Volume 33 - Issue 2

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THE Nsw JouRNAL

TheNewJournal

Volume 33, Number 2 October 13, 2000

FEATURES 8

Higher Education With new federal regulations, your financial aid could go up in smoke.

by Anya Kamenetz

12

Where Have You Gone, joseph Lieberman?

A portrait ofthe candidate as a Yale man

by Ronen Givony and Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

18

Deconstructionism Photos and essay by Whitney Grace

22

Cell Division How 500 Connecticut prisoners were sent to Virginia

by Jessica Bulman

STANDARDS 4

Points of Departure

26

Essay: Letter From Prague by Eric German

28

The Critical Angle: Hitchhiker's Guide to the University

by Patrick Cauy Pitts reviewing The Green Guide: Yale University anti New H~tven Endnote: Quorh rhe Ravens, Nevermore by Michael Gerber

30

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Eyes on the Prize THE

PERENNIAL

FILING

frenzy that descends on the fellowship at office Undergraduate Career Services during the first weeks of September has finally calmed.

Legions of Yalies brandishing applications and wearied from weeks of humble self-aggrandizement have given up their annual siege of 1 Hillhouse Ave. The many seniors who just couldn't get that perfect Rhodes recommendation or whose Fulbright interview flopped are now left to look for real jobs or to seek funds elsewhere.

Yet the despair of these haggard souls is unwarranted. They need look no further than the Yale College Dean's Office website to find Undergraduate Prius, a catalogue of Yale's many endowed prizes-some offering hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. The Dean's Office, the Council of Masters, and the residential colleges grant prizes for good sportsmanship, good grades, and even some for good intentions. The John C. Shroeder Award is set aside for the junior "who, in the opinion of the Committee on Award, will find his/her place and play a good part in the good labor of the world."

4

Other prizes, however, ask for something more.

Looking closely, the Yalie with even the most arcane talent, the most obscure interests, and the most eccentric character traits can find the trailhead of his or her own road to riches in Undergraduate Prius.

Take, for instance, the F. Wilder Bellamy, Jr., Memorial award, "for the junior or juniors who best exemplify the 'qualities for which F. Wilder Bellamy, Jr., is remembered."' Just what are. these qualities? The Class Book of 1937 yields some answers.

Mr. Bellamy ("Babe" to his college chums) attended St. Mark's prep school and entered Yale as a legacy in 1933. He lived in Davenport, managed rwo varsiry sports teams, majored in American History, and left planning to become an "investment broker." For sure, not just anyone can live up to such achievements. One of seven juniors who took home $2,000 for the Bellamy prize last year, David Valdez (oc 'ox) acknowledged that he and Mr. Bellamy "share a certain mystique." Asked whether he plans to become an investment broker, Mr. Valdez (who has no quirky nickname) replied, "No, no brokerage business for me.

Entertainment. It's only a little different."

Among the prizes that take more forethought is

Library Map Prize, "awarded by the Universiry Library to the student who makes the best use of maps in his/her senior essay or its equivalent." Fred Musto, curator of maps at Sterling Memorial Library, takes his duties as judge seriously.

"I don't know what sort of humor you're going to find in the Map Prize," he warns before I begin my questioning. The Prize, he goes on to explain, usually goes to a student whose thesis in volves historical geography or architecture. But it is not awarded every year, so spurious prize seekers need not apply. "We know that some people just look at the prize list to see what they're eligible for," Musto scowls.

Another man keeping a watchful eye on the ¡prize he oversees is Beinecke Library's Stephen Parks. Mr. Parks's eyes shine with nostalgia as h e tells me about the award's namesake Adrian van Sinderen, "one of the grand old book collectors of his era." The prize, $500 for sophomores and $750 for seniors, was endowed by Mr. van Sinderen "to stimulate book collecting among undergraduates, to encourage book-buying, book-owning, and bookreading both as a hobby and as a fundamental part of the educational process."

Mr. Parks explains that the committee of judges looks not simply for rariry, but rather for the "intelligently chosen nucleus" of a personal library. Winning collections have included editions of the Wizard ofOz and books on beekeeping. "Of course, there's always somebody who tries to win by submitting his course books," Mr. Parks commented derisively.

The residential college prizes honor perhaps the most carefree set of achievements. The Berkeley College Fellows Prize, for instance, is set aside for "that member who has brought the most light and air to the College." Some students feel, however, that certain prizes demand the impossible.

The Lawton Calhoun Cup is awarded annually in Pierson College "to that member of the college who, in the opinion of

THE NEW JouRNAL

the Master, has done the most to make Pierson a happy place." Says Pierson neighbor Jack Snyder (oc '03), "Bring happiness to Pierson? A Sisyphean challenge, indeed."

Don't feel up to the task? Perhaps, in the end, a real job doesn't look so bad.

-Matthew Underwood

Alma Matters RALPH NADER COMPLAINED that this year's election is nothing but a "Harvard-Yale game." Sure enough, if all are faithful to their alma maters, the four major-party presidential and vice-presidential candidates will visit Cambridge this November.

Of course, Dick Cheney might skip the proceedings, as he dropped out of Yale to graduate from the University of Wyoming.

But George W Bush should certainly be there, possibly even at his father's side. Al Gore and Joe Lieberman will have to part ways, as Gore and his three daughters chee.c the Cantabs, while Joe, a New Haven resident and Yale alum, will say a bracha over the Bulldogs. Of course, Ralph won't be there--he got stuck at Princeton for his bright college years.

0croBER13,2000

Surprisingly, compared with other elections over the past 50-odd years, the Ivy heritage of this year's crop is unusual. Some recent candidates attended name-brand schools, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. But many more graduated from schools that most don't associate with the power elite: the University of Minnesota, Eureka College, and Whittier College, for example.

In the past century, Harvard College has produced two presidents, but Gore should be wary of following in their footsteps: John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt both died in office. W would carry on the family tradition, as his father was one of only two candidates in history to go from the Old Campus to the White House. (The other was William Howard Taft, better known for his corpulence than his achievement in office). Princeton's sole candidate, Adlai Stevenson, lost twice.

Military academies have produced two winners (Dwight Eisenhower, a West Point man, and Jimmy Carter, an Annapolis graduate), while the University of Michigan (Gerald Ford and Thomas Dewey) and the University of Minnesota (Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale)

produced two election losers apiece.

Among candidates from lesser-known schools, Lyndon Johnson brought home the bacon for Southwest Texas Teachers College, while Ronald Reagan did Eureka College proud for two straight terms.

Richard Nixon wanted to go to Yale, but couldn't afford the travel expenses and instead went to Whittier College. He won two elections anyway. Perhaps the most impressive is Harry Truman, who never graduated from Spalding Business College, but nevertheless enrolled in the University of Kansas Law School at the age of 38.

So while this year may be a "HarvardYale game," it's the first one in recent memory. The two schools do produce many of the nation's leaders in business, as well as most levels of politics, but the presidency is a different animal. Few presidents have actively marketed themselves as intellectuals. The man-of-the-people image is a far more popular role, perhaps most masterfully played by Ronald Reagan. The last major candidate to present himself as a true thinker was Stevenson, who was crushed in consecutive elections by the simpler, more grandfatherly Eisenhower. (It also didn't hurt that Ike won the war.)

5

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However, Nader's phrase implicates something more than mere education: elitism. Coming from a Princeton graduate, this may be slightly hypocritical, but the issue is worth examining nonetheless.

Elitism, too, however, cuts against the uend of recent history. .PDR was the last of the patrician politicians, and he was followed by Harry Truman, a gritty populist.

JFK could be considered as an exception, but the Kennedys are a breed apart, eluding normal categories. True, George Bush exuded a whiff of elitism, but he rode on the coattails of the very folksy Reagan, and was soon defeated by the down-home Bill Clinton. No other presidenr in the past 50 years has represented any class higher than the comfortable middle class. Some, like Nixon, were downright poor.

The take-home message for Yalies who aspire to the highest office in the land?

Transfer ro Bemidji State and learn to play the sax.

-Anthony wt-iss

THE BOTILES WERE UNMARKED, which was suange. They sat on a card table at one corner of the New Haven Green. Some cost two dollars, some five, and others ten, and all were full of liquids of varying color. The table was cluttered, gray, and worn.

Surrounding it were people, bus stops, traf. fic, and noise. I gawked at the scene, dumbfounded in the middle of the city.

The vendor at the table noticed me, sensed my puzzlement as I stood there.

Like a good salesman, he approached, all energy. He called himself Stephen. He was jazz cool, almost mellow, with a smoky radiance and dread-locked hair. He grinned his introduction, and asked me if I had any questions. I bad one: "What are these?"

Stephen told me that his bottles were full of "domestic oil," trying to rouse my patriotic spirit. My heart saluted, but my gaze froze stoic. I didn't want him to smell my weakness--1 buy American. He spoke of the tradition surrounding oil, of its age: "Oil is as old as man." He paused for effect,

THE NEW JouRNAL

then went on: "Naw, it's even older. Oil is as old as the dinosaurs." H is statement was bold, but I wasn't impressed. I soon would be, though. Stephen was just getting warmed up. ~ His sales pitch was forceful, a winged barrage of fact and apparent fiction. By the end of it, I would be exhausted. He began with a geography lesson, explaining that "most oil comes from Europe---countries like France, Africa and Saudi Arabia." He followed with a passionate one-liner: "My products are from right here." He had suppliers in New York who got him the "stuff" he needed to make his oils. This frightened me. I really didn't want to douse my naked body in anything from the big city. So I asked a simple question: "What's in your oils?"

He told me that his oils come from both plants and animals. When I pressed him to clarify, he obliged: "See, some of my oils come from rotting wood extracts.

Some come from animals like . . . like . . . whales."

When he finished he frowned and reluctantly corrected himself: "Well, not whales. Their oil is used for burning. I guess I can't really think of any animals I use."

I tried to ease his obvious discomfort with another question: "H ow do you get your oils?" I knew that Stephen had "suppliers" in the city, but then again so do hospitals and addicts. I wanted more information. But Stephen had clearly pegged me as a dangerous outsider. He responded cryptically: "My suppliers usually just UPS the stuff to me." Silence followed.

Our conversation resumed after an uncomfortable minute of quiet. It was time to do business, and Stephen was ready for battle. I began by asking him what his most popular oil was. He hurled a quick response, no hesitation: "My best scent ever was 'Back That Ass Up'-you know, like that popular song. Yeah, that one sold like hotcakes."

With this remark Stephen launched into a rapid-fire explanation of his marketing strategy. His insides were exposed for the first time. "I don't have a logo or anything. But what I do is mix the oils and then give them unique names." He stopped abruptly. My jaw dropped open. What was this? He had spoken freely and obviously thought he had gone too far. I was too curious; I was the competition, a potential oil kingpin who would seize the market with all my Iowa cunning. We had been making progress, and now it had all just fallen apart. It was my cue to leave. I tried to seem inclifferent as I departed, allowing just a hint of interest to taint my goodbye. I waved and walked. Stephen just stood there.

I wasn't going to go back, but I had to.

Stephen and I were connected. We were starcrossed lovers without the love, man and merchant. I missed him; he missed me. I was corn. I returned to the street corner three days later, clutching a fistful of dollar bills. Stephen was waiting. I wasted no time: "I want some oil. Something raw, something classy." He sized me up as if to decide what oil would best com plement my Iowa scent.

He declared that I needed something "earthy" and handed me several bottles, among them a container of "Amber" and a vial of "Big Pappa." I chose "Ferdous."

Stephen told me that the word meant "highest heaven" or "paradise" in Arabic. It smelled like fruit and after-shave; its potential was jnfinjce.

We made the exchange, money for oil, and I walked away, hopeful. In my hand I clutched paradise in a vial. T he buy was a religious experience. Stephen was a little richer and I reeked of potential-oily, odorous, filmy potential-that sloshed in a two-dollar bottle.

-Clint Carroll

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7

. . . .Oucation a warm Tuesday night in September, I am in the living room of an off-campus apartwhen two other Yale students walk in. One financial aid; the other does not receive aid. have come here, to a friendly apartment, to a bowl of marijuana and a two-liter bottle of NCWJ\alln Dew. As they pass the pipe and the soda the living room table, I ask them if they've of the July 1998 amendment to the Higher llatt"aon Act (HF.A) that suspends the financial of any student convicted of a drug offense. hadn't, but they don't seem too worried.

If the police were to pass by our well-lit, firstwindow and look inside, both my friends be vulnerable to drug possession charges. my wealthier friend, these first-time charges probably lead at most to a fine and comservice. But as a result of the HE.A amendother friend would stand to lose her ~iving an education because of one for drug possession. Few students Yale know much about this Law, and of those who do don't see a reato it. But a small group is that.

1965 HF.A established categories aid like Stafford Loans and Pell "open the doors of college tO ,. Every few years, Congress the Act, fixing interest rates adding new programs and inithe latest trends in educa1998, the amendments to the a provision introduced by Mark Souder (R-Ind.) Any of a drug-related offense

would lose aU his or her federal financial aid for at least one year, perhaps permanently, depending on the severity of the crime, the number of offenses, and whether the student passed subsequent drug tests. This provision is retroactive, though juvenile offenses stricken from one's record do not count. Beginning in July 2000, the FAPSA form, which is used to determine students' eligibility for federal financial aid, included multiple-choice question 28, asking about an applicant's drug convictions.

The American Civil Liberties Union soon launched a protest against the amendment. "Stop the Use of Student Aid as a Tool of Discrimination!" read the banner at the head of its November 4â&#x20AC;˘ 1999, Action Akrt. This form letter, to be sent to a senator or representative, points out the possible discriminatory effects of the provision, which mandates special penalties for the economically disadvantaged that do not apply to wealthier people convicted of identical crimes. The provision has racial implications as well: Eleven percent of u.s. drug users are African-American, yet they make up 37 percent of those arrested and 6o percent of those in state prisons for drug offenses, meaning the law would almost certainly affect students of color disproportionately. And the stipulation that convicted students may complete a drug treatment program to clear their records, the letter says, is a fig leaf which ignores the woeful shortage of slots in such programs. The letter urges one's elected official to support Senator Barney Frank's (o-Mass.) H.R. 1053. which would repeal the amendment.

With a year tO go before the law would take effect, the usual cadre of studenc activists coalesced around the cause last full. The nationwide Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, at their founding conference last October, "decided that this issue was really something winnable," says Alexandra Cox, a leader of Yale's Student Legal Action Movement (sLAM). At the conference, the group chose to push for a series of student council resolutions in protest of the provision. The resolution, co-authored by Cox and passed by the Yale College Council (ycc) in February 2000, is typical of those passed aU over the country at schools big and small, public and private. It calls on Yale to "actively encourage" the passage of H.R. 1053

THE NEW JouRNAL

With new federal regulations, your financial aid could go up in smoke.

By Anya Kamenetz and to supplement any student's losses in financial aid. Hampshire College, in Amherst, MA, has actually established a fund for this purpose. With the only Ivy student council to sign on, Yale is featured prominently in a list of colleges and universities whose students support H.R. 1053 on several drug-reform policy websites, such as raisryourvoice.com and drcnet.org, the Drug Reform Coalition's website.

The Yale administration has yet to respond officially to the vee's call, but not because of a hardline position in the financial aid office against drug use or the possibility of compensating students for denied federal funding. "Personally, and I'm just expressing my own opinion here, I am not at all opposed to adopting such a procedure [compensating students]," said Caesar Storlazzi, Associate Director of University Financial Aid. Storlazzi points out a historical precedent for the University's mitigating the effects of a law restricting federal aid. During the Vietnam War, the Federal Government denied aid to anyone who failed to register for the draft; in response, the University compensated conscientious objectors for lost funds.' "So it wouldn't be the first time we might make this kind of decision on principle," Storlazzi said.

However, in this case, the principles involved are somewhat less clear than those surrounding the Vietnam War. After a long debate, for example, the Dwight Hall Cabinet decided to suppon only the first part of the YCC amendment, stopping short of recommending that Yale give drug offenders extra money. Now SLAM is working not

0crOBER

13,

2000

to build consensus, but simply to raise awareness of the issue.

"We're modeling ourselves after Students Against Sweatshops (sAS), which succeeded in bringing vast attention to something at school," Cox says. However, their campus organizing efforts have drawn only a handful of students thus far. While SAS has clearly defined targets, SLAM's goals are "more symbolic," says Cox, and its adversaries are more distant than the Yale administration or even Connecticut senators and representatives. In the absence of opposition on campus, they are focusing on education as a part of a national effort to put pressure on key legislators in other states who will vote on the pertinent legislation.

Cox's choice of the word "symbolic" points to larger reasons that this "really winnable" issue has failed to catch fire on campus. There is a not-sohidden sense among people who are excited about the HEA, on both sides, that it is really a gateway issue to a larger, and much more volatile, debate about the War on Drugs. Drug-related offenses now constitute the only categoty of crime for which students may be denied federal financial aid-not assault, not rape, not alcohol-related violations. So Students for a Sensible Drug Policy and the Drug Reform Coalition are leading the protests, while activists with more mainstream agendas are shying away. "I think on campus even some activists are reluctant to take this on because they don't think it's really legit," Cox says. Jelani Lawson, Director of A Better Way Foundation, which "educates and advocates on behalf of public-health-oriented solutions to the War on Drugs," puts the

9

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problem bluntly. "People are reluctant co talk about it because there's this hysteria surrounding drugs. There's this sense that while I might be able to get away with personal use, any public advocacy will put my personal use in jeopardy. People are afraid of being targeted and labeled as users."

The same stigma surrounding drug use that allowed the amendment to be passed in the first place may prevent those most directly affected from coming forward to protest. This provisio n is a new threat to the educations of the 39 percent of Yale students )'V)to are o n financial aid, yet "We've been kind of hesitant to single out students who are on financial aid as spokespeople," says Cox, "and even people who we've found don't want to come forward. " On a national scale, the movement appears to have the same problem. The website for the Coalition for HEA Reform, a nationwide group devoted to the cause, makes an appeal for stories from people who have lost their aid under this provision: "We urgently need to hear from students who have been affected by this law, especially students who are willing to go public."

H owever, only one such story, reported by Mother jon~ about a student at Antioch College, is linked to the site.

So far, there are no HEA poster children at Yale. "This is the first aid year where the Feds actually asked question 28," says Storlazzi. "At Yale, we haven't had anyone say yes, so there's no University policy yet.

T here is a sense that it's not likely to come up." But it strains credulity to think this is because Yale students are not using drugs.

Surveys show that about half of u.s. high school students try an illegal drug before graduation, and any Thursday night Bong & Keg attendee will tell you that this percentage probably increases during the Yale freshman year. It's also not because the New Haven Police aren't making drug arrests. In 1995, the most recent year for which statistics were available, there were 2.,682 drug-related arrests in New Haven; 612. of them were for simple marijuana possession.

So why the widespread complacency in the face of this imminent threat to hundreds of srudents' means to getting an education? To put it simply, Yale students aren't ThB NBW JouRNAL

Featuring the finest selection of better eye wear at guaranteed lowest prices. often arrested for drug use, or anything else. In 1998, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Yale Police m ade three drug arrests on or near the campus, none of which involved students.., This holds true even when students fit ': police stereotypes. "As a black man in New H aven, I feel cops treat me as a suspect," Lawson told me, recounting three separate experiences during his time at Yale in which he excited sudden, unfounded suspicion from the NHPD. He adds, "My Yale 10 basically served as a get-out-of-jail-free card." Each time, proving his student status resulted in a hasty apology from the cops.

A renewed willingness on the part of police to arrest Yale students was demonstrated in the last week of September, when a fraternity party on High Street led to seven alcohol-related arrests by New Haven officers in a campaign against street noise.

Yet as long as drug use at Yale remains a relatively private, quiet activity in living rooms and common rooms, the current stalemate in the campus War on Drugs is likely to continue, despite the new legislation's stated intention . Besides, Scorlazzi points out that simply asking students whether they have been convicted of a drug offense is the least efficient and accurate way to find out. "What I fmd interesting," he says, "is that the Federal Government is depending here on the honesty of applicants. Usually they're so careful about linking other databases, and it would certainly be easy for them to discover who was a convicted drug offender." At least for now, the HE.A amendm ent is more a symbolic statement than a serious deterrent to a behavior that almost no one publicly defends, but everyone silently acknowledges.

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be done there and few men are doing it. I look to the facts of the history of this state's treatment of its Negro citizens and I see very little but hatred and painful dehumanization. . . . It alJ becomes a personal matter to me. I am challenged personally."

To be sure, "Why I Go to Mississippi" is not entirely free from moralizing or selfrighteousness. At one point, lieberman paraphrases Ecclesiastes and quotes the Talmudic fathers en route to proclaiming, "This country is one or it is nothing." But in all, the "Senator" (as he was already being called) showed some real statesmanship. In the space of 1300 words, Joe Lieberman searched himself and his own motives, the criticisms of his opponents, and the call to action to which his heart had led him.

But impressive as it was, the thunder of the Senator's column was stolen by a short, unassuming piece in the adjacent column. In "Communications," the Editorial Page's daily space for letters, lieberman printed a brief poem by "D. Milch, 1966." It was untided and addressed simply to the Chairman of the News. It began: So you're gonna belp the poor nigger-

Well, here's news, white boy, This nigger don't want your white man's help.

I

By Ronen Givony & Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

0

n Monday, Ocrobeâ&#x20AC;˘ 28, â&#x20AC;˘963, Yak Daily N=â&#x20AC;˘ Choi<man Joe Uebennan wen< on <he record in support of the drive to register black voters in Mississippi. Along with 100 other volunteers from Yale and Stanford, lieberman was heading south to help voter registration efforts and the gubernatorial campaign of black candidate Aaron Henry. He had the sym~ bolic import of his mission in mind. The Chairman was going to show black Mississippians, as he wrote, "that there are white men who care about their plight ... whose insides burn with anxiety and guilt when they consider the way in which other white men have sought to rob the black man of his humanity." Writing in the first person singular, Lieberman detailed and defended the reasons for his upcoming departure to the poorest state in the nation. He explained his system ofbeliefs, how life is a call for "love among men," and why the present situation demanded the commitment of all men sworn to ending injustice. His style was neither overwrought nor overly self-conscious. It bespoke the conviction and selfassurance of a much older man: "I am going to Mississippi because there is much work to

12

And Milch was just getting started.

Amazingly, the first three lines are almost polite compared to the 20 that follow. In the course of three increasingly angry stanzas, the sophomore goes on to call Lieberman "white boy" five times; to claim "You ain't gonna get a cause out of my skin"; to explain "You still got to count to ten miUion by ones"; and to demand, "Look me in the eye an' call me brother," all before ending with a disarming plea: just teU me we aU got to die together, So that there':: just two guys cryin'.

That's all I want, white boy: A chance to cry with you, together.

"Why I Go to Mississippi" might well be the first of Joe Lieberman's many spodit, news-grabbing declamations over the years-and not only because of its tone of impassioned moralism or irs spirited call to public service. Even more telling is his deci~ sion, as Chairman of the News, to share the

THE NEW JouRNAL

page with an angry detractor. The words were written in 1963, almost a decade before Lieberman ever rook political office, but the piece and its rebuttal showcase the complexity of a candidate whose life so far has been largely cast in terms of simple right and wrong.

MoST NEWS ACCOUNTS get it wrong: ~ Joseph Isador Lieberman is above all a man of many paradoxes.

His speeches are long-winded and heavy with faces and figures. Confront him with an issue, however, and he will respond with poise and passion. His presence on camera is unimpressive, his personality mild; but when he speaks, people stop and pay attention. His voting record shows his willingness to spend millions on programs that help the poor, and billions on programs that help the powerful. He cites tikkun olam, the Jewish dictum meaning "heal the world," as one of his most deeply-held beliefs, yet he has also voted for every u.s. military action from Panama and Grenada to the Persian Gulf (the last on a Saturday-the Sabbath-no less). He is known as "the conscience of the Senate" as well as something of a moralizer. He is a reserved, quiet person-a hard-working family man who still calls his mother at least once a day-but, at the same time, a tough and often ruthless politician who . knocks off seemingly unbeatable opponents before heading on to larger glories.

The roots of the complexity that defines Lieberman took hold long before Yale. Lieberman spent the first 18 years of his life in a working-class neighborhood in Stamford, cr, living in a house bordered by a junkyard on one side and a tenement on the other. Much has been made of his modest roots and Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Lieberman himself praises his family and hometown for their role in his early political development-that is, his development into an American who cared "about the future of our democracy," as he writes in his recent memoir, In Praise of Public Lifo. Henry Lieberman was a liquorstore owner who also held a part time job in a bakery, working 14-hour days to suppon his wife Marcia and their three children. The Liebermans kept an Orthodox borne, and their only son's young life was steeped in religiosity, a f.lct that has provided fodder for both his own political

Ocroa.ea 13, 2000

13

rhetoric and extensive media coverage. Lieberman writes that his political interests come from that "same surprising portal of faith because it has much to do with the way I navigate through each day, personally and professionally." Long before he even applied to college, Joe Lieberman showed a penchant for the inner worlcings of politics. He staged his first political campaign while a freshman at Stamford High School, using 1950s rock songs in his speech and winning the race for class president by a landslide. He went on to hold the position for three of his four high school years, and was crowned prom king, a victory that he was unable to celebrate because the crowning was on a Saturday. In his valedictory speech, he spoke on civil rights and called on his classmates to join him in the fight against racism.

Like so many events in his political career, Lieberman's arrival at Yale in 1960 was exquisitely timed. In the first half of the 1960s, Yale was changing from the fmishing school of the aristocracy that former chaplain William Sloane Coffin describes as "the bland leading the bland" to a hotbed of liberal activism and dissent. (By 1967, Yale had the largest number of students who had turned their drafr cards over to the Justice Department ro protest the Vietnam War.) In 196o, when Joe Lieberman's freshman class entered Yale, it drew over 6o percent of its students from East Coast prep schools. At the start of his senior year, for the first time in Yale's history, more than half of incoming freshmen came from public schools, and minority representation was slowly growing. Along with this shifr in demographics, the University's leaderslllp was changing. After A. Whitney Griswold died in 1962, Kingman Brewster rook over as President and began an ambitious effort to break down the blueblood esublishment and recast Yale as a meritocracy. Reverend Coffin was one of the nation's most vocal and visible civil rights activists and later spearheaded the anti-war movement. T he first traces of social upheaval and liberal activism were appearing in every f:acet of University life. "Everyone felt things changing," recalls Jethro Lieberman, a friend (but no relation) of the Senator's who worked with him on the N~s and was tapped into the same secret society, Elihu. "We were really the Kennedy generation-the sense that we had to move forward was in the air." And the young Joe Lieberman was very much at the vanguard of this charge.

In the days before student government and the bevy of undergraduate publications that now overwhelm the campus, the News was the undeniable center of political power at Yale. (Among Lieberman's associates on the N~s were former presidential adviser

and U.S. N~s & World Report editor David Gergen, famed activist lawyer Stephen Bingham, and Bob Kaiser and Paul Steiger, managing editors of The Washington Post and The Wall Strut journal, respectively.) Despite his interest and political ambition, Lieberman did not join the N~s staff until his sophomore year. Once he had, though, his rise to the top position was meteoric. In November of 1962, during the fall of his junior year, Lieberman was elected Chairman, the equivalent of today's Editor-in-Chief, a position normally reserved for those who had worked on the paper since the first days of freshman year. "He joined the News late, which is interesting, but we never doubted he would be Chairman," explains Jethro, Managing Editor under the more prominent Lieberman.

"He was an extremely adept politician in the best sense of the word-a person capable of putting together coalitions of which he was the leader."

Once Chairman, Lieberman moved seamlessly between the roles of politician and moral crusader. Under him, the N~s reflected the growing liberalism and social consciousness of a campus stiU dominated by prep schoolers. According to Coffin, "[The News] was picking up an ethical theme and the main issue was civil rights." The Chairman's most visible role was writing editorials.

Lieberman's prominent position and gregarious personality brought him imo the public light and made his one of the most powerful voices on campus. His frequent editorials dripped with liberal idealism and moral certainty. "Being Chairman was important, and we thought it was a time when you could make a difference," recounts Harvey Berenson, Business Manager of the News during Lieberman's tenure. "With Kennedy, people believed you could do good works and save the world. It wasn't as cynical as it is now."

Indeed, the young President's hope and charisma-not to mention that he was the first non-Protestant President-had no small effect on Joe Lieberman. Inspired by the infectious sense of change in the air, Lieberman went to Washington briefly during the Kennedy administration, spending the summer after his junior year as an intern in the office of liberal Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff (the first Jew elected to the Senate). His editorial the week after Kennedy's assassination, entitled "A Void," was the earnest and heart-broken lament of a young idealist: "He renewed our faith; he extended our vision of what was possible. . . . He embodied our dreams and now-with no forewarning-he is gone." Lieberman did not only write about civil rights issues. He was the first Yale student to write in f:avor of co-education, defended Alabama Governor

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN. Born February 24, 1942, in Stamford, Connecticut, son of Henry and Marcia Manger Lieberman. Prepared at Stamford High School, Stamford, Connecticut. Scholar of the House special major; Ranking Scholar, 1960-62. Member, Morse; Elihu; Aurelian Honor Society; Yltle Daily News, 1961-64, chairman, 1963-64; Dwight Hall Freshman and Sophomore Cabinet, 1960-61, chairman; Senior Advisory Board, 1963-64; Senior Class Council, 1963-64, treasurer; Pundits; Yale N.A .A.C.P., 1960-62; Young Democrats, 1962-64. Roommates: T. R. Vischi, J. D. Wyles. Future profession: law. Address: 55 Strawberry Hill Court, Stamford, Conn.

14

THE NEW joURNAl.

George Wallace's right to speak on campus (which was nonetheless d enied), and ran editorials criticizing secret societies and the Old Yale elitism that they represented. (Though Lieberman would later join a society, Elihu, there are rumors that he turned down membership in the most exclusive of them -:all: Skull and Bones.)

Throughout, Lieberman managed to avoid coming across as an overly pedantic scold. In fact, his final editorial did not wax eloquent on injustice or invoke Talmud. In it, he questioned whether he and his associates hadn't taken themselves too seriously. One Macbeth, calls classmate, Angus Lieberman "sardonically humorous," pointing to his membership in the Pundits, a notoriously irreverent senior prankster society. And though he planted himself firmly within the mainstream, avoiding the showy label of "radical," his pieces were often gutsy. In October of 1963, he wrote and published on the front page "An Open Letter to Yale Alumni," criticizing them for their complacency on civil rights and calling on them "to use their influence in the power structure, the business complex-to bring about constructive and responsible change."

That same month, Allard Lowenstein visited Yale on behalf of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to recruit volunteers for the Freedom Vote Project. The basic idea was to have fieldworkers direct a mock gubernatorial election among Mississippi's black population. Blacks would be asked to vote-not in the regular election, to which their access was restricted by Jim Crow, but in a parallel "Freedom Vote" d~igned to minimize the potential for violence, and thereby ensure maximum voter turnout.

Joe Lieberman was an obvious choice for the trip. Coffin remembers, "He had fine ethical instincts and he was concerned about civil rights.... I urged him to go and wanted very much for him to go."

Thirty Yalies, Lieberman among them, responded to Lowenstein's call and began heading south at the end of October, staying through the November 4 conclusion of the campaign, at which point some 8o,ooo votes had been cast. The presence of white college students sometimes served to draw attention away from the conditions that bad brought them there in the first place. Th~ Nnu Yclrk Timn sene rqx>rters to cover the campaign, but headlined the stories with news that Yale students were working "for a Negro gubernatorial candidate in Mississippi." During the Freedom Rally in Jackson, which concluded the campaign, 1V men from NBC spent most of their time shooting film ofYalies and hardly seemed aware oflocals and full-time SNCC workers. SNCC was, for the most part, fine with this: As one staffer put it, "It was clear that the press would respond to the beating of a Yale student as it simply would not do to the ~ring of a local Negro."

So was it all do-goodism? While Lieberman was off in Mississippi, reports from the from-line dominated the front page of his newspaper. Besides "Why I go to Mississippi,.. a description of lbe campaign by Stephen Bingham entitled "Mississippi and You,.

appeared in the editorial section shortly after the volunteers returned to New Haven. The Nnus' coverage reflected the deeply moralistic idealism of the day and was also rather self-congratulatory. Bingham wrote that "Yale University has a truly extraordinary record of giving of itself," while an editorial note called the response of Yalies "a most significant indication of the awakening of Yale," and wished the volunteers "Godspeed in their journey and service."

YALE IN NOVEMBER OF 1963, Lieberman began a political education of a very different sort. He had been named a Scholar of the House, a now-retired honor that relieved him of all obligation to attend classes for the entirety of senior year and required only a thesis before graduation.

So Lieberman went to school elsewhere, at a New Haven institution renowned in its day almost as much as Old Blue-the office of Connecticut Democratic Party C hairman John Bailey.

John Bailey was to politics what Vince Lombardi was to football: For him, the point of the game was to win, sometimes at any cost. Bailey was an old-school "boss" in every sense of the word. In In Prais~ ofPublic Lifo, Lieberman wrote that Bailey's machinations reminded him of Willie Stark, the autocratic governor from Robert Penn Warren's Ali th~ King's Mm: "I can make the mare go," Stark tells a reporter in the novel. Bailey brought to power a considerable number of figures both in Connecticut and on the national level-including his friend John F. Kennedy, whom be successfully maneuvered into the Democratic nomination in 196o--and was instrumental in keeping Democrats in control of state government for most of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Bailey twisted arms and cursed and threatened and played dirty when dirty was needed. T heodore White, in his 1960 book Th~ Making ofth~ Pr~sidmt, wrote that "Bailey had in his fourteen years in office in Connecticut built the tightest New England political machine which he operated with merciless efficiency." Bailey's tactics would make a surprisingly deep impression on Lieberman, the professed champion of good works and tikkun olam. The master of back-room, hard-knuckled policies, as Lieberman once wrote, "was not totally evil, but then again he was not a philosopher king either." Lieberman's apprenticeship with Bailey was more than a bit at odds with the spirit of Mississippi, but invaluable nevertheless.

Bailey was Later labeled "the young Joe Lieberman's political rabbi."

After Lieberman chose to make Bailey the subject of his senior thesis, he submerged himself in histories of Connecticut politics and shadowed the man himself day and night. "It was a fascination," recalls Jethro Lieberman. He conducted countless interviews, tagged along to legislative meetings, even sat in on important brokering sessions between Local ward bosses and constituents. In doing so, of course, he had more than mere commencement prizes in mind; "I could see that there was no better way to learn about the history and intricacies of Connecticut's government than to UPON RETURNING

TO

"The one thing 1 regret today is that Joe is not a conservative Jew and an orthodox Democrat-they are a dying breed," said William Sloane Coffin.

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study John Bailey," he wrote in In Praise of Public Lifo. "The hours I spent interviewing him were priceless, my own private course in political science." Lieberman repaid his debt handsomely, portraying Bailey in his thesis as a brilliant, cunning, and magnanimous leader who understood both that the political game was changing and how to win it. The admiring thesis-part biography, part machine political philosophy-was published as The Power Broker by Houghton Mifflin in 1966, while Lieberman was still in law school. (It remains the authoritative biography on Bailey to this day.) After graduation, Lieberman sp~nt the summer of 1964 working for Bailey in Washington during his tenure as chairman of the National Democratic Parry.

But in pledging himself to Bailey, Lieberman may have taken the first steps on a path that, as many of his critics claim today, seems to run counter to the course he had set for himself-both in his work with Senator Abraham Ribicoff the summer before his senior year and with the News as an idealistic crusader. To his early faith in the good, Lieberman added a new faith in the joys of victory. As Boss Bailey himself was fond of saying, "You've gotta do what you've gorta do."

Lieberman learned all this and never forgot it. If he sensed a contradiction in exhorting his classmates to heal the world while admiring and evenrually incorporating the ethic of}ohn Bailey, he seems not to have agonized over it too much. It was only by sheer chance that the Connecticut political machine came into the Senator's life so quickly on the heels of Mississippi. Bur here emerged the two sides of Joe Lieberman's political life-the desire to do right and the desire tO win.

SHORTLY AFTER GRADUATING &om Yale Law School in 1967, the pupil was ready to apply the lesson. In 1970, Lieberman was 27 and practicing law in the area when New Haven's State Senator Ed Marcus announced his candidacy for the Democratic parry's u.s. Senate nomination.

Lieberman saw his opportuniry and entered his bid to replace Marcus as State Senator. After Marcus failed to win the nomination, a State Senate race futile in

THE NEW JoURNAL

the eyes of party insiders, between the recent graduate and the seasoned Senator, was on. But it was Marcus who would end up surprised. Employing Bailey's first rule of political success-organization, organization, organization-Lieberman enlisted a cadre of young volunteers, among them , Bill Clinton, then a law student at Yale.

Lieberman mounted a relentless door-todoor campaign and secured the voce of a vital constituency-Yale students who were allowed to vote in local elections for the first time that year. On Election Day, he shocked the Marcus campaign by rounding up senior citizens from a nearby retirement home and bringing them co vote in vans and station wagons. Lieberman went on to win the primary by 240 votes and, after that, the general election, remaining New Haven's State Senator for ten years and majority leader for the last six.

In 1980, Lieberman ditched the State Senate and ran for the u.s. H ouse of Representatives, but lost to a Republican opponent after watch ing a 17-point lead dwindle down to nothing in the final weeks of the campaign. Two years later, he returned to the scene a new man. With a political acumen that would have made Boss Bailey proud, he positioned himself as a man of the center, a maverick of the mainstream unafraid to buck party lines for what was right (or what would win), and emerged victorious as the new Connecticut Attorney General. While in office, he revived what had once been little more than a political sinecure into a showcase for high-profile prosecutions and investigations, gaining a reputatio n as a tireless public advocate. From the Attorney General's office there was but one obvious destination to seek out next: Washington, the seat of power to which he had been denied access eight years earlier. Lieberman targeted Senator Lowell Weicker. And though Weicker was a Republican, Lieberman ran to his right, alleging that the Senator was out of touch with his constituency and using his office for financial gain. Still, he trailed for most of the race--that is, until he ran a now-legendary cartoon ad likening Weicker to a sleeping bear. The cartoon opens with a trail of "Zu:z:r.s" drifting from the entrance of a bear cave, and an overlizcd bear cozily sleeping through the roll

0croBER IJ, 2000

call vote. "On things that matter to him personally, he will always growl," says the narrator, "but sometimes when it matters, he is sleeping." Lieberman won the election, but only by a mere IO,ooo votes.

THERE MAY BE NO INDUSTRY in which One's heart and one's ambitions so frequendy collide as they do in politics. Joe Lieberman, perhaps more than any other politician of his time, has tiptoed without visible effort along the fine line between selflessness and self-advancement. He has won four primaries and nine elections--five in a row for the State Senate starting in 1970, two for State Attorney General in 1982 and 1986, and finally two more for the u.s. Senate in 1988 and 1994-and lost only once. He has knocked off seemingly invincible opponents and-with the exception of only one or two small controversies--emerged from the fray with no visible mud on his suit and the Democratic nomination for V ice President to show for it.

Many characters from Joe Lieberman's early days as an idealist and moral spokesman express quiet reservations about developments in his political life, such as his decision to run for Vice President and Senator concurrently rather than give up his seat to another Democrat. "The one thing I regret today is that Joe is not a conservative Jew and an orthodox Democratthey are a dying breed," said Coffin. Still, the Joe Lieberman of today, shrewd politician and "moral voice of the Senate," is to them not radically changed from the young idealist who published "Why I Go to Mississippi" in October of 1963. Joe Lieberman's days at Yale and the brilliant career to which they gave way bring into light a knot of complications. It was here that "the Senator" learned how public goals tangle with private intentions--and exactly how to exploit this complexity.

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Ronm Givony. a smior in Branford Co/kg~, is an associau ~ditor for TNJ. Dania Kurtz-Ph~lan, a sophomo" in &rlt~ky Co/kg~, is rararrh di1Yctor forTNJ.

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The New ]ounal Thanks Jacob Blecher Clint Carroll Jessica Cohen Alex Dworkowitz Naolci Fujita Victoria Lyall Sandy Mayson Ellen Thompson Matthew Underwood 17

Yale is currently in the midst of its most intense phase of renovation and building since the 1920s and 1930s. In the past seven years, the University has spent more than $850 million on construction, and there are plans to invest over $1 billion more in the next decade.

With goals as large as these, ilie reality is that most of us will be long gone before the last stones are put in place. But, in the meantime, while we maneuver around unexpected ditches and detour signs, we should try to think of all of this work around us as something other than a nuisance. It's worth a second look, not necessarily because it has an aesthetic of its own, but because it reminds us that change is constant.

A static Yale has never existed. And although workmen and yellow tape, we can imagine one: a tographs, each building captured under fall Whether we appreciate it or not, we of tomorrow's Yale, while peeking inside the ....,..,&A2¡¡-.-; at the same time. So, give it another look, and think photographs as a more honest viewbook of our University: a amrpus continually building ..

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alzenia Henry's son was awakened in the middle of a cold December night last year, shackled, hog-tied, and put on a bus heading south. Twenty-two hours later, be arrived at Wallens Ridge State Prison, a super-maximum ("supermax") security facility in Virginia, and was placed in a cell where he would spend 13 hours of each day for the next six months. Neither Marcus Henry, a 23·feat!-<>ld New Haven man who is serving the sixth year of a 45-year prison sentence, nor his fumily was warned chat he would be moved out ofstate. Only when one of Marcus's friends called Ms. Henry did she learn that her son was in Virginia. "I liken it to slavery,'" she~ me. "They sold our fumilies 200 years ago, and rhef're dblns it again now, selling black men ro th~ lowest bidder. They used to seU to the highest bidder; now it's tbe towe.c.• I made plans to ~ .Ms. HeRry: :atJber home one day in late Sep~. Wa.IJcins along T"akdii Sttoec in New Haven's Dixwell .cleigh~. I~ ~:iiil bikes and neighbors sitting 'b'n their ~~~· ther and each other's company. ~ ~ned from 'J.Ofk when I arrived, so I Ms. 1-{entt 'tnited on tbe~·ps in front of her home, a grey and maroon Y't<torlan sP.tt illto six aeanments. Soon, a cream-colored car pWJed. :up. aDd Ms. Henry, a..plump 42-year-old black woman, got ~ rmctapp~ me. Her tiace wore a ssy..ile and no make~ and a lOose plaid shin covereJ the top of her blue spandiltx pants. Her home was a mess, she told nile apolOF~· Dff I mind if we went for coflee or suoutsJde? She jQinec!. ~AN\ dte tqp ledge of the steps and tQld me che stol"}J o(her son's transfer to ~ugit:P!: Marcus Henry was one of 484 Conneaieuc ~tes sent tO Wallens Ridge last .,ytar. The-- Connecticut Department of Correction (ooc) haS ~ibed the tranSfer; :Whiob took place in three installments, as~jfnmcd.iate resp~:to prison.cM!ItroWding in the S1ete of~t{nC:Ut." ~~tQ;.seni:l priSOMrS out of S~fe. hoWever, 9ias mad~tQ,e "c concern. In 1995~ ~ Public Aa Number the "oHrunissioner of thc:-:.tal'!rs d>rn:criond

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Armstrong assured the public that only the "wont of the worst" criminals-those with the highest scaarity &evels, longest sentences, and disciplinary problems ,.~ lle.ilig sent, a fitting group for a supermax prison. But a brief look at' the list of transferred inmates belies the use of these criteria. Many have sentences of between one and three years, and over 40 are serving time for non-violent drug offenses. It's difficult ro call even Marcus Henry, who is serving 45 years, the "worst of the worst." When Marcus was 17, he and some friends got high and went to an after-hours club to steal drug money, his mother told me. During the robbery, a man inside the club shot at them, and they fired back, killing him. Marcus was charged with felony murder and robbery, and his court-appointed attorney encouraged him to accept a plea bargain, a typical recommendation of over-burdened public defenders. Marcus pled guilty to manslaughter and twQ counts of robbery. "I love my child dearly," Ms. Henry told me. "The last place I expected him to ~nd up was in jail. He's not the monster the Department of Correction is making him out to be."

Marcus is no-longer incarcerated at Wallens Ridge. This past July, he and 156 other transferred Cbnnecticut inma~ were moved to Greensville Correctional Center in Jaran. Varginia. Greensville is intended to house prisoners with mid,;rkvel security dajSifications. and it offers educational, religious, and rehabilitative programs, which Wallens ~ge does !!9'· Ostentibly, Uunates w<i.!e transferred ~ a rewill"d for good behaviOI', ~itt their transf. ..._ an important question: If rh_ese intnllles can be safely housed in a mid-level security prison,..Jiy w~ th~ ever locket.l: up in a liilsb supermsrx?

i I

If the contract is a money-saver for Connecticut, it's a moneyissues groups, and the National Association for the Advancement of maker for Virginia, a proud entrepreneur in today's corrections Colored People, have called the mix of rhese guards and prisoners a business. Some six years ago, Republican George Allen's get-toughdisaster waiting to happen. Nearly all of rhe guards are white, while on-crime rhetoric won him Virginia's gubernatorial election. roughly 8o percent of the prisoners transferred from Connecticut fUtlllo,um crime had been on the decline in the state since 1993, are black or Latino. Prisoners claim they have been taunted with racial slurs, and Confederate flags and memorabilia decorate guards' iio'~rertllor Allen introduced barshec sentencing laws and massive prison construction. Prison spending grew twice as bst as spending cars and the warden's office. But racism is only part of the reason higher education, totaling over $1 billion in less than a decade. inmates have had difficulty adapting to Virginia's prison system.

Virginia incarcerates roughly 30,000 of its citizens, and nearWallens Ridge does nor provide any educational, religious, or reha40 percent of this prison population is classified as maximumbilitative programs, on which the Connecticut prison system prides the second-highest percentage in the . irsel£ Inmates who were only classes away from receiving GEDs were whisked off to Virginia and States. Nonethdess, Allen's prison-building over-projected the number of beds the state lost their chance at the degree. Reading materials• • need by about 4-500. At an average conincluding Bibles, are frequently confiscated, and inmates are locked in solitary confinement for all cost of $so,ooo _per ~ thac meant had wasted $us million. Sb, beginn~ in but one hour a day-and that only if they behave the Old Dominion State opeaecl its doon and well. Wallens Ridge also violates privacy and attorim1>9rti.ng human beinga to fm iu empty ney-client privilege, monitoring and taping phone and r~plenish Jhe dlte treasury. To4ay. conversations between inmates and their attorhas contracted not oaty with Connecticut, neys. Prisoners at Wallens Ridge tell disturbing also Michigan, Vermont, Delaware, New stories about their conditions. Almost all allege M~::xic•o, Iowa, and the Distria of Columbia, and baa 6Ued approximproper hygiene and medical attention. Some say that female guards watch them shower and that guards have pretended to ••~ery 3.500 of those wasted beds with out-of-state inmateS. The prison industry has stuffed not oruy Virginia's coffers. but sodomize inmates with metal pipes. Others talk of being tied ro pockets of several towns and their midents. Prisons mean jobs beds. spr~ed and naked, for up to 72 hours. ter·.clc:prc~c:d regions. They offer year-round employment and are According to prisoners, however, even these abuses pale in .,C:CSSIOn-pr,oot, even recessioo,.~ndly. becauie prison popUlations comparison tO the guards' use of guns with rubber bullets and electo grow during hard times. A feW years ago, Big Stone Gap, VA. tric shades. which are illegal in many states. Connecticut Prison lf(brgeJiltly in need of a new in~ Nestled in the heart of Watch repons .rhat. during Wallens Ridge's first year of operation, iiPalllll:hia, the town is home to fewer than 4..8:oo people. Its ~ gUards fired So rubber bullets and used stun guns 112 times, allegedofters the mayot'~ greedag. informatiOn abour rhe town SO"'"' ly shoCking inma~ for such minor infractions as refusing to return a paper cup and verbal insolence. The shocks are &r from harmless. and churches, and uca .fDom.D schedules. But the site mention che Jayoffi at Wesunerelalacl Coal Compm,y in the Lawrence James Frazier, a Bridgeport man serving a sentence for WJ""'[)()S or the clcvatation these I~ causcc:L Onc:e dependent l'apCf died on July 4 after guards shocked him repeatedly wirh a stun dying coal-mining in~ the peopfe of Big ~one G.-p au~ he lapsed into a coma. When Amnesty International asked !JIIlc~rate for jobs. and a prison offaed them just that. In .Apm 110 ~te conditions at Wallens Ridge following his death, Wallens Ridge-Vqinia"s seco.od supennax prisoa wu Vi~ p.cUon ofticials barred the international human rights '&J""~.L The rator-wire~dosed complex. which sits arop a group ft:onl•cing the facility. Frazier's death was not the first at WaUe. :l6dge. Two months earlier, David Tracy, a 2.o-year,.old root rodqr ridge noted bi Weals for its rani~, ~ dJC ~ ~aident sentenced to 30 months on a cocaine charge, .Big Stone Gap ~jobs with be--~ high .Wics. new induary also ~aft -people ihexperieOccd u gu:uds ~d at Wallc.8JUdac four months before his release. His death was · but his £unily md Connecricut newspapers have and auth~ ot~Fr pjiirthaa I,~.SOII~Cl'§.JW..W>;;.. was lcill¥. . , &oln Vi~~~~·ritllli~..-.11'1.#

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One abuse undeniably suffered by all of the transferred inmates renewed its contracr wirh Virginia for another year, as government officials claimed their hands were tied. Earlier this year, public is the distance they have been caken from their families. Big Sco ne opposition quashed plans co convert New Haven's Goffe Street Gap is roughly 720 miles from N ew Haven, which makes visiting Armory into a new jail. At the same time, the public clamored to difficult or impossible for prisoners' families. Ms. Henry has only been able co visit Marcus once since he was moved co Virginia, and have the prisoners returned from Virginia. But, said officials, you can't have it borh ways: If you don't want a prison in your backyard, the trip cost her about $200. The cost of phone calls is another burden. Phone companies know a profit-maker then you have co accept prisoners being sent out of scare. when they see it, and prisoners are perfect customers: Phone calls are one of their few links For che most pare, scare legislators' opinions about che transfer of prisoners co Virginia to family and friends, and they must make (~oiUlecticut's correspond co their feelings about the prison most of their calls collect using whatever carriindustry in general. Those who advocate a er the prison chooses. So, entering into mutugee-cough-on-crime seance argue chat prisonally-profitable contracts with DOCS across the ers should have considered consequences nation, phone companies charge inmates up before they broke the law, while those who to six times the normal rate for a call. Ms. • challenge the prison system oppose che transHenry and Marcus spoke daily when he was incarcerated in Connecticut, but since he was fer. State Representative William Dyson, however, undersrands the issue differently. He supports sending prisonmoved co Virginia, they have only been able to speak once every ers co Virginia out of necessity, but he finds fault with the entire cwo weeks. Still, Ms. Henry has been spending thousands of dollars prison system. To him, the transfer is the lesser of two evils. "First co maintain chis minimal contact.

THE TRANSFER OF INMATES from and foremost to me is that we don't build more prisons," he says.

"Building prisons doesn't work. No matter how many beds we ereConnecticut co Virginia has generared vocal opposition, not only ace, we fill them up." Dyson also points out chat Connecticut has from inmates' families and prison issues groups, bur also from the spent twice as much on corrections as on higher education since Prison Guards' Union, which fears losing jobs. Bur despite concerns on all sides, there are no plans to bring inmares home; according to 1991. "What's in better shape, our schools or our prisons?" he asks the DOC, there's just no space in Connecticut. The state recently me rhetorically. "And we deem oursc:lves a civiliud society. We sacrifice our young co demonstrate chat we're rough on crime." ~..-:-•;.,;........~ According to Dyson, sending prisoners to Virginia allows state fUnds to be given to education that would otherwise be swallowed up by prison construction.

But as Dyson acknowledges, framing the debate as only twosided glosses over an important question: Why has Connecticut's prison population surged to a dangerous level of overcrowding?

Between 1960 and 1980, the state's prison population was relatively stable, hovering around 4,000. Today, it is approximately x8,ooo, and projections for the year 1005 are as high as 22,000. Curiously, violent crime in Connecticut decreased by roughly 20 percent in the past decade, but the inmate population keeps growing.

The paradox is easily explained. Prisons are flooded largely due to the War on Drugs. Today, over two-thirds of Connecticut's inmates are serving time for non-violent, mostly drug-relared, offenses; more than 1,000 are incarcerated solely for drug possession. Also contributing ro the soaring prison population are the mentally ill, who found themselves forced out of closing mental hospitals in the 198os and 1990s only co be re-instirutionaliudthis time in jail. Esrimates of the number of mentally ill inmates ·l.~t· range from five ro 14 percent of the prison population.

Connecticut's Prison and Jail Overcrowding Commission also aruibutes the growth to the "admission of 14 and 15 year olds due to [a] shift in the Juvenile Justice System."

As more and more drug offenders are thrown in prison, Connecticut's drug rehabilirarion facilities become increasingly ~ insufficient. Today, there are only 262 beds available in residential treatment centers and over 11,000 inmares eligible for those beds.

I So instead of being rehabilitated, drug offenders are sent to prison and discharged without treatment. This makes communities less safe, argues Sally Joughin, who co-founded People Against Injustice

In 1980,

})rison })Opulation was under 4,000. Today it is 18,000 and growing.

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THE New JouRNAL

in 1996 to respond to rampant abuses of the criminal justice system. The group, which Dalzenia Henry joined after her son was moved, has organized around a variety of issues including, most recently, the transfer of prisoners to Virginia. Joughin believes that instead of transferring prisoners out of state, Connecticut should focus on finding better solutions at home. Much of her emphasis is on Alternative to Incarceration Programs (AlPs). If non-violent drug offenders and the mentally ill were sent to rehabilitation centers rather than prisons, she told me, there would be no need to send prisoners ou t of state, and everyone would be better off. "Prison should be a system of correction, not only punishment," sh e said. "Or they should at

OctoBER 13, 2000

least stop calling it the Department of Correction."

It comes as a surprise to many that AlPS, like drug rehabilitation centers and mental hospitals, are cheaper than prisons.

Substance abuse programs, for example, run about $5,000 per person per year, while it costs over $25,000 to keep a person in prison. According to recent polls, the people of Connecticut support treatment programs, at least in theory. Why, then, isn't the state filled with AlPS rather than prisons? The answer is money and policies.

Legislators don't want to be labeled "soft on crime" for supporting treatment rather than incarceration, especially in an election year. Furthermore, just as no one wants to live next door to a prison, no one wants to live next to a rrearment center, and there are more factors stacked against AlPS. Connecticut pays towns to host prisons, which do not pay property taXes. For prisons, this PILOT (Payment In Lieu OfTaxes) is 100 percent of the assessed property value, but the state pays less for facilities like treatment centers. Towns can also negotiate for certain benefits when they agree to build a prison. For example, Cheshire, which is home to five of Connecticut's prisons, has its sewer system managed and paid for by the state. "T he rown can make out like a bandit," Dyson told me. Four more Connecticut towns are now poised to rake in profits. In September, East Lyme, Montville, Somers, and Suffield submitted applications to the state for yet another planned prison expansion. One East Lyme selectman said that enlarging the town's prison would be like bringing in ten new businesses.

The inmate population is expected to swell by 4,000 over the next five years, and Connecticut has no plans to check this growth by funding rehabilitative programs.

Twenty-five million dollars of this year's budget are already earmarked for incarceration. As long as prison building remains both politically expedient and a source of profit for localities, few of those in power will have a reason to take the long viewand we will all pay the price.

J~ssica

C<Jiieg~.

Bulman, a junior in Bn-k~ley is a managing ditor for TNJ.

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LETTER FROM PRAGUE What I saw at the revolution

BY E RIC G ERMAN I'm in an abandoned builcling full of anarchist squatters, talking philosophy with Serotonin and Siv. Actually, Siv is doing most of the talking. He's an English philosophy student, and we met him wandering in the cold Prague night, looking for a place to sleep. Serotonin and I were catching a night tram over to the squat when bright-eyed Siv stepped from the shadows carrying a bedroll.

Siv is 23, from PortSmouth, and he's giving me his Hegelian explanation for why he came to demonstrate against the IMP. "History is a progression," he says. "There's a direction to events, and a certain truth, or oneness, or unity, you know, underlying it all." Siv is lying on his sleeping bag, head propped on a hand.

His sheep's-wool shock of brown hair sticks out philosophically. "And this IMF conference, this meeting, it's part of a progression that I think I've been seeing unfolding for awhile now." Siv is on the floor by Serotonin. I get the couch because I'm willing to deal with spiders.

Our room is less vile than the rest because it's a workspace. These anarchistS produce a newspaper, and irs refuse--paper scraps, books, leftist magazines and empty beer bottles--clogs the place. We had to squeeze by the rusty printing press just to get in the door.

Hard-core music pounds below us. The odors of beer and vomit waft up through dirtcrusted floorboards. They mix with the smell of primer's ink and Siv's overpowering feet. He is off from school, working on organic farms across Europe, and he doesn't shower much. I rub my nose, wishing my head cold were worse, and keep listening.

"You know, there were the demonstrations in Seattle, ones in Washington, actions in the U.K. Things are happening, I think," he says.

"Things are changing. I want to be here to be pact of it. If I can find a reason to give for why I'm here, I think that's it."

He doesn't ask me why I'm here and I don't bring it up. I wrote for Prague's only English weekly last summer and struck a deal with them for the fall: They pay airfare, and

I cover the annual IMP and World Bank meetings un paid. My qualifications are scant. A week ago I was only vaguely aware that the IMP or World Bank existed, and my presem "expertise" derives from a pile of articles I nervously absorbed on the plane.

But the paper needs scoops, and I'm poor.

T his means I sleep with protesters. As the youngest staff writer, I simply have to "find out from those kids why they think they're here."

So I don a black hooded sweatshirt and try to smell the zeitgeist.

Rubbing my nose again, I ask Siv if these demonstrations share an underlying clirection, if these events have a goal. What world-historical endpoint are we seeking? He is quiet for some time: "Empathy," he says finally. "People having more of an understanding of the feelings and lives of others. If those guys in the IMP hear us, maybe it will help them see that what they do has an effect on the lives of millions of other people. Maybe it will make them be more careful. Feel some empathy for the people they are hurting, you know?"

Siv turns to Serotonin and asks, "Do you know this word, 'empathy'?" Serotonin is 20, from Dresden, and his English-while better than our German-is patchy. Bent over a joint that won't come together, he hasn't heard a word Siv has said. His real name is Sven, but I've called him Serotonin ever since we met at a rave last summer where, with shaky-ecstatic hands, he scrawled his address on a napkin for me--serotonin@som~thingindeciphtrable.com. He cooks in Dresden, earning just enough to rent a flat, travel, and rave. After we pacted last summer, Serotonin rave-hopped until he ran through his money. He told me once that, if it were up to him, he would be a techno-gypsy.

Siv asks him again about empathy.

Serotonin shrugs and passes the joint. Siv smokes and then tries to define the word. It takes awhile. I ask Serotonin why he came to demonstrate. "I heard about Seattle," he says. "I saw on TV the rioting and I want to see if this will turn out the same." His rave-wear sags off

THE NEW JouRNAL

his slouchy, string-bean frame as he sits on the floor. "You weren't in Seattle, were you?" Serotonin is the fiftieth person to ask me that since my arrival. No, I wasn't there, I say. It's too bad you missed such a great time, he tells me. "I hope here it will rage like it did in Seattle," he says, blue eyes flashing above a grin.

Two days later, it raged. Thousands of ~ masked anarchists--our hoses among them, I imagine--showered police with sticks, petrol bombs, and cobblestones torn from the streetS. The riotlines shot back tear gas, stun grenades, and water cannons. Cops, youth, fire, blood, and tears flooded the streetS near the IMP and World Bank's conference center.

The protests were the most violent an IMP meeting has ever seen, and they had the newswires squawking. "s,ooo protesters unleashed a fresh round of fury against economic globalization!"

"6,ooo enemies of capitalism marched on the IMP and World Bank surnmir Tuesday!"

And the like. The press numbered the crowd, gave it one name, and one intention. From what I saw, the labels were ill-suited and the intentions lacking.

I saw my squat-mates just before the riots. Siv was extremely worked up. But not about cops, globalization, or even Hegel. "My trip at the moment," he said. "is that I have got to have a piss.

Can you point me to the loo?" Later, Siv joined a peaceful march of samba musicians, decked out in pink, who marched to the Congress Center simply making noise. Serotonin ducked the violence as well. Using his video camera as a prop, he obtained an independent media press badge to help dodge arrest.

He watched the bash of the year &om the sidelines and, with any luck, got it all on tape.

Neither I nor my two comrades can say much about globalization, the IMP, or the World Bank. We were simply country-hopping bums, looking for a place to sleep and an event to join.

We were not thugs, and we came to Prague in good faith. I came for a story. Serotonin for a party. Siv, for a piece of world history. I believe we fOund all three.

181 Eric Gn-man is a senior in Branford Co/kg~.

0croBER IJ, 2000

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Hitchhiker's Guide to the I

n the title of Michelin's new Grem Guide to Yale University and New Haven, the city and the institution of higher education huddle together, Like college sweethearts in a twin bed, separated by a mere conjunction. After 300 years of often strained coexistence, Yale and New Haven, it seems, have finally joined together in a blessed union that is a worthy subject for one of the world's most respected travel publishers. The blandishmems surrounding the new Guide's birth confirm this impression: At a press conference celebrating the Guide's completion, both Yale University Prcsidem Richard Levin and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr., emphasized the harmonious rapport between Old Blue and the Elm City.

For blushing bride DeStefano, the Guide "underscores the beneficial relationship between the city and Yale." Levin, the proud groom, echoes these sentiments: "I can think of no better way co honor our partnership." Naturally, I approached Michelin's Guide expecting a cheerful depiction of its nvo subjects and the union that ended years of strife, some sort of Mid-Connecticut Night's D"am.

However, the saga is anything but romantic or comic, more akin to that of Aeneas and Dido or Catherine and Heathcliff than Hermia and Lysander. The story revealed is more like a bad high school play in which the school's diva grabs the spotlight and forces the more timid actors into the unlit corners of the stage. Rather than celebrating a peaceful and prosperous relationship, the Guide seems to parody the Yale-centrism that many see as che perpetual stumbling block in Yale-New Haven relations with its onslaught of Yale matter and its dearth of New Haven content. After wading th rough a Cervantes-length account of the University, one almost comes to believe that Michelin intentionally ignored irs Sancho Panza in favor of rosy tales of its Don Quixote.

One need not even open the Guide co get a sense of irs true focus. Although the words "Yale University and New Haven'' are emblazoned across the center of the cover, all the other graphics feature only Yale. Directly under the ride is a picture of a corner of the Branford courtyard, the vista most over-used by Yale's publicity machine. Beneath this photo, Handsome Dan sits on the Yale Fence, a Georgian window peeks out from behind its cover of ivy, and the now-ubiquitous tercentennial logo shines forth in pure white text. Together, the trinity proves the equity proclaimed by the Guide's ride to be as illusory as the University's policy on alcohol consumption. The only reminder of the non-Yale Elm City is indirect at best: small, vertical text reading "with hotels and restaurants." This, despite the Guide's own acknowledgement that New Haven's trademark green and three churches are "the most beautiful and most photographed view in New Haven." In a guide that ostensibly depicts New Haven, the relegation of its most beautiful sight to a murky watercolor at the bottom of two later pages seems too contradictory to be accidental.

The first eight pages, a visual tour preceding the text, reinforce this impression with a blitz of Yale-related images that overwhelm the occ.'lSional mention ofNew Haven, present only when absolutely necessary: on the ride page, the table of contents, and the first map. The successive visuals seem to be drawn from the Admissions Viewbook. Included are the Yale Seal in its full-color, Larin and Hebrew glory; a watercolor of Harknj!SS Memorial Tower and the Memorial Gateway (minus construction workers and dumpsters); a student poring over her work under autumn leaves; and a map that features all of Yale but lacks such New Haven destinations as Wooster Square, Ease Rock, and Long Wharf.

When the introduction proper begins, New Haven reencers the picture. Because it predates che University by some 63 years, the city necessarily occupies the first half of the first page of the in troduction's history section. However, with the arrival of Yale in the middle of the page, New Haven almost disappears. Throughout the section, Michelin glosses over grand events in New Haven history in favor of petty particulars concerning Yale. Two of the most important events in New Haven's hiscory, the Amistad affair and the concealment of the regicides at West Rock, receive nearly the same amount of space as the opening of Yale's Henry R. Luce Hall.

After a short list of hotels, restaurants, and night spots, Yale receives 42 pages of the Guide, with headings that cover such crucial topics as "Yale Today," "Traditions," "Student Life," "Legacy," "Three Centuries of Growth," and "Evolution of the Campus."

This section includes two walking tours of the campus, describing in detail everything from the phallic wonder of Harkness Tower to the grandiose mansions on Hillhouse Avenue to the unforgettable tablet in Berkeley's wall commemorating the site of Yale's first telephone exchange. It also includes four-page guides to both the British Art Museum and the University Art Gallery, not only describing in detail the different sections of each museum floor, but also providing lessons in art history for the uninitiated reader.

If one disregards the occasional Yale office in the New Haven Savings Bank building, pages 64 and 65 showcase the Guide's first Yale-less photo. These are followed by the ten pages that constitute New Haven's portion of the Guide. Although New Haven is, surprisingly enough, much larger than Yale, the Guide provides only one extensive walking tour of the city and a paragraph-long Wooster Square tour. The main walking tour seems to embody the work's main flaw: At no point can the tourist turn in a complete circle without seeing Yale University. The tour is more an inculcation of the Yale administration worldview than a way to become acquainted with New Haven. Unlike the detailed four pages that the Yale University Art GaJiery receives or the one page devoted to the Collection of Musical Instruments, only one paragraph deals with the New Haven Colony Historical Society. Like Kline-Biology THE NEW JouRNAL

By Patrick Casey Pitts

University The Green Guide to Yale Unive.rsity and New Haven (Mic.helin, 2000), pp. 96 Tower rising over the city from the top of Science Hill, Yale's portion of the guide drastically overshadows New Haven's.

The Yale-centrism of the Guide is most likely a result of its progenitors, the folks at the Yale Tercentennial Office. A guide by a world-renowned publisher that skips over as much of New Haven as possible seems to be the perfect accompaniment to a celebration that will be broadcast throughout the world so that alumni need not return to New Haven. However, the Guide is nowhere near as subtle nor as cunning as the University's standard modus operandi; the obtrusiveness of the Guide's slant leads one to search for answers outside the frequently shadowy operations of the University. In fact, the impression that remains with the reader afrer finishing the Guide -that something is missing, that some crucial part has been withheld-is so strong that this failure seems intentional. Could the lack of New Haven content be a deliberate ploy on Michelin's part to critique and subvert the University's magnificent tercentennial celebration with a chilling portrait of unrelenting Yale-centrism? In accepting Yale's proposal and publishing this opus extolling the wonders of Old Blue, was Michelin able to bite the very hand that fed it the idea without arousing any notice? Could Michelin, like Shakespeare, Moliere, or other subtly subversive scribes, have managed to indict the institution that it claims to praise?

By packaging a version of The Yak (albeit somewhat more Yale-centric) under a title that includes both Yale and New Haven, the¡ Guide parodies the very concept it embodies. Still, the question of authorial intent remains. Did Michelin merely do an inadequate job, or did the company succeed in criticizing its own benefactors?

If Michelin chooses to turn the university-town theme into a series, future guides may provide an answer: a Princeton guide focusing entirely on the golf courses, yacht clubs, and BMW dealers near campus; a Brown guide without any sort of logical structure that allows the reader to choose his or her own path through the text; a Harvard guide "that leaves the reader miserable but sure that somehow, someday, the reading experience will prove invaluable. Any one of these works would prove that Michelin intended much more than praise in its Guuu to Yale and New Haven.

I8J

Patrick Casey Pitts, a sophomore in Berkeley Colkge, is on thestajf ojTNJ.

0croBER 13, 2000

Quoth the Ravens, Nevem1ore

By Michael Gerber

T

he last page of the playoff edition of the New Haven Ravens program tells the story of Rally and Ribbi's wedding.

Apparently, the two mascots became Mr. and Mrs. Raven on August 6 at Yale Field. Guests at the wedding included the Mariner Moose, who flew in from Seattle, and local mascot Handsome Dan, the Yale Bulldog. Immediately following the wedding. a baseball game was played.

Baseball doesn't seem to be a top priority for Ravens fans. lc's certainly on the list-maybe above the sumo matches chat occasionally occur between innings, probably below the fireworks that follow some games, and definitely below cotton candy and beer.

Way below beer.

This doesn't make it easy for the Ravens marketing team.

When a Major League team makes che playoffs, selling tickets is not a problem. For the Ravens, the opposite is rrue. Playoff games are not on the schedules printed at the beginning of the season, so people don't plan on coming to them. The playoffs also happen during che school year, when parents are not as likely to bring their children. So the Ravens resort to gimmicks like fireworks, giveaways, and having twice as many mascots as your average baseball team.

On September 14, the Ravens hosted game three of the Eastern League championship series. They had split the first two games with the Reading Phillies, so the title was well within reach. Game three also happened to be college night-for three bucks, a few friends and I gor seats at the picnic tables behind the right field fence, free food, and two-dollar drafts. "Free" tee-shirts, too--if you tipped the bartender. Because we were basically the only ones out there, we got a lot of attention: from other funs, from Ravens employees, from the players, and from the mascots. The mascots' attention was something we probably could have done without-let's just say that Rally wasn't being too faithful to his new bride or all that respectful of my friends' personal space.

At first, everybody else in the crowd seemed to be enrhusiastic about the game, but that was probably just because beers were halfoff when the Ravens were up. We kept cheering well after the Ravens took the lead, bur that was probably just because we were drunk. By cheering for the Ravens I mean, of course, harassing the opposition. In particular, we belitded the Phillies right fielder's ability, his home town, and members of his family whom we had never met. And with such a small crowd, he heard every word we said. I know, because

he laughed at us. The Ravens players heard us, too, because their right fielder tossed me a baseball, and the pitchers in the bullpen joined us when we started the wave.

That one tossed baseball began the greatest friendship with a professional athlete that I've ever had. I didn't know it at the rime, but one short day later, I'd be ar a bar putting back drinks with Keith Gordon, ex-Major Leaguer. Our enthusiasm had paid off: Two sales executives who were working the game came over to thank us for coming our, and we ended up with free tickets to the next night's game.

The Ravens had won, and we were back for the series finalthjs time behind the home dugout. That night, the Ravens became Eastern League champions, clinching the "World Series of AA baseball on the East Coast of the United States of America." I found myself chanting "We're Number One!" along with the funs and players, celebrating my two-day-old loyalty. We felt like we were part of the ream, especially after our friends from the night before stopped by to talk to us, and even more so when they invited us to TK's to celebrate with the Ravens players and staff.

It was there that I ran into Keith Gordon, the Ravens player who had thrown me that baseball. And that's how he ended up buying me drinks. There was really no way to turn him down. I tried all the excuses I could come up with. I told him I had already had a couple beers. He grabbed the waitress and told her to get me a Sam Adams. I reminded him that I was there as a journalist. He yelled across the bar and cold the waitress to make it two. With a glass of beer in each hand, I pointed out that I weighed much less than the average professional athlete. He bought me another beer.

Gordon's Major League scats aren't exactly impressive. In three games with the Cincinnati Reds in 1993, he had one hit in six atbats. He struck out twice. He told me he got called up by the Orioles for a week but I guess he never batted in Baltimore. In his eleven years in professional baseball, he didn't last a month in the Majors. He might never make it back. Bur he didn't seem upset by that. He almost quit before the season and may not play next year.

Even if Gordon does return to baseball, he won't be coming back to New Haven. For the last few seasons, the Ravens have been a farm team for Seattle, and now the Mariners are pulling out of the deal, taking the players with them. It's not a surprise. New Haven doesn't appreciate the team-attendance records are the lowest in the league. Next year, the Ravens will still be here, bur a new flock of players will play for the St. Louis Cardinals farm system. Chances are, Mark McGwire won't be among them. And maybe most of the Ravens won't make the big leagues. But when has Mark McGwire ever bought me a beer?

Micha~L

G"bn-. a smior in Ezra Stiln Co/leg~. is a contributing ~ditor for TNJ¡

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