Volume 40 - Issue 3 by The New Journal at Yale

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Publisher Lauren Hat"fison

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Acting Publisher Nick Handler

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Editor-in-Chief Jonny Dach •

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Managing Editors Nicole Allan, Nick Handler Designer Rachel Engler

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Senior Editors Emify Koh, Sophia Lear

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Production Manager Jordan Jacks

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Associate Editors Tess Dearing, Aditi Ramakrishnan, Mitchell Reich •

On-line Editors Ben T .a.sman, Ali Seitz Photo Editor Ben'!)' Sachs

receive a 5% discount with this ad •

Copy Editor Laura Bennett

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Featuring the finest selection of b~t:ter eye wear at guaranteed lowest prices.

Research Director LAura Zax

Sta Amy Fish, at Hayden, Matthew Lee, Brooks Swett

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Members and Directors Joshua Civin, Peter B. Cooper, Tom Griggs, Roger Cohn, Brooks Kelley, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Kathrin Lassila, Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, David Slifka, Fred Strebeigh, Thomas Strong, John Swansburg Advisors . Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Richard Connif~ Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin Friends Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Emily Bazelon, Anson M. Beard, Jr., Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Brant, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, · Ca1lahan,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 Gol.flman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald HW<\11& Walter Jacob, Jane Kamensky, Tina Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, 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 Sir npson, Adina Propasco and David Sulsman, Thon1as Strong, Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Wilson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stent Yergin

'!HE NEW TOURNAL

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The magaz1ne about Yale

Volume 40, Number 3 December 2007

and New Haven .

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CASH FOR CHANGE

Student microcreditors venture into town. f?y Alexis Fitts

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Music MoGuLs School of Music out of tune with undetg:raduates. f?y Mitchell Reich

REcoNCILIATION tttetru· Project ~ stories of national violence.

TRUTH AND

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f?y Pria Anand

HosPITAL TRIP Ketamine experiments use human subjects. f?y Nick Handler

THE VEIL Profiles in courage.

LIFTING

f?y Aditi Ramakrishnan

THE S ECRET GARDEN Growing farniliar with Yale's botanic collection. lryMai Wang

34 KIDs IN THE HALL

Yale workers struggle with child care. by Kate Selker

4 10

The Profile

The Critical Angle

Points of Departure Into the Woodshop lry Sarah Nutman

UCS

ry Ben T .asman

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42 The Personal Essay

La Vie Boheme lry Jessica Svendsen

6 4

Endnote

The Rhodes Warrior lry Matthew Lee

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, CT 06520. Office address: 305 Crown Street. All cont~ts Copyright 2006 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher and editor in chief is prohibited. While this magazine is published by Yale College students, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seventy-five hundred copies of each issue are distJibuted hee to members of the Yale and New Haven community. Subscriptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One year, $18. Two years, $32 The New Journal is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by • Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must indude address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication.

December 2007

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bee. Bada-pop. O'Connell is a slight figure with a thatch of gray curls and an easy, bluesy manner. Outside of . class, he wears a frayed velour zip-up, a t-shirt with metallic lettering, and jeans. He sports wire-rimmed spectacles and an ample moustache. His gravelly voice is slow and rhythmic. O'Connell is .o n a first-name basis with all the jazz greats: Miles, Ella, Dizzy. When he speaks about jazz, he leans forward across the table and drags . . out his words: · "Charlie Parker was. a. seminal. force." · He enunciates carefully. "And little kids six-year-olds are digging him. They walk into a store when music is playing and say 'That's Miles • ON ONE WAJ.I . OF CRAIG O'CONNEJJ.'S Davis, that's John Coltrane.' They're • first grade classroom is a huge collage blowing the parents away." in garish primary colors: floating O'Connell has been teaching for 36 saxophones played by disembodied paper years, but he's not entirely sure how he heads, magazine letters reading "JAZZ" ended up in the field. In college, he was and "BIRD LIVES," music notes cut a sociology major and philosophy minor. from construction paper, neon buildings '~t the time I had to make a decision. The plastered on a sharp blue sky. Despite Vietnam war 'was raging, for one thing, and the frenetic ·jumble of color and angles, that was not my first choice," he explains. there's an odd harmony to the spastic, ''I had to make a living, I like kids. It all geometric parts: the buildings tilt toward · added up." For a while, O'Connell played each other conspiratorially and the notes jazz in the classroom, but that was about . dance in artful clusters. O'Connell stands it. "Kinda like the Miles Davis tunes you in front of it all, gesturing madly. "ZA- . might hear on the Weather Channel," he baza, BOO-zaba, ZEE-zah RO-ni," he says with a lopsided grin. , His idea began to germinate when intones, and a gleeful chorus of six-yearold voices repeats after him. his students were gathered on the floor For the past five years, O'Connell has during their daily afternoon meeting. A girl been teaching jazz to first graders at St. raised her hand and said, "I have a dog." Thomas's Day School on Whitney Avenue. O'Connell was initially uninterested, all It's more than background music; he's too aware of the dangers of meandering wrapped his whole curriculum around six-year olds and their attention spans. the genre. Geography lessons stem from "I don'.t particularly want to hear dog songs that have a flavor a pulsing Latin stories at the end of the day because beat, a Middle Eastern melody. "I take out everyone has a dog and everyone wants the map and start talking about it," says to tell their stories," he explains. But the O'Connell. He plays be-bop so that his little gid continued, "His name is Miles." students learn to distinguish syllables and O'Connell's interest was piqued. When turn sounds into nonsense words. At this the girl informed him that the dog also age, he explains, kids are learning to read, had a middle name Davis O'Connell and jazz is a great way to teach phonemic decided to test the waters. "Do you see awareness. "One of the most important that poster right behind me?" he told the core ingredients of being a reader is being students. "That's a man whose name is able to hear and discriminate sound," says Miles Davis. Did you ever hear of him?" O'Connell. ''Wordplay is an . essential For the most part, they hadn't. But when ingredient." So when Ella Fitzgerald scats O'Connell put on a Charlie Parker tune in "How High the Moon," the students called "Now is the Time," the kids jumped dissect the sounds and write them out on up and started dancing. a dry erase board. Oo-papa da. YabbaSo he sat down, wrote a curriculum '

ouse azz

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comprised of ten lesson plans, and sent it off to the National Music Foundation. "I figured that when I submitted this/' he says, "that they would think I was either out of my mind, or that what I was doing was actually pretty profound." He won first place in the American Music Education Initiative, and was awarded a thousand dollar grant to jumpstart his jazz program. Now, the impact of the project has rippled throughout the school. There's a jazz club for parents, and O'Connell recently took 7 5 parents and kids on a field trip to a club called "The Jazz Standard" in New York City. These first graders some of whom are still on the cusp of literacy are learning how to identify musicians and styles of music, and loving it. "The kids are asking for Dizzy Gillespie CDs in their Christmas stockings," O'Connell says proudly. Today, his lesson is based on a book called "The Jazz Fly," which comes with a supplementary CD. The students are sitting on the floor, cross-legged and bouncing. A boy with a cowlick plays the air sa~ophone. Theodore, . a wide-eyed seven-year old with a shock of unruly hair, declares that he loves jazz "because you get to move to it a little bit." Connor's favorite musician is John Coltrane, although "that's a hard question." Priscilla likes music and all things art-related. "I like to make creations," she says solemnly. O'Connell gives . all the students whiteboards and tells them, '~fter you write out what you hear, let's change every b to a p and see what happens!" This was a crucial mistake. "ZA-baza, BOO-zaba" becomes "ZA-paz a, POO-zapa," and the word "POO" is too much for the kids to handle. The room dissolves into giggles. But O'Connell continues to conduct the chant with magisterial ease, mouthing the syllables and nodding his head to the rhythm of the song. All around him, the walls are lined with posters: Sonny Rollins is too cool in an icy shade of blue, with the collar of his white shirt flopped lackadaisically to the side. Theolonius Monk, photographed in milky yellow tones, stares upwards. He. has a goatee, dark glasses, and a tipped-back hat. Dizzy. Gillespie wears a beret and ' wide-rimmed glasses. His eyelids are low and sluggish and his mouth is curled as 'IHE NEW JOURNAL

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if at some private joke. Unflappable and infinitely smooth, they look on coolly as O'Connell taps his foot to the saxophone riffs and fluid beats.

.,...--Laura Bennett

's BOOTYLICIOUS BURN STARTS IN HALF AN

hour, and the studio looks ready to go. Barely-clothed, shining bodies parade across stacks of fitness magazines. A rainbow of rubber balls and handweights brightens one corner of the room. The lights cut through the strip mall parking lot, ca11ing through the dark · October night: New Haven women, it's time to work those glutes. But the door is locked. "Back in 10 minutes," says the sign. Inside, Mubarakah Ibrahim, Certified Personal Trainer, is praying. Ibrahim is the founder of Balance • Fitness, a women's fitness studio on Whalley Avenue. She's also an orthodox Sunni Muslim. Without an inch of muscled skin exposed, Ibrahim is not who you'd expect to find here, at a studio celebrated by locals as a center of female empowerment. She covers all but her face and hands around non-related males. Her headscarf, or hijab ( literally "to cover" in Arabic) represents modesty and morality. Ibrahim may be modest, but she's not meek. The hijab, she says, is "the epitome of empowerment... it forces people to look at you for who you are." She flashes a big, white-toothed smile. "I tend to have to prove myself a lot more often than other people do,_but I really don't have a problem with that." She's not camera-shy, either. Her grinning face graces newspapers, TV December 2007

stations, and blogs across · the country. "The press loves me," she boasts. Half Cherokee and half African-American, she presents herself as the quintessential American. Ibrahim designs her own workout outfits with an eye for fashion.her trademark is · a long-sleeved · pink camouflage shirt~ pink headscarf, and pink-and-white Nikes and plans to launch her own clothing line next spring. This year, she toured New England to promote her book, Fat Loss 10: The 10 Commandments rif Fat Loss. Despite all this publicity, one bit of press tops all others. For Ibrahim, life is divided into before and after "the show." Oprah's show. "The show'' made Ibrahim America's champion of fitness for Muslim women. "Muslim women don't have bikini season," Ibrahim says. ''You can literally go 24 hours without thinking about the rolls on your stomach. It isn't until you get in the shower that you say, 'Oh look, I have a roll!"' Unbothered by their flab and uncomfortable in mixed-gender gyms, Muslim women, Ibrahim says, tend to steer clear of fitness regimes. But according to Ibrahim, they are taking a growing interest in physical fitness. Through her non-profit, Fit Muslimah, Ibrahim organized a Muslim women's fitness conference in July that drew almost three hundred women and girls to New Haven. Ibrahim's name has traveled as far as Turkey, where a fitness clothing company sent her a Muslim running outfit. "I'm like the Muslim Denise Austin!" she laughs, referring to the blonde, often scantily-dad fitness video star. At the same time, Ibrahim has no qualms about helping non-Muslim women look good in their bikinis. ''I try not to judge why people want to be in good shape.," she says. ''I justgive you the fitness. What you do with it is up to you." The women who show up for Fat Loss 101 and Bootylicious Burn range from middleaged bottle blondes to Hasidic Jews. ''It's all shapes, sizes, cultures, ethnicities," woman says. ''It's an environment that crosses all those barriers." While there is no dress code at the studio, Balance devotees have adopted their own veil of sorts: the white curtains that sometimes cover the all-glass storefront. Orig1na11y used only for Muslim clients, who uncover inside the studio, the curtains are increasingly popular with non-Mus1irns. •

"I'm finding that more and more women actually want me to put the curtains up. They say, 'I don't want anybody to see me work out!"' According to one, they are happy to escape the "meat market" of coed gyms. "There's no pick up-factor," says a tall woman layered with silver jewelry. But even if you can run from men, you can't escape the eyes of Ibrahimespecially when you're showing up for Bootylicious Burn. As the hour approaches, Ibrahim unlocks the door, draws the curtains, · and changes into slightly shorter sleeves. She winds the ends of her lavender scarf around her head and tucks them in, making a turban; her fingers move with the confident grace of habit. A woman in hfjab walks in, heads to the bathroom to change, and reemerges, bare-headed, in a Fit Muslimah t-shirt. "That's my signature statement." Ibrahim points to the shirt. "Fitness is not a look. It's a state of being. Looking good is just a side effect." In the middle of the shirt, a cartoon woman in a headscarf lifts a weight, demonstrating Commandment X of Fat Loss 10: "Thou shall lift steel." On the aerobics floor, a full wall of mirrors confronts each client with her own image and lets Ibrahim keep an eye out for slackers. Her soft, girlish voice occasionally sharpens to a trainer's bark, rising above the beat of techno-mix Beyonce, pushing the panting women to tighten their abs and deepen their squats. "Oh, I'm feeling the burn," Ibrahim calls out. "It's the Bootylicious Burn!"

-Amy Fish ·.·

eec WHEN

CHRIS

MICHEL

BEGAN

WORKING

at the White House, he spent a lot of time listening to President Bush talk. He learned the cadence and rhythm of his words, the way he chose his phrases, the natural structure and logical patterns of the President's speech. Michel was studying not only what the President said

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but also, even more importantly, how Secretary of State John Negroponte. Despite the power they wield, many he said it. Michel listened to him give speeches, interviews, informal talks, and speechwrite.rs are young. Michel, U.rbahn, any other utterances he could find. and Jordan entered the field shortly after It was essential preparation. After graduation. In many ways, their youth graduating from Yale in 2003 as a history is to their benefit. Speechwriting "is major, Michel has spent most of his time something for the young to do," says as a speechwrite.r for the president. He Jordan, because it is in youth that people has drafted addresses for Bush on topics are "able to absorb someone's voice and .ranging from Cabinet nominees to the write in a compelling manner for them." Iraq War. The speeches are unified less Perhaps young writers still crafting their by their content than by their voice- own identities find it easier to adopt the President Bush's voice, one that Michel identities of others. painstakingly learned and internalized. Yet there is another, more practical Like all speechw.rite.rs, Michel .reason for .the preponderance of youth .recognized the need to ~aptu.re someone in speechwriting. In Washington, D.C., and wane with the currents else's style and write the speech his boss, careers .wax . . . o.r the "principal," would have written of electoral politics, and the young if he had the time. Keith U.rbahn, an travel lightly. U.rbahn has observed eloquent speaker himself, describes the that there always seem to be new jobs process as "synergy." In his experience as in speechwriting _and communications. a speechwriter for. the former Secretary "People in D.C. who work in those of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he noticed jobs tend to be young tend to be very that the best writers disappear behind their young because there are so many of employers. "The ultimate compliment," those jobs," he says. he says, "is, 'that .really sounded like This same phenomenon means that Rumsfeld, that really was Rumsfeld."' most young speechwrite.rs do not pursue Though modern politics is propelled it as a lifelong career. As Jordan explains, by clearly defined egos, these egos do not · . this is just "the nature of political jobs.belong to speechwriters. The profession they have a certain shelf life." Once Rice .requires not only that the speechwrite.r leaves the Department of State, Jordan's assume the voice of another, 'but also that job is over. She has already begun to think he relinquish his ownership of the words. ahead, and her future prospects lie outside "This is a · profession that demands its . speech writing, perhaps in journalism. members to totally .renounce their pride Michel, too, has begun to contemplate of authorship," Michel says. Though the future. Though he .recognizes many involved in the creative process of · speech writers choose to leave because composition, the speechwrite.r is a mere "the job is taXing and indeed often leads conduit for the ideas, and even speech to burnout," his .reasons for leaving are patterns, of his employer. "There are a lot different. The hard-earned familiarity of great writers who wouldn't be able to he gained with Bush left such a strong deal with this forced anonymity," Michel impression that he is not interested in adds. "I think that's why speechwrite.rs are writing for anyone else. ''When you spend something of a unique breed.'' four years writing for one person, as I · At the same time, speechwrite.rs wield have for President Bush, you form a pretty substantial power. Though speeches are intense bond with the person." There is edited by colleagues, policy-makers, and the something defiantly loyal in Michel's plans principals themselves, the .responsibility to resign from the field. "I'm not sure I'd for drafting them is firmly in the hands of be able to pick up someone else's voice," the speechwrite.r. As Urbahn says, 'cyou he continues. "And, even if I could, I'm can't have a policy without being able to not sure I'd want to." communicate it. You can't have rhetoric -Alena Gribskov without ideas." Speechwriters have not only a stake, but also a voice in this legacy. They are "part of ·the historic tradition of American rhetoric," says Elise Jordan '04, who writes speeches for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Deputy

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ros MOST YALE STUDENTS KNOW THAT "THE

file" exists. They imagine a modest rna- · nila folder, stuffed with official academic documents, nestled safely in their college dean's filing cabinet. Few students, however, know that tucked among their neatly-typed admissions application, crisp transcripts, and professor recommendations lies a hand-written paragraph filled with reflections on their friends, mental health, and life prospects up through the end of freshman year, anyway. It is private, unheralded, and rarely discovered. It is the last concrete legacy of their freshman counselor. Max Scholz, a J.E. senior, stumbled upon his evaluation while working in the Yale College Dean's office. Scholz, who maintained a prickly relationship with his freshman counselor, was written up as a "drunkard" who failed to concentrate on his studies and broke the Fro-Co suite's Christmas tree. Scholz resents the fact that his freshman mistakes continue to haunt his file, and he questions whether it should be the prerogative of freshman counselors to evaluate their fellow students. Ya1ina Disla, a .former Davenport Ethnic Counselor, has a different perspective_ The freshman evaluation, she claims, doesn't disclose "top secret info" or "juicy gossip." "Confidential information is usually not written," she says, explaining that the report. . is not meant to read like a tabloid but rather is "simply to give a .recap or background of the student something that might have changed from their college application."

'IHE NEW JOURNAL

Ethan Heard, a Calhoun freshman counselor from 2006 to 2007, considers the reports to be "mini-biographies" rather than assessments of a student's undergraduate exploits. George Levesque, Dean of Freshman Affairs, echoes Disla and Heard, adding that the reports encapsulate• a student's academic interests, extracurricular involvement, major challenges, and key successes. During his term as dean of Berkeley College, Levesque found the reports "helpful but not earth shattering" and "almost never contained anything I didn't already kflow." J.E. Dean Kyle Farley agrees that the reports were not especially insightful, even during his first year at the college. The reports describe a freshman's transition period, and, as Farley points out, recurring accounts of stress overload or flirtations with alcohol could be "true of any Yale freshman." Though freshman reports can't measure up to a cultivated relationship with a college dean or master, officials often refer to them while writing letters of recommendation. J.E. Master Gary Haller recounts the daunting task of crafting a recommendation for a student he never knew. Ten years after graduating from Yale, the alum called Haller for an academic recommendation, despite never having met the master during his time at the University. Haller dug into "dead storage" and used the report, along with the student's application essays and transcripts, to piece together a letter. If these reports are as humdrum and harmless as the masters and deans insist, why are they kept under wraps? The Buckley Amendment, or Family Educational Right to Privacy Act, ensures students' rights to access university records pertaining to them. Yet William Sledge, a former Calhoun master, acknowledges that keeping the .files "so strictly under lock and key makes it practically difficult to view them." And the statute is vague in regard to circurnstances under which outsiders such as a master or dean can view these files. Haller points out, however, that advertising the reports creates another set of logistical problems. When Scholz wrote an angry blurb about the reports in last December's issue of ].E.'s humor magazine, Temptations, Haller feared a mobilization" en masse" of curious students December 2007

at the dean's office door. Haller's greatest staking their decaying mom-and-pop concern is that broader awareness about store on a new approach they hope will the reports could damage relationships catch fire: Connecticut's first biodiesel between freshman counselors and their pump. The Cochrans aren't sure what the freshmen. . Despite Scholz's resentment of his market for the alternative fuel will be. counselor's negative comments; college Customers at their gas station and grocery administrators insist that potentially store are curious, said Rick. "Some people damning information in the reports does wonder what it is: Will it hurt my car? Will not affect recommendations or incite it run?" But the first month of sales has disciplinary · action. The reports, says been promising. "It's selling just as well Haller, provide only a brief snapshot of as the regular diesel.'' In early November, a student's performance. Haller draws an the Berkshire Country Store was selling its analogy between the freshman report and biodiesel for $3.65 per gallon, only about an isolated science grade on a student's a nickel more than the regular diesel sold academic transcript. "If he or she is down the street. a humanities person with a particular The Cochrans' livelihood depends on aversion to science," he says, "this whether consumers believe sustainability one grade would represent a distorted is worth that nickel. Unlike conventional diesel fuel, which is derived from picture." . Like that isolated science grade, the petroleum, biodiesel is derived from freshman counselor report a short, vegetable oil or animal fats. As pure hand-written paragraph, cradled within the biodiesel begins to congeal at low protective walls of a student's permanent temperatures, New Englanders typically file is but a minor piece of a student's opt for a biofuel blend to ensure cold biographical puzzle. Innocuous, freely weather operability. The industry standard has become B20 20 percent biodiesel, 80 accessible, but curiously surreptitious. percent petrodiesel which is operational -Jacqueline Jove down to negative five degrees Fahrenheit. · This blend promises about a 16 percent reduction in C02 emissions. Biodiesel burns normally in any diesel engine and doesn't require modifications to the car. Gus Kellogg, founder of Greenleaf Biofuels in Milford, CT, explained that despite a growing demand for biodiesel fuel, stations franchised by oil companies like Exxon -or Chevron are prevented from marketing the fuel of independent distributors. "The real delay has been the fact that at branded stations, the owners have contracts," he says. "So, if you are a Mobil station, you have to sell Mobil oil." Like the Cochrans, Kellogg thinks that biodiesel can be marketed by independent IF You DRIVE To W EST C o RNWAI.I ., AS FEW retailers as something that sets them apart bother to do these days, you'll find rnore from the big name brands. ''As soon as collapse than innovation. A tiny comer we get the first station, there's going to be of a tiny township in northwestern a domino effect. Because it's something Connecticut, West Cornwall is far from that makes them a little bit unique." anywhere and even further from the There are some signs that enthusiasm cutting edge. As a recent issue of the local for biodiesel is spreading. Connecticut Cornwall Chronicle reported, owners of the diesel drivers who are worried that troubled Berkshire Country Store, with the carbon footprint of a trip to West "its gas pumps long silenced and in need Cornwall will cancel out the · benefits of replacement and its deli counter in of burning biodiesel can visit the Santa need of business," decided to take action. Energy fueling station in ew Haven. Beth Cochran and her husband Rick are Although the station serves commercial •

umpe

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customers, inclucling Yale's fleet of transit a special divisional major. Rather than trying to bend preexisting buses, it has been known to accommodate a handful of biodiesel-loyal independent disciplines to their interests, special drivers. Other distributors, like Greenleaf divisional majors construct their own Biofuels and Hale Hill Farm Biofuels, academic infrastructure. Sarah Kabay even offer home delivery options. TD '08 is majoring in Poverty and A grand opening ceremony to Development. She studies social inequity, celebrate the new pump at the Berkshire its causes, and its potential remedies, Country Store, delayed to accommodate taking classes in economics, history, the governor's ribbon-cutting schedule, is anthropology, sociology, and area studies. in the works for some time before the new "The courses I wanted to take did not year. While not expecting record biodiesel . fit into any pre-existing major," Kabay . . sales, the owners hope that they can help explains. Another student, Mona Elsayed • educate Connecticut drivers. "The small JE '08 is majoring in Art Semiotics "an mom-and-pop shops don't make a lot of ' interdisciplinary approach to modern money anyway," Rick Cochran confided. visual media." Elsayed combines classes ''We did it more as an awareness thing." on aesthetics, theory, and visual and material culture with studio classes in -Kate Williams the Art and Architecture schools. Kabay ' and Elsayed are part of a tradition of a small number of students each yearusually only one or two who succeed in :?·.:·. . .?': . .·· .· . . . designing their own major. . ., The options are limidess, but only a few are plausible. Students hoping to major in Mario Kart will be disappointed . • • The Special Division Major is only for the determined and self-disciplined. • According to Elsayed, "It becomes a sort of survival of the fittest the DUS will suggest that the idea is maybe not THE PRINCETON REVIEW, IN ITS LATEST appropriate for an undergrad degree, or e-schpiel of . unhelpful and unsolicited students will give up because the proposal advice, counseled me, "While it is true process is rigorous and the wait is long." that choosing the proper major early Students first reseat;ch the area of study on can help spare years, possibly even and set up an initial meeting with DUS decades, of personal agony, the major you of the special _divisional major, Jasmina choose will neither predict nor guarantee Beserivic. Next, students write the your future." In other words, choosing proposal, which must take the form of a major is a lose-lose situation · choose and present all the information included . incorrecdy to devastating effect or make in the blue book descriptions of Yale's the right decision to. . . no effect. In offered majors. The mock blue book the hope of circumventing "decades of entry must list not only the classes the personal agony," coundess Yalies vacillate student plans to take but also all courses wildly between fields; they sweat over lists that Yale offers that will be relevant to the of prerequisites for Philosophy and blanch proposed major. This document, usually at pages of requirements for Physics. about ten pages long, then goes before There are so many EP&Es and MB&Bs the Committee on Academic Honors and to. keep track of that drawing letters out Standing, which approves a discouraging of a hat starts to grow appealing. Fearing proportion of the thirty or so proposals that anything that actually piques their it receives each year. Application to interest will condemn them to lives of the major usually starts during fall of unrelenting hardship, many freshmen are sophomore year and can last up to ten tempted by the pre-professional track. But months. During this time, students rnust . . for the select few who remain discontent maintain a backup plan and continue to with the existing programs of study, there take classes for a regular Yale major .in is a different approach. Toss the blue case their proposal is not accepted. . book out the window entirely, and pursue But the work doesn't end outside the •

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Dean's office, and students are often left in the job market's dust. Having a major all to one's own means doing a lot of clarification especially for employers. "I almost always have to explain what I mean by semiotics, even to professors or students who have encountered the subject before," says Elsayed. Employers are usually receptive; though ·Elsayed · often fears they will see semiotics as "too pretentious," this doesn't happen too frequendy. Though the unconventional major doesn't appear on the final diploma Kabay's and Elsayed's will only reflect that they graduated in "special divisional major" having an unusual major can stimulate useful dialogue. "It gives me the opportunity to talk about my interests, research, and work both in and outside the classroom," Kabay says. Though the special divisional major may not ensure success in the job market, Elsayed insists that gaining an edge is not her intention. Students pursuing the special divisional major are just like every other Yale student: chasing knowledge for its own sake. Choosing even an invented major may neither predict nor guarantee your future. The men of Animal House may have put it best: "I'd listen to him if I were you. He's pre-med." "I thought you were pre-law." "Same thing." •

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-Dai{)' Atterbury •

ICe MICHAEL SCS TT IS FOND OF REFERRING

to his employees as his family. In the very first episode of NBC's The Offtc,·e-ewhich mockuments the daily grind at the Scranton, PA branch of a fictional .. paper company, Dunder Mifflin the well-meaning but eternally hapless Regional Manager, faced with the threat of downsizing, addresses one (black) salesman's concerns. With his trademark 'IHE NEW JOURNAL

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combination of an embarrassing need to please and a shocking flair for the inappropriate, he announces: "I'm the head of this family, and you ain't gonna be messin' with my chillun!" On a day dedicated to educating the team about sexual harassment, he is eager to contribute. "Families grow," he says, his tone serious, his eyes radiating concern, ''And, at some point, the daddy can't take a bath with the kids anymore." Turning to the receptionist who has no idea how adorable she is, he continues, "It would be inappropriate for me to take a bath with Pam, as much as I might want to." Later, sharing a private moment with the camera, he pulls out a mug that reads "World's Best Boss" a mug he bought for himself and comments, "As far as I'm concerned, this says 'World's Best Dad."' To a certain extent, he's right. The Office, now entering its fourth season, has become, for millions of devoted fans, an extended family a cozier, kookier, but still recognizable version of the drab, mindless day-to-day they themselves are forced to endure. And now, with the launch of Dunder Mifflin Infinity, a social networking website of sorts for Office aficionados, that family has gone virtual. In the current season's second episode, Ryan, the temp-cum-corporate wiinderkind, returns to Scranton to announce a plan also named Dunder Mifflin Infinity to streamline the stodgy company: the staff will receive Blackberries, and a long-awaited businessto-business website Will finally go online. Michael, threatened by technological developments, mounts a predictably ridiculous counterattack. He plasters pictures of elderly folks on the walls of the conference room, calls a meeting, and announces that new ideas, while nice in theory, are also illegal. I'm no Luddite, but taking a tour of the NBC-created Dunder Mifflin Infinity website, I was inclined against my better judgment to agree with Michael. Sure, it seems cute at first: you find a Dunder Mifflin "branch" close to your hometown Quneau, Alaska was lucky enough to be assigned one, but devoted Yalies will have to send their resumes to New Britain), and apply for a position. Once you're approved by your branch's Regional Manager I got a confirmation e-mail December 2007

within the hour; I'm guessing he didn't check my references you tan create a user pro@e Qist your favorite Office character! Your favorite episode! Your favorite quote!), add favorite co-workers, comment on their pro@es, upload photos and videos, and decorate your virtual desk. So far, so familiar: an Office-themed Facebook. No .harm in that. But look closer and the insular madness . of devoted fandom encouraged by a healthy network thirst for . branding'--begins to assert itself. Each week NBC devises a "task," inspired by the most recently aired episode, for members to complete. Office drones earn money that leads to promotions and can be redeemed for desk supplies. The week after Office sweethearts Jiin and Pam spent the night at a coworker's beet-themed agrotourism destination, online employees were urged to download pictures from the trip--or rather, the set an.d digitally insert themselves. They were asked to write a "detailed" review of their own experience at the makeshift bed-and-breakfast as Jim and Pam had which branch co-workers could then vote on; the most popular review from each branch would be entered into a company-wide competition. A New Britain user named "GraphicDesignPam" seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed her unusual stay: "Every day we had a contest to see who could pick the most beets and then who could move the most manure," she raved in a review titled, "Beeter than the Rest!" "At the end of the week we all took a mud bath together, I sure hope that was mud, and then exfoliated our skin with beet jUice," she continued, her imagination incorporating plot points the writers had been too shy to include. "I never knew there were so many uses for beets!" Her review received an average of four out of five stars. I would be lying if I said I . hadn't, at several points during the couple's tender but frustrated three-seasonlong courtship, wished for a Jim of my own. And no, I wouldn't mind meeting Dwight, the aggressively awkward but somehow seductive B&B owner, whose only three interests appear to be bears, beets (of course), and Battlestar Galactica. Still, my on-line co-workers' eagerness to immerse themselves in a double layer of make-believe accepting not only the ~

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reality of the TV show, but joining an online community that both acknowledges the sitcom's fiction and pretends to be its real-world extension was somehow depressing. Don't these people already have offices filled with bored, unattractive people they get to visit every day? Are their desk jobs nqt unfulfilling enough? Well, maybe not. The genius of The Office as television show is that it turns the mundanely depressing the small humiliations that come with making sales calls, coffee, and copies, with being routinely unappreciated and understim,ulated into the genuinely amusing. We laugh at Kelly and Andy and Michael because we'd like to believe that they're slightly less functional, more pathetic versions of ourselves, that their office is a slightly less functional, more pathetic version of our own. But on Dunder Mifflin Infinity, we're not mocking ourselves by proxy anymorewe're just mocking ourselves. Voluntarily. As soon as I became an employee of the New Britain branch, the distance between Dwight and me collapsed. There was no room for irony. On a recent episode, ·Michael took a second job as a telemarketer for extra cash. And while there were many funny moments the culturally insensitive mid~e-manager chatting with the best salesman, a Pakistani, about his home country as a whole, it was an uncomfortable forty-two minutes. Actual financial distress: actually not that funny. Office fans taking second jobs at an on-line Office made me queasy for much the same reason. Actual job at The Office: actually not that funny. Laughing at a version of The Office that real people that you, in fact work at, is tantamount to turning to the camera and admiu ing, drink in hand, that life is never, ever, going to get any better than this. •

-Miranda Popkry

PROFILE

Into the Woodshop Mark Messier whittles while he works. By Sarah Nutman

at you have to do is put these ogether," says Mark Messier, pointing to pieces of freshly sawed wood sitting on an unfinished shelf. "Capisci?" A freshman listens silencly, wearing a look of bewilderment and stubborn resolve. "No capisci!" Messier continues emphatically, grabbing the two slabs to ready them for gluing. lr's a typical Saturday in the Gosselin Woodshop tucked into the basement of B erkeley College. For nearly 15 years, Messier, a professional woodworker and cabinetmaker, has made the hour-long commute from Coventry once each week to help Yale woodworkers fashion everything from bowls to croquet sets. In his tenure as master woodworker, Messier

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grizzled as his fraying shirt and beat-up Columbia moccasins- has become more emblematic of the shop than the blackand-white photograph of its namesake, Edward Webb Gosselin. But Messier seems disinterested in his legendary status. He brandishes a broad, jovial smile and starts to tell me about the room's history in epic detail: "There has always been a Berkeley woodshop," he begins. He weaves the lore of the woodshopits dimly lit, closet-sized origins off the Berkeley tunnel, its skeletal form in Swing Space, the society that used it to make mallets for their midnight croquet games-into the lore of his own life. This latter yarn begins with the son of an

insurance executive in a classic, 1731 New England house. Other than the tedium and odium of the insurance business, Messier, in the spirit of "the do-it-yourself generation" of which he counts himself a part says, "I didn't learn anything from my father." Still, he admires his father for putting _him to work on the house each weekend. He claims it fostered an appreciation for the old, wooden edifice. As he describes the house, his tone lightens, shedding its customary sarcasm. Messier's passion for his craft stems from the mischief of his youth. Though he carved his first bowl at age seven, Messier aClmits, "most of the rime I just made explosives." His exploits often went beyond mere tinkering. "W/e once tried to THE NEW JOURNAL

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make a boat," he remembers, "but it didn't keep me young," he says. "Every year float, so we turned it into a go-cart." I get to meet 18- and 19- year olds. It's His flirtation with woodworking'-- a fresh perspective." · Certain students He remembers part infatuation, part casual dating, never stand out in his memory. .. anything official followed Messier one heavily pierced disciple who had quit as he left the land of old ramblers and high school as a junior and another who "real architecture" and headed west to was commissioned to make conductors' Oregon. It was in this state · "where all batons for a campus orchestra. Messier worries that these types of · the houses are less than fifty years old"that a twenty-something Messier took his students are· growing extinct at Yale. first and last woodworking class. He had With each passing year, he has noticed barely begun to construct a rosewood that students know and care less and rocker by the conclusion of the course. less about his craft. "It used to be that "So I bought a shop smith and finished students had a grandfather not father, the chair myself," he says nonchalantly, as mind you, but, still, a grandfather that if that had been the only option. A few was a woodworker. Now," he laments, years and "over a hundred picnic tables" "there's a detachment. We're living in a later, Messier returned east, having taught material world." Messier fears that the himself how to frame, floor, and mold. art of woodworking will disappear in Standing at the lathe, Messier again the name of lofty pre-professionalism. extols the value of self-education. While "Do you know how many parents think he stands with a quiet, unassuming a woodshop in a college is ridiculous?" he expertise over the student at the asks. But Messier refuses to feel sorry for machine Berkeley Master Marvin himself. Instead, he takes his own advice, Chun's mother he does little to guide doing exactly as he told a woodworker one her. In fact, a few moments later, he has Saturday morning as he left him alone to wandered away from the amateur. '~s sand: "If you get something that's really long as you know how you can get hurt bad, just deal with it." and avoid those pitfalls, you can do well," he says, before amending his words to include the optimism of all great teachers. "No, you will do well." Indeed, the only Sarah N utman is a.freshman in Trumbull College. person who has ever gotten injured on Messier's watch is himself. Asked to describe some of his most memorable projects, Messier displays PROUD PRINTERS a lingering grin that seems to suggest he should hold his tongue. 'We picked FOR THE up and lifted a house nearly 18 inches," he laughs. "I almost killed myself. You YALE COMMUNITY see, I had my ·head on the ground and three inches above .me was the cast iron drain for the toilet. The drain dropped two." He leans toward me to whisper the moral of the story: "But I learned how to jack a house." Most of Messier's stories share a similar lesson: one learns more by doing than learning how to do. But the self-reliant Messier is too playful to be preachy. He likes to tnock himself, and he likes to mock Yale even more. Chuckling, he explains that he is often asked to carve names on plaques for different colleges. • Electronic Pre-Press "I've never done it in m y life" he says. • Newspapers These days, Messier rarely finds himself an inch frmn death. He runs a • High Quality Sheetfed Publications restoration company, recently re-named • Bindery & Mailing Services Birch Bend Builders, out of his "kickass shop." But he's content with the CaU Peter Howard tamer projects of Birch Bend building 1 00.824.6548 kitchens, domg historical renovations, UNMATCHED Water Street and insta11ing bathroom stalls. And he MA 01069 CUSTOMER SERVICE always looks forward to his Saturdays in the Berkeley basement. ''The students

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needed flour to bake cookies one Sunday morning, but I was in Germany, where the stores are closed on that day. The Dutch, fortunately, believe in Sunday shopping, and I could ride ·the bus from Aachen, Germany to Vaals, Holland. Midway through the 15minute journey, three Muslim women got on board. They seemed to float down the aisle in their black abtgas, their moving feet obscured by the cloaks that covered them from head to. toe. They took their seats opposite me, the sun shining on their black headscarves. One woman wore . a niqab over her face; only her eyes glinted in the light. Another woman's exposed face sparkled with the sheen of meloncolored lipstick and layers of green eyeshadow. I found myself self-conscious of my skirt. Did they think I was immodest? Even as I scrutinized them, I worried about being judged in turn. I wondered how the woman revealing only her eyes and the woman exposing a painted face could believe in the same idea of modesty, in the same Islam. It troubled me that I thought of them as a flock, as anonymous women wearing oppressive shrouds. As a woman of color and a feminist, I was - ·--. . . surprised to uncover the limits of my cultural understanding. In search of some '

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answers, I turned to the voices of five Muslim women at Yale. """'11he watmth of Altaf's smile radiates from her expressive brown eyes as she says hello to every other person we pass on our walk. An ethnic counselor for freshmen and one of the most vocal members of the Muslim Students Association and Asian American Students Association, Alta£ is a prominent campus presence. She is half Iranian and half Iraqi, a Shia Muslim who grew up in California. When she was about 14, she chose. to wear the headscarf along with her sister. It was a decision she had often considered, one that she has reevaluated ever since. But her reasons for wearing it have only strengthened over the past eight years. ''Wearing the headscarf removed me from the world where I was constantly judged for physical reasons. And who I am as a person is more important than my physical characteristics," she says. The headscarf has also grounded Alta£ in her faith and brought her closer to God. When she gathers the folds around her hair every morning, she is reminded of what her faith means to her. ''I like being tied to a tradition;" Alta£ says. "In a family it is natural to

wear it. You see its significance to the people you admire and care about." The headscarf, which immediately identifies her faith, connects her not only to her nuclear family but also to a larger Muslim one. "There's an immediate sense that you're Muslim. No matter where I go in the U.S., I feel like I'm going to have an immediate community." Although wearing the headscarf can subject a woman to stereotypes and racism, it has actually allowed Alta£ to confront those assumptions. "People assume that you are quiet and shy ... that the headscarf makes you anonymous," she says. "For me, it's a way of asserting my identity. But there are women who don't assert their identity and who see the headscarf as mandatory." Altaf is not one of them. For her, it is about choice the choice to wear the headscarf and to explore her faith and identity in relation to it.

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ahreen's parents are from '-- Bangladesh, a country that is home to the world's fourth largest, mostly Sunni, Muslim population. Traditionally, Bengali Muslim women wear saris and. do not wellf the headscarf, though this pattern has changed in recent years. When Zahreen's mother immigrated to the U.S., •

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she chose to wear the headscarf for the first time in her life. In America, unlike in Bangladesh, she felt the need to affirm her Muslim identity. Zahreen did not follow suit. She tucks her glossy hair behind her ear as she explains her own choice. "Wearing a headscarf would not make me more Musllin, but maybe more Muslim, physically, to others," she says. "People think that if you wear a headscarf you are more religious." Zahreen, who prays five times a day, fasts, and tries to practice Muslim ethics such as being charitable, refraining from gossip, and dressing modestly, resents this misinterpretation. Part of the reason she does not wear the headscarf is to challenge others' perception of Muslims as a monolithic group. She believes in a spectrum of Muslim practice, subject to individual interpretation. I ask her if feminism and the headscarf can be woven together. "Part of the fervor around the h!Jab," she says, "comes from the conception that it is only women who have to wear it, and the West is obsessed with how the rest of the world treats women. Freedom of choice is the ability to make choices, not the choices you have."

December 2007

side from one cousin and a grandmother who lives in India, Zenah is the only woman in her family who wears the headscarf. After the September 11"' attacks, Zenah's cousin began to wear it, and Zenah, too, soon became curious about the veil. When she read about the

to various ethoicities and religions. Through donning the veil, though, she is immediately identified as Muslim. Most of her family did not react significantly when she began wearing it. Her mother was initially encouraging. But when Zenah began wearing the headscarf

(7 wanted to stand out. I wanted people to come up to Âˇme and ask me about Islam. '' -Nisreen h!Jab in the Qur'an, she interpreted it as a call for modesty. ''Wearing the headscarf is a process of finding yourself, and finding identity," says Zenah, who does not see the tradition as a mandatory practice for every woman, but believes it is mandatory for her. "I wanted to see if it is possible to '-\Âˇear the headscarf in American society and be l\luslun. I did not want to become a political emblem; I just wanted to see if I couJd be visibly American Muslim and integrate into society." With her green-gray eyes, Zenah couJd be linked

every time she went out, even to dinner at a friend's home, her mother tried to stop her. For two or three years, Zenah's mother was upset that her daughter constantly wore the headscarf, but she never forced Zenah ro remove it. Now she accepts jt as part of Zenah's identity. Though Zenah did not want to become a political emblem, she has been influential in overrurning misconceptions about the headscarf within and outside her family. She has made it clear, even to her mother, that she wears the headscarf by choice.

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While it is a symbol of oppression in certain countries, it is quite the opposite here.

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first time I discovered that Nisreen had worn a headscarf was during an interfaith service trip to New Orleans. We were sitting in a circle, hanging onto Nisreen's captivating and articulate narration of her relationship with her faith. Nisreen's mother is from Malaysia, a secular country where Islam is a dominant religion, and Nisreen grew ' up in California. She was the only Muslim girl in her school. After the World Trade Center fell, many of her peers approached · her with stereotypical comments and assumptions about Islam. For Nisreen, the decision to wear the hijab was a political .one. "I wanted to draw attention to the . . fact that I was Muslim," says Nisreen, who first donned the headscarf at the age ot 14. "I wanted to stand out. I wanted people to come up to me and ask me about Islam. The hijab was an attentiongrabb~r for me." During .the two years she wore the headscarf, she found herself being cast as ·the perfect Muslim girl in both Islamic . and non-Islamic communities. Becoming a symbol for such a large community · was troubling. She also noticed that the lieadscarf defined who was a "good" or "bad" Muslim; the women who did not wear it were treated as outsiders in the Muslim community. Nisreen began · to question her reasons for wearing the headscarf. ''When I wore the hfjab I felt that I didn't need to watch what I said. I felt I judged too much. Was I wearing it to show off that I was a Muslim?" Nisreen ultitilately decided to take it off. "It is better to act as an upright person than put on a scarf and pretend to be a person I'rn not really," she says frankly. Afte.r she stopped wearing the headscarf, people in •

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both communities would ask her if she was giving up on the faith. One teacher even said, "It was really nice to see you make a statement. Why did you stop?" But her decision to stop wearing the veil was a statement in itself one in line with the various statements she continues to make. was worried that I would be attacked when I .came here," Nuru confides. This was two and a half years ago, when she left her home in Botswana to study at Yale. Despite her worries, Nuru has worn the headscarf throughout her time (

just a headscarf. "It's a tiny part of the whole idea o f modesty, which includes speaking and acting modestly," Nuru says. ''A lot o f people just see the headscarf as a symbol of oppression and assume various things about me. Friends have not told m e certain things because· they think I would judge them," she says. I thought back to m y worry of the woman in full burqa judging me. I realize the folly of my concerns when Nuru continues, "If you look at the scripture, you can't judge." n the Qur'an, the passage about the hijab does not specify which parts of the

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· at :Yale. She first donned the headscarf at age 13, when her friend's father required his daughter to wear the headscarf. Nuru, along with several friends, began to wear the headscarf in solidarity. ''We were her friends, and so we wore it with her," she says. The practice wasn't foreign to . Nuru every woman in her family wore the headscarf, and she had always expected to don it. In Botswana and New Haven, she wears it to identify herself as Muslim and to follow her interpretation of the religious commandments. She believes the headscarf protects women from being viewed as objects and generates respect based on their character, not appearance. Despite the weight it carries, the headscarf, she concedes, is

body must be covered. The specifics come from a H adith, or saying of the Prophet Muhammad. Literally interpreted, it says that women must cover all but their hands and feet; men must cover from navel to knee. But both Altaf and Zahreen tell me that they read scriptures such as the Qur'an with the historical context in mind. Languages are alive and change, as do interpretations. It is this fluidity that surfaces in these women's decisions, and which enriches, in turn, their shared religion .

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TN Aditi Ramakrishnan, a junior in Timotf?y Dwight College, is an associate editor of TN].

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• Student tilicrocreditors venture into town . By lexis Fitts

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aime Verab sees potential in-every water fixture. . "People don't know they have all these . options," says Verab, "so I ask every new client, What do you want tq see? What do you want to hear?'" The options vary widely. From gurgling pond to rushing brook to manmade waterfall, Aquatic Artisans, Verab's waterscape business, will build you just about anything you can imagine. This kind of customer service is key to ari independent business like Verab's. As he tells his clients~ "I can't compete with other people's prices, but they can't compete with my attention and quality." But over the past few years, Verab's orders have been on the decline. After coundess trade shows and several free displays failed to improve business, he began to look for other options. When a friend told him about a program at Yale called Elmseed, he was intrigued. Now, Verab has staked his entrepreneurial hopes on a project run by college undergraduates. Elmseed, a nonprofit microcredit group that provides independent entrepreneurs like Verab with small loans and business traini?g, is operated entirely by Yale students. ~lmseed grants loans without performing any credit check or ask'

ing for any collateral, relying instead on a social incentive for timely repayment. Clients, who are formed into groups of · three to five members, can only take out a new loan, if the rest of their group is up-to-date on its payments. With each successful repayment, the loans increase in 'size, doubling successively from $1,500 to a max of $12,000 each time a client repays a loan. The effect is twofold. By granting loans without background checks, Elmseed allows those who might be overlooked ·by regular banks to have access to capital. By using a group model, Elmseed simultaneously establishes a community of business peers and ensures that, despite its clients' lack of credit rating, its loans get repaid without resorting to hostile creditors or legal action. Elmseed is not alone in this endeavor. Its business plan is based on Muhammad Yunus's Grameen Bank, which was originally established in 1976 in Bangladesh but was not thrust into the spotlight until 2006, when Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Elmseed is one of a growing cohort of microcredit groups that has cropped up across the globe in the last fifteen years, most of which aim to implement variations of Yunus's mod-

el not just in the developing world, but in the United States as well. The concept is an innovative reworking of the American Dream with the modest goal of ending poverty, one hardworking entrepreneur at a time. By giving the working poor a helping hand rather than a hand-out, microfinance offers an ideological truce. As James Choy '03, one of Elmseed's founders, says, "Liberals love it because it . provides resources to the desperately poor that wouldn't otherwise have access to them. Conservatives love it because it gives people the chance to end their own poverty through capitalism and hard work." It is almost impossible, however, for a microcredit agency to break even, let alone make money, in industrialized nations. In developing countries, microcredit usually turns a profit, despite the high amount of labor required to produce multiple small-scale loans. Microcredit groups in the developing world maintain low operating costs and high interest rates, which can range from 10 percent in Asia to almost 150 percent in parts of Africa. In the United States, however, operating costs are high and federal regulations limit interest rates, making microfinance less practical.

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lem is in Bangledesh you can hire really qualified grad students for two hundred dollars a month, but in America labor is expensive," says Kuris. "One way to do it in America is to use college students who could do everything for free." They partnered with classmates Kitty Harvey and N owshad Rizwanullah, and over a series of dinner meetings and late nights, the four sophomores drew up a business plan" for Choy's brain-child. The Elmseed Enterprise Fund launched after winning the Yale Entrepreneurial Society's YSOK competition in 2001. Their proposal, created entirely by undergrads, beat out many proposed by groups of graduate students and even faculty. Through the YSOK seed money, and a partnership with Citizens Bank, the students were left with their dream, a business plan, and, according to Choy, "more money than we knew what to do W1"th" . The original YSOK check still hangs mounted on the wall of the Elmseed office, along with computer print-outs of inspirational quotes and a broken clock. Though the office is small, its corporate setting in a Church Street office building is a far cry from the church basements and free community spaces in which Elmseed originally met. Not only necessary but strategic, the~ office lends a note of professionalism to this corps of college students. Elmseed staff members always wear business au ire to meetings, and they emphasize preparation and punctuality. ''We're a professional business," says Elmseed CEO Ka Mo Lau '09. "When you're dealing with someone's finances, apologies don't matter." By creating a professional business, Elmseed has also created a selective one. With a 30 percent acceptance rate of applicants for staff positions, it's harder to receive a place on the sma11 staff than it is to receive a loan. Students are expected to have equal parts professional know-how and community compassion. "One of the

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Elmseed has found a way to work around these obstacles. In translating domestic rnicrofinance to a college system, Elmseed cut operating costs by substituting student volunteers for paid labor. 'We wouldn't be able to support the twenty staff members that we have if we paid them," says senior Cynthia Okechukwu, Elmseed's director of development. Using unpaid students, .she explains, allows Elmseed to "have as much human capital as possible." Elmseed is hoping its model will stick. After a solid six years in New Haven, Elmseed has already inspired a similar program at Harvard, the Cambridge Microfinance Initiative, which began about a year ago. Elmseed is currently in consultation with Rutgers, Georgetown, and Trinity, hoping to spread its gospel even further. •

tall started six years ago in a late night dorm room bull session between then-sophomore Choy and his roommate Gabriel Kuris. Spurred by Choy's internship with Project Enterprise, a rnicrocredit firm that operates out of New York City, the two were discussing why microcredit doesn't work in the United States. 'james was saying that the probDecember 2007

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giving seminars and motivational speeches and marketing his business plan. He wants to be as successful as Tim Washington, an Elmseed legend, cited in its • business proposal as an example of how • to capitalize on a small . sum of money. • But Washington's initial capital was not a questions we always ask in our interview than the money, Elmseed keeps you mo- loan, but a lottery win. He cashed in a two is 'What would you spend $1,500 on?"' tivated." thousand dollar lottery ticket in the late Kay founcl Elmseed's members re- '80s and used the money to buy a hot dog says Lau. "I mean, that's so small, a lot of freshingly engaged. At a series of center cart. The one cart soon multiplied into us spent more than that on books freshman year. It's important to be aware of meetings, which several groups attend ten, which became a fleet of ice cream every other week, she presented her busi- carts during a particularly hot summer. He these things." Although staff members sacrifice ness plans and received presentations has now transformed his lotto luck into many_aspects of college life to run a busi- from the Elmseed staff on topics ranging property investments worth, he estimates, from risk management.to pricing models. between seven and eight million dollars. ness~ they still struggle to measure up to full-time workers. Elmseed staffers work ''The students are smart, and there's al- "I've always known how to make money," long, unpaid hours and are expected to ways something to learn," says Kay. Even says Washington. "I know how to turn a maintain professionalism regardless of more valuable than her interactions with dollar into five, but accounting that's midterms and problem sets. Every sum- the Elmseed staff have been her interac- where Elmseed helps me out." Though he mer, a senior officer ·forgoes lucrative tions with fellow entrepreneurs. "Some took out'only a single loan from Elmseed, internships in consulting and finance to of the other clients are very experienced," mostly as a favor to the fledgling organistay behind in the office. "We aren't a says Kay. "They've given me some great zation (he bought some soda .with it, he full time staff that works 24/7, but our ideas for roy business." Darryl Minchenko, another Elmseed clients expect that kind of service," says Lau. "Their businesses aren't seasonal; we client, takes a less relaxed approach to can't take spring break off." entrepreneUrialism than Kay. Minchenko For sophomore Dana Wu, Elmseed's lives and breathes business. His website director of public relations, this profes- includes streaming homemade videos sionalism takes a heavy toll. "Over the · marketing a golf/ ring-toss fusion that summer, when I was on the West Coast, Minchenko calls "Soft-Toss." Techno a client would call me at seven a.m. East music blares, a camera flashes, and the Coast time," says Wu. "Even at four sce·n e pans to Minchenko, clad in a buta.m. my time, I would take the calls." ton-down shirt and his signature Yankees But Elmseed's cadre of students simply cap, promoting Soft-Toss at the IGA cannot provide this sort of continuous, Inventors Expo. Children putt, laughing and pressing their arms in the air. A man dedicated service every hour of every day. This past summer, one of Verab's group swerves his face toward the camera. "I'm members wanted to pay back his loan but taking a bunch of these home!" In the end, all Minchenko took home from the ~as unable to get in touch with the Elmseed staff. There were no center meetings expo was a silver medal. "No one bought and phone calls went unreturned. Verab my product," he says. "They bought into expressed his annoyance: "If they're go- it, but no one bought it." recalls), Washington continues to attend So when Elmseed walked through the center meetings. "They're sort of a guide ing to be a professional organjzation, you have to know how to return a phone call, door of Smooth's, a barbershop which for me," says Washington. ''You're always Minchenko currently runs, he was in- going to learn something every time you every time." trigued. "They were talking about giving go there." laudia · Kay deals in daffodils and money away," he says. ''Whether it's from But the assistance that microcredit of"--' chrysanthemums, but her wares are a kid or an adult, money's money." How- fers can only help those, like Washington, of the plastic variety. "I started working ever, like Kay, Minchenko has yet to take who are ready to take it. B.J. Hartman, with fresh flowers, but I found I could do out a loan. He spends his time focusing one of Elmseed's first clients, seemed an rnore with synthetic," says Kay. She has on his business plan rather than financ- ideal beneficiary of microcredit efforts. yet to take out a loan, but she credits Elm- ing new initiatives. Still, Minchenko finds Born into poverty and missing both arms, seed with bringing her out of retirement Elmseed's connections and networking Hartman was a hot-dog vendor who and offering her a chance to turn her opportunities particularly helpfuL ''You wanted to take out a loan to start a busiknack for crafts, jewelry, and flower arnever know who's in the room, or who ness se1ling winter clothes on the New rangements into a second career. "It gets these kids are gonna know," he says. Haven Green. He was frozen out in a few In ten years, Minchenko hopes to be months. "Other folks were se11ing things you doing something," says Kay. "More {

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that were cheaper than what I'm selling," prospered. Lau believes that Elmseed's success should be measured in its repaysays Hartman. "It was like going into the ment rates, its business successes, and its lion's den." personal successes. "One of our clients After some financial difficulties and is a clo~n, and he employs half a dozen personal crises, Hartman defaulted on people," says Lau. "It's making change on his loan. His team members paid it back a small scale, and seeing it spread." through combined fundraising · efforts, But for some clients, this scale is too but Hartman is no longer involved with Elmseed. Currently working in customer . small. Despite the twenty-thousand dollars of loans Elmseed is currently circuservice, Harttnan misses the freedom of being self-employed, but he doesn't miss lating amongst its clients, Verab has yet the challenges of running a small busito take out a threshold loan of $1,500. ness. "Most people say it's like baby steps, "I look at Elmseed as brainstorming," but I noticed being a small business you Verab explains. "Maybe 1 percent of all get stepped on easily." businesses can do something with a loan Dean Karlan, an assistant professor of $1,500. For my business, for an estabof economics at Yale who specializes lished business, that kind of money is ·:" in microcredit, believes that stories like nothing. Yeah, you can buy a hot dog cart, these more than the challenges of inter- start a business. A jazz musician defaulted but to rent a facility, to buy equipment, it's just not going to work." est rates and operating costs explain the on the money he had borrowed to cut his As a student organization, however, mixed record of microcredit in America. demo tape. A woman who had hoped to "One of the biggest challenges domestic start a promising business selling supplies Elmseed's success should be measured microcredit faces is that most small enterfor the deaf lacked the contacts to form a not only in terms of its clients, but in prises in America fail," says Karlan. "In group and, as no pre-existing groups had terms of its staff. After ditching problem sets for center meetings and summer pardeveloping countries there's a flourishspace, was unable even to join the proties for four a.m. phone calls with clients, ing sector that is huge, but you don't see gram. ''A lot of people took their kindmuch of that in America. It's less obvious ness for weakness," Washington says of the students who work for Elmseed come the types of things that an unemployed the Elmseed staf£ "Because they're young to identify with the singular devotion and sacrifice necessary to operate a small busiperson with a five hundred dollar loan and from Yale, people think you've got a ness. Kahan is fully aware of Elmseed's can do." Because of this difficult market, lot of money." It was a short but difficult time, Kuris role in shaping students' futures. ''We've successfully starting a business requires created several independent businesses, unique initiative, something that few pos- believes, before the staff began to understand the complexity of poverty. ''After and besides that we're getting ten kids sess. Clayton Williams, a senior loan officer the first year we were really humbled, who are doing something very concrete, with New Haven's Small Business Initia- both by the initiative of our staff, and the meaningful, and important," he explains. tive, which provides small entrepreneurs difficulties of the issue at hand," he says. "People who graduate from Elmseed go on to become great civil leaders." with business training and slightly larger "It was a steep learning curve." Choy emphasizes that the concept of loans than Elmseed's, tries to make sure Jeremy Kahan '04, a former CEO of that his clients are prepared to run a small Elmseed who currently sits on its board, microcredit is still in a trial phase. "The business. "I always ask new clients, 'Are reiterates the delicate balance between jury is still out on microcredit in general," you the kind of person who doesn't mind business and philanthropy. "You're lend- he says. "Even Grameen, which has been working 18-20 hours a day? Or do you ing to people who have a very fragile eco- around for thirty years now there are still lots of debates about whether that's need eight to ten hours of sleep and want nomic situation," says Kahan. "These are a good idea now." to take a vacation every year?' If you're the real-life people with real-life situations. Elmseed's staff members remain conformer then maybe you can start a busi- You know what, it's really hard to collect ness, and if you're the latter you should your $1,500 when someone doesn't have vinced. ''Elmseed doesn't rna ke claims to enough money to pay for their dialysis." change the world," says Wu. ''We're not probably get a job," says Williams. Despite these issues, the repayt 11ent rate going to change New Haven in a year. But lmseed's founders were disillusioned that first year was over 90 percent and is I know Elmseed has made a difference in individual's lives." - by the difficulties of creating suc- now an impressive 94 percent. Though this statistic sounds promiscessful businesses from scratch. '1: think in the beginning we imagined that we'd ing, it doesn't necessarily indicate Elmjust put up signs saying 'Microloans' seed's success in geu ing small businesses A lexis Fitts is a senior i11 Bra'!ford College. . and people would come," says Kuris. In- off the ground with micro-loans. Victor stead, recruiting was difficult; most of the Wong '09, CPO of Elm seed, declined to group's initial clients were brought in with provide the number of successful busiWashington's help, and t nany of the origi- nesses created through Elmseed fundnal loan recipients were unprepared to ing. Alumni estimate ten businesses have •

December 2007

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n the summit of Science Hill, across the street from a row of fading Victorian porches and an aged gun factory with punctured windows, sits a wheelbarrow visibly worn by a loose summer spent outdoors. Cradling empty beer bottles, it perches near a chalkboard covered with Dave Garinger's to-do list: ''Weed. Divide Iris. Mow down Locust Sprouts. Transplant Veggies!!!" For the last twenty five years, Garinger has lived inside a little clapboard house wedged between Mansfield Avenue and Hillside Place. As the groundskeeper of the Marsh Botanic Gardens, Garinger's morning commute consists of puu ing on a pair of well-made shoes and stepping outside. "Since I live so close," he says, "I did a comical video of my commute and sent it to my mom. The whole time

I was saying .things like 'Look, Mom, isn't this horrible? I tripped over a rock."' He spends the workday weeding the rest of the garden, so you'll have to excuse him if his own front steps at number 227 are a little overgrown. The whitewashed cottage forms the cornerstone of eight acres of sloping land that once belonged to Othniel Marsh, a philanthropist whose estate was bestowed to the Forestry School in 1899. Some time in the last century, a biology professor and his wife converted their home on the property into an apiary. Scores of beehives filled the ground floor. When the couple left, the bees were moved out, and Garinger moved in. Remnants of its former residents remain just beyond the chainlink fence overgrown with berries and jewelweed, visitors are still greeted by an ominous sign: "Beware of Bees First

Floor." The work at Marsh Botanic Gardens, 150 feet from Dave's front steps, involves growing plants for genetic research, filling orders from a flock of Yale labs, and providing a playground for ecology classes seeking hands-on experience. Garinger, the horticulturalist, and Eric Larson, the general manager, split the daily work. Between the two of them, the micro- and macro·- fauna are in good hands. Four ~reenhouses, affectionately named 1, 2, 3, and 4, split off from a cracked concrete driveway. Here, something is · always blooming or being dug up. Thankfully, there's still enough time for side projects: overgrown pebbles are scattered along the path between ' the two largest greenhouses, where Eric and Dave are designing a sitting garden lined with an overhead trellis for growing 'IHE NEW JOURNAL

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grapes. They are determined to coax the grapevine to adulthood. "In the summer the leaves will shade us," Eric explains, "and in the winter they'll fall down and we'll get some nice sunlight." In addition to shade, these plants will provide a valuable scientific resource. Currently, rows of high-tech corn are incubating in and around Greenhouse 4. "We grow the newfangled types of mutant corn the professors keep breeding," Garinger says. The shrunken corn husks, each one a tenth the size of a normal ear, are swaddled in white socks to prevent cross-pollination. They look like midget vegetables to us because they're engineered to echo the pre-Neolithic ancestors of corn, an eye-opening display for the students of agriculture who visit the Gardens. - The local wildlife enjoy them as well. "The butterflies down at the biology lab like to eat corn seedlings," Garinger shares, "but now I've got them hooked on collard greens." Greenhouse 1 is a rebellious museum. A world-wide assortment of ·flora intended to educate visiting students fills the room. Whole continents are presented in miniatpre. Three thousand species of plants are clustered by climate, but there's no regard for nationality: a Malayan Coconut Palm rubs branches with an Australian Wollami Pine. The coffee and chocolate trees are both sprouting beans this year, and the Trovita sweet oranges have ripened into their namesake color. A portion of each day is set aside for detangling the cucumber shoots that like to crawl up the windows. "It's a jungle," Garinger tells me. "I feel like I'm always weeding or clipping." He looks at the mossy tree fern and moans, "This thing has gotten huge! I need to trim it back." Garinger keeps a window display of hothouse orchids, but most of them are missing their signature blooms. ''They're easily kept alive, but it's so hard to get them to flower," he mourns. Off in a corner, the carnivorous plants keep to themselves. Sundews lure in flies with their tentacles, while butterwarts stick out their dewy topgues. Venus flytraps snap their eyes shut at the stroke of a single finger. But Garinger's heart lies in drier '

December 2007

places. Although he's not too fond of the bees his predecessors kept in his home, he's keen on another kind of prickly pet: his collection of shrunken cacti. · All of them live across the road in Greenhouse 2, part of the educational collection that doubles as Garinger's hobby house. His favorite cacti- are the living stones of Africa, whose flat bumps form a natural pavement, and the night-blooming cirrus, whose flowers are pollinated by wild bats. Somewhere in here is a resident snake that Garinger rarely sees. Lately it's taken to changing its clothes in public: a dried shell of a snakeskin lies coiled by a cluster of prickly pears. "I started this about twenty years ago, and some are as old as I've been here," Garinger tells me with a smile. He points to a noto cactus that could be taken for a menacing spiked cucumber. The most dangerous cacti have the smallest weapons. Glockids, tiny little spines that dig into your skin, won't let go after they get a

After the tour, Larson joins us, and the two men show me the three surviving bee~ves in Garinger's backyard. These bees are the grandchildren of the original ones that used to live indoors, and their honey is now in demand on the local market. Today, they're as busy as could be expected. "They love the . goldenrod this time of year. They're really working it!" he marvels. But then he looks a little troubled. "I think they've noticed us," he says. "I see them gathering in a clump to try and protect the queen. It looks like they're getting ready to swarm." We hurry back to the gardeners' office, and during their afternoon tea break I ask Garinger and Larson of their plans for the Marsh Botanic Gardens. Using Yale funding, they hope to raise the glass roofs and turn the low-ceilinged greenhouses into a full-blown conservatory, where they could plant tropical trees and let them grow to their full adult height. ''We need a taller structure!" Larson announces.

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hold of you. Once, when he was giving a tour to a group of second graders, a boy got his hands full of them, and Garinger could think of no home remedy. ''I told the teacher, 'One of your kids has cactus spines all over him! I don't know what to do,"' he says. "I tell the kids, 'Don't touch the cacti,' and they never listen. They go around rubbing this and that; they put their weight on everything." Besides the four greenhouses, Garinger also maintains a classroom for the Yale ecology classes that come in to study plants. Professors choose specimens in advance, and Garinger lifts each plant from its greenhouse to form a rotating exhibit. Today there is a young cinnamon tree and a papaya plant, but tomorrow they might be replaced by a pair of elephant ears and a sago palm.

"Right now, the coffee and chocolate trees can only grow to be dwarfs." Garinger nods in agreement. I ask them if they think all these wishes will bear fruit, and Larson gives me a sagely look. ''It's like throwing grass seed out there: some of it comes up, and some of it doesn't."

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Mai Wang is a sophomore in Timotf?y Du-ight College.

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Yale workers struggle wi c · d care. By te Selker •

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orne would say the · basement kitchen of Davenport's dining hall is no place for a child. Massive knives, fierce sieves, gargantuan ovens and freezers a hippo could get lost in are some of the kitchen's most obvious perils. A body four feet high could easily disappear in the fray. But others might note the fun of seeing pastries get iced or watching soup bubble in big pots. . Practically everything gleams. And few could deny that the upstairs dining area holds even more appeal. Even college students have been tempted to play Harry Potter underneath the chandelier, or make faces at the solemn portraits on the wall. Fewer still would say that it is safer, or more enjoyable, for children to be home by themselves for four hours a day after school. This dilemma plays out constandy for the many Yale workers who are single parents with children at home. It's a problem many Americans face. Everyone wants to spend time with their kids, babysitters are expensive, and most children are curious to see their parents at work. Yale, in particular, is an enticing

place for children: the courtyards are big and green, the colleges full of crannies to explore, and the dining halls stocked with four tubs of ice cream a night. Not to mention the lure ·of college students. Big kids are cool. Although Yale seems the perfect place to bring your daughter to work, practical concerns often win out. According to Diderot Desgrottes, a Davenport chef who spends time in the basement kitchen, "It's extremely unsafe down here. People get hurt all the time." Nevertheless, Desgrottes acknowledges the dilemma of the single parent. "If there's an emergency or something, you can't just leave them at home. You don't have that many options." Though Yale workers are contractually barred from bringing any children to their shift, the practice remains a staple in many dining halls. Briana Janelle Ursini, granddaughter of Davenport's Joanne Ursini, has been visiting the dining hall since she was two. It didn't seem to be a problem for anyone. "She'd sit quietly at one of the tables, and she would read, or sketch, or write •

poetry," Ursini explains. "She even knew how to use the computers upstairs." The Davenport community, she says, was welcoming, and the management didn't seem to mind. "Kids would even ask me, 'Joanne, can she hang out with us?' Then they'd all go off kicking a ball around, or reading a book." Ursini explains that she didn't rely on Davenport to entertain her granddaughter. It was for emergencies, or when Briana's school let out early. "It was nice for her, knowing what her grandmother was doing when she wasn't there. She loved going downstairs and watching the inner workings of the place to see me baking, watching me prepare the salad bar." Problems began to arise, however, when more cbildren started showing up at Davenport. Assistant Manager Hugo Vergara says, ''It didn't really bother me at first. But if everybody comes with their kids, then the manager has to take action." Davenport isn't a day care, he says, and it wasn't fair to allow some workers the • privilege of childcare and not others. So Brianna doesn't come anymore. ''Now I have to pay a person to take care of her," '!HE NEW JOURNAL

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Ursini says. "I tried to take her to the "under false pretenses," notes the contract, Boys' club, but she says the kids there act constitutes grounds for dismissal. like animals." Yale provides lists of babysitting Vergara has a managerial perspective and daycare services on its · ''WorkLife" on the problem. "Employees are not website, but, according to Vergara, staff supposed to bring their kids," he says, "and rarely use the suggestions. "Not too many it's hard for the parents to concentrate on people take advantage of them. They don't the job." At the same time, · the dining want to spend the money." Starting in the · halls need all the staff they can get, and spring of 2005, Yale provided subsidized if a worker has to use a sick day to stay rates to parents who needed "caregivers on call" in the case of emergencies. Even home with a child, everyone loses out. In Calhoun, a similar pattern arises. with the subsidy, though, parents end up Annett Ramos, who started working in paying between seven and fifteen dollars the dining hall this year, says she brings per hour. Workers and management alike say her daughter Lydia in about once a month. "I called and said I'd have to stay they'd love to see an entirely free day home to watch her, because I couldn't get care or after school program on cainpus. a babysitter. But they said they'd rather Students could staff the program as have me bring her here than not come at volunteers. The large number of Yalies all." participating in tutoring groups such "Sometimes we understand," explains as TIES, Splatter, and other programs, Vergara, who often allows a child to come suggests a population willing to help. "There could be one unit for all of rather than risk being understaffed. It's better for the workers, too if they stay Yale," Ursini imagines. "There'd be people home more than five times over three of certain criteria, watching the kids do months, they're issued a verbal warning. their homework, and it'd be costless, and After that, they could be fired. you'd know that there's integrity behind Vergara takes out a sheet charting the it." Support for such a dream is patterns of dining hall sick days. Topping the list of reasons why people don't show widespread. Shoshana Grant, who works are "single parent child care issues." in Davenport and has a baby on the way, While he knows this claim is legitimate, says she'd love to be able to "keep an eye Vergara worries that people have begun on her son" in a college daycare center. • to use 1t as an excuse. Vergara, too, is enthused. "That would be •

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Kate S elker is a.freshman in Davenport College.

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Richard Levin's Yale renovates, its architects tear buildings down and re-imagine. them. And when the Yale School of Music's Dean, Robert Blocker, imagines with a $100 million gift at his disposal he imagines shamelessly. This July; the School of Music's orchestra, the Philharmonia, will travel to China to perform with Beijing's Central Conservatory a full Yale ensemble, five · hundred Chinese singers, and two Yale graduates flown in from .the Metropolitan Opera, performing on one stage at . the 2008 Cultural Olympiad, the artistic companion to the Olympic Games. But how, Blocker asks, separated as they are by seven thousand miles, will the entire group be able to rehearse together beforehand? Envision, for a moment, the rehearsal room at Hendrie ·Hall, one of Yale's musk buildings, which is slated for full-scale renovation in May. Blocker closes his eyes rapturously and shifts his weight, imagining how such a challenge could be tackled in future years. Suppose Hendrie's May renovation could be completed . in advance of the July performance: "On one side. of the hall will be a screeri showing a live video feed of the group in China," he says, stretching his ·arms wide. "So we're in Connecticut, they're in China, and the conductor could be in London for all we care." This musician's technological fantasy would be uriimaginable to most of the . classical music world, struggling to maintain its relevance in a modern •

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began to enjoy the compound benefits of attracting the best young musicians in the world, top faculty to teach them, and ever more attention and contributions for an array of bracingly visionary projects. What remains astonishing is how little impact this growth has had on the opportunities available to undergraduate musicians at Yale. Students attracted to Yale College because of its outstanding music program are still regularly _denied access to professional music teachers . . and concert spaces. . The Departtnent of Music, · whose · professors hold degrees in music theory and history rather than performance, and which is far less moneyed than the professional school, is responsible for the College's sixty music majors, every music class available to undergraduates, and all of the undergraduate ensembles, including the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Glee Club, and the Concert Band. The University provides .them little financial support:smaller ensembles· often struggle to raise funds and ·the YSO resorts to charging performers for their own travel expenses . on foreign tours and selling ten-dollar tickets to the annual Halloween show. The University attaches enormous value to promoting performances and maintaining a vibrant music culture. Yet as the School of Music rockets happily ·skyward, undergraduates who came to Yale for its music find themselves low on resources, short on institutional committnent, and going nowhere. •

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age. So how did Blocker's grand vision become a viable reality for the School of Music, which only a decade ago was a small and relatively poor, if prestigious, conservatory? First, the extraordinary: two years ago, a well-wooed, anonymous donor dropped $100 million into the School's lap. Then, once tuition had been eliminated, applications doubled, the food at receptions gourmeted, and the School

obert Blocker, Dean of the Yale ~ :.tlO<)l of Music, is a heavyset South Carolinian whose white hair has receded far back from his ruddy face. He is a living legend among musicians at Yale. Blocker has the disarming manner of bygone gentility; his face is a screen of optimism, his voice full of throaty conviction. In 2005, Blocker left the School of Music after ten years as its dean, a

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departing champion who had enlarged the once-paltry $30 mi11ion endowment five times over. Today, the Robert Blocker Room, a portrait and plasma screen-filled space dedicated in his honor, sits beside the Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall, the red brick building on College and Wall Streets whose renovation he oversaw in ' 2003. Blocker's tenure, marked by rapid fundraising, facilities renovations, and an accompanying influx of highly regarded faculty and students, was considered remarkably successful. After Blocker left Yale to become the Provost of Southern Methodist University, the alma mater of Laura Bush and Harriet Miers, he and Levin quietly continued to communicate with a donor . who had expressed interest in offering a large gift to the University. He or she had been impressed with the School of Music under Blocker's stewardship, and Blocker and Levin suggested that giving to the comparatively small program would have an outsized impact. The payoff of their efforts was almost inconceivable. Thomas Duffy, the School of Music's acting dean, announced the news on the stage of Sprague Hall on October 28, 2005, moments before students were set to perform a selection of scenes from lesser-known operas. He · explained that the school had received $100 million from an anonymous donor and that new students would never pay -tuition again. After a gasp and euphoric release from the assembled students, faculty, and audience, Duffy took his seat and let the opera begin. A year ago, Robert Blocker returned to Yale like a conquering Roman general. At one performance across the hall from the room that bears Blocker's name, Aldo Parisot, a spry, octogenarian cellist and longstanding member of the faculty, · turned around between pieces he was conducting to sing the Dean's praises. "It turns out our problem all these years was money,:ll.. he shouted. '~d thanks to Dean Blocker, we've solved it!" Despite Parisot's accolades, the $100 million is less than it appears. According to a Yale policy, only 5 percent of all endowments in this case, $5 millioncan be spent in a given year. The total ' annual tuition of the School of Music's 215 students is almost precisely $5 mmion. Though the school is no longer

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responsible for the generous financial aid packages it . distributed before the gift, it has · more or less committed itself to a single use of the $100 million, at least for the time being. As Margot Fassler, a former dean of the Institute of Sacred Music and current School of Music professor, admitted, ''You can dream, but we're right on the edge of having it all spent." It is difficult to imagine a single investment in the school that could have achieved more objectives at one time. Subsidizing tuition instantly benefited students. "It was the decisive factor," says pianist Jessica Osborne of her decision to enroll at the School of Music in 2006. "I owe a lot of debt. I went to Jnilliard and Indiana, and neither was free." While debt is hardly an anomaly among graduate students of any stripe, the problem is typically more severe for music students, whose futures are particularly precarious. Classical musicians, even those •

December 2007

from the most prestigious schools, are not guaranteed a job, let alone a good one. "Music is just how shall I say it-difficult," says Michael Friedmann, a professor of theory and chamber music at the school. "People go into music because they can't imagine doing anything different, not because it is necessarily a lucrative career." Yet this problem is no easier for students at Yale's renowned Drama School, which can offer only need-based tuition to its students, men and women generally headed to uncertain freelance careers in theater. or is it so different for graduates of the Divinity School, which, despite its phenomenal $300 mi11ion endowment, does not subsidize its students' full tuition. The School of Music saw free enrollment as particularly nece sary for its students because of the enormous start-up cost of an instrument. A pianist like Osbourne wi11 likely begin her career with an additional thit ty thou and dol1ar ~

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of debt in order to buy a decent piano. Violinists and other string players might spend forty to one hundred thousand dollars on their instruments and regularly maintain them at the cost of several hundred dollars a year. And a young musician, even a great one, will typically have to scrounge up this capital while working several freelance jobs, flying to international competitions, and striving to capture the attention of a major orchestra or agent. ''If I'm at the right place at the right time, hopefully someone hears me," said Osbourne. Until then, she shrugs, ''I could probably make a decent amount doing odd jobs." ubsidizing tuition has also served ~ the University's grander strategy of gaining international prominence and attracting more international students to Yale. Juilliard, the world's mo t famous con ervatory, has always cast a long hadow o er the chool of l\1usic's 27

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Once the Yale School of Music renovates Hendrie Hall, students will be able to ride an elevator to practice rooms like this one. '

headquarters, Leigh Hall, from atop applicants we meet during our recruiting Manhattan's I jncoln Center. Highly · efforts are already aware of the full-tuition endowed, located in the heart of New scholarship, so it is usually not necessary York City, it attracts top talents who are to even mention it," said Daniel Pellegrini, willing to pay. "How are you going to get the School's director of admissions. Levin the-attention of someone in Japan next to himself has noted the effect, saying that the Juilliard?" Duffy asks. "free tuition has made possible attracting A hundred million dollars might do it. international students who would not It;1ternational media quickly picked up the have considered Yale without strong story and the New York Times ran articles financial support." debating the gift's impact on the future of To some degree, the quest for classical music. In the fall of 2005, the rate international students is a search for quality . of applications to the School of Music musicians. "Our goal has always been to doubled to nearly fifteen hundred a year. find the best and brightest in the world Its admit rate halved to 8 percent while its and bring them to Yale," Blo<::ker said. yield rose from 70 to 83 percent. Over 40 "There's no question that the standard is percent of the School of Music's students different," said Friedmann of the postare now international, far more than at donation admissions. "The quality of any other school within the University. every single instrument they're more Aside from Yale, only a single polished, they're more proficient. We have conservatory in the country, the Curtis some superstars here. This was out of the Institute in Philadelphia, offers free question in the past." But it is impossible enrollment, and many music schools to ignore the School of Music's place in around the world are heading in the Yale's ongoing embrace of globalization. other direction. "Most of the prospective The gift has enabled the University to

expand an already impressive collection of partnerships with institutions around the globe, among them a concert series with the Royal Academy in London and a slate of programs in Asia (especially China) that includes this summer's Cultural Olympiad. Levin is confident that these collaborations will raise the University's profile "in the music world, but also more generally." Other perks of the increased endowment have come effortlessly. ''All these things start drawing togethet:," said Blocker. ''You get a big gift and you have resources that enable you to see how those oppor tunities might open up." The School of Music was able to take over Yale's Collection of Musical Instruments and began to hold classes and concerts with students playing on Wagner's piano and 17th-Century virginals. In July, there w.iJl be a musical theater and jazz program for New Haven public schools. The School is holding a yearlong series of concerts by students and faculty at •

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Carnegie Hall in New York already the subject of multiple rave reviews by the New York Times presenting students with life-changing opportunities to be seen and heard. Hendrie Hall is the last of the School of Music's unrenovated, run-down behemoths. This relic, from an era in which Yale was, as Fa~sler described it, "the land of the peeling paint," is the School's last egregiously necessary project. Once it is completed, the school's next aim appears to be to raise enough money to award significant cost-of-living stipends to each of its students. "I would imagine another $100 to $200million will solve the stipend issue," said Duffy. Blocker who in his time at Yale has brought in at least $200 million in endowment money is a born fundraiser. When I asked him what motivates a donor to give $100 million to the school, he smiled at me ingratiatingly and said, "I think there's the same motivation for a young alum such as yourself. When you graduate, Mitch, start giving right away." ndergraduates lost their claim to all __.. of this in 1940. The School of Music, which was founded in 1894 through a gift from some of Yale's great .19th-century benefactors, the Battells, initially awarded degrees to undergraduates, doctoral students, and performers. Music schools, however, are notorious ~esspools of acrimony, especially between professors of competing disciplines, . and Yale's was beset by frequent complaints from undergraduates, historians, and theorists, who felt they were underappreciated next to the performers. Luther N oss, a School of Music dean in the 19 50s, who later becameitsurtofficialcourthistorian,recalls the state of the split of 1939. "For over a year there had been audible grumblings in the Yale College commUnity over what was felt to be, rightly or wrongly, the School's lack of interest and cooperation in tending to the academic and practical musical needs of the undergraduates." David Stanley Smith, the dean at the time, recommended that the School of Music satisfy its undergraduates by expanding its library of phonograph records, enlarging its faculty, and permitring students to study a broader liberal arts curriculum. Instead, Yale President Charles Seymour established the Department December 2007

administration, asking the department, and discovering hidden pockets of resources to fund projects, events, and performances. "It's one of the things I like best about Yale," she said. "It means that no one has ultimate control over something except the person who puts it together." A further irony: while the School of Music made news worldwide for granting free enrollment to its students, it has always been de rigueur for the University to award full tuition and cost-of-living stipends to every one of the more than three hundred doctoral students it admits annually, six to twelve of whom are music theorists and historians. The greatest irony, however, is the fate of undergraduate performers, music majors or otherwise, who are drawn to Yale by its well-deserved reputation for a rich musical culture. Overseen by the Department of Music, undergraduates have limited interaction with the wealthy professional school and soon discover that too few of the be,o.efits trickle down to their own educations in music. Nearly seventy years after their secession from an uncaring professional school, undergraduate musicians are still seeking the respect they deserve. •

Robert Blocker is dean of the School of Music

of Music, moving the scholars and their graduate students, along with all the undergraduates, to the new department. The professional school was left, as it remains, a home for professors of performance, composers, and graduate musicians. Even today, few will argue with the separation. ''It's absolutely a good division," said Daniel Harrison, the current chair of the music department. At schools without separate departments, Harrison said, "the scholarly components are generally undernourished compared to performers. They're the breadwinners." One irony it that, despite the firewall between the two schools, outsiders are generally unaware of the difference; in the weeks after the School of Music received its $100 million, the Department of Music fielded dozens of calls from prospective applic~ts confusing it with · the professional school. The department has also encountered significant fundraising difficulties now that donors mistakenly believe that Yale's entire music program is already fabulously wealthy. In reality, the department is by far the less wealthy of the two. ''Financially, we're a poor stepsister to the School," said Harrison. The music department enjoys only a tiny piece of the Uni ersity's endowment and must rely mainly on the generosity of the central administration and on targeted grant for its research and special projects. Sarah Wei s, an assistant professor of ethnomu icology, described the "treasure hunt' of winning University grants, petitioning the central •

onsider undergraduate ensembles - a t Yale. Junior Kate Swisher is assistant conductor of the Davenport Pops Orchestra. The group, founded by students in the spring of 2005 and modestly supported by Davenport College, is an integral part of what Harrison called the "fairly developed spectrum of music at Yale." An upstart group just as the Yale Symphony Orchestra, Yale Concert Band, and Glee Club once were, the Davenport Pops offers someone like Swisher, who hopes to pursue a career in performance, invaluable opportunities to conduct a full orchestra. Unfortunately, Yale offers her hardly anywhere to do it. "The School of Music won't rent space to undergrads," Swisher said. ''If you want to perform in Woolsey, it eats up your entire Sudler fund for the semester." The cost to reserve Woolsey for a night is, in fact, closer to 1,800, far more than the five-hundred-dollar Sudler grants available for student concerts. Battell Chapel is not much c~eaper. Swisher addressed her criticism toward the University: "You want us to perform, you want to support 29

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Some of Yale's musicians rehearse on the stage at Woolsey Hall. •

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the arts, but you won't give us a space to • perform or rehearse." Though the Yale Symphony Orchestra is one of the best undergraduate orchestras in the country and a group that several undergraduate musicians identify as the reason they chose to attend Yale, it does not fare much better. The University generally supplies around 30 percent of YSO's annual budget of approximately $100,000, which does not include travel expenses. 'We are expected to raise money for ourselves," said Toshiyuki Shimada, the orchestra's professional conductor. ''We have to rent Woolsey Hall, believe it or not." Funds for YSO come from benefit concerts, regular fundraising, and ticket revenues. Shimada said that Harrison is "very helpful spiritually, morally. But we do not get a tremendous amount of money fror•• the departtnent." Shimada and his orchestra would like to tour annually, but the group can only • travel once every other year; fundraising

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can pay for only so many $250,000 tours . to Europe. Student volunteers must . pay out of their own pockets to travel, something many Yale a cappella groups, "

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credit for the magnificent facility renovations the school has enjoyed. Weiss insists, moreover, that the University is far more eager to fund undergraduates

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well-endowed and profitable, would never dream of doing. ln ' theory, Yale does care about these ensembles. According to Duffy, the current director of university bands, "Richard Levin is a tremendous supporter of music." It was Levin, after all, who played an indispensable role in steering the $100 mi11ion toward the School of Music, Levin who can take substantial

than graduate students or their professors in the music department. It is unlikely, however, that the University's substantial fundraising apparatus, currently engaged in a multibillion dollar capital campaigri' the very apparatus that was able to launch the School of Music to the sky would not be able to stop charging its ensembles for a concert space that it allows the New Haven Symphony Orchestra to use for free.

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he more widespread complaint among undergraduates is how few music faculty are available to offer them private lessons. An undergraduate voice student, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of harming her relationship with several campus ensembles, was surprised to learn upon her arrival at Yale that there simply were not enough faculty members to teach her. ''When I came to Yale; I was under the impression that I would study with someone on the faculty. That's kind of wha.t they told me," she said. Private lessons for undergraduates are run by .the .School of Music in cooperation with the Departtnent of Music. Yale has only hired faculty to teach · highly skilled undergraduate pianists, violinists, and cellists; each year, professors may choose to take on a handful of exceptionally talented students of other instruments, but the numbers are always small. These lessons are apportioned on the basis of auditions and offered for course credit; students who fail to get a professor may pay graduate students for not-for-credit lessons. Though this voice studentis among the few undergraduates in the Schola Cantorum, a well-paid, highly selective, predominantly graduate voice ensemble, she was assigned a graduate student and was dissatisfied with the result. "Sometimes you have a teacher who isn't very interested in teaching," she said. "I had a teacher last year who was notorious for that." While graduate students at the School of Music, especially in the wake of the donation, are among the best young musicians in the world, they are often unqualified to instruct top-level undergraduates, some of whom will attend conservatories themselves after graduation. Of the approximately ninety voice students who apply for lessons each term, only about 15 may expect to receive lessons with faculty members. In other instruments, particularly woodwinds and brass, the number is closer to zero. Sophomore Daniel Schlosberg, a top-level composition student and pianist who studies with Wei-Yi Yang, a School of Music faculty member, has noticed similar flaws in the lessons program. "There inay be some grad students who are good, but it depends, and they cycle through so quickly," he said. ''I believe they should provide professors for undergraduates." The composition program, in which Schlosberg said available courses are minimal and private lessons extremely rare, is similarly limited for undergrads, as is the conducting program, which, according to Swisher, has only two faculty conductors despite the fact that "there's so many of us who want to conduct. "

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School of Music is the reason that many of these undergraduates come . to Yale in the first place. "Can you imagine," Margot Fassler asks, "what the musical culture would be without the School of Music?" Indeed, the spillover effects undergraduates enjoy by studying beside the School of Music are numerous: the School of Music holds four to five concerts on any given week; its graduate students fill the ranks of the Ya!_e Symphony Orchestra, Concert Band, and Glee Club, as well as countless other smaller ensembles like the Schola Cantorum, the Camerata, chamber groups, and shared graduate-undergraduate music classes. The School of Music is not only responsible for most of the lessons that ·u....

December 2007

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undergraduate music students receive and even the most inept students receive the very best graduate students as teachers but also for the use of top-notch practice spaces. When the School renovates Hendrie Hall, Concert Band musicians will no longer need to lug their instruments up six flights of stairs because the building will finally have an elevator. These benefits, however, are no more than spillover, focused on the School of Music and largely peripheral to the needs of Yale's undergraduate musicians. Those priorities are clear enough. ''We teach all applied music for undergraduates," Blocker said. "The School of Music has an integral responsibility and committnent to this." The School of Music undertook this responsibility and now, finally enjoying the use of its unprecedented resources, has let its contribution to undergraduates remain static in order to direct its resources outward, fighting for global attention and attracting an ever-finer crop of international graduate students. The University itself, which demonstrated its substantial commitment to music by supporting the School of Music's growth, has remained notably frugal in its support of undergraduate ensembles. Some of the very best young adult performers in the country already study here; why should their education be any less than exemplary? The contrast between the institution's commitment and the resources it offers is stark, and no one wants it this way. Levin has suggested that the University will increase the number of students taught by music faculty. For his part, Blocker sings the right tune: ''I believe firmly that those of us who are privileged by the opportnnities provided for us have an obligation to provide opportunity for other people," he said. "What a great joy and opportunity it is to have, in the hands of a young adult, music, which is able to bridge cultures like nothing else." Undergraduates will believe him once they see a bridge or two of their own. •

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Mitchell Reich, a junior in Pierson College is an associate editor qf 'INJ.

FEATURE

Truth and Reconciliation The Artemis Project archives individual stories of national violence. By Pria Anand

n 2004, months before she was panlyzed in a car accident in Sierra Leone, Artemis Christodulou '()() realized that everything she'd worked to collect over the past twO years could disappear. All 83 pages of inmates' essays from a Sierra Leonean prison, where many died without ever ;having been convicted; all 13 faces on a painting bearing a Sierra Leonean flag, loolcing to a future of good roads and streetlights; all of the stamps, poems, plays, and sculptures fro m combatants and civilians that bad borne witness to the transition o f a nation. In a conversation with Yale English

and Comparative Literature Professor Geoffrey Hartman, Christodulou discussed her work with Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Committee. She was about to take a semester off from graduate school to run the TRC's National Vision Project, an attempt to document the aspirations of Sierra Leone's citizens for the future of their country, devastated by eleven years of civil war. The tWO wondered whether any archive of testimo nies from truth commissions across the world existed. She ascertained that none did. As she was about to leave for Sierra Leone for the last rime, Ch.ristodulou laid

the groundwork for establishing such an archive at Yale, contacting transitio nal jusrice experts and law school faculty. These e fforts, and Christodulou's respect for the individual stories of national tragedy, are at the roor,.of Yale's campaign to memorialize the global devastatio n of genocide, civil war, and internal oppression. Artemis Christodulou would not return to Yale, but her name, like these stories, is immortalized in the Artemis Project. telle Higonnet '00 LAW 'OS and Alexi Zervos '99 LAW '05, twO of the Project's founding members, believe

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that the Project began in spirit, at least, in 2003, when they traveled to Sierra Leone with Christodulou to work on issues of transitional justice. Although Christodulou had already done similar work for the International Center for Transitional . ' Justice as well as for truth commissions in South America and Indonesia, this first trip to Sierra Leone cemented her com-· mitment to truth commissions and drew her back just one year later. The accident happened in May 2004, while Christodulou was heading the National Vision Project in Sierra Leone with Zervos's sister, Anthea. The two were driving from Makeni to a potential exhibition site in Freetown for the project, anq they were soon evacuated to.a hospital in . Paris. While Anthea Zervos recovered, Christodulou remained in a coma, and when she awoke,. she had suffered serious brain damage. It was about a month . after the accident, remembers Higonnet, that her friends realized that Christodulou might not be able to make a full recovery, and Alexi Zervos, Higonnet, and Daniel • • Feldman GRD '08 began to . talk about creating an initiative at Yale to honor Christodulou and her work. When Professor Hartinan told the students about his and Christodulou's conversation about a universal archive, they found a focus for their project. Since its official launch at a meeting of Yale librarians, faculty, and Christodulou's former colleagues in June 2005, the Artemis Project · has sought to create a central archive for mat~rials collected by the world's 25 truth conimissions, organizations that pursue reconciliation after periods of internal conflict. It .aims to publicly preserve both victims' and perpetrators' stories as a record of a history that might otherwise be too easily forgotten. Because they document violent political transitions, the materials the Artemis Project seeks to archive are often at risk. "Sometimes, it's as simple as someone setting a match to some boxes, and hundreds of testimonials are destroyed," explains Julie Carney '08, the Project's current student director. "One of the central ironies is that these stories are told so that they can be on the historical record, and instead, they often end up in a basement somewhere." While the National Vision Project was exhibited internation•

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ally, many TRC materials are now collecting dust in university sto~age rooms, and scores of other truth commission documents, which are never removed from their nations of origin, have met an even less certain fate. The Artemis Project seeks to prevent such losses by providing an online repository that will persist long after truth commissions consider their work complete · one that is accessible to everyone, from victims to human rights professionals. "These documents should be available to the world; they are about crimes against humanity, not against Sierra Leoneans or black South Africans," says Higonnet,. "Everyone should know and everyone .should care about it." • The challenge the Artemis Project now faces is how to ensure that these documents, which capture SOf!le of the most significant moments in global history, can remain permanendy . available without compromising the confideritia4ty of the individuals whose testimo~als ~ey · exhibit. "'~hese people have put their lives on die line, have risked eve · g, to tell the truth about the past," says Higonnet. "The Artemis Project is about honoring truth commissions, and about honoring the people who testified, which is what Artemis wanted." '

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"the Artemis Project student initiative" and the Artemis Project archive itself. So far, the organization has focused most of its work on the former. During the 20052006 s~hool year, the Project hosted two international conferences, one with truth commission managers and archivists and the second with journalists from nations undergoing political transition. In spring 2006, the Project received a grant to host a speaker series with truth commission scholars and organized an undergraduate political science seminar on truth com• tn1SS10ns. The archive itself is still in the process of materializing; its structure will be finalized this December. "It has been a very slow process," Carney explains. The Artemis Project's student participants have met with members of the Human Rights Project to discuss the Project's archival practicalities how materials should be digitized, how they should be solicited. This fall, the Artemis Project used grant funding to hire a consulting archivist from the Yale University Library, who conducted a research trip to Peru and Sierra Leone in November. The information she gathered about truth commission documents in these countries will soon be synthesized into a report that will be shared with the Artemis Project commit-

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Those invested in the Project also believe that it is also inexorably linked to the Yale community. ''This is something that makes sense to do as a student, and as a student at Yale," says Jessica Heyman '07, a former student director. She aut ibutes the importance of operating the Project through Yale to the resources of the Yale University Library and to the potential power of a Yale community made aware of wartime atrocities. The Project now functions in two capacities: a Yale outreach branch that Heyman describes as

tee, as well as with archivists working on similar projects at other institutions. "Examinations of the kinds of records that were generated by both commissions, and how they have been preserved and 111ade available since the work of the commission was completed, will provide us the information we need to deliver them digitally to the research community," explains Christine Weideman, the deputy director of Manuscripts and Archives at the Yale University Library. The Project's website is similarly in 33

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flux, with most of the links still under construction. Students are still debating · the benefits of several different models for the digital archive. Among them is one that Heyman refers to as a ''YouTube for human rights," where contributing countries can simply upload digitized documents to a central database. Another is known as the "S.WA.T. team approach," which would be operated by emissaries sent by the Artemis Project to work alongside locals to help digitize documents on site. Both models respect the autonomy of the contributing truth commissions, a priority of the Project's founding members that has persisted over the last three years.

not only documents from the National Vision Project's collection, but also recommendations, timelines, stories, and a list of victims. Christodulou's 2003 .research for the TRC and the images she collected for the National Vision Project in 2004 feature prominendy. As Christodulou's friends strive to bring the Artemis Project to life, ·the Project's namesake retains a palpable influence. "Her work, her emphasis on culturally sensitive responses to atr<,:>eity, and her unbridled enthusiasm for helping people she had never met before direcdy motivated the Project," Feldman .says. "I've often said that if the accident hadn't occurred, Artemis herself would have led this project and would have undoubtedly achieved far more than we have in three years." Still; says her father, "Now, we have a different Artemis. We can't pretend it never happened." •

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n 1999, Human Rights Watch had al_re: nu recorded tens of thousands of deaths, over 3 million displacements, and untold numbers of rapes and abductions during Sierra Leone's eleven- year civil war. These numbers would swell over the next three years, but amidst this strife and turmoil, the nation took its first step toan operation to lengthen a tendon in her ward healing by establishing a peace treaty left elbow that her father hopes will allow between the government and the rebel her to rest her hand rather than keeping forces. The peace treaty created the Sierra it clenched to her chest; now, she is grapLeone Truth and Reconciliation Comfter returning to America, Chris- pling with both the pain of the surgery mission to bear witness to the slaughter todulou stayed in a care center in and a constant nausea left by the antiand wrongdoings of the previous decade. . Massachusetts for almost three years. inflammatory she was prescribed. The Even as the country moved forward, it Although she remains paralyzed and doctor suggested that Christodulou take unable to speak, she was finally able to Motrin with milk instead, to ease the pain, was determined to remember its past. In December 2003, the TRC asked move home this September. Her family but her father doesn't think it will solve Christodulou, who had worked as a re- has specially outfitted a room with a lift, anything. "Every day she keeps crying, searcher for the Commission for several seating frame, and other equipment now and every day we get some new medicine months, to launch its National Vision necessary for her daily life. Some days she to help her," he says. Project with her friend Anthea Zervos, is well enough to spend up to an hour He wonders if she might be grieving By the time Christodulou discussed the reading friends' e-mails and updates, of- her mental limitations as well as her physlack of a universal archive for truth com- ten about Sierra Leone. "She likes read- ical pain. "Sometirnes she can remember mission documents with Professor Hart- ing about this part of her life; she really the past. When I talk to her, she closes man, she had already accepted the job. enjoys that she did something that did her eyes and I can tell that she's followAs a student of comparative literature, good for humans. That part of her hasn't · ing the conversation, but a few minutes Christodulou was focused on literature changed," her father says. ''I feel that she later, it's gone," he explains. "Such a mind as it related to communal memory, and understands this, that she remembers. I like she had, how can so much be lost? it was this interest that compelled her to know she does." It's so unbelievable. It's so painful." Chriscontinue her work for the 'IRC. ChrisThe Christodulous now devote their todulou had a 3.87 GPA at Yale, he says. todulou and Zervos began by fundrais- lives to Christodulou's comfort. Because She was a candidate for the Marshall and ing together in New York City, and then she requires constant supervision, they Rhodes scholarships. She spoke English, traveled to Sierra Leone to start their field stay awake with her on nights when the French, Greek, and German fluently, and work in earnest. The idea was simple, says full-tirne caretakers they've hired fail to during her time in Sierra Leone, .she was Zervos: ''You cannot change anything show up, help her exercise under the di- able to pick up Krio. until you can first imagine it, until you can rection of a physical therapist, and drive Most' importantly, while she worked . a b etter fu ture. " her to the mall sometimes for a change for the 'IRC, Ch.ristodulou made genuine u. nagme The TRC ultimately published three of scenery. Most recently, she returned contributions toward national reconciliavolumes of findings in 2007, comprising to Massachusetts General Hospital for •

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tion. Her father recalls the stories she told him of enemies who had been brought together by her work, who'd once hated one another ·and were now conununicating. Part of what drew Christodulou to truth commission work was her determination to preserve a full spec.trum of perspectives. Unlike courts, which are more focused on reparations, truth com- . missions catalogue perpetrators' perspectives as well as victitns', and while court testimonies are often closed to. the community, truth commissions intend to immortalize the stories they uncover in the public record. The loss of such materials is irrevocable. In a nation such as Sierra Leone, with an estitnated adult literacy rate of just 35 percent, the pieces collected by the TRC represent the only voice many citizens had in the healing process. "People who had nothing gave eve · g their time, their resources, their energy, to this restoration of Sierra Leone," says Zervos, who believes it is impossible to overestimate the testimonies' significance to the country's future. "People could not look forward without looking back. The conflict has entirely shaped people's ability to think about the future.'' At Yale, these stories have permanently shaped the students who have worked to preserve them. Unlike many student causes, the Artemis Project remains integral to many of its members' lives. Alexi Zervos describes himself as an "unofficial advisor" to the Project, while Higonnet says that sh~ is in constant email contact with current particpants and library staff Feldman still contributes to reports and grant statements produced by project members. "It's almost addictive," says Heyman who is continuing. her work for the Artemis Project in Sierra Leone. The founders, many of whom have also had the opportunity to work for truth commissions abroad, are motivated by the significance of the individual .stories they've encountered, those pieces of history catalogued and sornetimes lost in the process of making a.II).ends. "They are the history, these untold stories that haven't been written in textbooks," says Carney. "They are a way for a society as a whole to move forward." ccording to Heyman, everyone who · · in truth commission December 2007

work has heard at least one story that sticks. She encountered hers in 2005, when she was working for the post-genocide National Unity and Reconciliation Commission in Rwanda. The man whose story touched Heyman the most deeply, she says, had come home from his job at a Muslim radio station to find his village slaughtered. "It seemed almost theatrical, the way you'd ask someone a question and get such a horror story in response," she says. "Someone works late for a day and comes home to find their entire family dead behind a latrine, or that they are the only one left alive in their village." After the reconciliation, the man, a member of the Tutsi ethnic group victimized during the genocide, became engaged to ~ Hutu woman. "His priest asked him, 'Do you really trust this ·woman? She'll kill you in your sleep,"' Heyman remembers.

ized by the war. "It was heart-wrenching," she says. When she and Christodulou walked past, they were unsure where to look they worried that staring would make the residents self-conscious, but wondered whether ignoring them would be worse. When Christodulou focused her TRC research on these amputations, Higonnet • asked her how she managed to grapple with such devastating tragedy, day in and day out. "Tears welled up in her eyes, but she didn't cry," Higonnet remembers. "She just said, 'It's the right thing to do."' All of the Artemis Project's founding members tell similar stories chronicling Christodulou's incredible dedication. Although her father used to ask himself whether he and his wife should have stopped their daughter from returning to Sierra Leone, whether he could have

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The two married regardless, and he now works as a journalist for the BBC. "He faced a lot of opposition in practicing his own reconciliation," she says. Higonnet's story comes from the time she spent in Sierra Le_one in 2003, working for a special court with Alexi Zervos and sleeping beside Christodulou under a single spotty mosquito net. Although many of Higonnet's experiences in the court are bound by confidentiality, she is plagued by the memory of what she calls the "signature atrocity'' of the Sierra Leone civil war: the legendary "amputations" performed by the Rebel United Front, one of the warring parties. The rebels cut off their · hostages' hands, arms, noses, lips, ears tactics that typified the sheer brutality and lasting impact of the war. Higonnet describes art iving in Sierra Leone for the first time and being dt iven past an amputee camp where she saw even the smallest children vicrirn-

prevented the accident, he now realizes that nothing they could have done would have stopped her from doing the work she thought was important she was too touched by the tragedies she'd encountered to do anything but help. "It's hard to describe how enormously vibrant she was," Alexi Zervos muses. "She had this enormous passion for the truth commissions, and for the victims. She was simply inspirational." I .ike the truth commissions she was committed to, Christodulou tried to heal nations with stories. Ironically, her own story has become just one of the countless individual tragedies the Artemis Project is determined to remember. For everyone involved, says Zervos, '".,.....I'his project is important because it bears her name." •

Pria Ana11d is a sophomore i11 Berke~ College.

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I<etati1l1le expe ~·UL...L ents use human subjects. By ick andler

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merican radical and psychedelic drug pioneer Timothy Leary ..'-'nee said, "I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs and 1 ,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD." A similar sentiment might have been in the mind of Yale junior George Aki Nikolaidis when he volunteered to take small doses of the hallucinogen ketamine last July as part of a controlled experiment run by the Yale School of Medicine. "I started it mainly because I was

curious in the research. Research in drugs I had a serious interest in," ·says Nikolaidis . "It appealed to me that I could experience a hard drug in a really safe, controlled setting." The study, which took place at the neurology department of the West Haven VA Medical Center in West Haven, Connecticut and was conducted by Yale professors, is part of an ongoing project to use ketamine to revolutionize the treatment of schizophrenia. ''In the late 1980s and to this day,"

says John Krystal, lead investigator on the experiment, Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, and deputy_ chairman for research for the Department of Psychiatry, "our group of investigators at Yale studying schizophrenia were among the first groups in Connecticut and, in some cases, the world, to prescribe new medication treatments that were introduced for schizophrenia." Over a period of two weeks, Nikolaidis made four trips to the West Haven VA THE NEW JOURNAL

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facility to participate in the double-blind study. With electrodes on his head, an IV in his left arm to draw blood, and another in his right arm to administer a combination of saline solution, ketamine, and nicotine, Yale researchers recorded his brain waves using an electroencephalogram (EEG) test and monitored his vital signs. Twice he was given a placebo; twice he was given an injection of ketamine, once by itself and once in combination with nicotine. ''Words couldn't describe what happened," Nikolaidis says. ''I thought that when it was over I would be able to describe it to people, but I found myself complet~ly unable to describe my experience. It was much more on a tactile level than cerebral I just mean cerebral in the sense of being rational." December 2007

difficulty His explaining the experience is not unusual: ketamine, originally invented bf pharmacist Calvin Stevens in 1962 as an anesthetic, has strong dissociative properties, affecting both the hippocampus (a region of the brain associated with memory) and the prefrontal cortex (associated with abstract thought). While it has a number of medical uses, ketamine has been known to induce near-death experiences, cognitive distortion, hallucinations, and the socalled "I<-Hole," a state of drug-induced paralysis. "It was definitely interesting," says Nikolaidis. By tripping on ketamine, Nikolaidis may have participated in some of the most important psychopharmacological research in decades. These tests,

conducted by the Yale School of Medicine on otherwise healthy subjects, may be the key to revolutionary new treatments for illnesses ranging from clinical depression to schizophrenia. One student's K-Hole may be several million's door to a life of relative normalcy. ale's ketamine research dates back to the late 1980s and has been innovative in a number of ways. When used to treat mental disorders such as schizophrenia, ketamine targets the Nmethyl-D-aspartate MDA) glutamate receptor, a chemical receptor in the brain associated with the coordination of different neural networks. Krystal explains that all of the treat• nents that are approved current! by the Federal 37

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Food and Drug Administration for the Depression Research Program, has often associated with its countercultural treatment of schizophrenia work through . been conducting his own research on proponents than its medical ones. blockading one type of receptor target the effects of ketamine on treatment- Psychedelic gurus like astrologer Marcia in the bra1n for the chemical messenger resistant .depression. depression .which, Moore, who advocated the recreational dopamine. He says he and his colleagues much like the schizophrenia Krystal is use of ketam.ine in her 1978 book,Journrys and were "convinced that advances in studying, does not respond to drugs that into the Bright World, and D.M. Turner, the treatment of schizophrenia were target dopamine and serotonin receptors. author of The Essential P.rychedelic Guide, not going to come from drugs primarily "I think Yale, along with the National remain powerful images of the pitfalls targeting the dopamine-2 receptor." Institute of Mental Health, is really one of ketamine and· its place in American Building off a body of earlier work of the only places ·doing this kind of drug culture. Moore disappeared from . her house in 1979, presumably under on schizophrenia, . including the use of research~" Sanacora says. phencylidine, another drug which affects . Sanacora, who also ran his study out of the influence of ketamine. Her skeleton NMDA receptors, ·and preliminary the WestHaven VAhospitalandconducted was discovered two years later in a tree, work by Yale researchers on novel drug it on ten clinically depressed subjects over where she had frozen to death. On New treatments in the late 1980s, Krystal and the course of a year, reported dramatic Year's Eve of 1996, Turner drowned in his bathtub tripping on ketamine. · his colleagues have used ketamine to findings, After . a single administration . . Ketamine is currendy listed as a simulate some symptoms of schizophrenia of ketamine, seventy percent of patients in ·healthy patients like Nikolaidis. Post- reported that their symptoms improved, Schedule III narcotic by the United States mortem analyses of brain tissue have with one-third of patients reporting that · Drug Enforcement Agency, along with . indicated that glutamine receptors the their symptoms disappeared completely anabolic steroids and GHB, "the date rape same receptors ketamine affects? causing for days or even weeks. "Obviously," says drug." Known on the street as "Special its users to get, as Nikolaidis puts it, "really Sanacora, "it's been an exciting turn for K," ketamine has become popular on the fucked up" are naturally abnormal in the field." Though one patient had to be rave scene in recent years. "It is an entirely schizophrenic patients. A paper Krystal removed from the study because of an different, and a potentially dangerous arid several colleagues published in adverse reaction to the placebo, Sanacora situation, when somebody abuses 2003 posed the question: If ketamine claims that the study has not included ketamine," says Krystal. ''When abused, can be used to induce the symptoms of any other negative reactions. Pfizer has ketamine is often ingested in combination ' non-paranoid schizophrenia in healthy · . already presented data on a drug that with other substances that impair patients, might it be possible to develop uses a mechanism similar to the one Yale perception or judgment, like cannabis. an 'anti-ketamine' to reverse those same researchers have been studying. Sanacora The compounding of intoxicant effects effects in mentally . ill patients? "The is optimistic that such a drug might be could have unpredictable results." Such stigma has deterred some full. range of benefits and limitations of available on the market within the next . glutamatergic treatments remains to be . four years. "It would be a completely would-be research subjects. Nikolaidis first learned of the trial from his friend, demonstrated;' Krystal and his colleagues novel treatment for depression," he says. Spencer Gray, another Yale junior who concluded, "but the promise of these agents constitutes one of several hopeful he potential use of ketamine in had been scheduled to participate in the new avenues for .addressing the distress prescription anti-depressants and study, but dropped out before it began. and disability that still often plagues those anti-psychotics, as well as its experimental "I had some issues," says Gray, who has individuals suffering from schizophrenia." use on healthy volunteer research participated in a number of other Yale Researchers hope that experiments like subjects, conflicts with the public's studies, including MRis and glucose the one performed on Nikolaidis will perception of the drug as a dangerous, tolerance tests. Gray's motivations, unlike his friend's, were primarily financial. "My shed light on these avenues. While ketamine recreational psychedelic. . . Other scientists · are also using has been used since its inception as an · parents told me to get a job last year;' ketam.ine to treat mental disorders. Gray says, "so I carne up with the idea of anesthetic in environments ranging from . George Sanacora, associate professor veterinary offices and pediatric wards to doing experiments." The ketamine trial, of psychiatry and director of the Yale the battlefields of Vietnam, it is more which was advertised in the Yale post office, would have been a major windfall: ( • completing.. the two week trial brought with it an $875 paycheck. • Gray signed up for the experiment, went through a preliminary four-hour • • psychological evaluation, and consulted friends and acqua1ntances about' it. Many urged him to reconsider. His mother finally convinced him to change his mind. "She flipped out," Gray recalls. "I called her and told her I was thinking •

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about doing it. She started crying on the phone and asked me not to do it. It was Mother's Day and her birthday, and she asked me not to do it as a gift to her." While he ultimately decided not . to participate, G.tay believes the experiment is safe. "They're pretty careful about past history of psychosis and depression and stuf£ They were pretty open about the whole procedure. I didn't feel deceived or anything.'' "Participants are - screened very carefully with regard to their psychological and physical health," Krystal confirms. ''We believe that this may be a reason that ketamine has been so safe in our studies and in the studies conducted by our colleagues around the world." While ketamine alters judgement and perception, it can, says Krystal, "be studied safely in people who have been prepared for its effects, who are supervised by people who have experience in dealing with symptoms that it produces, and when it is administered in a setting that is safe and comfortable." Sanacora similarly emphasizes the relative safety of ketamine. ''It's been around for quite a while," he says. ' 'It can raise blood pressure, but otherwise it is pretty well-tolerated." December 2007

Jerald Block is a Washington-based psychiatrist who has criticized some of Yale's past human experiment policiesparticularly a recent clinical trial on Zyprexa, a medication designed to treat schizophrenia that was administered to adolescents over a period of several years. He views human testing as a balancing act. "I don't think researchers go into their studies trying to deceive people," he says. "Rather, we can get excited by a concept, lose perspective, and may take it too far. That is the role of Institutional Review Boards . to rein people in a bit. It is a tough balance. If the IRB is too intrusive, they hold back important research and people are harmed. If they are too loose... people can also get hurt." Nonetheless, Block, who has not specifically investigated Yale's ketamine experiments, sees potential in the drug. " I do not know the protocol so I cannot address it, specifically," he says. "However, · I will say that ketamine is interesting ... the literature seems to indicate some rather amazing data coming out on the use of ketamine in treating depression. So, it is an important substance to study and has the potential for a breakthrough discovery." For others, the touted safety of such a

study is not enough to convince them to participate. Michelle Castaneda, a friend of Gray's who became concerned after she learned of his plans to participate in the experiment, called her father, a professor at New York University School of Medicine and Director of Inpatient Psychiatry at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York, to ask him his opinion on the subject. "He did some reading on it, and said ketamine testing seemed pretty safe and pretty legitimate, but when I asked him if he would ever let me do it, he told me 'never, ever, ever, ever, ever."' Nikolaidis, a psychology major who nins a lab in which he conducts nondmg-related psychology experiments on volunteers of his own, defends the testing. ''I could not have imagined a more well-run study," he says. ''I think in terms of having m y best interest at heart, I could not have imagined better researchers." Nikolaidis admits that he could be exceptional in his willingness to lend his mind to science. ''It might just be me," he says, "but I'm just curious about drugs."

1 ick Handler, a junior in Ezra Stiles College, is a •

managing editor qf TNJ.

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n 2000, a student walked into the lobby of Yale's Undergraduate · Career Services and asked how to become a puppeteer. "This guy wanted a certain salary, certain benefits," recalls . . Phil Jones, the director of UCS since 1999. ''"We put a counselor to work on it and ended up with tons of information on puppeteering positions. It's rare, but every once in a while a student hits us . . with something new." . Seated in his office at 55 . Whitney Avenue, UCS' base of operations for the . past seven years, Jones exudes confidence. British and heavily bearded, he has faith in his department's ability to .smooth over the potentially harrowing experience of securing employment after nearly two decades of uninterrupted schooling. He is quick to champion the professional prowess of Yalies independent of UCS' involvement. "The greatest fear I hear from the students who come here is that they're not going to get jobs," he says. "That's ridiculous. In a competitive market, the most competitive people are •

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going to get the jobs, and the smartest people tend to .be the most competitive. And where are the smartest people?" He pauses, and leans forward conspiratorially in his armchajr. "The smartest people are here!" · · And yet, despite their intelligence, his clients are considerably less sanguine. From the oft-quoted complaint of UCS' favoritism towards investment bankers and consulting firms to the prohibitive expense of its overseas Bulldogs programs, not all students sing the praises of their Whitney Avenue advocates. Despite UCS' undeniably daunting resources an expansive alumni network, a seemingly endless cycle of specialized

seminars, and a sizeable and well-trained staff Yalies continue to write off the service as impersonal, limited in scope, and lacking in the kind of capabilities that New Haven's hotbed of precocious preprofessionals really wants: Jones uses the story of the puppeteer to illustrate the open-mindednes.s of the 0ffice he runs, but the tale raises questions of its own. Who really pulls the strings at UCS? Is it big-name firms like Morgan Stanley and. JPM9rgan, whose high turnover rates requjre a constant influx of fresh Ivy League blood? Is it the Yale administration, pushing its undergraduates to enter lucrative fields and seek prestigious positions? Or is it the students themselves, increasingly · concerned about their professional futures as graduation approaches, yet wary of abandoning the cushy confines of college far the monetary crush of the marketplace? Jones' answer is unequivocal: "I don't care what you do," he explains. "Our role here is to challenge students about what they want from a career. What's your criteria?" Indeed, since he acquired his post • in 1999,Jones has taken sweeping steps to broaden UCS' interactions with students, allowing what was once a Wall Street THE NEW JOURNAL

clearing-house to cater more and more to individualized interests and courses of study. "The important thing is sitting down one-on-one with undergraduates and discussing their future," he maintains. "It's going to be different for everyone." Before Jones took the helm at UCS, there were no counseling appointments. Now, the office accommodates roughly five thousand meetings a year. This personal contactisJones' response to his concerns over the deceptive ease of applying for positions in the age .of Internet commerce. "It's a kind of tunnel vision students have," he says, "like if it's all online, people can just furrow the path that's in their head. Somebody walked in here once and literally asked for our list of jobs." Jones does not see providing laundry lists and sign-up sheets as his responsibility. He contends that the road to the perfect career is one students must follow on the strength of their own ambition. UCS can· provide direction and advice, but does not aim to fence clients into the field of their dreams. The service, in Jones' words, "specializes in the totally clueless." But in drawing a distinction between monomaniacal pre-professionals and the desperately aimless, UCS misses what may be the most sizeable demographic of all: students with a pretty clear idea of their career goals, but not the faintest sense of how to achieve them. Bevan Dowd, a senior Literature major, unsuccessfully attempted to locate a writing or publishing internship through UCS for the summer between her sophomore-and junior years. When repeated searches proved fruitless, she decided to take matters into her own hands. 'Cj_ spent a lot of time on the UCS website," she explains, "but there just wasn't enough variety." Frustrated, Dowd went home and Googled "magazine internship New York City." She sent her resume to the first hit and spent the summer employed by a small food magazine. Her work involved, among other editorial duties, tracking down the top ten apple pies of the Big Apple. "I think the biggest problem with UCS is that a lot of people just- find them unapproachable," says Dowd. ''I know that they're trying to change the image that they're just for consulting and banking jobs, but that message isn't reaching students." Contrary to Jones' .

December 2007

conjecture, Dowd identifies most Yalies' professional anxiety as aggravated not by the uncertainty of finding a job, any job, but by the daunting quest to locate the "perfect fit" career. "UCS is a good . resource," she says, "and it makes Yale unique. But the complications that arise in a job search can't be assuaged by a service so many ~tudents see as tied up in a limited array of fields."

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you answer those general life questions." question of the puppeteer remains. Just how willing is UCS to tackle the unprecedented and the absurd, to assist students · with ambitions well beyond the realm of the immediately feasible? Jones, during our conversation, noted that the "hardest thing for Yale students is that . there really isn't anything they can't do." I

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Even those in pursuit of positions at investment banks and consulting firms ' acknowledge the system's limitations. Andriana Diez, a senior who will work for JPMorgan next year, praises the organizational abilities of UCS. ''I _ couldn't imagine going through the job search without UCS," explains Diez. "One week I had 13 interviews. If it hadn't been for them, I would have been out of school for a week." Still, Diez is quick to point out that a student's opinion of the organization depends largely on the career she chooses and the qua1ity of her counseling sessions, which can vary widely. ''I feel like U CS is really underappreciated on campus," she says. ''But how people feel about the program generally goes along with whether or not it helped them personally." Olga Berlinsky, another senior with a job offer from a top consulting firms agrees. "Last year, I was applying to some banking internships and set up an appointment at UCS to_talk about finance interviews," recalls Berlinsky. "The first question the UCS person asked me was, 'Are you really interested in this stuff, or are you just doing it because it's being thrown at you?' That really surprised me." Jones' commitment to diversifying UCS' appeal beyond simple schedu1ing and headhunting has been at least partia11y effective. Their counselors are asking the right questions, but the jury is out on whether they are helpful ''My impression is that UCS isn't really the place to get direction," comments Berlinsky. ''I think there are plenty of other resources at Yale, like friends, professors, and deans, that are more suited than UCS at helping

wondered just how far UCS' definition of "anything" extended, and decided to find out firsthand whether something more akin to Pinocchio than puppeteering was at work in the director's tale. After scheduling a standard thirtyminute appointment, I made m y way to UCS' Whitney Avenue headquarters and waited in the lobby for my counselor to appear. Before long, an affable red-haired woman emerged from behind a cubicle and shook my hand. We exchanged pleasantries where was I from, what was my major? and proceeded to her office. "So what brings you here today?" she asked, leaning over the desk. "It might sound a bit strange," I said, "but I'm looking for a job as a taxidermist." The counselor scrunched her eyes inquisitively, but appeared otherwise nnfazed. Turning to her computer, she began to pore through UCS' vast database of alumni contacts. A quick search of the listings yielded no matches. Moving over to a compilation of job postings, the counselor brought my attention to a pulldown list of career categories. ''We can take a look at Environment and Preservation," she exp]ained. ''Taxidermy is a kind of preser vation, I guess." When this too failed to produce a hit, the counselor rotated in her chair to face me. Scribbling notes on a steno pad, she lifted her eyes to meet mine. "Have you tried a random Google search?"

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burning through U!Jsses on a second floor balcony beneath the looming fac;ade of Notre Dame, I was interrupted by a pianist hammering out rhythmic jazz in harmony with a frenzied drumbeat from below. Following the staircase down to the piano, I encountered Carnal, the bookshop's carpenter. His toolbox lay locked at his side; instead of repairing the two poetry shelves that had collapsed the day before, he sat on the corner stair beating a makeshift drum in time to the pouring summer rain. Instead of facing the indignity of walking drenched through Saint-Michel, Carnal was waiting out the rain inside the shop. I sat down on the top stair and, following Carnal's lead, enclosed within its doors, decided to surrender myself to the peculiar melody of Shakespeare and Co. Some weeks before, on my arrival at the Parisian bookshop, I had pushed through the swarms of awed customers and asked for Sylvia, Sylvia Beach Whitman. I would begin my stay in her bookshop that evening. A thin-framed woman stood behind the vintage cash register, surrounded by the summer horde of American tourists, all of whom were overwhelmingly relieved to speak English with the Australian-accented manager. Eli that I am, I expected Sylvia to descend from her manager's office and offer a full orientation on the rules and regulations of the shop. As I would be sleeping there, I assumed that a few expectations would be established. Yet I quickly realized that control and organization were antithetical to the bohemian lifestyle of Shakespeare and Co. I was to read, and I was to write. In exchange for this intellectual discovery was a mattress, located right in the center of Paris. According to my official tide, I was a ''Writer-in-Residence." Sleeping overnight in a bookstore encapsulated all of my fondness for folios and octavos, even for the paperback. Yet not any bookstore would satisfy me I had to sleep overnight in Shakespeare and Company. Though Shakespeare and Co. attracts some tourists because of its consistent listing in Paris guidebooks, most overlook this hidden treasure tucked between the busding markets of Saint-Michel and the flying buttresses of Notre-Dame. This small bibliophilic sanctuary is known for •

December 2007

its eclectic collection of English novels in all congregated in her shop, which a country which vigorously promotes all became the center of literary culture and things French. It also serves as a haven innovative ideas. Hardly by coincidence, for wandering and penniless writers who all of the books banned in England and are allowed to sleep ainong its shelves for America most notably, Joyce's U!Jsses'-. ' were .readilty .available in Sylvia's shop. free. When I first heard of the opportunity, After Anglophone publishers rejected the I was skeptical. Perhaps it was possible for monumental text as pornographic, Beach a beatnik, but .not for me, not now. Even . decided to publish it out of Shakespeare the most unconventional modern hipster, and Company. I thought, would not hitchhike across The shop closed after the . Europ'e without a mapped.,.out plan or German occupation of Paris during sleep in a grimy and soiled bookshop just World War II. Hemingway himself for the sake of advenwre. Yet according liberated the store when he entered Paris to the store's owner, George Whitman, with the American troops in 1944, but over forty-thousand people have sl~pt in it was years before it re-opened across •

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his shop over the years. I went to Paris determined to become the next. One cannot know Shakespeare and Co. without knowing George._A 93-yearold man who retains a remarkably lucid memory and a propensity to burst into a tyrannical rage, George is a living legend whose presence in the shop inspires both awe and fear. He occasionally descends from his apartment on the third floor a space he calls "The Museum of the Lost Generation" and sits out on the wooden · benches lining the fac;ade of the shop, picking up three or four of the rejected used books, insisting that all of them have something worthwhile to offer:. A staunch socialist and a consummate host who lives by the adage, Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest thry be angels in disguise, he first allowed complete strangers to sleep in his bookstore in 1951. George is the second owner of Shakespeare and Company; Sylvia Beach Whitman, his daughter, now manages the shop. The original bookstore, located in the heart of l'Odeon, was established by Sylvia Beach in 1919. Her lending libraty of English books quickly became the refuge for all of the expatt iate writers of the Lost Generation. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, Stein, Joyce they •

town. George felt he had the prerogative to reestablish the store, recreating a literary haven where young writers could gather, discuss, and create, while living in one of the world's most stimulating cities. A second generation of lost writers gathered in George's bookshop, everyone from the last modernists Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Richard Wright, and Samuel Beckett through the first BeatsAllen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. George restored Beach's literary sphere, but this rime according to his Mat xist credo: Give what you can; take whatyou need. entered George's utopia and fell into the rhythms of the shop's exceptional lifestyle. On my first day of residence, I passed underneath the green front doorway and was confronted with a chaos of books, lying strewn in every possible direction. Books extended up to the edge of the rolling ceiling and crowded into splintered wooden shelves so unstable that one could not pull a spine off the shelf without fear of collapse. Pyramidal piles of books were stacked in corners, stuffed into suitcases like dirty clothing, or thrown, rolling and dismembered, into bins outside the shop, as if some 43

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unsuspecting tourist would fall in love ?ach morning, the resident writers with the flimsy paperbacks and purchase . wearily strolled across the street to Cafe one. Interspersed throughout this mayhem Panis, where the waiters behind the bar were seven mattresses, comfortably distinguished us · from the Notre Dame awaiting the fatigued residents of the tourists .by our bloodshot eyes, our dirty shop once those green doors closed at clothes, and (above all) our greasy hair. We midnight. quickly gulped down the one euro cafe at · During my stay, the shop hosted the bat: cheap but strong. After that, we anywhere from three to ten writers each went our separate ways heading upstairs night. We obediently helped open the to the library to .fulfill George's bidding shop at midday and close at midnight. that we read a book a day or sitting down at For two hours in between, we worked in an anCient typewnter, attempting to wnte the store . a sort of work-study program amidst all the customers disturbing our as part ·of our invitation to stay. One temporary home. We would reconvene at afternoon, while I was shelving literary midnight and retreat upstairs to the library, nonfiction, a delicate model entered the pop open the cheapest bottle of wine that bookshop, picked up the nearest Tiffany- Franprix offered, and let our thoughts blue hardback an9 pretended to read a flow. We positioned ourselves amidst the pose for her shoot. I felt eerily analogous books and talked into the wee hours of the to Audrey Hepburn in Funf!Y Face} covered morning. Some nights, the conversations in the grime of dusty book jackets, were more intellectual--discussing the scripted to the role of the bookworm in absurdity of French deconstructionism, opposition to the liberated and vivacious Ted Hughes' influence on Sylvia Plath, Fred Astaire. or the ways Walter Benjamin's theories on •

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art applied to Paris' constantly-clicking tourists. Other times, we simply laughed uncontrollably at YouTube videos or mentally prepared ourselves for our enmasse excursion the next morning to the free public showers. George was a prominent fixture during my stay. I recall fondly the morning when I was allowed to "shower" in George's bathtub, pouring a pan of hot water over myself, terrified of the ubiquitous cockroaches squirming throughout his apartment, or of seeing George himself, a notable ladies' man, spying on me through the stained gl~s windows that lined the tub. I gained the.ultimate satisfaction one Sunday afternoon when I was privileged to be George's "Tea Lady." I served tea to his friends, his dedicated followers, and even the random customers who gathered in his tiny apartment every Sunday at four o'clock. His crass voice rang into the narrow hallway, inquiring as to whether everyone had a cup of tea and a madeleine. 'IHE NEW JOURNAL

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Moments later, he strode into the room, still dressed in his blue polka-dot pajamas with his wired grey hair pointing in every direction. eyond feeling compelled to live in Shakespeare and Co., I wanted to read U fysses in the books hop that published it. I managed to hew my way through Joyce's jumbled narrative, sitting on the seco.Q.d-floor windowsill, looking across the -Seine to Notre Dame. Yet reading the monumental epic didn't have the profound effect I had anticipated. The bookstore changed me more than its colossal publication. It fulfilled my deep-rooted desire' to be bohemian; to throw away my planner and Post-It notes and merely live by the hour; to no longer be the collared-shirted, trousered, tightbunned Yale student. To be part of the generation still lost, migrating from place to place without any fixed destination; to no longer have a mapped out plan, but

merely exist from day to day, having no connections, no way to be traced, but to just be. I was still living in the bookstore during the crazed celebrations of the final Harry Potter installment. In the midst of the long line of squealing customers eager to acquire their reserved copies, George yelled at me for not properly centering Shakespeare and Co.'s signature stamp on the title page, insisting that the customer deserved a refund for not receiving a properly-placed stamp. I laughed, and Sylvia smiled at me with sympathy. After the copies had been sold, George sat down in a corner chair to offer all the regulars his homemade butter rum from a glass bell jar. We all walked outside and dispersed across -the worn benches lining the shop. I carefully rolled some tobacco; as I peered over the end of my first cigarette, I saw the eager eyes and smirlciog smile of a fellow writer as he lit the end. He seemed to take infinite

pleasure in his minor involvement in my conversion into a free-spirit. I smiled and inhaled. I breathed in, opening my lungs and myself to a bohemian rhythm. •

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Jessica Svendsen is aj11nior in Marse College. •

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ike many Yale students, I like money. Unfortunately, also like ma.ny Yale students, I've spent my college career reading books from an age when money was probably denominated in seashells or salt. Short on marketable . skills, I've spent most of my senior year trying to convince rich people to hand me money for no good reason. For those of you who are facing the same problem before graduation, I suggest my latest get-rich-quick scheme: the Rhodes Scholarships . The Rhodes Scholarships are just one of the many philanthropic ventures established by a Victorian tycoon named Cecil Rh.odes, who also founded the De Beers diamond corporation and the charming nation of Rhodesia. Of all Rhodes' acts of charity, .however, the Rhodes Scholarships are undoubtedly the most noble chiefly insofar as they have the potential to benefit me. The Scholarships fund two years of study at

the University of Oxford in the United great Englishmen like Margaret Thatcher. Kingdom; as such, they're perfect for End every answer by quoting Fawfty those of us incapable of acquiring a Towers. Rhodes committees are especially paying job or a suntan. Winning a Rhodes Scholarship is fajrly impressed by displays of courage. Begin straightforward. First, overcome some the interview by noting that you have crippling hardship. (Consider becoming spent the past several years living in New addicted to heroin.) Second, rescue some Haven a town known to be inhabited starving ·orphans and homeless puppies; by poor people, minorities, and even if at all possible, save time by letting some women. If committee members the starving orphans adopt the puppies. find such Victorian aplomb insufficiently Third, demonstrate strong leadership by courageous, show off your cqjones by ruthlessly eliminating those who dare to streaking. challenge your authority, starting with Finally, if you fail to win a Rhodes all competing applicants for the Rhodes Scholarship, oon't despajr: in the long Scholarships. run, all the winning applicants are still (Intelligence helps but is hardly a going to die alone, just like you They'll prerequisite. I, for instance, consider just be richer in the meantime. myself a strong candidate.) If invited for an interview, do anything possible to establish your credentials as • an Anglophile. Answer all questions in an Matthew L.ee, a senior in Jonathan Edwards College, assumed British accent (Cockney rhyming slang works best). Express admiration for is a staff writerfor TN]. •

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