Volume 34 - Issue 2

-

n ~the finest sdcdion of better~~ at guaranteed lowat prices.

•comprehensive eye exams •contact lenses •fashion eye WeiJr

PuBLISHER

Silpa Ptrichula

,,

EDITOR·IN-CHIEF

AnyaKammaz MANAGING EDITORS

Daniel IVJrtrrPixlan. Pfllriclt ~ Pitts DESIGNER

TtJJiana jitltoff PRODUCTION MANAGER

Carl Hungnford

Wbyis Spector Eye Care Newllaven's best(

BUSINESS MANAGER

Eric Rutlww PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

jessica CJhtn

AssociATE EDITORS

Blalu Wilson, Manh= Underwood RESEARCH DIRECTOR

Come in and the answer wiO he clear!

jacob Bl«htr C I RCULATION AND SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER

Clint Carroll. Sara Hirschhorn

1044 Chapel Street (Sherman's A lley) PHONE (203) 787-711 1 - Free Parktng- Student Dtscount Availabl<>

Suff Emily Anrhes • JC$Sica Bulman • Suthma Gandhi •Judith Milkr • Benita Singh • Nadia Suuman Elkrl Thompoon

Mrm/Hrf iUtt/ DrrmtM joohU2 Civin • P=r B. Cooper • Tom Gngp • Brooks

Kdlcy • Jmnifer Pin:s • Heruy Schwab • Alan Scbocnfdcl Elizabeth Sledge- Fred Sttcbagb • Thonw Strong

AJvU.rs Ridwd Blow • Jay Carney • Riclwd Conniff Rum Conniff • Elisha Cooper • Lauren Rabin Sroven Weisman • Danid Y<rgm

Frimds StCY<: B.Jiou • Anson M. Beard, Jr. • Blai~ Bcnncu Edward B. Bennet!, Jr. • Edward B. Bennett Ill P.ul S. 8cnncn • Gcnld Brucie • 8arl>an Bumil Jay Carney • Daphne O>U • Jooh Civin Jonathan M. Oartt • Co~ Clemen< • Elisb.a Cooper Peter B. Cooper • Andy Coun • Jary and Rae Coun ~ Denison • Alben J. Fox • Mn. HOMJ<I Fox o...id F-.un • Gcoll'r.y Fried • Atruto GancLt...

Shctwin Goldman • David c-nbcfl • Tom Grigl Stephen Hdlman • }aoc Kamcnsky • Broob KdJcy Rof1r IGrwood • And... J. KuzncsL, Jr. 1..cwis E. l.duman • Jim Lowe • E. Nobla Lowe IUnk Mao.bad< • Manb. E. Neil • Peter Nail HOMJ<I H. Newman • Scan O'Bncn • Jul>< "-n 1..cwis and jeoA Pbtt • jooh Plaur • Julia ~'laton La..= Robin • Fairfu c. Randal • RolLa RV Matlt Rio<L • N;doolu X. RizDpouloo • s-n Rohm .Atlcal and Anhw Dic:lr. and Dcbboe San Ridwd S1aidds • w. tiampble Siclcs • Ua sa-....

Eraabub and William ~ • Thomas Soonc Elizabcd> U.. • Alex and Bcuy Tocdlo • Mel-. T......., A1lcn and Su.b Wuddl D...od Yap 2lld ~ Srmr Ycrpa

'•

s.< •

2

THE NEW JouRNAL

I

TheNewJournal

Volume 34, Number 2 October 19, 2001

FEATURES

10

The Stranger Among Us Yaks Muslim and Arab studmts find tokrance more preached than practiced.

by Matthew Underwood

14

Birthday Candles Photos by Eli Feiman

16 The Thin Blue Line 150 years ofwartime Yak.

by Anya Kamenetz 22

First Choice What too ftw people know about Yak's reproductive policy.

by Emily Anthes and Benita Singh

STANDARDS 4 Ed.iton' Note 5 Points of Departure 26

Essay: Who Governs? by Sushma Gandhi

28

The Critical Angle: Fear and Loathing by Clint Ca"o/1 reviewing While Americll Slups: Self-Delusion, Military 'Wt-11kness, 11nd the Threat to Pe11ce Today by Dona/J Kagan and Frederick W. Kagan Endnote: Bird of Prey by Judith Miller

30

. '

1la N... Jou-.w. is published five rima durin& !hoe oc:adcmic yar b)' TH• NEW jouuw.. •u Yale. lAc.. P.O. 8os 3411 Yak SwioD, N<w fu...,., CT

o6s20. Office address: lfl Parlo: Suett. Pbooe (203) 4J1~All.coetaus copynsJ>r 1001 b)' TKa Npr jouU<AL at Yale. l...:. All Rishu Rt:renood. ~uaioo either in wt.ok or ia part .nthout wnucn pmnisa>oo of 1M publisher and editor-&D-dtid" is prohibited. dlio .....De " published b)' Yak CoiJcce students, Yak Uniwnity is 110( respcuuibk for iu con reno. Se¥m thousand bundnxl copia of -t1 iJIUC are distributed free to mcmben of !hoe Yale and New .__ -wuty. Subscriptioru are available to tbote ouui<le the area. Rata: 011e year, Jl1. T- yean. S)1. Tha Npr Jouuw.. is printed by TurJer Publ.eations, Polmer, WA; bookkeepioJ and b.!ltng sctvices :are .....wed br Colman Bookkeeping of N~ Haven. Tu• Npr jOIIIlNAL encourap kcters to the editor and com menu on Yak and N.-w Ha¥CD iuud. Wntc to Editorials. J4J1 Yale Station, New Ha.,.n, CT "'Po. Al1lntus for publication must include address and 11gnaNre. We reser... 1M risJ>r to edit all letters for publication.

s.,.

The New Journal would like to thank: Shruti Adhar Rachel Berger Matthew Fogel Sam Frank Gabriel Freiman Anya Freiman Fabrice LeSaffre.

David Lau Alan Schoenfeld

Photo & Design Contributors: Jessica Chang Tyler Coburn David Corson-Knowles

Ruth DeGolia

4

W

e find introducing this issue a heavy task. Since September 11, an unrelenting wave of pronouncements and prophecies have been offered up by student columnists, professors, community leaders, and other self-appointed arbiters of public opinion.

Their basic tenet is the same: Our generation has experienced a transformation of character; we find ourselves in a fundamentally altered world.

But what do these words really mean? What is historical change supposed to look like from the inside? Is it like continental drift, so slow and profound that it is entirely beyond our perception? Or is it like a Rash of _lightning illuminating a whole new landscape for an instant? We don't know. We are the children of the end of history. And even as the public bombast and Rood of editorials continue unabated, many around us slip back into routine, conversations, goals, and worries essentially unchanged.

In this issue, we strive to see how history has brought us here, and to examine where we are now. The cover article "A Thin Blue Line" shows us that complete clarity never existed on this campus during wartime.

The aw~ard self-consciousness of being 20 years old is not unique to the 21st century. The uncertainty and presumptuousness we feel does not make our attempts at clarity any less important or valid.

Meanwhile, members of our community encounter concrete problems. As ''The Stranger Among Us" illustrates, Arabs ¡and Muslims among us are forced to confront social forces shockingly discordant with the tolerance so many of us profess.

We cannot say definitively whether or not we live in a new world since September 11, whether our generation has a man~e to pick up, and whether the words we have written will weigh upon the scales of change. What we can say together, though, is that we have tried to do what this magazine has taken as its purpose since 1967: to put our moment into context.

1

I

-The Editors

THE NEW JouRNAL

--------------

A Few Good Men HALL, on 157 Orange Street, is an office that most people don't even know exists. Before September u, it was practically empty all day long.

Now it has a relatively steady flow of traffic of five people a day. It's a small increase, but the people in the United States Marine Recruiting Office aren't interested in numbers. They serve those few young women and men who want to do more than just wave a flag and proclaim their patriotism.

In fact, you won't find much flag waving in the Marine Recruiting Office. For them war is strictly business.

Walking into a recruiting office for the first time is a surreal experience for a young, skeptical civilian. The floor is covered with plush red carpet an~ the walls are plast~red with Marine memorabilia-glossy posters of tanks, helicopters, and sabers. Two yellow .boot prints appliqued onto the red carpet before the front desk indicate where a recruit should stand. As I hover near the door, to my left is a wall of Polaroid shots of new Marine recruits dressed in t-shirts and blue jeans. Standing in front of me is a young sergeant with a penetrating stare. He is polishing a dagger. The only thing at all familiar is a bulldog sniffing at my ankles. Only this bulldog is not "Handsome Dan," but "Tank," the office mascot.

The office is an elaborate propaganda machine, designed to entice potential recruits to join the Few, the Proud, the Marines. The man sitting behind the first desk is Sergeant Rosa, a lean, muscular young man whose eyeglasses and composed posrure help soften his appearance. "So, you ready to join?" he barks at me.

Intimidated, I respond with a not-so definitive, "Uh, no." However, after telling him that I am a srudent at Yale, the question of rny joining the Marines is immediately disrnissed-the University prohibits recruiters TucKED AWAY BEHI!'fD CITY

0croBER 19, 2001

on its campus of Io,ooo potential soldiers, and students almost never express interest.

However, Sergeant Rosa seems undisrurbed by this. Leaning back in his chair, he nonchalantly remarks, "It doesn't bother me.

I'd imagine that most Yale students aren't ¡ that interested in joining the Marines.

They're more concerned with making money or becoming famous."

For Sergeant Rosa, the Marine philosophy demands everything that Yalies are not. He takes out a set of brass plates and lays them on the table. They list everything that the Marines offers its recruits: Challenge, Pride of Belonging, and Leadership Management Skills, Courage, Poise, and Self-confidence.

What Yale offers to its students-educationa! opportunity, travel and adventure, professional development, and financial security-according to Sergeant Rosa are things that "come and go."

Marines do not rely on rewards that can change so easily. This is why they are the "9u for the world," the only armed service that can be deployed anywhere in the world within 24 hours without Congressional approval. For the Marines, September II was just another "9u call."

During my time in the office I hear Sergeant Rosa's colleagues express their dissatisfaction with the "bunch of fucking communists" surrounding them in New Haven and at Yale. Fortunately, as Sergeant Rosa is pleased to point out to a moneygrubbing Yalie such as myself, 33 percent of Fortune .500 companies are owned or run by former Marines-an impressive statistic for people who are taught to see financial security as something that "comes and goes." As one of Sergeant Rosa's colleagues, Sergeant Beaty, puts it, "Marines do many things with few numbers."

But a new outburst of patriotism is sweeping through the country. Is the sight of proud Americans waving flags in support of war a welcome sign to a Marine?

Sergeant Beaty tells me a story about a lady that tried to give him an American flag. He was in a coffee shop when she approached him to encourage him to put a flag on his car. He responded to her by pointing to the Department of Defense military identification sticker on his truck. "I was letting her know that I had been wearing my flag with pride long before September 11." He stared down at me. "On September 10 we couldn't give anyone a flag without someone¡ spitting on it or burning it. Now everyone fucking wants one."

-Afich~t~uon

Bill and Grace "THANK YOU, that's what I've been waiting to hear for three weeks."

Whether my words differed from anyone else's, I can't be sure. I've heard it said that William Jefferson Clinton, whenever he works a crowd, picks out one person for a heart-to-heart conversation-it has become his signature move. It could have been my words, it could have been my suave new Eddie Bauer glasses, or it could have been the awkward way I'd jammed a rain coat and a commemorative poncho and a program and a Caribbean novel under my left arm so that both of my hands were visible, as per the Secret Service's ordets. For whatever reason, when I muttered my thanks to the former President and shook his hand just after hearing the final speech of Yale's tercentennial celebration, he stopped, kept my hand in his, and began to speak.

President Clinton started by thanking me for my words and explaining the motivation behind his speech. "I think that this is the best thing I can dq right now, especially since I'm no longer in public office. I can talk to the American people, explain

5

12-PAKS 18-PAKS 24-PAKS 30-PAKS Always on Sale

FINE WINES Gag Jr. Liquor Store 1183 Olapel Street

New Haven. cr {203) 624- 1630

HMU's

Art SUpply & Framing

1144 Chapel Street (near York) 203-865-HULL www .hullanewha ven .com

Charles Brice Tailors Just Call (203)865-5269 "'->

Complete Alterations Leather Repair & Cleaning • Linings Zippers • Hooks • Buttons • Patches Complete Sewing Shop Garments Made to Order Sewing of AU Kinds

Fast Service 6

what's happening, and assure them that things will be all right." It seemed logical, although some might hope that a former President would use his experience and intelligence to shape policy decisions in the wake of mind-boggling events like the September n terrorist attacks. H e then expressed concern for the coun try's young adults, who have never experienced such an insecure and unstable world. He reiterated to me the words of his speech, calling for more "positive interdependence" throughout the globe. Because I had paid careful attention d uring his speech, I took this opportunity to in~estigate whether o~;..not President Clinton was truly wearing a toupee, as had been suggested by a neighbor during the address. However, before I could assure myself that his coif was in fact real, I was d rawn back into his presence by his careful reestablishment of eye contact.

He decided to end with a note of humor, making us chuckle by saying, "Osama bin Laden doesn't like it when you ·mention that, as a Muslim friend informed me, Mohammed's first wife was a wealthy independent businesswoman who proposed to Mohammed herself."

Listening to him, I felt better, as if the weight that had pressed down on my shoulders since the attacks had been lifted.

For a moment, the same charisma that brought him eight years in the Presidency was focused on a small group ofYalies. The handshake in itself was impressive: Even though President Clinton is left-handed, the grip of his right hand on mine was strong at the outset and remained so for the ninety seconds he held it, increasing the pressure when certain points m erited emphasis, until the demands of gesticulation broke the bond of o ur palms. This, I thought, is a man who knows how to use a handshake. All of it-the touch, the relaxed southern drawl, the slow transfer of his gaze from one person's eyes to the next, the way he cowered over my six feet one inch, the musky scene of sweat built up in a suit over the course of a day-seemed to convey a sense of fatherly concern and truth to the throng surrounding him.

As he moved away my palms were sweaty, my face was flushed, and my heart was pounding. I realized the import of his

first words: President Clinton seemed to understand that his ideas and intelligence were, as they have always been, less important than the inspiration and enveloping warmth he makes people feel. This is why his mere appearance in a crowd of jaded Yalies-students who had booed a video of the current President the night befor~ caused two standing ovations; the applause after the speech itself paled in comparison.

It was only when he moved on and I attempted to work my way out of the crowd that I caught the gaze of friends and strangers around me, staring with awe and envy. Clinton moved away, and the crowd that had been pressed against my backside began to disperse. As I fought my way out, hearing the yells of others pressing forward to make contact with the former President before his motorcade pulled away, I realized that the clamor for pictures and handshakes and words was not as ridiculous as I'd initially judged. President Clinton's vaunted intelligence and political acumen notwithstanding, all that had made him an important and powerful public figure could be captured in my moment with him on the steps before Sterling Memorial Library. Those packed into the crowd were competing to have just such a moment of their own.

-Patrick Casey Pitts

Skulls and Bones ON THE MORNING OF j UNE 14, 2001,

employees of the Giordano Construction Company were laying water pipes in front of 451 College Street, one of the many construction sites on the Yale campus. Entirely oblivious to the mystery they were about to unearth, several workers returned from their lunch breaks shordy before I PM and prepared to fill a trench with trucked-in dirt. Suddenly, they saw bone.

A truckload of soil used for backfill outside of the building that now houses the Departments of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies yielded the skeletal remains of more than one person, including a fractured jawbone with six teeth.

What were these bones doing there? No one has found a simple answer to this simple question.

THE NEW J ouRNAL

Whipping Boys The bones, according to the state's medical examiner, are from roo to 150 years old. The New Haven Register suggested that they carne from a church burial ground, maybe the First & Summerfield United Methodist Church'~ a few houses away.

However, such a simple explanation is highly unlikely, says Ed Franquemont, executive director of the New H aven Preservation Trust. "According to my knowledge, there never was a cemetery associated with this church."

Yale's chief research archivist Judith Schiff offers an altogether different explanation.

Desc ribing the discovery as "puzzling," she posits that t hese bones were the remains of people who were privately buried-perhap~ an old professor . ~hose relatives wished him to remain nearby. According to the New Haven Colony Historical Society records, in the nineteenth century the land on College Street was owned by several prominent figures, including a dentist, a public official, and a minister, any of whom may have wished to keep their loved ones close at hand. H owever, as Franquemont points out, there were rules prohibiting private burials; thus, such a suggestion seems only "dimly possible." So could it have been foul play? Perhaps these human remains are the clue to the so-called 'Edwards tragedy of 1906,' a mysterious murder that took place in the home of one of the neighborhood residents. Indeed, as Schiff points out, in this case "anything's possible."

Yet we should not forget a crucial part of the medical examiner's report-the finding of surgical marks on many of the bones.

According co a Yale spokesman who asked not to be named, the medical examiner believes the bones to have come from discarded cadavers used for medical purposes when the comer of Prospect and Grove Streets was the site of the School of

0croBER 19,

2001

Medicine from 1813 to r86o. While medical research was uncommon during the early nineteenth century, cadavers were necessary for teaching basic anatomy. However, since "recent subjects" were hard to come by, rumors were rife about students sneaking into the Grove Street Cemetery ro steal bodies for classroom use. It was even thought that a tunnel connected the cemetery to the medical school to make the students' snatching a little easier. Although these macabre stories are hard to verify, the medical school's historical librarian Tobey Appel acknowledges bodies must have been procured in a "somewhat shady manner." She refers to an incident in 1824 when a riot broke out in New Haven after the rumor that students ..,.,,.,......,. â&#x20AC;˘ had taken a female body from the Haven cemetery proved to be true. Enraged townspeople besieged the building for five nights; only an armed intervention by the local militia was able to quell the crowd's anger. The medical school was forced to rebury the stolen cadaver.

With medical markings on the bones and fragments revealing evidence of the scalpel or bone saw, it is quite possible thar the medical examiner's supposition holds true. In fact, the backfill the construction crew was using may have originated from behind the current sss building, since fill from various work sites is moved around campus regularly to be used wherever necessary. As a result, however, the exact source of the din in which the bones were found may never be determined. As one local newspaper so aptly commented about the 'EdwardS tragedy' in 1906, "This mystery, it is safe to say, never will be cleared up satisfactorily unless the dead will come back to tell."

-Sacha D~Lang~

IN 1865, freshman Lyman Hotchkiss Bagg might have returned to his room after a long day of orientation exercises to find his favorite cap missing, or his boxing gloves, or perhaps his pipe and tobacco. He looks around, confused. Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. "Yes?" answers the perplexed Bagg. From the other side comes laughter and cries of "Open the door, Fresh!" and "Let us in, Freshie, if you don't want to die!" A crowd of rowdy and inebriated sophomores bursts into the room and orders him to climb on his desk. If he refuses, they place him there by force, binding him if necessary. H aving subdued their prey, they pull cigars and pipes from their pockets and proceed to blow smoke in his face, all the while ordering him co recite poetry in Greek, explain the principles of Euclid, say the alphabet backwards, sing Yale songs, or dance a jig.

This is just one of the bizarre hazing rituals Bagg himself describes in his book Four Years at Yale, published in 1871. T he book was part of a Yale tradition in which each class would write its own history shortly after graduation. According ro Bagg, upperclassmen in general, and sophomores in particular, considered it their sacred duty to torment freshmen without mercy, doing everything from breaking into their rooms and stealing their personal belongings to shoving them into the street as they passed on the sidewalk.

The harassment was so vicious that Bagg openly encouraged freshmen to take up arms against their oppressors: "With sufficient warning, on both sides," he claimed, "a pistol-shot through the door is the surest way to scatter a crowd of Sophs pressing against it, and though they vow dire vengeance against him in conseq uence, a Freshman who thus defends himself will not be likely afrerwards to suffer at their hands." However, he is quick to point out, brandishing a pistol at the perpetrators once they have entered the room is just "sheer folly."

The old boys ofYale also took a more literal approach to the tradition of"Rush."

On an appointed night, usually in response to a challenge from the sophomores, crowds of " Freshes" anti "Sophs" would gather at opposite ends of Library Walk to

7

battle it out for the sake of class honor. At a given signal they would rush the opposing class at a dead sprint determined to break the other's ranks, though it mean scratched faces, scraped knees, and torn clothes. Rush usually continued in this way until the faculty sent everyone back to their lodgings or the police started making arrests.

But none of this, Bagg insists, compares to the genuine "hazing" reserved for special cases of freshmen insolence. If a freshman was deemed particularly ornery or uncooperative, a "self-appointed committee" of sophomores lured him into a closed carriage where he was bound, gagged, and blindfolded. They would then drive off with their victim to some remote location, often East or West Rock, where, depending on how much they disliked the offending Frosh, they would cut his hair, write his class year on his cheek in indelible ink, drench him in cold water, strip him naked and smear his body with paint, or as Bagg puts it, "practice certain things which cannot be mentioned... When. they tired of this they left him, hog-tied and naked, to make his own way home. If he was especially lucky, they might toss him over the wall of Grove Street Cemetery, where he stayed until the gates were unlocked the next morning. ¡ Interestingly, Bagg traces the abuse of freshmen back to Yale undergraduate regulations. As late as 1804, Yale freshmen were apprenticed to serve upperclassmen, who could summon them any time during their free hours. "It being the duty of Seniors," according to the 1760 rulebook, "to teach Freshmen the laws, usages and customs of the College, to this end they are empowered to order the whole freshmen class, or any member of it, to appear, in order to be instructed and reproved, at such a time and place as they shall appoint; when and where every freshman shall attend, answer all proper questions, and behave decently."

Anyone want a freshman slave?

The cruelest of these practices have mercifully receded into the past, and Bagg admits that, despite the abuse, "It is the freshmen," he says, "who go to the greatest excess in all sort of indulgences" from "drunkenness" to "lechery." At least some things never change.

-Kati~ Malizia

8

Pomp ON OcrOBER 5-7, 2001, Yale welcomed back its alumni to a third tercentennial weekend. Though special attempts were made to involve current students, sentiments on campus ranged from uninterested to indifferent. But I, an eager freshman, decided not to be cynical; in fact, inspired by a surge of school spirit, I christened myself "Tercentennial Boy" and dedicated my soul to Yale's birthday. Engulfed in a sea of black Mercedes sedans and joined by a

swarm of silver-haired men, I made it my mission to get to the bottom of ail things "three hundred." Was there anything beneath the hoopla? Was the gala more than a self-congratulatory reunion?

The weekend opened Friday evening with "A Celebration Of Tradition and Service" outside the Bowl. More than 20 organizations, 15 academic departments and schools, and beleaguered sports teams like fencing were invited to flaunt their achievements under makeshift tents. I arrived rwo hours before the start of the show, hoping to rub should.ers with throngs of other eager Yalies, but I found only nine people there including personnel.

Needing to pass some time, I dragged rwo suitemates onto the basketball court where I found a charming Southern alumnus of the class of 1959 in a ragged pinstriped suit old enough to have been worn by James Naismith. I asked him if he wanted to play.

He nodded in assent, and then the two of us took on my suitemates. Despite his advanced age, he knew how to talk shit and had a beautifully old-school sky-hook. I threw him a couple of passes he might have slammed down were it still 1959, but he finger-rolled them in. After the old man and I finished routing my friends, I asked him about the Yale of his day. "Not going to school with women was a problem ... it led

to nothing good, because I honestly didn't know how to interact with them. None of us knew how." As we walked off the court, I saw his wife waiting for him. Apparently he had learned. The crowds now began to overflow Eli Village. It was Tercentennial Time.

I took in the scenery in all its grandeur: old people, older people, and confused students who looked as though they had arrived at the party thirty years earlier. As I passed an intriguing exhibit on robotics, I saw a faculty jazz band headed by a chiseled, So-year-old tuba player.

They were playing an upbeat Dixieland tune and the crowd was very into them.

These guys, whose skill paralleled their age, redefined cool; for a moment, I would have given up youth itself to become one of them. This urge only intensified as the saxophonist, sporting a slick 50s Vegas look, slyly winked at a mesmerized (not to mention beautiful) sophomore. He represented an antiquely sophisticated generation ofYale men who wore raccoon coats and drank brandy.

I wanted in on that world, and they wanted to go back to it.

As hot as the band was, the buzz for me had shifted to a dark corner behind a gigantic plastic balloon in the likeness of a Tostitos bag. A crowd surrounded a mysterious, towering figure accompanied by what he claimed was a bulldog. Now I'm no dog breeder, but I know 'a }?ulldog when I see one, and this was more like an ugly, enormous, vicious Chihuahua. Little kids tried to play with the thing, and its owner encouraged them: "Pet Bulldog, Bulldog loves you." The cute kids begged to differ, giggling in unison, "That's not a bulldog!"

Despite ethical reservations about interacting with a person who desecrates our mascot and dupes our community, I approached the character because he radiated a kind of familiar avuncular vibe. He said to me, "I declare this day a divine spectacle." As into the whole thing as I was, I replied, "Yeah, it's fun, but you might be slightly overdoing it." The guy immediately turned on me, clutched his dog leash, and gave me a look that said, "If you don't get lost I'm gonna sick this bitch on you so fast you won't know what hit you, you litde smartass." Kids were frightened, the crowd began to dissipate, and needless to say, I boned ~ut.

THE NEW JouRNAL

I checked my cell. It was time to enter the stadium. I took my seat in the center of the Davenport section only to find something I hadn't seen for hours: throngs of young people. I started a conversation with the girl next to m e, but it all seemed so routine; I missed the mystique of the oldtimers.

The show in thcf Bowl, entitled "For God, for Country, for Yale... Forever" lived up to its name in that it lasted approximately forever; but it was still studded with a few gems. The rumor all along had been that Britney Spears would make a cameo, but we got something far more special: Big Bird. Not only did the gentle giant engage in witty banter with W illiam F. Buckley, Jr., but he led the crowd in a heartwarming rendition of the Sesame Street song. The Bowl erupted in applause as we all regressed 15 or m ore years. It all seemed too good to be true and this ·was still before Paul Simon took center stage. When he went into "Graceland" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water," the girl next to me called her dad in New York and simply said, "Listen." It was quite a moment. All this, in addition to a prc;:..Tecorded greeting from the 41st president, constant name dropping, and way too much orchestral music, lefr me with one question: What more could you ask for? This was an event that at different times resembled a second-tier awards show, a tight concert, and (most often) a ridiculously lavish bat mitzvah.

The night climaxed with an intimidating fireworks display. After the finale, I stood up, collected myself, and looked down at the flock of alumni on the field. I saw men and women who were, well, very old. And then it hit me. Before I know it, I will be the alumnus, blue blazer and all.

-Matth~ Patunon

ALL YOU CAN EAT LUNCH BUFFET

•

$-i.9S

EVERYDAY 12 NOON -3:00PM

Raced "Good" by The New York

•··

r~

...,1t:o

· "' s..g-.1 1 0% off Yale Studcnu • Free Odivcry Vietna.rne•e • T h a i • Lao Cui~dne I ISO Chapel S~reet: • N-=- Haven • 86S-S033

R

'

~~~~ l1

11

~

THE

~~WASH TUB

m

40 Foster Street '7he BEST laundry center in the East Rock Atea" • S.ELF-8RR.VIC.B open 7 daJI• 7 AM - 9 PM, FRI. 'Til to PM • &pert DROP-oFF SRR.VICE Mon. - Fri. 7 AM - 6 PM • Spariding Clean

Jalrw-

-~

...,.r

776-3598

-----

~

~St.

--- ·-

o.-.a.

'T'fie Pirst q{nnua{j!E C?J1era Pestiva{

~t t. t t

~_production

of

'Dido & ~eneas 1fofdi"8 dance andorchestra{ auditions soonC'a({ or emai{ ?Uexis Ortiz 6-1444 '

Ocro8ER19,2001

9

The Stranger Among Us I

T's FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14,

2001. Members of the Asian American Students Alliance, the Association of Native Americans at ~Yale, the Arab Students Association (ASA), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), and others have gathered at one of Yale's cultural houses. Many here were at an interfaith vigil earlier in the day sponsored by the MSA and Yale Hillel. Jews had read from the Koran, Muslims from the Old Testament prophets; everyone prayedtogether-for peace. In the face of tragedy, Yale students look first to one another for consolation and support.

That night at the house, they were doing what students everywhere were doing: bantering nervously over strains of hip-hop and rock, trying again to relax and to laugh, doing anything but studying, anything but watching TY. The scene could have been lifted from the pages of Yale's promotional literature. I imagine a caption beneath the. photograph: At Yak you will ga th~ b~st ~ducation available anywh"~¡ lOu will b~ in th~ vibrantly div~~ company ofyour purs, th~ group who will probably teach you th~ most in your four y~ars ofstudy. Th~ campus is a gartkn oftokranc~ wh~ any stutknt may gath" th~ flowers ofa /ib"al ~ducation fruly during an untkrgraduau ca"" that com~s to sum iik~ one long_ stimulating conversation.

THE NEW JouRNAL

Yale's Muslim and Arab students find tolerance more preached than practiced

By Matthew Underwood

"I'm very lucky to be at Yale. It's a very open-minded atmosphere," Tammer Riad, an Egyptian-American from New Jersey, told me that night. Nilofar Gardezi, an Mghan-American from California, concured: She's not felt any sidelong glances or heard any negative comments. "And I'm not surprised," she says "because I feel the Yale community is very open."

I listen and nod, but in my mind I imagine that caption with another sentence penciled in after September n: This could be the biggest lie you've ever believed.

VERYONR AT THE HOUSE had been told time and again that Yale was safe. Still, they told each other one more time.

Some displaced their concerns, focusing on the now continuous stream of news stories reporting acts of liacred and calls for retaliation ¡ against Arabs, other Middle-Easterners, Asians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and others across the country.

Someone's friend's ' mosque was firebombed outside Chicago.

Someone else's parents were told to go back where they belong.

Another person describes a bed-sheet sign spotted by a friend in New Jersey: Muslim Hunting Season Now Open.

Sammy Mansour, a Palestinian Muslim from Tira, Israel, who holds both American and Israeli citizenship, brings up the vandalizing of an MSA building at Wayne State University in Detroit: Bricks were thrown through windows; cars were smashed. All agree that such an incident could never happen here.

Yet Mansour himself admits, "There's always a threat in the background." Referring to an escort list created for ASA and MSA members, he says, "We're just taking precautionary measures." But others bring up incidents occurring in town, not far from campus: people threatened, singled out for their race or creed. "You never know," Mansour says. "It could eventually spill over onto campus.

But so far it hasn't."

Gardezi, however, has a story to counter that. She describes a joint ASA-MSA meeting held the night after the attacks. A friend, she says, saw from a distance a woman in a headscarf walking down a COrridor in WiUiam L. Harkness Hall. She then overheard voices fiom a nearby classroom: "How dare she wear that? How dare she show her face at a time like this?" "We all collectively gasped," Gardezi says of the reaction by those at the meeting that night. "'This could have been me. There are only four of us here on the

E

whole campus who are muhajaba {Muslim women who wear the hijab, a traditional headscarf)." "That was the first incident we had heard of ... and we didn't know what to anticipate. We were going around the circle, and time and time again someone kept saying 'Muhajaba, watch out.' 'If you look Arab, be careful.'"

Fadi Kanaan, co-president of the ASA, who is a Lebanese citizen, describes "a wall of bitterness" dividing campus since September n. One wonders if the barrier he describes is noticed only by those whom it excludes. Kanaan gives the atmosphere in the Yale office where he works as an example of the change: "Just the fact that you are racially affiliated with a group of people--not even religiously or politically--can make people think that you feel differently about this whole situation." He tries to understand his co-

~Muhajaba,

~If

Ocroau 19,

2001

watch out.'ll you look Arab, be careful.' workers' attitudes, saying, "These are people I've known for years. I know that ... it's subconscious and involuntary. But you can feel it." the prejudice, the threats are nothing new to Sammy Mansour. He says of the still nascent ASA, of which he is the Political Action Chair, "We're accepted o n campus, but we're always going to have to face opposition from some people who want to make us look like some evil organization." Mansour tells me about hateful emails, threats, and a nasty missive in the Valentine's Day issue of The Yale Herald.

In this fall's Light & Troth "Freshman Survival Guide," Davi Bernstein, former co-president of Yale Friends of Israel (YFI), warns freshman to avoid the ASA, a group he labels as "anti-American."

Many Arabs and Jews on campus felt compelled to take sides as Zionists and Palestinian nationalists clashed. The ASA was founded last fall as the current Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, was taking shape in Israel. Though thousands of miles from the West Bank, the campus has again become a battleground as the violence continues. Two Israeli soldiers gave a Master's Tea in Trumbull College on November 15, 2000, and retired Israeli General Yoav Gallant addressed a large crowd assembled in sss on January 23, 2001, at an event organized by the YFI. Outisde each event, ASA students distributed leaflets and held protest signs. Both time's, police escorts were needed to eject unruly spectators, including the faculty advi-

T

HR SUSPICIOUS GLANCES,

II

Hamden Plaza 2100 Dixwell Ave, Hamden 230-0039 • open 7 days

• natural fiber clothing • Crabtree & Evelyn • jewelry • toiletries • pottery • and presents for children of all

COLLEGE WINE

212 COL.LI!:GE STREET, NEW HAVE N , CT 061510 ( 203) 7T7·7S97 IIU-

HOURS

MON TO SAT 9 A MT08PM

T HE N ILE REsrAURANT

a.·-•

59 l'fcw . . . _ CT 06' 11 ..,._.,_. .._._., , . . , . • GniM ,._,

15 o/o off Breakf.ast, Lunch 8c Dinner with Yale ID during September Fru Ddiwry &

Orlning

Mon.- Fri. 7:30 lim -10 pm s.t.10 am - 10 pm

at: (203)

12

776-09:1

It

sor to the ASA, genetics professor Mazin Qumsiyeh. ASA members heckled the Israeli soldiers, calling them Nazis, says one YFI member. Gallant said Palestinians were no better than dogs, an ASA member counters.

Both sides deny the other's accusations.

After the first incident, the ASA tried to arrange a compromise, according to the Yak Daily Nnus. Each group had scheduled speakers w appear at campus events on November 28, 2000. Fadi Kanaan, who had invited Norman Finklestein, a Jew known for criticizing Israel as a colonialist state, encouraged a debate between him and Ehud Luz, an Israeli political scientist invited to speak by YFI. Luz refused, however, out of "dignity and self respect," and the lectures were held separately and simultaneously. Instead of a dialogue, there were two monologues, each on its own stage.

Verbal clashes continued into the spring semester, with partisans barraging the opinion pages of the N~s with guest columns, calling for dialogue and criticizing the other side for refusing to talk. The ASA lodged an informal complaint of harassment against YFI to the Yale College Dear~'s Office. A meeting between the two groups proposed by Assistant Dear~ Edgar Letriz never materialized after members of the A.SA rejected the invitation. In the last column the Nnus printed on the subject,

which appeared on January 30, 2001, Qurnsiyeh repeated the same vain hope expressed by both sides: that the next interaction between the two groups be "a dialogue open to both sides equally and fairly." What followed, however, were months of public silence.

Now, nearly a year after the conflict, reconciling the partisans seems impossible.

I tried to organize a group interview with Bernstein and Aaron Faust, former co-presidents of YFI, along with Kanaan and Qumsiyeh. Both Bernstein and Kanaan explained that the two sides have grown so far apart that neither even recognizes the other's existence.

Bernstein said, "Whenever we attempted a dialogue with the ASA, we were rebuffed and made to look like fools. This won't happen again. A proper dialogue is not possible with the ASA because they do not believe Israel is a legitimate entity, and thus YFI is not legitimate to them, either. This is the sad truth."

Kanaan, who reluctantly agreed to the meeting, described a similar feeling among ASA members. "The YFI has ingrained misperceptions of what the ASA is and what its members do," he explained. "They think we support Arafat and the dictators of the Arab world. We see ourselves as a group of Arabs and Arab-Americans who want to celebrate our culture and raise Arab awareness on campus. We've tried to work with them before, but they bluntly refused. As a result, it's really difficult to have a group interview with last year's YPI leaders."

Qumsiyeh was the only one to agree with enthusiasm; he even asked that the event take place in front of an audience.

Faust also refused to participate in a group interview, though he did offer to meet me in person and c:xplain why. "The issue is unique in its emotional depth," he explained. Everyone involved has been personally touched by the violence. He recalled Qumsiyeh's stories of brutal treatment at the hands of Israeli police. Faust himself has family members who've fought in every major Israeli-Palestinian war. H e asked, "How is Mazin going to have an unemotional discussion with me?" The two groups might be able to talk, he speculated, but only if they discussed anything but politics. "Th~ can't be any dialogue between

THE NEW

JouRNAL

1

the ASA and the YPJ about Palestine," he says emphatically. Then he reconsiders. "Is it possible? Probably. But it hasn't happened yet. Why can't it happen here? Well, maybe people here aren't as open-minded as they say they are."':· at the cultural house, Gardezi and I end up on the porch, talking about how Yale has changed since September n.

A junior who speaks with self-assurance, Gardezi is caught off guard when asked if she has always felt safe here. Her breath quickens a moment as she pauses.

Collecting herself, she admits that she has felt like an outsider at times. "It's ironic," she says, speaking of the post-catastrophe atmosphere on campus. "I only really started to feel safe and comfortable this last y.:ar. I didn't feel self-conscious anymore. I didn't feel like I was this person draped in this cloth and people were staring at me."

That newfound security was shattered when news of the attacks came. "I have a brother who works in New York," Gardezi says. "But I felt like I couldn't react. I had 10 wear this stone expression on my face, because people automatically see the head covering and they want to read your face.

'What does it mean? Is she happy?'"

Gardezi describes a feeling common among many Arab and Muslim students: that their otherness is now seen as a threat.

•Honest to God, I don't know what people think when they see me, and I'm not going

A

to go that far in speculating," she says.

Tammer Riad expresses a similar frustration. Speaking of the Arab and Muslim communities as a whole, he says he feels as if "we have to come together and prove to

TH£ PARTY IS DYING DOWN

0cro&£R

19,

2001

are we going to do, bomb the countryside?

The people there are already dying. Theyre already starVing ... It just doesn't make sense." Describing an identity that some might interpret as contradictory, she continues, "At my core, I'm still an Afghanan Afghan-American . . . I'm just as American as anyone else, and if I have to prove it to someone, well, I don't need to concern myself with them."

A

GA.RDEZI HEADS BACK JNSIO£ tO

the party, a bicyclist pedals past on Crown Street. "usA! uSA!" he shouts in the direction of the house. A week before, I would have thought such an outburst bizarre. Now I think it seems normal enough, even admirable. Then, I begin to consider his intentions and to wonder who he was. A patriotic Yalie? Looked like it. A friend of mine? Could have been. A bigot? Perhaps. I walk home alone, wondering how it came to be that the three possibilities could so easily all be true.

IIIJ

the American public that we grieve as much as they do, if not more. You know, we're American too."

While some students stay silent in an attempt to prove their patriotism, others believe it is important to speak freely.

Gardezi, for instance, expresses concern about the future of Afghanistan, the homeland she hasn't seen since age three. "What

Matthnu Undnwood. a junior in Davmport Co/kg~. is an associate ~ditor for TNJ.

13

Birthday Candles Photos by Eli Felman

THE NEW JouRNAL

"Esperanza no temorf Hope not fear!" The chant rose in the twilight as a crowd of over 2,500 filed toward the Yale Bowl. The group Included members of Yale unions Locals 34 and 35, the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, Yale-New Haven hospital workers, members of the clergy and local congregations, and undergraduate organizers of the nascent student union United Students at Yale-a bewildering variety of individuals and interests. They gathered on the night of Yale's tercentennial gala to demonstrate their unity of purpose: a desire for a better Yale, one that pays higher wages, recognizes organized graduate students, hospital workers, and undergraduates, and rethinks its role in the city which surrounds it.

15

BY ANYA KAMENETZ

"THE

OUTBREAK

UNPREPARED

OF

AND

[THE

THE

WAR]

COLLEGE

FOUND

THE

STUDENTS

AND IGNORANT • •• THE MAJORITY, EITHER LUKEWARM OR INDIFFERENT, REMAINED MERELY SPECTATORS THROUGHOUT THE ENTI RE

CONFLICT."

These words could easily refer to this month's bombing of Afghanistan. But they are taken from Ellsworth Eliot's 1932 history Yak in the Civil war. I find the echo fascinating, as the last month of national uncertainty has led me to a search for historical context.

How should we, as studentS, address war from within an institution older than the nation itself?

The answers I found were surprisingly enduring. In every major American war, Yale has been faced with an existential challenge: How can it continue to prepare elite young men for the future through a liberal arts education when that future is endangered and those young men are needed to fight? Throughout us history, the University has adapted to the requirementS of the time, defending both irs values and its methods as crucial to the nation's best interests. "In general, war has strengthened the University's confidence in itself;'' said Gaddis Smith, professor emeritus and eminent historian ofYale.

Furthermore, Yale and irs studentS have always responded to war with an eye toward building both the nation's history and their own futures. The names carved into the marble walls of Woolsey Hall bespeak the university's pride in its contribution to the national destiny. But as time passes, we may look very differently at both self-anointed heroes and the many in every age who allowed history to pass them by.

T

he War Between the Scates was the first to affect Yale substantially. During the American Revolution, the college, with only about 6o studentS, simply dosed down for a year. The War of 1812 and the Mexican War barely hindered Yale's growth or establishment. When news of war came to Yale during spring break in 1860, therefore, it reached a student body that had, like the current one, grown up in peaceful and prosperous times. They were uncon16

cerned with policies. Eliot pointS out that during the'entire ten years prior to the war, only one essay on any political subject appeared in any student publication.

One immediate effect of the Civil War was the departure of Southern studentS. But what ofYale's brave young Northern sons?

Were their heartS filled with fire for the glorious conflict? Not so much. Neither faculty nor administration especially encouraged service in the war, according to Eliot. In fact, the faculty decided against allowing a leave of absence for those deciding to serve. All in all, only about eleven percent of the class. of 1865 saw action, including 17 who served over their summer break. Out of all of Yale's studentS and living alumni of the time, 932 or one-fifth fought in the war-775 Union and 157 Confederate.

On campus, the attitude toward the war was surprisingly flippant. In essays such as "My War Experience" and "Our Army Correspondence," appearing in the Yak Literary Magazine in 1862, war service sounded like a bad vacation. One student wrote from the Shenandoah Valley: "The only thing we rook at this point were stout colds ... New Haven fogs don't get anything like what we cap· cured in Philadelphia, where we held a severe struggle with numerous ditches and brambles."

Of course there were heroic stories as well, like that of James Brand in the History ofthe Class ofI865. "In the thick of the fighting at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville & Gettysburg. Carried his wounded colonel off the "Wheat Field" in the face of a galling fire.

For this act, Congress awarded him a gold medal." On his return to New Haven in the spring, "Professor Thacher is said to have mounted the fence and proposed 'three cheers for James Brand."'

But the average student distinctly lacked brio. William Stocking, class of x865, quips in Yak in the Civil war, "We thought the war was about over or we wouldn't have enlisted at all." He

THE NEW JouRNAL

recounts a long :1maginary conversation with a fellow soldier who sounds like a Viemam protester-he "had been drafted and he hadn't money to buy a substitute; the roads to Canady was all guarded; he would have to go to the front; he might get killed and then what would become of him?" The soldier ends by lamenting char he wasn't a sick, black, b,;lby girl, "For then I would surely never have to serve."

A more thoughtful attempt to rationalize studenrs' lack of participation was the essay, "In WarTime," published in the Lit in June 1864. Ir follows the average student's hemming and hawing between the campus "contagion of enthusiasm" and his family's worry.

The Yale man tells himself that the war ought to be fought by the lower classes: "There were other men who were stouter, men who had no employment, and no settled plans, there were enough of these men to ftli up the ranks on the first call, and probably they would ftnish the war." As the war drags on, and the carnage gets worse, he feels not reliefbut regret."Vicksburg, Gettysburg, are historical names, but you have no share in them ... others chide your alma mater for having kept so many of her sons at home." Sharing in "historical" glory, even if that meant death, should be part of the Yale spirit.

The essay concludes with a theme repeated again and again over the next century: Yale men could be great in war, but their talenrs are better served by shaping history in peace. In this case, an appeal is made to studentS to go south as carpetbaggers: "There is a whole race to be elevated." And this wasn't just rhetoric. Smith points out Yale's strong role in the establishment of black colleges after Reconstruction; in the 188os there was a higher enrollment of blacksrudenrs at Yale than at any time until the 196os, mostly transfer studentS from colleges like Fisk with Yale graduates on their faculties.

OCTOBER

19, 2001

he History ofthe Class o/1918 includes an essay on "Yale in the Civil War and Yale in the World War" by Yale Law Professor Simeon E. Baldwin, class of r861. He goes through the relatively paltry statistics of those from Yale who served in his youth before concluding, "These figures are in striking contrast to those which the next university catalogue will describe. The college is now half depleted, dining hall dosed, and the campus is a daily drill ground.

StudentS go about in Khaki and the only lectures or addresses which attract any interest are on the war."

Indeed, the degree to which Yale turned all irs resources toward war in both WW1 and WWII is hard ro imagine today. "We were a very militaristic college," says Smith, "much more militaristic than Harvard. We were the only one that had irs own military program during the neutrality period." Prior to the establishment of the national Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in 1916, Yale signed up 500 students for training in field artiliery maneuvers. Private donations built a drill hall and stables out on the Yale Field, and each Yale Battery drilled an hour-and-a-half a week. In the summer of 1916 a company of 120 srudenrs, including Prescott Bush and Hiram Bingham, the future discoverer of Machu Picchu, went to training camp at Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, and spent a wonderful vacation learning to swear and dig ditches.

Even before America entered the war, sons of Eli were in the trenches. Most famously, Karl Llewellyn, an American who had attended high school in Germany, joined the German forces as soon as war broke out. As he wrote to his class, "I believe that Germany has been forced into this conflict through no fault of her own ... I shall be in the greatest epoch of the century. I shal! see history made, and see it in Germany, with an understanding that few have had."

He received the Iron Cross before being removed from Germany through the intercession of the American ambassador, and returned

T

All throughout the year we had been growing in our class a certain spirit best typified in our College motto, 'For God, for Country, and for Yale', which in June was destined to manifest itself in a practical way and amply prove the justification of its existence. It was the spirit of militarism, preparedness, and service.

This view was echoed in the boosterism of President Hadley, who, according to Smith, went so far as co state at the dedication of Woolsey Hall in 1919, '"these honored dead have fulfilled the ultimate purpose of the university by dying'."

Not everyone was thrilled by the prospect of drill teams sharing the Yale fields with football scrimmages. The discussion of the formation of Yale Batteries included a letter co the News from student G.R. Cl!cler on October 5, 1915. "The military regime must inevitably have a vicious effect on the intellectual ideals, on the thinking of every man in college," Curler wrote. "Worst of all, we should be caught to think of organized murder as a sort of game, on the whole rather good sport."

Whatever the objections of students like Cutler or the odd pacifist professor like William Lyons Phelps, Yale forged lasting links with the military during World War I. Yale's rotc program would continue, with for-credit courses in "military science""how to dig a latrine," according to Smith-until widespread opposition to the Vietnam War led to the program's abandonment in 1969.

T

to Yale in time co graduate with his class. He later tried in vain to join the American army, and went on to become a tegendary professor of law. Junior Will Thaw enlisted in the French army in 1915.

He wrote: "I am going to take a part, however small, in the greatest, and probably last, war in history, which has apparently developed into a fight of civilization against barbarism. " Once war was declared, again during spring break, "Yale became a military camp," says Smith. The dorms were under military supervision, Old Campus and Cross Campus were guarded by sentries, and nearly the entire student body was enrolled in the ROTC training course. The Class of 1917 published a separate war R~cord along with its History, the only Yale class to do so. Three hundred and sixry-four out of 415 students have some service record listed. These range from the bombers of the flying "Yale Gang" to artillery officers to members of the Chinese Labor Corps of the British Expeditionary Forces.

What spurred Yale's eagerness for war? Football, according to Professor Smith. "It had quite a bit co do with what was then called the Yale spirit, which has quite a bit to do with football," he said.

"Players were heroes who sacrificed time and pain for the greater glory of Yale . . . Yale invented college football as we know it."

Throughout the First World War, victories over Princeton and Brown shared space with victories at Berne or the Somme on the front pages of the News. The class of 1917 put it this way:

18

THE WORLD'S SECOND "TOTAL WAll." BROUGHT a greater degree of militarization a,nd upheaval to the University than had yet been seen. In July 1941 students lost their blanket deferment from the dra& for the first time. As in World War I, the campus became a military camp. This time several different wings of the military set up on campus: the Enlisted Reserve Corps, Navy¡ Line and Air, Marines, Aimy Air Corps, and the Aimy. Most trainees were not drafted, but in February and March 1943 Yale Goo students were called up in rwo weeks. The campus was in mass confusion, with studentS packing and unpacking, holding multiple "liquid" goodbye parties, auditing their classes restlessly.

As the war intensified, President Seymour instituted major changes in Yale's curriculum and policies. He wrote co the Class of 1944: "In defense against aggressive powers whose success will mean the destruction of all freedoms without which education is meaningless, the University must devote herself without limit of effort to a single, special service--helping to win the War. To this end all the resources of Yale are pledged." Yale moved to a year-round schedule and the traditional curriculum was curtailed co allow students to graduate in seven semesters while simultaneously training for the military.

Professor Smith says that in contrast co the bombastic rhetoric of wwt, the Second World War brought a grimmer attitude to the Universiry. As the History of th~ Class ofI944 reads: "No one could say that our new way of life was as enjoyable as the old, or that all our lase days here have been pleasant." But the students go on co underline their own necessity to history in terms familiar from previous generations of Yale students. "¡ ... that these changes were nee-

THE NEW JouRNAL

essacy for our future well-being, a justification of our remaining in a university existence, none can deny." In ordinary times, Ivy League students hardly have co cast about for a justification of their education.

But in times of war, as the students of the class of 1917 wrotl, "the constellation of M ars" has often eclipsed "the scar of knowledge."

T

"The deep misgivings about the war, compounded by the immorality of using an inequitable d raft to fight it, generates a bitter skepticism of the values which motivate all established authority." These words come not from a leftist student publication but from Yale President Kingman Brewster's address to the freshmen (and for the ftrst time, women) in September 1969.

During this war, the administration's energy was once again focused on preserving the integrity of the University. But, as Brewster recognized, the threat this time was internal. .

Yale studel;its of the time who talk now about the war years focus their attention on why the university was not destroyed by the nearly universal opposition to the war, the draft, and the establishment. Strobe Talbott, former deputy Secretary of State HAT IS, UNTIL VIETNAM.

and head ofYale's new Center for che Study of Globalization, says, "At Yale the demonstrations were almost universally peaceful, and if one person deserves credit for chat, it's Kingman Brewster. He really showed by example the importance of presenring the civility of discourse."

Talbott was Chairman of the Nro;s in 1967 when he published an editorial about a draft protest petition then in circulation, headed "They Won't Go." "Strobe Talbott actually is probably the single person who most turned Brewster against the war," says journalist Mark Zanger, who was immortalized as bushy-haired campus radical "Megaphone Mark" in Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury strips of the period. (Zanger claims che character is a composite.)

"When [Strobe] joined the ocher edicors in writing a 'We Won't Go' editorial ...

Brewster noticed that even the best and brightest by his definition were not going."

For Zanger and ochers seeking co motivate direct action, however, the moderation of the leadership was not all positive.

"Brewster was very hard for activists because he actually maintained some sense of openness . . . Ivy presidents like Cordier at Columbia or Pusey at Harvard, to name two, went down in the sixties because they took measures chat shut down and polar-

ized the campus. [At Yale] you couldn't just do anything and provoke acts of blatant stupidity."

Whether it is called "elevation of discourse," "intellectualization," or moderation, students speak of an apathy and ambivalence on campus chat didn't always come through in the music. "Many of those who opposed the war doubtless did so from a tangle of idealism and self-interest," says Randy Helm, class ofi970. "And I suspect chat chose of us who were most passionate and angry were chose who, in our hearts, wondered whether self-interest was the larger factor." Zanger says the campus was slow to respond co the exhortations ofYale's Students for a Democratic Society, the main anti-war organization. "In 1966 nobody showed up co a rally. In 1967 you would get maybe five or ten people. In early '68 we had an anti-war rally on the Green and Arthur Miller spoke, that was two co three thousand people. That was a peak."

Then, several events in the spring of 1970 changed the campus atmosphere: the murder trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale in New Haven, Nixon's illegal invasion of Cambodia, and the shooting of 13 student protesters at Kent State University. Even marginally involved students were sudden-

Subscribe to The New Journal S18tor one vear 15 issuesl S32tortwo vears 110 issuesl wrna PO Box 203432.

20

ly radicalized. "I spent most of senior year discovering the joys of getting high, hanging out at our unofficial senior society's beach house . . . in short, senior pleasures typical of a more insouciant age," said Reid Detchon, class of 1970. "Bobby Seale's trial came to New Haven, and I was on the Green that spring day-protesting a little, mostly participating in the Event-when the news came that Nixon had bombed Cambodia. This evil man had decided to make the war worse, not end it, and we howled in anger and fear and outrage about America becoming Amerika, losing our hope that this democracy would respond to us. The campus was shut down by that outrage, by our inability to focus on anything else." Those days of mass protest on the Green were the closest that Yale ever came to "blowing up," and like Yale presidents past, Brewster responded to the students' fiery spirit with special war measures-this time by canceling final exams and allowing seniors to graduate based on work done to date.

T

HE OTHER FORCE IN YALE's VIETNAM experieqce was, of course, the chaplain, civil rights and peace activist Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr. On September 23, 2001, he returned here to speak on a panel on peace at BatteU Chapel. "When I came back to Yale these past few days, I was flooded with remembrances," he said in response to a question. "It was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution all over again. We were the second university after the University of Michigan to have a sit-in in I964, and we need to have another one now," he told a cheering crowd. This comparison doesn't work at all for Talbott, who is editing a forthcoming anthology of Yale professors, Th~ Ag~ of T~r, to address the postSeptember 11 situation. "I have the greatest respect for Reverend Coffin," he says, "but the analogy doesn't take you very far. The Gulf of Tonkin was basically a case of harassment on the high seas, and now 7,000 people have been killed. It's not accurate history and not f.lir either."

Coffin and Talbott, like generations of Yale men before them, are drawing on their experience here to respond to a new kind of conflict. As a conscientious student I would like to learn from their example, but the historical analogies do not come easily.

Today, just as in the Civil War, we at Yale and in the nation have been caught unaware, faced with an unprecedented threat at home. Just as in the world wars, the conflict is global in scope. Just as in Vietnam, opposition to the government's policies, at least in form, is the norm within which we act. Is there a special mandate for action now?

At the Tercentennial celebration, the President of Harvard quoted Theodore Roosevelt's words, "Wherever I have been engaged in a great endeavor I have found a Yale man by my side." Professor Smith points out that he didn't finish the quotation-the "great endeavor" Roosevelt was specifically referring to was the bloody battle of San Juan Hill in the even bloodier Spanish-American War. One of Roosevelt's comrades-in-arms, Augustus Canfield Ledyard, class of 1898, is honored by the flagpole on Beinecke Plaza. "So the flagpole of the university celebrates not a very good cause---colonial oppression," Smith says. If making our mark on history is the Yale student's obsession, we would now do well to determine where the mark should strike.

1111

Anya /Vzmmnz, a smior in Davmport Co/kg~,

is ~Jitor-in-chitfo[TNJ.

THE NEW jOURNAL

THE YALE BC)C)KSTC)RE \

OcroseR 19,

2001

I ; \ 1.: '\ I ..._ 1\.

'\ I l

I: I I

I

I l

I I I I I

">

I '

>

I, I

Yale women walk over to University Health Services (UHs) on Hillhouse Avenue to receive some form of contraception-birth control pills, diaphragms, intrauterine devices. They are all available, and most never question their legality or women's right to have them. On their way, some of these women may even pass by 79 Trumbull Streeet. The building qualifies as a historic site, but there is no plaque commemorating what happened there forty years ago this November. If it weren't for the work of two Yale professors, one motivated woman, and members from the Yale and New Haven c~mmunity inside this building, the women who walk to University Health Services each day might still be committing a crime.

Reproductive rights in New Haven were revolutionized on November I, 1961, when 15 women became the inaugural patients of a Planned Parenthood clinic at 79 Trumbull. The clinic was an ¡open challenge to the Comstock laws, which made it illegal for a doctor in the United States to prescribe or give advice about birth control. In 1961, Connecticut was the only state that still clung to this 85-year-old law. Ten days and 75 patients later, police arrested the clinic's doctor, Yale obstetrics and gynecology chairman Dr. Charles Lee Buxton, and the clinic's director Estelle Griswold.

Upon entering the New Haven Police Station, Buxton expressed regret that the clinic would have to close. "It's very disappointing not to be able to treat patients who need medical advice so badly," he said. "It's like not being able to use penicillin for anyone who needs it."

Buxton and Griswold opened the clinic because the us Supreme Court could not rule on the constitutionality of the Comstock laws until someone had been prosecuted under their terms. Fowler Harper, the lawyer who took the case to the Supreme Court, said, "It would be a state and community service if a criminal action were brought" against the clinic.

New Haven police alleged that both defendants "did cause or command a certain married woman to use a drug or medicinal article for the purpose of preventing conception." The pair spent the night in jail and was released the next day on $250 bail.

Buxton and Griswold challenged the constitutionality of the Comstock laws, and pleaded not guilty to the charges against EVERY DAY,

22

them. Griswold v. Conn~cticutwas on its way to the Supreme Court of the United States.

While their case was pending, Buxton and Griswold kept the clinic open, using it as the departure point for a shuttle service taking women to clinics in New York and Rhode Island, where birth control had been legalized. Four years after their arrest, on June 7, 1965, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the defendants' favor. The 7-2 decision reversed the Comstock laws, making Connecticut the last state to legalize the prescription, use, and distribution of information about birth control. , A

t the time of Buxton and -Griswold's arrest, the center was booked through mid-December, women were flocking there from all over Connecticut. At Grace-New Haven Hospital (now Yale-New Haven}, restrictions prohibited Buxton from discussing birth control with his patients. So he sent them to Planned Parenthood, where six other Yale doctors had agreed to join him in providing what they considered the best care for their female patients.

Four decades later, Yale has emerged as one of the country's most progressive universities in terms of reproductive health policy, offering birth control and abortions under the Yale Health Plan. This policy appears to be a natural progression from Griswold v. Con~cticut. When asked in what year the Yale Health Plan began to fund abortions, Dr. William Billings, the head of obstetrics and gynecology at University Health Services at its inception in 1971, said, "When they became legal, in 1973. If it was legal, we offered it. If you wanted to have your appendix out, you had your appendix out. If you wanted an abortion, you could get an abortion."

This past January, Yale became the first school in the nation to announce that it would offer the new abortion drug, RU-486, as part of its standard health plan. The pill, also known as Mifeprex, induces miscarriage within several days when administered early in a pregnancy. After it received FDA approval in September 2000, many anticipated that "the abortion pill" would fundamentally change the way abortions are perceived. Pro-choice activists praised the long-overdue expanded freedom a woman now had to

THE NEW JouRNAL

.......

choose from a variety of treatments.

With the availability of a non-invasive abortion procedure, women gained increased privacy-and control over their bodies. Pro-lifers, though, criticized the new drug's likelihood of increasing the number of terminated pregnancies. They raised doubts about the drug's safety, n'?ting that first-time trials showed that som~ women suffered from extensive bleedint.

Unlike Yale", the majority of college campuses in the country have steered clear of the controversial drug. Most choose not to offer Mifeprex at their health centers, claiming they are ill-equipped to handle the potentially severe side effects of the drug, while some schools, such as H arvard, have agreed to reimburse students who receive the drug from an off-campus clinic.

When Yale announced last year that RU-486 would be offered as part of its standard health plan, USA Today conducted a poll of 50 random schools across -the country, of which Yale was the sole university co offer the controversial drug. Today, calls to all the Ivy League health centers reveal that Yale remains the only one to provide its srudents and faculty with the option of R.U-486.

Without any student lobbying, Yale decided to offer a drug whose political implications and reported adverse side effects have made national headlines since its first trial in 1991. Across the country, op-ed pages of srudent papers have displayed headlines urging administrations and student health plans to provide its students with the widest range of reproductive health options.

Meanwhile, on Yale's campus, it was only after the administration announced its new policy that the debate began. ¡ Emily Grant, chair of the Pro-Life League at Yale, published op-ed pieces in srudent newspapers criticizing the decision. RU486, she believes, "is not designed for college women. We don't have husbands, mothers, and other people who live with us to

0croBER 19, 2001

Z~E~/1~ euutZeHtta-S~

watch over us and make sure that we don't bleed to death." Currently the Pro-Life League is pushing for Yale to follow H arvard's lead, and provide students with moral objections to abortion with a refund of the fraction of their student health insurance that pays for abortions.

At Harvard the refund is 6o cents.

Director of University Health Services Paul Genecin understands the controversy over the drug, especially in a university setting. But such controversy, he believes, cannot dictate the university's decisions.

"Intellectual freedom at a place like Yale gives all of us the right to our views, but not all these views can be put into policy, and someone has to make this decision about policy," he said. Yale's policy, he feels, exists to offer the most complete set of medical options to patients, despite political and social implications.

But while Buxton and Griswold opened their clinic with the intention of testing the law, today Yale wants no part of a political debate. "The issue of abortion is highly politicized," said Genecin.

"As a health care organization, we want co preserve an atmosphere for our patients that is suppoctive and medical, not political." The result of this attitude, however, has been a notable silence about the options available to women under the Yale Health Plan, especially for a move that put Yale at the forefront of a national conflict.

Alice Wolfram, coordinator of the Reproductive Rights Action League at Yale, says that the administration's uneasiness about politicizing women's health options "might be a legitimate concern, but it's not a legitimate excuse." "The larger issue," Wolfram asserts, "is that abortion is a safe, legal, medical procedure that needs to be available to Yale students. Making abortion

23

available but not telling students it is available has the potential to undermine Yale's reproductive options."

i

i

A LITTLE OFF THE TOP

I

haircuts • updos • colors • hilites

ust how much can a woman find out about her choices at UHs? A phone call to the OB-GYN department to inquire about students' options reveals that, for political or organizational reasons, students are not the only ones in the dark. "Does the Yale Health Plan cover Ru-486?" a student wanted to know. The receptionist sighed, "I'm going to transfer you to member services."

Member services responded to the same question with a simple, "I don't know.

Can you call back?" Calling back resulted in another transfer-back to OB-GYN. "Does the health plan cover RU-486?"

"I don't know. I mean, I don't know what that is," the woman on the other end responded, "What is it?"

"My friend told me that it's an abortion pill."

A slight gasp from the other end.

Then, "Oh, dear. 1 don't know." The voice, which a second ago was annoyed by the request for the mystery drug, now offered$ympathy and support. Still, her only advice was, "Call back and make an appointment when you find out what you want to do, OK?" A student, confused, possibly desperate, hung up the phone unaware of what her options were--as a UHS patient and as a woman.

"I understand [Yale's] caution," says Susan Yq!en, Vice President of Public Affairs and-Communication at Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, "but the trouble with their caution is that students may not be getting the information that they need." Yale has set itself apart from schools across the country, but, as Susan Yolen says, "I don't think anyone likes being on a limb all by themselves."

In a sense, however, Yale has been in a league all by itself for the 40 years since Griswold. In his day, Griswold praised Buxton for having "acted in the highest traditions of the medical profession" and deserving "the salute and everlasting gratitude of all men and women who value human freedom." On July 28, 1961, Buxton issued a statement concerning the intention to open their clinic in the belief that Connecticut women "deserve the type

fJ 168 York Street New Haven 203 772

DAVENPORT COLLEGE presents A Screen Showing and a Master's Tea • "Missing," directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras, starring Sissy Spacek, Jack Lemmon, and John Shea Wednesday, October 24th, 9 :30pm, Davenport Dining Hall • A Master's Tea, "C hile, Pinochet, and the United States: Opening Up Secret History," with John O 'Learry, former U.S. Ambassador to Chile in the Clinton Administration who opened an investigation of the U.S. role in overthrowing the Allende government in Chile Thursday, October 25th, Davenport Master's House

THE NEW JouRNAL

of medical care legally permitted in all other states and in most foreign countries." Prior to 1965, 51 percent of families under the poverty line had no family planning. Thirty-one percent of children in New Haven were born to single women, and 15 percent of births were to mothers under the age of 18.

Harper and Btdton's campaign was about more than making birth control available--it was about making birth control available to people of all classes, neighborhoods, and minority groups.

According to Roraback, "if you knew the right person to get you to the right doctor and had the money, you could access birth control in Connecticut. Buxton was especially concerned that poor women wouldn't be able to get the services available to them." When Roraback, who still practices law in Hartford, was told that Yale offers RU-486 as part of its standard health plan, her response was exuberant.

"Yale is so good," she said, "it's amazing."

Still, some may ask whether Yale is doing all it can to serve the female students, faculty~ staff, and families who use UHs. Is it possibl~ for.Yale to find a balance between patients' right to know about all their options and patients' right to get medical service in a non-politicized environment? Yale only needs to look to the example set by the Griswold-eta doctors to see that political controversy need not inhibit the practice of medicine. Dr. Vuginia Stuermer, who worked at the Planned Parenthood clinic, recollected, "On the day Dr. Buxton and Mrs. Griswold were arrested I was running the clinic. And I came in the door and they said to me 'Dr. Stuermer, the cops are here. What should we do? And I said, 'We should see the patients."'

i~ [}{] & l1YAJ & Japanese Restaurant

*

BEST JAPANES E - S~t:e R.u.n.nec-Up CT Magazinl!' Rl!'ader's Choicl!' Poll I998-2oou B EST JAPANESE - N~ Haven C ount:y CT M agazinl!' RI!'<Ukrs' Choicl!' Poli I998-2oou Dinner. .. Su n day- T h ursday s:oo pm - 9:30p m

* Emily Anth~. a foshman in Davmport Co/kg~. and &nita Singh, a sophomo" in Bmnford Co/kg~. a" on thntajfo[TNJ.

o

UlJsJq

Lunch ...

C'atelia& 0

{!5 OcToBER 19, 2001

Friday - Sacurday 4:45 pm - IO:oo pm Monu ay- l-'riday II:JO am - :l.:JO pm

"'1 206 Dixwe ll A v enue. Hamd en

203-281-4542 FAX. 2 03- 407- "'165"'1

25

overns? ~

cian, but he remained mentally ill and homeless. I started to win more of my weekly chess games at Harmony Place, but that was because my opponents were usually high on crack.

Last summer, I did not know what to do. I didn't want to move again, so I ended up in New Haven, figuring I could work for one of its hundreds of do-gooder organizations. But when June came, I was still floating and unsatisfied., Then, I had a number of long conversations with a friend who was working on the "DeStefano for Mayor" campaign, and I watched the ftcst debate between mayoral

ical leadership in Fair Haven because they had been consistently frustrated at the apathy and incompetence of the existing leaders. In Fair Haven, which comprises three of New Haven's 30 political wards (wards 14> 15, and 16) and q,ooo of its 120,000 residents, democracy seemed to be failing.

The three Fair Haven aldermen had been in power for a decade, and we believed they had done harm. Their unchallenged leadership was perpetuated by a lack of effort to register new voters in the part of the city that consistently attracts the largest number of new residents. They supported the reopening of an antiquated power plant in

Daisy Montafiez is out on the streets of Fair Haven every day running a neighborhood trash collection operation to keep Fair Haven clean. All kinds of other leaders, activists, and community members came forward during the Fair Haven campaign, united in their conviction that Fair Haven's people deserved better. The three aldermen remain the same, but the Fair Haven Democratic Party is radically different.

There were no limits last summer.

Anyone could ask for anything, especially when they asked together.

The issue-based nature of the aldermanic campaigns effected change on at

It's a P91i-t ical campaign, not a non-profit. The goal is .to win. candidates DeStefano and State Senator Martin Looney. I began working on the campaign afrer a long conversation with Campaign Manager Julio Gonzalez, who reminded me that the "DeStefano for Mayor" campaign was not a tutoring program or a community development corporation. "It's a political campaign, and the goal is to win," he told me. "We want to win for good reasons. But we are not a nonprofit. Are you sure this is what you want to do?"

I was not sure. I spent hours that night thinking a.b out whether power really corrupts, and anticipating all the dirty, distasteful things I would see happen throughout the summer. I never guessed that I would be spending my Thursday nights in July in the yellow-walled People's laundromat.

At first, I couldn't conceive of anything revolutionary about the reelection of a four-term mayor. But then I realized one of the major goals of the campaign was to change the Democratic Party in New Haven by reaching o ut to everyone. Several of the Mayor's supporters were determined to find and support new Democratic polit0croBER 19, 2001

their neighborhood, English Station, even though New Haven already has the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state of Connecticut. Prostitution and drug-dealing remain prevalent in many sections of Fair Haven. Yet all three of its representatives have voted against allocating resources to Fair Haven when they cannot directly contrOl them.

There had not been a serious challenge to the aldermanic seats in Fair Haven for . longer than most residents could remember. The "DeStefano for Mayor" campaign ran candidates against the three incumbents. All three lost, but our campaign registered and pulled 300 new Democratic voters in Fair Haven, uniting passionate people from different pans of Fair Haven as well as creating votes for DeStefano. For the first time in years, people were talkin.g about issues, about change, about the future. The voting rolls were growing. A serious, impassioned debate developed.

More people in Fair Haven voted than in any of the past four mayoral primaries.

Kevin Walton ran for alderman of Ward 14¡ His eyes light up when he talks about the basketball team he coaches.

least one of the issues, even though our candidates did not win. When I wrote an "Energy Plan" for New Haven for the campaign this summer, one of my suggestions was that the city should acquire English Station, to make sure that it can never reopen in a way that is destructive to the people near it. I just found out that the city is actually working to do this. The aldermen retracted their unanimous support of the reopening of the English Station power plant and even apologized for ever supporting it. This means that the people of Fair Haven can count on at least one line of defense against environmental racism.

This summer I never wanted to leave work. Sometimes I didn't. I spent more than a few nights under my desk at the office. For the first time, I felt like I was doing more than fostering dependency. I was a part of the fluid organism that is democracy-something that can be as radical, daring, and open as people are willing to make it.

Sushma Gandhi, a junior in Saybrook Coliege, is on the staffofTNJ. 27

an I

N

THE DAYS AFTER SEPTEMBER

11,

Donald

Kagan, a Yale professor of history and classics, threw himself into the campus debate.

In a guest column in the Yale Daily News on September 18, Kagan called. for vigilance, criticizing the likes of professor Paul Kennedy and globalization guru ¡ Strobe Talbott for going soft ton terrorism and "blaming the victim." He wrote, "Such voices as those of Kennedy and Talbott are always available in countries such as ours.

Their grievances about various aspects of our own country lead them co seek the causes of any troubles in us and to urge understanding of our enemies." Kagan likened Kennedy and Talbott to the intellectuals who advocated appeasement as Hitler rose to power.

In While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military W'eakness, and the Threat to Peace Today (20oo), a book Kagan co-wrote with his son Frederick, a professor at West Point, the authors criticize us military policy over the last decade, and match Kagan's attacks on Kennedy ¡ and Talbott in forwardness and theme. The Kagans viciously pick apart us military policy, arguing that the world did not become safe with the fall of the Soviet Union and that the United Scates is ultimately responsible for this lapse in security. The book was at once frightening and affurning for me, a pacifist Iowan who has never expressed interest in foreign policy. It immersed me in the harsh language of Cold War realism for the first time. And though it seemed strange at the time, the language thrilled me. Instead of

shaking my head while reading it, I found myself asking, "Why am I suddenly obsessed with war?"

"In the war of 2020, certainly, of 2010, possibly, perhaps even earlier, America will not be immune to direct attack anymore."

This one sentence confers a new relevance on the book today. lc is sweeping, bold, abrasive, and tragically prescient. But is it adequately explained by the writers' analysis?

Much of the book draws on official documents and statements of policy-makers. Colin Powell ominously notes, "there will be a next time; there always is."

Clinton's Secretary of State William Perry states in words which now sound naive, "It's an entirely implausible scenario that we'd fight two wars at once." :And Senator Les Aspin proposes a sweeping threat-based military policy chat stands in stark contrast co the more absolute policy the Kagans favor. The authors shape the actors involved like literary characters. Aspin is impatient and misdirected. Dick Cheney is heroic and sagacious. In fact, each politician is disturbingly two-dimensional. The writers' political agenda is supported just enough by the ideas and writings of others to make the book palatable.

But the intentions of its authors are clear. America is falling down, the world is getting nasty, and something has to be done. The Kagans argue that the United States is in a position to suffer the same face as Britain did in the 1930s: We are tangled in a web of"pseudoengagements" similar co

those that drew England into World War II. Pseudoengagements, as the authors define them, are limited in scope and direction. They have the look of full-scale operations, minus the clear conclusion. For example, Slobodan Milosevic remained in power for several years after our intervention in the Balkans. An effective operation would have deposed him immediately; our "pseudoengagement" left him in control.

The lesson of the book is simple: Obliterating an opponent is a controversial plan of action, but not finishing the job is much worse.

Why, according to the.Kagans, has our policy grown weak? "The 'Viemarn syndrome' continues to paralyze American leaders." The United States refuses to touch anything that might escalate or de-escalate without warning, and is afraid of any engagement chat might claim American lives. Volatility is una.ttractive to policymakers, especially after the turbulence of the 6os and 70s. The Kagans realize this and warn, "There is no escape from the responsibility of judgment and no reason to believe that inaction is safer than action." ~erica's definicion of war changed again after the Iraqi conflict, they say. "It is noc enough to win; the victory must come at almost no cost ... engagement muse noc be prolonged, must entail no casualties, and, muse, almost always, avoid the use of ground forces." The Gulf War created a new model. Shaky engagements are now acceptable, so long as American.s are not hurr.

THE NEW JouRNAL

The authors argue that the United States has inexcusably failed to deter aggression worldwide. Since 1991 "declarations of false victories" have inflated American confidena, while the rest of the world shifted and sagged and schemed against us. Our Somalian campaign failed, our Haiti campaign was ineffective, Bosnia still requires constant intervention, Iraq is rebuilding its forces, and North Korea is still harboring weapons of mass destruction.

Forget specific examples for a moment. The authors' most disturbing conclusion is general: "Pseudoengagement has had the same effect in America as it had in England-it has gravely complicated the efforts of those who favor real engagement to make their case." Kagan voiced this concern even more direcdy in his September 18 editorial. Intellectuals, he says, are always cla.rnoring for peace. understanding, and rationality. But what happens when the irrational becomes reality? What happens when buildings fall down? What if the minority, that militant, unpopular minority. is absolutely correcr.? And what if no one listens?

Even ifAmerica has gone about things the wrong way, blatant aggression seems dangerous and foolish to many. The authors recognize this sentiment, knowing full well that almost everyone in his or her right mind rejects aggression in the abstract. They also seem to realize that they are perceived as both radical conservatives and self-aggrandizing intellectuals. The cleverness of Whik America Skeps lies in the way they compensate for this perception by grounding their discussion in numbers and reasonable-sounding observations: •It is not clear that the high-technology weapons our forces now use can be massproduced quickly." "By 1998 . . . the us Army and us Marine Corps active force lttucture bad been reduced to only 661,000 · .. The United States does not fight wars within margins so tight.• "The Gulf coalition has shattered; NATO and the United States risk drifting apan. Challengers of the 11atus quo proliferate, along with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.•

0cro&BR 19, 2001

I am living in an uncertain world. And as I cast about for a theory that will contexrualize the government's actions in Afghanistan, I can't help but entertain what the Kagans say: We have shown bow military weakness, combined with the desire to ignore unpleasant international realities, has led America to abandon control of the international scene, shirk its responsibilities, and place global stability and its own security in jeopardy ... has America allowed its military might to run down so far that the cost of restoring it might drive future administrations faced with real warning signs to ignore the dangers or seek unrealistic solutions? The answer, again, we fear, is yes.

I'm a quiet guy from the Midwest, who has never shot a gun. Yet I sit in my room, waiting for another tragedy, praying that Kagan is wrong, that any future conilia will be simple. If he is right, I hope I am not the only one who has tried to listen.

BEr:~ Malaysian ((fusion" c . sine

.......,...,.,..,,.

10~ JJiftiiW'Pe t,

inth Square) 562-25IL

..

Clint Carrol/, a sophomo~ in Branford Co/kg~. is a circulation and subscriptions manager for TN].

cut flowers in town!

Balloons and Plants.

(203) 772.2229 fax (203) 562.6004 michadsflowersltd.com 26 Whimcy Av~nue. New Haven )oo......lolw""""'t.londT....,.o..p.~

316 Elm St ., New Haven, CT 065 11 Tel. : (203) 562-8800 (203) 5@-9983 Business Hours: Mon - SaL: 11 :00 am - 2:00 am Sunday: 12:00 noon - 11 :00 pm

111111.

Black Hawk Helicopter, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, Stratford, CT In 1919, Igor Sikorsky fled the Russian Revolution for New York. Four years later, he founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation and went on to design and build the world's first helicopter. He designed them to be maneuverable for Improved search and rescue. ·1f a man Is In need of rescue, an airplane can come In and throw flowers on him, and that's just about all. w Today, Sikorsky is best known for combat aircraft, but its website still touts stories

In the current conflict, Black Hawks play a central role In US milltory strategy. Afghanistan's mountainous terrain makes hellcopters the c ombat vehicle of choice. America has already moved Black Hawk helicopters Into neighboring Uzbekistan, and the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk is now stationed in nearby waters to be used as a · my pad· for helicopter landings and special operations. While United Technologies Co. <UTC), Sikorsky' s parent company, saw its stock plummet after September 11 , chairman George David believes that defense spending will pull them through once again.

Last year. Congress gave $297 million to Colombia for new military expenditures in the War on Drugs.

This will Include the purchase of at least 18 new Sikorsky Black Hawks. Not mentioned on the Sikorsky website Is the use of Its helicopters In Colombia' s 40-year-old civil war. Assistant Secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Rand Beers, has sold, · The governments of Colombia and the United States don't discriminate between who is the drug trafficker and the •

Without extensive U.S. training, Colombia seems unable to properly manage the new hellcopters It has received as part of the War on Drugs. Last February, former drug czar Barry McCaffrey sold, ·You can't just send machinery .. .

You've got to train the crews .. .

(Several years ago) I flew In there and looked at (the Colombians) painting over the near $100,000-plus-radarreflective paint job so they could get 'Ejerclto de Colombia' on the tailbone.·

In the 1980s, Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd was known for his vocal opposition to President Reagan's interventionist policies In Central America, especially with regard to Nicaragua. However. he voted in favor of Plan Colombia last year. UTC has donated at least $38.000 to Senator Dodd and $33,500 to Senator Joseph Ueberman in the last six years.

Meanwhile, after signing a $217 million multi-year defense contract last May. Sikorsky has hired new workers in Connecticut. UTC Is the state's largest employer; Sikorsky alone is the tenth largest.

Next March, Sony Pictures will release Black Hawk Down. a patriotic action flick about a crashed hellcopter In Somalia and the values Americans hold most dear. In Deeds. another upcoming film.

Sikorsky's s-92 Is the stylish ride of a big-time buSInessman. According to the Sikorsky website. ·There Is an old Hollywood adage that actors should not share a stage with animals and children. as they are certain to steal the scene. Add to that a Sikorsky hellcopter.·

judith Miller, a junior in Berluky Colkgt!, is on thntaffoJTNJ. THE NEW JouRNAl.