Volume 39 - Issue 4 by The New Journal at Yale

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Publisher

THE 2007 FRANKE LECTURES IN THE HUMANITIES A series of lectures open to the public

Romy Drucker Editor-in-Chief

Adriane Quinlan

"Music in Context: Early Modernity and Enlightenment" . Whitney Humanities Center Yale University, 53 Wall Street

Managing Editors

fonny Dach, Helen Eckinger . .

Designer

Anna Zhang

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Thursday, March 1 · CHARLES ROSEN, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago, pianist, music theorist, and distinguished • • wnter on mus1c "Musical Ambition in the Eighteenth Century". Auditorium-S pm

·Business Manager

Nick Handler

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Senior Editors

M ina Kimes, David Zax Production Manager

Nicole Allan

The Franke Lectures are made possible by the generosity of Richard and Barbara Franke, and are intended to present important topics in the Humanities to a wide and general audience. The 2007 series will celebrate music and culture. The Franke Lectures are organized in conjunction with the Yale College seminar taught by Leon Plantinga. ·

Research Director

EmilyKoh · Circulations and Subscriptions Manager

Lauren Harrison •

Web Designer ,

Nicholas M oryl

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For infotmation contact Manana Sikic-phone 203 4320673 or e-mail manana.sikic@yale.edu .

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Staff Laura Bennett, Tess Dearing, Patrick Hayden, Jordan ·Jacks, Ben Lasman, Sophia Lear,_Veronica Madrigal, Aditi Ramakrishnan, Mitch Reich, Benny Sachs, Ali Seitz, LauraZax

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

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

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Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Emily Bazelon, Anson M. Beard, Jr. Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Brant,--5usan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Jay Carney, Daphne 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, Dani~l Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard-H. Newman, Sean O'Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Fairfax C. Randal, Robert Randolph, · Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W Hampton Sides, Lisa Silverman, Scott Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulsman, Thomas Strong, Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Wilson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stent Yergin

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Volume 39, Number 4 February 2007 •

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The magazine a bout Yal e and New Haven.

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NAKED AMBITION

Yale students derobe for the sake of art. by Jordan Jacks

PROTECTION FOR THE STUDENT BODY

Navigating Yale's sexual health resources. by Veronica Madrigal

THE PANIC RooM

-Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. by Patrick H ayden

A Nativity of Disaster Relief at the Divinity School. by Benny Sachs

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UNFOLDING A GLOBAL VILLAGE

WE BoMBED IN NEw HAVEN

Abandon all hope, y e who enter here. by Patrick Hay den

Points of Departure

4 20 The Critical Angle

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Tomb Raiders by Adriane Q uinlan •

42 The Personal Essay •

Motivations of the Speaker by Nick Handler

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46 Endnote

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Bandwidth of Brothers by M ina Kimes . •

THE NEw JoURNAL is published five times during the academic year by THE NEw JoURNAL at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CI 06520. Office addr~s: 305 Crown St. Phone: (203) 02-1957. All contents Copyright 2006 by THE NEW JouRNAL at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without wtinen 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 membas of the Yale and New Haven community. Subscriptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One year, $18. Two years, $32. THE NEw JoUilNAI. is printed by Turley Publications. Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. THE NEVI JoUilNAL encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editori:als, 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.

February 2007 •

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plans to turn the tender bunny into an entree. Hidden beneath the ivy , .. • of Berkeley College rest the w·e~ry bones of one suite's illegal gerbil, Queef. "It's an unmarked grave, but I know he's there," said the former owner of the deceased. "He's like the unknown soldier." Queef even spent one spring break hidden in the suite's microwave also illicit with a bong (illicit) and other (illicit) goods. "Hiding spots are few and far between in these suites," said one of Queef's owners. However, if the animal is deceased, hiding is no lonCult of Domesticity ger necessary. Now hanging on their dorm wall is the head of a stuffed buck that, they assert, is "cool by INSIDE A SLOPPY FRESHMAN BOYS' . . undergraduate regulations." suite, beer bottles and vodka handles Yale's unpoetic pet policy leaves decorate an otherwise naked winlittle room for interpretation. Flip to dowsill, forming an alcoholic skyline. the section on dormitory regulations Selections from the Western canon.Dante's Inferno, Paradise Lost are of the Undergraduate Regulations scattered across a stained futon. UnHandbook, and read, "Students are identifiable pieces of clothing slump not permitted to keep pets in their over the arms of two chairs. The dormitory rooms." Other schools' January light defracts in a fishbowl codes are less totalitarian. At Brown, on the table, in which a small, white the cool uncle of the Ivy League famrodent paces. ily, two rules are published. One sets "A mouse in the fishbowl." "A a maximum limit for the size of an tadpole in the red party cup." "A aquarium allowed in dormitories (ten bunny under the lofted bed." No, gallons) and another sets a minimum these aren't preparations for .a frat limit for the amount of time the pet initiation but rather everyday sights must be able to survive under water for those Yalies who risk keeping (fifteen minutes). Together, the two pets on campus. Though there aren't rules cleverly preclude such loopholes many student pet-owners on campus, as a Chihuahua living in a ten gallon tUb. At Wesleyan, Yale's cuckoo Conthe few are the proud. necticut cousin, only "uncaged pets" One suite attempted to turn their are forbidden. This rule, as flexible dorm's infestation into an experiment • • • as a contort1orust, seems to permlt in domestication. For several weeks a any number of sins and allow room group of freshman boys kept a lone mouse, Whiskers of Steel, in a fishfor flagrant animal abuse. Reed Colbowl on the common room table. The lege, our stoner brother, also permits owners of a smuggled rabbit claim to "caged anirnals," and, unsurprisingly, have saved him from a man who had the infamously liberal campus ·goes

a step further by designating certain dorms as "cat dorms," in which felineophilic residents agree on one communal cat for each floor. There is, however, one exception on Yale's otherwise staunch campus: Service animals are allowed for blind, deaf, and other wise physically disabled students. Currently, this privilege does not extend to animals aiding people with emotional ailments. Yet since a 2003 ruling by the Department of Transportation granted privileges to emotional support animals, it . is becoming common to hear of doctors' notes insisting that patients be allowed to bring dogs onto airplanes, into restaurants, and even to spas. There is no telling whether the University might soon find itself forced to discriminate between pets that qualify as service animals and those that don't. Dean of Students Betty Trachtenberg, however, doesn't paw and whine over the issue. "To my knowledge, we haven't had discussions about animals and mental health issues," wrote Trachtenberg in an e-mail. Though Yalies, by and large, don't seem to be substituting pets for Prozac, there's no doubt that having a pet can be a comfort for stressed university students. "College is a really self-centered time of life," said one rabbit-owner, who suggested that taking care of a pet allowed her to step outside of herself in a therapeutic way. "You're outside the network of family and only t · · g of your classes, your grades." Pet-owning Yalies won't settle for a mere wall hanging or a collage of photos of old friends to make their home away from home a little homier. "The fish tank adds some color," said the owner of Turtle, a silver dollar

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sized turtle the student caught over the summer while fishing with .his family. "It makes a more homey atmosphere." Students cannot be too choosy about their pets. Circumventing animal shelters' strict regulations is the first hurdle to clear. "I gave [the adoption agency] my master's office address and hoped they wouldn't try to contact me," said one former rabbitowner. Other students avoid sheltet s altogether. Craig's List introduced one se·n ior to his furry suitemate. The only criterion for adoption? "Don't kill the fucker." With adoption, the travails of illicit pet owning have only just begun. Duping adoption agencies is only practice for eluding the ubiquitous staff of Yale's Custodial Services, a veritable cadre of informants instructed to report any evidence of animal life the sights, sounds, and, of course, smells they come across on their daily rounds of the residential colleges. "We were always pretty confident that we were one step ahead of the authorities," said one of Queef's former owners. Apparently, most petowning malefactors are. "I feel that compliance is pretty good, generally," said University Fire Marshall Michael Johns, whose team is responsible for conducting room inspections in all twelve residential colleges. 'TPets] are not something we come across all that frequently." But a pet isn't the worst contraband for these secret police to find. Said one pet owner, "I would rather that the master see our pet than that the master see our opium." Ah, the life of an undergraduate. While the parents of college students try to experience it vicariously through their children's infrequent phonecalls, the pets of college students partake of that glamorized lifestyle firsthand (or rather, firstpaw). A turtle named Spinach, like his student owner, was a familiar commuter on Amtrak's regional service route. Without so much as taking the PSATs, another pet attended Yale classes via

his owner's tote bag. One rambunctious pet-gone-wild accumulated a memoir's worth of college experience that would put to shame the novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. The little darling partook in scientifically valuable (though legally questionable) physics projects, spent time iJ?- closequarters with a stash of hallucinogenic narcotics, and traveled through more than thirty states as a stowaway on tour with a rowdy Yale a capella group. Guilty by association, these dorm pets are not complacent in a life of domesticity, but rather complicit in a life of petty crime.

-Laura Zax ..

The Fall of Babkaman PHIL WEINBERGER USED

Babkaman; now he's an unemployed baker who misses his customers. Ten months ago, Weinberger dosed New Haven's Westville Kosher ~ Bakery, which his family had operated for almost three decades. He'd been in charge since 1988, and his wife and kids had worked in the store. But after years of baking for a living, even a family like the Weinbergers was beaten down by the harsh reality of the kosher business. On top of the usual rent, labor, and advertising struggles faced by most small businesses, maintaining kosher certification adds a new dimension to the difficulties of · g a business. Restaurants, grocery stores, and factories hoping to target the kosher market must work with a supervising rabbi or rabbinical organization. which regularly checks the business's facilities to attest that it is adhering to ko-

sher law. National organizations with familiar certification symbols include the Orthodox Union (a circle with aU inside) and 0 K Kosher Certification (a circle with a K inside). Weinberger worked with OK for a couple of years, but ultimately looked to local rabbis to supervise his business. Supervision centers on the basic rules of kosher, or kashrut, in which there are three food categories: meat, dairy, and pareve. Meat and dairy cannot come into contact with one another, and though -rabbis have different views on the issue, most recommend waiting a good six hours to drink a glass of milk after eating a burger. Pareve items are considered neutral they have not come into contact with either meat or dairy. Most kosher bakeries are pareve, avoiding both meat and dairy so that their· products can be eaten with any meal. The Westville Bakery used to sell cheesecake, but cut it from the • menu to attatn pareve status. After Weinberger assumed control over his parents' bakery, he decided to up the ante: He wanted to serve meat. The rules of kashrut surrounding meat are much more complicated than those that apply to a pareve bakery. Most kosher restaurants serving meat avoid dairy altogether. Weinberger, however, dreamed up an elaborate system for separating the different kosher food groups. "My place was unique," Weinberger explained. "I don't think rd be lying if I said there was no other place like it in the United States." His system involved separate sinks and ovens, labeled utensils, two sets of pots and pans, and a color-coded kitchen. After adding meat to his menu, Weinberger was instructed by his rabbi to hire a mashgiach, an observant Jew well-versed in the halakhah, or Jewish law, and responsible for supervising the kitchen on a daily basis. Mashgiachs are generally hired only when meat or fish is involved. Weinberger's mashgiach reported to his supervising rabbi to confi.nn that the 5

February 2007 •

Westville bakery, now also a deli, was adhering to the halakhah. These extra regulations were costly. Not only did Weinberger have to pay a full-time mashgiach in addition to the rest of his staff, but kosher meats, dry goods, and dairy products are more expensive than their nonkosher counterparts. The Westville Kosher Bakery was blessed, however, with a loyal customer base. Many regulars were comforted by the familyrun nature of the bakery, and relied on it to cater intimate events like wakes. "They liked to see a family-oriented business," Weinberger remembers. Many regular customers became "dear, dear friends of the family." Praise for Weinbergees babka, which he'd recently begun selling . online at Babkaman.com, wafted across Connecticut and into New York, eventually reaching the palate of the Food Network. In May 2004, Al Raker's show Roker on the Road set up shop in the. Westville . . Kosher Bakery for a day and filmed the customers, the staff, and most importantly the babka. After the episode aired, Babkaman.com was swamped with orders. Yet by June of 2006, the Westville Kosher Bakery was merely an empty room in a strip mall, ghosts of the family business fluttering across its dusty tile floor. When the Stop & Shop bakery went kosher, Weinberger flinched. When his rent soared, he took a hit. But what really put the Westville Kosher Bakery over the edge was kosher politics. In 2005, after worki~g with many different supervising rabbis and national certification agencies, Weinberger was collaborating with an organization of local rabbis. Rabbinical upheaval within this organization resulted in a tightening of reins on the bakery's actions, as well as a misunderstanding regarding the legality of the employed mashgiach's citizenship. Unhappy with his relationship with the organization, Weinberger decided to switch to the supervision of a single local rabbi. When he. informed his su.

pervising organization of his decision, its rabbis told him that they did not support the kosher label of the new rabbi. They told him that they would not endorse this rabbi's certificatiort of his business to their congregations. After an embittered battle over the switch, Weinberger finally dropped ·the organization's kosher label for the new rabbi's. As promised, however, the spurned rabbis announced the turnover in the Westville bakery's kosher certification and told their congregants that they no longer endorsed the bakery as adequately kosher. From here, business went under. "Customers who had come in three to four times a week no longer patronized us," Weinberger recalled, cc so that finished us off." After decades of serving the kosher community, the Weinbergers' customers were much more than their livelihood. "How would you feel if you were dear friends with someone for 35 years and you did something, maybe it was unordinary," Weinberger referred to the bakery's final kosher supervision switch, "and they refused to talk to you?" Because Phil . Weinberger devoted his life to the tenets of Judaism, the religious consequences of his story are particularly sad. He doesn't attend synagogue as often as he used to. The political nature of the bakery's closure cchas given me a different perspective on the religion," he reflected. "It's affected me. It's affected my kids." Unfortunately for New Haven, there won't be much babka in Phil Weinberger's future he has no interest in running a business or working in the food industry again. But, as a father of four, he's looking for work. "It's not easy, especially at my age. But we're moving on. We have a positive attitude, because you have to." •

-Nicole Allan •

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Maintaining Sanity THEY

CROPPED

SUDDENLY,

plastic sentries holding vigil at the entrances of our dining halls. In Commons, two stand within three feet, posed in stiff salutation. They beckon with the word "Complimentary," and boast with the testaments: ccPowerful defense against germs." It's so easy to slip a hand beneath the nozzle and let the automated dispenser douse your palm with a stream of sanitizing gel. Appearing in the dining halls this fall, the Purell stations spawned a flurry of speculation that our germobsessed culture had gone too far. The hand sanitizer, made of 62o/o ethyl alcohol, claimed to kill off 99.99% of germs in fifteen seconds. It was everywhere, from the check-in desk at UHS to the doorway of Durfee's Convenience Store. As with any break iii tradition, a cadre of Yalies skeptical of the change has spoken out. "Personally, I do not like the look, feel, or smell of the stuff or the dispensers," said Josh Viertel, co-director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project and a self-described organic health nut. "I do not like to begin or end a meal shared with friends by shaking hands with a plastic parking meter that squirts chemicals into my hand. It is not convivial." Aesthetics are not the only isTHE NEW jOURNAL

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sues raised by Purell's detractors. Viertel and others worry that the geldispensers may kill off susceptible bacteria only to leave us with mutant streams of more dangerous germs. "Pur ell spawns lethal megabacteria," declared sophomore Adam Gardner. "I feel sorry for anyone who uses the Purell machines; they have no idea what they are getting themselves into." Gardner is not ·alone in his distrust. "I call them deadly," said Junior Angel Hertselt, a STEP coordinator, who finds the dispensers generally unnecessary. "I am of the opinion that 'Purell-ing' as an institutionalized daily habit is no good. As a child, I played in the dirt and Lord knows what I was exposed to." Yale Dining Services allegedly purchased the dispensers to help protect the bodies of the student body throughout flu season. According to Chuck Bennett, the Manager of Purchasing and Facilities, the risks of selecting for killer germs must be weighed against the risks of illness from more prevalent bacteria. "Sure, I think disease resistant bacteria are a societal issue. But bacteria can be easily transmitted by hand contact. What's the worse of evils?" asked Bennett. "No one requires anyone to use the dispensers." Purell's supporters don't understand the fuss. "There is no risk with alcohol-based sanitizers," said Craig Roy, an associate professor of microbial pathogenesis at the Yale School of Medicine. "Purell is the same concept as a doctor wiping your arm with a little alcohol before giving you a shot. It kills bacteria and many viruses by dehydrating them." Of the dining hall sentries, Roy says, "It's a great · ·idea to have stations where you can apply Purell." The Purell dispensers are popular with the dining hall workers as a whole. "I think it's excellent," a Saybrook dining hall employee said. "Once I saw a boy come in here sneezing, nof washing his hands, eating food. That was so nasty, I jutnped on hi1n and told him February 2007

to use some Purell." "I think Purell is wonderful and vital," said a Commons employee. "Every once in a while I just put my hands over here and get some." Her co-worker sees the popularity among students as well. ''I can tell the kids . think it's great too. They get excited when they see it. Sometimes 't hey even miss it when they go in, and catch it on the way out." Many students do appreciate the addition to Yale's dining halls. "I love the dispensers," said Charles Gariepy. "Not only are they automated, which is highly convenient, but they demand attention for daily hygiene. That is a lesson in itself, I think." Sophomore Max Kramer believes: "Hand sanitizers are a good idea, but that might be because I'm paranoid." · The Purell website does little to alleviate such paranoia. It boasts a comprehensive list of "99 Places Where Germs are Likely to Lurk," including treadmill keypads, crayons, in-flight magazines and, perhaps most perilous, jump rope handles. "We also have a Workplace Wellness Program that puts Purell on the desk of each employee," said Angela Watkins, Media Relations manager for GOJO Industries, the company that created Purell. One elementary school even lists Purell among its required school supplies for kindergarteners. The company is overtaking America one squirt at a time, infiltrating even this Ivy League bastion of exclusivity. For both sanitation-zealots and anti-bacterial skeptics, the question remains: Are these fears a product of our neuroses, or is there a real risk? Viertel relates how an old professor of his. used to say "it is and always has been the age of bacteria." "I am okay with that. I think that an attempt to combat it is both futile and a sort of hubris," he said. The presence [of the dispensers] may be indicative of a growing sense of disease in the relationship we have with the natural world and with each other."

The

far Books Yale and Books i and

World ! -

A Di

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Selection ...., Gifts

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The risk inherent in mass sanience. Before he begins a climb, he tation .is perhaps more cultural than plots his path. The Art and Architecmedical, its pervasive influence comture building is scalable if you know pelling our society to sterilize everyhow to use your hands, but it's not thing in sight. "The first time I saw a ''friendly" building, so he's held off. the Purell dispensers I thought: totem At "friendly" buildings, he can plan pole," said Melina Shannon-DiPietro, both his way up and his way down. co-directo"r of the Yale Sustainable From experience, Adrian knows that Food Project. "But if one takes the it's best to have three body parts dispenser as a . totem," she mused, · touching the building at any one time. "does this piece of grey plastic and its Inexperienced climbers · grab whatalcohol-scented goo dispense a ritual ever handholds they can, latching act of unification for our community? onto fragile gargoyle tongues jutting Before breaking bread together, we'll out from Yale's gothic buildings_. (Acbathe in cleansing goo?" She shudcording to Adrian, a climber broke dered at the possibility. "It's not really off part of an unlucky Bingham gara ritual I want as part of my world." goyle.) . Unlike Adrian, Shawn views -Laura Bennett climbing as anything .but scientific (Shawn's name has been changed). He often climbs after.a night out. At the end of . the night, as the parties wind down and the drunken haze lifts, he is sure-footed but inhibition free. Spurred by "some little worm that makes you want to go do certain things," he heads out for a climb . "You don't listen to it when you're totally sober," he says. Alcohol lets him revel in the physicality of climbing without worrying as much about that for:ty-foot drop. "Things are reduced to what I need to do to get from one place to another," he says. The risk involved, Adrian says, . depends on where you are climbing, and how drunk you are. "I guess I'm na"ive, like most climbers," he says. Asocial Climbers "I perceive the real threat as being caught." AT I 2 3 POUNDS WITH LONG LEGS, While Adrian recognizes the long arms, and a short torso, Adrian's physical hazards of climbing, he debody is well-designed for his sport. clares that "to understand and to be"The more like a chimpanzee you're lieve in risk are two different things." built," he says, "the more useful." He uses a traffic analogy to explain Adrian climbed his first build- his thought process: You can fully ing in the third grade, on a wall of the comprehend the risk of being hit by a car, but you'll still cross the street school gymnasium. When his parents weren't looking, Adrian recalls, "I'd if you think you can make it. The climb as high as I dared go." Today same type of thinking applies to sex, he climbs higher, scaling the gothic he adds. "If you like doirig something, walls of Yale's residential colleges. · you suppress your fear, because your Adrian views climbing as a sci- mind is a rational thing." . •

At Shawn's high school, it was a tradition for students to climb the 150-foot bell tower and smoke cigars at the top. Recalling friends who rappelled down water towers and grain elevators at night. Shawn sees the risk only in retrospect. There was "just a harness and a rope and these 17-yearold kids tying the knots." At Yale, Shawn doesn't use ropes, but relies on the complex ornamentation of building facades. "With all these gothic spires everywhere," he says, "if you're an amateur rock climber, it looks pretty cool." Shawn's Yale climbing career began at Silliman..He used a fire exit on . an adjacent building to access the roof . Shawn's objective is often to get to the top of the building, whether that means reaching the roof or touching the tops of the gothic spires. While Shawn sometimes listens to music when he climbs, he rarely brings other people. He worries that they won't be safe. "I've done things I know aren't smart," he says, "like going along a ledge when I'm feeling sick to my stomach." But such risks, Shawn says, "put me in touch with something that other Yale .activities don't give." Judith, a member of Yale Climbing, loathes the idea of climbing for the risk factor. After helping carry an injured climber off a cliff, she understands the danger of climbing and tries to minimize it. "The people who do these things climb to the top under the cover of night," she says, "give the rest ~f us a bad name." Judith graduated from Yale in 2003, and during her time here scaled buildings with Yale Climbing as well as helped map low building climbing routes on campus that are still accessible on the _organization's website. "It's all about manageable risk," she explains, " ... and there's some objective risk left over." These bold stories frustrate those employed to keep Yale students safe. "People who have climbed East

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Rock and gotten stranded have had charges brought on by the Fire Department," explains Public Information Officer Sergeant Steven Woznyk of the Yale Police Department, but the YPD considers climbers on a case-by-case basis "like any criminal investigation.'' Associate Dean Betty Trachtenberg remembers how years ago students were allowed to climb a small segment of a Durfee wall under careful supervision. "Otherwise, we've declined many requests," she added. "In my view climbing is dangerous both for the climber and the audience." Shawn feels that climbing is safer at Yale than other places: "if you get in trouble, you can probably talk your way out of it." He rarely climbs at home now because he would be treated as a trespassing adult outside the safety net of Yale's "case-by-case" • • • 1nvesugauons. Adrian doesn't worry about trespassing. While playing an Old Campus-wide game of Assassins, he climbed into his target's Vanderbilt window and pelted her with a pair of socks to make the kill. The socks were never retrieved. He once irritated a studying student by climbing in~o his room through a bay window. Adrian politely asked the way to the stairs. Despite his attention to safety (and his manners), his practice got him into trouble with a dean, who accused him of breaking off a piece of the college wall. Adrian insisted that the fracture was from ice, not pressure, and pointed to the nature of the break. Calhoun's Master Holloway intervened on Adrian's behalf, but said he would not be able to defend hitn again. All out of free passes, Adrian knows how he will react if he is ever caught again. "In the future, that means if someone says, 'You there, come down,' it means keep going up, or run, if you can." •

-Ali Seitz February 2007

In Loco Parentis SENDING ONE'S BABY OFF TO COL-

has always been a nerve-wracking step. Think of everything that could go wrong: inedible cafeteria food, debilitating homesickness, a messy rootrunate. Or worse: freak ice storms, meningitis outbreaks, drug overdoses. This past summer, a letter from Dean Peter Salovey to Yale families added a new and terrifying possibility to the already extensive list of disaster scenarios: the H5N1 virus, commonly known as Avian Flu. Parents who tensed up while reading the letter can exhale: Yale has a comprehensive plan. For neurotic parents, Yale has a network of offices devoted to thinking up solutions to all the gruesome accidents that may befall students. Yale's Office of Risk Management likes to think of itself as the "go-to" agency for all calamities. Its title evokes images of high-strung politicos perched on the edge of their seats, watching for the tiniest blip on the radar. In truth, is that the office is run by the same kind of obsessive organizers who run the rest of Yale. Located on the fourth floor of 55 Whitney Avenue, a corporate building like any other, the headquarters holds a staff of six, directed by Marjorie Lemmon. Their task, Lenunon says, is simply "to imagine all bad things LEGE

that could happen.'' _ The recent· request of a group organizing a fashion show was typical: students sought the assistance of Risk Management out of concern for the members who would be staging clunky equipment. According to Lemmon, ever-present questions on the mind of every employee as he works are, "Are we covered if this happens? Where are the holes in our plan?" To brainstorm, employees scour the Yale Daily News, searching for the potentially dangerous details most of us overlook. One employee concentrates exclusively on driver safety awareness. The Office of Risk Management is the institutional equivalent of a fussy parent telling you to pack an umbrella if it looks like rain. If the University's duty is to serve in loco parentis, the fourth floor of 55 Whitney is a parent-packed PTA meeting. Across campus at the Office of the Secretary, Deputy Secretary Martha Highsmith supervises the University's "emergency preparedness efforts," overseeing a general all-hazards contingency plan and a specific plan to cope with the possibility of an outbreak of avian flu. About a year ago, Yale was compelled to re-evaluate its so-called safety net. Reports from Southeast Asia of a growing number of human cases of HSN1 incited a media maelstrom. Public health officials were especially disturbed by the 50% mortality rate of those infected. Graphic comparisons to the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic circulated to remind Americans of what was possible. If avian flu struck, it would affect every conceivable facet of campus life. Highsmith explains that avian flu presents challenges that demand a tailored plan. "In a pandemic," she says, "the resources we're normally able to call upon can't be used." Though the national media has long since moved on to other sensational 9

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stories, health experts know the threat is still very real, and the Secretary's Office does not underestimate the enemy. Highsmith's team went back to the drawing board and, referring to recommendations from the Center for Disease Control and World Health Organization, came up with an estimate of how many peo- · ple might get• sick and how the infection . rates might affect Yale's ability to function. The· plan they devised outlines roles for teams in academics, technology, and dining services. Each department considered the different scenarios and came up with its own contingency plan. Custodial services, for example, devised a strategy that would allow for less frequent cleaning based on the number of infected employees. Though· it seems absurd to care about sweeping the stairway when people are dying of avian flu, every detail is crucial to overall success: In this case, maintaining some level of regular sanitation might prevent more people from falling ill. So what would Yale's Pandemic Plan look like in action? No doubt the scene would be grim: Avian flu has spread across campus, and everyone from your TA to the shy girl down the hall has fallen ill. Highsmith's network anticipates that each of these unfortunate so:uls might hobble into University Health Services with suspicious symptoms: wheezing, coughing, fever, eye infections, muscle soreness, and pneumonia. Diagnosing the situation, Health Services would sound the alarm. The Secretary's Office would be contacted first and they, in_ turn, would activate the Pandemic Plan, which would establish an Emergency Operations Center. From that point forward, the group would seize full control, like generals declaring martial law. The Emergency Operations Center would make all of Yale's decisions, from the wording of press releases to deciding if students should be home. And if parents require further proof that Yale takes its obligations as a surrogate family seriously, they need

not look further than the cell phone program included in the revised plan. In the case of a crisis, a reverse 9-1-1 system would generate calls in a crisis to thousands of Yale families. Within minutes Mom and Dad would know if little Suzy was safe. Though many other colleges have emergency avian flu procedures, Yale's plan leads the pack. Connecti. cut's Department of Homeland Secu- .. rity was so impressed by the U niversity's approach that it asked Yale to serve as a case study at an upcoming conference. What makes Yale so successful Mothering Mothers at handling risk? It may be its overall lack of specific emergency plans. THE RED DOTS ON NANCY NickHighsmith notes that aside from less's computer monitor indicate that avian flu, Yale does not have other detailed contingency plans in place. the blood sugar levels of one of her "One of the things people in .emergen- clients are far outside of the safe cy managementlearned after Septem- zone. Levels should hover between 65 and 140 units, but for this patient, ber 11th is that you can't imagine the the numbers fall closer to four hunworst that will happen," Highsmith dred. Nancy's office is on the fourth explains. It's just "wiser to have a floor of Yale-New Haven Hospital flexible plan." In short,. Yale puts its in the Perinatal Unit. A large bulletin faith in assembling the right group of experts to deal with whatever calam- board displays photographs of children whose mothers she's counseled, ity may occur. By monitoring the big picture while simultaneously scruti- and a poem entitled "THANK YOU FOR CARING." nizing the details, University officials A petite brunette with pageboy leave no risk unexplored. Thanks to the Office of Risk Management and -style hair and a chipper voice, Nancy deserves to be thanked. She is the the Secretary's Office, Yale may not sole registered nurse in the high-risk be quite as prone to worry as most obstetrics department certified as a parents but it's got a plan. diabetes educator. She counsels every patient at Yale-New Haven Hospital -Marie Diamond who develops gestational diabetes. •

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Every year, the disease affects four percent of pregnant women in United States approximately 135,000 cases. According to the American Diabetes Association "pregnant women who have never had diabetes before but have high · blood sugar (glucose) levels during pregnancy are said to have gestational diabetes." Like pant sizes and cholesterol levels, the prevalence of gestational diabe. . tes has increased with the country's rising obesity problem. Nancy's client with blood sugar levels in the four · hundred range, for example, weighs nearly five hundred pounds. Simple habits like healthy eating and regular exercise help combat gestational diabetes, but maintaining such habits does not come easily. Some of her clients cannot afford fresh foods; others have multiple children and no time for exercise. The five hundred pound patient continues to eat fast food, probably because burgers and fries are the most convenient way to feed her existing kids. Her failure to get healthy, however, endangers not only her own life, but the life of the next addition to her family. "At the rate she is going," Nancy says, "she'lllose the pregnancy." Over the next few months, Nancy's job will be to help this patient help herself: to teach her to modify her eating habits in order to protect her unborn child. But Nancy's role as a maternal figure to these future mothers is limited; she can advise her patients, but she cannot force them to follow her advice. Just as these women have limited control over their diabetes, Nancy has limited control over them. The morning I meet Nancy in her office at Yale-New Haven, one of her patients has already failed to show. On the phone, the woman claims the medical cab never arrived to drive her to the hospital. Unsure of when she'll see the patient in person, Nancy seizes the opportunity to gather information she would have acquired durFebruary 2007

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ing the actual appointment. "While I have you on the phone, can I have your blood sugars?" she asks: The patient evades her question and, for the remainder of the conversation, Nancy attempts to steer her back: she wants the numbers. First the patient claims she lost her glucometer, the machine that measures ~lood sugar levels. Then she changes her mind it wasn't · lost but broken, her son had spilled· orange juice on it. Finally, Nancy hangs up and lets out a small sigh. "Well," she says. "I don't know how much of that to believe." Nancy's workday is weighed down by such conversations. Between transportation, child care, work, and the discomfort of pricking one's finger to draw blood, it conies as no great surprise that many of the women Nancy counsels fail to monitor their progress. Patients may not provide the . information she needs, but they have · no trouble recounting their personal woes. "I could be on the phone for hours with their personal problems" she tells me, "Some of these people begin with a lot." One woman would call from the back room of the store where she worked, crying because her boss would not allow her to sit down. She is 31-years-old and has "nine living children right now." N arrey flips through a list of patients. One woman has three kids, another has more and one woman currently in rehabilitation for drug abuse has seven. "But that doesn't stop them," Nancy says. "They keep coming back and having more.'' Multiple pregnancies and repeated bouts of gestational diabetes do not guarantee that patients will adopt better habits." Missed appointments and non-compliance persist. "You can't make the horse drink the water when it's not good." Not all of Nancy's patients are difficult to track down. The patients who are best at maintaining their blood sugar are the .o nes who have

the resources to do so: food, money, an education, and family support. But they also are not the women who are at the greatest risk. · It's the women without resources who cancel their appointments, who refuse to take urine tests, who fudge their blood sugar numbers to · please her or simply to get her off their case. She mentions one woman who would call and claim that her blood sugar levels were in the range of one or two hundred. When Nancy reviewed the data herself, she found the numbers were actually closer to four hundred. She pulls up the patient's file on her computer and notices that she has since miscarried, after only fourteen weeks of pregnancy. "Sometimes t h at 's nature 's way, "Nancy says matter-of-factly. "That baby was just swimming in glucose.'~ Nancy does not become sad or sentimental at the reminder of this failed pregnancy she did what she could and understands the inherent limitations of her job. Nancy can counsel women about the biology of gestational diabetes, but she cannot force them to .change their lifestyle. The most she can do is pick up the phone. The greatest help she can provide is her own availability. The telephone rings. "New client,'' Nancy says. She starts to pull up files on her computer that she'll include in an information packet an explanation of the disorder with dietary guidelines. If Nancy mails it to her this afternoon, the patient should receive it either tomorrow or the day after. Nine months later, if all goes well, a baby will follow. •

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Flirting For Disaster IN THE INTEREST OF ERADICATING

landmines from the face of the planet, Yale paid for two chocolate fountains. As an attendee at the recent Speed Dating for Charity event, I, on the other hand, paid with my dignity. More than three-hundred singles, enticed by the tagline "Give Some, Get Some," donated five dollars for landmine removal but seemed anxious to get their money's worth in love. We mingled in the Davenport Common Room, which had been transformed by $1800 worth of subsidized, Costco-purchased brownies and punch, then we shuffled into the Dining Hall. Bewildered girls tried to look relaxed and drunk guys tried to look sober as we sat at row after row of red clothed tables littered with candy and suggested conversa• t1on starters. But to the high-mi~ded altruists among us, this money-for-dates proposition just seemed so crass. Weren't we there to help uproot landmines across the globe? The promised exchange seemed closer to roughly one dignitile · let's say, the amount of dignity you spend trying to prove to a complete stranger that you have any personality at all for x amount of Afghan limbs kept safe from Soviet-era landmines.

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Afghan limbs and Soviet landmines were conspicuously absent from the website for "Charity SpeedDating@ Yale." It was jarringly pink and adorned with images of stuffed horses kissing the event's logo. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to resemble a kissing horse, which seemed like an inauspicious beginning, or if they were supposed to represent third-worlders rejoicing to be free of landmines, which struck me as kind of unfair. After I passed the horses, I was prompted to describe myself in five adjectives. Apparently, I'm a Friendly Liberal Intellectual Idealist (After all, I do go to Yale and I was saving human lives), and since I was basically lying already, I threw in Attractive as well. What was I interested in? Like any honest gay man, I picked "really really really ridiculously good looking" and left it at that. When I arrived at the actual event, however, there weren't enough gay men signed up to segregate us into a "really really really ridiculously good looking" table and a "people with personalities" table. Which is just as well, I thought, since I wouldn't want to find out at which table I'd be placed anyway. What we twelve received at the double chocolate fountained speed-dating night at the gay Ivy, was a single half-sized, kids' table sheeted in a gray tablecloth. The gray color, different from all other tables decked in red warned unwary chicks that, no, this wasn't a dream,all these sensitive men did indeed watch Proj•

ect Runway. The emcee, a Yalie, doubled as a raffle-caller, offering several hundred dollars, worth of prizes (for us, not the landmine victims). He ended the excruciatingly long period of off-theclock socializing by thanking us for coming to speed-date and commending our desire to eliminate the scourge of landmines. "We wanted to do a charity event/, Yale,s Ivy Corps representative and the night's organizer told me, "that was also a social event.,, Those who came to the Davenport February 2007

dining hall represented only a small part of a larger confederation of loveless academic do-gooders · a similar event took place on the campuses of every Ivy League college yvith a heart and a social life. (Harvard declined to . participate.) As my first speed-date began, a pang of anxiety struck me: I had nothing interesting to say. Why, I asked myself, was I here? I envisioned Croatian goatherds frolicking .through the grassy fields of Pannonia, and I said to myself, "you selfish idiot, there could be landmines in those fields: start speed dating and shed some dignity!" So I got to work. Dignity, it turned out, was easy to shed. The Yale gay community is insular and incestuous enough that I was only one or two degrees of separation removed from two thirds of the boys sitting near me: I'd broken up with one of them about a month before, and the next boy over had rejected me earlier in the semester. So those dates were easy, dignity losswise. I ironically asked, "Do I know you?" and laughed at my own joke, and spent the next two minutes and fifty seconds praying that time would accelerate. Then there were the two guys that my friend and I already had slightly naughty nicknames for, and then there was my friend, then his exboyfriend,s ex, then my ex,s ex. So that made seven dates with a baseline level of awkwardness that, if my calculations were correct, probably saved a few dozen Bosnians from illfated explosive stumbles. · The inescapable irony of the whole event was that, in the real world, where I understand that people actually go on dates, speed -dating has found its niche as an altet native to a whole evening of one-on-one awkwardness. But at Yale, where dating comes in a distant third to random Beta hookups and library sleepovers as a popular preamble to relationships, speed-dating seems to be the closest to old-fashioned dating that most Elis have ever experienced. Wit•

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ness, for instance~ my female friend's speed-date with a football player who brought not one but three beers to carry him through less than an hour of 'd ating. Or another,s speed-date with a fellow who could bar~ly utter more than a handful of words during the requisite three minutes. You'd think the generation brought up on Seinfeld, Sex and the City, and even Doug would have more sensitivity to the complex kabuki of structured romance. But this toe-dip into the world of face-to-face, exchange-ofinformation mating rituals proved as perilous as a jaunt thro1:1gh an uncleared Mozambican battleground. Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn,t enjoy it. Yale may have tossed dating · of the ice cream social variety onto the Sustainable Trash Heap, but even this pale hint of that lost age awakened a little conservative nostalgia in me. Once i ducked past those few social landmines, there was something refreshingly honest and direct about talking to someone with a shared awareness that we were evaluating each other as potential. .. well, dates. And everyone came away from the event with something. The landmine victims got a neat $1700, Yale got stuck with the bill for the food, and somewhere among the evening,s terrifying moments~ I managed to score a date with a cute guy. I would almost say· it felt better than spending those five bucks on world peace, but I'm a Friendly Liberal Intellectual Idealist. I care too much for that.

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Mitch Reich

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Illustrations by Adriane Quinlan 13

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ake Yale students derobe for tht: sake of art. by Jordan Jacks '

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am Messer, the Associate Dean of the Yale Art School, is a quotable man who favors black sweaters and chic eyeglasses and has an impeccably shaved head. He peppers his speech with references to art theory, waves his arms energetically when talking of art's "creation .of a visual language," and, peering through his black frames, says that he could pay me quite a bit of money to take off my clothes. Since the subject at hand is nude modeling, his offer is perfectly appropriate. The power of persuasion seems to be a requisite trait for anyone walking th~ halls of 1156 Chapel Street. An atmosphere of import and meaning pervades: well-shod twenty-somethings with charcoal-stained hands shuffle past doors that open into rooms filled with half-painted canvases and empty easels. Even the most reptilian accountant would want to paint, or be painted, after ten minutes in the Yale Art School. For a second I consider taking Messer up on his offer before realizing that I would be literally inhabiting one of the world's most popular nightmares: standing in front of a crowd of strangers, entirely naked. Fortunately for the University, the majority of applicants for model positions are not nervous prudes entranced by their first encounters with the art world. A quick perusal of the massive, overstuffed blue binder that archives the application and Polaroid of every hired model reveals an extraordinarily varied bunch: black, white, Asian, male, female, burly, lithe, hairy, sleek, beautiful, and often stunningly ordinary. Pasted on many of the applications are sticky notes with comments scrawled by the art professors on the model's performance. One model has fantastic poses, another talks too much, and one is generally aloof and brings strange visitors. It is a veritable Domesday Book of evaluated nudity, and one that I am allowed to see only because of a careless attendant. After only a few educational minutes, it's snapped frorn my hands. Despite The Blue Binder's aura of secrecy, applying to model at Yale Art is a straightforward process. Easy, even: A potential applicant fills out an

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application, snaps a Polaroid, indicates her availability and modeling preferences (nude or clothed, undergraduate or graduate classes), and·she is on her way to becoming someone's charcoal sketch. "She'' is the correct pronoun .here for more than political reasons: the Art School's models are generally female. Male models, Messer tells me, are more difficult to acquire. "American men want only one penis .in the room," he says. Gender politics aside, The Blue Binder · brims with photographs of women, some quite old. Many, however, are young enough to be Yale students and some of them actually are. Though the vast majority of models are "casuals" local residents unaffiliated with the University the school currently employs several Yalies willing to defrock for the sake of art. At $15 dollars per hour clothed, $20 nude, modeling is one of the University's highest paying student jobs, but certainly not the oldest. According to Sam Messer, before Yale went co-ed, art students relied solely on outside models or drew from busts. It is difficult to pinpoint who the first nude student model on Yale's campus was, as even though women were admitted to the Art School as early as 1873, they were certainly not encouraged to pose fully nude. Considering women were not even admitted to Yale College until 1969, no undergraduate women posed until at least the 1970s. By the 1980s, however, the job was advertised and feminist Naomi Wolf, who would later go on to publish The Beautylv!Jth, advise AI Gore, and accuse Yale Professor Harold Bloom of sexual assault, modeled nude as an undergraduate. It is difficult to calculate the exact number of models currently employed by the University, largely due to the ambiguity of what constitUtes employment. Though the Blue Binder is packed with models, few of them are ever called to duty. Aside from indicating availability and class preferences (an undergraduate model might choose not to model for introductory courses filled with students she passes daily on Cross Campus), there is little the models can do clothed to prepare for the day of their employment. The process is almost entirely in the hands of those who run the classes. Professors looking for models consult The Binder and contact those whose preferences •

match their courses. Sarah Lasley, a graduate student in the Art School who runs a well-attended figure drawing class every week, says there is little turnover; professors generally stick to one model per year for the sake of • convenience. Ies a bit reductive and more than a little cliche to call the models «muses" for certain courses, but their constancy and purpose as the form for student art encourages the comparison. Though the hiring process is largely controlled by extrinsic factors, the model wields a surprising. amount of power once inside a figure drawing class. When I visit the evening session run by Lasley, the robed model ambles around the studio before the session, leisurely eating Chinese take-out and insisting that country music is not played. At her request, a heater is placed next to the pillowed, draped platform where she will recline. A boombox plays Bjork. The shades are drawn. Though practices vary by professor and class, Lasley's informal evening drawing sessions leave the choice of poses to the model. On this night, Jennifer, a tall, curvaceous «casual," asks if any of the assorted students sitting at their easels have posing preferences. She then divides the session into a series of shorter warmup poses followed by two hourlong poses intersperesed with much needed five minute breaks to ease her muscles. Jennifer steps up to the platform, unties her waistband, and drops her robe. Far more than appearance or body-type, the choice of pose is the defining factor in modeling skill. To pose well is an act of both literal and figurative balance; a model must be able to display creativity and aesthetic sensibility while remaining absolutely still. Shorter poses generally two to five minutes are offered at the beginning of any figure drawing session to facilitate warm-up sketches. When the medium is conducive to quick sketches, a model can afford to hold her arms out and lean at precarious angles. To formulate. a longer pose for paint or inkwash, a model may have to hold still for up to thirty minutes. There's a thin line between a beautiful curve and a strained back, and models generally experiment with different poses until they find the perfect combination of intriguing form and weight-distributing, neck-supporting function. In the evening class, Jennifer begins with •

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a quick series of short standing poses. With legs shoulderwidth apart and head evenly turned, she assumes the stance of a nude conqueror. After two minutes, she raises one leg and places an arm over her head to hold an invisible parasol; 1ennifer becomes a girlish figure dancing through an imaginary rainstorm. Through five more short poses and two reclining long poses, she remains motionless but for her eyes, which take in a room of bizarre juxtapositions: her discarded sandals and robe s~t next to the platform, a crowd of appealingly mussed artists works intently, and . one hapless fellow in a Hollister hoodie holding a nearly empty sketchbook stands nearby. Observer versus ob- · served, artist versus art, clothed versus naked once 1ennifer or any model steps onto the platform, boundaries are drawn and roles are created. Nude modeling is about far more than taking off your clothes. When models are given the freedom to choose their poses, they collaborate in the process of their own artistic representation. For Sarah Lasley, who sometimes poses for her own class, the model herself both facilitates and directs the artistic process. Sarah recalls sessions in which she has occupied the · role of both supervisor and model, bustling. about in a robe to adjust the platform upon which she would soon recline, alternatively telling students, "Paper's over there" and asking, ccHow do you like my boobs?'' ·The typical model, however, values her employment for more than a salary; on the clock, she finds an opportuni-: ty for self-reflection. The obvious question most people ask of nude models is what do they think about when holding still for so long, without clothes? And the answer is almost unanimous: themselves. Elizabeth, an undergraduate who

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has modeled nude for the Art School for the past two years and requested her name be changed for this article, sees modeling as an occasion for meditation, an "enforced concentration" that has taught her to appreciate the workings of the human body. ccwhen all you can do is concentrate on holding a certain position," she says, " you really learn things about your posture and balance." However, modeling nude is more than simple mechanics; it has provided Elizabeth with a new perspective on how she perceives her body and herself. Since a figure drawing session produces numerous portraits from just as many angles, the results reflect the inherently subjective nature of an image: there may be only one woman draped over the platform, but there are as many ways of perceiving her as there are artists in the room. For Elizabeth, this expe.rience has helped combat negative self-image. Her first attempts at model- · . ing were filled with anxiety about how she looked. "I used to try to suck in my stomach when I first started/' she recalls. Later, she realized that "nobody's in a class to scout for Victoria's Secret models," and that few students, if any, care about a less-than-flat midsection. The importance lies in the body itself, and in realizing that art takes as subject what popular culture might classify as imperfections. "Maybe one guy just focuses in on the way the vertebrae in your neck are shaded," she says. "Or someone will draw you with huge hips or with a really tiny waist or with distorted eyes and ape-like arms." Artists and models seem to agree that the artistic method the process of drawing and being drawnprovides both the artist with an opportunity for aesthetic improvement and the model with a sense of personal fulfillment. Aspiring artists depend on

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models, and though modeling nude may require a great deal of courage, it also seems to meld a personal knowledge of the body a knowledge that the body is, as Elizabeth says, <<a truly amazing machine, a work of art in its very ability to do things as seemingly simple as making cereal" with a more powerful conception of the self. Standing on a stage, naked, in front of strangers forces models to confront and overcome their own fears. Stripped of society and its cot- . ton accoutrements, the lone artist and many "assume that naked means bethe pure form contend with what it ing easy or irresponsible," and that means to have a body, to be a human. "without having participated or obThe process of becoming art is, for served the modeling class dynamic it the model, a method of self-portrait. would be easy to assume that there,s So why was The Blue Binder, a something inherently devious in record of so many positive experi- nudity with strangers." ences, ripped from my hands after Sarah Lasley combats the "sextwo minutes? Why wasn,t I -allowed ual nude" stereotype with mockery. to see the application to be a nude "When I model," she says, "I do model? Why did the undergradu- cheesecake poses, I do pin-up stuff." ate model I interviewed espouse the Satirizing popular conception is her benefits of the process while with- way of confronting it. Lasley admits holding her name from publication? that modeling nude is the only job Why are the benefits of nude model- she has ever had to hide from her ing confined to the studio in which parents. not because she is anythey are experienced? thing remotely close to ashamed, The artistic community at Yale but because their Southern Baptist explains such privacy by contrasting values simply wouldn,t condone their world with a vaguely defined · such behavior. "outside," which sees the Venus de The Yale Art SchooPs attitude Milo and screams "armless strip- toward nude modelling is strangely per." The "outside world," Yale Art conflicted. On the one hand, it proclaims the nude is a representation of would think, often wrongly sees the nude form as a taboo, and, like John human beauty, a necessary tool for artistic training, and an empowerAshcroft and his drapery, would ing symbol of identity which trumps rather cover it. The popular conflation of sex- the sexual prejudices of the outside uality and the nude form is an obvi- world. On the other hand, a curious ous problem that models confront. defeatism reigns: Within the halls of Elizabeth, the undergraduate model, 1156 Chapel, everyone is persuaded has no problem telling her parents of the beauty of the nude, but takand friends about her on-campus ing one step out of the building job shes proud of her work, and renders any attempts at explanation · besides, "ies a good boyfriend test." meaningless. By recognizing a pubJealousy is unattractive, and philis- lic prejudice and only combating tinism even more so anyone who it within the privacy of the studio, conceives of modeling for the Art nude modeling at Yale succumbs to School as just "flashing your tits the taboo it so vehemently opposes. to strangers" is "probably pretty If they won't understand it anyway, closed-minded." Yet Elizabeth re- the reasoning goes, why try to set the record straight? fuses to publish her name, citing that

"I used to try to suck in my stomach when I rst started," she recalls. Later, she realizedthat"nobodys in a class to scout or Victoria's Secret models."

February 2007

Only once has Lasley ever felt ill-at-ease in a class. Two first-time male models were working as a pair·one would model only if the other would. Having never been nude in public, perhaps because they were on a dare, the models had no idea .what to do. Once the robes were off, they proceeded to model the same pose hands on slightly-thrust hips, with a stoic gaze into the distance, as if they had just crossed the Rubicon nude · for three hours. The usually aloof figure-drawing class devolved into heckling. "It was so uncomfortable/' Lasley told me, not because the men were naked but because of an absence of protocol. A lack of understanding about the nude modeling process had sexualized the proceedings and rendered them comic. The outside world had invaded the art building and transformed art into a one big joke. This is the fear that nude models at Yale face: the beauty of the nude is overshadowed by the world,s misinformed conception of it. It is a fear bred of division, of the walls between art and culture and their complicated breaching. The only awkward moments of a figure drawing class are its moments of transition, those seconds in which the model takes off her glasses, unties her robe, and for a split second is both art and artless, observer and observed, clothed and naked. ~n the portrait that Yale,s Art Department draws of itself, the model is half-clothed.

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jordan jacks, a sophomore in Saybrook College, is on the staff of

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How Hollywood imagines Yale's most secret space. by Adriane uinlan

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arly in The Good Shepherd, Yale man Edward Bell Wilson is granted access to the tomb of the secret society Skull and Bones. It is here that Wilson, portrayed by sensitive heartthrob Matt Da. mon, first enters a world of secrecy and deception in Robert DeNiro's recent espionage drama. But Art Director Jeannine Oppewall who garnered the production's sole Academy Award nomination has exchanged the frumpy brownstone on High Street for something a little more va-va-voom: Damon pushes through immense oxidized copper doors and enters a fortress of cold white granite that resembles the fa~ade of a courthouse. Perhaps we shouldn't expect accuracy from a movie that shows women studying in the Yale library in 1939 (a full thirty years before co-eds first marched in) and casts Angelina J olie as your tandard, glum housewife. But unlike many of Hollywood's historical flubs, the inaccuracies Oppewall makes in portraying the tomb are indicative of deeper cultural beliefs about what is hidden here, in the American icon of secrecy. The interior of Oppewall's Skull and Bones is even more farfetched than its exterior. Inside, Wilson finds a neo-cla_ssical foyer reminiscent of the Capitol rotunda. Veiny marble columns the color of money stretch from floor to ceiling. Buttery candlelight skims the shoulders of Wilson's wide-lapel suit, landing on marble floors that look like they have been doused in olive oil and scrubbed with a toothbrush. Combining the flickering candlelight of gothic academia with the cool, glazed marbl~ of government halls, the tomb is a mashup of cartoony cliches of power. Here, the bright sounds of boot heels ·

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clacking across the marble floor declare that these are men on a mission with places to go. This is a site where important things happen, but happen in secret. When Wilson graduates to join the O.S.S., the intelligence agency that will later evolve into the C.I.A., he finds himself in rooms like these, pacing halls of the same polished marble. We share Wilson's feeling that his life has been lined up before him as a long series of endless halls and · imposing rooms, beginning with that tomb on High Street. Edward Bell Wilson is the Hollywood amalgam of two actual Yale graduates who became CIA operatives in the agency's early days. But neither of them was a Bonesman: James Angleton, a brilliant spy but poor student from the Midwest, would never have qualified, and Dick Bissell was one of the rare few who

A fictional Yalie peers down into the rotunda of a fictional Skull and Bones.

is courtesy of the foolhardy few turned down his tap. Bissell was from a Bones family, but he resented how who ·have broken in, and it barely resembles the version depicted in his older brother never discussed his involvement, keeping the .tomb's se- The Good Shepherd. The most comcrets ccuntil his death." Bissell opely plete schematic comes from the first declared the society cc counterpro- group to enter. In 1877, a group callductive to true education." · ing itself the "Order of the File and Yet the filmmakers turn these Claw" filed the bars on the rear basemasters of government intelligence ment window before clawing them into Bonesmen, allying the secrecy out, climbing inside, pilfering the within the tomb with the secrecy tomb, and writing up an expository within the government. Released pamphlet that included floor plans in the wake of the Patriot Act, the and a description of a stronghold Plame affair, and NSA wire-tap- with the air of a ccpleasant, convivial pings (brought about by the secret dub" where "men may enjoy good executive order of a Bonesman), The suppers and quiet whist." Good Shepherd reflects our culture's The next break-in came a century fear of secrecy in the government. later, in 1979, when a Bonesman proHere, in the darkness of a tomb testing the society's unisex policy led we'll never enter, the set designer a group of gutsy co-eds indoors. In a ties the loose threads of conspiracy campus magazine, one girl described a room "like Miss Havisham's shrine," theories into a damning knot. The tomb is the physical embodiment of in "kind of a shambles." The tomb, our collective fears. she said, "looked like a boy's dorm room ... like it hadn't been cleaned in six months." And from the anonyhe tomb onscreen is far from mous accounts of ex-Bonesmen, rewhat we know of the tomb on High Street. What little we do know porter Alexandra Robbins portrayed the tomb as a "Victorian living room." News stories most often picture it as a glorified frat house. The summary vision of these accounts informs us that the tail of the tomb's "T" shape contains a long, high-ceilinged back dining room, while the rectangle facing High Street contains a basement with a mu.s ty kitchen and storage rooms. Above the basement level is a two-story mini-manse that includes a cozy, book-lined living room and a few bedrooms, convenient resting •

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Bones

a le to sue or iel, which would what the tomb does contain.

•

places for drunken inductees.

to depict a space that, while it does or Corinthian but boxy Bauhaus, exist, feels fictional a space that is hewn of light grey stone. Good Shepherd is not the only a product of the cultural imagination, Inscribed into the wall of the second film to take on the mystery of a space that has come to symbol- level are three capital letters spelling Skull and Bones. In 2000, The Skulls ize our fears of back-alley political out the word ''WAR." The film tells defined the stereotypical Bonesman power, a space that has a deep .and us that this inscription is the six foot in the character of Caleb Mandrake. yet completely obscure history. tall stone equivalent of a peppy poster A Yale senior, Mandrake pulls his When the hard:-working, cre.w - in a career services office: it is intendrowing, · all-around-good-boy Luke . ed to prod Bonesmen to volunteer for convertible up to a riverbank to watch a regatta and hauls himself out . MeN amara 0 oshua Jackson) first their country. This task, a Bonesman of the bucket seat for a better view. enters the tomb depicted in The and U.S. Senator explains to a bewil. . In the process, he blocks·the view of Skulls, he finds himself in a very dif- dered MeN amara, is a necessary step his girlfriend, who whines: "Hey- ferent space from that which appears on the road to political power. When liiiike, I can't see the race!" Always in The Good Shepherd. The center of MeN amara asks the obvious questhe gentleman, Mandrake huffs, the tomb is a stark grey atrium, _with tion "But what if there isn't a war to "Imagine it." the chilly air of a bank vault, that volunteer for?" the Senator strokes The suave, assured villain played Bonesmen refer · to as "The Ritual a glowing, neon-green skull and reby hunky Paul Walker is a caricature Room." The columns are not Doric plies ominously, "Son, there is always of the Yale Man: rich enough for that nice car, charming enough for that . ··,.. > • · · . ;. , ' : . : .. ·, , . · . : . · ·• : · • · · ·· · .. · . · . :.<< ·:,f ·.-,. ... !> ;>>.::; · : . > : · ·'>: . > . · : :::': ·/ • · :' •; ·. <:·> ·: :·..-·:..:_;<::: · : :·; . ·· ··. · · · , : :· : . ·: <.< . . ,· .. · . · ' · :. . nice girl, laid-back enough to spend <~"..· ·. . . .·:, ··.·-.:... ·.· ..·... - . ... : ..... .:-:._ ...- . _.. . .-·:·..·:--: -· .... _..,= ·. . .. ... . -. . ..... . .- ...... : :··· ... .. ·-:: ·:= ·......;.. ··:-: -·-· -·- . . -.: .-· ·•. .-. :: : ::.'···::::-· : -· ..- ...... _.;. .. •. :.--· : .. . f . M'l - . ··- -=·-· · - ... =··--· -- -· .. -.. ·-· ....:, ... __ . ·. . -···--·--· ..··. ·. .:••:·:. .•,...:··•...:···-.··.·· ·.··. ..--.··· .··,...... ·. .·....... . . ···-...-..·-........•...·•.._--•:.. . ·. .,;· · ·.... . . ··· ..:· · ·. .·-·.,,. ,. .... ;....··. ·,...... ;.·· tlme away rom h1s 1 ton essay to . . . .. ··. . · ··..:.-:..." .:·-·..·. ·..-·-:·· ....-.· ·.....··...... ... ... .- . . :··.. ·. .:"• . · .··.·.. . . . .,. . :,. ··.·< · . ...... . •· ,,, ..... .· ........ . .-. . .-. . . ,..... .... ·..,., . . . . . .. . . .. ........ .·. . ·. .· ..-........... .. -.. _ ... . -. . . . .---·:-... -. .-. . - ......... .....· ·. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. : · " . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . · . . ..:·.. . • : . · . · . . : · · . ' . ... ·,, ... , . · . . ... ·'· . . . ·. . . . .... ., . ......... .. . ... .· .. ,, .... · ,, ... . · ., . .............. . .. .. ... .· ...... .·" - . . . . .•·' ·- .. .·;.. ....... . .•.... .... . . .. ·. ·.. . .. ......... ·. .. .. -.- ... ... .... ... ·. ........ ... . .... ·· ... .. ..,....,,. .. .-.; Ch eer at regattas and a tota1 ass h 0 1e. . . . . .. -· . ... --:. · .... :-·... .. .. . . ... .· .. . . . -. . .. . .. . .. ,· ,- . .. --:;. :· . .. .. •:: ;,,. -: .: . . ·: . :_· ·. .. .. · .. ... ,. . . ., ...· -•'• · - •' ' destt.ned for the ·..'· · .... . · ' ..··... · ·. ·. . -· "Mandrake he was . · · .···... . ·. . .. .... · ,... . .. ·. ·..· ·.... ...... .,.... .. ··· .·-..··•• ......:•......:''···· . ....... .. ,. ...•··. ..• ·. ·... ''... .· ·· ·-. .·.,..... ...... .. . ··.. ... · · .. :. ·.. ..... . .,. · ··. .·· . · ·..· ··' . ·.· .... ... .. .;<-....... .. ... , · · ··.,. .· ·• ······:· .. .. ... .·...... . .· .•.. .. ..... .. .. ..... -,...-:-;.... ..... . • ; . . . ' .. .. ... . .. ..· .. .. . ...• .. ... --..·. . -- ..... ... .. ... .. .. .. . . .. .. . ... .. . • . . o rn," says a ......... . . :..· ... ,:···.·:·.·.··· .. · : . > .. ·· · .... · .· · · . . : . : . :·: · : · . . · .·· ·.· ~·: . .. .. .,. . . . . . ;.:•: · · . ::. , : · ; · · . · · " · · · · . · .. . . ... . ·:·· . , . ; . . · · ·. · ; · · · · · · he Was b .... . . .. ... . ······ . . . .. . . . Skulls. the day .. .... .... ,,.. .. . . . . . ... .... ·. .... ·....-.·: . ... . .. .. .·...... . ..... . . . soct'ety recrut'ter:, .watcht'ng ht·m at t·h e ·.. · · . · ..'· · ·. ..· • . .......... ·· . :·· . · : · · · .· · . ··. . · ·. ·... · ·' .:·... -_.. .:,:...-. · .," · . . . . ·'- · . · . . ... :. :. .. . . ·.. . :._.. ··:. :.. . ":_=· ::.'_ . ·•.· •. ··: . .... :.·.··... . ... ·.. .. .. ... . .. _-: . --... . . . .. . . .. · . . .. . . . . . .. .ng bt·n · oculars · . . .· ... · .. ·· ...... · · • · ·.·· :· · , , " . · · ..... · '.:·, .. • ··· . · . ·.:·.,··,; · · · ·· · · · • .:: · · .' · :. , · .·· . . · . ··., · . regatta through .huntl . . • . ~ . . ·. .- . . ..: .. ·..' ':',·.'.... '· ...... . . '::··I_,;.· ·.. : ·.· ,;:.; :. : '.<: . . . ·.. ::. .. . ... . . •·· .... . the qut'ntessentt'al · · ... .... ..-..·'··,· ·· ,:,;.:: . · , . . : . :··;." ·.· · ·•·•· . • ... . · . : ... ·::.: · · . " · · .·.:· ·s .. ....... .. . _: --· ... . . But Mandrake l . . . ..-.. . . . . • . .·.. . - . . · - .. . .· ... ... ... . .. -. ... . :.--· . . ". . . .. .. .. Skull not only because of his chiseled, · .· ...... <·~<.;· .< · : : · · · . . ;. · -'. · ··:··.:...... :· · ·.•<..... . ·,-:.:--... / .:. · · : · . . .· · . - . : · ·.- . : ·. · · .. ... . . .. . .. ... ·.·..... .. ......... .. .. Nordic features, his powerful dad, ... :, > . .· · • .. . ,. . ·: .• · , . . ~:· . : : < ·· ·· · · · . ... :· .. .. .. · .. .. . . . ... ...... .. . . . -· .. .. ... ... .. -· . . ... . ... . . . ..·.·· ·..-·... ;. . .·. . ··:·. .=·- . . ."::. . ... .._:::.. • .. .. and his rotating chorus of doting gals; .: : . ·.:: :... ,:· . . . .. . . . . . . . -... . .. ' . .· he is a Skull because he delights in ob- . .. • .. . . .. . . . .. . .. . ... . . . .. . . . . . . . . . structing views, telling those who'd . . ... .. . ... .. :· · . · . : . · :<~:: .. :~·: ·:-= ;_; :~(~ . '·;·=-; . ,:" .. . . -·.· ->· ······ · · · . . . -. . . • . . . . -.. .. . - .. . like .to peer over his wide shoulders .. . .- .. . .. .. .. . . . . . . ..- . to simply "imagine it." ... ' .. ... Despite the sketch of the tomb afforded by those break-ins, Holly- . . .. wood has taken Mandrake's advice . . .. ..• . .. to heart, "imagining" the tomb how.- . . . . -. . .. .. . . . _. • ' ever it sees fit. For all its rumored .. - . . .. .. . . . . .. . .. . - . -- . power, Skull and Bones has no abil- · ' . . .. . . .. _ .. . . --. . . .. .- .. . . . . . . ... . . ity to control its image. Though the , .. . .. . . club is routinely depicted on such . .... . . . . .,.. . . . . .. .. ostensibly objective news sources as . . - . . . . . .. CNN as a power-hungry, fear-mon.. . . . . . . .. . . . .. - .. .. . . . .- . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . gering bastion of elitism, Skull and . - . . .. .. . . .. . . . . . .. . . .. . - . .. - ., . .. . .. . .. . .. • . . . .-.· ;.. - ·-· Bones is completely unable to sue for -- . . .. .· .. _:. . . ·••. ---=::.=.. :- . .· ·. . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . libel, which would require revealing . .. what the tomb does contain. This leaves set designers free to let their imaginations run wild. Their cameras can glide inside with the authority of objective journalists, and walk .... -- .. . .. . . .. ... . . . . .. us through rooms that are wholly fantastical. It's a singular challenge, -~: -- ~: ; ::-·.s- :•= :::

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THE N Ew Jo uRNAL

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knowledge, an all-important place of the seven thousand pages of The Pentagon Papers elucidating the ori- that is perpetually hidden. Within gins of the Vietnam War~ More re- these walls, war resembles the induction rituals MeN amara must endure cently, Mark Danner's investigation to enter the "Ritual Room" just of the commencement of the war in another frat-boy initiation on the Iraq, published under the title The path to power. Secret Way to War, highlighted the . ' military planning that began as early · impler than any other fa~ade facas November, 2001, before inspec..... ing High Street, Skull and Bones' tors could confirm the existence of tomb is almost inviting car:ved of weapons of mass destruction. The rosy stone, worn soft at the edges, war-room of the White House, like a secret society, is a place obscured with slit windows that peer sadly at 0 ld Campus. There are no overt to the public until the adventurous markings suggesting that the tomb few break in. is anything .other than a building In both The Skulls and The Good Shepherd, Skull and Bones repre- that sometimes people go out of and sents this lacuna in our national self- sometimes people go in. · But there's something here that stirs our desire to enter. Look closer at the society's official logo ina scribed on intra-society memos- H 1( and there seems to be something .tI D , lurking in the dark sockets. The lo••• A. go's artist has taken care to show us • •• •t that something is back there, lurking just beyond. The two hollows, E --1( like the tomb's guarded windows, B are obscured portals hinting at an ·-1 ( - - - - - 1 p t _;.. interior that they simultaneously 1( refuse to reveal. I I I• In The Skulls, the Bonesmen ~,;, • . monitor their tomb on closed -circuit ' c Il • I camera. But when our hero proudly It J[ _________ l.l _~.-·_,_,_.,_,·--'I takes the tape to the police station at a a the film's end offering seemingly foolproof evidence of a murder Man~-------------------------- · ---------------------------drake committed in the tomb there isn't anything to see. The screen is B E all static and fuzz. "There must be • something wrong," he pleads, flailing his arms wildly. "It was all here! )l • It was all on film!" ' .. D , F In the end, film fails us. The best ' ... • we can do is as the murderer recom1( l mended: "Imagine." • f KfA

a war sometime, somewhere." ne of these cinematic tombs was constructed after a Bonesman led this country into the Gulf War, the other after his Bonesman son led us int·o the War on Terror a war conducted almost entirely behind closed doors. In their depictions of the stronghold, both films reflect the anxiety that national matters of life and death are decided in secret by a handful of powerful men. Are these the men who encourage our country to go to ''WAR?" The beginnings of wars are often obscured from the populace. Only after a Supreme Court battle were newspapers able to publish sections

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E - .. 0

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FIG . S.

February 2007

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Adriane Quinlan, a senior in Calhoun College, is the Editor-in-Chief ofTNJ.

•

â&#x20AC;˘

t was September a month before I ever met Maya.the real possibility. and I was naked in a room of strangers, lying de-robed The truth is, many people with HPV don't even on a cold examining table in a cold room on the sterile know that they have it. But widespread screening . . second floor of Yale University Health Services. My in the last forty years with annual Pap smears like feet were lodged in stirrups attached to either side of the exthe one I had enjoyed has knocked cervical cancer amining table, my legs were spread indecently wide, and my down from its former spot as the number one cause vagina had been pried open by a large plastic beak-looking of cancer deaths in American women to a distant instrument. Stationed somewhere in the midst of it all was a number two. For four decades, this seemed to be as balding man in a white coat exhorting me to "just relax" so good as it would get. Then it got better. . . In the fall of 2005, Merck announced that it had he could scrape and swab my unsuspecting cervix. developed a hundred percent effective vaccine to When the spreading and prying came to a merciful end, prevent two particular strains of HPV associated -, I clothed and composed myself and remembered why I with cervical cancer in women. By June, the FDA subjected myself to this in the first place. I had come to ask had issued a rapid approval of the vaccine, called about Gardasil, the new vaccine against human papillomavirus Gardasil. "There have only been a few times in my (HPV). A while before, my mother had for warded me a bit life as a physician when I've been able to say (at least of online news: ''Test shows vaccine prevents cervical cancer/' to myself), 'This is truly big news,'" a doctor told the headline had cheered. So when I gripped the sides of the examining table and the New York Times. Female lawmakers on both asked my gynecologist for the shot, I was startled by his _ sides of the aisle in the Michigan state legislature response. The vaccine, he said somewhat apologetically, was were even inspired to band together, their common not yet available at University Health Services. UHS first womanhood trumping petty partisanship, in support needed to devise a system to accommodate the many women of a bill mandating the vaccine for sixth-grade girls. at Yale. When it was ready, he promised, I'd be sure to hear. If it was such big news, then why did I have I decided to trust the doctor: After all, a survey by Trojan so much trouble securing doses of the vaccine in Brand Condoms in the fall placed Yale at the top of a list of September, three months after it was approved by one hundred universities in terms of sexual health resources the FDA? (Harvard came in 43rd). But while UHS has now made Gardasil available, it wasn't until two months feel like the clock is ticking,'' Maya told me. after my start-of-school Pap smear. Even though She is a freshman, but not in the way I was a Trojan's "Sexual Health Report Card"-got it mostly freshman glum, moody, stubbornly maladjusted. It was right acknowledging real strides like free STD only October when I met Maya (a pseudonym), and she was testing, contraception availability, sexual assault already eminently adjusted. She would spend a lot of time services, and various outreach programs as I just sitting a~ound talking with her suitemates about how learned more about sexual health at Yale, I found happy they all were at Yale. But when her suitemates started coming home, she ushered me from the conunon room into that there are still major gaps in the system. And these gaps may be putting students at unnecessary the privacy of her bedroom. She could talk with them about most things just not, I supposed, about this. risk. Maya like many freshmen had been looking fox ward ater that same month I asked a friend whether to starting college single. She had altnost made it, too, ...... she had considered getting the vaccine. She before fate intervened: Mere months away from a swingin' did not even know what HPV even was an early single freshman year, Maya met someone. She described an almost old-fashioned courtship, conducted through modern indication, I should have realized, Yale women are not receiving the sexual health info they need. I technology. "The entire relationship consisted of sharing and talking," she explained, describing their long instant messenger explained that HPV is the most conunon sexually conversations. "We learned a lot about each other." transmitted disease in the U.S., that between fifty â&#x20AC;˘ and seventy percent of us will contract it at some She learned, for instance, that he has HPV and occasionally point in our lives, and that although in most cases suffers from flare-ups of genital warts. The two had not slept it will clear undetected, in a third of cases it causes with each other over the sununer, but she told me of her hopes genital warts, and in 9,700 American women each for Thanksgiving break: She was considering taking the Next year it turns into cervical cancer. Her brow knit. Step. With just two months left until Thanksgiving, Maya, "Do I have it?" my friend joked, half mortified at

February 2007

•

concerned for her health, went to her OB-GYN to ask for Gardasil. There was scarcely enough time for two of the vaccine's three rounds. By late October, when UHS began offering Gardasil, it was too late for Maya to be even two-thirds protected for their big reunion. cci'm seeing this guy soon,'' she said. ccobviously it's not a guarantee, but anything to reduce · my chances." Her even voice took on the slightest edge. c~I feel a lot of risk surrounding this whole issue. I feel like the clock is ticking." •

•

s · Maya guided me through her problems, I discovered even more troubling news than her delay in obtaining Gardasil. Maya received little to no guidance along the way. When Maya's boyfrit:nd first told her that he had HPV, she was stumped. ccThe last time I learned about it was in the eighth grade," she recalled thinking. cci don't remember what HPV is, or how you can get it. I have no idea how this works." ccN o one knows what to do,'' said Maggie Doherty, a ' former coordinator of the Reproductive Rights Action League of Yale (RALY). On the surface, she appears deceptively sunny. But when she spoke about sexual health at Yale, her tone was slightly despondent. c'I'm still sometimes flabbergasted. We have Peer Health Educators, we have all this stuff that's out there, and no one knows where to get a condom or what to do in an emergency." As a RALY member, Maggie has pushed UHS to increase transparency of the University's policies on emergency contraception. "Yale's sexual health policies are kind of odd in that they're good," she said. "They do good things. But because some of these things are controversial, Yale doesn't do a good job of getting word out there. People just don't know about it." To understand Yale's reasoning, Doherty imagined stodgy old alums raising a ruckus when they read about things like the ready availability of emergency contraceptives or Yale's free coverage of unlimited abortions. Heavily dependent on contributions from more conservative alumni, the University has allowed a certa-in vagueness to accrue around the availability of sexual health resources. Doherty also spoke of some women going in to ask for emergency contraceptives only to face doctors who accused them of reckless behavior. "We've been trying to get our hands on their policy for a long time, and haven't been able. Apparently doctor ~o doctor it's very specific," Doherty said. "Their policy isn't very coherent and they don't corninunicate it very effectively." The University's inability to provide a clear explication of its available resources, she suggested, has led to such wellintentioned but questionably effective ventures as the Peer Health Educators' (PHE) "Connections"workshop, •

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was laughing the entire time," she said. And why should she have paid closer attention? She felt she'd been lucky to receive a pretty thorough sex education in high school, and that Connections had merely rehashed old material. "I feel like I knew all of this stuff when I was taking tests . ' on it," she said. ('But despite all that, no~ that I'm actually in the sit~ation and actually have to deal with it, I have no idea what to do." As a PHE, Schmidt sees this response far too often. "We hope the workshops aren't too frustratingly boring for those who know everything," he reasoned, ."and at least informative for those who don't." ·so wh~t is taken in? Maya's knowledge of the services offered by UHS was limited. "I'm guessing you can get emergency contraception?" she said. "I'm not sure." She remembered hearing about a new rape crisis hotline from Connections, but wasn't sure if she could even get birth control pills at UHS. "I feel like I'm new at being an adult, and being sexually active," she explained. ((The overwhelming feeling is kind of excited, and really co'nfused, about what it's like." The combination of sentiments she exposed anticipation, anxiety, and, above all, confusion made one thing clear: Maya needed more than a simple immunization . •

The original pamphlet asked male undergraduates, "Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?"

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better known as the "freshman sex talk." Doherty sees Connections as "just a bizarre sort of failure." Peer Health Educator Axel Schmidt, who was trained by UHS, explained that the workshop's top priority is to convey to students that most of UHS's services are free. Educators like Schmidt also direct students to other resources, like Walden, a hotline that provides general peer counseling. "We try to make sure they know [these resources] ~xist," he said. But Axel was the first to admit that, because so many resources exist, even he sometimes has "no idea which one does what." Moreover, he said, as they all have different contact information and points of access, "finding them is kind of difficult." After the workshop, PHEs hand out UHS magnets listing a few resources for quick reference. It's the least they can do to attack the problem. Maybe Maya misplaced the magnet. Maybe she never received it. Regardless, it's not in her room. While she enjoyed the PHE's Connections workshop Doherty had termed a "failure," Maya couldn't recall much else about it. "I just remember that everyone in that room •

ne resource that might help students like Maya if only they knew about it is Sex Counseling Services, a program at UHS offered by the Mental Hygiene department. The program is little-known at Yale; its only mention ·o n the UHS website is a two-word reference buried on the Mental Hygiene page. The office of sex counselor Dr. Philip Sarrel is tucked away in a quiet corner of UHS's third floor, where he can be found one day a week. In his seventies, he is nearing retirement, but the subdued quiet of his office belies the boisterous history of his career at Yale. After training in gynecology at Yale during the '60s, Sarrel joined the Air Force and was briefly stationed near Massachusetts's Five Colleges. There, he and his wife first developed the notion of an undergraduate course on human sexuality. With no credits and no grades really no requirements at all the unprecedented class ·was entirely for students' personal benefit. The Sarrels piloted "Topics in Human Sexuality" at Mt. Holyoke, Amherst, and Smith. When they debuted the course at Yale, Battell Chapel was the only venue large enough to seat the 1200 students who enrolled. In addition to a weekly lecture and evening film series, the Sarrels organized up to eighty discussion groups of twelve students, each led by two students, one male and one female, who had taken the class before. While "Topics" discussed what now seems like traditional sex ed fare "Contraception and Abortion" and "Pregnancy and Birth" they also included more unconventional •

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subjects like "Sex as a Medium of Exchange." What ''Topics" students were seeking and what the Sarrels attempted to offer was rote biology as it applied to human relationships; facts as they applied to feelings. On the cover of their book above an abstract design of a flower in bloom, is the title: Sexual Unfolding. It is, they write, the "process ... by which some young people form that aspect of their identity we call the sexual." The course ran for 28 years. Sarrel attributed the advent of "Topics" and the Sex Counseling Service to the cultural atmosphere of the early '70s. In Connecticut, laws that made contraception _illegal and banned sex on Sundays were finally revoked by the state legislature. "It was very much a 'spirit of the times' thing," he explained. This is not to say that the program wasn't wildly controversial. Under the Sarrels' guidance, a group of students (boldly named the "Committee on Human Sexuality") were soon inspired to write an informational pamphlet for the student body. Titled" Sex and the Yale Student," the 64-page book outlined everything from the condom-ona-banana basics of sex-ed to a comprehensive guide of Yale's sexual health resources, with- instructions on what to do and where to turn in every foreseeable circumstance. "Sex and the Yale Student" was such a success that even former Yale President Kingman Brewster proudly

kept copies stacked on a table in his Hillhouse home. Just past the first page's delightful inscription "We all get by with a little help from our friends ... " the pamphle~ contained a passage declaring that _its readers were "privileged in that you have access to information that some would... have given their lives for in previous times." The authors probably thought easy access to this information was assured for all future students. Sadly, this was not the case. The last edition of "Sex and the Yale Student" (later simply "Sex at Yale") was printed around 1996, the last year the Sarrels taught "Topics" before taking a joint sabbatical. "There was a sense that the society was picking up the role we played," Sarrel remembered. "Now I have some other thoughts about it." When they had gone, the program floundered. The money to produce the pamphlet, formerly . freely distributed to every incoming freshman thanks to a five-dollar fee collected from "Topics" attendees, was now nowhere to be found. Sarrelloves the idea of resurrecting the Yale-specific pamphlet, and even received preliminary approval for a new, online version from UHS. Its reintroduction, however, would require the help of a corrunitted group of students. "Remember," he says, "all the power behind this [was because] Yale responded to the voice of its students. It may not seem that way, butifstudentswantsomething ... '' n Halloween, I was set to meet with Maya one last time, but I felt like I had nothing left to offer her. I'd spent the end of October on the_ phone, calling around New Haven for clinics that might be able to give her at least one dose of Gardasil before Thanksgiving break less than a month away but to little avail. The vaccine at last became available at UHS on Monday, October 30th. There was no fanfare when it hnally

appeared. And contrary to my gynecologist's assurances, I wouldn't have heard about its availability at all if I hadn't pestered Immunizations to keep me on a call-list for those awaiting the vaccine . For Maya, though, immunization seemed practically beside the · point. She kept mentioning "mixed feelings" and "anxiety," and her smiles seemed forced. I'd known there wasn't a strict commitment, that she'd been vaguely seeing other people, that he wasn't her boyfriend per se. "I don't want to let him down, but it's a lot of pressure," she said. In a situation fraught with many pressures, I thought the pressure of navigating Yale's buried sexual health resources shouldn't have to be one of them. Once, Dr. Sarrel told me of a doctor he met at a clinic in Stockholm, where sex education starts in kindergarten. He had remarked to her how much more advanced her country's approach to sex education seemed to be. He didn't think he'd ever see that in the U.S., at least not in his lifetime. "People waste so much time on sex," she told him. "If they knew what sex was all about, they could spend all that energy on something else."

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Veronica Madrigal, a senior in Timothy Dwight College, is on the staff ofTNJ.

February 2007

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The Panic Room

the intimidation begins with a . package bearing your name AND a frightening red stamp: "CONFIDENTIAL." You, the unfortunate • recipient;' have been summoned to meet with the Executive c ·o mmittee of Yale College "Excomm." Nowyoumustprepare a statement, schedule a meeting, and choose attire that conveys sober remorse. Accompanied by a single ally your college dean you will ascend to SSS 41 0, an unlocked conference room in one of Yale's busiest buildings. While the room seems an unlikely setting for a show-down between old-boy tradition and youthful resistance, this mundane space soon develops into the scene of a stifling inquisition. The ,informal waiting area outside 41 O's mahogany doors is lit by a skylight barred by a metallic grid. A member of Excomn1 will · eventually appear at the door and usher you into the room, where you will face anywhere from three to nine committee members, seated around an enormous, worn wooden table that stretches an imposing fifte~n feet long and five feet wide. There are fifteen aged chairs, most of which will stay empty. On the side of the table facing the door sits the Coordinating Group of the Executive Committee: Professor Paul Bloom, Dean Jill Cutler, and Dean Joseph Gordon. In this harsh venue of judgment, the air remains uncomfortably quiet. Gaze upwards, and you will observe a beam ceiling resembling a maht>gany cage. The Excomm room is impeccably clean, with a sterile air of authority. The thirty-bythirty foot space features a barren, unused fireplace and a tattered oriental rug. A few blemishes mar the traditional decor. At a table in the corner, four carafes sport tackyorange" ICA COFFEE" labels and a shoddy plastic container holds

Abandon all hope, ye w ho enter here. by Patrick Hayden

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white napkins with the bold orange and purple "DUNKIN DONUTS, logo. . ITH STERN PORTRAITS AND AN ADVERSARIAL SEAT-

arrangement, the room is a manifestation of the t , ._ power ~hat ,Y;~~ have been accused of usurping. The chair pulled out for you has a stiff back that demands a flawless postur~; ·shoulders back and chest out. According to Dean Cutler, the room serves as another disciplinary judge. c'The room itself is the key," she explains. c'The people are humane, but the room is intimidating." A student member of the committee also argues that appearing before Excomm is "a punishment in itself ... [The room] should convey the unlimited power of the judicial body." A few years ago, administrators · discussed moving Excomm to the Dean's office on the :first floor of the building but voted against it. Dean Cutler describes how Excomm decided that the more modern space was not intimidating enough. ccwe like the intimidation." This space also wracks the nerves • of the judges themselves. Oil paintings of Astronomy Professor Charter Smith Lyman (Yale Class of 1837) and Engineering Professor Augustus Jay Dubois • • (1849-1915) rest on either side of the room:~ doors. In his portrait, Dubois stares away from the painter -(and the Committ~e). He holds a pen and glasses while brooding over the papers before him. With his lips pursed and his eyes set, Dubois seems to announce himself as anot~~r judge of the transgressor. The aged pastor Lyman who gazes toward the doors with icy blue eyes, ghostly skin, an4 wispy remnants of a beard, exuding moral authority and Puritan strength. These judges have seen it all: everything from the relentless persecution of bootleggers during Pro~ibition to condemnations of students abusing the Internet. While early disciplinary procedures were, in Dean Cutler's words, "characterized by a lack of recognition for the rule of law," student pressure in -the 1960s forced Excotrun into new levels of transparency and accessibility. With the addition of student representatives and the annual publication of Exconun proceedings, the mysterious disciplinary body has been brought to the public eye. In Dean Cutler's view, this growing belief that student transgressions should be understood as breaches of community trust ING

has led to a moreopen system of punishment. ccYale regards itself as a community,, she said, cc and you have to answer to the community.,, Punishment has increasingly been seen as educational. ccMost people [summoned by Excomm] have done stupid things with huge repercussions,, she says. ccYale is often their first community experience, and they need to :figure out how to behave in a community." Lest Excomm seem anything less than · terrifying, she adds, cc Our hearts don't bleed for them." For some of its victims, the process offers a perverse thrill. Reflecting on his experience, a recent Excomm servivor explains, ccl kind of liked it. It was an interesting experience to have under my belt like wow, a chance to see backdoor bureaucracy that most don't get to see." He boldly relates the experience of Excomm 'cto being _ tapped into a secret society. [It's] a thrilling chance to see the secrecy of Yale,, Another recently Excomm-ed student also enjoyed the exclusivity of the tribunal. celt's unknown territory, and it's exciting to see in person."

ne stu ent • • escrz es a vzszt to Excomm as a "t rz a nee to see t e secrecy o Ya e." ~

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LONGER BITTER ABOUT HIS

the first student speaks positively about the room. 'cl like that this is Excotrun. You are at Yale not a shitty corporate office. Excomm is so Yale and so intense." Perhaps Excomm is a reward as well as a punishment, as the bold students who resist the constriction of traditional policies find themselves in the system,s mysterious yet entrancing underbelly. The accused students who fill this space of Puritan vindictiveness may have hoped to be there all along, to push past the ostensible rules of a well-oiled university machine and see the invisible forces that have driven it for so long. One student admits that, a year before his trial, he had surreptitiously explored SSS in search of the room. ccThere,s another way to get in, you know," he offers. 'cThere,s a window through the bathroom, and you can climb onto a balcony and into Excomm at night." JUDGMENT,

Patrick Hayden, a junior in Timothy Dwight College, is on the staff of TN].

February 2007

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Unfolding a Global Village . A Nativity of Disaster Relief on the Divinity School Quadrangle by Ben Sachs

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ast semester, on a Tuesday night during reading • week, while most undergrads were partying or attempting to write papers, a village was erected in one hour at th~ Yale Divinity School. Like a white beacons of architectural altruism, the ephemeral village shone in the night as the hymns of the Advent service were chanted around a campfire. The five Global Village Shelters were each assembled in a matter of minutes by a team of four students. Five paper laminate houses, structures previously used in disaster relief efforts in Grenada, Pakistan and Afghanistan, stood in stark contrast to the Jeffersonian classicism of the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle. They lent the traditional Christmas creche an air of activist fervor. •

The installation, which will stand through the end of February, is the brainchild of Judith Dupre. A student at the Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music and a writer of architectural criticism, Dupre was inspired by the Museum of Mode'r n Art's October 2005 exhibition, Safe: Design Takes on Risk, which included the Global Village Shelters. To visually address "the housing crisis facing a huge swath of the world's population," she organized the display using shelters designed by Dan Ferrara and Mia Ferrara Pelosi, a father-daughter industrial design team from Morris, Connecticut . ccMost people do not even realize that disaster relief is a market," says Ferrara Pelosi. But the ccmarket" to aid displaced populations is a growing sector both here and abroad; she hopes that the installation will call attention to this trend and "allow people to open their minds and think actively about solutions." Dupre intends to extend this educational goal beyond Yale and .New Haven after the exhibition closes. celt was important for me that these wonderfully designed shelters, the quintessential image of a simple house, have another life once the Divinity School installation concludes," she ~ays. The five shelters will be donated to a hodgepodge of individuals and charitable institutions

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in New York and Connecticut, including a church, an installation artist, and the film department of a community college. Easier to assemble than most Ikea furniture, the houses are made from Tri-Wall, a biodegradable laminate of corrugated cardboard and glue. This unique material allows the units to be shipped flat and assembled by unskilled labor in a manner evocative of opening a pop-up book. In a matter of minutes, the houses unfold into three dimensions to become streamlined paper miniatures of the American single family home. Despite their dreamlike appearance, the boxy white shelters are explicitly utilitarian. To be effective, the homes must be easy to assemble, environmentally responsible, economical to ship, and· able to provide basic privacy and safety. "It is important to design for the inhabitant," Pelosi says, ccto always keep in mind that you are creating a temporary home, something that will give the user a building block to start over, something that will provide some comfort in times of extreme duress." The structures are wind and fire-resistant and can be easily customized to suit different environments. Recipients can paint the exteriors, cut holes into the

cardboard for ventilation, and even convert the temporary shelters into permanent dwellings by laying bricks against their frames. Such adaptability defines a new era of mobile architecture for use in disaster-stricken · areas across the globe. Pelosi emphasizes that appearance is not a priority. "I have found," she says,"that as a designer you place focus on aesthetics but as a problem solver this takes a back seat." In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard defines the house,s presence as the psychological shelter which allows one to daydream in peace. "For our house is our corner of the woild ... our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. If we look at it intimately, the humblest dwelling has beauty." The beauty of these houses lies in their ability to restore to displaced persons the sense of their own bodies as the center of the world around them. The installation on the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle remincfs its visitors of the sheltees role as a microcosm, a place to dwell and dream. pragmatic structures are beautiful for the way they distill the basic symbolic elements that constitute a conventional house. The door framing almost

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suggests a front porch, and the hipped roof evokes the archetypal American Foursquare house, popularized in the early twentieth century mail order catalogs of companies such as Sears and Montgomery Ward. From 1908 through the 1930s, prospective homeowners could order house-building kits and construct their own homes in new suburbs. In 2006, these flatpacked paper houses materialized in the same way, to grant their inhabitants the security to dream of a better future. For the victims of disaster relief, home begins as an image and a box. ''Most of us here in New Haven are far removed geographically, emotionally, · intellectually from the daily r~ality faced by those in need of such shelters," Dupre says. "I hope the installation will move people to think globally and act on behalf of the homeless." Undergraduates don't have to walk by the Divinity School Quadrangle for reminders .of the psychological and physical comforts basic shelter provides; Yalies witness homelessness on a daily basis. The juxtaposition of these shelters and the needy in New Haven leads one to hope that the structures might go beyond their strictly expositional purpose. "There are no plans for anyone to live in these shelters," Dupre says. "We invited several dozen churches in New Haven to consider taking a unit for themselves, but have yet to hear back from them." Despite their resemblance to the American single family home, the possible use of the Global Village Shelters to relieve the local homeless population would be severely limited; Tri-Wall can't weather a tough New England winter. Still, one can't help but hope that they will not stay empty forever. For those in need, even the humblest dwelling can be a cosmos of hope.

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Yale as a target for terrorists. by Ben Lasman

utside the heavy double-doors of the Ezra Stiles dining hall, a group of students stood with their arms crossed in weak impersonations of bouncers. The staff at last November's Girltalk concert stamped hands, collected donations for the Neighborhood Music School, and tried to turn away hordes of intoxicated Yalies from the overcrowded event, but with a shrugging concession from the hired policeman, finally gave in and granted access to the surging crowd. Though a staff member myself, I could hardly feign confidence as I faced the rising tide of staggering, half-drunk students. Despite my calm demeanor and authoritative, wide-legged stance, I could envision nothing but disaster everywhere I looked. What if the salad bar and microwave tucked into a darkened corner suddenly burst into flames, spraying molten debris and crisped produce onto the packed audience? The students entering Stiles seemed less like my fellow classmates than lambs to the slaughter potential corpses whose remains I would have to catalog. Why, in the midst of such a thriving event, was I possessed by such a paralyzing sense of dread? I had purchased the insurance. I was the unlucky volunteer who had bought a coverage package through Yale University's Office of Risk Management. Created to address, among other concerns, •

February 2007

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the loss or damage of personal property, the office subcontracts policies for campus events through the U rmia Insurance Company. U rmia's website shows cheerful photographs of trim motivational speakers and children playing soccer to encourage one to buy coverage for anything from a debutante ball to a boxing match with an easy credit card payment. Should some ·over-eager grinding lead to serious injury on the dance floor, or should a fire suddenly ignite onstage, we would be covered: The event was insured for over a million dollars' worth of damages. All of the liabilities covered in the insurance document were specifically enumerated, save one striking exception: Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). Instead of specifying a payment limit, the column offered an ominous summary: "Included." As the evening wound down and sweaty concert-goers streamed toward the exits, the other staff members smiled and congratulated each other on a job well done. As my peers celebrated, I sighed with relief knowing that no one had suffered any injuries to speak of except, perhaps, those in the front row, whom Girltalk, a.k.a. Greg Gillis, had doused with beer. Although I was proud of the work we had done, as the rest of the crew packed up and disappeared into the night I wondered what would have happened if the policy's final clause had come into play. While no one shrank from the responsibility of keeping excited freshmen off stacked

tables, how could the staff have countered an armed posse of political dissidents or defused a time bomb wired to the audio-visual equipment? I suppose my fears of a terrorist attack at a Girltalk concert seemed paranoid and absurd. But having paid several hundred dollars to defray the potential cost of precisely such an occurrence, I had a vivid sense of how close disaster was. After a night as risk-assessor, I had lost my easy sense of security at Yale. s farfetched as my premonitions of bedlam might seem, they were not entirely unfounded. Over the past four decades, four bombs have exploded at Yale. In 1971, at the height of the New Haven trials of Black Pan-

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thers Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, two devices detonated in the basement of the Ingalls Ice Rink. No one was harmed, and the perpetrators were never identified. ''In the 1960s and 70s there was some terrorism directed at universities," explains History Professor Beverly Gage. "A lot of national groups criticized the institutions for colluding with the government and the military." Indeed, during the Seale trial, Black Panthers stayed in Yale dormitories and protested with students against the ongoing prosecution. Incensed by the "war" they believed the FBI was waging against radical groups like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, Yalies clashed with the police and the National Guard in the name of intellectual and ideological fr~edom. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, American universities were symbols of both institutional oppression and individual expression. The two bombs at the hockey rink were aimed not at the students, but at the Institution. Two decades years later, Ted Kaczynski saw Yale as an institutional Moloch, a symbol of capitalist society's descent into technological dependency and environmental degredation. In 1993, the U nabomber mailed an explosive device to the Watson Hall office of Computer Science Professor David Gerlernter. Although Gerlernter was not killed by the blast, he sustained permanent damage to his eye and hand. Kaczynski, who was apprehended three years later in Montana, is currently serving a life sentence for this and for other bombings .

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Most recently, on May 21st, 2003, at 4:38 p.m., an explosion rocked the library of the Yale Law School in the middle of its exam week, only days before Commencement, and one day after President Bush had raised the nation's threat level to "Orange." Though the bomb caused no injuries, it destroyed several rare books and prompted an eight-day investigation by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. On May 30th, the Law School reopened with an official statement that the occurrence did not "indicate or hear the marks of an international terrorist incident." The bombing remains unsolved. It also stands largely forgotten. When discussing the incident with current students, the few who do recall the explosion have only vague recollections of reading about it in the news. The blast occurred at a time when most undergraduates had already left for summer vacation. Still, it seems troublesome that at a place as historically-literate as Yale, the Law School bombing has nearly vanished into obscurity and apathy. To unravel the mystery enshrouding the 2003 explosion, we must ask the question: What does Yale represent to terrorists in the 21st century? "You can never anticipate what will happen or when," suggests Martha Highsmith, Deputy Secretary and Director of Security programs at the University. Her staff monitors campus alarms, oversees the construction of new buildings, and communicates with federal agencies such as the FBI and the Secret Service to remain abreast of any potential threats. ccAfter 9/11, we conducted a comprehensive review of all facilities that might pose a potential threat to the larger community," she explains, "places like labs with hazardous materials." After this review, the Office of the Secretary installed the nowubiquitous electronic ID readers on doors and gates across the U niversity and revised its emergency plans. February 2007

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·So what does warrant the title o terrorism?

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''We · worked with people in at-risk facilities, figuring who gets in and out and with what," Highsmith describes. "We now are at a constant level of preparation. If the government raises its threat assessment, we review what that means for us and adapt our procedures as necessary." Faced with the daunting responsibility of safeguarding roughly 12,000 students and faculty as well as multibillion dollar assets, Highsmith makes no concessions about the current state of world affairs. "The world has become a more dangerous place since 9/11," she posits, "But do I think Yale has become a safer place since then? I do. We have not eliminated crime nobody has but burglaries are down, violence is down, and people feel like their community .1s more secure. " If a· terrorist attack had occurred at the November concert, the Office of Risk Management would have processed the claim and directed it toward the federal government for consideration under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). The law, signed by President Bush in November ,of 2002 and extended in 2005, allows the Treasury to defray 90% of the cost of any damage done to private property by a "Certified Act of Terrorism." Due for review by December 31 st of this year, TRIA is intended to supplement the insufficient capacity of private companies to cover damages incurred by large-scale acts of terrorism. In order to be "certi:fi ed," the incident must have been intended to harm

human life, infrastructure, or property, and must be carried out by or in the name of foreign interests for the express purpose of alte~ing governmental policy through coercion or violence against civilians. Just how massive, then, must these strikes be in order to secure government aid? s<? massive that the bombing at the Yale Law School, which scorched a ceiling, demolished a wall separating two classrooms, and crushed the cabinets of the alumni reading room, thus sending rubble and debris tumbling d-own a stairwell into an open portion of the library, did not qualify for TRIA aid. "We paid for the damage through our regular insurance channels," relates Marjorie Lemmon, the University's Risk Manager. ·"The explosion was deemed an act of vandalism." So what does warrant the title of terrorism? If the federal government recognizes only certain acts, how are we to define or prepare for future acts of violence? Several months after the con•

cert, I called the New Haven branch of the FBI to inquire . into the bureau's stance on the local threat of terrorism. How likely were vre ,t~ get hit? And what could I an Elm City citizen do to stop it? I had found the number of the office's Media Representative, Speci~l Agent Victoria Woods, on the branch's webpage. After a couple of suspenseful rings, a pinched female voice int.onecJ on the ' . other end. "New Haven FBI. How may I help you?" After explaiping , ... "' my interest, I was placed on hold, and, some thirty seconds later, connected to the press office. I reached an answering machine which gave me another number, which led to another answering machine: "Thank you for calling the pre~s ~~fie~ of the New Haven FBI. We are not here to take your call right now. Please leave your message and we'll respond · to your inquiry as soon as possible." I wanted to talk to the FBI about my apocalyptic visions that Yale would be blown up. After all, we had educated the President so •

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reviled abroad. We are a symbol of exclusivity, Western values, and American knowledge. The more I thought abou.t it, the more convinced I became of a pending attack. I wanted to ask the FBI whom they suspected had bombed the Law School in 2003. I wanted to know what was counted as a "Certified, act of terror, and why. As I began to recite my name and number into the receiver, I was struck with a new anxie~y. Before the Girltalk concert, I had downloaded his album which it• self illegally samples hundreds of songs and burned copies for my friends. I hung up the phone. Sure, security makes campus safer. But it also makes those it protects warier. Living under the vigil of the Office of the Secretary and the federal government, one might begin 'to ask whether their ceaseless preparation for annihilation fosters a sure belief in one's own safety, or a state of constant fear. If such a tremendous bureaucracy is needed to shelter us from the malevolent forces at our doorstep, doesn't its existence make us even more afraid? These days, those ·who are charged with our protection can be more intimidating than the forces from which they protect us. Though certainly less frightening than an actual act of terrorism, the <TRIN clause at the end of that insurance form had been plenty terrifying. It seemed to acknowledge that if the worst were to happen, there would be nothing we could do.

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A celebratory concert honoring musicologist Kerala J. Snyder, author of Dieterich Buxtehude: Organist in Liibeck, on the occasion of the tercentenary of the composer's death. Featuring performances by Yale faculty and students (rom Yale College, Yale School of Music, and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. · Tuesday, February

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Reception will follow at jonathan Edwards College Great Hall.

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Ben Lasman, a freshman in Berkeley College, is on the staff ofTNJ. February 2007

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The exterior of New Haven Academy, a small charter school in Hamden.

thing would seem like a sick joke if it weren't true. But I still found it difficult to explain this outrage to sixteen and seventeen-year olds-the very group the policy affects. New Haven Academy is a small charter high school housed in a bland glass box of a building in Hamden. The curriculum is experimental, and my student audience was working on an interesting senior project: They had to choose an issue of social importance and organize around it. With the assistance of a Yale faculty member, I had contacted the principal, explained my cause, and negotiated an hour of class time on a Friday afternoon to present the issue and discuss the fundamentals of organizing a social justice campaign. Hoping to elicit a chord of sympathy, I recited a long list of injustices: Connecticut is out of step with the rest of the nation in regards to its juvenile criminal policies. Unfairly, even non-violent juvenile offenders in Connecticut must go through the adult justice system. Once convicted, they abuse from guards and older prisoners and are given access to neither therapy, drug treatment, nor the many educational resources offered in juvenile facilities. A felony record disqualifies juveniles from receiving Pell Grants for college and bars them from a number of jobs; juveniles tried as adults are more likely to be re-incarcerated than those tried as juveniles. Finding myself at the front of a classroom in-

arlier this month, I stood in front of a high-school class and tried my best to make eye contact. But high-school was nerve-wracking enough the first time around. I started out like any new kid: I made a joke about not being able to find a date. It got a decent laugh (apparently, it didn't seem that implausible). Then, armed with facts, figures, and handouts on juvenile justice reform, I asked these 27 New Haven teenagers to help me organize in support of a bill to change what I view to be one of the most unfair judicial policies in the country. I explained what has always shocked me: Connecticut is one of only three states that automatically charges sixteen and seventeen-year-olds as adults for any crime they commit (New York and North Carolina are the other two). Connecticut also sends more juveniles to prison (383 last year) than any other state. This policy disproportionately affects those already at risk: kids with untreated emotional disabilities whose parents have them arrested because they can't afford psychological treatment; kids on parole who go to jail for statutory offenses like chronic truancy; wards of the state who run away from foster homes (technically a violation of a court order and, hence, an incarcerable offence). The list goes on. The issue has always seemed morally clear to me. There are children in prison-some in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day-for crimes so minor that the whole

February 2007

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never even seen the inside of a prison. juveniles. Just look: Juveniles placed in prison with hardened adult of- He doesn't know anyone inside. He has no personal stake in this at all." fenders are several times more likely And they'd be right I am just to commit crimes once released. an outsider. My confidence wavered, Another student chimed in. He and I realized how removed I was had heard that kids in prison have to from this traumatic system of injoin gangs, and that once you're in a justice. But distanced as I may have gang, you're in it for life; that a lot seemed, I remembered being sixteen of kids who come in for small-time stuff leave beholden · to some re- and sitting in a classroom like this, enraged by the unfairness I saw evally dangerous people. While I had never heard of this ·specific dilemma, erywhere. Maybe I didn't have any a personal stake, and maybe this whole based on my experience watching films and TV shows about prison, "fair" thing was just my own sense of justice acting up. Nonetheless, it was it seemed pretty plausible. One girl stead of behind a desk, I was forced why I was there. says that her cousin just got out of to confront a question I hadn't anticWe spent the last fifteen minprison, where he'd been saved by the ipated: To what extent was I encourutes of class brainstorming a plan to Lord. Now he goes to church every aging these students to form their change the current law. Any ideas? Sunday. I didn't know what to do own conclusions, and to what extent No? Well, I said, at Yale we've been with that, so I just nodded. was I leading them to mine? Who was calling legislators (it's really easy, All the while, . I was thinking I to come swooping in with statistics, and we'll pass out their contact inthat I didn't ·have the authority to and lecture the New Haven youth formation after class) and giving lecture anyone let alone students on what was good for them? In a city presentations to other organizations whose friends and siblings have been in which youth violence is on the that might be interested in helpaffected by the injustice I was fightrise, there is often little sympathy for ing us raise awareness. I told them ing. I kept expecting someone to juvenile offenders. "The situation is · we could start by figuring out what jump up and expose me as a fraud; bad,'' I imagined them saying. nThis places in their communities might ''He'd never even been to Connectiis no time for your statistics." be interested in rallying around cut before his freshman year. He's I was expounding on the long-term benefits of juvenile as opposed to adult detention facilities when one student raised his hand and told me that, according to his friend who was recently released from juvie, kids there have access to Playstation 3 and can curse out their guards and nothing happens to them. He wondered how juvenile inmates are supposed to learn right from wrong if they can do whatever they want without consequences. With a handful of printouts and no actual experience in a juvenile detention center, I didn't know how to answer. A fellow organizer came to my rescue, explaining that the student's idea that prison should "reform" inmates through harsh treatment is an example of "deterrence" the idea that • if you make prison really unpleasant, people will be less likely to commit future crimes. Pointing to a handout, she told him that, if he looked halfway down the page, he would see that statistics prove the ineffectiveness of deterrence, especially among

Connecticut also

to prison 383 last

at risk.

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THE NEw JouRNAL

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the issue. The students had ideas: James works with the NAACP, Peter thought Myspace.com could be a good place to advertise, Jess said.that her church might be interested, and Sylvia wasn't quite sure, but definitely wanted to help. We finished by passing out signup sheets asking them to fill in their contact information and list things they might do for the campaign. The afternoon went more smoothly than I had anticipated. We're still in touch with the school and plan to · work with them in the future. I was relieved that no one had called my bluff. It was probably evident that I knew far less about things like prison and youth crime than some of the kids who had shared their personal stories. I like to think that, as transparently inexperienced as I may have been, the students forgave and encouraged me. It was a Friday afternoon and most of them were probably more concerned with the coming weekend. Still, I thought, maybe I had taught them a little about organizing, about social change, and about making a difference. Maybe I wasn't a total fraud after all. Class was dismissed. The teens left for their weekend, and I was left with my statistics, my angst, and my hope that things could change.-

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NPORT COLLEGE . . . TER'S TEA Thursday March 1st, 2007 4:00p.m.

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Brodsky's first major work was created in 1997, the photographic essay Buena Memoria (Good Memory, la tnarca editot:a), a multimedia experience of photos, video, and texts that c0mbined shows the personal and collective evolution of a class of the high school Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, tnarked 1by two "n1issing" students due to the State Terrorism. Between 1997 and 2006, the exhibit was presented more than a hundred titnes in twenty countries, by itself or as ae missing and murdered during the military dictatorship. Brodsky's work seeks to coinntunicate to the new generations the experience of the state terrorism in Argentine in a different way, based on emotion and sensate experience, such that the transmission of it will generate a real and profound knowledge based on dialogue atnong the different generations affected by the consequences of the rnilitary dictator. '

Nick Handler, a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College, is Business Manager of

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Growing New Haven's biotech industry and local economy

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Davenport College Ma...'iter's Tea with Chef Ann Cooper, "Renegade Lt.tnch Lady'' tron1 Bt~rkcley, CA. ,,

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THURSDAY, APR 26

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IN THE KITCH :EN

PLAYING \VITH FOOD: THREE CENTURIES OF SCIENCE

Harold .f\.1cGee; author of ON FOOD AND COOKING; co-sponsored by the Centt~r for Environtnental Law and ·Policy and the "Plant to Plate•' seminar series, Yale Center for Bioethics' Genetically Modified Plants \Vorking Group ' Law Sclwol .Auditoriitnt, 127 vVall St; reception~follows

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Films on Food and Agriculture: KING CORN: A DOCUMENTARY ( 92 min); follo,ved by panel "\Vith Ian Cheney and Kurt Ellis ~Vhitne)' Hu1na,nities Center, 53 Wall St Films co-sponsored by the Yale Sustainable Food Project~ C-oalition OIJ. Agriculture, Food, and the Environment; and Food from the Earth

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ALL EVENTS SUPPORTED BY THE GEORGE AND SHELLY LAZARUS FUND FOR SUSTAINABLE FOOD AND AGRJCULTURE AT YALE • • •

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