Volume 38 - Issue 1 by The New Journal at Yale

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Editor-in-Chief Romy Drucker Managing Editors Concha Mendoza) Adriane Quinlan Designer Sara Schneider Associate Publisher Natasha Kim Business Manager Brian W fD!da Photography Editor Erica Deahl · Senior Editors Paige Austin) Sarah Laskow Production Manager Mina Kimes Research Director Helen Eckinger Associate Editors Emi!J Koplry) David Zax Web Editor ]onf!Y Dach Circulation and Subscription Managers Anna Altman) Lane Rick ·

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· Ye•gin and Angela Stem Ye.•gin

THE NEW JOURNAL

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Volume 38, Number 1 September 2005

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The Elephant in the Room How Yale Breeds the Conservative Superstars

Tomorrow

by Paige Austin • •

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The Chosen Among the Chosen

Can You be a True Jew in Blue?

by Romy Drucker

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Points of Departure The Critical Angle: Padlocks, Griffins, & Gangsters: The Many Meanings of Yale l?J Sarah Laskow Essay: Across State Lines l?J Lane Rick Endnote: How to be Happy l?J Mina Kimes

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THE EW JOURNAL is publish.,ed 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: 305 Crown Street. Phone: 203.432.0520. All contents copyright 2005 THE NEW JOURNAL at Yale, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher and editor-in-chief is prohibited. While this magazine is published by Yale College srudenrs, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seven thousand five hundred 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, $18. Two years, $32. THE EW JOURNAL is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman bookkeeping of New Haven. THE NEW JOURNAL encourages letters w the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, P.O. Box 3432 Yale Station, ew Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication. THE NEW JOURNAL would like to thank the UOFC for their generous financial support.

September 2005

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King Tut, Busted LAsT FEBRUARY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC approached Michael Anderson, a museum curator at the Peabody, with a seemingly straightforward request: reconstruct the face of a long-dead organism based on data gathered from a CAT scan of its skull. The catch? Anderson was not given a hint as to whose skull it was and his results would be com to those of a French team performing an identical reconstruction. Since his previous work included reconstructing · the famous faces of Australopithecus aforensis Lucy and a giant Luna Moth for an exhibit on Dr. Doolittle, he knew the skull could belong to just about an · Luckily, a pl} · · CAT scan indicated that the skull was, in fact, human. And it revealed tell-tale signs of the skull's origins. It still had a smattering of soft tissue nasal cattilage and lip tissue and desiccated skin attached to it, indicating that it was not a fossil, since only bone fossilizes. Evu1 more telling, the brain case was full of resin. Only one civilization extracted the brains of its

dead through their nostrils and poured molten plant goo into the ensuing empty space: Anderson had a mumn1y on his hands. ·· Anderson's next step was to use the data from the CAT scan to determine the mummy's basic characteristics: its age, sex, and race. ''When I first saw the skull, I looked at it, and from my limited knowledge of skull morphology it looked like a female;' Anderson said. He based his assessment on the skull's ..soft brow ridges most males have prominent brow ridges-and its delicate facial features. ''I knew I coulddt rely on my own hunches to do this reconstruction," · Anderson said. So he took the data to a series of experts around New Havenfirst to Aronsen at Yale's anthropology department, then to an expert at Quinnipiac who had previously performed scans on the Peabody's own mununy. Aronsen agreed with Anderson's initial assessment of the mummy's sex, but declined to speculate on its age or race. The expert at Quinnipiac ventured that the mummy · was in its early tw-enties, but was not able to definitively ascertain its race or sex. By now it was April, and Anderson did not feel comfortable going ahead with the reconstruction when he did not even know this pre · · information. ''I went back to National Geographic and I said 'Look, I think this is a female; I think it's someone in their early tw-enties; I don't know what race it is. I can do the reconstruction with this information, but if anyone puts a microphone in my face, I'm going to say I did it by the seat of mypants,"' he said. National Geographic put Anderson in touch with Susan Anton at NYU, who was able to insert the skull's precise meas•

urements into a computer program and produce a profile of the mummy. The results were not what Anderson had expected. According to Anton, the skull belonged to an 18-20 year-old male. 'That was a real stunner;' Anderson said. But Anton's report revealed why Anderson, as well as two experts in the field, had been stymied by the mummy's sex. The mumn1y came from an extremely gracile population and was quite young, which meant that his facial features would have been more delicate than the average tnale. Also, his skull had been deliberately deformed, molded into a precise shape during the mummy's early childhood flat on top, bulbous in the back which would have decreased the prominence of the brow ridge. The moment Anderson found out the skull belonged to a male mummy, flashing lights went of£ ''They told me when I first took the job, 'This is a very famous person. You will know who it is, and every person in the country will too,"' he said. Because Anderson initia11y thought the skull belonged to a female, he guessed that he was being asked to reconstruct the face of Cleopatra or Nefertiti. But that changed as soon as Anton confirmed that his project was male. There was only one truly famous male mummy: KingTut. ''I was ahnost certain that it was Tut, but I was so hesitant to hazard a guess," Anderson said. ''It didn't matter to what I was doing." Now that the analytical work was out of the way, Anderson could · sculpting. ''I started with sculpting the big chewing muscles when you clench your teeth together you can feel them;' he said ''Then I produced the fat pads and the s · structures. Basically I built up

THE NEW JOURNAL

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the muscles, things that are going to skin color he might have had' and let the public make their decision," affect the contours of the skin." After he perfected the facial struc- Anderson said. "To tell the truth, I don't quite get tures, Anderson spent days detailing the sculpture's skin. He took molds of living the protests," he continued. "It's a people's faces, then put clay into the political hot potato, but the science is molds and grafted it to the sculpture's pretty clear about it and based on that face in order to get a realistic texture in science the skin color should have other words, King Tut may have the been such and such but we don't enlarged pores of some guy in account- know what Caucasoids~ skin tone was ing at the Peabody. Anderson presented when Tut lived. There are some very his bust to N arional Geographic in May, dark skinned portraits of Tut and and both he and the organization were there are some very light skinned versions so who knows." extraordinarily pleased with his results. Despite uncertainties about the '~ou could draw a line down the French reconstruction and mine and put color of Tut's skin, Anderson and his them together there's very little differ- French colleagues have likely put _ together the most accurate representaence," he said. The French team~s reconstruction was tion to date of what the boy king featured on the cover of the June 2005 looked like when he died. And while issue of National Geographic and went on the reconstructions of Tut will more · display at the Natural History Museum likely inspire picketers than reveal of Los Angeles County the same month. unknown truths about the Egyptian Then, National Geographic encountered a royalty, there's something to be said publi<;: ,. relations snafu of epic for making one of Egypt's most • famous pharaohs seem a little more proporttons. "There were huge protests in Los human than he did when we only Angeles about the color of his skin,--- knew him from the gilded exterior of they decided to yank the reconstruction;~ his sarcophocus. It's the beauty of finally putting a face to a name. Anderson said. African-American activists in Los - .Helen Eckinger Angeles thought that the French team's reconstruction looked whiter than King Tut · should. Although Anderson did not initially have to make a choice about what skin tone he was going to use on his reconstruction National Geographic asked hirn to submit a plaster cast rather than a full color version in order to compare its features and bone structure to those on the French reconstruction; he has now been· commissioned to do two more busts of Tut as a result of the melee. One will feature a light Egyptian skin tone, and one will feature a dark skin tone, with the original French reconstruction serving as a mid-range model. "They're goin_g to put mine and the French team's (reconstructions) all up together and say 'This is the range of September 2005

Open Water ROPES ARE STRETCHED, COILED, AND

knotted, holding mast to deck to prow to stern and you can hear the slow creaking as ropes adjust to the shifting water and wind. Everyone aboard is tou · rope. little girls examine thick ropes, frayed and hardened by sun and salt. At the prow, a man drapes himself over the anchor, clenching the knot ·on top and leaning hard into the wind. It takes most of the · people aboard the schooner to set the sails. They line up with feet planted apart and grab the rope with both hands, preparing for a game of tug-of-war against the immense mast. Two of the crew members station themselves Monica at the throat, Eve at the peak and start shouting directions. Heave! Heave! Heave! Hold the line! Everyone throws the weight of their bodies back and forth, mimicking the rocking of waves, and the heavy mast slowly groans upward. More ropes are unfastened; white sails, unleashed, whip out and bulge against the wind. As a woman knots and coils up ends of rope, Captain Bill Pinkney, the portrait of a seaman white beard, enormous glasses, baseball cap, gold hoop earring'-•

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When the Amistad finally reached using the leverage of their combined saunters above deck and urges us to gather around to hear the tale of the Amistad, America, the two Spaniard captains sail- weight. They all listen to the tale of the which has just pulled out of the pier at .ing it demanded full property rights of original Amistad's maiden voyage, a story Long Wharf and away from the sounds the ship and its human cargo. The case of people reco · · in each other the of I-95. Pinkney punctuates his sentences reached the Supreme Court, where John cotnmon trait of humanity and through with sharp exaggerated hand gestures, as Quincy Adams argued for six hours this recognition learning to help and if he is conducting a rather obstinate and straight on behalf of the captives. He understand each other. As they sail home near-sighted symphony orchestra. 1bis eventua11y secured their freedom, a mira- against the backdrop of a sky faded purstory is very important, his hands seem to cle considering that seven of the nine jus- ple, streaked with livid pink and orange, say as they conjure a trove of tales from a rices owned slaves or resided in a slave they find it easy to believe in Captain lost sea world; pay attention. Gradually, state. The decision was one of the first Pinkney's message. The ship seems much all of ·the passengers move in doser, judicial triumphs for human rights. The louder as it retu tns to the wharf, filled drawn into the mesmerizing rh of Mende setded in Fartnington, Cf, where with the murmured conversations of a church group taught them English and people who have just met, even if they are · his words. The story of the Amistad, he explains, helped them readjust to the cornmunity. about to get on the highway. -Erica Deahl is the story of Sengbe Pie~ one of 53 When Mende captives aboard the small the schooner when it set sail for Cuba in 1839. As the story goes, one day Sengbe The Jig is Up went to the cook to ask for more food. The cook's response was to drag two "SORRY IT'S A BIT HOT IN HERE " ' fingers across his neck and point at says Jane, who arrives early with the cooking pot Sengbe believed her husband Dick. ''There is a that his captors were planning to yoga class in here right beforekill and eat the captives, and rushed hand. They like it hot for some back to inform the others. W ith litreason, but we like it cool tle hope of survival, the . group · because we work up a bit of a decided to fight for its freedom. sweat," Dick adds. Tonight is a big Using a steel nail pried from a plank, night for the New Haven branch of j •• • . ' ,. ·:. I ·• the captives managed to pick the lock the Royal Scottish Country Dance . ·. ., on the chains that bound them below .. Society. Still glowing from their annual ·\ deck each night They discovered that the ball two weeks ago, the group is now cargo bins they had been chained above preparing for an exhibition at the were conveniently full of long, sharp Mende raised Masonic Lodge in North Haven to be sugar-cane knives. Armed, the captives enough money, . they hired a ship and debuted the next day. stormed above deck and seized control of · sailed home. The group meets every Tuesday As Captain Pinkney's hand gestm:es night in an empty conference room in the Amistad, hacking the captain to death. Unable to operate a ship, they conunand- become even grander as he approaches the · unassuming New Haven Medical ed the two remaining crew members to the finale of his oration, he explaines why Association, a colonial-style office buildsail toward the sunrise in order to return the is so special: It brings people ing on Whitney Avenue. Haphazardly home to Africa. together, in physical and spiritual proxim- stacked chairs and yoga mats litter the During the day, the two Spaniards ity. All types of people come aboard the periphery of the room. A faded wood'i!m.'St. during its public sai1s today in en piano covered in dust sits in the cordutifully sailed east towards the sunris~ but at night, when the captives could not the Ehn Oty as it travels up and down . ncr. Though call is at 7:30 p.m., the tell which direction was east, they used the coast. Surrounded by open water, the group's "regulars" trickle in over the their compasses to sail north instead. schooner becomes home, prison, and next half-hour. Rather than sailing towards Africa, the means of escape; New Haveners are its Jane, a substitute teacher in Orange ship moved steadily towards New York captives. Strangers wander around the with cropped blonde hair, anxiously and eventually ended up at Montauk sma11 deck during the three-hour sail, so shifts her gaze from the door to her Point The ship was never contacted by close that they brush against each other as watch and back again. A few tninutes another vessel, because it looked like a they situate their bodies to the fi · of before 8 p.m., she hears the front door waves. Tl er, they operate the ship slarn and cranes her neck. HGreat, we've pirate ship. · •

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got eight. Let's get started." The New Haven branch celebrated its zsth anniversary four years ago, recalls Dick, a retired history teacher who graduated from Yale in 1952 and occasionally plays in its marching band. But before he can get too nostalgic, Christopher Anagnostakis, the instructor for the evening and the group's veteran, interjects: "There have been groups of people dancing since the late sixties. They were around years before we became a recognized branch, which was no simple task." According to Christopher, there must be at least two certified instructors in each branch, as well as a minimum number of members. "The certification comes straight from .-.. Edinburgh," he announces with pride. The best way describe Scottish - dancing is tp desCribe what it is not. "J?on't confuse it with highland dancing, which is much more focused on the individual," Dick warns, wagging a stubby and weathered finger. ''And it's a lot more competitive, for the young and strong and athletic," he says with disdain. "It's like a mix between ballet and the figures from square dancing,'' Jane adds. ''People who have a background in ballet will pick it up pretty easily." During official demonstrations, the members don traditional Scottish garb which most of them ownbut Dick prefers to wear a kilt in class as well. ''It allows me more freedom," he says, shinunying his kilt from side to side. All except one member are wearing ghilles the traditional Scottish dancing shoes which are low cut, wide-laced, and wrap around the ankle like ballet slippers. The members face each other in two parallel lines, with men on one side and women on the other. They dance a sequence of formations, weaving in predetermined directions. Some dance in place while others move around them. Other times, couples circle each other or switch part-

ners altogether. Sometimes · the dancers flow into circles of·four in the middle of which each person puts one hand in to form a pinwheel. ETS The movement is fluid and in time • with the music. There is no set dance movement, per se, as the members traverse the steps some skip while • 00 others shuffle, some trot while others strut each infuses his or her own personality into the routine. Christopher announces that tonight ¢ey will attempt a series he adapted from an English country dance. This causes some raised eyebrows, but he · immediately begins to read the TERRY PRATCHE.,..'I".,..I', author of THUD! sequence from a directions sheet: ala_m and, ladies chain, birl, arch, slip step, cast, snake, promenade; the members · RASHEDA ALI, author of I'll Hold Your nod their heads as they visualize Hand So You Won't Fall: A Child's Guide the dance. Parkinson's Disease As Christopher adjusts the stereo, some bend their knees in anticipation, while others start hopping or marchBRANDT Goi.DSTEIN, author of ing in place. They jump right into the S forming the Court: How a Band of Law dance once the music begins, executStudents Sued the President And Won ing the first few steps without interruption. But then Jane gets lost during a reel and stands frozen between CHRIS ELLIOTI", author of The Shroud the two lines. ''You were already chained! You the Twacker don't make another chain," snaps Christopher. Jane ponders the direction for a moment, then smiles and AKHIL REED AMAR, author of falls back into place. Christopher ........ J.U'L...r:o.'s CoNS11TU110N: A BIOGRAPHY waves his hand in a circle over his head and restarts the music. Later that night, as he watches the For a Full Schedule of Events ~ group practice from the side, he explains, ''I like things to be meticuwww..yalebookstore. com lous, which is why I was ·pushing them hard tonight to stand straight in the rows and make the movements flawless." He quickly turns his attention back to the group. "When I said stretch your body to meet her, I really meant stretch," he barks. ''I'm doing what I can," one of the older members snips and then giggles. "Scottish dance is all 77 Broadway, New Haven about precision and synu netty," (203) 777-8440 Christopher notes.

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After a few more rehearsals, the group New Haven (ASNH), has a different seems to have worked out the kinks and hypothesis, one that emphasizes brightexecutes the dance seamlessly. The mood . ness with contrast. He believes that the is lighter and Dick even breaks the .circle effectiveness of a fixture depends upon at one point to twirl, eliciting a collective how the light it sheds is used, not how cheer. As the room heats up, one of the much of it there is. To see better at night, older ladies recklessly · off her knit one should simply "lessen the contrast," button-down sweater and throws her a~ Crelin says, between light and dark hands up in the air. At the end of the D.irn the lights; your eyes will adjust. ''It's dance_,Dick and Jane steal a quick _kiss. a matter of letting your eyes do what they As the last person leaves, George do naturally;' he says. ·· packs ·away the stereo equipment and Crelin, who authored There Once Was shuts the creaking wooden door to a S~ FuU of Stars, uses this · example: · the ballroom. Suppose you are in a pitch-black room At 55 years-old, George, who is class with only a bare bUlb to ward off the chair of the New Haven branch, is one darkness. How well can you see? Not of the youngest in the group. 'cyou well. Now, suppose you shield the bulb know, we really could use some new with your hand. Much better.. At night, blood in this group. And it's really such on local streets, the new system's full cuta shame, us being so close to ·Yale and off fixture acts as your hand. It is a shield all, full of young kids. Oh well. We're all that not only darifies your vision but also young at heart," he says Without the prevu1ts stray rays from str into a least bit of sarcasm. bedroom window or producing glare on a car windshield. . -Zvika Krieger The renovated system similar]y battles light pollution the ultimate luminary Dimmer Switch evil-by protecting the sky from excess illumination. Over1ighting, the primary As BOTH A YALE STUDENT cause of light pollution, is caused by basic and New Haven fear of th~ dark Anxiety over what lurks native, I know in the shadows provokes the copious this town like the amount of light. On its website, the back of my Intematiorial Dark Sky Association, an hand. That said, organization intent on combating light it took me an pollution, states that bright light is not • enttre year to e · ent to strong security. 'The task is notice the city's renovated to be safe, not just to feel safe. We want street lights; and then, only to be able to see well, rather than lighting after someone pointed them the ctitninal's way. ·Good lighting can be a help, poor lighting always compromises out to me. With its new lights installed, safety." Bob Carruthers, Vice President of the city shines not bigger or the ASNH, states that the extra light brighter but better, with the full meant to deter ct itne is, in fact, "countercut-off light ~e directing productive." "People do feel safer;' he the light downward instead of exp]ains, ''But in actua]ity they're not." upward or out. The old style:The battle of light versus dark is not the cobra head drop lu1s-s- a new one; and neither is the full cut-off relied on faulty logic. The the- solution. As early as 1997, Mayor John ory went: The more light there DeStefano, Jr. looked into revamping the is, the better you see. city's light system but decided to maintain Bob Crelin, a member of the status quo. ''It wasn't popular back the Astronomical Society of then;' Crclin s adding that full cut'

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off lighting now constitutes a hip alternative. In 2004, the city reconsidered Crelin's project. New Haven's Street lighting Manager, Tim Keyes, and its Purchasing Agent, Mike Fumiatti, took lead roles. Shortly after, the city hired two separate, private contractors to carry it out. In their entirety, the renovations cost New Haven close to $1.5 mi11ion $646,397.50 for the labor and $849,620.40 for the material. Star-lit skies don't come cheap. . Despite this investment, Brendan Cohen, a member of the student-group STARRY--Society for Telescopes and Astronomical Research and Recreation at Yale isdt confident that the change in lighting provides city-dwellers with stronger star visibility. The group, which hosts observing sessions on Cross Campus, is fully aware of the diffusion that streetlights bring to the sky. ''We're still in a city;' he argues. ''There's still gonna be light pollution." He cites this urban conundrum as the reason why STARRY makes little effort to combat over-lighting. Stars or no stars, the new fixtures do require less power to function. Over time, the expensive project should pay for itself Keyes cited consumption savings as equal to $220,000 each year. Crelin considers the renovation to be "a well-intentioned step in the right direction;' but believes that New Haven would ·have benefited from more extensive research. He contends that with an even greater decrease in wattage, the city could have further reduced operating costs and saved a larger amount of money. But that's for the next round of bulbs. With a full understanding of the project, I decided to test its environmental · promise. Once darkn~ss settled, I looked outside my window to the street light directly across from my house. Sure enough, its light aitned straight down. I reversed my gaze and looked up with a hope to see stars. No such luck that night there were only clouds. •

- Emi(y Koh

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Talk

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"DO NOT THINK. THAT I AM COME . TO . SEND .. PEACE ON EARTH: I CAME NOT TO• SEND •

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PEACE, BUT A SWORD." •

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..---·Matthew 10:36 . .

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This citation is incorrect. The line . .' . actUally .comes froin · Matthew 10:34. But for the authors of a biting exchange of messages (the Scrawled retort: "Christianity is evil arid Violent'') on a . marble ·'Yan dividing .. the third anc;l • . f~urth staUs in one of Yale's largest rest.. rooms, that made little difference. When • ~ first · noticed the Matthew . exch~ge, the second.writer had the last \vont But . when I returned several weeks later, another artist had added; ''No .Christian has ever flown a plane into a building." specific requests are made for younger One conclusion gave the debate a poetboys, Yale students, large genitalia, and, • ic . flair, ·' 'Your breath smells so mean, · in one entry dated December 12, 1989, you need Listerine/ ·. Not a sip, not a "real love." swalioW, but the whole damn bottle." Many of the more recent sexual • .·. · Around from Ma~hine requests are repeated by their authors in . . the corner • ' City in Cross Campus pbrary, the rest- several stalls, and are often accompanied room is long and wide, with a few ·yards by ·e-mail addresses set up specifically separating a row of urinals from a line for the occasion, with monikers derived • of twdve. toilet sriills. From the outside from the author's physical characteris• of the stalls ahnost no graffiti is visible, tics and the year of writing. Only a few, but inside, it cannot be ignored. Some of including one describing hirnsel£: the it is carved into the stone inscriptions writer, as a "closeted masculine athlete· dating back to the seventies. are still vis- guy;' adrnit any sexual repression. And ible--and others written with Sharpie while · it's unclear whether a restroom markers and ballpoint pens appear to pleading does result in rendezvous, no have suffered litde wear over the years. evidence exists to the contrary. The folMost of the graffiti in the . stalls arcs lowing poem however crude sugaround a reader seated on a toilet, and gests that, perhaps, encounters the industrious bathroom user performs do ·o ccur: two simultaneous tasks. Here I sit A forum for political debate, yo rna•na Thinking I was alone... hu •nor, and a blank slate for personal · While the gays in the next ads, the bathroom stalls are prirnarily a stall moan. message board, not unlike Craigslist. Some ··writers receive responses That is, more nwnerous than any other demanding more details, but most often, types of posting are raimchy solicita- requests are greeted with homophobic tions for sex, ofteh with rime, place, and slurs and derogatory epithets. In fact, somerir nes, a racial qualifier~ Writers ~teful words proliferate: There are a tempt readers tg- join the•n bey(>nd the few swastikas, and on one wall, a nm nber bathroom doors at Woolsey Hall or of phrases in German have been East Rock Park fqr arial ahd orai sex; scratched out, leaving only "Ein Fuhrer." •

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Fortunately, the conununity of watercloset writers polices itself: Next to the anti-semitic graffiti is written an eqWilly nasty response to the perpetrators. Most of the stalls are privy to hateful and largely widess denunciations of George W. Bush; and I found dairns that our sitting president ingested cocaine, defecated, masturbated, and "knocked on the coffin." Among these displays of rancor, loneliness, and unfulfilled desire, there is a scattered collection of the absurd, the inspired, and the mexplicable. Some inscriptions are authoritative r'The world is God's gargantuan testicle''); some are spiritual r'The balance: Why wait, grab your life/ Seek the middle path,''). There is a twoline excerpt from Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour;' a few declarations of love, one declaration of freedom, a discussion about the income of Yale staff, and an appeal to an indefinite subject to ''Lock your marna up and throw away the key." Though perhaps the product of boredom, rnany of the inscriptions sean to be tnanifestations of the tensions inherutt in the and developing personalities of young adults and in the fi:u~trated lives of mtployees. Where no one is looking, where no vandal can be

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identified, and where the most private of human physiological processes takes place, men at Yale find the liberation they need to plaster their stray thoughts on a wall, perhaps to displace their unhappiness onto the next defecator, or perhaps simply to snicker at the joy of untraceable crime. •

-Alexandre Lessard-Pilon

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Systems CONNECilCUf IS A LOUSY

place to do astronomy;' says Charles Bailyn, ar1: astrOnomy professor who has discovered smaJ1 black holes in the Musca and Scorpius conste1lations, who first noted uniformity in the masses of black holes fanned by imploded stars, and who is currently observing binary star systems-all from his foothold in · Southern Connecticut. ''What you want, to get good observations, is mountains. In the desert" So once, maybe twice a year, the squirrelly academic packs his bags for La Serer•a, Chile. Seven thousand feet . above the sea and two-hours from the nearest town, in the craggy, purple mountains of the Andes, just where the .lean dirt road · s to widen, the professor's dusty Jeep comes to a halt Though he has traveled thousands of miles from his alma mater in New Haven,

Bailyn is really just traveling from one Yale campus to another. Yale's ·Astronomy Department, working under the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), contracts and hires Chilean technicians to maintain the Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory here, and e-mail its images to the department When Bailyn arrives at twilight, he has the habit of counting the condors-those big, mousy awkward birds, who are graceful only iri flight If they're flying this high, it is due to updrafts-bad news for observing. In La Serena, the local technicians have coined a phrase ''A three condor night,'' and it means the observations are going to be lousy. Yale astronomers get ten percent of the viewing time, while the other ·ninety percent is divided between the institutions which helped Yale to refurbish the scope. Because of a law which applies to all Chilean telescopes, Chilean astronomers get ten percent of all research time. 'The · only problem,'' Bailyn say8, "is that there just too few Chilean astronomers.'' Instead of letting the valuable re · · ten percent go to waste, Yale's Astronomy Department agreed to help the University of Chile start up a graduate astronomy program, even offering Chilean students classes in New Haven. Today, Professor Bailyn is the scope's director, delighting in all of its '

successes. "A lot of people read about the new planet in the news this year;' he said, sp offhandedly about the discovery of 2003UB313, the supposed planet beyond Pluto, first found by the astronomers at Yale and Caltech. ''Really, their research was backed up by observations made on the telescope in Chile, run by Yalies." Graduate students swiveling in office chairs on Science Hill type e-mails to the astronomers in the Andes, and the next morning, receive digital images of swaths . ' of Southern Hermsphere. Ten years ago, Professor Bailyn traveled to Chile for three nights of valuable viewing time. On the first night, it rained. On the second night, the astronomers nearly fell off their swivel stools scared by the shrapnel-echo of "ping-pong-sized chunks of hail" pelting the hollow tin roo£ On the third night, they got lucky, and found evidence of a black hole. 'The fun part of it was that we were able to examine the data as it was acquired,'' Bailyn said. "So we could see the star's motion around its invisible companion while it was happening.'' This immediate joy is lost on most astronomers who today use a technique known as "queue observation" employing permanent on-site technicians and instructing them via the internet Though they're no longer harnpered by hailstorms-eve · is just pushed back in the event of inclement weather-many astronomers larnent the new efficiency. ''We don't get as many cool trips,'' Bailyn jokes. And of course, it's less exciting to open a ]PEG the next morning than to catch an orbiting binary as it orbits. Jokes aside, queue observing is actnally a very serious controversy within the astronomical community. Many astronomers find it difficult to make informed judgments about the quality of the observations when they haven't seen them obtained. And, sadly, more and more students are graduating from astronomy programs without getting their hands dirty with a real, huge telescope. Forty years ago, the telescope cratered in the Andean rock Was kept much closer to . those who ran it. Originally, Yale's 1.0 •

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. meter scope (the mirror from which the sky's light is reflected has a 1.0 meter diameter) scanned the Northern Hemisphere from cozy Bethany, Connecticut But, as Bailyn explained, 'Though there's excellent research that can be done from there, it was stupid." Due to · · light pollution and poor weather, misty, humid Bethany just "didn't make sense." At that time, in the 1960s, Yale was using time on larger telescopes in other locales, which were able to see objects much further away. Other universities were throwing their 1.0 meter telescopes away. In the face of this new technology, Yale opted to move Bethany's 1.0 meter telescope in 1973 to an area of the sky they were interested in seeing more broadly. The Southern Hemisphere. 'The Southern Hemisphere is so much better than the Northern Hemisphere; there's the closest - star, Alpha Centauri, and the Way stripes across," said Professor Bill van Altena, fr-om his office in the Northen1 Hemisphere. "EVi · of interest is down there.'' When the departinent moved its Bethany scope south, it was following a long tradition of research in the Southern Hemisphere, in 1920 when Yale started to develop its Johannesburg, South Africa station with a 26-inch refractor built in a Yale lab. In the 1960s, the department constructed a new observatory, the largest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, in the easten1 foothills of the Andes, at El Leoncito, tina. From 1965 to 1974, the department used this telescope to tackle the ambitious project of surveying the enti rc hanisphere. At the end of a ten year span, they had proof that these telescope were quite useful: They had produced the most exact photograph of the southern sky ever taken. Though the bulk of astronomical re; ~rch fits snugly within the stereotype of the bookish, de tical mathematician, Yale's Astronomy D ent puts their little · · to work all over the globe. Van Altena still goes south to train new workers and conduct his own resea reb several times , a year. Trips South have also become personal. ''My wife is Argentinean,'' he says; he '

met her on a sabbatical Professor Bailyn makes the trip less often, but cer1ainly looks forward to the travel. "It's fun to have an excuse to just oft:'' he said. '~d the students . like it" To ensure that .Yale's grads do get hands-on experience, Bailyn founded a program tided SMARTS (Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System) which, among other · forces grad students to ~ the observatory thanselves when the Andean workers . take vacations. In the program, students have observed Ray Bursters, monitored black holes, and tracked asteroids. Today, the department is even looking to address the lack of study abroad programs for scia1ce majors by creating a summer ...,....... ::..... un for undergrads who are interested in studying astronomy abroad, and speaking entirely in Spanish . .. Van Altena's teatn is currendy comparing the map obtained 30 years ago using only 17 by 17 inch photo plates, which show the precise positions of the stars back then, with new digital exposures his team is · of the same area of the sky. ·By ' the two digital i.tnages, van Altena and his students will look at how, in the · inteairn, the positions of the stars have The difference the images the ways in which the stars in our are moving-information that will fiu d1er our knowledge about the mass and da1sity of our and the existence of dark matter there. '~the initial census, where we counted the stars and added up their mass, there wasn't tnuch of a gap,'' van Altena says, referring to the observable tnass of the , versus the mass implied by the way it is moving; "We found no evidence fur dark maucr locally, near the sun in our own , though it may exist in other parts of the . ' By · · · the existence of dark matter and dark a1ergy-that invisible stuff that pushes our stars further and fi.u d1er apart-

September 2005

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the professor is really looking into the ultimate fate of our universe. "Before the advent of computer-controlled large telescopes and instrumentation, observing meant being trapped in an observing cage, which is five feet in diameter and six feet long, high above the floor" van Altena described. "It's one of the most mystical experiences for an observer. You have the feeling of being able to see the distances between stars." In New Haven, where the sky at night glows dull orange, where the stars look like pinpricks, astronomers feel much further from the stars they study. Researchers say that El Leoncito, Argentina is so dark that when the moon is down but the Milky Way is up, you can read a newspaper by the lig~t of the stars. ''At least in my generatiori:," said van Altena, "we became astronomers because we loved to look at the sky, and really see it." •

-Adriane Quinlan

Seen From Above .

from twenty-thousand feet. It is a view rarely seen by its residents unless they're profes•

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Notyour gran4father's globe. •

sionals with business in Pittsburgh and Cleveland or students that a fear of heights, an empty wallet, or . an anxious Jewish mother has not kept from taking Yale's flying lessons and -it is now easily accessible through the latest piece of Internet technology. Google Earth, which will ' download in about twenty minutes on a 56kb/s modem or in less than two on the University's . broadband, presents its user with a· patchwork of satellite images that have been wrapped around a digital globe. Like your grandfather's globe, Google Earth may be spun and titledbut here the similarities end. Google Earth allows its users to zoom in at any point', often to the level of the neighborhood (though Israel, has declined to allow such fine resolution of its cities). The programmers incorporated overlays presenting 3D mock-ups of downtown build-

ings, top?graphical maps of national parks, and information ranging from when a particular area was photographed to the location of nearby supermarkets. With a. built-in Yellow Pages and a directions tool that will not only describe how to get from your house to the top of East Rock, but also actually fly over the route, it seems as though the computer scientists at Google Labs have thought of everything. It's what the program doesn't include, however, that gives it the potential to alter the way in which we access the internet and relate to our communities. Recognizing that there will be gaps in their knowledge, the creators of Google Earth allow users to add their own information about a point on the map and then upload those additions to the map for other people to toggle on and off at their • conven1ence. Much like Wikipedia, which •

runs on the same principle of user-supplied content, entries are alternately informative or spurious. The more inventive in the community have already fed in addresses and data from "Hot or Not"" websites and the federal list of sex offenders. But there is also more staid and use ful information. As restaurants add their menus and video stores the status of their inventories, Google Earth will start to provide a logical way of organizing information that could threaten the company's flagship product the search engine. Imagine setting Google Earth as your new web browser: instead of loading your 'homepage' like to day's Internet Explorer or Firefox, it would launch by zooming in to a central space: Yale Station, say, or the New Haven Green, or your actual home. Information would then be located over whatever it logically corresponds to over the place where, fifteen years ago, you would have had to actually visit to find what you needed. Bucking the current trend of storing inf_ormation at random and hoping your search engine whether Google, the iTunes Music Store, or Spotlight can pick it out from the crowd, information can now be organized in an intuitive and logical fashion. Need crime statistics? Scroll over to Union Street, avert your eyes · from the architectural mon. strosity that is the New Haven Police Headquarters, and click on the building. The same for train schedules and the depart- .. ing station, headlining acts at Toad's Place, and your nearest ' Shaw's . With the predicted rise in

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internet telephones, it won't be programs, the more people long before clicking on the pic- using it, the better aJ;ld better it ture of a. friend's house is gets. Though more esoteric enough to make her phone ring information might still require or her instant messaging window using an old-fashioned search blink. A slight improvement in engine to locate perhaps· a the satellite photo Google Earth link to it could be located on has of New Haven would bring top of the side of Bishop Tutu it up to the resolution of corner ·w here the New Haven Cambridge, where you can count Information Booth sits a burthe leaves on the tre.es of geoning community will quickly Harvard Yard and the frowns on enter all of the information the students' faces. Some about our city, and other cities, Manhattan bloggers feature a that one could reasonably need Google ·Maps photo of the to find. And with Google island with the link of the blog Earth, a quick tap on the zoom hoVering over its author's apart- button can take you from an ment; Google Earth can do the _Internet where information is same without the size of your local, to an Internet . where screen defining the extent of information is global and .. your neighborhood. back again. U:l tim a tel y, worldwide -Johnny bach acc.essibility is the program's strong_e st chance for success. TNJ As -: -with other user-modified ,_ .

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September 2005

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·n coming to Yale, Brian Christiansen knew he was entering a social enclave more liberal than any he had ever experienced; that was exacdy why he chose it. The son of a retired navy captain, Christiansen had always lived on military basesincluding, years earlier, the US base in Guatanamo Bay, Cuba and his parents had reinforced the conservative, patriotic tendencies of the military community. But when Christiansen decided to go to West Point as a high school senior, his parents urged him to test new waters; he could always return. to the military life later. In the meantime, choosing Yale over West Point would offer a different • perspective. And it wouldn't take long. One of Brian's freshman-year suitemates also identified hitnself as a conservative, but they were the only ·ones in their Old Campus dormitory. "I remember we were sitting around in a dorm room in Farnam one day," Christiansen recalled this su rnmer, three months after he graduated and a month before returning to Yale School of Management as a Silver Scholar, "and someone said, 'Well, at least we won't run into many Republicans here!' John and r looked at each other and we both kind of slowly raised our hands." The experience was a harbinger of ideological divergence to come. From the beginning, Christiansen was less than thrilled with the quality of political discussion at Yale and with the acritnony of many of his peers' Bush-

bashing. "So after 9/11, I kept · my views to myself and studied and prepared for my post-Yale career," he recalled ruefully, but with characteristic good cheer. In hindsight, Christiansen posits that the quality of political dialogue at Yale has decreased since the ti rne when future members of America's conservative vanguard people like Governor George Pataki '67 or President Reagan's attqrney general, Edwin Meese III '53 studied there. But criticism of Yale's leftist skew and the resulting . paucity of substantive debate was nothing new in that era either. In fact, the person most often hailed as the father of modern . American conservatism, William F. Buckley, graduated from Yale in the class of 1950 and within a year, had •

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their own, Yale had taken to converting its students into "atheistic socialists." The book caused a furor in the national media. Meanwhile, Buckley went on to found the conservative magazine The National Review and to reign over traditional conservatives for more than four decades. His career captured a curious irony: Yale simultaneously bred the first public backlash against left-wing dominance of college campuses, in the form of Buckley's landmark critique, and peopled the vanguard of Republican politics. Today, Yale is the best-represented university among staffers in the current Republican administtation.the second, in fewer than twenty years, under a Yale Republican and well represented in a range of conservative DC institutions. On the surface, it •

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seems Buckley was mistaken in condemning his a1tna mater. If what he said was true, how could Yale have continued attracting young conservatives, and propelling them into the upper echelons of Republican politics for another half century? The question sheds light on the

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role of liberal universities in partisan Adams doesn't flaunt it, and she has politics, and· also on the nature of her reasons not to·: "If you're g<;>ing to. Republican politics more broadly. · be really vocal, you have to be willing · Christiansen and Buckley, who gradu- to argue all the time... arid I'm not a · ated fifty years apart, have something confrontational person." Instead, as a besides politics in common: When sophomore, she applied for a they left the Elm City, they b.o th went · Pickering Fellowship, which put her . to Washington. . ~ · on track to spend two years getting a And for them, as for many of their Masters Degree in International Yale peers, prosperity in the nation's . ·Relations, courtesy of the fed~ral gov• capital · ~arne not after overcoming ' ernment, then join the Foreign Se~vice their years at liberal Yale, but. by·tak-· for another four. She's not sure. about if:ig advantage of that very libe~ality t;o future in politics, but obviously, f~r shape a successful future on the the tirne being, she is ahe~d of the ' right and to shape the right's sue- . pack on getting a toehold in cessful future. government. The distance between U rbahn and • WHERE THE Wnn THINGS ARE Adams represents the division in the conservative demographic at Yale. n his biweekly Yale Dai!J News column ''Unchained Reactionary;' Keith U rbahn claitned that the Bush-Cheney t-shirt he donned the week before last fall's election u~covered a "covert fraternity of • Bush supporters on campus" a substantial number of fellow Republicans who may not have had t-shirts of their • own, but did offer thumbs up and . . . looks of approval for his. His conclusion was that his political peers were not hiding their political beliefs; they just didn't feel like brooking all the criticism they would face if they chose e to advertise. At a casqal Greek eatery near Dupont Circle. this July, Urbahn elab- There are a few highly vocal conservaorated. At Yale, he said, the liberal tives (another Yalie interning in DC atmosphere is intirnidating for people . this surnrner estirnated there are five who disagree with it: "You're con- and then proceeded to count them off stantly barraged. So you either don't on his fingers; Urbahn was number say an · or you feel like you know two) and a larger mass .of quiet ones, what you're talking about enough to people like Adams and Christiansen, interact with people." Clearly; Urbahn likely to join the political fray, but only prides hitnself on being in the latter after they graduate. Even Andrew category. But of course, not everyone Bender, the Vice President of the Yale College Republicans and a snmtner hankers for debate. "If you get to know me well intern at the Deparunent of Housing enough," PrisciJJa Adams explained at and Urban Development, recalls a restaurant on the other side of being unsure whether to mention his Dupont, ''You'll see I have conserva- role in YCR in postcards to his freshtive written all over my forehead." But men counselees: He didn't want to •

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compromise their goodwill before he ev:en met them. ' . .. ; . . · The silence of latter variety .of conservatives shrouds the U ni:versity's Republican minority · in ambiguity. There is little doubt that it's there, but its m~mbers can, be. difficult to identify, ~nd easy for ·the liberal majority to • tgnore. . , . <:omirig to Was~ngton, then, where most organizations carry a political • designation by reputation, if not on the door, can bring Yale's political demographics into sharper relief. For Austin Broussard, who interned at the American Enterprise Institute , (AEI) last year · and this summer for his Republi~an . senator ·David Bitter, the experien~e was r~vealing: "It's not like

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we conservatives run in the same cir~es at Yale., so it's ~hnost like a tom. . . ing out party: It's like wow, you too? I • didn't even know!" ' But in the world of DC interns, conservative Yalies aren't so few and far between. Last summer, when Broussard worked at AEI home. to administration lutninaries like Lynn Cheney, Paul ·Wolfowitz and John Bolton ~67, LAW ~70 seven of the 55 swnmer interns were from Yale. This year there were another five. The ' Heritage. Institute, · a conservative think tank noted for its stellar internship prograan, had two X:alies this •

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summer and three the previous year. Three of this summer's White House interns were from Yale. But those numbers need context: A lot of Yale students intern in DC . . When R. David Edelman , set up a Yale-in-Washington program for summer interns last spring, 450 students registered for the mailing list. Of those, 300 attended , Yale-inWashington events between start of June and mid-August, many with noted Washington conservatives like Week!J Standard . publisher William Kristol and Senator John McCain. Edelman did not record participants' places of employment, but he agreed with many interns' estimates that at least half of the Y alies in DC were right-of-center. At Yale itself, the proportions are mw;h .more skewed. Judging by mem' bership.i~ the Yale Democrats and the • Yale ·College Republicans,. Democrats outn~.:unlJer Republicans at Yale by altnost three to one. Of·· course, not all conservatives identify as Republican, nor all Republicans as all-around conservatives, but the numbers are telling. Conservatives constitute a much higher proportion of Yale studen~s interning in DC than they do in the undergraduate population as a whole. For a minority accustomed to dissimulating at school, DC is like a smnmerlong coming-out party. •

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THE NEW RADICALS

ven in William Buckley's era, at the start of the 19 50s, ' . . conservatives were a mmortty, more prone than liberals to cause offense and less likely to receive slack for it, In God and Man at . . Yale, the former YDN chairman complained that his right-of-center editorials elicited far more ire than those of his leftist successor in the class of 19 51. For Buckley, the experience indicated a turning point in Yale history: . "I am forced to conclude from my •

September 2005

Mathew Ciesielski atop the American Enterprise Institute building in DC (Photo by Paige Austin) '

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experience with the Yale Dai!J News ' . . through several years, and from other evidence also, that at least at this college level, the great. ttansformatio_il has actually taken place. The conserVatives, as a IT,linority, are the new radicals." At _the .time, conservativ~s of Buckley's political ilk really were radicals, fitful in their relationship even to the Republican Party. :Today, conservatives occupy far less of a political of them CQunt th~ir fringe. Still, many • status as radicals among tHe University's blessings. That's becaus~ they hail disproportionately froin places where, as Adams said of her hometown in the Florida panhandle, "You're hard-pressed to fmd a Democrat" (though probably not as hard-pressed as Jordan Stevens, a sophomore from Midland, Texas who interned on S:apital Hill this surnmer. In the president's hometown, Stevens says, "Nobody I know, literally nobody, is liberal."). At Yale, by contrast, conservative-minded students encounter frequent opposition to the views they grew up with. Many say the contention forces them to re-trench and learn how to argue for their posi•

tions. Escape, after all, wocld be impossible. "If I weren't open to hearing liberals, I'd be shunned," chuckled Matt Ciesielski, a conservative from small-town Indiana, and an · AEI intern this summer. All that contact with the liberal opposition keeps conservatives on their toes. By way of example: The Yale Democrats has over a thousand norninal members, about one hundred of .whom participate in the group's meetings or events. In the Yale College Republicans, by contrast, over fifty of the 350 members are active:one in six, as opposed to one in ten Yale. Dema.<;:rats. And at the Yale Political Union, as president Silas Kulkarni explained, "Though the left outnumbers the right by about two to one in member:ship, the attendance pattern is a lrnost the exact inverse. . . People have tried very hard to get the left to show up in force, but so far that has proven very difficult." The Party of the Right (POR), the most conservative of the six YPU parties, consistently has the best attendance at YPU debates: On average, Kulkarni estimates, 20 to 25 •

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POR members attend, compared to only five to · ten members of the furthest left party. The reason, Kulkarni believes, is that liberals prefer activism to politicking. In a sense, that is not surprising: The Yale Democrats and liberal YPU parties are only two options in a whole smorgasbord of left leaning, single-issue groups and clubs. Conservatives have fewer places to go as Ciesielski said, "If you're not involved with the Yale College Republicans or the YPU, you're kind of just out there as a conservative." But undergraduates on the right also have more cause to consider their politics and, to the extent that they opt for political involvement at Yale, not to take that involvement lighdy. The result is that, proportionally, there are fewer armchair conservatives than liberals. Of course, there are a few places at Yale where conservatives are no minority. When Stevens' football coach polled the team after the election last fall, seventy percent of the players said they voted for Bush. And AI Jiwa, the president of the '

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Yale College Republicans, noted, "Especially at election times, when we needed to rally, it was up to someone to call up the · D KE guys" DKE being, as Urbahn put it, home to "a lot of Cheney hats." Outside the President's old fraternity, however, there are few groups whose members would dare to show their colors. I GoT You BABE

ronically, having fewer conser. . vative organizations at Yale has its perks conservative Yalies who do get involved in campus politics know where to find each other, whether they need help or are in a position to offer it. When David Barnes, a former president of the Party of the Right, joined the staff of the Heritage Institute last year, he advised several POR members still at Yale to apply for one of Heritage's vaunted summer internships. When they did, Barnes says he was in a good position to advocate. David White, another alumnus from the '

class of 2003, did the same thing for his former cohorts at The Politic, eventually picking Will Ritchie, to intern with him in the speech-writing department at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) this summer. There is nothing new about connections helping students to secure jobs and internships in Washington. But for conservatives, minority identification lends a degree of camaraderie that dime-a-dozen liberals would fmd hard to match. Urbahn, the YDN columnist, got his job as an intern in speech-writing at the Department of Defense when he sent his resume to David White at HUD, who passed it along to fellow Yale alumni in the White House and the Department of Defense. Though Urbahn did not have a formal interview at the White House, those he spoke to in both places were,. Yalies. ''You share stories," he recalled later in the summer. "One guy was a reporter for the YDN; he just identified with me." Chris Michel, the former YDN editor-in-chief now serving on Bush's

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Gerald Ford . The 38th President entered Congress in 1948 and served as House Minority leader from 19651973.

1941 {Law)

Governor of California from 1991-1999, he got his start working for Nixon.

Called the father of modern American conservatism, he founded National Review magazine.

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1953 1955

1950 George H.W. Bush

Edwin Meese

The 40th President and son of a Senator from Connecticut beat Democratic opponent Michael Dnkakis in 49 states.

Former Attorney General, he was one of Reagan's most 1mportant advisors.

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speech-writing staff, had in fact already emailed Urbahn to commend him for his plucky biweekly column, which marked its author out as a dogged anomaly on a liberal campus. At a Yale-in-Washington dinner later in the summer, Michel said that, like many of his fellow young alumni, he still trolls the YDN and keeps an eye out for good writers like U rbahn. In a sense, Michel is just returning the favor: At the same dinner, he explained that he got his job when a member of the ·YDN alumni board put him in touch with a Yale alum working in the White House, who helped hhn to get an internship in speech-writing and then, a few months later, to turn the internship into a staff position. The reason for · that help, and its iffiplication, was not lost on Michel. "If you go to Yale and you're conservative~· you're part of a group that is especially small. I think there's that drive to hire people and help people along," explained U rbahn. "There's a sense that I know what you're going through." •

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White, who left his fiUD job in August to become the assistant editor of AEI's in-house magazine, agreed. "Most Yalies are willing to go out on a limb for other Yalies, even people you've never met before. And probably especially wirh conservative Yalies, because there aren't as many of us, so if we want to fill up DC with likeminded Yalies we have a smaller pool to pull from." And with that as their bond, Yale conservatives will find that in Washington, they are not alone. IN GOOD CoMPANY •

Institute, The Project for the American Century, and the InterCollegiate Institute have been preening college-aged conservatives for decades. In the 1960s and '70s, Buckley's Young America Foundation did the same thing, channeling resources to conservative student groups on campuses. across the country. These organizations were intended to counteract the liberal onslaught Buckley had trumpeted years earlier, but by now, they have a two decade head start. The H eritage Institute, with its 75student internship program is a Washington standout: well-established, well-funded and, best of all, chock full of true believers the old alongside the young. And this summer, it had the good fortune to attract a recent Yale graduate who, in the previous four years, had plenty of impetus to reflect on his conservative views: Brian Christiansen. · . · Christiansen spent the summer at Heritage in terning for Edwin Meese III, a constitutional law scholar and fellow Yale alumnus, compiling •

wo features of Yale's con-. servatism consolidated undergraduate institutions, and the catalyzing effects of minority status find an almost uncanny reflection in Washington. This summer, few topics seemed as in vogue among lefti~t organizers as the right's edge in cultivating young leaders, and the left's need to play catch up. Conservative organizations like Heritage, The Cato

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George W. Bush

John Negroponte Credited with carrying out Reagan's campaign against the Sandinistas, Negroponte is now Director of National Intelligence.

Steven Calabrasi Calabresi founded the Federalist Society, the prc~ml·e:r association of conservative lawyers and law students in America .

The current president espouses a "compassionate 18conservative philosophy." •

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CIA Director since 2004, Goss was first elected as a republican congressman in 1989.

The current vice president is the veteran of four republican admin• • 1sttat1ons.

The Supreme Court's m ost conservative Justice was appointed b y P resident Bush in 1991. . •

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research and writing a position paper that will help Heritage establish its stance on prisoners' rights at the military base where Christiansen once lived, Guatanamo Bay. The program, which he described as "half internship, half school," was an eye-opener: Christiansen discovered a whole movement, rooted in Reagan conservatism, to counteract the leftward tilt on college campuses that had hit him in the face in a Farnam dorm room four years earlier. Intellectually, . it engaged him as few classes or forums at Yale had though, of course, Yale had a big effect on his experience. His internship was funded with a fellowship from his Yale fraternity, Zeta Psi, and he says he is a better writer and researcher because of his time there. He added amused, "Sometimes I'll say stuff and people will write it off like, he's been brainwashed at liberal Yale.'' His time at Heritage taught Christiansen a few things about liberal Yale too. In June, The New York Times published a high-profile article on the

veled. "I thought I was one of like ten conservatives." Apparently, the people whq called him thought the same thing. They figure Christiansen is unique at Yale, just like they once were. And but for his time at Heritage, Christiansen would still agree with them.

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admitted that the careful case Heritage had presented against affirmative action was hard to refute. Now, he says, he sees the problems with the policy he had supported. Jonathan Swanson, a Heritage intern last sutnmer, recounts a similar neartransformation on the issue of gay marriage. He explained, "It's not indoctrination, it's just really persuasive." At most think tanks, interns act as researchers for the institute's full-time scholars, finding mentors and making contacts in the process. Juliet Squire, a two-summer AEI intern, describes the program as akin to "a three-month long interview process," one that brings many interns back for a position on the staff. . Her co-intern, Matthew Ciesielski, objects to the characterization of AEI's internship program as a Republican Party feeder ("I'm not sure the kids think of it that way; it's not like ' they're be · · gin single-A and they'll be in the pros in twenty years."), but he agrees that the ties, like the experience,

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Heritage program, which mentioned DC THINK TANKS: CONVINCING Christiansen's name and said that · he C ASE S, SMILING FACES was happy to have reprieve from the "liberal ethos" at Yale. Afterwards, he nterning at a posh DC thinkbegan receiving calls and emails from tank can do more than unite stuother Yale graduates who had looked dents of a political feather. up his contact information in the Christiansen estimates that alumni directory. "They just wanted to when he applied to Heritage, only congratulate me on what I'm doing," sixty percent of his responses to Christiansen recalled in August. As application questions were in accord one of the quiet conservatives at Yale, - with the Institute's positions. On a he was shocked to find he had so few crucial issues, like affirmative much company. "I a1most feel like action, he was at odds. But over there's this secret cell of conservatives lunch at the Capital Hill Brewery on who you don't know about," he mar- the last day of his internship, he

are helpful. Jonathan Swanson can testify to the potency of those ties. As a junior, he applied twice to intern at the White House, both titnes unsuccessfully. Last summer, he landed a Heritage Foundation internship... instead. With Heritage on his resmne, his third White House internship application was accepted, and he spent last fall as an intern at the National Economic Council at the White House. Back at Yale in the spring for' his second-to-last semester, Swanson began organizing students around the same issue he had

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worked on for while there: adding private accounts to social security. When he returned to DC for a second summer, this time to manage the group he had co-founded, Students to Save Social Security (S4), Swanson began to cash in on his earlier contacts. Heritage staffers provided hiin and his student colleagues with advice on eve · g from getting an op-ed into the . paper ("If you say you have twelve chapters in an editor's state, that helps.") to attracting more media coverage ("The media wants something to take a picture o£ I never would've thought that of that."). Heritage even arranged for the group to do a free media training ' session with the National Leadership Institute complete with television · cameras, live callers, and professional producers to .c ritique the students on their_fauX: guest appearances. "Little things like that are really practical,',' S~;mson said later. ''There was " one guy in our group who's really articulate but on camera he never smiled. They told hirn that." To date, the group has opened chapters at over 150 colleges, staged a demonstration outside the Capital, enjoyed modest fundraising success, and scored an invitation to the White House. Swanson himself was the focus of an August Washington Post at ~de about upand-coming political organizers. Like a lot of people, the Yale senior concluded that the heightened youth recruittnent and training efforts he witnessed from Republicans were no aberration. The right is simply better organized overall. A key breakthrough in Swanson's development of S4 came when he wrangled a speaker's spot at Grover Norquist's famous Wednesday morning meeting, an essential weekly stop for conservative strategists and politicians in DC. Swanson told the group about his organization and asked for any help people at the meeting could offer. ''Afterwards people were coming around" here Swanson raised his '

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Yale-in-Was ·

on head R David Edelman canoodles with politicos like Mr. McCain. •

arms to indicate the convening country. CAP also funds The Hippofytic, a masses " It was literally like the magazine for progressive students at • • conservattve movement comtng Yale. But its director, David Halerpin '84, LAW '89 is the first to adtnit that around me." For a young politico like Swanson, conservatives are way ahead in moving fiscally conservative but socia11y liberal, college students through the ranks. "There is no question that the the experience raised a crucial question: Is the left doing enough to match its right wing is better right now at culticompetition? Or, as he put it, ''Do they vating and promoting young talent have a Wednesday morning meeting and finding new leaders," Halperin where I can go to address every major said this sumrner. And it is better at propelling that young talent upward: liberal leader? Because they should." They don't, of course, but they are ''We don't have that same culture; beginning to realize that they need one. there isn't that same culture that we In 2003, President Clinton's former should all be helping each other." CAP has made progress in bolsterchief of staff founded a new DC instiing youth outreach, but the organizatut~, the Center for American Progress (CAP), to take airn at the left's political tion-and the left, more broadly-may deficiency in the think-tank realrn and be well served not to discard the to play catch-up by groon1ing students siege mentality anytime soon. for future leadership roles. CAP A HEAI:rHY DosE OF PANIC employed fifty interns this smnmer . ' y many conservatives (three of them Yalies) and its collegeor · · g wing, the Center for Campus own admission, · an Progress hosted its first annual conferenduring sense of panic ence for young progressives, attended has been hugely benefiby 650 college students from around the cial to the Republican party over the •

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last four decades. In 1964, when nate at Yale. Here, unlike in the . . the GOP's conservative wing final- country at large, conservatives' ly marked its ascertdancy by nomi- sense of embattlement is. often . nating ultra-right winger Barry quite justified, and it has been for Goldwater, the Democrats decades. Buckley felt it in 19 50. In trounced them in all but six states. 1980, Steven Calabrasi, the founder Buckley predicted the defeat; even of the Federalist Society, did too; before the results were in, he was he claims that he resolved to estabencouraging his party to look ahead lish the conservative lawyers' assoto the next battle. It wasn't until ciation one day in a .Yale Law 1980 .that far-right conservatives School classroom when he was one like Buckley found an ideological of only two in a class of 90 to say . peer in the White House. In the he had voted for Ronald Reagan; meantime, the party rallied around When he arrived at . Yale two its self-image as the embattled decades later, Brian Christiansen's underdog. Today, Republicans con- experience was almost identical. trol the White House, both houses For most middle-of-the-road of Congress, and over half of gov- Yale liberals, no experience in a ernorships but the back-to-the- Yale dorm- or classroom is likely to wall fighting spirit developed in the be as catalyzing as this. If their 1960s and '70s still appears, for conservative peers are correct, far political purposes, like the gift that too many of them simply assume that everyone · is basically liberalkeeps on givirig. . . Most likely the movement to . or, at least, that· they would be if change that philosophy won't origi- they thought about it a little more. •

Edelman, the director of the Yale-in-Washington program, thinks that is how the summer events calendar ended up with such a high proportion of conservative speakers, relative to Yale's typical bias. "Bill Kristol's office will call us back in a day, whereas James Carville won't give us the time of day," Edelman complained midway through the summer. Far-left celebrities are hard to come by, he explained, and even those who are well known like Carville, a prominent Democratic strategist and author are not necessarily very convincing. He thinks their failure lies in their refusal to engage the opposition on equal terms, preferring as they do to highlight its illogic. Part of the problem may lie in the inherent differences between conservative and liberal ideologies; while the right can coalesce around ' a finite set of axiomatic beliefs, •

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easily conveyed and universally applicable,. the left is by nature less coherent, more like a federation attempting to speak the aims of disparate citizens than a centralized state in which shared aims ar·e the uniting factor. But if that characterization is accurate, liberals ought to have more cause for substantive debate, not less. And they should be able to refute conservative arguments with considerably more nuance. A lot ·of conservative undergraduates, like Christiansen, would welcome the change. Calling President Bush an idiot, they argue, is no substitute for spirited intellectual discussion •• ("It's just a lot of screaming," - scoffed Anc;lrew Bender, the YCR vice.-president). Conservative students. can't get away with that kinc;i :_: df - behavior-and they are " /• . better off because of it. •

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illiam Buckley would likely know the feeling. His attacks on the University's attempts to cultivate "atheistic socialists" at the expense of god-fearing "individualists" proved legendary, and Buckley didn't stop there. He encouraged alumni who disapproved of Yale's trend towards secular "collectivism" not to contribute to the school financially, and turned down repeated requests to do so himself. But a lack of broad support from Yale's faculty . and . student body did not stop Buckley from exploiting his years in New Haven. When he founded The National Review in 1955; he appointed a fellow Yalie publisher, and relied on other Yalies as senior editors and advisors. In a 40th reunion toast to his Yale class-

BERI<ELEY COLLEGE

mates, reprinted in his autobiography, he told them about his circle of friends: "And most of my friends .I met forty-odd years ago, met them within a radius of two hundred yards of where I am now standing." Yale has not had an easy relationship with its contentious graduate from the cla.ss of 1950. Its more liberal faculty and students might still find it ironic that an overwhelmingly liberal institutionbred, even motivated and honed, the father of modern conservatism, but time would prove he is no rarity. Yale may not be ~n the business of mass-producing conservatives, but it does yield · its share of luminaries. .

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Paige Austin, a senior in Davenport College, is a Senior Editor of TN]. ·

TNJ

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September 2005

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osh Baraban had the automatic motion detector in his suite's bathroom removed so that the electricity would not be automatically triggered during Shabbat. Zvika - --· Krieger rarely gets to see his best friend's a cappella group perform because the shows are usually held on Fridays and . always use microphones. Sarah Raymond . has been left in the frigid darkness of High Street on a Friday night when the gates of Old Campus are already electronically locked. She will not use her electric keycard and unlike the residential colleges, the Old Campus gates ~re not equipped for special Shabbat keys. Beginning on Friday night, a small group of Orthodox Jewish stuaents redefines sacrifice by ' making simple changes in their · ·daily lives. They believe that God .. . . meant for them to act this way, to .··•· <: : ·.•. · .· :: : live one day in the week without ··· , · · :• ·. . ·· .· · effecting change, even at Yale.

he physical traces of an gave him this advice, "Look, Orthodox presence at Yale Sweetkind. You're a good student, have only risen to promi- but we've never had a Jew. Don't nence over the past several years, · apply. It's just a waste of time." due to a flurry of events affecting Two decades later, in 1946, Yale Jews on campus. The first was tenured the University's first their admission. Club. Yale only Jewish professor, Paul Weiss of began to admit Jews in the 1920s, the philosophy department. And and then only nominally, limiting by 1970 one out of every six prospaces for undergraduates with fessors was Jewish. Between 1970 quotas hovering around ten per- and the late 1990s, the presence of cent. When Morris Sweetkind Jews on campus was felt socially applied to pursue graduate work and academically, as Hillel, foundin the Yale English Department, a ed in 1941, and the judaic studies professor named Tucker Brooke department established them26

selves as significant elements of Yale's repertoire. Up to that point, the brief history of Jews at Yale reveals an obvious trend: growth. ut in 1997, the community was stunted (and stunned) by the "Yale Five,"a 1997 juridical rebellion of five Orthodox freshmen who sued the University for refusing to provide . the same-sex housing accommodations they deemed necessary to uphold their belief that men and women should not reside together

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until marriage. As the Yale Daily News reported on September 24, 1997, in an article entitled "Lawyer for students calls Yale ~intolerant,"' the court case polarized the campus: "The issue has raised a firestorm of controversy on campus, as some in the Yale

that the plaintiffs could have selected to att.e nd another university if they felt Yale's housing policy violated their religious convictions. The January 12, 2001 announcement of the verdict in the Yale Daily News stated, "The ruling has probably ended the stu-

damaged their vision of what the community of Orthodox students at Yale stands for. Zvika, an Orthodox student who volunteers at the admissions office and actively recruits Orthodox Jewish students, sees first-hand the detrimental effect the court case had •

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community have thrown their sup- dents' legal battles, much to the ' port behind the students while relief of the Yale Orthodox - others including other Jewish community." But even if Ort:h od·o x Jewish students and faculty· -. members dismiss the clai1;TI_S - ~-s groundless." • The affair became a political debacle. The official legal claim of the "Yale Five" contended that Yale's housing policy violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by tying together the businesses of education and housing. But supporters of the Orthodox students further vilified Yale, arguing the institution d _id not · support religious tolerance and was violating the basic civil liberties of the students. The personalities involved fueled the fire. Defense lawyer Nathan Lewin, along with Rabbi Daniel Greer, a father and uncle to defendants and a prominent ultra-Orthodox New Haven Rabbi, garnered national media attention with public conservative insult, even The candles are lit on Frid0f night to signify the going so far as to call Yale's committment to student life "phony." the campus would no longer be But on December 28, 2000, the polarized, was surely 1t "Yale Five" became the Yale zero stigmatized. when the Second Circuit Court of This is a moment that many Appeals upheld a 1998 U.S. Orthodox students at Yale today District Court decision, ruling still lament, because of how it has

on the public perception of Jewish community and identity at Yale. Some Orthodox students -

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September 2005

beginning of the Sabbath.

will not consider Yale, he says, going so far as resentfully refusing to visit: "People will say, 'Oh; you go to Yale. Do you live in the dorms?' The Yale Five is a huge stigma we still have to fight

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Assimilation on against when we are recruiting Orthodox . Orthodox Jews." Considering the University Campuses," stresses omnipresence of the issue for that if parents want their ·kids to Orthodox Jews at Yale, Rabbi maintain a high level of religiosity, Shlomo Shulman, another Yale then they shouldn't turn to vauntgraduate as well as rabbi, parent, ed Ivy League schools · as the eduand leader of Yale's Jewish cational paradigm. But Rabbi Awareness America Maimonides Shulman, who graduated from the Leader's Fellowship Program University in 1989, is an_anomaly; OAAM) has his own opinion: "I he became Orthodox during his certainly . believe that as an four years in New Haven. He sugAmerican and a Yale alumnus that gests that the Yale Five decision the Yale Five decision was unjust . turned away Orthodox students and not consistent with the liber- because some people were eager al, anti-discrimination platform of to interpret Yale's position, perthe University." haps incorrectly, as a rejection Last year, two Harvard gradu- of God. The compounded effect of this ates published . a pamphlet addressing the moral residue the relatively short history and the Yale Five case left on the academ- "Yale Fiv~" incident is apparent in ic world. The premise of the pam- the dem<;>graphic of the communiphlet, "A Parents Guide to ty today. Though estimates are '

Amaris Singer, a Maimonides graduate} Rabbi Shulman} and a visiting Orthodox Rabbi.

that about one-quarter, to · onethird of undergraduates · are Jewish, within that group, the University's Orthodox community is tiny. Compared to the extensive networks of Orthodox students · that Ivy League schools like Columbia and University of Pennsylvania have been able to attract, largely due to New York and Philadelphia's vibrant Orthodox communities, very . few Orthodox students matriculate at Yale each year. The ·reasons for this discrepancy are both.structural and self-perpetuating. Orthodox Jews who do select Yale are inherently making a statement and taking a risk. At Yeshiva University, a Jewish college that many kids who are products of Orthodox upbringings choose to attend, the customs that these students had been taught all their lives are reinforced; at Yale, students must elect to follow the customs at all, and even then, reinforcing them is very difficult. Elsewhere, the sacrifices made by Orthodox students like Josh, Sarah and Zvika are commonplace. At Yale, it contributes to their sense of in di vi duality. Still, it is hard for the trio to · ignore that their O..rthodox friends at Penn and Columbia are having very different, less exacting social experiences at college. At Yale, practical issues stand in the way of .. daily devotion. "At Columbia they have ten different services a day," • says Zvika. "At Yale, we have a mere three: a pragmatic example of why it is easier to be observant

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in a large community." And on a good day, the Yale Orthodox minyans prayer services usually attract just over the requisite minimum quorum of ten men. Consistently following the Jewish tenets specified in the Torah and Halacha, the book of Jewish law, becomes much simpler when a group of 500 people, rather than a fistful, make collective lifestyle choices. At Yale Orthodox Jews are forced to perform rituals in a context that makes them seem unusual. Here, at one of the most enlightened places in the world, · some people just don't get it. For Sarah Raymond, this was iniFially frustrating. Last year, as a freshman, she struggled to reconcile who she · was ' as a religious woman with who she would be as Yale woman. And she had a lot of -::..-· choice( -":~The Jewish community here, especially the Orthodox community, is very different. At other schools people may find the community to be oppressive and issues become polarized," she explains. When things are polarized, the choices are clear cut, making it easier to be religious and rely on the community. But Yale's Orthodox Jews _are a grab bag, a microcosm of the national community of Orthodox Jews: Some like the festivity of the Chai Society, others the warmth of Slifka. To some Orthodox Jews, this diversity is contradictory to their sectarian beliefs. But the model seems to work at Yale, largely due to the diffuse nature of the Jewish community on campus in general. One symbol of this diversity is the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. Home to the student group Yal_e Hillel, the center serves both Jews and nonJews. This vision of Slifka as a multi-cultural institution is prob-

lematic for some Orthodox Jews who feel that at Yale, Sli.fka is all they've got and that it should exist to meet their demands. As a cultural and not always traditionally religious institution, Slifka Center

with expectations about the community, and an uncompromising mindset on issues like gender, has caused the community to become • • • • more conservative 1n tts practices. The addition of a full time rabbi

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September 2005

A jovial group cf Maimonides students and Rabbi Shulman;~ famify devour Kosher pizza.

is thus a place where all Jews are in ·2002, Rabbi Jason Rappaport, welcome, but where some may may have similarly impacted the feel out of place. community. Some undergraduates "By nature, the Orthodox com- who pray and study with Rabbi munity tends to be overpowering Rappaport have characterized him because they have so many needs," as "right-wing" on issues such as ' Zvika admits. But he knows that the participation of women in the, being at Yale precludes the possibil- mitryan, even on high holidays such' ity of an exclusively Orthodox facil- as Yom Kippur, which demands ity. Yale's small Ortliodox popula- 25 hours of davaning, or prayer. tion cannot command the space or The friction over these issues the attention that they might at is indicative of a larger conflict other schools. And as the court within Orthodox Judaism, in decision stipulated they chose this which no mainstream rabbis have ' life . .."The kind of people who can endorsed the larger role for stay religious at Yale are the kind of women in services that more leftpeople who -thrive on challenges, leaning students are demanding. Some more liberal-minded graduwho like obstacles," remarks Zvika. Not all of those obstacles ate students have stopped attendcome from outside the Jewish or ing the Orthodox services as a even the Orthodox community. result of Rabbi Rappaport's attiSome students believe that an tude. One graduate student supinflux of Orthodox undergradu- posedly went so far as to call ate males admitted between 2001 Rabbi Rappaport "dishonest." and 2003, men who came to Yale Another student, however, dis•

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direction is the New Minyan, a prayer service Sarah has sometimes chosen to attend because it • perm1ts women to lead sections . But the service is not a staple on like the standard campus Orthodox minyan. Sarah observes that the New Minyan has faced some resistance: "We have had a problem getting a requisite ten men. If Orthodox men don't feel comfortable, they could actively recruit any Jewish men. I haven't voiced this suggestion to anyone, and I most definitely should have done so and have the opportunity to do so." Sarah's peers encounter daily tension between modern life and traditional religious values. This is something that Zvika, · Josh and Sarah have learned by b~ing S homer S habbos, following the traditional laws for the strict observance of the Sabbath. While none of them write, drive, carry money or keys, use .their cell phones or check their e-mail between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday, the three students make

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mtsses crttcs Rappaport as ccstudents who are frustrated with Orthodox Judaism in general and are simply throwing stones at Yale's rabbinic figure." The debate has fomented largely beneath the surface, but its effects are definitely felt. Among the Orthodox Jews, Sarah acknowledges, "Being a woman and being Orthodox . is an issue on everyone's mind." Her comment is indicative of a certain degree of con1placency in the Orthodox community when it comes to women, especially the place of a woman in an Orthodox minyan. In general, at Yale, Sarah is not allowed to lead services, though outside of her religious life, the school encourages her to

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speak her mind. "Gender is always a lively discussion at our Sunday night pizza and learning," Josh says diplomatically, of the weekly forum he helps organize for the graduate and undergraduate . Orthodox community. One step in the right

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individual choices about what S homer S habbos means in a college context. , These choices became more significant for all of them at Yale given the school's weekend-dominated social scene. Suddenly, the

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Sabbath has the potential to be a on a co-ed campus: "There was a social hindrance. "It is personal somewhat promiscuous woman ·who what is in the spirit of Shabbat," hugged someone and then yelled to says Zvika. He considers "hang- me, 'I can't hug you, you're Shomer ing out" on Friday night okay, but Negjyah.' I did not want to hug her he draws the line at parties or anyways .. .·but because she said that, I events with music or electricity, thought I should be more careful. opting for more laid-back Shomer Shomer Negjyah was a mitzvah I did not S habbos-friendly fetes. Zvika, a fully realize until I graduated." founding brother of Alpha One milestone of Rabbi Epsilon Pi a popular Jewish fra- Shulman's journey to Orthodoxy ternity at Yale established two traces the recent historical presyears ago is trying to be a model ence of Orthodox Judaism in the of an observant yet hip Orthodox Yale community. He nostalgically Jew. "It's hard to argue that get- recalls that when he joined the ting drunk is against the Torah," Kosher _Kitchen in the fall of he says with fraternal spirit. He 1987, it was located in the basemay not consider himself socially ment of 305 Crown Street. "My r job was to be in charge of the restrict~d, but non-Jews and Jews alike might see some of Zvika's bagel brunches. I was proud of choices thpugh he is a frat them. I would bribe people to boy as sociaJlir :'limiting. drive me to Manhattan, but we In cohtrast, Josh seems to always made a lot of money," he avoid most mainstream social recalls jocularly. The establishevents. Sarah is still dealing with ment of a Kosher Kitchen, howthe issue of whether or not to go ever makeshift, was a step in the out on Friday nights. "I am still right direction. A turning paint trying to find what I feel comfort- came eight years later in 1995 able with in my Jewish routine," when the ribbon was cut to open she says. But for each of them, the Slifka center on Wall Street, these are difficult decisions. finally a monument of the influAfter deferring his matricula- -ence of Judaism at Yale. For tion to spend a year in I-srael, Rabbi Shulman, Slifka is the Z vika decided to become S homer promised land; and Crown Street Negfyah, a rite that forbids him to was a struggling kibbutz in the touch females before he consum- desert. "Then, it was us against mates his marriage. As he the world fighting for survival," as explains: "When I got to Yale I Shulman describes. "The minyan told everyone about it. I made a was very hamish)" he says, noting big deal about it. It was easier that the beauty of its simplicity and way because it was a big deal- hominess; "and I hope they don't "'Oh, you're the guy who can't lose that now being that it is fancy · touch girls!'" Zvika and Josh, who and beautiful." is also Shomer Negfyah, do not face ecently, Rabbi Shulman anything Orthodox men of the felt stirred to become a past were not used to. In the late 1980s, Rabbi Shlomo Shu1man faced new presence on campus, sin1iJar challenges as he grew into his one decisively aimed at reviving Orthodoxy, also incorporating S homer religion as a force in the lives of Negjyah into his undergraduate life. the University's Jewish students. He offers an anecdote about the diffi- With his partner and wife Aviva, culty of appreciating S homer Neg!yah he founded a Yale branch of a

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September 2005

Peter B. Cooper

Emily Bazelon •

Tom Griggs Brooks Kelley Daniel Kurlz-Phelan

Fred Stteighbeigh FJjzabeth Sl David SJjfka

1bon1as Strong •

JohnSwansb 31

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The Maimonides classroom hosts a livelry discussion about the existence

nationally-funded Jewish educational program geared towards reconnecting Jewish college students with their rich religious heritage. Every Tuesday night last semester, he eagerly commanded a second floor classroom of LinslyChittenden Hall to show a batch of students how Judaism is integral to the practical aspects of everyday life. Participants received a $500 stipend. Last year's group, a small, hand-picked assortment of graduate and undergraduate students, all Jewish, many only by birth, received Rabbi Shulman's words with the finesse of true Yalies. They questioned. They probed. They learned. They refuted. They argued. They dismissed. They accepted hesitantly. They probed again. Prominent profes-

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sionals from the national Orthodox community visited as lecturers to discuss the spiritual and material value -of leading an Orthodox life. Shabbaton weekend trips to Rabbi Shulman's homogenous Orthodox neighborhood in Waterbury, · Connecticut offered an on-site glimpse into the nuances of Orthodox life in the real world. Students lived with other rabbis and their families for a weekend, experiencing the custom and emotion of the Sabbath first-hand. Through all of these initiatives, Rabbi Shulman hopes to prepare students for Jewish life, something that at best, Yale can do only half-heartedly. ''Mairnonides has given me a greater appreciation for the gift of life and God's presence in the world," says Michael Rucker, a graduate of the pro-

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gram. "But, there are still many questions that have not been answered for me. I am a true believer in openness to new ideas and people and I feel that any conservative belief system is dangerous. Although Judaism allows for questioning, which is very important and different than most conservative ideologies, a strict religious doctrine causes separatism no matter how you look at it." Rabbi Shultnan is teaching skeptical Jews about the importance of sacrifice in the name of religion. And this s~mester his mission continues. He may not succeed in cultivating a new generation of Orthodox Jews, but he is reinforcing the existence of that community at Yale and in the world. '

Romy Drucker, a junior in Davenport College, is Editor-in-Chief of TN].

TNJ

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ad Cotton Mather, presi- tion to the public." dent of a school called Yet despite Linda I<och Collegiate, had the fore- Lorimer's tireless watch, Yale's sight in 1718 to hire a brand image has a few hidden dimenmanagement professional, sions. In fact, the three "yale" doubtless "Yale" would have en tries in the Oxford English been cut from the list of edgy Dictionary have little to do with names for America's next great ivory towers and academic university. While these days excellence. With almost 2000 ascendant universities pay high- years of use .behind it, errant earning professionals to revamp meanings and associations can their names and images, Mather slip between the phonemes of even the most stalwart name. kept it . simple. Elihu Yale . . donated · 560 sterling pounds Like the rich, eccentric uncle worth of . books: although his who avoids family reunions and own experience had more to do forgets to send birthday checks, with colonial administration the Yale student body has genthan academia, Yale's name was erally ignored its nominal emblazoned onto American aca,... cousins, perhaps to its own loss. demic history. These eccentric allusions may Given this haphazard start, chip away at Yale's jealously Yale has built up substantial guarded brand purity, but just brand equity over the years, like Elihu, they are part of the rounding off a basic liberal arts . Yale narrative. education with sister schools of forestry, law, medicine, and THE HISTORY OF "YALE" business. To its students, Yale . University is a mark 'of distinc- 77: Pliny the Elder introduces a tion forever headlining their beast called the eale (Latin) to resumes. To the University's the ancient world in his Natural Vice President and Secretary Histories. The "yale" (English and the Yale University translation) sized up to eleLicensing Department, the phants and hippopotami, but its name is a trademark to be defining feature was its horns, guarded from "misrepresenta- which swiveled forward in bat36

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tle. Some scholars have identified Pliny's yale with the Indian water buffalo. 1443: John, third son of Henry IV, becomes . the Earl of Kendal. He adopts the yale as his supporter: and as one of the Royal Beasts of England. The beast resembled an antelope, with the tail of a lion or goat, and again with horns that swiveled on their own. In 1443, the Earldom passed to John Beaufort, who kept the yale as a supporter. Now the creature was speckled with gold bezants the characteristic markings of Beaufort, and enhanced with a pair of sharp tusks. 15th Century: In medieval Wales, the Yal, Jal, or Ial district was an upland region ringed b y hills. By the late 1400s, this area, together with an adjoining district, had betome the lordship of Yale and Bromfield, in the county Denbigh. Welsh children usually took their fathers' given names as sur- ·· names; no one system dictated custom, however, and some took an estate or a district for a surname. In this way, the word

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lock, which opens only when a certain number of pins moves the correct distance. He names "the world's favorite lock" after himself. It is now universal.

1869: J.D. Whitney, head of the Harvard School of Mining, leads an expedition of the school's inaugural class to Colorado, where the mountains were rumored to surpass even the tallest California peaks. At 14,202 feet, the eighth highest peak in the range that the class explored was named Mount Yale, after Whitney's alma mater. Mount Harvard is 14, 420 feet tall, Mount Oxford 14, 160 feet.

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Yale became a name. 16th Century: Dr. Thomas Yale is the first to officially dub himself a Yale. 1653: As a four year-old, Elihu Yale, who was born in Boston, catches a last breath of America before sailing with his family to England. Coincidentally, his grandmother, in her second marriage, wed the governor of the New Haven Colony. '

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1687: Elihu Yale, a long time employee of the British East India Company, becomes governor of Madras.

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1718: Elihu Yale saves . Collegiate College ... ·•· •·: · from early demise with a large donation of books. The school uses the funds to relocate to a single building in New Haven, named after its benefactor. • . .

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1840s or 50s: Linus Yale, a descendent of Elihu's, designs a serrated key, that fits into a matching 38

1886: When a raging fire destroys much of Vancouver, the Yale Hotel, where workers in the ·n ew community relaxed after work, survived. After the fire, the hotel's popularity as a hang-out sky-rocketed and it was renamed "the Colonial" in 1889.

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one. Exposition discovers college fjord. Yale finally has its own glacier. 1906: W. Denny & Brothers, a Scottish ship-building company, designs the early 20th century version of a !oyota Prius: The ships operated on turbine propulsion and, in their third year, were converted to run on oil rather than coal. In 1906; the two boats the Yale and the Harvard began to run a route between Boston and New York. During World War I, the two

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boats traveled to England and pitched in for the Allies. Early 20th Century: gangster Francesco Loele moves to

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sters kidnap her and .her father refuses to pay ransom, Clarice's assailants rig the Yale-Harvard game and wed Clarice to Yale's young football star, Hector Wilmot. Collegiate 1980s: licencsing comes into vogue. Yale hires an outside firm to acitvely pursue licensing the University's marks. In 1995, the University moves the program under its own auspices.

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Bro9kly?, calls him~e1f~, Frankie Yale, sets up headq'barters at the Harvard Inn in Brooklyn and hires Al Capone. 1935: "Hold 'em mieres. The movie ordeal of rich deb Cleve. After New

Yale" prefollows the Clarice Van York gang-

2004: No longer satisfied with the professional quality of the Monoface font De Aetna, Yale University commissions a font bearing its name the Yale Administrative Roman typefacefor use in all official communication.

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appa over yea ass1cs include the baby-wear and future president lines there are many more brilliant tie-ins just waiting for exploration: the Yale yale mascot with accompanying Harvard student engorged on its horns, a whole genre of Yale football movies, and a Yale-affiliated underground crime ring in memory of Frankie Yale. The possibilities are endless. •

2005: Chloe Does Yale makes the New York Times Best Seller list. f Natalie Krinsky's masterpiece hasn't undermined the strength of the Yale brand, nothing can. While Yale merchandise has brought us plenty of memorable

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S arab Laskow1 a Senior zn Davenport College) is a Senior Editor of TN].

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large red notebook lies in the backseat of my car, slotted between the weekly newspapers from Denver, Milwaukee, Fargo, and a milk crate stuffed with road maps, incense, ski-vests, and a cell phone charger. The dirty, tattered notebook is filled with names and pictures, celebrating each person I've met since I drove out of New Haven in May. I know now that my efforts were insufficient, but what else could I do to create tangible memories of a summer on the road? In the form of a Kinglsey Fellowship, Yale wrote me a check for $6000 to travel across the country, interact with a broad swath of Americans, and use my experiences to compose a play. The play has yet to be written, but the people I met are already becoming characters in my mind. . One get-to-know-you conversation after another, proved that everyone in AmeriCa talks about the · same things; and I would offer similar pieces of information about my own life again and again, like a sitcom reintroducing its characters on each episode. If asked about my origins, I'd say that I was from New Haven; I preferred not to discuss my childhood in Atlanta unless it served as a setting for a story or saved me from,. ''Oh, so you're a Yankee?" I wanted to inhabit the role of a perpetual traveler, a curious and funloving girl with only a car and a few colorful stories. Did I squeeze myself into a stereotype? I met a girl

named Mollie with the same story in Eugene, Oregon. I never saw her again, and probably never will; but she will be forever summarized in my notebook as the traveler I met at the Oregon Country Fair. Ben from Seattle, on the other hand, deserves a more detailed description. By the time we had finished "rocking Portland," as he put it, we actually felt like we knew each other. Nonetheless, I have yet to muster the courage to write a full a·c count of him. I doodled his face slightly apelike, framed by brown dreadlocks and scribbled a few sentences about how we met, then left three blank sheets of paper and moved on to describe things I cared less about .. I came to realize that the people I grew to know best couldn't be confined to paper, could never exist again for me outside of our brief moments together. I generally •

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recall my path around Lake Michigan, through South Dakota and Wyoming, down, up, over, back down, up, and over. Llano, Texas. Rising Sun, Kentucky. Hannibal, Missouri. Keokuk, Iowa. Nederland, Colorado. Raymond, Minnesota. Small-town America exists. -Big-city America does too;. that's where I found the twenty-somethings living in under-furnished : apartments, working as cooks, and chain-smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. But small towns: I still dream of one town that I saw time and time again. The library was the size of Mamoun's, and was only open from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Main Street coincided with state highway 34 or maybe it was county highway E. The old-style gas station mini-mart served as the main grocery store, which really meant that it sold liquor, flour, and granulated sugar. The handpainted wooden signs .. ......_..... were peeling, and when I walked

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into the only restaurant in town, I stuck out like an iguana in a bowl of marshmallows. Everyone knew everyone, and I had to be ready to listen maybe even interject if I were bold enough to the town gossip bursting with scandal: The same terrible things people do to each other everywhere. People in small towns live in historic districts. There is always a rail-

Dharma Bums) and recalled one fascinating story aJter another: childhood misadventures with her sister who lived just a mile or two thataway on the farm they grew up on, which was about fifteen miles thisaway. Marjorie's nephew lives there now with · his wife and four kids. During our conversation, someone knocked softly on the rickety screen door. It was one of •

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or neighborhood caught my attention, and I sought to find it. Diverse contingents thrive in every town. I met small-town types and big-city types, Midwesterners and Pacific Northwesterners, the college sort and the "bad at school" sort; they're all different, yet I could relate to them in a bizarrely similar way. They offered me their stories, and I offered them a few of mine, and I began to suspect that the repetition I faced in my encounters was a testament to a common sympathy for the human experience. No matter where I went, the same conversations occurredthose famously and less-famously . '' .. .

road or a river carrying coal-loaded reminders of industry and progress. The older residents lead slow-paced lives and wield a sepia-stained wisdom that could never mature in a city bustling with billboards, trends, and state-of-the-art technological devices. These small towns don't even get cell phone reception. Many of the residents work the land, and a good way to find a centuries-old farmhouse is to look for a sign by a mailbox advertising eggs. You have to drive slowly on the dirt driveway though, so as not to run over the chickens that will eventually feed you. I met Marjorie this way. She gave me a handful of eggs (which I later cooked on my camping stove at the back of a bank parking lot very September 2005

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Marjorie's grandsons, who often visits her to play with the baby chickens in a cardboard box in the backroom. As I hopped into my car and drove off, I reached for my notebook to record a testament to Marjorie. Again, I felt strained by my pen's 1inutations, but I had to memorialize her in some way before my car traveled too far. By sunset, I would have reached this big city or that hip college town with the weekly arts paper unfolded in my lap. Often, the name of a certain street •

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over-discussed topics. Weather is the obv ious one. It's muggy in New Orleans, and it rains in Portland; I could describe a million "mishaps" ruined gardens, sore hipbones, braying animals all triggered b y the weather. Everyone seems to consistently share certain pieces of information more readily than others. Money. Everyone likes to talk about money. I know more salaries and rents and good deals than I could ev er use in a lifetime. Jordan 43

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pays $550 a month for his room in a four-person apartment. Alice pays $180. That . boy in Northern California saved $1500 to buy a motorcycle. An acre of land outside of Taos, New Mexico costs $1200. Larry bought his solar panel for just under $300 on eBay. If Scott works full-time for a week, he can take three weeks off and still pay rent '

money? "Yale gave me enough money to pay for my trip." How much? "Six-thousand dollars." · "You got $6000 to drive around the country?! Where's the catch?" "There isn't one." . "Yeah, hut what do you have to do?" •

piled on a growing stack of the same. Nor do I tell them that they may or may not be the inspiration for that play that I will put on in the fall, or that it's possible that I will forget them tomorrow or remember them forever. Another frequent topic was politics. Eric sat on a barstool next to me in New Orleans and insisted that I

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and have enough money to spend on food. Jacob pays $250 rent. Or maybe the entire apartment is $250, and Jacob pays $125 of it. It's qne detail I can't exactly remember. Sometimes, discussions of finances led to a discussion of my · own travels. Doesn't it cost a lot to drive around? Where do you get gas

"I told them I'd write a play. But, that's not what I have to do. What I have to do is prove that I used the money to travel around the country in my car. Just like I'm doing." I don't like to tell them that they will end up as a page in my notebook or that the phone numbers and addresses they give me will end up '

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needed to "shut Yale down" in order to prove that th~ nation's president is an idiot, a protest that would surely end the war in Iraq. Adam wanted to hide behind his bong · and keep tabs on what was going on around his room not the country. Kyle associated Yale with George W. Bush and wanted to know if everyone there is "like that." ''Well, I'm certainly not a younger female version of the .president." "No, apparently you aren't, they'd reply. For one, you're making your way alone around the country, risking danger from terrorists and serial killers. You naven't met any of those yet, have you?" "Nope." ''No creeps? I wouldn't trust pea. ple these days." ''You can recognize them."

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"I'm just saying, be careful. Doesn't anyone worry about you or anything? Don't you get scared and lonely?" "I'm having the tirne of my life right now. Even when I'm sitting in my car by myself, I can turn the music up really loud and roll the windows down and watch the countryside pass by like a moving landscape painting. It's perfect." I'm lucky, they ,_. tell me. My life, they . . say, is,. perfect. No hou·s5!,. ·no_ pets, no boyfti~·~, no job, and ' a·.• Y-ale education the world must be at your feet. Now, as I glance back at the red note. book sprawled across my backseat like a sleeping passenger, its p ages role of a cultural a n t hropologist plastered with sketches, anecdotes, , but I don't think I'll ever be and quotes from · the people I've capable of boil ing a human met, I fantasize and fear what they being like Bob d own to a few bullet points afte r k n owing him would write about me. I was somewhere south of for a fe·w minutes o r hours or . Chestnut, Illinois when I made the even years. A c ross A m e nca, I connection between this f e ar and found parallels in d e meanor, the unavoidability of forcing my conversation, and even cooking • • new acquaintances 1nto stereo- technique. These p a rallels didtypes. I had just passed the a ft er- n't justify the catego ri z ation of noon outside a small-town g a s sta- my new friends, howeve r; the y tion discussing life, the universe, only proved their c o mmon and everything else with 65 -year humanity. And why was I alway s old Bob. As I drove aw ay, the trying to reduce real experience bite-size c o c ktai l _party thought of compacting him into a to few paragraphs nearly mov ed me soundbytes? Was thi s the skill that Yale had tau g ht me? to tears. While turning onto the high- Couldn't I just le t life unfurl? After spending three days with way, I questioned my noteb ook, my method, my journey. I had Josh, a young man I tne t in Boulder, spent the summer playing the Colorado, I found myself moving /

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beyond the superficial to deeper matters. Books. Astronomy. Jim Jarmusch. Vapor Caves. I wanted to -hear what he had to say about Henry Miller, and I wanted to discuss art, education, and how to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. Like others before him, Josh can't be limited to college-ruled paper, but I still made the attempt. Despite the insufficiency of my writing, and my fear of anyone attempting to rewrite me, the pages in my notebook are irreplaceable memories of a sur nmer on the open road. Plus, my gauge reads 116,000.

Lane Rick, ajunior in Morse College, is a Circulation and S ubsciptions Manager of

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to by Mina Kimes me where to buy a drink ticket. His voice was barely audible amidst the clatter of huge gilded cups of beer banging against the tables. After procuring an overpriced glass of merlot, I scanned the crowd for classmates interning in New York for the summer. There were a few familiar faces, but the scene was dominated by graduates. In a city renowned for its diverse fashion sensibility, the look of the Yale Club was surprisingly square. As I navigated the room, I couldn't help but feel as though I was drowning in a sea of polo shirts, pearls, and pastel . Before sitting down, we made a pit stop for food. Again, my hopes were squashed; instead of fancy hors d'oeuvres, there were punch bowls brimming with Ruffles. A waiter waltzed by me, squeezing ranch dressing into plastic cups and spooning salsa out of a jar. ''It's like a cheap bar mitzvah;' I whispered. · "Hey, they're serving chili out of the same things they'- use in the dining halls!" She gestured towards hot, trays mounted over flames like pedestals- - monuments to canned beans and Spam. As we sat down, _I eyed two bins resembling the containers used to store jungle juice. A sign that read "decaf" was taped to one of them, assuaging my fears that I'd stumbled into a frat party. While drinking and nibbling on wings, our table assessed the crowd. Bald spots and canes notwithstanding, most of the graduates could pass for current students. Phrases like "post-colonialism," ''litigate," and "keg stand" exploded across the room like fireworks. I pointed out a table of lookalikes wearing identical Yale ties. Nat, a junior, smirked and stroked his buzz cut "This is one of the creepiest scenes you'll find;' he said. "That's kind of pessimistiC:' argued Alice, also a junior. ''I mean, there's something to be said for the tradition. It's fun to see Yale friends in the city like a home away from home." Despite the deflation of my shi-shi expectations and my distaste for blue-blooded homogeneity an admittedly hypocritical combinations of biases I found myself agreeing with Alice. After spending the summer in a city bursting with strangers, attending happy hour did make me feel as though I was a part of something. My thoughts wete interrupted by a heavy ~lash on my shoulder. I turned and saw an huge blond man trudging by with an overflowing Mary's cup. "Sorry," he said sheepishly. I smiled and shrugged. like Yale, happy hour is a crossroads between Ivy League tradition and Animal House antics. To be a part · of it means accepting the occasional waterfall of cheap beer.

s my friend and I turned the corner of 42nd and Vanderbilt, she knit her brows with concern. "I heard that these guys were thrown out for wearing sneakers." I snapped my gum. "No way." She nodded solemnly. ''I swear ... did you look at the website?" The website for the Yale Club of New York devotes an entire section to the dress code. ''Inappropriate attire;' my friend parroted to me, "includes, but is not limited to, denim, shores, t-shirts, sandals ... " I swailowed my gum and assessed my post-work get-up, which was indisputably ''business casual," but had melted onto my back during the sweltering subway ride to Grand Central. I felt like a limp piece of steamed broccoli. I had expected more fanfare. According to the website, the building boasts "22 floors of home away from home"-a fact that I confirmed by joy-riding the elevator. Hidden within its unassuming exterior are three top:-tier restaurants, a full gymnasium with squash courts, a stocked library, and several bedrooms that members can utilize as they see fit. Typically, membership is limited to due. paying Yale alumni, graduate students, and faculty. In June and July however, this stipulation ·is lifted on Thursday evenings for a special happy hour during which all Yale alumni are invited to enjoy snacks (free), alcoholic beverages (not free), and the enlightened company of their fellow Eli's (invaluable?). In addition to businessmen hoping to network and former art majors prowling for free food, the event attracts a large, fake ill-toting undergraduate population. . Besides the navy flag, the club's entrance was marked by a group of yuppies outside~ chain-smoking and hissing into their cell phones. I pulled out my Yale ID and waited. The doorman, however, paid me no notice, and the receptionist barely glanced up when we entered. I shoved my ID back int~ m y wallet. ''I can't believe they don't check," I murmured to my friend. She raised her eyebrows. ''Disappointed?" The lobby, on the other hand, met m y vision of elitist exclusivity; the mahogany decor, plush carpeting, and austere portraits all matched the style I'd come to associate with Ivy League traditionalism. A grandfather clock ticked menacingly by the coat check, and two men seated in overstuffed arm chairs stroked their beards. We followed a noisy group of freshmen to the third floor. I .ike the foyer, the furnishings were dark wood. Chandeliers swung from the vaulted ceiling, and old photographs and dimly-lit sconces decked the walls. The ambience of the gigantic room was only disrupted by the crowds of raucous drinkers. The resulting mood was a cross • between a speakeasy and an upscale ski lodge; I half expected to see M ina Kimes, ajunior in Davenport Coikge, is Production Manager o Al Capone saunter in wearing a pink parka. TN.l As we wriggled to the bar, I bumped into Pete, a senior who told •

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I don't want to work for The New Journal! 1have better things to do with my time than work for a magazine that has received every major

writing prize at Yale as well as the Rolling Stone College Journalism Award. Besides, you and I both know that The New Journal is just a training ground formedia types like TNJ founder, and

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Pulitzer Prize winner, I

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Daniel Yergin or past . TNJ staffer, and editor

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of the Chicago > Tribune, Jack Fuller. r · •· · And you think just .• .. ·--·•._ .•. because The New

"'"'· - · · .· Journal is the oldest magazine at Yale and also has the largest circulation, I'm ·supposed to be ·· ···•· · . -· impressed? Give me some credit. So, l.. beg of you, go ask someone who cares . •

Well, while we won't be seeing him at any TNJ meetings, we would

love to see you!

The New Journal is looking for innovative writers, DTP demigods, cutting-edge designers, dynamic photographers , artistes extraordinaires, business tycoons, and interested, interesting Yalies in general. If one of the above applies to you, come to one of our two snappy organizational meetings or call us.

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