Volume 39 - Issue 2

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Volume 39 .. Number 2

October 2006

The magazine about Yale and New Haven

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Publisher

Romy Drucker •

Editor-in-Chief

Adriane Quinlan Managing Editors

DAVENPORT COU.EGB TBA

fanny Dach, Helen Eckinger Designer

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Anna Zhang

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Business Manager

Nick Handler

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Senior Editors

Mina Kimes, David Zax •

Production Manager

Behind the Scenes at NPR

Nicole Allan

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Research Director

Emily Koh

Reportetj National Public

Circulation and Subscription Manager

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received his B.A. ftom Yale in 2000 and has reported on the Justice for National Public since thai. Based in Washington, ·he covers major national legal and the internal operations of the Department . In 2004, he led NPR's of the Schiavo controversy, and be is reportins on the Senate race in In 2005, he was awarded the · Daniel Sdlorr Journalism Prize.

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Web Designer

Nicholas Moryl

Staff Russell Brandom, Tess Dearing, Elizabeth Gumport

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Lauren Harrison

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Members and Directors Joshua Civin, Peter B. Cooper, Tom Griggs, Brooks Kelley, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Kathrin Lassila, Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, David Slifka, Fred Strebeigh, Thomas Strong, John Swans burg

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Advisors Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin

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Friends

910 wl.lley II\8IIR new lwwm 06515

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55 whitney avenue new haven 06510 203.ll6aYARN

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Michael Addison, Austin and Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Emily Bazelon, Anson M. Beard, Jr. Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Brant, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Jay Carney, Daphne Chu,Josh Civin,Jonath:m M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, Masi Denison, Albert]. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang, Walter Jacob, Jane Kamensky, Tma Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe; E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean o:Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Fairfax C. Randal, Robert Randolph, Stuart.Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W. Hampton Sides, Lisa Silverman, Scott Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulsman, Thomas Strong, Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Wtlson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stent Yergin · L -_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

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THE NEW jOURNAL

The New Journal

Volume 39, Number 2 October 2006

The magazine about Yale and New Haven.

~--------------FEATURES 10 Garbage Pail Kids Wesleyan's dumpster divers take out your trash.

By Mina Kimes

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On The Rocks Will Yale no longer be the lax Ivy?

By Lauren Harrison

PROFILES - -32

The Candidate

SNAPSHOTS 18

by Tina Colon

by Nicole Allan

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22 The Classes Server

by Mitch Reich

Learning Spanglish Hamburgl'd

by Laura Zax

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Suburbia on the Green

by Benny Sachs

STANDARDS 4

Points of Departu re

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The Critical Angle

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Essay

The Sub text of Sandals by Romy Drucker Supersenior! by David Zax & Adriane Quinlan

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Endnote Reps, Sets, Sex by Pat Hayden

THEN'"' jOU&HAL is published five times during the ocadcmic yur by THE NEw Jou&HAL at Yale, Inc., P.O. Boz 203432 Yale Sution, New Haven, Cf 06520. Office address: 305 Crown St. Pbone: (203) 432· 1957. All contents Copyright 2006 by Tta NEY JoU&HAL at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in wbole or in put without wrinen permission of the publisher and editor in chief is prohibited. While this magu.ine is published by Yale College stUdents. Yale Universiry is not responsible for its contents. Sevenry-five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and New Haven communiry. Subscriptions are avaihble to those outside the area. Rates: One yur, $18. Two years, $32. TH£ N£Y ]OU&HAL is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; book· keeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. Tm NEY JoURNAL encourages leners to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Allleners for publication mUSt include address and signarure. We reserve the right to edit alllcnen for publication.

October 2006

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hiz Kids To

FIND THE BRAINS,

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SAYS

DR.

Michael Norden, don't follow the calculators follow the Frisbees. In September, Norden, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington, released a study of private universi. ties showing that a school's performance in Ultimate Frisbee correlates strongly with its average SAT score and graduation rate. Over the last ten years, private universities in the top half of the Ultimate Frisbee ladder have averaged an 85% graduation rate, while the bottom half measures just sixty percent. If that's not enough, consider the top seven Ultimate schools over the stretch: Tufts, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, and Yale.

So what do the promising in-: tellectuals of the Yale Men,s Ultimate Frisbee team think of Norden's analysis? ccYou're talking to the wrong person," says one team member, ccbecause I'm not going to graduate." When pressed, he admits players need a certain intelligence to consider varying velocity, calculate long trajectories, and interpret wind patterns. ccwell," he says, ccthere's quite a bit of on-thefly physics involved."

His teammate replies: ccThat's a

load of shit."

Norden disagrees. Citing MIT and other mathlete schools with particularly strong teams ·for their size, Norden says that there 'cmay be something about math spatial aptitude that is somehow advantageous."

Spatial aptitude? · c'I've played many points with a beer in hand," says a teammate in a bandana. ccWhenever we play We~leyan, they play barefoot. You wouldn't see that in many other sports." He recalls taking drunken slip'n'slide belly flops with a hometown club team, and describes throwing Frisbees to break a pinata filled with joints and booze.

Perusing the Princeton Review's 361 Best Colleges, Norden was amused to discover a list of schools with the happiest students. cc Of the. same seven schools ranked for top Ultimate," he notes, cc six of the seven were also among the highest for happiest students." He chuckles. ccThe only one missing, that you _m ight find interesting, was Harvard."

Norden also notes that several stone-cold academic schools like the University of Chicago and Caltech are conspicuously missing from Ultimate's upper ranks. Why the poor showing from these on-the-fly physicists? The explanation, perhaps, is that their players had water in hand instead of Colt 45s. ccThe ones that are missing from the very top," says Norden, are the schools with cc a culture that's maybe a little bit less fun-oriented."

The Yale team doesn't have this problem. Having finished their warm-up tosses, they form a circle on the field and begin to stretch, soaking up the hot sun on one of

fall's last warm days. Suddenly, a cry of dismay pierces the scene. ~Two handles. of Popov?" one player cries out. The vodka in question must nearly b~ boiling. "They've got to be," he shrieks, "at like a staggering 3 5 degrees Celsius!"

A frisbee player with a working knowledge of the metric system and the chemical properties of ethanol?

Dr. Norden wouldn't be surprised.

-Daniel Fromson

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The Boxer IN THE BASEMENT BENEATH CoM~

mons dining hall, between the main kitchen and the administrative offices, there is a room marked with a plaque. The room is a walk-in cooler, and its plaque is a laminated color print-out that reads, in red letters, "Jasper's Box." Jasper himself is long gone he retired-to North Carolina in 2001 but the sign remains.

Jasper was in charge of maintaining stored produce, and, since he first began working forty years ago; the cooler he stocked was known as "Jasper's Box.-" The sign came later, although no one is sure exactly when, just as no one is really sure who exactly Jasper was. The only •

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reminder of his years at Yale is the spacious cooler and everyone tries to fill it with their own stories.

"He had perfect attendance, all forty years,, recalls Dan Flynn, the manager of Commons who worked with Jasper. Flynn's office is across the hall from Jasper's Box. ccWe'd have Christmas vacation for two or three weeks. We'd say <Jasper, where you going?' He'd say, ci don't know.'

He'd just get one of those bus passes , an d go. " Another Commons worker chimes in. «He went to New York every weekend. He never stayed home. I would see him walking to the train station and ask him if he wanted a ride, but he never took one." 'She pauses. cci don't think he ever drove. I don't think he ever even owned a car."

"I heatd, he got in a car accident when he : was seventeen," Flynn • recalls. ccN ever drove again." J asper lived in the Taft Apartments, and could walk to work or to the • • train station.

The refrigerator he left behind consists of two matching concrete rooms, blocked at each end by a stiff rubber curtain. · The thermometer reads 42 degrees, but it's not cold enough to be uncomfortable. The room originally stored only fruits and vegetables, but . as Commons grew, Jasper's job expanded with the cooler's contents. The front room holds mostly dairy products, but also assorted perishables: pickled eggplant, fig compote, a half gallon bucket of tomato basil sauce.' An entire corner is devoted to cheese, stacked in cardboard boxes underneath a ventilation grate. Everything is stacked on plastic palettes, in piles as tall as a grown man. No single stack is light enough to lift by hand. It would take at least twenty trips to carry everything out of "Jaspers Box." •

CCHe was a hard worker," says Joe Veronesi, the head chef.

Jean Ward the Commons em-. ployee who Veronesi says knew Jasper best is a black woman, freckled, with red hair. When asked about Jasper and cars, she says, ccThat was his thing." But is it true about the accident? She shrugs.

A lot has changed over the last decade: The inner room of Jasper's Box is now the beverage room.

Most of the space is occupied by a locked cage that belongs to Yale Catering. On the shelves, there are the · standard crates of alcohol, but also more exotic fare Tsing Tao, Kaliber, and Wolaver's Organic Beer.

Loose cans have been swept unstacked into milk crates. The cage is new since Jasper left, although the name has not changed.

No one calls it anything other than Jasper's Box. The workers who stock the cooler do not know any more than Jasper's name and that he is gone more or less what students in residential colleges know about John Branford or Ezra Stiles. It is all they care to know.

Veronesi insists, «He's wellmissed."

-Russell Brandom

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Grass, Point Blank THIS YEAR, THE YALE OFFICE OF

Facilities will spend approximately half a million dollars on grass. Its Grounds Maintenance division will sow roughly half a ton of seed.

The total budget for these and other beautification efforts will amount to $5.8 million. c'We have to remember that we're in the middle of a city," says one maintenance worker. "Our job is to try and keep the campus as green as possible." At Yale, the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence it's greener where there's money to pay for it.

Last year, in an attempt to reduce operating costs, the Office of Facilities merged the management of Science Hill and central campus, creating a single office responsible for overseeing all campus grounds. It is, as Ground Manager Walter Debboli puts it, "a -difficult job."

Tucking his shoulder-length grey hair behind his ears, Debboli summarizes his department's contribution to the Yale community: "The next time someone throws a party and there's beer and vomit all over the lawn, you'll wake up in the morning and it's gone."

He leans in conspiratorially and grins. "That's us."

Debboli's office is less like an adrninistrative building than an oversized tool shed. Its dust-covered windows overlook twin ga-

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rage doors whose dented aluminum bears the street number in neon orange spray paint. Several greenhouses, a variety of sprinklers, and scattered gardening equipment litter the perimeter. Inside is a necropolis of outdated machinery. Dismantled lawnmowers line the cobwebbed walls. The skeleton of a rusty Zamboni lords over the concrete floor, illuminated by what sparse sunlight manages to filter through the grimy windowpanes.

The cluttered headquarters bears the mark of a single man working a two-personjob. The immense blueprint for the Trumbull renovation takes up an entire chair, its pages draped over the cushioned seat. Debboli tends two phones at once, answering one at his workstation before crossing the room to answer the other. As updates from his staff pour in, he delivers instructions on the fly, relaying messages to his crews across campus. ''We get paper requests from all departments,, he says, holding up a leaflet. An overgrown patch of flowers, it seems, has blocked a pathway at the Divinity School and needs to be trimmed. "Sometimes I get involved," he says. If there's too much to ~e done, he'll go to the site with the workmen he oversees.

Aided by a staff of 29, Debboli divides his crew into four area-specific groups and distributes the department's six riding mowers, four large walk-behind mowers and approximately two dozen smaller push mowers accordingly. Displaced but unfazed by the perennial construction, Grounds Maintenance must adhere to stringent seasonal timelines, synchronizing immediate concerns the dangerously lush flora of the Divinity School with the inflexible dates of reunions and graduation, events whose grounds he must perfectly prepare before Yalies pour in to trample on the work.

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While lawns must be maintained, recycling carried out, and snow shoveled, the University still entertains loftier dreams for the natural splendor of its campus. ''We used to have a kind of fruit salad type of landscape,, Debboli says, referring to the diverse agricultural . agendas of his immediate predecessors. "But now · we're going back to a more traditional look., In the 1940s and so·s, ·landscape architect Beatrix Farrand designed a complete campus planting system for Yale, outlining what kinds of shrubs could be planted and where. The list of accepted plants consists primarily of species native to the New Haven area dogwoods, crabapples, shadlows, and climbing shrubs, meant to beautify. the sides of dorms and academic buildings. This traditional focus on local flora is reinforced by the school's greener philosophy to maintain a "Sustainable Landscape., "The Administration's been pushing ~his word around a lot,, says Debboli, "But it ends up being less work for us. Local species better resist cold and disease, and therefore require less pesticide and water."

The administration may be invested in marrying Yale's values with its appearance, but Debboli is not motivated by a lofty ideology. Instead, the supervisor confides, he does it for the children: "I don't see students as problems, but as guests or customers. They're here for an education, but also an experience. Playing Frisbee may not be great for a lawn, but if you want to throw a ball around, God bless you."

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SPEAKING To A YALE

ANGLER's

journal board member is a bit like speaking to a cult member sooner or later, the patriarch enters the picture. History begins with a man, James Prosek, and continues with an epic list of his accomplishments: how, at age 21, Prosek wrote and published a definitive illustrated treatise on trout; how his artistic renderings of such fish garnered national press and comparisons to James Audubon; how he is now revered as a triple threat: a man of letters, a songsmith, and, as always, • a pa1nter.

Since graduating in 1997, Prosek has published eight books and won a Peabody award, all the while remaining a figurehead for the magazine he helped create as a college student. The Angler's Journal, which Prosek described in the first issue as "the closest thing to a house for fishy dreams and visions we can provide," is blessed by his reputation. "His purpose, really, is -BenLasman his name,, says Aaron Alter, the Journal's current Editor-in-Chief.

And indeed, everyone the board · members, the subscribers worldwide, the wealthy fishermen who flock to the annual Yale Angler's journal dinner seem to be in awe.

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ishing Lines

THE NEW jOURNAL

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But at its core, the publication is not a fanzine to Prosek, it's a seri.:ous literary magazine about fish. A typical issue includes well-crafted fishing-themed poems, tutorials, and personal essays about fishing, such as Brigham Young University Professor Michael Rutter's homage to the grayling. "I love all things grayling," he writes, "but mostly I love grayling colors: The splendid hues of understated lilac and icy green on the spiny sailboat dorsal fin; the fluorescent, sapphire-like · periods along the body; the dusky yellow-green tail; the alluring white lips. There's much to admire."

The Journal is a handsome if unassuming publication, neatly designed and expensively bound. Were it not for the artwork fly fishers in sylvan scenes, ancient Byzantine illustrations one could be forgiven for mistaking it for, say, the Yale

Literary Magazine.

Unlike the Yale Literary M agazine, however, it is almost impossible for a Yalie to find a copy. Current and back-issues are stored in a monstrous, full metal cabinet in the third floor of a brick building at 305 Crown Street. The office is a testament to the journal's removal from much of Yale society: schools of wooden fish and painted trout deck the walls, bumper stickers with clever fish puns · are pasted on cabinets, and against a wall stands a fly-tying table, on which peacock feathers and yarn are transformed into miniature insects. A painting of a girl wearing a scandalous pink skirt and black garters, fishing rod in hand, greets every visitor.

But the only fellows this gal will ever wink at are her kindred fishermen. According to Alter, ''the magazine isn't .really geared to Yale students. That being said, there are students interested it's just that most of them work on staff."

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October 2006

beyond the Yale community for most of its funding, submissions, and exposure. Each year, when the .

Journal attends New Jersey's Somerset Fly Fishing Conference, among the Prosek devotees and intrigued fishermen who court their booth are many confused by the conjunction of the words "Yale" and "Angler's." "Some people are put off by it/' Alter says. One question comes up again and again: Why do Yale students, who hail from a city not known for its trout runs, publish a journal about fishing? "It's hard to answer, "he says.

Yet here, once again, the maga• • • zine swims upstream to Its source, its founder, its hero. At conventions such as Somerset, which attract young, wealthy fishermen interested in high-brow fishing culture, Prosek's name is often the first lofted from the Elis' lips everyone, _ whether "fly-fisherman or fly-fisherwoman," as the Journal's president Tom Gilliland puts it, on some level wants to be James Prosek.

The point of the magazine, then, seems to be to promote Prosek's brand of fishing, which marries the old -school allure of fishing clubs with the energy of ambitious undergrads. What Ready Made Magazine is to Better Homes and Gardens, the Yale Angler's Journal is to its humdrum, old school standards like Field & Stream. The journal aims at establishing an intellectual, artistic community for fishermen away from the stream, regardless of whether that stream flows anywhere near Yale.

If the Journal's mission is to create a truly global fishing community, its annual dinner is a testament to its progress. Last year's tenth anniversary celebration took place at the revered New York Angler's Club, featured protninent speakers from the world of fly-fishing, and auctioned off a fishing trip

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

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to Argentina for two thousand dollars. The hall was packed to the gills with young, rich fishermen, many of whom have no connection to the University but all of whom paid a $120 entrance fee. Yale students mix with trout enthusiasts, fly fishermen, and anyone for whom fishing is more than just a tug on the line.

Discus_sions of fly-tying technique become artistic critique.

For the Journal, the act of spreading one,s arms to measure the length of a fish is not simply an exercise in angling pride but a unifying gesture, a symbol of both the fish and the mind that appreciates it. This is a group that sees in gills a fundamental, natural beauty. Humor is .not lost on them, either at last yeaes dinner, amid the discussion, the suits, and the speeches, someone must have noticed the menu: a choice of steak or, predictably, salmon.

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-Jordan Jacks

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The Made-Up Counter

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IN THE BASEMENT OF THE YALE

College Bookstore, wedged between a pastel selection of knickknacks, paper wastebaskets, and Vera Bradley paisley, there stands an oft-ignored makeup counter.

Alongside dress hangers, computer cords, and bathmats, the Clinique makeup counter cements the Yale Bookstore,s reputation as a veritable Co-op, selling everything a 8

student needs to succeed .

Wait we need makeup?

Most Yalies are completely unaware of the counter,s . existence.

Kledia M yrtolli asked herself the other day as she walked by it, c'Why? Why is it here? Is there ever .anyone hen!?, The Clinique counter is indeed a curiosity. Yalies often ignore it in their typically pointed quests to seek and purchase, · but they occasionally stop and cock their heads.

The counter does not call attention to- itself. The calming tones of its products are upstaged by flanking piles of typical gift-shop merchandise mugs that read "Mr. Wonderful, and posters of a beer-chugging John Belushi. It is a lonely, frequently unmanned, indistinguishable island of perfume and mascara.

Heather Butler recalled seeing a sign at the counter that encouraged her to ask questions, declaring "We Can ;I-Ielp You,, but the space was deserted. "I was confused. Doesn,t it say they can help you?, Customers seeking skin solutions peer around for a Clinique "clinician, in vain 1,1ntil, to their surprise, a regular bookstore attendant materializes behind the register. In addition to the undefined nature of the counter attendants, the relationship between the Yale Bookstore and the Clinique counter is confusing .

Neither the Clinique technicians nor the Bookstore,s manager were willing to go on the record clarifying the relationship .

Nationally, Clinique cultivates a certain image for itself. It is known as the brand that places a grid on your face, that scientifically determines its clients, particular and multifarious needs and solves them with more precision than you, the owner of the face, can hope to achieve. Clinique is about results.

Ir>s about listening to your problems and handing you a solution in '

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a clean, conveniently sized bottle or pot or tube, dearly labeled with its purpose. Deep Cleansing Emergency Mask. Stay the Day Lip Color. Each of Clinique,s slogans is more encouraging than the next. ccp nme. .

D efi ne. Illum1nate. . , "G.1ve Happy. Get Happy.,, "Can great skin be created?, This particular counter, however, does not answer that question with conviction. Ellie Woodward observes the discrepancy between Clinique's claims toward scientifically-achieved perfection and the everyday bookstore employees who dole out advice at Yale's counter. "I don,t understand how they know stuff about makeup. I didn't even try to ask questions. They weren't wearing ~nything [Clinique]., On its website, Clinique preaches extensive training for all of its employees. At any Macy's in the country, you can find an identical Clinique counter with .one key difference: it will be manned by trained technicians, whose chipper voices inspire immediate trust. At the Yale Bookstore's makeup counter, however, confusion or mild despair is the usual reaction elicited by the eerie vacancy. "There was no one there to help me,, a baffled sophomore told me. 'cl felt awkward. I tried to hide." · We are left to wonder: Why is the Clinique counter there, and why do the "clinicians, look suspiciously like Booktore employees?

Will they be able to recommend the precise product that Clinique's scientists have developed for our beauty needs? And, at a learning institution famed for its professors, why isn,t there anyone to teach us how to scientifically follow a three ·step process or apply the right lip liner?

-Tess Dearing

THE NEw JouRNAL

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AT THE ANNUAL NEW HAVEN MI-

gration Festival, birders gather at Lighthouse Point Park to observe the yearly arrival of hawks from the north. Though the day is damp and windy, the park's convention hall feels positively festive. The building, just yards from the Long Island Sound, houses an antique carousel, which was built in 1916 and is now listed on the Connecticut Register of Historic Places. As the volunteer bird-rescue organization Wind Over Wings prep~res its show, a bridal party banished from the beach by the rain arrives to have portraits taken in front of the carousel. One bridesmaid approaches the booth sponsored by the Peabody Museum, leans across a row of bird skulls, and asks directions to the bathroom.

Nearby, at the booth of the event's sponsor, New Haven Bird Club, a woman examines the merchandise which includes a guide for novice hawk aficionados and "Flights of Fancy," a line of ~and­ painted Christmas ornaments before declaring, "I have the world's most complete wardrobe of bird socks!'' and moving on. The next table, sponsored by the Connecticut Butterfly Association, is abandoned except for a lone caterpillar,

October 2006

who steadily climbs a leaf sprouting from a film canister. At the window, several pairs of binoculars are trained expectantly on the sky. But no hawks appear: the only animals visible from the hall are doublecrested cormorants, flocking on the stones of the breakwater, and a peach-and-white Shih Tzu, trotting down the beach behind its owner.

In · the absence of hawks, sideshows become main events. Just as the raptor display is about to begin, the bride arrives with her entourage and mounts the carousel. When the ride ends, the birders join the wed- · ding party in a cheer. The couple and its coterie depart in three limos, and Wind Over Wings volunteer Grace Krick removes a red -shouldered hawk named Forest from his cage. The bird, seemingly the only hawk inN ew Haven, is followed by a peregrine falcon named Isis. After Isis, the volunteers introduce Bentley, whom Krick calls "a very brave owl." Blind in one eye, the great gray bird shares a cage at the aviary with Solitaire, a female owl who helped nurse him back to health.

As Krick describes the owl's 52inch wingspan, Bentley obligingly spreads his wings. "Thank you," Krick tells the bird. The show ends with the rare gold-en eagle "the king of all bird and the bird of kings" dines on rabbit, which the staff ordered frozen from a company named Gourmet Rodent.

Uphill, deeper into the park, a few persistent birders brave the rain, still hoping to witness a hawk. Located on the Sound, abutting East Haven, the park is a "bot~leneck," says Gary Lenunon, treasurer of the Bird Club, because the hawks prefer not to migrate across the sea. Thermals the pockets of rising air that allow the birds to gain altitude do not form above bodies of w ater, and so the hawks gather above the park each aututnn before

altering their route south.

Downhill, spirits are high in spite of the rain. Yesterday, at the Monarch Waystation a flower garden that provides milkweeds, nectar sources, and shelter for migrating butterflies observers spotted Clouded Sulphurs and Red Admirals, as well as the common Cabbage White. Today the butterfliers have already tagged several Monarchs, which pass through the park on their way to Texas, where they will lay eggs before they die.

As the day goes on, the birders identify a peregrine falcon and an excited butterflier tags a Viceroy. The rain stops, but the clouds still hang low and gray in the sky, and only the most persistent hawk devotees remain. Prime hawk spotting days are when the winds are from the Northwest after a cold front," notes one of the last, lingering birders. Winter will come, and so, eventually, will the hawks, but today the breeze just blows in from the water and the carousel continues its rounds.

-Elizabeth Gumport

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jean Pockrus and Quinn Hechtkopf balance on a Yale dumpster, one of many they've raided for Operation Ivy.

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by Mina Kimes

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erched on the curb outside of Saint Thomas More's Catholic Center on Park Street, an enormous blue dumpster bristles with trash. A woven plastic chair sits atop the heap of cardboard, garbage bags, and packing material, reflecting the afternoon. sun like a tinfoil star stuck on a bedraggled Christmas tree. · · When John Smigel turns onto Park, he sights the overflowing bin and grins. "This is the kind of dumpster we dive for," he says.

John's compatriots dart ahead, wringing their hands in anticipation of this unorthodox treasure chest. They circle their find, scanning for viable points of entry and promising bags. This dumpster, located on the eastern fringe of Yale's campus, eluded the Wesleyan student diving crew in May when they drove to New Haven to film their student documentary, Operation Ivy: Dumpster Diving at Elite Colleges. Back then, the group didn't stray far from Old Campus, so they're eager to "dumpster" the verb they use to describe their pastime in a different area.

"This stuff is definitely from Yale's art school," says Quinn Hechtkopf. Quinn, w~ose curly red hair sprouts from his head in haphazard pigtails, scrambles up the side of the dumpster and stretches his lanky arms over its lip. He pushes several large boards aside and extracts a bag of orange tubing from the abyss. eels this paintbrush too congealed?" John asks, waving a dusty brush in the air.

After a few minutes, the group decides to abandon the bin; these resourceful art students haven't thrown out anything of value. After collecting the orange tubing and a can of red spray paint, Quinn leads the way to another dumpster, located behind the Afro-American Cultural Center.

Quinn, who graduated from Wesleyan this year, currently works as an electrician at the Harvard Club in New York City, where, he's quick to point out, he wired the garbage room. The two students who flank him Jean Pockrus and Brendan O'Connell are both juniors at Wesleyan. With John trailing in the back, the 11

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motley crew draws a few glances from passersby. Quinn wears a neon pink sweater bedecked with gold stars; Brendan's dirty-blonde hair is shorn into a sort of punk rock mullet; and John cuts an imposing figure with his shaved head and oversized Red Sox jersey. Though most divers try to lay low, this crowd attracts attention before they jump into the trash.

This image of divers leaping head-first into the garbage, how• • • ever, 1s a m1srepresentat1on perpetuated by the term "diving." Before they even touch the two bins nestled in the AACC's backyard, the group surveys its contents. Jean prods one of the garbage bags with a dowel, exposing a tear in the plastic. ''Someone's been clustering here already." She leans closer and sniffs. ''Cat food. Moldy paper.

Wilting lettuce." · Quinn offers a kernel of wisdom: "If you cuddle the bag a bit, you can tell where it's from: the kitchen, the bathroom. Chunky objects with definition that's what you want. Stay away from squishy."

He grasps one of the bags, kneading and shaping the plastic with the deftness of a master sculptor.

"Th.1s ... 1s . a sneak er. " John, though, is already inside.

He hands . Quinn two long strips

of mirror a . discovery that elicits praise from the group then moves on to ·a set of enormous, indistinguishable, wooden cut-outs, wedged deep below the bags. John raises them into the sunlight, and the dark, mysterious shapes are revealed to be ·garishly painted monkeys; acrobats, and clowns. He hoists the upper torso of a yellow strongman over his head and beams down at his friends.

"Hey," says Brendan. "Not bad for 15 minutes of dumpstering.''

peration Ivy the documentary's. working title, pays homage to a defunct 80s punk bandwas conceived in late March and is slated for release next spring. It is an ambitious project, laden with environmental and anthropological implications. While the film is Jean's brainchild, she admits that the idea stemmed from necessity rather than activist leanings. "We needed mpney for vans," she says, her voice tinged with a light southern accent.

After visiting Yale during May of her sophomore year, Jean was astounded by the surplus of usable items tossed by outgoing students.

Originally from Arkansas, she had never visited New England before arriving at Wesleyan . ."J had been dumpstering before," she says, ccbut

I had never seen this kind of wealth, and the waste that comes with it.

The things people throw away at these schools ... " Her voice trails off, and she shakes her head. "Anyways, after starting school, I started hearing about the great stuff people were finding around campus. Someone I knew found a one-hundred dollar bill in a jewelry box." Jean recognized the fiscal benefits of converting her hobby into a vehicle for social analysis. "We figured we were doing something complex," she says. "And if we documented it, we could get money to do it."

In May, the group submitted a film proposal to Wesleyan's Student Budget Committee, requesting $450: enough money to fund trips to Trinity, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Brown, and Yale. Jean is quick to point out that her goal isn't to criticize the Yale community for being especially careless.

"This isn't about demonizing rich students," she insists. John agrees.

"Waste is endemic," he says. "It's not just restricted to a certain class or demographic."

As of October, the crew had prepared a three-minute trailer from eight hours of raw footage, which they uploaded online and intend to submit to environmental film festivals. '

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The trailer opens with a shot of Austin Purnell, a Wesleyan junior,_plucking items from a Harvard dumpster with exaggerated panache.

While he dances with an empty water cooler, classical music crashes in the background "there was actually an orchestra playing near the dumpsters/' Jean interjects and hits a crescendo, dramatizing the silly scene. Expository text flashes across the screen, transitioning to an excerpt from an interview with Rob Gogan, head of Harvard Recycling .

"There's no formal policy against divers," he says, "but we don't like it." Images of teeming dumpsters are juxtaposed with a shot of a nearempty "donation station," driving the point of the_film home: Th~re is . an extraordinary amount of waste, and colleges aren't handling it well.

Before applying to Wesleyan for funds, Jean and Brenda researched recycling programs at various universities in the Northeast. "As plans for the movie progressed, we realized it could become a propaganda vehicle to develop colleges' recycling programs," says Jean. ''I didn't know anything about this stuff before we put together the project."

As a paradigm, the proposal cites Bates University, whose waste management program was orchestrated by a non-profit consulting firm called Dump and Run. At Bates, students' recyclables are collected, stored, and sold in a massive

tag sale in the fall; in 2005, the effort Wesleyan upperclassmen. "They converted the goods into approxj- sort of transferred it to us, and we spread their advice," Jean says. "At mately $12,000 of profit, which the school donated to community or- first, we would go by ourselves. ganizations. ''Wesleyan is on a pro- Then we started emailing each gram called 'freecycle,"' says Jean. other inventory lists of our finds. ''There's no real infrastructure just Workshops were a . natural transition from there." these big storage pods."

"The pods are disgusting," adds Last year, Jean and Brendan beQuinn. "Mildewing, decomposing." gan holding dumpster diving inforWhile Wesleyan's recycling mation sessions for their classmates. program lacks a sturdy infrastruc- Sponsored by the Earth House, the ture, its dumpster diving commu- workshops attract between twenty nity has been a fixture for years. and thirty people, who come to The campus' subculture is rooted learn about the best routes to take, in the school's Earth and Well-Be- ways to identify good sites, and how ing Houses, residential collectives · to clean up dumpsters after diving. for like-minded students. Bren- Brendan's handwritten flyer for the dan is the current manager of the event calls it a "workshop for · beWelL-Being .House . dec;li~ated . -to ginners and prof~ssional~ alike." the spiritual and mental lives of After conducting four workstudents. At one time or another, shops, Jean had accumulated an Brendan, Jean, and Quinn have all extensive list of dumpster diving lived within its walls. John, who aficionados, which came in handy graduated from the University of when she began assembling a crew Connecticut with a philosophy for Operation Ivy. After submitting degree in 2001, was a frequent -the proposal, she received six hunguest. Together, they cultivated a dred dollars more than she asked -mutual passion for their unconven- for. When May rolled around, the tional hobby. vans, crew, and itinerary were all "I'm a musician," says Brendan, set but the overarching concept was "and all of my equipment is from still under development. As Jean's dumpsters amps, speakers, you investigations helped expand the . " name 1t. scope of the project, the film's pur"I once found ninety dollar pose grew increasingly complexDiesel sneakers;" says Jean. was it a vehicle for social change "Forty boxes of douche," says or a subcultural artifact? "I tried to Quinn. tell my mom what we were doing," The team was inspired by says Quinn. "But she just heard the

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esleyan students aren't the only ones picking through Yale's trash: Christopher Shirley, a freshman in Davenport, has dumpstered since high school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. "For me," he says, "diving started as a service for others." .Shirley started by joining the nationwide group "Food Not · Bombs,'' which takes food thrown away by grocery stores and prepares it for the homeless. The New Haven chapter serves .m eals on the Green.

Christopher, whose thick chestnut dreadlocks droop over his forehead like spindly antennae, wears a t-shirt that says, "Mercado Libertario: Really Really Free Market." "Everything I have on" he gestures to his loose blue pants and shoes "I got for free. I've dumpstered at Yale, for sure, especially in the first two weeks of school, when I found lamps, couches, organizers, shelves. Most of the time, there was nothing wrong with it."

For Christopher and the creators of Operation Ivy, "trash'' is not a dirty word; it's a synonym for "freebie." This semantic difference sheds light on the overarching goal of the pursuit: Dumpster divers aren't simply looking for reusable goods they want to redefine the notion of usability. And at Northeastern universities where · they filmed, they want to show that far too much is thrown away.

"The real problem is, in our society, things that are thrown away are then perceived differently," says Chris. "Once something hits a can or a dumpster; it's inexplicably transformed. People think food in a trash can is disgusting, even if it's packaged." Chris points to the free bread put out at midnight by Atticus Cafe, a local bakery that abuts Yale's campus. "The bread is placed in a garbage bag, and there's _often still a lot left at the end of the night. My 14

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roommate thinks that, when faced with actual poverty, many people are afraid of finding the things they need in the garbage it signifies the crossing of a threshold." ccT rash is stigmatized," says John. «That's why most people don't dumpster. That's why people . at us. " were stanng After the Middletown crew has safely stashed their finds from the afternoon the orange tubing, • • • spray pa1nt, m1rror stnps, set props, and several yards of yellow fabricthey head indoors. «If you dumpster dive on a consistent basis," says Quinn, «you'll find everything you need: appliances, cleaning products, food. Everything in this room"he gestures towards the table and chairs around him cc can be found in a dumpster."

Jean agrees. ''It's not that different from what normal college students do, when they find miscellaneous stuff on the streets for their apartments. We just do it strategically." She carries a zine the crew put together to advertise the workshops; it also provides the Middletown sanitation schedule. The scrappy little publication includes a synopsis of the film project, an excerpt from John Hoffman's The Art

and Science of Dumpster Diving, and a list of tips like "Restaurants bad! Bakeries good!" and ccTithe what you dive!"

Quinn offers another nugget.

"You should wear gloves on your hands othet wise they'll look like mine." He stretches out his palms, which are weathered and pink, the color of his hair. "Try to make the whole process as clean and neat as possible. When you take the contents out of the bag, they're no longer neat and compressed; you end up leaving a little mountain of litter

behind you." _ "Wear good shoes," adds Jean.

"Bring a flashlight, a cart. But you'll often find what you need to carry the stuff in the dumpster itself."

«Beware of the bottom of the dumpster," says -Quinn. celt might be a reservoir for dumpster juice." A grimace flashes crosses his face, and the group takes a moment of silence to recall the stench and consistency of fluids like cat urine, rain water, and curdled milk.

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ale was the first school visited by the film crew of Operation Ivy. In the weeks after their New Haven trip, the group shot footage at W es- leyan, Trinity, Harvard, and Williams. While all five schools yielded a substantial payoff, the content and contraband nature of their trash differed. Trinity, according to Quinn, "was full of alcohol. .. every dumpster had unopened booze. We found crates of imported beer. There was even homemade beer." He grins, then adds, «That tasted crazy." Xrated paraphernalia materialized across the board; the group shares a laugh over a pornographic DVD they found in a Harvard dumpster, which they describe as cc hilarious."

"I think it was called cin 'N Out,"' says Brendan.

The group was met with varying reception. Williams College security officers kicked them off campus («They made us put our finds back in the trash!" cries Brendan), while Harvard's recycling director, Rob Gogan, granted them an extensive interview and a tour of the University's facilities.

«Those guys really have their act together," says John. Like Bates, Harvard uses Dump and Run. After implementing the initiative, the Cantabs saw a 54 percent reduction

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in waste from 2002 to 2004, and their post-summer «Stuff Sale" generated more than $70,000, which they donated to Habitat for Humanity.

By filming at schools during their spring move-out periods, Operation Ivy pinpoints a specific problem, described by Jean's proposal as cc the sheer amount of stuff thrown away when -housing closes." At Yale, the administration's response to this phenomenon is a program called Spring Salvage, which positions 177 blue cc donation drums" around campus in hopes that students will drop off their reusable goods.

"We walked through a big gate at Yale, and there were just heaps of things everywhere," recalls Brendan.

«They had recycling bins out, but they definitely weren't big enough.

Stuff was just lying out." _ Yale's waste is renowned amongst the diving community for its magnitude and quality, attracting locals and transients alike. ccwe met a real cross-section," says Brendan.

"Other students, New Haven-ites, diving gurus ... regular people. One guy, Juan, told us that dumpstering by the campus had kept him in free shaving cream and razors for years." ccyale was the best," says Jean.

"When we got there, no one wanted to miss out and hold the camera, so the film work is a bit erratic it was split between five people." The teams' finds included several printers, a Prada bag, and a wrapped lollipop thai weighed three pounds.

They're quickest to boast, however, about the six iPods, all of which had easily reparable malfunctions.

When Jean found her second iPod, she was approached by a stranger. cci was inside a dumpster at the time, and was excited with my discovery. Then this gray-haired guy with a t-shirt that said 'Talk Trash to Me' walked up and asked, 'Find anything?' I was like, cWho are you?'."

Silver-haired C.J. May is Yale's only full-time recycling coordinator, and though he doesn't recall meet15

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ing Jean and her crew, her account disavow it on camera? It may be a seems plausible: "When I see scav- matter of legality. Because dumpengers, dumpster divers, I'll often sters are often located on private poke my head in and ask, 'How's property, removing their contents is technically trespassing. it going?"' He doesn't reprimand "It's illegal to actually get into them. "If people. stopped dumpster a dumpster," says Jean, "what with diving, .t he amount of waste on our the liabilities and all. But most hands around here would increase people want others to take their tremendously." stuff, so they'll look the other way."

While the . crew of Operation Ivy · is critical of the overflow that Even though many choose to igevades the dona~ion . drums, they nore dumpster divers, the ambigu-:may have ignored recent improve- ous legality can make divers jittery. ments. In 2005, Spring Salvage col- "Once, I was inside of a dumpster," lected 18 tons of belongings far recalls Christopher, "and a police less than the amount collected at officer walked up to me. I was pretBates, a school with only 1,600 ty nervous, but all he said was, 'Restudents to Yale's 5,300. This year, cycle and reuse."' however, Yale Recycling more than "Cops usually don't care," afdoubled its intake, collecting 38 firms Quinn. "It's business owners tons of reusable goods. who get upset; they'll consistently come out of their stores to scare C.J. attributes the gain to the acquisition of warehouse space, a away div~rs. I had some friends who used to dumpster behind a depair -of recycling trucks, and a team of approximately 20 students. The partment store. To discourage them, new system, similar to Dump and the manager dumped rose oil on the Run in that reusables are strategi- bags. My friends were like, 'Sweet, this smells good now."' cally collected and stored, differs in Others think that dumpster its final application. "Yale doesn't like the idea of selling things, as diving is an invasion of privacythere a,re liabilities. So, instead, we sometimes, the skeletons in people's invite ninety New Haven non-prof- closets turn up in their wastebaskets. its to come to the warehouse," he ''In a way, I can understand why explains. After the non-profits sign people don't like divers," says John. forms to clear the University of re- ''When you see someone going sponsibility, they can then use or through your trash, it's upsetting." sell the goods as they see fit.

Jean, Quinn, and Brendan have all There is still, however, the found personal items while dumpproblem of education what John stering: diaries, ID' s, credit cards. refers to as "the supply side of "It explains why the most common trash." Despite the efforts of Yale reaction we get is awkwardness," Recycling, C.J. admits that "50% of says Brendan. what ends up in the dumpsters here Not everyone, however, reacts is reusable.'' Most students know to dumpster div€.rs with disdain or the customary recyclable materi- trepidation. "One night at Yale," als paper, cardboard, glass but recalls Jean, "I was going through are unlikely to donate items that a dumpster near 0 ld Campus, throwing the stuff I wanted onto are similarly useful, like a half-used the street " bottle of laundry detergent. Or a Quinn interjects, "It looked broken iPod. like someone had been dumped and their ex had thrown all of their stuff f dumpster diving reduces waste out the window." buildup and reassigns value "So I was on the lip of the to the goods that society has left behind, why does Harvard's Re- dumpster," continues Jean. "It was cycling Coordinator Rod Gogan pretty late, and a New Haven bus •

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stopped next to me. The ~river got out of the bus and asked me if I was alright she offered to buy me some food. I told her I was fine, but she insisted, and returned with a Philly cheese steak ·and some juice.

Another guy gave me a hamburger.

I didn't have the heart to tell them I . " was a vegetanan.

Quinn laughs. "Once, when we were diving, a guy walked by and said, 'Be careful kids it's addictive.' He's right: Jean will dumpster for ten . hours. She's a total . " add1ct.

Jean shrugs. "Unlike most people, I didn't get into dumpster diving because of environmentalism; it's something I've just done for a long time. But as plans for the movie progressed, I realized I wanted to come up with policies that address the issues I'm coming across."

Passing observers, Williams security officers, and Quinn's mother may see dumpstering as a worthless pursuit, but Operation Ivy aims to prove otherwise. When extracted from a dumpster and held up to the light, a dark cutout can be reassessed as a monkey, an acrobat, or a strongman; when documented on film, the apparently lowly act of seeking out garbage can he similarly redefined.

"We want to break the stigma that surrounds trash," says John.

"We want colleges to implement better recycling programs," says Brendan.

Jean nods, . her eyes lighting with purpose. "We want to make a good movie."

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VOted Advocate's Best Haven . .

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Spanish for the. teacher to call on months, students are sent off. This him "YO quiero decirle el answer!" school is, she attests, "completely At New Haven's John C. Daniels dual language here, · everybody School, the dominant language is learns both." After basic training in their native tongue during kinSpanglish.

A self-proclaimed "pioneer in dergarten and first grade, all childual-language education," the J.C. dren, regardless of their language Daniels school is trying to become background, are plunged into a mix a place ''where all children can of homework and tarea, arithmetic learn/ don de todos los niiios pueden and matemdticas, classrooms and aprender. '' Sixty percent of the 650 salones, teachers and maestros. From students are Hispanic. At the be- second to sixth grade, on alternate ginning of September, J.C. Daniels weeks, each subject is taught in eimoved into a colossal $44 million ther English or Spanish. As a result, classes move straight from atoms to glass structure a spotless 90,7 40 he teacher is moleculas without pausing for resquare foot building complete with telling a story about a zorro who view.

Each classroom contains a mix an oversized sunken gym and a vivia en el bosque con sus amiguitos, of English-dominant, Spanish-domshiny silver "cafetorium."

The walls but the restless class keeps calling out inant, and completely bilingual stuare plastered with historical displays answers without raising their hands. dents.

"They help each other learn," declaring "Celebremos la Hispani"!Manos, yo quiero ver las manos!"

Barna says. dad" and with the national flags of she insists, her voice now hoarse "The kids love it," says PrinPeru, Cuba, Panama, Mexico and from a long day of teaching. She tells cipal Gina Wells.

"Mostly it's the Puerto Rico. one boy to pay attention in broken parents who pull their kids out."

"We are not a bilingual school," English and then returns to her lesShe estimates that eighty percent of insists Robin Barna, Head Instrucsons in Spanish. the parents love the program and tional Coach at J. C. Daniels for the Over the next 45 minutes, this the other twenty percent complain. past fifteen years.

She explains that scenario repeats itself the teacher Some African-American families see at bilingual schools, after thirty yells out a question in one language, students respond in the other, and • the two languages blur together. A girl with beads and cornrows pumps • her hand in the air "ooh, ooh, yo know!" In the front, a chubby His• • panic boy begs in ·almost perfect •

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New Haven students are taught in two languages.

by Tina Colon

little use for dual language education when Spanish will only be practiced at school, and the occasional Latino family will prefer to abandon Ia lengua de patria altogether, sending their children to a more conventional school.

Despite its detractors, J.C. Daniels shows no signs of slowing down. Before the recent move, two small separate buildings housed its classrooms. Students would run across the street from _class to class, teachers felt cramped, and a 23-year battle for a new location began.

Now, the spotless month-old facility dominates Congress Avenue, and every aspect of the school exudes an aura of efficiency. With the help of a specialist from California, teachers are now implementing the regimented "SlOP" (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) program of instruction, which ·covers lesson techniques for everything from vocabulary building to reading comprehension.

Students show improved - performance on standardized tests in all subjects, and although it is still a neighborhood public school, its growth is evidenced by the ten buses and seven vans it employs daily.

Administrators may be forced to turn applicants away next year, as

the school aspires to become a more competitive magnet school with entrance exams that admit only New Haven's brightest students.

The dual language program is · far from perfect. '' Si, es dificil," a substitute teacher sighs when asked about the challenge of bilingual instruction. During math class, she often finds herself begging Englishspeaking students to stop complaining that they don't understanddouble-digit addition is the same in every language. While distributing worksheets, she must constantly reexplain the instructions in English for students who didn't understand the Spanish the first time.

It's most difficult for the nonHispanic students, who tend to be less comfortable with Spanish than the Latino students are with English.

Outnumbered by Spanish-speaking and bilingual Hispanic students, Barna concedes that these Englishdominant students "are not learning Spanish as quickly as we'd like them to." The school has mastered English as a Second Language instruction, but is still looking for a Spanish as a Second Language teacher.

Such an inconsistency is the result of New Haven's staggeringly fast demographic shift. In the 1970s, Latinos made up less than four percent of New Haven's population.

Today, they comprise nearly one third of its citizens, and the city is still learning how it can best serve its new residents.

Although the school hosts children from all of New Haven, most live in the Hill neighborhood near the school. Compared with New Haven as a whole, which the last census listed as 21% Hispanic and 37% African-American, this neighborhood holds a disproportionately

high Latino concentration 46% are Hispanic, a minority group which surpasses the black residents who make up 39o/o. Here, homes where Spanish is the main language (41%) are almost as prevalent as those that are English-dominant (54%). Of these Latinos, half still speak imperfect English. As more enroll at J.C. Daniels, students from a bilingual home environment persistently outshine those raised in a single-language home.

Though the curriculum of this elementary school is distinctive, its students are like students everywhere: they sit together, eat together, pass notes to each other in class. Over the past eight years, J.C. Daniels has offered the challenge of stepping into bilingual shoes five days a week providing children a comfortable learning environment where they can get to know their neighbors without losing or hiding their culture.

"They're raised together. Ies like they're brothers and sisters. It's definitely different." At J. C. Daniels, the kids of New Haven are learning to celebrar Ia hispaninad within their neighborhoods and within their homes. They are learning, one classroom at a time, to become one comunidad with two idiomas.

Tina Colon is a Sophomore in Branford College.

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An internet poll robs Louis' Lunch of its crown.

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title, "Father of the Hamburger," for a defining moment at the 1885 World's Fair when he sandwiched meatballs between slabs of bread for the eating ease of ambulatory fairgoers. And so it was that Louis' Lunch was relegated from the already dubious status of very-arguably-the-home-of-the-first-sort-of hamburger in the United States to at-best-the-home-of-the-thirdmaybe hamburger in America.

Louis, Lunch,s affidavit from the New Haven Preservation Trust can't hold a candle to the fanfare that Nagreen's legacy enjoys in his native Seymour, Wisconsin, where the modern-day mascot Hamburger Charlie serves as the city's representative on all beef-related issues. Hamburger Charlie's voice is appealing. He sounds like Santa,s midwestern cousin jolly, well-fed, hyper-commercialized. He is a gracious winner. ccLouis' certainly has the longest continual selling hamburger/' he says conciliatorily during a short telephone interview.

While H-amburger Charlie, on the other end of the telephone, is just a voice, Ken Lassen barely has one in person. "How old do you think I am?" he demands in .soft gravelly tones. Lassen is the 89-yearold grandson of Louis Lassen, the establishment's eponymous founder, who, one fateful day in 1900, slapped a patty between two slices of toast for a customer on the nin. '

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the outcome of ccThe Hamburger Hearings,,, a mock trial at which modern day representatives of four historical claimants to the invention of America,s favorite food presented their cases before a judge and his jury, the Burger Commission.

This actually happened.

The Elm City's Louis' Lunch was one contender at the hearings.

The famed Crown Street luncheonette, which claims to have sold the first hamburger 68 years before the birth of the Big Mac, garnered only 26% of the vote. Louis' Lunch was three percent shy of second place, which went to the Menches· family of Akron, Ohio. The cyber-verdict ·bestowed entrepreneur Charles Nagreen with the coveted

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merica voted.

And though the official annals of gastronomic history are famously unsettled on the subject of the hamburger's origin, an internet poll conducted during August's first annual National Hamburger Festival in Akron, Ohio claims to have divined the historical truth.

Yes, the long contested history of the hamburger's origin is settled.

The verdict is in. The poll decided 22

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Today, Lassen's own son, Jeffrey, works the counter from 6:00p.m. to 2:00 a.m. each business day, while the elderly Lassen jokes that he is usemi-retired." The phrase, meant to describe the state of Lassen's career, is a metaphor for the state of Louis' Lunch itself, a euphemism for a dying American way.

Lassen was flipping patties long before the statesmen and businessmen of Seymour, Wisconsin even learned of their town's hamburger history. Raised by his grandparents, Lassen spent his childhood behind the counter, helping put meat into the ugrinder" a special cast-iron grill and sampling it as it came out. He began working for his family the day after he graduated from high school. Lassen is a tradesman whose goal is the perfection that comes -from specialization, not the profit that comes from commercialization. ''What do I know best? The lunch counter," says Lassen, who has eaten an unfathomable number of hamburgers all made at Louis' Lunch.

The appeal of Louis' creation, so starkly in a class of its own, may be inaccessible to the uneducated masses. A burger at Louis' is a thick patty, broiled vertically in the

grinder and served between two slices of white toast. The emphasis is on the flavor of the meat. ''Every . element of the burger is deferential to the meat, is there to complement it," explains Robin Goldstein, author of New Haven's scathing restaurant guide The Menu. ''The bread is really just there to protect your fingers from the patty.'' The only acceptable fixin's at Louis' are tomato, onion, and cheese. Ketchup is verboten the restaurant's t-shirts portray a ketchup bottle_ barred behind the diagonal chord struck through an angry red circle.

Some see Louis' -purism as classy; others find it needlessly austere. Either way, it probably hurt Louis' at the Hamburger Hearings, where kitsch trumped class.

August's internet poll awarded first and second place to burger-innovators who hail from two cities that make circuses of their dubious burger heritages. Akron is home not only to the ~enches brothers but also to the uHamburger Festival." America's other burger fete, "Home of the Hamburger," takes place in Hamburger Charlie's Seymour, Wisconsin. In that same city, burger lovers can make a pilgrimage to the Hamburger Hall •

am urger ar ie's vozce • ea zng. e soun • • western couszn-;o • • com mereta zz e October 2006

of Fame to admire photographs of the world's largest hamburger, an 8,266 pound whopper prepared in Seymour in 2001. "They're profe~­ sionals," Lassen says of the burger mavericks who stole spots one and two. He shakes his head disdainfully. ccThey just aren't about what we're about."

Few businesses are anymore.

The Lassen's family-run establish:ment is on the verge of extinction.

Because both of Lassen's sons are divorced and childless, it's likely the next owners won't even be in the family. Lassen hopes to live to see grandchildren, but not for · the sake of keeping the business in the bloodline. "I just want grandkids," he says, staring at his diner through cataract-damaged eyes.

He adds, "There's more to life than hamburgers.''

Laura Zax is a Freshman in Silliman College. . .

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Will Yale no longer be the lax Ivy?_

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n October 13th, a thin green pamphlet offering "Information for the Yale Community regarding Connecticu.t 's cAct Concerning Underage Drinking; P.A. 06-112"' surfaced in residential college dining halls.

Appearing twelve days after · the new law came into effect, the pamphlet was an overdue attempt by Yale to clarify the state's new alcohol laws. Since late August, rumors and speculation have kept students wondering how the new law would affect social life at Yale. So far, it is altering what it means to attend this historically looser-laced member of the Ivy League.

October 2006

Only a month ago, three giggling Yale women enjoyed a carefree evening out on the town. They · were dressed alike each wore her own version of the skinny jeans, beaded top, and stiletto heels nightlife uniform and all three left their dorm holding an alcoholic beverage of choice. Two splashed beer out of cans as they skipped down Chapel Street, while the other sipped discretely out of a red Solo cup. A · balding policeman stationed at the corner of High and Chapel Streets nodded at the girls as they passed, then glanced at his watch. Although the girls were clearly not 21, he did not stop them. He leaned wearily against the street sign and watched them enter the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house. Another night, another party.

On the night of September 30th, the evening that the law went into effect, the scene was markedly different. Police patrolled the streets surrounding Yale with a new vigor.

They endured tense negotiations with residential college deans, arrested undergraduates using fake IDs, and handled the fallout of a recent sting operation that cracked down on New Haven liquor stores.

As one cop dragged a handcuffed undergraduate out of Toad's Place, he shouted, ccDoes t4is mean anything to you? Do you understand what's happening here?"

Fifteen years from now, it may be clear what is happening herewhat effects the law has had on the University's atmosphere. At the present, it's uncertain whether Yale will be able to maintain its fun-loving reputation. In a 2004 editorial, the staff of The Harvard Crimson enviously pointed to ccNew Raven's relaxed drinking laws," and "Yale's benevolent policies towards underage alcohol consumption."

Connecticut's new law raises the

question of who is responsible for creating the campus atmosphere that will best keep students happy, healthy, and safe the University Administration or a group ·o f state legislators. For all of the animus Elis bear against Harv:ard and its strict tailgating ·policies, the Cantabs' rules are the product of the Boston Police Department, not Harvard President Derek Bok. Should theN ew Haven police crack down, there is little indication that Woodbridge Hall will put up more of a fight than its Cambridge counterpart. If it does not, what social attractions will Yale offer the Class of 2011? Will the next generation of stiletto-clad trios and SAE revelers take this into account when they decide whether to come to Yale?

No current student can answer that question. Nor can the many New Haven liquor stores, dance clubs, or bars that watched with bewilderment as years of "letting it slide" and cclooking the other way" came to a screeching halt on October tst. Even those vendors that knew about the revised law were unsure how much it would change.

When a law affects a state's entire underage population, one would expect a more visible attempt to inform the public. Before the belated pamphlets, however, education came in the form of a crackdown, and no one is sure when a new status quo will emerge.

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n June 2nd, when Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell signed the act into law, most Yale undergraduates were far from campus.

Driven by the efforts of the Governor's Prevention Partnership a coalition between the Connecticut state government and business leaders to "keep Connecticut's youth ~afe, successful and drugfree'' the law sealed loopholes

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left open by its predecessor. ures, especially Yale College MasThe previous law had no provi- ters, who are held liable under the sions against minors possessing al- same laws that would send Mommy cohol on private property. Although to jail for little Joey's kegger. teens could not legally purchase booze, downing J aegerbombs in ocated just down the street from their parents' basement was ''safe." ........ the freshman dorms on Old Parents who provided alcohol to Campus, College ·Wine and Liquor youngsters were rarely penalized, ran into trouble with the law this as there was no ''criminal social past September. Following a calm host law" to hold adults liable for summer, the return of students to underage drinking in private homes. campus brought .a rash of new probU nderage drinkers in Connecticut lems. were, for years, shielded from po''We've had trouble in the past, lice intervention. _ but this is something new,'' says an The new act effectively ends assistant manager who asked to not the days when the ''cool" parents be identified. ccwe've always been could let little Joey host a kegger in picky about IDs, yeah, because peothe garage. Now, if Mom and Pop ple are always trying to use fakes, or "knowingly permit(s) any minor to use no ID at all. We look at them, possess alcoholic liquor," they face up to five hundred dollars in fines • • and the possibility of a year in jail. ccYou can now be held respon..: sible if you don't take reasonable • efforts to prevent minors from consuming alcohol at your party," says Lieutenant Michael Patten of the Yale Police. His definition of "reasonable efforts" ''telling people t to leave if they're drinking you can stay but the alcohol can't" is, • at best, hazy. "It's all new stuff so things are going to be fleshed out • as they go along," he admits. The process of ''fleshing things out" has • been confusing for authority fig-

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and if they don't look old enough, we ask for ID. We never had problems," he says carefully, opening a fresh case of wine. "However, the week before the new law took effect there was a police sting operation.

The store was caught selling alcohol to minors, along with fourteen stores in neighboring towns. College Wine had to pay a $750.00 fine and close for three days.

Sting operations, in which offic.ers let a suspect's unlawful actions progress in order to gather evidence of wrongdoing before a police raid, are not a new phenomenon in New Haven, and College Wine and Liquor has endured its share in years past. Still, the assistant manager insists that the police have been "harsher" in recent weeks, and that the sting operation happened unusually early in the school year.

"This was the first time we've actually gotten into trouble," he says.

"It's different."

Spiro Pi at, the owner of Broadway Liquor, is less nervous. The store, located less prominently than College Wine on the outskirts of Yale's campus, .is not even on the radar of most freshmen. Broadway Liquor attracts travel-fatigued businessmen from the nearby Marriott, workers from stores on Whalley Avenue around the corne~ and a consistent clientele who are, ac-

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cording to its owner, cc just around."

It's evident that his store caters to-a more adult crowd: a collage of nearly nude ladies adorns the countertop, as do two scrawled signs that note: "21 +over no ID!!! No liquor... no exceptions. 21 + over!!" Though his shelves are stocked with aged tequila and Puerto Rican rum, one thing is conspicuously absent from Broadway .Liquor: the effects of the new underage drinking law. As of mid-October, Piat was unaware that there had been a change. It goes to show, perhaps, how Yale-centric the crackdown has been. Around the corner from Payne Whitney Gym but past the main Broadway thoroughfare, the store is just far enough to remain untouched by the intensified enforcement.

Fraternity Row does not enjoy the same lack of scrutiny. Students who live and party in houses on High Street and Lynwood Place are well-versed in the intricacies of the alcohol law. Although most frats are formally recognized by the University, their off-campus locations place them under the jurisdiction of the New Haven police. As a fulcrum of Yale's underage social life, the frats have had to make some serious adjustments.

In addition to tracking down kegs and cranberry juice, Solo cups and playlists, Sigma Alpha Epsi-

is hard to tell.

Ion president David Kemp and his Lieutenant Patten also downbrothers now have other details plays the impact of the change. He to attend to: complying with the claims that his department has alnew law and worrying about the ways been strict, " ... issu[ing] inincreased police · presence in and fractions for public drinking in the around Yale. Though Kemp claims that the law has sparked only a "re- past on a fairly regular basis." He iteration of our policies of the past," adds, "this new law doesn't make any differentiation." But judging party-hopping Yalies lament what from students' anecdotes, the rate they perceive to be a sea-change in the partying environment. Most no- at which IDs have been confiscated ticeable is the diminished frequency · and parties have beeu broken up inof "SAE Late Night," a weekly par- dicates other wise. ty ritual that has, for many students, n an e-mail with the subject defined Thursday nights at Yale. line ccN o More Mr. Nice Guy," Kemp, however, insists that Ezra Stiles College Master Stuart his fraternity is simply being more careful. "We've reinforced our risk Schwartz explained that, in light management policy," he explains. of "the amount of partying in the Frat brothers now check IDs at the college last weekend unregisdoor and mark the hands of under- tered and the apparent violations age students, who won't be served of the college and state laws and alcohol. "We also provide alternate regulations I am forced to bring beverages, food if someone needs it, the period of <transition' to a close." and we don't serve visibly intoxi- After advising Stilesians to regiscated people," Kemp says. "The ter parties with more than fifteen New Haven police want more sub- guests, Master Schwartz added an dued affairs. They're serious about ominous warning: "Those who regenforcing the law, so we have to lis- ister their events will have the priviten to them." lege of a warning from the master or Despite the void in many stu- dean prior to any call to the police. dents' Thursday night social sched- Those who do not register will not ules, Kemp is not worried that qual- be so warned." His closing remarkity of life will worsen in the long ccHave fun, use your heads" is emrun. "In the end, ! ~think the Yale blematic of the mixed message the experience is still going to be pretty University is sending to students. similar," he says. But at this point, it The restrictions are ambiguous, but

the enforcement is harsh, and the His attitude reflects many stuschool cares less about students' dents' determination to not let comdrinking habits than about keeping plex legalities affect their routines.

This goes for Yale policies as well, their criminal records clean. with renewed In years past, the rules that which have resurfaced . purpose in response to the law. A undergraduates actually obeyed University procedure called "ruswere largely unspoken: Try to keep . tication" a word that means little parties contained; turn the music down as the clock creeps closer to to most students has always been dawn; clean up; don't break other included in the Yale College manlaws. However, with the exception ual of UndergradU:ate Regulations. . . of a few fastidious students, parties Rustication is, as the manual outtended to stay unregistered and lines, a response io "violation of the hosts tended to slip by unscathed. dormitory regulations ... requir[ing] As long as students were safe and the student in question to live off healthy, the Masters seemed satis- - campus, either for a specified pefied, and their liability under the riod or permanently. This penalty is old laws was limited. called 'rustication.' Rusticated stuThe new law, however, affects dents may be denied access to the not only students, but their Mas- college itself and to its facilities." ters who· are now at personal risk.

It is not a . term that regularly "Our Master has taken the provi- surfaces in conversations over a sion of the law that states that 'the keg. "What the hell is rustication?" asks a senior, who has never heard · person in charge of the domain will bear .responsibility' to mean that the term, and does not know that it that person is him," says a Yale jucould threaten her. . . . nior, who requested anonymity. Still, o one suite of sophomore boys, when he and his suitemates threw a . this highfalutin word has acparty this year, the recent vigilance quired new relevance. In discussscarcely crossed their minds. Ten minutes before guests were slated ing their plight, the boys are chatty to arrive, they received · a personal and affable; they crack half-hearted phone call from the Master remind- jokes about the seriousness of their ing them of the new law. predicament and accuse one anoth"[Our Master] said, 'Don't let er of being the most "moronic" of people go outside with cups, just the group. Yet the gravity of their keep people inside of the entrance- situation is clear: They insist on reway."' They responded by · put- maining anonymous in this article ting up signs that read, 'No booze because they are in serious trououtside. Thanks' and 'Please throw ble, and the threat of "rustication" your cups out before leaving.' There looms too close for comfort.

The weekend of October 1sT were no problems. "Though we were initially kind of worried about seemed like a fine time to host a the police showing up, we kind of . party. The weather was crisp but forgot about it as soon as the party not chilly, midterm hysteria had started," they explained. not yet descended, and the boys The boys are already plan- were eager to continue a tradition of ning another party. "This law hosting consistently successful parwon't change my social life," one ties. As always, the boys purchased of them said. "Our next party is gallons of low-quality alcohol, set soon ... Stop by.'' _ a time, spread the word, and never •

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thought twice about registering.

They also didn't think twice about the date their party was to · be held: the very night when the new alcohol law would come into effect. They admit it was a poor decision, but partially blame it on the lack of information. One suite member thought the alcohol law was changing on October 4th. Another reasoned, ''We weren't allowed to drink [alcohol] anyway, so I didn't think the law change mattered. It was already an 'illegal' party in its totality." .

But their college Master, they claim indignantly, did little to elucidate the new policies. At a college. wide meeting early in the semester, discussion of the new law was " .. .like a joke,'' according to one of the boys. "Everyone was laughing because basically 75o/o of the college is underage anyway. It was like, 'Oh, we can still drink in our rooms."' He chuckles sardonically.

"It didn't really seem like anything was going to change."

On the night of the party, it became painfully evident that things had changed. Approximately one hundred and fifty people showed up, a number so large that the party spilled into the courtyard. Nearly everyone carried a red cup, laughing, yelling, flirting, drinking.

By 11:00 p.m., four New Haven not Yale police officers had entered the college courtyard and were observing the scene, checking their watches. The hosts at last remembered the significance of that particular night, panicked momentarily, then got on with the party.

"If anything, the pace of the party sped up once the cops arrived," one host recalls wistfully. "It was like when the police stand outside of a fraternity house no one cares, no one stops."

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lucid enough to remember the significance of October 1sr, one guest started a raucous countdown to midnight. Guests spilled beer on their shirts as they drank as quickly as possible, desperate to beat the deadline. It was a decidedly less savory Cinderella story, with guests evading the New Haven police rather than Prince Charming.

The college Dean materialized shortly, and began negotiating with the irate officers. By 11:45, the Dean was ordering students to toss cups, gather belongings, and get out. . By midnight it was all over for everyone, that is, except the hosts.

The next morning, the boys awoke to two unpleasant reminders of the previous night: hangovers, and an email from the Dean and Master of their college calling for an immediate conference. The boys were told that if they held another party, they would either be rusticated, or sent to the Executive Committee, who would review their status as Yale students. One host describes the meeting as "one of the worst experiences of my life." Harsh consequences for "just another party.''

A week later, the fallout had partially settled. "We are being made an example," one of the boys grumbles. "I think people are scared about what's going to happen. No parties have been thrown since the law has happened ... No one wants to be the scapegoat.''

Though they were spared rustication, the change in the law has, they say, slammed the door on ''a way of life.'' or freshmen struggling to negotiate a new social scene, being thrust into a shifting climate . has been doubly awkward. Freshman Counselors, like Jus tin Ash of Ezra Stiles College, have had to rise to the challenge of helping first-years

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navigate newly dangerous drinking territory. "There was one incident last night that I heard about," Ash recalled on October 2No. ''A freshman: was drinking an energy drink, and apparently a police officer approached him and demanded that he pour it out. He said, 'Actually, officer, it's only an energy drink, I swear!' but the officer said, 'I don't care, get rid of it now."'

Three floors above Ash's room in Lawrance Hall, freshmen Jose Meza and Julondre Brown are optimistic. ''I've been having a lot of fun/' Jose says with a shrug. Neither student fears the law will place a·damper on their "Yale experience"; each insists that he will have just as much fun as the upperclassmen did back in the day. Taking a bite out of his Rice K.rispie treat, Brown adds, "I can't see it stopping anything."

lieved that any fake ID that vaguely time. Their conversation was sudresembled its bearer would pass. denly interrupted, however, when a But in the past few years, Toad's Toad's bouncer approached. has been raided more frequently "He came up to [Denise] and I and underage admits have been and said, 'Leave this street right now, ejected and even fined by the local just leave,"' Hertslet recalls. At 5'6", police. Rumors of raids reached a with honey-blonde hair, kind eyes, frenzy in the days leading up to the and soft features, Hertslet's presalcohol law's implementation. Unence is hardly threatening. So why der the reign of P.A. 06-112, all IDs was he yelling at her? Surprised by are scrutinized. Bouncers often rethe seriousness of his voice, the girls quest multiple forms to ensure that left quickly and headed back toward names and birthdates match. In their dorm. However, the guilt of the line, whispers circulate debatabandoning their friend was strong: ing the harshness of that evening's Leave no girl behind, even if it's on bouncer. Has he taken any IDs? the dance floor at Toad's.

Is he asking for multiples? Many In the twenty minutes they'd desert the line and head next door been gone, however, the situation to Yorkside Pizza. For those who at the nightclub had taken a turn for get in, it is hard to miss the sign anthe worse. "When we came back, nouncing: "Toad's place reserves the our friend was coming out of Toad's right to physically remove hostile persons from the premises."

Fifty feet from that sign on an October night, Junior Angel Hertslet, along with her friend Denise, • shivered together on the sidewalk bordering Toad's Place, with no • intention of entering. The girls were waiting for a friend who was busy grinding and bopping on the dance floor inside. Amidst a parade of passing characters, from rowdy members of the men's lacrosse team to fatigued truck drivers, the girls chatted quietly, trying to pass the

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et some traditions have already stopped. Blissful ignorance ends at the kelly green doors to Toad's Place, the host of the 21 and over Saturday night dance parties that have long characterized Yale nightlife. The saying goes "All roads lead to Toad's," and every Saturday flocks of inebriated Yalies gravitate towards the club like moths to a flarne. It was once infamously easy to enter: Most undergraduates be-

was comzng out o Toa 's wit a man; " says ertse was "

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with a policeman/' says Hertslet, of letting anything slide, especially upset. "She was hap.dcuffed." with policemen watching from .

Another policeman stationed the wings. nearby tried to calm the frightened . The new law's most signifigirls, but to no avail. "We asked cant effect cannot be measured in the policeman about the new Con- the number of arrests or the severnecticut drinking law and he said ity of fines. P.A. 06-112 has most he wasn't even aware of it. He drastically changed the perception didn't even know what we were of underage drinking. Though the illegal act has always been taboo, talking about."

Nor, evidently, did Jim Bay, students once shared party stories the Operations Manager of Toad's and announced imminent trips to Place. Though revelers at Toad's the liquor store without a second that Saturday night insist that po- thought. No one worried about lice swarmed the area, Jim has a dif- concealing the flasks they brought to the Halloween concert, and ferent account. ''I heard some rumor of some "open containers" once referred to law change Saturday night, but yesterday's leftovers, not a breach I wasn't informed about it," he of the law. "Rustication" sounded mumbled distractedly while man- more like an obscure reference to ning the club's entrance one recent animal husbandry than a feared Thursday evening. "I never got any punishment. sort of written notice that things But the reluctance of both stuhad changed state-wide." He paused to reflect for a minute, then continued. "You know, I actually was under the impression that [the law] was just a Yale thing; I didn't realize it was a state-wide change.

But hey, I'm kind of busy . right now," he said, gesturing at the long line outside the door. Clearly, business hadn't suffered.

The full impact of the new law on Yale is not yet clear. Precedents have not been set and compromises have not yet been reached. Several Yalies have been made into examples, but whether the Administration will continue to seek scapegoats remains to be seen. If anything, the new law tests the audacity of students. Sigma Phi Epsilon recently implemented an invitation-<:>nly policy for its parties. Pierson College turned its "Tuesday Night Club," once a University-wide party, into a seniors-only event. Toad's Place and College Wine and Liquor will continue checking IDs. They don't want to risk the consequences

dents and adults to discuss the present state of affairs encapsulates the tension and confusion surrounding the new law. One thing is certain: Students are uneasy. And until the challenges it poses to Yalies are elucidated, the University's social scene will proceed cautiously as it seeks to redefine itself in the eyes of next year's class of 2011, which won't turn 21 until2010.

Lauren Harrison, a Sophomore in Ezra Stiles College, is Circulations & Subscriptions Manager ofTNJ. •

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Some New Haven liquor stores are suffering due to recent police sting operations.

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CALLING ALL WRITERS ...

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Reading and Conversation

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7:30p.m., Thursday, November 2, 2006 · ·Branford College Common Room

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Staff Writer The New Yorker Author of 27 books including

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Uncommon Carriers Annals of the Former World Coming into the Country Encounters with the Archdruid The Pine Barrens

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John Cristophe Schlesinger Visiting Writer at Yale

Come armed .with story ideas to The. New ournal's next 111eeting on Monday, October 23.

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What,s marking the pavement?

by Romy Drucker

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Flip- ops are so ubiquitous that they're unnoticeable. Standard and pervasive, they are nearly as obvious as eet themselves.

October 2006

"To find out what sort of person a man is at Yale, you look at his shoes," wrote Eli D.H. Marshman in a 1942 sketch of his classmates. "This University has been going for 241 years and it has found this to be true, and when Yale takes a stand on the matter of shoes as an indication of eligibility, Yale is right there is nothing more important."

Marshman, who graduated in 1945 and won an Academy Award for the screenplay of Sunset Boulevard in 1950, used shoes to size up a man. Black buckskins? An inferior miscreant. White with plain toes and thick red rubber soles? Clearly destined for greatness. White with hard soles and perforations? "Cross to the other side of York street In the Eli caste system, he is· something akin to untouchable," answers Marshman. To understand the Yale man, Marshman peered into his sole.

Today, Yale students reserve their suede Nubucks and shiny buckskins for formal events. On an average Tuesday evening, during an average dinner rush at Commons Dining Hall, an average of one in three students entered wearing flip-flops.

From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on October 10th, 31.8% or 146 o£459 diners sported flip-flops. Others wore flats, sneakers, or sandals. One girl donned kneehigh boots with four-inch heels. A baby entered in socks.

That infallible barometer of student interests, thefacebook.com, documents 328 groups with the word "flip-flop" in their titles. Eighteen Yale students listed "flip-flops,, in their profiles under "Interests.,, Between April 1, 2005 and October 10, 2006, Paul Richards, a shoe store on the corner of York

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and Elm, sold 315 pairs of flip-flops fashionista girls starting buying the s Roland Barthes admits in at $43.95 each. At any given time, flip-flops in Chinatown and wear'ccBlue is in Fashion This Year,: the shop carries about 14 styles of ing them with jeans with skirts and A Note on Research into Signifying flip-flops; this year, madras beat dresses all over the East Village,,, she Units in Fashion Clothing,, clothnotes. Stores like Pearl River Mart ing may not carry meaning in the out black-and-white polka dots as the top seller. At Thorn Brown, a acquired cult status among New same way that language does, "but shoe store on Broadway, salesgirl York trendsetters, who incorporat- I am right at least to apply a lin.: • April Mercure says the summer ed flip-flops into their wardrobes in guistic method of analysis to it., sandals are "still selling,, even this droves. In Rio and Paris, chicettes In this spirit, in Yale,s spirit, it is a late into fall. Down the block, the would never pair flip-flops with reasonable assumption that the flipYale Bookstore stocks twelve differ- couture. But the flip-flop was never flops that traipse on our collegiate ent styles, including four with Yale motifs. Every one of Broadway,s purveyors of chic J.Crew, Wishlist, and Urban Outfitters sells the sandals to campus devotees. . . .. i Take Kevin . Davis, who has 16 pairs in his dorm room and ten more .at home, or Lillian Lwamugira, who has eight pairs at Yale. And then there,s Lauren Taylor, who,s been known to wear them in the snow. "And in the rain they just make more sense than any other shoes/, she argues.

Today, it is an understatement to acknowledge that flip-flops are • a Yale wardrobe staple, but thirty years ago, the situation was, well, flip-flopped. Average number of students wearing flip-flops in the 1976 Yale yearbook: zero.· Flipflops are so ubiquitous that they,re unnoticeable. Standard and pervasive, they are nearly as obvious as The New Journal Js guide to fall fashion. feet themselves.

Modeled after Japanese Zori, a intended to grace a runway. It is stomping grounds are provocative, sandal woven of straw or plant fiber, rooted in traditions of convenience self-referential signifiers. flip-flops probably first appeared and dirt. Not surprisingly, the style At Yale, the flip-flop has a as rubber imita-tions sold in drug became trendy at colleges, where grammatica function that footwear stores after World War II. Until the dirt is a problem and convenience is lacks at other colleges: the Y~·sllape.­ 1990s, they were relegated to beach- an objective. created by the straps that stretch out es, gyms, and showers. Meghan Flip-flops are cool, effortless, af- from between the big and pointer Cleary, author of "The Perfect Fit: fordable fashion. People try hard to toes. The shoe inscribes feet with What Your Shoes Say About You, look like they're not trying, to hide the University's alphabetical sigand a recognized shoe guru who their intense scrutiny of the world nifier, even as the shoe serves as a blogs about shoes at missmeghan. around them in a veil of breezy subtle rebellion against an old-boy com, has an expert opinion on when nonchalance. But no dress choice is Yale of nubucks and buckskins. We the fashion flip-flop bonanza began. without meaning. We are surround- unconsciously mark ourselves with "It was the summer of 1998... It ed by signifiers of our own making. it. The ego, in search of meaning, was that summer that some of the Everything is connotative . necessarily searches for signs, un•

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controllably reading the world as if it were a text and projecting it uponus: in this case, through fashion.

The flip-flop is a Y in the alphabet of the world, a literal text marking the pavement.

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ix decades after Marshman used footwear to delineate Yale's social strata, the rules that govern Yale fashion · are . decidedly more liberal. Going to cla_ss is no longer a coat and tie affair: few occasionsare. And while fashion today is still hierarchical, flip-flops function as the great equalizer. Unpracticed at dressing up, Yalies wear flip-flops to dress down.

Flip-flops are a site of class consciousness. For Yale students, • • • • an expens1ve pa1r 1s not supenor to its less pricey counterpart. In fact at $14, Havaianas are a cheap fashion fix. Those who own expensive Rainbows also own flip-flops from Wal-Mart and Old Navy. Fashionistas who own Siegerson Morrison kitten heel flip-flops whose debut guru Meghan Clearly says marked the «height of the flip-flop madness of the 'fashion' scene" treat them no better than a pair from Target.

These flip-flops are simply flipflops: emblems of practicality, ease, and comfort. They are the essence of footwear, the barest essentials of support, protection, and city survival. At Yale, flip-flops symbolize the liberalization of the Eli caste system Marshman parodied. They simultaneously manage to be chic and to oppose the bourgeois elements of fashion.

In that sense, they are an objec~ of rebellion. Northwestern University's championship women's lacrosse team became daughters of the revolution on July 19, 2005 when some members of the clan arrived for a meet-and-greet with President Bush at the White House

And while ashion

to dress down.

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October 2006

EQUOS

FLIP-FLOP

(After Saussure.) wearing flip-flops. The flop faux pas was front-page news, riling cultural critics to encapsulate~ the incident as emblematic of the degeneration of fashion responsibility. The juxtaposition of Bush's conservatism and the naked toes of the female athletes was a public expression of the everyday rebellion played out at Yale, where flip-flops flop where W once treaded the courtyards in loafers.

Those who decry the shoe as socially unacceptable also argue against its practicality. "They are bad for your feet," says Cleary.

«The way you see them worn ... is really bad. That's the big deception of the flip-flop." Schlepping around

in flip-flops leaves dust, road residue, and the day's dregs trapped in · foot cradles. Wearers walk home with blackened feet and, sometimes, sore ankles. For their winter fans, there's road salt and frostbite. Podiatrists have rallied against them.

That the flip...:flop ·is simultaneously unacceptable in formal society and pervasive in the collegiate environment that will · ostensibly ·feed into that strata positions them in the wardrobes of becoming. We don't wear flip-flops to job interviews, which will determine our future, but to class, as if it won't. To make such a distinction is to admit that this place is only a temporary side trip, a diversion where it's cool to look good but uncool to care that you do.

Marshman wrote that shoes are a "real index" of men. Following his lead, we should take a moment to ponder why we wear the shoes we do. Trends in footwear are not incidental but discursive of the people we are. Like what we call them, they represent a shift, a becoming, a transition that occurs somewhere between a flip and a flop.

Romy Drucker, a Senior in Davenport College, is the Publisher of

TNJ.

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37

Suburbia on the Green The ghosts of Chapel Street Mall

by Benny Sachs

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verlooking the New outside, the old fountains and storeHaven Green at 900 fronts of the mall are buried under Chapel Street · stands cheap mu lch and synthetic masonry. a colossal, modern- A sanitized simulacrum of a bustling ist building. Its imposing frame of downtown shopping street has been glass and steel blocks out the rays transformed into a sanitized simuof the midday sun as workers from lacrum of suburban yard, street, local office buildings scurry to and and park. fro under its shaded arcade. In the But upon entering a former lobby stands Brian Keefe. He is a storefront, one finds not a cheery sales representative for Connecti- suburban living room but a long cut Realty Partners, which leases hallway leading into a sterile, onedowntown properties, including the bedroom unit. It could be found apartments in this forty thousand in any motel--except that some of square foot building. the windows look directly into the "This is where the most elite barren courtyard, a view that gives people in New Haven live," Keefe prospective tenants a unique opporsays, standing in the "Residence tunity to window shop.

Court," which formerly served This toy suburb is the result as the interior plaza of the Chapel of redevelopment at a site that has Square Mall. This unconventional been an embarrassment to downatrium features streetlamps and park town New Haven for decades. The benches, bicycle racks and trash project started in 1965 as an urban cans, hammocks and gas grills, pic- renewal scheme to revive an econic tables and umbrellas that have nomically troubled downtown by encouraging suburban shoppers to never been subjected to rain.

The lobby feels like a ghost return to the center of the city. But town, as if all the shoppers had fled the mall failed, haunted from the bean impending apocalypse. Blank bay ginning by the assumption that subwindows stare out at planters that were once fountains, which divide the central space into two parallel paths. Overhead walkways cast dark shadows. Two colors of vinyl siding and red brick line the interior walls, producing a garish, uneven effect. A plastic Corinthian column supports a four-sided clock, the baffling centerpiece of this absurd courtyard.

Like the bodies of early New Haven residents interred under the Green

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The lobby feels like a ghost town, as if all the shoppers had fled an impending apocalypse.

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urban forms would succeed in an urban context. After countless redevelopment schemes based on this suburbia-on-the-green paradigm fell flat, Lubert Adler Real Estate Funds and their local partner, David Nyberg, had the novel idea of turning the Chapel Square Mall inside out, placing the retail space on the exterior and redesigning the interior stores as residential space.

Still, something of the suburban dream of house and yard lingers in the heart of the mall-gone-apartment-complex, in its exposed beams and fountains of mulch, in its second story porticos and bay windows.

Who constitutes this "New Haven elite," this landed gentry living parallel to the public Green? Rents are upwards of $950 for a one bedroom unit or $1200 for a two bedroom. The apartment's website

appeals to tenants' desire to have it both ways: to have access to a bustling metropolis while maintaining a comfortable suburban insulation. "Who thought you could experience the peaceful sanctuary of a private green space literally feet from bustling Chapel Street?" the website asks.

The promoters promise the impossible: the protected isolation of a house and yard, or at least the facsimile of one, within the hustle and bustle of a downtown lifestyle. But the 24-hour security service, like those protecting suburban gated communities, reflects a certain fear of the lower class residents who live nearby. Even invited guests must be led past the guard's desk.

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Benny Sachs is a Sophomore in Ezra Stiles College.

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Daria Vander Veer chose your classes for you.

by Mitch Reich • • •

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or a brief moment each August, Daria Vander Veer is the most powerful person at Yale University. Armed with only a yellow pencil and a spiral notebook, the tall strawberry-blonde single-handedly begins to draw up the futures of Yale students. Unlike Shelly Kagan, she does not have the power to extinguish their intellectual pretensions, and she can't smother their dreams of neurosurgeonhood like the professors of MCDB 120. But she .can, and does, send some of them halfway up Science Hill at 9:30 every morning for a French seminar. ccrve often jokingly thought that I would give President Levin a call, and say to him, cl just want to

October 2006

be sure you realize that, for the first two weeks of classes, I'm the most important administrator at Yale, not you, sir."' Vander Veer adds, with a note of irony, ccl'm certainly the most popular." As the local czarina of classrooms, she is not exaggerating. It's her job to assign classrooms to classes, a · seemingly minor decision that has a huge impact on the popularity of courses and the happiness of students not to mention the egos of professors.

Harold Bloom refuses to teach in any room other than a sunlit second floor seminar room number 208in the centrally located William L. Harkness Hall.

The czarina's semester-altering decisions elicit more raw anger than

most of her peers would ever dream of.

At Harvard, Vander Veer's counterpart oversees only a fraction of the University's classrooms; he claims that he cannot imagine doing his job without hiring an assistant for the first month of each semester.

Here at Yale, however, with the exception of a few dozen rooms that are directly administered by departments, Vander Veer has toiled alone under the title of Associate Registrar since January of 2005 to place every course offered by the College and the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences into its semesterlong home.

Her methodology is a tnix of the archaic and the haphazard. After departments complete their pro41

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seminar room. ''Apparently there's sors to choose teaching times. When posals and select their course times some rule at Yale that you can't they all cluster around a few desirin June, the registrar's office spends more than a month proofread- teach seminars from 10:30 to 12:30 able slots, Vander Veer can only in the morning," he says. Negoti- scramble to clean up the mess. It is ing course descriptions, removing overlaps, and ensuring that profes- ating the switch with Vander Veer no coincidence that the .professors sors are not slotted for two classes c'wasn't pleasant," he recalled. ccshe teaching on Tuesdays at 1 :30, a time was . incredibly . supercilious and slot packed with seminars, are ofsimul taneousl y. rude to the person who works in ten those who complain about subIn August, Vander Veer takes my office." standard seminar rooms. Vander the data and assigns the rooms for More sympathetic are · the de- Veer is, to paraphrase Vander Veer, several hundred courses by hand. partment . registrars who have de- simply the desk attendant at the · Her criteria are so numerous, she says, that scheduling software- veloped relationships with Vander world's least accommodating hotel. which does exist could not pos- Veer which they admit can't hurt Yet half a decade into the 21sT their chances of getting the desired century, Yale wants to have it all: a sibly take them all into account.

She considers past enrollment, po- _ room swaps. c'She ·does everything shopping period without pre-regshe can to make us happy within istration, professors free to choose tential popularity, peculiar needs her power," says Patricia Slatter, whatever course times they want, cccan you get me a room where students can paint on the tables?"), the Assistant to the Philosophy and a single assistant registrar who Department chair. c'It's not an assigns rooms to every course with proxi~ity to department offices ideal situation." Registrar of the a pencil and a notebook. and, last but not least, convenience English ·Department Ruben Rofor students (as an undergrad who Vander Veer is hard pressed graduated in 1987, she should . man sympathizes: ccshe must have to explain the system. c'It seems a very thick skin." know). While she keeps tabs on all almost medieval that it's done this Vander Veer articulates the way," admits the desk clerk, the dicthese requirements, Vander Veer problem succinctly. "When you go tator, the unseen spirit guide who must reshuffle course locations to to a hotel," she says, "and they give sends students trekking up Science match shopping period's shifting you a room, and you don't like your Hill for French seminars. c'Heaven enrollment numbers. room, you can go. back downstairs forbid I came down with chicken The results are displeasing for many and chaotic for most. Those · and say ci don't like this room, give pox in the first week of classes,'' who dream of a modern semi- me another one.' And they give she says. you another one. And I think nar room in Linsley-Chittenden How would anyone know sometimes they think I can do where to go? may find themselves exiled to the that I wish I could but they're dank bowels of Becton Labs. At the beginning of shopping period, sort of astounded when I say ci actually don't have any rooms that instructors complain en masse are bigger than the one you have Mitch Reich is a Sophomore in Pierthat their classrooms are · woefully undersized, dimly lit, wholly in- that are available."' son College.

Vander Veer faults a long standconvenient, a travesty of modern ing tradition which allows profesarchitectural design. They clamor to be moved. Mark Ennis, the Anthropology Department adminis. friJ 1·7 trator who relays the qualms of his Coffee & Sc¢:10·5 professors to Vander Veer, acts as a Sw'v:C!oJe, '1/ . . ., peacekeeper. cc A lot of panic sets in ' . ttr fj !~: ' ' " . with the professors," he says.

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by Patrick Hayden •

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fter two hours of diving practice, my hair is crusted and chlorinated, and I'm sporting undersized blue U mbro shorts that I have probably owned since the fourth grade. Feeling unattractive, I pull my white socks over my shins and head up the stairs to the Payne-Whitney fitness center. In contrast to its modernized, sleek, and severe counterparts, Payne Whitney has remained defiantly traditional. Its faux-gothic architecture and its murals of American industrialists like Rockefeller and Bush, hard at work during their days as Eli athletes, distinguishes the gym from its peers.

Gold's Gym may ·offer complementary protein shakes and grab-bag deals for Brazilian bikini waxes, but the Yale Gymnasium appears to strive for pure Ivy League accomplishment.

But after passing through the austere corridors, I find myself in a surprisingly standard gym. On the left, the ellipticals and tread-mills whirl into oblivion while the medieval torture devices we call "weight machines" fill the space to my right. After a brief scan of the scene, I try to focus on my workout like the serious Ivy League athlete Payne Whitney Gym demands me to be.

Yet after a while, my focus wavers. I can't help it, and neither could you. I~ the weight area, dozens of guys grunt, inflating their bodies to impress the girls, who are busily sweating to dwindle away pounds in the cardio zon~.

First, I notice a young man pumping away with dumb bells beside me whose groans of anguish attract stares from around the gym. Brilliant white Nike low-tops highlight his taut, bulging calves.

He wears shiny red basketball shorts and a wifebeater

that strains against his body with each surge of blood to his massive lats. His brown hair is freshly . trimmed, gelled, and spiked, and he carefully pats it after finishing his set. He also adjusts the red and white Livestrong bracelets around his wrists this is a man who not only cares for AIDS patients and the poverty-stricken, but he knows how to color-coordinate. Drops of perspiration dot his forehead, but this gentleman is well-versed in the etiquette of attracting athletic harlots. He slowly lifts his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face and reveals completely by accident! a rippling six pack. The stench of salty sweat and sharp cologne may have addled my wits, but I swear I see this Narcissus mouth, "You're the bomb" to himself in the mirror. · I pull my eyes away from his sordid performance, wondering whom he could possibly hope · to attract, when I notice his perky female counterpart thrashing away on -an elliptical. She wears trendy blue mesh shoes, which conveniently match the spandex booty

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shorts designed to accent her tanned, waxed legs. She's got that ubiquitous Tiffany's heart necklace dangling in her cleavage, silver studs studding her ears, and dark brown hair so immaculately straightened that it reflects the gym's florescent light like a metallic shield.

She repeatedly smacks her lips to ensure the lip gloss hasn't gone anywhere and removes her hands from the elliptical bars to check that her blue eye shadow hasn't migrated down cheeks more orange than tan. When all is ship-shape, she throws her head back and gazes intently at the glossy magazine propped before her.

As they aggressively pout in the wall-to-wall mirror, I hope that these two manage to look away long enough to notice one another. They'll have a flirtaceous encounter in which he'll casually brush back his hair incidentally flexing his bicep before huskily asking her what she's doing later.

Together, they'll saunter away, leaving this athletic cocktail lounge surging with hormones and the mating scents of Old Spice and Ralph Lauren perfume.

How stressful it must be for these performers, who tone their bodies to attract admirers outside the gym while also striving for optimal sexiness inside these hallowed walls. Behind its fa~ade, Payne Whitney is the scene of the • • same grotesque mating ntuals found at gyms across the country. While I watch overmuscled studs chug powdery protein shakes and spandexed vixens writhe on vinyl mats, I realize how unexceptionally shallow Payne Whitney really is. I shake my head and return to my lonely workout. But wait-do my blue Umbros Illustration by Philip Sancilio look way too small when I bend my legs like that?

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THE NEw JouRNAL

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Growing New Haven's biotech industry and local economy

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Creating a vital downtown through Yale's community investment program

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Supporting New Haven public school education through partnerships

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Strengthening neighborhoods by helping Yale employees buy homes

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Whitney Avenue, New