Volume 39 - Issue 3

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November 2006

The magazine about Yale and New Haven.

Volume 39, Number 3

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INSIDE

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What Elihu took from India Italian delis duke it out · Falun Gong flees Chin Irish history comes to life

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Publisher

Romy Drucker

Trumbull College Master's Tea

Editor-in-Chief

Adriane Quinlan Managing Editors

Jonny Dach, Helen Eckinger Designer

Anna Zhang Business Manager

Nick Handler

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Senior Editors

Mina Kimes, David Zax

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Andrew Lam

Production Manager

Nicole Allan

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Research Director

Editor, New American Media Author, Perfume Dreams

Emily Koh .

Circulation and Subscription Manager

Lauren Harrison

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Book of essays on the Vietnamese diaspora.

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Web Designer

Nicholas M oryl

Wednesday, November 29th 4:00p.m.

100 High Street

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Staff

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Russell Brandom, Tess Dearing, Elizabeth Gumport, Pat Hayden, Ben Lasman, Sophia Lear, Aditi Ramakrishnan, Laura Zax

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 Swansburg

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

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Friends

910 whalley IMDie new haven 065 15

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receive a 5"%

Michael Addison, Austin 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, Dapline Chu, Josh Civin, Jonathan M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, Masi Denison, Albert J. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang, Walter Jacob, Jane Kamensky, Tina Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sea.q 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 Wilson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stent Yergin

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Volume 39, Number 3 November 2006

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The magazine about Y e and New Haven .

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,..ROMEO

CoLD CuT

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Star-crossed brothers (in;_ law) battle it out~ .

by Sophia Lear

CESARE'S

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THE WAY OF THE LAW WHEEL .

How Falun Gong translates at Yale.

by Nick Handler

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ELIHU IN INDIA

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Can Yale speak its mother tongue?

by Aditi Ramakrishnan

18 The Wanted Professor

by Daniel Jordan

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by Nicole Allan

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The Candidate

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A Gated Community

by Amy Rothschild

14 Eire Apparent

by Ben Lasman

4 Points of Departure

22 The Critical Angle

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Enlightened Smut by Helen Eckinger

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24 Shots in the Dark

43 Essay Seventy Angry Men by ]onny Dach •

46 Endnote

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The Ivy Circuit by Lauren Harrison

THE N EW JouRNAL is published five ti mes during the academic year by THE NEW JoURNAL at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Office addres~: 305 Crown St. Phone: (203) 432-1957. All contents Copyright 2006 by THE NEw JouRNAL at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without wtitten permission of the publisher and editor in chief is prohibited . While this magazine is published by Yale College students, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seventy-five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and New Haven community. Subscriptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One year, $18. Two years, $32. THE NEw JoURNAL is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. THE NEW JoURNAL encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication.

November 2006

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Fecke's business model feeds off the history he dismantles, breeding new life from the dried timbers. He t-! •. turns ancient planks from collapsing, century-old buildings into ·usable wood and then sells it at two to three times the price of fresh-cut ' lumber.

Within the factory, a hive -of workers twitter in English and Spanish. They are in the process of reclaiming an old gym .floor from Albertus Magnus College, splintered th~ boards from the Yale bowl, and a filthy-looking piece of an Amish country-house from Pennsylvania.

THE SHORT DRIVE OUT TO FAIR Here, the wood goes through a slow Haven feels like a century of ur- rebirth. Workers clean off half an ban decay on fast-forward: Yale inch of grime, rot, and water damage passes behind you, then downtown, and then reshape the wood to form still ''reawakening,.,, and then the perfect, rectangular planks. Fecke sad, shoddy buildings that line the keeps a sort of family album of where highways winding toward the city's his offspring end up: the floor of an half-vacant industrial core. Among office in Litchfield, a deluxe apartthe empty warehouses that once fu- ment in Manhattan, and the bases of eled America's First Planned City, those tiny, ubiquitous table tents in across . from an overgrown plant every Yale dining hall. nursery, Rob Fecke has erected an The Yale Sustainable Food Projalmost painfully self-aware symbol ect collaborates with Rob Fecke to of urban renewal. F ecke, a charmer make these centerpieces. Josh Viwith the slouchy mannerisms of a ertel, the project's director, gushes ski bum, tousles his bright mane of that, ''It's really beautiful orange blonde hair as he says of his busi- wood ... Beautiful, beautiful wood: ness, ''We are, like, the epitome of doesn't need any finish, doesn't economic development." need any paint."

He's referring to ' Fecke's Reclamation Lumber what people in the business call a salvages and resells old timber from "patina," a luster that wood gains turn -of-the-century mills, factories, only with age. Fecke and Viertel and other overlooked buildings like claim that old wood has a richer and colonial agricultural silos. The very deeper color and that dense clusters first building F ecke entered eight of growth rings create a more duyears ago to gut for lumber was rable, stable piece of lumber. Vierthe 19th-century Winchester Arms tel can hardly bring himself to buy Company, the long-collapsed lode- wood from anyone else: the Food star of New Haven's economy. He Project's greenhouses are ·assembled used its logs for a commercial build- with slats from an old, beachside ing in Litchfield. boardwalk, and the roof of its wood. I

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Against Grain

burning oven was pulled from a factory in East Haven. Viertel even purchased reclaimed lumber for the compost bins and stakes. With Fecke he feels a ''connection with someone who's into materials, into policy."

Of course, recycled wood is more sustainable. "They're all a bunch of greenheads over there," Fecke says of Yale. "It's a good thing." Fecke is a fervent environmentalist himself.

He talks passionately of Wall Street and its environmentally destructive incentives system, the history of logging and carpentry, and how chemical treatments have changed Ameri- . can practices forever. He talks about fast-growing trees that can never compare to the products of ancient forests, and how, for most of their history, humans have recycled wood to build new structures. History, for F ecke, has been nothing more than a continuous process of rebuilding.

But when asked if he's involved in any other environmental ·causes, Fecke says he's not. Then, zooming almost instantly into the microscopic details of running his business, he describes his plans for expansion and a big meeting when he will display his showroom to architects. He says he wants to win back the "battleground" that is industrial Fair Haven.

There· is something else that Reclamation Lumber is trying to reclaim: a section of the city that he wants to "win back." And that's not a surprising idea to hear from one of the few who believes that at least something in New Haven has aged well.

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-Mitch Reich

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Native Speakers .

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5 CLASS, THE atmosphere among the ten students is generally one of camaraderie in the struggle to learn a new language.

There is, however, one student who interferes with the laid-back tone.

When the professor asks questions that stump the other students, Lindsay speaks up. At other times, she seems bored, rubbing her eyes. When other students struggle over a tricky phrase, Lindsay breaks in, correcting their pronunciation. In a word, she makes things ... uncomfortable.

Whether out of cultural fascination or practical business aspirations, more and more students are flocking to Chinese language classes. But as the East Asian Studies Department expands its course offerings, it is having trouble deciding what to do with students like Lindsay students of Chinese heritage who can speak the language to some extent, but lack significant exposure to its written form.

Yale has restructured its Chinese program in response to this and other problems. Following a series of meetings in the summer of 2005, the university adopted a new placement test for students with some Chinese experience. Based on test results, the .. department places introductory level students in either Chinese 115, for students with no experience, or Chinese 118, for students who, according to the course description, "have had varying degrees of exposure to Chinese in a family or other setting."

Yale emphasizes that the courses in IN A CHINESE I I

this "separate track" are "not more 'advanced' than those designed for students with no background in Chinese but rather address a ·different set of needs." Chinese 115 provides elementary language .skills to students with no previous exposure to the language, with particular attention to pronunciation and speaking. Chinese 118, on the other hand, is designed for students with some background in the language and focuses on literacy.

Yale's new program has its kinks. Some students, like Lindsay, have ended up in 115 when 118 would be more appropriate. In Lindsay's case, a scheduling conflict prevented her from taking 118, but some other students disparagingly called "sleepers" by t4eir peershave been known to mask their language abilities in order to succeed in less challenging classes and coast through language requirements.

The problems multiply in the intermediate and advanced courses.

After one year of language study, the department merges the two tracks in the hope that both sets of students will be able to work together at a similar level. However, many non-heritage students report, that the departmenes plan is somewhat naive. Scott Cohen, · an East Asian Studies major now enrolled in an advanced course on Chinese film, sits alongside classmates with more · oral competence in the language.

While he may score well on written assignments, he still lacks the mastery many native speakers possess and has come to the conclusion that "you just can't worry about your grades." He remains enthusiastic about the language, but finds studying it increasingly frustrating. "It's enormously hard to articulate opinions and arguments," he explains.

"I come home really upset some. " t1mes.

While Cohen has stuck with it, many others have abandoned the ~

language altogether. Marisa Reisman, a junior who recently stopped taking · Chinese, found that there was too much variety in the experience levels of students in her classes.

After two years of study and a summer in China, she found it almost impossible to follow the language at a level comparable to that of students with backgrounds in Chinese.

Reisman feels that the Yale program is impossible to navigate for a student attempting to learn the language from scratch. "If you just go through the Yale program," without visiting China, she says, "you would crash and burn.''

Still, some Chinese-heritage students insist learning Chinese is not simple for anyone.

Lissa Yu originally attempted to take an upper-level class, assuming her heritage and speaking ability would qualify her for its demands.

Instead, she wound up "bombing" the first test and dropping down to Chinese 118. She admits her background gave her some advantage in the class, but she argues, "Everyone had some knowledge and, for those who didn't, you knew what you were getting into.'' Furthermore, Yu points out that her own abilities should not be overrated though she is a native speaker, she speaks Chinese "like a fouryear-old."

Besides, Yu suggests that nonheritage students can also learn a valuable lesson in their classes the feeling of suddenly finding yourself in a minority culture. "If you're uncomfortable," she advises, "consider how I grew up."

Some names have been changed.

-Patrick Hayden

October 2006

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Plumbing the Depths SARAH

STRONG

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graduate, a soon-to-be published poet, and according to a recent poll in The New Haven Advocate·the finest plumber in New Haven.

If the combination surprises you, you're not alone. Even Strong herself is somewhat baffled. "If you had told me I was gonna be a plumber living in New Haven ... " she says, letting the sentence finish itself.

Strong's story is an encouraging one for Yale seniors whose postgraduation plans are often nebulous and anxiety-inducing. In Strong's family there was precedent for jobhopping and tradesmanship of the many jobs her . mother had, her favorite was a stint as a carpenter. As an aspiring actress in high school, the future plumber never had pipe dreams. Sure, she liked to tinker with things and didn't mind getting dirty, but the connections end there.

Her resume is a smorgasbord of careers. She has been a bartender, a door-to-door canvasser, a teacher in a bilingual school, and an interpreter at a deaf school.

Strong made her first foray into plumbing a little less than a decade ago when, while searching for a job that would allow her to continue writing poetry and fiction part-time, she accompanied her plumber boyfriend on the job. Plumbing, though, is not a career one just falls into. It •

requires at least twice as many years . of preparation to become a licensed plumber as it does to become a licensed lawyer. It takes four years of apprenticeship, two years of . practice as a journeyman, and three multiple-choice exams to put the "skilled" in "skilled labor." But after her first day under the pipes Strong was "completely sold, end of discussion," and she quickly. began .the formal education that would secure her a license. Six years later, ·she founded Anchor Plumbing, LLC. Strong cites the paucity of women in the trades as the reason she never considered a plumbing career in her youth. Female tradesmen comprise about two percent of the skilled physical labor work force, and Strong guesses the .statistic is even smaller in the ph.imbing industry. She also points to the prevailing attitudes about tradesmanship. "A lot of people don't ever even think to consider a, job in the trades," says Strong.

The poet-plumber shakes her head at the classist assumptions that cause many people to associate plumbing with a failure to earn a college degree. Strong, for one, has a B.A~ from Wesleyan.

A college diploma and two X chromosomes aren't the only things that make her an unconventional plumber. "I don't want to perpetuate the ·stereotype of the mechanic," she says. So she combats preconceptions by being punctual to all appointments and returning phone calls promptly. The ''plumber butt" stereotype is less easily dismantled.

"The tool belt is heavy," she says obliquely. · Though it's easy to imagine how plumbing might influence Strong's writing a mechanical vocabulary or a propensity for bathroom scenes, for example she has written only a few pieces about her job. One, a poem, will be published in the upcoming edition of The Cream City •

Review, The University of Wisconsin's literary journal. Surprisingly, Strong claims that her work as a writer has actually had a greater effect on her work as a plumber than the other way around. The communication skills and sensitivity to interpersonal relationships honed by her writing serve her daily in her life as a tradeswoman. They certainly didn't go unnoticed by readers of New Haven's newspaper The Advocate, who voted in a in a fall 2006 poll that Strong's business is the best of its kind in the Elm City. · Despite prevailing stereotypes surrounding her primary line of work, Strong never second-guesses its value. "Working with your hands is grounding," says Strong.

"It teaches you to be in the present moment." Strong relishes the grati- . fication that results from solving a problem not on a page, but in a pipe.

"It's empowering," says Strong, a jill of all trades, unafraid to leave her ivory tower for the porcelain bowls. Though writing, not plumbing, may seem more important to Yale students, Strong recognizes that plumbing is nearly as essential as the water coursing through the pipelines she repairs. After all, she says, "You need that toilet."

-LauraZax

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Lip Schtick HEY THERE, KID. CAREFUL CLIMBING

up onto my tank. Just this summer a drunk kid fell off me and landed

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flat on his face. So you,re writing that paper for Professor Vincent Scully, aren,t you? After years of seeing students trek to Morse just to stare at me for a week and then never give me another glance, rve wised up. I can tell some of you just want to melt me down, but class is class, and papers must be written, so you kids learn to bullshit.

I don't mind. I know Scully assigns this paper every year. Should I be placed on Old Campus? Or left at Morse, where I live now? I know I attract more sneers than admiring glances after all, r m a big, metal lipstick on top of a big, scary tank. Do you know what an identity criss that creates? rve always taken some comfort in being called a "work of art., But art, to most of you, is the David, with his handsome proportions and flawless musculature Queen Bee by luckof-the-form. I, on the other hand, am designed to be too much to handle. Michelangelo made David "larger than life,: Claes Oldenburg made me absurdly gargantuan. rm at peace enough with where I am. Here, Scully says my "wonderful international orange stands out against the sky.'' Here, 0 ldenburg says, I "turn on the sky., I know, that doesn't help my reputation as a big phallic joke, but ir>s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me. When I was installed in Beinecke Plaza in '69, people tossed around the idea of giving me a partner a cigarette butt perched on the low wall, to complete the look.

But they left me alone, so you kids graffitied me and postered me" my exposed tracks rusted, and I was ·taken away.

I can see what you scribble down. You think I can,t read? rve gone to college for 38 years. This year, one of you called my current home "cramped" but wrote in your paper that r d look out of _shape and silly on Old Campus. If October 2006

she were forced to move me there, she, d smush me between Bingham and Vanderbilt, next to the recycling bins and trash. She is in the c'melt-me-down,, camp. They talk about doing it behind my back all the time, but you can,t let it get to you. Ir>s important to keep a cool, metal shell.

Others seem scared of me,scared that I might start rolling and crush everything in my path, or that I might launch a missile from my shaft. They,re in the "can,tseparate-life-from-art, camp. In the 70s, I served as an anti-war platform. These days, students see a military machine. rm what you kids make of me.

Yup, kid, sitting down is a good idea, especially if .you,re sober. (Remember that drunk kid, who tanked off me?) Whar>s that?

I would have given you some comfort on 0 ld Campus? Ah, a healthy dose of the absurd the day you arrived. Something else out of place, standing tall and proud. You think that all of the other "lost" freshman would empathize with me? Well, kid, rm not the lost one. You,re the one talking to a statue instead of writing your paper.

Eh! What are you doing now?

You know, you get even funnierlooking when you're down on your hands and knees. You're crawling underneath me? Yeah, rm hollow inside (ir>s a body-image problem I've struggled with for years). But people usually experience me from the outside, you realize. Are you standing up? Careful there. Whoa!

Kid, I haven,t been touched there in years!

f

Academic

and Scholarly for Books Yale and Books

by Alumni and

The ,

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A Distinctive Selection ofYa • Apparel, Gifts and

-Ali Seitz

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Skeletons in the Closet AN

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WILD

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LURKS

in the entryway of a building on Whitney Avenue. Its jaws gape. Its back bristles with .wiry fur. The pig's flank is made of . woven basketry. Painted in rich shades of ochre, chalk, and soot, it is actually a tribal dance costume acquired by Anthropologist Leopold Pospisil in the 1950s from a Tambunus village in Papua New Guinea. Against the white walls and grim linoleum of Yal~'s Physical Anthropology Lab, it seems resigned to never dance • aga1n.

The hallways are lined with similar relics. Glass cases bear festive garlands of wooden beads, pottery artifacts~ and even a canoe from the Pacific Northwest. In one room, a delicate skeleton of a small · primate is poised on a branch, its bones eerily arranged.

The majority of Yale's anthropological specimens collect dust in the largest of the eighteen ·storerooms that house the combined collections of Yale and the Peabody Museum. Stacks and stacks of boxes, meticulously labeled, extend up to the ceiling. These anthropological goodies are not on display across the street in the Peabody because they are either insufficiently restored or insufficiently eye-catching.

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accessible to researchers, curators may also be hesitant to put them in a public exhibition because of the controversial nature of Yale's ownership. Yale acquired most of the specimens in this room between 1920 and 1970, before new laws regarding the transp·o rtation of antiquities were instated. ''The process of collection has changed a lot over .time," says Ben Diebold, a graduate student in the anthropology department. Though once artifacts could be shipped to the museum after excavations, after World War II, countries tightened regulations about the movement of antiquities.

In the 21st century, countries tend to be reasonably possessive of artifacts discovered within their borders.

The items in the storeroom are mostly relics of a time during which a sort of "finders, keepers" mentality prevailed. The grey boxes, Diebold explains, all contain skeletal material: pieces of jaw bone, tibias, pelvises, a yellowed skull with crooked teeth. They come from large-scale excavations as well as private collections.

"We've got a mummy in here," says Diebold nonchalantly, gesturing towards a crate made of smooth wood, as small as a child's toybox.

Inside lies a dwarfed nine-year-old girl from Thebes, swathed in fabric, a painted mask obscuring her face.

Archeologists believe there was a spa near the site where she was found, and that at the time of her death, the girl was brought there for treatment. She ended up here.

There is something unsettling about the place, with its austere walls and neat shelving. As coldly institutional as a factory warehouse, the room nonetheless quivers with eccentric stories that most students will never hear tales about the splintered femur of an ancient man, shards of the world's first glass, a mummified crocodile dozing unseen all tucked on shelves and nes-

tled in ordered boxes, hidden in the bowels of the lab, relics of the days when anthropologists took what they found and brought it here.

-Laura Bennett

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Blue Blooded IN 2006, ONE HUNDRED YALE STU-

dents gathered to protest the war in Iraq. A generation earlier, on May 5 1 \ 1970, 15,000 Yale students and demonstrators from around the country gathered in New Haven to protest the murder trial of the Black Panther party chairman, · Bobby Seale. Numbers like these have led many to point to a decline in political activism on college campuses since the end of the Vietnam era.

Though these protests occurred 36 years apart, the Stromberg family was at Yale for both .

Before Cliff Stromberg '71 even takes a seat at a meeting of Yale donors, he pulls out a pamphlet students handed to him earlier. It proclaims that a staggering one fifth of Yale's undergraduate population comes from only seventy of the nation's high schools. He looks at the pamphlet, then cautiously suggests, "Aren't there more serious issues to be fighting?"

Stromberg matriculated at Yale in 1967, when the university was still an all male bastion and students wore coats and ties to class.

Reflecting on his first two years at Yale, Stromberg believes that the political spectrum on campus dur-

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ing that period was similar to the range of opinions on campus today.

In 1969, however, women arrived: The ties came off, the draft became a reality, the civil rights movement was in full force, and the political spectrum shrank. "There was no gradual change. The difference between 1967 and 1969 was like the difference between 1945 and 1969," Stromberg says. "'LiberaP turned into a dirty word it implied you weren't radical enough. Any association with the Democratic Party branded you as a 'sellout to the establishment."'

Stromberg's wife, Dr. Eva Feiner '71, attended Swarthmore for two years before transferring to Yale in the fall of '69. Feiner remembers the campus reverberating with the feeling that "we were united in a potent moment in history where we could actually change things." The sheer number of baby boomers created a sense of power, and the shaky state of the economy eased students' fears that their involvement with protests would threaten their otherwise bright futures. Political philosophy and revisionist history were incorporated into all levels of education.

It was more than a period of social and political change; it was an intellectual revolution.

Stromberg and Feiner's daughter, Kimberly Stromberg, is a senior at Yale and has just completed her run as publisher of the Yale Daily News. She combines her parents' former idealism with their current ambition. An Economics and History double major, Kimberly dresses in cowboy boots and funky scarves when not suited up for a finance interview. Though she has a job at a New York City investment bank lined up for next year, Kimberly is quick to emphasize that this occupation is merely a starting point; a necessary step before she can pursue something more meaningful, perhaps related to interna•

tional economic development. · significant time instigating radical The Yale that Kimberly attends political change. Unlike her parbarely resembles the university of ents' generation, Kimberly and her her parents' years. The sense of be- friends tend to accept their parents' longing to a "potent moment in his- politics. Many seniors at Yale have tory" no longer exists. Ins_tead, her parents who were, at their age, part father points out, "Kids .today are of a revolutionary moment in hismore practical about changing the tory. And though they have heard world in concrete, local ways: Teach stories of how their parents rebelled for America, personal projects in against the establishment, these same Guatemala, advocating for environ- parents have more often than .not mental reform, interning in D.C." landed themselves "establishment" At the Yale Kimberly's parents careers that pay for their tuition. experienced, any progressive poLike their formerly radical parlitical action had to be anti-estab- ents, many current Yale students lishment. "I couldn't imagine even have chosen to work within the considering business school when I system by taking I -banking careers, graduated from Yale," Feiner says. completing D.C. internships, and "It wasn't considered intellectual teaching in under-funded public enough." Instead, she received her schools. Perhaps this is not so much Ph.D. in government at Harvard, an an indication of apathy, but rather a experience she describes as wonder- sign that as times change, so do the ful but not quite right for her. "It best ways to effect further change. was a politically correct decision."

After graduate school and "an edu-Annie Hudson-Price cation in the real world," Feiner de• cided that she could best change the system from the inside. "I started to believe that the markets could have a more sweeping effect in improving people's lives than government imposed policies." Feiner has headI :I ed IBM's Department for International Trade and Development.

Kimberly knows her parents see their careers as much more "establishment'' than the professions they had envisioned as undergraduates.

Nevertheless, both parents feel they have successfully found ways to express the values they learned at Yale, and Kimberly hopes to do the same.

EMILE MISSES THE COURTYARD. But by following her parents' halfrebellious road, she is by definition Roseanne misses the dining hall. _ Stu misses the steel-cut oats, Tony less rebellious. . The political activity Kimberly misses the squirrels, and everybody sees on the Yale campus is largely misses everybody else. Each year, as intellectual or institutionalized: the Yale sequentially renovates its resiRoosevelt Institute, bus trips to dential colleges, a new student popcanvas for votes, politically inclined ulation finds itself · displaced. But magazines like The Hippolytic. And all over campus, from the heights yet, while everyone seems to have of Kline Biology Tower to the inan opinion, few students spend ner recesses of the Morse-Stiles •

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The Sillidiaspora

October 2006

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kitchen, Yale workers · are also er, Tony realized that it was a baby by Master Krauss to cook for Sillisquirrel. The mother squirrel, star~ manders in Commons each Thursmissing Silliman.

To be sure, they insist, there is tled by the noise of the drills, had day, but says that this once-a-week much to commend at their new out- decided to abandon her home in glimpse of his former community posts. Calhoun's "hounies" have Silliman. She carefully moved three makes him miss it all the more. He · warmed up to Emile, who cleans of her babies, one at a time, from a. wears his Silliman hat to work every entryways C, D, and E. Some have tree in the courtyard to one outside day, with "CHEF STU'' stitched discovered .that the native Haitian the Wall Street · gate away from on the back, and he just had a new cap made. Do his Morse-Stiles colspeaks French, and they practice . the noise of drills and hammers.

As Tony packs up a ·vacuum leagues think that, months into his with her each morning. Ricky now cleans Morse, and he finds his new cleaner in Berkeley's south court- employment at another kitchen, job a little bit easier; it seems that yard, a wistful expression crosses he ought to leave the hat at home?

Morsels steal few~r cups than Silli- his face. There are a few squirrels "None of them would ask me to do manders, so Ricky doesn't have to who run around the courtyard that," he says immediately. "They constantly carry them back to the here, he says, but it's not the same. know I'm a Sillimander." dining hall. Jeanne, who supervised "I fed a couple of them, but they'-re They all miss the students, too.

Emile and Ricky when they worked not used to me."

Stu remembers teaching Karen how Though separated from his to brew her own beer. Roseanne rein Silliman, is happy to spend more time in Timothy Dwight, getting to squirrels, Tony is at least able to members how she'd save grapes for know the students there. And while reunite with his former co-work- Isaac when she knew he'd be comers on occassion: he helps Emile Tony misses "Jeannie," whom he ing to dinner late. Emile, a devout . calls one of the best bosses he's empty the trash every _morning in Catholic, remembers praying each ever had, he's really pleased with Calhoun. "We all stay in touch," morning with Aaron, a devout Jew. Kirsta, his new supervisor: "She's a says Ricky. They visit each other She wants him to become a rabbi, on breaks; sometimes meeting on or a lawyer~ or, better yet, both. peach," he says. · Still, they miss it. "I miss ev- Broadway. Tyrese, who is curMostly, though, they miss erything about . Silliman," says rently recovering from an opera- each other. "It's more or less a Tony, his eyes magnified by his tion on his knee, calls Ricky every family," says Ricky. "When you thick glasses. Now 71 years old, he day. Monique, who recently had got a problem, it's their problem, spent the last nine of those years hip surgery, speaks regularly with too." He puts the finishing touchcleaning Silliman's entryways A, B, Roseanne, who keeps in touch with es on a sink in a top-floor bathand C. He particularly misses the Nicole over in Timothy Dwight room in Morse. "I like it here," he over in Branford. courtyard's squirrels, whom he had and Alice says, then his voice softens · "but .

Stu, too, paid Alice a visit last I want to go home." gradually befriended (with the help of peanuts) by the end of his first week. As Silliman's head chef, a poyear at Silliman. ''It was a ritual for sition he rose to over his 23 years -David Zax me every day," he says, adding of cooking in its kitchen, Stu would that a three-pound bag of nuts from say he misses the college most of all.

Illustrations by Adriane Quinlan Stop & Shop would last him only a He's honored to have been invited week and a half. The squirrels grew so used to Tony, they could recognize him at a distance swarming The Yale Journalism Initiative him even when he wasn't in uniWelcomes form and he could even recognize some of them. "One had half an }ILL ABRAMSON ear," Tony reminisces. "He was the MANAGING EDITOR smartest one."

NEw YoRK TIMES It seems that the squirrels have also been displaced by the construcas our Visiting Journalist for tion. When the renovation first beSpring 2007 gan, Tony saw a squirrel hurry by, carrying what he thought was a rat in its mouth. When he looked clos•

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by Amy Rothschild sk Chris Alexander about the problem with Sterling Memorial Library, and he'll point her out. '<There she is the lady who hassles us," he whispers, as a uniformed guard with hair as shiny as her shoes struts into the farthest alcove of the library and narrows her eyes on the six computers open to ' non-Yalies. Few students know that she is a key actor in a quiet drama playing out on the lamp-lit stage of Sterling. According to Alexander, who comes to the library for a quiet respite after a workday as a roofer, this guard has explicitly stated that it is unfair for students, who pay so much money to attend Yale, to be forced to share library access with the broader New Haven community. uThere are signs

all over the place saying you can use the computer for twenty minutes," he says. uAfter fifteen minutes, she's asking you to leave.''

On August 2Jrd, the administration posted flyers announcing that, starting September 6th, entry would be <<restricted to persons with current Yale University or Library issued identification cards, Sunday through Friday after 6 p.m.'' From this hour until closing, bookworms entering the library must slide a Yale ID through a groove on the side of the stainless steel turnstile under the watch of a uniformed guard. For the privileged few, the machine beeps, flashes a light, and then lowers its metal arms. It sounds like a robot regurgitating, and ies equally personable.

According to Danuta Nitecki, the associate university librarian for public services, • the contraption cost the University thousands of dollars. Nitecki, who has the warm ~emeanor of a grade-school librarian, says that the expensive scanner is part of an experiment in preparation for the re-opening

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of Cross Campus · Library, where similar scanners may one day grace the underground entrance.

Nitecki stresses that, though every effort is made to extend resources to the New Haven community to what she terms cc researchers in the . . . world" Sterling and CCL are not · public libraries. (Yale houses its collection of government documents, which is available to the general public by federal law, far from central campus, in the Seeley G. Mudd Library on Mansfield Road.)

In previous years, CCL not only opened its doors indiscriminately, but also furnished some two-dozen computer stations with unrestricted internet access. Last year, library patrons complained about limited seating and computer availability.

The staff receives so few complaints that, Nitecki says, ccwe take them to heart." As a result, library administrators placed further limitations on access during the evening hours, when more students traffic in and out of the library.

But even before the clock strikes six, some guards stringently enforce the twenty minute policy. On a Friday afternoon, New Haven resident Jeraya, 16, finds herself booted from MySpace despite the .fact that two•

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thirds of the computers idle, ready for any student or cc researcher in the world" to claim. A guard with a large, soft . face frantically treads back and forth in the nave, like a toy car gaining traction. He stands over Jeraya, spitting <<Supervisor!'' into his walkie-talkie. When J eraya must finally trade MySpace for some space outside, the guard turns and sighs to a librarian on duty. ccBoy, is she trouble." cci knew it was going to happen," New Haven resident Jim Moore said of his recently restricted access. The once-homeless Moore, who currently volunteers at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, has fr-e quented Yale's central libraries for years; he prefers them to the New Haven Public Library, where teenagers gather after school to trade gossip and obscenities, and where computer users have always faced time restrictions. He foresaw that the closing of Cross Campus Library might include not only the building itself, but also its policy of allowing _members of the public like himself to use the computers to conduct research, check e-mail, or play cards on gatning sites into the early · morning. Although outside users usually follow proper

library conduct, there have been times when Yale Security or the University Police were summoned to ask individuals engaging in disruptive behavior such as creating too much noise or looking at pornography to leave. «The homeless have ruined it for themselves," says Mike, another formerly homeless Yale library-user. «We're not all angels," he admits.

Nitecki argues that, especially with the renovations, there is simply too great a demand for library resources. Installations such as the ID scanner are not unique to Yale, she points out. ccM y impression is that among the Ivy Leagues, we are the most open." Indeed, access to Columbia and Harvard's main libraries hinges on a University ID. «I'ffi very comfortable that we are still generous," she says. <'Eight thirty to six p.m. is quite a bit of time."

These hours do not irnpress Gregory Morton, a member of the Class of 2000 who • deplores the changes. He called last year's open library access ccone of Yale's best contributions to the city." Currently a graduate student studying Anthropology and social work :at the - · University of Chicago, Morton says •

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that though "the University may not have intended to provide a space for the education of non-students, including people who were homeless," the generosity's uqjntentional nature "was what made the act special: it came without strings or selfinterest on the university's part.,, During his time at Yale, Morton cofounded Harmony Place and Respect Line, two projects of the Yale Homelessness and Hunger Action Project. While Morton concedes that student access must remain the library system's top priority, he does not believe the University,s devotion to its students should preclude it from sharing resources.

He is quick to point out that Yale receives ample .funds from the government and should use some of those resources to lower its metal bars and welcome the public inside.

The ID scanner acts as a barrier to this sort of welcome, and Morton, referencing the French philosopher Michel Foucault, says, celt creates a ritualistic reenactment of status. If every day you get in and get kicked • • • • out at a certa1n t1me, your pos1t1on is inscribed."

Meanwhile, Yale students ~re growing accustomed to the turnstile. It's ccinconsequential/' said Sophomore Ari Baraban. ccEveryone knows it's there." Where Morton sees a ritual reenactment of status, Nitecki has seen "expressions of delight" on the faces of students when the cc gentle bar" lowers for them.

But there are others who find the bar emblematic of encroaching injustices. "When things go unchallenged," Morton says, ccthey simply become natural facts."

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Pick up a sword and shield it's "Live Like a Celt Day."

By Ben Lasman

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t's nine a.m. on a frigid Saturday morning, and Cyril May cannot find his cow horn. The bonyfaced, pony-tailed director of Yale Recycling and co-founder of the Celtic Learning Project hurls jagged spearheads, tore necklaces, and homemade leather buckles across a frosty lawn in an attempt to locate the errant bovine accessory. "Cattle were very important to the Celts,'' he says, brandishing a Beanie Baby bull and mooing for emphasis. "This is what they used for currency."

At the Ancient Order of Hibernian's Hall in Meriden, Connecticut, Cyril and his fellow volunteersmostly middle-aged, bundled in layers of polar fleece and traditional tartan tunics arrange artifacts and shirts in preparation for the arrival of local families at today's ''Live Like a Celt Day,~' an event intended to teach children about the Celtic tradition. Hibernian's Hall, dull gray and plastered with bulletins for upcoming poker nights and potluck suppers, evokes a mutated Winnebago, its rooms jutting out at unpredictable angles. The half-wilted lawn is strewn with primitive accoutrements and bordered by squat, tarp-strewn sheds.

In the parking lot around back, a battered dumpster has been proudly pasted with a glittery shamrock. Today's event marks the first official collaboration between the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish Catholic fraternal society established in 1565, and the Celtic Learning Project. Yet, despite its obsession with history, none of its members knows when the Celtic Learning Project began. "We started organizing sometime in the past five or ten years," offers Betty, one of the group's founders.

The members are here today thanks to Cyril. ''He came down here one night to tell a story," remembers Stanley, a fellow member of the Order dressed in a green Jets sweatshirt and covered in blue face-paint, "and I thought it would be great to have him do something like that for the kids." Although performing Celtic tales

comprises a large portion of the Learning Project's activities, Cyril often has to edit the legends for younger audiences: "These stories aren't rated X," he says. "But they are usually rated R." . Dan, a blacksmith affiliated with the Ancient Celtic Clans reenactment group, woke at five this morning to make the three-hour drive from his home in upstate New York. His day of living like a Celt begins with building an open tent on the grass and hollowing out a shallow divot in the earth to act as his furnace. He cradles a tiny iron cube in his calloused hands. "That's my anvil," he says, resting the lump atop a log jammed vertically into the ground, "The Celts liked it because it was highly portable."

A specialist in what he calls "experimental archaeology,'' Dan meets with fellow enthusiasts weekly. Using items disinterred from excavations as models, the blacksmith and his assistants painstakingly recreate artifacts from scratch, producing functional and accurate facsimiles for use in re-enactments and artisanal demonstrations. According to Dan, when anthropologists discovered a carnax, or centuries-old horn, in an Irish bog, a Scottish trombonist spent an estimated 10,000 pounds constructing a working model of the instrument. "We'd love to get one of those," Dan says, a wistful expression crossing his face.

As the Society's resident artist, Betty specializes in fabricating its painted shields and wire neckbands.

"Once, we painted figures of Boudicca and Cuchullin with the faces cut out so kids could get their photographs taken," she recalls. "They like that male-female thing." While there is no comparable setup at today's event, Betty has devised an equally compelling assortment of interactive stations to teach the many facets of antediluvian Celtic existence: "The Fort," a trampoline-sized, waist-high ring draped in cloth and flanked by a tninute, wooden loom, borders the concrete park-

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ing lot. On the far side of the Hibernian Society's grass, two women prepare a grill for demonstrations of ancient Irish cooking.

As the blacksmith assembles his bellows, a primordial wheeze echoes from behind the tent: Cyril has found his horn. "It sounds like a dying bull moose with asthma," he says, laughing as he holds the instrument at arm's length. The dissonant fanfare has attracted the attention . of the volunteers, who form a semicircle around the trumpeter. With his team assembled, Cyril begins to divide up responsibilities. Stanley organizes a nature walk along the perimeter of the yard. Frank, the taciturn, mustachioed leader of the Meriden Hibernians, stands next to the blacksmith's hutch with his arms crossed. "You want a skirt, Frank?"

Cyril asks, offering him a plaid tunic. Frank does not want a skirt.

Cyril instructs a massive, whitebearded man to hide in the tract of woods bordering the property. ''Lawrence is our raider," Cyril explains as the burly individual walks off towards the foliage, eventually taking cover behind a young sapling that manages to conceal about a third of his girth. He will not move from this position for the next two hours.

His team in place; Cyril claps his hands to his sides and heads off in the · direction of his green van.

"Time to get pretty pretty!" he exclaims, dropping to one knee to lace up his leather shoes before tossing on a red knee-length tunic and fastening a sword to the right side of his belt. "You would think that a warrior would want his blade hanging from the left," he says, pulling the sheath across his waist and drawing the weapon with practiced ferocity. "But," he continues, pulling the cutlass back to its original position, "Archeaological evidence from Celtic burial grounds suggests that soldiers would actually wear their •

swords here, on the right." Lift- ' ing his holster to chest level, Cyril pulls the blade horizontally across his abdomen and grins, demonstrating a plausible reason for the placement. "This is my theory." A female volunteer wearing a pink baseball cap and smoking a cigarette seems unimpressed. "Maybe they were all just left-handed," she says.

The ultimate goal of the Celtic Learning Project is to create a living history museum, like Colonial Williamsburg. But despite their fanatical devotion to historical verisimilitude, an undercurrent of modernity haunts the enterprise. Prior to the families' arrivals, Cyril fumbles with a digital camera, erasing pictures to free up space on the memory card.

None of Cyril's regalia his cloak, sword and tore is actually Irish in origin; every piece is an American reproduction. "We have to take liberties with the Celts because we just don't know," he remarks. But behind the recreated tools, the tartan tunics, and the petite anvils lies a more fundamental irony. The Celts left little behind because they were unable to secure their own posterity.

"The Celts lost, historically," Cyril says. "The Romans defeated them."

Minor historical inaccuracies aside, "Live Like a Celt Day" is meant to introduce children to the lifestyle of the Celts. "We really don't know how many people will show up," confides Frank, "We put ads in our newsletter and in the town paper, but there's no way of gues ing who will turn out."

Behind him, a minivan pulls into the parking lot and lurches to a halt. The first family of the day has arrived. '

ix children come to "Live Like a Celt Day." That number dwindles to five when one boy complains that the traditional costume thrust upon him is too scratchy. Attendance, however, does not seem to

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concern Cyril. He blows his horn to gather the modest crowd now outfitted in tunics and face paintfor a nature walk along the outskirts of the yard. ''Station. One," set up along the embankment of a drainage ditch, depicts the Celtic reverence for streams and salmon. Cyril shows a computer printout of a fish to the kids. "Does anyone know what the salmon meant to the Celts?" Connor, a homeschooled eight-year-old who just finished studying ancient Irish history, has the correct answer: "Knowledge."

Moving on to the next stage of the walk, Cyril explains the importance of animals to the Celtic tribes. "Can anyone spot the fox in the woods?'' he asks, motioning towards the thorny underbrush. "I see,,, calls Connor, pointing into the woods where Stanley has set up a cardboard replica of a fox. After congratulating Connor, Cyril remarks that wolves used to live in the Connecticut woods, but became largely extinct due to hunting.

"Is there a fake wolf?'' asks a little blonde girl with glasses, scanning the forest intently.

As the group arrives on the far end of the lawn, Cyril begins to lead the children into the trees. "Be on the lookout for raiders,,, he warns portentously. Several tense seconds pass before Lawrence bursts forth from the leaves, waving a stic~ and roaring. A little girl screams. "Kill 'em all," bellows the faux-barbarian, charging from his hideout.

"We'll enslave the children and kill the rest!,, Cyril ushers the children from the underbrush and runs with them into the yard. His prey out of reach, Lawrence pivots and lumbers dejectedly back into the woods .

t Once the children have caught their breath, the lesson continues.

Cyril explains that for Celts, the wheel was a symbol for war. "Does anyone think they know why?'' he asks. Connor's hand shoots up.

"Maybe because they thought war was a cycle that never ended and always kept happening," he says.

Cyril looks to the adults mingling on the outskirts of the parking lot: "We've got a philosopher here." He had always thought it was because the Celts rode chariots into battle.

In the meantime, · Betty has prepared bowls of oatmeal to demonstrate how the Celts might have made crackers. As the kids sit on a concrete ledge facing the grill, she arranges her cooking utensils and describes the history of classic Irish cuisine. ''Behold the ancient Celtic Tupperware," she announces, producing a plastic container full of biscuits from a nearby box and placing it before her audience. The children, apparently less concerned with ·learning the process than eating lunch, pound oatmeal into past€ and shake mason jars .filled with cream.

"We don't know how the Celts actually made butter," whispers Cyril to Dan, "But this is fun for the kids."

As one little girl peruses the stack of Celtic-themed coloring books for sale, her mother asks Cyril how she can pay him for his services. "Pay me?" the robed educator laughs. "Pay me in cattle, of course."'

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Lisa Curran is one of this year's MacArthur geniuses~

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n Indonesia, loggers have placed a five hundred dollar bounty on Professor Lisa Curran's head.

Back in the U.S., however, she is viewed as a luminary rather than as a target. This year, she was awarded a MacArthur ''Genius Grant" five hundred thousand dollars to use for her work, no strings attached.

Thanks to the grant, she can now afford to be caught by the loggers one thousand times.

For the wanted woman, finding a place to sleep is the least of her worries in Indonesia; David Butman, one of Curran's students at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, recalls finding unconventional lodgings with the professor while hiking on a kuda

kuda, or logging trail. ''Our beds

few years ago, Curran discovered an interaction between two natural phenomena in Kalimantan. One of these occurrences, "masting," is a period of heightened seed production by the island's canopy trees that occurs every three to four years. The other event is the El Niiio Southern Oscillations, a climatic cycle that affects weather in the tropical Pacific. After studying both phenomena, Curran found that the canopy trees synchronized their seed production with this weather cycle, and that, because of this simultaneity, milli'ons of wild pigs feast during years when El Niiio occurs. "These pigs are 150 kilos. They're huge, and they migrate over the landscape in search of

consisted of empty rice bags slung between two poles just cut from the surrounding forest," he described. ''The sounds of Orangutans cast us off to sleep at night." The pair camped together while traveling through Kalimantan, the region of Indonesia that Curran has studied for 22 years. ''I know the supply town in Indonesia better than I know where I live now," says Curran, a professor of tropical resources at Yale. In the second week of November, Curran will once again travel to Kalimantan. Before she leaves, she'll need new booster shots. ''But I don't get sick anymore," she insists. ''I've had it all."

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these seeds. So when the seeds come out, they all breed and start .moving.

It's the biggest . migration outside the wildebeests in Africa."

Illegal logging of canopy trees, however, interferes with this natural system. Using field studies and satellite images, Curran has shown that, from 1985 to 2001, Kalimantan's protected lowland forests shrank by more than fifty percent.

Since fewer trees are left to produce the newly fallen seeds, the pigs' feasting curbs the forests' regeneration. "I've been blessed and cursed in a way," she explains, "because for the first six or eight years, I was in a beautiful national park, just bathing in the river in a remote place that was absolutely beautiful. Then later on, I started to see the place getting destroyed." ost of this devastation occurred under the regime of Haji Mohammad Suharto, Indonesia's notorious former president, who resigned in 1998 after three years of civil unrest. ~~If you think of Mobutu or Marcos or Baby Doc," Curran says, ''They're like chump change compared to this guy." _ Since Suharto's resignation and the forests' decline, the government has found an alternative source of capital in oil palm trees. Palm oil an ingredient used in products from Godiva chocolate to Nabisco crackers generates revenue for an economy in need of a marketable resource. But Curran dislikes the degree of industrialization necessary to extract palm oil. She describes the current situation: "Say you lived there. You have your own farms, and you have coffee and rubber, and you're doing okay in your village of two hundred nouseholds.

The bulldozer shows up, and these guys take all your land. You have no legal means of recourse." She shakes her head. "The regime gives you two hectares, and you plant •

November 2006

town in Indonesia better than I know where I live now," says Curran, a proresources at Yale. this oil palm. The regime owns it, and you owe them loans. Essentially they're taking self-sufficient people and turning them into indentured servants."

As her research acquired a more political tone, Curran began to publicize her results with · the hope of inducing social reform. Since her first paper was published in Science in 1999, numerous groups, such as the Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace, have applied her findings to their own environmental campaigns. Logging in Kalimantan, while disastrous, serves as an example that might rescue the Amazon from a similar fate. Unfortunately, it is too late to save the Kalimantan forests, as Curran recognized the connection between the two phenomena after the forests had begun to disappear.

Curran's white skin and auburn hair clearly mark her as a foreigner in Indonesia, but she has managed to earn acceptance overseas. "Because Kalimantan is on the outskirts and Jakarta and the capital cities are not, I learned to speak in the backwaters of Indonesia. rm always teased that I speak like a local hick." She doesn't mind the teasing; she believes a sense of humor has helped her blend in.

One presentation that Curran gave to an Indonesian audience solicited a slew of laughs when she called one of her tools a "seed trap." After she was done, she learned why everyone had chuckled "seed trap" is

Indonesian slang for male genitalia.

"It's good because it's self-deprecating," she says. '~You learn in Asian culture that you don't brag · about yourself. You make funny comments to put yourself lower, so it .works very well."

In a dangerous field like .Curran's, it's helpful to have a trustworthy crew. To select the students she invites on her trips, Curran says, "I take people out for a beer. Sense of humor is important. Patience is another big deal because in Indonesia, you hurry up and wait a lot. It helps if you have a little zen."

This zen helps Curran prevent Indonesia's culture of corruption from interfering with her research.

Kabir Peay, a graduate student who worked with Curran in Kalimantan, remembers an occasion when their group was held against its will at a palm oil processing plant. "The evening we arrived," he recalled, "four large men ·arrived at the plantation we were staying at and claimed we had broken adat, local law, by crossing their village grounds without stopping to pay respects to the village head." Holding Curran hostage, the men threatened to expel the group and confiscate its scientific equipment. But Curran spent hours speaking with them in Indonesian to negotiate a bargain that would enable the group to stay and conduct research. "There are not many other people that could have sat in that room, calmly smoking clove cigarettes and negotiating in a foreign language with a group of dangerous men that wanted to hold us hostage," Peay noted. '~But Lisa was able to keep it together and do exactly that."

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Daniel Jordan is a freshman in Berkeley College.

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by Nicole Allan •

icholas Edward Panza, America wants you.

Beyond your casual speech, I hear her singing to your lean rower's body, your gleeful enthusiasm. I sense her thirsting to claim your bottled Yalie energy, your Exeter polish and your Ivy · gleam rooted in a Pasadena past. : America, Nick Panza, is soft. Remember when she crumbled? It pushed you .over the edge. Now, you say, when you hear them talk the softies, the liberals you get seriously, seriously disturbed. Do they love America? Some of them say they do. But you, Nick Panza you love America. our coach once told you, before you leaped into your boat and rowed until your lungs flamed, to embrace the pain. Nick Panza, you leap in that boat and embrace that pain. And you did. You do. It's a good thing you call yourself a masochist.

When you left Yale for the summer and showed up for that first day at Officer Candidate School, and they emptied your bag onto the hot glinting Virginia asphalt, you saw it coming. Hours of pre-dawn pullups and push-ups and sprints and planks. Breakfast , lunch, and dinner with a rifle by your side. An endless bay of bunks. Disorientation, you describe, all the time because, Candidate Panza, battle is anything but order.

Did you complain? You say Officer Candidate School was awesome, the sweetest thing ever. Six weeks so sweet you had to go back. You wanted to finish right then and there, but you were reclaimed

by Yale. Its lectures and protests and keggers. If anyone gives me shit, you said, he's dead. You were hard in a sea of soft.

Back at school, you set up a recruiting table on the quad. Semper Fi, . your poster trumpeted, ever

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faithful. The few, the proud, the Marines. Ears cupping out from your fuzzed brown hair, you wore your Marine t-shirt with your flip-flops and bare tanned legs. A kid edged over and said, Thanks, man thank you for what you're doing. Another spat out, I hate the military. You said, You hate the military? Go join the Taliban.

One guy read your brochure, looked you in the eye, said I want to join the Marines. You said great. He said, I'm gay. You, Candidate Panza, said I can't help you.

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merica knows you don't come from a "military fam. y," as you put it. She knows that, and she wants you anyway. She knows they weren't thrilled when you told them. You could be an investment banker, you recall them saying. Eighty thousand . your first year. You answered that OCS is nonbinding. You still could be.

After all, America's too smart to gobble you, Nick Panza, up all in one bite. She'll savor you week by tnonth by year; she got you for six weeks after your sophotnore •

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year for Platoon Leaders Class at the Quantico base, and she'll get you for another six this summer. She'll even pay you for it. Usually, America demands the summer after junior year for your second leg of PLC, but she wanted you so very much that she let you defer a year. You needed to train with your team. By then, if you haven't gotten kicked out and you, Panza, that'll never happen to you she'll have you for six months at The Basic School." You'll finally be able to. shoot the bullets she denied you at first, though you've spent four months cradling your weapon.

After fighting for your specialty, infantry or law or intelligence or tanks or aviation you want intel, but things change, America lets you change. Once you decide, you"ll spend weeks or months getting specific. Then comes the contract, the assignment you'll go anywhere and everywhere and hopefully where there are terrorists. Three and a half years minimum. Technically, you could still be an investment banker. But America, Nick Panza, is used to getting her way. ou tell your friends why you went to Quantico. When they get all political on you, because college kids usually do, you can take it. Did you vote for Bush? No, but everyone knows you're a conservative. You didn't vote for him, but you love his America. You are quick to declare that you, Nick Panza, will support America no matter who's running it and who's getting bombed.

You liked being around people like yourself. You try to explain how the candidates appreciated their freedoms, how they didn't take anything for granted you,d never seen character like that before. And, let's be honest, they were hoots; you'd never choked back so many laughs.

Not many people know how funny the military is, but you, Candidate Panza, you tell them. You

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keep track of what the Sergeant Instructors say, and you tell everyone you know. Like when anSI explained that your M 16 was like a woman in black leather she demands respect and enjoys pain. Remember that?

And the SI who told a candidate he didn't like guys, but if he kept it up he'd stick it in backwards. Ah, wasn't that the same one who asked, ~don't you want to feel what it's like to pull a man's heart out of his chest while it's still beating? That was damn funny, you say. id you like fitting in, Candidate Panza? Mos candidates do. You admit that you understand why the military sticks to Don't Ask Don't Tell. You do love your meatand -potatoes, after all a delicious side to your matching M16"s and masculinity, your we're-not-blackwe,re-not-wh'tte-we ' re-green motto. You kept it hush-hush that you went to Yale. It didn't end up being a big deal, but your bunkrnates went to Iowa State and Valley Forge, so

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you mostly stayed quiet. You're just a candidate, you told yourself, just one more candidate giving your summer to America.

When you boarded your flight home, Nick Panza, in a buzz-cut and a Marine t-shirt, you were alone. It was the most humbling feeling ever, you remember. You were so, so full of accomplishment you grin and grin just recalling it now that people stopped you, and thanked you. Maybe they sensed your hardness, Candidate Panza, alongside their softness. Was that when you knew you belonged to America? When you began to declare that you wanted to do your part? Was that when you knew that · once a Marine, you, Nick Panza, would always be a Marine?

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Nicole Allan, a sophomore in Calhoun College, is Production Manager ofThe New Journal.

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Though she departed from the academic world, Wil- · . lig,s novels are full of tidbits gleaned from her years at A Yale grad spurns academia to write Yale and Harvard. Her first novel, The Secret History of trashy romance novels. the Pink Carnation, is mostly set in a Parisian mansion.

As a Renaissance Studies major at Yale, Willig designed

by Helen Eckinger · · just such a mansion for a course in Renaissance architecture. Years .later, while writing Pink Carnation, she y senior essay ,,Patriarchal Society and · pulled out her old notebook and transformed her humble Female Promiscuity in Jane Austen, is homework into the palace of ''Edouard de Balcourt., All due in exactly three weeks. I can only of Willig's work is punctuated with references tq poetimagine the look of horror on my advisor,s face if ry jokes about Keats and Wordsworth which she atI marched into her office and announced that I was tributes to a stint in English 125. And, of course, Willig blowing it off in favor of writing a sequel to Pride encountered the rudiments of her romantic heroes and and Prejudice. Yale alum Lauren Willig '99, however, villains at Yale. did just that. And she,s completely unrepentant.

After attending a Manhattan all-girls high school, Four years into pursuing a doctorate in English Willig scouted her new co-ed environment for characHistory at Harvard, Willig abandoned her plans to be- ters. "So much of the. male stuff comes from long discuscome a professor. She became a law school student by sions with male friends who were like 'this is how men day, and the author of unabashed historical chick-lit think/, she said. "Yale was such a great resource for minby night. Three years later, Willig is a first year associ- ing the male psyche I mean, you, d have the guys from ate at a New York law firm, and the author of three through the fire door in the common room until two in novels: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, The the morning., At the end of her tenure as a doctoral candidate, WilMasque of the Black Tulip, and The Deception of the lig spent a year conducting research in England; that year Emerald Ring.

Although Willig wasn't smote by the gavel of Har- was undoubtedly the biggest academic influence on her vard academia, her professors were underwhelmed by work. Her novel opens in the present day as Eloise Kelly also a Harvard doctoral candidate roots through her newfound literary ambitions. ''Some of them who were interested in making his- the British Museum,s archives for information about tory more accessible were excited about it,', she said aristocratic British spies during theN apoleonic Wars. She from her office in New York. "But most of them just stumbles upon a goldmine in letters belonging to a Mrs. thought it was a great big joke.,, Selwick-Alderly, whose ancestor, Richard Selwick, was

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The novel's biggest problem is its· use of Eloise's modern-day story as a framing device. The historical sequences are told as · Eloise imagines them, producing a number of unrealistic albeit amusing·linguistic anachronisms. It's doubtful that a nineteenth -century wouldbe rapist would utter cc Come on!

You know you want me!" to his prey. It's equally dubious that members of Britain's most elite corps of spies would refer to the Assistant Minister of Police's personal interrogation room as the cc extra-special torture chamber."

Similarly anachronistic is the lack of decorum displayed by the

Napoleon's Egyptologist by day and the Purple Gentian Britain's most dangerous spy by night. But although the Selwick family files are rife with information on the Purple Gentian and his predecessor, the Scarlet Pimpernel, they also contain references to the Pink Carnation, the last and greatest of the troika of British aristocratic spies and the only one who was never unmasked.

The Pink Carnation follows Eloise's quest to discover the identity of its titular spy. She begins by following the odyssey of Amy Halcourt. Orphaned and exiled during the French Revolution, Amy returns home to France at the request of her brother, Edouard, who has Yale alum merges her become an intimate of Napoleon. love of history and chick lit in her novels.

Amy, however, has a secret motive: novel's female characters. Amy pacto find the Purple Genetian whose es up and down the deck of a shipidentity is still unknown and join staffed by drunken sailors in only his league of spies. Once she enher slip, and arranges a clandestine counters Richard Selwick, the premidnight meeting in the Jardin du dictable comedy of mistaken identiLuxembourg with the man she's ties ensues, leading to an inevitable sure is the Purple Gentian. Part of climax replete with poisoned branthis can be ascribed to Amy's nady, an antique pistol, and an iron ivete, which at times borders on maiden. There are, of course, the idiocy, but her utter lack of propriobligatory sex scenes this is, after ety is mirrored in the behavior of all, a romance novel but far fewer her peers. Toward the novel's end, than in most novels of its ilk; Willig Richard's younger sister, Henrietclearly prefers international intrigue ta, emerges from her bed chamber to bodice ripping. wearing only a "diaphanous" night-

gown into a room filled with several of her brother's friends. It's enough to give Jane Austen an aneurysm.

There's plenty to poke fun at • tn The Pink Carnation. Considering his reputation as Britain's most mercilessly efficient spy, the Purple Gentian proves to be utterly inept once Amy arrives on the scene. Perhaps it's because he's besotted with her and, admittedly, preventing her from meddling her way into danger is a full-time job but it's hard to believe that a spy who falls for the most obvious traps could be England's last hope at stemming a French invasion.

But ies not fair to judge Willig's work with the same scrutiny as bonafide historical fiction. Hers is mass-market fiction, pure and simple, and while it can be inane at times, it's also deliciously fun. Perhaps because they're such a vital part of our education, we tend to view books in an ali-or-nothing light we either praise them as literature or dismiss them as trash. Then, as soon as we are done ridiculing Nora Roberts, we run off to watch the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy. I, personally, was so enthralled by The Pink Carnation that I completely forgot to get my weekly Grey:~s fix. Value is relative to a book's intended purpose; here, the purpose is to entertain. In the same vein, Willig's newest book, The Deception of the Emerald Ring, was released on November 16th. And a few weeks from now, I know I'll put aside my stodgy Austen criticism to read her newest tale of "extra-special torture chambers," bumbling heroines, and not-so-secret agents.

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Helen Eckinger, a senior in Trumbull College:~ is a Managing EditorofThe New Journal

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Reflections of the day's fading light at New Haven's Lighthouse Point .

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Star-crossed brothers ·· (in-law) Romeo and Giuseppe battle it out over groceries.

By Sophia Lear

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food displays, the placating of unhappy customers, the sweeping of floors, came flooding back to him as he saw the hulking figure standing beneath the shop's white awning.

Giuseppe came face to face with Romeo, and Romeo told his paisan, his kin, his partner, that Giuseppe had to go. Overnight, Romeo had changed the locks on the Store. ''It took me right off my feet.

I had nothing left," Giuseppe says.

"Fourteen years of my life work. And the goals that I had always dreamed of when I was young. And finally, you know, suddenly,· 'boom!' It just shut off. I just went, you know, kind of blind. I locked myself into myself. I couldn't think of nothing more than revenge."

iuseppe was at home on Linden Street in New Haven's East Rock neighborhood . when Romeo called. He left his house and raced toward Orange Street. As he neared "Romeo and Giuseppe's," the gourmet Italian grocery store he and Romeo had run together for over a decade, he could see Romeo standing outside.

Giuseppe knew that figure by heart.

It was the man he had spent every day with for the last 14 years: his countryman from the fields of Italy, his companion in pre-dawn trips to New York's produce markets. All of the dealings with nasty distributors, the firing of unruly employees, the lifting of crates, the arranging of •

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t is 5:30 p.m. on the last day of October, and night has descended on New Haven. On Orange Street, between Humphrey and Bishop, the early darkness catches shoppers at Nica's Market off-guard: Is it dinner time already? A graduate student comparing two types of goat cheese throws both in his basket, a little boy in search of the perfect potato is scooped up by his mother, and two young employees at the back counter rush to fill demands for chicken piccatta, marinated olives, lasagna, and balls of fresh mozzarella.

And there, standing next to the meat counter, beaming over the scene, is Giuseppe--or Joe, as he's known in the neighborhood. His face is sharp, bird-like: His nose juts out strongly; his eyes are dark and focused; his skin is taut; his mustache is perfectly pointed. In motion-and Giuseppe never stops

November 2006

moving-he radiates a warmth and exuberance that soften his harsh features. He is fit, and when his name is shouted from the other end of the store, he darts off in its direction, his sing-song voice echoing through the aisles. Giuseppe is Nica's life force, and the store is his. While the long hours and stress of running an independent grocery might damag~ the health of others, Giuseppe's happiness seems directly proportionate to his level of industry.

At a similar store a few blocks down the road, 14 years of history have been revised; the labels on the tomato sauce, the spice bottles, the olive oil, and the awning now read "Romeo and Cesare's." A blow-up black-and-white portrait of Romeo and Cesare has been affixed to the wall above the deli. Side by side in the picture, the brothers' doughy faces melt seamlessly into their necks, but where Cesare's soft features and wide brows convey a gentle, kind demeanor, Romeo's twinkling eyes and hard mouth offer a mischievous

contrast.

It is Romeo's day off. Outside the store, general manager Ben Minichino, a born schmoozer, rearranges outdoor seating and greets customers. "What's up, boss?" he says to an old man wearing a sports jacket and a straw hat. Inside, Cesare mans the register while a woman holding an infant in a carrot costume consults a shopping list and a man fumbles for change to pay for a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.

At dusk on Halloween, each store is completely self-involved, ignorant of the parallel scene playing out mere blocks away. The proximity of the two paisan, and their determination to ignore each other raises the question: What could ever have divided two lives so completely entwined?

Although the story tore through the East Rock neighborhood at the time, the cause of the split remained obscured. Toni Dorfman, a Yale theater studies professor and patron of Romeo and Giuseppe's, remembers returning from a trip to England to discover the schism. The account, she says, became more and more lurid in the telling. "Something about

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a knife across the throat," she recalls.

Both Romeo and Giuseppe avoid specifics. "Do I have to go into all this detail?" Giuseppe snaps in a rare display of frustration. Romeo says, "I never tried, you know the truth, I never tried to do something bad ... to ~nyone." Giuseppe will relate ,his emotional reaction to the breakup, b~t even that requires a disclaimer: ''This is not a story I tell around."

Romeo and Giuseppe are the Montague and Capulet of Orange Street: two men born in the same year, nurtured by the same land, who crossed the same ocean and tried to make their fortunes together, only to be wrenched ·apart by jealousy ahd betrayal. But their story has remained shrouded in omerta an Italian principle of silence that Romeo and Giuseppe carried · to New '

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warm and raspy voice. Even as children, Romeo and Giuseppe had already begun to cultivate their trade. omeo Simeone and Giuseppe When Giuseppe was 16, he left Sabino were born in 1950 in Formicola and immigrated to New Formicola, Italy, a srpall town in Haven with his mother and older the province of Caserta, about 45 brother, Vincent. It wasn't a clean kilometers north of Naples. Gi- break. Giuseppe took on three jobs useppe imagines he emerged from . to support his family at a soda botthe womb already hard at work. tling plant, a pocketbook shop, and "I was born working. I was born a steel warehouse and his heart working with my father in the fields remained in Formicola. Giuseppe of Italy," he says. While helping to and his brother frequently returned plant olives, tomatoes, grapes, and to their hometown on vacation, and chestnuts on his family's small farm, back home the brothers re-kinGiuseppe developed an impeccable dled old romances. They married knowledge of vegetables. their sweethearts in Italy, and then Nearby, in another section of brought their young brides back to the comuni, Romeo rein to work at New Haven. When Romeo's sishis uncle's grocery store each day ter, Josephine, married Giuseppe's after school. When his uncle made brother, Vincent, the two men betrips to the marke.t, he would bring came family. . young Romeo along. "I saw the In 1974, Romeo and his brother mushrooms, and the chestnuts all Cesare arrived in New Haven with of those stuff like that. And I learn," nothing. Meanwhile, Giuseppe had worked his way up to the position Romeo remembers aloud in his of general manager of the steel warehouse, so he helped the Simeone '

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brothers settle in: ccwe found them jobs. Everything. We took them in as our own family," Giuseppe recalls ruefully.

In 1982, Giuseppe moved his family which now included daughter Rosanna and son Antonio back to Formicola. Seven years later, after building a house and opening a grocery store in his native town, Giuseppe experienced a change of heart: "I figured my kids had more opportunities in America than in Italy." And so Giuseppe returned, only to find the roles were reversed: Now, he had a wife and two kids but no work, while Romeo was running "Romeo's Imports," a successful Italian trade store on Grand Avenue, in the Wooster Square area

of New Haven.

According to Giuseppe, it was then that Romeo tipped him off about the Orange Street property.

But, Giuseppe insists that cc originally it was supposed to be only mine.

And my fan1ily 's. So we put all our efforts in, to build the business up.

And Romeo, he said, 'I'll help you to start it. Because there was a relationship between family, a family relation, I thought nothing of it."

They never put anything on paper.

Romeo remembers things differently. He claims that he sold the Grand Avenue store, moved his business to Orange Street, and then let Giuseppe in on the enterprise

because he was family. "That's why he was, we give, we make a partner, we make "Romeo, who struggles with English, gives up and cuts to the chase. "It was a big mistake!" he says, and then laughs impishly, as if admitting something he -shouldn't have.

Both men seem to have shut out any memory of the 14 years they, their wives, and their kids labored together to make a vibrant, intimate place for the neighborhood to buy gounnet food. The sour end makes those times when Romeo and Giuseppe devoted their lives to each 29

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.Their story has remained of this purchase, it must, at the very · least, have been surreptitious; for . Sh rou ded zn omerta an as soon as Romeo learned of the Italian principle o si- acquisition he flew into a rage, and lence that Romeo and i~mediately began planning to oust . . hts partner of 14 years. · Not long Gzuseppe carrzed to New after Giuseppe bought (the future) Haven until now. Nica's, Romeo stood at t?e door of

Giuseppe's, and burst into tears in front of her. <(Imagine it like this," she told the sobbing Giuseppe, "you fell down, and now you have to get up and walk again." Giuseppe would never forget those words. He went home, and, watching his twoyear-old granddaughter Veronica their grocery and told Gtuseppe he playing on the floor, taking cautious other impossible to revisit. baby-steps, Giuseppe knew that he could never enter the store again.

Questions abound: why, if Ro- had to start all over again. Later that ut listening·to Giuseppe and Romeo stole so egregiously, did Gi- year, Giuseppe opened a brand new meo talk, a rough sketch of the useppe not confront his partner store the shop initially purchased events leading up to the cataclysmic earlier? Why, really, did Joe buy the for his son and named it after his moment emerges. According to Giother property? And why was this granddaughter, Nica. useppe, trouble had been brewing an unpardonable offense to Romeo? from the very beginning: "As soon nThey had' a dispute," Peter DeRose hough Romeo and Giuseppe as they came in, hell started. Everysays when I ask him what happened. have each lost a brother, they body was robbing everybody." Gi- ''There's just no other nationality have been sustained by their ex- · useppe keeps the accusations genthat will stab you in the back like tended family: their neightborhood. eral; but he paints ·the theft more as the Italians.''

"For me, it's like one big family," fistfuls of cash snatched from the This, in fact; is the key: no one Romeo says, his voice dropping its register that both Romeo and Gicares what the details that caused usual playfulness'. "I appreciate very useppe's wives and children worked the drama were they were merely much anyone who spends one penthan doctored receipts or 'dubious the occasion for the histrionic be- ny or ten· dollars when they come in . accounting. The treachery lived havior that followed. Whatever the the door. It's very~ .. it's a pleasure. right at the surface, right among the cause of his wrath, Romeo did not It's very nice." melanzana, broccolini, and cavol- confront Giuseppe to tell him they And Giuseppe, burned by his fiore, and Giuseppe knew it. should split; he plotted, carefully fellow paisan, still finds himself full Just as the duplicity within the of goodwill. He has made the whole and patiently, until the locks ·were aisles of Romeo and Giuseppe's .changed overnight, and he could world his family: "I love everybody. reached a fever pitch, Giuseppe summon Giuseppe to see what he I learn to love everybody. Colors, learned about an empty store propdoesn't matter. Ages, doesn't mathad done, the world as his witness. erty just a few blocks away. Giuseppe · For Giuseppe, the details be- ter. And different countries, differhad a minor real estate business he hind the story have dissolved in the ent cultures, I love them all, because owned a few houses around the emotional anguish of the betrayal every one of them is human." neighborhood and when he asked itself. Four years later, his voice Throughout the drama, DeRose his children if he should buy the · quickly rises: "I got a call, a phone has managed to remain friends with building, they said yes. Giuseppe call says come down, and they were both Romeo and Giuseppe. He has does not clarify exactly what he inall there like vultures. Prepared. To his own take on the saga. Despite tended to do with the store; Peter attack. To attack why? Because I the fireworks, he argues, little has DeRose, who owned yet another help my kids buy a building? Why? changed between Romeo and GiItalian market on Orange Street at My kids are monkeys or something? useppe of Formicola, Italy: "They the time, thinks Giuseppe meant the They don't have their own families? both still work a lot of hours and building to be a gift to his son, An- Why?" It is the victimization that are very dedicated to their work. I tonio, to open his own pizza market haunts Giuseppe, and the story he think it's the same thing. But now or prepared food store. Giuseppe cannot keep bottled inside. they have to compete with each connects the purchase to Romeo's For seven or eight months, other, which probably spurs them stealing, yet insists it was business as both to work even harder."

Giuseppe barely spoke a word to usual. He had always bought good anyone. He hid in his house on properties, and this was just another Linden Street and considered suione. cide. On one rare excursion, GiAlthough neighborhood sp~cu­ useppe bumped into a woman who Sophia Lear is a junior in Ezra lation swirls around the intentions had been a regular at Romeo and Stiles College .

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The Robert C. Bates Sununer Traveling Fellowships The Howard.William Hilgendorf~ Jr. Fellowship The Rhea Plunkett Wagster Memorial Fellowship The Lewis P. Curtis Fellowship for Travel The Lewis Jeffrey A. '66 Reseach and Travel Fellowship The David Baer Fellowship The John B. Morse Fellowship The Alan S. Tetelman •58 Fello·w ships for Study Abroad

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Awards are available to Yale College Juniors who give evidence that their educational experience would be significantly enhanced by a project of independent sununer study and/or research outside the continental United States.

Applicatiotts available online:

.yale.edu/iefp/fellowships/by category/sumn1er.html (scroll to the bottom of the page) •

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Informational meeting:

Monday, November 27 7:00PM

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by Nick Handler

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mid the din of the construction site on Cross Campus and the whirl of students rushing from class to class, Min Deng and her companions are finding inner peace. Notes of traditional Chinese music waft from a small tape recorder, competing with the roar of heavy machinery, as the group moves in unison through the motions of "Buddha Showing a Thousand Hands, the first in a series of mind-body exercises.

They guide their palms into the lotus position, bring them together at the center of their abdomens, raise them to the level of their chins, then stretch them skyward. They point their fingers toward each other, straighten their legs, stretch their bodies, and then, after several seconds, relax.

Their lower jaws are fixed;- their tongues touch the tops of their palettes, and their eyes are gently shut in a gesture of controlled serenity as they atte1npt to unblock what they term the ''meridians'' of their bodies the invisible channels through which their qi, or life energy, flows.

Deng and the others in this group are members of the Yale Falun Gong Club. Falun Gong is a Chinese spiriNovember 2006

tual movement that has grown in the last ten years from a small culture of practitioners in mainland China to an international movement a movement that claims to cure the illnesses of its followers and help them attain supernormal powers. Banned as a cult in China and mistrusted and reviled by much of Yale's Chinese national population, Falun Gong's opponents claim that it brainwashes its devotees and incites them to suicide. But today, Dr. Deng and her fellow Yale scientists could not seem more peaceful.

Founded two years ago by a group of faculty, graduate students, and post-doctoral researchers, the group meets on Cross Campus to practice what it calls "mind-body cultivation." "I try to do the practice every day," says Deng, a researcher specializing in dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine and the group's president. "It keeps me much calmer, much happier., Yanping Lu, a post-doctoral researcher in im33

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munobiology, agrees. 'ti used to get very agitated during the course of the day. When I practice cultivation, I feel peaceful." ¡ ' Also present are Tracey Zhu, a New Haven physician who completed her residency at the Yale School of Medicine; Jianchao Xu, a nephrologist and assistant professor of internal medicine; Hao Wang, a senior economics major in Morse College; and several others.

Movements from "The Falun Standing Stance" and "Penetrating the Two c ¡ostnic Extremes,', to "The Great Heavenly Circuit," and "Strengthening Divine Powers" are designed to unite their energies with the cosmos. alun Gong combines meditation with a unique form of cosmology rooted in traditional Chinese belief systems. The practice was introduced to China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, a trumpet player and former army officer, who outlined his essential teaching in Zhuan Falun, or, in English, Revolving the Law Wheel. In this collection of nine lectures and essays, Li claims he was tutored by a long line of Buddhist and Daoist masters in qigong an ancient Chinese form of mind-body meditation designed to redirect the 34

flow of qi throughout the body. Li also claims to have gained the ability to levitate and walk through walls. Falun Gong,s ultimate goal is the improvement of the mental, physical, and spiritual health of its practitioners . . Members of Falun Gong, however, believe that Master Li brought a significantly different element to qigong practice. When Li introduced the movement, he claimed that he was not founding a new religion but reviving an ancient set of practices. The . movemenes official website, falundafa.org, describes Falun Gong as "originating in pre-historic China.,, "The basic foundations of Fa. lun Gong are in qigong," explains Gareth Fischer, a post-doctoral researcher in the East Asian Studies Department and a visiting instructor in anthropology. "But as you get more deeply involved this other stuff starts getting put on top of it."

Originally, much of qigong practice possessed a religious or cos-

mological element. It was only during the Cultural Revolution of the .

1960s, when Mao Zedong actively suppressed traditional Chinese religions, that the form of meditation more strongly emphasized the physical component.

"In traditional practices, like Tai,chi," says Wang, "the practice was passed down from teacher to student, and they w:orked at opening one meridian at a time. It might take 15 or 20 years for a practitioner to open all their meridians. In Falun Gong, you begin by opening all of your meridians with the first . " practice.

"Many practitioners turn to Falun Gong because of health reasons," says Fischer. Fischer does not _practice Falun Gong himself, but over the summer of 2000, while completing his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, he studied its practitioners in Hong Kong. Since 1999, it has been illegal to practice, or even research, the movement in

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mainland China.

"It is a very physical practice," he says. "No different from lifting weights at the gym." Li intended for the practice to be painful at first. It involves a series of highly specified poses held for a long period: Fischer, who tried the practice with followers in Hong Kong, admits that they can "make you really sick." This process of sustained poses is called qingli ·shenti, or "cleaning of the self." Li and his followers believe that by enduring the pain of difficult meditation, they can eliminate impure karma.

"Once they see the practice works, they tend to get drawn into the cosmology."

At its core, Falun Gong sees qigong as a vehicle for attaining Zhen-Shan-Ren, or ''Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance."

These three principles, Falun Gong maintains, underlie the workings of the universe: It is because of man's natural corruption that humanity suffers the illnesses and hardships of the physical world. he doctors who practice at Yale claim that Falun Gong offers not only the path to health, but alsQ the key to rediscovering one's true form what Li refers to as the yuansheng. He says it will allow one to see past the "special dimension" that has been constructed around human ignorance to one of ten other dimensions, where the "law wheel," or Falun, exists. "Li believes that in every person there is a wheel," explains Fischer, "that has been installed in the abdomen, but that exists in another dimension."

This wheel is supposed to move in tune with the Milky Way, the cosmos, and the various rhythms of the universe, but stress inflicted upon it by wordly life destroys this synchronicity. This is where meditation comes in; the tranquil exercises witnessed on Cross Campus are an effort to realign one's individual wheel with that of the cosmos.

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Although L i claims that Falun Gong has ancient origins, its philosophy of degeneration and purification m ay h ave more recent ·sociological roots. Falun Gong comes from urban mainland China, where recent developments in Chinese society r ap id industrialization, large-scale environmental degradation, and the removal of social support and w elfare institutions have contributed to a general feeling of • corruption.

In Fischer 's eyes, "people left out of rapid social change" are attracted by w h at Falun Gong • promises. he practice has brought a fair amount of con t roversy to Yale's campus. Last April, as Chinese President Hu Jintao delivered a speech to a packed audience at Sprague Memorial Hall, sco res of Falun Gong practitioners who had come from as far as Australia m editated in protest on the New H aven Green, holding bright yellow b anners proclaiming "Falun D afa is Good." Across the street, C hinese students and Communist P arty members, some

of whom had b een bussed up from New York, h oisted ~ed Chinese flags in support of their country's government. A lternating between Chinese and English, the two groups berated each oth er through dueling megaphones.

The streets surroun din g campus were postered with rraphic photos.

Protesters demonstrated live reenactments of tortur e. Sin ce 1999,_ the movement h as been banned in China and actively suppressed by the government, w hich denies that it has committed any human rights violations in its h andling of Falun Gong. But many claim that those who refuse to recant their beliefs are tortured, sometimes to death, by government authorities.

F alundafa.org alleges that over two thousand practitioners have died in custody. Some also claim that the government harvests the o r gans of Falun Gong discip les to sell on the black market.

The day b efo r e Hu's speech, the Yale Falu n Gong Club had drawn up a petition with over 2,500 signatures req u esting that President Levin raise the issue of the

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alleged internment and torture of Falun Gong practitioners with the Chinese president. ccThe ~orture is well-established/, says Lu. cci grew up in China. I know the social atmosphere. When the government wants to destroy a group, the social atmosphere turns to try to defame . thatgroup ..NobodyinChinaknows the truth about Falun Gong.''

"Falun Go~g is a victim of relentless state-run media propaganda,, says Wang, who has actively protested the Chinese government's policies for years. Wang claims he was detained for several hours by Chinese authorities when he and his mother tried to protest a state visit by then-President Jiang Zerriin in Iceland. "The government got nervous when they saw that there was a group other than the Communist Party that people were willing to join," Wang says, "so they set out to destroy it., Though the .Yale club maintains that Falun Gong has no political agenda, many ·disagre.e. Among these is Huaping Tang, a fifth-year graduate student studying genetics from Zhejian, China, who serves as President of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars.

Tang finds the group dangerous.

"I don't lik~ their ideology I do think they should be banned," he says. Though he admits that there is no evidence to disprove claims of human rights abuses occurring in

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China, Tang maintains, ''I don,t helieve what they say. I would rather not believe that. They say that they can cure diseases, and they tell you not to take medicine. As a scientist, my scientific knowledge ·tells me that's not right.''

Among non-practicing · Chinese like Tang, Falun Gong has grown more unpopular · since it · was banned in 1999, due in part to a successful propaganda . campaign by the Chinese state media.

Practitioners have responded with an increasingly intense campaign of their o-wn counter-propaganda.

"They pamphlet .constantly, spam email boxes ... Many ordinary peaple, I think, are turned off by their tactics," says Fischer. ecause Falun Gong has no temple, clergy, or official membership, the movement is based mainly on local informal groups like this one. It spreads largely through word of mouth and communication over the internet. ccWe contact each other mainly by e-mail," Deng explains. ((There is no other network, no hierarchy." Compared to similar clubs around the world, whose membership can reach into the hundreds or thousands, the Yale Falun Gong Club is relatively small. Deng estimates that there are between seven and ten committed practitioners in the Yale community at any given time,. as well as a shifting population

of other casual observers.

At Yale, as elsewhere, the group is centered around regular meditation and weekly "experience sharing" sessions, in which practitioners meet to read and study the movement's central text and discuss the ways in which Falun Gong has changed their lives. For most of the members, this change has been largely health related. · Lu, the immunobiology researcher, was introduced to the movement by her parents in 2000.

Her mother, suffering from heart disease and cerebral arteriosclerosis, turned to Falun Gong. ccAt first we all thought my mother was superstitious," Lu says. After a string of unsuccessful research projects and a difficult childbirth~ -Lu "followed her mother's example.

Among the group's core mem- . hers, Wang, who emigrated from China's Sichuan Province when he was ten years old, is the only undergraduate. "I was a very sick child, even in China," he said. When he moved to Boston, he was hospitalized for an ulcer. His father, a researcher in cardiology at Harvard who had been suffering from a neurological disease known as progressive spinal muscular atrophy, introduced him to Falun Gong. ''Every doctor in China told [my father] he had five years to live, maximum," reports Wang. "He wanted to try the United States, but it was the same

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response everywhere. So he turned to meditation.''

In a testimonial distributed by Falun Gong, Wang's ·father claims he was · miraculously cured of what Western . and Chinese medicine had both classified as an "incurable disease." Wang reports that he hasn't had a problem since joining his father in the practice of Falun Gong.

Many of the more dramatic spiritual claims of Falun · Gong, .F ischer clarifies, are not emphasized beyond China's borders. Outside China, the practice is less about cosmological gains and more about physical health. Expatriate practitioners typically see the philosophy as a vital guide to modern life, a recourse from its stresses. Thi~ application, which emphasizes the practice's calming effect, may explain its presence at Yale, small as it is, and the fervor of its Eli followers.

Zhu, who has been a practicing physician in New Haven for several years, thinks that there is no conflict between Falun Gong and Western medicine. "In Chinese traditional medicine," she says, ''they had some supernormal powers, and they were able to see blockages; but I think that that does not conflict with Western medicine. They occupy two separate realms."

As the group ends its practice, students are still hurrying to classes and appointments, occasionally casting glances at the group as they rush past. As the sounds of machinery and traffic reverberate across the green, the practitioners pack up their mats and prepare to return to their respective workdays, leaving their spiritual studies for their scientific ones.

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Nick Handler, a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College, is Business Manager ofThe New Journal. ovember 2006

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Council on the English,

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1a Can the University speak its mother tongue?

by Aditi Ramakrishnan

._: A SOUTH INDIAN WIND,

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redolent of cinnamon, swishes through coastal palm trees and ruffles the hair of .twenty-three year old Elihu Yale as he emerges from the ship's cabin. He leans upon the gunwhale and drinks in the twisted figures of coconut trees . rooted in ochre sand, the narrow build . of catamarans bobbing up and down ''• \ [~·• ,..... ...·; ·· among blue waves. The ship is fifty feet from the shore. Catamarans pull up alongside the hull and. the crew of the East India Company voyage is rowed through the azure water. Brown boys clutching limes wade out toward the Englishmen. Elihu accepts a lime and is hoisted onto a boy's sinewy shoulders and carried ashore, where he steps down to gingerly touch the rough, hot sands of Fort St. George, India. Here, he will begin as a ccwriter" a lowly clerk for the East India Company.

Elihu will work zealously for the next few years. He will travel, trade, and . rise to become the governor of this ' English settlement. But for now, he .· .... . ... . . .··. azes ahead. A polished c·o bblestone s to the stone walls of Fort • • • • • : :: . . . .. . ·.· ·. . . . ; . . · •. · . > . ;, :,.

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first felt the sands of Fort St. George, un erstan U Wl never he is now the settlemenfs acting • • • governor. Future acc<;>unts of Govat zt wz t zs anguage, nor ernor Yale will describe one of his first orders: "He induced natives to one ay · e s o en on t e cam us 0 agree to provide 200 pairs [of cot• • • • ton stockings].

Yale tried to contract ear zs name. unzverszty t at wz them to make cotton gloves, but he A conversation between two journeys, Indian servants carry him was unsuccessful because [the _nafishermen drifts past Elihu,s ears. through dense jungle on a palanquin. tives] were not accustomed to making them.,, Governor Yale enjoys The language they speak is nasal, _From his elevated perch, he sees the rounded, and rough. Some words curving tops of temples, hills cov- trade, but loves taxes even more. He sound coarse and short; others fill ered with medicinal herbs, and glim- channels much of his energy into demanding that the Indians of Mathe mouth and float into stretched- mering paddies of rice. He meets out vowels. In · a few days, Elihu weavers who specialize in weaving dras pay annual property taxes and will learn that this language is called chintz, gingham, and embroidering rents. The town leaders have lived Tamil, and that it is spoken through- golden flowers. With the aid of in- in Madras for forty years and have never paid such taxes. They refuse, out the vast lands that hug the bor- terpreters, he bickers and negotiates but Elihu threatens: if they do not ders of the fort. He will never fully with wealthy natives. Perhaps he pay, they must leave their homes. understand this language and will uses Tamil phrases, or even speaks certainly never dream that it will in broken bits to the various mer- His threats escalate. The Indians riot. Elihu issues an ultimatum: If one day be spoken on the campus of chants, chiefs, and kings he meets the chiefs do not <<beg pardon for a university that will bear his name. on his travels. their crime of insurrection against A university he will help to fund in the Government and promise obepart with the fortune that he will 1684: Twelve years since Elihu reap in Tamil N adu.

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Across the seas at Yale University, 334 years later, students and professors sit around a polished wooden table in a resplendent dining hall and speak the language Elihu Yale heard when he first landed in India, now taught in New Hav~n.

At the Tamil language table, some students speak fluently, while others lean forward and try to catch the racing words of the language that Elihu Yale heard and perhaps spoke in southern India.

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As a writer, Elihu records the activities and trade contracts between Fort St. George and various Indian merchants. The English trade gold bullion for diamonds, sapphires, spices, and cotton. South . Indian cotton is precious to the English, who trade much of it for pepper in the Spice Island~. As the years pass, Elihu rises through the ranks. He travels throughout southern India to assess where trade can be extended and where more factories should be built. During these

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Elihu Yale's snuff boxes. Ezra Stiles will go on to pay forty shillings for them.

Company. They vilify him for favoring his brother, for not paying customs on his private trade, for keeping the finest of the _factoryproduced cloth for himself, and for forcing the natives to fill his coffers with so much money that "they naturally could not pay their proper taxes." This document brings about Elihu's downfall.

A year later, Governor Yale is forced to pass the keys of Fort St. George to the newly appointed Governor Higginson. Despite his demotion, Elihu spends seven more years in Madras before returning to England. During these years, the council 16 91 : Elihu is a prosperous and seizes his estate and accuses him of unpopular governor. Through pri- poisoning three council members. vate trade and as a company em- But Elihu is acquitted of all charges ployee, he has amassed a fortune of by the English Parliament. He spends five-hundred-thousand small, gold his last years in India investing in the pellets known as pagodas equiva- private trade of diamonds, a practice lent to 27 million of today's dollars. he continues even after returning to Suspicions that he has used com- London in 1699. His most prized pany money to conduct private piece is forty-five carats of a velvetdiamond trade simmer within the blue color which recalls its orgins in council of Fort St. George. Elihu the Goloconda diamond vein, deep negotiates the purchase of a region within Tamil N adu . south of Madras and names it Fort St. David. When he attempts to ap- 1713 : Elihu is persuaded to point his brother as the governor of donate 32 books to a new college this new settlement, the resentment isolated in the Connecticut wilderof the council boils over. Members ness. Collectors of the funds curtly write a fiery document, "Charges recount, "Mr. Yale has done someAgainst Governor Yale," and send thing, tho very little considering it to the directors of the East India his Estate." In 1718, Elihu receives

dience," he will raze their houses and banish thejr families from Madras.

In the midst of unrest, famine plagues the people of Madras. As a result, trade and factory output decrease. Governor Yale tries to use · the East India Company money to provide food for the people after all, healthy workers make more cotton stockings but the Company directors do not approve the expenditure. Famine presses on, and the Indians, the English, and Governor Yale wait for the rains and the relief they bring.

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a persuasive letter promising that, contingent upon a generous donation, the College of New Haven will bear his name for eternity. Perhaps enticed by the idea of immortalization, he sends hundreds of books, a few English goods and paintings, and two trunks of Madras textiles to New Haven. The textiles, woven

by Tamil weavers, consist of calico, rriuslins, poplins, and silk crepe. All sell for considerable profit in New England, and thus constitute a suitable donation to the floundering college. More than half the books he donates resonate with religious themes; Yale hopes that education can convert the Puritans of the new college to Anglicanism. Over the following years, representatives of Yale College hound him to donate more.

Elihu promises more books, more goods, and more paintings. But he forgets, and when he remembers, he sends less than he promised.

On July 11, 1721, Elihu Yale passes away, and his will is read.

Nothing is promised to his ccwicked wife," but five hundred pounds are promised to the cc Connectic<?te College." As the will is neither dated nor signed, its validity is contested.

Stepdaughters, sons-in-law, representatives of Yale College, and a religious group all compete for slices of the fortune. After three-and-ahalf years, a Yale representative writes that, ccwe lost Our Cause in the Commons by the vile decree of the Dean of the Arches, who, I verily believe was corrupted." Though hope of receiving the last five hundred pounds is dashed Yale College keeps its name. Elihu's total donation to the college amounts to £1,162. Though only a meager portion of his wealth, this donation links his name, and Tamil Nadu, to a college he has never seen .

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283 years later, I see the gothic spires that Elihu's Madras textiles helped to build. It is the sununer, and, like many high-school

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or seniors, I visit the Yale campus and sit through a nervous interview on Hillhouse Avenue. Waiting in line at a f9od cart, my father proceeds to call his friend and talk rather loudly about the grandeur and beauty of Yale. "I can see why any parent would want their child to go here!,, A tall, bearded man ahead of us looks back and smiles. I apologize for my · embarrassing father, and a conversation springs up. The man asks my father where he is from.

When he says he is originally from Chennai formerly known as Madras in India, the man's blue eyes brighten and he exclaims, "Tamilianaa ?" He begins to speak rapidly in Tamil about how he lived and studied in Tamil Nadu for five years. He even rocks and nods his head like a native Tamilian. This is my introduction to Anthropology Professor Bernard Bate.

Neither my father nor I have ever met a non-Indian fluent in Tamil, and we are silent while our surprise subsides. I can't even .keep up with Bate's rapid speech. During the next ten minutes, Professor Bate excitedly informs me that Tamil will be taught at Yale for the first time in the fall. He strides towards his car and beckons to us, "Vaango, vaango," asking us to join him in his office. We politely decline.

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asszstance.

A year and a h~lf later, Professor Bate confides to me that he thought he had scared my father and me away that summer day. We were certainly in awe of him. He had made me excited that Tamil, a language I could understand but still wished to gain literacy and fluency in, was to be taught at Yale.

When it came time for me to choose a college in April, Tamil was a distinguishing factor.

My timing is opportune. Just two years before I arrived on campus, proposals to offer a Tamil course were being written, presented, and debated. The South Asian Studies Program was being built around the arrival of Arjun Appadurai, an eminent professor of contemporary South Asia and social thought, and Carol Breckenridge, a professor of South Asian history. "In the winter of 2002, there was all this excitement about South Asia," says Bate, looking back. "It was then that I thought we should bring Tamil here.

Early the next year we were writing proposals." He, Appadurai, Breckenridge, and Economics Professor T.N. Srinivasan presented proposals to the Language Study Committee.

Tamil is one of two classical, literary Indian languages. It is the thirteenth most spoken language in the

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That first year, eight students signed up. The next year, along with a sophomore from Sri Lanka and a graduate student, I enrolled as a freshman in the introductory level.

Both the graduate student and I could understand Tamil quite well, but our speech was fragmented and we were illiterate. Our Sri Lankan peer had learned to read and write Tamil growing up, but his comprehension and speech skills were at a lower level than ours. The instructor, Professor Elayaperumal Annatnalai, skillfully tailored the class to our individual needs. One day, he brought us rasam, a spicy tomato and lentil soup, and, as we tasted the dish, we · discussed its cooking process and learned new, culinary

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world, surpassing I tali an and Korean. Along with Man_darin and Arabic, Tamil has the oldest continuous literary tradition of any language: a history of two millennia. It is mainly spoken in the south Indian state of Tamil N adu, and is a native language in Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Malaysia. In addition, Mauritian, Fijian, South African, and American diasporas have transplanted Tamil to those countries. This is the language yale did not offer.

Thanks to faculty mobilization and a petition, students perusing the 2004-2005 Yale College Programs of Study could find a course under the South Asian Studies section entitled TAML 115:

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Yale Office of International Affairs. ''Funding is needed for paying teach"Is there a possibility of it ever going ers and for books and publications .

We would like to build our library back up?" collections and we would like our "There is a sense of unease about having three [students per students to study in Chennai."

Yale has discovered a particular level]," Bate says, "but U. Chicago has those numbers. Harvard and fund within the Tamil Nadu government that may be used to promote Columbia have those numbers."

Aside from small class size, an- the study of Tamil abroad. This past other issue dogs the administration: September, Joseph traveled to Tamil the lack of academic outlets for stu- N adu and met with its Chief Minister to discuss applying this fund todents who study TamiL "How does wards Tamil studies at Yale. Despite its vast endowment, Yale is asking a developing country for financial assistance. But last summer, an individual donor made a gift to the University tagged specifically for Tamil studies. This gift might ensure that Tamil will be offered next year, but what about the year after that? .

1699: A

stout, 'f ifty-year-old Elihu Yale leans upon the rim of a ship bound for England. He gazes for the last time at the towers of Fort St. George, the catamarans beached on the scalding sand, and the curving coastline of Madras. During the six-month voyage back to England, he will recall his travels, his rise and fall, his diamonds. Elihu breathes his last breath of Madras air: a brew of salt, fish, and spice. He hears two fishermen speaking to each other in Tamil, arguing heatedly. Perhaps he catches a word or two; perhaps he gleans a sliver of their argument. He turns and descends into the ship,s belly to join the chintz, gingham, and diamonds, leaving this language behind forever.

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Professor Elayaperumal Annamalai teaches TAM L 115. words. We watched a Tamil movie about the politics, corruption, and bureaucracy of building a house in · India. We learned about issues of gender, caste, and race in Tamil society. At the end of the year, we relished steaming south Indian rices, soups, and vegetable curries at Annamalai,s house. We grew very close as a class; the small number gave us room to learn the subtleties of the language.

This fall, the class remains small; three students are in Intermediate Tamil and three are in the introductory level. The administration is not satisfied with this enrollment. "The question is: will it be more than a single digit number?" says George Joseph, assistant secretary of the •

Tamil fit into University scholarship right now? I think there is an expectation that if you,re learning a language, you will use it elsewhere in the curriculum," Joseph says. Yet Hindi, which boasts a far greater enrollment than Tamil, has only one such class: ''Hindi in the Diaspora."

Tamil itself appears in Bates anthropology classes such as ''Gender and Media in India" and in Annamalai's anthropology class, ''Language, Politics, and Society in India."

The issue truly clouding Tamii>s future at Yale is funding. The South Asian Studies Council is the newest of all the academic councils, and is therefore not as well-endowed. Aditi Ramakrishnan is a sophomore ''You have to look anywhere, ev- in Timothy Dwight College. erywhere for money,,, Joseph says .

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even My day with the jury pool. by fanny Dach

n the morning after Election Day, I feel proud of my country and proud of its political processes. With the House ours and the Senate on its way, few of my fellow Democrats feel they have cause to be unhappy.

One of them is John DeStefano, who remains New Haven Mayor rather than Connecticut Governor-Elect. I pass him in front of City Hall as I wend through foggy s~eets to join sixty or seventy of my fellow citizens trickling through a queue at the door of 235 Church Street. No one in line, Democrat or Republican, is happy. Shuffling one by one past a magnetometer, our limbs are frisked, our hats removed, our camera phones confiscated, and our jackets branded with stickers.

(Since 9/11, anyone caught in this building without a small, whiteand-red sticker has been detained.)

Our harmlessness established, we are corralled into an elevator and taken up to a ninth-floor auditorium, where gray plastic seats face a wood-paneled podium. In a large, square room with white walls and gray carpet, we wait. And wait. And wait. Until. .. ''Good morning!" · The voice, ringing and convivial, tries to welcome the motley assortment of New Haven Tesidents to the County Courthouse, but elicits no more than the grumbling, half-hearted reply heard so often by principals addressing middle school assemblies. Chipper, pas-

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sionate, and perplexed by our lackluster response, the voice belongs to the · Honorable Jonathan Silbert, a Connecticut Superior Court judge.

He goes on to offer some cajoling words of encouragement: "You should really be more enthusiastic than that this is jury duty!"

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ew would-be jurors share Silbert's rosy perspective. Informed of n1y impending summons, my friends spent the week before November 8th telling me that racism is my best exit strategy. "Say you were mugged by a black man on Dixwell." "Say your family is from Texas." "Say an episode of The Cosby Show traumatized you as a child and the wounds have yet to heal."

Though my distress at Bill Cosby's infamous threat against Theo (''I brought you into this world, and I can take you out") has long since faded, the first two statements are accurate enough. But the next logical steps therefore, I am prejudiced against African-Americans; therefore; I am unfit to serve as an impartial member of a jury simply aren't true. How, then, can I avoid what the sutnnlons I received in the mail describes as "an obligation and an honor"?

My mother the Texan suggests announcing that I trust the police. "They always ask you if you would believe the testimony of a cop over that of an alleged critninal .

And I always say 'yes/ and they always push me, saying 'Really? Why

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lious colonists, but the next segtnent of the video is more affecting. Buildings that served as fixtures of my childhood flash across the screenthe Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court and we are told that, without our ''most direct and vital" participation, these buildings will crumble and fall. As a proud Washingtonian, and as a voter who recently exercised his civic rights, I am struck by this prophecy. I feel like a heel.

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stu ent, am a czrcus anzma . would you?' But I really believe that. Our. house has been broken into twice, and the police caught the people· both times. Our car was · stolen, and,found by the police before we knew it 'Yas missing. One of your au pairs dated that nice police. her. " man, F 1s She's right; I trust the D.C. officers. With· their blue uniforms and smiling faces, they protected my childhood home from burglars and watched out for me as I crossed the streets to school. But I am registered to vote here in Connecticut; so I have been summoned for jury duty in New Haven, and I cannot place my faith in a thin blue line that seems crooked, inadequate, and hateful of Yale. · I finally ignore all advice, entering the courthouse with one measly card up my sleeve: My aunt is president of the Texas State Bar. My apartment is furnished with large, brass scales of justice from her swearing-in, and I've heard that lawyers don't like their jurors to come from legal families.

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s it tunis out, I am holding an .. a.~.-~;;. my Yale ID. Though my College Dean ignored two frantic e-mails pleading for information about some sort of scholastic exemption, and though no one I spoke with could remember hearing of another summoned student, the ninthfloor desk attendant is brisk and knowledgable. She takes one look at me, asks if I atn a full-time student, and then says, "I'm going to send you home, okay?" Just like that, I am free to go, to finish my reading while the men and women who would other wise be at work must spend hours listlessly waiting to be chosen for a jury panel.

I'm off the hook. But as I turn to leave, I'tn seized by a childlike

curiosity and an adult-sized helping of guilt. Besides, it's eight a.m. and I have nothing better to do until my one o'clock class. So why not stay?

Fearing that the kindly attendant will discover me and shoo me away, I claim a chair in the . nextto-last row. When a television is wheeled to the front of the room, I regret sitting so far back. Soaring music and a flowing graphic of- the U.S. Constitution replace the muscled body builders of an infomercial as a video starts to play. A voiceover narrates the revolutionary struggles before continuing with "the Preamble and Sixth Amendment that, I'm told, my forefathers died to secure: "The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law... " My forefathers spent the American Revolution as Polish Jews and Scottish landowners, not rebel-

n case the video failed to stir us, Jonathan Silbert is here to motivate the jury pool in person. After his rousing "good morning," he launches right into it. "Experience tells me that one or two maybe even three of you wish you were somewhere else." He smiles jovially as most in the audience nod their heads. There by choice, but hoping not to stand out, I grin weakly before pursing my lips and nodding.

Silbert describes voire dire, "an old French phrase for 'to speak the truth."' During the next part of the process the examination of prospective jurors, under oath, by the competing litigators we'll need

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to do just that. This grilling session is where the wheat and chaff are separated into dignified jurors and shamed freemen, where so many had urged me to paint a convincing portrayal of racism or blind faith in authority. A quick poll reveals that, of the sixty or seventy members of Wednesday's jury pool, half had been summoned in the past and only four of those had been accepted onto jury panels. Silbert lays what he says we ''may find a hard curse" on the rest of us that we may be one of the select few who "look back with pride upon that as one of the most important civic duties they have ever performed or will ever perform in their lives."

"Virtually without exception," he continues, "everyone who's had the opportunity to actually sit on a jury reports that it's been one of the most valuable and rewarding things they've done." My ears perk upwhether at the promised rewards or the selective application process Yale students are bred to adore, it's hard to say. When many are called and few are chosen, the prospect of being one of the elect is irresistible.

I consider asking to have my name put back in the pool. Days :filled with Dean's Excuses and spiritu-al fulfillment are hard to pass up.

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s I wind up, Silbert winds down, signing off with a joke about how he hopes the security line at the door was shorter than the one at the polls. (It wasn't. Not by a long shot.) Unamused, the potential jurors settle in for a long, quiet wait.

The experienced have brought laptops and bagged lunches; the naive must make do with a pile of B-list magazines and a hurruning vending · machine. Members of the jury pool are at once friends, thrown together by circumstance, and eneniies, hoping the others will get picked. The television is tuned to the Food Network, which tortures those of us not well-stocked for the day's haul, November 2006

then (per my request and to the an- . noyance of others) switches over to CNN's constant, unwavering coverage of the Virginia senate race.

Exploring away from the television, I find a group of potential jurors debating the merits of their respective chicken coops. Elsewhere, a small . Shih Tzu with a pink bow between her ears is carried mysteriously back and forth by court employees. A pet? Part of a K-9 unit?

Evidence?

To much of the jury pool, I am more out of place than the dog. For them, I, a Yale student, am a circus animal. They laugh at my vocabulary and stand by the windows, pointing at various residential colleges. "Which one is that?" These are not the tricks I came here to perform, an~ it doesn't ~ake long for the American flag waving in my mind's eye to sag pathetically.

My dull, three-hour stay has given me plenty of time to consider the havoc such an obligation would wreak on my class schedule and vacation plans. I head dejectedly

for the door, trying to assuage my second thoughts. I tell myself that I helped the justice system merely by showing up. I have experienced town and gown for four hours, just by placing a white circle on my breast pocket. I anticipate placing the sticker proudly on my wall. It. labeled me: ''JUROR." Yet, as I exit, the guards force me to throw the sticker away. For consolation, I ruminate on one of Silbert's. remarks. "Not to worry," he had reassured the pool. "We know who you are, we know where you live, and, if we don't :find a case for you today, we'll track you down in a year or two and try again." In my head, I start counting down from 365.

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] onny Dach, a junior in]onathan Edwards College, is a Managing Editor ofThe New Journal.

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45

how up to a college tour any college tour and you're guaranteed to encounter numerous species: breathless mothers arriving early to make a good impression; bored siblings rendered deaf by iPods; .nostalgic alums; and locals who drift along to kill ·time.

But one demographic you'll be hard-pressed to find is recent university grads. So why, on one recent Yale tour, was a pair of young Southern gentlemen, fresh out of Baylor and the University of Georgia, trailing a group of Japanese tourists and high school seniors?

Diplomas in hand, Brent Hill, 25, and Cal Knight, 23, had but two dreams. One: to move to New York City capital of what was, for them, the uncharted and enticing Northeast territory and strike it big; a pretty standard goal for young professionals. Item number two? To go on a campus tour of every single Ivy League university. It's part of a list of things they'd like to do in the Northeast, along with skiing in Vermont, fishing off Long Island, and camping in the Catskills. They commemorate their trek by purchasing t-shirts at each school. Together, they cultivate their love, no, make that their passion for Ivy League campus tours.

As of November, the determined duo has visited the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Cal is eager to visit Dartmouth. Brent looks forward to Brown. Neither really wants ·t o see Cornell, but they both feel they must for the sake of the mission. Mter a year of tours, they have mastered the art of the campus visit. "Get there early so you can see the town," Cal suggests. Brent spends days scouring each college's website for maps and tour schedules, crafting tightly-regimented itineraries.

But once you have a diploma in hand, what could possibly be the appeal of taking campus tours? '

"Well basically, we go to college campuses to try to date tour guides," Brent explains. "No, no, I'm just joking. It's a joke, I promise." Cal laughs awkwardly. "He's kidding."

So, if not for the Ivy League broads whom Cal arid Brent describe as "extremely book smart but not necessarily socially smart or attractive" then for what?

Shiela Pastor, Director of Yale's Visitor Center, is certain that the boys have a hidden agenda. When she hears about their epic journey, she shakes her head. "Well now, that is unusual, yes. I've never heard anyone say they were doing this before.

Maybe they're writing a book? I just don't know why you'd ever do that once you graduate from college."

Her colleague nods emphatically in agreement.

Cal insists their reasons are harmless: "I was going to be an architecture major in college. These schools are great places to see architecture, like how that Yale guy buried the stones in the ground to make them look old and poured acid down Harkness tower."

Brent's motives or at least those he will fess up to are equally tame.

"Being from Kansas, you always hear about the Ivy League. Now that I'm in New York City, Ivy League schools are one of the things I want . , to expenence.

The pair's Southern ·hospitality, however, makes them easy targets for Yankee swindlers. At Harvard, t_hey

say, "fake" tour guides hustled them outside of the train station, trying to persuade them to . take their tour instead of the official version.

"Honestly, those fake tour guides looked kind of shady. We don't know if they were actually students " Cal interrupts: ''Not as shady · as the people outside of the New Haven train station!" Evidently, the Elm City didn't treat the visitors very well.

With four schools down and four to go, the boys have reached some preliminary conclusions: • Oddest tour guide? Harvard's. According to Brent, she was "your classic Ivy League girl." Cal adds, "You could tell that she probably has social anxiety disorder."

•Greatest mystery? Whether or not to tip their tour guide.

• School of choice? "Princeton for undergrad and then Harvard for grad school," Cal says.

"You know, I don't know if I'd necessarily want to go to an Ivy League university," Brent tieclares at one point. "It's not necessarily the ultimate college experience."

But twenty minutes later, after excitedly describing their journey, Brent has changed his tune. "I think I probably would go ~o whichever Ivy League school would let me in."

Lauren Harrison, a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College, is Circulation & Subscriptions Manager of The New Journal THE NEw JouRNAL

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