Volume 32 - Issue 4

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THE NEW JouRNAL

1

TheNewJournal

Volume 32, N umber 4 February n, 2000

FEATURES

9

Type Set Photos by Whitney Grace Essay by Don Tontiplaphol

4 12

Net Gain Trading MP3s can gtt you caught in a tangled web.

by Anya Karnenetz

16

And Then There was One Likt it or not, Yalt is now tht only player in New Haven Development.

by Dan Kurtz-Phelan and Nadia Sussman

22

Camera Obscura Is no news good ntws?

by Ian Blecher

STANDARDS 4 8

Points of Departure

About This Issue

26

Essay: Going Public by john Swansburg

28

The Critical Angle: Strings Attached by Alan Schomfoid r~vi~wing ]asp~r johns: N~w Paintings and Works on Pap~r Endnote: Mississippi Burning by Daniel Brook

30

TH£ Ntw jOURNAL is publish«! fi~ rima during rbe ..:ademic year by TH~ NEW jouRNAL at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 3-432 Yale Sarion, Nnr tu¥CJ, CT o6s2o. Office address: 2S2 Park Suen. Pbone: {203) 431· All contents copyright 1000 by TH£ N..., joutNAL at Yale. Inc. All Rigbts Reserved. Rq>roducrion either in whole or in part without written pctmission of the publisher and editor in chief is ptobibired.

While this magazine is published by Yale College srudenrs, Yale University is n<>< tapnnsibk for iu contenrs. Sewn thousand 6..., hundred copia of each issue ate dinribured free to members of rhe Yale and New Haven communtry. Subscriptions arc available ro those oursidc rbe area. Rates: One year, stl. Two yean. S)L TH£ Ntw jouRNAL is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, WA; bookkttping and btlling services ate PI'OVtded by Colman Bookkeeping of New Hoven. THE Nnr jOURNAL encourages letters to rbe editor and comments on Yale and New Ha¥CJ issues. Writ< to Editorials, 3-431 Yale Station, New Haven, CT o611o. All letters for publication must indudc address and signarur<. We resc~ the rigbt to edit all letters for publication.

19U.

Elective Affinities Female politician: the words quickly conjure images of Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole, women in the national spodight seen as riding not only on their own qualifications but also on their husbands' coattails. Most women entering politics, however, do not have husbands sitting in the Oval Office or Capitol, nor do they launch their careers with bids for senator or president. The real story of women in politics reveals female protagonists acting in a largely local arena. But the problems faced

by Clinton and Dole in their respective elections-criticism of appearance and personality and difficulties in fundraising in particular-are common to all female politicians.

What, then, is a woman entering politics without Washington connections to do? She can attempt to raise money, build coalitions, and combat the old boys' network and a biased media singlehandedly, or she can turn to the Women's Campaign School (wcs) at Yale University to learn the latest in campaign techniques, fundraising, public speaking and media relations.

Andree Brooks, a former journalist and county official in England, founded the wcs in November, 1993, hoping to provide accessible and reliable training for women seeking to enter politics. The women's movement had offered political training for many years, but, according to Brooks, "Women could only find it if they were already in politics." A fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Brooks hoped to use her Yale connection to anchor training at a well-known university, whose name would attract students internationally.

She has largely succeeded. For the past eight years, the wcs, which is co-sponsored by the Yale Law School and the Women's and Gender Studies Program, has offered an annual four-and-a-half-day comprehensive training session for 40 students, and in 1996 expanded its program to include several one-day workshops. At all sessions, women, as well as men who plan to run women's campaigns, receive hands-on 4

tratmng in campaign skills. They learn for April due to low enrollment, and from experienced politicians, who have although the wcs has attracted students of included New Jersey Governor Christine diverse backgrounds, ages, and nationaliTodd Whitman and Connecticut ties, most of its students come from Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and cake Connecticut and a small cluster of surpart in mock campaigns, case studies, and rounding states. With a limited budget and lobbying sessions. Students not only gain â&#x20AC;˘ publicity resources, the wcs can only reach concrete skills, but also build confidence so far. and coalitions, and it is this trio, rather The largely local success enjoyed by than any single benefit, that Brooks celethe wcs is perhaps one more reflection of brates as the school's greatest contribution. the current situation of female politicians: Brooks has good reason to herald the wcs's women are making the greatest gains in achievements. In recent municipal eleclocal elections, while change is coming tions, So percent of wcs graduates who ran more slowly on the national front. Despite won their races, and the program boasts an all-rime high of 65 women in Congress, not only successful American alumnae, but it is nonetheless the local scene in which also alumnae from Haiti, I ndonesia, and "women have made h uge inroads and Kenya. changes," states Brooks, who warns against But the successes of the wcs have not focusing solely on national politics. come without a struggle. "It's been an Although there are congresswomen among uphill batde," says Brooks. Ironically, the wcs alumnae, they are far outnumbered by challenges the wcs faces reflect the very women serving as selectwomen, presidents obstacles the school teaches female candiof boards of education, and city council dates to overcome. Women in politics members. In Connecticut at least, local encounter greater obstacles than their male gains have been significant-Connecticut counterparts in raising money and gaining ranks ninth in percentage of female state access to publicity. Furthermore, media legislators, and at least one half of the state's presentation is often biased. Women executive posts are held by women. receive more coverage of personal characThis does not mean, however, that teristics, such as appearance, marital status, female involvement in local politics is the and personality, and less coverage of their primary goal of the wcs. Women who positions on issues. There is a definite douenter local politics are likely to trickle up to ble standard operating on the political national positions; the wcs hopes to turn playing field. As Brooks says, "A woman this trickle into a flood. Recendy, the wcs has to prove herself; a man's competence is has set its sights on California and is offerassumed. Whereas a woman will be critiing a two-day conference in San Francisco cized for her looks or clothing. a man can this March. Perhaps, as the wcs reaches a get away with sloppy clothes and a raspy hi-coastal audience, the school will realize voice." even greater success in bolstering women's While the wcs helps women overcome political achievements. In any case, the obstacles regarding fundraising and media activities of the wcs both reflect and engencoverage, the school itself stumbles over der an important sea change for the these very hurdles. "We've existed hand to American political system. mouth from the beginning." says Brooks, -jessica Bulman who launched the school with no capital.

Today, the wcs's fiscal resources remain limited, and the school has difficulty advertising its services. A one-day conference scheduled for February 5 was rescheduled THE NEW jOURNAL

-:.

Coming from America Consider the following possibilities. You walk down a hallway and see a poster advertising the Partisan Review. Your freshman counselor makes an offhand comment relating Hemingway's ''A Clean WellLighted Place" and Hopper's "Nighthawks" when he sees a copy of the painting on your wall. Each weekend you can choose from several student productions, at least one of which is a dramatic "classic." The highlight of your Halloween is a performance by your school's undergraduate symphony orchestra. Sound familiar?

Now pretend that you go to a public high school in a small town in southwestern Ohio named after a much grander town in England. This high school wins national awards in vocational agriculture but doesn't offer more than one or two honors classes. Now populate that school with students ranging from professors' kids to members of the Future Farmers of America and Future Homemakers of America to pseudo-gang member, pseudocity kids.

That school, Talawanda High School, was my high school, and from the perspective ofYale, it's a pretty strange place. But from the perspective of home, Yale is even stranger. Although my town is named Oxford after the college in England, and we have our own state universiry, Miami Universiry, to accompany that name, people from Oxford just don't do things like go to Ivy League schools.

The three guidance counselors my school employed told us about our postsecondary options: we could enter the workforce or the military, go to a vocational program, get a two year associate's degree, or, if we really, really, wanted to, attend a four-year college or universirylike Ol_tio State or Miami. Distant and prestigious schools like Yale were never mentioned in the little bit of advising that did exist, perhaps rightly so. After all, in a school where the only AP class offered, AP Literature, was dosed due to low enrollment (five students), there were obviously fEBRUARY 11, 2000

very few students looking at schools like Yale. I remember the lone meeting the school had for college-bound students. It was in the late fall of our senior year, about the time decisions had been made about where to apply and even the biggest slackers had already sent in a few applications.

We all gathered in the sweary gymnasium, hardly filling up the row of bleachers where we were sitting, while a financial aid officer from Miami tried to explain to us how financial aid works. Then she left, and we were told to return to our classes. End of discussion.

To some Yale students these scenes might seem ludicrous, bur to my high school classmates it is the Partisan Review, "Nighthawks," and theater and orchestra concerts that are absurd. It is when Yale students take these details for granted that I am reminded of the true rift between this ivory tower and home. A poster in a hallway is like hotel art; it's something bland and innocuous that everyone accepts without a question. Only at a universiry like Yale would the Partisan Review be deemed such a poster.

It's these details we take for granted that make me feel like an interloper here.

Aside from a few wry groans and sympathizing grimaces, hardly anyone looks askance at a friend spending Saturday night studying in the library. Sure, Naples is always full on a Thursday night, but so are the college libraries-and they're full until a much later hour than Naples. Every so often I start to forget how peculiar this lifesryle is, how divorced from "real America."

It's easy to get caught up in the whirl of protesting the Taliban, watching Fight Club afrer a question and answer session with Edward Norton, and having epiphanies about the Odyssry and Milan Kundera.

It would be easy never to leave this lifestyle of assumptions, the implicit checklist in the back of every good Yalie's head: a qualicy pre-college education, Yale, profession-

allgraduate school, high-paying job, designer apartment in ¡"the City" or sprawling old farmhouse in the country. And it would be easy for me to start checking off that list myself.

I'm not saying that my hometown is "real America." There are too many differences from place to place to designate any single town or region as "real." Even I'm not really a farm girl, though I went to a rural school district. My dad is a professor, my mom an engineer, and I took as many Miami classes as I could during high school. And hey-l'm a Yalie too.

-judyMilkr

Professor Kang-1 Sun Chang would like to make Handsome Dan a household name in China. The bulldog's history, along with fourteen other essays about Yale and its professors, are collected in her new book, Rejkctions on Yak, Gender and Culture. This compilation of articles, written in Chinese, is currently being printed in both Taiwan and mainland China. Chang expects her book to be a best-seller.

In Taiwan, where most of these articles were published originally, the cult of Yale is already well established. Most Americans have probably never thought about the Universities of Taipei or Beijing. In Asia, however, there is a widespread fascination with Yale and Harvard, so much so that Chang uses Yale's name as a selling point when her articles are essentially about something else. Her essay on the Women's Table, for example, is in fact a case study in the growth of American co-education.

Chang's articles about Yale have been wellreceived: many have appeared in publications that she describes as analosues to the New l0rk Times or the New l0rk Review of Books. An article on President Levin was published in the Cmtrai Daily News's literary supplement. "Everybody in Taiwan reads the Cmtrai Daily News," says Chang.

5

Snow Falling on Elms Yale's image in the People's Republic of China is a little different. When Chang came to Yale's East Asian Literature faculty almost cwenty years ago, Harvard stood alone in the Chinese conscience as a symbol of American educational excellence.

Weakening the other school's iron grip has been part of her agenda all along. Chang considers herself a cultural ambassador and has consciously attempted to bolster Yale's reputation in C hina through her articles and books. She has written about Yale's historical involvement with China; and Refoctions on Yale, Gmtkr and Cultur~, in a somewhat altered form, will appear as part of a series of books on great universities.

Other books will include one on Harvard and another on the University of Beijing.

(Princeton, it seems, still does not matter.)

Chang's perspective on Yale might surprise a typical undergraduate. As she describes it, Yale is every bit as idyllic and intellecrually free an institution as portrayed in the admissions catalog. Her optimism is partially motivated by a desire to portray Yale in a good light-news of union trouble and New Haven crime does reach Taiwan-but it is fundamentally grounded in a very bright view of the school, its students, and irs faculty. Chang has made remarkable use of this place, and her list of friends is practically an all-star roster. She interviews professors here whose work interests her, and then passes on something from Levin's commencement speech, or a few of Vladimir Alexandrov's thoughts on Nabokov, to her Chinese readers. In a country where intellectual freedom is not granted liberally, the Ivy League university, with its mascots and traditions, is a powerful symbol of liberty and free thought. When we think of American cuicure and its popularity in other countries, we think more often of Madonna and Babe Ruth than of Jonathon Spence and H arold Blume. But Chang's book shows that there is a strong Chinese market for our ideas, and for the idea ofYale.

-Blair~

6

Wilson

According to Yale's admissions viewbook, the main task of the admissions committee is to answer cwo questions: "Who is likely to make the most ofYale's resources?" and "Who will contribute significandy to the Yale community?" One week ago, while walking around Yale, I came upon an astonishing scene showing just how badly the committee failed at this rask.

I am walking back ro Old Campus after the Super Bowl, and ir is snowing.

Not dry, annoying snow, but the good stuff: big. sticky flakes that fall fast and hard, s~ you can actually feel each one as it plops onto your shoulders. Snow like this cries for sleds, begs for snowmen, pleads to be balled up and thrown at people's heads.

Snow like this leaves no excuse to be inside.

As I see it, snow like this certainly qualifies as one of "Yale's resources."

Yet Old Campus is painfully serene.

Lights are on everywhere, but nobody is o utside. Wonderful snow falls o n deaf g round, ignored and left to suffer death-bysanding come dawn. Once in my room, I call a trusted friend. "We have to go sledding now," I tell him.

"It's perfect outside, better than it's ever been. There's a great hill behind the Divinity School."

H e doesn't even ask if I have a sled. (I don't. The closest I have is a cardboard sign, but I figure it will do.) Instead, he says, "Can't. I have chem."

"Grear," I say. "When's it due?"

"Tomorrow," he says. Anticipating my next question, he added, "In the morning."

I try several other friends and both of my roommates, but everyone was hopelessly indisposed: os reading, astronomy homework, Russian translation, Milron's poetry, a televised showing of &autician and th~ B~ast.

Pathetic. By the standards of our own admissions committee, we don't deserve ro be here. One of the best Super Bowls in recent memory has just ended, and great snow is falling everywhere; there is no better time to play snow foorball. And if football isn't our thing, we can go sledding.

have a snowball fight, build snow men or snow torso sculptures, like the one in rhe Davenport courtyard. But we aren't doing any of thar. What are we doing? We are reading. highlighting, crunching numbers.

Never have I encountered a group so unwilling to contribute ro the Yale community, so unwilling to take advantage of its resources.

It could have been a great night, one .that would live longer in memory than any problem set, bur nobody seemed to care. It was self-imposed prison, and everybody just wanted to be left alone until it seemed safe to be free. "Homework got us in here," the reasoning went, "so homework must be what can get us out." I grabbed my cardboard sign and headed for the Divinity School.

What happens to us becween childhood and Yale? How does chem become more important than sledding?

Priorities may change, but not to the point that working redox reactions seems like a better idea than playing in the snow. Perhaps we have grown roo mature ro play in the snow, too dignified ro have a slush ball shoved down the back of our neck.

We don't have to go this way. After several runs down the Div School hill on my cardboard sign, a man and his dog arrive at the rop. The man pulls out a plastic garbage can lid, sets ir on the snow and sits down. "Look our," he yells, and pushes off. As he shoots past me, his dog racing after him, I wonder if he was like this 20 years ago, or if he was locked up in some library waiting for life to come in and whisper "Psst! Follow me." He reaches the bottom and begins playing wich rhe dog. and I realize that ir doesn't matter what he was like 20 years ago. What matters is that at some point he made a decision to be something. and became the person he is now: a fortyish man who isn't afraid to sled on plastic garbage can lids and play in the snow with his dog ar midnight on a Sunday.

THE NEW JouRNAL

Nearing P helps Gate on the way back from sledding, I hear Old <3ampus before I see it: the place isn't just occupied, it's crowded. People are everywhere. Major wars are being fought in front of Farnam and Vanderbilt, as ground troops tackle each other amid heavy artillery fire. There are no snow torsos, but some of the snowmen and snowwomen have been built with such p recision that they are easily rold apart.

A boy from m y English class rushes up and says, "See that guy over there in the red coat? Let's get him."

"Who is he?" I ask.

"I don't know. That's why we're going to get h im," he says, and we take off. We pause as two girls, the o nes who couldn't go sledding earlier because they were reading Milton's poetry, run past us wearing nothing at all. Then we sprint toward Red Coat, and throw him down tO the snow. As he lies on the ground, slush-covered and freshly tackled by two complete strangers, Red Coat just laughs.

The clock says 12:45 bu t the sky is alm ost bright blue, as if light is already creeping up around the edges, or maybe it just never left completely in the first place.

One of the M ilton girls has French at 8:30, but she's back outside in a sweatshirt, standing next to me as she yells and throws snowballs at a friend 's dark window on the third floor. There is no reason, I realize, to be angry o r bitter about the moment of hesitation before we pou r out of our rooms and into the snow. Some of us are trying to • change our lives, "grow up" and wear pretty shoes and an overcoat; some of us already are grown up, and have been for too long. All of us, however, have a choice, and if we heed grown men on trash can lids and girls trying to read Milton d uring perfect snows, we will make the right choice and see that in becoming adults we don't have to give up what made being ten years old so fi.in. Maybe the admissions committee wasn't so wrong about us after all: we were just a little slow out of the gate.

-Andrro~

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fEBRUARY II, 2000

7

The New Journal ournalist Janet Malcolm once wrote, "Every journalist who is not

J

Would like to thank:

too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows

that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, praying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining

Isadore Zack David Gerber

their trust and betraying them without remorse."

Liz Ruiz Much has been made lately of CBS News 's attempts to control

Adam Rosenblatt digitally what appears on the screen. Sources of record, like The New

Marc Blecher York Times and the other major networks, have been quick to con-

demn CBS. But the fact is, every piece of jou rnal ism, including the articles in this issue, are a kind of distortion. The only question is how

Skye Gruen Fray Chao

successfully the ruse works. A reporter, like a camera, only sees things

Chris Edwards

from a certain point of view.

Joshua Mann

New journal reporters don't try to pass themselves off as com-

Rich Baleen

pletely objective-the stories all reflect our various attempts to get

Kara Loewentheil

some control over a world that is for the most part beyond our con-

Boma Brown-West

trol. We are confidence men and women-many of us hope our sto-

Bradley Van Hoorn

ries will end a certain way before we begin. We're aware of our biases,

Alex Timbers but we don't entirely apologize for them.

Arthur Mitchell And besides, we can hardly think of anything more interesti ng than vanity, ignorance, loneliness, trust, and betrayal.

8

THE NEW JouRNAL

.-

'1'ype Set Photos by Whitney Grace Text by Don Tontiplaphol Whitlock's Typewriter Shop occupies a single room.

Shelves of antique, manual, and electric typing machines line every wall, and the room is saturated with a musty, industrial smell.

From the entrance to the only window, rows of typewriters, standing on their sides and waiting to be sold, line a narrow path.

An 1896 antique machine, sent by a collector in New York, sits atop a tilted stand near Manson Whitlock's desk, as an ailing monstrous IBM Selectric goes under the knife .

To the right of the window is a bookcase brimming with .anuals and collector's guides, and to the left are tiny holsters for tools and boxes of spare parts.

Totally quiet and detached from the bustling traffic and construction along York Street, the shop seems more like a museum than a business. But Manson Whitlock is cer~ tainly busy enough. ui've got so many machines to work on--behind schedule!"

It's easy to fall in love witb these beautifully anachronistic machines.

Typewriters possess a refreshing authenticity, a kind of austerity that computers altogether lack.

Today, words are "processed," and the writer's actions are intermediated by monitors and keyboards and printers.

The first time I can see my actual words is after waiting for the document to spool, whatever that means.

Computers, by some mystically fickle electronic force, gobble up essays ten minutes before the deadline.

Files corrupt and printers jam.

The typewriter, however, gives immediate gratification and tangible reward.

The paper is before me, and the words are fixed in space right in front of my eyes.

There is no delay between composition and the printed word.

Of course, typing machines are not as neat and ordered as computers.

They smudge.

They require perfect typing skills and strong shoulders.

But on the same coin, typewriters, in their rigid elegance, don't allow for the big mistakes, the errors that destroy whole works.

Many times I have wished that I had written papers with my slim and trusty Royalite 300, itself purchased from Whitlock's.

There is a kind of nostalgia that accompanies typewriters, a return to beautifully original ways of putting words on a page.

"I myself still like the old manual machines, " Whitlock agrees., "They're what I grew up with." Even as I purchased my macbine from him, Whitlock displayed some of the old cb*l:a that comes with typewriters.

"Why don't you make 1~ a secretary and fill out your address on this 'J!'eie:ei.pt7 ..

NOVEMBER 19, 1999

9

Manson Whitlock started working on typewriters in 1934 when his family owned Whitlock's Bookstore, a pre-war version of Barnes and Noble--it sold sandwiches and coffee, books and records.

The family-run business, which took up most of a whole block along Broadway during the 1930s, later moved to a smaller one-story location on York Street. Whitlock then moved in 1991 to the current one-room space above Willoughby's at 282 York.

But through all the moves and changes, he stays in business with a sense of devotion.

"I feel an obligation to help the old customers who can't find anyone to fix their old machines.

I sell them for about a tenth of their worth." He sells and repairs these old and beautiful machines simply because he loves them, and he thinks others deserve to have these great typewriters, too.

Whitlock certainly puts out a quality product .

David Bromwich, a Yale English professor, bought an old Royal Standard from Whitlock's in 1969 for $50 .

Nit has used dozens of ribbons since then, but has never needed a repair," Bromwich said .

"A solid industrial object, and when you have finished using it, you have had a workout, but your eyes are not glazed over, your brain is not torpid, and your mortal being has not been blasted one inch closer to eternity by a trillion computer death rays.

All in all, a very good bargain." Whitlock, too, sees typewriters as filling a contemporary need.

"For example, it's even easier to address an envelope than to turn on your computer . " As for those who complain about the noise which typewriters make, "People! We used to put up with all that without the squawking."

For Whitlock, his shop is nothing special: "I'm not sure if I'm a curious antique or an antique curiosity . " He just repairs and sells typewriters. While I was talking with him, Whitlock answered a house-call from a customer .

"That was some old lady who can't climb stairs anymore.

She asked me if I could come by and replace an old ribbon in her machine for her--that's why I still work with these machines."

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you probably know what an MP3 is and

.L: how co get one. These free, tradable, shareable music files are

becoming as ubiquitous on Yale computers as Solitaire. Our ultrafast Ethernet connections are perfectly suited co both MP3 transmjssion and distribution. But for some Yale stud!!nts, MP3S are more than a diversion; they're an opportunity to contribute to a community of music fans, and a fast moneymaker as well. So what happens when an underground technology becomes popular and accessible, providing free entertainment co many and tangible rewards co a few? You guessed it-the party's almost over.

Daniel Folkinshteyn, a sophomore in JE, set up his MP3 server this fall "just to see if I could do ic." He downloaded free software from the Internet that transformed his computer into a web server, making the MP3 files he downloaded or ripped from cos available to anyone on the Internet. Yale's multi-user network makes this relatively easy.

Dan led me proudly to my Compaq Presario to show the evidence of his work. Disdaining the mouse, he called up graph.net.yak.edu with a few keystrokes. This showed Yale's incoming-outgoing web traffic, broken down by residence hall and into daily, monthly, and yearly averages. The average load for Jonathan Edwards College is about 200 kilobics per second (kb/s). "But," he said, "you will see a nke little spike in September"- a staggering average load of 5,000 kb/s- for the three weeks Folkinshceyn's site was running at its peak.

What made Folkinshceyn's site so popular? Volume and selection. "When I first got my computer, it had 4 gigabytes of [hard disk space] and I was like, what am I going to do with all this?" he said. "Now I have 18, and II of ic is taken up with MP3s." That put more than 2 ,000 songs on his site. How did he choose them? "I

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asked some people what kind of music was popular, and then I would downloatl that. I don't even remember the names because a lot of it I'd never heard of." Since arriving in this country from Moscow five years ago, Folkinshteyn's own taste in music has tended toward Metallica. His site also included every episode of South Park i.o Real Video.

This traffic brought Folkinshteyn more than personal satisfaction. He set up an advertising banner program on his site with instructions asking people co click on the banner in order to gee the free music. Banner companies pay site operators a few cents per click. This. earned him almost $400 in about three weeks. "I guess if you count the total time I cook to set it up, ic comes co less chan minimum wage," he said.

But once the site was running, it would have kept earning money with little or no support, were it not for the long arm of Yale's Information Technology Services (ITS) . "One day I cam e home from classes and found that I didn't have access co the Internee anymore and they had blocked all packets having co do with my IP [Internee Protocol] address, both source and destination.

I started composing an e-mail asking what was going on, but my email wasn't working either." (The IP address is an identification number for each computer on the network.) Folkinshteyn ended up in a meeting with the head of ITS, Daniel Updegrove, and promised co take down his site. That was it-no sanctions, no threacs.

How did ITS catch Folkinshteyn, and what was he d o ing wrong? The first question is easy to answer: "We monjcor the neework, not for content, but like a traffic councer on Whitney Avenue. Basically we look for an unusual amount of traffic," Updegrove said. "That's our clue that someone's been doing something nasty." No doubt, ic was the sharp spike in JE's traffic fo r

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September that attracted the eye of one of ITs's 325 employees, bringing Folkinshteyn's cottage industry to an end.

The second question is a bit more complex. In his meeting with Folkinshteyn, Updegrove cited violations of several ITS "Appropriate Use" policies, most of which were formulated with the general good in mind. Most concretely, any "non-Yale commercial use" of ITS systems, such as a banner program on a web site, is prohibited. A second section of the policy applicable to Folkinshteyn's case is a bit more abstract: "Users must not deny or interfere with or attempt to deny or interfere with service to other users by means of'resource hogging."' A site receiving twenty-five times the normal amount of traffic would seem to qualify. " It's like a highway," says Updegrove. "If there are too many cars on it, you'll go slower. We try to engineer the system with a reasonable amount of capacity for each user, but if someone's using too much, it just slows everyone else down."

Had the university wished to press the issue, the question of good network citizenship would have been secondary. MP3 traders are Internet criminals. Under the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, passed in 1997, the distribution (including electronic distribution) of copyrighted sound recording can be criminally prosecuted even if no one is earning a profit. This law closed a legal loophole: before 1997, it was impossible to prosecute MP3 traders who were giving away their stolen merchandise.

The NET Act was passed with heavy lobbying from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the victim's voice in the "victimless crime" of MP3 trading. The RIAA, a nonprofit association representing major record labels, is running a one-entity crusade against illegal MP3s. Universities, with their fast networks and large number of bored smart kids, are a hotbed of such activi-

ties and a major focus of RIAA's campaign. As their web site (www.riaa.com) states, they provide a kit for university and college administrators which "serve[s] as a framework for discussion of music and the Internet. Its purpose is to raise awareness that reproducing and distributing music illegally is akin to stealing, and such actions have serious ethical and legal consequences."

But education is not the extent of the RIAA's efforts to secure justice. Just ask sophmore Jeremy Stacy, who may bear the distinction of being ITS's first bust. He had his MP3 site, Neuromancer's Pad, up within weeks of arriving at Yale. "Actually, my first day here, I talked to one of the ITS people and asked if it would be okay to run my own server off of Yale's," Stacy said. "He said it would be okay, so I thought I had clearance." Stacy's site was set up using a proprietary server software called Hotline, which he downloaded for free off the web. He describes the program as "basically like a newsgroup, AOL instant messenger, and FTP all in one. " Neuromancer's Pad was a tribute to Stacy's love of industrial music-he also has an industrial show on WYBC. In addition to illegal ripped or downloaded cracks, he had a good number of unsigned bands who made their music freely available in hopes of gaining recognition. "Originally, I was doing it because I was making a few hundred dollars a week," Stacy said. "But then I took the banner programs off, because I could get more hits that way, and I didn't really need the money. I liked being somebody who organized a place for people to come on and get to know each other." On a couple of occasions, small record labels like Grimworks Records ended up signing bands they had first heard on Stacy's site.

Before uploading a single song, Stacy sought assurance that all this activity was above-board. "It's nice to have the law on your side," he said. He had a lawyer draft an agreement which he

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thought would make his site kosher. Users had to click through a series of disclaimers, comm on to many MP3 sites: all copyrighted music must be deleted from the visitor's hard drive within 24 hours, those who kept downloaded music were told to buy the actual co, etc. These warnings, of course, were completely unenforceable, alcin to the OVER 18 ONLY! admonitions that blanket porn sites. But according to Stacy's lawyer, these disclaimers constituted a legal "back door" that absolved Stacy of all liability.

This belief is specifically targeted as a misconception on RIM's site: "It doesn't matter how many disclaimers you put on a site. If you reproduce, offer to distribute and/or distribute full-length sound recordings without a license, you are violating copyright law."

As for Stacy's site, RIM wasn't having any of it. Last spring Stacy got an e-mail signed by Daniel Updegrove, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg, and U niversity President Richard Levin. The RIAA had been monitoring his activities, had found some MP3s from their artists, and had written to the university threatening legal action against Stacy if he did not cease and desist, which he did.

So it was RIM that first brought this kind of activity to Yale's attention. "In general, we don't monitor for content, becau~e what students have on their computers is their own business," Updegrove said. "But we've responded promptly to reports of RIAA concerns." Indeed, President Levin

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put presadministrators, turn put pressure on students. No lawyers are called in and no money changes hands. Case closed?

Not quite. "MP3" is a featured category on most Internet search engines, along with "sex" and "sports." One click leads to a galaxy of sites exhaustively indexed. Some of these, such as The

Change Music Network, are legal, and feature largely unknown artists who release their work in hopes of increasing their popularity, or more popular bands who make a few rarities or previews available for the hardcore fans. But many more sites, like Folkinshteyn's and Stacy's, carry pirated tracks. These are mostly maintained coverrly by enthusiasts who rake advantage of fast Internet connections at universities or -companies. And it is against these sires that RlAA has taken up arms, with a combination of public education, surveillance, complaints, and threats. But their campaign is hindered by both misinformation and too much information.

Stacy and Folkinshteyn profess innocent ignorance of both law and university policy. "From what I could find out, 1 djdn't think that having a server per se was illegal," Follcinshteyn said. "I must have seen misinformation created by people who run servers." The two use strikingly similar legal analogies, based on the idea that receiving, not distributing, MP3s is the real crime. "You can't sue Ford for providing a getaway car," said Stacy.

"If someone steals my gun ana uses it to commit a murder, I'm nor liable," said Folkinshteyn. "I didn't ask the man-to rake my gun and shoot someone." Although this comparison doesn't hold up in light of the NET Act, the sheer proliferation of MP3 sires lends it an air of credibility.

Yale's networ~olig {available at www.yale. edu!policy!policy_dcc.html) has not done much to di~el the legal confusion. It has no explicit reference to the RlA.A, MP3S or the NET Act. "Copyright law" is the sixth subitem of the sixth item in the document, with a single sentence advising users to "observe intellectual property rights ... as they apply to electronic forms of information." Updegrove admits, "In hindsight, I would have put more effort into promulgating the current policy... it appears as if some folks are not aware of the policy or think it doesn't apply co them." Srudents are marched in their willful ignorance by TTS itself, which seems

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to be pursuing a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with resp~t to MP3S. "I can't imagine the circumstances under which we would turn someone over to law enforcement," Updegrove said. "There is a very strong likelihood of a copyright problem o n our networks. Bur we do nor routinely look at content." ..Education is the key to answering complex internet questions," claims the RIM's site in its attempt to lay down the law. Bur the dictates of the marketplace, and the trends of the computer industry, may prove stronger than enforceable laws.

"Computer power is increasing much faster, than the speed of the network," Updegrove said. "Two years ago, [a] 300 megahen. [processer] was fast! These days I'm nor even sure you can buy one. A 1000 megahen. is standard. But in those two years the network hasn't gained any capacity ... as computers get faster and there's more interesting multimedia content, use of the network will continue ro grow."

Indeed, ITS is currc;ndy barding against a new, easy-ro-use program char is endangering its network capacity: Napsrer.

I found ten or so sires online which distribute Napsrer and its Mac equivalent, Macsrer, for free. The program hooks your computer up to a giant filesharing network which can search all other users' computers for the MP3 you want. In turn, the user's computer itself becomes a web server, making all its MP3S available on the web and exposing its IP address to RIM or anyone who's looking.

On Friday, February 5, ITS called an emergency meeting of all computing assistants tocfiscuss e apster sttuaoon and to brainstorm solutions. Two weeks before, iTSliad deoded to Check Napster's elfect on network traffic, turning it off without warning ... We turned it off and the traffic dropped like a rock," Updegrove told the twenty o r so computing assistants assembled in LC 211. T he test came at the same time as an upgrade of maximum network capacity from 10 mb/s to 1~ mb/s. "On the very first day [of the higher capacity], with Napster rurned off, we used more than we were paying for," said Updegrove. "This fEB RUARY II, 2000

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frustrated demand," fro m users who can't ger fast enough access ro the web while the bandwidth is being taken up with Napscer.

In the program's few short months of popularity, Napster users have become the big rig caravans o n the highway of the Yale network. ITS has a program that allows it ro capture the IP addresses of the highestfrequency users. " For the last two weeks, whenever we've done snapshots of the big ten, about 85 percent have been student Napsrers," Updegrove said.

ITS hopes that students will curb Napster hogging voluntarily. A publicity campaign is beginning to warn students of the dangers of spewing the contents of their hard drives o ur onto the Internet, where anyone can find out how much stolen music they have. Yale is reluctant to take more drastic seeps, although several coUeges, including the University of Southern California, Oregon State, Northwestern and Oxford, have already blocked access to Napstcr. In November 1999, the RlAA announced plans to sue the company for copyright infringement. Bur even these measures are only a temporary sray in the proliferation of MP3 technology.

The final threat to musical free trade will not be opposition, bur appropriation.

The RlAA is announcing the end of the "pirate era" of music trading with something called the "Secure Digital Music Initiative," an industry forum for the development of audio watermark technologies, which would allow MPJS co be sold online while protecting their author's copyright.

They have already developed a portable MP3 listening device and are now working on "an overall architecture for delivery of <ligiralffiusic in all forms."

In reality, this project is more like installing a fence and security guards around an existing building than designing a new one. But it looks as though the Wild West days of the Wo rld Wide Web soon be history.

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Like it or not, Yale is now the only player in New Haven Development.

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By Dan Kurtz-Phelan and Nadia Sussman

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VERY SuNDAY NIGHT at Branford's Chowder Pot III restaurant, patrons eat, mingle and dance to the Dixieland tunes of the Galvanized Jazz Band. Most of the couples stepping deftly across the dance floor have white hair. The band itself has been playing weekly for almost 30 years. The Chowder Pot is hardly the type of place where one would expect to find one of New Haven's most influential developers. Nevertheless, Joel Schiavone is center-stage, strumming a banjo and belting out an occasional ballad alongside the band's six other members.

Since returning to New Haven in 1971 after earning an MBA from Harvard and managing a string of nightclubs, Schiavone has played a central, though controversial, role in the city's development. "This guy's a Connecticut legend," one diner informs his companion at a table set back from the dance floor. "He's one of the most famous people in Connecticut."

After decades of banjo and real estate, and even a brief foray into Republican politics, Schiavone is giving up on his hometown.

"I'm trying to get out of New Haven. I'm tired of it. I've been talking about [revitalization] for thirty years ap.d made absolutely no progress." Schiavone, a 1958 Yale gcad~ate and native New Havener, .first entered the local real estate market in 1979 and quickly came to dominate. the city's small downtown. He has owned several apart¡ ment and office buildings, and was central in the redevelopment of the Palace Theater. By 1985, Schiavone controlled Chapel Street between High and College and quickly transformed the dilapi<Jated strip into the commercial center it is today. fu New Haven's economy turned downward, however, Schiavone's partner in the venture, First Constitution Bank, filed for bankruptcy. In 1993, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) inherited the bank's share of the properties and became the dominant partner. While Schiavone continued to manage the properties, he had lost control of their fate.

Finally, in 1998, Yale purchased the buildings at the request of the city. Corning in the wake of expanded interest in commercial development, this incursion into the local real estate market bred suspicion and, in certain circles, resentment.

Schiavone's story is not unique, but it is significant in light of the shifting power structure in New Haven. Yale's voice has long been a prominent one, but in the past there we're others to balance it. Now those other voices have dropped away, leaving Yale's preeminent. Yale has been integral in designing and implementing various urban renewal and redevelopment proposals over the past 50 years. What is new is the starkness of the contrast between Yale's tremendous wealth and investment potencial and the city's relative poverty. This gives the university the unprecedented ability-and, according to some, responsibility-to shape New Haven. As Schiavone and his fellow power-players fade from the limelight, the burden of defining the course of the city's development falls on Yale, and the future of New Haven may hang in the balance.

1~'her e

Was 0n e r6

THE NEw JouRNAL

"NEW HAVEN WAS CONSIDERED A PLACE tO which aJl sortS of people vigorate irs dying downtown. Although redevelopment attempts wanted to move back in the lsos and '6os," reminisces Rick Wolff, had brought little benefit to the city as a whole, development cona New Haven resident and . Yale PhD, who commutes to the tinued to be a lucrative b usiness in New Haven, particularly because government subsidies accompanied by tax-abatemen tS made investUniversity of Massachusetts to teach economics. Over the past halfcentury, New Haven has become a symbol of urban economic mentS relatively low risk. Schiavone was successfUl for several years, decline with the usual social problems-poverty, crime, drugs, prosembarking on ambitious projectS to draw upscale shoppers to the titution, AIDs-and a test case for urban renewal efforts. Yale's rise Chapel Street area and the Ninth Square district, as well as working to create a theater district. H e also quickly became one of New to preeminence against this dismal backdrop was not sudden. It resulted from an extended history of other community forces losing Haven's most eccentric and controversial public figures. "In the their power after failed urban renewal attempts.

1980s, he was a lightning rod for criticism of City Hall's trickle By the late 1950s a post-war exodus of industry left New Haven down policies, tax breaks for the rich, and his eviction of poor peoone of the poorest cities in the nation. However, unlike other downple despite receiving city help," says New Haven Advocate Associate towns in similar decline, New H aven had a unique and attractive Editor Paul Bass. Schiavone, however, portrays himself as an examresource: Yale, one of the wealthiest universities in the world. Local ple for positive and lasting urban renewal and, indeed, many of his political figures latched on to this unusual marriage of urban downtown projects, the Chapel Street shops in particular, have condecline and academic prestige and used it to secure federal grant tinued to prosper through the 1990s.

The effortS of Schiavone and his colleagues were not sufficient money for redevelopment, touting New Haven as a laboratory for to stave off New Haven's persistent economic decline. With Yale testing solutions to urban problems in the United States. In the 1960s, Yale designed anti-poverty measures aimed at creating jobs owning a huge proportion of the¡ most valuable real estate in New and improving the welfare system. When those efforts yielded meaHaven and paying taxes on only one percent of it, the tax burden o n local residents¡ had ger results, decision-mak""When .the recession comes to New Haven, all the Yale become the highest in the ers embraced grandiose, university-researched redepolice in the world won't be able to stop these prob- state--30 to 50 percent higher than in the survelopment schemes that lems. All these poor people living within a stone's rounding suburbs. The would fundamentally alter the city's physical layout. throw of the campus are going to come over the fence., exodus of business and better-off residents left Since the earliest attempts to revitalize New Haven, Yale has worked closely with the behind a poor urban population unable to support the kind of Aashy commercial downtown that the city had tried to create. city and its governing elite to shape the course of urban renewal. For The second half of the 1980s proved deadly to local business. irs professors and students, the city serves as a real-life testing Banks failed, developers went belly-up and the city witnessed what ground for theories and blueprints. In addition, the university Bass calls a "near total abandonment of for-profit industry and receives considerable federal fUnding for irs research effortS. "To locally-based financial institutions." Schiavone experienced this have New Haven fUnction as a lab opportunity for dozens of process first-hand as his partner, First Constitution Bank, struggled, departments that do research not only benefitS the professors and and the market tightened. "In the mid-'8os, there were tremendous studentS who actually do it, but it is actually a financial benefit for changes in the city administration ... there was general agreement the university-a vehicle for keeping the government money among local developers that the administration ostracized the local Bowing into Yale," says Wolff. Since corning to New Haven in 1964, private sector. There is no business left in New Haven." The city's Wolff has extensively researched New Haven's economic decline economic distress made it clear that the development establishment and Yale's relations with the city during that process. had failed to stave off the onslaught of urban blight and, in the end, The end of the 1960s and the beginning of the next decade had collapsed on itself brought the construction of two interstate highways which converged in the center of New Haven's, and the state's, most densely FoR ALDERMAN AND YALE graduate Julio Gonzalez, Yale's rise to populated neighborhood, and a downtown shopping district cenpreeminence ultimately depended on the decline of New Haven tered around the Chapel Square Mall. Such large-scale schemes gave ourside the university. "Yale's growth is only noticeable in the vacurise to a third category of central policy-shapers--<ievelopers. This um of other private-sector leadership." While Yale may not have triad of Yale, city officials and developers envisioned New Haven as sought the power it has now acquired, this alone does not exonera bustling commercial center that would bring back the shoppers ate the university's past role. Wolff condemns the university-develwho had Bed to the suburbs in the preceding decades. Federal oper-city relationship as a self-sustaining system, a cabal that has money Bowed in, professors researched plans, and private developbenefited each of irs members while doing little for New Haven. ers tore down, built up, renovated and overhauled the city's down"We have thirty-five years of a partnership between Yale University, town. the city of New Haven, the federal government and private develBy the time Schiavone came on to the real estate scene in 1979, opers. My conclusion is that they should all be arrested for what New Haven had already undergone over a decade of effortS to rein-

FEBRUARY u,

2000

17

they did because the resulcs a.re terrible," accuses Wolff. The developers do not escape his blame, but as individual businessmen, they are not his prime target.

"This is a city whose economic development is an unmirigated disaster. And in that disaster, Schiavone, and a whole bunch of others-he's in no way particularly to blame--they just cashed in."

In Wolff's eyes, New Haven has cycled through the same series of unsuccessful redevelopment techniques with every new city administration for the past thirty years, and each time, the city's economic and social problems have only been exacerbated. Though the Chapel Square mall has been refinanced multiple times and at great expense, its two anchor department stores-Malley's and Macy's-both collapsed over a decade ago and much of the retail space in the downtown mall lies vacant. The suburban shoppers who the city expected co flow in on 1-95 and 1-91 never came; they constructed their own malls and avoided New Haven altogether.

In addition to redevelopment strategies doomed to fail, Wolff poincs to the university's tax exemption on nearly all of ics property as one of the city's central problems, a view shared by Paul Bass. In the mid-198os, Wolff estimated what Yale would owe in property taxes if it paid the same tax rate as the average family living in the poverty-stricken Dixwell neighborhood. Basing his research on the university's own statementS of ics property value published in the annual financial report, Wolff concluded that Yale would have owed the city about $80 million a yearthe university was paying $4 million at the time. Though the state's Payment in Lieu ofTaxes (PILOT) program partially compensates for this, it does not nearly close the gap. This past year, New Haven received under $20 million from PILOT, less than a quarter of Wolff's estimate. This loss of tax revenue gains more and more significance as the university gees richer and New Haven's economy gees steadily worse. For

Wolff and many New Haven residents, the dispariry is unconscionable. "They were not prepared to take any of the steps and, above all, to make any of the necessary expenditures to make a serious assault on poverty," he charges.

While Schiavone's criticisms of Yale differ markedly from Wolff's, he agrees that

Schfavone: New Haven politicians -should be in Yale"s pocket. There¡s nobody else: the increasing economic divide between the university and the city is deeply troubling: "Yale is the only major university in the United States that has not had a significant impact on itS city, and the gap is widening." Schiavone describes an entrenched isolationism on the parr of the university. In his days as a major developer, Schiavone was one of the university's most vocal critics. "They were isolated on all four sides," he recalls. City Planner Karyn Gilvarg confirms that this "perception of Yale as a 500-pound sleeping gorilla" was widespread. Schiavone goes further, charging that Yale exhibited an overt unwillingness to invest in New Haven, instead

engaging in what Paul Bass refers co as "head-in-the-sand, moat capitalism." In the face of the university's apparent reluctance to proactively address the city's economic problems, New Haven languished, and blame fell on Yale.

However, attempts by Yale co ease rela~ions with the city, such as the creation of the Office of New Haven Affairs and University Properties, have improved communications. The inception of the Yale Homebuyers' Program, and more controversially, the redevelopment of Broadway and the purchase of the Chapel Street shops exemplify the style of city involvement the university has recently embraced.

"Now Yale has tried to be a constructive player in renewal. That's neither morally laudable nor venal; it's a business decision good for ics bottom line and at times good for New Haven, too," says Bass.

Yale's Office of New Haven and State Affairs, headed by former Baltimore developer Bruce Alexander, has no trouble. compiling accolades and statistics to attest t"O ics positive role in community development.

The university has received national attention from President Clinton for ics literacy programs and H U D Secretary H enry Cisneros for establishing community partnerships. The Yale Homebuyers' Program has helped almost 400 local residentS purchase homes. "There are few universities who have committed themselves as vigorously as Yale to long-term, comprehensive institutional partnerships for community development," says Michael Morand, an Assistant Vice-President in the Office of New Haven Affairs.

Yale and the city's model for New Haven redevelopment in recent years has been mostly incremental in ics approach, bringing in businesses one by one and periodically renovating buildings. Though New Haven's economic distress is acute, Karyn Gilvarg claims that Yale and the city are "constantly chipping away at it." Many local residentS and business owners are satisfied with this development tactic and THE NEW jOURNAL

welcome Yale's expansion as a commercial landowner. Claire Criscuolo of Claire's Corner Copia lauds Yale's current communiry involvement, especially Yale's acquisition of the building that houses her restaurant. "Does Yale own a lor of properry? Yes, they do. And rhey should." Yale's claims and rhe cescimony of small-business owners make a srrong case for the benefits of Yale's growing role in fostering both public and privace secror growth. These fail, however, ro eradicate deep-seated doubt in che communiry about the future ofNew Haven.

Is this efforr roo linle, too late? The question unites many of the ciry's most disparate elements in an answer: yes. "I think [Yale's] changing things now, bur they're so far behind, they need to put forrh a massive efforr jusc ro catch up. I don't see a massive efforr," deplores Schiavone. He pain ts a srarding picture of a ciry u nerly ravaged: "There are only two people left in New Haven: the ciry and Yale ...They're the two czars who have been on a battlefield for the pasc fifty years and they end up in a wasteland." The former developer peers wistfully out at his hometown from his third-floor office on Chapel Srreer. "Everything is gone and they're the only two people left to care." Schiavone is nor alone in his account. "What gets me most upset is the gap between what is and what could be. It's a tragedy," lamencs Wolff. Alderman Gonzalez affirms this suspicion of Yale in the local comrnuniry. Yale officials are quick to dismiss such dissenters.

"Describing New Haven as a 'wasteland' is truly ridiculous ... the only wasteland is between the ears of New Haven's detracrors," says Morand.

WHILE CITY OFFICIALS AND YALE may care abour New Haven, critics agree that only Yale has the resources to effect dramatic changes. The universiry's vision, if realized, will determine New Haven's future. Quick to claim knowledge of the universiry's longterm plan for New Haven, Wolff paints Yale as a quiecly manipulative institution

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with the unspoken intention of making drastic changes. As he describes it, Yale wants to reduce the city's population to half of its current size, letting poverty drive out less desirable residents; in the wake of this urban cleansing, only Yale employees and wealthy commuters would remain. "It'll be a nice 'college town.' They would really like that. They don't have quite enough power to do it, but they're biding their time.

Therefore they don't want too much of a wonderful program for poor people ~cause they'd like them to go."

Schiavone also sees New Haven moving in the direction of a "college town." But for him, this vision should not be condemned-it is the only option left. "Forget creating a commercial center with high rise buildings," he wrote in the early '90s, "realize that we can't ever become a tourist destination; and accept the happy F.ue--we are now and maybe always will be a college town." Accordingly, Schiavone condones what he portrays as Yale's control of local decision-making. "[Politicians] should be in Yale's pocket. There's nobody else."

There is little idealism in Schiavone's words. To him, there is no room for such notions in a city with only one path out of economic desolation.

Nonetheless, Schiavone faults Yale's past and current involvement with the city for being fur too feeble to make any substantial change.

So what does he want? Yale to replace him. With no private-sector leadership left, the university needs to fill the vacuum.

Yale, he maintains, ought to invest in making New Haven attractive for its own benefit-to draw top students and faculty-and in the process desig.n a cute and comfortable college town. Although such self-interest is cannon-fodder for many of Yale's critics, he claims that philanthropic alms-giving only exacerbates the situation.

"IfYale tries to solve all the problems of the poor, and doesn't cry to solve its own problems, then everyone gets dragged down into the mud ... Dwight Hall is nauseating." In Schiavone's vision, capitalistic endeavors are the only way to resurrect New Haven: "Yale's self-interest is our salvation."

But even this faith·in the healing powers of self-interested investment does not

THE New JouRNAL

1

give him confidence that a solution to New Haven's problems is fast emerging. Until the university confronts the extent of the "' tion, and economic barrenness, the destitu deep bitterness sewn into the social fabric of the community, it can never effectively rum things around. "[Yale] people don't understand the depth of the problem."

Rick Wolff, in very similar language, points to building animosity and resentment toward Yale, and he looks ahead, to a time when the current economic boom collapses. "When the recession com es to New Haven, all the Yale police in the world won't be able to stop these problems. All these poor people living within a stone's throw of the campus are going to come over the fence."

THE l:lALF-CENTURY STORY of New Haven's decay is a deeply human one, and irs costs must be measured in human terms. "All of our kids have left town. Nobody has kids left in New Haven," remarks Schiavone.

"That is the most damning comment you can make."

In the eyes of many in the local communiry-Schiavone, Wolff, Bass-Yale has emerged from this vast historical landscape with the future of New Haven in its hands.

"At this point, New Haven's economy is so dependent on Yale... that leaders welcome whatever Yale will do," says Paul Bass. Yale is in a position of power like never before.

The way the university will play out irs role remains to be seen, but it is clear that the city has reached a critical juncture.

Whatever path it chooses, Yale will have to reconcile with the animosity many residents feel toward the u n iversity.

Shaping irs Long-term vision will require careful examination of the complex economic forces, including Yale's own presence, that have brought New Haven to its present situation. Most important, Yale must act with the constant awareness that whatever it does-or does not do--will affect tens of thousands of lives.

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2000

~~~HEN I MET NEwsCHANNEL 8 CORRESPONDENT Erin

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Cox one gray morning, she was rushing back to her Waterbury bureau with a copy of rhe daily R~pub/ican-Amnican in hand. Its name to the contrary, the ~ublican-Amnican is a nonpartisan look at local news, and it's rhe first place a good reporter looks for leads every morning (rhough she prefers to get ideas on her own).

Today was slow.

There was a story about state mastery rest scores. They were up a little, especially in Hartford. Scores, said Erin (everyone's on a first-name basis in the TV biz), usually make good local news. They get regular people worked up about schools. Regulae people ace rhe good guys in rhe local news world, and bad scores vindicate rhem in their eternal struggle against the government. That isn't quite how Erin put it, but it's basically her job to tell variations on this narrative every day. Despite rhe appeal, however, it's hard to turn mediocre scores into good television. "I like to tell stories," Erin said, and, it seems, there isn't much of a story here; just rhe scores, which rhe ~ublican-Ammcan already published.

It was time ro see what else was on the ledger. An NFL superstar named Lincoln Kennedy was in rhe news for some reason. "He must have had interesti ng parents," I said. "Yeah," she said. "Both Democrats." Erin had never heard of Lincoln Kennedy, rho ugh, so that story was out.

There was a controversy over rhe appointment of rhe new interim Waterbury Schools Superintendent. Erin had covered this already-in fact, she got the scoop.

But the ~ublican-Ammcan got the first shot at covering rhe raise that Waterbury gave its Chief of Finance. "Interesting," Erin said. "But it's not only not video; it's a one-town story." Later, she continued, "Nor all stories are interesting to everyone. Some stories are informative--you know, about taXes. But sometimes they're entertaining, too--maybe a new school gym opening, and that's fun." If only a new school gym were opening today.

22

Then Erin started: "Oh, look, there's a great rhing here about the pink things you can buy for Valentine's Day. Cute!" Erin is an uncommonly nice woman of about 33 who acts more girlish than she probably is. There was a Beanie Baby on her computer, slouched next to a Smwf. She has pictures of kids all over the office.

"Is that your daughter?" I asked, pointing to one. "No," she said, a little sadly. "All these pictures are nieces and nephews." Erin's nor married and she doesn't have kids-"no one would care if I .died in a helicopter crash," she said-but I son of hoped someone cared enough to get her somerhing pink.

Okay, okay, we weren't gerting anywhere. Were there any good stories? The New Haven bureau, Erin said, was going to do a follow-up on the crane rhat had collapsed in Milford the day before.

Two people had died. One guy was pinned for eight hours, his legs crushed under the extraordinary weight of the crane. This was a great story, because Chopper-8 had gotten it all on camera-in fact, they'd scunled pact of Erin's piece to shoot the last scenes. "For chose people that tried to rescue him, it must have been moment by moment. It was like rhat whole Jessica-in-the-well thing over again." Jessica-in-the-well is the Holy Grail of TV news ... 1 mean, it was awful ... but it was great TV." Today clearly wasn't going to be a day for great TV. "It doesn't look like a weather-story day," she said, drawing the drapes. The snow was too light. Erin had to think of something, though, before the daily 9:30AM conference call when the Waterbury bureau swaps ideas with the New Haven bureau. I should probably now reveal the little-known but easily discoverable fact rhat Erin herself is the Waterbury bureau. No other reporters, no secretary. Just Erin and her cameraman, AI Mack-they even do rheir own cleaning. The office, in a Marriott, is pretty small: just big enough for some editing equipment, a computer, a fax machine, and a TV with CNN. Erin had rurned the TV on when she first got in, but the sound was down and I don't think she paid much artention. It was mostly there for the ambiance.

THE NEw JouRNAL

Al wasn't here yet. He was out ÂŁilming the weather, as he often does on snowy mornings. But Al apparently likes co remain behind the camera. Erin cold me he didn't wane me co ask him any questions or quote him.

Ten AM: time for the 9:30 conference calL The New Haven folks (TV news people say "folks" a lot) didn't have a lot of good ideas. Someone was pushing.a piece on che city of Seymour, which, deep in debe, had recently assessed all its homeowners an extra property tax. "The city's a mess," Erin said. "If I were a homeowner, I'd go nuts." Erin doesn't seem co like taxes coo much, but coday she didn't dislike them enough co do a story on them. She had another idea: a smalJ town in northwestern Connecticut called Winsted has eight miles of dirty pipes, and some of the cap water is discolored. Things really started co heat up this month when a few residents refused co pay their property taxes until the city deans the water. "I love a yellow-water story," the producer in New Haven said.

It was decided. Erin starred making phone calls.

Al got back around 10:30. He was a big teutonic guy with a strong jaw, wearing a blue Communication Workers of America jacket. We shook hands without saying much, and he sac down co edit the weather footage. Today was special because Al had shoes of his dalmatian, Charlie, romping through the snow. Even more special: we learned that the anchor was going co mention Charlie by name. Al swore softly as he worked.

Meanwhile, Erin got ready ro go. She showed me her heavyduty winter-wear, which was boots with rights and thick socks underneath her navy-blue pantsuit. "Always be prepared. You know," she said, "people think I go around with a can of hairspray and rube of lipstick." She thought for a second: "And, I do-but I also have co bring warm clothes." Erin admitted that part of her job is looking good, which is especially hard on days like today, when she's feeling sick. Despite the hardship, she shellacked make-up on her face like a real pro. In the end, she looked sort of like a dressedFEBRUARY II, 2000

for-success porcelain doH. This is how all TV reporrers-men and women-look in person.

Before we left, I asked Erin if it was ever difficult for her co remain objective about cases like this. "If I cold you I didn't have opinions, I'd be lying. But part of the fun is you teH a story-if you already know how it's going to end, it's no fun."

Finally, it was time to cake the Stormteam-8 Explorer to Winsted. Erin's original idea was co knock on doors at random and ask about the water. But she happened co gee lucky and catch Charlene St. Sauveur on the phone before we arrived. Charlene was at home with her husband, Jim (who, ironically, works for a waterfilter company) and her 22-month-old son, Sean Patrick. Erin was psyched because, as it turned out, Sean Patrick was her brother's name. She kept cooing about how great the baby was: "God bless him," she would say, "he's really being very good." Erin is very friendly. In point of face, the baby was whiny, imperious, and probably too old to have a pacifier. But I think Erin honestly didn't harbor any of these thoughts, or if she did, she didn't welcome them the way I did. Instead, she seemed taken with Charlene's domestic bliss. She and Charlene connected right away-Jim talked to Al for a little while, but it soon became clear Jim wasn't going to be part of the story. He just didn't seem co care as deeply as Charlene.

The house was cluctered with all kinds of tchocchkes: a twofoot princess doll encased in glass, a set of 12 Pillsbury Doughboy figurines, one for each month, "Family Circus" cartoons pasted to the refrigerator, Barney on the TV {with no one watching). To make matters worse, Erin, Al, and I had cracked in a good deal of dirty snow that Charlene, in her socks, tried surreptitiously co wipe up from time co time. , Now it was time for Erin to find out the facts. Charlene said the water in the pipes was discolored. The color was the main problem with it, actually, because the lab analysis bad come back negative for bacteria and harmful minerals. In fact, the city claimed the water was safe to drink. Charlene, however, wondered if there was

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too much iron, which she thought could cause heart disease and cancer. (Iron poisoning does pose a health risk, though cancer and heart disease aren't major effects.)

Erin didn't look much into the more morbid side of the problem, and in the end, it didn't get into the story. Nevertheless, she seemed to agree with Charlene's rather dire assessment of things. She compared Wmsted to the town in A Civil Action where bad water caused a cancer cluster. "I mean, the water's safe to drink," Erin said.

"But as a mom, how do you feel about it?"

As a mom, Charlene was obviously a little worried that her children had to bathe in brown water. Some of the family's clothes were ruined, too. And they were trying to get more tests done, because some of the women on the block were suffering from urinary tract infections, which Charlene also attributed to the water.

The city government, for its part. had not found a solution. The pipes were probably causing the discoloration, but to replace them would cost around $4 million.

Wmsted simply couldn't afford it. Instead, since lab tests said the water was non-toxic, the city had people use it for everything except drinking-they provided bottled water, free of charge.

But when the city had the chutzpah to send the St. Sauveurs their regular water bill for the dirty water, Charlene and a few of her neighbors were indignant. They simply refused to pay. That was going to be Erin's angle.

Meanwhile, Al was setting up to get some action shots. The main problem was that there was no action. The water wasn't brown today. It was clear. Charlene looked pretty disappointed, so she went upstairs to find some clothes that had been ruined in the wash. Again, she was unsuccessful. The kids must have had them on, she said. But Al had to get something, so he made Charlene sit down on the tub with little Sean and turn on the water.

By that time, Charlene's neighbor Linda had seen the Storntteam-8 mobile in the driveway and had stopped by with a bottle of yellow water taken from her tap a few days before. She'd been saving it for reporters (apparently Fox61 News had already been through town, so folks were prepared). Everyone was pretty excited about this piece of evidence. It really looked disgusting. So AI brought his cam-

era down and panned all around the bottle.

Erin was impressed by this, and she said, "We could have shot the bottle from only one way-but that would be boring."

Next, Al sho t Charlene taking a piece of clothing out of the hamper and examining it for spots. This probably would have been more poignant if the garment in question had actually had any spots on it, but Charlene's look of consternation was pretty effective as it was. Al then had Charlene open and close the refrigerator a few times, to get a good shot of the bottled water.

That was when Charlene's other ~ neighbor, Leesa Ringstad arrived. Leesa proudly bore a shirt stained brown in the wash. "I was happy to see this," she said with a bizarre lack of sarcasm. What was probably more bizarre was that Erin and Charlene seemed to unde rstand her perfectly. Al filmed the shirt at close range so the spots would show up. Leesa also brought over a bunch of stained glasses that she was keeping as evidence. Then she indignantly held up $10 cash someone from the city had given her as compensation for the tests she'd run on her water (which, by the way, also tested negative for bacteria and minerals). In an act of rebellion, she was planning on "donating" it back to the city at an upcoming meeting.

Al filmed everything, but he wanted to capture Sean doing something. So Charlene asked if they wanted to shoot her baby son drinking the (dirty) water. Erin, naturally, refused. "Only if he drank it on his own," she said. But the filet is, practically everything Al filmed was staged in one way or another: Charlene drawing the bath, for example, or picking up the laundry, or opening and closing the fridge several times for no reason. On lV all this sruff looks normal, but in real life, it's sort of surreal to see people doing the most banal things in a way that no one would ever do them. Who goes through the hamper and picks out one shirt to wash?

Now it was time to film the tease. Erin stood up in front of the camera, holding a bottle of brown water, and said in a decisive news voice, "If your water looked like this, would you pay for it? I'm Erin Cox with the story of a taxpayer protest, up next: The camera loves Erin, and she seemed to come alive in front -of it. Her hoarse voice and earnest sympathy with Charlene and Leesa gave way to operatic tones of our:ragt

THE NEW JouRNAL

at the city. And not a moment too soon.

When we left Chatlene's place, it was time co pay a visit to those government thugs.

The town manager, Karen Johnson, wasn't available, so Erin wouldn't be able to interview her. That was bad, because it "' out what wouldn't be possible to find would happen if Charlene and Leesa didn't pay their taxes. Plus, the story looked a little lopsided, showing only the protestors' point of view.

So we stopped by the office of the Winsted Director of Public Works. In a moment of gonzo, Erin had Al bring the camera and asked to see the Director, Pat Hague, who turned out to be in. Pat Hague was a middle-aged guy dressed in jeans and a work shirt and smoking a cigarette. His everyday-Joe countenance made him a sympathetic character in person, but it didn't seem to come through in front of the camera. He was obviously a little nervous-especially after the job Fox61 had done on his office, as he told us. Unlike Charlene and Leesa, however, he didn't seem to have learned anything from this experience, because what he said was really stupid: "This water is safe to drink-it's discolored ... I wouldn't drink it neither." In retrospect, I wondered if the fact that the city gives away bottled drinking water made up for Pat's view. But at the time, Erin, Al, and I were all thinking, gotcha!

Erin said gleefully, "People say the media distorts, but he really said that." And later, "I didn't even have to ask a leading question." But what most scandalized Erin was Pat's smoking in a public building, which, she whispered to Al, "is a federal offense."

Now it was back to the office to edit.

A1 had a lot of stuff on tape, and it had to be boiled down to one minute and thirty seconds of news-like turning sap into maple syrup. Erin wrote the copy quickly and effortlessly, while Al cut and pasted the video, at turns swearing and apologizing for swearing.

The editing process was almost as surreal as the filming process. Erin narrated the action in her news-voice. "The water from Charlene St. Sauveur's faucet is dirty," she said, Charlene drew a bath of relatively clear water. Then a shot of the water bottle Linda had brought over, as Charlene spoke: "It has a yellow tint to it, a dark brown tint to it." No one mentioned that the water we were looking at was not from

Charlene's faucet. Later, Charlene's voice said, "We're not going to pay anything until they give us clean, healthy water," as they cut back to the bath. But since the bath was full of clear water, it didn't make much sense. The problem is that water could be poisonous or it could be safe and you can't tell the difference just by looking.

You can only tell by testing it. On TV, though, the boring old test gets short shrift compared to the great visuals of (the neighbors') yellow water.

More egregiously, Charlene and Leesa admitted they didn't know any other Winsted residents who weren't paying their taxes. Leesa said she didn't understand why more people weren't protesting like herbut that bite didn't make i~ onto the show.

Since Charlene and Leesa were the only two folks Erin talked to, on TV their vigilantism looked like a popular revolt. When Erin said, "Folks were more than insulted when they got their water bills," she meant the two of them, not the town generally.

But you couldn't have known that from watching the show. Then, Erin narrated, "Clean water may not come right around the corner. City officials say the problem is probably the old pipes." That's true. But Erin didn't mention the prohibitively high cost of fixing the problem, especially in light of the fact that the water tested negative for bacteria and minerals. Instead, the city looked like a mom that didn't care about her kids enough to give them clean water, while Charlene and Leesa looked like moms who did.

After the story ran, Keith, the anchor, cut to Erin live in the Waterbury studio.

She said, "We tried to find out what would happen to Charlene and Leesa if they didn't pay their water bills, but the town manager did not return our repeated phone calls." In the real wotld, the folks at the Winsted town manager's office could have been too busy with work to make the five o'clock news. But through the myopic eye of the camera, their absence seemed sinister. On TV, it seems, if you don't show up, you lose.

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FEBRUARY II, 2000

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â&#x20AC;˘,

by John Swansburg

â&#x20AC;˘ SACHS HAS FOURTEEN BusiNESs PRINCIPLES. reminding his audience that not all non-profit work is hands-on Principle Number 2 reads, "Our assets are our people, capital, community service. "Like corporations," he said, "we have budreputation." At Goldman Sachs people clearly come first. gets." In the world of budgets, however, size matters, and he quickly moved from compare to contrast, adrnining, "We can't keep you Recruiting, therefore, has its own principle, Principle Number 6: "We make an unusual effort to identify and recruit the very best because we can pay you a lot of money." What non-profit work can person for every job. Although our activities are measured in biloffer you, said Colavito, are the intangible rewa.rds of working for lions of dollars, we select our people one by one." change. But, he stressed, that work can be just as mundane as At universities across the country, this effort takes the form of crunching numbers for ING Bearings-and it doesn't pay nearly as elaborate recruiting campaigns. Investment banking firms like well. Was this the non-profit sales pitch?

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley Dean Winer take out fullThe comparisons to the corporate world continued. page ads in school newsp1pers; they take prospective employees our Throughout his speech he was wary of setting up the typical oppoto dinner. Of course, if your company's activities sition between analyst and activist. He was eager, for are measured in billions of dollars, it will attract instance, to discard the stereotype of the jolly nonHow do non-profit attention with or without an unusual effort. profit worker: "Our work affects people's lives. But While some job-seeking, soon-to-be college grads organizations. which that doesn't mean everyone has a good personaliry. may be attracted to Goldman Sachs's assertion Expect to meet all sorts of folks today-not everyone have neither the is super-nice." that "integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business" (Principle 14), most are more likely money to attract Colavito's curt tone seemed to stand as proof of his closing comment. The students who had asseminterested in the salaries and the signing bonuses. attention nor the But how do non-profit organizations, which bled to hear his opening remarks appeared a bit bewilallure of big salaries. dered. For one, the majority of the students present have neither the money to attract attention nor looked as if they had dressed to farm, nor to kill. The the allure of big salaries, go about recruiting? The go about recruiting?

Public Interest Career Fair seemed like a good sartorial sensibilities of the recruiters were far more diverse. As the fair opened in earnest and the recruiters rook their place ro find an answer. For the past two years the fair has been housed in Dwight Hall, with most of the over 30 organiz.ations places behind their booths, the connection Colavito had drawn crammed into the hall's chapel. By noon, organizations with names between corporations and non-profits was visibly apparent in the recruiters' clothing. Several suits stood interspersed between like Emergency Shelter Management Services and the Young Adult Institute were preparing to preach the grass-roots gospel from the swearers and scarves. Despite his rhetoric, Colavito himself looked chapel's apse; Urban Resources Initiative and E, the Environmental the activist part, his wiry frame outfitted in an evergreen flannel Magazine, were setting up shop in the nave. shirt, jeans and sneakers, his dark brown eyes staring out of a dark The festivities began a little after one o'clock with a brief introbrown, well-trimmed beard. The nearby Teach For America rep, on ductory speech, entitled "Job Search Tips," given by Yale grad Peter the other hand, looked like he had just stepped out of the Merrill Colavito. Colavito is currently the Political Director for the Lynch web sire.

If the students were at first flustered by Colavito's words, they Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now quickly adapted. Within minutes of the fair's opening, nearly every (ACORN). In 1998, 17 percent of Yale's graduating students pursued recruiter had a prospective employee to entertain. A number of jobs in business and finance. But Colavito had the ear of over a hundred Yale students. Here was a chance to make the case for nonbrave souls moved directly to the ACORN booth to gather information. One student remarked that he enjoyed Colavito's speech. "I profit over profit, to champion a career in public service over a career in self-service. hope I didn't scare you away," retorted Colavito, apparently aware of the uninviting timbre of his words. "What is a typical day like for Colavito, however, took quite a different tack. He opened his an ACORN organizer?" another studem asked. "Very long." he talk by comparing non-profit o rganizations to corporations, OLDMAN

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AUTHENTIC THAI CUISINE TAKE OUT MENU

replied, and launched into a description of the rigorous application process. He defined the ideal ACORN organizer as someone who fixes the copy machine when it breaks, nor someone who calls maintenance for more toner. "We don't want any prima donnas," he declared. Were it not for his outfit, Colavito could have been a Smith Barney rep, on the verge of asking an interviewee how much a 747 weighs.

But not everyone was as gruff as Colavito. Throughout the over-three-hour event, one of the most popular booths belonged to Green Corps, an agency that "strives to solve threats facing the planet."

Representing Green Corps was Bernadette Del Chiaro, a young, energetic, super-nice woman. She differed in demeanor from Colavito, but she echoed his corporate comparisons. She spoke of the long hours non-profit work demands, comparing it to the long hours ofl-bankers. Again the difference was the compensation: applicants to the Green Corps compete for a shot at a slim $17,500 a year. Del Chiaro herself was recruiting all day in Dwight Hall pro bono.

But Green Corps' net gain was considerable: in under an hour Del Chiaro had acquired the names and addresses of over 20 interested students. Green Corps only hires 25 employees annually. Four hundred apply. Competition is even stiffer for other programs. The Peace Corps representative (suit) amiably distributed applications and free highlighters to droves of students all afternoon, out with a practiced frown she informed seniors that if they wanted co join the Peace Corps next September they should have started applying this past September, the same month Goldman Sachs first came to New Haven.

fEBRUARY II, 2000

So what is the allure? Public interest work is rewarding-for romantics and realists alike. A program like Teach for America appeals to students who want to save the world, offering the opportunity to work in some of the toughest schools in the country, to work toward progress one classroom at a time. The Connecticut Department of Corrections, on the other hand, appeals more to the practical mind. Many of the volunteers at Connecticut Corrections are law students trying to gain valuable experience working with juvenile offenders.

There was an organization for every cause at the fair. Interested students could find out how to help fight homelessness, hunger and everything in between. A tangible reward gained working behind a desk is faceless-unless you count Ben Franklin's countenance. An intangible one, it seemed, may have any number of faces.

The Public Interest Career Fair pulled in over 130 students this year. It seems that despite the recent barrage of tantalizing success stories of IPOs on NASDAQ, there are still plenty of young people who would prefer a career fighting DDT through ACORN. Non-profits may not be able to foot the bill for full-page ads, but due to the interest in their causes, they can afford to tell it like it is, to talk about long hours and low wages. Is this an unusual way to recruit? Peter Colavito would say it is just a cost-effective way to identify and recruit the very best person for every job. li1J

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john Swansburg, a senior in Saybrook Co/kg~. is associau ~ditor ofTNJ.

27

Strings Attached

by Alan Schoenfeld

Jasper Johns: New Paintings and Works on P...., Yale University Art Gallery

I

from the November 18, 1996, issue of Th~ N~w York Tim~s, a young. war-worn Rwandan woman sits languidly in a chair as she receives a transfusion of her mother's blood. Her mother stands beside her, holding a bag of saline solution connected to a needle in her daughter's arm. A tube hangs loosely from the bag, drooping down towards the ground and then sweeping up to the girl's arm, forming a curve which mathematicians call a catenary (think Nike swoosh).

The women and the catenary stand in contrast to the inchoate background of the decrepit third-world hospital.

We would like to forget such an image: its perverse beauty jostles us out of our perceived security and reminds us of the fragility of human life. This photograph, ranered and yellowing, hangs on the wall of Jasper Johns's studio and inspired the 13 paintings and works on paper now on exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery. The works traverse difficult thematic terrain, exploring the dualities of childhood and adulthood, life and death, tragedy and comedy. The catenary curve emerge~ as the hero of the exhibit, providing the connection necessary to respond to the modern crises of misperception and distancing that pervade the exhibit.

The exhibit continues Johns's artistic trajectory. His earliest work was inhabited by familiar public images-Bags and targets, namely-and was characterized by an almost complete lack of emotions. While he challenged his viewers' perceptions and N A PHOTOGRAPH

visual and cerebral acuity, Johns offered little of himself But he has become increasingly present in his work, investing it with more emotional and personal references.

This exhibition, which dramatically confronts questions of utmost personal importance as well as those of critical artistic value, joins these two facets of his artistry.

Johns's abstract imagery can be alienating and daunting to all but the most seasoned modern art observers. I have never been one for senseless hues and splattered cans of paint, so I approached this exhibit with a healthy amount of skepticism.

Could srrings and canvases doused indiscriminately with paint mean anything to me? Could they affect me in the same way a Courbet portrait could? Without the imagery of the photograph that I carried with me throughout my five visits to the exhibit, probably not. But bearing that in mind-and we must, since Johns himself did-the exhibit rruly is a beautiful, eloquent commentary, its simple and austere beauty akin to a Neruda poem. One must delve into the spaces of the paintings and seek connections between their disparate elements in order to garner some meaning.

What is perhaps most striking about the works is the unity of their imagery. A white suing hanging from one side of the frame to the other-a catenary-and the dense, murky background in various shades of gray persist throughout the series, as do variations on a small number of other images: the Big Dipper, the Milky Way, carved writings, and patterns from harle--

quin costumes. Each presents its own paradox or problem of perception which the viewer is forced to reconcile.

Consider, for example, Johns's use of the Milky Way and the Big Dipper.

Though the celestial images are present in several of the works, each rendering is different. Johns's depictions of the Milky Way range from a Seurat-like mass of dots in the formation of the galaxy to a much more defined structure resembling a blender blade. Similarly, the renderings of the constellation range from thin, painted white lines connected to yellow dot stars, ro deeply incised lines separated by a small space from the carved yellow docs. Such a variety conuibutes to the spectrum of distance and connection that pervades the exhibit. It seems that Johns also uses this opportunity to expound upon the uses and limitations of human perception. The appearance of the galaxy is a natural phenomenon made possible by gravity, whereas the constellation is a human construe· tion, an example of humans inventing sense and connection where nature has provided none. While the galaxy reminds humans how small and inconsequential ·we are in the vast expanse of nature, the con· stellacion provides us with some security. we can understand and harness the power of nature for our own psychic benefit. But this security is problematic: one depiction of the constellation shows rwo different placements of the·scars in the night sky. separated by one hour's celestial movement. Understand the phenomenon, we

TH£

NEW JouRNAL

may; control it, we cannot.

Another problematic image is the harlequin, who in his august b:iffoonery represents the perfect marriage of comedy and tragedy. Though he provides entertainment and enjoyment, he also represents the reduction of all human desires and emotions from the sublime to the ridiculous.

We laugh at him because we see ourselves in him. Artists ranging from ToulouseLautrec to Picasso and, now, to Johns, have used the harlequin for his complex psychological associations and for the inevitable connection to childhood that his presence precipitates. Though Johns represents the harlequins meconymically in this series of works, using only the argyle pattern of their costumes, such familiar imagery is sufficient co conjure the tragicomic cha.racter of the harlequin and the simultaneous lightness and gravity he represents. The harlequin, his apparent lightness, and youth are all bound up in the pattern of diamonds that lines the right side of several of the paintings. In " Bridge," the centerpiece of the exhibit, this section of the frame fades quickly into a- dark gray background which takes up the rest of the painting: only the catenary bridges the great chasm of the tableau and, perhaps, the gap between the lightness and childhood that the harlequin represents, and their murky opposites. As in all the works, the catenary on this frame immediately recalls the catenary in the photograph. The implicit commentary on the fragility of the connection between youth and the great expanse beyond it is truly powerful.

While the harlequin represents figuratively the opposition between lightness and gravity, the catenary physically embodies these principles. Various fasteners are fixed to either side of the frame, with the fastener on the right side much higher than the one on the left. A thick white string hangs between the two fasteners, swooping down from right to left until it reaches a nadir and swoops up again towards the fastener on the left, mimicking the shape of the rv tube shared by the two Rwandan women in the photograph. In much the same way that the harlequin must concede some of his emotional autonomy to the forces of tragedy and despair, gravity takes over the fEBRUARY II, 2000

catenary and determines the shape of its trajectory. Though Johns determines where the fasteners lie on the frame and how long the string is, gravity creates the catenary.

The presence of the catenary demands a meditation on the differences between nature and human powers of creation.

Both .the catenary and the constellation represent the happy marriage of nature and creativity, requiring the powers of both for their existence and comprehensibility.

Johns challenges the viewer to question what is created and what is natural, and whether or not the difference matters.

I don't think Johns himself knows the answer to that question. The exhibit is playful and challenging, but fundamentally frustrating. It is easy co look at this exhibit and see nothing but variations on a collection of abstract forms and hues of gray. It takes a great deal of investigation and processing to make any sense of the works, and after five viewings I'm not sure that I am any further along than I was at the first.

Have I fallen into the trap of art criticism and found meaning where there is none?

Johns makes such a mistake as difficult as possible to commit. Even the seemingly empty spaces of the canvas are rife with detail and vibrancy: the gray backgrounds, while simple and uniform from afar, are in fact complex mixes of various shades and textures. So I have faith in Johns and in his hero, the catenary, to rescue me from my tentativeness. The catenary is truly heroic in its elegance and simplicity. It makes sense of the world it traverses, connecting disparate elements-tempestuous celestial bodies, images of childhood-along an axis that is consistent and stable. The difficulties of this collection are nothing in comparison to the statement it makes regarding the nature and importance of connection, in the word's most broadly conceived meaning. Plod through the dense imagery, the inscrutability of this exhibit, and connect.

II1J

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Alan Schomfold, a sophomor~ in Saybrook Co/kg~, is a r~search director for TN].

29

Mississippi Burning How a Herald Op-ed Sparked a Flame-"War Between the States

by Daniel Brook BACK IN THE 1960s, COLLEGE-AGED 'YANKEES had to pile into station-wagons and drive South to effect social change. It was tough work. C ivil-rights workers were routinely harassed and sometimes even killed. Luckily for today's Ivy League liberals, modern Internet technology has made all that messy person-to-person contact a thing of the past. Thanks to U-Wire, a Chicago-based internet company that collects and distributes articles from over 200 subscribing student periodicals, long-distance agitation has never been easier. Just publish a few well-worded anacks in your college paper and let U- Wire do the rest.

In his October 29 "Whiskey and Rye" column in the Yak Hn-ald, junior John Schochet argued that the South "acts like a spoiled child" by preserving "treasonous" symbols of the Confederacy. In addition, Schochet criticized the region for "revel[ing] in its racist, violent, primitive, and intolerant past." Like any decent student column, it made good points but often rode that fine line between hyperbole and insanity, saying things like, "Virginia and Alabama owe humanity an apology [for honoring Robert E. Lee and 'Stonewall' Jackson]." The column provoked a number of leners to the editor, and to Schocher himself. most of which rode that same line. One e-mail consisted of the words "Eat my load" wrinen over and over and was meant, according to the author, to be sung "to the rune of'Ode to Joy."' But the real fun started a week later.

Unbeknownst to Scbochet, the newspaper editors at the University of Southern Mississippi picked up his column from U-Wire. Schacher's op-ed ran in the November 4 issue of usM's The Studmt Printz, attracting a second wave of leners. One letter was selected by the Printz to run in its November 9 ~ issue. "I recall a certain President that was from the ._..- : ¡ state of Massachusetts that almost put this country in another economic depression," the lener said. "In contrast, our friend from Arkansas has not only brought prosperity and peace, but he has done it with southern style and pinash [sic] that northerners only read about." Sadly, the last president from Massachusetts was Kennedy;

George Bush famously claimed three home states but Massachusetts wasn't one of them. And as for Clinton, I think we'd all be much happier if he kept his southern "pinash" in his pants.

But if students were having this much trouble simply keeping the facts straight and the spelling correct, the older generation was completely at sea with the newfangled U-Wire technology. One Printz.. reading USM alum pegged Schochet for a srudent at Southern Mississippi rather than a vicious outside agitator (a Jew from the Bay Area, no less). "I am sincerely disappointed to find that a once fine Southern institution of higher learning has become a Politically Correct 'South Basher,"' the letter fumed. "At one time, I believed that Southern Miss was the finest university in the South and had encouraged my child to attend classes at your school. However, after seeing the tripe you have seen fit to publish, I have decided that my child will not even bother to apply there."

Ultimately, the very fundamentals of human communication seemed to be breaking down on the shoulder of the information superhighway. Schochet especially enjoyed an e-mail from "a guy who talked about how he was a veteran and how obviously I had never served in the military and wasn't a real American like him. He addressed the column 'Dear Mr. Schocher' but then started address-

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let's face it, if we're not going to rise above trading insults, who needs an electronic intermediary like email? Telling someone to "Eat my load" in person beats telling them via e-mail.

I8J

LMJl.J~~

Daniel Brook, a senior in Davenport co/kge, is a managing editor ofTNJ. 30

THE

NEw JouRNAL

Tuesday, February 22nd at 4:30pm

Jon

Katz Jon Katz is the author of eight books, including Running to the Mountain and Virtuous Reality, but is best known for his writings on media and technology.

He has written for Wired, GQ, and 1be New lVrk Times and was twice nominated for the National Magazine Award for his articles in Rolling Stone.

Katz also writes for Slashdot.org, Hotwired, and Free!, the Freedom Forum's website. His new book, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho , is a remarkable true story of how technology can change lives.

Geeks takes us into an increasingly powerful sub-culture with its own language, traditions and taboos, to a place where jesse Dailey and Eric 1\vilegar altered their fates. In a story full of hope, we see how these two working<lass, rural teenagers with little support or resources used the Net to pull themselves up the economic ladder to a better job and a better place.

As part of the Author Series at The Yale Bookstore, jon Katz will discuss and sign Geeks on Tuesday, February 22nd at~:30pm. All events are free and open to the public.

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