Volume 36 - Issue 2

Volwne 36, Nwnber 2

The magazine about Yale and New Haven

November 2003

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PUBLISHER (:-

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Michael Addison

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EDITOR-IN 7CHIEF

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Kathryn Malizia MANAGING EDITORS

jacob Blecher, Clinton Carroll .-;..

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DESIGNER

jessica Chang PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR •

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Paige Atkinson •

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AssociATE EDITORS :':?' .

Fkra Lichtman, Paige Austin RESEARCH DIRECTOR

AnaMufzoz CIRCULATION AND SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER

Ana Munoz "!!:::.

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Staff Romy Drucker • Maeve Herbert • Charlotte Howard

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Tom Isler • Coco Krumme • Adriane Quinlan April Rabkin

Mnnbm and Directors Emily Bazelon • Joshua Civin • Peter B. Cooper Tom Griggs • Brooks Kdley • Daniel Kurtz-Phelan Jennifer Pires • Henry Schwab • Elizabeth Sledge David Slifka • Fred Strebeigh • Thomas Strong John Swansburg

Advisors Richard Blow • Jay Carney • Richard Conniff Ruth Conniff • Elisha Cooper • Julia Presron Lauren Rabin • Sreven Weisman • Daniel Yergin

Frirods Steve Ballou • Anson M. Beard, Jr. • Blaire Bennett Edward B. Bennerr, Jr. • Edward B. Bennett III Paul S. Bennett • Richard Blow • Martha Branr Jay Carney • Daphne Chu • Josh Civin Jonathan M. Clark • Constance Clement • Elisha Cooper Peter B. Cooper • Andy Court • Masi Denison Albert J. Fox • Mrs. Howard Fox • David Freeman Geoffrey Fried • Sherwin Goldman • David Greenberg Tom Griggs • Stephen Hellman • Jane Kamensky Brooks Kelley • Roger Kirwood • Lewis E. Lehrman Jim Lowe • E. Nobles Lowe • Martha E. -.. eil Peter eill • Howard H. Newman • Sean O'Brien Julie Peters • Lewis and Joan Plan • Josh Plaut Julia Preston • Lauren Rabin • Fairfax C. Randal Stuart Rnhrer Arleen and Arthur Sager • Richard Shields W. Hampton Sides • l .isa Silverman Elizabeth and William Sledge Adina Proposco and David Sulsman • Thomas Srrong Elizabeth Tare • Daniel Yergin and Angela Stem Yergin

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916 w a ey • new

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THE NEw JouRNAL

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TheNewJournal

Volume 36, Number 2 November 2003

FEATURES

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Home Alone Can a modest welfare program put New Haven's broken families back together?

by Clinton C arroll

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Tune In, Turn Out How an unexpectedly contentious election made '\.%rd One matter.

by C harlotte Howard

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There Goes the Neighborhood Plant invaders pit a small Connecticut town against nature.

by Maeve Herbert

STANDARDS 4

Points of Departure

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Shots in the Dark: Fast Times by Emma Pollack-Ptlzntr

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The Critical Angle: Learning from the Masters by Adriltnt Quinlan

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Endnote: Taxicab ConfessionaJ by David Zax

Cover Photo by Lisa Gross THE Nnr )OUIU<AI. is publish«! fr.-. times during the academic year by THE NEW jOURNAl. ar Yale. Inc., P.O. Box }4)1 Yale $ration, New Haven, cr o6S10. Office ad~ 19-<4S Broadway. Phone (10J) 4)1· 19S7· Email: rnj@yale.tdu. All contenu copyrighr 100) by THt NEW )oullNAJ. ar Yale, Inc::. All Righu Reserved. Reproduction eitheT in whole or in pan withour wriuen permission of rhe publish<r and tdiror in chief •• prohibit«!. Whik this maguine is publithtd by Yale Conege srudents, Yale Universiry is nor responsible for its contenu. S...O thousand five huod~ copies of eaeh issue are distributtd free ro members ofrbe Yale and New Haven communiry. Subscriptions are available to those ourside the a rea. Rata: One year, s18. Two years. SJ1. Tm Ntw )OUllNAI. is p rint«! by Turley Publicarions, Palmer, MA; bookl<eeping ~billing services are providtd by Colman Bookl<eeping of New Haven. THJ! N .... )oullNAI. encouragesletten ro rhe tditor and commenrs on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, }4)1 Yale Station, ~ Haven, CT o6po. Alllenen for publicarion musr indude address and signarure. We reserve the righr ro tdir all letters for publication.

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Being and Nothingness

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ON THE CROWDED POSTER BOARDS around Yale's campus, one can almost always find a tacked-up flier that boasts the alluring benefits of yoga, meditation or Pilates.

Despite the current pop culture obsession with physio-soulful nourishment, Buddhism at Yale, a relatively new member of the Yale Religious Ministry, is more than a passing fad. With a permanent home in the Indigo Blue Center for Buddhist life at Yale, and a chaplain dedicated to the cause, Buddhism on campus promises to be more than a new millennium trend. For several years, Yale Buddhist Chaplain Bruce Blair, class of 1981, has been quietly. and lovingly sprinkling the seeds of Buddhism in 't he campus's rockiest areas these places that exist not . in the landscape, but in the mind. Blair seeks to alleviate the feelings of desperation, angst, fear, and anxiety that are familiar to so many Yale students. According to Blair, we have all tried at one time or another to deny these feelings rather than to cope with their reality.

Blair is trying to create a space for Yale students to explore and recapture their lost reality a space where people ~an contemplate "fitting into the myth," as Blair puts it, and perhaps attempt to understand life's difficul• ues.

According to Blair, Buddhism is a space in the modern sense of the word. In the feng shui of Yale, in which each organization and department form part of an academic and spiritual aesthetic, Buddhism sets out to be a "source of our strength that gives us the capacity to be who we are." It is about broadening our perspectives and eschewing religiosity or routine. It makes us ask the difficult questions: How are we supposed to feel? How do we relate to one another? Does it matter?

Blair cites the nation's contemplative mood in the aftermath of September II as the

source of Yalies' newfound interest in Buddhism. Many religious leaders thought students should have a place to go cope, grieve, and think in the long hours between 9pm and 3am. In typical Zen fashion, Bruce suggested that silence would be the most effective way of reaching out to students. The religious ministry agreed. "Most of the people who showed up who were most distraught were not those who had lost people in 9/n. It was people who had lost people but hadn't grieved until that time," Blair says. "9/n brought questions to mind that people had not taken the time to consider." These expressions of delayed grief were a ·precursor for "Silence, Candlelight, and Tea," a new daily observance between midnight and 2am in Battell ChapeL "It is a place where people can be alone with their questions," Blair says.

According to his philosophy, as our thoughts race faster than our feet and our ignitions turn to over-drive, sometimes we iose sight of the reason we are here. Buddhism asks us to be aware of our uniqueness. In silence, we can

actively listen to the things we are most likely to tune out and consider the why behind our particular existence.

This Zen movement is not only about going to meditation instruction on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Nor is it about stopping by Battell for tea and quiet during midterms (though both are highly recommended.) A dedication to Buddhism requires much more than observing for five minutes, however pleasant or beautiful.

These beginnings are easy, but the rewards of Buddhism do not ~orne so quickly.

Blair's work aims to create a lasting space on our campus, a bastion of scholarship and learning that is comfortable not having all the answers . .In Western culture, the word "empty" has acquired a negative connotation. If something is empty, it is in some way inferior. But in the Buddhist teaching, to empty oneself can be cleansing we finally hear the rhythmic clicking of your fingers on a keyboard, the icy scratch of a pencil on a notebook, the chiming bells of Harkness tower.

"We can very easily become our criticisms," Blair observes. "The Dharma teaches we need to work from a pla.ce of love not from a place of fear. We must learn how to truly honor , ourse1ves.

But for all Blair's instruction, he knows that Buddhism is not really meant to be verbalized. "The Dao that is spoken is not the real Dao," he laughs, aware of the paradox of discussing Buddhism as part of an .....article, or as anything outside of the internal sel£ But this article is neither posing as the Dao, nor as a mission. "It is absolutely necessary to speak of this in a way that's not confrontational," Bruce said concernedly. "It is about Truth, Tone, and Timeliness," he said. This applies to both Zen master and disciple, to those outside of.Zen, and even to this article.

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As I write, there is an exchange taking place about truth. But then the question arises: How do we communicate truth? Where do we listen for it? What language do we use?

These questions get at the very heart of why it is important to talk about Buddhism as a philosophy and as a University presence.

Whether in tea and silence, or in abstract musings, Buddhism at Yale may be able break the hectic cycles of college life.

-Romy Drucker

Beyond the Grave "My FRIEND PASSED AWAY this summer," a woman in the audience announced, brushing her hair back with her hand. "I was at my boyfriend's house, sleeping in the basemenc. I woke up and saw this black shape.

Then I saw a white light coming out from behind it.

It came out of this, like, white background." Her voice began to tremble. "The black shape looked like my friend. I think I saw my friend's ghost."

Lorraine Warren shook her head. "No, that's not possible," she said.

"She was drunk!" someone yelled.

Spectators guffawed and murmured. "What?" the woman mouthed, speechless.

"The figure of a human spirit would never be black," said Mrs. Warren. "Human spirits only appear as white."

Lorraine Warren, Connecticut's celebrity ghost hunter, had just finished a spectacular two-hour lecture before an audience of 1_,300 in an auditorium at Southern Connecticut

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State University. Warren's grandmotherly demeanor belies her extraordinary powers.

Bumping into her on the street, with her gray hair tied back in a bun, and clad in a black sweater speckled with large orange pumpkins, one would never imagine that she's one of America's preeminent experts on spirits and demonology and a co-founder of the New England Institute of Psychic Researchmembership $30.

One also may not have guessed that Mrs. Warren can see "light transcendent media," but she can. "She can see your health, your state of mind, before you even open your mouth," said Tony Spera, her colleague and sonin-law. "Gold and red, for instance, mean a lot," he added.

Warren does not appear to be particularly "clairaudial" or "clairvisual." But these sixth and seventh senses-the ability to see and hear supernatural phenomena-have propelled Mrs. Warrren and her husband through 55 lucrative years of www.warn:ns.net "supernatural investigation and management." The couple has dedicated their lives to battling goblins, sprites, and other "evil spirits who exist for the sheer purpose of opposing the works of God." Lorraine's husband, the equally famous Ed Warren, is a theological demonologist.

From his title, one might assume Warren worships the devil. Not so. ":We worship God," said Spera, "because if you worship God, God is more powerful than any demon."

Being on God's side, however, doesn't make demonology easy. Being born with super senses means you must work with demons who are not very good at following

directions. Demonology is a risky business.

"I've been punched, thrown across rooms, slashed. I've had burn marks across my body," Mr. Warren testified on a cas Halloween special. Lorraine added that in the most deadly haunted houses, knives have flown across the room. "Some places aren't worth saving," she shrugged.

The ghost-busting duo found each other more than half a century ago, while attending the same art school. In 1952., they founded the New England Society for Psychic Research, and since then they have witnessed 10,000 "hauntings and paranormal activity," or about four ghosts a week.

In the packed scsu auditorium, Mrs. Warren and Tony Spera showed slide afrer slide of indisputable hard evidence of the supernatural and taught the audience, mostly college students, how to interpret these photographs.

"I'll point her out--eyes, nose, ears, spirit aura, " Warren said with the authority of a college professor, as she flicked her red laser beam across the screen to focus on the image's key features.

"The woman you're going to see is a Satanist," said Spera gravely, before changing the slide. "See the monster in her hair?" At first the slide seemed only to depict a woman's hair, which had so much body she could have modeled for Vidal Sassoon, but if you stared hard enough you could just make out an angry, devilish face scaring right back.

Ghosts appear on ftlm even when the human retina doesn't pick them up, Mrs. Warren explained. "All they have to do is think of what they want to look like, and that is how they appear," she said. Some choose to appear as floating orbs of light, some as Pillsbury Doughboy-like creatures, and some ghosts, called "avenging spirits," feign large wingspans for their haunting affect. "Oh my

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cion, Lorraine explained, because the children had drowned 30 years before the picture was taken.

One of the clairaudial segments of the presentation was an audiotape of Ed Warren talking with a spirit named Fred in 1977·

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Ed: "Were you a Christian?"

Fred: [grumble, mutter} soldjah.

Ed: What did he say?

1 Other voice: He. said, "No, a soldier. ' Ed: Aren't soldiers Christian?

Fred: No answer. · Ed: Are you a Christian?

Fred: [ruff! ruff!]

Ed: What do you think of we Americans?

Do you like us?

Fred: [low growl] •

Ed and Lorraine have authored nine books including Deliver Us from Evz1, The

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God. That's fucking scary," said the woman behind me. Indeed.

"That's your typical Halloween ghost.

You see the appendages arms, legs, hands, and head. But when there's one ghost, there's always more than one." When spirits congregate with other ghosts to form a swirling tornado, they are called "ghost veils," and they suck the energy out of the ground, typically leaving a cold spot in a cemetery. "That energy is drawn from animal and plant life. That is what the spirit draws upon in order to project this image onto your ftlm."

But it takes an expert to identify them.

In one slide, what we thought was a ghost veil, with magnification, proved to be a column of dozens of faces of World War II veterans haunting a living room.

Sometimes, however, understanding spirits requires some historical background .

For instance, in one photograph of a seemingly ordinary window, Lorraine pointed to an image in the glass of two children in antebellum-style clothes. But this was not a reflec6

been the subject of two movies. Lorraine has continued the couple's educational lecture series at high schools and colleges across the country.

Ed and Lorraine's basement, now converted into a museum, harbors a collection of · "possessed artifacts." A Raggedy Andy doll, called Annibelle or the · "Devil's Doll," is responsible for the deaths and dismemberment of several who have dared to · mock it .

"He died that night; she never walked again," Lorraine lamented. Now Annibelle is safely encased behind glass. There's a Ouija board alongside a collection of Hindu and Buddha figurines, costume jewelry, playing cards, busts, and plastic skulls. One fan wrote on a Warren fan club website, "Many times I have stared into Annibelle's eyes, many times from just outside the glass. It is truly an experience you would never forget."

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-April Rabkin

School ofThought TucK F.D

IN FIVE FORMER OFFICES,

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of a fluorescent-lit hallway, above the Connecticut Mental Health Center, is the newest addition to the New Haven Public School system. New Haven Academy opened this fall, but just barely. The magnet school gained accreditation in June, only three months before the fall term, leaving little time to recruit students and teachers. The Academy organized its own admissions lottery for its first class of 65 from a pool of 250.

But those accepted won a dubious prize: admission to a school whose location had not yet been secured.

In late July, just a month before opening, the school's founders, the husband and wife team of Gregory Baldwin and Meredith Gavrin, secured a second-story office space off Nicoll Street. This last minute accomplishment came after six hard years of preparation. In 1998, the couple left their jobs at the Institute for Collaborative Education, a thriving magnet school in New York City, hoping to create a similar school in New Haven. When they arrived, they spent a year meeting with anyone in NHPS who seemed willing to provide a support system. When they finally opened, these connections proved invaluable.

New Haven Academy does not resemble the prototypical high school with spacious hallways and rows of lockers. No one chats in the cafeteria or loiters in the hall. Students are always several feet from their next class. The closest thing to a cafeteria is a vending machine, and the library consists of a cart of laptop computers. Currently, the school uses the East Rock Magnet School library for its weekly school-wide "town meeting," and they · hope to secure use of the gym as well.

Despite meager resources, Baldwin remains optimistic: The school's intimate space, he says, is actually conducive to his vision. The seven faculty members know all the students personally and because students are so physically close, no one can hide. "Two months ago I didn't know these 65 families that I now know really well," he said.

Baldwin's program brings to New Haven an amalgamation of present public education philosophies. For example, the Academy has embraced a program called "Facing History and Ourselves," which examines historical movements of oppression. The related moral choices discussed within the class will inform his students' everyday decisions, and promote their civic engagement. As a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools, the Academy aims to create small, racially diverse and intellectually challenging learning environments.

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The school has had success in creating a close-knit environment, where the entire faculty collaborates to monitor student progress.

Individual students are discussed at faculty meetings, allowing teachers from different subjects to comment on ways to help troubled students. One student at the school; once known for her disruptive behavior, has learned that this attitude is not acceptable at this school. The student now voices her opinions in class and has become a discussion leader, Baldwin said. Her accomplishments showcase the founder's primary goal: preparing students for college by teaching them to speak out, participate, and think on their own. Instead of rote memorization, students learn what questions to ask when they are studying and how to develop their own ideas and criticisms from the material they are • gtven.

But Baldwin does more than philosophize. He wears more hats and more latex gloves than most principals, who only interact with students through chance hallway confrontations. Along with being a teacher, secretary, and guidance counselo~, Baldwin also acts as a "hall monitor, custodian, and lunchroom supervisor." Baldwin and Gavrin knew life at a small school could be like this, and Baldwin cherishes the intimacy that allows him to develop a stronger, more casual relationship with students. The couple hopes to stay at New Haven Academy until they retire, and Baldwin imagines his school becoming a resource for the greater New Haven community. But this, he says, "is like a rookie saying what he will do when he gets really good." For now, Baldwin is busy handing out city bus tokens, and answering phones.

-Concha Mendoza

Peculiar Institution -

I FIRST ENTERED THE BACKROOM of the Eli Whitney Museum, it felt more like the North Pole at Christmas time than Connecticut. The walls were lined with bookshelves bearing toy soldiers and brightly painted wooden dolls. Giant model planes swung from the ceiling. I half-expected an elf to peep out from behind one of the piles of old-fashioned wooden board games on the counters. I was even greeted by a tall jolly man with white hair. Clearly, here was the master of this whimsical toyshop.

But behind this child's paradise was not

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Santa, but Bill Brown, the director of the Eli Whitney Museum. Unlike Santa, Brown · wears a prominent patch over his right eye, .and works in an office where employees' costumed dogs roam freely. Comfortable in an atmosphere as unorthodox as he is, Brown tends to the daily affairs of the museum and spins the history of one visionary to implement the ideas of another.

Eli Whitney, Yale class of 1792, may have been one of America's most innovative inventors, but his groundbreaking work was often used for sinister aims. Whitney designed guns, and most famously invented the cotton gin, the machine almost solely responsible for sustaining the institution of slavery in America. Despite Whitney's dubious legacy, Brown has found a way to promote his unique views on education by channeling Whitney's innate genius and passion as an inventor. ''I'm using Eli Whitney," Brown explains. "He did not read until he was twelve, he. was wonderful with his hands. His persona gave me an excuse to institute this kind of program which I am sure I would . have just done somewhere else." · Brown's liberal view of Whitney has inspired a broad repertoire of classes for Connecticut kids. The museum organizes workshops ranging from a doll-making course for three, four, and five-year-olds, to instructions on building model airplanes and race cars for older students. He has developed an extensive selection of projects for preschoolers to high school students, all focusing on kinetic learning, a type of instruction not normally present in the classroom. Brown, originally trained as a clinical sociologist, claims that "15-20 percent of the population is not suited for learning in the classroom." The museum advertises these projects as a "return to the basics." They are modeled after the type of experiments done

by Da Vinci, Newton, the Wright Brothers, and, of course, Whitney. All focus on solving problems by working with your hands.

Brown also attempts to incorporate history into his projects. In one course, students build toy soldiers, which they use to reenact wars. Recently, Brown worked with a school group to build and reenact Alexander the Great's campaign across Persia. "You might think it odd since I'm a Quaker that I would want to do projects reenacting war, but I have observed that if you learn the history of battles, you also learn how worthless they are and how much you don't want to have them," Brown said, extending this message into a warning: "Some modern leaders should real-

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In Issue 36.1 (October 2003), Luis Velazquez and Angela Aponte were misidentified in a photo as Mr. and Mrs. Jorge Rivera.

We apologize for the error. .

ize that nobody ever conquered Persia successfully." Ironically, the very site where these pacifist lessons are now being taught was once the factory for Winchester Repeating Arms Company, the largest firearms manufacturer in the United States.

Brown looks for students in these group activities that especially excel at hands-on projects. It is these children that are invited back to work for the museum as members of the apprenticeship program. The program employs up to 75 high school students who spend from 50 to 500 hours a year developing building challenges for younger students~ ·. helping to run the museum and working on inventions of their own. "I have learned that people who often struggle in the classroom paradoxically have the gift that makes them great car builders," Brown explained. Many of these apprentices have gone on to excel in the design field or in computers, and one even participates in model airplane competitions on a national team.

Besides helping students, . the schoolwide projects also give the museum workers an opportunity to observe students in a laboratory-like setting. Bill Brown spends time observing the basic behavioral patterns of the students he teaches, and has developed a wide array of sociological theories. For example, one project asks a group of female elementary students to build a castle from materials of their choice. Brown has noticed that although girls often build a "womb structure," which is what psychologists predict, they also at times build a "phallic structure," a form more often chosen by boys. .

"These programs are for the people that don't necessarily go to school or finish college," Brown says. "It's hard to be the one who does the. exploring," he said, referring to dropouts. Brown claims that this is not only because families don't approve, but also because society itself, in its very nature, is against them. "It is much easier to go Yale, which makes your mother happy, as opposed to doing something else," Brown said brusquely.

Although Bill Brown has a refreshingly non-academic vision of learning, it is also a romantic one. He seems to be using the legacy of a man whose life was in many ways diametrically· opposed to the values he is trying to teach the children who go through his museum. The museum's guidebook reports that the museum is contemplating changing its name to the Whitney Workshop. Perhaps it would be more accurate to drop Whitney from the title altogether.

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-Jocelyn Courtney

Doctor Strangelove . UNSATISFIED AND DESPERATE, I decided to seek professional help. I needed a watering hole in the emotional tundra that was my life. So I arranged to meet with radio talk-show host, New Haven Advocate advice columnist, and self-proclaimed "Love Queen," Dr. Linda Olsen. As I waited inside the Chapel Street Starbucks, my imagination ran wild about the woman behind the crown, a woman whose love life I could only begin to imagine in my wildest dreams, a woman who in a deep, smoky voice shared her hard-earned boudoir knowledge with America's emotionally needy. I heard "Love Queen" and thought "Queen of the Night." Dr. Linda, however, did not have copious amounts of cheap plastic jewelry, dangling bra straps, or an alias of "Madame Chloe." The stylishly coiffed blonde I met that sunny afternoon in Starbucks screamed Greenwich, not Greenwich Village. Clad in a cream-colored dress-suit and multi-carat cut diamond earrings, Dr. Linda looked sort of normal.

I only knew· Dr. Linda from her weekly column in the Advocate, but I soon learned that she is much more than a sex advice columnist.

A clinical psychologist with a doctorate from Emory University, as well as a trained therapist, she preaches to the lovelorn across Connecticut as the host of the radio call-in show "America's Love Doctor." But she is far from satisfied. Dr. Linda won't settle for anything less than the summit of her field: "You know how Martha Stewart is the 'Home Queen'? I want to be the 'Love Queen,"' she declared. I was excited by the prospect of being coached by a trained expert someone who has honed the art of "partner selection" down to a science. I believed I was in good hands.

We sat down at a cozy table near the window, and the doctor began to decipher the mysterious code that is love. "You have to understand the basics of partner selection," she leaned in to tell me. "People, particularly teens, just don't understand. You have to ask yourself, 'Who am I? What do I want? What do I want in a partner?' If you don't know what you want or what you are, you can't give much to a relationship." I think I know the answers to those questions, but what if my 'Mr. Right' has already passed me by? "There is definitely no such thing as just one soul mate," Dr. Linda reassured me, "but rather three or four that you'll meet in your lifetime."

I sat fascinated as Dr. Linda continued to reveal her teachings. She is a proponent of the '

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theoretically-based and "clinically-tested" "Imago Theory" of partner selection, which claims that each person possesses an inner "Imago." According to Dr. Linda's website lovedoctor. com, "Your Imago" is the image carried in your mind of that 'perfect partner' who can make you feel complete. The Imago forms during childhood and draws on a combination of the positive and negative traits of the people who raise you. In essence, each of us will be irresistibly drawn to three or four "perfect" mates during our life-mates who will all share defining traits with our parents. These select few are our "Imago matches." These matches are supposed to be able to complete the unfinished business of our childhood. "You're finding the lost part of yourself," Dr. Linda explained.

I had never thought that I might not be "whole." The idea of love as a scavenger hunt for self completion terrified me. I needed to be convinced that fulfillment was indeed possible.

For Dr. Linda, her own romantic experience is proof enough: "I followed my high school sweetheart to college," she told me. "I didn't have a due about partner selection. I eventually decided he wasn't intelligent enough for me ... that's why I left the relationship." Now happily married and the mother of three young boys, Dr. Linda believes Imago worked for her.

"Don't settle," she advises, "What attracts you [now) will irritate the crap out of you later."

Soon Dr. Linda will be doling out more than mere advice. She is currently managing the release of her product line, "The True Love Collection," set to hit stores this Valentine's Day. The "Collection" will include everything a couple needs to keep the flame alive, including the "True Love Journal, the "Gourmet Chocolate Lovebite," and the "Journey to Love" musical CD which articulates in song the Imago Theory stages of love.

At this point, my doubts mounted about having a love counselor at all. As reassuring as this packaged advice sounded, I found myself Starting to feel repelled by the prospect of a trademarked path to love. After all, shouldn't I be learning these love lessons on my own? Love therapy and counseling is popular these days, and Dr. Linda is just one of many catering to a lovesick American public. Her radio show was rtcendy syndicated and her book will soon hit shelves everywhere. Imago Theory could become a national phenomenon. Dr. Linda's advice has the potential to help people all over the nation, but on at least one issue in life, this londy romantic is a conservative. For matters of the heart, Frank Sinatra is still the only Love Doctor I need.

-Pau Hamilton NoVEMBER 2003

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SEPTEMBER 26, 1998, 15-year-old Tabatha Brendle hung herself by the old administration. With this shift in policy came new probin her bedroom at the Long Lane School, a now defunct juvenile lems. Workers were now hyper-vigilant and, fearing the consequences facility for violent teens in Middletown, Connecticut. Before her of new beatings o:r additional suicides, began to yank children out of stay at. Long Lane, Brendle had endured years of physiCal and sexual their homes at the slightest signs of parental indiscretion. abuse at home. The state was never able to intervene. Brendle's suicide Once removed from their homes, though, many children were revealed a disturbing trend: Unlike in the I960S and I970S., when most - victims of further abuse. These ·children molested, beaten, starved, children in need of protective serVices were orphans or children of terand neglected req~ired medical and psychiatric attention that DCF could no·t always provide. Consequently, some of Connecticut's most minally ill parents, today children like Breridle are more often victims of unspeakable acts of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. · difficult children were being placed in some of the state's most inexperienced foster homes, with parents green to the very idea of foster care, Today, horror stories of children under state care appear in news- · let alone the notion of ~aring for special-needs children. Five years ago, papers all the time. The Connecticut system is no exception. In faced with a pending class action lawsuit, a handful of tragedies, and September 1994, a 19-month-old Waterbury girl named Tazjin Jones, endless criticism from the press, DCF initiated a bold project, the whose family was under the watch of the Department of Children and Supportive Housing for Families Program (sHF), which promised conFamilies (ocF), was beaten to death by her mother's boyfriend. On structive change and maybe even a solution. · March 13, 1995, a 9-momh-old Emily Hernandez, died under similar Two weeks ago SHF was presented with the Touch of Life Award by circumstances. In 1999, five children were removed from the care of the United Way of Greater New Haven. The award was a sign that their Manchester foster parents after one of them, a 4-year-old girl, was DCF's reputation is on the mend. Yet this reputation hangs in a delicate allegedly burned with cigarettes and forced to eat her own excrement. . balance, as one of DCF's biggest threats is also one ,of the hardest to In fiscal year 2003 there were 95,214 allegations of child endanger. gauge. Betsy Cronin, Program Director for SHF, points out that one of ment statewide, 20,322 of which were substantiated by DCF. .Of these the biggest problems facing DCF in 2003 is .the difficulty of reunifYing 20,322 unlucky children, 1.437 were physically abused, . 4,528 were "emotionally. neglected, 12,053 were physically neglected," and 573 reformed parents with their children. were sexually abused. In New Haven alone, 1,387 cases of child endanWhen parents go to jail or check into drug treatment centers, they . germent were subst;mtiated in 2003. In the mid 1990s, responding to give up everything property, possessions, and . their children. Once rehabilitated, parents can regain custody only if they find adequate similar statistics and to the shocking deaths of Jones and Hernandez, housing. But the housing market in Connecticut is expensive and DCF changed its philosophy. Whereas the agency had once pushed for options are limited. The farther one ventures from New Haven, where family preservation at all costs, it now began to place the well-being of drugs and crime routinely tear families apart, the more one has to pay. its children above family, stability, and community all things lauded N

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The result is a disheartening cacch-22 in which parents who wane co reconnect with their children are prevented from doing so by the turbulent past they are trying to leave behind. They cannot take charge of their new lives, since rene everywhere--shore of the most ravaged neighborhoods in Connecticut's worse cities-is high, and landlords are unwilling co accommodate crack addicts, prostitutes, and criminals looking to launch their American Dream. Without a stable home to return to, their children are left to the whims of a crude foster care system.

ORMA HAS LONG BLACK HAIR. SLEEPY EYES, and a smile that oscillates berween guarded, nervous, and friendly. We chat at a table in the middle of an old ballroom at the SHF office in New Haven.

Her story is fragmented, her words alternately convoluted and familiar, melting together into a classic story of mental illness, urban poverty, and loss. SHF officials, the champions of the nuclear family, sit on either side of us, watching as I ask Norma about drugs, lost children, and pain. Upon first impression Norma does not seem to be a member of a functional family. She has one 16-month-old son, a teenage daughter who lives with Norma's adoptive dad, and a 7-year-old who has lived with his paternal grandmother since he was four months old.

Her family seems markedly dysfunctional, yet many mornings SHF delivers the paper to her little country apartment, gives her rides, helps her with errands, and dispenses neighborly advice. Her life is remarkably normal.

As a child, Norma was given up for adoption after her mother was deemed

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unstable. She hated her new parents, especially her adoptive father.

When she was 13 years old, she ran away to New Haven, where she knew her mother resided. Norma spent three rain-soaked nights looking for her house, asking strangers whether they knew her. Eventually she found someone who directed her to a house on a street that no 13year-old had any business visiting. She rang the doorbell, scared, excited, full of hatred, love, and confusion, and was greeted by the woman who had given her up years earlier. After Norma introduced herself, the woman cold her co leave and never come back.

Norma started doing drugs when she was 15. She would gee high during the day because doing it at night was coo scary and too emotional. Soon she got pregnane and gave birch co a daughter whom she immediately turned over to her adoptive father. Her drug abuse spiraled out of control, and after having three more children, rwo of whom the state permanently removed from her care, she ended up in jail. After being released she faced che possibility of seven more years in prison. She was a physical and emotional mess, but somehow, she started co improve. She sobered up, gave birth co a fifth child, a baby boy, and got involved with SHF through The Connection, a comprehensive community organization established in 1972,

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"in response to the devastation being wrought on families as a result of addiction, crime, abuse, and neglect."

SHF has a strategy for dealing with people like Norma. For recovering addicts or child abusers, the biggest barrier to good parenting, aside from mental problems, is affordable and safe housing. SHF is first and foremost an advocacy group which specializes in finding suitable housing for its clientele. Since landlords do not readily hand over property to the type of people in need of state intervention, SHF forms its own relationships with local landlords. According to Cronin, SHF is in good standing with over 50 landlords in New Haven alone. The organization also employs two full-time housing coordinators who inspect tenements, ensuring cleanliness and livability. Once housing is found, SHF leaves it up to the state to help parents cover rent.

Many SHF clients qualify for a state voucher that reduces their rent to a flat rate of 30 to 40 percent of their income. Parents who would otherwise need to work three or four jobs can now work only one, and still have money for groceries, clothing, transportation, and school supplies.

SHF understands the danger in giving former addicts disposable income in neighborhoods where drugs are readily available. But they also know that placing addicts in neighborhoods where drugs are not prevalent is expensive. Part of SHF's task is to strike a compromise, to fmd a place far enough from urban centers to be safe, and close enough to urban centers to be affordable.

Good geography, however, is not enough to reunite struggling parents and fragile children. The final task SHF officials face is rehabilitation. In conjunction with DCF caseworkers, SHF develops a battery of wrap-around services for its clients, including counseling, vocational training, transportations, help with ettands, and general support. As Cronin noted, some families are so far in debt that they cannot even turn on the electricity in their new homes. Solving such problems is SHF's specialty.

N ITS INITIAL PLANNING OF SHF, the Department of Children and Families rejected the idea of building new housing projects, knowing full well that an entire ten-

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DCF also rejected the idea of expanding Connecticut's transitional housing system.

The system, as officials saw it, was good for certain types of people--the loner looking to be reintegrated into society, the juvenile offender-but was inappropriate for families who needed to rebuild stable households.

Once released from transitional care, parents

these families would be admitted to the housing program.

To date, the number of people SHF has helped does not even approach the number of Connecticut children neglected in 2003.

Even so, SHF thinks it has discovered a tentative, albeit counterintuitive solution to Connecticut's problem: Give kids back to their neglectful or once abusive parents to reestablish a traditional family, but pair these reunified families with caring individuals who are not overworked social workers, but professionals whose sole task is to ensure day-today existence. Give SHF administrators a litde money, stick them under an established umbrella organization, and pray for change.

ORMA NOW LIVES IN THE COUNTRY, away from New Haven and five miles from the nearest bus stop. If she wanted to get high these days, she would have to carry her 16-month-old boy over an hour to the bus, scrounge up enough money for the fare and for drugs, and then somehow get back home. This is too much for Norma.

She spends most of her days bored and alone, save for her son.

Norma's situation reveals the limitations of the program that has tried so hard to save her. Four of Norma's five children are gone, either living with relatives or lost to foster care, and she still must wrestle with mental illness and unemployment. She now has small support networks.

SHF drops in and helps her out when needed. She has reconciled with her adoptive father, and visits her oldest daughter on a semi-regular basis. "Our relationship is more sister-sister or friend-friend," she explains. She refuses to take credit for her daughter's upbringing, in which she played no part, giving full credit to her adoptive father. She has also recently started speaking with her real mother, the same woman who coldly rejected her as a girl.

But this long-awaired reconciliation was almost Norma's undoing. When she revisited the house, Norma found her mother a different woman, softened by encroaching senility.

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still might not make enough money to provide housing, and their children would inevitably return to state custody.

DCF finally decided on a "scattered site model" that had worked in other states.

They gave this scattered site program a name and a budget, and erected it so that a family could develop a plan-of-action with DCF caseworkers. If they followed this plan, exhibited good faith, and filled out an application,

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She also found the house a mess. People were getting high upstairs, and Norma craved drugs more than she had in a year. But for some reason, possibly the thought of her son back home, she did not get high that day.

Instead she chatted with the woman she had once hated in the middle of a city she desperately wanted to forget. · She continues to return there week after week, her craving more muted upon each return.

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But nothing can change the fact that she has lost four of her children. In this system, there are no fairytale endings.

And for every innovative program like SHF initiated by the DCF, there is still an overburdened social worker, a forgotten child or an overlooked family.

Maybe the Connecticut child welfare system is as good as dead. Maybe foster care is a doomed concept.

But then again, through programs like SHF and programs yet unseen, the system has a fighting chance just as Norma did standing on a porch, decades ago, three days sleepless, pleading with a woman who said she would never accept her.

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Clinton Carroll, a senior in Branford College, is Managing Editor for TNJ. NOVEMBER 2003

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UST AFTER EIGHT PM on November 4, a group of students packed into a back room of Yale's Dwight Hall to hear the outcome of the Ward One aldermanic race.

Some students had worked on a campaign, some were political activists, some were reporters, and a precious few were there just because. They stood in hushed reverence as a middle-aged man disappeared behind the booths. In the tense silence his disembodied voice read out the tallies.

On that Tuesday in November, voters in Ward One elected incumbent Ben Healey to represent them on the New Haven Board of Aldermen. But this race didn't merely secure Healey's position on the board, it exalted the Ward One seat itsel£ Though Healey de~at­ ed his opponent Dan Kruger by a three to one margin, this election remained the ward's most contested battle in over fifteen years.

The two candidates raised approximately eight times the funding of the 2ooi Ward One aldermanic candidates. All kinds of New Haveners local politicians, labor organizers, Yale students~ faculty and administrators:took sides and backed their cho"sen candidate.

Calhoun College Master William Sledge not only contributed to Kruger's campaign fmancially, but tried to rally support by singing Kruger's . praises in the Yale Daily News, endorsing him on campaign flyers that saturated almost every bathroom in his college, and even hosting a reception for him. Mayor John D. DeStefano, Jr. helped Healey reach constituents in a still more vocal way, belting

out his support from the steps of Dwight Hall. Devotees on both sides barked at each other in organized public debates, on the radio, and across the op-ed pages of the campus papers. Websites were created, banners hung, "Vote Ben" shirts donned, "Dan for Alderman" pens distributed, and posters, stickers, and buttons were stuck to every available surface. In an historically inactive ward, constituents were finally invested in the outcome of this race. All of a sudden, the Ward One seat seemed to matter. ~..,

ALDERMAN FROM WARD ONE has always played a unique role in articulating town-gown relations. Bounded

by Temple, Park, Wall, and Crown Streets, Ward One contains eight residential colleges, which means 85 percent of its constituents are students. Elected by undergraduates to represent student interests in City Hall, the alderman is the most visible connection between Yale College and New Haven. Any ward's alderman can shape city politics by backing new legislation and serving on town committees, but the layout of the fust district gives its alderman a unique _position on the board. Michael Morand (SY'87, DN'93) a two-term Ward One Alderman, knows this position well. Elected in 1989 and 1991, Morand remains entrenched in New Haven politics as Associate Vice President of the Yale Office of New Haven and State Affairs. "The first ward alderperson," he said recently, "tends

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not to have as many constituent service issues, potholes, streetlights, sidewalks, as other · alderpeople have, so the first ward alderperson has more time to work on other issues;what those issues are generally reflect the particular times and personalities involved."

The particular time and personalities of the Healey-Kruger race defined the nature of the Ward One position more concretely than has any race since students first vied for the seat. With the administration's ink on contracts for Locals 34 and 35 barely dry, and students' memories of crossing or joining picket lines still fresh, questions about Yale-New Haven relations echoed in the campus's gothic • arches. This resonance coincided with an aldermanic race that focused on ideological differences.

In past aldermanic races, Democratic candidates could rely on Yale's liberal tilt to slide their Republican opponents off the boards. This race was unique • because Kruger ran as an independent and made it clear from the beginning that he largely shared Healey's democratic objectives. "I agree with the basic · agenda," he explained during the campaign, "It's the way that we should go. about doing it that. should give us some pause for · thought." Kruger criticized Healey for promoting an "adversarial" relationship with the University and representing "special interests" namely those of the unions, rather than what he perceived to be student interests. Whether students chose Healey or Kruger, t~1erefore, would be a testament to the way they defined their own involvement in the city, and the means by which they sought to change it. '

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by the buzz surrounding the race than Kruger himsel£ A buoyant figure with yellow hair and a tendency to turn beet red whenever he gets nervous, Kruger is alternately a seasoned politico and an eager boy scout. Sipping his lemonade at Atticus Cafe five days before the election, he grinned with boyish optimism. "I didn't think this would be as big an issue for the average undergraduate as it seems to be. I'm excited and somewhat surprised and heartened." Kruger quickly denied the suggestion that he was aligned with the administration, or that his candidacy was just a "knee-jerk reaction" to Healey's affiliation with the unions. So why did he 18 ONE WAS MORE SURPRISED

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City Hall there was a picket line, which I run? Well, there is the issue of poor commuactually think is kind of humorous in retronication. During his sophomore year, Kruger spect. There were Yale managers and adminwas appalled to learn he had been redistricted istrators picketing, and Master Sledge was out ofWard One without being informed by one of the ones walking around in a suit and his alderman (he has since moved back into tie with a sign." Kruger and Sledge met more the ward). Then there is a Lakeville, formally a few days later, and Kruger's resume Connecticut native's love for his home state. ''I'm a big fan of Connecticut," he told a and his vision for New Haven convinced the group of students during his campaign. ''I .. Master that Dan Kruger was exactly what New Haven's renegade board needed. grew up in Connecticut ... We're part of a great tradition going back to 1636." Kruger .. . After the City Hall rally, Kruger attend. ed a reception at the Yale Office of New has grown to be a big fan of New Haven as Haven and State Affairs protesting the amendment to repeal Yale's tax exemption. Kruger claims that he did not use the reception to promote his candidacy publicly, but, he concedes, "Some of the Yale • people, the Yale managers, had heard about my campaign, so they • • • were saying things to me." Claudia Merson, the Office's Public School • • Administrator, and Reginald Solomon, the office's Program Director, each privately contributed to Kruger's campaign.

Faculty and administrators took Kruger's candidacy seriously from its beginning. Healey, on the • other hand, seemed befuddled by Kruger's challenge. On July 24, he sent Kruger an email informally . le d , "a ch at.il" : tlt • '

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well. His first connection to the city was tinged with a sort of religious fascination. As a child, he explained, he'd seen pictures of New Haven, and thought it "looked like a · New Jerusalem." But Kruger was quick to play down any characterization of himself as the city's newest savior. "This isn't about my person~ political aspirations or what I want to do and what not. This is just something I've wanted to do this semester ... I felt I could, because of the way academics worked out and I was able to take time off from having a job. It's been good fun."

But if this race was good fun, it was also a lot of work. Though Kruger denies any official alignment with the university, he hints at an informal afftliation. July 7, 2003, was an important day for his campaign. On that midsummer morning, Kruger announced his candidacy by distributing a mass email and launching a campaign website. He also went to City Hall to protest the Naclerio Amendment, a resolution supported by Healey that challenged Yale's tax exemption on its for-profit ventures. "When I went to

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Kruger's response the next day gave a vague, if genuine, explanation for his campaign. ·.·.My motivations for running- are basic, but not specifically just about Yale or beyond Yale. I've been involved in New Haven since I moved here, and I've been committed to service for my state since I was very young. Connecticut has always been and will always be my home, and I feel a responsibility to give back to our community by helping to build a stronger future ....

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Hey Dan, Would you care to meet for coffee next Wednesday at 5 at Book Trader to chat for a bit? I saw your website, but I feel we are friends and am curious about your motivations for running beyond Yale stuff. It's up to you.

Best, Ben.

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As it happened, Kruger and Healey never met for coffee (Kruger was headed out of town to do research for his senior essay), and these emails were the only private interaction between the candidates during the course of the campaign. When school began, Kruger's campaign was already well underway and Healey found himself in unfamiliar territo• • ry a competitive race. on the Board of Aldermen for two and a half years, Healey had never had to organize a real campaign. As a freshman, he was handpicked

by Mayor DeStefano's staff to replace Alderman Julio Gonzalez (CC '99), who was leaving his seat to become the mayor's campaign manager in the 2001 election. When Healey ran for the Board the following fall, he faced no opponent. But even though Healey has never needed to prove himself in a campaign, he nonetheless dedicated his resources to his job and spent time molding the seat to his agenda. In his time on the Board, Healey has frequently criticized the nature of Yale's involvement in New Haven, and concentrated on issues reaching far beyond the Yale campus. This broad focus demonstrates a new path for the Ward One Alderman, and has engendered respect and dismay alike across the city. Gonzalez himself, now the Mayor's Executive Assistant, has only praise for Healey. "The platform I had [as alderman] was much less focused on the Yale relationship to the city... [Healey] works on issues that are relevant to the community . real issues that people care about, " Gonzalez said. __ But Sledge recounts a far different history. He sees Healey's agenda as "narrow and relatively unimaginative," and refers longingly to the days of Gonzalez's predecessor, Josh Civin (CC'96), who combined a general dedication to the city with what Sledge calls "very specific student oriented issues."

When Kruger announced his candidacy, Healey was waist-deep in his work for New Haven. He was struggling to promote the Naclerio Amendment, domestic partnership, new urban environmental policies, and clean elections. He was supporting Locals 34 and 35, organizing the Immigrant Worker's Freedom Ride, and working with the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, pushing urban families to organize into a coalition of working people. A soft-spoken, twenty-one year old whose mild manners and easy smile belie his hard line politics, Healey was busy as usual. Now, for the first time in his young political career, he would have to

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The New ournal would like to thank: Daniel Gusman ohn Swansburg Al Powers

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defend his platform against an opponent. He adopted "Students First" as his campaign slogan. When asked why, Healey shrugged his shoulders. "Michael Montano (TD' 03) [a DeStefano campaign staffer] suggested it. He knew that's what I'd be criticized for."

Kruger and Healey's first public confrontation was a debate organized by the Yale College Democrats in early September.

Kruger thought Healey didn't take the event seriously. "It was pretty clear that he felt this [race] was just a fun thing .... He didn't speak well. He would say, 'This is our city, riiight?' and 'We need to take ownership; riiight?' You know how people do that when they speak? I felt like it was a high school debate." But if Healey began his campaign lightly, he soon rose to Kruger's challenge. And as the campaign heated up in September, both candidates began raising funds in earnest. Though Kruger had denied Healey's suggestion that "Yale stuff" was all that divided their platforms, the tension between the University and the unions largely drove the support for each campaign. While Kruger accepted ·contributions from Sledge and administrators at Yale's Office of New Haven and State Affairs, Healey received donations from organizers of · the New England Health Care Workers, the Communication Workers of America, and the Connecticut Center for a New Economy.

In the Yale Daily News, a letter by James Kirchick (PC' o6) denounced Healey's affiliation with union leader Bobby Proto by declaring, ''A Vote for Healey is a Vote for Proto." In a second debate, this time sponsored by the Yale Political Uniqn, Healey did not apologize for his financial backers and pointedly remarked, "You know ~..-ho our friends are, and you know who we'll be working with."

This question of whom each candidate would work with once in office buzzed around the race like an aggressive mosquito.

Master Sledge, observing how this election differed from those in the past, commented, "What's struck me and I don't feel like I fully understand this is that we're preoccupied now with the power arrangements around the candidates, rather than the candidates themselves." But it is no wonder that people with a long term investment in New Haven politics, like union organizers and Sledge himself, were concerned about who Healey and Kruger would ally with in the city. With former aldermen like Morand and Gonzalez shaping current New Haven politics, it has become increasingly clear that the young politician who holds the Ward One .

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seat is not a mere passerby.

It seems a single alderman's term can launch a politician to the upper tiers of city power.

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extent these political. and future connec• tlOflS dominated the cam- · paign hype, power arrangements could not the outcome of this · race.

After all, the unions couldn't elect Healey. Any election hinges upon how well the candidates are able to reach out to their voters. In Ward One, where the constituent base is largely transient and historically indifferent, this can pose a peculiar challenge. Healey and Kruger not only had to court student voters, they also · had to convince them that New Haven politics matter in the first place. Many Yale undergraduates, passing through in only four years, feel that city issues do not affect them, and prefer to register in their hometowns. & Kruger has noted, "In the past I think that local politics in Ward One have been-viewed as something that is only in the interest of a few people who tend to see themselves as involved in this city, and therefore not as something the average person in Ward One should really be affected by or take part in, and I think that that's a misconception." Part of Kruger's mission, therefore, was "to change the political arena and broaden it," that is, to appeal to the silent majority ofYale students, and to reach out to students who might have been jarred out of their apathy by the sound of strikers banging pots at eight in the morn• mg. .

Kruger tried to engage the "average person in Ward One" by canvassing all the colleges in the district. He went door to door introducing himself to his peers. First there was the "Hi'" . "H ey there.I" or "H ey man, , then, "My name is Dan Kruger and I'm running for Ward One Alderman. You're on the magic list of people registered to vote in Ward One, did you know that?" or some similar variation. Some students seemed interested, some didn't, some were out, and others were napping. Kruger tried to pique student interest by attending Residential College Council meetings, an approach which won him little support. At these meetings, where discussions usually revolve around a field trip or the next dance, "I got almost no reaction," he recalled, "It was like I was a piece of the woodwork."

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Seeking a better way to present his platform, members of Kruger's campaign organized a Master's Tea in Ezra Stiles College.

This time he did get a reaction, though perhaps not the one he anticipated. Armed only with a cookie and a cup of tea, Kruger found himself facing . a wall of students in green "Vote Ben!" t-shirts. He responded jovially enough. "I want to leave the majority of time for any of you guys to question me, to grill me, to use it as a sort of inquisition," he told the students. "This chair is sort of a rack ... you can turn me around and torture me any way you want." Indeed, they did just that. & the tea dragged on, Kruger's ears grew red in spite of his apparent good humor.

As the race continued, Kruger's campaign tactics demonstrated a profound naivete regarding the dynamics of this election. When Master Sledge invited him to hold a reception in his home on October 27, Kruger accepted, sparking a fiasco that provided his opponents with ample material to label him "a tool of the administration."

Sledge emailed his college an invitation to the reception, which uhleashed a volley of explosive responses. Calhoun freshman Marissa Levendis sent a fiery email to Sledge and copied the email to all of Calhoun. Her words were scathing: "You, as the Master of Calhoun College, have the duty to not abuse the power you have over the Calhoun student body. Quite honestly, your contifl.l!al, concentrated support of Dan Kruger seriously makes me uncomfortable and makes me feel that you are seeking to pressure me, from your position of authority over me, to think a certain way about politics." Levendis was not the only one concerned by the master's endorsement. Political Science lecturer • Cynthia Horan criticized Sledge's public support of Kruger in a letter to the Yale Daily News entitled, "What is the Role of a College Master?" After learning of these objections,

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Kruger offered to cancel the reception. "If I were the Master. of Calhoun College, I'm not sure what I would have done," he explained.

However, when Sledge decided to proceed, Kruger followed suit. "It's not my role to decide what the Master should and shouldn't do." But given his self-described role as the race's independent voice one might have asked, why not?

The evening of October 2 7 was cold and rainy. And while Kruger was attempting to engage students under Master Sledge's roof, Healey traipsed across campus from one student meeting to another. He set out from Dwight Hall at 6:30 PM, using one of his campaign posters as an umbrella as he navigated his way through the streets. His first stop was La Casa, the Hispanic cultural house. There was a black-out, and a dozen students sat in the living room, discussing the business of the evening while they waited for the lights to come back on. Careful not to interrupt, Healey pulled up a chair and leaned in, listening to their conversation in the dark. When it was his turn to speak, he introduced himself "To the people I don't know, hi, I'm Ben." After chatting for a few minutes, he passed around a volunteer sheet, thanked the group for having him and headed back into the rain. His next visit was the AFL-CIO meeting back at Dwight Hall, then out again through the puddles to the Yale College Democrats meeting in Branford College. Later that week at La Casa, he went on to address the pivotal issue of Yale's relationship to the city. "I think that New Haven has a set of issues that we need to confront internally, and they deal with the power relations in the city ... [with] how an eleven billion dollar institution that is the biggest socio-economic engine in the city relates to the rest of the town. We all recognize that Yale is not going to solve the problems of New Haven, right?"

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Healey speaks in :1 mild voice and calls con. tuents, labor organizers, no politicians "folks." He talks to students about the he's done as alderman and the work "we're doing together." While Kruger sought to bring .... average Yale student to pen forums, Healey courted groups already thought He wanted to them their broader ideals could be realized through city politics, and they did not need to rely on the University to effect change. After the meeting with the Yale Democrats on that rainy Monday evening, Healey headed back into the night, canvassing door to door, trying to engage students in the issues he cared about and was convinced they cared about, too.

On the Saturday before the election, Healey sat in the Branford College courtyard, attempting to concentrate on homework. It was a perfect New England afternoon, sunny and crisp, with deep yellow leaves crunching under the feet of students walking by. The quadrangle is the pride of the Yale Admissions office. After the tour guide tells you that New Haven really isn't that dangerous, she'll lead you into Branford. From inside, it is impossible to see any part of the outside world but the sky, and reality dissolves in a careful arrangement of gothic spires·. Healey had been trying to attend to his school work, but his Normative Ethics book sat uncracked on the bench beside him. "I know that there's a certain percentage ofYale students who are not going to want to~ do more than concentrate on their studies, live their college life, and get out of here, but my work is to make that percentage as small as possible by continuing to talk to people. This is our life here. This is our home." He gazed pensively at the autumn light on Harkness tower. "For me, the work is engaging the folks because the institutional bollndary doesn't translate into individual boundaries. I think we can all transcend them."

Two days earlier, Kruger had discussed election ·day as he sipped his lemonade, and had characteristically looked on the bright side. "No matter the outcome, it's a win-win situation in my mind because we've started a debate, and gotten people talking about, really talking about the issues and the approach to politics ... which is great and that's some•

thing I'm really excited about and I'm proud of . . . If Ben is re-elected, I think that he will be a better alderman by my rubric, if you like, than he ·was before."

These words, recalled after the election, make Kruger's loss less disheartening. He pushed Healey to think about his constituents and reevaluate their bond with the city. He pushed Healey to redefine the Ward One seat as the link between his peers and what had become his home. And he pushed students finally to think about the course of New Haven's future. and cold.

Healey arrived on Old Campus at six in the morning, and held his ground resolutely until the polls closed at eight at night. Kruger shivered right alongside him, stopping passersby with a cheerful, "Hey there, have you voted yet?" When students packed into Dwight Hall to hear the results, Kruger was absent. "He had to go back to his apartment to let someone in," his campaign manager explained.

For most Yale students, as Kruger discovered, the fate of New Haven remains a future largely unrelated to their owri.

However, this race demonstrated the increasing number of students who are invested in the city, and its outcome determined the way they hope to change it. In the last days of his campaign, Healey had told a group of students, "I think that we, as Yale students, tend to honor our University and look there for problem-solving because we don't know how to charter the outside sources." On November 4, voting students chose Ben Healey, not Dan Kruger by a margin of three to one. Perhaps they chose him because he was the incumbent, perhaps because they knew him personally, perhaps because they liked his t-shirrs. Or, perhaps, presented with two visions of the relationship between Yale and New Haven, they chose to put their faith not in their University, but in the city, and in their alderman.

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ROM THE ROAD THAT WINDS OUT OF THE TOWN of Guilford and down into the valley, the lake seemed to be at peace in its bed. A red blanket of hemlocks and oaks had folded over the hills and Lake Quonnipaug lay still and flat. Past the bend in the road, in the center of the III -acre stretch of water, a fisherman wrapped in his overcoat had slowed his boat to a stop and dropped anchor. As he cast his line and watched it sink that October morning, he might have thought that all was well in the waters below. · What the fisherman may have not known was that the sleepy waters were under siege. In the dark ledges of the lake, two weeds born in distant waters had wheedled their way into the soil-bed, made themselves at home, and slowly begun to choke the lake. No one, not the town residents who spend so many hours on the water, nor the expert researchers who investigate the spread of the invasion, knows whether the lake will ever return to what it once was.

But they're willing to give • it a try even if it means fighting a battle that may already be lost.

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HE WEEDS WERE FIRST SPOTTED over four years ago, lurking around the boat launch in the northern cove. It was here that Ben Sylvester, the long-standing secretary of the Friends of Quonnipaug and the man who first saw the odd-looking plant waving its spindly green fmgers and perking up its pearly white head. Having spent almost every day of the past four decades out on the lake, he knew something new and alien had taken root.

Sylvester had already lost one lake to the weeds and he wasn't about to lose another. Back in 1963, as director of rowing at the Choate School, Mr. Sylvester had to tell the Wild Boars boys' team that they could no longer row in Community Lake in Wallingford, where they had practiced for almost to 50 years. The weeds had grown up to the surface and closed off the lake.

Forced out by the weeds, the team moved to the boat launch in the north end of Lake Quonnipaug. Except for the lily-pads in the southchannel, the lake was in pretty good shape. It was here that Sylvester, an experienced single sculler, coached his team to m any n ational cham-

pionships: As a ·continuous presence on Lake Quonnipaug, he has come to know the ways of the lake better than most people.

Sylvester arid other residents began to worry about their lake. They first saw the strange plant along the boat · cove, cropping up near the beach and skulking into the shallow ledges in the heart of the lake.

Though the town had been dealing with an overgrowth of pondweed and lily-pads for several years, no one living by the water had ever seen the likes of these massive roots.

Fearful that the strange plant might put an end to summer boating, decimate property values and take hold of the entire lake, Sylvester and a small group of Guilford residents began to pressure the town experts to do something about the invading alien species. When the chairman of the Milford Conservation Community called to order the spring meeting three years ago, the first order of business was to devise a plan of action for the lake. They decided to call in the experts.

The two alien weeds identified in the lake are formally known as Cabomba. caroliniana and Eurasian water milfoil. Each is a noxious non-native species, and, if released in the right conditions, it has the potential to choke out native plants, birds, fish, and reptiles. The plants, popular aquarium decorations, travelled a long way before reaching Connecticut. Researchers believe that Eurasian milfoil may have slipped from a lake somewhere in Europe or North Africa onto the underside of a commercial freight and traveled into the Chesapeake Bay as early as the r88os. Cabomba probably traveled a shorter distance to Lake Quonnipaug perhaps tucked in a shipping crate from its native lakes in the southern United States to an aquarium store somewhere on the Atlantic seaboard, then moving to the gravelly base of a fish-tank in a child's room, only to be poured into a backyard creek, where the weed was free to run rampant.

By the mid I990s, weed sightings by Connecticut lake managers and residents had become commonplace.. Seeds were hitdiing rides on boat motors to new lakes, and flying on the beaks of birds scanning the waters for food, before finding new territory and laying root to blossom.

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By Maeve Herbert However the weeds entered Connecticut, the scientific community agrees that these non-native species pose a very real threat to lake ecology. A report published last July by the State Council on Environment Quality names non-native plants and animals as the second greatest threat to Connecticut's natural habitats after land development. The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated that nonnative species are responsible for at least half of the threatened species in this country. Weeds like Cabomba and Eurasian milfoil are particularly troubling because they have the potential to wipe out entire native species, fostering a monoculture that would destroy the delicate balance of the ecosystem.

Confronted with this growing body of evidence both national and state legislators have taken several initiatives to control and curb the spread of non-native plants. In February of 1999, President Clinton formed the National Invasive Species Council to investigate ways to halt the spread of these species, which annually cost the country approximately $137 billion, while aquatic needs cost $275 million.

Earlier this year, Congress passed a landmark piece of legislation, the National Aquatic Invasive Species Act, which alocated $170 million for "prevention, . contro1, and research" _.

Many lake communities welcome these efforts, bur legislativ~ debates on prevention methods and the imposition of restrictions on the sale of non-native species are of little use to residents like Ben Sylvester whose lakes have already been invaded by Cabomba and milfoil. For them, the overgrowth of weeds could transform their beloved lake to a murky marsh. The loss would be more than sentimental: Studies have shown that non-native weed overgrowth can lead to a drop of ro percent or more in land valu~.

So while legislators and conservationists gather in closed rooms to . discuss various proposals for prevention, town residents have taken their own initiative. They want the weeds gone for good, but they are slowly discovering that weeds may be fiercer than suspected. . .

RESIDENTS PHONED THE CoNNECTICUT Agricultural Experimental Station (cAEs) three years ago, there was no aquatic weed expert around to pick up. The scientists at CAES, a brick building pocketed-in New Haven's tree-lined Hutchinson ¡ Street, were busy with other tasks: chasing an Asian beetle that was rapidly consuming New England's hemlocks, and researching the spread and containment of West Nile Disease. Given that non-native weeds had only recently begun appearing in Connecticut lakes, there did nor yet seem to be a need for an aquatic weed specialist.

When Greg Bugbee, an expert responsible for the station's soil testing laboratory, offered to look at the lake, he seemed as well equipped as anyone. A soil scientist with over twenty years experience at CAES, Bugbee had already tackled one weed problem in Bashan Lake in East Hamden, Connecticut the year before. Having grown up on lakes and studied their beds, Bugbee knew them to be a realm of ecological science where there- were more questions than answers.

After an initial survey of Quonnipaug Lake, Bugbee discovered that the lake's vegetation had undergone some very rapid changes, which was highly unusual considering the typically static nature of lake water chemistry. The CAES study confumed that extensive areas of Eurasian milfoil and Cabomba had cropped up in Lake Quonnipaug.

At the time, affected areas were confined mostly to the boat launch cove and the beach area, but unless action was taken, these weeds could soon t~e over the whole lake.

With the residents demanding action, and published evidence backing the residents' demands, the GCC realized it needed to find a solution quickly. In early summer of 2001, Guilford took its first stab at removing the weeds no other town in Connecticut had beaten.

The town agreed to fund a team from CAES to investigate the effectiveness of treating the non-native weeds with spot applications of herbicide. At the very least, the project would allow Bugbee to observe the weeds' response to herbicide. With any luck, the projectwould destroy the plants for good, preserving the lake's biodiversity and pacifying the rowers, fishermen, and home-owners. â&#x20AC;˘

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thick lily-pad roots torn from the sediment The process of weed hunting quickly In the weeks following the treatment, it arced out of the water. turned into a game of hide-and-go-seek. looked as if the combination of herbicide and Over the following two summers, in accorAs the boat slowed, Bugbee tipped up his machinery had succeeded. Follow-up surveys after the treatments in 2002 confirmed that dance with the research plan, a powerboat Guilford baseball-cap, and leaned over the equipped with a spray can of granular flurialmost every last stem of Cabomba and whalings to have a closer look. He peered odone set out to test the toughness of Eurasian milfoil had died the boat launch through the aqua scope, a tube used for Cabomba · and Eurasian milfoil. When the cove and the beach were finally clear. When · underwater observation. As bubbles ran weeds were blasted with up to 150 pounds of the Commission convened last January, the under the circle of glass, a brilliant green tenherbicide per acre, they didn't last long. final reports came in: residents were pleased dril waving in the current came into focus: Within a matter of weeks, the green foliage with the hydro-raking. With a little bit of Cabomba. The weed had slipped from the had turned brown and limp. The shriveled spray, a week of heavy mowing, and a lot of northern to the southern side without anyone remains floated to the_surface, and no plants noticing, and was now slowly weaving a thick pressure from homeowners, the lake had been from the boat area alone were hauled away in green carpet across the entire channel. restored or so they thought.

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Putting away the aqua scope, Bugbee But the home-owners weren't stood and returned to the wheel. He did not look pleased. As he maneuvered the completely satisfied. In the spring of 2002, after the initial herbicide treatboat through the placid southern chanments in the north, 369 Guilford resnel, Bugbee knew that the culprit responsible for the murky islands and the idents signed a petition demanding that the town clear out the lake's uprooted mess of lilies were not the hated south end, where native lily-pads had alien weed. This time around, the machines seemed the . root of the probclogged up the channel for years.

Realizing the mobilized force of resilem. When the heavy metal teeth gnawed dents expected action, when the up the lily pads last October, they dislodged the soil bed, and in the wrecked, Commission gathered again for its regular town meeting in March, the open space, Cabomba had dosed in. In Chairman proposed a last resort techfact, the blade spinning behind the nique that had not yet been dismachine may even have spit out cussed: hydro-raking. .

Cabomba seed fragments leftover from The weed had slipped from the . The hydro-raking process is akin other lake jobs. to lawn-mowing for lakes, and is · a "It just dug up the whole bottom," northern to the southern side . .

Bugbee explained, nodding at the section fairly common method of weed control. In the past hydro-raking has without anyone noticing and was of the lake that now resembled a marsh.

Bugbee proven to be a useful, if pricey, strate- now slowly weaving _ had supporters: both the town a thick green commissioners and the Friends of gy for removing vegetation. The lake residents and the GCC hoped that the carpet across the entire channel. Quonnipaug recognized their blunder. machines would remove the last of As the chairman of the Gee William the submerged vegetation, floating Johnson explained, "By disturbing the · debris, and clumps of soil. Acco1·ding to site we actually created conditions for invaRUISING PAST THE SOLE FISHERMAN sives to come in where they were not present Aquatic Control Technologies, . the private out on the water on that day of before." Even Sylvester, who's still hoping he hydro-raking company from Sutton, October, Greg Bugbee adjusted his will have more luck with this lake than his last Massachusetts that agreed to take on the job, reflective sunglasses and headed straight for the mowing would pose little or no permaone, agrees the fight against weeds may have the south end. Bugbee had not been to the led to more problems than answers. nent threat to the lake's sediment and soil lake for over a. month, and this excursion structure, and the hefty fee they demanded might be his last chance this season to inveswould be worth the results. tigate the area. It had been a year since the EGATIVE SIDE-EFFECTS like those in Even though the Connecticut hydro-rakers departed, but even before he the southern channel have promptDepartment of Environmental Protection reached the lake's southern tip, Bugbee knew ed some environmentalists.to wonhad expressed concerns that the raking might that the weeds would still be there waiting for der if it might be better to let the weeds run cause more harm than good, the township him. wild. According to Chuck Lee at the pressed on. In October of 2002, a heavy-set Sure enough, when Bugbee eased off the Connecticut DEP, there is always a chance man in a plaid shirt arrived from throttle and the boat entered the south chanthat Mother Nature will sort things out at her . Massachusetts, switched on an enormous nel, he saw that the seemingly peaceful lake own pace. Not only do mechanical control machine armed with giant teeth and a powwas growing sick again. Entire patches of the options like hydro-raking have the potential erful engine, and set to work. For one week, lake bed-dark and deadened soil never to destroy local habitats and even advance the the rake dug deep into the lake-bed. A prointended to see the light of day had made spread of non-native species by transporting cession of dump trucks loaded with lake sedtheir way up to the surface, forming islands. seed fragmentS from lake to lake, but herbiciiment and vegetation wove its way to the Scattered between these clumps of alien land, dal methods, if not properly administered, town compost.

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may actually kill off the native and threatened • species.

Last spring, the Connecticut DEPrefused to grant the town permission to use the herbicide in the lake, arguing that a certain threatened species in Lake Quonnipaug, the water marigold, might suffer the same fate as the Cabomba and Eurasian milfoil. Currently, the Gee is negotiating with the DEP to secure permission to apply a limited amount of herbicide to targeted areas without endangering the rest of the lake.

Even Bugbee wonders if it might not be . better just to let the lakes be. Leaving the southern channel that morning, Bugbee turns to look at the lake he has known for so many years. He muses aloud that he would not mind leaving it be. Bugbee is, however, concerned about preserving the lake's biodiversity and protecting the local species, and is working in conjunction with the town to develop alternative ways of slowing the growth of the dreadful Cabomba. In his opinion, it all boils down to a combination of science and politics. Bugbee is currently helping to launch a comprehensive study of the effects of herbicides on aquatic weeds for the state, set to begin sometime next year.

In the meantime, the best course of action for dealing with Lake Quonnipaug remains a mystery. In a world where land values are determined by aesthetics, and where people cling to the memories of past afternoons on a pristine lake, it does not seem likely that the town will be willing to turn its lake over to the weeds Before Bugbee returned to the GAEC to ~ _ write his report, he dropped anchor in the heart of the lake. Stooping like a doctor over an aging body, he recorded the lake's temperature and measured its oxygen levels. As he revved the engine and coasted back toward the boat launch, he pointed to where construction workers were building a large window-filled house on the bank.

A year earlier, the owner of the house-tobe had called Bugbee to ask if there were weeds in the lake. He wasn't going to buy land and build if his investment would swiftly lose its value. And Bugbee told him what he knew, that they were working to keep the weeds under control. At this point though, only time can tell if the view out the house's new windows will be the one the owner wanted. .

T :\;I

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NoVEMBER 1965, Branford College accepted a donation of four paintings by French contemporary artist, Max Papart, valued between four and seven thousand dollars each. While the donor had given the paintings to Branford College in order for students to experience contemporary art "in an everyday environment, instead of a museum," most students ignored them. At Yale, we have grown used to eating our apple tofu crisp in ·the company of dark portraits of white men in suits. We dine in the midst of what the curators jokingly refer to as the "Yale Worthies," men with names like Fayerweather, Gaylord, Billings, Jessup, Luquiens, and Eleazar. And we don't give them a second glance. .

These formal portraits, though often ignored, are occasionally the targets of food fights and practical jokes. The archaic, ostentatious paintings of authority figures preside over dining halls, where generations of stressed-out students have been armed with a limitless supply of oily food and a little too much time. On Saturday, February 10, 1973, Yale Poli~e conducting a routine check of Commons noticed an abnormally bright, rectangular spot on one wall. A painting was missing. The thieves weren't very careful, as the frame and back were circled by an array of sneaker marks beneath the space where the portrait had hung. Even so, the painting was never recovered. Occasionally, students add their own art instead of stealing it. In 1982, a portrait of Solomon Porter was removed because the "cheeks, ears, and lips of the subject appeared to have been defaced with a felt tip pen." Paintings are regularly caught in the line of fire in food fights. A Calhoun Dining Hall master's portrait was permanently damaged when a meatball smashed neatly through the subject's face. When a roof leak damaged three portraits in Commons, the conservator couldn't bear to handle them, writing in his •

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report that the works were "[too] disgusting to touch they had food, grease, and heaven knows what else on them." But Solomon Porter, the Calhoun Master with a taste for meatballs, and the three soggy "Yale Worthies" were not thrown away: They were kept cloistered in a basement gallery known simply as "Bs7." It is a graveyard for paintings laid to rest alongside their fallen comrades and stained with deep gummy oils, darkened with the weather of years of thumb prints or ripped neatly by massive food fights. Here, in •

Branford Master Steven Smith, by James Prosek .

BS7, aged masters look out dumbly from

behind masks of hateful red paint with forkpierced eyes, as congealed drips of crimson berry pie m n down their faces like tears.

Why should Yale spend the money to conserve these soiled paintings, or even keep

them at all? Why should anyone care? As any snooty art major will tell you over Sunday brunch, these portraits are not even well-executed. Some of them are horrific, painted in a style that would amuse any six-year-old. Rosy cherubic faces are squashed against sea-foam green backdrops and their shoddy canvases are bordered in gilt frames so ridiculous they seem like relics from a baroque opera. The paintings' subjects are just as dull: Men sit uncomfortably in haunted, dark worlds, their hands folded neatly in their laps, their white collars starched crisply, their handsome Windsor knots choking them at the throat.

But the portraits, if not artistically interesting, are at least historically important, argues Jennifer Bossman, the Yale University Art Registrar whose job includes keeping an inventory of these works and their decaying conditions. "Portraiture at Yale is an ongoing tradition," she explains. "The first piece of art the Yale Art Galleries acquired was a portrait of King George, and paintings of historical figures are at the core of the gallery's collection." Bossman adds that she considers historical context when deciding where to hang newly restored portrait. She tries to shift portraits to appropriate locations for example, hanging a recently acquired portrait of John C. Calhoun in the Calhoun dining hall, or replacing a crumbling portrait of William Law Learned with a large and inelegant painting .of George H. W. Bush in Commons. Bossman and other workers in the art registrar's office have tried to assemble a sort of pictorial history checkering Yale's walls with historically important portraits, as if eating beneath these exonerated figures will give students the knowledge held by the wise figures of their University's past.

Bur two dining hall paintings have separated themselve.S from their peers. These are the portraits toward which groups of bored students, sleep-deprived and short on converTHE NEw JouRNAL

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sation, can always turn for inspiration.

Students love to hate the modern portrait of current Master Steven Smith hung just to the left of the Branford Dining Hall's huge fireplace, and the surreal portrait of Master Stout hung in the center of the wall opposite the .Berkeley dining hall entrance.

Master Smith stares at us from a dull, dingy office, his torso curving in and out of the painting like a slippery fish. Behind him, a snowy Yale courtyard glows in the watery sunlight, the bare branches of dark trees wavering as if seen through an aquarium.

The portrait, commissioned by the class of 1997 the first graduating class over which the master presided is unlike any other portrait at Yale in that it was commissioned as a surprise for its subject. The class of 1997 asked their classmate, James Prosek, to paint the portrait from a photograph of the master.

As a graduating senior, Prosek was well known for his paintings of trout. He had just. completed a best-selling book of watercolors, "Trout: An Illustrated History," and his classmates didn't think it would be a problem that he had never before painted a human. "This perhaps explains the slightly 'fishy' look of the portrait," Master Smith explains. Though his portrait is admittedly wacky Master Smith's glasses rest lopsided below his oversized forehead, his necktie is painted in a fierce cadmium yellow with the face of an unknown woman smudged in its lower half- it. is successful, not as a portrait, but as a caricature. It captures Smith's likeness, conveying his quirky, constant energy through pulsing loopy brushstrokes. Smith appears gaunt and squirmy, as if painted by Egon Schiele, if Schiele had used Lucian Freud's somber palette. Despite its bleak color choices, Smith seems happy and untroubled. He doesn't look foreboding or snooty, despite his high perch and isolation from the audience behind a broad wooden NoVEMBER 2003

desk. Indeed, the portrait's success rests in its lack of pretension.

Smith's tie is loose, his jacket unbuttoned, his shirt wrinkled . .The room surrounding him is not ostentatious or even elegant, but simple and modern. It does not distract from its subject. Granted, the actual painting isn't very well done. It feels muddy, the reflection floats like a mirage in the desk, the subject is backlit and the lighting doesn't work. In addition, the composition is childishly symmetrical and the local color of the

Berkeley Master Harry Stout, by R. Beggs

white shirt reflects poorly against the snow in the background. But at least this paint.ing does not pretend to be something else. It is different than the "Yale Worthies" crowding the room men like Charles William Harkness and Joshua Huntington, William .

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Maxwell Evans and George Lincoln Hendrickson distinguished men with indistinguishable portraits.

And then there is the infamous "Skip in Space," a portrait of Master Harry "Skip" Stout, so nicknamed by those who frequent the Berkeley dining hall. The portrait, in all its strangeness, is the subject of constant ridicule. When current master John Rogers sent out an email asking students if they would be willing to contribute a portion of the college's funds toward a frozen . yogurt · machine, one student replied asking where the master's priorities were: "We shouldn't be concentrating our money on ice cream when we could be allocating funds to build a force field to protect us from the flying Berkeley shields headed straight for our heads!" But the portrait of Master Stout, painted by Berkeley Associate Fellow R. Beggs, is no laughing matter.

During his first year as Master, Stout approached Beggs on a visit to the painter and filmmaker's San Francisco home.

Beggs took over fifty photos of Master Stout, who was too busy to sit for him, and also "took pictures of all the preceding portraits to remind [him] of what [he] wasn't. interested in doing." Committed not only to capturing his "likeness" and his authority, Beggs attempted to convey Stout's spirit on the canvas. "While hardly conscious, I made a series of decisions about what the portrait would be," explains Beggs. "[Stout] was a friend and a bearer of tradition. There is an irreverence about him but also a dignity and seriousness of purpose. The idea of Berkeley as an institution and Harry embodying that institution and at. the same time passing through, transitory, like all the previous masters, was an underlying idea. The relaxed figure, open collar, and the darting College ~ms are manifestations of those ideas, at. the time felt, not. acknowledged. Hindsight is great. n

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Painted in a style reminiscent of neoexpressionists like Eric Fischl and David Park, Master Stout smiles, basking in the reflected haze of a far-off fluorescent light, Berkeley shields flying like icy bullets toward his smiling maw. The work's composition is more interesting than those of its classical comrades. The subject is pushed to the left edge of the rectangle, and the shields lead our sight from the right corner back to the left. While it seems like the master is floating in space, this hazy dark background is almost more natural than the phony constructed atmosphere of a traditional office. Stout's casual attire open shirt, and rumpled suit feels more realistic than the robes donned by his colleagues. This portrait is certainly different from those surrounding it. But Beggs is still not entirely satisfied: "Certain things could have been pushed more. It's a hard call.

Whose happiness and satisfaction is at stake?"

Ultimately, a painting's success can be measured by the opinions of the students who view it daily. So mock these two portraits all you want. Admittedly they are not that good, but they are not as bad as one might think. Portraits like those of Stout and Smith are successful because they are interesting, because they are different, and because their painters had the courage to embrace change instead of pushing for the traditional and outmoded. These paintings are less authoritative, less strict, and less archaic. They are less likely to be vandalized with red pens, because they already seem to mock themselves. They are less likely to end up in basement storage rooms, a meatball shot through one eye. And you can be sure of one thing: If they are stolen, everyone will notice. ~ I

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By David Zax

LIVE IN NEW HAVEN, you're probably already familiar with the Metro Taxi genre. My Story begins like so many others with a missed train. On the final Sunday of last March, I dialed 7777777, the number for Metro Taxi, New Haven's dominant taxi ser. vice, and asked for a cab to take my sister and me to Union Station, but they never showed. Half an }:lour later, I hailed a competing cab headed down Temple Street. made it to the platform just in time to see the train doors seal and to receive a what-am-I-supposed-to-doabout-it shrug from a balding businessman through a window of the receding first class car.

Outside the station, I walked past three waiting Metro cabs and climbed into the first independent car I saw. fu we pulled away, the driver leaned toward me and whispered conspiratorially: "Say, tell me ... You got something against Metro?"

"They suck," I said.

"Thank you," he breathed, turning a corner.

My campaign had begun. "BOYCOTT METROTAXI FORWARD!!!" read the subject line of a volley of e-mails I sent out when I got back to my dorm. "END THE NY OF THE SEV. ENS!" I exhorted. "WE HAVE MISSED OUR LAST TRAIN! SAVE THE INDEPENDENTS!" .

I was joining the r_anks of a movement that was larger than I suspected, led by New Haven's numerous but tiny independent cab companies, among them Quick Taxi, Ecuamex, Lucy's, Horizon, and Easy-One, which soon became my independent of choice. Most of the resistance fighters found in these cabs were even fiercer than I. "To me, they're nothin' but shit, sir," said Meshach, who asked that I not use his real name. ''I'm an old timer, I been working these parts since the forties, and let me tell you, they don't know where they're going, they don't know how to act, they don't know how to take people they're bullshit. Nothin' but shit."

Meshach fits into a pattern of independent drivers: "Everyone used to work for Metro," he explained. Most deportees now openly condemn the company.

"I call them shitheads, sir," Meshach continued. He is silent for a while, until I ask him why the Metro drivers merit this. "Because they don't know how to operate," he responds without a beat. "Not all of 'em " he reconsiders, "you got a lot that are pretty good drivers. But I don't like 'em, sir. Most of 'em are foreigners. All immigrants from Africa, Pakistan."

Shadrach, another driver who declined to use his real name, expressed his bitterness with unabashed racism: "Most of the drivers are not so good. They are, you know ... most are black. People see "Metro" painted on the car and they think that guarantees a good driver." Shadrach looks at me in the rear-view mirror, making sure I get his point. "But you can't judge a book by its cover.

You know what I am saying?"

Bob, a driver for Easy-One, alleged that most of Metro's "foreign" drivers are illegal aliens, pressured into working longer than legal hours. According to Bob, this is just one of the many unsavory features of Metro.

Easy-One Taxi is at the vanguard of the whaling mission against Metro, and Bob is Ahab clutching his harpoon. He leapt at the chance to criticize Metro, listing the company's various transgressions, infractions, and generally nefarious dealings. He told me stories of a two-week suspension for unpaid parking tickets, Metro's disregard of this suspension, and the company's doubling of license plates to expand its fleet. Bob's -allegations got still more serious: "You got guys working [for Metro] eighteen hours a day. You got guys shouldn't be driving. Guys high or drinking about 2 AM, or haven't gone to sleep all day ... Metro, they get away with everything except murder so far."

He reflects on this. "Till somebody dies in a Metro cab, nobody's gonna do nothin'."

Bob tells me this, but is not aware of my last experience with his own company. Last spring, I hiked to the top of East Rock with a friend visiting from Boston. Around two o'clock, he said he wanted ·to ·c atch an early ·train home. I decided to engage the help of my new friends at Easy-One. But my request for a cab to pick us up at the lot atop East Rock only resulted in a long pause at the other end of the line.

I repeated myself: "Could you send a cab up here to the lot at the top of East Rock at 2:30, is that okay?"

Inexplicably, the dispatcher erupted: "HOW 'BOUT I COME UP THERE AND KICK YOUR FUCKING ASS AT 2:30, THAT OKAY?" Needless to say, it was not, but I was too stunned to respond and sat down, winded. This was the most abuse I had sustained over the telephone since a man suggested some years ago, quite loudly and angrily, that I "go suck myself," after I refused to purchase an emergency call system for my grandmother. I told my friend what had happened, and he reassured me I was in no physical danger. But he didn't understand that this was the least of my problems. Now who was I supposed to call for a ride to the train station?

"BOYCOTT EASY-ONE FORWARD!!" read the subject line of my next e-mail.

Granted, there are other independent companies, and I could use them if I felt like keeping up the good fight. But this warrior is tired, and I find myself dialing those sevens more often than not. ~ When I mentioned to a Metro dispatcher that I'd heard stories of an independent uprising against Metro, he didn't seem worried.

"Metro's kinda dominating the city," he said. "The owners aren't really concerned about the competition."

But Meshach, Shadrach, and Bob are still out there. Through the streets of New Haven ride the whispers of resistance.

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David Zax is a sophomore in Silliman College.

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THE NEw JouRNAL

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Yale University Strengthens Neighborhoods ' Yale has contributed to 1,000 units of affordable housing and home ownership in New Haven neighborhoods through the Yale Homebuyer program and through support for community development corporations. Yale University provides more than 11,000 good jobs in New Haven with strong job security, good wages, and excellent benefits including free medical cate, the homebuyer progra •n, college scholarships for employee children, and up to 52 paid days off for vacation, holidays, sick leave, and personal time.

Yale University Enriches Public School Education More than 1'0,000 New Haven young people participate in Yale-sponsored academic and athletic programs on the Yale catnpus every year. .

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Yale University. Supports 'Government and ·Promotes Econ.omic Development · Since 1990, Yale has paid more than $20 million in voluntary contributions directly to the City government .

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Yale University Supports Downtown Yale is a major sponsor of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, Shubert Theater, Market New Haven, and Town Green Special Services District. .

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Yale Students have tutored more than soo Timothy Dwight Elementary School Students including those pictured here. This new addition to the school was designed by volunteers from the Yale School of Architecture .

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The annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven supported by Yale University brings tens of thousands of New Haveners together on the Green.

The renovation by the Hill Development Corporation of this previously blighted building is one of many neighborhood projects Yale has supported.

Yale University: Contributing to a Strong New Haven www.yale.edu

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