Volume 18 - Issue 5

Publisher Tony Reese Editor-in-Chief Joyce Banerjee Business Manager Lauren R abin Executive Editor R ich Blow Managing Editor Anne Applebaum Designer Maria Hong Production Manager Margie Smith Photography Editor Mark F edors AssociaJe Business Managers Rob Lindeman Mike Sonnenblick• • Barrie Seidenberg Associate Editors J ay Carney Melissa Turner Tamar Lehrich Dan Waterman Associate Production Manager Margaret Bauer Associate Photography Editor Carter Brooks Staff James Bennet• Martha Brant• Beth Cohen Anne H awke K atie Hazelwood Pearl H u Meredith Hyde Paul Kihn

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The New JournaVFebruary 28, 1986

P eter Lefkowitz Hank Mansbach Patrick Santana Lori Sherman P am Thompson Stu Weinzimer Yin Wong• Peter Zu si

• el«ud FebrUJJry .5, 1986 • •elecud FebruJJry 18, 1986 , Mmrbers and Directors: Edward B. Bennett III • H enry C . Chauncey, Jr. • Peter B. Cooper • Aody Court • Brooks Kelley • Michelle Press • Fred Strebeigh • Thomas Strong Friends: Anson M. Beard, Jr.t • Edward B.

Bennett, Jr. • Blaire Bennett • Gerald Bruck • Jonathan M. Clark • Louise F. Coopert • James W. Coopert • Peter B. Coopert • J erry and Rae Court • David Freeman • GeoiTry Fried • Sherwin Goldman • John Heney • Brooks Kelley • Roger Kirwood • And rew J .

Kuzneski, Jr. • Lewis E. Lehrman • E. Nobles Lowe • Peter Neill • Fairfax C. Randallt • Nicholas X. Rizopoulos • Arleen and Arthur Sager • Dick and Debbie Searst • Richard Shields • Thomas Strong • Elizabeth Tate • Alex and Betsy Torello • Allen and Sarah Wardwell • Peter. Yeager • Daniel Yergin thas given a second time (Volume 18, Numbe• $) 771< N.w }••"""' is published six times during the tchool year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., Post Ofroce Box 3432 Yale Station, New H aven, CT 06520.

Copyright l986 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All rights retc:rved. Reproduction either in whole or i.n part without written pcrmitsion of the publisher and editor-in-chief is prohibited.

This moguine is publi•hed by Yale College students, and Yale Unive.nity is noc. responsible for it.s contents.

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Cover photo by Mark Fedors

Between the Vines

6

Understanding Disaster Last month's explosion of the space shuttle Challenger inspired a flood of media attention, some calling it the worst national tragedy since the assassination of President Kennedy. The author, however, must contend with rational Yalies who separate themselves .from the common reaction and look cynically at the event. By Peter Zusi.

Theater

8

On-Site Success Because it lacks both funding and a permanent home, The Ensemble Theater Company creates its own style of innovative drama. By Tom A ugst.

Features

10

The Power of the Personality Over the past eight years, Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti has been both cheered and mocked, praised and vilified. He has never been called boring.

With just months before he leaves Yale, Giamatti discussed in a series of exclusive interviews how he m.o.de the transition .from Yale professor to Yale president, and what he tried to achieve dun¡ng his tenure. By Anne Applebaum and Rich Blow.

22

Growing into Motherhood The rate of teen pregnancy in New Haven exceeds the national average, creating a problem further complicated by inner-city poverty. Coping with the realities of motherhood, hundreds of teenage girls struggle each year, trying both to raise their children and remain in school. By Susan Orenstein.

Letters

4

The New Journal/February 28, 1986 3

Letters

Cheap Service ¡

To the Editor: In his article entitled "Out of Touch" (TN], 1/31/86), James Bennet has listed several instances of sloppy practice by the Yale University Health Ser. vices. His conclusion, that the problems would disappear if members discuss them with the Health Services, does not follow from the evidence. It is perhaps more logical to conclude that the Health Services' avowed goal of providing the cheapest possible medical care is incompatible with the patients' interest in receiving proper medical treatment. The Health Services has had difficulty attracting and keeping a full staff of physicians, with the consequence that indicated medical examinations and treatments are postponed. Many departments, such as opthamology and gynecology, are staffed at a level inadequate to meet the demands for their services; patients are simply told that a two-month wait is "normal." The stories cited by Mr. Bennet, along with many others that he did not present, indicate that a large number of those physicians and nurse practitioners who do consent to work at the Health Services are either not sufficiently competent or irresponsible. It is a reasonable guess that one reason real tragedies have not been reported is that patients recognize the shortcomings of the treatment that they receive at the Health Services and go elsewhere.

These problems are substantial and will not evaporate once we discuss them with the Health Services, in part because many of them are problems inherent to Health Maintenance Organizations.

The problems with the Yale University Health Services would be less important if Yale students could choose among, for example, the range of health plans that is open to Yale employees. The correct solution to the problems.. with the Health Services is not for students to talk about them while waiting for a tragedy but rather 4

The New JournaVFebruary 28, 1986

for Yale to allow its students to vote with their feet.

Sincerely yours, William H. Gilson Graduate Student Department of El~ctrical Engineering

Oversight To the Editor: While I realize that The New journal is a publication of Yale College students, I wish that the article, "Out of Touch" (TN], 1131186) would have dealt with some of the problems that graduate and professional students have with UHS. It's not so much that the words "undergraduate" and "student" were used synonymously in the article (you get used to that around here after a while), but rather that it dealt extensively with the Undergraduate Walk-in Service, service by definition unavailable to G and P's.

Having been ¡an undergraduate here before entering the graduate school, I continued using the Walk-in Service until . my second year, when I was "found out" and told that as a graduate student I would have to make an appointment. The nature of my ailments (at the time a rather sore neck) had not changed with my academic status, neither had the cost of my health plan, only the accessibility of a nursepractitioner.

T he U's in both DUH and UHS stand for university, not undergraduate.

a

Sincerely, Jeffrey Clark Mathematics Department

Sobering Thoughts To the Editor: A few thoughts upon the University Chaplain's "Final Words" (TN}, 1/31186), and upon the general topic of hymns and prayers at University convocations.

As a Christian I find myself ill at ease when I meet with the parapher-

nalia of worship in secular settings.

This is not only because I don't think non-believers should be manipulated into singing hymns and mouthing prayers, but also because I worry about what believers themselves think they are accomplishing by such observances. Our religiosity is complacent and self-serving enough at church; we need not add to our sins by making a pageant of it at school. Moreover, and in addition to the legitimate objections that can be raised by non-Christian members of the University community, Christians themselves ought to think twice before endorsing the religious trappings with which Yale, in , its more nostalgic moments, occasionally decorates itself.

We all like to solemnize our importance, institutions being no exception.

And there is no more heady form of self-importance than to align oneself with the deity. Long before the Moral Majority was lining u p, God, America, morality and the free enterprise system in the fight against evil, a Puritan institution could exhort its membership to give its all "for God, for country, and for Yale." Yet quite apart from the fact that Yale no longer serves a selfconsciously Christian community, thoughtful Christians must question whether any institution's efforts to legitimate itself in religious terms should pass unchallenged.

It seems to me that Christians, more than anyone else, should balk at singing lines like, "0 God beneath Thy guiding hand Our exiled fathers crossed the sea . . ."

which were on the program for the Graduate and P.rofessional Assembly in September. For here it is precisely the Christian Gospel which is being misunderstood by enlisting it to validate the self-image of New England and its revered institutions.

Believers and non-believers alike, Christians, J ews, and those who only question, will all do better to let God be God, and let institutions like Yale do their work in sobriety rather than self-glorification. For by the grace of God there is much good work to be done, honorable work which is both delightful in itself and of profit to this

1

sick and suffering world. There is good reason to take up this work with joy, if we remember who we are and what we are about. The sobriety to remember that we and our endeavors are not God, sometimes comes easier to those who don't believe in God in the first place, but it will do believers a world of good to keep it in mind as well.

Sincerely, Phillip Cary

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Th New JoumtJl encourages letters to the editor and comment on Yale and New H aven issues.

Write to Melissa Turner, Editorials, 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication m ust include address and signature.

The New Journal reserves the right to edit all letters for publication.

Congratulations Tlu New Journal is pleased to announce the elections of Margie Smith as Publisher and of Melissa Turner as Editor-in-Chief, effective . today.

Margie joined the magazine in 1984 and has served as Production Manager for the past year. Melissa joined the magazine in 1985 and has served as Associate Editor this year. Margie and Melissa will continue the leadership of graduating Publisher Tony Reese and Editor-in-Chief J oyce Banerjee.

Five additional members of TNJ's new Executive Board will also assume their offices today: Business Manager Barrie Seidenberg, Managing Editors Jay Carney and Tamar Lehrich, Production Manager Margaret Bauer, and Photography Editor Carter Brooks. Together with Margie and Melissa they. are now planning their first issue which w ill appear in April.

We congratulate them a nd wish them the best of luck.

Correction A number of illustrations mistakenly appeared last issue without credits.

The illustration for the opening spread of "Defining the Crime" was drawn by Yin W ong. The photographs for "Out ofTouch" were taken by Lori Sherman and Pearl Hu. The New journal regrets the error.

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The New JoumaVFehruary 28, 1986

5

Between the Vines/ Peter Zusi

Understanding Disaster People at Yale are very concerned with arguments. They like to debate. The value of a gut emotional response, however , often goes unappreciated here.

It finally happened: I met the Space Shuttle Cynic. I had thought, perhaps too audaciously, that even in this breeding ground of cynicism called Yale, the news of the shuttle explosion might escape unscathed. I should have known better. I was hanging out at Yale Station when the figure emerged from h is cloud of cigarette smoke and approached me. Conversation began innocently enough: we exchanged a couple of quick wittici;;ms about the lighting in the L&B room and then progressed into a protracted discussion about Christmas vacation. Yet before I knew what happened, the word had been said. Shuttle. As in Space, that is.

As in explosion, as in thousands of kids "you must be an aficionado of high watching six astronauts and a technology."

H mmm. This on e made me think schoolteacher die six miles from Earth.

"What did you think of the accident?" hard. I kept trying to conjure up the his look seemed to ask me. "It really technology in my life and aJI I could d isturbed me. I was shocked much see was the refrigerator. That started more deeply than I expected to be. to make me hungry. I had to admit to Yeah, it was really awful." The en- myself, though, that kitchen apcounter had begun. pliances didn't really count as "high "That's stupid," sneered the Cynic. technology," and that I had to think of "I think the whole thing has been something else. Backyard satellite blown out of proportion. What are you, television antennae? No. Cruise patriotic?" This, I realized, was the missiles? No. I star ted to tremble at the first exchange of what could be a fierce thought of conceding another point, battle, and that slowly, point by point, but what else could I do? the Cynic hoped to reduce my kneejerk "No," I said. reaction to rubble. I considered my op"Well, well, well. If you weren't tions against this first question. Truth disturbed by the glaring failure of be known, I don't think I am especially American tech nology, nor by the setpatriotic- I feel more allegiance to the back to future shuttle m issions, could local bagel store than to the United it be the deaths which upset you?"

States. When I think of modern I saw the trap he had lain. If I said America, tackiness comes to mind: yes then I would be open to the reply 3-D movies, big cars with loose-fitting about airline disasters, about how 500 chrome parts, or people dressed up in people can be killed over the Mickey Mouse costumes. American Himalayas and we hardly bat an eye, Cheese, I've always felt, was a good but when seven people are killed over symbol of our country: it's an un- Florida everyone gets upset. This was natural orange color, and it looks like not even to mention tidal waves in plastic.

Bangladesh, which have killed over "No," I said.

20,000 people, or the ongoing suffering "Aha! Since you are not disturbed by of people in South Africa or South the demise of a patriotic symbol, nor America, or the Bronx. If I answered upset over the damage to the country's this question with a straight "yes," I image," he said, squinting his eyes, was bound to be snowballed.

6

The New JournaVFebruary 28, 1986

"In a way but . . ." but I was inter· rupted.

"In a way? What about plane crashes which kill 500 people, or mudslides in South America which kill 20,000 peo· pie, or the ongoing suffering of people in Angola, or Nicaragua, or even the Bronx. I n terms ol human sutler· ing the Shuttle accident was a minor one. So where does that leave your argument now? Why are you so shocked by the incident?"

"It ... um . . . " I replied.

"Obviously, my friend, you're a puppet of the press, responding to the size of the type on the front page of The New York Times, to the 10 solid pages of Shuttle stories in that first issue, and to the flood of front page articles which have appeared every , day since then.

Do you really think that's an intelligent way to respond to an event? I n my opinion, the whole affair only demonstrates bow easily the press manipulates the masses. It's really very frightening. The Shuttle has gotten far too much attention. People are ob· sessed with it." Having posited these . truths, the cynic turned and disap· peared behind his cloud of smoke, from whence he came.

So, I had met the Space Shuttle Cynic, we battled, and I lost. Lost, I thought, in a big way. I walked home, feeling like Jello in a dining hall.

The hallway had little pools of beer left over from a party the night before.

I waded into my room, sat c!own with my head in hands, and reconsidered myself. Why did I commit myself to a viewpoint which I couldn't even de· fend? Why didn't I think these issues through? Maybe I'm just too young, inexperienced, too naive to see clearly in such a situation. I hurled deprecating epithets at myself. Unin· sightful fool. Babe-in-the-woods.

Sophomore. I felt like an idiot, a failure. But then, just as I was indul· ging in self-flagellation, my instincts for self-preservation kicked in. I was sure I had been right. There was

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nothing wrong with being upset by the crash. I had just been caught offguard and couldn't justify my reaction; I needed to think it through more thoroughly.

Why did I have such a strong reaction to the shuttle accident? The more I thought about it, the more difficult it was to explain . Maybe it had something to do with my age, with how I grew up relative to the space program. I was too young to remember the moon landing, but one of my earliest memories is of a T .V. set up in our kitchen, showing a cloudy image which my parents told me was a rocket. On the same screen, but years later, I watched the Apollo-Soyuz hook-up . Through high school, I saw the shuttle develop from preliminary drawings published in magazines to live footage on the T .V. They even named the protot 1·pe after the ship in m y favorite T.V. show; I remember seeing Mr. Spock being interviewed in front of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. I remember how silly the shuttle looked,

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perched on the back of a 747. I watche d the first launching of t he shuttle and thought, "No way. There's no way that it is going to land." And then I saw it land. I remember the age when I considered m yself "too old" to be interested in the shuttle, and then genuinely losing interest a little later.

Maybe I do associate the .shuttle with the United States after all, in a strange way. It was one of the few positive national symbols which I didn't find e m barrassing, one of the few rockets which didn't kill people.

I had some basic elements of an argument here: I just had to put them together, condense them, and I would be ready for a rematch with the Shuttle Cynic. So, the shuttle was one of the few positive symbols of the U.S., and it was floating in a sea of American Cheese. It was a particularly powerful and familiar image for my generation , the Shuttle Generation. In a way it represented my childhood: when it exploded, so did my youth.

That sounded awful. I could barely

repeat that to myself, let alone use it as an argument against the Cynic, who wanted to hear a solid justification for my reaction to the accident. He certainly wasn't interested in exploding youth s. It just didn't seem like I was going to be able to wrap up my response to the explosion with fl few strings of logic- it was too complicated, had too many sharp edges. But m y inability to justify my response logically no longer led me to conclude that I was inept. I couldn't logically restate the reasons for my reaction because those reasons weren't logical . I realize d that I had reacted on an emotional and certainly valid level, and the feelings I was working with could not be handed out as arguments in a debate.

People at Yale are very concerned with argum ents. They like to debate.

The value of a gut emotional response, however, often goes unappreciated here . The explosion of the space shuttle is an example of an event which, for many people, provoked a huge gut response. For me, the explosion is not disturbing because of its political and intf': llectual ramifications; it is shocking in and of itself. The emotional response I experienced was not just ~ by-product of the event- it was the event, and it constitutes the sole importance of that event. But how can I explain this to the Cynic? I don't understand m y reaction m yself; I just know how badly I felt. I can't explain· my reaction logically. But that d oesn't make it any less real.

Maybe I am a fool to believe that an inexplicable emotional response can have more value than solid logical arguments, but I don't mind. The next time I meet the Cynic, I will hurl taunts at him: "Go ahead! Call me a fool!" I like it better that way.

•

Peter Zusi, a sophomore in SiUi71UJ.n, u on lht staff of TN].

The opinions expressed in this section are those of the individual writeL The New joumaUFebruary 28, 1986

7

~

Book.keepu Mr. Zero (Bert Gankof) auid uoualy, ETC production of Adding Machine.

keep• track of finance• in the

On-Site Success Electronic music echoed through the auditorium. White gas, spewing from under their seats, enveloped the audience. On stage, large white numbers were suspended against a black curtain, and wood stumps popped open into flowerbeds of colored balloons.

Presenting shows such as this 1923 Elmer Rice drama, The Adding Machine, The Ensemble Theater Company (ETC) sees itself as a vanguard for small theater. Though it lacks the funding to pay any of its artists or to construct elaborate sets, ETC produces plays that are risky, imaginative, and what its directors hope will be a refreshing alternative to other theater in New Haven.

Founded last year by Artistic Directors Kevin Cochran, '83, and Bill 8

The New J ournal/February 28, 1986

Ferguson, '83, ETC has already tapped into the audiences that attend the Longwharf and Yale Repertory Theatres. With success that surprises even Cochran and Ferguson, ETC has sold out every seat for each of its plays and already has a loyal following of 250 season subscribers .

One reason for the theater's success lies in the informal and spirited attitude of the ensemble. Cochran believes that ETC appeals to people by offering the fun that larger theaters in New Haven lack. "Theater is entertainment," he said. "If you don't relax the audience, you'll never affect them."

Tom Killiam, a drama critic for the NtW Haven Register who has seen much of their work, agreed . "I t's the adventure of the whole thing. Whether au-

diences like (the play] or not, everyone enjoys the experience."

ETC has performed without a theater for most of the season, taking its plays instead to different locations around New Haven . Inherit the WinJ was produced at the Moot Court in tht Yale Law School. For Life is a Dream, blindfolded audiences were loaded on· to a schoolbus and taken to an unknown location, to identify with the play's protagonist. ETC also plans to produce Tommy . . . the Rock Opera at Toad's Place, as well as Agnes of God in Yale's Dwight Chapel.

"The use of different locations camt about as a happy coincidence of historical and aesthetic motivations: Ferguson explained. Without the fund· ing to establish a permanent home,

ETC has the opportunity to experiment with different ways to involve the audience in its plays. "When you take a play out of the theater," Ferguson continued, "you also take away hampering conventions." Once the habits of "typical" theater, such as where one sits and when one applauds, are broken, Ferguson believes that the audience's experience wiJI be very different.

non-threatening," Cochran asserted.

"If they're bored somewhere else, they feel stupid. If they're bored here, the play just didn't work out."

ETC's future will depend on its special audience appeal. Rather than fundraising through government and corporate grants like most new theaters, ETC has chosen to support itself solely through ticket sales. With

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The Ensemble Theater Company, undaunted by its lack of a permanent atage, produces its plays at a variety of locations in New Haven. Here, Inherit tlu Wind is performed at Moot Court at the Yale Law School.

ETC's artistic directors believe that through this experimentation, they have successfully created a dynamic relationship with their audience. "Thev are not alienated by our faults," Ferguson explained. "Our faults are avenues into the show. At the same time, these flaws allow us to get closer to the audience." During a performance of Th~ Adding Machmt when the set got caught in a curtain. the audience laughed and then applauded.

Rather than detract from the play, such events add to the intimate experience ETC seeks to create. "We're

the development of a loyal following, ETC can avoid the fate of many experimental theaters which quickly become conservative under the pressure of corporate support and boards of directors. While ETC has the artistic freedom to perform lesserproduced plays in challenging ways, the audience remains Cochran's primary reason for sustaining that freedom.

Tom Augst Samantha Conti Bill Day Jen Fleissner Andreas Kraebber Lawrence Lipsher Walter Littel Paul Mele Debbie Roster Margo Schlanger Karen Shen Regina Starolis Strong Cohen Graphic Design Grace White

•

Tom Augst is a junior in Silliman.

The New journaVFebruary 28, 1986 9

The Power of the Personality Anne Applebaum and Rich Blow "The constitution of Yale is a constitutional monarchy, but one in which the king is crucial. And the president is king."

10 The New JournaVFebruary 28, 1986

On a Saturday in 1978, the Yale Corporation interviewed A. Bartlett Giamatti. On Sunday they asked him to be president of Yale, and on Monday, Giamatti accepted. Not long after, he became the victim of a recurring nightmare.

"I was in a huge airplane hangar, an immense structure, larger than I could define the limits of," he remembers. "There was a puzzle in there, one of those huge puzzles, and I wasn't even sure I knew where all the pieces were. I knew I didn't know where all the pieces were."

Giamatti's qualms about his nearly overnight transformation from English professor to Yale president didn't affect his emerging public image. The press loved Bart Giamatti then and has ever since. He was articulate, outspoken, and president of Yale, more than enough to make colorful reading. He looked different from most college presidents. In those early days, he was described over and over again as a "Renaissance Man," a student of Machiavelli and Dante who walked around campus wearing work boots and a battered Red Sox cap. His family car was an aging Volkswagen Bug. I-te had a sense of humor; this was the man who once said that the only thing he had ever wanted to be was president of baseball's American League. And he represented a break from tradition- Yale's first "ethnic" president.

After eight years, the hoopla surrounding Giamatti's ascendence to the Yale presidency has given way to more realistic, if sometimes con¡ flicting, perceptions of his beliefs and principles. Now he is difficult to label. The same people who hailed him as a great liberal after he blasted the Moral Majority¡ in a speech to the freshmen felt betrayed when he took an obviously sincere hard-line stance during the strike, refusing to consent to binding arbitration. On the other hand, the Old Blues who applauded when he announced in his Inaugural Address that the University should be a place of "civilized order" and a "standard in times of uncertainty and disaffection" surely grimaced when he declared his belief that no money or effort should be spent on athletic recruiting. And although it's hard to find many people within the administration who will say anything negative about him, grumbling students and faculty members accuse him of having grown stale and of lacking innovative ideas.

Giamatti takes these accusations as a part of the job. "If people like what you do, you're a shining moral light. And if they don't like what you do , while you think you're doing the same thing in a different context, then you're a retrograde oppressor of everybody. All I want to do is to be consistent with my perception of my principles."

ButGiamatti'sprinciplesdid notinstantlyemerge when he became president, nor have they always been clear to the Yale community. To understand his presidency, it's critical to understand his principles, for they have

An English professor donning the robes of tradition

The New J ournaVFebruary 28, 1986

II

always dictated his actions as president. They derive from his devotion to Yale as an institution, his Renaissance. scholarship, and his experiences as a teacher at Yale during the late sixties and early seventies.

In a series of interviews over the past several weeks, Giamatti discussed the origins of his principles, how they have shaped Yale, and how he acquired the authority to apply them.

Talking with Giamatti, one can't help but notice how much older he looks than he did when he first became president. He has gained weight; wrinkles and deep bags line his face and eyes. He smokes heavily, in the hungry manner of someone who enjoys smoking too much even to consider quitting. There is no more black in his once-raven beard. But Giamatti has lost none of the verbal and mental dexterity that made him such an attractive candidate for the presidency in 1978. Why did he decide to talk now?

"Because it's the end," he explains.

"Because in a funny way you want it said."

The entry for Angelo Bartlett Giamatti in the Class of'60 yearbook reads like a list of Yale social clubs: the Dramat, Pundits, the Elizabethan Club, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Aurelian, Scroll and Key. He joined almost as many committees: Charities Drive, Undergraduate Affairs Committee, Senior Advisory Board, Class Day Orator, Saybrook College Council. Giamatti was a Yale man to the core. He had the family heritage- his father, a professor of Italian, was class of'32-and he had been "prepared," as the yearbook put it, at Andover.

Giamatti was both well-liked and well-known. According to University Secretary John Wilkinson, a classmate of Giamatti's, "After six months everyone knew who he was. He was just a powerful personality. He was dramatic. He always wore a trenchcoat, always wore dark glasses, always walked around with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He was sort of in a Humphrey Bogart phase."

Giamatti's enthusiasm and admiration for Yale institutions didn't end with his undergraduate days. Cyrus Hamlin, one of Giamatti's graduate 12

The New JoumaVFebruary 28, 1986

Paying the price for being .. king ot a conahtuttonat monarchy "

school classmates in Comparative Literature and later a fellow Yale professor, recalls a time when the two were playing a Whiffenpoof record.

"When it came to the Whiffenpoof song, Bart insisted that no one speak.

It was that kind of intensity." In fact, Giamatti has spent only two years of his adult life away from Yale, teaching at Princeton after he received his Ph.D. in 1964. He then returned in 1966 and became a full professor within five years. At age 33, he was one of the youngest scholars ever to be granted tenure in the Yale English department.

Giamatti's respect for the sanctity of institutions extended beyond his devotion to Yale. As a scholar, Giamatti never pretended to be anything other than a traditionalist. Even at a universi-

ty world-famous for its avant-garde critics, the home of the "Yale School~ and deconstructionism, he remained a staunch advocate of traditional notions of reading and interpretation. Today, Giamatti freely expresses his distaste for "people who wish to have it thought that everything we teach is a structure of the political and economic systeJll we come out of." The point of scholarship, he feels, is to elucidate texts, to "show what they meant, then implicitly or explicitly evaluate them against some notion of what was good and what wasn't." The importance of the original statement of the poet exceeds the value of issues like the examination of the social role of the critic or un¡ earthing the implied ethical values of the literary canon.

But if Giarnatti is not interested in

o

1986 Anne Applebaum and Rich Blbw

labelling and re-examining his critic<.J standpoint, neither was he enthusiastic in the late sixties when students began demanding a re-examination of the role of the university in modern America. Rejecting condemnations of the university as the institutionalization of elite values, Giamatti turned for support to the positions of 16thcentury Humanism, just as he had always turned to traditional texts for clarification of his values and beliefs.

There he rediscovered classically liberal notions of the university and education, notions to which he still subscribes.

The University, claims Giamatti, is '"a paradoxical creature. You have an involved, very competitive community-very competitive by designand yet the normal financial incentives for competition are absent." Because of the absence of self-serving motives, the University is a place where people are free "for pursuing not one single truth, but all the various truths there are, and all the new knowledge that there can be at the same time as you remember and accumulate the old." Competition occurs within this "free market of ideas" in a "fruitful, yet joyous and intense fashion, and that's the wonderful mystery at the heart of the university.

That people are free, yet they assume constraints that keep other people free . . . ., You're really independent when you begin to understand the pleasure of dependence on others. You don't have to be isolated to be independent."

Giamatti will grant that this is an ideal. He won't pretend that his vision describes everyday life at Yale. But he will defend his positions vehemently, and in the early seventies that meant attacking anyone who questioned the value of education at private institutions like Yale. His writings satirized "open" classrooms, New Math, and the •individualized instruction" and •eJective systems" which produced students who emerged "not knowing how to listen to anyone else, not knowing how to take a direction." He refused to accept the prevailing idea that Yale was an elitist institution which needed to reorient itself in a new political direction.

Again, Renaissance texts supported his arguments. "Humanism," he proclaimed, "was designed to develop a

flexible method of inquiry, not a preconceived message. Education was linked to politics- one was meant to be led out into the city- but education was not 'politicized.'"

The sports articles which Giamatti wrote during his years as an English professor also provide telling evidence of Giamatti's attitude towards American youth and American values during that period of time. His "Tom Seaver's .l:'"areweU," which he wrote for HOTpers;- praised the Mets pitcher for "gaining control over a block of soace approximately three feet high, 18 inches wide," while "Yippies yipped, flower children blossomed and withered." Giamatti wrote that he had "no idea what opinions Seaver then had on race, politics, war, marijuana, and the other ERA, but whatever they were, or are, they are beside the point.

The point is the way Seaver was perceived- as clean-cut, larger than life, a fastballer, 'straight,' all the time when many other young people, who were getting lots of newspaper coverage, were none of the above."

In a more blatant attack on antiEstablishment sentiment, Giamatti caricatured one of these "other young people" as "outfitted for peace at the Army-Navy store with his coded cries about relevance and community and his roomful of stereos, cameras, and electric typewriters, whose deepest dream was to bring about the Revolution and get credit for it." Yet he also considered these students a failure on the part of American educational institutions. Liberal arts universities had failed to articulate their relationship with society, to clarify their goals and purposes. This lapse had resulted in the halt of intelligent debate and communication, the central focus of Giamatti's ideal university. In the early seventies, he feared that the intellectual tradition would erode into sentimentality. Language had become a medium for expressing individual desire rather than a forum for shaping the relationship between the free, rational individual and society.

Given these viewpoints, it was no surprise when Giamatti, despite his "liberal" image, turned out to be a conservative president. He simply stuck to his principles. Just as he had verbally

On the President's Image: "The Yale community doesn't want a president who makes a fool or a public spectacle out of himself.

There may be people who think I do, but it's not because I set out to do it. But then you don't want some shrinking, sad, wizened little creature that I claim I am all the time. You want to have someone you can feel good about when you're watching the David Susskind show.

You don't want to say, 'Oh no, it's Giamatti, let's get into the car and go to . . . . Burger King or something.' Not tlilat you should sit there and say' 'Ob my God, rm in awe, it's the president of Yale!'"

On America: "The thing about America is that the elite class, whatever that means, tends to be made by universities, not by inherited wealth, standing armies, or the state church. One of the reasons American culture is so devoted to education is that education was the way you made yourself into an American. That was different from the Old Country and I'm sufficiently a patriot to say that it's better. I would rather live in a country where you didn't have to be born in a family that always went to college in order to go to coUege.•

On Poetry:

•I think criticism is interesting, but I don't think it's as interesting as reading a great poem.

And I don't think it's nearly as interesting as writing a great poem.

And if I really could have asked the Creator to make me in a way that would have been interesting, it would have been to write poems, not to engage in debates about whether or not my insight into somebody else's insight was creative or not.• The New JournaVFebruary 28, 1986

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ANOELO BARTLE1T OIAMAm (Ban). Born April ... 1938, in Boston,

son of Valentine Oilmelti, '32, Ulcl Mary Walton Olamaul. Prepared at South Hadley Hlah School, lmematioDal School, Rome Ulcl Andover. EnaUsh honors major; on Dean's Litl, I!IS6-58 and aprlna, 1959. Member, Saybrook (on Council). Dr.-&, Pundita, Elizabethan, Delta Kappa Eplilon, Aurellan, and Scroll and Key; chairman, Charitla Drive, 1959-60; on Underaraduate Affairs Committee, 1956-S?, aac1 Seuior Advisory Board; Claas Day orator. Future , . , occupation: ~~after pwluaCe wort In compuaaive literature, possibly at Hanard; lldclress: 29 Silver Street. Soutb H8dley, Mass.

Giamatti's Yale: t he beginning of thirty years of devotion.

defended the human istic university against radical attacks during the six· ties, he continued as president to defend its independence against the more concrete intrusions of government, unions, the M o ral Majority, and the remains of student activism. In Giamatti's eyes, his assurance of financial aid for students denied government loans for refusing to register for the draft derived from the same principle which led him to reject binding arbitration during the Local 34 strike. He insisted that the Yale G lee Club could not sing the Solidarity anthem on the Voice of America for the same reason that he consistently refused to reveal his own opinions on current political or social issues. He explains, "I would have seen all of those issues as trying to be consistent to a sense of the autonomy of the university, and the capacity of the university to manage its own affairs." Moreover, he believes that neither Yale nor Yale's president should associate themselves with a single partisan viewpoint. "I think I should encourage an e nviro nment where I can have my judgements and you can have yours. I am not obliged to satisfy everybody's ideological labels."

Even if Bart Giamatti did arrive in the office of the Yale presidency with a clear mandate from the Corporation a nd his own set of classical educational principles, he knew it would take time to enact them. As he explains it, the greatest problem he faced during his first years was that "you have to find a voice, find a style, fmd a way of expressing yourself that doesn't presume on the one hand to be the innermost thoughts o f an ex traord inarily variegated group of people, many of whom will shortly profoundly disagree with what you say. But on the other hand, your style can't be hed ging so many .bets and being so cautious as to be totally bland a nd inaudible. I didn't have an institutional style. I hadn't been pre!!ident very long. I was working on it."

In the process of finding this voice, Giamatti encountered several stumb· lin ~r blocks. He found himself con· fronted with an immediate change in lifestyle, even more abrupt and ex· treme than he had expected. "You are not doing what you did before. It's a d ifferent job, and it carries a different way of life. That doesn't mean your values change, but it certainly changes what you do and how you do things. I can't go slouching into the Yale Bowl and sit in the end zone in my blue jeans and workboots on a Saturday the way I could when I lived across the street in Westville. First of all, I can't sit in the end zone. I have to sit where the presi· dent sits. What- do you think I could move evervthing to the end zone?"

Giamatti re~embers in particular the shock of his first interview, conducted by Sally Quinn of the Washington Post. "You sit down, and you talk to th:s person, and you go home, and she prints an article, and what does she say? 'H e looks like a Mafioso.' She did.

She said this. 'He looks like a don , and with him is a guy who looks like his consigliere.' She had no idea what a slur, to use a polite word, that was. If 1 were a black or a Jew she wouldn't have said something that egregious.

"Not everything's as dramatic or as painful as that was. But it was that pro· cess of translation from father or Yale academic or a guy who writes about sports for Harper's to this object which has no relation to your self-perception.

If you decide you're going to be what they say, then you're playing with them. If you decide the heck with them, I'm me- they'U take you apart.

You m ake adjustments."

Even after discounting the shock of becoming a public figure so quickly, Giamatti's memories of the first two years are not particularly cheer ful.

"People would say to me in the first year, 'Do you like it?' and I would say, 'Oh, it's ... fascinating!' People would say, 'Are you having fun?' and I'd say, 'Fun? I'm not sure about having fun .

Fun?'" Almost immediately, a conflict between personal feelings and presi·

dential responsibility arose when his first major appointment, Provost Abe Goldstein, was revealed to have spent some $70,000 of Yale money redecorating his university-owned house. Shortly after, Goldstein resigned. The issue remains so emotionally charged that Giamatti still re fuses to talk about it.

Not long after, Giamatti faced a different challenge from Robert Brustein, then dean of the Yale Drama School.

The two quarrelled over a range of issues, including how much emphasis the school should place on the Yale Repertory Theater- Brustein's personal project-how much on the graduate school, and how much on the undergraduate Dramat, to which Giamatti himself had belonged. The disagreement swelled into an argument over how much control the central university administration had over a department. Brustein ultimately left Yale to head the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge , but the quarrel left Giamatti extremely sensitive about future challenges to his authority.

Giamatti explains, "After all, it's important to every university president that they are able to legitimately take the responsibility they are given. This is a job with a lot of responsibility, and not a whole lot of authority." Giamatti had realized that the Yale presidency is a position whose prestige and whose official power do not necessarily match one another. At least, he asserts it to be that way. "Power!" he exclaims. "I would love to have, in reality, a smidgen of what is ascribed."

In a literal sense, Giamatti is right.

As Corporation member Maxine S inger explained, "When he started as President,_1:here were certain customs and established practices, certain expectations about the relation between the Corporation and the Yale President which he assumed." The President cannot simply step in and take control. For example, the Corporation by-laws do give the president the right to appoint faculty, but accepted custom prevents this from happening under normal circumstances. The president is also technically in charge of the budget, yet the burden of its specific divisions falls to the Provost.

The president is therefore under

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Finally, he is without any guarantee that in most cases his advice will be obeyed, especially by the faculty, which guards its independence fiercely. Aside from his ceremonial functions, his only official task is to make appointments such as university officers, deans, masters, and department chairpersons. All of these appointments are made through an extensive committee process, and again the president is obliged by custom to heed their advice.

There is, however. another side to the coin. As History Professor Donald Kagan puts it, Giamatti's willingness to deprecate his own power is "part of Bart's shrewdness and wisdom. That's one of the first requirements of a president, to say that. But my own opinion after watching Yale for 17 years is that the constitution of Yale is a constitutional monarchy, but one in which the king is crucial. And the president is king." Giamatti may not have many officially designated {asks, but as Kagan points out, "When the president, as the symbol of the university, comes to people and says, 'Look, I need your hl'lp,' you know what they'd do? They'd say 'yes.'"

Giamatti is not unaware of this aspect of his job. He explains, "Power is essentially a f~ction, to which · everyone subscribes. And if it is ascribed to you, even if you don't have it, you do have it." For Giamatti, wielding power at Yale is like conducting a symphony orchestra. "If the orchestra decides they're not going to look at the conductor, then.they're not going to do it. But if they decide to look at the conductor and they trust him, then they may not like it all the time, but they'll follow him." The Yale president, like an orchestra conductor, must convince people to trust him if he wants to maintain his authority. After overcoming some initial insecurity and challenges to his authority, Giamatti seems to have obtained this trust. And with the respect of the Yale community comes an immense amount of what he calls "the po~r of suasion , the power to persuade."

Giamatti attributes the success of his administration to his sense of selfpreservation, saying, "I don't mean

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"I never want to be one of those people of whom they're saying in parking lots and hallways, W hen's he going to go?"' self-preservation in a physical literal sen se of the word, I mean politically viable. And I mean politically in the best and largest sense of the word, trying to involve a polity , create a comm u nity. To that extent you do not engage in acts that are designed to lose the goodwill that you must draw upon when something you're trying to do needs to be done. I can't say, 'You're going to be Master of X , you're going to be Chairman of Y, and you're going to be Director ofZ.' People do not have to obey." Instead, Giamatti relies on his humility. "I paint myself as this besieged, weak creature trying to get through the day-the Wimp of Woodbridge Hall . It is not inefTecti~e."

But Giamatti's persuasive talents extend beyond simple self-preservation.

K agan attributes Giamatti's success with people to his sincere devotion to the institution . "You can't say no, because you know he means it, you know that he cares, you know that he's not a distant figure who is them, rather tha.o us." Director of Athletics Frank R yan adds, "You have to realize that there's nobody who doesn't like Bart Giamatti. People like him because he likes them. He's the mouth for their own emotions and feelings. He can converse with the common man ."

In short, Giamatti's ability to exercise power as Yale president is inseparable from, even dependent upon the power of his personality. Not everyone feels this style of leadership is always appropriate. Comments Wilkinson, "Giamatti doesn't walk on water. He can be tempestuous, difficult, cranky. And he's called some things wrong, stylistically, maybe said the right thing the wrong way. On occasion the very force and power of his personality have been such that there were people who felt that they weren't really heard."

Critics also challenge Giamatti's sincerity, pointing to his ability to charm with personality if he can't convinct> with facts. More than one observer has invoked Giamatti's undergraduate acting career as proof that the president can play whatever role a situation demands. One Literature professor compared Giamatti to Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry V, emphasizing Hal's transformation from a fun-loving inhabitant of the "tavern world" to the aloof and manipulative King Henry V. If Giamatti has taken advantage of his strong personality to wield presidential power more effectively, he has also paid a personal price for it.

When the power of the president depends on the individual's strength of personality rather than written codes, the president becomes a ripe target for those who wish to attack the institution. During the 1984 strike, for instance, Local 34 ridiculed Giamatti by printing and selling "Bartbuster'' t-shirts and chanting anti-Giamatti manifestos. The union's strategy was to discredit the position of the Yale administration by discrediting Giamatti.

"No human being enjoys having to have a bodyguard to walk around on campus," Giamatti says today, almost certainly with more stoicism than he could manage at the time. "No human being enj oys having his family subjected to the kinds of things mine were.

No human be i n~ enjoys being called those names and being held up to contempt and ridicule. But no human being who confronts that and then changes all of his beliefs about what the place stands for and how money is allocated would be worth very much." · Despite his reliance on style, Giamatti will probably be remembered in substantive terms as the president who balanced the books at Yale. That was Giamatti's first priority when he became president, and he has succeeded in eliminating the Yale deficit- for years a multi-million dollar embarrassment- and helped almost triple Yale's endowment. That achievement, along with his well-publicized attention to alumni relations, Yale-New Haven relations, boosting faculty salaries, and restoring campus buildings, has given his presidency a "housekeeping" flavor.

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Speaking out: The problem of finding an institutional voice

As Giamatti said not long ago, in only partial jest, "Call me Bart the Refurbisher. I've spent $20 million on deferred maintenance and will only be remembered by people who like to go through steam tunnels. If my name goes on anything, it will be the Giamatti Memorial Wiring System."

But Giamatti has also shaped Yale in more subtle ways. He has guided the University through a period of malaise, a cor·~sequence of post-sixties confusion over the role of the University in society and the economic crises of the seventies. He has committed Yale to need-blind admissions at a time when other major universities have had to discard that policy. He has promoted education at a national level, keeping issues like the availability of student loans on the national agenda, and perhaps linking the idea of access to higher education with Yale in the minds of many. Most importantly, Giamatti has succeeded in keeping the University as independent and free of external control as possible in an era of labor unrest and financial strains. He has been, in the words of Corporation member Maxine Singer, "the defender of the independence of the university as an intellectual institution." That independence is likely to prove Giamatti's most valuable legacy.

Yet the problematic equation of power with personality may ultimately undermine Giamatti's achievements as president. If the foundation ofGiamat· ti's achievements is his personality, it is possible that these achievements may not survive his departure. "One has to be conscious of the fact that style is substance," Giamatti claims- but it's an arguable proposition, one which will be put to the test after he leaves.

One potential problem spot will be town-gown relations. Conventional wisdom has it that they are much better under Giamatti than before him, and this is probably true. But much of this improvement is merely a function of popular perception- perception of "Bart" as a man of the people, a Yale president on a first name basis with New Haven merchants, a friend of another prominent New Haven figure of Italian descent, Mayor Biagio DiLieto. When Giamatti leaves, he could well take that perception of improvement with him. Says Wilkinson, "The fact is that our relations with the city are still very shaky. I am very ner-· vous with Bart going because people might see those relations as being only personalized, and we cannot have relations with the city resting on the shoulders of two men."

There is also a sense that in his drive to resto~:e a traditional educational equilibrium at Yale, Giamatti has sometimes stopped short of further progress once he had made necessary repairs. Some ob~ervers, mostly on the faculty, feel that Giamatti has simply been too busy with administrative functions to attend to issues of Yale's educational philosophy and direction.

Says Kagan, "Certainly Giamatti has not attempted to do academic innovation in any major way that I know of. His effort was to get the place in as good shape as it could be in a variety of ways where he thought it needed bringing back to. I would say this is a good time, now that Bart has got things straightened out and put an end to a sense of crisis and defeat, this is a ,good time to really make a press for quality. To me, that would be the excitement of this next phase."

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Hamlin agrees, saying, "I think that the real commttment ne has to education and to the humanities has had to be put on the back burner in order to tend to things like the budget and the alumni support, and the buildings and grounds, and labor problems. This was hardly what he had in mind when he came into office."

To an extent, Giamatti concedes the point, saying, "I haven't been able to sit here thinking what I can do for the humanities- but then I shouldn't have. Of course anybody who's president of a university is going to be presented with labor problems and municipal probl~ms. But I did not slack in my devotion to the humanities, I have simply increased my devotion to the rest of the place."

Even when Giamatti has been able to speak out on educational theory, his renowned emphasis on the humanities never really embraced the sciences. No matter how much money Giamatti sank into the renovation ·of science facilities, or how much time he spent trying to woo prominent scientists to the Yale faculty , it was clear that Giamatti could not articulate a love for the sciences as he could for the humanities.

"From a personal standpoint, I was disappointed in his talks which so often dealt with the question of liberal education," said Singer, a highly-respected biologist in addition to being a Corporation member. "I agree with those talks as far as they go, yet he didn't include the sciences in his definition. If I were defining a liberal education, I would at least include the sciences."

If Giamatti failed to attend to such concerns because more mundane troubles kept him too busy, his decision to retire seems somewhat mysterious. Why would he choose to leave when the strike's end meant the first problem-free horizon for Yale since Giamatti had become president?

If there were ever a time when Giamatti could advance his educational agenda-and he surely does have one-it is now, when Yale is free of the financial and labor troubles that occupied so much of Giamatti's time in the past.

There are numerous rumors why Giamatti is leaving- to attend to his

Dan A. Oren In a unique and richly informative addition to American educational, religious, and cultural history, Dan Oren examines the college life of Jews at Yale from the first Jewish graduate in 1809 to the present time, drawing comparisons to the Jewish experience at other elite colleges and universities and to the experiences of other minorities at Yale.

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health and his family life, to name two- but none of them fully explains why a president at the peak of his power, having spent more than half his life at Yale, would choose to step down.

The answers are rooted eight years in the past, in Giamatti's own mixed feelings about becoming president.

In the sudden transition from private to public figure, G iamatti was forced to give up P.asttimes he loved.

The greatest sacrifice was teaching, but there were other losses: writing, meeting with students, spending time in libraries- the day-to-day activities of a man in the thick of Yale life, rather than distantly above it. Giamatti remembers, "I said in my interview [with the Corporation] that I was not the kind of person .they wanted, and I had no interest in being a butcher. I didn't see myself as a person who was going to slash budgets. I was candid about the fact that I wasn't someone who I would have thought they would have come to." At the time, Giamatti predicted that he would only serve as president for seven years.

Publicly , Giamatti reconciled himself to his new role. Still, one senses that privately he has never been completely comfortable trying to be president and teacher, administrator and educational spokesman all at once .

That struggle to be the "Renaissance Man" has exacted a tremendous physical and personal toll on Giamatti .

Moreover, he worries that in staying longer he risks losing the respect he has acquired.

"I never want to be one of those people of whom they're saying in parking lots and hallways, 'When's he going to go?"' Giamatti says. "Because that's too late. And I didn't want to come to a point where I had a feeling of defending what I had done- saying well, yes, we had to do all that renovation because it was so necessary. Or yes, I didn't do that because we were rebuilding faculty salaries. Then I think the institution slows down. It keeps pace with you; it's patient, it waits. But the place deserves to keep moving at a certain momentum ."

Giamatti says these words with conviction. Undoubtedly he thinks it best for Yale and himself that he move on, but his choices are limited. H e has

r-----------------------------------1I THE I I

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turned down offers to go into politics, and he almost certainly will not go into business. Being president of another university or a foundation would probably strike Giamatti as redundant or anticlimactic.

In truth, there are surprisingly few options for a former president of Yale, especially one who is as proud as Giamatti. Other presidents have retired after leaving office , and p r esidents have died in office.

Kingman Brewster is now master of an Oxford college. But Giamatti is far younger than all of them were, and even he doesn't seem to know what the job market holds for ex- Yale presidents.

Of course, Giamatti has spent the majority of his life as an academic, and many faculty members have told him they would like to see him return to Yale to teach again. Giamatti, however, is pessimistic about the possibility. There are enemies made over the years to consider, the problem of catching up with a decade's worth of scholarship, the difficulty of downshifting from president to faculty member, and the awkwardness his presence at Yale might mean to President-designate Benno Schmidt.

For a man who loves Yale as much as Giamatti does, such a threatened separation is more like exile. Giamatti can't help but be aware of how ironic it is for a president who has always stressed the importance of choice at Yale to find that he has little choice but to leave Yale, never to return except as a visitor.

"I've been here about as long as I thought I should be," Giamatti says softly. "You should know when enough is enough. You sh ould do it just for the sheer joy of doing it, because the place deserves better than just repetition."

He pauses. "Then let somebody else do it. This isn't my career. I mean, I do like it. I used to get asked that question five, six, seven years ago, and I wasn't so sure. Now, if you say to me, 'Are you having fun?' I'd say, 'Yes. I enjoy the job.' And I will miss it.•

•

Anne Applebaum, a senior in Pierson, is 1TI4114ging editor of TN].

R ich B !JJw, a smwr in Branford, is executive edi«tr of TN].

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TYCO STATIONERS 27 BROADWAY NEW HAVEN , CT 776-3626 The New JournaUFebruary 28, 1986

21

This young mother wishes she bad finished school before having her daughter.

I I

Growing into Motherhood Susan Orenstein In New H aven, the frequency of teenage pregnan1 y has become great enough to warrant its own statistic.

Each year, the c..ny records hundreds of new births to teenage girls, ~orne of them as young as 13. Once they leave the hospital, they wiJJ begin to adjust their lives, at school and at home, to accomodate the demands of their children. Long after the city's books are put away each year, teenage mothers will continue to encounter problems and constraints which statistics never reveal.

The Hill Health Center in New Haven reports that, citywide, 449 teenage girls had children in 1983, the most recent year statistics were available. While startling, the high number of teen mothers in New H aven reflects a national problem that has 22

The New Journal/February 28, 1986

captured increasing attention from the number of out-of-wedlock b irths to American public. In nat ional New Haven teenagers does not m agazines, full-page ads sponsored by decrease, teen pregnancy may become the Planned Parenthood Federation too commonplace to reverse. picture a girl behind a school desk who In New Haven, the best sources for asks, "Do I look like a mother to you?" insight into the problem are the young The problem has been considered so mothers themselves. Michelle, who is important by Time that it featured teen 18 and lives with her father and stepmothers on a recent December cover. mother in New Haven, sat and talked For a teenager, a baby alters both one day in school after making up a her body and her personal identity, test. Her hands were folded over her and she finds herself caught between stomach , and she looked down at them school and motherhood. Since many of when she thought about the baby. "I New Haven's teenagers already come just didn't think I could get pregnant," from a life of inner-city poverty, she said. "I was doing good, four whole motherhood creates both increased years (without contraception), and financial strain and reasons to drop out then I popped up pregnant this year." of school. The city has instituted pro- Michelle's belief in her security comes grams to help young mothers function naturally to adolescents who don't with their babies and has made ef- want to worry beyond the present. A forts aimed at prevem:on, but if the task force of the Planned Parenthood

"l just didn't think I could get pregnant. I was doing good, four whole years (without contraception), and then I popped up pregnant this year."

Federation reports that only one in seven adolescents comes to a clinic before having sex, and the delay between first intercourse and first contraception is usually .six months.

Michelle found out about her pregnancy last August and since then has given up her hope to join the Navy.

Now she plans to go to college parttime at night but will wait until her child is at least one year old.

In New Haven, teenagers accounted for 20 percent of the total number of women who gave birth in 1983. Within Connecticut, the teen pregnancy rate was reported at 10 percent, twice as high as national figures. But even at five percent, the United States has the highest rate in the western world, and the only one still rising, according to a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute. Reporting on developed countries, the study cited openness about sex as the crucial factor in controlling teen pregnancy. For example, in 1975 Sweden and the United States had comparable teen pregnancy rates, but since then Sweden has liberalized its abortion laws and mandated sex education, issues still under debate in the U.S. Sweden now has a teen pregnancy rate less than half that of the United States.

Christine, a 16-year-old at Hillhouse High School in New Haven, would have benefited from better sex education. Part of the problem was how her own mother approached the topic of

sex. "As soon as I got my period," she said, "all my mom said was 'You better not get pregnant.'" Left at that, such a statement ignored crucial issues about sex, particularly contraception.

Though she wanted to avoid having a baby, Christine was using birth control incorrectly when she became pregnant. According to Kathleen London, head of a program at Hillhouse for school-age parents, a girl may actually ask her mother for birth control and then go ahead with sex even if her mother says no. Living on welfare with a daughter 10 months old, Christine says that preventing another baby is on her mind every day, largely because she doesn't think she could withstand another 25-hour delivery.

Recent studies of teen pregnancy show that the problem is not limited to girls of poverty like Christine. Suburban areas have seen an increase in pregnant teenagers, with more girls carrying their pregnancies to term. But the extremely high rate of pregnancy in New Haven indicates that poverty makes the problem worse. Dr. James P. Comer, professor of child psychiatry at the Yale Medical School, believes that a breakdown in the community accompanied by early exposure to sex causes the teen pregnancy rate to rise. Among people who are most marginal in any society, such as farm women in Europe, the rates are highest. According to Comer, New Haven suffers because teenagers here do not sense they have a chance for economic success and lack a reason rot to have a child at a young age.

In fact, in New Haven, many girls find numerous reasons w haue babies.

Michelle thinks some girls are like her, arriving at their pregnancies by mistake, while some become pregnant because their friends do. They either see having a baby as a sign of maturity or as just something to love. And the sight of other girls with babies brings the idea home, making it more immediate and plausible. A mother in

school, Sharon looked like any appearance-conscious teenager walking down the hall, her lipstick freshly applied even near the end of the day.

But with a two-year-old son, her time is spent taking care of a baby as well as herself. Sharon was not using birth control when she became pregnant in the eighth grade. "The problem with girls is they don't have their mother to talk to them about sex. I knew I could get pregnant but at the time I wanted the experience." Aside from curiosity about sex, many teenage girls may also gain a sense of gratification from having a child. In an article he wrote for The Crisis magazine, Dr. Comer claimed that having a child often compensates for a lack of success in family life, school, or employment.

In his article, Dr. Comer also discussed the male motivation behind teen pregnancy. "Closed out of an opportunity for economic adequacy too many black males turn to sexu.al conquest as a major source of a sense of adequacy," he wrote. Evelyn Elliot, who graduated from Hillhouse last spring with a 15-month-old son, agrees with Dr. Comer. She sees how, in her community, males will rely on sexual prowess and experience to shape their self-image. "A lot of girls I know, the fathers are around, just around," she said. "He likes to say 'yes, this is my son,' but when it comes to responsibility he's not there . . . . See, we grow up and get more mature because we go through the whole nine months. But they don't, so they go out and do what they were doing. All they realize is 'I got a son.' Guys on my street go bragging 'I got three babies.' And other ones say 'I hear you, man.'"

Problems with self-esteem also plague the girls themselves, leading some into young motherhood.

Especially when the teenager has been physically abused as a child, she may get pregnant as a part of her fantasy to bring her mother back into her life.

The most belligerent mothen, London The New JoumaUFebruary 28, 1986 25

says, often pay more attention to a girl when she is pregnant, and there have even been "false pregnancies" in response to severe abuse.

For such varied reasons, 9,498 teenagers actually became pregnant in Connecticut in 1983, and over half of them terminated the pregnancy in abortion. London says that despite the city's high birth rate there are more abortions in New Haven than people realize. Manv of these abortions, however, occur among girls who either later do become teen mothers or who already have a child. A recent article in Connecticut magazine provided evidence suggesting that suburban white girls are more likely to have abortions than urban blacks. According to Dr. Coll)er, in the lower-income urban communities of New Haven , seeing other people have early sexual experiences and babies creates a community trend. "Many middle-class families are not going to keep your baby for you," Dr. Comer said. He added that, while low-income communities in New Haven have experien-c ed a degree of deterioration, some families are more willing to help raise children because it is their only usable skill. At Hillhous_e , 17-year-old Beth is

sometimes late for school and has to start her day at the attendance office.

She tells the annoyed secretary there that she was busy with her daughter and came to school as soon as she could. Beth says she is fortunate to come to school at all, because her mother watches her baby during the day. In another family, however, Sylvia wonders how she will stay in school, since her mother, at age 33, doesn't necessarily want to watch the children while she is in class. In order to finish high school, Sylvia meets her cousin at 7:45 a.m. to give her the baby for the morning, and h~r best friend, the baby's godmother, helps watch him in the afternoon.

Aside from the potential for family support and the example set by teen mothers in the community' other factors often influence a girl's decision to have her baby. At an estimated cost of $225, affording an abortion is one barrier to terminating a pregnancy. Both Planned Parenthood and the Women's Health Services, Inc . may perform abortions covered by state medicaid, though they will provide services only through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. For girls who have trouble accepting their pregnancy, let alone making

a decision about it, the 12-week deadline may preclude abortion, unless they are willing to travel to Bridgeport or other places outside the city. According to London, Yale/New Haven Hospital is reluctant to use medicaid for abortions because it receives federal funds and does not want to run counter to the current administration's policy. Currently, an effort by Connecticut to discontinue state medicaid for abortions is pending decision in court, and plans to balance the federal budget threaten grants provided to Women's Health Services.

For some girls, whether or not toterminate a pregnancy depends not on cost considerations but on die moral or religious issues surrounding abortion.

Michelle, for example, said, "I don't like abortion 'cause you're killing something that's alive. There's no reason that I should have gotten an abortion. I mean, I could see if I was raped." Within her church, a girl faces a split in opinion concerning her motherhood. Becoming pregnant outof-wedlock is viewed as wrong, but going through with the birth is the right decision, and the church will support it over an abortion.

While this influence of the church is j direct and spoken, another, far more ~ subtle force may influence a girl against the idea of abortion. Many young women will not consider ter! minating their pregnancy because they themselves are the children of teen mothers. London estimates that 80 to â&#x20AC;˘ 85 percent of her students have ~ mothers who were also teen parents.

As the idea sinks in that their mothers were pregnant teenagers a generation ago, girls in New Haven may hesitate to terminate a pregnancy and effectively break away from their mothers' example. They may feel that since their mothers had them, they should not abort tpeir own pregnancies .

Recognizing that many pregnant

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The New Journal/February 28, 1986

teenagers m New Haven will have their babies, the city responded 20 years ago with the opening of an alternative school for pregnant girls. The school has recently changed locations, and on a trip down Columbus Avenue, a billboard gives the first welcome to the neighborhood, its bold black letters reading "Having a Baby? We Deliver!"

The Polly T. McCabe building, identified by a hand-written sign in the window, is school for hundreds of teenagers each year. Within the school system, Polly McCabe receives about 90 percent of the city's pregnant girls, the official count last year being 211.

Most of them black or Hispanic, their ages range from 12 to 20, or from si.xth to 12th grade.

A key purpose of McCabe is to make the pregnant teen feel ~omfortable by offering her the company of others in the same situation. The entrance to the school has a round table that serves as a student lounge, and in between classes pregnant girls gather there, talking and laughing together. McCabe seeks to help students not only socially but educationally, and the subjects written on the classroom doors resemble those of other schools: social studies, English, home economics. ¡ The program aims at keeping girls in school throughout their pregnancy, so that they can either graduate or continue In regular schools such as Hillhouse.

For -Michelle, attending McCabe this year will mean a high school diploma as well as something equally vital: lessons in mothering. "I'm scared ... 'cause I don't know nothing about babies," she said. "I'm scared I might get up in the middle of the night and be angry for getting up." When she first found out she was pregnant, Michelle also feared the pain of childbirth. To help prepare for labor, she takes a class at McCabe on childbirth and health that meets twice a week. The room is also used for delivery exercises, so on those days it is empty of desks and

Dinah Milton, engaged to the father of her three year-old daughter, ia currently a student at Southern Connecticut State University where she helps counsel teenagers about preventing pregnancy.

chairs. More than the open space, the posters on the walls show that the classroom is far from ordinary. One presenting a series of pictures is called "Stages of Labor," and another, on the other side of the room, reads "How a Baby Grows."

Michelle says she feels more involved with school now than before her pregnancy, and one reason could be the personally important issues she encounters in class. Taught by Adair Luciani, "Childbirth and Health" deals w1th delivery, nutritional information, birth control, and family dynamics.

Ironically, Luciani finds that the girls in her classroom are in many ways naive. "The swingers know enough to use birth control," she said. "The ones who get pregnant are the innocents."

Michelle, not realizing she could get pregnant after four years of sex without birth control, is an example of such innocence. Her face is covered with freckles, making her protruding stomach incongruous with her youth.

She realized she was pregnant when she called her mother after being sick for a while. "We just took it as a joke, I guess, I don't know. She didn't yell, she didn't get mad or nothing. She said, 'If you throw up phlegm then

you're pregnant.' I was throwing up, and my mother said 'I guess I'll be a grandmother.'"

As soon as she delivers her baby, Michelle will face difficulties that Luciani's class may not have prepared her for. After having people worry about¡ her while pregnant, she will start worrying about her own baby. And her goals to finish school and get a job will become more difficult than she imagined. She will already break the pattern of 50 to 85 percent of teenage mothers nationwide by finishing high school. Going on to college would be exceptional, as well as draining.

Addressing the problem of high dropout rates among young mothers, Lee High School in New Haven intwduced a program eight years ago designed to keep teenage parents in school. Today, all three high schools in New Haven have programs, but only Hillhouse employs a teacher full time.

London, who ran the program's original model , is currently the teacher at Hillhouse. Having formerly worked at McCabe, she believes the hardest work for young mothers comes after the baby is born. London believes that many of the 111 students enrolled in her program this year find that they The New JoumaVFebruary 28, 1986

25

are separated from other girls in school. "I do think some of the other girls view it sadly as a loss of their teenage friends, and it is," she said.

"But I don't think they pass moral judgment at all."

Still, the student mother recognizes the split in what she deals with at home and at school all in the same day. "I'm still a teenager," Beth said defiantly. "I don't have to be grown. I don't have to cut my fun out because I'm still young.

I'm notgoingto play the grown role yet . . . but I like being around older people. Young girls, they act too silly. You know, smart remarks about the baby."

Before she comes to school, Beth gets up at 5:30 or six a.m., checks on the baby and changes her. She wishes she could take care of her daughter during the day, and she also wishes she could earn her own money. Beth sees her younger sister, who is pregnant now, as a source of conflict, not as someone following her own lead. With two babies in the family, Beth thinks she won't have as much money allotted to her as before.

Sharon, who helped ¡ others with their babies before becoming a mother, thinks she was ready for the responsibility. Separation from peers does not concern her, because most of her friends now have babies. Even though having a child out-of-wedlock trapped Sharon and other teenagers into poverty, their motherhood serves to bring them together. She wishes she could have had her own son when she wasn't a student, but her friends provide the emotional support which makes motherhood bearable. Still,- among her friends with babies, Sharon does feel distanced from the ones who don't stay in school and says they use motherhood as an excuse to drop out.

Young mothers in New Haven face alienation because school is designed for teenagers who do not have to worry about dependent children. Trying to be both students and mothers, teenage girls may feel successful as neither. In 26

The New Journal/February 28, 1986

A young grandmother poaea with daughter: dt;apite conflictâ&#x20AC;˘ in the paat, they remain cloae, and both auert the importance of young mothers staying in school.

order to resolve the conflict, they may choose a single identity and abandon school because motherhood comes first . Remarkably, New Haven has a drop-out rate for teen mothers of only 18 percent, a figure far below the national average. The city's school-age parents' program plays a major role in keeping young mothers in school because it removes them from an alienating environment for one period each day. Everything in London's room, for example, speaks directly to them. A table in the corner is covered wtth pamphlets that include information on, among other things, birth control, drinking and pregnancy, men and sex, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Across the room from the pamphlets, a bulletin board displays pictures of babies born to London's students.

Along with troubles at school, teen mothers often must face difficult choices within their own homes. One of the concerns that differs from mother to mother is the specific financial situation of her family and the way she supports her baby. Rules govern-

ing state aid are confusing, even intimidating, and teenagers may not understand what is available to them.

London will call and even visit the welfare office and then explain the information to her students . Currently, a major problem for young mothers is that they do not receive the welfare award for their babies while living at home. In late 1984, the state transferred responsibility for the babies to the maternal and paternal grandparents, so that they receive the added award instead of the mothers. The new policy seeks to make parents more responsible for their teenagers' sexual behavior, but it has the adverse effect¡ of leading young mothers out on their: own. Some of them are genuinely more responsible than their parents and feel a great need to control the baby's funds. But to do so, they must declare their independence, and many will move out only to face increased poverty. London says some young mothers end up with no place to live as a result of the new policy, and others may resort to lying to evade the law.

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"For most young mothers , marriage does not coincide with h aving a baby, and the ones who do rem ain with their b aby's father often feel unusual."

Christine is one young mother in New H aven who moved out of her house so that she could receive welfare compensation for her baby directly.

Though she says she hates being "on the state," Christine became too frustrated living with her mother.

"When my mother was getting my money, I wasn't getting anything at all.

I wish I could move back and still get it," she said. With her own apartment near her mother's house; Christine comes home from school and confronts the tasks of running a household. Planning her monthly budget, she always sets aside enough for two spare boxes of Pampers. "Mrs. London's class is the only reason I come to school," Christine said. "Otherwise I would For Sylvia, life in her mother's house has also proved difficult, and she plans to move out soon. Finishing out the year at Polly McCabe, her son just three months old, Sylvia talked while her two-year-old daughter fell asleep on her lap. The baby, holding ~nto her mother's shirt, had two braids fastened with Raggedy Ann barettes, the braiding part of her mother's daily routine. Sylvia says her own mother, who became a single parent when she was 15, challenges her role with the children. "I can't feed my son when I want," Sylvia said. "I can't change him when I want. There's a certain time I can play with my child." certain time I can play with my child."

Her mother gives her $140 a month to live on and also pays for her food, but Sylvia plans to receive S500 a month paying a low rent at her aunt's house.

Sylvia finds that most of her friends from high school currently have babies, and she knows of only one who is married. For most young mothers,

marriage does not coincide with having a baby, and the ones who do remain with their baby's father often feel unusual. Although she has a new boyfriend, Sylvia considers her children the most important part of her life, and she wants to go to college and open a home for young mothers. College is a way for her to escape a dependence on welfare, and she is eager both to support herself and to get married. "I'd like to be married but there ain't no boy dumb enough to marry someone with two kids already," she said. She would have married her babies' father, but speaking of him now brings her noticeable pain. With a disillusioned outlook on men, she says they are like little children even though they can be fathers. She finds it painful to answer her daughter's questions about her father anr:l think-: abo11t protecting her son from his example.

Evelyn, with a two-year-old son, went through different stages of emotions regarding her baby's father. "I felt like at first I didn't want my baby's father to have anything to do with me and my baby," she said. "Then I felt selfish, like I should let him be with his child. Then I felt like maybe I rushed him. But he's never around. I don't think he deserves this baby. Guys get what they want, then they leave. This isn't what I wanted in him. The love that you thought you had is gone."

Currently, her son's father has another baby, born to the teenager who lives next door to Evelyn. Evelyn feels resentful when he will not help take care of her baby and then goes into the house next door. She says she knows a number of young mothers who receive financial help from their babies' fathers, but most of the love and emo-

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27

tional support go out of the relationship. Her own son calls his father by his first name since he knows him more in the caoacity of friend than of "Daddy."

Throughout New Haven , m any young mothers expect that, for the time being at least, they will live on their own. Though many of them currently have boyfriends, these men are not necessarily expecte d to become husbands. Beth, who is still together with her baby's father, doesn't think he will be the m a n she will marry. "You can't expect to stay with your baby's father forever," she said, "because pretty soon he'll break loose. H e don't want no woman with babies all the time." Michelle, who has watched her pare nts, her brother and her friend all suffe r troubled marriages and separations, has turned down her boyfriend's proposal. " I don't want to get m a rried," she said. "I did, but I d on't want to now. H e got the ring, but I told him I didn't want it. Marriage, tha t's a scary word because then they feel tha t they own you. They got papers saying you're his or whatever. You can't just go your way and he go his way."

Though Michelle's outlook is sobering, current statistics show that he r c hances fo r a successful marriage a re not very good . A task force on teen pregnancy in Connecticut reported that marital disruption within 15 years is three times more likely for women who become mothers between the ages of 14 and 17 than for those who wait until after they are 20. For women becoming mothers at ages 18 or 19, the likelihood for disruption is two times as great. Aside from a troubled marriage, poverty is also more likely for a teenage mother. Families headed by young m others are seven times more like ly to live in poverty, and in 1984, 58 percent of Connecticut's Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), or welfare, went to women who were teen mothers.

The figures for children born to ~8

The New Journal/February 28, 1986

young mothers are equally troubling.

Teenagers are twice as likely to have low birth-weight babies than mothers who are ages 20 to 24, and in 1983 New Haven's infan t mortality rate was 23 deaths per 1,000 live births. This figure was more than double the state rate of 10. 1 and the national rate of 11.5. In addition, New H aven had a nine percent rate of low birth-weight as compared to the state's 6.4 percent and the U.S.'s 6.8 percent. According to Bob Kilpatrick at th e Hill H ealth Center, being both poor and a teenager automatically places a young mother in higher risk of having a baby who is below weight or unable to survive. H e cites problems such as low income, lang uage and cultural barriers, lack o f transpo rtation , and fear o f medical a id as some reasons why young mothers do not receive better prenatal care.

The generation of babies being born to black teen mothers faces other disturbing predictions. The Children's Defense Fund in W ashington, D.C. wrote in 1985 that "Our principal con-

elusion is that black children are sliding backwards." The report also says that black teenage girls are three times as likely to die during childbirth.

Babies of black teen mothers are four times as likely to live with neither paren t and be supervised by child welfare and five times as likely to be dependent on welfare and becom e pregnant as teens. For New Haven, such predictions give a grim outlook for the future, since nearly 20 percent o f the female school population has childre n each year.

In searching for a solution to New Haven's problem, Comer says it is difficult for teenagers to break away from community trends because the community provides their base of emotional support. A large ' gap exists between the immediate environment in which m a ny teenagers have children and the outside community that is more ready to reject such a practice.

Comer suggests the idea of "bridge people," such as church leaders or teachers, who work from within the community to provide mainstream attitudes, values, and skills. To aid teenagers in New Haven who need a strong academic program that w ill m otivate them towards jobs, Comer is currently working at Hillhouse to develop the curriculum and address health issues, including teen pregnancy. London believes that fathers should also have increased opportunity for vocatio n al training. "They feel they should be fmancially responsible, and yet they are for the most part unable," London said.

Young mothers in New Haven, recognizing that teen pregnancy is a problem, do not know how to change it. Beth said, "Everybody you know is pregnant. And it's sad too 'cause there's nothing you can do for them ."

Christine, shaking her head, added, "Best thing I could tell them is to take the pill every day." Thinking for a moment, sh e expanded her advice. "Tell them how hard it is," she said. "If you

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"fd like to b e m arried but there ain't no boy dumb enough to marry someone with two kids already ." d o have sex, make sure you have d o u ble protection." Hoping to tell teenage girls how hard it is before they get pregnant is one of the objectives of a newly formed project in New Haven called Helping Others Win. Founded

by Evelyn Elliot last spring, the program originally called for visiting the elderly in convalescent homes and then began discussing sex and pregnancy with teenagers. Elliot and her partner in the organization, Dinah Milton, also try to encourage young mothers to remain in school after giving birth. "At graduation , we felt like we should've been respected more highly than anyone else because we had children. I felt like I was gon na burst and cry and do everything at the same time," Elliot said. She and Milton have been visiting classrooms since last year but ultimately wan t to open an office where teenagers won't be afraid to talk.

A nother ind ependent program, Life H aven I nc., plans to open a shelter for pregnant teenagers and mothers in the greater New H aven area to provide housing, counseling, and follow-up work. T h e project has aiready received 50 requests for help, though it will accomodate only 12 girls at once when it opens this summer.

Meanwhile, New Haven's city-run programs continue to provide some essential services. Connecticut magazine last May reported that London's school-age parents program has reduced the number of young mothers who become pregnant a second time within two years to eight percent, compared to 60 percent nationwide, and it

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"At graduation, we felt like we should've been respected nnore higbJy than anyone else because we had children. I felt like I was gonna burst and cry." has also helped to keep young mothers in school. At Yale, several researchers, headed by Vicky Seitz in the Child Studies Center, have interviewed 145 young mothers since 1981. Their results show that mothers who attend McCabe go on to h ave increased educational success, as well as healthier babies.

Despite their positive effects, New H aven's p rograms do not reach the core of the city's teen pregnancy problem. Teenagers isolated from econ omic opportunity will not find. compelling reasons to avoid having children, and their futu res will be d ictated by adjustments to motherhood instead of academic or career goals.

Daily, such young women will face questions concerning their child's welfare, the possib ility of dropping out, and the sufficiency of their AFDC check . Some believe, however, that they can attain a future apart from these problems, perhaps one of security. "In five years," Beth said, "I hope to be in my last year of college, finding me a good nursing job. I want one more baby, I want to be married."

T hen, smiling a bit, she said what she really wanted: "I want to go to Europe.

I want a fresh start and take my family with me and be happy."

•

Susan Orenstein is a sophomore in Trumbull.

Michelle, Christine, Sharon, Beth, and Sylvia are pseudonyms.

30

The

~ew Journal/February

28, 1986

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