•
•
www.sohohair.com
Publisher
Student Discounts
Romy Drucker
Editor-in-Chief Adriane Quinlan ·< .
Managing Editors ,.<
Jon'!) Dach, Helen Eckinger
Designer Sara Schneider
Business Manager Nick Handler
Senior Editors Mina Kimes, David Zax
Production Manager Nicole AJian
Research Director Emi!JKoh
Web Designer ~·
:.~
Nicholas Moryl
...
Circulation and Subscription Manager Lauren Hanuon Staff
Tess
•
BEST
Flizal:ldh
Vao•ica
Members and Directors
•
Joshua Civin, Peter R Cooper, Tom Griggs, Brooks Kelley, Daniel Km tz-Phelan, Kathrin I assib.,
en •
Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim
•
Sleeper, David Slifka, Fred Strebeigh, Th011tas Strong,
John Sw.msbwg •
Advisors Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Richard Conniff,
Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin •
Friends M1Chad Addiscxl, Mat iaone _A! lSI in and Ru II~ Steve Ba1b.I, J Neda Banc1 jec, Ma1gat:ct Bauer, FJ 1 dly Anson M Bcud,JJ: B1ai:re Bennett, Richard Brndley, Ma1rba Brnnt, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Jay Carney, Daphne Chu, Josh Civin, Jonathan M Oark, Clement, Andy Court, Masi Albut J Fox, Mrs. Howard fux, David Frcr•1•an, Geoffrey Fried, David
•
91 0 whalley avenue new haven 065 I 5
203.389.3369
•
55 whitney avenue new haven 065 I 0
Greeulxrg, Stepheu HeDman, lama Heymann, Getald Hwang, WaltrrJacob,Jane Kamensky, Tma Kdley, Roger I .c wis E. I eb1 111an, Jill I Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Marrha E. Neil, Pd• r eil, Howard H. Newman, Sean ~ I am a Pappano, J11lie Pete 1s, I .ewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, C Randal , Robert Julia Prestnn I anh'!11 RaJ >in, Fairfax ' Raock>1ph, Stuart Rohrer AaJccn and Arthur Sager, Ricban:l Shields, w. Hat I q•ton Sic"le\ I isa SaM Iii JaD, Scott Simpson, Adioa and David Sulsman, 1:bo 1 JaS Stroc tg Ma•garira Whi1deall• •, Wilsor a, Danid. · and Angt"b S«• rn
203.776.YARN
.yarnLLC.corr1
·~
receive a S% discount with this ad
2
•
'IH E NEW JOURNAL
•
•
Volume 39, Number 1 September 2006 The 1nagazine about Yale
and New Haven •
•
•
12
Model Minorities Yale struggles to define its Ethnic Counselor Program.
by Emily Koh
26
A Spiritual Conversion The modernization of the Yale Divinity School.
by Nicole
~an
•
Foreign Objects 10
•
by Mina Kimes __
,,_,__.. ·.·
-·
Fight Club
24
by Russell Brandom
4
Points of Departure
20
Shots in the Dark
22
Profile
•
The Star Gazer by Aditi Rarnakrishnan
32
Essay Shifting G ears by Sophia Lear
34
The Critical Angle
••
Final D estinations by Jon Hood & A driaoe Quinlan
38
Endnote The Girl W ho Cried H elp!' by Margaret Mapondera •
THE NEW JOCRNALis publish...! m-~ rin-=s during the acackmic year by TifE NEW JOGRNAL at Yale. Inc.. P.O. Box 3432 Yale Starioo, ew H=en, CT 0652:0. Offir:t. aMrcs•· 305 Crown Strcu. P~ 203.432.0520. All corm nts · 2005 TifE NEW JOL"RNAL at Yale, Inc. All rights r~ · • irher in wholoe or 111 pan without wriru n P' r wissioo of ~ pnhlisha and rditor-in-drid is pmhibitr d While this rrrogarirv is published by Yale College smdo ru::s, Yale Urmeosiry is not rcsponS1ble for its cont~ms. Suen tboosand &~hundred of ~cb issue~ distributed &:ec to nw rnhe:rs of the Yale and • ew Hn-en u;numnnity. W>soc:ri' • ~ anilable to~ ontsick the •rra Raa:s: On~ yur, $18. Two years, $32. TifE 'EW JOURNAL is prinr...J by Turley Publicotions, P.ln..,r, MA; · and billing !oCXvic• san: pm"idcd by Colman hoo»"'eping of_ 1ew H:rren. THE NEW JOL"RNAL en~ letttt:s to the rditor and comnw n on Yale and ·~,.,&..-en issues.. Write to Eclitornls, P.O. Box 3432 Yale nn;on, ew H=en, CI 0652:0. Alllcm rs foe publication must in~ addttss and sigrurtme. w~ reso ··~ th~ right to rdir all ltuers for public:ation.
September 2006
3
•
'
•
•
•
The Brine Arts
On Wednesdays, he ventures uptown to the Union Square Greenrriarket, where he hawks his line of nine pickle varieties to passersby. Today, as he offers one visitor a sample of his pickled okra, Field warns that th~ vegetable is still in ''beta-testing." He hopes it will eventually join the official Rick's Picks roster, rounding his stable out to an even ten. If there is a pickl~ avant garde, Field is at its forefront: he takes a mischievous, experitnental attitude toward the process, and his okra will join a family whose members include Phat Beetz whose brine includes rosemary and allspice, and Bee 'n' Beez bread-and-butter style pickles sweetened with coconut, ginger, and dried cherries. · Field participates in a storied tradition. The Egyptians employed a technique similar to pi · to preserve their dead, using the same word to denote both embaltnment and the process by which they cured food. Etymologically, "pickle" derives from the Middle Dutch noun for the brine in which the food was preserved To speak of the pickle, then, is necessarily to speak of its creation, and its creators. Food -preservationists and their ilk have always been a colorful crowd--consider Wi11iarn Buck1and, the nineteenth-centm y Oxford professor who served his dinner guests the meat of a wooly manunoth, preserved in ice for thousands of years and Field is no exception. His college years coincided with the golden age of Yale's air guitar scene, when he and his friends performed as the Rolling Stones at Berkeley's annual contest, where their entourage included an "air roadie." Namra11y, Field was Mick Jagger, and his stand in Union Square is an encore to this illusory perforr nance. The man is ps a magician: if air guitar is a kind of sleight of hand, then pickling is '
ON A WARM, BREEZY day in August, four men have come to the farmers' market in New York City's Union Square to ask Rick Field about pickled okra. "Okra," Field muses, '<well, she's like a woman." When it comes to the art of pi · he informs them, "you can take the measure of most vegetables easily, but okra is unpredictable." Field, who graduated from Yale in 1985, is the rnan behind Rick's Picks, a line of artisanal pickles that he started in his New York City apartment nine years ago. Tall and tan, the former EngJish major bears little resemblance to the wizened picklers of yore. He is at once professional and slighdy disheveled, a Lost Boy who, upon 1} he had grown up, turned to brine instead of the botde. Field considered himself only a recreational pickler, tinkering with his mother's recipes on weekends, until 2001, when he atteuded the Rosendale International Pickle Festival in Rosendale, New York The festival, whose official instrument is the piccolo, boasts a pickle toss, a pickle · · contest, and a gleefully cutthroat pickling ' contest. Field's wares won six ribbons, including Best in Show; in 2002, his pickles again took the top tide, and less than two years later, Rick's Picks officia11y incorporated His Brooklyn apar 11 nent could no longer accot •nnodate the burgeoning pickle t1 npire a few hundred gherkins are nobody's ideal roommates. So Field now produces his pickles in upstate New York, but runs his business from Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side of ~tt:ruano...once the heart of the city's pickle industry. '
•
akin to alchemy, as Field transforms the
diffident cucumber into the jaunty pickle. The averred "critical · · g skills" Field acquired at Yale are on full display as he tends to his pickles: No nuance is left unexplained, no potential pairing is left unmentioned, and no customer is left behind. He even assuages hesitant vegetarians; one woinan recoils after he tells · her that the GT 1000s (a c_uirieq_tomato pickle) will go well with ~urgers, and refuses to pick up the jar again until ~e proposes she pair them with cheese instead. Presiding over his pickles at the Greenmarket, Field calls out, "How's everyone doing today? It's hard to aq~ue with today." He holds court until sundown, telling jokes about asparagus, singing a song about a co~ offering Rick's Picks stickers to children. To speak of Rick's pickles, then, is to speak of their creator.
'--Elizabeth Gumport
High Glass lN A WORKSHOP ON the first floor of Sterling Chunistry La~ Daryl Smith is using a six.Up hand to~ to form glass tubing into a s · -order Buchner fimnel for a research facility upstairs. The blazing gas-and-oxygen lamp which he uses to shape the glass _exceeds two thousand degrees. While he fires one end of the glass, the rest of the tubing is heated by a fourbarrel Bunsen burner flan•ing electric blue. Smith is Yale's only full-ritne scieutific glassblower, the Don of glassblowing at
• •
4
•
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
•
Yale. He's been taking the heat since time to get good at it," he reflects. While today's tools are more high-tech, 1986, when he entered the only school in "Complex stuff there's no way to . something still feels antiquated about the the country that offers full-time instruc- machine-make that," he says, pointing to craft, which possesses a certain mom• I tion in scientific glassblowing Salem a vacuum system that looks like a fun and-pop feel that most trades have lost. . . . Community College in New Jersey. house for a water droplet, more Chihuly "Glass is an umbrella term for a numAccording to the American Scientific than Curie. ber of different materials," Smith contin- · .. Glassblowers Society, Smith belongs to a With expert technique, Smith blows, ues. ''There are fifty thousand different rare breed: In some states, there is only stretches, gathers, and thickens the glass forms of glass." With understated move' • one glassblower. . tubing as it is held in place by a glassblow- ments, he scores and cuts a quartz glass At Yale, he teaches Chern 565L: ing lave, which spins and supports the rod, fills a 400 mL beaker with water, and Introduction to Scientific Glassblowing, a ends of the tubing, freeing up his hands places the shortened quartz rod and a preclass in which Yale graduate students use to manipulate the torches, forceps, and cut piece of Pyrex into the flame of a small torches to create scientific and dec- other forming tools. '~lot of it is feel," Bunsen burner. Within seconds, the Pyrex orative wares. For many students, it feels he says matter-of-factly. A man used to grows soft and liquidous, like the bulletmore like an apprenticeship than a lab. · laboring with his hands, Smith performs vision CGI sequence of a Matrix movie. ''The glass is very forgiving," says Fabiola the ambidextrous act of maneuvering the The quartz, on the other hand, is white Barrios-Landeros, a former student. "If oxygen valve to raise the temperature hot, like a glow stick at a rave. With gradeyou made a mistake you just melt it again of the flame and removing extra glass · school charm, he has demonstrated how and start over." now in a liquid state by wrapping its melting points differentiate diverse types like the glass he works with, Smith is flow around a solid rod. ''You've got to of glass, and how glass flows together to read what's happening," he says as he become a single piece . sturdy -and practical. His littered desk is a ..,. ... peers at the flame through yellowed safeOn the prototype glassware pieces he :vaY$1:JlEO!L~or orders and invoices, many designs, he places a white decal With his ftoJil rX~ professors who contact him to ty goggles. One hundred years ago, techniques like signature. It is glass couture: An original d~~J?-prototype glassware for their laboratories. Smith also does glass work for the one Smith now practices involved Daryl Smith. institutions outside the University. ''What whale oil or lard and a wick attached to a I like about [the work] is it takes a long pedal .through which air was pumped. -Romy Drucker ••
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
I
•
•
,/
~
,.
-r
~
;
-
~
Daryl Smith handles the heat as Yale} onfy full-time glassblower. September 2006
•
5
•
I tali an Lessons ·
General) Academic and Scholarly Books The Source for Books About Yale and Books by Alumni and Faculty •
World Language Center A Distinctive Selection ofYale Apparel) Gifts and Keepsakes
hardly a thriving metropolis. Consequently, the arrival and inteTHE MOST POPULAR gration of a group of American plaza in Amelia, college students, however small, Italy surrounds Ia was conspicuous and often porta romana the ungainly. · Roman gate. Old For at least the first week, we men · with wrinkled couldn't figure out how to stop faces are perma- the interminable offerings of nent fixtures on its pasta, veal, and wine at every meal. stone benches, My host mother was so horrified where they . ~atch . and comment by my habit of leaving the house on the young teenagers, shop with wet hair that she presented owners, and farmers who flow by me with a blow drier. The family in Fiats and on Vespas. This July, I stayed with was even more disthe elderly gentlemen sitting sen- mayed by my obsessive punctualitry encountered a few unfamiliar ty, encouraging me to eat slowly, faces pale ones not yet tanned nap generously, and cultivate the by the Mediterranean sun and art of relinquishing control. . lacking the strong features of the Our host farnilies and neightownspeople and overheard bors eased the ffansition. When a snippets of loud.English as fifteen classmate expressed a PJl-SSion for ,-,. Yale students swept into the tiny toasted bread covered- with olive medieval town. oil, tomatoes, and garlic a tradiPerched on the rocky, tree-cov- tional type of bruschetta · his ered hills of the Umbria region, family cooked the dish over and Amelia's historic quarter il centro over again. Another student, who storjco is encased by stone walls demonstrated an interest in the that were constructed in the arts, was welcomed into her host Middle Ages. From ·ten p.m. until parents' glass blowing workshop. the early morning, its citizens per- One host father took his Yalie to fect the art of seeing and being his orchards, patiently showing seen, Ia passeggiata, which involves her the trees he bred and crosswalking up and down the main pollinated as a hobby. In the late afternoons, my host promenade, maybe stopping for a drink along the way. Coffee is sister Sonia and I returned home served black, sweet, and scorch- for pranzo, the huge midday meal. ing, ready three seconds after a The dishes seemed soaked in delirequest for "un cife~ per piacere." cious, nutty olive oil, which came Stress is nonexistent; family, partially from the olives grown in sacred; punctuality, relative. the grove outside my bedroom Discussions on any topic, from window, which are brought to the politics to relationships to cook- frantoio, or factory, by local famiing, are heated, lyrical, and come lies. The three parts of the accompanied by emphatic physical olive flesh, oil, and seed are gestures. separated by machine, then the oil The other students and I were is filtered naturally by gravity and enrolled in Italian 130, an inten- bottled. The slow, meticulous sive sumtner course for second nature of the process reflects the year language students. While attitude of ilie entire town. This Yale offers a plethora of study- was also how we learned Italianabroad programs in major cities slowly, naturally. such as Paris, St. Petersburg, Over the weeks, our "fieldPrague, and Berlin, Amelia is work" became much more impor·~
~
•
.
6
•
•
THE NEW JOURNAL
..,
tant than homework. For our group, this enchantingly secluded town was a classroom without walls, schedules, or blackboards. Although we had three hours of grammar instruction with two Yale professors every morning, our real learning environment was Amelia itself. As our class acculturated, some of us began co forget basic English words and attempted to speak to parents and friends back home in Italian. We asked waiters and cashiers to avoid speaking to us in English, assuring them: "St~ si parliamo italiano"-"Yes, yes we speak Italian." With these words, we received smiles and winks across counters. We screamed "Forza Azzlld' alongside the tOW!)Speople and waved Italian flags¡"from_the windows of cars, joining tlle.;nidnight parade in celebration-of Italy's World Cup victory. By the end of July, we no longer felt like guests. Eventually, some of us were mistaken for natives. Tourists even asked for directions. At the sweltering Roma- Fiumicino airport at the end of my stay, I heaved my two overweight suitcases onto the scale. The Alitalia attendant asked me, "How many bags?" I responded, "Due." We chatted in Italian, complaining about the heat. Italian 130 had evolved into a course that had no set boundaries, that followed us out of Italy. On my last morning in Amelia, my host parents took me to the small bar opposite Ia porta romano for a cappuccino and a pastry filled with liquid chocolate. It was a gray day, heavy with parting, and our words were few. The old men were already perched at their roost, reading newspapers and debating. As I shared their break-of-day ritual, I wondered how I had ever grabbed a granola bar for breakfast on the road. The old men cast curious glances at my light hair, my long limbs. "Odd," they must have thought, "not a word of English."
-Tess Dearing A corner of Amerlia, Ita!J's centro storico.
September 2006
7
•
Bulldogs in Kabul "ANYONE
•
•
•
•
SAYS
that disarmament is for the weak has never hauled old Soviet artillery down Afghan mountain roads." From a laptop in Afghanistan, Yale senior Whitney Haring-Smith describes the process of disarming an Afghan town nestled deep in the Salang Mountains northwest of Kabul. The munitions are left over from the 1979-89 Soviet invasion, part of a 'five-metric-ton stockpile being handed over by a local mujahideen commander. Haring-Smith is tagging along beside two technical ammunition experts, a representative from the Afghani Ministry of Defense, two large transport trucks, two pickups, ten Afghan police, and a group of laborers. The artillery has to be carried down the mountain by hand before a donkey convoy could be assembled to transport the weapons out. Here, Haring-Smith finds that solutions to 21st century problen1s
•
•
•
•
WHO
•
•
•
• •
•
are often holdovers from the 14th als from other countries: an century: Donkeys remain the most Albanian munitions expert, a forconvenient means of transporta- mer member of the Bangladeshi • Special Forces, and soldiers from uon . The week-long disarmament Kosovo, Germany, the United project, which Haring-Smith Kingdom. Every team member is with a National describes as his "favorite field mis- clipped sion," is one of several he partici- Associate an Afghan who serves pated in this summer as an assistant as a translator and link to the counto Afghanistan's New Beginnings try's local and governmental netProgramme (ANBP), a branch of works. the United Nations De:velopment Haring-Smith is expected to coordinate missions like this one in Programme. So how does an American stu- the Sarang Mountains, where dent from an Ivy League university ·ANBP collects serviceable ammu• come to spend his summer dispos- nition and hands it over to the ing of military ammunition in Afghan military. The group perAfghanistan? forms work that is vital to the longDuring a ~ore mainstream term stability of Afghanistan; it internship at the Pentagon the pre- destroys faulty ammunition that vious summer, Haring-Smith first poses a safety hazard to the local made contact with . ANBP staff population. Haring-Smith's involvement members. There was no formal application the "disbandment of comes at a crucial time in illegal armed groups" isn't your Afghanistan's development. The typical summer internship but transition to democracy has been Whitney submitted a resume and difficult inefficiency and corrupgot the job. He is the only college tion have eroded confidence student, as well as the only among both Afghans and internaAmerican, working with the pro- tional donors. Anti-government gram. The majority of his cowork- forces, such as the Taliban in the ers are former tnilitary profession- south and east and Tajiks in the •
•
•
. .
•· •
•
-.-
·-» -
. - . -~--
.-:·
•
i
E
"'-...c
at
• •i
% >o
..
.1::
~
'0 >o
•!
:;,
0
u
.
UtJ
modern and ancient modes of transportation are used in
8 • •
'IHENEWJOURNAL •
•
Panjshir Valley, · are fueling the growth of an internal arms trade and breeding widespread violence and instability. While roads are under construction throughout the country, citizens still lack basic services like electricity and running water. In major cities like Kabul, with a population of five to six million, police have rolled back proposed reforms and overlooked human rights violations. As a result, dissatisfaction is • growing among Afghans who blame the lack of progress on corrupt officials. ''Afghanistan is a country trying to make a leap from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first century in only a few decades," writes Haring-Smith in an e-mail. He cites a local warlord who occupies a · centuries-old role similar to that of the feudal lords of Medieval Europe. "Only now," HatingSmith says, "he's reachable by satellite phone." Overall, Hating-Smith sums up his experience in Afghanistan as "excellent." The Political Science major especially appreciated how the experience "made some of the costs of the Iraq war much more real." Such lessons aren't learned in a classroom. ''Afghanistan will get worse before it gets better," HatingSmith wrote in late August. "I remember once talking with a warlord there. He asked where I was going after I left Afghanistan. I told him that I was going to the United States, and he responded, 'take me with you."' _ -Nick Handler
:READINGS-
WITH CHOIR
5.00 PM EVERY SUNDAY IN ACADEMIC T DWIGHT C EL (OLD C PUS) •
September 2006
9
•
•
l
• by
•
•
Lna
•
Lmes
•
n the patio of a cafe in a crowded Seoul shopping district, two teenage girls sip coffee and take turns nibbling on a wedge of green tea cake. One is dressed for school in a pleated navy skirt, crisp oxford, vest, and tie. The other, whose bangs sweep across her forehead in a trendy blunt cut, has thrown an oversized t -shirt over her uniform. In block letters, the shirt declares: ''YALE ROWING." Over six thousand miles from New Haven, Korean teenagers and nostalgic Eli expatriates can purchase Bulldog · paraphernalia from an unlikely source: E-Land, a self-described "Harvard & Yale Campus Shop" with four locations in Seoul and dozens more throughout
•
Asia. The franchise claims to be the only store in Korea to hold official rights to the University name, which it brandishes on t-shirts, blazers, sweaters, and even knock-off Chuck Taylors with a ubiquity that presupposes familiarity. Most Koreans, however, have never seen more than the name itself. Jong Pil Kim, an E-land employee, attempts to explain the University's popularity in a country that sends only a handful of promising youths to Old Campus each year. "Personally, I have never met anyone who goes to Yale," he admits, adjusting his "Richard" nametag and running his fingers through his spiky black hair. "But everyone in Seoul knows that Harvard and Yale are the top two schools. If you don't know that,
you're crazy." He hops down from the store counter and points at the ceiling, where the pennants of American colleges spiral outwards in a nautilus pattern. "Originally, E-Land wanted all eight Ivy League schools. I believe they were only able to get the rights to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and .... " He pauses for a moment, sneaking a glance at the forest green pennant· hanging limply over his . h ead . "Dart . .. mou th';>" Throughout the shop, circular racks brim with pleated white mini skirts, oxford button downs, and distressed jeans, all stamped with university names and crests. It's Abercrombie & Fitch meets the Yale Bookstore, ftltered through the lens of a Korean• tourist. It's also incredibly popular; at least a dozen packs of giggling schoolgirls file through E-Land's doors in the course of an hour, contributing to the franchise's $13.3 mi11ion in annual revenue. Despite the variety promised by the whorl of pennants, nearly half of the inventory is devoted to Yale. Mannequins whittled to smaller propor. tions than their Western counterparts pose in T-shirts advertising a variety of nonexistent organizations has anyone heard of the ''Yale Yacht Club?" Prices seem to correspond to both qna1ity and authenticity: A baby blue ''Yale . -,:r " amptng vermont tee costs a mere ten C thousand won (approximately nine U.S. dollars), while a seersucker blazer embroidered with a near-perfect representation of the navy college crest retails for about sixty bucks. But does near perfection signify legit-
•
..., z
-:
1-
E
•-c :IE
:.:
Window shoppers check out authentic Yale apparel in Seoul, Korea. 10
•
• •
'!HE NEW JOURNAL
• •
•
•
•
•
•
• • •
•
• •
•
•
• •
•
•
imacy? Donald Filer, Yale's Associate Secretary and trademark licensing coordinator, · attests to E-Land's "official" status. "The University ·owns the Yale trademark, which we license in areas other than education, like apparel," he says. ''We've registered it both in the U.S. and internationally, at stores such as E-Land." Such an arrangement · brings in revenue to Yale without damaging the University's identity as a brand. Yale wor.k s with three foreign licensing agents middlemen in Korea, Japan, and Italy "to ensure that the university's reputation is protected," says Filer. As a result, Yale whiskey and Yale machine guns probably won't be coming to stores near you. ''We're careful to ensure that people don't put the name on whatever they want," he says. "Companies have to send us images, or samples of what they sell ... the office tends to get overrun with them someritnes." . But E-Land isn't simply selling apparel and accessories it's selling a simulacrum of the university itsel£ For customers who have never seen the college,
.
:· "
'• . ·:
Jong Pi/ Kim stands before a displqy
o/
((Yale" merchandise.
se ia-tone a
.
sailing, rowing, and jazz t-shirts, there are numerous faux-antique curios that contribute to the vintage atmosphere. Dark blue sconces jut out from the walls, casting a ditn light on miscellany
Korean production of ''America: The Musical." In her actual role as shopgirl, she embodies the inaccuracy of E-Land's representation. The employees say it isn't about
on •
e an
•
e stores
stu ents zn
a vertisements zs tnore
the store's distorted portrayal is the last word on Yale. And while the contrivance of phony student groups seems harmless, the depiction of phony students in the store's sepia-toned advertisements is more disturbing: Nearly all of the models are blonde and white. Last year, 12°/o of Yale's incoming freshmen were Asian American; in E-Land's version of the university, a Korean teenager would be a racial anotnaly. The homogeneous student body isn't the only anachronism perpetuated by Seoul's "Harvard & Yale Campus Shop." In addition to the countless
Septer n her 2006
s seetns
e iction o
0
cC'G . ' :IE
•
contrivance o arJn ess, ·t e
.
istu~ in
•
ite.
like an old-fashioned radio, a bust of Yale at all. "We know about the John Harvard, and a framed Lux et American schools," Jong Pil says, "but Veritas crest. A weather-beaten leather we have our owri elite universities in armchair sags beside shelves lined with Korea, like Seoul ational. With this imported books random encyclope- store, we're not actually promoting dias, a ragged copy of a novel titled Harvard or Yale; we're promoting the Freshman Q uarterback all beneath idea of a school logo as fashion." Judy-Olivia agrees, then offers her photographs of Harkness Tower and opinion: cci think I like Yale better Harvard Square. As Jong Pil assists a shopper with than Harvard. But only because we a necktie, a petite female coworker put their logo on fancier things." with an "Olivia" natnetag rnans the T'\.1 counter. <'My name is Judy," she says. In her midriff-baring, red-and-whitechecked oxford and denim miniskirt, Mina Kime~ a S enior in Davenport College, is she could be mistaken for the lead in a a S enior E ditor o/ TN]. 11
·-
12
erlvy
pro
ceton have toward d 1n ncan as anent affairs." Yale's other mentoring • tltuuqns, which are generally Counselor Program has the t1c1sm, reststance, 1n some cases, total indif,_. .... ority student regards his or ,.~_,._._tly and~ in turn~ respo~" • elor Program in a •
•
•
•
•
er 2006
•
•
•
•
•
manner. All students agree on only spell out the program's purpose: acknowledges this problem and one thing about the program: that "Although the problems of all incoming believes the University should it is very vaguely defined. freshmen are in most respects similar, reconsider how it presents the proNot surprisingly, the University those of minority students can nonethe- gram to its students. "We have is in the process of re-evaluating less be different if various acculturation often put our ethnic counselors in the program's perceived inconsis- pressures accomparry their ac!Justment at a very ambiguous and difficult tencies and redefining its purpose. Yale. Such a rystem of counseling pro- position," he says, "and I think we In August 2005, Dean George vides minority freshmen with ·a gr~up of as an institution need to do [a] betLevesque assumed the title of counselors JJ!ho have coped successjui!J ter job of defining and describing Dean of Freshman Affairs, a with similar difftcultif!S." · the program." If Yale administrators have But the literature does not articnewly-created position that requires him to review many of the ulate any of the ''similar 'difficul- trouble articulating the role of the . ·"· ' College's freshman programs. ties" successfully coped · with by Ethnic Counselor Program, it's Though he has spent a great deal of minorities. The description is delib- easy to understand how a freshman time evaluating the Ethnic erately vague; it makes no specific might fail to grasp its purpose. Counselors Program, he has yet to comment on the experience of Mona Elsayed, now a Junior in Edwards College, address the concerns of those who minorities at Yale. It intends to Jonathan .. . . . expand, rather than narrow, the checked the box marked "Other" CtltlClZe lt. The University's ambiguous counselor's responsibilities. In the when her Yale application asked description is ·unlikely to help him. process, it fails to . justify the need her to select the ethnicity she the program. Levesque strongly identified with most One University website attempts to for •
•
•
~.
._., ...
Jade Pagkas-Bather, secondfrom lift, attends the Freshman Ethnic Counselor Chocolate Fountain Reception.
14
•
•
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
•
•
•
strongly. She does not remember explicitly mentioning her Egyptian background anywhere on her application and was surprised to learn that she'd been assigned an Ethnic Counselor. "I was impressed that so much investigation had been done to discover I was not white," she wryly notes. "Nobody really explained to me what the point of it is." Elsayed is a first-generation American with two Egyptian parents, but her heritage did not greatly influence her upbringing. she checked "Other" because it best described her ethnicity, not because she considered her Egyptian heritage particularly relevant to her identity. She didn't go so far as to fill in the line next to the box that asked her to specify her ethnic group; "Other" suited her fine. Jade Pagkas-Bather, who served as an Ethnic Counselor last year, felt differently when she marked the box on her application. She is part Jamaican, part Greek, and, unlike Elsayed, sees her race as a defining aspect of her identity. On the Facebook.com, ~agkas-Bather is a member of groups such as •
•
._,._.
::. . . h . :; : oJ..-:·. .•
..
~
'
.-: -:·:
«
::-
·.
i<
...'•
...,. &
'
.' '*
_,.
,•,
&
•
Students
of all ethnicities gather at the A J-Am H ouse to we/come f reshmen. •
•
nzc counse or nee
eJCtra
e ? •
azrs "First Generation-ers," ''SMHAC: Students of Mixed Heritage and Culture,'' and "The Mulatto Army." When Yale asked her to identify with a specific ethnic group, the box she checked meant something to her. She had positive experiences with her residential and ethnic counselors as a freshman, motivatSeptember 2006
ing her to apply for the position going into her senior year. ale institued the E thnic Counselors Program in 1972, thirty-four years after the inception of the re side ntial counselor position. At the tim e, the campus was feeling the r everber ations o f the V ietnam ·w ar an d the
Civil Rights Movement; Yale had rec ently gone co-ed and New Haven politics were immersed in the trial of Black Panthers Bobb y Seale and Ericka Huggins. The Yale Dai/y News followe d these mounting tensions in a series of 1972 articles: "Law Applic ants for Minorities Fall" (February 17, 1972) , "Study Finds Broad Gap in 15
•
'
be the University's top priority. "It is not merely enough to accept minority students," it read. "The University community must make every effort to [e] nsure that these students find Yale a rewarding and fulfilling place." One stride toward self- improvement was spearheaded by Yale President Kingman Brewster. Brewster commissioned a committee to collect information from alumni, faculty, and students and use it to produce "broad recommendations concerning the future of Yale College over the next 20 years." Because of the charged atmosphere, it was clear that these recommendations would address issues of race. The committee's findings spurred the creation of the Ethnic Counselor Program. The University modeled the ethnic counselors after the residential freshman counselors, but the two types of advisors are ultimately chosen by two distinct groups: College deans select the residential counselors, while the deans of Yale's four Cultural Centers choose 12 rising seniors to be ethnic counselors, pairing each with a residential college that is not necessarily their own. Ethnic counselors have two roles: to counsel all minority students in their assigned college and to assist freshmen who have checked a box deemed similar to their own. For example, all freshmen who identify as "Asian American or Asian, incl. Indian ... Subcontinent" are divided between the ethnic counselors selected by the Asian American Cultural Center. Cultural houses are a gathering place for freshmen. Because a student's ethnic idenMinority Enrollment" (April 10, Students were concerned that tity can't be reduced to a checked 1972), "Law School Conuoittee Yale was not doing its part to box, _the current systetn tnisplaces Studies Discrimination" (November attract minority applicants. An many freshmen. Elsayed ended up 17, 1972), ccDisgruntled Black DJ's April 12, 1972 YDN editorial with two ethnic counselors during Refuse to Broadcast" (February 15, expressed an undergraduate belief her freshman year. Her first coun1972). that minority recruitment should selor sent her a flurry of emails •
16
•
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
•
'
.
.
' 0
.
about various events and study breaks, but Elsayed was uninterested, replying that she wished to remain uninvolved. In response, the University transferred Elsayed to a different counselor whose ethnicity was more similar to her own her first was an AfricanAmerican female, the second an Arab male. The switch brought Elsayed no closer to her second counselor or to the program. She wondered why the ¡ University would think she would better connect to someone of her own race. "[M]any students find their ethnic counselor extremely valuable, but others find the program redundant," admits Dean Levesque. "Some freshmen resent that they were assigned an ethnic counselor without requesting one. 'Why does
Yale think I need extra help? Is something wrong with me?"' Elsayed thinks similarly. "Why would I want to be friends with you
a
versity that stresses a diverse student body. "I don't need to congregate with other people who aren't white for stability," she says.
â&#x20AC;˘
ver
â&#x20AC;˘
0
n
conce 0
ou nee our
'' ona
on the basis of not being white?" After three years at Yale, she has amassed a diverse group of friends-one of the goals of a uni0
Elsayed believes that the Ethnic Counselors Program shields._ students from the social challenges that arise from living in a mixed
Cultural houses like LA Casa welcome freshmen with events like this Puerto Rican dinner. September 2006
17
•
•
campus environment rather than encouraging them to confront such challenges. "Isn't the point of diversity that you have to be on your own and defend your background?" she says. "It's a very foreign concept to me that you need to be with your kind." Still, other minority students may draw comfort from hanging out with students who share their ethnicity. When Pagkas-Bather was a freshman, the University was embroiled in the debate over affirmative action. Demonstrations and editorials against the admissions •
•
charged incident Pagkas-Bather recalls from her freshman year when she was asked by classmates if she could braid their hair. Last year, William Mao was Trumbull's ethnic counselor. "Though our title may suggest otherwise and often pigeon...:hole us," he wrote in an ·e-mail, "we . ECs dealt with many of the same issues as residential counselors. But at the • • same tlme, some 1ssues may contain a cultural or racial undertone/ dimension that [we] may be more sensitive to or more readily able to .see."
counselor is part and parcel of everything we do," he says. "In my eyes, [that' counselor] is indistinguishable from the others." But if an Ethnic Counselor is indistinguishable from a residential counselor, why bother with two separate labels? In his review of the program, Dean Levesque hasn't found a simple answer. He has discovered a "wide variety in the experiences that students have had with their ethnic counselor. . . The University wants to convey that two friends are better than one, he says, "but that is difficult to get across to freshmen." •· Overall, -the Ethnic Co.unselor Program attempts to be too many things to too many groups. For • a minority ~tudent who regards his ethnicity as an integral part of his identity, the program offers a social lifeline. For one who gives little attention to his ethnic background, the program is at best redundant, at worst belittling. The program alters its function for every student in the freshman class. While these altered roles may not be too complicated for one counselor to carry out, the subtle differences between them can be Although ethnic counselors are confusing to new students. trained to counsel all members of McDow says it's about "striking the freshman class, the false belief the right tone." In order to appeal that they cater only to minority to various segments within the freshmen persists. "[We] won't freshman class, the Ethnic deny someone help because they Counselor Program must emphaaren't of our race [or] ethnicity," size different aspects of the prosays Pagkas-Bather. gram to different students. Some students conclude that Unfortunately, when you strike a because the primary responsibility different note to appeal to every of ethnic counselors is to serve group on campus, the chord you only a segment of freshmen, their strike is dissonant. ' role and influence is less significant than that of residential counselors. Branford College Dean Thomas Emi!J Koh7 a Junior in Jonathan McDow speaks against this con- Edwards College, is Research Director of ception. In Branford, "the ethnic TNJ. •
•
•
•
((
e zssues •
or racza •
sz.on •
we
•
•
en-
ore sen-
..
e
''
•
'·
•
•
-
policy created a tense environment for some minority students, and thus Pagkas-Bather appreciated the support of her ethnic counselors. While Pagkas-Bather recalls handling several problems related to race during her tenure as an ethnic counselor, she emphasizes that the program should not be sirnplified to a "racial crisis center." "Thankfully, students don't assume that ethnic counselors can only talk about race and ethnicity" she says. Many of her discussions with freshmen weren't overtly related to race issues; the connection was more often irnplicit, like a subtly •
18
•
THE NEW JOURNAL •
.
.
•
•
• •
"Money, it's a gas. Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash" ...
•
•
For
Voted Advocates Best New Haven Eye Docto and Best Eye ·
Manage a profitable publishing business
• comprehensive eye exams • contact lenses • fashion eye wear
Assist our accountant
•
Handle Advertising Accounts
•
Direct financial matters
No
•
Featuring the eye wear at
selection o lowest prices.
EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. JUST
A PASSION FOR MAGAZINES, BUSINESS, OR BOTH.
•
As always, The New Journal loves you. Contact:
September 2006
.edu 19
_, --~- -- ···
-~···-~---
I
•,
'
'
'
•
•
•
•
•
lS
'
•
•
•
•
er finger guides me first, then her voice. She points to a nebulous white cloud, then traces the dotted patterns of light that spiral out from it. I follow her voice on this journey through young, old, pulsing, and dying stars until her finger comes to rest upon the darkness at the photograph's edge. ''This is a photographic plate of a supernova,". she says in a tremulous . voice. Her gnarled hands circle around one another as she describes the phases of a star. "Like people, stars age and change," she says. They are born, glo~ and then fade; some wither away, some explode into new forma• nons. •
•
•
22
My guide, Dorrit Hoffleit, is a ninetynine-year old senior research astronomer emeritus at Yale, who specializes in the study of variable stars whose brightness fluctuates over time: ·seconds, minutes, months, even years. Once the fundamental nature of these stars is understood, theorists can investigate how and why they behave the way they do. To search for patterns, she uses photographic plates. · This, the study of stars' positions and motions, is termed '~stronometry." It brought her to Yale in 1956 and keeps her here today. Though she officially retired in 1975, Hoffleit has walked across the parking lot between her aparttnent and ·her office in the Gibbs Physics building almost every day for the past thirty-one years. During the past seven or eight decades, she has written over three hundred articles and continues to conduct research; ''Working keeps me alive," she says. Because of a recent fall, she has not been to her office for a few months. Instead, she works in her cramped and cozy apartment. Piles of papers rise from the table tops, building in white waves around the sitting room. "Some piles need to go in the Yale archives," she says, ''but most should be thrown away." On top of one pile lies a
•
• •
thick, blue book: The Yale Catalogue of Bright Stars, by Dorrit Hoffleit, Ph.D. Now referred to as "The Bright Star Catalogue," it is one of the most widely consulted astronomy catalogues; a compendium of the names, positions, parallaxes, luminosities, colors, and other characteristics of more than nine thousand stars, all visible to the naked eye. Her other works, including Astronomy at Yale, 1701-1968, quietly line the bookshelves in her sitting room. There is neither a computer nor a television in the aparttnent. Hoffleit listens to the news over a sma11 radio on her kitchen table. Most scientists can't work without a computer, but she explains that her present work researching the history of astronomy and ''looking · up generally because somebody wants something" doesn't require one. Books and catalogues are all that she needs. Hoffleit leans on her bamboo cane, to get up for a few seconds, then walks slowly f~ a few steps to pick up a large photo album. One picture shows her as a serious twenty-one-year old in cap and gown at her college graduation. ''I wanted to concentrate in math and the fine arts," says·· Hoffleit, who earned a degree in mathematics from Radcliffe College in 1928, ''but [the Radcliffe administration] would not let me. I thought, 'better chance of survival in math than in the fine arts!"' Hoffleit still indulges her interest in the
THE NEW JOURNAL
• •
• •
•
Dorrit Hoflleit and some of the stars she mapped fine arts because various aspects of astronomy, such as the creation of photographic plates, require an artistic eye. After she graduated from Radcliffe, Hoffleit studied the characteristics of variable stars at the Harvard College Observatory under Professor Harlow Shapley. She earned forty cents an hour while her male peers earned more than twice as much. Nonetheless, Shapley encouraged her to pursue a Ph.D.; so she did. Encouragement from her mentors dulled the sting Hoffleit felt from gender discrimirultion. It was rare for a woman to major in mathematics, much less earn a doctorate in astronomy. The bias was even pres- · ent within her fami1y, Hoffleit says: "I was always called the dumb sister." She looks away. "Once I overheard my teacher tell my mother, 'Dorrit isn't nearly as bright as her brother."' Her brother excelled in Greek, Latin, and other languages the very subjects she found difficult. At Radcliffe, Hoffleit steered away from the humanities, and stJC ened her skill in mathematics and astronomy. "Astronomy was just blosson1ing right and left because of all
the modern equipment," Hoffleit recalled. ''In my field there was and is always something new to explore and write about." The study of astronomy led her to the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket and then to Yale, where, years •
zrectors
ro
•
car:
September 2006
because she possessed an abundance of "£emtntne . . patience. . " N oneth e1ess, sueh dull tasks did not prevent Hoffleit from producing more substantive work, such as zone catalogues that focused on the movement of stars. Now into her one-hundredth year on · earth, Hoffleit continues to observe stars. Last April, astronomers from Argentina to Connecticut gathered at Yale to celebrate the Astronomy Department's oldest member at a two-day symposium entitled "The Hoffleit Centennial: A Year of Celebration." It featured • lectures about the status of women in astronomy, photometry, the solar system, and, of course, variable stars. That work, she believes, is her most important. Recording the movements of variable stars is crucial, she says, "because the universe doesn't stay fixed; stars change and age." "If they didn't, we wouldn't keep observing them."
ago, the directors of the Astronomy Department employed female astronomers as assistants. They expected these women not to produce innovative research but to carry out detailed, repetitive computations of the motions, positions and mag11itudes of stars. The job of an assistant followed a strict routine, as the directors assumed that women had enough patience to perform t&lindnnmbing operations. According to Hoffleit, she performed the repetitive work because she needed a job, not
•
T\:.1
Aditi Ramakrishnan is a Sophomore in Timotqy Dwight College.
23
•
•
..
•
•
•
•
• •
•
he prize for top speaker at the Princeton debate tournament is a bronze statue of ·a tiger. It is two feet long, posed in mid-growl or possibly mid-bite. Its shoulders are enlarged and the overall musculature is quite striking.·Weighing in at more than 15 pounds, this is a tiger who has spent time at the gym. It seems more like a work of art than a trophy, but for a fmger-sized brass plate at its base ·that reads: "Top Speaker, Princeton, 2006." It is one of .t he most coveted trophies for Yale debaters. Although .t hose who compete for these trophies aren't usually covered in campus publications, the Yale Debate Association has dominated the lives of its members for almost a century. Each week in debate tournaments at schools across the country, speakers pair off into teams, the teams debate, the best progress to playoffs, and one team is named winner. There are annual awards, weekly rankings, and continually updated statistics all funded through a private endowment. The YDA is one of the most elite, competitive groups on campus so why isn't it more reputed? Ariel Schneller, the most recent recipient of the tiger, has been a member of the YDA since his freshman year. A philosophy major, Schneller's principal hobby other than debate is on1ioe poker, and it is not unusual for him to gamble with upwards of ten thousand dollars in a single siu ing. The tiger, however, is worth almost as much to him as the thousands he gambles: Schneller keeps the bronze beast atop a bookshelf in his bedroom, where he sees it every day. "It brought me luck," he says. "I won at Stanford the next week." •
24
by Russell Brandom
•
News doesn't scout prospective copy-editors but it's much less obvious to high school debaters. "When you have a strong team, people tend to self-select," says Dean of Admissions Jeffrey Brezlin, "but I wouldn't say we privilege debaters, and we don't recruit them." Like every other student organization, the Yale Debate Association begins recruiting in September. Its intensive
He is one of the less committed debaters on the Yale team, having attended only six .tournaments last year. Other members of the team's upper tier attend more than 15 tournaments anually and spend more than half their weekends debating at schools~ The weekly grind of tournaments sleeping on couches, driving several hours each way is what the debate team does. Most Yalies would •
ost
alies woul
•
cnnge .
a ew weekends to an extracurn·cular activi'""' , but or committed ebaters this is ar•
tzes, an marks o
ame.
cringe at the thought of losing even a few weekends to an extracurricular activity, but for committed debaters this is an entire social world, with its own lingo, parties, and marks of fame. ollege debate has undeniable appeal. Debate is popular among high schoolers eager to build up their resumes, confident that the experience will translate into an acceptance letter from their school of choice. The Yale Debate Association website earnestly protests that it does not have any sway with admissions officers, and states that the Association cannot recruit debaters before they are admitted. This seems obvious after all, The Yale Daify
•
• •
-
•
process, however, is more like that of the lacrosse team than the chess club. Last year, eighty freshmen tried out. Twelve made it. The two-day process is a cross between a play audition. and the LSATs, with performed an written portions. The lucky few who make it through tryouts often find the stress of competition equally challenging. There are special tournament awards for "novices" (debate lingo for freshmen), but the level of com-·· petition is much tougher than it was in high school, and inexperience hinders most from winning other prizes. u sua11y only a third of debaters persist after their first year. "The thing to remember," says Schneller, "is that you're having freshmen sacrifice formative weekends at Yale to
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
sleep on couches and do poorly at debate." In its own tight-knit world, great debaters are recognized. They can easily become · famous or at least, famous among the right hundred people. At a recent tournament, teams discussed a cocky, ursine debater from William and Mary the way movie buffs discuss Harvey Weinstein. Another debate alumnus became gossip-worthy when he started to clerk for the New York Court of Appeals. The skills they hone in debate make them better speakers, better leaders. Because the subculture is large enough, outside recognition is less significant than inside glory. Many judges and politicians are former debaters and belong to a network that rivals Skull and Bones, so it's easy to understand why high school champs expect a little pull with the admissions departruent. The tournaments may only matter to other debaters, but many participants will remain in the debate circuit for the rest of their lives. And why would they leave? Outside of debate culture, Schneller's tiger is markedly less impressive. If people haven't heard about the APDA National Championships, they're unlikely to be impressed with a ftfth place finish. Few outsiders understand how mentally rigorous debate is. Even at the tournaments, debaters tend to arrive and leave unnoticed by the rest of the Caf!lpus. typical debate trip leaves Friday afternoon and returns late Saturday night, leaving Friday night open for inter-collegiate revelry. These are, after all, college students. Many debaters show up for the next morning's fourth round in less than perfect shape. "It's impossible to win fourth round," says Ariel, "because you're usually up against someone who slept more and drank less." A team can usua11y lose one of the five preliminary rounds and still make it into the bracket, so many debaters simply factor in a fourth round loss from the outset small price to pay for a raucous night. After sleeping just six hours on the floor of last night's party at an MIT tournament, few Yale debaters are ready for a 9 a.m. car ride. One debater is curled up in a blanket on the floor his teammates
September 2006
•
... N Ql
)(
.....
-; zc...
The entire debate team revels at Mory s after a semester of tournaments. find him after the party's hosts had already left. Also abandoned at the suite is a portly kid in an oversized cowboy hat. No one knows who he is. He rides with them in the car back to the tournament. Back at the main building, it is difficult to tell who is hung-over and who is not. Men wear ties; women wear skirts. Debaters sip coffee and pass around legal pads and laptops. Garbage bags and luggage are flung over the chairs. Almost everyone is explaining something to the person next to them. At any given moment, people tick off points on their fingers, in true debater style. The group from the party, still half asleep, slowly take their seats. Lena, a Brandeis debater, describes the room's occupants: "Of the people who come to the party, half of them get drunk enough that they're uncomfortable fourth round. Of them, some percentage are still drunk for fourth round. And others are about to start drinking." After the fourth round, most teams know whether they'll make it into the elimination rounds. If they know they won't, they are stuck in an auditorium with no other amusements, leading some to pop open beers or discreetly sip from flasks. A man walks up the aisle in a Santa Claus hat, ca11ing out for whoever paid for a handle of Black Label. After a moment, he finds him. While the drinking seldom gets out of hand at debate functions, it explains why ~
most participants don't view tourna.f!lents as hampering their social lives. This is the party they want to go to, these are the people they want to see the same people they saw last week and the week before. Most debaters don't come for the trophies many throw theirs away. The ones that end up being kept are the bowls, goblets, and plates that you can drink from or eat off of. In the past, the Yale Tournament has given out Xboxes and iPods, and at the last tournament they gave out margarita pitchers useful for the next tournament's Friday night merry-making. But if most debaters keep coming back to see their friends, there are still those, like Ariel, who are in it for the glory. Debate, like many sports, can simulate war, and many of its practitioners approach it with their own sort of bloodlust. "I just really like beating people at things," Ariel says, explaining the draw of debate. '~d it's not just some random thing. It's like in poker. When I win, I won because I was smarter than they were, and I get recognized for that. People who are really good get to be really well known." Well known, at least, among a select few. •
•
T\JJ
Russell Brandom is a Senior in Ezra Stiles College.
25
-
'
•
• •
•
•
;<
ts aren never
>
•'
•
Thaes " Sewanee University> where she avoided all gious groups and instead ~tivateo ~'extte~ely left-leaning politics~'"' But after graduation.,. Anschutz, the daughter of an Episcopal nunis: ter, reclaitned her roots. In 1998~ she moved to New Haven entolled at Yale Divinity School, eventually an associate dean of an Episcopal enclave within the school. Unbeknownst her, the school was undergoing a conscious transition. It was z
'
~
to
•
Z7
.
..
•
•
•
.
••
.
.
• •
••
••
•
.
•
•
•
.,...'.
~·:
..
~
·~
.
':' .
.
•
.-
•
·.
•
emerging from the skeptical outlook •
•
of the 2oth century, and trying to maintain its liberal reputation while · shifting to accomnlodat9e a burgeoning Christian Right. Today's Yale Divinity School sponsors new initiatives such as the Yale ' . Center for Faith and Culture, which tackles the issue of religion in ·c ontemporary society. The Center hosts conferences, lectures, and workshops that address faith in the workplace, moral . leadership, and reconciliation between · Christians and Muslims. Such programs contradict the original dogtna of the Divinity School, which branched off from the College in 1822 and occupied the current location of Calhoun College. •
•
'
.
ow the Divinity School that sits at 409 Prospect Street far from the center of campus is one of five non-denominational divinity schools associated with American universities. Harvard, Wak~ Forest, Vanderbilt, . and the University of Chicago are home to the other four. Yale and Harvard's divinity schools, the most well-known of the bunch, could not be more different: Harvard focuses on comparative and world religions, while Yale values the academic explo'. ration of Christian history and theology. •
•
'
-. =:·,.
.., . .-
•
,.~
..•·
'
•
·.
. .•,;r ..... •.. ~
•
Enlightenment ideals trickled down the . The_se gaps, along with the dis- · . American coast, their impact. was .far · tance between. the two canipuse·s~ are . less revolutionary once they reached symptoms of a larger issue: How. to smaller port towns like New Haven, · practice and study religion in. an aca- . Connecticut. Yale escaped the make- demic world that is . increasingly uncomfortable with public displays over and clung to its traditional roots. In the 1970s, the two schools again of faith. parted ways. Harvard Divinity School efore 1993, Levin's unfamilunderwent significant curriculum reform and developed into a center for iarity with the Divinity School the study of comparative and world was not unique. Its campus, religions. Yale Divinity School warded hardly a source of pride for the off the new trends and retained its University, did not grace many Christian focus. brochures. Yale's · -year deferred ' maintenance policy left the Divinity .. !though many 21st century School in sharnbles. Anschutz recalls in class and watching asbestos . sitting Yale undergraduates pass the from the ceiling. ~ ~ . tiles fall school while jogging up · . But it wasn't only the facilities t4at Prospect Street or hear of it in were suffering. The Divinity School's . Religious Studies · seminars, the Div adrnission rate was embarrassingly high School is much less well-known than by Yale standards, the result of a the Law, Business, and Medical nationwide drop in applications followSchools. Years after President Richard ing the Vietnam War. Though graduate · Levin assumed his current role, he told schools of all sorts experienced a spike Harold Attridge, Dean of Yale Divinity in draft-dodger applicants during the School, that he barely knew the school war, afterwards a burgeoning national existed ~t the start of his presidency. towards an · g organskepticism The separation between the College ized religion included contributed and the Divinity School began in 1963, when Yale established an undergradu- to a long dry spell for the Church. In ate Department of Religious Studies. 1994, Levin, hoping to reverse such a Today, religion classes are split between trend in Yale's professional schools, the Div School and the Religious ordered the Divinity School to conduct Studies Departtnent, and both under- a self-study. '
••
•
•
•
ears a ter
•
•
rest ent
_evzn assume
•
zs cur- · •
rent roe)
e to
aro
ttri
..
ean •
00
•
are
J
exzst-
e start o . . •
Harvard and Yale both began as schools of Christian study. In the early 19th century, Boston was hit full force by the Enlightemnent. Science, reason, and secularity reshaped the Hat vard School. Though Divinity 28 .
graduate and graduate students take This evaluation revealed the obviclasses at both schools. Each prograrn o~s: The dilapidated buildings were in • offers different degrees: Ph.D.'s are .dire need of renovation. ·Relocation earned through the Religious Studies closer to the rest of carnpus was disDepat unent, Masters through the Div cussed, and though the idea was never · · • School. executed, yale's gesture signaled a vote -
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
•
• •
•
...., z....
-
The Yale Divinity School welcomes those who seek a rigorous traditional theological education. of confidence in the Div School's potential. Forty-nine million dollars later, a freshly renovated Yale Divinity ·School witnessed a drop in its admissions rate. It now admits forty percent of applicants a low percentage compared to similar institutions, especially given the relatively small pool of applicants. According to Anschutz, that nntnber represents a "better and brighter" student body. •
he Divinity School's politics have never been old-fashioned. ''It's [a] bastion of progressive Protestant liberalistn,'~ says Betsy Anderson, another graduate. ''It just takes a while for it to catch up with the rest of the University." This transition is in action right now, as evidenced by shifting student demographics. "The Div School is in process it has changed, it is changing;' she explains. September 2006
When she first set foot on campus in 1994, at the age of 46, she found herself joining an older, predotninantly white student body. By 2005, however, 44 percent of students were tninorities; 58 percent of students in 2003 were under · . Today, Anschutz describes the average student as twenty-seven years old and "just sorting things out'-we're a real combination of sorts." The diversification of the Divinity School's student body has allowed a new voice to emerge: that of conservative Christians. The growing right-wing Christian population in the U.S. has penetrated the liberal fortress of Yale Divinity School, and Maryetta Anschutz, a self-described "progressive liberal," couldn't be happier about it. ''The conservatives at Yale have incredibly thoughtful, thought-out positions," she explains. ''You can't hate 'em." Fundamentalist, evangelical Christians are attracted .to Yale for the
same reasons as their liberal classmates: They want to be challenged so .that they can argue with greater conviction. Despite their shifting demographics, one thing about Div School students remains the same: They want the foundation of a Yale education. "Yale education" has special nieaning at Yale Divinity School. The School differentiates itself from its peers by focusing its course of study not on real-world training but on a strong theological artd historical background. Anschutz unreservedly expresses her faith in this approach. "The focus on oppression, prejudice, all that stuff you find at Hat vard and other places;" (She lowers her voice.) ''It's a· lot of hocus-pocus." These days, she explains, a·nyone who enters the professional Christian world desperately needs "academic clout."
29
•
• •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
• •
•
•
•
•
•
••
•
• •
•
•
..., z
-><
1-
~
.
·-i; '0
0
As its chapel indicates} the Yale Divity School has retained its Christian focus. Perhaps in an era of stadium-sized churches and televised sermons, it is ~ yearning for yellowed pages and layers of dust that draws young Christians to Yale Divinity's traditional Georgian quadrangle. But the academic orientation of Yale's Div School doesn't mean that its students enter the real world as naive bookworms. As with the Yale Law School, theory is privileged over practice with the vision ·of a thorough grounding in theory as the best preparation for informed practice. With this in mind, Div School students are broadening their goals upon graduation. One growing trend among graduates is an interest in prirnary and secondary education. Anschutz iuunediately focused on this issue when she took up her post as associate dean in 2004. One of her personal projects was 30
to encourage Divinity School training for future heads of private elementary and secondary schools. And not just religious schools Anschutz feels that a background in theology and spirituality can be extremely valuable in a secular set I ing. So does Andrew Wooden, who enrolled at the Divinity School in 1993 for precisely that reason. He came to. Yale from Choate Rosemary Hall, a Northeast boarding school, where he'd worked as an English teacher and then as the Director of Admissions. Almost forty when he enrolled, Wooden was not looking for a religious comrnunity. He planned to avoid the daily chapel services and other aspects of the school's Hspiritual formation" program and instead focused on his study of literature. Wooden hoped this plan would
•
• •
set hitn on a path to become a head of school somewhere in New England. Traditionally, a high percentage of headmasters held Divinity degrees, as schools saw the role of headmaster as sitnilar to the role of a head of a religious conununity. ''We care a lot about the moral and ethical development of people;' Wooden said. After six months, Wooden was drawn into the Div chool comrnunity. ''It awakened my spiritual life," he said. ''It's a perfect little gem." While writing a paper about the pueblo churches of New Mexico, · Wooden ran into a group of Albuquerque parents in the process of . founding a new college preparatory school Setting aside his initial goal of leading an established New England school, Wooden seized the opportunity.
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
The Divinity School had worked its . m . fu smgun . h' W1'th a " secular calltnagtc, , ing to start son1ething new. YDS gave me the courage to go out and tty something risky."·Wooden is now in his tenth year as Head of Bosque School, which he has watched grow from 75 to five hundred students, praised for its focus on the moral development of its students. The Yale Divinity School has long pursued the task President Kingman Brewster assigned the University forty years ago: To train a generation of leaders. To lead be it in a moral or civic capacity, in a church or in a high school one must know what he or she believes and why. A Yale Divinity School education can provide one with this knowledge.
..
a e's •
•
•
c1ence • •
I 1n
•
WORI<ING GROUP
•
•
prawled on the trim grass of the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle, one is saturated by a quiet that is hard to find on the central University campus. Here, the cahn mood suits the Georgian brick buildings, the ubiquitous white columns, and the solid, square chapel at the end of the quad. ''It's a splendid setting for a Divinity School education," says Linda Lorimer, Yale Vice President and Secretary. "I'm very pleased the University made the major investment to renovate." "It continues to be a gem," Wooden agrees. He speaks of a renovation . that not only precluded further asbestos leakage, but launched a program of conceptual change. "It just seems to have a larger mission now." Now, the school prepares its students not only for the academic · and religious environment, as it did in the 19th and 20th centuries, but for the real world. As Anderson described; the Divinity School is finally catching up.
T'\.1 •
This group is · aimed at fostering a university-wide dialogue on the relationships between scientific findings and the relig_ious quest, with a particular emphasis on the neurosciences and their impact on questions of theology, ethics, and belief. The group also sponsors presentations by leading scientists, theologians, and · ethicists from Yale and elsewhere, and will develop group-authored publications. A professional science background is not required. Undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and the academically engaged public are invited
•
Facilitated by Nihal de Lanerolle, Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurobiology and Chaplain of - the Episcopal Church at Yale. '
A grant from the Metanexus Institute's Local Societies Initiative funds this program.
When:
•
6:30- 8 pm Thursdays when classes are in session. (You may drop in to shop the group.)
Where: Contacts:
Yale Divinity School o ISM Seminar Room 1st Floor (ask at the front desk) •
nihal.delanerolle@yale.edu or james. van pelt@yale.edu (624-0122) •
Nicole Allan, a Sophomore in Calhoun College, is Production Manager of TNJ.
September 2006
31
•
• •
•
•
• •
.
.
• •
•
by Sophia Lear Day 26. Jefferson, lA to Dunlap, lA. 86.5 tniles. SEVERE TI-IUNDERSTORM WARNing. Please move to a secure location in your house. Ifyou live in a mobile home, please move to a more secure indoor location. Storm capable of producing nickel-sized haiL Winds up to 60 miles per hour. -Weather forecast for Jefferson, Iowa, June 21, 2006 We wake at 5:30 -a.m., and by 7:30after rolling up ThermaRests, filling water . bottles, pumping tires, and stuffing Clif bars into our back pockets we ease back onto our bicycles and head off. Most days, courtesy of Brandon's nifty Blackberry, we know the daily high temperature, chance of precipitation, wind speed and direction. But not today. While Jefferson, Iowa has a bell tower, a shiny new Rec ·center, and a public library that lends out both romance novels and cake pans, the
town _does not have cell phone service. Not until two miles out is there enough service to download the weather forecast, but by then we are. spread out over a long stretch of road, well on our way. Lina and I hive cycled about seven miles, chatting about poems and past crushes and favorite restaurants, when we both look ahead and fall silent. The sky is dark grey, but the other colors the green of the fields and the black of the asphalt are eerily bright. Directly ahead, a halo of white light surrounds a small, grey shack the only building in sight. On our right, a cluster of clouds seems to drip · right down to the ground. "That's rain," I say. We continue pedaling, approaching the line where the cloud stops melting the beginning of the storm. ''What should we do?" Lina asks. There is nothing to do. We are the only ones in the uruverse: no riders to be seen, no cars, no buildings, no trees, no hills. There is nothing but flat, endless field in every direction; the only sign of human life is the artificial straightness _of the rows of crops. We keep on biking, the lines of •
•
•
•
32
•
•
our tires tracing from New Haven to Portland, across the United States as riders on the annual Habitat for Humanity Bicycle Chillenge. Over nine weeks and four thousand miles we traveled through farms and small towns from Pennsylvania to Iowa, biking each day and staying in churches and community centers each night. Each of the ninety Yale students on this year's .trip has raised money, relying on sponsorship from churches, fraternities, and next-door neighbors. Now in its twelfth year, the Challege generated approximately $420,000 this summer toward housing for low-income families. · On the road, we ride another mile before I feel the fttst drop. "Lina!" We look at each other. "Sophia!" But even as she yells my name I lose sight of her. I scream as the rain pummels down on us and I have to duck rny head almost between my legs. I try to keep my eyes open through the waterfall pouring over my face. "SHOULD WE STOP?" Lina screams. "NO!" I yell; I feel infused, almost high with purpose: MUST KEEP BIKING. Thunder crash.es above us. A few hundred feet farther along the road we find shelter in a barn. Others, we find out later, have escaped into a tractor garage, hidden under a front porch, and in the worst case, huddled in a ditch, · holding their bikes above their heads until a passing pick-up truck rescued them. Half-an-hour later we are back on our bikes, trying to remember all the words to Paula Abdul's ccStraight Up,". the water spinning off our wheels the only
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
•
•
' •
trace of the past storm. Only 78 more · to go today. .
-
43. Moran Junction, WY to t Yellowstone, MT. 88.7 tni1es.
•
•
•
•
•
We sit on the benches circling Old Faithful, waiting for .the show. Japanese tourists toting fanny packs, fathers peering through heavy binoculars, mothers wearing pink visors and little girls sucking on melting popsicles all mill around the RV-packed parking lot, the gift shop, the restaurant, the hotel, the bathrooms, constantly checking their watches. According to the large clock at the entrance, Hie' will happen at 2:47 p.m.. "What makes this one special?'' a little boy asks his father. Good ques. tion. "Ies extremely predictable,'' the father answers, as the first spurts of steaming water shoot up. Watching the reactions of my fellow riders, I marvel at the irony. We biked over ninety miles to see this: the opposite of predictable. The crowd begins to ooh and ahh. •
Day
Wellsboro, PA S.t nethport, PA. 69.5 tniles.
•
•
7.
•
to
I've gone twelve miles and just gotten • my third flat tire of the trip. On the rear · "Y~eel, I find a big gash. I'm alone and riding "sweep," the designated last rider, so there is no one behind me. I need a new tire. I need the van. I need to call the van. I need cell phone service. I .need help. ''You need help?" yells an older man wearing a camouflage baseball hat out the . window of a slowing SUV I ask him if he has cell phone service and he laughs, then adds, "There's an inn down the road, they got a public phone there. I can give ya a ride just pop yer bike in the back." I pause for a motnent, then get in. ''Yer not one of them 'Habitat for Humanity' folks, are ya?" he says as I buckle my seatbelt. It sounds like he's asking me if I have the plague. I tell him I am, and he lets out a loud guffaw. ''You ·. tellin' me I let one of them damn liberals in my car?" he yells, in what I hope is jovial disbelief. I stammer something about Habitat being a Christian organization and he cuts me off. "I just don't •
Every summer 90 Yalies cross the country for Habitat for Humanity. •
believe in givin' people like that stuff for free." I consider telling him Habitat isdt a handout, but decide on an enthusiastic nod instead . "I work!" he continues, "I work my whole life. How come they get to just sit on their ass and we're gonna give 'em a house!" He looks over at me. ''Yeah," I say, trying to look as convinced as possible. He seems satisfied. ''They always gonna be trash." He checks the rearview mirror. ''You know, it's like my daddy used to say: 'trash begets trash."' There are broad vistas of the road, the cozy church basement~ we sleep in every night, and there is this the America we came to see, devoid of postcard beauty. The Pennsylvania wilderness rolls by, and we ride in silence the rest of the way to the inn, my bike in the back.
aling with his hands by his side. Deirdre glances over her shoulder at Schecter. "But it's not real. Really you're just sitting in a chair with electrodes attached to you." '~nd how about other people?" I say, swerving away from some road kill. "Like, you meet the absolute love of your life, and you're happy because you believe there really exists out there someone you connect with that deeply, but actually " "No, I'm happy because my wife is hot." Schecter giggles, and Deirdre shakes her head in disgust. ''You are ridiculous," she says, speeding up to Adam and Colin. Whatever Schecter says, we don't want some hypothetical helmet that sits us still we want a bike helmet and the wind at our backs. We all want to see things.the golden and the gritty. We want to see .LU.,g. I look out at the mountains. I am starving. I look down at my odometer; we've gone 43.2 miles. It's almost lunchtime. Deirdre and Colin are talking, but I can't hear them, and Schecter has fallen silent, so I start to scan the horizon for the turquoise trailer, praying that there wi11 still be lunchmeat by the time we get there. •
Day 45. West Yellowstone, MT to Virginia City, MT. 78.2 tniles. '~e
you serious? I'd put that thing on in a second," Schecter says and we laugh as we discuss the possibility of a wearable happiness machine. The five of us are flying; the road is flat, there is a tailwind, and, although I am barely pedaling, my odometer reads 23 miles per hour. "'This helmet is going to permanently maximize my happiness? Who wouldn't put it on?'' he continues, siu ing up straight and ped-
•
Sophia Lear is a Junior in Ezra Stiles College..
•
September 2006
33 •
•
•
•
•
•
•
• cu
roa
•
• '
by Jon Hood & Adriane
uinlan
•
ay you're about to die, and you're in Connecticut. You basically have two options: First: You book a plane ticket to Aruba, empty your bank account on a cheap prostitute and an expensive bottle of rum, pen a verbose will, shack up in a cabana, and let death take its course. Second: Let's be serious. You look at the cold, rain-soaked street and realize: I live in Connecticut. I don't do places like Aruba. I don't do sun. So you do what you do every day. You walk into the corner bookshop and think, 'these are all the books I will die without reading.' You silently accept that fact and grab a neatly-packaged guide to your last days: 1000 Places to See Before You Die. The author of this 894-page tome is Patricia Schultz, a former Conde Nast travel writer who, judging by the youthful headshot on the dust jacket, has not lived long enough to have ventured to all one thousand sites. The resulting compilation reads less like a handy travel guide than a coffee-table book, featuring cute descriptions of teahouses and temples. Of the 184 pages devoted to the United States, four are dedicated to Connecticut. And since you have a day to live maybe less, as the doctor · · was a little vague it offers a handy itinerary for your last hours on Earth . Turn to page 592. Your first stop is Essex, which Schultz calls "a mint-condition one-traffic-light river town where the dignified revolutionary-era spirit still lingers.''
•
'
•
..,
z.....
-c
--•c
a ! -! ~
The foreboding exterior of the Mark Twain House in Hartford 34
.
•
•
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
•
•
•
..., z
-c
1-
ns
-c
·-::s a
Q)
c
·-"0... ns
~
Essexs historic Griswold Inn boasts (The Gun Room," where todqy thry serve breakfast What's lingering today are the clouds. At a gray 9:30 a.m., you're tumbling down a road toward a sleepy shoreline town in Southern Connecticut. Essex boasts the Griswold Inn, otherwise known as "the Griz," where along with every other historical site in the Northeast George Washington once shared a drink with pals. That sounds good, but it's 10 a.m. Breakfast? Let's look in the book ... "Guests come for the table-groaning buffet (the inn's sausage is made from a his torical recipe)." You approach • the bored blonde who staffs the Inn's front entrance. She gives you a once-over and, as if death is etched on your face, coldly replies that the Griz "~oes not serve breakfast to non-guests." You accept visu~ nourishment instead, idly wandering among the Currier & Ives prints that Schultz praises. What you find is The Gun Room, where a veritable smorgasbord of pistols, muskets, and big old clunkers of guns deck the walls. Way
e
September 2006
to drill in the mortality issue, Schultz. Guests loll in the foyer, waiting in limbo. Is there a tour bus coming? A toyship-building convention that starts up in an hour? You leave and walk down thin, angling roads toward the dockyard, where boats slowly rust and men in rain-
-
oro
•
zs
if you can keep it down.
fries that seem to dig back. The proprietor of the "Nest" swallows when he sees you. In exchange for two coins, he serves coffee, eggs, and hash browns, watching you all the while. Suddenly, he grabs you by the arm with an urgency that suggests he's seen the black spot on your hand or something
4- ....... a e tome is
shifty in your aura . He lays a map flat on the ' table, unfolding a cartoon..... 0 ish vision of Essex not unlike Disney World. It's • less like 'Essex: The Best Little Town in America,' as its label reads, and more like The World's Worst Theme Park. "Look," he says, walking one finger out of town, to the tippy-top of a cartoon hill. 'cyou've gotta go to Gillette casde." The narrow road feels like a footpath by the River Styx townsmen mill about in the mist with vacant looks on their . faces, their mouths agape like zombies. You flee, crossing the river on a white • bridge, and twist up the sinister cartoon hill. There you find a dark casde, not unlike Count Chocula's, a cairn of rough-
n e
•
u
ea s u • as not zve to a
on on
• •
e ust enou to • sztes.
-
coats yell at the gray sky. Despite the storm, there's one place still serving coffee The Craw's est. The est is just a step below heaven, its butter-yellow kitchen offering Mexican omelettes on plastic plate . On the deck sits a prie t, staring out past an overweight farnil digging into home-
35
•
hewn, rain-soaked stones. "one of the world's largest .beluga whale You wait for her to pass, climb down It looks like the watchtower of Hell. exhibits." Here, you're in the belly of the a ditch, and relieve yourself in the bushYou leave, quickly, letting the car glide beast. Tourists cram the museum's walk- es (the road to Hartford was a lesson in down the hill. The hours are ticking by ... ways, hallways, and parking lot. So the patience for your bladder). You pass the Death waits for no man, and neither car's parallel-parked in front of Mystic's gift-shop, where a glass window showcaswill your second stop: Mystic Seaport, "a drawbridge, providing a front row seat es stiff porcelain dolls, faces upturned recreated coastal village that brings salty for a show too boring to watch. Someone like those of children frozen in a lake. 19th century maritime America to life." has parked illegally behind you and, by They stare back, as if you are a traitor for Life! God, you're on a hill, driving a stick, and being here at all. "Don't you," they seem . It's really raining now. Water sweeps you're trapped. Youput the car in neutral, to ask, "have somewhere you should be?" Your guide told you to be here, howevacross the roads, funneling down to pump the clutch, and use the parking · Mystic Seaport, the town you know best brake for all it's worth. While you strug- er, so you stand on tiptoes, peering into as the backdrop for "Mystic Pizza." At gle, a dog on the street guards the glut- the house's windows like Tom Sawyer death's door, you can't believe you ever tons feasting inside Mystic's historic ice watching his own funeral from the attic. wasted precious hours watching a young cream shop. He's a mean, growly thing, You feel as if you are seeing the rooms as Julia Roberts sprinkle parmesan and pep- and he snaps at you. they should be seen, not paraded about by It's time to get the hell _out of Mystic. an authoritative tour guide, but peeked at percorns. _You would go around the world to by a deceitful child. You're becoming skeptical of Schultz's judgment. Sure, Essex was beautiful, but escape such a dull town, so you consult You walk back up the ragged hill, with by classifying it as something necessary your guide. Why, lookee here, Schultz grass long and overgrown like Lucifer's to see before dying, Schultz defines what says that "literary fans come from around matted fur. You pass through the center of is necessary to accomplish in life. Can we the world to visit the home of one of the parking lot, where the car glimmers not live out our lives in our own back- America's most famous and beloved faintly in the twilight like a dying star. yards, cultivating our own gardens? authors" Mark Twain. His house is in The rain has stopped. It's clear, and so Who's to say it's more necessary to see a downtown Hartford, and at five p.m.- are the roads to your penultimate destina' quaint tourist town than a Julia Roberts it's already that late the traffic is as slow tion: Litchfield Hills and The Mayflower movie that runs on TBS? as . honey drippirig down the back of a Inn. "Unfolding beyond every bend of Like Essex, Mystic appears to be just spoon. The road leading into the city is the area's meandering roads," your guide another tiny town near another big body balanced on columns and the city below describes, "is a Classic Currier and Ives landscape of 18th and 19th century saltof water. More boats with big, tipsy looks like a network of ditches. masts scoot around a harbor, flanked by You descend into the urban tangle box farmhouses, red cabins, imposing white clapboard mansions, stone walls, and quiet lakes." Your route winds down from Twain's house on a Hartford hill to the quiet • towns of the Litchfield Hills area, frequented by city dwellers who don't mind • driving only an hour from New York. You can't understand why anyone would • • leave willingly: It's an idyllic postcard, a land bereft of chain stores and parking lots. Do the people here ever eat anything besides crumbling scones at fire-lit coffee . shops? The only thing missing is sin, and more specialty shops selling tea-cozies and find a network of brown signs point- you can't help thinking city dwellers have and ships-in-bottles. It feels like an iuuta- ing toward the house. Like Hansel and come here to expunge it. tion of a historic town that never existed. Gretel, you follow the crumbs to the You're looking for the historic Whaling the town's ancient industry- doorstep, where a broad-shouldered Mayflower Inn, located at the top of a was a messy business, but Mystic's cur- giantess of a woman emerges from a hill in Litchfield Hills. Once a private rent wares smell of cinnamon and all- door nestled in the gentle slope that is boys' school, it is now a gourmet restau-: rant housed a posh hotel, and one of the spice. The drawbridge that once lifted for Marky's lawn. 'We're closed," she shouts, waddling four things you're supposed to witness big, muddy boats has become a show. before the Reaper. "Oh, look," a woman gasps, grabbing her to her waiting chariot. Your watch confirms this: It's past . The full moon rises above the hills, husband's arm, 'We almost missed seeing the bridge!" · five. But the house still stands a glori- illuminating an oversized Georgian manThe other big draw is a maritime ous, red-brick Victorian with windows sion which must have been a simple museum that boasts what Schultz calls that reflect a sky as white as bone. farmhouse at one time, now couched in '
•
'
'
'
•
•
•
'
•
•
mz
narrow roa t e ver out zn t: ezr
•
•
vacan ezr mou
0
•
36
••
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
•
• •
-,
~
-J!c
-a::s c
! -! '0 ~
Take a creepy sidetrip to Gillette Castle, once home to the rflicial actor-impersonator of Sherlock Holmes, Jack Gillette. •
one hundred years of built-on additions. You pull into the hotel - lot, squeeze between a Mercedes and a Lexus and avoid making eye contact with a teenage valet who peers out at the dark as he assists older women in silken evening gowns into the swank, historic dining room. You're starving and want to go inside, but you're not properly dressed: This world, this Paradise, was not meant for you. The light wafting from the scores of windows is amber, glowing with a warmth you'll never feeL You walk away from the Inn and ascend a series of terraces. Where do they lead? Go upward, cross a hedgerow and levels of terraced lawn. Did Patricia experience this? The wet grass grazing your ankles, the sight of the diners below, stuffing their faces with crabcakes and spit-sloppy cigars? Did she stop to see the simple beauty that exists between ~
September 2006
places, at the center of everything? What the book gets wrong, you think, is that just knowing you are going to die makes everything beautiful, and everything meaningless. To travel propelled by the dateline of an impending death is to travel without really seeing. If the same book was called 1000 Things to See it would never have sold so well the title appeals to an illogical and morbid fear, to our vision of the world as a check list where beauty can be a feat seen and accomplished. At the top of these terraces, you cross a hedge and find yourself trapped inside .a puzzle a curving maze of · garden hedges in concentric circles the sort of labyrinth pilgrims would walk in medieval churches. You look at your watch and it's ten p.m. Your stomach growls a sure sign you're still alive. You get back on the road and look for a restaurant. Is there a
Friendly's? McDonald's? No, the fttst place you see is John's, a classy place with a purple placard sporting scarlet berries. You're much happier to arrive at this cafe than you were to see any of the four places in Schultz's book. A waitress seats you and offe~s liqueur and a pasta platter. Around you, older couples lounge in leather seats, enjoying their late-night suppers, cackling like fat Roman emperors. This is hell, you think, biting the head of a jumbo-shrimp marinated in a balsamic reduction, and you are loving it. On the drive back you pass a tombstone store, and consider stopping to place an order. Since surely, now, you've seen all there is to see. •
Adriane Quinlan, a Ssenior in Calhoun College, is Editor-in-Chief of TN]. Jon Hood is a Senior in Ezra Stiles.
37
•
'
' • •
. .
by Margaret Mapondera . On occasion, a tutor would offer a good piece of writing advice. Let me tell you what Tutor.com is and what it looks like. First, what it looks like. Just showing it might be simplest:
Tonya A (Tutor): Welcome to Tutor.com. Do you have a homework question I can help you with? Me: I gots to write a story, but I'm not sure how to start?
•
You know that you've reached your low point when you get your kicks by posing online as a desperate high schooler. Some titne last year, I reached my low point. •
Tonya A (Tutor): What must your story be about? Me: It has to be about my most favorite thing in the world.
•
Now, what it is. Tutor. com is a library initiative to help New Haven students with school. Earlier this year, the New Haven Free Public Library introduced the Live Homework Help™ system to assist citywide students fourth grade through college by providing "expert tutors." The site employs over one thousand tutors across the United States and Canada, inlcuding certified teachers, university professors, graduate and undergraduate students, and professionals regarded as experts in their fields. The tutors conduct live, one-on-one online help sessions, assisting students with homework in math, the sciences, social studies and English. First introduced in 2000, Tutor.com is now accessible from 1500 public library sites across the United States and Canada. The program's intention is to offer all children regardless of their economic background, geography, and scholastic ability the homework help they need through their local library. It is a laudable policy: The site doesn't even discriminate against a high-achieving Ivy League student living comfortably in the Gothic cradle of Yale. Tutor.com has received a favorable response from its users: "It's better than a real ~lassroom 'cause you are not afraid to ask them questions!" says one tenth grade student. "It's awesome!" seconds a fourth grader. Over 9 5 °/ o of students who have used Tutor.com report that •
•
Although I first visited Tutor.com on a lark," I was hooked on the site's Live Homework Help from .the moment I logged on. Tonya A ·and her colleagues were willing to help me with any problem I co~d imagine, and I took a perverse pleasure in inventing homework assignments to challenge them. ·
Tonya A (Tutor): Have you decided what your favorite thing in the world is? Me: I think it would have to be my puppy ... I guess I should start with what he looks like? Tonya A (Tutor): That sounds great! Yes, let your reader know what it is and then what he looks like.
. .
•
38
• •
THE NEW JOURNAL
•
• •
they're pleased. I am among that happy 95°/o. Not only have tutors helped me with my times tables, they have also brightened many sleepless nights that I might other. wise have spent watchtng reruns o f. "Ch eers. " Tutor.com is indeed awesome. It didn't take long for me to become a dedicated disciple every evening I would double-click my way into a new persona. I battled with ever · g from split infinitives to long division (which is a lot more confusing than it was in fourth grade). The trouble came when I attempted to ask my first science question. Up until then I had stuck to what I knew: simple questions about essay ·writing and elementary mathematics. Then one night I decided to ask a question about science.
'
Me: Yup! Maybe I should wait until my profes- .. sor has gone over it in depth and I'll read up on , it on the net. I'm sure there are millions of web- : sites all over the place - any recommendations? : - Jeremy B (Tutor): You are in a college class?
•
Oh for goodness sake! What was this twenty questions? At this point I was getting seriously annoyed.
Jeremy B (Tutor): Welcome to Tutor.com. How can I help you? · Me: Hi there, I just wanted to ask for a little clarification on stem cells and their uses in the medical field.
I thought this was a vaguely intelligent sounding ques• tton. •
Me: urn ... no. . . I am a high school student sitting in on a college class! I need help! I need Tutor.com! I gots to write a story but I'm not sure how to end it!
Jeremy B (Tutor): Ok, what can you tell me about them? That will give me a better idea of what to , talk abut.
I proceeded to give a confused description of stem cells as I understood them. I wished desperately that my Tutor would step in and give me an answer.
Jeremy B (Tutor): That was fine: Jeremy B (Tutor): So you have just gone over the basics of them?
My disguise was lifted ~ had been found out. I never did log back on to Tutor.com. These days, I find myself lonely on Friday nights, staring at the luminous computer screen with the grinning yellow icon looking back at me, wanting desperate-. ly to click the 'Connect' button that would lead me to the online classroom to my old tutors, my old friends, where everybody knows my name. Here I am, a sophomore at Yale College, and I've just been expelled from high school.
•
Margaret Mapondera is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College.
September 2006
39