Volume 37 - Issue 3

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Volume 37, Number 3 November 2004

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Out in the Cold

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How Yale fails its queer communiry.

by Amia Srinivasan 12

The Dead Shall Be Raised

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Unearthing the story

of body donation at Yale.

by Adriane Quinlan

Shifting Markets

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Asian-Amen·can storeowners relocate to New Haven.

by Evelyn Shih

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Points of Departure

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Shots in the Dark: by Liz Hammond The Critical Angle: Olde Blue by Sarah Laskow Essay: Choosing Life by LuCJlS Kwong

38 -Endnote: Weddings/Celebrations? by Romy Drucker • .

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The New Journal is published five times during the academic year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Office address: 29-45 Broadway. Phone: (203) 432-1957.

Email: tnj@yale.edu. All contents copyright 2003 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without wtitten permission of the publisher 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, Sl8. Two years, S32. The New Journal is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, rna; booklceeping 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, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication.

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adding gravely, "We alwao/s need to be secuOn Guard rity conscious." Len is always security conscious. On the bulletin board above his.

IN 1966 the great desk he has tacked up articles about devasphilanthropist tating art heists. "2 Art Treasures With Paul Mellon Value of At Least $200 Million Stolen!" "A donated his extenRobbery, A Reporter, and Somewhere a sive collection of British art to Yale, and in Cellar Full of Masterpieces!" When I asked · 1974, the great architect Louis Kahn comhim if I could turn on a tape recorder, he pleted his last building, a museum to house squinted at me and quickly shook his head. that art, and ever since then, the most beau- · Definitely not, nope. He couldn't allow tiful spot on Yale's campus has been the himself to be recorded, "for secu.rity reafourth floor of the Yale Center for British sons." Instead, he made a counter-offer: I Art on a mellow mid-afternoon when the could take notes, and he would inspect sky is nothing but blue and the sun hits the them. As we began to speak I mentioned stone angels on the bridge over High Street that I come to the museum often. "I and the city is a crazy mess of spires and know," he said quietly. "I've seen· you." pointed roofs jutting into the distance and Len"s office is right next to the control "The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam . room, which is not one of the most beautiBecalmed" by J.M.W. Turner shines a light ful spots on the Yale campus. Just a door of its own onto the sea and the city it · and a corridor away from the smooth, soardepicts. ing spaces of Kahn's museum, these walls Weekday afternoons at the YCBA are are made of cinderblocks instead of paneled slow, and as I sat by this painting one oak and crammed with television screens sunny Tuesday, only a few people passed by. instead of paintings. There is a huge series There was a couple with a baby girl of Polaroid snapshots depicting everyone ("Look," they said to her, pointing at the . who is authorized to enter the building. painting, "It's alive."). Then there were two There is a drawing of Betty Boop. And glossy, gray-suited women gesturing flamthen, of course, there is Len, who has been boyantly ("Turner was a genius."), and then a constant presence here for 25 years, when for a long time there was nobody but a he started as a security guard. He knows the security guard with a silver hoop in his ear. place inside -and out and keeps a very close He was short and stocky and he darted in eye on things, but even so, a few more sets and out looking at "The Dort Packet-Boat" of eyes don't hurt. from several angles. Once or twice he Tha"s why the YCBA has 35 roving swiped his hand over the painting's huge, · security cameras, which, I have been gold frame. "I don't know," he said into his assured, will find you wherever you are. radio. · "It doesn't look that bad."

The cameras are state-of-the-art: they can I was curious about what he was doing, swivel around the room, follow people but I didn't think I was allowed to ask. I through the museum, and zoom in on had just come from the museum's "control minute details. They produce a record of room," where I spoke at length with Len every visitor's motions from the time he Costanza, the head security supervisor of enters the building to the time he leaves, the YCBA, who had given me explicit stored on a hard drive. When I visited the instructions not to interview the security control room, a petite woman was manning guards-"I don't know what they might tell the computers and scanning the images you!" he exclaimed in mock horror before ·intently. Len introduced her. "I have every •

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confidence inJen here," he said. "She's seen things under fire. She oversees everything from this room. She even makes sure the UPS guy isn't an imposter." Jen cast a harried glance at me and turned back to her six computer screens as they flashed from scene to scene. A man walked through a doorway.

Another man walked through another doorway. Nothing looked particularly suspicious to me, but as Len pointed out several times, the guards ·at the YCBA have to be constantly alert, constantly ready for disaster. "You have to think like this," he says.

Len Costanza does not think or speak in ambiguities, because the way he sees it, . there are none, at least not in his line of work. Either the museum is secure or it is not. One of his favorite phrases is "we must always assume", as in, "we must always assume a fire alarm is set off in an attempted burglary," or, "we must always assume that someone is hiding out in the bushes ready to steal a painting," or simply, "we must always assume the worst."

These aren't just blind assumptions Len knows the worst, because he has seen it.

He still remembers the exact date and time of the first and last major "security incident" in YCBA history. At 9:15 on the morning of July 19, 1984, a guard discovered something missing from the Henry Moore sculpture "Bird and Egg" -namely, the egg, which had been completely detached from the base and spirited away.

The s~ulpture's defacement caused an uproar, and although the egg was returned 11 days later (via inter-office mail, enclosed in a brown envelope labeled "sorry for the hassle"),. the memory still haunts Len, who keeps a manila folder full of yellowed clippings about the theft. When I asked him about the incident, he winced Did he ever • find out who did it? "Well, ubviously-no, I obviously can't say." Weii, if everything was secure the night before, it must have been a guard, right? "I can't go into it further D I could never say it was an inside job," he

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said abruptly. "But timing-wise, it had to be someone who was in the building prior to its opening." He changed the subject. "We have to be in a position to prevent things like this from happening ever again,, he said emphatically. "It's almost like someone invaded my personal-." He stopped and began again. "This is our house, and we take so much pride in the beauty of the building, the Louis Kahn building, and the art. We takeJt personally. Somebody gets something robbed, the next thing they do is put in a whole new security system. My way of thinking is that we always need to be two steps ahead. Many times on a Sunday,- I'll walk this building and look for vulnerable places. We can't rely on luck-luck has nothing to do with it-we just don't take any shortcuts. There's only one way to do it, and that's to do it right."

Suddenly, he straightened up in his Aeron chair and looked me in the eye. "I knew Mr. Mellon-! have a signed copy of one of his books-and I feel I have a duty to live up to his treasures. If he was going to give his treasures to this museum, I wi).l do everything in my power to protect those treasures. He was such a wonderful man."

When I asked him about his own favorite art, he had a ready answer. "I always admired the Stubbs paintings. I love horses, and I know these were Mr. Mellon's favorite paintings. I'm fascinated by the oldest paintings in the collection. How artists made their paints and constructed this art and it's still standing here 500 years later."

He dwelt on Paul Mellon and his legacy for a while, which makes sense; after all, these paintings are Len's to protect, and he, perhaps more than any other man, is · charged with the mission of keeping them intact until he chooses to pass them on to another protector. But his eloquence faded to jargony, nervous patter as I prepared to leave and asked if I could talk to an actual security guard He clammed up again and gave me a "no, sorry, I don't think so, secuNoVEMBER 2004

rity issues," and I gave him a "thanks for your time" and returned to the fourth floor of the museum to sit by the Turner painting. I started to write and stopped again, acutely conscious of the 35 cameras panning the building ("I could read someone' s book with this camera," I remembered Len saying). I didn't dare speak to the guard with the earring, but I watched as he paced in and out of the room, still talking into his radio and eyeing "The Dort Packet-Boat."

Eventually he returned and slid a slatted window shut. He looked at me apologetically-"Sorry about that, but we've gotta keep the sunlight off the painting, we've gotta protect it"-and then the room was darker but the painting still glowed and the guard moved on.

-julia Wallace

Double Agency MAY-

LAST

· , Eritrea celebrated the 13th anniversary of its independence from neighboring Ethiopia, to which a UN Resolution had formally ceded it in December 1950. But a major Amnesty International review undertaken in the months before the country's birthday paints what the BBC calls "a damning portrait of what Eritrea, once seen as one of Mrica' s brightest hopes, has become." !he report cites the nine-year detention of religious minorities and journalists, the continued internment of Ethiopian POWs, the torture of political prisoners and women conscripts, and the continued avoidance of a multi-party elec-tion despite a 1997 constitutional amendment calling for one.

Law School Professor Lea Brilmayer may be the highest ranked and most overlooked government official teaching at Yale University. Author of two books on the conflict between domestic and global •

courts, tenured as the Boltzmann Professor of International Law, and an ardent antisecessionist, she is also the Chief Legal Advisor to the Office of the President of Eritrea.

According to Don Lewis, a partner at PiperRudnick LLP in Washington, D.C. and one of the counsels for Ethiopia, no one is better cut out for the job. "She's a true believer in the Eritrean Cause," he says, with a certain degree of astonishment that anyone actually could be. She could pass a lie detector test asserting that Eritrea was an innocent little country whose neighbors were all out to get it." · However questionable an affiliation • with a country that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have condemned, none of these accusations faze either Brilmayer or Yale. In fact, the University supports her. The Law School's Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights is the informational and financial umbrella under which all foreign aid programs sponsored by the Law School are organized-a Dwight Hall for the global community. In its annual guide to human rights programs, there is a listing for an 'Eritrea Project.' "Summer placements are available for a small number of students interested in working in Asmara on development and public international project 0 rang[ing] from urban planning, to seeking compensation for victims of illegal deportation from Ethiopia, to preparing documents for international arbitration.

The Law School provides basic travel expenses.'' According to Brilmayer, about twenty students have taken her up on this opportun1ty.

While Lewis freely admits that Yale faculty members are allowed their private endeavors, the involvement of students and University fundi_n g baffles him. "How," he asks, "does a human rights center justify the giving of these grants? These students aren't •

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helping Eritreans, they're helping Eritrea: helping its government, its criminal sol. diers, and its corrupt president." He cites the reports of human rights groups and The Hague's decision to condemn Eritrea for the "frequent physical abuse of [Ethiopian] civilians by means of intentional killings, beatings and abductions" as evidence for a side of the country ignored by Brilmayer and her supporters.

Brilmayer denies all of these allegations in the same breath as she protests implicating the University in her work. The Schell Center, in her mind, serves a necessary information conduit that should not be confused with support. The same rationale keeps her from spreading the gospel of Eritrea in her classroom or public lectures, interesting and relevant as her work might be. "I don't proselytize. It's very different if a student comes to me in a one-on-one setting and asks about what I do. Then we can sit down and talk about it. But I d.o n't bring it up in the classroom."

The secrecy with which she blankets her work, given its magnitude and the student body's interest in international rela- . tions and human rights,is almost astounding. Lewis, remarking on Brilmayer's unquestioned support by the University · and the ignorance of students on the situation, asks what would have happened if this had been not Eritrea but "1980's apartheid South Africa. Or Pinochet." While his post as opposing counsel has undoubtedly biased him against the Eritrean government-and Ethiopia has committed its own share of human rights abuses and war crimes, to be sure-it is curious that Brilmayer's work has never elicited either interest or controversy in the politicized environment of Yale. While apartheid South Africa and Pinochet's Chile may be too one-sided to serve as good examples, it does seem that Eritrea gets ignored largely because of its geographical location. Were a professor to become centrally involved in a contentious western European government, however small, it's safe to say that campus would take rather severe notice. With a recent census count giving it a population of some 4,362,000, Eritrea has nearly ten times the citizens of Luxembourg and about 400,000 more than the Republic of Ireland. Why should a professor's taking sides in full-scale atmed conflict be less polarizing than the endorsement of, ·say, •

the IRA? for And it's not as if the international The . . . community has turned a blind eye .

Following the 2000 <;f!ase-fire which brought an end to what The Hague calls the "costly, large-scale interna~ional armed conflict'' that raged between Eritrea and Ethiopia, The Hague set up two tribunals to settle the sources of co~ict-a Boundary Commission to determin''.. the new border · . of the countries, and a Cl ·ims Commission to assess awards owed by each country for . war crimes committed during the conflict.

In the preface to its decision in support of · Ethiopia, the Claims Commissioners "Self Portrait, by Henry Miler. encouraged both nations to guard against the "nationalization of the truth." ' ' Btilmayer, who spent the 2000-2001 acadeAdventures. of Tom Sawyer and "Un-Eyed mic year on sabbatical in the city of Dog," a sketch ."Executed instantaneously and blindfolded by I Truly Yours /Mark Asmara to collect evidence for exactly that nationalization, is listed as the chief counTwain/ (Educated artist).'~ ~ The jaunty sel for the Eritrean government in both humor ofTwain's caption is reflected in the deliberations. title of the collection . ' to which the sketch Prestigious as the title sounds, belongs: the "Art for the Wrong. Reason" Brilmayer is quick to downplay her role in archive of the Yale Collection of American the Eritrean government. Though she Literature. The archive is named for the reabegan handling cases for Eritrea shortly son the works were collected: Its 68 pieces after its founding, it is a relationship she were amassed primarily out of interest in describes ·as starting almost "irrationally." the writers who created them and less out of "I'd always been interested.in Africa, I don't appreciation for the works' artistic merit. really know why. I wenJ over and did one The works range from the hastily-comjob for them, and everyone was very warm. posed caricature to the ambitious lithoIt was just one of those things," she · graphs or oil painting. The collection was explains. When confronted with the idea originally the private investment of that her job description sounds remarkably Norman HoltJ:leS Pearson (BA 1932, Ph. D. similar to that of the United States 1941 ), Ya.le Professor of English and Attorney General, she only laughs before American studies and advisor to the Yale protesting that she doesn't deal with any Collection of American Literature. After aspects of domestic policy-no Patriot Acts his death in 1975, all of Pearson's personal come from behind her desk. "I think they and scholarly papers were donated to the had .to give me a title of some sort," she Beinecke, including what he had dubbed says, "and this just happened to be it. the 'Art for the Wrong Reason' collection.

Something to put on my nametag."

The scholar's own story informs that of the -fanny Dach art collection he donated to the Beinecke. ' ·!

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MARK TwAIN's literature might be unaware of the humorist's hidden talent for doodling on dinner napkins while blindfolded.

Indeed, the underground annals of the Beinecke house both the manuscript notes

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A portrait ofPearson.graces the wall to the left of the reading ·room ·in the library and reveals not only his warm, intelligently wrinkled countenance, but also his many interests. Set in the professor's HGS study, the painting boasts in its background the Oxford Anthology of American Literature, which Pearson edited with his friend William Rose Benet. Perched next to the Oxford anthology is Dusty Diamonds, a "boys' book" representative of Pearson's collection of this genre. But most striking is a painting of a woman whose cold face contrasts markedly with Pearson's own: it is the face of "Arabella," who stares out of D. H. Lawrence's only portrait (which Pearson owned). Arabella's distant, overly large eyes and awkwardly open mouth suggest that Lawrence was wise to stick to his day job.

Pearson acquired "Arabella" for his collection fronf the model who sat for it, and displayed the painting in his office because his wife declared there to be "too much artistically wrong" with it to be displayed in the Pearson home. Much of the art in Pearson's collection was similarly obtained from writer-friends, who included e .e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Tom Wolfe, and Denise Levertov. Purchased pieces by Robert Louis Stevenson, Thackeray, Proust, and Hugo, among others, round out the group.

Pearson's interest in writers' art stemmed from his desire to gain a fuller picture (so to speak) of the writers whose

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TheNewJournal delivered to your home? literature he enjoyed. Pearson wrote, "[I] like to meditate on the relationship between a writer's painting and his poetry and prose. Is there a correlation? Does a writer write better because of learning to hold a brush?" One might look to e. e. cummings' paintings for an answer. Along with Herman Hesse, cummings is one of the few writers in the collection whose artistic endeavors are particularly extensive and well known. One of his watercolors, "View of Silver Lake" is intensely colorful and joyous, yet deliberate. This controlled euphoria is familiar to the reader of such poetry, as "Picasso I you give us things I which I bulge: grunting lungs pumped full of sharp thick mind." Although Cummings' graceful paintings do not themselves "bulge:grunting lungs pumped full," these landscapes demonstrate the ppet's serious aspiration to be a gentler Picasso.

More obscure is the art of William Carlos Williams, who studied visual art before he took up poetry. The calm, bucolic mood of his green-and-brown New Jersey landscape, "View of Passaic River," shadows . the less calm America of his long poem "Paterson." The painting hangs in the office of Nancy Kuhl, the Assistant Curator of the American Literature collection. "So few people seem to know that Williams · painted at all-even those who otherwise know a great deal about his work and his life," she says. "When they see the painting in my office, I think people take it in as a painting, but they begin also to factor the fact of it into their larger understanding of

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the poet/man/doctor/artist who painted it." Seeing the art of other writers besides Williams and cummings likewise enhances familiarity with the people behind the pen.

Like Williams, GUnter Grass also began his career as a visual artist. His lithograph of four huddling, cloaked men whose heads resemble that of "The Scream," haunts the collection. So does Tom Wolfe's ink sketch of Hugh Hefner as a smoking, boozing, dictatorial imp. Less threatening but equally impish is Henry Miller's painted self-portrait, in which abstract blobs almost accidentally fuse to compose · a blank-eyed bohemian. George Bernard Shaw's own watercolor self-portrait, as an ethereal Don Quixote, reveals the playwright's romantic and wry side.

Some of the pieces are more strange than illuminating. Hilaire Belloc, a Frenchturned-British writer of poetry, literary criticism, and military and social history, contributes to the collection an ink sketch of cartoonish goblins and fairies surrounding a watercolor inset of a nebulous landscape.

By way of explanation, a pseudo-Latin inscription captions the picture. Queen.

Victoria's miniature figure studies, the product of her fourteen-year-old hand, also distinguish the collection. The Queen ren. . ders a pair of horses, a horse-riding Turk, and a gypsy girl with a goat and tambourine in simple lines and dutiful cross-hatching.

The "Art for the Wrong Reason" collection was featured in a Beinecke exhibit about twenty years ago, but since then most of the art, which is flat and unframed, has sat quietly in two grey, acid-free boxes. The occasional scholar does request to see a particular piece. Yet even if the art does not regularly appear to the public, there is virtue in the possibility of future exhibition, in its in-the-meantime aid to scholars, and in its very preservation.

Would a Twain sketch by any other name look as sweet? Perhaps not, but a Williams painting or Grass litho might.

These works of art, though not masterpieces, help us to piece together the personality of masters. '

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New Haven's presence. "You get a feel of the size of Yale's hospital-and it's expandWITH MY SEATBELT AND EARMUFFS SECURE, ing." He points out Ingalls rink. I turn to we go over the final pre-take-off precauglance down at it as we fly by. Its smooth tions, following yet pre-made, alllines make it look like a grey turtle shell encompassing checklist. ~ voice signals that all is clear, and the plane inches forsleeping amongst the beautiful collage of ward. The comfortable feeling of being safe- · treetops.

Yale Aviation provides an enticing ly strapped into the backseat of a car vanishes as the single engine propeller plane promise: "The possibilities that await you jumps from the airstrip and begins to wobas you soar skyward are endless." The orga. nization extends its invitation on signs at ble awkwardly. My eyes . art to the ·pilot, Ricky Kamp, Forestry School graduate, a Yale Station post office, The club boasts up flight student, and his instructor, Charlie Skelton, a dedicated, top-notch head Skelton, the President of Yale Avaiation, · instructor in a four-plane fleet, and a flock hoping to be assured that everything is runof 82 members, who take in the view of New Haven-among other sights-from ning smoothly. Eventually, the plane stead2,000 feet up. ies, cutting through the autumn air, as my Skelton's red-tinted aviator glasses and Scanning the view of New Haven expands.

• his captain's voice-soothing, steady, and three glass panes of the aircraft, I feel as clear-make the though I am peernovice flyer feel ing into an undissafe under his turbed snow globe wings. His relaof New Haven. tionship with Every building • planes started appears to me m a when he joined · new context, a the Air Scouts, a part of a clearer group under the picture of New international Haven. My exagScouting movegerated view of ment that Yale as the epicenemphasizes flyter of New Haven ing activities. shifts into scale.

He obtained a Yale Aviation job through the was launched in Air Scouts ser1915 by then Yale vicing airplanes sophomore at Tweed-New Trubee Davison.

Haven airport, where he worked until The club's alumni include the founders of Pan American Airlines and of Federal enrolling in Quinnipiac University. He Express. The group became the first aerial then joined Yale's Navy ROTC and later coastal patrol unit and originally served as served as a Ma_rine colonel and fighter pilot. a springboard into the Army. Today's club His aviation and military background are is purely recreational. It is no longer directrevealed in his regimented yet calm ly affiliated with Yale because of liability demeanor. reasons, and twenty percent of its members Before· we take off, Skelton's equally have no Yale affiliation. Interest in sustainmeticulous student, scans his l:hecklist a ing the club has not dwindled over the second time while peering into crevices in years, and it still serves-indirectly at least-as search of"crack manifolds" that could danoccupational training. Kamp believes that gerously spread. "It's no place to pull over air training is the ultimate multi-tasking up there," he says as he stares under the challenge. plane for any malfunctions. Skelton "Ikea's parking lot is nearly full again," explained to Kamp that most repairs to the ' Skelton laments. The massive aerial eyesore planes, whose manufacturing dates range is matched by a parking lot, nearly as large from 1966 to 1975, are "frighteningly and equally bland. Gliding past Ikea, expensive." Still, the club services its fleet Skelton offers a passing remark about Yalemore often than is required by law. Skelton •

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has yet to witness an accident, and the planes' ages are masked by new paint jobs and polished parts. Kamp regularly reads Safety reports. the National Transportation . .

Many fatal accident reports cite "relative inexperience," he says. Kamp can but has not flown solo because he refuses to take the written test, which necessitates 40 hours of previous flight. He believes gaining experience is important and is in no hurry to rush through the pilot classifica-

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In the air, a message b.lurs over the radio signaling that another plane is nearby. Suddenly, my two companions begin making brisk movements in all directions trying to spot the· other craft. This time I am unwarrantedly calm. When they spot the other air craft, they settle comfortably in their seats again. Despite the over 100 hours of flying time Kamp has clocked, Skelton maintains a "sterile cockpit" -conversation is mainly limited to take-off, landing and flying. "If you're going for instruction, paying for instruction, you are going to be instructed," Kamp said.

It is no surprise that the club is expensive, which is one reason the faculty advisor for the club, Lawrence Manley posits for limited undergraduate enrollment. The club requires an initial $150 fee-undergraduates receive a $25 discount-and monthly dues of $37.50. In addition, flyers pay an in-flight hourly fee that hovers around $80 per hour. The price is well worth it for those who can afford membership, however. "For me, it's exhilarating. It keeps me out of the office," Kamp said.

For Kamp, his flying hobby and his career mingle in the cockpit. According to Skelton, Kamp "takes more photos than anyone I have known." The a,erial photos allow him to assess environmental violations, part of his job with the Department of Environmental Protection. The view from above gives him a better idea of environmental damage. His first comments are not about the buildings, as Skelton's are, but about the impending haze where the New York city skyline should be. He remarks that after it rains, everything · ·appears clean and fresh from above, but the pollution quickly builds up again.

As we circle New Haven one last time, my head aches slightly and my stomach is tested by two minor patches of turbulence (perhaps caused by the wind deflecting off

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West Rock, Skelton speculates). After, Kamp tells · me Skelton had urged hi~ to attempt some aerobatics. Lucky · for me, Kamp, being the conservative flyer that he is, opted to land instead.

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Emily .Kopley Peter Furia· Gabriel Diaz Emily Koh Fusco anagement and .

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looks like an extensionr of the cemetery across the street The frb nt lawn is lined with · three rows of gravestones, some of which bear inscriptions, all - arranged around a colossal granite cross as tall as the showroom itself. The scene unfolds inside, where Pat Giordano, Sr. stands amid more headstones, a portable phone pressed into .his ear, as he confirms such information as the name of "the deceased" -never "the dead." He's so poised and professional that it's easy to overlook the morbidity of his business-after all, he does sell tombstones for a living. "Me, it doesn't bother," he_says, walking past the headstone · of Albert Marzala, June 29, 1920-August 17, 2000.

"But some people get very uneasy when they come in here." As for the headstones that populate the store, most were intended for specific clients. "In thirty-five years, you make a few mistakes/' he admits with a shrug of his shoulders .

Selling headstones is a touchy business.

Along with undertakers and funeral directors, Pat Sr. is one of the first people to come in contact with a family after a family member has died. He says that he's had a fair number of people cry in the store.

Grieving pet owners, surprisingly, are one of the most devastated groups. "You have the biggest, burliest guys come in here and break down," he says.

As far · as emotional strain is concerned, Pat Sr. claims his job is far easier than that of, say, an undertaker. However, he notes that buying a headstone marks a turning point in a family's grieving process.

"Some people will keep having you change little things on headstones, because thafs the final gift that you can give a loved one,, he says. "Once it's done, you reach a kind of closure, and some people aren't ready for that."

Currently, Pat Sr. is the only·Giordano running the monument store. Once upon a time, however, it was owned by the Giordano brothers - all four of them. Pat

Sr.'s grandfather founded the store along with his three brothers in 1921. It has remained at the same location across from the Yale Bowl ever since, and has subsequently been owned by Pat Sr.'s father, and now Pat Sr. himself.

Although some carving is done at the quarry in Barre, Vermont, from which Pat Sr. orders the majority of his granite most of the tombstones are etched in a shop behind the showroom. Over the span of his career, Pat Sr. has witnessed the decline of hammer-and-chisel-carved stones and an increase in the use of more high-tech techniques like sandblasting and computer imaging. It's even possible to use computers to etch a photograph of the deceased onto a tombstone.

Beyond manufacturing headstones, Pat Sr. also has to be acutely aware of the rules and regulations governing headstones in the cemeteries where ·his products will end . up. Each cemetery allows only headstones of certain sizes and specific materials to be placed on its grounds. Many cemeteries even have subsections with more specific rules.

Most bylaws governing headstones are of a practical nature: all Connecticut cemeteries require headstones to be made of granite, .not marble, because marble erodes quickly in the local climate. Some, however, concern religious beliefs. The Catholic Cemetery Association (CCA) requires that all tombstones in their cemeteries have a certain amount of religious iconographypraying hands, large crosses, and images of saints are all strongly encouraged. Pat Sr. finds the specific percentages that the CCA dictates baffling. "We still can't figure out what the hell they're talking about," he says.

Other customers choose more secular images to rest alongside their loved ones. In particular, Pat Sr. notes that many customers have requested alcohol related engravings-martini glasses, Manhattan glasses, · ~en detailed Budwei~er cans. "I guess they enjoyed the time they spent drinking together," he says.

For such an attention-grabbing storefront, Pat Sr. is lucky to suffer little vandalism or defacement of his property. The only incident he can recall occurred a couple of years ago when one of the headstones in front of the store disappeared in the middle of the night. "The police got a kick out of it," he says. "It was very unprofessionalTHE NEw JouRNAL

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ly done-it had to be a frat."

Technological changes aside, selling headstones seems like a relatively non-transient business: there's a steady demand for product, and little direct competition.

Despite this, Pat Sr. says that he's seen business dwindle during his years in the industry. "Monuments have gotten smaller and smaller," he says. "Cemeteries have to keep sizes down-they're running out of space."

He also points to young people's lack of interest in the business: "I've found that when people reach the age of retirement, no one takes over-they go out of business. I've know three places that's happened to in the past couple of years."

Nevertheless, Pat Sr. has little fear of his store following in the wake of his nowdefunct competition. He's confident that when he retires, his own son, Pat Jr., who currently }Yorks alongside his father, will keep the faqtily business alive. After all, for the Giordano's, their store is a tradition in the vein of family-run tailors and furniture stores-except, instead of inseams or ottomans, their business revolves around "the deceased."

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Bisexual Transgendered ~.u.Cl group for all undergraduate queer orgal their weekly meetin. A handful of students of a dreary building on Crown Street, · avoid bankruptcy and how to best vocalize the queer student community. The meeting decries ception that the queer student community at Y: reputation based on the University's ample . spread social liberalism, and relatively in ty.

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Despite its "gay-friendly' reputation,,.Yale to many of its peer universities, ihdudinfolj ' Pennsylvania and Stanford, in 'D; for LGBT students and the queer deep frustration for many policies and attitudes when When Charlie '-'Cl u.u. from the Eastman School not what he had anticipated: expecting a whole and there just wasn't. Y, facilities and things that

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Yalies, Action, and dent-run, and thus organizations. Many of gling to achieve co group becomes defunct, another group, leaving out of touch. This tralized" approach to Unlike many othet '

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member to deal with the needs of queer students. As a result, Yale's so-called "queer resource center" -which also doubles as the the Coop's meeting space-has no regular open hours. Students in need of advice, information, or .help are usually forced to turn elsewhere.

Similarly, there is no counseling service offered to students dealing specifically with issues of their sexual or gender identity, and freshmen counselors are selected without consideration of their openness to LGBT discussion. Finally, Yale allocates no part of its budget to addressing the social needs of this segment of its student population.

When Justin Ross and Arianna Davlos became coordinators of the Co-op, the second sem~ster of their freshmen years, they walked into a challenge: "When we took over," says Ari, "we were facing bankruptcy, and we were constantly worrying about sources of funding. We went through a stag~ of real pessimism where we nearly gave up. Even now, it's a huge strain-we sometimes joke that we should stop attending classes altogether and just run the Co-op."

Unlike queer student umbrella groups at many other universities, the Co-op must petition for yearly funding from the Undergraduate Organization's Funding Committee, rather than receiving an allocated bud• get from Yale. According to ' ' Charlie, a Co-op member, this means that the group • • "has to go through the same channels [for fund• ing] as the Tea Club. The • Tea Club is great," he says, "but that's just oddD." This dependence on annual . . funding from the UOFC keeps the Co-op and its subsidiary organizations in constant financial peril.

They rarely have enough money to achieve their goals, and face bankruptcy if they are not able to draw in large proceeds from dances and other social events.

There is not just a question of funding, but also a question of space. For most concerned student and faculty members at Yale, the absence of an official space for queer students, such as a Queer House, is a pressing issue. Stanford University boasts a spacious ·and recently renovated on-campus Queer Center in a converted fire station, with two full-time staff members, paid student coordinators, support groups and counseling sessions. It is a facility in which students-queer and straight alike-come to study, eat, hang out and organize. Co-op heads Justin and Ari visited the Center last year, and described it as having a "thriving, fun, and supportive" atmosphere, in marked contrast to the back room of 305 Crown Street to which the Yale Co-op has been relegated. In addition, each department at Stanford designates a faculty member who is openly LGBT and is willing to talk to students about LGBT issues. "These little things can make a big difference," says Justin, "The more I investigate other schools, the more I realize Yale is lagging behind."

Justin and Ari believe that Yale should use Stanford as a model

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for necessary change. they hope to utilize the same tactics Stanford students employed to mobilize their University, reminding the Administration that students only perform well academically when they are socially comfortable and happy.

The push for a queer space is not a push for isolation. "So many queer students here are worried about self-segregation," says Ari, "but that's not what an LGBT space would be about." Yale's cultural houses were · creat~d to facilitate integration and celebration of shared background, not to isolate the community; a Queer House, advocates insist, would serve that same function .. It would community. also provide a physiCal space to help build a cohesive • The current fragmentation does not allow for a unified voice with which to argue for change. · This fragmentation may be one reason for the relative lack of queer activism .which ·one might expect to thrive on a campus as politically active and liberal as Yale's. But here queer student activists often find themselves defending the purpose of their advocacyt, instead of actually fighting for change. This brickwall may be a product of tolerance: the lack of overt homophobia means that students may be more likely to question the need for activism. Loren Krywanczyk is a queer student organizer and also the leader of Trans Action..

• He notes: "You have to justify to people that there really is a problem-that homophobia • •• • really does exist. Only then can you go about trying to dispel . , It. But recently, an uncharacteristically public sign of antigay sentiment arrived uninvited at Yale's doorstep. Beenie • Man, a rap artist notorious for his lyrics inciting people to lynch and bum gays, played at Toad's in October, despite fervent protest and a signed petition from Yale's queer-friendly community. "It was a real slap in the face," comments Loren, who orga- · nized the protest, "particularly on the anniversary of Matthew Shepard's murder, one of the worst recent cases of homophobia."

And yet, proving that homophobia exists within Yale is not as hard as it may seem. The lack of persistent, overt anti-gay sentiment obscures the homophobia that does exist, which is private and hard to confront. Justin remembers how he was chalking an advertisement for a queer dance on the co~bles of Old Campuslast year, wqen a small group of intoxicated Yale students began spitting on the sign and shouting homophobic slurs. . But these instances are perhaps more frequent than at other sc\l:ools. Charlie reflects on the environment at Eastman School of ~sic: "It was so much easier to pull together an active gay comI¥nity based on activism, because there were always r~ent acts of ~emophobia in the collective memory., Charlie recalls putting up posters for queer activities, only to have them defamed the next ' mprning by the Christian Fellowship, and fraternity members

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putting up photographs of bestiality for Coming-out Day. In response to Toad's refusal to cancel the Beenie Man show, "' and in honor of Shepard's death, members and allies of the queer student community held a candlelight vigil outside of the bar, passing out fliers and speaking with Toad's customers. In response, they were verbally abused and insulted. One girl, Justin and Ari remember, took a flier, declared that "going in was ok, because her aunt was gay," and tnen proceeded inside. More than rampant homophobia, complacency-that "some-of-my-best-friends-are-gay" attitudedefines much of .the Yale population's attitudes towards queer issues.

Because of ·the lack of sufficient support for queer activism, Charlie believes that the path towards change is to temporarily put aside serious issues, and to focus instead on throwing To this good . LGBT parties to rally the community. . end, he and William Cornwell started GaYalies, a queer student group that emphasizes the social aS"'"" of queer life at · Yale. With their catchy posters"Because Britney's a fairy, and so are you" -GaYalies hopes to use social events as the first step towards building a more unified queer community that can then agitate for .Fhange. "If I had tried to create a society of activism," e:lSplains Charlie, "it wouldn't have workedwhich is why we bill GaYaJies as a social thing q It's a first step to bettering the community." So far, the endeavor seems to be a successful one: the GaYalies parties have been well-attended by a mixture of undergraduates, graduate s:tudents, professors and nonYale students. Charlie hopes the Friday night excitement will soon translate into a more serious movement.

This tactic fits the vision of the Co-op. Says Justin: "When we took over the Co-op, we decided to begin with social events to create a cohesive community-an active and vibrant queer community needs to be demonstrated to the Administration." Ari echoes the importance of this approach, "Although (the presence of the queer community] seems obvious to students, the Administration just isn't aware enough."

to LGBT studies .

Yale's determination to be at the academic forefront has led it to support queer academics over the social needs of its own queer community. Jonathan Katz, the Executive Coordinator ofLKI, says, "If I were forced into a stark choice, I would say that I am glad Yale has chosen to support queer academia first, because it has had an impact that has been felt outside ofYale itself." But Katz is also the first to admit that social change is long overdue: "But I think it's time. It's striking to me that a university that supports LGBT queer studies can fail to understand the palpable stress among queer students here."

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Yale is quickly on its way to becoming the pre-eminent academic institution for gay, lesbian and queer studies-perhaps affirming, in a new way, its identity as the "gay Ivy'". Unlike most other universities in the U.S., Yale has been relatively eager to embrace queer studies as a serious academic field, something that has yet to occur at many other schools across the globe. In doing so, Yale has bucked the social-first trend of most universities, taking queer academic seriously before seriously supporting queer student life.

Within the recently renamed Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) department, students are presented with a wfde array of course choices dealing with academic approaches to issues of sexuality and gender identity as categories of cultural analysis. · WGSS majors can choose from one of two tracks: Women's thd Gender Studies or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Sexuality Studies. The department is also home to the Larry Kramer Initiative for LesbHln and Gay Studies, a five-year long academic endeavor begun in 2062 , which brings in visiting professors to teach at Yale and host a number of academic lectures, symposia, and special events relatiHg ESPITE ITS LACK OF SUPPORT FOR QUEER STUDENTS,

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stress," unrecognized or at least unaddressed by the Yale Administration, has meant that professors like Katz end up picking up much of the slack where the institution falls short. Queer students often describe Katz as a "super hero" who is always willing to go the extra mile when it comes to supporting activism. Likewise, many Yale students meet LKI Professor Seth Silberman at queer social events before meeting him in the classroom. While in the classroom Katz insists that LKI is a purely academic endeavor, rightfully treated as such by Yale, he acknowledges that he goes beyond the call of his academic duty; "I am stretched thin-the vast majority of my time is spent pursuing academic excellence for LKI, but I would have to be willfully uncaring to ignore unmet need." While it is rumored that the Yale Administration looks at Katz' involvement in queer student organizing with an unsympathetic eye, he serves a need that is otherwise ignored, students say-and until someone else is hired to fill this role, he and other concerned faculty members will have to fill in.

Even on the academic front, however, there is room for improvement within the program. The Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department l~cks a tenure track for a sexuality specialist, meaning that there is, of now, no possibility of a queer studies specialist finding a permanent home at Yale. Moreover, while LKI ·brings in exciting innovators from the field, it is only a fiveyear long program, and LKI professors only have two year-long contracts. For Silbennan, that means that his relationships with his students are short-lived: "My students are so fantastic 0 but I'm not going to be here to work on most of their senior essays with them," he says sadly. The destiny of LKI is unclear. After it completes its lifespan in 2007, it might be over five-year for good.

Consequently, as more queer students come to Yale because of its burgeoning academic offerings, more queer students will suffer from Yale's lack of social support. "Yale is not only known as the gay Ivy, it is also the growing leader in LGBT academia," says Justin, who came to Yale partly for the queer studies program.

"Although it is attracting more LGBT students, it is not addressing their social needs to help them perform.'' Justin foresees the ripple effect of Yale's myopia. ~It's such a gaping problem for us, we don't understand how others don't see it."

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in both financial and social causes. Some students and faculty point towards Yale's hesitance to invest heavily during its "no growth" period; others emphasize the lack of awareness of the Yale Administration about LGBT issues. But students and faculty voice one common and recurring theme: complacency. Professor Silberman explains the problem in these terms: "Despite the obvious shortcomings, things are pretty good here. And that 'pretty-goodness' is an excuse not to change things."

While some queer students question the need for a queer house or social support, Justin :warns that it is dangerous to assume that every queer student will fit easily into the Yale without a more structured LGBT social program. "We're not just doing this for us. Not everyone who comes here is going to be as comfortable~" Ari points to the dearth of lesbian students at Yale-she estimates the undergraduate population to be less than fifty-and underscores that being a gay woman is not as easy as being a gay man at Yale. "There is little to no community of queer women ... gay men have been at Yale so long, but lesbians still remain a real minority.

This translates into even less support [for queer w<:>men]."

Similarly, students who are trans or coping with trans issues find themselves outside of the neat "gay Yalie" conception. With even fewer trans students than queer women on Yale's campus, trans students make a case for greater ·institutionalized support. Queer issues and trans issues are not entirely the same thing-'queer' relating to one's sexuality, and 'trans' to one's gender identity-still their concerns often overlap. Loren has been an active leader of Yale's queer community since his freshman year, but has recently started to extend his activism to raise awareness ·of the needs of trans stu- · dents. In doing so, he has realized that while Yale underserves the queer community as a whole, its policies are even less supportive of trans students.

How are single-sex suites to accommodate a trans-male student?

And how are trans students supposed to categorize their "sex" when . · · they apply to Yale? How is an institution to take seriously not just one's sex, but one's gender identity? Beyond bringing these issues to light, of trans students demonstrates that the "gay issue" is not a simple one. While some queer students find their home easily at the "gay Ivy," others face deep~r challenges.

Katz echoes this sentiment, pointing in particular to the difficulty some students face with coming out; "People who come out [at Yale] do so, overwhelmingly, individually. Coming out is greatly eased by a community context-but we have no network for that here." Katz adds that this often places a particular burden on ·some international members of the community: "My sense is that a percentage of all international students choose to study abroad based on reasons other than just academics. It's particularly charged as Yale becomes more global, and we have students who are glimpsing possibilities that are literally foreclosed in their home countries."

Loren is making slow headway in his attempt to change Yale policies to be more trans-aware and friendly. In a series of meetings held this year, Loren spoke to Associate Dean of Yale College and Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg in an attempt to bolster administrative awareness about trans issues. The result, he hopes, will be some small but significant changes in Yale policy: inclusion of "gender identity" in its anti-discrimination policy; changes in housing policy to accommodate trans students; and altering the Yale PROBLEM APPEARS

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application to allow students the option of including written comments about their gender identity, rather than just ticking the "male" or "female" boxes. The overall effect of these changes, Loren says, will be a resounding message that Yale "institutionally welcomes trans peopl e. " Despite disappointment over Yale's response to queer student needs, there are signs that Yale may be creeping forward. One sign of progress is the ·recently created LGBT Advisory Committee, a body that brings queer student and faculty leaders from Yale College and the graduate . schools, together with members of the Administration. Begun by Jesse Reed, Program Coordinator of the Office of Diversity and Eqt1al Opportunity, the committee seeks to centralize the queer resources that currently exist on the Yale campus, and to gain a broader perspective on the needs of the community. PartiCipants hope this initial discussion will catalyze substantial reform.

The hope that this committee brings is tempered by realism.

Ventures like this have occurred before at Yale, only to fizzle out without making any real progress. And while some prominent administrators are beginning to lend a thoughtful ear to queer concerns, including Dean Betty Trachtenberg, they have taken little action.

Despite differing levels of optimism about the Yale Administration's readiness, there is a shared sentiment within the community about what it will take to effect change. A fragmented and complacent community will not suffice; for Yale to become institutionally more queer-friendly, concerned students-queer and straight-must put pressure on the University. "If the Administration is reticent, it's the students' responsibility," Charlie says, "Students have to represent their needs and vocalize them." · Professor Silberman, who will be leaving at the end of this year when his two-year contract with Yale expires, hopes that his students will witness changes that he will not be around to see: "What I tell my students is that Yale is an institution with 300 years of historyit is therefore very cautious and has a long-term perspective on things, necessarily. Students need to be very articulate, vocal, and persistent about what they want." But Silberman reminds his students that the onus lies on them to override Yale's complacency about queer issues; "LKI itself got here by polemicism-Yale just couldn't ignore it anymore. A student outcry can nudge change."

If the queer community at Yale can push Yale to live up to its nickname, then it can be the "gay Ivy" not by default, but by principle.

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VERY DAY SERA KIM AND ANNIE PARK

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spend three hours commuting from Queens, New York to open up shop on the corner of College and Crown St., where none of their customers speak Korean.

Annie had worked for over 14 years as a manicurist in Queens, but bought into the New Haven deal when Sera decided to buy a nail salon about three years .ago.

"Good location, but not busy now," . .

Annie says, waving her arm at the empty manicure stations. "Oh my god, it's dead in here!" For a Thursday, business is frustratingly slow. Annie and Sera are waiting at the register, wondering if they will break even today.

Annie, straight faced, with her hair in a tight bun, looks her part-a keen business woman who has spent decades just making ends meet. In Korean, Annie is an expert conversationalist, but when she switches to English, her choppy pidgin is as economical as her appearance. "She really likes it here," says Annie, pointing at Sera after a long conference in Korean with her friend, "but meD" --she makes a gesture as if to say, she could be better. "Very big problem for the language. "I want to perfect speak. But I can't, so I sayD;" She makes the • gesture agam.

Sera and her husband came to the United States because they believed their sons would be better served with an American college degree. Annie, too, came fourteen years ago to give her daughter an American education. The two met at the Korean church in Queens where Sera's husband now serves as pastor. The church has served as both an internal and external network. It helped them adapt to the neighborhood and then raise the resources to branch out of it in favor of this new one.

Sera, a relative newcomer to the country compared to Annie, is a former fulltime housewife. Now, like many other immigrants, she is building her own American dream: she has opened a store in a new town where the business is said to be good, in order to put her two sons through college.

Sera struggles to explain with the little English that she knows. "I spend a lot of money for my sons' education in this country," she says. Her older son is at Buffalo University, and her younger son is preparing for the SATs. She doesn't see him very much.

But Sera doesn't seem unhappy. If she feels resigned to the fact that she is dedicating her middle age to daily three-hour commutes, she doesn't show it. Above all, she's a "mommy," she says, and if her sons are happy, she is happy.

Crossing the Long Island Sound is not a new immigration pattern. New Haven prides itself on a long history of ethnic diversity, but because the city is dominated . by black and white issues, with an occasional mention of the Hispanic population, most discussions focus on race relations of these groups. Only 3.9 percent of the population is identified as Asian. Most · new· immigrants, even those who have heard of New Haven, deem New York City a more logical place to settle. The area of Queens where Annie once worked was filled with · people who spoke her language. But recently, New Haven has lured a few entrepre.neurs away from those communities.

Why did Annie and Sera leave the comfort of their original Korean enclave in New York and risk the few resources they had to start their own business? Why did they walk out of their comfort zone, the surrogate home of Korean Queens, and into the unknown?

In an immigrant neighborhood, competition is fierce. Despite the fact that New York's Asian immigrant community is strong and cohesive, everyone is trying to make money using a similar skill set.

Restaurants, delis, laundromats and manicure salons are on every block, fighting for the same clientele. In New Haven, on a quiet day like today, the move seems like a mistake, but the truth is, Annie and Sera don't have nearly as many competitors on the corner of College and Crown as they would on a corner in Queens.

The two friends get a strong returning Yale clientele and a decent amount of business from locals. They earn enough profit to make it worth the demanding schedule, · the risk, the loneliness, and the commute.

They have the satisfaction of putting their children through college. , For these women, there has never been another option. They live for their families. .

For storeowners wi~ longer history in New Haven, however, family has become synonymous with business. Annie and Sera still have one foot in ~ew York and one foot in New Haven. But other immigrant families have transplantep their en~re lives •

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here. Although Peter Whang, one of the owners of Gourmet Heaven, grew up watch·ing his parents run delis in Manhattan, he now lives in Connecticut. The store he left in New York was a family business, which his parents started before he was born, more than thirty years ago. Many of his parents' friends also ran delis, tapping into a business pattern that worked within the ~orean immigrant community, which burgeoned during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But in the past five years, delis have been closing left and right. . .

"It just doesn't make sense anymore," said Peter, who was born and bred in Manhattan. "My feeling is that the Manhattan area is tapped out. Delis are a dime a dozen there. The rents are astronomical; and the economic downturn has something to do with it, too." One storefront that his family had leased for several years, he recalled, started asking $75,000 a month. The September 11 terrorist attacks were a particularly personal trauma for the Whangs, who owned a deli inside the World Trade Center. Pressured by the increased number of delis in the area and the economic downturn, the Whangs looked to move.

When Bruce Alexander, Yale's Director of New Haven and State Affairs, aggressively recruited the Whangs to open a deli in New Haven, they were ready for change.

Peter's brother-in-law Chung Cho opened the first New Haven Gourmet Heaven on Broadway in March of 2001.

Representatives from . Bruce Alexander's office specifically chose the Whang deli out of all the delis in Manhattan. During a formal trip to Manhattan, Alexander and his representatives entered and asked to speak with the owner. Eventually, they persuaded the Whangs to make a move out of a city they have called home for decades.

And if sales are any measurement, a 24hour Manhattan-style deli is just what New Haven needed. The Yale student response to the first store was immediate. Although prices are high for the average student budget, Gourmet Heaven is one of the only 24hour food sources available. Savvy to the health-consciousness of a college campus, the Whangs take special care to serve organic and high quality food. They fill their drink refrigerator with designer juice bottles instead of clunky family-sized cartons.

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Twenty years of experience in Manhattan paid off for Chung Cho. The Whangs deliver exactly what Yale recruited them for. With a clean, colorful storefront on Broadway, Gourmet Heaven brings dining and grocery options to a street frequented by students. No alcohol or cigarettes are sold, because as Peter said, "It just seems inconsistent with the healthy concept of food."

The store fits the image Yale's Development Office wanted to create for Broadway. Hong Kong Grocery, a thirteenyear veteran of Whitney Avenue was denied a Broadway spot because their store was "too messy," according to owner Guo Zengguang. Their extensive grocery inventory and attached Chinese restaurant were not enough to convince Yale's Development Office that they were a good fit for Broadway. Its smell of raw fish and exotic vegetables were considered .too far from the mainstream. the Whang family devoted more of its time and energy to their New Haven · business. "The Manhattan stores became an afterthought," said Peter. "If we franchise in New England, it would be out of a New Haven base," he said. "Yale invested in us, and in a way, relocating is our way of returning that good will."

But in some ways, New York City is hard to leave behind. The two New Haven Gourmet Heavens receive produce shipped daily from Huntspoint Market in _the Bronx,. the same provider that they've had for more than thirty years. When he first joined the family business, Peter personally made the drive every two days.

"It's certainly not the easy way to do things, but you know, it's a trust thing," he said "We know that the produce is of a certain quality, and the customers deserve that."

Peter, who had been working in California as a web developer, was called back to the East Coast to help out with the second Gourmet Heaven, now open on Whitney Avenue across the street from Hong Kong Grocery. He was out of a job after the dot com bubble burst; but for Peter, giving up an Internet career to work in the deli business meant coming back to his root~ He decided that his place was with his family.

"It's funny, I got a college degree, l;>ut here I am, becomiQg my dad." He pauses, nostalgic. "Most people would see that as a step down. But I'm proud of it, if I can be half the man my dad is. I watched him struggle to keep up the business. It's hard, especially if you don't speak the language."

So far, ·life in Connecticut is treating Peter well, even though the Yankee fan in him still bristles when Red Sox victories ignite celebration across New England.

Unlike his brother-in-law, who went to · high school in Korea, he is a native English speaker, and over the past couple of years has become the public face of Gourmet Heaven. He has also been working to shift the Whitney Avenue store away from the Broadway model to fit the demographic of the area. Whereas the salad bar and buffet options are extremely important for the students on Broadway, residential complexes near Whitney appreciate the sale of pro4uce and specialized organic goods. Law offices in the locale provide a steady lunchtime sandwich business as well. · "It's definitely a change of pace, and nothing can duplicate the sheer volume you get in Manhattan," he said. "But people here are friendly-there is definitely attitude in Manhattan-and we're just a big family."

A growing sense of community for his new home is, according to Peter, one of the biggest perks of his new career.

For new storeowners like Peter, Annie, and Sera, serving the customer better than the competition is essential to success. And that means going the extra mile to understand the needs of an unfamiliar community. They know that good service brings customers back. Sera Nail Salon and Gourmet Heaven, both young businesses, have had a New Haven tenure shorter than a college student's four-year stay, but their owners have had more intimate contact with the city than the average Yalie.

Annie projects a concerned motherly persona toward her young female clientele.

She stands up briskly to welcome her first customer of the hour.

"How are you?" she asks, helping take off the coat of a girl who seemed accustomed to this ritUal. "My nails are a mess!" she complained.

"Long time!""- countered Annie in the tone of maternal ~eprimand.

"Yeah, it's been three weeks," admitted the girl. She sat down across from Annie at

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a mamcure statiOn. Annie is a pro of 14 years. She makes small talk with her client while shaping nails deftly. Even though she is dissatisfied with her English skills Annie knows how to gain the trust of her devoted client base. ither by appealing to the University or by tapping into the needs of the local clientele, these enterprising new storeowners are part of a new trend of recent emigrant businesses opening up in small cities and rural areas. With a hardworking immigrant ethic and a strong tendency to rally around the family unit, they make their small businesses in New Haven more profitable than Manhattan ventures. They are able to capitalize on existing consumer populations in ·New Haven, finding niches left empty by locals. .

When a vacancy arises, should Yale's Development office be looking for candidates closer to home? The new faces in New Haven-Peter, Annie and Sera-have escaped the competition of New York City. But .to the Elm City, they have only brought it back.

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Evelyn Shih is on the staff <?fTNJ.

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n the gloomy sub-basements of Yale Medical's Brady Building, hallways snake beneath exposed industrial pip- · ing past stacks of cardboard boxes labeled "TOXIC: HUMAN WASTE." The temperature begins to drop as I near Room 37, where a man in a lab coat with a thick Russian accent asks me what I'm doing "down here." I push my way through two stainless steel doors and it becomes clear why he asked: this is not a place often wandered upon.

Room 37 is the Yale Morgue the first stop for anyone who expires at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Art Belanger, the morgue's manager -a giggly man who recalls the sea captain of the Tintin comics-calls the bodies he autopsies his "patients.'' He wears a sweater to work and · keeps a jug of methyl butane on an upper shelf, next to his motorcycle helmet. His office is small, windowless and lined with hundreds of boxes of Fluidshield surgical masks and Safeskin purple· nitrate gloves.

In the comer stands a file cabinet straight out of the Twilight Zone: there must be over 300 miniature drawers labeled "Old Autopsy Files."

The main function of the morgue is to store a body until the funeral director picks it up, or, in the case of twenty percent of Yale Hospital deaths, to perfonn an autopsy. Belanger and his crew do 230 autopsies every year on patients whose deaths are investigated either by the request of a doctor, family member, or in the case of suspicious circumstances-"If it's an untimely death[] like accidents, homicides, etc. Then the state has the right not only to investigate but to order an autopsy," says Belanger. .

Within the morgue, dark hallways feed into two sterile laboratories, each with two metal tables in the center of the rooms.

The first table, scooped out like a bowl to contain and then drain the fluids, is where the technicians unload the body. The second flat table displays a row of glinting surgical instruments along its left-hand side. "That's where we'll put the organs when we remove them," he says quickly, before walking to the second laboratory, where Maxwell-a graying, soft-spoken doctor in a getup right out of Yi>ttng Frankenstein hoses dark, clotted blood into the drain. "He's just cleaning up from an autopsy of a fetus this mouain~" Art says, •

CORRECTION

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The New Journal would like to apologize for an error on page 21, vol.37, No.2 of the New Journal. Wei Su should actually have been referred to as Zhengguo Kang

and Maxwell nods. I shiver. This is not something I want to see.

Though death has been conveniently concealed in the sub-basements of the morgue, packed in boxes stuck with neon stickers, and barricaded behind steel doors, it is no less real. I finger a small white card in my back pocket, and know what it says without reading: "My body has been donated to YALE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE," it proclaims. There was a blank for my signature. I signed. When I called the Body Donation Network a few weeks ago, the secretary on the other end of the line asked me out of curiosity how old I was. My voice must have sounded young over the phone. "Nineteen?" she asked, again. "You're crazy." Maybe she's right.

If everything goes according to plan, someday I will be lying here. Forget million dollar bequests, football fields and fellowship grants. Giving ·a dead corpse to your alma mater is the most generous donation possible.

I have chosen to donate my body "whole," which means it will be wheeled upstairs to the anatomy labs to help med~ ical students learn the Greek vocabulary for my insides. But if I really want my body donated to science, Art explains, I had better pray I don't need an autopsy. "Medical doesn't accept autopsied bodies for donation," he explains, "because in autopsy aU the organs are removed, which is exactly what Medical students are going to want to do with their donated cadavers."

Behind the autopsy lab, in a stuffy sideroom, these organs sit cooped up in plastic beach pails. Some are labeled "breast tissue," others "heart." Near a sink, three medical students are working quickly.

"Today is brain cutting day," Art says.

There's a bread knife on the counter and a blonde medical student named Amanda is laying banana-bread-thick slices of human brain onto numbered cookie trays lined with formaldehyde-soaked p~r towels .

The numbers on the trays stand for patients: 212,213, 215. Art notes that 214 is missing. "It's standard to take out the brain in an autopsy, so maybe the family of patient 214 requested to restrict the autopsy to only the diseased organs. They didn't want anyone messing with what wasn't neeessary."

There's a pervading fear that tampering with the dead hurts them in some way.

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Today, these brains will be seen by a neurologist scanning for brain disease. What the doctor finds may further medical science, and the brains themselves may enter .classrooms as examples to live for years in glass jars on distant upper shelves. But the missing brain of patient 214 can go only two ways: it will be buried or burnt.

Though my body may never go through an autopsy a~d my ·organs may go uncut, the little white card in my pocket ensures that I will end up here, on a gurney in the last room in Art's tour.

Welcome to the freezer. Just above the do9r, a large button is twice label~d, "Emergency Release." I'm glad about the button, because I would not want to be stuck here. Art • agrees. Though about 1200 bodies come through this room every year, today there are only two-an amputated left leg of an Orthodox Jewish man wrapped up in a trash bag ("the Orthodox Jews believe our bodies must be buried whole, so a funeral director will keep it for twenty years or so until the poor guy dies"). There's also something bright in the other corner of the room. Motioning toward the pale body bag, Art says, "She's been here a month. No one's come to claim her yet," and then shakes his head. "It's my nightmare that that should happen to me, and I tell it to all the doctors upstairs. They know if I go, to come pick me up." · Though it is a regular question in bis business, Art hasn't decided whether he wants to end up like his patients. "Really, I'm tom between three things," he says.

"Whether I should have an autopsy, whether I should donate it to science, or-" he lingers, "whether I should just be cremated and left alone." Most people choose to be "left alone." Even pathologists-who benefit directly from the knowledge accrued during autopsies-are not immune to the fear that maybe there is something disrespectful about disturbing the dead In the morgue, workers are superstitious, careful, scared-because in the "business of death" ' as they call it, death never really becomes a NoVEMBER 2004

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Ultimately, however, the route of our afterlives is not only ours to map. "It's really what the family decides," Art explains. '~If a donor has a card that says they'd like to donate their body to science, and the family says no, Yale is not going to go against the family. It's just not worth it for the University." If my family goes along with my decision, I will be part of the "very .small percent" of those who Art carts directly from the freezer to the s-econd floor, across the elevated walkway to 300 Cedar Street-the heart of the. Yale School of Medicine and the home of Yale's Anatomy Department. he Anatomy Department both is and is not as I envisioned it. There is a predictably stark white hallway that seems to extend infinitely, but then again, amateur watercolor landscapes hang on the wall because someone who donated money to the department thought it looked "too sterile." True: there is a real skeleton peeping out from a comer, and display of x-ray photographs; but there's also ·a homey quilt sewn by last year's anatomy class as a departing gift to their "donors." In the anatomy department, Art's "patients" become "donors." The word choice is deliberate. These people

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chose to end up here. These corpses carried the card.

The lucky finder of a body with a donor card is asked to telephone Yale's "Anatomy Mortician." The voice on the other end of the line belongs to Phil Lapre, a smiley people-person who got his training at New York's Bellevue morgue at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. Today, he hands out caramel candies to anyone who enters his office and keeps framed photos of his two daughters · on an upper · shelf. Though his geniality seems out of place in this morbid profession, it's practically in the job description. As the anatomy morti<;ian, he is the first contact for anyone even vaguely considering full b<;>dy-donation. "We speak to donors if they have any questions, provide them with paperwork, give them counsel." Phil tells potential donors as much as they'd like to know, stressing that donors are never recruited. "None of the people who donate to Yale are solicited. They come of their own volition and fill out the paperwork that you received." But donors can always change their minds. The filing cabinets pushed against every wall guard the paperwork of the undead who signed on but may never show up. · For those who stick to their decision, Phil is also the first contact for the grieving family of the loved one who has wiJJed her

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body to Yale. Though often shocked by the idea of dissection, the "vast majority" of donors' families, Lapre explains, "are going to respect the wishes of the dead, who are here because they want to be here."

When a body is accepted for donation, it is wheeled up to the Anatomy Morgueaffiliated with Yale School of Medicine.

Here, no funeral homes are telephoned; no family members need to identify the corpse. This is the workroom where Phil prepares the bodies not' for display, but for dissection.

For the fifty or so donors who come in every year, Phil's job is to keep them looking as fresh as the day they arrived.

Through a cut in the neck, a tube attached to a vat of formaldehyde runs a formalin solution through the donot:'s veins. Once the corpse is sufficiently saturated, the body stays in a freezer with fifty bedfellows until a day in August, when it will be wheeled out to the lab and studied by hundreds of sets of eyes. .

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t is late August: One-hundred first-year medical students shuffle into a large amphitheater where they are greeted by.

Dr. Bill Stewart and Dr. Lawrence Rizzolo, the two lead professors of first-year anatomy-an academically and emotionally challenging class regarded as a Med school rite of passage. On the first day, the students don't dissect. Instead, they become "acquainted" with the donor they will soon dismantle. Most medical students approach the bodies with a chilling, robotic respectperhaps the donors expected as much.

But donors probably didn't expect to be viewed by another brand of student entirely-over-eager sixteen-year-olds from Career High School-a public science magnet made up of mostly inner-city kids. They have never seen a dead body before. And, up until today, neither have I. It's no coincidence that the table in the center of the amphitheater in the Hope Medical building is the perfect size to curl up and nap on. This hall is modeled after old operation theaters, and the table was designed to hold the cadaver undergoing dissection. That's probably why Dr. Bill Stewart has chosen this room to speak to eighteen Career High School students and me. We are a fidgety audience. "Years ago," he says, motioning to an invisible corpse, "they would have been homeless people or

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criminals who didn't want to be dissected."

Our ears perk up.

Eighty years ago, the dead bodies that ended up here did not sign consent forms when they were living, and may not have been so pleased to be plucked apart. In 1824, when the grave of a 19-year-old West Haven resident, Bathsheba Smith was found plundered, angry townspeople pointed their pitchforks accusingly at the Medical School, then located at the intersection of Grove and Prospect Streets· where the SSS building sits today. Yale anatomy students had indeed stolen the body, just as they had stolen others before, and when Smith's corpse was found hastily reburied in the basement of the Medical School, New Haveners were furious. Fearful for their lives, anatomy students barricaded themselves in the medical building, while protestors outside pelted the windows with burning chunks of coal. Today Dr. Stewart assures us that the situation couldn't be more different than the "Dissection Riot of 1824." "All the people upstairs donated their bodies," he emphasizes. "They would be excited to know .that people like you were looking at them." .

From a few rows behind, nervous whispering signals that its time to go to the lab.

"Are you feeling okay?" a ·med student asks a girl who is on her way out.

"Oh, yeah," she says. "Dead people just make me feel great."

"Well, they're better that way," the student assures her. "They can't do anything."

Moving through the same hallways that . the bodies travel from the morgue, Doctor Stewart, bubbling with excitement, asks me, as an aside, "Have you seen a body before?" The rest of the students here have had to fill out waivers.

"Nope," I say.

"Are you ready?"

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ear the waistline of my labcoa4 a bloodstain runs in a perfect line. A medical student at the door of the classroom hands out masks, though Doctor Stewart doesn't take one. At firs4 I follow Stewart's lead. But the student warns me, "You're going to want this when you smell it." Gloves are also a necessity. One hundred years ago, approximately one medical student in each graduating class would die from infection from the cadaver-a hand cut with a scalpel exposed to the cadaver's dis-

eased flesh would immediately result in infection. Putting the gloves and mask on, a tall boy turns to the girl on his left, and says excitedly, "This is just like E.R.," referring, of course, to the TV not the show, hospital wing.

Above the sink in the classroom there is a selection of tools-a bone saw for getting through the skull, a hammer and chisel for separating the segments of spinal cord. A table is covered with boxes of gloves, suture needles, sandwich bags for storing removed organs, flashlights for peering into dark spaces and, against the wall, red buckets to collect excess skin, which will later be incinerated. In the center of the room are three rows of four metal boxes that serve as temporary caskets.

We separate into groups: four high schoolers, two med students, and one dead body. We are told by Dr. Stewart to "use the buddy system, and look out for each other." My buddy is Jonathan, an enthusiastic medical student who later blushes when he talks about the body of · a woman with a "third nipple." I'm glad he's watching out for me: "It can be a little upsetting," Dr. Stewart assures us. "If you feel a little upset, leave the room and take a break." I've heard that the first dead body you see changes your life.

In this momen4 I am waiting for my life to change. Two students, one on each end, unsnap the locks of the case and heave its lid open. All I can see is a mess of paper towels. It reminds me of my brother as a child-his favorite hideand-seek position was to wrap himself in bed sheets and lay splayed-out and still, trying hard not to breathe. The medical students uncover the body sheet by sheet. The skin is yellow and crumpled like a paper bag. We are invited to touch it. "It seems fake," a girl in my group says flatly. "It doesn't smell fake," a med student says. ...

"It's clearly a person, but it's also dead," says my buddy Jonathan. "And it's hard to understand that." Though Stewart professes the body "isn't that messy ye4" it is pretty messy: the torso has been opened up like a ,car hood, and the ribs, brittle and yellow, lift open to a mass of pinks and blues. A Ziploc bag, oozing with pinkish water, contains the

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heart. The kids pass it around, and Clara tests us by asking if we can name all four chambers. Everything is a mash of slippery, greasy mush and looks nothing like the drawings of the human body I yawned at in high school science classrooms. "It's almost, in some ways," Clara says, thinking out loud, "as if we are more different on the inside than on the outside."

A curious Career student asks why the face is still covered up. "That's just not to freak you out," Clara says candidly. "It's easier to go into surgery mode with the sheet over their face. It's sort of upsetting to think, 'Whoa, this is a person with a life and a family."'

I take a deep breath and step back from the table. Jonathan looks at me with concern. "Whoa," I am thinking: "This could be me." ..

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first year anatomy. On the contrary, other medical schools have described Yale's anatomy courses as too "touchy-feely."

"Most other medical schools," Dr. Rizzolo defends, "would say 'toughen up, suck in your gut."' Yale, instead, encourages students to feel. "We can't afford to deny our emotions: the rate of drug abuse and suicide in this profession is very high." To get the job done and to be a good surgeon, doctors need to deal with their fears to a certain extent.

"What's the alternative?

To I become some kind of machine? 0 We don't want to suppress the qualities that mal.<e you a good caregiver. To do this you have to come to terms with your own feelings about death and dying." In Anatomy Classroom N331, the living are studying the dead and the dead are teaching the living. With the living hovering over, the dead lay on tables, their cloudy eyes staring toward the sky.

And it's not until I'm halfway homemy lab coat shoved in the laundry bin, the latex residue from my bloody gloves violently scrubbed from my hands, that I realize I have never been so afraid of death. ach February, anatomy students gather in the Yale Medical Historical Library, a wooden room in a nearby building on Cedar Street, for the yearly "Service of Gratitude." Programs are passed about with a short list of speak-

ers printed on the interior flap, but everyone here already knows what it says: ~he only invitees to this ceremony are the graduates of this anatomy class, who gather to present poems, songs, speeches, and artworks to the memory of their "donors." In 2002, the service included a poem by a student namedJena titled "Appalled;" in 2003, a story titled "Be not afraid." Every year, students use the forum to express mixed feelings about ~he practice. Last year, in the spring of 2004, one student denounced the practice of dissecting cadavers at all.

"One student got up and said this was sacrilegious, that he just didn't buy it," said Rizzolo. "I remember the dissenting student very well," Stewart recalled. "He was unable to ever feel comfortable with it.

Although he did it, and passed the course," he puases, "he felt as if it was a violation."

Instead of shunning the "dissenter," the two co-professors invited him to speak at next year's first class. "We think that there are probably elements of his feeling in just about all of the students," Stewart explained. "Every year there is one."

This year, it's probably Roald, who as a Yale undergrad, with a degree in art, and is cast by his classmates as the sensitive student who always finds a way to disagree with his entire discussion group. "Every time I walk around I see people but I also sort of notice that they're walking bags of organs and water," Roald says. "I just think it's a sad fact that we have to adopt this world viewD. Everyone in my section is always saying, 'I've never been the same ever since I found that organ with my bare hands.' Well, I don't want to feel that change. I don't trust their enthusiasm. I think it's just a fine line that separates scientific considerations and morbid curiosity."

Some schools have found that teaching from cadavers is outdated and are beginning to work vy-ith technology that images a 360 degree view of the interior of a human stitched together from thousands of MRI scans. Classes taught this way have tested just as well as classes taught from bodies, and even Dr. Stewart admits that "in 100 . years, technology will probably replace the donor," though there are strong arguments against this literal de-humanization.

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izzolo and Stewart are careful when they speak to me about "donors."

To them, questioning the donors' decision at all is disrespectful. Medical students are expected· to be grateful. In this light Roald's stance is near heresy: "Maybe it's not respectful toward my donor to feel this way about dissecting her, but none of the stuff I'm doing to her is either," he says.

"I personally feel really certain that this whole practice will be seen as outmoded and barbaric, just as grave-robbing does to us now." Though it may be systematized, he argues, the details are still hazy to most. · Knowing the exact details of what will happen to your body is known as "informed consent." Stewart agrees that while donors know they will be dissected, "if you asked them what those procedures were and how they would appear when they were dissected, they would not be able to answer." And perhaps with good reason: dissection is grizzly, some argue if donors were fully informed they would rescind their generosity. Even Dr. Rizzolo, whQ speaks of the body as "an incredible machine, more fantastic than you can imagine," has been, to put .it bluntly, grossed out. "The second time I did this, up until the dissection of the pelvis, everything seemed as though you could put it back together, and at the day's end, things were whole," Rizzolo says. "But with this procedure it seemed like so many mangled bodies-legs stuck out at angles you could not have stretched in life." · These . professors are maximally informed. And neither has chosen to donate his body for dissection. "If you go around a hospital and ask, you'll find that very few doctors would be willing to donate their bodies, and these are the people who benefited directly from it," Rizzolo says.

Phil Lapre, the anatomy mortician, would also choose not to donate, and instead opt, like Belanger, for a quick cremation. When I ask Lawrence Rizzolo why the majority of doctors are unwilling to gut themselves for their own cause, he pauses: "My very nonscientific, informal response is that D maybe they know too much of what goes on inside." f I was going to go ahead and donate, I· thought I needed to be informed, to know "too much." But I may have been going about this all the wrong way.

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Though physically, my donated .body ;will ·:. "letters are "typical." Whoever wrote that follow the path I've been tracing, · 1 won't riote did end up at Harvard, but only as actually b~ anywhere at all. So I t~rn . . chunks of skin in red pails lining a room·. towards the philosophical. · Samuel · · He ended up incinerated and disposed of.

Gorovitz-a Yale philosophy professor, ethi- . He went through corridors, freezers, cist, and author of Doctors' Dilemmas: Moral : embalmment rooms, classrooms. He ended Conflict and Medical Care, who spends .most up the way we all eventually do. of his time pondering the aft~rlife, .argues ~ .· Since seeing- the bodies, I am constant-· that the question ofdonation is·moot. : . , , ly . queasy. I have stopped eating meat.

"We must ask the ques~ion, ' should We · :- Wheri I ·look at people's hands I halh,1ci,. care at all about what. happens t9 ~ oiir b6dnate that I can see their tendons moving . ies after we're dead? Logically~ the answer· is' · · like streams. I .pray. I have nightmares and 'no, of course not.' Because· when we're cry when characters on TV shows die. dead, we don't exist anymor~. and it should- 1 · • 'Before I go on a road trip one weekend, I n't make any difference to . us now."· But write a provisional will on the deskto'p of ' Gorovitz understands , that stra~gely) lo~ic. . my '. cot;nputer. Everyone, even when is not at issue here: "The realitY is that rJ;lOSt ·'. . . ·~rappe~ in their wintry parkas and chatterof us do care." Gorovitz hims'elf wouli:ln't ' ihg ·.busily in steamy . cafes, seems to me " donate anything. "I would . choose crema- · · paked and cold, "bags of organs and water." tion because I take pretty seriously. the .land . .I suddenly want to control it all, to use aspects around today's sprawiing ' , stop it, to pull the plug. !'want to rip up my cemeteries." . . . ·, :.· · .donor card. I want to be cremated, to go What values do I hold? An~ do .they ~ · ,untouch~d. ~lit I realize it doesn't matter. I have anything to do with · overcrowded · ·. will not really go to the morgue or to the cemeteries or a handful of studeri~ i will 1 •• ' · snaking tunnels buried in Yale's basements. have never met? Shirley Neighbors,' the· I will see nothing. I will hear nothing. And teacher who created and currently . teache~ · ·. so I mig}lt as well give everything the publicized Career High School cours·e,' . . . has calculated the benefits .her stupents · ,· wo weeks later, it's as if nothing have received in multiple ways. At a Boston ever changed. I suppose I've conference of the American : Meqical repressed it all, forgotten the bone Association, Ms. Neighbors and Dr. Stewart saws and eyeballs, the bodies lined up in presented statistics that they believe prove rows. There will be snappy stories that will that high school students can learn anatobubble up in cocktail party conversations, my. "Not only did they pass difficult • . . or days when I shudder at the memory of exams," Ms. Neighbors says with pride, . some daydreamed image, but this is a piece "Their grades in other classes went up when of my life which refuses to .fit with the rest.

To leave ·the world of death is to leave a they took this class." This year, Dr. Stewart hopes the high schoolers exposure to these country to which you can never return.

Perhaps it is hidden because we should not bodies will prompt them· to ·take their own health into stronger consi.d eration: e~t · go there. . more vegetables, exercise regularly, and respect and appreciate their own bodies. He believes that their direct confrontation with death impacts their lives in a fundamental ' way, and understands that when we learn from the dead, we appreciate most what it . means to be living.

The majority of the bodies in the anatomy lab lived outside the ivied walls • • and now serve as "research tools" for the ·· University. When Harvard University accepted a cadaver a few years ago, it came with a note (they often do). "I couldn't make it to Harvard as a youngster, but I'm coming now." The note is initially shock• ing, but its worse when you learn that such • • '

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Yale t:lniversity School ofMetlicine DottatiOtt of Body Jdetttificaticn ·&Authorization Card .

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My body has~ dOO~t~.~~ YALE)JNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ME01CINE1 1 ieques;l that itrun00ia1al-f att~r my ®ath rut -in CO!'il¢iarl00" wll.h the Ganmaf Sta tl.le$ ot ConnectiQit, ~ VALE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE De noo.iMd by tele!)hM& at 785-2813 or 78e>·2614. As!< I« ttl$ a.'latomy mo(tietan.

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Rather than coasting easily to the success of America's elite, • . "' ' The punt sails low over the heads of the opposing teams and . hmvever: :Dihk finds himself challenged by the ideas of th~ "Jess • bounces sporadically across the ground The ball is scooped up by . d~sirable?' elements of his class~ 'When he starts to "drop in" ' the halfback .and run across the 50'-yard-line, deep into defensive socially on these fringe elements, he finds himself off the beaten : • : . " . . . ~ga~lf, ~~~~ng one~ . again i~~o ~ lon~ly notoriety. . · territory. . " The crowd echoes~ "Get the jump, Yale!" .· • . ·. · ~;~~~ Nowadays, .Lawrenceville s football team 1s hopeless, but · "Throw them back, Yale!" .:··· ~~-)~6t7Jrding 'to Johnson, in Dm~'s 19th cen~ry ve~sion of my : • "Fight 'em back!" :.. . : ..;-: · .. ~ . ,.: i";J ~- · · ; p'teparatory school, reputations were made and broken on the : :: "You've gQt .to, Yale-you've got to!".)~ ·' . ·•· · · · .:-_ · >' ·~ ,:., ~.spott:s ··field. The Lawrenceville "varsity eleven" of Dink's freshrr1an ::. : "Oh you Yaleses." . . ··· · · . . ~ ' · "''":<~~:: y~N: ~"scored on the Princeton varsity." Dink's own rejection by his ~ .• ; . At t~e bottom_ of the ?de 1s John Humperdmk S~over, :has ·'· .1_c, '. ~ciuse~~tes originates on rl?-e field of a House baseball game (the . 4, : Rinky Dmk, the D1nk~ or JUSt Dmk..we are all watching t~s .·. n:.., ; -!9ugh equivalent of an intramural field). On his ~rst day of high ....·--: freshman, usually a,skdlful end, playmg now at hal~ack on a : ~--~:\.; :~·:-:- :-s<;}lool, when lie misses a crucial catch, instead of following the hopeless team. . . . . :'>•:·:.'· ..~. ·. -· 'play through, his fault sends ·him running o~ the field in fear. His I do not belong m th1s wnthmg mass of men, the Yahes that ~ ~ repu.t~tion does not recover until the next year, when, inches taller ~..:- .. cheered Old Blue over a century ago. Th:se ~entleme~ urtders~and - :: _:, and.pounds h-eavier, his obstinacy and grit land him a place on the ..- ____: the game of football better than I ever will and they expect _a r~_af. ; ,',. : ... ·schuol's fobtball team . . · · "e • .. fighting_match. Their parted hair and argyle sweater~ turq on me, · ·-:.-·As Stover learns the rules of football, he also learns to live .. a girl, and shun me into the ~ether reach~s of the :rowd, up with ' a~ong "men." In -this world,-women, ·especially the visiting sisters ~~ .... the unfortunat~ s~dents duttfully attendmg to thetr guests.

- . of.friends, are feared. They disrupt the rhythm of boy-bonding .~~ But I was 1nv1ted. I am the guest of Owen John~n, class o~ ·" i/ · under ~hich the school thrives. The Lawrenceville of 100 years ago : : ~ 1~01, ~nd he has asked me to_watch _the struggle ofDmk S~over. . ·;:· pounded Latin and Greek into the heads of its students, but more • Dmk Is. t}:le h~ro of The Varmznt a~d Stover at Yale-Jo~son s popu- , -~mportantly, it instilled in them the. manly values the school conlar stones of hfe at the Lawrenc~V1lle School (~rol_ll which I gradu.Sid~red intrinsic .to success. s~uggling ·thro1:1gh adolescence, the ·rough and tumble adventures of these young men could prove _ ated in 2002) and at Yale in the late 19th centu.zy, !espectively. I _ have followed Dink (and his creator) from the redl;>rick Houses · shocking to the more delicate sex. A:s ·the introduction exhorts, "it on the green Circle of Lawrenceville, New Jersey through Phelps goes ~without saying that those of you who intend to read parts of Gate, into the imposing halls of Yale. He has .f6llo-#ed me as well: this .volume .aloud to your wives should do so sparingly." , my high school library proudly displayed a dozen copies of The Truthfully, th~ behavior of the school did shock my gentler sensi- ..._ • Lawrenceville Stories, a friend presented me wi$ St~er_ at Yale as a bilities-the n,ow-banned "boxer runs" of my days at Lawrenceville .. : graduation present, and I was greeted at the Yale Boo.kstore upon when half(and sometimes fully) naked fifteen and sixteen-year-old my first arrival by sheathes of the newly-re-released volume. 1"11) , · boys sprinting wildly around my dorm in celebration-could in no - : way-prepare me for the scandals Johnson relates. The most memo- : : meant to believe that Dink and I share the sam~ road: tl_le much- ,. vaunted "Lawrenceville Experience," followed by a prized Yale eduraple: in Dink's junior year, the entire school, optraged at the cation. I have long since admitted to myself that I am an original · shoddy way· the laundry service treated their clothes, rallies behind : · prep. And yet my·elitism falls far·froni Dink's football-filled, one boy, who le~ds the procession ?ressed only in tattered underwomanless world where secret societies rule the school. Am I still garments and a tig4t black gym suit The few females to witness following in Dink Stover's footsteps? Or has Yale changed_enough this s~epe. ~e -duly scandalized py such a blatant show of.mascuthat Johnson's books tell a completely different story, only set iii li~e ·energy: ~· ·-: ·.

•-':~ · · .· · - , : _ .· vaguely familiar surroundings? ,.. ~ .. These days, the danger of exposmg·a female reaQ.ership to.

The Varmint first appeared in 1910, followed by Stover at Yale these stories may have less to do with shocking masculmity and in 1911. Dink Stover arrives at Lawrenceville a scamp and, after more to do with the shallow portrayal of female characters ---: originally being shunned by his peers, joins the football team, thr~ughout Johnson's narrative. Dink and his companions reduce -: where he learns what it is to fight and to lead. The Varmint is sandwomen to a collage of pictures displayed in their common rooms ~.;

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criticize in American life," he says. He argues for real educationeducation about politics, contemporary art and the real world. He argues against elitism. Brockhurst's fierce individualism may reflect a classic American ideology, but has it really been reflected in today' s Yale? The Yale class of 2006 may be more diverse in some ways than its 1901 predecessors, but Lawrenceville sent six students to Yale in 2002-the same number that passed through Phelps Gate over a century ago.

Yet Stover's Yale barely resembles ours. The residential college system is still three decades away; co-education, three more.

While secret societies still recruit juniors to their ranks, now a cappella commandeers the rituals of Tap Night (in Stover's day, "tap" was a hefty slam on the back, rather than a frantic chorus accompanied by a huge cup of mysterious liquid). When Stover was on the ·football team, he worried for weeks over his punts; if our football team only had him and his punts at the Game this year, we would easily best our enemy!

Although Johnson's prose begs to be read out loud in a high Bostonian accent, he can still pull the modern reader, even a female one, swiftly and enjoyably through Dink's boyhood and his growth as a man. This is a story about coming of age.

Moreover, the foundation of Dink's experience still holds true. At Yale, Dink not only enjoys the warmth of his teammates and the company of good friends, both inside and outside of his secret society, he also learns that Yale is a difficult place.

On his very fust day of Yale, his .sophomore mentor, appropriately named Le Baron, tells him, "In every class there are just a small number of fellows who are able to do it and who will do it. All the rest don't count." .

Although he rejects Le Baron's point of view, Dink, still ambitious, cannot find peace with his less traditionally successful companions. Out from under the watchful eyes of his Lawrenceville masters, Dink solves his problems by drinking himself silly every night at Mory's. On the first train to Yale, he is certain he will conquer sophomore year, however he is deeply enmeshed in a struggle that he doesn't know how to solve. This

_ - and on their bureaus, as trophies and as a. necessary burden in a : ..-. man's life. In Stover at Yale, Dink meets the girl whom he later - ---· marries, but she exists only as a foil to his ambition, and doesn't entireiy understand the sacrifices he makes for his ideals. In the : · book, only the supposedly undesirable men wap.t educated .. ·women. This faction hails mostly from the Midwest, rather than _. from the stuffy New England prep school scene, but, as Stover realizes, their ideas will inform the future.

At our own future alma mater, Dink indirectly helps to overthrow the system of favoritism that ushers the more traditional prep school boys .into sophomore societies, junior frater• nities and the essential senior societies (Skull and Bones, Scroll • and Key and Wolfs Head). After entering the system seamlessly, Dink balks at its mechanism when he instead becomes fascinated by the bright American dream of his less fortunate classmates. Rather than "dropping in" on the elite of his class, he

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takes to sitting at the feet of an informal debate society, where he encounters Brockhurst, Owen Johnson's own alter ego and the intellectual heart of the novel. Brockhurst believes in America; he believes in the individual; and he believes that the Yale system is completely outdated. "Work for Yale 0 Bah! Sublime poppycock!" He rants against Stover's proposition that one must put his talents in the school's service. "Of all drivel preached to young Americans, this is the worst. I came to Yale for an education." Brockhurst rips through his comrades and the stultified information that they absorb from Yale courses and soon forget. He sees his school and its flaws as a paradigm of what's holding the whole country back: "What I criticize here, I

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battle of wills between classic society men and the less elite members of the class, each trying to create their own path to success, is still relevant at Yale today. Cocky freshmen who arrive each year on Old Campus find themselves eye-to-eye with men and women who equal them in intelligence and drive. Just as Dink was 100 year -ago, we are thrown among ambitious classmates, and what once came easily may now be a struggle. Like Dink Stover, we feel like "big men from big schools," but must learn how to live among others just as smart and driven as ourselves. Even todays . many Yalies still learn more from each other than from professors.

In the end, elitism prevails for Dink. The very last man tapped for Skull and Bones, he is flooded with relief as he is welcomed back into the fold, receiving "the mark of approval from his own kind." Brockhurst, the visionary, remains outside the system, spending his time questioning how Yale should interact with the rest of the country. In the 21st century, as Yalies flood the White House and vie for political hegemony, this question still rings loudly in our ears. Relevant as his questions are, Brockhurst's answers are of little help in defining what approach we can take today. The role ofYale in America has changed. Yale, a big school from a big league, must compete with up-and-coming Midwestern NoVEMBER 2004

and Southern schools for power in the country.

The meaning ofYale has changed, and no arena demonstrates this more clearly than the football field. Whereas Dink's efforts as the Yale tight end landed him a spot on the All-American roster, Yale football today has become more of a farce than an epic struggle. But while many of us may not understand ·the rules of football, or what exactly an end does, we understand precisely what it is to win, what it is to beat Harvard, and what it is to carry the triumphant shouts of our school up and out of the stadium.

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ing the pro-life author's journey accompanying a friend to her abortion, makes me wonder if some believers are actually striving for new depths of cruelty: Did you bother to tell her that she will have to face judgement for her actions someday. You have given the , impression that God will tolerate the murder of her child. The word says the truth will set you free. Your actions have placed that young • lady into bondage. If she dies in her sins, you will bear part of the responsibility.

nen I arrived at the North Berkeley corner of Cross Campus _ on October 21, I was surprised at how uneventful the scene was. The position that CLAY represents is not popular at Yale. Last year, when advertising for CLAY events, I often revisited the same boards two or three times, to find that our posters had been ripped down. Still, opposition is relatively tame, compared to what pro-lifers encounter elsewhere. While protesting at the March for Women's Lives in D.C. la.st spring, .Mary was confronted by a pro-choice marcher who said to her, "Your mother should have aborted you." Here, after CLAY members scrawled "A person's a person, no matter how small" on the steps leading up to Sterling Memorial Library, I had expected to see at the very least some demonstration-a lone protester holding a "Stop Anti-Choice at Yale" sign, even-but the message remained unmarked. · On the night of the vigil there was only a lonely-looking table stacked with literature and a cluster of people gathered at the wall overlooking Cross Campus Library, placing candles into paper bags. On the lawn, the scattered bags bore a vague resemblance to a cross. There was no "us vs. the world" binary here, only a twothousand-year-old symbol of compassion. .

For a few minutes, I placed • candles and made small talk. In contrast to the reputation of prolifers as militant automatons, with a penchant for chanting Scripture . and writing death threats to Planned Parenthood directors, the truth is rather boring-namely, that we are creatures of human impulse.

Talking about the mundane seems to be instinctual at events that remember the mystery of exis~ tence. I was about to ask my partner about his courses when Mary came up to us, an apologetic smile on her face. "We're starting the vigil soon," she said, "so I guess we should start keeping silence."

"Okay," I said, flushing with embarrassment. As the cross of candles began to appear, the crowd settled into a meditative hush. The silence was short-lived, however: our memorials burst into flame, as improperly settled candles lit their bags on fire. The sight of CLAY members running out onto the field to stomp out the miniature testaments to unborn livesquite vehemently, in the case of the more frantic extinguishersmust have seemed incongruous to onlookers. Some members laughed nervously, while others stared on as if they saw it as a melancholy symbol. The metaphorical implications, of course, were fodder for freshman English: the violence with which we were stamping out the fires was an inadvertent demonstration of the violence inflicted on the lives they symbolized.

"Another life put out by abortion," someone said In hindsight, that seems horrifically trite, b_u t at the time 1 didn't know what to do but smile. Despite my smirking, I was profoundly irritated: to simply accept our disintegrating arrangement as some kind of divinely orchestrated comment on the violence of abortion

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rer wrote that knew just where to stab and twist. By accusing a Christian trying to emulate Christ's compas• sion of driving someone into "bondage," the writer suggests she is acting as a tool of the Devil. The completeness with which that statement violates· the spirit of Christ might be funny, if ' only it were fictional.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Canadian government is one of the few in .the world that imposes absolutely no restrictions on abortion rights, a policy which has strongly influenced my .. country's identity. For example, my high school English teacher once mentioned Bush's restrictions on overseas abortion funding, dismissed them as dangerously conservative, then moved onto the · particulars of iambic pentameter. In Canada, the debate over abortion is exemplified by the following exchange from the 2004 fed. , eral election: a conservative ; politician suggested that ~ women might benefit from ' third-party counseling prior • to abortion, and one out: raged spokeswoman decried • . the attempt to "force feed · anti-abortion propaganda" to · women as evidence of an "anti-choice ideology." That last epithet says everything about the prevailing ethos in , Canada: a woman's choice is the only issue at stake. Any concern for the organism kicking inside the womb is necessarily misogynistic. However proud I may be of hockey and socialism, I fear that being Canadian these days means embracing a philosophy in which humanity is denied according to personal opinion.

Which brings me to the vigil and why I was sitting in Machine City folding paper bags. I have little use for the intimidation games many pro-lifers play-the bu ruing eye of judgment turned towards the women who choose abortion and the blind eye to the hardships facing those who do not. But it is just as difficult for me to stomach the rhetoric of choice, in which pro-lifers are dismissed as exercising freedom of religion instead of engaging in serious dialogue. I cannot accept a world where a human embryo's rights are not considered, a world that reduces a growing life to an inconvenience, a tumor-like tissue fit for surgical dismemberment. For me, this vigil was the first step in defusing a war zone. It would honor the dead without making murderers of pregnant women. It would also try a tactic that has been forgotten on most college campuses: silence.

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THE NEw JouRNAL •

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seemed to be ·an excuse for complacency, the same complacency I see in a culture that settles for abortion.

My unfocused thoughts were answered by the sound of our first "protester" approaching. "I'm right here," a girl was muttering into her cell phone. "Yes, right here." She ended her call,. walked up to the table and asked, "What is this?"

Mary explained and offered her a pamphlet. The girl star~d at her in disbelief. She grabbed the pamphlet and declared, as if shouting over a violent commotion, "I really resent this." Then she marched off towards WLH, leaving Mary at a loss for words. I turned back to the others and wondered if kneeling in prayer with them would clear my mind.

After about two seconds of meditation, we were greeted by music so loud I heard it reverberate in the library behind me. Those praying around me snapped to attention and glared at the source of the offending noise: the top floor of Calhoun. Any idea that the disruption was coincidental evaporated when I actually listened to the song lyrics: "Here's a butterknife, cut it open, shit it out/That motherfucker ain't mine/I ain't payin shit." As devastating protest music, it wasn't exactly Dylan; as a disturbance, it was enough for Jacqui to phone the police and call in a complaint. I was seeing red by this point, but a quick glance around made me feel alone in my anger. Everyone else was looking on at the candles with a calmness I couldn't understand. Even Mary looked back with a tired smile, as if to say: what did you expect?

I fumed while rap became rock became a repeat of the first song again, more butterknife abortion for our edification. What did they think we would do-pack up our candles and leave, all because of a thousand-decibels of the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Or did they find our presence so disgusting that simply causing us humiliation was victory enough? I found myself considering the possibility that our grave statement on abortion was a joke. It seems to me that too many people eschew dialogue every day: the fundamentalists drowning out the world with screams of hellfire; the doctors vacuuming heart and brain into the trash; and in my weaker moments, me with my pat condemnations of both. I could have laughed, but instead I pulled my hood over my head to keep the-cold out.

Twenty minutes later, a couple of officers showed up, looking as annoyed as I was. When the music was finally turned off, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I took that as a sign to stop griping to myself and finally, somehow, pay my undivided respects. But even then it was impossible: I kept drowning out the silence in my head with the litany of injustices that fill the pro-life polemic-dehumanization, violation of women, unthinking submission to social nonns. I was afraid that if I stopped to listen to myself, I would discover no grief at all-just empty self-righteousness over a cause divorced from my heart and an inability to find meaning in the small lights dancing on the grass.

The discourse in my head was joined by a murmur: the students kneeling in front of the candles were beginning a Hail Mary. After the _assault of noise to which we had just been subjected, the sound of the Rosary was a strange comfort, even for a Protestant-and yes, even at that point, I was one of only two Protestants present.

Realizing this fact made the gears inside start churning again. On one hand, something in me stirred at the words, "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." On the other hand, I had to wonder why it was only natural for our group to mom n with the Rosary. Were

there no others who believed in the humanity of the fetus? .

The religious dynamic of our vigil was altered, however subtly, by the arrival of another Protestant. He put his hand on my shoulder, as if in sympathy with the sorrow I wished would overwhelm me, and bowed his head in prayer. I bowed my head too, fumbling for the improvised simplicity of an Evangelical prayer, but, as if on cue, the voice of dissent returned. The girl who had informed us of her resentment was walking down the steps from the library again, with more helpful commentary: "The netve of you people," she huffed; then, as she hurried away, "Self righteousr So· ~uch for defusing the war zone.

From that point on, the vigil settled into a stillness that was both peaceful and troubling. I closed my eyes and found a rhythm of prayer, begging God to visit the unborn, mothers, doctors, Canadians, Americans. In an article the next day, the YDN would publish a quote that, as much as it pains me, may well be the case: "Most students here have made up their minds about abortion, and I don't feel a·vigil. is going to change that."

In spite of its logistical failures, I do not believe our vigil was a joke, because at some point I had a revelation that I am still coming to grips with. After about an hour of shivering and staring into the back of my eyelids, I opened my eyes. The crowd reciting the rosary had dispersed, leaving only a handful of the faithful still meditating.

The cross of candles was burnt out in places but the stubborn lumi-• naria still flickering were enough to keep its pattern recognizable. I stared at the candles, the 167 children who will never grow into men and women, and suddenly thought: it is so good to be aliye. Written down, it sounds almost idiotic, but standing there in the bitter cold I repeated it in my head, like my own rosary. I now know what pushed distractions out of my mind: the longing to rejoice. I longed to celebrate on that freezing night, to pray for a cause no one was interested in discussing, as people accused and mocked me. I longed not to grieve for the 167 but to celebrate them, the six-week lives, the two-month lives, those mute spirits for whom the universe was warm and dark and ended all too soon. It may take me a lifetime to learn how to celebrate, but that nig~t I came to know how good it is to be alive-how good it is to have been born.

A wind began to blow from behind The candles started to flicker; some of the bags were rocking back and forth. I knelt down impulsively,~ hands reaching out to steady one of them, though I knew it was pointless. Eventually I would have to stand up. The wind would still be blowing, and what would the paper bag do but begin to rock again? But I stayed squatting anyway, hands poised, eyes level with the light.

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Weddings I Celebrations?

0RLY FRIEDMAN, ANDREW CEDAR

by Romy Drucker KEVIN ABELS, ELLIOT GREENBERGER

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Orly Friedman, daughter of Thomas and Like two ships passing in the night, Anne Friedman of Bethesda, Maryland, has Kevin Abels of White Plains, New Yqrk been dating Andrew Cedar, son of Phil and and Elliot Greenberger of Chicago, Dr. Meryl Cedar of Scarsdale, New York, Illinois always spotted each other · since the two met at a Yale College Council around campus. "Should I say 'hi?"'

(YCC) meeting in October of 2003. Though they each wondered at a FOOT party in the pair has been together an "unlucky" Spring 2003, when suddenly a friend thirteen months, Ms. Friedman· and Mr. Cedar's forecast as a couple ushered them toward each other. It seemed like slow motion. remains as auspicious as their beginnings.

But Abels and Greenberger are not a movie couple. In fact, they Fr~edman's interest began as an innocent crush on a Harry Potter proudly "keep it· real." "Actually I'm the keep-it-realer," boasts look-alike. She approached Cedar with a bogus question as an excuse to .

Greenberger. Abels, a Literature major with a penchant for community strike up a conversation. (Today, the conversation continues.) A few days organizing, and Greenberger, an English major who sings for Mixed later Cedar, who would soon be elected YCC President, emailed Company and excels 1n dance and theater, are so busy, they are forced to Friedman in true Yale fashion. "I know," he says. "It ·is a little .nerdy." It be nocturnal lovebirds. Neither this temporal distance nor a term paid off, d(!spite her roommates' original impression that he was a · abroad has kept them apart, and maybe nothing ever will. "I'm excited "shmuck." Mter a salsa dancing date at Berkeley. and some unconvenabout that possibility," smiles Abels. tional bonding on Yom Kippur, Friedman and Cedar found themselves It may be all flowers and candy for the adorable duo, but not when in a serious relationship. it comes to gifts. Greenberger bought Abels a wind-up ear toy to show The busy power pair-he, the executive ofYCC, she, an active memhis appreciation for his beau's stellar listening skills. Abels knows how ber of the Yale Student Activities Committee and United Way-enjoys to cheer up his partner: he can always count on a ginger ale and a sandcooking Italian delicacies in the Swing Space kitchen, puzzling over their wich from Gourmet Heaven to turn Greeberger's frown upside-down.

Game Theory problem sets together, appreciating American art and Especially when dressed up in Liberace outfits as Siegfried and Roy, challenging other couples to Trivial Pursuit. When no one is looking, . the couple are a fearsome twosome. The icing on the cake? The white they may hold hands ·in the Sterling Memorial Library courtyard. "New Bengal beanie baby Siegfried wore on his shoulder. This couple has Haven can be romantic if you make good use of it," says Friedman. found the key to companionship.

Although she laments the fact . that Cedar~s on-campus prominence "does not allow for romantic getaways," he makes up for it by being a MICHELLE Ros ISAAC KLAUSNER good shopping partner.

Her father is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist. Her mother is a Maybe Michelle Rosenthal and Isaac first grade reading teacher. His father, a lawyer, and his mother, a pediaKlausner's four year relationship works trician, met as undergraduates at Brandeis University in Boston. Are Ms. because it started off on the right foot.

Friedman and Mr. Cedar following in their parents' footsteps?

That is, FOOT. The two weren't on the same trip but met for the first time on the train coming up to Yale. They even rode WHITNEY SEIBEL, EDWARD HIGGINS . in the same taxi to Phelps Gate.

Destiny or lady luck? They got together on Casino Night 2001, and The heartland of America has united two the two ·Stilesians have been rolling high ever since. The best part, they Yale hearts. Whitney Seibel of McPherson, agree, is sharing their relationship with their friends. "Last year they Kansas, and Edward Higgins of Kansas City, threw us a surprise anniversary party," says Rosenthal. 'They have Kansas, both juniors in Trumbull, have been watched us evolve." They live under the same roof in a fourteen person together since the sparks began to fly in house with their Stiles family, and, in fact, Klausner and Rosenthal have Bingham D two years ago. never been more than an entryway or two apart: "Yale is a place where Maybe it was geography, maybe it was destiny, or maybe it was a we can do our own thing and still be together," says Klausn£_r. Well-concapella. Some combination of the threehas kept couple in harmony. nected and intensely involved, she is a Dwight Hall co-coordinator; he Seibel sings for The New Blue; Higgins is a member of the Spizzwinks?. is a star on the Yale Film Scene-and the self-proclaimed "first man of But they make their best music together. "It's hard to think about planDwight Hall." . ning, but we definitely want things to work out in the future," Seibel When they are not listening to Brazilian Jazz or reading plays says, adding that the two have never taken a "break" in their three years aloud, the pair share their favorite children's books. They are writing at Yale. "I don't have a college experience without Eddie," she says ebulone too: a fairy tale liently. Considering as one of his thefacebook.com "interests" is "cudl'\;f • dling," one can see why.

Seibel, who dabbles in modeling and recently appeared in Maxim, is Romy Drucker is Research Direaor for a Psychology major. Higgins majors in History. They continue to be a TNJ. major Yale item. '

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