Volume 34 - Issue 1

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Volwne 34> NUmber 1

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September 7, 2001

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THE NEW JouRNAL

TheNewJournal

Volume 34, Number I September 7, 200 1

FEATURES

10

Street Cred Angelo Reyes creates first homes and second chances.

by Matthew Underwood

14

Blue Genes A Yale student markets her DNA.

by Jessica Cohen

18

A Mind ofWinter Photos by Sam Elder

20

Arrested Development When Asian immigrants tried to start a business in an all-black neighborhood, racial politics undermined the American dream.

by Sara Hirschhorn

18

STAN DAR OS 4 5

Points of Departure Kamm~tz

22

Essay: Lonely Planets by Anya

24

The Critical Angle: A School for Scandal by Patriclt Casry Pitts rrvimling The Story ofJ ane by CathmM Cussa, Thinks... by David Lodg~. and The Dying Animal by Philip Roth Endnote: Panrsed by 8/alt~ Wilson

30

lila NIW jool.NAL L1 published fi~ umC$ dunn& rhe academic year by T1u Nnr Jolll.NAL at Yak,

Letters to the Editor

Inc., P.O. Box UJ>. Yak Saoon, New Ha~n. CT o6sw. Office acldtess: lSI Parlr Suat. Phone (WJ) -4J1· '9n. AU con tena copyn&ht lOOt by THa Nonr jOUl.NAL ar Yale, Inc. All Ri&ha Rt:suval. Rq>roducuon either"' whok or rn pan without wrinen permiuion of the publisher and editor-in-chid is prohibited• ..... this map2.1ne is published by Yale Colle&• srudenu. Yale Univer>iry is nor rC$ponsible for iu contmu. ~ thowand fi~ hundred copies of each i~ an: distributed free to memben of the Yale aod New Ha.aa conununiry. Subscriptions are available to th<* our:side the area. Rate$: One year, SJ8. Two yean, 1)1. THa Nonr Joul.NAL is pnnted by Tu1lty Publications. Palmer, MA; boolleepin& and bilhn& semc:es ue f'l1loidod by Colman Bonll«prn& of New Ha~n. T111 Nonr Jouki<AL encoura&CS letters to the editor and com menu on Yale and New Haven issue$. Write to Edhorials. UJ1 Yale Sation, New Ha~n. cr "'s:10. AU Inters for publication must include address and •i&narure. We r=~ the ri&hr ro edit alllerten for publication.

Work for The Neuu Journal Thank you for Patrick Casey Pins' informative article on the Yale School of Drama dean search (The Dean's the Thing. Vol. 33.5).

It's baflling that people here are so resistant to the challenge of such a singular artist as Anne Bogart. Among actors, she's famous for not only her aesthetic integrity, but also her remarkable generosiry and compassion-qualities which, in fact, can make a huge difference in a production's outcome. After all, theater depends on a group of human beings being able to work with one another over time.

There are two things which you might have added to your argument:

We are looking for savvy writers, cutting-edge designers, innovative photographers, dynamic production staff, business tycoons, and web wizards.

TNT Information Sessions Tuesday, September 11 TNJ office, 252 Park Street (behind Davenport) & Wednesday, September 12 Berkeley College Common Room For info call Anya at 777-8776 or email tnj@yale.edu

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1) The important contributions to us theater the Rep made in the years between Brustein and Wojewodski. Under Lloyd Richards, Yale Rep was the home to every Athol Fugard world premiere; provided the launching pad for playwright August Wilson's huge career; introduced plays by Lee Blessing that became international successes (A Walk in the WOods, Cobb); gave the world perhaps the finest production of Long Day's journey Into Night ever staged (Colleen Dewhurst and Jason -Robards starring, Jose Quintero directing); and produced from YSD a large number of now-prominent actors, directors and designers (Angela Bassett, Charles Dutton, David Alan Grier, Marcus Stern, Evan Yiannoulis, Christopher Ackerlind, and on and on).

2) Regarding the Trinity Rep: You didn't mention that Anne Bogart used to be the Artistic Director there-for one year, until the timorous board of directors puUed the plug on her. Their excuse was the same as the one implied here: the red-herring issue of management skills. The fact is, in Bogart's one season, she actually increased Trinity's subscriber base. At any theater, the installation of a new artistic director usually causes a dropoff in subscriptionsoften temporary, while audiences adjust to the new regime. Doesn't bringing in more money count as a management skill?

Margaret Spillane Lecturer in English, Yale Universiry

The New Journal invites letters and responses to the editor.

Write to rnj@yale.edu or The Editor P.O. Box 203432 New Haven, CT 06520 We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

4

THE NEW JoURNAL

A M ore Perfect Union SOMETHING BIG IS AiouT TO HAPPEN with of the Graduate Employees and Students undergraduate "student union" seeks an labor in New Haven. At least the AFL-C;O Organization (GESO)-spoke about the expanded role in the decision-making thinks so. Last spring, the national labor union's multi-year struggle for recognition, p rocesses of the University. federation dispatched to the Elm City a quoting from A Chorus Line and referring T he five groups-Locals 34 and 35, leading field representative, a maverick to French literature papers in the process, a II99• GESO, and me undergraduates-make who specializes in large-scale mobilizations. .baffled silence fell over the crowd. up an incongruous alliance, loosely orga(He is rumored to have been a lead labor New Haven's labor movement is a nized under the Federation of Hospital and organizer at the historic WTO protest in University Employees (FHUE). When their complex coalition of disparate groups. The Seattle in 1999.) The Yale administration is city's two established unions are Locals 34 contracts with Yale expire on January r, not supposed to know he's here, and h e and 35, united under the Hotel Employees 2002, Local 34 and Local 35 will demand does not speak to the that the University press. His name is agree to card-check Vinnie O'Brien. neutrality in the April 20, 2001, was unionizing efforts of a day of jarring contrasts hospital workers and in New Haven. At 4PM, graduate students. many of Yale's most ven"~e have a very erated alumni-a page unique partnership out of the Who's Who of here between fou r the American aristocragroups of very differcy--convened in stately ent workers who are Woolsey Hall for the looking beyond the opening event of the traditional way in which people have University's second things in comm on," 300th anniversary · celesaid Deborah bration. However, as forChernoff, a full-time mer Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin employee of 1199 and one-time chair- Local 3.f worken atand in ailencc on Hillhouae Avenue abortly befcne who also serves as the woman of the President's being arrested for civil diaobediencc on October 5.

Communica ti ons Director of FHUE. Council of Economic Advisors Janet Yellen The New joumaVOctober 19, 1984 And union leaders, whether students or workers, express confipontificated about the state of th e and Restaurant Employees International American economy, a crowd of 2,200 Yale Union (HERE) and representing Yale's secdence that the alliance, united by a broader sense of civic involvement and social jusemployees, hospital workers, politicians, vice and maintenance staff. Meanwhile, tice, will stand up in the face of pressure Oisuict II99 of the Service Employees union organizers, local clergy, and Yale stufrom Yale's administration. dents amassed on the New Haven Green, a International Union (SEIU) and GESO strugWhen the people in this alliance gle to establish unions for Yale-New Haven block from Woolsey. Their purpose: to explained to me what has brought them wrest the world's attention from the terH ospital workers and graduate student together, their reasons seem, at first, suscentennial event and redirect it towards teaching assistants, respectively. Each is pect. They talk abou t "vision" and a "strugNew Haven's charging labor movement. demanding that their employer accept gle for justice." "Suddenly, people have The scene at the rally, however, offered what is known as card-check neuualitystatted to see a vision of a better version of a few jarring conuasts of its own. C lean-cut impartiality in the organizing stages and the University as possible," Carlos students locked arms with dining hall recognition once more than half of the Aramayo, a member of GESo's coordinating workers and secretaries. On stage, the rabworkers, or in the case of GESO, graduate committee, told me. "The University hie-rousing speeches of Democratic politistudents, have signed a card expressing solshould be responsive to the community c:ians and burly union men gave way to the idarity with the union. (With card-check and high-minded. That's exactly the kind neutrality, organizers claim, victory is soft-spoken words of a PHD student in a of public sphere a university should be, and cashmere scar£ As the student-a member inevitable.) At the same time, a nascent

si!.P'r2MBER 1, 2001

5

that won't happen unless hospital workers are organized, unless clergymen are organized, unless janitors are organized, unless students are organized, unless the community is organized."

New Haven are as pragmatic as they are idealistic. "It is in our self-interest to be mutually interested and go beyond narrow definitions," Chernoff said. Only united, organizers say, can they contend with an

The incongruous alliance represents a new hope for a faltering national labor movement This broad conception of community interest manifests itself in a variety of ways, many of which are a far cry from the traditional concerns of organized labor. Abbey Hudson, de facto head of the undergraduate union, likes to point out that last April, when Local 34 was pamphleting tercentennial weekend alumni gatherings, the flier it distributed at the culminating event-an afrernoon session headlined by the elder President Bush--deatt not with pay .scales or labor rights, but with financial aid. The highly publicized report this August about Yale's historical relationship with slave owners, authored by three GESO members, was also strongly supported by the unions.

Antony Dugdale, one of the report's authors and a labor organizer, said, "This scholarship on slavery and the union each fit into a larger struggle. They're sides of the same coin, both part of the fight for justice in New Haven."

Ultimately, though, the strategies and partnerships pursued by labor activists in

employer-Yale--which directly controls a quarter of New Haven's jobs and indiroctly controls an even larger portion (a fact which labor activists quote ad nauseam).

One nigh t in August, I joined three labor organizers, including a recent Yale graduate and a PHD student in Yale's history department, at The Second Star of Jacob, a Pentecostal church in the predominantly Latino Fair Haven neighborhood.

The three began a PowerPoint presentation in Spanish on why, New Haven workers must unionize in front of xoo-some parishioners, many of whom are employed by Yale and closely connected industries. The congregation chattered and shifred restlessly. I took this reaction as a lack of interest, an excuse for my own skepticism. Halfway through the presentation, the Yale graduate student offered her own testimonial, detailing her reasons for wanting to unionize graduate teachers and attempting to connect her plight to the plights of.custodians and dining hall workers.

Ten minutes later, we walked out of the chapel. In the church lobby, we were stopped. Parishioners wanted to say thanks.

To tell their stories. "You have blessed us by coming here," one said, in heavily accented English. Before we left, he insisted on giving each of us--even me-a hug.

The incongruous alliance of workers and students and community members represents a new hope for a faltering national labor movement--one on which its continued relevance may depend.

Organized labor has struggled to adapt to an economy in which service jobs now outnumber those in traditionally unionized manufacturing industries; nationally, union membership has plummeted to 13 percent of the workforce, and leaders have struggled to replace an increasingly outmoded model. A victory for labor at Yale will send shock waves around the nation.

"If this model is successful-and it will be--it V(ill provide a real example for unions around the nation to follow," declared Nick Allen, an organizer with 1199¡

On October 5, Yale will continue its tercentennial celebration with a final gala weekend, and the world will be watching.

If Vinnie O'Brien and the new labor alliance have their way, headlines will be more about protest than pageantry- and a national movement will be on its way to revitalization.

-Dani~l Kurtz-Ph~lan

6

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7

Remorse THREE YALE PHD CANDIDATES published a report this summer, "Yale, Slavery and Abolition," which put together a number of unsurprising facts into a substantial case.

The story was all over The New JOrk Times.

Eight of Yale's twelve residential colleges were named after former slave owners.

Furthermore, Yale, like many northern institutions, was financially dependent on profits from slavery through the 18th and 19th centuries. To Yale students, the name "Calhoun" may bring forth images of a quaint courtyard bordering Cross Campus, but outside the bounds of Chapel and Prospect streets it conjures up South Carolina's promi- _ nent slave owner, plantation master, and senator John C. Calhoun-a man who ardently advocated the expansion of slavery throughout the nation.

The debate on oped pages has been centered on the philosophical idea of "presentism"-that is, to what extent modern critics, using contemporary standards, can judge the moral worth of decisions made in the past. The naming of residential colleges, however, poses a more historical and less philosophical question: How did the administration choose which Yale figures to honor?

Morse College, named for telegraph inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, is another residential college that honors a Yale alumnus who displayed zealous support for slavery.

In 1955, Yale used a $2.5 million grant from John A Whitney, class of 1926, to purchase the land to build the elevencb and twelfth colleges. This forced three New Haven high schools to relocate, including Hillhouse High School, named for the prominent abolitionist, Yale graduate, and senator James Hillhouse. The colleges were built there between 1958 and 1962, after the university secured a $15 million grant from Paul Mellon, class of 1929. Seven and a half million of Mellon's grant was used for the consttuction, while the remaining $7.5 mil8

lion continues to fund educational programs, such as college seminars and the Mellon Forum, within all the residential colleges.

So why is it that Morse and Stiles are not known as Whitney and Mellon? Both John A. Whitney and Paul Mellon were prominent Yale alumni; Whitney served as the publisher of the New JOrk Herald Tribune as well as an ambassador to Britain under President Eisenhower.

Mellon

had a career at Yale marked by academic and extracurricular accomplishments and had already bestowed grants upon Yale that continue to fund academic programs to this day, including the Directed Studies program in the humanities. Upon acquiring the grant, Yale President AWhimey Griswold, in a lener to Mellon, wrote that "no university in [his) knowledge has had so enlightened a benefactor." In fact, he has since become Yale's largest individual donor.

A file of correspondence relating to proposed names for the two new colleges in Sterling Memorial Library's Manuscripts and Archives makes one allusion to Paul Mellon-a pamphlet for Mellon Residential Hall at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, with a note penciled in, stating that Mellon was "not averse to the use of his name." (A residential hall at Harvard is also named for him.) Aside from that, the folder I contains various other proposl als for names. There was one from Betty Hotchkiss in 1958, asking that the university consider naming one of the new colleges in honor of her relative Noah Webster, creator of the first American dictionary. That same year, the alumni director of the class of 1910 proâ&#x20AC;˘ posed that one of the colleges be named Taft College in honor of President Taft and his son, the late Senator Bob Taft, class of 1910.

Also contained in the file is a list of authors affiliated with Yale, including â&#x20AC;˘ James Fenimore Cooper, .Sinclair Lewis, and Thornton Wuder, noting that many of these , names seem "a bit too contemporary . . . too bad we don't have a wider selection in this field."

The proposal that won the administration's approval was from Theodore Sizer, an alumnus who is now professor emeritus of education at Brown University. Written in a florid jade-green calligraphy, Sizer's letter to President Griswold asks, "What other graduate of the university has become the universal man? . . . What other Yale man has cbere been whose name has become a noun?" In a later letter, Sizer also wrote that cbe name "'Morse College' is euphonious." What cbe lener failed to mention is that Morse published articles defending slavery as part of God's ordained plan and that he served as the president of two pro-slavery organizaTHE NEW JouRNAL

tions, the American Society for the Promotion of National Unity and the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge.

Would simply naming one of Yale's residential colleges after its donor be too simple? In naming a residential college "Mellon College," perhaps Yale felt that it would discount its heritage and traditionthe tombs of its societies and the acidwashed stone facades of its colleges. Paul Mellon's gift of $15 million, however, was not just for the construction of traditional undergrad uate residences-it was for the development of a novel educational system.

In a letter written to President Griswold in 1958, Mellon wrote that his grant "may also serve as a stimulus to other donors and to other colleges to keep liberal education liberal!" Griswold echoed the thoughts of Mellon when he wrote that higher education has "put a premium on the residential college as a means of cultivating and refining students in moral and aesthetic terms."

Quoting Sir Lawrence Johns, Griswold defined the p urpose of the residential college to be "a miniature of what a civilized western community should provide for us all."

While Yale ler tradition pervade its nomenclature, it implemented an innovative system of education in the us. It is in this sense that the question of "presentism" may very well be overshadowed by the question of historical process. That colleges bearing the names of slaveholders were created with the intention of fostering a liberal education can be viewed as simply a lack of historical perspective and not a lack of morality. Perhaps the irony of tradition lies here: To view the residential colleges' names as symbols of Yale's morality is to become slave to the same burden of tradition to which the university's previous administrations succumbed.

-Bmita Singh

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0

ne night in 1994, Angelo Reyes watched a gunfight play out only yards from the dilapidated house on Peck Alley that he had just bought and renovated for his family. A buller hole marks the siding as a reminder. "I was scared for my daughter," says Reyes. "I was aggravated." The next day, he dumped twelve tons of dirt in the alleyway, retained his new front yard with a wall of concrete blocks, and stretched a chainlink fence across the other side. People objected. Drug dealers cur through his fence. The city wanted him arrested. But Reyes was determined. "I fought with the people ... In the end, they just gave up, because I wasn't going to hear it. This was nor going to be a shooting gallery anymore ... I worked a little backwards. I worked from anger, and I just did it."

Standing in his front yard, Reyes describes the first project he completed through a method he pioneered in Fair Haven, a poor Latino neighborhood in Ne-w Haven. "They call it 'Angelo Domain,"' he jokes.

Reyes knows about working backwards. In a sense, he's been working backwards his whole life. A self-proclaimed "private developer," he operates a laundromat, purchases and renovates run-down houses, and originates loans for first-rime home buyers from his neighborhood. Many of those buyers have bad credit or no credit at all when they come to him; they are the sort of people shunned by banks and mortgage brokers. "Angelo works at the margins: in a housing marker that people say doesn't work, with prospective homeowners who often have lousy credit, in a neighborhood that people say is impossible to get anything done in," says Paul Wessel, a Neighborhood Specialist for Fair Haven at New Haven's Livable City Initiative (LCI). What makes his work all the more striking is that Reyes began it while on supervised release from federal prison.

In 1992, he was convicted of drug trafficking and conspiracy.

The sale of one ounce of cocaine and his refusal to cooperate with federal prosecutors earned him 57 months behind bars. ''I'm a late bloomer," Reyes says, "but I'm here and I'm strong. I'm here in Fair Haven, and I see others who are late bloomers. I think I can help."

He's working backwards still, and changing Fair Haven for the better.

But he's doing it Fair Haven's way.

IO

THE NEW jouRNAL

A

day ofte,

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binhday. Angelo Reye.< <old

mâ&#x20AC;˘ ru, ur.

'l.story. By the time he turned nine, his family life was crumbling. His parents separated, and Reyes worked a number of jobs to help support his mother and siblings. "I grew up in a neighborhood ... where you woke up to it that a little burglary doesn't hurt anyone, that selling drugs is OK because you have to do what you have to do," Reyes says. By 13, he had turned to selling cocaine. With selling came using. Soon, though, the physical effects of addiction opened his eyes. "I started recognizing who I was, and it was ugly," Reyes says. "I tried to make change. I stopped partying when I was suddenly coughing up blood, when I couldn't smell anything because of my sinuses. I would still sell, though, and I'd be saying J\11 right, but this stuff will kill you.'"

A federal sting operation finally nailed Reyes. A friend and fellow dealer from East Haven whom Reyes had regularly supplied was apprehended. The friend informed on him and conducted a deal with him while wearing a wiretap. Reyes spent nearly five years in prison. He now says, "It cost a lot of people--it cost my son," referring to his first child, fathered at age 19. "I am full of regret that I can't spend the moments. But I tell myself that this was a process for me to be whoever I am now. So I lost a few years to gain a lifetime."

Despite his initial refusal to cooperate with prosecutors, Reyes proved to be a model prisoner, says Vicky Stackpole-Adams of the U.S. Federal Probation Office. Once, left behind at a worksite outside the prison grounds, Reyes made the choice to walk back to his cell. "[People I passed] were like, 'What the hell are you doing?' I was like 'I'm walking back to prison.' But I was comfortable with my sentence. I was comfortable that I had to do this and get it over with."

Released under supervision, Reyes got a job and slowly began to rebuild his life. "Here I am, 36 years old, and I'm finally doing what I should have been doing at 13 ... It took me a while to look

in that mirror and say 'You're Angelo Reyes, I forgive you, go on.'"

lJ P

e has gone on, remapping Fair Haven in the process.

Buildings are razed, boundaries redrawn and properties seized, all by right of "Angelo Domain." I met up with Reyes for a tour of his projects. We begin at 291 Uoyd Street, a house that stands out on a sueet where the others look as if they could only be inhabited by squatters or illegal immigrants, both commoh in Fair Haven. Here, work trucks crowd the driveway. A black man covered in a patina of plaster dust and sweat peeks through the window when I arrive. "I picked it up for a good price," Reyes explains, referring to the house he purchased at a foreclosure auction. "I didn't even look in there. But there was this hustler, selling drugs, an, uh ... a poacher, no, what do you call it?" "A squatter?" I suggest.

S2PTÂŁMBER 7'

2001

"Yeah, a squatter ... Now, either I could go through the motions of the courthouse and yada yada, or I just say, 'Look, what do you need?' He told me $2,500 would get him out of there. I told him, 'Twenty-five hundred dollars, and you don't get a dollar till you're out that door. And you can keep the locks.'" Inside, Reyes' work crew, composed of temporary workers from the neighborhoodnew immigrants, ex-cons, the disabled, and folks just down on their luck-are completing renovations. They redid the house from floor to ceiling, patching walls, reshaping rooms. Reyes plans to sell the p lace, at little profit to himself, to a 20-year-old woman with a child and a $400-a-week job--someone, he explains, whom every bank simply ignores. "But she just met a nice guy," he says, "and they want to take a chance. That's the type of people we need here."

The other houses we visit are similar. At one on Exchange Street, Reyes split a neighboring abandoned lot with a stockade fence, claiming half for himself and half for the house next door.

Both residents now enjoy backyards unusually spacious for Fair Haven. Another house, on Woolsey Street, was the first Reyes purchased upon leaving prison. This was where he learned to work backwards.

Reyes tells how he first learned the basics of buying and sel.ling houses in prison: not from any class, but from fellow inmates locked up for selling bad mortgages. As they detailed their scams, Reyes paid attention. "I listened, and I picked up the right pieces,"

Malaysian "fusion" cuisine

he explains. Once out of jail, he applied for a loan to purchase and rehabilitate the Woolsey Street house, but no bank would lend to an ex-con. So Reyes borrowed privately-at a usurious 15 percent interest rate-and set to work. Making payments was tough, but he kept at it, establishing his credit in the process. In a year, he qualified for a bank loan and was able to refinance. He refinanced the house three times in all, each time at a lower interest rate. "I went backwards in the system," he says, "but it showed that I can do it."

For the first time in his life, Reyes owned something. "By owning, your voice is heard," he explains. "I don't agree with out-of-towners corriing " in . . . and just having the attitude that, 'We'll rent to anyone. We don't care if they kill themselves.' And that's exactly what we're doing [in Fair Haven).

We're killing ourselves."

Wessel explained further, "There's an old anarchist maxim: Property is theft ... Home ownership is abo~t building equity. When you rent, you're paying off someone else's mort~ • gage. When you own, your monthly payments are about building your net worth."

Reyes soon got the idea to help his neighbors do as he had done and work towards owning homes. "Fair Haven is set up with a lot of people with bad credit, so how do you get [them] the opportunity to own? ... The same program that I did with myself, I'm doing with these people," he says. This is the genius of Angelo Reyes: By securing high-interest loans for homebuyers, he allows them to build credit while owning their homes. The process demands hard work and sacrifice, but Reyes himself is an example of what can be done.

But Reyes has competition. The Fair Haven Development Corporation (FHDC), a private, non-profit organi2ation, has a mission similar to Angelo's own, as described by its director, James R. Welter u: "to provide housing and community building services to the people of Fair Haven." Founded in 1994, the FHDC works

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to eradicate the absentee landlordism that has plagued Fair Haven for decades by offering classes in the basics of home ownership, and more recently by purchasing, renovating, and selling abandoned houses.

However, Reyes' remedies are far more successful than the FHoc's. When asked how many of the 64 graduates of their program now own homes, Welter is reluctant to give numbers. "It takes a little time," he explains. "I think in a year or so, we'll start getting into double digits with folks who have gone through our class and bought their own homes ... Most folks don't understand how long it takes . . . It's not like going down to the grocery and buying a gallon of milk." For now, five graduates are "in the p rocess" of buying homes-four in neighborhoods outside Fair Haven. Out of prison since 1997, Reyes, in contrast, has already helped over 50 Fair Haven residents purchase their own homes.

The difference between Reyes' approach and that of the FHDC and other similar city programs comes down to the issue of -credit. To ~ &. actually buy a home with help from the FHDC or the city, you need to have good credit first. "Anyone can attend [our) class," Welter explains. "But the realiry is that not everyone is immediately ready to buy a home ... Quite frankly, peopie have to be willing to do what they have to do to take care of credit problems."

Reyes sees this attitude as part of the problem. "It takes too long for someone to fix their credit," he explains, "and the opportunities they have now won't be there once their credit is fixed."

Reyes' status as a private entrepreneur and neighborhood insider is the key to his success. He can afford to bend rules and challenge statutes. He can share in the debt risks of his neighbors and spend out of his own pocket to back them up. He can fill in his alleyway and stand his ground. Having once considered running for city alderman, Reyes is nOV\' proud to be a private citizen.

"I've been doing everything that [the aldermen] were supposed to do. I have their

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cooperation now, and that's what's important."

Stili, some are critical of his cavalier attitude. When he recently purchased land on Atwater Street, his plans to build a house on a back lot aroused the opposition of the local block watch. Angelo went ahead with his plans,':hardly consulting the neighbors. In his mind, the haste was justified. "Ifl wouldn't have bought that house, somebody else from out of town would have bought it, and rented it." Alderman Robin Kroogman accuses Reyes of hypocrisy. "Angelo likes to know what's going on," she explains. "He sits in meetings and asks questions. But he doesn't like others to do the same where his projects are concerned ... I think it's offensive that he's critical of the very process that's there to benefit him. He's done very good things on Atwater Street and elsewhere, but that does not give him carte blanche to do whatever he wants."

Wessel, on the other hand, sees Angelo as a challenge, not a nuisance. "Clearly one of the things that keeps Angelo nimble and efficient is his di~tance from government programs. He has no patience for us ...

One of our biggest challenges as the ciry government is to figure out bow to partner with and nurture people like Angelo with passion, skills, and know-how . . . He's not afraid to take risks, or to work the rules to get done what he's trying to get done. In the end, everyone looks around and appreciates that he gets it done, however he manages to do it."

A LITTLE OFF THE TOP

haircuts â&#x20AC;˘updos â&#x20AC;˘ colors â&#x20AC;˘hilites 168 York Street. New Haven 203 772 4666

eyes, for his part, remains bound to his neighborhood. Its story is his own story writ large. It's as if he will not be fully reformed until he has reformed the neighborhood that made him who he was.

Sitting in his home, Reyes lifts his seven-month-old son Christian from a cradle and holds him standing on his father's knee. "See this guy here," be says, "He will never see what I've seen." And if Reyes' success continues, neither will anyone else growing up these days in Fair Haven.

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Matthew Underwood, a junior in Davenport College, is an associate editor ofTNJ. 13

A Yale student marlcets her DHA

By Jessica Cohen

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a classified ad ran for rwo weeks in the Yale Daily N~s: Wanted: one egg. But this couldn't be just any egg. T he couple was picky, and, for that reason, was offering between $40,000 and $6o,ooo for the right egg from the right donor.

I had a book as a child called "Where Did I Come From?" It offered a full biological explanation, in cartoons, of those sticky, awkward questions that curious tots ask. But the book is now out of date. Replacing it are books such as Mommy, Did I Grow In Your Tummy?

The update "explains to children about all the ways babies can come into the world . . . it provides descriptions of egg donors, surrogacy and adoption."

When conception doesn't occur in the natural way, it becomes very complicated.

Once all parties have been accounted for-including eggdonors, sperm donors, surrogate ARLY LAST SPRING,

mothers, and the paying couple--five people can be involved with the conception, carrying, delivery, and rearing of the child.

No wonder there is a new book.

The p rospective parents' choice to advertise in the N~~and the five-figure compensation-immediately suggested that they were in the market for an egg of a certain standard. Their demands weren't for just any Ivy Leaguer. The specifications were as follows: over 5'7", preferably blonde, of Jewish heritage, athletic, and a minimum 1500 SAT score. I was curious, and I fit all the criteria except the SAT score.

So I emailed Michelle and David and asked for more information about the process and how important the SAT minimum really was to them. From there, I launched into one of the strangest email relationships I've ever had.

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is neither simple nor painless. The process takes a few weeks. First, the donor and the woman who will carry the child must coordinate their menstrual cycles. The donor takes birth control pills, followed by a shot of Depo-Lupron, to bring her cycle in synch with that of the surrogate. Synchrony can typically be achieved simply by having two women live together, but in the ONATING AN EGG

world of egg donation such low-tech, timeintensive methods are frowned upon.

After altering her cycle, the donor must enhance her egg supply with fertility drugs in the same way an infertile woman does when trying to conceive. Shots of a common fertility drug such as Follistim or Fertinex are administered for seven to eleven days to stimulate the release of an abnormally large number of egg-containing follicles. During this time, the donor must give blood every other day before 9AM so doctors can monitor hormone levels.

Thirty-six hours before retrieyal day, a shot of HCG (profasi) is administered to prevent the eggs from being released on their own schedule before they are ready for pick-up.

The actual retrieval happens while the donor is under anaesthetic. The tool is a needle and the product, with luck, is five to ten follicles. Egg Donation Inc., an "egg bank," explained that doctors take that many because "not every follicle will contain an egg, and not all eggs will be good.

Some will be immature and some overripe."

I later spoke with Sherry T, one of the founders of Surrogate Mothers Online, a two-time donor and also the mother of rwo of her "own" children. She found donating

"an extremely rewarding" experience. She explained co me that, once in a while, something can go wrong, and I braced myself for the fine print. On very rare occasions, hyperstimulation of the ovaries can occur and the donor is hospitalized until the ovaries return to normal. In even rarer cases, the ovaries rupture, resulting in permanent infertility or possibly even death. "I must stress that this is very

rare," Sherry assured me. "I had two wonderful experiences. The second time I even stayed awake to help the doctor count how many eggs he retrieved."

David responded quickly to my email, only hours after I'd sent it. He told me nothing about himself or his wife and hardly mentioned the egg-donation process.

The bulk of the email was a strange description of a cartoon, followed by a request for photos of me. The cartoon, he wrote, "is a scene with a couple getting married: he a nerd and she a great beauty.

They are kvelling about their future child with his brains and her good looks. The next panel shows a nerdy looking baby thinlcing empty thoughts." This introduction baffied me. Maybe this guy was a nerd hoping to avoid the same kind of disaster, or maybe he was simply trying to make light of the fact that he was potentially going to pay me more than a year ofYale's tuition for my egg. I thanked him for the email and ~ked once again about egg donation, their criteria, and how to send my pictures.

The next email was more direct and in worse taste. David let me know that they were flexible on most criteria but that his wife "is a real Nazi on: donor looks and donor health history."

He promised to return my photos, so I sent him a strange assorrment of pictures-dorm room pictures, the kind that every Yalie has lying around. Now they were evidence. I would soon learn what this konymous couple somewhere in the us thought about my genetic material.

NFERTJUTY IS NOT A modern problem, but it has created a modern industry.

One in six American couples is infertile, and more than 50 percent of those couples ' contribute to the $2 billion-a-year fertility industry. The Federal Trade Commission even publishes a booklet to assist prospective parents in sifting their options. I empathize with women who cannot use their own eggs to have a child. It must be a sober awakening for those who have always dreamed of raising their own f.unily. But when faced with this problem, prospective parents' options depend greatly upon their wealth. All over the world, women who can't have children must simply accept the fact and find other roles in society. Here in the us, people's means dictate their ability to have their own child and determine how closely that child will resemble the one they might have had-or the one they dream of having.

On the website of Egg Donation Inc., there is a whole database of potential genetic material. In order to access the list of 300 potential donors, interested parties must call the company and requ~st. the password for the month. Once I'd given the receptionist on the phone my name and address, she told me the password for August: colorful. I hung up and entered the database.

Potential parents can search for a variety of features, narrowing the pool as much as they like. "Select Egg Donor Criteria: Ethnic Origin, Religion of Birth, State, Hair Color, Eye Color, Height." In this way, couples find women willing to help them create the child of their dreams. I entered the characteristics that Michelle and David were looking for into the database and found four potential donors.

None of them had college degrees.

The standard compensation for an egg from Egg Donation Inc. is between $2,000 and $3,500, and "additional funds are offered to donors that have advanced degrees or are of Asian or Jewish decent."

THE NEW JouRNAL

This significantly s~aller compensation, I learned, affects the nature of the clients and donors involved. Couples searching for an egg at Egg Donation Inc. can be picky, but not as demanding as couples advertising in the News. Is it fair that a couple can pay for a high-standard egg and have that lcind of child? Maybe it is simply an update of Social Darwinism. Modern success is largely dependent on finances, so why shouldn't the most successful couple have access to the most successful, most expensive eggs?

Of course, as David pointed out in his first email, input does not always translate perfectly into output-the donor's potentially desirable characteristics may never be manifest in the child.

If a couple chooses not to find their egg through an agency, they must do so independently. A search on the Internet turned up a few sites like Surrogate Mothers Online where donors and wouldbe parents can post classified ads. There were more than 500 posted dassifieds on the site. A whole marketplace, an eBay for genetic material.

"Hi! My name is Kimberly," read one of the ads. "I am 24 years old, 5'n" with blonde hair and green eyes. I previously donated eggs and the couple was blessed with BIG twin boys! The doctor told me I have perky ovaries! ...The doctor told me I had the most perfect eggs he had ever seen." There were links to this woman's photographs as well as an email address.

Parents on the site offered "competitive" rates, generally between $5,000 and $10,000 for donors who fit their design.

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on a highway in rural Minnesota, a baby's face smiled down at me from a billboard.

The sign read, in huge letters, "I am a designer baby." The phrase "designer baby" threw me for a loop. Snippets of conversations by future parents searching through J.Crew catalogs of possible children began NE AFTERNOON THIS SUMMER,

to play in my head. "Yes, we'd like item 9JIOI7K, the blonde, long-legged genius ...

She's on sale this week, right?"

About a week after I sent the pictures I received a third email. "Got the pictures, you look perfect. I can't say this with any authority, that is my wife's department.

She's been known to disregard a young woman based on cheekbones, hair, nose, you name it. I think you have the right looks but I'll have to wait until she gets

"The doctor told me I have perky ovaries/ The doctor told me I had the most perfect eggs he had ever seen!' back in town to subject them to her judgment." He then shifted the focus to my brain. "My department is the SAT scores.

Can you tell me more about your academ-ic performance? What are you talcing at Yale? What high school did you attend? Do you have any idea what you want to do?" I was overwhelmed. The whole thing seemed like a joke. I dutifully answered his questions, explaining that I was from a noname high school in the Midwest, I couldn't do math or science, and I hadn't planned my summer, let alone the rest of my life. .

Michelle and David now had my educational stats as well as my photos. They were examining my credentials and trying to imagine their child. If I was accepted, a

harvest of my eggs would be fertilized by the frozen semen of the author of the disturbing emails I had received. A few embryos would be implanted, a few would be frozen, and then I would be out of the picture forever. Would these embryos from my egg grow to be this couple's dream child?

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MODERN EMBRYO has been frozen, ;tolen, aborted, researched and delivered weeks early along with five or six instant siblings. This summer was full of embryo news. The first big story was President Bush's deliberations on stem-cell research. The embryos available for genetic research include those frozen by fertility clinics for later use by couples using in vitro fertilization.

Embryos took the spotlight again when Helen Beasley, a surrogate mother from Shrewsbury, England, decided to sue a San Francisco couple for the parenting rights to the twin fetuses she is carrying.

The couple and Beasley had signed a contract for $20,000 for one child created from a donated egg and the father's sperm, co be carried by Beasley. The contract also called for selective reduction-the abortion of any extra embryos-by the twelfth week. The problem arose when Beasley discovered she was carrying twins in the 13th week. Fearing for her own health and objecting to the abortion of such highlydeveloped fetuses, she refused to end her pregnancy. She is suing for parental rights, which would allow her co put the babies up for adoption. She is also seelcing the original financial compensation promised to her by the couple with which she contracted.

They do not want the children. And yet, they have rights to the genetic makeup; Beasley is simply the vessel. The case is only one of a multitude spawned by modern fertility processes. On August 15, Th~ N~ York Times reported that a woman in New York was suing for ~e rights to the

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SEPTEMBER

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N ESTLED IN THE HEART of New Haven's thriving Elm Haven development area, Di.xwell Plaza remains vacant for the sixth year in a row. In contrast to the repaired and restored surrounding buildings, the squat concrete edifice at 156 Dixwell Avenue is a reminder of harder times for one of New Haven's oldest neighborhoods.

Though the plaza was originally envisioned as a bustling commercial center, not a single customer in the predominantly AfricanAmerican Dixwell coinmunity has been. served there in years. But last September, it seemed that would change. In their own attempt at the American dream, Cambodian immigrants Cong and May Lim scraped together enough money to buy the building and open a superette and laundromat. The purchase would provide needed services to Di.xwell while giving the Lims a chance at achieving financial independence. It seemed like the perfect parmership.

Only the Lims missed something. It was almost as if there were a sign in the storefront window: Asian-Americans need not inquire.

While driving down Dixwell Avenue one morning last September, Mrs. Lim noticed the vacant Oi.xwell Plaza, last occupied by a ValuMart that declared bankruptcy in 1996. Thinking that the location might be ideal for a family-run grocery and laundromat, she called City Hall. One-hundred fifty-six Dixwell, which the city bought from First Union Bank in 1999, was now in the hands of the Livable City Initiative (LCI), a program created by the Mayor in 1996 to facilitate property transfers and community development. Though others had expressed interest in the property, only the Lims were able to put down an offer. In September 2000, the Lirns paid the city a ten percent deposit of $2o,ooo. Nevertheless, the Lims' petition to LCI was still subject to a hearing and approval by the New Haven Board of Aldermen. All seemed to go well for

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the first few months-but little did the Lims know that there was a maelstrom gathering blocks away in the aldermanic chambers on Church street.

Behind the controversy that continues to polarize the Board of Aldermen is Alderman Willie Greene of Newhallville, whose ward adjoins the Dixwell neighborhood, but does not include the plaza itself An outspoken activist for community development, Greene also sits on the LCI advisory board. The first the board saw of the Lim deal was a signed conttact and deposit. Greene immediately raised objections to the Lims' purchase, claiming that the property had not been aggressively marketea to African-American businesspeople. However, LCI continued to back the deal over the next ten months as it proceeded to the final stage of negotiation, subject to a vote of approval by the Board of Aldermen.

Which was no mere formality. After nearly ten months, the Lims' proposal fmally came before the Board of Aldermeh on May 21. Yet, in less than two hours, the family found the item tabled and their hopes indefinitely delayed. Though two other aldermenjoined Greene's petition, only he spoke publicly in opposition. To May Lim, the motion signified one important fact: namely, that she and her husband were unwanted in Dixwell. She explained, "Mr. Greene [essentially] said they don't sell to me. They don't want Asian people."

At a public hearing later in the summer Greene remained in opposition to the Lims' purchase, while officials of LCI, Oixwell Alderman Jelani Lawson, a representative of the Oixwell Merchants and Professionals Association, and a local African-American businessman spoke in favor of the Lirns' purchase. However, in closed meetings with city officials, everyone began to feel the strain of a

When East Asian immigrants all-black neighborhood, the American Dream 20

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process that had dragged on too long. Shortly before the Board of Aldermen meeting slated for August 6, the Lims threw up their hands and withdrew their deposit with the city for 156 Dixwell.

Yet, the issue hadn't been formally closed. According to the minutes of the August 6 meeting, while Alderman Lawson attempted to end discussion by noting that the Lims had withdrawn their offer "after the political hullabaloo that erupted in the neighborhood surrounding this issue," Alderman Greene prolonged the conversation. "I want to make this very clear for the record my opposition to this particular sale," Greene said and outlined his objections for the board. He argued that the African-American community was not "properly informed" and "that's where my opposition came." "While the sale of the market, I really believe, would have been good for the Lims and good for Dixwell Plaza," he explained, "personally, I think this was an affront to the black community." He repeated that his objections were not against the Lims and said, "Again, I am very sadden[ed] that the Lims did pull out, but I would never apologize for standing up in my community and talking about building an economic base. And if doing that makes me a racist, well then I'm the biggest racist that ever did walk on two

feet."

T HESE

DAYS, everyone involved with the Lims is talking about 'process', thanks to Alderman Greene. Reflecting on the 10-month struggle, Alderman Lawson commented that it was the very "fact that there was a process that led to the Lims withdrawing." If the Lims' purchase was as "abnormally simple from a process point of view," as Mickey Mercer of the city's Office of Legislative Services claims, what, then, went wrong?

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Most likely, it is because Alderman Greene and LCI labor under rwo different definitions of process. To Greene, process means the participation of his own Dixwell community. And to LCI, process ultimately is the best strategy for economic development.

LCI and the city have both publicly backed the Lims. Lei's Executive Director Regina Winters claims that "we supported their application from the beginning." Deputy Director Nick Tomeo, who has been struggling to dispose of the unwanted property for years, defends the process employed by LCI. Addressing Greene's objections, Tomeo explained that the building was marketed under a "negotiated sale provision," meaning that the district alderman (Lawson), the Dixwell Management team, the Dixwell Merchants Association, Yale's property czar Bruce Alexander, and other interested parries were all informed of the impending deal. Tomeo calls the process "fair and open" and insists that "[whatever] takes place afterwards ... one can't blame the city."

Dixwell Plaza was unwanted and vacant for years. Though the city invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the redevelopment of Elm Haven throughout the early 1990S, resources grew tight at the end of the decade and progress lagged in the Dix:well neighborhood. Dix:well Plaza, with its history of bankruptcy and back taxes, was considered a near lost cause. By marketing 156 Dix:well under the 'negotiated sale' clause--which is to say not publicly marketing the building at all with the exception of a small poster in the window-LCI avoided expenses and crossed its fingers that someone would make an offer. Greene is right in saying that the process wasn't as open as it could have been. But the "lack of competitiveness" was likely because no one was seriously interested in competing.

When the Lims came with a pledge to try their best to make their

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tried to start a business in an racial politics undermined

By Sara Hirschhorn SÂŁi>TEMBER

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few weeks ago I was having in Oaxaca with a art student, a Polish hardcore bassist, ' and an' lta)jan experimental mime dancer (this is not a joke). Four young bohemians, four native languages, and yet ' we managed to have a political discussion. This consisted mainly of vehement agreement about the evils of gloha/izacion. • ~ Despite the gentle irony, I felt hip; I was a global citizen that day. ' I don't think I'm alone in this experience. Seemingly everyone I talk co at Yale has just come back from the ends of the earth, .. and is headed there again. Of the last twelve months, I've spent a total of two in Mexico, Moscow, Morocco, and Costa Rica. This summer, some of my closest friends were in Egypt, China, Germany, Sicily, Russia, Bocswana, Cuba, and Lithuania.

The Grand Tour is a rice of passage about as old as Yale itself. In the 18th century, it denoted well-off young Brits scrolling through the , Piazza Di Spagna, and by the 19th, American students were flocking to the venerated German universities in Heidelberg or Gottingen, taking time off to tour the Louvre or bicycle through Scotland. The most adventurous might have made it as far as Egypt or the Holy Land. Eighteen out of 130 members of Yale's class of 1886 headed overseas after graduation.

As recently as five years ago, the uadition of foreign study was languishing at Yale. Only three percent of the junior class spent a semester abroad in 1996. Today, that number has doubled, and a survey last spring indicated chat almost a fifth of the senior class had spent part of their education abroad, when summers, semesters, and leaves of absence were considered. And the countries explored are getting more exotic. "We definitely have seen larger numbers of students uave!Hng to China, Japan, and Korea, because of the Light Fellowship," which pays for a summer or full year of Ease Asian language study, says Karyn Jones, Study Abroad Advisor of the International Education and Fellowship Programs office. "More students are choosing Central and South America, Buenos Aires and Santiago, for Spanish study, instead of the obvious Spain. And Africa~ all of Africa, is getting more popular."

Why, in an age when everything is getting closer together, do people want co get farther away? Partly because travelling is just what modem people do. In his 1975 book The Tourist: A New Theory ofthe Leisure Class, sociologist Dean MacCanneU posited the tourist as the epitome of the modern man. Tourism shares with modernity an extreme commodification of experience ("Five Nights! Six Days! $595!") and a search for authenticity. Sightseeing may also be an expression of the modern desire to impose order on a chaotic world. Foe a tourist, a city like Paris or Marrakech is easily parsed into "must-sees" and "must-avoids," a simplification that the lifetime resident could never enjoy. Sightseeing, MacCanneU writes, "is uniquely well-suited among leisure alternatives co draw the tourist into a relationship with the modern social totality." In other words, we go to see -·nnrhi•r><r. to determine what "everything" is, and to see how we relate to everything.

In the 1970s, perhaps, authenticity came more easily. Tripping was more than an expression; people still believed in the possibility of dropout of society. And hippie backpackers, tourist attractions themselves back in Haight-Ashbury, were blazing a new kind of path from Bali in Indonesia to Goa in India. These days, students have to go a little farther on their journeys of self-discovery co avoid following in their • 11 footsteps.

But the latitudes that backpackers uek across these days are often depressingly similar. In all the countries I've visited, there are #' street markets and upsetting numbers of homeless people. There are many more houses of worship than at home, and musicians II on the streets. There are strange breakfast foods, and Coca-Cola in bottles, served without ice. There are the ubiquitous # ' cafes--connections co the home we're crying to leave behind. Not only that, but we all do pretty much the 11

•

., • same things with our ti;e. Whether we are volunteers or students, we are playing "tourist." We take our pic• tures, practice our languages, write in our journals while sitting in a little cafe at the edge of the plaza, go for hikes in 11 • the desert and the ruins and the mountains and the waterfalls. We complain about all the other tourists. ' • Going through our paces in that single country called Abroad, we are, of course, looking to be broadened. Within limits.

We leave our own communities to join the global communiry, always knowing that the experience will have an ending. that we will come home again. But one night a few weeks ago, sitting at che computer in that youth hostel in Oaxaca, Mexico, I read that Narasha Smalls, a friend of mine from freshman year, had disappeared in South Africa.

• The Hartford Courant article in the email raised more questions than it provided answers. Natasha abducted? Placed in a mental institution against her:. ~ill? Drugged? This was a travel experience without a safety net. Not knowing anyone at the hostel, I confided mY worries in my bunkmate Yad; a girl uaveUing the world after getting out of the Israeli atmy. She told me about her two years stationed in Eilat while her boyfriend was in skirmishes at the Lebanese border, at the other end of the country. There would be unnamed casualties, the phones would go out, and she would have no idea where he was, or if he was safe. But at least the cwo of them were fellow soldiers, not particles floating about in the stratosphere.

When I first heard the news, I was hundreds of miles away from anyone I knew, communicating in halting Spanish. I like to see the world as a smorgasbord of poisibilities, but suddenly it seemed like a frightening place. I like to think of myself as a proud member of many intersecting communities, but suddenly I felt alone. In my thoughts I rebelled against the very idea of community. Much is said in its praise, but here was a terrible drawback-your vulnerability to loss is extended as wide as the circle you join. I never met Suzanne Jovin, but when she was murdered in 1998 I lost a member of my college, and I shared in the grief of my master, my dean, and the students and faculry who knew her. Sophomore year, my window in Davenport's back courtyard looked out on her small memorial plaque under a tree.

Now 1-with all of Yale--was missing Narasha. There's nothing to say when someone is missing. Consolations ate casteless. You have to hold your breath, and sometimes your tongue, and hope. When I came back to school the next week, everyone knew. Her face was up on fliers all over New Haven, just like Suzanne's face had been. There was a vigil planned for her August 23 at the Afro-American Cenrer. But chat was the day Narasha came back. She called her mother from Johannesburg, and asked her to come take her home.

This incident has me worried, especially because I've taken the first few steps down the road ro Kyrgyzstan, one of the smaller former Soviet, independent, Old Silk Road nations. Whar began as a wild whim last May has taken root and spread leaves over the summer. This time next after a gantlet of interviews and miles of red tape, I just might find myself the recipient of a government grant, working on a journalism in the capital city of Bishkek, which I imagine as turreted. Why am I drawn to this country, whose name I didn't know four months My patents want to know, desperately. limbuktu or Karhmandu would be fine with them, but this is going a little roo far.

1 could summon up a hosr of socially acceptable reasons, which is, coincidentally, what the application requires. Bur maybe it's just an extreme reaction to graduation, a Grand Tour for the new century. I want to forge a meaningfully unique identity out there in the post-Stalinist muck. I want to come face-to-face with myself, and escape aU previous expectations. It strikes me that these are ' some of the same reasons I joined the Yale community, and I'm overcome by the same emotion: ambivalence. I wanted to ~ avoid playing a pre-defined role here, but I also wanted to find my plac.e in the world. And I'm still looking. #

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Anya Kamen~a seni/w Co/kg~. is

School for Scandal

By Patrick Casey Pitts HE PAST YEAR OF TERCENTENNIAL CELEBRATION brought an abundance of new opportunities to read about Yale. Last September, Tom Perona gave Yale undergraduates a fictionalized account of their lives in Jo~ Co/kg~. Art History students can now purchase a guide to each and every stained glass window on Yale's campus.

Professor John Hollander edited a volume of poems by Yale alumni inspired by paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery. Someone is even publishing an indepth history of the Provost's Office. One group, however, was conspicuously left out. Filling the void, Yale French professor Catherine Cusset recently released her American debut, an English translation of her fictionalized account of Yale's professors, Th~ Story ofjan~. It joins recent novels by prominent authors David Lodge and Philip Roth in painting a portrait of modem academia. Though the central concern of each novel is very different, each provides a less than perfect image of the professional life.

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The Story ofjane> Catherine Cusset (Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 304 The Dying Animal Philip Roth (Houghton Mufflin, 2001), pp. 156 Thinks...>David Lodge (Viking, 200 1), pp. 342

I a young Th( Story of jane, CooK, French professor at Devayne University, a p restigious N

C ussET TELLS T H E TALE O F j ANE

institution on Long Island Sound with "the best French departmen t in the whole country." While Cusset does change proper names, the story's real-life setting becomes quickly apparen t in light of Cusset's descriptions of Old Campus and the closing o f Macy's off the Green in the early 1990~. And the name " D evayne University" conspicuously echoes Yale~s. DeVane Lectures.

Jane returns home one day to find an unsigned package waiting at her door. Inside, she discovers a manuscript recounting her own life from the moment sh e started teachin g at Devayne to the moment she picked up the package. From this point o n, the book consists almost enrit:ely of the text of the manuscript. A picture of Jane's life within the university, and by extension the life of a Yale professor, emerges.

This portrait is not a positive one for academics or anyone aspiring to the profession. The world inhabited by Devayne professors is competitive, unhappy, and , most of all, sexually frustrated.

Nearly all the faculty ace getting divorced , having affairs, or living miserably alone, ofren all three simultaneously. Of the French department, Jane thinks, Poor them. All of them . Even those who had ten ure at Devayne, this sign of highest achievement. T hey were like kids, arguing about trifles with terribly serious voices. So little joy on their faces . .. No wonder they were all desperately hanging on to the miserable little power left to them: torturing graduate students and refusing ten ure to their young colleagues.

One of Jane's friends explains to her, "This p lace makes you dry up inside like an old parchment and you lose your imagina~on and your senses. Not you especially, but anyone here ... One day you rnay buy on e or two dogs too, and never leave Old Newport anymore except for the M LA convention. Just like McGregor and Carrington: d ead inside."

Despite the bleak tone, the n ovel d oes p rovide Yale and New Haven-savvy readers a test of their geographic and gossip knowl-

si!PTEMBu

7,

2001

edge. Sleuths can find a Naples-like pizza p lace, Connecticu t Limo, and even AYA tours, which Jane describes as full of "eighty-five-yearold m en who were dripping saliva around her and who had all taken the Concorde to fly to Paris because it was barely more expensive and so much more convenient than a first-class ticket in a normal plane." The reader's game of assigning identities to the fictional p rofessors makes the book even more intriguing. Jane herself says, "Professors of literature these days wouldn't hesitat~ to sell their souls-or their colleagues' souls-just to get a few crumbs of Literary glory." As one reads Cusset's novel, one can't help but wonder whether this is exactly what Cusset has done. Her characters discuss their own attem pts to fictionally adapt their lives, both portrayin g and commenting on h er own Literary project.

Overall, Cusset paints a salacious and depressing picture of American academ ia--one that no doubt greatly interested the French readers who first picked up the novel in I999¡ As the novel progresses, the literature professor in Cusset becomes more and more apparent, as she plays with the fine line between fiction and non-fiction . Those looking for a book true to Yale in every respect will be left scratching their heads and waiting for their brand-new history of the Provost's Office.

T hinks ... , THE NEW NOVEL BY DAVID LoDGE, a retired professor of English literature at the University of Birm ingham, England, also portrays professors as abnormally prone to adultery. Nearly all of his characters seem to be sleeping with someone besides their significant other. However, adultery merely serves as the backdrop to a more important drama, one that has gain ed steam over the last decade and engaged authors from Francis Crick to Tom Wolfe: the scientific and philosophical debate over the nature of consciousn ess.

Lodge's novel, set at the University of Gloucester, dramatizes this debate through two characters: Helen Reed, a novelist spending the semester teaching a writing seminar, and Ralph Messenger, a lascivious married professor who heads the glamorous and well-funded center for cognitive science. Helen views consciousness as a transcendent pact of oneself, the final realm free fr~m science; she believes it is the novelist's job to understand and represent con-

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sciousness. Ralph, on the other hand, believes that consciousness is merely a yetto-be-deciphered pattern of neuron frrings determined in large part by genetics and evolution.

Lodge jumps between a transcription of Ralph's scholarly attemptS to record his stream of consciousness, the diary entries of Helen, third-person narration, email correspondences, and the writing exercises done by Helen's class. Even as he is exploring these different ways of representing consciousness through the novel, he explains some of the science behind the consciousness debate. Lodge's work seems to be driven by one question: Where can one turn when one has only a "faltering half-belief in the transcendental" but is uncomfortable with a completely evolutionary, material explanation of life?

Unfortunately, Lodge's novel does not offer an answer. When the story ends, the abstract questions that the novel was designed to illuminate are left hanging in the air.

Nevertheless, Lodge does provide humorous descriptions of academic culture, his trademark in previous novels such as Changing Places and Nice WOrk. After attending a lecture, Helen commentS, The 'Subject' in Robyn Penrose's lecture title turned out to be a kind of multiple pun, meaning the subject as experiencing indiv!dual, the subject of a sentence, the subject of a political state, and the subject of English Literature in the university curriculum. As far as I could foUow it ... there is some kind of equivalence berween the privileging of the ego in classical psychoanalysis, the fetishization of formal correctness in traditional grammar, the exploitation and oppression of subject races by colonialism, and the idea of a literary canon.

Satirical encapsulations like this one have made Lodge's novels celebrated in academic circles. One only wishes that more rime had been spent on his strength and less on an unresolved philosophical quandary. o one would accuse Philip Roth of avoiding the big questions in his rwenty-odd novels. In The Dying Anima/, Roth brings .back David Kepesh, a horrifying yet compelling character and the pro-

N

THE NEW JouRNAL

tagonist of two of Roth's previous books.

Kepesh is an elderly professor of "practical criticism" who embraced the sexual revolution of the 1960s and remains totally committed to it despite his 62 years of age. He does delay his affairs with students until they have completed his course and he has turned in their grad~, a policy in place "since, back in the mid-eighties, the phone number of the sexual harassment hotline was first posted ourside [his] office door."

The Dying Animal describes in first person Kepesh's own turbulent eight-year obsession with a former student named Consuela, while also recounting many of his past exploits and describing the old man's torture of realizing that,

all those body parts invisible up to now (kidneys, lungs, veins, arteries, brain, intestines, prostate, heart) are about to start making themselves distressingly apparent, while the organ most conspicuous throughout your life is doomed to dwindle to insignificance.

While Roth's ¡professor is as lecherous as those in Cussers and Lodge's novels and may call to mind stories told around the courtyards of Yale, his book is the least concerned with academia per se. Instead, Roth chooses the character of a professor in order to chart the waters of contemporary sexual activity. Not only was Kepesh immersed in the energy of the 1960s as a student, but now as a professor he has more space to live by his own convictions than the professional world provides, as well as a continuing supply of liberated young women.

In Kepesh, Roth conjures up a man driven by both an analytical mind and a carnal nature. While Kepesh is controlled by the basest desires, his understanding of the functioning of these urges borders on brilliance. Because Roth uses an academic setting chiefly to better convey non-academic questions such as those surrounding modern-day sex, his novel is the most compelling of the three. Cusset and Lodge, as career academics, provide interesting images of the professorate and its peccadilloes, but Roth, a major literary figure, answers and asks questions that resonate OUtside of academia. tal Patrick Casey Pitts, a junwr in Berkeley College, is a managing editor ojTNJ. SEPTEMBER 7' 2001

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Continr«dfrom page 17 embryos that she and her ex-husband had created and frozen a few years prior. A strange case for child custody lawyers.

Ten years ago at the University of California Fertility Clinic, doctors took frozen embryos from successful patients and gave them to other couples without consent. Once discovered, the scam resulted in over a hundred prosecutions and a cohort of children whose biological parents didn't consent to their existence, and whose active parents, in legal terms, had stt>len them. The motivation for the doctors was money. And the parents simply wanted a baby. It is hard to say if throwing the embryos away would have been any better.

Even if Michelle and David liked my stats, I knew I had. a long way to go before becoming an actual donor. The application on Egg Donors Inc. is 13 pages long-twice as long as Yale's entrance application. The first two pages cover the basics: looks, name, address. After that, they wanted to know if I'd ever filed for bankruptcy, ever had counseling, did I drink, what were my goals in life, tWO favorite books, my paternal grandfather's height and weight, bobbies, what I would want the child to know about me, etc. They even threw in a few fill-in-the-blanks at the end: "I feel strongly about_, I am sorry I did not__, In ten years I want to be__ ." Not even my closest friends knew all these things about me. If Egg Donors Inc., offering less than one tenth of Michelle and David's compensation, wanted all this information, who knows what data Michelle and David might want?

H

AND DAVID were certainly trying hard. On one classified site, I carne across a request that was strangely familiar: "Loving family seeks exceptional egg donor with 1500 SAT, great looks, good family health history, Jewish heritage and athletic. Height 5'3"-5'9", 18-29. We will pay EXTREMELY well and will take care of all expenses. Hope to hear from you."

The email address was David and I CHELLE

Michelle's familiar AOL account. Theirs was the most demanding classified on the site, but also the only one that offered to pay "EXTREMELY well".

I kept dreaming about all the things I could do with $5o,ooo. I had gone into the correspondence on a whim, the same way I sometimes buy a lottery ticket or enter a raffle. But soon, despite David's casual tone and the optimistic attitude of all the dassifieds and information I read, I realized that this process was something of which I never wanted to be a part. I understand the desire for a child, even one who would resemble and fit in with the family. But once a couple starts choosing a few characteristics, it is too easy to shoot for perfection, especially if you can afford it. The money might have changed my life for a while, but ultimately it would contribute to the creation of a life designed with too many expectations.

After hours of thought I received the shortest email of the correspondence. The verdict on my pictures was in: "I showed the pies to my wife this AM. Personally I think you look great. She said Ho Hum." The email dosed with those two simple words. No goodbye,' no thanks for potentially having been the biological mother of their child. Nothing. I guess I didn't fit in their design; my genes weren't the right material for their chifd'orovre. So my eggs were rejected. I keep imagining the day when David and Michelle's child asks where he or she carne from. David will go off on a tangent about how hard they both worked on the whole thing. how much they spent, and how many pictures they looked at. The child will turn to them and say, "ho-hum."

I8J

Miche/k and David are pseudonyms. jessica Cohen, a junior in Timothy Dwight Colkge, is on the staffojTNJ.

THE NEW JoURNAL

Continued from page 21 business and the neighborhood grow-and most importantly, a $20,500 profit for the city-LCI was eager ~ seal the deal.

And so were Dixwell community leaders. While Alderman Greene claims ro represent the feelings and best interests of all of New Haven in objecting to the process, none of the other community leaders seem tO mind. All were extremely interested in seeing 156 Dixwell occupied, period.

Tomeo claims that "no one in the city thinks that [this) should have anything to do with race."

Although Greene claims, "I don't care what color [they are), I just want an open, competitive process," his remarks intimate a deeper resentment. "Race should not play a part in this ... everyone should be on a level playing Geld," he mused, "but it's not a level playing field."

In light of the Lims' case, a variety of local leaders feel that city policies for developing Dixwell have seriously failed to reconcile interests in community-based development and economic soundness.

Recalling conversations in closed meetings with the Lims, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano acknowleged that as the process dragged on, me Lims seemed "nervous"

about investing in the city, feeling "afraid of the reaction of the African-American community." Alderman Lawson, himself African-American, said that "the deal was

Yet perhaps there is an upside. Since the controversy erupted, numerous offers have been made on 156 Dixwell, partially due to changes in LCI marketing policies to advertise the building in the local press. Greene boasts that at least 16-20 MricanAmerican entrepreneurs have approached him, and Torneo of LCI admits to having had discussions with several prospective buyers of undisclosed race. The Lims, too, have found new hope and are working with LCI to find a new site for a small business. All seem optimistic. Bur come this fall, Dixwell Plaza will be empty for the seventh year in a row.

"I would never apologize for

standing up in my community ... and if that makes me a racist, well then I'm the biggest racist that ever did walk on two feet" stopped because [the Lims) didn't have enough melanin in their skin" and that the board's decision encouraged what he sees as "racism in its strictest form ... [the] denial of economic development." The Lims' lawyer Norbert Church argues that the case "is actionable ... [as there was] no legally sufficient reason" for denying their petition. The Lims' case highlights the difficulty of arbitrating community interests and fiscal planning. It's likely that development for Dixwell will continue to mean investment from outside the community and dependency on those investors - unless the city comes forward with a more accessible process.

1111

Sara Hirschhorn, a junior in jonathan Edwards Co!kge, is circulations and subscriptions manager ofTNJ.

"Highly Recomm.ended"

By The New lbilc TimeS

BELLY DANCING EVERY FRIDAY

SEPTEMBER

7'

2001

By Blake Wilso1

0

n August 17, in the city of New Haven, at a few minutes before 7AM, some bastard stole my pants. I woke up in time to hear them catch on the security bars of my first-floor bedroom and to see the cuffs clear the sill a half-second before my empty hands met those bars. I also woke up in time to see the desperate look in that bald-headed man's sunken eyes-the desperation of a man who broke into my backyard! pooped, and then scraped together enough criminal dignity to pry off my screen and steal my clean pants. I stumbled, bleary-eyed and pantless, out into the street. A woman was on the porch across from me. "Are you looking for your pAnts?" she asked.

"Uh huh."

"Beige pants?"

"Yeah, beige pants."

"Well, a guy came running out of your alley just now carrying some beige pants."

HAT WAS WHEN NEw HAVEN became a dangerous city for me. About a month earlier there had been a shooting in front of Pizza at the Brick Oven, on Howe Street.

A few days before that there was one in front of Alpha Delta Pizza, about 100 feet away. Both shootings were late at night; neither was fatal; neither involved Yale students. There were over 20 reported shootings this summer in the New Haven Register, 16 people were shot in a stretch of 16 days. Gang activity is on the upswing, the papers say, and petty crime seems to be up around off-campus housing on Edgewood Avenue, through Lynwood Avenue, and along Dwight Street. It doesn't hit home, though, until it hits home.

T

I HADNT HAD TROUBLE with folks trying to get into my pants. I was walking home late one night in June when I ended up charting with a prostitute. She was walking slowly towards Whalley. I caught up to her, and she got me calking. She didn't really look the part; she was about 30, with sweatpants

I

30

T'S NOT LIKE

and straightened hair just starting to kink. She told me she had been waiting on Dwight to meet "a friend," but that he hadn't shown up.

"This isn't really my thing," she said.

"But, you know, I need the money."

As I was about to head up my steps, she asked me if I was married. I told her I wasn't.

"Hey, do you wanna .... " she started, and then began to laugh. "Nah," she chuckled and waved her arm at me, shaking her head, as she walked away. She blew me off, a potential paying customer, because ... well, who was I kidding?

GUESS I NEVER FELT LIKE I BELONGED in New Haven. Hookers laughed at me, drug dealers crossed to the other side of the street when they saw me coming. When I was grabbing a late lunch, covered in sweat and dirt from my summer landscaping job, I'd sometimes get a nod of camaraderie from a fencing contractor or a nurseryman in East Haven, but New Haveners always saw right through me--a big Yalie loser. You see, I didn't so much feel like I was safe in New H aven as I felt like a spectator, watching a civic drama playing out where I lived and worked. But everything changed for me when that guy took off with my pants-I guess I gave up being one kind of chump to become another. I pay taxes to the city; I'm going to vote in the next election; if I go co a block watch meeting this semester, it's going to be because I'm watching my block. Now I may be a chump without any pants-but at least I'm a chump without pants at home in New Haven.

I

Blake Wilson, a senior in Branford Co/kge, is an associate editor ofTNJ.

THE NEW JouRNAL

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