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Editor-in-Chief Ben Lasman

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Managing Editors ·Haley Cohen, Kate Selker Designer Aimee Marquez

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910 whalley haven 06515

Associate Editor Kanglei Wang

haven 06510 203.77liYARN

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203~389.3369

Copy Editor Elsie Kenyon •

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receive a 10% discount with this ad Clean up your act before Parent's Weekend!

Production Staff Timothy Shriver, Samantha Ellner, Helena Malchione, Abigail OwenPontez

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Senior Editor Laura Zax

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Avenue New · cr 203-865-0082 Cefl2.03-492-9713 Student's Speical Available Walk-ins Welcome

Members and Directors Emily Bazelon~ Roger Cohn, Peter B. Cooper, Jonathan Dach, Tom Griggs, Brooks Kelley, Kathrin Lassila, Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, Fred Strebeigh, Thomas Strong •

Advisors Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Joshua Civin, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, David Slifka, .

John Swansburg, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin

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Friends Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Emily Bazelon, Anson M. Beard, Jr., Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Brant, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Daphne Chu, Jonathan M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, Masi Denison, Albert J. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang, Walter Jacob, Jane Kamensky, Tina Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Jonathan Lear, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean O'Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Lauren Rabin, Fairfax C. Randal, Robert Randolph, R. Anthony Reese, Rollin Riggs, Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W. Hampton Sides, Lisa Silverman, Scott Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulsman, Margarita 'Whiteleather, Blake Wilson, Jessica Winter, Angela Stent Yergin . .

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THE NEW JOURNAL

Volume 42, No. 2

. The magazine about Yale

and New Haven October 2009 •

FEATURES

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COVERING ANNIE LE. How the media turned a campus tragedy into national news.

by Elsie Kenyon

12 HISTORY IS OURPRESENT Coeducation at 40: Reflections from three generations ofYale women.

by Hannah Zeavin 18 •

IN THE RED From music with a mission to music for music's sake: can the Yale Russian Chorus stay relevant in the post-Soviet age?

by Marissa Grunes

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SNAPSHOTS 7

NESTEGGS In backyards across New Haven, residents are hatching a fowl plan.

by Laura Blake

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NOHAVEN Iraqi refugees living in New Haven face difficulty finding work, homes, and even getting picked up at the airport. Two organizations want that to change.

by Helena Malchione

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NETGAIN Artist William I .a anson asks us to reconsider our standards.

by Jane Long

Long Shot. ]a_ne Long

STANDARDS 4

POINTS OF DEPARTURE Roadkill taxidermy, hospice care, and .mind-boggling streets.

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PROFILE Supernormal

by Haley Cohen

A formation of tarot cards after a reading. Haley Cohen

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ENDNOTE

by Ben Lasman

The New Journal is published five times during the academic year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Office address: 30S Crown Street. All contents Copyright 2008 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written peunission of the publisher and editor in chief is prohibited. While this magazine is published by Yale College students, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seventy-five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to membeiS of the Yale and New Haven community.

Subscriptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One year, S 18. Two years, $32 The New Journal is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must indude address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication.

October 2009

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DEAD ON ARRIVAL Every Tuesday and Thursday, seventeen-year-old Zoe Kauder Nalebuff waits in line behind a gaggle ofschoolchildren in the lobby of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. She is not going to see the dinosaurs. When Zoe reaches the front, she . makes eye contact with a security guard, who steps out from behind the admissions desk and escorts her to a locked door which he sweeps open with the ceremony of a chauffeur. Zoe descends . two flights of an echoing cement staircase and emerges beneath the Peabody, where strips of fl~orescent lights and exposed piping stretch down a network of hallways lined with windowless doors. The signage is troubling. The "Pest Control Orange Zone" gives way to a corridor flanked with an "Emergency Shower Unit" and cabinets labeled "Dirty Bones." Chain-link doors segment the hallway like security checkp~ints and require the repeated use of a key. Behind a sliding steel door, secured with a clunky steel padlock, is the museum's taxidermy and modeling studio.

In the corner, there is a freezer.

The unpaid assistant to the Peabody's head preparator, Zoe halts her journey here. This second-tier taxidermy freezer looks like something you might keep in your basement to store last year's Otter Pops. It is a standard-issue chest freezer, a trusty Frigidaire. Dating back from before the company went modern and started writing its name in caps lock with a faddish triangle for an A, the box's logo is still in classic cursive. If the Frigidaire could

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pass for ten years younger, you'd swear the Peabody picked it up on Craigslist.

The freezer is filled with the bodies of birds. Unlike the specimens filling the museum's sleek Ornithology freezer, the Frigidaire collection is not shipped crosscountry by naturalists, but amassed by amateur donors. The packaging reflects this. All birds inhabit their own bag, but some press against the plastic, others are wrapped in brown paper towels. The wing of a barn owl in a Barnes and Nobles book bag pokes through the cheek of Guy de Maupassant . . Most bags are sealed, but some are loosely knotted or left open; a Ziploc contains rwo· mallard ducklings with legs so freezer-burned they look like rock candy. The biggest bird in the box has three layers of brown feathers, glossed with green and orange sheen. Its leg, from talon to knee joint, is the length of a forearm.

This bird rests inside an unsealed black garbage bag, its head rubber-banded to a second bag that once contained a loaf of Pepperidge Farm sourdough. Turns our this specimen is a wild turkey, and in November, they're over-donated. Last year, the head of taxidermy painstakingly peeled the skin off a surplus turkey, then transferred the frozen body into a vat of marinade for his Thanksgiving dinner.

But because the Peabody's head preparator, Michael Anderson, has been busy making insect models these past few months, the day-to-day taxidermy has fallen to Zoe. She came to the basement a year and a half ago looking for a hands-on way to join her interests in art and science, and was soon pushing a scalpel through neck flesh and driving around with a cooler in her trunk and a Connecticut state permit to pick up roadkill. Still in training, Zoe has yet to contribute anything to the upstairs "Birds of Connecticut" exhibit; for now, her handiwork is tied to cheap display boards and sent to public elementary schools. Her guiding text for turning these birds into wall-mounts is The Preparation of Birds for Study by James Chapin of the American Museum of Natural History, published in 1923 at the price of fifteen cents. It sits in photocopy on the worktable. Chapin's highly technical instructions are supplemented by J.H. Barry's Practical

Taxidermy and Home Decoration, published five years later. Here is a text for the everyman, or maybe the gentleman, or any man fond of the last three items of its index: Water ouzels, pg.93; Woodcock on shed, pg.ll4; Yacht, traveling by, pg.32.

At the very least, a man with patiencewhen one of Zoe's colleagues ripped the skin on his first mount decades back, he threw the bird across the room. To encourage everyone to rise above these impulses, the preparator's studio plays exclusively opera.

Every couple of weeks, Zoe selects a bird from the freezer. If she can, she'll choose one that died a summer death; winter birds' skeletons are sheathed in fat that has to be scraped off. Zoe doesn't diverge much from Chapin's 1923 instructions. She dries the blood with cornmeal and stuffs the head with chaff, then turns the whole bird inside out and fills the body cavity with a string and fiber model ten or twelve tries in the making. But a little modern method seeps in. Chapin suggests removing the brain with the handle of the scalpel; Zoe uses a grapefruit spoon. On page ten, someone has penned in, "KEEP FEMUR. Don't cut at knee." Chapin warns against warming the body too quickly. But the slight thawing necessary to strip the skin from the frozen core takes twenty minutes on the table. On most days, Zoe swaps out Michael's coffee cup from the office microwave, and puts a bird in its place. Twenty seconds does the trick.

For years, people have just been bringing in the birds. New Haven residents call in with intact roadkill after having seen the museum's taxidermy displays, and get transferred to Michael Anderson. Peabody employees have supplied a steady stream of birds for as long as Michael can remember.

The Peabody primarily reserves these birds for their public education programs, but every year, in a nod to grassroots gathering, a handful of them make it into the museum. Some never make it anywhere.

The oldest label Zoe has sighted in the freezer, next to a small pink bird, reads "Wallingford, Connecticut. Killed at window. January 22, 1983". But some of the most unusual birds the red-shouldered hawk, the beautiful turkey are unlabeled. There's no telling how long they've THE NEW JOURNAL •

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the bathroom, left hand on the small of her back, right hand cupping her shoulder bone. Sit her on the toilet. Shut bathroom door or risk Alice complaining, "You're showing me to the road!" At ninety-eight Alice still has spunk. .

If you see her dentures, soak them in water. Place her wristwatch and chest monitor on the counter, discard her diaper in the trash, tie the trash bag and leave it .o utside. Get the shower water running.

Wash her back, underarms, stomach, legs while she's sitting. She'll wash her face.

Stand her and wash her bottom thoroughly," instructs Colleen Swiderski, one of Alice's four attendants and a certified homehelp aid. She explains the job as you go through the motions. This is hospice care, a philosophy of emotional and physical treatment aimed at the comfort of the patient at the end of her life. It is not to keep her from dying. It is to make the transition from life to death kinder and easier.

Alice is treated from horne. Her bottom is chapped a dark red. Scrub lightly.

"Don't be afraid to touch me," Alice -"--Kate Lund says. Scrub harder. When her arms start to shake, she's tired. Water off, towels on: one draped over her back, one across her legs.

Lather Sween Moisturizing Body Cream on the raw skin on her bottom. Then: - Underwear up. Camisole down. Pants up.

Blouse down. Left sock up. Sweater down.

Right sock up. Done. If you found them earlier, apply Super Polygrip to dentures and give them to Alice on a small wash• cloth. If you hadn't found them on the counter to soak, Alice still has them in from the night before. Though she risks swallowing them in her sleep when she does this, don't say a word.

Never question Alice's ability to make decisions for herself. Don't argue if Alice wants to keep her dentures in so she can HELPING ALICE nibble on the chocolates on her bedside table during the night. Don't get frustrated If you came here to watch someone die, when patients want to take control, even if you carne to the right place. If you carne it interferes with your job. here to help, grab a pair of gloves.

After the shower routine (don't forget 'Trn a mess today," Alice calls as you enthe hearing aid or the glasses), help her to ter her home. Blinds up. Heated bathroom the reclining blue chair beside the glass light on. Pants, sweater, blouse, camisole, paneled doors looking out over the ocean. underwear (lined with a day pad), wool Listen when Alice says "That's our socks: lay them on top -of the washing marock." She points out the window to a chine in the bathroom. Place the walker at rock jutting out of the sur£ Nod to tell the bedside and scoop up a pair of speckher 'what a nice rock.' Alice explains that led legs thinner than your forearm. After when she was a middle school teacher, her a five minute routine of ankle circles (to classroom was so quiet that people used to get circulation going), help walk Alice to

sat inside the Frigidaire.

A few months ago, a Peabody employe~ walked into the studio unannounced, threw open the lid of the freezer, and began spreading crows and hummingbirds and finches across the floor. After scattering several dozen bodies, he found what he was looking for. It was a hawk, in an unlabelled plastic bag. Seven years ago, he was speeding down the highway with his buddies and a trunkful of fishing tackle when the hawk crashed into his car, cracking the windshield. The four men turned around, bought an ice chest at a gas station, and headed straight home to the Peabody. They never made it to the lake. "This is it," he said, shaking the bag furiously, tearing open ·the seal to show a wing still spiked with glass. "I hoped he might get mounted, you know, claws around a fish."

Maybe Zoe will resurrect this hawk one day. 'Trn like a puppeteer," she says, "bringing these birds back some sort of ·C " e. l II

October 2009

joke that she hypnotized her students. Believe it as you feel that silence descending over the sun-drenched house. Pause, just for a minute. If you came here to watch someone die, you couldn't have come to a more beautiful place.

Never think about the fact you're working hospice care. Don't dwell on the stories Colleen told you about the patient who bled out of his mouth, or the patient who died in her arms, or the patient after patient who soiled the bed night after night. .

Still, remember your job. Practice how to fasten the orange "Do Not Resuscitate" bracelet, pinned to the phone beside the elderly woman's reclining chair, around her quarter-inch thick wrist. Worry that it seems like Alice's family, as Colleen tells you, is "just waiting for her to die." Examine the evidence: they never buy her new nightgowns. And they only come by to say 'hey Morn' and borrow her copy of the New Haven Register. "You'll see that," Colleen warns.

Don't panic or call the hospital if something goes wrong. Fasten the bracelet tight around her wrist and call the family. Let her die: that's your job description. Then again, even Alice will readily admit that no one wants to live until she's ninety-eight.

When her legs shake in the shower, or when she leans back into your arms and waits nervously for you to lift her into bed, she knows how little is within her control.

Bring her one cup instant coffee, one slice of toast (cut diagonally in fourths), eight to twelve Frosted Mini-Wheats. Remember: separate spoons for the coffee, jam, and cereal. Don't pour the milk or the coffee creamer. She'll do that hersel£

-Laura Gottesdiener •

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DRIVING IN CIRCLES

it easier" for bicyclists to get around safely.

Professor of Management at Yale, explains It's the duty of a city to protect its citizens that the city's plan was "very rare for that and facilitate transportation. Bicyclists, period." however, aren't always playing by the rules Two hundred years after the either. grid was first set down, the automobile Though bicyclists are supposed to made its debut, and with it came congesobey traffic signals just as cars do, many tion. By the 1960s, in an effort to calm often cross the street with pedestrians intraffic, the city made most of the streets stead of waiting for a green light. Moredowntown one-way, an arrangement that over, in an effort to avoid the same indirect has persisted to the present day. This derouting drivers face, cyclists often go the sign, Rae said, is meant to speed up car wrong way down one-way streets. The traffic. "Traffic moves in New Haven now problem becomes particularly acute on maybe twice or even three times as fast smaller, single-direction roads not intendas it did seventy years ago," he said. City ed for through-traffic, such as Wall Street, · Engineer Richard · Miller, for one, thinks whose direction switches every couple of it's been relatively successful. "I don't reblocks. ceive many complaints about the one-way In an effort to reconcile the needs streets," he said. · · of drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians, the But the one-way streets can annoy city is working on compiling a Complete anyone in a car used to walking by more Streets Manual, to be finished by the end direct routes. To get fro~ Phelps Gate to of the year. The pamphlet will assess the Broadway, for example, Joyner must drive conditions and usage patterns of every four blocks out of his way. "Customers get street in New Haven. "We're looking at upset because they think I'm taking them trying· to be much more aware of the confor a ride," he said. "In some instances, it's text" to determine how to address traffic quicker to walk.~' needs on each street, Miller said. He stressThough he now lives in Strates that many forms of technology for trafford, Joyner, 49, grew up in New Haven. fic control have already been developed; "When I got my license, people drove with the city only needs the money and time to a littie more courtesy," he said. Though the layouts of the streets haven't changed, . implement the new ideas.

For now, people like Joyner and "traffic is ten times as much as it was when Tang try to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of I was younger. '' New Haven's streets. Perhaps in time, the Jq.yner's stint as a New Haven cabbie city will realize the need to adapt to them began about a month ago. Before that, he instead. drove in Milford and Bridgeport, where -Julia Fisher two-way streets and free parking abound.

"New Haven is pretty unfriendly to the automobile," Rae said. "The really vital thing about New Haven is that the downtown and Yale neighborhoods center on pedestrians, and, to a lesser extent, bicycles."

According to Miller, there are an increasing number of cyclists in the city, a fact he attributes to the resurgence of the green movement and the heavy concentration of schools in the downtown area. Yet there are few bike lanes on New Haven's streets and biking on the sidewalk is illegal, so cyclists, like Brian Tang, TD '12, have to ride next to cars.

Tang, a former intern with the New Haven Transportation, Traffic and Parking Department, says that, "From the perspective of a Yale student, it feels like somebody should be making an effort to make things safer for Yale's campus and to make

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THE NEW JOURNAL •

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SNAPSHOT Nest Eggs In backya rd s across New Haven, residents are hatching a fowl plan.

By Laura Blake

FROM THE SIDEWALK, Vince Kay's house is indistinguishable from any other on irs block in New H aven's East Rock neighborhood-white paint, two stories, a modest porch out front. Walk past the green Jeep and white Isuzu parked in the driveway, however, and you may wonder whether you mistakenly wound up in New Haven, Vermont, a town of 1700 near the westem border of the Green Mountain State.

Through the window of a weathered, wooden barn with a plaque reading "Farm Bureau Member" Lies a collection of vars and tanks, equipment Kay uses to process the honey his bees produce. Nasturtiums creep along the edge of a vegetable garden that abounds with leeks, basil, peppers, and tomatoes srrung up on wooden trelLises with strips of white cloth. Tucked in the back comer, a Bock of Buff Orpington chickens rustle and cluck in their coop, setcling in for another evening in New Haven.

Kay has been keeping chickens in his backyard for the past twenty years, but this f.ill marks the first time that his birds are legal residents of the city. As of SeptemOctober 2009

ber 8th, an ordinance permits New Haven residents co keep up to six hens in their backyards, provided they follow a series of requirements for coop size, structure, and distance from neighboring residencies. The ordinance, which passed in an 18-8 vote by the city's Board of Aldermen, places New Haven among a growing number of American cities legalizing the raising of chickens in residential districts. In doing so, these centers are redefining how we think about the uses of urban space, what it should look Like, and the tradiÂŁional boundaries between rural, suburban, and city Life.

New Haven's ordinance owes irs success to widespread community mobilization.

It all began two years ago with a woman named Rebecca Weiner, who was keeping a coop at her home in Westville. After her neighbor complained to city officials, Weiner was rold that, under the city's zoning regulations, her birds had to go. Rather than give up her Bock, however, Weiner, gathering support from friends and proponents of urban agriculture throughout

the city, appealed to the zoning board and received a special exception for her coop.

Soon after, Alderman Roland Lamar, who ultimately would play a key role in the legislative effort, was approached by another resident about Weiner's case. Lemar was intrigued. Though he didn't know much about the nuts and bolts of city chickens, Lemar recalls, "I liked it from a policy standpoint. A place like New Haven has limited access to good, locally produced proteins. [The chickens] are a great, easy, cheap way to produce a source of protein."

He did a bit of research, and then spoke to a few colleagues on the Board of Aldermen about legalizing chickens. The idea was axed. Lemar would have let the issue lie, but his constituents kept pushing. At the time, the city's legal policy regarding chickens was unclear, an unofficial don't-askdon't-tell. So Lemar made it his mission to illuminate the issue: "'Let's push it, let's figure it out. Lose or win, but let's figure it our."

Throughout the following months, Lemar and two fdlow aldermen, Erin Sturgis-

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Pascale and Ina Silverman, worked closely with local advocates as well as officials in zoning and public health to draft a strict yet sensible ordinance for urban fowl. The legislation was eventually voted out of committee and brought before the board, where it finally won council approval.

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Walk past the green jeep and white Isuzu parked in the drivewa~ however, and you may wonder whether you mistakenly wound up in New Haven:~ Vermont, a town o 1700 near the western border o the Green Mountain State.

Kay, who raises his birds for eggs, cites his reason for keeping the birds as largely gastronomic: "There's just absolutely no comparison. The color and the flavor are just so delicious." As proof, he asked me to hard-boil an egg and bring it to our interview, so I showed up outside the coop holding a Tupperware container of Grade A Jumbo eggs from .caged chickens in Pennsylvania. Kay brought out his eggs, · laid that morning, in a small china dish painted with flowers. Looking at the two white globes I had brought, he exclaimed, "Look at how big they are. Oh my God, they're like ostrich eggs!" Then, sprinkling a scant half teaspoon of salt on each egg, we traded batches and took a bite. The first difference I noticed between Kay's eggs and my own was color. The store-bought yolk was a dull crayola yellow, while Kay's was a rich~ vivid gold. And then there was the texture of the homegrown eggs: buttery and smooth in a way that lingered almost decadently on the tongue. And the taste: a flavor that unfolded over time, growing, deepening, hinting at the varied diet of the hens, who eat natural grain mix, layer mash, grass clippings, and garden weeds.

"You are what you eat," Kay told me. "If the birds are outside getting good light and good food, they produce a fantastic egg."

Yet the city chicken movement, and the greater urban agricultural trend it represents, are about greater pleasures than the purely gustatory. As his hens ran around the garden, scratching in the soil in pursuit of worms or ·seizing fallen cherry tomatoes 8

in their beaks, Kay spoke about how his chickens fill a prominent, and troubling, gap in modern urban society: "Our food has gotten into this really antiseptic kind of production at .factory farms.

People only . know it through the cellophane in the grocery stores." Yale English professor Cathy Shufro, who raises chickens at her home in Woodbridge, expressed a similar concern: "Urban children who . don't have parents wealthy enough to take them out to the country or send them to camp might well grow up without ever ·seeing a farm animal." The societal. model we have come to take for granted, with its strict dichotomy between urban and rural space, has created a mass ignorance when it comes to food production, best illustrated in the Rooster debate. Both Kay and Lemar mentioned repeatedly that neighbors had approached them and demanded to know how they expected to produce eggs without a rooster, which the city ordinance forbids for reasons of noise control. Both had patiently explained that, biologically, chickens don't need a rooster to lay eggs, only to hatch chicks. Kay shakes his head. "People just are oblivious to how it all works."

Kay brought out his eggs:~ laid that morning, in a small china dish painted with flowers. Looking at the two white globes I had brought, he exclaimed "Look at how big they are. Oh my God they're like ostrich eggs!"

The criticism that we as a society have forgotten, or choose to ignore, where our food comes from, is not a new one. But New Haven's chicken policies have demonstrated how this criticism translates into a reality. While obliviousness deteriorates community relationships an act like mowing the lawn, or planting a garden, or raising chickens creates a sense of investment in one's community, turning cities into desirable, livable places. For the past twenty years, Kay has maintained good relationships with his neighbors. In return, they have declined to repon his chicken coop to the Zoning Board. More broadly, he ex-

plained how raising your own food makes you directly responsible for the health of your family, and therefore more inclined to choose agricultural practices that promote the health of the entire community.

"I think we'd have a healthier planet .. .if everyone had a garden in their backyard," Kay says. ''I'm sure they wouldn't spray their lawns and poison the wells."

As his hens ran around the garden, scratching in the soil in pursuit o worms or seizing fallen cherry tomatoes in their beaks:~ Kay spoke about how · his chickens ll a prominent, and troubling, gap in modern urban-society.

Looking back to a time when chickens were illegal, Lemar reflects, ·"Our zoning code kind of had this antiquated vision of what cities looked like when they separated out defined residential zones, defined industrial zones, defined commercial zones, and [were] not really accommodating to folks who wanted to mix those uses." Now, residents like Kay have a legal right to reconsider those definitions. As Kay recounts the way raising vegetables and chickens has shaped the relationships that form his community, his hens begin rooting around the flowerbeds. He bangs the lid of a pot to shoo them away. He stays in New Haven because his relationships with neighbors, store owners, and small businesses, in his words, "feel like family." A livable urban future lies in relationships like these that blur boundaries between commercial and communal, between public responsibility and private choice, to create integrated and invested communities. How do we begin to shape these communities? If we're anything like Kay, we'll do it through food.

Laura Blake is a Sophomore in jonathan Edwards College.

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Iraqi refugees living in New Haven face difficulty finding work, homes, and even getting picked up at the airport. Two organizations want that to change.

By Helena Malchione

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You MAY KNOW LITTLE Aoo1s Ababa in Washington, D.C. or the Little Armenia of Los Angeles (otherwise known as the city of Glendale), but you probably haven't thought of New Haven as a Little Baghdad. Over the last three years, however, approximately 180 Iraqis have arrived in New Haven now considered an "Iraqi location" by the State Department as the United States has finally begun to address the refugee crisis it helped create.

Hussain, an Iraqi refu_g ee living in New Haven, waited a year and a half for his case to be processed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) before he was invited to come to the US. It was not his first time in the States he studied at the University of Arkansas as a Fulbright Scholar from 2005 to 2007 but he, like most other arriving refugees, had never heard of New Haven.

"I Googled 'New Haven' to read about New Haven and Yale, and I started having some dreams about whether I would be happy here or not," recalls Hussain.

Hussain is now employed as a caseworker, Arabic interpreter, and cultural advisor at New Haven's Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, more commonly known by its acronym, IRIS. One of many October 2009

non-profit resettlement organizations around the country, IRIS assists newly arrived refugees once the State Department assigns them to the New Haven area. The group provides airport pick-up services, health and employment advising, school registration and language classes, and referrals to the government's public benefit programs. IRIS supports families as they work to become self-sufficient a process that can take up to a year, and is only made harder by the fact that these families only receive $900 of federal support.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq left as many as two million Iraqi refugees living in the Middle East, and 2:7 million more remain displaced within their own country.

Despite these alarming numbers, the US made no move to address the situation until 2006. The work was slow. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act in January 2006 to provide for fifty special immigrant visas (SNs) per year for Iraqis or Mghanis translators who aided US forces while in Iraq. From the beginning of the war to September 2007, despite Congressional hearings on the worsening predicament, the US approved only 2,371 Iraqi refugees for admission.

"There was an embarrassing, shameful delay in the resettling of [Iraqi] refugees,"

says Chris George, Executive Director of IRIS. Only in the last few years has the situation begun to amend itself. In January 2008, the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act of 2007 (the Kennedy Act) provided 5,000 SNs per year for five years, and also initiated expansive refugee resettlement programs. By September of that year, the US announced it had admitted 13,823 Iraqi refugees, and by July 2009, twenty-thousand Iraqis had been allowed to enter the United States.

Now, there is a small, growing Iraqi community in New Haven. "People here take pride in the idea of 'strength through diversity,"' George continued. "The Elm City 10 Card, especially, sent a loud message that immigrants and refugees are welcome here."

Yale students are doing what they can to help refugees. At the undergraduate level, the student group Reach Out has started a new initiative this fall to work with refugees through IRIS and shine a spotlight on New Haven's growing immigrant community. Additionally, two Yale Law School students, Becca Heller LAW '10 and Jon Finer LAW '09 founded the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) last summer.

Inspired by Finer's firsthand observations

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of the Iraqi refugee crisis while he was reporting . in Jordan for the Washington Post, the organization quickly grew, and now boasts chapters at New York University Law School and UC Berkeley's Boalt School of Law. Additionally, it has gained support among law students drawn to the refugee crisis as "a great injustice that we · caused and weren't doing anything about," as IRAP Director of Direct Assistance Kate Brubacher LAW '10 explained.

c'I always tell people, , says '

Hussain, "that if one Iraqi ·man P'!-1-ts his hands on the shoulders o ·another Iraqi man, they are not homosexuals. This is simply our custom. " •

Still entirely student-run, IRAP has a three-pronged mission: to work directly in the Middle East resettling· refugees, to advocate for refugees through United States policy reforni, and to provide direct services to refugees here in New Haven as they adjust to American life. Since the New Haven-based IRIS has limited staff to ad. dress the needs of each newly-arrived Iraqi ·family, IRAP provides student volunteers to help refugees with a variety of services, from teaching individuals about tenant rights to tutoring English to personally accompanying men and women to job interviews around the city. · This year, IRAP is opening volunteer opportunities up to undergraduates as well. An IRAP undergraduate information meeting at the end of September lured a large number of interested Yalies to donate their time to the cause. IRAP hopes to convince student organizations on campus to sponsor individual families and to promote an awareness campaign on the Iraqi refugee crisis. Undergraduates will also have opportunities to work on policy teams that make recommendations to Washington. "You should simultaneously be a resource and an advocate," encouraged Brubacher at the meeting. "The Law School is incredibly connected," said Michael Boyce BR '11, who worked with IRAP in their local legal assistance division during a semester abroad in Jordan.

He currently helps lead the undergraduate branch of IRAP. "You're not just sending 10

. things out into the ether. Your suggestions are heard. It's amazing what you can accomplish," Boyce said in reference to !RAP's policy advocacy division.

The aid of the students involved is not lost on a struggling local community. Even before arriving in the United States, many Iraqi refugees have to put their lives on hold for several years while they muddle through the complicated application process. Unaware of the status ·o f their petition, they subsist on very little income as a result of being forced to live in countries like Jordan, where it is illegal for refugees to work. Despite having surmounted incredible obstacles in order to arrive in the US, refugees do not see resettlement in New Haven as the light at the end of the tunnel. Rather, those arriving in the city face a host of new setbacks.

One problem arriving Iraqi refugees face in New Haven is the task of finding jobs that match their professional qualifications. As a particularly highly-educated group of refugees, Iraqis "come with qualifications that are not to be considered here, so they have to re-credentialize their degrees," explained H ·ussain. "We think to ourselves, 'We are a ready-to-go people.

The United States didn't spend a penny on our education why not benefit from it by employing us in professional fields?"'

A Baghdad oncologist Hussain worked with at IRIS, for example, could not find a medical job here, and now works in a meat service department. · "Iraqis waiting to come to the U.S. in Jordan are convinced that they will get better jobs here than they actually will," echoed Boyce.

"They all plan on making $75,000 a year before they get here, but these kinds of opportunities don't materialize."

The struggle to find jobs is augmented by what Hussain calls the "general ignorance" of employers towards the refugee resettlement program. "People think that refugees have no paperwork," he explained, "when in fact we are the most documented people."

Finally, the culture shock New Haven poses to Iraqi refugees is significant. "We come from a patriarchy, a system where the man is the dominating character in the family," explained Hussain. "Here, this is different. Women participate in decisions." The implications of this culture gap are broad. For example, an elementary school may call the home of an Iraqi refu.

gee family to arrange for a parent-teacher conference, only to be told by the husband that he will show up to the meeting, but that his wife who should be kept at home will not be present. In other instances, some Iraqi customs don't translate into American society. "I always tell people," says Hussain, "that if one Iraqi man puts his hands on the shoulders of another Iraqi man, they are not homosexuals. This is simply our custom." Additionally, many facets of our everyday lives ATM machines, credit cards, and mortgages are unheard of in much of Iraq, and must be explained to newly arrived refugees.

New Haven's growing Iraqi refugee population brings the Iraq War home in the truest sense of the expression. "Iraqis are good people. Refugees are good people," said Hussain. "They need chances, jobs they need to feel somehow that life is better here for them." With the privilege of living in a society thaf'enables refugees to rese.t tle comes the responsibility to accept and promote them as members of our community. If refugees arrive in New Haven only to feel that life here is a disappointment compared to the countries from which they fled, then ·the city has failed to live up to its name.

TN Helena Malchione is a sophomore in jonathan Edwards College, and a member of the business staffofTNJ

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'7 think you have to remember the historical moment d.,, . w h en we a1nve -~-Julia

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Julia Preston was one of roughly 500 females accepted into the first co-educational class at Yale of 1969. At the time, being a woman at Yale was just one of a handful of politically and experientially important events of the year. As Preston reminded me, "We were in the throes of the Vietnam war. The country was in tumult." Campuses nationwide were abuzz with dissent and protest. The women at Yale, however, did not go unnoticed amidst the chaos. "I think the situation we walked into could better be described as chaos or upheaval ... It was clearly a university that did not have the experience of having women on its campus. I felt that every day." Women at Yale were different, it seemed, at least to the Yale boys, than average women. In the company of" 1,000 male leaders," Preston explained, "We were strange creatures and an intimidating group. The kind of competition we went through to get in is . not exceptional now, but certainly was then. There were 500 freshman women and we were preceded by some reputation that we were either outrageous nerds or intellectual amazons." Though neither was really true, she remembers, "I just had a feeling of being unfamiliar, that we were 'The Other' coming to campus."

When Preston was a freshman, the women had a curfew'-everyone had to be in their rooms by ten. However, men would stay in girls' dorms well past this time in order to get "accidentally" locked in overnight. The 'lock-ins' replaced bussing. Before women became readily .accessible in a dorm on Old Campus, buses from women's colleges like Barnard and Smith would park along Phelps Gate. Women were being imported. In retrospect, the situations seem rife with chauvinism, but, according to Preston, "The whole inequality thing was never part of my experience.

I always thought of being part of that whole group of women as an incredibly empowering experience."

In the spring of 1971 Preston took a !eave of absence to travel to South America. When she returned in 1975, a mere six years after gender integration, the campus had, in Preston's words, entered a new era. "On the one hand, co-education had become quite routine, but on the other hand, in the spring of 1975 the war in Vietnam had ended. So I came back to a university that was settled." This made Preston a bit uneasy. "[It was] comforting -to not be a strange creature _anymore but also worrisome in· the sense that there was a sharp decline in the of the activism of the student body." Yale, it seemed, cooled down the calm wrought by accepted change. -

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c7 have been trying to think about why there was such a small reaction to the 'scouting report. 'A lot of thought it was funny. I am trying to think about why. is a whok spirit of being antifeminist. Men perpetrate it too, thinking that it will make them more masculine. And think irs the only way to be sexy. ,, -Rachel Kauder NalebuffYC'13 Student, editor of My Little Red Book

By the time Elizabeth Alexander matriculated at Yale in 1980, a shift both cultural and political was taking place across the country, as well as on campus. Alexander .remembers watching from Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, SM '13 was disgusted at Yale's reac- . the Morse Dining Hall as Reagan was elected in the fall of her tion to the "preseason scouting report," an anonymous email profreshman year. The role of being an active participant in politics filing 53 incoming freshman women. The women were rated on a had shifted from protestor to witness, from acting to watching. scale from sober to ten beers, the more sober, of course, being the Alexander remembers her freshman year as being both historically more desirable. The review often got personal, even citing specific important and radical. According to her, it was "a brief and wonFacebook pictures, as if these women really had been scouted by derful period after the sexual revolution and before the AJDS epithe students before they arrived. demic ... It was very powerful to be eighteen and feeling that being "I was surprised that no real action was taken .. .! think we need sexually free was part of being an intellectual and of being politibetter sexual education," Kauder Nalebuff says. "People do not cal." It was a short-lived but incredible time to be a woman. Disknow basic, fundamental things that people interacting with other course on the roles and rights of women at Yale pervaded campus . people really need to know. Things like sexual etiquette."

Being empowered to talk privately about current situations was no What needs to change for women to feel not only equal, but longer enough; the critical voice had made it, not only into the comfortable in this community? Why is it that our student body culture but into to the classroom, too. It was the foundation of needs to be educated about how to cope with being co-educated? the work being conducted inside the university and on its grounds What happened in the 40 years since women first entered Yale? as well. "In the classroom, in the academy, it was very present, very real." There was a self-determined ideal: a watermark, a goal The sense of entitlement to co-education on the collegiate level for where women should be and how they should be received. is understandable. It is a choice, and one seldom made, to be eduThe women's role at Yale felt to Alexander like a challenge, but cated in a single sex environment. Of course women feel entitled one that was unstable. «.We were called upon to do our best and to be at Yale. Who would ever reverse that decision? better." Between 1984 and 2009, that feeling, says Alexander, has But it's not enough, perhaps, to say that if men and women evaporated. Speaking about the Yale of today as both an alumnus and a professor active in student life, Alexander addressed a shift ~ both get x, we have equality. Is it then ridiculous to want to firm a deeper sensibility, not just actions but perceptions? The hour away from classroom-based political discussions. Whereas studdoes not feel as though it has come to do more than talk privately ies of old movements are the norm, it is rare that a class diverts about our discontent. Or has it? Perhaps we as Yale women and away from a syllabus to talk about campus dynamics. "Change as women in general should put those questions from the past 40 is not made by slackers," she remarks. Yet today's Yale women are years back on the table. far from slacking. As with our men, the women ofYale are highly pressured, and highly motivated, and often wildly dedicated. So why, then, aren't they making change? _ At first glance, it seems that there is less at stake. Thought about women and change at Yale is no longer based in imperatives, but suggested in terms of additions, improvements, and patches. It's true today, few could imagine the college without female students, let alone our female professors and staff. This comfort, however, may prove a different challenge. Today's Yale must be aware of the quieter hurts, based on gender and insidious Hannah Zeavin is a sophomore in Berkeley College. strains of sexism that still riddle the campus. The newer generations must look with sharper _eyes.

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Artist William Lamson asks us to reconsider our standards.

By Jane Long

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William Lamson invites viewers to engage with his creation. jane Long

THE POCKET PARK on the corner of Chapel and Orange seems more like a concrete wasteland than an art gallery.

The gravel entrance gives way to unkempt patches of green and yellow grass. Flanked on three sides by a large brick wall, the area is dark even when the sun is out. The air is thick with the dust of nearby construction, and the park provides no shelter from the sounds of the street just a few feet away. · But then, there it is: a large, old-school basketball hoop atop a wooden pole. The rim is rusty, fading from red to crusty brown, and the net is worn and dirty from overuse. There's really nothing unusual about the equipment, except that it is 25 times larger than any other basketball hoop you've ever seen.

The sheer height of the hoop, designed

by Brooklyn artist William Lamson, is enough to intimidate the athletic and nonathletic alike. Since the diameter of the

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rim is also 2.5 times larger than a normal hoop, the worn-down blue basketball provided on-site should be at least six times more likely to go in. Even knowing that probability, the prospect of tossing a ball 25 feet is daunting. But most people who show up to "Long Shot," as the installation is officially called, decide to take the challenge. After all, they come here to ball.

My first shot resulted in an air ball; I missed the net by a good three feet. On my second try, the ball grazed the hoop.

A few more times quickly became fifteen minutes, and then an hour. The ball kept missing its target, but I didn't want to give up.

The task was Herculean. Lamson, however, would have been pleased by my repeated failures. "The audience's struggle to make a shot is the fundamental experience of the work. When we play with this enlarged hoop it recreates the experience

of being a child playing on a normal size basketball hoop," he explained.

Like a child, I became fixated on the task: I have to get it in, and I'll stay until I do. The stares of the people waiting at the bus stop or working at the construction site nearby no longer embarrassed me. I might have looked goofy, but I was having a lot of fun. Occasionally, people came over to see what the ruckus was all about. "Even Shaq can't dunk that," one exclaimed. And once they see the hoop, they're hooked; no one who takes a shot leaves without scoring. While few are actually children, everyone looks like a preschooler when they shoot.

The idea of returning the audience to its youthful roots is something Lamsop. has explored before. For instance, in 2007 he created"Action," a series of videos in which ' he pops black .balloons. This year he exhibited "To Work and Trade," a performance

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and an installation project where viewers could become part of the exhibition by ~rading a personal object for a drawing of choice. Unsurprisingly, the artist says he gets ideas from "things I did when I was growing up ... whether it comes from playing with BB guns or playing basketball."

But is a basketball hoop in a derelict parking lot really art?

The artist says he gets ideas from "things I did when I was growing up ... whether it comes vm playing with BB guns or playing basketball. ~, Liza Stanton, the art curator at New Haven's non-profit ArtSpace that commissioned "Long Shot," explains, "His work is really dense. It looks very simple but it's conceptually pretty complex." In what may be a long shot of an interpretation, she posits that the hoop is a metaphor for the "nature of being human and the struggle we endure as human beings [both] mental and physical." Whether or not it shifts our perspective of the world, Lamson's piece does force its audience to reexamine assumptions about its environment. "We're all used to the standards," says Stanton. "[Basketball hoops .are] ten feet off the ground, but this one is almost 2.5 times the norm, and that much harder to play on. This idea of pushing yourself and exaggerating your physical limits, that theme is very present in his work." ArtSpace's website puts the task in simpler terms, inviting visitors tQ "Please play and enjoy!"

Just as Lamson's art pushes its viewers to reconsider their everyday experiences, ArtSpace pushes city residents to reconsider their relationship with art. Each year, the non-profit gallery puts on nearly twenty shows predominately featuring local artists. While many of ArtSpace's exhibitions take place in its downtown gallery, the organization also likes to spread art throughout the city. During its monthlong festival "City-Wide Open Studios" every October, ArtSpace presents installations in derelict New Haven buildings and willing artists open their private studios to the public. The Lot, an abandoned parking lot turned public transit site, is another example of the organization's mission to October 2009

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blur the boundaries between artistic and urban spaces. In creating work for the site, Lamson understood the Lot's powerful potential to encourage community engagement with an underused corner of the city.

"I hope that people see ["Long Shot"] as a means of personalizing public space," he _ explains.

Although the city undoubtedly benefits from ArtSpace's exhibitions, the biggest boons go to em~rging artists eager to secure spaces to exhibit their work. Lamson, who graduated from the Bard MFA program in 2006, explained, "I think that for public artwork, the Lot space is a really great base for emerging artists to try ideas. There are places like this in New York, but that lot in downtown New Haven is special." New Haven, often known for the things it lacks, has abundant open space. Lots that have laid vacant for years are fertile ground for new artists to grow their ideas. "There aren't a lot of empty spaces in New York that non-profit art spaces can do public projects. There are places in New York like Central Park ... but for artists like me this wouldn't have been an opportunity that presented itsel£" He is hesitant to classify his work, but after careful deliberation Lamson decides, "If I had to use one word, I would use the word intervention. With most of my recent work, I take something that exists in the landscape and I change it or add something to it."

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''I think that for public artwork~ the Lot space is a really great base for emerging artists to try ideas. There are places like this in New York~ but that lot in downtown New Haven is special. " ~

As I hurl the basketball up at the tant hoop one last time, I realize that by stepping onto the derelict court I have intervened. The ball hits the rim, vers on the edge, and goes in.

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TN jane Long is a freshman in Silliman College.

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How the media turned a campus tragedy into national news .

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"ONE. Two. One-two-three-four." Just after 8 p.m. on September 14, an amplified message cracked the silence of thousands of mourners gathered on Cross Campus to commemorate Annie Le GRD '13, whose body had been recovered the previous afternoon from the basement of 10 Amistad Street. Alongside the solemn addresses of Yale University President Richard Levin, University Chaplain Sharon Kugler, and Le's roommate, Natalie Powers, a parallel broadcast of "TESTING" messages, camera clicks, and the shuffling of television crews emerged from the loudspeakers. Undergraduate and graduate students, New Haven residents, and friends ofLe members, as Levin put it, of a "community of concern" had come to Cross Campus to grieve and be comforted, yet the vigil itself teetered on the edge of spectacle. The next morning, images of the sea of candle-lit faces would allow millions of newspaper readers, web-surfers, and television-watch-

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ers around the world to share in the vigil.

But there was one aspect of the experience, salient to all who huddled together on cross campus, that the media would not • • • capture: Its own, at tunes mtrus1ve, presence.

Yet from the volume of press Le's story received, consumers of news could imagine the media circus that New Haven hosted in the weeks following the September 8th disappearance. As city, state, and federal investigators tirelessly searched, first for Le, and then her killer, local and national news sources searched for a story.

Film crews stalked press conferences, vans camped out on Amistad Street, and reporters accosted ignorant undergraduates outside Woodbridge Hall, Office of the President. Regarding the trampling of NBC producer Alycia Savyides by a throng of reporters at a New Haven Police Department briefing, Joe Avery, a spokesperson for the police, told the New Haven Inde•

pendent, "I've never seen a bunch of people so out of control in my entire life."

Regarding the trampling of NBC producer Alycia Savyides by a throng of reporters at a New Haven Police Department briefing> joe AverY> a spokesperson for the police> noted '1ve never seen a bunch ofpeople so out o control in my entire lie.»

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As they had after the 1998 murder of Suzanne Jovin '99 and the 2003 Yale Law School Bombing, the press descended on New Haven last month for, as Editor in Chief of the· Yale Daily News Thomas Ka-

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plan put it, this "perfect storm story." A promising young bride-to-be missing, a gruesome murder with a town-gown twist: though not a random act, it could have happened anywhere, and it happened at Yale. Le's tragedy was simultaneously riveting, bizarre, human, and relatable and to the press, supremely marketable. During the week of September 14, the story drew more media coverage in America (seven percent) than the swine flu, the war in Afghanistan, or missile defense. News sources converted provocative images and words ("stuffed," "traumatic axphixiation," "lab tech") into dollars: Le's murder was "closely followed" by about a quarter of the American public, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & Press.

The marketability of Le story's led to the media's use of both new-age and ageold tactics of sensationalist reporting .

Along with an overload of lurid headlines ( CBS's "Grisly Yale Murder 'Freaks' Students" on Crime Insider) came videos (ABC's "Cold Feet or Foul Play?" on Good Morning America), online photo albums (CBS's ''Annie Le and the Love of Her Life", again on Crime Insider), and interactive timelines ( see the Hartford Courant) that blurred the line between informative and inappropriate.

In their attempt to capture the attention of audiences in the digital age, the press exploited new media at the expense of sensitivity, and devalued their integrity by engaging in the overused tactics of speculation and dissemination of misinformation. Echoing the claims made after Jovin's murder, runiors began circulating on Friday, three days after Le's disappearance, that a Yale professor was the prime suspect in the case. The New York Post and New York Daily News later reported that a Yale student had failed a polygraph test in the FBI investigation. There were two premature reports of a recovered body: Sunday stories claimed that Le had been found buried in a Hartford landfill. Even when facts replaced these claims, the search for Raymond Clark III's motive in Le's murder bordered on amusement: Clark was angry at Lefor her treatment of lab animals (Fox News); he had killed Le in a "roid rage," a steroid-induced frenzy (The National Enquirer); the two had formerly been romantically involved. "It's sort of frightening to see the misinformation that's been printed as fact," Kaplan remarked.

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The Yale Daily News focused on getting the facts right. Like their professional counterparts, newspaper's staff spent the period of uncertainty following Le's disappearance on the medical school campus, at the police station, and on the telephone gleaning information. Their tactics thorough investigating and conservative reporting worked. Such methodology resulted in "CLARK CHARGED IN LE GRD '13 MURDER" rather · than the cbsnews.com headline from the · same day, "Raymond Clark III and Jennifer Hromadka's Wedding Web Site Goes Dark."

THE fuE DAILY NEws, however, had a few advantages, manifested not only in keycard access to Yale buildings, but also in the established trust of University administra,tors, police, and students. Moreover, Kaplan admits that the paper was free of its professional counterparts' need for "a blunt headline to sell newspapers." Without the impetus to gain readership or spur local interest in the Le story, there was no economic narrative pushing dramatic excess onto the paper's front page. The Yale Daily News could afford to avoid sensationalism, and, as the paper serving Levin's "community of concern," it also could not afford to stoop to speculation. While the murder might have been the national headline of the week, for the team at the Yale Daily News, said Kaplan, it was "the biggest news story in a decade." The students rose to the challenge of the occasion. "We had an opportunity to do really outstanding work. ..

There was a very clear obligation to handle the story with the proper level of sensitivity." The charge not only to tell the truth, but tell it well, validated the intensity of the News' coverage. "FEMALE BODY FOUND AT 10 AMISTAD," while potentially lurid elsewhere, felt more relevant at Yale, where the people, places and the possible threat in question hit especially close to home.

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"It's sort offrightening to see the misinformation that's been printed as fact~ ~~ Kaplan remarked.

Accuracy and sensitivity legitimized the already reputable paper as a sources of news: over two million people followed the

Annie Le, a pharmacology student at Yale Sc.l;lool of Medicine, who was murdered last month.

Le story on yaledailynews.co1J1; Yale Daily • News photos were sold to outside media sources; impressed readers posted appreciative comments online, and Kaplan received hundreds of requests for television • • tntervtews.

The paper not only informed the Yale community, but served as its mirror, and, by extension, its voice. But while the staff received accolades for journalistic integrity, the paper would have gained no such attention had the media not generated such fervor around the story in the first place.

Interest in Raymond Clark's personal life, statistics on "workplace violence," and fascination with Ivy e journalists went hand in hand with the murder. Ultimately, the obsession distanced Le from her own narrative. Though Yale vigil-goers and journalists alike respected life lost, the media created a story as much as it reported one.

Elsie Kenyon is junior in Trumbull College.

She is the Copy Editor ofTN]. .

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From music with a mission to music for music's sake: can the Yale Russian Chorus stay relevant in the postSoviet age?

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By .Marissa Grunes IN- FRONT OF THE lofty pillars and gleaming organ inside Dwight Chapel stand some twenty young, tuxedoed men arranged in a two-tiered crescent. Watching them expectantly is an audience ofYale undergraduates, graduate students with small children, and elderly men and women whispering in Russian or Ukrainian.

A moment later the audience falls silent as a pure, solemn chord fills the Chapel.

The sound, full and mysterious, is built of a deep, broad bass note supporting a middle baritone, with a bright tenor Boating above. This is the sound the audience came to hear. Even those of us who do not speak Russian understand that this sound is meant to praise the Eternal.

It is the sound of the Yale Russian Chorus, a group of singers and intellectuals struggling to hold its ground against the backdrop of a changing world and a changing university, all the while making beautiful tnusic.

For over fifty years, the Yale Russian Chorus has shared the beauty of Slavic choral music with tens of thousands of Americans and Russians. The Chorus has helped preserve religious and folk music of the 17th and 18th centuries once banned as 'dissident' by the Soviet regime. Far from dissolving along with the Soviet bloc at the end of the Cold War, the Chorus continues to bring the haunting liturgical . music and humorous, spitfire folk songs of the Russian steppes into the present day.

Many members speak no Russian, but they are still touched by the stunning, alien harmonies they sing. The music speaks for itself: in '' Satrpialo," the choristers' voices swell and speed up to the precise clip of a rider spurring his horse to reach the girl he loves. In a slower folk song, "The Volga Boatmen," the sorrowful chant of peasant laborers builds to a powerful peak, then fades as the men pull the barge into the distance.

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Current YRC Baritone Alexander Remington poses with founding director Dennis Mickiewicz.

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· THE CHORUS WAS founded in 1953 almost by accident. One week, the Yale Russian Club, a coterie of students who met to discuss Russian politics and culture, invited Denis Mickiewicz, a Russian-born student from the School of Music, to speak about his country's folk tunes. The charismatic emigre, who had Bed the Soviet occupation of Latvia, didn't care to "speak" with the undergraduates about his musical heritage, but instead showed up with a guitar, mimeographed records of Russian folk music, and two bottles of vodka under his arm. The academic gathering became a rousing chorus of Slavophiles. Despite their lack of formal training in the genre, the men readily belted out the potent har• mon1es.

Though they started out small and "pretty scruffy," as one alum, Harold Hille (YC '66), recall, as time went on the passionate Chorus could afford to be choosy.

In 1959, over a hundred students tried out for the group. With the launch of Sputrlik •

in 1957, the number of students taking Russian at Yale had leapt from 11 to 110.

The Lucy-Zarubin Agreement promoting US-Soviet cultural exchange had also just been signed, allowing the Chorus to embark on its first tour of the USSR in 1958. The Yale Russian Choristers had begun their career as musical diplomats sans portfolio.

During their first tour of the USSR, the 18 Yale men ga.t hered each day in a public square and began to sing AfricanAmerican spirituals for roughly twenty minutes in an effort establish themselves as a definitively American singing group.

They then switched to Russian songs.

Immediately, eager Russians would interrupt them, curious about these American kids who sang ancient Russian folk and sacred music. Despite the danger of conversing with foreigners, the Soviet citizens could not contain their wonder. A corner of the Iron Curtain had been raised, and both sides peered through curiously and critically. Soviets demanded to know how

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Americans espousing the ideal of liberty could allow racial segregation to persist in their country. On one occasion, a Chorus ~ember crumpled up his draft card and driver's license and left them in the public square to prove that US citizens could move freely without papers.

A er a concert in Cali ornia in the late 60s, Carter says a bearish Russian man with tears streaming down his -ace told the Chorus that Mother • • Russia "lives agazn tn your hearts."

The Chorus ·returned to the Soviet Union the following two years, but Mickiewicz, after receiving hints that the Soviet government might not respect his recently-acquired American citizenship and arrest him for alleged "war crimes," chose not to tour in 1960. Soviet citizens did not go unscathed by the group's presence either. The Chorus would return to find that organizations whose members they had met in past years had been dissolved; former contacts had simply vanished. The Chorus knew their movements were being tracked and later learned that the secret police regularly questioned everyone seen speaking to them. "The Soviets were getting more and more determined to block real cultural exchange," recalls Hille. "They wanted to manage it, and we were like gypsies," itinerant and irritating to the officials. Hille laughs a bit grimly, remarking, "we were there as tourists, kids, and we didn't really know about consequences."

Though naive about Cold War reality in the Soviet Union, these self-appointed ambassadors took their work seriously.

According to Hille, "We were really loyal US guys and were trying to do our bit for democracy, for the freedom of thought that we read about in school." The United States government declared itself thrilled with the Yalies' efforts. Then-Senator Hubert Humphrey wrote in 1960: "The Yale Russian Chorus has done a most effeCtive job in communicating the American message to the Soviet people ... the only tragedy is that we don't have ten or fifty or a hundred choruses such as yours." The State Department may have had more than just a passing interest in the effectiveness of promising, young Russian-speaking men.

As late as the 1980s, after a concen at the October 2009

White House, the Chorus was asked to report on their observations of Gorbachev to the government.

The Chorus had a cultural mission in the United States as well. On their return from the Soviet Union in 1958, the New York Times featured their picture on its front page and the "Today Show" invited them to discuss their experience in the USSR During Spring Break the Chorus would drive to California and back, singing concerts daily at colleges and the occasional Russian Orthodox church along the route. They opened their shows with lectures on their observations of Soviet society. The Chorus, Hille contends, wanted to bring "Russian and Eastern European issues to Americans and keep the issues alive, to try to put a human face on their , struggle.

Hille, who still organizes the two-hundred-person reunions of Chorus alumni, and who speaks a dozen languages, took that humanizing mission to heart, first working as a translator for the United Nation, and then as a professor of Russian at Yale. Brian Carter (PhD '92), another alum who continued to sing with the Chorus while working at Yale, has a slightly different but no less impassioned view of the Chorus' political role. "In 1968, we were singing revolutionary songs, and we meant it, we were really dissatisfied," he says. "It was the Vietnam War years and May Day." During this era of activism, the Chorus successfully mixed politics with serious music. In 1962, they won first place at an international choral festival in Litle, France. During the same tour, in Berlin, they sang at the spot along the Berlin Wall where Peter Fechter had been shot trying to flee to the West. Then, in 1963, Soviet agents detained Yale professor Frederick Barghoorn on charges of espionage. When both the university and the State Department refused to confront the USSR over the matter, the Russian Chorus decided to get involved. "We started raising hell," Hille laughs. They organized a letter-writing campaign and managed to convince the American Organization of Professors to protest to the State Department. After 14 days of confinement, Barghoorn was released.

But 1963 saw losses for the Chorus as well. That year, Mickiewicz left Yale to begin his career as a comparative literature professor. With no native Russians left to ensure authenticity of singing or interpretation, the Chorus clung to the traditions its founder had left behind. However,

despite frequent shifts in leadership, it remained much the same organism throughout the Cold War, driven by the emotional interpretations and cultural agenda instituted by the former director.

WITH THE COLLAPSE of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia ceased to compel as much student interest as it had before.

Furthermore, the end of the Cold War brought with it a flowering of traditional choruses in Russia, thus rendering the Chorus' role as cultural preservationist obsolete. As the group's political relevance waned, so, in turn, did several of its traditions. In 1995, students of the Russian Chorus stopped relying on student conductors, a custom instated following the departure of Mickiewicz, by inviting early music expert Mark Bailey (YSM '89) to serve as permanent artistic director. Bailey had recently graduated from the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale and was teaching music at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary in New York.

Dissatisfied with the trend of interpreting Russian choral music with the rough gusto of peasants, Bailey was determined to bring a more European refinement to the group. Raised in Ukraine, Bailey had grown up surrounded by music, and, as a child, sang in his grandmother's choir at the local Ukrainian Orthodox church.

Bailey's connection to Slavic culture is as deep as the repertoire itsel£ ''I'm conducting Russian marching songs and my great grandfather was in the Czar's Army," he says with a smile. In an era when interest in Russian culture at Yale is too casual to make student conductors a feasible option, the members of the current Chorus are grateful for a consistent musical mentor.

Bailey takes a different approach to the music than that of his predecessors. Carter observes that Bailey "drills his choir as though they were singing Brahms: they are very professional, in a fine West European concert choir mode."

Their clear, open harmonies, however, come at the price of the old boisterous masculinity of Mickiewicz's days. Bailey also began to change the Chorus' repertoire, ending the decades-old tradition of allowing alumni to sing in any rehearsal or performance. Alumni who graduated before 1995 felt as though someone had changed the lock on the door to their own home. Caner, who had sung regularly with the Chorus for nearly three decades, does not want to "steal" the Chorus from the current students. "On the 19

other hand," he says, opening his palms, "I miss it! I miss being able to drop into a rehearsal and sing songs I know." Like many Russian Choristers of the past and present, Carter and Hille, men with no formal musical training, valued their chance to sing in a serious and vibrant ensemble.

Thanks to the Yale Russian Chorus, Carter says with wonder, he, as a "rank amateur," has sung five times in Carnegie Hall. "It's a high," Carter says. "You lose yourself as part of this organism making these beautiful sounds."

The pre-1995 alums still meet annually, and remain as raw and shirt-ripping as ever under the baton of Maestro Mickiewicz, who continues to conduct them.

The Alumni of the Yale Russian Chorus (a5 they designat,e d themselves after a legal tug-of-war with the group on campus) still · perform reunion concerts at Carnegie Hall and other prestigious stages. Membership is at least four hundred-strong worldwide, and at least two hundred former Choristers show up to ,each rem1ion. Among them are former high ranking State Department officials, ambassadors, and a former US Solicitor General who now teaches at Yale Law School. An offshoot group of alumni continue to perform professionally as the chorus Slovyanka in San Francisco.

This winter, past choristers will fly to New Haven from around the world to celebrate Mickiewicz's 80th birthday with three days of rehearsals, recording sessions and performances. Shortly thereafter, Mickiewicz will fly to Moscow to deliver a lecture on "Khoristoria," the documentary history of the Yale Russian Chorus.

Despite an active alumni life, many older alumni remain unsettled by the new Chorus' heightened musicality and depoliticization. For Hille, the former UN translator, the Chorus was a way to fulfill Yale's mission for its "students and graduates to becortle active in the world, to play a role, be involved in decision making, get involved in some of the fights that were going on out there." In 2005, Hille asked the Chorus to help raise campus awareness · about the Orange Revolution in Kiev, and, more recently, about the war in Georgia.

Speaking like a concerned parent, Hille remarks that the older alumni "are puzzled by the current group, how different they are musically, and what they see as the reason for doing this." In the past, he says, that reason was tied to a "sense of what being a concerned and engaged individual meant, and I would love to see that resurrected." Acknowledging the changed political scene, he adds, "I think nowadays, 20

in order to have an equivalent experience, you'd have to have an Iranian chorus ora North Korean chorus ... some group that's demonized in the American press."

Current chorus members sympathize with these indictments. They lament the slackened energy, the lack ofpolitical conscientiousness, and the loss of songs like the foot-stomping "Kalinka," (a favorite on Soviet tours). At the same time, the students echo Hille's observation that the world is a different place. ."Russia and Eastern Europe are no longer 'the Second World'," says Ian Randolph (YC'10): Russian issues don't claim c·a mpus attention, and the Chorus is no longer a political or. . . . ' . . gan1zat1on; 1t s a smgmg group. · This art they defend vigorously. Nicholas Villalon (MED'10) stresses that Bailey preserves expressive spontaneity by urging the singers to understand the songs through music and text. Randolph, with no previous musiCal training, is grateful to Bailey for transforming him into a semiprofessional singer. He loves the music, and speaks with relish of how the singers "bite into the weird dissonances, the weird-sounding chords." For current Chorus President Adam Haliburton (YC'10), the Chorus satisfied his wish to be part of "something a little more elevated, classical, liturgical." · Yet the question remains: without the Cold War, why is there still a Yale Russian Chorus? Some, like Hille, believe the group is not long for this world, and are resigneP. to let it die peacefully. But the current Chorus members are not so morbid. As long as the group has a permanent director, and is not too tied to a shifting student population, it seems that the Chorus, a Yale tradition, is likely to survive.

While the Chorus sometimes struggles for its footing here at Yale, the group continues to perform semi-professionally to great acclaim around the US. Their 1996 commercial album was placed on the New York Times "Critic's Choice List," and the singers hope to record another such album this year or next. Their political presence has shrunk, but the music remains powerful. Randolph believes the Chorus is "more than just a curiosity ... I think there is areally deep soul to our music." The Chorus has also adapted. Rather than singing to American students, it often books Orthodox churches and sings for Russian expatriates who have little opportunity to hear their native music. After a concert in California in the late 60s, Carter says a bearish Russian man with tears streaming down his face told the Chorus that Mother Rus•

sia "lives again in your hearts." Even now, it is not unusual for the current group to provoke tears and equally profuse gratitude on the part of their Slavic audiences. The Chorus also continues to tour. Haliburton has arranged concerts in Connecticut and New York, at Harvard, and even a performance with the celebrated Slavic choir Capella Romana. Moreover, the President has tried to increase recruitment by sharpening the Chorus' image with magnificent banners and public exposure. Villalon suggests the Chorus might retain singers better if its repertoire changed more often, while Randolph hopes the Chorus can become a "larger musical personality'' by holding more free campus performances.

Ultimately, however, the Chorus suffers from two chronic troubles endemic to Yale groups low membership and limited leadership, both conditions that tend to exacerbate each other. Every graduation rocks the boat, especially when the President, the _primary organizational figure, · prepares to leave.

Yet the music itself has staying power, and each year, new students join. The answer to the Chorus' survival lies deeper, all the way back to the Yale Russian Club's transformation into the Yale Russian Chorus in 1953. Why were these men not content just to talk about Russian music and culture? The founder has an idea of the reason. "Much of the mythology of the songs is universal," explains Mickiewicz in his thick accent. "The woes and joys of love are universal ... hard fighting is, alas, also universal." These themes are not generational, nor is the joy of singing determined by political bent. In truth, the interaction between the Chorus' singers and its music has changed very little since 1953. Carter joined the Chorus in 1969 after hearing the Red Army Chorus playing in a dorm room he happened to pass.

Villalon remembers randomly picking up a CD of Russian vespers in high school.

He heard a "shockingly eerie and haunting" sound he could not forget. Randolph is also inspired by the sound. When Bailey tunes the Chorus carefully, Randolph says, "We get these really nice sonorities where the overtones come out. The chords almost make me believe in God."

. Marissa Grunes' is a senior in Saybrook Col-

lege THE NEW JOURNAL

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Denise Petry claims she's clairvoyant, but can this accountant-cum-psychic take stock of your future?

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By Haley Cohen

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You DONT HAVE to be a psychic to grasp that accounting can be boring. Not just makes-you-wanna-tap-your-foot-' causethere's-nothing-better-to-do boring, but would-rather-watch-a-snail-crawl-a-marathon, potential-cure-for-insomnia, starthearing-voices-that-nobody-else-can bor• mg.

Denise Petry, who worked as an accountant for 20 years, often hears those voices, but not in the way that will get you locked up. In fact, she started hearing them long before the number crunching and checkbook managing had a chance to erode her sanity. They don't tell her specific things like, "Joe, the guy at the Deli counter is a molester!" They merely suggest, "Hmmm, something's off with Joe." "I used to think I was just a really good guesser," she laughs. But then, here and there, she would "guess" that a friend was pregnant or that a family: member would get a divorce and "what do you know? It would happen!"

The card depicts two young children, both blonde and cherubic, standing in front of a thatched-roof cottage behind which the sun is beginning to set. The boy, clad in a tunic with a periwinkle belt, extends a cup full of flowers to his female friend who looks back at him, eyes glassy with adoration.

"A.b., the six of cups. This means that an old love will return to you," Petry declares.

Hmm, I think. Old loves? Old loves?

Do I have ANY old loves? Maybe she means John Smith from Pocahontas? My crush on him as a 5-year old was intense enough to qualify as love. Granted, he was also animated. ~

Now SHE "GuESSEs" for a living. As a professional psychic reader, Petry makes a career out of flipping tarot cards. She hands me the deck and asks that I "put my energy into the cards." I don't really know what this means so I stare willfully at the cards as I mix them, hoping that will be good enough.

I hand them back to Petry, who splays the deck into a fan shape on the table, sets a timer for twenty minutes, (the length of a reading $25 buys), and invites me to pick a card.

Flip.

October 2009

Flip.

As Petry reads my cards, l watch her.

She is not the kind of person I would have expected to give me my first psychic reading. She doesn't wear black robes, talk about chakras or reek of incense. Her urn-

ber hair is coiffed into a professional bob with bangs, and her face is neatly made up. When she speaks it is with certainty, and not as though she is channeling words through some invisible third party. "The best psychics are the normal folks," she explains. "The one's who go around screaming 'I'm mystical!' those are the ones you gotta watch out for because they're almost always full of crap."

Flip.

A brawny man in a tartan kilt stares up from the card's glossy surface. He clutches a long staff and stares down at the six wands pointed at him, challenging them to explode with his belligerent glare.

"The seven of wands. This means there's a lot of competition in the field you will pursue but you will tough it out. It also means you'll probably do something creative - writing, TV, something artistic.

Any other questions?"

'She's right!' I think excitedly. 1\.fter all, I do want to go into journalism of some

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sort!' But then I catch mysel£ Before she had started to read me, I had asked Petry if I could record our conversation as I planned to write something about it.

I wonder what she would have predicted without that vital information. I watch her as she purses her meticulously lined lips, and strokes her chin with a red acrylic nail as long as the crystal she holds in her other palm "for clarity." Would she have prophesized I would go into banking if a copy of the Wall Street journal were poking out of my backpack instead of The New Yorker?

Flip.

Petry tells me that she didn't use her abilities in a professional capacity · until very recently. It is hardly acceptable in the accounting world to record "predicted" assets and liabilities. Then two and a half years ago, Petry got tired of "pushing the pencil"- a development even a non-psychic might have foreseen - and started a new career in the slightly less conventional field of selling angel and fairy memorabilia.

Despite its "less than whimsical location in a suburban shopping center in Harnden, Petry's boutique, Gifts by Moonlight, might have popped out of a Hans Christian Anderson tale . .The walls depict pastel fairies and butterflies flitting across a starry, saccharine-peach sky, their fair hair cascading behind them. Fairy mobiles hang from the ceiling above tables full of crystal angels and jars of vanilla perfume.

A wind chime tinkles faintly at the store's entrance, evoking someone's idea of what fairy laughter might sound like.

"I just wanted to do something fun," Petry explains.

For a while, Petry's fuzzy pink pouches and ornate -angel stationary flew off the shelves. However, when the economy soured last year, angels and fairies dropped off consumers' must-have lists. Petry's business plummeted from profitability like Lucifer from heaven.

"I figured I needed to add a service to boost business and I thought: 'I like reading people, why not?"'

Petry reads me in a sectioned-off area in the back of her store. The space is not dark or mysterious, and I am slightly disappointed to see that there are no crystal balls, red velvet tablecloths, or vials of bubbling potion. I suppose, though, that finding those items would make Petry one of the abrasively mystical readers I'm •

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supposed to watch out for. Instead, Petry's reading space is cheerful with lots of light and windows that look out on a lush backyard. A lone candle {vanilla scented) and the ticking timer sit atop a minimalist wooden table.

both of us hold for slightly too long, reading one another.

"I'm very accurate," sh e vo1unteers.

"No body's 1OOo/o with these things. I am human after all."

Flip.

Three swords impale a rose-red heart that floats in a tempestuous sky.

"Hmm the three of swords," Petry pauses. "Is there something going on with your mother?" Well, that's not vague at all.

"Your mother is going to want you to come home. for something. Don't worry, it's nothing bad!" I tltink a heart with swords run through it looks pretty bad. "She's just going to want you to come home."

Suddenly, the timer beeps, indicating that my twenty minutes are up. ''Anything else you want to ask real quick?" Petry offers. I shake my head no.

As I thank her, we make eye contact which

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TN Haley Cohen is a junior in Davenport College. She is a Managing Editor ofTNJ

LY GIRL'S BEST ' GS You NEED TO OW' RICAN HISTORY'' UT •

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. . . ntverst

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O"\\la

Tuesday, October 27th 4:oopm Ezra Stiles College Master's Tea

Master's House 9 Tower Parkway

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Presented by the Frank K. Bosworth Fund and the Department of History '

THE NEW JOURNAL

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dardized A Cappella Group Application Fo

20th

niversary Edition

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Name._ _ _ _ __ College_ _ _ __ Desired Group(s) _ _ ___..

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Tradition forms the backbone ofYale a cappella. Please complete the following song using your knowledge ofYale a cappella's rich history.

(Yale a cappella retains all rights to perform, license or spontaneously sing the underwritten work).

"

iffen

Onotnatopoeia

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Song"

To the - - - down at - - - Noun .

NotMory's To the place w h e r e - - - - - - - - - - - - - dwells Service industry proprietor To the old Temple we _ _ _ so well Verb Adjective Place of business the Whiffen assembled with their raised on high ----------Verb Noise Drinking implement And the _______of t h e i r - - - - - - - - - - - ____ casts its spell Noun (mystical) Celebratory noun ending in "ing"

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Yes, the of their of the - - - - -we love so well Noun (hubristic) Verb ending in "ing" Plural noun· Shall I and - - - - - - - - - and the rest Bodily verb ending in "ing" Make-believe name We will our _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ while life and ___ shall _ _ _ __ Verb (performative) Delicatessen employee Noun Abstract verb Then we'll and be with the rest Verb (morbid) Verb (past-tense) II

II

II

II

We're _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ little who have lost our way Adjective (pathetic) Fal'm animal (plural) I

- - - - - ' --------' - - - - - - · Animal noise Animal noise Animal noise

We're little

who have gone astray Color

Ba•nyard creature (plural) I

- - - - - -' '------· Animal noise Animal noise Animal noise •

Gentleman

off on a spree

Effete profession Doomed from here to _ _ _ _ _ __ Place (abstract) ______ have mercy on such as we Name of deity I

------' '------· Animal noise Animal noise Animal noise

For office use only DO NOT MARK •

October 2009

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