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Volume 15

December 1, 1982

Number three

4

Letters

6

Comment

Should Yale have a white collar union? john Wilhelm, coordiruztor of the organizing campaign .for Local 34, the proposÂŤ./ white-col/or union, and Radley Daly, Director of Administrative Services at Yale clebau the merits of a white-coll,ar union for the University.

10

NewsJoumal

by Radley Daly and John Wilhelm

Brewster's new calling Yale's for:rner:, presiclent takes his talents to the world of professional basketball.

The reel world Actress Jennifer Beals, Calhoun '86, turns from the ivory tower to the silver screen.

Blasting off The Blues Astronauts clecicle to make a career of it.

12

Major stories

An underworld around us

by Geoff H ayward

EnclosÂŤ.. in our gothic world, we are surrouncled by stone figures which make us unwitting victims of their /osting commentary.

SPECIAL REPORT: A look at the residential college system What does the future hold?

20

by Jim Lowe

A committee examines the future of the resiclential colleges as part of the 50th anniversary of the system.

What's the master to do?

24

Grappling with the role resiclentwl colleges.

of the master in

by Katherine Scobey the

by Andi Vayda

Finding out the fellows

26

Stuclents and facu/Jy look at ways to involve the felLows in the resiclentwl colleges.

30

Profile

AJ:ithony Appiah: God's natural anstocrat

by Kathleen Cleaver

A descenclent of Asante kings ar.d Bn"tish lords, Yale~ DUS of Afro-American Studies reflects an elegant fusion of African and English culture.

34

Theatre

by Laura Pappano

The late-night acrobats The show behind the shows; an allnighter with the techies.

38

Research

by Tony Reese

Discovering nothing A Yale researcher stumbles upon a hole thru thousand times the size of the Milky Way.

The New Journal/December 1, 1982 3

Letters

Russo revisited To the Editor: Since Thomas McQuillen betrayed a certain preoccupation with medieval metaphor in his letter ("Russo out of touch," TN], October 15, 1982), I will respond to him in terms he can understand: Mr. McQuillen, lay off the grog!

As co-author of the Class Day Address, I found it difficult to locate the passages in the speech which caused McQuillen such obvious distress.

(P erhaps I can attribute m y perplexity to the fact that McQuillen neglected to cite specific passages of the speech in his reply.) McQuillen accuses J ohn Russo (I was curiously exonerated in his analysis.) of "fabricating large corporate dragons" and "economic demons" simply because he wanted "something to slay." Either McQuillen holds that the "demons" are fabricated, in which case he must assume corporations to be inherently moral o rganizations; or else he believes that the cor porations themselves a re fabricated, in which case he is a fool.

McQuillen supposes that "it is always easier to attack somethmg no one can see, something no one knows about; no o ne can argue with you." It seems that he has underestimated his audience's powers of observation. I can see corpo rations; the last few people I asked said that they could, too. But I should point o ut that John and I did not "attack" corporations; we merely suggested that graduating seniors should be cognizan t of corporate influence and should exert pressure, whether internally or , externally, on such institutions to act with ethical responsibility.

I suspect that McQuillen neglected to (re)read our speech when he wrote his response, and that he had a few of his own dragons to slay. If so, I am justified in stro ngly protesting his assertion that "Russo is insincere."

Sincerity, Mr. M cQuillen, is no harder w :;ee than the "corp,prate" demons" that you insist are figments of o ur imagination. You have only to look.

Kathryn Hemker Jonathan Edwards, 1984 4 The New Journal/December 1,. 1982

vee and JCSC: student leaders resPOnd To the Editor: Morris Fanner's a r ticle ("Student fidence of the student body. Through government: critique and reform ," an elaborate reorganization of dollars TNJ, O ctober 15, 1982), raises several and representatives from the YCC, the issues that deserve attention. These in- J CSC and the twelve residential colclude the formalization of residential lege councils, a newfound, popular incollege councils, the coordination of terest in student governance would be the latter with the Yale College Coun- sparked, and a umtied student voice cil (YCC) and the coordination of the would emerge.

YCC a nd the J oint Committee of What this voice would say is still not Social Chairpersons UCSC). As clear to me. Would it announce each chairperson of the Ezra Stiles College week's SAC events, or would it plea for Council, I witnessed the benefits of student input on matters of academic allowing a formal, elective body and administrative policy? What I distribute funds among various college suspect might happen is that the new activities. This not only encourages Student Senate would not produce a people to buy SAC cards when they see clear representative voice at all. Inthat many activities are funded, but it stead, it would promote a great deal of also ensures that the Social Committee friction between two distinct groups of will be responsible to a consistent, students (the former SAC people and elected group of students. the former YCC crowd) over the fate Having listened to many YCC of a communal pool of money. I don't reports and the YCC representatives' think it is possible to form a productive pleas for student input, I would agree student committee which must be both that some coordinatio n between the a political voice and a social activities college councils and the YCC would planner. Discussion about the longlend support to that ever-criticized term implications of a foreign language organization. M oreover, it is wor th requirement just doesn't mix with the noting that last year's Ezra Stiles planning of a happy hour.

Council never even m entioned JCSC Panner is absolutely correct in asser路 activities, and that lately many ting that Yale really has no represen路 students have expressed their desire to tative student government. Yet the hold back fund s from the JCSC whilP. proposed marriage of the YCC with still contributing to the residential col- theJCSC (or perhaps more accurately, lege SAC funds . with the JCSC's money) will not While Fanner's proposal does not guarantee the campus wide support necessarily provide the best answer to which the YCC needs in order to be these problems, it finally brings the able to influence the Yale administra路 question of formalization and coor- tion. It is critical that the YCC become dination of studen t government to the recognized as a spokesman for students' interests. One way to gain foreground . that recognition is by actively seeking Betsy Goldmuntz out student opinion on specific issues Former ,Ezra Stiles Council (via questionnaires, telephone surveys, Chairperson etc.) and then presenting thern forcefully to the administration. Cer路 tainly the YCC can not obtain the To the Editor: "Money talks," or so Morris Panner power and influeuce which it needs asumes in his article ("Student Govern- simply by playing ogre over the coffer ment: critique and reform" TN], Oct. fo r students' social activities.

15, 1982). If the Yale College Council (YCC) were to be given control of the David Downing funds currently administered by the YCC R epresentative 1980-81 Joint Council of Social Chairpersons Branford 1984 UCSC), both organizations would supposedly gain the support and con-

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The New Journal/December 1, 1982 5

Comment Should Yale have a whitecollar union?

University: "Voluntary cooperation and mutual respect " Radley Daly

Should Yale have a white-collar union?

Two thousand six hundred clerical and technical employees may have to decide soon.

Local 34, the union trying to organize the workers, claims that it will petition the National Labor ReW.tions Board (NLRB) to hold an election soon.

Organizers say they already have the signatures of the 30 percent of the workers required by the NLRB to petition for an election, but they are waiting for a •substantial majority" of the workers to sign INfore filing a petition. lf the clerical and technical employees form a union, it could wield enormous power because of the central position these workers occupy in the University. A white-collar · union could make substantial changes in working conditions and significantly alter the status quo at Yale.

Van'ous groups have tn'ed to organize the white·colW.r workers over the past 15 years ("In search of a white collar union,"' TNJ , October 24, 1981). They have waged vigorous campaigns since the early 1960's, although the workers have voted on two occa· sions against forming a union.

Since November 1980, Local 35, Federation of University employees, AFL-C/0, Yale's dining hall and maintenance workers union, has assisted the clerical and technical workers in trying to organize a "sister union" to be known as Local34, while the University has waged its own campaign to discourage the workers from forming a union.

The New Journal asked the representatives of the University and the Union to outline their positions on this issue for the Yale community. Radky Daly '49, Director of Administrative Services for Yale, summed up the University's argument, and john Wilhelm, '67, coordinator of the organizing campaign for Local 34, gave the union's perspective.

6 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

It is the deeply held conviction of Yale's administration that we must strive to manage this institution in such a way that our clerical and technical employees will enjoy and be challenged by their jobs and will feel fairly treated and justly compensated. W e believe that the majority of the Yale staff shares our concern that Yale will become not a better place, but a worse place to work if a third party is paid to come on the campus and bring about the adversarial atmosphere that unionization inevitably creates.

Who are the clerical and technical staff members? They are the more than 2,500 women and men whose jobs are in offices and laboratories, in libraries and galleries, and in service units such as the Health Center and the Telephone Switchboard Room .

They perform secretarial and book· keeping tasks; they carry out research experiments; they help to buy books and to return them to library shelves; they print Yale's stationery; they schedule classes; they run computers.

Yale could not carry on without them.

Those who are employed full time (most are) typically work 37 ~ hours per week. Their salaries range from $8,275 to well over $20,000. One in three has worked on the campus for more than five years. They have always been especially supportive of students and faculty, and during those occcuional times when Yale has had tough sledding, they have pitched in with the extra effort needed to keep the place going. .

Not only is there variety in the•r jobs, but there is variety in the purposes for which clerical and technical staffs serve Yale and in the size of the departments in which they work. One has only to look at the centerfold of any issue of the Weekly Bulletin & Galen· dar to appreciate the wide range of ac· tivities at Yale. On any given day literally hundreds of different things are going on in hundreds of University buildings. Some of the larger depart·

Union: ments employ scores of staff members whose efforts must be coordinated. At the same time, scattered among small laboratories and offices are individuals whose sometimes esoteric projects sweep over an incredible variety of intellectual and scientific pursuits.

Diversity, in an atmosphere of freedom to pursue the truth, is the essence of a great research campus. Yale thrives on new programs, special arrangements, unique talents and chance d iscoveries.

We know that at other universities where the staff has succumbed to unionization, the netting which holds together this conglomeration of activities has drawn tight. The critical slip-knots in the fabric of the institution which gives it flexibility to grow, change and experiment, have hardened into gnarls. Work rules, disciplinary proceedings, and time clocks have replaced the easy come and go. Friendliness has congealed to formality, and mutual interests have transmuted to contesting ones.

The picture just painted is, perhaps, overdone. Not every office or labora~ory at Yale is ma.naged with a benign hand . And surely, some unions avoid the excesses of the notorious. Nevertheless, the whole point of a union is to assemble power and to exercise it. In contrast, universities simply are not put together to match muscle with muscle. Professors aren't assembly line foremen. Toughness, table-thumping, and locked arms are inimical to academia. They tear a university apart. " Some sav that a _s_taff u11ion at Yale would be different;-n that it would be democratically run; that its leadership would be guided solely by the imerests of the local members. That is naive.

The union now seeking to organize Yale's staff, like its three predecessors, IS bound by its constitution to march to t~e tune of the parent "international" With which it is affiliated. Of the ~400,000 or more in dues, fines, initiatiOn fees and assessments which Yale me~bers would pay each year, approxtmately $125 000 would be turned 0 ver d.trectly to 'the Interna tional to

(continued page 8)

"[the workers] are less noticed and less respected than the students, the faculty and the administration."

John Wilhelm The University community is, by its nature, concerned with free inquiry, with discussion free from pressure and propaganda. It is concerned about questions of social equity. It is concerned about the importance of all members of the community. It is concerned about freedom. It is concerned about the right of free association.

Apparently, however, these sincerely-held concerns and values do not extend to some members of th e Yale community.

Most people in the Yale community would be startled to learn that there are 2,600 clerical and technical employees at Yale.

These employees- overwhelmingly women- work in some 256 d ifferent job classifications. The work they do is critical to the Universi~y's mission.

Carrying out research, handling money, processing paperwork, assisting faculty, operating computers, making the libraries work, providing health care, photography, printingthese and many other vital services rest on their shoulders.

And yet they feel invisible. They are less noticed and less respected than the students, the faculty, and the administration. They are even less noticed than the much smaller group of about 1,000 blue-collar service and maintenance workers represented by Local 35, Federation of University Employees, AFL-CIO. There are many manifestations of the second-class status of clerical and technical employees within the Yale community.

One, certainly, is- salary. The start-

ing salary in the lowest salary grade is $4.24 an hour. The top salary in that lowest grade is $5.69 an hour, with no system of steady progression from the bottom to the top of the salary range.

Ironically, the comparable lowest starting rate at meagerly-endowP.d Quinnipiac College, a small school in suburban New Haven, is now $4.47, 23 cents per hour higher than Yale!

Those employees are members of Local 217, Hotel & Restaurant Et:nRloyees Union, a sister Local to the unions at Yale.

The lowest-paid salary grade for Yale service and maintenance workers represented by Local 35 starts at $5.47 an hour and progresses to $6.47 after o ne year's service. Local 35 members also get cost-of-living raises every three months.

A senior administrative assistant in the clerical and technical group is typically found in a highly respon$ible, sensitive and demanding job such as assisting the Dean of a major Yale graduate school. That job is in Salary Grade 9, with a starting rate of $6.24 per hour, or $12,175 per year. The maxim um is $9.03 per hour, or $ 17,600 per year, with no assurance that an employee will progress to that maximum.

By comparison, a baker represented

by Local 35 earns $9.38 an hour, or $19,150 a year, after one year's service. A first cook or a carpenter earns $10.07 an hour, or $20,946 a year, after one year's service.

A key national issue today is "comparable worth": the long-overdue idea that jobs should be paid according to the worth of the work performed, and not be paid less just because most of those involved are women, or more just because they are men. Yale would make an excellent laboratory for studying that concept, as the comparisons above suggest.

The lack of respect for clerical and technical employees at Yale is, however, much more deep-seated than the salary issue, important as that is.

Example: Present clerical and technical employees are not given any preference when there is a job opening. (continued page 9)

The New Journal/December 1, 1982 7

University ¡ "The range of benefits ... is extraordinary." pay for that body's programs and administration. Just as unions exist to wield power externally , so are they governed by¡power internally.

Suppose Yale's clerical and technical staff members do decide to form a union. What effect will students see?

There is no short answer to that, but here again, examples drawn from o ther universities suggest what is most likely to touch students lives. Almost certainly, a union will move to restrict student access to campus j obs. Where there is now flexibility in the student e mployment picture, a union contract will impose boundaries. That has b een Yale's experien ce with its blue collar union.

If a Yale union behaves as other unio n s do, its leaders, in order to stay in office, will have to bargain on behalf of their members for an ever-increasing slice of the dollar pie. If Yale does not grow, then someon e will have to pay in more dollars to make a bigger pie, or some g roup activity will have to take a smaller slice.. There always has been, a nd there always will be, a contest for the University's resources.

That contest will become livelier, to say the least.

Another e flect, and perhaps the most unwelcome one, may come about because of the difficulty unions have a lways had in dealing with the concept o f merit. Most unionized workers (and a ll in the union nQw at Yale) who hold the same jobs get exactly the same pay after an initial probationary period .

Merit is not reflected in pay checks.

The least effective worker who meets th e minimum standards gets precisely the same pay as the strongest contributor. Students who have dealt with a government office or a motor vehicles bureau will appreciate what happens to service when there are n o incentives to try harder o r to work smarter. Unions cannot recognize merit. Yale cannot ig nore it. The entire campus would feel the conflict.

If Yale's administration feels as strongly as it does about having a union-free staff, what has it done and what will it do to respond to the legitimate concerns of those employees 8 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

who think they need a union to represent then1? Three primary issues must be addressed.

J ob security is on everyone's mind.

H appily Yale has a healthy record in this area. Our educational "product" continues to enjoy a strong demand and there is little chance that we will go out of business. We won't close the New H aven plant. We won't move to Sumter, South Carolina. We have been a ble in the past and we expect in the future to manage most staffing changes through natural attrition.

Second, we must constantly see to the business of fair compensationcompen sation being the total of salaries and benefits. Up until a few .years ago Yale h ad reputation for leading the parade on benefits while lagging behind .on pay, not so much for employees who had been here for a few years, but r ather in starting salaries for newcomers. We have made major strides in altering this picture. In each of the last four years the average salary increase for continuing clerical and technical staff members has exceeded 10 percent. As a result of a salary scale improvement which will go into effect on D ecember 1, Yale will have raised its starting sala r ies in its largest classifications by 60 percent in less than four and a half years. These are big changes, and as a result we have largely achieved our objective of offering fully competitive salaries in the market from which we draw our employees.

With respect to benefits, Yale has maintained a leadership position by adding n ew programs, expanding existing ones, and increasing their dollar value. The range of benefits available to staff is extraordinary. It includes a choice of four health insurance plans and two major medical plans at very low cost; 22 p aid vacation days plus six paid recess days, four paid personal days and seven paid holidays each year; bonus vacation days for longservice; low-cost life insurance up to four times salary; J 2 p aid sick days per year with the ability to accumulate up to 120 unused days for later need; free life and accident insurance for University-related travel; up to $250 per term in tuition assistance for college-level courses; half tuition in

Yale's Special Studies courses; college scholarships of up to $3,500 per year for children of long-service employees; free long-term disability insurance which picks up where social security leaves off; an excellent pension plan entirely paid for by the University; a mortgage assistance program; and a large array of plans through which employees can s ave or accumulate capital with substantial tax benefits. I know of no employer in this area that matches Yale in overall benefit programs.

Finally, there is fair treatment, the area where we must always work the hardest. Because people are human, make mistakes and m isunderstand one anoth er, small problems can become big h assles. Sometimes people of extraordinary genius are less sensitive than they should be to the needs of their fellow workers. One or'the major responsibilities of Yale's P ersonnel Department is to try to catch "people" problems early a nd to assist in their resolution. When solutions are not forthcoming, Yale staff members may avail themselves of a formal Grievance Procedure which really works. The Training Department offers a wide variety of courses to employees to help them become better supervisors, to show them how to deal with conflict, to help them manage their own careers, and to keep them abreast of Yale's policies and work rules. The re can and will be no let-up in these efforts to maintain fair treatment.

It is true in every field of endeavor that the better one gets at defining one's ideals, the harder the ir achievement seems to become. But setting goals and then find ing ways to meet them is the cru c ial task of every administration. The conviction that Yale must be a good place to work is not limited. F or in the end, all of us, whether we study, teach, conduct research or mind the store , will be better off if our community is one where people work together o n a voluntary b asis in a n atmosph e re of cooperation and mutual respect.

•

R adley Daly is Director of Administrative Services at Yale. H e is a 1949 graduate of Yale College.

Union: "1be lack of respect for the clerical and technical employees at Yale is, however, much more deep-seated than the salary issue."

Regardless of the quality of their work, their length of service, their loyalty, or their own needs and preferences, the University can, and on a daily basis does, hire outsiders over present employees who have asked for a promotion or transfer.

Exo.mple: When a job is terminated, which happens frequently, especially for those employed with grant money, the employee gets no preference for other available jobs within the U niversity, regardless of qualifications, years at Yale, or anything else. Last spring about 30 employees were laid off in one department of the Medical School because of grant expirations, even ~ho~gh at the very same time openings In Similar jobs were being filled with new hirees.

Exo.mple: R ecently, all 10 clerical and technical employees in one Yale office were called in by their supervisor.

They were told that in January two of the 10 would be laid off. They were told that it was not known which two would have to go, and that all 10 should start looking for other jobs.

The University's non-binding, unenforceable policy statements read more positively than these examples suggest- but these are realities.

The lack of respect for clerical and technical employees continues even aft~r. they retire. A typical employee ':hnng at age 65 with 20 years of serVIce gets a Yale pension of about $200 a ~onth. A $200 Yale pension makes retirement a bleak reward for so many years of service.

The effects on the students and the rest of the University community of this lack of respect are not widely understood. When such a large number of participants in the -community, performing so many vital services, feel so ignored, the effect on the quality of service and the quality of life at Yale is profound.

In response to their second-class status, Yale clerical and technical employees have been working hard for two years to organize themselves into Local 34, Federation of University Employees, AFL-CIO, a sister union to Local 35.

An Organizing Committee of 400 rank and file employees is spreading the word about the Union throughout the campus. More than half of the 2,600 employees have already joined Local 34. More are joining. The Union organizing effort is a person-toperson campaign, with very little literature or propaganda. It is based on employees talking to employees about joining together to win the respect they ought to have.

When a substantial majority of the 2,600 employees have made the decision to join Local 34, a petition for a secret ballot election wiJI be filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

What is the University's response to the conclusion by clerical and technical employees that their interests are best served by organizing Local 34? Sadly, the University has responded no differently than any profit-making American corporation. I t has hired Connecticut's most notorious antiunion law firm, Siegel, O'Connor & Kainen. It has already started a textbook union-busting campaign, with propaganda mailed to employees, and with "captive audience" meetings on work-time, designed to pressure the employees and divert them from their day-to-day concems.

That campaign will- following the standa rd union-ousting formula- steadily intensify the pressure o n th¡e employees.

It would befit this great University to rise above the usual propaganda and pressure tactics with which corporations respond to Union organizing efforts by their employees. It would befit Yale to listen to the employees' frustra-

tions about their lack of respect at Yale, and to respect the employees' right to join together to improve their lives.

The University traveled a lo n g, rocky, and decidedly unproductive road with Local 35 [the blue-collar union] before it finally concluded that it makes more sense to respect the Union than to try to destroy it. The blue-collar workers in Local 35 went on strike four consecutive times, in 1968, 1971, 1974 and 1977.

Although wages, benefits and working conditions were at issue in those strikes, the fundamental question each time was whether Yale would accept the right of its employees to bargain collectively.

Finally, in the peaceful contract settlements of 1980 and 1982, the University recognized that it is more constructive and productive to approach the Union members as equal partners in the University community.

Drawing upon that experience, why cannot the University reach the same conclusion with its clerical a nd technical employees before embarking on the road of discord and contention, rather than after? Why cannot this great University simply permit its 2,600 clerical and technical employees to join together in Local 34 if they so desire, without fighting, without pressure, without corporate-style psychological warfare against the idea of the Union?

•

John W . Wilhelm is the coordinaJor of the organizing campaign for Local 34, Fet:kration of University Empwyees, AFL-C/0, and is the Business Manager of Local 35.

He is a 1967 grath.uue of Yale College.

Tbc oplniooa cxpreacd in thU .ecrion are thOK o( the individual writers. TM N., J--' wdcoma leuen to the editor, and comment on VIlle and New Haven i.uea. Write to '-t32 Yale Scatioa, New Haven, CT 06520. All !etten for publication mU8t include add.raa and aipwure.

The New Journal/December 1, 1982 9

December 1, 1982

Brewster's new calling Kingman Brewster has always had a knack for settling disputes. As President of Yale in the turbulent '60s and Ambassador to Great Britain during a period of social turmoil, Brewster had ample opportunity to hone his skills as a mediator.

Since we last looked in on Brewster (TN], January 30, 1982), his talent has led him in unexpected directions: Brewster is now settling multi-million dollar contract disputes between big-name basketball players-like Moses Malone and Bernard King-and the National Basketball Association (NBA).

"It's a whole new world to me," Brewster explained. "I'm no expert in basketball or sports, but I'm learning a lot about them, and that's what keeps you young."

Last May, Brewster became "Special Master" to rule on points of law in disputes between the Basketball Players League and the NBA. He passes preliminary judgements on what the law says to help the district courts handle their swelling case load.

"It's not like being czar of the NBA," Brewster said. "It's simply acting on behalf of the court in their legal disputes."

Yale Presidents have dabbled in the world of professional sports on other occasions. Before A. Bartlett Giamatti succeeded Brewster as President of Yale, he wrote several sports articles for Harper's magazine. His article, "Tom Seaver's Farewell," won an award for best sports story of the year.

But Brewster finds his new job strange. "I wouldn't have dreamed of doing this anymore than I would have dreamed of being President of Yale or Ambassador to the Court of St. James," he said.

Brewster caused a stir this summer when he wrote a Boston Globe editorial calling for "universal publicly useful service." Many people 10 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

thought Brewster was advocating a return to the draft, although he insists his proposal was for something different. "It would have to be truly universal, and it wouldn't have to military," he said. "My motto is I would rather be drafted than nuked but since I'm too old to be drafted, that doesn't hold up so well, because ._.,...,L~L.J' you're never too old to be nuked."

Brewster doesn't have to spend much time on his NBA work. He has handled only four cases since his appointment as Special Master. He spends the rest of his time revising a book, tentatively titled TM Persistent Agenda, in which he will develop his ideas for universal service in several chapters. He hopes to present the book to a publisher sometime this spring. •

-Paul Hojheinz

~

! desk with a "Satanic look" in his eyes t and reminded her, "We own you z now." There was a moment, recalled J! Beals, when she felt like Faust cootracting with the devil. ,;; In Flo.shdance, Beals plays the part .!i of a 19-year-olq welder in Pittsburgh who aspires to be a professional dancer. The director of the picture is Adrian Lyne, who, incidemally, worked with another Yale actress, Jodie Foster, in the recent film Foxes.

Althoug h Beals has done little acting, she has already made a name for herself in a slightly different line of work. She is covering her Yale expenses with the money she earned during her hectic modeling career in high school, which included posing for fashion magazines and catalogues, showing for Chicago designer Pe rry Ellis, and working last summer in Paris. "While other kids were doing homework," remembered Beals, "I was putting on makeup and running out to do a job." Her only previous film experience was a small part as a high school student in My Bodyguard.

Beals said she already misses her newly-made friends and the academic atmosphere at Yale. "There are times when I wonder what the heck I'm doing out here. You're supposed to be in school at this point in your life.

But I get the best of everything. I can experience this and then go back to school. Still, it would be nice if we were filmin g in New Haven ."

• -Lauren Rabin

l

The

Blasting off The Blues Astronauts are alive and well and living in Brighton. Mter some personnel reshuffiing, the rhythm and blues/funk band that formed at Yale two years ago has pulled its act together and taken it on the road.

The Astronauts were no less than a tradition during their years at Yale, headlining local clubs and elevating stale SAC parties to something of an event. When the group of six selftaught musicians graduated last May, they were having such a good time that they decided to make a career of it.

So instead of dissolving like so many college bands do, the Blues Astronauts simply went to Boston, rented a big house, bought a Newfoundland puppy named Dagoo, and began working up and down the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to New York. They've played every gig they could get their hands on -from the Walpole Maximum Security Prison in Massachusetts to frat parties on the university circuit to the biggest dance clubs in Boston and Providence.

The original band at Yale was composed of Jodie Myers in Silliman and five students from Jonathan Edwards: Michael Albrecht, Paul Bloodgood, Boo Elmer, Willie MacMullen and Dan Perlman. After graduation, however, Elmer and MacMullen dropped out of the group, and the Astronauts added a new harmonica player, Andy Breslau.

Last March, the original members cut a promotional album, No Sanctuary, at Real Art Ways studio in Hartford . The new Astronauts plan t? record another album soon, this ttme in a New York studio with the backing of some new investors. "We were pretty unprofessional on the Production side last time," said Mike Smith, TD '82 the band's manager.

"This next one' should be better."

So far the Astronauts have met with enthusiasm and critical acclaim,

including a favorable review in the Boston Phoenix this fall. But they are finding out that breaking into the club circuit is not easy. "We are not an established name," said Smith.

"We haven't opened up for any big names yet, but we're getting there."

Last May they appeared in a blues festival which featured such artists as J .B. Hutto and the New Hoods, and Koko Taylor.

While pleased with the progress, the Astronauts have discovered that professional music isn't the most lucrative business in the world- at least at first . "Clubs don't pay well," Smith explained. "The money's tight.

We all have part-time jobs, from record producer to video computer salesman to our painting division .

We're using our brains as much as possible."

The Astronauts soon hope to hit some of the top New York clubs (Smith calls them "the toughies")nightspots like the Mudd Club and C BGB's. "We're going to do this until it becomes obvious that it's not going to work," said Smith. "It's working now. We've gone this far-I guess we'll be all right."

• -Sally Sloan

The reel wor1d

Jennifer Beals: for God, for country and for Hollywood.

., ~

• week,~

She had been at Yale scarcely a yet Jennifer Beals, Calhoun '86, was ~ packing her bags. While her classmates were settling into their first Yale weekend, the 18-year-old actress from Chicago was in New York signing a contract for the lead role in Paramount Pictures' new venture, Flo.shdance- now filming, and scheduled for release in April.

For Beals, who hopes to return to Yale by next semester , making a movie is more of a diversion than anything else. "At this time it's not a career to me," she said, "because I know I'm not dedicated to acting for the rest of my life." Still, a motion picture contract is not exactly something she can walk away from.

She remembers the day one of the film producers leaned across his office

The underworld around us the gothic facades with unpunctuated insistence, but so subtly that we don't consciously hear it.

On the roof of Trumbull College's Wesley Needham has known Sterling lower courtyard is the figure of a man Library longer than anyone. Fifty-two perched on a stone potty with his pants years ago he helped build it. In the in- down around his heels. Grinning fooltervening half century he must have ishly, he defecates on the college passed the check-out desk tens of below. "I don't like to pass it when I'm thousands of times. But it wasn't until taking tours through the west court," a short while ago that he noticed says Needham. "I don't think it's a nice thing for ladies- elderly or otherwise something unusual.

-to see. I've complained about it but High above the check-out counter, perched over the mural of Alma no one seems to want to take it down."

On Trumbull's Elm and High Street Mater, is a large sculpted vampire bat with its fangs bared in a fiendish laugh. corner, the humour gets more Presiding over the magnificent en- perverse. A relief shows a devil blowtrance hall, it occupies the most com- ing a horn as a dog mounts drunken manding position in Sterling's man- a symbol of sodomy. Another "cathedral of learning." A position bas-relief beneath the defecating man which in less secular cathedrals would shows more devils and strange r itual; a group of hooded and costumed people be reserved for a guardi~n angel. gather round laughing at a man in a In our gothic world we are sur- coffin. The man appears to be masturrounded by stone figures which give bating.

The most disturbing element in it all lasting expression to a strange commentary. Sometimes it is just distrac- is the implied sacreligion. A statue on ting. Often it is satiric or secretly in- Davenport's' York Street facade shows sulting. But at times it is openly con- the Lord and the devil conspiring in a deming, sacrilegous and even per- joke. The devil grins slyly at the Lord verted. The voice comes down from who hoots with laughter. The statue is

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12 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

not garrish. And it only becomes offensive when you begin to wonder what it was meant to symbolize.

At the far end of Sterling Archives is the circular gothic vault originally used to house the Gutenberg Bible. Above the gates which protect the room are two suitably reverent religious figures.

But faces of jesters and horned devillike creatures line the gates themselves.

More frightening than the presence of the demons is their placement. Why devils on a gate which guarded a text of so much religious significance?

In Sterling Library, the humour takes an anti-academic twist. Lining the exhibition corridor, fourteen statuettes give satiric renditions of scholars. A student reads as a cloaked and hooded skeleton clings to his shoulder. A glutonous drunken student smokes and gawks at a pin-up nude. The last statuette shows a student chortling over a book inscribed with the words "U.R.A. JOKE." Officially, at least, the statuettes were supposed to satirize not students but different types of study. All the same, the student reading "U.R.A. JOKE" seems to bear the brunt of his own laughter. The cryptic message is

Grinning foolishly, the figure defecates on the college below.

A lasting laugh

1

But

the architect, James Gamble

1, Rogers, was not one to ignore the little ~

A vampir e hovers over Sterling Library

more contemptuous than it is clever.

Are we meant to laugh at the book, at the student, or at ourselves?

One could go on and on. At the Law School, cynical, anti-academic jokes abound. On the tops of the finials, four foot sculpted animals conduct a "mock trial" over the whole Law School.

Wolves and parrots dress up as lawyers; their clients are donkeys and goats with money bags. On Grove ~treet, Justice falls at the mercy of a Jester; her scales tip as a fool in cap and bells pulls a blindfold down over her eyes.

There is something discpmforting about the fun these buildings have at our expense. "It's not really very funny," protests former Master of Trumbull George Lord. "There is an eclecti~ism about it all which is very disturbmg. Unlike at Oxford and Cambridge, the architecture here is inward looking with a hostile streak toward the rest of the world."

There is something odd in using an architecture to portray people defecating or devils masturbating when the institution is supposedly devoted to loftier pursuits. There is SO~ething dishonest about a building W~•ch on its facades pays reverent tribute to divinity and in its interior ~akes a lasting and bitter mockery of It. "I think it's a little gross and a little demean ing," says Lord. "On a public act of creation an architect cannot ignore the symbolism of his work."

things in a building. He must have known. "[Rogers' firm] had been organized as very much an extension of his own personality." writes his grandson J. G. Rogers III. "I t had been organized both to allow him maximum control over every aspect of the businesJJ and maximum freedom for himself . . . Rogers' control on the design of the buildings went virtually unchecked." As Yale's consulting architect, Rogers had the power to create his own little university. I n less than a decade he built the "new Yale"; Harkness Tower, Sterling Memorial Library, the Law School , the Grad School, and nine of the coll~ges. He did it all with an obsession for detail, and a mania for control which set him apart from other architects.

Rogers had little respect for the quibbling university committees set up to keep him in check. As they sat heatedly debating whether or not an apple should appear at Isaac Newton's feet, he wrote, "I shall be very glad to do any or all of the work of the committee but there will arise a time when the builders have to have models. In fact, they are howling for them now.

Yes, howling is the word."

Rogers repeatedly ignored the committee's ban on carving busts of living people. He made sure he and his designers were immortalized in Indiana limestone wherever possible .. But his egotism went beyond the desire to see his smiling face. As Yale's architect supreme, he was the author of a world of stone, and he was not above leaving a few cryptic messages.

Take the curious juxtaposition of two roof sculptures on symmetricaJly opposite sides of Sterling Library. One is a Yale student bowed over his boob as though in prayer. The other, a horned demon with a spiked tail, hunches over in the same pose. A long, thick, phallic tongue thrusts ~mt past his chin as he grasps somethmg u nrt!cognizable tightly ag~st. ~s _pelvis When viewed side by s1de, 1t 1s hard to see the demon as anything but a satiric corruption of the Yalie. Bu~ i~s ~ot a connection the average tounst IS likely to make. The demon is hidden behind

the Reserve R eading Room. so the two sculptures cannot be viewed simultaneously.

All the same, the connection seems to have been deliberate and more than one person must have known about it.

Plaster models for most of the library's sculptures were made, and shown to Rogers for approval . A Yale arch ives picture collection shows photographs of each model.

But, the collection also shows that in the case of the two roof sculptures, a singular exception was made. Someone moved model 31 (the student) next to model 98 (the demon) and took a picture of them side by side. A strange statement about students, which might otherwise have been overlooked, became strikingly obvious. Whoever took that picture and whoever saw it knew about the satiric relation between the sculptures. And it seems likely that one of these people was the prankster who divined it.

The same queer sense of h umor is at work on the book tower of Sterling Library. Beneath a set of goth ic windows, are four bas relief heads. On the far left is a yale (the two horned myth ical beast)-a symbol of the University. On the far right is a student dressed up in a cap and tassle- a symbol of scholarship. Between them are two savage demons with fangs bared in threatening grimace.

This mixing of satanic symbols with scholarly ones is too blatant to have escaped Rogers' discerning eye. The

The New Journal/December 1, 1982 13

The chortling student reads U.R.A. JOKE and seems to bear the brunt of his own laughter.

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four heaas are so high up and so close together that they appear more as a group than as individuals. And no matter how you interpret it, the portrait isn't flattering of either Yale or her students.

Not all of this architectural cant has gone unnoticed. Even as "the New Yale" was still taking form, a 'i930 issue of the Harkness Hoot leveled its bitter criticism. "It violates all canons of good taste by deliberately misusing the Gothic details with which it abounds.

How can students be educated to artistic appreciation under the eaves of an architecture that puts water tanks in church towers, and lavatories in oriels?

It seems dubious what lesson of honesty the young man can derive from such m isuses and untruths."

Yale lecturer Lila Freedman writes, "But what is most curious is that many [of the Law School ornaments] are deliberately satiric, implicitly commenting upon or even explicitly mocking the very concepts that presumably are taught within the building itself."

Says Lord, "This architecture has a lot of authority and it's conditioning people all the time. I think it's enclosing and very insistent. I think undergraduates are negatively affected, irritated and finally even depressed by it."

Why? Wh" would an institution like Yale portray through its ornaments so much 14 The New Journal/December

~.

1982

cymc1sm about the values of education? Why a jester triumphing over Justice? Why all the animals dressed up as magistrates and lawyers? Why all the portrayals of dru n ken and decadent students? Why the recurring connections · between students and demons?

According to Yale legend, the draftsmen did it. The story goes that und erpaid Italian stone masons decided to vent their frustrations against an elitist institution by carving their insults into the buildings. And when they tired of carving insults, they decided to carve themselves. In the front arches ofHGS appear the faces of all the draftsmen.

But this common knowledge explanation is more myth than fact, said History of Art professor Vincent Scully. "These stories of spontaneous creation and happy draftsmen have developed afterward~ . . . I say I'd be willing to bet that you could find sketches for every one (of the ornaments.)"

Wesley Needham, whose face is carved in the right hand archway of HGS, remembers the decision to portray draftsmen on the building. Like all other decisions about ornaments, it came from the architectural d esigner and not from the draftsmen themselves. Sketches for ornaments originated as a rule in the office of the head designer. James Gamble Rogers would review the sketches at a weekly session. In the case of the faces of

HGS, he seems to have given approval even though it was another flagrant violation of the University Decoration Committee guidelines.

In fact, an effort may have been made to hide some of the more offensive statues from the draftsmen.

Needham remembers that the man on the potty was not on the plans for Trumbull's west courtyard. He says that the plans he worked on showed only a 1straightforward finial. Needham admits he really doesn't know how the potty man got there, but he figures that it must have been put on afterwards by undergraduates because, "No faculty member would ever do that." He adds, "It is perfectly formed over the finial. It is well done . . . I would like to know how they did it."

But it seems that undergrads had nothing to do with it. Photographs show the potty man on his throne shortly after the building was finished.

The pictures created a bit of a stir, and Rogers made no effort to deny responsibility.

Another explanation for the satire is that architect and chief designers used satiric'!.l ornament:: in an attempt to mimic : the medieval gothic style.

"They thought they were being very medieval," Scully says. "These people were acting out of a social myth about ~othic architecture." Nothing sinister, JUSt a failed naive attempt to i,mitate the expression of a long lost architecture.

But this explanation is only slightly better than the creative draftsmen theory. Rogers and his designers did not think of themselves as curators of a gothic tradition but creators of a new style. In an article on Trumbull College architecture, Needham describes how the work of chief designer John Donald Tuttle was to innovate and develop a new "modern gothic" ornamentation. Needham relates how Tuttle regularly substituted his own ornaments for traditional gothic. ~yond the potty and the devil ~hefs, one recurring "modern-gothic" â&#x20AC;˘dc:a was to plaster â&#x20AC;˘_he college with anamals. In the arches of Trumbull one finds serpents, bats, frogs, and sharks.

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Above the most westerly set of windows there is a monkey and an ass.

What were they trying to make out of us? Which was supposed to best characterize the students of Trumbull CoiJege?

Rogers' captains It all adds up to a statement about students and scholarship. It may not have been made by Rogers, but il was made with his consent. The people who made the sketches and clay models came to him for approval. He called them his 'captains,' and they all seem to have shared his sardonic sense of humour.

It started with the hiring of E. Donald Robb. Since Rogers had vir-

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tually no experience in gothic architecture when he was commisioned to do the H arkness quadrangle, he decided to borrow a designer from a firm more experienced in the style. But Rogers' choice of Robb was a strange one.

Even though Robb was a very qualified designer, he was the center of much controversy. Someone had just discovered that the sculptures he had done in St. Thomas' Church in Manhattan were cynical and secular, often directly questioning religious ideals. When confronted, Robb had no regrets and defended the sculptures adamantly.

Rogers' choice of Robb had more than a few people worried. When H arkness Tower was finally completed, a New H aven newspaper reported, "In as much as considerable fu ror h as been occasioned by the discovery of countless caricatures and other b its of art at St. Thomas' Church . . . attention is being directed to the Memorial Quadrangle at Yale."

Robb showed much restraint on H arkness, but he hadn't entirely reformed. The tower, so reverent of God, Country and Yale, was less flattering of students. The gargoyles at the top of th e tower- designed by Robbare in fact not gargoyles at all out students at different stages of their Yale career. T here is a naked freshman with a terrified expression on his face.

There is a tortured sophomore with a noose around his neck. The junior formally dressed and holding a tea cup, has become a socialite. The last gargoyle, dressed in cap and gown, looks fearfully out on the real world.

Robb left Rogers' firm after the Harkness project, but the jokes on students remained. If anything, they became more numerous, more obvious, and less funny. They became irreligious and anti-intellectual in Sterling L ibrary, bitter and cynical on the Law School, gratuitous and insulting on Trumbull.

The spirit of this queer humour seems to have infected other artists commisioned by Rogers. Ainsly Ballantyne was the man who did all the sketches for the Law School. Samuel Yellin was the one who forged the Gutenberg Bible gates. John Donald

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Tuttle engineered the Trumbull decorations. And Mr. Finnegan, Rogers' right hand man, got fired only when one of his satiric inscriptions on HGS came to alumni attention.

But possibly the most controversial of Rogers' captains was Eugene Savage who did the mural beneath the vampire bat. Whether Savage set out intentionally to satirize the university and the pursuit of knowledge, or whether he was simply overwhelmed by his own symbols, every stage of his work met with a barrage of criticism.

The Hoot fumed, "There can no longer be any doubts as to the character of the Library architecture, with this symbol of concentrated artistic poverty exposed in all its gruesome and turgid vulagarity ... (It) is the ideal altar piece for a building which is in every respect also an absurd travesty of the gothic style."

And indeed, the symbolism of the mural is a bit odd. One figure wields a hammer and sickle. Another figure, representing science, bears a cannon aimed at the Alma Mater-not the most flattering image for the fruits of Yale's science faculties. In the place of flowers at the feet of the Alma Mater, there is a bed of weeds- the dead

18 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

dandelions being a symbol of bitterness and irony. The mountains in the background on either side take the form of two giant black hands looming over the whole foreground scene.

It is $iifficult to believe that Savage, a laureled Yale professor of art, was blind to the obvious interpretations of his symbols. His first sketches of"Alma Mater" horrified Yale administrators.

Everett Meeks, Dean of th e Art School wrote anxiously, "Students will rid1cule it." Meeks wrote a number of letters to Savage begging him to clean up his symbolism. They seem to have had some effect.

When the mural was finally unveiled, the Hoot tried to raise spirits by pointing out the alternative, "The faculty of the Art School is, we understand, much relieved at the outcome; the mural is far less objectionable than it had dared hope. Original sketches had been disconcertingly informal in composition, and one focused as its central point on the impressive rumps of a large pink horse."

Meeks saved future generations from the shock of a giant pink bottom in Sterling, but he couldn't save them from a thinly veiled satire of the university and academia. The painting had been subjected to over a half cen· tury of faculty and student ridicule since its first exposure to the dim light of the library.

Rogers was well aware of all the tur· moil caused by Savage's satiric mural.

But when the time came to choose an artist for his next project at the University of Chicago, Rogers turned again to Savage. The result- Athena standing in an ancient portal in midtown Manhattan- could have shocked only someone unaware of the Yale fiasco.

Again Savage ignored repeated pleas from university administrators. Again he met accusations and vicious cnt1c1sm. And again a university would suffer lasting humiliation.

Savage's Chicago masterpiece was dubbed "The Ugly Mural."

Part of the problem was that no one was willing to stand up to an artist chosen by Rogers. One administr ator wrote that h~ seriously doubted a Committee would go very far "in disapproving or approving of the mural by an artist selected by Mr.

bz

Rogers." Why would Rogers lend his credibility to an artist whose work w..as so universally disliked? A personal friendship? Maybe, but it may also have been because their senses for satire were so compatible.

UniiHidW.y OF GREATER NEW HAVEN

A university possessed T he mocking spirit of James Gamble Roger s found expression in more than j ust decorations. The buildings themselves are his greatest commentary. I n some cases, as with the Law School, he chose to make fun-house reflections of Oxford and Cambridge.

Other times, imitations gave way to elaborate parody.

T h e main entrance hall of Sterling Library is a mock cathedral. Confessional booths h ave become telephone booths; the altar is used as a check-out counter; scenes from the passion play became scenes from the history of Connecticut; the portrait of the Virgin M ary is replaced by one of Alma Mater; and the Holy Book is converted into what seems to be an early version of the Blue Book.

There isn't necessarily anything more than good wholesome fun behind R ogers' architectural punning. But obvio us explanations for his multimillion dollar play on buildings were never entirely accepted. A 1931 issue of the Harkness Hoot, asked "Is there any honesty in h id ing the magnificent function of a tower of books under a cloakage that has no more relevance to it than to a grain elevator? ... All this, in the university whose motto is Lux and Veritas. There is not one sugg~stion of Veritas in the Sterling Ltbrary, and for that matter there is precious little of Lux." Sterling is the showpiece of Yale's mutant gothic style, but Rogers' ca~edral of learning makes tribute to netther d ivinity nor scholarship. It is perha ps a monument only to its creator . And if, as is inscribed on the ~ain e ntrance of Ste rling, "The Ltbrary is the H eart of the University," what d oes this elaborate farce say about Yale? . Yale used to be a cam pus of open VIstas with unassuming architecture in the style of Connecticut Hall. But when Rogers took over as consulting architect, Yale began to close herself

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Over the sh oulder in. Gothic facades, erected w ith the money of the roaring twenties and the labour of the dirty thirites, made for a city of fortr esses, each guarded by its stone walls, moat and spiked iron gates. T he walls are austere, the moats enclosing, the gates forb idding.

And even those who enter the sanctuary of the inner courtyards face the persistent satire of sculptures that question their right to be there. There is nothing inviting or reassuring about devils overlooking people masturbating in coffins. Nor is there much majesty in a man sitting on potty. And whether it's a jester triumphing over justice, or a devil laughing at the Lord, or a ddg mounting a man, these sculptures throw into doubf the values which a university should hold sacred. How much of it do we unknowingly hear and how much of it can we safely ignore when we walk in Rogers' world?

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SPECIAL REPORT A look at the residential college system

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20 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

.

What does the future hold?

Jim Lowe

"I'm in Morse. What college are you in?" Hundreds of times a week, in classes, at SAC parties and at dinner, Yale students use this greeting to identify themselves. The residential colleges are the center of undergraduate life at Yale. And on September 25, 1983 the residential college system will be 50 years old.

In honor of this anniversary, the University has set in motion a process that includes the Committee on the Future of the Residential College System under the chairmanship of Professor Donald Kagan, a multi-million dollar fund drive linked in part to the findings and recommendations of the Kagan Committee, and the actual celebration itself, scheduled for next fall. In addition, the Council o n Priorities and Planning will examine the effect of the college system on the university as a whole. All of this activity, first announced by President A. Bartlett Giamatti in his freshman address this fall, appears to be aimed at attempting to improve the college system wherever possible.

Is there any real reason, other than the 50th anniversary of the system, to reevaluate the system? The system appears to be unique in American education, and happily so, it appears.

Almost everyone at Yale loves the colleges. Why tamper with the system at all?

There are a few obvious reasons.

The colleges are 50 years old and are in need of major repairs. Additionally, while in basis the system works very well, there are some areas such as the masters and fellows programs (see connecting articles) which could use some fine tuning. But the question still remains, why such a substantial agenda for the celebration? For the answer to this question it is necessary to turn to the person who first thought to link the celebration with a fund drive.

Tim Naftali, a senior in Timothy Dwight, says that he has been de~ply interested in the college system smce he arrived at Yale. After working with the TD seminar committee last year, he decided to seek a way to save that controversial and financially troubled program. What better time to raise money, he figured, than the 50th anniversary of the colleges.

It was Naftali, who first brought a coherent plan for the celebration of the 50th anniversary to Giamatti. The president had alr~ady been cc;msi?ering the anniversary. I focused h1s mmd on the process," said Naftali. Beca':'se of his early involvement, Naftah h as become a central figure in the whole process. He is one of two students on

the Kagan Committee and chairman of a committee that will recommend plans for the celebration.

The study The Kagan Committee has the potential of being the most important entity to come out of the planning for the anniversary. This ten member committee of eight faculty and two students was charged by Giamatti 'to "look out to the rest of the century, and recommend how we and our successors might continue to enhance the moral, social and academic- the total educationalquality of the residential colleges."

"When I came to the first meeting I thought this was going to be an impossible task," said Ellen Shemitz '83, the other student on the committee.

Professor Kagan explained that the committee wants to look at the history of the system and see how it got to where it is now, evaluate what is happening in the colleges now, and finally make suggestions on how the individual colleges and the system as a whole can be improved.

"My own feeling," said Kagan, "is that the colleges are wonderful. I have not seen anything as good anyw.here . partly for that reason I have urged the committee not to take the present system for granted. Nothing should be completely sacred during the examination process. We should be looking for the best of all possible worlds."

Specifically, subcommittees will be examining the physical needs of the colleges, such as new pipes or roofs, as well as topics such as teaching in the colleges, the fellows program, the role of the masters and deans and the possibility of new colleges. "We are acting now as if there are no restrictions, financial or otherwise," said Kagan.

"We're trying w create an ideal."

But still the question remains, why now? "An anniversary is a good time for reflection," said Naftali. But that is not the entire motivation. "If we produced a good report it will be used by the Development Office to help raise funds," said Kagan. "We will be making suggestions as to what is needed for the colleges. I hope it will help target the drive."

sssss The bottom line is the money. "We're still at stage one in the process," explained Terry Holcombe, vicepresident for development and alumni affairs. "We are looking to the Kagan Committee, the Dean's Office, the Council of Masters and others to decide on priorities and then we can set a goal." Holcombe would like to of-

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ficially announce the drive next fall in conjunction with the actual celebra· tions. Both he and Naftali would like to link the celebration with the alumni gatherings in the early fall in part to help the fund raising. "It would be a good chance to give the alumni another look at what they are being asked to help," said H olcombe.

It was Naftali who first brought a $50 million goal to coordinate with the 50th anniversary, but Holcombe says that no real goal has been set yet. "It could be anywhere from $30 million up to say $100 million. We just won't know until we get a solid list of priorities," H olcombe said The center of the fund raising drive will be for physical improvements for the colleges. According to Jerald Stevens, vice-president for finance and administration, all the colleges except Morse and Stiles n eed infrastructure repairs in the near future.

"There is definitely a need for renovation: roofs, plumbing, perhaps wiring-all need or will need major repair work. We are looking at the five to six million dollar range," said Stevens.

These needs create a problem from a fund raising point of view. "It's very difficult to raise money for buildings," said Holcombe. "Foundations and corporations are particularly unwilling to give for these sorts of needs. We will have to rely on individuals for that money."

The fund drive, however, will involve more than just buildings. "We are going to be looking at priorities not just in the r esidential colleges themselves, but in all of Yale College," said Holcombe. "For example, the college writing program, which affects more than just the residential colleges, may be one of the things we'll want to fund." Holcombe also suggested that the University might use this opportunity to raise badly needed financial aid funds. ·

The party The least developed of all the parts of the 50th anniversary of the colleges is the plan for the actual celebration itself. In his freshman address Giamatti placed the burden of developing ideas on the individual colleges. Naftali, who called the celebration "a pet project of mine," was, if anything, less definite.

"We are celebrating the system, not just the In· dlvldual colleges."

"We are considering all sorts of things: masters' balls, gala musical performances, perhaps involving other universities. The celebration will almost certainly be in the fall. The spring has too many other events that we don't want to conflict with.

His committee hopes to receive recommendations from all the colleges and then w11l give a report to the president. Naftali, like Holcombe would like to see some coordination between the fund raising and the celebration.

"We will heighten awareness of the college system through the celebration " he said, "and then the Developme~t Office will solicit funds to aid the system." . ~hile he says he urges each ind1v1dual college to have its own celebration, Naftali seems to want at least some form of central celebration as well. "We are celebrating the system, not just the individual colleges."

Student Involvement?

The Kagan Committee has made some effort to publicize their existence.

Notices have been placed in various campus publications soliciting written suggestions and Naftali made a presentation to a meeting of the Yale College Council. According to Shemitz, she and Naftali plan to visit all the residential college councils in the next few months in the hope of soliciting more suggestions. "The great thing is that there are students involved in this," said Naftali. However, as of the first week of November, according to Shemitz, only one written student suggestion had been received by the committee.

Kagan said he suggested having an open meeting to get some student feedback but the idea received little support from the committee. Naftali said that it was not the time for such a meeting; he felt it was important for the committee to have some findings to present to such a gathering and thus use people as a "sounding board." Kagan said this was not the only reason lor opposition.

The committee also felt that such meetings usually got very low turnouts ~nd generated few original suggestions.

Beth Pardo, the Chairperson of the YCC, said that while the YCC had considered an open meeting of its own on the subject, there was "no formal

plan" for one in the near future.

Yet despite this lack of student participation, all the principle people involved in the planning of the celebration constantly stress the importance of the students in the process. "What will this have to do with you?" said Giamatti to the freshmen . "Almost everything.

You will be very much a part ol 1t ..

You will be crucial to what goes forth."

Naftali sees this as a great opportunity for student involvement. "For students who care about higher education," he said, "this is a unique opportunity."

And Holcombe sees students helping to raise fund s for the residential colleges by meeting with the donors and giving them a sense of who their money will really help.

With or without further student involvement, the process unveiled in the freshman address ·will continue to the celebration next fall and o n into the fund drive. It will almost certainly have at least some effect on the residential college system as we know it. Kagan hopes that at the very least his committee will produce an ideal against which the residential college system can be judged in the future. But he and others hope this review process can do even more.

Shemitz sees this as as "amazing opportunity to reevaluate the system."

Said Naftali, "I would like to see a reaffirmation of our commitment to the residential college system. Anyway , nothing is perfect. The system could always use improving."

Over the next few months the Kagan Committee will continue its examination. In April the committee plans to present its report to the president and the Yale community for discussion and review. "I have no idea what we will find or suggest," said Kagan. "But if no one gets mad, then we have done a bad job." But even in its fmal form, the committee's report will only be non-binding recommendations to the president. Under these conditions, what effect do committee members hope to have?

"I would like to see the college system in existence 50 years from now," said Naftali. "If this happens then the Kagan Committee has done an excellent job."

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What's the master to do?

Andi Vayda Ahen someone asks what I do I feel panicky. ~ ask myself, what do I do?

Do I do anything? How do I define my own job?" said Calhoun Master Davie Napier. Such a comment is not uncommon among the 12 residential college masters whose role is difficult to define and poorly understood by most of the university community. The master can be disciplinarian, tonesetter, advisor, grounds keeper, spiritual leader or scapegoat.

Theoretically, the master is "the chief administrative officer of the college and the presiding academic presence," as President A. Bartlett Giamatti said in his freshman address this fall. In actuality, the role varies from college to college, from master to master. In some colleges the master takes an active role, working with the seminar committee, the college council and the social activities chairmen. In others he or she may have less direct contact with student activities but affect the college in other ways through master's teas or lecture series.

The master is also charged with enforcing the rules stipulated in Undergraduate Regulations. Here, too, the role of the master varies in each college. Some masters appear to have a policy of benign neglect, particularly when it comes to rules about happy hours and other SAC events.

Others are stricter; ,last year one master went as far as to issue a decree of rustication, expelling a student from the college for a specified period of time. The master can do this when he or she feels a student has repeatedly or severely violated the regulations and has disrupted the life of the college.

Given the lack of definition and consistency, relations between masters and students are often tense and sometimes non-existent. "I do not know what the master is supposed to do," said john Pergande, Morse '85.

"His defined powers have never been told to anyone I know. Since no one knows their powers, thf' masters are 24 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

not a major factor in college life. It ends up that no one even cares about the masters."

Not all students feel that this lack of definition is necessarily that much of a problem. Lyle Crowley, Pierson '85, ::al~ed the master the "spiritual leader" of the college. By constantly being in touch with students, according to Crowley, the master can be "very much on the level of the students."

This contact helps to unify the college.

"He definitely brings us together."

Bridging die inconsistencies between the colleges is one goal of the Council of Masters. Composed of the 12 masters, the president, the provost, the deans of Yale College, two associate deans and an associate provost, the Council meets as an¡ advisory body to the president and as a group to share information, according to Council Chairperson and Berkeley Master Robin Winks. In the Council, masters attempt to shape policy on issues affecting students' lives. Through the Council and independently, masters function as information and action channels for student concerns and suggestions.

Calhoun Master Davie Napier

masters are talking ::>bout, they can not have any input into the decision making." .

Masters can also be counselors.

"The master knows the people involved in college activities. He> ran suggest to a student activities which he might enjoy or be helped by participating in," said Linda Schupack, a freshman counselor in Silliman.

The way the master sets the tone of the college is most difficult to define.

Personality and allocation of the funds available allow the masters to create a distinct atmosphere in each college.

"There is much room for the ind ividual interests of masters," Napier said. "My field is theology. I am ordained and have an uncommon interest in the pastoral function of the master. I care very much about the Useful link people in the college." Nidza Vizcarra, Students involved in the residential Calhoun '83, thinks that although college councils and in social activities Napier is not solely responsible for the committees attest to the importance of "incredible closeness" of her college, his masters in helping to carry out student actions and attitude help to maintain proposals and activities. Yale College it.

Council Chairperson Beth Pardo sees Tastes and hobbies of the master can the Council of Masters as a "strong carry over into residential college life. political force on campus." She ex- Schuback noted that Master William plains that the YCC works closely with Bennett of Silliman has special inthe Council, which she described as "a terests in classical music and counterforce to the administration." photography. He holds chamber music She elaborated, "The masters tend to brunches and plans many recitals. He be more open to students than the ad- also gave money to build an excellent darkroom. ministration is.

"If ther~ is something we want to do that we think the administration may Different approach not support, we go first to the Council Sitting in his office and displaying a of Masters. They can help us because pile of index cards mounted with they are senior faculty members and freshman snapshots accompanied by are influential." statistics, Napier related what he But Pardo cited problems in dealing believes is the most important part of with the masters that stem again from his job. "At the top of my list of the lack of definition of their duties. priorities is knowing students as quick"We find ik scary th at we do not know ly as I can, as soon as possible by what these powerful people are doing name. Once a relationship has been or ta,l king about. A lot of times they are established, it is much easier f01 deciding upon issues very relevant to students to come to me when they have students, such as SAC policies and a problem." hours, yet they do not solicit our opiJust a few hundred feet away in nion. If students do not know what the Berkeley College, Winks offered a dif-

''The only time I ever see our master Is when he Is Issuing a decree of something we cannot do."

Est. 1932

..

51 BROA

ferent view of a master's priorities. He feels that a master's v isibility in the col~ege is not necessarily his most important function. "I f a master is too visible, he is not serving the best interests of the students. He can get more done behind the scenes. Accessibility is very important; visibility is cosmetic and less important," he said.

Students often form their opinions about their master depending on h is level of visibility. Pergande explained, "The only time I ever see our master is when he is issuing a decree of something we cannot do. He seems to have no great involvement in the college."

William Hallo, Morse's new master, has stirred some resentment among students who feel he is not sufficiently attuned to or involved in student activities.

Students like Rhonda Reaves, Trumbull '85, who think the master should function as a "den-parent," ~rgue that day-to-day contact i8 very tmportant. However, some students feel visibility strains relationships between students and masters.

Berkeley senior Chris Kafoglis explained, "Students approach those who might control their daily lives in an anxious and mistrustful way. Thus, the masters are operating from the beginning without the trust of the students. The less visible the master is, the better, because if he is visible, people feel they are being regulated."

The vision of master solely as rule enforcer helps to explain last year's student protest of Trumbull Master M ichael Cooke's rustication of Roy Jenkin s '84. In response to Jenkins' " malicous parody" of Trumbull's newsletter, Cooke issued a d ecree, later rescinded which rusticated J enkins for two ~eeks. One hundred studen ts responded to the decree with a Protest in the Trumbull common room 6()d a petition against the master which ~rcent of T rumbullian s signed. ! latr-ups in master-student relationships such as that over Cooke's rustica-

tion decree last year are caused by unfamiliarity with the rules until they are enforced. Another cause of student frustration toward the masters is the lack of awareness of the unwritten and often unseen activities of masters.

These frustrations exist especially in colleges where day-to-day interactions are minimal.

Students are not the only people frustrated with the lack of definition of the masters' role. The masters themselves often do not know exactly what their position in the college is supposed to be. Adding to th eir difficulties, the University sees the mastership as only a half-time job. During their five-year terms, masters are expected to teach half of their normal course loads. Joh n Hall, a professor of Japanese h istory and a former master of Morse, explained some of the difficult ies academics encounter when they take the job of master. "Being a master is a full-time job. It is all-consuming. It is very d ifficult for a professor w h o is primarily a scholar to take over the job."

Masters also fi nd that completing the tasks th ey are expected to perform is not always easy. Lack of personnel and cooperation often cause frustration. Hall said, "The master is responsible for everything without the machinery to do it. He is powerless to do the job himself. He must learn what buttons to push."

But through it all, most of the masters appear to enjoy their positions. "The rewards of being a master are tremendous," said Napier. "fm given th e privilege of living with some of th e finest young people to be found in th e world."

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The New JournaVDecember 1, 1982 25

Finding out the

fellows

Katherine Scobey No one is happy with the college fellowships. Students wonder what the fellows do. Fellows and masters know what the fellowships do and see how they faJI short of their potential. All agree that residential college life could be tremendously enriched by stronger fellowships. Somehow, "they are healthy in only about half of the colleges," according to Robin Winks, who· is chairman of the Council of Masters and m.aster of Berkeley College.

Throughout the colleges the main purpose of the fellowships is twofoldto bring faculty together arid to bring faculty and students together. Most students are only concerned with the second goal. They assume the fellowships exist for students, as a group of advisors or as a link with the faculty.

Thus, when the fellows meet without students, as they usually do, students wonder what "those teachers who eat in the dining halls" are doi~g, and they consider the feUowships rather ineffectual.

"The fellowships are not necessarily for the students," said Emmet McLaughlin, a resident fellow of Davenport College. For fellows and masters, the primary value of the fellowships is the bringing together of faculty of different departments.

Heinrich von Staden, lJlaster of Ezra Stiles College, points to the "intellectual cross-fertilization" resulting from the fellowships; when faculty get together, they teach each other, and they breed ideas. Fellows and masters also work toward interaction of faculty and students; however, this has not been very effective.

A different purpose As originally implemented in 1933, the residential college system provided for only 12 faculty members for each college fell<;>wship, but their specific purpose was unclear. George Pierson, the university historian, who has been a fellow of Davenport College since 1933. witnessed the "unexpected"

operation of the program. "There was great excitement at the rediscovery of · faculty." Yale became, he ~akl,..~a talking university" as the faculty of the various departments came together.. · The fellowships became a sort of faculty club, not by design, but in effect.

A~ the university grew, the fellowships grew. Then .during Kingman Brewster's presidency, the Mandatory Rule was passed and effected what Winks described as the "democritizing" of the fellowship program. All faculty and administrators became fellows, either through a bidding, process or assignment. At the same time, the fellowships took on a large ~umber of citizens from New Haven to enhance town/gown relations, and others outside Yale called associate fellows. Pierson said, "The fellowships have lost some of their intimacy, curiosity and good will.

Numbers change you," Three years later the Council of Masters voted to abolish the Mandatory Rule. Currently the masters are attempting to cut the size of their fellowships to 50 to 60 from an average total of 162.

Throughout their existence, "The chief value of the fellowships has been in gathering a cross-disciplinary group of faculty," said Frederick Pottle, Ster- , ling Professor Emeritus of English and , a fellow of Davenport since 1933. The . fellowships also allow faculty of dif- · ferent departments to build friendships. Winks said, "It creates an awareness of where other fields are going." He added, "I found what I learned through my relationships with the fellows the most valuable part of Yale. My membership in the fellowship. made me stay here." If one seeks tangible benefits, one fmds that many a lecture, many an entire course, as well as teaching methods, have been generated in the interaction of fellows of a college.

Masters plan for their fellowships to meet regularly. In most colleges weekly or bi-weekly receptions or dinners bring fellows together; in colleges such as Ezra Stiles and Saybrook, a fellow may give a talk to the rest of the fellowship after dinner. About once a month, Master William Bennett of Silliman College invites a visitor from outside Yale or sometimes arranges a concert for his fellows. Many fellows lunch together at the colleges. Henry Turner, master of Davenport College, uses his fellows to advise on such mat-

26 The New J ournal/Decernber 1, 1982

Lers as selection of guest-speakers for the college. Often a fellow establishes the contact with the speaker or gr oup.

To the extent that fellows participate in college life, the fellowships function well; however, only about one-quarter of all fellows near Yale attend fellows gatherings. On the other hand, the masters would not have space enough if all showed up.

Many of the fellows themselves are not satisfied with the program. Some faculty fellows do not feel that the inclusion of non-faculty enhances the fellowship. Winks explained, however, that administrators, staff and faculty will operate more successfully if they can empathize with each other, as they must function side-by-side in the university. The addition of non-faculty to the fellowships must affect the- program's functioning for the faculty and the students- the intended beneficiaries of the college system. Winks predicts that the question of who should be a fellow "will come under much discussion" as their numbers are decreased. · Yale's size sometimes obstructs faculty-student interaction, and the fellowships offer an opportunity for exchange. The form that ·that e~change should take has been the subject of discussion since the inception of the college system. In 1933 some administrators, such as President James Rowland Angell and Provost Charles Seymour, thought the colleges should have a definite educational · function- for example, the fellows might take· on tutorial roles, slightly resembl· ing the fellows at Oxford. Ultimately the fellows did not become tutors because the colleges .never became the center of teaching at Yale. .

Cutrently a fellow might teach a co1· lege seminar, and the college pays him, but the college seminar program is not solely for the fellows. Fellows also ad· vise students in their college formally as freshman or departmental advisors.

On the whole, however, fellow-student

"Students and fellows seem mutually terrified of sitting down with each other at the lunch tables."

contact is minimal.

informal,

and

rather

Hope for Interaction In a fer' colleges, a strong effort is made to bring students and fellows together. Some fellows participate in college organizations, such as the seminar committee, intramural teams and language tables in the d ining halls.

Many colleges feature a "Fellowof the Week" whom students join for lunch or dinner.

In Berkeley College the program is more elaborate: several meals with a fellow are scheduled within the week, and table tents provide a 3hort biography of the fellow. More generally, all Berkeley fellows are listed in a directory that notes a lso their professional field and hobbies, and they stand available to advise students over. the telephone. Winks often calls upon associate fellows to help seniors find jobs.

In Ezra Stiles College on one weekend the fellows invite students to their homes for dinner. Bennett says he tries to arrange for "common ground" for fellows and students of Silliman.

H e hosts a "chamber music brunch" in his house every other week; students and fellows bring their appetites and musical abilities. Silliman fellows and Fellows at play

j ...,

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...,

students exhibit their work in the college's art gallery. They also meet in Silliman's darkroom and at dinner parties at the master's house.

"Find the Fellows" brings Calhoun College fellows and students together.

Three years ago Calhoun obtained $12,500 for fellow-student functions in a contest for that gift, which had been earmarked for improving residential college life. Calhoun receives $500 a year for 25 years, and the fellows and the college council match those funds.

The committee, led by Kirk Hughes '84, sought to use its $1,500 budget to promote "meaningful discourse" among students and fellows. Hughes' ideal is to see close relationships evolve: "Everyone needs a mentor," he said.

Like Bennett, he provides common ground on which students and fellows interact. Several times each term, a group of about 15, composed of roughly equal numbers of fellows and students, attend a play or concert or some event that is "entertaining but also has pith."

The program works well, for it prompts "dialogue," not merely "contact." Student-faculty discussion is "brought down to the vernacular," Hughes said, from the lofty, impersonal rhetoric that can characterize teacher-student conferences. "Find the Fellows" also provides lunch at Calhoun and a bottle of wine for a fellow and student to get" to know one another further.

These programs operate well. But they are few. Students, fellows and masters agree that lack of time thwarts the fellowships. Many faculty members, like Robert Contreras, a Davenport fellow, spend their hours not given to class work in "research and being with the family." McLaughlin said, «The normal Yale professor is occupied with his work, and students are not lazy either." As Harold Morowitz, master of Pierson College said, "The problem is how to get fellows to consider their efforts toward the college as significant as those toward their. work."

Also, in an effort to economiZe, the colleges now charge fellows a discount rate of 65 per cent to eat in the colleges, whereas they formerly h:'"d been able to dint> free of charge. Smce the

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change, far fewer fellows eat in the college dining halls, where student-fellow contact most likely takes place. And when they do come, as Morowitz said, "Students and fellows seem mutually terrified of sitting down with each other at the lunch tables."

The fellowships do benefit some faculty and some students greatly, at times. McLaughlin said, "The fellowship is good for those who want it; they have the opportunity" for interaction .

Most masters are discontent . Von Staden said that "the fellowship is working reasonably well" toward the goal of faculty interaction. But "in fostering contact between fellows and students, it falls far short of being realized." He stressed the value of the program: "With even one goal realized, the fellowships would be immensely worthwhile"; however, he said he is "not satisfied."

In a speech commemorating the laying of the corner-stone for Ezra Stiles College in February, 1961, Professor Richard B. Sewall, first master of Ezra Stiles, articulated the unique potential of interaction among faculty, among students, and between the two: "This, I take it, is the noblest work of these colleges: to facilitate conversation- the meeting of young with young, old with old, and (hardest of all) young with old ... 'The scholarly life,' said (Professor Alfred North] Whitehead, 'is by nature solitary; it is our task to make it companionable."'

Most masters consider the "conversation" to be inadequate, but the nature of mutual, interested interaction precludes efforts to force it.

McLaughlin said, "The artifical atmosphere of most fellow-and-student functions defeats them." Some believe that decreasing the size of the fellowships might envigorate them.

Morowitz said, "Until the fellowships are smaller, more interested groups, they are not likely to achieve their goals." Yet the small fellowships of the 1930s seemed no more successful than the contemporary ones. The true hope for the fellowships is probably in the few bright programs that inspire others .

•

Katherine &obey, a junior in Davenport, is a regular contributor to TNJ. 28 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

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T he New JournaVDecember 1, 1982 29

Profile Anthony Appiah: God's natural aristocrat Kathleen Cleaver

Appi ah on the Green Before the harp recital began, the guests at a fashionable party in a Gloucestershire home were conversing over drinks one evening in 1971.

A retired British officer, dressed in tweeds, ambled over to the tall, brown-skinned young man he did not recognize.

"I say, old chap, do you speak English?" he bluntly inquired.

"Why don't you ask my grandmother," Anthony Appiah answered curtly, in his impeccable upper class British accent.

"Who, may I ask, rs your grandmother?" he rejoined weakly.

"Lady Cripps," Appiah replied, as he turned to listen to the music.

The retired officer stood there astounded. Lady Isabel Cripps was the most distinguished person at the party. As the widow of Sir Stafford Cripps, who became the Labour Party's Chancellor of the Exchequer following World War II, Lady Cripps was known throughout the British Commonwealth. Sir Stafford Cripps had been a vigorous advocate of independence for Britain's colonial possessions as far back as the 1930s, an outspoken Christian socialist, and during World War II had been Britain's Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Carrying on the tradition of 30 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

outstanding public leadership that had marked his family for generations, Cripps made a powerful impact on British politics during his lifetime.

Last year, Anthony Appiah (pronounced Ah-pee-ah), the surprising African at the cocktail party, became DUS of Yale's Afro-American Studies Program. A descendant of Asante kings and British lords, he reflects an elegant fusion of African and English culture in his scholarship, his personality, and even in the musical rhythm of his speech. He was th~ first African to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy from Cambridge. He was the first African to be inducted into a secret society at Cambridge. And when he taught at the University of Ghana, he was the first faculty member to lecture in traditional Asante dress. But here at Yale, he regularly takes t_e a at the Elizabethan Club and does his writing on a word processor. "Anthony is the best DUS in the history of the program," said Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Professor of English and Afro-American Studies. "He brings a uniquely cosmopolitan blend of personal and educational experiences to AfroAmerican Studies, and he is the best person in this country doing work m African philosophy."

couple's tour was a hospital where Anthony, eight years old at the time, happened to be a patient. Prince Philip greeted Anthony and told him to give his regards to Peggy Appiah. Infuriated that the royalty had payed so much attention to Appiah's family, Nkrumah had Anthony's doctor deported. With her husband in jail and her younger daughters to look after, Peggy Appiah concluded it would be best to send Anthony off to England before another outrageous incident occurred. She enrolled him in a small boarding school near her mother's home in the Gloucestershire countryside.

Lady Cripps' cottage became Appiah's second home. Until he graduated from Cambridge in 1975, Appiah spent his school years in England and his summers in Ghana.

He became very close to his grandmother, and was surrounded by a large family of uncles, aunts and cousins who lived near his grandmother's village. The Cripps children had been socially ostracized by their neighbors who considered Sir Stafford Cripps, whom they dubbed "The Red Squire," a traitor to his class.

Insulated within a close family both in Ghana and England, Appiah remained largely unaware of racism until he reached 18. "Though there were ''The Red Squire" episodes in my childhood in Ghana Akroma-Ampin Kusi Kwame Appiah which were partly racial," he explained, was born in London in 1954. He was "my experience- and this may simply the first child of Joe Appiah, an ardent have been because we were protected agitator for African independence, and -was living in a home with a white Peggy Cripps, the youngest daughter inother and a black father and having of Isabel and Stafford Cripps. Their friends who were European, African wedding ir- London in 1953 made and Indian, and never thinking that headlines around the world. The Ap- was remotely strange." At Bryanston, piahs settled in Kumasi, the capital of the prestigious British 'public school' he the Asante kingdom in central Ghana, attended, Appiah continued to be known as "the garden city of West sheltered.

Africa." A dynamic attorney, Joe ApAppiah's first extended stay in Lonpiah served in Prime Minister Kwame don changed all that. After graduating Nkrumah's first parliament, but his from Bryanston, Appiah and a group outspoken support for trade unions of British and African classmates spent soon put him in opposition to the summer in London preparing to Nkrumah. During the turbulent early stage the British premiere of a play days of Ghana's independence J oe Ap- about the 1960 assassination of Patrice piah wound up in prison for his stand. Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of Joe Appiah was still in prison in the Congo. "I suppose it was spending 1962 when Queen Elizabeth and a lot of time in London with black Prince Philip made a state visit to Africans that made me somewhat Ghana. One of the stops on the royal aware for the first time that racism

"He Is In essence like an 18th century country gentleman. Yet there Is a paradox -he has a com· puterlzed telephone."

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The language of discriminat ion In the fall of 1972 Appiah entered Clare College at Cambridge to study medicine. He soon became the only m.ale member of the Cambridge women's movement. It was then that the fundamental similarity between racism and sexism became apparent to h im.

Appiah has since become convinced that d iscrimination is not just a matter of how people treat each other- it has to do with language. "As a philosopher of language," said Appiah. "I am interested in the degree to which it is reasonable to try to change the language- those facts about the way the language works, for example, and how the masculine nouns are used as a sort of indefinite form . I used to think it was silly to spend a lot of time fussing about the language, because the real issues won't change because you stop talking a certain way. But now I think that is not true. The effort to change the language is, in itself, liberating to a degree."

"Everybody knows we don't want to use terms of abuse which are sexist or racist," he continued. "But while 'colored' doesn't have to be a term of abuse, it does have built into it the idea that being white is the normal state of ~u:nan beings, and that everyone else IS colored,' that is, yellow people are ~olored yellow, as opposed to white. It 1s the way that language appropriates certain things a-, the nOrlJl, and then automatically consigns you to the periphery if you're not a man or not white."

B~t the use of language goes beyond ascnbing inferiority to women and e~ic minorities. "The important thn!-g to bear in mind in thinking about ~x1sm and racism," Appiah explained, • IS .that although the key issue in both m mjustice, it is not the case that nonwhites are the only people who suffer from racism, or that non-males are the only people who suffer from sexism.

It's restrictive to have a certain form of masculinity imposed on you just because you're male. And though I

think the worst aspects of sexism damage women most, and the worst aspects of racism damage black people more than they damage white people, still, it does damage males and whites.

So they have an interest in liberating themselves from it too."

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A double first At Cambridge, Appiah met "Skip" Gates, who had just grarluated from Yale and had won a fellowship to study at Clare College. The two became friends immediately. Gates brought Appiah in touch with the radical upheavals which had shaken America since the 1960s. The Bobby Seale trial, the May Day rallies, and the union strike had all taken place during Gates' undergraduate years at Yale. He and Appiah spent many hours together, sometimes staying up all night, discussing the situation facing Africans and Afro-Americans from the perspective of the black power struggles raging in the United States.

"Anthony rarely attended lectures, which were not required at Cambridge," Gates recalled. "Instead, he would stay up all night reading, or talking, then sleep most of the day. He enjoyed an active social life. He was very popular-witty, handsome, charming- the life of the party. Regardless of what Anthony did, it was never flamboyant or offensive. His philosophy tutor called him 'God's natural aristocrat."'

Appiah nearly failed his medical exams his first year at Cambridge. Then he switched to philosophy. He became the only philosphy student in his graduating class to win what at Cambridge is called a 'double first'- highest possible marks in both second and third year finals. After graduating from Cambridge, Appian returned to Ghana to do a year of national service.

He had no clear idea of what he would do until the day he received a telegram from Cambridge telling him he'd gotten a double first. "I had never considered being an academic philospher," Appiah said. "but with that piece of paper I felt I could ask for. a j?b teaching philosophy at the Vmvers1ty of Ghana." During the year he spent teaching, Appiah startled both the faculty and the studcmts by wearing

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I n 1978 Appiah came to Yale as a Special Student after receiving a Ph.D. in philosophy at Cambridge. A graduate student in one of Appiah's seminars, Dominic Parisi, remembered him well . "Sometimes I would see him during the day and it was obvious he'd been up all night reading," Parisi said. "For the most part, he was a quiet, introspective, reflective person, very British in style.

He has a command of the English language like a character in a 19th century novel. Hearing him talk about anything is like listening to music. But his appeal as a teacher was not so much in what he said, but in his presence, his warmth, and his genuine interest in his students."

Applah'a work Apptah is now an Assistan t Professor of Philosophy and Afro-American Studies, a combination which many people initially find perplexing. But Appiah has the rare ability to explain the complex and obscure in clear, precise language. His work, like his personality, is a perfect balance of so many rlixerse elements. "The thing that ties together a large part of what I do in philosophy," Appiah explained, "is a concern with understanding cultures other than our own, interpreting cultures to each other~ and

understanding language within a culture. And that is what philosphers call the 'theory of meaning.' How do these inert shapes and sounds come to acquire meaning, and what are we doing with them? Because language provides the medium in which we conduct our discussions about serious questions, the philosophy of language is useful in that it allows us to sharpen those tools and keep clear about how to use them without endangering ourselves."

Appiah, who grew up speaking English and Twi, the language of the Asante, finds his linguistic flexibility to his advantage as a philosopher.

"Although most of the work in philosophy has been done in a small subset of Indo-European languages," he said, "some of the features of Twi which are different from those languages are very helpful in escaping philosophical error .- 1 think a lot of the puzzles and worries about 'existence' in the Western tradition are hard to fall into in a language in which it is difficult to talk of existence as a concept.

You can talk about what there is-but the emphasis is on being a thing, or being a person. But, on the whole, I think the abstract notion of existence has produced more muddle than insight whether in the Latin, or Greek, or modern European discussions."

One of the problems - in African philosophy that Appiah is working on is fmding. a way to arficulate the way the

32 The New Journal/December 1, 1982

....

"Philosophy la complicated.

That's what makea It fun."

Asante view the relationships between gods, spirits and humans. "I am interested in the theoretical questions of how one goes about the process of transforming an understanding of a set of.alien concepts."

The Asante understandin~ of th~> relationo;hip between the mind and the body, for example, is different from the common-sense view in theWest.

"For the last 300 years in the West," Appiah explained, "people have been trying to tear the mind from the body in various unsatisfactory ways. The standard Western concept is that minds a nd bodies a re pretty distinct sorts of things, and that minds can exist without bodies, as in the conception of the soul. I happen to think that this is a pretty incoherent notion. One of the interesting things about the traditional philosophical views of the Asante about minds and bodies is that they don't have this dualistic view.

They see them as very much bound up with one another." in Twi, many of the words for the emotions express this relationship.

"For example," Appiah said, "'I'm angry' is literally translated 'my eyes are red .' That is, the emotion words are tied into their physical manifestations. The concepts people ordinarily use to understand each other a re different , and they need to be ex;~ mined and understood."

Modele of the mind Elizabeth Archibald, Acting Dean of Morse College, came to Yale, like Appiah, several years after graduating from Cambridge. A native Briton, Archibald is intrigued by the ease with which Appiah has adapted to Yale while preserving his own style. "Anthony is in essence like an 18th century country gentleman," she said. "He is so gracious, so unhurried. But yet, there is a paradox: he has a computer~zed telephone. And I am surprised at how adept he is at using the word processor."

Appiah is a scholar who is fascinated by the computer. He does all of his writing on a word processor (he is curready at work on three books) because be fmda it far more congenial to thinking than a typewriter. "Computers eliminate the drudge work that other-

wise you would have to get people to do," said Appiah . "But what is most interesting is that because we have had to build computers to duplicate things people do, we have learned in the process things about how the mind works., Appiah sees the computer as a model of the relationship between the mind and the brain , between the psychological and the physiological.

"There is a difference in the way an engineer undentands a computer and the way a programmer understands it.

It is not the engineer's way, but the programmer's way that is interesting to me. -The machin~ illustrates how there can be two radically different ways of undentanding the same thing."

The computer, in effect, has both a mind and a brain. Appiah explains that while a computer engineer is concerned with the physical hardware of the machine (as a neurosurgeon might try to u nderstand the biochemistry of the !brain), a computer programmer must consider the software's psychologi~ process (as a psychologist might analyze the inner workings of the mind). An engineer and a programmer might confront the same problem in a !COmputer and describe it in completely ,different ways.

But, Appiah cau tions, "It is very important to undenta nd what kind of model the computer is, and to be very clear that it is only a model. Only some of its features are refevant to an understanding of the brain. In particular, I think that the computer model doesn't really tell us anything about the relationship between beliefs and the world. What it does tell us about is the relationships between beliefs and other beliefs. The computer is the only man-made machine where the relationship between the different levels of describing how it works are so tncredibly rich."

For Anthony Appiah, it is the. inost intricate, the most complex aspects of language- culturat language , philosophical language, technological language- that are so compelling.

"Philosopby is complicated," he said. "'That's what makes it fun .•

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Theatre

The路late-night acrobats Laura Pappano l

ple coming in to breakfast," Schwa路r tz su_ggests .. t "Well, when IS breakfast?" someone z else asks.

"Not for another hour."

"Yeah, we're in dynamite shape."

"Well, I'm not waiting for it."

"Look, there are two gels here."

"Well, leave them there. They are probably happy."

"I'm afraid if I go to sleep now, I won't wake up for my 9:30 class.

"You do theatre-what did you take a 9:30 class for?" 路 "It's a required course in the major."

"Wrong major."

"You know, if I faint, I don't think I'd feel the difference."

Dining hall employees have been in the kitchen for the past 4-5 minutes.

They are cooking eggs, blintze!': and potato-corn fritters (potatoes and corn were both served as vegetables at dinner last night). An employee sets out bowls of peanut butter. raisins and orange marmalade. Another sets out a tray of cereals, carefully camouflaging the Captain Crunch with tall boxes of Cheerios, AU-Bran and Grape-Nuts.

The Captain Crunch always goes first.

Ked leather, yellow leather They place coffee and boiling water on Bitter bluebirds bear it better the warmers. Steam for a new day.

Sally Seashore saw a sweater What's the weather? Go ask Heather Hart rolls over on his table. "Why do \...ap(am \...runch drank too much punch we do this to ourselves?"

And who knows what he ate . . . It's ume路 "Forty-two," Schwartz says, "the to ENUNCIATE! answer is forty-two." Everyone agrees.

This is the show behind every show.

But now it's time to put the dining hall back. It never goes back right. These are the techies- the technicians, There are always too many tables and electricians, lighting' people, set peoeven more chairs. Six around a square ple. They make theatre at Yale haptable? Sure-if the chairs fit it's all pen, and keep on happening. They right. "Setting up dining halls can be hang the fresnels, lekos and parcans. one of the worst experiences that a They put on the bam door, top hats human can endure in his lifetime," says and gels. They talk in two-fers and John Hart, another veteran techie. three-fers, 25 and 50-foot lengths of "But setting up a dining hall with Mark cable. They know that a "swivel Schwartz can almost be a pleasurable cheeseburrow" isn't a ritual Danish experience." Right now Schwartz ilt dance step, and that a wrench isn't just singing. "Counting the cars on the for fighting street crime. Techies walk in the ceiling supports and hang from New Jersey Turnpike . . . " Someone hides the last chair behind scaffolding and extension ladders. the set. At 6:30 a.m. they can go They are late-night acrobats at practice anywhere. "Okay, when's breakfast?" whose performances come in colorful Constable asks as she stretches .out on shapes of light sprayed across the stage top of a table not far from the toaster. of another Yale show.

Mark Schwartz, a Yale graduate Schwartz and Hart and the rest of the and a grad student in the Philosophy crew follow her example.

"I think we should arrange ourselves department, has done countless shows artistically over the tables for the pea- at Yale. "Last semester was my ~

Hanging lights from the rafter s At 5:30 a.m. the dining hall looks like Grendel has just left. Tables are overturned, chatrs are stacked like thrones, 'coffee is gone in take-out cups, and only a cold French fry is left in the paper sack. On the hardwOod floor lies a tape measure, and there are coats, emptied liters of coke, newspapers, textbooks, sweat shirts, colored candy wrappers. Lengths of lighting cable hang from the ceiling and pile on the floor like measured portions of black spaghetti. People on scaffolding are trying to wind it all up.

"We've reached the end!" someone yells from the top of the scaffolding.

They have worked their way back to the metal control box, drawing together and bundling cable along the ceiling. It all lands in a confusion on top of the box. Remie Constable, a veteran lighting person, makes sense of it all. Soon she slides a knob up the dimmer board and a light shoots across the stage.

There is no escaping reaction.

Whistles, shouts, claps. Someone sings a verse that the play's conductor thought up to get actors to enunciate: 34- The New Journal/December 1, 1982

Ann;e' s features record," he says. "I was involved iQ a major way in 11 productions." Remie Constable estimates that by the end of this year she will have done 40 shows at Yale, with a record of 13 in one term.

John Hart, a junior, estimates his number of shows to be "closing in on 20."

They all agree that teching has its addictive qualities. "If I weren't working on a show I'd be miserable," Constable explains. "And if I work, I'm slightly less miserable." Schwartz thinks that "addictive" is a pretty good word to describe teching. "It just happens," says Schwartz. "It's out of control. I know lots of people who say they're not going to do any more shows, but then they go and do more shows. They just can't stop."

Well, maybe they can't stop because Yale theatre needs them. They are a rare species that will voluntarily give up sleep and study time to learn the technician's trade. "There are only about ten real lighting people on campus," says Noah Morowitz, an experienced techie. "You need such a familiarity with lights, and not that many people know what to do. Lights have a mystique about them- it's electricity and people think it's some kind of magic."

Constable also feels the pressure of a techie shortage. - "It thrills you when people ask you to do things," she says, "And you just can't say 'no'. But I wish I still nad that warm feeling when they call me. Now, it's 'how much do they really need me?-" -Teching takes a lot of time- a lot of prime sleep time-and it comes all at once. "All the snows go up on about fou r weekends- so it's a big crunch," says Hart. "If you're¡ silly enough to work on more than one show, it gets incredibly hectic during those weeks.

And if you're working on a mainstage show [at the University Theatre], you might as well pitch a tent."

Dinner ends at 7:00 and breakfast opens at 7:45-a.m. that is. That gives the techies 12 hours and 45 minutes to work. When you realize that you need more than 24 hours to put-in some shows, you see that every hour is legal working time. "Sometimes you even lose track of whether it's day or night," explains Hart. After a series of these

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sleepless, indefinable blocks of time, most of us would probably stumble around, grey-faced and quiet. Techiepeople don't operate like that. They can't. "There are times y~:>U would like to make a spittoon out of the light you're hanging," says Hart, "But the important thing in a situation like that is to keep your sense of humor and let yourself get a bit punchy."

Schwartz sits up. A G~mby-like pink panther clinging desperately to his shirt collar seems to be reaching for his beard. Mordred, a furry black stuffed panther, sits on Ha11.t's shoulder. There are more of the Gumby-like pink panthers in incredible positions on another table. A stray panther next to the toaster has a slice-of whole wheat "Country Pride" around his middle. "I bring them to put-ins to make people laugh," explains Constable. "My boyfriend acquired two pink panthers and I thought they were stupid- until I started playing with them. · They are incredibly pliable creatures. Then I got six more, so we had eight. With eight of them they can have some pretty wild orgies."

"It's kind of fun looking up at the ceiling and thinking 'liey, I've crawled around up there,"' says Hart.

Morowitz shifts his gaze from the rotating racks of the toaster to the ceiling. He agrees. "When I leave Calhoun," he says, "my name won't be on a plaque for conspicuous service, but I'll leave about 25 hooks in the dining hall ceiling."

Memories are a big part of tech work. "There are such strong memories that stay with you," says Morowitz. "They don't just last for the time of the show." Every show carries memories that are unique and that surface again and again. Jesus Christ Supersto.r, a work of technical artistry, yields a deluge of recollections. "Finding ourselves for the third morning in a row waking up around that round table in the Stiles dining hall," Hart says, "it got to the point where I could pick up a spoon and point to it and say 'look, R emie, this is a sp~n!' and she would collapse in a fit of laughter."

Morowitz recalls dress rehearsal for Supersto.r. "The technical end was so complicated that we spent about ten minutes yelling 'ready' back and forth

before everything was set," he says.

"The lights went down and Scott (Freiman] got up to start conducting.

Nothing happened. Then someone realized that no one had bothered to cue the actors."

Remie Constable's recollections of Superstar aren't so clear. "I literally don't remember how that show got put-in," she says. "I just sat on the stage hallucinating- I had a temperature of about 103. I lost my voice." During focusing everyone learned how tu read R em ie's hand signals."

Schwartz has had analogous experience. "Most of the time," he says, "you get a second wind, and a third wind, and a fourth wind. But then sometimes you just feel horrible. rve had the experience of waking up on a dining hall table after a night of put-in.

I wonder 'where am I?'- and rm freezing. 'Did everything get done while I was asleep?'"

"There's a certain point where you just laugh at things," says Constable.

"You might cry if you thought about it, but you're too tired- so you laugh."

People are coming in to breakfast, and they don't have wrenches in their pockets. They are a lso freshly showered. They read over notes or try to cram for language vocabulary exams. lch kann nicht recordar las palabras bien ce matin. The eggs th is morning are scrambled. Someone has found the Captain Crunch and now it's almost gone. A dining hall employee grudgingly brings out another box.

Hart looks around. "You know," he says, "it's strange having all these people eating in the dining hall.,.

Schwartz sings another verse of "Enunciation": Jelly, bellies, belly, jello Jenny ate some and turned yellow Mother Manha's feeling mellow Hamlet, MacBeth and Othello True-the tune is simple and the lyrics aren't too great It's time to ENUNCIATE!

H art joins in on the last line. "Well, even if other people don't appreciate us," be says, "we appreciate ourselves."

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Uw.ra Pappano, a junior in Ezra Stiles, wrote on the Council of Col/~ge DrarTUlts for tile October issue of TNJ. The New Journal/December 1, 1982 37

Research Discovering nothing Tony Reese which science has built to explain how we thought the universe was structured. "It means we've guessed wrong," he said.

. The discovery

Profe11or Augustus Oemler A.~us . Oemler , Jr . discovered nothing last year after six years of slow observation and calculation. And he made national headlines for it. The "nothing" Oemler discovered was an empty region of space a thousand times the volume of anything previously known or predicted by conventional theories. Oemler's "nothing" tlas forced astrophysicists to change their ways of thinking.

"Vast 'Hole' in Space Appears ~.., Defy Theories" was the headline of the article on the front page of The New York Times which brought the discovery to the attention of the general public.

The hole was estimated to be 300 million light-years wide (as compared to the 100,000 light-year width of the Milky Way galaxy). A volume of that magnitude would typically be filled with- about 2,000 galaxies.

Until this observation, scientists believed that the universe was basically smooth and that any incongruities were on a very small scale. This notion had been fundamental to the theories of the evolution of the universe. Only recently have we been able to test this principle. Oemler explained that his observation drew attention because it challenges the foundations of theories

Oemler, an assistant professor of astronomy at Yale, began work in 1.1175 on a large scale survey of the distribution of galaxies in space, according to Professor Charles Larson, chairman of the astronomy department. Oemler collaborated with Robert Kirschner of the University of Michigan, Paul Schechter of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, and Steven Shectman of the Mount Wilson Observatory. The original study was aimed, Oemler said, at looking at the distribution of matter throughout the universe. The researchers ended up stumbling upon nothit.g.

The work leading up to the discovery of tho empty region was slow .and deliberate. The researchers would take a "core sample" of the sky, Oemler explained, focusing their attention through the telescope on a small area of space in a particular direction. "We looked for all galaxies brighter than a certain limit which we had set and then photographed them. We measured their spectra and looked for the Doppler shifts of the galaxies. They are almost invariably moving away from us and we can compute their velocity using the Doppler shifts. We can then figure out their distance from their velocity. We also know their direction, and once we know these things we can put a galaxy at a spot in space," Oemler said.

The group found three fields in the northern sky in which there "weren't any galaxies," said Oemler. The fields were located directionally near the constellation Bootes but far beyond the constellation in distance from the earth. · In order to verify their observations, the researchers have gone back to the telescopes and are looking "at several hundred areas in that sector of the sky to see if we can find anything in it," Oemler said. So far they have not found anything, but they still have not located all the borders of the region, either.

38 The New JournaVDecember 1, 1982

Meanwhile, theorists have gone back to the drawing board to try to reconcile the discovery with theories based on the principle of a smooth universe, one in which all matter is distributed evenly throughout. Scien· tists recognized that this principle was not entirely true, because absolute homogeneity would rule out galaxies, stars, planets and man . On a larger scale , though, they felt that the universe was basically smooth..

Commonly accepted theories prior to the discovery held that the incongruous "lumps" of matter that were present in the universe were made lumpier by gravity over time, and in this manner the planets and stars were formed . These came together to form galaxies, and these galaxies clustered into their present configuratioQs. The original incongruities were thought to build up gradually in a very ofderly process of clumping. Thus, scientists could use the amount of incongruity in the present universe to deduce what the universe originally looked like.

The pancake theory Until the discovery of the hole, observations of incongruity in the universe generally upheld building-up theories.

For example, big bang radiation is distributed very evenly throughout the universe, according to Oemler. This gives a picture of a relatively young universe that h~ built up its structure.

The observatioll of the void, though, raises the question of"how the universe got so inc;ongruous so fast," Oemler said, Widely accepted theories can't answer this question, so many theorists are re-examining a proposal made in the Soviet Union about 20 years ago and known as the Zeldovich pancake theory. "Rather than the dull, slow pic· ture [of the building-up theories) , this theory gives a violent, dramatic picture. The basics of the theory hold that at the beginning of the universe there were giant clouds of gas with slight in· congruities," such as small irreg· Ulariues in the density o( the clouds or slight mward monon on one side or the other, Oemler explained. Gravity magnified these irregularities to the point where the clouds collapsed into

Oemler's "nothlng" has forced astrophysicists to change their ways of think·

lng.

pancalte-shaped masses of gas- very thin but very large. These "paricakes" then broke apart into clusters of galaxies, which fragmented into _galaxies1 which ~en fragmented into stars and planets. This fragmentation would be much less orderly than the clumping in conventional theories, and thus allows for the observed irregularity in the distribution of galaxies.

The pancake theory is upheld by other kinds of observations. For example, Oemler suggested that recently observed long strings or sheets of galaxies (as opposed to the normally observed clusters of g alaxies) are more easily explained by this theory.

H owever, the Zeldovich pancake theory is far from the definitive answer. "There is a large amount of theoretical work being done on the structure of the univers_e," Oemler t.:ommented. "Our observation is just one p1ece of information. People's ideas are shifting around a lot. The pancake theory seems to be promising, but in a couple of years it may be impossible to account for newer observations using that theory, or tliose who are trying to develop the theory may get nowhere. And then they might go charging off' in another direction."

Despite all the stir, Oernler downplays the signific~ce ·of his discovery.

H e is quick to poi~t out the possibility that the "hole could be full of'stuff and as long as it doesn't shine, we'd never see it ." He emphasizes, however, that scientists can only measure what can be observed. In the case of astronomy, that means the things that shine in the heavens. "We just have to hope that what we see is a good indicator of what is there." OemJer a:lso indicates that it is still really too early t<;> say what the full significance of the discovery is, and that other observations must be taken into account.

Even in light of these possible limitations, the discovery of nothing has changed, at least for now, the direction of astrophysics. The "hole" that Oemler and his colleagues stumbled upon in far dis~ant spate revealed a hole of comparable magnitude in man's exPlanation of his universe .

•Tony Reese is a freshman in Branford.

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