Volume 25 - Issue 5

ewourna Volume 25, Nwnber 5

The magazine about Yale and New Haven

April 16, 1993

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A.PRJL 16,

1993

TheNewJournal Volume 25, N umber 5

The magazine about Yale and New H aven

April 16, 1993

STANDARDS --------------~----------------I.

4

About this Issue 20 Between the Vines: H ometown Brew. by Elisha Cooper.

H ooking Up. by Ellen Barry.

29 Afterthought: Action, for a Change. by Shana Waterman.

page 5

PROFILE~----------------------------------12

Carby's Uncommon Critique. by Jackie Cooperman. Yale professor Hazel Carby stretches the traditional bounds ofIvy League academia.

FEATURES

page 10

5

Approaching the Bench. by David Gerber. The budding litigators of H illhouse$ mock trial team sharpen their skills on hapless opponents.

8

A Surprise Party. by Peter Greenberger. Can A Connecticut Party, Governor Lowell 'Weicker s political brainchild, ·escape its founders shadow?

10 ~

A Master and his Craft. by Kate Brewster. New Haven boatbuilder Mike Vespoli quietly builds some ofthe finest racing shells in the world.

16

Breaking Ground in the Promised Land. by Jose Manuel Tesoro. The University of New Havens attempt to build a campus in the 'West Bank ignited a blaze of controversy in the U.S. and in the Middle East.

26 GI Blues. by Elaine Lewinnek. Under the GI Bil4 WWII veterans marched into Yale and changed it forever.

page29

Cover Design by Jen Chen, Annerre Kirchner, Jen Chen; Photos by Jose Manuel Tesoro.

(Volume 25. Number 5. Tht Nnu j~tn7Uil is published five times during the school year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., Post Office Box 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT' 06520.

Copyright 1993 by The New journal at Yale, Inc. All riRhcs r~ ~roducrion eit:J:>er in ~ole or in pan without wrinen ~ission o~ the publ~her and editor-in-chid' is prohibited.

This magu.ine is published by Yale CoU~ stu?encs, ana Yale Uruv~ur ts not respons1ble for ItS cont~ts. EJeve!" ~ousan~ cop1es of ~h 1ssue are d1smbuted IT~ to members of th~ Yal~ University community. Tht Nnu, J~r~nutl is pronted by Turley Publicaoons of Palmer. MA. Bookkeepong and b1lling servoccs are prov1ded by Colman Boo~ing of New Haven, CT. Office address: 305 Crown Str«t, Office 312. Phone: (203) 432-1957. Subscriptiot>s are available to th~ outside the Yale community. Rates: One year. SIS. Two years. S30. Tht Nnu }MI1'7Wl encourages letters to the editor and commentS on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to 1~ Manuel Tesoro, Edicorials. 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, 06520. All Inters for publication must include address and signature. Tht Nnu J~IITNII reserves the right to edit all letters for publication.

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vika Blum, Elqana's engineer and "city planner, looked understandably surprised when I showed up in his office. I had wandered into Elqana's municipal building looking for anyone who spoke enough English to tell me about the settlement. I must have been, to him, an odd sight: a Christian Filipino, spending spring break in Israel, who had come to write about a Jewish settlement on the West Bank for an American college magazine.

He welcomed me with an unexpected warmth. Blum assumed that I had come all the way from the United States because I wanted to study at the university he was building. "Wait! How much time do you have?" he asked me. "Come, I'll take you on a tour of the town." He bundled me into his car and drove me around the settlement. Blum had designed much of Elqana himself and seemed to take pleasure in showing his visitor the fruits of his labor. · Throughout his tour I tried my best to disabuse Zvika of his misconceptions about my visit. He finally understood, but proudly continued to point out things like the town's manicured mini-park and brand-new high school, built with government funds. Coming down a hill, where "we could see a nice view," he said, of the rolling country around Elqana, and the minarets of an Arab town nearby, I asked him what will happen to Elqana now that the Labor government has said it will stop funding the settlements. "We won't be worse off than before," he said, and shrugged, as if to say living in Elqana was enough of a challenge. .

My visit to Elqana brought revelations (in a land thoroughly bound up with revelations). I did discover, despite UNH's decision to abandon its planned campus, that construction had not stopped in the settlement.

Beyond that, I gained an insight into a concealed universe; one structured by different rules and suffused with political tensions and daily struggles.

The New journal has built its reputation partly on revelations. We don't get scoops often, but we can and do cast old things in a new light. We strive to reveal new and candid perspectives on how people live their lives, and the issues they confront. In this magazine, Kate Brewster shows us how some of the world's best boats are built, as well as the man who builds them, and Ellen Barry speaks frankly about college trysts. As revelations often bring more questions than answers, we here at TNJ consider producing a magazine a continual learning experience. In putting together this issue, we have shown how widely dispersed articles on Yale and New Haven can be, by wandering as far afield in time and space-as World War II or the West Bank.

We thank the seniors and juniors who are moving on, who have caught us much of what we know, and whom we are proud to call our friends: Sarah, Kathy, Emily, Charlotte, Tina, Jen, Katie, Erik, and Kate. We thank as well our Board of Directors, without whose continued support, friendship, and concern for the magazine we could not do what we do well.

We also invite all interested in learning with us the business of revelation to come and plan our next issue. Would-be writers, businesspeople, graphic designers, artists, and photographers should write this down on their calendars: "TNJ meeting-Monday, April 19, at 7:45 P.M. in the Berkeley Seminar Room." We hope to see you there.

-]MT The New Journal regrets the passing ofjohn Hersey, a longtime friend ofthe magazine.

II1J1

APRIL 16, 1993

Approaching the Bench David Gerber atching the Hillhouse High School mock trial team in action is like watching those feisty, articulate lawyers on L.A. Law. Following their Hollywood counterparts, these teenage litigators intimidate when eros-examining, object dramatically (and far more often than any real-life attorney), and even mutter under their breaths discontentedly when they disagree with a judge's ruling. Such courtroom procedure seems to come naturally to them, thanks to weeks of practice, which prepare them for almost any situation. If the unexpected does come their way, they take it in stride, relying on the melange of spontaneity and poise that has propelled this inner-city New Haven high school team to three state championships.

Pitted against Hillhouse's razor-sharp attorneys and slithery witnesses, most opponents quickly become victims, a process that can turn ugly as Hillhouse recognizes and toys with their weaknesses. Last year, Leigh Roberts, then a sophomore at Hillhouse, turned the tables of traditional trial control on a hapless opposing attorney as she, playing a witness, forced him to waste five of his seven allotted cross-examination minutes reviewing the definition of "drink" in her affidavit. A Hillhouse attorney once objected to 15 consecutive questions, and when the judge sustained each and every time, opposing counsel found itself without an argument.

"The team will learn the law and courtroom procedure. But the object is to win," Coach Allen Grenet says of the competition that combines debating skills with a knowledge of the law.

"Everybody is hungry for blood," Leigh says.

Tonight, March 16, is no exception, as Hillhouse expects to tear apart a fledgling team from Platt High School in its second match of the regional tournament.

Platt cannot hide its rookie status, misunderstanding judges' instructions and neglecting basics like approaching the bench when introducing evidence. Still, Hillhouse has trouble sealing a victory, for Platt's inexperience bogs down the trial. Rather than capitalizing on its superiority, Hillhouse seems to sink to its opponent's level. Lawyers

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APIUL 16, 1993

miss opportunities to object; witnesses struggle with the inappropriate questions that arise as a consequence.

Somewhere in the gallery, one parent whispers to another: "You should have seen them last year." uring the 1992 season, Hillhouse reached the top, and then kept climbing. After winning Connecticut's tournament, the team went on to beat the New York state champions in the bi-state competition, which effectively marked it the best of the two states' 673 participating schools. Hillhouse also took the gold in 1986 and 1987, but last year was the first time it did so as a magnet team. Since 1991 , Hillhouse has drawn participants from a number of schools around New Haven, and some other teams cite this as an unfair advantage. This year the squad of seven students breaks down into three from Hillhouse, two from Wilbur Cross, and two from Amity.

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By this time last year, the team had been rehearsing entire trials for weeks. This season, however, they barely reached that polished stage. Because the team comprises only veteran competitors, Coach Grenet relaxed his notorious five-day-a-week practice regimen, a decision he has come to question now that he has seen his team srruggle in the tournament. In January, teams received a case dealing with a hypothetical mugging. Competition organizers provided maps, footprints, medical records, and affidavits.

Over the next two months, Hillhouse's three lawyers used TH.ÂŁ NEW JouRNAL 5

the materials to formulate questions, while the four witnesses gradually assumed their assigned characters. In competition-a simulated trial that lasts about two hours- the seven students represent either prosecution or defense, depending on the flip of a coin. Three judges, usually local practicing attorneys, officiate the trial and award the points that determine the victor.

The team's abnormally low level of preparation may come from disappointment with the assigned case; compared to previous scenarios, like last year's battle over AIDS patients occupying a home in a resistant neighborhood, the theft of $35 does not offer much intellectual fodder. "Other years we examined our own views as we practiced," says Cross senior Sash a Sanberg-Champion. "This year it seems like just a few facts on paper.

There's not much there."

It is this reaching beyond given information that has set Hillhouse apart from other teams in the past. By going to the experts, they acquaint themselves with an issue more thoroughly than competitors, and often more thoroughly than the judges. This year they spoke to detectives of the New Haven police, who explained fingerprinting, footprint analysis, and crime-scene procedure. For the AIDS case, they went to epidemiologists.

"Our expert witness knew so much about the epidemic that she could teach doctors," asserts Coach Grenet.

Knowledge of the law comes counesy of dedicated attorneys who volunteer with the team several times a week, and while all schools officially have such advisers, most teams meet with theirs only a few times immediately before the tournament. This discrepancy manifests itself clearly during competition, when Hillhouse may make a pre-trial motion or take exception, baffling opponents who still grapple with terms like Miranda rights.

6 THE NEw JouRNAL

Leaving most¡ legal matters to advisers Beth Merkin and Karen Goodrow, both New Haven public attorneys, Coach Grenet considers himself a theatrical director. Stand up straight, no "urns," think before you speak, he insists. A Hillhouse history teacher forever clad in a blue "1992 Mock Trial State Champions" jacket, Coach Grenet gnaws nervously on a stopwatch during practice, whiteknuckled hands mercilessly gripping his d esk. When practices give way to compeuuon, his apprehension explodes into outright panic. Years ago the team complained that his neurotic behavior harmed their performance, so now he exits the courtroom after opening statements. Every half hour or so he returns for an update, temples moist with perspiration, eyes bulging with worry, palm meeting forehead to punctuate his anguish.

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wo hours into the trial against Platt, Coach Grenet comes into the gallery for the fourth time and introduces a new concern: points. To advance to the quarterfinals, Hillhouse must win both of two regional matches, and since more than one team may meet this requirement, Hillhouse must also tally the most

total points. At the moment, however, Hillhouse does not even know for sure if it won last week against Hamdenresults of both regional trials are post. ed after the second to discourage losing teams from throwing in the towel after the first. Although team members and observers feel fairly confident that Hillhouse won the first match, nothing calms the coach. Grenet has been circulating through other courtrooms, and he has concluded that some other teams have been racking up points at a dangerous pace.

But so has Hillhouse. For the last two witnesses there has been no question of who controls the action in this crowded room in the New Haven Superior Courthouse. Under relentless interrogation by Hillhouse's Crissa Klein, a senior at Amity, a Platt witness contradicts his own testimony.

While the judges continue to see that ostensibly sweet smile on Crissa's face, the audience can see her clenching her hands behind her back, evidence of her nor-so-sweet intent to exploit the error. The difference in the two schools' experience takes on farcical proportions during closing statements.

Representing Hillhouse, Sasha stands assuredly in front of the bench while captivating onlookers with lingo and APRIL 16, 1993

Newly Renovated ... gestures a trial lawyer would be proud of. Platt's attorney teeters back and forth uncertainly, and when he finally finds the words he's been groping for, they emerge in a defeated mumble.

After a two-minute recess, the judges cri tique the teams' performances, but do not announce the winner. O ne of th em drags on about subtlety and word variety; another suggests more respect for the bench. From out in the hallway comes a cheer. "The scores are out," says a concerned Hillhouse parent, then walks out to check for hersel£ Still the judges ramble on. Now they're saying something about keeping q uestions short. The parent com es back in the courtroom, amused dejection in her eyes. "We won tonight all right," she whispers ro some eager parents and teachers. "But we lost last week." Disbelief becomes audib le. "We lost last week- to Hamden? But we d id so well, better than th ey did." By this time the Hillhouse students, still bound before th e longwinded judges, sense that their season has come to an early end. For the d efending state champions, firs r: round defeat equals d isgrace. Another parent comes back to her seat. "Mr. G. is upset."

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wo weeks later, the loss still pains the coach. "It's my fault," says Coach Grenet. "I should h ave p ushed them more. I assumed they would get it together, and they never d id ." H e has already turned to next season, which will require significant regrouping. Four of this year's competitors graduate in June, and one of the remaining three has expressed doubt about returning to the team. As Coach G renet rises from his desk, he glances at the three state championship plaques on his office wall. It may be some time before he adds a fourth. IIIJ

David Gerber, a sophomore in Trumbull College, is associate editor ofTNJ · APRIL 16, 1993

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9 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, 498-8271 THE NEw JouRNAL 7

A Surprise Party Peter Greenberger

Statement of Principles , A Connecticut Party is ~-w movement within our state. dedicated the very best in government and the leadership to guide it.

to

A Connecticut Party is a new voice up from grass roots - speaking in the belief that the brightest, the best and the courageous can overcome political entrenchment.

A Connecticut Party is committed to open, accountable, responsive and inclusive government and welcomes all who are willing to share their creativity, vigilance, intelligence and independence.

A Connecticut Party pledges itself its energy, honesty, idealism and vision - to a better Connecticut, reformed, revitalized and nurtured by the best within us.

uring Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.'s (TO '53) losing 1988 campaign for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate, his Democratic opponents labeled him a "sleeping bear."

His lengthy tenure in Washington, they insinuated, had made him comfortable with the status quo. Little did they expect that cwo years later, Weicker would roar back to life as the head of a party he founded himself, A Connecticut Party (ACP), co become Connecticut's first third-party governor in nearly 150 years. ACP's success constituted a challenge to traditional two-party politics.

Yet both Republicans and Democrats dismiss ACP, calling the organization more a personality cult centered around Weicker than a viable political force.

Weicker's new political coalition suited the anti-two-party feeling engulfing the country. Invigorated by Weicker's engaging personality, ACP built its platforms out of planks from both parties. The party stresses the Republican view that business is the key to Connecticut's growth yet also emphasizes traditionally Democratic concerns such as education and civil

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Lowell P. Weid<er, Jr.

Governor

rights. ACP's Statement of Principles dedicates the party to "overcoming political entrenchmept" and providing "the leadership to guide Connecticut. " Critics doubt ACP's lofty principles, considering the parry the product of Weicker's political scrambling. A former Republican, Weicker left his posicion as law professor at George Washington University to jump into Connecticut's gubernatorial contest

"It was chic to be independent," Foley said. after both Democrat and Republican slots had been filled. Even if h e had announced his candidacy earlier, his pro-choice stance and refusal to support Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination would have made it difficult to convince his former party to welcome him back Ed Marcus, the Democratic state parry chair, called Weicker's decision

Eunice S. Groa!i( Lt. Governor

ACONNECTICUT PAR1Y 8

THE NEW jOURNAL

APRIL I6, 1993

to found ACP "a shrewd political maneuver." But Republicans see Weicker's move as a direct attack on his former party. Republican state party chair Dick Foley believes the ACP was "one man's vengeance" against the party that criticized his performance in the U.S. Senate.

According to Weicker, however, Republican discontent had nothing to do with his decision. Traditional twoparty gridlock led him to choose a third way. Upon announcing his entry into the race early in March 1990, Weicker exclaimed, " How about deregulating politics? Let's have some competition." An independent party, Weicker said, would be able to "handle t he tough problems" that the two other parties neglect.

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eicker's party, ACP, according to party statistics, has grown surprisingly large in just two years. Party supporters today range from converted Republicans to disenchanted Democrats, a coalition th at exists largely because of Weicker and his no-nonsense approach to thj economy. The extensive grass roots organization, which claims to bring honesty and issues back to politics, has effected some change in Connecticut.

ACP fielded a number of its own candidates in the 1992 elections and endorsed many candidates from the two major parties. Not one of the ACP candidates won, although many received up to 25 percent of the vote.

Regardless of the disappointing election returns, ACP believes it exerted

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APIUL 16, 1993

influence on state politics. The party claims that several of the cross candidates, including Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), owe their victories to the support of ACP. ACP has already begun preparing for the 1994 elections.

Connecticut Democrats and .Republicans are not nea~ly as opti mistic about the party's future. One anonymous Democratic leader said, "There are 738,000 Democrats in - - - - - - . . . - JOIN Connecticut, 504,000 Republicans A CONNECI'ICUT PARTY and only 1,770 official members of the ACP. So what do you think?"

Republican Foley agrees that ACP first year in office, Connecticut's support is weak, particularly if deficit had turned into a roughly $30 Weicker decides to retire from politics. million surplus. Weicker's approval "It is a personality cult, not a political rating jumped to nearly 50 percent by party," Foley said. Weicker's presence the end of 1992. Connecticut's pervades ACP, even though he holds turnaround appears to support no formal position within the organi- Weicker's argument that the two tradization. Party newsletters often contain tional parties are more skilled at bata personal "Message from the tling each other than in solving the Governor," and pamphlets attracting nation's problems. new members include a letter from Ross Perot's emergence in the last Weicker. In addition, Foley contends presidential election underscores the that Weicker's 1990 winning cam- possible impact a third party can have paign drew heavily from the political on the national level. Weicker himself disillusionment in the country at the has been involved in efforts to estabtime. "It was chic to be independent," lish a national third party. This is the he said. ACP's lone victory with only option, he believes, "that's going Weicker supports the bipartisan criti- to straighten out both politics and cism. Though ACP refutes .rhe government." Weicker, however, has assumption that Weicker alone holds dismissed any rumors of running for the party together, it will take national president under a national third and state election victories to convince party-an idea that resulted from his prominent involvement in the new critics.

ACP supporters point to the movement. Downplaying any nationparty's rapid growth and the accompa- al aspirations, ACP chair Diane Blick nying national attention as proof posi- surmised, "We are, after all, the tive that the party is here to stay, even Connecticut Party."

How long A Connecticut Parry though these achievements rest largely can last without its popular creator on Weicker's economic successes.

When Weicker ran for governor, remains in question. Weicker may not Connecticut had nearly a $1 billion seek another term as governor in 1994. deficit. Once in office, he instituted If he chooses not to run, or is defeated an income tax, the first in the state's in a reelection effort, ACP may disinhistory, which met a barrage of criti- tegrate as quickly as it emerged. IIIJ cism. Weicker's popularity plummeted to around 20 percent.

Tough medicine, however, had Peter Greenberger is a sophomore in quick results. At the end of Weicker's Pierson College.

THE NEW JouRNAL 9

A Master and his Craft.

Kate Brewster

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ucked behind Marcus Dairy on New Haven's Cl inton Avenue is Vespoli USA, a modest plant which happens to be the largest producer of crew racing shells in North America. Inside his factory's hangar-like space, former Olympic rower Mike Vespoli looms, disarmingly tall and broad-shouldered, over one of his slender 60-foot-long boats. A finger-knock against the hull makes a satisfyingly hollow thump. Built, after all, for people Vespoli's size, the boat looks impossibly delicate. "In the first crew race between Cambridge and Oxford in 1829, they used wooden boats that weighed more than 950 pounds," says Vespoli. This boat weighs less than 200, and co bring ic up to the recently imposed minimum of 205 pounds for men's eighc-oar shells, Vespoli will have co add weights.

"This is a piece of the interior," he says, picking up a rectangle of whac looks like glazed cardboard, less than half-an-inch chick. "Try flexing it."

The material feels as light as Styrofoam, but ic refuses to bend even a millimeter. "It's a resin-impregnated carbon composite," Vespoli explains - fiberglass is now as outdated as wood. Before being made into boats, the sheets of composite look like rolled-up wallpaper and are stored in freezers. Workers peel off che backing and sandwich a si.ngle layer of stretchy nylon honeycomb between the sheets of composite. They arrange hand-cut pieces of the layered material in che . boat's mold. A huge box-like oven, set at 250 degrees Fahrenheit, is lowered over the mold, and the boac bakes for 90 minutes. Baking releases che resin co flow between the cells of the honey-

comb, forming a material lighter than fiberglass but four times as stiff.

"This is the same technology Sikorsky Aircraft uses," says Vespoli, as the oven rises slowly to hang above the outline of a freshly baked boat.

Innovations borrowed from the aerospace industry have revolutionized boac designs, as well as materials. A company in San Diego works with Vespoli on new hull designs, using computer programs that predict the motion of any three-dimensional shape through water. But so much manual labor goes into boac building, Vespoli explains, chat the process still manages to fuse Space Age engineering with craftsmanship and customization.

"You won't see this kind of care and finish even on a fine car anymore," says Vespoli, scanding in the plane's last room where a worker is buff-

Three products ofMike Vespoli shandiwork await finishing touches in the foctory.

10

THÂŁ NEW jOURNAL

APIUL J6, 1993

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Hydrodynamics in proem: A ~spoli boatbuilder prepares a hulL

ing a boat. The worker passes a whirling wheel of soft material over the hull, releasing a sharp smell of resin and paint. The boats' surfaces shine. The paint-red for Radcliffe, purple for Williams-was carefully weighed before it was sprayed on. Another boat already has shoes installed in the sizes a coach specified for his crew. The whole package will carry a price tag of $16,000. efore he started his company in 1980, Vespoli spent three years coaching Yale's freshman crew.

He still speaks with the alert, controlled energy of a coach, as enthusiastic about the sport of running a business as he is intense about the details of rowing history. But he recalls, "I wasn't going to sit around waiting for a head coaching job." In the late 1970s, he had been importing boats as a licensee for a British company.

"Building my own seemed like a logical progression," he says. Vespoli USA now turns out 300 boats a year and is the largest producer of eight-oar shells in the world. It built 90 percent ofYale's boats and 5 of the 13 that rhe U.S. Olympic team used in Spain last summer. Brightly colored banners from international rowing events hang in Vespoli's office, and a framed U.S. parent for the hull design of one of his eight-oar shells sits on a table.

It doesn't seem to bother Vespoli that the plant on Clinton Avenue remains a mystery to the average New Haven cab driver. "It's easy to be a big

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APRJL 16, 1993

fish in a small pond," he says with a laugh. Immersed in the pond since he started rowing crew at Georgetown , Vespoli speaks of the rowing world with amused affection. Rowers, for instance, are not to be confused with kayakers and canoers. "Rowers are more picky, for some reason," he says.

Willie Black, Yale's current novice women's crew coach, speaks of the neverending debate among rowers over Vespoli shells versus "the yellow boats" made by Empacher of Germany, Vespoli's major international competitor. Black has no complaints about Yale's support of local talent.

"Shoot," he says. "If Vespoli shells are good enough for the U.S. Olympic ream, they're good enough for us."

Vespoli says his own perspective as a former rower and coach both helps and hurts his work. "Unless you're an outstanding engineer o r inventor you can't really revolu tionize," he says. "But I know where coaches are coming from." Although he regrets that he himself no longer has time to coach, Vespoli likes the way his job keeps him in touch with rowing. He travels extensively, negotiating contracts with institutions and governments in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. "We want to build everybody's boar," he says with pride.

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PROFILE

Carby's Uncommon Critique jackie Cooperman ince arriving at Yale in 1989, Hazel Carby has invigorated discussion about race, gender, and politics throughout the university. Carby, a professor tenured in three departments- English, American studies, and Afro-American studies- and the director of graduate studies (DGS) in Afro-American studies, argues that the inclusion of people of color on university syllabi represents only a small step towards a tolerant and equitable society.

Colleagues and students praise Carby's ability to present complicated issues in the classroom without imposing her own opinions. Her even-handed approach is especially noteworthy because understatement is not her style. Carby's thoughtfully paced speech is ftlled with a disciplined urgency. "She says very antagonistic things that are true and that. other professors shy away from," said Lizzie Skurnik (PC '95), an Afro-American studies major. "I really admire her for that."

One of only two tenured black women at Yale, Carby often speaks of hypocrisy and racism both in the academic community and in American society. "While the attention of faculty and administrators has been directed toward increasing the representation of different social groups in the curriculum or the college handbook," she wrote last year in an essay entitled "The Multicultural Wars," "few alliances have been forged with substantial forces across this society chat will significantly halt and reverse the declining numbers of black, working-class, and poor people among university student bodies or faculty."

Until these alliances are forged, Carby suggests, white students will read about black culture without ever encountering it in a real-life setting. "I don't want students to feel that they know black people just from reading books by them," she said. The inclusion of texts written by people of color, Carby argues, often serves as an inadequate substitute for a broader program of societal integration.

Last semester, Carby explored issues of race in Black Women and Their Forms of Culture, a lecture class she taught for the English department. "These questions may be contentious, they may be provocative, but I think they're extremely important," she said. "Classrooms shoul~n't be cushioned. It's important to ask why the discomfort arises when we t.alk about race."

S

C 12

arby's mix of impassioned confrontation and distanced scholarship, of literature, ftlm, and music, of political activism and what one colleague called

THE NEW jOURNAL

"statespersonship," has drawn the attention not only of faculty and students at Yale but also of the national media. Last semester, Carby was invited to speak on the Oprah Winfrry Show about the ftlm Malcolm X and the mainstream marketing of black culture.

Winfrey asked Carby whether the ftlm would impact national race relations. "White people will see Malcolm X, but they do not want black kids from the inner city sitting next to their kids in the white suburbs," Carby responded.

"It speaks to the deep hypocrisy of our society, and it's a substitute for the political action needed to desegregate our society." Taken aback by Carby's frank response to her questions, Winfrey, one of the ftlm's major ftnancial backers, quickly returned to questioning Spike Lee, the film's direc-

Students varied and emotional reactions¡to Carby's class reflect the tensions in American society. tor, before going to a commercial break. "Oprah only let professor Carby talk for a couple of seconds," said Liz Chang (BR '95), a Carby student who watched the program. "She cut her off as soon as she got political."

Carby dismisses the publicity she and other prominent black scholars receive from the American media. "Instead of the issue being the breadth of African-American intellectuals, one scholar is taken and given a lot of attention," Carby said. "In particular, the very existence of black male professors seems to fascinate the New York Times," she noted in "Multicultural Wars." Carby wrote that an Aprill990 front page article about Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "adopts such an incisive tone of ridicule that one wonders if the newspaper's editorial staff consciously decided to create a cartoon of black studies as a ship of fools."

If Carby's determined political speech remains too challenging for the mainstream forum of an afternoon talk show or daily newspaper, it finds myriad followers at Yale.

"Bringing Hazel Carby here was a big step forward that I hope represents a substantial commitment to AfroAmerican studies from the university," said Afro-American studies and history professor Melvin Ely. A self-proclaimed Marxian scholar, Carby said her research follows a tradition of black, socialist analysis. "I use APIUL 16, 1993

Hazel Carby has earned a ''cult foLLowing "at Yak. MRJL 16, 1993

Marxist theories as a historical framework," she said. "They provide a tradition of a more equitable vision of society."

When relations between graduate students and the administration became strained last year, Carby proved herself willing to put these academic beliefs into practice. She and 11 ocher faculty members signed a petition co Yale's administration, asking the university co negotiate with striking graduate students. "Faculty who took the lead on speaking out were really courageous," said Gordon Lafer (GRD '94), a Graduate Employees Student Organization (GESO) leader. "Hazel Carby earned a lot of graduate students' admiration for her bravery."

Carby believes that all students have a basic ~ight to representation. Born co a Jamaican father and a Welsh mother and raised in England, she spent her graduate student years there, earning her doctoral degree in cultural studies at the Universiry of Birmingham. "I come from a country where students do have unions. In Europe, it is not assumed that a collective voice is antagonistic," she said.

Carby is critical of the administration's attempts to preserve unequal power relations between faculty and graduate students. "I am not interested in defending che university's system of patronage. If the administration regards che students with terror," she said, "I am appalled by their terror."

Carby has also earned praise for her work with Gerald Jaynes, the chairman of Afro-American studies, and other colleagues in the department to create a Ph.D program in Afro-American studies. Carby said that while race is undertheorized in many ocher areas of the university, the Ph.D program will require core classes on the subject. The doccoral degree will first be offered in 1994.

"Hazel's efforts in graduate studies will attract better students and faculty to Yale," said Cynthia Russett, one of Carby's colleagues in the history department. "Hazel is active as a kind of university statesperson. She is a remarkably wide-ranging scholar and a real asset co the university."

Cara Hood (GRAD '96), a teaching assistant for Carby last term, commended Carby for expanding the focus of the graduate program. "Graduate school is a place starving for policies," said Hood. "And Hazel's classes are some of the few places where you'll get that. " Students also benefic from Carby's juxtaposition of film, music, and literature. "She brings a special inter-disciplinary knowledge to her work," said Robert Stepco, a professor tenured in the same departments as Carby and the first DGS for African and Afro-American studies. Stepco emphaTHÂŁ NEw JouRNAL

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sized the importance of Carby's research on 19th century black women w riters, early 20th century women blues singers, and the Chicago Renaissance in the 1920s.

Carby's interest in film led her to create the Black Film Collection from resources in the Film Studies Center.

The collection received national attention following a conference Carby organized last year. In January, she testifie'd at a U.S. Senate hearing about the importance of access to and preservation of film archives in the Library of Congress.

In high demand around the country, Carby nonetheless focuses the bulk of her attention on her responsibilities as a scholar and a teacher. Her classroom style emphasizes candid interaction between students and instructors. "I talked with theTAs about trying to provide a secure atmosphere for people to say what they felt," Carby said about the sections for Black Women and Their .Forms of Culture. She said that students' varied and emotional reactions to her class reflected the tensions in American society. "I want to give students a sense that the issues in the class are not separate from real life," she said.

In her lectures, Carby provided the historical context for books that would later serve as a framework for discussing contemporary issues of race.

These talks gave way to "productive tensions," according to Hood, who led one of the sections. Students related personal experiences to those described in the texts, but some found that racial tensions limited the discussions.

"There were certain th.ings that a black person could say that a white person couldn't," Skurnik said. "People were very afraid and very defensive."

One Carby advisee, Rebecca Cohen (SY '93), called her section "very comfortable." However, others accused some white students of taking the course as a way of exploring nontraditional literature, but without serious intellectual curiosity. "When we got into sections, we spent too much APRIL 16, 1993

ti me explaining our culture, " said Crystal Marie Smith (D C '93), a black Afro-Am erican studies majo r and Carby advisee.

While Carby's work elicits nearly unanimous p raise from students and faculty, th e role comes with its own pressures. Som e worry that Carby, a n ationally recognized scholar with interdisciplinary interests, has overextended herself. "I feel like she has to be an expert on everything and maybe she's sp reading h erself too thin," one st udent said. "She's become b igger th an life so of course she falls short.

She sho uldn't be the only one doing this research."

Unless Yale's tenure record improves, however, there will be few other professors studying the cultural experiences of black women. "I d on't perceive the number of tenured people of color changing. Instead of h aving H azel wear ten different hats, have ten diffe ren t people," H ood suggeste,d.

"But my sense is that in a place like Yale, that's not going to h appen."

Carby, too, is concerned about Yale's poor record tenuring women and minorities. "I worry about it generating a very disillusioning message for younger scholars," she said. "We run the risk of demoralization because we h ave many terrific teachers in the jun ior faculty w h o may not get tenured."

In her time at Yale, Carby's work has earned her what one AfroAmerican stud ies major described as "a d efinite cult following"- a following d rawn by her commitment to voicing intellecrual and p'llitical ideas long-ignored in Yale's more trad itional fields of study. Encouraging st ud ents to take responsibility is integ ral to Carby's presence at Yale.

"Setting people out to ask questions fo r themselves," she said, "That is wh at makes teaching very exciting for me. " 18) ]acki~

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15

Breaking Ground in the Promised Land jose Manuel Tesoro

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he West Bank settlement of Elqana is booming.

Surrounded by cool rolling country, the town's freshly painted houses sit among piles of earth and construction equipment. Fifty more housing units will join a recently finished synagogue on the west side of town, while to the north, a branch of a small women's university will soon boast new dormitories. Carefully laid out, Elqana attempts a proud semblance of peace and order, defying the turmoil and tensions of life on the West Bank. In the heart of Elkana lies the centerpiece of the town's ambitions: an assemblage of steel girders and concrete pillars that in a year, promised city engineer Zvika Blum, will become the University of New Haven's first overseas branch campus.

For the 3,000 residents of Elqana, many of whom com- · mute daily to work in Tel Aviv 12 miles to the west, the line dividing Israel from the Israeli-occupied West Bank has practically ceased to exist. For UNH, however, the border has become a dangerous and disastrous line to cross. Criticized by many and supported by almost none for its decision to build a campus in occupied territory, UNH stumbled into a political nightmare with international repercussions. Jewish, Arab, and American organizations blasted UNH's surprising foray for legitimizing Israeli control of the West Bank, subverting U.S. policy, and supporting human-rights violations. "It started as an educational enterprise that got bound up in politics," said UNH President Lawrence J. DeNardis. But only after enduring the storm of protest did UNH learn that in the West Bank, few enterprises can be anything but political.

The journey that led UNH from its home in West Haven to a settlement on the West Bank started two years ago. Under the new DeNardis administration, the 72-year old university started looking into ventures abroad.

Contacts between UNH faculty and Israeli educators had brought a deluge of Israeli students, who now comprise close to 20 percent of the foreign student population at UNH. Since the exodus of Israelis to UNH had been caused by a dearth of spaces at universities at home, UNH believed that Israel could be a perfect market for its educational product-an American college degree. "We said to ourselves, 'No one is doing it.We can do it,"' recalled DeNardis.

A covenant, forged early last year between UNH and the Bio-Technological Institute of Tel Aviv-an unaccredited two-year college that owns one of UNH's feeder schools in Israel, laid the foundation for UNH's overseas adventure.

The Wingot family, which owns Bio-Tech, had even sent a

member of the clan, Yehuda Wingot, to study at UNH. Bio-Tech offered UNH what seemed to be an ideal arrangement, one that would allow the university to reap t he benefits of the vast market for higher education in Israel with minimal financial commitmeii't.

Shouldering the bulk of the project's financial burden, Bio-Tech would supply the funds to build what would be known as the HaSharon campus ofUNH. BioTech p lanned to manage the campus and maintain its faci lit ies. UNH, for its part in the bargain, would select faculty and students, construct curricula, and grant degrees in programs that ranged from engineering to restaurant management. In return, UNH would receive one percent of the tuition receipts or a minimum of $50,000 a year. With a· projected enrollment of 7,000 students within th ree years, UNH could expect nearly $1 million in revenues from the Israel campus. "It was strictLEBANOJ"!.' ,-~

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.y a question of business," said Joe DiMow, head of the New Haven chapter of New Jewish Agenda, a liberal group opposed to the plan.

There was just one problem. The situation in Israel that made higher education so lucrative also made it extremely difficult for UNH to set up a campus inside the country's pre-1967 borders. Within Israel, a consortium of seven universities accredits new educational institutions, and seldom do they admit new members into their profitable club. "In effect," said DeNardis, "the consortium is a higher education cartel." The group of seven refused to grant accreditation to the UNH-Bio-Tech deal. The consortium's control could be circumvented-but only by building the HaSharon campus across the "Green Line," the border between Israel and the West Bank. n most Israeli maps, the Green Line no longer appears. Ti'te physical distinction between Israel and the Occupied Territories has nearly vanished i.n some areas. The seamless green of the fields almost inasks the political fault lines that divide Israel and the West Bank. Heading into the territories, however, one soon leaves behind the shabby, disorganized sprawls of old Israeli

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towns and starts to pass strikingly homogeneous arrays of freshly-painted homes that are the Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. ¡ Elqana was one of the fuse settlements in the Occupied Territories, built soon after the 1967 Six-Day War that gave Israel military control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. A former Jordanian military base now houses the town's municipal building. Although located close enough to the Green Line to escape much of the violence that grips the West Bank, APRIL 16, 1993

Elqana is no Eden. Less than a year has passed since a Palestinian youth was killed close to the town.

Many of the Jewish settlers have been moved by religious or political zealotry to brave the dangers of life in occupied land. Some settler groups, notably the Gush Emunim, want nothing less than the expulsion of all Palestinians from the Territories. Elqana, critics of the UNH plan claim, was settled by a Gush Emunim group.

The presence of these extremist settlers represent, in some eyes, Israel's attempt to integrate forcibly the Occupied Territories. The political tensions between the Jewish settlers, who call the West Bank area Judea and Samaria, and the Arab populations, who consider the region occupied Palestine, have made violence the order of the day. The Jewish presence in the Occupied Territories has been so troublesome that many nations, including the U.S., consider a freeze on settlement activity a necessary precondition for a negotiated peace.

"Israel is trying to create a situation," argued New Jewish Agenda's DiMow, "in which there would be no territory to return if they decided to return ir." Despite international opposition, the recently ousted Likud government in Israel openly encouraged the development of the settlements. The present construction boom in Elqana, in fact, owes its genesis to che generous coffers of the past administration.

The Likud government readily bestowed its blessing on the UNH project. Zvulun Hammer, the education minister, granted UNH and Bio-Tech the necessary licenses to build in the territories.

Settlers greeted the announcement of the planned HaSharon campus with glee. Yechiel Leiter, . a spokesperson for the settlers' council, told United Press International, "The communities in Judea and Samaria have come of age."

But when the Likud fell from grace in Israel last year, so did UNH. The new Labor government under Yitzhak Rabin ordered a hale to Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

Hammer's successor, Shulamit Aloni, declared her resistance to the UNH plan, although she admitted she could not rescind the license issued by the past administration.

Stymied in Israel, UNH suddenly found itself under siege in the United States as well. Once the plan became public knowledge in late November last year, political activists started to anack the UNH plan. The American-Arab THE NEw joURNAL

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Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), one of UNH's major opponents, realized that the UNH plan could pave the way for the privatization of settlement construction. The university could open up a whole new dimension in the expansion of the Jewish presence in the West Bank.

"We saw a precedent, " said I mad Abbi-saleh, campus coordinator for ADC. "If UNH can do this, then maybe others will follow. " The ADC and other activist groups immediately organ ized a demonstration at the UNH campus to attract media publicity and marshal popular outrage against UNH. DeNardis' office soon became plagued by letters and phone calls from organizations and individuals that opposed the plan. ADC called the international implications of the UNH plan "near-apocalyptic." Jewish groups like Israeli Peace Now and the New Jewish Agenda joined the ADC in denouncing UNH's tacit acceptance of Israeli rule in the Occupied Territories.

"One cannot legally lease the land from Israel because Israel, as an Occupying Power, has no valid lease to give," protested the ADC president, Albert Mokhiber.

The National Lawyers Guild pointed out that settlement activity continued to violate the Geneva Conventions. "The presence of UNH in Elqana is tantamount to a blanket acceptance of the occupation and all its abuses against the indigenous Palestinian population," wrote its president, John Brittain, to DeNardis.

Representative Nick Rahall (D-WV) wrote to the State Department, and worried that funds for the campus' construction could come from American aid to Israel. He feared that UNH's blunder could endanger the already shaky peace talks in the Middle East. The State Department told Rahal!, " No matter how this issue is resolved, it should not be allowed to have a negative effect on APRIL 16, 1993

....

the peace process."

UNH attempted to assuage concerns, declaring that the HaSharon campus would welcome both Israelis and Arabs. Elqana would become a place for both to meet in peace. "The rhetoric of UNH began to change, " observed DiMow. "They suddenly became interested in building bridges."

The HaSharon campus, DeNardis said, would be "a laboratory in which mutual understanding and coexistence can be seen as a positive example, an incubator of hope for the future of the region."

Members of the mounting opposition criticized UNH's naivete. ADC further accused UNH of discriminating against Arabs, since no Palestinian f~culty had been chosen. "The only .Arabs able to get into the university will be those who come to clean," said Amiram Goldblum, spokesperson for Israeli Peace Now. Even worse, opponents viewed the perceived radicalism 6f Elqana's settlers as a danger to the lives of any Arabs who might possibly come to the HaSharon campus. No Palestinian would enroll, they predict:t ed. "We knew full well that most of the students would be Israelis," explained DeNardis recently, "but we thought, that by flying the American flag, we could attract some Palestinian students as well. If that is naive, then so be it."

The settlers raised the loudest voices in UNH's defense. "If Arabs want to, they'll come," Nisan Shlomiansky, the head of the Elqana local council, told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. "If no Indian comes to study at a university in the States, does that mean that it discriminates?"

UNH began to find the climate of opinion at home much less hospitable than that ofElqana. The original lack of campus opposition to the plan "was based on a willingness to trust a new administration," wrote Joel Marks, associate professor of philosophy at UNH, to the New Haven Register, "and, more particularly, on several assertions by that APRIL 16, 1993

lli that powers on high may have used

~ UNH to promote a pro-settlement ~ political agenda. "I fear you have been ~ misled by your associates from the Bio._ e Technological Institute," wrote Peace ~ Now's Goldblum to DeNardis.

Ha'aretz, in an article called "Building a University with Tricks," pointed out ~ that Bio-Tech's Win got family main~ tained connections to national religious ~ parties and to the former pro-setdeSl ment government. "The Jewish brain, :ยง in American covering, found a way to -2 exploit a loophole in the law." conclud~ ed Ha'Aretz. UNH had planned to cirif cumvent consortium control of higher education; it ended up subverting the government ban on settlements in the territories. Ron Malamud, spokesperson for the education minister's office, said, 'This looks like a last grab by the old government." More likely, the HaSharon campus simply represented a convergence of interests that sought to accomplish a number of objectives, only a few of which were purely educaConstruction ofthe campus continues. tional.

Although the University of New administration which subsequently Haven claims to have washed its hands proved to be erroneous." of the entire affair, construction of a UNH stood practically alone. In university still progresses in Elqana.

January, a little over a month since it The city engineer remains under the revealed the plan to the public, UNH impression that his client is UNH. announced a delay in the opening of "We are not going ahead with the the HaSharon campus due to "heightplan," DeNardis insisted. "We are not ened political tensions" in the region. opening a campus in Elqana." But the The delay was widely interpreted as a continuing construction suggests that way for the university to save face, the answers to why UNH became a bit while extricating itself from a political player in the ongoing drama in the morass. UNH did not halt, however, Middle East may ultimately lie, if not its search for an overseas site. in West Haven, then in Elkana or even DeNardis traveled to Israel early this Jerusalem. While the battle over the year to continue negotiations with the Occupied Territories rages on, the University of New Haven persists in its consortium so that UNH can realize search for a home in Israel. Like Israel, its dream of a campus abroad-this rime, on the right side of the line.

UNH remains far from finding peace in the promised land.

1111 ' ' I t's been a long and unprejose Manuel Tesoro, a junior zn dictable quest," said DeNardis of his university's strange Jonathan Edwards College, ts adventure in the realm of international editor-in-chiifofTNJ policies. Israeli news reports insinuated

..

THE NEW jOURNAL

19

BETWEEN THE VINES - - - = - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

An industrious brewer has his hands full bringing beer to the thirsty masses.

Hometown Brew Elisha Cooper 'm bottling beer. Eighi:-thirty on a Tuesday morning and we're about to load, fill, and cap the first run of Connecticut Ale, New Haven Brewing's newest line of bottled beer. New Haven Brewing is the largest brewery in New Haven-the only brewery in New Haven for that matter. They are the makers of the ever popular Elm City Golden Ale and of Blackwell Stout, the beer with the black dog on the label. I've come to their old white warehouse at 458 Grand Avenue to bottle beer for five dollars an hour.

Outside the warehouse is an industrial wharf criss-crossed by train tracks and a canal which leads down to the harbor.

Inside, Jim Gordon, a partner in the brewery, walks by looking for a bottle opener.

The airy warehouse has four rooms. There's an office filled with pictures and clippings, a basketball hoop, and, when I first arrive, a toddler nicknamed "Bud" who is bumping randomly into the walls. Presumably, he belongs to someone. The office opens onto a storage area traversing the length of the warehouse, longer than two basketball courts and lined with cases and blue kegs. Inside this space, partitioned by walls and windows are the Brewhouse and the bottling room. I walk through swinging doors into the bottling room. It's large, about 40 feet by 40 feet, and curving around its wall, inhabiting the space, is the monstrous stainless steel machine. It reaches to the ceiling, bursting with bits of metal: levers, sprockets, a twisting conveyer belt

I

20 THE NEw JouRNAL

on stilts going in and out, angling tubes. The tubes cut through a glass wall through which I can see the last room, the Brewhouse, and the bottoms of massive silver tanks.

The whole place reminds me of my milking days growing up on a farm: the stainless steel, the buckets, the gulping tubes, teats. But there are no teats here, no udders. And no milk either, just beer.

Work begins. My job¡ is to take empty brown bottles from the stacks of green and blue cases in the center of the room and place them on the conveyor belt. As I start loading the belt I notice a large plastic sign to my right, leaning against a window. It shouts: ACHTUNG! Das Machine is Nicht Fur Gerfingerpoken Und Mittengraben. Is Easy Schnappen Der Springenwerk, Blowenfusen Und Poppencorken Mit Spitzensparken. Is Nicht Fur Gerwerken By Dumbkopftn. Das Rubbernecken Sightseeren Keepin Das Hands in Das Pockets. Relaxen Und 'Watch Das Blinkenlights.

I proceed cautiously. ROTATING PALLETS CAN CRUSH FINGERS says an official sticker on the belt, complete with a p icture of a mangled hand. Other workers filter into the room and someone turns on a Neil Young tape. Jim Gordon strides by. With his white sweater, round glasses, and shoulder-length blond hair he looks like a very hip German philosopher. Only his rubber boots and his smile APRIL 16, 1993

give him away as a brewer. He disappears and the bottling machine yawns itself awake, coming to life with a hum of hydraulics. Belts start to churn, and I hear the swish of fluid passing.

The first empty bottle goes down the line, leaving my hand and leading its compatriots in an upright brown procession down the belt. As it reaches the corner of the room, it takes a left. The parade orders itself into single file at this point, a spot of frequent traffic jams. One of the workers, a middle-aged man in a blue hat that says "NHFD Local 825" scoops soapy water onto the belt with a long silver cooking-ladle. This smooths the run. Now the bottle gets cleaned; supported on both sides by plastic tubing, it turns 360 degrees as water jets on both sides douse it inside and out, removing any dust. Then it takes a left into the maw of the machine. Through a protective glass window I see a rubber faucet clamp onto the bottle and fill it with beer.

When the faucet unclamps, the top of the bottle foams with sudsy beer head, and waits for the capper. Jim takes a scoop, the kind you'd find in a coffee store, fills it with caps, jumps up on a ladder, and tosses the clinking goldens into a hole in the top of the machine. With a whoosh the bottle is capped, and with a slap the label stuck on. The label around the neck says Connecticut Ale; the one on the body is traditional white with"Elm City" in green and blue letters. The first labels stick on at all angles, but that doesn't matter. Because of contaminants the first couple of cases are thrown out.

Loading proves strenuous and monotonous. Four giant stacks of cases, heavy with empty bottles, sit in the center of the room. I lift one case, bring it to th{ belt, unload the botdes as quickly as possible, and toss the empty case onto a jumbled pile to the right. The motion repeats, and a rhythm is born. Working with me is a man named Pete with a wool hat and a Texaco shirr. He's a drummer in a local band and he taps his fingers against the cases as he unloads them. He's much better at unloading than I am, picking up four bottles in one movement. Three men work at the other end of the machine, taking the beer-filled, wet, labeled bottles, making sure labels aren't upside down, and packaging them in the empty cases we've thrown their way.

It takes the machine one minute to churn out 80 bottles.

During a break I sidle over behind the machine where Jim is sitting like a yuppie Buddha. "You have to buy the good stuff," he says, pointing to the machine with a spray of water from his hose. "If you bake cookies in a plastic pan you can't expect-" A bottle explodes. Jim hoses the works of the machine, pushing spilled beer, crumpled labels, and broken glass off the apparatus onto the floor. Things are going smoothly for now; it's natural to lose around 50 beers in a run of 360 cases. The machine can "act up" though; Jim affectionately calls it the Anti-Christ. I ask him what he . enjoys most about brewing. "Not this," he replies, gesturing APRIL I6,

199~

at the machine. "The best part of the job is walking into a bar and getting compliments when they don't even know who you are." "What's your favorite beer? " I ask. Jim laughs. "The Stout."

I go upstairs to help grab some bottle tops. The loft of the warehouse is immense, dim, and shadowed. Wooden rafters. hang over a stretching dusty floor, and boxes of supplies line the wall, all appropriately labeled with the greenand-blue Elm City logo. A gray couch sits alone in the middle of the loft: a rhino alone in the veldt. A croquet set rests in a box next to the wall. I can imagine the brewers taking a break and coming up here for a quick game.

I go back to hauling bottles. Through the glass in front of me I can see the storage area and stacks of hefty brown bags with BRIESS MALT-CHILTON WI written on the side. Each bag is 50 pounds; I find out later that New Haven Brewing orders around 40,000 pounds of malt from Wisconsin every five or six weeks. About 500 pounds are used in each run. It sounds like a lot, but compared to larger breweries like Anheuser-Busch it's nothing.

Microbrewing, though expanding, is a small and specialized industry-worlds apart from the giants of Milwaukee and St. Louis. Beginnings are often humble.

New Haven Brewing started with Blair Potts (BK '84) experimenting with beer recipes as an undergrad in his Taft building apartment. Rick Elser (BR '81), owner of Richter's Bar, joined him and they incorporated in 1987. Since then Elser has left and Jim Gordon has come aboard. They were joined by a chubby third partner, Mike Gettings, the ironic inspiration behind Mr. Mike's Light Ale, New Haven Brewing's light beer. In 1989 they moved to 458 Grand Avenue, a converted trolley barn. New Haven Brewing now supplies countless retailers, Yale sports teams, restaurants

The Brewhouse reminds me ofmy milking days growing up on a farm.

But there are no teats here:~ no udders.

And no milk either, just beer. and bars in the area. Nevertheless, in one year they will produce less than two-thirds as much beer as Anheuser-Busch will spill in one day. It's an old brewing cliche, but true.

With a dying whoosh from the machine the first run is over. It's 11:30 and we've bottled 359 cases. The union man gestures at me, then around him, and says, "Relax, have a beer."

During lunch I venture into the Brewhouse. It's a wonderful room. Glass-paned windows frame the view of snowcovered Grand Avenue. Wooden rafters cross high above on THE NEw JouRNAL

21

the ceiling. Lining the walls, like the regal monumencs ar Stonehenge, are eight silver fermentation tanks with blue labels. They must be over 20 feet tall. Sunlight deans the entire space and cascades onto che concrete floor where a swash of beer and malt tum~ bles down the drains. Huge blue tubes coil on rhe floor, pumping beer.

In the c~entef of it all is Blair Potts, loping around the metal drums like an anxious gnome. He wears a red Jzod over a workshirt which, pulled up, reveals strong arms. He used to row crew for Yale. His trousers tuck into big black rubber boots. He has little round glasses, an earnest and energetic look, and, at 30, thinning hair. He was a self-described "chemistry weenie" in high school.

"I believe in the Jeffersonian ideal of the yeoman farmer, making a small contribution to the community, "he says, thoughtfully, pausing from adjusting a tube to look at me. "1 don't dance, can't sing, not such a writer, but I'm a pretty decent brewer. " Blair moves over to tbe filter, which is con~ nected by rubes to the No. 4 tank, and check& a small window with a flash~ light. Fluid can be seen gliding by, golden and swift. He taps rhe metal.

"Someday this thing is going to blow up and kill me." He continues, "I like creating things." He is very proud of their Blackwell Stout, named after the dog of his original partner, Elser. lronicaUy, Blair can't drink Blackwell Stout, or any beer for that matter, as he is allergic to hops. He can only sip, then spit. It seems to be a frequently mentioned, somewhat sore subject, so I ask him gingerly what his favorite beer is. "The Stout, ... he says nodding. "I originally made it to impress my wife."

Blair moves over to cwo smaller ranks. He takes a glass, places it under a spigot on the underside of the tank marked "MASH TUM-CAP 724," then turns the spigot. Yellow liquid rushes out into the glass. "Here, try chis,'' he says and hands it to me. It's 22

THE

Nsw jouRNAL

warm and castes jusr like malted~milk balls. "It's wort," Blair says, which rurns our to be raw beer. He proceeds co tell me the fine points of the New Haven brewing process. Wisconsin malr: is added to city water. The brewery uj;es two-row malt, which is more traditional, more expensive, and takes longer co brew. Enzymes activate in the malt, and the sugar that ferments makes alcohol. Changing the temperacure during this process is important; it determines the body of the beer. Six gallons of yeast are added per run.

UnfortQnately fOr Blair, hops, a clarify~ ing agent or p~servative, is also added.

We walk up a set of metal stairs nex( to the wort tank, and peer down inside.

It's steaming. At the bottom is a little heap of white matter. "That's crub,"' Blair explains. "a protein sediment from the.brewing.., I turn around> and next co me at the top of the stairs ~ of all things, a canoe paddle. Blair dashes off before I can ;.tSk him if it has anything to do with removing the trub. I idly wonder jf they use the paddle to stir the beer. lair retu{ns, pacing along with quiet energy. Earlier he bad talked about the attractive lifestyle of a brewmaster, and now we continue discussjng what he likes about brewing-creativity. I listen and lean against a blue bucket fuU of used malt which, Blair tells me, he exchanges for a side of beef with a farmer in Monroe, Connecticut, named Bert Block. "Some people go into investment banking. some people go into medicine, some go into ..."

Blair's voice recedes as he darts behind one of the tanh to check the C02 content from a gauge. "And you?" I ask when he reappears. "WeU â&#x20AC;˘.. I guess I just had an open mind."

The second run does not go smoothly. "Somebody must've changed the machine in here during lunch,., Jim mutt:ers to me and to the machine. "'Pretty horrible." The Anti-Christ is

B

acting up; frequent explosions emanate from its insides. The remains of 40 or 50 crushed bottles of beer wallow about on the sudsy floor. The labeler is not working well either; sticky labels point every which way. Jim has to stop the machine, slam doors , and toss expletives before he can get it working again.

I'm still loading the conveyor belt; the pjle of empty caseS slowly shrinks. I understand what Blair meant when he said .that working in a brewery was hard work, that he often puts in tenhour days. Soon it is over though; 4:00 and 361 cases bottled .in the aft-ernoon run. The machine fizzes out, dripping.

Jim storms off in a Nietzschean rage. and we start to mop up the refuse and pour unused beer down the drain.

Back in the office the mood has calmed. The three partners lounge in easy chai~ the picture of tired and satisfied workers. A box of Oreo cookies is on one desk. "You don't see this in corporate!" l>ellows Mike Gettings, who had been away for the day. " We need a nap break around here, cookies, milk," says Jim wanly, leaning back, still recovering from his run-in with the machine. Blair lopes out to the warehouse. He returns with an unmarked brown bottle, silently opens it, pours, and passes around the glass. The beer is dark and thick, an extremely rich caste.

It's the new Imperial Stout, a secret which he's been working on.

When I leave I grab a six-pack of newly-bottled Connecticut Ale from their fridge. I'm reminded of what Jim said to me before: ''When you send some of these cases out of here it's almost like dropping off your kids on their first day of school." I carefully place the beer in my bag, shake hands with Blair and Jim, and leave the warebouse. As I bike back over railroad tracks and bridges, the beer clunks softly against my back.

-

Elisha Coop~r. ll smior in TrumbuLl Co/lege, is on the staffofTNJ. .APRJL 16, 1993

-

B ETWEEN THE V I N E S - - - - -

Hooking Up Ellen Barry There was something sweet and strange about that night, when Mike Maloney held my hand for hours inside my coat pocket, so nobody could see. Not like I thought anything would come of it-here was a boy I knew only as a friend of a friend-a stranger. He was pretty drunk and extravagant on the dance floor, dipping me, making the room spin. He seemed only halfway aware of me, anyway, and never called me by my name. The whole encounter was doubtful, as my roommates pointed out the next morning.

And yet, and yet. He was a junior, tall and broadshouldered, and he wore a long wool coat like my father's. It was December and my cheeks burned and this boy I hardly knew held my hand steadily for an entire night.

I was breathless from it-dizzy not from the beer we shared on a stairway somewhere but from the sense of developing events-and I smiled and smiled, wondering. I was 18 and could not get over the recklessness. This was the front end of experience for me; nothing like high school. I was not as aware of that as I was of his broad bands, his suede bucks, the straight brown hair that fell over his eyes.

The scene had possibilities but collapsed under its own weight later in the evening as I became, by gradations, dead sober. This is what I remember: we .are at some marginal fraternity near my college and he st:Ods close behind me, barely touching me, like we had agreed on something. We are with five boys and one girl, and the girl lies sprawled on this water bed in this weird fraternity and says, with total candor, that she has never had sex on a waterbed. There is a pregnant pause. We stand, mulling this over, and someone says, "If we had. cards, we could play Asshole."

So I balked. I walked home alone in the cold, regretting something, thinking I should be more open to things. I don't hook up much; the ridiculousness of it always strikes me at the wrong time, and the sweet scene of Mike Maloney holding my hand gives way to some moron in a fraternity suggesting that we play cards. And it replays itSelf, not just for me but for my friends: a kid asks us to play pool in his basement, or listen to Elvis in his apartment, or see the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling. Sometimes we go.

Hooking up has become a way of life for some of usseemingly safe, empowering, and a uniquely collegiate phenomenon. These four years make it not precisely promiscuous, because they are college boys. They were on the debate team in high school, probably, and we expect them to listen if we tell them to stop. Generally they don't go very far sexually. They are drinking from the same keg, their hands APRIL 16, 1993

touch by accident, she puts on his baseball cap, he pulls a strand of hair out of her mouth and by then they are so close it is inevitable. We don't, as a rule, pick up men in nightclubs. On campus things are different-the egregious pick-up lines are still lines but somehow endearing-even boys with experience are boys, and awkward.

My friend Natalie has long thick hair and wears wellcut French blazers. She lies on her back on her bed ro tell me about hooking up; she ticks them off and comes up with the number 21. Most of them were freshman year, when "a weekend you didn't hook up was-" She doesn't finish but what she means is a bust, a useless night our, a game you lost. Natalie has distilled the experience over time, and her philosophy has shifted a little since freshman year, when she expected the guys to call her afterwards.

"It is worth having a man sleep in your bed," she says, finally. "It is worth having a warm body, a little release.

Sometimes you just want a little fix."

Natalie is dating someone now. So far things have been fairly orthodox: they sing in the same chorus and she liked him from afar, then dared herself to talk to him, now he calls her and comes early to our parties. We tell her, repeatedly, bow cute he is, but she frowns. She's not sure if she likes him and doesn't want to lead him on. I hear her on the phone to her sister, talking about ambivalence. She says last night she started noticing flaws. As soon as you are close enough to see pores, she says, everything else dissolves into THÂŁ NEW JouRNAL

23

/

them. He is paunchy, appareni:Iy. tion of going to his room. Which she did, sternly, articulating her limits like Natalie prefers boys on teams.

Reaching back to her salad days it says in Our Bodies, Ourselves. Later for my sake, she smiles, proud of her on, Dianne tried to dress in the dark, ability to hook up on a regular basis. bumping into furniture because she She reels off case studies, strategies and didn't want to wake him up. her -personal weapon: significant eye She escaped to his bright bathcontact. room and realized that in her hurry One time there were actually bets placed between Natalie and a friend at a dance, freshman year. Blackstodcinged, fiercely turned out, the two gitls "picked out these random guys and just . worked it." Natalie caught this kid's eye-he played football-and he came over to dance with her. "We sort of established that we were going to hook up before we even had a conversation," she says, smiling and still astonished at her nerve. So finally they did have a conversation, sitting in the college common room. He was already holding her hand, and when he finally talked he said, "Your lips are so red, you are so sensuous," she recalls. She says she tried to shut him up before she got too appalled to go home with him. "It's easier to fool around than just talk," she says. "Can you imagine ¡ just talking for seven hours?"

Recalling the incident, Natalie laughs. She is a girl with attitude, someone who isolates what she wants and works systematically. "I definitely felt powerful that I had the ability to just pick someone out," she says.

When she likes a guy, that power evaporates.

Late-night empowerment can also quickly degenerate into early-morning she had left "a few crucial items" in embarassment. Alice, who has hooked Lewis' room. Three years after the fact, up five times in four years, calls it Dianne attempts to recreate the sce"post hook-up syndrome," and my nario that became what we remember friend Dianne has it bad. Late in fresh- as the Bra Incident. man year, Dianne was picked up by a This incident brought Lewis' true senior named Lewis whom she recalls, nature into high beams, and it turned dismissively, as "kind of cute." They out Lewis was a schmuck. Dianne says met at a fraternity-Sigma Alpha she "called him about 500 times" and Epsilon, she says-and after a short left messages requesting the return of conversation that "wasn't all that her "scuff." No response. So finally she sophisticated," he kissed her, embarassed confronted him in the post office and her, and came up with the creative solu- demanded her bra. He promised to

leave it in a paper bag in a cubbyhole outside his dining hall and she checked it every day for weeks to no avail.

"It became an obsession with me," says Dianne. "I had dreams about it. I had this one nightmare where I went into his room to look for it and in his closet there were rows and rows of bras and none ofthem were mine."

Dianne's experience with Lewis is a classic example of ..:rftermath, the biggest strike against hooking up.

"My best hookups have been with people who I knew I would never ever ever see again," says Dianne, remembering a German exchange student, a

These girls are lucid and deliberate and bulletproof swimmer from Brown. Otherwise the night gets complicated. Is it a law of thermodynamics? If you kiss a stranger, even a very appealing stranger, between 1:30 and 3:30 Saturday night, you are likely to pass him frequently over the course of the next week and then regularly until he graduates or you do. And you may avoid looking at him, or you may say hello, but you won't ask him for your bra back, and he won't ask you to the movies. Romance dies quickly in these situations; embarassment lasts forever.

My friends, who are seniors, say the key to escaping this uneasiness is low expectations. "Freshman year I sort of wanted something afterwards, and that's kind of naive," says one woman. Now these women are powerhungry and utterly pragmatic.

Recently Natalie lured to her room a boy with "long wavy hair" who "spoke French." They listened to music and kissed for a long time. When he left, 1he said, "If I give you my address and phone number, will you write to me or call me?" And Natalie said, "Just enjoy APRIL t6, 1993

tonight." The freshman girls who waited for calls have become seniors who coolly tell young men not to bother. Dianne's theory goes this way: her love life here has foundered lately, but someday she will meet someone, and sexual experience will come in handy. " I see it all as educating myself," she says.

The rules of the game have changed accordingly. As seniors, these women focus more on underclassmen, whom they describe as "reverent." As an ingenuous freshman, Dianne "was definitely getting picked up," she says, and the biggest shift now lies in "who's calling the shots." They buy their own condoms, these women, and sexual intimidation is not high on their list of worries. "I feel like I pounced on this boy last night," one of them tells me, looking sheepish, pulling a bathrobe close around her. "I left his head spinning." There is less pressure involve..d now, less loss of footing, says Natalie.

Lately, hooking up is less of a seduction, she adds. "I only do it when I really want to."

Because when we got here, 18: year-olds, we were more or less borne along by events. All that year we walked the edge between disaster and beautiful credulity. Our first nights were heart-stopping, volatile: an older

I feel totally in contro l~ " says one friend and she means that she has reduced it to a system. cc

boy leaned over like he was drinking from a water fountain and ended up, astonishingly, kissing us. He said he liked us; we said, "Don't lie to me."

We were routinely amazed at the rum of events; he walked us home at sunrise and bought doughnuts. Nothing has APRIL 16, 1993

ever been so good, we wrote in our journals, if we still kept them. I love his hair, we wrote. It was uncharted ground.

On a balcony, against a wall, at a billiard hall on Chapel Street, these were the first nights of new lives. They _were chancy. They were frightening.

My first night sticks with me on the strength of one image: I am not used to drinking; I am almost unconscious; this man I do not know is unbuttoning my shirt and my head hits the end of his bed loudly. He asks me if I am all right and I can still hear him laughing. Were you ever afraid? I ask Alice.

Yes, s he says. There was one time when I had to yell "Get the fuck off me," she says. "And he didn't get off."

My friends have been through it-the hand around the wrist, the hollow leavetaking-and they are exhausted with the effort of selfdefense. "I feel totally in control," says one friend, and she means that she has reduced it to a system. She setS boundaries, she expects little, she knows what she wants and castS her net no farther.

Natalie's preagreed contracts include not only sexual limits, but a walk home afterwards. These girls are lucid and deliberate and bulletproof. The dangerous plunge of freshman yearthe crapshoot-is eliminated, and so, strangely, is most of the appeal. "I look back fondly" on the procession of warm, unknown men, "but I wouldn't want it anymore," Natalie says. "We've all found that it just gets less satisfying," says Alice. Eagerness is a quality that gets you into trouble, and if we regret its passing then we do it from the safe vantage of maturity. Still there is something lost-the hand in my pocket-the years when possibility constructed itself even in the muddy yard of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. lEI)

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25

GI Blues Elaine Lewinnek iscussion of changes at Yale often gravitates toward the 60s, with images of hippie students and tenured radicals. But by the late 1940s, post-war realities had already begun to alter 250 yews ofYale elitism, as ex-soldiers in fatigues sat in class next to navy-blazered prep school graduates. The freshman class of 1946 was the largest in Yale's history, included more public-school graduates than the university had ever had, and began a lasting liberalization ofYale.

Behind Yale's post-war transformation was the GI Bill of Rights, part of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act. With this legislation, the U.S. Government agreed to pay for four years of college for all returning soldiers. Yale patriotically accepted as many of the ex-soldiers it could squeeze in, even housing some students on cots in Payne Whitney Gymnasium and in specially built huts around New Haven.

Congress p~sed the G I Bill in 1944 to ease the country's shift into peace time. Instead of having thousands of unemployed soldiers trying to find work all at once, Uncle Sam sent the servicemen to college. American universities faced a sudden flood of students. Yale's enrollment increased by 60 percent. In 1945, there were 257 people in the freshman class at Yale. In 1946, the freshman class burgeoned to an astounding 1,767 students.

These statistics may be misleading, since during the confusion of World War II, Yalies often switched classer.

For example, Reverend Harry Adams (BK '48), now the master of Trumbull College, entered Yale in the summer of 1942 expecting to graduate in 1945 through Yale's accelerated year-round war programs. Adams was called into service in February 1943, returned to Yale with some of the first released soldiers in October 1945, and finally graduated in January 1948. His case was not unusual.

"By the spring of '43, there were almost no civilians left at Yale," Adams recaJled. He estimated that 90% of his class left for active duty in the war. The a1my and navy stationed training programs at Yale, housing soldiers on Old Campus and in all but three of the residential colleges. After the war, Yale's policy was to "accept anyone who had been here under any p rogram," Adams said. The classes entering in 1945 and 1946 included not only many students new to the Ivy League, but also five years' worth of backlogged Yale students and those who had come here for army and navy training. "It began to be a very complex and diverse place," Adams said.

The aftermath of World War II shaped the Yale that students know today. Before the war, a three-room suite

D

APIUL 16, 1993

held two people. After 1946, the same suite, now with armystyle bunkbeds, held four. "Yale has never gone back to the space it had before," Adams said.

College dining halls typified the changing Yale. Before the war, students wore ties and jackets to dinner, sat at tables with linen table-cloths, ordered from printed menus, and were served by waiters and waitresses. After the war, rhe new crowds forced dining halls to change "from restaurant-style to armystyle," according to Larry Schafer (TC '47). Students waited in long cafeteria lines and ate from metal trays identical to rhe ones they had used in the army. "Jackets became customary rather than obligatory," said Harrold Parritz (SM '49).

The revolution in dress code was nor confined to the dining halls. "Some of the returning soldiers still wore their GI-issue clothes, at least for the first year," Schafer said. "They often were too poor to buy new clothes. There was something of a clothing shortage after the war, and army clothes were good clothes."

But Yale had more pressing concerns than dinner dress to worry about. To house roughly 200 married Yale students and their families, Yale built special quonset huts-half-dome structures with a living room, kitchen and bedroom, near the Yale Bowl and at the present sire of the Pierson-Sage garage.

Other married students (25 percent ofthe class of 1950) found off-campus housing. George Bush (DC '48), for instance, lived with his wife Barbara and 40 other people in crowded quarters at 37 Hillhouse Ave. As the average age of graduating seniors rose from 21 to 23, marriage became only one index of maturity. "Many of those men had three or four years of violence behind them," said Bradford Wright (SM '49) . Some of the returning soldiers suffered from battle fatigue, Schafer said, but few manifested overt problems. People before 1946 referred to students as "Yale boys." With the barrie-forged class that entered in 1946, people began to speak of "Yale men."

The ex-Gis generally earned higher GPAs than the younger students, according to a 1946 Ya/~ Daily N~ws. .,RANZ W ALT£lt Wl£8£ oi Franz Walrcr ( Wally). Born O......txr ~.

"Having had experiences outside of academics, we were clearer, :..U..) H•lh School~!t.,~"" de Cuima~ wkl: 1p.....,::'3.,.. ~ork Cty, <nch· m<mbtt p · ~!nul Yak wnh · - N -__:~·v .. Nauptuc:~t ' ..,_ aJ>d Fr<nctt aJ>d .,__. _, ~.. - u•..,.., '9fs; -~ rn more focused," Adams said. Older and sometimes less privi- ,..• addrca, 18S-j,c ]UI Craccn.. Awtw. ...,...,_club&. FU~Un OCCVpotioe: mtdi.

I , N. Y. leged than typical Yalies, many Gls were also more conscious of the need to find a job after graduation. Leon Blum (BK '50) said the veterans "brought a more serious approach to college than there had been in the past. Gut courses didn't attract the vets. They were interested in learning. trying to get as much as they could our of college."

Schafer, who first entered Yale in 1938, disagreed, despite the statistics. "Some of those guys who got in on the GI Bill might AJuL t6, 1993

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have been good men, great soldiers and all that, but they were less academically inclined. I think on the whole the returning GI had a poorer high-school .

the mid-30s. The Yale Banner of 1948 reported that 52 percent of Yale students believed fraternities "don't justify their existence." According to Blum, "Nobody was out to break the frats, none of the change was belligerent, but it just didn't occur to me to join a fraternity." Instead, Blum was active in the Labor Party of the Political Union and in the Amt)"ican Veterans Committee, a liberal political organization that in 1946 was the largest politieducation than most Yale students cal student group at Yale. "That sort of before the war. Yale became more democratic as a result of the GI Bill, and political activism was new," he said.

I don't think that was entirely a good "The administration was open to thing. There was some loss of academic us. They wanted ideas on how to hanstandards. Yale stopped looking so dle a whole new population," Blum much like an ivy-covered academic said. "It was npt business as usual." institution and more like a boot camp."

America's transition to peace had Many veterans did protest having unleashed forces of change in the to submit to what they considered · nation as a whole. At Yale, Adams said, unnecessary authority. To avoid takirig "Every month new people were flowthe swimming test required to graduate, ing in. It seems chaotic now as I look back on it." The administration, in its , Blum convinced the administration that he was allergic to chlorine. He said, ~We support of the GI Bill, welcomed a were there for an education and the more diverse student body. Many at other stuff wasn't important. We'd been the time may not have been aware of out in the world, we weren't wet behind the long-term consequences for Old the ears, and we felt, 'Yale's not a prep Yale. school, it's a university. Don't tell us Forties non-conformists like Blum about discipline."' foreshadowed the political unrest of the 60s. "Political activism came along with Many Yalies in the 40s, like students before them, spent their free time the liberal wing of the Gls, but it was watching football games, participating pretty mild stuff," said Blum. "We never in intramural sports, and road-tripping confronted the administration; there to Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, or Smith. But was no militancy."

But Blum pointed out that the the older Gls were less interested in typical college activities. In particular, marlate 40s represented a transitional periried students living off campus tended od at Yale. "The impact of the Cis was to shy away from the college party to gradually start momentum toward scene. The returning soldiers brought a the kind of changes that came later, such as admitting women," said Blum. more adult social life, Adams said.

"It began a change in tone that contin"Heavy drinking and partying didn't hold the novelty for returning Gls that ued with the liberal presidencies of A. it had for some students straight out of Whitney Griswold and Kingman prep school," he said. "My memory of Brewster." The Gl Bill made "Yale boys" into "Yale men, " and helped the social life is mostly sitting around talking with friends." lead to the evolution of a new species, the Yale woman.

1111 Fraternity influence gradually waned in those years, though some of Elaine Lewinnelt is a sophomore in the decline had begun with the institution of the residential college system in jonathan Edwards Colkge.

The GI Bill transformed Yale boys into Yale men.

AtuL I6, 1993

AFTERTHOUGHT - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Action, for a Change Shana Waterman This writing is meant as a reminder to myselfas much as it is to each ofyou. There was something abour the anger at the Beinecke rallies last April that was refreshing. But to what end? ( ( yale is New Haven and New Haven is Yale!"

Voices of anger lifted up a resounding cry from the pavement of Yale's campus last spring.

Hundreds of students gathered on Beinecke Plaza to vent their rage and disgust at the oppression which still infects this country, and to agitate for change. The police officers who had savagely beaten black motorist Rodney King had been acquitted, and Los Angeles was on fire.

For so many of us who come from communities where

AJuL 16, 1993

urban blight and violence are a part of the everyday landscape, what happened in Los Angeles was not a surprise.

The riots were a predictable result of too much poverty and too little justice. The verdict fanned an already raging fire by reinforcing the perception that the legal system does not work for those who do not have the resources to manipulate its decisions.

Some of my Yale classmates were caught off guard by the riots, and in various discussions they showed that they did not understand the basic roots of the upheaval. The shock that many Yale students felt revealed a basic ignorance-there is violence in South Central, and throughout our country, every day. I did not expect or want approval of

THE NEW jOUJlNAL

29

this pillage and Qestruction, but I was disturbed that some of the nation's supposedly most promising future leaders did not recognize that oppression often leads to revolt.

The violence inflicted upon Rodney King was emblematic of what is happening to this nation's children.

As Marian Wright Edelman, director of the Children's Defense Fund, said when she spoke at Yale this March: for many children, home, school, and most places in between have become warzones. How can a child concentrate on algebra when she or he is terrified of being shot? Too many of our children are beaten down by the conditions of their environments before they can discover the heights of their potential. The death of an innocent South Central child is such a common occurence that it tends not to receive much attention. Because of that lost promise, we all suffer.

A year has passed and, as always, memories fade and emotions once expressed passionately, lose their fire.

What became of the demands made ale has historically existed on Beinecke and the energy which under a similar illusion of forced them to be articulated? containment. Only recently, it Of course, there are those who seems, has the university opened its were working to make a difference eyes to the city with which it is inextribefore the beating of Rodney King and cably linked. New Haven suffers many who continue to do so today. Their of the same problems which led to the efforts make it easier for others to folrevolt in L.A. The students who were low in their footsteps. The L.E.A.P. ?n Beinecke Plaza recognized that program enables college students to what happened in Los Angeles could -Jive in New Haven's housing developments while leading children in a comhave taken place in New Haven given was suddenly too close to home ... it was time to call in the National Guard.

Y

How can a child concentrate on algebra when she or he is terrified ofbeing shot?

Before the riots, the rampant crime that South Central residents faced daily appeared to be contained.

The riots, and particularly the beating of another innocent-white motorist Reginald Denny shattered this illusion and provoked a national outcry. To all sympathetic human beings the incident was repulsive. But white America was especially terrified. The car once seemed to be an inviolate space. Safely inside their vehicles, suburbanites can pass through and around urban blight without stopping, without ever looking back. The beating of Reginald Denny symbolized the possibility that white Americans could be ensnared in this violence. The potential for injury 30 THE NEW jOURNAL

a similar set of circumstances. These students expressed their concerns to Yale alumni, who were holding a kickoff assembly for the university's $1.5 billion fundraising campaign. A set of demands were issued which stressed the university's obligation to give back significantly to New Haven. The list of demands called for Yale to initiate and upgrade programs which would encourage job training and offer greater support to places like the Dixwell Q House, and to exert more energy in celebrating Yale's multicultural community with the establishment of a mandatory freshperson orientation on this topic.

prehensive program of education and recreation. This program is a model for the nation-right in our backyard.

There are also student tutoring programs such as UIC, BRANCH and TIES, AYA Community Service Fellowships, and opportunities to be a Dwight Hall Summer intern.

As Alderman Mike Morand (D1) stated in a recent speech, the university itself has created programs that point in the right direction. "The Medical School has taken a leading role in school reform and in fighting AIDS, lead poisoning, tuberculosis, and infant mortality," he said. "The Architecture School requires all firstyea.r students to participate in a comAluL 16, 1993

munity project that has built many units of affordable housing in New Haven. The Yale Psychiatric Institute has established a pannership with the Hill Development Corporation that provides job training and employment in the health care field for H ill neighborhood residents."

All of the above are encouraging.

Yet with the massive resources that this university commands, it is still necessary to do more. Can Yale really afford not to?

The nation has a new President who speaks of a commitment to improve the quality of life for a ll Americans. There are more people of color in Congress than ever before.

And yet, while we celebrate these advances, we must not cling to the mistaken notion that public figures alone can transform our world for us.

The changes, the progressions that we as youth need to spearhead, must occur first at the grassroots level. We must each give of our time and our energy. There is something unique about what each of us as human beings can contribute. However, we ~ students, in the tradition of all the stu:. dent activists who came before us, have a special obligation to push for change.

Marian Wright Edelman is lobbying the government for the funding which makes many important programs possible. Her biggest nightmare however, is that, after getting full funding for Head Start and programs whose successes have been demonstrated time and time again, there will not be sufficient numbers of dedicated, competent, and committed personnel to fulfill their mandates. What good is a battle plan without soldiers?

In real terms, an idea intellectually conceived without being actualized makes for a hollow victory.

I

t is 1993. A year has gone by. The racism, the violence, the ci~ies without jobs, and the schools w1th-

AluL 16, 1993

out money conti nue to exist. And while there are some successes, many problems fester unabated.

As Rabbi Arnold Wolf wrote in a 1976 issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine, "We have lost our illusions at Yale. We live within the inner city .surrounded by poverty and crime, and there are no islands in this city where we live. The dream of the ivory tower

An idea intellectually conceived without being actualized makes for hollow victory. and the safe refuge are gone. As if it were possible to lock out all those who were different from us. It is the law of the scripture and also of the w~rld that oppression brings retribution, that benign n eglect brings panic in its wake. We cannot be invulnerable surrounded by vulnerability."

It js time to take stock of what we said and where we have gone since the riots and the protests at Yale. We must realize that for most people conditions have not changed. Yet, while being realistic in our appraisal, we must be committed to the belief that each of us can, in some unique and individual way, work towards the achievement of social justice. Our predecessors have found the courage to pave the way. We must not abandon this mandate.

Unless action follows, expressions of emotion as displayed on Beinecke temporarily ease guilt but in the end do nothing.

It is time for each of us to take personal inventory.

Or, do we really need another wake-up call? li1l

Shana

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