Volume 15 - Issue 1

Volume 15 Number one

September 10, 1982

etum to Innocence I

W. Hampton Sides

Aftermath of a Yale murder Pospisil's jungle journey

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Publisher Ed Bennett Editor-in-Chief Andy Court

RESTAURANT -Brunch Saturday and Sunday 12-4:30 Lunch dinner and late night menus

Designer Matthew Bartholomew• Business Manager Barbara Burrell* Production Manager Hilary Callahan Photography Editor Jeff Strong•

Outdoor dining-weather permitting 1104 Chapel between Yale Rep & British Art Center 785-0080

Associate Editors Geoff Hayward, Paul Hofheinz, Jim Lowe, W. Hampton Sides, • Lelia Wardwell Associate Production Manager Alex Savich

Staff Andy Brimmer, • Lisa Hintz, • Will Winkelstein *elected August 23, 1982

Fn'ends Anonymous Anson M. Beard, Jr. Edward B. Bennett, Jr. Nancy R . Bennett Louise F. Cooper• James W. Cooper• Peter B. Cooper Geoffry Fried Sherwin Goldman Brooks Kelley Lewis E. Lehrman Fairfax Randall* Nicholas X. Rizopoulos Dick and Debbie Sears• • Richard Shields Thomas Strong Alex and Betsy Torello Allen and Sarah Wardwell Daniel Yergin •new frimd, &ptembtr 2, 1982 • •has .J!wen a second time. rovn- photo h1 /df Stron.t• ant! p,ter Coombe

•

15 Number one

September 10, 1982

this issue 3

Comment

Making room for the world The world has become like breakfast, really.

5

by Andy Court

Perils of the middle path

by J ohn Russo and Kathryn Hemker

The text ofjohn Russo's controversial Class Day speech.

10 NewsJoumal

The Falwell fire .

Fugard's successes . .

Trials of a draft resister

12 Major stories

Aftermath of a Yale murder An examination of the issues raised by two new books ahout the murder of Bonnie Carumd.

18

The marching band's return to innocence Drum Mqjor Po/insley .ttropes for the fine line between hzlan"ty and vulgan¡ty.

26

Profile Sports

Books

by Maggie Jackson

Add an A, end an era The Ivy's demotion to Division f -AA could mean the loss of more than just prestige.

45

by Geoff Hayward

Blond, blue-eyed and ...

A day in the life of Yalie super-model Michael lves.

41

by W. Hampton Sides

The jungle journey of Leopold Pospisil An anthropology professor travels into the rainfurests of New Guinea and emerges with new ideas about Marx.

34

by Andy Court

by Greg Myre

Dupre talks to the monks Louis Dupre's The Deeper Life searches for the el.irnent of mysticism in Christian faith.

by Timothy Safford

YALE

The New JournaVSeptember 10, 1982 3

TheNewJournal

About this issue Members Peter B. Cooper Sherwin M. Goldman Nicholas X. Rizopoulos Daniel Yergin

Board of Directors Peter B. Cooper Nicholas X. Rizopoulos Thomas Strong

Board of Advisors Roger Kirwood Thomas Strong

September 10, 1982- Volume 15, Number one The New journal, a Yale University magazine of news and comment, is published six times during the school year by the New Journal at Yale, Inc., Post Office Box 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520 Copyright c 1982 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction, either in whole or in part, without written permission of the Publisher and Editorin-Chief, is prohibited.

Ten thousand copies of each issue are distributed for free to all members of the Yale University community.

The New journal is typeset by the Charlton Press of New Haven, CT and printed by the Trumbull Printing Company of Trumbull, CT. Office hours weekday 1-3pm, 105 Becton Center.

Phone: (203) 436-4525

4 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

Welcome back from what was probably a pretty busy summer. It was pretty busy for most of us, too.

From distant points like New York, Edmonton, Berkeley, Memphis, and New Haven, reporters and editors worked long-distance to put this issue together. While writing for his hometown magazine, newly-elected Associate Editor W. Hampton Sides put the polishing touc;hes on a piece he believes "is destined to rock the illiterate world." Hampton found the Precision Marching Band's leader David Polinsky to be an adroit politician who has tempered the band's traditionally-raunchy sense of humor with a respect for the tastes of more conservative alumni, local football fans, and administration officials.

Coming up with a cover shot for the Marching Band story proved something of a chore. Though we had a perfect picture of Polinsky with his arms spread out,in ecstatic expostulation, we couldn't get his arms to fit within the confines of the cover.

Enter Matt Bartholomew, our new designer, and Jeff Strong, our new photography editor, who managed to summon Polinsky from his chicken farm in rural Connecticut. At 8:30 on a Monday morning, while traffic flowed below, Bartholomew and Strong found themselves on the roof of the Taft Apartments trying to re-create his historic pose.

Never one known for understatement, Polinsky was precariously teetering on the Taft's edge, Bartholomew reports. "If he went over the ledge, we were all set," he said.

"Jeff was going to run up and take pictures of him going down. It would have been Pulitzer Prize material, I think."

In this issue, we also introduce a new section called NewsJournal (Get it?). This will allow us to follow up stories we covered in previous issues, and develop shorter stories we would previously have had to pass up. This month, Morris Panner and Hampton Sides put the section together.

Associate Editor Geoff Hayward recounts the story of Leopold Pospisil's journey into the rain forests of New Guinea where he discovered that the Kapauku Papauans didn't follow Marx's prescription for primitive societies. Hayward has been working for the past nine months on our research stories, attempting to make oftentimes technical ideas interesting and accessible. His background in physics has sometimes helped. He spent this summer working in a Physics lab in Edmonton, Canada, and procrastinating on a make-up exam he had to confront last week.

You may notice more advertisements in the magazine this year.

Barbara Burrell, our new Business Manager, has been the person coordinating our advertising strategy.

We have been trying for some time to work out a simple yet effective method for account management, and Burrell has been extremely involved in this process. She is a Dallas, Texas, native who did financial public relations wor.k in New York this summer for Kekst and Co. We are constantly looking for new people to work on the magazine. On Wednesday September 15 we will be holding an organizational meeting.

Hope to see you there.

Enjoy the issue.

•

Comment

Making room for the world Andy Court The trouble with the youth here is that their lives are meager in content, drifting as though in a dream or a game.

-from the letters of Jonathan Netanyahu, the Israeli hero who died in the Entebbe rescue.

They plop the world on my doorstep every morning. It lands with a thud, and someone's steps shuffie away. I take it out of the doorway, so people won't trip on it. I glance at the front page, but I don't have time to read. I'm late for class. I've got to get going. I've got so much to do. And the world has become like breakfast, really, something of a luxury I usually don't have time for, an excuse for procrastination in those times that I do.

Then I go to class where we talk about something called history. After the section, a friend expresses his profound p leasure that h e got in a remark even though he h ad not read the book.

I'm left wondering: if you carry that attitude to its insidious extreme, what act was performed aside from a useless, shameless dance of egos around the table?

I come home from ITIY classes, and my roommate is actually reading the newspaper. I fall asleep on the couch and someone wakes me up and invites me to a political round table. I decline this offer, just as I have avoided a friend's repeated invitations to attend a weekly discussion group in her room.

Sometimes I do get caught in a "political" discussion, and it is most frustrating. Especially because I realize that most of the others know little more than I. Especially because I see how a~ept we all are at stretching what little bus we do possess into a discussion that often revolves around semanitcs inst~ad of reality. We are all equipped wnh the ability to make what we know seem like more than it is. We use this

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skill' o~ term papers written the night before, and discussion sections for which we are less than sufficiently prepared.

Have we begun to believe what any suspecting TA would not-that we know more than we do simply because we have done the surface work and possess the fudging skills? And, even more distressing, have we gotten into the dangerous habit of shuffiing and embellishing what little we have absorbed, instead of coming to terms with material, making connections that apply to reality, formulating an intelligent position which would be possible to act on?

I feel a strange mixture of shame and anger when I become involved in a discussion about something none of us seems to know the first thing about. It is not just the sheer irony and abstraction, our naive and idle wonder about some stumbled-upon topic like prison reform. It is the way the conversation becomes academic in the worst connotation of the term. Academic in the sense of a game that is played with

ideas, in which all the participants are removed from the human implications of the subject. So that in the middle of talking about what we should do about putting people behind bars in horrid conditions, someone asks, "What's this in the soup?"

"It's a kiwi ."

"A kiwi?"

Yes, much of it is me, and yet I still believe that there is something wrong with the way many, perhaps most, of us perceive our relation to the "real world." We are in many ways complacent and unaware and empty. Blame partly our youth, blame partly the fortunate circumstances of our birth in a land of relative prosperity. But also blame ourselves because we may have misinterpreted freedom to mean invulnerability and have lapsed into laziness because nobody has slapped us in the face .

Most of us are the privileged members of a so-far lucky generation, and our problem (in many ways a for-

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The New Journal thanks: Peter Coombe Peter Halsey Elizabeth Hayes jane Kammsky Roger Kirwood MO:!JI O'S_ulliuan Robbie Moore Morris Panner Ralph Parda Wes Poling Frank Proto Rachel Resnick Rollin Riggs Gabriella Stern

Max Tucker The staff of the Becton Center Library Christiana Williams

Corrections: In the April t 9, 1982 issue Nancy R. Bennett was incorrectly identified. Additionally, the names Nicholas X. Rizopoulos and ¡ R ichard Shields were misspelled.

6 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

\.

tunate one) is that history isn't squeezing us right now, and so we are not forced to come to terms with issues we know are there.

If we were personally confronted, personally provoked, we would have no choice but to respond. But no one has dragged our parents off in the middle of the night, or told us that we will have to fight in a war tomorrow if our number comes up today . Some of us have lost financial aid, and some of us have had to fill out white pieces of paper reminding us that the government considers us an available resource. T hat, however, is all.

And so for us to be concerned, disturbed even, with the way things are going, we must lead with our minds and persuade our hearts to follow. The threat of nuclear war is a perfect example of something you don't see, something that doesn't seem to affect our daily lives at all. Until it happens.

Unless you make an intellectual leap, summoning some sense of historical possibility and thinking, "hey, this could happen and it's getting more and more probable all the time," then it might never really concern you.

It might never concern you even though it is a much more important issue in your life than the change to a plus-minus grading system. The pluses and minuses, paper extensions and library policies are things you can see and feel their effects. Escalating arms and declining employment are less evident.

As a student, I find myself in the unique position of having the time and luxury to think about things, yet the nature of my lifestyle, its hurried pace and self-absorption, seems to work against the very purpose of my stay here.

No doubt some would argue that we are here for the seclusion and contemplation; we will, after all, have the

rest of our lives to read the newspapers, and gripe about taxes.

But so much of a liberal education involves developing appreciations, learning to care about things and carrying those concerns with you for the rest of your life. We do not live ou r lives in neatly-bundled d isciplines. We get it all at once- the psychological, biological, religious, and historical. To immerse ourselves in classical civilization or organic chemistry wh ile ignoring what's going on around us is to sacrifice, for the sake of scholarship, a perspective on the present. Why not the world, now as well as later?

Still it is easy to see how the urgent though unimportant i~sues easily take priority simply because they interfere with the daily operation of my life. If I've got a paper to write, that must come first because it's due tomorrow.

Knowing about rent control, public education, or foreign affairs has no deadline, and so it's often not done.

Thus arises that bland ivory tower feeling I get after participating in some alltoo-uninformed and naive intellectual discussion. "Gee," I think, "I really should care more about this. Why don't I know more about it?" I nevitably, it's because I've been so busy with my projects and my papers a nd my relationships to really worry about whether the president's policies may lead to the destruction of the earth.

Not laziness, but extreme and misdirected diligence accounts for much of the problem. The tendency of so many of us is to immerse ourselves in our classes and activities and emerge from them successfully. I was so busy writing and night-editing at the Yale Daily News during my freshman year that I rarely found time to read that newspaper or any other. A nd so in the process of working hard to become a

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leader, I became too busy to remain a in a current that pulled them under. citizen.

The danger of being fortunate and We're all so involved in writing our sheltered is that you can lose a sense of articles, researching our papers, your own vulnerability. You forget finishing our problem sets, and strik- that no matter how intelligent, ere· ing our sets that we fl.lter out all other ative, and ambitious you are, you can things, including news of the outside be swallowed up as easily as others world. Being well-informed requires a have been. What is it besides the arcommitment of time and emotional rogance of our age, and the comenergy, two things you just begin to placency of our time that leads us to run short on come midterms or finals, believe we will be exempted from the printer's deadline or opening night. challenges and the traumas history has When we do pick up the newspaper, so continually put forth? What amazes we often still lack a sense of immediacy is the ability of the status quo to erode and importance. History, including our sense of possibility. that attempt to represent it on the If nothing else, perhaps it pays to printed page, appears as something muster sufficient selfishness and outside of our world, something to foresight to realize we are affected by study with a detached interest, and to what strangers do. This is not a matter write long papers about senior year. of being liberal or idealistic or activist.

But as far as all these words actually af- It just means making room in your life fecting people, actually affecting our for the world, and doing that, if for no lives in a big way, it is hard to make other reason, simply because you ar_e that connection. The news has rarely part of it. had such a direct effect on our lives.

In December, The New Journal inter· We know there are people at war right viewed Kathleen Cleaver, a former now, soldiers shooting and killing one Black Panther who came to Yale last another. It's just not us or anyone we year after living abroad with her husknow. band Eldridge who had been a fugitive Perhaps that's why war seems like from justice. During the interview, I such a remote possibility even though I remarked that history hasn't really af. realize it's quite possible we could get fected our generation the way it af. into another war within the next ten fected hers.

"It hasn't clobbered us yet," I said. years. I don't believe it will happen "Don't worry," she said . "You might because it has never happened to me or to my father or to his grandfather. It is get a chance for history to clobber you at once a definite and a remote too." possibility, one that fills me with fear but does not arouse my interest in Andy Court, a senior in Saybrook, is editor· world events. in-chiif ~The New Journal Some nights I walk by the Woolsey Rotunda and read ·the names of the The opinions expressed in this section Yale graduates killed in wars. Above are those of the individual writers. The the portal which most of us pass each New Journal welcomel> letters to the day on our way to class, it sa} s, "We editor, and comment on Yale and New who must live salute you who found Haven issues. Write to 3432 Yale the strength to die." I wonder how Station New Haven, CT 06520. All many of them really found the strength letters 'for publication must include to die and how many were just caught address and signature.

•

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8 The New JournaliSeptember 10, 1982

It came out of the blue, sandwiched between the Whiffenpoofs and SmoJor John Glmn. john A. Russo, a graduating senior in SillitTUJn and a co1ounder of the Campaign Against Militarism and the Draft, stood up before 3, 000 of his clasStTUJtes and their relatives packed into Wools91 Hall, and spoke his mind. Parts of the Class Day speech were intended as a direct rebuttal to President A . Bartlett GiatTUJtti's Baccalaureate Address, · "In the Middle Distance, • delivered that morning from the same rostrum. In the address, GU.Zmatti had said, •In urging you h9'ond ideowgy . . . I offer the view of one person, one who is clear{1 middle-aged, middle-class, middle of the road; a view of one not given to extremes but to the middle."

•I was concerned about why people are going corporate, • Russo told The New Journal. •I was concerned that our own president had come out and told us to be a rekztivist, to compromise our convictions. " The folwwing is the full text of that speech, co-written by Kathryn Hemker, and delivered May 23.

Parents, faculty , and honored guests: I hope that you will excuse me if I take this opportunity to speak directly to my classmates. Fellow graduates, all about us, our choices and our liberties are in danger. Let me give you a few examples.

Book banning, a narrow-minded practice that discourages thought, is enjoying a revival in our schools.

Thought vigilantes seek to censor any books that do not conform to their catechism of correct and patriotic views. These individuals would go so far as to shield their children, and the children of others, from knowledge of our country's past misdeeds, including slavery. In a misguided attempt to preserve children's innocence, book banners would condemn future generations to ignorance, and possibly the repetition of the same atrocities.

Elsewhere, there are other signs of restriction. In 1973 the Supreme Court declared that, with respect to abortion, decisions regarding reproductive rights were a private matter between doctor and patient. But current legislation in Congress attempts to intervene in this private relationship by defining socalled "moral" boundaries.

In a reasonably democratic system, such as ours, these problems are easily seen, if not easily solved. Our economic system, on the other hand, limits our freedoms in ways which are far more obscure and insidious.

Probably the most salient example for this graduating class is the state of the job market. More of us lined up at Career Advisory seeking corporate interviews this year than ever before.

Because of this, critics have accused us of being selfish and without ideals. But we were offered fewer choices than previous graduates.

Traditionally, jobs such as teaching, social work, and legal aid have been considered idealistic. Now, with spending cuts in educational loans, social programs, and legal assistance for the poor, it has become virtually impossible to pursue these careers.

And have we lost our idealism? No, what we have lost is the opportunity to enter the professions that have attracted idealistic people in the past.

The so-called "free market" has produced jobs only in the business sector.

This is the reflection of an economic system that places greater emphasis on the evils of ring around the collar than on the evils of substandard housing.

Our mistake is in placing the responsibility for social justice on a small number of professionals, rather than on all citizens. In these days when our freedoms are slipping away we must realize that social action is not an option: it's a responsibility.

We have been subtlely told-even

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this very morning-not to question the status quo too closely. It is easy to have faith in the present educational and legal processes when one is in a privileged position. What about those Americans who cannot afford the best schools and the best lawyers? Those underprivileged Americans who cannot afford to have faith in the process.

We must direct our processes toward an ideal- the ideals of liberty, justice, and equality as enumerated in the theories of our Founding Fathers. It is true that we are given a set of circumstances. It is also true that we can actively strive to change those circumstances if they are not just. Yet how many times have we been warned not to rock the boat?

How glibly we criticize the people of Nazi Germany for their obedience to authority and yet how blindly we, too, obey. I do not mean to imply that we commit acts similar to Nazi collaborators, only that the moral principle remains the same. We can yield control over our workday actions, but we can ne~er yield responsibility for those actions.

Fellow graduates, we cannot allow our large bureaucratic organizations, both public and private, to render us personally irrelevant without hope.

These institutions are the creatures of men. Together, concerned men and women can force these bureaucracies to serve all people, not just the privileged few.

Large corporations command more resources than most state and local governments. Corporations can, and have, dominated our nation's development in this century. They must take greater responsibility for their actions, or we must compel that sense of responsibility. Modern democracy is hollow when confined to the political sphere, for it cannot, by itself, redress the injustices of an undemocrlttic economic system.

Happiness is not something that comes with the refreshing taste of Coke and freedom is more than a choice at the 7-11. We must, each and every one of us, reconfirm our citizenship by rekindling our nation's yearning for freedom and justice. We must rediscover that America's gift to human society is not weapons, wealth, or commodities, but our revolutionary legacy of human welfare and human liberty.

•

john Russo, Silliman '82, is a student at New York University Law School. Kathryn Hemker is a junior in Jonathan Edwards.

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The New Journal/September 10, 1982 9

NewsJournal

September 10, 1982

The Falwell fire The Reverend Jerry Falwell, who will speak before the Political Union November 11, has been waiting almost a year now for a chance to come to Yale and defend his much-maligned Moral Majority.

It was this time last fall when President A. Bartlett Giamatti released his fulminous Freshman Address on the Moral Majority and sent waves of controversy ringing· from the gothic towers in New Haven to the church-steepled hills of southern Virginia. In the address, which was printed in its entirety in the New York Times and the Washington Post, Giamatti accused the Moral Majority of "licensing a new meanness of spirit in our land, a resurgent bigotry that manifests itself in racist and discriminatory postures."

Calling the leaders of the fundamentalist organization "peddlers of coercion," Giamatti wrote, "The Moral Majority would displace law with polyester mysticism and would presume to impose a final, complete, arbitrary contour on society, and the behavior of individuals."

Needless to say, Falwell and his associates weren't too happy about that speech. In September the Political Union tried to arrange a sort of

"monkey trial" debate between Falwell and Giamatti ("The Debate That Wasn't,"TNJ January 30). The Moral Majority in Lynchburg quickly accepted the invitation, but Giamatti, who had maintained a conspicuously low profile since the release of the address, flatly declined. "I think Giamatti is a chicken," responded Cal Thomas, Vice President and chief spokesman for Moral Majority, Inc., "and I would be happy to call that to his face. The low class of his remarks leaves me nothing to fear from a personal and even intellectual confrontation with him, and I would renew the challenge.

I think we could present Dr. Falwell at Yale- and he's interested in going- if Giamatti would simply stop hiding behind the intellectual equivalent of his mother's skirts, and come out and fight like a man."

Nelson Keener, who handles press relations for the Rev. Falwell, said that Falwell and possibly Cal Thomas will speak at Yale about the Moral Majority itself, and then will entertain questions. "The Political Union has been after u s for two years. The debate plan didn't work out, so this is the next best thing."

•

courtesy of Newsweek

Falwell will defend his much-maligned Majority here on November 11.

Fugard's successes For most playwrights, a Tony Award But d espite Fugard's public appeal means extra fan mail, but if you hap- in America, the South African governpen to be Athol Fugard, the controver- ment rarely accords him a warm weisial South African dramatist, critical . come. "I have a feeling they may be recognition may lead the Government opening up his mail again," said Roz to open up your mail.

Heinz, Press Relations Director for the Since Heinrich von Staden inter- Yale Rep, when she discovered that a viewed him for TN] in February, gift from New Haven that had been Fugard has done exceptionally well. sent to celebrate his Tony nomination His latest play, Master Harold . . . and had taken two months to reach him in the Boys, was one of five Tony Award South Africa. nominees this spring, and it lost out Fugard has not yet attempted to proonly to the popular Nicholas Nickleby. duce Master Harold in his native Master Harold also won the Outer country . He consid ers the play a parCritics' Circle Award for drama. Zakes ticularly sen sitive work to stage there, Mokae, handpicked by Fugard in and it is the first play in his 24-year South Africa to play the lead, won the career which has premiered outside of Tony Award for Best Actor, and the apartheid nation. The work Fugard himself was nominated for Best revolves around an episode from the Director. Apart from critical praise, lives of two black men (Willie and DeYid Ott~ntTM ..... Joumel the play has enjoyed an 85 percent Sam) and a 17-year-old white boy Afrikaner playwright Athol Fugard won a capacity all summer on ·Broadway, an (Hally, later Master Harold). "There Tony Nomiruuion as Best Director last year. almost unprecedented success for a are elements in Master Harold . . . and the Boys that might have run into censtraight play.

10 T he Newjo~aV~ptembe~ 10, _1982

•-'

sorship problems," Fugard said in his February interview.

The fact that Fugard has developed close ties with Yale and Drama School Dean Lloyd Richards has led many within the dramatic community here to believe that the Afrikaner will return to Yale this year to work as a playwrightin-residence for the Rep and direct another play. But Heinz says those rumours are unfounded. "As much as we would treasure having him here at the Rep, the greater advantage in the long run would be for him to stay in South Africa, where his heart and work are, to write another play."

Back in South Africa, Fugard is now directing his daughter in one of his earlier works, People Are Living There.

He is also working on his autobiography and beginning a new play.

•

Trials of a draft resister I tlaink tJuu we should be men first, and sub-

j«ts afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

-Henry David Thoreau, 1849.

Thoreau's "Essay on Civil Disobedience" has become something of a bible for 21-year-old David Wayte, a former Yale student who goes on trial for draft resistance on the 28th of this month. Wayte is one of five men in the United States who have been indicted by the Federal Government for failing to register for the draft. A Pasadena resident who would now be a senior in Trumbull had he not dropped out two years ago to devote himself to the protest against draft registration, Wayte has decided to follow his conscience into the courts, even if it means going to jail.

•1 obviously don't want to go to prison," Wayte told The New Journal in a phone interview. "God knows I'm frightened about it, but I am prepared to go." .

Wayte is very certain about his motives for disobedience. "I don't want to take eve~ the first step toward war," he explained. "I'm protesting the spirit ?f militarism that is growing in AmerIca. I don't consider it a radical thing to say that I want to control my own life.

I'm not a piece of the government's

property to be used in Lebanon or El Salvador or wherever else it decides to send me. I think we should always look for alternatives to war, not steps toward war, especially when we know that we are on the verge of global suicide at all times."

Wayte, who has been one of the most vocal opponents of registration, has been a conspicuous violator from the very beginning. When the Carter Administration first stumbled upon draft registration renewal in 1979 as a possible way to show American disapproval of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Wayte wrote a letter directly to President Carter explaining why he would never support the Selective Service Act. After the measure passed Congress, Wayte became increasingly involved in anti-draft demonstrations and other means of protest. It was a year before Wayte heard from the government. He received a letter from the justice Department warning him that if he didn't register by return mail within 15 days, he would face immediate indictment and a swift trial. Wayte threw: that letter away.

As far as legal precedent goes, Wayte's case does not look very promising. On August 26 a Federal Court in San Diego tried and promptly convicted the first draft resister of the 1980s, 21-year-old Ben Sasway of Humboldt State University in California. Sasway, who has been a close friend of W ayte's for over a year now, is in prison today awaiting his sentence, which the court will not deliver until October 4. Wayte expects Sasway's sentence will approach the maximum penalty for the felony of non-compliance: five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

"I was extremely disappointed with the [Sasway) trial," said Wayte, several

hours after he appeared on ABC's Nightline the night following the verdiet. "Not just with the outcome, which I had expected all along, but mostly with the fact that Ben wasn't allowed to state his motives for not signing. They just put him in jail to shut him up until they could decide on a sentence. They said the rationale for disobedience was irrelevant. I realize now that the courts are going to be especially rough in the first few cases, because they're trying to make an example out of us. The Justice Department has singled out the most visible violators, the ones who have spoken out, and then it has expedi ted our trials. The idea is to show the others what could happen to them."

Sasway and Wayte do not qualify as ~nscientious objectors in the traditional sense, since neither has cited a particular religious aft-.liation or ethnic heritage as a rationale for non-compliance. For most of today's draft resisters, it is strictly a matter of per.sonal conscience. But Sasway and Wayte do have one remaining tnimpcard: There are at least 675,000 men in the country who for various reasons have not signed up either. Proceedings on that large a scale would obviously present immense legal problems for the Justice Department. Supposing that the government could indict and conviet every one, which it could not, the resulting mass of violators would fill the cu~nt national prison system 20 times over.

"This is the greatest law enforcement problem since prohibition," said Wayte. "It has become a mass movement, really. It would be impossible for the government to imprison all of us. My only hope is that by refusing to back down, we can raise public consciousness and maybe get the law changed."

•

The New Journal/September 10, 1982 11

Jf¡

Aftermath of a Yale murder Andy Court

"I like Richard," said one of the prison officials at the Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York.

Then a guard buzzed the doublelocking doors, and through the formica visiting room, down a door to the right, Richard Herrin, the Yale murderer, appeared.

Seeing the man without seeing or feeling the harm that he has caused, it was difficult not to ¡ agree with the prison official. His long black hair pinned ¡ back behind his head, his neatly-groomed mustache coming down to the corners of his lip, Herrin appeared healthy, fit, and reflective.

He refused to talk on the record about the murder or about his Yale experiences until he had time to think about some of the specific questions posed. He seemed so "together"-so aware, sincere, articulate, assertive in a quiet way- that it forced one to weigh present positive impressions against the volumes of collected knowledge about the case, and the one indelible consequence of his act.

It has been almost a year since Herrin, Yale '75, the killer of his girlfriend, Bonnie Garland, granted interviews to two authors writing books about his case. Those books- The Yale Murder by Peter Meyer, and The Killing of Bonnie Garland by Willard Gaylin, M.D.both criticize Yale for the way it responded to the 1977 murder, and suggest the Yale environment might have contributed to the troubles that caused Herrin to kill.

"Yale acted as though someone had inadvertently dumped a load of manure on its front lawn," Gaylin writes. "It was embarrassing, an annoying inconvenience, and Yale was particularly offended by the importunity of the neighbors in complaining of the stench. 'After all, it wasn't Yale's fault' was a constant refrain. Yale's official attitude remains constant to this

12 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

courteey of Emili,. Boolc8

Bonnie Garland and Richard Herrin.

day. While the mess was on their doorstep, it was not of their doing."

Said Meyer in an interview this summer: "The attitude among the Yale administrators that I talked with, as evidenced by the very fact they didn't want me to use their names, is that they wpuld just as soon have this thing go away." He believes there was "a great deal of misjudgment and lack of awareness on the Yale administration's part."

But did the murder really have anything to do with Yale? It happened in Scarsdale during the summer at the home of Bonnie Garland, Herrin's girlfriend. He killed her with a hammer while she was sleeping, ostensibly because she had told him she wanted to date-and sleep with-other men. At the time, Herrin had been out of school for two years, and Yale would not permit Garland to return unless she did weU in summer school. The

"Yale acted as though someone had inadvertently dumped a load of manure on Its front lawn."

members of the Yale community who knew Herrin and came to his aid did so as individuals, not as representatives of Yale. And although there is some question about the capacity in which the chaplains at St. Thomas More House, the Catholic Church at Yale, acted on H errin's behalf, the denominational groups here function independently of Yale's authority. Why should Yale h ave done other than it did- holding a memorial service for the Garlands, and then remaining silent as an institution?

And was it really "the Yale murder" at all, except for purposes of selJing books?

A fot depends upon how one chooses to read Richard Herrin. If one buys the psychological scenario presented

by Herrin's defense lawyer, and portrayed in Meyer's book, Herrin was a troubled youth who suffered a series of humiliations, academic and amorous, which he long repressed and finally

vented in a moment of rage. If one whole being, everything about his subscribes to the prosecution's background and lifestyle, and in effect scenario, he was hurt, he d ecided to humiliated him ." kill his girlfriend , he searched for a weapon, he used the weapon, and he The story later recounted with coherence and Bonnie Garland and Richard Herrin precision exactly what he had done. met on Bladderball weekend, NovIf Herrin did just act as a lover seek- ember, 1974. He was a senior Geology ing vengeance, then perhaps it could major in Saybrook, a half-Mexican have happened anywhere, regardless American from the barrio of East Los of where murderer and victim met and Angeles. She was a freshman with a went to school. But if, as defense ex- beautiful voice who sang in the Glee perts testified in court, one must con- Club and later helped found the singsider the whole psychological profile, ing group, Proof of the Pudding. She then perhaps Yale did have something lived in a Tudor-style house in to do with it.

Scarsdale and was educated at "My feeling is had Richard Herrin Madeira. not gone to Yale, stayed on the West They were described as Coast, stayed in an environment that "inseparable" by Yale friends, and was familiar to him, gone to a college three weeks after they met, Garland that was less competitive , none of this moved in with Herrin. They spent a would have happened," Meyer said. lot of time in their room together and "He wouldn't have been in the kind of did very poorly academically. After circumstances which challenged his H errin went on to a doctorate program

Riclw.rd Herrin now rtsidts in the chatuzu-likt Eastern Co"utional Facility at Napanoch in tlu Catskills.

The New Journal/September 10, 1982 13

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in Fort Worth while Garland remained in New Haven, they became engaged.

In 1977, during her junior year, Garland went on tour with the Glee Club and started dating a Whiffenpoof. She didn't write Herrin for three weeks, while he wrote her at every stop alon g the tour. "I'm living every second for you now," one of his letters said.

When Garland mailed a letter informing him she was involved with another man, she joked, "He'll probably kill me."

Herrin flew to New York to meet Garland when she returned from Europe. He resolved to get a job in New Haven so that he would always be near her. It was on the second night of his stay in the Garland's home that it occurred to him that he had to kill Bonnie and then himself. He searched for a weapon, found a hammer downstairs and hit her head, throat, and chest while she was sleeping in her bedroom.

He then drove away half-naked into the night, trying but not having the courage to kill himself, and eventually confessing to a priest in Coxsackie, New York, four hours later.

When Scarsdale police arrived at Bonnie's home·, her father, Paul Garland (Yale '52), had already left for work, but Joan Garland, her mother, awoke and said, "You must have the wrong house." She went upstairs and found her daughter beaten and bloody but still alive.

Bonnie Garland died after intensive surgery and Richard Herrin, sat handcuffed to a chair in Coxsackie, New York, charged with murder. His friends from Yale, however, especially people he had known while playing guitar at St. Thomas More House, came to his aid. They raised $30,000 for a la~er. They wrote letters recommending him for bail and found a place where he could stay with a group of Christian Brothers in Albany which

The New Journal/September '10, 1982

Barbara Roaen/Emplra Booka

Peter Meyer, author qf

The Yale Murder. runs a home for troubled youths. Some the letters written by people who had worked with or known Herrin used the Yale letterhead although it violates university policy to use Yale stationery for unofficial causes.

Thirty-six days after he had, by his own admission, murdered Bonnie Garland, Herrin was free on $50,000 bail. A Yale pediatric cardiologist who belonged to St. Thomas More House but had not met Herrin until she visited him in jail, put her home up as collateral for Herrin's bail.

"I had never seen people bend that far backwards for an admitted murderer," said Fenno Heath, director of the Yale Glee Club who was very close to Bonnie Garland. "It's the thing that turned Paul Garland completely bitter." · Expressing anger and dismay that members of the Yale community "have rushed to the aid and support of the killer, in an organized and systematic manner, and have succeeded in clothing him with the aura of Yale sponsorship and support," Paul Garland cut all ties with Yale, except for the Bonnie Garland Music Fund. ul

"I had never seen people bend that far backwards for an admitted murderer."

After a heavily publicized and highly tiona! positions on matters other than emotional trial, a Westchester jury its own activities."

Regarding the tremendous support convicted H errin of manslaughter, rather than murder, b ecause he was Herrin received from the Yale comacting under "extreme emotional dismunity, Chauncey said that if there is turbance," as described by the defense's any place where people should be alexpert witnesses. Herrin received the lowed to act according to their own maximum manslaughter senten ce of con sciences, it should be in a universieight-and-a-third to 25 years. He will ¡ ty.

"I understand Mr . Garland's procome up for parole in 1986. found loss," Chauncey said, "but you "If you have a $30,000 defense fund, have to separate that from the role that a Yale connection, and a clergy conthe University plays. You cannot prenection, you're entitled to one free vent individuals from speaking their hammer murder," Joan Garland was mind." quoted as saying after the trial.

Yale's position?

With members of the Yale community ¡ supporting Herrin , should Yale have made some statement supporting the Garlands and expressing its abhorrence of the brutal act?

In The Killing of Bonnie Garland, Gaylin seems to say yes. He believes the state must "do that w hich individuals find difficult to do, to maintain its primary con cern for life that was not lived." He repeatedly makes the point that once Bonnie Garland was killed, she ceased to exist, w hile her m urderer remained present as an object of compassion and sympath y. In this way, Gay lin writes, the murderer "usurps the compassion th at is justly his victim's due. He will steal h is victim's moral constituency along with her life."

Gaylin believes Yale should have done something more because "the mess, whether of their making or not, was on their doorstep. And that, like it ?r not, does require some institutional Involvement."

But H en ry Chauncey, Jr., Secretary of the University at the time, disagreed. "People like Gaylin don't understand the nature of the University as an institutio n ," he said. "A University should avoid taking institu-

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Nonetheless the question remains: were the dynamics of the situation such that silence by the Yale administration and action by me mbers of the Yale community, made it appear to some that the institution condoned the act, or was trying to stay clear of the scandal? Chauncey said the image question was never a factor. "Yale is not going to stand or fall on the actions of one of its alumni," he said.

In the course of briefing the Yale Corporation, Chauncey said he did mention the matter but "there was no discussion in a decision-making sense."

Neither Chauncey, nor Horace Taft,

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Dean of Yale College at the time, recalled any discussion in which the administration considered drafting a statement on the matter.

Yale's responsibility?

Chauncey and Taft also said they did not recall any effort to check back after the murder to see what had happened to Herrin and Garland while they were at Yale. This rai~es another question: What was Yale's responsibility for the events that preceded and possibly contributed to the murder? Is it possible, as Gaylin writes, that Yale contributed "an inadvertent but significant share to the tragedy" ?

Meyer and Gaylin both see Herrin as a minority student from a disadvantaged background who came to Yale where he was overwhelmed. "Richard was in culture shock from the beginning," Gaylin writes. He was also academically intimidated, and admitted in an interview with Meyer, "I gave up before I gave myself a chance."

Sociallv, Meyer writes, Herrin had a sense of being "subtly ostracized."

Thumbing through the pages of the Old Campus freshman directory, he "felt like an interloper coming to a formal dinner with a counterfeit invitation," Meyer writes.

At the time Herrin came to Yale, there were 30 Chicanos attending the school. He did not attend PROP, a special program now held to help minority students adjust to Yale before school begins .

"Should a university pursue an affirmative action program and insensitively assume that a boy from the barrio is no different from that young lad from Hotchkiss who brings his experience, his culture, his know-how, his friends, his manners, and his sense of self and place along with him to an environment that was designed for him by people like him?" Gaylin asks.

16 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

Father R ichard Russell, senior Chaplain at More House, and a supporter of Herrin, took issue with Gaylin. "I don't think Yale is as simple as the authors make it out to be. How do we define a minority? There are all kinds of people making all kinds of adjustments here." Russell said he disapproved of Gaylin's implication that it's wrong for an institution like Yale to take people w ho are going to be overwhelmed. ¡The only tangible sign of Herrin's problems was his poor academic ' record. He failed three courses in his first two years, and graduated only after taking a course and writing his senior paper over the summer. Herrin barely squeaked by, but Chauncey and Taft said they didn't know of any attempt on the administration's part after the murder to see if Herrin's residential college dean or facu lty advisor had sat him down and tried to find out what was wrong.

Again, Gaylin feels Yale could have done more: "Makeup examinations, incompletes, special exceptions, pushing through, and finally graduation despite incomplete work are not appropriate substitutes for awareness, supervision, guidance, and even discipline. He needed an institutional mother. Where is alma mater these days?"

Chauncey said that failures, TI's, and graduation contingent upon summer work are not at all unique at Yale, and are not necessarily a sign of deep emotional troubles. He adds that there is not necessarily any connection between Herrin's poor academic work and the forces that moved him to murder.

Yale may not p lay the role of an "institutional mother" but it does provide a support system of people students can go to for help- freshman counselors , residential college deans,

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faculty advisors, chaplains, and therapists at University Health Services. There are no statistics on the number of lives saved because the support system is working, University Chaplain John Vannorsdall said. It is an unseen and unsung network dependent not only on university workers but also on the troubled students themselves and friends who may guide them to someone who can help.

If Richard Herrin did not hook up with people who could help him it is indeed largely his fault . In an interview with Meyer, he said he was not sure what kept him from seeking help but there were certain feelings he was afraid to reveal to anyone, even Bonnie Garland.

In Herrin's case, Vannorsdall said, "' don't know anybody who had an inkling. How can you provide a support structure when there aren't any clues?"

Soul ...archlng If the Yale murder had occurred on the Yale campus during the school year, it would perhaps have been cause for more soul-searching. Last year when John Angel, a freshman in Davenport

College, died on November 20 after taking a combination of barbituates and alcohol, the Council of Masters took a serious look at Yale's alcohol policy. But during and after the trial of Herrin, there was little discussion of the matter on campus, according to Fenno Heath.

Although Yale may have had very little to do with the killing of Bonnie Garland, it could have at least taken the occasion to address issues this community needs to address over and over again. What is Yale's responsibility towards minority students? What is the proper balance between supervision and restriction? What ultimately determines the success or failure of support systems?

Without accepting blame or pointing fingers, the University community could perhaps have taken time to consider itself. That it did not, that some denied it had anything to do with Yale at all, is the small shame of this enormous tragedy.

•

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This stqry was wn"ttert by Andy Court, with reporting by Jim Lowe, and Lenny ~ker.

The New Joumal/September 10, 1982 17

'7

Ring out the old

J .D. LevlneiYa.. Dally Newe

No longer will tM Band drop trou on national t~lroision, as it did in the Brown game (1977).

W. Hampton Sides

It was the spring of 1981 and the Precision Marching Band was in a fix. It had been a bad year for the band, a "nadir" as President Giamatti had called it. Disgruntled alumni, in unprecedented numbers, had written angry letters to the administration and to the athletic department that year, accusing the PMB of everything from "cheap sadism" to "unfunny vulgarity."

The band's ofT-key halftime performances had infuriated New Haven residents, Connecticut football fans, and television networks alike. A Westport woman, for example, had

18 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

described one show she'd seen as â&#x20AC;˘ the most vulgar, tasteless , sickening display of filth that any of us have ever seen." She was probably referring to a show that had featured Handsome Dan, the mascot bulldog, lying in fetal position inside what appeared to be the uterus of a pregnant woman formation while the band solemnly played Bolero.

Such performances had virtually become the rule rathe"r than the glaring exception. Flashy articles and flaming letters about the band's shenanigans were appearing in local and regional papers, even The New York Tzmes. The

• • •

bring in the new

1980-8 1 PMB had won national notoriety for its X-rated shows, for its irreverence to the military and the White House, and for its obsession with phallic symbols.

That spring the administration was eyeing the flood of hate mail with considerable displeasure and not a little embarrassment. "We didn't want to get involved in censorship," recalled Dean o f Student Affairs David Henson, the man who had to read those letters.

"But people were really getting offended, usually by the sexual overtones" -thoughtful pause - •In some cases it was more than just an overtone." In May 1981, the Cou n eil of Ivy Presidents, discussed similar complaints about the racy halftime shows, and agreed to warn all the Ivy bands to clean up their material. University o fficials, including Henson, Associate Dean Martin Griffin, and President A. Bartlett G iamatti, made it clear that the PMB was not an essential ingredient to Yale football, and that, if the shows did not improve, the gridiron would be ofT limits.

What was more, the n ewly-selected drum major, a wild-eyed and clownish sophomore named David Polinsky, had caused quite a stir within the band. Why? For openers, Polinsky, who had spent most o f his life on a chicken farm in rural Connecticut, could not read music. Marching flamboyantly into his first audition wearing a battery-operated light-up bowtie and wielding a pink fluorescent golf club for a conducting mace, Polinsky seemed every bit as unorthodox as his predecessors. One instrumentalist remembered him as "loud, eccentric, happy-go-lucky Dave." The nettlesome question for the band was this: Could a musically-illiterate ham like Polinsky steer the PMB safely toward the new standards of self-censorship demanded by the administration? While others

Jeff lltrongfnle .... .-......

Drum Major Daoid Polinsky personijUd tJu &nd's '"niCe and ctmn• image at graduation last spring.

The New JournaVSeptember 10, 1982 19

''They would have loved for us to spell out 'funburger' on the field everytlme."

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crossed their fingers, Polinsky simply grinned from ear to ear and got to work.

That was the spring of 1981. Now it is the fall of 1982 and things have changed for the PMB. The band is bouncing back from a season that was nothing less than a raving success.

The flood of hate mail has diminished to a trickle. Dean Henson has praised Polinsky's PMB for cleaning up the smut. Athletic director Frank Ryan , who once had had grave doubts about the band, is all compliments. University band director Dr. Richard Thurston, the only official who reviews the PMB scripts, has all but packed away his blue pencil. In the course of a year Polinsky has gingerly accomplished the task of putting on the predictably rambunctious PMB shows while exercising just enough discretion to get by. What people have discovered is that, aside from being a nut, Polinsky is something of a politician.

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20 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

David Polinsky still can't read music, but he practically lives and breathes the Precision Marching Band this time of year. When he's not working on arrangements or formation charts or halftime scripts, he's reviewing Super-8 ftlms of last week's show or simply talking about the PMB over dinner. When he's not perched on a ladder madly conducting the band with his trademark golf club, he's down on the field scurrying through the formations, making sure that human circles and squares don't suddenly become human amoebas. When he's not rolling spiritedly down Chapel Street on Columbus Day in a little red wagon (the band following on roller skates), he's over on Giamatti's lawn Halloween night, throwing off his clothes into the cold while the President directs the Yale Precision Martian Band in a rendition of "The Stripper."

The fU"St thing that strikes you when you meet Polinsky is that he is obnoxiously loud- both vocally and visually.

His adam's apple is as big as a fist.

Perhaps it is the result of growing up with chickens. Polinsky, who has done a good bit of theatre at Yale, seems always to be on center stage, always a little louder and usually a little more

"We are quite capable of committing our own sins.

We don't need the sins of our forefathers on top of that." electrical than the others. His glaring eyeballs and his madman smile would convince you that he's just been struck by lightning.

But underneath the lightning bolt is a different Polinsky, the reserved and diplomatic drum major who cautiously walked the PMB along the edge of decorum last year-without falling off.

This is the Polinsky who carne in stressing "tasteful hilarity rather than bodacious vulgarity," the nail-biter, the moderate, the self-censor. "I personally want to die thinking about some of those old shows," grumbled Polinsky last May. He was congested after three weeks in bed with double pneumonia. "I think what happened was that the committee sat down every week and said, 'Let's write about sex,' and that's exactly what came out, no pun intended."

Polinsky wishes simply to forget about these "sex shows," as he calls them, to dissociate today's band from its notorious and controversial past.

"We are quite capable of committing our own sins," said Polinsky, lifting a steady finger. "We don't need the sins of our forefathers on top of that."

While the PMB may lapse momentarily into its o ld sinful ways from time to time, Polinsky makes it clear that certain things just will not be done anymore. No longer, for instance, will the band members drop their drawers on national television to expose bare legs and diapers (Brown, 1977); no longer will they fill the gridiron with a humongous "69" or do commemorations to Rene Richard's sex change; no longer will the Yale "Y" merge conspicuously with the Vassar "V." "The hard thing when we're writing a script," said Polinsky, "is that we can get carried away and start laughing our heads off. We can say some pretty impolite, rude , offensive, or just downright disgusting things without realizing it. Then later I have to say, Tm sorry guys, but there's no way in hell that we can put that over the P.A."'

Fine line of propriety So if blatant sex won't make it over P.A. anymore, what will? Where do Polinsky and script reviewer Dr. Thurston draw the boundaries

â&#x20AC;˘&metimes we have to teach the Band how not to march. "' of propriety? A good example of the a bit of a letdown. "To some people the fine line might be the "Tribute to bad ole days were the good ole days," Communism Show" during the Dart- said Dr. Thurston.

"The students really wanted the mouth game last October, alumni weekend. Broadcast regionally by raunch," chuckled Dr. Death while a ABC, the band formed a full-field new Frank Zappa song came over the hammer and sickle in praise of com- radio in his dark and musty room in munist institutions and suddenly un- Saybrook. "They would have loved for furled the official ABC sports banner, us to spell out 'furrburger' on the field which someone had "borrowed" from everytime. But the alums were right. the pressbox. The banner, coincicfen- Our shows were fLlthy and they were tally, was crimson red. So were the dumb. We were getting letters from people who were so irate you could see ABC technicians.

For the Princeton show the script the paper smouldering." committee had decided to do a sketch on Pac Man. As an opening line the Dr. Death scriptwriters had originally written, A senior music major last year who "Watch now as the Yale Precision now lives and works in New Haven, Marching Band gives new meaning to Death has this strange way of looking the words ¡~at me'." Realizing that the like he knows something you don't. It "eat me" might be pushing it, they sub- has something to do with his permitted to Dr. Thurston a preference manently cynical smirk, or his vacant list of possible sentence completions stare, or maybe with the fact that his starting with "eat me" and continuing thin, sheet-white face, framed in tinted on in descending degree of innuendo. John Lennon-style wirerims, never Thurston accepted number five on the changes expression when he talks. At list, "chew on this one." And so it was. the games he used to wear a floppy "Dr. Thurston is like God in the yellow hat with thunderbolts and a band structure," said Bob Parker, alias tight purple vestcoat studded with "Dr. Death," the halftime announcer plastic jewels. last year. "If he decides something is While no one could rightfully call not going in, it's not going in."

Death a "typical" PMB member, you'd Of course there were some people, be hardpressed to find one more particularly those in the student sec- fanatical. A testimony to his fanaticism tion, who had grown accustomed to might be last year's Harvard Game: So seeing the weekly halftime "sex shows," determined was Death to keep the topand who found the band's sterilization seciTt halftime script (most of which he The New Journal/September 10, 1982 21

"We're not out there to march precisely. We're out there to entertain."

had written) out of the reach of Hac.: vard spies, that he locked it away in h is personal computer account the week before The Game.

Parker's epithet, which has by and large displaced his real name, was coined four years ago: "I wore a black cape around freshman year and was just generally a weird person.

Somebody came up with 'Dr. Death' and it stuck." Death's greatest claim to fame, apart from reading the halftime scripts and just generally being a weird person, was playing the gigantic pipe organ in Wvolsey Hall for the Halloween Concert last year. Crouched over the organ with his long, spindly legs stabbing at the foot pedals and his wiry fingers climbing over the triple-deck keyboard, Death could have been the phantom of the opera. "It was the wildest thing I've ever done," he remembered. "There must have been 3,000 drunk and tripping people dressed in every wild outfit imaginable, and they were listening to every note I played."

Obligat ory jokes As last year's announcer, Death had . probably the most familiar voice on campus. Aside from a casual innuendo or a suggestive double entendre which might occasionally slide by, the Voice of Death stuck to broader themes of a less risque nature last year- themes like Reaganomics, or James Watt, or parents. But the band did observe what Dr. Death referred to as "obligatory" jokes. For example, tradition dictates that the band make at least some random reference to sheep during the Dartmouth show. It's sort of a conditioned response by now , a formality the band follows more out of habit than anything else. "These are just gratuitous sheep jokes," explained Death . "'God, they hate those. Every year we do one and every year you can hear the Dartmouth people squirming in their seats and screaming 'Oh no, not again!"'

Another "obligatory" joke is what Death described as the "token, belowthe-belt Princeton joke." The PMB, it seems, has had a bit of a vendetta against the Princeton band which goes back years. Like most feuds, no one knows exactly how it all started, but

the PMB claims that¡ Princeton has been singularly rude in the past, persistently eating into the PMB's limited time slot, and nearly ruining a show on one occasion. The "obligatory" Princeton joke varies from year to year, said Death, but it is invariably vicious, and it usually has something to do with turnpike exits and industrial smells.

With or without "obligatory" jokes, there are a number of Yale alumni and area fans who have tremendous problems simply with the concept of a satire band. It's not so much that they don't appreciate the PMB's humor as they don't consider the Yale Bowl the proper place for it. Even in the Ivy League, fans take their football seriously, and that includes the halftime show, "People gripe about what we're not more than what we are," said Dr. Thurston. One angry season-ticket holder had this to say in the New Haven RegÂŁster last fall: "Will the Yale administration ever get the hint that patrons of the games love to see the excellent marching bands coming from UConn, Navy, and others? . . . I think the poor showing of the Yale band is an insult to the prestigious Yale School of Music, and a reflection on the University in general . . . IfCarm Cozza and Yale want to be known as a football power- remember that the powerful Midwestern colleges are <nown for great football and great mar::bing bands. I say shame on Yale."

22 The New Joumal/September 10, 198:l

Fascist bands It has been said that if John Philip Sousa were to take an aerial glimpse of one of the band's formations, he'd bail out without a parachute. David Polinsky would be the first to admit the band's imprecision, but he has never been in sympathy with the traditional Big-10 bands, which he and others have summ arily called "fascist." "We're not our there to march precisely," said Polinsky," "We're out there to entertain. I don't ever recall being precise, and I don't remember doing much marching either. Sometimes we have to teach our freshman how not to march."

No one in his right mind h as ever tried to argue that the PMB marches better than the Big-10 bands. "Such a thing as the Yale Precision Marching Band would be impossible in the Midwest," said Dr. Thurston. But comparing, say, the Navy or the Air Force band to Yale's is about like comparing a copy o( National Geographic to Mad magazine. You just can't.

While the Navy band will march onto the field in spotless uniforms, waving flags and twirling batons in configurations so neat they make the yard lines look crooked, the PMB will crowd raggedly into the end zone for warmup calisthenics- finger push~ps, toe bends, swimming strokes, and jumping jacks. If the Air Force does a tribute to Freedom, complete with standard bearers and a jet air show, then the PMB will do one in honor of Communism , with jugglers, uni-

SUBSCRIB£ NOW To The 1982-83 Season -cyclists, and a junk yard's worth of props. While the opposing b a nd plays "R ocky" or "Star Wars," th e P MB plays "R ock Lobster" or ch ants th e "interception, con traception, stop -that-ball" cheer.

Does this irreverent hor seplay bother the other bands? Apparently not. After the Air Force game two years ago, several cadets in the band crossed over to the Yale sid e to congratulate the PMB for what oth ers h ad considered a particularly scathing show on the armed forces. "Some of the brass migh t have been m iffed," said D r. T hurston, who, coincidentally, had directed the A ir Force band before coming to Yale three years ago. "But they're usually a bunch of stuffed shirts. Maybe I'm just a kid at heart."

Recognition factor The band's near brush with censorship in 1980 raised some important questions about the PMB: Why do Yale and only a handful of other schools in the country (Brown, University of Chicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, P rinceton, and Stanford) have "unorthodox" bands? What does the presence of a phenomenon like the P MB say about the way Yale looks at football? And, who should the PMB ultimately try to e n tertain? T he students? The alumn i? The faculty?

The networks? The local fans?

"I have to p lay up to everybody," said Polinsky. "There's the administration, the athletic department, the alumni, even my mom and dad.

There's constantly the problem of the recognition factor. I mean how many people over 40 are going to identify with 'Purple Haze?' We have to spread our humour out pretty thin."

Detractors often seem to forget that the PMB differs greatly in its organization (and in its emphasis within the sports program) from the bands of the football powerhouses, which subordinate bands to the athletic department and award academic credit for band participation .. "At no time did we expect the band to follow the role model of the Big-10" said Dean Henson. At some schools, playing tuba for the band is roughly equivalent in time commitment to playing linebacker for the team. At Yale, where the band en-

For information caD (203) 787-4282 FREE ROUND TRIP BUS SERVICE leaves the Sheraton-Park Pl aza Hotel and Univers ity Towers Apartments in dow ntown New Haven promptly at 1:30 for the Wednesday m at inee; and 7:30 for Tuesday evening performances. No reservations necessary.

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joys complete independence from the athletic department, instrumentalists receive no credit and attend the games purely voluntarily. With a limited budget and little guidance from either the music school or the administration, the PMB will never march and play altogether precisely.

A balancing agent Some members of the band take the PMB's independence from Yale athletics a step farther; they see the band as a balancing agent, a neutralizer, to offset the seriousness with which many people treat football.

"People in the booth think the world moves when they take a shit," said Death, who, as the band's announcer, worked in the pressbox with ABC technicians, stats people, and football scouts. "We always tried to demonstrate to them how utterly stupid the game can be when they become that engrossed in yardage and first downs. ABC treated us like we were hired help."

George Cohen, a clarinet player in the band for four years, said it best: "It's a way of being irreverent. We're putting football in perspective. People take the game too seriously, and they forget how strange it is that 20,000 people come out every week to watch students beat heads together. The whole attitude toward the game at most colleges is totally wrong."

So aside from cutting up and cracking dirty jokes, you might say the Precision Marching Band has a nobler purpose. Maybe you could say the PMB is just an institutional gadfly whose job is to make people laugh at all the momentous things that American football and football halftime shows have become. Its duty is to remind us that football is in fact a game. And if there is to be a gadfly in college football, why shouldn't it be the PMB? After all, the game was invented at Yale .

For further information, call Bruce Kent at 203-432-4667 Monday evenings, 7:30-9:00 P.M.

24: The New Joumal/September 10, 1982

â&#x20AC;˘

W. Hampton Sides, a junior in Ezra Stilet, has written for Memphis Magazine. 1ft> u an Associate Editor of TN].

A weekly nuclear war Probably the most time-consuming, and certainly the most difficult part of putting on a PMB show is producing a script that works. Few people are aware of the innumerable headaches invested in each three-minute halftime text. Tempers often flare out of laughter during the weekly scriptwriting sessions as 15 cantankerous comedians try to defend their own puns, jabs and jests. Bob "Death" Parker, last year's announcer, described the meeting as "a weekly nuclear war." The scriptwriters can tread heavily on each other's emotions when they tread lightly on each other's jokes.

"Sometimes people believe that if you don't think they are funny, then it means they're lepers," Death remarked.

The writers quarrel· line by line, bargaining for jokes and puns as if they were Wall Street commodities. This line is too suggestive, that one too cliche; this joke is stale, that one too lengthy. Finally they arrive at a script they consider suitable. Barring a few minor "adjustments" by drum major David Polinsky or band director Richard Thurston, the script is complete. The writers are confident that they've created something good, but it remains to be seen on Saturday how a crowd as large and as varied as the Yale Bowl (and maybe a TV audience) will receive it. Only when the laughter comes do they know they've succeeded.

The following are excerpts from some of last year's most successful shows, selected from the PMB file: Good Afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen. We of the Yale Precision Marching Band would like to respond to a recent WICH radio sports show editorial. Dick Galliette was right. We are responsible for the Princeton Band not being allowed to go to West Point.

It was our fault. We admit it. We also accept responsibility for the assassination of Anwar Sadat, President McKinley, and Julius Caesar. And we also killed thousands of Cambodians.

And bombed London. And caused the ' Black Plague. We're fl.lthy, perverted, and disgusting. And do you know what else? Next week, the entire Soviet Union will explode-engineered solely

by . . . The Yale . . . Precision . . .

Marching . . . Band! .Yes, we've been told to clean up our act. In the past we used to form ftlthy, disgusting formations, like this one: Q Look at this formation. What would your analyst say about it? What would your mother say about what you're thinking? This is dirt! This is ftlth!

This is unconscionable! But wait-

0

This new formation is clean. This formation is nice. This formation is only . . a cigar.

First Russia went Communist and it was a big deal. Then China went Communist and all the people who weren't communists had to go to a tiny island and make T.V . sets. Then Cuba went Communist and Miami went Cuban. Now, in solidarity with the workers of the world, it's, The Yale ...

Precision . . . Marching . . . Band.

We take you now to Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska.

"Hey, what's that button?"

"I don't know, YOU push it!"

"I'm not gonna push it, YOU push it!"

"I'M not gonna push it!"

"Hey, let's get Ronnie! He'll push anything!"

"He pushed it! Hey Ronnie! You know what happened? You just launched . . . The Yale . . . Precision .. Marching . . . Band!!"

President Reagan has been in office for almost a year now, and already the opposition has broken into distinct factions. There's the "I'm in charge here!"

Alexander Haig faction, and the "It was all just a joke anyway" David Stockman faction. Now that Reaganomics is making it more profitable to be wealthy, and Nancy Reagan's hairdresser makes more than most college presidents, conspicous consumption is back in vogue.

Another example of conspicuous consumption is the James Watt •Let's use it all up RIGHT NOW" school of thought; or, as the song says, "This land was paved for you and me." Did

you know that the Russians have a hole outside of Gorky which is five times bigger than anything we have in America? We're losing the race to rape the land! After all "guns don't kill people, TREES kill people!"

Yes, today our subject is amazingly topical. We're talking about parents -your's, m1ne, everyone's . . . Don't be embarrassed- we all have them.

Some are more trouble than others.

And what about Oedipus. A fine upstanding young man, killed his father, slept with his mother, poked his eyes out, and then had to wait 2500 years for Freud to come along and tell him why he did it. Why ask Freud? We could have told him that if you do it you'll go blind. ("I Only Have Eyes For You") Well, that last episode was a little gross. You want to hear about a nice, clean, historical American family? We take you know to a small, sleepy suburb, where we meet the Cleaver family, starring Hugh Beaumont, Barbara Billingsley, To~y Dow, and special guest Lizzie Borden as the Beaver.

In today's episode, Lizzy chops· Mommy and Daddy up into little tiny pieces . . . "He!lo Mrs . Cleaver.

Where is the Beaver?" "Oh, hi Eddie.

Beaver took the deaver upstairs. He's giving his father 40 whacks. He's such a .cut-up. Would you like some milk and cookies, Eddie?"

Russia isn't the only great Communist country in the world. Over one quarter of the world's population is Chinese and one billion Chinese can't be Wong. The only trouble with Communism in China is that half an hour after you revolt, you're hungry again.

Since becoming a Communist country, it's been hard to get into China.

We tried to penetrate the great wall, but if Ghengis couldn't do it, nobody Khan.

Comrades- UNITE. For when the revolution comes around, all the Eggheaded Leftist Intellectuals, or ELI, will Eliminate Leftover Imperialists, or ELI.

•

The New journal/September 10, 1982 25

.

¡The jungle journey of Leopold Pospisil or how the Papauans refuted Marx

courteey of Leopold f'oec>lslllf'Mbody M-m

Professor Leopold Pospisil poses with Kapauku .frimd.

Geoff Hayward

It must have been a strange sight- five

hundred Stone Age warriors leading a well-clothed European through the rain forests of New Guinea. Certainly, it was SJrange for the warriors who, before this, had never seen a "modern man " But, also strange for Leopold Posp1 -;il, a Yale anthropology student doing research for his doctoral thesis.

On this expedition into the Kamu Valley of West New Guinea, he uncovered a tribal confederation still untouched by the modern world. For

26 The New JoumaVSeptember 10, 1982

thirteen months, he lived isolated with the Kapauku Papauans gathering data on their economy, politics and laws.

His fmdings would later raise serious doubts about Marxist representation:. of "primitive society."

Almost thirty years since that first trip in 1954, Leopold Pospisil is still continuing his research. Now an accomplished professor of anthropology at Yale, he returns to New Guinea every few summers to study how a Stone Age people adjusts to an atomic

"When we came to the Debal Valley, the people didn't know whether they should kill us or not ..."

era. His detailed observations have led him to contradict anthropologists wh o tout "primitive communism," and "leaderless egalitarian societies." He questions those who claim that the advance of society is "economically determined."

Born and raised in Czechoslovakia, P ospisil suffered an intellectuallystifling education dominated by Marxist dogma. Later, when fighting in the resistance against the Nazis, he became all the more aware of the risks of allowing one man's theories to dominate the minds of a nation. This background has profoundly influenced his research. It is characterized by an almost obsessive empiricism and a long-standing disdain for the concoctions of armchair theoreticians. So it was that when he arrived at the rudiments of a theory of law, he decided to test his ideas against first-hand experience.

He went to study the Eskimo, the Hopi Indians, the Tiroleans of Europe, and, in 1954, the Kapauku Papauans, a people uninfluenced by contempory legal ideas. "When we came to the Debai Valley," Pospisil said, "the people didn't know whether they should kill us or not- they had killed everybody else before. And so, there was a big discussion lasting about half a day with them and then they finally decided to let me go through.

T hey said, 'Alright we'll let you go through, but our neighbors further deep in the Debai are real bastards.

They would kill you, so we are going to give you two hundred warriors to protect you.' So, I went deeper into the valley and the pattern was repeated.

The next people said, 'Alright we'll let you through but the neighbors are real{, bastards, so we give you protection of a hundred more people . So, I appeared on the edge of the Kamu valley with about five hundred or six hundred warriors. It was like a b1g invasion.

Pospisil in the marktplace.

And there, underneath, there was about five or six thousand people waiting for me-just an unbelievable multitude."

Here in the Kamu valley, Pospisil was warmly received by a tribe since known as the Kapuaku Papauans. The Headman offered to provide him with food and lodging and to teach him the Kapauku language. Pospisil gladly accepted, deciding to stay with these peopie and confine his studies to their culture.

Despite the apparent calm of the Headman , most of the natives rem a ined both transfixed and terrified

by Pospisil. Large groups would follow his every move, but would flee in all directions if he ever approached them.

Some of the most brave would come up to touch him . Pospisil later discovered that they wanted to find out if his ligl t color was just painted on. In these first few weeks, he was much less of an observer than something to be observed.

The first days "When you are exposed to five or six thousand people wh o just ogle you and watch your every movemen t, you can't even go to the forest to relieve yourself.

And so this was quite a ch ore, the first day.

"The second day I woke up abou t six o'clock in the morning and the su n was not yet up. This is a most beau tiful time of the day; the b irds were singing and chirping and everything else was absolutely q u iet. I thought, 'It is a teerific thing after the big meeting last night. It's nice to be alone.' So I opened the tent and walked out, and my God, I was facing abou t eight thousand peopie sitting there absolutely quiet and staring at the ten t. The reaction of the people would be sim ilar- maybe more shocking for them than for us, if a flying saucer would land on New H aven Green."

Pospisil kept u p an u n tiring effort to learn the language. Kapauku is ex-

The New Journal/September 10, 1982 27

"They said I was covering up for our Immortality."

The Kapauku Papauans of New Guinea prepan'ng for a pig feast celebration. ceedingly complex, much more so than any contemporary European language. But having at that time six other languages already under his belt, Pospisil picked up the language fairly quickly. After five months he had gotten to the point where he could understand even when the Kapauku talked amongst themselves.

Having learned the basics of the language, he discovered that the natives were more frightened of his clothing than of him. Once he stripped to his shorts, and they saw that he had limbs like theirs, they began to accept him more easily. But now, his clearly visible white skin supported other misconceptions.

"I found out," he said, "that they regarded me as immortal. 'White man is immortal, he doesn't die.' Now, there was a big argument. I said we did die and they didn't believe me. Then I found out the reason they "scientifically" thought we didn't die was because of our light skin. The only lightskinned animals they had in their environment were small crayfish. The crayfish sheds its shell and becomes soft and pink. The shell then hardens and is shed again periodically. They believe that in this way the crayfish rejuvenates itself; the soft pinkish shellfish are like the babies of Kapauku. So, they believed that the

crayfish was the only ammal around that was immortal because of this cycling. And they claimed the same was true of me. I said, 'This is nonsense.

We die, we get killed by accidents or by force, in wars, or we die of old age and disease like you do.' No, they wouldn't believe me. They said I was covering up for our immortality.

"Then what happens to me? I tan, so I started to get brown. They say, 'Aha! You see-you lied to us. Now you are getting brown like the crayfish.' Indeed, I went to New Guinea straight from New Haven, and as always happens to me when I first go in the sun and overdo it, I burned and I peeled .

So, first exposure to the sun, I got red then I got brown, and they say, 'Aha, now you will peel,' and, indeed, I did.

So that was a cinch; I was lying to them and we were immortal, and I was covering up for our immortality."

Unveiling a culture Normally, the Kapauku are a practical people, not interested m such complicated reasonings. But, a few of the oldest men who spend time contemplating the nature of the universe offered Pospisil their explanation of nature.

The earth is a flat b lock of soil and stone infinitely deep. The sun is a ball of fire , and the moon is a cool ball giv-

28 The New JoumaVSeptember 10, 1982

¡

courtesy of Leopold Posplaii/PNbody Mu-..m

ing off light like that of fire flies. The sun and moon range across a solid inverted bowl. In day time, the sun travels from east to west just underneath the surface of the bowl. At night, the sun travels back over the bowl. The sun's light shines through a number of perforations in the bowl which we call "stars."

The Kapauku's ingenious natural philosophy is accompanied by perhaps the most primitive technology in the world today. They are without pottery , painting or written language. They remember the past with the aid of knotted strings. Otherwise, their technology is limited to bow making and net weaving. They can calculate to the hundreds of thousands but make use of this ability only in market place transactions. Nonetheless, Pospisil found occasion to be thankful for the scientific accomplishments of his hosts.

"Once I scratched my lower right leg and developed what you call a tropical ulcer," he said "The same day I had huge swelling and got down with a bad fever from the terrific infection in my leg. So I wanted to operate on myself ¡ with a Gillette blade. The natives saw that I wanted to cut through my leg and screamed 'For heavens sake, you would cut your vein.' They asked me, 'Do you know how to cut a leg?' I said no. 'Well,' they said, 'you are a fool to

If a native of the Debal Valley visited New Haven, Pospisil suggests, "He would call us dirty socialists."

cut yourself, we'll get you an expert- a doctor.' So they got him, and he came with two helpers, two husky, very muscular fellows. One sat down and held me from behind, incapacitating my arms; the other sat on my thighs and fixed my legs to the ground. Then the doctor started to operate with stone flint chips which he chipped in front of me. When I asked him , 'Why do you chip a new knife, you certainly have old chips?' He said, 'The old chips are bad because there is an evil spirit o n them.' Well, just clever people, and I was more confident after he told me that.

"He started to operate. Now I was very apprehensive about the opera· tion, that is, I expected terrific pain.

The fantastic thing was how clever they were at inflicting the least pain without any anesthetic. He cuts through making a short instantaneous cut and then withdraws. I t was like pricking with a needle, I was jerking, but before I could scream, the knife was withdrawn.

"So in this way he slowly worked himself right to the bone. Then he stuf· fed the thing with crushed leaves from a plant, and then sealed it. He cured me; in about ten days and I was walking. Other people, friends of mine with tropical ulcers, had their legs i11 a bucket for half a year incapacitated with this." ·

Money over Marx When Pospisil first went to New Guinea, anthropology was still a study o f dichotomies: modern versus primitives, civilized versus barbaric, logical versus prelogical. The theories of political thinkers such as Marx and Durkheim still dominated the field .

The Marxist dialectic of history presents neolithic society as a leaderless, prim1t1ve communism , without private property or division of labor. While Pospisil did not accept en· tirely the Marxist portrait of Stone Age culture, he did expect to find the natives' very p rimitive technology would accompany a very primitive economy.

One of the biggest surprises of his research was the discovery that the K apauku had a highly advanced market economy. Contrary to Marxist

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prediction, he uncovered a highly individualistic wealth-oriented society with true money and rigid contractual obligations. Natives gain prestige and political power not through bravery in combat or skill in religious ceremonies, but almost entirely through the acquisition of wealth.

Money is the medium of almost all contractual obligations. A young man pays heavily for his bride. The only limitations to the number of brides he may take is the number he can afford.

If his brother dies, he must pay all those who mourn over the grave. Since the death caused the mourners grief, they have a right to demand-compensation. Everything from parcels of land, to wild pigs, to the paths of the forest are owned by individuals. In fact, Pospisil concludes, Kapauku society is far more individualistic than contemporary American society. If a native of the Kamu Valley visited New Haven, suggests Pospisil, "he would call us dirty socialists."

Rigid divisions of labor dictate different chores depending on the age and sex of the worker. Strict taboos prevent women from entering men's quarters, eating food reserved for males, or engaging in male rituals. Should a woman try to break these taboos, the natives believe she will cause the death of her husband. And if the woman's husband dies under such circumstances, she may be held legally responsible and could suffer execution as a result.

Beyond the strict age/sex labor divisions there is room for specialization.

Pospisil saw the equivalents of professional lawyers, dentists, doctors, merchants and even professional embezzlers. Ail this is a far cry from the Marxist vision of collective and egalitarian society.

"I said if I had to put a label to it, I would call it 'primitive capitalism,' and that of course enraged them all," Pospisil said. "Not because the statement was unjustified, but because it fights their theories, their convictions.

Marxism is actually a religion to these anthropologists -let's be clear about that. It's just not science what they're practicing, it's just the antithesis of science . . . . What I found was just the opposite of what you read about

YALE REPERTORY THEATRE 1982/1983 SEASON savages and collectivism and the nonsense of egalitarian society. This is all hogwash, very often propogated by anthropologists who have never seen a primitive man.

"I don't fight Marxist theory, you see, because it is like fasc ist theory or like Nazi theory, or even capitalistic theory. T hey are ethnocentric theories d reamt up by people with a limited knowledge of the universe and of m ankind. In physics, you don't bother with wild models of the universe and of mankind. In the same way, a true anthropologist doesn't bother with such theories. Of course, we have Marxist, Fascist and Nazi anthropologists here and there. So social science is where physics and biology used to be in the sixteenth century. We do not yet distinguish between alchemists and chemists. You see it is all mixed up and usually it is the social alchemist who becomes the superstar while the chemist is hidden, not well understood and even looked down upon . The huge theories come forward and usually the huge theories are nonsense."

The new opiate The "religious influence" of Marxists in anthropology might be compared to the influence of the Creationists in biology; dogmas of the nineteenth centu ry still permeate the ranks of influential social anthropologists. Pospisil's quarrel is not with the "great thinkers" themselves, but with those who blindly parrot their works as gospel. He rejects the belief that by idle speculation one can uncover "laws" that govern social development.

Pospisil's follow up studies were almost as revealing was his first trip.

He witnessed a Neolithic people thrust through thousands of years of development. Since his first trip, the policies of the Dutch colonial government towards New Guinea changed radically. The natives lost an important part of their culture when the government prohibited warfare between tribes.

Modern medicine resulted in overpopulation and over cultivation of the land. Twice the natives rose up to fight against forced integration.

Pospisil maintains that the changes in Kapauku culture over the last three decades provide evidence to contradict

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Marx's theory of economic determinism. Mcsrx's theory claims that the manner in which goods are produced will dictate the religion, laws and politics of a people. The evolution of Kapauku culture, Pospisil argues could not have been motivated primarily by economic factors.

Neighboring villages often developed in different ways even though they shared a common economy.

In one particularly striking example, Pospisil describes how a headman modified the incest taboo in his village.

The motivation of the headman was simple- he fell in love with two of his second paternal cousins and decided to marry them. To lessen the effect of his crime, he made a law permitting such marriages. The new law was accepted and had far reaching effects, eventually altering even the physical structure of the village. The change could not have been economically determined, because the community shared its economy with surrounding villages which did not change their incest taboos. Pospisil argues that the law was accepted only because of the particular political and historical situation of the Botukebo community.

Although Pospisil could not prevent the many upheavals in Kapauku culture, he did much to avert its total destruction. His books include complete collections of their songs, myths, and legends. His works describe native dance, ritual and natural philosophy.

His book Kapau.ku and their Law became the official source of native law used by the Dutch colonial government in judging disputes, but when Indo· nesians took over, Pospisil was banned from New Guinea for opposing government policy toward the natives.

Pospisil's last visit to the Kamu Valley was in the summer of 1979. He no longer sees anything odd about living with Stone Age people. He still nolds strong ties with the Kapauku , counting among them several close friends and forty two adopted sons. As he looks forward to his next expedition into the rain forests of New Guinea, his reasons are perhaps as personal as they are scientific .

•Geoff Hayward, a smior in Davmport, is an A ssociate Editor of TNJ .

32 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

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Profile

Blond, blue-eyed and . . .

Maggie Jackson When Michael Ives began modeling during his sophomore year at Yale, everyone in the business told him he looked too Waspish to succeed. He was blond, blue-eyed and preppie. But though his features were classically handsome, they were softly askew, as though sculpted by a gentle hand As he opened his mail o ne morning, he paused to flip through a glossy catalogue. Each page he turned to revealed a picture of himself. In one, he was draped on a leather couch and he gazed at the camera, pouting.

Beneath, a quote from Calvin Thompson read, "Living well is the best revenge." In another, he posed beside a roaring fire, wearing a leathertrimmed jacket and clasping a shotgun casually. Beneath, Herman Melville was quoted, "They talk of the dignity

of work. Bosh. The dignity is in the leisure." He flipped through the pages, commenting on one or two as if criticizing a stranger.

Pinned on the wall above him was a Dior ad which he had done last year.

The overhead shot pictured him lying on a tussled bed beside a woman wrapped in fur with his head to her feet. They were laughing. A silk scarf was stretched tightly between them-one end in his teeth, the other in her hands . "It was fun to do," he said, "a fantasy, but not the kind of picture I would cherish."

He showed me around the honeycomb offices of the $14 million modeling agency. Rows and rows of framed Vogue and Glamour' covers hung upon the president's office wall, along with M1chael's December 1980 Gmtlnnan's

courtesy of

MichMl b1es found a job without any help from Carter Advisory.

34 The New Joumal/SeptC"mber 10, 1982

~llo

Spo<ts-

"They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. The dignity Is In the leisure."

Quarterly cover, and his November 1981 Linia Uomo cover. Michael was the only male model in the collection.

The honor of being the 'top' model in the business is somewhat arbitrary, th ough, Michael said. "It's just like in an y business dependent on public opinion, like the recording business. If you and I had a band, we could write and sing beautiful songs, but until someone decided that we are 'it' we wouldn't be anything. We have control in that we can do our best, but until someone decides to make you, you are nothing."

Leaving the agency, we headed for his assignment, a shooting for B. Altman's spring collection. Catalogues comprise two-thirds of his schedule. At Yale where Michael majored in English, rowed crew and considered teaching, he never thought that in his first full year after graduation in 1980, he would earn over $100,000.

This year he will make even more.

"I remember two years ago, when I was discovered," he said. "Dan Deeley, the head of the men's division, told me: 'A year from now you're not going to be able to walk down the street without feeling self-conscious. People will point at you and you'll be working everyday.'

I never thought it would happen but he was right."

c:ourteey of Reelllo Sports-r

From perfectly preppie to super sultry, praying or pouting, lves personifies tlu I vy League look.

ing. I never get away from it, unless I stay home."

"Do people treat you like the image you project in magazines?"

"Well, they automatically assume that I am conceited," he said. "But ¡ when I talk to them then they are much nicer and more responsive. Then they Instant recognition People often approach him and ask admit, 'God, I expected you to be such an asshole.'" 'aren't you Michael Ives?' In We arrived at an unobtrusive restaurants, he often has to wait a little longer for a table because the maitre d ' building on 42nd street. In the cramped third floor hall, he knocked hotel wants to seat him in front.

"D an once told me : 'I don't want to on a soiled wooden door where a small see you getting drunk in public.' I nameplate was tacked w h ich read, understand why he said that now. The "Maury Hammond." In a moment, the who le market is my public appeal. The door was opened by a short , balding reason that I am able to work a lot is man with a slight paunch wearing that clien ts have found that my picture faded designer jeans. Maury ushered will sell their product to the public. us in and shuffied back to his seat in his When I go out, in effect, I am work- make-shift corner office. As we en-

tered, another male model, who resembled a well-built doll with angular features, precise hair and wide eyes, was preparing to leave. He wrapped an aviator scarf nonchalantly about his neck and complimented Michael's hair.

"What did you do with it?" Maury asked.

Michael smiled, "I didn't do anything. Someone else cut it for me."

In a raspy voice, Maury began to complain of models who cut their hair after the first session of a two-day shoot and returned the next day looking complerdv different.

The l>tylist, a tnm woman v.tth a maternal air, gave Michael his first outfit from the racks of clothes.

Designer and department clothes, after-five and after-'lki wear, play and

The New Journal/September 10, 1982 35

"I can see that men don't always appreciate having me around."

work suits hung on th,e racks, each piece still tagged. Mtchael doesn't mind that he can't keep the clothes, since he is two inches taller than most models and can barely fit into most l)amples anyway. While he was ch an· ging, the stylist ironed a handkerchief deftly, placed it in a suit pocket anc reached for her pins. When he ·came out, she straightened his collar an• smoothed his shirt briskly.

Upon page thirty of B. Altman's Sprin g Catalogue, Michael Ives wears a cotton sweater in striped pastels, and tan chino pants. The camera would not, however, capture his rolled up cuffs, which haphazardly revealed his own white socks and battered moccasins.

After snapping two Polaroids for the lay-outs, Maury took his camera and began to roam back and forth. He worked in silence. Only the whirl of his electric shutter was heard against the soft tones of the piped-in muzak.

Michael perched on the edge of a white wooden cube, resting his elbow. His face froze in a rapid sequence of expressions- boyish grin, pensive stare, energetic laugh, sullen profile, like sli~es clicking on a projection screen.

Later, I asked him what he thought about during the sessions.

"I knew you would ask that," he laughed. "Nothing."

After half an hour, Maury paused, scratched his head, uttered a sigh, and the assistant changed the position of the wooden blocks. Now, Michael leaned back, rested both elbows, and faced the camera. H e asked, "Are my hands OK?" Maury shrugged. "That's fine." Each rime Michael moved, the stylist jumped up to smooth his sweater or his sleeve.

I wondered what the other models were like.

"How can I generalize?" he said, "What are the students at Yale like?

courtesy of Michael lves

In 1979, Ives rowed third seat with the heavyweight crew which won the Henky They're all so ditferent . . . Modeling certainly has a mystique about it. I think that's just because models are young kids who have a lot of money, do a lot of drugs and start going to fancy places and become the Beautiful People. Most of them are boring .as shit, and stupid, too. But that's true in any business."

"Is there a lot of competition between models?"

"It feels pretty competitive at times.

We don't compete for jobs, but to see who works more. A lot of it is unsaid, _ but I feel it. People will joke about it a lot, but underneath there's a hint of animosity."

"What is the most dangerous trap for a model?" I asked.

"Believing your own publicity," he said. "If you start to believe that you're special, and a lot of people in this business do, then you're in trouble.

Because you're not. There are a lot of people in modeling who don't have a humble bone in their bodies."

"Do you feel powerful?"

"No, I don't feel powerful. I guess other people assume that you are.

You're it. You personify taste and class and style. Sometimes it is scary, because ad men know that just power will sell. They show the guy who has the power, who is the center of attention. It'~ funny to be part of this

36 The New journal/September 10, 1982

Re.~atta.

advertising world, but it has always been interesting to me. But I know that it's not real. As you just saw, they pin the clothes and nothing fits and they have to cut the shoes so that my feet will fit in. I know it's all fake." We said goodbye to Maury and departed.

From a newsstand on the street, Michael purchased a copy of the March issue of Gentleman's Qyarterly. We sat on the steps of the Public Library, looking through the articles instructing men how to be "On the Go," have an "Ultimate Scrub-Down," or be "Born Again" after an "Eleven Month Tuneup." The ads spoke in virile superlatives of "conquering time," "having an edge on the competition" and "adding life to your style."

On pages 50-55, he found the ads he had done in South America last January for Henry Grethal fashion. In each two-page spread, he and four other models were striding toward the camera confidently, smiling widely, their hands in pockets. Thick fertile palms stood in the distance. "It looks beautiful," he said, "but actually it was 100° in the shade, and we were drenched in sweat. We were pretty sick, as a matter of fact, because of the squalor and dirt of the place. See that woman?" He pointed to a beautiful blonde with a vivacious grin. "She just got out of the hospital last week after

contracting a fever in South America."

"Henry Grethal Designs Sportswear Collections with Spirit," the ad proclaimed.

"Has modeling affected your relations with women?" I asked.

"No, not really . . . people treat me differen!}y. When I go out at night, though, .I cansee that men don't always appfeciate having me around. I found that at Yale too."

Legendary ladles man Members of the Yale crew team would not be surprised to learn that Michael is regarded as a ladies _man in New York; his popularity in Florida one spring break is still a legend. In his 1 senior year, Michael stepped off the bus in Tampa, and was approached by a girl named Tammy. She had seen him rowing a year earlier and had fallen for hiin. For the whole year, she had kept his picture and waited for his return. "I wouldn't say that she attacked him but she certainly tried to get to know him pretty fast. They saw each other for the two weeks of vacation," said Hal Evans, a heavyweight who rowed with Michael for two years.

"He got along well with men, for someone who spent a lot of time with girls," Evans said. "Crew is a classic test of one's ability to get along with guys. You can't be a prima donna or a complainer." Another member of the team who was competing for the number five seat said Michael was too nice a guy. Usually, on the water he was quiet, but always had a sense of humor. "We were never sure whether he was psyched or not. He acted almost nonchalant," said Evans.

The year .in which he .pegan to model, the yarsity boats competed at Henley, and Mike rowed in the number five seat. His coach, Tony Johnson, a lean, relaxed man who has been at Yale since 1970, said, "Michael had a lot of athletic ability and responded to

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the competition and difficult situations with an inner strength." Although Johnson felt that M ichael had to adjust to the demands of modeling, work and rowing, and make some sacrifices, he doesn't believe that modeling detracted from his performance in the boat.

Michael never spoke of his modeling unless someone asked him, and although curious, the team rarely did.

In fact, it puzzled Hal Evans that Michael became a model after graduation: "It seems like a lot falls into Mike's lap."

Fairy tale discovery

"I'm sony guys, but there's no way In hell that we can put that over the P.A."

TheNewJournal The facts beyond the faces 38 The New JournaUSeptember 10, 1982

Michael was surprised that I hadn't heard the story of his discovery. "I was painting houses one summer o n Martha's Vineyard after my freshman year and a Vogue photographer named Bruce Weber came up and asked, 'would you mind if we took your picture?' I asked him how much he would pay me, and he told me $60 for the day.

That was a lot of money. Later, after I d id a five page men's section for Vogue in April of my sophmore year, I was home for two days between Eastern Sprints and training for the Harvard Race in May. Bruce Weber called on Sunday night and said, 'Michael, I want you to fly down to New York tomorrow, so that we can do some pictures for Valentino.' When I told him that I couldn't afford to do that, he said they would pay for the day. I figured that he meant $60 again, so I said, 'the plane is $45 each way and I have to be back tomorrow anyhow to go to Connecticut . . . 'He said, 'Look, we'll pay you $500 to come d own.' '$ 500,' I said, 'Are you kidding?' So I went down in a hurry. The same day I met Dan, we got along well, and he offered me work in New York anytim e. W hen summer rolled around, I called up and said, 'were you serious about that offer? Can I come to New York?' So I did. And

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Blondes prifer this gmtlmuzn. that's my story. I'm a discovery. I'm a fairy tale, they say."

"But why did you turn to modeling full-time after Yale?" I asked.

"Well, it was so easy, I mean it was right there. I had a couple of teaching offers, but you can't make a living doing that. I figured that I could do it for a little while, and quit anytime. Also, there was no reason not to do it, and I kind of wanted to see what would happen."

I wondered if a model's lifestyle was addictive; you get a little, and you always want more.

"Not for me," he said. "At first I hesitated terribly, and the people at the agency couldn't believe that I had gone back to school. In a way, that became part of my appeal, the fact that I had gr~duated from Yale. I get a lot of mileage out of it."

"Do the self-serving aspects of

modeling bother you?"

"That's just something I have to accept. What can I do about it? After all, they are paying me, so I am taking as much advantage of them as they are of me."

Price of success "Sometimes," he continued, "I wish that a bus would go by and break my nose and I would have to quit, because the novelty has really worn ofT. "At first, it was really exciting, but now it is really work."

I asked if the work has increased his confidence.

"No, I have gotten more insecure if anything. I am not a terribly insecure person, I think, but this job can make one very insecure. I am spoiled, as I said; I have had it easy, and thi:~gs have gone well but if I don't work tor two ~r three qays, I start to wonder,

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what's the matter with me?"

"Don't you th ink th at's because of the pressure?"

"No, the pressure is really off me now. At first, it was p ressured . . .

When I was in my heyd ay last year, work ing everyday for GQ, Glamour, or Vogue, Dan said to me, 'It's great right now, you're getting a lot of recognition, you feel good , you're making a lot money but soon you are not going to be the new top guy.

You're going to be up th ere still, maybe making more money, but your n ame won't be on th e tip of everyone's tongue.' H e was right, and all of a sudden, I wasn't th e new guy."

"That must h ave been depressing," I said.

"No, not really. It happened so gradually that I wasn't depressed. I was just imp ressed that he had such foresight. I am making more money now. The magazines pay $200 a day, and other designers pay $2000."

"That won't be easy to give up," I said.

"It will be hard to take me away from it. I always think that would be the easiest way. Sometimes I have regrets. I wish that I h adn't done this, or that I was building a future. This l.e ads you nowhere. That's sort of the justification for being paid a lot.

Modeling ends and it's a temporary job. There really is not a future in it, unless you want to be an actor. But I don't want to do that. This will lead to something, I think. I don't worry about it, because everything just seems to fall into place. It will work out. I know it will."

â&#x20AC;˘

Maggu Jackson, '82, is former arts editor of The Yale Daily News. She worked this summer at the Modern Media Institute, in

St. Petersburg, Florida.

40 The New Journal/September 10,

19~2

¡.

Sports .

"Ivy League football fans [have] the same frustrations competitively as the VIc¡ tortans had sexually."

Add an A, end an era Greg Myre

After a century of football with over 700 victories at collegiate ~rt's highest level, Yale will enter a new era a week from tomorrow when the Bulldogs begin the 1982 season, their first outside the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) highest division, 1-A. Yale and the rest of the Ivies were demoted to Division 1-AA last December.

Since then no one in the Ivy League, from administrators to coaches to players, has come out in favor of being in Division 1-AA. Even as a rule adopted by the NCAA in December becomes accepted, it remains a sore spot, especially at Yale, where the Bulldogs have consistently beaten 1-A teams outside the Ivy League . Yet the demotion to 1-AA marks both the culmination of long-standing Ivy policies that have de-emphasized football and the beginning of a new era that may cause those in charge of Ivy policy to re-evaluate their traditional positions.

From a national perspective, the Ivies as a group do not belong in Divi-

sion 1-A. They have been a steadily declining football force for the last quarter century. Last season , the eight Ivy schools produced a combined record of six wins and 18 losses against teams outside of the Ivy League. Yale alone accounted for three of those victories.

"The Ivy League is in another world all its own," said Penn State coach Joe Paterno at the NCAA meeting that dropped the Ivies from I-A. â&#x20AC;˘rm in the real world," he added.

Ivy administrators purposely created this situation which made their teams less than competitive. When the Ivy League was officially formed, it formulated guidelines concerning the scholastic indifference, and the win-atall-costs philosophy found in many big-time football programs. Administrators effectively put limits on Ivy football programs by forbidding athletic scholarships, abolishing spring football practice, and not allowing Ivy schools to participate in post-season ball games.

These policies, which have isolated

The New Journal/September 10, 1982 41

"Our f~tbail pr~ra.mâ&#x20AC;˘ .are going to suffer If we don't fight this."

the conference from the realities of bigtime football in an attempt to protect it from the abuses found in many major college programs, have had their effect on the teams' performances. The Ivies are consistently thumped by nonleague opponents, not because of a lack of talen t, but because they are expected to compete with schools that give scholarships and have spring practice.

Administrators have applied this policy primarily to football because it is the most visible sport. Crew teams can work out twice a day all year, but football cannot have 20 days of spring practice because that would show an over-emphasis on football.

"I can understand why football needs tighter controls because of its size and power relative to other sports," Coach Cozza said. "But I also think the Ivy football programs are unfairly discriminated against, especially with regards to the players."

Cozza points out that 83 of Yale's 91 football players were National Honor Society members in high school. "We have never. had problems with losing kids due to academics," he said, "The l vits n eed restrittibns ¡on monetary policies, but we shouldn't restrict the kids from reaching their potential."

Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford once wrote that "there 'is an oppressive self-consciousness that permeates Ivy League football." He added that the Ivy League's unwillingness to put itself on the line and admit it cares and try to be the best gives "'vy League football fans the same frustrations competitively that the Victorians had sexually."

For almost 30 years, policies that deemphasized football allowed the Ivies to continue along their own u n ique path, largely unaffected by the big business approach of most major schools, while still retaining recognition as a Division 1-A conference.

But when 61 of the biggest football

powers recently pushed for tougher qualifications of Division I -A membership so that they could h ave a larger role in shaping TV contracts, the NCAA bowed to the pressure, and roughly 45 sch ools, including all th e Ivies, were dropped ft:om Division 1-A to 1-AA. Yale met both of the new requirements (a stadium with 30,000 permanent seats, or an average of 17,000 in paid attendance for at least one of the previous four seasons) but the Ivy schools decided to stick together.

Yale was trapped in the middle because its football teams have proven they could survive in Division 1-A, yet it remained allied with its increasinglyimpotent Ivy bretheren. Last season Yale won all of its games with teams outside of the Ivy League, including an impressive victory over Navy, a highly regarded Division 1-A school.

Yale coaches and administrators disagree over how Division 1-AA will affect the program. "Our football programs are going to suffer if we don't fight this," Coach Cozza said. "The effects may not be immediate, but eventually it could hurt us in terms of recruiting, scheduling, TV revenue, and prestige." Athletic Director Frank Ryan is less worried about the effects of demotion. "If I had my druthers f d be in 1-A, but we have accepted the change and it's business as usual," he said.

To a certain degree, the difference between 1-A and 1-AA is semantic; Yale plays 10 football games a year an d seven of those will always be against Ivy opponents. So it does not much matter if the Ivies are 1-A, 1-AA. o r NFL. Yale will p lay virtually the same schedule.

But the remaining three games can be quite significant because they allow Yale to prove its worth outside the Ivies. As a I-AA school, Yale may fmd

42 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

it increasingly difficult to schedule a first-rate 1-A school. A school such as Navy was willing to play Yale because Yale was 1-A and it looked like both an attractive game and a fairly certain victory for Navy. It proved a bad risk , and now that Yale is 1-AA it will be a risk most 1-A schools are less likely to take since there is nothing to gain except possible embarrassment when one battles a school in a supposedly inferior division.

Had Yale not been able to schedule Navy _ last season its 9-1 record and many of the individual records would

+D.L.eotnefYale o.lly .._.

Bulldog coach Carm Cozza

RIGHT NEAR YOUR DOOR!

NEWSSTANDS The Downtown Stores: The London Times Literary Supplement to L 'Express, Sports Illustrated to William Buckley's National Review, Vogue to Autoweek-not forgetting the Sunday New York Times ! have been viewed quite skeptically by outsiders who could claim such achievements were accomplished against weak Ivy opponents. One victory over a team such as Navy gives Yale's season legitimacy and prestige that it would not have gained had it played a lesser known I-AA school.

And in college sports "prestige" translates into two important factors: the ability to raise money and recruit first-rate players.

Yale collected roughly half a million dollars from television contracts last year. A television appearance is worth between $200,000 and $300,000. Last season, the prestige of Yale's program was such that ABC televised two of Yale's games (Navy and Dartmouth).

Because Yale's entire athletic budget (for 33 varsity sports) is a little over $4 million, the money made from TV appearances can help to balance the athletic budget.

While th e Ivies have never relied on TV revenue to support themselves, television also provides exposure, which is an immeasurable aid in recruiting. And recruiting is the area that may by most affected by demotion to 1-AA. Over the years, Yale has done better than its Ivy opponents because of its ability to recruit outstanding players.

Yale has successfully sold bright and talented high school athletes on the benefits of a Yale education and the chance to play football at the Division 1-A level, even if this means foregoing a scholarship that is available elsewhere. Yale will still be able to recruit a sufficient number of quality players, but attracting the outstanding prospects will become increasingly difficult. For the extremely talented high school player, the prospect of paying one's way to play at a 1-AA school pales compared to the chance to p lay at a Division 1-A school for free .

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Ivy football programs are unfairly restrictive and discriminated against.

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Furthermore, even ·if an outstanding player opts for an Ivy school, he may encounter obstacles. After the regular season last fall, Rich Diana was chosen to play in two post-season all-star games although an Ivy rule limits players to only one such game. When Diana chose to play in both games, he was ruled ineligible to play baseball in the spring of 1982.

As a baseball player, Diana would have been free to play in any number of post-season baseball games because the limits on post season play only applies to football , and not to any other Ivy sports.

Ivy administrators are hopelessly stuck between two poles of thought.

They have Division III philosophy and Division I aspirations. Ivy League athletic philosophy is no more aligned with 1-AA than it was with 1-A. Schools in both divisions give scholar· ships, hold spring practice and have post-season bowl competition . Yale's policies are most compatible with the NCAA's D ivision III, a group of small colleges that do not give scholarships, do not hold spring practices and engage in only limited recruiting.

The irony is that Yale can excel in Division 1-A. Last year's Division 1-AA champion, Eastern Kentucky, lost to Navy 24-0.

Some Ivy administrators have recognized the effect their policies have had on Ivy athletics. '"I believe the Ivy League has become more isolated within intercollegiate sports than is desirable," Brown President Howard Swearer admitted in a speech last spring. "What will be the reputation of our teams among the public at large, our alumni, and prospective student athletes if they are totally eclipsed by media atten tion to big football powers?" Swearer asked. •r hope the Ivy League will become m ore involved in national deliberations and forgo our penchant for semi-isolation ."

The New Journal/September 10, 1982

Jeff 9tronomle ....

Ya/es finest shaping up for tkir first year in Division 1-AA.

The Ivies' self-imposed isolation in football is all the more paradoxical because they strive for excellence in everything else they attempt, and there is no reason for them not to aspire to such in athletics also. But if the Ivies do not assume a larger policy-making role on the national level , they will re· main at the mercy of such forces as the NCAA which will certainly make their decisions for them.

•

Greg Myre, a senior in Trumbull, has writ· ten sports for the Meramec Montage in St.

Louis, Missouri.

Books

"God means absolute poverty."

Dupre talks to the monks Timothy Safford

The Deeper Life

by Louis Dupre Preface by Henri Nouwen 1982 Crossroad Publishers, 92 pp.

"What business do I, a worldly man mainly acquainted with modern philosophy and Marxist theory, have speaking to you about mysticism?" pondered Professor Louis Dupre as he stood before the Cistercian monks.

The Yale Religious Studies scholar had just opened up a series of lectures at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist Monastery in Kentucky, where he was to discu!ls spirtuality and Christian mysticism.

It was not an unreasonable question.

Dupre must have found the monastery considerably different from his haunts at Yale. For a Trappist's life is one of prayer, penance, liturgy, study and manual labor. Most of a Trappist's day is spent in silence and solitude. And this particular monastery, the Abbey of Gethsemani, had been for many years the home of Thomas Merton, one of the best-known spiritual writers of the 20th century.

Dupre's lastest book, The Deeper Life, is a collection of the lectures he gave at the Abbey in Kentucky. In it, the reader finds Dupre's own struggle to discover and understand the most emotional and mysterious aspects of ~th.

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Religious Studies professor Lows Dupre

The New JournaVSeptember 10, 1982 45

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"Mysticism In the widest sense belongs to the core of all religious faith, whether communal or private."

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troductory question, Dupre has written a book neither didactic nor dogmatic, one that succeeds in encouraging the reader to join him in the search for the element of mysticism in Christian faith.

Hen ri Nouwen, Dupre's friend and former Yale colleague who now lives in the Trappist monastery in Genesee, New York, notes in the forward that Dupre may have seemed out of p lace at the Abbey: "I kept hearing Louis' inspired voice in this for-him-sounusual milieu, and I kept seeing eager faces listening to this, for-them-sounusual visitor." Nevertheless, Dupre's sensitivity to the Trappist way of life is seen in the pages of The Deeper Life. He is addressing a group of men who have dedicated their lives to a spiritual journey to bring them closer to God. Dupre is conversational as he puts forward how mysticism can be part of the spiritual journey for monks and readers alike.

Eastern religions are considered "mystical" because of their emphasis on meditation and personal search for the spiritual union with God. Christianity's history and heritage as seen in its Sunday morning splendor and omnipresent edifices is conceived quite differently in contemporary society, but Dupre con tends that Christian ity should not be excluded from being considered mystical. He writes, "Mysticism in the widest sense, understood as some passively infused experience, belongs to the core of all religious faith, whether communal or private."

For Dupre, the mystical search for the spirtual life is found in turning inward so that the self will exist alone with God separate from the structure of existence. Dupre searches for the place "where God and soul touch , the divine place where God resides, the center of my created being which re-

46 The New Journal/September 10, 1982

mains perm anently united with God's creative act." Those familiar with Dupre's earlier work, Transcendent Seifhood, may find The Deeper Life a personal meditation on the id eas he set forth previously.

Because it deals with intimate feelings and elusive emotions, mysticism is more easily experienced than exp lained. Keeping this problem in m ind, Dupre reviews h ow the classical Christian mystical writers h ave expressed mysticism within their spiritual life. H e enlists the help of St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross.

Primar ily¡, though, D upre follows the thinking of the 14th century German Dominican Meister Eckhart. For Eckhart, "God means absolute poverty." For D upre, this poverty is "the goal of the mystical journey."

Unfortunately, such attempts to describe the experience of Christian mysticism seem confusing at times.

The "poverty of God" may make sense to a Cistercian monk who has spent years in silence and meditation searching for aloneness with God. B ut the person looking for an inroad to spiritual mysticism whose experience is mostly within the confines of Su nd ay morning liturgies may be at a loss with The Deeper Life. Dupre states that the Christian mystic must purge the soul, as St. John the Cross did, through the suffering and failure of Christ. "The mystic is ready for the passive purgation," Dupre states, "because he or she has long learned to accept all suffering as a God given ch ance to be p u rified."

T his may be so, but it is clearly som ething one must experien ce. The Deeper L ife is not a how-to or do-ityourself C h ristian mysticism book.

Like the C istercian m onks who originally heard the material, the reader shouldhave some background in or eagerness for mysticism. I n that

TheNewJournal OUR READERS CAN'T PUT IT DOWN

sense, the book is not introductory enough. It will help those who have already started their mystical journey more than those who are trying to begin.

To the book's benefit, Dupre does an excellent job at showing the importance and rewards of pursuing mysticism. The ultimate pursuit of such a journey is the union of God and soul. Quoting St. Teresa, Dupre describes the union as a marriage of sorts where the human soul and God become "like two who cannot be separated from one another." The soul, through this union, knows the nature and purpose of God. ~ Deeper Life will appeal to Christian and non-Christian alike. Dupre has shown the peculiarities of Christian m yst i cism well, but he also acknowledges the validity of other mystical approaches to some ultimate, o r the ultimate, truth. He demonstrates how Christianity harmon izes with the mystical approaches of o ther religions.

T he importance of mysticism , Christian or otherwise, is paramount for Dupre. As he sees it, culture and leeular society have created the need for understanding our spiritual lives through mysticism. "The need out of which I speak is not merely personal," Dupre writes. •It is the need of an entire age that has replaced trantcendence by self-transcending. We may calJ the prevailing climate atheistic, not because the faith has disappeared in our time, but because the question whether we believe in God or not, retains little or no practical bearing upon our lives."

ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING 8 :00P .M . September 15 Berkeley Common Room

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Sd..ol, .\as wriJJm for tJu Long BttKh Press

Come to the meeting and meet our staff

Telegram and tJu Knight Rider News

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The New JournaVSeptember 10, 1982 47

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