Volume 36 - Issue 4

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PUBLISHER

VERY

Michael Addison EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Paige Austin

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MANAGING EDITORS

Sarah Laskow, F!Dra Lichtman DESIGNER

Miao \\:'ling

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TO BUY THE ·

BusiNESs MANAGER •

Brian U:'llyda PHOTOGRAPHY EpiTOR

GIFT FOR THE

Eve Fairbanks

IMPOSSIBLE

TO SHOP FOR PRODUCTION MANAGER

Adriane Quinlan RESEARCH DIRECTOR •

Romy Drucker CIRCULATION AND SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGERS

Ann Lane Rick, David Zax

1209 Chapel Street, New Haven (between Park and Howe) Free parking in rear

203-787-4496

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WEB EDITOR

Concha Mmdoza

AssociATE PHoTo EDITOR

Sarahi Uribt Stnior Staff Maeve Herben • Charlotte Howard

Mtmbm and Dirtct6n Emily Bazdon • Joshua Civin • Peter B. Cooper Tom Griggs • Brooks Kdlcy • Daniel Kurtz-Phelan Jennifer Pitts • Henry Schwab • Elizabeth Sledge David Slifka • Fred Suebcigh • Thomas SU'Ong John Swansburg

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AJvison Richard Blow • Jay Carney • Richard Conniff Ruth Conniff • FJisha Cooper • Julia Preston Lauren Rabin • Steven Weisman • Danid Yergin

Frimds Steve Ballou • Anson M. Beard, Jr. • Blaiie" Bennett EdW2rd B. Bennrn, Jr. • EdW2rd B. Bennett III Paul S. Bcnnrn • Richard Blow • Manha Brant Jay Carney • Daphne Chu • Josh Civin Jonathon M. Oark • Constance Ocmcnt • FJisha Cooper Peter B. Cooper • Andy Court • Masi Denison Alben J. Fox • Mrs. HoW2rd Fox • David Freeman Gcoffiey Fried • Sherwin Goldman • David Greenberg Tom · • Stephen Hdlman • Jane J<;.mcnsky Brooks • Roger Kirwood • Lewis E. Lehrman Jim Lowe • E. Nobles Lowe • Manha E. Neil Peter Nc:ill • HOW2rd H. Newman • Scan O'Brien Julie Pc~s • Lewis and Joan Platt • Josh Plaut Julia Prest<>n • I...aurm R2bin • Fairfax C. Randal Sruan Rohrer Arlcrn and Arthur Sager • Richard Shields W. Hampton Sides • Jjsa Sil=man FJizabeth and William Sledge Adina Proposco and David Sulsman • Thomas SU'Ong FJizabeth Tate • Danid Yergin and Angda Stcnt Yogin •

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Volume 36, Number 4 April2004 •

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The Guilded Age

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Derelict buildings allow New Haven artist guilds to Survive.

by Adriane Quinlan

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Unsought Asylum

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The psychiatric ward at Yale-New Haven Hospital cares for Yales most depressed students -whether they want it or not.

by David Zax

Th·e Fourth Coming

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How the grand design for the Chapel Square Mall gives way to urban compromise.

by Chaitanya Mehra

Derailed from the Tenure Track

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Young professors paint their side ofthe tenure debate.

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by Evelyn Shih •

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Points of Departure The Critical Angle: Excavating Kahn by Charlotte Howard Shots in the Dark: Birds of a Feather by Eve Fairbanks Interview: World Fellow Norbert Mao: Uganda's Next President •

Endnote: Tweedle-Dumb by Romy Drucker •

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THE NEW joURNAL is published five times during the academic yt:ar by THE NEW JoURNAL at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, cr o6po. Office address: 29-45 Broadway. Phone: (203) 4321957· Email: tnj@yale.edu. All contents copyright 2003 by THE NEW jOURNAL at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction eithec in whole or in part without wrirten permission of the publishec and editor in chief is prohibited. While this magazine is published by Yale College students, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seven thousand five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and New Haven community. Subscriptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One year, SI8. Two years, S32. THE NEW JouRNAL is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. THE NEW JouRNAL encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Cf o6p.o. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We resecve the right to edit all letters for publication.

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Natural Hazards

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It's just after midnight on a Monday, and I'm in the backseat of a car heading up 1-95 towards Orange, with Lucas Dreier, a ponytailed Yale senior. Val and Liliana, a middleaged Connecticut couple that Lucas met through a meditation course, are sitting in front, talking about India; Lucas is checking the batteries in his flashlight.

About twenty minutes out of New Haven, we spot our target: Trader Joe's grocery store, now closed. Lucas directs Val to park the car behind a dumpster, out of view from the street. "Get your masks out," Lucas quips. Armed with flashlights, and keeping . our voices low to avoid the night attendant on duty, the four of us get out of the car and make our way over to a large black dumpster.

With childlike enthusiasm, Lucas lifts up the lid, takes out his flashlight, and jumps in among heaps of plastic bags. Wearing only sandals, old jeans, and a corduroy shirt despite the frigid cold, he eagerly begins to tear open the plastic bags revealing packaged food mixed in with rotten items, thawing meat, spoilt vegetables and cracked bottles of tomato sauce. Ignoring the faint 4

stench, Lucas plunges. his bare hands into a bag and discovers, much to his excitement, what he calls great finds: cartons of half-andhalf, an intact bag of nuts, bags of frozen vegetables, and a hunk of cheddar cheese.

"The first rule of dumpstering," Lucas explains as he rummages, unfazed, through a particularly soggy bag of food remains, "is to never be hesitant to reach down to the bottom of a disgusting bag inevitably, that's where the real treat is." Proving his point, he happily pulls out a large can of oats, covered in organic slime. "Just a little messy," he says, "but perfectly good." From inside the dumpster, he hands the can over to us, and we add it to our growing pile of liberated goods.

Like me, this is Val and Liliana's first time dumpstering, and it shows. When Lucas tries to convince them that the "partiallyopened" bag of Belgian chocolate chip cookies are still edible, they pause warily. Lucas tosses the cookies onto the pile next to the large can of oats. "We'll take cern," he says; "My housemates will eat anything."

Lucas is right: the people with whom he lives enjoy dumpstered food daily. They also share his passion for recycling, minimal resource use, and anti-globalization rhetoric.

In fact, for Lucas and his seven housemates, this is a way of life. They are the original founders of the Greenhouse, Yale's first and only cooperative living group.

Started last fall by a group ofYale upperrclassmen, the Greenhouse allows students who are committed to social justice and environmental responsibility to try to live according to their ideals. Besides minimizing resource use (enter dumpstering), this means making all decisions through group consensus, cooking vegetarian or vegan meals together, and fostering an ethic of mutual cooperation and inter-dependence. Located on 125 Dwight Street, the Greenhouse has had its fair share of challenges. But now, by all accounts, it's thriving. Already, ~eteen Yale students have expressed an interest in joining next year.

There is a lot to the Greenhouse beyond dumpstering, though it is a vital part of its plan to reduce waste (dumpsters behind Trader Joe's, Lucas tells me, are recognized nationally as "activist goldmines," because of the large quantities of packaged food discarded there). The house, with its strong commitment to environmental and social responsibility, is a haven for Yale's activist community. It

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After some moments of concentrated sil~nce, orie member comes up witp a solu-. cion , to the fridge ·problem: a weekly fridge, checker will be added to the list of rotating . ' jobs, and this individual will have the task of ·~ checking that the fridge-cleaner has done his or her job. Taking out the chore wheel, Lucas " makes the necessary. amendments to the list . c of duties. ; The consensus system is integral to the 1 Greenhouse. Every decision is made by every ' member of the House. "Expediency is a necessary sacrifice," explained Marina " Spitkovskaya, one of the two founding mem<' hers of the Greenhouse. "We have dealt with ~ difficult issues as they have come up, and I - believe the result is a home where everyone's ~ voice is heard. However imperfect our house .. is, it is the product of a group of individuals ' who have participated in its creation, which ; is more than I can say of society at large, where many are silenced." No one is con• templating the abandonment of the consen' sus process anytime soon. Still, I can't help ~ but notice some impatient faces among · seniors with essays to write as the meeting " stretches precariously close to its agreed1 upon time limit . . ..

"There. is always tension," Lucas ~ explains, "between the importance of the consensus process and people's needs to get l stuff done." A thirty-minute conversation about dumpstering and composting later, I ' begin to understand why. " · When graduation plans come up, many of the seniors announce that their parents ; will be staying at the Greenhouse. "Oh h guys, says one seruor, you cannot, w atever you do, mention dumpstering to my par.' ents. " But it's when the members discuss their :. families and graduation plans that I clearly - see the Gre nhouse's greatest asset. In total, - the house h eleven bedrooms, with spare space for viJiting family, visitors from other · co-ops across the nation, and, in one case last semester, a homeless person.· Nonetheless, graduation will be a serious crunch time, when each senior's family \ expects to stay at the house. One girl explains that her mother and two sisters will be staying with them. Immediately, the other people offer the use of their beds and bedrooms.

The members of the Greenhouse share an ethic of generosity and interdependence. i Yet they seem as oblivious to their mutual generosity as they are to the absurdity of ; some of their practices.

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For all their absurUity, for .all of their troubles with food, for all of what outsiders might consider an over-obsession with leftist causes, the me~bers of the Greenhouse enjoy a bond, it seems to me, that few at Yale have.

It is probably this fact that accounts for the last item on the Greenhouse's agenda for the meeting: how to accommodate the 19 new students eager to join. ..

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Networked With a touch of nostalgia, I pushed open the door of Koffee? on Audubon Street and greeted a scene with which I had become familiar over the past seven months. The coffee shop was overflowing with a diverse mix of busybodies and activists, brought together courtesy of Meetup, an Internet bulletin board that helps unite strangers with shared interests. As the local coordinator running Meetups on behalf of Wesley Clark's presidential campaign, I was accustomed to standing in front of a similar group each month at Anna Liffey's. These small gro·up gatherings were just one piece of·a small nationwide revolution, in which thousands of supporters . . honed Internet technology like Meetup into a political tool guaranteed to give candidates a boost. For Clark and the previously littleknown Vermont Governor Howard Dean, that boost was enough to seize headlines, but not victory. Instead, the campaign of John Kerry, which is considerably less adept with local organizing and Internet technology like Meetup, emerged as the Democrats' hope for a November victory.

That's · why tonight's meeting at Koffee? was different, and not just for me. Previous Meetups had always been devoted to meeting on behalf of a particular candidate, but the Democratic National Committee had designated tonight's meeting a special "Unity Meetup." Grudgingly, the former Deaniacs and Clark supporters were heeding the call to transfer their allegiance to the triumphant Kerry clan and to bring their technology with them.

Meetup's website (www.meetup.com) lists over 4,000 topics around which people can converge ranging from Bufl}r the Vampire Slayer to crocheting political groups are only a subset, although with the advent of the .

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Dean and Clark campaigns, they have become a dominant subset. Users pick a topic, enter their zip code, and find out when the next meeting is. The pre-determined meeting days fall at the same time on the same day each month, so there's no wrangling over people's schedules. Venues are determined by vote: local New Haven spots have included Koffee?, Playwright, Anna Liffey's, and Olde Blue. The average Meetup involves members informally gathering to socialize and discuss their common interest over a few drinks but, as the Dean and Clark campaigns have demonstrated, they can also accomplish much more.

The self-designated leader of the Unity Meetup was Ward 22's newly elected Democratic Committee co-chair, Alyssa Rosenberg. Perched on a table in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the coffee shop, she had her hands full with the . restless array of button-clad Democrats who filled the room. Some of the crowd consisted of bright-eyed political newcomers; others were old hands who still weren't sold on this newfangled form of mobilization. Most challenging of all, Rosenberg faced the bemused and impatient stares of several contingents of Clark and Dean supporters, who had been attending and running their own Meetups for months.

One of them, Sharon Steuer, whose attachment to the exciting time of Dean's rise was visibly intact, is an artist and former coordinator for Dean. She sat in a corner among a tight cluster of fellow supporters of the Vermont Governor and was clearly having a hard time concealing her impatience with the Democrats who lacked the Dean campaign's adroitness with of local organizing. As Rosenberg and members of the audience hesitantly considered creating a media response committee, Steuer interjected, "The DeaD campaign already knows how to do this. Let's not reinvent the wheel."

The vocal but confused comments frofll around the room only rein£0rced Steuer's annoyance.

"I have a question: Why are we having all of these groups?" said Keith Crane, a. mountainous man whose booming voice startled Rosenberg and much of the crowd. "There's 3 Kerry Meetup tomorrow; why don't we just go to that one and get rid of this one? I was 3 Dean supporter before, but we've got a candidate now. It's John Kerry and we should be united around him. So why do we need all of these different meetings?" Crane's complaintS are not without foundation: sometimes, the •

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main result of Meetup can just be a lot of meetings. Plus, because the organizing methods usually associated with the technology do . . not carry are fixed institutional structures or hard lines of accountability, the success of a particular locality • • • m to orgamzmg voters depends on the personalities of the people who ... ,.. decide to take on leadership roles there.

Despite these drawbacks, the potential .of these new techniques has drawn the attention of Democratic officials all over the country, including New Haven.

"The Party .tsn ' t as Innovative . . and fresh as it needs to be," Democratic Town Committee Chair Susan Voigt tells me the following night over drinks in the basement of Anna Liffey's. We are speaking over the din of fifty chatting people, who are attending the first Kerry Meetup since the Massachusetts Senator cinched the nomination. The students leading the event Zach Jones and Rachel Juarez, members of Yale College for Kerry got advance warning of what to expect- as a result of the previous evening's turnout and have managed to improvise an agenda with aplomb. The attendees have to maneuver around us as they line up to donate money to nominee's cause and sign up for the lists of activities.

To Voigt, the free-form structure and energy that characterize Meetups seem both mysterious and intriguing. "This is all so new and different to me. I'm used to ;mion politics, where there's a structure, and everyone knows exactly what they're supposed to do.

But we need to learn to do this, to put some more life into the Party, and to use these new ideas and technologies to reach different conAPRIL 2004

stituencies than the ones I usually see," she says earnestly. "We even got Mayor John [DeStefano] to sign up," she adds a good sign that Meetup has broken into the consciousness of the Democratic establishment '

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in New Haven.

Rosenberg intends to lat~h onto that opening and harness the enthusiasm of the Clark and Dean Meetup groups to energize the local Democratic Party. "There are 130,000 people in N~ Haven and only 50,000 are registered Democrats. This is unacceptable," she says. As the city regularly polls oover half Democratic, Rosenberg has a rea~on to expect more. On the other hand, this dominance is itself a reason for apathy.

With such a powerfUl Democratic machine ensuring victory at almost all levels of government in election after election, it's nnsurprising that few people see much reason to register and vote. Although the Kerry campaign hopes to build the anarchic energy of the Clark and Dean Meetups into a potent anti-

Bush force. Laura Barnes, a Clark supporter from Lyme, is skeptical: "We grew from within, from early meetings and increasing online organization and they worked. The Kerry people are trying to get into this sideways, and I'm not sure that they fit."

Sideways or otherwise, the Kerry campaign is interested in making it work, and Kerry activists such as Juarez and Jones are eager to reach out to the supporters of other Democratic candidates to learn • • new orgamzmg techniques. They may have little other choice: on the morning ~fter Super Tuesday, Kerry had a hundred million dollars less money in his • campatgn treasury than President Bush.

In the weeks since then, Kerry has had significant success fundraising, with the fUror over the September · 11th commission helping to increase interest. But as the controversy ebbs and flows, gaining an advantage over the President will require Democrats across the country to tap into their source of comparative advantage, tapping into their ability to motivate supporters at local venues like Koffee and Anna Liffey's.

-Eric Tam

Hearing History Looking for the office of Andy Horowitz, director of the New Haven Oral History Project, in the basement of HGS, I take a wrong turn down the dim orange hall 7

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and wind up walled in by a decayed mattress and a pile of discarded desks. Though Andy says that he is ashamed to lead donors to his office, the project has recently attracted sig~ nificant donations. The energetic office makes up for the modest surroundings. From the recorders on Andy's desk to the stacks of CDs with the stories ofNew Haven residents, one senses that something historically significant is in the works here.

Andy launches into the history of his own project and its connection with urban renewal. He sees a great . logic to the NHOHP: it fills a historically important gap in the extensive literature on New Haven's renewal, it is educational for the interviewers (some of whom are doing simultaneous indi~ vidual research), and it helps foster a towngown dynamic that is empowering for New Haven citizens.

He gives me a quick history of New Haven renewal, beginning with historians' traditional starting point Richard Lee, mayor of New Haven from 1954:-1970.

During that time Lee created radical change in the city with extremely well-funded projects that attracted national attention. At one point, New Haven was receiving twice as much from. the government as any other city iri America. But while he put New Haven at · the forefront of American urban renewal projects, his policies remain controversial. He relocated over 25,000 people to create his conception of "the model city." In the process, he erased much of what was deemed unsightly in New Haven, but some would argue that in the process he also got rid of much of what was good. Pointing to a . framed magazine page OIJ. his wall, Andy shows me several Caterpillar Heavy Equipment magazine advertisements depicting Richard Lee in command of a fleet of bulldozers ploughing through New Haven.

Previously, historians have examined how Lee set up alternative government structures, how he secured his massive amounts of funding, and how he achieved such large scale change.

From historians like Yale professor Douglas Rae, we know a good deal about a small number of the people who governed New Haven. But, Andy explains, we know very little about what the actual experience was like for most residents: "No one," Andy says, "has ever asked what was it like to live in the model city." One of the main goals of oral history is to record the stories of those people who are not represented in the traditional historical record. Andy is a firm believ•

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er in the notion that "You don't have to be famous for your life to be history." And this community-based approach, he says, is part of what has made the project so successful; people want to do it, and they are aware that they are helping write history themselves ..

In Andy's opinion the very act of interviewing is just as valuable as the archives it produces. While Andy thinks the typical range of Yale service projects is fantastic, he noticed that after a while the dynamic can get a little one-sided Yale students are the experts helping out New Haven. With the oral history project, New Haven residents are helping out students, and the interviews · are empowering for both sides, Growing up in New Haven, Andy says pointedly, "my parents and friends were smart, too." · About half way through our talk, a member of his team comes in. She has just interviewed a resident for a research paper. "His dog burped into the microphone," she says.

"Yeah, that happened to me .too one time," replies Andy.

How did Andy begin the project in which he would later have experience with dog-burp archival? Andy is a New Haven resident who went to Hillhouse High School.

For four summers he worked for the Department of Weights and Measures. He was the guy who went .around making sure · everybody got a fair deal on their cheese at the deli by standardizing scales. "When you are doing a job like that," he admits, "you take your time." So he heard all sorts of interesting stories. As for the cheese scale accuracy, he says, the benefit usually went to the customers: "the scales get sticky after a while which makes things read as heavier." Andy offers that detail with a certain self-aware excitement, his inner archivist grinning at the idea.that he has had firsthand access to such a quirky fact. .

What else has Andy found? Some stories are bits of New Haven color: the owner of the Winchester factory used to ride his bike up a hill holding onto the back of a trolley. Others probe the high hopes and tough consequences of renewal. A planner of the Audobon arts district describes the period as "one of the most exciting times; there was the sense that you could dream as big as you wanted and the city and the federal government could have it there for you to make it happen." A man tells how, when his childhood neighborhood was bulldozed, he would take the after school bus with his friends to stand around the remains of their old neighborhood. Another resident describes how her •

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The Past Recast · The Peabody Museum of Natural History will soon have a symbol to define its role in the Yale-New Haven community: a THE NEw JouRNAL

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family had owned a store for three generations a store that "is now under 1-91. They built a highway over my livelihood." There are also stories of integration; one interviewee was a lawyer for a group dedicated to integrating predominantly white neighborhoods.

The group was made up of bankers and (( " .

1awyers w h o ran a straw man operation: white owners would think they were selling to whites when, in fact, the people they met were decoys. Once the previous residents had left, the new black owners would sign the deeds.

Andy also hopes to explore the excitement of renewal and the problems it created through intra-neighborhood conversations.

These will include three Local History Days at the New Haven Free Public Library when members of the old neighborhoods will have a chance to trade stories in panel discussions.

He also is working ·o n a museum exhibit called "Life in the Model City."

Andy gives me a few CD's of recorded interviews. The first is an interview with the Reverend Dr. Edwin Edmonds, an MricanAmerican sociology professor at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina who came to New Haven on February 7, 1959, after the racist backlash against integration endangered his family. He slowly describes taking his two daughters to a "white-only" municipal pool supported by his tax money.

When he got to New Haven, he took a job at the Dixwell Church of Christ and continued his involvement with the NAACP, which the New Haven White Citizens' council had declared "treasonous."

Listening to Edmonds' stories is very different from the frenzy of daily life at Yale. The stories emerge slowly. There is something soothing about taking an hour out of the day listening to someone who's not talking any faster to accommodate your hectic schedule. While Horowitz is busy transcribing interviews to be more rapidly accessible, skimming these stories will have an entirely different effect than listening to the Reverend speak slowly and clearly, proud of the fact that he has an eager audience.

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twenty-one foot long dinosaur sculpture. But the museum didn't opt for a well-known or particularly graceful species of dinosaur; instead, its curators chose the torosaurus; an obscure herbivore from the Late Cretaceous period that is closely related to the tricer:.. atops.

The torosaurus, along with several species, was first named and described by 0. C. Marsh, a 19th century Yale paleontologist. Then again, Marsh also identified five hundred other more prominent dinosaurs, such • as the stegosaurus and the triceratops.

So why did the ' Peabody choose the torosaurus?

And why does the Peabody need a twenty-one foot long bronze statue anyway?

The museum's Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Jacques Gaultier, first hatched the idea in 2000, when he suggested erecting up a sculpture to give the Peabody an identifiable icon. Gaultier started the search for a sculptor outside the Peabody community, but when exhibit creator and prepartor Michael Anderson heard about the plan, he jumped at the opportunity. In fact, he is still so still so wildly passionate about the project that he can't imagine why the Peabody didn't immediately consider offering the job to one of its own staff members. "This is what I do, this is what I've been trained to do. My background is anatomy and sculpture. I couldn't believe it," he said. When Richard Burger, director of the Peabody Museum, asked him to put together a few proposals. Anderson agreed and began the search for the perfect dinosaur.

"The one that I was really interested in doing was the Torosaurus; that would be the most .. fun to sculpt," Anderson said. He was lucky: when Peabody Museum Director Dr. Richard Burger saw Anderson's torosaurus model, he chose it before even looking at the others.

Still, neither Yale nor the Peabody had APRil. 2004

approved the sculpture, and the project had no funding. The preliminary stages of the project took two years to complete, so Anderson used the time to refine his torosaurus model. He .traveled to the Smithsonian and worked with its paleontolo. gists and preparators to create a more accurate model. He presented this second version of

A few blocks away from his house, another team · of worker~ is using a point-matching method to build the dinosaur up to full scale.

Once the life-size sculpture is completed, it ' will be taken to bronze casters, and the •' bronze sculpture will be returned to the Peabody, where it will be mounted on · an ·I eight-foot tall, fifteen-foot long block of, granite and Anderson will ' ' finally see his "dream project" in • completion . .

Meanwhile, the Peabody still hasn't set a completion . date or location for the $400,000 ' sculpture.

Tentatively, the ; torosaurus will be mounted in front of the museum, at Whitney and ' Satchem. But due , to the large dawn redwood in the area, dissat- isfied architects are perusing Whitney for other possible sites. .

• The project won't be completed for at least . another year, but five years is not an abnormal!y long time span for such a project. Since committing to reconstructing the torosaurus, .

Anderson has learned a lot about dinosaurs. ' He usually studies and works with the facial bone structure and muscle arrangement of hominids, . specifically the Australopithecus: ·• the species on which he wrote his this is what he wrote his Masters thesis. While there are basic similarities in the musculature and • skeletal build of hominids and dinosaurs, Anderson knew very little about reconstructing dinosaurs and Teptiles. He realized that . dissecting reptiles and birds would help him . better understand the torosaurus' muscula- · ture. So he began to study and dissect reptiles, including crocodiles and iguanas, as well as a • few birds. He is also checking with experts _ about every decision he makes along the way. ''I'm really pleased with how much effortJ went into this thing, how much we researched it," Anderson said. "We have backup on every decision we made."

But the Peabody has a history of blunders in its reconstructions, from "The Age of Reptiles," Rudolph .ZaiJinger's mural in the Great Hall all the animals in it are now understood to be grossly misrepresented to . the apatosaurus reconstruction, which is the the most iconic thing the Peabody has right • ' I

the torosaurus to the Peabody curators in the summer of 200 1. They loved it, but the project still needed funding and approval from Yale's Outdoor Sculpture Committee, which has the responsibility to oversee the placement of sculptures on the campus. By the summer of 2002, Yale had approved the sculpture and the project received all of its funding from an "individual that cannot be named."

With approval and funding cleared, Anderson immersed himself in the project.

He went back to the Smithsonian's paleontologists and "picked their brains for a couple of days," returning to Yale with -~:me-sixth scale triceratops bone casts. (Because torosaurus bones are much rarer than those of the triceratops and the two have ·very similar structures, Anderson and the paleontologists agreed to use the triceratops skeleton to reconstruct the torosaurus.)

When he finished the one-sixth scale model, Anderson upgraded to a one-third scale model, building first the skeleton then the musculature. Now Anderson has moved the sculpture to his house in Guilford and is crafting the skin, which he hopes to complete by the end of April.

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now. Aside from being rebuilt inaccurately, the apatosaurus body is attached to the skull of a camarasaurus, creating the brontosaurus, a dinosaur that doesn't actually exist.

Anderson acknowledges someone will probably find an error in his torosaurus, giving it the same fate as "The Age of Reptiles" and the apatosaurus. But, as he emphasizes, '"The Age of Reptiles' remains as a work of art. I hope the torosaurus will be the same way."

He paused dramatically. '~d they will find something." Yet, the apatosaurus and "The Age of Reptiles" are markers _for human perception of the dinosaurs, which is molding a history of its own.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his and resist the temptation to ·remind the dinner guests that it's also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company •

-Lane Rick •

Poetic Justice •

Taylor Mali, former national champion performance poet, was wearing an American flag pin on the lapel of his blazer. An unsettled feeling began to grow among the twenty Yale students in the room. Mali's prea,cherlike baritone voice, squeezed into a hurried introduction, made him sound like a nervous stand-up comic; The audience. wondered if this poet's jive would be a departure from the typical anti-elitist, disenfranchised tone that is endemic to slam poetry. After all, slam poetry, the illegitimate child of poetry and hip-hop, popularized but commercially misrepresented by Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam, is characterized by rebellion against academia, against government, but most of all, against itsel£ In fact, the genre is in danger of disintegrating because the poets themselves refuse to identify with the movement.

Slam poetry, as Mali has said, is best defined by its medium, which is performance art. It doesn't exist on the page or in the mind but in the audience's reaction, which waivers between a strange empowerment and submission to the sheer volume of his emphatic, • staccato votce:

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Mali believes that every poet should have twenty minutes of material to "instruct and entertain" any audience, whether it be a room of eighth graders or George Bush. Mali took a break from a twelve year teaching career to bring his philosophy to the road and accomplish his goal of encouraging young people to become teachers. His formula for change combines his classroom experience with a dash of anti-elitism thrown in as a token tribute to the genre. To inspire others, Mali describes his. proudest moment as a teacherthe opening of a young girl's mind:

He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"

He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about teachers: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

I'm writing the poem that will change the world, and it's Lilly Wilson at my office door.

Lilly is writing a research paper for me about how homosexuals shouldn't be allowed. to adopt children ... ... I can't believe I'm saying this, Mr. Mali, but I think I'd like to switch sides.

And I want to tell her to do more than just believe it, but to enjoy it!

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When M_ali brings his show down south, however, he censors himsel£ To a conservative audience, for instance, Lilly's initial objection is no longer to gay parenthood, but to allowing Muslims to ride commercial flights. He argues that this less controversial issue teaches a similar lesson of openmindedness, but the audience accepts this lesson more readily.

In his censorship, Mali says he strives to be a uniter, not a divider.

Mter reading a few and poems • the gaugmg • reactions and political leanings of the audience, he offers the aside that his flag pin is worn out of critical irony, intended to mock overt patriotism. His audience can't help but become skeptical, wondering if the symbol might change meaning the next time he tours the south.

Raphi Soifer, on the other hand, wears no ambiguous symbols on his lapel. A Yale Senior and native of the Seattle area, Soifer became involved with slam poetry during a year off he spent at home before his freshman year, touring local poetry cafes by night. He describes himself as, "a performer first, and a poet second," but he became disillusioned with the genre of slam poetry soon after he and a Yale team made it to the national finals during his freshman year.

At ·a typical poetry slam, ftYe judges are randomly picked from the audience to assign a score from one to ten following each performance. As Mali explains, to win, a poet must immediately adapt to reach his audience,and make his poetry accessible to everyone present. Indeed, academic poets would hardly stand a chance in the slam arena.

During competition, accessibility can become a constraint. For Mali, it is just an inconvenience, forcing him to hand pick his poems and discard a taboo here and there; for Soifer, it robs slam poetry of the freedom that is its THE NEw JoURNAL

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very essence. His advice to young poets: "Don't start into slam poetry. Instead, start an ' open mic, build a constructive•'t sommunity of poets and when you're about fifty percent confident in a poem, put yourself out on the line without the pressure of competition."

Soifer's praise of the widely respected Mali is restrained. He only credits Mali for 11 knowing how to compete, and knowing how 11 to win. Although pejorative terms like sellout plague the slam scene, Soifer, at least tries to avoid these competitive commonplaces.

He lists a barrage of the things he terms "cliches" "the coming out poem, the grandmother poem, the racial identity poem, the September 11th poem, the erotic poem, the Tm white and ashamed of 'x' poem"' but his litany makes it hard to imagine the genre devoid of these themes. To Soifer, and anyone familiar with the slam scene, each cliche is ubiquitous, but none are necessarily regrettable. To crusade against these common themes is unnatural and represents the constant rebellion of the genre against itsel£ In time, slam poets are in danger of becoming so paranoid of being labeled as "slam" that their genre may consist of mere satire, like Mali's "How to .. " .

cally wouldn't perform for a group of Yale students like us?" someone asks. ''Actually, the one I just did has gotten me in the most trouble," he replies, ''And I wouldn't have performed it here if you hadn't brought up hip-hop." .

- Brian Wtzyda •

Friendly Fire

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How to Write a Political Poem

By Taylor Mali However it begins, it's gotta be loud and then it's gotta get a little bit louder.

Because this is how you write a political poem and how you deliver it with power... - ... Because all you have to do is close your eyes, lower your voice, and end by saying: the same line three times, the same line three times, the same line three times.

Mali's criticism of hip-hop inspired poetry takes the form of satirical mimicry of the genre, light-hearted and astute on many points, but all the more painful to watch when delivered by a white, middle-aged man, particularly as he attempts to beat-box, grunt, and imitate the distinctive slang of hip-hop vernacular. The audience is visually uncomfortable at best, and the silence conveys a hazy disapproval at the breaking of a cultural taboo.

Somebody in the back wonders if he is holding anything back, if Mr. Mali is censoring himself for this group of Yale students.

"Mr. Mali, is there any material you specifiAPRIL 2004

During the week, David Heinig, a field technician for Qualxserv, frequently answers calls from Yale's Information Technology Services to service computers throughout campus. Several weekends a month, however, Heinig steps out of the information age and into the Old West. In a wooded area adjacent to Quonniquag Lake in rural North Guilford, he orchestrates shooting events as • Territorial Governor of the Bluffhead Bushwackers, a cowboy action shooting society. In these parts, Heinig is known simply as "Cayuse," and the only troubleshooting he does is with a gun. Like "Cayuse," every member adopts an alias, as required by the Bushwackers' parent organization. The name, which must be original among the 54,000 members of the Single Action Shooting

collection. The sport thus becomes less a recreational activity and more a transforma• twn.

For "Cayuse," that transformation means donning the styles of the 1880scowboy boots, spurs, buckles, and belts and proper eye and ear protection for the entire day as he fires replicas of 19th century pistols, rifles and shotguns at steel targets. He is joined in this passion by almost a hundred fellow Bushwackers, only ten of whom are women. They come out, like their Territorial Governor, to enjoy the woods and the good company. For these die-hard Bushwhackers, living out a youthful infatuation with a game of "Cowboys and Indians" is all in a Sunday's work.

Recently, Bushwackers under aliases like "Doc Red thumb," "Philetus Fine Shoot," and "Col.]. L. Chamberlain" gathered for an early morning safety meeting, after which they split into three posses to embark on a weekend ritual. With spectators standing ju~t twenty feet away, the participants trotted, one at a time, between shooting stations, pulling guns from their holsters and aiming them at the · "critters" steel targets shaped like coyotes, chickens, bears, bunnies, and buffalo, as well as the less traditional whiskey jugs and enemy cowboys that populate three clearings in the otherwise towering

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Society (SASS), is often tied to a fictitious or real gunslinger and, combined with a little research, helps its holder spawn a new persona complete with period costume and gun

woods. A safety officer.jogs close behind with a timer in hand. At each of the three stations, the shooters execute stages according to detailed scenarios penned by the Territorial II

Governor. Stage two, for example, is entitled "Sunday Morning Buggy Ride," with instructions that read: "You and the misses are out for a Sunday Morningbuggy ride when you take a bum steer· and wind up face to face with some onry critters. Lucky that you brought your greener and can take care of the matters." Above the scenario descriptions and the directions are Microsoft Paint-created digital diagrams with trajectories linking the stations from which to shoot (a wooden outhouse, a jail, and a swaying buckboard) to the critters. The · trajectories are color-coded according to the type of gun . required: a shot- · gun, rifle or pistol.

A running commentary between the • • participants breaks up the booming gun shots. "I knew I • was gomg to shoot over that chicken;" "No misses;" and the playful-bickering of wife-husband rivalries.

Scoring is based both on accuracy and the overall time spent completing each stage, but the only spoils a '• • • wmner IS grant• ed are playful - bragging rights.

Most of the • • • morrung IS pep; pered with the '

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Now, as Territorial Governor, he tries to give his crew a special niche within SASS. The members' names are chosen with care, with consideration of their historical weight and with the personalities of their holders in mind. So when choosing a name for the club, "Cayuse" was also careful. He thought "Bluff Head," which refers to where the Bushwackers hold their meetings had to be incorporated. The chosen name naturally . suits a club which "Cayuse" has been molding.from its infancy to stand-out. "It did not take long to settle on 'Bushwackers,"' the club's website explains. ''A quick check of The Chronicle reveals a few 'Vigilantes,' 'Regulators,' and 'Shootists,' but there's only one 'B us hwack ers' . "

-Concha Mendoza

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· forceful sounds - of firing guns and clink of ejected shells.

Earplugs limit conversation, but, even so, frequent jovial exchanges display the group's pleasant rapport.

The Bushwhackers are part of a growing ' national community created through SASS. · The 115-page February issue of The Cowboy • · Chronicle, the monthly SASS journal, features articles by "Aimless Annie," "Palaver Pete," · ' and "J .E. B. Stuart" but doesn't mention a single legal name. This is a testament to the

unique, tight-knit community, that has developed across the country among · those who share an enthusiasm for .c owboy action shoot• mg.

While "Cayuse~' oversees planning for the Bushwacker branch of this extended family, another member takes responsibility for keep- · ing it safe. On a chilly, drizzly morning, "Lazy Ace Bob," leaves his Wall Street job as a portfolio manager to enter the backwoods. I-fere . he takes on the title of Head Safety ·officer, a job he takes just as seriously. "Lazy Ace Bob" is re·s ponsible for making sure SASS safety regulations are followed, such as adherence to the "170 degree safety plane." Shooters must. keep their guns pointed at their target at all times: if the barrel of their gun strays more than 8 5 degrees . in either direction, they are dis.qualified. . · .

Safe though the environment may be, it is still extremely noisy.

Neighbors complain consistent. ly, though "Cayuse" says he has been able to appease them by . restricting shooting hours. The group's forthcoming underground shooting facility a project which necessitated a five hundred dollar contribution from each member-should improve Bushwacker-neighbor relations.

Despite complaints from nonparticipants, single action shooting is the fastest-growing shooting sport in the nation.

The rules are simple and non-restrictive: all participants must wear period clothing, follow the safety guidelines, join SASS and be over the age of twelve. After trying several shooting disciplines, "Cayuse" settled with cowboy action shooting because he found it to be the most fun and ]east competitive. For the past seven years he has participated in the sport and in 2000 he founded the Bushwackers .

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ERELICT

UILDINGS ALLO TIST GUILDS TO -

ike the set for a movie that will never be made, the stretch of Orange Street between Chapel and Crown is so empty that it - · hard to imagine anyone has ever lived there. The storefronts are vacant. Picture windows gape at idle sidewalks. Cars rarely pass.

This is the Ninth Square, a New Haven neighborhood undergoing vast renovations with the goal of attracting upscale retail. Further down Orange Street, there are new and expensive restaurants, but for now this block is still gray and deserted.

But the Ninth Square is not entirely dead. Though dark and unwatched, 60 Orange Street isn't actually vacant. A red ribbon, cut long ago at a celebration of the space's opening, bangs limp by the perpetually, curiously unlocked door. Inside, scrappy wooden pedestals support sculptures of lounging, curvaceous women, who stand sentry over. the naked interior. And at the room's front wind-ow, two life-size painted penguins stare out at the rare passerby who invariably ignores them.

Sixty Orange Street is a temporary display space for the Society of Connecticut Sculptors, a Hartford-based artist guild founded twelve years ago. According to the society's mission statement, the guild was born when "the artistic climate was so overwhelmingly opposed to any .

APRIL 2004

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hint of realism in art that it was almost impossible for us to show our work." Tlie penguin sculptures are the creations of D.C. French, a New Haven resident and member of the Society's Board of Directors. He speaks proudly of the society, whose membership has recently increased to over a hundred area sculptors.

The guild helps to fill in an important gap in New Haven's art scene. As French admits, "It's sort of a struggle to be a local artist in New Haven." For a city bursting with well-regarded museums and ambitious art students, New Haven has very few outlets to display the work of its local talent. The New Haven Paint and Clay Club, the oldest artist guild in America, now widely admired throughout New England, grew out of such a need. "We were originally founded in 1900 by a group of artists, most of whom were connected to the Yale School of Art," explains artist Dolores Gall, the group's president. "For sixty or seventy years, it was the only way to display work in New Haven apart from through the Yale University An Gallery, and the British Art Center didn't even open until '77, but of course we're not British anyway," she says, chuckling. The Paint and Clay Club broke off from the Yale Galleries, which seek to exp-ose the Yale p-opulation to foreign work, leaving local artists largely n nsupp-orted.

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Following the Paint and Clay Club's example, other New Haven artists have recently banded together to form loose guilds. These groups do not solicit established galleries but try to establish their own spaces to showcase their work. The galleries are not typical: ArtSpace, Elm City Artists Guild, and the Society of Connecticut Sculptors are renovating abandoned commercial spaces across the city, transforming them into temporary artistic havens. By taking charge of these dilapidated, downtown spaces, the groups are using the city's crippled economy to improve their culture. From the ruins of the economic slump, they are sculpting an artistic climate.

Sixty Orange Street is one such gallery. Two years ago, French scoured the Ninth Square's vacant storefronts, hunting for a place for his penguins and other artists' works. He asked a real-estate agent a few doors down for permission -to display a few sculptures. The agent immediately allowed the group to use the vacant building. "The thing is, the place is really for rent, and if someone comes in and wants to sign a lease for five years to make a restaurant or something and they're willing to shell out a couple thousand, then we're out," French explains.

"So we've got a sort of sweetheart deal at this point in time, as we're not paying thousands of dollars. We're just making the place look habitable."

Two years before French even set out on his artistic mission, when the economic and artistic climate was at a low point, an organization had already emerged with the sole goal of promoting the arts. ArtSpace, a non-profit organizaion, is committed to improving the art community by finding outlets for local artists to display their work. The organization is best known for its beautiful converted gallery space on · Orange Street, but at any one time the gallery displays work in a dozen spaces across town. Helen Kauder, the foundation's director, is continu_ally seeking abandoned buildings to convert to galleries.

"I'm not really sure why there are all these vacant storefronts," Kauder muses. "The businesses just sort ofdied." She notes that spaces are becoming . more and more difficult to find. · "Due to the overall development in New Haven ... we're having to look deeper into residential neighborhoods ... The early nineties were a tough time and a lot of alternative and commercial galleries folded. When we started in 1998, we grew from this need to display work from the artist's per. " specnve.

The process of converting an abandoned ·commercial space into a gallery is, of course, no simple feat. "You need to make an appointment with the city, and that in itself can be hectic - they're busy with other things, and [appointments] needs to be booked far in advance. And then you need to pass inspections with a fue marshal ... The work we do embodies general cleaning up, cleaning windows, making signs, putting in lighting and sometimes building new walls," Kauder explains. The group once converted spaces that are now day care centers, bookshops, Chinese Take-out restaurants, and even a hair salon.

Displays that are affiliated with ArtSpace have also occupied places like the Gourmet Heaven space on Whitney and Audubon Streets, as well as Book Trader Cafe. The construction on Chapel and Orange, soon to be Cutler's Corner, was once the American Discount Store on 852 Chapel Street, but even before its aisles were studded with mouthwash and diapers, it housed the elegant works of local artists. · Currently, the gallery collective is involved in a display that opens on April 18, in another empty Ninth Square street front across from their current location at 50 Orange Street. The show, "Treasure Maps," is a collection of art by non-artists: mathematicians, dancers, and biologists. ArtSpace, unlike the conventional New Haven Paint and Clay Oub and the conservative Society of Connecticut Sculptors, seeks to

display the avant-garde and the cutting edge. "The work we try to show is not typical. We are trying to encourage artists to show non-traditional art, to work together and make site-specific works, and most of all we're trying to create a dialogue between the artists," says Kauder.

ArtSpace is also responsible for the well-known City Wide Open Studios, an annual project that brings together about four hundred artists and displays their work in a larger, ~bandoned industrialized space. The success of City Wide Open Studios has encouraged many artists, including Kauder, to seek out permanent non-conventional spaces. In fact, marty artists who met at City Wide Open Studios have banded together to found their own galleries.

In 1999., ArtSpace acquired the rights to an empty office building at 99 Orange Street. The gallery then transferred control of the space to a •

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group of artists, including Stephen Grossman, who became- specifically interested in one of the building's dilapidated second floor walls.

Instead of using the open space to display his already extensive body of work, Grossman opted to create a site-specific piece. He marked the wall with a series of vertical stripes and painted between the stripes a fade of light washes that, though largely abstract, implied atmospheric spatial depth. Painted over the crumbling surface, Grossman's piece revealed the wall's history, highlighting its weighty pa.St. Rather than seeking to cover up a piece of failure and destruction, the work accentuates its dilapidation, suggesting the beauty he found in ruin.

This work, entitled "Collaboration with a Wall," was featured in Art News, one of the art world's most widely distributed and respected L

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I publications, giving Grossman the kind of publicity a struggling, local artist is rarely afforded. Grossman took another piece of crumbling wall, and made it a symbol of New Haven's artistic rebirth.

"Collaboration with a Wall," however, was only a temporary exhibit. It was spackled and re-painted in the process of renovations that converted 99 Orange Street into a series of affordable apartments, which now hover over the present location of Central Steakhouse.

Across the Green, guarding the intersection of Whitney and Audubon streets, the former residence of Clinton Pianos has been cleared of musical instruments. A "University Properties" sign hangs in the front window, advertising the space to interested landlords. But here, nestled beneath the crown moldings of imitation living rooms and hovering over the wall-to-wall carpeting once ridden by a sea of •

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the typical gallery guide. In a plaid shirt and jeans, he sits expectantly behind a desk stacked with fliers. When a shy blonde asks if she can come in and just look at the paintings, or if she has to pay, he's ecstatic. "By all means, come on in," he says, waving her inside.

When Cooney leads a visitor around the gallery, he's surprised by a painting; "Look - one of peas!" he says, excitedly, "I didn't see that one before." The painting at which he's pointing is not something you would find in the classical floors of the Yale Galleries- it's -a simple snap pea, rudely rendered against a lemon yellow backdrop. It's a terrible painting, but at the same time, there's something homey and kind about the work, and Cooney evidently loves it. A few days later, the painting has been moved from the backroom to the front window, where it can face the whole city, and maybe draw the attention of the next passerby to a storefront which would otherwise be empty. But when the next aspiring entrepreneur rents the space, the artists will take down their work, forced to find another hole in the fabric of New Haven to patch with their migratory art.

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' lacquered pianos, hangs the work of yet another collective of hopeful painters, the Elm City Artists.

The Elm City Artists "grew out of friendship," explains founding member John Cooney. "We would get together at a local bar after a Friday open studio class and talk about art." And while the group has pulled together an impressive show, they aren't really reaching for the pages of Art News. "Though I suppose," Cooney admits, "some of us might harbor the secret desire to be successful." Although their first full group show is receiving much less publicity than Grossman's did, it is no small accomplishment. "There are about 180 paintings here," Cooney says proudly, "And we've sold about forty." Mr. Cooney is not APRil. 2004

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Adriane QJ.tinlan, a freshman in Calhoun Colkge, is Production Manager for TNJ.

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bout twenty years ago, Frank Gehry designed the Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, which occupies a small _triangular block bounded by Liberty Street, Washington Avenue, and · Congress Avenue, at the southern edge of the Yale-New Haven Medical Center. The stairwells are partially exposed to the elements and a small moat lines one corner of the Hospital complex's lead exterior, which is both toxic and unsafe to touch. Each day, at the entrance on Liberty Street, the mentally ill of Yale and New Haven arrive to be treated, with or without their consent. ast spring, Flora*, a sophomore, became severely depressed.

On a night, she said something to a friend along the lines of, "Maybe I should just take all my pills." She doesn't remember her exact words most of that weekend has become a haze. The friend took her to the emergency staff at University Health Services (UHS), which decided, against Flora's will, that she needed to go to "the Hospital" (as she calls it and as it will be referred to herein).

The ambulance crew strapped her on _a stretcher the fust of several experiences she now describes as "dehumanizing" and rushed her to the suicidal .unit at the YaleNew Haven Hospital. There, after waiting seven hours for a bed to become available, she was again put on a stretcher and wheeled to the adult psychiatric ward.

Another patient, Michael, has less traumatic memories of entering "the Hospital."

Sometime in October, after a "pretty terrible weekend depression-wise," Michael's psychiatrist recommended a visit at the end of his regular mental hygiene appointment. At first Michael resisted, but the doctor assured him he "would be there just for a few days. It just going to be a chance to rest and recu.u... " He consented, and about an hour ~ .. ,an ambulance arrived to take him to the He remembered the ambulance being "a litde too chipper ... but one was woman with a heavily hair-sprayed fe-mul-

let, and that's worth mentioning."

Although Michael consented to go to the Hospital, if his doctor had declared his case an emergency, Michael's opinion, like Flora's, would not have mattered. Dr. Sledge, Medical Director of the Hospital and Master of Calhoun College, estimates that one quarter of the Hospital's admitted patients are "truly involuntary," but that after about a week, most end up changing their minds.

Still, there are those, like Flora, who do not change their minds. For them, their forced hospitalization makes them feel that their mental health has slipped out of their control.

For Michael, this loss of control became apparent when he learned that a doctor he had just met for a few minutes that morning had called his mother and asked her to come to the hospital. "Had my therapist or psychiatrist, or even [my dean] called her, they would have known that my mother herself attempted suicide a litde over a month prior," he recalled later. "-My relationship with her is tenuous, and her presence was not comforting to me at the time." The phone call from UHS was the first time Flora's parents had heard that their daughter had mental health problems. In high school, Flora never told anyone she was depressed: "I never talked about being depressed to my guid~ counselor, because I thought she would give me a bad recommendation and I wouldn't get into college." Her parents had to drive to New Haven and stay in the Ronald McDonald House, a discount residence for families of the hospitalized.

Both Flora and Michael are ex-residents of WS2, the adult ward at the Hospital. Dr. Sledge explains, "WS2 means the operations that are on the second floor of the Washington Square building," which is named for the adjacent street (as are the complex's ·other two buildings, Liberty Village and Congress Place).

Sarah, a junior who also had a severe depressive episode, arrived at WS2 just hours before Michael. On the day of their arrival, the ward was decorated with cutout pump•

kins illustrated with faces patients had drawn during a session of occupational therapy. Ghosts adorned the nurse's station, a big glass box overlooking the lounge. "I looked at the nurse's station and immediately thought: 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'" Sarah said. On the corkboard in her " room, someone had written a dialogue with• Jesus. "Forgive me Jesus for my evil, evil sins," it read, and then beneath that: "I forgive you I watch over everyone in this room.

Remember the Ten Commandments love thy father and mother." The word "remember" was under.- ·. lined twice.

Sarah shared her quad with three older · women. WS2 does not separate Yale students from New Haven residents, nor does it separate those with mood disorders, like depression or bipolar disorder, from those with other illnesses, like schizophrenia, which a number of students complained about. "One 83-year-old woman wouldn't " stop talking when it was time to go to sleep," said Sarah. "She'd just say, 'Get me out of here, please God get me out of here.'" The first night, · a patient with Tourette's syn- . drome sat outside her room cursing repeatedly. "He was like a leaky faucet just saying 'Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. "' In the hospital, the day begins early.

"You have to get up at the ass crack of dawn," said Flora. The first activity is "Goals Group," a group session during which each patient, in turn, declares his or her goal for the day. "Everyone said their goal was to get out that day. One guy was dea£ He would just scream," Flora remembered.

All patients are assigned a treatment team that includes a nurse, a doctor, a social worker, and some medical students, since Yale-New Haven is a teaching hospital.

Flora said that the Hospital was not helpful: "You just sit around for eight fucking hours thinking about how depressed you are." Dr. Robert Milstein, Associate Medical Director, said that while life in the ward is certainly "not exciting in the sense tha

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everyday life is," there are still activities and various treatments over the course of the day. ...; .

• There are outdoor breaks, there are puzzles .. and board games, and there is a television. .

J And there is also occupational therapy, otherwise known as arts and crafts. One day : during her two-week stay at the hospital, , Sarah's art therapist told the group to draw ~ how they were feeling. "I drew a brick wall and a tornado chasing a little guy," she told · me. "And I drew a knot." ~

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services and can participate in federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid more fully than a free-standing psychiatric hospit al . " The shift in payments from insurance companies, which led to a shift in the standard of care, may be one of the factors that provoked criticisms of the psychiatric hospital. As Dr. Sledge pointed out, the old "rehabilitative" system was more lenient toward the patients but ultimately unsustainable due to the expense. The cost of weeks or months

*** history of the Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital reflects the history of psychiatric care through the past century. Until recently it was called the Yale ~ Psychiatric Institute (YPI), established by the . Yale Medical School in the 1930s. ' Throughout the following decades, the YPI , used a psychoanalytic approach, specializing· ·n adolescent and young adult treatment. ' The method common in these decades was known as "rehabilitative." The setting was "more like home," says Dr. Sledge, and those who could afford it came from all over the world to the YPI. : In the 1960s a strong anti-institutional J ' ~ sentiment swept across much of the nation, , and many psychological hospitals and homes were emptied. But this first wave of de-insti.' tutionalization was ill-conceived, since few outpatient resources were well-developed. A second wave of de-institutionalization over • the next two decades was more successful, although it was followed by a sharp rise in the • r costs of both inpatient and outpatient mental _ health care. Insurance companies began pres.:.

• . suring patients not to stay long in mental hos. pitals. "Today," Dr. Sledge told me, "those who pay the bills have said, 'We are not paying for rehabilitation we pay for the treatment of acute symptoms.'" Because of this pressure, the average stay at today' s psychi• atric hospital is only eight or nine days.

Due to this drop in financing, the YPI began to accumulate debts. Meanwhile, the · neighboring Yale-New Haven Hospital has - always had its own mental health service. In - 2000, Yale Medicine Magazine ran a blurb headed "F LL TO YPI," calling the Institute "a victim of the new economics of healthcare." The Yale-New Haven Hospital would acquire the old facility under Dr. Sledge's direction, improving both their own mental health services and those of the . Institute since "Yale-New Haven Hospital has more access to patients through its medical •

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advised Flora to be careful about what she told her doctors, if she wanted to be able to stay at Yale.

A student often becomes a patient at the Hospital before he even learns that his status at Yale is in jeopardy and hinges on approval from two doctors at Mental Hygiene, Dr. Lorraine Siggins and Dr. Eric Millman. They decide whether a student is allowed to return to classes or if he will have to take medical leave.

The two girls whom Flora befriended in the Hospital gave her • advice on how to portray herself to those evaluating her. "They said if I let them know that school's a prob• lem, they'd kick me out. So, basically, I was very manipulative with my doctors."

Dr. Sledge tried to sketch the different viewpoints surrounding the doctors' decisions to hospitalize and to subsequently force medical leave.

Patients generally "don't want to think of themselves as profoundly mentally ill," and thus will sometimes deny the seriousness of their situations.

Certain conditions can also distort patients' perspectives: the manic patients tend to have extreme denial, the paranoid ones have misperceptions, and the depressed ones have feelings of doom and self-blame. Those responsible for taking care of such patients must be careful to make their own judgments accordingly. "There will be disagreements between clinicians and patients about what the truth is and sometimes [the patients are] right," Dr. Sledge said.

A little under a week after entering the Hospital, Michael met with Dr. Millman, who told him, without missing a beat, that he would not be going back to scltool but would be sent home. Michael protested, as did his mother and even his college dean. The doctor agreed to confer with the rest of the team and reconsider, but they stuck with their initial decision. "I was really angry and upset for a good two months after," Michael wrote me.

The doctors "did confer with both my therapist and psychiatrist, and Dr. Milstein and [the social worker] at the hospital, but it still seems wrong. The decision rested upon the whim of two people I spent less than an hour

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of nursing and doctoring was ·roo expensive for the majority, and thus the system was "not democratic, in that only the very wealthy, and the very well-insured could afford treatment."

The new system, then, was democratic, because it was cheaper but it became cheap• er at a pnce. hen you have suicidal thoughts, Flora said, "you don't really want to die. You just want something inside you to. die." Though she told the emergency staff at UHS that she wanted to sleep for a very long time, it was because she wanted relief from her depression. Flora wanted the rehabilitation she had thus far failed to get, not just the treatment of acute symptoms, so she was determined to get out of the Hospital from the moment she set foot inside. For her, WS2 was "really demoralizing. It made me feel like I couldn't take care of rnysel£ And they didn't change my medications, they didn't really give me therapy."

The weekend of her arrival at the Hospital, Flora talked with two other Yale students who would soon be let out after a week and a half stay. The students had just learned that Yale was asking them to take a medical leave from school. The two girls

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with between them." Michael met them so briefly that he wasn't even sure of their names.

The decision is made in the "best interests of the patient," said Dr. Sledge. He agrees that the notion that the patient doesn't know what is in her best interest is "kind of paternalistic. But I would rather err on this side than on rhe side of neglect. As a physician this will always be my bias."

Michael is currently in the process of applying for readmission to Yale which, Dr. Siggins emphasizes, is nothing like applying for the first time. "We generally anticipate that all students will be coming back," she said. Flora also took time off, but on a leave of absence, rather than on medical leave. She spent last semester with her aunt, working full-time to help pay for medication and appointments with a psychiatrist and a social worker and for medication all told, a sum of $500. Flora did this voluntarily, but Michael was forced to pay for his treatment during his year off, "placing a great strain on my family financially," he said.

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"I needed to go off all these medications, and I couldn't do that outside of the Hospital," she said, a fact which she and her psychiatrist, who is not associated with UHS, agreed upon. After a day or so, space at the Hospital opened up: There was no need for an emergency UHS visit, or an ambulance ride under restraints. "I took a taxi," she said simply.

Paige, drained of medications, was tremendously depressed upon her entrance to the hospital. At "times she could hardly get out of bed. After two weeks, she didn't want to leave. "My insurance kicked me out. I was scared to go." She called the Hospital a "first-rate place" and was very happy with the team of people attending to her, from · Dr. Milstein to her nurse, and even "down to the medical student on my case." Last summer, U.S. News & World Report ranked the

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hough a number of ex-patients of the Psychiatric Hospital were contacted, very few agreed to speak about their experiences, and the cases in this article can hardly be said to represent an accurate sample.

It may be, Dr. Sledge suggested, that "the satisfied customers aren't vocal," and that mainly those with scores to settle with the Hospital are eager to respond. But one student who replied was extremely positive about her experience at the Hospital.

While Paige, a senior, received the same treatment from the same staff as Flora, the circumstances under which she entered ttreatment may have made all the difference.

A few summers ago, Paige was in New Haven raking summer courses when she had a seizure. One of the medications she was taking for her depression, Wellbutrin, is known to lower seizure thresholds, and though she had been taking it for years, the recent addition of other medications may have triggered the episode. Under the direction of her psychiatrist, Paige had to stop taking all four of her medications. (She is currently about to start her 20th medication "nothing works for me," she said.)

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hospital as the seventh best psychiatric hospital in the nation, and the fourth best in the northeast (the ranking was computed "solely on reputation" by sending surveys to randomly-selected psychiatrists).

Because she was there over the summer, Paige didn't have to face the committee that can force medical leave. She ended up following her doctor's advice of taking a year off anyway, simply declaring a leave of absence and retaining the right to come back · to Yale the following year, no questions asked.

Paige said she could understand, though, why some students hated their experiences at the Hospital. "I suspect that the fact that some visits are involuntary and the fact that students face geuing kicked out of Yale lead to people's anger towards. the •

Hospital." She agreed as well, that some students are sent there who don't need to be · there. "[Mental hygiene] is really quick to hospitalize.

Sometimes people end up there not without reason but who don't need to be there. I went there really wanting to get better. I think that's not the case for some. And that could make you bitter. If you spend the whole time fighting the fact that you're there, it will make you more depressed." Even so, she was baffled to find some students describe it "as if it were as bad as Mexican prison." Paige only had one criticism of the Hospital: "It's true. The food is bad." ot so long ago, Flora had a very bad weekend, but she, at least, had no one to fall back on. She was as depressed as she was the night she went to University Health, and then to the Hospital last year.

"I felt actually suicidal," she said. "But I knew if I went to UHS they would have h~s­ pitalized me with good reason, in terms of liability. I couldn't hide it that I was suicidal, and in their viewpoint it ~ould have made sense. So I didn't go, and I just stared at my pills across the room for two days. Before, there were a couple of friends I'd call, but I know now they'd say I should be in the Hospital. So I just deal with it on my own."

Though Dr. Sledge wouldn't comment on any specific cases, when presented with one similar to Flora's a composite of the dissatisfied ex-residents at WS2, those who hate or are afraid of the people who were supposed to help them he said that at such a point, he didn't think the Hospital could do anything. Hopefully, he added, the student would still forge a strong relationship with a University· Health therapist. "I don't think for a moment that what we do is perfecr," said Dr. Sledge, "or that we don't do things that sometimes make people feel dehumanized. I know we do. When it happens, it's because of safety concerns, not a sadistic urge.

"That's a tragedy someone who's alienated, who needs care. It's something we should try very hard to correct."

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David Zax, a sophomore in Silliman College, is a Circukztion and Subsaiptions

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ust past 6 p.m... on a Wednesday afterrt~on, the Chapel Square Mall is empty and sil~nt, save for the consistent and qwet hum of the ventilation 'system. Inside the windowless shell sit the ghostlike remnants of previous occupants part of a Foot. Locker sign, the fading, and chipped paint from the' Baby Boutique · still present in the building. But stenciling on the wall betrays the _new plans: inside the .J: "'' courtyard, . apartment numbers 1, 2, 3 . are •mar~ea on the bare . . metal' frames, and an idle crane sits on the floor reaching upwards like the escalators that once operated in its place . ..

But there are also ·signs of. life in the • building: new windows and a faint rustling behind the boarded .up storefronts and papered .windows. Dumpsters ' • are hauled away as the con~truction is completed. The •r~nova'tions - mark the space's fourth rebirth in three decades.

A • taxi driver, waiting next door at ~he • Omni Hotel, is skeptical. "They_tried this before", he says. "Who's gonna go ·there?.

That's what they haven't figured out.

Maybe it'll be Yale .. .it's not going to be , ' me. ' ' .' t a meeting with business owner~ ' " and local officials last year, Lehr · Jackson, head of the development · _ team, was confident that New Haven was ready for this fourth coming of the. retail • revolution. "Chapel Square ·will be locat- · _ ed in the hean of the triumphantly resurgent Downtown New Haven," proc~aimed the firm's webpage.

Attached to his text, too, was an· artistic rendering of the "new lower Chapel," the ambitious re-development projects spearheaded by William Jackson Ewing (WJE). The new mall was to showcase upscale retail development, an outward facing food market, and well-known anchor stores, promised but unnamed. The finn envisioned Chapel Square as a "live, work and play destination" and, th~ website added, "Chapel Square will integrate a wide mix ofshops, restaurants, sidewalk cafes and a European fresh fo~ market,'cate.ting to ·a:.broad spectrum of area residents, employees _and visitors to the area." 'For·over a year at national retail conferences and. expositions,. the firm's marketing staff pushed this presenration--complete with mockup mall_- touting the city, the market, and the project to reel in po~ential ten;;ants.

By any measure, both New Haven city officials and ·v ale administrators were happy. New Haven had landed a national development team with a portfolio of high pro.6Ie projeets such as Union Station in Washington D.C. and New York's Grand Central Station. New Haven was finally slated to "tie together the historic campus ofYale University, the Broadway shopping corridor, the surging residential Ninth Square, and Downtown's renowned th~ter and arts district." The mall, one of the biggest eyesores in the downtown area and the behemoth foil to the quaint Yale-managed boutiques of upper Chapel Str~t, - was finally .ready for its facelift.

The Chapel Square Mall, 160,000 square feet of enclosed shopping space, opened as part of New Haven's new wave of development began in the 1960s. In 1965, it was a New Haven dream-come-true: an urban shopping complc r, with department stores like Macy's and Malley's. It was no longer necessary to visit two, three or four specialty shops.

Because the mall contained · under one roof, early adverr ise.

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ments promised escape from the whims of Northeastern weather.

A few years after its completion, the project began to falter. In 1972, mounting debts incurred by the development team caused a shakeup in the mall's ownership. At the same time, competition from new suburban mega-malls and a population decline in the inner city led to a drastic fall in sales throughout the downtown market. Rising crime in the 1980s presented another hurdle. Malley's closed its doors in 1982, and in 1993 Macy's too left for greener pastures. Today, the Macy's building still sits vacant, a shell of the old embossed logo presiding over a crumbling door.

In all that time, the Mall I undergone several has I attempted improvements.

Besides three mini-renova-I tions and leasing drives, it saw a 1997 revitalization effort in I I conjunction with the thennew Omni Hotel New Haven .

Baltimore developer David I Cordish, the man behind the renovation, envisioned an interior passage to link the hotel to the markets, much like the hugely successful Chicago Omni Hotel and shopping complex, also by .

Cordish. By the time New Haven's Omni opened, however, the proposed passage was already shut, and remains so today.

So far, attempts to resurrect Chapel Square Mall have all fallen short and most experts are not surprised. ''I've been dubious that there was sufficient market for retail [in that space] for 30 years," said Alexander Garvin, commissioner on the New York City Planning Commission and professor of Urban Planning and Management at Yale "There is not a lot of demand there currently. There have to be many more people - residents, office workers or people coming into town.

What you need is a market and people to fill up the space."

Over the past ten years, downtown New Haven has experienced an economic boom led, many say, by Yale's drive to focus energy and money in the areas around campus. After years of fiscal austerity in the 1980s, the Yale of the 1990s injected the overflow from its burgeoning endowment into the city, buying up property in three areas: Broadway, Chapel Street and Science Hill. Since the beginning of President Levin's term, much of the property closest to campus has changed hands: from local owners to the Yale corporation. Currently, Yale owns the majority of the area two square miles outside of central Ompus, not only in the key Chapel and Broadway areas but also south of campus in the Audubon area and along the artery that connects central campus with the medical school. Yale's involvement and investments, however, drop off rapidly just blocks from the residential colleges.

That a prestigious fum such as WJE would develop property outside of the traditional hot zones surprised some. Still, Michael Morand, Vice President of the Yale Office of New Haven and· State Affairs, declared it a natural progression of the investment that Yale and the city • had been making in the downtown area. "There is no city in Connecticut that is doing nearly as well as New -Haven is. The fact of continuing private investment speaks to its strength," he said.

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The actual development team that was slated to be involved with the project was picked by an ad-hoc selection committee composed of local city officials, among them Anthony Rescignio, director of the Chamber of Commerce; Scott Healy, director of the Town Green Special Services District; representatives ·from the Mayor's office; local business owners; arid Bruce Alexander, the director of the Yale Office of New Haven and State Affairs. "We chose the developers based upon some pretty dynamic presentations, with W'JE head and shoulders above the others. It was exciting to see the initial architectural renderings, and the letters of intent," said Scott Healy. · ut things began to go downhill quickly. The original financier for the plan withdrew, leaving a void in the funding that was filled

by Lubert Adler partners, a Philadelphia-based real estate investment group. David Nyberg, a Lubert Adler employee, is also the head of a city development firm called Chapel Street LLC, located in New Haven. "David Nyberg and Lubert Adler stepped in to make the proposal possible. The committee was very happy with the decision that was made," said Healy. Neither Nyberg and Lubert Adler officials responded to repeated emails and calls requesting comment . .

Despite the new funding, the plan still drew its critics. In 2003, the Mall's previous tenants local merchants such as Cross Flava Records sued WJE over unlawful eviction. Though WJE ultimately prevailed, the confrontation brought the project to a standstill for almost five months and also soured public opinion on the project. The suits reinforced an old line of criticism: at what cost to the local population was this project advancing, and for whom was the redeveloped mall being created? Philosophical questions aside, 'W}E's actions were legal. The leasing documents for these businesses show that they were operating under public subsidy; their rent did not even cover the building's utilities. According to Scott Healey, ''Any of these businesses that had a viable business plan would be able to find space elsewhere in downtown, at market rates."

Throughout the summer, when the first new retail tenaius had been scheduled to open, the project remained in a deadlock. Though Yale •

Chapel Square Mall in 1960 APRIL

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Chapel Square Mall in 2004 •

sent representatives to the committee that picked the development group, Yale news releases about the project were nowhere to be found.

New Haven local news rarely covered its progress. -Then, in a January 2004 interview with the New Haven Register, Henry Fernandez, the mayorial office's economic development czar, broke the news: eve · g had fallen apart. The WJE development team was no longer a principal player in the project.

Gone too was any· mention of the plan from the -w}E webpage that had earlier heralded Chapel Square as the number one upcoming site under development. And by January 2004, the date originally set for completion, the space still sat mostly vacant, in stark contrast to the bustling crowds filling the glass-fronted atrium in the WJE brochure. "The people who were on the committee were not kept in the loop about how the plans progressed," said Healey.

Two people close to the project, who prefer not to be named, said they had felt growing impatience from Luben Adler in the face of a weakened national retail market. In the intervening months the local political scene had changed as well. Controversy over the fate of the block directly adjacent to Chapel Square likely played •

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a role in the Chapel developm~nt. While one side of the original site faces the hustle and bustle of the New Haven shopping district, the other side faces the. soon-to-be demolished Coliseum and the dilapidated Macy's complex. According to sources involved with the development process, "W}E grew increasingly interested in acquiring and developing this attached site as well.

The city had other plans. In 1999, Mayor John DeStefano • requested state funding to move • Gateway Community College from Long Wharf to downtown. "The future of the site • directly adjacent to it was in doubt. "WJE couldn't get the city to commit to even street level retail if they moved Gateway in," said Healey. This would effectively isolate the new retail in an island separating it from other properties, and walling it in between two colleges. College students, by most counts, are not ideal customers. "The issue is not whether or not Gateway br4Igs the right type of clientele down- · • town. LOoking at Bridgeport or Hartford there is no increase in · the business in the area right around the college. Yale students, too, are not the greatest customers," said Healey. The city saw the Gateway project as only a small piece of a larger plan. According to Roland Lamar, the Mayor's press secretary, DeStefano "wanted to use this to secure

money towards multiple projects ... moving the college downtown, bringing in the Long WharfTheatre, and paying for the demolition of the Coliseum." The Mayor's office and economic development team, led by Henry Fernandez, aimed for a holistic redevelopment of the city. · "There is going to be a better campus for Gateway. We think it will also make going to college more attractive for our residents.

Similar to the number of people who chose Yale over, for example, Dartmouth based on seeing New Haven, [students] might look at the _ new Gateway and make a decision based on that," said Lamar. '

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current development, without the involvement of the nationally reputed "WJE, has taken a different focus now that Nyberg is at its helm. He wants to try something new and previously untested in the downtown area: sacrificing the space earmarked for retail to increase the amount of residential space. This is appropriate considering the previous work done by the developers; while WJE •

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Management and Political Science and author of City, a recent book on urbanization in New Haven, "I do think there is potential, and that the right development of the mall will meet with market success." But for now the building is dark, empty and waiting an island in a city watching it for signs of movement.

had a primarily retail portfolio, Nyberg is primarily a residential developer. Some of his best-known local projects include the apartments above the Palace Theatre and the properties on College Street. "I was intrigued by the idea of housing; the notion of turning the office building into housing seemed to be a promising and interesting one," said Garvin. "It was the first scheme that thought about downtown resi· dential use."

Still the current plan is not universally praised. According to neighbors, it is being organized without ·a grand plan for design; no architect is listed on the forms filed with the city for zoning changes. While the previous plan had centered on changing the very fabric of the mallturning it "inside out" and cutting through to extend the Shubert Arcade through the building the current design will keep the mall's basic design intact. If the previous proposal was open-heart surgery, this is a mere band-aid. Healey sees this as a problem. "The second story on the Temple and Chapel corner is a office space for [Nyberg's] purposes," he said. The concrete shell is not much different. What is needed is strong architectural vision. If there is one on the project, he's being paid to work from the inside out rather than the outside in." Even without a strong design vision, the building has already opened doors and laid out a welcome mat.

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elc< ,..... to the new Chapel Square" says ilie receptionist at 900 Chapel Street. While her warmth may seem a bit premature, there will certainly be something new to see when students return to New Haven in the fall. The fourth development will mark the end of four decades of hope for a downtown mall. The resulting buiJding will be much like other city apartments, with housing above and retail units on the ground floor. What will not return is the airy inner atrium, the floors of retail and the very idea that spawned American mall growth: enclosed, climate-controlled space. If the new plan succeeds, it will mark the first time that Chapel Square has achieved economic success. According to Douglas Rae, Yale Professor of

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Chaitanya Mehra is a sophomore in Davenport College.

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remember saying yes, oh yes, this is a job I've wanted since I was seventeen years old," says Professor Vilashni Coop pan.

That was six years ago, when she landed her first job: Assistant Professor of Literature at Yale University, her alma mater. "It was an incredible sense of arrival," she says. But at the end of this semester, she will leave her post at Yale to teach in the University of California system. "I think I speak for many," she said in a recent speech to the Women's Faculty Forum, "when I say that we want our

dream jobs to deliver more than this. We · want to work somewhere where we matter and where we count."

Cooppan always knew this day would come Yale had made that clear. "The institution leaves no room for surprise," she exp]ains. "They let you know that there is less than ten percent tenure rate for junior faculty. You choose to come here knowing that."

Yale's tenure positions usually go to academics who are already leaders in their fields and perhaps tenured elsewhere. To Cooppan,

this tendency means that contributions she might make to the Yale comniunity, including mentoring students and cooperating with colleagues to develop academic innovations, will go unappreciated. "All of it is on your own time," she says. "I have been told, as have all my junior colleagues, that 'You should have said 'no' to whatever extra ' demands, courses, committees, programbuilding initiatives, curriculum redesign projects, interdisciplinary seminars, etc. are placed on us and have gotten in the way of

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our 'real work.'"

World Literatures, a course that Professor Cooppan designed from scratch, is an example of a contribution she feels is underappreciated. Since the course's inception, it has become a core requirement for the Literature major and has received rave reviews from students. She smiles, "it was a pedagogical project that led to some of the best I have done here and served as the basis for several solid articles. The work that the institution considers peripheral irrigates the 'real

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tis common knowledge that Yale has high standards for its faculty, and emphasizes ~e importance of research. In a recent article on the tenure process in The Yale Herald, History Department Chair Jon Butler is quoted as saying: "The University is committed to the advancement of knowledge. And the advancement of knowledge comes from scholarship from research, as opposed to te;~ching." To achieve his goal,

Yale hires only the best of the best: those who publish the most influential and respected books and papers in humanities, and those responsible for leading research in the sciences. From the their perspective, it pays to make long term investments only in academic super stars. Such investments leave Yale's young professors fending for themselves in the shadows of their world-renowned colleagues. If, later in their careers, these junior faculty prove to be top scholars themselves, Yale can then give them atuactive tenure

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A case in point is the career arc of Professor Seyla Benhabib, who is currently the director of the Ethics, Politics, and Economics Department and a full tenured professor. She was an assistant professor at Yale for two years after graduating from the Ph.D. program in Philosophy, then she left to take a research fellowship in Germany. Upon returning to America, she taught at Boston and Harvard Universities for two years without tenure. She was then tenured at SUNY Stony brook, which led' to tenure at Harvard in 1993 and eventually, in 2001, back at Yale.

In this case, the university was able to bring her talent back to the institution after her early promise of excellence came to fruition.

Yet while this system benefits the goals of the insitution, it is a grueling process for the scholars who seek job security.

The university runs on the bottom line and cannot make promises even to its high-level employees, the professors. Many junior faculty come to Yale and leave frustrated.

Yale rarely hires within t4e r~ks, a policy which sets up a "glass ceiling" for its junior professors. '

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fter five years of teaching and research, Professor · Guillermo Irizarry is also leaving Yale this spring.

He says that the amount of research work expected of junior faculty is an enormous burden. In order to get tenure at any institution of higher learning in America, an academic in the humanities needs to have one book under his or her belt and another near completion, as well as a sizable dossier of academic papers published in respected journals. All this must be accomplished within the four or five years before his or her case goes up for review by a tenure committee. "It means you don't have a life," Professor Irizarry jokes painfully. At Ivy League institutions, "You not only have to walk on water, but you need someone in your department to argue .for and defend your work," he says.

Yale hires assistant professors for five to •

six year contracts, at which point promotion to associate professor depends on an assess-· ment. But unlike many state universities, Yale does not offer associate professors tenure.

Instead it considers them mere junior faculty.

Only after a faculty member has taught for at least ten years is he or she eligible to be hired as a full tenured professor.

When a department committee decides to grant a faculty member full professorship, the decision is immense and political, a.S it entails an investment of several million .dollars over · the course of twenty to twenty-five years.

Drafting these senior faculty lines, or full professor tenure tracks, is extremely difficuk As

for Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Currently a leading scholar in Mrican American Studies and a tenured professor at Harvard, he was once a junior professor at Yale. Untenured here, he left to teach at Cornell University.

Early cases of tenure, where junior faculty members are actually promoted, make up only a small percentage of Yale's tenure appointments each year. The dominant practice by far, he explains, is to hire academics who are "at the high point in their careers, with established reputations." This is common knowledge to junior faculty like him and Cooppan, who chose to leave for more advanced, secur,e positions at other universities even before being reviewed by Yale's initial pro• • motion committee.

To Cooppan, it is not only one of job security.

"Much of what I want to do, I can do better else-· where," she says.

In addition to creating courses, she works with cultural houses as a minority professor and participates in the Women's Faculty Forum.

But instead of being satisfied with her engagement, she feels spread thin.

"I'm at a stage in my work where I • want to Invest a result, academics who study marginal topics energy in an institution and have it recognize can face long odd in seeking tenure. "For that work from the beginning." For Yale example," Irizarry says amiably, "we are in the junior faculty, there is "no indication that Literature Department, and we are all senior someone has invested in us for the. long haul, faculty deciding whether to give a certain - and we can only learn the lesson of our tranjunior faculty member tenure. They are the sience." A particular disappointment for her, absolute expert in the literature of a remote having been a Yale undergraduate herself, was island in the Caribbean, but it doesn't have . that the university does not value its faculty much to do with your area of expertise, or · the way it does its students. "When you're an mine. It's not a particularly hot topic. .Why undergrad, it really is all about you. When should we create a tenure line for him? Unless you're a graduate student, or a,junior professomeone argues passionately for his case." On sor, that's no longer the case. And that's kind this point, Cooppan agrees. In her view, this of sad .... you're told to keep your head down trend of conventionality is hostile to the and get your work done. Yale can't keep bankinnovative, cutting edge scholarship of many ing on drawing people who choose, perhaps brilliant young academics. Such was the case THE NEw JoURNAL ~

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foolhardily, not to keep their heads down."

Another strong draw of the UC sy~tem, where she will teach this fall is its "family friendly initiative." As the mother of two young children, Cooppan appreciates the five year leave that UC offers. The UC system also actively encourages the increase of female faculty by providing ·comprehensive day care.

Recently, the Women's Faculty Forum (WFF), of which Vilashini and Seyla ar~ members, has pushed for greater understanding of the woman's role in academia_"There is a price one pays as a woman," she told m.e.

"It is the most difficult between the ages of thirty and forty, with the biological clock ticking. And at the same time, from thirtyfive to thirty-eight, that's when one comes up for tenure." Benhabib, however, emphasized the need for hard statistics before drawing conclusions. The WFF is currently creating a task-force to gather data on women at Yale.

In her opinion, an institution of higher learning can only gain by eradicating needless obstacles for women. "As the director of EP & E," she said, "it is increasingly difficult to find someone to serve as the director of undergraduate studies, because it is regarded as a dead-end administrative job by most junior faculty, especially the men. Women are generally 'bet• • ter c1t1zen s. ' , H e r

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cycling in this way." current procedure accomplishing the tasks it's Irizarry believes that the university has an designed for? The fact is that we're having our ultimately hierarchical culture, one reluctant best junior faculty stolen, and we're wasting to give support to those time and . low on the ladder. "I don't resources hir• want to imply that this is a mg new peoplot to oppress junior facple ov;er and But ulty, because it's not. Yale over. , isn't stingy, but it is interfaculty have ested in having the best, reason to be now. It can outpay most hopeful. "At other universities for their least there is , senior faculty, and can forum • a . , even make pre-emptive now, she offers. . . Let them leave, says in refer- · then let them come back ence to the when they prove themWFF. "The ... .. . selves. That is Yale's gener1nsutut1on al attitude." still does not Will Professors Irizarry m*e it easy 4;,;;;~:i_ ~; and Cooppan be back a~ to be a junior Yale as senior faculty ten faculty memyears from now? As far as ber here, but . ' -. at least . there Yale is concerned, the . ~'-'' ·,-,.. . "'" jury's still out. And for curis a place to .

-- • discuss these rent undergrads who • aspire to professorship, it's questions.

Vjlashni Cooppan and er two kids unclear whether the path One has to ahead will be easier going even walking in start the discussion." Cooppan, for her part, their formidable footsteps . notes that one of the problem~ with initiatives like the WFF is • that they rely on • JUnior faculty and students, all ~of whom c y c 1e through • Yale and 1 eave within four to ten years .

Powerful thrusts from the •

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"Yale does not tenure from within the ranks," she criticizes. "There needs to be discussion at the very top administrative levels: are there aspects of the tenuring procedure that are not working? Is the

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level run out of steam after only a few years, and responsibility falls to the next cycle of leaders to continually push for negotiations. "At a point," she predicts, "it will be too costly for Yale to keep •

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Evelyn Shih is a junior in Silliman Colkge.

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o the casual passer·by, the southern face of Louis Kahn's Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) looks the sanie. as ever: its unrelenting brick fas;ade moves · along Chapel Street · with the authority it has commanded for over fifty years. But around the corner on York Street, the glass wall · reveals a major excavation taking place. The building's four stories resemble an archeological site.

Kahn's famous tetrahedronal ceiling weighs down upon a dusty expanse, broken only by concrete pillars, the occasional ladder, and rows of glowing work-lights.

The YUAG renovation is the first phase in a $94 million capital campaign to transform the Chapel Street arts area.

When the entire project is complete, the Art History Department will be housed in a new building on York Street, and the Gallery will reclaim the . space . in Egerton Swartwout's Old Art Gallery, built in 1928, and Street Hall, built in 1867, for teaching galleries and object study classrooms.

Among Gallery staff, it had long been known that the Kahn building was in need of an improvement. Because it had never undergone a full scale renovation, the building was unable to meet some of the technical demands of a twenty-first century museum.

More importantly, the project needed to restore Kahn's building to match his original conception. Kahn had intended the Gallery to be open expanse, but over the years storage space and offices carved into the space.

When the Kahn building . reopens its door in 2005, it will have more exhibition

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space than ever, establishing its primary role . as a museum rather than a multipurpose space used for galleries, classrooms and offices.

As Louisa Cunningham, a Deputy Director of YUAG, explained while she walked from one expansive floor to the next, the renovation will "restore the building to Kahn's original vision." With a renewed emphasis on Kahn's principal themes of light and structure, the renovation will allow viewers to appreciate how the interior affects their relationship to the art.

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understand the importance of the current renovation, one needs to look at the his.t ory of the building's design: the evolution of Kahn's ideas and their degradation over time. Originally, the University had selected Philip Goodwin as the designer for the new gallery on the corner of York and Chapel. The first modern building on campus, it would mark a major departure from the neo-gothic towers that dominated the University. Goodwin had co-designed New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1939, one of Manhattan's first International Style buildings, and Yale wanted to bring this sleek mod• • erntsm to Its campus.

Although Goodwin had made preliminary sketches for the Gallery in 1941, he grew frustrated with the projects' stops and starts and quit in 1951.

Louis Kahn, based at a firm in Philadelphia, began lecturing at Yale's architecture school in 1947. He went abroad as a fellow of the American Academy in Rome when the school, in conjunction with the architecture department, asked him to take over the Gallery designs. Kahn, over fifty years old and still without a major commission, quickly accepted the offer.

Kahn inherited not only the basic rectangular scheme of the Gallery, but a host of requirements. Still, the ultimate design was distinctly his own. The closed brick fas;ade along Chapel Street departed from Goodwin's scheme, as did the glass curtain

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walls on the west and north sides of the building. Like a good modernist, Kahn put functional concerns first and transformed Goodwin's three stories into four in order to maximize floor space. But the architect's most striking contributions, • • as many crlttcs have noted, are evident in the Gallery's interior. Kahn wanted to make the structure of his building clear to the viewer, so he left the raw concrete supports of the building unfinished and undisguised.

The brick walls on the building's south side were clearly decorative and allowed inches of air to flow between them and the ceiling.

Overhead, an innovative tetrahedronal concrete housed light fixtures, air ducts, and electrical wiring, all clearly visible to the viewer below. When · the Gallery finally opened in 1953, Kahn told a reporter at_the Yale Daily News, "I believe in frank architecture. A building is a struggle, not a miracle, and the architect should acknowledge this."

Wtth this in mind, Kahn sought to imbue the gallery with a unique balance of function and aesthetics. His design emphasizes light and fluid movement through space: "I hate claustrophobia," Kahn told the YDN reporter. In the 2000 YUAG Bulletin, Associate Dean of the School of Architecture Alexander Purves, explained that Kahn's plan departed from Goodwin's because it concentrated all the closed spaces (stairs, toilets, elevator shaft) in the center of the building.

This left the perimeter of each floor open, allowing light to stream through the glass exterior and flood the space.

The geometry of the tetrahedronal ceiling is echoed by the concrete cylinder of the stairwell and links the lateral movement within each floor to the vertical rise of the building. The steps aspire up a triangular path towards a terrazzo triangle floating

above the column on a shallow ring of windows. The triangles hovering above enabled . Kahn to overcome the spatial requirements of a low ceiling to create a continuous sense of upward movement.

Kahn's innov. "pogoauve panels" (panels pressed between the ceiling and floor on pogo- · like springs) can be moved to accomodate exhibitions and create rooms as needed. Vincent Scully noted that the panels served an aesthetic purpose as well, separating the art from the frame and making object more "intensely alive." The pogo-panels themselves, set on skinny legs, seem almost anthropomorphic, active agents in Kahn's space, much like the viewers themselves. Art

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set on the panels separate from the concrete structure and become active agents in Kahn's immense space, with the tetrahedrons continuing ever onward and light sweeping above, below, and around the panels, the art stands still and encourages the viewer to stand still with it. After some time the sweeping movement of light and air impels the viewer on to the next panel, then after some time, to the next, pausing at each stop to identify with the art. Within Kahn's open galleries, the panels encourage students to forge intimate connections with objects Scully calls "protected from barbarism and from time."

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n practice, fe'w, if any, of the building's floors have ever experienced Kahn's imagine4 openness. When the Gallery opened, it was dominated by .the temporary walls for dassrooms, · studios, storage facilities, and offices. The fourth floor was entirely unobstructed but was used as a drafting room for architecture students instead of exhibition space. In 1963 many of the facilities were moved to the new Art and Architecture building, but the Gallery remained cluttered with offices and conservation labs. Ironically, as Scully, Purves, and Cunningham have all noted, Kahn's movable panels did not make the display of art more fluid rather, they allowed its inhabitants to cannibalize the space more easily. The architect had once boasted to the YDN, "A good building is one which the client cannot destroy by wrong use of space. Almost all the partitions ·are movable, so whenever the space is needed for something else, they can fit the space to suit their need without ruining anything."

Although the panels did enable the Gallery to adapt to suit the changing needs of students and staff, they had a disastrous impact on the building's character and effect.

Perhaps the most alarming desecrations of the space have occurred when curators have fai:led to understand Kahn's intentions.

Andrew Carduff Ritchie, who came from MoMA to serve as director of the Yale Gallery in 1957, was the first to manipulate the panels wrongly. In The Art Museums of Louis I Kahn, Patricia C · gs Loud suggests that Ritchie, "concerned about the increasing numbers of works of art he had to ' display... set .about 'remodeling' the Yale Gallery to create a more neutral effect, more like that in the Museum of Modem Art." Ritchie installed white walls to trade the building's openness for more definite rooms, THE NEw JouRNAL

and used smooth panels to hide much of the unfinished concrete so essential to the building's raw effect. Even the concrete staircase, one of Kahn's principal elements, was concealed from view.

Over the years, the cylinder's panels have been removed, but the offices and storage space continue to create a sense of Kahn's hated claustrophobia. The southern brick wall was hidden behind the walls of a gift shop, and black screens spanned the crucial space between the pogo-panels and the floor.

In 1962, Scully bemoaned the building's misuse but offered some consolation: "some day it will obviously be rectified."

That ch,ty, apparently, is today, though the process began informally some time back.

Pointing to an exposed brick wall, Cunningham credited Mary Gardner Neill, Gallery director in the early 90s, as "one of the first people to start chipping away at the archeological layers" of the building. "Over the years," she added, "as we've taken the walls down from around the cylinder, taken the wall down from the south brick wall, curators keep seeing how the installations are only improved as we return [the Gallery] closer to what Kahn envisioned."

Though the basement and fourth floors will still contain some offices and storage space, the renovated Gallery will actually be closer to "Kahn's original vision" than it was in 1953. Unrestricted exhibition space will span much of the first and all of the second and third floors. Most imponantly, the pogopanels will be used more thoroughly within these open spaces. In his article in YUAG's 2000 Bulletin, Alexander Purves explained that after Ritchie's renovations of the late 1950s, " ... never again did [Kahn] allow the primary spatial experience of his architecture to be at the mercy of secondary panition locations." The pogo-panel, the very thing that enabled hacking and clutter, when used correctly, will make the museum a unique expression of light and structure. In its purest incarnation, each floor of Kahn's building would be an unobstructed expanse, populated only by these panels, the artWork, and the viewers themselves, with the ceiling and cylinder guiding us steadily upward. By next summer, students will be able to visit the museum once again, and to experience Kahn's space as never before.

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I guess the stronger and bigger the odds that you overcome, the more admiration you win. That's the only way I can explain my socalled heroism.

<>rt:Mao, 36, a leading advocate for human rights who hails from war-torn Northern region of Gulu, Uganda, has spent the past nine months studyi,ng as a World Fellow at Yale University. When he returns to Uganda this june, where he is currently serving a second term in Parliament, Mao will take on a new challenge: campaigning for the Presidency in 2006. For someone who began his political career with thirteen dollars in his pocket, challenges are nothing new. Having wtinessed the atrocities ofgenocide in his own country, Mao believes Afticans can teach the world a lesson in the fight against terrorism: empathy. The following are excerpts from an interview with The New Journal.

What new perspectives, specifically, have you gained as a World Fellow? Have any affected or changed the views you originally held? . .

Two come to mind. The first is the inequality within America. From my general studies, I used to know about inequalities between nations. Living here in New Haven, I have reflected more on inequalities within nations. I have realized that America has a lot of challenges in bridging the social gaps between those who have, those who have not, and those who have little. So that is one thing that I go back with: a new look at America's social inequalities.

The other thing is that there is no unanimity. on the face that America represents to the world. I used to think that every American thought like President Bush: you're either with us, or with them.

A black and white policy where when America intervenes they ask the first person they meet, . "Who are the bad guys and who are the good guys?"

I go back to Uganda convinced that Bush is not America. And Americans are not Bush. I go back convinced that there is a vigorous debate in this country.

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What is the next presidential candidate for Uganda doing here in New Haven?

I've also been wondering~ Whenever I'm invited to talk to people, I end by saying, "What's a nice guy like me doing at Yale?" I believe that it is important if you have a big mission ahead of you, to sort of take a step back. Even Jesus. first took forty days in the desert to reflect on his life's mission. I'm not Jesus, but I have a mission. I decided long ago that before I ran for the office of president of Uganda, I would first build a sufficient knowledge base, and the World Fellows Program has offered me that opportunity.

You have been described as a "hero, a kind ofsuperstar for the youth. " What is your vision for Uganda, and what is it about this vision that speaks to younger people?

When you infot med your colleagues and your constituency that you would be coming to the United States to participate in this program, how was the news received?

My message appeals to the youth because I tell them that, "The earlier generations have m~sed up so much, let's understand why they messed up, and then our mission is to correct." And to a large extent, the young age at which I went for nationalist elections [helps]. I was twenty six when I offered myself for the first election; I lost, which is a good thing. I think if you think you're such a hot stuff, you're .horns should be pruned a bit. And thank God I got my pruning very early in life.

The young people see me as a spokesman for their generation,. a kind of voice. I have reassured them that Uganda is our country. I have told them that though we are many tribes in Uganda, we are united by poverty, we are united by the lack of water in our villages, we are united by illiteracy.

Also, the views I've expressed in parliament: In 1997, I was a lone voice calling for a peaceful settlement for the conflict in the north. I thought I was actually digging my political grave. I was saying things which must have offended so many of the members. I told them we needed to talk to people who were killing our people. But I felt I was morally bound to advocate for peace. To stand up, express a view and be met with jeers and scorns that was trying for me. [But] hardly four years later, the Parliament turned around and started pressuring the government to talk to the rebels.

What flattered my voters most was the fact that I was chosen from so many Africans. I guess that made them feel that, "Well, other people have confidence in our choice." But, in life, people also know that where you stand determines the level of your influence. Becoming a World Fellow puts me in touch with people who are very influential. I get emails from people in my constituency, and they say, "Why dont you bring the issue of Northern Uganda to the attention of the Security Council?" And indeed, when the US Ambassador-to the UN came to speak to us, I pulled him aside and addressed him on that matter. My constituents therefore know that being a World Fellow puts me in a position where I can reach key decision makers.

Yale has a track-record of c1"eating presidents, most notably the two current candidates for the US pres· What are your thoughts on this campaign, and how does the type of negative politicking he1-e compare to your anticipated presidential campaign in Uganda?

People can get nasty in a campaign, basically because, in America, the campaigns are not really managed or run by the candidates. The people who choose the words and phrases that politicians say in front •

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ert of the voters are different. If Bush wins the next election, having scared Americans so much, the situation is going to be so disgusting, that people will wonder. And also, if Kerry wins the election, having told Americans that Republicans are, "Public Enemy Number One," that also is not healthy. So, what you need is a breed of politicians who are able to look for the common ground. In Uganda, that kind of [negative] politics also exists. People start bad-mouthing each other.

Sometimes they get so personal. In the last campaign, the incumbent accused his challenger of being sick with AIDS. Well, the truth or not of it was not debated; but it showed how far people will go in order to win an election. The key way to look at the election, therefore, is to study human nature. And human nature is the same in America and the same in Uganda.

In a recent article you wrote for The Yale Herald, you described how travel advisories for JYorthern Uganda usually raise more eyebrows than questions. What do you think accounts for this scarcity ofdemand for information?

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The media in America seldom focuses on Africa. It's either famine in Ethiopia, the refugees of Sudan, the death of dictator Idi Amin, or the war in the Congo. Now, the embassies in Mrica, they know everything that goes on in Uganda, and that's why they tell their citizens, "Don't go to ·Northern Uganda." But they don't go into the details.

The media, it marches behind the strong political currents. In Uganda, since this current president took over in 1986, he has been hailed as a beacon of hope for Africa, he has been described as part of a new breed of Mrican leaders. The characteristic of this new breed was that they are very much pro-USA. So they have enjoyed a long honeymoon where the USA has not criticized their policies.

As a result [of these alliances], there is a distonion. In Nonhern Uganda, one million people are displaced; economic activity has come to a standstill; the HN AIDS infection rate is at thirty percent. Still the US government does not question our government's policy! Our government is an ally. So, while the Cold War era gave America the motivation to suppon thugs like Mbeki, the current war in Iraq is giving America the motivation to suppon dubious leaders in Africa, including our own. And that is why the travel advisories stop at saying, "Don't go there."

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In the same article, you concluded by asking the world to act, and act now. What can Yale students do to help?

At Amani Forum [The Great Lakes Parliamentary Forum on Peace], we cany out fact-finding missions. We could have two Yale student interns, who can look at the situation. By having Yale Students visit conflict regions, and repon on what they see, in a language that 2004

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Do you think human rights can become a voting issue in this country, and in Uganda?

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Americans can understand, is one way to help.

The other way is for Yale students to write to their senators, and tell them the money they are sending in aid [to Uganda] is being used to fight wars. It has become an industry for removing guilt. You just give money to Mrica to .remove guilt. I think America should roll up its sleeves and get involved. Yale students can galvanize that pressure towards their senators and legislators. The other thing is for them to get interested in the issues. I think we need to care about people.

Somebody said after the Rwandan genocide that if the 200 mountain gorillas had been threatened with extinction, the world would have acted more. Instead, for months, people were dying in Rwanda. The younger generation ofYale, the "A-B40s" or, "Americans below forty," ofYale University, they need to have that feeling of kinship with human beings. Yale students need to start asking questions of their leaders.

0 nee erica."

Elections are very local, and unless the human rights issue is a local issue, they don't seem to resonate well. But I do think, for America, given its pre-eminence in the world today, human rights can become an issue. I do believe that we can also make human rights in Africa an issue. And the starting point is to ask the candidates, what do you think? At the end of the day, my only advice to Yale studen~s is to reclaim that sense of outrage when things go wrong. We need outrage, outrage about human rights.

It's not often in the American press that you hear opinions from African politicians on the so-called "global war on terrorism. " What are your views, and what do you see as Africa's role in the war on terrorism?

It is our duty, as African leaders, to condemn terrorism. There is no place for terrorism in a civilized world. At the same time, it is critical that we look at the root causes of terrorism. The strategies of terrorists, appear to be based on desperation. There is some deep-seeded anger. First, we must show that we understand. The role of sympathy ·and empathy in diplomacy has been underestimated. There are a few things Africans can teach the world about conflict resolution. We must find a way to be a family again. Right now, I think many of the Arabs don't feel they are members of the world's families. There's a lot of prejudice. So, what can the weaker countries of the world do? They can teach the powerful countries the power of sympathy.

You have been praised for your use ofproverbs. Do you have a favorite proverb?

I actually don't use proverbs a lot. I use stories. My favorite saying, though, is, "Whatever you do, do it as if it is impossible to fail."

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automatic sliding glass doors that lead to the main ' and only terminal ofTweed New Haven Regional Airport bear an ironically ferocious warning in bold red letters: STAND )3ACK. Though the maxim is certainly a necessary safety feature for the temperamental doors, the admonition • seems applicable to the whole airport, not just its entrance. You do want to ..stand back" as you gaze inside Tweed, with its industrial brushstrokes of red and grey on the walls and floors.

The airport's color scheme and the sheer absurdity of its petite frame make the building seem like it was meticulously fit together. from a few pieces of a Lego Set. You want to stand back from Tweed. Stand back and laugh.

"Tweed is a farm," as one Pierson sophomore who recently visited the airport put it. The airport sort of jumps out of nowhere, as if it were placed with all the thought that goes into a left mouse click in the residential zone of a game of SimCity. Compared to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, which is over 4,930 acres .and boasts three enormous runways which range from 10,000 to 14,572 feet in length, Tweed is 236 acres and has one runway which measures a measly 5600 feet. Even as far as small airports go, Tweed is positively dinky. To get there you take modest residential side streets with names evocative of suburbia's pleasant greenery: Grove Street, Forest Street and Charter Oak Avenue. These are streets that normally take you to the grocery store or the cleaners, not to an airport. The route is marked by blue informational signs stamped with an airplane logo, which looks more like a slightly disfigured bird than a plane. Runways aside, the building itself might be smaller than a Connecticut bird sanctuary. This is a place where planes depart and arrive, but some Connecticut homes definitely show it up. Of course, most homes do not have baggage carousels (Tweed doesn't actUally have a real

baggage carousel), or what seems to be Twec;!d's greatest asset: a colorful and plentifully stocked Snapple vending machine. . · On a Saturday afternoon during the Connecticut public school spring break,· the only people in the lonely terminal were two idle uniformed workers manning the vacan_t ticket counter. The blankness of their expres. sions suggested that thes~ employees were used to slow days. Currently, the only flights from Tweed go to Philadelphia. Who from New Haven needs to go to Philadelphia anyway?

Apparently, . corporate America. "We need an airport that can serve the cor-

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porate community that needs to get in ... Get their business done ... And get out and Tweed New Haven really has that," said Henry Fernandez, Economic Director of the City of New Haven in an aviation press release. And maybe this little airport really is needed: there were several dozen cars parked in Tweed's Long Term parking lot that day and even some empty spots at the attached Avis rental car facility. With the recent acquisition of Delta shuttle service and forthcoming flights to Washington-Dulles Airport from a nouveau airline called Independent, more people are warming up to the possibility of a New Haven airport, even if it does look like a joke from the outside.

The project sparked a city-wide debate this year when additional money was required to expedite the renovations which Tweed has been undergoing almost continuously since it opened in 1931. Naysayers dismissed this desperate final attempt to modernize Tweed as part of an 11 n realistically utopian economic vision of New Haven. So

when the city's generous contract with Tweed expired and technically ended funding efforts, no one expected Mayor John DeStefano to independently decide that if the New Haven business community could raise two million dollais, the city would commit another $900,000. "Given that we had laid off public service employees and raised taxes," said Ward One Alderman Ben Healey, "it seemed difficult to justify putting $900,000 towards an airport." But eventually, after heated debates within the aldermanic chamber, Healey came to support the airport.

"There are no sure bets when it comes to something like Tweed Airport," he admitted ..

But the prospect of economic development gave him reason enough to try and convince fellow officials and skeptical constituents of his opinion: "You've gotta give it a chance."

Expanding Tweed is a gamble for New Haven, much in the same way that New Haven gambled on an extensive urban development project in the 1950s: parking lots. Despite an extensive highway infrastructure, for the most part, those stayed empty. Will Tweed take off? Will those lonely employees realize their vision of a terminal bustling with business associates hurriedly trying to catch a plane back to their home bases and Yale students traveling home on the holidays? Will Tweed's baggage carousels make their first substantial circuit? (Tweed doesn't acwally have baggage carousels.) Will Snapples tumble forth from the machine as quickly as they are snatched from a Yale Law School refrigerator? One can only hope that for the good of the New Haven community, those answers will all be, "Go fly."

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Romy Drucker, a freshman in Davenport College, is Research Diirector for TNJ.

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