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Highs and Lows of Town and Gown
March
2001 -- Special Tercentennial Edition
Since even before Yale found its way to New Haven in 1716, the fates of
the town and the college have been intertwined. The 300-year relationship
has been marked by a mix of cooperation, mutual pride, mutual indifference,
occasional violence, and, increasingly, a recognition of interdependence.
Here are some of the highlights -- and lowlights -- of Yale-New
Haven relations.
HIGH
1647 -- Nine years after the New Haven Colony is founded, the local assembly
meets to "consider and reserve what lott they shall see meete and
most commodious for a college which they desire may bee sett up
so soone as their abilitie will reach therunto." The meeting is
the first recorded discussion of a college in New Haven, but it
will be another 54 years before the Collegiate School is established -- not in New Haven but Saybrook.
HIGH
1701 -- The Reverend James Pierpont, pastor of New Haven's First Church,
leads the efforts of Connecticut ministers to establish the Collegiate
School. Having purchased a set of books from the town of New Haven
that had been set aside for a college by the Reverend John Davenport
45 years earlier, he donates the books to the new college's library.
HIGH
1716 -- After an intense competition among factions representing Saybrook,
Hartford, and New Haven, the trustees choose New Haven as the new
and permanent home for the College, because of its central location
and because the town had made "the Most Liberal Donations" to its
support. One year later, the College holds its first Commencement
in the Elm City.
LOW
1753 -- President Thomas Clap begins holding separate Sunday worship
services for students in the College, instead of at First Church,
because he feels that First's minister, Joseph Noyes, is theologically
suspect (not to mention boring). The move alienates the Connecticut
clergy and also marks the beginning of the Yale undergraduate's
withdrawal from New Haven life.
HIGH
1779 -- A volunteer company of some 70 Yale students is hastily assembled
to defend New Haven when it is attacked by the British on July 4.
College President emeritus Naphtali Daggett, 72, is caught sniping
at British troops with a fowling piece and asked by his captors
if he will keep shooting at them if they let him go. "Nothing more
likely," he growls in response. Daggett is bayonetted and later
dies of his wounds.
LOW
1806 -- A full-scale riot, the first of many fought with fists, clubs,
and knives, breaks out between off-duty sailors and Yale students.
Townspeople refer to the leader of the Yale mob, Guy Richards, as
the "College bully." Soon thereafter, students turn the title into
an elected undergraduate position until it is outlawed by the faculty
in 1840.
LOW
1820 -- New Haven responds generously when Yale embarks on one of its first
fund drives, this one to raise money for the establishment of the
Divinity School. Donations from New Haven residents would also be
instrumental in the purchase of the Gibbs collection of minerals
in 1825 and the $100,000 general fund drive of 1832.
LOW
1841 -- In the first of many dangerous clashes with firefighters stationed
at High and Library Streets, Yale students attack the firehouse
and destroy equipment. A mob threatens to burn the College, and
military companies are called in to keep the peace.
LOW
1842 -- Angry at the participation of Yale students -- who were predominantly
conservative Whigs -- in local elections, New Haven politicians
push a law through the state legislature prohibiting students from
voting in places other than their hometowns. The law is repealed
two years later.
LOW
1854 -- Bricks and bullets fly after a confrontation between students
and townspeople at a New Haven theater. After the leader of the
town group is stabbed, the students retreat to the College. The
locals bring in two militia cannons and aim them at the College,
but are stopped by constables before they can fire.
LOW
1858 -- The Yale man's habit of carrying a weapon contributes to a fatal
clash. When a group of undergraduates passes the High Street firehouse,
harsh words are exchanged with a firefighter and a student shoots
him. The incident moves Yale to ban weapons -- and to contribute
$100 toward relocating the firehouse away from the campus.
HIGH
1865 -- Yale plays its first intercollegiate baseball game, against Wesleyan,
heralding the postwar rise of organized athletics. In addition to
providing years of entertainment for New Haven residents, sports
help to channel student aggression, lessening town-gown tensions.
LOW
1870 -- Farnam Hall is completed. The building is the first stage of the
gradual walling-off of the Old Campus from the city, a gesture that
sets the pattern for future courtyards and quadrangles. While these
spaces create a collegial intimacy, they are forever seen by the city
as forbidding and aloof.
HIGH
1880 -- President Noah Porter urges New Haven to develop East Rock and
the surrounding area as a park. Yale gives its "College Woods,"
which had been used to provide firewood for campus buildings, to
the city as part of the new park, which becomes a favorite of both
students and townspeople.
HIGH
1886 -- Dwight Hall is founded as the Yale University Christian Association.
Over the next hundred years, the organization becomes the center
for student volunteer efforts in the New Haven community ranging
from tutoring to help for the homeless.
LOW
1896 -- Alarmed by Yale's expansion and the loss of property from tax rolls,
the city attempts to tax the University's dormitories, dining halls,
and gymnasiums, arguing that they are not used for education. The
Connecticut Supreme Court sides with Yale, and the plan fails.
HIGH
1908 -- Leading New Haven citizen George Dudley Seymour campaigns for
better town-gown relations, persuading Yale to open the Peabody
Museum and the Art Gallery to the public on Sunday afternoons and
to make University rooms available for conventions. A year later,
the Yale Club of New Haven is formed to promote harmony.
HIGH
1916 -- Yale and New Haven celebrate two centuries together with a concert
on the Green and a pageant at the Yale Bowl, at which scenes from
the history of the College and city are performed.
LOW
1919 -- A period of wartime cooperation ends when returning local servicemen,
angry over perceived insults from Yale students, attack the Old Campus.
Finding the gates locked, they break hundreds of windows and move
on to theaters and restaurants, assaulting any students they can find.
HIGH
1923 -- John W. Sterling's enormous bequest to the University includes
an amount set aside to help pay the tuition of students from New
Haven. The program is later augmented by other scholarship funds
administered by the Yale Club of New Haven.
LOW
1929 -- As Yale greatly expands its campus with money from the Sterling
bequest, removing more property from the tax rolls, local resentment
of the University's tax-exempt status flares again.
LOW
1959 -- Two days after a student snowball fight on city streets gets
out of hand, resulting in arrests by New Haven police, students
pelt police officers with snowballs as the St. Patrick's Day parade
moves down Elm Street. The snowball riot attracts national media
attention, and local Irish leaders alledge that the students were
motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment.
HIGH
1970 -- Yale opens its campus to demonstrators who have descended on
the city to protest the murder trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale,
helping both the campus and the city get through the "May Day" events
without the violence that many had anticipated.
LOW
1971 -- Local 35 of the Federation of University Employees stages a 53-day
strike, the longest in Yale's history at that time. Union leaders
say they consider Yale's "social commitment to New Haven" to be
a key issue. Workers will strike again in 1974, 1977, 1984, and
1996.
LOW
1973 -- The New Haven Board of Aldermen rejects a Yale proposal to build
two new eight-story residential colleges at the corner of Whitney
and Grove Streets. Many objections to the colleges' design are cited,
but the main point of dispute is over taxation: The aldermen want
Yale to pay full property tax on the buildings.
HIGH
1978 -- As the result of lobbying from New Haven and Yale, the State
of Connecticut enacts a law that provides city governments with
payments in lieu of taxes to compensate cities partially for revenue
lost by the presence of large tax-exempt institutions. The new law
helps lessen the ongoing tension over property taxes.
HIGH
1994 -- In order to better coordinate its economic, political, and community-
relations efforts in New Haven, President Richard Levin establishes
the Office of New Haven Affairs under the direction of Secretary
Linda Koch Lorimer.
HIGH
1994 -- Yale establishes its Homebuyer Program, which provides $25,000
over ten years to University employees who buy houses in New Haven.
Seven years later, the program has helped more than 400 people become
homeowners, most of them in low- and middle-income areas of the
city.
HIGH
1998 -- Veteran developer Bruce Alexander
'65 is named to a newly created vice presidency for New Haven and
state affairs. Alexander is charged with encouraging economic development
in the city and improving Yale's commercial real estate on Chapel
Street and Broadway.
LOW
1999 -- Yale undergraduate Asit Gosar '00, running for New Haven alderman,
persuades a number of Yale freshmen to register to vote in their colleges
(which are in his district) instead of their Old Campus dormitories
(which aren't). Gosar wins a narrow victory in the primary, but when
news breaks of the questionable practice, he is forced to concede
to the incumbent, who had finished second.
HIGH
2000 -- Yale unveils a "framework
for campus planning," prepared in consultation with city officials,
that seeks to improve the interaction between campus and city. President
Levin calls the plan "a major sea change in the relationship between
Yale and the city."
HIGH
2001 -- When the University announced that it was investing $1 billion
in science and medicine, one often-voiced hope was that the new
research facilities would eventually serve as an engine of economic
development for New Haven. With more than a dozen new
biotech companies spun off from Yale research, that promise
has become reality.  |
