Volume 21 - Issue 1

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Num.;.....ber1 September 9, 1988

About This Issue

5

NewsJoumal

8

Between the VInes

10

Organs play . . . Needles work . . . Books open . . . Film societies close.

What To Do About Nothing An investzgation of the ~s in which nothing has injlumc~ the jormatwn of the TTUXiern mind. Close readings in ShalcLspeare, Melville, and Hmry James. Prejermce given to students wean'ng bright socks. By Peter Zusi

Essay

12

Features

18

24

30

Books

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Out of Bounds

Will the Yale ~ucation evolve into a jour year program without majors? As inlerdisciplinary studies bÂŤome more popular with ~ucators, students might luun to think more broadly. By Matthew Fleischer

Trial and Error: The Executive Committee's Self-Discipline Students rarely think about Yate:r ruks unttl they break tlttm. AIJ.hqugh the Executive CommiJUe is revising its procedures to make studmts more aware of its disciplinary methods, many feel iJ likes its privacy. By Martha Brant

A Modem Messiah In an tra of.fv.ruJarnm14Lism, poliJiazl apathy and the thrtt:d of nuclear lwlocaust, the Baha'i Fallh has spread .from Persia. to New Haven, quiitly working towards poliJical and socWl, as well as religious goals. By Malaika Amon

After the Fire Two yaus ago, over 1, 000 demonstrators ga.thertd in &ineck Plaza to proust IN removal of the anti-aparthrld shantytown 77tis summer, after a Yale alumnus IJunW IN re-builJ shanties to the ground, IN Coalition Against Apartheid has tried to reconstruct the community mthusiasm that has eluded the group since 1986.

ByJohn Gill

Fighting Words

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Two critics argue persuasively that the balde of IN sexes has shaped 20th cmtury litrrature. But their ambitious three-part study No Man's Land, is not withDut problems By Jmnijtr Fleissner

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The New JournaliSeptember 9, 1988 3

Publisher Mary Chen Editor-in-Chi¢ Martha Brant Business Manager Jodi Lox Managing Ediwrs Skye Wilson Peter Zusi Designer Pamela Geismar Producti.tm Manager David King Phowgraphy Edi/Qr Heidi Schulman

Associale Business Manager Pamela Weber Associale Edi/Qrs Cynthia Cameros John Gill Associale Phowgraphy EdiWr John Kim Circuldion Manager Malaika Amon

TheNewJournal t/V1tlA't'~ ~t( ~

Staff Andrew Cohen Jenny Colleton Ashley Dunning Lynn Festa Jennifer Fleissner Julie Hantman• Mitchell Hammond ·d«ktf~.

Stephen Hooper• Anna Kreiner• Ann Light Motoko Rich • Kirk Semple Barry Shirnelfarb Jaeyong So Jamie Workman

/988

Mnnhws aNi Dirtaors: Edward B. Bennett Ill • Constance Clement - Peter B. Cooper • Andy Coun • Brooks Ketley • Michelle Press • Fred Strebeigh • Thomas Strong Frimds: Anson M. Beard, Jr.t • Edward B. Bennett, Jr. • Edward B. Bennett Ill • Blaire Bennett • Gerald Bruck • Jonathan M. C lark • Louise F. Coopert • James W. Coopert • Peter B. Coopert • Jerry and Rae Court • David Freeman • Geoffry Fried • Sherwin Goldman • john Hersey • Brooks K elley • Roger Kirwood • Andrew J. Ku:z:neski, Jr. • Lewis E. Lehrman • E . Nobles Lowe • Peter Neill • Julie Peters • Fairfax C. Randallf • Nicholas X. Rizopoulos • Arleen and Anhur Sager • Dick and Debbie Searsf • Richard Shields • Thomas Strong • Elizabeth Tate • Alex and Betsy Torello • Allen and Sarah WardweU • Peter Yeager • Daniel Yergin fhas given a second time

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About This Issue

Just a couple of words, that's all. It was the next to the last night of production weekend, and the only major task left for the editors was to come up with titles. We sat down to plow through the stories in order: first, the Newsjournals. They're short piec~s; the titles should come quickly, we figured. There was Kirk Semple's piece about a program in New Haven to distribute clean needles to intravenous drug abusers. Playing on needle imagery, we came up with "Needle Point."

But that didn't quite cut it. Then we thought about alluding to the controversy surrounding the program. Someone suggested "Sticking It Out." That wasn't right either.

We decided to move on to the features. We were encouraged when the title for the cover story on Yale's disciplinary body came to us quickly: "Trial and Error." But apparently someone snoozed at the computer before the copy went to the typesetter: The piece came back as "Trial and Terror," which seemed a bit biased. Next we tackled Peter Zusi's piece-a light-hearted discourse about the art of saying nothing. We considered leaving the headline blank, but some thought that too subtle. Then someone suggested â&#x20AC;˘A Tale Told By An Idiot, Signifying Nothing." Peter wasn't amused.

Eventually things fell into place, as they seem to every issue. The Nw Journal, an undergraduate magazine covering Yale and . New Haven, comes o~t six times a year. We distribute 11,000 copies free throughout campus. Our contents range from short news stories to indepth research articles and from opinion pieces to book reviews. We are student-run and completely funded by our advertisers.

In the past six years, six of our features have won Yale nonfiction writing prizes. The New Republic ran a condensed version of a New ]ounud cover story on Accuracy in Academia. CBS turned another cover story on a New Haven prostitute with AIDS into a segment for 60 Minutes. The same story also won a Rolling Stone College journalism award for investigative reporting. This summer the writer of the story about Yale Aviation clubs was asked to write a book on the same subject. And for three years in a row, The New Journal has won top honors from the Columbia University Press Association. .

We would like to see your input in the magazine. The New Journal lS looking for photographers, designers, salespeople, and writers. We have planned an organizational meeting for Thursday, September 22 at 9:00p.m. in the Silliman Common Room. We hope to see you there .

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-MB

The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comment on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Martha Brant, Editorials, 686 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. The New Journal reserves the right to edit all letters for publication.

The New journal/September 9, 1988 5

News Journal

Pipe Cleaners Under the ornate ceiling of Woolsey Hall and below the orderly rows of wooden benches, Nicholas Thompson-Allen and Joseph Dzeda, Yale's curators of organs, can hardly move. In their cluttered, subterranean workshop, they clean and repair Yale's 14 organs. Benches, organ pipes, and bottle brushes crowd the room. The curators' most cumbersome task is maintammg Woolsey's towering centerpiece-the 12,573-pipe Newberry Memorial organ.

A 40-year-old photograph hanging on the wall shows the workshop basically unchanged. Even the tea cans stacked on the shelves are the same.

Many of the tools Dzeda and Thompson-Allen use came from the former curators; the workshop today remains distinctly low-tech. Dzeda and Thompson-Allen have resisted experimenting with new materials.

They stuck with leather diaphragms when other curators tried plastic, which Dzeda points out, deteriorates too quickly. When curators from other schools alter the organs according to the ruling fashion, he said, they compromise the instruments' quality. "You wouldn't repaint a Rembrandt to match new, yellow walls in the house. But that's essentially what has been done to the organs at these other schools."

Even though Dzeda and ThompsonAllen pamper their organs with oldfashioned care, they cannot protect the instruments from old age. Over time, the diaphragms that control the organs' valves dry out and rupture, which distorts the sound. Before dismantling the delicate instruments, the curators usually wait until several problems accumulate. "The organs are happiest when left alone," Dzeda said.

That can mean waiting anywhere between 25 and 50 years, when the organs get their regular pipe cleaning.

But even with this long grace period, the curators have fallen somewhat

Joseph D zeda, curator of o r gans, h as some catching up to do: Woolsey H all's N Memorial o r gan consists of 12,573 pipes, each of which must be cleaned.

behind. In fact, thousands of the Newberry Memorial organ's pipes have gone unwashed since 1928.

The cleaning process hasn't changed much over the intervening years. Like their predecessors, Dzeda and Thompson-Allen carry the pipes to the basement and scrub each one using bottle brushes and hot water. After reinstalling the pipes, Thompson-Allen performs a technique called "voicing" to regulate the force and response of the sound.

Thompson-Allen learned this method from his father, Aubrey , who was the third organ curator in Yale's history. Both Dzeda and ThompsonAllen trained with Aubrey before taking over as associate curators in 1973. The two men also run the Thompson-Allen Company, which repairs organs throughout Connecticut.

The curators have embraced tradition over innovation . They want future generations to see, hear, and play the organs the way the Yale community enjoys them today. And although it creates more work for him, Dzeda believes that everyone should have access to the organs. "These are not museum pieces," he said-even though he still considers himself a curator.

- M otoko Rich

Counterpoints

John Parker speaks with urgency and passion about the AIDS threat facing intravenous ( IV) drug abusers.

"People say drug addicts can't change their behavior. But there's still time to reach addicts that don't know the facts," he said. "We need to do it now."

As a 34-year-old, reformed heroin addict, ex-con, and master's candidate at the Yale School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Parker knows the addict's plight. In a controversial, selffunded campaign that defies Connecti6 The New JoumaliSeptembcr 9, 1988

Darius Helm (MC '88) goes to the ltreets to distnbute clean needles to heroin Wlen. cut laws, he has been distributing clean hypodermic needles among New Haven's IV drug-abusing population.

Parker is addressing a serious problem. Sixty-nine percent of the 175 reported AIDS cases in New Haven are IV drug abusers. Few addicts have access to health information; even fewer use sterilizing agents or clean equipment.

Three years ago, Parker founded a drug educational campaign in New Haven and Boston, now known as the National AIDS Brigade. He postered target areas in both cities with leaflets showing injection equipment and the warnings "DON'T SHARE" and "USE BLEACH" in Spanish and English.

Several Yale medical students joined Parker on his weekly postering runs to the Dixwell, Grand Avenue, and Hill neighborhoods in New Haven.

Parker has now taken his campaign one step further . He distributes clean needles and bleach in New Haven, violating a state law that prohibits the ~ssion and trade of syringes wathout a prescription. Connecticut shares this law with only 13 other states. Using money he earns as a fisherman and pan-time teacher in South Boston , Parker buys the needles legally in Vermont for 18 cents each.

Darius Helm (MC '88) , a local AIDS counselor who helps Parker with the_ New Haven program, describes thear rounds. "We begin postering to attract attention and look for long ~es (hiding track marks)," Helm said. â&#x20AC;˘If there's someone standing around who looks interested, we ask if he knows somebody who shoots drugs, ask him if he gets off." Once they locate u~en. they explain correct AIDS-

prevention techniques, including needle sterilization.

Parker hands out 4-0 needles on his biweekly runs, making contact with a small fraction of the estimated 7,500 IV drug abusers in the city. But he hopes to mobilize more volunteers and financial support and to dispense 4-00 needles a month by the end of the year.

Using the example of several international campaigns, Parker also plans to develop his program into a strict needle-for-needle exchange.

He has met some resistance to his project. Some opponents of needle distri.b ution and exhange argue that such programs only encourage drug use and drug trafficking. "I'm not sure that addicts are really sitting and worrying about AIDS, as opposed to getting through the day and getting more drugs," said Robin Kroogman, chairwoman of the New Haven Board of Aldermen's Special Committee on Drugs.

Alvin Novick, M.D., professor of biology at Yale and chairman of the Mayor's Task Force on AIDS, admits that needle distribution could increase drug use, but supports Parker's campaign for its short-term health benefits.

H e believes that until enough public health care programs are established for the addict population , public health officials must encourage addicts to use their drugs safely.

Novick also argues that the existing legislation intended to reduce the spread of drugs has done little to prevent drug abuse. In addition, he says, it has increased the spread of AIDS. He claims that laws restricting needle purchase have raised the price of injection equipment on the street, where needles cost from five to ten dollars. The high price of syringes has promoted needle sharing, which expedites the spread of the AIDS virus. "Addicts hate to share needles: Parker said.

"They're only doing it out of necessity."

U ndaunted by his arrest in Boston last month, Parker is continuing his efforts to create a Maine-to-New Jersey needle-distribution campaign.

Recent proposals for legal needle-

exchange programs in New Haven, Boston, and New York City are encouraging, but too slow for Parker's agenda. To complement the expanding New Haven project, he is initiating his own distribution program in New York this fall.

- Kirk Semple

An Open Book Twenty years after Yale College went co-ed, the Yale College Programs of Study (YCPS), popularly known as the "Blue Book," has followed suit.

Beginning with its 1988-89 edition, the YCPS will no longer use the generic "he" to refer to students. This change developed from a letter that inspired three professors of the Women's Studies department to sift through every sentence of the Blue Book for words and expressions they considered sexist.

The letter arrived on the desk of Yale President Benno Schmidt in the spring of 198 7. It was the expression of a parent's displeasure with the University's public stance towards women.

A ccording to Margaret Homans, chairperson of the Women's Studies department, the parent's complaints included an objection to the frequent use of gender-specific language in official documents. Nancy Cott, chairperson of the Women's Studies department at that time, received a copy of the letter. After speaking with Yale College Dean Sidney Altman and YCPS Editor Lila Friedman, Cott met with Homans and Mahzarin Banaji , assistant professor of Women's Studies.

Working on their own time, the three women compiled a list of suggested revisions to remove genderspecific expressions from the YCPS. Their recommendations included replacing â&#x20AC;˘the student . . . he" with -rhe students . . . they: substituting -rhe" for "his," and rewriting some sentences entirely to eliminate gender-marked The New joumal/September 9, 1988 7

2 •

3

"absurd" and replaced it with genderneutral language. Princeton University uses second- or third-person plural pronouns in its publications.

Although the three Yale professors would have welcomed a complete overhap) of the Blue Book, Homans believes that limited change is better than no change, at least for now. "You make a compromise," she said. "The options are fairly limited. It was more a commitment to the principle that the generic 'he' would disappear."

Chairperson of Women's Studies Margaret Homans and her colleagues suggested hundreds of changes to remove gender-specific language in the Blue Book. constructions. They suggested more than 40 revisions for the YCPS and often included more than one possible rewrite for each sentence they wanted to change. They also recommended that the term "chairman" be replaced by "chair," "freshman" by "first-years" or "first-year students," and "upperclassmen" by "sophomores, iuniors, and seniors." "We hoped that this would become policy for all public documents at Yale," Homans said.

While Friedman understands the professors' concerns, she has taken a more conservative approach to changes in the Blue Book. "The generic 'he' doesn't bother me as much as it docs Nancy Cott and Margaret Ho. mans," Friedman said. Nevertheless, she believes that "language is consensual" and popular usage should be respected. Reasoning that the Yale community has begun to perceive the construction as masculine, she approved the replacement of "he."

Still, Friedman was unwilling to accept the other revisions proposed by the three professors. She considers the term ..freshman• to be fairly entrenched in the language at Yale and 8 The New journal/September 9, 1988

-Anna Kreiner I I

Rnal Cut

does not feel that the word applies only to male members of the class. "I don't hear 'fresh man' ever. I hear 'freshman,"' she said. Although Friedman recognizes the possibility for change, the Blue Book will continue to refer to all first-year students as "freshmen" until she is satisfied that the term no longer applies to women.

While this squabble over nomenclature remains unresolved on campus, Friedman does not expect the YCPS to take a leading role in such debate.

"The YCPS is by nature conservative," she explained. "It doesn't try to innovate, to be at the cutting edge."

She is also wary of opening a linguistic Pandora's box. •If we're going to embark on that kind of change, we're going to have to eliminate the Latinate sufftxes that indicate gender," she said.

Words such as "'advisor" or "senior" would no longer be acceptable.

Yale is not the first Ivy League school to revise its course catalogue.

The University of Pennsylvania replaced the generic "he" about eight years ago with "he/she." Later, according to a university publications official, Penn deemed the construction

Gone with the wind is Friday night's dilemma of deciding which of the six movies on campus to see. The choice will be easier this September as only Spectrum, Ezra Stiles, and Yale Medical School ftlm soc1et1es are operating. The thinning of the ranks follows a tougher liability rule for film societies, making student directors personally responsible for debt, which in once case totalled $9,000.

This new policy was sparked by the financial collapse of Berkeley People's Film Society (BPFS) last year. When Stan Paik (BK '89) took over BPFS in September, 1987, he hoped to show good fllms and stay on budget. By December, he had accumulated a $5,000 debt, plus be had inherited $4,000 in unpaid bills from previous directors. Paik increased his advertising and expanded the schedule, but his low turnout did not cover these costs. The night he showed the British classic, The Snvant, two people came.

Paik thought he had no reason to worry· The University had never enforced the rule that makes directors liable for their expenses. After a few more flops, he cut the number of showings, but it was too late. Angry distributors called him daily to demand payment. It didn't stop there. They also began to call Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg.

DISCOVER

XAYMACA IN WESTVILLE VlLLAGE

Faced with court orders, Paik flew to France and left the defunct film society behind.

To prevent another such occurence the Dean's Office began investigating all · of the film societtes' finances. First, the University made partial payments on the outstanding debts of film societies registered as undergraduate organizations. Ezra Stiles and Yale Medical School have the only two independent film societies. Then, T r achtenberg warned student directors that the Dean's Office would enforce the existing liability rule: The University will pay student directors' debts if they default, but the students must then repay the University.

According to Trachtenberg, the Dean's Office isn't looking so much to punish students, but simply wants to prevent debt. The University has stepped in and plans to monitor the film societies' budgets closely. If it is deemed necessary, the Dean's Office will halt a society even mid-semester , unless the directors either pay their debts or alter the film schedule to make more money.

David Ki rchner (BK '89) , a director of the Yale Law School Film Society, worries that the plan doesn't allow for sufficient flexibility. He explains that film societies' finances are erratic.

A society can incur a $500 debt in one weekend. "If monitoring is set up that closely, at what point do they hold a director liable? At how much d ebt?" Kirchner asked. His society and Yale Film Society are taking no chances. The two are merging, and they will severely cut their schedule , wh ich won't begin until the spring.

M aybe more important to moviegoers, the new policy does not allow for much artistic creativity in the movie selection. "In a year-and-a-half or two years, there will be far fewer good, small-audience ·mms," Kirchner said.

Now that d irectors must worry about liability, financial considerations may overshadow artistic ones.

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Between the Vines/Peter Zusi

What To Do About Nothing Every once in a while I have nothing to say. This does not bother me much.

Often, however, people expect more from me. At an institution that exists solely for the productive exchange of ideas-I refer here to Yale-it is a breach of etiquette to have nothing to say. It brings conversations to an end and indicates, well, stupidity, which can be awkward and embarrassing.

And since students in particular are often confronted with occasions when they have nothing to say but are forced to say it, I present here some tips on how to say nothing, and say it at length.

Circumlocute, circumlocute, circumlocute! Circumlocution is the act of talking around your subject, but it works just as well when you have no subject. This is what experts refer to as the doughnut of langu4gt: a fat ring of words with nothing in the middle. Circumlocution creates substance from nothing; what's more, it's poetic.

Ancient writers used it all the time.

One can enhance circumlocution through the use of litotes, or double negatives ("Don't not call me Ishmael"), repetition (to emphasize an important point), and substitution (why say "antepenultimate" when you can say "second from the next to

lastâ&#x20AC;˘?).

Put things in a pattern. As does circumlocution, patterns create a struc:ture that makes something of your noth!ng. For example, if I have nothmg to say, I can change that into "The Seven Ages of Having Nothing to Say." Basing your pattern on S~espeare is g~, because it's poetiC. And now, mstead of having nothing to say, I. have at least seven paragraphs. An outline for the seven 10 The New JournaVSeptember 9, 1988

ages m1ght go as follows. First: When I was very young, I couldn't talk- thus I had nothing to say. Second: Once my mother told me to clean up my room, and I had nothing to say. Third: A professor asked me about magnetic fields or something and, truly, I had nothing to say. And so on. Different

patterns work for different amounts of nothing. A doctoral thesis might be entitled "The Thousand and One Nights of Nothing to Say." Copy different styles. This gives you an excuse to say nothing because you are saying it in an unusual way. Legal talk is an obvious choice here, as it was ''

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designed to say nothing, but I prefer something more literary. For writing nothing, nothing beats Henry James' style: elaborate, wordy, circumlocutive. I demonstrate: Three figures sat in front of a large, old house, forming visors with their hands to shield their eyes from the afternoon sun, while dark shadows grew across the lawn (and with them grew the history of the house, a house that was ancient and, at the same time, somehow quite modern). There was nothing to do. Then one of thefigures spoke up with a suddeness that positively made the teacups rattle in their saucers.

•Ah, Cousin Pointsharp! I do so admire your independent spirit!" The cousin addressed, a most modern young woman from America, turned her head slightly, and then assured her interlocutor that he was odious.

The thirdfigure then spoke, an older woman, the bnghtness of whose gaze was matched only by that of the sun, which beat down upon the heads of the three figures.

"Please, positively! This whole situation is . tellement ennuyeux! Ralph, what do you have to say for yourself?" "'Ah!" was the reply.

This could go on for pages. The point of the scene is that "There was nothing to do." But because the style is that of a leisure-oriented, francophilic teadrinker, the passage is rather long.

T he style itself accounts for 148 of the 16 1 words that appear.

O n e last point. Whichever method you choose to say your nothing, be sure to str ike a bitter tone. You will sound smart, and people will take you more seriously.

T hese devices are good for all situation s where having nothing to say m ight be rude or compromising. They are perfect for occasions where you m ust say more than you mean. They are a basic tool for today's student.

There is, however, another process related to saying nothing, one which takes up less time and involves fewer rhetorical flourishes: That is, don't say a nyth ing. The difference is that when not saying anything, hands remain fo lded on the lap, eyes stare straight ahead (or perhaps pensively at the

ceiling), and the mouth remains firmly shut. No words come out. When you don't say anything, nobody hears you say it- which is the complete opposite of saying nothing. Although'not saying anything requires fewer skills, many people consider it the more difficult p rocess. If it is difficult, that is because it requires honesty: You must admit you have nothing to say.

H aving nothing to say should not imply having nothing on your m ind, but unfortunately this is often taken to be the case. Because of the structures of university study, people learn to put a lot of emphasis on the quick retort,

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the conclusive evidence, and the final analysis. All these things are loud, so loudness becomes the sign of the thinking process. But thinking is silent.

It should not be embarrassing to let people see you thinking instead of having thought.

Thus every now and then, everybody ought to shut up. This is an important point, so I'll repeat it: Shut up. If you do it correctly, it can actually be quite impressive. Picture the following scene: You sit with your legs crossed, wearing bright socks, holding a pad of paper (but no pen).

You are silent. A crowd of people forms around you, waiting to hear what you have to say, but finally becoming impatient, they ask, "What is the secret?" "Oh, it's nothing," you reply; and they all agree that it is.

•

Peter Zusi, a senior in Silliman College, u managing editor of TNJ. The New Journal/September 9, 1988" II

Essay/Matthew Fleischer

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Out of Bounds What would a new vision of education look like? Not the vision loosely structured, progressive schools have been offering for years, but one that a place like Yale could ad~pt-a place that answers to the many masters of a conventional university, from the residential college variety to the powerful alums. Students know at least part of the anJwer: Education would not be chopped into 36 unrelated courses. Between the divisions, the potential of so many ideas seeps through. Instead of discovering the relationships between the physics problem set and the abstractions in the philosophy reading, students struggle to do one or the other-and end up 12 The New JownaliSeptembcr 9 , 1988

with specialization in one discipline, but a fragmentary vision overall. A new education at Yale would view knowledge as an umbrella. All different approaches to learning would assemble under its protection to form a cohesive way of thinking. What would a new vision of education look like?

The plans to bring such a program to Yale are already in place.

University President Benno Schmidt believes the Yale education is capable of melting academic divisions. According to Schmidt, education becomes fluid as advances in knowledge approach what he calls "the seamless nature of understanding." For him, specialization is only as good as its

contribution to a broader knowledge.

Schmidt regards Yale's d istributional requirements as the mechanism that assures breadth in a Yale College education. Yet this breadth is antagonistic to the integrated understanding he also insists students must have. The four groups into which all classes fall divide Yale's education into a checklist from which students must choose some of this group, some of that. By reducing knowledge to this checklist, students might know what to learn- a grasp of another language by the end of year four, a Group III next semester. But for students to be able to leave Yale aware of how to learn, they need to see relationships between the subjects they study. In the end, Yale students should believe that their experience has bred more than an intellectual expansion. They should feel they achieved an intellectual coherence as well.

A new program is trying to piece together Yale's fragmen.t s. Shortly after most students had left for the summer, Schmidt announced the University's new interdisciplinary initiative, the Program in Public Philosophy and Ethics (PPE). PPE will address general questions concerning "the public" for both study and research. Still in the planning stages, PPE will begin next fall.

This mlttative will create an undergraduate major called Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. The major, going by the same initials, will replace the existing hybrid major of Economics and Political Science, if approved by the faculty and the Yale Corporation. Whereas Economics and Political Science combines courses and faculty from the two parent majors, the proposed PPE major will have its own faculty and courses indigenous to the depanment.

The other branch of the PPE proposal, the Public Philosophy and Ethics program, will create a union of faculty and students from existing sraduate and professional schools. By establishing a strong presence at the lhduate level, PPE hopes to initiate

intellectual discussion with other centers for specialized study on campus. With these exchanges in place, PPE Director and Political Science Professor Douglas Rae says, "People can think about questions without translating back into th~ir disciplinary argot at every stage."

I n organ iz i ng this program , Schmidt, Rae, and other PPE supporters are responding directly to the academic barriers withi n the University. The words "Politics," "Philosophy," and "Economics" in the name of the proposed major reflect the organizers' belief that scholarship benefits from smoothing over academic divisions. PPE attempts to redefine departmental boundaries that exist throughout the University by aiming at their points of intersection.

Other Yale departments have worked in the past to fuse academic disciplines and have enjoyed success.

Majors such as Women's Studies, African and Afro-American Studies, American Studies, and Humanities bring together different specializations under their headings. Yet the PPE major seems even more broadly conceived than any of these. Whereas the creatjon of those earlier interdisciplinary departments reflected their entry into formal academia, PPE is more than an embrace of unexplored subject matter. The major takes a new scholarly approach by applying several perspectives to several subjects. Using the notion of "the public" as a cornerstone, the major will not only link the well-established political science, philosophy, and economics departments, but will also claim for itself all that they individually teach. It will not add an extra house to the neighborhood, but rather will organize the existing homes as if property lines did not matter.

As programs like PPE gain entry to universities, cross-disciplinary thinking will claim a larger role in academia. Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of H istory, says the most significant scholarly insights over the past 20 years have come from the

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borders of disciplines. The scholars in such positions note the evidence and methods of other fields in order to learn about their own. Howard Stern, a lecturer in the German department, has done the same by investigating the common ground between such apparently separate subjects as mathematics and literature.

Stern believes that one can discover mathematical principles in works of literature. A close examination of mathematics reveals analogies to literary analysis and provides new means for interpretation, he says.

Stern cites Cervantes' Don Quixote, in which, in the second part of the novel, the characters read their own story from the first. This self-reference could simply be called magic. Or, according to Stern, "We can see that there is a very simple mathematical way to organize that magic using (the branch of analytic geometry called) topology."

Literature is currently understood using perspectives from history , sociology, linguistics, art, and philosophy. "Literary studies are always enriched by invoking other disciplines," Stern says. He feels math has a place, too.

To President Schmidt, institutional efforts like PPE and individual efforts like Stern's reflect a burgeoning sense of academic community at Yale. The nourishing of these connections within the University produces new bases for scholarship and faculty research.

Schmidt cites recent developments in biophysics and biochemistry, progress in molecular medicine, and increased dialogue between the humanities and the social sciences. The challenge is to find a way to open this academic community to the students. Pelikan points out that the seeds for scholarly breakthroughs often come from students in class discussions and in essays. In a truly productive and coherent academic community, all members are involved. Students must not feel that they are silently passing through Yale's course machinery, but rather that they are holding several academic conversations at once.

For the students then, majors like

PPE and teachers like Stern encourage a more expansive way of thinking. But these studies come with warning labels , both for the students and the professors. Poorly conceived, crossdisciplinary work can promote obfuscation instead of creative thinking. Although Stern uses math to understand literature, he warns against confusing the two. Each discipline has different founding principles at stake: "(In mathematics) the theoretical structure is immediately usable for higher-level theory, but literary theory does not have this power. You never move on to a higherorder Ulysses," he says.

Interdisciplinary study also risks confusing students, particularly if they lack enough knowledge in an area to go comfortably beyond. Dan Sodickson (TD '88), last year's Warren Prize winner for the Humanities, spent his four undergraduate years balan- ¡ cing interdisciplinary work in the Humanities with highly disciplined study in Physics. He sometimes felt his Humanities seminars were so full of variety that they never quite cohered.

"They coagulated into a big knot where you lost everything," he says. Ruth Marcus, a professor of philosophy, Yale President Benno Schmidt: Education should explore "the seamless nature of understanding.'"

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H o w ard Stern, lecturer in the German department, multiplied Don Quixote b y th e square root of Faust. The result? Magic. calls this "being interdisciplinary for interdisciplinary's sake." Those who ch ase an abstract goal like interdisciplinary knowledge often have a misguided devotion to large-scale theorizing. Marcus feels that the relevant carry-over from one discipline to another will naturally evolve in the classroom , and that sustained pursuit of these connections will confuse and distract students. She believes that students should expect to graduate with large gaps in their knowledge: Marcus fears that in trying to make connections between subjects, the students may lose all grasp of their content.

This concern articulates a common criticism of interdisciplinary studies.

But by the same token, in expecting boundaries to give out by themselves, M arcus falls on faulty logic. She removes the onus from both teacher and student to look beyond the academic divisions that entrench the educational system. Without a dedication to challenging these barriers, fragmented studies will remain the status quo. The promise of interdisciplinary programs cannot be fulfilled unless both teacher and student walk into class prepared to test boundaries and to shift perspectives.

Interdisciplinary programs rest their underlying philosophies on the usefulness of knowledge. Schmidt says, )Knowledge} is a good, of and in lbelf. . . . [It} answers no questions of utility, of relevance, of social value."

H e feels this position defends liberal education from the narrow thinking of careerism and pre-professionalism .

But students gain by having a strong connection to the world, rather than lllerely an intellectual refuge. Inter-

disciplinary study develops sophisticated resources for problem-solving.

Today, the questions to be answered require information from other fields and not just the insider's view of a single topic. The bringing together of disciplines at the undergraduate level squeezes a college education of everything it has and still addresses the needs of developing scholars.

As the administration and faculty become more receptive to making education a cross-section of ideas, students must unlearn the high school lesson that learning is divided into discrete subjects. Why not an interdisciplinary directive in the Yale College Programs of Study? It could tell incoming students to look forward to making insights not only within a specialization but also between subjects of study. They would learn that students should try to see the ir classes not as five different projects, but as different extensions of the same enterprise.

As the University finds better means for linking its specialties, the education it offers students will improve. Students will be able to approach their education not with hesitation or whimsy-two common pitfalls in course selection- but with the excitement of taking on a single challenge.

The challenge for now, both for the University and the students, is to find an innovative approach to c reating that coherent education. As PPE will show, subjects of different content will find common ground in the minds of students.

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MatiMw Fl.nscher is a sophomort in Trumbull College .

The New Joumal/Seprembe,. 9, 1988 15

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The Executive Committee views itself as a strict but kind parent to Yale undergraduates. But many students lee Yale College's disciplinary board as too heavy-handed. They complain that in answer to their procedural questions, too often they are told "just because." Yale's children are talking back, and the committee is listening.

In response to a few controversial ca.ea, the 13-member disciplinary body, which guards the Undergraduate Regulations, is working toward a reamciliation. The outcome could affect not only students' life at Yale, but in some cases their post-college life as well.

Stuart Weinzimer (PC '88) was a medical school admissions director's dream applicant before he ran up asainst the Committee. He took a ~yaica class spring semester of 1987 With over one hundred other students.

Throughout the course, the professor eDcouraged his students to work on the problem sets together. And all lelbeater Weinzimer and his classlllatet collaborated. When it came to the take-home final, many figured the IUile policy applied. They were Wl'Ong; in the professor's eyes, over 50 JJel'cent of the class had cheated. The cue caught the attention . of the Bzec:utive Committee members, and

they called 13 of the students before the board the following fall. Although the professor recognized that there were extenuating circumstances, the most he could do for the students was plead for leniency.

"There was a vast number of people whose papers were suspect. How they arrived at 13 seems arbitrary," Weinzimer said. "The scapegoats were made. They were never concerned with the fact that there was any ambiguity surrounding my particular case." Weinzimer was suspended for a semester, a light sentence by the Committee's standards. As a result, he didn't get into the medical schools he might have. And for some of the 13 who were suspended, with less stellar records than Weinzimer, it meant a change of plans from medtcal school altogether.

Weinzimer's case is atypical.

Although the majority of the cases that go before the Committee concern plagiarism and cheating, most are more straightforward. Forty students went before the Committee last year, and of those, over half were charged with academic dishonesty. According to Thomas Carew, chairman of the Executive Committee and professor of psychology and biology, the Committee has a clear-cut policy for plagiarism

and cheating. "The routine punishment is spelled out in the regulations. They shouldn't come and be shell-shocked if they plagiarized that it's a two-term suspension," Carew said. "Certainly you take into account whether the person's moral fiber has been attested to, but you try to go on the information that is in front of you."

The Undergraduate Regulations explain the rules and the punishment for everything from vandalism to political protest. But few students read the rules. When the regulations come in the registration packet at the beginning of the year, most students' minds are still at the beach. Later in the fall, the Executive Committee publishes a brief summary of its decisions in the Weekly Bulletin. But again, few students see it.

Most students know little about the Executive Committee and the rules its members enforce. But with the help of an ad hoc committee appointed in March, 1987 by Dean of Yale College Sidney Altman, the Executive Committee's low proftle may be rising. The 11 members of the ad hoc group addres¡sing student complaints, compiled a report to update Committee procedures. Their suggestions were approved by faculty vote last May. As a result, the Executive Committee will adopt detailed, annual summaries of The New journal/September 9, 1988 17

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Phebe Bell (MC '88) is s1ttmg on Beinecke Plaza, the site of an antiapartheid rally attended by 1,000 people two-and-a-half years ago. At the height of Yale's divestment movement in the spring of 1986, several students came before the Executive Committee for building shanties, or, according to the regulations, trespassing. Even though the Undergraduate Regulations call for suspension, the students were only reprimanded. The following fall, when Bell received a similar charge for blocking the Bursar's Office in protest of the University's holdings in South Africa, she expected the same penalty.

But when Bell went in front of the Committee, its tune had changed.

Bell, along with four others who had been reprimanderl for their activities, was suspended for the rest of the semester.

The board's membership had changed over the summer. The Executive Committee is made up of three students, a representative of the Dean's Office, three tenured and three untenured faculty members, and the three members of the coordinating ~oup. The coordinating group-the secretary, the fact-fmder, and the chairperson- run the Committee. Its members do not vote except to break a tie, but they do most of the work. They

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the cases and provide reasoning for its decisions. The Committee will try to make these cautionary tales more accessible to students, either through a campus mailing or the Yale Daily News.

Liz Magill (BR '88), one of two student members of the ad hoc · committee, thinks that if students know about the Committee, they might keep out of trouble. "People are not aware of how seriously plagiarism is taken and exactly what constitutes plagiarism. I think (the summaries] can help with that and can make such cases talked about. And then when they receive it, they might say, 'That could be me, I'd better watch it,'" Magill said. Yet, she believes that if students are going to trust in the rules, the Committee must act consistently.

18 The New Journal/September 9, 1988

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review infractions on Yale's premises that are called to their attention by police reports, faculty members, college deans, or the sexual harassment grievance board. At the end of each year, some stay on the Committee, but several new members are also appointed. In Bell's"case, the presence of so many new members that fall broke up the consistency of the Committee's decisions. According to Richard Lapin (DC '88), a student member of the Executive Committee for two years, "They were two very different committees and two very different chairpeople."

The ad hoc committee suggested that the members remain on the Committee for three years to ensure continuity. The Executive Committee will also make its records more accessible to members by putting case histories on computer. Cross-listing the cases by penalty, nature, person, and date will allow them to research past decisions that apply to current sessions.

Jon Ritter (TC '88), one of the five suspended in the second d1vestment case, doesn't think a computer would have changed the outcome of his hearing. He thinks there is a human

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flaw in the system and that the Committee decided the case based on his politics. Ritter feels that Dean Altman selected a new board that was biased against his political activism.

"We don't have any hard evidence that he appointed a committee that would be less sympathetic with us, but he certainly appointed a committee that was going to take a more legalistic approach," Ritter said. Altman appoints all the board members, taking suggestions for the student representatives from the Yale College Council.

Ritter feels that this arrangement gives• Altman too much power over the Committee. But . according to Peter Brooks, chairman of the ad hoc committee and professor of French, "The Dean is in the best position to produce a balanced committee. He is also in the best position to persuade people to join it."

Dean Altman also has an ex officio post on the Executive Committee, as he does on many Yale College committees. Usually a representative from his office sits in. But Altman has attended one Executive Committee session, the second divestment case, raising a further question of his conflict of interest. "There is no doubt that he had influence on everyone in that room- like if you're an untenured faculty looking to get in right with the administration," Bell said. No matter what effect, if any, Altman had on the Committee's decision, his presence looked bad for the board. The procedures state that either a representative of the Dean's Office or the Dean may be present at the session. In this case, both were there.

The five defendants wanted to appeal based on Dean Altman's visit and the board's inconsistency, but there is no process for appealing an Executive Committee decision. "There is no one to complain to. You're supposed to complain to Altman, but we were complaining about Altman," Bell said.

Only if there is substantial new evidence will the Committee rehear the

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case; procedural disputes do not qualify for retrial. Whether or not the decisions in the divestment cases were political, the five who were suspended in the fall of 1986 received the penalty prescribed by the Undergraduate Regulations.

Still, many students feel the Executive Committee needs to discipline itself. Carew, who became chairman last fall , has tried to make his committee more precise than previous boards. "One thing I feel very strongly about is that the procedures should be followed to the letter," Carew said.

And the ad hoc group has set the Executive Commitee in that direction.

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"People are not aware of how seriously plagiarism is taken and exactly what constitutes plagiarism."

The major coup of the ad hoc board was the formation of the Committee of Review, not quite an appellate body, but close. If a student has a complamt about an Executive Committee's decision, she or he will have 60 days after the case to send a written statement to the Committee of Review . This committee will not actually retry a case, but will advise the Executive Committee if it should hold another hearing. "We didn't want to undercut the Executive Committee in any way," Brooks said. "We see the Committee of Review as an opportunity for a reflective, second thought- a group of wise people who would be removed from the weekly routine of the decision-making."

Some had more radical changes in tnind. Their ideas began several Protests ago. In 1969, an incident at Wright Hall sparked the first wave of chan·ges in Executive Committee policy. StUdents barricaded the office of a personnel administrator to protest

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what they considered a racist dismissal of an employee. The old set of rules could not accommodate the new issue,$ raised. In the early 1900's, disciplinary matters went before the entire Yale faculty. As the school grew, so did its problems, and this practice became impossible. In 1926, the faculty approved an executive committee to act in its place. With the political unrest of the sixties came more changes in the procedures along with the idea of establishing a separate disciplinary board for particularly difficult issues.

Students continue to call for a separate board for political cases.

According to Magill, the ad hoc committee members discussed this idea, but decided against it. "What is political and what is not political is very unclear. How do you characterize sexual harassment? How do you characterize the destr uction of property if it is a certain type of \ property?" Magill asked. They decided 'that a committee which met frequently and had established its own precedents is better than one that rarely meets.

And besides, Brooks said, "Discipline is not concerned with the rightness or wrongness of an ideological position, but what infraction of the rules took place."

Wayne Dick (DC '88) remains skeptical of the intentions of the Committee. He speaks in a loud, dramatic voice as he tells his story.

During the week of Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days (GLAD) in the spring of 1986, Dick satirized GLAD Week

20 The New Journal/September 9, 1988

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by distributing table tents for BAD Week, Bestiality Awareness Days. He was accused of harassing and intimidating the gay and lesbian communities on campus and singling out a prominent gay student activist and a gay professor. As in the case of the divestment protestors, Dick went in front of two different boards, one in the spring of 1986 and another in the fall of 1987. When he came before the Executive Committee the first time, he was put on probation for two years.

Dick's case became a torch for first amendment rights activists. "The only way you can fight the Executive Committee is through the press or through the court. I decided to take my case to the media," Dick said. He told his story to Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff, who turned the case into a series of Yale-bashing articles. Yale decided to give Dick a second hearing. According to Dick, "Benno Schmidt said, 'Sometimes substantial new evidence means reasons for a rehearing."'

The following fall, the Committee determined that Dick didn't break Yale's written rules, only some unspoken ones. He was protected by a report on freedom of expression at Yale, which quotes Supreme Court Justice Holmes' saying that we should a llow "freedom for the thought that we hate." D ick believes that the Comm ittee members ignored this report the first time and made their decision based on his opinions. At the second

hearing Dick was found not guilty.

Dick thinks that the first committee had a liberal slant that worked against him. He calls for opening the Executive Committee's closed-door policy in order to expose its biases and make it more responsible. "If a student wants an open hearing, they should be allowed to have an open hearing. The only way you can force them to go by the rules is to make what they do public," D ick said. According to the Committee's procedures, the hearings are confidential and no Committee member can talk about a case. But two years ago, after the Committee received bad press concerning an earlier case, a rule was passsed saying that the chairperson could respond to a student's public criticism of its procedures.

Most of the time, little is heard from the Committee. "I will tell you frankly that there are many times that I would be absolutely delighted to have made absolutely public a decision we have made. But I'd rather people say you're overly secretive than compromise a student," Carew said. If cases were public, he says, the students would have a difficult time reentering the Yale community. But Lapin admits that the privacy serves more than the students' best interest. "Confidentiality is there to protect the witnesses and to protect the integrity of the Committee.

We've got to feel comfortable asking any questions that we want, however

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indelicate they might be, however personal," Lapin said.

Many students find the whole process overwhelming. The meeting place itself, on the fourth floor of Sheffield-Sterling-Str;athcona Hall (SSS), Jacks amenities that might make the students feel at home. The Torch Room once housed the Torch Society.

The students and Committee members sit around a long table in high-backed chairs and address each other by formal titles. If students want to plead guilty, they may face only the coordinating group. But if there are extenuating circumstances or if they want to plead not guilty, students usually go in front of the full committee to advise students who go as much of a familial and supportive committee. Most of the cases go before before the Executive Committee. environment as we can." If the the coordinating group.

"There were no impartial people we Committee were only sending students Before any session, students receive could turn to for advice, and we were to their rooms without dinner, maybe a packet of information that includes totally at their mercy. We could have they would believe him. Some students the procedures, the charges against faculty advisors, but they didn't know see the Committee more as judge and them, and any evidence that the fact- anything about it either," Ritter said. jury and have decided to take Yale on finder gathers about the case. The procedures suggest using a college with a lawyer. Students may use According to Weinzimer, "The dean as an advisor, but often the deans lawyers as their advisors when they are procedures are sketchy and don't give have had no experience with the charged with offenses against people or you any idea of what's going on. I was Committee. property. If students bring an never fully informed of my rights."

Even those advisors who have had attorney, the Committee calls in the T~e Committee is considering pubpractice play a minor role. They are general counsel of Yale University. lishing a guideline to the procedures. meant not to be advocates of the Carew strongly recommends against But Ritter would rather have had students but to suggest questions or seeking outside counsel. "I think it someone to talk to. Some students issues to raise. They may help the would be awful for the students. It isn't have suggested that there be a standing student prepare but may not partici- just that Yale could muster the clout to - pate directly in the proceedings until outclass the lawyers that students could ~ the end. "An hour later when the bring in, it would be what that would ~ advisor gives a small statement, it turn the proceedings into. It would be doesn't make any difference. Yalies are adversarial."

Lapin admits that the students who ! not known for changing their minds. go in front of the Committee feel ~ Your advisor not only has to be ! wholeheartedly for you, but he has to ¡intimidated. But he thinks that anxiety j be aggressive," Dick said. The is inevitable. "You're not there to have ! advisor's role was originally intended a picnic. I don't think it's adversarial ! to be unobtrusive so as not to turn the like in a courtroom, but certainly tensession into a trial and the advisor into sions are charged," Lapin said Many a defense lawyer. Among the ad hoc students feel that the University does committee's major revisions, it has little to make them feel at ease. The tried to redefine the advisor's role as a circumstances, the setting, the promore active one. cedures, all add up to an unfriendly But Carew is wary of the Executive situation.

Bell felt more comfortable Committee's becoming too much like a court. "The Executive Committee is recognizing at least three of the faces not a trial. It's a delicate balance, but on the Committee. "The students on it's not a trial," he said. "We try to solve the Committee make such a difference. llil:ha:d L.pin (DC '88): IPfbe ltudenl things not in strict, legalistic terms with Regardless of how they were going to ia just another member.â&#x20AC;˘ cross examinations and the like, but in vote, it was such a comfort to have a

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22 The New JoumaVSeptember 9, 1988

face that I knew on the ¡other side of the table. And I could aim a lot more of my talk to a person I knew was no more scary than I was," Bell said. She feels that more students on the Committee would help ease the tension. Student members are not much different from the others; their role is not student advocate, but member of the Executive Committee.

"The student is just another member like anybody else, truly they are.

There is a great sense of consensus in the committee. We don't feel it's us against them," Lapin said.

There are some aspects of going before the Executive Committee that will never be easy. No one likes to be scolded. "You feel so alienated. You are so angry at the University, and that shouldn't be," Bell said. But according to Carew, "As much good happens in that room for students, as stuff that makes them feel bad. It validates the very existence of the community, and it says thllt we have agreed as a community to live by a code of rules."

Those rules have changed with the times, and the Executive Committee is trying to respond to new problems.

But its own image may present the biggest challenge. "It is not just important that fair decisions are made, but that fair decisions are perceived to have been made," Carew said. Committee members are working to make the students trust in them and in the house rules. Yet for those students who must leave Yale's family, many never really feel part of it again. "It was like, 'OK you're back.' I didn't get a letter or anything. I appeared at Yale's doorstep and started taking classes again," Weinzimer said. "For me, Yale is just this evil monster now. I have no attachments."

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"Why is it that very educated, highly intellectual people give their life like nothing to Baha'u'llah? Can you find a scholar today willing to give his life for Plato?"

24 The New JoumaVScptember 9, 1988

The room is nothing out of the ordinary. There are scattered floor pillows, a grand piano, and a large sofa. But tonight East meets West in this New Haven living room, where Cheryl Khavari hosts a Baha'i Faith fireside. An emeritus professor, a law student, and a New Haven area grade school teacher gather to share stories, prayers, and questions with others in the group. Khavari periodically consults her notes and prayer books u she guides the discussion on the â&#x20AC;˘Baha'i Way of Life."

Once every two weeks, several of the 20 Baha'is from the New Haven and

Yale communities gather for a fireside meeting of prayer and discussion. The Baha'i Faith, an eastern religion that hu enjoyed quiet growth in the United States over the past century, shuns ritual, dogma, and theological controversy. With no organized clergy, participants take an active role in worship at the fireside meetings. The religion forbids proselytizing; the firesides serve to communicate the teachings of the faith to people of other religious backgrounds and are open to all who are interested.

David Wellen, enrolled in the special student and teacher preparation pro-

gram at Yale, is not Baha'i, but he frequents the firesides. Wellen finds the discussions comfortable for people who want to explore religion. "The Baha'i Faith attracts the type of person who rejects ritual- the type who finds something spiritually valuable in religion yet resists the dogmatic claims and over-ritualized aspects of conventional religion," Wellen said.

The Baha'i religion draws no distinct line between religious and secular issues. It seeks to realize three basic goals: unity of religions, international peace, and world brotherhood.

In search of a modern religion during the early 1970's, two undergraduates formed the Baha'i Association at Yale. They asked Firuz Kazemzadeh, professor of Russian history and a practicing Baha'i, to be

their advisor. At that time, Kazemzadeh offered a seminar in Trumbull College on the Baha'i Faith in response to student request. The Baha'i Association at Yale has gained recognition from the University as an official campus organization but has had a quiet presence on campus. There were nine members last year. Yet recently, Howard Garey, professor emeritus of French and romance philology and the current advisor to the association, received a warm welcome from the Yale Religious Ministry. Garey sees this welcome as an important step towards the aim of cooperation among religions. The semi-monthly meetings of the association in the Dwight Hall Library center. on topics pertinent to the religion, such as Islam and its

relationship to the Baha'i Faith. Like the community firesides, these campus meetings are informal and open to all who are interested.

The Yale Baha'i club is part of a nationwide phenomenon. There are over 200 Baha'i campus organizations across the country, with anywhere from two to seventy members each.

They reached a peak of over 300 groups in the sixties, and after a decline in the late seventies, there has been a steady growth of campus clubs in the last two years. The University of Michigan, Princeton University, and the University of California at Los Angeles have the largest organizations.

According to Kern Kuipers of the Baha'i National Youth Committee, "Clubs are encouraged to determine the needs of their respective campuses

The New JoumaUSeptembc:r 9, 1988 25

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and organize projects in keeping with their goal of world unity." Such projects as "Images of Peace," held annually at Princeton, try to heighten student awareness of different global religions and encourage campus-wide cooperation. "We are not just interested in developing ourselves spiritually, but in helping others to appreciate their own religion as well ," Kuipers said .

East first met West in Chicago, when the Baha'i Faith was introduced to America at the "Parliament of Religions ," a conference held in connection with the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The religion came to the United States from Persia , where in 18H, a young man named Siyyid AliMuhammad announced himself to be the Bab, or gate, through which a messenger from God would come. The messenger, Baha'u1Jah, from whom the Baha'iFaith gets its name, appeared after the Bab was martyred by the Persian government. In 1912 , Baha'u'llah's son came to the United States to spread the reli g ion throughout the country. During his tour, he laid the cornerstone for the only Baha'i temple in America, which

is located in Willmette, Illinois.

T oday, as the youngest of the world's independent religions, its global membership has grown from 100,000 at the turn of the century to over fourand-a-half million today, with 110,000 Baha'is in the United States. Next to C hristianity, it is the most globally diffused world religion, found throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

The faith is ab le t o cross geographical and political boundaries because it recognizes the validity of all world religions. A primary Baha'i goal, the unity of religions, is based on the idea of progressive revelation. They believe that God has sent different manifestations, such as Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, to meet humankind's needs at particular times. "Just as a ch ild matures through various developmental stages until he reaches adulthood, humankind pursues a path of evolution that leads him closer and closer towards the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth," Garey said. "Along the way, humankind's needs will vary, and so God sends messengers at various intervals to address the unique problems of the

Professor Emeritus of French Howard Garey: "In what other religious syatem is it taught that religion is relative?"

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time." Baha'is believe that God's most recent messenger is Baha'u'llah, whose teachings are to remain relevant for the next 1,000 years. God will then send another manifestation with a message unique to that time period. "In what other religious system is it taught that religion is relative?" Garey asked.

Although Baha'is recognize all prophets and religions, they believe that a general acceptance of the Baha'i principles will bring about international peace, their second major goal. Baha'is identify a "Most Great Peace" as the next stage in the evolution of the planet when all differences between nations will be reconciled. The gradual establishment of international peace will coincide with the emergence of the Baha'i world order, which Baha'is associate with the

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err there is only enough money to educate one child, a ·Baha'i family is obligated to give preference to a daughter over a son." millenium- the arrival of the King-

dom of God on earth. "During this time, the Baha'i community will contribute more to the search for a new world order, as it will already be apiritually grounded in the idea of unity," Kazemzadeh said. But Baha'is realize that even in the Kingdom of God, there will be problems. "There will be troublemakers," Garey said. "It will be a system of government in which the inevitable conflicts will be dealt with in a reasonable but compassionate manner. There will be a large place for love."

Meanwhile, Baha'is first anticipate tbe establishment of a "Lesser Peace" that will be negotiated by secular ~· As Kazemzadeh explained, "It aa not an apocalyptic view that on an atablished d~te all guns will cease

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firing and all wars will end. It is a peace that may be recognized only in retrospect as a time of general global calm." Baha'is recognize the present age as one in which people possess the technology and knowledge to bring nations together or to bring destruction.

They believe that it is humankind's choice to decide whether peace will be established only after unforeseen horrors have forced a negotiation, or whether it will be voluntarily embraced by all nations.

Baha'is work towards peace on both religious and political levels. But they ara discouraged from takmg part in any demonstrations or belonging to any organizations that might compro· mise their vision of unity. For this reason, Baha'is -may not hold a partisan political position and must register as Independents. "We are interested in peace and harmony, not agitation," Garey said. Yet where political or social interests are in keeping with the principles of the faith , Baha'is volunteer their time. A year and a half ago, Baha'i members, including Kazemzadeh , help ed contribute to the ratification of the Genocide Convention, a human rights treaty. Currently Baha'is are involved with such causes as the Abolition of Torture Campaign and.!,he Impieme..rr· tation ·!--egislation Campaign of the Genocide Convention, as well as with such peace groups as Amnesty Interna· tional and Beyond War. In addition to its spiritual offerings, many people are attracted to the Baha'i Faith because of its modern social teachings. The religion seeks unity of humankind through the active eradica· tion of prejudice on the basis of race, class, and sex. While each individual finds a different satisfaction in the faith, the religion provides a common bond that unites the Baha'i community to work toward its third major goal, world brotherhood. "There are as many reasons for joining the faith as there are human needs," said Kazemzadeh, who was raised Baha'i. "To become a Baha'i is an act of faith. The heart must be touched. There must be a spark. It

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s Abclul-Baha, son of Baha'u'llah, brought the Baha'i faith to the United States in 1912.

has been a practtcmg surgeon in Nakuru, Kenya for 22 years. Yet he doesn't talk about the faith to his patients. He treats them and then makes sure they can get the medicine they need. Maybe some will ask him about his beliefs; then he will talk. But teaching is by deeds, not by words." As he tells the story, he offers some candid observations on the situation for Baha'is in Iran.

In the Shiite Muslim country of Iran, Baha'is are persecuted.

Muhammad is recognized as the last prophet, making Baha'u'llah a false messenger. Since the revolution of 1979, which brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power, conditions have worsened. The government terminated pensions, and Baha'is are required to give back all pay that they earned in their careers. Government officials have confiscated property and thrown many Baha'is in jail, where some have been executed and others pressured under torture to recant their ·faith. Children of Baha'is may not go to school, even though under the Shah, Baha'i schools were considered the best and drew children from liberal Muslim families. W estern Baha'is are aware of these conditions. In 1984, Kazemzadeh helped form the Bureau for External Affairs in response to the oppression. This organization has had some success pressuring the Iranian government, but persecution continues.

On the other side of the world, at the fireside, the faces of the people seated around the living room reveal a dedication to the faith. "Why is it," the Persian Baha'i asked, "that very educated, highly intellectual people give their life like nothing to Baha'u'llah? Can you find a scholar today willing to give his life for Plato?"

The strength of Baha'i beliefs comes with a quiet approach, which may not be the quickest way to achieve such idealistic goals. But the Baha'is are patient.

is that spark that touches all Baha'is."

Baha'is hold education in high regard, as means both to honor their goals and to share their beliefs. In an effort to compensate for past inequalities, if there is only enough money to educate one child, a Baha'i family is obligated to give preference to a daughter over a son. Because knowledge is viewed as God's greatest gift, Baha'is are forbidden to use harmful toxins such as alcohol. Baha'is believe !hat only with knowledge can an mdividual choose the Baha'i faith, and so they do not push their views on others. They prefer to educate people through means such as the firesides. Garey himself was introduced to the faith in 1956 through Kazemzadeh while they were both assistant professors at Yale. Kazemzadeh l~nt Garey some books on the faith at a ttme when Garey was beginning to question his atheism. After seven years of exploring his Jewish background and learning more about the teachings of the Baha'is, Garey decided to join the faith.

In place of missionary work, the ~aha'is prefer to establish themselves 1D a community and live their faith as an example to those around them. As a Malaika · Amon, a junior in Trumbull Persian Baha'i explained, "My uncle College, is on the staff of TN].

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The New Journal/September 9, 1988 29

John Gill Standing at the anti-apartheid wall he designed to replace the shantytown destroyed by arson this summer, Bruce Blair (TC '81) gestures toward a pot of~ SiWIMI'f~ shriveled red flowers n the aftermath of the shanties' Beinecke destruction, an event that sparked use some extraordinary outrage throughout the '__b..,.lllf!~. In the absence of a Yale and New Haven communities, ~:::..~~1111'1~ he shrugs and begins to the Coalition has tried to cultivate the flowers with his hands, new energy available to it. In snapping ofT~ stems in the hopes furthering their political agenda, the of giving the buds ce to grow. ten core members of CAA must now Blair, a member of the st n determine how best to foster positive

.

30 Th~ N~w Joumai/Scpt~mbcr 9, 1988

aspects of the organization while making a fresh break from attitudes and tactics that have hin dered growth in the past.

On June 5, police arrested Yale alumnus Dr. E lwood Bracey (SM '58), physician from West Palm Beach, and charged him with setting to the shantytown . The makeshift intended to mirror the living itions of black South Africans, been built by C AA members in to protest Yale's investment in :'a•mJpam·~:s that operate in South ••ll\lln<:a. Bracey considered the shanties eyesore that desecr ated some of most revered architecture. "I am in sympathy with our dictating South Africans should run their country, nor am I in sympathy students dictating how the ~n,rn<'>r::.,ttn,n should run the Uni'" Bracey says.

Far from making the anti-apartheid nt go away, the arson attack interest in the divestment At a hastily convened vigil the of the blaze, over 100 students city residents gathered around the remn ants of the shanties to new strategies. In addition to expected die-har d Coalition hers, many new voices took part dialogue. "Altho u gh the younger ~'""''"'""' might not have felt included -rP~Iln,n~•y, because they were not when the shanties were built, they were deeply touched when the shanties were torched," Blair says.

•Many who hadn't been involved with us before spoke of their outrage. The shanties meant something to them."

Out of this and other CAA meetings grew a commitment to pursue two related goals. The Coalition would push to secure a harsh punishment for Bracey, while erecting a new structure to replace the shantytown.

The day after the fire, the Connecticut state's attorney reduced charges against Bracey from first- to thirddegree arson . Two weeks later, Bracey's lawy~r, his college roommate, entered a plea of not guilty and applied for accelerated rehabilitation (AR), a

probationary period that precludes any formal trial. Each of the v ictims named in the application- Yale University, CAA, and the New H aven police and fire departments- had the right to appear in court on July 14 to object to Bracey's request for AR. Only the Coalition exercised this right.

About a dozen CAA members attended the hearing. Four of them, including a Yale law professor, argued for a full-blown trial. One of those who spoke in court, Nancy Fishman (D C '88), was disturbed by Yal~s failure to

"Many who hadn't been involved with us before spoke of their outrage. The shanties meant something to them." make a ~im ilar argument. "I think it says an ugly thing about the University," she says. Fishman believes that Yale would have been less accommodating towards a nonalumnus. But Yale Deputy General Counsel William Stemple contends that Yale's inaction conformed with the University's usual posture. "I don't recall a case where Yale appeared in court to level a formal objection against a request for AR," he says.

In the end, Bracey was granted accelerated rehabilitation and the record of his arrest will be erased in two years, provided he complies with the terms of his probation within the next 18 months. Under these terms, Bracey will pay S5 ,000 in damages both to CAA and to New H aven's arson squad, as well as an unspecified amount to Yale far cleaning the granite slabs scorched by the fire. H e must also perform 400 hours of community service. At the specific request of the Coalition's representatives, 100 of those hours will involve hands-on construction for a community housing

agency.

Despite its disappointment in the Bracey case, the Coalition was able to turn the renewed vigor of New Haven anti-apartheid sentiment into tangible gains. Mobilizing support for construction of its a nti-apartheid wall, CAA members unearthed old phone lists and dialed every number they could find . They also encouraged participatio n of city residents by passing o ut informational leaflets on the New Haven Green during a concert. "We got an incredible response," Fishman says. "Some were people we'd seen before, some not.

Some were people we hadn't seen in years." All told, more than 150 students, New H aven activists, union workers, and politicians. rallied to build the wall on Thursday, June 16. As part of a series of speeches, State House Speaker I rving Stolberg called for the University to divest from companies doing business in South Africa.

The very act of speaking, even more than the words spoke n , dramatized a further reason for the anger incited by the shantytown's burning. The two wooden shanties had often been the location of rallies in the past and had come to symbolize not only the Coalition's concern for the plight of black South Africans, but a commitment to exercising free speech. In a statement issued the day of the blaze, Yale President Benno Schmidt addressed this first ammendment issue directly.

"A university must be committed to freedom of expression as a first principle, and therefore ought to tolerate even bizarre and eccentric forms of expression , including symbolic speech," Schmidt said.

While the University voiced its tolerance of the Coalition's free expression, the precise duration of that express ion became a point of contention . University Secretary Sheila Wellington granted permission for construction of a memorial wall for the weekend only . The following Monday, amid threats of copy-cat arson against the structure, Wellington offered the University's help in The New Journal/September 9, 1988 3 1

Rosanne Adderley (PC '89) thinks that a more colorful racial blend would stJ:_:engthen the Coalition _;,..;.....-~-.=-.

Against Apartheid's lobbying efforts. dismantling and storing the wall so that it could be "reconstructed at discrete times and places." At a noon rally that day attended by U.S. Representative Bruce Morrison, the Coalition rejected Yale's offer after a voice vote by the approximately 120 demonstrators present. The wall remained on the site of the shanties, and in July, Wellington gave her belated sanction for its continued presence.

Since then, the Coalition has tried to use the 40-foot-long plywood wall to divert attention from Bracey back to South Africa. The group plastered the structure with anti-apartheid slogans, petitions, and art, as well as a color photograph of the shantytown in flames. They intended the wall to inform passers-by about the racial policies of the South African government, while encouraging them to support divestment. "It was so much bigger than Bracey," Fishman says.

"We focused on teaching people about racism in South Africa and here. Yale is like a Vatican City- it tries to build up its own walls."

Although the wooden wall in Reinecke Plaza represents an important victory for the Coalition, the future of 32 The New joumaVSeptember 9, 1988

CAA seems to rest more on whether its members succeed in tearing down a number of walls that have. arisen within the anti-apartheid movement.

In the two years since the high point of the Coalition's visibility- its civil disobedience demonstrations- internal disputes have often grown while membership dwindled.

This decline in anti-apartheid activism at Yale reflects a larger national trend. Soon after the South African government instituted its press ban in 1986, divestment became a less popular issue across the United States.

The lack of press coverage has made it increasingly difficult for CAA to attract people to the films, lectures, and rallies it sponsors.

Still, those who have worked with CAA point to more immediate reasons why attendance at its rallies shrunk from 1,000 in 1986 to fewer than 100 last spring. Most agree that some realignment, at least in patterns of thinking, will prove necessary if the Coalition is to increase its ranks this fall. "I see things picking up," Fishman says, "but we must change our attitudes about success. We're most powerful on the level of education. Not

everyone IS willing to stand up at a rally."

Fishman believes that the Coalition's fervent escalation of divestment demonstrations in 1986 actually held the group back in some respects and scared off potential supporters. She now encourages low-profile activities such as letter-writing campaigns designed to promote awareness about South Africa. This summer, students in CAA wrote to every member of the Yale Corporation on the subject of divestment. Some Coalition representatives even met with Corporation members one on one.

In addition, Fishman stresses the importance of promoting ties with other a-ctivist organizations on campus, particularly with the Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY). In the last year-and-a-half, the membership of CAA has become racially bleached. "As with any movement, people feel locked out, and it becomes a clique," she says. "I get frustrated by that. We don't want to be just a bunch of white kids sitting around talking."

Rosanne Adderley (PC '89), a former BSA Y political education leader and a CAA member since 1985,

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agrees that ethnic homogeneity has bun the Coalition in the past. She believes that many of CAA's ailments could be cured by establishing a multiracial steering committee. Last year, BSAY designated a representative to attend Coalition meetings, and Adderley hopes that other campus political groups will follow. "There is something very attractive about presenting the administration with the diversity and equality that they claim they believe in, but which their involvement in South African investrnents suggests they don't," Adderley says.

During the 1985-86 school year, such a steering committee lobbied the administration for divestment. By fall 1986, however, the pace of divestment demonstrations had outrun the comrnittee's organizational abilities, and the committee collapsed. CAA later ~grouped with a racial mix proportiOnal to the composition of the University population, which made for a predominantly white membership. .At the same time, many blacks were alienated by the Coalition's decision to Pl'omote sit-ins that resulted in the art'est of some demonstrators. Accord-

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ing to Adderley, many black students ~ simply not willing to get arrested because the risks for them are substantially greater than for whites.

•It's a problem of perceptions," she ] says. "Most of the people in CAA are ~ fundamentally good people, but someus times they're just not aware of these isaues."

Connections between CAA and New Haven's anti-apartheid movement have also been frayed at times.

Paula Panzarella, co-founder of New Haven's grassroots South Africa Action Committee, believes that CAA has not always made a concerted effort in the past two years to bring New Haven people into the movement.

'7heir posters very rarely appear in any New Haven neighborhoods unless they're right downtown," she says.

•And the posters always announce a rally at "Beinecke Plaza" or "LinsleyChittenden." Community people don't know where that is."

Within the month, however, CAA will strengthen ties with numerous groups that share its political philosophy. Over the weekend of September 23, an East Coast antiapartheid conference will convene at Yale under the sponsorship of New Haven's Free South Africa Coalition .

An executive member of the African National Congress will attend the three-day convention, which represents the first step toward developing a coordinated regional movement. CAA members expect at least 400 delegates from universities, trade unions, churches, and community organizations.

Through this major extramural event, CAA hopes to further the constructive approach that brought city participation in Coalition rallies to ~uch high levels this summer. "Buildtng really does bring people together," Blair says. "When I'm carrying a piece of wall with a clerk from City Hall, then there's community involvement."

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The New Journal/September 9, 1988 35

Books/Jennifer Fleissner

Fighting Words

numerous cnttcs, however, most female authors of this period are not included in the modern literary canon.

The early 20th century's spirited dialogue between the sexes has typically been rea<;! as a monologue, with the male perspective seen as "Is the pen a metaphorical penis?" universal. As a result, the sexual asked Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan anxieties qf modern male heroes are Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic, perceived as generalized "metaphors of their groundbreaking 1979 study of metaphysical angst."

19th-century women writers. Gilbert Gilbert and Gubar argue that the and Gubar argued that in a culture prevalence of such angst, typical of where writing was defined as a male modernist literature, was a direct activity, many female authors result of the women's movement. The identified themselves with the figure of Victorian conception of the sexless the ranting madwoman. The book woman gave way in the 20th century to became a classic, and the authors have a new image, influenced by Freud, of finally penned a sequel, titled The War wild, voracious female desire that of the Wordr, which came out last threatened societal norms.

January. This new book is only part one Simultaneoâ&#x20AC;˘Jsly, male characters began of what is to be a three-part series, called to appear weak and impotent, No Man's Land, examining the place of victimized by uncontrollable new the woman writer in the 20th century. opponents such as the two world wars, The primary achievement of The industrialization, and Darwin's War of the Wordr is the proof it provides theories. These forces are often that gender issues have been an considered fundamental to the undeniable force in modem literature writ- formation of modernism. Of equal ten by men and women alike. Gilbert and importance, Gilbert and Gubar claim, Gubar feel that the emerging women's was the emergence of women into the movement at the turn of the century public sphere. played a key role in bringing gender These women included many issues into the open. Satires of the authors. Gertrude Stein, Elinor Wylie, period often mocked women writers, Edna St. Vincent Millay and others while science fiction authors were controversial public figures who ~ considered the dire prospect of female"flaunted their sexuality through welll ruled empires. Yet even these publicized lesbian affairs or ~ misogynistic works clearly considered heterosexual promiscuity." Indeed, the j "the woman question" worthy of private lives of these women often ~ literary consideration. attracted more attention than their in As has been pointed out by work. Reviews that did appear were The War of the Wordr Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar Yale University Press 320 pp. 122. 95 J

36 The New journaVSeptember 9, 1988

usually condescending. Critics ignored the powerful rage and fear behind !"luch of Wylie's poetry, praising her mstead as "exquisite," "dainty," and â&#x20AC;˘refined."

To combat this denial, many women writers sought assurance from the past, writing lovingly about the women authors who preceded them . Gilbert and Gubar call this approach â&#x20AC;˘affiliation," in which women replace the patriarchal canon with their own female ancestry. Such a move also

A text by the most extreme sexist on the planet can be given a valuable feminist reading. subverts Freud's theory that the young girl must turn from her mother as love object to her father. Gilbert and Gubar suggest that the arrival of the impotent male hero meant that fathers could ~y appear as weak figures whose tnfluence might be overcome .

Gradually, women writers were able to come into their own and find the female tradition that had been hidden.

Affiliation, as defined by Gilbert and Gubar, is a positive move for a female writer. It is a fantasy in which an author is able to forge a bond across

time with a literary ancestor. But Gilbert and Gubar feel that such a bond can only be achieved in the genre of criticism, which is not bound by narrative constraints. In the novel , as they see it, "each event inexorably leads to another" and thus the author can never step outside the linear progression of time. When successful, affiliation should result in a truly timeless moment.

That Gilbert and Gubar would place such emphasis on this timeless moment is bewildering. The concept implies a literary standstill , in which a text's meaning becomes faxed. Yet do such moments really exist in literature?

Reading and re-reading, which bring constantly changing interpretations, challenge any notion of literary stasis.

Gilbert and Gubar avoid this issue simply by neglecting the reader altogether. This is the flaw which runs throughout The War of tlu Words, and which in the end makes it a limited study at best. It also places the authors within a fairly conservative, authorialintention school of criticism , one which is at odds with much feminist thought, particularly that which has been influenced by deconstructionist theory.

In direct opposition to the poststructuralist notion that a text is an ever-shifting entity with many possible readings, Gilbert and Gubar read every book as the concrete result of the author's intention- an intention they interpret as confidently as if they had just talked with the writer over lunch.

Thus we find references to Kate Chopin's dealing with her "anxieties The New Journal/September 9 , 1987 37

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about [literaryJ repression by enacting them in this text," to Willa Cather's "clearly feeling ambivalent" about her protagonist, and to the science fiction author C.L. Moore's depicting a freakish female alien because of her own "culturally conditioned selfloathing."

The problem is not simply that these judgments often seem extremely presumptuous and irrelevant. The main error is that by placing all of their discussion squarely on the shoulders of the author's apparent meaning, Gilbert and Gubar give no authority whatsoever to the reader. This is a fatal mistake. Feminist criticism need not focus on labelling texts either feminist or not-feminist. Rather, it should examine the play of gender-specific elements that, because of the instability of the socially constructed opposition between female and male, con· tradict and undermine textual structure. Because of these contradictions, a text by the most extreme sexist on the planet can be given a valuable feminist reading- not, that is, a reading that claims the author was trying to make a feminist statement, but one that shows the patriarchal structures underlying the text to be capable of deconstructing their own foundations.

When one considers these possibilities, many of Gilbert and Gubar's own readings, based as they are on assumed authorial intentions, seem flat and cautious.

The authors acknowledge only tentatively that a woman writer might have derived textual power from such post-modern· ist concepts as a decentralized self or writing that is "deliberately imprudent or impudent." This perspective is surprising since the tools of subversion that Mary Ellmann outlined in her landmark feminist text Thinking About Womm included irony, rashness, and deliberate writing from position of marginality. Gilbert and Gubar take only small steps toward affirming the power of these strongly feminine modes of language. Although they discuss the strengths of paradox and

a

38 The New JoumaVSeptember 9, 1988

fantasy, they view such techniques as escapist- proving women were so oppressed by reality that they had to turn away from it- instead of positive, transformative forces.

While Gilbert and Gubar appear to celebrate the magical and the speculative, they do not realize half of the possibilities that fantasy generates.

This oversight is never proven more strongly than by their assertion that the novel "inexorably" leads in one direction. Their doggedly linear conception of fiction is at odds with the structures of much avant-garde and fantasy literature. And again, what of the reader, who must inexorably follow a novel toward its single meaning?

It is not that Gilbert and Gubar are

u naware of the theories of post· structuralism. In true kitchen-sink fashion, they pay lip service to the French femin ist thinkers Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigaray in the book's final chapter, provocatively titled "Sexual Linguistics."

These writers, however, are brought up only to be dismissed out of hand as "mystical" and "straining." Gilbert and Gubar go on to praise Virginia Woolf as a bulwark of "practical" criticism.

In fact, the last chapter may be the most frustrating of the e ntire book, simply because it seems so promising.

The authors begin by setting their famous question, "Is the pen a metaphorical penis?" in opposition to "Is the womb a metaphorical mouth?"

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Strangely, though, Gilbert and Gubar themselves remain on the sidelines throughout this discussion, throwing forth many provocative ideas from radical feminist thinkers, but rarely commenting on them. The chapter concludes with a pat comment on the possibilities for female writers today, and the reader is left scratching her head. What was the point?

Gilbert and Gubar do not present material in this book that justifies their current position as the grandes dames of American feminist criticism. They have a tendency, here as in MadworTUJn, to toss together genres and make huge generalizations about periods in an effort to be as encyclopedic as possible.

As a result, their treatment of areas such as lesbian and black literature is thin and unsatisfying. The very concept of No Man's Land as a threepart feminist extravaganza presents a problem. Far too many people are likely to take whatever Gilbert and Gubar write as the feminist gospel of the day.

Ofcourse, one can always hope that the next two volumes- to be titled SexcluJnges and Letters From the Front- will rectify some of the wrongs of The War of the Words. This seems unlikely, however, since the earlier Madwoman shared many of_ this book's problems.

In the end. Gilbert and Gubar are more historians than literary critics.

They are valuable writers, for they uncover lines traceable through history that are crucial to feminist criticism.

But in concentrating on the symbolism of the pen, they neglect what happens once the ink dries on the page- and a new world, a new battle, and fantasies that the author never imagined suddenly begin .

•

Jennifer FleisSTitr, a senior in Calhoun Colkg~, is on the sw.ff of TN].

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The Yale University Bands 1988-89 Thomas C. Duffy, Director

Yale Concert Band Sixty to seventy select brass. woodwind, and percussion players performing from the entire repertoire of symphonic wind music: marches, band standards, classical transcriptions, chamber wind pieces. and contemporary works, including special commissioned compositions.

All indoor concerts are at 8:00pm in Woolsey Hall.

• Sat., Oct. 8

Parents Day Concert, with the Yale Glee Club & Yale Sym. Orch.

• Fri., Oct. 28 Fall Concert; music of Villa Lobos, Sullivan, Sousa, Duffy, Hindemith • Thu., Nov. 10 Spraeue Hall. 11:00 pro "A Little Night Music"- an evening of chamber wind music • Fri., Dec. 2 Holiday Concert; music of Gabrieli, Anderson, and assorted holiday pieces • Fri., Feb. 10 Winter Concert; featuring Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Professor Ward Davenny, piano • Fri., Apr. 7 Una Serata Italiana;(Italian Evening) music of Rossini, Ponchielli, Verdi, Gabricli, Puccini & others: Tickets required (432-4111) • Sun., May 28 Twilight Concert; 7:00 pm Old Campus; featuring Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with live artillery and the Harkness Memorial Carillon

Yale Precision Marching Band 120-250 musicians and others both celebrated and infamous for a unique blend of musical and topical satire performed at football games, pep rallies, and the like.

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17 25

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15 22

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29 Nov.

5 12 19

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Brown UConn Navy Army (Parents Weekend) Columbia Penn Dartmouth Cornell Princeton Harvard

Yale Jazz Ensemble A twenty-piece Big Band playing everything from Dixieland to classic Ellington and Basie tunes to the latest contemporary charts. Available for parties and dances.

• Mon., Nov. 14-8:00 pm Sprague Hall • Wed., March 1-8:00 pm Sprague Hall • Tues .• Apr. 18- 8:00pm Sprague Hall • Sun., May 7 .. 12:00 noon Cross Campus

All Yale Band concerts (Concert Band and Jazz Ensemble), unless noted otherwise, are free and open to the public. For more information about any aspect of the program, call432-4111 or write: Yale Bands, 3-A Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Scheduled events may change unexpectedly. For verification, call 432-4113, which will have taped concert information one week before each event.