Volume 34 - Issue 5 by The New Journal at Yale

PuBLISHER

Eric Rut/tow EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Dank/ KurtrrP!xlan MANAGING EDITORS

]Nica Cohm, Matthrw Undmvood DESIGN £It

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MichMl &ilxl PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Santiago Mostyn

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TheNewJournal

Volume 34, Number 5 April2002

FEATURES

Crossing Enemy Lines The Yale Polict department seeks to mend civic wounds by blurring age-old boundaries. by Daniel Kurn-Phelan

Silent Treatment Can Yak's stxual harassment policy avert disaster? by Emily Breunig

Ladies' Night Lust and longing at the Red Hot Pony Express. by C hristopher Heaney

STANDARDS 4

Points of Departure Shots in the Dade Prelude by Santiago Mostyn

Essay: The Hidden Curriculum by Blalt~ Wilson

Essay: Nobody Waits at Walgreens by Matth~w Schn~id~r-Maytrson

The Critical Angle: This is rhe Way the World Ends by jacob B/uh~r r~vi~wing Th~

Translator by john Crowley Endnote: Walk This Way by }mica Cohm

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The Persistence of Memory An elegant young woman stares down at the director of the New Haven Colony Historical Society as he works in his office, a constant reminder that the eyes of history are upon him. The director must decide what he owes the portrait. Is he a guest in her room, or she a guest in his? The Historical Society has long been a refuge from contemporary New Haven. Inside, cows still graze on che New Haven Green. Yet even the Society has not escaped the forces that have changed the city. Strolling through the galleries, I couldn't help but notice that I was alone, and I began to wonder if the Society itself was poised to fade away like so much of New Haven's past. For answers about the Society's past and its prospects for the future, I turned to former Executive Director Richard Hegel and current Executive Director Peter Lamothe. Hegel was the Society's Executive Director in the late 1960s, "the Golden Age, back when everything was perfect." Now 74, he is still on the Board of Directors, and a quintessential old-timer, always genteel. Lamothe, at 31, is the bright new hope. He came co New Haven to run the society in April of 2000 with extensive experience in the museum field, first at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which runs Monticello, then at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. He speaks like a professional. "Historical societies and museums are moving away from being a trailitionally product-oriented organization and more into the service and experience industry." In other words, the Society is not just a resource for people to come and use; it should reach out and offer them new experiences. Like most rooms in the Historical Society, the director's office has a fireplace. Inside it is Benedict Arnold's wrought-iron chimneypiece, from 1771. Staunch Arnold fans,

sifring through the society's archives, might also find the sign from his New Haven drugstore and his waste book, along with a silver tankard owned by Jonathan Edwards, a piece of Daniel Webster's deathbed, and endless other stuff that suaddles the fine line berween historical gems and oddball exotica. Such relics inspired the Society's founding. To the founders, history was a

family affair, passed along in heirlooms and stories. However, by the 186os, some of New Haven's citizens sensed that times were changing and this was no lo nger sufficient. What co do with these memories, this scuff? In 1862, they founded the Society. The emphasis on family history attracted not only antiquarians, but people like Mary Ellen Hotchkiss, the elegant young woman on Lamothe's wall, who fused the Historical Society with high society. This association helped to sustain the Society for years, but after World War II, the old famjjjes began to move to the suburbs, and the Society lost one of its mainstays of support. "It was always broke," remembers Hegel. "Every rime it would rain, Ogden [President William Ogden Ross] and I would go up to the steel grid beneath the roof and push buckets around on the I-beams to catch the water so it wouldn't leak through the ceiling." Fundraising was a personal affair. For

one exhibition, Hegel and the president approached a donor for $xo,ooo. The president said, "You're familiar with what we can do, and we can do it well." The donor responded, "My arrorney will mail you a check for SIO,ooo." Once a show goes up, believes Hegel, the quality must speak for itselÂŁ "If you have a well-presented exhibit, it will attract." The 18TH century tableware exhibit irks Lamothe more than almost anything. Aside from the tableware itself, there is nothing attractive about it. The room is dim and claustrophobic, the tableware crammed into small cases, some of them so poorly located that a normal-sized viewer staniling upright will find himself staring not at colonial-era china, but at cheap, painted plywood ilisplay walls. Lamothe sees this "culture of mediocrity" as endemic to the Society he inherited. "I'm trying to smash that culture." Gesturing with his arm, he tells me that the entire display will soon be cleared away. "We're going to use this space to bouse a new special exhibition gallery. Our first show will be a photography exhibition on redevelopment and the Oak Street neighborhood." The redevelopment exhibit is part of Lamothe's effort to move the Society away from its focus on 18TH and 19TH century history. One of his first exhibits was on contemporary New Haven architects, which attracted 6oo people. The society also collaborated with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas on "The 1901 Project," which represented turn-of-the~cenrury life through everyday items, like the steamer trunk that brought a family's possessions across from Europe. The crowds were so large that people had to be turned away. The difference berween Hegel and Lamothe isn't exactly that they disagree. It's that they agree while saying completely different things. To Lamothe, the Society is outdated and in need of reform. In Hegel's view, the society remains, and will remain, a place that interested people will seek out. Lamothe feels there are too many people THE

N.ew JouRNAL

who don't yet know they're interested. Mary Ellen Hotchkiss watches Lamothe every day as he struggles to modernize the Society. However, she may not be watching for much longer. When I asked Lamothe about the portrait, he shrugged. ''I'm going to clear some of this stuff out of here. I want to put up some contemporary photography." -Anthony Weiss

that high school athletes in Vernonia, Oregon, could be required to submit to mandatory drug tests. But in Vernonia there was evidence of widespread drug use among athletes. At Tecumseh, there was no such evidence: Only five of 500 students tested in recent years have shown up positive for drug use. In fact, students involved in an extracurricular activity like choir seemed even less likely than the general

Courts ide On March 19, Graham Boyd, a New Haven-based lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, went to court. Not just any court. He represented Lindsay Earls before the Supreme Court of the United States. When Earls, now a freshman at Dartmouth, was a sophomore at Tecumseh High School in Oklahoma, she was required as a member of the afterschool choir to give a urine sample to check for marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and steroids. Earls filed suit against the school board that had ordered the test, claiming it was an infringement of her constitutional rights. The ACLU took her case, and it slowly percolated through the judicial system, ending up in the Supreme Court. At five o'clock that morning, I stood shivering under a dark morning sky; I could just make out the words "Equal Justice Under The Law" glaring down at me. The argument was scheduled to begin at 10 AM, but public tickets were given out on a first come, first served basis. I had five hours to wait. Boyd, who graduated from Yale College in 1987 and Yale Law School in 1992, oversees the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project out of its New Haven office. This case, Board of Education v. Earls, Number 01-332, seemed simple. Boyd would argue that testing students just because they are involved in extracurricular activities is a violation of a provision of the Fourth Amendment-the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. What made the case more complicated, however, was that Tecumseh High School's policy seemed only a modest expansion of a drug testing policy approved in a 1995 case. Then, the Supreme Court had ruled

APRIL 2002

population to be using drugs--a key point in Boyd's argument. A few minutes after ten, a dull buzzing noise filled the court's main chamber, and a hush senled over the observers and litigants. The Crier swung his gavel down on a wooden block. We all stood as he announced, "The honorable, the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Oyez, oyez, oyez." From behind the fl~wing curtains, the justices emerged in unison, clad in long black gowns. The simultaneous low buzz, whoosh of the curtain, and sudden appearance of nine of the most influential people in the world was overwhelming. I felt like I was watching a play, everything scripted and performed a thousand times before. As soon as Linda Meoli, the lawyer representing the Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, began her argument, I realized this performance would not go as planned. Before Meoli could get out a sentence, Justice O'Connor broke in with an unrelated question. Then Justice Souter noted that the Tecumseh school district has shown a

very low incidence of drug use, to which Justice Rehnquist caustically replied on Meoli's behalf, "The existence of th~ policy might be expected to deter drug use, wouldn't it?" Justice Ginsberg, in a slow and roundabout response, drew a crucial distinction between the last drug testing case and this one. Through it all, the argument was easy to follow; the questions were supremely logical and free oflegalese, based on straightforward common sense. Boyd took the podium after an intense half-hour of argument dominated by questions from Meoli's opponents on the bench. The justices that laid low during Meoli's argument sprang to life when Boyd approached the podium. Scalia brought his chair to its upright position, Kennedy stared intensely, and Rehnquist's eyes flashed red. (Only Justice Thomas, his undivided attention apparently devoted to the ceiling, remained aloof during both arguments.) At points during Boyd's argument, intensity grew to anger. Kennedy, presenting to Boyd a hypothetical scenario, referred to a school that did not test for drugs as "the druggie school." "No parent," he continued, "would send a child to that school-except maybe your client." This personal attack seemed strangely out of line, especially since Earls had tested negative for drug use. Both sides finished, and I descended from the highest court in the land in a daze. Both lawyers had endured a mental firing squad of the sharpest shooters in the country; just watching took it out of me. From the sea of supporters for both sides, I watched Lindsay Earls, my age exactly, walk down the front steps of the Supreme Court, the words "Equal Justice Under the Law" looming above her. Something clicked. Equal justice means accessible justice. Lindsey Earls, a regular teenager from a small town in Oklahoma had a problem with the way her school conducted business, and it turned our to be important enough for the most influential judicial figures in the world to puzzle through. The Court will release its ruling on her case this SUfll..\Der. -Flora Lichtman

Damn the Man "Very very few students . . . who come through social programs at Dwight Hall go on ro jobs and careers that affect the social conditions in the community of New Haven or any O[her community, as far as I know," George Edwards says as he sits in the Dwight Hall common room. 37 years ago, Edwards was o n campus for the first time in this very room, jolting Yalies out of their wide-eyed stupor at a Students for a Democradc Society meeting. H e's been around ever since, but chat's made him no less pissed off. Edwards is proud to be a pain in the ass, continually bothering institutions like Yale and the city government. His criticism of Yale's community-related programs is biting. "You look at the last 35 years, and there's a serious march to power at Yale to take almost total control of the institutional power ... in the city of New Haven. I don't think it looks good for the future of the power of the people in this city." He recaJis his first days in New Haven with pride. " I think what I had to say then was quite shocking to the persons present because I was advocating armed struggle as a revolutionary thrust, and that was frightening -even my presence while I was talking." He has agitated, demonstrated, and been arrested countless times in the past three decades as a Black Panther and advocate for social justice. Edwards and his friends used to barge into New Haven public schools, demanding inclusion of black studies in the curriculum. They called themselves the Angry Young Black Men. Today, such tactics seem inappropriate co some. "People say I'm antiquated, I should shut up, retire, don't come to this meeting, oh there he goes again, here he comes again, oh my God he's got something ro say, he's gonna say something, he's gonna upstage everybody." Edwards does not refme those accusations. He does not seem ro mind them. "I think that I would be absolutely mad ifl didn't activate or give something back. I know that I would. I probably wouldn't even be sitting here--l'd probably be dead." For Edwards, activism is not a hobby, but an identity. He has not budged from his revolutionary rnindsec; chat is obvious in his every word. He is convinced that the World

Trade Center bombing was an "inside job." He carries around anri-war propaganda, slapping posters on bulletin boards and greeting students he knows with a kind word. Speaking to Edwards sends you back to 197o-to a much older, tenser New Haven. For nearly as long as Edwards has been an activist, Yale studems have written senior essays, seminar papers, and journalistic accounts of New Haven-and George Edwards--in the late sixties. But Edwards can't think of himself as a historical figure. He is reticent about his role in the famous trial of Bobby Seale, preferring to talk philosophy. I am sicring face to face with a liv-

Morand now from the Mike Morand of '84, '85, '86. It's like a chameleon." Yale srudent activists recogniu: and even agree with Edwards' concerns, but hardly ever implicate themselves as sellouts. "I would guess there are some of us who don't [sell out]. But without a doubt, many of us will go on to work in banking, consulting, industry, fmance, hi-tech, or corporate law," says Justin Ruben, a Forestry student active in anri-globalizarion efforts who bas spoken with Edwards about his own work. Despite their differences, Yalies keep coming back to Edwards, and Edwards keeps corning back to them. Through the course of our discussion, Edwards softens his rone. "I've had community people, white and black, tell me, 'Why are you wasting your rime with Yale students?' ... but how can you denounce Yale students for being involved? People have studies, they have their own lives, they're youngyou have to put things in perspective." -Victoria Trusch~it

Toy Soldiers

George Edwards. center

ing, reluctant historical document. Though he is willing co help students with their scholarly analysis, he does not distinguish what he has lived through from what he is living now. Students, decades removed from Edwards' Panther years, make a distinction between then and now. Edwards does not. Edwards is still doing what he's always done. His message hasn't changed since his days as a Panther: Stop exploiting us! His cynicism has grown from direct interaction with Yale and the New Haven political machine, and the short attention span of Yale activists infuriates him. " I've seen infiltrators that get acknowledged as the activist srudent heroes, and ten years later, they cut the long hair, take off the ragged jeans and sneakers. They have two or three degrees from the university, and they're in the office, suit and rie, giving orders as an administrator. Case in point: Mike Morand. He was the leading anti-apartheid student activist. He's almost Secretary of the University. You wouldn't know Mike

Sergeant First Class {Retired) Jose L. Romero marches back and forth at the head of the room. "Who here can recite the cadet creed without srurnbling?" he barks. Student after srudent steps up. They all begin the same way, speeding through the memorized words, but eventually trip up and burst into laughter. Romero is disgusted. "I tell you what, I'm going ro pick on o ne boy, and if he can't recite the creed, all the boys are going ro drop and give me fifty." When his chosen victim fails to recite it perfectly, he reminds them of what they discussed the day before: "You know what they say? They say black schools and inner city schools are the most difficult.... On Monday I talked to you about respect and discipline. Do I need to make you sir with your palms on the table again? The first thing [that goes wrong], guess what, I'm going to lynch you right our there: he says, pointing past the American Aag by the window, "and then I'm going to burn a taco so they know it was me." He calls our to a girl who has already failed her first anempr to recite the creed. "Williams, you said you were going ro come up here." "I can't, sir. . My hearr is beating!" "You're weak!" He screams, pointing at her violently.

TH E NEW jOURNAL

"Everybody drop and give me ten!" The entire class drops to the floor and begins to do the push-ups. When they are done, he calls six students to the front. They recite the creed in unison: I am an army ]ROTC cadet. I will always conduce myself to bring credit co my family, country, school and corps of cadets. I am loyal and patriotic. I am the future of the United States of America. I do not lie, cheat, Âˇ or steal and will always be accountable for my actions and deeds. I will always practice good citizenship and patriotism. I will work hard to improve my mind and strengthen my body. I will seek the mantle of leadership and stand prepared co uphold che constitution and the American way of life. May God grant me the strength to live by this creed.

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The whole process cakes half a class period. Suddenly, the bell rings, and the students erupt out of their seats and dash to the door. This is the }ROTc's second year in operation at Hillhouse High School, a sprawling, newly renovated building on Sherman Parkway with mostly black and Hispanic students. For four years, Principal Lonnie Garris, a former ROTC cadet himself, lobbied to bring the program to H illhouse in spite of bureaucratic red tape and community opposition. As Dana Charles, a senior ]ROTC cadet, explains, "Parents and a Joe of people were against it, because they thought it promoted violence. They signed petitions. They thought we would be using guns." }ROTC is not the military's only means of gaining access co Hillhouse students. Recruiters regularly come into the school cafeteria ac lunch and stop students in the hallways. According to cadet Shana Barton, recruiters will say anything to get a student to enlist. "My recruiter wasn't telling me [important information] cause he wanted me to join right then .... They get paid more money if they recruit more." While students are suspicious of recruiters, they see retired Colonel Donald B. Leazott, the }ROTC director, as an ally. The military is anxious co distinguish }ROTC from its direct

APRJL 2002

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recruitment programs. On the school's website, the JROTC at Hillhouse says its mission is "To motivate young people to be better citizens." Above all, Colonel Leazott wanes to emphasize that his program is not a recruitment tool. "We don't work with recruiters," he insists. "We are not a recruiting program." Yet Shanavia Swepson, a freshmi'-n cadet, says that after joining JROTC "mostly everybody I know, most of the boys and some of the girls" are planning to join the military. Whatever the party line about the military's intent, it seems the effect of JROTC is to encourage enlistment. And Marilyn DeJesus, a second year cadet, recalls Army Sergeant Dorsey coming into the classroom several times. Her experience is typical. "[Before joining JROTC] when I thought about the army, I thought about wars. But it's not really like that. I had a whole different perspective. Sergeant Dorsey cleared that up for me." Now she says she is going into Basic Training this summer. Many of the other students with whom I spoke experienced similar conversions after joining }ROTC. " Before, I was not serious about joining the military," said Charles, who was just accepted into West Point. "Then Sergeant Romero taught us about West Point in class ... [and the Colonel] drove me up to visit." Some parents and others worry that students are making uninformed decisions with serious repercussions. Joanne Sheehan, the New England coordinator of the War Resistors League, regularly goes into schools to give kids the information the military leaves out. To a girl like Barton, whose recruiter promised a job in "eng ineering," Sheehan would explain, "The actual assignment you get is completely at the discretion of the military." And beware, Sheehan warns, the promises of increased earning power. "Most job training in the military is not transferable to the real world," she explains. "One of the most potent recruiting tools is the notion that if you enlist it will pay for your education." Unfortunately, she says, "Statistics show that few people are able to take advantage of [this money]." And with increased reserve deplovment after September 11, enlistment itself may be a question of life and death. After the JROTC class ends, I ask DeJesus what she would do if she changed

THE NEW JouRNAL

her mind about going to war after enlisting. She looks puzzled. ''I'd probably get myself kicked out, or ask for permission to leave." Did she know what might happen to her? "I think you get disciplined or something." In fact, she could be jailed or dishonorably discharged. Had the Colonel or the Sergeant ever talked about stuff like that? Marilyn laughs. "They wouldn't want us to get a bad opinion about the army. They wouldn't want to talk about the real things." I ask her if she knows how long she will be committed to the army if she enlists. "I'm not really sur~I think it's two years minimum." The minimum commitment is eight years, two of active duty and six in the reserves, during which time you can always be called into active duty. I asked her if she has ever done any research beyond asking her recruiter and Colonel Leazott about how enlistment works or about her rights once there. She shakes her head. "I pretty much know the things I need to know."

-Sophie Raseman

Home Economics The Prince Elementary School m New Haven's Hill neighborhood stands across the street from the Welch Annex School. Neither one has an auditorium. They share an insufficient library. The weedy playing field that serves both schools extends over less than a quarter of an acre. It had been clear for years that the schools needed renovation. In fact, the city began planning to fix them seven years ago. So when the news that they would be rebuilt finally came, some neighborhood residents were pleasantly surprised. For 18 families, however, the news was bittersweet: Their homes would be demolished in the process. The reconstruction of Prince and Welch Elementary schools, slated to begin in the coming months, is part of a school construction program launched in 1996. After a facilities review determined that 40 percent of New Haven's schools are at least 50 years old, Mayor John DeStefano began Âˇ a comprehensive $I.I billion rebuilding program that has been applauded as his great service and legacy to New Haven. Not since the 1960s has New Haven undertaken such a grand-scale project in the city's schools. And never before has the ciry garnered the energy and funds to create

APRIL 2002

schools that will rival those of the best districts across the nation. This past f.ill, Mayor DeStefano's campaign literature reminded voters of his pledge to build improved schools with state-of-the-art facilities. But the residents of the Hill North neighborhood don't feel the benefits of the ciry's vast program. In a last plea from the Hill's Hispanic residents to save their homes from imminent demolition, messages such as "Guarda este hagar" are written on boarded windows. Only last August, one year after the site for the new school had been chosen, Hill resident Sheryl Horner learned that she was living on the school's new site. Horner's mother, who lives on the second floor of her home, still has no place to go. "There are just no houses for the amount of money she's being offered [by the ciry]," Horner tells me. According to Pastor Ruth Drews of Resurrection Lutheran Church, the owners of homes with a market value of $65,000 have been offered only $3o,ooo from the city. One family was able to obtain a generous $61,000 from the city for a home with a market value of$74,245 only after they hired a private attorney. Hill North residents finally mobilized in January as part of Save the Upper Hill Now (SUHN), "a neighborhood association for justice and rebuilding in the upper hill." Community meetings were held and residents, organized by Pastor Drews, pre-

sented the Mayor with a list of demands, including an immediate cessation of evictions and the organization of four more site committee meetings. At a meeting organized by SUHN on March 26, Mayor DeStefano rejected each of the organization's demands. And he continues to counter the accusations that the site selection process cook place behind closed doors. "The site selection and hearing process occurred over a three year period," DeStefano asserts. ''Ads were placed in newspapers, articles were written." The public hearings included Mayor's Night Out, where the first announcement of the site selection cook place in the f.ill of 1998. "I don't go to a Mayor's Night Out to find out that a school construction project is going to result in the demolition of houses in my backyard," Pastor Drews says. According to Drews, the letters about the public hearings were misdirected and sent to old addresses that were no longer correct. "The city's mailing list for this neighborhood was at least seventeen years old." The voice of Hill residents appears to have surfaced too late. City officials insist that the outreach efforts in the Hill neighborhood were exhaustive and that it is simply too late to begin a new site selection process. "$3.5 million has already been spent," says Communications Director of the New Haven Public Schools Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo. "That's a lot of money."

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H ad Hill residents instigated their protest earlier, would the city have responded to their requests? When residents in the East Rock neighborhood learned that the school renovation plan included the demolition of residents' homes, a committee of parents immediately put together an extensive report on 22 alternative sites and hired a lawyer ~o defend their property against the city's claim of eminent domain. David Cameron, a Yale professor and East Rock resident, recalls that the construction project was halted and the Mayor "created a different, m ore public process." Pastor Drews remains convinced that "that middle-class neighborhood of East Rock was treated incredibly differently." Sitting in her office, which is cluttered with drafts of sermons and city contracts, Pastor D rews contends "that it would seem to me in the u.s. you give equal treatment to neighborhoods of all classes. This is a poor, disempowered neighborhood, and it's difficult for people to see that they can oppose this." Drews believes that the apathy of Hill residents should have motivated the city to reach out to the community, and Cameron agrees. "Residents in East Rock most likely had more sources of information, more resources. We got information that the Hill residents weren't able to get." Walking down Ward Street, Pastor Drews points out three houses just named as part of a historic district that will soon be demolished. "These houses have been home to immigrants for 100 years and they are still standing," Drews says, "Even immigrants of modest means, a hundred years ago, were provided housing that had dignity, design and enabled them to live with a sense of respect. Now it's just blight." But the blight that we so often associate with neglect tells a different story in the Hill neighborhood-the story of residents trying too late to empower themselves; and a city trying too hard to do what's best.

Women aren't funny. That's the impression you get from watching them in comedy shows at Yale. But as a seven-year veteran of ari all-female education, I knew women could be talented comedians. I hoped that

THE NEW JouRNAL

I would find the same in college. But here, humor seems to be a man's domain in the performance world. When Marisa Bass told me she was starting an all-female comedy group, I was thrilled. The first show's sketches were diverse, spoofing everything from a cappella singing to Jesus Christ. It wasn't the funniest show I'd ever seen, but it was a good start. Bass' ensemble--the Sphincter Troupe--is a first step in liberating the Funny Woman at Yale. As it turns out, the group wasn't trying to liberate anyone. Rather, when they decided to start an all-female group, they were only trying to do something fresh. "The Fifth Humor was here first, so anyone else has to do something different to have a reason to be here," says Bass. Founding the Troupe was in part a reaction to the Fifth Humor. "[Co-founder] Jessica [Cohen] and I would go to Fifth Humour shows and see that the guys wrote all the sketches and the women didn't have any good parts," Bass says. "It didn't seem to me like it was because the girls weren't funny, but because the parts that were written for them didn't allow them to be funny." Unlike any other comedy group at Yale, in the Sphincter Troupe women write, direct, and perform their own work. And in an allfemale rehearsal environment, they can relax, be creative, and have fun. "What really works about our group is that everyone listens to each other," Bass says. "We like each other, we spend time together, we don't have internal fights in the group, and I think it comes across in our shows that we're having fun, which makes the shows funnier." But taking men out of the equation may only perperuare the problem by suggesting that women can't match men joke for joke when they share the stage. The fact remains that in co-ed performances, women aren't quite pulling their weight. Take the Fifth Humor as an example. As a general rule, Humor women don't write sketches and have not yet directed or produced any of the group's shows. The women play the parts of wives or daughters or talk show hosts-mere supporting roles. Adam Wells, president of the Fifth Humor, says this is because "the sketches are written by males for males. Sketch ideas are hard to come up with, and when you think of an idea you want ro write it. You don't want to pur it off just to write a sketch with girls in

APRIL 2.002.

it." According to him, the process is not a conscious attempt to exclude women from comedy. Rather, ic's a response to the fact that most comedic archetypes are male. "When you're looking to make fun of a historical figure or a certain profession, you're going to think of a guy, because it is so much more common for those figures to be men." Wells argues further that letting women play these roles complicates what could otherwise be straightforwardly funny. "A big part of the success of a sketch is figuring out what your joke is and sticking to it. Adding orher layers can sometimes distract from what you're really after." Humor is the first priority, even if success requires alienating half the members of a group. This male-dominated stage dynamic is also apparent when improvisational comedy groups perform. The women often seem inhibited. And nothing is less funny than someone trying to be funny when she obviously thinks she's not. Ofren, the funniest topics seem taboo for women to joke about. "Girls can rarely pull off dirty humor," says Molly Worthen, a junior who is a former member of the Viola Question. "We were playing one of the line games," she says, describing an experience she had as the only actress performing in vQ's twelve-hour improv marathon. "One of the guys was like, ~ight, our topic is ... VAGINAS!' I was so alienated. As a girl, I just can't make those jokes." What's clear to Worthen, Bass, and other aspiring comediennes is that women can't just wait around until it's okay for them ro be crass on stage. Women can be funny, but perhaps nor in the same crude ways as men. They need to discover the comedic vocabulary that's narural to them. The Sphincter Troupe is an important first step in allowing women to do just that, and Yale audiences may soon be more comfortable with funny women. But before that happens, they must learn to crack a new kind of joke.

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The Yale Pol ice Department wounds by blUrring age-old A

T ONE IN THE MORNING ON FÂŁBRUARY 17, 1991, a Yale sophomore named Christian Prince was shoe co deach on the steps of a church on Hillhouse Avenue. The murder-a botched robbery attempt, according to investigators-reinforced a belief already held by most members of the University community ac che time: that the C ity of New Haven was a terrifying place to go to school. Yale's administration, under siege and increasingly wary of New Haven's national notoriety, responded with a slew of new security measures. Lighting was improved on dark meets> and 250 blue security phones were installed, positioned so that one of che neon bulbs marking a phone's location would be visible from nearly every point on campus. Most dramatically, the Yale Police Department underwent a complete overhaul. Within che next year, che size of che force increased by more than 50 percent from its pre-1990 level; by the end of 1992, there were 8o armed police officers on Yale's campus. But even as the University bolstered its fortifications against security threats, chat year also marked a turning point of another sort. Facing a crisis in its relationship with New Haven and an epidemic of violenc crime edging ever closer to campus, Yale reformulated its tactics and did something unexpected: Instead of further detaching itself from its surroundings, the University began to rake a more active role in city affairs. Under the leadership of Yale President Richard Levin, who took office in 1993, Yale showed a heightened

interest in che surrounding residential neighborhoods and commercial properties, and in New H aven's overall vitality. Instead of further building up its walls, it created porous borders-allowing, supporters claim, che University's positive influence to diffuse into the city around it: A decade later, the fruits of this effort are readily apparent. The areas around campus are, for bener or worse, transformed, and the relationship between Yale and New Haven is flourishing as never before. This revolution in town-gown relations-with a corresponding change in the way Yale thinks of and protects its own boundariespresents a new kind of challenge to the most recent incarnation of the Yale Police Department. With blurred borders came che need for a more active role in the community and a more holistic approach to security. Property acquisitions near campus demanded new patrol routes and increased vigilance. According to statistics the YPD has responded successfully: Since 1992, crime on campus has fallen by more than half, violen t crime by almost two thirds.

y ALE POLICE OFFICERS

HAVE FULL POWERS OF ARREST, the right to carry a weapon (and use it when necessary), and full jurisdiction over all of New H aven. T hey go through complete police training and accreditation and bear all the rights and responsibilities of regular city cops. For all intencs and purposes, che YPD functions like

En em

ines

seeks to mend civic boundaries

By Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

any city police force, with one critical difference: Irs primary allegiance is to the University, a private and exclusive entity within the city itselÂŁ The department is, in the words of University Secretary Martha Highsmith, under whose administrative and financial control it falls, a "private police force" with a broader public role. Among university police departments, this makes the YPO unique; no other campus police force can claim such extensive power or expansive jurisdiction. Yale Police ChiefJames Perrotti sees this difference as essential to his department's ability to serve at a school like Yale in a city like New Haven. "Other university's departments are restricted to campus," he explains. "But we could not do the job we do without the authority we have." In Perrotti's office, there hangs a framed poster from a lecture at the Yale School of Management by former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir. Safir, who led the effort to clean up New York City in the early 1990s, is an apostle of "community policing"-the idea that cops can best combat crime by focusing on relatively minor violations of the law, like jaywalking or property neglect, and proactively engaging the communities which they serve. Some observers have called this the "broken windows" theory; small signs of neglect lie, in an important sense, at the root of serious crime. Perrotti, for one, is a passionate devotee of the doctrine. Since taking over as Chief of the YPO in 1998 (after rwenty five years as a member of

the force), he has practiced his own version of "community policing" around the University. This spring, the YPD will begin construction of a new headquarters at a recently purchased site on Lock Street, straddling the campus's northern boundary and the edge of the Oixwcll neighborhood. The move represents both an affirmation and test of Perrotti's approach. Though the new site is relatively close to the department's current home on Sachem Street-a crumbling brick house on a dead end driveway-the move wilJ mean an entirely new kind of presence in a neighborhood that appears to have little to do with the University.

Last November, Yale finalized a deal to pay just over $IOo,ooo for the two-acre lot at 63 Lock Street-an address that does not even lie within a current YPD patrol route. For now, it is vacant and overgrown, littered with bricks and broken bottles, and ringed by a sagging chain-link fence with holes cut into it. Public housing projects and a boarded-up brick building stand adjacent to the site, and the stone-walled expanse of Grove Street Cemetery shields it from the Yale campus irsel£ At dusk, sirens drown out the chimes of the carillon issuing from Harkness Tower, just barely visible to the south. Except for the distant bustle of a pickup basketball game, the block is empty. But when Perrotti talks about.the site's future, he articulates an idyllic vision of a bustling police station and community center-with the emphasis, of course, on community. He elaborates: "We're going to be right in the Dixwell community. We hope to · have some community meeting space in the new building, ~o the community can come right to us. We want to facil-

BooK

itate tutoring by Yale students." He talks about youth athletic leagues, fixing broken windows, and getting rid of junk cars. He describes premature plans for community forums and block parties. He doesn't say much about muggings, stolen bikes, laptop theft, or breaches in dorm security though. When pressed, he shrugs, turns his palms upward, and explains, matter-of-facdy, "Partnering with the community solves more problems."

HE ROOTS OF THE YPD are found in the same kind of town-gown tensions that persist today. In September of 1894, two New Haven police officers ;,alked onto the Yale campus for the first time. This incursion was, by all accounts, an outrage--a violation of an implicit code establishing the University as sacrosanct territory, exempt from the power of all external authorities. The police action had come in response to a rash of corpse thefts from New Haven cemeteries by Yale medical students, culminating a period of general hos:tility bet'Ween cown and gown. It was by no

HAVEN

The

means a goodwill gesture, and the two officers, Jim Donnely and Bill Wiser, came with the charge to subdue the student body and establish the city's policing authority on previously exempt territory. Wiser recorded those tense early days in his memoirs. "No policemen before this time had ventured on these sacred grounds," he wrote, "and the campus had come to be considered a safe place of refuge for students fleeing from the wrath of city police." Students reacted with expected resentment to this invasion of their "charmed and secret enclosure." They dashed with Donnely and Wiser over the restriction of practices like "tearing down the buildings for fire-wood" after football victories and "setting fire to the newly-erected electric light poles" that "shone into their rooms and kept them awake." Gradually, however, Donnely and Wiser saw their standing among students improve, and their role evolved accordingly. No longer treated as insidious invaders, the officers shifted their focus from subduing students on campus (though the "booz-

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ng habit" would remain a problem throughout their tenure) to :eeping outsiders away. To the University, this new cask proved an nfinitely more valuable service than the original. There was, 1ccording to Wiser, no shortage of "vagrant peddlers, and other objectionable persons" who posed a threat to the well-being of the students in their charge. But, he boasts, "We impressed upon their minds the inadvisability of any future visits from them and their friends." Ultimately, these services proved valuable enough that the University persuaded Donnely and Wiser to resign from the New Haven Police Department and establish a private police force on campus-the earliest incarnation of the YPD, with the explicit goal of keeping outsiders out. Far removed from these beginnings, the most recent revolution in the department came in response to the Prince murder. At the time, the New Haven Police Department was undergoing a transformation of its own under Chief Nick Pastore, who had taken its helm in 1990 and served unril1997. "Our strategy was to better engage the public. We faced issues head on with community policing, and Yale came on board," recounts Pastore, now a Police Policy Fellow at the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation and an outspoken advocate of the tactics of community policing. In subsequent years, guided by Pastore and then-YPo Chief Al Guyer, acrimony between the departments gave way to dose cooperation. "There was this symbiotic relationship that became a real friendship," Pastore continued. "We had commonality. Our vision was their vision." Now, the hour-to-hour functioning of both departments depends on constant communication and frequent collaboration. The YPD's dispatch system, run out of its Communications Center in Phelps Gate, is linked to the NHPD's, and the forces share IB'C_ _,... resources and information on a daily basis. Most ofYale, however, remains the ypo's domain, a swathe across the center of New Haven with other enclaves around the City-a total of 910 acres that includes Yale buildathletic fields, a golf and the grownumber of com-

plainclothes officers. Already, the six regular YPD beat areas cover a territory that extends from Howe Street to the New Haven Green, and from the fur edge of the Medical School to Highland Street, two blocks past the Divinity School. Yale police, however, carry the right of force and the threat of arrest in all of New Haven. With the opening of the new Lock Street headquarters and the continued expansion of Yale's commercial holdings, the department's regular domain will expand to include an even greater portion of the City.

The move to Dixwell will force the YPD into the role of community steward in a community that is not its own.

in cruisers, but recent years have seen a growing emphasis on bike copsthere are five patrolling the

APRIL 2002

HEN

CHIEF

PERROTTI

DISCUSSES

POLICING, he peppers his sentences with words like "community," "willingness," "caring," and "understanding." A wooden placard that occupies the center of his desk proclaims, "Respect is Mutual." Poised behind it, elbows on the surface and hands pressed together in front of his lips, Perrotti elaborates on the philosophy behind the ypo's strategy: Involvement in neighborhoods and communities-maintaining a constant presence in people's day-to-day lives-is the best way to reduce overall crime. The reality in which the YPO works, however, means that its version of this strategy looks considerably different than it would in New York City. Though it is primarily responsible for property owned by the University, confronting crime at the source means focusing efforts more and more on areas outside the campus itself. Perrotti explains this idea with ease: "You have to have some positive involvement in the community because there's no wall around Yale. You have to build a balance." The new Dixwell headquarters is a marquis development in this respect. Aside from "community," the phrase that Perrotti throws around most when discussing the move to Dixwell is "quality of life"-the core value of community policing. He explains, "In traditional policing, you focus on the big stuff. Here, it's a much more proactive approach, because we're focusing on quality of life issues." Perrotti offers a scenario to consider. There is a string of broken down cars on a block. The owners of the cars are not nec-1~~~ essarily breaking the law, but the cars give the impres] sion of neglect, disorder, and danger. That impression, according to the holistic systems approach of community policing, turns neighborhood epidemic of broken down cars into a police problem-one which demands preemptive action and perhaps a bit of courteous but forceful persuasion. Perrotti has no shortage of alternate examples: "Take public intoxication. Most people don't want to walk down the street and be bothered by someone who has had too much to drinkthat's a quality of life 1ssue too.

Traffic violations, same thing ... It's a total strategy." This prospective level of police involvement in the Dixwell community goes along nicely with other University and city plans for the neighborhood. The nearby Elm Haven public housing complex is being demolished in favor of a new mixedincome development, and Yale has toyed with the idea of buying another adjacent lot for townhouse development. Pastore, for one, calls the move to Lock Street "a stroke of genius on the parr of the administration and the Yale Police Department. It's time for Yale to really get down with the issues of neighborhood living and make the neighborhood tranquil and stable." This intention, echoed by Perrotti, Yale's administration, and New Haven city government, is community policing in its purest form. With the Yale Police no longer simply a security force for University properties, the move to Dixwell will mack the culmination of a trend-one which will, if all goes according to planned, force the YPD into the role of community steward in a community which is not its own. MEETING this year, A YPD PUBUC Lieutenant Michael Patten was T A

EARLIER

accused of being part of the "military arm of the Yale Corporation." The accusation is

one the YPD knows well, and which-wrapped up with sensitive and sticky issues of race, class, and Yale's place in New Haven-it has had considerable experience trying to counter over the last several years. The most recent high proflle incident carne during a Yale Law School minority recruitment weekend last spring. At two AM on a weekend night, several Yale police cars went in pursuit of two young men in" "baggy pants" who had attempted to steal an air conditioner. On Chapel Street, Harold McDougall, a black student who attended the event, and his host were leaving a party when a squad car stopped in the street next to them. Two officers got our and demanded 10 from the two .srudents: "I was in a brown jacket, an orange sweater, and khaki corduroys-char were nor baggy by the way," McDougall remembers. "And the cops .said, 'Yeah, yeah, that's the description.' What I later found out was that the description that they gave was 'men in baggy pants,' and that was all they needed to stop us and question us for 20 minutes." The eyewitness' description did not mention race. The problems raised by the incident last spring ace not specific to New Haven; nor do they allow for easy blame to be cast on the police force. "There was considerable unrest from people of color who felt uniquely challenged,'' says Pastore of the period when he was NHPD chief. "Racial profiling was a huge issue on campus." Jelani Lawson, a 1996 graduate of Yale College who served as Ward 2 Alderman before leaving New Haven last year, recalls an undergraduate and aldermanic career marked by periodic harassment by the YPD. "Let's say I received less than the average deference accorded to members of the University community," he says. "In concrete terms, it means that I was asked for 10 while entering college gates. It means that I was harassed while standing on a corner waiting to get a haircut. It means that I always had to have my Yale 10, because if I were for some reason stopped by the cops,

I had to have my 'Get Out of Jail Free' card." This perception of rampant racial profiling and mistreatment of actual and suspected outsiders persists in the New Haven community, despite rhe YPD's fervent denial and ongoing efforts to counter it. Recently, the University voluntarily agreed to keep statistics on traffic stops around campus and submit the records to the Chief State's Attorney's office, a requirement of public police departments from which private departments are exempt. Those statistics, according to Highsmith, disprove claims of favoritism or profiling. Perrotti, when confronted by this type of criticism, points to the tremendous diversity of the YPD--17% of officers are female, and a quarter ace racial minorities, far outstripping the national average. "We are a very diverse work force, and that is a tremendous benefit, particularly when you're dealing with issues on the street," he claims. "We just don't have problems with race and gender. That reflects our values." Bur community activists have long dismissed this sort of claim as empty rhetoric. Emma Jones is a New Haven resident who has fought for the establishment of an aU-citizen police review board since her son Malik was gunned down by police officers in 1997. As head of the Malik Organization, Jones says, "I have had a number of complaints, pads of paper where people shared that just because they were African-Americans or had a certain hairstyle or drove a certain car, Yale police-and they seem to be worse than the New Haven police--gave them bogus rickets, or stopped them for no reason, or gave them motor-vehicle violations." Jones has met with Perrotti and other representatives of the YPD in the past, but claims that few of their promises have been reflected in action. Voicing a widely held belief, she charges, "They're shielded from any kind of scrutiny because it's Yale." Even Pastore, an ardent supporter of the YPD, acknowledges the ubiquity of this view. "Much of the community feels like they're still not engaged, like it's"-here, he slips into the tone of either mock reverence or impending doom that many New Haveners employ when referring to the University"s.rill Yale." Half-jokingly, Pastore continues, "If I assigned six undercover agents to Yale for six months, I would make more

THE NEw JouRNAL

narcotics arrests than I make in Dixwell in a year. When you put that in terms of incidence of crime, it would be far higher on campus than in any neighborhood." He adds, of course, "That's not to say that I ever would. " But the point resonates in a neighborhood like Dixwell, and this resonance wiU be something to contend with as the perceived agent of privilege, wealth, and whiteness moves its forces into a poor and almost exclusively black community.

Con,..,...........tulations ood Luck

NOERNEATH THE DISCUSSION of "cooperation," "understanding," and "engagement," community policing is about one th ing: the perception of safety. Taking that perception seriously, in fact, has been the greatest success of the strategy, and one that Perrotti and the YPO wholeheartedly adopt. "Even if people are safe, if they don't feel safe, then it's a problem," Perrotti acknowledges, "Sometimes perception is reality." In that respect, the success of the YPD in Dixwell will have as much to do with factors outside of its control as with its own behavior. Above all, however, it will require that the YPO and the University as a whole take seriously the sense of injustice and rnisueacmenc rather than sticking by numbers and complaint records alone. In the past, Perrotti has been known to refuse interviews about racial profiling accusations, and the University's often vapid official rhetoric remains unconvincing to large portions of New Haven. But in community policing, as Pastore says, "If it's a perception, it m ust be dealt with." Over the course of the last decade, the University's heightened interest in the city has stemmed from the belief that what is good for New Haven is good for Yale. As the em pty lot in Dixwell transforms into the headquarters of the YPO, the neighborhood must begin to believe that the reverse is also true. As Pastore cautions, "When Yale opens up its doors on Lock Street, it has to remember that it's a visitor and it should act like a visitor who wants to be welcomed." II1J

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APRI L 2002

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Can Yale's sexual harassment policy avert di~411"]1~

By Emily Breunig

THE NEW jouRNAL 20

'l lI

Y FRIEND COMMITTED suicide a year ago, although no one ~ew it was suicide at the time. Julie died on April 3o--found on the floor of her Massachussetts Institute ofTechnology dormroom by her roommate-and nobody quite knew why. I went to Boston for a student-organized service and listened to people say great things about her character and life. I spoke to a man who had met her at a debate a week before her death; he could not comprehend the fact that someone so alive had just died. I headed home, still unable to accept that Julie was gone. I was scared to sleep alone, afraid that one night my heart would stop like hers did, without warning. On June 26, everyone's perspective changed. The

APRIL 2002

coroners ruled her death a suicide by cyanide poisoning. The press did not seem surprised; Julie Carpenter was, after all, a chemical engineering major at MIT-which meant that she had access to aU sorts of poisons-and her housemate had lit herself on fire and died from the burns just a year before. But I held fast to the idea that she had mixed up pills, intenrung to take NoOoz instead and discovering her mistake too late. I tried to resign myself to a sort of Zen acceptance of the fact that we'd never really know what happened. That worked until August. On August 9, the Boston Globe ran a front page story detailing an entirely different scenario. "In the months before her suicide in April," reporter Patrick Healy wrote, "Massachusetts Institute of Technology sophomore Julie M. Carpenter was stalked and harassed by a love-struck freshman and then endured an excruciating campus inquiry that initially failed to stop him." I had visited Julie the previous November. At the time, the student had

been quietly and intensely attracted to her. Even though she made it clear to him that she was not interested, he still followed her through the halls, slept outside her door, and accessed emails she had written to her boyfriend. Distressed by the relentless attention, she finally complained to her student house committee in January. The committee stalled for a month while the harassment continued. Finally, the case was handed over to the Office of the Dean for Student Life, and the harasser was moved to another dorm. But it was two more months before the administration officially ruled that Julie had actually been harassed, and her assailant's punishment was minimal: He was required to arrend three therapy sessions, read three books about trauma, and write an essay on harassment. Despite everything, he would be allowed to reapply to live in Julie's house the following year. Five days later, Julie killed herself. The connections between the sexual harassment case and Julie's death are srrong. Her boyfriend's father stated in a letter to MIT that "everyone who knew Julie

.. well believes the ruling in the harassment claim ... was the triggering event in her apparent suicide." Then again, a college friend insisted that Julie was stronger than that, and would not have killed herself over a mishandled harassment charge. I disagree. Julie was stalked for over four months whiJe MIT failed over and over again to do anything about it. Even in an environment of supposed awareness, institutional safeguards failed miserably. And that led me to wonder: Could this happen at a similar institution? Could it happen at Yale? No one knows how many women have been harassed or assaulted because few complaints are made official. You may never know who they are unless a close friend happens to be one, but even then silence can prevail; it took nearly four months before the circumstances surrounding Julie's death were known to anyone save family and close friends at MIT. The rest of us read about it in the paper. Even at Yale, the silence that surrounds sexual harassment conceals the staggering number of women who have lived through it. N 1999, A YALE FRESHMAN NAMED SARAH was sexua!Jy harassed by a junior professor. A series of comments directed at her both in and out of class culminated in his asking Sarah to talk with him privately about his teaching style. When she refused to return with him to his apartment, his

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fina!Jy alone. " He was in his early thirties, big on gun rights," she told me. "That was a large contributing factor in my decision to press charges. He owned lots of guns, and I didn't like that he knew where I lived." Distressed and unable to work, Sarah spoke to the dean of her residential college, who contacted Professor Peter Parker, convener of Yale's Sexual Harassment G rievance Board, and Dean of Student Affajrs Betty Trachtenberg, -a Board member. Sarah did not have the option of presenting her case to Yale College's disciplinary tribunal, the Executive Committee, since complaints brought to the Committee must involve only undergraduates. In 1970, when a student first formally accused a f.tculcy member of harassment, the U niversity created the Grievance Board to handle cases like Sarah's. Technica!Jy, the Board's function is advisory rather than punitive. Board member Brian Yolles, an undergraduate, emphasizes the Board's role in mediation. "Ideally, everything can be solved informally," says Yolles. "This is tough to bring before a lot of people and generally not what the accuser wanes." Frequently, a student simply needs the Board's assurance that what took place was harassment. This validation can go a long way. "The institution is behind her-she knows he is wrong and there is no wav he can iustifv his

empowered-this has happened quite a few times." Board members are quick to point out the expediency with which a complaint is handled, especia!Jy in potentia!Jy dangerous situations. When a student lodges a complaint with the Board, the accused is informed the same day, and forbidden to contact the accuser. Any retaliatory acts are treated as separate incidents. After speaking with Sarah, Parker and Trachtenberg met with her instructor and warned him to keep his distance from her. He was told to leave a public space should he find her there and to avoid coming dose to her in any circumstantial meeting. T hey advised Sarah to be careful when walking alone. Sarah remembers the situation as extremely difficult. She says she felt "silly" the whole time. "I wasn't raped, wasn't attacked," she told me. "You feel like you should deal with it. You feel silly, like a whiny girl who couldn't deal." The Board did offer some help. "Peter Parker told me that given the situation of power, there were certain rules, he was supposed to act certain ways, and what he was doing was egregious. He made me feel like I had done the right thing," she said. Yet Sarah feels that the Board could have done more after the initial complaint was handled. At the Âˇ ne, Sarah did not even know that the >ard had official student members whom e could approach for information and vice. "There was no particular amount of Llow-up," she says. "I continued to feel nsafe. But the situation was handled pretty quickly-within a week. . . . Nothing awful happened." In the end, Sarah did not decide to lodge a formal complaint. Her instructor was leaving at the end of the semester, and the incident was noted on his record. 4 ASES uKE SARAH's AND JuUE's (

1 illustrate that may be the biggest

silence

THE NEW JouRNAL

threat to resolving sexual harassment issues. Confidentiality is healthy and necessary for a victim, but potentially detrimental co the community as a whole. A confused, frantic student who brings a concern to the Grievance Board may find a solution, bur her public silence inadvertently masks the fact that such incidents take place on the Yale campus in the first place. Such silence perpetuates the belief that sexual harassment and assault do not occur here--leaving victims feeling isolated and alone. The members of the Grievance Board expressed frustration with the lack of knowledge about harassment on campus, citing ignorance as the largest obstacle to the Board's effectiveness. "This year has been incredibly uneventful, which can be a double-edged sword, as I believe that people are reluctant to report cases," said Yolles. As Stephanie Schmid, a student Board member, stated, "Reporting, if done properly, makes people feel less alone and it encourages more people co feel comfortable enough to come forward. " Despite the dramatic nature of Julie's death and the prolonged press coverage, none of the Board members I spoke to knew of it. Trachtenberg stressed the general inaccessibility of this type of information, "We can't possibly know everything that goes on, and a little bit of knowledge, some from one source, some from another, is a dangerous thing. We just don't know what takes place. We know case studies, but we clinically can't open a file. " While communication sometimes exists between individual administrators, professional conlidentiality must be mainwned in specific cases-another ver-

APRIL 2002

sion of the double-edged sword. The Board members do recognize a need for some transparency in the system. But, as Trach tenberg notes, the mandatory confidentially is restricting. "We give a pamphlet every year to each student, but a particular case involving particular students we can't talk about. And so we're left with the reputation of not doing anything," she said. "We cannot say that we had twelve satisfied cuscomers and their cases were such and such." For her part, Sarah suggests chat friendlier forms of advertisement, like stickers and posters, might soften the Board's intimidating image. Describing her own reluctance to lodge a complaint, Sarah cold me, "You feel as though it has to be a bad situation and clearly defined. You're unsure of yourself. You're not going to go and say that you're unsure--boards have old white guys on them." The Board acknowledges these difficulties. Trachtenberg emphasizes that the Board frequently discusses its effectiveness as well as the community's perception of it. "We look at ourselves critically to see how we're working. I'm not exaggerating about this. We're always looking." But with the constant tension between silence and prevention, the only course available may be vigilance. At MIT, careful vigilance within the institutional framework might have saved Julie. "Everything is handled here

until the student is comfortable," Yolles said, "but I'm sure people at MIT would have said the same thing. There's a bureaucracy ... students often get caught up in that. Real life moves at rapid paces." Julie and Sarah both courageously came forward with their complaints-a step many victims do not take. For Sarah, the process was a difficult one despite the speed with which Yale responded to her complaint. For Julie, this difficulty became unbearable when MIT, through rulings and delays, made her feel like her complaint was not legitimate and failed to guarantee that the harassment would not continue. No institution can eradicate harassment, but without a system that eradicates a victim's feelings of inadequacy and isolation, the next Yale Sarah could end like Julie.

1111 Sarah is a psrodonym. Emily

B~nig is

a junior in B"keley College.

THE NEW JouRNAL

HE LADIES ENTER. ADJUST THEIR EYES to the dim lighting, and take their places in the horseshoe of chairs and tables around the dance floor. The college girls in the crowd, Saturday night warriors in bright tops, black panes, and slathered glitter, sit down quickly, and nervously order Mike's Hard Lemonade. The 30-andolder set is more boisterous, with permed hair and half-buttoned denim blouses. They saunter in and belly up to the bar for an opening round of cheap beer. By the time they take their sears, they've strapped a couple of beers on and are ready for the show to begin. It's Saturday night at Toad's Place, and the Red Hot Pony Express is about to leave the station. Toad's is infamous for its late night dance parties, semi-exclusive affairs where men and women with proper 10 can grind their blues away to remixed hip-hop and strobed lighting. Once or twice a semester, things change. Courtesy of the Red Hot Pony Express, Toad's sheds irs dance hall skin and devolves into a raucous mess of a strip dub, where enthusiastic men in G-strings and boors will rub up against a woman's leg only if she's offered him a crisp dollar bill first. On nights when the Red Hot Pony Express is in town, no matter what their age, no matter whether they're leaving behind a highpaying job, a sink full of rushes, or a sociology paper, these women squeeze sexual liberation until it bursts.

ITH THE EXCEPTION OF ToAD'S BOUNCERS and bartenders, tonight I'm the only man in a sea of more than a hundred women. In this sexually charged atmosphere, I'm a non-entity. I'm not getting onstage to shake my booty; I'm watching just like the rest of them. I sit at a table next to the stage with seven women who spend most of their time talking like I'm not there. Our quarters are tight, which keeps the experience vivid and dose, especially when I have to scoot over to allow my neighbor ample room for a lap dance later in the show. To my left, th,ree Yale students are psyching themselves up for their first male strip show. They're dressed for a night out, but are a little too put together for the lewd atmosphere. They're here for the full experience, but shy away from <liscussing the nearly naked men. For "health reasons," they're going to forgo the lap dances tonight. They will spend much of the show with their hands over their mouths, giggling and asking each other, "Did you see that?" One of their number is securely righteous when she tells me that she thinks it's the lewdest thing ever. (After the show, she changes her tune and says she'd certainly go again.) For now, though, the suitemates nervously joke about the townified nature of the crowd. The New Yorker of the bunch leans over to me and advises, "Make sure you write down how scary the women are."

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"Which women?" I ask. "All of them." She could very well be tallcirig about the rest of the table, if by scary she means intent on seeing a man in a G-string. To my right are a pair of gravelly-voiced, tightlycoiffed 40-year olds who work for Yale on weekdays. Although they've had strippers for birthdays, they've never been to a strip show and are enthusiastic. Their cameras will guarantee lap dances later in the evening. They've come with one of the final women at the table, a petite Yale undergrad they work with during the week. She sits across from me with her friend, another student who's been to a strip show before. They are visibly excited, loud, ready to embrace the endless parade of flesh. They will match the strippers' enthusiasm, scream for scre.a m, grind for grind. When one of the girls gets her "birthday" lap dance, the stripper will cradle her face in his hands and gleefully yell, "C'mere, baby!" For her part, she will grab his ass as tight as anyone else does that evening. Everyone at the table, mys!!lf included, has a different reason for being here tonight. Its "the experience," "my friend's birthday," "a writing assignment," "to support a friend." These reasons, though individually defensible, ignore the fact that it's 8:45, the show was supposed to begin 15

~~~~~-------~~------·------~--~~

from

TheNewJournal THE NEW jOURNAL

minutes ago, and the audience looks like its about to mutiny if a man doesn't get out on that dance floor and flash his ass sometime soon.

the m iddle of the dance floor, drawing a few cheers of relief from the audience. He's dressed casually but smartly, in crisp blue jeans, a right silver shirt, and a black leather blazer. He's a smooth character and good at relaxing the nervous first-rimers into the enthusiastic sexual aggression shared by the rest of the audience. He hawks Niagara, Viagra's carbonated fruit cousin, smoothly assuring, "When these guys get you hot and horny, do whatever you want, cause you're the ones in control tonight." "How many girls here are just plain horny?" he asks. "Take it offi" screams someone in the audience. This is the battle cry of the evening, raised by the crowd when someone on the dance floor is doing too much teasing and not enough stripping. T he emcee's doing well, and the momentum is build ing. He laughs and says, "Okay, my name's Brett. Now you have to scream out your name on the count of three. One, two, three!" The women respond most heartily where I'm sitting, dubbed the "Sexy HE EMCEE JOGS OUT TO

Erection Section" by Brett. Apparently I'm surrounded by "season ticket holders," ladies who have been to shows before and have mastered the proper "fold and stuff" technique for the placement of dollar bills. The first timers don't get off so easily. "Tonight you are all fucking virgins," Brett sarcastically intones. The season dcket holders cheer. "Tonight, ladies, this is your one true opportunity to be a virgin." T he 40-year-old "virgin" to my right leans over and mutters to me, "Oh God, I gotta go home." "Okay, ladies, are you ready to see your first naked man?" Even the "virgins" join in as the crowd yells a forceful affirmative. The momentum of female sexuality breaks for a moment when three women behind me start yelling guttural "Yeah!"'s at Brett. Brett does a dou ble take. The testosteronic irony is clear: T hey're playing the alpha male at the Kitty Kat Club, loud, abrasive, and confused as to

HE HAS

BIGH APRIL

2002

. whether they're cheering for their favorite quarterback or favorite stripper. Brett snaps his fingers, regains the crowd's attention, and silkily introduces "Marky Mark," AKA "Fireman Joe," AKA "the New Haven Fire Marshall, here to inspect the 'penal' code." Marky Mark runs out of the wings like a pro-wrestler. His entrance music is a crackly nursery rhyme chanted over a plinky music box melody. "He's a little fireman, he's a little fireman, everyone knows he has a great big hose." Barely 5'6" in boots, Mark is indeed little, but Âˇmakes up for his height with a chest and shoulders that threaten to pop out of his yellow flame-retardant suit. A red fire helmet and coke bottle glasses top the outfit. This is Mark's act, his gimmick and hook. Ev~ry stripper has one, whether it's as a cowboy, a policeman,. or a fireman. Mark's hook is unique in that it taps the self-deprecating vein of the striptease, He's not just up there to strip; the face he puts on is one of good times, and he'll be damned if he leaves the dance floor withour making everyone smile. Mark reaches into his pants and pulls out a foot and a half length of fire hose. He fondles it in time to the song for a moment before it fires a jet of colored confetti from the nozzle. The women at my table burst out laughing. The ice is broken, and the show starts in earnest as the house's joyous cheers are drowned out by the muscular techno standard, "Y'all Ready For This?" Mark tears off his jacket, revealing a grotesquely built body that strains under a white elastic singlet. His bulk is no hindrance to his dance moves, however, which squirt out of him like hair gel from a botde, setting the evening's standard at an impossibly high level. Amidst sidles and spins, he pulls off the singlet and heavy pants, temporarily keeping the white briefs and heavy boots where they are. His solid bronze body is unencumbered enough to leap through the air and land in a roll that pops him back up bopping. Mark brings the crowd to the cusp of panic before he executes the finishing move. He cocks his head and milks the moment, as if he can't hear the screams of "Take it offi" He grins, rips off the briefs,

and poses there in all his green G-string glory. He swells his chest in happy pride as the crowd begins to wave dollar bills like green flags at a bull. He bounces over to his first lady, a wary college brunette whose head is framed by her friends' money. H er friends burst into cheers when Mark leaps into her lap

at which he becomes oddly sweet. He dismounts, leans over, and gives the brunette a soft peck on the cheek, a move the strippers repeat all night long. She looks up at him and smiles. This unexpected affection lasts for only an instant before Mark breaks the spell and twitches his tanned buttocks over to the next woman.

photos by Mary-catherine Millkey

and guides her hands to his rear, exhorting her to "Squeeze! Squeeze!" He takes hold of her hair and begins to gyrate, grind, and pump his hips with convincing sincerity. The lap dance lasts for two or three ferocious minutes, during which the girlfriends scuff the G-string with bills, which give Mark's modest package an ironic layer of virile padding-so virile, in fact, that he'll later have to transfer the wad to his boot to make room. Mark's performance is clearly meant to be rough and sexual, but there's a moment

THEME BEGINS TO DEVELOP in Brett's shtick between performers. He jogs out after Mark's maestro routine and asks, Âˇ~y women getting married tomorrow?" A suspicious third of the 100-woman crowd cheers, rallying around marital plans that may or may not exist. Brett takes the 30 brides-to-be in perfect stride. The Red Hot Pony Express attracts the marrying, married, and temporarily unmarried co their shows on a regular basis. Brett turns to the openly wed women to offer their

THE

New JouRNAL

counterparts some timely advice. "Don't do it!" yell the unrestrained wives to the college students. "D'gh ~ t, , Brett says. "0o you want co know what S I NGLE stands for? Stay Intoxicated Nightly, Get Laid Everyday." Another witty repartee between Brett and the crowd doesn't go as smoothly, but

speaks to the same concerns. "Hey ladies, what's the difference between a tornado and a marriage?" A witty gal behind me slurs, "They both drive you crazy!" Her friends laugh at the bon mot. "They both drive you crazy ... " Brett mulls this over for a moment. "No that's not right. The answer is "nothing, 'cause in the beginning there's a lor of sucking and blowing and in the end you lose your house." Again and again over the course of the evening, Brett's jokes and the interactions between women and strippers riff on the marriage theme, if only ro make the lapdances and stripteases seem that much wilder and more forbidden. The sexuality gets positively violent at moments, quire often at the woman's prodding; the strippers seem warier of the fine line between APRIL 2002

sexy forcefulness and aggression. Someone behind me screams at a stripper, "Come on baby, right here! I got a whole pocketful! Get your ass over here!" She has five lap dances with him, each o ne a violent ride that leaves her partner with red scratches on his ass. By the time Brett announces the final stripper, an t8year-old sailor, the crowd is hurting. It's unclear whether the ladies have anything left to g ive after two visceral hours of screaming, waving bills, and getting hauled up on the shoulders of ridiculously ripped men. The applause is weak and could be as much for the end of the show as for the stripper. The undergrads at my table have expressed an urge ro do their own dancing. T he show's gone on a little roo long. Brett brings two beautiful undergrads onstage and seats them across from each other. A third chair, upon which rests a cane and top hat, is between them. The well-dressed girls, one blonde, the other a brunette, look nervous, bur share a smile when Brett growls, "He's your last naked man ... he's an officer and a gentleman ... his name is Corey!" The theme from Top Gun blazes over the sound system and Corey, 26 years old and a gym owner, strides into the spotlight. The over-30 crowd goes wild. They leap from their seats and join the collective wail of the music's screaming guitars. At 6'6," and blonde, blue-eyed, tan, and dressed head to roe in officer's whites, he's as close ro their dreams as they come. He marches past the lucky pair, pivots on his right foot, and stops at the edge of the stage, still at

rigid attention. Corey snaps his right arm into a serious and sincere salute, oblivious to the cheering and catcalling crowd beneath him. Corey brings his arm back down and the music changes again, this time to Top Gun's canonical anthem, "Take My Breath Away." Corey stands rigid for a moment more, then melodramatically sways, a lover's swoon, towards his onstage girlfriends. He rushes over to the blonde, gathers her in his arms, and lifts her up as if she were as light as a feather. Corey looks at her sweetly. She puts her arms around his neck. And they spin once. Twice. Just like in the movtes. I freeze. I'm not the only one. All the cheering that had seemed so sexual, so derisive, and so visceral, suddenly becomes everything I thought a striptease wasn't. Yes, a lap dance literally beats you over the head with sexuality. Yes, the money's roo damn good for these strippers to be in it for the love. But something happens in the exchange between these paid men and liberated women that deserves to be understood. A woman might come for rhe forbidden pleasure of paying a stranger to shower them with physical attention, but at the end of almost every lap dance, there's a gentle kiss that brings it all right back to romance, however superficial. It's the perfect relationship: three minutes of hot sex and sweet nothings with no messy breakup. Not all of the women are touched by this sentimental moment. Some are laughing, and some women left Toad's an hour ago. But for the women who find sexuality and romance watching a suip show, who imagine themselves both in Corey's bed and in his arms, this Red Hot Pony Express is really something else. No wonder this place is packed. lEI]

Chnstophn- H~anry is a junior in Timothy Dwight Co/kg~.

Ridden Curriculum The role of

secret societies in a Yale education By Blake Wilson

P YOU PEER BEHIND THE IRON DOORS OF ONE OF YALE's secret societies on any given Thursday or Sunday night, you won't find 15 white men chortling at the world over cigars and brandy. In face, you will see a picture right out of a college admissions viewbook: Sirting around the dinner table will be a black man, a Latina, a South Asian woman, several Jews, and a few roken WASPs. They will be journalists, athletes, intellectuals, and activists; some will be gay, some will be Christian, and there will be at least one representative of Yale's rarest minority, the conservative. They are the new faces of the Yale elite, but in its old home. Within their halls they enjoy all the ancient trappings of mystery and luxury; they are served dinner by a staff and study in a private library. And among the privileges that they do not share with you is an educational and a social experience that Yale's best have tasted in one form or another for over 150 years. .

HAVE ALWAYS HAD A PRYING INTEREST IN SKUll and Bones and its younger siblings. After last year's tap night left me unaffiliated, my curiosity intensified and soured. But my interest in the societies as educa.cional institutions really sprung our of the uncertain days after September 11. I was involved in a number of efforts to bring together students of different cultural backgrounds and political convictions tO talk about the attacks, and I found again and again that the gulfs between students' perspectives were too wide to bridge constructively in a public forum. The debate could not be civil. I realized thac the obstacles preventing dialogue were more personal than political, but ironically they belonged more to a public than a private conversation. The secret societies were, I began to suspect, a possible solution.

Secret societies are social experiments. Fifteen juniors from different backgrounds, who have distinguished themselves in different walks of Yale life, are thrown together in an environment structured to bring about meaningful interaction and self-reflection. After three years of building friendships and making names for themselves, about ten percent of every Yale class is chosen at the end of its junior spring to be a part of one or another of these groups. There are six societies with tombs, and a more fluid roster that meet in other spaces, following the original model with varying levels of seriousness. The shroud of each society's rituals, and the pro~ for its initiates that those rituals concal, differ from ball to hall and from rented bouse to borrowed room. But three things are almost universally shared: an emphasis on honest debate, candid autobiography, and seaecy. Members liken the intensity of the social climate inside their halls to rhat of the lace-night discussions they had with friends and roommates when they first came to Yale. This may be chalked up to the excitement of a new environment and new friends, but the depth and the candor of society conversations seem to be staked upon the other trappings of the experience. "More than secret, maybe [societies] are just private, .. one member cold me. Without years to develop crusting friendships, members of a society are thrown into intimate contact. The secrecy creates a safe environment, and the oral autobiographies given by each member in most societies deepen the bonds betweeo stUdents quickly. Not all members are equally enthusiastic about the biographies, though: They last as many as five hoW'S -and can be Yehides for .narcissism or exhibitionism as easily as they can promote understanding. Complementing political and intellectual debate with an opponu-

THE NEW JoURNAL

nity to learn what experiences have informed opposing perspectives should be a valuable exercise. But one society member expressed his doubt that the message really sinks in. "All our life we've learned just to judge things on the surface," he told me, "and I think that's tough to break down in just a year."

art. ... We believe that such studies and pursuits develop the best affections of the heart, and the highest powers of the intellect, and afford a foundation for friendships which are cemented by elevating the character of thoughts, and by giving a decided tone to the finer sentiments of the soul.

t... ULTICULTURALISM AND A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF democratic guilt l'l,.. have crawled under even the thickest and most conservative

Mack describes how as the liberal arts were folded into Yale's acadskins, so that the principal function of many societies has come to emic curriculum, and as Scroll and Key became an established and be the exploration of difference. This was by no means always so. wealthy institution, the function, if never the ideals or the rituals, Throughout much of their of the society changed. Scroll and Key began to fund acahistory, secret societies, as demic prizes, scholarships, and contribute financially to well as the University itself, Yale in other ways, establishing a pattern that other socihave exerted a homogenizing eties have followed. At the same time, the new curriculum Dead force. Eighty years ago, Yale of liberal arts a Ia cart~ was perceived as a threat to the was a much smaller place, Poets Society holistic autodidacticism ofYale's 19TH century education. with fewer extracurricular Scroll and Key perpetuated the older, gentlemanly intelactivities in which students lectual culture and continued to instill its qualities in the could excel. There was a dear ladder of popularity and accomchanging student body. Building up the Society had given way to plishment that could be climbed, with Skull and Bones looming at conserving a culture. the top and the other tomb societies just below. This, at least, is the The demographics of the societies, especially the oldest and caricature drawn by F. Scott Fitzgerald and by Owen Johnson in best-established ones, never quite kept pace with those of the Stover at Yale. The "best men" began their senior years as leaders and University. Until World War II, the societies were dominated by strong characters on campus; they left as Bonesmen. white students, mostly from prep-schools, often Yale and secret society legacies. By the late nineteen-sixties, though, most of the But the origins of the secret society system belie both its current appearance and the role it seems to have played in Yale's least societies were swept up in the democratic spirit of the time-which Mack refers to as "the recent unpleasantness." They began to admit democratic days. Skull and Bones was founded in 1832, and Scroll students of color and women. In the early 1990S, Skull and Bones and Key a decade later. At the time, Yale's academic curriculum and Wolf's Head were the last two major societies to go co-ed. But consisted mostly of classical languages, mathematics, and the physthe hyper-diverse character of the societies today is recent and hard ical sciences. T he rest of a liberal education was extracurricular and won-a fact still on the minds of minority students within them. largely student run, and the organs that provided it were the sophoThe guidelines for choosing the next tap class differ from socimore, junior, and senior societies, the debating and honors organiety to society, but the taps have historically run through organizazations, and the private student libraries of Linonia and Brothers in tions. The editor of the Daily News might have been all but guarUnity. It is unsurprising that this collegiate atmosphere produced anteed a place in Skull and Bones for much of its history, but today exclusive senior societies dedicated to debate, fraternity, and intellectual ideals. The original atmosphere of Bones and Keys was much more that of D~ad Poet's Soci~ty than the New World Order. Maynard Mack's History of Scro/J and Kry describes the heady idealism and the activities of those early days with more detail than one would expect in a text available to the public. Scroll and Key was a literary, dramatic, and debating society, where students declaimed original poetry and drank whisky punch in a rented room with velvet-draped walls. In his book, Mack quotes an extended passage from the preamble to the society's constitution:

The original atmosphere of Bones and Keys was much more that of than the New World Order.

The love of ideal beauty is the peculiar distinction of a noble mind; that it is wise therefore to cherish an enthusiasm for perfect forms of grace, whether seen in the works of literature, science, or

APRIL 2.002.

many of chose chains have been broken and replaced with strong ones that run through minority communities. I spoke with a Âˇwoman who was capped by a society but declined co join. "When I decided," she said, "I was giving up [a minority] tap, and that was a big deal." At the same time, many minority students ask themselves why they should buy into the system at all. A university can be opened up and democratized by the admission of women and students of color. But the secret societies are by their nature closed and anti-democratic.

1""

HAT WAS ONE OF THE LARGEST issues I grappled with in considering the function and culture of the societies. Whereas almost all the rest of the I9TH century student organizations are now either gone or radically transformed, the secret societies and the model they established continue essentially unchanged today. The question is: Is there something so inherently strong about the social experiment that, despite 150 years of social change, it can continue to drag along with it an anachronistic and distasteful apparatus of exclusion? Or is the culture of perceived importance, luxury, and privilege such a strong force that the social experiment that justifies it can continue to adapt to the new demographics of Yale in order for that culture co survive? This latter view is certainly held by many outside the society system. "Bad things lase a long time, too," a faculty member told me. "[Secret societies are] places where peo-

ple make new friends, but does that justify Emersonian self-reliance is not taught at the structure of cap, exclusion and secrecy?" Yale anymore, and it is not in the air either. He sees one of the impulses working on Grappling with the intelligence of one's society members to be the same one that peers, the frustrations of academia, and the motivates twelve-year-old boys to build a guilt of being pare of an elite University is clubhouse- the desire to exclude others. tough. Both an exaggerated sense of While members recognize the exisaccomplishment and indulgent self-doubt renee of that impulse, most are quick to are easier responses than honest confrontaqualify it. "(Inside the hall] you cion of those issues. almost forget that you're in Most people are But there is another something that the outside ultimately more problem that members do world views as intimidating or attracted to the not always see. Within the scary," one told me. "You real. hall, one is expected to ly forget, and it just becomes promise of speak about oneself with about who you are interacting power and status great candor to nearly perwith. In the end, it's just a Glub than they are feet strangers. On the outat a university." The counterrm"tted t side, though, much pettier . to this v1ew . 1s . an emph a- com o . h t ly potnt secrets muse be ug sis that some society members more fundamen- locked away from intimate put upon the power of cradi- tal obligations. friends and even family. Ir should be enough co say cion, and on knowing how many others have gone through the same that this hurts people, and that there are process. We all recognize the power of secflaws in some students' personalities that ring on our personae - we act differently become exaggerated under the pressure of in church, in a classroom, and with a group this conflict. Most people, no matter how of friends. Simply by being told that we are much they deny it, are ultimately more special, a member of the elect, our behavior attracted to the promise of power and seaand self-projection can change co confirm tus than they are committed to more funthat fact. My father grew up in New damental obligations. Haven, and both my uncle and grandfather went co Yale. When my father was at HE MODEL OF SECRET SOCIETIES fascinates me, and I believe that societies Lawrence College in Wisconsin, he found have preserved lessons that the rest ofYale the cop of his class to be every bit as smart may have forgotten. Each society has found and accomplished as the many people he had met at Yale. The self-confidence and a way to bring 15 dramatically different voices into debate and conversation. Three ambition of his peers was far less, however, presidents have been members of societies, as was their subsequent professional sucas have innumerable professors, statesmen, cess. He believed that name and history, writers, and leaders in business. Not all of not the people, made the difference; that a Yale's "best" have sat in one of the halls, but conferred sense of importance can precipialmost everyone invited to has accepted. tate strength, genius, and drive. Within them, they have made new friends, What is ugliest about the secret socihad rich and serious debate, and-more eties is what they sometimes do to the recently--explored difference. But everysenior class, and to friendships. Though one who has accepted their tap has also almost everyone concedes that society taps made a compromise--one that has staked, are arbitrary, and that they are driven as if only in a slight way, principles, autonoÂˇ much by politics and friendships as they are my and friendship upon a blind promise of by real indicators of one's worth or success something better. I know for my part that I at Yale, few juniors escape the process with would have made this compromise, but their egos unaffected. Seniors in societies chat does not mean I would have been may receive a boose co their self-confidence and a sense that they are doing something proud of it. r important with their time at Yale, but being passed over can be a burr under the l (; skin that makes one's haphazard path Blake Wilson, a smior in Branford College, through the University seem less coherent c is a contributing editor for TN]Âˇ and one's prospects beyond it dim. h

1111

THE NEW JouruuJ.

By MaHhaw Schnaldar-Mayarson 12:04 AM, January 22 I walk into the new Walgreens, a shade of gray just lighter than death. Saccharine radio pop-rock-hip-hop blares from unseen speakers. This week's specials scream from all sides. 'Could I have an application please?' I ask the cashier. H e pulls one out from under the desk and smiles slightly. He knows something. I ask him about this shift. It's 4 PM co 12 AM paving the way for the graveyard shift, 12 AM to 8 AM. I figure that's where I want to be. Halfway berween New Haven gheuoes and Yale-New Haven Hospital, there's gona be interesting stuff going on at 4 AM under these fluorescent lighrs. But will I get shot? "Well, yeah, if the bullet's got your name on ir. .. "

2:00 PM, January 29

c 0

Having returned the application and gotten the call I was waiting for, I show up for the "computer test. " The questions on the test are strictly co ensure that I am right for Walgreens and Walgreens is right for me; it will be helpful only ifl am completely truthful. The first few questions have to do with how many crimes I've committed and how recendy. Then I move on to the drug section. "Walgreens understands that it is typical in American society co experiment with drugs. However, Walgreens is not inrerested in hiring any addictS." The next screen is blum: " What kind of items have you stolen from your employer(s) in the past 24 months?" The choices include: {a) Food, candy, chips, etc. {c) COs, hair dryers, records, etc. (f) Cars, jewelry, etc. . To supplement: " What would you say is the total cash value of the items you've stolen from your employer(s) in the past 24 months?" the options range <$J to >$100,000. Actual Walgreens employees come onto the computer screen. They tell me what they like best and worst. They like the ~Â raderie best. A chipper young woman intones that the most difficult thing to get used to is angry customers; she looks pretty angry herself.

APRIL 2002

Finally, the crucial test. A video of a customer is to be shown, and I am to respond as I would m reality. A reddish, drooping woman in her 40s materializes. "Yesterday they told me chat they'd have my photos today. Now you tell me they're not here. I'll kill you if you tell me co come back tomorrow!" The following week l have an interview. Afrer five mmutes of questions, my future boss sighs, "Well, I see no reason not to hire you. So, pending your passing a drug test, you're hired." She's clearly elated to be working with me, and we shake hands. 9:00 AM, February 4 A trainee watches three videos before beginning employment at the Walgreens on York Street, where Parking Is Limited To 60 Minutes Or Your Car is Towed. One of them is called "So You're Starting a New Job." It's the best by far. The 'host' is a man named John Astin. You may remember him from such films as G~t to Know ~ur Rabbit, /GUn Tomatoo Eat Franu! and Supmonsur, and as a leader of a Buddhist sect in Santa Monica, or a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University. But we've all <>een him before in the nightmares of our collective subconscious. He has smiling jowls that seem to curl and crinkle, and a strange rwink.Je in his eyes, like Vince Fontaine in Gm:u, or a hol>t on a variety show gone sour.

He offers some tips for starting my new job. Tips, he reminds me, that will help me throughout my life. Like "Watch your appearance!," "In your aisle, gets a smile!," and "Nobody waits at Walgreens!" The Walgreens-specific video is set to a raucous rap sing-along beat. It's really old school. It's really old. Groups of flat-topped employees are smiling, and yelling things like "Worlcing at Walgreens is great!" in unison. An African man with gapped teeth admits with a smile, " But worlcing at Walgreens can be hard." I can see myself in the reflection of the television: a little too much hair, collared shirt recently purchased at Sal's, moth-bitten cartoonish mod tie, khalcis too short. I doubt I'll ever get in a company video.

11:30 AM, February 5 This week I'm in training, 9 AM to 3 PM. Then I start my graveyard shift, from 11 PM to 7 AM. Kay, a motherly woman in her early fifties, is training me today and tomorrow. Run it through the red light. Do it again until it beeps. Press Total when all the items have been rung up. Type the amount of Cash Tendered. Scramble for the change. Fast. Don't forget the receipt. (Five dollars free if I fail to give you a receipt.) Don't forget to say Have A Good Day. (Don't forget to mean it.) Keep on standing. Kay's been working at Walgreens for 13 years. Pay starts at $7.00 an hour. She thinks I'm a little crazy for wanting to work the late night shift. Bur there's thar feeling of being alone in the world-walcing up early-early for once to see the sun rise and live while everyone else is asleep. A clandestine l-and-thou with the world.

dom, diaper, and Dorito is in the front of its shelf space and at a ninety-degree angle. I face the items as fast as I can. Ah, new fish! When I finish, I ask Mr. Narichania what to do next. He thinks for a second. "Do it again, I guess." I get lonely here in the wee hours between night and day. Sometimes we only get one customer an hour, sometimes none. When they come I hang around them, inspecting their movements for a twitch toward the cash register and hoping they'll strike up a conversation. I dote. I want to tell them that I'm lonely and glad to have them, bur I don't.

5:50 AM, February 25 Strange things happen to my mind at Walgreens. Lee me explain. There is facing. I move an item a few inches forward so that it sits at the front of its display, right misplaced items, and turn items a few degrees this way or that, so that they are perfectly square. As always, it is the appearance of order that really matters. This work takes its toll on me. Absurd as it may seem, . the experience of cleaning up the store every night only to return the next evening and find it a jungle is something alcin to running on a treadmill, and I can't help harboring a secret animosity towards the customers for mussing up the displays. Then there is the repetitiveness of this work. I face thousands of items a night. There are over wo,ooo Walgreens employees in the United States of America; Wal-Mart employs "1.3 million associates worldwide"; Kmart, Target, Rite Aid, the list is endless, and the numbers pile up. Is this what human beings were put on this earth to do? Even though the work is mundane, purposeless, and repetitive, I have the intractable desire to do a good job and am often ashamed by it. The music is, to put it lightly, maddening. It is omnipresent, persisting through the 2-5 AM hours despite the complete lack of customers. In the break room I stand on a chair and turn the ceiling speaker off, but every night it's back on

Sometimes we only gal ona customer an hour. I want to tall them I'm lonely and glad to have them, but I doni.

2:30 AM, February 11 As my new boss Mr. Narichania puts it, "This job, it's okay, but it's nothing to look forward to. It's work work work all the time. From the moment you punch in you cannot stop working." When there are no customers in the store I'm supposed co "face" all the merchandise. This means ensuring that every battery, bedpan, con-

again. The osmosis of the Muzak's gray content into my brain is slowly driving me towards insanity. For once, I'm aware that some of my colleagues feel the same way, having discussed the matter with Joe the Security Guard. Husky country voices meld into overproduced pop ballads, an epidemic of synthesizers into pleading R&B tunes, pedestrian harmonicas into saxophone solos, painfully catchy odes into competitions over the use of the word "love." But it all sounds the same through these speakers. A friend reminds me that this music has probably been tested to ensure that it leads to a buying mood. I ask Mr. Narichania, and he confirms my suspicion: The music is beamed into every Walgreens from a satellite. It comes from outer space! The day shift and night shift are completely different. During the day, there is action, movement, work to be done. During the night there is facing. During the day the workers talk to each other, laugh, do something to pass the hours and soften the job. During the night my colleagues are Janet and Mildred. Janet hasn't spoken a friendly word to me since I've arrived-she hasn't spoken 10 words to me, period. I like Mildred, but I worry that there's something wrong with her. A typical conversation: Me: You going to lunch? She: Yeah. Me [making quote symbols, smiling): "Lunch"? She: What you mean? Me: It's funny to have lunch at 4 AM ..â&#x20AC;˘ She: Yeah, that's lunchtime. The assistant manager before Mr. Narichania lasted only two months, and his predecessor's tenure was four weeks. So they shouldn't be too surprised that I'm planning on hanging up my blue vest in a few weeks. I feel guilty, of course. I don't think they'll mind too much, given that they get three or four new applications every night. The turnover is surprisingly quick in a high-profile gig like this.

7:24 AM, March 3 Kay walks in, finally. "My savior!" I yell with a grin. The customer in front of me, obese under her hospital garb, with Buddy Holly

THE NEW JouRNAL

glasses and diagonally-slicked black hair asks, "T his means you can go home?" "Yeah. Gee a good night's sleep," I laugh. It's groggy, and I'm 7:23 AM. " I used co work nights, back when I started at the hospital, for three long years. The whole world is against you." "We should have our own neighborhoods-" "Communities!" " ...where everyone gets a good day's sleep, and the calendar day stares at noon!" We pause. "It's a dream." I hand her some silver and a bag. "You have a good day." The trick here, as always, is to get through the next day, hour, and minute, and not to think about the weeks or months that may follow. It's just too depressing. So I sing at 2 AM, I dribble a children's bouncy ball at 3 AM, I dance at 4 AM, and I almost lose my balance at 5 AM. I try to create a parliament of Happy Easter! balloons, and I build pyramids with a pile of SonyÂŽ 6 Hrs (EP) Brilliant Color and Sound Premium Grade videotapes. Bottom line is, my colleagues work the graveyard shift to get away from social interaction.

shift is preparing to go, and we talk. ''I'm leaving soon," I tell him. "But your shift just started!" "No, I mean this job." "Yeah? Me too. There's no life here." I know exactly what he means. "Three people quit last week." "I guess it's going around, like some beautiful epidemic. What you doin' next?" "Computers. That's my field." I'm impressed, and I'm really happy for him. Lorna, short with pale features and reddish hair, ambles over to us. "I went to school to become an RN and a pharmacist. All those degrees, and I'm working,"-she lowers her eyes and her voice, pauses, then looks at me-"here. Nobody wanes to be here." A tall black woman steps up and interrupts us. " Do you have an application?" I'm stoned, and I realize it's obvious as my hands reach like pincers for the form, which is missing. "Sorry, but we're all out." lmJ

Matthew Schn~ider-May~rson is a junior in Davmport Co/leg~.

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3:40 AM, March 12 A woman with brown hair and her left eye half-closed walks purposefully into the store and directly to the counter. "Other than these shirts here, do you guys sell, like, clothes?" I think for a second as her lame eye flutters. "My kid got all his clothes cut up yesterday," she confesses. I point her co aisle two, where Walgreens stocks a mysterious array of ghetto-fatigue XXL shirts and XS shorts in bright blues, oranges, and pinks. She runs over and returns with a shirt and a pair of socks. "What happened, if you don't mind my asking?" "Adam got in a car accident." My smile drops, and I ring up her Marlboros twice. "He and his ftiends were driving, and two quads-four wheelers, not cars!ran them off the road. The car flipped over, and he's in the hospital." 11:00 PM, March 15 As I show up to work one Friday night, my Honduran friend Jesus from the afrernoon

4..PRI L 2002

â&#x20AC;˘

'This ts the Way the World Ends Novelist John Crowley rewrites history from the inside Th~

Translator by John Crowley (William Morrow, 2002.), pp. 285.

OR A . FEW HOURS LAST FALL,

we glimpsed history. Some of us watched from our sofas, others from rooftops in Brooklyn, and still others from the very jets that slammed into the World Trade Center. As the Twin Towers collapsed in a cloud of ash and smoke, the world changed irrevocably-yet in our sight. John Crowley, a professor of English at ÂˇYale, tries to capture something like this in his new novel Th~ Translator. What, he asks, is it like to experience and to be a part of history? Modest, yet scrupulously crafted, Th~ Translator offers rare insight into the inner workings of the past. Critics tend to categorize Crowley's fiction as magical realism or fantasy, but Th~ Translator hardly fits that mold. The novel is a work of historical fiction. The angels, talking a:nimals, time travelers, magical houses, and elaborate, otherworldly milieus that pervade C rowley's previous seven novels and numerous novellas are glaringly absent, supplanted by normal people and historical figures in familiar, earthly surroundings. Set mostly in the si:nies at an unnamed midwestern university, the world of The Translator looks something like a baby-boomer's college yearbook: Characters sing Pete Seeger songs, get drunk, read the poetry of A. E. Housman, and go to student protests. The story begins in early 1962, the year of the Cuban m issile crisis, when the novel's heroine Christa "Kit" Malone starts her freshman year of college a semester late. Like most gifted poets, Kit has gone through some rough times in her childhood. During her senior year of high school, she gave birth to a fatally deformed baby; later, she attempted suicide. None of this seems to matter, though, when she finagles her way into a class taught by an exiled Russian poet named lnnokenti Falin, a Joseph Brodsky type, and quickly falls in love with him. Falin at first appears gruff-he startles his students on the first day of class with the warning that they will be graded solely on the memorization of poems ("Best to memorize all," he says. "Observe this motto of Soviet Young Pioneers: Be Prepared')-but Kit finds his icy fa~de enchanting. When she bumps into him one night at the library and subsequently has coffee with him at an aU-night diner, an improbable friendship develops between them. As the summer approaches, w ith the Cuban missile crisis looming in the background, Falin and Kit grow closer-so close that he asks her ro help him translate his corpus into English.

By J acob Blecher This storyline may sound sappy-and to some degree it isbut Crowley has a knack for crafting beautiful sentences that redeem even the most mawkish narrative. As Kit hugs Falin before returning home for a few weeks, for instance, he writes, She knew-she knew by now-that there really can be a person, one at least, that you can embrace as easily and wholly as though the two of you were one thing, a thing that once upon a time was broken into pieces and is now put back together. And how could she know this unless he knew it too? It was part of the wholeness, that he must:

THE NEW JouRNJ

and that too she knew. With her he was for a moment whole, they were whole: as whole as an egg, and as fragile. Though abstract, this is deeply affecting prose. Though the story centers on the tensest moment of the twentieth century, The Translator never turns into the sprawling war-epic, in the tradition of Tolstoy's ~r and Peace or Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, that one might hope for or expect. Although we learn that Falin is mysteriously implicated in the Cold War and, what's more, that he is somehow responsible for the peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis, the details of that plotline remain almost wholly unstated. When Kit asks Falin whether he is "some kind of ... agent," he replies cryptically, "Ah. But not all agents are secret. And not all secret agents are spies." Is the implication that Falin as poet somehow saves the world and changes the very direction of history? It is uncertain, and other details are similarly obscure. The full extent of Kit and Falin's relationship, for example, remains cloudy, even after Kit wakes up one morning in his bed. "You were lovers, then, in that summer?" a Russian scholar asks Kit as Crowley zooms out co a conference in St. Petersburg thirty years later commemorating what would have been Falin's 75th birthday. IGt fumbles for a second and then replies, "No, no . . . Not then. But yes a little later. Or maybe not. I mean ... I'm not sure." It is as if Crowley has purposely omitted four or five hundred pages of intrigue, action, and drama and left us with the more subdued interludes. This subdued quality is not without value, however. Much of the latent excitement of the plot, as well as Crowley's affinity for magical realism, seems "translated" into powerful metaphors and images. In one striking scene, right before Kit slits her wrists, she opens the mirrored door of a medicine cabinet, surprised "to find, behind her face, not the contents of herself," but only toiletries. This poignant mirror motif resurfaces throughout the work, especially in reference to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. Kit's favorite book, Through the Looking Glass comes to \.pRJL 2002

symbolize (perhaps a bit too often) not only the Cold War, but also the sort of mirror-image pas-tk-tkux in which she and Falin engage throughout the book. The verse that Crowley ghostwrites for Kit and Falin is an achievement in its own right. Few novelists dare to undertake such a difficult task. Crowley, though, manages both to construct independent voices for his two protagonists (though this is a major point of contention in the novel: whether true translation is possible, or simply "new poems") and to write a half dozen or so skillful poems. It is in this careful attention to language, rather than in a grand, bloated plotline, that The Translator succeeds most as a novel. Precisely by rejecting an epic, multicharacter narrative, Crowley achieves something equally magnificient. He does not merely revise history; he puts a mystical, dreamy spin on what it means to be a part of it and to articulate ir. In reference to a childhood marked by constant relocation, Crowley writes of Kit, "To [her], the places [her family] lived were vivid, bur she remembered them like scenes from novels: separate and poignant and hers, but not her." In Crowley's own book, he has achieved something like this: not so much a coherent narrative as a series of punctuated moments, loosely connected to form a story. The Translator's retelling of the Cold War centers on individuals whose knowledge of the past is vivid at times and fragmented or blurry at others. If nothing else, the novel offers a unique and deeply personal vantage point from which to reflect on the mysteries of language, history, and time. To be sure, The Translator is one of Crowley's least ambitious projects in recent years. It represents a turn to accessibility for an author whose novels have attracted only a small, mostly bookish following in the past. But this may be more a sign of versatility than senility; Crowley is a profoundly talented writer, and he deserves far better than to fall through the cracks of history like his male protagonist. IBIJ

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jacob Blecher, a sophomore in Davenport Cotkge, is associate editor for TNJ. 37

NEW HAVEN: HOME OF Pepe's pizza, Louis' burgers, sons and daughters of Eli, and the only buzzing, beeping, count-down savvy, two-way walk traffic lights I know. When I first encountered the beeping traffic light outside of Commons two years ago, I was taken aback. I stood and watched a few cycles of red and green. Back then, the light on the corner of Grove and College merely chirped. Now, it beeps and counts crossable time down from 30. If New Haven traffic controls continue to evolve at this rate, stoplights may soon be running the city. This breed of vocal stoplight is rapidly multiplying throughout New Haven. Sentient traffic lights can now be found at Chapel Âˇa nd Temple, York_ and Elm, and Grove and Whitney. I was eager to learn more about these marvels of traffic-control technology. So I called Ernie LeGoya at the Connecticut Department of Transportation. He immediately informed me that when it comes to regulating traffic, New Haven is something of a renegade municipality. While the DOT manages traffic for many Connecticut cities, LeGoya told me that "New Haven likes to be in charge of all their signals. They even do all their own painting. You know, the yellow on the curbs." LeGoya was kind enough to help me get in touch with the people in charge. Bruce Fischer of New Haven Traffic Control was baffled by my keen interest in his job. Explaining my mission, I began throwing questions at him. His responses were elusive: "You might think we're doing some things that we're not." Hmm. But why, I insisted, does New Haven have such unusual stoplights? Fischer explained that be and his staff were simply responding to public demand. The beeping stoplights are for the visually impaired, and the countdowns arrived as a solution to the complaint from senior citizens that they didn't have enough time to cross. "Older people got scared," he explains. The pre-countdown era stoplights had eight seconds of white "walk" and then twelve seconds of flashing red "don't walk." The flashing was

supposed to inform the pedestrian to finish crossing the street and to warn pedestrians on the curb not to begin. Fischer and the department received many complaints from elderly residents. "They saw the flashing begin when they were half-way across the street and they thought they were supposed to turn around." Fortunately, the countdown gives the ful[ allotted time. Fischer elaborated, "We just try to respond to the needs of an area." The countdown stoplight makes perfect sense: Who wouldn't love to get old people out of the middle of the road? As Fischer became more and more excited, he lost his reserve and revealed the secrets behind New Haven's advanced stoplight technology. "We have a staff of people interested in the new technology. We see a new light and say 'Gee! We want that new . kind of walkway here!"' Fischer said proudly, The truth is, the countdown stoplight has not been approved by all DOT's. In fact, the state opposes New Haven's use of the countdowns. Personally, I'm glad we have Fischer on the job. He has a bold vision for the future of intersections around New Haven. Some day, those boring yellow poles at every corner may begin to vibrate when the walk signal is up--a service for the seeing and hearing impaired. Crossing the street could become a sensory extravaganza. Fischer's mission goes well beyond stoplights. He is every pedestrian's friend. "We want to make it easier for people to walk." Years ago, for example, Broadway was one wide street. The city and the University worried about students crossing at various locations, so they cooperated and built the parking lot and walkway system that now divide the street. Fischer's department directs our feet, and the walls and marked waJkways make crossing Broadway a safe and even pleasant experience. Unfortunately, traffic lights and traffic laws are consistently abused. New Haven citizens-Yale students especially-take jaywalking to new extremes. The biggest problem for New Haven officials is the

stretch of Elm Street at:weert College and ~ weekday arounJ 11:20 AM, cars must stop in their rradc.s as droves of eager 'Stude ts edge out into the streef. Fischer astutely observes, "People take shortest route. To encourage people to walk to the cross street is very difficult, especially young people dashing across the street." Fischer and the department have talked about placing waist-high New York-style fences along the curb. He expects that there will be substantial opposition and made it dear that it is only an idea. ''I'm only projecting that. It's a distant possibility." As you dart diagonally across the Comrnons-sss intersection, you probably aren't thinking about Bruce Fischer or the DOT, nor do you realize that you are breaking a city ordinance that Fischer takes quite seriously. I asked Fischer about the "diagonal cross" phenomenon (as I naively termed it). He didn't understand what I meant. I tried again in more technical terms, and soon we were on the same page. "Oh you mean the protected pedestrian phase? That is not a diagonal cross time." Fischer warned explicitly that no one should ever be crossing the street diagonally, even if the lights are beeping and counting down. "I'm just trying to protect the most vulnerable people," Fischer told me in our conversation. The "protected pedestrian phases" are part of an intricate light program intended to coordinate pedestrian and vehicular paths in the safest, most efficient manner. The beep and countdown are there for our safety. They are a New Haven privilege, and yet we continue to disrespect the beep, the countdown, and the double walk, increasing our vulnerability with each "diagonal cross." 1111

J~ssica

Cohm, a junior in Timothy Dwight Colkge, is managing ~ditor for TNJ.

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