Volume 43 - Issue 1

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Volume 43, No. 1

· September·20 10 ·

The magazine about Yale

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Publishers Samantha Ellner, Tim Shriver

Editors-in-Chief Haley Cohen, Kate Selker •

Managing Editors Max Ehrenfreund, Jacque Feldman, Bob Jeffery

Photo & Design Editors •

Brianne Bowen, Jane Long •

Senior Editors

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Eleanor Kenyon, Sarah Mich, Maya Seidler

Business Director Helena Malchione •

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Associate Editors Julia Fisher, Helen Knight

On-line Editors •

Bay Gross, Jimmy Murphy

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Mnnbers 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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o: Lines Murphy, cover ,,.. .Lu Atkinson, p 3, 20-21 Jacque Feldman, p. 4-5 ~u: Selker, p 6 .Ld.Lc;~ Cohen, p 8 U.L.L.L Hagey, p 11 Ehrenfreund, p 13, l5 ane Long, p 22, 26

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Friends

Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Anson M. Beard, Jr., Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Brant, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Jay Carney, Daphne Chu, Josh Civin, Jonathan M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, Masi Denison, Albert J. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang, Walter Jacob, Jane Kamensky, Tina Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Jonathan I ear, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean O'Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Fairfc1x C. Randal, Robert Randolph, Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W. Hampton Sides, I .isa Silvennan, Scott Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulsman, Thomas Strong, Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Wilson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stent Yergin

THE NEw JouRNAL

Volume 43, Number 1 September 2010 •

The magazine about Yale

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and New Haven •

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ON CAPITOL HILL

Yale students learn how a bill becomes a law.

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by Max Ehrenfreund •

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WELCOME To DETENTION •

Turning around New Havens juvenile detention center.

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by Ali "Weiner ::.

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SEEKING A GENus FoR MY SPECIES

An Eli's quest for taxonomic immortality.

by Zara Kessler

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POINTS OF DEPARTURE

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THE CRITICAL ANGLE

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Click to Read More

by Eve Binder •

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PROFILE

Ike Wilson

by Tatiana Gay

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SHOTS IN THE DARK

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Yale's in the Details

by Kevin Atkinson

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PERSONAL ESSAY

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When I Grow Up

by Kate Selker •

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ENDNOTE

by Bob jeffery and M aya Seidler •

The New Journal is published five times during the academic year by The ew Journal at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, cr 06520. Office address: 305 Crown Street. All contents Copyright 2006

by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher and editor in chief is prohibited. While this magazine is published by Yale College students, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seventy-five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and ew Haven community. Subsu iptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One-year, $18. Two years, $32. The ew Journal is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of rew Haven.

The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, ew Haven, Cf 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication.

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SEPTEMBER 2 010

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. JEWISH LAW HOLDS THAT nieat and dairy must be stored apart, served with different utensils, and consumed separately. Shaking his head in somber embarrassment, Timothy Frye, who has . been head chef at Yale's Slifka Center for five years, admits he doesn't know why. He must not realize he is in the majority. Stumped by the $arne question, medieval Torah guru Maimonedes reasoned that meat boiled in milk was too filling and "undoubtedly gross:' But most follow Kashrut, Jewish dietary law, because it is just that: unequivocal, concrete, law-the will of God as expressed to Moses and codified in the Mishnah.

Tonight, Rosh Hashanah, is a meat night. . · The sun has set behind West Rock and the evening is one · of mandatory rest, just not for the staff of the Slifka center's Kosher Kitchen. Yamulked boys and girls with pearl necklaces stream up to the serving station in droves, platters extended.

"Is the peanut butter on the table parve?" a bespectacled girl shouts over· the line.

"Can we get more challah?" asks another.

"Shana tova!" calls a girl in ·a lace dress, to no one in particular.

The serving station resembles the skeleton of a steel barn, the gabled roof gently dividing the servers and the served. The kitchen itself is split into two chambers that join in front at the serving area: dairy in the smaller left ventricle, and meat on the right.

Dressed in a black double-breasted cooking shirt with woven balls for buttons, Tim flits around the kitchen, gingerly lifting Saran wrap veils off of •

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his creations. A chef of nearly two de- spect every processed food item that encades, he casts a trained eye over each ters the Slifka building for such a mark. pan, straightening the rows of chicken It has taken him years, but he has finally breasts and tossing the melange of pearl memorized all 96. onions, peas, eggplant and peppers so Meats pose an even greater chalthat it resembles . an avant...,garde chil- lenge. Only animals that have both dren's ball pit. Scratching his head, Tim cloven hooves and chew their cud are wonders out loud where the cauliflower considered kosher; this bars hares, pigs, is. He spies it across the kitchen and hyraxes and camels-though Tim mennods. Satisfied, he claps his hands and tions those last two are rarely missed. his staff grab red-handled tongs and These pronged-footed masticators must prepare to start serving. die at the hands of Rabbis who slit the such blood- animals' throats to most quickly end A formidable army of . . colored utensils hangs at attention on their pain. Jews must not consume the a steel rod above the meat sink, like creatures' blood, and once their veins disembodied lobster· claws-though ac- and capillaries have run dry, meat must cording to Kashrut, real lobster would be hewed from the animals' shoulders, never be allowed in the · kitchen. Over never the rump. Leviticus pronounces the dairy sink a complementary infan- all fish with both fins and scales pure, try of blue tongs dangles idly, off duty. and dismisses the rest -shellfish, squid, Dante, a hulking man in a red and shark, and catfish-as filth. black flat-brimmed hat, heaps flakey Tim views_the Slifka kitchen as aha• mountains of brisket onto platters next ven - a place where kosher students can to Jezarelle, who handles the roast enjoy meals without worry and non-kochicken and tomatoes. A wing tip of her sher students can relax and simply enjoy butterfly tattoo peeping from behind good food. "A home away from home:' her hoop-laden ear, Ronesha hacks he calls it. Tim urges kids to bring him away at a pan of sweet noodle kugel, family recipes and immortalizes regular sliding ragged -'edged rectangles onto patrons like Nate Glasser '11-the inspistudents' · plates. She doesn't like the ration for "Nate's Famous Corned Beef" stuff herself-"Sweet pasta? Weird:' -but -on his menu. Josh Price '11 still awaits seems pleased that her a dairy-free con- a namesake, but not for lack of rapport coction of egg noodles, brown sugar, with the Slifka kitchen staff. He has eateggs, cinnamon, ·margarine and raisin en almost every lunch and dinner there studs is disappearing faster thari. the po- since his freshman move-in night and tato version Dante baked. often hangs to shoot pool with Tim and While the meat side of the kitchen Dante after they close down the kitchen. hums, the dairy side sleeps. Leek stalks "Dante taught me most of what I know lie in the sink, their fuzzy roots still cov- about pool;' Josh says. "_B ut I beat him ered in water droplets, and beet plants pretty regularly now:' rest on a cutting board next to a bowl It is an unlikely image: Josh, a comfull of pomegranates. Six small pump- pact Judiac Studies major predisposed kins beg to be carved, or at least made to cable-knits and side-parts, taunting into pie. On top of a heated convection the colossal Dante across Slifka's welloven sit cobalt cooking mitts labeled varnished pool table. But it's what the . DAIRY, in white lettering. Small images Slifka kitchen-where muscle and milk of a fork, spoon and knife follow the Y cannot touch, but Muslims who observe like exclamation points.

Halal and Jews who keep kosher discuss None of the staff is Jewish, but out -literature over Parve pasta cooked by of habit, Tim shops kosher for himself bacon-loving Christians-is all about. as well as for the Slifka kitchen. On A place where food must bear a kosher the wall of his Lilliputian office in the label, but labeled folk- "football jocks': back corner of the meat kitchen, he has "section assholes': "uber jews·: "hiptacked a sheet of permissible kosher sters': "staff': "students"-Inix like racked . symbols-block letter Ks, encircled Us, stripes and solids before the break. and Cs enveloping the letters HK and · Haley Cohen topped with regal crowns. Tim must in•

THE NEw JouRNAL

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Say Cheese INSIDE THE CHEESE TRUCK, I AM

sweating like a wedge of parmesan - it's just a quarter past twelve, but already, a lin:e has formed outside.

Caseus, the three-year-old bistro and fromagerie at 93 Whitney Avenue, officially owns the vehicle, but Jeff, a Caseus chef and self-identified "cheese truck dude;' calls it his "current babY:' Jeff's helpers today are Krystle, whose favorite topping is guacamole, a new trainee named Raven, and me.

The four of us are packed so tightly· that _only I can reach the fridge, so they· let me serve Perrier, Coke, and Di~t Coke to customers. Krystle explains that the soda in glass bottles, made with real sugar, not corn syrup comes from Mexico.

The sandwich du juor is a grass-fed beef patty, and today's tomatoes hail from a farm in Washington, Connecticut. "I know the farmer;' -says Jeff, who likes his ingredients to be as local as possible.

Besides four people and a fridge, the small van contains a grill (Jeff's hands deftly feel out the hottest zones), a vat of tomato soup, a stack of sliced sourdough, coolers of vegetables, a prep surface for salad, and a big box of grated cheese: comte, cheddar, swiss, gruyere, gouda, and provolone. The walls are clean, shiny metal, and the skylight is propped open. Caseus found this specially outfitted vehicle through a Craigslist post from New Jersey.

When business is slow, customers take time to chat, usually to ex•

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press happiness at stumbling upon Cross Campus. Other regular stops the truck: "I was just walking by include Yale-New Haven Hospital on and I was like, wait, Caseus truck! Thursdays and the Wooster Square Awesome:' When the line grows Farmers' Market on Saturdays. The long, Krystle begins to yell orders- truck also made an appearance at "Tomato!" to Jeff, who stands just .the September 1Oth Train concert in two feet from her and confirms, Trumbull, Connecticut. "It's the first "Tomato!" concert we've done;' Jeff says. That "The challenge of trying to hustle same weekend, the truck served cussandwiches as fast as possible"- tomers at the Fall Festival and Green Krystle pauses to confess "is a lot Expo in Edgerton Park.

The cheese truck may be going of fun:' Within minutes of each other, places, but its heart will always retwo young men ask us about The main a good grilled cheese sandChallenge. To rise to The Challenge, wich. I ask Jeff for tips. "The trick customers must design a sandwich is butter;' he replies, dipping a ladle and down ten within an hour. Sur- .into a Tupperware container and vivors win a t -shirt, naming rights, splashing it on the grill. One ounce and free sandwiches for life. "If you per sandwich. "Let the bread swim don't make it;' the truck's menu cau- in the butter:' Then, add cheese, tions, "you must pay in full and you ''squish it together;' and fry. Perfect, get nothing but full of cheese sand- every time. wiches:' -Jacque Feldman "Does it say without vomiting?" asks one curious customer. (It does ..)

"Don't come overly hungry;' Raven warns. "Your stomach shrinks:' Another customer asks whether it is enough to add just one topping to the sandwich. "Yeah;' shouts Jeff from the grill, "but you don't want to be that arugula guy:' The man who came closest to meeting the challenge inhaled seven guacamole and onion cheese sandwiches before throwing in the napkin. Only one other person has attempted, and he topped out at only four. Will anyone ever succeed? "I hope so:' says Jeff. "SQmebody has •

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Caseus owner Jason Sobochinski and his brother, Tommy introduced the cheese truck in February. The truck brings publicity to the restaurant, but Jeff describes its main mission as bringing sandwiches to the masses. "Everybody;' he says, "loves grilled cheese. I see people s1nile because they eat grilled cheese .. That makes me happy:' Many Yalies are familiar with the truck's Tuesday and Friday visits to York Street and its Wednesdays on

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SEPTEMBER 2010

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Computers make an appearance on old campus.

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e Internet is ·a liberal, artistic, educational medium. But does it •

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effectively shares a birthday with the Internet. Netscape Navigator, the first major lnternet browser, was released ·for public consumption in 1992. The newest Yalies were still growing teeth while Netscape and Yahoo were growing roots, and by their first high school term in 2006, 57 million households in the U.S. were already broadband subscribers. That number has since grown to over 81 million, according to 2009 statistics from the OECD, which tracks Internet ~sage in 33 countries.

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Brainpower, revved up by signal strength. That's the core idea behind Yale's many tech exertions and expenses~-that the Internet can improve what was already good to begin with.

A Yale student computing survey conducted in 2007 by Information Technology Services (ITS) revealed that 80 percent of students were using the University wireless network that year, compared with just 20 percent in 2003. 2007 also marked the first year the university took interest in students' online activity, asking about their Facebook use (78 percent were members then), their online music purchases (56.5 percent had patronized iTunes). Nationwide, trends are sitnilar. An exhaustive report published

roughly $5.5 million goes to tec4nological resources in teaching and learning, which covers everything from installing and distributing clickers in large-lecture ' courses to creating downloadable virtual art museums for the Art History departnient. · Chuck Powell, the Senior Director of Academic Media and Technology a subdivision of ITS has observed markedly positive trends in digital education on campus. "The bar keeps rising every year;' he says. "Four years ago, the percentage of faculty who wen~ ;using installed projectors to display media or PowerPoint in the classroom was probably around ten to twenty percent. These days, we count it at around sixty, sixtyfive percent:' .

Many of these faculty members, including tenured professors and the occasional Luddite Emeritus, have sought to push the envelope further than PowerPoint. One famously taught Beowulf 2.0, using student wikis to promote ·arid ex-; pand conversation about the epic poem.

Another used 3D and geo-technology URING THE 2009-20"10 academic year, the Yale College Programs of to enhance the study of ancient Rome, Study offered 15 undergraduate courses making artifacts and historical geology that featured web-related topics. But pop and, in the words of Powell, "bringthese classes are anomalies among a ing that ancient subject to life:' mostly Internet-free curriculum. HowIn this regard, Yale's humanities deever, the Internet has significantly partments respond more or less like the changed the ways in which Yalies expe- rest of the community, greeting online rience their education. resources with vigor rather than vinegar.

Online scholastic resources are ubiq- They upload their syllabi to Classes*~2 uitous. The Classes*v2 server is the and readily communicate by email. They most familiar, hosting some 1500 un- have vocally endorsed Yale's digitizadergraduate and graduate courses each tion projects, which involve the ongosemester. Of the $115 million spent each ing transfer of hundreds of thousands year on Information Technology (IT), of slides, manuscripts and news archives

last year by EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association devoted to IT initiatives in higher learning, found that 90 percent of the 29,000 students at American and Canadian universities surveyed used social networking sites every day, and "84 percent were downloading music or videos on a weekly basis.

Like the printing press before it, the Web marks an epistemological turning point: a moment when what we know· and how we know are critically expanded and transformed. While university authorities might once have taken a tongue-in-cheek or turn-the-othercheek approach to today's prevailing fads, they're now following them closely, because the what and how of knowledge are the basis of their careers. How should a university react when the mental processing of its students is fundamentally altered, at times even replaced, by computer processing? How, and what, does one teach this new generation of savvy undergraduates?

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uring out what's going on with a symbol still hasn't changed very much:' In other words, the word "water" might appear 177 times in Shakespeare's plays that figure thanks to open-source site OpenShakespeare.org but no algorithm on the Net will turn that number into an argument.

Online textual concordances like those found on OpenShakespeare.org are beloved by undergrads. Though it's easy to envision their abuse (why read all of Moby Dick when you can just query "Thar she blows"?), they're considered benign by most educators a convenience, rather than a chance to cut corners. The intellectual activity involved in research remains the same, though computational data has the potential to energize, expand and enhance it.

Brainpower, revved up by signal strength. That's the core id~a behind Yale's many tech exertions apd expenses that the Internet can improve what was already good to begin with. It's also the idea that motivates Ken Panko, the manager of Yale's Instructional Technology Group and the man responsible for turning Lewis' classroom vision into virtual reality.

Part of what Panko likes about tools like class blogs and wikis, he explains, is that they boost student creativity onto a level where their ideas have practical, tangible value. "When you write an academic paper and you give it to your professor, what's the authentic value of that? Obviously you've learned a lot in the process of creating it, but the artifact of your knowledge isn't useful in a way that can be shared with the rest of the world. But when you publish to a blog, you have the opportunity to show people what you've done:' Panko also favors "active learning;' a buzzword among educators and technophiles. "Try to envision a model of teaching where instead of going to lectures, you get that content online;' says Panko. "Course sessions would then involve the kind of close interaction you might get in seminars, or actual handson work. And the professor becomes more of a guide and mentor, rather than someone who just stands onstage and delivers content:' It would be a turning point in Web pedagogy: the moment '

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Books and computers join forces as educational resources. '

from the shelves of Yale's libraries to a digital humanities at Yale. tagged -and -searchable online sanctuary.

If humanists like Lewis are embracSome professors, like Pericles Lewis ing Web-based classroom tools, it may of the English and Comparative Litera- ¡ be because these pose no direct threat ture departments, have even ventured to their disciplines. "The approach to into cyberspace on their own. Lewis studying the material may be different, founded the Modernism Lab, a collab- but ultimately the questions at the center orative research site on early 20th-cen- of it are still traditional humanistic questury writers, which hosts around 4,000 tions;' Lewis says.

Answering those questions today primary sources and a wiki of editable articles. He has encouraged his un- might involve a six -second Google dergraduate classes to use the site as a search for "Shakespeare" and "water:' as research tool, which is widely praised opposed to six weeks reading the Bard's among administrators, faculty, and ITS entire oeuvre with a highlighter. Still, staff metnbers as an exciting step for the Lewis argues, "the scholarly work of fig8

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Finding Your ·Courses . .

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Classes*v2 is a popular way for students to download course information. when these tools become not just facili- really incredible resource:' completely redesigned using informatators, but educators in their own right.

But as Jansson points out, not even tion technology strategically:' If the In a way, active learning has already be- Web-based tools come risk-free, and classic liberal-arts model isn't reformed, gun at Yale. Video recordings oflectures Yale's investment in these resources what Kamenetz calls "edupunk" do-it-:have been online at Open Yale Courses could eventually backfire. Thanks to yourselfNet-based learning will evensince 2007. The courses can't be taken open course offerings in particular and tually dominate the pricey, elite system for credit and there are no discussion the Internet in general, Jansson says, that currently reigns supreme. sections·: But for undergrads who over- "there's been an explosion of this abilBut how likely is "edupunk" to affect slept and those who weren't enrolled in ity to manage your own education. The Yale and institutions with similar values the first place, the online courseware question is, how do you react to this and methods? Could the Internet ultisystem is an important and valuable de- institutionally? Do you let students con- mately destroy the liberal arts establishvelopment. sume this material on their own, and ment?

Of all the ways that Yale has imple- assume more of a guide-on-the-side Jansson, for one, believes that libmented the Internet as a teaching tool, model?" eral arts education will continue to be Open Yale Courses might also be the These are the same questions that valuable in the Internet age. "In fact, we most surprising a bit, one might ar- Yale administrators have already been really need more of it;' he argues. "The gue, like thunking down the drawbridge asking themselves. By placing course modern world is really telling us that we to the ivory tower. But professional materials online, or condoning the use don't need people with discrete profesWeb innovators think that free, online of concordances, or . introducing class sional skills, but people who are lifelong courseware is a natural upshot of larger blogs and wikis into the- syllabus, Yale learners:' trends toward self-directed learning, is fostering the very skillsets that could Modern-day success requires rapid international presence, and the value of throw its institutional value into ques- adaptability: to new media, new voices, tion. Sooner or later, someone's going new careers. In 2008, the U.S. Bureau of knowledge as a public good.

One such innovator is Eric Jansson, to wonder: if all this stuff is online, then Labor Statistics reported that the averDirector of Labs at the National Insti- why am I still sitting here? age job tenure was 4.1 years, a figure tute for Technology in Liberal EducaSomeone has been wondering, that suggests that if you want to join totion (NITLE). "Networks have exposed namely Anya Kamenetz '02, former day's workforce, you'd better keep your us to an enormous amount of resources, New Journal editor and the author of bags by the door and your brain fully which are increasing in sophistica- the recently published DIY U: Edu- charged. tion all the time:· he says. "Projects like punks, Entrepreneurs and the Coming Unlike for-profit and vocational MIT's OpenCourseWare are emblem- Transformation of Higher Education. schools, liberal arts institutions pride atic of this. You're taping some of the She writes, "Rather than layering new themselves on creating exactly that kind finest undergraduate lecturers out there, technologies as bells and whistles onto of flexible intellectual. "The goal is not and publishing that online it creates a existing classes ... courses need to be to prepare students for any particular •

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vocation;' says George Levesque, Yale's Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs, "but to give them the skills to be prepared for anY:' So even as the Internet alters the need for Yale's teachers, it creates a need for the supple minds they produce.

But even if liberal arts education endures, that doesn't mean liberal arts schools will. "One of the problems is, · we're not sure how stable the vessel for that type of education is;' says Jansson.

He explains that a place like Yale is protected by its sturdy reputation and generous endowment, but smaller institutiOil,S might have to make major changes in order to survive.

While Yale students use the Internet extensively, Adam Lior Hirst '1 0, a recent graduate and history major, ex. presses reservations about the changes brought about by new media. "Look, I'm the kind of guy who'll get really bored during lectures, and sit there responding to emails;' he confesses, "but I think there should be a switch to turn off the Internet in classrooms!'

When asked why, Hirst offers surprising rationale for someone of his generation: Yale is a liberal arts school, not a WiFi hotspot. "The purpose of Yale seems to be to spend four years considering the best that's ever been thought, written, said and so on:' he says. "The university should force us to do that if · we can't do it ·ourselves!'

Hirst points out that student proficiency or fixation does not always equal enthusiasm. We "digital natives" log on because we don't know how not to, but just because we're media-literate doesn't mean we value media literacy, or seek its . implementation in a classroom. In fact, by the time they reach college, many students feel quite the contrary. The Web may be a teeming information ecosystem, but a flesh-and-blood professor provides the invaluable service of organizing, prioritizing and situating that information. We can surf on our own, but how effectively can we learn on our own?

Nor is this tepid response to Web learning just a Yale phenomenon. EDUCAUSE's 2009 report found that while 70 percent of surveyed students felt positively about the use of information technology in their courses, 60 percent '

wanted just a "moderate" amount, and only a few loose cannons 3.5 percent of the sample craved an exclusively digital experience.

If Yale students aren't lobbying for digital freedoms, then why. have Yale faculty members and administration worked so hard to bring the Web into curricula? Is reframing education still an issue if student ambitions are the same as they always were? For all the Web's purported interfacing, it looks as though something important has failed to transmit. ·· Maybe Yale ·students are just more shortsighted about their education than those who provide it. The current crop of Yale undergraduates might still bow down to the historic mystique of the Ivy League, but that doesn't mean that future generations will feel the same way.

As the Net Generation, we feel the loss of a culture that we never had in the first place. We are not digital natives at all, but the children of digital immigrants, raised in a virtual society but molded equally by the views of our analog forbears. · .

An inherited sense of old-world nostalgia is what makes students pore fondly over the archived, handwritten notebooks of old Elis and wonder if they're missing out, even though they can take the same notes on a laptop in a quarter of the time. It's why Yale is still a tourist attraction, and why the campus bookstore can still sell Yale sweatshirts that cost more·than a WiFi router.

But that nostalgia won't last forever.

Jansson's prediction that Yale can subsist on its reputation and endowment will only hold true as long as we continue to value academic isolationism, and the idea that spending four years reading Kant in a wood-paneled wonderland still constitutes a modern education. '

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TNJ Eve Binder is a senior in Pierson College.

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heart of the body politic.

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HE WEEK OF JULY 4, Congress is in recess. The cafeteria's patrons, lining up with trays of food at the row of checkout counters, are dressed casually in polo shirts, tank tops, and khaki pants-no neckties. The cafeteria is in the basement of the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill, one of several granite and marble blocks clustered around the Capitol in Washington, D.C., where members of Congress and their staff have their offices. . The mood is lighthearted, almost merry. Press assistants trade jokes across the salad bar, and interns waiting in line for the grill talk about the menu. You wouldn't know that partisan acrimony is especially intense right now, but midterm elections are just three months awayeating here are two opposed camps. By the way they gossip over bagels, you might forget that these people spend their days butting heads. By the way they talk over their coffee, you might forget that their bosses' decisions can affect millions of people.

In fact, you might think for a moment that you're in a cafeteria at a large university. Most of the several thousand staffers running the day-today operations of the nation's legislatl,lre are under thirty. They are recent college grads, off to research for their senator. They are high-school interns and undergrads, off to sort papers in exchange for just being here in this place.

A few of the bunch will rise quickly to take on responsibility and influence.

One or two of them will be leading our country twenty years down the road. But for now, they're running the show from behind · the scenes. Capitol Hill has a culture of youth, ambition, and idealism, and it is the source of federal law in the United States.

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NE OF THE CAFETERIA'S PATRONS today is Matthew Ellison '1 0, a newly-nlinted staff assistant in the office of Rep. Jim Clyburn, the Majority Whip and third- ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. He is one of about twenty-five current Yale students and recent graduates working for members of Congress in Washington this sununer.

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"I love the Hill;' Ellison tells me.

HE FIRST TIME KEVIN Hu '11 walked Like many others who seek jobs in into the Longworth building's Washington, Ellison moved to the capital basement cafeteria, he recalls seeing after graduation without knowing where Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts he would work. Graduates entering Democrat with thirty years experience, other fields may be able to line up a just sitting at a table there, with his jacket job in January of their senior year, but off and his shirt un-tucked. "It's always vacancies in politics need to be filled shocking;' Hu says of sightings like these.

Unlike Ellison, however, Hu and most quickly, he explained. Most people have to be in the District before they can have of the other Yalies working on the Hill a chance of finding a position.

I talked to got their positions through Ellison knew when he arrived in the front door, by applying online or Washington that he wanted to work for submitting a resume and cover letter.

One of Hu's fellow interns, however, Clyburn, a powerful legislator from his home state of South Carolina, and was is the congresswoman's nephew. It is able to meet with the chief of staff for not unusual for one of the interns in a Rep. John Spratt, who also represents congressional office to be a relative of South Carolina, · through a friend of the legislator, especially since the tasks the family. Spratt's chief of staff was interns complete don't require much impressed enough to put Ellison in touch expertise. Interns, according to Hu, are with her counterpart in Clyburn's office, "the moat that separates the staffers from who got him a position. everyone else:' They take calls, respo~d to Ellison started as an intern, working letters from constituents, and give tours without pay, a few weeks before I met of the Capitol. They're also given tedious him. When one of the staff assistants research assignments. Hu recently was left, Ellison stepped in to fill the role. I tasked with fact-checking hours of met him during his ·first week in this new testimony from Supreme Court Justice capacity.

Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings in This summer wasn't the first time the Senate.

Ellison had been inside an influential But there are other assignments that lawmaker's office; In the summer make interning worth it. Emily Villano before his freshman year at Yale, Ellison '13 says her interest in the legislative interned under then-senator Joseph process led her to apply for an internship Biden from Delaware. with Rep. Greg Walden, who represents As Ellison tells the story, his geometry her home district in Oregon. The teacher's band was performing at internship allowed her to listen in on an event that Biden happened to be briefings and hearings and to see how attending. Ellison-in what would later a congressional office operates from the become a wise political move-came inside. along too, and introduced himself. After Villano recalls one memorable the show, Biden spoke with the members hearing on the controversial Arizona of the band, and the geometry teacher law aimed at reducing undocumented let it slip that Ellison would be attending immigration. The witnesses, all women, Yale in the fall. The senator decided there testified on how the law would impact their lives. They spoke of the abuse they was room for this student in his office.

By the end of that first summer, Ellison had suffered at the hands of deputies and was hooked. "The Hill is where all the the trauma of children whose mothers action is;' he says. It's where lawmakers were detained. Some listening were and their aides are creating national . moved to tears. (The law is currently policy, and there are opportunities even suppressed under a court injunction.) for a junior staff member to make the Experiences like this made Villano's country a better place. He worked at time on Capitol Hill worthwhile, despite a federal agency last summer but was other, less glamorous assignments she frustrated by the bureaucracy there. He received. She recalls days spent entering · · says there's less red tape in Congress, names into a database. "That would which answers only to voters. just be mind-nuil}bingly boring," she remembers. "I felt like I was wasting my •

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life away:' Friends and family from home tend to view these internships as prestigious, even though entry-level work in an office on Capitol Hill, as in any other office, can be dull.

"We're certainly expendable;' jokes Hu. ''There's an army of us:' There are about two thousand interns on Capitol Hill every summer, sprinkled across all 535 congressional ·offices. It's enough undergraduates to form a small liberal arts college.

Hu expresses frustration over those about their interns who aren't humble . . jobs. "You need some perspective:' he said. A congressional internship "inflates people's egos. It's horrifyfng:' David Manners-Weber '1 0 spent two of his undergraduate summers working on Capitol Hill. "I think there is an impression that Hill interns are bright, ambitious, and sometimes a little too big for their britches. As far as stereotypes go, it's not a bad one:' he wrote in an email message. "You go to work in important-looking buildings and are in close proximity to important people it's easy to get it into your head that you're an important person:' There is even a widely-read blog dedicated to mocking interns who think too highly of themselves called "Spotted: DC [Summer] Interns:' The blog's readers e-mail the editors with stories about interns embarrassing themselves.

The following post is from this July:

Join the distinguished ranks ofTNJ alun1s: Neela Banerjee

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Jatnes Bennet, editor- in -chie(

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Richard Bradley, editor- in -chiet~ \X~Jrt/J A1ttgrtzi llC

Jay Carney, vVashington Bureau ChieC Ihne ;\4t~grtzi nc

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Heard: The Fifth ofJuly I was in Longworth Cafeteria last week when I overheard two valley girls with red badges the table over. There was nothing out ofthe ordinary until the following exchange: Intern 1: Is july 5th, like, a federal holiday?

Intern 2: Ummm. I don't think so.

Intern 1: Then, why do we have offi Intern 2: Maybe it's because, like it was the first full day they really got to celebrate the Declaration ofIndependence.

Posts on the site feature interns all over the city, but most of the blog's unwitting protagonists are wearing the ubiquitous red identification badge of congressional interns, which the blog's editors have nicknamed "the red badge , o f courage.

"God, it's awful," says Hu, when I ask

him about the site.

Villano thinks this stereotype of congressional interns isn't quite fair.

"Potentially, people come in with greater ambitions -- and then they end up making coffee;' she says. "But for the most part, the interns I interacted with were good-natured people who were interested in politics the way I was."

Waller contrasts the distribution o ages in Congess with the corporate world. ''We have a range o ages in teh o ce, not a gaggle o _17-year-olds. " •

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ITH SO MANY YOUNG PEOPLE

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the city, congressional interns and staff can enjoy a busy social life.

Hu and the other interns in Chu's office go out for dinner regularly, and when there's a chance to eat for free anywhere on · Capitol Hill, they take advantage.

When I met with Hu, they had recently sampled corn products at CornFest, an everit for congressional staffers and interns sponsored by the National Corn Growers Association.

And at nighttime, Hu and his roomate band with other Yalies to visit dubs and bars around Washington, which are filled with revelers working in advocacy groups, lobbying firms, policy research centers, the press, and every branch of government.

"It's amazing how much of the government is run by people under 35;' as Manners-Weber wrote.

This is especially true of Congress, where legislators depend heavily on their aides' advice. ccThere is no way members of Congress can make informed decisions on every vote:' Hu insists.

There are too many issues, committee meetings are scheduled for overlapping times, and most members return home .·· on weekends to talk to voters.

That leaves much of the work of legislating with senior staff, who are often THE NEw JouRNAL •

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Ned Waller left Capitol Hill disenchanted after spending the summer there tn 2006.

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relatively young. "If you're committed to what you do, you can move up the ladder pretty fast:' Ellison explains.

ED WALLER '09 INTERNED on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2006.

His time there left him with little desire to return. Waller now lives in the capital and works for IBM. I've met him for lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl, a Washington landmark and guidebook destination. Ben's is noisy and crowded on a Saturday afternoon. There isn't room to stand on the restaurant's checkered floor and all of the bright red booths are occupied. Large grills behind the counter are covered with roasting hot dogs.

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Ben's is about twelve blocks away from the part of the city dominated by federal office buildings, and the atmosphere is different. A crowd of tourists and locals with their families has replaced the mix of government officials, political operatives, and wonky-looking economists that flood lunch spots downtown during the week.

Waller contrasts the distribution of ages in Congress with the corporate· world. "We have a range of ages in the office, riot a gaggle of 17-year-olds:' "The Hill is very young, very personality-driven, very partisan;' · he adds. The policy research congressional aides do can be fascinating, he admits, but "even when you are way down on the totem pole, as I was as an intern, you can sense the desire for power and (federal) money that many on the Hill have:' As we eat, Waller points out the black-and-white photographs decorating the walls, which show Ben, the restaurant's owner, with a number of civil rights leaders. Ben's, one of the few establishments to survive the race riots 16

that devastated this neighborhood in 1968, is a local symbol of reconciliation. are everywhere in Politics Washington, even in this back room of Ben's, but it's different on Capitol Hill. As Waller puts it, "The Hill has· a crassness . t 0 1't))

Waller's colleagues there loved to talk about elections, which frustrated him. "I take great pride in being well-informed and I like knowing what's going on, but I don't feel the need to discuss a Montana primary race, being a D.C. resident and a Louisiana native. That's the kind of thing the Hill does;' he says. To Waller, Congress is as much about playing an intricate and high-stakes game as it is about creating a more perfect union.

LLISON SEES IT DIFFERENTLY. Even a .veu-designed bill won't become law unless enough legislators vote for it, so it matters who and what has the support of the public and of key interest groups.

"Politics and policy can't be separated.

You need both to get anything done;' he says.

Most congressional .offices have two components, he explains. Part of the staff focuses on legislative issues researching problems in society and designing laws to address them. But another part of the staff is dedicated to communicationstalking to constituents, representatives of interest groups, and other lawmakers.

The intersection of politics and policy makes Congress intriguing for Ellisonand it's why he wanted to work in the Majority Whip's office. Clyburn has a third group of staffers, the floor team, who are responsible for counting votes and making sure that bills the speaker brings before the House have enough support to pass. They have an important responsibility in the chamber, and . Ellison hopes to work with them in the future.

Congress is not for everyone, Ellison concedes. "There are some people who had some connection to an office and got the internship, and this may be a good way for them to decide that politics is not what they want to do;' he says.

Ellison, however, hopes to continue working here as long as the opportunity lasts. He will matriculate at Georgetown Law School in the fall of 2011 and take •

night classes there while continuing to work on Capitol Hill during the day. Hopefully he will have a position with more flexible hours by that time.

Currently, Ellison works late, taking messages for the chief of staff, drafting emails to Democratic members of the House, or supervising the office's interns.

Every Thursday morning he helps set up the whip's weekly breakfast for House Democrats. Clyburn's office also provides dinner for the caucus whenever the chamber holds an evening vote. The office orders take-out, and Ellison and his coworkers bring the food on carts up to a conference room where lawmakers can help themselves.

For Ellison, even these small tasks are rewarding. "Everything we're doing has an impact on a huge number of people if we're doing our job right;' he says .

"If we get the votes for something we support, then people's lives ·improve. If we don't get the votes, people's lives don't .Improve. ))

IPPING A GIN AND TONIC in the Hawk and Dove, a Capitol Hill bar that serves congressional staffers of all stripes, Hu recalls the 2000 presidential election. On Election Night that year, his homework was to watch the news and color each state on a map of the United States red or blue as the newscasters announced results in favor of then Governor George Bush or then-Vice President AI Gore.

Hu's relationship to politics in high school, however, was . "kind of like cheering for a sports team, an undying faith in the Democrats or liberalism:' None of his friends were interested in politics or read the news regularly. Hu began to develop his political views seriously only when he joined the Yale Political Union. He became interested in social justice, an issue for which Chu has a record as a firm advocate.

Now, Hu has a place at the source of decisions on social justice but his experience working on Capitol Hill has made him less idealistic. "It's made me appreciate the complexity of the political process a lot more;' he explains. 'Ihings are no longer so black and white, or red and blue, as the case may be.

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disappointed with President Obama for not insisting on a governmentoperated health insurance option and for continuing much of the previous administration's policy toward terrorism.

But Hu's experience this summer has made him feel that the president is less to blame than Congress, where it takes a lot of e-mails, phone calls, and meetings to move anything through the tangled network of legislators and their aides.

It takes optimism. "I refuse to believe the world we live in now is as good as it's going to get;' Hu says.

For people like him, work on the Hill can be frustrating, but it is never futile.

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Ehre.J?:freund, a junior in Davenport ' College, is a managing editor ofTNJ.

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R. IKE WILSON IS A 21-YEAR-

old student at Yale University in New Haven, CT. He's currently working as a teacher at a summer program called Ulysses S. Grant.

We call it U.S. Grant for short. Ike is teaching a class on the first-person narrative in which I am one of his students.

At first I thought his class was BORING. But as time passed it started to become 18

kind of fun. proximately 5' 11" and is a super skinny Mr. Wilson has curly brown hair that . dude. Ike has ears that look like quescomes to an Elvis Presley-looking point tion marks and quite a few bags under at the top. He has an interesting face his eyes. These bags are so big that you with bushy eyebrows, squinty eyes, a could go on a week-long shopping spree pointy nose and an odd-shaped mouth. with Oprah and still have room under Overall, he has a super small head. his eyes to store your stuff. Ike is as busy ..

Ike can usually be seen wearing a as a bee, so he is often very sleepy. pair of old-man loafers, straight-legged Mr. Wilson loves basketball. When pants and a solid colored shirt. He's ap- he was a kid, he was obsessed with Ner£ THE NEw JouRNAL

He used to think he<i be the new-age Jordan. But then he came to his senses. He realized that his dream team "The Secret" would never be and that the NBA wouldn't be calling. So after years of perfecting his made-up moves, Ike called it quits. It was time for him to come back to the real world. Now, Ike only plays for fun. At lunch he can be seen playing taps with Mercedes, another one of his students. People say that she sleeps a lot, but if you put a basketball in front of her, she becomes wide-eyed and bushytailed. But enough about her.

Mr. Wilson is a sneaker freak. When asked how many pairs of sneakers he has, he obnoxiously replied, "I have like somewhere around 40 pairs. Sometimes I Nike ID them, but most of the time I buy them as is:¡ Ike is obsessed with his name. On his Nike ID'd sneakers the "N" is in one color and the "IKE" is in another. If you haven't noticed, he highlights the part of Nike that is his name. If you take the "N" off of "Nike': what do you get? IKE! Ike Wilson, that's his name, and playing basketball is his game.

But as of right now, Ike isn't playing ball He's playing with his black and yellow pen. It sort of looks like a bumblebee. Now he's looking at some black and white "Thank You" cards that sit on a very manly hot pink file organizer thingy. Now Ike seals the envelope with a lick of his tongue. Ewwwww! Get some tape, man.

Mr. Wilson is a rising senior at Yale University. I don't think he has a girlfriend. He's never texting and doesn't have any pictures in his wallet. He also mopes around all day like he doesn't have a care in the world. Ladies, there's a single man on the loose. For all you cougars out there, Mr. Wilson is lonely.

Mr. Wilson has an odd-looking piece of hair that sticks off the top of his head.

It looks like this Greaser needs a haircut! Maybe Mr. Tern us can hook him up with a fade and a fresh edge.

Mr. Wilson loves to hit the books.

He hasn't gotten more than five hours of sleep in eight years. No wonder he's always so grumpy. Or at least that's what he says about how many hours of sleep he gets.

Ike loves to visit his family. Sadly, his SEPTEMBER 2010

mother and brother were in a car accident recently. The car flipped over four times! Luckily no one was hurt.

Ike is from California. He lives in San Francisco. Yeah, I was disappointed too.

I thought he lived in Hollywood. But what man in his right mind would leave HOLLYWOOD and com e here, all the way across the country to New Haven, Connecticut?!

Mr. Wilson has his own style. Sometimes his skinnies have a few wrinkles.

That just makes me wonder what his room looks like. I'm going to just take a guess.

No man who gets just under five hours of sleep has time to keep a neat, clean room. I get nine hours of sleep and my room's still a m ess.

According to Ike, his childhood Nerf goal is on the back of his dormitory door facing the big common room. He says his dorm consists mostly of a desk and bed, so where does he store his clothes?

There has to be someplace he stores all those old-man loafers. And what about

dude. Although he is often tired, he gets his work done. Ike is dedicated and that is why he's # 1. That is why I like IKE. My name is Tatiana Gay and I approve t his message.

I dont think he has a TN] girlfriend. Hes never Tatiana Gay is an eighth grader at texting and doesn't have Conte W'est Hills School in New Haven. any pictures in his wallet. those pants? He has to have at least five pairs: two blue, two khaki and a black.

Then there are all those shirts. On July 13th, Ike was wearing a blue, grey, and white striped polo with his blue skinnylegged jeans. And last but not least, he was wearing his navy blue old-man loafers. Now, that outfit deserves to be on the cover of a magazine. NOT! Today, Ike edits more work. He could really use a break. Maybe while he's on that break he could brush up on those handwriting skills. I mean, he writes like my doctor in that yet-to-be famous chicken scratch.

But there are some things that Ike is good at. like basketball and teaching. If he puts those skills together he could be a basketball coach. It's a very doable job.

My Social Studies teacher, Mr. Civ, does it and he works full time. Coaching basketball is just his side hustle.

On a regular basis, Ike is a pretty cool 19

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Over the past three-hundred years, Yale has built, removed, spliced, and assumed buildings of every style. Here, we observe and collect a history of ornament. rough its idiosyncrasies, the detail of campus architecture imbues the environment with history and craftsmanship. It is up to those . who walk through campus to notice the many charming gems, secrets, and oddities that enrich and enliven the University.

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New Haven juvenile Detention Center •

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FEW BLOCKS WEST of Yale University, on a gritty stretch of Whalley Avenue where disheveled old men gather in the morning with · paper bags full of scotch, sits a squat tan building where children were beaten, routinely, as recently as a decade and a half ago in what was then one of three abysmal juvenile detention centers in Connecticut.

A few blocks west of Yale University, on a gritty stretch of Whalley Avenue where young men set up carts in the morning selling used cassettes and greasy hotdogs, sits a squat tan building

where children .are given the chance to play, to learn, and to start over, in what may now be the best juvenile detention center in the country.

What happened?

The answer lies partly in children charged with delinquency, assault, robbery, and sometimes nothing at all, who found someone to fight on their behalf. It lies partly in an obscure document from 1997: a consent decree, approved by a federal court to settle a 1993 class action lawsuit against the state's juvenile de tention centers. But mostly, the answer lies in a decade and a half of hard work car-

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ried out by a handful pf individuals who believed that Connecticut's most at-risk youth deserved more than solitary confinement and systemic abuse.

HE NEw HAVEN JuvENILE Detention Center is a holding ground.

Children are brought here on charges • of assault, sexual assault, robbery, or because they have broken probation. They are ordered to detention w_hile they wait for court dates, or for the state to figure out where to put them. But jqY;~nile detention is never a final destination, never ' the place for a sentence to be carried THE NEw JouRNAL

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out. The ·average. ti~e a . child ,spends in the Centet 'is• le'ss than two weeks. In the early 1990s, however, juvenile detention in Connecticut was closer to hell than to purgatory. . "We had conditions of confinement that no one was especially happy with;' says Bill Carbone, executive .director of the Court · Support Services Division (CSSD), the part· of the Connecticut Judicial Branch tasked . with managing juvenile detention: "In addition to overcrowding, we didnt feel we had the appropriate medical or mental health services or recreation services:' Detainees were forced to sleep in pairs on the floor of small, overcrowded cells. Medicine, surgery, and food were withheld from the children ..Tackling, hitting, and twisting the limbs of youth were all encouraged as disciplinary tactics. Connecticut's two other juvenile detention facilities are in Hartford and Bridgeport, two of the state's most dangerous cities during the 1990s. In all three Centers, the state swept its youngest troublemakers off the streets and, f():r lack of a better option, forced them into detention.

Joe Mirto has been.a J~venile Deten.,. tion Officer at the New Haven Center for twenty years. He is one of fifty-five JDOs, the direct care staff responsible for the wellbeing of the detainees on a minUteto-minute basis. Mirto is a small, pale man with a pointed nose and a slight paunch. He moves slowly and jokes easily, but sometimes, like when he talks about ~'back then:· he ·is somber. He remembers the days when ·the average daily population in the Center was over 40 children, though capacity was just 24 back then. Everything-doctors, beds, patience-was in short supply.

In 1993, conditions were so bad that then-director of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union Martha Stone filed a lawsuit against the state's three juvenile detention centers. "We had been notified by the public defender's office about overcrowding;' recalls Stone. "The places were in poor condition - there were not enough services, especially mental health services, for the children:' Stone's classaction lawsuit, Emily ] v "Weicker, was filed on behalf of eight specific children and, more broadly, .all the young people detained in New Haven, Bridgeport, and • •

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Hartford. The suit accused. the state Ju-. , · detention facilities must go through an dicial Department, the Department of involved, three-year process that meaChildren and Families (DCF), and the sures more than four hundred criteria, three city education department~ of 114 down to the types of screws used in winkinds of mistreatment and neglect of de- dow frames. Dual accreditation signals tained youth. · that the Connecticut centers are among In 1995, two years after Stone filed the ·most progressive in the nation, emEmily ], the suit was still stuck in the . phasizing detention as an opportunity courts when the Director of Detention not just to house children but to rehabiliServices, Tom White, decided to try to tate them. The New Haven Center scored move it along. White asked Stone and the above 99% on both accreditations, an federal court to settle the case in a con- unprecedented feat. sent decree, rather than continue the case The progress has been a direct result through a trial and a potentially lengthy of the original lawsuit filed by Martha appeals.process. In doing so, he acknowl- Stone. It is no surprise, then, that the aledged the merit of many of Stone's alle- legations Stone laid out in the "statement gations and agreed to work towards her of facts" portion of her lawsuit act as a proposed changes. "I felt that the condi~ · guide to the biggest changes that were tions in the centers were unacceptable;· needed, ·and made, in the New Haven White explained. "If we felt we wanted Center over the last decade and a half. to make dramatic changes to detention The difference, says current New Haven in the state, why fight the lawsuit when detention superintendent Jack Fitzgerwe could partner with the court and the ald, is night and day. But really, the difCCLU under the consent decree?" Do- ference is Fitzgerald. For it was he- a siling so, White explained, would be less ver-haired, professorish man who talks expensive in the long term and would just as frequently about feelings as about give the state .a court-ordered reason to· actions - who brought on the dawn . continue to improve conditions . .

"1993 Statement of Facts Description ofPJaintiffs: Michael is sleeping on the floor beof the overcrowding, locked in room with another child."

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The suit accused the state judicial Department, the Department o Children and Families (DCF), and the three city education departments o 114 kinds mistreatment and 0 neglect o detained youth.

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The 1997 consent decree and additional agreements negotiated in 2002 and 2005 have transformed the Connecticut juvenile detention centers from some of the worst in the nation to some of the best. Today, Connecticut is the only state nationwide whose public juvenile detention centers are accredited by both the American Correctional Association (ACA) and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC), the two standard-bearing organizations in the field. These accreditations are not nominal. To be accredited by ACA alone, •

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After four consecutive years of decline in the number of juveniles detained in Connecticut, the state's detention centers began to crowd again in 2010. Owing to Stone's lawsuit, the New Haven Center, at least, is better equipped to deal with the uptick. It has improved medical and mental health services, recreational options, education, and disciplinary tactics. But most obvious to the naked eye are the changes to the building itself.

Superintendent since 1999, Fitzgerald is a congenial man with small, piercing eyes behind round silver frames. He is tall, a commanding presence softened by tweed jackets, nubby sweaters, and a constant, vaguely Southern-sounding "ya know?" that punctuates his sentences. On first impression, and even second, he seems more like a librarian than a warden. Fitzgerald has perfected the air of a man charged with overseeing a highstress environment: relaxed but u nques•

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tionably firm. And at the core of his work is his conviction that he runs a detention center, not a prison. He seems to have a personal stake in the distinction.

The consent decree mandated better living conditions, and Fitzgerald obliged.

"The original plant was poorly designed for children;' he explains. "It was more like a prison than any prison we had built for adults:' The interior had minimal recreation space. Sparse, dark rooms tripled as classrooms, rec rooms and spaces for gro.up meetings. The building was devoid of any natural light. For twenty-four hours a day, children lived, worked and fought under a dull fluorescent glow.

"The rooms were dark, dank;' he says.

"The upkeep of the painting wasn't done:' In the cells, beds - of which there were usually too few - were steel platforms jutting out of the wall a few feet from a steel toilet. Children who didn't have a bed got a sleeping pad on the ·floor.

but the overall effect, Fitzgerald says, is a vast improvement. He is right. A room full of plastic furniture and no light can't be called inviting, but at least it does not feel like punishment. ·. . ,.

In the 1990s, . overcrowding compounded the already depressing conditions, making the Center unbearable.

Today, JDOs like Joe Mirto work one or two of three eight-hour shifts at the Center. When it was filled above capacity in the 1990s, Mirto remembers, Fitzgerald would need to staff twelve JDOs on each of the two daytime shifts and .six JDOs on the graveyard shift from midnight to eight in the morning :... in total, sfx more officers daily than. he now . needs.· Back then, Mirto recalls with a shake of his head, everyone was stretched thin.

Today, capacity in the facility is 42, but no more than twelve are generally there on a given day. Until 2005, children identified by DCF, Connecticut's child welfare agency, as members of Families He points to the paint With Service Needs (FWSN) were detained in the Center. "They didn't have to trim aro.und the hallways have done anything illegal;' says Joe Ezeand inside the classrooms: kiel, one of Fitzgerald's deputies. "FWS~ (pronounced fwiz-en) kids coul4 be runC(Maroon and Connecticut ning away from home, skipping school, Blue, the same colors that having sex too young - anything that made the parents nervous. The parents are inside public schools could ask DCI:' for help:' 1hroughout across the state. · It looks the 1990s, most of the children. in detention were designated as FWSN 14ds... ~y ·like the outside world." the time Martha Stone filed Emily],. the ' state had filled one of the more violent .

Perhaps because they no longer feel detention centers in the country beyond like jail cells, no one who works in the capacity with children who often hadn't Center calls them "cells" anymore. They actually broken the law. , are "individual bedrooms" on the "resi- · In 2005, Connecticut decriminalized .. , dential side" of the building. Now, each FWSN so that. in most cases, children . small room· has a bunk bed made from could no longer be placed into detensmooth, curved tan plastic that matches tion merely for worrying t~eir parents. a few other pieces of furniture in the The population at all three centers has room. The bed looks, if not quite like a _dropped dramatically as a result. bed, at least like a comfortable resting The biggest changes to th~ building place in a child's jungle gym. On each are the most recent. In September 2008, bunk is a thin mattress and the types of New Haven finished construction on two pillows, sheets, and blankets you would new classrooms, an administrative wing, find at an airport motel. There are no a weight room, two recreation rooms, a toilets in the renovated bedrooms. "You recreation office, and a gymnasium ;with shouldn't have to go to the bathroom high glass windows that fill the entire new wing with natural light. The extra in front of anyone else;' says Fitzgerald.

There is still little natural light on the space has given the Center more opresidential side - just a square foot of tions for how to keep children occupied glass close to the ceiling of each room throughout the day. "These changes im•

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pact the rest of the environment;' says Fitzgerald. "We build our programming so that kids can be in that area, exposed to the natural light as much as possible:' Fitzgerald speaks constantly about bringing light to the building, not just for the children, but for the staff who spend their days inside. One of the worst parts about working in the Center in the 1990s, he says, was that no matter which shift you worked in the winter - 12am to Sam, Sam to 4pm, or 4pm to 12am - it would still be dark on the way to work, dark all day inside the building, and dark again when the shift was over. "You could go entire weeks without seeing really any natural sunlight;' he explained.

"Can you imagine? And if the staff were so down because of this - how must the kids feel?"

Fitzgerald i$ good at his job and •the New Haven Center is one .of the best nationwide precisely because 'the superintendent makes it a point to imagine how the kids feel. Every other week, he has lunch alone with the children, using the time to ask what they would change about the Center. Often, Mirto says, Fitzgt;rald takes these suggestions.

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Before Emily J, remembers Joe Mirto, the Center's veteran JDO, medical care was almost nonexistent. Mirto talks often of the years when the job was done differently. "We had a med box that we kept in the control room:' he says. "It wasn't kept locked. A lot of kids come in here on controlled substances - lithium, Ritalin, l)epakote. The kids would line up outside the window and weo yell out for him: 'Jimmy, it's time for your lithium: We realized, if I'm a fifteen year old kid, I'm probably not too happy if that's being yelled out in front of everybody:' In conversation, Mirto is careful never to tell stories of specific children.

He makes oblique references: Imagine if you were fifteen... When you come into the Center with mental health issues. . . Prob• ably, -t he references are composites - the THE NEw JouRNAL

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common tendencies of boys and girls he has seen over almost twenty years in the Center. But in his plainspoken way, the habit seems respectful, as though the children who confide in him have a right not to have their vulnerabilities shared with the world.

Back then, medical care began and ended with that med box. About a third of the children were given no physical examination while in the Center. Doctors were only available a few days a week, so staff with no medical training performed the exams instead. According to Stone's federal complaint, children were admitted to the general population of detainees «with significant communicable diseases such as hepatitis, chicken pox, measles, and · staph infections, as •

no longer dispensed by the line staff, but by a licensed nurse. · Yale psychiatrists regularly examine those on psychotropic medication. Every child is given a physical, and children in need are taken to dentists. For some, this is the first checkup they've had in years. For others, it is their first check-up ever.

Medical care was one of the easier things to improve· in . the building, it seems. Carbone, who controls most of the New Haven Center's budget, was ((very insightful of the ·need" for better healthcare, says F:itzgerald, and the superintendent was thankful for this. "You can't do this on the cheap;' says Fitzgerald. "It's kids lives we're talking about:' •

"Emily has not received any counseling

a fifteen-year-old kid and I come home at night and see her on the couch ... you know... with a man. You can understand how that would make me feel:' Singl€.1 mothers aren't the worst of it.

A 2001 study published in the Review of Psychiatry . series found that over 90% of children in juvenile detention in America have experienced at least one traumatic incident. Often, this includes physical or sexual abuse, or domestic, community, or gang violence. It should be no surprise, then, that depression and suicidal thoughts are common among youth in detention. Yet before Emily], children with mental health needs were not counseled - they were reprimanded for acting out. «From what I understand, fifteen years ago, it was a largely punitive

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well as conditions such as ring worm, lice, and· scabies" because there was nowhere to quarantine them.

The consent decree brought major changes in the medical treatment given to children in the Center, according to Bill Carbone of the Judicial Branch. Doctors and nurses are now available around the clock in the medical suite, a small room that looks exactly like an elementary school nurse's office, complete with the requisite posters ("How to Prevent the Common Cold;'' '~bstinence lets you choose your future"). Medicine is SEPTEMBER 2010

or other mental health interventions.

She has gone to bed crying at night."

By the time a child reaches the New Haven Juvenile Detention Center, he or she has usually seen things that would drive most adults to therapy. Though detention isn't intended as a permanent residence, both Joe Mirto and Jack Fitzgerald understand that some kids don't want to go home. "Some kids are going home to things that are worse than what they have here:' says Mirto. "Mom may have five other kids. She might be 33, and I'm

system:' says Donna MacComber, Director of Social Problem Solving Training (SPST), a program that educates children at the New Haven Center about how to manage stressful situations. "There were very few therapeutic opportunities:' Today, an awareness of mental health and suicide prevention is behind everything the children do. WELCOME TO DETENTION reads a letter taped to the desk on the intake room where children are sent when they first arrive. It continues: The first thing you need to know is that you are safe. You are going to be fine. 'We are 25

. here to help you. Welcome. -jack Fitzgerald. ::;;,.. · ''We try to make the process as comfort·(, .. . ·:,·:' . able t~ possible for the child, to explain :~-:~:.-. every -rep;' he says. "It's not supposed to ~ ~- ? .:~ be p son:' Fitzgerald's own appearance • • echoes this. As he makes his way around the building, stopping to meet with children and go over paperwork with staff, he cl ps a white ceramic coffee mug with "MICI\:EY!" painted in bright red letters und 1 a picture of the grinning cartoon mou S"' It is difficult to feel scared of a gro n man toting Mickey Mouse. · . It is easier to be scared of other parts of the Center. Later in the welcome letter taped to the intake desk, the seventh thing a child needs to know is this: A staff person who is the same sex as you is going to do a strip search ofyou. No one is going to touch you. 1hey will have you go in the shower area and have you remove your clothes and observe you from several feet away. 1his is to make sure you have no injurT.es. The letter is calm, understanding, even comforting, but upsetting nonetheless. The same might be said of the Center itsel£ During intake, children are screened for t raumatic events that may have occurred in the past. They are asked about scho :.1l, family and friends, as well as about their history with alcohol, drugs, ' . · and other red flags. "We aren't just looking for how they answer the questions verbally;' says Ezekiel, Fitzgerald's deputy. "We pay attention to how they say it, if th ·'re forthcoming:' V\ hat they're looking for, among other th , gs, is how closely the child needs to be atched. In response to Stone's contention that the Center made no effort at suicide prevention, Fitzgerald installed a watc;:h system. Next to every residential room is a small, circular metal "hit pad:' When children are in their rooms, a JDO is responsible for "the pipe;' a data recorder that looks like a flashlight · with no bulb at the end. Every fifteen minutes, the JDO must walk the line of rooms, looking through the doors at each child and touching the pipe to each hit pad. The pipe's internal data recorder keeps a history of the times that the pipe made contact with each hit pad. At the end of each day, the information in. the pipe is downloaded onto a computer that · cha he hits, showing Fitzgerald that - his c. · -"es are being cared for. Children ,~l'l

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.who raise suspicion during their intake screening - through what they say, how they sit, whether they make eye contact - are checked every four minutes rather . . than every fifteen. And about once every two months, the Center has a child on "constant'' - acute suicide watch that requires a JDO to be within arm's length of the child 24 hours a day.

Staff note how seriously Fitzgerald takes what he refers to as the most pervasive suicide prevention plan in the country. ''Jac;:k will never take a kid off constant;' says Ezekiel. "He doesn't feel he is medically trained to judge mental health with such high stakes, and so he constant, even if the will keep a kid on . .

JDOs think the kid doesn't need it, until the child can be examined by a trained mental health professional:' '

What they~re looking or, among other things~ is how closely the child needs to be watched.

experiences and teach them how to best manage the two in a way that won't land them back in custody, or dead.

Even before the Center started running SPST and TARGET in response to · the consent decree, Mirto say~, he operated under the philosophy that the children in the New Haven Center needed to be taught how to articulate their darkest thoughts. If a child acts out, he says, he rarely chooses to "punish" the child. "I(i rather talk you down - teach you • how to calm down:' It is difficult to tell, in 2009, if Mirto really did have an awareness of mental health in the early 1990s, but the evidence is strong: of the more than fifty JDOs who work in New Haven, Mirto is the only one who has spent his career representing children in hearings when they act out in detention and face disciplinary measures, like solitary room time. Mirto insists on advocating for -. minimal punishment even for the children who are in trouble for disrespeCting Mirto himsel£ For this, he has earned the nickname "Crazy Joe": crazy, he laughs, because he is nearly impossible to anger.

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Fitzgerald defends this paranoia. ''A '"William has not been outside since kid doesn't have to say they have a plan to hurt themselves for me to put them on being incarcerated except for a one constant. If I feel he doesn't look right and a half hour furlough for a funeral and a preplacement visit." that's good enough for me:' The bottom line, h~ says, is this: "I am their guardian here. I am responsible not just to the Outside the Center, a basketball court court, but to their parents:' Because he sits waiting for good weather. If it has children of his own, Fitzgerald says, weren't for the fact that entering the he tries to give other parents' children Center's indoor gymnasium requires the same attention that he would want going through many locked doors that his kids to have if the situation were remust be opened by staff, recreation versed. here would feel like that in any middle Ezekiel is more blunt: "Kids harm school gym, complete with professional themselves;' he says. "If they're doubled looking floors and a hoop for half-court up, they might harm each other. This ball. The walls are covered with standard way, they know we're always watching blue gym mats for safe games of tag, and them:' the ceilings are high, giving a sense of The watch system is just a small part freedom to the place. The weight room adjacent to the gym looks like a small of what is now a facility-wide hyperawareness of mental health. The once- sports club: treadmill, bike, free weights, weight machines, and exercise balls fill idle afternoon hours have been filled with group counseling sessions and edu- the space. "The boys spend a lot of time here;' says Ezekiel. cation programs developed by psycholoIn the 1990s, recreation at the Cengists. These programs - Social Problem Solving Training (SPST) and Trauma ter, if it existed at all, consisted of cards · · Adaptive Recovery Group Education and outdoor basketball. Girls sat idly and Therapy (TARGET) - encourage while boys monopolized the court. On children to talk about their feelings and cold days, there was nowhere to move

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around, so everyone sat idly, stadng at a TV in a room that might have also housed English class earlier that day. Because school and group counseling only lasts from about Sam to 4pm, Fitzgerald now schedules structured recreation to fill the hours between counseling and bedtime at 9 or 1Opm. "We want you to be a kid here, too:' he says. "Recreation is an important part of being a kid. We try to create environments here where you can thrive, where it's not just basketball every day:' A typical monthly rec schedule rotates small groups around different sports and activities one might find at a summer camp: Knockout, Reading, Weight Room, Sorry, Checkers, Spelling Bee, Blob Tag, Crossword Puzzles, Wiffle Ball, Drawing, Obstacle Course. Shat.tered is the stereotypical scene of lifting barbells in a prison yard.

Around the Center, rec rooms are filled with art supplies, Ping Pong tables, Guitar Hero, and board games. One locked cabinet holds real African drums - "two grand each, at least:' says Ezekiel - that the Connecticut Ballet uses on Monday nights when they visit the Center to teach the kids about African music and dane~. The Open World Leadership Center ~nds trips to New Haven for visiting dignitaries. Last year, the Chief Justice of Liberia came to speak to the children, says Fitzgerald. "That's like Chief Justice Roberts coming to speak in your classroom, ya know?,

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ered with possible role models: Martin : couldn't flip t!teJ#,:and mushroom chairs Luther King Jr, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, , · ·: with WeigH.,ts. ~n ·the ' bo~om so the kids John F. Kennedy, Rodin. Evetywher.e, \ . : ~uldn~ttbro~ t~m:' says Olsen. "Then students are confronted with · people ·· we had long.foJding tables, .and the kids · .· . ·, would·. :. pull .the · 'Sc.rews , out and they meant to inspire them. .· -...

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· · ·o r a~adeinic ·ability. B'ecause the average -·,. . :-cbild .. i~~ in the ~pt~~ for less than two , · ...·~kS; -~le~<.>ns· . stari .• .. and end in a day:' This classroom didn't exist until Emily . ·says Ql~en~ ~~at .w,ay,: kids can pick up J "Before, we were tight:' says Fitzger.,. ·. .~here .;Yfe .: aie ,, wi~q}lf feeling they've ald. "Your learning space was a in:ul~ · .rQis~d' a l>}lnc1h pr(or; T~aching at the tipurpose room; you might have · been . .Cen~t ·requir~s fleighUity.. "If a child in those rooms for sixteen hours ·a day.: ,i doesr\t ~jte ~ell~ :we use .verbal cues:· • doing recreation. It was not a school .en~ . sbe s~ys.- "We · do'"tliffere!ltforms of comvironment:' For kids with learning dis- ··.. .muQicat:io.rt, so·tpe·kid-. ,who's a struggling abilities, spending rec time in a room ' .rea~er . C3.9· still .'succeed:' Olsen doesn't formal. testing~ .. .~hoo~ing instead to used for education made it difJicult to ~se . .. . differentiate between the two. "Now,.you. · loo~ oyer ~er stu9ents' work to make have a classroom that looks like a ·real . ~ure they h~Ye··urid,~rs~ood their lessons. classroom. It's normal. It promotes the ·"A lot _ of ~ese. ldcl~·~have a 'tough time mindset that what they're doing her.e is with forma!•·~estiQg.:'The. word test brings . real school:' U:P a lot.of _anXiety:' ,~. · Until 2000, "real school" would ·have Fitzgerald takes sp~~ial pride in the been a stretch of a description. The Ne\Y _edu<;ati~n~ ~nvir:pm~~nt- he has created.

Haven Board of Education was responsi·, · ~1 went to ~y daughter's s~hool when we . ble for the education of detainees. Today, · · not been more than two hours a day. _ d_esjgning ~e;· new classrooms,, he ' .... " .. . on many occasions it consisted the teachers are staff of Area Coopera.:. . ·-~· .s,y.s.. · See.· the celor. of ·the. tile on these of watching nature films, he has not tive Educational Services, a private coin- . ·.. tl.oors? -- Bri~t r,ello"'. .:...- it's so warm, been attending school." pany that specializes in aUernative ~d , , so haP.PY:or He· poirits to the paint trim special-needs education. Darrylle Olsen,' · ~uad tlle_ hall\Vays ~d,inside the class.. ' .

Every day, Mrs. Michaud begins Eng- the current math teacher, remembers ·· t:.Ooms: ~"Maioon and"Connecticut Blue, lish class in the Center with the same that the public school teachers who pre-··' . the same ·C9lOrS< that·, a}'e inside public greeting: "Good morning my shining ceded her at the Center assigned mostly .-· sch,ools across the· state. It looks like the stars:' The classrooms at the Center look "busywork out of old textbooks." Chil- ·.~":-outside world:. We w~ them to feel like like a regular middle school, and the dren were grouped by age or by school,.. .. their life -here is-aS' nor.l nal-as possible." . · sp~aks, as he so ofstudents are treated, to the best of ev- grade: "a nightmare:' says Olsen~ because. :..~ .~en ._ . the children feel eryone's ability, like they would be "on kids were coming from vastly different · 'teJ{does, a~Ut· the outside:' In Michaud's room, rows of backgrounds. In order to focus the most- _· cop1fortable iQ detention, he makes dear individual desks - grey metal tabletops ly-special-needs youth enough ~o be able ·· .: ~~t even-the guilty'on~ :':._the ones who and maroon chairs bolted together - face to actually teach something, Olsen ·real- .- .have ro~be~~ rap~, _or $hot at somea SmartBoard that doubles as a slide pro- ized early on the importance of having and back 'in.detention on a jector. In the far corner, her desk is piled the right surroundings. .Violation of paiol~ .... aren't monsters or high with files, papers, and framed pho"First we had big, ugly ron nd tables burdens inside· his walls. '!hey are sons tographs of her family. The walls are cov- with sand in the bottom so the kids.. and daughters ..- . Inside, 4etention, ironi.. . .

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"Rau1on has witnessed staff hurting children by bending their arms and legs until they cry, slamming them on the floor, and dragging them across the rug."

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Fitzgerald knows that most kids come to the Center fearful. "Their only glimpses of detention come from shows like Lockup Raw;· he says. In the 1990s, those fea.t;'s would have been justified. Perhaps nowhere are the changes in the New Haven Center as noticeable as in the use of discipline. Until Emily ] brought the practices to the attention of the courts, • the line staff in the Center were beating children as young as eight years old on a regular basis. "We used to restrain kids using very barbaric and crude methods;' recalls Joe Mirto. Training was purely physical: karate, jujitsu, submission holds. Mirto remembers working an overnight shift and being taken by the local FBI into a back classroom around three in the morning. "They taught us how to kick, punch, how to hit with the heel of our hand:' At the time, it was standard operating procedure. "We used to use something called an arm bar a lot.

That's when ·you lift a child's arm behind his back, whichever arm you want, as far as you can go without breaking it:' Room confinement was the other major form of discipline before Emily J "If a kid swore at you in 1991, he or she was probably given 'room time;" says Mirto. «We'd use a method of punish-: ment called stacking. If you were a kid, and you told me to go reproduce myself, you got 24 hours of room confinement. If you told me to fuck off when I gave you room time, you'd get another 24 hours stacked on the first 24 for basically the same offense:' Staff in the 1990s resorted to violence and room time because they were not trained on how to treat the children as anything but criminals. "If the only thing a carpenter had was a hammer and nail;' explains Karl Alston, now deputy director of juvenile residential services for CSSD, «that's all he would use. But if he had a full toolbag- his router, his screwdriver, the hammer and nail, a saw - he'd •

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be more productive. That's how we look at our staff. The more we give them tools to use, the better our environments will ,, b e.

Both Mirto and Fitzgerald are quick to point out that the Center how strives to minimize room time and physical submission. When Fitzgerald came to the facility as superintendent in 1999, he started by retraining the staff. "In reality, the JDOs are closer to your parent than your prison guard;' he says. "They needed to start thinking that way, in order for the kids to start thinking that waY:' · Training is no longer on how to hit a child effectively. It was imperative· to Fitzgerald that staff be tra~ned "not toreact, but to interact. We spent more time on interaction, communication, avoiding conflict. When they learned those concepts, it transformed the facility:' The job of a juvenile detention officer can lend itself to power trips, and some still have their moments, says Mirto.

"Some staff think they're officers. We're not really officers. I'm a caretaker. I take care of your ld.ds:' Most of the boys who come through the Center have no positive male figure in their lives. It is paramount to Mirto, he says, that he act as a role model, not another disappointment. He is known throughout the Center for his hesitance to lay a }:land on a child. "Regardless of what your child may have done - murder, rape, not going to school - I take care of your child. Do I get mad? Of course I do. Do I abuse them? No waY:' •

S FITZGERALD POINTS out often, the New Haven Center's dual accreditation by the American Correctional Association and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care place it among the best in the nation. In his office, the certificates from the first time New Haven was accredited in 2003 hang behind his desk, so that guests who sit and face him cannot help but notice.

His voice swells with pride when he talks about working on that first accreditation. "When I was preparing for ACA, I called fifty facilities in the country that had been through the process to really learn how it was done and what we had to do:' Like many of those facilities, New Haven was motivated by a court order •

to make changes to the facility. But unlike most, the Center, under Fitzgerald's leadership, decided to try for regular reaccreditation every three years. "We want to continually test ourselves against the national waters, to ensure that we are continually at the forefront of juvenile detention:' The accrediting organizations look for excellence in all of the areas where the Emily ] consent decree ordered change: living conditions, medical and mental health care, recreation, education, discipline. And by those organizations' standards, thanks to the hard work of people like Jack Fitzgerald and to the empathy of people like Joe Mirto, the New Haven Center is nearly perfect.

But what does it mean to be the perfect juvenile detention center? What does it mean to be the best of all the futures that parents fear for theit children: the best of all the places no one wants to end up?

Group therapy and real classrooms and African drums can go a long way towards making a child forget that the rest of the world sees him as a criminal.

But when beds made of plastic and not metal are a victory, when strip searches are routine and when privacy is an unrealistic wish - through no fault of Fitzgerald's, or Mirto's, or maybe anyone's at all - the shadow of being in an institution will always preclude some light from shining through.

Nonetheless, it is important work to try to give children their youth back. And the detainees that Fitzgerald and Mirto care for are just that: children. They are young, and have been taught badly by the people and places where they grew up. Thanks to Emily ], the staff in the New Haven Center understand that it is someone's duty not only to teach these children but to teach them well. You are worth teaching, Fitzgerald seems to say. '·

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HIS SUMMER, a 75-million year old dinosaur skeleton was baptized the mojoceratops by Yale paleontologist Nicholas Longrich.

If one Yalie made his mark this way, I thought, surely another can as well.

A NEW GENUS OR SPECIES-GROUP NAME SHOULD BE SHORT AND EUPHONIOUS IN LATIN. I, Zara Kessler have decided to make a name for myself. To go down in history. To be eternally remembered.

You'll find this nineteen-year-old in your textbooks one day. You'll search for this college sophomore in the depths of the jungle. You'll watch me swim by at the bottom of the sea, study me under your microscopes.· One day you'll write E. zarae in your notebooks. You'll mark A. kessleri on your tree of life.

IN FORMING A SPECIES-GROUP NAME FROM THE NAME OF A WOMAN, A FINAL -A OR-E MAY BE ELIDED FOR EUPHONY, E.G., JOSEPHINEAE OR JOSEPHINAE (JOSEPHINE).

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I have set out to have a species named after me, to be memorialized by a zoological specimen. In the last two hundred years, about 1.8 million species have been named; and yet, still millions more await classification. Most such creatures will be stuck with banal titles, Latin words describing where they were found or what they look like.

Some fortunate creatures will instead be named after people. And soon, one particularly lucky young species will bear my name. .

The honor of becoming a zoological namesake has been bestowed upon

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all types of living individuals, even laboratory-fearing laypeople like myself.

J email Dr. Eric Sargis, Yale Professor of Anthropology and curator at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, to inquire about the ro·u te to Linnaean permanence. He responds with a single sentence: "People name species after distinguished colleagues (see etymology for Dryomomys szalayi in-attached), not themselves:' •

IN FORMING A ZOOLOGICAL NAME FROM A COMPOUND PERSONAL NAME, A ZOOLOGIST SHOULD CONSIDER USING ONLY ONE OF THE COMPONENTS, GIVING PREFERENCE TO THE BETTER '

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Since 2005, Wheeler has helped christen .beetles or George Bush (Agathidium · bushi), Darth Vader (Agathidium vaderi), and Stephen Colbert (Agaporomorphus colberti).

parasitic tapeworm Acanthobothrium zimmeri (the genus name is typically set, leaving only the species name up for grabs). "It's really nice;' says Zimmer. "It gives me a surprisingly warm feeling to know that there's a tapeworm out there that's got my name:' Zimmer's Linnaean legacy A. zimmeris name was officially published earlier this year was the gift of Carr!e Fyler, a student who was inspired to become a parasitologist by Zimmer's book Parasite Rex. When she set about the detailed and highlyformal process of naming shark parasites a few years later, Fyler figured shea return the favor to Zimmer.

Ziiruner doesn't take his taxonomical fame for granted: "It's neat to know that you're in the books somewhere, even if it's a parasitology textbook or something:' As for my own entrance into the books, though, Zimmer offers minimal assistance. He does admit that even Linnaeus, the patriarch of taxonomy, had some fun with his names: ''Apparently, when he would describe a really noxious weed he would sometimes name it after his enemies:' Zimmer also narrows my competition when he reveals that, as far he knows, egomaniacal taxonomists are not allowed to name species after themselves. I'm relieved by the his confession that he would have trouble identifying A. zimmeri from among a lineup of tapeworms.

Zimmer also has to cope with every seasoned namesake's fear of, dare I say it, extinction. If A. zimmeri were to die out, Zimmer admits, "You know I would be )) very sad .

Despite Zimmer's wisdom, he's unable to lead me far on my quest. .

His tapeworm was a gift, and thus he has little counseJ to impart on how to '

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KNOWN, E.G. BAKER! (BENTHUNE BAKER), GUERIN! (GUERIN MENIVILLE) I may not be a "distinguished colleague" but I'm pretty sure this campus holds a couple of the sort. Unwi11ing to give up my quest, I set out to find someone who has already achieved taxonomic recognition.

Enter Carl Zimmer, Yale lecturer, famed science writer, and namesake of

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on the phone, I finally pop the question to Wheeler: Let's just say I wanted to name a species after myself. How would I do it?

"Do you have a checkbook handy?" he laughs. I'm on board, reaching into my pocket. Sure I'll pay twenty, even fifty, dollars for immortality. Sign me up.

I'll give up Starbucks for a few weeks.

Welcome to the world young T. zarae.

"You know it's funny, I led a fundraising tour cruise to the Galapagos this spring. And one of the guests along on the yacht told rne and I haven't done it yet but I'm going to follow throughshe said she would gladly pay $5,000 to have a species named after her;' Wheeler explains. ·~nd I told her as soon as I found one elegant enough I'd be back:' Maybe I'll have to give up Starbucks for life .

Or maybe I'll just have to give up.

But Wheeler admits, though his price is high, he's not my only hope. Anyone who describes a species, follows the rules laid .. out by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, and publishes · his work in the appropriate place, can be a taxonomist. "So frankly the only gatekeeper is that individual. Someone might do it for a pint of good beer, I don't know, it's entirely up to them:' If only I could find that person, l(:l be happy to provide him with several pints.

Then again, marrying Wheeler might be a cheaper option. "I named one species after my wife and another one after my ex-wife!" he laughs. "So there's all kinds of possibility:• "So my best bet is to befriend someone who finds species often?"

"Yes, absolutely the best way to go!"

But Dean Wheeler, I want to plead, I was hoping you could be that friend. "Keep me in mind if you're naming any new species!" I make a last pathetic stab.

"Will do. Absolutely." Wheeler's reply seems less than sincere.

•

A biting midge. Credit: United States Department of Agricture .

acquire a species without penning a scientific tome.

•

IN FORMING A

SPECIES-GROUP NAME )

FROM YOUR OWN NAME YOU LL NEED A

FRIEND.

THAT

FRIEND SHOULD BE

A SKILLED IN THE RESEARCH OF TINY CREATURES, E.G. AN ENTOMOLOGIST OR "·

PARASITOLOGIST. ~~ '

I need-· ~ to make some friends. I summon all my charm and cunning, and I proceed. I must not solicit someone who's already achieved nomenclatural triumph but instead find someone who baptizes creatures himself. I try for Quentin Wheeler, Vice President and Dean at Arizona State University. And insect taxonomist extraordinaire.

Wheeler is famous for leading celebrities into the taxonomic world, much to the chagrin of his more straight-laced colleagues. His retort is that he works in an underfunded, unnoticed field: "Why not spin it in such a way so that it brings media attention to the whole effort?" Hence, since 2005, he's helped christen beetles for George Bush (Agathidium bushi), Darth .

Vader (Agathidium vaderi), and Stephen Colbert (Agaporomorphus colberti), among many others.

"President Bush phoned me up to thank me for the honor of having a · species named after him-that was a thrill-and actually followed up with a little handwritten note. And, I daresay•

SEPTEMBER 2010

these were slime-mold feeding beetles -so I like to say that this is probably the only time in the history of the Union that the word 'slime-mold' was penned in the Oval Office;' Wheeler proudly announces.

I don't see why Bush and Colbert, whose names will be memorialized regardless of their entrance into zoological taxonomy, need species when so many of us underdogs want to be remembered. I'm also resentful of Wheeler's nonchalant comment that he's got around four or six species named after him. He has stopped keeping track.

Zimmer also has to cope with every seasoned namesakes ear o > dare I say it> extinction . .l A. zimmeri were to die out> Zimmer admits> ccYou know I would be very sad. n He doesn't fail, though, to rub it in: "You know it's your little piece of immortality:' Yours if you can get it, Wheeler.

But as would any noble crusader, I lay aside my jealousy and frustration and concentrate on the task at hand: persuade this patronymic patriarch to put zarae in the books. After 15 minutes

•

IN FORMING A ZOOLOGICAL NAME FROM YOUR OWN PERSONAL NAME, YOU NEED SOME CASH.

A

FEW HUNDRED

THOUSAND DOLLARS WOULD BE HELPFUL, THOUGH YOU MAY BE ABLE TO GET BY WITH ONLY A COUPLE OF THOUSANDS.

31

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Perhaps trying to avoid becoming my taxonomic sponsor, Wheeler later emails me a set of hyperlinks, which usher me to my · next destination: organizations that formally sell species. ~ First, there's a stop in Germany, which boasts BIOPAT (Patrons for Biodiversity), a nonprofit group founded in 1999. "Name a frog or an orchid!" flashes across my computer screen as I ~rrive at the BIOPAT website. "Names are meaningless?' Not at all since a name identifies individuals:' it clarifies. "With a ~ingle donation of at least 2.600 Euro to BIOPAT e.V. you can eternalize a name of your choice by baptizing a newly discovered plant or animal species:' Despite this homepage, Dr. Jorn · Kohler, a zoologist at the National Hessian Museum, insists that BIOPAT isn't really selling anything: "It's a honor for support of nature conservation and biodiversity research via · a donation (acquiring funds for these fields is the major aim of BIOPAT):' But, as I browse the site's catalogue of species, it's crystal clear that for 2.600 Euro, the beetle, Penthoscarpha zarae, can be mine.

Upgrade to 3.500 Euro, and I can instead christen, Milichiella zarae, a fifteen to twenty million-year-old fly species. A · Google currency converter computes that the cheaper beetle will cost me $3,843. Thanks, but no thanks.

Hoping that Europeans attach a higher value to taxonomy than Americans do, I travel closer to home seeking a better deal. San Diego holds the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, with a Name-a-Species program and a website asserting, "Every year collections staff and researchers discover new species of marine creatures. The cost to name one of Scripps's newly discovered species ranges from $5,000 to $100,000:' I start to hope that with· a phone call to Greg Rouse, curator of the Benthic Invertebrate Collection at the Institution, something cheaper can be arranged for an enthusiastic Linneaus fan.

Not exactly. Rouse explains to me that when he finds a new species, if it seems suitable, he turns it over to. the development office: "What we normally want is something that looks pretty good, that we have a good photograph of:' If no

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A slime beetle (shown above) was named after President Bush by scientist Quentin Wheeler.

one purchases the species, Rouse doesn't and a lot of effort:' delay the publication of his scientific Apparently, finding an economical paper nor does he lower the price to means of achieving taxonomical increase demand (apparently he's not permanence also takes a lot time and in contact with the Scripps Economics effort, and I'm growing tired: Perhaps department). Instead, he names the sensing my impatience, Rouse explains species himself. Since the Scripps project that, in the past, people have come to began in 2008, only one $10,000 worm him, explaining their desire to name and three $5,000 species have been sold. a species and support the project-but Rouse doesn't see the pricing scheme as a without the requisite 5,000-plus dollars. problem. The problem, he gripes, is that He soothes them by telling them not he underwater invertebrates, "People to fret but instead to start saving. With are mainly attracted to vertebrates. It's millions of species to name, a worm will difficult to sell a worm:' When I press be waiting when you can cough up the . him to expound on the exorbitant cash.

But I've no patience for starting a pricing, hoping he'll offer me a discount for my valiant efforts, he only grows piggy bank. Wapting my species and perturbed. "It costs a lot of money for us wanting her now, I'm contemplating to name the species. It takes a lot of time · backtracking to bargain with Wheeler.

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With a little persuasion, surely I can get him down to a couple hundred dollars and ~ few pints of his favorite beer. But first there's one last store to visit. I log

"Name a og or an orchid!" ashes across my computerscreen as I arrive at the BIOPAT website. onto the aptly-titled Nameaspecies.com, the brainchild of 24-year-old Hunter Williams.

When the website loads, I immediately see her. A charming tancolored midge. For $500 she's mine. For $500, I can have Telmatogeton zarae, a two-winged fly from Iceland. She's not pretty, enchanting, or particularly exotic.

She also doesn't cost the fifty dollars I set out to spend. But I have four months until Chanukah. Just enough time to convince my parents that all I want for the holidays is to be memorialized by taxonomic offspring.

While completing a Master's Degree at Cambridge University, Williams became fascinated by the fact that his friend, a .p aleobiology PhD student, had the chance to name some species. But Williams never garnered a namesake for himself, he laments, because his pal soon switched fields. Williams realized that graduate students, always in need of a little extra cash, name many of the world's newest species and got the idea to launch a site to sell more affordable species names. "I thought- there was a real opportunity for a retail way for average people to be participating and supporting science;' Williams says.

Finally, someone has heard my wallet's • cnes.

"I wound up;' he continues, "only being able to find one scientist, a Norwegian entomologist:' The Norwegian handed over information about a handful of insects he needed to name in his next paper, and Williams agreed that he would give him a sizeable portion of the proceeds, which due to William's focus on accessibility and the species' lackluster natures, would be meager: "I didn't-think people were going to be willing to spend more than SEPTEMBER 2010

a few hundred dollars for a microbe or. a midge:' Nameaspecies.com launched in August 2008, to the delight of bargain species-shoppers like myself. .

But the fate of young T. . zarae is less delightful. Midway thrbugh our conversation, Williams admits that none of the initial species up for sale sold, perhaps due their lack of "sexiness:' Had I clicked Telmatogeton, I would have found that she's been removed from the website's inventory. In Jact, none of the website's species are up for sale any more.

The Norwegian scientist published his paper; the nameless flies were baptized.

Williams is now a strategy consultant in Shanghai, lamenting the pending extinction of his website: "It's a concept that is currently in mothballs:' Goodbye T. kesslerae. Good thing I hadn't ordered the personalized stationery yet.

So what, Mr. Williams, should a weary traveler with a college student's budget do about her aspirations for taxonomic immortality?

"Meet some grad students who are in the right kinds of fields and get to be ·· their girlfriends - that may be a pretty good waY:' '

A

NEW GENUS

NAME

OR SPECIES-GROUP

IS ALL BUT IMPOSSIBLE TO

ACQUIRE FOR ONESELF CHEAPLY.

I'm ready to log onto Facebook to scrutinize the profiles of graduate in paleobiology and students entomology. And then an email brings me within sight of the promised land, swarming with bugs and beetles. It's the messianic Hunter Williams, hailing from Shanghai. He wonders if I want to be put in contact with Iiis friend the Norwegian entomologist. "If you would like a species named after you and do not mind that it is a midge, he might be willing to oblige:' Yes please, pretty please, contact the Norwegian. I reply immediately.

After weeks of anxious waiting and a number of insistent reminders, Williams finally fulfi11s his promise.

Apologizing for his tardiness (he's been busy at his real job), Williams copies me on an email to the one-and -only Professor Saether, requesting that the Norwegian entomologist speak with me.

Microscopic bugs and parasites again fly through my daily thoughts. But pleading emails from Williams and from myself, remain unanswered by the Norwegian; perhaps Saether deems neither of us his "distinguished colleagues:' I've been on the road towards taxonomic permanence for over two months, and I don't feel any closer to the zoological Holy ·Grail than when I began. Late one November evening, I send Saether one last beseeching email, for closure more than anything else. Then I purge all memories of the Norwegian and his midges.

I wake up the next morning to find Saether's name in my e-mailbox and curse my rash actions of the previous night. What kind of crusader gives up on a quest? When did I lose my zoological zeal? My heart beats as I open up what just may be my acceptance letter into the world of taxonomy.

"I did not answer you previously since I was quite busy and I did not have anything to say except the whole business seems to have been a failure;' · Saether's message opens. I pray that the next sentence reads Nevertheless would •

•

you prefer to bestow your name on a midge from Iceland or would one from an island in the South Atlantic better suit your tastes?

It does not. Instead, the Norwegian entomologist launches into his own sad tale. A couple of years ago, he officially bid adieu to the world of science, and, in his retirement, lost his funding.

Post-retirement and still christening little bugs, Saether hesitantly entered the world of species selling as a way of amassing money for his work. But when no one wanted to buy his midges, he baptized them himself. Changing their names now would be an arduous process.

Saether makes no offers to name a species after me and, in fact, he seems to be contemplating withdraw! from commercial taxonomy all together.

When I close my laptop, there is only one word of his email that lingers in my rnind: retirement.

A

NEW

GENUS

OR

SPECIES-GROUP

NAME IS NOT ALL THAT IS OUT THERE.

To save the day, I turn to Bond. Jason 33

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Bond. He's a s~ienttst, he Jja.ou~S, spedes, ~· . tciion~inical community doesn't find and maybe, just m,ay.be, be's the OI;l~ )Vho~ll:· ...·me, .and the publications for which I name mine. I first enter· )1egotiations work, distinguished, famous, or wealthy with Bond, a biOlagist . ,at~East ,Caroli,na · ·enough, I'll find another means of University, · whi~e :~aiting _,. fur the. ·. immortality.

Norwegian to aU.s~er 'his· .email. .Before · · . I end up paying only. $18.95 for Wheeler presented -- Colbert with his ·· za.t:ae. I order her online, and beetle, Bon·d had gifted ·pim;an ~achnid ·:-: immediately' receive her Birth Certificate Bond baptized.~.A. · stephencolb~rti after: .a:·· .. hi PDF. form, to print out as many times spider named f0t; Neil Yo.ung ·provpkep . as I. desire.

Colbert to complain.' on ·national: ...TV .

"Let it be known that the star located that he wasn't'l;>eipg dg~tfully honored at ·RA 00:25:14.030 and Declination by the scientific ·. com~nity. ·I f ·Bo,n d · F-01~49:58.14 will hereby be known as T. heeded Colbert's· cries ·,f<>r tax.()nomic~ . W:rae:' the page proudly reads. renown; perhap-s ·he ,might al,~(> re~pond . . . . ' Months ago, a friend o{ mine had to mine. As long as. the ~ritt_en ,tcile of.... .s.qggested star .naming, open to any my taxonomical travels is ~b1e, ~c;>·. gar-ner ~;web user for an affordable price, as an him enough press>that is. :. "l'm . ~.lw~ys .· allu·r ing alternative to species hunting. sort of game .fO:r..a' ginuniFk . or ~wo if , ·Offend~d at the suggestion that I might it has the potential .for _.highlighting · ·. b~ . unsuccessful in my taxonomical the importance · of ·. biodiversit)i· ·· ~d quest;· · I banished it, cursing the taxonomic research ·'and .that . sQr~••.. of .individual's brazen attempt to distract thing;' he says. I£ I .ca~ publish ~)r quest ~ . no.ble crusader of Linnaeus. But with on a large enough 5c~e,- rp.y odds look a ·cpllection of failed mentors lying in good. . . ..,· ·: : · · .: . . . the ·dust and the slim wallet of a college I rush out and pt~ure my tale a .spQt. sttJ:dent, .christening a star emerged as in the next .issue ~·~ ·rbet Neiv Jourf14/._.· I . .tile.c mast brilliant plan. Literally. Of can already picture tgis' face whei:l he .. course,. just one name.came to mind: T. . cracks open the: magazine only to.-find. zarae.: Linnaeus would be so proud. that, lo and behol~i; ;.~~ spider has he'en , · , ·:: B()nd later circles back to tell me that christened T. kess~:·· I<excitedly e1l.1aiJ.·; he· t:inderstands my financial woes and . Bond to tell. him that soon all of.·Yale·.·' would be willing to compromise on a will be reading ef hii·spiders: Hop'~g . modest 'Contribution and a widely read to cement my chances for success; I .· article as payment for a species. But I mention that .I'll stilEshop my pieCe-·; to · don't need his creepy crawlers. I've gone -.

I some Manhattan pu.b llcatiorts and tha.t . cosmic. .

I'll also be willing to pay:.sdrne fee fc;}r iny T. zarae is not a parasite, a spider, or entrance into the an~~s..of:zoology. · .a·midge. Younameastar.com won't even But apparently, .c ampus publjcatiOI)s· .let me italicize her name. I can't locate can't compare to the Qplbert Sho~: · . niy celestial child in the night sky. But Bond's response·· doe$n't;.~ mention Ou:r · ·- sh~'s mine. Forever. previous plan to ·bart~r pul:m~ity for ·a .. ·· ··.. T. zarae doesn't live or breathe. You personalized spider...Instead· he assures . won't find her listed in your biology me that for $1 ;500 ( th.e ·price his If\$.. ,•textbook or buried in the depths of the spider went fpr.·: at· ·. an·_··:auction), an · jungle. Instead, she's high up in the night arachnid can be mine. _If ! prefer goods ..· . s~ a beacon of hope for lost travelers. to cash, I can ~~~o pur~bas~ a $3,000 . She_. shines above Sargis' New Haven Apple Dual Qua~- Core Machine for his • ab,ode, Saether's Norweigan lab, and lab: "Sometimes.with a little treativity it·· . .

Bend's North Carolina office.

T. zarae .

• can be easier to C()J11e up witfi~on;teth~ng ·· . ~~'t be squished under a shoe or served like a computet' ra~er "th~ ··Ca8h,". he mi a plate. ·-_.... '~-~. · And T. zarae can never go extinct. concludes the e:.fhail.

I like to thitik of myself -as. creative, . • · · but so far that .trait -has y~t · to spawn· · computers. I pql~ly explain .~o B~d that I don't have .fhe fi:nandal·resotirces · .Zara K~ssler is a junior in Ezra Stiles Colfor his games. · is enou.g~. If the · lege.

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Facsimile ofthe certificate memorializing Zara Kessler for all time, or until T. zaraes supernova.

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35

SEPTEMBER 2010 •

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I WILL BE a teacher when I grow up.

I taught this summer and it .was wonderful. There was Ryder, who's tiny, and writes with neat handwriting, and Jenna, who walks that fine line between popular and kind. There's Raheem, who, at eleven years old, is an adorable lump, and Jorge, who doesn't know how to be cool, who has the most earnest eyes and the most staggering optimism.

ERHAPS

•

without being asked to speak.

I adored the children I taught. I was stunned by the curve of their learning and the depths of their hearts. I thought, .daily; that I had the most wonderful job in the world, that 'I could do it forever.

But then ·came the nagging Yale Voice. The nagging Yale Voice that says, Kate, you need to run the school system.

You can teach for two years - Teach For America, obviously--- and then you can go to law school, and then you can be '

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to be on from the moment you walk in at eight thirty, thinking you've got half an hour unt'H the kids come and then realizing they're already arrived. You need to be on at lunch. You can't just corral and silence them, because you want them to talk. You want to smile enough but not too much and you want to be real, but not like a friend. You can't swear. You lose your first name .

You're trying to keep up with this flock of chatty h:uman hummingbirds, and your feet hurt. You wonder if they won't learn if you make jokes. You wonder if they won't learn if you're too serious.

You wonder if they won't respect you if you are too kind; you wonder if they'll hate you if you're stern. You can't go out at night. You've got to sleep. You get home hungry, and tired, wishing you had the ener~y to run, or to talk, but you are beyond exhausted. And in the morning, it all begins again. '

R MAYBE, · I'll

When you're a teacher, each day brings rollicking surprise and comforting consistency. You read sentences about cars made out of purple pizza sauce, about instruments of cow bones that a dinosaur plays. You get used to the student who raises her hand every time, and you get used to the student who wishes he were a fly on the wall so he could just, please, listen, 36

be a writer when I grow up. I think writing is a high form of magic. A writer gets to send pictures to your head, like telepathy.

A writer can conjure those slippery sliver-memories: she can bring you the wet-fresh sumrrier camp art room, the lemon-salt air of a laundry machine, the spice of your aunfs kitchen.

So I proudly' told a friend the other morning that I would bartend when I graduated from Yale.

I was as bold as Kerouac. I told the superintendent .... him I'd travel the country, hitting up This is the voice that puts the word. six states in one year, six new bars. I(l "just" before the word "teach;' the stand each evening pouring drinks and voice that asks if it's the "best use" of drinking in stories. ICl write by day, my education, the voice· that suggests observe by night. I'm not sure when I'd that I'd be bored by the daily grind of a sleep, or where. I would eat peanuts and pretzels for meals. I'd have bags beneath . · · seventh grade classroom.

But teaching is harder than Yale my eyes. My · hair would get curlier, exams. Teaching is the hardest job I've messier, and my clothes might fray. I felt ever done. You need to be on. You need brave just thinking about it.

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Fifteen minutes later, sitting in lecture, I started to fill out an application for Bain & Company a multi- national management consulting firm. I couldnt even wait until class ended. And ·while I ignored my professor's lecture on 19th Century Mexican immigration, I crossed the border between Dreams I. Have and Goals I Don't Quite Understand. Before I was even finished listing my previous employment history for Bain, . I had opened up an application for Boston · Consulting Group, too. I'd been getting emails about them for weeks it felt concrete and proactive to plug myself into the forms online. Something about them felt safe. . I could imagine the skyscraper I'd work in, as a consultant.

I could imagine the outfits I'd wear. I know people who do it. I know people who -love it. I figured that, in theory, I could love it, too. And it seemed so •

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Grade 3. I want it to be writing a novel . of one of the lauded institutions of about ahigh-up executive who meditates the East, where just forty years ago, at lunch in Central Park. smart meant rich and diverse meant But I'm still uncertain. Am I following Congregationalist; here at Yale, we my heart, · or am I· just postponing are cushioned by a legacy of prestige, adulthood merely playing with words, manuscripts, and ivy.

• Our collegt; lives are full of options. teaching stories to children?

-Instead of picking classes, we "shop:' We FEW WEEKS AGO, science journalist gettwoweekstohonedownourneurotic/ Marantz Heing, in her New lovely wish lists and spreadsheets from York · Times feature "What Is · it About twenty classes to eight, then eight to Twenty Somethings?"wrote that we young five. If, when the semester starts, there's folks are curly-queing our way past the one we dont like, we can .usually drop "lockstep march toward adulthood" it. Choices abound, and they don't stop that our parents may have expected. at academics. Be you a poet, politico, or Jobs are hardet: to find. We have broken prankster, a gamer or a goalie, an actor the go to school, get a job, get married or artist, there's a campus group to suit pipeline of the past. Blogs, radio shows, you. newspapers and magazines joined the We pick our suitemates. conversation. Everyone was talking We pick our suites. about our broken career ladders, our We pick our meeting times on Doodle uncertain futures, our supposed fancy- polls, and if we don't like them any more, free vision about growing up. Heing did we switch them with a last-minute text. not tell me whether or not I wanted to be We pick our dining halls- Commons? a teacher, or a writer, or a consultant. She Calhoun? Hall of Graduate Studies? did not tell me much that I didn't already Then, falafel balls or turkey burgers?

So, when we graduate, we want to· know. But Heing assured me that, in my' ' uncertainty, that I was normal. pick. We want control over which job For ·most of us at Yale, it's not that we get. We want it in just the right city, we're uninterested in getting a job. We with just the right boss and co-workers, are, in general, quite motivated, and just the right salary, just the right "fit:' pretty damn stressed about finding But career ladders are just that ladders; something to do after senior year. It's they start at the bottom and this isn't just that we're not ready for our Final something we're used to.

We're stressed because we're used to Answer. We're convinced we don't need the job just yet rather, we're looking . endless choices, and we don't want to settle for anything less than Just Right. ahead to the next few years.

But we're the exception. As soon For the most part, we don't have to. I've as Heing's article had come out in got time to find my Just Right. This is the New York Times Magazine, been an unfair freedom, and I know I deserve analyzed on Slate, and discussed on it no more than anyone else. But I will National Public Radio, · folks made the honor it, as best I can, by doing the work point that these were elite journalists that I love in this moment. I will try to and scholars talking about a very small help others, and I will recognize the pool of Americans. Center for American value of my opportunity.

Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias, I'll work with my options. I will for instance, wrote that the deluge of teach about writing, I will write about media coverage was myopic. He argued teaching, I will make purple pizzas and that ' Heing's argument applied only to orchestrate dinosaur bands. And I will, I graduates of selective universities that, hope, be happy. for the majority of Americans, getting a job to support oneself or one's family was enough, and that "finding oneself" while exploring a few career paths was just not an option.

Yglesias rightly nabs the unfair Kate Selker is a senior in Davenport privilege of Yalies. We're graduates College.

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And while I ignored my pro essors lecture on 19th century Mexican immJgration> I crossed th~ border between · Dreams I Have and Goals I Dont uite Understand.

But in my three years of college, I've dropped out of Intra -Economics and First-Order Logic. I think I'd be sad that I couldnt title the "incentives" section of a management case report "Good things!" and that there wouldnt be time to hear the 'highs and lows' of all my co-workers' days amidst the New York abustle. I think I'd get lost in imagining stories about my clientswondering whether or not the CEO of the Nature Conservancy we're working for has a favorite place in Central Park.

I think I might end up turning a page of OOO,OOO,OOO's into cute little centipede armies. It's not that I cant do serious work. It's just that, a lot of the time, I want my serious work to be correcting Tales of Centipede Armies, by Josh, SEPTEMBER 2010

TNJ

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Icing (noun): .. ic-ing [ahy-sing] . .

The act of administering a Smirnoff Ice to an unsuspecting bro, thereby forcing him to chug the entirety of the sugary malt beverage whilst down on one ~ee:

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Etymology: . .

In the olden days, attempting to buy Smirnoff Ice was a clear giveaway that you were either underage, or buying for someone who was. It has the satne alcohol content as light beer, only it tastes like a liquid fruit rollup But the demographic of Smirnoffice drinkers has been drastically altered·thanks to a guerill"' a drink. ' . ing ga tne gone viral. · ..

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The exact origins of Icing are unknown, but it is rumored to have emerged sometime last spring, first gaining tracti~n amongst fraternities in the South and growing into a nationwide phenomenon. The premise is simple: if a bro hands you a Smirnoff Ice, you must assume the kneeling position and down the bottle's contents before standing up again. But, if you happen to have an Ice on your person when a bro attempts· to Ice you, then you can counter with an ~'Ice block," forcing your attacker down on his knees to chug both . beverages. It's like an ongoing ga•ne of tag, only you're not "it" ... you're "Iced." ·

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Rejecting an Icing is a fraternal faux-paus - .a far cry from the days when drinking Smirnoff Ice was considered latne. But the phenomenon of Icing has spread beyond Greek walls, inflicting many an innocent and unsuspecting peer or colleague. By now, you may have even witnessed an Icing yourself or heard the term thrown around in casual conversation ("Yo, I got iced so bad"). Even hipsters aren't safe, as the trend has taken hold a•nong them, too. As one likely lax-er latnents on the blog, BroBible.com: "Hipsters have taken this shit over. Only the most epic. bro icings will ·(now) get the attention they deserve." So learn well, and learn fast, as we guarantee Icing will be coming soon to a social group near you.

Some of the more epic Icings are hard to beat, (e.g. Icing a runner who has just finished aSK). But there are still plenty of opportunities to get your Ice in the books. Some possible plans of attack: 1) Ice a tour guide 2) Ice your T.A. when you hand in your reading response 3) Dress in a black robe and Ice eager juniors 4) Tell freshmen they've been invited onto the set of "College Musical" and Ice them all!

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Some final tips: have good form while chugging your Ice - keep your back straight, knee sturdy, arm raised, never pause, never spill. Remember, dignity is key. ..

And remember: Please Ice Responsibly.

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