Volume 28 - Issue 2

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UME-28,N-UMB-ER2J!___ OcTOBER TheNe,~'lVV,T.(LUJna.l_Vo-L 13, 1995

FEATURES

7 12

Tap Night Riots It's ali fun and games until someone gets punched in the face.

BY ALEX FUNK

Art for Art's Sake?

Cuts in federal funding for the arts bring a national debate to New Haven.

BY NATASHA HOEHN

16

Preparing for Justice Yale spearheads an international effort to document the Khmer Rouge's atrocities in Cambodia.

BY KATE SCHULER

21

Weighing In: Athletes and Eating Disorders Ever striving for perfection, some Yale athletes struggle to lose pounds and gain points.

BY KATHERINE BELL

p. 16

Intelligence Redefined Experts at Yale and beyond argue that emotional development gauges aptitude better than standard IQ tests.

BY ] AY DIXIT

STANDARDS 4

About this Issue

5

Points of Departure

31

Between the Vines: Blintzes in the Promised Land BY SARAH BECK.

p.26

Cover photo courtesy of Craig Etcheson/Cambodian Genocide Program. Cover design by Gabriel Snyder.

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There was nothing that could be done about it. We just could not avoid it. We tried to restructure, reschedule, reconsider, but it would not do. The fact remains, that against all odds, this issue is coming out on the ignominious Friday the Thirteenth. So, battling centuries of superstition, we have plowed forward-in spite of our own skittishness-and decided to publish on this despised of days.

But always looking for that silver lining, I think I've found one. This Friday the Thirteenth fortunately happens to kick off Parents' Weekend. A time for fami ly reunions and tasty meals out, Parents' Weekend always promises to take Yale and New Haven by storm. Generations commingle in a glorious array of differing perspectives, lifestyles, and opinions. But the very generational difference that lends con't inuity to our lives may also lead to conflict. I speak not just about fights between students and their parents, but about the ruptures that occur between groups of different generations in time.

This issue's cover story addresses this issue of historical rupture quite directly. In her story, Kate Schuler details Yale's role in spearheading a major international attempt to document the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia over 15 years ago. Led by Yale's Ben Kiernan and Craig Etcheson, the Cambodian Genocide Program aims to archive the extent of genocide in Cambodia. In response to a growing desire among Cambodians and the international community at large, Kiernan and Etcheson are trying to assemble a cohesive case against the Khmer Rouge. However, their work has been constrained by the fact that the Khmer Rouge executed an entire generation of legal professionals and scholars who possessed intimate knowledge of the country's legal system. This lost generation will never be able to speak for itself and the Cambodian Genocide Program may serve as the link between two generations that would not otherwise be able to converse. Through papers hidden in Cambodia, Kiernan and his colleagues will be able to mend that historical rupture and complete a tale not fully told.

On a different note, Sarah Beck's Between the Vines essay takes the reader on a bitter-sweet, tongue-in-cheek narrative journey from San Antonio, Texas to Yale during which she must confront her Jewish American identity and deal with the rupture between Jewish life in Texas and at Yale. But Beck does not attempt to erase the seams in her identity; instead, she revels in the complicated, conflict-ridden nature of her Jewishness. Generational difference plays its part in this story, as Sarah must toe the religious and cultural lines drawn by her grandfather's and stepfather's diverging attitudes towards Judaism.

Generations are obviously not inevitably meant to conflict with one another. But Parents' Weekend serves as a metaphor for the links between generations that may-and often do-break. It is the work of people like Kiernan and Etcheson that can ultimately recuperate that severed past, redrawing lines to the present and giving us a sense of continuity.

-SAK

THE NEW JouRNAL

Soaring Over New Haven New Haven wakes up late. The first bus leaving the Green for Lighthouse Point is deserted, and the ride through the silent city in the early morning darkness shows empty streets and closed stores. The silence is even more pronounced in the empty field where the bus makes its last stop. At 6:55 on this chi.lly September morning, three older men are standing near the perimeter, with binoculars pointed skyward. They don't say much, quiet with their expectation of the rising sun and soaring hawk. Mter all, the weeks between September 15 and October 15 are the rush hour of hawk migration season, and today's Northeast winds carry the promise of a busy day of hawk-watching.

As the sun climbs above the tree line, the whitewashed lighthouse reflects a brilliant yellow, but the hawk-watchers don't seem to notice. Their squints are all directed vertically, scanning the sky for any sign of their prey.

They are glad to feel the sun, though; .as the thermal energy heats the air, it gives the hawks the lift they need to soar.

Lighthouse Point lies in the migratory path of hawks headed south for the winter, making it one of the best spots on the East coast for bird-watchers. The New Haven Bird Club organizes the hawk-watch here every day in the late summer and early fall. It is open to anyone, and the Yale Ornithological Society is often in attendance. Last year when Yale professor of organismal biology John Moore taught "Biology of Birds," many Yale students carne to the watches. There are usually about a dozen of the faithful present. Today should be crowded, with a bird club from Allen,

0croBER IJ,

1995

Connecticut expected and a children's nature walk scheduled.

Fourteen kinds of hawks have been seen here, with six primary species passing overhead regularly: Sharp-shinned, Osprey, Northern Harrier, Merlin, American Kestral, and Cooper's Hawk.

Despite the favorable winds, today starts out slowly. The first hawk, an Osprey, doesn't make an appearance until 7:55. The sight of the brilliant white underside of its blacktipped wings ends a long cold hour of anticipation. By 8:30, there are 15 cars in the parking lot, and a group of ten children are preparing for their nature walk.

On most days when a few hundred hawks pass overhead, the flurry of activity in the air is mirrored on the ground, as binoculars turn in unison towards the direction called out by the first viewer. At these times, Ronald Bell, the hawk-watch coordinator, listens for the voices he can trust to report to him the passing hawks, as he keeps a record for the national organization that tracks the hawk migratory patterns.

In the forest bordering the field, Jim Zipp, a New Haven Park Ranger, crouches among the trees with a cage of small birds like pigeons. When he spots a hawk passing, he gets these birds to flutter their feathers to attract the hawk. Zipp then catches the hawks and bands them so their migratory parterns can be studied further. When he catches a rare species, Zipp usually brings it to the birdwatchers for them to ogle before he sets it free.

Today turns out to be a very slow day of hawk-watching. By 9 a.m. only a handful of hawks have passed by. But like fishing, the joy of hawk-watching isn't so much in the catch.

As weekend-watcher Wllford Shultz sees it, "The worst day of hawk-watching is better than the best day at work."

On a slow day like this, the hawkwatchers lapse into stories of past glory. They talk about the day last year when a peregrine falcon chasing a swan came right into the field. Or the day when a "sharpie" {a sharpshinned hawk) killed a warbler in the field.

Then, there's the story of an exquisite redtailed hawk living a few miles from Lghthouse

Point, which a privileged few have seen.

The crowd thins out around I 0 a.m., heading home with inevitable neck cramps.

Some of the most dedicated will stay late into the afternoon.

When the bus returns ro the Green, it's hard to believe that it's the same city that had been so quiet just a few hours earlier. The mall is already crawling with activity, and the bus stops are crowded. A speeding car with music blaring frightens some unobserved pigeons, who hop and Auner around the hot dog stand on the corner.

-Dan Murphy

Yale's Tabloid Witness It was the story that stunned the nation.

This would be the typical opening to an article featuring Dr. Stephen Herman, a child psychiatrist affiliated with the Yale Child Study Center. Sensational news and big headlines are nothing new to Dr. Herman. As an expert witness, he has figured in some very high profile court cases. In 1993, Herman was a prominent witness in the Woody Allen-Mia Farrow custody battle. Mia Farrow's legal team called in Herman to dispute the Yale-New Haven Hospital report that cleared Woody Allen of allegations of sexual abuse. In 1994, Herman was the expert witness for the defense of Eric Smith, a 13-year-old who beat a fouryear-old to death in Savona, New York. In the highly publicized case, Herman testified that Smith suffered from "intermittent explosive disorder" and was not in control of his rage impulses. From a 20/20 appearance to comment on the Spur Posse, a group of jocks at a California high school who competed off the field by seeing which one could have sex with the most girls, to a guest appearance on CNN's Sonya Liv~!, Herman's opinions on a wide range of cases have appeared regularly in the check-out aisle. Most recently he was reported to be the expert witness in the upcoming McCaulay Culkin custody battle, but he will not appear due to what he called "technical legal reasons."

What makes Herman's views on these issues in such demand? Herman was hard

5

. '

pressed to explain the media's attraction to him. He said, "I don't know quite why that happens. It's nothing that I necessarily seek out. " At first Dr. Herman was hesitant about talking to a Yale publication, "I have no interest in getting publicity about celebrities or ever talking about them," he said. But Herman theo r ized that his early press appearances in high profile cases led the media to him more often. Dr. Herman was a little taken aback at the suggestion that he is a national expert and replied, "Urn ... I don't know what to say to that." National expert or not, the fact remains that one of the most widely quoted ch ild psychiatrists in tabloid news is at Yale.

Well sort of. While affiliated with. Yale, Dr. Herman's office is in Wilton, Connecticut. Officially, Herman is an associate clinical professor at the Yale Child Srudy Center. But, he does not teach at Yale and says, "Lately, I haven't been too active."

Inquiries at the Child Study Center led to confusion there. One person at the center said, "I haven't heard of him." Another explained that an associate clinical professor is an unpaid appointment, but when asked exactly what Dr. Herman has done with the center or what he did to get an appointment, she replied, "I can't answer that question."

Though Dr. Herman downplays his academic affiliation with Yale, the media usually names him "a Yale University psychiatrist." Even Herman points out that not all experts carry the same weight in court.

He explains, "It's up to judges to decide whether experts are equally qualified or not.

Because the person is qualified as an expert to testify doesn't mean the person has the same level of credentials or qualifications." When he was called in to testify for Mia Farrow, it was to dispute a report signed by Dr. John Leventhal (Hon. MA '92), a pediatrics professor at the Yale School of Medicine and director of the Yale-New Haven Child Sex Abuse Center. Though it would seem advantageous for Farrow's legal team to have another Yale expert, Herman doesn't see the connection. "I was requested by Mia Farrow's

6

lawyer to review the report. It had nothing to do with my academic affiliation."

- GabrieL Snyder

First Time Strikes Out In eight months, as a member of the class of '96, you'Ll leave the Gothic sanctity of Yale in pursuit of wealth, honor, and altruism.

Equipped with a philosophy degree and an unequaled, four-year experience, you've scouted the outer reaches of the post-New Haven world. Graduate school? Law? Med school? Still frustrated? Well then, what about dubbing 1V shows into Spanish and working as a part-time receptionist at a trendy hair salon?

Jackie Guerra, one of sitcom's newest stars, undertakes such a career on her show, First Time Out. Only three weeks into its first season, the show, featuring Guerra playing a bold Yale philosophy graduate, has hit rock bottom, securing a place as the least watched show among the major television networks.

First Time Out's failure is partly due to its mediocre supporting cast and its creativitydeprived writers. Of course, a slot on the Warner Brothers Network at 9:30 on Sunday nights hasn't helped much either. Many have simply dismissed the show as a Friends or living Single rip-<lff.

Aside from the obvious shortcomings, First Time Out introduces a brave concept. Guerra is the first Latina-American to star in her own sitcom-a fact of which she's well aware. The Virginian-Piwt quoted Guerra as saying, "We hope to show a side of Latino culture you don't see on Cops." Guerra isn't shy about her crusade to propel America's Latino legacy into the cultural mainstream. At points during her show, snippets of Spanish conversation and 'slang are sub-tided in English. Furthermore, a socially and racially diverse cast complements Guerra's minority heritage.

Sending a respectable, but flawed, message, the show's main problem lies not in how it attacks Mexican stereotypes. but the hypocritical paradoxes it creates while criticizing them. In a recent episode, Jackie (keeping her name in the show}, heads south

of rhe California border to see a dentist in Tijuana in hopes of saving on medical fees.

Her friend, Nathan (Craig Anton), a clueless Generation-X slacker, expects to see the Mexican dentist wearing a sombrero and poncho. Guerra clenches her teeth , denouncing stereotypes and chiding him for his ignorance. Then, strangely enough, the dentist, on bis way back from a fiesta, does appear in a sombrero and poncho. The writers sacrifice the show's message, ttying to pull in a forced laugh.

While Jackie attempts to fight ethnic stereotypes, the other characters remain confined within stereotypes as well. Nathan portrays the same mainstream vision of a twenty-something that rwenty-somethings are trying to avoid. One of Guerra's roommates, a dirzy blonde, is nothing more than a dirzy blonde. Even Jackie's boyfriend can't stop making lame fat jokes about her, refusing to sleep with her until she drops some pounds.

By the end of an episode, you get the feeling that all young people are self-absorbed, superficial, and sex-crazed.

The writers of the show want First Ttme Out's audience to take for granted the brilliance of Jackie's Yale-educated mind. Yet, she has struck a wall with two dead-end jobs.

In return for mocking her Yale past, she has added the how-will-we-pay-this-month's-rent component to the show. Yale, Guerra, the audience-who hasn't the show insulted?

Genuinely funny in her stand-up comedy days, Guerra was forced to deputize much of the comedy writing to the producers. Like Margaret Cho, the Asian-American star of AIJ.American Girl (whose show was cancelled by ABC}, Guerra must contend with the loosely planned and poor dramatic set up of the sitcom before raging against ethnic stereotypes.

Nobody cares about learning lessons from a flop. With the downfall of other cultural vehicles like Ail-American GirL and The Jeff Foxworthy Show (representing the Southern belt}, Jackie Guerra's show has yet another stereotype to fight.

-Faisai Choudhury

THE NEW JouRNAL

It's all fun and games until someone gets punched in the face.

The Tap Night Riots Alex Funk

A

lone student staggers a!lgrily across the darkened Old Campus. A Road Warrior, post-apocalyptic, he is surrounded by rubble-shreds of rubber, paper, beer bonles, golf balls-that he does not notice. He is angry.

Blood drips from his arm, and he screams for his enemies.

"Where are they?!" His voice echoes off the indifferent walls of Farnam and Lawrence Halls. "Those assholes beat me up!"

Nobody responds.

He is calling for the Duke's Men. The Duke's Men are generally known to be a singing ensemble. Like most other Yale singing groups, they rehearse several times a week to hone their particular blend of a cappella music. While it is entirely possible that the Duke's Men include combat drills as part of their vocal warm-ups, there has been little previous evidence in their 43-year hiswry at Yale to suggest that they are in any way a fighting unit.

So why is the Road Warrior so angry?

Geoff Blanford (TO '97) waits at University Health Services for stitches for the fresh gash that prominently mars his forehead.

Geoff has a large body, the kind required of bouncers and football players. When he steps forward to give his social security number, the woman behind the desk looks up at his painted face and asks what happened.

"It is difficult to explain," he starts, the blood still fresh on his skin. "You see, I'm in a singing group... "

0croBÂŁR IJ,

1995

Vanderbilt Hall is an interesting place to be at 11:30 p.m. on September 28. In less than an hour, Geoff will receive the head wound that will send him to UHS. Presently, Michael Bakkensen (BR '96), dressed in white face paint and enjoying the adrenaline rush of anticipation, addresses the throng of people assembled beneath the archway. Some of these people he has designated as "blood donors," others as "semen donors. " Bakkensen, after delivering specific instructions to each group, ends the rally by shouting a command: "Kic~ the shit out of every singing group you see!"

At 12:10 a.m., the Whiffenpoofs are finally singing and are glad to be holding torches. About 500 people surround their dimly lit faces; maybe 200 in front of them and 300 behind.

Those in front are packed around the steel-grate doors of High Street Gate, some clad in bright yellow bowling shim, others in marching black denim jackets. Many wear blue jeans. Geoff (preinjury) and his friends in the Baker's Dozen are here, sporting tribal warpaint on their faces and matching green shirts. T hese 200-some oddly-dressed students are the members of Yale's a cappella singing group community, gathered together tonight for their annual Tap Night festivities, and they are anxious for the Whiffenpoofs to stop singing.

When the final chord of "Wake, Freshmen, Wake" has sounded, the singers, armed with only their matching clothing, silver chalices and high adrenaline levels, will storm the Old

7

Dukes Men Adam Koslojf(DC '98) and Ramon Esquivel (TD '97). Singing is fun!

Campus in hopes of carrying away a handful of talented freshmen and sustaining minimal water damage in the process. The 300-odd people clumped behind the Whiffenpoofs, many armed with water baJloons and some with worse, plan to make the f~rmer task difficult and the latter impossible. undreds of other anti-singinggroup Yalies lie in wair further away from the High Street Gate.

Some are lone thrill-seekers with nothing to do, but many others are war generals who have been battle-planning for days.

Daniel Lyons (SM '98) is one such warrior, arguably the highest-ranking aqua-general on Yale's campus tonight.

Daniel is largely responsible for the impressive crowd of nearly 300 gathered inside the Silliman courtyard, far from the Tap Night epicenter at the High Street Gate. He is the founder of S.P.L.A.S.H. (Soak and Punish Loud A Cappella Singing Hordes), an organization dedicated to providing appropriate ammunition and motivation to members of Silliman College. Under the watchful eye of Silliman Master Kelly Brownell, Daniel has distributed flyers and posters inviting Sillimanders to come out and defend their college from singers. He has even written

H

8

a letter to The Yale Daily News warning, "we are going, in all means possible, to distribute a great quantity of water upon the singing groups." Daniel boasted to the News, "If an officer [of the law] is present on Tap Night, I shall try my hardest not to hit him when I am throwing water balloons. But hey, accidents do happen."

This letter was brought to the attention of the Yale Police by the Singing Group Council yesterday afternoon. The response from the officer on duty was "I hope he does hit me with a balloon," ac~ompanied, one presumes, ~ith a wry grm. .

Luckily for both parties involved, Daniel and the two Yale Police officers nearby are stationed on opposite sides of the Silliman gate, and the crowd is saving its water for the singers.

As the Whiffs sing at High Street, the frosh of Saybrook and Pierson Colleges prepare to "take back" Lanman-Wright Hall. The enemy from whom they hope to reclaim their dorm is an amorphous conglomerate of Yale organizations: improv comedy troupes, fraternities, athletic teams and, of course, singing groups. In the past two weeks, organizations of all four types have interrupted the serene nocturnal quiet of Lanman-Wright with loud, often drunken disturbances, and now, before chronic sleep deprivation permanently depletes their energy stores, the frosh are going to strike back.

Santosh Aravind (PC '99) is not sure exactly what this rebellion will entail. He is aware of a fellow Wright resident who has anonymously threatened (again, through The Yale Daily News) to urinate

out of his window onto passing singers.

Drunk as he -knows many of his friends to be, Santosh does not consider this possibility a longshot. Brian Garland (PC '99) in the same YDN article, has hinted that the defense will be built from stronger stuff than water balloons. "From what I've heard, were I anyone that even remotely resembled a singing group member, I would steer clear of Wright Hall on Tap Night," he says. aliantly, the Whiffenpoofs sing.

Their concert is only a song-and-ahalf old, and already one member has been egged, several others doused with . an incredibly sticky red sauce, courtesy of Bakkenson's "blood donors." The crowd of 300 behind them is responsible for this, as well as for the loud interrupting interludes of "Hey, Jude," "Meet the Flintstones" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" that have drowned out parts of the set. No Whiffs have yet broken rank, though the senior men have agreed to use their torches to fend off attackers if any one of them is touched in person.

Only the few singing group members directly in front of the Whiffs can hear the concert well, and so it is only these few people that get to enjoy hearing James Gore (TC '96) sing his solo line in the middle of "Eli's Comin'": "Eli's comin', gonna kick your ass, fool!"

Those aren't the real words, are they, James?

V

This is not the first Tap Night in which water will have played a prominent role. The past few years have witnessed a growing fad of aqueous assault against singing groups, with Silliman College leading the way. On Tap Night last year,

THE NEW jOURNAL

Two students fall on the ground exchanging punches. Neither know s the other's name. One has never been in a fist fight before.

The world has become a very small place.

You will find many world cultures represented at the

Yale University Art Gallery's Rachel Garcia (TO ' 97), a member of Redhot & Blue, slipped on a staircase that had been doused with water and was knocked unconscious. Witnesses who saw the treatment of Jean McLeod (CC '97), a member of Something Extra, in the courtyard of Silliman that same night, said that it had strong overtones of sexual harassment. Two men grabbed an arm each and held her in place, while several others dumped buckets of water over her head. Something Extra wore white tap shirts that year.

This year, in an attempt to keep the fun within the limits of decency, the Silliman Dean's office has issued official "Rules of Waterplay." These include "No throwing water from windows," "No aiming for the head," and the everimportant "Nothing but water." Dean Flick is confident that no harm can come from safely-played water spores. Erin Callahan (SM ' 96) a member of Something Extra and Whim 'n' Rhythm, called Dean Hugh Flick today in hopes that he would somehow discourage the pending assault. He has done nothing of the sort.

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he song ends and bedlam descends upon the Old Campus. The singers scramble away from the gate, challenged immediately by a line of several dozen students who have formed a human chain and are chanting "hold that line, hold that line." The line holds for only a few moments; tooth marks on the arms of several students indicate that it has been chewed apart.

Within moments, the BDs are attempting to enter Vanderbilt Hall. A massive barricade built from garbage cans and assorted human beings blocks their

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path inro the entryway, a barricade that constitutes both a triumph of undergraduate ingenuity as well as an unbelievable fire hazard. It completely stops traffic. Standing atop this L~s Miurabi~s-esque construction stands Doug Rubinson (BR '98). He has a whip in one hand and a jug of wine in the other.

"Bring it on, you morherfuckers!" he yells.

One by one, the Baker's Dozen do.

Several manage to pass Doug's perch without incident. One, however, does not.

Big hands grab Doug under the a rm pits and set him down on rhe ground, wine and whip still in hand. Before he has rime to react, he has been clinched in a headlock and is being punched repeatedly in the face. An observer will later recall that it looked as if Doug would "disintegrate" under the blows.

Thankfully, he does not, nor does he report to University Health Services for his injuries.

Meanwhile, Geoff is hit in the head with a garbage can while navigating the barricade. Undaunted, he and Doug's assailant run through the archway and up an entryway to fulfi ll their mission of welcoming a freshman into their singing group.

The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus is in the process of rapping a freshman in Lanman-Wright Hall. Down in the courtyard, Nat Fogg (BK '97) waits inconspicuously, wearing not so much as a T-shirt or a pin to identify himself as a singer. He notices a student, presumably a freshman, standing in the next enrryway over, nervously cradling a fire extinguisher, and gradually realizes that the guy is planning to spray the thing.

The SOBs run out of the entryway, and he starts shooting clouds of sulfur dust toward their faces. The 30 or so people standing around and watching don't notice or don't care. Nat is having trouble breathing and runs over to stop the attack.

As he approaches, the extinguisher turns slightly and belches into his face, temporarily blinding him.

The rwo students fall on the ground, exchanging furious punches. At last, residenrs of Wright Hall and several S.O.Bs separate rhe two, who continue exchanging screamed threats. Neither knows the other's name; Nat has never been in such a fistfighr before.

Nor far away, Santosh Aravind ts vomiting from the smell of sulfur.

The men and women of Redhot & Blue are assembled in the shadows of Wall Street, rapping a new member. They have called on a blue phone and asked her to join them outside rather than conducting rhe ceremony in her room. They a re trying to avoid a confrontation with S.P.L.A.S.H. Unannounced and uninvited, Daniel Lyons comes barreling down Wall Street with a bucker of water and scores of S.P.L.A.S.H. infantry close behind. The cerem ony is cur short and Redhot

Tm NEW jouRNAL

Strange as it may seem, there is still a strong fear around campus that scores have yet to be settled, that the Road Warrior is still angry. members flee. They will finish tapping this woman days later in the sanctity of El Amigo Felix.

While the Alley Cats, who have already navigated the Silligaundet on the way in, tap a member of Silliman's freshman class, senior Alley Cat and Whiffenpoof Josh Adler OE '96) talks to a S.P.L.A.S.H. participant down below in the archway.

"What are you doing?" asks Josh. The other guy is holding a water balloon.

"None of your business."

"You're throwing water balloons at my friends."

"It's just good fun ... " responds the balloon-holder, hoping the conversation will end soon.

"You think hurting people is fun?

Singing is fun! Hurting people is crazy!"

The injuries mount. Fistfights all around. Water everywhere. A prankster in Silliman hits a BD alum in the back with a water balloon. The alum, who happens to be a Marine, knocks him quickly and heavily. to the ground. An older Duke's Men alum- Class of '74- is doused at point-blank range with a recycling bin's worth of water, and issues the challenge "Let's go!" to his attacker as water drips from his moustache. A student visiting from Connecticut College finds herself lifted off the ground by two strange men, who forcibly pry a garden hose out of her hands, cutting her arm in the process.

Urine is dumped out of a window in Durfee Hall. And, of course, at some point in the evening, the Road Warrior is waylaid by one or many Duke's Men, inciting him to roam the night long after most of the combatants call it an evening.

0croBER 13,

1995

Finally, Tap Night ends. The singing groups, having replenished their ranks, adjourn to privately celebrate with their new taps. Responding to a disturbing-thepeace call, the Yale Police rush to Calhoun College and break up a Spizzwinks (?) parry before things get our of control. t is another Friday as usual at Yale University. Frisbee-players dot the Old Campus, and Duke's Man Dorian Rivers (SM '96) walks down the flagstone path, keeping a wary eye out for the Road Warrior. He wonders if he should be wearing his Tap Shirr our in public, then laughs at the thought. The sun is out today, the memory of last night seems no more than a nightmare.

Yet still: Geoff Blanford has stitches in his head, and two students in Branford may still be able to see tooth indentations in their arms.

I

Silliman Master Kelly Brownell expresses no public remorse over the mob scene in that took place in his college.

S.P.L.A.S.H. organizer Daniel Lyons is proud of the event, proud of his college's spirit and proud of the 'restraint and control showed by Sillimanders. Dean Betty Trachtenberg, on the other hand, calls Tap Night "a sorry day for Yale College."

Sanrosh Aravind agrees. "It was supposed to be fun, something for frosh to bond over, but people took things much too far."

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of Tap Night is the lack of coherent and reliable information about what really happened. Few students that took part in the commotion are willing to talk about it. "I am scared to mention my name,"

one of the anonymous contributors to this article tells me. "I don't want people looking me up and coming after me." A woman who witnessed the urine dumped out of Durfee Hall feels similarly, despite the fact that her testimony names no specific person or group of people.

Strange as it may seem, there is still a strong fear around campus that scores have yet to be settled, that the Road Warrior is still angry.

Due to this fear, the process of atoning for the violence and preventing its recurrence will be a difficult one. The singing group community plans to present a coherent, unified plan to the administration outlining proposed changes for next year's Tap Night, but is still in the process of collecting verifiable information and testimony about this year's fiasco. Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg, who oversees the rush process, has already mentioned the possibility of switching over to a "sealed envelope" selection system similar to that already in use at Stanford, thereby threatening to eliminate one of Yale's most unique traditions.

As students wait to hear the fate of Tap Night, administrators puzzle over an event that, this year, proved to be more lal than fun and games.

Akx Funlt is a unior in Calhoun Co/kg~.

H~ is a m~mb~r of th~ Whiffinpoofi and th~ Dultt'sMm. 11

Cuts in federal funding for the arts bring a national debate to New Haven . Local arts organizations such as the Long Wharf Theater brace themselves for the future.

Art for Art's Sake?

Natasha Hoehn t doesn't look like much: just another converted warehouse down at the wharf made inconspicuous and indistinct by grey industrial paint, large shipping crates, imposing advertisements for paper products and bagels and fish. You could drive right by and miss it altogether. But what looks like very little from the expansive parking lot out front is, in fact, a theater of national repute and a leader in the New Haven arts community.

For within its humble trappings, the Long Wharf Theater has represented regional professional drama since its inception in 1964. The theater touts such achievements as Tony Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, and productions picked up by Broadway and PBS. The Long Wharf maintains a multi-million dollar operating budget, employing over 200 theater professionals and producing ten plays annually.

In addition, the Long Wharf Theater has developed outreach programs to involve the New Haven community in the arts. In recent years, the company has introduced over 2,000 New Haven students to live theater each season through Shakespeare's World, a program that runs workshops relating the plays to issues in students' l ives. The company also offers lower-priced performance previews and presents audiences with the opportunity ro enjoy free open discussions with scholars and actors.

Much of the Long Wharf Theater's success has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts. Established in 1965 as a federal agency dedicated to developing and preserving the nation's creative talent, the NEA distributes millions of dollars annually to arts programs across the nation. Last year, with a budget under $200 million, the NEA supported 4,000

I

12

artistic endeavors nationwide, from folk art festivals in South Dakota, to chamber music groups in Florida, to the Dance Theater of Harlem. The NEA's primary beneficiaries represent the two extremes of the art spectrum: it promotes and sustains "cream of the crop" institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and the Yale Repertory Theater, and makes the arts accessible to all Americans through experimental education and community outreach programs. ut heavy cutbacks in the National Endowment fo r the Arts' budget have forced the federal organization to slash its funding almost unilaterally. Press releases from arts advocacy groups report that the organization's budget for the fiscal year 1996-97 has been approved at $99.5 mill ion, a reduction .of nearly $70 million from the fiscal year of 1995-96.

The Long Wharf will be hit next year with a dramatic 50 percent decrease of its federal backing. Mter next year, the future of NEA funding looks even more bleak: the House of Representatives has advocated the outright elimination of the agency by the year 2000.

Around the Wharf, people are fiercely contesting the House position. The Long Wharf has received funding from the federal agency for every one of its 30 years, and never before has Edgar Rosenblum, executive director of the Long Wharf, feared for the agency's future. "It has become trendy to attack the arts," says Rosenblum. "But there is no reason to eliminate the NEA. The arts community depends on it for support, leadership, and recognition." Although his organization no longer depends on NEA funding as its lifeblood, having long ago established an endowment , attracted a stable audience base, and recruited

B

THE NEW j OURNAL

The Long Wharf Theatre and the Elm Shakespeare program sponsor Shakespeare's World, a program is designed to acquaint New Haven high school with classic dramatic works. numerous corporate sponsors, he is nevertheless dismayed and confused at our leaders' recent maneuvers on Capitol Hill.

Leaning fo rward in his black leather office chair, raising his hands as if to get our politicians' attention, Rosenblum questions the rationale behind the cutbacks; .he wonders why, at a time when his established and patently successful theater company flo u rishes- in spite of the double threat of existing in a community still limping from years of recession and successive years of a steadily weakening national economy-the National Endowment for the Arts must reduce its funding to the Theater from a high point of nearly $200,000 a year to only $60,000 for fiscal year 1996-97. He cannot understand why the government would put clearly successful programs-like those at the Long Wharf-in jeopardy. Like administrators and artists nationwide, he wo rries how these cuts will affect his organization, and, almost 'resignedly leaning back in his chair, wonders if our national arts community can survive the budget crunch.

But Rosenblum and his organization are not the only ones who will be affected by NEA cutbacks: from Yale's Repertory Theater and Art Gallery to the Audubon Court arts district, New Haven arts organizations are mobilizing to fight the cuts. On rhe shady rust-red Audubon street, where artists and students from the greater New Haven area photograph, paint, dance, rune instruments, and recite, concern about the future escalates as the natio nal climate becomes increasingly averse coward rhe arts.

Although organizations in this area do not receive direct funds from the NEA, arts organizers claim that the reduction and possible demise of rhe national agency will effectively eliminate leadership in the arts community. Cutbacks will substantially curtail the Connecticut Commission on the Arts' ability to give

0cro&ER

13, 1995

financial support to New Haven arts o rganizations. "The elimination of those funds will add up to a real reduction in the livelihood of arrs organizations. Everyone will feel an impact," predicts Bitsie Clark, publicist for the Arrs Council of Greater New Haven.

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven has, for many years, given voice and unity to the Audubon arts neighborhood, promoting sponsorship and patronage of rhe arts, establishing cross-organizational and grassroots programs, and publishing a monthly newsletter which outlines the calendar of artistic events in the area. Situated at the heart of Audubon Court, the council sits amid the Neighborhood Music School, the Creative Arts Workshop, Artspace, the Educational Center fo r the Arts, Connecticut Public Radio and Television, the Little Theater, and the office of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Keeping close tabs on the effects the proposed cuts in federal fundi ng are beginning to have on the community, the Arrs Council itself is considering applying fo r increased Connecticut Tourism Council funding to preempt potential financial difficulties. Clark elaborates: "You see, the NEA wields an influence far beyond the financial." She explains that one of the most important functions of the agency is to place a stamp of excellence upon artists and arts organizations, so that private donors know who deserves support, developing organizations know who to look to fo r leadership, and the artists themselves may be rewarded for their excellence by their government.

In New H aven, the NEA primarily works to develop its expansion arts programs. "These experimental initiatives have traditionally abounded in the city. They begin with NEA 'seed money' and, if they succeed, branch out on their own," Clark

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explains. Successful examples from the past include the NEA-funded City-Spirit artist initiative, which created programs such as poetry in the jails, dance classes at community centers, and inner-city artist mentorship programs. Begun in 1976, City-Spirit programs were implemented in 76 cities nationwide. New Haven's branch was particularly successful, eventually evolving into the independently-funded program it is today. "If the NEA disappears," Clark comments wryly, "th at kind of imaginative seed money ¡will be gone. We won't even notice programs disappearing-it's just that they will never begin at all."

Edgar Rosenblum, executive director of the Long Wharf Theater,

14

THE NEw JouRNAL

R

cent attacks on the NEA accompany a tide of legislative onservatism. Objections have emerged on three fronts. The first group of critics targets what they claim to be NEA elitism: "Scarce federal dollars should not be spent for people who would otherwise enjoy the arts," argues Senator Mike Dewine (R-OH) as reported in Tht Ntw York Timu this January. "There is no moral justification for spending Federal money on subsidies for wealthy people to go to the opera or the ballet." But the NEA supports artistic excellence in a variety of media on an equal and non-discriminatory basis.

Precisely due to this flexible means of aid distribution, ten organizations in New Haven alone received a total of $500,000 from the NEA in fiscal year 1992-93.

Most of this money went to expansion arts programs like City-Spirit or the Long Wharf's Shakespeare in the Schools.

The second front points to budgetary constraints. Why, some ask, in a time of recession and debt, shou ld the government spend money it barely has on the arts? However, last year, the federal government allocated $167 million to the NEA less than one half of one per cent of the national budget.

The third front addresses the nation's values and morals, arguing, as Senator John Ashcroft (R-MO) has said in Tht Ntw York Timts, that it is simply unacceptable to use money extracted from the nation's taxpayers to "subsidize an assault on thei r values, religion or politics." The federal agency's recent sponsorship of controversial projectsthose that have included homosexuality, nudity, and religion-have provided ample fuel for attacks on morality. Such

Ocroan 13, 1995

projects range from Mapplethorpe exhibits to art shows with such titles as "Ecco Lesbo, Ecco Homo."

A

ccording to Karsten Harries, Yale professor of philosophy, conservati ves believe newfangled art funded by the NEA has led to a decay of values and the demise of common sense in America. "The conservative temper seeks to find refuge in a past, in tradition.

They will no longer tolerate artists who have shaken what is supposed to be tried and true."

Jesse Helms's (R-NC) proposal speaks against potentially offensive art: it bars the NEA, as long as it continues to exist, from funding projects involving "in a patently offensive way, sexual or excretory activities or organs" or projects that "denigrate objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion."

Productions at the Long Wharf Theater could be affected by the passage of a bill such as this. Peter Sagal's Denial, in which a professor claims the Holocaust is a fabricated Jewish hoax, might violate the bill's terms.

The future of the NEA looks bleak.

Down at the Long Wharf and over on Audubon Street, arts administrators struggle to find other sources of funding and leadership in preparation for the NEA's future demise. "If the bill passes, and the NEA disappears altogether, we will be faced with a number of choices," Rosenblum admits. "There's no way we will produce a season of musicals just to make more money in ticket sales," he insists. "We are committed to quality, and if that means having to scale back our season by one or two productions a year because we can't make up the NEA loss,

A Shakespeare's WorU/ instructor teaches a high school student about the art offencing. then that's what we' ll have to do." But something will have to give. Season subscriptions at the theater have been receding in recent years in the wake of the recession, and, with the NEA money gone, certain programs and activities will have to be eliminated. Will it be the school programs? Will the company have to produce fewer plays? Or will they be forced to hire fewer actors or cut back on lighting, sets, and props?

The fate of the NEA will be decided sometime this fall, as soon as the House and the Senate reach a compromise on the details of the NEA phase-out. "We depend on uncensored art in our society because common sense and consensus needs to be continually challenged in order for a civilization to move forward," warns Harries. Artists, he says, are our experimenters, our foretellers, our "explorers who playfully defy norms." He continues, "A healthy society must be up to the challenge of the future."

Ia)

-

Natasha Hoehn is a senior in Siiliman ' College.

15

Craig Etcheson, the manager ofthe Cambodian Genocide Program, on-site in the Kanda/ Province of Cambodia.

Preparing _for Justice Kate Schuler tanding in front of a filing cabinet in his office on the third floor of Hall of Graduate Studies, Ben Kiernan holds out a piece of paper. The rows and columns that criss-cross the page are filled, in the scrolling letters of the Khmer alphabet, with che names of Cambodians. Only the scrawled note written across the right side of the page undermines the orderliness of the record, "Kill them all," it says. The nore is signed by Deuch, the direcror of rhe Khmer Rouge extermination center at Tuol Sleng.

As he runs his finger down a lefr-hand column, reading off rhe ages of the Cambodians on the lise-nine, nine, ren and so onone gets the feeling that this document is a kind of prize for Kiernan, Yale associate professor of history and the director of the Cambodian Genocide Program. The small smile he has on his face as he points out Deuch's signature is a wry one, signaling the lcind of cautious delight that surfaces when you realize that your enemy has jusr made a crucial mistake.

This document, Kiernan says, is by no means an isolated record, a stray scrap left carelessly behind in 1979 by the Khmer Rouge recreating from Cam.bodia after four years of government conrrol. Thousands of such documents, chronicling rhe mass annihilation that accompanied Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, exist in rhe basements of former prisons, in museums, and in private archives such as Kiernan's. Now, an arrempt is being made ro bring all of these documents together, to build a case-made stronger wirh each new record uncovered-against leaders of the Khmer Rouge on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humaniry.

The endeavor, the Cambodian Genocide Program, was brought to life in May of 1994 with a bill introduced by Senator Chuck Robb (D-VA). The ensuing legislation, the Cambodian Genocide

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16

Justice Act, ¡ established a State Deparrment Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations ro collect informacion and to establish a tribunal through which to try the Khmer Rouge. ¡ The State Oeparrment, in turn, contracted Yale to carry out the bulk of this wo.rk. Yale's Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP), headed by Kiernan, is co-sponsored by organizatio'ns with the imposing titles, and no less imposing missions, of the Center for International and Area Studies ar Yale and the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School.

The Genocide program here collects and archives documents and photographs to use as evidence of the Khmer Rouge's atrocities. The program also aims to form a permanent Cambodian Documentation Center, determine legal means of redress for the crimes of the regime, and train Cambodian officials and human rights activists in international and criminal law.

The program, while large in scope and ambition, has a relatively small physical presence on campus. Kiernan, the director, and Craig Etcheson (DIV '69), the manager of the CGP, are at once the core and the bulk of the staff here. Beyond the involvement of a handful of Yale student volunteers, day-to-day operations-the cataloging, scanning, and processing of documents-rake place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, where Yale's CGP has set up the Cambodian Document Center.

That the main hope for redress against the atrocities of Pol Pot lies in the hands of these two scholars at Yale, a foreign institution more than six thousand miles from Cambodia, testifies to the thoroughness of Pol Poe's assault on the Cambodian population and irs resources. Estimates of the dead are inexact-the current Cambodian government estimates 3.1 million; the United Nations, 2 million; and the Genocide Program, 1.5 ro 2 million. But the targeted victims are clear. Khmer peasants, Muslims, Chinese,

THE NEw JouRNAL

Buddhist monks, the educated elite, and those associated with the former government became instant targets for the Khmer Rouge when it came to power in 1975. The decimation of the latter groups........described by Ron Slye (LAW '89), the associate director of the Schell Center, as "the educated, the lawyers and judges: those who knew the law"- inevitably hinders the effort to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice and necessitates the dependence on Yale's program.

Cambodia's main law school has just reopened, Kiernan explains, and the legal profession, "almost entirely wiped out by Pol Pot," is beginning the slow process of rebuilding. "In the last 15 years there has been an attempt to revive the legal system, but a lot mote training needs to be done," he says. Kiernan's Genocide Program will play a role in shaping this justice system, in preparing the new generation for its first and most public of endeavors.

The CGP held a conference in August of this year that brought together international lawyers and human rights activists, who presented the legal options for br inging the Khmer Rouge leadership to trial.

The foreseeable possibilities include Cambodian domestic trial on counts of mass murder, an ad hoc international tribunal similar to the one formed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, or a truth commission ro gather information and issue indictments.

This is not the first time the world has thought to try the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, but it may be the most serious effort to date. Kiernan tells of the missed opportunities of the eighties, when, amazingly, the Khmer Rouge still held Cambodia's seat in the United Nations. At that point, he says, the Khmer Rouge could have been hdd accountable and brought before the World Court.

But after the Khmer Rouge relinquished that seat in the early nineties, that opportunity disappeared. Kiernan speaks matter-of-

facdy, although not without hints of frustration, "The world could have said [the Khmer Rouge] had to answer a case on the genocide convention ... . Nobody did anything, despite a lot of lobbying by myself and others."

In 1979, the newly formed Cambodian government established a tribunal to prosecute the Khmer Rouge leaders for war crimes against humanity and genocide. Held in absmtia, with none of the leaders on trial present-for who knew where they were?-the trial 0 0

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The graduates ofthe Cambodian Genocide Program's 1995 Legal Training Project will malre up the core ofthe legal teams when the members ofthe Khmer Rouge are brought to tritzL made little impact. "It didn't make any difference at all," Ercheson says. "Nobody paid any attention ro it. The people who were convicted have been running a war for the past 15 years, and it didn't seem to bother them very much." Today, there is a growing determination among Cambodian survivors ro see a living representative of the Khmer Rouge face public condemnation for the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime. This goal rests permanently at rhe front of the minds of the people working on the project; another trial held in abuntia is nor an option for those seeking visible justice. However, rhe fact remains that rhe leaders of the Khmer Rouge-Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Thiounn Prasith-are still at large.

Etcheso n and Kiernan gently push aside this facL Ercheson, who acknowledges that "to be effective you have ro have the accused in custody, and that presents a real problem," explains that this is , for the moment, one of the lesse r concerns of the project. The more immediate concern, says Ercheson, is to gather the evidence so that when a rrial comes about, a case can be made. Kiernan sees a more immediate possibility and suggests that, in the case t hat a tru rh commission issues indictments, "It could make the Khmer Rouge subject to international arrest. It could make it more difficult for Thailand ro shelter them."

Curiously though, the failure to have

18

the enemy in custody does nor dampen the enrhu.sias m of those cataloging the atrocities. It must be, one can conclude, a therapy unto itself, this organizing and cou nting the atrocities, turning rile amorphous terror into a countable, and surmountable list. raig Ercheson sits at his desk in his small Luce Hall office and strays from talk of the possibilities of the future, speaking, rather, of the evidence.

He slides a phorograph across the desk and explains that it was taken at a former prison site in the Kanda! province in Cambodia. In the photo, Etcheson sits in front of a mass grave, resting on a low wall that holds back a small heap of human skeletons. Etcheson says, "You never know what expression to have on your face in a picture like that."

With the elusive goal of bringing the Khmer Rouge to trial, it is the evidence that becomes the central focus.

In fact, the most publicized aspect of rhis program, which has landed the project in The New York Times recently, has been the search for documents to put all the records and photos that are uncovered onto the Internet.

The Doc umentation Center of Cambodia, established in January of this year by the CGP, is the gathering place for the documentary evidence amassed by the project. Scanning thousands of documents

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and photographs into a computer database is the task at hand in the office, preparing for a world aebut in early 1997, when the entire database will be transferred to the Internet. The plans for the Internet are big.

Already, the documentation center has a homepage (http://www.pactok.net.au). The hope, however tentative, is that people who have useful information will be encouraged to come forth when they see what the project can achieve. Kiernan explains one goal for the project: scanning in 4,000 photos of unidentified prisoners. "We hope to get feedback from the Internet by scanning all the photographs and then having a special field where people can, if they know the face, type in the name and it'll come back to us," Kiernan says. ¡ The 4,000 photos to which Kiernan refers were found among the records of a former extermination camp. Part of the CGP's documentation project involves mapping as many of the prisons and extermination centers as possible. "The local people all know where [prisons and centers] are," Kiernan says.

The records from the camps provide, by far, the most illustrative\view of the degree of the atrocities. Even with the astounding bulk of documents being uncovered, it is the details-such as Deuch's margin notes-that offer an intimate glimpse of the horror the victims faced. Kiernan's own archives include, in addition to the rosters of prisoners with scrawled death orders, tally sheets that state "from the time we've started until now, we've killed 1,500 enemies," and copies of forced confessions with instructions in the margins for carrying out tortures designed to elicit a specific response.

His own archives are just a fraction of the documents that exist, Kiernan i~sists.

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The main obstacle has been pulling all the evidence together. Kiernan himself has become almost a hero in this effort. He tells the story of the rescue of 1,000 pages of archives from a rural prison. Listening to the story gives the outsider an inkling of the disarray that characterizes the records of the Khmer Rouge period. One begins to understand for the first time the truly ground-breaking work of the CGP. In 1980, while doing independent research, Kiernan photocopied the archives of the prison-one of the most complete sets of prison archives seen at that pointand deposited the copies in a museum in

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Cambodia. In the ensuing years, the originals were lost; when local residents began asking for the copies, the museum could not locate them. Kiernan went to Cambodia in August of this year and found them himself, "lying in a cupboard" in the archive room. These documents are being scanned into the program's database.

The mandate established by the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act was slated for two years of work; the grant will end in 1997, at which point Kiernan hopes the CGP will have built a strong enough foundation to keep the momentum going.

The database will be loaded onto the

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network, and the operations of the center will be turned over to Cambodian management. Etcheson is optimistic that all the publicity afforded to the project may bring in more funding and doubts that the work will suffer in any way after the two~ year deadline.

The Khmer Rouge leaders, while at large , are not at rest. Since being overthrown in 197 9, the Khmer Rouge has been waging war against Cambodia. For the moment, they are on the defensive, pushed back into northwest Thailand.

While the Khmer Rouge constantly pelts the bruised body of Cambodia with threats of future injury, the Cambodians who work on this project must deal with the knowledge that future reprisals are possible.

Kiernan admits this is "very much on my mind," but says that the Cambodians working on the project do not voice such concerns aloud.

T here can be lirtle concern, it seems, among the projects volunteers for such hidden, hypothetical dangers when faced daily with th e written record of the unimaginable horrors that have already transpired, for which the Khmer Rouge has 1811 yet to be brought to justice.

Katt Schukr, a smior in Saybrook managing ~ditor ofTNJ.

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THE NEW JouJtNAL

Weighing In: Athletes and Eating Disorders Katheri ne Bell

T

he number IOO is written ar rhe rop of almost every page of Amy Gallo's (PC '96) diary from freshman year.

Not I 00 percent, or I 00 days, bur I 00 pounds. When she came ro Yale, Gallo fell easily within the average weight range for her height. But when she tried out to be a coxswain of the women's crew ream, she found out that her weight wasn't good enough for crew. The coach told her an ideal coxswain should weigh under I 00 pounds. To Gallo, that meant she had to be under I 00 pounds.

Eating disorders among athletes no longer remain hidden in their diaries. Joan Ryan's book, Littl~ Girls in Pr~tty Boxu, hit bookstores this summer, criticizing the decreasing age and weight of gymnasts and figure skaters. In September, as a reaction to bleak statistics, such as the 23-pound drop in the average weight of a U.S. gymnastics team member between I976 and I992, U.S. Gymnastics released a list of recommendations to reduce the sport's risks.

Eating problems do not occu'r solely on elite gymnastics teams. Especially in the high-pressure arena of college varsity sports, all athletes, particularly women, are at risk. And at Yale, competitive athletics, combined with intense academics and the social pressures of university life, can prove disastrous.

Most of the pressure Gallo felt came from her own desire to be a perfect coxswain: to steer the boat, motivate the crew, and weigh as little as possible so that the boat could meet its maximum average weight requirement. "What my coach was telling me and what I was interpreting as pressure may have been completely different," she says. But she does point to specific instances when women's crew coach Willy Black explicitly told her to lose weight. Once, when Gallo asked why each of the nine crew members in her boat couldn't lose a couple of pounds instead, Black responded that if each rower lost five pounds and she lost 20, the boat's situation would be ideal. "I kept trying to find an out and he wasn't allowing it, whether he was conscious of it or not," she says. The only out Gallo could find was severe bulimia that lasted into her sophomore year.

S

rudies have made it clear that eating disorders are more prevalent among athletes rhan among non-athletes of the same age.

Bur according to Kelly Brownell, Yale professor of psychology, epidemio logy, and public

0croBER13, 1995

health and co-editor of a recent essay collection, Eating, Body W~ight and Puformance in A thletes, debate exists as to

whether participating in certain sports causes eating disorders or whether those already vulnerable to eating disorders are drawn to specific spo rts. Brownell believes both scenarios occur.

If sports cause eating disorders, t hey do so in dramatically different ways. In certain sports, like track and gymnastics, an athlete's performance will usually improve as his or her we i g h t

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decreases. Eating disorders may occur purely because athletes want to gain the extra seconds the loss of a few pounds will allow. "It wasn't a matter of body image," says Gallo. "I didn't care about how I looked. In fact I knew I would probably look worse, but it was a matter of doing it for the sport."

Mark Young, head coach of Yale women's track and cross country teams, claims there is a difference between eating disorders, specifically bulimia and anorexia nervosa, and "disordered eating" which he defines as inconsistent or overly restricted eating habits without the emotional component of classic eating disorders. The prevalence of eati ng disorders among runners is undeniably high, but Young believes it is hardly an epidemic. If an athlete runs 70 to 80 miles

a week, he maintains, it is possible to eat a lot, stay eJC'rremely thin, and remain emotionally healthy.

At Yale, lightweight crew stands as one of few men's sportS that places a premium on losing weight. Nils Erdmann (CC '96), a rower on the lightweight team, explains that lightweights must stay in optimal condition by following a strict diet determined by their lean muscle mass.

Mostly, the diet means eating a lot of cottage cheese. "It's an art," says Erdmann. During the racing season, rowers weigh in on Friday afternoons. All day, the lightweights do everything conceivable to "suck weight" and reach the goal of an average of 15 5 pou.nds per boat. Many hardly eat or drink and spend . hours in the sauna. Once, Erdmann lost nine pounds in a single day by wearing

OnaAhumada Ravi Batista Sarah Beck john Bullock Dennis Chang Faisal Choudhury Alex Felder Alex Funk Scott Healy Natasha Hoehn Mike Hrycelak Cindy Hwang Whitney Lawson Bim Lau The Sledge Family The Yale Daily News Yale Office ofPublic Affairs

22

KeOy D. Brownell, Yale professor ofpsychology, works with the athletics Jepartmmt to educate athletes and coaches about the warning signs and consequmus ofeating Jisortkrs.

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â&#x20AC;˘ Yale students feel like they have to do everything to extremes. When they're athletes, they have to be super athletes, and they'll do anything to achieve that. several layers of clothing, an overcoat, and a garbage bag. After the ritual weigh-in, the rowers eats as much as they can to regain the energy necessary for the next d ay's race. Though the lightwe ights' bizarre behavior seems to be a collective form of hinging and purging, Erd mann denies any body image problems on t he team. The rowers don't worry about their appearance, he says blithely, because none of them are overweight.

In sports such as gymnastics, diving, ¡ and figure skating, in which judges determine results, appeara nce coun ts.

Heather Simpson (TD '96), captain of the women's gymnastics team, explains that body image plays a central role in (emale gymnasts' vulnerab ili ty to eati n g disorders. "Everyone is scrutinizing you," she says. "You have to sell yourself to the judges." Simpson also points to the age and size of Olympic gymnasts. "Our idols have been 13-year-old girls who haven't gone through puberty yet," she says. Even though the level of competition is lower in college gymnastics, t he mentality t ha t gymnasts should have the bodies of little girls remains. One survey of 42 National Collegiate Athletic Association gymnastics p rograms showed that 62 perce nt o f college gymnasts had "engaged in eating disorder practices."

While physical requirements of sports like track and gymnastics take society's pressure co be thin to an extreme, softball demands a type of body t hat American society often labels as unfeminine and unattractive. Coaches encou rage t he players to increase muscle mass and strength, explains soft ball player To n i Fortunato (ES '96), which inevitably leads to a larger upper body and thighs. Softball also requires relatively little cardiovascular

0croBEll 13,

1995

training, which can make it easy co fall out o f shape. Fortunato's body image suffered in response to the mixed messages coming from inside and outside her sport.

She faced a paradox: lift weights and improve her performance in the outfield and at bat, or lose strength and gain the kind of body' she wanted. Though she never developed a physically debilitating eating disorder, Fortunato obsessed about food and exercise for over a year.

Psychologists who conducted two 1987 studies d isagreed on swimmers' vulnerability to eating disorders. While one stud y targeted swimmers because of the sport's emphasis on thinness, the other used swimmers as a control group because they tended not to be overly concerned with weight. But Frank Keefe, Yale's men's and women's swim team coach, believes that swimmers do face the risk of eating disorders due to combined issues of performance and body image.

Body composition does affect performance in swimming; the leaner a swimmer is, the less his or her body will resist t he water. On the other hand, a certain amount of body fat is necessary to p rovide buoyancy in the water. The comparatively low temperature of the water-80 degrees Fahrenheit-also forces the bod y to develop a thin layer of insulating fat.

Missi Dalrymple (ES '96), a backstroker on the Yale women's team, believes that among swimmers, women with poor body image are particularly at risk. She explains that while endless hours spent in bat h ing suits make some swimmers extremely com fortable with their bodies, o the rs become dangerously concerned with their appearance. Practicing with the men's team can also provide the kind of

critical audience other athletes experience in judged competitions. "The guys are very uncaring about this stuff in our sport," Dalrymple says. "They see you half-naked all the time, and they can tell if you put on a couple of pounds." Keefe emphasizes the fact that eating disorders do also occur in male athletes, but he has never encountered a problem on the men's team.

While many factors leading to eating disorders are inherent in the nature of competitive sports, the coach's powerful position, if abused, can also contribute to the problem. Dalrymple developed bulimia in boarding school. She swam on the best high school team in the country, under a coach she calls "a control freak."

He told her repeatedly that she was too fat, until she began to binge and purge. "I did it to spite my coach," she says.

Dalrymple's four best friends developed anorexia. She suggested to the coach that a nutritionist talk to the team, but he refused. She believes he viewed eating disorders as a weakness. "He shouldn't be a women's coach," Dalrymple says. H e now coaches one of the top three college women's teams in the country.

Dalrymple's experiences with Keefe have been almost the opposite. She points to an ongoing problem with eating disorders on the women's team, but she says that Keefe has displayed extraordinary sensitivity, especially considering his position as the male coach of a female team. He refuses to weigh the swimmers more than three or four times a year, and he has successfully convinced several women to seek counseling for eating disorders. " I can never hear enough about it," Keefe says, "because there may be one thing that keys me in to someone with a

23

The sport was a way for me to get back into the pattern of having an eating disorder.

problem."

At rhe beginning of her sophomore year, after srruggling with bulimia all summer, Gallo quir rhe crew team. When she spoke ro Black about his role in her eating disorder, she found our char he had been unaware of the pressure he had been placing her under. Gallo messes Black's concern for her health and his exrremely receptive response co her criricisms of rhe women's crew program. oaches at Yale seem aware of the risks their spores entail, or at least receptive to the concerns and criticisms of their athletes. In Brownell's paradigm, the physical requirements of spores and occasional pressure from coaches produce external pressures ro lose weight that are ofren compounded by perfectionism and an extsung vulnerability to eating disorders on rhe part of individual athletes. Gallo had experienced eating problems before she came ro Yale. "The sporr was a way for me ro gee back into the pattern of having an eating disorder," she explains. So when Gallo joined the crew team, everything her coach said became, in her mind , pressure to lose weight regardless of the cost. Gallo already knew how.

Perfecrionism is nor rare among studenrs ar Yale. "I think Yale students feel like they have ro do everything to extremes," says Gallo. "When rhey're arhletes, rhey have to be super athleres, and they'll do anything to achieve char."

On college gymnastics teams compering at a higher level than Yale's, coaches dicrate eating patterns much more stringenrly rhan rhey do here. Bur at Yale, Simpson claims, athletes are far more critical of themselves. "Yalies are so competitive with

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24

each other and with themselves," she says.

Team dinners can rurn into comperitions, she remarks wryly, with gymnasts scrurinizing each other's eating habits.

The athlete's position as a member of a close-knit team does not always ensure that someone will notice her eating problem. Dr. Barry Goldberg, head of sports medicine at University Health Services, notes an unwillingness to discuss rhe subject char pervades many teams,. mirroring rhe secrecy and shame those with caring disorders often experience.

While Fortunato talked about her concerns often with friends, parricularly those who had experien·ced eating problems themselves, she rarely· brought up the issue with teammates.

Bulimia can be parricularly difficult to detect, even on a team, because bulimics don't necessarily lose excessive weight, and rhey become expert at concealing their problem. Simpson believes that far more college students become bulimic than anorexic, simply because in the dining hall, it is harder to hide nor eating than not keeping the food down.

After Gallo quit the team, a few rowers admitted to her they had thought she had a problem, though no one said anything at the time. Gallo attributes part of this silence to her posicion on the team as a coxswain. If teammates notice an athlete's eating disorder, they usually do so when her physical performance begins to decline. A rower's problem might become evident if she began to lose strength or endurance. Gallo believes her bulimia did affect her performance, though not physically. "As it progressed I grew to hate the sport more and grew to be a worse coxswain," she says. But she didn't lose much weight, and during the season, she

didn't work out with the team. Gallo's irritability. a nd lack of concentration on the water might have resulted just as easily from academic or emotional problems.

Team dynamics can also encourage eating disorders. Simpson says that during her freshman and sophomore years, no one on the gymnastics team would discuss the issue, even though many of the upperclassmen had eating problems, a.nd dangerous eating patterns filtered down to the entire team. T h e situation has improved over the last two years, due to a concerred effort on the pan of current upperclassmen to encourage healthier attitudes towards food and weight. Still, Simpson says, roughly two of the team's 15 gymnasts have fu ll-fledged eating disorders at any time, and every Yale gymnast has what Simpson calls a "weird relationship with food."

W:

en ath letes do notice a eammate's problem, they must ecide whether or not to address it through official channels. While athletes on the track and swim teams often approach their coaches with the problem, Yale gymnasts usually discuss their concerns about a teammate before approaching her themselves. None of the women interviewed sought counseling for their eating problems. After Dalrymple left her high school team, she stopped hinging and purging, to begin again only briefly at Yale. During Fortunato's junio r year, exhaustion caused by too much exercise and the emotional stress of her obsession forced her to shift her focus away from losing weight back to gaining the strength she needed to improve her game.

Gallo saw a trainer at Uni·versity

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URBAN OBJECTS Home + Fashion Man, Woman + Child 1044 CHAPEL STREET NEW HAVEN Health Services once a week during her freshman year to help her lose weight, but she never mentioned her bulimia. Her trainer never noticed the problem, despite the fact that Gallo's weight fluctuated more and more dramatically as the year progressed. One morning in the trainer's office, Gallo suddenly began to cry. When one of the trainers asked her what was wrong, she said "Nothing, I just can't do this." No one probed any further t han that. "They kept saying 'Don't worry, you can do it,'" she explains. "What they thought they were doing was encouraging me to stick to my diet and lose the weight for sprints, but what they were actually encouraging me to do was continue hinging and purging." During her sophomore year, Gallo managed to stop by herself.

T hough Yale's health service didn't detect Gallo's problem, Goldberg defends the existing medical system at Yale. He points to the fact that unlike some universities, Yale doesn't automatically dismiss athletes with eating disorders from participation in their sports, but instead tries to use the sport as part of a complex solution to the problem. The difficulty, he says, lies in pulling athletes at risk for eating disorders into the system. This year, Goldberg has already scheduled meetings with coaches and captains to plan ways to make the services more accessible to athlet es with eating problems. A presentation Brownell gave to coaches about the causes, symptoms, and treatment of eating disorders convinced Young and Keefe to set up talks next week fo r their teams. Simpson has noticed a drastic improvement. Last year, she says, a single name in an athletics department brochure was the only resource of which

0CTOB£R 13, 1995

she was aware.

When Gallo quit the crew team, she suggested that she talk to the freshwomen trying out to be coxswains about eating disorders. Black fully supported her efforts to prevent her experience from recurring.

One freshwoman who had recovered from an eating disorder in the past decided not to continue tryouts after Gallo's talk.

Goldberg has decided that Gall o's approach works. With Tom Beckett, Director of Athletics, he is planning a peer counseling program in which athletes will be trained to counsel other athletes about the resources available to them at Yale.

The students themselves, Goldberg believes, will be more successful at bringing vulnerable athletes into the system. He expects the program to be running by the spring, and eventually, he wants the captain of every sport to be trained extensively to deal with the issue. alrymple, Gallo, and Fortunato will all graduate in May. With or without Yale's help, they have each survived moments in the pool, on the river, or on the field, when they were seized by an awareness of the destructive power sometimes wielded by the sport they loved. The freshwomen who will replace them next year will have far more resources at their disposal, if they face eating disorders. But the influences of University Health Services, coaches, even other teammates cannot alter the essential loneliness of eating disorders. And, says Gallo, an ideal coxswain still weighs under 100 pounds. .:I

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Ex perts at Yale and beyond argue that emotional development gauges aptitude better than standard IQ tests .

Intelligence Redefined Jay Dixit '' w

y is it," wondered Peter Salovey, "that some of the smartest people we know are so stupid?" At the time, Salovey, Yale professor of psychology, was painting his house with the help of his friend John Mayer, a fellow psychologist with training in the field of intelligence.

In the ensuing conversation, the ~o men noted that academia seemed to be a haven for bright bvt socially unskilled people. They challenged each other to define "charisma." Why is it, they asked themselves, that so many academics seem to have so little of it?

By the same token, they acknowledged, there are other people who seem especially skilled at purring people at ease-those to whom one reveals one's deepest secrets. Why are some people so naturally easy to talk to that they make social interactions seem effortless? a leader in the study of emotions, Salovey proposed that a arge part of charisma might involve a set of emotion-related kills: being able ro understand and express one's own emotions, being able to read nonverbal cues in others, being able to calm people down or cheer them up and â&#x20AC;˘tsing emotions to gain new perspectives on solving problems or to enhance one's creativity.

Referring to his own area of expertise, Mayer offered his opinion: such a set of skills could constitute a certain kind of intelligence that couldn't be measured by an IQ rest.

Their conversation resulted in the 1990 publication of a paper entitled "Emotional Intelligence," in which the two authors proposed a framework for thinking about emotion-related skills as a form of intelligence.

When first published, the paper attracted little attention outside of the scientific community. But with the recent release of Emotional lnulligmu by Daniel Goleman, a N~w York Tim~s science writer, emotional intelligence has landed at the center of a storm of controversy about what it means to be smart. Already, the book is number five on the bestseller list. The cover of the October 2 issue of Tim~ magazine proclaims that "emotional intelligence may be the best predictor of success in life. " Even President Clinton is talking about it. During a recent campaign, Clinton's motorcade made an unscheduled visit to the Tattered Cover bookstore in

Denver. "I'll tell you what's a great book," he told reporters, "this Emotionallnt~//igmu. It's a very interesting book. I love it. Hillary gave it to me."

According to Goleman's book, "Emotional intelligence is basically a different way of being smart." It involves the set of skills that Salovey and Mayer proposed, along with some additio!ls.

What's more, Goleman claims that emotional intelligence skiUs are much better predictors of a person's future success than the skills traditionally measured by IQ. This, of course, is not a new idea. That's why we have words like "nerd" and "geek" to describe people who may have book smarts, but are socially in ept. Conversely, we call people "charismatic," "popular," or "charming,'' if we find that they have the set of people skills we deem important.

But somehow that conventional wisdom has gone ignored in modern psychological circles. Peter Salovey thinks that we owe our neglect of emotions to the fact that "the last 2,000 years of Western thought have always pitted passion against reason." Emotions have traditionally been thought of as disruptions that should be minimized and regulated because they disturb the thought process.

Whatever the reason, emotions are seldom mentioned in connection with intelligence. Indeed, traditional intelligence researchers continue to be openly hostile to the idea that emotions constitute a part of intelligence. As a result, the idea that we possess an emotional intelligence is nothing shon of revolutionary.

Part of the reason for the controversy lies in the media's portrayal of emotional intelligence. The cover of Tim~, for instance, tantalizes readers with the question, "What's Your EQ?" But according to Salovey, "There is no EQ. There's no EQ test. We would never argue that there is one, or that a single EQ is even a measurable construct." The test printed in Tim~ under the heading "One Way to Test Your EQ" is actually a test of optimism.

Emotional lnttlligmc~ deliberately places itself in the midst of an already ¡heated debate over intelligence. Goleman goes so far as to quote Richai-d Hernstein and Charles Murray, whose book Th~ B~/1 Curv~ corroborates Goleman's thesis, that "the link berween test scores and ... ach ievements is dwarfed by the totality of other characteristics."

So why this talk about feelings all of a sudden? Goleman writes

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that he had a very good reason for bringing this up when he did.

All around us, he writes, in our cities, in our communities, in our schools and on our streets, things are getring worse. In his preface, Goleman presents a compendium of some of the more disturbing stories in the newspaper that week. A nine-year-old's temper tantrum that turns into a rampage, a shoving match in a crowd that ends in a shooting, statistics about parents murdering their children, a neo-Nazi on trial for burning five women to death.

What's the common thread here? "The news," Goleman writes, "simply reflects back to us on a larger scale a creeping sense of emotions out of control in our own lives and in the people around us. " Many of these problems, Goleman argues, have their root cause in the "surging rage and despair"¡ that is the result of poor management of our emotional lives. "This book," he writes, "is a guide to making sense of the senselessness."

Goleman's definition of emotional intelligence lends itself to theories of behavior modification. Unlike the IQ test, which attempts to rate the purely genetic component of intelligence, emotional intelligence incorporates social influences. The solution is to teach it to our children in schools.

The Social Development Program, headquartered is at Hillhouse High School, is taught in every New Haven public school at each grade level from kindergarten through senior high.

Instituted in 1988, the program aims to combat the growing problems of violence and HIV. Tim Shriver, former supervisor of the Social Development Program, claims that, alrhough the program does not use the term emotional intelligence, "If you look at the examples, we're really talking about the same thing." Point for point, the Social Development Program teaches the skills that Goleman advocates in his book.

The first skill of emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and articulate one's own feelings. This is taught starting in kindergarten, where children learn to give "I messages"statements that begin with "I feel." Training in using the vocabulary of feelings continues in various forms through the sixth grade. By learning to verbalize feelings in this way, children master the first skill of.EQ.

0crOBER IJ,

1995

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In New Haven elnnmtary schools, students learn to "stop, calm ÂŽwn, and think before you act. "

A second important skill is empathy. Mickey Kavanagh, one of the SOP's facilitators, calls this "knowing what it's like on the other side." Empathy is practiced in the fourth and fifth grades in games such as "Making Faces," in which one player receives a card with a "feelings word" and mimes it, charades-style. The other students are then challenged to read his facial expressions and body language to guess what feeling is being represented. The idea is that in a crisis situation, if each child is able to tell how the other is feeling and to understand the other's situation, they will be more likely to resolve the conflict peacefully.

Goleman's third skill is motivation-what he calls "maintaining hope and optimism in the face of setback and adversity." Students are taught motivarion through a six-step process that includes "say the problem and how you feel," "set a positive goal," "think of lors of solutions," and finally, "go ahead and try rhe best plan. " Children are also taught how to administer "warm fuzzies" -a sure way to cheer up their classmates.

27

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The last skill-and according Goleman the most important-is impulse control which is drilled into students early and often. A poster hanging in a classroom depicts a stoplight and reads: "Stop, calm down, and think before you act." The hope is that students will learn to think through their actions, rather than letting their anger move them to do something rash. Ideally, when confronted with a real-life situati~n, students will have already internalized the steps to a non-violent solution, and will be able to resolve the conflict peacefully.

The program has seen real results.

There has been a decline in the number of 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds who repo rt having had sexual intercourse, as well as a decrease in the number of situations in which the children report that they would fight.

Other testimonials abound: tales of parents getting along better with their children; a story about a sixth-grader who prevented her best fri e nd's suicide by soliciting the help of a Social Development teacher; a student who is certain she would have e nded up an unwed , pregnant teenager if she hadn't been taught to stand up for her rights in her Social Development class.

"I think the results are pretty close to spectacular," says Shriver. "Fighting is down, suspensions are down, safety is better, hopefulness is up. Children have a sense of the future. " Although the Social Development Program appears to be addressing the same themes as emotional intelligence, Goleman can't claim credit for its success. The program was developed by former Yale professor Roger Weissberg, in collaboration with educators, but independently of Salovey and emotio n al intelligence

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Ylzk psycholtJgy professor Peter SaltJvey believes an alternate form ofintelligence. researchers. "I think it's a happy accident, frankly," Goleman says. "The fact that it was independently discove red by the program's developers gives me more faith in its intrinsic success. It suggests that there is a common core of competencies which act as a buffer or inoculation for a_child facing perils like drug abuse or violence or dropping out."

Salovey objects to this thought process.

"The press on this over the past two weeks, in part encouraged by the Goleman book, implies that this is the answer to social problems-this is the answer to teenage pregnancy; this is the answer to drug use; this is the answer to drop-ours; this is the answer to unemployment; this is the answer to dying prematurely." The danger here, Salovey argues, is in blaming the victim-in saying, "If only you were smarter about your emotions, this wouldn't have happened to you." The problem with that, Salovey says, is that it takes social problems and implies that they have individual solutions. "The idea that it's going to save the world from all these social ills, I think, is the wrong level of analysis."

Of course, no one can deny that a program that teaches children to be better problem-solvers, to negotiate difficult interpersonal situations, or, as Salovey puts it, "basically to learn how to share the

0croBER IJ,

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basketball rather than punch the other guy and rake it." Goleman's book will increase public awareness about the potential effectiveness of such programs.

"I think the critical thing to recognize here is that we're doing incremental work," Shriver said. "You don't expect kids ro come in as if they just mastered long division and say, 'aha, I can do it.' What you're likely ro find is a lor of small steps that result in a bigger picture that says that we as communities, schools, families are working better together."

What's the next step in emotional intelligence research? For starters, earlier this year the Yale Child Srudy Center established CASEL, the Collaborative for the Advancement of Emotional and Social Learning, to promote courses that teach these kinds of skills to children.

Meanwhile, Peter Salovey is working on a book of his own. Says Salovey, "I was going to call it something like Emotional Compttency and Emotional Literacy, bur now I'm thinking of calling it Emotional Compttmcy and Emotional lntelligmu." He laughs. "Why should Dan Goleman be the only one who gets to use emotional intelligence in the tide of his book?" iBIJ

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29

Blintzes in the Promised Land Sarah Beck ''W

LCOME TO TEMPLE BETH-EL SAN ANTONIO, IS

TEXAS. Do NOT ENTER w_HILÂŁ CONGREGATION

STANDING AT PRAYER. DO NOT WALK IN FRONT OF

warned the sign at the entrance co rhe sanctuary. It was past eight o'clock, already winter dark; the lobby was dim, the sanctuary was lit, and a man wearing an Anti-Defamation League tie pin was lurking behind the door. The usher flinched slightly as I walked in. "Oh," he sighed, "you're here for An Riklin."

"My grandfather," I apologized. "You will know him by his tie pin-" Art, my grandfather of the ADL, stopped lurking, marched forward, rook my right forearm in both hands, and hauled me co our sears, pretending that he meant only ro kiss me hello. "You come here often, hmm?" he asked, and fixed me with a decent rendition of my uncle Eddie's leer.

"Day and niiiight... " I said.

"Night and day!" he sang, on key.

"Cole Porter went ro Yale. Class of'I3."

"But you're tare!" he said, tightening his grip on my arm. The cantor walked in, the congregation began the opening hymn, and we looked around for pillars of the community with whom we would exchange greetings after services.

"Malachti hashartit," said the canror.

"Malachei ÂŁlyon," replied my grandfather and I. He held rhe prayerbook in one hand, straightening his arm so that the page was directly in front of my eyes. With rhe index finger of his free hand, he jabbed the appropriate syllable in rime with the chant, lest we get lost in the Hebrew. This was, of course, as much for his benefit as for my own.

We were six words into the Sabbath and had yet to lose our place. No one should ever go to services alone.

ALTAR,"

's son, my stepfather Scot, tried to laugh me our of an attack of anticipatory worry in the days before I left for New Haven. "You ill look around and ask yourself, 'Diaspora? What diaspora?

What happened to the exile, the dispersion?' There are so many Jews up there, Sarah. Compared to San Antonio, New Haven looks like Jerusalem. You will be in the land of Tht Nro~ l'Ork Ttmes, and I, Scot Riklin-and my pork-eating, Christmas-celebrating brethren-will sr.ill be here."

"I'm scared."

"I don't often indulge in my parental advice urge, Sarah~r in the major Jewish cliches-bur please r.ry to be a mmsch about this."

"It will be difficult nor to be. They tell me rhar the horrible

AE

30

maelstrom of mmschen, the contingent of clich~ itself, is building some sort of'center for Jewish life' right near,.limothy Dwight."

He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and sighed. "Oh, no. No. Don't tell me that, please. I'll worry."

"Blinrzes, Scot! On demand." We take our blintzes very seriously, but we like them better when it is not a rabbi, but instead a wild hog from the West Texas underbrush, who supervises their preparation.

"There is no good kosher food! No such thing! You know that."

"I'll be careful."

"I'd hare to see you get sucked into all that," he said.

''I

adjure you, 0 daughter of Jerusalem!" I yelled at my unwitting and newly-arrived suiremate. "Why would you awaken the rabbi, or stir it up, until it please?" The Biblical "Song of Songs" did not make appropriate moving-day small talk. Nor, indeed, did I think that my visiting the Hillel rabbi was a suitable moving-day activity.

"Aren't you Jewish?" asked my roommate.

"Yes," I replied, with a straight face.

"You seem to have some problem with rabbis."

"Yes!" "But you're Jewish-" "It is becaust I am a Jew that I have this fear! Gentiles don't have to worry." .

"Why are you going to see the rabbi, if it's so hard on you?"

"Someone at home--my natal rabbi, in fact-sent the Hillelim a letter, warning them that I was coming. It is good to infiltrate the hierarchy. My grandfather would be proud." e Slifka Center is hardly half a block from limothy Dwight College. However much I had once delighted in driving a car on the Sabbath, it looked like now I would be walking to services.

With less effort than I cared to admit, I could make our the Hebrew on the sign: "Beit Josef," "school of Joseph [Slifka]," it said. The language wore out my patience, however, and I went inside to starr my infiltration, finding not one, but two rabbis.

"Oh, you're Sarah Bedel" one said. "We got the letter. Marvelous!

Wonderful letter. Were you sent a copy?" Courtesy, goodwill, and glee-all familiar, aU appropriately rabbinical, and all much appreciated by this sojourner in a strange land.

"It is good co meet you both-" "I am Jim Ponet. I am the director of Hillel. This is my colleague-" "Sharon Cohen-Anisfeld. Pleasure to meet you."

Ti

THE NEw jOURNAL

"How are you finding Yale?"

"It has set in already-" I said, jaw set.

"Yale has?"

"No, no, horrible despair has-set in."

"That is-maybe a bit premature, three days into the year."

"Of course. You are right."

Scot would have been highly suspicious of my enjoying the company of the rabbinate, but Art would have been glad I was not ruining my chances of political influence so early in the year. The Jew who alienates the power structure before Yom Kippur will fast alone and have much for which to atone, but I did not foresee any terrible trouble.

Days later, I was eating blintzes made without milk or honey in the Kosher Kitchen. "Are you going home for the holidays?" asked someone at my right.

"No," I said. "Spring break falls well before Passover this year."

"What-" "It's probably just as well that I'm staying here-my grandmother had just formed the Commemorative Apple Salad into blocks the week before I came up here." Nan believes in advance preparation. Then I realized she was not referring to Passover, but the upcoming High Holidays. "No. My stepdad would laugh, I think, if I came home for the New Year." My earliest memory of Rosh Hashanah is of Scot's standing in the kitchen, making fake shofar noises so I might not regret missing the blowing of the ram's hom at services.

"Your family isn't observant, then?"

"Popart, my grandfather, is a big. tremendous deal on the Jewish political scene, back home. 'Moses! Golda! Art!' they say. But no, my stepdad and I aren't observant, except for the Seder."

"Is that hard on you? Why all this enthusiasm, then?"

"Don't say that!"

"Is enthusiasm bad?" she asked.

"The enthusiastic are all in temple youth organizations-wait, pardon me, nothing personal-" "Oh, no, I never did youth group. Never my thing."

"Most of them wear sleeveless clothes. Scary types," I said.

"I guess they aren't very observant-" "It's not the observance that worries me! Taste. Bad taste."

"Better than at my shuJ-at home, the youth groups practically cover their hair. I think my mother was afraid that if I went to Israel, I would come back like that-very pious, very modest."

"This was exactly what was worrying my stepdad-" "You were covering your hair?"

"No, no, he warned me not to get sucked in, into this dairy lunch Ocro&ElllJ, 1995

bi t • into all t h a t goes ~--••rJ with it," I said.

"Too late, then.

You've been assimilated, I guess. " She grinned.

"So to speak, yes."

"And we are such a happy, cheerful band," she said, with tongue in cheek. "Maybe your High Holidays will actually be better up here, despite-" "Because of-" "Your being away from your family."

1l

e morning of Rosh Hashanah was swarming with prayer bawls of every stripe. There were Jews in the entryway, Jews in he restroom, Jews standing outside. After going to services, I called home. Scot answered.

"L'shanah-'' he began. "I'm trying to think of the Hebrew for 'Happy New Year'-" "L'shanah haba'ah-no, that's for Passover."

"L'shanah tovah! Good year!"

"Did we even remember to say, 'Next year, in Jerusalem!' last Passover?"

"I don't know, Little Ms. Rabbi-don't take this great Jewish schol.ar's word for it, though."

"Next year, in New Haven, then-may all, especially me, be free!"

"Once I get that bursar bill, we'll see how 'free' you are. Those blintzes are on the meal plan, you're sure?"

"This is Yale, Scot! Of course they a.re."

"Where is this thing, the diaspora?" he teased, with his best Israeli inflection. "I see no dispersion there, in the Kingdom of the Kosher Lunch, at the Shrine of Tht Ntw York Ttmts." I had wandered out of the South Texas desen into someplace more temperate, where blintzes grew on bushes, and where there were no zealots to bother me as I ate them.

1111

Smah &dt is a~n in Ttmothy Dwight Co/kgt.

31

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