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THE NEW JouRNAL
TheNewJournal FEATURES
Volume 33, Nuinber 4 February 9, 2001
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Risky Business The non-starters ofYale startups. by Anya Kamenen
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Trading Places Whos the real outsider in New Havens mayoral race? by Michael Gerber
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Tears of the Sun Essay by Victoria Lyall Photos by Whimey Grace
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Invisible Men Minutes from Yale lives an underground community ofillegal immigrants.
STAN DAR OS 4 32
Essay: I Want My CfV by Patrick Cauy Pitts Sidebar: Interview with the Vampire by Clinton Carroll
OK Computer
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How Yale jumped on the high tech train with Project X
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The Critical Angle: The Agony and the Ecstasy by jessica Bulman reviewing Lying Awake, Mark Salzman Endnote: Shock the Monkey by Tatiana jitkojf
by Daniel Kurn-Phelan
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Points of Departure
by Ronen Givony
~ Nnr jOURNAL i$ publish«! five times during rhe aca<kmivyeu by Ttt£ NEW jOURNAL .. Yale, Inc., P.O. Box }431 Yale S<arioo. New Haven, cr o6j10. Office address: 1j1 Park Srreer. Phone: (10j) 431• m~- All eon rents eopytighr 1001 -by THE NEW joURNAL ar Yale, Inc. All Rights Resetvtd. Reproducrion eirhcr in whole or in part withour wrirren permi$sion of rhe publisher and ediror in chief i$ prohibired. rhi$ magujne i$ publi$btd by Yale College students. Yale Universiry i$ nor responsible for irs eontenu. Seven rbowand five hundrtd eopies of each issue are diftriburtd free ro members of rhe Yale and New lta.tn eommuniry. Subscriprions ore available 10 those ouuide the area. Rates: One yen, stS. Two years, SJ>. TH£ NEW joURNAL is prinrtd by Turley Publicarions, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are .-.ided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. Ttt£ Nnr jouRNAL encourages lerrers ro the editor and eommenrs on Yale and New Haven mues. Write to EdirorUls, }4}1 Yale Sration, New Havm, cr Cl6slo. All ktrcrs for publication must include address and signature. We reserve rhe righr ro tdir all letters for publication.
Pool Ties ON jANUARY 13, Jeff Jannuzzo-25-year member and self-professed lover of New York's Yale Club "in all her diversity" threarened litigation against that venerated institution. Citing New York Nor-forProfit Corporation Law Section 621, he called for Club President Peter Wells to provide him with a list of rhe Club's voting members within five days. "The lisr is demanded," wrote Jannuzzo, "for an object relating to the business of rhe Club, namely ro communicate with the members as to whether there shall be any changes to the Club's fifth floor swimming pool." Failure ro deliver the list, he wrote, could send the issue ro the Stare Supreme Court. The trouble began last summer. In mid-July, the Yale Club Council distributed surveys to members to determine the popularity of certain facilities. The Club's petite, 85-year-old swimming pool-maximum occupancy, three lane swimmers, and monthly usage, 30o-was among the facilities in question. Its inclusion raised some eyebrows among a contingent of 50 or so swimmers in the Club, Jannuzzo included, who instantly began to suspect foul play. "We began exchanging letters and e-mails with people in rhe Club governance," Jannuzzo explained over the phone, "to say, like, 'What is going on and can you assure us that you're not going ro be closing this place?' and not getting satisfactory answers." The pool, with its handmade mosaic tiles, solid brass railings, and three lion's head fountains (allegedly the work of a foundry used by sculptor Henry Moore), appeals to many swimmers because of its old-fashioned feel. The pool's rumored "Roman bath" tradition of harbouring nude and inebriated swimmers in the old days may also provide some nostalgic charm. After questioning some members of the Club's Athletic Committee in early fall, the swimmers received the bad news. The demolition of their prized pool, they learned, was being considered in a proposed renovation and expansion of the
4
women's locker room and the aerobic facilities. So the swimmers began ro organize and agitate. "We used to go [to the pool] and hang out," said Jannuzzo, "and say, 'Hey, did you hear they're thinking of closing the pool?"' One of the swimmers procured the e-mail address savethepool@aol. com, and then things began ro roll. A few of the pool activists contacted The New York Times-coincidentally, their employerwhich published a fluff piece about the
pool on November 5¡ Before long, in what seemed ro resemble an authentic movement, the group began meeting on Saturday nights to strategize. "The people in the elected officership part of the Club have really been, just, you know, amazed," said Jannuzzo, who became both the Savethe-Pool group's chairman and secretary. "People have grumbled before about the way things have changed, but no one's accually organized." Then Jannuzzo's troops hit the front lines. Ar a January 13 meeting, they voted on a "two-prong plan of political action and diplomacy." While Jannuzzo sent his fiery missive to President Wells, demanding the names and addresses of the Club's voting members for a "Save the Pool" mailing drive, others pressed members of the Council by phone on how the Club planned to get members' comments prior ro construction. Meanwhile, certain members had been hard at work creating www.savethepool.com, where one can peruse detailed minutes from the meetings, news from the front, heartbreaking quotations ("Without the pool the athletic facilities
will be like any others in town. I'll cancel my athletic membership in a heartbeat if this plan goes forward"), and even the instrumental New York Times article. Peter Wells has been a bit dumbfounded. "One of the things that has characterized this Save-the-Pool group is they like to make a lor of noise based on no facts," he explained. Vice President Tom Fiffer responded by e-mail to Jannuzzo's early demand letter, "I am frankly astonished at the degree to which your committee is and has been relying on rumors-as opposed ro seeking our facts .... " (This is the same Tom Fiffer, by the way, who, in a prelude to the pool affair, last May temporarily suspended Club member Tad l:.ow, co-creator ofVH1's Pop-Up Video, for hurling cauliflower florets and cheese cubes at the Whiffenpoofs during a concert.) Wells insists that the Council never planned to scrap the pool, but has merely tossed around the idea as one possibility for the summer renovations. The council is also considering demolishing one of the Club's four squash courts. "There is a small, dedicated group of people that don't want that to happen," said Wells, "and we will hea~; from them as well." For Jannuzzo and his chums, there's much more at stake than an antique, 32-by18 foot pool. Many view the pool controversy as just one symptom of the Yale Club's widespread decline inro kitsch and profitability. Along with the recent proliferation of "cheap Holiday Inn furnirure" in the lobby, according to activist Peter Rose, members watched the Club allow University of Virginia graduates to join in 1996, following decisions many years ago ÂŁO welcome Dartmouth alumni and oKL brothers too. "(The Yale Club] is a place that we give a damn about," said Jannuzzo. "and that we want to make sure nobody tries to rurn into a place where they charge you for the towels and think of new ways to get your money, and come and go out of business with the whims of fashion and notions of what is cool." Some find the
THE NEW JouRNAL
Malaysia_n. "fusion" CUIS i ne
Club Council's increasing aloofness and' secrecy "fascistic." "I think this dub is experiencing a leadership problem at the moment," said Rose, who alleges that he's never been offered a chance to vote for a council member in his 25 years at the Club. "They've told employees not to talk about the pool-a lifeguard who works at the pool was reprimanded for tallcing to members." Bur are the pool supporters of the NYC Yale Club really entitled ro the democratic process they seek? The Club, after alJ, is not only private, but also restricted ro those willing to shell out $1,500 a year, martinis not included. Jannuzzo and his marginalized swimmers srill seem co think they're owed some sort of voice. Peter Wells recently handed over the Club membership list, and the Save-the-Pool group plans to lobby for a general vote. Within those comfortable environs, a leather-armchair revolution is brewing.
-jacob Blechu
Disgruntled WT MONTH-January
to be exact-1 turned 20. It was the saddest birthday of my life. As I turned the key in box 200857 in Yale Station Post Office, I imagined cakes and balJoons and cards stuffed far with cash tumbling out at my feet. Nothing. Not from Mom, not from Grandma, not from anyone. In disbelief, I Stretched my arm through the box. There must have been a mistake, I told mysel£ Somebody must love me. Perhaps my cards were in the box below. Dislocating my shoulder in the process, I reached 200957. Nothing. I reached above, but still I found only the cold, gray steel of another box as empty as my own. Again I peered through, resigned and sad. To my surprise, I came face to f.ace with a man Who understood my pain. Larry (he requests that his real name not be used) looks like the stereotypical postal worker: nearing middle age, stocky, 12
dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt. But Larry is something more: Beneath his Postman Joe fas:ade I found a civil servant dedicated to the proposition that all postal customers are created equal. He smoked a cigarette as he consoled me outside Lanman-Wright. "It's shame"fUJ," he says of the delays that plague Yale Station. "They're treating you like second-class citiuns. Something ought to be done. You see that poster over there, with the phone number on it?" He's posrered every kiosk on campus with the number of the New Haven Postmaster, hoping for students to lodge their complaints. "I know you guys have problems like this," he explains, alluding to the common complaints from disgruntled Yale Station customers about lateness, lost packages, and rude employees. "You ought to give that number a call." My sadness turned to ire. Ready to take a stand for my rights, I made the call. Lavinia, the clerk who answered, took my name and box number and said I'd be hearing from the postmaster shortly. When I persisted with my inquiries, she directed me to Christine Dugas, the Post Office's Communications Program Specialist for Public Affairs and Communications in the Northeast. I phoned her office in Providence, Rhode Island, but no one picked up. I returned to Yale Station, humming "Happy Birthday" to myself in languid, self-pitying strains. I found Larry, who once again buoyed my sagging spirits. It wasn't me, he promised. It was the system. I tried to tell him that the cards weren't ever going to come. He could see I was desperate, and being a man ofconviction he knew he'd have to prove his point. Punching the security code into the door, we made our way behind the boxes. All this was "illegal," Larry explained, "but OK, cause you're with me." Packages in carrs and white plastic boxes filled with letters were stacked waist high, covering most of the floor. Still, something was missing: people. I was
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need. As of now, there are no plans to increase staffing at Yale Station." As Dinius sees it, the Office has a promise to fuf1iu. "We're in the service world, but we're unique ~ 01J1b& ~ because we're a service that \ _~OJ 1ouches you every day. ...,.,... Somehow, in some way, we ~~ : make contact, every single •.,u•m y other human paaence wu the J)ay." A week passed before I voice of Ax1 Rose. tarry's c:ldiCieacc was b.t the lffength to once again look in my even lonelier than my own. "'Yeah, it's just box. I hesitated as I rurned the key. I me back here in this section," he explains, peered inside to find a cornucopia ofbirthagain expressing his disappointment at not day cheer: a yellow package slip and three living up to the Post Office's promises. different cards. Seeking out Larry to say "You kids deserve to get your mail on time. thanks, I found him wading through the But you know, ever since they've cut our growing pile of boxes. "These came in yesstaff, we just can't do it. I'd say on average terday," he explains. "Maybe I'll get to I get to your box only three or four days them tomorrow. But I'm just one man out of the week." back here. I can't hi~ every box every day." Larry directed me next to John He points to the cards in my hands, all Dinius, president of the local chapter of stamped a week before January 12. "See, I the Associated Postal Workers Union. He told you," he says, the power-to-the-people effused a patriotic vigor similar to Larry's spirit still ringing in his voice. "The postown. "We're here to provide a universal sermark never lies." -Matthro~ Underwood vice to America," Dinius explained. "[Yale Station] is part of America, but you guys Grumpy Old Men aren't being served." His explanation was simple: "The problems at Yale Station are At first glance, the 85-year-old members of due 100 percent to understaffing. At one the Oass of 1937 don't look like rabbletime we had 18 people there. [Since 1993], rousers. Twenty-five years after their graduour levels have dropped from 18 down to 15 ation, 88 percent were happily married, 85 then to 13 and now to the present ten. It's percent were regular churchgoers, and 71 like trying to move ten pounds of sand percent were registered Republicans; they with two people instead of ten people. believed in fighting for their country, ownUntil we have more bodies back there, ing rwo cars, and the fact that they would there are going to be delays, plain and simbe bald in ten years. By 1999, not much ple." had changed. But in October of that year, When I finally reached Communicathe Class of 1937 took up arms against its tions Program Specialist for Public Affairs alma mater. Why are these rebels not the and Communications Dugas, she took a peacefully retired grandfathers they seemed different tone. The faceless bureaucrat in destined to become? Providence, she had no sympathy for my The answer: "Phelpsgate." In lack of birthday joy. She corrected me September 1999, several hundred copies of when I spoke of delayed mail. "You're Yale's conservative student publication assuming delayed delivery to be a face," she Light & Truth were removed from freshman said. "Our studies show that for the State mailboxes. Playing off juicy allegations of of Connecticut and for New Haven and illegal acts by Yale's freshman counselors Yale Station in particular, we have an onand an administration cover-up, the name time delivery rate of 95 percent, which is has stuck. As the furor died down and the above our national goal of 93 percent." administration rejected L&Ts grievance Dugas admitted that the Yale St2tion workpetition, it soon seemed as if everyone had force had been "streamlined" in the past; forgotten. However, "Pbdpsgate" had just but, she explained, "We feel we are providbegun to captivate the minds of the men of ing our customers with the services they
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the Class of 1937. Sixty-rwo years away from Yale had done nothing to dampen their fervor or their memory. They were old, but not too old to take on the system. One 38-page report, a flurry of correspondence, and a year and a half later, the Class of 1937 is still standing firm. Although some in their ranks are as tired of the issue as most students, others are sriU bandying about terms like "pc Police" and specularing about freshman counselor "spy networks" run out of Dean Trachtenberg's office. According to a former L&T staff member, the magazine and the alumni soon found a murually agreeable division of labor in the fight: "We [L&T] provided the informacion, and they fought the battles for us." Though unsuccessful in helping the editors receive compensation for damages or having "formal sanctions" brought against the implicated freshman counselors and administ.ratots, the alumni still seem determined to fight to the death. The Class that Levin has called "Yale's most devoted" has filed a petition with the AYA and is calling for a review of the University's free speech regulations. "As members of the Class of 1937, we are old," said corresponding secretary John W. Field. "We believe in tradition and freedom ... [and] we love Yale." On the surface, the Class of 1937 perceived a threat to intellecrual freedom on campus, especially for conservative views. However, their actions betray a deeper fear that, as the years go by, the administration is forgetting the Old Yale. The decline of conservative groups, which they see as one of the last bastions of this spirit on campus, is pacricularly worrisome to men who may not be around to defend the Yale they love much longer. By not punishing those involved in confiscating L&T, it seemed as if University officials were not only attacking the rights of a conservative publication to challenge the administration, but the values and rights of her own alumni as well. "[W]e had a grand rime here together and we now march out and sit on the sidelines and exercise our almost divine right to grumble at the changes that will doubtless begin the instant our backs are rumed: former Yale president James Rowland Angell wrote in the History of th~ C/as:s t/ I9JJ. "[O]r we might make the class of 193" completely immortal."
-Sara Hinchho,.
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t's hard to believe, but an entire economic era has come and gone since I entered Yale in the fall of 1998. Sky-high technology stocks sent the Nasdaq up 86 percent in 1999, its best year since its inception 29 years ago, and created a mood of unparalleled economic exuberance from Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley. In the process, a new American hero was born: the 22-year-old gazillionaire computer whi2 with his own e-business scarrup. Across the nation, thousands of humanities majors began to wonder w hether they should be studying Java instead of Joh n Milton. But as the media have recently noted with barely concealed glee, the bubble has most certainly burst. The Nasdaq saw its worst ever losses, 40 percent, in 2000, due primarily to rbe failure of Internet stocks. Nearly 36,000 technology workers have lost their jobs. Last January, Jj)e-companies bought airtime during the Super Bowl; this year, only four did. No one has yet dared to breathe the word "recession," but Alan Greenspan did admit last month that the economy was at a "standstill." The heady dot-com era has not passed entirely, however. One legacy is the dream of the dormroom entrepreneur-the dream that a kid barely out of high school could create a successful business plan and be taken seriously by real investors with real money. To hear them talk, Yale's srudenr
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entrepreneurs are just getting srarted and are poised to lead themselves, the school, and the entire city of New Haven to glory. But the recent failures of several of the most publicized ventures raise the question: Have Yalies come to the table too late to get a piece of the pie? Ask Mike Stern. Until December 2000, he was the C.E.O. of Aquarium Ventures, which had the recursive mission of finding and funding other dorm-room entrepreneurs. Aquarium Ventures was, of course, a venture itself. It was one of the first companies to be funded by Dagim Capital, a New Haven venture capital (vc) fund started by a Yale graduate student, Benjamin Karp, and Orthodox Rabbi Shmully Hecht, 'Yho runs the Chai Society, a Jewish social organization where Yalies network over schnapps. With this unusual backing and its campus-focused business plan, Aquarium Ventures immediately attracted attention. As its founder, Stern was profiled in;~. O'umber of slick e-business publications such as Fast Company, &d Herring, and Busin~ss 2.0. Fortun~ magazine asked of Stern and several other vc founders, "Can these Doogie Howser vcs fmd and foster firms that will rate an "A" and make a profit?" "Running a startup company is like being a juggler with a thousand different balls in the air. You can't let any of them drop," Stern told UMagazin~ in a typically self-assured sound bite. Heeding hjs own wisdom, Stern took last fall off Yale to work on the company fulltime. · According to its website, aquariumvmtur~s.com, "[Aquarium's] success depends on our ability to identify tomorrow's great companies today, and get them moving fast." Apparendy, though, that never happened. Aquarium Ventures closed up shop after ten months, having invested in only two student companies, Goldthumb Technologies and Broadcastbuilders.Com. "The economy slowed down," Stern explains, "and we were obviously having some trouble, as everyone else was." Now back in school, Stern has a new respect for experience. "I would tell anyone to line up your ducks before you jump in the water ... Before you start up, get as much feedback from smart people as you can. God knows we made a lot of mistakes, but none of them were new." Failure isn't the only thing that can hurt student entrepreneurs; success is dangerous too. Classmates have called Joshua Newman the "superstar ofYale entrepreneurship." He co-founded Sharkbyte, a computer consulting firm, his freshman year. "The firm began to grow until it hit 20 people a year and a half ago," Newman said, "then we were bought by a company called Quantrum and subsumed into it. By cbe time the company was sold I was the only student still left. I was in school the whole time--1 just stopped sleeping and going to the bathroom." Seth Sternberg had a similar problem with the success of Ivy Bound, his college consulting company.
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"Last year, Ivy Bound had around 40 dienrs. That's 40 families, 40 sets of demands that had to be satisfied. That's too much work," Sternberg said. He cut the number of prospective student-clients this year, and probably won't continue operating the company after graduation. These students' experiences in the world of business both complement and conflict with their education in the same way as, say, the editorship of a student newspaper does. And just as a student newspaper brings together aspiring journalists, the Yale Entrepreneurial Sociery (YES) has become the main meeting ground for student entrepreneurs. David Pozen founded YES last year with Sean Glass, Mark Volchek, and Miles Lasater, all entrepreneurs, and has seen it grow to over 700 members. They run a $5o,ooo business plan competition, Y50K, sponsored by corporations and judged by a panel of investors and entrepreneurs. Yale recendy agreed to administer the Y50K prize, allowing YES to assume non-profit status. The organization has also been given office space on York Street to incubate fledgling student businesses. The tapid growth of YES seems to indicate a latent demand for business opportunities at Yale. Mark Gretens, the C.E.O. of Elm City Ventures, another New Haven vc fum started by Yale business and graduate students, says, "Everybody feels that the human capital at Yale is tremendously under-leveraged." Almost all the student entrepreneurs I talked to invoked the examples of MIT and Stanford, both of which have long-established business plan competitions and resources for student entrepreneurs that have added to their allure for programmers and other new-economy types. Emulating this forward-looking image, Harvard announced last year to great fanfare that it was relaxing the rules regarding students running businesses over the University network; Yale still occasionally enforces a policy against commercial activiry in the dorms, belying the term "dorm-room entrepreneur." "We're far, far behind a lot of our peers in terms of creating an entrepreneurial environment," says Newman. "Yale got a late start but is catching up fast." Unfortunately, Yale has to do this catching up in a much less favorable economic climate than that of the last few years. "It's too late for Yale to become another MIT," says Gretens. Sternberg recounts a harrowing popped-bubble experience: "I had a meeting wicb an incubator on the day the Nasdaq dropped 500 points and then came up 500 points on the same day. I was in my car, driving to New York, and I heard it on National Public Radio, and I was like, 'Oh no, I hope they're not liStening to this.' [The downturn] hurt a lot because all of a sudden [investors] were like, ' Hey, you don't have experience really' .... My sense is that there's a kind of general discouragement. Being an entrepreneur is not sexy anymore."
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. 21
But fortunes aren't made by the easily Public Offering] stage, it could have a very ~ discouraged, and Yale business types have big and lasting effect. The economy around managed ro find a silver lining in the gathBoston is booming, in part because of n~ ering economic clouds. New venture capiventures started by recent graduates of ...Utal firms started by students, alumni, and versities in that area." Cromwell, however, others continue to be enthused about has his own reasons to be bullish on New investing in New Haven. Newman says, Haven: He has his own vc firm, Sachem "[Since the tech downturn] we have Ventures, whose investors include Yale, an~ received fewer business plans, but of a which also has stakes in Higher One. much higher caliber." So f.u, his fund's only Pozcn sees Yale's location as an ad'f'aninvestment, Higher One, founded by tage over other Ivy League schools because Glass, Lasater, and Volchek, is doing well. of the greater opportunity to advance th( David Cromwell, the Lester Crown local economy. He speaks with pride about his organization's impact on New Haven Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Yale School of through a program called Management, and a member Cororunicy Consultirtg. of the advisocy board of YES, THE POTENTIAL OF Oesp• its socially-conscious .~ name, · consists mosdy of · agrees. "The fundamental YALE STUDENTS TO long-term oudook still is students in ning at loc;al star· REJUVENATE NEW very promising for serious tups, with a also teaching entrepreneurs .... There are IIAVEN'S ECONOMY entrepreneurship at local charalways those who are attract- WITH STARTUPS HAS ter school Amistad Academy. ed to get-rich-quick TO BE QUESTIONED. He adds, "The greatest pote~ schemes. Hopefully rhe tial for us to be an engine df change for New Haven is the shakeout has made such people look elsewhere, which is good since [Y50K] competition. If you can create a they probably would nor have succeeded business with 40 jobs and millions of do!:anyway. New Haven had a slow start in the lars in revenue, that's a huge thing. not just dot-com game, and I believe that the mara nice thing." The city has begun to lend its ket decline will have almost no effect on suppon. Recendy, YES has held meetings entrepreneurship in the city." with Henry Fernandez, New Haven's q:oIndeed, some observers see in the nomic development administrator, to disgrowth of student entrepreneurship an cuss the role the city can play in promotill~ opportunity that New Haven desperately Y50K. "There are going to be banners down Chapel Street," says Pozen, "that say 'Y!S needs. Last spring, Joel Schiavone, a businessman with enterprises all over and The City of New Haven Present Y50L' Connecticut and now a candidate for The city wants to develop a culwre of mayor of New Haven, requested that YES entrepreneurship." host him for a talk at Yale, appropriately The techno-savvy argot of these tided "The Importance of YES." According cut young men (they are nearly aU men). and the staggering sums of money they toSS to the YES newsletter, he called the organization the city's single greatest resource for around, lend their activities a certain gravi· entrepreneurs, extolling its promise for tas. But the "culture of entrepreneurship• developing the city's private sector. notwithstanding, the true potential-of uni· Cromwell also believes that YES has "big versity students and recent graduates to potencial" to alter the city's economic ourrejuvenate New Haven's commercial ecoft· look. "New Haven is not a large city. It will omy has to be questioned. So &r, most of not take many new successful ventures to the successful student startups, ~ Yale at)d across the country, have grown "one cusmake a big impact on such a small place. tomer at a time• by providing a service. Five or ten new startups a year would make a big impact, and if one out of twenty of Usually it's a service that students ate those should make it, say, to IPO [Initial uniquely qualified to provide, whether
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because of their cutting-edge technological apoertise (building websites) or simply thtir .status as students {counseling prospective Ivy Leaguers). The likelihoo~ of all.'/ of these companies creating a signif.: kant nun\ber of new jobs for the broader Hew Haven community is, therefore, not "'~ty great. In addition, ambitious student entrepreneurs are increasingly finding the business-to-consumer model "too much work." as Sternberg said of his own company. They are attracted more to the high1 risk, high-reward world of venture capital-where others make your money for you. Newman put the money from the sale of his first company into yet another vc firm for · student ventures, Silicon Ivy, which now has $xo million to invest. Sternberg is currently working on a book for other young entrepreneurs on "how the vc;: ecosystem works." Students, as Stern points out, have little to lose in vc: "People in school have the lowest risk. The bulk of college students have loans, but they're not mpporting families, and they don't have JeU1 ihvested in one career." This carefree .position, however, is exactly the opposite of New Haven's. Relying on Yale-related venture capital firms to create the kinds of jobs the city needs is like relying on Beinecke Library to improve New Haven's public
. lthools. In the end, the legacy of the e-business IIM>lution might look a lot more like traditional developments in Yale's history than tbose involved would like to admit. New opportunities are being created, but thus 6t they extend mostly to students who closely resemble the average Yalie of days Jlllt-male, affiuent, and well-connected. 'llR cffeets on New Haven will probably be 'de cffeets, as the University pursues its lirlditional goals. Even if the timing of Y.le's entry into the tech world had been at tbe crost of the wave, it's unlikely that New ·Haftn- would be coming along for the ride.
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II
• Who's the real outsider in New Haven's next Mayoral race?
OHN DESTEFANO IS CONFIDENT, and there's no reason he shouldn't be. Since he became mayor of New Haven in 1994, he hasn't faced a serious challenge to re-election, reigning from his office overlopking the Green with apparent immunity. Despite frequent allegations of corruption and numerous scandals in his administration, potential opponents have mostly opted to stay out of the fray. Martin Looney is confident. He is a popular state senator who has been active in local politics for a quarter-century. He also has a successful law practice, teaches classes at two local colleges, and thinks he can unseat DeStefano in 2001. And why not? Jim Newton proved that the mayor was vulnerable by winning almost 40 percent of the primary vote in 1999and that was without any major endorsements and with relatively little money. Looney has much more of each. This September, DeStefano and Looney will f.l.ce off for the Democratic mayoral nomination. DeStefano hopes to take credit for New Haven's recent economic improvementhe promises it will continue if he is re-elected. Looney claims that eight years of corruption and scandal have been enough; the city has improved, he argues, in spite of the current administration. Ask the candidates to get much more specific, and the details become fuzzy. Traditionally, candidates for mayor of New Haven have fallen into two categories: the candidate supported by the Democratic party and the candidate who claims to be the outsider. Usually, they are easy to tell apart: Two years ago, Jim Newton did not have the support of any party leaders, while the mayor's campaign was managed by the Democratic town chairman, Nick Balleno. But this time, with the mayor challenged by a well-liked state legislator, the incumbent may end up playing the role of the outsider. Balletto has declared himself neutral, and local Democrats are slowly dividing into twO camps, preparing for what could become a hostile contest.
J
" I'M GB'ITING A UTil.E PISSED OFF." The mayor's distinct voice
travels from his office through the reception area. It is late October, and he is on the phone discussing the sirut:uion ofa local homeless shelter. "Who's in charge of this? They've had four years to deal with this already," he yells inro the receiver. The phone conversation ends, and a couple of minutes Later, the mayor steps from his office. "Can I go to the bathroom?" he jokes with one of his assistants. "Yeah, ic's allowed," the assistant replies. THE NEW JouRNtJ.
By MichJel Gerber The mayor has not run the city of New Haven for the last ¡ seven years on charisma and congeniality. He doesn't court the press, and much of the time the media has responded in kind. But DeStefano doesn't seem to mind-he simply tells his mom not to read the Nng Haven Advocate. DeStefano's supporters know that he doesn't go out of his way to be delicate, or even tactful. "He's gotten calloused about making decisions that have to be made but will piss people off," says Matthew Nemerson, former CEO of the New Haven Chamber of Commerce. "And he doesn't tell them he's sorry about it. [DeStefano] has presented an image of himself that is tough and unemotional. A lot of people have assumed he's arrogant and uncaring," Nemerson adds. "I don't think that's true, but he comes off that way." MARTIN LoONEY SITS AT A CONFERENCE TABLE in his Orange Street office across the street from City Hall, with his hands folded on the table. At 52, Looney is seven years older than DeStefano. His smile and his smaller stature make him a less intimidating presence than the mayor, and while DeStefano expects people to know what he's accomplished and dismisses those who ¡ do not, Looney wants to explain to everyone why he should be mayor. "I think the city is prepared for a change," Looney says. "There is a lq_ss of energy," he adds, speaking of DeStefano's City Hall. With two decades in the state legislature and prior experience in city politics, Looney thinks he is just the person to bring a new attitude into the city government. And Looney and his supporters offer other reasons why the mayor should lose his job. DeStefano, they say, does not play well with others.
FmnmARY 9,
2001
Mayor John DeStefano
LAsT YEAR, DESTEFANO SENT A LETTER accusing Looney of shirking his duty as a state senator by not bringing adequate state funds to New Haven. According to DeStefano, he was merely doing his job. "As quarterback of the city ... I'm here to see that this is a healthy community," he says. But Looney, and some members of the Board of Aldermen, see the letter as "symptomatic of his overall approach of being divisive and harsh rather than consensus-building." Looney claims that the mayor's inability to work with others has cost him the support of many of his former Democratic party allies. "There's been a sort of estrangement and alienation from a number of people in the community, and obviously the mayor's trying to turn that into an advantage by saying that the fact that he doesn't have a relationship with x, Y, and z is because of his own actions," he says. But in Looney's eyes, the mayor's break from the Democratic Party's machine does not signal a reformed City Hall; rather, the mayor has created his own system of patronage--a machine that revolves less around the party and more around those individuals who give to the mayor's campaign. Looney pledges to dismande that machine. "My approach to government will be inclusive, participatory, responsive to segments of the community," he says. "It will signal an end to factionalism, and a unified party and administration."
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THE LAST YEAR, some local Democrats have noticed a change in the mayor. " He became more charismatic, more popular, more responsive, Alderman J ulio Gonzalez said last fall, before he joined the mayor's campaign. "I really feel there has been a change in the tone of the adminis. , eranon. Gonzalez is not alone in his newfound enthusiasm for the DeStefano administration. The race for the nomination has not only split the Democratic party, bu t has also strengthened the convictions of each side. Local leaders who had previously shown lukewarm support for the mayor are preparing to actively campaign for him. BilJ Dyson, who represents New Haven in the Connecticut Assembly, wilJ support DeStefano because, in his opinion, the Looney camp has offered no agenda, while DeStefano has "made a vase improvement." The mayor is hesitant to say that he has changed significantly in the last yearthat would be an admission that his fuse six years were much less productive and energetic. But he knows he learned something from Jim Newton's suong showing in 1999: "Two years ago voters sent me a message [that] they were concerned with city government," he says of the last election. Gonzalez and Dyson attribute the mayor's new attitude to his rift with Democratic leaders like Balletto. As Dyson explains, "[DeStefano) is slowly but surely surrounding himself with people that he trusts." Indeed, the people surrounding each candidate have become as m uch of an issue in this campaign as the candidates themselves. During his fust six years in office, it seemed that DeStefano could not avoid scandal. He managed to come through nearly unscathed each time, while members of his administration took the fall. In the process, the look of City Hall has changed. Chief Administrative Officer Jim Horan had not lived in New Haven prior to working for the mayor. The head of economic development is no longer a
veteran of New H aven politics, but a young graduate ofYale Law School named Henry Fernandez. Supporters seem to think DeStefano has broken free of his debts to the party that got him the job. "When you first get elected there's a tendency to bring in the people who brought you to the dance," DeStefano admits. But the general feeling in New Haven is that the Democratic Party does not work the way it used to. If the mayor can convince New Haven that he is the one responsible for turning an oligarchy into a meritocracy, he will be mayor again next year.
Patronage is a part of the DeStefano administration, but it would surely be a part of the Looney administration as well.
PEOPLE like Balletto seemingly on his side, Looney may find it difficult to distance himself from the traditional ways of the Democratic machine. "Rewarding friends in the city is something [the old party bosses) did well," says Robin Kroogman, an alderwoman who will likely support Looney. She faults the mayor for hiring staffers from outside the city, pointing to Fernandez, Horan, and parks director Robert Levine, who moved from Virginia co New Haven co cake the job. DeStefano's supporters believe that the mayor's administration has found the necessary balance berween the reformer, grass· roots liberals, and the traditional, Party-oriented Democrats. "On the one hand, the mayor gets criticized for working with Party regulars; on the other, he's criticized for not working with them ," Nemerson says. "If you study urban policies in America, all of the successful mayors .. · p resent themselves as reformers who are going to do things in a market-based way. while cutting as many deals as they can." While it might not seem right, patronage always has and probably always will play some role in New Haven politics. It's a part of the DeStefano administration, but it would surely be a part of the Loone)' administration as well. In face, the Looney team features many former players from DeS~e.fano's Cit}' WITH
.. Hall. For example, Patti Cofrancesco, formerly a top city lawyer, was fired by the mayor after signing off on questionable city loans to another city employee, Andrea Jackson-Brooks. Now, Jackson-Brooks is on the Board of Aldermen, Cofrancescif practices law in New Haven, and both are expected to support Looney. Why would Looney, who has usually been known as a reformer, join the Party team? His first job in city government was as aide to Mayor Frank Logue, a nonmachine candidate in the 1970s. Martin Looney has had his eye on City Hall for a long time, and the rifr in local Democratic leadership might give him the best opporcunity anyone has had to unseat DeStefano. "[Looney] is a good guy with a clean record who's right on state issues," Gonzalez says. "I just don't see how he could govern without appeasing that [Party] base." MAYoR DESTEFANO THINKS voters don't
care about political maneuvering-they want the soccer fields mowed and the schools improved. "When you've got an incumbent, [the voters] are going to look and say, ~ I satisfied or not?'" In his opinion, the people of New Haven are better off now than they were before he became mayor. "There's no doubt that New Haven is a more confident place than it was a year ago." The mayor is right about most voters: They don't care about politics, who's running whose campaign, and who's supporting whom. They will decide the election based on how their lives are right now, and they care about schools, parks, and policing. But they also want a City Hall free of debrs to political bosses and corporate donors--something neither DeStefano nor Looney can promise.
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FI!.BRUARY
9·
2001
-DOHT LET THIS HAPPfH TO Y'OCJI
WW AHUU. 10 YOU. TAITif 'HONE lOJ.86S.484S
IS
:¡::; Daniel Kurtz-Phelan
Minutes from Ya le community of T
HE WESTERN HONDURAN LANDSCAPE IS BLANKETED with cloud-forest and dotted with tiny Indian villages. In every town, something is missing: There are almost no men between the ages of 18 and 35¡ Everywhere, the explanation for their absence is the same: They have left for EL Nort~.
The sprawling, loose-knit, Honduran family from whom r rented a room last summer was typical. Three sisters and their children lived together in a house; their husbands and eldest sons were already gone, expected to return at some unspecified point in the future. The oldest male left in the household was Francisco, and though he was only twelve, he was already talking about his own upcoming journey. When I asked him how men get through Guatemala and Mexico and over the border into the u.s., he responded nonchalandy, "You go visit the coyote." It is a simple business transaction. You pay the coyote and he delivers you co EL Nort~. If the first attempt fails, you go again and again until you've made it. The whole thing sounded impossibly easy. Honduras, the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, has been devastated, like much of Central America, by successive hu~ricanes and floods in the past two years. The poor own no land and have little opportunity to find work. In areas heavily populated by Indians, unemployment pushes 50 percent. The only option is to head north. Still, it is startling to see the magnitude of the flight reflected in what is left behind: entire families without a single male figure, children who have never met their fathers, mothers who haven't seen their sons in decades. All are awaiting the return of some long-departed relative whose memory takes on a shadowy, mythic stature in letters, memories, and anecdotes. One day, I met the coyote. Jaime wore a red flannel shirt and sported a long black ponytail. He listened to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones and had once played in a rock-and-roll band. He showed off the few Engltsh phrases that he knew ("Jou are very bee-oo-ty-ful"), and together we sang the first verse of "Black Dog." When I brought up immigration, he grinned drunkenly, revealing a missing front tooth. But he evaded my questions. How much does he chacge? Depends. $2,ooo, $3,000, maybe more. How does he get people to El Norte? Depends. Truck, bus, maybe plane. How do his clients cross the border? Depends. Through the river, over the fence, hidden in the trunk of a car or the back of a truck. Jaime, however, was emphatic on one point: Getting to the u.s. is easy and certain, despite Ia migra (a moniker for the border police used on both sides of the Rio Grande). "We are," be said in Spanish, "like the barbarians invading Rome."
\
lives an underground illegal immigrants. THE U.S. CURRENTLY HAS A HIGHER PROPORTION OF IMMIGRANTS
than at any other time in the past hundred years. Scill, New Haven-thousands of miles from the border, lacking any major industry or agriculture--seems an unlikely place to come across undocumented workers. I hardly expected to find anyone in this smaJl, northeastern city who had completed the long, dangerous journey from Latin America. I decided to look anyway-and what I found was an entire underground community of ilegales a short walk away from the Yale campus. I just had to head southeast on Elm Street, past the Green, and through downtown. When Elm became Grand Avenue, I continued under 1-91 and crossed over the train tracks into Fair Haven. Suddenly, the signs were in Spanish-Lujo's Librerfa, El CanquC Restaurante, Lujinera Caribera-and Spanish graffiti ragged fences and storefronts. Fair Haven has been the center of New Haven's Puerto Rican population for decades. Recently, a new crowd has come to the neighborhood: the ilegales, undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, and a host of other Larin American countries. Signs on storefronts read "No loitering-Police rake notice" (or somcthin~ in Spanish), but the measure hac~ seems necessary. Though it is a-sunny Sarurday afternoon, few people are out in the streets. Grand old wood-plank houses line the streets, their large porches pushing almost to the sidewalk. Some of ~e houses show signs of careful attention, freshly painted in blues and pinks, with small fences and Christmas decorations. But every block also has houses that have f.illen into disrepair. Their windows are boarded up, their ancient paint-jobs flaked almost off, their porches caved in at 45 degree angles. Some of the most decrepit ones show the smallest signs of habitation: broken windows covered with newspaper, a makeshifr mailbox propped against a porch column.
Though the streets are mostly empty, I occasionally see someone walking hurriedly, eyes down, into a house, or a small group of men standing on a street-corner. But whenever I approach them, they eye me suspiciously and move away. Finally, I see a woman watching me from the other side of the street, and I ask her, in Spanish, if people live in these houses. She shrugs. "Only ilegales." Last summer, Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) agents raided a condemned house on Cedar Hill Avenue and found 35 undocumented workers living there. At the time, the INS reported knowledge of at least eight such hovels around New Haven, each of which housed two or three dozen immigrants. According to Hernando Diosa, a prominent journalist and radio personality in the local Latino community, houses for ilegales still abound in Fair Haven and a number of ocher local neighborhoods. "I know a house where 40 or 50 people live. There are only three bedrooms. People sleep in the hallways, on newspapers on the floors." Afrer the ilegales cleared out of the Cedar HiH Avenue house, authorities discovered feces littering the basement and a chimney that was on the verge of collapse. In recent years, Diosa says, Fair Haven has been flooded with new immigrants-" Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Peruvians, Hondurans, Colombians, all groups." Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of New Haven's population. The official community now numbers almost 25,000, 50 percent larger than it was ten years ago. It is hard to say just how many more are undocumented. "The people are scared, some of them are even afraid of me because they think I'm Ia migra," Diosa tells me. "But there are at least 5,000 ilegales in New Haven."
ws
CARLos PASSES ME A DRINK AND SITS DOWN AT THE TABLE, where I am chatting with a man who calls himself Sigi. The two ilegales are
friends of Diosa, and they have agreed to meet me in this small South American restaurant at the edge of New Haven. Mexican country music plays in the background, and I hear only Spanish from the clientele. When I 6rst walked in and met the men sitting at the bar, they made jokes about my being a spy for Ia migra, an outsider sent to raid their establishment. At fust, Sigi dominates the conversation. He tells me that he carne from Mexico and that he can write down his story for me for an unnamed fee. He knows how to write well, he claims, because he was once a cop. When I politely turn him down, he tells me that he has to leave, shakes my hand, and goes to sit at the bar. Carlos, however, is more open to my questions. His background belies the stereotype of ikgaks as lowly and uneducated. He says he has a university degree and worked as an accountant in Medellin, Colombia, where he lived before coming to the u.s. He looks the part of an urban professional, with graying hair and a green knit shin tucked into slacks. After years of working in business in Colombia, the situation became "unbearable-the crime, bribes, and intimidation, all of it." Carlos immediately asks me why I am interested in his "normal" story. I tell him about Honduras, about the family I lived with, about the absence of their husbands and brothers and fathers, and the glorious homecoming they anticipate. Carlos smiles. When I ask him about coming to the u.s., he uses words like "calm" and "easy" to describe his experiences. Carlos bas lived in the United States for the past three years, the last four months of which have been spent in New Haven. He lives in a bouse with 19 other people and works 16 hours a day busing tables. Still, be does nor complain, or seek sympathy for the long journey he made to get here. "The life is very ... tranquila, • he says. Bur when I press Carlos for details, his life seems nowhere near as serene as his adjectives would suggest. "In Mexico they take your clothes, they take your money," he says of the Mexican authorities, who are also known to rape women making the
trip. The journey from South America may take months. Diosa tells me about a Colombian man he knows who left his home with ten pesos in his pocket. After crossing over to Panama through the Colombian jungle-one of the most dangerous and lawless regions in the worldhe hitchhiked through Central America and Mexico, and was repeatedly beaten up and robbed before arriving at the TexasMexico border. There, he somehow managed to come up with the money to pay a coyote-Dio~. not wanting to soil his friend's name, will not tell me how. And from there, Diosa says, "It's easy . . . the crossing takes 15 minutes."
"I CAME NORTH TO WORK," Carlos tells me. "I am here for money. I work 16 hours a day. I want to help my family. I send money home." The purpose of life in the u.s. is to make money, most of which will be sent to families back home in Latin America. In several Central American countries, including Honduras, remittance payments-money sent from relatives working in the u.s.--constitute one of the largest sources of national revenue. Carlos directs my attention toward the back of the restaurant. A line of immigrants waits in front of a woman at a computer screen, cash clutched in their ftsts. The woman, Carlos tells me, works for a wir~ transfer service, a small-time Western Union alternative specializing in immigrant business. "They are transferring money to their families. She has been working since eight o'clock this morning." The ikgaln' quest for work is guided by a large network that extends from a village in their home country to the Mexican border, and then to Houston or El Paso or Nogales or some other u .s. city where their services are needed. The coyote is the central figure in this network. His role extends well beyond just shepherding ikgaks through the desert, across a river, or over a fence. "It's a whole industry," Diosa explains to me. The coyote's contacts are everywhere, and "it all depends on the cooracts. • The way Diosa tells it, the immigrant follows the coyote's conracts wherev-
THE NEW JouRNAL
er they take him. "You know a guy who out by the employers themselves. In the stant fear of being deported." I ask Carlos knows a coyote who guides you across the past few years, Con necticut tobacco farms if this claim is true, and he shakes his head. border and has a contact on the other side," have come under fire for this practice, and "You're not going to get deported unless he elaborates. "Then, maybe you hav6!- a public suspicion has been directed at severyou make a mistake." Not making a misal area construction companies as well. take becomes the mission of ikgaks. Life cousin or a friend in New Haven who works for a guy, or the coyote's contact Diosa is hesitant to offer me many details for them is like walking a tightrope: mainknows a guy who has a factory and needs on local employers-he does mention one tain concentration, don't slip up, watch out workers." Through their contactS, the ikdowntown restaurant by name--but for anything that could upset balance. gale find a city, a house where they can stay assures me that ikgaks have no trouble Since 1996, when President Clinton (like the one raided by the signed the Illegal Immigration INS on Cedar Hill Avenue), The employer~ ne~d i/ega/es. No one else w~nts to do Reform and Immigrant and a job. The ikgale don't the work, the dirty JObs, not even the Puerto Ricans. and Responsibility Act into law, the have much COntrOl over their We COme here and WOrk fOr nOt even minimUm Wage fOr INS has Stepped up efforts nationJives here. They move twelve 1 fourteen hours a day no problem." wide to find and deport ikgale, through a vast and intricate ' especially those who use public network of coyotes and cousins and corfinding work. Some businesses are entirely services and seek employment in the u.s. In rupt Americans that ends at some farm or open about their desire to employ the ikConnecticut, the number of deportees has factory or hotel or restaurant. gale, going so far as to send vans to Fair doubled in the past four years. Still, in This kind of network defines Carlos' Haven in the morning to bring them in to 1999, this amounted to only 379 deportastory, as it does that of most ikgaks. A guy work (though this practice has recently tions, a number that pales in comparison to he knew in Colombia knew a coyote in been scrutinized). Other businesses mainthe probable number of ikgaks in New Mexico who guided him over the fence, cain a fa~de of legality. But, Diosa claims, Haven alone. through the desert, and all the way ¡to this represents a small obstacle; fake papers But for the ikgaks, the pitfalls are are easily obtained, and several different many, and they make a constant Houston. Once in Houston, he called a friend's cousin, who found him a job at people can use a set of papers to obtain effort to avoid the mistakes Polo Ralph Lauren in North Carolina. work--often in the same day. "One friend that can send them After a couple of years there, he heard from uses his papers in the morning, and then home. That another friend in New Haven, who knew a another uses the same papers in the afterwhy the restaurant owner who needed workers. So noon," he explains. Employers, officials, he came here. cops, and Ia migra are willing to rum a By all accounts, getting a job is not a blind eye, at least as long as it benefits problem. "Employers look for ikgaks so them. Carlos tells me that the police Erethey can pay whatever they want," says quencly collaborate with employers. "They Oiosa. At his job in North Carolina, Carlos know that people need you to work." Last was paid six dollars an hour, while the May, investigators in New Haven uncovered a scheme to employ ikgaks to remove American workers received ten or twelve. But the ikgale find the relationship mutuasbestos from a building on Temple Street. Dominic Onofrio had sought out several ally beneficial. Diosa explains, "Even if you make five or six dollars an hour here, you Mexican migrants, falsified work docuwould only be making 75 cents an hour for ments for them, and exposed the laborers the same job in Colombia. And the to a building's worth of deadly asbestos, all without protection. His sentence: six employers need ikgale. No one else wants months house arrest and a $4,000 fine. to do the work, the dirty jobs, not even the Puetto Ricans, and we come here and work for not even minimum wage for twelve, A DESOu.TE CALM settles over the streets of Fair Haven. The neighborhood shows few fourteen hours a day, no problem." signs of the underground community it The "dirty jobs" Oiosa mentions are harbors. Given the sheer number of ikgale plentiful: picking tobacco, cleaning botd that live in the neighborhood, the emptirooms, tending plant nurseries, manning ness seems all the more startling. factory assembly lines. lkgaks bear about '• A recent article in the Nnu Havm work from friends or family or the coyote's Advocau alleged that ikgale "live in concontacts, and are sometimes even sought
I"
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streets in Fair Haven are so empty. "They come here, they work, and they stay out of sight," Diosa tells me. "They don't want to bother anybody or cause any trouble." As a result, i/ega/es in New Haven are invisible to all but the small segment of the population that deals with them on a regular basis. They avoid bars, community centers, and parties. They hoard their savings in mattresses or chestS in their houses, because they can't open bank accountS. Gangs frequently target i/ega/es because they know that an immigrant will have his entire savings stashed in his house and will not report the crime. Many are too terrified to visit a hospital for fear they will be found out and deported if they have to deal with authorities. ""Say you just came from Michoacln or Mazatlan or Mexico City," explains Diosa. "If you feel something wrong with your chest, you're not going to go ro the hospitals unless you have papers." The passage of the 1996 Act gave the INS the responsibility to deport any noncitizen who has committed even the most minor infraction. The real risk for most ilega/es, however, is that someone will rat them out. "It could be anyone," says Diosa. "Could be your best friend, could be an exlover, somebody who is jealous, somebody who thinks you are a better worker." H e tells the story of an envious lover who suspected that his girlfriend was seeing another man. For revenge, he called the INS and reported the man, who was subsequently arrested and deported. Employers also use the threat of Ia migra to keep workers in Hne. Last year a farm owner near New Haven called the INS on his own employees after they tried to organize to demand better wages and safer working conditions. Generally, however, i/egaks just keep quiet and don't complain. "They treat them bad and the workers can't do anything because they have no papers," Diosa tells me. Each i/egal I meet has the same singleminded focus. "I don't go out, I don't go enjoy the city," Carlos tells me. He continually says that life here is tranquil, but this may just be resignation, because he doesn't really have any other options. He set out from home in search of work and money, followed his concaccs, and worked his way through a nerwork to where he is now. "Here I don't really matter. I don't really have any value," he says. "I wake, I work, I sleep. That's it."
THE NEW jOURNAL
"OuR MISSION IS TO GET HERE and work hard for two, three, four years and then to return home," Carlos explains to me. "All my family is in Medellin, and I want to go back .... " He trails off and looks at a photograph of an Andean village on the wall. Diosa tells me that be, too, came to the u.s with the intention of going back home to his f.unily and friends, but son,.ewbere along the way, his plan changed. He came from Colombia 25 years ago. He had obtained a temporary tourist visa by slipping a corrupt Colombian official $4,000 under the table, and he didn't return home after the visa expired. "When I came here, I told my f.unily that I was going to work for a year and then come back. I starred working. I washed dishes. I was like a gypsy," he recounts. "Then Ia migra wanted to deport me, so I married an American lady, and we had rwo kids, and we still live together." Diosa is now a prominent and well-connected figure in the immigrant community. Still, he doesn't romanticize the story. "For most of the people involved, marriage is just a business." The ikgales come with the plan of making some money and then going back home. They focus on the task at hand, try ro stay our of trouble, work hard , follow the jobs and whatever friends and f.unily may be in El Norte as well. Somehow, in walking this difficult course, the original intention of going home gees lost. The quest to return home is supplanted by the q uest ro obtain papers. "The mission becomes to get documentS, to marry an American," Carlos continues. Diosa marter-of-factly describes the course of his and his friends' lives in El Nom. "You say you're going to come back, but when you start you don't know what will really happen because you don't know where you're going. People come here, and they try to get married or become legal some way. They don't go back. They stay here." In the mountains of Western Honduras, wives anticipate their husbands' returns and children wait to meet their fathers for the first time. They continue hoping, while the ilegales continue down a path of no return. And as soon as each fatherless boy is old enough, the f.unily takes itS savings, contactS the coyote, and sends another to El Nom. Dani~l Kurtz-Ph~lan,
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2001
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25
IN THE SUMMER OF 1996, not long after people began to get excited about the pace of the new economy, rwo ofYale's highest officers met to discuss how the University would keep up. For Provost Alison Richard and Associate Vice President Joseph Mullinix, there was reason to worry: Yale's mainframes and administrative systems were becoming obsolete, and business practices lagged years behind the latest technology. Most antiquated was the University's 15-year-old accounting software, which had been designed when Yale was a significantly less prosperous place than it is today. On top of questions of mere obsolescence was the almost religious fervor surrounding Y2K, the modern twist to the familiar apocalypse story (which still turned out less bang than whimper). Even more dire than the state of aging buildings and facilities around campus, it seemed, was the delicate starus ofYale's digital infrastructure. Richard and Mullinix quickly called for a committee and working groups to address the problem. Over 6o individuals from all levels of the University would assist in the effort and report back to the administration with their findings. They were asked to submit a preliminary budget, evaluate potential contractors, and develop an overall program strategy. They eventually proposed what rurned out to be the largest, costliest, and most controversial restructuring program in Yale's history-the ominous, if unirnpressively named, Project X. Project X promised to change almost every aspect of the way Yale conducted business, from making office life paperless to automating tasks that once involved an intricate hierarchical chain of people and processes. It heralded nothing less than a new work environment, free from so-called "redundancy," guided by the new (and yet old) economic virtues of efficiency, rapidity, and automation. Four years, $wo million, and the retraining of several hundred employees later, nearly everyone at Yale agrees that Project X has done all these things. They only disTHE NEW JouRNAL
agree as to whether this constitutes a success, or a minor catastrophe. NoBODY SEEMS TO KNOW WHAT THE X IN PROJECT X STANDS FOR. Certainly it's better than the official name (the Yale "Finance and Human Resources Modernization Project") that was somehow approved. Still, almost every affected Yale employee, at one time or another, has probably felt its unofficial name signified something unsavory: One woman I spoke with said she believed it stood for "Xcruciacing"; "X-cessive" was another guess I heard; a third, "X-crement." Feelings of prolonged frustration are also expressed by the Project's most vocal supporters and by people who were instrumental in bringing it about. Mk any Yale employee co calk about the early stages of Project X, and the response you get will inevitably be clinical. (The word "painful" seems especially popular; one person made an extended comparison to surgery.) "We survived," said Dean Plummer, one of the Project's architects. "We got through it. Ic was painful, but we made it." Before Yale had to worry about such things as Y2K compliance, the routine functions of office work--check requests, payroll, accoum maintenance-were largely a matter of directing paper forms co specific offices. Requests co purchase anything from a stapler to a new computer required handling by the Purchasing Office. There were Payroll people, Grants Management people, Personnel people, Accounts Payable people, and so on. In order to be reimbursed for the simplest personal expense, for example, an employee would have to fill out one form, have that form signed by the office business manager, then send it up the street to the first floor of 155 Whitney, Accounts Payable, where another pale face would look it over, sign it, and chen send it back down the street. Even then, you could never really be sure the envelope would complete its journey. No one much doubted that the Project X operation would be at least mildly painful; what came as a surprise was the extent of the trauma. Back in 1996, when the Yale Steering Committee first began investigating the available upgrade options, it had the experience of peer institutions to instruct it. T he University of Pennsylvania had beaten everyone to the line, going live with a limited installation of Oracle database software in July 1996. Penn had asked Oracle simply to update certain of its financial systems and to patch up others for Y2K compliance in a gradual rollouc over the course of several years. Princeton and Stanford had similar plans. Harvard, on the other hand, announced that it was overhauUng nearly all of its administrative systems at once. In so doing. it kick-started the kind of backand-forth race that characterizes most policy changes in universities today. The imperative was dear: Yale had to meet its competitors' challenge. Would O ld Blue merely hold pace with the new econo-
HOW YALE JUMPED ON THE HIGH TECH TRAIN WITH PROJECT X By Ronen Givony
FEBRUARY 9•
2001
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27
my--or would it pull, so to speak, into the lead? The working groups reported back with their findings in a lengthy study, which discussed the many shortcomings of ¡Yale's existing systems and proposed a bold corrective. They found, in their own words, that obsolete software and antiquated business practices were often "impeding the best efforts of faculty and staff." They argued that the entire University community was frustrated and distracted by "complex, time-consuming, and costly administrative processes in the course of their academic work." The study maintained that while Yale could, conceivably, foUow the more tentative course taken by Pennpatching some systems and upgrading only those in the most critical condition-an alternative if more challenging option was open to them. Rather than go halfway, Yale could go the better way-the way of Harvard-and even a step beyond. In one giant leap forward, Yale could "reengineer" not only its technology, but also the equally obsolete routines of its users. The University agreed; and m September, with Pentium-like speed, the Yale Corporation approved funding for a large-scale tech upgrade. Accompanying the ongoing facilities renovation project would be an equally intensive renovation of information tech nology. The lucrative contract, initially projected at $30 million, went to Silicon Valley database giant Oracle, whose CEO, Larry Ellison, is the second richest person in America. With Oracle promising that "the deluge of papers and forms that can overwhelm even the most efficient Yale staff members will soon
become a thing of the past," the University signed a four-year agreement with the company, making Yale a test site for some of its newest database and financial systems. Project X was officially born.
issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar. An official statement of goals, in no particular order, was soon drafted, and would become nearly omnipresent in the Project X literature:
AN ARMY OF PROGRAMMI:!RS and consultants from Oracle and KPMG were called in to begin implementing the new system. Soon, it became clear that Project X would be a learning experience for both the doctors and the patient. By 1997, Oracle had already overseen complete system overhauls for businesses and governments around the world, but never for a university. New technology was to replace obsolete systems in any department or office that maintained its own payroll, purchasing, general accounting, financial planning, or grant funding-which is to say, every single office at Yale. The everyday tasks that once required eight separate forms sent to eight separate central departments would now be handled by a single web-based system. The old mainframe was to be completely replaced with rwo brand-new IBM servers, which could be accessed by 2,000 screens simultaneously over a new fiber-optic network. Beyond mere boldness, Yale could also claim credit for being a trendsetter, the first university to commit itself to such a massive undertaking. But being first counts more in some races than in others, and the distinction of being first with Project X was rather dubious. A month after the Corporation approved the project, Richard and Mullinix announced the new initiative, already going by the unofficial moniker " Project X," in a letter printed in the October 7-14
[I)mproving management and planning at all University levels; providing higher-quality administrative services to faculty, students, staff, alumni, donors and sponsors; improving revenues; and reducing risk through more reliable business support systems. Also in October, the Oracle people came in and set up temporary headquarters at 1 2 Prospect Place. Working with them to test the software were uo full-time workers from across the University-people from the Arts and Sciences faculty, Athletics, the School of Forestry, Yale College, and Animal Care. Over the next four months, team members would learn the software and then propose how it could be tailored to best meet Yale's needs. They developed product specifications and suggested design changes along the way. Meanwhile, Oracle planned Yale's future database systemprojected at 1.2 terabytes worth of code, or the equivalent of around 50 million volumes of the Encyc/op~dia Britannica. Once the pilot testing of the Oracle software was completed in March, Yale began the more arduous task of phasing out its existing systems while adjusting employees to the new ones. That same month, Project X sent out some 500 invitations to business managers, department heads, and other staff to take part in a training program advertised as "the most
PROJECT X COST OVER $100 MILLION-$33 MILLION IN 1998, WHEN THINGS WERE RUNNING SMOOTHLY, AND $70.5 MILLION IN 1999, WHEN THEY WERE NOT. THE NEW JouRNAL
YALE CONTINUED TO OFFER TRAINING PROGRAMS FOR SOFTWARE THAT DIDN'T YET EXIST. extensive ever offered by the University.: Sessions covering everything from software usage to " Preparing for Change" would help employees with the difficult learning process. T he handsome new office housing Project X on the nimh floor of a downtown building was equipped with itS own training room and a fleet of new computers for group sessions. A separate learning center, similarly appointed, soon went up at 220 Whitney. Suddenly, it seemed that not a day went by when Yale employees weren't being invited to avail themselves of focus groups, full-day workshops, business redesign workshops, management issues forums, hands-on training, implementation planning, in-depth briefing sessions, and telephone support. No topic was considered self-explanatory, and training sessions always restricted class sizes, of course, so as not to discourage the group from asking questions. The planners, it must be said, were certainly mindful of the people uncomfortable with Project X. Steve Sunderland, the Project manager, told the Bulktin ¡ & Cakndar (in the first of itS series of articles devoted to the subject} that he was "fully aware" that "for some people on campus who have become accustomed to doing their jobs the same way for many years, the modernization m ight make them anxious about bow the changes will affect them." Sunderland stressed that everyone--ronyone--would have the opportunity to be trained. "There's no doubt that such a major change can be scary," acknowledged Margaret Plympton, another director of Project X. For chat reason, she said, her team was working hard co make people feel
FEBRUARY
9¡
2001
ac ease about the transition, since, naturally, "we'll all be going through the changeover together." ONE BY ONE, Yale began to transform existing systems into "modernized" Oracle equivalentS. By the summer of 1998, Yale had successfully installed the first round of Oracle human resources (HR) and accounting applications. Already, it was becoming easy to see how Project X would change office life. Redundancy could now be replaced by simple, efficient automation. No longer would HR staffers spend their days photocopying and filing the 12,500 resumes that Yale receives each year; now they could simply be dropped into a scanner and filed electronicalJy. As Mullinix told Oracle's company publication, the baldly tid ed Profit magazine, "The principal idea is, 'Do it right; do it once."' But the Oracle transition team stood to learn something from the ethic propounded by Mullinix. It is difficult to gauge precisely how faithful Project X was to its self-imposed deadlines because those dares were changed many times and hardly any of them was actually met. Originally, Project X was to be completed in two phases-the first phase, largely clerical and technical in nature, in July 1998, and the second phase, largely administrative, in April 1999. In reality, the final launch was delayed three times because of, well, technical difficulties. As the April deadline approached, test after test uncovered new problems to solve. As April I became May 1 and then, just as quickly, July I, the Project architects went on the defensive. With uncommon prescience, Dean Plummer con trasted the modernization
process with an election: "It's not like an election when on a certain date you fmd out who won and that's the end of it," he told a Yak Daily News reporter. "It's more like a learning process where you sign up for a lesson and come out much, much smarter." Without a finished product to introduce to employees, Project X was forced to continue offering training programs for software that didn't yet exist. And the delay only served to aggravate further the hideous budget overrun that saw Project X go three times over itS original $30 million allocation. When the new Oracle software fmally went live o n July 6, 1999, no one really knew what ro expect. O n July 9, when the first batch of paychecks was printed, they got an idea. T he checks showed up at the wrong location. Such was the inauspicious opening, and more of the same was to come. Staff benefitS were calculated improperly; data entry errors, bugs, and glitches kept reappearing in the system. Employees, upon opening the web-based Oracle programs, seemed much less competent than the Project directors had hoped. Some employees complained that there was not eno ugh qualified technical staff around to help the less experienced, and some problems left even the technicians themselves scratching their heads. Almost nothing went well during the first year of Project X. Clerical and technical staff, in particular-the 2,800 predominantly middle-aged, female employees sitting at desb and keeping the University operating-were finding it difficult to learn programs they used only sporadicalJy.
11" ..
:
., This proved worrisome, because for the first time, all Yale offices and academic departments were to submit their budget proposals-formerly plotted on a simple Excel spreadsheet, or even handwritten with pen and paper-in the new Oracle format. In February 2000, officials announced that the University budget for fiscal year 2001 would not be completed until two months after its usual April submission deadline because of lingering Project X growing pains. Still, in hindsight it appears that Project X was far less painful than it could · have been. In March 2000, Ohio State and Cleveland State, which had chosen to work with Oracle's competitor, PeopleSoft, reported that their system upgrades were proceeding miserably. Ohio learned that its project, estimated at $53 million over. three years, would cost $90 million and take six years. Yale also had the satisfaction of trumping its neighbor in Cambridge. Like Yale, Harvard had begun planning a systems upgrade back in 1996, and even gave the effort a similarly bland name, Project ADAPT. Also like Yale, Harvard, working with Oracle, went far over budget, faced delays, and-perhaps believing that one Game a year wasn't enough-also settled on a July 1 deadline. But whereas the turnover at Yale is retrospectively deemed manageable, Harvard offices are still struggling with their transition to Oracle, and Project ADAPT is widely considered an embarrassment. IN DECEMBER 1999, with all the new systems finally in place, Mullinix told the YON that it would be difficult to calculate exactly how much Yale had spent on the Project: "The problem is that the Project is many projects and so it all depends on what you include in the cost estimate." Mullinix had a personal stake in Project X as one of its original planners, which may explain his weak explanation to the same reporter: "It's just such a mishmash of scuff that it is very hard to come up with a number." Officially, the matter was handled with
30
more decorum. In Yale's financial statement for fiscal year 1999, the figure given for all the training and technology was over $100 million-$33 million in 1998, when things were running smoothly, and $70.5 million in 1999, when they were not. A staggering amount of money-and yet, in these fat and plentiful economic days, only a fraction of the $1.24 billion Yale spent to keep the University running in 1999. One year later, in February 2001, a near-unanimous consensus deems Project X a success. Across the board, administrators say that, while they wouldn't want to revisit the early days of the Project, it has had a positive efkct on working life at Yale. Chuck Paul, Yale's Director of Total Compensation, says that Project X has empowered individual employees and rid the University of long trails of paper. According to Brian Tunney, Director of Labor Relations for the University, the transition co Project X has constituted a near non-issue for Yale's workforce. Tunney explains that Project X has not caused intimidation or lost jobs; rather, Yale now employs over 200 more full-time workers than it did prior to the Oracle overhaul. Of the University's upcoming contract renegotiations with Locals 34 and 35, Tunney added that Project X would almost certainly not be an issue. At the same time, some of Yale's workforce say they have yet to see the wonderful advances promised by Project X. Eighteen months after Oracle went live, some of Yale's clerical and technical workers are dissatisfied-a frivolous response, according to their higher-ups. The reasons behind their dissatisfaction extend back to the earliest announcements of Project X, but also, in a sense, to before such things as webbased financial accounting systems existed.
Historically, Yale's employees have been nothing if not class-conscious in their ret.· rionships with the University and ~ . other. Today (maybe more than ever) thett exists a palpable and long-stan'ding -~ separating the work interests of Yale's thr.te main labor pools. The groups usually refer to each other by abbreviations-management and professional (M&P), clerical and tecl\iaical (c&:T), and service 1:01 maintenance (s&M~ at all times main~~o"''a clear sense of where tbey stand, status-wise, relan'ft to the other two. ·
..
REsPONSES TO PROJECT
·.
..,
X
usually fall in one of nvo unevenly matched catftp$_,. On the one_hand there~ the articulate and c:oniident views of M&:PS irt :cl!. central businesS offtcb. · There is not much ~ thy on this side of d1t fence for people who persist in heli<!Villf Oracle programs are too difficult to 1~ and they may be right. Then again, th~ are people whose jobs handling finance and personnel matters were given new capabilities by the powerful Oracle software, ~ pie who use the Oracle software evcty-: day--or, more likely, who have ass~ who use it. To ask these people about n difficulties incurred by Project X, you will hear that while some old-fashioned ptopft were more cautious than others, .more- Qf less everyone has accepted it as 50\lbe~ that is here to sray. To press the point-~ ask if there isn't really someone who is fc!!l than thrilled by the change, you will hear a slightly less diplomatic opinion, wbJcl holds that some people, sadly, will alw.fs refuse to learn. It's difficult to find someone in c:be other camp who will rebut the M&:P poibt of view, at least on the record. Not ~ there aren't people who disagree--it's jmt that they have either retired ca.r:ly, .• • .... :.... ,·>,: .,
THE
Nsw JouRMA£
-..c wocking, but arc not at liberty to teU
1beir employers what they really think of - unttgements made for them. Just as $e Project's supporters can almost always t.e t6und in the more spacious offices of IIC&fs, the dissenters are inevitably middle~. ~male C&'TS who work in smaller !?~ and believe they are doing more "JJIIIrk. not less, since the new system
~
These are the pesky women who, to t.(OcP's dismay, still complain of having dift1el.llcy with the Oracle software. They ·-.ork in residential college master's offices, hl libraries, and in smaller academic 4cpanments, where on top of everyday qtrical tasks was suddenly placed the burden of learning a difficult and unwieldy Oncle system. These are the women-so 10t;s the complaint-who were never asked ahout Project X and never once asked for it; whe wen: told one day that other people were "n:engineering" their jobs, and that they ~uld have to get with the program. ncse are the women who answer phones and p rocess student payroll, keep track .of hiring .and maintain department budgets, lox whom life is still anything but paperie., and for whom Oracle's 30-digit procasi~ numbers are no simpler than the fotms they once had to fiU out. ' ~. "The pressure and frustration of learnil'l the systems and the programs when YG\J don't use them every day makes it very p.inful," said one master's assistant, who uld she eould only talk while the coUege ·dta(er was out of the office. "Sometimes just want to pick up the computer and dii'VW'• it through the window, it's so piin6,aL• She says that Project X has added iibre wks to her life without eliminating ~ ptc-Orade responsibilities. A friend of ~ says she knows people who have been ~ ·another person would always be ...:ely' to take over any work she found too tllicult, which of course is true. This Jtlen4 uys that any further comment she AIDibs about Project X has to be approved .)J 1he director of her office, who has asked "'- she refer all questions to him. A third
·1eu
Yale employee in the Benefits Office knows co-workers who have retired because of Project X and current employees who feel overly burdened by the new systems. She promises to ask if anyone would be interested in talking, then calls back a few days later and says all would rather not revisit the issue. NEARLY EVERYONE DIRECTLY involved prospered handsomely as a result of Project X. Oracle came away with millions and a successful partnership to advertise in wooing other universities. Yale installed one of the most sophisticated financial systems in the world and retrained its administrative workforce in the process, while reporting only minimal injuries. Individual actors prospered as well: Sunderland, the Project director, soon left Yale to work for Oracle; Daniel Updegrove, head of ITS during the Project, also left shortly after completion to head the much larger IT services department for the University ofTexas at Austin. Most successful was probably Mullinix, who took a position as Senior Vice President of Business and Finance of the California state university system, despite teUing Profit magaz.ine that he looked forward to using Oracle software to print out his Yale budget reports. But while Project X was a smash for the administration, it became merely 9 to 5 for the people in the offices--the ones who carry out the bold initiatives of the socalled new economy. The C&'T women's complaints would probably strike most M&Ps as idle, even willfully archaic. After all, no one but the most wistful Romantic really feels any sympathy for the Luddites, who smashed their bosses' weaving machines but live on today mainly as quaint relics of an older age. Today's working world, it seems, is unique in that the hammers can be ordered direcdy with Oracle Purchasing-only minutes before attending a session advising how to "Prepare for Change."
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31
I by Patrick Casey Pitts
~~cAMER.A NUMBER TWO, ZOOM IN and give me your twO shot. There you go. Can you get the frwt basket and the sign too? Great, I'll take that. Ready camera number rwo. Take camera number two." The two people I'd just trapped in the small black and white box on top of my camera appeared in full color on the television screens placed at either side of the stage. Unfortunately, the perfection of my framing was quickly interrupted by what seemed to be an on-screen earthquake. "What the fuck was that?" screamed the confused director. A glance at the base of my camera revealed that the sign-man ruffling through cue cards ("PSA" and "5 minutes" and "Smile!"} had delivered a blow to the base of my camera. It was my first mistake of the day, astonishing when one considered that I'd learned how to handle the mechanical beast less than 2.0 minutes ago. Apparently, Citizens Television truly does believe in public access: I'd entered a television studio for the first time in my life, and three hours later I was a part of the show. Mv INTEREST IN CITIZENS TELEVISION (CIV} STEMMED from a news blurb in the New Haven Advocat~. The local public access station had recendy finished the search for a new executive director. Instead
32
of hiring the candidate with ample experience who was anxious to return to New Haven, crv's board of directors had picked a lessexperienced candidate who was also the board's former president. The station was being sued by Ruben Abreu, Jr., a former executive direccor who claimed that he was unfairly pushed out of his job so that the same board president could take over his position. While similar power plays from New Haven's unscrupulous public servants no longer shock me, the motivations for this particular maneuver escaped me. Who in their right mind would stage such a calculated takeover for what seemed to be a humble position with an unimpressive salary at an unimportant organization? To get a better sense of what was happening at Citizens Television, I called a friend. I knew Zannerre Lewis as a program director for the Regional Cultural Plan for Greater New Haven, where I worked last summer. However, the astrological chart she'd done for me, and her explanation of an eclipse's significance for our workplace, revealed another side of her personality. To many area fans of the metaphysical, Zannette is known only as Z, the host of a crv show called "The 3rd Eye." I came to crv to watch a taping of her show, which occupied the important slot opposite "Dawson's
THE NEW JouRNAL
Creek" in crv 's lineup. What did CIV hope could steal viewers from Joey, Pacey, and Dawson? According to Z, her show is "a metaphysical talk show whose purpose is m give the public information about the relationship of energy and matcer as it relates to their journey m higher levels of existence." Z appears on Channel 27 discussing copies ranging from tai chi and yoga to astrological charts to Native American and Eastern divination. "[By watching the show,] you'll get an understanding of what you need to do to be highly evolved as a person or spirit on the planet," claims Z, who is quick ro argue that her show is not merely a circus act. "Initially, they just wanted me to come on and do readings, but I thought that the community needed to see people who are on their path to the third eye. I wanted to do the show at a higher level than that of a psychic fair." I entered the world of public access out of curiosity. Z, on the other hand, was recruited. "I was just finishing up a project at the Peabody and I had an opportunity to go -on TV and talk about the relationship between the environment and culture. CIV was losing its astrology show at the time and Ruben knew that I had also found astrologers for the Peabody, so he asked me to consider doing a show. They felt that this was an area that the community needed
FEBRUARY
9¡ 2001
info about, so they decided to ask me." Z claims her show is needed because much of crv's lineup consists of evangelical Christian programming. I had trouble accepting the idea that the best counterpoim to the programming of the irrational religious right was a "metaphysical talk show."
As I WANDERED AROUND THE STUDIO AND LISTENED TO THE small bits of conversation that drifted my way, it became apparent that not everyone there was motivated by Z's desire for free intellectual discourse. John, a fellow camera operator, was a friend of the director with nothing else to do that day. The sound recorder seemed concerned mainly with his own "fame," using the studio's headset system to explain his plans to usurp another show's anchorship. Z's guests mainly saw the show as an opportunity to advertise their services. Ruben himself, unable to talk about his own dismissal because of pending legal actions, admits that many involved in public access lack the high ideals of Z. Some, in fact, see the tiny sound stage as an arena for power. "When they're in charge of their TV show," Ruben said, "they rule."
33
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34
• B itsie Clark • Sarah England • Nicholas Jitkoff • Alex Setness • Nadia Sussman
Public access television struggles to meet the standards set by its commercial counterpart. The offices of crv were filled with cheap imitation and kitsch: fake plastic ferns, a portrait of jazz not-so-great Maynard Ferguson. This aesthetic extended to the set. The "ceiling" that would appear on TV consisted of nothing more than a two-by-four. I had to help the crew move a couch from crv 's reception area onto the set, thinking as I struggled to maintain my grip that Katie Couric and Matt Lauer probably had permanent seating. "The 3rd Eye" was produced by a team of unpaid v6lunteers and its d irector was also its producer, its graphic designer, its art director, and its promotio nal-refrigeratormagnet assembler. Just two and a half hours afrer the taping was scheduled to begin, everything was almost in place. However, a final problem needed to be solved. "Has anyone seen the intern?" the director asked in a harried voice. It seemed that the intern, who was supposed to run camera number two during the taping, had left the studio. And that left only one unoccupied person in the station: myself. I was pulled into the studio, given a thorough intrOduction to the camera- "This is the zoom. This is the focus. Don't llip this switch or the camera will f.ill to the ground and break into a number of smaiJ pieces"-and handed a headset. The taping began. RUNNING A CAMERA was much easier than I expected. The camera doesn't move if you don't want it to and the director was generally easy to please, so I didn't have much to worry about. This gave me time to consider the profoundly metaphysical significance of the production of which I was now a part. To Z, crv and al1 other forms of public access provide an opportunity for voices that are lacking in the mainstream media. "This is Citizens Television. Anyone who considers themselves a citizen of society should be able to get involved and produce a show .... They should have an alternative to everything that's on the major channels." Ruben shares this grandiose vision of public access, believing that "The 3rd Eye" and other public access shows pose a serious threat to the dominant forms of televi-
T H E NEW JouRNAL
THE
sion and the big media giants. "Public access is the only real line that people have to freedom of expression, freedom of contact with other people, freedom to utilize technology in a way that doesn't reflect a bottom line. It's 1V for the community b~ the community. Public access is a common ground for everyone, regardless of their ideas or beliefs. When a nation stops thinking critically about its experience, you're in trouble. If we don't have a p ublic access outlet, the critical thinking is zero. Critical thinking will make or break our country." Although Ruben, with 25 years of experience in public access, was an impassioned pitchman for these ideas, I was not convinced. Ironically, the success of public access is dependent on the very en tities that it condemns-the giant cable networks that carry its signals. The station where Ruben now works as operations manager, the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, is dependent for its financial existence upon AOL Tune Warner, one of the country's largest and most dominant media giants. While this may pose problems for a station's credibility, it did allow me to understand one of the pleasures of public access television: We were using the tools and fmancial resources of the cable companies to create something of which they would never dream. I don't believe that public access will change the world. Still, I found something seductive in the rhetoric used by Z and Ruben. The shows are created by volunteers and aired without concern for market share or advertising revenue, unlike anything in modern commercial television. The same · individuality that creates programming uninteresting to all but a select few also makes it unlike anything found on the commercial channels. II1IJ
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2001
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condition can draw one imo an altered world, create an obsessive interest in religion and philosophy, and bring about artistic effusions. But, the doctor assures her, there's good news: The growth that causes her seizures is in an excellent posicion for removal, and once it's dislodged, Sister John will be "as good as new." This promise of modern medicine is at best a mixed blessing for Sister John. She weighs two distressing options: She can have the growth removed and risk losing her divine visions; or she can forego surgery, knowing that her assurances of God's grace may be the mere symptoms of illness. She responds to the doctor's diagnosis with a simple and heartfelt plea, uttered in the intimate voice of prayer that permeates the novel: •Pkas~. God, tak~ anything. tak~
my lifo ... but don't tak~ Yours~lfaway.from m~. don't t~/1 m~ I hav~'t known Yc7u at alL ..
humane, yet simply human, story. Salzman, who considers himself an agnostic, handles Sister John's religious faith in such a tender way that one can't help but feel he is drawing on his own artistic experiences. Indeed, he considers the nature ofartistic genius in the novel: An article that the doctor gives Sister John to explain her condition speculates that Dostoevsky, Van Gogh, Tennyson, and Proust all suffered from temporal-lobe epilepsy. Sister John wonders, "If Dostoevsky had been given the option of treatment ... would he have taken it? Should he have?" Lying Awak~ also bears a striking connection to one of Salzman's earlier novels, Th~ Soloist. Written nearly ten years ago, the novel describes a cellist's struggle to achieve perfect pitch and is moderately autobiographical-an October article in Th~ N~ Yc7rker reported that Salzman entered Yale as a music majo~ bur gave
Tm NEW JouRNAL
THE
AGONY
AND
THE
8
Y
J FSS IC A 8
up the cello after he saw Yo-Yo Ma play and realized he would never share his passion for the instrument. Th~ SokJist begins: "This morning I read an article suggesting that Saint Theresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic noted for her ecstatic visions, suffered from a neurological disorder known to cause hallucinations." So, it appears, Salzman had been brooding over Sister John's dilemma long before he brought her character into being-his p rotagonist's spiritual crisis seems co bear an affinity not only co his own musical struggles but also to h is Literary struggles. Lying Awalt~ emerged from nearly six years of self-doubt, and Salz.nian completed the novel only after retreating to a writer's colony, where, as he cold Th~ N~ Yorker, "I was in a community of people who seemed dedicated to art almost like a sacred pursuit. And the irony was not lost on me chat I was now living essentially like a Carmelite nun." Perhaps this proximity of religious and artistic yearning underlies Salzman's ability to move even the most skeptical of readers. To be sure, Salzman periodically stumbles into cliches, especially when describing Sister John's visions; of one epiphany, he writes, "[e)very moment, every breath was poetry." And some of his descriptionsSister John f.illing "upward into brilliance," for example--are too strenuously lyric. Perhaps Salzman sh ould not have tried to express the inexpressible, for he does much bener with yearning than fulfillment, with doubt than with certainty. But these shortcomings do not significantly detract from his spare, elegant novel.
FEBRUARY
9· 2001
ECSTASY
L1 L 1\1 A N
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(·\llrl·d E. Knl..'pl. ~l~('(1 ). pp
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Salzman makes Sister John's character compelling and her struggle with faith poignant, nor sanctimonious. This balanced treatment of the story's protagonist finds a formal counterpart in Salzman's narrative style: H e intersperses a prose plot with poetic gestures of prayer, so char readers are ar once a part of Sister John's outside world and her innermost rhoughrs. The greatest achievements of Lying Awak~ are the humility and anemion co detail that animate the novel. Saltman writes about daily life in the monastery, rather chan focusing on extraordinary eventS. In fact, it is not the religious momentS, in any traditional sense, rhat are most touching, but rather the more mundane struggles of women who have chosen co give up "television, radios, newspapers, movies, fashion, [and) men" to commune with an impalpable God. Salzman writes that in "the spiritual life, individual success often came at the expense of community harmony," and rather than gloss over the human emotions and relationships of the sisters, he records both the secular and the deeply religious aspects of life at the monastery. For example, the sisters discuss breakfast juices with both religious conviction and personal preference, and they feel a mix of awe and en vy when Sister John achieves poetic fame. The everyday motions of the sisters convince readers not only of their faith, bur also their individuality. The~e are nor cookie-cuner nuns. Sister John's interactions wirh her doctor are also compelling, because Salzman sucessfully resists caricaturing either indi-
IS.:'
vidual. The doctor is nor a mere representative of secular moderniry, nor is Sister John a two-dimensional embodiment of piety. AJrhough they often speak to each ocher on seemingly separate planes of existence--her "Peace be with you, Doctor" receives an empty "Have a great day" in response-the smaller momentS of connection between them reveal Salzman's fine ch aracterization and the judiciousness of his novel. Near the end of the novel, the doctor turns to discard a pair of surgical scissors he has used only once, and Sister John asks if she can have it for the monastery. During her next visit, he gives her a box full of scissors. This moment could easily become sentimental and contrived, but the doctor's comment, "Now you and your Sisters won't have to fight over that other one," reflects both his professionalism and his nervous compassion. Ultimately, it is the daily life of the monastery and the sisters' interactions with the ourside world that impress the reader with genuine spirituality. And it is the poised balance Salzman maintains between faith and science throughout the novel that makes this meditation succeed in irs contemplation of two seemingly irreconcilable creeds.
J~ica Bulman, a junior in Berk~ky Co/kg~. is a managing ~ditor of TNJ.
37
'•
ENDNOTE
I
Dy THtlHnH JttkQIT
don't like doing it. But course packets are expensive these days. I tried getting money the old-fashioned - way, but a part-time job on top of everything else? Who needs the extra stress and who really has the time? No, I may not like it, but it's good, fast, honest money. My friends think I'm crazy and a little sick. I can't even tell my parents. But it doesn't matter what they all think anyway-it's my body, and I'll do with it as I please. So I just lie back, close my eyes, try to relax, and hope it doesn't hun too much. When those twenty-dollar bills get flipped into my hand, it all seems worthwhile. .. Everybody wants it, everybody needs it, but how fur would you go for an easy buck? What services would you be willing co provide? And are you an 18-28-year-old non-smoker available for a 45-minute perception test in exchange for eight dollars? I am, and I'll gladly do more than that. You can make a career out of being a science whore if you play your cards right. Sure, lots of people dabble in the small stuff: the periodic psych freebie, the five-dollar survey, maybe a tendollar dexterity test. You run into the occasional MRI that pays a cool $50, but most people keep it simple. There are, however, a few of us out there--the estrogen-injecting, electrically-shocked, drug-testing, egg-donating fewwho are willing 'tO risk permanent bodily harm in exchange for some hard cash. The more dangerous, the more scarring, the better the pay. It took 20 minutes to get there by bus. All the best gigs are usually some distance from campus. They like to call you in twice, the first time to size you up, test you, see if you are what they're looking for. You get $30 just for that. Then you come back a week later for the actual experiment. On my return visit, I was nervous, still f.Urly new to the business. I walked into the office, my palms sweating, smiling nervously. The man sitting inside seemed nice enough. I was lucky; you can run into some pretty creepy people at these things, but this guy was even kind of cute. I settled down to read the contract. I was there to test the "effects ofMGLUIUAGONIST (LY354740) vs. Placebo in the Fear Potentiated Startle Paradigm." I would be testing an anti-anxiety drug to see how it affected my reflexes and emotions. The experiment began with two large white pills, then two more an hour later. I was left in a cubicle to allow the drug to sink in. In the cubicle next to me a man was testing what I understood to be a controlled form of an otherwise-illicit substance. I spent the next two hours doing homework and listening to him mumble to himself. A doctor came in every half-hour to ask how he felt and if he heard the voices of God or the Devil. By the time I left, no divine beings had spoken to him, but he had apparently held a moving conversation with his left foot. Even after the drugs in my system had made me a bit dizzy and I had been assaulted by a nurse thirsty for eight tubes of blood, I remained f.Urly confident about the experiment ... until the administrator started taping wires to my face and wrist. She stuck rwo detectors just below my left eye co record my reflex response to electric shocks administered to the inside of my left wrist by two wires. I was guaranteed at least one and up to three shocks described by past subjects as "very unpleasant." The administrator assured me that it wouldn't be any worse than a shock from an electrical outlet. If this was meant to calm me, it didn't. All I could think about was the last time I was shocked by an electrical outlet-my arm tingled for two hours and it took another rwo to get the hair on my arms to lie flat again. Selling your body to science can be a scary business. You don't always know exactly what you're getting yourself into, and you can unwittingly get sucked into some pretty serious stuff. You draw the line--"That's as far as I'll go"-then you slowly cross it and redraw it over and over again. Before you know it, you're bald, numb, or going through temporary menopause at age 21. For LY354740 they subjected me to pregnancy tests for three months; it had been deemed a safe enough drug for me, but whether it could give gills to my unborn children is yet to be determined. You can't let things like that bother you too much, though. You survive on gut instinct. If a situation seems dangerous, you stay away from it. It's when you let them push you around that you can get into trouble. But if you don't mind shon bouts of discomfon and nausea, pee into this cup and initial pages 3-7. You'll be compensated upon completion of the experiment. Tatitzna ]itkoff, a sophomore in Calhoun College, is designer o/TNJ.
THE NEW JoURNAL
TETELMAN
FELLOWSHIP
Science in the New Millennium - 2001 Tercentennial Tete/man Lectures
February 14, 15, 16
Professor Robert Blandford Robert Blandford is the Richard Chase Tolman Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology
The Space Odyssey The capability to operate telescopes from space has brought about a revolution in our view of the universe. The Universe has consequently become a smaller and more intimate place, replete with exotic environments that stretch our imagination. February 14
The Master of Jonathan Edwards College invites you to attend the Tetelman Lecture
2001: The Space Odyssey 5: 15 pm Wednesday Davies Auditorium, Becton Center
February 15
The Master's Tea
A Conversation with Robert Blandford 4:00 pm Thursday The Master's House, 70 High Street
I• February 16
The Physics Club
New Horizons in Black Hole Astrophysics 4:00pm 57 Sloane Physics Lab Preceded at 3:30 by coffee, Sloane Lounge 3rd floor SPL
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