Volume 32 - Issue 5

e ewour Volwne 32, Nwnber 5

The magazine about Yale and New Haven

Steal This Br

April 14,

PuBLISHER

Shruti Adhar EDITOR-IN-CHIEP

Alan Schomft/d MANAGING EDITORS

jessica Bulman, Anya Kammetz DESIGNER

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Whii.'My Gract

AssociATE EDITORS

Ronm Givony. Eric Rothfttkr RESEARCH DIRECTOR

Danu/ Kurtz-Pk/an CIRCULATION AND SUBSCRIPT I ONS MANAGERS

Makiko Harunari, Blakt Wilson

Suff Sydney l..eav~ns

M,mbm 11nti Dirtt~n Emily B2zdon • Consance Clement • Peter B. Cooptr Michael Gerber • Tom Griggs • Brooks Kelley H~nry

Schwab •

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• F~ Srn::I>Ogh

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Atlvison Riclurd Blow • Jay Carney • Riclurd Conniff Rulh Conniff • Elisha Cooptr • lauren Rabin St~n W~isman • Daniel Yergin

FrimJs Sreve B:allou • Anson M. Bean!, Jr. • Blair< ~nnm Edwan:l B. ~oncn,Jr. • Edward B. Bmnen lll Paul S. Bmn<n • c-Jd Bnad< • llarl>on Bundl Jay Carney • Daphne Chu • )ooh Civin Jooalhan M. O..!r. • Cons.._ <::km<nt • EliW Coop.r Peter B. Coopor • Andy Coun • Jcny and Rae Coun Masi Denison • AI~ J. Fox • Mn. Howard Fox David Prccroan • Gcoffi<y Fried • Arturo Gandara ~rwin

Goldman • David Crcmhcrg • Tom Crigo Sr<pbcn Hdlman • Jan~ Kamcnsky • Bmoks Kelley Roser IGrwood • Andrew J. l<uz.ncs;IU, Jr. Lewis E. l.duman • Jim l..owo< • E. Nobks l..owo< Hank Mansbodt • Manha E. Nal • Peter Neill Howud H. Namwl • &an O'Brien • Julie Pcun Lewis and Joan Plan • )ooh Plaur • Julia Pra<on uurcn Rabin • Fairfu c. Rand:aJ • Rollin RiBP Mark Rinella • Nicholas X. Rizopouloo • Sruart Roh~<r Arle<n and Anhur 5a&tt • Dick and Debbie Scm Riclwd Shields • W. H=p<on Sides • U.. SiMrman Eliza~ and Wdliam Sledge • Thoma. Srrong Eliza~ Tare • Ala and 8cay Torello • Mdisaa Turner Allen and Sarah Wvddl Daniel Ycrgin and Angela Stcnr Ycrgin

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THE NEW JouRNAL

Volume 32, Number 5 April 14, 2000

TheNewJournal FEATURES 8

Marketplace of Ideas Who ho/Js th~ tiuds to Ytzles int~/lectua/ prop"ty?

by Judy Miller and Patrick Casey Pitts

12

Keeping the Faith Rw"enti Eric Smith combin~s worship anti work to r~vitaliu Newha//vi//e.

by Andy Cowdery

14

Corr Convictions From abantion~ti bui/Jings to th~ Ivory Towtr, Antkrs Corr redefines resistance.

by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

18

A Clean Well-Lighted Space photos and essay by Jessica Bulman

21

Minority Rules

by Carl Hungerford

24

One Shot Wonder How ]ouph H~ller learn~ti to stop worrying anti wv~ th~ bomb.

by Ronen Givony

30

Fare-ing Badly While Metro Taxi stalls,

th~ m~t"s

ticking.

by Sydney Leavens

STANDARDS Points of Departure

Euap Carolina On My Mind by Anya Kamtnetz The Critical Aape: Can't Buy Me Love by Eric Rothftder rn~iewint

The LDu ofHIIJ'pinns In MArleet Democracies

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by Robut E. Lane Eadaota Clock Tease by Blake Wilson

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I Shot Andy Cowdery !t isn't.~d. to t~ll when a ~e of ~ .

"Assassins" is played by Assassms 1s gomg on. Sqwrt · ,.,. many, taken seriously by some, guns bulge out of pockets, ,.. ~ ',-:,;!(;_ ;. _-. and drives several half-insane and unusual numbers of '"' ~ ,.., · before they are killed by the one paranoid, jittery folks ~. person who escalates che game to walk in large groups, •• 1 r ~r:. such a level that it no longer seems looking nervously over ··._ · ··· ~ like a game at all. "It's just a squirt their shoulders every few "·~ -.... /1 gun," skeptics often say. "H ow scri~ seconds. Doors that have been "'. /) ous could it be?" Serious enough to interrupt a midterm co kill a target at unlocked all year are now bolted, :_, · Jj. • and when knocked upon they arc • his desk, reverse the peephole in a taranswered with a suspicious eye at the get's suite door co spy for the perfect peephole. The door opens a quick crack moment, and rappel out a fourth-Aoor as a plastic pistol jabs out, and a voice from window co kill a target while he sleeps.

Games that run through Spring Break are behind the peephole asks, "Are you alone?"

Laugh at their fear if you want, but if now put on hold unril classes resume a stranger had popped out of your closet because several years ago a srudcnr drove ro with a gun the night before, you might be the home of his target over break and shoe afraid coo. The object of the game, after all, him. Yalies are nothing if not determined. is to shoot people. "Assassins" starts when Dedicated players know when you eat and organizers give players the name of their where you study, and have scoured out a first target, to be "killed" with a water or nice blind spot behind the door in LC dart gun. If the players kill their first carger, where your Econ section meets. They wiU their next assignment becomes the old tarspend hours and days just co find a foolgee of the player they have just killed. The proof way to lci11 you, and rhey will not be satisfied until you are dead. pattern continues until there is no one left to shoot. Until players either win the game Sound scary? Ir should. "Assassins" has or die, they are always after someone, and the ability to transform peaceful, ~wearsomeone is always after them. Usually the shop-protesting college students inco rules declare chat players cannot be killed scheming, methodical killers. The game while walking in a group of three or more, would be more lighthearted if it meant and dining halls, classes, bathrooms, and only a campus full of crazies squirting bedrooms are sometimes declared "safe madly at each other, but chat is too childish zones" so players can perform some normal for us. We want something real. Thus there daily functions without fear of death by are no massive water brawls, and the serisquirt gun. ous players do not prowl the streets hapMost players are f.t.irly nonchalant. ha.zardly in hopes that their target will walk They walk to class alone, eat their meals at by. That kind of thinking doesn't get you regular hours, sleep well at night, and are into Yale. Players lay low, sit in their rooms or any other "safe zone" they can find, and usually eliminated in the first few days by the serious players, who carry their guns sift their minds for that foolproof plan everywhere, suspect everyone, and modify until it hits them. Then they lull. their plans to fit the schedule of their tarThere are many people who hate gets and avoid their own assassins. This "Assassirls,. and all it represents, and they means skipping classes, eating and srudyirtg have a point. In such violent times we must at random times and locations, and leaving question the appropriateness of games that buildings a different way each time. If done trivialize death with fake guns. One year ago 15 students were killed by real guns at properly, players often survive a month or more.

Columbine High School. Recently a man

,,_.....,.. . . .,

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4

in New York was killed by .p real bullet~ while reaching for his wallet. Perhaps \\C don't need any more killing games. l.ast year, a Brown student was killed while playing this "game." She wa~ running away from her assassin, and dashed right in from of a bus. "It's just a squire gun" indeed.

Dean Betty Trachtenberg is reluctam ro outlaw "Assru.sins," but nor for an) love of the game. "I think ['Ass;mins'] is terri· ble," she said. "We arc living in such an atmosphere of violence that, morally, the campus can find other ways to entertain itscl£ There are a lot of better things to do than run around cha,ing people with gun~."

Berty T. may well be right. Only dap into my ~Assass"ns" career, I got rircd ol shooting nice people and comrandy look· ing over my shoulder. 1 had become anoth· er kAssassins" victim. I handed in my gun

-Andy ( ou•dl'

It Takes 1o,ooo Villages The intoxicating scent and gentle mm spill out of the store and onro the streCJ luring you in. And once rou enter li:t Thousand Villages, the coly crafts score ot Chapel Street, it's difficult to leave. Tht atmosphere is scrent• .md warm, compkct with complimcncary t·oiTcc .wd anim~ crackers. And the cornucopi.t of han! made items-from colorful scarves ar meticulously carved wooden boxes to je elry and musical insrrumems---<ontribuctl to the impre<>sion of visiting someont! bt.-amifully adorn~J. if dunernl, humc.

If the score is a home, I i" Rider, ~ manager, seems to be in. ~.oomfona~ inhabitant. A Roman Catholic with a m ter's degree in moral theolog}• R1c:. declare,. "People are my fir~t conce;n That's the essential dilTcrcnce between bd' ~tore and a mo;e corporate place like ~ One Imports. ·ren Thousand Village\ 11J nonprofit organization who,c go.tl, ,1ccord-

ing to its mission statement, is "to provide vital, fair income to Third World people by selling their handicrafts and telling their stories in North America."

The organization was started 53 years ago by a Mennonite teacher named Ruth Edna Byler. At first, Byler operated a onewoman business, selling Puerto Rican embroidery out of her basement and the trunk of her car. Now, half a century later, the Mennonite Central Committee runs the chain, operating 210 stores across North America, including local branches in New Haven, West Hartford, Cambridge, Northampton, Providence, Boston, and Princeton. In recent years, the rate of growth has increased with an average of two new stores opening every year, rypically run by two paid employees and an assortment of volunteers. · The organization works with artisans in 35 countries in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed. (Although, as Rider admits, they fall about nine thousand seven hundred villages short of their name's claim, give or take a few villages).

They work in co-ops, where each member follows a piece to its conclusion, sometimes bringing it home to finish. Each co-op specializes in a craft: a Bangladeshi co-op makes paper from weeds and water hyacinths, for example, and Kenyan workers carve furniture and boxes out of wood.

Then the co-ops sell their products to Ten Thousand Villages and other fair trade organizations, for a fair price, regardless of whether the merchandise ultimately sells to a customer.

The co-ops are founded by Mennonites, Roman Catholics or other concerned people, but are gradually taken over by the artisans themselves. Rider had just returned from a month-long trip to South America when I first met her, and she related how an Ecuadoran co-op start-

ed by an Italian priest had entirely emerged from dependence on him and on any religious affiliation. Rider is adamant jn her.· insistence that she perceived "no sense· of patronization or 'big brother."' It is hard to deny the chariry aspect of Ten Thousand Villages, but Rider does her best to downplay it; she prefers to think of it as a partnership between the artisans and her nonprofit. In any case, it's much more along the lines of teaching a man to fish than giving him a fish. The artisans she met were largely autonomous, asking advice only about what would sell in North America. This kind of practical exchange about marketing strategies is essential to the system's sustainabiliry. She acknowledges that "one of the dangers of do-gooders, goody-two-shoes, is that yo• have a good idea, and you don't think it through." The thriving suc:Cess of her organization's stores attests that .this pitfall is one that the "goody-twoshoes" at Ten Thousand Vtllages have avoided.

Of all the organization's good ideas, one of the most integral is to extend their business beyond commerce. The artisans want to give something back to their communities, and they have embarked on projects such as trash collecting, road work and reforestacion in their communities. And on the North American end of the business, this ambition is manifested on several levels.

Rider has done radio interviews, given a drumming presentation to toddlers at the Early Learning Center on Blake Street, and taught fifth and seventh graders in Cheshire about global economics.

She claims, "Any organization that wants me to give a presentation, I will." More importantly, this attitude of communiry extends to the day-to-day functioning of the enterprise. "You will never see a panhandler outside our store." Rider says-not because they shoo the panhandlers away but because the store invites them in. "They

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Skulls Give Up Their Bones

Before h e was a legacy in national politiel George W Bush inherited a spot in an eve• more mandarin cloister of elite powe1 Skull and Bones. Luckily for Bush oppo nents everywhere, this ominous fact ha not escaped the ever-vigilant Gar Trudeau, who dedicated a week a " Doonsbury'' in March to lampoonin Bones's zany attempts to grease W's path t• the White House.

W ith all the talk of secrecy, it may b fitting that Trudeau kept his own societ involvement a secret. Rumor has it he him self turned down a spot in Skull and Bone in order co join Scroll and Key in 197c This particular ch oice of clandestine insti tution may make sense given Trudeau bohemian ambitions. Keys has a smalle1 more liberal political roster than Bones; th best Trudeau's fellows ever did in politic was probably Dean Acheson, whose biogra phy, you may recall, W lied about havin read; or possibly Sargent Shri'!'er, Kenned spouse and father-in-law to forme Presidential Fitness Adviser Arnol• Schwarzen eggac. Bones tends to get stodg insiders like David Gergen; Keys tends t• get stodgy muckrakers like Bol Woodward. Given this dichotomy, mayb Trudeau's point was not that secret societie ace bad for American democracy, but tha Skull and Bones in particular is bad fo American democracy.

Director Rob Cohen advances a simi lac thesis in the film The Skulls. Lik• Trudeau, Cohen went tO Yale, and lik• Trudeau, Cohen's society expertise come: from his year in a non-Bones societ) (which one remains a secret). And, i.

Trudeau's characters are better drawn Cohen's ace yet more conspiratorial. In The Skulls, an improbably cast Craig T. Nelson (of "Coach" fame) coaches an all-whi~t team of Yale men in the game of eli~t power, branding them with skulls, secredy funneling thousands into their banlc accounts, settin g them up with centerfold

THE NEW JouRJW-

8 0

models, and getting them inco law school, all to the rousing chorus of "A Skull before any other!" Everything's going smoothly for these elite boys until someone takes this advice too seriously, and a non-Skull dies.

According to this view, the other societies are just rich; the Skulls alone are truly evil.

But are Cohen and Trudeau right? Do those of us in the non-secret world have something to fear from the likes of Alderman Julio Gonzalez?

If money is the measure of political power, then it is probably worth noting that seven out of 14 of W's Bones classmares have donated relatively large sums to his campaign. And although one out of two may not sound like great participation, the Bones's percentage of campaign concribucors is more than 50 times larger than the national percentage. What is more, five of the seven donated the maximum amount: SIOOO. These were: Donald Etra, G. Gregory Gallico, Robert McCallum Jr, Muhammad Ahmad Saleh, and Brinkley Thorne--lawyers, doctors, and businessmen. Britton Kolar gave $200, and Christopher Brown, S50. We may also want to include Victor Ashe in this group, though he was in the Class of'67. Ashe is a true Skull: Mayor of Kaoxville, and a longtime friend and donor to W. (He gave $1000.)

Despite appearances, however, the donations probably have more to do with friendship than with fellowship or politics; only two people in the Bones Class of '67 have given, and no one in the Class of '66 has contributed. And although four people in the Class of'69 have donated, their total donation is roughly equal co the $200 Britton Kolar gave on his own. Indeed, W has raised about as much from his Delta Kappa Epsilon brothers (whom he really did brand) as he has from his fellow Bonesmen.

So, barring a genuine, underground money-laundering operation, there doesn't seem co be much of a Skull and Bones conspiracy-as if one were necessary to raise S?O million for a Republican ofW's breeding in a booming economy.

-lanBkchn-

APRJL '4¡ 2000

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Who holds the deeds

to'

I As

''There is a consensus that Versity.com's actions are a deeply troubling commercial intrusion into our classrooms, an improper exploitation of the intellectual property of the instructors, and in many instances a misrepresentation of courses."

- Richard Brodhead, Dean of Yale College email to the Yale College student body

" Under the Copyright Law, the copyright to a work created by a person in the course of his or her employment belongs to the employer rather than to the individual creator.

The law provides, therefore, that works created by faculty members in the course of their teaching and research, and works created by staff members in the course of their jobs, are the property of the University."

-Yale University Policy on Copyrights Office of Cooperative Research

" [In 1999,] income from licensing royalties to the University continued to grow, reaching $40.7 million, up

$7.4 million from the previous year."

-Yale University Office of Cooperative Research 1999 Financial Report

THEY WALKED PAST

the "No Food or

~ Drinks" signs into the An Gallery Lecture Hall, carrying notebooks, snacks, and coffee one chilly February morning, students in Professor John Merriman's "European Civilization: 1648-1945" course were surprised to find another student standing outside the room, handing out sheets of paper. Even more surprising, these papers contained notes from the previous Monday's lecture. Versity.com, an online noteproviding agency, was using student employees to drum up business for its website. By the end of February, Versity was providing notes for 37 Yale classes, and this same scene had been staged outside five of Yale College's largest lecture courses.

The site carried notes for some of Yale's bestknown classes, including Jonathan Spence's kHistory of Modern China" and Willie Strong's '']au: America's Music."

Versity grew from the effons of four University of Michigan students to provide notes for their classes. The site expanded quickly and soon became one of a number of online "academic communities" offering services such as class notes, discussion boards, and campus news. The company first anempted to enter the fabric of Eli society last December by contacting Dean Brodhead's office. When the Administration failed to reply, Versity started recruiting students as note-takers. Approximately 100 students applied and 24 were chosen for the job, many taking notes for more than one class. Toward the end of February, Versity reported that up to 17o/o of Yale students were accessing the site.

Shortly after the site went up, many of Yale's professors learned about Versity. "One of my TAS happened to browse into [the site]," Spence said. uMy reaction was to be puzz.led because I'd never been asked in any way to do this [post lecture nores on the Internet)." After considering the subject, Spence decided he didn't approve. Other professors agreed. "They're interjecting themselves in an area where they don't belong," Merriman said ofVersity and its student employees. Concerns ranged from quescions of accuracy and infringement of intellectual propeny rights to simple lecture anendance by students.

Yale is by no means the only member of the

THE NEW

JouRNAL

~ale's intellectual property?

by Judy Miller and Patrick Casey Pitts Ivy League that has had to deal with Versity. The site has featured classes from Harvard, Columbia, and Penn, among others, and still includes 45 courses for Penn, 37 for Cornell, and 20 for Columbia.

Stanford courses are featured on the site as well, but, after an objection from the administration regarding unlimited access to the site, Versity agreed to allow only Stanford students access. Enterprising students must now choose "Stanford" from a list of schools when registering in order to view Stanford's notes. Harvard cook a more active approach to the problem. The adminstration threatened the rebellious scribblers with expulsion, since their actions were in violation of the student handbook: "Studen ts who sell lecture or reading notes ... may be required co withdraw."

Yale's administration became aware of Versity's presence on campus when a number of professors complained to Dorothy Robinson, General Counsel for the University. "I had not heard of Versity.com until I began to receive some email correspondences that were forwarded copies of messages by faculty members expressing their upset and outrage over discovering that notes from their classes were posted on Versity.com's website ... My initial reaction was surprise that this activity would be happening without authorization," she said. The University took action. Brodhead sent an email to all Yale students arguing that Versity's service was both a commercial intrusion into the classroom and an exploitation of intellectual property. Brodhead also claimed that Versity's services "are not only wrongful, bur also often misleading and academically unsound." Following Harvard's lead, Brodhead referred co the Untkrgraduau Regulations, which, he claimed, prohibits students from selling notes. Unfortunately for Yale, the clause in Yale's student handbook is not nearly as strong as Harvard's; Yale's merely states that studen ts may not "undertake to represent any commercial interest or to operate any business on the campus without securing prior permission from the Dean of Student Affairs."

More important than Brodhead's warning to students was his attack on Versity icselÂŁ The University threatened to take legal action against the company if it continued to post notes from Yale classes. "We thought that it was important first of all because things happen quickly on the web and because of the degree of concern expressed by faculty members," Robinson said. "Versity had undertaken this activity without permission and faculty felt exposed and felt exploited, and they also felt that their courses were being misrepresented as to content." T h e same day that Brodhead wrote to the student body, Versity agreed to remove temporarily all notes for Yale classes-at least until it met with the Yale administration.

Monday, March 27, marked the end ofVersity's life at Yale for the indefinite future. After meeting with administrators, Versity agreed to keep Yale courses off its website. In exchange, the University agreed to contact Versity if they desired its services at a Iacer dace. While Robinson doesn't think this renewed conract is

impossible, she does think it is extremely unlikely: "The service that's co be provided, that of note-taking. is something that can be accomplished in other ways."

The real question, then, is why Versity agreed to such an obviously lopsided agreement. Yale got everything it wanted, and Versity got nothing. Versity provided no explicit reason. Robinson thought that "Versity appreciates that it's in the company's best interest not to have adversarial relations with colleges and universities but to sell its services and its packages co institutions that want them ...They have a business that they wish to build and they're learning how. They were up front with us that they're trying co learn, they're trying to do new things and they're trying to learn from their mistakes." But Versity's rune was very different earlier in the semester. In an interview at that time with the Yak Daily Nnus, Ken Dignam, one of Versity's regional managers, was confidenr of Versity's position with regard to the law.

"Intellectual property rights do not exist.

Someone taught the professors the material they're lecturing on; are they going to send their old professors a part of their pay check each year?"

But while Dignam and, by extension, Versity, have claimed that intellectual property rights do not legally exist, this is simply false. The United States and other countries around the world have a long history of granting rights to intellectual property. The Copyright Act of 1909 was the first codification of United States copyright law. It became possible to copyright any original work in fixed form. The law also contained rwo important points regarding academic lectures. F1CSt, it included "lectures, sermons, [and] addresses" in its list of copyrightable materials.

Second, the Act declared that works-for-hire (works created using company resources or while being paid to create said works) are the property of the employer, and not che employee. It appeared, however, co exclude reachers from the works-for-hire clause.

The confusion, however, still lies in copyright ownership. The 1969 case Wil/i4ms v. ~isur involved a ucu. professor seeking an injunction and damages against a company similar to Versicy for publishing notes from his class. While the case 6cmly estab-

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lished that academic lectures generally were copyrightable under the 1909 Copyright Act, the actual owner of the copyright remained in question.

Matters were muddled even further with the Federal Copyright Act of 1976.

The Act made one crucial change: there is no longer any implication that teachers are exempt from the works-for-hire clause.

Still, the relationship between the 1909 Act and the 1976 Act is unclear. If the second was intended to replace the first, then any implications for professors from the first Act are annulled. But if the second Act was intended to revise the first, replacing only certain portions, then the implications remain relevant, as does common law tradition regarding copyrights.

Under the works-for-hire clause, lectures may belong to the university. After all, they are created on university time as part of a university employee's job. In fact, .Yale policy claims ownership of all copyrightable works of intellectual property created by its employees. In order to encourage scholarship, it waives these rights for certain materials, such as books and articles. No specific mention, however, is made of lectures. According to Robinson, the University would grant most lecture copyrights to professors. "Yes, the University is involved and interested [in lectures], and yes, [lectures] may in a technical sense be works-for-hire under the copyright law, but there's a recognition of the critical role played by the faculty member... If it is a work-for-hire, it is licensed back; there's an implicit license back to the faculty member of rights to further develop and exploit that content consistent with the interests of the University." Other University officials disagree: "It is well understood that the lectures, if they were to be copyrightable, would be treated as if they were the property of the University," says Dr. E. Jonathan Soderstrom, Managing Director of the Yale University Office of Cooperative Research (OCR).

The walls of OCR are covered by posters describing various business procedures, publications trumpeting the latest discoveries of the Yale faculty, framed stories of Yale research successes {such as the drugs Zerit and Lymerix), and charts showing the drastic increase over the last four years in profits earned from Yale patents. In a comer of the waiting room hangs a poster

charting the "Patent's Progress," an appropriate decoration for a place that attempts to unite scholarship with business. This office, after all, manages the business side of all of Yale's intellectual property.

According to the office's website, "The duties of the OCR include oversight for patenting and licensing activity, University inventions, and contractual relationships between faculty and industry."

Additionally, the office attempts to develop new connections with industry by identifying inventions with commercial applica, tions and by helping to create new private companies to market applications of Yale research.

Yale has the right to an area of intellectual property much more profitable than copyrights: patents. Yale owns patents on all inventions created out of work done at Yale. This non-waived right has proved q uite lucrative for the University, bringing in $4o,ooo,ooo during fiscal year 1999路 This is largely due to the $33,ooo,ooo earned by Zerit, a popular AIDS drug that the University has licensed to Bristol-Myers Squibb. In addition, SmithKline Beecham has received FDA approval for Yale-developed Lyrnerix, the first vaccine available for Lyme disease.

One might wonder why the University makes $4o,ooo,ooo off patents from research done by professors. The answer is the works-for-hire clause. Because the research that creates these patents is done with Yale resources, on paid Yale rime, the University is able to claim ownership of these patents, and, unlike its policy regarding books and articles, chooses not to renounce this ownership. "The investment in patenting and exploiting inventions is sometimes very great," Robinson said. "It's only been through the resources of the Universiry that inventions have been patented and are marketed and licensed and sold. That whole activity involves an investment of resources on the institutional side quite apart from 'the investment of resources in the laboratory setups and the surrounding support that is part of the environment that makes possible the kinds of inventions that are done on the scientific research side." Copyrightable material, on the other hand, does not usually incur the same expenses and seldom generates such large royalties.

This different policy for patents relies

THE NEW JouRNAL

on a formula that splits profits between the cion, unlike the universities mentioned in inventor and the University. After subtractthe article, "categorically, Yale will not ing the expense involved in acquiring and allow any restrictions on publications. maintaining the patent from any royalty Period. End of conversation. Have we money the patent generates, the University turned down money from corporations splits the remaining rof.alties with the because we weren't willing to bend on that?

Yes. Will we in the future? Yes. Will we inventors. For the first $10o,ooo that a patent generates, half of the royalties go to change that policy? No." the inventor and half go to the University.

In the end, Dean Brodhead's email to For the next $too,ooo, the inventor is students was largely correct. Versity's notes granted 40% and the University 6o%. For were at the very least misleading in their all profits above $2oo,ooo, 30% goes to the representation of Yale courses. They clearly inventor and 70% to the University. Like cannot provide a substitute for the professoc-student interaction that occurs in any copyrights, the University sets its own terms and determines for itself how the ereclass, lecture or seminar. " It seems to be difator will be compensated or rewarded. ferent from the kind of relationship one For example, if a single license works out with the students you're brings in $33,ooo,ooo, nearly 70% teaching at a given moment.. .lf I'm will go to the University. While this presenting my ideas to a group that may seem to benefit the â&#x20AC;˘ I'm talking to directly, where University unfairly, Yale's divi- , , . . . .fjll.. there's a lot of give and take, it's a sion formula is actually more ,~ kind of sharing. Even though it's .a large class, you can focus in on generous than that of many other universltles. Harvard's policy, for people and there's a kind of sharing going example, grants only 35% of the first on all the time," Spence said. In addition, $50,000 and only 25% of the remainder of Versity's easily available notes preclude even the royalties to the inventor. Harvard's porthe minimal amount of thought required tion of the royalties is split between the to copy a classmate's notes, let alone any department of the inventor, the school in opportunity for the connection with course content provided by actual class attenwhich the inventor works, and the university as a whole. This earmarking of royalties dance.

Furthermore, Brodhead was right to the inventor's department has been suggested by some of Yale's professors, most when he said that Versity had exploited intellectual property. Copyright law makes often from the School of Medicine, but no proposals have come before the Yale it clear that lectures are copyrightable.

Corporation. "The policy is set by the Brodhead, however, may have erred in Corporation and it has been modified a speaking of the instructors' intellectual property. University policy states that copycouple of times, but all changes must be rightable materials are the property of the approved by the Corporation," Soderstrom said.

University. The faculty, staff, and students Soderstrom seems not to worry that must agree to abide by this policy. commercial interests have been harmful to Although the University grants a blanket exemption for books and other published scholarship at Yale. "Yale ...was viewed as being historically antagonistic co commerworks, it has yet to extend this policy to cia! influence on research... That's lectures.

Brodhead's strongest argument rests changed. We've become a much more open, accepting environment, but that's on the implied negative effects of Ver~ity's been a more recent phenomenon. " commercial intrusion into academia.

Although Soderstrom characteriz.es this Robinson states, "It may be that the classenvironment as more open and inviting, room domain is coming to be, like so many not everyone agrees. A recent article in Th~ other aspects of life now, [a place] where Atlantic Monthly discussed the nefarious one has to be concerned about the forces of influences of corporate money on research, commercial intrusions and take protective actions [against these]." These intrusions including limitiations on publication and sharing of research tools. Soderstrom could affect anything from lecturing to notes to strained relations between profesemphasized that Yale believes research tools should be made broadly available. In addisors and students.

llt:.:.1U

APRIL

1.4.

2000

Ironically, Yale itself has taken the initiative in introducing certain commercial influences, most notably drug licensing, into professors' research. Although Yale has worked to ensure academic integrity, it has also instituted practices that identify, encourage, and develop commerciallyviable research. The $4o,ooo,ooo that Yale made on patents last year is nearly enough to pay for the salaries -of every full, associate, and assistant professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The addition of the profit motive, especially when dealing with such large sums of money, is enough to influence even the most well-intentioned administrator or professor to research for commercial rather than academic reasons.

Professors may choose to pursue drugs that will be successful in the United States marketplace, like Viagra or Rogaine, rather than unprofitable drugs like vaccines for epidemic third-world diseases.

So far, Yale has been vigilant in defending the institution against overt commercialization of research and teaching, as well as the attendant consequences.

Compared to its peer institutions, the University is generous with professors when dealing with intellectual property and has avoided many of the pitfalls of commercial influence. Still, Yale must be careful not to take any further steps along the primrose path of commercial success at the expense of academic integrity. The institution has already begun to examine scientific research through the lens of profit. The Versity situation reminds us that the temptation for academic trespass can arise in all fields, be they scientific, humanistic, or pedagogical.

Ill]

judy Milln; a ~shman in Berluky is production manager for TNJ.

Co/kg~.

Patrick Casty Pitts is a freshman in Berlt~ky Co/kg~.

u

l<eepi ng the Faith

Reve rend Eric Sm ith combines worship and work t o

by Andy Cowdery

0

NE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, a young black woman arrived in Washington, DC, intent on leading her community. She raised her voice against unfair voting laws, segregation, and lynching, and she didn't quiet down for 61 years. Her speeches inspired action, and her work was the basis for the inclusion of women into the National Baptist Convention. Her name was Nannie Helen Burroughs, and a century after she began her crusade, Reverend Eric Smith is well into his.

Since arriving at the Newhallville Community Baptist Church five years ago, this energetic computer-programmer-turned-pastor has tirelessly worked to rejuvenate the Newhallville neighborhood of New Haven and to strengthen the Church's role in town aff.Ucs. Smith's current project is the Nannie Helen Burroughs School, an Afrocentric Christian school opening this fall. "Sunday is the warmup act," he says, a huge grin spreading over his face. "Monday through Saturday is the show."

Smith has been working Monday through Saturday (in addition to his sizeable Sunday duties) since 1997 , setting up committees and boards so that, come this fall, the Burroughs School will be able to run entirely on its own, allowing him to focus on his next project: a credit union in Newhallville geared at stimulating local business. The Burroughs School, after all, is only one part of Community Baptist's massive Community Development Corporation (CDC), a hub of urban renewal that Smith engineered himself. Other projects include a daycare center for working families, a substance abuse clinic, a job-rcain.ing facility, and a lowincome housing development.

None of this would have happened had Smith not been called into the ministry in 1992 while working as a computer programmer and consultant in New Britain. He's not your average techie--he is built more like a linebacker than a hacker. Smith began raking classes at the Yale Divinity School and left his job at Command Systems Consulting in 1995 to work at Community Baptist with irs celebrated pastor, Reverend Thomas Holmes. Smith enjoyed working with Holmes so much that in 1996 he moved his family to Newhallville just to be closer to him. At this point in the story Smith leans back in his chair, a quiz.z.ical expression on his face, and says, "Literally while we were moving our things out of the truck, we found out that Reverend Holmes had just died." Smith says that in spite of the fateful timing of this event, he had come to do a job, and set about doing it. When he began at Community Baptist as

12

interim pastor, it was first time in 25 years that someone other than Thomas Holmes delivered the Sunday sermon.

"They didn't know what to do with me at first," Smith recalls of his inherited congregation, which was accustomed to milder sermons than Smith wanted to deliver. Eventually they warmed to Smith's more energetic style, and, three years after being named Community Baptist's full pastor, he has become one of New Haven's mosr effective community leaders, largely because of intense and broad-based support from his congregation.

Indeed, many of those currently working on the Nannie Helen Burroughs School are members of Community Baptist. Three years ago planning began for the School, designed as a cultural alrernarive for students (or parents) dissatisfied with the public school system's ueatment of race, religion, and history.

The Burroughs School will enroll only kindergarten and first grade students this fall, but will eventually run through the eighth grade as it expands with each incoming class. Classes wilJ have 2 0 students, and Smith is adamant that the School maintain a studentto-reacher ratio of 20:1. The School's Afrocenrcic focus will come primarily from irs curriculum. The Burroughs School wilJ most likely use the A B~ka Book text, used at over 17,000 Christian schools nationwide. Though some members of the School's curriculum committee feel that the A B~ka Book, used at many predominantly white schools, would not accurately reAect African culture, Smith believes that reachers can combine the text with their own cultural perspective to create a sufficiently Afrocentric focus.

This year, while the School is still rather small (40 students), classes will meet on the lower Aoor of Community Baptist. Starting in the fall of 2001, the Burroughs School will occupy irs own building in NewhaJlville. Funding for the School has come from local cor· porations, regional banks, private donations, and Community Baptist itself, which devoted five percent of its income.

For now, however, Smith .is still focused on ensuring that the Burroughs School will open without a hitch. Helping his cause is 2 great number of volunteers who have signed on ro write up school bylaws, drum up interest in the community, and design the cur· riculum. Many of the volunteers have personal motivations for join· ing Smith's team. "We were new to the neighborhood," said Jolyn Walker, who came to Milford several years. ago with her young son. "and we ran into some incidents in the public school system." She pauses a moment, then continues slowly. "He was spit upon, and

THE

New JouRNAl-

) revitalize Newhallville

called 'blackhead.' He got punched in the face, and rhcy all looked at him like h~was rhc troublemaker. We went to his teacher, and we were ignored." Another pause, and chen angrily: "My son did not want to go to school anymore."

Walker pulled her son our of public school and enrolled him at Heritage Christian Academy in Wallingford, where he is now an A student and active in school life. "What stayed with me," his mother adds, "was what would have happened ro him if I couldn't pay to get hlm our? What would he be today?" Walker searched for an educational atmosphere inspiring confidence and self-esreem rather th an fear, and found rhat "people kept calking abour Reverend Smith." She soon signed onto the Nannic Helen Burroughs board to sh are her ideas and emotions productively, and ro support a school rhar was everything she wished her son could have had.

Though Smith's projects have been helped greatly by his church, Smith's church has been helped in turn by public awareness of the projects it takes on, the Burroughs School in particular. "I was pleased by the idea of an Afrocentric Christian school," Moore said, "especially after watching the number of children who fail because they have no sense of self. Children need to be engaged, to learn through exploration and rake control of their own education.

They need to get a feeling of power to learn on their own rerms, and it has to begin while they arc young, in kindergarten or first grade."

He believes that, as a new school whose curriculum and policies are being designed to meet the demands of modern society. the Burroughs School will prepare srudencs for the real world, both culturally and academically.

Smith also stresses the importance of reaching srudenrs history in a meaningful way. He criticizes the tendency of public schools to teach only pose-slavery African history, which, according to Smith, results in a shallow awareness of true African culture. \XIalker was even more distressed, saying char, "Our history in many ways has been virtually erased ... for us, ir's like, 'Marrin Luther King,' and that's it."

Although applications arc still being sc.:nr our ro pre-schools and parents, the Nannie Helen Burroughs School already has irs first matriculating studenc: Jeremiah Smtrh. the kindergarten-age son of Reverend Smith himself. "His ID number will be 't.'" "I he elder Sm ith beams, then adds, "And we're paying tuition, too."

The school's tuition will be on a sliding scale, based on a percentage of household income, in keeping with the board's de~ire

that Burroughs be open to all, regardless of class or race. Despite irs Afrocentric focus, the school will nor consider race in admissions, which Smith claims will be strictly first-come, first-serve, until the 20 spaces in each class are filled.

Walker hopes that the School's focus on learning, culture, and the community will create a reputation that will offer Burroughs students attractive options upon graduation. "I have worked at Choate Rosemary Hall for 10 years," she says, "and they are very interested in a school like Nannie Helen Burroughs." Walker believes chat once it reaches full capacity in 2007, Burroughs could be a strong feeder co prep schools like Choate. She added that prestigious academies are "open ro anyone with the right skills," and that, with Burroughs' focus on academics and the community, its students will be well prepared for whichever high school they choose ro attend.

The Burroughs School logo is a dove perched in a band-a reference ro Noah's return ro dry lan d and a symbol of a new beginning. And Moore is emphatic that American religion needs a new beginning... With shootings every two seconds and drug deals on every corner, what's the church for?" he asks, then answers the question himself: "Prayer by itself is nor enough; you need to puc action behind it. That's how prayers get answered. He doesn't focus just on the afterlife," Moore says of Smith. "His focus is on now, on building the community."

Above the doors ro the main sanctuary of Community Baptist hangs a sign char reads, "Enter to Worship, Exit to Serve.~ Though Smith didn't author the phrase, he makes sure it is carried out. He "vill soon be absorbed in building homes and credit unions, but the spark to his work is the School, which will produce a base of young community members who are secure in their belief and their cuiture.

And] Cowd~ry is a jmhman in Ezra Stiks APRIL 14, 2000

Co/kg~.

by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

A

Anders Corr read "Self-Reliance" and took to heart Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice to "learn to detect and watch the gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages."

He dropped out of high school, renounced his American citizenship, and spent much of the next decade as a squatter-activist fighting for the right of the homeless to live on vacant "private property." Keeping this personal history in mind while waiting to meet him at Atticus, I scanned the tables, searching for dreadlocks, piercings and other tell-tale signs of a radical in the midst of clean-cut Yale students. Corr, however, had no trouble blending in. Now a Yalie himself, the 30-year-old junior's conservative haircut, hornrimmed glasses and chic patent leather shoes belie his exceptional past and the nonchalance with which he recounts scouring dumpsters for food, getting deported from Kenya and Mexico, and spending three weeks in solitary confinement for refusing to wear an identification bracelet while in a California prison.

As I sit down with Corr he shakes my hand unassumingly.

When the waiter comes over; he orders a cookie, then changes his mind and asks for a menu. Laughing at himself, he decides on the cookie. I ask him some questions about squatting, but he seems more interested in talking about his classes and thoughts on politics. 'Tm focusing on whether it makes sense to have global integration and take away borders between nation scares," he tells me.

"What I am doing right now is all about getting rid of borders." I press him to describe his time as a squatter camping on unoccupied land and scavenging for food. "Oh yeah, here." He takes out a hardcover book and hands it to me. "I need that back, though, it's my only copy."

The tome is Corr's book No Trespassing, released last fall by South End Press, a small, nonprofit publisher in Cambridge. It documents his own experience as a squatter and defends the rights of others-from peasants in Honduras to disaffected punks in New York City-to live freely on unoccupied land and in abandoned buildings. In No Trespassing, Corr draws on both historical and con-

14

T THE AGE OF 17,

temporary examples to argue that squatting is the ultimate form of protest against a fundamentally unjust economic and political system. I flip to the "About the Author" in the back of the book. His resume boasts an impressive list of publications for which he has written- The New York Times, The San Francisco Examiner, Anarchy Magazine, and Squat BeautifUL While No Trespassing makes a compelling and well-considered intellectual argument, its real significance lies in its call to action.

The book's final line quotes Elvia Alvarado, a Honduran squatter: "I hate to offend you, but we won't get anywhere by just writing and reading books," she told Corr. "The important thing is for you to do something." Corr, not one for sanctimonious rhetoric, has spent much of his life fulfilling this ideal.

After growing up as the only child of a single mother in Santa Cruz, CA, Corr spent his junior year in high school as an American Field Service exchange student in Kenya. During his stay in Nairobi, he was exposed to a level of poverty that made a profound impression on him. In the midst of such deprivation, he began to question the causes of social and economic inequality around the globe. "I began to wish for a world that did not order its agricultural ¡or political states through police and military force, lines of property, and international boundaries drawn on maps." More importantly, Corr questioned his own role in such a system. "I read . Tolstoy and Gandhi. I became a pacifist and an internationalist."

A month before he was scheduled to return to California, Corr marched into the American embassy in Nairobi, passport in hand, and renounced his citizenship. "I saw that by using a United Stares passport, I tacitly participated in what I considered an injustice."

Bewildered embassy officials were unsure how to respond to this well-read, precocious, and idealistic 17 year-old. They promptly expelled him from the country and sent him home.

Back in San't a Cruz, Corr was a changed man. His Quaker background had already given him a pacifist and socially-conscious world-view, but his exposure to the slums and srarvation of Nairobi had convinced him to reject sociery altogether. In a consummately

THÂŁ NEW JouRNAL

Emersonian act of defiance, he biked into Mexico without a passport, a cicizen of the world filled with indignation. After evading border controls and police for several hundred miles, Corr was finally apprehended and detained by officials in Mazaclin. "They said that I could either pay for a plane ticker back to the U.S. or go to prison," recalls Corr. His principles demanded that he go to prison. But, a sympathetic citizen of the United States paid for him to fiy back to California.

Just t8 years old, Corr decided to drop out of society as completely as possible. " I asked the question, 'How is it justified for me co spend money at all when there are people starving all over the world?' I wanted co live without spending any money," he explains.

Over the next three months, he lived on just forty cents, camping in the woods outside of Santa Cruz and sustaining himself on organic milk and half-eaten sandwiches scavenged nightly from a dumpster behind a health food store. Once, Corr tells me, he almost are a bag of tofu that was mixed with shards of glass. H e laughs. "Whatever. If there's food in a dumpster and there are people starving, I should ear that food--even if it's a lircle dangerous."

While squatting, Corr was constantly harassed by cops and property owners. During those days and his subsequent time as a homeless rights activist, he was arrested 17 rimes and spent a total offour months in jail. I ask him about prison. "It was intense, it was a learning experience, bur not intolerable. I read Th~ htkra/ist Papn-1 in prison," he notes with a couch of irony. Even when threatened with harsh treatment by cops and prison guards, Corr retained his commitment to noncompliance and pacifism. His incarcerations were often prolonged because, in defiance of a system which he saw as perpetuating injustice, Core would refuse co sign forms allowing him to leave without bail.

During one stint in a Santa Cruz jail, Corr removed his prisoner identification bracelet, similar to the one a patient wears in a hospital. "It's dehumanizing, it's implying that you're

sick because you're in jail. So I refused to wear it... and they put me in solitary confinement for three weeks."

Corr relates all of this to me marrer-of-factly, as if describing the boring details of a high school graduation. Trying co imagine the person before me living our the story he tells, I ask him if he was as clean cut then as he is now. H e laughs. "I was more clean cur back then."

Just a few months after he started squatting, Corr began ro depart from his radical asceticism. In Quaker meetings, many of his peers condemned his lifestyle, particularly his defiant noncompliance with the law. Corr wanted to defend his views in writing. "I knew that what I was doing was right, and I wanted co explain that." His casual tone undercuts any self-indulgence which the effort might imply. Although he began with the intention of writing no more than a pamphlet, Core's scope quickly grew. Influenced by people as diverse as Rigoberta Menchu and Mark Twain, he saw close connections between his experience and land occupation efforts worldwide. "Land and housing movements are infinitely diverse, yet enjoy exciting trans-global coalitions," he wrote. The idea evolved into a full-scale study of squatting and squatters' rights movements around the world and throughout the twentieth century. Corr ended his days as a squatter and reemerged as a member of society, dividing his rime between writing, activism, and work.

Bur, he emphasizes, this in no way implied a break in his commitment ro radical change and direct action. Indeed, two years Later, he returned ro squatting. "I've avoided the rigors of... outdoor squatting for the last seven years," Corr wrote in the book's introduction, "bur I began writing this book as a squatter, and I hope that squatter spirit permeates irs pages." Even as he started accept-

Malaysian "fusion" cuisine

Lunch

(off of

16

ingjobs waiting tables and doing day labor, he was far from m oving into the main~ scream. Initially, he would not cake more than three dollars an hour- the mean per capita global wage-for his work, even when employers offered him nine or ten. "I wouldn't accept more than that because I tho~ght that's what everyone should make," he explains.

Corr also became active in movements fighting for the rights of squatters to occu~ py unused land regardless of who holds the deed. In the midst of other squatters, he organized and participated in countless occupations of land and buildings. H e takes out a photo album and shows me pic~ rures of occupations and rallies. Alongside homeless Vietnam veterans and wild~haired punks. Corr wields a crowbar, shattering deadbolts and masrerlocks to enter aban~ cloned buildings. He describes an effort in San Francisco to block the descrucrion of an abandoned building used by squatters.

He speaks slowly and deliberately, choosing his words carefully so as not to reveal his role--or whether he even had a role--in the illegal enterprise. A 55-gallon barrel was filled with chunks of stone and concrete and clUck strips of iron rebar. After wet cement was poured in, the idea went, squarten and aCtivists would bolt their

hands into the barrel. In order to move them from the site, cops would have to cut through hundreds of pounds of concrete, rock and metal. The building was saved.

Even as Corr describes how he ended up at Yale, I cannot help but feel that his current life is somehow disjointed from his radical activist days. I do not want to believe that he has sold out, but I can't rec· oncile the paradox his story seems to embody: the guy with a radical commit· ment to change and personal direct action transforms himself easily into the faithful and diligent academic. After spending three semesters at community college in San Francisco, he transferred to Yale cltis ~. largely because of a desire to study wid! certain members of the political science department. One of those professors, James Scott, praises Corr, his student, on dle jacket of No Trnpassing. Corr is currendr focusing his studies on issues of global governance, the theory propounded by left· wing "world federalist" organizations around the country. H e hopes to graduate next year with both bachelor's and master's degrees in political science and then to go to either Law or graduate school.

Corr picks up on m y suspicion that he has sold out. "Stieet activism has a mot21 power that nothing else does. It's saying

THE NEW jouRNAL

'we're not going to play the little game, that it's all bullshit,'" he says. Corr, however, sees no need to defend hi~ decisions; he calmly explains them. <.onlidcnr chat h i!. reasoning will speak for itself: H e does not dismiss rhe srreer-lcvel l,tdidtl i~m of his younger da)·s as angst-ridden, adolescenr rebellion . Instead, he attributes his radical change in .tpproach to acquired wisdom and a recendy-developed political sensibility. "I saw the limitations th.n ~ocial movements can come up agaimt," he explains. " Rad icals need to try to get into places where they can affec:c ch.111ge on a macrolevel." More than anyone, Corr seems to be in a position to make this judgement. \X'hile his radicalism has not subsided, he sees power-trad i tion;tl, hierarchical, establishment power as the most viable avenue ro legirimatt. change. "I though t that to be part of that hierarchy you had ro compromise yourself. hut if you can get let into that hierarchy. you h ave a much bener chance of making changes: you'll be at the table instead of ourside with a banner."

Anders Corr is toeing the fine line chat every activist must tread. After ,1 decade of street activism, he is poised to emcr a mainstream that seems to contr.tdict the radicalism of his younger dap. Cort thinks he can resolve this paradox and doC"sn't c.·ue if others suspect that he has bcc.:n compromised .

"All of my activist friends 1hink J'm a sellout, and tt\ okay with 111(.'," He returns to Emcr~on's "Self-Reliance," the bible of hi~ youth: "Io he gre-at is w be misunderiBIJ stood. "

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1

HE BASEMENT OF 220 CoLLEGE

STREET IS RAW SPACE. Tucked beneath Tibwin Grill, the barren room belies the beauty par-

lor it once was. Walls, pipes, sinks, and hair dryers have all been removed. The space has been stripped of its former saccharine chaos and scraped clean. Now, electric sockets gape from the walls, naked bulbs glare from the ceiling, four rusty poles stand exposed, and a circle of white folding chairs occupies one corner.

Untitled (space) is the new home of Artspace, a nonprofit artists' collaborative that is quietly changing the way New Haven sees art and, well, art spaces. "We are redefining where art happens," said Helen K.auder, president of Arts pace's board of direc¡ tors, when I met with her and co-di.rector Marianne Bernstein in untitled (space) one afternoon. Since its inception in 1984.

Artspace has been "a catalyst for artistic efforts," and, in recent years, with its City-Wide Open Studios project , has turned

i~

focus toward rehabilitating decrepit or abandoned New Haven spaces. Each year, vacant commercial buildings are transformed into artists' studios and the public is invited inside. In its wake, Open Studios has left a trail of urban renewal: about half of t}l( abandoned spaces used as studios in the first year of the project were subsequently leased.

For most of its existence, Artspace introduced art to vacant spaces while remaining nestled in an upscale gallery on Audubo~ Street. But all this changed in 1998 when the overhead of the Audubon gallery grew too high. Artspace was forced to "retrencâ&#x20AC;˘ and reinvent" itself, said K.auder, and eventually moved into 220 College Street, a Yale-donated space that Bernstein described

18

THE NEW JouRl'tl

as "chameleon-like." The room is void of decoration, giving the artists great freedom to install their pieces as they see fit.

With each exhibit, the space is reinvented.

When I visited untitled (space), there

~

was no exhibit and nothing to see except ¡the stack beauty of the room itsel£ I quickly realized the delicate humor of the situation. Standing in this barren gallery, I was enacting Artspace's mission: to redefine perceptions of art. Each click of my camera's shutter was an effort to turn this basement gallery bereft of art into a work of art itsel£ Ten minutes later I walked through a fence on Chapel Street into a collection of painted rocks that traced a spiral around my feet and provided a sharp contrast to the surrounding brick walls and piles of glass and dirt that filled the once-abandoned lot I stood in. I had come to photograph Artspace's newest project, the New Haven Labyrinth, or "the Lot," as Kauder and Bernstein insistently called it, underscoring both the innovative use of this space and its transient nature. The labyrinth, which is composed of rocks decorated by New Haven residents ranging from elementary school students to cancer patients, was opened on January 1, 2000, and will soon be dismantled. "The labyrinth has transformed the way people see Chapel Street," said Bernstein. "They will never see it the same way again." But Bernstein and Kauder believe that after a few months people will stop noticing the labyrinth, and the lot will be no more to passing eyes than a vacant public space. They plan to introduce a series of temporary projects, including a giant suspended chair, to keep the space engaging. Said Bernstein, "Change is necessary to keep people seeing."

jessica Bulman, a sophomore in Berkeley College, is a managing editor ofTNJ.

I

1 H ungerford

Y

ALE'S ETHNIC COUNSELORSHIP PROGRAM has always

tried to help minoritj students make not only a change of address but also a major cultural leap upon their arrival in New Haven. "I think there's a dominant culture here at Yale," explains Roopa Purushothaman. "There's doubleconsciousness. White students have the luxury of nor knowing anything about me if they don't want ro. Bur as a minority, I don't have that choice. I have to know both worlds."

Purushothaman speaks with the conviction of a devoted leader, a strident activist, and an intimate friend.

As one of only 13 ethnic counselors in Yale College, she assumes aU three roles on a daily basis. For Purushothaman, who is Indian, a strong personal commitment to diversity and her desire to ease the transition to college for Yale's minority freshmen motivate her co continue her efforts. She believes, however, that "the system is currently very Aawed."

Unlike a Yale freshman, the University's ethnic counselorship program cannot chalk up its current problems ro transition difficulties. In fact, the program is now almost 30 years old. In the early 1970s, Yale had only recently begun taking measures ro accommodate many of the calls for reform that were then circulating. Along with many of its Ivy League peers, Yale first admitted women in the late 1960s and soon began recruiting more racial minorities.

With activists such as Betty Friedan and Marrin Luther King, Jr. preaching the gospel of equality, the message was clear: Yale must change its our-ofdare admissions practices or be lefr behind. Yale, to its credit, chose co change, and formed the ethnic counselorship program in 1972.

Unfortunately, the early hope expressed fur the program has been wearing ÂŁhin. As new ............._freshmen arrive on campus each September, ~cts seem ro surface. Supponers of the program admit that it is too small to be effective, while antagonists claim that ethnic counselors foster the very divisiveness they seek ro heal by singling out minorities for special attention.

For instance, Aaron Honn wrote in the February 2, 1996, edition of the Yak Daily News that, "from racially exclusive fraternities and sororities to Yale's ethnic counselor program, the emphasis seems to be on the maintenance of one's ethnic identity above all else... Yale needs to get over race. It's nor that big a deal." In response, the Black Student Union shot back only two days later, saying that "ignoring reality hardly seems an appropriate, final word of advice... We can't 'get over' APIUL 14>

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something we have yet, fully and honestly, community by automatically marking to face." them out for special attention.

Often, this rhetoric only serves to Another problem is the randomness of osuacize Yale's minorities. "I remember the assignments: Korean-Americans to a when I arrived at Yale, the first publication Chinese-American counselor, MexicanI saw was Light and Truth,'' recalls Vindia Americans to a Puerto Rican.

Fernandez. "They had this cartoon that Purushothaman says, "I have tons of AsianAmerican counselees but only two South portrayed ethnic minorities with stylized Asian kids. East Asia and South Asia are facial features that was very stereotypical and prejudicial. My first reaction was, Oh two totally different cultures. That's a big my God ... I didn't realize I could be perissue that isn't being examined." ceived as a threat to other people. I was Leah Walker, a multiracial freshman really affected by it." She continues, "Yale is who considers herself part Mricana very different place from where I grew up.

American, part Native American, and part When you're homesick Caucasian, feels the real ''THE MAJORI1Y OF THE cause of tension for Yale or just need to talk co someone with a similar WHITE STUDENT BODY minorities is a lack of background, it's nice to DOESN'T TIIINK THERE'S AN recognition that racial have the support of an problems still exist at ISSUE WITH RACE. PEOPLE Yale. "The majority of ethnic counselor."

The most common ARE UKE 'EVERYIHING'S the white student body doesn't think there's an proposal for improving FAIR AND EQUAL,' WHEN the program is to expand issue with race. People the number of ethnic ALL TilE CUSTODIAL PEOPLE are like 'evetything's fair counselors in order to and equal,' when all the ARE BLACK." custodial people are encourage greater contact between counselors and counselees. black." Despite the enormous changes in Currently, the approximately 400 ethnic Yale's recruiting and admissions policies since the late 196os, a mere seven percent of minority freshman are divided among the 13 ethnic counselors, so each counselor is the student body University-wide is African-American. In comparison, Africanassigned anywhere from 40 to 70 students, Americans make up about 13% of the gencompared to about 20 students per freshman counselor. "The point of being a eral U.S. population.

Walker, however, feels that racial tencounselor is tO be a net," Purushothaman points out, "But with so many students to sion at Yale is created not only by the look afrer, sometimes it's hard." majority, but often arises from within the minority community. She recalls the Black Another proposed solution is to do away with ethnic counselor assignments Solidarity Conference that she attended earlier this year, where "there was so much altogether. Purushothaman herself thinks angry poetry," she states. "It was weird. chat this is a viable plan. "I fed like assignThey had covered up all the portraits of the ing is outdated. Maybe giving incoming freshmen more of a choice in choosing a old white men in the Silliman dining hall counselor would be a good change." with black doth so that they wouldn't have to look at them. The mood was just very Students who indicate their starus as a angry and violent, which I disapprove oC minority on their initial Yale application Maritza Baez, a student of Puerto Rican are automatically assigned to an ethnic counselor when they come to Yale. Instead descent, agrees that no one group is solely responsible for racial tensions at Yale. "I of this system, Purushothaman and others belong to a multi-ethnic sorority, Lambda suggest that ethnic counselors could become 'ethnic liaisons' and simply make Psi Delta. A couple of groups only wanted to have people from their race [in the sororthemselves available to anyone who wants ity]. They said that everyone was welcome, to seek them out. "That way," says but they weren't. I found that irritating.,.

Purushorhaman, "students who aren't She adds, "The exclusivity needs to go. I'm minorities could link to minority commua person first." nities if they wanted to." This change Walker feels her biggest challenge as a might satisfy critics who contend that the minority at Yale isn't the ethnic counselorprogram seals minorities off from the Yale

THE NEW }OUR.NAL

ship program, bur racher her own representation of her communicy. "We don't gee to worry about our own lives," she said.

"We're in a situation where we can pave che way for ochers. I don't want people co forgee where they're comirrg from. We should work on changing complacency." She feels chat this cask is difficult, however, because complacency and self-interest often overlap. "I chink a lor of people don't want to talk about race unless something big comes up," she says. "They're aftaid chey won't be as open-minded as they think they are. For people who aren't minorities, race is a special issue." Nonetheless, Walker does approve of the basic aims of che echoic counselorship program. "If I had a problem, I would go to an ethnic counselor," she said.

A furcher challenge lies in integrating che echoic counselor program with ocher existing support networks for minoricy students. In addition to the counselorship program, Yale has a network of deans who serve as liaisons to different echoic groups, and several cultural houses chat function as meeting centers for minoricy studen ts.

Dean Richard Chavolla, che head of chese faculcy ethnic liaisons as well as the Chicano Cultural Ho~se, believes chat che ethnic counselorship program is imegraced relatively well wich Yale's ocher minoritydirected programs, despite any shortcomings the counselorship program itself may have. He takes pains to emphasize that his job is not simply to oversee che various cultural houses and echoic counselors.

Chavolla feels strongly chat che echoic counselorship program builds unicy at Yale.

"There is a misplaced perception chat chese programs are divisive," he says. One example he cites is the relationship of che ethnic counselors and cultural houses to what is perhaps che most distinctive feature of undergraduate life at Yale: che residential college system. "These programs aren't at odds wich che residential colleges," he says.

"They're complementary." He goes on to explain, "The most culturally active students are normally che most active in general ....A strong idencicy wich an echoic group actually helps a person to open up to ochers, not to close chemselves off."

In roughly 30 years, m inoricy groups have clearly established themselves in undergraduate life at Yale. Bulletin boards around campus overflow wich Ayers adver-

rising everything from ethnic poetry jams to minoricy leadership conferences. While minorities may be statistically underrepresented, the influence of their cultures and ideas on student life is strongly felt.

Nonetheless, minorities often feel unsure abour how to represent themselves and don't know to what extent they should advertise their differences from the majoricy of Yale students. Manal Metha, an Indian student, illustrates the paradox of minoricy student life with the following anecdote. "I came across this book by Theodore Roosevelt," he explains, "that said there's no room in this country for hyphenated Americans. You could say he's racist. . . or you could say he's telling us to see each other just as people."

That paradox-the pull between the impulse ro withdraw into one's own culture and the obligation to st2nd apart to educate the majoricy-is long-standing, but not irreconcilable. In fact, it is often such dilemmas that give minoricy students the energy and the direction they value in their lives. ''I'm definitely glad I made the decision ro be an ethnic counselor," Purushothaman claims. "You have to leave 15 minutes earlier whe~r you go in case you run into a kid. You haTe to deal with a lor of issues other people ton't think about.

Bur ir's worth it."

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DECEMHl R, shnrrlv atl, r Joseph Heller dj Despite the 40 years that have passed since Catch-22 first an ·k this home in I .1ct Hampton, New Yort~ ad occaappeared, today's military seems even more ridiculous, more inept, sion to remdnber a fr:_agmenr of dialngu• from his 6 and more foolish than Yoss:uian's commanding officers. But the difin8uenrial o<Wel, Vtd.'-22. fhl" circumstances were n between our age and his are anything but comical; instead, tangled, b n condensed \Cf1iion runs '3$ tOll e visiting tO be insidious and rather dangerous. Today's military is r postage sometimes divided by separate uniforms and alterfamily in ISrael over the hoh<bys, a letter with un arrived,. r me from tht• draft ho.trd of rhc Israeli Army. It was sent of strategy, but more often not. Today's military is interto ke known my pending ohligation to the "defense and secuc.icooperative, engaged in fighting common enemies and of the nation. Being a grown adult of 21 yetrs and the- prod . Governments sell each other arms o ne year and use of Israeli parents-a dual ciri1en by birthright, according tO &r..dii-:~}~li-~me weapons against each other the next. Today's wars, law--my presence at a training depot for fim-year soldiers \WI' instant coverage on CNN, are almost always undeclared, required immediately and without delay, under threat of arrest and self-perpetuatiJig. clter Osama bin-Laden or even imprisonment. \'X'hcn; rhc Army keeps ~uch information, I ' n · always around rhe corner.

Joeepb Heller oresaw aU thia. It tnight even b e said that our can't even imagine. I pl.tced several linguistically challenging phone calls to the presiding officer ;tt some base or orher in the middle of current paupcioa 0£ the milicary--with all of its bloated supply nowhere. But nothing, he said. could be done. Despite my c:oDtnca, ia botched hUmanitarian missions, its sex scandals, and American passport, despite my soon-ro-be interrupted studies, srories of mysterious Gulf War illness-resembles the world of despite the fact that I was in Israel lor a two week stay, for crying O#eb-22more than Hdler might have imagined. His outrage, dark our loud, I would not be permitted to leave Israeli soil. humor, and ironic vision foreshadowed-in only a partially humor"Nobody likes the Army at first," the officer explained, unwitous way-rhe essential nature of politics and war as many of us see it today. His death has left us with one fewer voice in the continutingly echoing the logic of Doc Daneeka in Catch-22, "but they get used to it. Ifl excused you, I'd have to excuse anyone who didn't fed ing discussion of what America has done to her children in the like fighting, and what kind of army would that be?" twentieth century. His message, however, made more poignant by his compulsion to joke about it, lingers in the reminder that this is Tm ours. Cuckoo,' [Yossarian said). 'Don't you a world saturated with d eath. understand? I'm off my rocker. They sent someone dse home in my place by misrake. They've got a licensed psyHeller was born in Coney Island, Brooklyn in 192.3. Of his chiatrist up at the hospital who examined me, and that was childhood home, he wrote: "Coney Island is beautiful to children his verdicr. I'm really insane.' and ugly to adults, and, in this respect, it is often typical of life 'So?' irsel£" In 1942., one year after graduating from Abraham Lincoln 'So?' Yossarian was puzzled by Doc Daneeka's inabiliHigh School, and a few months before he would have been drafted, ty to comprehend. 'Don't you Stt what that means? Now Heller enlisted in the Army Air Corps and went into combat (like you can take me off combat duty and send me home.

Yossarian) as a wing bombardier st2tioned near Corsica. His first They're not going to send a crazy man our ro be killed, are 8ytng · missions were entirely uneventful: milk runs, in which no they?'

'Who else will go?' one shot back. It was not until his 37th mission, in fact-this rime, over Avignon, in the south of France, when a gunner in his own plane was wounded-that Heller came to the discovery that made After a call to the American embassy in Jerusalem, the situation his literary career. "Good God, • as Yossarian exclaims in the first shortly resolved itself. For the symbolic act of renouncing my Israeli chapter of Cauh-22, "they're trying to kill me, too." citizenship, I would be allowed to board my flight borne. But the After the war, and 2.3 more flight missions, Heller married, calm and uncomprehending voice of the Army o fficer lingers in my spent a year in California, and began his belated education on the mind, especially when I hear of the frequent "police actions" Israeli Gl Bill. He earned a bachelor's degree &om NYU and a master's in soldiers routinely carry out in Gaza and the West Bank. Heller's English &om Columbia, and went on to Oxford as a Fulbright book now strikes me more as prophetic documentary than as pure Scholar. Upon his return co the United States, Heller taught English fiction. His subject, after all, is sanity: who defines what is sane briefly at Penn St2te, and then decided to work in advertising, behavior and what is not? And might not insanity be preferred in a where be remained for the next ten years. {HeUer's advenrures in world with such perverted notions of what is sane?

ACK

THE NEW JouRNAL

How Joseph Heller learned to stop worrying and love the bomb advertising would later resurface in the bleak Something HappnmJ, his second novel.) While writing copy in the advertising departments o f Time, Look, and finally McCall's magazines, Heller would squeeze in work on his novel-at night, seated at his dinner table, or surrep titiously at the office. In November of 1961, after eight uninterrupted years of writing, Catch-22 appeared to giddy reviews fro m som e and h arsh criticism from others. Richard Stern, who reviewed Catch-22 for The N ew York Times, said the book was "a collection of an ecdotes, some of them finely assembled, yes," but "much too long," "repetitive," "monotonous," and "certainly no , novel." Another reviewer, John Pine, called Catch-u I "tedious" and recommended it only for libraries with large • Five years after the collections of fiction.

But there was also a breakthrough success rather vocal group of readers who thought otherwise. The of Catch-zz,joseph novelist Nelson Algren, writHeller cam.e to Yale to ing in The Nation, claimed Heller's book was not only stage his first play. "the best American novd to come out of World War u" But would ~Bombed but also simply "th e best American novel.. .in years." in New Haven live up Amidst the salvos of critics favorable and not, the book to its tide? circulated quietly for a few years. After the poor reviews and negative publicity died down, most read ers o nly came to Catch-22 via word-of-mouth.

Soon enough Yossarian would become everyone's favorite survivor, and Catch-22 the novel that everyone was reading.

In telling the story o f John Yossarian, a bombardier wh o spends much of the novel tryi ng to have himself declared insane and therefore unable ro fly another mission, Heller drew on many of his own experiences in the war, but always deflected attempts to connect Yossarian's nihilism with his own view of life at the time. "I am not Yossarian," Heller o nce said. "He is who I might like to have been, had I .the knowled ge then that I now have."

It is hard to overstate the importance of Catch-22 in American cultural and polirical life. Before Catch-22, American war writing consisted o f a d ozen variations on a single traditional theme. In 1M Red Badge of Courage, A Fa~ell to Arms, and even more contemporary works such as The Naked and the Dead and The Thin Ret/

Line, the soldier's experience in war invariably takes the form of the bildungsroman, a story of a young person's education and arrival into the world. After World War I, the tales usually featured a young man disillusioned by his service in the war. After Heller, the seasoned and aged veteran replaced the inexperienced charge as protagonist. Prolonged hysteria and rampant paranoia, taken up again by the war films of the 1970S and '8os, became the dominant keys in which the stories of war were told. Most importantly, war could finally be funny. After Catch-22, novels such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Grttvityi RAinbow could be written, and films such as Dr. Smtn~low could be produced.

Set during World War II and written in the 1950S, Catch-22 missed by a decade or so the war in which Milo Minderbinder and Major Major Major Major might have been depicted most fittingly. And yet despite its faintly anachronistic references to the McCarthy era, no other work of fiction inspired more students and young people as the antiwar movement grew or represented the folly of napalm diplomacy so well. By the mid-196os, draft dodgers began wearing Army field jackets with "Yossarian Lives" name.tags, and Nnusw«lt wrote about the "Heller cult." Catch-22, although not directly about Vietnam, became the most compemng and popular story of the war's nightmarish realities, and of our country's namdess agents of orange: · vou mean there's a catch?"

•sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied.

•earch-11. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty really isn't crazy."

Thete was only one catch and that was Cacch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face ofdangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he Bcw them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Carch-11 and let out a respectful wtWde. •That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

•Jt's the best there is," Doc Danecka agreed.

Carm-u, as the critic Alfred Kazin observed, is a fantasy made real by historical events, another variable in the question of whether an imitates life or the other way around. In the four decades since its first publication, the novel has been rranslated into more than 20

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languages, made into a film by Mike Nichols, sold around ten million copies in the United States alone, and earned its author the race distinction of citations in dictionaries of the English language.

For his pact, Heller was pleased but by no means content with the success of Catch-22. After the book was published, he taught at various colleges before becoming a professor of English at the City College of New York. As popular and critical acclaim for Catch-22 grew, Heller began to tour college campuses, and became a vocal critic of the wac in Vietnam. During this time, Heller conceived of having a group of actors read selections from Catch-22 alongside some passages from Shakespeare that had influenced him. And then something fortuitous happened. Sometime in the middle of the Catch-22 wave, in the fall of 1966, Joseph Heller arrived at Yale.

Although the entire affair is curiously absent from his 1998 memoir, Now and Thm: From Coney Island to H~. Heller carne to New Haven for a reading at the invitation of Calhoun College, during which he would mischievously call himself "a born promotion man." Later that same day, Heller had dinner at the home of Robert Brustein, the Dean of the Yale School of Drama and the author of a particularly favorable review of Catch-22 in Th~ N~ &public. The pair had met shortly after the appearance of the review in 1961 and maintained a steady friendship in later years. During dinner, Heller discussed his idea for a play he had been writing in bits and pieces over the past year; about a month later, the first half of the first act appeared in Brustein's mailbox along with a vague outline of the rest. Four months later, Heller sent him the second draft of the entire play. Brustein was ecstatic: that very evening, he read the entire play (about 200 pages) aloud to his wife and was stiU so excited afterward that he decided to call his friend Philip Roth and read him the entire play as well. ~ Bomb~d in the early ride HeUer gave his two-act play, was to change its name each the rime it was produced in a different city. Heller would also have an unlimited opportunity to see its steady progress from the script to the stage. Brustein invited Heller to be playwright-in-residence for the fall 1967 term and ro help produce the first production at

THE NEW JouRNAL

the Drama School. While at Yale, Heller why are they going there?" he pleads. also taught :t graduate playwriting seminar Tapping his manuscript of the same play and an undergraduate creative writing being performed, the Major replies with class. On the strength of two rough drafts, chiJiing indifference: "Because it says so."

Heller had been awarded gn honor that OffStage, the m ission to Constantinople many writers Struggle m'any years to takes place, and one of the younger soldiers, Sinclair, is killed. In Act 11, another receive: an adjunct gig teaching studentS the craft of fiction and the chance to see soldier, Sergeant Henderson, spends most o ne of the most prestigious theater ensemof his time looking unsuccessfully for the bles in the country produce his own first recently deceased Sinclair. Amidst Starkey play. and Henderson's ongoing debate over the The first public reading of the play in reality of young men going off to war and October was a huge success. A group of 12 never coming back, the Major sends in Sinclair's replacement: the 12-year-old son actors read the script before the entire Drama School, and Heller _ ,.......____ of Captain Starkey himself. was reportedly among those The action of the play is intermoved to tears. Auditions spersed with scenes of were held and rehearsals for Henderson's fellow airmen~ Bombed in New Haven three of whom are designated began a short time later on simply as "Idiors"-playing October JO, inside the old and with the baseball bars, footdusty WNHC building on balls, and toy grenades that Chapel Street. Bur Heller the Major has generously soon showed himself to be a treated them to; the halfhearred courrship of Starkey and rrue writer and not an actor: at the first rehearsal, he gasped the Red Cross worker Ruth; upon learning that the actors would nor be the antics of two sporrsmen, associates of able to rehearse with props and correct the Major; and Henderson's confused revelacion that the evenrs of the play might spacing until four days before opening night, the performance space currently acruaUy be real after all. being occupied by pesky undergraduates Less elegant are the motifs and conand, for some reason, the San Francisco ceirs from Pirandello and the theater of the Mime Troupe. Other discoveries upset absurd that Heller borrowed liberally in~ Heller even more. Stacy Keach, the lead in &mbed in New Haven. Between the two ~ Bombed in New Haven, was unable to air missions Captain Starkey sends his men attend the first week and a half of to fly, a number of increasingly tedious disrehearsals; Heller's exhaustive stage direccussions rake place in which the actors, tions (sometimes going on for pages at a lounging on the stage, talk about the relarive size of their speaking partS in the play time} were being ignored; his punctuation and intonations were going unnoticed; and and their personal ambitions as performers.

In what would seem to be a direct theft worst of all, the actors were making the play's serious parrs comical and the comic from Six Characters in &arch ofan Author parts serious. "They're changing my (which Heller denied ever having read), words!~ he shrieked. After three rehearsals, Starkey, at the play's dose, rationalizes his Heller decided to leave the play in the decision to send his son off on a bombing hands of director Larry Arrick until openmission to Minnesota with the following ing night, December 4· logic: "Now, none of this, of course, is real~ Bombed in New Haven is about an ly happening. It's a show, a play in the theAir Force squadron in an unspecified modater, and I'm nor really a captain. I'm an em war. In the first act, Starkey, the decent actor. There bas never been a war. There but ultimately quiescent captain of the will never be a war. Nobody will be killed squadron, receives news from the Major here tonight. It's only make-believe." that hi~ men are to bomb Constantinople.

But as the time drew closer to opening ··There is no Constantinople. It's Istanbul," night, the production was facing new, more Starkey protests. "I know that," the Major immediate problems. Printed immediately answers. ~Then why are we going there?" following an interview with HeUer in a ·we're not going there. They are." •And campus publication was a full-page adver-

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tisement endorsed by the Yale Draft Refusal Committee and signed by hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students declaring their determinacion to refuse their pending service in Vietnam.

The Resistance Committee {another student group) had purchased a block of seats for the opening of 'M- Bombed in New Havm. And yet opinion ar the Drama School among students not involved in the production was becoming increasingly mixed. Several of the more radical students had decided rhar the play's final scene (in .. which Starkey is forced to send his son off to certain death) signified not avant-garde dissent but rather shameful surrender to the war and its leaders. Students refusing to go to war found the passivity of Starkey's adolescent son an implicit criticism of their own generation's behavior, and many even planned to gather in the orchestra during the final scene and chant "Hell no, we won't go." Brustein and the illustrator Jules Feiffer, another critic of the war in Vietnam, managed only days before the first show to persuade the students that disrupting the play would hurt their cause more than help it. As the curtain went up for the first scene on opening night, Heller, seated uncomfortably in the audience, seemed to most observers to be in restrained agony.

His worries that night were unfounded. After a performance many hailed as quite brilliant-Paul Newman and Mike Nichols were among those in the audience--~ Bombed in Nnu Havm sold out every show of its two-week run at the Drama School. Jack Kroll, writing in Newsweek, praised Heller's work as "the most powerful play about contemporary irrationality an American has written."

Another director signed an agreement with Heller to produce ~ Bombed in New Havm {once performed in New Haven, the title stuck) on Broadway the following year in a revised version, with some members of the Yale cast and Jason Robards playing the lead. Producers began calling for a stage adaptation of Catch-22, which Heller would later wrire. And despite the erstwhile playwright's ranting and raving, the production in New Haven is generally agreed to have been the ¡most successful of the play's incarnations ro dare.

Bur Heller's brief flirtation with the theater, for the time being, was enough. He

THE NEW JouRNAL

left New Haven the morning after the first performance at Yale without a word to anyone and, according to Brustein, avoided the spotlight for some years. The 8eeting love of critical opinion, iJ seems, was soon to leave Joseph Heller. After the opening night of the Broadway production, a reviewer for Time claimed Heller now stood with Henry James, Hemingway, and SauJ Bellow in the American tradition of good novelists who have made awful playwrights. "We Bombed in New Haven ran at the Ambassador for only u weeks, from the middle of October to the end of December 1968. A small number of productions in Europe kept the play alive until 1972, after which the play fell imo almost complete disregard. Maybe Heller was right to omit the entire affair from his memoir.

In later years, Heller's efforts to meet and even surpass the reach of his first novel fell significantly short of their goal.

Thirteen years after Catch-22, in one of the most anticipated literary events of the 1970s, Heller portrayed the dismal workings of an advertising firm in Something Happened (1974) and received primarily hostile reviews. This set the tone for the reception of his later work, as neither Good as Gold (1979), nor God Knows (1984), nor Closing Tzme (1994), a sequel of sortS to Catch-22, would be considered worthy of company with his first novel. In this respect Heller has much in common with many influential writers of the postwar eraKesey, Salinger, and Kerouac come to mind-whose careers, after early masterworks, are spent in the daunting shadow of that first, great work. Of this Heller was more chan aware: when an interviewer once told him he had never written anything better chan Carch-22, he retorted, "Who has?• But the legacy of Joseph Heller figures not merely in his tremendous artistry and decisive influence as a writer of a single work of fiction. It is, rather, in his suggestion that the line separating fiction and reality in contemporary American life becomes more slight with every passing year.

181

Ronm Givony, a junior in Branford Colkge, is an assoriau editor ojTNJ.

APRJL

14,

2000

TheNewiournal would like to thank: Andy Cowdery Sarah England Sara Hirschorn Carl Hungetford Cillian Nolan Patrick Casey Pitts Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow and

Vrrginia Bayer Amanda Brown Alan Wilensky Evan Williams

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FARE-INGB

LY

While Metro Taxi stalls, the meter

by Sydney Leaven s

0

the goals of the protest. "Our most important campaign right now

as commuter traffic was at its peak in New Haven, Metro Taxi drivers were lining up as always in from of Union Station--only that day, they were nor picking up the businessmen and students who gathered by the taxi stop. An estimated 6o cab drivers gathered co join a one-lane procession that would circle the New Haven Green and Yale campus several times. I joined Donel Ballaird, one of four spokesmen for the Metro Taxi drivers. Ballaird's car was third in the procession, and from the rear window I watched the line of cabs, each adorned with blue rally balloons, snake around the Green behind us. As we passed Phelps Gate, I saw students hunched over the nearby blue phone, black suitcases at their sides, angrily making call after fran-'-"'.....- •• • c call.

Ballaird pointed ar his computer screen and whisded in amaze"Look at all those jobs!• Thanks ro Metro T~'s high-tech 11:;t;:Orrlpu.cer dispatch system, he could count them as rbey built up. people were waiting at Sr. Raphael's Hospital, aad another had called in from the train station. He counted 15 trusrrated ~~·pie in all, waiting co be picked up by cabs.

Ballaird knew he was nor the only one eyeing the computer ,...~r"'l'n. Metro Taxi owner Bill Scalzi would also see the increasing of waiting custOmers from the company's headquarters in F.t~u~, Haven. The 6o drivers who participated in cbe March 31 I:'J.:iftl•rot:est sacrificed their most profitable hours of busiacss co make l~il'llfl"::::ar ro Scalzi their determination to unionize. In "Our lime Has ~~U..:Orne," a letter encouraging Metro Taxi drivers to join the fight to '!.~uu•Dru~, steering committee secretary Briao MacFarlane outlined NE LATE FRIDAY AFTERNOON,

is to unite and attempt to gain the power to negotiate a fair contract

that allows us the power to control our work conditions. We should have the ability to control our leases, set credits for downtime, and to prevent unfair work practices such as the non-fault accident penalty."

Metro Taxi drivers began to push for collective bargaining rights five weeks ago when, on March 7, Scalzi atlOOunced that. he was raising weekly lease rates by $So--from $640 tO $720 a week for new cars and from $6xo to $690 for older models. Mike Cacioppo, another of the spokesmen for the protesting drivers, explained that the new rates, cou pled with inflated gas prices, drove weekly operating costs to alm01t $xooo. "Most cab drivers have co work 14 to 16 hours a day, scwa1 days a week, to make enough money to live," he told me. DriYen were not satisfied when Scalzi lowered the rates by $)0 as a r....,.-:ary measure to offset the rise in gas prices. They wanted the ~to negotiate. "(Scalzi] doesn't recognize us as spokesmen fo.- chc other cab drivers, even though the other cab drivers picke<{ us llO be spokesmen for them," Cacioppo c:x:plained co me. "~try to work with him, bur he won't work with us. Everything be doa. tie does ro benefit him."

Scalzi, however, claimed -- Ia QOt againsc unions in general, bur cannot"5Upporr his drivers~ proposed union because it is illegal.

According to Scalz.i, his driv Me independent contJ"actors and thus are nor entided co Ol'gania. Tbe Connecticut Dcpamnem of Transportation agrees. "Two by things denote an employeeemployer relationship, [rellingl cfriftrs when to work and [tying) the revenue [the business coUCIICIS] with the dtiftr's revenue: Scalzi

is ticking

explained. "[At Metro Taxi] drivers are our customers, not our employees. The driver doesn't have to use our computer dispatch system. He doesn't even have to do a job. Once they pay us, they could park the car in a driveway all day, it doesn't matter. I didn't write the union laws. Period. End of story. What they are trying to do is not allowable by law."

I met with Scalzi the morning of the protest in his office at Metro Taxi headquarters. It is a small, unassuming building with fading letters on the exterior. A trailer connected on its left side is home to Scalzi's office, a cozy room furnished with a desk and chair, two leather chairs for meetings, a large computer, and dozens of photographs of his children. He thanked an employee who brought him a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, which he proceeded to mix with a pen. "Old habit," he winked.

For all his informality, however, the success of Metro Taxi has proven Bill Scalzi an excellent businessman. He began the company in 1987, when public transportation, he said, "was pretty pathetic." He bought operating rights for 109 taxis from a company that was going out of business and began with 15 cabs, gradually increasilll numbers as demand, and his revenue, grew. Now, he operates all 10, cabs and claims that there is unrnet demand for more. "Up until this past winter, there were no complaints [that our cabs we!' not aniving when people requested them]. This past winter, ere defused wti:h complaints. We-~ didn't- hrte enl5ugn vehi on the road." In a move that he said will hopefully lower waiti~ rime for cabs, Scalzi has applied to the State Deparrmtat of Transportation for a certificate- ro operate 30 more vehicl The will ho.ld a hearing to determine whether th

lie need for more taxis in New Haven, and will decide whether to grant Scalzi his request by April 27.

In the meantime, Scalzi said he has tried to improve service by increasing the efficiency of his company and the quality of his cabs.

He has added a fleet of new cabs and a state of the art computer system, which has cut down response time from an average of over 15 minutes to 8.2. Metro Taxi will also break ground this summer on a new facility that will allow for more dispatchers and com,Puter space.

Such improvements, he said, require more capital, which Metro Taxi can only raise by increasing the weekly lease that caxi drivers pay. He added that cab drivers were compensated for this lease increase by the Transportation Department's raised meter rate--a change that Scalzi himself had petitioned for-that went into effect on March 5¡ "That's why we raised lease rates when did," he explained. In f.tcr, Scalzi argued that the new meter more than compensate for the higher lease payments. Accoroing Scalzi, the new lease rates channel one-third of the increased enue of the new meter rates to the company while allowing to keep two-thirds of the profit. "Drivers make more than they before with the increased meter and lease rates," he asserted.

Additionally, Scalzi's temporary compensation for increased prices was meant to show drivers that he is in touch with needs. "The only reason that there is such a hubbub right now raised f.tres is that they came at the same time as gasoline eted," he argued. "But the drivers are our consumers, and we [to create] a work environment for them that makes them want [lease from us]."

31

will subside anytime soon. The Metro Taxi protesters seek to prove that they are employees rather than independent contractors, which will win them the right to unionize. Moreover, the 6o drivers who have begun to organize believe that Metro Taxi has no viable competition in the New Haven area and that drivers have to accept Scalzi's higher lease rates. The Connecticut Department ofTransporration reports that Metro Taxi, one of six taxi companies authorized to operate in New Haven, controls 109 of the 129 taxi certificates in the ciry. So while Metro Taxi's nearest competitor, New Haven Yellow Cab, currently charges only $380 for an owner-operator lease (compared

t••·······

to Metro's $495), the company can only drivers at a time.jobs to nine ..

off~r

Metro Taxi drivers

dent contractors. The UAW helped both groups hold rallies and parades similar to the one Metro Taxi workers recently held.

Ted Feng, a UAW represenrative who attended the March 31 protest, said he is optimistic about the possibiliry of a Metro Taxi drivers' union. "We've got a big problem here. Any policy the cab owner puts into place is imposed upon cab drivers, not negotiated." In fact, Feng and Donna Becotte, an international representative in organizing for the UAW, feel that New Haven Metro Taxi drivers' claim to

~-······

believe they have a ~············ strong legal precedent for challenging their employee starus is a strong one, perhaps classification as independent contractors. even stronger than that of the drivers in Stamford and Darien. "These guys might Late last spring, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that workers at lease cars, but [Scalzi] controls most of Stamford Taxi were employees and could their work lives," she asserted. " He deterjoin the United Auto Workers (uAw) mines how much money they have to pay to lease the car, what insurance they get union. Subsequently, workers at Yellow and Everyday cab companies in Darien, cr, and how much they pay for it. Anything successfully challenged claims by owner that deals with their work lives has to go Vito Bochicchio that they were indepenthrough him."

32

The case may not be as clear-cut as the makes it seem. Scalzi argued that, while he does not face great competition from other cab companies, he does from other lines of work. "Driving a cab isn't the only industry in the world. It's competitive with any other job. We don't stay in the business by treating [our drivers] badly," he points out. Even if drivers are set on driving a cab, it is not uncommon for them to seek leases with companies in other cities.

"Guys from Portland and Bridgeport drive for me. If they're not happy, [drivers] can go up to Hartford, Waterbury. or Bridgeport."

Moreover, other cab companies complain that job applicants are few and inexperienced, weakening Metro drivers' claims that they have no other options. Doug Vine, owner of New Haven Yellow Cab, told me that Metro Taxi attracts better drivers. "[Scalzi] is going through hundreds and hundreds of drivers, and we end up with the people he doesn't want." New Haven Yellow Cab's owner-operator leases may be over $too cheaper than Scalzi's now, but he said that he is considering raising these leases to $425 or $450 a week, only $40 to $70 cheaper.

Scalzi's higher prices may also be offset by services that other New Haven cab companies do not offer. As cabdriver Tahseen Kazmi grudgingly admitted, the computer UAW

THE NEW JouRNAL

dispatch service, unique to Metro Taxi in New Haven, has increased revenue for drivers.

Scalz.i disputes the claim that his leases force drivers to work unreasonable hours. "[Weekly drivers are] charged for six days, we don't expect them to work for seven days. The seventh day is yours: if you want to drive, you can," he said. "I have some drivers who only work five and a half days a week." However, many drivers complain that he does not credit them for the time spent waiting at the company's garage for rune-ups. Scalz.i claims that down rime is minimal. "Drivers have to come in once every two and a half to three weeks for servicing that lasts 45 minutes to three hours," he explained. Since he feels that they receive a free day of revenue each week, Scalzi believes that drivers are more than compensated for this small amount of rime. He added that if cars need more work, he readily loans drivers a car if one is available. "We don't have enough cars on the road, so the spare cars we have available dwindJe to almost nothing. That is not the f2.ult of Metro Taxi. We've applied for more cabs and hopefully the Department of Transportation will see clear to granting our request."

Scalz.i pointed out that not all Metro Taxi drivers are pressing to unionize. He leases cabs to over 100 drivers, so the involvement of 6o in rallies is perhaps not all that daunting. "Go out to the train station and you'll see JO cars working," he said. â&#x20AC;˘Most [drivers] are not interested in

union talks." But in contrast to the eagerness that protesters expressed in speaking to me, not a single driver who has not joined the organizers would allow me to reveal his name for this article. One told me he thought Scalzi a fair businessman, but that he did not want to go on the record as saying so, for fear of being ostracized by his peers. Another told me he would join the union, but he believes Metro Taxi drivers do not have a shot at obtaining the rights to organize.

Moreover, the drivers have few outside supporters. Robert Cumpstone, manager of Motor Transport Services at the Department ofTransponarion, said that he has received numerous phone calls from the spokesmen for the Metro Taxi organizers, but must tell them he has no jurisdiction over their concerns. "I sit as a neutral parry. The driver will certainly be given the courtesy of [my) listening-and then I explain the rules, regulations and statutes that prohibit our department from intervening." Curnpstone said that he refers callers to the Department of Labor, which might be better equipped to address their concerns.

While Scalzi has argued that independent contractors are "customers" of the taxi company, the Department of Transportation does not rreat them as such.

If, as Cumpstone explained, this Department does not seek to regulate lease rates because its role is to serve the public, then taxi drivers are not considered among the customers that it protects. As indepen-

dent contractors, taxi drivers are apparently neither customers nor employees, but occupy <t nebulous middJe ground.

The dispute between Bill Scalz.i and some of his Metro Taxi drivers is less a story of heroes and villains than of one businessman who needs clearer rulebooks. Scalzi's voice rose indignandy on the phone when I called for his response to some of his drivers' accusations. "Those insinuations are like fingernails on blackboards to me," he said. "I wouldn't have been able to grow from 15 cabs to 109 by treating my cab drivers poorly. I challenge any driver out of the present or past to show me somebody who's gotten a bad deal. It hasn't happened." In the case of the Metro Taxi drivers, it all depends on whose story you believe.

IJ;!D

Sydnty Ltavms, a sophoTTUJrr in Calhoun Colltgt, is on tht uaffofTNJ.

H

They pointed out that the Myrtle Beach "tradition" was only about 6ve years old. Other schools, such as S\varthmore, Haverford, 7cmple, and Duke, had decided w move their spring break or ~ craining out of South Carolina. Now these Yalies ju!tt had to convince she majority of the senior class that the majority of the senior dilt was chaneing their mind.

11M: fonam. 100k on the air of a high school student council ~ J,epn to raise their hands and object to the pro• •Not evecyone I've talked w thinks this is a woe• aid Adam Gordon. "Virginia has just as many race $outh Camlioa." Josh Kagan, a native Soucherner, said · Bach was roo cold for swimming in May and that the qfMt-nJe Beach were "liberals" who would be punished

express trenchant support for cent of the Yale freshman class was of mostly white college students Freedom Summer to register voters and campaign for In 2000, segregation is illegal. This January, the Association for the Advancement of Colored People declared a boycott of all businesses in South Carolina until that comes down. About seven percent of the Yale freshman class is ~ black. And hundreds of mostly white college students are planning sUd Ia~. "Almost everyone we talked to was in tavor to travel to South Carolina for Dead Week to hang out and party. of the Con6iterate fb& coming down, but a lot of people offered a For me, the decoration atop the South Carolina capital is a range of reasons dial boyootting is not the way to get the Aag lame racial issue, especially compared to affirmative action or down .. . My sense w.as that a lot of people for whatever reason wantpolice brutality. Nevertheless, the NAACP decided this symbol ed to figure out a way that going to Myrtle Beach was okay."

Maybe it was because they wen: discussing remote symbols, deserved national attention, and, just as they did 36 years ago, Ivy Leaguers heard the call. A small group of white student activists at peripheral to their daily lives. Most of the peopk involved in the Yale mobilized in support of the boycott. That is, as soon as they campaign had spent very little time in the South, and mO&t, it realized where Myrtle Beach was. seemed, had lirrle direct experience with racism. Meanwhile, the Rebecca Ingber, who Started the drive to convince seniors to black community at Yale was far from spearheading this campaign. boycott Myrtle Beach, told me, "I was on the phone with my mo~, Thorn Cantey, the lone black student at the first meeting, said, "I talking about the NAACP boycott. Our conversation switched to my fed a sort of directed ambivalence about this thing. The whole conplans for Senior Week and I mentioned going to Myrtle. She said, cept of going to support a Southern beach at all has no great appeal 'But that's in South Carolina,' and that was when I first realized for me." The Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY) lent their voice that." Simon Rodberg, who co-wrote with Ingber the February 18 to the February 28 press conference called by Ingber and her friends and put up a few Ayers. But their basic attitude towards the cameditorial in the Yak Dail;y N(Ws tided "Boycott Myrtle Beach, S.C. for 'Dead Week,"' said Ingber was the first w clue him in. "I had paign was summed up by Eliada Nwosu, a leader ofBSAY: "I am not surprised by the lack of suppon the boycott is getting from our been reading about the South Carolina boycott, but I honestly had never put it together in my mind that Myrtle Beach was in South senior class .. .I am fully aware that there are those who redefine pasCarolina." sivity as far as polilic:al action is concerned and could not be conOnce they had figured out their geography, the activists had a vinced 01~ • lot of ground to cover. It was the third week of February. Dead I.fd;e. .... ~~ February 21 forum and rhe February Week was only three months away and many of their classmates h a d - M e a . . the fOn:cs of passivity gathered. There were YON already put down deposits on rooms at Myrtle Beach. What ~ &ea.:. to 1hc editor. and Ayers reading, "St:NIOR CLASS their strategy for raising consciousness? •we never had a plaluMid BIIAal.•1n a YDN editorial. Kagan repeated his argu· campaign," Rod berg said. "I kind of thought, op~. the Mynle Beach was the most: liberal part of South Carolina first editorial would be enough." Instead, at an opat~ on :.W....._che local mcn::haoas had publicly declared their opposition Monday, February 21, objections began to surface. to the •A ~ of an entire state is unprecedented and, to l counted 27 seniors at that first i.e 101, only one of me. paoWanaric • Jay Van Sciver suggested a less drastic alternative them black. "This is going to be a "I want boycott: a three-hour drive to Columbia as part of everyone's concerns to be a range of ~What if concerned members of the senior cia.~' concerns that would

by Kristen lcgislarure to voice our opinion in protest on a specific Armstrong, In~ Senior Week? After all, we could show our disappro\'al hearts and of the Aag and bring beer." In general, the pro-Myrtle Beach froni a town ~le to argued on the basis of tradition, unity, and rhe osential unimpor· rooiDI "tttiiitbC ranee of merely symbolic gesrures--exacrly the same line taken by

file:

THE NEW JouRSAL

flag-wavers in rhe Soum Carolina legislature.

Meanwhile, members of the Yale community old enough to r<fmember Freedom Summer greeted me controversy with a combination of bitterness and bewilderment. Glenda Gilmore, a native North Carolinian and professor of Soumern history, in a statement at me ami-Myrtle press conference, said, "If someone had told me during me civil rights movement that the Confederate flag would be flying over Soum Carolina in me year 2000, I would have laughed at them. There are times in your life co make a stand, even if it is inconvenient, even if you lose your deposit." Barbara Strauss, a self-described "middle-aged, Republican mother of a Yale undergraduate," wrote me YON expressing her incredulity at the controversy's very existence: "What could you be thinlcins?

Your parents and prior generations ofYale students filled buses, and risked their traveling down South to take a stand fw civil rights in me '6os. Not to rnenaoa;. how could you be so insulting to the stUdena ofcolor in your own class? This is nor a tough call. You don't have to take over building. You don't have to march op Selma. Just rake your week in the sun oa some other stretch of beach."

The Yale Administration, on the other hand, does seem to 6nd the scale of the Confederacy ro be a tough c:all. Lury Hau. me Director of Public Affairs, &old ~ "The Administration has not takca a pollcion on this comroversy."' The ~ made ~eral efforts to get. if opt tupport. then at least a public statement ~ me controversy. Rodberg said, ~ asked, and parents have written asJUa&.'for the Administration to take a scaild • a maner of moral leadership." The aalr stance Yale officially took was nor ro move the men's and women's track team training over spring break our of Soum Carolina.

Gilmore said m defense of the Administration's inaction, "It is nor the Administration's place to dictate to students decisions of conscience. It is each student's responsibility to search his or her heart and determine whether going to vacation under the Confederate flag is a good idea." Her support of the boycou, however, and me support of other faculty members like Rogers M. Smith, a native Soum Carolinian, lenr moral authority to

the cause, partly because they were among me few Soumerners to speak publicly on the issue.

Back in Soum Carolina, me COntroversy over the relic of a 135-year-old, defeated governmenr continues to smolder. State legislators remain adamant, declaring the flag a historic symbol of Southern independence, not of slavery or racism. Bur me boycott seems ro be having some effect. A February poll cited by me Columbus, sc Dispatch found that 67% of voters in the stare support the removal of ~ Confederate fiag from its pa.~~•..!Jill!!l~.-tl~ the dome to a Statehouse orr""''"•

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35

¡'

J=an't_Buy Me Love.

The Loss of Happiness In Market Democracies

BY R OBERT

E.

l..ANE

by Eric Rothfeder

R

The Loss of in Marka ,Dmzocracies, by highlighting a central irony: market capitalism and democracy are prod¡ ucts of a utilitarian philosophy of happiness, yet the advancement of these systems creates an increasingly unhappy society. D espite postwar economic and social gains, studies report a significant decline in the number of Americans who cqnsider themselves happy, as well as a growing incidence of depression and suicide. Why are today's Amerieans unhappier than their parents and grandparentS? Lane, the Eugene Meyer Professor Emcrjtus of Political Science a t Yale University, attemptS to answer his question in this thought-provoking, if highly contestable, book.

Drawing on the fields of philosophy, biology, genetics, psychology, and economics, Lane explains his basic premiJC: social relations make us happiest and market economics and democracy draw us further from those relations. As a society develops into an advanced market democracy, he contends, there is a decline in happiness.

T he statistics Lane cites regarding the decline of happiness in America are less than staggering, but, given the economic and political ad vances of the past decades, any decline seems strange.

Between 1972 and 1994, the number of Americans who c;onsidc;red themselves "very happy" declined by about five percent. The incidence of depression rose by a larger percentage. Lane quotes frarn a srudy finding that, "of those Americans born before 1955, only one percent had suffered a major depression by age 75; of those born after 1955¡ six percent had become depressed by axe 24 [sic}." The study also suggested that "now about a quarter of the population experiences some of the clinical symptoms of depression during som e portion of their lifetime."

H aving established the problem, Lane attacks the market's ability to make us happy. Market economies are often jwtificd by their ability to maximize consumer choice to best fiillill material desires.

But do more goods make people happier? Most Americans think so.

Without giving precise statistics, Lane refers to a study that found that "most people believe that a 25% pay increase would make them more satisfied with their lives." And yet, those whose "inc:Omes are now at that higher level are not, in &ct, happier or more satisfied with their lives." Lane uses the psychological theory of the "hedonic tread mill" to explain this phenomenon: "if desires, expectations, and standards of comparison increase as rapidly as achieveme~ts, or at least attainments, no increase in income, no matter how large. will increase SWB [subjective well being]." Lane argues that "in advanced countries, above the poverty level, this relationship OBERT LANE BEGINS HIS NEW BOOK, Happin~ss

between level of income and level of SWB is weak or no nexistent. Thus, the rich are no more satisfied with their lives than the merely com fortable, who in turn are only slightly, if at all, m ore satisfied with their lives than the lower middle classes."

While Lane's arguments are convincing and often perceptive, one wonders if this all isn't just common sense. Isn't Lane using statistics and technical jargon to tell us what our parentS have told us for years: m o ney doesn't make us happy?

Lane's analysis becomes more original in later chapters, but as he departS from familiar ground, his reasoning breaks down.

Lane argues not only that money does not add to our happiness, but also that the pursuit of it drives us away from our friends and family. He claims that "the cost of market efficiency, and therefore of wealth, was the sacrifice of &roily and friendship relations in economic affairs." For example, employers' choice of workers -is supposedly based upon merit "uncontaminated by cronyism or nepotism" as they pursue profit at the cost of companionship and family. Lane may be correct to argue that we would be happier in a job surrounded by family and friends rather than the most efficient and productive of strangers. Perhaps we find cronyism and nepotism appalling not because they reduce profit, but because these practices are unethical. Lane ignores this possibility as well as the continuing prevalence of such favoritism .

Lane points to the "devaluation" of children as a cause of unhappiness in f.unily life. "Children have now lost much of their value as human capital and are, instead, rather expensive consumer goods." Lane points to the significant decline in time women spend with their children (men report a slight increase in family time) and the declining birthrate as evidence of this devaluation. I am skeptical of his argument. Lane only fleetingly mentions birth control's relation to declining birthrates and fails to note the impact of feminism on domestic life. If there is a decline in the quantity of time parents spend with their child, this does not mean there is a decline in quality of time. And even if parents choose to have fewer children for financial reasons, this does no t mean the children are less loved or that they grow up less happily.

If market capitalism &ils to make a society hap py, perhaps we should rum to the government for help. But Lane also targets democracy as a cawe of the rising tide of unhap piness in America.

In the second half of his book, Lane explains how democratic processes are "genecally painful, &i1 to contribute to good cheer in democratic publics, and contribute to an unhappiness-negativity

THE NEW JouRNAL

syndrome." Yet he does not claim that there is any system better than democracy.

He also admits that democracy has "other business" {e.g., admin~tering justice and defending civil rights) besides making irs citizens happy. Lane, however, claims that, "across politics at all levels of development, the presence of democracy ... is unrelated to average SWB." Lane refers to several studies that show that neither equality nor civil and political rights contribute to happiness. "How can this be?" he asks. Lane answers that "people fight to the death to gain these rights, but, as with income, once achieved, they adapt to their good fortune.

They take their rights for granted."

Another cause of our unhappiness is the inherent pain of the democratic process. Democracy asks that irs citizens take a position on difficult social problems.

Political participation is painful because thinking about social problems "may cause internal conflicts" and "quarrels. " Furthermore, "the resolution of those quarrels will injure one side or another," "acknowledging the presence of these problems is painful," and "the implied or open conflict of values is painful because it hurts to find one's values chatlenged or scorned."

Lane believes this unhappiness is manifested in the increasing number of Americans who report "community, national, and world problems" as sources of unhappiness.

Between 1957 and 1976, this number almost doubled to 24%. But, are people made unhappy by the problems themselves or by the political discussions that ensue? I imagine that the Columbine shootings caused more unhappiness than did the political discussions which they precipitated.

Voting, app arently, is also a great source of pain. Lane applies a cost-benefit analysis to voting: The traditional way of assessing the coscs or pains of participation is to compare the effort and time involved in voting with the likelihood that one's vorcs will make the difference between winning and losing and, in an extended comparison, the likelihood that one wiiJ acrually receive the policy benefits from winning. It is no contest. As has often bcc:n noted, one is more likely co be run over on the way to the polls than to cast a winning vote. Hence the rational choice is to stay away from the polls.

Lane doesn't mean that we should stop voting; rather, he explains why most people dislike it. While Lane's cost-benefit analysis may explain low rates of voting, it does not further his thesis. Of the 55% of Americans who voted in the 1996 presidential elections, I can't imagine the action detracted significantly from their SWB, nor does Lane offer any evidence that it did.

Lane's most puzzling and problematic statements deal with the "deep and often irreconcilable tension between the universalistic principles of democracy and the particularistic principles of companionship." Lane believes that democracy inhibits, if not excludes, the principles that guide our social relations. Democracy makes us unhappy because our relation ro other citizens is unlike our relation to our friends and family. Moreover, while "com panionship relies on the familiar and the similar, democracy must include strangers and the unfamiliar and dissimilar." Again, I am skeptical of this argument. While democracy may exclude the principles of companionship, Lane gives no evidence that it inhibits acrual friendship. I also have no concern for the happiness of those who are so disturbed by democracy's inclusion of the different and dissimilar. Of course, my own antipathy toward the intolerant would serve as a demonstration of Lane's argumem if it led to my own unhappiness.

Bur I'm nor losing any sleep over it.

Lane succeeds in aslcing striking questions about our political and economic system. His market analysis effectively shows how money fails to contribute to happiness and may even contribute ro unhappiness.

While some of his arguments read like common sense, common sense is suenghthened by concrete proof, whiLh Lane offers. Unfortunately, Lane's analysis of democracy could use a good dollop of the same common sense. I've presented some of my objections to these argument~. and I'm sure readers could quickly find their own. But perhaps no o ne should bother to read Lane's analysis of democracy. In a cost-benefit analysis of the time and effort it rakes to read these chapters {and the possibility of incurring a paper cut), compared with the likelihood that Lane will persuade, there is no contest.

Ill)

A Family and Yale Tradition for Over a Quarter of a Century

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Eric Rothfitkr, a sophomo" in SaJbroolt Co/kg~. is associlttuditor of TNJ.

37

You :-.-lAY HAVE NCrfliCEI+ifWI!' clocks around daylight savings. fw~cnl'lore, so often drift heavenw.lrÂŤ the: phenomenal and Tower's four dock faces the porch, they each seem tO bear the least eossiblc l'eSle~bl3!!9~llliD.I!II Standing outside of Linsly-Chittenden, you might be tempted to consult the dock face on the archway connecting Street Hall and the Art Gallery. T h ere, too, you would be misled; while not as prodigiously dishonest as Father Harkness, this child tells you neither the correct minute nor the correct hour. Saybrugians, of course, had their sixteen-hundred-dollar Geochron clock stolen this fall-but before we allow them too much sympathy, consider the rumor that it was never actually correctly set.

I have read bewilderingly bad times from docks in OML and HGS, and I've heard that a clock in Beccon has its hands bent into acute angles. Harkness Tower used to be reliable; up until October I could still use it to tick off the minutes left in Latin through a convenient window in Phelps Hall. Now it has been broken for six months. Yale Vision, the cable channel that Yale purchased and left as a blank blue screen with no programming save the time. was never taken off daylight savings. Ironically, because no one ever touched it, it now does tell the right time. Not content with all of this, I spoke with President Levin's secretary about the Harkness problem in mid-November. I was told that the time would be set again by Spring Break, a manageable deadline that has nevertheless come and gone. This afternoon I've been waiting for N ina fMm Levin's office to call me back. I've volunteered, you see, to solve this problem myself. I just need a lead: whom do I call, and where in Yale's trackless bureaucracy are the keys for winding these cloclts?

Nina still hasn't called.

The alarm clock in my room is wrong as well. My roommate

Blak~ Wilson,

a sophomo~ in Branforti

Co/kr~.

liiUtch five or ten minures fast is a ~ay;l!lscar~urself into not being late, extremes: half an hour, '$very day it's differen t. to fool himself, he says, and if doclc is running when he wakes up, he'll ...........~r )10U me a slave co time without a clock, or a slave to clocks without the time. We invented both, and we realize that they are contrivances, but we still cower at their feet.

Bedtime nips at our heels from breakfast, chasing us through an arbitrary schedule and down the to-do list of today's nonnegotiable deadlines. How often do we do our work instead of spending time with friends? How often do we play Windows solitaire instead of doing our work instead of spending rime with friends?

English idiom provides us with a question: do we find tim~ or malt~ time? Are the 24 hours of the day a zero-sum game, o r can we create space in our lives for the things we don't have to do by tomorrow, out of the bits and ends of our idleness and lying on the couch?

We are very busy here, and we aren't likely to find ourselves spontaneously motivated to do anything when we pun ch out for the day.

But if we add another item to the list-a coffee date or another paper to write--we still get it all done. If we play a dub spore, or take an extra class, those eight hours a week do not come out of important time with friends or in the library, b ut from some untapped reserve. Our lives get m ore hectic, yet we add more action than we take away.

On any given day, I'm sure that President Levin, his secretary, and the staff in the physical plant all have something more pressing to do than tend to the clocks around campus. In the meantime, though, we've all trudged by them so many times that our eyes glaze. and !-because I srubbornly won't wear a watch-am always late. It's as absurd as it sounds: Yale doesn't have the time to set the time.

is a circulations ana subscriptions manager for TN].

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