Issuu

•

• • •

•

Volume 38, Number 5 •

The magazine about Yale

and New Haven

Apri12006

•

• •

•

ROTC

•

Ned Lamont

.· Harmony Place hing Colleges

www.sohohair.com

Publisher Romy Drucker

Discounts

Editor-in-Chief Adriane Quinlan •

Managing Editors Jonny Dach, Helen Eckinger •

Designer Sara Schneider Business Manager Nick Handler Advertising Executive Matthew Baron Senior Editors Mina Kimes, David Zax Production Manager Nicole Allan Research Director Emify Koh Web Designer Nicholas Moryl

--Circulation and Subscription Manager Lauren Hamson

Staff Julia WaDace, Tess Ivy Wang, Mno:lith Wall, Lane Rick, Emily Kopley, Gabriel Diaz, O:mcha M Paige Austin, Sarah Laskow •.

Members and Directors Joshua Civin, Peter B. Cooper, Tom Griggs, Brooks Kelley, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab,

Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, David SJitka, Fred Sttebeigh, Thomas Strong, John Swansburg

Advisors •

Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Richard Conniff, Ruth '

Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Julia Preston, Laura Rabin, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin •

Friends Steve Ballou, Fmily Bazeloo, Anson M Beard,Jt: B1aire Bennett, Edward B. Bennett, Richard Blow, Martha Brant,

91 0 whalley avenue new haven 065 I 5 203.389.3369

Jay Carney, Daphne Chu,Josh Civin,Jonathan M Oark,

55 whitney avenue new haven 065 I 0 203.776.YARN

Constance Oement, Elisha Cooper, Peter B. Cooper, Andy Court, M.asi Denison, Albert J Fox, MiS. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Tom Griggs, Step~en Hellman, Jane Kamensky, Brooks Kelley, Roger · Lewis E.

•

I ebttalan,Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Matlha E Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H Newman, Sean O'Brien, Julie Pete:t s, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Julia Preston, ' lauren Rabin, Fairfax C Randal, Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W. Hampton Sides, I jsa

.yarnLLC.com receive a 5% discount with this ad

Silve• 111an, Adina

and David S. 1kt 1aan, 1lxxnas

Strong E1izabeth Tatt; Daniel Yug1ta and Angela Stent Yng1n

•

'IHE NEW JOURNAL

• •

Volume 38, Number 5 April2006

•

The magazine about Yale

and New Haven • •

ROTC Goes MIA

Four Yalies stick with a Corp that long agp lift the Universi!Jl. by Helen E ckinge r

•

The Old College Try H ow Yale failed to build two new co/kg~ and how it hopes to succeed by Jonny Dach

•

Keeping an Eye on Iran A New H aven non-profit documents violations abroad. by Paige A ustin •

Harmony Displaced What happens when the shelter gets evicted. by Nick Handler · •

Phallacy 14 by Julia Wallace

Pints for Points

by Megan McLaughlin

Points of Departure

Profile

•

The Contender by Lauren Harrison

Shots in the Dark •

The Critical Angle The Young and the Restless by Sophia I .ear

Essay The College Dropout by Nicole Allan

Endnote Dewry, Decimated by Melvil D ewey J r.

1HE NEW JOURNAL is published five rimes . the academic year by THE NEW JOURNAL at Yak, Inc., P.O. Box 3432 Yale Star:ion. ew Haven, cr 06520. Office address: 305 Crown tteet. Phone: 203.4320520. All contents copyright 2005 THE NEW JOURNAL at Yale, Inc. All rights reset• ed Reproduction either in whole or in part without written t>et"'ission of the publisha and editor-in-ehief is pmbibired Wlwe this IIIJI azine is published by Yale College students, Yale University is nor responsible for its contents. Seven thousand fi•e hundred of each issue are distnbuted &ee ro members of the Yale and ' ' ew IU>en community. Subscriptions are awilable to those outside the area. Rates: One ear, $18. Tv;o years, $32 1HE NEW JOURNAL is printed b)' Turley Publications, Palmer, L\; bookkeeping and sen ices are pronded by CoiiiiJin booklweping of ew Haven. THE NEW JOURNAL encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and ew Hlwen issues. Write to Enirorials, P.O. Box 3432 Yale ration, ' ew Ha..-en, cr 06520. Allleriers for publiotion musr include address and signature. We resa..-e the right to edit alllerras for publication.

April2006

' •

•

• • '

•

' •

•

~·

•

• •

•

• • •

•

• •

•

Abe, Honestly lN DOWNTOWN NEW HAVEN, THE WRITING

is quite literally on the wall. On Court Street a few buildings down from the orthographically sinister awning. of "Cryptonnite Beauty Salon" a Viennese furrier has posted a handwritten note informing his clients that he will return by April 20th. Close to Chapel Street, a plaque commemorates the world's first commercial telephone exchange, which opened . in 1878 . several hundred feet away from the current location of a Southwestern Bell Corporation building. Ghostly messages traced on its dusty windows read "Dixwell" and "7 -2602." On the other side of the same building, at the corner of Court and State Streets, two plaques hang next to _each other. One is an unexpected and well-ornamented tribute to the 1856 founding of a B'nai B'rith lodge; the other plaque causes one to pause. Installed on March 6th, 1976, the plaque bears a quotation from a speech Abraham Lincoln gave in New Haven on that same date 116 years earlier. During his campaign for pt;esident in 1860, Lincoln toured Connecticut, speaking forcibly against the extension of the institution of slavery. The plaque on Court Street, however, focuses not on slavery but on laborers' right to strike: I'm glad that a system of labor prevails in ew England under which laborers can strike when •

. thry want to. . . J like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to. .. One of the reasons I am opposed to slavery is just here. Appropriately, the Bicentt:nnial Labor Commission of Greater New Haven sponsored the Court Street plaque. · The strike to which Lincoln refers was not confined to New Haven. Earlier that year, shoemakers in Massachusetts had gone on strike, inciting twenty thousand shoemakers across New England to join the movement. In the years following Lincoln's speech, New Haven would. see a number of similar labor movements. Printers went on strike after a typesetting quarrel broke out between newspapers, and an 1871 issue of The 'New Haven Evening Register enigmatically reported~ c'Some days ago, Quigley's plumbers were said to have been on a strike. That announcement was a mistake. All the plumbers but those at Quigley's were on a strike, and they have probably returned to their work by this time." The rights of laborers, then, • were certainly relevant to those who listened to Lincoln's speech. Yet the plaque's declaration that Lincoln spoke "against slavery and for labor's rights" is rnisleading. Although Lincoln advocated for laborers' rights, his words are embedded in a larger anti-slavery argument and are often considered sitnply one of the means by which he campaigned against slavery. In fact, the fust ellipsis on the sign •

•

stands in for Lincoln's praist; of workers who "are not tied · down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not." This rhetoric of bondage, deliberately omitted . by the plaque's designers, reminds us that, in New Haven, Lincoln was primarily speaking against slavery~ In The Library of America's collection of his writings, the speech runs 17 pages long, and t~ paragraph from which the Bicentennial Labor .,. Commission of Greater . New Haven drew their quotation "is one of the very few moments that Lincoln refers to the labor movement. This particular· speech ·is more often · remembered for the extended passage in which he compares slavery to a "venomous snake" in bed with children. In transforming the sound of Lincoln's voice into metal, the Bicentennial Labor Commission also performed an act of referential • alchemy, compelling the quotatioq to stand in tribute to labor unions. It all likelihood, the conunission wished to honor · the. New Haven public school teachers_ who were arrested for striking the year before the plaque was commis~ion~d. Like the flyers an_d awnings that run along Court Street, the plaque is an advertisement, selling o~e particular interpretation of history-·with Abraham Lincoln as its spokesman. This street corner is a lesson . in how history is made, reminding us that to quote is . always, perhaps, to tnisquote. After all, I .incoln hianself against his opponents' tendency to create '

•

'111E NEW JOURNAL

•

...., z

·-...J as (,) (,)

a: Grotesqueries haunt the University Theatre Prop Shop, which resembles a house

"a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which ·a man can prove a horse chestnut to be . a chestnut horse." -Elizabeth Gumport

props for the eighty productions the theater stages each season. When the theater agrees to put up a show, Merrick and her boss, Props Master Brian Cookson, produce props in a number of ways. If the show has been in production • Mad Props elsewhere, as this winter's colorful Brundibar was, it may arrive at the ''WEIJ., WE WRAPPED A BOLSTER PII.I.OW University Theater with a full into a circle and covered it with yel- smorgasbord of props. A director low cloth. Then we found a giant then decides whether to add or inflatable duck, you know, like the . replace items. For Brundibar, kind that a child would sit on. And Merrick dreamt up two tnajor we cut off its head and stuffed props: a giant ball of yarn, created t h at. . . " , . by wrapping a yoga ball in string; No, this is not a tidbit from a and a baker's tray bearing techniparticularly traumatizing episode of color t nuffins. The ball of yarn was Martha Stewart Living. It's Alison an entirely new addition, the tray, a Merrick's description of her replacement for an inferior version favorite aspect of her job. As Props used in earlier perforn1.ances. "This Assistant at the Yale University one is bigger and lighter and more Theater, Merrick is the woman in colorful,' she ays. "And it charge of fip.ding and creating wiggle !" r

•

if horrors more than a warehouse.

April2006

On the other hand, if the show debuts at the University Theater, Merrick and Cookson must build all of the props themselves. They begin with props already at their disposal in the theater's warehouse, isolated in an industrial area between Fair Haven and Wooster Square. The warehouse shares an enormous space with Tile America, so as visitors move into floorspace owned by the University Theater, the shelves' contents shift from painted plaster tiles to clunky typewriters and paisley armchairs. Props are arranged on the shelves by type. Populating one area, like the remnants of an abandoned men's room, are three full toilets, a urinal, and several toilet seats of various colors. Behind a pre-stuffed bra made of gold lame lies a carton of other accessories that actors use to augment their

• •

"You can buy pie boxes, obviously," she says. " But the ones ·we found didn't look enough like pie boxes." When functional objects from real life don't serve the aesthetic needs of performed life, Merrick must create new objects. If compelling items cannot be found in catalogues or among the piles at the · warehouse, . she must use yards of . fabric, inflatable animals, and scraps of hardware to create larger-than-life . objects: a pie box ..., z pie-boxier than any cardboard ~ .c container that lCD has ever held a • ::::E p1~, or an enormous ball of The Peabotjy celebrated this bronze sculpture at Dinosaur Dqys 2006. yarn that could • crush a real cat postures: walking sticks, canes, and to death. While we often underscepters. Objects that are more stand how everyday objects are trickier to categorize are strewn made we see the man at Yorkside among the piles: A lonesome deer fold the boxes, and we watch the torso keeps quiet vigil over a forest kitten unravel the yarn props of baby carriages and computer exist outside of effort and funcboxes. The props create a feeling of tion. On stage, they seem so real, surrealism. After walking by two so alive, o magical that without an stuffed arms sporting painted-red occa·s ional glimpse of the dusty, flngernails, one feels one has stum- discarded head of an inflatable bled into a Dali painting. duck, one can almost believe that The sheer quantity of. props the are. makes it easy to forget the effort -Rebecca Livengood that went into each individual object. They are stored so carefully Dig It because many are hand-crafted entirely frorn raw materials. Merrick lists a few props she ha I r BIRD HALL 0 THE TOP FLOOR OF constructed, among them car , the Peabody Museum, surrounded trees, and pie boxes. I find the la t by ruffed waterfowl, a young man example surprising: Can't he ju t named Ti1n Fa ano its behind a buy pie boxes? box of crayon and a stack of card-

•

stock. Today is the last Saturday in February, and there are still a fe~ hours to go until the end of Dinosaur Days 2006, an annual week-long event dedicated to the· giant reptiles that roamed the, Earth over 65 million years ago. Fasano is a senior at Hopkins . ' School who has volunteered at the Peabody Museum for the past two years. "All of the events run together" he reminisces, "but I remember the hats." His booth offers Peabody visitors the• chance to construct dinosaur headgear. A . gloating tod4ler struts by wearing a Tyrannosaurus rex hat by this~ time in the afternoon, Fasano has run out of that particular species. Celebrated for over twenty, years, Dinosaur Days is the longest-standing annual event at ~ the Peabody. Today, exc1ted young• sters trailed by bedraggled parents flll the Great Hall, built in 1929 to house the enormous Apatosaurus· skeleton that still dominates ' the space. A flve-year old girl stanles herself while gazing at the giant skull of the long-extinct carnivore,; while two slightly older boys point excitedly to the smoking volcanoes and swooping pterodactyl depicted in the The Age of Reptiles mural above. This year's Dinosaur Days is especially signiflcant due to the the recently unveiled bronze Torosaurus latus sculpture gracing the Museum's lawn. The dinosaur's likeness is scattered throughout the museum's interior and on its inhabitants' heads. A sign on the second-floor landing proclaim_s:' "Torosaurus: A Peabody Dinosaur." David Heiser, the museum's Event Coordinator, proudly explains how Peabody visi• tors recently had a chance to use the clay left over from the sculp- · ture's full-scale model to create their own Torosaurus sculptures. •

•

THE NEW JOURNAL

•

~- -

--~

•

' I

Dinosaur Days is a kid's dream. Volunteer Fasano believes that, if the museum can get kids interested in natural history on a basic ''!-likehats" level, they may develop a real passion for the subject as they grow older. Fasano would know He attributes his own desire to learn about natural history to the toy dinosaurs he played with as a child. In the Hall of Mammals, the fossils buried in the 3' x 3' sandbox are · real, and each child can take one home in an envelope with a description of its type and age. Shekar Menon, one of several volunteers monitoring the mini paleopt~logists, explains, "their favorites are the shark teeth" as he -shakes his .hea-d at a greedy threeye~~:-_ol(} _.whq wants to take home ---.;:, _,. . more. th~n ~ ne. When I request to join i!}~~~non kindly explains that, • while I have outgrown the fossil dig, there are plenty of Dinosaur Days activities aimed at an older audience. Elaine Hitt, a volunteer at the hat display, agrees. "Lots of times we have three generations," she says, gesturing at the fan1ilies making hats together. Just for a while, I try to act my age and read placards, but after four or five scientific descriptions of giant turtles and flightless birds, I want to be a kid again. ___,Meredith Wall . ., .#

Variations on a Theme "GENILEMEN, IN AU . PROBABILITY YOU

are writing better now than you will ever write again." The year was 1952, and Edward Weeks, a guest lecturer at Yale and then-Editor-inChief of Atlantic Month!J, stared down from a podium at an attentive group of Yale men: star students from the English Departrnent's Daily Themes class. Gaddis Stnith peered back. Now Professor April2006

Emeritus of History, Smith believes obs_e rvation of children."' Half a• Weeks was right. He and his class- century after taking the class, Smith mates probably never regained the still clearly ·remembers being taught intense "spontaneity and energy" to characterize through detail: "Do that breathed so freely through not write: 'John was an angry man.'their best themes. - In 19 52, Daily Write: 'John kicked the dog down Themes was already a legend, and the stairs."' The example is a critical' over the years it has only become lesson for any serious ·writer. After' more mythic. Along with Smith, a decline in the sixties culminated in· legendary men of letters such as the course's two-year absence from Calvin Trillin and William F. the curriculum, John Hollander Buckley have graced its roster and revived the class in 1979. ' gone on to write about the course Today's Daily Themes students ' •• in their memoirs. must attend lecture every Tuesday The class first appeared in the and write a 250-300 word theme Yale curriculum as "Short Themes" every weekday, and discuss their! in 1903 and was christened "Daily written themes in a weekly tutorial. Themes" by Assistant Professor of Each week focuses on a different English C.S. Baldwin in 1907. John aspect of writing: Point of View, Berdan taught from 1907 until 1941 Diction, Journals, Sentence· and as Professor Smith recalls, he Rhythms, and so on. According to· was the man who really "invented the current professor of Daily Daily Themes." In Calvin Trillin's Themes Bill Deresiewicz, some of 1966 New Yorker article about the these topics focus on "writing at class, he lists Berdan's eight slogans: the most atomic level; some are. "Individualize by Specific Detail! forms of narrative, and some are Vivify by Range of Appeal! elements of narrative." At the lecCharacterize by Speech and ture, the professor reads selections Gesture! Clarify by Point of View! by authors who have tackled the' Unify by a Single Impression! week's topic with particular aplomb.' Combine Details for Coherence! Sometirnes, the writers themselves Charge Words with Connotation! took the • Choose Words for their Sounds!" course. • Richard Sewell, a revered English And professor and the first master of yet not Ezra Stiles College, echoed Berdan's maxi rns when he took over the course in the 1940s. As described by Trillin, Sewell's words at a teaching conference highlighted his predecessor's legacy: "Sewell I

•

e ··

'Individualize by Specific Detail' the eye opener in Daily Themes' • attempt to revtve the sensitivity to detail ... a 'return to the vivid, honest, and direct

Writing daity can be a

•

ev eryone in Daily Themes wants goading. The lover is notoriousto pursue writing professionally. ly brutal, but perversely sweet.' Although few will actually The writer must continually become novelists, poets, or jour- rekindle passion, refine emotion, nalists, Professor Deresiewicz plumb experience: He recalls .t he. treats all as if they wilL He generations of Yale students believ es that "to be a writer is to before him as they too must live a certain kind of life. It's have stared at blank paper, about learning to look at the absently fiddling with fountain world, taking a responsibility for pens. Encouraged by this bond, the truth. If you · are deciding to the student might begin: do that, you are throwing the "Charles stared at the blank weight of your soul behind it." white door to his study. He knew For a single semester, Daily Katerina had heard him come in; Themes ' students are united he could hear her arranging die with each other . and with their folds of her dressing gown predecessors by their common across the sofa, every detail caldecision to make a commitment culated to unsettle him into submission. But he could only sigh. to the writing life. As the Daily Themes student For the hundredth time, . his sits down every night at a laptop, hand twitched on the doorknob. staring in haggard anguish at the Daily, he could not resist he~' cursor ticking across a blinking -Tess D~aring white screen, an insatiable lover whispers in his ear, relentlessly •

•

A Wide Selection

The Franke Lectures in the Humanities Spring 2006 Whitney Humanities Center Yale University, 53 Wall Street

of Distinctive

•

of Biography"

"The

Apparel, Gifts

JACKMII.ES

and · Keepsakes for

Author of "God: A Biography"

Yale Graduates.

"The Monstrous in Fiction & Biography"

TUESDAY, APRIL

Pictured: Our popular NIKE' 'M grey crewneck sweatshirt $45.00

P.M., AUDITORIUM

Reception itn•nediately following, Rootn 108

77 Broadway. New Haven, CT 065 1 I '

18, 5

The Franke Lectures are made possible by the generosity of Richard and Barbara Franke, and are intended to present important topics in the Hmnanities to a wide and general audience. The 2006 series will celebrate biography as a litera r y genre and method of history.

For information contact Manana Sikic- hone 203 432-0673 ore-mail manana.siki 'ale.edu .

Free and open to the public

• •

THE NEW JOURNAL

•

.. •

YOUR SUPPORT IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR FUTURE, AND WE APPRECIATE IT • .

TEFULTO OUR

HE .

I. OUR 39TH REUNION WAS A SMASHING SUCCESS! T

I< YOU TO ALL WHO

PARTICIPATED IN TilE FESI'IVITIES, AND TilE FOLLO . .

G DONORS:

J. N eela Banerjee Daniel Brook Hilary Callahan David Freeman David Greenberg Laura Heymann Tina Kelley Eli Kintisch Katherine Kress -Kehoe Audrey Leibovich Laura Pappano Jennifer Pitts Lauren Rabin Barnett Rubin Betsy Sledge

•

;

...

'..

....-

~ :~i;;;f

John Stella Fred Strebeigh Blake Wilson Margarita

•

ecza

onsors: •

.-anle a-war

April2006

e-wtnan .-

•

9 •

•

. .

by Julia

•

"It's a helmet."· · fenced off from the college. courtyard, . where the college bigwigs white"It's a gun." haired fellows, special guests mingle "It's a gun wearing a helmet." during the college's Thursday evening "It's a droopy mushroom." garden parties, guzzling botdes of wine, "It's very ... vertical. It's sort of, urn-" nodding with approval at '"'the fme barn"It's a penis." yard notes of this Bordeaux." It's the sculpture outside my , The phallic centerwindow stunningly ugly, .·· .··.····.·. · · ·•. ·• .•· ·. piece of these gatherings brutishly tall, bizarrely arrived ·in JE in the sensual. To me, it spring of 1998, looks like a when Gary craggy . Haller polyp; to ,.. ·.·• · was finothers.. . · ishing up o k a y ·, · •.' .· his first many oth- ··• year as ers it's a · Master . g 1 a n t Haller, a emblem professor of of. .. masculinity. chemistry, Objectively, . it's not . · studies hetmuch more than a broadly erogeneous curved surface on top of sever- , • catalysis by allong, twisted pillars. But any ..... . day, but his way you look at "it, it's a jarring • .•.•. •· extracurncuaddition to the stone-andlar passions brick faux-Gothic aesthetic c e n t e r of Jonathan Edwards around the College. art world. An Perched on a pouredavid collector concrete patio in the ' of figurative fenced-in space behind the . drawings parMaster's House, it domi- t > •····· nates the route from the ·•.· .: •·.: ticularly those depicting the dining hall to the college · ·. · nude formgate. Every JE student \ Hailer has exhibpasses it daily, but a surpris. ited a broad array ing number of people have of paintings and never noticed the thing. photographs Few have even registered since taking up the fact that their walkway borders the Master's backhis · post in JE. His curatorial yard, a tiny garden space A statue thrusts out if the JE Cour!Jard. .

•

:·

•

·.

• •

contacts at . the Yale University Art Gallery thought of him when the longterm renovation of the Gallery's sculpture garden began, and one of them had the bright idea to evacuate the sculpture across the street to Jonathan Edwards. A crane was duly procured, and the statue was, in turn, lifted, rolled, and pushed into the Master's garden. It has neyer left. The Art Gallery has never ~asked.- for it back, and there has never been· a formal agreement about its status only, as Master Haller puts it, Han unders~ding.'; The first year, a group of students opposed the statue so vehemendy that they circulated a petition for its removal. Haller dug in his heels: "It's my backyard, and the sculpture stays!" he told them. By 1999, though, the residents of JE had loosened up enough to adopt the thing as a sort of mascot. "They started ca11ing it 'the Master's phallic symbol,"' Haller ruefully recalls, "and that was that." Once, a student even asked to deck the statue with Christmas lights for the holiday season. Master Haller approved the project, but an eminent professor of Art History was so incensed with the Hdisrespectful violation of the integrity of the piece" that nobody dared touch it again. When I ask Master Haller how he feels about the integrity of the piece, he gt ins. ''Well ... I like it now. It took a while. When they first asked me to take it, I said, 'It's not my favorite piece ... but it's not unattractive.' Now it's become attractive because it's familiar." But what is it, anyw~y? The Master thrusts a huge book at me: ''Here, take this. I don't really know anything. I don't even know what's in this book." It turns out that the sculpture is, •

THE NEW JOURNAL

•

indeed, a helmet of sorts. It's called Floating Helmets and was envisioned by the Greek-American artist Dimitri Hadzi in 1963 as one of a series of sculptures of helmets. These pieces are variously said to evoke the warriors of the ancient world, the devastating mushroom clouds of modern warfare, and of coursesex. Or, as one art historian puts it, there is a highly "dominant phallic content" that brings "sexual overtones ... to an aggressive extreme." Hadzi seems to be one of those perennially underappreciated artists who resurface every few years just long enough for their supporters to make desultory pleas for relevance. One such supporter, Hadzi's longtime friend Seamus Heaney, writes (perhaps a bit too raptut_ously) of Hadzi's sculptures, i "They excite the viewer's whole being, making it want to Jly round and round in

•

.. .

-:;

...-:.._

.··.-~:::::~{j~t,;:,:.::.~;i~(~f :; ·' _., •._.. . =~?•

.-_

': -: : - :(~~;_ :·': _,;._ .

-~~

=~:

--~-

delighte~reconnaissance."

Perhaps.--: -. .~ - ri

But 't;:.Q.p§t 6f us never take the tirne to - look a(fthe thing in the first place. We don't care about the sculpture except as a joke the Master's phallic symbol indeed! and why should we? After all, what does it mean to live with a piece of art? To make fun of it. To bring it down to our level or to let our simple, unwitting ignorance bring it down. It gets nicknamed. It get compared to body parts. For better or for worse, it doesn't make a big difference to anything or anyone:it's no Mona Lisa, after all-and as we pass, it quickly fades into a forgotten form. We think instead about ourselves. Ten feet from the statue, two JE students are in conversatlon. ''I'm learning about symbio- ... symbolo- ... symbiology," a freshman girl spits out proudly. "Uh, what's that?" her companion asks. "Um, it's symbols," she says. ''I .ike what · mean and why." They walk off into the heat of the day, away from the shadowy crevices of the college they call hor r 1e, oblivious to the floating helmets of Floating Helmets looming above, and what they mean, and why. ,.....,_

•

julia Wallace is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College.

•

Colege at Yale

T~J

April2006

•• '

••

•

... '

.{''

• •

•••

••

,....

... ¥

•

••

• •

• ·~,(>

.,.

•••

•

• •

•

/ •

•

• -~ • ~-

• 17.

./',t-

// •

7 ..... .. ..•••

·'

•

/ •

•

"' ••

••

•

/ , ••

" /

•

"' "/

••'

.1''

•

•• •

• •••

•

••

•

•• •

/'/

• • •

•

/ •'

•••

,_,. /

••

/"/

•' .

••' ••

•

••

,.. •

•

...

../

,..

•••• •

•• •

/ /

•

.:•

. • .1'

. .,.,.-·

. . "/'• •

,.....·"

/ • / ,1• • .....~ . ..... ••

•

•••

••

.· / . "

..,.. /

·"'

.1'

••

•

"'•.,

·' I

•

•'

•

/·/

n 1950, over half of Yale's undergraduate population participated in the military's Reserve Office Training Corp (ROTC)••

,•'

the c:Qllege student's alternative to taking his chances with the

.' •

draft. In addition to their normal coursework, they performed

,./

•'

•

dri11s, took Military Science courses, and, perhaps most daunt-

•

•••'

ingly, signed away the four years following graduation to become officers in the military. In exchange, they

••

•

receiv ed Yale credit for their ROTC coursework, considerable financial aid, and, in an era when military service

' •'

<••

w as almost compulsory, were able to exercise some control over how they would go about serving.

•'

•

"''

••-~

, ·., /

••''

~ /

•

;

.,>

•

prep courses, and commit at least four post-graduate years to serving as officers in the military. ROTC

·" "'

•

Half a century later, the basic ROTC program remains unchanged: Cadets perform drills, take military-

,•

.//

•'

•

,.,. / '

_,.

-·

•

•••

/ ' / ••

/"· / ' • ••

....

.....

•

•/

'/.

/ •

----~·~--

.. / " ..,/' •

.../

• •

•

./"

•

/ /

•

/ ./

•

Hammerle and Pampena were in transit thirty minutes behind schedule. "I have no idea what happened back there," Hammerle said as he turned the car out of the lot and headed towards the highway.

participation at Yale, however, looks very different. The overwhelming number of students who participated during its heyday has been reduced to single digits. And, whereas in the 19 50s Yale students only had to walk across campus to participate in ROTC training, their dri11s now begin with an hour and a half-long car ride. Every Thursday morning at 10:30, Yale Senior M:;~.tthew Hammerle pulls on a dull-green flight suit, climbs into a rental car, and drives 65 miles to ROTC training at the University. of Connecticut. On one particular Thursday last fall, he and Jason Pam.pena, a fellow cadet, stood waiting in front of Payne Whitney Gym for their rental car to be delivered. However, on this particular Thursday, Enterprise RentA-Car failed to pass inspection. This particular Thursday, Enterprise was late. 10:30 passed, 10:40 passed, 10:50 passed. Finally, a taxi pulled up to the curb and not one, not two, but three Enterprise representatives crawled out of the backseat. Apparently they lacked the personnel to drive the car over. They wanted

s the two drove northeast, their conversation drifted away from Yale and towards ROTC. Pampena, a sophomore, had only recently begun attending ROTC classes and was unsure whether he was comfortable making a binding committnent to the military. He was so new to the program that he had yet to be issued a uniform unlike the majority of the underclass cadets, he still wore a button-down shirt and khaki pants. And, as he was coming to realize, the distance between New Haven and Storrs, where the University of Connecticut is located, poses more of an.obstacle for the Yale cadets than simply a long drive. Like any organization, ROTC has a social component, and Pampena wasn't sure how to go about inaking friends with fellow •

•

ROTC consists of three main components: classroom seminars, drill training, and physical fitness. The Air Force cadets attend training once per week, and are required to attend a Saturday session once or twice per semester. But that day's session promised two key deviations from the routine. Late in the afternoon, there would be a physical fitness test in preparation for an official exam the following week. And Jason had heard rumors that .there would be an inspection. Cadets in shorts and t-shirts, sweating through repetitions of sit-ups, push-ups, and laps around a track while yelping cadence is perhaps one of the images most commonly associated with ROTC. But while a cadet's performance on physical fitness tests affects whether he gets his desired job in the Air Force, the minimwn requirements are, according to Hammerle, quite lax. Essentia11y, ph~ical training is just one way the military exacts its c~ef requirement from its officers: discipline. "It says a lot intrinsically ahout how dedicated to the program you are," Hammerle said. "If you don't meet the requirements, one, that's pretty bad; two, you aren't trying at all." The inspection Pam.pena anticipated is also about more than shiny buttons and ironed dress blues. "The idea is to make sure the younger cadets know how to wear their uniform and that the older cadets are still keeping neat," Hammerle said. "It teaches discipline you have to stand at attention for an extended period of time." ''What happens if you have to sneeze while at attention?" Pampena asked . Hammerle laughed. "Umm ... hold it?" he said, half-questioningly. ''I mean, if you have to sneeze, you have to sneeze, but it's about discipline." The premium the military places on discipline transcends the walls of the classroom. As representatives of the Air Force, the officers are expected to embody its values in their public and private lives Hammerle, peppered his speech with asides such as "this is just my opinion, not the Air Force's." To uphold the reputation of the Air Force is a weighty responsibility, especially for ROTC cadets who will, on average, work full time for the military by the age of 22. When his fellow Yale seniors are tentatively acclimariz1ng to the world beyond col•

•

(

•

e at

•

in t e nti itar isn't sotnet in uate-it's or

e •

'' e.

•

en z

•

Hammerle and Pampena to w~ the five cadets he saw only once per week. blocks to Enterprise headquarters on "Get involved with these people outCrown Street, but, after a quick negotia- side of ROTC," Hammerle advised him. tion, they, not Hammerle and Pampena, ''Do some of the fundraising events." A were trudging down the sidewalk, and the senior, Hammerle was in his fourth year two cadets were in the taxi, speeding · of ROTC. Just as Pampena's civilian towards the car lot. A s they climbed out, clothes marked him as a newcomer, yet another Enterprise representative Hammerle's uniform placed him among materialized. "Hey Matt, what's up the elite of his ROTC division. His flight buddy," he said, handing Hammerle the suit indicated his status as a jet pilot one keys to a gray Mazda. A brief search for of the most coveted positions in the Air the car in question ensued, but finally, Force. •

14 •

•

• •

THE NEW JOURNAL

• •

•

lege, Hammerle will be thrown in headfirst. On May 20, he receives his commission as a Second Lieutenant. nee they arrive at Storrs, Hammerle and Pampena split up. Pampena joins his fellow sophomores for a history lesson while Hammerle and the other senior cadets seat themselves around a table in a drab, gray conference room. The room is equipped with computers, projection equipment, and fancy speaker phones, the last of which hold the cadets' attention. Each week, part of their classroom time is devoted to telephoning an officer in the Air Force. This week their mentor is Lieutenant Ian Young, who boasts 15 years_ of military experience ten as an p f£!t:er and has been stationed in locales ~ "far-flung as Djibouti, Germany, and Florida. One by one, in brisk, official to.,..t;~s/~e · caqets present him with quesnom. . . .,... ~~rf what is jt like to be married to a #"E ,. fellow officer?" "Sir, you are prior enlisted what are the best leadership qualities you've seen implemented by an officer?" "Sir, what is a typical day like as a maintenance officer?" "Sir, what culture differences did you encounter between the Air Force and Marines in Africa?" . "Sir, what is it like coming back to the U.S. from overseas?" Their questions and Young's answers emphasized that these cadets are not merely preparing for a job; they are preparing for a lifestyle. I jke Lieutenant Young, they will return from abroad to find that their farniHes are doing just fine without thetn. They will squabble with Marines over stolen video games. They will conduct search and rescue missions in 120 degree heat. All of these may occur during their tour of duty in the Air Force. •

•

~..

, . .I

. , ...

...

fter thcir phone call to Young, the senior cadets are given a brief break. Some adjourn to the ROTC lounge, where they snack, recount weekend exploits, and coordinate logistics for an upcoming movie night. OthersUCoon students dash across campus to attend their other, academic classes. N o

Matthew Hammerle's flight suit marks him as a j11ture pilot

matter how late they are, the uniformed cadets salute one another as they cross paths. While they don't come close to outnumbering their civilian peers, they are a visible presence on campus. And this points to the m ost difficult part of Hammerle and his fellow Yale cadets' d ecision to p articipate in the program: There is no ROTC program at Yale. arnmerle, two other Air Force cadets, and a lone Arrny cadet co mpose Yale's entire R OTC contingent. But in the not-too-distant past, Yale did have a strong involvetnent in ROTC. Professor Gaddis Smith, who is abo ut to publish a book titled Yale in the

April2006

2rfh Century, explained succinctly w hy Yalies were once drawn to the program: In the 1950s, "ROTC was a way of getting through college without getting drafted" But Yale's relationship with military training began even b efore the conception of · the ROTC program. For a number of years after the Civil War, Yale students perfonned rudimentary 1 oilitat y exercises to satisfy the conditions of a federal grant. The grant was eventually withdrawn, and until World War I, Yale lacked a milita t y presence. "When World War I broke o u t in 1914, a great many students, alumni, and even the president of the University belie ed very srrongl in military preparedness," Smith said. 'CVale established

15 •

cal; he serves as a liaison between Yale students and ROTC officials.

'•.

t:: '• .. ,·

·-c: ·Cl)

~:s 0

Bef!Ji Hurlburt, secotzd from the right, stands with follow Air Force ROT C cadets.

its own, private, privately-funded military training program while the U.S. was n eutral." In 1916, when war with Germany seemed . inevitable, Congress o fficially established the current form o f ROTC. Yale was one of the charter m embers. . . Almost immediately, the faculty expressed its unhappiness that courses such as "Stable Management" counted for Yale College credit, but the program went largely unchallenged for five decades. During that rime, Yale students fought in the two World Wars in such great numbers that, according to Smith, "the only civilians remaining at Yale were either very young, or in some cases old or disabled." But in the face of the Vietnam War, attitudes towards the military at Yale became highly unfavorable. "The anti-war movements at Yale and around the country .. . saw ROTC as the symb ol of University support in an immoral war," Smith said. Etnboldened by anti-war and anti-ROTC sentiments, Yale professors finally acted on their long-standing dissatisfaction with the program . Supported by the Yale Corporation, professors presented the Pentagon with a list of changes ROTC would have to implem ent in order to stay on campus: Students would no longer receive Yale College credit for ROTC courses; ROTC instructors would

I '

' '

•

I ' I

•

• •

' •

lose their titles as Yale professors; and whereas previously, the military had not allowed them to pursue studies in certain departments such as Art History or Anthropology, ROTC students would be free to major in whatever subject they wished. The Pentagon rejected the faculty proposal, and · in 1969, ROTC was expelled from Yale. •

oday, ROTC and Yale are tenuously linked. Because the U niversity lacks an ROTC battalion; interested students must travel to nearby campuses that do host them: Army ROTC is hosted by Sacred Heart, and Air Force ROTC by the U niversity of ·c onnecticut's Storrs campus. No school in Cqnnecticut offers N avy ROTC. N onetheless, Yale still provides some support for its ROTC students. It pays fo r the rental cars, tardy though they may b e, that the cadets drive to the University o f Connecticut and Sacred Heart every week. It also provides them with a university-affiliated ROT C advisor: Yale's Director of System Engineering Facilities, Jerry Hill. Hill w as chosen as ROTC advisor by former Yale College Dean Rich~rd Brodhead, who deemed his twenty years of ser vice in the Navy "appropriate life exp erience." His role is primarily logisti-

ver the years, various groups have tried to bring ROTC back to Yale. The most recent failed attempt was championed by the Yale College Republicans during the 20042005 school year. As in 1969, today's ROTC proponents are challenged by a war that is largely unpopular among Yale students. But unlike in 1969, when the academic veracity of ROTC was the other key point of tension, it is now the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that has turned many faculty and students against on-campus recruitment. Professors and students at the law school have flied a series of lawsuits against the Department of Defense to protest the Solomon Amendment, a . piece of legislation mandating that any university receiving federal~undltig allow military recruitment on its ca.inpus.. ~d, during the Yale College Republican's recent attempt to reinstate the prbgram, Yale University President Richard Levin publicly sounded off on the issue, announcing that he found the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy "shameful." ~

n spite of the controversy associated with ROTC, neither Hammerle, nor Benji Hurlburt, another Air Force ROTC cadet, has encountered much campus criticism for their ROTC participation. They both point to an incident that occurred last spring while they were manning a ROTC information booth during Bulldog Days as the only memorable exception. ''A girl was handing out 'Lies About the Militat y' fliers right next to our table," Hurlburt recalled "Mostly, people just ask me what it's about, though." ''My friends think my tmiform's pretty cool," he added. either Hammerle nor Hurlburt portrays his decision to enroll in ROTC as overtly political. Hamr nerle saw it as a way to show his gratitude . for the comforts afforded by American citizenship. ''I haven't had a lot to worry about," he said. ''I thought I had to give something back to my country, and

THE NEW JOURNAL •

•

• •

•

military service is .a way to do that." good way to go," Hill said. Perhaps Yale students are simply Hammerle also sees his future career as Not all ROTC students are on schol- wary of entering such a difficult and an Air Force jet pilot as one he can easily arship, and many have reasons aside dangerous career. Those in the military, translate to the civilian sphere. from financial aid to join the military. even officers, make sacrifices unasked of "Leadership is something I'm definitely Hill noted that a number of recent Yale their civilian counterparts they bind looking into," he said. He is also aware cadets have joined Air Force ROTC themselves into a contract to accept low that, as a Yale student, his desire to pursue because they want to become pilots. But pay, live in far-flung, sometimes leadership opportunities does not set him in almost the same breath, he empha- unpleasant locations, and work within a apart. ''A lot of people at Yale want to be sized that he believes ROTC students system unrivaled for its discipline and leaders, but they don't want to do it are at least partially tnotivated by ideo- rigidity. They also face occupational hazthrough military service." Pointing to the logical concerns. "They all do it to serve ards injury and even death that few political ambitions of many Yale students, their country on some level," he said. other Yale students consider when Hammerle added, ''Truthfully, I think that "There are other ways to fly planes." weighing future career options. the American people would be very skepPatriotism aside, Hill said that this Hammerle noted that one of the rea·tical of someone who's going to be send- year's class of four cadets reflects typical sons Yale students may not join the miling our troops into battle without having involvement in the program. itary en masse is that they are unwilling to · been there himsel£" "It's interesting since we've gone make a potentially fatal commitment. .{\side from ROTC, there are other through 9/11 that there doesn't seem to "It's .really tough," he said sincerely. routes that college students can pursue if be an appreciable increase in interest in "We have it pretty happy and easy here. ithey want to receive officers' commisROTC [at Yale]," he said. "We haven't Why put that at risk for an objective you r . ~jons upon graduating. All college graduseen an application increase." might not believe in?" "Some of the older alumni think that ates are eJigibfe to apply to Officer CandKfate School, a 14-week training [the current] generation is not as patriotenji Hurlburt's primary motiic as the older generation," he added, vation to join ROTC had pr~g~ "'tiJ-at, like ROTC, prepares them "Which is unfortunate. The military more to do with the specific to ert~tf tlie tni1i~ as officers. The U.S. ..,. . Marine Corp. also offers a Platoon needs people like Yale students-smart, opportunities it offers than with a strong desire to enter national service. 'I eaders Course, in which aspiring offi- critical thinkers, problem-solvers." cers complete training over the course of two summers. According to Hill, approximately twenty Yale students currently participate in the program, and part of its appeal lies in that it requires a weaker commiunent than ROTC. ''When you graduate, you are not to join the Marines, nor are they obliged to take you," said- Yale's ROTC advisor, Jerry Hill. ''They have a no-harm approach there." ROTC, by contrast, does require its cadets to join the military upon graduation, and they usnal1y make a binding couunitment by the end of their sophomore year. It also requires students to conunit a sizeable amount of time to the miJitary while they are in college. Yet, the progra.tn has its own advantages over other forms of officer · · . Most notably, while the Platoon Leaders Course provides students with some financial aid for college, ROTC is one of the few proof any kind that offers students sizable anerit-based scholarships. ~'If you're a middle-class family and can't apply for financial aid but can't quite afford to send your kid to a place like Yale, the ROTC scholarship is a Hltrlb11rt St!fS his.friends "think nry 11niform s pref!Y cool. n •

•

or~~ ~,_....

-_-.____

-.-_-

:·::;

April2006

•

'•

•

http://

.yale.edu/writing

through Period. It's paper-crunch time. · We're here to help.

Experienced writers near!J always get feedback on works-in-progress. So shouldyou! Residential College Writing Tutors. By appointment only-see website for tutor schedules. Located in your college, these tutors are experienced, professional writers who have helped generations of Yale students. Seniors-see our website for sutnmer help with Grad School/Fellowship Applications.

Writing Partners Yale undergraduate or graduate students selected for their writing skills and their ability to ta1k about • • wnnng. Drop-in service only, at the Writing Center. (35 Broadwayentrance behind Toad's) Sun-Thurs, 3-Spm & 7-9pm Fri. 3-Spm Closed Fri. evening, closed ali-day Saturday.

"It's kind of a dream of mine to be a pilot," he said. ''And getting college paid for that really helps." Hurlburt sees the lack of ROTC involvement at Yale as a Yale-specific problem. "I think maybe people at Yale think a job in the military isn't something Yale students do when they graduate it's for ordinary people," he said. "People think of going into politics or becoming a doctor," he added. "They don't put military service on the same level. .. Maybe it's just the culture of Yale in general, which isn't · as patriotic as other places." · Ironically, Hurlburt's aspirations as a pilot place him in the same situation as Yale students competing for extremely selective jobs. Unlike Hammerle, who has already received his cornnussion ' Hurlburt, as a sophomore, is still competing with Air Force cadets across the country for one of the few pilot slots available to ROTC cadets every year. In some ways, his status as a Yale student places him at a disadvantage; ''To be a pilot, when you're competing, GPA is a factor," he said. '~They don't take into account what classes you're taking ... They put all your numbers in a database, and if you're above a certain percentage, you're in." n ROTC, .Hurlburt's identity is little more than a number in a database a ' fact that may point to a reason for the progratn's decline at Yale. As an institution that champions the individuality of its students, its values may simply be antithetical to mmta t y participation. Nonetheless, in spite of the limitations it places upon its cadets, both Hammerle and Hurlburt have forged individual identities as students outside of ROTC during their time at Yale. Hammerle is an avid participant in intranmral sports he was captain of the Morse inner tube water polo team for three years in a row while Hurlburt was recendy narned director of The Purple Crayon, an improv comedy troupe. · back on the past four years, Han unerle doesn't believe that ROTC has defined his tirne at Yale. '~ definitely missed out on a couple of classes I wanted to take," he said ''But ROTC is kind of a different world for me. Thursday comes around and I go to Storrs, then I come back and forget

about ROTC."

•

or Jason Pampena, however, · ROTC proved to be too much of a time committnent he stopped participating at the beginning of this semester. "I left because it just didn't fit into my schedule," he said. "If that hadn't been the case, I would have definitely stayed in through the end of the year." Like Hammerle, Pampena was attracted to the military because of the public service opportunities it affords. But during the fall, his trips to Storrs interfered with an EMf training course he was also taking. Pampena also ·said that he found hiniSdf questioning whether the goverru:J:lent was using the military · in a proper m~er. Now he lists Teach for America and the Peace Corps as post-college opportunities that interest him, though he has not ruled · out the possibility of joiniQg the- military upon graduation. very day, thousands of students, including Hammerle, Hurlburt, and Pampena pass through the rotunda of Commons where, carved into the walls are the names of every Yale student or graduate who has died serving his country in the Armed Forces. Entering frorn Beinecke Plaza, one is confronted by the names of those who fell early in Yale's history: in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War. Moving forward into the adjoining foyer, it is possible to be overwhelmed by the a1most uncountable names of those who died during the two World Wars. Exiting into the rotuilda, one passes two short walls listing the names of those who died in the Korean War and in Vietnam, ending with Francis A11ard Boyer, class of 1969, who died on December 3, 1972. Althoqgh in the past several decades, U.S. mi1itary fatalities have paled in comparison to earlier eras, the names do not stop because wars stopped. They stop because Yale students stopped joining the military. Helen Eckinger, ajunior in T rnmbu/1 College~ is Managing Editor of The New JournaL

THE NEW JOURNAL •

• •

•

;

I' •

•

'•

•

~ ,A

•

• •

• •• \

•

'• . •

•

' I• • ~

•

' •••

•

1. •

• • .. ••

•

' •

Chicken Kebob .............. $3.25 '.

•• '

Lightly seasoned cubes of chicken, grilled on a skewer

•

Hommus Plate .............. $4.50 '

•

A garnished plate of hommus •

•

Kefta Kebab ................. $3.25 A ground patty of lamb, parsley,

and onions, grilled •

...•

Shawerma ................... $5.50

•

Seasoned, slowly roasted lamb, shaved thinly, with tomatoes, parsley, and onions

•

·,

•

SERVING THE YALE COMMUN FOR MROE THAN 25 F: OPEN LATE, our •

85 Howe St., New Haven, CT 065_11

119 Mac Dougal St. New York, NY 10012

203 562-8444

(212) 675-8685'

(Menus, prices and hours may vary at each location.) April2006

• •

•

• •

vtan •

•

n Tuesday nights, the tables irt Anna Liffey's, a subterranean Irish pub at 17 Whitney, fill up by 8:15 as regulars appear and gradually crystallize into teams of five. When nine o'clock rolls around, these teams engage in animated debates ·about the seemingly trivial questions like "which popular board game was banned in Cuba and North Korea?" The participants defy generalization: Neuroscience graduate students compete against Book Trader baristas and a group of coworkers from a local high school. Some participants neither work nor reside in New Haven, but make the trip to Whitney Avenue just for . Anna Liffey's famed Trivia Night. The Quizmaster, Jonathan, is bestowed with the responsibility of reading the trivia questions and occupies an appropriately righteous seat of authority on a raised platform. The adjacent table is occupied by Jessica, Michael, Derek, Scott, and •

•

Chris who make up the unlikely veteran team: Rehab is for Quitters, How did they become Trivia Night regulars? ''I kind of .. ' got sucked in;" one offers, and the other.s laugh in agreement. Each member initially joined as a substitute, then was g:radualy incorporated into the core over the past stx years. At nine o'clock, the chatter in Anna Liffey's softens to a murmur and Trivia Night commences. The Quizmaster opens a package of questions (supplied weekly by a company named Brainstormer Pub Quiz) and calls out the rules of the game: •

•

Liffey's were Irish, as was the bartender who started the trivia tradition seven years ago. The nation's flag marks the entrance and, weeks after St. Patrick's Day, "Guinness" clovers still hang from the • • walls. •

•

2. Come up with ah imaginative team name and write it on each of your Play Cards. , For Quizmaster Jonatha~e highlight of Trivia Night occurs . after rouna thre_e, when he reads the colorful team .m nikers aloud during the ftrst score ~ update. Names range from the raunchy (Save a • Train-.R ide a Conductor), to the whimsically obscene (One Puck Two Puck Red Puck Blue Puck), to the simply absurd (Dingoes Ate My Baby). The members of Rehab is for · Quitters can't remember exactly how their team found its namebut they do recall how their original members were heavy drinkers and smokers. Ironically, ·M ichael, .who joined the team i ' few years ago, works at a New Haven rehab center. · •

•

1. Order some drinks. This is, after all; an Irish pub. Old spritz bottles and lanterns are shelved against roughly stone walls, and each wrought iron table is fashioned to resemble those which once held classic Singer sewing machines. The nostalgic ambience is genuine the original owners of Anna

3. When the contest ·begins, · the Quiztuaster will read out the questions. Cotne up with as many correct· answers as possible and write thetn on 'the Play Cards provided. Every week, Brainstormer Pub Quiz mails Anna Liffey's a package which contains seven rounds of questions tieariog subjects from chemistry to pop culture. Jonathan always replaces one round with a music category, which asks teams to identify songs based on s01ind clips. The crowd at Anna Liffey's often transforms into a musical troupe, as when most of ' the bar. breaks into an enthusiastic rendition of ''As Long as We Got Each Other" from Growing Pains.

•

Come inside and testy our knowledge

over Gt~imuss.

THE NEW JOURNAL •

•

' •

•

• •

4. NO CHEATING! •

Because· 'm oney is at stake, this rule is stricdy enforced. For a play card and the promise· of an enjoyable night, each team must cpntribute ten do11ars. At the end of the night, the .pot of gold is divided among the three highest-scoring teams. With tWenty teams consistendy playing, first ,place I Can expect tO take home OVer one hundred •

•

S'; Do not yell out• the answers!

When Jonathan bellows,''You lose on average fifty to one hundred of what each day," some teams try to foil their competitors by shouting out facetious answers: "Fingers!" . ''Toeuai,lse' At another table, with intensity to Yale students, aJE '06 team leans in .. dose to deliberate. They barely . their poses long enough to sip their • drirtks, lest any discussion become privy to •

•

,·7 ,-#

-;;e..-.

...-

6. ...~ ·' iJle-~nt of any disputes, the Q1uz~te'r's_ def;iaion is final. Be ni~cttJ-yo'Ur Quizmas~er; and he will be

•

nice to .yop. Jonathan and the waitresses who work Tuesday nights reward the loyalty of Rehab is for Quitters by reserving · their treasured table. Such respect is rare the Quizmaster ridicules stupid answers, singling out a team that avows a platypus, not a bat, is the only mammal that can fly. •

•

Voted s Best New Haven Eye and Best Eye

•

7. ~ aQ clae, ENJOY YOURSEI.F! That's really what it's all about. For the tnetnbers. of is for Quitters, the . rewards of trivia night extend beyond Tt~esdays. J~sica explains that, except for brothers-41-law Derek and Chris, none of the Rehab is for Quitters teammates had met before · · "sucked in." Now good friends, they convene on birthdays to play Trivial Pursuit. Though Rehab is for Quitters no longer consistendy places at Trivia Night, the tear:n has not forgotten its · former glory days. With discernible Jessica's Derek laments, "We used to be sodding number one!" To which their waitress responds,''You're still one to me."

• comprehensive eye exams • contact lenses • fashion eye wear •

•

Featuring the eye wear at

seleceion better lowest prices.

is a Sopho1110rt in Jonathan

Co&ge.

•

April 2006 •

•

21 • •

•

lS •

•

by Lauren ed Lamont strolls into the Branford Common Room. Robust and confident, he seems a bit too polished for the casual space. His smile is self-satisfied without being smug. Boyish, the 52-year old businessman-turned-politician is the fust challenger to Senator Joe Lieberman since the latter's election in 19th. · Lamont projects the irriage of the . spirited politician who . captures both the support ·of both the old and young in one fell swoop a would-be JFK of Connecticut's Democrats. ''Who am I?'' Lamont asks the crowd minutes after arriving at Yale. "I'm an entrepre~eur ... and if you're an entrepreneur in business, I think you're a progressive in government." Lamont says he is peddling innovation whether in politics or his digital cable business. The audience nods like a litter of .obedient puppy dogs awaiting a treat. Latnont hits all of the major left-wing sore spots: Iraq was a mistake and "those who got us into this war should be held accountable"; universal affordable healthcare needs to be "a part of the solution"; we're currently paying for "tax cuts we can't afford"; our moral authority has been degraded by "the outsourcing of torture and Abu •

•

arrtson

Ghraib"; and our president "thinks he's . Vice President of the U.S., and a bid for above the law." . the Presidency, Lieberman has the And then the clincher. With increas- name, the war chest (five mi11ion dollars ing urgency, Lamont asks the crowd, as of the end of 2005), and the connec.:. ''On all of these issues, where was tions that makes young~oliticians saliJoe?" Tense silence. He continues. vate. In his campaign to replace hitn, "Senator Lieberman · cheered on the Ned Lamont is also endeavo.iing to President every step of the way. And replace a legacy. that is why I think Joe should go. I'd like to say to Lieberman, 'If you're not n a midnight blue suit, his going to stand up to this president for complexion artificially matte, his failed po~cies, then I will."' The Lamont looks like a member audience bursts into applause. They've of the New England Brahmin. He come expecting this meat the also bears the resume points of the well-groomed political elite: He can wax poetic about his years spent at Philips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, and boasts a degree from Yale School of Management, which he scathing criticism of Lieberman and hands proudly in his otherwise nonthe status quo and it is fed to them descript office. with impressive fluidity. Lamont Yet, tirne and titne again, Lamont exhales, wrings his hands nervously tries to distance himself. from this behind his back, then nods apprecia- image, claiming that he 1s "true to his roots." In the public domain, he takes tively. I .a•••ont hopes to revive Connecticut's pains to stress his role as a family man tradition of progressive politics an~ as (he has three children, the oldest of he told his eager audience in Branfor~ whom followed her father to Hat vard). to "show people that you can be a real An entrepreneur by trade he founded Democrat and win.'' Over the coming I .DS in 1980 the Greenwich native months, he will pit his forn tidable vision divides his free rirne between his famiagainst Liebernlan's fonnidable resmne. ly, teaching a business class in one of With 18 years in the Senate, a run for Bridgeport's inner-city schools, and

THE NEW JOURNAL •

•

chairing various local boards. Lamont wants Connecticut to see hirn as an active member of the community-not just another smartly dressed politician. To illustrate this point, Lamont loves to describe how, between his years at Harvard and Yale, he turned away from lofty Ivy pretension. A summer job with The Black River Tn.bune drew him from the pristine rooms of Harvard's "Lamont Library" (named after a great-grandfather) to the sleepy streets of Ludlow, Vermont. Lamont says that this "real world experience" afforded him the chance to travel to small towns, meet local leaders, and chat with the citizens. .f'I ·came away with an appreciation for r . }Yhat a difference good government can make," he says wistfully. "And it ;../ ; j~t , -~-' ~ems to me, looking at -- .W-a~hjngton D.C., that they're • o;r noc;even- rtying to make a difference anytnore."

.·

....· .

•

y:.

. >4~:, :~., '

••

.~f

Earlier this semester,

ed Lamont spoke to students gathered in the Bra!iford Common Room.

mouth of one with so little experience. Lamont's current task is to play the role of the anti-Joe. In spite of his "rescuerof-the-Democratic-Party" appeal, Lamont is, by any standards, a political novice and has a long way to go if he hopes to become a household name. Before January, Lamont was virtually unknown outside of the Greenwich community, and even today, a Google Image search for ''Ned Lamont" yields just nine results, only six of which are actually pictures of ed Larnontthree are pictures of Iiebennan. As he speaks from the Branford Common Room, Lamont lags behind in the polls by an estirnated margin of SSo/o.

amont may think Washington is geu ing lazy, but for the purpose of his campaign, it's more important that Joe Iieberman is getting particularly slovenly. Lamont is banking on support from Democrats who agree Iieberman has overstayed his welcome in the Senate. Comparing his foe to the elderly housekeeper of a wealthy estate, whose workmanship declines, unnoticed and unchallenged over the years, Lamont says that Iieberman is no longer a Democrat but "half of one." Lieberman's conservative stances on the war, abortion, and civil liberties issues coupled with his o his rnost fervent supportsupport for conservative Justice ers, he is not just another Samuel Alito LAW '75 have earned aspiring politician he's the hirn a reputation as Fox News' favorite Democrat. liberal backlash has been superhero waiting in the wings. The quiet thus far, limited to a few websites man who could potentially reenergize ca1Jing Liebennan a ''DINO" or a and reunify the Democratic party, the liberal who just might re-liberalize ''Democrat In Narne Only." His chances of success depend on Connecticut politics. With this camwhether he can paint hin1Self as a truer paign, Larnont has set hirnself a Democrat, and whether voters will daunting task: A battle against one trust those claims corning from the very wealthy and experienced foe.

April2006

Nevertheless, with each stump speech, it seems more believable that Ned Lamont could be the one to dethrone the incumbent, to topple the mighty "Republocrat" Joseph Lieberman at long last. By the end of the night, fatigue has cast deep shadows across Lamont's face; inhaling, he summons the energy to repeat one final tirne what has become his slogan: "The bottom line is I think our candidacy is going to be the best thing for the Democrats in this state... Some have said, 'Ned, I don't want you to jeopardize the Democrats' hold on Connecticut,' and my response is, 'This is a blue state. You're not going to lose a senator, you're going to gain a Den1ocrat."' On his way out the door, Lamont shakes the hands of eager students and tries his best to look like a beacon of hope. •

Lauren Harrison a freshman in E~a Stiles, is Ciratlations Atanagerfor TN]. 1

T~J

23 .-

~-----. ~-.....--

_.-y:Jc-

•

..... """.... •

•

'li

'<#

,,_

_.,_

•

• 1

•

co ..

one ccee

•

onn •

•

arly last month, a Yale ·alumna in Washington, D. C. agreed to take a quick -·-

" meeting with a University development officer, on the concHtio{\ that the •

•

officer would not attempt to solicit any donations. The meeting, later described by the alumna as "very low-key," was only one in an extended .

series of interviews currently being conducted by Yale development officers across the country. .

They are part of the "quiet phase" of a major University fundraising drive scheduled to be unveiled .,.,. in September. Representatives are currently conducting a vast '

' "'·

number of interviews with alumni to pinpoint topics

•

that will make nostalgia flourish, hearts rush, and money flow, which will allow the Development Office to finalize its fundrasing goals. ·:-:-

. .

•

• •

RNAL

• •

'•

•

Indeed, the officer conducted another such discussion within the hour with an . alumnus who worked just a few offices away from her first stop. After both meetings, the alumni reported that Richer had casually sketched the University's hopes for what could be achieved and asked for their reactions. Nothing too innovative, the of~cer . sug. gested, just expansions of current projects except for one thing: adding two ' more residential colleges. "Would you have a reaction to that?" lumni have heard this pitch before. From its 1933 inception, the residential college system has evolved to accommodate a · frC?)Ving student population. In fact, a S_"Yell in enrollment was the system's original impe~~_,_ Okl'Brick Row, the alternatU:.~_. &.S;f:s of rectangular dorms and ch~0~~~tJjat housed Yale in its early days,i~~ not _eyen provide eno~h beds ·for the smaller student population of 1870. The current Old Campus, haphazardly built in the final decades of the 19th century, was also quickly outgrown. The 750 students who graduated in 1920 could have wiped the floor with their fathers' class in a rousing (if not particularly suspenseful) game of Bladderball, for they outnumbered the Class of 1899 by more than two to one. Connecticut Hall, the last vestige of O~d Brick ·R ow, was preserved as auxiliary housing, but even its salvation could not forestall the pending crisis. Had such growth accrued today, Yale might have simply squeezed an unprecedented third bed inside a Bingham single. The students of a hundred years ago, however, would not stand for such indignities and began to move off campus in droves. By 1925, the housing situation had grown untenable. That winter, University President James R Angell submitted a plan for "dividing the student body into a number of groups somewhat resembling the English colleges." With new students to fill the space and a donation from Edward Harkness, Class of 1897, to provide grist for the mil1, 1933 saw the construction of new buildings and the birth of the first seven undergraduate colleges. As Yale's student population

April2006

continued to grow, new residences were quickly added: Berkeley in 1934, Timothy Dwight in 1935, and Silliman in 1940. Morse and Stiles followed in 1961, replacing a city public schooL The arrival of coeducation in 1969 presented Yale with a choice: scale back male enrollment or increase housing. For thenPresident Kingman Brewster, the decision was clear. Hoping to replicate the success his predecessor had enjoyed a decade earlie.r, he commissioned plans to construct the 13th and 14th residential college. The plans had the three key ingredients: a donor, a site, and a stack of blueprints. A donation by 1926 alnt n John Hay would fund the colleges. They would be built on land just north of Timothy Dwight, bordered by Whitney, Grove, and Tetnple Streets Yale on two sides, New Haven on two others. Mitchell/ Giurgola Associates, the architectural firm hired to design the site, hoped the new colleges would serve as "a vital area where the University tnerges with the City, a crossroads for cat r1pus and comnmoity, a place of encounter." To facilitate this town-gown bonding, the proposed nine-story highrises bore little resemblance to traditional, courtyard-orientated acadetnic enclaves. Cotmnercial facilities and parking lots would occupy the building at street level. Though gates would restrict access to the sma11, sunken courtyards, public walkways ~ould trans-

verse the site to promote the sense of connection to the city. Even the building's aesthetic, featured in adjacent drawing, would join it. with the city, combining the reds of 'ID with the white of surrounding city structures. To achieve this, the oversized, russet bricks of the fa<_;:ade would be punctuated by juu ing, off-white plexiglass bay • windows that seemed plucked from the set of Fritz_Lang's Metropolis. These modules would be outfitted with desks so that students could contemplate the city while contemplating A Tale if Two Cities- a concurrence that might prompt them to apply their academic expertise on realworld problems. The rooms were grouped into suites containing four to eight singles that shared a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. Together, these spaces were incorporated into three-story compounds, with half of the students living above the comtnon area and the other half below. The plan abandoned the tra- . ditional entryway system even more decisively than Morse and Stiles, ca11ing for hallways whose exterior walls would be glass flooding the buildings with light and further emphasizing a connection with the city. But the city, it turned out, wanted none of it. Brewster faced strong opposition from the Mavor's Office a stark ' contrast to the reception President Alfred Griswold had enjoyed when he

•

• •

• '

' I

•

' ' I'

-.•• '

•

The two most likefy homesfor a pair o/ new colleges are marked on the right map as .Sites 7 and 13; on the left, site 7 is marked ••

(

•

"residential"~

oversaw the construction of Morse and Stiles. Richard C. Lee, the youngest and ~ongest-serving mayor in the city's history, had been replaced by Bartholomew F. Guida. This change of guard marked the end of amicable relations between the President and Mayor's offices. Unable to collect taxes on land occupied by the University, Guida passed an amendment designed to prevent its expansion by _~equiring city permission for any Yale property · acquisitions. Though Morse and Stiles were built on land purchased from New Haven, City Plan Director John McGurty refused to give up space <i>n Whitney and Grove. "I do not feel," he professed, "that such a crossroads can be achieved." This statement epitotnized opinion throughout New Haven. The city's objections, combined with a vague show of student opposition and some difficulties involving the relocation of a historic house on the proposed site, ultimately spelled defeat the project's defeat. Originally due to welcome its first students in the fall of 1975, the current site of the planned Whitney-Grove Colleges is now an office block a frontier in lieu of the envisioned crossroads.

there 110111. • ' • ' • ••

he plan for a set of WhitneyGrove Colleges ended in public disaster and embarrassment. Today, President Richard Levin, who has devoted much of his tenure to revitalizing Yale's infrastructure, has no desire to reenact past misfortunes. Groundwork for the renewed attempt will be laid as firmly as the buildings' future foundations. This titne, the early stages will be kept secret: Not since February 2004, when Levin that the University was considering between two and four new residential colleges and had been "for some time," has the issue surfaced publicly. Meetings with alumni about financing these new colleges are conducted under the umbrella of the fun · · drive, even though Mark Reach '02, a Yale development officer, cer1 ifies that "the building of new residential colleges is not part of the upcoming campaign." Vice President for Development Inge Reichenbach ignores Levin's two-yearold announcement and does not acknowledge the discussions her staff conducts. ''There are no plans currendy •

•

to build new residential "·< she1 says, "and we therefore have ftO son 'tO. include a discussion about this topic -in any of our meetings with alumni." ·Vice President for New Haven and State,• Affairs Bruce Alexander agreed .with Reichenbach, writing that "there are no ~ such current efforts." Yet a recent alnrn, •• • ni newsletter announced .his assumption. of new duties including the ; ment of facilities planning, consn;u~o~ • renovation and operations." This sug-;• gests the University is · up .. forj major "facilities" projects that :·WilJi require the city's coonM'Q_tion. ' ,:-~ I . r-.1 Regardless of • such th~ • increasing student body ~~·akes expaQ~ sion inevitable. Former Vice Presidenti - I for Finance and Aqr ninistration Johri' Pepper The Yale Dai!J ~ in the days after Levin's announce1nent. that "it was a question of when, no~ whether, it wiJJ happen." . · . With Levin's on-the-record confession · that plans have beeu mounting, why an;• ~ the secrci::y? Part of the hush is dtJe tOi • the rime guaranteed to ~ elapse ~fore: 1 ground is brokeu; levin and his • have other priorities before their attcnJ, -·

tea

•

• •

'IHE NEW JOURN.AU .•

• •

•

tion tan be fully ditected to the expansion of the college system. Most pertinently, renovations to the existing col1Ileges must be completed. With a recent . confirmation that Calhoun, Morse, and 'Stiles are also slated for remodeling, construction of their new brethren is unlikely to be completed for at least a decade.

evin's announcement explicitly stated the motive for housing expansion. "There are so many outstanding students that we must ~turn down," he explained. "If Yale has a : :modest expansion, we would be fulfi11ing our mission even more than today." With ' · . ·this year's acceptance rate of 8.6°/o once · :again seu ing a new Ivy League record for '. ;sele~tivity, it is clear that students must ·~d~~perately claw their ways into Yale. . ' · .Two new colleges comparable in size to ._ the current twelve would allow the ~~shni?sions departtnent to make roughly " • _:-r , . '25l>. tilore j!l:gh school seniors per year~ and;J~ 1f-parents . very, very happy. • Some current students, however, worry that the larger class size would threaten class unity. Also, unless new faculty positions were offered (necessitating, of course, new office space), the teacherstudent ratio would plunge. This is a serious concern, but those wary of expanding enrolltnent are not necessarily against the creation of colleges. They claim that the University needs at le:ast that ·many new beds to accomtnodate the students it already has; present crowded conditions have annexed as many as half of the junior class in some colleges. Still, a return on the investtnent calls for new students. And if Levin's motive for construction is to give more high-school seniors a Yale experience, students dreaming of singles will be disappointed. A different issue is likely to rouse more catnpus interest Where will the new colleges be situated? Having learnt from its 1970s mistake, the University will likely build the future residential colleges on land it already owns denying the city its veto. '~his restriction lit nits designers to a handful of possible sites, and the ensuing debate over which to choose is grounded in more than a century of Yale's development 0

•

,.~

,:;~

The terrain of that debate, and of New Haven, was extensively surveyed in a 2000 report Yale commissioned from a New York architecture and urban design firm, Cooper, Robertson & Partners. The 193-page document, A Framework for Campus Planning, offers an illustrated examination of the University's architectural legacies, realities, and potential advising on policies regarding everything from construction and landscaping to signage and transit. As a framework rather than a master plan, it allows for deviation: Yale's deci- . sions can remain flexible. A preponderance of evidence in the framework points to the area just north of the Grove Street · Cemetery on Prospect Street currently home to a cluster of three-story houses, the avowedly temporary silver "diner," Brewster Hall, and the Art School's •

Sculpture Departtnent (already slated for re:location to Edgewood) as the likely new home for eight hundred Yale students. In one of the report's maps, an overlay suggesting future uses lays the word "residential" over the areathough no one lives there. Another diagram, detailing the 19 sites reconunended for "major initiatives," suspiciously bifurcates this triangle into 7a and 7c, as one would divide space between two colleges, and allows room for 7b a pedestrian corridor like Library Walk that would lead students to Swing Space, the gym, and the burgeoning retail on Broadway. The location's new neighbors are further proof of possible University designs for the area: Rose Security Center was recently constructed on Ashmun, and University Health Services' proposed new home is on the corner of Canal and Lock. If these street names 0

•

April

~006

•

The framework divides yale into two main corr£dors. one slidi11g east qf the Cemetery, the other, west o/ the Green. Two new colleges mt!J be the first residences to grace the northern axis..

•

are unfamiliar now, they won't be to the class of 2020; their distance from the currendy perceived heart of campus is part of their appeal. Yale is moving to surround Grove Street Cemetery. Science Hill, the focus of renewed University commitment in the form of a five-hundred million dollar suite of construction projects, is alienated from the rest of campus. Bringing two resic;lential colleges to the north axis would ' reinvigorate the area, moving the figurative cent_e r of campus north along College Street from the end of Cross Campus to the front doors of Woolsey Hall. The site is actually no further from Conunons than Pierson. A second proposed site, the east border ·of Cross Campus, is closer to the current campus center. The old

Departments want more offices, aesthetes hope for open space, and the Music School would always love a larger concert hall. Were it given to the Political Science department as a replacement for Brewster Hall, Yale could simultaneously recognize the discipline's increasing popularity and clear the final barrier to the construction of new colleges on Prospect Street. On the other hand, centrallylocated new colleges could ·trump all of those concerns no student could complain of being exiled to the hinterlands of campus. Much less likely candidates are the current location of YUHS on Hillhouse, the awkward corridor now occupied by G PSCY and the Af-Am House, or the site of Davenport and .

e area •

ree

rove

dorms at $173 mmion. While not astrO-i nomical, it's hardly pocket change. To attract a donor, Princeton ·recently agreed to name its sixth college after eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who financed the construction. Whether. alumni donors will demand naming• rights and whether Yale would grant. the request is hard to predict. Yale ha~ long avoided bartering naming rights in exchange for donations. Not one of the existing twelve is named after the donor who paid for it. Even Edward Harkness, whose . donations funded · more than half · of the colleges, was ' rewarded only with a tower. Vice President Reichenbach would not speculate on whether the University would continue its current tack or echo Princeton's. The latter policy would

•

new

•

• • • •

trick frat house at 451 College occupied by the Literature and Religious Studies Departments is slated for demolition, despite recent restoration. · Parking .Lot 51, which occupies much of the block's interior, will be torn up and moved across Temple Street or underground. Hendrie Hall could stay or go. Either way, acres of land will become available in the very heart of Yale, and everyone is fighting for the privilege of building on it:

Saybrook's new annex at Harrison Court. Location will certainly affect the aesthetic of the new colleges, but they will undoubtedly follow the planned renovations of Cross Campus Library in reverting to Yale's traditional courtyards and Collegiate Gothic.

certainly ease the process of- locating donors to cover the project. If the two almnni interviewed in Washington are an accurate littnus test, the bribe may not be necessary. While not eager to see another Morse or'. Stiles, both hoped for expansion. Like Levin, alumni· are keeping track of record-breaking rejection rates. Those wealthy enough to be substantial donors are often old enough to have kids, whose chances of a large enve-

arvard recently issued a conservative estimate for its expansion across the Charles River that placed the cost of three new

...

•

••

•

These buildings on W hitnry Avenue would have given wqy to two new residential colleges, had .· the city not oijected.·

•

. •

.•·•

•

• •

...•

-,.

•

••

•'

•

. --- •_, •

--=-:" . -

•

.• •

.: •

• . .

••

''• ' •

... .

•

I'T"'<'IHE NEW JOURNAL •

• •

•

lope dwindle . each year. "From the point of view of alumni," one commented, expansion seems like "a good thing because it has been so hard to get your kids in." . If that enthusiasm inspires donations ·without the stipulation of naming rights, the names of these new colleges may be up .for grabs. Kingman Brewster is a slightly stodgy option~ but an appropriate one, especially if Brewster Hall is demolished to make way .for the new structures. Sinclair LeWis, Class of 1908, could also deserve a college on merit; John Hersey '36 would be an appropriate counterpart. Both have a • certaln nng. } _Brewster jokingly proposed naming the·: Whitney/Grove colleges "Harry and George." New York Times columriis!- J~hn ~Tierney '75 suggested "Man . ;.-, and God:' .-, ~ _.,., W1~·,tw0-existing colleges (Saybrook r-~C and BranfOrd) named for Connecticut towns and ten for white men including John C. Calhoun, the intellectual progenitor of the Confederacy there may be pressure to consider female and minority namesakes for the 13th and 14th college. Maya Lin's name is often dropped in that regard. Annie Talbot '7 5 facetiously described the onerous burden of living in Calhoun, saying that she "frequently had to apologize for liv iog in the college named after a slaveholder. So I guess it would be wise to stay away from luminaries whose subsequent reputation may be tainted by political incorrectness." Talbot suggests Meryl Streep, arguing that enough is enough on Maya Lin she has a Yale memorial already. But other options arise. c~ ,

•

: -~

of the current college names are so WASPy there should be one with a Jewish name. How about Levin? What other Jews are associated with Yale?". Could future students live in Wendy Wasserstein College? Tierney also suggests naming them after fictional Yalies, who are currently as underrepresented as women and minorities. Crotchety Simpsons overlord Montgomery Burns '14, Bonfire of the Vanities anti-hero Sherman McCoy, and Fitzgerald's violent, adulterous Tom Buchanan '15 are among those who might have the means to buy the honorific out from underneath those more deserving, like fake alumni Nick Carraway (a member of Buchanan's secret society) and Michael Doonesbury who, like his creator, began as a lowly Yale undergrad. Whoever the 13th and 14th colleges are named after will secure a place in Yale's history. Contrary to Talbot's joking suggestion to name them after Levin, there is no need to commemorate the Yale President so explicitly as the overseer of the planning and construction of these edifices, he will have left a large mark. The 13th and 14th residential colleges are a fitting feather in the cap of a President who renovated the first twelve. Opening the University he has rebuilt to the denizens of new colleges is a worthy endeavor, and one wbose rirne, if still only in secret, has come.

ew ourna ants to see a '

rea ear •

•••

•'

our 1 •

na ort •

•

su •

1ss1ons •

e . . . . ostto our •

s1te. •

enew ourna

Jon'!Y Dach, a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College, is Managing Editor ifTNJ

TNJ •

-.-

•

• •

April2006

•

• •

•

' •

• •

•

roa

•

• •

•

,.•

' •

•

• •

•

••

•

us tin

•

••

·' •

•

1es separate New Haven from Tehran, the capital of. the ·

ust

•

•'

•

Iran. Late last year, a new organization

Islamic

the Iran Human

•

tion Center (IHRDC)----:was founded with the intention of.. ...

Rights D

..,..

•

The Center may seem like just another entrant into New .

non-profit scene, but it is distinguished by its singular mission: to monitor human rights abuses in Iran from an office overlooking the New Haven Green.

•

It is odd enough that the organization, which has no formal Yale affiliation, . is located in New Haven. That it chose to make its home at 129 Chapel Street only •

•

• •

adds to the Center's enigma. For years, the Chapel Street building's offering of sin-

•

gle-room offices with rent payable by the month has attracted an unJikely crew of '

•

,. .

tenants: solo attorneys, independent financial advisers, the odd parish office. The • •

Center has the distinction of being the only international human rights organiza•

•

tion in residence. It has clearly not come for the low-budget accommodation: Last year, the IHRDC received one mi11ion dollars in funding from the U.S. State •

Departtnent, nearly a third of the $3.5 tnilJion earmarked for democracy promo-

l11E NEW JOURNAL

•

••

•

year, the IHRDC feceived one million dollars in funding from the U.S. State Department, nearly a third of the $3.5 million earmarked for democracy promotion in Iran. The Center, which is forthright in its aims (witness the frankness of its name), reveals on its website that it is interested in documenting human rights abuses in Iran solely since the Islamic revolution of 1979 ushered the current, staunchly anti.:.American regime into . power. It's no surprise, then, that some Yale students and faculty members reacted with suspicion to news of the Center's opening in December 2004. They worried that the Center would merely concern itself with building a case for U.S. military intervention in Iran. Opposition to the government in Tehran, after all, is a growth •

•

As it happens, few if any of those events have come to pass. The IHRDC's founders claim that their timing, like the Center's location, was a fortunate coincidence: The three Iranian-American founders Drs. Ramin Ahmandi, Payam Akhavan, and Roya Boroumand met in New Haven in 2003 and hatched the. idea for the . Center soon after. Their one million dollar grari t came in 2004 from the State Department's Human Rights and Democracy Fund, which distributed over $48 million last year and cites the entire "Muslim world" as a regional priority. According to co-founder Akhavan, . the support they have received only demonstrates that not everyone in the U.S. government is in favor of overt regime change iri Iran. It was the more •

•

zn .

. •

•

zn industry. In February, Condoleeza Rice announced the Bush Administration's intention to expand funding for Iranian democratization from its paltry $3.5 million allotment in 2005 to $75 million this year. With so much money in the budget, strange things might happen: A new cadre of Iranian freedom fighters might emerge overnight; Dick Cheney might begin professing grave concern for Middle Easterners' rights and safety; and an Iranian version of Ahrnad Chalabi the exiled Iraqi expatriate who famously fed politicians and journalists information to support the invasion of his homeland might set up shop right across the Green, here in the heart of sunny New Haven. •

•

"progressive elements" of a diverse State Department, he posits, that opted to back the Center's peaceable project. Like the IHRDC's other supporters, Akhavan is adamant that those who scrutinize the present Iranian government's human rights record are not all seeking to justify an invasive foreign policy, and that some may wish to document its abuses for entirely different reasons, which they claim, are divorced from politics. "When there are strong interests at play, human rights often become instrumentalized for questionable ends," Akhavan acknowledged. The problem is not "that no one is speaking about human rights in Iran. The question is: 'Is there really a gen-

uine commitment?' And: 'Is there really an appreciation that a culture of human rights is not just about regime change?"' To overcome the murmurs of skeptical Yale liberals, the Center will need to show that any similarity between its agenda and that of the Bush administration is purely coincidental. Once it does that, the real work can begin. wo types of organizations are already at work documenting human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic. First, there are the behemoth, wellestablished monitors like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that research and publicize human rights abuse.s in countries ·around the ~ including Iran. At the other end of t4:e spectrum, " there are the hundred? of websites, blogs, and smaller organizations devoted to denouncing the Iranian ·· government, including one started by IHRDC co-founder Roya Boroumand in 2001. For the first sort, objectivity is the key to establishing credibility. Organizations of the latter type, however, make no claims of neutrality. The IHRDC appears destined to keep a foot in each camp. Though its board is staffed with well-known human rights experts, it also plans to rely on testimony frorn the four-n1illion-strong Iranian-American diaspora to gather and disseminate information-including accounts from exiles who make no bones about their opposition to the Iranian government. Yet what really makes the New Haven Center unique, according to Executive Director Mora Johnson, is its narrow focus and legal and historical e~pertise. The Center employs two Iranian historians, as well as a handful of lawyers who specialize in human rights. Their

THE NEW JOURNAL

34 •

•• •

goal is to collect do cum en ts arid testimony from existing sources and then to compile reports with a level of detail that broader organizations do not have time to include in theirs. The detailed .reportsand the material on which they a.re based will be published in both English arid Farsi and eventually made available on a searchable archives to aid policymake.rs, journalists, scholars, and students, both in Iran and abroad. The Center's goal is abstract, and its success so far is difficult to gauge. The first .reports, due to be published between May and July, .range in topic f.rom the treatment i ' qf Iran's Baha'i population in the --1980s to the .recent death of . I.ra11j~n::- eanadian journalist Zah.ra ~a~:iFqi . J,Vhile in police custody in Tey~;~~:fhese a.re not novel subjects. ; But to ·the Chair of the •

J - . -

Center's Board of Directors, Yale Law Professor Owen _Fiss, that is exactly the point: The .reports will take a fresh look at old debates. Evidence of state repression of the Baha'i, fo.r example, was gleaned f.rom extensive Baha'i archives in Tel Aviv. Long available but never closely examined, the information should give fo.rm and substance to long-held suspicions. From these documents, Piss explained, "We could see this wasn't just vengeance but a systematic policy to exterminate o.r .repress the Baha'i ... All the world has known it is uncomfortable fo.r Baha'i in I.ran, but this evidence is .really chilling." Piss added that the difference between those two levels of understanding is mo.re than semantic. Many of the worst state-sponsored crimes of the last century only came to light after the fall of the

gov e.rnmen ts that perpetrated them. B y that time, observers and ·politicians around the world could safely throw up their hands and claim to have never suspected how egregious the offenders really we.re-and thus did not .recognize how strongly they ought to have been condemned. Now, in Iran's case, Professor Piss hopes, "That excuse will no longer be available." n the surface, I.ran seems the last country in need of this added degree of scrutiny. The government in Tehran has one of the most harshly criticized human .rights .records in the world. The country was put under one of the most far-reaching sanctions in U.S. history in 1996, and President Bush has singled it out fo.r censure in every State of the Union address since 2002. In

•

--•c:

•

The building's lobf?y sees a daify parade of unlike!J tenants

April2006

•

December, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolu.:. tion condemning Iran's continued human rights violations, from the nation's use of torture to public executions and lack of due legal process. Yet the IHRDC is not the lone voice calling for a more thorough · inspection of the country. .History Professor and Iran specialist Abbas Amanat who is not affiliated with the Center agrees: "Although it has been done somewhat unprofessionally by others," he said recently, "it has never been done by people who really know what they're doing, and with • proper funding." •

zss

f~nding base. Presently the majori-

ty of financial backing continues to come from the U.S. government·which is no coincidence. European governments, to which the Center is also appealing for support, have never been as strident in their opposition to Iran. Nor would the U.S. government likely have been so generous had the Center been investigating · human rights abuses in a percieved backwater, like Cameroon, or ally, . like Saudi Arabia. "If · you demonstrate the human rights abuses of the present regime [in Iran] and those of the past, that might have the byproduct •

•

envzszons

rofessor Abbas and others agree that one of the Center's . greatest challenges lies in the fact that . though . Iran does attract a lot of attention (and censure) in the foreign policy arena, only a small portion is focused on the regime's human rights abuses. Concerns about nuclear proliferation, the stability of Iran's huge oil supply, . and the country's alleged support for terrorist groups all tend to dominate discussions of U.S. policy towards the country. The IHRDC's attempt to insert human rights into the debate places the organization alongside Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in the uphill battle those established organizations have waged for decades. The other overwhelming challenge for the Center will be to avoid supporting a particular political agenda. To maintain neutrality, Johnson and Fiss both understand they will need to diversify their

reen as a • . '' -zon an 0 ran.

•

enough for me to get v1sas into Iran." Board members may claim that this antagonism is the natural byproduct of general support for human rights and international law, but the frequent comparisons they draw between the Tehran government and murderous regimes in South Africa, the Soviet Union, and even Rwanda do little to support their claims of political neutrality. Though they may not advocate forcible regime change, they are not averse to strongly condemning Iran's government as long _ as it is for the right reasons. "The government has a terrible human rights erecord," J o h n . son - e~plained . • {iThe concurrenee of this -• • vi.ew with the political agenda of the U.S. government may not go so far as to discredit the organization among scholars but it will certainly restrict the Center's reach and appeal to those inside of Iran. The IHRDC's staff and board members, the majority of whom are Iranian-American, acknowledge this limitation. Though Johnson admits their present emphasis is, by necessity, on witnesses and source material available outside the country information as readily accessible in New Haven as anywhere else they are :working with some activists inside Iran. In this way, Fiss envisions the office on the Green as a "bridge of information" carrying information into and opt of Iran. Akhavan recalls how his irnpulse to establish the Center near Yale was partia11y inspired by the University's prolific tradition of genocide documenta-

tee

zn o

•

of supporting certain positions the government takes," Professor Fiss acknowledged. "But you can't help that." Still, the IHRDC's founders would be hard-pressed to argue that, at its core, the organization does not possess a certain animus for the government in Tehran. Julia Huang, a Yale sophomore who has lived in Iran and still visits regularly, realized this at the Center's opening last December. At the time, she was interested in working there as a translator or researcher, but decided against doing so when she sensed the group's opinion on the current government in Iran. cci just didn't want to associate myself with a group that was actively trying to find negative aspects of what the Iranian government was doing," she stated. "It's hard

THE NEW JOURNAL • • •

tion. The Cambodian Genocide Documentation project is run through the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, and the . University's library is home to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Like the IHRDC, . these projects often collect documents to help create an accurate historical narrative. "You can't use them if they don't exist," explained English Professor Geoffrey Hartman, advisor to the Holocaust Testimonies project. Professor Piss offered similar reasoning. "It's tricky what you can do in international human rights fr9m a law school," he said. In the ' 2 absence of hands-on clinics or courts, doq,Jmentation and legal anal~js -fs the service that scholars : /,. art<i ·c ' <:lawyers can best .. / •

•

n invitation to •

•

1n I WORKING GROUP This group is -a imed at fostering a university-wide dialogue on the relationships between scientific findings and the religious quest, with a particular emphasis on the neurosciences and their impact on questions of theology, ethics, and belief. The group also sponsors presentations by leading scientists, theologians, and ethicists from Yale and elsewhere, and will develop group-authored publications. A professional science background is not required. Undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and the academically engaged public are invited •

'As a former advisor to the special court in Sierra Leone Johnson has confidence in the project's utility. ccThe tyrants of today are in the prisoner's dock down the road," she said, predicting possible future uses of the Center's research. When power finally does change hands in Iran, a new government might call for an invc;stigation of past abuses. And while lawyers like Piss tend to doubt that an Iranian court or international commission there would accept an outside organization's work, it rnight be useful to those gathering official evidence. ccyou never know where the work you do today is going to end up," Johnson mused.

Facilitated by Nihal de Lanerolle, Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurobiology and Chaplain of -the Episcopal Church at Yale.

A grant from the Metanexus Institute's LocalSocieties Initiative funds this program. •

When: •

Paige Austin~ a senior in Davenport College, is Senior Editor Ementus of 1N].

•

<i~

:.t..J:.-· _,-pro.Y-~e~ _ r rF ,·

a e's

c1ence •

;.-_.,~r~

artici ate in

Where: Contacts:

6:30- 8 pm Thursdays when classes are in session. (You may drop in to shop the group.) Yale Divinity School o ISM Seminar Room 1st Floor (ask at the front desk) nihaJ.delanerolle@yale.edu or james. van pelt@yale.edu (624-0122) •

•

April2006

• . . •

•

••

•

abor Kovacs left Hungary in 1976. "Draft dodging," he explains with a faint smile. "In Hungary, everybody had to serve. You didn't have a choice." It is a quiet Tuesday evening at .the Trinity Lutheran Church on ·wall Street. Gabor sits at a table in a room at. . . the back of the chapel. He occasionally looks over at the window as the daylight fades. It is almost six o'clock. Harmony Place, a community center for the homeless run by Yale student volunteers, meets here every Tuesday and Thursday from 4 to 10 p.m., and Sundays from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Around us, some of the other guests wait in line to use the phone; some quietly play cards; others sit in folding chairs watching a movie on an old television in the corner. ''You know," Gabor continues, "that's the way it was in Hungary. It was ·a big mess. They were a shell-shocked people. First it was the Hapsburgs, then it was the SS, then it was the Communists ... In World War II, you had to fight. And if you fought, you died, but if you didn't, you were mowed down by your own. Even afterwards, when every•

e more

• •

ace) t e more

armon •

as survzve

•

as on as zt as.

•

t znvo ves a ver com ex ...

nalnics. ''

set o

armon

body ended up in business or in city hall, they were still shell-shocked." Behind his untrimtned beard and brown, shaggy hair, Gabor has a handsome face. His bright blue eyes glea t n and widen as he talks.

ace

we talk about comedy, baseball, or music he's attended hundreds of concerts and used to f>lay in a band does he become animated. A few of the other regulars are scattered around the room. Cynthia, though no longer hot11eles , still comes to

"Industry, politicians. You can't trust them. They lie:all of them. And they're ineffective. Do you know they put nail polish remover in milk? They do. And the government does nothing. Why do you think the rate of birth defects has doubled in the last ten years? Chemicals~ Everywhere." He goes on, listing government conspiracies and the abuses of the industrial age: the poison in fapd, the fatal flaws in medication, the rising cancer rates. : ; Jim, another guest, leans back in his chair on the other side of the table. He looks over his shoulder at the crowd in front of the Tv. "They're probably watching Lethal Weapon Twelve, or something stupid like that," he says in his soft-spoken tone. "I'd watch movies, but not this garbage. I hate this stuff. But try putting in Schindler's List or something and see what these guys do." Unlike Gabor, Jim grew up just one town over, in Hamden. He comes from a strict Pentecostal family. He has deep, intelligent eyes which are usually fixed on the floor, and a wide, emphatic smile which he seldom shows. He is well spoken, but usually sits silently apart. Only when

•

THE NEW JOURNAL

• •

. Harmony Place whenever it is open. restrictions. You know more people. She has found God and wants to be You can be yourself." This June, after five years in operordained. Then there's Mike, perhaps the· most outgoing tall and slim, ation, Harmony Place will be asked to. with long hair and a nasal voice. He leave Trinity Church. If, within the greets everyone and is always the next two months, this community loudest and most cheerful during card cannot fmd anothe:r home, it will disgames. Mike does odd jobs when he appear. can find them, but is looking for Harmony Place was founded in steady work. Dwayne used to cook in 1999 by the acting Yale Homelessness a ·restaurant. Jimmy once worked in Hunger Action Project coordinator the Saybrook dining hall. Joe is always John Scafidi '01 and volunteer quick with a stnile, though he is miss- Gregory Duff Morton '00. It sprang ing his two fran t teeth. from Outreach another community Harmony Place offers a respite service organization founded by from the homeless life. There is a Morton to encourage undergraduate phone, a television, games, heat, run- involvement beyond campus. First ning water, a washer and dryer, and housed in Fellowship House on Elm . meals on Sunday. It also fosters a cer- Street, it moved to Trinity in 2001. For a while, it worked. There were tain sense of community. "I~ D;.16re relaxed here than in the weekly meetings between volunteers and homeless patrons to set agendas, sh~£~fs;:. , . , . s 4ys Cynthia. "There are less . }

•

. ,,,

as well as boards for conflict resolution, rules, and a constant supply of drivers to and from the shelters. There were protocols, organization, and, it seemed, a plan for the future. In recent years, however, the number of volunteers has decreased dramatically. The only cornmunity volunteer is Frank Dean, who is often the only person there to ensure that the center opens. Dean has kept every volunteer signin book used at Harmony Place. His long, stern face remains set and expressionless as he glances through their pages. "There used to be a lot more volunteers here," he says, as he ·flips through 2001, 2002, 2003. "Used to be we ran out of Yalies." 2004, 2005 ... the names dwindle. Some people began showing up once a week, some once a month, some once, and

-';.

r , . .. V'"

In two months, the doors of Trinity Church will close out the homeless community.

April2006

• •

Pawluk hopes to reVitalize his urban congregation. .

then never again. ''Yalies are always busy. I don't think they're as interested any more." The original leadership of Harmony Place has long since graduated, and the spirit that inspired its founding has dissipated in successive generations of volunteers. As volunteers left, Harmony Place began to run more and more on inertia; the agendas, grievance boards, and activities slackened. Fights both verbal and physical have become more frequent. "I don't like that the guests bring their stuff in from outside," says Jim. ''It's called Harmony Place. I don't feel any harmony here anymore." He remains pensive for a moment. "Part of me thinks it sucks that Harmony Place is moving out~ but part of me thinks it's good. People fight, they steal from here, they try to sleep in here ... " He pauses and looks around and, in a subdued tone of disgust, continues. "People have had sex in this fuckin' place. That's not right. That's disgraceful. There used to be a corrununity, but there is no longer." ''But," Jim continues, "on the other hand, it is gonna suck. There 40

won't be a place to come in out of the heat. And the laundry nowhere to do your laundry. And the winter," he says, raising his eyes. ''And the winter ... we didn't have a real winter this . year, ~ut wel have one next year. That w i l 1 be hard." hen Harmony Place first came to Trinity, it encountered a very different parish from the one it is about to be evicted from. ''We were on the verge of closing down," says Pastor Henry Pawluk. He is tall, with wire-ritn glasses, a thin goatee, and neat brown hair. His office is an orderly Orange Street aparttnent adjoining the church. · A cross hangs on the wall and a stand crowned with a religious painting props open the door. "I know it doesn't look like it frorn the size of the building, but our congregation had shrunk dramatically. We were living off our endowment." Trinity had been between pastors for several months, and the month before Pastor Pawluk arrived, church

president Jack Nicholson had unilaterally approved Harmony Place's use of the building's facilities. "Jack never did what should be done before making a decision like that," says Pawluk. "He never consulted the congregation, he never tried to integrate Harmony Place into the community. From the start, it was unpopular with some of the congregation." "But," he adds, "I thought it was an excellent idea. I thought urban ministry was the key to the church's survival." Founded in 1865 by working-class German irnmigrants, mempership in Trinity Lutheran peaked in the 1950s with a largely blue-collar congregation hovering above two thousand. In 2001, Pawluk a~ved -on the heels of three decades' worth of rising crime rates and vanishing manufacturing jobs. The congregation had dwindled to fewer than two hundred, with a weekly attendance of around 45. "Urban churches are in decline . Not · just here, everywhere. Saint Boniface, the Catholic church down the street" Pawluk indicates with a wave of his hand "was forced to close last year. Thirty one churches in New York alone shut their doors last year. They just don't have the congregations." ''You know," Pawluk continues, carefully phrasing his thoughts, "There has always been a resistance to a religious presence in Harmony Place. Students tend to be secular'-and I understand that. But there are some in the congregation who feel that Harmony Place does not care whether the church lives or dies." "Over the last five years, three days a week, five hours a day, we have given Harmony Place water, free heat, chairs, room space, kitchen access,all for free. 'I know it's easy for students and non-church people to look at the church and say that we're not doing enough. But when Harmony

THE NEW JOURNAL

•

• •

•

• •

.ftrst came here, we were only open on Sundays now we're open every day, for at least half the day. We'~e adding new programs, and," he smiles, ufor the first tirne in many years we're · to see people return to the church." Indeed, since Pastor Pawluk arrived, Trinity's weekly attendance has more than doubled to one hundred per week. New groups.N arcotics A.n onymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, church youth groups, have formed, all vying for· space. As the church has expanded, tensions ·with Harmony Place due to fights, thefts, break-ins, and disorder on the part .of the homeless have become increasingly serious. - "Our congregation is growing," - - "and we have to provi4~- (9,t 1haF It's very hard for us to acc6n"~{iiq~ Harmony Place. If we ...-; - .c-;.don'trwaidi out for ourselves, we'll be gone in five to ten years. Whether you are religious . or not, you lose something in a cornntunity when a church closes. It's the center, it's the conscience. Church-bashing has become very popular in the last few years," he J

• '

c'See that?" he says, frustrated. set of dynamics." . · Marks recognizes the challenge of "My parishioners get towed when supplying a community center for they come to worship. How can you such a volatile group of people: . grow a congregation when more Balancing the needs of the homeless than half of them come in from the with the sensibility of the communi- suburbs, and they have nowhere to ty at large requires · delicacy. For the park?" His concern for his flock shows short term, her goal is simple: keep Harmony Place alive by any means on his face. Pastor Pawluk takes no possible. Marks is looking to various joy in turning out Harmony Placechurches and conununity groups for that is clear. In fact, he seems pained a new location. She tries to keep spir- by the decision. But on the back its !-JP, encourage volunteers, provide steps of his of~ce, he is looking forentertainment, and keep the program ward to a new and thriving urban functioning. church and to an extent, I can feel "We have a very committed core his enthusiasm. Like the student volgroup," she says, ccbut l think in. the unteers who forgot day-to-day, future we need to take more care month-to-month, year-to-year the with recruiting." She hopes to start a little room in the back of the church formal intern program through they once visited, he, too, has his Dwight Hall, find grant funding, and own future and his own corrununity maybe even locate a permanent to think of. I cannot help but look across the home. But change comes slowly. The same alley at the back door of the volunteers are few, the churches hes- church and the stairs leading up to itant, and the great structural the room which, in several hours, changes she envisions remain far of£ will fill with New Haven's homeAs of yet, Harmony Place has less the "shell-shocked," as Gabor nowhere to go when it is displaced in might coin them. And, as Pastor June. No one has stepped forward to Pawluk closes the door behind me, I •

armon •

zves or

,, en

• • •

•

says, "but we're the ones still in the city."

offer a home. Even the a cappella and improv groups Sarah has contacted to perform at Harrnony Place have not responded. Nobody, it seems, is certain of Harmony Place's future. •

f there is any future for Harmony Place, it lies with the current coordinator, Yale freshrnan Sarah Marks. "The more I work with Harmony Place," she wrote in an e-ntail, "the more I an1 shocked that it has survived as long as it has. It involves a very complex

April2006

s Pastor Pawluk leaves office, he pauses on wrought iron stait way looks out. He points to parking lot.

his the and the

think of something Frank had said: cWhen we clean up, after we're done here, they want it spodess. They even want you to sweep up your footprints. They want it to look like you were never here." Nick Handler, a freshman in E~a Stiles College, is Business Manager tifTNJ.

' •

• ;

• •

•

• on

. .

•

• •

by Sophia Le·a r

•

I •

· t just seems like the flrst Yale, and I was like, 'I can do this myself."' Eamon Murphy '08 and Toni Blackwell episode ... " I paused, searching for After each episode, viewers log online to '09. And, frorri now on, each episode will vote on questions like, "Should Snow and focus on only half of the cast in order to a tactful phrase. "Kind of sucked?" offered I jna Chen Christian make out in Episode Two?" The flesh out the characters' personalities. Then there is the problem of visual results are then incorporated into the next - ~08~ the mastermind behind lf!YU, the undergraduate soap opera that recently episode (64°/o percent said "yes, they tone: lf!YU more closely resembles a home ' premiered on YTY, Yale's student-run tel- should"). As Chen has realized, there is no video than nationally broadcast Tv. For evision station. . better way for viewers to sate their God this, Chen blames · her inability to com'Well,' I thought, 'now that you mention complexes than by commanding charac- mand a crew: ''I was too ni~," she says. "I ters to make out on camera and then wanted everyone to haye- fun. I didn't it,_.)eah.' demand enough." But she has .I JvyU captured attention on campus since abandoned her welcoming ._ lorig before it premiered. Chen's marattitude. ''I just can't have inexketing team handed out laminated cards at Co.mnlOris Dining Hall, placed ads in perienced people. Everybody . the campus tabloid, Rumpus, and plasworking on this has to be expetei-e~ every campus bulletin board with rienced." posterS. Each offered seductively few As with most pilot·episPdes, details; "lt:JU... Soon." The show manthe first show introduced charaged to achieve that magical something acters and set the stage for as yet unheard of for YTV: serious future intrigue, making buzz. And it paid off. On the day lf!YU Lynwood Place seem more like premiered, 847 people went to the Melrose Place. Meet Snow: Laura show's website, www.chooseyourscanMerriman '08 is the innocent dal.com, to download the episode. ingenue who is starting to feel , Unfortunately, the show fails to live smothered by her nice-guy · ~P to its hype. The length of the entire boyfriend, RJ, played by Lucas pilot is a measly 15 minutes (including O'Connor, '08. ("l think I just, three tninutes of credits), which leaves like, need some fresh oxygen, or the dedicated television viewer with something," she tells him.) that difficult-to-at ticula~e feeling that it The sultry stars of IvyU know this table has more than one use. Providing skanky relief is isn't, well ... good. (In the sense that Stephanie (Ashley Fox, '08), ' MTV's trashy teen soap Laguna Beach is watching them swap spit. Even casting Snow's "best frien~" who purrs in RJ's decisions are left in the audience's hands. ear, "you know, there are always ... other good.) Although open to criticism, Chen people." Then there is Cherry, the new girl; Still, the premise is undeniably brilliant: an ''interactive" soap opera starring your quickly ticks off the steps she has already Diesel, the smooth-talking bad boy; and peers kids you see in lecture whose taken to improve the show. The original Ryan and Brittany, the funny know-it~alls destinies are placed in your hands like a screenwriter a "random graduate stu- who trade quips over Cherry's airhead Choose Your Own Adventure story. "I remem- dent" who wrote the line ''I'm more comments. Ry'an's sexuality is also literally ber watching TV in 10th grade, and I real- screwed than a fat cat in a blender'' to cap- open to vote, although evidence from lines ly wanted a character to die, and they just ture a character's midterm anxieties has like, "Oh Brittany, I'm sorry you're so wouldn't die," Chen reminisces. "I came to been replaced by two undergraduates, uncul~ed. You wouldn't recognize Prada •

•

THE NEW JOURNAL •

•

if it were kicking you in the ass," may have

•

already tipped the balance (62% voted for gay, 31 °/o for bisexual, and 7°/o for straight). The pilot's plot gets underway· when Snow notices a mysterious necklace hang-ing over the edge of a brick wall. She grabs it, proceeds to a deserted area bathed in ,moonlight, of course perches on a bench in her flimsy, white shift, and fingers the jewelry while nervously glancing over .her shoulder. Inexplicably, she is then kidnapped. The necklace belongs to a secret society called 'VJ'he Gentlemen," whose dark, brooding leader, Christian, has organized the kidnapping to recover itand maybe something more. "I'll pick her up at midnight," he orders a goon over the · phone. "No, of course she doesn't know ~e. And," he adds, his voice dropping a .register, "I want her back in an even better A:ondition than you took her.' :. So where is this story headed? .Amazin_gly, .-it's up to us. Merriman has a f~ ·(i.rQposals for her own character's futur€· ' '~ thi' n k there should be a sex scene ,.. / " ' in ~~~ck-s:" she . suggests thoughtfully. "Snow could be up there, with pigtails, a }

· '#

..... j:

-;./"

basket of books, a sundress. And then one of the bad guys could find her, like Diesel, and he'd say," -she lowers her voice-"Snowcome here." She also has a plan for how Stephanie and Snow should resolve their backstabbing friendship: "I was like, 'why don't I make out with Ashley'? And they were like, 'but she's a girl!' And I was like'so?' I want to un-build gender stereotypes at Yale; it'd be so progressive." Chen, hoping to attract a male audience with a science-fiction angle, is giving "The Gentlemen" ties to a race of "demonic creatures from hell." It is Merriman, however, who may have more of the right idea. The most impressive element of the show is its endless roll of credits. Though Chen conceptualized lf!YU on her own, she relied on more than forty-five people to bring it to fruition. "Ijna Chen is unbelievable," explains Suzanna Lee '08, head of pro · g at YTV "It takes so much time and effort to put together something like the vision she had for lf!YU. This was a two year process of it happen." Two years for fifteen minutes? ''People are so ready to criticize everything and anything •

on YTv," Suzanna continues, "but jhey have no idea what goes into it the equipment, schedules, learning how to use the equipment . often for the very first time." Why do students who are self-proclaimed "bad-TV" junkies ridicule Yale's own network? YIV is not, and net.er will be, MTV: it's an amateur-run college TV channel. This translates, as we all immediately note, into the home video q4ty of its shows. But, more importantly, it also allows for enormous creative opportunities: ''We could go right now, and I could put you live on the air," Suzanna says. So if you have an idea for a show, YTV can help make it a reality. If you don't, perhaps you should abandon yoUr pretensions and sit back to enjoy' another example of Yalies working hard at ~· art. Of course, in this case, the art is set to an '80s soundtrack, with a few close-up shots and a handful of love triangles thrown in for good measure. •

Sophia Lear is a sophomore in E!"{!'a 'Stiles College.

•

Apri}2t

Th• eon~. cf* ~~ {Yitt.eno 0. Sica)

On.,.IA:.1h &:Jo-- JOtwpa

r..

•

April2006

• •

•

• I

•

tn '

•

• •

•

uring my Yale .admissions tour, forty overeager highschoolers and I were herded through the iron gates of Si11itnan, arranged in a corner of the Frisbee-dotted courtyard, and regaled with the merits of the residential college system. A couple of months later, in my interview, I cited these merits as one of my prirnary motives for applying to Yale. I babbled•about how I longed for an intimate liberal arts experience in the midst of a research university and described a dream. of four-year friendships, fierce loyalty, and a surrogate fami1y. I was certain lwould be a blissful Yale student. Accepted, I spent the endless stretch of summer repeatedly logging onto the lnterQet, where I was greeted by my homepage www..yale.edu. I navigated my way through residential college websites, comparing coats of arms and acquiring a fanii1iar ease with the Berkeley Dining Hall, the picturesque Branford courtyard, and the Silligym. I envisioned the envelope containing my college assigrunent as my most lifedetern•ining piece of rnai1 to date. I knew just enough about the colleges to detern•ine that I would be happy as long as I wasn't in Morse or EzraStiles. It was an aesthetic opinion; they were the "ugly'' colleges, lurking in an isolated corner of campus that definitely wasn't included on my adtuissions ton£ I held my breath and mentally

chanted, "Not Morse, not Stiles, not Morse, .not. Stiles." I opened the letter: . • Stiles. When I lugged my boxes across Old Campus in . late . August, I quickly learned that Camp Yale is all about colleges. Registration meetings, receptions, and formal dinners plucked me from the grassy, Gothic paradise of Old Campus and deposited me amidst the irregular angles of Stiles. At gathering after g~thering, I was told why my college was the most tighdy-knit, enthusiastic , and charismatic of all Yale's colleges. To cope with my disappointtnent, I decided to buy into the hype. I attended study breaks and IM practices armed with a rabid devotion to my underdog college. I told my parents who worried about the unusual architecture and abundance of . critne in Stiles' environs - ·t hat the college's students made up for its "undesirable" status. All of my friends were in Stiles, and even the dining hall was growing on me.

make me uncomfortable.. . l . sifted through my photos on Face~ook.com and cringed to see they all featured a dressed-up version _of ·m yself posing with people I bati:ly knew at· parties I scarcely remembered. I spent hours recounting these feelings~to my best friend from home. At the"" end of one of these long sessions, she reassured me, c'Don't worry. I lost you there for a biy but now you're back." And I was. Upon my return to Yale, I was not entirely sure how to fix the problem I started avoiding everything I had embraced during the fall; stopped spending tirne in Lawrance, used the back door of my suite in order to circumvent my common room, and cut off the Stiles friendships which, up to that point, had defined my social life. My next step was to find a new world in which to irnmerse myself. I strengthened friendships I had formed around shared interests and activities rather than residential proximity. One of my closest friends was in Calhoun. I'd met and liked a couple of her suitemates. By Februaty, I informed my dean that I wanted to switch colleges. :

hen I arrived at Yale, I tried on a new personality. I went out two or three nights a week, hosted coundess dance pat ties in my corrunon room, and thorlthough I filled out the paper:. oughly enjoyed mysel£ Removed from work and met with the al')1f~ priate - officials, a sense · of the college enviromnent by three weeks of winter break, however, I was dissatis- . betrayal deterred me from 'te11ing other fied with the new me. Something about Stilesians about my plans even my rny college experience was beginning to suitet ••ates. It also took titne· to get up

•

• •

'IHE NEW JOURNAL

\ l

......

•

' ' •. I . ~

... ..

.,.

.. ;.

~ • '

•

.. !the nerve to tell my family. After men• • )tioning it·oft-handedly to my sister dur(itig·a phone conversation, she confront;ed me on 'issues I'd refused to acknowl• ·er1~· . . . • '""5'"'•

!:·· f;I thought you loved the college sys~tetJ~hecause it threw you into a group of ;random people who you wouldn't have ;gotten to know otherwise," she remind·;oo ~'During the entire fall you were ~tavipg about how much you love the ~di~tSity. And now you're just going to ,l~av~ . and · · try somewhere else?" ·Eanba rrasse<l, I could only mwnble a . ' ~'I hope you're not switching just • you want a mcer space, " she added with contempt. .. . : I snapped. 2 ' • ;--.. · 1 did not want to switch in order to . ' . --Wake up to gothic arches. My reasons ·had .Q.0tlnng to do with Stiles' looks or ' .,.;r;·, 'locatipn. And I refused to feel like a fail~ . . . r . . ~- I didn't fall in love with the )

me.

•

. \whom I was randomly grouped ·with. 'I hat said, I did reaHze that I could not my alienation on Stiles or ' 'other Stilesians. They had - not !~anged I was the one undergoing a • .ttaitsition. 1, Despite my effort to ~eep it quiet, my ;decision . soon leaked throughout ;I,.a~ce. Hbwever, the backlash of my • · ipet;:~ was diluted by the fact that eight ~~ther Stiles freshmen (of the original '113). were also transfening out. The ,kn~edge that nearly ten percent of ·the freshmu1 in my college felt similarly naisplaced gave my daitns a sense of .legi~cy. 1 resolved to snnnount my 'feelings of hypocrisy and explain the situation to fellow Stilesians. Yes, in the fall • ji had. · Stiles. 1 had played IM's. I .have pictures of· myself grinnin& my contorted to spell out the' letters ~'E Sti." But aren't we expected to during freshman year? •

a new college for a fresh start.

Packing off

..-:

•

hree of my closest friends also swttched colleges two from Stiles, one from Edwards. rve talked to many others who have tried, with varying

April2006

•

success. Reasons range frotn aesthetic inequality ''Stiles is depressing and ugly" (a transfer request that was not granted) to a lack of friends in one's current college and a concentration of them in another. Due to a housing crunch this year, neither Si11iman nor Trumbull accepted transfers, contributing to a slight dip in the number of requests and the success rate. 'Ibis year, 41 people attempted to switch and 29 succeeded I.ast year's results are more typical: 59 requests to 49 approvals. These nutnbers reveal that the residential college systetn is not without its faults not surprisingly, though, they are not advertised by Yale. My dean described the transfer selection process as "pretty much like poker." From what I could gather, the deans of each college sit at a large table, hold cards with the narnes of students attempting to switch, and barter. If three people leave Branford, the dean of that college can accept thtee new students. Colleges like to keep the in/ out ratio as even as possible. Stiles usua11y has a seven-in, seven-out average; but this year proved a depar tore from the norm. Nine students are leaving. No one is switching in. •.

••

he amount of hard work and luck necessary to tnake the switch prompts n1any students to retnain passive even when they are unhappy in their colleges. When I explained my reasons for · · various friends in Stiles echoed most of my dissatisfactions. But, nn1ike me, they still feel a vague loyalty to the college to which they were assigned. I tnay have insulted some Stilesians with my decision, and my story will be omitted on an admissions tour of the University. A glitch in the ancient and infaJJible college system, my t rnnsfer will disappear within the greater history of Yale University's residential colleges. But I signed up for this glorified residential college system as advetl ised, and I an1 still deten nined to experience it to its fullest potential. Next year I look forward to living with three of my favorite people, going to breakfast in my paja'''as, attending Master's Teas, and fanatically screat11ing college cheers with my new £uni1y. Nicole Allan, a · freshman in Calhoun College, is Production Manager tif'INJ. T'\: .I

45 •

•

:<:.

the basement of aw~t1ng only the occasional,.;'~;:;; ,, .,,,,, traditionalists. The .cabinets, emptied of their indicies, Wl . +-nr bucks. kind of idiot would bf!Y a might recognize that · ..uv f"rTT

•

& Information

••

•

sema _cabinet.at .-r-but growing

I I

.,..,

,•

·--·-·--·-·

·-.

:-.

-~--

___ ,

·-

Food - & :Drink: · Lay the guests coffee. . .,. ..._,,,,,_;r y

795 Games of Chance: Fill a :-:-.--

Dran1a: Insist that the referenc;~e :!!!!~~~~ ;:;, , _._.,:-; :'VI _._,,"· · Be~ . to_louldl) .....

----.·- ...

..... .........,._

• • •

THE

EWJOURNAL

•

E>ver 725 Yale·employees ha\l~·· · · · · purchased homes through ~lie . Hom . whidh provides ·. · ·. ·•· · . employees wifh a $zs,ooo · · · .

·-

.-.-

·-

~:'

•::::

•

T H

As the largest property taxpayer· in New Haven, Yale pays more than $J mtnion fn on nonacademic properties .

WN M

•

Each year, Yale makes a of $4.2 to the . Vale also pays for its own police force and trash disposal. __ , __ _

FoY tnfonnation on Yale's community log to

Yale University: Contributing to a Strong ~ew Haven April2006

•