Volume 31 - Issue 3

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Sutff

Vancssa Agard-Joocs • Jan Bkdter • Daniel Brook Jo Coa.kky • Jason D'Cna • Anya Ka~mnn1 Monica Kim • Eric Rothfe<kr • Alan Sch0«1fdd lkn Smith • John Swaruburg • ~~Taft Ltt Wang • Heidi Vogt • Jada Yuan Mtmbm iUU/ Dirrm.n

Emily Budon • Constan<e Clement • Peter B. Cooper Tom Grigp • Brooks Kdlcy • Henry Schwab

Elizabeth Sledge • Gabriel Snyder • Fred Strd>eigh Thomas Strong

.At/uism

Richard Blow • Jay Carney • Rkhard Conniff Ruth Conniff • Elisha Cooper • Lauren Rabin St<Yen Weisman • Daniel Ycrgin

Frinu/s Sent B.llou • AMott M. Beard, Jr. • BW.. 8cnn<n Edwvd B. Bcnnm. Jr. • Edward B. 8cnn<n m P.uJ S. 8cnn<n • G.nld llrudt • llaman BurreD J>r Carney • Daphne O.u • josh CMn .Joou1w> M. 0ar11: • Comancc a ........ · ~Cooper P<tU B. Cooper • Andy Coan • Jcny aad Rao Coun Mooi Dc.U- • Al>cn J. Fa. • Mrs. How>td Fa. Da'lid f......., • Gco&i<y Fri<d • Amuo c-b.ra Shtnrin Goldman • Da'lid G~ • Tom Gf1Q1 5«pplca Hdlm&n • Jarw: J<.mcnsky • Broob Kdky Rostt IGnoood • ADd..... J. Kumaki. Jr. Lewis E. Lduman • Jiaa I..Dft • E. Nobles I..Dft Hank M>Nbad< • Martha E. N<il • Pcm Nril Howard H. NcwmaD • San O"Bricn • Julie p...,.

Lewis and Jooa Pbn • josh Pbm • Julia Praoon laurm Rabin • Fairfax C. Randal • RDIIin Rigs Madt Rindla • N'oc:hobs X. Riaopouloo • Sruatt Rohm Artcca - ' Arthl.lf Sop • Oidt aDd Debbie Sean Ridwd Shields • W. Hampcon Sida • Lisa Silvmnan Erwbnh aad Wdliam SJe.4< • Thomas Saonc Elizabnh Tuc • Ala aDd 8cay Tordlo • Mdissa Tumcr AllcD and Sarah Warddl Danid Yerpn aDd Ancda Slftlt Ycrpn

NovEMBER, N-UMB-ER 30, 199 s 3~ TheNe~-x ,T.O...U..IU(Ll_vo_LUME-31 fvvJ~

features

6 Fathers and Sons Leo Tolstoy and his son Ilya dreamt ofnew havens.

BY jOH N SWA NSBU RG

8

School Crossing Project Choice allows suburban students to attend New Haven schools, but the color line remains intact.

BY DANIEL BROOK

12

The Omnimpotent Hotel workers have voted to unionize, but management is stalling.

BY I AN B LECH ER

16 Vantage Strut photography brings a new perspective to the lives ofthe Big Apple's citizens.

BY LINCOLN ELSE

20

Automatics for the People Two stutknts go comparison shopping in New Havens legal and illegal gun markets.

BY L AINI E R UTKOW AND B EN SMI T H

Cultural Capital New Havens interest in the arts may be solely financial.

BY ERIC R oTHFEDER

A Quick Fix Police are using first aid tactics to shut down prostitution, but the wounds might run too deep.

BY } ADA Y U AN

32

Symptoms of the Flu Asian cu"ency tkpreciations force stutknts to make unexpected sacrifices.

BY M AKIKO H A RUNARI

standards

4 34

Points of D eparture

36

The Critical Angle: A Land in Full

38

Endnote: Good News BY ANDREW Y O UN

B etween the Vines: Misreading BY B LAKE CHARLTON

BY R ONEN G!VONY

THE Nnr jot.'aNAI. is publishal live times dwin& IlK acodcmic you by The New journal ar Yak, Inc., P.O Box )4J1 Yak Swion, N~ Hoven, CT o6s10. Offiu address: 151 Pad. Succr. Phone: 1103' 4Jl-'9S7· AI con~e~~u c:opynsJn 1998 by The New Jourtul at Yak. Inc. All Rigilu Racrvcd. Reproduction culler on whok or in pan without written pcrmoaion of IlK publishft and cdiror in chief is prohil>oted. '1171\ik this 8llpzinc is published by Yale College srudcna, Yak Uomnuy is not ruponsiblc for iu contents. ~n thowand 1m hundred copies of each ....,. arc do.tril>uted fnc to mcmbcn of IlK Yak and New Hoven CIDtllmunity Sub«riptions arc available ro thooc oursidc the area. Rates: One you, $18. Two years. SJO. TH£ NEY j OC."aKAL is printed by lmpnnt PrinttnC. North H..cn. CT; l>onldr.ccpin& and l><ll•n& StrYK:a arc ~ by Colman Booldr.ccpin& of New Ha~. THE NEY j ot;lNAL cncoun&e~ Inters to the editor and commentS on Yak and N~ Haven anua. Wntc to Eduorials, )431 Yak Stauon, N~ Haven, CT 06s10. All letters for publicarion ml1SC include address tnd Signature. We reserve the right to edit all lcncn for publoauon.

Faith No More As church bells pealed through the Silliman courtyard, I sat down for a conversation with Chris Mooney (SM '99), one of the leaders of the Yale Society of Humanists, Atheists and Agnostics (YSHM). More than fifty similar groups have been established on campuses nationwide in the last year in association with the Council for Secular Humanism. The YSHAA's unremarkable mission is to advance free and rational thought, but the activities they organize to secure Yale for the godless seem bizarre to the uninitiated.

The group's activist agenda includes a campaign against Yale's mandatoty Freshman Assembly, because it involves prayer.

They also want Yale to install a secular chaplain. "We actually have someone lined up to fill this position-a member of the _.. .........,_ _...

American Humanist Association," said Mooney. "We want someone who would be useful to show that Yale respects all modes of thought."

The YSHAA held a Superstition Bash on Cross Campus on Friday, November 13. Brave Yale students tested their fate by walking under a huge ladder and Mooney smashed a mirror while spilling salt over both shoulders at 13:13 {1:13 p.m.}.

The organization also aims to create a community of non-believers. At this point Mooney's efforts consist largely of a weekly keg party in his suite, which is decorated with an eight-inch squeaking nun and posters bearing legends )ike "HELL? NO, WE WON'T GO!" and "Anti-Priest, Pro Altar-Boy." The society does have more serious goals.

"The main concerns of the association are separation of church and state and First Amendment rights." Mooney also sees a connection between "free-thinkers" and a variety of other causes on campus. ~The homosexuals have it even worse than we do, and we have a common enemy in the church. But it's hard to form alliances since, if you're gay, about the only thing that could be worse would be to come out as godless, too."

The journey towards unbelief was a short

4

one for Mooney, who grew up amidst the miasma of Catholicism and bacchanalia that is New Orleans. Reared by an atheist family, he recalls feeling different from all the other families in his neighborhood, where the Virgin Mary was a popular lawn ornament. "But the time that I realized there was no God acutely was when I was a junior or senior in high school. It mattered to me a lot because I was really unhappy and angry, and being mad at religion was one way to get it out."

I asked Mooney how he evolved his philosophy of tolerance and openness out of this initial anger and prejudice. "Yeah, it took a long time," he admits. "But I think with rational th~ught anyone would get there eventually." This paradox seems endemic to the entire movement: a collection of "free thinkers" united by vitriol against the foolishly superstitious. When I asked if Mooney would like to see all organized religion eradicated, he demurred, saying, "That would be a fascist goal. I'm not a fascist."

But when pressed he admits, "I think it would be better."

Although a march against Batte!

Chapel would surely generate controversy, YSHM currently might be said to suffer from a lack of opposition. "Secular humanists love America. At least, the one that got founded. If you look at the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, all their arguments and conceptions of human rights and maximizing happinesswe're just kicking ourselves that we're not in the Enlightenment now." Yale's Campus Crusade for Christ's efforts notwithstanding, rationalism and empiricism overrule piety inside classrooms and out. Nevertheless, Mooney sees his organization as part of the old guard against a rising wave of dangerous mysticism. "I think there's a potential to enter a new Enlightenment, but also a new Middle Ages." H e reads me a quote from Carl Sagan, one of the patron saints of his movement: "It's a foreboding I have, maybe ill-placed,

of an America in my children's generation, or my grandchildren's generation, when, clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness. "

-Anya Kammetz

Holy Land, U.S.A. It's a typical case of bringing the mountain to Mohammed. As long as the mountain is plaster of Paris and Mohammed is a fannypacked fortysomething. ¡ It's "Holy Land, U.SA." ¡ These brightly lit words and accompanying 50-foot high cross shine down on Interstate 84 near Waterbury, beckoning motorists to find their salvation on top of Pine Hill. It's an enticement to the kitsch-loving imaginacion.

John Greco (lAW '25) started building Holy Land in 1956 as an alternative pilgrimage for the devout who couldn't afford to make the trip to Jerusalem. Greco bought the 17-acre plot for $13,000, then began to build his city. Soon Pine Hill began to fill with poured concrete Virgin Marys, mannequins dressed as saints, pipe railings, and all sizes of decorative plastic flowers. Walking through Holy Land is like a trip through a fonune cookie factory, with pithy sayings like "The world is fragile, handle with prayer" at every turn. Greco forged his miniature Jerusalem out of other people's garage sale junk.

And they carne.

In the early '80s, the amusement park-like shrine welcomed 40,000 disciples a day, often arriving in bus-loads. Donations from visiting tourists paid for the upkeep and expansion of Holy Land, and Greco added items: everything from concrete grottoes to the Dead Sea. With the new funds, Greco created a 200-foor long replica of the catacombs, then a miniature of the villages of the 12 tribes oflsrael.

All this "for the glory of God," according to Greco. As a child, Greco wanted to become

THE NEW JouRNAL

a priest, but he opted for a more lucrative career as a lawyer. Holy Land was Greco's contribution to the fa.ith. He chose Pine Hill because the terrain b n the hilltop reminded him of Palestine.

Holy Land's heyday ended in the mid'80s as Greco (who was 70 when he started the project) became too frail to maintain the site himself any longer. Holy Land withered with Greco, closing its gigantic gate to the public when Greco became too ill to supervise the project. Those who heed the call today and make the pilgrimage will find that the largest replica of Jerusalem this side of, well, anywhere, has been all but worn away by mother nature.

Greco died in 1986, leaving Holy Land in the charge of the same order of nuns that had cared for him in his last days, the Religious Teachers Filipini. Today's Holy Land hosts

graffiti and beer bottles instead of worshippers. The sisters currently have plans for the crumbling Holy Land, but aren't discussing what form their repairs will take. While the future of Holy Land is being decided, the sisters concentrate on keeping the cross lit, giving commuters below a little kitsch to ponder, if nothing else.

-H~idi Y&gt

The Lady Vanishes When the city of New Haven demolished the old Malley's 4epartment store on the corner of Church and George Streets, it destroyed a landmark more than a century old. In its place now sits a gaudy sign welcoming visitors to "New Haven: An All-American NOVEMBER 30, 1998

City."

But beneath the empty lot lurks a mystery that has haunted the city since before the turn of the century-the unsolved murder of 20 year old Jennie E. Cramer.

In 1881, New Haven was the quintessential New England city: refined women and men paraded down tree-lined streets, the economy boomed, and the city bustled with the intellectual life its prized university provided. On August 6, however, the city was shaken from its Victorian complacency by the discovery of a grisly and mysterious murder.

A pamphlet published after the murder testifies to the charms of the victim, a middle class girl: "She was well-known and well-liked for her beauty, which was undoubtedly striking, and for her high spirits and good company, although she was not well educated, nor particularly attractive mentally."

One of Cramer's most persistent admirers was James Malley, Jr., the nephew of Edward Malley, namesake and owner of the famous Malley's Department store. As the story goes, Cramer and Malley spent the evening of Wednesday, August 3, with Walter Malley, James's cousin, and Walter's friend Blanche Douglass.

When Cramer did not return home that night, her mother was frantic. She interrogated the Malley boys and Douglass about her daughter's whereabouts. Douglass said that the two had spent the previous evening at the Elliot Boarding House for Women, but that they had split up that morning. The Malley boys sent a note to Mrs. Cramer saying that they had not seen her daughter.

Two days later, Cramer's body was discovered by a fisherman, Asa Curtiss, near Savin Rock on the Long Island Sound. The autopsy revealed that she had not drowned. She bad been poisoned with laudanum.

According to court documents, an investigation began promptly, and the Malley boys and Douglass were the first witnesses called in for questioning. All three denied having seen Cramer after the evening of August 3, and families and friends provided alibis for the threesome starting the morning of August 4.

When Douglass was questioned further, however, she revealed that she had lied about her and Cramer's whereabouts: they had spent the evenings of August 3 and August 5 at the Malley mansion.

On August 15, New Haven police arrest-

eel both Malley boys and Douglass. Edward Malley promptly offered a $1000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the "real" murderer. The New Haven community was outraged at the elder Malley's involvement in the inquiry, and became suspicious of the slow pace of the investigation.

The Nau Havm Unum accused the police department of "masterful inactivity" and argued forcefully that it was "no time for dilly dallying."

The New Haven coroner's jury, the equivalent of today's grand jury, accused the threesome of "not having fear of God before their eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, wickedly contriving one Jennie Cramer, late of said town of New Haven, with poison willfully, feloniously and of their malice aforethought to kill and murder." The trial date was set for June, 1882.

In the interim, the Cramer story exploded, gaining regional attention and appearing repeatedly on the front page of the Nau 111rk Tim~s. All the makings of a good story were there: power, money, and se:x. Pictures of the victim abounded in New Haven. In April, a pamphlet appeared that implicated the Malley family in the crime. Although the Malleys asked their servants to buy up the pamphlet, several copies found their way into the public's hands, and the demand was so great that it went into a second printing.

Afrer a trial of nearly three months, both Malley boys and Douglass were acquitted.

The people of New Haven osrracized the Malley family, suspecting their involvement in the murder. People refused to shop at their store and the Malleys were rebuffed by the society that had once revered them. "The incident helped focus the community on the pervasive class divisions in¡ New Haven," said history professor Robin Winks, who lectured on the Cramer murder to the New Haven Colony Historical Society last October.

"A woman who used to teach English at Yale was walking down the street with a Malley's bag and someone approached her and said, 'You must be new here. It's not proper to shop at Malley's-people around here don't go there anymore,'" said fames Campbell of the New Haven Colony Historical Society.

Malley's might have been replaced by the "All-American City," but beneath the facade lie unanswered questions-the murder remains unsolved.

-Alan Schomfild 5

of his wife's rule, he began preparations to slip out from under her iron ' ' A l l happy families resemble each other," writes Sofya in a curling cyrillic script, beginning to copy the manuscript fist. The house was unusually still. Sofya had finally fallen asleep after her husband has just handed her. The work is arduous: stirring all night and Tolstoy seized the opportunity. He was 82 years many words have been furiously scratched out, margin old, weak, and close to death. He packed some things, and accompacorrections have been recorrected, and arrows ¡point lost words home-. nied by his doctor, left his home and his wife. The carriage drove to a ward. She may be the only person who can decipher the mess made by nearby station, where Tolstoy and his doctor boarded a train, a train that would gain fame rivaled only by the locomotive that races through her husband's brilliance. Her hand, perhaps, still aches from transcribing W?tr and Peace. She did it seven times. the pages of AnnaKarenina.

Tolstoy was bound for She also bore Count Leo Tolstoy 13 children, six of Shamordino, the home of his whom would not live to see sister, Marya. Everyone in the third-class railroad carriage their father die. That she was recognized the famous writer, fiercely devoted to her husband and his art is without question; and before long passengers that she was severely mentally from throughout the train crowded into Tolstoy's carill in the final years of her life is also doubtless, though not necriage, where he expounded on essarily a consequence of her pacifism and politics. After a six-hour train ride, the Count devotion. The same passion and his doctor arrived . at that made Countess Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoy a brilliant Kozyolsk, where they spent the night, switching trains in scribe made her a ruthless administrator of her household the morning and embarking again for Shamordino. in the closing years of Leo Tolstoy's life. The aging Sofya grew The arduous journey suspicious of her husband began to take its toll on the Tolstoy's five sons. 1/ya is second from the left. writer. As Tolstoy shivered in (though his octagenarian frame could hardly have sustained disloyalty). She kept her physically ailing the cold train compartment, his doctor decided the author could not husband awake at night with the racket of her mental maladies: the complete the trip. The next stop of the train bringing Tolstoy to the slamming drawers and doors of her searches for the evidence of her husend of his life was the obscure town ofAstapovo, where the station masband's betrayal. She rarely slept. Tolstoy wrote in his diary (presumably ter offered to house the ailing Tolstoy. the one for which she searched in vain), "Day and night, she has to On November 6, still too sick to travel, Tolstoy remained in bed at know my every word and deed, and have everything under her conthe station master's home. He was in pain. His days marooned in trol." It is because of his wife's illness that Tolstoy's biographies invariAstapovo allowed his family to catch up with him, and soon he was surrounded by his children in the small room. Tolstoy continued to write ably end under the same chapter heading: "Escape." in his diary, even in his final hours. His November 6 entry: "Life is a On October 28, 1910, at three o'clock in the morning, Leo Tolstoy dream, death is an awakening." awoke in his bedroom at Yasnaya Polyana, the Tolstoy estate in the suburbs of Moscow, and, deciding he could no longer live under the terror Sofya too came to Astapavo, but she was not allowed to see her bus-

6

THE NEW JouRNAL

band, for fear that her presence would upset¡ him too much. She remained outside the house, with the crowds of peasants who had flocked to respect the great man. Only a handful of those present had probably ever read Tolstoy's novels, in which he denies the existence of great men.

There is no contemporary analogy for what it must have been like for the station master to have Leo Tolstoy as a guest, albeit an unwilling one. No intellectual today commands the reverence that Tolstoy did in his Russia. Perhaps no intellectual ever has achieved such popular respect before signing with Hades, that unparalleled literary agent.

On November 7 it became clear that Tolstoy's journey would end in unlikely Astapovo. At half past five in the morning, Sofya was finally admitted into the room where her husband was deep in a sleep from which he would never awaken. Walking to his bed, Sofya stood over her husband, and said, "I have never loved anyone but you."

The body of Tolstoy was returned to Yasnaya Polyana by train.

Thousands of peasants gathered to pay respeCts to the Count. His body was carried from the estate to a plot that Tolstoy h;ld long ago selected as his burial ground, on the edge of a ravine in the Zakaz forest, by four of his sons.

Soon after Alexandra's visit, Ilya was hospitalized for what proved to be cancer, a cancer which quickly consumed his body. Alexandra visited Ilya in the hospital whenever she could, attending to her brother with the devotion of Natasha to the dying Prince Andrei, two of Leo's literary children. Ilya's sickness did nothing to change the ways of the itinerant Nadya. His physical suffering was great, but he welcomed it. He would not take the morphine offered to him by the doctors: "I have sinned much in my life. I have been sent this suffering in atonement, so as to prepare myself. I must bear it, for the sake of God." Nadya was at his side that morning, trying to convince him to take the morphine. He could not be persuaded to ease the pain, and Alexandra could not persuade Nadya to stay that evening. llya's wife told Alexandra that she was leaving. "Don't," Alexandra importuned, "llya will die tonight." But Nadya would not change her mind.

That night Alexandra sat beside Ilya, holding his hand. When she returned from the hospital the next morning, Alexandra's friends, seeing her smiling face, devoid of grief, inquired as to the health of her brother. "He is dead," she responded. Alexandra wrote, "I could not explain why I was smiling, why in my soul I rejoiced. How could they have understood? For the first time in my life I had comprehended lexandra had a car but why suffering was necessary for did not know how to death, and how wonderful was the transition. 'Life is sleepdrive it. Her brother was 70 miles away, severely ill. death is the awakening,' as my With fear and without a father had said." license, Alexandra lefr her The body of Ilya Tolstoy, home at 3:30 in the morning. after a small ceremony, was buried in December 1933, far llya Tolstoy, son of Leo, lived in a woodland cottage on from the Zakaz forest, the banks of the Zoar River. although not far from the He was married, but he was banks of the Zoar river in always alone. His wife, Nadya, //yo's cottage on the banks of the Zoor River.

Southbury, Connecticut.

Unlike his father's grave, solitary, amidst the forest, llya's grave lies constantly left her husband in order to travel. Alexandra arrived to find Ilya's house squalid. llya had lost weight. He complained of pain in his under a solitary maple tree, surrounded by the gravestones of strangers.

His body was buried in a cemetery in New Haven, so many miles from side. He moved with difficulty. Alexandra called a doctor to the house Yasnaya Polyana, where years before Ilya lay tucked safely in his bed, in to examine her brother. Outside the cottage, in private, the doctor told Alexandra that Ilya most likely suffered from cancer. a room not far from Alexandra's, as his mother, sittin$ downstairs at her desk, dutifully copied the manuscript her husband has just handed her: Ilya looked Strikingly like his father: the same gray eyes, only larger, the same wide brow, broad nose, the signature heavy beard. In the years " ...but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

IIIJ since his father's death, his thoughts, too, had grown to resemble his fither's. Ilya was a memoirist, the author of several published works, including &miniscmc~ of Tolstqy, a book about his memories of his john Swansburg, a junior in Saybrook Colkgt, is on tht staffof TN]. fither, and a collection of stories entitled VISions.

A

NOVEMBER 30, 1998

7

SCHOOL CROSSING

..

Project Choice allows suburban students to attend New Haven schools, but the color line remains intact.

Daniel Brook

8

THE New JouRNAL

William Costello III was always part of the legion of white, subur-

ban teens who drive up the price of Hilfiger stock and make it profitable to produce rap albums. But starting last September, Will sacri-

ficed something a teenager actually cares about-sleep-to be part of urban culture. He wakes up at 5:30 every morning for an hour-long bus ride from Durham, Cf to New Haven's Wilbur Cross High School. The bus gets Will to school a half-hour before the morning ritual of filing through the metal detectors begins.

Will, a junior, is taking part in Project Choice, a program which provides state-financed busing for students adventurous enough to attend school outside their town and masochistic enough to wake up at 5:30 a.m. It is one of several programs created by the state legislature in response to the Sheff v. O'Nal school desegregation case. According to the decision, Connecticut's racial demographics create de facto segregation in the public schools, which must be remedied by the legislature.

Each district was asked to declare how many spaces it had available for out-of-district students. According to Peter Young, head of the Regional Educational Service Center, which oversees the finances and logistics of the busing, some suburban districts were honest, some were not.

Still, the legislature is confident that it can force all districts to play the game, like it or not, once the Education Commissioner's report is released in January.

Project Choice is one of two busing programs to come out of the State House in response to Sh4f The other bill opened Connecticut's tnagner schools to out-of-district students. Of the 500 suburban students coming into New Haven, nearly all take part in this program. But with carefully sdeged student bodies and bundles of state aid, magnet schools have few of the problems associated with urban public education. This year, New Haven's magnet Career High School moved into a brand new $30 million building near the Yale Medical School. Thirty nilllion dollars buys one hell of a natatorium. In addition, Career offers

NOVEMBER JO, 1998

seven Advanced Placement courses and boasts an internship program with Yale-New Haven Hospital. With these resources it is no wonder the school can woo more than a quarter of its students from out-of-district.

And woo is all urban districts can do. In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to mandate desegregation busing across district lines. According to New Haven Representative Cam Sta- l pies, head of the Education CornrrUttee in the State House, it was pop- { ular opinion, not the Supreme Court, that took forced busing off the ~ table. "That method of desegregating schools has been discredited. No ~ one in Hartford wanted forced busing," he said. Presumably none of ~ the little people outside of the Belrway wanted it either. Without man- "' ~ dated busing, desegregation becomes reliant, in Staples' words, on " "marketing."

But how could New Haven's regular comprehensive high schools ever compete with their well-funded counterparts in the suburbs? If this first year of Project Choice is any indication, not very well. This year, the program has opened up regular urban high schools in New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford to students from out of district. In Bridgeport and Hartford not a single suburban student enrolled in the program. In New Haven five did, one of whom was Will Costello.

Will's decision to commute to Wilbur Cross each morning has made him something of a celebrity. He has been interviewed by The Boston Globe and The New York 1i11m. Yet, unlike the student integrationists of the 1950s and '60s, Will did not intend his enrollment to make such a splash. He is no modern-day James Meredith. His decision to change high schools was more about education than the politics thereof, though like any left-leaning teen, he finds the pose of a civil rights crusader an alluring one. When I first asked Will about his decision to come to New Haven, he invoked the d-word-"diversity." His

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mom, though she preferred the m-word stood why The New lQrk Times had come call("multiculturalism"), did the same. Still, both ing. ''I'm shocked," she said. quickly moved past talk of integration to talk Why did Will's family take advantage of of education. Will actually concluded our interview by requesting a copy of my article. the program while so many others did not? '~ything that'll help for college," he For one, they've been more exposed to urban explained. They are not merely paying lip serlife than most suburban whites. The Costellos vice to racial harmony. It seems to be an only moved to Durham from semi-urban Middletown because they got a good deal on important value to them, but it is clearly seca house. "My mom always says, 'Our house is ondary to-and in many ways in the service of-Wtll's education. in Durham, but our heart is in Middletown,"' But aside from a killer college essay;' how said Will. Though they moved, they still go to could attending Wilbur Cross High School, a racially mixed Episcopal church in Middletown each week during ''America's most segrewhere the incoming freshman class of more gated hour." Furthermore, Will's mother than 400 will dwindle to 175 by graduation ofren works in low-income communities day, be good for Will's education? While Cross' drop-out and success rates on where she helps residents organize afterstatewide exams are much worse than school programs and other community Durham's, the New Haven public projects. schools still have a lot to offer a For these reasons, the student like Will. In New Costellos have a more cosHaven, unlike Durham, mopolitan oudook than Will gets to Will is in all honors most of their friends in classes. Sure, this When Durham. study with the most means that Cross Will's mother motivated students in has lower stantold people that her son was dards for gifred Cross rather than the education, but in going to New Will's case it means Haven many slackers of the he gets to study with the responded with silence.

"They thought he'd get a most motivated students at suburbs. second-rate education. No Cross rather than the slackers of the suburbs. For a student who, as one said it, but I felt it. They were thinking 'Why would you his mother puts it, is "more sociable than studious," this can make a huge difallow your son to go there?'" Will's ference. And if it works, and Will excels at teenage friends were less tactful. "They Cross, he'll have the chance to take classes at were like 'You been shot yet? Been jumped?"'

Southern or Yale, an option not available to he said.

While Will has remained friends with students in the suburbs. these kids, aided no doubt by his newfound Will's old school, despite conventional "street cred," he referred to them as "doublewisdom about suburban high schools, has its sided" ("two-faced" in grown-up speak). They problems, too. A recent stabbing has brought listen to rap music and wear baggy jeans, but state troopers to the parking lots at the beginning and end of each school day. rarely go into New Haven, even to skateConsidering these factors, there must be board. Yet like his mother, who ended our hundreds of kids in the suburbs who could be interview by urging me to "be kind to reaping the same benefits. In fact, Will's Durham-there are good people in this mother assumed they were. She did not think town," Will has little ire towards his suburban of her child's decision as unusual, and peers. A good liberal, he forgives them, for assumed there were more than 100 students they know not what they do. Still, both he just like Will being bused into ordinary New and his mother see their shortcomings.

Haven high schools each day. She even Like a historian, Will's mother provides one telling anecdote to explain her son's decirequested a monthly parents' meeting. When I told her that Will was one of only five subursion to leave his school. Last February Wt.ll banites in Project Choice, she finally underwas in Spain, on the kind of trip only a subur-

THE NEW JouRNAL

ban high school could afford to organize. Will and his peers were cooped up in a Madrid hotel room when die other kids started complaining that there- was no 1V and that the Spanish people they had met were rude. As his mother put it, Will had a revelation. Sure the students from Durham were "great kids," but it struck him that he needed a broader experience-an experience he felt he could get in New H aven.

In many ways, it's an experience he is getting, but in other ways it is not. Will is excited that the students at Cross "have experienced more, they're not so sheltered, and they know more of what's going on in the world." But they haven't been to Spain and they watch an awful lot of television. According to the assistant principal, most of Cross' dropouts just sit at home and watch 1V all day. And while the diversity in New Haven dwarfs that of Durham, where Will said only four of the 400 kids in his school were non-white, there is little meaningful interaction between students of different races.

When I was trying to locate a former Project Choice student named Tanisha, I went to the cafeteria during her lunch period and asked the teacher·on duty for help. He and I walked around the black side of the lunchroom asking if anyone knew her whereabouts.

No one did. Then the teacher stopped, looked out across the rest of the lunch room at the all-Latino tables and remarked, "That's not a Hispanic name, so I guess she isn't here."

When I moved on to look for Will, whom a peer had described as tall and red-headed with baggy pants, I found him at a table in the library surrounded by the few white kids in his grade.

Still, he insisted he had made non-white friends. His mother bragged that all the girls, regardless of race, were introducing themselves to him since., in her modest, motherly opinion, "he's a pretty good-looking guy."

Certai.nly he's had interactions with minority Students that would have been impossible in Durham, but his good friends are white because, as he says, "I have the most in common with them."

While most suburbanites fear urban schools, some may put them on a pedestal they don't dese.rVe. To a suburban kid alienated by his peers' closed-mindedness, the shoncornings of urban kids can be dismissed as a lack of opponunity-an excuse spoiled sub-

NOVEMBER JO,

1998

urbanites don't have. Yet, if the students from Cross went to Madrid, they'd probably want to watch television there, too--not that we'll ever find out. New Haven's kids will never go to Madrid, as long as school funding remains based on local property taxes. And it will, regardless of Sheff The weak goal of the Sheff v. O'Neil decision was to address racial segregation but not financial inequalities. Sure, separate but equal is inherently unequal. But isn't integrated and unequal unequal as well? Busing in one white kid from the suburbs to Cross is only integration in the Governor Wallace sense. And there aren't any minority students being bused into Durham.

Still, Will's experience, while statistically negligible, is valuable. His experience has dispelled many of his Durham friends' myths about urban education-he hasn't been jumped, or shot. Will's new city friends have met someone from the great wide world outside New H aven. But there are limits. One white suburbanite coming into a school with more than 1,000 students is not going to affect the school's racial isolation. For all the insensitivity of the forced busing bureaucrats of the late '60s and '70s, they understood that social change takes something few Americans like: oven social engineering. Surely this is what the creators of Project Choice sought to avoid, and they succeeded, by crafting a program in line with American values. The program is voluntary-based on schools luring students-and while the state-provided transportation is expensive, there is no attempt to take suburban tax dollars and give them to the urban schools that need them.

The program speaks the language of American liberal capitalism: "choice" and "marketing" with the student as happy consumer-voter. Perhaps if Popeye's Chicken on Elm Street "marketed" itself better, white Yalies would "choose" to go there. But they don't, though the quality of their product is no worse than the dining halls' or say, Broadway Pizza's. Alas, Project Choice is as American as apple pie, as American as craving 1V It shows us who we really are. And Project Choice shows us that, despite the Costellos and others like them, integration is not a IIIJ choice America is willing to make.

DanieL Brook, a junior in Davenport CoLI~ge, is on the staffof TN].

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11

The Omnimpotent Hotel workers have voted to unionize, but management is stalling.

Ian Blecher

11

THE NEw JouRNAL

Then tht disciples came and said f() him, "Why do you speak in para~ bles?" And ht answtrtd them... 'to him who has will mort be given, and ht wilL havt abundanct; but from him who has not, even what he has wilL be taken away. " Matthew 13:10~12

'' T

he hotel is getting busier and busier, like a pot of boil~ ing water. And all the employees are frogs. And the water gets hotter and hotter, but really really slowly, so no one notices it, until one day the frogs are boil~ ing, and the hotel is running really well."

John Pluecker (ES '0 1) is relating the gospel according to Linda Lbby, General Manager of the Omni Hotel, where he delivers room service. "I don't really know what to make of it," he said. "I guess she wanted it to mean everyone works harder and harder? Maybe?"

One thing's for sure: the Omni is boiling.

On October 29, Omni workers voted, by card count, overwhelmingly for a union. Soon afterwards, management filed a suit before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

They charged Local 2 17 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees with coercing workers to sign union cards. And Libby recently inex~ plicably resigned, though some workers say she was forced out.

The controversies surrounding the Omni began in 1995, when developer David Cordish decided to resuscitate the abandoned Park Plaza H otel. In exchange for providing several hundred jobs and a sure boon to the moribund Chapel Square Mall, New Haven diverted $9.9 million to the project. At Mayor John DeStefano's coaxing, Cordish agreed that he would eventually sign a neutrality agreement stipulating that the new hotel's management would not discuss the formation of a union with its employees. With~ out this sort of treaty, management has every right to intimidate would~ be unionists in the weeks before their election. After a few closed semi~ nars on pay cuts, union corruption, and job loss, most workers decide to vote "no." More importantly, under a neutrality agreement, a card count over several months, rather than a one-time election, decides the fa.te of the union. Employees can join the revolution as slowly as they please.

Then came the Omni. The international hotel syndicate bought a controlling stake in the new development and demanded that the bus stops on the Greeri be relocated on behalf of its guests' right not to see poor people, and put off the neutrality agreement on behalf of its right to keep them poor. The only good will in New Haven that the compa~ ny did keep was the city's generous $9.9 million donation, which it

used to build an ostensibly anti-union luxury hotel. Even worse, when it finally opened, after years of delay, the Omni drew banquets and other events away from union shops like Yale.

Locals 34 and 35 became irate, according to Connor Martin (TC '99), a banquet waitress and member ofLocal217's Omni Organizing Committee. In 1996, they'd won a bitter fight against subcontracting certain dining hall jobs to non-union employees of an outside firm.

Suddenly Yale was using the Omni as a kind of luxury subcontractor.

Money that had once gone to unionized workers was going (in lesser proportion, of course) to non-union ones.

As soon as the hotel opened for business, protests Bared up. A coali~ tion formed out of clergy, Yale students, and union members, who felt that 9.9 million of their tax dollars entitled the city to viable jobs, not just simple surplus value extraction. Even I was awakened from my ironic slumber long enough to chant, "Linda Libby: No More Fibby!" in front of the hotel last winter.

Although the New Haven Advocate reported that Libby publically avowed that the hotel was negotiating a neutrality agr~ ment with Local 217, no such agreement ever came. In fa.ct, the hotel brought in attorney Jay Krupin, a nationally renowned union-buster, to try and settle things down.

The Omni was looking for a fight, and l Linda Libby was still spinning fibbies. oi But even Krupin's cunning couldn't step i. to the solidarity of a depressed and desperate community intent on shoring up what few good jobs were still possible. Demonstrators proved vigilant enough to prevent the Governor of Puerto Rico, the ~ Honorable Pedro Rosello, from staying at the hotel, and some Omni events were moved to the Law School. A boycott threatened by the a coalition finally pushed Yale to authorize its (anti-) labor lawyer, Brian Tunney, to help the two sides negotiate a neutrality agreement, which was signed on Aprill5 of this year.

All of this culminated in October 29's card count: of 154 eligible employees, 112 agreed to unionize. I asked Martin why the union won so easily. "Job security," she said. "There's a company attempt to create grievance procedures [for wrongful firings], but it doesn't work at all. A grievance procedure is stipulated in a contract, and right now, not having a contract, any policy that the hotel has for its employees can be changed at the drop of a hac. We have no guarantees. ,Until it's guaran~ teed in a contract, we have no protection."

Although they would not go on record, other hotel workers agreed.

One said he had signed a union card even though the Omni considers him management, because he was worried about losing his job. Even workers who didn't sign union cards cited fear of management reprisal

"If I slack off a little

bit at work, and I'm pro-union, that could mean my job."

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as their motivation. Pluecker himself expressed some concerns about unionism: "When I was signing my union card, I was like, 'Do I really want to do this? Is it going to come back to me?' If I slack off a little bit at work, and I'm pro-union, that could mean my job."

For Martin, however, respect for workers is almost as important as secure jobs. "They have these Omni Service Champion Awards where they give out special awards each month. Anyway, one month, there was a Mardi Gras theme, and the managers all were having a private party beforehand. Then they carne out and Linda Libby was wearing a crown, and everyone else was w~ing these very elaborate masks. Now, the normal workers weren,t given masks-only the managers. And the managers walked around through the ballroom where everyone else was sitting, and threw little beads at the workers, and then went up and gave their presentation."

On top of that, she said, "The uniform is horrible. It's a polyester tuXedo." Some of the hotel's employees aren't even allowed on the elevators because "they smell bad," according to Martin.

Pluecker, too, has suffered his share of indignities. "There's this one guy who called me and I went into his room one night, and there was someone in his bed. A very thin, scraggly looking white man, and a very overweight African-American lady, a prostitute, lying in bed, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. It was kind of traumatic. He stays in the hotel all the time."

Paradoxically, the more the Omni makes a show of respecting its workers, the more it highlights how little it actually does. "They have this slogan," Pluecker said. "'The Power of One.' You don't know about the Power of One? It says that whenever there is any problem, you are fully empowered to make a decision." Of course, it also implies that what's really important are individual performances as opposed to worker solidarity. T he Omni calls all of its employees "associates." It promotes monthly "Service Champions." It even passed out an "associate opinion survey," on

which the last question was "Does this survey make you feel like your opinion matters?" I asked Pluecker whether his does. "Sort of."

And the "Power of One?" "It's just a slogan," he said.

Martin reports a more serious incident.

"One member of management called a group of black and Latino workers who were eating while on a break a 'bunch of little monkeys,' and asked the manager to get rid of them.

T hose things are brought to the boss manager and dealt with usually, although the guy is still there. The grievance procedure is supposed to have some sort of committee, but it doesn't exist as far as I know." Pluecker also alleged incidents of racism against Latinos.

As a result of this type of condescension, "the Human Resources Department was taken aback by how well we organized this hotel, because they don't think that their workers are capable of organizing," said Martin.

In fact, worker solidarity at the Omni may act as a counter-hegemony against the Omni's culture of corporate kitsch. Martin said, "In some sense, we already have a union. We stand up for each other on the job, and that's what a union is all about.'' Since the card count, "there's been an amazing change in the way people I work with think about themselves as workers, the way they think about themselves and the power they have in society. It's the s~nse among workers that 'I have dignity, and I deserve respect,"' said Martin.

"What the union is all about" became perfectly clear on October 30, the day after the card count. Three union members, including Martin, took over a worker/management meeting led by Libby and the hotel's Director of Human Resources, Paul Pinto.

They presented Libby with a blown-up petition, tied with a silk ribbon, and signed by 109 union supponers, including Jesse Jackson. Unionists planted in the crowd applauded, setting off cheers from the rest of the audience. When Libby finally spoke, Martin said, she was alrriost drowned out. "Yes, [the cards] do demonstrate a majority, but we're not recognizing them, because we think the union intimidated you," said Libby.

"In some sense, we already have a union.

W e stand up for each other on the job."

THE NEw JouRNAL

The Omni has refiled a previously withdrawn case before the NLRB on behalf of its employees, alleging tjlat union organizers, like Martin, intimidated· other workers. Victory would annul the card count. Dan Abraham (SM '98), head of the Organizing Committee on which Martin serves, denies the charges emphatically. "We don't think we harassed or intimidated anyone," he said. Martin agrees.

"I didn't threaten to beat anyone up," she said.

The source of those charges is slimy, according to Pluecker. "When management was trying to find out if any workers had been harassed by the union, Paul Pinto and the main Omni corporate lawyer got a room at the hotel, got pizza delivered, got all these beverages and stuff, and then they called individuals from the restaurant and basically said, would you like some pizza, would you like a drink, and did the union harass you in any way?" Several workers, including Martin, confirmed that tete-a-tetes like this one-illegal by the terms of the neutrality agreement-have taken place, though no one testified to first harxi experience.

Nevertheless, Local 217 has not filed a complaint before ~e NLRB. "It's in the interest of the workers to make this as polite and non-confrontational as possible. Non-confrontational is the word of the day," said Martin. In other words, if the union is strong enough, legal recourse is unnecessary. Abraham agrees. "If the union is strong, which I think ours is, they have to negotiate with us.

But if they think were weak, then they'll

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fight."

Right now, it's management that looks weak. Libby is gone, and the Omni is fighting Local 217 in court. If its case is dismissed, the union may begin contract negotiations three months from October 29, according to Abraham. That's when the real rumble will probably begin. "The fight to get our first contract will be much harder than it will have been to gee union recognition," said Martin.

One thing's for sure, though: Omni workers are a long way from boiled frogs.

1111

]mica Winter ((C '99) contributed to this story.

Ian Bkchn; a junior in Davenport on th~ staffof TNJ. NOVEMBER 30, 1998

Co/kg~.

is

15

They are all in the same city, on the same street, flowing past each other, bouncing off each other, yet isolated in their own world. They each have their own concerns, worries, and reasons to hurry; they are aware of their surroundings, yet so often unaware of the camera that sees them.

There is an unwritten language, an implicit choreography, spoken and followed on the street: when you walk, where you stand, where you look,

when you wait, who you touch, and what you do.

These interactions are taken for granted, yet they determine our movements and c'eate a strange world when frozen in time.

These photographs were all taken on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan over the course of the last two months.

They represent a portion of a year-long project centered on the people of Manhattan's streets and the act of taking these pictures.

VANTAGE

BY LINCOLN ELSE

10

•• • ~

• • •• • ••

• •• • •

S

haw's Supermarket closed at 10 p.m. lase Tuesday. The cuswhich extends for two blocks between Elm and Chapel. The shot heard tomers packed up and headed out while a security car circled the last Tuesday night came from this area. A second shot followed half an perimeter of the parking .lot. On adjacent Elm Street, a boy hour later. Hours after the October 23 shooting on Chapel Street, the pulled his jacket over his head, running for cover from the rain.

Yale Daily News rushed out a special supplement diagramming the Sirens converged on St. Raphael's Hospital two blocks away and a few events. Yet a few blocks away, random gunfire elicits no response. cars sped down Elm coward the suburbs. A little after ten, the rain Despite the proximity of the Chapel Street shootings to campus, no dulled the sound of a gunshot. No one raised an alarm, no police cruisYale student has been shot, or shot at, in years. But before New Haven's ers followed. plague of gun viole"nce fades into the background again, it's wonh askLase year, the New Haven Police Department recorded 779 guning where the guns come from. shots, and firearms were used in 19 of the city's 22 homicides. Although the department's firearms unit has recovered 165 handguns since Janu'' H ere's a list of guns purchased by one ary, crime rates have actually dropped in 1998. This year New Haven person-49 guns," says Captain Brian Sullivan, Head of Detectives has seen only ten homicides, five committed with --------firearms. The numbers sound promising and Yale for the New Haven Police Department. "This guy continues co recover from the 1991 Hillhouse bought a lot of guns at various sports places. Some Avenue shooting death of junior Christian Prince. of those guns ended up in shootings and murders.

But after two incidents on Chapel Street this He was one of the lase straw purchasers in New fall, guns have resurfaced as a threat co students and Haven." "Straw buyers" take advantage of differing to the university's image. On October 7 a man fired state and local laws by legally purchasing dozens of guns in one area and reselling them on the black a gun on a New Haven bus near the intersection of Chapel and H igh Streets. Two weeks later, on market. New Haven police now run detailed background checks on anyone who purchases multiple October 23, two groups of teenagers exchanged guns, but straw buyers persist in states with looser · shots at the corner of York and Chapel. Coming on gun regulations. the heels of a pair of shootings at the Medical New Haven police have begun to work with School, the Chapel Street events again raised the state and federal agencies to deter straw buying and specter of gun violence in Yale's backyard. co block the flow of guns into the city. ConnectiAlthough the visibility of guns on campus may cut's project "Drugfue" has allowed local police seem unique to this fall, they have never been far depanments to pool their forensic evidence: "Every gun leaves its own away. Kensington Street, just four blocks behind Pierson and Daven1 individual mark. There are no two alike-it's like fingerprints," says pon Colleges, has long been a center for the city's inseparable drug and Sullivan. "Now all of this gets put in the computer. It's a great tool." gun trades. Ho~ with boarded-up windows line both sides of the And in conjunction with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and street; groups of young men stand in doorways and warily eye passing Firearms (ATF), New Haven police have begun a study that will trace cars. As close as it is co campus, Kensington has not shared in the urban the origin of every gun implicated in a crime. ATF researchers will folrenaissance that won New Haven this year's All-American City award. low the path of a gun from manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer and The walk to Shaw's takes many students past Kensington Street,

Although the visibility of guns on campus may seem unique to this fall, they have never been far away.

NoVEMBER 30, 1998

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ultimately to the last legal purchaser of the cants must be at least 21 years old and can be gun--often a straw buyer. disqualified by past felonies and certain other At the moment, however, law enforcecrimes, including stalking and assault. ment officers lack a clear sense of the source of About eight of the handgun applicants New Haven's seemingly unlimited gun supreceive approval each month. "I have a lot of ply. "It's a big myth that guns on the streets of bad feelings about people but l have to give the city are being brought up from the them permits-the law allows it," says Jones.

South," says Sullivan. Cit------• "I wish the law would ing the many eonnectigive me a time more discretion, maybe make the cut gun manufacturers, he says, "I think they're age 25 and up. Somepurchased in the state, times someone's 21, first legally." But Officer they're not mature, but

"Do 1get guns for Yale kids? No, just drugs, nO Weapons," he says. But he has no objections to the idea, and qUiCkly turns to business.·

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Eric Jones of the Police Department's firearms unit suggests that the major sources of New H aven's guns are out-ofstate. "We've had a few StraW buyers from the South. If they're coming from New York we haven't seen them yet," he says.

While much of the Department focuses on curtailing the illegal gun trade, Jones regulates New Haven's legal gun culture. New Haven police receive between 12 and 15 applications for handgun permits each month. The two-month process to obtain a handgun permit includes a course in handgun safety and use, $70 in fees, proof of residency, and three letters of recommendation. Appli-

the law says if they have a

clean record..." It's eaSy to

sympathize with Jones' predicament. According to state law, even a mentally ill person can be denied a permit only under a narrow set of conditions. "I haven't seen any guns come back yet, but I wouldn't be surprised," says Jones. ere's only one legal gun store in New Haven, according to Sullivan. And Chris' Gun Shop, which shares a small storefront building with an Italian deli near East H aven, plays by the rules. Chris, a graying, serious middle-aged shopkeeper, makes sure his clients are of age, and he offers the

THE NEW JouRNAL

j

state-mandated gun safety classes himself.

Still, like Jones, Sullivan has mixed feelings about the legicimase gun trade. "They're in a legal business, theyre making money, they're very honorable--but still, they're selling

"It's easy to get a gun," says Officer Jones.

"It's knowing the right people and getting the word out." guns."

At Chris', a faded bumper sticker on the door announces, 'Tm fed up with the liberal media!" Inside, another bumper sticker hangs between deer heads on the wall behind the cash register: "Gun control means using both hands." Rifles and shotguns stand vertically on a special shel£ while dozens of handguns line the display case. You can pay $150 for an ugly, long-nosed nine millimeter from Ruger, $485 for a Glock, or $850 for a Beretta with laser sight. Or you could spend a few dollars on the loosely associated items lining the wall opposite the counter: pepper spray, ammunition cases, several copies of Colin Powell's autobiography.

All of Chris' customers already have their permits, and they come to him with a variety of needs. The first, a married woman, wants to purchase a gun for protection from the sralker who has been leaving shredded clothing on her lawn. A second, younger woman scratched her pistol with a ring during target practice and hopes Chris can undo the darnage. And a young man with long blond hair, a badly scarred neck, and only one arm says that he'll be paying more than $500 for a handgun. "I want it for personal protection, and for fun," he says. They are followed by a few middle-aged men, who discuss the correct e<juipment for shooting deer in Vermonr. ' ( W :y would anyone buy a gun legally?" asks John, a New H aven resident in his lace forties. Though he now holds a steady job, John

NOVEMBER 30, 1998

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was once actively involved in the city's gun scene and he maintains his old contacts. He clearly enjoys his role as guide to a side of New Haven normally inaccessible to Yale students. "You're either book smart or you're street smart. You kids come to Yale and become lawyers or doctors, but me, I'm street smart. I'm a street person," he says.

Like the police, John insists that New Haven's gun trade is closely linked to its drug epidemic. "It's crazy," he says. "It's a drug thing. If you're selling drugs, you've always got a gun." But unlike the police, John is confident that he knows where the guns come

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from. "Anything that they want in New Haven, they go to New York to get it. There's a place in New York they go to, they get brand new pistols for $250, bullets and all."

Over dinner John offers well-intentioned advice about the New Haven gun scene. He warns against buying guns on the street or at "after hours" establishments, the underground bars that open their doors around 1 a.m. to sell alcohol and sometimes firearms. He also warns about guns being sold for less than $100 and explains the reason why. "Unless you get something new, it's been used in some kind of driveby or shootout. It has fingerprints, people want to get it off their hands."

Guns are everywhere in New Haven, according to John. What happens if you get caught? John lowers his head and smiles patronizingly. "You don't get caught." He lists street after street where he knows people who could get him a gun: Kensington, the Dixwell projects, Befrs Street, Garden Street, down on Howe.

Had the October 23 gunfight taken place on Kensington or Garden, just a few blocks up Chapel, it would have caused little, if any, sensation in the Yale community. But there's something distasteful to Yalies about the intrusion of gun violence into "Yale" streets like York and High. Rather than wondering why teenagers were exchanging shots in the middle of the day, students asked each other

THE NEW JouRNAL

what these kids were doing so close to campus.

But the line be;ween town and gown isn't as distinct as some would like to imagine.

Mark makes his living begging and hustling around campus. "Do I get guns for Yale kids?

No, just drugs, no weapons," he says. But he has no objections to the idea, and quickly turns to business. "Nothing under $50 will get you a gun. It would take 24 hours for it to go down."

Mark's words sound like they're straight out of a movie. Is it really as simple as he says?

"It's easy to get a gun," says Officer Jones. "It's

can't get to the edge of campus ?

then come Into the center.. .

the Microcomputer Sales Center knowing the right people and putting the word out." But a late night cup of coffee buys an acquaintance with Mark. "If you want a nine millimeter automatic, it'll cost you about $150, $200, with' bullets." By the next afternoon Mark has located someone who is willing to meet us that night on the New Haven Green. "He's an honest businessman," says Mark. "He just wants his money and the transaction's made."

At 9 p.m. intermittent lamps light paths across the Green. It would be difficult to spot a man with a backpack standing in the shadow of a tree and impossible to hear the gunshots on Kensington Street. At this hour most Yalies don't go anywhere near the Green's ominous dark stretches. Bearing John's warning in mind, we break our date with the dealer. The gun is waiting for the next person ready to put up the cash.

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NOVEMBER 30, 1998

25

.,

CULTURAL CAPITAL New Haven's interest in the arts may be solely financial.

ERIC ROTHFEDER

26

T HE NEw JouRNAL

, The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) opened in downtown Newark in 1997. After the '67 riots and the white flight that ensued, Newark became a crime-ridden and economically depressed city. However, in its first year alone NJPAC sold 82 percent of its seats to over half a million patrons. Its success sparked a surge of realtors who were convinced of Newark's potential to buy downtown property.

These recent successes in Newark demonstrate that the arts can improve the image and economy of a city. The Regional Cultural Plan of Greater New Haven seeks to emulate the NJPAC with one difference--arts are already flourishing in New Haven. The greater New Haven area boasts six symphony orchestras, two regional theaters, three touring houses, five museums, and 5,000 individual artists, in addition to Yale's four professional art schools. According to the Cultural Plan, by supporting the already existing arts and marketing New Haven as an arts community, the city will become the creative capital of Connecticut by the end of the decade.

The Cultural Plan arose from feelings within the arts community that New Haven, and especially its businesses, didn't see the arts as central to the city. As in Newark, such cultural growth could spark economic growth. In 1996 the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, an umbrella group for New Haven's arts community, hired the Woolf Organization to perform a comprehensive study of New Haven's cultural assets. In June 1997 they finalized the report and drew up eight strategies to encourage creative growth in New Haven. The report proposed improving 'the city's facilities, marketing New Haven as an arts community, and stabilizing the finances of arts organizations. They sought to further develop cultural services and resources, improve education and increase community solidarity through creative expression.

Now things are starting to happen. The state of Connecticut commissioned a $450,000 independent study of the city's arts facilities.

Also, the Coalition received an award of $300,000 through a matching grant from The Community Foundation. In the first week of November, the Arts Coalition named Nan Birdwhistell (SOM '86) the Plan's director.

The Cultural Plan is an expensive proposition, costing a projected $1 .6 million annually, plus capital investments. However, the plan is unclear as to how much this investment will improve the city economically and socially. Money given to the arts might only improve the arts.

However, the plan's ultimate goal is an urban revitalization comparable to Newark or Cleveland's Playhouse Square. Yet the plan never fully explores the connection between the arts and the city's economy. While claiming that "the impact of its cultural expenditures, already over $160 million annually in the nonprofit sector alone, will grow substantially," it never explicitly outlines what benefits the city could reap from becoming the "creative capital" of Connecticut.

Originally, one of the major motives for commissioning the plan was to find an effective way to market New Haven as an artistic community. The Aris Council has decided to suspend this initiative until next year to address a more pressing financial issue. Thirty-two percent of arts organizations are running deficits in the current fiscal year. Historically, the picture is even worse. In 1995 the city's arts organizations

NovEMBER 30, 1998

ran a deficit totalling $2.5 million. Moreover, there is comparatively less financial support for the arts in New Haven than in other cities. Sixtythree percent of New Haven art institutions' budgets come from earned income, compared to 39 percent in Cha.r:lotte and 57 percent in Houston (two other cities studied by the Woolf Organization). This can be attributed to a relatively low rate of giving from both the private and public sectors. The city contributes only six percent, and the state only one percent, to the budget of New Haven art organizations. Unfortunately, local corporations have not picked up the slack.

These statistics, however, can be misleading. The numbers exclude ad hoc giving from the city and state, like the funds for renovation of the Shubert Theater and the revitalization of Audubon Court. Nevertheless, this trend of ad hoc giving puts the arts in a precarious situation. T here is little or no steady source of funding. "This is one of the greatest challenges to enacting the plan," says Frances Clark, Executive Director of the Arts Council. She calls for additional funding for an arts lottery like that used in Massachusetts, or a segment of the sales tax to be set aside for the arts.

In order for the cultural plan to work, it needs the full support of the community. Perhaps this is the greatest contradiction in the planit relies on the financial aid of the city, the state, and local businesses, but one of its primary goals is to foster private community support.

Essentially the Arts Council has to rely on an assumed level of support to jumpstart its efforts. If support fails to snowball, however, the plan may never be fully enacted.

Other challenges abound. The plan calls for arts organizations to see themselves as a community, and not as competitors. "The biggest challenge for enacting the Plan is getting people to make sacrifices for the whole," says Clark. While the plan is only in its infancy, some potential allies are unsure of their place in it. "I'm not clear of what my role in the plan is... I'm anxious to see how they include this office," says Lauren D'Alessandro, Director of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs.

"The biggest obmcle is enacting the actual planning," says Mike Morand (SY '87), vice president of the Office of New Haven Affairs.

The project is both enormous and costly, making the Arts Council selfconscious about doing it correctly; if it doesn't act quickly, the community could easily grow wary of its efforts.

While few would ever deny the need for the arts, it is debatable how many see them as the key to New Haven's future. Since nothing has been enacted yet, there has been little opposition to the plan. This makes it difficult to determine whether the plan will garner the support it needs to turn greater New Haven into a creative and cultural center for Connecticut, let alone whether it will lead to economic and social revitalization.

Unlike other initiatives to improve the city, such as the renovation of the Chapel Square Mall, the Cultural Plan relies not on a few individuals but on the entire community. Supporters' and skeptics agree that a successful Cultural Plan would mark a new era in the histof}' of a troubled city.

IBIJ

Eric &thfidn; a freshman in Saybrook Co/kg~. is on th~ staffof TN].

27

A

QUIC~

FIX

..

Police are using first aid tactics to shut do-wn prostitution~ but the -wounds tnight run too deep.

Tm: NEw JouRNAL

It's four o'clock in the afternoon and Sharon is already at Dana's house.

She's standing on the steps asking for her. Dana comes out wearing a coat, stomping her boots, blinking her eyes Like she just woke up. "Sharon, it's damn cold out here," she says. "Why you dragging me out of bed?" But Dana's not too cold or tired to know that Sharon wants some drugr. Dana holds out her hand. Sharon gives her some money. Dana keeps her hand out. Sharon gives her more. IfSharon wants Dana to go out and get her some, Sharon had best be prepared to give some back. What's fair is fair.

For the New Haven Police Department, recent crackdowns on vice are all about fairness. Despite comforting statistics citing the decline in violent crime nationwide, crimes once viewed by police as too mundane for serious attention now plague the city. In the mid-'80s, when New Haven's drug wars hit their peak, police had no choice but to concentrate on the wave of murders, burglaries, and assaults that accompanied the drug trade. Now at the end of the '90s, nights of violence and fear have subsided, even if the drug trade has not. Until just a few months ago, however, the police continued to target felony offenders, despite the surge in misdemeanors. "We weren't listening to what the community wanted," says Sergeant Everett Nichols of the Fair Haven district. "What we thought were mundane crimes were what the community wanted out_of their lives. Let's face it, a murder doesn't happen every day, but the drunk will be on your steps every day." Arresting everyone from drunks to kids playing their music too loudly, the police have been trying to make the streets of New Haven quieter and more livable for law-abiding citizens. In the past two months, the police department has completed four busts, arresting more than 50 women and men in its biggest attempt yet to erase the misdemeanor most closely related to the drug trade and violence: prostitution.

'1 don't Like to call itprostitution on my part," Dana says. Dana doem't

ifshe'll have to turn tricks. She starts off the day knowing she's going to get high, but that won't happen until Sharon comes around and sends her out to buy some stuff When Dana jim wakes up she ftels normal normal enough to Lie in bed and watch TV And she's Mrmal enough to chase her grandkids around the house or cook up a meal or talk for afew hours with that reporter who comes over from the universi~ But by the time Sharon comes around, Dana already wants her drugr and she's ready to risk arrest to get Sharon some, plus a bwck ofher own.

When Dana gets a bwck, the size ofan Advil she breaks it in half One halfkeeps her high for 30 minutes, so she can get afull hourfrom one bwck.

At the end of the hour Dana starts getting headaches. She's got to smoke some crack cocaine. So Dana starts woking aroundfor money: two dollars left over from what her husband gave her for giving it up last night, three dolltzrs from the cans and bottles she's been collecting. .. not enough to buy a TUJrmal $10 bag. ?:hat's when Dana puts on her jeans and heads out to the ¡Ho-StrolL " tvm start offa typical day knowing

The prostitution hot spot for downtown New Haven, or the HoStroll as it's known on the streets, runs along Chapel Street and Edge-

NOVEMBER 30, 1998

wood Avenue between Howe Street and Sherman Avenue, a block up from Pierson College. A hot spot can start with just one or two girls out on the corner. Johns drive by and start recognizing that spot as a place to go to "take care of business." Women start recognizing that spot as a good place to make money, and traffic grows until it becomes the place in the district to make a transaction. With prostitution comes drug dealing and with drug dealing come gangs. Gang activity brings loud music, yelling, and even gunshots until three in the morning. "When you get nine, ten girls on the street, they're noisy, their dates are noisy, they're leaving their narcotics around-then it's a quality of life issue," says Nichols. Eliminating prostitution is not an easy task. Most busts break up a hot spot only to push prostitutes and johns to new parts of the district and city, new intersections that will become new hot spots.

"We're like a M.AS.H . unit," says Nichols. "We're just a quick fix."

Getting her fix is easier for Dana now that she's been around a whik, now that she's known. On the streets they call her the Bag Lady or Ma Duke out ofrespect. Dana can walk the Ho-Stroll in jeans; she tkJem't even need to comb her hair. On most days, she walks tkJwn Howe dragging her garbage bagr, picking up cans and bottles on the way. A new car skws down in front ofher. A couple of Yale students walk past Dana on their way to Pizza House, but they're not who she's wokingfor. She walks straight to the car. A man leans out and asks her, "}Ou working?" He woks Like he's coming from an office. "Uh-huh, "she answers and keeps on walking. The car circks around the bwck and swws tkJwn again in front ofDana. She gets in. He drives dtnmz the street and pulls over. "Ifhe wants to smile at you, it's going 1 to cost him," says Dana. "Ifhe wants to sit next to you, it's going to cost him. i Ifhe wants to put his arm around you, that'll cost him even more. "Dana !l" ~ never sets a price. She just sticks out her hand and waits.

"On the first, second, and third ofthe month it's real weirdpeopk from the veteran's hospitals, "says Dana. "They come in taxi cabs with their disabilities checks. They pay you $200 to sit and talk with them and watch them ... "She moves her hand up and tkJwn to indicate masturbation. Dana only sees the veterans once a month. Usually it's married white men from the suburbs, businessmen, and cops. She likes the white men. "They always strung out and paranoid and give up their money real easy, " she says. "I always tell them I need the money for my family. "Dana Likes it best when men give her money before she agrees to tkJ anything. The man drives by her house and Dana runs inside and pretends to give the money to her family.

When she gets in the car again, he'll give her more money to go to his house.

'1 can get $300 for smoking his crack and ktting him eat pussy," Dana laughs. She stops there, though. If he wants her to give it up, Dana just sticks out her handfor money and, as soon as she gets it, opens the tkJor and runs out. In the 15 years she's been smoking crack cocaine, Dana claims she has only given it up to "the bitch, "her husband, and he'pays for it, too.

These past two months the police department's work on sting operations has paid off in countless arrests. In each operation, an undercover officer in an unmarked car drives to a hot spot and strikes up a conversation with a girl on the street. He records the entire conversation,

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but stays silent most of the time. If the cop asks her for sex or offers her money first, then she can't be charged with prostitution. When they make the deal, he drives the unsuspecting woman down the block to where arresting officers are waiting. Then he goes back to the hot spot and waits to make another bust.

Johns, too, can be charged with prostitution, which Nichols defines as "the request or the use of sex for money." John stings are usually much more dangerous than prostitute stings. Once the john solicits sex, the undercover female officer must get into hfs car and wait for the police cars to chase him down.

Johns, unlike prostitutes, often carry weapons and may threaten the undercover officer. In a recent bust of 12 johns on the Ho-Stroll, two were carrying pistols.

DanA has never been pistol-whipped, but she has been beaten. She tries to watch her back and won't walk on the dark side of the street.

She's never mtirely safe, though. "Once I was walking down a street and the lights was bright, " DanA says, "and somebody co'!le up behind me and put a razor bkuk to my neck. " She got away. '1 got 011t ofa car driving once, " she says. "He told me, 'Youre going to give me some. J!m going to take you to the woods.' He had his hand on my neck. I had my hand on the steering wheeL so he was going to crash and he got scared and let go of me, and I jumped out.

Another guy had me in his car and wanted me to give him sex before he gave me the money, "she continues. '1 tried the tkJor on my side, but it wouldn't open and I tried his side and it wouldn't open, but I didn't know untiL I was inside that I couldn't get out. I went for his eyes first. He got to see the bad side of me having those bagr ofbottles and cans. I took one out and beat him. I always beat them harder than they beat me. He was glad to let me out. " For most prostitutes, there is no way out, no way of stopping the cycle. The police and drug court see the same people coming through the system over and over. Even with the police department's emphasis on quality of life, it cannot keep prostitutes off the streets forever. "We don't have enough room for the bad guys," says N ichols. "With a prostitute, the only one she's hurting is herself." Most of the women never make it to the stage where they can ask for drug rehabilitation. They get parole and are back on the streets in a matter

of days. Although the state pays for drug rehabilitation, the criminal offender must ask for it and then pass through an examination period to see if she is qualified for the program.

Given the choice between rehabilitation and jail, most choose jail; it's an easier process, and they can detox there as well. After spending 90 days in jail, most women are well-fed, have better complexions, and care more about their appearances-but without an intervention program, they soon return to their old habits.

Project More, the drug court's rehabilitation program, has had an incredible 82 percent success rate in the two years since its founding, but serves only a small portion of the women who go through the courts.

Entrance into the program requires the admission of guilt and the assignment of a sentence. If the woman fails to finish the year of drug rehabilitation, the judge can enforce the jail sentence. In the beginning of the program, she must com~ in every day for urine testing and hours of counseling. If she tests positive for drugs, the judge can sentence her to highway clean-up or even a night in jail.

Project More understands that relapses come with rehabilitation and tries co work with each client to analyze the problem and solve it. If the problem stems ftom environmental factors, the program attempts to remove the client from that environment. Project More tries to help people cope with the stress in their lives through means ocher chan drugs, but clients don't always listen.

jocelyn was the first woman DanA ever listened to, ever respected. DanA met jocelyn when she moved to Hartford. DanA was only 13 then.

She had run away from her mother in New Haven. SeveraL years later, jocelyn gave Dana her first fix, and right after she started smoking, DanA started messing around,· she needed cash.

'Jocelyn, she taught me everything I know, "says DanA. "She taught me everything about men, how to play them, how to get more." When DanA got pregnant at 15, she thought about moving back to New Haven, but the baby bqy was stiLlborn, so she stayed on in Hartford with jocelyn. DanA moved back in with her mother when she was 22, after the birth ofher daughter Debbie. DanA made a Livingfor years as a seam· stress, but_ had to stop because ofher health. •1 got this uncontrollable high blood pressure, "sh( says. "It almost took my Lifo several times. "Dana couldn't take care of Debbie, so her mother THE NEw JouRNAL

raised the child. "That child kills me, she's so spoiled," sighs Dana. "But I let her do what she wants to do, otherwise it's dangerous for me. She , got a temper. ¡ Debbie, who is 16, has just come back from being out on the street for three days. She never says where she is, but is doing okay, so Dana tries not to worry too much. Dana has given Debbie a lot offreedom to make her own decisions, and for the most part she feels that Debbie has made some good choices-she only messes around with men she knows and she likes marijuana better than crack. But Debbie steals. That's why Dana hides everything from her daughter: bags, cigarettes, money. '1 can't trust no one in this family, "says Dana. Even now, with Debbie dropped out ofHillhouse High School and Dana raising Debbie's boy, she feels shut out. "My family always has something negative to say, " says Dana. "There's no love. I hate living here."

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As she walks down Howe, aU Dana can think about is escape. '1 hold everything on the inside. There's so much stress in my lifo, I had to have brain surgery last year. Drugs help me get these things out, to help me relax. " That's what she's thinking about tonight. She sees one car circling the block, picking up other girls for a while. ln the back ofher mind she thinks, "Maybe he's a cop. " But Dana is 40 years old, her head's kiUing her, and she stopped caring a long time ago. The john slows down and she walks up to him. "You working tonight?" he asks. "Uhhuh, "she says and steps into his car. Dana holds out her hand and asks the man to make it worth her time. He gives her 10 dollars to eat her out before he makes the bust.

1111 Dana, Sharon, Debbie, and jocelyn are pseudo-

nyms.

.

]ada Yuan, a junior in Branford Co/Jege, is on the Itajfof TNJ.

NOVEMBER }0,

1998

31

SYMPTOMS OF THE FLU Makiko Harunari

Asian currency depreciations force students to make unexpected sacrifices.

A

lot of people thought I ~iled-1 was

cially independent in my life, and having a job on campus sounded like a clistant story to me-until the second semester of my freshman year." Last Christmas break, the one holiday during the year when students are free from work. marked the beginning of a painful downhill slide for Gary and other Asian natives at Yale. In a single day, the Indonesian rupiah lost

32

returned to Yale for the spring semester and approached the University for financial assistance. Due to Yale's financial aid policy, international students who do not request financial aid upon acceptance must sign a form stating that they will not ask for aid during their four years at Yale.

Gary, who spent dose to $5,000 on personal expenses during the first semester of his freshman year, had not hesitated to sign this form. "The:

THE NEW joURNAL

signature is fairly binding. A repeal of this form is rare and must go under careful scrutiny," says Patricia Wei, an undergraduate admissions officer responsible for Asia. Without any aid or loans, Gary's parents resorted to borrowing money from friends fof his spring tuition. A monthly allowance was now a dteam, and, for the first time, Gary was on work-study. He juggled two jobs, one of which overlapped with his physics class, preventing him from attending any lectures.

The worst had not yet struck. On May 16, Gary rerurned home for the summer and was confronted not only by economic peril but by riots in the streets. "Those people, Indonesians, they were starving.

They just didn't have the money to eat. It didn't seem to have any reason or rationality. I still believe that it is a miracle that I walked out of it alive." The exchange rate was now 16,500 rupiahs to the dollar, oneeighth of its original value. "My father was basically being asked to pay what used to be worth $250,000 per school year." He continues, "My luggage, which included all my books and summer clothing and computer, was looted during the riots." It was not until late June that he was able to leave the country and rerurn to New Haven to work full-time at a laboratory.

When Gary's parents realized that they could no longer spend a single penny on their son's education, they were Speechless. In Asia, parents consider education a priority in raising their childten, and financial sacrifice is not considered to be a burden for the purposes of a quality education. The financial stability necessary to finance a good education has been regarded as normal up until this crisis, and thus it has bewildered many parents who have been laid off from work. Eugene Auh (CC '99) acknowledges that "a mother of an acquaintance back in Korea committed suicide because her husband had not told the family about his yearlong unemployment." The sudden end to comfortable living has taken Asians by such surprise that people are hesitant to reveal their problems, even to family members.

The currency depreciation has not only obstructed higher educationit has also ruined parents' dteams of making a committed gift to the next generation.

T

he economic crisis hit Indonesia harder than any other nation in the Asian community, so Gary's experience is one of the few extreme cases; however, other students have also been significandy affected. For Carmen Hui (TD '0 1), who attended Jakarta International School in Indonesia, the financial crisis became a mental strain as much as an economic one. In March, her parents escaped to Hong Kong, and she has not been able to rerurn to Indonesia ever since. She has lost contact with many of her high school friends. "We are all separated now," said Hui. "I feel like I have lost a great home." Out of all the countries she has lived in, she feels the strongest tie to Indonesia.

Now she has no definite plans to rerum to the place where her identity was forged.

NOVEMBER JO,

1998

As trying as the grief and struggle may be, many Yale students have begun to make sacrifices for their Yale education. Some have decided to curtail their stay to three years. Others, like Auh, have started to work on campus, and some have attempted to maximize their funds by keeping track of the currency market. Laiyee Leong (SY '94, GRD '03) rerurned to Yale as a first-year graduate student after working in Singapore as a journalist for four years. Although she receives a full fellowship that covers her tuition, Leong must use her earnings for personal expenses. Aware that there is now only a fixed amount in her savings account, she is much more careful with her money. "When I was coming to Yale this summer, I tried to exchange as litde as possible," she says. "The rate had risen to 1.77 Singapore dollars to one U.S. dollar, about a 20 percent decrease in currency value. I plan to exchange in increments from now on, too." As an undergraduate, she was never worried about buying anything at Store 24's high prices. Now returning to the same place just four years later, she feels like she has been caught in the twilight zone.

The unexpected financial downfall in Asia has been a concern for both currendy enrolled students and adtninistrators. "Overall international applications dropped for the first time for the class of '02," said Wei. "When I went on a recruitment trip to Asia this past April, I saw fewer numbers of students attending information sessions." Although economics professor Giancarlo Corserti considers East and Southeast Asia to be the only regions where the currency depreciation has led to a major economic depression, the admissions office foresees a delayed effect on the class of '03.

With the recent 50 percent increase in foreign financial aid and the initiation of a recruitment trip to Latin America, the admissions office is trying to maintain Yale's diversity. The last five years have seen a significant improvement in the internationalization of Yale; international applicants can now submit part of their application online and receive information through the newly lengthened brochure.

"Yale, with its relatively stable financial structure, has been one of the least affected universities in the United States," said Wei. Nevertheless, as Assistant Dean Mary Li Hsu says, "I do know that a few students with whom I am familiar have taken time off from school because of financial difficulties related to the economy." Gary is not one of them. This semester, along with taking six credits, he works over 20 hours a week to pay off his bills and loans. Although he no longer can afford to spend money on luxuries, he is thankful for being able to stay at Yale. As Auh says, "Many of us, including me, are appreciating Yale a lot more now." ' IIIJ

Gary is a puudonym.

Makiko Harunari is a sophomo~ in Ezra Stiks Co/kg~.

33

early 200 physics students crowd the hall outside Davies auditorium. A few walk quickly toward a wooden table, and soon surround it. Others follow until they encircle the students already at the table. Another ring of students forms, then another and another. Those on the outside want to get to the table so badly that they press against each other, forming a solid wall around the table. By now those actually at the table are trapped by the students around them. Confusion and anxiety build. Those on the outside examine the faces of those now forcing their way out. Some show disappointment, some show relief, some laugh, and some show no emotion at all. And those on the outside wonder what kind of face they will be wearing when they get their tests back.

I am one of these students, but I will not get my test back today.

I'm learning disabled. Although the questions are the same and I'm graded the same way as everyone else, my test is "different." While I search again and again through the "A-to-C" stack of bluebooks, the people behind me grumble and wonder what I'm doing. It seems that my professor has misplaced my midterm. I am growing increasingly anxious, but I cannot blame him; he did go out of his way to allow me twice the normal time to take the test. Still, I can't help but feel somewhat like a second-class student. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to hike up Science Hill for this test, and now I'll have to jump through hoops to remind my professor that I really did take the exam and that my bluebook must exist somewhere.

I was born with dyslexia, a disability that affeets reading and spelling. Although learning disabled students like myself receive special

N

34

treatment, we also have to make sacrifices, such as waking earlier than everyone else to take a test and forfeiting extracurricular activities to make time for our slowed reading and writing.

The hardest part of being dyslexic at Yale, however, is the general ignorance that exists about the condition. Although many students may have had some contact with a learning disabled person in the past, the majority remain ignorant about learning disabilities. I confront their misconceptions every day.

"Dyslexic" does not mean "blind." There is nothing wrong with my eyes, and I don't see things backward. Yes, I can read a book upside down, but you can, too, if you try. I have no problem telling my left from my right, and I have never spelled anything backwards. But these misunderstandings are minor compared to the belief that "learning disability" is synonymous with "incompetence." This misconception occurs when others realize that I am different but can't quite tell how.

This uncertainty often leads to prejudice.

A learning disability is a condition that slows the acquisition of certain fundamental scholastic skills. In my case it simply means that I read slowly, spell horribly, and have trouble with basic computations like addition and subtraction. However, a learning disability in no way affeets one's ability to think and reason. The majority of learning disabled students have no trouble understanding elaborate concepts even though they lack the ability to perform certain skills.

It may be said that those with learning disabilities have the body of intelligence, but lack the hands and feet. Just as a physically handicapped person benefits from a prosthetic limb, those who are born with

THE NEW joURNAL

a learning handicap benefit from special privileges. These include extra time on tests and, in some cases, a p~al waiver from the foreign language requirement. But compared to some other universities-such as Brown, which allows its learning disabled students five years to graduate--Yale's approach to learning disabilities is, to say the least, unaccommodating.

That Yale would even accept a student who has trouble with basic skills might seem mysterious. Most people don't understand that these skills are not actually required to complete an Ivy League education. A learning disabled student can perform at a level equal or superior to other Yale students. Granted, they must find alternative ways of learning that compensate for the basic skills that they lack. As my lab instructor put it, "Good mathematicians don't bother with arithmetic." Most students don't understand this and ding to the belief that learning disabled students somehow "snuck" into Yale by gaining an unf.Ur advantage over other students"Anyone could have done well on the SATs if they weren't timed." This common misconception leads to a feeling of distance that troubles learning disabled people.

Distressing as they sometimes might be, there are aspects of my disability that have led to some rather comical circumstances. Last summer I was traveling alone in Europe.

When I entered England, I was given a small card to fill out explaining where I had been, how long I was going to stay, and so on. Having visited a few other countries, I had grown accustomed to these little cards as something to be disregarded. So I was very surprised when two armed guards approached me while I was waiting in line to leave the train station.

It seems that I had misspelled "Amerrica" on the card; this error, in addition to the fact that I had been traveling in Morocco during an African bombing incident, made me suspect.

After a tense moment I was able to produce my passport and share a laugh with the official. Luckily I can reBect on such events with humor; it allows me to appreciate that though I might have to wait a few more days for my tats to be graded, I will never be suspected of international terrorism at Yale.

IIIJ

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A Land in Full In his new novel, Tom Wolfe devours '90s America.

by Ro nen G ivony A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), pp. 742.

Among American writers of the 20th century, perhaps only Tom Wolfe (GRD '57) can be said to have drawn consistendy definitive pictures of individuals and society from not one, not two, but three decades. It was Wolfe's reporting that captured San Francisco's '60s counterculture in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and then went on to show the death throes of black nationalism in Radi~al Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. In the '70s, he coined what came to be the quintessential tide of the country's baby boomers-"The Me Generation"-and wrote about a nation moving in both ambition and direction toward the heavens in The Right Stuff In the '80s, he walked the streets of New York City-"where things were happening!"-for six years and produced his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, one of the decade's best-selling books and perhaps the final statement of its greed and corruption. Now, Wolfe is back with his second novel, A Man in Fu/4 a book that tries to capture the '90s with the same skills that have made the past 30 years essentially his.

What has separated Wolfe from his contemporaries, as well as most of his recent literary predecessors, is his devotion to a detailed realism, which demands painstaking research and complete immersion in the surroundings he chooses to write about. In his 1973 book, The New jounullism, Wolfe advanced a theory of nonfiction as an art form that would eventually come to replace the novel. In a 1989literary manifesto ("Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast") published in Harper's, he modified and added to this theory, claiming that American fiction must return to the kind of ambitious, realistic, socially relevant "big novels" once produced abroad by Dickens, Zola, and Balzac and in our own country by Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Steinbeck.

Such a diehard commitment to tireless,

down-in-the-trenches reporting, as well as direct interaction with those he writes about, has come to be a staple of American journalism, but has kept Wolfe, for the most part, outside of the highbrow literary establishment. As John Updike has written, Wolfe's writing is thought by many to be not literature, but entertainment.

Wolfe is still best known for just how much damned fun his books are to read.

Wolfe's ~tyle-his kinetic, excited prose, jammed. full of exclamation marks, italicized phrases, onomatopoeic sound bites, and inside jokes at his characters' expense--has set him apart in an age which increasingly believes that good fiction is abstract fiction. A quick survey of prominent postwar writersThomas Pynchon, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov-reveals writing that has turned away from strict reporting of the everyday world to increasingly chaotic, fragmented, absurd depictions oflife.

Wolfe's first venture into fiction, Bonfire, represents his inlplicit rejection of this kind of writing. In his own words, Bonfire was an attempt to "cram as much of New York City as possible between two covers." The public eagerly responded, even if the critics claimed the book's half-hearted ending, lack of emotional depth, and solely external characters made it fall one step shon ofgreamess. If Bonfire represented a compression of Gotham, A Man in FuU attempts a much larger project: cramming America between two covers.

Wolfe has adjusted every aspect of his storytelling for this increase in scope. Eleven years in the writing, A Man in FuU weighs in at well over 700 pages, and includes several hundred characters, four subplots, and sprawling descriptions of both the Georgia countryside and the Northern California urban belt. It also features Wolfe's usual fare of

serious reporting sprinkled with li~ral doses of humor. Like Charlie Croker, the book's main figure, the chief characteristic of A Man in FuU is its massive size.

The book opens during a quail hunt at Croker's 29,000-acre Adanta plantation, Turpmcime. Croker is the All-American guy whose presence is felt at every point of the book. Sixty years old, a decorated Vietnam vet and former college football star, Croker has raised himself up from the poveny of southern Georgia ("din poor and common as pig tracks") to become one of the most inlponant real estate developers in Atlanta. He's dumped his first wife and now carries on his arm an achingly gorgeous 28 year old named ~rena, who, at half of Charlie's age, "has Second Wife written all over her." His many praises are sung all over Atlanta, and even his own servants at Turpmcime have written a song in his honor: Charlie Croker was a man in full.

He had a back like a Jersey bull.

Didn't like okra, didn't like pears.

He liked a gal that had no hairs.

Charlie Croker! Charlie Croker! Charlie Croker!

Still, Charlie is not without his problems: his latest venture, a multimillion dollar com¡ plex built¡ during Atlanta's 1996 Olympics, lovingly named Croker Concourse, has become a hideously expensive Aop. The banks are calling about the 800 million dollars-

THE NEW JouRNAL

"800 million dollars!" as Wolfe interjects-he owes in debts, for which Croker can't even begin to pay the inter,est. As a result, Charlie is $200 million in the 'fed, making a seizure of his many airplanes, cars, houses and horses likely. And his reputation is at stake in Adanta, where "they liked to talk about family, but money was what it all came down to at the end of the day." To satisfy the consultants at PlannersBanc who keep harassing him for money, Charlie decides to lay off some workers from his food packaging operation and search for other means to pay back his debts.

Meanwhile, two other plots begin to unfold. Roger White II, a successful, educated, black corporate lawyer who can't seem to shake his old Morehouse nickname, Roger Too White, has been asked to work on a case that may upset the city's fragile racial balance.

Fareek Fanon, Georgia Tech's All-American running back and 225 pounds of attitude, has been accused of raping Elizabeth Armholster, whose f.unily is "one of the first five names you'd think of if the subject was the White Establishment in Atlanta." Across the country in Oakland, a young laborer named Conrad Hensley has been laid off from one of Croker's frozen food packaging plants. The two subplots begin to merge with Charlie at the center of the story. Evenrually, Charlie is presented with a Faustian bargain by Roger Too White, Atlanta's black mayor, and the Georgia Tech board: sell out the Armholster family (old friends he has sworn to help) and have his debts all but forgiven, or maintain his honor and potentially lose everything else.

Throughout the sprawling narrative, Atlanta's invisible but palpable presence is constandy in the background. After 11 years of research, Wolfe has captured the many nuances of the city "too busy to hate" perfectly-right down to the deep cigarette-induced baritones of Adanta's society women-even if it is a distinctly Northerner's perception. One racial tension after another is explored in A Man in Fu/}. the mistruSt of a city 75 percent black, yet still dominated by white business; the ironies of a city government where blacks question who is truer to the race; and even the different perceptions of rich and poor whites, viewing each other as if they were all but different colors themselves.

But unlike most of Wolfe's other books, race is not the theme of this novel. A Man in F.Jl explores the different ways that America,

NOVEMBER 30, 1998

regardless of race, class, or gender, is coming to terms with the confusion of the 1990s and the approaching millenium, of a world changing too fast As the Wiz, Charlie's Whartoneducated CFO explains, "the paradigm has shifted." Conrad, for one, lives in a plastic suburb described as "one goulash of condominiums," where one community can only be ¡ distinguished from another by the reappearance of ?-Elevens and Wendy's franchises.

Martha Croker, Charlie's ex-wife, finds herself single again and suddenly out ofstep with the flow of things. Charlie himself, while listening to a pseudo-postmodern critic discussing Foucault and subjectivity in a piece of homoerotic art, feels

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Wolfe has finally developed the talent to look beyond external appearances, and mak~ his characters three-dimensional. The egalitarian sense of suffering that A Man in Full portrays, as each character builds his casde in the sky and watches it crumble, is Wolfe's silent assertion that America's realities, worries and doubts essentially plague everyone, once their immediate differences are swept away.

Still, A Man in Full is not without its own problems. Wolfe hasn't learned how to end a novel. Simply put, Wolfe seems to have run out of time-at 68, this will probably be his last book. He drops the ending on the reader with none of the build-up and ornamentation of the powerful, informed writing of the first 600 pages.

A Man in Full may not have perfectly captured an entire nation's hopes and doubts, but it comes as close as any attempt seen so far in the 1990s. And who knows what Tom Wolfe has left up his sleeve? The last page of the book offers hope for another commentary in the future: "'Oh, don't worry,' said the man of the world, 'I'll be back.'"

181

Ronm Givony, a sophomo" in Branford Col-

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37

Good News PUBLIC ACCESS CABLE SWEEPS THE CLOUDS AWAY.

by Andrew Youn

,_

~ ]

~

1 ~

"Army Training Classics" is the best show on public access television. Airing Wednesday nights on channel 29, it's essentially a broadcast of old War Department training films in grainy black and white, interspersed with ultra-militant soundbites. While watching on October 28, I learned how to crawl under barbed wire (on my back), how to cross an enemy trench (quickly); and why TNT is the armed forces' standard-issue explosive.

Welcome to the Media Revolution. Along with MTV, CNN, and Lifetime, Yale students were plugged into three public television stations-27, 28, 29-as part of our cable package this year. At first glance, the stations seem to air only religious zealots, but looks can be . deceiving.

Citizens Television, Inc. (CfV) is the non-profit provider of public access television to the greater New Haven area. Located far north on State Street, its unassuming storefront conceals a high-tech interior complete with four editing suites, a massive studio, and a Star Trek-like room with 20 VCRs stacked on top of one another. The acting executive director of CTV, James Martino, is something of a media fanatic.

"Television is so central," he says. "It's everything in our society. I want to demystify it, to not understand it is dangerous. All sons of terrible, evil things can be done with television."

These are strange words coming from a corporate type wearing a dress shirt, tie, and wire-rimmed glasses. But hold on-as the Brooks Brothers top gives way to youthful jeans and sneakers, Martino's enthusiasm for television becomes contagious.

His vision for CTV comes out in lengthy bursts of verbiage. Commenting on Citizens Television before he took over, Martino says, "It wasn't in bad shape, but it was stagnant. Not moving. To me, that's bad. We were fulfilling all of our obligations, but not moving forward."

He can hardly keep the disgust out of his voice.

Martino has a long list of improvements in the works-a five-year plan, if you will. The omnipresent shabby-looking rug seen on all of the studio shows will soon be phased out by a new generation of props.

As he hies his stride, Martino elaborates about his plans to advertise CTV on the Prevue Channel ("the only game in town"), build a second studio space, and improve production training to make the television shows look somewhat professional.

There's certainly a lot of work to be done. Upon actually watching the shows on CTY, it might be tempting to conclude rhat, well, public

access television just plain sucks. Religious groups, which take up more than half the programming time, range from over-zealous, heavy-jowled, sweaty local ministers to nationwide gloom-and-doom crack-pots with their own 800-numbers. A significant chunk of the remaining time is composed of what I like to call "endurance-television," such ~ hour-long interviews about nothing in particular with people talking very slowly.

A personal favorite is a program that features a fixed camera showing the tops of people's heads in a NASA control room for hours on end.

Most embarrassing for CIV is the question of how many people actually tune in, an issue that Martino awkwardly ducks (he'll get back to me on that).

At the same time though, shows like "Army Training Classics" redeem CTV as a valuable enterprise-seriously. The non-commercialism that makes CIV so lame is the same factor that makes the occasional program so eclectic and amusing. It is gratifying to have an escape from a world of nano-second soundbites, stick-thin supermodels and ¡catchy jingles. It is healthy to see ordinary, homely people on TV. For example, consider "Dolly Curtis Interviews," which features none other than Dolly herself (don't worry, I hadn't heard of her either), traveling around Connecticut in search of local heroes. At least Dolly won't nauseate you with endless coverage of the Lewinsky a.ff.Ur or, to be honest, Kosovo.

Perhaps rhe show closest to my heart, though, is the brand-new "Today's Good News Show," whose selling line is: "No more bad news!" Noticeably absent from the inaugural show was any media hype, or the standard shooting-stabbing-sexual perversion story.

Instead, the viewer is treated to a nice interview with a local couple who own a small business, while their lirtle children run in and out of the picture. Then, a technical error caused the airing ofa brief but informative video about rhe jellybean industry. The show rallied with a pand discussion featuring the mayors of West Haven, Hamden, and New Haven chatting pleasantly about "the issues" people claim to care about. The clincher: an interview with an endearing old man who was a torch-bearer in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Maybe the CIV "Media Rev.olution" is not for everybody. But I think Sydney Evans, the producer of "Today's Good News Show," sums it up pretty well: "You see stereotype after stereotype on television. What we're trying to do is bring out people's humanity."

Andrew Youn, a junior in Calhoun College, is a research director of TNJ.

November 30, 1998

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Sometimes a crumb falls from the table of joy.

Sometimes a bone is flung.

To some people love is given, To others, only heaven.

-Langston Hughes

By Lynn Nottage irected by Seret Scott