had come. They didn't need a better reason. They had indeed entered the real world, where things just get done a lot quicker if you shut up and stop ask~ ing questions.

Ed Noyes says he thinks the crowds in his halls show that students are giving more consideration to business careers now than in the recent pcut. I don't think what's going on here has much to do with business or with considered opinions. From what fve seen, it looks like just another manifestation of that invincible human penchant for blind conformity. And I don't know why anybody should hesitate to condemn it.

•

forced to confront the realities of limited resources. Comforted by this misperception of abundance, they ignore environmental dilemmas.

- The "Global 2000 Report to the President," published in 1980 by the Council on Environmental Quality and the State Department, sums up the rather bleak outlook. The report concludes, "If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now."

Without an appreciation for the environment, the world cannot avoid this

ominous fate. Environmental laws may handcuff the most visible offenders, but they do nothing to change cultural attitudes. The government has been equally ineffective. Since the publication of Global 2000, it has cut dramatically the budgets of the Interior Department and the Environment Protection Agency. Interior Secretary James Watt's controversial policies further emphasize the need for a better informed society which can responsibly evaluate environmental questions.

While the future demands a basic awareness of environmentaJ predicaments, it also affords a variety of

career opportumues. Engineering and computer science may have drawn the most attention as up-and-coming fields , but most people do not realize the wealth of available environmentally related careers.

Other Ivy League schools, such as Brown, Princeton and Harvard, all share a stronger commitment to environmental education than does Yale.

Brown offers a major, and Princeton and Harvard refer interested students to the appropriate facuJty members and departments.

Wolf, Smith and Forestry Dean WilJiam Smith have sought improvements in environmental studies at Yale. Dean Smith suggests the appointment of a new faculty member to work through both the Forestry School and American Studies to teach two introductory environmental studies courses. Such an instructor would also coordinate existing offerings into a more cohesive presentation.

Although a usefuJ idea, these recommendations constitute only a first step in bringing environmental education to Yale. None of the world's multiplying resource problems can be addressed if leading universities do not provide adequate environmental studies programs.

Yale should offer more than just two introductory courses; it should bring environmental questions into the mainstream of academic life. The curricuJum needs many new courses, coordination of existing ones, and an en¡. ironmental studies major. Not until Yale effects these changes can its students become environmentally literate.

•

Will Winkelsuin Saybrook.

is

a

sophomore

m

7

The state of the Union Pau I H ofhei nz

Everyone knows there was no strike.

But few people understand what came out of Th~ Agreemmt b~tw~m Yal~ Universiry and tM Ftdnation of Universiry Employus Local No. 35. The document is called an agreement, but the two parties that signed it disagree on what it means both for themselves and for the Yale community.

They disagree, for example, on one of the Union's most important concerns: job security. Under the terms of the new contract, employees in the bargaining unit who have worked at Yale for 10 years or more cannot be laid ofT for lack of work for the duration of the contract. The Union interprets this provision to mean that a worker has a guaranteed right to his or her own job after 10 years of service to Yale. But the University maintains that the language of the contract does

8

not prevent it from reassigning those workers to a different job, even if the job is in a lower wage scale.

"What if something happened in the energy department and we decided all of the people in the power p lant were going to be changed to something else," Donald Stevens , Director of Employee Relations and chief negotiator for the University explained.

The contract "says that all of those people with 10 years of experience will be given some other position."

Stevens described the process the University would use to give jobs to the workers protected by the contract as a "bumping down" process. "They don't maintain their own position, but • they use their seniority to bump down somebody else," he said.

If the Administration's interpreta-

"In sheer power terms we don't have the ability to crlp¡ pie the University."

•

tion is correct, most of the concessions won by the Union on job security would mean effectively nothing. For example, the University could under certain circumstances transfer a Locksmith making S9.91 an hour to another position like Elevator Operator or Pantry Worker, where his skills would be useless, the work disagreeable, and the pay several dollars an hour less. After 15 or so years of being a Locksmith, he would most likely be driven away from the University, which would make the transfer into an effective layoff.

The Union disagrees forcefully with Stevens' interpretation.

"I'm interested if that's his interpretation, because it's fundamentally wrong," said John Wilhelm, Business Manager and chief negotiator for Local 35, "If they stuck with that position, we'd arbitrate it," he added.

"There's no question we would win."

Wilhelm cited a 1979 ruling by an impartial arbitrator that "the term 'layoff' means 'from your own job.'"

That ruling, made under the terms of the 1977 contract, precludes transferring a worker to another position.

Most likely, the arbitration ruling still holds up, because the changes made in the new agreement do not depart significantly from the old contract. Arbitration has a status similar to legal precedence; it is subject to review, but cannot be changed unless the factors surrounding the case have changed or the impartial arbitrator can be proven incorrect.

"If that ruling is in order, the University wouldn't have a chance," if they took this statute before an arbitrator, said Julius Getman, a Yale Law Professor who specializes in labor law.

If the University cannot transfer

employees at will, then the Union has won some substantial protection against layoffs by obtaining some small changes in the contract. The o ld contract specified that no employees "shall be laid off for lack of work during the umainder of the University fiscal year, • which begins and ends every July 1. The language of the new contract reads "during the term of this agreement," which expires on January 17, 1985.

Those few words g ive the Union a lot more job protection than they might seem to contain at f~rst sight. If the Union refuses to let the University remove that provision the next time the contract is renegotiated, then any worker with 10 years of service at Yale can hold his job as long as he wants it.

"Assuming we retain that provision in the future, it protects those workers permanently," Wilhelm said.

Who won?

The Union and the University disagree not only on the issue of job security, but also o n the more general question of who made the most concessions at the bargaining table. Wilhelm maintains that the new agreement contains "major breakthroughs in the noneconomic area . . . including very strong new language on job security."

Stevens maintains that the Union "did not get more than we can give an a reasonable fashion."

"If they think they won, I'm delighted, because we think we won and that's what counts," Wilhelm said.

The Union did get a number of benefits. Apart from the disputed clause on job security, it won full coverage of medicaJ costs for spouses and retired employees; a commitment by the University to make "good faith consultations" on how to reorganize departments, improve work load prob-

terns, supply equipment and create entirely new jobs where they are needed; a streamlined grievance procedure with penalties on the University for not acting on a filed grievance within a set time period; a commitment to pay 50 per cent of tuition for classes taken by an employee; new strong language on sub-contracting; and an extended sick leave.

But the Union accepted a small wage proposal to get these concessions.

In the Union's original proposal made last November, it sought a 15 per cent across the board raise and a higher Cost of Living Allowance (COLA).

That figure dropped over the next few weeks to 12 per cent, then nine per cent, and finally, six per cent three days before the contract was due to expire. In the last minute compromise, the negotiating committee agreed to a meager 1. 4 per cent raise with the same COLA from the old contract in exchange for the new language and benefits.

"In every respect but wages, it's an outstanding proposal," Wilhelm reportedly told the workers before they voted whether or not to accept the contract. "If you want to strike, do so on the wage issue and the Union leadership will support you."

The Union believes it got a good deal even with the low wage increase because it had already corrected the problem of salary in the past. In 1968, when Local 35 had its first strike, the workers' wages were scarcely above the minimum wage. Now three strikes later they are among the highest paid dining hall and maintenance workers in the country.

"We've had the luxury of being able to concentrate on [other benefits] but it's a luxury we've created ourselves by the economic progress that we've made

9

"I'd be embarrassed to take that back to my bargaining unit."

Rollin Riggs/The New Journal

Yale~

Centrex operators are some of the many clerical workers the union wants to organize.

in which the people went out on the street," Wilhelm said .

"They make more than anyone else in the area for their kind of work," Wilhelm added, "and that's one of the principal reasons why our members were willing to settle for a relatively modest economic package."

As a result of the "modest" wage settlement, the University saved a lot of money. Donald Stevens points out that the new contract contains a smaller percentage increase in overall costs to the University than e-ither the settlement in 1977 after a 13-week strike or the one in 1974 after a 10-week walkout. These figures indicate that the combined cost of the new benefits and the wage increase is less than the cost of the wage concessions made by the University in the past.

"We shouldn't pay any group at Yale more or less than competitive wages, and that meant a little less for the bargaining unit and a little Jess over a three year period is a powerful number," according to Jerald Stevens, Vice-President of Finance and Administration.

Furthermore, Donald Stevens noted that the final settlement on wages is virtually identical to the University's first offer made last December. In the final proposal, the upper salary grades got a 30 cents an hour raise, up only 10

five cents from the University's original proposal. The lower salary grades got a five cents an hour raise, the same figure that the University had proposed in early December.

Moreover, the Union agreed to make the salary for people entering the workforce one dollar less for their first six months, and 50 cents Jess for their second six months. Wilhelm points out that this change will affect no one already in the bargaining unit, although it will be felt by people who are just starting to work for Yale including student dining hall workers: But at least one local labor leader feels that the substantial concessions the Union gave on wages are not offset by the benefits they got in return. He points out that job security means very little if the University is about to hire more workers as the Administration has hinted it will do. He also claims that the commitments to consult with the Union do not mean much because the Union has no recourse if there is disagreement between the two parties. •rd be embarassed to take that back to my bargaining unit," he commented.

"It's not like Yale is General Motors and you've got to save the institution" by accepting low wages, he added. "I think they (the Union] got clobbered" at the bargaining table.

.

..

No matter who got the better end of the Agreement, both sides won a substantial victory by signing the first three year contract at Yale since 1965 without a strike. Even with the economic and working condition improvements that Local 35 brought about in the 1970s, the strikes were not easy on the workforce, especially the long ones that lasted 10 and 13 weeks.

Likewise, the Administration is happy to have done away with much of the hostility that the strikes caused in the work place and the greater New Haven community.

"No one knows what it's like to settle around here," Wilhelm commented just after the vote.

How clo•• to • etrlke?

•

The Union's and the University's vital interests were not in direct conflict this time around. They both seemed willing to settle for low wages and more benefits. But Union officials say there would have been a strike if the U niversity had not given in on some of its more controversial demands, particularly the attempts to "take back" proposals from the old contract.

"There is a school of thought which is popular in management these days that rather than going to the bargaining table and in effect proposing the status quo and arguing about how much forward you ought to go, that the management ought to come to the bargaining table and talk about going backwards," Wilhelm said.

Stevens maintains that the University's proposals were made to help management operate more efficiently.

"We were proposing things that would help the University operate," he said .

"I don't know if they were for bargaining purposes."

The University wanted to limit the

number of times a worker could bid to switch departments in a year, make Good Friday into a floating holiday, and put a 40 cent cap on the COLA. But the most important "take back" was an attempted revision of Section 2.9 covering job descriptions and job titles. Under the old contract, the University had to notify the Union of any job reclassification 10 days before it takes effect, thereby allowing the Union time to challenge their decision through the grievance procedure. The University sought to rewrite that statute so that it could reclassify at will without having to notify the Union in advance, according to Sam IssacharofT, a second year Law School student and a member of Local 35's negotiating committee.

"That change would have effectively put the Unions out of business," IssacharofT said, because, like the disputed job security policy, the University could use the classification to manipulate the work force by switching their jobs around.

IssacharofT maintains that, had the University not dropped the proposed change on the last day of negotiations, there would have been a strike.

Wilhelm agreed. "If they'd insisted on those take backs, there would be a strike," he reportedly told the workers just before they voted on the new contract. He said the University withdrew those proposals over the weekend of the vote, except for the reduction m starting salary which he described as "acceptable."

Wilhelm also maintains that the "take backs" strategy backfired on the University. "If the University proposed (the 'take backs'] as a way of getting people to settle for less, I think they had the opposite effect," he said. "They pissed people ofT."

Local 35 captialized on the "take backs," using them against the U niversity. The Union negotiating team met regularly with "captains" elected from each department at Yale to report on the progress being made at the table.

The news of the "take backs" spreading through the work force as a result of those meetings gave rise to much of the pessimism and anxiety felt by many members of the community as the deadline approached.

Local 35 also had another ploy to bargain from a more powerful position. They circulated a flyer entitled A Chalkngt to Yale University the same week that negotiations began. "We want Yale to let us increase our productivity," it read, blaming "wasteful bureaucratic management" and "lack of consistency and effective planning," for the "productivity problem."

By casting the University as the primary impediment to more efficient production, the Union used the same claim against the University that might have been leveled against itself. Many people felt that the University was going to hold that the members of Local 35 were •Jazy" and "overpaid," as justificaton for the low salary increases they sought from the first day of negotiations. But Local 35 tried to deflate that charge with the productivity flyer.

"That was a good ploy by John," a high ranking University official said.

"The University certainly has an interest in improving productivity, and he tried to capture the University's ground."

Wilhelm also made many remarks to the press throughout the negotiations to the effect that the University's unwillingness to cooperate with Local 35 was hurting the negotiations.

"There is a total lack of interest in 11

"Quite frankly, I'm somewhat surprls$d we're not out on the streets."

doing something useful like [improving productivity) by the administration," he told the Yale Daily News four days before the contract would expire.

'They want to continue to ignore problems like these," he added.

"That was never said at the bargaining table," Stevens maintained, adding that the Union and the University came to a conceptual agreement on "productivity" early on, but disagreed primarily on how much of a wage increase the workers should get.

"Wilhelm, as any union person will do, will seek out the news sources and give them statements because he's trying to keep his constituency involved," Stevens said. "I don't have that problem."

By casting the University as the troublemakers in the negotiations, Wilhelm could either score points among the members of Local 35 ¡ for winning concessions for them, or blame a strike on the University's unwillingness to cooperate, if need be.

But Local 35 was not able to get every improvement they sought even with these tactics. Wilhelm reportedly outlined to the workers before the vote some of the proposals that he would like to have gotten from the University, such as medical coverage for dental care and eyeglasses, improvements in the pension plan, free parking, and reform of the job classifications.

"We'll never have any improvements in these areas until we have a clerical and technical union ," he reportedly told the members of Local 35.

White collar drive Wilhelm maintains that while Local 35 had made significant improvements in working conditions at Yale, they have done so with rather limited resources.

With over 9,000 employees at Yale, the 12

1,373 employees in Local 35's bargaining unit make up a small portion of the workforce.

As Wilhelm explained in an interview last summer: "In sheer power terms, we don't have the ability to cripple the University. Our strikes harass the University, inconvenience the University, embarass the University, but just in terms of raw power, the fact is that we can't control the University by ourselves. That is always a fact which overshadows everything that goes on at the bargaining table. We know it and they know it. On the other ..., hand if the clerical and technical and the service and maintenance people all stood together, that's another ballgame."

Since November of 1980, Local 35 has led a drive to organize the clerical and technical workers into a sister union called Local 34. If it is successful, the two unions would have a great deal of power at the bargaining table especially if they chose to honor each others' picket lines. While they could use that strength to negotiate better settlements for the work force, the changes would no doubt raise the operating costs of the University, leading possibly to higher tuition or curtailed services.

Recently, Local 35 has overcome many of the obstacles which kept the Union from calling for a vote on union representation by the white collar workers. On January 21, just five days after the union ended its two months of negotiations with the University, the United Auto Workers (UA W) suddenly ended its three and a half year old drive to organize the clericals and technicals. Their withdrawal ended the confusion tha~ many workers had because two unions were competing for the nght to repre-

"I'm interested if that's his interpretation because it's fundamentally wrong."

Rollin Riggs/The New Journal

The Union's John Wilhelm

Yale's Donald Stevens sent them. Moreover, Local 35 began to distribute cards last fall Ollf which they will need the signatures of 30 per cent of the work force, around 800 people at Yale, to call for an election. Until that time, the Union had worked on establishing a rank and file committee of around 500 workers with at least one employee from every department at Yale. All of this means that white collar workers might have to decide sometime this spring whether or not they want union representation.

With the prospect of a clerical and technical union lurking in the background, the University and the Union have an added stake in how the community perceives them and the contract. The UAW first approached Local 35 about withdrawing their organizing drive on Thursday, January 14, thre·e days before the contract expired, but it withheld the an• nouncement until after the settlement, perhaps so as not to cause the University to push the Union into a strike to

take the steam out of its organizing drive.

Both the University and the Union have taken much advantage of the Yale press to put forward their interpretations of the contract. "This contract should be a source of inspiration for the University clerical and technical employees," Sam Issacharoff wrote in an editorial in the Yale Daily News.

Days later, Wilhelm followed up with a letter to the editor calling attention to the increases in blue collar wages from the COLA, something which white collar workers do not have. At the same time, Stevens gave much play to the "cents per hour" increase that the blue collar workers got in an unsigned article he wrote for the Weekly Bulletin and Calendar. He pointed out that the weighted salary increase was only 1.4 per cent per year, as well as that the old COLA, which is also in the new contract,only provides quarterly increases at 40 per cent the rate of inflation.

And so, Yale and the Union find

themselves once again on opposite sides of the bargaining table. While negotiations between the two parties have ended, the dialogue about how to interpret The Agreement between Yale University and the Federation of University Empwyees Local No. 35 goes on. Perhaps the real winner of this past contract settlement was nOt the Union, or the University, but the Yale community, who for only the second time in 14 years will go three years without a strike of one of its most essential work forces.

"Quite frankly , I'm somewhat surprised we're not out on the streets," Wilhelm commented after it was all over.

They are not out on the streets, and that in itself is quite an accomplishment.

•

Paul Hojheinz, a sophomore in Silliman, last wrote on robOT at yale in the October issue of TN].

13

Heinrich von Staden Interviews Athol Fugard

14

Outspoken South African playwnght Athol Fugard has had several of his plays produced at the Yale Repertory Theatre. His most recent play- M aster H a rold and the Boys - premieres at the R ep March 12. It deals with an episode in the Lives of two black men (Willie and Sam) and a 17 year-old white boy ( H ally, later called Master H arold).

A part-Afrilraner who wn'tes in English and lives in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Fugard has written, directed, and acted in over a dozen plays, both in South Africa and abroad. H e is best known in this country for his plays A Lesson from Aloes (produced at the Yale Repertory Theatre with james Ear/jones and Mario. Tucci under Fugard's direction), Boesman and Lena , Sizwe Bansi Is D ead, The Blood, and The Island. In 1979, he also published a novel, Tsotsi, which was written more than tweng years.

All of Fugard's works are set in South Africa and deal with politically explosive material in a humane, sensitive way. They dramatize how difficult it is for people's decency to survive the brutalizing effects of racial oppression; but his plays also insist that it is possible- indeed imperative - for individual decency to survive the moral imperfections of the state and of the body politic.

H einrich von Staden, a friend of Fugard's, is the Master of Ezra Stiles College and Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Yale. Born in Preroria, South Africa, von Statkn grew up mainly among Afrikaners and urban Blacks and attended Afrikaans schools. H e voluntarily left South Africa when he was seventeen and has lived in self-imposed exile in Austria, Germany, and the United States ever sznce.

Parts of the following interview were conducted in A.fnlwans.

Heinr ich von Staden: Athol, whenever I see you roam ing a ro und freely, I'm relieved. Yo u are wa lking on the ed ge of what is permissible in South Africa, with a lo t of the the m es you a re treating. You neve r fall off that ed ge.

And the authorities don't p ush you off the edge. Nor do they chain you so tha t you can't continue walking along the edge. I sometimes wonder, is th at because Athol is writing in English?

Athol Fugard: I t's because I'm writing in En glish, and there's a n o ther facto r .

A nother important factor, H ein r ic h .

T he days when the likes of myself- old style liberals like Alan Payton (the South African auth or]- were regarded as Public Enem y Number One are past. The polarization within South African society is extrem e now. God , I'm not going to make bombs; AJan is never gonna make bombs ; b ut there are David OttenstelniThe N ew Journel

HvS: But do you think you had a genuine choice at that time?

Fugard: I had a choice between silence or being heard.

Athol Fugard

Ottenateln!Tlle New Joumel

people who are making bombs. Ten years ago they thought that Alan and I might get around to making bombs one day. And that's when they were nervous. They didn't realize then that we were actually never into making bombs at all.

HvS: The bombs of fiction-Athol, aren't they more explosive than TNT? Fugard: I'd like to believe that. You understand I've got to be careful about that one. I've got to be careful about flattering myself about the potency of the one area of activity which I've got, which is theatre and being a writer.

HvS: How often have there been productions of your plays for non-segregated audiences in South Africa?

Fugard: I've had to change my tactics in terms of that over the years. At a period when the policy on segregated audiences in South Africa was rigid and very strictly enforced, I had to make a decision whether to take on an act of silence, just be silent because I couldn't go into a theatre that was decent in my terms, or whether to take on the compromising circumstances of segregated audiences simply because I felt that if a play has got something to say, at least say it. And there were years when I decided to do the latter. I did perform before segregated au"' diences. In a sense I regret that decision now. I think I might possibly have looked after myself- and maybe the situation- better by not accepting that compromise. But I did .

HvS: Let me ask you, along similar lines, when you are writing a play or a novel like Tsotsi, do you sense constraints on the way you are writing in view of the fact that certain things are anathema to the government, also in fiction?

Fugard: I would like to believe that I have operated at the table at which I sit and write, that I have operated totally without self-censorship. Maybe some awareness of what is possible and is not possible has operated subconsciously and is deciding choices I make in terms of what I favor. I think it may be pertinent to the conversation we are having, that Master Harold and the Boys is the first play of mine in 24 years of writing that will have its premiere outside of South Africa. And one of the reasons why I'm doing that this time is that there are elements in Master Harold and the Boys that might have run into censorship problems.

HvS: I appreciate exactly what you're saying; there was a point in the text where indeed I asked myself, "how could this be pnforrmd in South Africa?"

Fugard: Well, that's why I'm here in New Haven.

HvS: Has your relationship with Yale been confined to the Yale Rep, or has it included the Southern African Research Program and the University in general?

Fugard: Yes. The Southern African Research Program-that's joint Yale and Wesleyan- got me over here on a fellowship. I must say I did find the academic aspect of Yale a bit heavy going.

HvS: Athol, let's make no bones about it , you're not an academic.

Fugard: No. Certainly not.

HvS: You don't have a university degree.

Fugard: No, and the language academics use sometimes make me wonder whether I , in fact, speak English or not.

HvS: Let me ask you this, because I think it leads to an important question for those of us who are in universities.

Here you are, a person who, critics say, has achieved exceptional insight into human nature, and you never obtained a university degree.

What institutions, what processes do you think contributed most to the insights you have?

Fugard: Well , I think to be a South African is in a way to be at a university that teaches you about that. The South African experience is certainly on... in

15

"They talk about federalism, they tal.k about something called the President's Council ... It's all a load of rubbish."

r

David OttenstelnfThe New Journal

Athol Fugard, interviewed by Heinrich von-Staden which, if you're prepared to keep your eyes open and look, you're going to see a lot of suffering. But then, in terms of personal specifics, I suppose for me there was a very, very important relationship, a friendship, with a black man in what I suppose is any person's most formative and definitive years, the age between 11, 10 up until the age of 20. It was a black man in Port Elizabeth, and my play Master Harold and the Boys reflects something of that friendship, tries to talk about it, look at it. I left South Africa, hitchhiked through the African continent, ended up as a sailor on a ship which, apart from the officers and engineers, had a totally non-white, had a totally black crew, and I was a sailor in a totally black crew. There was that. I think I 16

can't nail down any one specific traumatic incident as being totally decisive. But I could be certain that Master Harold and the Boys deals with one specific moment which I'm trying to exorcise out of my soul.

HvS: In all of your plays and in the novel you always have a South African setting. Yet your plays and your novels, though so rooted in the specifics of the South African situation, seem to have a tremendous appeal to audiences that are largely ignorant of the situation there. To what do you ascribe that?

Fugard: You take a chance. As a storyteller one year ago, I took a ¡• chance . . . I realized that it was finally time to deal with the story of a 17

year-old boy and his friendship with two black men. And it's a gamble.

There's no formula. There is no way that you can make or decide or guarantee before the event that that story is going to resonate outside of its specific context. You just take a bloody chance.

HvS: Let's go back again to South Africa from a slightly different angle.

After you've been in a country like America or England, where you can speak and move freely, without the kinds of constraints that are only too well known to exist in South Africa, why do you go back to South Africa so insistently? Every time you've been abroad, you've insisted on going back again.

Fugard: My answer to the question is quite simply that the little or the lot I know about loving, which is, I think, the most important activity in life, was taught me by South Africa. I must admit that the moment I find myself outside of my country I can cut through very cleanly to why I love it, why I will eventually want to go back to it , and why I will be buried there. I've chosen my spot.

HvS: You've chosen your spot?

Fugard: There's a Iitle village in the mountains behind GraafT-Reinet.

HvS: But why would a man who is as alive as you are, think so much about death . . . as to go and choose . . . ?

Fugard: Because it's going to happen.

HvS: Do you think about it very often?

Fugard: There's a marvelous few sentences in the preface to Kazantzakis' RqJorl to Greco, where in the course of it he says: "Listen, I'm

writing this goddamn thing"- he's talking to his wife; he says, "I'm writing this thing so that what you finally put into the ground: just bones, just bones.

There must be nothing left." At a certain point as a writer your writing process involves a progressive unburdening. You're not accumulating anymore. You're unburdening yourself.

Master Harold, relieved me-left me feeling a little bit lighter.

H vS: Great. Does Athol Fugard also os-killate between hope and despair?

Fugard: Yt>s, yes, yes. My despair is always involved in trying to see the whole situation, trying to use my imagination, in terms of what can happen if maybe I get it all sorted out. In that context I get very confused and therefore inclined to despair. What I find I cannot lose faith and hope in is what Sam says to H ally at the end of the play. What Sam's little moment amounts to, is saying to this little white boy who is going to walk out after a series of very traumatic incidents: "You can choose the quality of the life you're going to live. It's absolutely your choice."

HvS: This country where you will be buried, 60 miles from where you were born, near Graaff-Reinet, is a country which many people think does not have much of a future. I was very struck in this context by a scene from your new play where the notion of pro- HvS: So your hope arises from your gress is introduced, because that's faith in individuals? something that Afrikaners are harping Fugard: Yes. on all the time: "We're making progress, we're making progress." And the HvS: And your despair arises from the scene to which I am referring, you will total political picture? recall, from Master Harold, is where Fugard: Correct.

Hally, before he becomes Master Harold, says: "If Joan of Arc was cap- HvS: Do you have some kind of tured today, she'd . . . systematic or intuitive vision of what Fugard: Oh, I love that exchange . . . you think would be a feasible alterI was so happy when that happened. native to what we now have in South Africa?

HvS: It's beautiful. But your text: "If Fugard: I can't but believe that any Joan of Arc was captured today, she'd decent social system starts with One be given a fair trial." And then Sam Man, One Vote. I mean, I think that is says: my first and my last political utterance .

HvS and Fugard (in unison): "And I don't know .. . they talk about then the death sentence." federalism; they talk about something called The President's HvS: And then Hally says: "I know, I Council now; it's all a load of rubbish. know. I oscillate between hope and despair."

Fugard: On the stage it's going to be HvS: Do you think that the Afrikaner (because my mispronunciation of would survive, the white man would words in my youth, simply because I survive? That, of course, is the didn't have a good education, waster- Afrikaners' standard counter-argurible) . . . it's going to be "I os-killate." ment to a One I\-1an, One Vote system.

17

"If you're prepared to keep your eyes open and look you're going to see a lot of suffering."

Fugard: Individuals would. Maybe a corporate Afrikaans identity would get lost, but I don't care about those identities.

HvS: As you know, one of the more controversial topics in American univerSities is whether American universities should get rid of whatever stocks and other holdings they have in corporations that do business with South Africa. Would you be in favor of divesting of holdings in such corporations, first of all? And secondly, would you be in favor of an economic boycott?

Fugard: What's very interesting for me is this: Poland is in very serious trouble, and the Reagan administration had no hesitation in moving in with some fairly radical sanctions against Poland. Yet no American administration has even mooted the possibility of similar action against South Africa.

HvS: But there is the decision by corporations to adopt the so-called Sullivan principles and their implications: Equal pay for equal work; integrated cafeterias; integrated toilets, and so on.

Fugard: That's token. Talk, talk, talk.

That doesn't change a farthing.

HvS: So you're in favor of divestment, you're in favor of total economic pressure, a trade embargo? What about the counter-argument that the blacks are the ones who would suffer most? They'll lose their jobs in Port Elizabeth, at Ford, at GM, at Firestone.

Fugard: The black people I've talked to, and others whom I've heard reported , have said . . . We are 18

prepared to go along with that if something's really going to happen . if something will finally happen.

HvS: And to drop below the subsistence line?

Fugard: Ja. HvS: Athol, let's get back to your plays. One of the things that I find striking, both about Piet Bezuidenhout in A Lesson from Aloes and about Master Harold, is that you leave your audience feeling quite ambivalent about your protagonist. Let's take Master Harold.

H ere is a fundamentally good kid who went much further than a lot of white .. people in South Africa would: in being open to blacks, in being willing to teach them, to communicate with them. Essentially, Hally was not a racist until he becomes unveiled as Master Harold. And at that point the ratio of good to evil becomes very unclear, becomes very fuzzy .

Fugard: Hally [is] 16 or 17 years-old, emotionally confused in the way that any adolescent would be anywhere in the world, but when you also happen to be a South African . . . You see , what is interesting is the way he dictates the nature of the relationship with Sam; he forces roles on Sam; he makes Sam a servant in one moment: "Just get on with your bloody job! No more nonsense around here." At another moment he'll allow Sam to become his intimate, and he will stand in genuine adoration of Sam's vision of a worlJ without collisions and say: "God, that's beautiful Sam, you've got a vision."

And he can also get around to spitting in his face, all of which actually just reflects his degree of personal confusion . There is the traumatic experience when he leaves the stage at the end of the play . . . it has been spelt out very clearly by Sam that you, and you ahme,

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A scene from Fugard's Boesman and Lena

can decide the man you're going to be, which was, in a sense, an equivalent m oment for Piet Bezuidenhout when he'd stop his bus and listen to those (black) people and they slapped him on the back and they welcomed him, and he realized, as Master Harold has got to realize, that to sit on a "whites only" bench is to do something as profoundly damaging to yourself as it is to do something damaging to Sam. I just think that the South African experience involves that radical degree of choice. I've talked to young Americans, I've talked to old Americans, I've talked to middle-aged Americans, and

Photo Gerry Goodstein

their sense of a radical choice is not very profound, whereas in South Africa it is, and to the extent that you get poised on going one way or the other, the degree of ambiguity and ambivalence must of necessity operate.

H vS: An interesting thing about Piet Bezuidenhout is that at first, yes, he stops his bus. The moment of curiosity becomes a moment, very soon, of political transformation. H owever, by the end of the play, one has the feeling that, in spite of the clear , radical choices Piet has made, he is left dangling.

The New Journal is lookIng for creative people who can take ideas and turn them Into results-people who like to make things happen.

If you'd like to become Involved, call Ed Bennett (432-3241), Andy Court (432.0238) or Jeff Foster (432.()050).

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"I had a choice between silence and being heard."

Fugard: Nobody will talk to him.

HvS: Is that part of the tragedy of South Africa, that even if you make a clear choice, you can be left dangling, unacceptable?

Fugard: I am. I am. I am totally unacceptable to radical nationalist Afrikaner politics, because of the attitudes I have. And I know that both within South Africa now, and certainly in the exiled black community outside of South Africa, I am regarded in a very, very uncertain light. Inside the country my old style liberalism is not radical enough; outside of the country I've gone on to be an embarrassment

because, so far, in terms of theatre at least, I appear to have been the only person who has got around to talking about black realitites in South Africa, and I've got a white skin.

HvS: And they're embarrassed to have a white man speak about black realities?

Fugard: Some of them can't deal with that.

HvS: But there are black actors who continue working very closely with you.

Fugard: Well, those black South African actors get assaulted, get

A scene from Fuf!ard's A Lesson from Aloes

20

..

THE DWIGHT HALL BIKE SHOP

IS OPEN AGAIN FOR BUSINESS challen ged, in terms of their associations with me and my p lays.

HvS: Are there other things you wan t to b r ing to the attention of the students?

Fugard: The decisions about the q u ality of the life you are going to live are yours. As Sam says, "You don't have to sit on that bench. You can get up, stand up, walk away from it any time you choose." And Sam was talking about a white, Sunday bench.

HvS: By the same token Sam is also • the one who says: "You can't fly a kite on rainy days," and Hally later repeats

that line and says: "You can't fl y a kite on rain y days, remember?"

F u gard: J a, well, it was a rainy day.

HvS: So you would say, "Remember, you can make you own ch oices, and yet the political o r emotional weather can exercise constraints upon your choices?"

Fuga r d : Sometimes the weather's bad.

Sometimes the weather's bad. I wrote this play, I suppose at one level , in an attempt to try to understand how and why I am the man that I am.

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W E ARE ALSO TAKING APPOINTMENTS FOR WINTER O VERHAULS AT $10, $17 AND $22 (PARTS NOT INCLUDED).

H vS : If I didn't know Athol, and if I didn't know the man Athol is, and I'd seen only the play, don't you think that I might have been left with the erroneous impression that Master Harold never could have become Athol?

Fugard : A play's not a novel. A novel must not leave that question u nanswered. A play must answer that question in production. In performance. And you, when you see it at Yale Rep, H einrich, you'll have your answer.

THE DWIGHT HA LL BIKE S HOP IS LOC ATED IN THE BASEMENT OF THE SILLIMAN ANNEX AND RIGHT NEXT TO NAPLES AT:

HvS: So, you think that the ending of this play, in the production, will leave us with a hope and a confidence in the possibility of a recuperation of humanity?

Fu gard: Yes, absolutely. That's what I've got to look after as a director.

That's what I intend doing.

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EVER Y SATURDAY FRO M 1 :00 TO 3:30.

H vS: Athol, that means you're oskillating again .

Fugard: I'm os-killating.

•

Heinrich von Sl4dm, an Assoriau Professor of Clo.ssics and Comparative LiteraJure, is Master of Ezra StilLs.

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21

The Political Party

Union's

Identity crisis Jim Lowe

22

of the Right

Rollin Riggs/The New Journal

members toast at Mory's.

Bill Buckley was a member. Kingman Brewster was a member. At one point in the 1960s one quarter of Yale undergraduates were members . Yet now this group has barely 400 undergraduate members and is one of the more derided student organizations at Yale.

Attempts !O deal with the Union's soiled image and sagging membership have set off a debate both inside and outside of the organization over its purpose and operation.

The Yale Political Union is composed of four internal parties that members can join dependent upon their ideological leanings. And it is between these parties- the Liberal Party, the Independent Party, the Conservative Party and the Party of the Right -that what internal debate there is rages. The main question appears to be how, if at all, the Union can raise its membership up to the levels of ten years ago.

"You can't put too much of the blame for the membership figures on the Union," said Independent Party Chairman Bernie Gilmore. "Basically we're not doing anything differently now than we were ten years ago. It is sort of depressing, though, seeing so few members."

This sense of depression aided by the shadow of a once glorious and gigantic Political Union appears to be the root of much of the unrest and uneasiness now present in the PU ranks. But it is not the only cause.

Some signs of actual decay worry

many in the Union. For example, fuUy 60 per cent of the Union's members are either freshmen or sophomores, and as Gilmore put it, "In truth, the Union is basically dominated by freshmen." These are mostly people who joined during the summer, before they even arrived at Yale and often do not renew their membership for a second year.

Last semester attendance at Union student debates was sparse and at times almost non-existent. In December the Progressive Party of the Union dissolved for want of members.

And on top of aU this, the PU has a public image of being elitist and dominated by people who, as one member put it, "are more interested in arguing nit-picky political rules than being involved in a meaningful political dialogue."

So in essence the Political Union is an organization haunted by a multidimensional image problem. Those outside the Union see it as meaningless and child-like. Internally, it is haunted by the ghost of the Political Union past.

The origins of much of this situation can be found in the Union's changes over the past 50 years. Founded in 1934 as a mock parliament, the Political Union spent its first 20 years of existence as solely a student debating society. It was not until the-.

1950s that the PU invited speakers to address it, and then only as key-noters for student debates.

The sudden vast student interest in politics of the mid and late 1960s truly

"If people aren't enjoying the Union, what Is the point of having It?"

altered the PU. The students who came to the Union at that point were looking for more than philosophical debates that were often more social events than anything else. So more speakers were invited to ke y-note debates and also just to address the Union on topics of political interest.

New parties formed within the Union reflecting the greater ideological spread it now represented. By 1970, there were five internal parties ranging from the activist, radical left Progressive Party to the ultraconservative, philosophic, debate oriented Party of the Right.

Then in 1972 George McGovern was defeated, and soon after the Vietnam War ended and the Watergate disgrace began. Students' interest in politics declined. What activity remained was centered on activist groups that had formed during the late '60s.

The Political Union's membership dropped sharply.

The Liberal Party, which has lost more members than any other party over the past few years, has made the strongest attempt to address the Union's image problems, identify causes and suggest solutions. In an editorial in the November issue of the party's internal publication The Liberal Dialo~, the party leadership identified what they saw as some of the causes of the Union's poor public image and possible ways to solve it. The editorial even went as far as to say, "Perhaps the time has come for the Liberal Party to reconsider its participation in the Political Union in its ¡current sorry state . . . But we'd better hurry- the PU is sinking fast."

"That last bit is too strong, I guess," said Gary Hammer, one of the editors of the DUz/ogUL and presently Liberal Party chairman. "The problems we list, though, we take very seriously.

We think these suggestions will make

the Union more enjoyable for everyone in it. If people aren't enjoying the Union, what is the point of having it?"

The Liberals have two main complaints. First, the Union constitution by requiring the use of the traditional, if somewhat pompous Robert's Rukr of Order encourages events such as floorfights and filibusters and also enhances the Union's image as pompous and elitist. They focus this complaint on the use of Robert's during speaker meetings. Robert's requires that a question to a speaker be addressed through the chairperson ('Mr. Speaker, does the Gentleman/Lady believe .. .').

The Liberals' second complaint has to do with the organization of the Union. They feel that, as one party member put it, "For better or worse, debate is a dying institution." And thus the PU's time and effort would be better spent improving and expanding its speaker program.

These are not radical reforms according to the Liberals. Indeed , Hammer made a point of saying that he was not advocating that the Union drop entirely its use of Robnt's. "In general these rules are very useful and necessary.

However, in a public meeting, with an important speaker, there is no reason to force someone to speak through the chair. It looks silly. It made me laugh.

Why shouldn't someone else laugh?"

What Hammer suggests is that the Union adopt a policy of "polite oversight" of Robert's during speaker meetings.

Doing this and strengthening the speaker program, Hammer and other Liberals believe, wiU attract many more people to the Union and improve its image. "We have got to get rid of the silliness [of Robert's and floorfights] .

Then people will see what the PU really has to offer," Hammer said. The more people who are involved in the

Union, he feels, the better it can do its job of providing an open forum for political discussion.

For now, though, it seems unlikely that any of the Liberals' suggestions will be put into effect. The Union elections in December left the Liberals without a single member on the Union's Executive Board other than their party chairman . Also, the Union's present Speaker, who is in charge of enforcing Robert's, is a staunch supporter of the rules. "I believe the rules are an important part of the Union," said Speaker Chris Bieda who is also a member of the Party of the Right. "It (the enforcement of Robert's) may drive a few people away, but we've always been able to get a balanced forum despite our strictures.

Anyway, we are really much more lax about the rules than people think."

Union President Joel Rubin , an Independent Parry member, was even more to the point. "To say that people leave the Union because of Robert's- to me that is really a cop-out. I don't think addressing a speaker through the chair is really necessary, but at the same time I don't see why people have such a great aversion to it." He believes that there are other ways that the Union can attract more people.

"I would like to see every undergraduate at Yale in the Political Union," said Rubin. "I believe we have something to offer each of them." He, howc:ver, does not feel that it is important to realign the Union's structure to improve it. By salvaging the student debate program, adding more keynoted debates and bringmg "thoughtprovoking" people to address the Union, Rubin believes the Union can be strengthened.

He agrees that the Union's reputation has been hurt by infighting in the past few years and thus he is determined to prevent that from recurring. "My

23

" If you expect the gigantic speaker-a-week programwell, we just don't have lt."

24

main goal," Rubin said, "is to keep offers its own calendar of events. The peace." He hopes that this peace com- Liberals and Independents each have bined with a stronger program will in- programs of internal debate and invite crease the number of renewed mem- outside people to meet exclusively with berships and thus lower the percentage them. The L iberals are also involved of freshman and sophomore members. with a number of activist groups at Rubin admits, however, that there Yale. Indeed, the Connecticut Com are some things the Union in its pres- mittee for Handgun Control grew out ent form can do little about. Everyone of the Liberal Party. The Independent in the Union, including the Liberals, Party sponsors a trip to New York to agrees that a Progressive Party could meet political leaders. The Consernot survive. "The radical left," said vative Party, due to its small size, ofRubin, "is interested in activism, not fers only a small program of events, debate and discussion. We really just though it does appear to have one of don't have a place for that group of the stronger internal debate programs. ~ Yale students." He and others also adThe Party of the Right differs from mit that in the end there is little the the other parties. The POR never inUnion can do to substantially improve its speaker program . The Political vites outside speakers to meet with it; Union does not pay honorariums to its instead, it holds a weekly program of speakers and thus must draw on its debate on topics ranging from the reputation and Yale's name to bring political (Resolved: Creation ism should be purged from the public speakers here.

That name and reputation have schools) to the abstract (Resolved: served the Union very well in the past. Reason cannot survive the fall of God).

As well as being able to bring major But perhaps more than anything else, Presidential candidates here during the POR is a social group for its core of election years, the Union in the past members. Party Chairman Victor few years has been able to set up such Lazaron admitted, "Undoubtably our events as a nationally televised debate members are closer, more incestuous if between Bill Buckley and George you will, than those in other parties.

McGovern. Even today the Ptrs repu- But then again, we put no pressure on our members. They can get as intation remains effective.

"The speaker program is quite good volved as they want." as it is. Important people come here," Last semester the Union's program said Gilmore. "Last term we had two was "admittedly a bit feeble," accorcabinet officials, the Mayor of New ding to Bieda. This semester, however, York and Betty Friedan among many the Union appears to be improving. others. However, if you expect the Already they have presented a number gigantic speaker-a-week program- of speakers including Carol Belamy of well, we just don't have it."

New York City in January and senaNonetheless, the Union seems to torial candidate Toby Moffett earlier provide an important service to its this week. Also there have been a host members. On this point everyone in of relatively well-attended student the Union, including the critics in the debates and major key-noted debates .

Liberal Party, agree. In addition to the Thus despite all the derision the Yale regular PU events which include ap- Political Union may receive and proximately two dozen speakers a year despite its sagging membership figures and almost-weekly debates, each party and internal attempts at reform , it still

Yale Daily News

s u B s

c

R I

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Rollin RlggsfThe N- Journal

The Ex~cutiv~ Commit~e of tlu Yale Political Union appears to remain an organization with a lot to offer politically interested Yale students. The purpose of the Union according to its Constitution and its officers is to provide an open • forum for political dialogue from all parts of the political spectrum, and it appears to be providing that service.

What , then, is wro ng with the Union? Many su g gest it is simply the

victim of increased stude nt political apathy and a new professionalism in students' goals. If this is so, perhaps the concept of a mass membership Political Union is anachronistic.

•

jim Lowe, a f u shman in M orse, w rov on stwknt involvmrmt at WYB C for the Decmrber issue ofTNJ .

Prorated Issues $8.00 202 York St. 25

Toad's' defensive line Matt H amel

26

Toad's Place opens at 8.

"I have to keep an overview of "Hi, how ya doin'?" asks Whiskey of everything that's going on," he says. the few fans who had been waiting "I'm like the quarterback. You have to outside. Cold, they tell him . He asks train your eyes to look for a million litfor their identification, collects their tle things. It's a lot more than just money, stamps their hands with one of fights. In fact, there are very rarely 24 rubber stamps and sets his 6'4 ~ ", any fights." When a paper airplane 300 pound frame on a barstool. lands innocuously on the stage, for ex"The type of crowd depends on the ample, Vinnie searches the crowd for type of band," he says. "There's no the culprit. The next time it happens, such thing as an average crowd." Eight Vinnie spots him and trains a small to the Bar, a 1940s revival band, is white flashlight on him. Another floortonight's show, and it usually attracts man makes his way through the crowd, women in their twenties. "They like to an art in itself, and escorts the villain to dance," he explains. the door.

If you have been at Toad's Place, "The system is great," says Whiskey. chances are good that Whiskey has "It works much better than whistles asked for your ID, collected your . would, and the people don't notice it. money, stamped your hand. He works They think the flashlight is just another five nights a week at the nightclub on light shining. We're able to get to a York Street, and at least a couple of trouble spot and move the trouble out those are spent at the door. He is a the door within 30 seconds. And a floorman , not a bouncer, as his boss, good doorman can keep trouble out Brian Phelps, is quick to explain. "I before it gets in. 90 to 95 per cent of would never hire a bouncer," Phelps troublemakers don't get in." Since a says. "My floorrnen are responsible for dress code was instituted banning much more than just bouncing leather, Whiskey says, the motorcycle drunks." gangs that used to frequent Toad's "I equate my joo with that of a white never show up. "You know it's been a blood cell," soft-spoken Whiskey says. good night if you don't do anything." "fm here to keep Toad's Place safe and Even if they don't do anything, they clean. Our theory is to have enough are busy. Vinnie lists some of his force to prevent an incident. If you had responsibilities: "We have to clean up four people my size around you, it the bathroom, where you don't know would be silly to do anything." The 12 what you're picking up. We have to page training manual that floormen deal with people who faint [there were are tested on explains the Toad's two in 1981] or vomit, or play with the system: the floor is divided into three thermostat, or the air-conditioner, or zones. One floorman is responsible for the sinks. There have been stink the area to the right of the stage, one bombs in the men's room. There was for the center, and a third for the left of an M-80 in there once. People take the stage and downstairs. A fourth sits drugs in there. People lie to your face, in the box in the middle of the floor tell you they didn't do something you and oversees the others. Vinnie saw them do. People complain about Volmut is working in the box tonight. losing a quarter in the pinball "' He sits behind the sound man, in front machine." of the light man, and surveys the floor.

Whiskey, as the senior floorman , is

Jeff Strong/The New Jo..rnal

The jloomu:n at Toad's await the night's crowds in charge of designating who patrols what zone. "We have 12 floormen, and seven come in on a busy night. The manager sets the guidelines for security and I figure out how to do it."

Whlakey'a .Journey Whiskey came to Toad's by way of the 1960s. "I was a freshman at Yale in 1966." He lived in Durfee, then afftliated with T.D. "Things were different then. We wore coats and ties at every meal. There were no women. I joined the Young Democrats, drank red and green cups at Mory's, played freshmen football under Harry J acunski, joined the judo team, the whole bit. Then the world started changing."

Whiskey took two years off after freshman year. He joined what he calls "a counter-cultural commune" in Philadelphia, then returned to Yale to take drama courses. "I wasn't crazy enough. You have to really live, die and breathe everything." He drifted into the American Studies department, got married, moved off-campus. He took some more time ofT to run a center for emotionally disturbed kids.

"Then I burned out. I went to California-everyone has to. I lasted in L.A. for two hours, then went to San Francisco. I decided that California was one _giant Boston Post Road, so I came back east."

He got divorced, joined a co-op garage (he's still a part-time mechanic

by day), and decided that he wanted a job with absolutely no hassles. "I became a parking lot attendant at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. It was a wonderful job; I became the supervisor." He organized the attendants into a union and led a seven-week strike for better pay and working conditions.

"The strike resulted in a better contract, but needless to say, I was, er, terminated."

That's when Bill Walkauskas went to Toad's Place. "I thought it would be kind of fun, kind of like Matt Dillon after 15 years in Dodge City." He's been a fixture at Toad's since just a few months after it opened. "Hungry Charlie's was a restaurant here. When it moved out, Toad's moved in."

Michael Spoerndle, the 30-year old owner of Toad's, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and the bar at Toad's was originally more important than the entertainment. Eventually, bigger bands and record companies began to notice Toad's, and it grew into more of a nightclub. Promotional parties are held there by record companies, such as a recent "listening party" given by CBS Records for Molly Hatchet's new album. The room was expanded in stages to twice its original size, allowing still bigger acts to tune up for New York or Boston gigs on the more manageable New Haven stage.

Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger jammed there after concerts at the New

Haven Coliseum in 1979 (within a week of each other). Blondie and Meatloaf have also performed there.

"Billy Joel was our biggest deal so far," Whiskey says. "We had 13 floormen, plus Joel's personal security guard. There were plenty of ofT-duty cops here, too." Normally meant to hold between 600 and 700 people, Toad's fit 1000 Joel fans that June night in 1980. A cut from his new live album was recorded there.

"I remember that show, but I don't remember too many others," Whiskey says. "They all fade together. Five a week, 20 a month, four and a half years . . . They pay me to watch the crowds, not the shows. A band has to be really good to get my attention."

Vinnie agrees: "When there's a band I want to see, I take the night off."

Yale students started going to Toad's about three and a half years ago, when there were occasional Morse and Stiles nights. It grew from there. "Sometimes there are 20 per cent Yalies here, more on Yale nights," Whiskey says.

While Whiskey talks, the crowd grows. He asks for identification, collects money, stamps hands. When the small entryway gets crowded, he raises himself to his full stature, his green and yellow Toad's Place jacket buttoned against the winter that slips through the door. He keeps things moving peacefully by the mere authority of his 27

size. "I'm sorry, I can't accept this ID," he tells a kid with peach fuzz on his upper lip. His impassive, bearded face and thick-framed glasses create a psychological distance between him and the eager crowd, and Peach Fuzz doesn't even protest what is clearly the last word on the subject.

When there are not as many people trying to get in , the entryway fills with Whiskey's friends: off-duty floormen, an ofT-duty cop (Toad's hires one every Whiskry, jloorman at Toad's night, just in case), a pizza chef from Yorkside, the sound man, Toad's Place ever happened to me was when a guy saw his ex-wife here with her groupies who show up every night.

"I miss when Toad's was crazier," boyfriend. He went wild. We got him outside and I was holding him when he Whiskey says. "It's mellower now.

There's not even a fight on St. Patrick's bit my arm. I had to have tetanus shots for that." Vinnie says he has never Day. When we started it was more of a thrown or taken a punch in just over a party. Now it's more of a business.

That's the only way to expand, I sup- year at Toad's.

Just as there is no average crowd , pose, but the old days were fun, too.

Remember the free popcorn all over there is no average floorman. Rohn Lawrence, 6'3" and 250 pounds, plays the floor?"

Floorman Bob Szponda, 10 year jazz at the Foundry Cafe on his nights veteran of local bars, spews forth a ofT, as well as on some locally recorded library of anecdotes from the good old albums. A n other floorman was once a days. The 6'2" 250 pounder is a credit Philadephia Eagle. They average 260 collector by day, but he clearly revels pounds, and you would have to be in his nighttime antics. His rapid-fire pretty drunk to pick a fight with any of delivery and verbal shortcuts make them.

What they share, besides size, is him hard to follow, but now and then a decipherable phrase gives the neophyte Toad's Place. "Night people become listener a clue to the story's gist. "Then your people," Whiskey says. "It's a I grabbed two or three of the little guys whole after hours world. It makes and carried them outside," he says. "I'd sense to go to someone's house at 3 quit before I'd kick out a woman who's a.m. When I go out in the daytime it's pissing on the floor ," he says. The con- way too crowded. The cars are too tent of the anecdotes is immaterial ; if close together." Whiskey generally you wanted to film them, you would stays up until sunrise. "They pay me to have to make a psychedelic, noisy se- be paranoid here," he explains. "I've got to spend a few hours unwinding quence of blurred motion.

The job is not as violent as its when I go home." He plays video stereotype. "I've only thrown four pun- games or his guitar to loosen up. He ches in four years here," says Whiskey, rises between noon and one ("I've never "and I've had maybe twice that, maybe, had much use for mornings"), works thrown at me. The worst thing that on his flower garden, sometimes strolls

28

Jeff Strong/The New Journel

through the 11 acres of woods he lives on in Woodbridge. He reads, mostly modern English history, fixes himself ¡ dinner, then goes to work.

Whiskey is uncertain about his future. Toad's is expanding; a Waterbury Toad's Place opened recently and more are scheduled. "Having a chain of Toad's Place was a gleam in the owner's eye when this was a sawhorse," Whiskey says, slamming his hand against the entryway wall. "I like hanging around with music people and with the kids who come here. I like the fact that this is a safe place for them to learn how to drink." As for a bar of his own, "that's a lot of time and money down the road."

VInnie In the box "It's bizarre that I'm working here," says Vinnie, a 6'9", 275 pound blond.

I'm more comfortable in a three-piece suit. I don't smoke. I don't like the loud noise; it affects your central nervous system. I love rock & roll, but I never hung out in bars. This is a bad environment for me."

Vinnie is Toad's Place's video production manager, and works as a floorman on a part-time basis. Trained at Hofstra University on Long Island, he. has worked in video for several years.

He produced industrial training and

"I'd quit before I'd kick out a woman who's pisslng on the floor."

safety programs for Polaroid and Sun down the narrow steps of the box, and Finally, Toad's closes. At 3 in the Chemical, filmed a Grateful Dead con- closes the door. Like Whiskey, he morning, the band has loaded its cert at the Capitol Theater in Newark, relies upon his scruffy beard, his barrel equipment with the help of the New Jersey, for Home Box Office chest, his sheer size to keep patrons in floormen , and the dishcrew (known at television, and helped w ith lighting on line.

Toad's as "the hippies") has cleaned the The Making of "Superman" and The MakThe incident that sticks most in Vin- parking lot next to Fred Locke Stereo, ing of ~ Bridge Too Far," as well as the nie's mind occurred at the Meatloaf where many Toad's patrons park. The BBC's Nova series. When the company concert last fall. "I was standing next to $95,000 sound system is silent. A buthe worked for was bought, Vinnie the stage, watching the crowd when ton reading "It's not rock & roll. It's a decided to strike out on his own in Meatloaf fell off the stage. If I'd been big hassle" reflects the red light of the Connecticut, where there were more watching I could have caught him, but clock in the box. Girlfriends, steady or jobs to be had than New York. H e as it was he fell off and I helped him otherwise, leave with some of the recorded a recent Angela Bofil concert back up. After the intermission I was floormen; one floorman met his wife at at Toad's for cable TV. standing in the same place, looking Toad's. Vinnie sheds his black vest Vinnie has developed the sixth sense mean like I'm supposed to, when with buttons advertising upcoming he says it takes to be a good floorman. Meatloaf came back onstage. He was acts and solar power. H e puts on his Despite his earplugs (which all coming right at me, making eye con- overcoat, and goes home. floormen wear), he has learned to hear tact. I didn't know if he was going to things that just don't sound right. "You fall off again or what. When he reachhave to when you're up in the box," he ed me, he grabbed my ears and kissed says. "You're responsible for the well- me on the forehead. Well, I turned being of 600 people." every shade of red and couldn't look From anywhere in Toad's, but mean again for the rest of the night. Matt Hamel, a senior in Jonathan Edespecially from the box, it is a her- And not one photographer got a pic- wards, is a former sports editor of the Yale culean effort to ignore the band. It is ture of it." Meatloaf told him later that Daily News. He wrote a profile of Charles Black in the September issue of TN]. just a few yards away, it is illuminated, he'd done it to make Vinnie smile. and it is playing music at 112 decibels.

(People speak at 75 decibels on the logarithmic scale; airplanes take off at From the booth overlooking the main floor, Ron controls sound and stage lights.

Jeff Strong/The New Journal 125 decibels.) The crowd is little more than a large mass of undifferentiable dark heads bobbing to the beat. It is this that Vinnie watches. He communicates with other floormen and bartenders with an impromptu sign language. Wiggling two fingers downward tells a floormen to escort the band to or from the dressing room.

Placing a hand by the shoulder, palm up, means "We need a waitress."

H e keeps an eye on the pinball machines by using a mirror over the back bar. Two or three dozen times a night a small white light above the side exit goes on, signalling Vinnie that someone has opened the exit behind him; he spins out of his chair, bounds

•

29

Profile-----Downey: from Chinese prison to the Senate trail Tony Caplan

30

For most candidates, a campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate is a product of many years of political preparation, a carefully constructed resume, and the cultivation of political and media contacts. But John Downey, Yale class of 1951 and a candidate for the 1982 Democratic Senatorial nomination in Connecticut, has had to make up for lost time. For 20 years Downey sat in a Chinese prison camp, captured as a CIA agent during the Korean War. Only for the past three years has he pursued a political career.

The first Democrat to enter the Senate race this year, Downey formally announced his candidacy October 20, 1981 at a party at the Piccadilly Square Restaurant in New Haven. He took a stand against most of Reaganomics and called for federal protection of minority rights and care for the impoverished 'and elderly. After the speech, he shook bands with everybody he possibly could, yet his actions seemed harried- this was not the practiced slickness of an experienced politician, but the effort of a man learning a new style.

The eldest son of a judge probate in Wallingford, and the grandson of the chairman of the Wallingford town council, Downey said he "grew up with the ideal of public service in mind."

Because success in politics meant getting the best education possible, Downey attended the Choate School in Wallingford where he graduated in 1947 before coming to Yale.

In college Downey was more active in sports than politics. He played center on the football team and was a heavyweight wrestler, while majoring in English and working in the library.

He was"' lso a member of St. Anthony's Hall. Downey said he always adm1red the diversity of student talent. "My roommates were involved in different things," he said. "One was a newsie. I played football. But at night we'd get together and talk about the things we'd done that day. That's how I learned the most, in those late night talks."

While Downey attended Yale, the Korean War was in progress. "There was a clear sense of duty, a belief that

we had to rid the world of the Soviet threat," Downey said. The political mood at Yale in the early 1950s was marked by a conservatism and a search for personal security above all else. "We were filled with a sense of elitism," Downey said. "I don't know if that's changed." A passage from the 1951 Yale Banner reads: "A time of uncertainty . . . that is what the year was to most of us . . . Would we crush the North Koreans? was question number one."

Downey's sense of duty led him to service with the CIA upon graduation.

After a training course in Texas, where half the participants were Yale, Harvard or Princeton graduates, he was shipped to Japan for 11 months in preparation for service in Korea. On his second mission contacting Chinese agents behind enemy lines, Downey's plane was shot down. After his cap!ure, he was sent to prison in China, where he was given a life sentence. The CIA refused to admit he was an agent, and negotiations for his relea_ยงe made little progress.

Although the Chinese never physically abused Downey, he said, they did subject him to much psychological torment and solitary confinement. "It was a very stressful situation.

I was isolated from the normal prison life. They wanted us to believe that our people had given up on us, something I never fell for." Once, during the later years of his capture, he was ordered to clean out a room in which he discovered a mail bag full of Christmas letters and well wishes from Wallingford children that had been kept from him.

Downey tried to make the best of his years in prison. "You learn to keep busy. I think that's the key to life. I would get up, exercise for an hour, wash, study for a few hours (I studied Russian for many years), listen to an English language radio broadcast, take part in the Mao study group, exercise some more, sew, clean. I did a lot of shoveling snow, things like that. Youv do a lot of thinking. You learn that the world goes on without you. You learn patience."

Hong Kong Information Services

' After 20 years of imprisonment in China, john Downey prepares to go home.

He says he is not bitter about his imprisonment; the CIA had warned its agents that if they were captured the agency would not claim them, and he still feels the CIA is an "essential agency in the tough world we live in." In his public statements, Downey seems to pass off his 20 years in jail as nothing more than a nuisance, a minor setback in the life story of a successful Yalie.

During his years of confinement, Downey said he remained patriotic even as news trickled through about his country's growing disillusionment.

The Chinese let him receive outside magazines, including Time, Newsweek, and the Yale Alumni Magazine. Downey said he was able to keep abreast of the major developments of the sixties: the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, Yale-Harvard football scores, and the advent of coeducation.

After President Nixon's trip to China in 1973, Downey ¡was finally released. His campai~n brochures today include a picture of him crossing the border into Hong Kong.

1 Downey said he had no troubles adjusting to his new freedom, but he was

perplexed by the national mood upon his return to the U.S. "I considered the despair and Joss of faith in the system, especially during Water~ate, somewhat preposterous after what I'd seen in China." He decided to become active in politics because he was concerned with this "loss of purpose."

Before embarking on a political career, he went back to school for a law degree. After graduating from Harvard Law School and marrying Audrey Lee, a graduate student at Yale, Downey began to practice Jaw in Wallingford, commuting from his home in New Haven.

In 1978, Downey made an attempt to run for Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut. Although he received few votes, he feels the lesson was a valuable introduction to politics. At the time, he also met Governor Ella Grasso, who was to become his political mentor.

She appointed him to the chairmanship of the Public Utilities Control Authority (PUCA) in 1978.

Downey learned a lot in a short period of time under Grasso's political tutelage. "She was a terrific lady. The

most intelligent person I've ever met.

And she knew more about politics than anybody. She realized it was a largely symbolic affair, the benevolent governor sweeping down on the disasterstruck town, then sweeping right out again."

Downey did a creditable job at PUCA, balancing the interests of consumer groups and financially pressed utility companies, and managing to alienate neither group. He resigned last April in order to "explore" the possibilities of a Senate run.

After making hi~ candidacy formal in October 1981, Downey began to campaign for the Democratic nomination.

But his inexperiel'lce on the campaign trail qmckly showed through. "I think I'm better qualified to be a U.S. Senator than I am to campaign for the Senate," he said. "The important thing is that I'm learning as I go along."

Although he was well-known in political circles, his name carried little recognition among voters when he first announced. His wife Audrey jokes about his relations with the media: "Before .Jack used to run away from the 31

The Chinese let him receive outside magazines, In· eluding Time, Newsweek, and the Yale Alumni Magazine.

cameras. Now he looks for them."

Recently, Downey has begu-n to receive increased attention in the press, with front page stories in the Hartford Courant and the Boston Globe.

He has had trouble finding the money for a statewide campaign. So far he has raised a paltry S80,000 "without a really cohesive fund raising effort." This figure is half as much as what his better-connected rival in the Democratic race claims to h<we raised.

Downey has targeted $750,000 as his goal to be raised by the summer months, and he estimates that the entire campaign could cost as much as S2 million.

But Downey's most formidable challenge is overcoming the advantage that most political analysts have given Toby Moffett, the popular and charismatic Sixth District Connecticut Congressman who announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in December. Downey has until the nominating convention in May to win 20 per cent of the state's delell'ates in

•order to torce Moffett into a state primary.

"Obviously, I think it's winnable," said Downey. "Moffett will fade in the ·long haul and I think even Weiker, the Republican senator, is vulnerable."

Prescott Bush, a Yale graduate and brother of the Vice President has agreed with Downey's assessment. In January, Bush declared his candidacy for the R epublican nomination against incumbent Weiker.

Downey is counting on support from conservative Democrats hopefully alienated by what he calls "Moffett's musty, outmoded brand of politics."

As a fiscal conservative and advocate of an aggressive foreign policy, Downey has begun to attack Moffett's liberal positions on social services and defense spending. Although initially cautious about taking stands on issues, Downey has become increasingly candid about his views. He is a strong supporter of defense appropriations for· Israel and the establishment of a peace keeping force in the S inai. He has also

john Downey in his downtown New Haven law ojftce.

Rollin Rlgoaffhe New Journal

32

The Yale Repertory Theatre presents

A world premiere • denounced Reaganomic cutbacks in social welfare as well as the betrayal of the Democratic Party by its more liberal members.

He feels he has some knowledge of Connecticut's e n ergy problems because of his work at PUCA. He has proposed several ways to solve the state's outrageous electricity rates, including the use of Canadian hydropower. The basic goal, said Downey, is to reduce dependence on oil, whether by converting oil plants to coal, or increasing the number of nuclear plants in the state.

D owney's support has picked up around the state as his campaigning has improved and his recognition has increased. While he started out with strong support among New Haven Democrats including Mayor Ben DiLieto and Democratic Chairman Vincent Mauro, his list of endorsements has grown to include state "House of Representatives Majority Leader J ohn Groppo, and Yale Law School Dean of Admissions Jim Thomas. These men all serve o n the 65-member statewide steering committee.

Just how strong this support will prove in the eventual showdown with Moffe tt remains a question on which not even Downey will speculate. But whatever the eventual outcome of the race, Downey is a man who has learned that time is on his side .

Written and Directed by

ATHOL FUGARD March 9-27

•

Tony Caplan iJ a smior in Calhoun.

RYale ~~ry LIO'(d R<"aros A rttSitC D•rector

•

Corner of Chapel & York Streets New Haven , CT 06520

203-436-1 600 33

Research---Hopes and concerns over cheap Isotopes Tim Misner

34

Yale res earc hers Mahadevan Krishnan, J. L. Hirshfield and Michael Geva have recently made a breakthrough' which could lead to an inexpensive supply of isotopes.

Ironically, although this technique has many beneficial applications in medicine and physics, it could produce the raw material for nuclear weapons.

Radioactive isotopes of Thalium are used in a promising method of diagnosing heart conditions. Doctors can take pictures of the patient's heart with a special camera by injecting Thalium into the bloodstream. Many heart attack victims could be helped by this technique, but the high cost of producing the Thalium has barred its widespread availability.

An inexpensive supply of isotopes would also be a boon to nuclear physicists. Accelerator or "atom smasher" experiments, which help to uncover the basic particles and forces of nature, can easily consume upwards of $50,000 worth of isotopes per day.

Because of the high cost , many experiments of considerable scientific interest are not conducted.

But for some in the scientific world, separating isotopes means enriching uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

"There was great excitement when the paper carne out. Some people worried about whether it should be classified or not," said Werner Wolf, Chairman of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In fact, the researchers themselves were worried that the Pentagon, which keeps a close watch on the papers published in scientific journals, would classify their work. Said Wolf, "Krishnan himself came and showed me something [his results). He worried that we might have trouble publishing, that someone might want to classify it."

Said Krishnan, "Anyone who does anything in isotope separation has to deal with the specter of this nuclear business."

Could their plasma centrifuge technique be developed to produce the raw material for nuclear weapons? "In principle we don't see why not," said Geva. But he was quick to point out that there were practical difficulties in using their technique for uranium.

"For uranium it fthe experimental apparatus] could not work because our magnetic field is too weak."

Robert Wheeler, Chairman of Applied Physics, is doubtful that this technique will ever be used for uranium enrichment. "It takes an enormous amount of capital to develop a new technology ," and this technology is still in the theoretical stages of development. The Department of Defense, which has already invested large sums in other approaches to uranium enrichment, is not looking for new ideas.

Jack Warner, Director of Grants and Contracts, commented, "If someone gets into an area to enhance isotope separation, in a marketable, productive way, then it is very possible that DOD or the Department of Energy will say 'that's classified.' I recall some years ago- in isotope separation- they [DOD) said that the work the guy was doing was classified, ~ and so he was obliged to put the books into a safety box." The researcher whose work was classified left Yale shortly after this happened. "You're jeopardizing a man's a cademic career if his work can't be subject to the scrutiny of his peers."

In the case of Krishnan. Hirschfield and Geva, the work was published. It addresses the problem of pulling the heavier isotopes apart from the lighter ones. It has long been known that in a centrifuge the heavier isotopes move further to the outside . But since the internal structure of solids is not changed by centrifugal force, the researchers had to find some way of converting the metal to a fluid. The breakthrough came when they discovered an effective way of converting metal to plasma.

Plasma is charged gas, like the air surrounding a lightning bolt. Their major innovation was to use a laser to transform the metal. A laser beam is fired at a sample of metal, burning it ofT and changing it to a gas. Spun by electrical and magnetic forces the plasma spirals down towards the end of the tube, and the metal collects there,~ with the heaviest isotopes furthest from the center.

Traditio nal methods of separating

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Blemann/The New Journal

Michael Geoa and Drs. Krishnan and Hirshfield. isotopes are costly and timeconsuming. At Oakridge National Laboratories, the major world supplier of isotopes, beams of ions form an invisible strainer that only allows a specific isotope to pass through. The Yale researchers' machine can handle 1000 times as many isotopes at a time, though at present it cannot work as con tinously as the Oakridge machine.

The Oakridge machine produces isotopes of 99 per cent purity, as compared to 90 per cent for the Yale machine, but for most applications, high purity is not required.

Krishnan stressed that much work remains to be done. "The difference is similar to that between Scbockley's first transistor and the integrated circuits in your pocket calculator," he said. From the initial investigations to production , a full-fledged research project would take three to six years. But despite all that remains to be done, the researchers have faith in the future of their technique.

As for future research, Krishnan and Hirshfield hope to find a more Qlegant theoretical model for how the plasma behaves. "The theory we have now is rudimentary at best," said Krishnan. One outstanding question is

why a partially ionized gas cannot be made to spin faster than a certain limit.

Also, the researchers would like to experiment with other ways to separate isotopes, as well as fine-tuning their present method. The research has been slowed by the tedious process of monitoring the isotopes' separation.

Krishnan and Hirshfield, who both initiated the project five to six years ago, con tinue to work together. Geva, on the other hand, will probably finish writing his Ph.D. thesis on the plasma centrifuge results and leave the academic world for an industrial lab, where in all likelihood he will be earning 50-75 per cent more than his Ph.D. advisers.

Researchers Krishnan, Geva and Hirshfield perceive a tension between the desire to do scientific work and the moral problems with some of its applications. Though this holds true for almost all the sciences, the uses of an applied scientist's work are more apparent. Noted Krishnan, "You realize that isotopes can be used to make bombs or they can help to diagnose heart disease."

•

Tim MisMT is afreshman in Berlcef9.

11 lll11ammk ;, N ew H1111e" si,ce 1934 268 College Street New Haven, Connecticut 06~ 10 Telephone (203) 624 -3 2~ 0

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35

Food is Good Drink is Good

We serve both ..... . comfortably.

Winks accurately presents detective fiction as a genre "that compels attention to every word," and uses this statement in the best defense I have read of Agatha Christie's tour-de-force, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Winks returns the reader to the critical point in the text to demonstrate that Christie was definitely 'playing fair' in her resolution of the mystery.

For the most part, Winks does not deal with classic detection and the master investigators. He is more interested in contemporary detective fiction, in which the emphasis has markedly shifted from presenting and resolving an intricate puzzle to depiction of human nature within the framework of the investigation of a crime. Anyone who has, like myself, dismissed spy fiction without fair trial, will likely be inclined to alter his judgement after reading Winks. He says spy fiction is founded upon the seeming "trivia of detail; "The unobserved detail is the important detail." The spy moves alone, opposed by the enemy and his natural allies. Landscape is crucial to a good spy novel as "spy fiction is cinematic, visual, the sense of place providing a good measure of the sense of menace." Winks sensibly takes to task those indolent thriller-writers who fail to accurately research the era or locale they depict. The accent on ambiguity and uncertainty in contemporary society is picked up by Winks: "The modern spy thriller is not chess, coldly rational, with values attached to each participant, for we do not know the values." The new game is backgammon, where the roll of the dice is neutral and "the testing is in the way one plays the roll."

For Winks, detective fiction provides insights into much more than the operation of a criminal investigation.

He would place Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mystery Gaudy Night "on the shelf of women's liberationist literature." Sayers becomes not a mystery writer, but "a highly skilled novelist of manners in an academic set~ng" who chooses the '"device of the mystery because she enjoys it." Winks actually refers to contemporary

mystery writer Amanda Cross in the above quotation but it is clear he means to include the earlier author in the category of a skilled novelist using the mystery to present "one of the angriest, most chilling denunciations of a university utterly dominated by men."

Winks 1s occasionally ~ilty of deviating from his stated mtention.

Gaudy Night may provide him with an opening into women's liberation (as elsewhere The Ox-Bow Incident presented a young Winks with his first exposure to injustice), but to classify it as a novel of liberation masquerading as a mystery rather than a mystery novel that by virtue of its setting must perforce deal with the position of female academics is, to me, a mistake.

In one other place, Winks makes too broad a claim "about education and family and perhaps America" based on his own realization that he did not have to like "great" art simply because it had been labeled "great" by others.

Winks narrowly treads the line between seriousness and mock-seriousness, but the constant presence of wit and good humor make Modus Operandi a pleasant diversion and keeps those assertions most open to challenge nicely cushioned.

eo<- of Pwk & Elm St

â&#x20AC;˘

Lenny Picker, a Junior in Berkeley, is currently working on a mystery novel set at Yale.

37

Books----Bloom's latest ''misreading'' Elizabeth Wahl

38

Agon by Harold Bloom, 1981 Oxford University Press .

Reading Harold Bloom's Agon for the first time gives one the peculiar and rather exhausting sensation of treading water in a bottomless sea. And then suddenly, when it seems as if the waves are going to close over o n e's head, the auth or draws his ideas together tightly in a net th at saves the reader from drowning in the wash of his interpretive forays. Agon is a unique work o f literary theory, combining elements of philosophy, religion, and psychoanalysis, as well as the close reading of a text, traditionally associated with literary criticism.

Following A Map of Misruuiing, the book develops a theory of revisionism, a "reseeing" of literary works from one man's unusual and perceptive v ision.

Bloom sets th e background for this vision against the history of the gnostic tradition which he defmes as a knowledge of what is oldest in oneself, an "agon" or contest between a rational or intellectual interpretation of an idea and a more emotional, instinctive response to it. He defends the m ode o f criticism which he terms "misprision" or a strong "misreading" of a text, in his own case to ask of a text "what is it good for? What can it do for me? What can I make it mean?" H e writes, "American criticism ought to be outrageous and pragmatic." The conclusions drawn in Agon are both.

Bloom has chosen to consider a wide variety of authors from Valentinius to Emerson to Freud as well as the literary genre of fantasy and what he calls the Sublime in mOdern literature.

Such a smorgasbord of topics might appear to be rather farflung for any series of critical discussion to do them justice, but Bloom maintains a sense of coherence by the steadiness of his tone and constancy to his gnostic mode of interpretation.

His discussions of Emerson and Whitman are his most successful. Both serve as frequent sources of quotation, their works seeming to embody for Bloom the eloquent expression of a Gnosis akin to his own. Both Emerson

Harold Bloom

Julia O'Neill/The New Journal

...

and Whitman disavow Western literary tradition for a more personal selfknowledge. Thus Emerson saw American poetry taking on the tremendous task of d isplacing S hakespeare which Bloom observes is the "doomed enterprise that shadows Moby Die/c. â&#x20AC;˘ And Bloom finds in Whitman an embodiment of this peculiarly American poetic defiance. He executes a m arvellous close-reading o f Whitman's "Song of Myself," carefully and meticulously examining the intricacies and implications of each cited passage.

Having thus connected Emerson and Whitman in the context of the development of an American poetic voice, Bloom abruptly changes pace by giving his own theory of fantasy in literature. This is his stated intent , but the chapter is just as much a defense of one o f the author's favorite works of this genre, David Linsey's A Voyage to .

Arcturus. It is difficult to separate Bloom's theory of fantasy from all the excess literary jargon surrounding itâ&#x20AC;˘ but he seems to imply that fantasy as a literary form is structurally flawed; ultimately it cannot describe the unreat in terms that transcend literary convention .

Jn choosing to illustrate this view with a book as little-known as Voyage to Arcturus, Bloom does the reader a disservice. By the time he has finished g iving the names of the major characters and places and their allegorical meanings, the reader is so confused that he has lost sight of the point Bloom is trying to make.

Fortunately, the concluding chapters of Agon return their attention to a consideration of individual authors and how they are connected, beginning with a short but convincing study of Wallace Stevens. This is Bloom at his critical best, dissecting a text not with surgical detachment, but with an intense spiritual love of language as well as content. Bloom is a writer and critic of no small subtlety and complexity. In many instances, his ideas are almost inaccessible, especially when he retreats behind a barrier of obscure literary references. Yet he seldom loses • sight of his stated purpose in any meditation. Whether one agrees with his observations or takes exception to the means by which he draws his conclusions, one cannot help but be fascinated by his unique method of "reseeing" a text and his intense personal involvement m the act of criticism.

•

Elizabeth Wahl, a freshman in Timothy Dwight, has workedfor Monthly Detroit magazine.

new this fallPower and Politics THE PURPOSES OF AMERICAN POWER An Essay on National Security Robert W. Tucker, The Johns Hopluns University We have reached a major turning potnt 10 American fore1gn policy; a penod of withdrawal and of pass•vity has come to an end. Tucker portrays the visible decline of Amencan power and JXISitlon as having led to a greater dissatisfaction over policy than we have expenenced tn a decade. Notes. b1hliography.

CONTENTS: 1. A Cntical juncture. 2. America 10 Declme: The 1970s. 3. The S1gnificance of the Present Debate. 4. The Arms Balance and the Pers•an Gulf.

5. The Two Contamments: An Argument Retraced.

200 pp. September 1981 $12.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-03-059974-1 $5.95 (Student Edmon) ISBN 0-03-059976-8 A LEHRMAN INSTITUTE BOOK

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR ROBERT W TUCKER'S PREVIOUS BOOKS The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy "Tucker, as tough·mmded a ranon-'ll>t a> th~ come. welli(h> the com•ennonal and radiCal v1ewpmnts agatn>t each lither m hnii.ant and relentlessly l>hJectl\'e style ... An extremely •miXlrtant hc."'>k:' Puhluh~rs Wiikl:'· The New Isolationism "A cogenr challenge. radical yet :,(>her.

American fore1gn policy:'

tu

the recent and current l>rthoJoxy ol Swnk:' Hujfnwnn

The Inequality of Nations "Professor Tucker's luc1d, f(lrceful. um,nhodux and lmpl>rtant arli(Ument should continue the debates engendered by h1s earher essays on th•~ suhJect. Tl1 try to mduce greater equahry mto international relations. the auth~>r ms1sts. ~· •II he quiXOtiC and counterproductive:· F(Jwgn Affam

PaA£GUl ruaUSHUS 521 Fifth Avenue New York. New York 10175

39

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