Volume 40 - Issue 5

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Advism Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, FJisha Cooper, Julia Pre.'>ton. Lauren Rabin, Stn·en Weisman, Daniel Ycrgm FrJtnds Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Emily B.tzdon, Anson M. Beard, Jr., Blaire Bennett, Richard Bmdlcy, Martha Brant, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Jay Carney. Daphne Chu, Josh Civin,Jonarhan M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, M~i Denison, Albert J. Fox, Mrs. Hov.ard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwm Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang. Walter Jacob, Jane Karnensl..'y, Tina Kdley, Roger Kirv.ood.Jonathan Lear, lc\vis E. Lehrman, Jim Lov.e, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean O'Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lev. is and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabm, Fairfax C. Randal, Robert Randolph, Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, \X~ Hampton ides, Usa S1herman, con Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulsman, Thomas trong. Margarita Whitelearher, Blake \X'ilson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stem Yergin I HE NEW JOURl"\AL

Volume 40, Number 5 April2008

The New Journal 20

liVING ON THE EDGE

Yale develop plans for new colleges, but will it develop Lower Hillhouse?

by Miub Rm·!J

26

Ct.AsS CoNs< tous~Ess

Yale College reevaluates freshman seminars. byAin: Hmzm"

9

Illll Doom E Creating our favorite wffcc shop.

SKETCHEs m

by Rachtl Engl~r 14

Btu , B1u.s, Pn LS Birth control prices get knocked up.

by M1raruitz Popluy

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11

16

34 30

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C url"lalk by Laum Zax PERSONAl

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The Fa nul) \X e Choose

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THI:' CRiliCAl A GLE lhe \an \ echten Files: Confronting a literary icon' com:ro,ers1al collection by Amy Fish ENDNOlE

Real to Red by Bm !Arman

April2008

3

POINTS OF DEPARTURE

SCUBA LIBRE Instructor Lee Livingston smacks his fist against his palm, and a resounding pop carries through the water. Hearing this signal for Loolt out!, Y.e rurn slowly ro identify its source, careful ro draw our gear tight about our bodio. With 62 pounds per cubic foot of water above us, every motion must be gentle and precise. £~ on mt! Livingston goruro. poking two fingers emphatically towards his face.

Silent and docile as manatees, we obev and await further instruction.

• Ar half past noon every Sunday, I head co a classroom in the basement of Payne Whitney Gym to find Livingston, a lean man bristling with a gray beard, drawing charts and graphs on the whireboard. For $450 and one semester's worth of Sundays, he is teaching me ro be a cenified scuba diver.

At the end of the class, we will perform open-water check-our dives in the cold, murky warer off Massachusens and become certified ro dive almost anywhere in the world. "Then you can dive the rest of your life in the blue, warm waters of the Caribbean, if that's your style!" Livingston snorts. h isn't rus: Livingston has done hundreds of dhes off the Ea.sr Coast, where the waters hide cenruries of sunken trading and naval vessels. He has explored shipwrecks both professionally and for personal imeresr, and emphasizes that he h always "very respectful when I go down there. ome of those ~ires are also grave sires; there's a lot of history out in

4

the ocean." He has, however, hauled up classes. •It's usually the average Joe Blow his share of sunken treasure. "I picked up off the street," he ~ys. Our own class some silver plates off the Bianca C," he includes Yale undergraduate and gradu-· boasts, referring to a well-known wreck ate .madents studying various disciplines. middle-aged locals, and C\'en a high near the island of Grenada.

Payne Whlmey's version ofscuba train- school student whose grandfather wanted ing is less Piraus ofth~ Caribb~an and more a daving buddy.

Having heard Livin~ton'~ signal for atYMCA. After dry training. v.e get rc:ady to dive in a swimming pool, trooping to tention, we collect in an expectant circle the trailer to retrieve a Buoyancy-Com- around him. He makes a sudden frantic pensator vesr, a 16-pound weight belt, a slashing movement acro~s his neck. He wet suit, an octopus-like set of tubes with rips his regulator from his mouth and our breathing apparatus, and a bright bubbles stream from his lips like jellyyellow scuba rank. I stand at the edge of fish shooting for the surface. Livingston's the Kiphuth Exhibition Pool, neon green wife kic~ toward him, her pink flippers • Rippers dangling over the rim, watching Hashing through the water. Livingston other pairs of divers kick to deeper water grips her vest and grabs the cord of her like shiny black frogs. I look to my buddy, regulator, allowing her to take one deep a second-year School of Management stu- breath before pulling the regulator into dent named Rachel, before bending my his own mouth. He breathes freely twice knees, pressing my goggles to my face, and hands the regulator back to her. Putand Hipping head first into the water. ting hb own back into his mouth, he .

Although the bottom of a swimming straightens up and points to me. I rum ro pool seems the least interesting place on my buddy and make rhe same motions, Earth £O explore, Kiphuth's unnaturally sharing air for two breaths at a rime until blue water has the advantages of high v.e have a steady rhythm. visibility and of being close to open air.

As I drag myself our of the pool after In the pool, we deflate our BC's, allow- three hours, I'm cold. tired, and only ing our weight-belts to drag us to the slightly traumatized. Sure, I've seen phobottom. There, Livingston demonstrates tos of :.ea anemones <Uld brain-coral and an underwater skill and corrects us as we parrot-fish,l\-e \Yatched)ames Bond fight practice it in rurn, rrying to acclimate underw:uer battles with spear-guns. Bur ourselves to our aquatic surroundings. We what v.ill happen when we're rosscd into learn to clear a flooded mask of water and the big blue for check-out dives in April? to retrieve our breathing regularors. We It can't be that different from the bottom even remove our entire scuba tanks and of a pool, I tell myself. Just more fish. then strap them back on. To prepare for a worst-case scenario, we practice buddy- Marissa Grunes breathing, a skill no one will need unless someone's "fool of a diving buddy is numbskull enough to screw up and not check his air," Livingston grimaces. We laugh uneasily bur know he harbors no Ulusions. His scoldings shock us into attentiveness far quicker than the amagined dangers of open water.

Learning ro keep cool is a critical skall for a scuba diver and the primary goal of our Pame Whitney class. To receive cenificati~n. we musr .pass a written test and accomplish certain tasks in the open ocean to demonsuare comfort in the environment. Although he has taught daving at many univer.iries, Livingston does not often have college student~ in his

THE NEW JOUR.l"l'AL

FLAGS TO RICHES Anyone who has driven along the Governor John Davi~ Lodge 'turnpike, the segment of 1-95 that hug~ the New Haven harbor for several miles before abruptly veering off toward Mystic, is sure to have spotted a row of trucks and vans with gaudy. spray-painted monikers like Sweeney's" and Mlxtapa." lhe gritty entrepre- neurs who own and operate these mobile luncheonetto have served the ~arne burritos and hot dogs to the same customers-truckers en route to Providence or Boston-for years. But one vehicle mnds our from the r~t: a 1988 Chevy van decked with Rags that flurter noisily in the coa\tal breeze. For >ears, this van has piqued the curiosity of school-bound Yale students and homeward-bound suburbanites with its array of banne ·~ Jnd plastic signs reading"Fbg Man" ana "Since 1991." Ounky and vaniUa-colored the vehicle might well have had a past life as an ice-cream truck.

Irs peeling paint and growing sheen of rust, meanwhile, suggest that its current life is drawing to a close.

BiiJ Shields, the owner of the van, has the rugged build of a former linebacker.

His appearance is unkempt, hh voice slightly dopey, but he is surprhingly eloquent on the subject of fla~. For the last twenty years, he has eked out a living selling them our of the back of his van.

On any given day he sells between five and rwenry, emb z.oned with pattern~ as diverse as the Red So nsignia, the Star Spangled Banner 1.nd the ever-popular skuiJ and crossbones. The income he generato nuy be small by Wall Street standards. but it is sufficient for his needs.

Selling fl~ used to be a p:m-time gig. For years, Shields worked at one of many American printing companies dut went out of~iness in the c-.ulv nineties.

April2008

When he felt as if the entire industry were being shipped overseas in the late dghrio, Shields, a self-proclaimed hiqOC)' buff, took to ~lling patriotic bumper ~ticker,, license plato, and Rags on the side. His first sale was an Irish tricolor at a Rea market in ~iilford. To this day, the p.1ttern continuo to be a top ~eller, rhanh in large part to Saint P.:mick's day. ult's the Catholic countries," he says, \\ho boast the most national pride. The coUntC)' with the least, judging by irs Aag purchases, is France.

In the mid-nineties, Shields severed ties with the commercial printing industry and devoted himself full time to his tiny road-side business, which starred to thrive once he discovered "Madison Avenue"-his nickname for the lot on Wharf Drive across from the Nnu Havm R~gisur headquarters. This location saves him money on advertising: people notice him when rhey pass on the highway and larer rerum for all of rheir flag-flying needs. Over rime, Shtelds h:b de,doped lucrative reladonshtp" with eveC)·one from Bo Scouts ro church members-people wtth btg apperiro for Aag,.. He rewards loyal customers with discounts on package deals, retires old flags in accordance \\ith Army protocol. and refuses to charge veterans even though it mean" losing out on a big chunk of business.

And business is something he can't afford to lose-in the last five yt:ars, sab have plummeted a staggering 40 percent. The internet was one thing. but now he has to contend with the like, of Target and Walman, who stock whole aisles of Rags in the days marching up to the Fourth of July. Unless busine-s improves, Shields will have to consider a change of career ro make end~ meet for his wife, Rose, and his four kid~. "I was thinking, actually. about doing some PI work for insurance companies," he volumccrs.

If forced to give up his spot on the Avenue, it's not the Rag~ he's going to missor the money. "I'm like Jack Kerouac," he says, referring to the fact that he trades in stories as much as he trades in Rag~. There's the old Pohsh woman who rejected a flag he sold her because the manufacrurer had omirted the riny crown that caps the eagle in the inset coat of arm" ("The Communists made us rake off the crown!"). And

the Cold War H~teran whose job it was in rhe sixtie, and seventies ro drop sonar buo) ~ on Russian suhs. ·lhis has been the privilege of .Shields' career: He has never had to roam the COUntC)'• as Kerouac did, in search of marerial. The stories have always come to him.

-Duncan Greenberg

iBOOKWORM Anyone who has \at through a lecture behind a classmate on Facebook--or been that clas~mare on F.tcebook-knows how utterly compelling the onhne advenruro of a complete manger can become, especially in the context of Psych II 0. Attention shifts se.tmlessly from pe rsonality types co photos, from language acquisition to Scrabulous. But what gets lost in cyber~p;~cc when students are equally reliant upon profC5sors and Macbooks to get through a fifty-minute lecture?

According to Profe~sor Amy Hungerford, who reache~ a lecture course on the Amen can novel, class ,hould nor be a passiv<' experience like watching television.

Rather, it should be a chance for students to learn hO\\ to ·assimilat<' language" and follow a logical argument. "You can't learn how to listen '' hile surfing the web or checking )OUr email," she insists.

O,.tensibly, we attend Yale to learn from some of the \\Odd's most renowned scholars and sir bcs1de some of the most

5

accomplished smdenrs in the counrry. But the classroom experience is more than the PowerPoims, more than the discussion sections, and more than the final exam.

Professors strive for a lecture "experience," nor jusr a relay of information that students could obtain by copying a classmate's notes. They desire the intangible impacr of sharing kno\\ledge. Even professors who reach in lecture halls the size of cinemas like to imagine a conversation rather than a performance. "h's not a recital," explains Professor Haun Saussy. who reaches this semester's \Vorld Poetry and Performance. "1here's a difference between rransmining information and actually raising questions."

When one person's arrenrion wand~rs, Professor Saussy can derec:r the entire class becoming disrracted. "Everyone indirectly senses it," he says, including professors. "I give berrer lectures when I feel more connecred to the class," Hungerford explains.

With the rise of laptop use in lecture, this connection wanes.

Saussy strives to reach a riveting class by drawing upon his own inspiring classroom experiences in graduate school. "\\"'hen you teach, you really are laying down tracks of thought.'' he says. He waits for a "Aicker of enlightenment" in the faces of his students, gauging his effectiveness by their expre:>Sions. "I want people to be involved!" His conception of the classroom forum, "an ancient form ofkno\\ledge diffusion," borders on the sacred.

Professors and sn~denrs ar Yale pride themselves on mutual respect-they strive to foster a community of scholars rather than splitting a didactic divide. Professor Charles Hill is adamant about the strength of professor-student relationships :1( Yale.

He cites a recenr article in '/ht CIJronidt of Hightr Education lamenting the growth in disciplinary exactitude in many colleges today; the article describes a gto\\ ~ng proliferation of syllabi that outline rules for class conduct. "There is a complete breakdown in relationships at these schools," he explains. •sur that is nor the case here."

Hungerford and Sa~ also acknowledge a culture of mutual respect. ThC) cra\·e a method of harnessing a class\ arrention without undermining this aca demic bond. "You don't want to alienate studenrs," explams Hungerford. She says

6

she knows that nobody means to disrespect her or spoil her lecture by using laprops in class, bur the recent electronic garden springing up in her lecture hall was enough to spur action. "My strategy was to make a joke.~ she says, stating the srarding fact of a recent study on email addiction and focus that she shared wirh her American novel class: Those who frequently check their inboxe~ register lower IQ during moments of weakness than their email-abstinent peers.

Saussy recendy made an online bid for students' full dasstime attention on his blog at Prinrculrure.com. He wrote that he is a "reasonable human being with the power co issue F's, yes, so as you value your resume, treat me with the care due a crazy dictator who might have his hand on the hot button." In person, however, Saussy cheerfully acknowledges and understands how compelling email and online distractions can be. "I've done it myself," he admits. Sometimes he notices when students "are smiling to themselves because they've just gonen some email from rheir beloved. But I just want to say, 'We're here ro R-ad Shakespeare, darnrnit!'"

-Kate Sefker

HANDYMAN Dwight Godwin is a few decades older than the 120 freshmen in Directed Srudte5 this year. but he srill keeps the phil, •sophy syllabus, from Aristotle tO \X'ittgensrein, sitting on his bookshelf.

Godwin is a professional American

Sign Language (ASL) interpreter at Yale· _ whose clients include a OS student, and he takes his responsibility seriously-he has ingested everything from poetry to__ graduate-level particle physics. "I read all of the same books that the students read," Godwin says. This reading is part of a demanding. self-imposed regimen that extends from 5:30 a.m. until ll p.m., and is split berween Yale and a handful of other Connecticut universities.

Godwin speaks with enthusiasm, gesturing frequently and fingerspelling acronyms for emphasis. He forms his sentences with precision and carefully modulates his pace to suit his listener. Along with five other regular and independent sign language interpreters and four others who assist less frequently, Godwin forms an integral part of the services offered to the six deaf and hard-of-hearing students at Yale. The interpreters work in teams of rwo, providing support for the same classes all semester. For large lectures, Yale offers the more high-tech Computer Aided Real-Time Transcription (CARn system, where stenographers provide what Judy York, director of the Resource Office on Disabilities, calls "closed captioning for the classroom."

Freshman Ariel Baker-Gibbs, who uses interpreters for all four of her seminarstyle classes, deems Yale's system "pretty good." She emphasizes the importance of skilled interpreters, explaining that "the information is at the discretion of the interpreter;" when they make mistakes, her own educational experience suffers.

Godwin recognizes his obligation to his clients, describing the pressure of being "responsible for providing such an accurate translation that the students have full and equal access to the information."

Parr of the problem is that sign language is a uniquely challenging means of communication. According ro Godwin, many people don't realize that "ASL is its own language. It has syntax, it has rules."

Many interpreters use a combination of ASL and other forms of sign that more closely mimic English syntax. Godwin employs both techniques, engaging in "constant negotiation with the deaf person to make sure semantic intent is being realized."

Standards of conduct have vastly improved in the relatively young profession

THE NEW JOURNAL

• ·of sign languag~ int~rpr~ting, Godwin not~. At on~ time, rh~ majority of interpr~ers were unpaid friends and relatives _ .of deaf people, and they often rook a paternalistic approach ro interpreting. translating only what they thought the deaf person might want to hear. In the past thirty years. however, national organizations, training programs, and certification t~ts have created standards for professional interpreting, as well as injury prevenrion recomm~ndarions. Godwin now performs a ~ries of hand exerci:>es before every se~ion to avoid repeririv~ motion injury, a condition that affects as many as 87o/o of peopl~ in the .field.

Baker-Gibbs found interpreting services at Yale to b~ much better than those at most other colleges she considered, and far better than those of her Canadian public high school. The biggest problem she encounters is when, due ro last-minute scheduling problems, no interpreter is • able ro show up ro one of her classes. She describes these days as ~difficult," and says that without the abiliry ro get notes from ocher stud~nr~, she'd be lost. York shares Baker-Gibbs' concern, calling such situations "my biggest regret" and expressing a desire to "look at different wap to make sure that spot is always filled."

For Yale's deaf students, sign language interpreting services cannot be successful without the cooperation of professors.

Baker-Gibbs. Godwin, and York agree that, for the most part, professors are sensitive to deaf students' needs. The most understanding professors might include interpreters on class panlisrs, let them know in advance what material the class will cover, and pay attention ro the visual s~up of the classroom.

Godwin views part of his job as educating hearing students on how to accommodate their deaf peers by, for example, always addressing the student rather than the interpreter.

"Deafness is an invisible disability," Godwin ob~erves. "They don't have white canes. they don't have dogs." He's always ~r to interpret at non-academic events like master's teas and housing meetings beca~ thoc ap~ces broaden students' exposure ro inrerpredng. "Only by seeing deaf people in different venues," he says ...do people become aware that there are deaf people around them."

April2008

According ro Baker-Gibbs, most students love watching the interpreters. "It's cool. It's like someone walking up to you and saying, 'How do you speak French?

It's so beautiful.' It's really nice.·· She paus· es a few seconds. "Also a little bit n.1·ive."

-Sarah Winsberg

ART PROJECTS Under the steady gaze of West Rock, six buildings stand as a rare lifeline for struggling artists in an evolving city. Artist Lofts West, better known as ArLoW, is a six million dollar enterprise in New Haven's Westville neighborhood that provides affordable living and working space for artists of all kinds. The complex currently hous~ 16 r~ident artists as well as a number of independent busine~,es. and it cominu~ to expand.

In 1996, art organizer Thea Buxbaum and her husband, sculptor Gar Waterman. bought a tiny. dilapidated wareho~ from the City for one dollar (the City's alternative, demolishing the building, could have cost $30.000). Buxbaum and Waterman converted the warehouse into a set of impressh·ely modern apart· ments and studios. Inspired by this sue-

c~sful renovation and sympathetic to the obstacles young arrists face, the couple began exploring ways to assist w~rville's arrisric community. On the advice of a tenant's development consultant mother, Buxbaum and her husband purchased five more buildings in the area and set ro work on renovations.

E.1ch renovated building has a similar layout: a first Roor occupied by a small business or art space, such as a tennis shop. a clothing score, or a pottery-painting workshop for children. The artists chemselve~ live above th~e business~.

Along with a few painters, their eclectic ranks include an opera singer, an upright bassist, a Rautist, and a tenant Buxbaum calls a "renaissance man," who paints, writes, sings, photographs, and plays several insrrumenrs.

Buxbaum seeks grants from the City, Stare, and private sourc~ ro keep her housing units affordable. Prospective tenants must earn below 50, 60, or 80 percent of the neighborhood median, depending on the unit, in order to rent an apartment in ArLoW People are nor forced out if their income incr~s. however. "We wanted to have unit~ where people could never be displaced," she explains.

In addition ro cultivating a community arcs scene, Buxbaum is committed to maintaining her neighborhood's eclectic character. Westville is as quirky as Buxbaum her.self-a woman who has never cut her three-year-old son's hair, crafting a rebellious look that would make Keith Richards blush-and she aims to keep ir that way. One of her motivations for buying up abandoned storefronts was to prevent large chains like Dunkin' Donuts and CYS from moving in. She discriminates carefully when deciding which business~ to allow into her properri~. and the r~ult is the perpetuation of the neighborhood's amy reputation.

Economically. w~rville is a particularly diverse neighborhood. According to Buxbaum, the portion that li~ south of \X'halley Avenue has the high~t average income of any area of ~ew Hayen, while the northern half has the lowest. Buxbaum, who~e renovated studio and ho~ is .situated on the troubled northern side. remembe~ the sense of danger that permeated the area when she first moved in.

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play in the streets," she describes. One of her goals is to bridge the gap between the t\vo disparate halves of the neighborhood, and ArLo\Y./, with buildings on both sides of the proverbial tracks, helps accomplish this objective.

Buxbaum's tenants are enthusiastic about their living situations. Jonny Rodgers, a guitarist and vocalist for the band ,\1ighty Purple, shares a Bar with his wife Desirca. He lists the advantages of living in ArLoW: "I can play very loud music and no one complains; room for a laundry machine, a dishwasher, heat in the winter! \Y./e love all of these!" Bassist Adam Kubota is equally appreciative of the low rent and high tolerance for late-night music.

Crowning the list of advantages is the ease and frequency of collaborative projects among ArLo\Y./ residents. Kubota has jammed and performed with Rodgers. Two other residents, John Bent and ]emma Williams, run a gallery out of their apartment, and Kubota provides musical accompaniment at their art shows. Reccndv, on a cold winter's day, Rodgers sipp;d a steaming cup of tea under a glass dome as part of a photography project.

Pas~ersby were puzzled, yet many were undoubtedly reassured by the reminder of Westville's abiding quirkiness.

-Aaron Wlener

21 TEMPLE ST., NEW HAVEN, CT 06511 . 203·787·5289. 203-787-5290 FAX

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· r by Matt WaKJtllffi.

THE NEW JOURNAL

SNAPSHOT

I PICTUM THt. YANK£.1! DOODLE COFFEF.

and Sandwich Shop as a predictably adorable American diner-it is warm inside. the coffee is oily, and a man in a paper sailor hat keep~ refilling my cup. lhere are sticky leather sears and a chrome-lined counter and stains on the cook's white apron. I eat French toast and drink chocolate milkstukes. There is m~ic playing, and the background noise~ of a baseball game on the tdevuion. When I come in after class, the cook says, •Hey there, Rachel! How're your studi~?· In my imagination, I am a regular.

I have never been to the Yankee Doodle Diner and I gu~ I never will. I have passed it hundreds of tim~. The last time I walked by, rhe mrauram's windows were covered from the inside: with light blue paper.

April2008

No one could claim its greasy food was good for the heart, but many believed it to be good for the soul. The Doodle was the sort of place that people loved to love, and it has become: the sort of place that people love to save:.

Some Yale students treated a visit to irs counren like a uip to a shrine or a temple.

"Though I didn't go a lot, when I did I always was glad of it and told mysc:lfl ought to go more,~ says sophomore: Joshua Silvc:mein, c:xpr~ing the sort of guilt often felt by the sporadically religious. Like a sacred ritual. the Doodle rep~nted a tie to the past. "It was so old school: says ilvc:rstein. ~Pretty much the definition of old school."

It seems that everyone ha~ a Doodle story. "lbe fim time was the best," recalls Senior Ted Gordon. •My friends and I. fr~hman year, after pulling an all-nighter,

vowed to eat breakfast at the Doodle as it opened ar 5:30 or six in the morning. We walked over in the cold and ordered."

Ochers spin tales of glurtonous pride.

On ~ebruary 15. 1999, William Storbierski, who liv~ in the Nc:w Haven area, ate 25 hamburger~ at the Doodle counter. earning a plaque on the resrauranr's \valls.

When another man beat his record ~everal months later, Storbierski went back to the Doodle to reclaim hi.!. title.

Bur memorable and C\en periodic visits to the Doodle do nm a regular make. Joe Gerhard, a NC\V Ha' en resident since 1984 and a frc.quenr fiddler at Ann2 Liffey's, ~timates rhat he's eaten at the Doodle between one and two hundred rimes but claims that "ifyou do the math, you'll see that number still v.ouldn't be often enough to qualify me as one of the regulars."

9

f1Atj w

DAVENPORT COLLEGE MASTE.R'STEA

Monday, April 21st, 2008 4pm

Davtnpon Co11tge Common Room 248 York Street

Dan Jeanerte, a New Haven native, ace at the Doodle ac lease once a week during his four years of high school. He sees the coffee shop's closing as part of the ongoing transformation of York Square.

"Yale seems to be striving to create more of a 'college rown' feel where shops stay open later and the general vibe is geared towards the college clientele," he nores.

Although Jeanette recognizes the benefits ofYale-sponsored urban development, he also points out that "some of this change has been ro the detriment of long-standing businesses. Barrie Ltd. Shoes, York Square Cinemas, and now the Doodle have all closed down." While new businesses like J. Crew and Au Bon Pain may have revitalized the area, they "don't have any history behind them."

"Jm not as good as I

used to be, "says the retired competitive eater.

"My time has passed. "

bridge's spires and gothic rowers. Even students who claim ro reject Ivy League • elitism nostalgically embrace Yale's material tradition. For these srudents, rhe Doodle represents a New Haven before · c cheap Chinese food or Srarbucks. It stands for a time when twelve sears were enough and when trans fats didn't have a name.

It sirs around rhe corner from J.Press, another bastion of "Old Yale" nostalgia, but it seems that no number of oxford shirrs, cufflinks, milkshakes, or cheeseburgers will bring back the good old days.

But perhaps the good old days-or our imagined version of them-are not worth preserving. After all, the idealization of "Old Yale" that the Doodle can inspire is not unproblematic. Grunes imagines the diner of yesteryear as "the classless little place that classy people would patronize, where the proprietor is behind the counter, and you know his name and he knows yours ...and then of course you leave and become a high-power Yale man and reminisce fondly, but that's pretty much the end of the love story."

SO, WHY SAVE TiiE DOODLE? MAYBE STO-

NOT ALL LOCALS ARJ! SENTIMENTAL ABOlTf

~estions and Answers

with

DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER Dr. Ruth Westhcimer i,. a

psychosexual rherapist who helped pioneer rhe ftcld of media M chology and srread what she has labeled "sexual literacy." She has rwice heen rutnterl "'College Lecturer of the Year."' Dr. Ruth is current!)• reaching in Davenpon with Pro~oror Rabbi jim Ponct.

Ha11e a question?

A11 ammyrtJOIIS box will be in the Dar101port Masters Office.

10

the Doodle's closing. Storbierski has only casually followed the story in the Ntw Havrn &gisttr and he doesn't intend to become involved in the cause to "Save the Doodle!" "I'm working two jobs and really don't have the spare time to try and help out," he says.

According to Paul Cuticcllo, the owner of Paul Richards, an old-timey neighboring shoe store, local Doodle activists are less prominent than Yale-affiliated ones.

Even some Yalies who never set foot in the Doodle are rallying behind the little diner.

Sophomore Marissa Grunes, who never ate at the Doodle, is nonetheless a member of the "Save the Doodle" Facebook group.

Another group member, sophomore Brittany Golob, articulates what artracts her to the diner's cause: "Traditions like cups and hanging out at Naples or Yorks ide or Yankee Doodle speak of...what we do now that connects us to Yale's past."

Perhaps students who are up in arms about the fall of a shoebox restaurant whose threshold they never crossed are simply appropriating another tradition that does not belong to them, just as Yale's 1920s architects appropriated Cam-

bierski's thoughts on his own career apply to the outdated diner as well. "I'm not as good as I used to be," says the retired competitive eater, whose second record was surpassed in 2003. "My time has passed."

Still, maybe we want to save a vision of ourselves as old-time, scholarly Elis immune to grease and gentrification.

As one terribly literary hyGate blogger wrote, mourning rhe los_~ of the Doodle Ivy-wide, ~I can totally imagine Franny or Seymour hanging our there!"

TNJ &uhrl Eng!n- u a sophomorr m Ezra Stiks Colkgr.

THE NEW JOURNAL

PROFILE

ESPRESSO SELF Formerly homeless artist finds his fix at Starbucks.

By Laura Ytlo THERE ARE HUSDRFDS OF PENS A."D PES•

cils spread our on the table in from of Isaac Canady. "fhcy are a p.Hndc of pl.mk. of thin mip~ of color; orne nre metallic. and many look like they'w seen bcuer days. He stores them all in a large, bat· tered Ziploc bag.

These arc his tools, collected carefully and pamstakingly through the }ears, through homelessness and starvation, mental illness and hospitalization. He calls them tools because it is through them that he earns an income, unsteady as it may be. It is because of them that he has food to eat and a place to sleep. \'( ath these pens and pencils, he's bu1lt himself a home. s.~ac's work lines the windows of the Smbu~.:ks on the corner of Chapel and 1-ligh street~. Simply rendered-~tlmost primitive in form--the colorful draY. ings Aprill008

pique the interest of passersby. hue, a regular fixture at a corner table inside rhc ~tore. is himself a curious sight, his long. thin body bent over his work as sunlight streams in around him, his fingers fUriously dotting at the paper. His cheeks are sunken and his gaze is incense, focused.

His clothes are drab but clean. He b completely, utterly engros~ed in hb \\Ork. Isaac is 48 years old, but he started drawing just 15 years ago. He was in the hospital at the time-"1 had a lot of•.. issues," he says evash·ely, "a lot of anger and rescmmcnr." Later, he clarifies: "I ha'e a very abusive history-~exually, physically, emotionally. Ar the time, my mental health was falling to piece..,, my marriage was falling to pieces. I had quit m} JOb because I was so sick." He and his wtfe owned a farmhouse on 99 aero ofland in Oxford, Connecticut, bur a fey, years af-

rer quming h1~ job he lo~t everything. His job, incidentally, was with the Connecticut Department of Merna I Health. "I was in just a~ had a predicament as the people I w,ts trt.';lting." hc s.tys, his hands tented .uound his mouth. So he had checked himsdfin. lor four month,, he had nothing but paper and a few penc1ls to rel1eve his boredom.

THAT DRAWl G CAMP

ATURALLY TO i'MC

was both expected and unexpected. He'd been invohed m the am since he was just a bo), but almost exclushel) m the per· fomting am. He had started with piano, then mO\ed on to sax, X} lophone, and dance. But doodlmg during his hospital stay, Isaac found hiS passion. .Sketchmg was also .t \\"a) to channel and etlm has .tnger. "I pra)ed to my hagher power to help me wnh my issues, and ll

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all prices include taxes! little did I know he'd help me through my artisdc abiliry. When I started doodling that's exactly how the healing process rook place," he sap. His art is abstract and organic, and wrought with symbolism: He uses pear-like shapes to represent women, roots for history and ancestry, and colors, lots of colors, to show the interconnect· ednos of people. "My work is nor about blacks, it's about all cultures. All of us have the same issues, the same problems."

Being able to safely express his emotions is therapeutic, bur his art is also an exercise in sdf-rt.':itrainr. ~I do pointillism-my an form is pointillism-and irs an an form rhar rakes a lor of patience.

And if you Y.ork hard at it, it dn"elops patience." Pointillism is a term he learned while homebs and drawing on the New Haven Green. "This woman came by one day and said, 'You don't know what you're doing, do you?' And I'm like, I'm doing an! And she's like, 'Yeah, but do you know what art form you're doing?'

And I 'aid no. And she said. Tm going to \Hite down a couple of thing; for you.

You look it up. I'll be by here again. you let me know what art form it is.' And she wrote down Seurat, and a couple of other pointillists. Sure enough, I ran into her about a month later, and she said, 'Did you find out?' And I said, 'Yes, ir's pointillism. Seurar is amazing.' And he is!"

Isaac doesn't talk much about his fouryear stint of homdessness. "I don't want to say too much abour it. Homelessness Y.':l.S .. . an inconvenience. It was frighten· ing. bcc:ausc people view you as separate from <ocien•. Ir W:tl sad at times--but I

12

can't say it was the most unhappiest time of my life. You know why? Because I'm so creative, I adapt to situations, I refuse to be miserable." He carried his pens with him in a backpack everywhere he went, usually drawing on the Green, or in Starbucks if it was raining.

Six years ago, Srarbucks' then-manager Rick Ford noticed how Isaac's drawings drew people into the store. "I told him he could sit here and do his work, if he promised to get his act together. And he did," Ford said.

Today, he has an apartment in Westville that he pays for by selling his drawings, and he's thinking about going back to school. Maybe college, maybe art classes. He's also considering finding another day job, although that possibility, he says, "scares the shit out of me." In the old days, he was in Starbucks the minute it opened because he had nowhere else to be, but now he goes to museums every day, hangs out in other coffee shops (he particularly likes Koffee on Audubon), watche~ science fiction movies-and isn't kicked out of a shelter at five in the morning.

'1 thank God that I have the stick-to-it-iveness and the zeal and all that to keep going regardless ofthe money, " he says.

to gain him recognition within the local community. He has sold drawings for as much as five hundred dollars and says that, because of the diversity of the people • who congregate around Yale, his work has disseminated to countries all over the world.

But those sales are few and far between, and his prosperity is more psychological than financial. Still, though life is hard as a struggling artist-"! say struggling, not srarving, although that's part of it"- he's happy. "If I die today, I'm proud of what I've accomplished. I thank God that I have the stick-to-it-iveness and the zeal and all that to keep going regardless of the money," he says. "I truly believe that I will be a recognized artist one day, probably after I die. But I'm going to try co beat that, I'm going to try to do it while I'm living."

Digging his fingers into the pile before him, the plastic pens gently clicking in his hands, Isaac says. "I may be poor, but my work doesn't have to look poor."

No longer collecting old pens off the street, he has added a few more expensive cools to his collection-India ink, some felt-tipped markers. But he still relies on his grimy ballpoints and gel pens and highlighters, because they are what he's used to, because he knows how co wield them well, because he's not the type to forget where he came from.

His daughter, Chiara Ocean Canadyjust a baby when Isaac was in the hospiral-goes to school at the Educational Center for the Arts and drops by Starbuck.~ to visit him on her way home. She has long. curly black hair and a light, tan complexion-her mother is Italian-and though she moves with the shy awkwardness of a 15-vear-old, she exudes self-confidence. "She's so focused she scares me, I'm just waiting for all hell to break loose," Isaac says proudly. "We talk a lot about how she can do whatever she wants, and doesn't need a man for anything."

IN A WAY, ISAAC CHOSE TO BE POOR-

chose, even. to be homeless. He recogniu:d that he wasn't happy" ith "here he was in life and made a drastic decision co effect a change. Now, his art has begun

lNJ :.:zu,a Ya, . a1unwr m ]cmsthan Edwtlrrls

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April2008

13

SNAPSHOT

College women across the nation protested a hike in the price of birth control prescribed through university health centers.

BILLS, BILLS, PILLS Birth control prices get knocked up.

By Miranda Popkey ON OCTOBER 18,2007, TIIP.OFHCEPHONES

of Senator Chrisropher Dodd and US Congresswoman Rosa Od.auro srarred ringing off the hook. Yale srudents, upset at a sudden and dramatic increase in the price of birth control prc:,,cribed through Y;tle University Health Services were calling their Democratic. representatives to protc.~r. The 2005 Deficit Reduction Act (ORA), a law originally aimed at curbing ~tedicaid fraud, had simultaneously ended a long-standing tradirion whereby ph.umaceutical companic~ sold birth control ro university healrh centers at deeply discounted prices. 'Ihe arr.tngement had allowed schools ro provide prescriprions ro their srudenrs for as low as four or five dollars a month. bur recently, prices have jumped ro as high as fifty dollars. Participants in a phone-in organized by the Reproductive Rights Action league ar Yale (RALY), rhe srudents c.1lling in rheir complaints--every minute, for hours-had a simple demand: f'tx ir.

The group's co-chaar, sophomore Alice Buttrick, believes that rhe price hike was a legislative oversighr. Suun Yolen, vice president of public affair~ for Planned Parenthood, agrees. ~lr's nor our impre;sion that this was imenrional," Yolen uys. adding chat Planned Parenthood i~ currently

14

1nvolvcd 1n lobbying efforrs to reverse rhe bill's unforeseen consequences.

Yer more chan a year afrer rhe ORA was enacrcd and six months after RALY's weUarrended phone-a-thon, many Yale women are still paying ten times more for their birth control than they were: before the Ltw went inro effect. Despite both pubhe m~a culptz's from legislators who supporr reproductive rights .md the recent propo~l of a bill that would allow universnic:s once again ro receive discounted drup. the issue has taken the backburner ro the: war in Iraq, the presidential election, and a looming economic recession. ' !he question is not whether well-organized nationwide opposition will evenrually win the law's repeal through a war of bureaucratic attrition, nor whether Yale women can bear the brunr of the price increase~. The question is whether, while lobbyists prod Congress to get around to correcring its blunder. rhe victims-low income women at universities across the counrry--can stand to wair.

Few people. even rho~c directly involved in fighting the legislative snafu. undc:rsrand exactly why prices for pre~cription birth control have suddenly ~kyrocketcd. Borh Yolen and Bumick are fuzzy on the specific.,, given the length.

scope, jargon, and acronym-heavy language of the ORA. Peter Steere, associate director of Yale University Health Services, offers a clearer explanation: Federal law mandates chat Medicaid programs receive drug manufacturers' "best price" for prescription drugs.

Prior 10 the law's passage, campus clinics and other "safery-net" health care providers were excluded from rhe "best price" calculus so chat manufacrurers could sell discoumed pills to universities without also having to lower Medicaid prices.

The ORA closed this loophole for university clinics, while many other low-cost providers-such as Planned Parenthood and some community health centers-remained unaffected. In the New Haven area. low-income and uninsured women can still receive discounted birth control at the Fair Haven Community Health Center, the Hill Health Center, the Haven Free Clinic, and, of course, Planned Parenthood. Bur when it arne to universities like \ale. pharmaceutical companies were faced \\ith a choice: Continue selling discounted prescription birth comrol drugs to srudent centers and see their profits plummer, or raise prices. 'lhey chose to raise prices.

THE NEW JOUR."iAL

The confusion surrounding the act has bred resentment and led some students ro suspect that the ORA's con~equences were entirely by design. Though Buttrick is certain rhar the law was an "accident" and Yolen concurs that "it's not our impression that this was intentional," at the Yale Women's Center, talk of the price hike among bcnrd member~ past and presenr quickly snowballs into a broader discussion of the Bush administration's assault on the righa of women, especially poor women.

Steere observes that students have not been complaining (lu loudly or frequently as some might have thought.

Isabel Polon, the women center's political action coordinator, h:b her doubu about labeling the price increase an innocent oversight. "Whether it was an oversight, or whether it was intentional," she say~.

"Congress in general doesn't have women's righa as a priority. We know where the administration stands on these i~~ues."

Chase Oli\-arius-McAllister, who served as political action coordinator last semester. is even more explicit. "It's about breaking the backs of poor "omen. The legacy of this administration is going to be that they made poor women'" livo awful on every front."

April2008

For these activists, the pa\sage of the ORA, coupled with Congre~s路 failure to enact any timely corrective legislation. is not an isolated incident; it h indicathe both of the Bush Administration's hostility to\\ards women's righu and a general, nation-wide complacency. "This is nor seen as a necessaf} health service that \\Omen are entirled to," Presca Ahn, a coordinator at the \X'omen's Center, adds. "(Congrt'.S)men] don't want to talk about it until they get a call every second from Yale Unh路ersity students."

Df.SPITE THE HIGH

TUR~OliT

AT THR RALY

phone-a-thon, it's unclear how many Yale students have been tangibly affected hy the act. While Steere ha~ noticed that many women now buy their binh comrol one monrh at a time (imtead of .-r<>Lking up on four cycles). he hasn't seen an overall drop in the numbers of comraccptivt路 prescriptions. Although a Yale College Council comminee h:b been exploring the i55ue, and Steere has heard "the occasional expression of frustration," he obsen.o that ~tudents ha\e not been com plaining "as loudly or frequeml) as ~ome might ha\e thought."

Polon artnbures a lack of student response tO me university's SOCIQ-CCOnOm路 ic demographics. "On other unhersity campuses there has been an uproar," she explains. "Twenty dollars isn't going to make a world of difference to the a\eragc Yale studem, bur that'~ nor the case in the country in general."

Meanwhile, on campuses across the nation where the average student is far less well-off. student groups have held widely-attended rallies and protests. And while ir may be ea.-y to assume that me average Yale student "on't have a problem paying an extra forty dollars a month, Yolen notes that "it's one thing if you've got parents '' ho will willingly CO\ er this cost, and it's another thing if you're a scholarship student."

Even those who,e parenu can afford to absorb the price htke have an uncomfortable conversation ahead of mem. "I'd probably ha~c difficulty confronting my parents if I s,11d I needed to go on birth control .md I needed this money," sa~ Ahn. "I can't alford it with the money I make for myself." 1he assumption that the DRA has nor affected Yale women also ignores the thousands of Yale staffers who are ser\Cd by the Yale Health Plan. "'!his h nor an abstract group of people )Ou're hclpmg out of the goodness of your bean," Buttrick empha.-izo. "You have ro do thh w help you~elf." Unfortunately, whether or not Yale students \\ant to help themselves-whether or not they even need help-there's little they can do. Except. of course, wait.

TNJ

Mmzn44 Puplrry. 11 )Untor tn BnmforrJ Collrg~. rs 11 photo ~dttor ofTNJ

15

PROFILE

CURL TALK Hairdresser cuts hair and pulls legs.

By LauraZax DICKIE M'D I ARJ! FLIPPJ:-;G THROUGH A."

old edition of Playboy when his next customer comes in. I stan with embarrassment as the door to Dickie's second floor atdier opens. but he continue~ poring over the pornography. He turns a glossy page with his right hand while bc:ckoning with the other to the middle-aged \\"Oman arriving for a rrim.

"Take a seat over ht:re and Nancy will give you a wash," he sap, and in the same breath a:.ks me to guess the identity of one panicularly buxom bunny. Though I'm usually prepared for pop quazzcs, this isn't really my subject.

"That's Pamela Anderson, right there, before she had any work done. What a natural beauty." He rutfles through a couple more pages of the 1995 issue, which features an Ivy League ~pread showing off ~exy Yale girls posing provOCltively on

16

Cross Campus. He arrhes at his destina· cion and points to a brunette on a love seat. "She's a former client!"

DICKU, WHOSE REAL SAME IS CAETANO

Ferriuolo, is the owner of The Workshop, a small, second-story hair salon on Chapel !'itrttt couched bernren Book Trader Cafe and Thai Pan Asian. 'I he New Haven native anJ former hippie is an expert in curls.

Young Dickie shm\ed no signs of being a fUture hair parlor prodigy. He didn't cut his ~iblings' hair, nor did he style hb stuffed animals. He did, however, grow up with severe dyslexia-a disorder he credits for his skilled hands. "It's like being blind-you can hear bener. I used v.hat I had," says Dickie, \\ho preferred ro gct thrown out of class rather than rc:otd aloud.

Though Dickie now ~ms a natural-. born stylist, he didn't choose his calling.

Rather, a juvenile court did, after Dickie dropped out of high school with several friends to become a bookie. "We were any mother's dream," he jokes. He took bets on local sporting events until he ·was 17, when he was arrested for bookmak· ing. The p.uh to curl connoisseurship was born in court. "You have to tell the judge you're doing something with your life. So my la\V}'er said, 'Tell them you're going to go to barber college,' and the judge actu· ally made me go."

After receiving his barber's license, Dickie went straight ro work. His "hands of gold," as he refers to them, were an im· mediate success. Dickie had clients lining up outside his shop waiting for their rurn in the hot seat before he was old enough to buy the PlAyboy whose bunnies he would one day style. "I was a tender young boy-just the kind you like," the tirelessly bawdy Dickie says, giving my knee a playfUl tap.

As Dickie's body matured, so did his professional interests. "All the pretty girls were going to hairdre~r school, so I decided to go to hairdresser school," he tells me. After graduation, his career skyrocketed. He went from trimming New Haven's most coveted coiffeur's hair to working at his salon. Soon he was in New York City. employed by a Fifth Avenue salon-a place so stylish that all of its employees had stage names. Dickie went by :...iister Dick.

Dickie had clients lining up outside his shop before he was old enough to buy the Playboy whose bunnies he would one day style.

SOOS IT WAS THE SIXTIES. "I ENDED UP

with some genius non-conformists," says Dickie, who later found himself hanging '"'ith a Studio 54 crowd. One of the in· novators with whom Dickie worked was Paul Mirchdl, whose brand is still king u upscale hair salons. "We were the first ones to reallv cut hair," he declares.

THE ::-\EW JOUR.~AL

'ttl E. PHONE RINCS. "rH l!> IS VANNA W ill iE

,.

looking for me," he jokes before answering. "She thinks I'm a slut. Shc'.s right!"

Though a srylist who an handle un ruly curls is a uuc: gern, Dickie is a jewd .still rarer: A professional .,., irh a personality.

"I've never been known not to ha\'e personality," he: Sd}'$ proudly. In the face of cold and impersonal mnd:uds of professionalism, Dickie: shares as much as he: hcar1>. I knew more about his lo~e life by the end of my fir.st visit to his studio than my freshman yor roomm:ue knew about mine: when we moved out in May. As he chats through extended w rl sessions, it bewmc< dor that Dilkie'~ notions of time and money vc:c:r from the: norm. "I'm not trying to make any money. I don't need to make any money. I'm Join' thi) for fun," he ,,tys. Still, despite all of thc~e quirk\, he: i~. and by hb OY.n ac~ount, alway~ has been, a remotrkably successful hairdrc:s~c:r. "lhcy \loere banging down the: • door," Dickie: boastS of the clientele he drew even as a barber fresh out of \OCl· tiona! .school. While businessmen around him worry about an economic m:ession, D1ckie, who works Just thrc:c: cbys a wc:c:k in hrs own salon, has the leisure to worry about a m:ession of passion.

film s, concerts, talks, conferences bridging disciplines

* bringing people together

The Whitney Humanities Center salutes The New Journal and invites its readers to attend upcoming events, including :

"PA\!>JON IS F'AWNG BY TilE 'I); A' IUE.- fiE

sa}'$ in a rare moment of despondency. "'lhe young people in all the am arc losing passion-passion to write, ~ssion to nuke an, passion to cut hair." But Drckie ha' faith in todJy'.s Yal<' students. "You\oc got a good group now: he says. "Let'~ write; let's 'ing; let's do .sculpture; let' cut h.1ir. It's coming bJ, k." Dickie's p.LS.,ion is un.tduhc:r;ucd. 'lhc: intentions of this hairstylist, whose life's onlr paradOJI is the: irony of a baldmg m:an with a specialty in thick hair, lire refreshingly uncomphcnc:d. With the seriousness of 11 young boy asscning that he wants to~ lin ~tronaut. he S2}'S, •Alii ¥.-anna do is cut hair."

TNJ Lzu,.. Z4r.

4 sqphomD" 111 SJ/mum Co~. u 11 11'11Vl4Jl"K alwr qjTNJ

April2008

17

SNAPSHOT

TOWN BICYCLE Bike Collective offers Fair Haveners a free ride.

ByMai mzng CHRIS SHIRLEY IS

ORli!RMI~ED

TO rEACII

me how to ride a bike. A friendly Davenport sophomore who sport' a black runicneck over a pair of tight-fitting ''omen's jeans and a blue fanny pack in place of a belr, Shirley is one of the cofounders of the Neo.v Ha,en Bike Collective. lhe group, which is currently thinking of changing its name to Cydismo, began lasr f211. wirh the aim of providmg free btkes and bike repair training ro lOCtl residents.

Though the Collecm-e has ycr to mo' e be'}'ond holding organizauonal mecungs, writing grant proposals, and secunng a storage space, :Shirleo. reUs me thar they hope to get the program m fUll gear by spring. I, who spenr a bikeless childhood indoors, ,,;lJ be thetr first uainec.

The collecthe has set up shop in the 18

heart of Fair Haven, where the median income of $30,084 is $20,000 ,horr of the Connecticut state average. "We're trying to capture an audience that's not being serviced by high-end btke shops like Devil's Gear." Shirley says. "and empo\\er them to learn neo.v skills they can take home."

SHIRLEY HOPES TO INCREA:.E TIIfi NUMBER

ofNC\, Ha\'Cn residents who b1keto \\Ork But once these nC\\ bikers hn the streets, tht:) 'II face nC\\ difficulues: New Ha~en only h.ts rn-o miles of bike lanes, man} of which end abrupd). FJSC\, here m rhe Elm Cit)', cyclists ha\e to hare bUS), narrow roads "ith cars. For }ears, C) ding ad\ocaC} group like ElmCiryCyclmg ha~e Clled the need for more bike racks, bike lanes

and increased rights for cyclists injured in c.tr-bikc collisions. but the local government ha, only recently starred ro listen.

In 2.003, the Kew Haven Mayor's Office publtshed a "Share he Streets" report that recommended addmg rhe much-needed racks and lanes, as "'-"ell as slowing down motor traffic by installing speed bumps and roundabouts ro make roads safer for those on f\\O \\heels. So far, progress has been slm\. Though a lone bike lane has been added to Orange Street and twenty btke racks ha~e been prinkled throughout the Ot), a recent 1\'nl Ha~>m Advocau arude notes that City Hall officials are sull Un\\ tllmg to com err co,¡ered on-street parkmg spots ro btke lane,. Unimproved streets ltke Whimeo.¡ A\enue srill pose a danger ro cycltsrs, mduding rhe bikers

THE l':EW JOUR..'-"AL

htrl~ and hts cohons want to tmroduce to already congested road Shutt) h ts rhe manv hurdles fotctng people who want to btke to ''ork "You ha\e to be t.aught ho\\ to nde, ha\e the energy to nde cveryd3} and l1\e close enough to make the mmute w But 1f all th~ condm n are met }• voure a F.m Ha,-en res dent "ho works m the area and wam the exe1ct ndmg a btke Wtll h lp to redu e .ur polluuon 10 a neighborhood sull pi gued by former cool plant em1 1 n and also reduce the COSt of chUv transportation 'Xe work to undercut the fin nc1 I burden, htrlc:} expl:uns -ears c:tn co~t thou~nds ofdol· Lars a \ear to mamt;un, \\hc:reas b1kes are much chc:apc[ And tf you don't have the: monq ro bu} a new h1ke or pay a hun· dred dollars for a tune-up. \OU c;~n come: to us mstc:ad •

"~ bave

to get the message right. 7bere's a spectrurn offree stuff, and this is not a handout. JfJ'OU. tunnt a bike, you'll hatJe to help out

the Collective first. " I~

ADDITION

0 ITS I NVJRONM !I.'TALAND

monetarv benefit • rhc Collccm-e's "arn a-btkc program \\til hdp the Ha\-en communi!) b) doublmg as a mentor program htrlcv hopes to recruit )Oungsters from nearb) schools and YMCA centers for a wc:dclv 2fter .sChool workshop, dur mg Y.h1ch Collectt\e members \\tll y,ork one-on..one " th aty > urh, reachmg them ~aauo~ kills so dut an am DC\\ ly ~red used btkes harlcv thought up the dea for the Bike Co ccu~ e ~ er a year ago I was at an a t t conference m DC called Pm>.-er h ft and one: kid to d us that he had ;a uat er fu of b kes :and d dn t knO\\ ' hat ro do "'uh rhem," he ~' 1hc blkcs rn quc:suon turned our ro be unsalvage abe but h1rla and CoUcctl\e c found-

nm

Apnl2008

system for distributing free btkes. Ihcy bq;an by collecting bikes from Freccycle org. an online group that connects used btke 0\\ nen w11h the btkdess, but u w: fellow Collcctr\e member Paul Hammer '' ho stumbled upon the real motherlodc: of f~ bikes: Yale. At rhe end of every spnng term, Hammer diSCO\ered, a Yale Sccumy team con6scnes all bteydes left on student bake racks. shepherdmg them to the basement of the Po~ync Wlmnq g>'ITI. If sull unclaimed after stx months the bakes become publtc propert) When the group rcce1ved permtSSIOO from 'tale Secumy to take the btkes, the Collccme was born.

IS ORO R TO Ill L THE COLl.ECTlVE!'S COP.

the group wtll also rep.a1r btkes to II to people who don't have ume to fix theu OY.n, tn the procC'SS tramtng novice repa1rmen to re mA.ate ures, fix brakes, and replace chams After tramees ha'-e learned b IC ktll on the modd btkes, thC\ wtll be able to 1.1ckle thear own b1kes wtth the hdp of Collecme volunteers.

For tho e hke me ''ho door kno" how H RS,

OVER THIS PAST WJI'<,.IlR. 111£ COLUCTIV

exp..tnded to a core group of nound tWenty people, most of them Yale otnd ourhern students mtxed "uh a fe\\ htke aatvasts from ElmCtl)-<:ydmg. Tod<l)• the Collccuve houses O\"er I 50 secondhand btkes to the b.asemenr of a red bra k f-.ttr H:a,cn butldmg donated by a IOC<ll bu 1 nessman. h1rlC) shov. $torehousc one unday afternoon room ts dtm :and du I) :and n enorm rat p.l\VS a woodptlc bordenn Ion stnng of btkcs hulq hopes to r p ar bakes ln the: outdoor ~rkmg lot on the Y.-eather tmpfO\es. \'( orkang outdoo wdl be the Collcaves roam ad,en m tr,u eg). hopefull} anracung loul resadenr who happen to pass ~ on the dcy,alk But for nm,, rhc btkcs re mil 10 tor age. hp of p.;per h;n-e h«n st pled to all rhe handleb.ar:s--g •p m~n Is mtssmg. most often a brake or whcd.A "Ch• m~nsthech:un nt \\ rk mg ntoothl). and the mast common bbd IS "RU." for rust.

E\-entually. Shut~ hopo t fC8l tcr the bikes 10 a compurer d.at:tb.uc you come 10 and you \"e nC\"er fixed a b before and tod.n you can "' rL: li r r hours We U plug an those stats ro the d.a t.aiwe and moatch you up'" th a b ke thoat rnttts your dtill le\'ds a d t me m mcnr • He stresses dut the group " workmg on a S)"Jtcm of sweat equ n lu\-e to get the message r gin lh spectrum of free: stuff. and th handout If you \\~t a b kr ro hdp our the Co lccu'-e 6

19

FEATURE

YALE's TWELVE RFSJDENTlAL CO LUGES ARE

arranged in concentric rings around the University's core, each facing the central axis of Old Campus, Cross Campus, and Commons. The colleg~ along the University'.s eastern and \\'Otern rims, sitting wirh their backs exposed to the city, are encircled by waves of urban devdopmenr.

Morse and Ezra Stiles are overlooked by Payne Whitney Gymnasium from across the arc of Tower Parkway. Rows of Park Sm:er student apartments, Lynwood fraternities, and Howe Street restaurants border Pierson and Davenpon. Silliman and Timothy Dwight rest on a long arm of polished downtown office buildings and shops merching up Church Street.

On the streets surrounding every college. from every side, facades arc maintained, srores abound, and the shared economic life of Yale and New Haven is, by any reasonable m~"asure, thriving.

But even Yale's most self-assured cheerleaders of progress do not expect this ro be the case for Yale's planned 13th and 14th colk-ges. lh~e colleges, slated for a large triangle wedged bcrween Prospect on one end, Canal and the Gro,路e Street Cemetery on the ~econd, and Sachem on rhe third, will sir alongside an undeveloped <.orner of New Haven, an area which campus planners refer to as lower Hillhouse, and \\hich promises very little opportunity for economic growth.

Heading past the corner of the destined triangle currently occupied by ~ludd Libr:try, onto a segment of Sachem that will be steps from a student's room in future years. and across a desolate stretch of empty lots and chain-link fences, one encounters the only unit of retail within blocks: Paolillo's Service Center, a claustrophobic blue automobile supply store advertising rwo \arieries of antifreeze and several name brand coolants in irs window. By the admission of Michael .Morand, Yale's dapper associate vice president of New Haven and State Affairs, "If you look at this area now, there's not a lot of service retail." And, if Morand is to be believed, '\ery few shops and restaurants will be enticed to join Paolillo's even after the colleges are completed. "I wouldn't oversell the retail implications of the new colleges," he says. "Students don't have much purchasing power."

This entire neighborhood'.; negligible 22

appeal for future businesses and students is something that Morand and the University have made lirrle effort to deny. Instead, officials have ignored the problem publicly. perhaps because they realize that the truth may be a bitter pill for students and alumni to swallow: In the face of the University's most important expansion in half a century, the strategies which, for 15 years. Yale and New Haven have joindy and successfully employed to attract wealth. revitalization, and investment to the city will, it appears. hit their limit.

IT IS DIFFICULT TO UNDERESTIMATE THE influence Yale is unwilling-or unable--to use to transform Lower Hillhouse. Yale's engine of economic growth has no doubt been responsible for dramatic changes in the New Haven business-scape during the past decade and a half. Perceptions of town-gown conflict aside, the mayor's administration recognizes the perks of host路 ing a world class university. "It's beneficial for us being in a college town," explains Kelly Murphy. New Haven's economic development administrator. "I think the reladonship bcrween Mayor DeStefano and President Levin is very good. 'What's good tOr the city is good for Yale, and what's good for Yale is good for the city."

Yale's primary economic strength emanates from the fact that as a university. it is highly resistant to economic recessions.

Yale attracts thousands of srudenrs, faculry, and staff to the city, bringing about half a million visitors to New H:tven annually. The University, in turn, inocul.ues the areas around it, injecting local businesses such as support services, research, and particularly construction, with regular investments. University employees, who enjoy job and income security, spend their earnings on retail in the area. In 2000, the University estimated that it directly conrributed almost a billion dollar~ to rhe merro area economy that year; its indirect impact was considerably greater.

To :-:ew Ha\路en's benefit, Yale is a magnet for im路estmem. "A lot of people outside of the area may not know New Haven," Murphy says. "But they know Yale."

National businesses. from the forthcoming American Apparel on Broadway to Pfiur in irs immaculate $35 million clinical research facility next to the School of .Medicine, regularly approach Yale to

consider leasing University property. Yale frequently rebuffs such requests and, according to Karyn Gilvarg, a member of Murphy's economic development team, puts irs suitors in contact with the city.

"When developers are interested, they send them our way," Gilvarg says, explaining that this sort of "anecdotal" support can be extremely valuable. Sometimes Yale can catalyze a project merely by contributing its prestige. The Omni Hotel on Temple Street was redeveloped once Yale agreed to attach irs name to the project, creating the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale. "Something seemingly intangible like that," says Gilvarg, "can have a major impact."

Across a desolate stretch ofempty Lots and chainLink fences, one encounters the only unit ofretail within blocks: Paolillo's Service Center.

YAI.E CREATES THE GRI'.ATEST RIPPLE EFFECT,

however, when it says yes to developers.

On Broad\v-~y. the crown jewel of New Haven\ revitalization, Yale first started buying properties and upgrading the street'~ physical appearance more than ten years ago. Working with the city, Yale used its business relationships and prestige to entice tenants such as]. Crew and Urban Outfitters. Scott Healy, executive director of the Town Green Special Services District, a semi-independent development agency funded direccly by property owners. calls these national chains "retail anchors in downtown." Once the first chains had signed on, the dominoes began to fall. A full complement of businesses quickly emerged in what the Univer~ity now proudly calls irs "retail district." Change was felt as far away as the: i\brrion on Whalley Avenue. The hotel chain moved into a building adjacent to campus bur not owned by the University.

Morand refers to this rype of development as the "catalytic impact."

When Yale expands, benefits rebound back to the city. Property raxes from developments fill the city's coffers and outercity residents come downtown to spend THE NEW JOURNAL

Broadway, the crown jewel of New Haven's revitalization, directly abuts four of Yale's residential colleges. their money. Moreover, ~mall busines~es, whose role in the downtown economy has largely been slipping in recent years, have come to fill a niche created by the big business Yale brmgs to the ciry. Walter Esdaile, director of New Haven\ Small Business lniciative, c:xphins that, though Yale development has prevented rhe rise of cercain rypes of small businesses, ir has opened the door for others. "It's tougher for a lot of our smaller guys to step into the Yale srandard. let's pur it rhar way," he says, referring to locally owned shops in prime Yale areas. Bur for local conmucrion contractors and supporr sen.ices, Yale provides a steady stream of business. This dynamic is one component of a pov.erful partnership that has achieved a great deal when President Levin and ~1ayor DeStefano have pointed it in a mutually beneficial direction.

Lower Hillhouse, it appear,, h no sud: direcrion. Yale and ~ew Haven"s current development plans include no mention of transforming this quiet and somewhat April2008

dilapidated residential area-"a good American neighborhood," in Morand's careful construction-into a new center of commerce that those affiliated with and arrracted ro Yale might actually patronize. New Haven is nor prioritizing the neighborhood for development, and Yale: has either kept silent about irs dissatisf.lction or is simply indifferent. Whatever rhe reason, usustained cooperation~ between DeStefano and Levin. which Morand and so many others credit with being the first step toward change in the city, is not forchcoming for this neighborhood.

"What's good for the city is good for Yale, and what's goodfor Yale is good for the city. " -Kelly Murphy lnqcad, the City and the University ha\e more or less agreed to focus on an

en tardy different part of rown. DeS ref., no recently laid our New Haven's long term devdopmenr aims according ro a $1.5 billion agenda he calls the "Future Framework." Bearing his PowerPoim gospc:l to City Hall meetings. DeStefano explained that he w·amed ro see "urban in fill" around the downtown area by converting rhe unsightly Route 34 highway into an urban boulevard and connecting the Medical District and Union Station ro downtown proper. ~furphy later amplified rhe mayor\ philosophy: "New Haven is a fully dt"Vdoped ciry, basically, within our borders ... che idea is stitching rhe dry together." lr is a bold and exciting mission. and one to which che Uni\'c~•rv is also devot· ing much of irs attention. Since April of 2000, when Yale pubLshed ~A frame\\Ork for Cunpu~ Planning," its blueprint for future: dc:vdopmc:nr, the University h.ts been looking to achieve: a goal constantly repeated in the document: "improved connections among Yale's three

23

campuses," identified as Central Cam~ pus, the Medical Center, and the Athletic Fields. Morand, echoing DeStefano, says the University's aim is "extending the vi~ tality of downtown" by connecting the University's core with the train station and the Medical Center. Yale is doubly interested in f~tering development around the Medical School in order to create a â&#x20AC;˘thriving biotechnology indu.my in :-:ew Ha\¡en; according to Jon Soderstrom, managing director of the Office of Cooperative Research. The OCR, which works closely with Morand's office, is hoping chat 5uch an industry will help to attract and retain faculty by offering research opporrunities.

For these reasons, the area berween Central Campus and the Medical School has been lavished with enormous attention. The city is building a new high school and accompanying retail space, the University is leasing property at 300 George Street to fill vacant lots, and the

dean of the Medical School is constantly negotiating with outside developers. The University has committed eight million dollars to a new Economic Development Corporation run jointly by the City and Yale to provide an independent imperus for downtown development.

((There are no commercial corridors close enough to the proposed site ofthe colleges to see any influx ofnew commerce. "-Scott Healy The only area anywhere near Lower Hillhouse chat attracts this type of joint attention is Science Park, off Prospect Street near Marsh Hall, a hub of technology businesses of interest to the City and Yale for many of the same reasons that Yale is encouraging biotechnology near the

Medical School. Should development in Science Park begin to attract retail as Morand hopes, it will not do students in the new colleges much good; it is still far enough away chat they might as well walk over to Audubon.

Even if Yale wanted to develop Lower Hillhouse itself, it is not clear how it would proceed. For one thing, the University controls little property beyond the ten million dollar corner of the ProspectSachem-Canal triangle it purchased from the City. "There really isn't any chat we own. The current space we have wouldn't lend itself to [retail)," Morand says, referring to the Rose Center, a beautiful community education center run by Yale about a block past the proposed site of the colleges, a Yale police station, and a Bristol Street building even farther away which the University purchased, cleaned up, and sold to Beulah Land Development Corporation. These developments have resulted, in part, from a subdued

A view of Prospect Place, In the lower Hillhouse triangle proposed for the new colleges.

THE NEW JOURNAL

-push over the last several years to clean up an area that has served as an occasional student route between Swing Space and Science Hill.

- That a rehabilitation project begun in tandem with the 1997 construction of Swing Space has achieved so little tangible progress is perhaps indicative of the University's minimal influence in the neighborhood. Since most of the remaining property consists of private homes, it is unlikely that Yale will be able to acquire much of it. Funhermore, the closest the third building on the proposed site of the colleges-which will likely be filled with classrooms and performance spaces-will come to retail space is a late-night caf~. "I think it's doubtful," Morand says of commercial development within the colleges.

"It's not a priority for anyone that the colleges themselves include retail."

Those who accept that the University is unlikely co single-handedly remake the neighborhood-an undoubtedly difficuh goal, given that past developments have generally required cooperation with the Mayor's Offi~hold out hope that the marker alone will spur development.

Greg Morehead, the Ward 22 alderman who represents the area, explains that residents are almosc universally enthusiastic about the prospect of the colleges. Many, Morehead included, hope that some modest development will follow. "I don't think [it will be) necessarily attracted by the colleges," he concedes. "But it's going to be a plus. If there are no restaurants in the area, some will be attracted by the colleges." Morand also believes, despite his doubts about student purchasing power as a draw for commerce, that businesses will respond in some way to the influx of several hundred new residents.

Healy offers a more damning assessment. "There are no commercial corridors close enough co the proposed site of the colleges co see any influx of new commerce: he says. "It's possible, though, that commercial demand will grow organically, providing incentive for the development of storefronts in the area.â&#x20AC;˘ But Healy guesses that the most probable commercial influx will be in the form of food pushcarts.

PERHAPS, ULTIMATELY, DEVELOPMEST OF

the l..olo\o-er Hillhouse area will be unnecesApril2008

sary for students in the new colleges. They will be three minutes' walking distance from the nearest scores on Whitney. and President Levin has endorsed the College Study Groups' recommendations that the University enhance security in the area and provide regular transportation between the new additions and the rest of campus (the center of which is, after all, only three blocks away). The University may even consider new retail on the first floor of the Becton Center.

But, in the absence of commercial development, life for students who live in the new colleges will be crucially different from student life in every other residential college. While the others are cloistered not only within the University itself bur also within the most thriving and inviring parts of the city, the new colleges will jut into an area in which students will have little reason ever to set foot.

The new colleges might pierce the Yale bubble, placing studentS side-by-side with a good American neighborhood. In this way, the University may finally realize irs 2000 Framework objective of "blending campus edges with surrounding neighborhoods." Bur if students end up more isolated and inconvenienced than their peers, they might find themselves wishing that the University, somewhere in its Study Group document or official deliberations, had planned co place their new home somewhere they might actually want to live.

TNJ

Mitch Rnch, a junior in Pinson Co/kg~, is a managJng ~difQr tifTNJ.

THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

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FEATURE

IT BEGINS WITH A BWE BOOK.

Each July, reluctant hands Rip through pulpy pages. Corners are folded, pages arc marked, highlighters run dry. At the end of summer, every moment is bittersweet, but the arrival of the Yale College course caralog heralds the end.

Except for freshmen. I remember my first Blue Book, dog-cared within hours and scrawled full of marginalia within the week. I declined Directed Studies that summer, deciding I had too many choices to be directed.

Instead, I applied for a freshman seminar. A small class had three chief virtues in my mind: It would allow me to get to know a professor the way I'd known my high-school teachers, it would introduce me to freshmen with similar interests, and it would point me down a track toY;ard a major, or not. I picked MRevolutionary

26

America.~

taught by Jon Buder, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

A big name. a big wpic, a big disappointment: I was rejected in August.

BlTfLER, I LEARNED THIS WEEK, IS SHORT

o~nd

grey-bearded. His voice is lilting, and \\hen he's excited, he giggle:.. He reminds me of my grandfather, except my grandfather is not a world-famous historian.

Though Buder is "too busy dean-ing~ to teach a lecture on religion and modern America, the topic that made him famous, he is teaching it as a freshman seminar.

This is a major loss for rhe upperclassmen who would have filled his lecture hall. After all, his seminar garners glowing reviews year after year: "lr was personal and real," one effusive freshman writes.

"Having an opportunity ro learn with teh (sic] Dean of rhe Grad School is price-

less," exclaims another. "He truly helped improve my writing and has made me a better student in the process." Asked if he or she would recommend rhe course to others, one freshman notes, "I already have. Unfortunately, none of them can take it because they're nor going to be freshmen again."

Buder, such accolades are the highest form of praise. He is not merely the professor of one of the most popular freshman seminars, but rhe person who catalyzed the program's creaÂŁion six years ago. Buder served as a member of the Committee on Yale College Education (CYCE), which convened in 2001 ro "assess the adequacy of the current undergraduate program and to consider changes and improvements." It was he who suggested that the College take a new approach to educating freshmen, and

¡Io

THE NEW JOUR1~AL

it was he who taught the first fre,hman seminar in the fall of2002.

That seminar was "Revolutionary America," the class I triple-underlined in ..green htghlighter cwo ye3rs later. When Buder first offered it, he admits he w:u offering it as a test CI.SC to prove that the format could work. "I probably wasn't the right person to do it," he says with a laugh. "I had a bit of a vested anterest."

Afrer an unden,helming stan in 2002, when only 13 students showed up for the firsr day of class-"no one knew quite what it was, so the registrar had assigned the cour)e to a lecture hall"-the course developed a reputation. Ont" ye3r later, 55 freshmen crowded into a semin.u room eager ro sign up.

While no ont" doubted rhar Buder's seminar would find succe~s. a singlt" stellar seminar daes nor make a program. Fresh!l13.Jl seminars, however, have .1chievc:d success in their own right. "!heir small • size and rv.ice-\\eekly meetings nurture relationships among students and facuhy.

Their interactive dynamic encourages freshmen to engage in their own education. "This isn't Math 112," s;~ys Dean of Freshman Affairs George Levesque, who runs the program. "You're having an acrual conversation."

Six ye3rs after Buder's test run, as the program faces its first full e\-aluation, the freshman seminar experiment has only one glirch: too many freshman e3ger ro rake roo few courses.

rives on Science are nor rhe only one~ ex· pc:riencing the intimae}• of the classroom.

The English, mathematics, and language departments have offered ~mall introductory cl~es for decades. A few year~ ago, <:\'en the economics department, \\hich is nor known for its attention ro pedagogy, added a small, lottery-based alternathe to its large introductory lecrures.

Still, the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from students in freshman seminars seems to indicate that the program h unique. "Among students, I think the satisfaction rate is probably 85, 90 percent," Levesque estimates. Asked to evaluate the classes at term's end, freshmen describe: their seminars with exclamations like "awesome" and "TAKE IT!" Many freshmen ask their seminar professors ro serve as second-year advisor~. Associate: Dean Penelope Laurans, who converted a longstanding poetry course: ro a freshman seminar in 2005, estimates rhar 13 of her freshmen studenrs from last spring now come ro her for academic advice.

Loyal converts include nor just stu· dents bur professors. Of this year's 32 seminars, 23 are taught by profo)or~ v.ho are returning to reach a second course or to repeat a first. These namo, \\hich include physicist Peter Parker and jack-ofall-trades 81 • Summers, are among Yale's most notable; 'l!mosr all have tenure and several have won reaching awards.

All agree that the program has become one of Yale's finest commitments

to it' Mudents. "'I he: pedagogical value of these seminar' w freshmen is very clear," says Cerman Profes,or Emeritus Cyrus Hamlin, who taught a seminar on German culture ustng the: Beinc:cke Library's collections in 2004. "In freshman year, a genuine intellectual transformation rakes place." Hamlin retired in 2005 bur is considering rerurnmg in mo }ea~ to reach another freshman seminar.

Buder is pleased. "Faculty have come up to me and said, 'lbb i~ the best te3ching expenence I have ever had. Period,'" he ~id. "I think the program's working." lhe doubts expre,sed by CYCE members, which centered on concern that the expanding program would eventually run out of interested f.1culty members, have largely di,sipatcd.

IJIE PROGRAM liAS

Al-~0

HAO A POSITIVE

effect on fiN-year .1dvising. "The advising 'YMc:m needs an overhaul," says Levesque. "'Ine hope for frl-:;hman seminars is that students and faculty develop long-term relationships." .Sighing. he continues: "I don't think the freshman seminar program alone can sohe that problem, bur it's seemed ro provide a much more orgame way for freshmen to get to know faculty members."

Hamlin's experience pro\·es rhe point.

His seminar, v.hich required a reading knowledge of German, consisted of only eight freshmen-and he h~ kept up with many. "110\ed the attention rhat we got,"

IN 2004, THF. COLLF.GF. OFFERIJO 16 SEMI·

nars, with room for just under three hundred freshmen to enroll. "this year, there: are 32--enough ro sear one third of the class of 20 II. Add that ro the Directed Studies and Perspective.) on Science populations-the three programs are mutually exclusive-and that figure rises ro almrut 50 percent.

Nonetheless, plenty of freshmen are left out. This year, 0\er eight hundred freshmen applied for jusr under five hundred seminar seats, despite the dean's offices avowed desire 10 create a space for ~ery interested student. At liberal aru colleges scattered throughout the country, the idea that only half of all freshmen rake a single small class v.ould be laughable.

Bur first·)ears in the freshman seminar program, Directed .Studies, and PerspccApril2008

27

says senior Janice Wong. a molecular biochemist who wok the class. Intrigued by the marc~rial. she conunuc:d w smdy with Hamlin as a sophomore and spent the follov.ing )ummer stud) ing abro2d m Gerrn2ny.

Hamlin') colleague, Gerrn2n Professor Carol Jacobs, is just as happy to ha\e contributed to the program. "My cxpcncnce reaching a freshman semmar was cxtula1'2ting: she says. ·In no other scm mar I've aught at Yale have I seen students gr<m as much as in that semester."

BUT THE RECENT SIGNS 01' sTABILIZATIO:"o;

portend difficulues of their own. Growth has sloY.ed: l.:t>t )ear's 33 seminar~ were followed by rhb }ear's 32.

"We're at a pl.ueau nght now; admits Levesque. Neverrhel~''· he is exdrcd to shepherd the program into its fifth )Car. Several notable faculty w1ll reach new freshman seminars, including John Gaddis, who v.illlead a course enmled "How History Teaches"; others \\ill return. But as the program attempts w continue its growth, it faces the challenges that come with provoking entrenched academic srrucmres.

One obstacle 1s the program's reluctance to engage JUnior faculry members.

The vast majority of freshman semmar professors are, hke Gadd1s, tenured or tenure-track faculty with long records of service to rhe Univer51ty and reputations a~ devoted teachers. .Such a teaching force is one of the program's strengths, of course, and Dean Levesque's office has resisted the temptation to fill holes wuh n1m-ladder faculty who nught not be around for four continuous )'l"ars 10 develop the son of long-lasting relationsh•ps the program is meant to insp1re. But the fact that only eight of this year's 32 seminars are taught by bdder faculty still v.orking to achieve tenure-a demographic wh1ch dominates the college'_.. teaching corp uggests thar the program's strength also d1m1mshes its ability to expand.

Junior faculty remam brgd) dJSmterested in the program. The pnmary culprit is the inccnuvc structure created by the academy's so-called tenure ladder.

MTcnured facult} often ha\c more Rextb.Iity in what they can do: SJys l..c\esquc.

MFor a lot of them, tcachmg a freshman seminar is a wdcomc opporrumtv to do

28

\Omething new." Junior faculty, on the other hand, confronted with the pressure to publish. often need to gravitate toward large lectures and ad\"aaCed seminars. The former require lirdc in the way of course de)ign, and the latter are more helpful in advancing one's own ~ch. Under a system that subordinates teaching skills to publishmg prowess, the freshrn2n seminar program is buning up against a teacher ~hottage.

Other challenges may not be intr.~c­ table-just expensive. kl don't know that we'll be able to get beyond this plateau without significant additional resources," Levesque srates. Funding, which is bcginni ng to stream in from committed alumni donors, could be directed to one of rwo areas: Either to a long-term investment in administrative support or to understaffed academic departments. The first need is clear: Levesque and a single assistant oversee not only the freshman seminar program, but also freshman counseling, pre-orientation programs, and first-year advising. Additional funding could hire a full-time seminar coordinator and build a training program for professors who wish to teach but do not fed pedagogically prepared to reach freshmen.

'in freshman year, a genuine intellectual transformation takes place."

-Cyrus Hamlin Donating the funds directly to academic departments is more complex and ties into an 1ssuc addressed in the recent report on Yale College expansion: The alleviation of pressures within individual depart· ments. panicuJarly in the social sciences.

For example, the incredibly popular political science department has offered only three freshman seminars smce 2004, and all were in the program's first rwo years. ·we stmply don't have the faculty," said Political Science Professor Susan Stokes, the department's director of undergraduate smdies. Depanments as ~trapped as political science must save their seminar resources for upperclassmen.

Still,l..co.esque suggests that an increase m freshman seminar funding could aile-

viate one deficiency while also helping ro solve the other. "With more resources," says I.cvoque, "we could work with departments to find creative solutions to staffing needs." One approach-shared by' several of Yale's peer instirutions--would be a permanent endowment that would compensate Yale departments for teaching time, allowing them to hire visiting or full·time faculty to fill programmatic needs. By contributing funding to the departmental pot. the program could secure a commitment from individual departments to offer a small number of freshman seminars each year.

Buder, for one, is skeptical. ''I'd say we need to expand the faculty in political science," he says. "If we can do that, we'll have some room for freshman seminars.

But I personally wouldn't go for visiting people-and I think it's most important that we grow political science to a decent size." While Levesque prioritizes immediate challenges and Butler long-term obstacles, both agree that there are gaps to fill. The question is how-and when.

YALE'S PEER INSTITUTIONS HAVE GRAPPLED

with, and largely resolved, similar problem~. Harvard's freshman seminar progr.~m traces its roots to the 1960s and has experienced something of a renaissance in the last five years. Its offerings have quadrupled in number, reaching 122 this year. •Departments were asked to look at giving freshman seminars as part of their overall curricular planning." explains Sandra Naddaff, who directs the Harvard program. "That went a long way towards getting departments to offer seminars and to think about it as something that was part of their service to the college."

Roughly a third of Harvard seminars arc aught by non-bddcr faculty members, and another quarter are taught by professional school professors who arc directly compensated by the program.

"Harvard's a bigger place-they have a lot more of those people running around," notes Uvcsquc. •we've always wanted to keep the program under departments' control."

Princeton's freshman seminar program resembles a more developed version of Yale's own. Most of this year's 78 seminars are aught by senior faculty, including Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and THE NEW JOURNAL

1

che college's former provost, Amy Guttman. ~ioreover, since its inception in che late 1980s. the program's financial structnre has echoed Levesque') ambitions.

Roughly half of Princeton's freshman seminars are funded direcdy by endowments, and rhe program reimburses departments for che teaching rime contributed by their professors. Some of the endowment funds can also be used ro subsidize activities like dinners, field trip), or summer continuations of certain course!>.

If other Ivy League colleges can offer Yale's freshman seminar program a lesson, iris rhe necessity of funding. Hamlin • makes a blunt case: "Yale is rich. Lately, cheir endowment is doing so well that chey ought to commit to staffing che • freshman seminars in sufficient numbers _ such char any freshman who wants to take one, can."

Four years ago, smarting from my re. jeaion, I might have agreed. Though it • would be nice to allow rejected applicants spaces in a seminar, the gap between supply and demand is not the only factor " char influences scheduling. Students ofren drop classes rhey sign up for, leaving some seminars unfilled while others remain overbooked. Incoming freshmen who intend to pursue majors in science and mach are particularly problematic, and chose departments have roisted heavy participation in the program.

The freshman seminar program may have expanded to just about its limit.

Levesque, for his part, seems to be moving onto new challenges. "What would it be like to teach CHEM 114 in a thirry-person class?" he asks. In his eyes, freshman seminars are incubators of educational innovation rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

"We have to accept that there is no perfect way to make every single freshman have a great cxpenence," says Laurans. Yale's challenge in coming years will be ro accept chis realiry, adjust to it, and still live up ro the sk')'-high expectations of Blue Book-gripping freshmen in July.

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29

THE CRITICAL ANGLE

TeenSex Club

Graduation ~1aencrn

Oneblfe

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110 AGAIN! 7

1

THE VAN VECHTEN FILES Confronting a literary icon's controversial collections.

By Amy Fish 30

THE NEW JOUR..~AL

she says. As the 25-year mark drew near, Cur out of newsprint like a ransom scholars as;sumed they were about to unnote, the words sprawl acros;s the top of veil Van Vechren's diaries. "They said, 'Of the page. Below lies a large black and white course, this is going to be exciting. and photograph of a young, pale-skinned man let's open those journals and have a parry.' wearing nothing but a garland. His lips and the curator said, 'Well, I don't think shine; his pelvis thrusts forward in bold so .. .' It was a good instinct." The few display. There's no getting around the people who did attend the 1989 opening, focus of the picture: The penis, standing including Willis, were shocked by what they found: 18 scrapbooks of graphic hoproud at center stage. [ funively scan the Beinecke reading moeroticism, full of mischief and devoid room: Has anyone looked up from his of explanation. medieval manuscripts? The coast is clear.

I look back down to read the last words THE SCRAPBOOKS TAKE VA...; VECHTEN's legendarily wicked humor to an outrapasted on the page. geous new level. He had a knack for the ~come on in, Sucker."

• fiendish double emendre, turning otherwise innocent phrases inro cheeky capWELCOME TO PAGE ONE OP THE SCRAPbooks of Carl Van Vechten, luminary of tions for his images of conspicuous erecthe twentieth century New York arts scene tions: "Such fine Mears at Low Prices!"

- and notorious provocateur. The foremost "Learn to sip, not guzzle." He reveled in white patron of the H arlem Renais;sance, the seductive tone of twentieth century he broughr Langston H ughes and Zora advertising. Pitches like "Come say 'HEL• Neale Hurston to publishers and white LO' to a GOOD BUY!", ~You'll like it!", rourisrs ro Harlem in the 1920s and 30s. and "Just taste chis new kind!" become the Equal pans pacron and partier. "Carlo" sly subtitles to pictures of naked men. He • • knew everyone and everyone came ro his was especially fond of ads in the second panies. One of the best-connected people person, wielding an aggressively intimate of his era, he has also been one of the most you that makes the ,;ewer feel strangely complicit in his vice. neglected in its recent historical memory.

Van Vechten collected newspaper clippings chronicling Harlem drag balls, early sex-change operations ("GI Who Turned Woman is a Happy Beaury"), court cases c ' HELLO GOOD for "morals charges," and abuse incidents.

He assembled more restrained, if still theI " " 10Utt V: I" BUY., t atrical, black and white photographs of male nudes, both Caucasian and African American, which most scholars think are mostly or entirely the work of Van Vechren. Nothing escaped him: Photos of ambiguously homoerotic Greek vases, labeled in childishly rounded handwriting, nestle against newspaper curours of male wrestlers locked in combat.

VAN VECHTEN'S SCRAPBOOKS, HOWEVER. But as we-librarians, art historians, are reviving his legacy in ways no one gender studies scholars, and the casual anticipated. The books arrived at Yale. Beinecke browser-try to understand the packed in three mysterious cartons bearing Van Vechten behind these irreverent colstrict instructions nor to be opened until lages, we must confront the darker side of 25 years after his death, which occurred the scrapbooks. First, a persistent strain of in 1964. Patricia Willis, the soft-spoken pedophilia. "Do you want a baby?~ says a curator of American literature at the Bei- clipping next to a phorograph of an adonecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. lescent boy wearing nothing but Greek remembers when the albums were still a lace-up sandals; on another page, two boys mystery. "They were in the stacks with hold each other's erections. There is also a rope around them that said 'restricted.'" troubling strain of racism. A young. rail "THIS IS .II.~

.

Pitches like "Come say to a 'lll'ke tt. . , and 'Just taste this new kind!" become the sly subtitles to pictures of naked men.

April2008

blond leers down at a shorter black boy, who grins broadly as he grips the other's shoulders proprietarily; one of its four captions reads. "In idenrif)ing meat, color is our best guide." Another page shows a French soldier sodomizing an Arab boy.

Such scenes, numerous and shockingly extreme, are impossible to dismiss. They threaten to crumble an already shal·-y undemanding of a complex man.

VAN

VECHTEN,

SCHOLARS

SPECULATE,

compiled the scrapbooks between the 1930s and the 1950s. Participating in a trend of scrapbook sharing, he probably passed them around and received clipping contributions from a small and covert circle of friends. Since going public, the scrapbooks have gathered enough of a cult following among academics that they're beginning to fall apart; they flaked as I turned the pages. Still, their current audience, like the first, remains small and under the radar. The albums form a mere fraction of the legacy of a man who worked tirelessly to preserve the cultural artifacts of his era and to showcase irs biracialism. A fervenr believer in cultural cross-pollination, Van Vechten com·inced his white artist friends to leave their collections to Fl!lk, a historically African American university in Nashville, and his black friends to donate their papers to Yale's own Beinecke, thereby creating the treasured James Weldon Johnson collection.

Van Vechten had a keen sense of his own role in history. He purposefully made himself an indispensable commercial and cultural link between Harlem and white New York. Jennifer Wood, the effusive dean of Ezra Stiles College and Yale's inhouse expert on the scrapbooks, argues that the Harlem Renaissance would not have occurred as it did without him. "He really brought the power of the white publishing houses to the Harlem Renaissance," she explains. "And that shaped it, for better or wor~."

In the 1960s, when the Harlem Renaissance came back in vogue, historians tried to forget Van Vechten, and, with him, the uncomfortable role of whites in the movement. In the past decade, however, he has reappeared in ac.1demia. "He speaks to some issues that we're working our now," Wood c.-xplains, "in terms of white Fasci31

narion with black culture and the many ramifications tbar can have.• The scrapbooks lie at the heart of the Van Vcchten d.ilcmma. forcing us to consider bow prejudice. even if unconscious. pmiad in this croa-racial p•onccr. While be wu cxdunsi"l long. ~uent lctcas wich Lanpon Hughes. he WIS also c:ollecdiJI typewritten ~ erns--scancml &1110111 chc ncwspapcr clippinp in his scrapboob--fuU of sexual sing-son& rhymes unprintably offensive toward blacb. Even as his prift~ scrapbook saapsbots betray his erotic and cxoricizcd &scination with black bodies, his public phorographs of black artists, musicians, and wriras show a profound respect for and will to document African American artistic production. These scrapbooks may be the last frontier ofVan Vcchten's persona. a dansaous landscape rhar tempts scholars to padt it in unopcnable boxa and mum to chc •CarJo• they knew and loml.

Wood, who is writing her dissertation on Van Vcchtcn, knows firsthand chc difficulty of verbalizing the contents of the books. "Nothing can p~ you for sitting down with them; she says.

Most scholars don't even uy. Yale's own Lesbian. gay. bisexual and aarusender studies wdlsi~ describes chc collec:dons as •a light hearted, ironic comment on homosexual men, lesbians, and masculinity and fanininity: Jonathan Weinberg. who wrote one of the fim pieces ofscholanhip about the scrapbooks, a 1994 article tided •Boy enzy; celebrates how Van Vcchtcn •found homosexuality where homosexuality bad been suppressed... and he found homosexuality where it was not supposed to be: Ycr Weinberg &i1s to mention race throughout the fim half of the essay, and by the end of the twenty-five-page article the issue seems almost forgotten. The imap reproduced from the scrapbooks UIU· ally show only photographs of whites or the least offmsivc images of blacks. Con-

fronted with clements incongruous to a wdl-respcctcd historical figure, scholars have chosen to tum away.

"It's hard to say what he actually felt about really anything, , WOod confesses. "He has his tongue firmly placed in his cheek at all times. , Wood agrees rhar academia has downplayed the most disturbing aspects of the books, focusing instead on their straightforwanl, easily celebrated components.

Scholars have seized on the albums as an obsessively meticulous record of gay history, a discipline in which many documents have been lost or desrroycd. "'The archive in its own right is snmning.• says Wood. •r mean it's one of the best. if not · •

v... Yech1en's scrapbooks reveal the prejudices of. cross-racial pioneer.

• :

I . ,

.

'

Col/ for Encores

32

THE NEW JOURNAL

the besr.•. of rhis period." Combined with the Fisk and James Weldon Johnson collections, the scrapbook archive cements Van Vechren's place as an invaluable his· torian. Art historians, meanwh1le, have concemrared on the less pornographic, more aestheticizro nude porrrau.s, those that coincide wtth Van Vechren's image as a praiseworthy photographer.

Some.scholars avo1d the albums emirely.

"There are twenry books about him from the last twenry years that do nor mention the scrapbooks at all," Wood says. MThere are people who are really stecnng away from them." One of the reasons scholars may shirk from interpreting the scrap· ' books lS that, 10 his life and work, Van Vechten remained stubbornly unreadable.

Mit's hard to say what he actually felt about really anything," Wood confesses. MHe has • his tongue firmly placed 10 hiS cheek at all times."

In a few months, WilliS plans to launch an exhibit of Van Vechren's relauvely unknown color photographs of Afncan Amencan arusts ThiS show Is Intended ' to broaden percepuons of Van Vcchten, but no IMages from the scrapbooks w1ll be included.

In 2006, scholar James malls opened the scrapbooks to an In-depth diSCUSSIOn of race. In a book tided Tht HomOtTDtt~ Pho10f771phy cJ Ozrl \~n \tthtm, malls argues that Van Vechtcn "needed• the b1· racial dement of the scrapbooks to Justify both hu erotic Interest In African Amen· caru and hb faJth m cultural lnterraoall.sm. fhl.s e.xplanauon seems madcqu;ue given rhe aggressl'le and unhe.suaung nature of Van \'educn's racial crotkum.

The argument also neglects rhe fact th:.t the albums, though pnvate dunng Van \'echten's lifetime, were eventually meant to go public. "'There's a Itt de bu ofsocia1 cngmecrang. there's a little bu of control in cvcrytlung he docs: s:ays Wood. \l;1tata"Cr h1s per· sonal feehngs, Van Vechren nC\u forgot about hu public •mage. Sull. malls h1ts somcthmg at the hc:an of the scrapbooks. jUSt as Van Vcchtcn mllf have Mnceded• the scrapbooks to see hLS own l&fc m a ccr· cun 'lltay, C'I'Cl)' Vl~"Cr sea m them wh.tt he or she needs to see. ~me sec a s~mple hl.stoncal archn"C, others a cdcbrarcd point in the hurory of gay nghts, and sull others an aesthetiC contnbuuon to pho-

-

.

April2008

tography. Van Vechren, the consummate manipulalOr, has become the object of our own manipulations.

When I view the scrapbooks, l squirm at Van Vechtcn's assumed license ro cross and re-cross the racial line. He would have underestimated just hoY. uruccept able such an ani rude would seem 10 2008.

Wood characterizes Van Vechren as un derstanding himself as being able to tran gress racial bounchrie.s...he fdt he had some sort of special dispen~uon to speak for and about African Americans." He 1 , Wood says. "a projcctory of Elvis Preslc) and Eminem, what have you. People ha'e this whire character who's going to talk abour race as an insider in some w.t}.~ I once researched Van Vcchten's no10ri· ous 1926 novel Niggtr flravm • •1 h.mdy "insider's" view of Harlem life. Whtlc the book projects an innocent dbrcg.ud for its own problematic narure, there lS some thing knowing in irs ah1luy to capture the reader's reluctant fa.scm:.uon. Whtle much of Harlem railed again r 11. as h• ronan M1chad S. ~Iiller WntC'S 10 "Acuv Ism m the H:.rlem Rcnai.SS.lncc," h1 200 es.sa). 11 was the number one nmd on the reserve hn at a Harlem branch of the New York Pubhc l sbral). E~ef)one I'C':ld 11 10 private. When ] read Nrggtr llrmYn four )'Cars ago. I was ashllmed to be sc:cn w uh u 01nd a tude dLSgusted b) u But l ha\t' rcm:uned fascinated b, 1ts author Ponng oYer my Bcinecke loot, I think that perh:.ps Van Vechtcn was nght to ad dress hiS scrapbook \1CV.'Crs as ''you " My fasanlltion m:.kC'S me fed as comph u 10 the making of the albums as the people who Knt rheu sexual poems to "Carlo" Wood calls Van Vechten ·, ISIOO.ll'),• he ccnamly plannro for the albums to cause a scandal. "Yale rna) not thmk so, but ull be JUSt Jolly," he prom1ses on one page "Carl hlld a penchant for hodung prople,M s:ays Wilhs. He would ha\"C IO\'td m sec me fidget m m} suff lkmeckc chau

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33

PERSONAL ESSAY

THE FAMILY WE CHOOSE

By Sophia Lear ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER l, AT THE CE.."â&#x20AC;˘

Veterirury Hospital in Nc:\\ Ha\c:n, there are few patie-nts and a lot of bodtc:s. "lt'5 just been sad lately," D.midle, a vet technician, says v.ith a tired stgh in the open "Emergency Care" area in the hospital's basement. "It's 'cause the holidays are coming." she admtts, and, before I can open my mouth, she rurns back to her computer. I don't undt:ro.tand the connection.

Instde the bright, linoleum emergency care area, a silver boom box on a shelf next to a swaying test tube tray has been playing holiday songs, one after another, all day long. "Lt:r Your Da) Ek MelT}." "Winter Wonderland." "Let it now." "White: Christmas." OutSide, the first now of the year-or freezing ram, nther-is falling in the early dusk.

"Bet\\-een Tha.nksgivmg and Chnstmas TRAL

\\e do a lot ot euthanasia," D r. Kris Gnu picking up on my confusion. "Every Yl'ar. "\'lhy?" I ask. Over rhe course of one Jay, I ha\e seen ~even hypodermic needb filled \\ith a hot pink liquid, and 5even dead pets carried (if a cat) or v.heeled on a can (if a dog) down the hallway. I've seen three of them euthanized myself: "Dusty: "Kirtcn," and "Celeste."

We seem to take more lives during the holidays, it occurs to me later. Our own, as suicide rates notoriously cltmb every year with the approach of the ~ew Year, and-as I dL\Cover anecdotally~ur pets'. Suicide statistia garner attention, I think, because we bclieH: Y.e understand them. 1he grating, unrelenting cheer of the season, the out-of-hanJ materialism, the stress of family gatherings, the y.c:ight of that annual charge to fix our Raws, htt S3)S,

w all in \"arying degrees.

But pets?

DURING A LULL IN ACTIVITY AT THE HOSPI-

I demand an explanation, and nurses Linda, Mary. and Trudy gather arou nd to offer a fc:\\ theories. Visiting relatives make owners reevaluate the hassles of caring for an unhealthy pet. Big dogs do poorly in cold weather. "It's the end of the year," says Mary. shrugging. "On to new thing,." :-\o one can offer anything more certain than that.

Whtle human euthanasia floats in the realm ofOp-Ed pages, poliucal posruring. and passionate publtc debate, itS animal countetpan is much more matter-of-fact, sitting in a box of vials under the syringes.

And the blunt posstbiliry of euthanasia tn the pet \\Orld makes the discussion of death almo.st unrc:cogmzably different.

TAl ,

THF NEW JOUR."'AL

Righr-ro-die advocates portray human euthanasia ~an alternative to the arrogance of the medkal prof..:ssion-the right to do what nature will ~hortly do anyway. For pers. the arrogance runs the other way, ~ we assume rhe duty of deciding when the suffering should scop.

FOR MOST Pl-.T OWNERS, THE FIRST STEP

..

to the animal hospital comes when they notice something's wrong. Thomas Mason and his young ron were walking their nine-week-old American Bulldog. Dusry, along Long Bt:ach in Branford, when Dusty sniffed a mushroom and gobbled up another. Mr. .Mason assured his son that Du~ry. whom they'd brought home just rwo weeks earlier, would be 6ne. A day later, Ousry was shaking and couldn't stand up. She: started ro have seizures in â&#x20AC;˘ the car on the way to the hospital.

Preparing w start on morning rounds with three other vets, Or. Laura McKay asks. "Do you want to scan with the sad or not so sad?" The consensus is sad, and Dusty is the first stop. Or. McKay rattl~ off her stat:.. Activated Clotting Tune (ACT) above 4000. Ammonia up. Glucose in the toilet. ~This mushroom has fun nicknames," she says, ~like death angel. destroyer angel." Dusty's liver is failing. "A single mushroom can kill a small child." she concludes. \Yle look and coo once more as Dusry raises her wrinkly infant head. \Yie move on.

A few hours later in a small office off the central F.R area, Dr. Grau hangs up the phone with Poison Control and makes a poury face. "In humans. we'd do a liver rransplam," Or. Grau says, ~bur we haven't gotten there for the animal world yer."

THE LISE BI!TWEEI' PET A...;o CHILD OF-

blurs for rhe serious animal lover. and the Animal Hospital is one place where this feeling is understood. "I deal with the same thing with my daughter," Dr. Grau ~ays. commiserating with an owner whose pug. Brittany, has allergies. Brittany is wearing a rainbow sweater and has been dragging her "girly pares" across the living room floor. As she follows behind her daughter's epileptic golden rerriever, another woman half-jokes to me. "~fy granddaughter!"

In the hospital files, patienrs are given TEN

April2008

their owners' last names: "Ruby" Parterron, or "Bravehearr" Fucci. "We began to long for the pirrer patter of little feet: reads a quote on a calendar hanging in the office, "so we bought a dog. \Ylell, it's cheaper, and you ger more feet." At home, I have caught my mom calling our my name to our ten-year-old Bernese Mounrain Dog, Marilla, "by accident."

The distance between this hospital's patienrs and the human world, however, reveals itself in the ER. "Oh, man, this is disgusting," Dr. McKay says as she lacerates a cyst on tbe back of a black car. "'lou smell terrible!" she continues as she works, saying something no pediatrician would ever dare in front of a diem. "Look, this eat's been snorting coke;' Linda jokes, holding down a black cat with white flecks around its nose, as another nurse gives him a shot.

Pet:.' inabiliry to communicate their burrs only makes their mothers and fathers more dependent on hospital sraff.

As Dr. Grau and I enter room after room ro meet with shaken owners and their sick or hurt or dying pers, I keep expecting the owners to glare ar me for intruding at .~uch a personal rime. Instead, ~ soon as we enter, I become invisible. lhc paricms might patter over to sniff me, siz.c me up, or wag a tail, but the eyes of the owners immediately seize on Or. Grau. waiting to hear her words, as if from a prophet.

"Perc does have plenty ofstool in him," Dr. Grau tells Frank Hardy. a middle aged man brimming with emotion. "I knew it!" he r~ponds, throwing his hands up in rhe air. Dr. Grau speaks with rhe soothing voice of a kindergarten reacher. She explains what she has found. "He's got keystones in his urine," she sotys, "which means Perc has diabetes." Next she offers her advice for treatment, ending by emphasizing that "right now we want to get Percy feeling berrer first, before anything else."

"That's wonderful," Hardy nods. kec:ping it together, and follows her our of rhe room ro look at Petey's X-rays.

OR. CRAU ENTERS CHECK-UP ROOM fOUR.

where my mother and I sit waiting. She closes the door gently behind her. She w~ blue scrubs over a plump but sturdy frame, and her dark hair i.s pulled back from her warm face in a ponytail. Or.

Grau, as I 6nd our a few weeks later, loves emergency veterinary work, lunch, and laughing. "I didn't do ir!" she exclaims, and then giggles, whenever a docror or nurse calls her name from across the room.

When it's getting close ro rwo and lunch hasn't been ordered, she mock-shours, "Never keep a fat girl from her lunch!"

A heartfelt "rhar sucks" is her refrain for all the lows of the day, from discouraging blood test results to a cat just put down.

She is the caring. competent elementary school teacher in the check up room, with an endearing penchant for naughty PG humor behind closed doors.

"You smell terrible!" she continues as she works, saying something no pediatrician would ever dare in front ofa client.

MY FIRST TRIP TO THE ANIMAL. HOSPITAL

was on November 11, when I called my mom about an Otlullo paper and found her choking back sobs on the other end.

"She just collapsed," she said of Marilla.

A neighbor had helped lift Marilla's seventy-pound frame into the back of our Volvo station wagon, and my mom had rushed her to the animal hospital just a fe\\ blocks a\vay.

In the parking lot, Marilla managed to get out of the car herself. and my mom wondered if she had overreacted. Inside, however, the vet technician lifted up Marilla's black lips and pronounced, ~She: has grey gums." Grey gums mean profuse internal bleeding. As the technician whisked Marilla away to the ER, the receptionist pushed a form in front of my mom. "Sign here," she said, "co begin emergency treatment."

The news so far sounded grim. "I don't know what to do," my mom whispered over the phone. So I put down my paper and drove to the hospital a few miles away, ro see Marilla for perhaps the last rime, and, in a rare moment, to comfort my mom, instead of the other way around.

"1 NEED TO TELL )'OU EXACTLY WHAT's

going on," Dr. Grau says, her no-non

35

sense cone powerful and soothing. "Then we can talk about what decisions you might need to make." Dr. Grau delivers information in calm. dige~tible chunks. ~1arilla h bleeding into her abdomen and has a large mass there; the prognosis for rhese siruarions is never good. If the mass is confined to her spleen, the non-boardcerrified surgeon on call can remove it. If it's on her liver, "he won't be able to deal with it." But he won't know until he opens her up, because ,\farilla"s internal bleeding blurs X-rap. An ultrasound would pinpoint the mas,, but this ho~pital doesn't have rhe equipment. We'd have to go to Norwalk, an hour's drive away.

"Bur look," she says finally, in a tried and rrue formula I later come to recog¡ nize. "There arc: some things we: can do to just get a bit more: of a handle. Get her stable. Sec where: we: arc:." My mom and I nod, and Or. Grau leaves. "Isn't she wonderful?" my mom says hoarsely, and we are left sirring on the floor, stroking Marilla, who, be~ides brt.-athing unevenly. seems perfectly fine.

MARILLA HAD THE Ol'f!R.-\110:>0 OVERSIGHT,

and the: surgeon removed a grapefruiHized rumor from her spleen. My mom did nor blink at the $4,000 price mg of Marilla's

blood work, X-rays, surgery, and post-op recuperation. Bur many do. Money is a touchy, ever-present subject at the animal hospital. Less than a quarter of pet owners have medical insurance, and ..most get it after they've had to spend a lor of money here," says Tracy, a nurse who presents financial estimates to owners.

'1t's not weird, "Dr. Grau says, piercing the strange air oftransition from family member to dead animal that fills the room.

OR. GRAU DOES NOT HOLD BACK PROM

judging owners' tight-fisted behavior.

"How would you like to get thrown twenty feet in the air and get sent home with some Tylenol?" Dr. Grau fumes ro me when an owner decides ro forgo treatment for a dog who has been hit by a car. But she also spends much of her time reassuring owners that sometimes euthanasia is the best--even if not the only-option.

Around this time, I realize we could have put Marilla to sleep then and there and no one would have raised an eyebrow.

"If you need someone to say, 'Is this OK to do?' I'm here ro say-'Ir is,"' Dr. Grau says quiedy on the phone to Mr. O'Brien (whose name has been changed), whose car, "Kinen: has a bladder full of stones for the third time. O'Brien decided to operate the first two times at two thousand dollars a pop. Now Dr. Grau talks about qualiry of life, nor only the pet's but the family's. She reminds him that medicine offers "no guarantee," and then concludes, "I don't mean to sound crude, but there are so many cats in this world that need a home that don't have chronic medical problems." Pets are the family we choose, as a common saying goes, and Dr. Grau understands the hardnosed truth about choosing as much as the parr about family.

"ARE YOU READY?"

"Yeah."

George Mason wears a puffy vest and sweatpants and talks with tough guy anitude, but as Dr. Grau inserts the needle he looks up at the ceiling to hold back tears, stroking Dusty's four-pound body.

I keep my eyes on Dusty. She seems al-

THE NEW JOURNAL

most prenatal, too translucent, wrinkled, and small for this world. Her eyes droop closed, and she: looks like a Victorian imag.: of death, pcacdul and asleep, as if her ¡ time on earth were just a brief, harmless dream. Dr. Grau checks for a heartbeat.

"Okay. she's gone," she: murmurs. ''I'm so sorry." Mason lowers his head and gravity take. over. The tears roll down his cheeks.

Dr. Grau asks if he wantS to spend more time with Dusty's still-warm body.

"No, no," Mason mumbles, wiping his eyes and sniffling.

"It's not weird." Dr. Grau says, piercing the: mange: air of transition from family member to dead animal that fills the room.

"I know, I know," Mason says a bit defensively. "But I'm fine." He lifts his baseball cap up and down a few times and trudges down the hallway to the exit.

Downstairs, Dr. Grau lays Dusty on a stainless steel table. "The cremation service does a pick-up once a day," she says, and then walks away. With Dr. Grau gone:, I run my hand over Dusty. "It's not weird," I think, and feel relieved.

THE SEXT DAY, A CAT SCREAMS FOR HIS UFE.

Mr. O'Brien and his 11-year-old daughter, Isabelle:, stand in the check-up room. As o;oon as Dr. Grau enters, Isabelle startS bawling fiercely. Kitten sits on the table. He: is a Halloween cat, his black fur so lustrous and dark it appears a siJvery blue as it catches the light, and his eyes are rwo large yellow globes. He looks alert and vigorous.

Owners have several choices to make when putting down a pet: Whether or not to be present for the euthanasia, whether to cremate the body or take it home to bury. Bodies can be cremated individually and returned. or cremated co masse.

As Isabelle: continues to sob, Mr. O'Brien delivers his family's answer: They don't want to be prc:sent for Kitten's death, bur they do want his body to bury at home:. "I just \'\o"ant to let you know, I treat each animal like it's my own," Dr. Grau sap as she scoops up Kitten.

In the hubbub of the open ER downstairs, a few nurses offer Kitten some cat food in a red and white cardboard container, a miniature version of the containers Cape Cod restaurants use to serve fried cLams or steamers. Kitten .sniffs the: food April2008

and rurns away. "Oh come on, it's your last meal!" Dr. Grau begs. Kitten refuses.

"Shhhh, pretty baby, it's okay," Linda coos as she holds Kitten's body down. Dr. Grau insertS the needle, and suddenly Kitten spits and screams. Not a howl or a hiss or any other word we use to describe non-human noises, but a real scream, eerily high-pitched and otherworldly. He fights to rum his head back to his leg. where DL Grau is pushing the liquid through the needle. His body shakes. Finally, he goes limp.

Dr. Grau and Linda look weary. I am shocked. Trudy picks up the body. "Now, don't you dace pee: on me!" Trudy warns as her under five-foot frame struggles to carry Kitten's weight. "Trudy, he's not going to pee on you!" Linda says, leaning on the metal operating table. "Oh, yeah," Trudy chuckles, heaving Kitten's body into a cardboard box. "I forgot." Kitten's head flops over the side of the box. Trudy pushes it back in.

against our own desire to have her around for as long as we can. And, of course, we cannot consult her in the decision. I lean down, stroke her ear, and her tail whaps against the dle floor. Her wishes are only as we imagine them.

All I can firmly glean from my time at the Animal Hospital is that I want to be there when Marilla is cuthaniz.ed. I don't care what happens to her body.

WHEN I WAS IN SECOND GRADE, MY PAR-

ents got a divorce. In retaliation, I gave an ultimatum to my mom: We get a dog or I get my ears pierced. I wanted a dogmore than an-y-thing--but if the answer was no, as it had been for months and months, I just had to do somahing.

This tactic did not budge her, so I threw a fit. I cried and cried and grew hysterical until finally I quieted down, and said, in the argument my mom still recalls as the one that shifted the tide, "Mama. You arc thinking of this dog as just a burden. But the truth is, you will love her, and then she won't feel like a burden ac all." I offered my own presence in her life as an example.

I brought Marilla into our lives, and though I still love her dearly, she now matters more to my mom than to me. I am about to graduate college, and I feel on the cusp of my adult life. Marilla is at home.

After her surgery, Dr. Grau sent a chunk of Marilla's excised rumor to a specialist.

It was malignant. A rough prognosis gives Marilla another four months; with chemotherapy, perhaps a year.

When I am home for dinner one night, Marilla rc:scs her chin on my feec under the table. We arc trying to weigh, as a family, the pain of chemotherapy for Marilla

TN] Sophia uar, a smior in Ezra Stiks Co/kg~. is a smior ~dit4r nntrirus oj1NJ.

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ENDNOTE

AT 10 A.M. ON FEBRUAR\' I 5• PRECOCIOUS

teenager~

and under-employed young adulr.s from acrms Connec.:cicut began to convene en masse in from of New Haven's BAR restaurant. Most of the v.omen seemed to have applied Sephora'~ entire make-up and perfume inventory prior to the pilgrimage. Some fumbled in handbags for tissues, v. hile others smoked pink and turquoise p.teks of <.';a mel ultralights.

The fur protruding from rheir c.:oars v.as on par with the decor of a Ukrainian hunting lodge. The smattering of men compensated for their low numbers with a variety of testosterone-dripping accessories: Energy drinks emblamncd with "No Fearn decals, abundant and unpredictably located facial piercings, panb c.:overed in NBA ream logos. Arrh•ing at the queue at half past noon, I felt a distinct lack of camaraderie emanating from the assembled masses. Though I had bleac.:hcd and gelled my widm' 's peak and thrown on a tracksuit, I was anxioU5. Fear and loathing hung like Axe bod) spray in the chill winter air. Bur thb unease was understandable. We v.ere all competing for the arne thing. We all wanted to be cast in MTV's

7ht Rtall>."'or/d, ~son 21.

Every kid blessed with tebision access during the past ten years harbors some

38

form of jungian collective consciousness based on a clip moorage from this show.

We may go years without a relapse, but those images-scenes of hoc-rub fondlings, of Rurhie collapsing naked in the sho,,er during the second Hav.aii episode-linger in the corners of our brains like kidney stones waiting to dislodge. \\'hen I first heard about the New Haven casting call, it had been years since I watched Tht &a/ World. But, right on schedule, some unchecked, hisrrionic affiniry for broadcasting myself into millions of American homes began to blossom in my gut. Fame was calling. I had to call back.

After waiting about an hour in rhe cold, listening to a GMC Suburban pulsare Hor97 while parked running on the curb, I was called inside. The space teemed wirh chatty people in har.s. Sitting at a wooden table \\irh a pack of girls, I was handed an application. a pen. and a beer cozy adverrhing Lacry the Cable Guy's new film, Witkss Prouction. Across from me, several ladies who appeared to have only recently hit puberty strategized about hov. to be.t fill out the form.

"What's my best quality?" asked one.

"You're honest," replied her friend.

"What's my worst quality?" continued

the first. ~You're

kind of a bitch."

Finally, my table was summoned to the back of the restaurant for a group interview. "lell us your most embarrassing moment," demanded the casting director.

Someone. apparently. had fallen off of a guardrail while trying to have sex with a homeless person. Another had peed in her pants before a stadium full of Lenny Kravitz fans. After another 15 minutes of heinous personal anecdotes, we were told ro sum up our personalities with one word before leaving.

"I'm a freak!" declared the first girl.

"I'm promiscuous!" yelled the second.

Faced with the prospect of condensing my menty years oflife into one or rwo syllables, I choked. All around me, mascaraswathed eye~ stared like bats in a damp cave. lhe ca.~ring director clicked her nails against the table. Finally. the moment of rrurh: "l'm... single?"

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Yale Students Recieve 15°/o Discount on Monday Evenings Serving Dinner from s:oo pn1, 1\Ionday-Saturday We are open Sunday and Monday. l\lay 25-6.

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 4pm: A Conversation \vith Michael Pollan," Master's Tea, Jonathan Edwards College, 100 Tower Parkway u.

7pm:

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