Volume 39 - Issue 5

Stepping Up Val

Tenut:eJIOticy Bouti~C...

AntiqN~ DiscJockdylr

• •

•

Publisher

•

Lauren Harrison

DSO

•

Editor-in-Chief •

Jonny Dach

A Master's Tea in Jonathan Edwards College Monday, April23 at 4:00

•

Managing Editors

Nicole Allan, Nick Handler •

•

Designer

Anna Zhang

• •

Senior Editors

Emily Koh, Sophia Lear Production Manager

] ordan Jacks Associate Editors

Kate Davidson graduated from Yale College in 1998 and is now an associate producer for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Before joining ·.

NPR, Kate worked in public television and documentary ftlm. For her work reporting and producing "Saint and Indians," Kate was awarded the 2006 Edward R. Murrow Award for best national news documentary from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. She was also named a fmalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

Tess-Dearing, Aditi Ramakrishnan, Mitchell Reich •

Photo Editor

Benny Sachs

-

On-line Editors

Ben Lasman, Ali Seitz Copy Editor

Laura Bennett

•

Research Director

Laura ·Zax Staff

•

Patrick Hayden, Amy Rothschild

Members and Directors Joshua Civin, Peter B. Cooper, Tom Griggs, Brooks Kelley, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Kathrin Lassila, Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, David Slifka, Fred Strebeigh, Thomas Strong, John Swansburg

Advisors

•

•

Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin

Friends

910 whatley avenue new 06515 201389..3369

Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Emily Bazelon, Anson M. Beard, Jr. Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Br!,nt, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Jay Carney, Daphne Chu, Josh Civin, Jonathan M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, Masi Denison, Albert J. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang, Walter Jacob, Jane Kamensky, Tina Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean O'Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Fairfax C. Randal, Robert Randolph, Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W. Hampton Sides, Lisa Silverman, Scott Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulsman, Thomas Strong, Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Wilson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stent Yergin

SS whitney avenue ha¥en 06510 203.ll~YARN

receive a 5% discount with this ad

• •

2

THE NEw JouRNAL

The New Journal

Volume 39, Number 5

May 2007

The m agazine about Yale and New Haven.

30

GETTING TENURE BACK ON TRACK

Changes improve the junior faculty experience.

by Sophia Lear

15

36

PARADISE LosT?

Elis recall a formative six weeks at TASP.

by Tess Dearing

20

SNAPSHOTS ----------------~ 12

MINORITY REPORT

Building better anti-discrimination policy.

by Nicole Allan

14

BoDY oF WoRK

Residents at Yale-New Haven amass a corpus.

by Aditi Ramakrishnan

24

16

TYPECAST

Yale,s Publications Council discusses racism in print.

by Mitchell Reich

STANDARDS --~-------------4 Points of Departure 30

20 The Profile Last Taps of the Typewriter by Michael Birnbaum

40 The Personal Essay The Roads More Traveled by Emily Koh

43 The Critical Angle

The Shape of Things by Adriane Quinlan

40

46 Endnote

Bard-hopping by Nick Handler, Ben Lasman, & Ali Seitz

Tm Nn- jouo..".u "publi<hed 6ve lima durinc the acadmU.: yar by TH~ Nnr jolSL'.AI.., Y~c, Inc~ P.O. Box 20J.432 Yak Subon, NI!'W Hn..., CT06S20. Office addtus: :lOS Crown St. All oonoenu Copyrigho 2006 by TH a N'"' jOUIL'<AL ao Y~e, Inc. All lllghu Racned. Reproduction <itb.r in whole or Ul put without wrium permission o( the publiober =d edJOor in chief is prol>ibioed. While this m>c=M" publuhed by Y~e CoUev m>clnus, Y~e Uruftnny is DO< raponsible for ios c:on<en<s. Sncnoy·live buadred copies ol ncb issue an dlJtribuoed free oo members ol the Y~e and New Hnen c:ommurul). Sui>Kripoioru arc a nibble oo those ou<sode the area. Rat..: One year, $18. Two years, SJ2. Tut ·~· joUIL'<>\1. is prinoed by Turley Publoeanom, P.almn, MA; bookk«ping and btl lute K<Viea are provided by Colman Bool.keepiJ>& of New Haven. THIN'"' jOUilNAL ~a Inters oo the edaor and c:ommm<s on Yale =d NI!'W H nen iuua. Wn« oo EdaO<ials, 20J.432 Yale Subon, r-;.., H aven, CT 06S20. AU Inters for publieation must include addrcu and <ignature. We raerve the right to edot all letter< for publication.

May 2007

3

• •

•

...

•

•

• •

A Furtive Endeavor •

JosEPH'S FURS STOCKS COATS, CAR-

ries mink, and doesn't trust anyone.

The doors are always locked, the windows bolted, and the furs tucked away in a two-story safe with twenty-inch-thick walls. Outside, midday traffic and it is always day, as Joseph's closes at 4:30 passes the neighboring donut shops and comic book stores. But inside 1193 Chapel, in the vault, all is quiet. It is a veritable fortress of pelts.

One cannot just walk into J oseph's Furs. A potential customer must ring a bell and pass a thorough inspection through the win.:. dow to gain access to New Haven's only historic furrier. Inside the sable-lined grotto, fluorescent light falls upon cheap carpeting, valuable antique endtables, standard office desks, fratned art, and cheap travel calendars. There seems to be no division between office and showroom, •

4

work and retail. A few decrepit mannequins, their chests scored by lines of ink, stand in the shadow of the safe, regarding their reflections in the gold -framed mirrors _that ov.erwhelm the demure white wails. There are few visible furs.

"You don't see any coats on the floor, now do you?" Fred Joseph asks, pointing to the massive wheeled lock on the safe behind him. Mr. Joseph, 77, is wearing a tan Bur berry coat. He and his wife, Selma, dressed in imported Italian lambskin, have owned Joseph's Furs for over fifty years, ever since the death of Mr. Joseph's father, Louis, who founded Joseph's on Chapel in 1910.

The younger Mr. Joseph has been selling and storing furs since he was 18 years old and has . now bequeathed most management duties to his son.

References to family, as well as references to the impermeability of the vault and the general dangers of the outside world, are mainstays of conversation with the Josephs. The family has circled its wagons around its furs and views outsiders with extreme trepidation. They demand a business card, identification, and proof of this magazine's existence before granting me even the paltriest of details about the store. Mrs. Joseph does not trust me at all throughout my talk with her husband, she frequently tells him that she is nervous about the interview, and that he doesn't have to divulge any information. "Look at him," she says. "He could be anyone, coming off the street like that. I don't like this.

Why is he looking at the lamps?"

After Mrs. Joseph reveals that the Josephs suspect everyone who enters their store, and after I assure her that I am not out to rob them, the mood lightens considerably. "You don't look like the fur type," Mrs .

Joseph tells me, and her · husband

agrees. "People in New Haven Yale students used to dress in beautiful clothes," he says, "not like you."

As Mr. Joseph reminisces about his native city's bygone glory days as a center for fine tailors and clothiers, it becomes apparent that the three principal facets ·of the Josephs' lives furs, family, and the history through which both have traveled are all embodied in the establishment which has supported them for decades. .

The Josephs' suspicion · of outsiders has its roots in 1813, when the building still housing Joseph's Furs was constructed. In the early 20th century, Joseph's father bought the space, which was then surrounded by beautiful verandas and inlaid with intricate woodworking. When Mr. Joseph restored the decaying building in 1959, he found a number of bottles of Lydia Pinkham, a 19th Century feminine hygiene product stashed in the building's several chimneys. He is convinced they were hidden there by prostitutes.

"This place was probably a bordello," he says.

Whatever the profession of the building's past tenants, one fact is certain: for a few nocturnal hours in 1959, 1193 Chapel was occupied by thieves.

Following the building's restoration, the Josephs came to work one day to find 86 holes drilled in the steel safe wall's only weak spo , and dozens of furs missing. Since the break-in, the Josephs have been even more vigilant in protecting not only their furs, but everything else for which they standelegance, their family, the rich and storied history of clothes in New Haven. Though it will never account for the Josephs' bizarre interior decorating choices in an apt reaction to the decor, one painting hanging behind an empty coat rack portrays a large man burying his head in his hands the

THE NEw JouRNAL •

.-

pair's story explains much of the oddity that permeates their sequestered office. The harsh mistrust, the demands for a business card, the subsequent reprimands for the absence of a business card, the locked doors, the strangely coatless showroom, the insurance policy that covers "for everything, up to insurrection and atomic attack," and the monolithic steel safe begin to make, like fur, an extravagantly eccentric sort of sense.

After the Josephs have warmed up to me--perhaps due to an hour of vigorous nodding in feigned agreement about matters of New Haven history I know nothing about-! am allowed to see the inside of the vault, an amazing display of trust. Even then, I am made to turn my back as the door is unlocked through a complicated procedure. To make sure I am not looking, Selma comes over to distract me with a newspaper article. Once Mr. Joseph opens the vault, he subtly blocks my entrance with his entire body, permitting me to stand in the doorway and feel the carefully calibrated forty-degree air flowing through two stories of fur coats organized by gender, type, and size. The sight of so many coats, all the size of the human bodies that wear them, reinforces the humanity behind the Josephs' bizarre suspicion of mankind. They suspect everyone, but they love New Haven, they lovehistory, they love family-and for them, fur is all of these things.

If they don't suspect you of malfeasance, if they let you peer into a concrete bunker full of old women's mink, then you must be kin, worthy of their wisdom as elders. At the end of the day, Mrs. Joseph tells me to always listen to my mother. Mr. Joseph offers his own advice, fatherly wisdom he no doubt imparts to his son and business partner. "Wannabe s~ccessful? Marry a rich girl. It's what I did."

-jordan jacks

May 2007

Harbinger of Broom lT IS A LITTLE KNOWN FACT THAT, OF

all broom-based sports, curling is second in popularity only to quidditch.

It is a littler known fact that, this past fall, the quirky Scottish pastime was added to the roster of Yale's club sports teams. Enter Michael Lindsay, the athletic entrepreneur who is selling Yalies on this bizarre and misunderstood game.

Lindsay's passion for curling only slightly precedes the founding ofYale's CurlingClub.The20060lympicGames gave the obscure sport some welcome publicity, and he was an immediate curling convert. "I became obsessed," says Lindsay, who first set his Tivo to record every match, and then set out to start a curling team at Yale. After rallying support by searching for Yalies who had listed"curling" as a Facebook interest, Lindsay's brainchild passed the scrutiny of the Club SportS Advisory Board and was soon registered as an official club sport.

For Lindsay, the experience smacked of deja vu. During the 2000 Olympic Games, he had a similar love affair with fencing. A student in the ninth grade at the time, he soon founded a fencing team at his high school. "I wasn't good at sports," says Lindsay with a good-natured laugh. Rather, he was good with swords. By his senior year, the team he had started was competing for the state championship. Lindsay continued his fencing career at Yale, competing on the Varsity team for two years before devoting his full atten-

tion to the nascent curling club.

Six months after he first fell for curling, Lindsay showed up at the Nutmeg Curling Club, a new curling facility in Bridgeport, CT, for the Yale CurlingClub'sfirstpractice.ltwasmidOctober 2006, and he had a handful of other would-be curlers in tow-a motley crew, mostly of his close friends, whom he had convinced with some difficulty to join the team. He also had his fingers crossed. The Berkeley junior, so passionate about curling, had never curled before in his life. "I had all of my eggs in one very risky basket," Lindsay admits. But this fringe sport enthusiast had struck upon another success, and curling turned out to be as much fun to play as, for most, it is to mock.

An unconventional union of physical skill and strategy, curling is a perfect sport for the scholar-athlete yearning to consider himself in a class above the stereotypical dumb jock. The game pits two teams of four against each other in ten inninglike rounds called "ends." The teams take turns delivering a 44-pound granite stone down the "sheet," an alley of ice leading to the target area or "house." Sweepers precede the sliding stone, brushing the ice to reduce friction. Contact with the stone itself is an infraction called "burning."

The sweepers help direct the stone to a targeted resting place determined by the "skip," the team's captain and chief of strategy. This entire process looks ridiculous.

Unsurprisingly, some skeptics question this bizarre spectacle's status as a sport. After all, athletic ability, physical fitness, and strength are by no means requisites-one of Nutmeg's members is approaching her ninetieth birthday. "You can be pretty horribly out of shape and still curl," says the team's treasurer, Matthew Lawler. Even avid dust-busters aren't necessarily at an advantage. "Brooms and I had never really gotten along before," says Lindsay, who showed no particular talent for sweeping as a 5

.

child. In fact, "Chess-on-ice,'' as curling is commonly called, often looks most like a life-sized board game, a sophisticated reenactment of Chutes and Ladders. Even Lawler is reluctant to classify it as a sport. "I'd call it a 'skilled activity,'" Lawler says.

But curling's biggest threat isn't its debated classification. The Club Sports Advisory Board, which acknowledges fishing and even ballroom dancing as sports, had no trouble bestowing the title. If curling has anything to worry about, it's global warming." Curlingliterallyfollows the ice patterns of the world," says Lindsay, as he maps out curling's strongholdsinAmerica Wisconsin, Illinois, and other states along the border between the U.S. and Canada, where curling is as · popular as ice hockey.

Climactic restrictions have prevented the sport, which Lindsay and others claim is infectious, from infiltrating the athletic mainstream. "Florida is . not big on curling just yet," Lindsay jokes. But curling's popularity is rising faster than the ice caps are melting.

Though curling was first introduced as an 0 lympic sport in 1998, the U.S. curling team's bronze medal in last year's Olympic Games has precipitated "the .perfect storm for curling" in the States, according to Lindsay.

In fact, most of the other clubs Yale played against at the team's first match in early February were also in their starting year. "We went in ready to kick some ass," said Lindsay. And they did. A team of Yale freshmen and sophomores, competing as a "Bteam" alongside Yale's "A-Team" of juniors and seniors, won the tournament. Having gained confidence from the unexpected victory, a team of four Bulldogs decided to head, brooms in hands, to the national "bonspiel," or tournament, at the North Shore Curling Club in Chicago. When one player dropped out and another team member's flight from Kennedy Airport was snowed in, the team was debilitatingly halved. By picking up alternates, the remainder of Yale's

.

team the diehard duo of Lindsay Shades, radios in from the distant and Freshman Edward Chang still Planet of Hollywood. Heresy. managed to participate in the tournaMost people in Hollywood have ment. The severely handicapped team big dreams. So do most people at Yale. finished at nationals with a 0-3 record, Kevin Winston, who graduated from two of the losses having come in the Yale in 1991, called his dream Yale in final throw of the match.

Hollywood. A few years ago, he and Though the attitude may be unseveral alumni in the entertainment . familiar to the typical Yalie, winning industry began to plan entertainmentand losing are a mere side dish in this related events for the Yale Club of unconventional sport. At its . heart is Southern California. At a happy hour "the spirit of curling," an age-old tradi- in 2002, held at a bar owned by Matt tion of beer-drinking, good sports- Damon and Ben Affleck, one hundred manship, and a vibrant pin, patch, and Yale alumni made appearances. Afbutton culture. "The essence of the ter the event's success, Winston and game is to enjoy the game," said Jim a few other Yalies decided to forge Meinhold, Nutmeg's Director of Col- ahead under the banner"YaleinHollylege and Youth Curling, and it is advice wood.'' First,morehappyhours. Then worth heeding. The over-stimulated panels. Panels on "How I got into the and overbooked Yalie might be sur- Biz," panels on video games, panels on prised, on adding this activity to her "The Marketing of Winnie the Pooh to schedule, to learn what productive a Global Audience." An e-mail list of activity springs from, as Lindsay puts eight hundred. And every summer it, "stones, ice, and nothing to do." since .2003, an internship program, feeding current Yale students into the -Laura Zax system. · As it turns out, there are some things Theater Studies 110 just can't teach you. As Junior Dariush Nothaft, current president of Bulldog Productions and a San Diego native who worked at a production .m anagement firm last summer as part of Yale in Hollywood, says, "The West Coast is a __..;.,- completely different animal. It hasn't really been a part of Yale culture." Winston agrees. "At Yale, Sunday through Wednesdayyoustudy. Thursday,maybeyougoout. Friday, Saturday: Toads."

He gazes through ocean-blue contact .lenses to the sidewalk of Sunset Boulevard, where his dog; Achilles, waits.

Achilles, Winston explains, was named Going Coastal fortheBradPittcharacterin Troy. "Hollywood is very much about meeting YALE STUDENTS HAVE RECENTLY DISpeople. It's pretty much the opposite covered a small planet exerting a of Yale. You go out Friday, Saturday, stronger and stronger pull on New and every weekday to, say, a Yale in Haven: its name is Hollywood, and Hollywood event." there, everything you thought you Winston never dreamed he'd know, is no more. Take, for instance, land in L.A. After Yale, he attended the value of a Yale degree. "It doesn't matter that you went to Yale," Lynd- graduate school "at that other place, sey Ford 'OS, former member of · in Boston," and then zipped off to L.A. •

•

.

•

•

•

.

6

THE NEw JouRNAL •

•

to work as a consultant for McKinsey. !'Non-risky,,, he says. But the entertainment industry proved alluring, almost contagious. "With high risk comes, potentially, reward.'' Winston, right now, is working on an independent project somemightcallita "spec," others, a "spec of a spec," still others a "pitch."

Winston calls it strictly confidential. .

There's more than one way to walk the walk of fame, and it doesn't even have to involve actual fame, or money or, since it is L.A~, walking. If Kevin Winston is a Hollywood blockbuster, the seven alumni from the Class of 2005 the hipsters, the former Shades singers, Duke's Men, and dancers are the independent releaseswaitingfortheircultfollowing. Their home, the "WiltonHilton," is the closest thing L.A. has to a residential college.

Built in 1911, the spacious house on Wilton Place in Hollywood has enough amenities to make a JE student feel right at home: antique gas lines, peeling paint and wide wooden staircases worn at the center from footprints.

One late afternoon between .

Christmas and New Year's, Summer Aubrey '05, lounging on a red velvet couch, blinks and surveys the scene.

Polaroid pictures are displayed in a row on the piano. Menorahs line the front hall. In the corner, a sad Christmas tree sits decked in candy canes.

On the table lies a mess of DVDs, cereal bowls doubling as tea cups, a bottle of Tylenol. "We had a bit of a party last night," Aubrey explains.

"Your goal might be to write screenplays and not necessarily sell · them. It's a different definition of success than is accepted/' Aubrey says. · She recently completed a project designing an internationally themed resort. Ford, the Shades alum, recently finished recording the in-store music _ for Build-a-Bear Workshops. Some are supported by their parents, and some support themselves. They all tutor. "It's selling out, in a way, helping the wealthy kids of L.A.," laments one time WhiffenpoofThomas Dolan.

While Wmston takes a hard-drivMay 2007

ing professional approach to his life in Hollywood, Dolan and his roommates are not in a rush to the top. Dolan knows how his friends in New York view his choices. "We're on the West Coast. We just do coke, .e xercise and tan,"hesaystheatrically. "Thaes Yalies' fear." Like the film industry, this alternative lifestyle is alluring and addictive, illuminated by the neon glow of Planet Hollywood.

-:Amy Rothschild

and Sch ·T he

far Books Yale .and Books by·Aiumni and •

Wend

A L.ll:;,;unctive ofYafe Ap f""'\:,..;h

-

Se~'·-

.· • R:cbon w

Gifts

and ·

A Delicate Music •

THE STAFF AT THE YALE CoLLECTION

of Musical Instruments likes to tell a story about a nine-year-old boy who approached the single-manual harpsichord available for public use on the second floor of the Collection and began to play a Bach Fugue. This came as something of a surprise to the boy's parents, who had never heard him play a single note. Their child, it turned out, had been learning to play at a neighbor's house.

Resting one hand on the same harpsichord, Susan E. Thompson, the Collection's curator, tells this story with an air of satisfaction. Near her sit a 1736 Stradivarius violin, a grand piano that Wagner used for a decade, and two small epinettes that might 7

have belonged to Marie Antoinette.

Thompson, holding a cup of tea, gestures toward the piano. It is tiny, with narrow keys, perfect for a woman with exceptionally small hands and a light, practiced touch. "We call this the eggshell instrument," she says in a soft voice before removing the protective case and playing a few notes. The sound that comes out is delicate; her fingers no more than graze the keys.

Such musical gems seem incongruous in the former fraternity house on 15 Hillhouse that holds the instruments. The Collection began in 1900 with a gift from Morris Steinert, a local piano merchant and founder of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. To thank the University for allowing the Symphony to rehearse on campus, Steinert donated a number of keyboards which were originally displayed in Woolsey Hall as the first Yale Collection of Musical Instruments.

The Collection's second major donor watches over the instruments from a painting that hangs on the second floor. Belle Skinner, depicted in a red dress with her sister Katharine, was a Holyoke textile heiress whose nephews attended Yale. Aside from donating several instruments to Yale's Collection, Skinner was responsible for moving the Collection to its present location.

The building on Hillhouse gave the Collection a space in which it could come alive, a place where instruments could be seen and heard. Thompson raises her arm high above her head, notes the great acoustics in the space, and snaps. Pleased with the full sound her fingers make, she continues walking around the room, which houses a permanent exhibit of keyboard instruments widely regarded as the jewel of the collection.

The second floor exhibit visually summarizes the keyboard's history. Thompson's discussion of the instruments with NicholasRenouf, the congenial Associate Curator, makes it evident that no one piece exists in isolation. Each is tied to an ancestor and 8

an heir, an important predecessor and a later imitation. Instruments in the Collection are displayed not only as art objects, but also as historical records.

When asked about Wagner's piano, Renouf presents a thorough history of the instrument's precedent and its direct descendent, which Wagner called the instrument of his dreams.

To the untrained eye, however, the evolution and importance of certain instruments is not immediately apparent. Some displays have almost universal appeal; the recorder-like tonette, "America's favorite pre-band instrument," catches every visitor's eye. Its display case, sprinkled with clippings from "Tonette News," gives such valuable advice as "Don't blow your instrument in class while the teacher is talking."

A current exhibit of bells from around the world is also popular, displaying everything from Japanese temple bells, to French table bells (one of which is shaped like Napoleon), to a book entitled "The Art of Ringing, "whichcontains,amongother things, obituaries of bell carillonneurs.

The quieter, grander exhibits, though, aren't very accessible, as the textual explanation accompanying each instrument is short.

Thompson and Renouf both want to incorporate more explanatory text and even a sound system to accompany the instruments, but the building's small size makes the curators' availability to visitors important.

Not all of the instruments can be on display at any given time, so their curators emphasize quality over quantity. "There has never been any desire forcomprehension, "Renoufsays. "The instruments in the Collection are all superb examples." However superb, though, the Collection's limited hours make it difficult for the public to gain access. It exists as a compromise between museum and special collection.

While the British Art Center and the Peabody hold more open hours, most of the University's specialized holdings are open only through appointment and have no exhibits.

Interim Director Leon Plantinga and InternElizabethWeinfield arehelping Thompson and Renouf expand the scope of visitors. The Collection already serves as a resource for music students, and art classes visit periodically to sketch the instruments. Eventually, the staff envisions art openings, talks, and other events to attract more undergraduates. Another promising idea is a composition contest open to the School of Music in which students would use instruments in the Collection as inspiration for a musical piece.

The Collection is also open to the public through its concert series, which takes advantage of the marvelous acoustics that Thompson praises.

The keyboards on the second floor rest on rolling platforms that allow the gallery to be transformed into a hundred-seat concert hall. These concerts are often performed on restored instruments from the Collection. As the concert musicians begin, history animates, as unexpected and delightful as a Bach Fugue played by a secretly musical nine-year-old boy.

-Lizzy Star

Talk of the Town SUNRISE ON THE RIVER: A QUAINT

wooden sea wall stands in a spiked silhouette; red and white lobster boats bob by the dock; delicate blues and pinks play on the shimmering water. "Good one--for the village look," says Bill. His audience, leaning in for a closer look, agrees. You'd guess the photograph was of an old fishing village, not of the modern banks of the Quinnipiac just a THE NEw JouRNAL

few miles northeast of Yale in Fair Haven.

Bill is one of nine members of the Chatham Square photography project, which meets in the basement of the tiny Fair Haven public library. Some experienced members adjust their color schemes on Photoshop; others aren't sure how to use the flash. All venture out with cameras and a desire to show that Fair Haven-specifically, their own nineblock neighborhood of Chatham Square-gets a bad rap. "Yale slams this neighborhood all the time," says Heather, who took the sunrise pictures. "It's not fair." If Yalies think of Fair Haven at all, they probably associate the neighborhood with drugs and prostitution. But the many residents of Chatham Square are not ones to sit back and be dismissed. In the past few years, with the help of the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, Chatham Square locals have thrown themselves into the work of reviving their neighborhood and restoring its image as safe, civicminded, and diverse.

A community historically populated by waves of immigrants from all over Europe, Latin America, and the United States, Chatham Square has weathered diverse circumstances: once a bustling marketplace, it fell into disrepair in the middle of the last century and has only recently recovered some of its former vibrancy. A large Puerto Rican population of both recent immigrants and long time residents lives side-by-side with eightyyear-old German immigrants and twenty-year-old NYU Art School grads. A dual-language public school does its best to promote neighborhood unity. The neighborhood hums with untold history.

Determined to preserve-and to advertise-the fibric of Chatham Square, the Community Foundation turned to Andy Horowitz, Yale Class of 2003. Horowitz is the founder and director of the New Haven Oral History Project, run out of the Yale HisMay 2007

tory Department. A stroke of luck community on the brink of revival. sent the Community Foundation to Chatham Square is starting to Horowitz just as he was approached come to terms with its identity. Back by another organization, the under- in the library basement, Heather's graduate Yale Anthropology Society. husband shows the group his own Anthropology majors, chronically shot of dawn on the Quinnipiac Rivlow on funding for field work, want- er. On the left, an old-fashioned laned hands-on experience, and Cha- tern glows against a clapboard house. tham Square wanted its stories heard. Across the top of the picture runs a Horowitz brought the two together, jagged black tangle of electrical wires, and the Yale Anthropology Ethnog- cutting into the perfect silver of the sky. "It's too bad about those wires," raphy Project was born.

The Ethnography Project stu- a woman sighs. The group contemdents receive training from Horowitz plates the shot in silence; maybe the in oral history interviewing before wires could be cropped out. Then: "I heading into Chatham Square to re- don't know... maybe not," someone cord the stories of its residents. In says, and others start to speak up, too. a side project using Sudler funding, The diverse elements bring balance to the composition; they make a nice Yale students formed the Chatham contrast against the pale sky. Besides, Square photography group, which equips Chatham locals like Heather someone points out, this is a picture and Bill with cameras to take pictures of a real place, and the wires are reof their neighborhood. The Ethnog- ally there. Yes, the group agrees: the raphy Project is planning a local ex- wires stay. hibit in early May that will feature the -Amy Fish highlights of the collected oral histories and the work of the photography group.

As the interviewers have discovered, however, the people of Chatham Square are not unified in their enthusiasm for the neighborhood.

Some residents speak of the tension between English-speaking locals and Spanish-speaking immigrants. Not everyone, moreover, has opened their doors to Yale students with tape recorders. While the interviewees are diverse in age, language, and background, they are a self-selecting group. Consequently, the voice of the neighborhood is coming from those who care about it most. Chatham Square activists "want to show off their neighborhood," says Horowitz. They are interested not only in recording the area's history but marketing it to potential homebuyers. As Cutting a Deal students gain field experience and locals build a potential promotional "PEOPLE ARE NEVER EXCITED TO GEt a phone call from an 18-year-old tool, a particular version of Chatham who wants to come over and throw Square history emerges. This sense of knives at your face," says Saybrook history, while perhaps biased towards Junior Doug Scott. But it is his job the positive, offers new pride to a 9

to get them excited, and Scott is good at his job. Like forty thousand other college students in the United States and Canada, Scott is a representative of Cutco Cutlery, a massive knifeselling corporation that grosses $144 million ~n domestic sales each year.

In the summer of 2005, Scott sold thirty thousand dollars' worth of Cutco products.

First formed in 1949, Cutco is now paired with Vector Marketing as a subsidiary of Alcas Corporation.

Cutco succeeds in part because of the quality of its products, but l;ugely because of its relentless recruitment of ambitious young salespeople. The company seizes and profits off their new representatives' social networks, telling employees to "sell to everyone you know. "Beginning representatives are responsible for 75% of Cutco's sales, though most quickly exhaust their contact lists and enthusiasm.

In a throwback to the days of Arthur Miller, the upper-middle class teenagers who form the bulk of Cutco's sales team travel to homes, make light conversation with their hosts, and then casually invite themselves into the kitchen cabinets, where they discover the horror of dull knives and wooden handles. Scott tells his customers to "have fun spending five years cutting your steak tonight" and informs them that, with all the bacteria in a wooden handle, they may as well feed the bubonic plague to their children. He then performs a series of choreographed and impressive demonstrations, a cost comparison, and a package pitch, invariably selling a few knives or, at the very least, an ice cream scoop. Emphasizing the value of personal charisma, Scott advises future representatives, "You better believe that if your customer has kids, you're on the floor playing with those babies and making them love you." Though this tactic stretches the traditional forms of solicitation, the cutlery giant continues to reel in budding professionals of college age with a polished image of enterprise.

10

The triumph of Vector Market- high school graduation with a basket ing, more than its ability to script of Vector Marketing recruiting inforclever presentations, is in its success mation. The materials she gave him in understanding our generation. Sar- contained few direct references to ah Andrus, the director of academic cutlery, and the interview and trainprograms at Vector Marketing, cites a ing process consisted of clean-cut number of studies that her firm uses professionals pitching an exciting opto effectively recruit salespeople from portunity to earn money and improve the 18-24 age bracket. Speaking with his transcript. At Scott's branch, reprea combination of masterful articula- sentatives galvanized the trainees by tion and anecdotes, Andrus relates running into the room at choice mothat "entrepreneurship" is on the rise ments and yellingupdates: "Kathyjust in Generation Y, a phenomenon that made $350! Tom did $800!" Elated by she breathlessly describes as "just the style and polish of the company, wonderful." Cuteo has no trou blefind- many new representatives become ing representatives on college cam- instantly loyal. In this early stage of puses, she explains, because it un- Cutco courtship, Scott recalls feeling derstands that students need "instant "like you are a part of this bustling litgratification" and relish the thought tle operation, even if you don't know of self-made success. Homemakers what it is." and weekend barbecues fuel the conEventually, experienced trainers sumption of Cutco's cutlery, but it is bring out the knives, detail the scriptthe young sellers who tirelessly push ed phone calls, and outline the oneit forward. hour in-horne presentations. While Dan Carey, a professor of social young salespeople initially enter the psychology at Notre Dame Univer- Cutco world intoxicated by its refined sity who us-es Cutco in his discussion image, the company's complicated of savvy compliance techniques, be- system of hierarchies, rankings, and lieves the cutlery giant's business promotions keeps them among the strategy "reads like a social psychol- Cutco faithful. Both Chiu and Scott ogy text book." Discussing Cutco outdid their rivals, selling enough provokes immediate reactions from knives to climb in"commission brackhis students, since many own Cutco ets." They speak reverently of the top knives or have worked for the com- levelsof"FieldServiceMangers." Chiu pany in the past. Carey explains that describes how weekly Cutco newsletVector Marketing's appeal is often ters listing national rankings of salesbased on its flashy presentation. people stoked his competitive nature, For KevinChiu,aSaybrookfresh- and Scott mentions the looming man who sold Cutco knives last sum- perks of successful sales. "Selling is mer, the recruiting process began addictiveforme, "Scottexplains. "They when a little girl danced around his always have these promos-contests,

Cafe, Groa!ry & Gift Bee Bim Bap and more ...

486

~St, New~

CT06511

.203 ¡865 ¡2849 THE NEw JouRNAL

•

•

conferences, and events that keep you going. They have all these levelsyou want to be 'keystaff,'whichliterally means that you just get a key to put on your shirt.'' Despite the startlingly dull nature of the product, the allure of briefcases, pinstripes, and promotions seizes the ambitious minds of college-age men and women.

Rosa Ayala, a Davenport sophomore who raked in eight thousand dollars during het Cutco summer and has since been promoted to management, recognizes the Cutco stigma but sees the income as a means to an end. While other Yalies truck themselves to internships around the country, where they break countless fax machines and learn to conceal their Face book voyeurism, Rosa points out that the Cutco system mixes personal interaction with rewards and recognition. "I want to be a teacher,'' she says, "and I plan to use every bit of what I make from Cutco." Yet her ambition does not imply a lack ofloyalty. "Ilove the product," she explains. "I wouldn't be doing sales if I didn't."

Scott is similarly enthusiastic about bringing knives to the doorsteps ofAmerica." I love this company," he grins, "even though everyone from the top down knows it's a -scam.~'

-

•

Best Eye ·• comprehensive eye·exams • lenses • fashion eye, wear

-Pat Hayden

the •

• •

Illustrations by Benny Sachs andAli Seitz May 2007

11

SNAPSHOT ally have a clear mission." Now, t~e CEO investigates employment dtscrimination, enforces construction contracts, and inspects sites to ensure regulations are being followed. ~ur­ ingJefferson's second yea~ on the_Job, the CEO conducted 508 mspecnons.

Last year, it completed 1,061. .

In addition to these duttes, Jefferson runs a construction training program that was transferred to her espite Anhur T~cker's office after its rocky start at the Workyears of consuucuon expen- force Alliance. Between 1999, when ence, people often assume he's the Construction Workforce Initiaan unskilled laborer. He rarely gets tive began, and 2001, when Jefferson hired to complete the more lucrative took the reins, less than one hundred spell out "INTEGRITY." "It's in "gravy work," or finishing. touches, on residents graduated from the program. this building, it's on this floor-but a project. Art:hur Tucker ts black. He This tally was surpassed within the you've got to have pro~ f." Thou~h thinks this might be why. first year of Jefferson's tenure. Ideally, her office receives mynad casual mThough Tucker didn't attend City CWI graduates are mat~hed wi.th con- quiries into what constitutes discrimHall's public hearing on minority con- tractors working on Ctty proJects, a ination, only about ten formal comstruction hiring in early March, he was set-up that benefits all panics-the mi- plaints are filed each year. Jefferson represented in absentia by a fu~ house norities need jobs and the contractors constantly meets with people who of people with similar complamts. ~n need minorities-as New Haven law fume about racist employers, and she an impassioned and unexpected twtst, mandates that 25% of the hours spent often believes them. But if workers these minority construction workers on City-funded construction projects won't divulge their names, much less pitted themselves against a woman must be logged by minority workers. the details of their experiences, she who has done more to help them find Jefferson also assumed cont!ol of the can do nothing.

"I only deal in facts," Jefferson previously un-enforced ProJect Labor jobs in New Haven ov.er the ~as~ six years than anyone has m the ctty s re- Agreement, which s~tes that 25%. of explains. "When you discriminate the hours spent on ctty consuuctton against someone, you gotta be able .to cent history. projects must be completed by New prove it. You have to have facts, wnte ew Haven's Commission on Haven union workers. In yet another down times, have witnesses-you Equal OpportUnities is located gesture of confidence last fall, the Ci~ gotta give me some ammunition." in a bustling City Hall office that has She has facts on the disgruntled gave her office employment supe~t­ long been too small for i~s occupants. sion duties at all New Haven Housmg workers who complained about disNichole Jefferson, prestdent of the Authority worksites. crimination at the public hearing, and CEO, has tucked pit<;hers of fake Six years after these structural they aren't pretty. One black woman flowers between the heaps of paper shifts the CE.O b.as· .pushed New who claimed she was -laid off for no that cover her office: -As she · plucks Have~ contractors' minority hiring reason has a history of drug abuse, bulging files from the visu~ chaos, rates higher than any other city in and Jefferson wouldn't be surprised it is clear that she loves her JOb and Connecticut. Countless people have if she'd begun using again. Another received training and landed well- African-American man, also recently does it well.

The Commission-founded in laid off was blacklisted by his union paying construction jobs through 1964 and one of the oldest munici- Jefferson's office. So why do so ~any for ev;ding its educational requirepal civil rights agencies in the cou?- minorities still feel that they can t get ments. Jefferson dug up payrolls to try-has not always hummed as tt or keep jobs because of their race? prove that another worker, who'd does now. Before Jefferson was hired passionately argued tha~ black '"?en in 2001, she says, •nobody ever did iscrimination is everywhere," were being laid off a parncular proJeCt anything. Zero, zip, zilp, blah, blah, once the contractors had filled their Jefferson say~, her f~ce framed blah." With only five staff members, by letters hanging 10 her wmdow that quota, had been flat-out lying. She Jefferson notes, "the office didn't reTHE NEW JouRNAL 12

Minority Report

Building better antidiscrimination policy.

by Nicole Allan

D

1:

N

D

' •

knew these details all along but didn't think them appropriate to announce to the crowd. "It would be black people against black people," she says, "and I don't want to do that."

Instead, Jefferson hinted at these issues in a more general way, reminding those at the hearing that "everybody is not going to be a perfect employee. The people who are constantly laid off, it's usually not about race:it's about being a bad employee."

Jimmy, the white foreman of a plumbing subcontractor working on the construction of a Fair Haven school, confinned this trend he usually lays people off when they don't show up to work or do as he asks. That's not to say that he's never been accused of discrimination. He once addressed a black employee as "boy," which caused a stir despite the factthatJimmy said it "in the way I wanted to say it because he was younger than I was."

An important component of the CEO inspections includes confidential interviews with minority workers to verify that they are paid and treated appropriately. Lisa Muniz and Hope Wiggins, CEO inspectors, confirmed that a recent CWI graduate who'd begun working under Jimmy on the Fair Haven project only a couple of weeks before hadn't experienced any unfair treatment. Muniz and Davis filed · a report for the CEO records, adding to Jefferson's currency of "facts." When discrepancies are found, the CEO calls in the contractors and, if necessary, enforces fines or takes legal action. lan Felder, a local subcontractor, does not deny that Jefferson and her office have provided New Haven

minorities with a slew of opportuni- not a laborer he's a subcontractor. ties. But he feels that black men in There are no minority quotas on the particular are slipping through major subcontracting -level, and despite the holes in the city's construction policy. efforts of New Haven's Small BusiBorn and raised inN ew Haven, Felder ness Initiative, he feels that it is next has 22 .years of plumbing experience. to impossible for small, black-owned • • His small subcontracting company is operations to surv1ve. folding, however, as Felder focuses his energy on Man-Up, a new advocacy efferson, though busy enough organization for African-American preventing discrimination on a lamen working in construction. Manor level, understands the problems Up hopes to instill a moral obligation Felder confronts. She says the minorin New Haven construction firms ities at the hearing ''needed someone to hire black residents and to better to be angry with. And I understand.integrate themselves into th~ com- I'm passionate about my job." munity a lofty goal. On a practica.l Lowering her voice to a maternal level, the organization plans to act as murmur, she reveals that their anger, a community that trains and supports and Tucker's anger, and Felder's anger, black men trying to gain upward mo- stem from the same source: an inabilbility in the construction industry. ity to reach the "next level." Whether A couple of days before the City the wall that stands between them Hall hearing, Felder staged a rally at a and this goal is racial, attitudinal, polarge, privately-fu~ded construction litical, or an indissoluble mixture of site in Westville. He protested the proj- the three is debatable. But after the ect's lack of minority subcontractors rally and the hearing and six years of and accused the general contractor of Jefferson's tireless supervision, New hiring illegal Mexican workers instead Haven is beginning to contemplate of black New Haven residents. tearing it down.

For Man-Up members, the Westville site exemplifies a primary flaw in city regulations: as a private development, it is not subject to any minority Nicole Allan, a sophomore in Calhoun or resident quotas. The CEO does not College, is a Managing Editor of supervise it and, according to Felder, this means that this project and others like it get away with hiring illegal immigrants in place of black New Haven residents.

Another of Man-Up's grievances centers on the difficulties black men face in climbing the construction salary ladder. Felder does not deny that black laborers can generally find work through the CEO. But Felder is

•

•

• •

•

•

l

'

•

•

• •

•

•

•

•

•

•

Body of

ork •

Residents at Yale-New Haven amass a cor.

pus.

by Aditi Ramakrishnan orne to think of it~ I never knew her name~ the pepper farmer~s wife. She lived in ]indo~ on that speck of an island~ a piece ofparadise on water. The locals say that if you throw a stone from one end of the island~ it lands on the other. All her life~ with her body~ her handsj her fingers~ her eyes~ her mind~ and her breath~ she worked on a plot of that island~ growing things... The lines go on to describe the favorite color of the pepper farmer~s wife, her family, and her scent. Only briefly does the writer allude to her death, and to the smells of formaldehyde and alcohol. There is no mention of blood, blisters, and the bearing of bad tidings. And yet these are the words of Dr. Grace Suh, resident physician at Yale-New Haven hospital.

Last November, Suh crafted this piece during a writing workshop led by the prominent physician-writer, Dr. Richard Selzer. Selzer's class, part of the "Yale Internal Medicine Residency's Writers Workshop," has brought together approximately 15 residents each November over the past four years to learn and practice the craft of writing under the mentorship of a physician-writer. Dr. Abraham Verghese, a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of My Own Country, led the first workshop in November 2003. Selzer, a former surgeon

a

whose fourteenth book will come out next spring, led the past two workshops. The creative writing program began a few years ago as a way to address the extreme stress experienced by the hospital's residents and staff. According to Dr. Anna Reisman, co-director of the program, "The purpose of this workshop was a way to combat the negative feelings and experiences that many staff go through and witness in the hospital. They see a tendency to connect less with the patient and rely more on technology in order to be effi.cient." With that disconnect in mind, Verghese and Dr. Ralph Horowitz, a focmer dean of the Yale Medical School, created the writing workshop.

The residents who take part in the workshop have varied backgrounds in writing and literature. Some are novices, eager to learn how to narrate the stories that constantly play out in their tninds. Others are experienced · · writers, ready to trade their scalpels for pens. But whatever their backgrounds, all share the belief that delving into words can be a refreshing hiatus from the toil of hospital rounds.

Before the workshop, the residents submit samples of their writing, which are usually related to medicine. Over the course of two days, the mentor leads the students in a •

•

14

THE NEw JouRNAL

critique of each others' pieces. Participants then write short, spontaneous assignments depicting a scene or a character. In the beginning, the residents may not know each other, but the experience of sharing their writing quickly forges close bonds between them. "When we start out, we're shy and don't want to hurt others' feelings. The critiques are very general," Suh says; "But on the second day we know each other's styles and become more comfortable. The discussions become more interesting." The program culminates in a student reading of revised essays and stories during the Medical Grahd Rounds, an academic conference attended by University and community physicians. These pieces are then preserved in the annual workshop journal, Capsules.

The intersection of writing and medicine is not new. Anton Chekhov was a physician; William Carlos Williams wrote some of his poems on the backs of prescription bills. Dr. Lisa Sanders, a primary care physician and clinical instructor at the Yale Medical School, writes a column, "Diagnosis," for The New York Times Magazine. "Medicine is a storyteller's art," she says of the connection between health care and narrative. "You have to find the beginning, the middle, and the end and weave together a story of the patient. The clues you find will help you weave the narrative, the unifying diagnosis." Sanders uses this idea of narrative to ~each diagnostic skills to residents. She tells them that if the diagnosis does not hang together as a narrative, perhaps it is wrong. In her view, physicians who write develop empathy and become attuned to details such as subtle facial movements. A doctor who is interested in stories will be more interested in her patients' lives, a more careful listener, and thus ask the patient more precise • questions. . . . , .. .

Writing can also influence a ·phys1c1an s ability m deeper, unexpected ways. -Selzer, now 79 years old, still remembers sitting on the landing between the first and second floors of his childhood home, listening to the moans of patients from his father's first-floor doctor's office mingling with the scales of his mother, a professional singer, emanating from the second floor. Selzer's career mimicked the mixture of medicine and artistry found in his childhood he followed in his father's footsteps and became a surgeon, and, at forty, honored his mother's artistic inclination by beginning to write. His dual careers as surgeon and author lasted 18 years. Pain was a common thread in his work. Wanting to focus, he finally chose the literary path. "By starting to write, I opened a thirdeyeintomymind,inwhichicouldperceiveandfeel," he says. "It interfered with my practice and surgery; a surgeon is supposed to concentrate on doing, not on the patient's feelings. -I decided to stop practicing surgery.

Once you're a writer, the third eye has been opened. It has no lid, and it can never be closed."

As the workshop caters to residents specializing in internal medicine, psychiatry, and pediatrics fields in which empathy and penetrating vision are essential•

May 2007

•

" middle, and the end and weave ·

Dr. Lisa Sanders .

the program's goal of opening a caring "third eye" in its participants seems appropriate. But is this goal feasible?

Can an annual, two-day workshop influence the abilities of these residents as writers and physicians? Burdened with eighty-hour work weeks, residents often lack opportunities to polish pieces or keep regular journals. Their attempts to meet as an informal wri~i~? group ha~e also failed. How can writing help these asp1nng doctors If they cannot find the t~me to practice the craft?

Though the short · duration of the workshop limits improvements in the quality of these students' writing, the emphasis on narratives and detail does seep into their daily medical practice. Dr. Laura Gravelin, who participated in last November's workshop, does not write regu· larly but still feels the residual effects of the course .. "If you approach a day like it's a story, you look at things differently," she says. "You pay more attention to the details of your patients." Suh concurs; writing has allowed her to approach her practice more thoroughly. It has also provided her with solace. "It's hard to explain what eighty hours a week really means. It's a sacrifice, but writing has been an escape." And because of the writing workshops, that escape is now infinitely better-written. In the beginning, Suh just wanted to write therapeutically, reflectively. But over the course of two years, the workshops urged her to read what others have written, and to make her own writing more artistic a literary piece rather than a diary entry. "A lot of physician writers are not very good," she confesses, laughin~.

"They're in the practice of medicine and good at commurucating. But they don't focus on the writing as an art form."

For Suh, the writing workshops have driven her to care about words the way she cares about patients. But even with her passion for language, Suh struggles to find the time to write. To achieve the artistry she desires, she may have to devote herself less to medicine. Like Selzer, she may ultimately make a choice between medicine and writing. Perhaps a two-day workshop foreshadows the forked path ahead. But for now, as the list of ideas grows, Suh's story of the pepper farmer's wife comes to a quiet close: .. ./ suppose I did love her, if merely out of duty. The pepper farmer's wife, whose name I do not know, whose eyes are now mine. She left behind little else. She must have taken her scent with her.

Aditi Ramakrishnan, a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College, is an Associate Editor ofTNJ. 15

Typecast Yale's Publications Council discusses racism in print.

by Mitchell Reich

ine sets of campus editors-including one from this magazine-showed up for the first meeting of the Yale Publications Council in early February, and eight considered themselves journalists. This irked Betty Trachtenberg, the Dean of Student Affairs.

When she and several residential college deans established the group, she said, "We wanted people to understand what was the concept of responsible journalism." Their mission proved difficult, as the avowed non-journalists were, in fact, the editors of The Yale Record, who consider themselves humor writers. Their mock "Blue Book," released last September, was one of a handful of publications that had motivated Trachtenberg to solve what she later called "the problems of these kinds of scurrilous articles

N

16

in various of our journals. ., She added, witheringly, "It's supposed to be passed off as humor, and people weren't buying it."

Nearly every editor, however, including the Record's, left the room optimistic about the Council's possibilities and willing to attempt a second meeting. From their perspective, it had the potential to become a forum where editors could share tips, make the publishing process at Yale more open, and engage in dialogue with the rest of the campus community. For Trachtenberg and many of the cultural groups on campus, however, it was an effort to persuade Yale publications to change their habits: not only to stop printing the offending articles~but to actively acknowledge the minority presence at Yale. This change began long before the first meeting of the Publications Council. The student reactions against the inflammatory articles changed, however temporarily, the tone and policies of major publications at Yale, and sharply limited or refocused their discussions of race. The Council had little to do with the transformation, bu t its potential for relevance is emerging: to determine whether these changes can become long-term parts of the Yale media landscape, for journalists and non-journalists alike.

This landscape was rocked a year ago by the publicaTHE NEw jouRNAL

tion of two pieces. One was ''Me Love you Long Time: Yale's Case of Yellow Fever/' in the April issue of Rumpus. It appeared within several days of a cartoon in The Yale Herald depicting a student who suggests he would not vote for a candidate for YCC president because he was Asian. Students and administrators spotted the pair and were outraged.

"Offensive speech is protected at Yale," President Richard Levin said. "That doesn't mean that if you say something that is deeply offensive to other people, you should be." Priya Prasad, president of the Asian American Students Association, alleged that the publications had advanced stereotypes substantially damaging to the perception of Asian students at Yale. Editors from both quickly apologized and underwent scathing criticism at two packed student forums. Students charged the Herald with a long history of perceived racial insensitivity; the Asian American Students Association sponsored a "Day of Silence," during which students gagged themselves to protest the publications' "racial insensitivity toward Asian Americans and other minority groups."

Many students who were incensed by the articles grew frustrated that the protests, staged in the weeks before finals and summer break, inspired nothing but apolo~

May 2007

gies and expressions of hope for a smoother fall term. April Joyner, an editor of Sphere, a publication about minority events and issues at Yale, supported the protests and went to both forums. "I don't think anything was really accomplished in the end;" she reflected. "Basically, the editors were attacked, and all they could do was apologize."

In September, these fears were confirmed for many by the publication of the Record's Blue Book, which offended African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, gays, and others with a smorgasbord of fake courses like "AFAM101: The Difference Between Black People and White People. Black Stand-Up Comics;" "ARBC125: Introductory Terrorist Arabic;" and "SPAN135b: Practical Applications of Spanish for WASPs." Some groups labeled the publication bigoted.

Another forum was held, at which many questioned the efficacy of the previous spring's demonstrations.

Students, however, had underestimated the success of their protests. Deviating from what the newspaper had long viewed as its editorial role, Rumpus turned off the spigot of aggressive racial humor. Whatever its content, past and present editors of Rumpus have argued that the self-proclaimed tabloid fills a legitimate journalistic niche on campus. Kyle Mathews, a current Editor-in-Chief, refers to the need for "fidelity to the institution," whose aim, 17

he says, is to portray real discourse and behavior in which students are engaged, from gossip about daily alcohol-induced mishaps to the occasional orgy.

Discussing the controversy, Mathews says: "What's so frustrating about that particular perspective is that it's a reflection of what students are saying privately. They [the protestors] were attacking a symptom of the problem and not the problem itself."

Sam Heller, an Editor-in-Chief who published the offending piece, admitted to the Herald in an interview that he had edited the article with the intent of maximizing its shock value.

In response to the spring controversy, Heller apologized profusely and claimed that the editors made an error in printing the article in its published form. Mathews, though he told me that he would "weather the storm" and publish another controversial piece "if we thought there was some merit to the article," admitted that<< in choosing which articles to run we've really tried to avoid topics of race." Indeed, no article on race has been published under Mathews' tenure. Heller, by contrast, published a handful, including "Party Lines: Black Parties Differ from White Parties" and "Miscegenation Station: Interracial Dating at Yale."

The Record, which attempted to remain defiantly unfazed by the protests, ma:de changes of its own. ThenEditor-in-Chief David Litt published a jokey pseudo-apology in the next issue of the Record, mocking his critics. But in an interview, he conceded that he had grown more cautious.

"There's definitely things in the Record we would have printed, and we don't now," he said. He stressed that "it's not the protest that made us do that, but people who sat down and talked to us and said, <this made me feel shitty and here's why."'

Yale's two main newspapers reacted with their own policy changes.

The Herald began to limit provocative mentions of race. As at Rumpus, this proved a significant challenge to the paper's longstanding editorial prerogative. In an extended medita18

tion on the responsibilities of journalists printed in a January issue of the Herald, former Editor-in-Chief Sarah Raymond q uoted her predecessor, Tamara Micner, defending her decision to print the offending cartoon in much the same terms as Mathews. "I thought it was pointed, and I thought it was smart, and it definitely struck a chord. This was based on stuff I actually heard people saying, and it was mirroring that, as art often does."

Micner's and Heller's comments point to their shared sentiment that racist material in publications is not the whole problem, but a symptom of a larger question of racism on campus. Yet her official remarks last April were contrite. "The comic has come across as offensive and racist to a sizable portion of the student body," she wrote in an Editor's Note, "and in such a case the Herald recognizes that to some extent authorial intent no longer matters."

Moreover, Micner mentioned in a later interview that she received another comic last April from the same artist referring to the controversy generated by his earlier piece.

"I found that it spoke to the attitudes that people were showing," she admitted, but, "in the immediate aftermath, we didn't think it was necessary." She chose not to print it. Why had she changed her mind? "I think the bar has risen for the quality of the content versus its provocativeness," she told me. A glance at her successor's article on the topic confirms how much the Herald was rattled by the protests.

Raymond concludes the piece by prescribing Yale an exceptionally strong medicine. She argues that Yale should adopt a "Blueprint" that all students agree to uphold, a sort of journalistic honor code that pledges not to offend. "Perhaps," Raymond ruminates, "we could use a little guidance toward ethical life."

The Yale Daily News, though not a major instigator of the protests, has attempted reforms that are potentially the most far-reaching.

The News identifies itself as a lead-

"They w ere talking about a journalistic code of ethics," Guy said. "I was w orried that somehow it would seem that there would be a party line. " er of campus discourse, not merely a faithful scribbler of it. Yet it is hardly a secret that the publication has historically had a poor relationship with cultural groups on campus.

Crystal Paul-Laughinghouse, the editor of the African-American Cultural House's newsletter, identifies the News' coverage of cultural events as rare and often inaccurate, and says that black students have often had unpleasant experiences working as reporters there. As at other major campus publications, few minorities have ever sat on the paper's editorial board.

Dean Trachtenberg and theNews said that in the past year, the current Editor-in-Chief, Sarah Mishkin, has made a substantial effort to rebuild the relationship between the paper and cultural groups at Yale. Mishkin confirmed that the recent protests had largely motivated several changes: "It's definitely something that set the agenda to focus on that." For the first time, a reporter, Judy Wang, has been assigned to cover primarily religious and cultural events, recently reporting a series on race and attending a host of cultural events. The News is also in the early stages of organizing a forum, co-sponsored by the Coalition for Campus Unity-an organization formed in direct response to the Record controversy-where students

THE NEW}OURNAL

will offer opinions and air frustrations about the paper's coverage of campus groups. Dean Trachtenberg volunteered that "the editor of the Yale Daily News is very sincere in its wish to be more inclusive. And I think if you look at the YDN, it's different this year." Trachtenberg's publications council helped drive the change: both Wang's highly unusual series on race at Yale and the planned forum emerged shortly after the council's first meeting.

These recent developments at the News are probably the group's only achievements so far. But they signal what role, if any, the council may play in building on the temporary, reactionary changes of the Record, Rumpus, and Herald. Race may have been absent from Rumpus for the past year, but turnover on editorial boards will ensure that the controversy shadowing the tabloid will soon be forgotten.

The administrators behind the Council's creation-primarily Berkeley's Dean Kevin Hicks and Trachtenberg, as well as a handful of other Residential College Deans-see the group as a long-term opportunity. Alexandra Suich, the editor-in-chief of the Yale Globalist, attended the meeting and described a conversation with Hicks immediately afterwards. "Dean Hicks sees it as a much more far-sighted organization," she said. "He wants the creation of a culture where the publications won't want to publish this material."

This solution is more moderate than many of the ideas that percolated at the time of the Council's creation. Alfred Guy, the director of the Yale Writing Center, witnessed its evolution. Within a few weeks of each other, two separate groups approached him and asked if he would do something about the state of undergraduate journalism at Yale. The first group was blunt. Saveena Dhall, an Assistant Dean and Director of the Asian Cultural Center, came with two students to ask Guy if there was anything he could do to prevent publications from printing articles considered May2007

offensive by cultural groups at Yale.

Guy politely declined.

The second group was a little more reserved. Three Residential College Deans asked Guy, as well as Mark Oppenheimer, head of the Writing Center's Journalism Initiative, to participate in a new administrative proposal called the Yale Publications Council. Though yet unformed, the council they and Trachtenberg envisioned would bring together editors from all major campus publicationsfrom the News to Rumpus-to regularly meet and discuss common goals, guidelines, and challenges. The deans asked Guy and Oppenheimer to help set up events for the Council, and the five brainstormed ideas like bringing professional journalists to Yale to meet with the editors. But as the Deans gradually expanded their vision for the council, Guy drew back and once again refused to participate.

"They were talking about a journalistic code of ethics," he said. "I was worried that somehow it would seem that there would be a party line."

Dhall's request reflected the attitudes of many cultural groups on campus at the time. In the wake of the Record forum, a group of students sent a packet of offensive articles printed in Yale publications to the national media. Though not part of that intiative, Josh Williams, co-founder of the Coalition for Campus Unity and a co-moderator at ~the forum, called its work "very professional" and is puzzled by the packet's failure to generate coverage. The Yale chapter of the NAACP suggested that the administration trash an entire print run of a publication that was deemed offensive.

However much these attitudes may have motivated the Council's creation, Trachtenberg, who claims to be adamantly against censorship, stressed that the group is an entirely voluntary, editor-run group. This characteristic suggests its potential and the recipe for its undoing. Editors who believe in transforming the temporary racial gag rule in Yale's major publications into a

lasting consciousness, one that stimulates campus dialogue about divisive issues instead of occasionally shocking the campus, may find the Council a receptive setting. Editors have spoken of beginning monthly dialogues with cultural groups and offended students and moving beyond periodic ritual of frustrated campus-wide protests and apologies. TheCouncilcouldadd transparency to the editorial process, and, as Raymond suggested, set up guidelines of ethical conduct for reporters, ¡ editors, and writers.

But the Council's members, as the Record made clear, are not all journalists, and the various responses to the most recent crises suggest how difficult it may be to forge any agreement or informal co-regulation between editors. As the Rumpus' Kyle Mathews said, it would be useless to try to set standards of journalism for the Council, because the only standards he would consent to would be laughably inadequate for the YDN. And editors are wary, whatever Trachtenberg's assurances to the contrary, that the Council could begin to exercise a chilling effect on worthwhile yet controversial printed material. It is perhaps for these reasons-coupled with Trachtenberg's imminent departure and the impossibility of finding a common free hour for a dozen people at Yale--that the likelihood of a second Publications Council meeting is slim.

There is another matter. "To take on serious issues," Guy told me simply, "you might have to offend people." Journalism at Yale, in his view, isn't actually broken. "I wouldn't vote for any particular offense," he said; "But," he added, "I would rather work in a place where the student publications occasionally fuck up."

1NJ

Mitchell Reich, a sophomore in Pierson College, is an Associate Editor of

TNJ. 19

PROFILE

Last Taps of the Typewriter Manson Whitlock preserves a lost art on York Street.

by Michael Birnbaum nson H. Whitlock peers into the typewriter on the table, a big, avoado-green IBM Selectric from the sixties. Something is jammed and ieces are scattered around the machine. Eventually, Whitlock finds what he's looking for-a screw has fallen in, causing the type mechanism to stick. Out goes the screw. Using a spring-hook, an implement that would be more at home in a dentist's office than a Dell factory, he reassembles the typewriter-plastic cover plates, the metal paper tray that directs paper onto the main roller, and the cylindrical rubber plate itself. Then he taps some keys, examining how each letter moves. "Good enough. For government standards anyhow." He draws a smiley-face on the repair order, gazes through the window at the late-autumn leaves blowing outside, and calls the client on his old black rotary phone. ¡ Whitlock is 89, and, though he looks younger, his tweed jacket, silk tie, and sweater betray him as a man from a different era. The only thing missing is a pipe, though an orange typewriter-shaped ashtray sits empty on the shelf; four or five years ago he quit smoking, worried that he would die young. His face is lined and friendly, crowned by thinning, combed-back hair that recalls LyndonJohnson's without the grease. The ring and pinkie fingers of his right hand are twisted with arthritis, but that doesn't keep him from his job. Though he's slightly stooped and often uses a cane, he still moves a heavy typewriter with ease. Whitlock has probably been repairing typewriters longer than anyone else in the Northeast, maybe even the United States. When he started in 1930, Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight was a fresh memory, Herbert Hoover was president, and construction of the Empire State Building had just begun.

These days his shop is jammed with tools, books, machines, and memories that have accumulated over the last 76 years. After his 1990 "retirement," when he moved from the larger storefront to a tiny outpost upstairs, Whitlock filled a dumpster with typewriters and flotsam. What remains are the survivors. Shelves line the sides of the shop, laden with enough ribbons to supply David lve's monkeys on their near-eternal quest to recreate the complete works of Shakespeare. A bust of Mark Twain (the first author to turn in a typed manuscript) sits on a bookcase, an old prize for having been the highest-grossing Smith-Corona dealer in the Northeast. On another shelf are repair catalogues, A Treasury of jewish Humor, the 1978 New Haven telephone directory, and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste.

There are boxes full of platens, type-balls, type-slugs, and type-bars.

And of course there are the typewriters themselves, which sit in various states of disrepair. Some gleam as they might have in 1 920. Others, victims of cannibalization, have been dissected to feed the cravings of clients' machines.

M

20

THE NEw JouRNAL

•

Typewriter repair is a delicate business.

•

• •

••

•

•

Their covers are open, exposing mouthfuls of thin metal teeth. There is an old black Underwood, the kind you'd see in a Howard Hawks movie. A German, skyblue Olympia built like a tank. Seven strains of electric Smith-Corona, four breeds of IBM Selectric, and one exotic old Oliver No.5, with its clustered typebars poking up like mouse ears on either side of the platen roller.

Whitlock says that he has repaired around three hundred thousand typewriters in his career. The avocado IBM was job number 300,001. "If you put the typewriters I've repaired end to end it would take days to drive past them," he boasts. Indeed, if each of those typewriters were fourteen inches long, together they would form a line of 795 miles, or just about the distance between Chicago and New York. Drive your car however fast you want.

The fastest Whitlock has ever driven was 110 miles an hour in a brand-new 1946 Packard with overdrive, a gift from his father-in-law. At that rate, he would have driven past his line of typewriters in seven hours and fourteen minutes. He says his sons don't like typewriters "because you can't go 'vroom vroom' with them," and sometimes he feels the same way. A small chrome clock salvaged from the dashboard of a 1953 Jaguar XK120 sits on his work table; it loses about a tninute a week but is otherwise reliable.

The Jaguar lives on in Whitlock's memory and in a painting in his living room; he sold the car itself to pay his wife's medical bills.

May 2007

21

•

•

Even Jaguars might be a little too modern for Whitlock. "Airplanes, automobiles, television... computers ... they've changed the ·world too quickly. It was nice 75 years ago!"

Seventy-five years ago, Thomas Edison filed his last patent. A half-century before~ in 1872, the legendary inventor had filed one of his first patents for a "Type-Writing Machine."

He was leaping into a competitive field; a single standard had not yet ·emerged. But Edison's design soon lost to the Sholes typewriter, the first with the QWERTY keyboard. The Sholes didn't jam as much as other machines, because it was scientifically engineered to slow our typing, by forcing our fingers to hop around as much as possible. It has been ham• • penng us ever s1nce.

Whitlock has outlived most of his contemporaries both the typewriters and the people. His wife, Nancy, died a decade ago. Brothers Gilbert and Everett both died within the last three years, leaving ninetythree-year-old Reverdy as the only one of Whitlock's five brothers still alive. Reverdy and Manson used to work together at their father's shop, though the C.E.H. Whitlock store was a New Haven institution long before either was born.

Clifford Everett Hale Whitlock started his business out of a bike garage next door to the Skull and Bones tomb. At age 15, he ambitiously billed himself "bookseller to Yale." A promotional pamphlet from this era shows the newly-moved shop, dark •

•

••

•

as •

•

out .z ve

ost

•

•

rzters e

an

eo

and wood -paneled, every inch the ancient general store. It aimed to anticipate all needs an advertisement reads, "YALE MEN, YOUR TELEGRAMS WILL BE RECEIVED TILL 8 P.M. AT WHITLOCK'S BOOK SHOP." By the time Manson Whitlock started working at his father's store, it had moved again, this time for good, to New Haven's main commercial block on Broadway Avenue.

The store always had a big typewriter section. His father would put displays of the mouse-eared 0 livers in the windows, and some~ • • umes a company representative would come and awe onlookers by drawing pictures with the No.5. He taught young Whitlock how to draw a line of soldiers across the page using an '0' for the head, a slash for the body, hyphens for arms, and a caret for legs. "It was pleasing for little minds," Whitlock reminisces.

He was interested in mechanics, so when the time came to work in the •

shop, he gravitated toward typewriters. Having never actually received any formal training through classes or books, Whitlock learned how to complete repairs by "osmosis."

Reverdy Whitlock took over the family bookstore in the forties~ He and Manson didn't get along very well, and the split, when it came, was acrimonious. Reverdy recounts coming to the store one Sunday to find his brother loading typewriters into an old, wood -paneled station wagon and moving them to a storefront around the corner. Neither brother likes to talk about that period. Manson Whitlock just smiles ruefully and says that he has a much better relationship with his brother now than he did then. The move let the typewriter shop expand; at its height, Whitlock employed six mechanics and stocked four to five hundred machines. Success enabled him to pick and choose the jobs he worked on himself uninterested in electric typewriters, he delegated them to others and kept the older manuals for himself.

A 1910 Oliver is the oldest machine that Whitlock keeps in his shop today. Although distinguished by its years, it is fairly conventional when compared to other early typewriter designs. There was the Hammonia, Germany's first writing machine, which looked more like a bread-slicer than a typewriter. The Gardner, which had fourteen keys that were pressed in different "chords" for each letter. The Blickensderfer No. 5,

• •

22

•

THE NEw JoURNAL

•

•

which had keys that stuck out in all directions, making it look, in Whitlock's words, "sort of like a centipede." And, best of all, the Williams had a "grasshopper" type-action in which the type-bar leaped up, over, and back down onto the platen from above as though each depressed key propelled an insect into the air.

Whitlock sold his last six Williams typewriters when he closed the big shop downstairs. Nowadays, despite his objections, he works mostly on electric typewriters, which run by motor, and electronic typewriters, which have computer chips-that's all people bring. Today most of the half-eaten machines in his shop are electrics; the marvels serve only as decoration and company.

One afternoon Whitlock lets me take apart an electric Smith-Corona.

Electric typewriters have motors that connect to a spinning, ridged shaft.

A key, when pressed, catches onto a ridge of the shaft, whose spin kicks the type-bars forward against the page. Whitlock tells me to remove the type-bars. They're sort of like spring-loaded frog legs, with a slight bend halfway down. I try to take one out. "Never force anything," Whitlock says. Right. I try harder. "You're forcing!" He takes it in his fingers and, with a flick of his wrist, disconnects the bar from its linkage to the key. I take the next type-bar and flick my wrist. Nothing happens. He takes it and, despite his arthritis, humiliates me again. I end up having to use two bands to remove the bars one by one. Whitlock tells me to look at the escapement, the jumble of gears that moves the carriage from one letter to the next. He tells me how it works; I am completely lost. He smiles and tries to phrase it differently. I poke at the escapement with my screwdriver. He prods it too, didactically, and presses the spacebar a few times.

Finally I understand. It resists the carriage's tension; it doesn't actually cause movement. A few days after I destroyed his typewriter, Whitlock

tells me that if I had come to his shop twenty years ago, he would have given me a job.

After my repair lesson, I want a typewriter of my own. The next day I tell him that I have been looking for one on eBay. He has never used or even seen the Internet, but bas heard of the site and is intrigued. So, disregarding the first thing he ever told me--"You work a typewriter, a computer works you"-1 bring in my shiny, silver laptop, and we sit down to scope out the market. 'Til be darned," he says, when 1,782 items pop up. We click the first on the list.

"The Oliver N°· S's used to have metal covers. We'd put them in the chicken coop." We return to the list-"1'11 be darned," he says again, "Let's see that Remington. Remington Rand N<>- 5 Clumsy, not as nice a feel as Royals. " I ask him if he can sec the computer well enough. "It's got such a clear screen! I had thought it would be blurry like a TV!" He smiles and looks at the $10.49 Corona N" 3 I've clicked. "Goodness gracious. Unbe-

WOM£HS RICH & SKINNY JEANS C & C CALIFORNIA ELLA MOSS

TeAGS JUNK FOOO BIG STAR SEVEN FOR All MANKIND JUICY COUTURE MICHAEL STARS LACOST£ TRUE REUGION J SIWID

PAIGE PREMIUM DEN IN GOlO SIGN JEANS NiJEANS SHOSHAHNA SWE£TROMEO

MENS SEN SHERMAN BIG STAFI

LACOSTE TRUE REUGlOH NiJEAt;S

FREDPEIIRY IW'EFI OEI'!llll & CLOTH JUICY COUTURE NENS

licvable. They were made during the First World War. The last one I had I sold for $100." Whitlock used to go to New York City pawnshops once a week to buy old hocked models for the store--it's as though eBay is an electronic Metro-North. He takes a shot at moving the mouse around with the touchpad. It's like a game.

"Underwood-hmm, that's not old, forties or fifties. They're calling that an antique?"

The next day I bring my computer again. The wireless connection flickers, then quickly sputters out.

I fiddle with the laptop the way he fiddles with typewriters-by pressing buttons, shaking it, cajoling it. Whitlock asks if there is a cattle prod button. eBay won't load. I give up; there's nothing I can do to fix it.

Whitlock looks at me. "Well, it was neat," he says quietly, "but I'll stick to typewriters."

1NJ Mtchael Btrnbaum Branford College.

LS

a ;umor m

·i

"

'· ,7fr~ "111 ... , "-

'i.

~-

•

•

fun perk. "Very, very seldom do I see more than maybe ten regulars," says Mark, "And that's scary."

The fecund club hub of New York throbs only ninety miles away, the promised land these New Haven DJs someday hope to reach. There, DJ culture persists tantalizingly close yet still far out of reach for New Haven DJs. nen· darkness falls on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night, Crown Street comes alive. Dim street lamps, clusters of cigarette embers, and the glow of cell phones . light the strip while the click-clack of high heels and the . call-response banter of party posses reverberates through the night. As midnight fades to morning, the crowd is · · rowdy and the police are vigilant. Sweaty bodies spill into the streets, slipping from one drink special to the next.

On Thursday night, the kings of New Haven nightlife preside over the city's dance floors. Nobody cares. A drunk girl gyrates with overt sexuality, balancing a vodka cranberry in one hand as she sways the other above her head, cocked in a come-hither manner. Her lips don't miss a word to a song she has heard a thousand times.

Despite the generous array of clubs on Crown, everyone knows which two spots are always packed, the kind of crowded that causes ladies to link arms and guys to sling a finger through their girlfriends' belt loops. In a city fueled by nightclub glitz, Bar and Alchemy will never close.

The latter, a sprawling, three-level oasis of alcohol, loud music, and strategic lighting cues, boasts the biggest dance floor in Connecticut. It is as close as New Haven gets to a standard New York party club which is to say, not close enough.

High above the sweaty crowd is DJ Robert LaFrance, Joe's colleague. Illuminated by a single strand

•

•

• •

-

These day> spinning records are little more than background music.

of Christmas lights and the greenish glow of his equipment, he looks like a mad scientist. His hands move quickly, skillfu lly, arranging an endless layered mix of pop hits. When he spins around to flip a light switch, a siren goes off and the crowd goes crazy. "My thing is really House music. [This] is kind of cheesy," he says of the Billboard hip-hop playlist he is asked to play in the main room. "But I'm okay with that." DJ Rob is not here to educate, but to entertain.

On the upper level of Alchemy is Lounge 215, a 21+ area posing as a V.I.P. room. It has its own bar and boasts a buffet of silver banquet dishes offering rubbery munchies.

DJ J oe is there playing House music.

To the pop-listener, the sound is distorted and exotic.

A descendant of disco, House music is electric, trippedout, and airy, with a four-by-four pulse and driving bassline designed to keep the body in motion. According to DJ Rob, House music generates "a feeling that you can't really describe."

If Alchemy aspires to resemble a crowded Paris discotheque, then Bar recalls a jammed Dublin pub. Surrounded by mahogany, exposed brick accents, beer garden-style seating, and an antique pool table, people relax and drink beer.

Originally opened as a nightclub in 1991, Bar successfully added pizza ovens and a rnicrobrewery in the rnid-'90s. On this particular Thursday there is hardly enough elbow room to bring cup to mouth.

Depending on your vibe, you may avoid or gravitate towards Bar's back room, where DJ Mark supervises a smattering of people on the dance floor below. Of the quarter of the club-goers lounging in the back room, maybe a twentieth are dancing. Compared to the main room at Alchemy, this is tame.

After the hip-hop DJ winds down at the end of Thursday night, Mark begins a House set. The scant dance floor quickly clears. "(Last] night I was called a fucking asshole

ten times in the booth," he says, not altogether unhapPY¡ Even if he is insulted, these are the moments when Mark stood out and was noticed for what he loves: playing House. He and Joe are throwbacks to when being a DJ mattered.

I

n 1964, nightclubs were about the music. "Going out" implied dances, sipped cocktails, and artful seduction. At discotheques, clubgoers went over the rainbow on LSD and danced the monkey, the frug, and Watusi until the harsh sun rose over Battery Park.

In May 1965, "discotheque" appeared in "Among the New Words," an article in the linguistic journal American Speech. Five years later, the dazzling, decadent heyday of disco began. In New York, the conductor of this movement was not a club proprietor, musical artist, or celebrity. He was a DJ: Francis Grasso, presented by the city with blow jobs and blow.

Even ninety miles away in New Haven, the scene was "pretty intense," recalls Chris Arnott, Arts Editor for the New Haven Advocate. "There were discotheques that were a really big deal... the city had a claim to some real stuff."

But Joe and Mark grew up on a new sound that had its roots in 1980s Chicago. There, at a club called The Warehouse, House music was corning into its own.

The vibrations hit the Big Apple overnight. As young men, Joe and Mark frolicked at notorious NYC hotspots like Paradise Garage and the original Sound Factory. Mark began DJing in 1977, moonlighting at places like NYC's Fillmore. It was a time when the influence of DJs rivaled that of the radio. "We were at a table at Limelight," Mark reminisces, "and this is when Madonna had just released 'Everybody.' She was at the table with us for about three hours. We had a lot of fun with her." Back in the 1980s, DJs like Mark and Joe could make Madonna famous. hen House made its Connecticut debut in the early '90s, Joe was attracting wild crowds at Aetna Diner in Hartford. On June 7, 1995, The Hartford Courant credited him with introducing House

W

As midnight fades to morning, the crowd is rowdy and the police are vigilant.

Sweaty bodies spill into the streets, slipping from one drink special to the next.

•

and techno to Connecticut. With his fresh Chicago sound and an intuitive sense of how to move the crowd, Joe started Riot at the Municipal, a party so popular that it was featured on the cover of the Hartford Advocate in 1989. The headline read "Bringing Down the House: The Municipal Restaurant is home to Riot, Hartfo"rd's new, cutting-edge 'acid house' night club." Riot soon found its own venue. As co-owner and DJ, Joe was a local sensation, getting the crowd off three nights a week and even bringing the after-hours scene back to the floor he rented in his coowner's place. He was at the vanguard of a dance craze reminiscent of the legendary disco era. "I suspect that the big difference between the '90s and now is that there was more spectacle then," says Arnott. "There were warehouses being rented out for big spectacular dance parties."

People did Ecstasy and danced until dawn. These were the later glory days of dance music .

Soon, Joe began to ·get noticed outside of Connecticut. He opened Riot New York and Riot Atlanta, and even traveled overseas in 2003 and 2004 to do a series of club tours. "In Spain," he says, "people would come up and ask me for my autograph." Europeans still idolize even the unknown D J. But ~ack in the States, many DJs lead double lives, find tninor success, and then lose it. Three years after international recognition, Joe is back at Alchemy, tnaking a living. DJ Rob has a day job, a wife, and three kids. "My passion is not to sell telecommunications services to large corporations," he saysofhisworkatAT&TinFarmington, Connecticut. If the DJs go unnoticed by night, then by day they are undetectable.

Joe hopes to achieve notoriety by teaming up with Rob in a production teamtheycall "Rejexx." The two work out of a spare bedroom in Rob's house and attempt to do what the big boys do make music. These days, fame as a DJ depends on music produc28

•

• •

•

•

THE NEw JouRNAL

fucks it up." LeDuc designs Mark's business cards, website, and CDs, all of which feature a cartoon logo of a sexpot female mechanic. He is quick to talk Mark up, but not without good reason. In the DJ room, Mechanix mixes sweet beats. ~~He"s fucking phenomenal,"'"' LeDuc continues, getting noticeably excited. "He's so smooth; -I've seen him spin 2 CDs and a fucking turntable at the same time. Are you kidding me? That's fucking nuts.''

.

Clubgoers at Alchemy dance to the well-known beats of Billboard hits.

•

tion, which gets you noticed by the industry and courted by musicians and clubs. Joe's five minutes of fame was next to nothing compared to today's number one DJ, Tiesto, a true artist who sells millions of records and playstosold-outstadiums. Rejexxhas posted several tracks it produced on itswebsite. Thenewest, "Do You Want Me?" is described as "featuring syncopated percussion, chopped up female vocals, and an old-school house bass line." Rob and Joe gave out some demo CDs at a music conference last year and plan to distribute more in the upcoming months. Most of all, Joe wants to see the tracks on vinyl. A CD just goes in a pile, but vinyl says it like the song with some soul.

Joe has aspirations of starting his own label. Though sometin1es withdrawn, he has always made good business decisions and has two gold records to show for it. But fame is fickle, and today, Joe is back spinning inN ew Haven and Hartford. Like any American dreamer, he wants more.

"Where I want~ to be, is to do music full-time," says Mark. "I really want to be a DJ worldwide, and I know I can do it. DJing, retoixing, producing. Time is so limited."

May 2007

He says this somewhat mournfully.

He is sitting at a table at Bar eating pizza topped with mashed potatoes and bacon and drinking Coca-Cola.

Though he's faced with a half-empty garage and a half-eaten pizza, this middle-aged man with his middleaged dream is someone you want to believe in. ''Salt and pepper hair and grease in his fingen1ails," says Ron LeDuc, a friend of Mark who works the door at Bar, '~[but he] fucking gets in there and

t's true that Joe came closer to fame, but when it comes down to it, he and Mark are two DJs, working one block away from each other and fighting for the same prize. In a city satisfied by a soundtrack to beer, Joe and Mark are underappreciated and anonymous to most. But they will keep their day jobs and keep on _ spinning. Because when you have a dream and nothing to lose, you go for it. You hand out your business card. Give away CDs. Put contacts _on the guest list. You call back. You play on. Anything to get noticed.

••

•

l

Romy Drucker, a senior in Davenport College, is the former Publisher ofTNJ.

·-

·:;.

·.

•

. MonHay, Apri123rd, 4PM

•

- -:

Jentz

College Master's House Street

Authorof .· ..

STRANG~

f •

•

29

Getting Tenure Back on Track Changes improve the junior faculty experience.

by Sophia Lear

.'

.

r-¡ - -

a history conference in 2004, an eminent Yale histo- was prompted by the committee's determination to find a concrete solution to an arcane system, one that could an introduced himself to David Bell, the Andrew W. provoke a change in Yale's overall academic culture. The ellon Professor in the Humanities atJ ohns Hopkins report aims to be not only a technical tweaking, but a University. "Oh, how nice to meet you!" the Yale professor holistic evaluation. "The problem we're addressing is not said warmly. "What work are you doing?" Bell-once a ju. one of the number of people tenured or the rate of tenure,,. nior faculty member in Yale's history department--eyed his Dean Salovey clarified. "The problem addressed is how to fellow historian before politely answering the question. But, achieve rational and appropriate teaching and citizenship as he recalls now, "I had to hold myself back from saying, 'I at Yale." had an office across the hall from you for years! You really Until now, Yale's tenure policy has differed radically should know who I am.'" To merit his former colleague's atfrom those at almost all other universities. At a tenuretention, Bell had to leave Yale and get tenure elsewhere. track university, junior hires are guaranteed that a tenured On February 5th, 2007, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences position will be available should they eventually qualify Tenure and Appointments Policy Committee released its refor it; their cases are reviewed internally, and a lot of them port on tenure at Yale. Acknowledging the plight of Bell and make the cut.

But Yale promises nothing: junior hires are legions like him, the report offered specific changes to the not necessarily reviewed for tenure; instead, they're often tenure system and an admission Yale professors have long told that no openings exist in their department. If a junior been waiting to hear: systemic difficulties in tenuring junior faculty member is brought up for review, he or she must faculty members is hurting the Yale community and hindercompete without preferential treatment against every ing the University in the cutthroat world of academia. "It's other scholar in the field, with the position offered to the unusual," says Professor Jon Butler, Dean of the Graduate most qualified candidate.

School and co-chair of the committee. "Most reports on tenThe University has justified its unique system by arure and appointments don't discuss the experience of junior that Yale is a unique place. To receive' tenure at Yale, guing faculty." candidates must, as the report insists, â&#x20AC;˘ stand in competiBeginning in September 2005, the nine-person committion with the foremost leaders in their field throughout tee met 31 times over 15 months. Provost Andrew Hamilton, the world.,.

Salovey claims that the report will not lower who appointed a committee of four divisional directors and these standards.

"It is difficult to get tenure at Yale, and it three professors, co-chaired by Dean of Yale College Peter will still be difficult to get tenure at Yale, and we're happy Salovey and Dean Butler, initially expected the group to finabout that." ish its report by spring 2006. But the committee quickly reYale's tough-love policy has long. distinguished it alized its work would take significantly longer. The problem among elite institutions. But in the increasingly competiwas not divisiveness; a united belief in the need for reform world of academia, the Yale system has become more tive charged the group from the start, and all of its members and more of a liability. The committee aims to streamline easily agreed on the targets for change. Rather, the delay 30

THE NEw JouRNAL

what is currently regarded as a cumbersome and illogical system that is not only out of sync with the rest of academia, but also hampers Yale in its quest to attract and retain the best faculty. The report compares the existing structure with the Swiss Franc, "a unique currency with increasingly high transaction costs," and proposes a multifaceted solution. The new policy will give each junior faculty hire a guaranteed shot at tenure in a shorter amount of time, preference over outside candidates in the tenure competition, and two years of paid leave. former Yale associate faculty member felt like she had been let back in the pearly gates when she was offered a junior position in the University's political science department. "I had been an undergraduate at Yale, and I felt like graduation was expulsion from Paradise," she remembers. "So getting a job there was beyond my wildest dreams." A junior position can spark the hope that Yale will ask you to stay for good, but those familiar with Yale's tenure system will advise new hires not to get too attached. From those who left after a few years to several current department chairs, the same sentence surfaces again and again: I never expected to get tenure here.

The faculty member loved the excitement that filled the political science department when she arrived. "I thought, this is an extraordinary intellectual environment, and a place where my scholarship would really improve." But she kept her hopes in check. "In general, I thought I wouldn't get tenure, but it would be a wonderful place to be in the meantime. It was dangerous to have anything else than that for your attitude."

Four years later she accepted a job at Princeton.

She loved her

A

,. ...

•

•

••'

• . *.

•.

~

\

'

•

••

••

•

•

•

.......

••

•

••

•·

•

·•

•

;

•

~ ·

.

•

·•

~

•..•

••

: lrdti•l

••

•

•

•

.•.

•

.

A

•

•

..

•

• •

•

•

• •

~

• • •

•

•

•

••

••

·•

•

•

.

'.

•

•

•

.

•

•

•

'

t,_...._ MQJ-

The Tenure and Appointments Policy CommitteeJs report included figures outlining its recommendations.

•

position at Yale, but Princeton's system guaranteed tenure review, and seemed to be governed by a rationality absent from Yale's. She was content with her junior faculty position at Yale because she arrived fully prepared to leave. But for a number of the most promising young post-docs, the question remains: Why bother with Yale at all? .

One major issue addressed in the report is Yale's former system of Junior Faculty Equivalencies. In the unreformed system which will permanently disappear on July 1 JFEs served as financial allotments for faculty members. Departments had set numbers of JFEs; a junior hire took one JFE, and a senior hire took two. For a junior faculty member to achieve tenure, an extra JFE had to be available within his or her department, which occurred only when a faculty metnber had recently vacated a position or if the department chair successfully petitioned for another.

Under such a system, even the most qualified junior faculty member could be refused tenure if no additional JFE was available. When Salovey was a junior professor, the then-chairmen · of the Psychology department told him, "Peter, even if Psychology gave a Nobel prize, and you won it, we still can't guarantee there will be a spot for you." Many faculty members see JFEs as a useful pretext for •

'

their department to deny someone tenure without reviewing his or her work.

Even if a JFE became available, the hurdles had ju.s t begun for the qualified junior faculty member. The next major obstacle was the open search. When a position became available in a particular department, Yale sent letters to top professors in that field asking them to list the best scholars in the discipline. If the faculty member's name didn't · surface on these lists, the process stopped right there. Until now, there was no such thing as an ~cinternal candidate" at Yale. The system put no value on place; to be reviewed for tenure was to apply for a fresh job open to the best candidates in the field.

Though the open search policy •

But ora num er o t e most • • romzszng young ost- ocs, t e • • questzon remazns: • y ot erwzt Ya eat a ?

32

• •

sounds ruthlessly fair, there was suspicion among junior faculty that it was sometimes manipulated to produce certain desired results. The letter of the law is so high that it can be used as a shield from blame; hypothetically, if a department liked an inside candidate, the chair could send the letters to a select sample of scholars likely to include the . candidate's name on their lists. In the opposite scenario, all a department had to do was stick to the written rules, and there was a pretty good chance the candidate wouldn't make it through.

It's hard to distinguish rumor from truth, but the rampant speculation and nebulous anxiety the open search policy inspired among junior faculty was detrimental enough. "I remember worrying more about the oddness of Yale's procedures than my own work," said Salovey. "Are people going to realize with this list of names that the question is really ~should we tenure Peter or not?' I was more worried about these issues than my scholarship or teaching, because I felt those things were under my control."

As elite departments develop at universities across the country, young scholars no longer feel compelled to risk Yale"s tenure-policy to achieve prestige. "The first complaint is that they don't do that at Princeton, they don't do that at Michigan, Berkeley, Chicago, and on and on," observes

THE NEw JouRNAL

Butler. "Brand new faculty don't want to go through that. It's so far from the center, from standard practice. Among other things it probably restricts the numbers of people who want to come to Yale."

Academia is notoriously gossipy, and the committee is confident that news of Yale's tenure changes will travel fast. By abolishing JFEs and promising each junior faculty hire the resources for a potential senior position, the new report places more significance on the initial hiring than ever before. "The old system created a little bit of cynicism," remarked Salovey. With an open search policy, "there's the sense that if some appointment doesn't work out, the system is self-correcting."

While the changes make Yale's system less idiosyncratic and more attractive to potential hires, the results cannot be entirely predicted. When the diennial review mandated by the report is published, it w ill reveal whether the number of junior faculty promoted to tenured positions at Yale increases. At least as important as numbers, however, is convincing the nation's PhDs of Yale's change of heart. "We think this will attract really exciting, excellent new non-tenured faculty and propel them into the kind of the career they wan t," said Butler. "And if they are successful, we hope that they'll stay at Yale."

avid Bell had been a junior faculty member in the Yale history department for four years when Johns Hopkins offered him a job. T he position was untenur ed, b ut Yale's system made it hard to justify staying in New Haven. Bell was tor n, and he went to his department chair's office to tell him about the offer. "We'd like to keep you," the chair responded. "What can we offer you?" Bell knew he was far too young to come up for tenure at Yale, but he asked his chair if the department could create another JFE in his field to indicate at least a modicum of commitmen t.

The chairman looked into it b ut to no

D

May2007

Phone Number: (203) 777-8900

113 0 Chapel S treet N ew H aven, C T

aLAte spring and early summer are so unpredictable!

One day it's wann, but it's cool the next. O ur girl goes with the layered look: long sleeves under a sundress, footless tights with a mini, a belted cardigan over denim and great jewelry. T.iVhere can she go to find all this and more? Clare j ones!

M onday, Tuesday, ~dnesday 10 a .m . to 6 p.m.

Thursday 10 a .m . to 8 p.m .

Friday 1 0 a .m . to 6 p .m.

Saturday 10 a .m . to 6 :3 0 p.m .

Sunday 1 2 p.m. to 5 p .m .

33

avail. Instead, he offered to shorten Bell's tenure clock, so that he would come up for tenure a year earlier. Bell was unconvinced. "Without a JFE in place," he notes now, "it was like an offer to accelerate your trip to the firing squad." Shortly after his meeting with the chair, Bell accepted the Johns Hopkins position, where, he said, "I went in with the expectation of getting tenure." Only four years later, he got it.

Before the report, Yale had little to offer junior faculty courted by other institutions. This rendered it vulnerable to other universities eager to capitalize on Yale's tough standards.

In a rapidly growing department like political science, inter-school competition for junior faculty is fierce.

"What places tend to do is try and go after people before they can make it by the Yale criteria," says Professor Ian Shapiro, who chaired the political science department for five and a half years. "Pick them off earlier and earlier and earlier."

But, as Bell's case exemplifies, the clinching reason to leave Yale is not that it's difficult to get tenure.

Though many junior faculty leave for schools with significantly higher tenure rates, many others chose alternatives like Princeton, whose tenure rates are comparable to Yale's. People leave because they are not guaranteed even the possibility of vying for tenure. Everyone wants to know they will get their fair shot, and, until now, Yale has refused to provide this comfort.

The changes remove a huge source of anxiety for junior faculty and allow the University to more competitively recruit and retain faculty, but it's hard to envision how the promise of tenure resources for everyone meshes with departments that depend on a large horde of junior faculty to staff small classes.

The English department prides itself on its impressive number of introductory seminars especially designed for freshmen and sophomores. "Offering extensive introductory seminars taught by ladder faculty is a real pri34

ority for us," says Professor Langdon Hammer, chair of the English department. "I assume that we will do whatever we need to do to ensure that we maintain that commitment. There's a real consensus that that's part of <what we do good.'" But staffing all the classes of English 125, 127, and 129 depends upon a large body of junior faculty who teach more introductory courses than senior professors do. If the ratio of junior to senior faculty (currently 20:23 filled appointments) remains the same, will Yale honestly earmark the resources to tenure all of them?

Hammer believes the new system for representing faculty resources is primarily descriptive, not prescriptive. "I don't see that the new accounting system mandates any particular ratio of junior to senior faculty, or otherwise promises to structure what departments do. I think it's simply a new way of describing how faculty resources are allotted and spent."

As Yale can no longer feed junior faculty JFE excuses, the new system will force departments to deny them tenure on the basis of their ,work. English Professor William Deresiewicz points to places like S~ford, which has a tenure track system but doesn't tenure an appreciably higher rate of junior faculty in the humanities. "So that's always going to be hanging over you to some degree."

may help prevent the situation that Deresiewicz now faces.

"It's very hard to get a job as an associate professor in term," Deresiewicz explains. "It's an in-between rank that schools don't usually hire at. So you're either left applying for a senior position, and you're at a disadvantage because you're not already tenured, or you're applying for a junior position and a lot of schools won't even consider someone because they have to pay them too much, or because they have to tenure them too fast when they get

Everyone wants their fair shot, provide

eresiewicz is leaving Yale. In fact, after nine years as a much-loved junior professor in the English department, Deresiewicz is leaving academia altogether, and not exactly by choice. His tenure clock has run out, and the department concluded there were no openings in his field, 19th Century British literature. The long ten-year tenure clock has left Deresiewicz out of sync with the hiring patters of the rest of academia. There are few jobs advertised, and the ones he applied for he didn't get. The new system has reduced the tenure clock from ten to nine years, a move that, combined with the two years of leave,

D

THE NEw JouRNAL

there." TheEnglishdepartment'sstatistics suggest that Deresiewicz's experience in not representative. According to H ammer, over the past twenty years the vast majority of advanced assistant and associate professors in English have been able to move on to tenured or tenure-track positions at colleges or research universities.

Nonetheless, the theme is recurrent in conversation. While Bell skipped out early to Johns Hopkins, he watched two of his former colleagues await a tenure decision, only to be

ow they will get ale has refused to comfort.

denied. "One of them is now working at the Beinecke Library, and the other is working at a public policy organization in New York. Their careers are completely derailed," Bell laments. "If they had come up for tenure earlier, they would have been able to apply for junior level positions, but now it's too late." Bell compared these experiences to a candidate who was recently denied tenure at Johns Hopkins. "He was able to turn it around and apply for junior positions at other places. If this had happened, you know, three years later, like it would at Yale, he might well be just kicked out of the field entirely." Yale's long tenure clock permits a department to postpone the bad news. "I think," Bell concludes, "it would be better if Yale were hardhearted with people earlier on."

T

here will always be a tension between the University's desire for the best faculty in the world (and the ruthless system it proscribes) and the intimate chats and personal relationships that pepper a department's daily life. For students, it would be like going to school with the admissions department for eight years before applying to Yale. For internal candidates, Deresiewicz believes the "personal stuff" will always color the ostensibly objective system. "Academic human nature being what it is, internal tenuring decisions, as opposed to when we bring someone in from the outside, are always going to be bound up in personal relationships, in politics, and therefore in rumor, in mystery."

Tenurereviewinherentlyinvolves judgments by friends and colleagues.

And the awkward balance of departmental camaraderie and ruthless competition often makes it easier for senior faculty to avoid the topic of tenure with their juniors altogether. Deresiewicz realized in his third or fourth year that he wasn't sensing the promising "signals" from the department that some of his peers, who later received tenure, were. "No one from the senior faculty had used the word tenure to

M ay 2007

me in an official-or even scarcely in an unofficial-capacity before this year." Deresiewicz understands the tendency to tiptoe around the tenure topic. "Nobody wants to talk about it because it's a very uncomfortable subject. Because, quite frankly, it's a kind of structural violence. The people who are running it don't want to be associated with this. You're doing something that's inherently, well, violent, so there's the tendency not to be upfront about it, not to be honest about it. And that's a problem."

In his sixth year, Deresiewicz had the required "six-year review," when associate professors can be promoted to associate professors on term. He received the promotion, but he remembers vividly sitting in his Chair's office, listening to her discuss his work, and waiting for the subject of tenure to come up. It never did. The sore point for Deresiewicz is not being denied tenure so much as the inadequate communication that proeceeded it. "The point is that they need to start talking about it earlier," he says.

The tenure committee's report places additional emphasis on the required third and sixth year reviews.

But the tenure committee also hopes to spark a more informal universitywide discussion that may assuage some of that violence with dialogue.

"I think what junior faculty members have felt, and what the University has come to feel, is that the junior faculty is a remarkable resource of the University that hasn't been sufficiently drawn upon and maximized," remarked Hammer. "And I would say simply talking about it is healthy, and a promising first step." The Yale community will have to wait to see what the report's changes amount to. But at a place like Yale that both nurtures and depends upon an open exchange of ideas, a real conversation about this contentious topic is an achievement in and of itself. And the University, finally, seems willing to talk.

1NJ Sophia Lear, a junior in Ezra Stiles College, is a Senior Editor ofTNJ. 35

•

•

•

•

Para ISe

•

•

Elis recall a formative six weeks at

TASP.

by Te~s Dearing

•

•

• • •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

• •

••

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

..

•

•

• .

•

•

•

•

• •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

• •

36

n a steamy July morning, sleepy students slowly trickle into a small seminar room at Cornell U niversity. Mugs of coffee and tea in hand, they drop thick, annotated tomes of medieval literature onto a horseshoe of worn wooden tables. Their minds sated by the hundreds of pages crammed into them the night before, the students mur. mur quietly amongst themselves, critically perusing copies of a classmate's paper on The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Despite the early hour and oppressive heat, the classroom pulsates · with minds revving in intellectual anticipation. Two professors call the class to attention, and a group session of intense critique and analysis commences. The students jump with electric speed from style to content to themes to philosophy to metatextual concerns, pushing one another to breach the boundaries of their intellectual comfort zones. They tackle the impact of particular rhetorical techniques, the distinctions between masculine and feminine v.oice, and the role of Biblical allusions .

After three hours, they break for lunch.

While this scene is typical of many an Ivy League seminar, none of these students are in college. In fact, they aren't even out of grade school. Many of them don't have driver's licenses, and none of them can vote. They are rising high school seniors, barely 17, all part of the Telluride Association Su1nmer Program, an intensive, six-week seminar program established in 1954. TASP students attend class for three 'hours every weekday, receive no grades, and earn no academic credit. Most of the fifty states are represented and, while most participants are American, some hail from as far as Singapore. They come from trailers in the heartland, from mansions on the coasts, from

• • •

THE NEw JouRNAL

Elite high school students spend a semi-monastic summer studying in the Cayuga valley.

. t

~

â&#x20AC;˘r

f-

apartments in the metropolitan centers. Some have never attended a creative writing class. Others have already composed award-winning plays.

In some ways, the TASP application process is equally, if not more, competitive than those of the top universities most TASP students will later attend. Applications are mailed to those who score in the 99th percentile of the PSAT, although high sch~ol teachers can recommend outstanding students to the program and a recent change in policy allows highly motivated prospective attendees to download the application and go it alone. To enter a TASP classroom, applicants must write six lengthy essays and undergo rigorous interviews. About seventy students are accepted to the program at the end of this long process, and all of them are awarded a scholarship to attend one of five seminars held at colleges around the country. These classes cover topics such as "The Dilemma of Modernism," "The Battle of the Sexes in Medieval and Renaissance Literature," "Race, Class, and Gender in British and American History," "War, Violence, and Storymaking," and "The Mystery of Creativity"-titles that could be lifted from many a university course catalogue.

A hefty handful of TASP alumni matriculate at Yale each fall, and many grace the ranks of Directed Studies, a selective freshman program that takes a writing-intensive and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the Western Canon. They are well-prepared. Thanks to TASP, these students have already shared a house, managed a collective budget, and been tutored by renowned May 2007

professors. Joshua Garcia, a Yale sophomore who attended TASP at Cornell in 2004, looked back on his experience, saying, "It was one of the most intense intellectual experiences I ever had and that I will have."

As a former TASP student myself, I recognize the deep intellectual awakening, the feeling of academic possibility that the program inspires. I have also come to accept its inherent transience. Now, I wonder if it is healthy for these bright minds to arrive at college with soaring intellectual expectations that are almost bound to be dashed by the university system. After all, it seems unnatural for a freshman to enter a world of education less ideal and less isolated than the one he or she had previously encountered. I find myself questioning the advantage of the fragile state of enlightenment the program offers its attendees. Is this singular scholarly community too unreal to be of value?

ll students who participate in TASP quickly embrace their new identities as "TASPers," hoping to gain what the official 2007 brochure calls "a sense of intellectual purpose and community responsibility." Described in promotional materials as "semi-monastic," the TASP program discourages participants from associating with anyone outside the community for the duration of the program in order to foster an undistracted dedication to the spirit of the experience. The program is also described as "semi-autonomous," and, in many ways, every TASP group runs itself. TASPers meet once a week for a "town meeting" to discuss issues of communal relevance, allo-

A

37

• •

Undergraduate rf!embers of the Cornell Telluride House.

•

•

cate funds, and plan social activities.

TASPers also shoulder kitchen duties, chores, and other household responsibilities. They . quickly realize that th~ , quality of their summer experience, both intellectually and socially, depends heavily on their individual contributions to the community.

TASP is a branch of the Telluride Association, which was· founded in 1911 by ·Lucien L. Nunn, a mining engineer who made it big in the mineral-ri'?h Rockies. Nunn, hoping to educate the young men who worked for him, dedicated his fortune to the Telluride Association and · Deep Springs College. On its website, the Association defines itself as "a nonprofit organization that creates and fosters educational communities that ·rely upon democratic participation.'~ Telluride's mission is complex: it aims at an "everyday synthesis of self-governance and intellectual inquiry that enables students to develop their potential for leadership and · public service.'' TASPers are often reminded of this philosophy by their paid "factota" one or two college or graduate students who live and attend classes with each seminar group.

Far from traditional camp counselors, the factota live up to their Latin 38

names c'those who do everything."

In addition to attending seminar with the students, the factota help them · with their papers and often become close with their summer wards, filling the roles. of sibling, coach, mentor, and friend. .

or many of its participants, TASP offers a six-week utopia for nerdy, tortured teens who prefer poetry readings to pep rallies: "People need TASP to get away from the real world," said Emma Griffin, a TASPer and current Yale freshman. Griffin recognizes the surreal elements of the TASP experience, but maintains that the students who participate in it are hungry for an intellectual and social experience unavailable to them in high school. Intellectualism, especially in an American grade school, can lead to profound alienation. By contrast, these small conununities of adolescent intellectuals take on the character of Thoreau's Walden as their members attempt to build an insular, erudite existence that is not only mentally superior, hut altogether separate from their quotidian lives. Tae-Yeoun Keum, a junior, believes that highly creative minds lead lives that are "very solitary, very lonely, very terrifying." TASP gave

Keum what she called the "greatest kind of support: to know that you are not alone."

This communal feeling of displacement facilitates an oddly powerful sense of trust among TASPers. There is a sense of confidence that fosters personal exposure and rapid intellectual development. Both seminar and daily routines are characterized by intimations of deep connection; TASPers re. ally are there to help one another. Junior Jacob Eigen, an alumnus of both TASP and Deep Springs, felt extremely isolated as a high school student and found a novel sense of community during his Telluride sutnmer. "TASP was really the one thing I did in high school that made me want to spend time with other people ... whatever personal trust took place had to do with whatever intellectual trust was there." Stacey Fitzgerald, a sophomore, expressed a similar opinion. "When I went to TASP, I spoke more freely that I ever have ....There was nothing wrong with being wrong."

This openness stems from the deep respect TASPers feel for their companions. Such regard derives in part from · the students' awareness of the admissions criteria, which focus not only on intellectual prowess but also on personal maturity and self-awareness. Matt Morello, who graduated from Yale in 2004, wrote of his TASP experience ih an e-mail, recalling that cc most of all, the other kids were so amazingly smart and curious I felt awfully lucky to have made it there, not to mention freed by the blank slate to be myself, and motivated like maybe never before or again to prove and define myself in the context of that group." Many TASPers believe that the students sitting across from thenr in seminar are the most intelligent and interesting people they have ever encountered.

Elis, too, are often filled with awe of their peers. Sylvia Bingham, a sophomore, said that "everyone poo-poos the pretentious and elitist aspects of TASP, but Yale has the same appeal.

They are both so competitive that you end up with only the most dynamic people who care about academics."

Garcia believes early submersion in

•

•

THE NEw JouRNAL

..

culture of TASP was notable for its lack of debauchery. "At TASP, there was no drinking, no sex, no alcohol.

The monasticism was particularly great. Here, there is such a bouooary between people who drink, have sex, flirt and those who don't. At TASP, there was a sense that everyone should contribute to everyone's education."

"On weekend nights at TASP," Garcia recalled, "we didn't go out. We didn't get drunk. We talked to each other all night. This doesn't really happen here."

Morello paints a similarly stark picture of Yale's crowded social scene.

"I don't think I was disappointed by Yale so much as overwhelmed,• he said. "Neither TASP nor my small private high school had prepared me for anything like the ass-and-booze festival of Camp Yale ... I feel like I had to junk whatever expectations for college I'd formed at TASP within a few days or weeks of starting actual college-friends, freedom, and work at Yale were part of a much longer haul in a much bigger, more diverse place. • For young intellectuals, bow can any experience possibly match the ecstasy of a summer spent living and learning with smart, thoughtful peers, at the developmental fulcrum that is late adolescence?

Many TASPers derive satisfaction from the way in which TASP, while a fleeting experience, has permanendy changed them. "What TASP gave me more than an expectation of the world was a vision of myself, a sense of what I could be," said Keum. •1 was close to my ideal self, being able to throw myself so completely and passionately inro something I was doing. When I was leaving TASP, I shared a cab with two other TASPers. We were silent and then gradually realized we were all thinking hile TASP readied its students the same thing: I do not want to recurn for their coursework, it could to my old mundane self... here, we not prepare 'them for the social atmodon't have the social support to do that sphere at Ya]e. Bingham feels that her again.

But it doesn't matter, I don't any alumni, unable to avoid experience at Yale lacks the particuthink, as long as you know you are lar closeness that TASP engenders.

"I comparing the two scholastic capable of it. It is in some ways a lost thought Yale would force me to get ventures, notice a void in their intellectual and social lives at Yale that was to know people who were different golden age.• filled at TASP. Garcia expected his ex- from me." She was disappointed. •1 Dearing, a sophomore in Berkeperiences in writing classes to be like still feel like my circle of friends is ley College, is an Associate Editor of TASP, but now knows that TASP- very predictable."'

Bingham also noted that the TN]. style workshopping "won't happen

this culture of excellence may, ironically, leave TASPers more level-headed than their current classmates. "[I learned] to accept my own merits because of who I am, not because of my talents. I was not the only talented person ... You have a few crises, asking yourself, 'Who am I? I am nothing.'"

TASP, of course, is just a summer endeavor, and, like any other camp, it inevitably comes to an end as TASPers disband and return to their respective high schools for their senior year. Most TASPers find this transition difficult. Keum admitted that "TASP made senior year unbearable."

Liz Tulis, a Yale graduate student and College alumna who attended TASP in 1996, recalled that her last year of high school was characterized by a "shadow life" of nearly daily e-mail exchanges with her closest TASP friends.

If TASPers find it difficult to relate to their peers before leaving for Cornell or UT Austin, they become even more disoriented after their summers away from home. Morello reflects, "How, after all, is real life supposed to compete with six weeks of dawn-busting, 17-year-old-soul-baring conversations? Ultimately, of course, real life won, but goddarnn if that didn't take a while."' Many TASPers spend their senior year in furious anticipation of college, which they hope will provide a kind of reincarnation of TASP. Whether or not this rebirth comes to fruition-whether college can best, or even match, TASP's intellectual intensity-is often questionable. Griffin chose to come to Yale because ofTASP-she believed that Elis "were the most similar to TASPers and felt the same way about knowledge."'

At the same time, she did not expect Yale to be TASP. "I didn't have a disappointment in comparison to TASP. They are different experiences."

again."' He says, "My intellectual experience at Yale is very rushed,"' said Garcia, who deplored the discrepancy between the two hours a week devoted to seminars in college and the daily three-.hour classes he enjoyed that summer. "At TASP, we had opportunities to talk about everything."

Fitzgerald agreed that her intellectual expectations were deflated at Yale.

"TASP," she said, "idealized the academic life."

Most TASPers search for traces of their cultish summer bliss at Yale.

"Of course I looked for TASP at Yale," Morello wrote. "It was the only taste of collegiate, academic, non-home life I'd yet had." Many turn to Directed Studies, hoping to find three yearlong TASP seminars. Keum found that the intensive freshman program and TASP are, in some ways, similar programs. "At TASP, everywhere I went, I could see people working." At Yale, these kindred spirits exist-in the library. "There was one day when I was in the Newspaper Room in Sterling reading Dostoevsky. All of a sudden, I looked up and saw another DSer across from me at the table. He had his Dostoevsky in front of him and his Nietzsche beside it. Our eyes met in profound Dostoevsky-ian empathy." This kind of solidarity-the sense that everyone is collectively banging their brains against difficult texts-characterizes both TASP and certain tightly-knit classes at Yale.

Nevertheless, Keum described her TASP seminar as something Yale has yet to match. While she spent much of Directed Studies "too scared toreflect," TASP offered "a center that we all contributed to."

W

M

1!':?

May 2007

39

-

""

' ~ ••

'<

,

•

'

''

'

• ·· .'

•

-

,-

• '

)

-.,:• " ·-·

•

.

~~....

•, ~

'

'

-...

'

••••

.. '

'

..•

'

~

•• •

'

•,

I

..'\.

·

\

>

'

..

•

('.

•.

• •

'

'

.., \ •• <

•

••

>

'

•

,

.,

.

•• •

••

•

'

-·

.

\ •••

~

.'

.

.' ~

•

"<\.. !

•• ·.,

.,

'

•

•.•

<

• •

• ~

•

'

'·

•

• ••

•

• _.

' •

•

..

• ••

•

~

'·

""~- -

•

.......

•

4

'

>

' .........

.

.,.

' ••

\

',

•

•

....

••

•

'i

I / ;...

•

. '.. ~

•

•' •

•

•

•

'• '":: <

•

,,

"

··,

.•

'

'

'

•.,

,, ·

'··

..

40

::

:.:

::

•

•

THE NEW JOURNAL

â&#x20AC;˘ l

ESSAY \

The Roads More Traveled A Yale junior drives to discover.

by Emily Koh

R

obert Frost was one acquainted with the night, and so am I. I have, on occasion, driven through it.

My father works near the College, and when he takes trips out of town he parks his car by the office so I can use it while he's gone. I do. When I have studied for too long and read too much and the day's scenes begin to share a flatness of scope, my mind becomes adrift with thoughts of other places and a desire for movement, so I get into his car and drive.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain-and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat.

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. rost wrote these lines. When I read them earlier this year for class, I considered all the times I have gone out into the rain and returned, all the times that I have dropped my eyes from passersby at night, willed the darkness to absorb my form and permit me to travel unobserved.

When I drive, I never go far. I might become lost and not know how to retrace my path. My concern, however, does not eliminate the allure of spontaneity. In the car, I could ride southontheinterstateintoNewYorkCityorwesttoPaloAlto or Seattle. I could head to Chicago and book a ilight out of O'Hare to Paris or Milan or drive along the Boston Post Road to Florida and board a helicopter headed for one of the Keys.

I consider my options fleetingly but dismiss them. Of course I could venture to all these far off places, but I never do. Instead, I stay close to home and travel to familiar spots, places perma-

F

May 2007

nently marked on my mental map.

Often, when one speaks of trips by car, the purpose behind such travel is escape. The shouts grow too loud in the house and the sole recourse is a swift exit through the kitchen's rear door. One needs to be somewhere else, and the car is both a means of escape and a place in itself.

The trips I take, however, arise from an entirely different need: a desire not to break free of ties, but to tighten their strings. I drive not to flee the places that tire me but to revisit those from which I have long been away.

A

s it happens, driving is the way I keep in touch.

The routes of my trips are improvised but revolve around specific plot-points. There are certain spots that I never fail to drive past: the Prospect Street apartment with the deep red inner walls, the Huntington Street home with a spruce-colored door and crimson curtains. The house on Everit painted pale yellow with black trim, graced by a low brick fence in front and geraniums in the first floor window. I have never set foot in this house, but I've imagined eating breakfast there and spending winter mornings wrapped in blankets on the plush couches I see from the street.

All of my stops are domestic. I am drawn to them by ornamental details-crimson curtains, geraniumsthat I instantly filed into my long-term memory. I am a magpie, tucking specific items and decorative traits into my nest for later assembly.

During my drives on Prospect, I begin to notice a man seated at his desk before the second floor window, presumably hard at work. Whether he ever moves I cannot say, for he is always positioned exactly as I last left him, with the light from an unseen monitor illuminating his face and infusing the dark room with a subtle, pulsing glow. Over time, I have come to rely on his presence. He has become the primary plot-point on my map, the first sign that all is in order, that I am properly charting the course.

Another plot-point: my own home not seven minutes away from central campus. Some of its lights remain 41

on, and I wonder who is awake within it. My brother, perhaps, his bedroom window still lit. That room used to be mine before I left for college and he officially took it over. Its position at the front of the house allows it to take in more light than any other room. Now, when I'm home, I sleep in a bedroom down the hall that overlooks the blacktop driveway. The weeping beech that envelops the drive blocks light from entering it. For that reason, the precise time of day is hard to determine and the position of stars difficult to chan from inside this room.

In primary and high school I never escaped from home by car. Instead I sought solace in that room at the front of the house. I would run upstairs, lock the door, and-guided by a teen's wistful and romantic sensibility-stare out the window searching for some clue hidden amongst the stars. Where was fulfillment? How could I achieve it? Could I actually transpon myself to a happier, clearer, more satisfied state? Did the solutions to all my anxieties and insecurities reside in New York, Austin, o r San Francisco? I rarely stare wistfully out of windows now but continue to toss such questions around while driving. The only difference between those years and these is that I no longer expect answers to reveal themselves in the sky. rowing up, many of my family's most involved conversations took place in the car. It was the mobile stage upon which countless scenes were set.

In the car, I cried and yelled as a result of these talks. Most of all, I listened. The car was where my parents offered their best advice, dispensed whatever wisdom they'd accrued from years of trial and error. It was where we discussed history and politics and where they recounted childhood tales.

It was in the car that my parents told me, in one way or another, that if I worked steadily and consistently put fonh my best, I would succeed.

Conversations of this type were often conducted on drives to and from the houses of my relatives. Subse-

G

42

In the car, I cried and yelled as a result of these talks. Most of all, I listened. quently, I began to conflate the route with the destination. While much is made of the notion that the destination pales in comparison to the journey, this outlook fails to acknowledge the extent to which familiarity with cenain byways actually enhances the experience of arrival. Take, for example, Route 25A, the road my family drives along to reach my grandparent's front door in Syosset, New York. I've traveled this road on weekdays throughout the summer and weekends in the fall when the sunset sky matches the hue of the changing leaves. I've traveled along it on the day after Christmas and Easter Sundays. I traveled along 25A to attend my grandfather's funeral.

25A sparks a series of associations in my mind: Split Rock Road, grandma, roast beef and sweet potatoes, interrupted anecdotes, cups of tea drunk late at night. When I travel along 25A, I already know precisely where I am headed. This panicular destination does not arise from decisions made along the drive. Rather,

the familiar route makes the endpoint clear from the start; no division exists between the two. In my mind, 25A leads only to one place.

Most roads, however, are not associated with remembrances of sweet potatoes and tea. Most roads serve solely as throughways, means to travel from one location to the next.

Self-deception is universal, and the tactics employed to support it hard to pierce. Driving from house to house, piecing together those ornaments collected for the magpie's nestthese tactics substitute for searches amongst stars from inside a locked room. I am no less na1ve about my pursuit of that elusive something. I still trust the search, refusing to acknowledge its futility.

In the car, isolated from the outside, I deliberately suspend time for a spell and drive unaware of whatever hour the clock reads. Locked in my vehicle, I reflect on the emotional risk involved in setting off on my own, the nerve necessary to go it alone without peripheral support. I consider the pluck needed to embark on a journey unsure of where it will conclude. I consider the way in which my car serves as a ponable fonress sheltering me from the outside air and how, as its driver, my search through the outside world is still conducted in a space that is decidedly enclosed.

1NJ

Emily Koh, a junior in jonathan Edwards College, is a Senior Editor of

TNJ.

Frames, Framing

Fabulous!

Downtown on Chapel Street

H U II UNIV.RSITY

r

5

Art Supply â&#x20AC;˘ Framinc

,

144 Chapel

street. New Haven

203865 HULL

www.HullsNewHaven.com

Best Art Supply

and Frame Shop Year after Year

THE NEw JouRNAL

•

.

• •

•

•

• •

•

.

•

•

•

•

The Boutique cakes are on the rise in Connecticut.

•

by Adriane

uinlan

•

•

•

ustomers ask the Vona sisters for fire trucks, hamburgers, and trumpets. They demand kittens. Could you make me a red sneaker, like an Adidas sneaker? A reclining cheetah, complete with spots oh, and, can you put him on a bed of jungle grass?

Whatever the order, the Vonas provide. All it takes is sugar, flour, eggs, butter, baking soda, and buttercream frosting. "I bring ideas to life using cake," says the slender, sharp-nosed Sofia Marini, pushing up her hairnet.

"For grass we use coconut, for water we use royal icing. We have to get ereative." Along with her two younger sisters, Sofia owns and runs The Cake Boutique, an unconventional bakeshop that sells its goods "by appointment only" and is known in wealthy Wilton, Connecticut for its "Shaped Custom Cakes."

Business is booming, and the turn-of-the century carriage house the girls bought four years ago is starting to feel cramped. The kitchen's large single oven will cook ten separate cakes over the next two days, all ordered for Easter Sunday. Spending upwards of twenty hours to concoct each individual dessert means that the sisters often stay in the kitchen until two or three in the morning. Sonya and Sandra joke that if they bake a cake for their eldest sister, it will take the form of a Dunkin' Donuts ·cup because Sofia is "always attached to a cup of coffee."

These days, it seems that everyone in Wilton wants a sculpted cake.

Driving up Danbury Road~to the boutique, the sisters pass their old high school and continue past gentrified strips of antique stores and cozy cafes.

"It's a cute town," Sofia said, "with people who will spend money on cakes."

At twelve dollars per slice for pa1ticularly difficult forms (witness the cheetah), the Cake Boutique's clientele is limited. You can tell by perusing the cakes in their backlog; one client ordered a cake shaped like a purse, filled -with cookies sculpted after her choice cosmetics Chanel Glossimier, Vega eye-shadow, and "Mystery Blush." You can now have your designer bag and eat it too. Consumerism becomes consumption.

The Vona enterprise is just the latest slice of an American baking trend _ that started in the 70s, when sculpted cakes were displayed to attract fairgoers. At the top tier of that movement was Roland A. Winbeckler, a baker who stacked his reputation on life-sized cakes resembling celebrities from Christopher Columbus to a midriff-baring Cher. Last TV season, the celebrities he carved stepped aside to let cake sculptors share the limelight, courtesy of the Food Network reality series Ace of Cakes, which tracked •

May 2007

43

-

•

••

•

•

A British baker wins internet stardom for sculpting a baby-shaped cake .

•

the day-to-day stresses of a Baltimore bakeshop that once iced an exact replica of Wrigley Field.

Historically cakes have been round, as that is the natural shape of rising dough.

(Batter came later, as pans were invented.)

But because the delicacy is eaten almost ex.. elusively on special occasions, the shape of cake has taken on more significance. Romans impressed their cakes with stamps depicting gods; Russians ate round cakes in ·praise of the sun; and Chinese cooks served round mooncakes to honor the goddess of the moon. We bake what we praise.

In 1976, Winbeckler baked a cake in . the shape of Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and presented to the god a cake in his own image. The Colonel asked, "Is it chicken flavored?" More recently, police officers arrested a Connecticut bride for hurling slices of cake at caterers who had closed the bar. Upon arrest, she attempted to bite an officer. When the cake is a weapon, and the man is a cake, can we no longer distinguish what is edible, what is real, and what is cake? .

Welcome to the realist movement of culinary arts, where customer testimonials on the bakery's website praise the Vonas as "artists." One Wilton mother attested that, for her son's bar mitzvah, the sisters had "created an actual boat so stunningly accurate that many guests thought it could not possibly BE a cake!" It was a success, as realist art is, because it deceived its audience.

Growing up, the sisters joined their mother, a homemaker, in trying new dessert

•

-

•

e come to t e rea tst • movement o cu znar arts, w ere customer • • • testtmonza s razse t e onas as ''artists. ''

•

•

•

'

. .

recipes every Sunday after lunch. Their father, a stonemason, sat back and ate. "His medium is stone," said Sofia. "He made beautiful things out of stone." The Vonas' craft melds their parents' professions. Just as their father once carved rock, today they lean over teetering towers of stacked sheet cake and, with lean knives, cut away to uncover the forms buried within. "Actually a lot of people tell us they don't want to cut into the cake," Sofia said. "They don't wanna destroy it." But the Vona sisters know better. Moved by artistic mettle, their brave carving recalls a statement of Michelangelo that their father might have known: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

A popular video posted on YouTube shows a British baker sculpting a block of chocolate cake into a near-perfect replica of a slumbering human baby, complete with tiny, curled fingers molded of peach fondant.

The final cake seems innocent, almost adorable. But comments from the videos viewers seethe with disgust: What sicko would want to eat a baby? Such a question is central to cake sculpting. Why do we desire to ingest what we love? To eat the work of cake is akin to Communion, wherein we take that which we love inside of ourselves in a cannibalistic ritual.

"Eventuallytheymaketheirwayimoit," Sofia said of her timid customers. "They wanna see what's inside." To know the cake, they must destroy it. To fully love it, they must gut it. Anne, a Wilton bride, wrote to the Von a sisters that she had overheard guests expressing surprise because "cakes that are pretty usually don't taste good." It's a lesson those attendees might have learned anywhere in life. Perhaps it is only in cake art that surface and interior arc equally rewarding, that what is beautiful is also kind, and also sort of delicious, and buttery, and downright satisfying.

1NJ

Adriane Quinlan, a senior in Calhoun ColLege, is the former Editor-in-Chief ofTNJ.

•

Well, his companion launches into "Sonnet 154." With the clock ticking and over a dozen full-length works left to read, the pair flips pages, picks roles, and presses on to the next play.

•

I

·

Scene ii: Nick Handler knavishly infiltrates History.

Bleary-eyed and adrift in the LC hallway, I am yanked into the History room, where an unshaven thespian in an ill-fitting polo shirt pleads, "Do you want to be the Duke · of Orleans?" With no time to respond, I am thrust into the middle of a circle of chairs alongside the Dauphin and .

Lord Rainbures, who hands me a dusty copy of Henry V. The King lounges in the English camp near the window with his plastic sword, contemplating the imminent battle at Agincourt. A gawky Lear stands outside the door, looking for an Edmund. · We are at the end of Act III, in the French camp near the blackboard. The night before the battle is dragging on, and I am growing tense. ·After forty minutes of Dauphin stumbling through a verbose insult of my horse, I begin to understand the Duke's impatience: "Will it never be morning?" Enter King Henry in Ralph Lauren armor and wirerim glasses, lamenting histrionically, "Thou proud dream . that plays so subtly with a king's repose ... " 1:45 .. .

2:00 .. .

By 2:30, I am looking for some repose of my own.

Tired and fed up with King Henry's whining, my last lines come with a little extra energy: "What a wretched and peevish fellow is this king of England, to mope with his fat-brained followers so far out of his knowledge!"

Exit Orleans. .

.

Bard-hopping

•

by Ben Lasman, Nick Handler, and Ali Seitz It is one a.m. at the all-:night Shakespeare marathon in Linsley-Chittenden Hall. Shakespeare enthusiasts abound, grouped in rooms according to dramatic genre: history, tragedy, comedy, miscellaneous. Enter Ben Lasman, Nick Handler, and Ali Seitz, armed with notebooks.

Scene i: Ben Lasman, journalistic rogue, observes the players.

•

By 1:30, only two people remain in the Miscellaneous room. One, his _face engulfed by The Collected Works of William Shakespeare, recites "Sonnet 152" in a stentorian tone.

His partner stands at attention, book in hand, like a tag-team wrestler primed to enter the ring. Had these poets decided to stage their soliloquies on the corner of York and Elm Street instead of within the warmly-lit interiors of Yale's English department, most passersby would have thrown them some change. Rather than repelling onlookers with their brazen dorkiness, the speakers project the dignified aura often claimed by Civil War reenactors. Perfonning for itself, the old guard stands for history in an age of 1mimpeded progress, promoting the immortal relevance of artistic tradition against the fleeting affectations of YouTube.

They want to share their message and will go to great lengths to do so. The first orator, a graduate student at Boston University, traveled all the way from Massachusetts to attend the Bardic festival. "My friend and I got a bunch of e-tnails about it and decided, 'Hey, it's a way to spend a Saturday night,'" explained the attendee. As he rifles through an avalanche of dog-eared folios in search of All's Well That Ends

•

Scene iii: Ali Seitz, bastard son, finds pizza.

"Will you be Edgar?"

My chin drops, quivers a little, nods of its own accord.

I am moved by the sincere expressions in the bright Tragedies room.

I stutter slightly, my voice lilting with each new and unnatural apostrophe, but I soon assume the confident speech of the spurned son Edgar. I relish the words "grime with filth." I sneer and cry in my passionate sorrow. For a moment, I giggle I giggle at King Lear, the mo st tragic of tragedies, where calamity is blamed not on witches but on silly humans like myself. But I labor to inhabit my lost Edgar once again, and disguise myself as Tom O'Bedlam. As I tum to my poor, ravaged father, my eyes meet his sockets, and we struggle to stay in character. As we embark on our tortured path to Dover, somebody yells "Pizza!".

And we are alone.

•

46

T HE N Ew JoURNAL

~ Yale University Contributing to a Strong New Haven

•

<:inJM~

New Hawn"s biallerft ~and IDclll eca~mmy

•

ere.&lg • vbl '*'-•..,.ltwai.VJ Yale"s ........ty inw:es~uenl pragmra

•

Suppc:MiiiG New Hawn pubic schaal • • ' •t .................lips

•

Slrengewuing ~by he. . .

v.- 81'4+ ,ees bufhames

Sprin

C arityW

k nd 2007

Tho Spri\g Charity Bowt te an event that Is designed to promote a wookend of charitable wens In the Spmg Somoetor.

O~i\aly dnlgnod to folow tho model of tho Collogo Charity Bowl, a natJon..Wido aubeldlary of tho Chratophor and Dana Reeve Foundation that has been organized on over thrty cologo campuaoe nationwide, tho Spring Charity Bowl has bocomo a muJU..faceted endeavor to hcorporate YaJo'l dlvorao atudont population i1 ono actlvly: ~ thoeo In nood.

Runni\g from 12:00 to 4:00 PM on Friday, Aprl 27th 2007. this fi'at annual Spring Chartly Bowl wl feature a running onaomblo of atudont banda playing for tho enti'oty of Yalo to onjoy and an al-you·can-eat food festival, putting on display tho foods of New Havon'alocal restaurants and Yale's flnoat student chofa (or makoehlft talgatora).

In addition, running concurrently with tho music and fOOd offori\ga, Yale atudont organizations w• bo glvon tho chance to enter tho participatory roatm of tho Bowl by competing hoad· to.hoad In tho Spri\g Charity BoWl Cup. Prosontod as a aorlot of fun and entertaining gamoa and actlvltlos for participants and audience all<o, tho Cup Is d081gnod to glvo thoee organizations on campus tho ablty to give back to thoao in noocs, whlo only roqul'ing a toam registration and a monetary donation. Tho winning toam of tho Cup, boaldoe Inheriting more than a fal' a hero of pride, wl bo crowned Spring Charity Bowl Grand Champion, and wl havo tholr organization's namo otched Into a perpetual plaque, to bo put on display on Yalo'a campus.

Observing students have tho option to watch all of tho musical acta. Including former Battle of tho Banda wlnnora , and enjoy tho hBarlty and competition of tho Cup completely free of charge, and tho food foatlval ltaolr wl roqulro only a tmal donation.

Tho Spring Charity Bowl II about more than tho ai\glo ovont, and tho alnglo day: It Is about oatablilhing a tradltlon of charitable worka i1 a fun and enjoyable setti1g, glvng ontortai1ment to tho Yalo community, whle almultanoou81y giving so much moro to tho wortd community at large.

This yoar'a Spmg Charity Bowl d Club of New Haven.

bo sponsorng tho Chrlltophor Reeve's Foundation for Paralyala and tho Boyt & G ins

Christopher Reeve Found tlon GoFonwrd.

SIGMA ALPHA EPSILON -

Students for Organ Donation Kappa Alpha Theta