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Light & Verity
March
2002
University
and Unions Strive to End Acrimony
Once
again, it is time for Yale and union locals 34 and 35 to negotiate
a new contract. But alumni whose bright
college years included picket lines and meal reimbursement checks
should know that the University and the unions have vowed to do
things differently this time. At an event celebrating Martin Luther
King Jr.'s birthday, President Richard Levin said he wanted to build
a relationship with the union based on "day-to-day interaction rather
than periodic confrontation."
The
previous six-year contract with the unions, which represent Yale's
4,000 clerical, technical, service, and maintenance workers, expired
on January 20. But both parties agreed at that time to extend the
contract to March 1, during which time they were to participate
in "interest-based bargaining training," a process that focuses
on finding common goals of labor and management and working toward
"win-win" solutions rather than the traditional zero-sum game of
collective bargaining.
That
consultant, Restructuring
Associates, Inc., was brought in by the unions and the University
to interview labor and management personnel about Yale's situation,
and in January they released a report that described a "dysfunctional" environment. While the unions were criticized in the report for
defending underperforming workers, the brunt of criticism was aimed
at management. Workers described a demoralized workforce without
a voice in how they do their jobs. "We're treated like children,"
said one unnamed employee. "Is it any wonder that after a while
you begin to behave like a child?"
Yale
and the unions, responding to the report in a joint statement, described
it as "sobering" and "cause for great concern."
Among
the issues sure to come up in negotiations are the unionization
drives among graduate teaching assistants at Yale and workers at
Yale-New Haven Hospital. Locals 34 and 35 want Yale to adopt a policy
of "card-count neutrality" on these unionization efforts, which
means that the University and its management would not take a position
on unionization and that the union would be recognized if enough employees sign authorization cards. But the University says that
workers should decide the question in a secret-ballot election supervised
by the National Labor Relations Board.
The
University will be publishing updates on the negotiations at www.yale.edu/opa/labor.
For the unions' position, go to www.yaleunions.org/neg.
Talbott
Leaving to Head Brookings
Strobe
Talbott '68, the former deputy secretary of state in the Clinton
administration, who came to Yale
last summer to lead the new Center for the Study of Globalization,
is returning to Washington, D.C., to become the president of the
Brookings Institution. Talbott said he will stay at Yale until he
assumes the new post on September 1.
Talbott's decision to leave so soon after the launch of the interdisciplinary center was a surprise to many. Talbott says that he "certainly didn't plan to leave this early," but that the chance to run the prominent D.C. think tank "was such a unique opportunity for me that I could not turn it down." President Levin concurred, saying that the Brookings job was "an irresistible offer" for Talbott.
The Center for the Study of Globalization is intended to study the causes and effects of increased global interdependence. Still in temporary offices on Whitney Avenue, it is to be housed in the historic Davies Mansion, which is being renovated with funds from Corporation member Roland Betts '68. Betts House, as the mansion will be called, will also house the newly created World Fellows Program. Talbott's wife, Brooke Shearer, is currently serving as executive director of that program, but will also leave in September.
While
the Center is still in its infancy, its mission gained currency
after the September 11 attacks. In the Center's first major initiative,
Talbott and the center's publications director, Nayan Chanda, edited
a book on the international aftermath of the attacks featuring essays by several Yale faculty members. "Whatever I do in my remaining
career," said Talbott, "I'll always be uniquely proud of what Rick
Levin has given me a chance to do: start something from scratch."
New
Hat in Biotech Ring
The announcement
in January that Rib-X, a New Haven-based biotech startup designed
to exploit Yale discoveries in molecular biology and chemistry,
had secured $22 million in venture capital funding is one sign that
New Haven's biotechnology boom
is going strong.
"This is a landmark deal," says Matthew Rothman '00, a spokesman for EuclidSR Partners, the venture capital firm that arranged the financing. "It's the biggest deal of its kind in Connecticut history, and it was one of the largest in the country last year."
Despite the recession, health care companies attracted considerable interest from venture capitalists in 2001. Rib-X currently has only about a dozen employees in its offices and laboratories in Science Park, but it secured major funding, Rothman explained, because the technology it has licensed through Yale shows significant potential in the rapid development of new and custom-designed antibiotics.
The company,
which is in the process of expanding its staff and moving to larger
headquarters at 300 George Street, grew out of work published two
years ago in Science magazine by biochemists Thomas Steitz and Peter Moore. In a paper
other investigators hailed as a "milestone," the researchers provided
a highly detailed structure of a key component of the ribosome,
the site in the cell where genetic information is used to manufacture
the proteins required for life. The work was quickly seen as science
with commercial possibilities, and the two researchers founded Rib-X.
"The
ribosome is a major target for antibiotics, and one of the major
problems we're beginning to encounter is antibiotic resistance,"
says Steitz, a Sterling Professor
of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. "Unfortunately, developing
new antibiotics has often been a matter of shooting in the dark."
The ability to look for vulnerable sites on the ribosome, coupled with drug design software invented by Yale chemist and Rib-X cofounder William Jorgensen, should give the fledgling company the tools to eliminate much of the time-consuming, trial-and-error aspects of drug development.
Land
Flap Leads To a Donation
Yale
investment officer David Swensen is by now famous for his successful
strategy of investing more than half of the University's endowment
funds in so-called alternative investments such as venture capital,
gas, oil, timber, and real estate. The strategy has drawn favorable
reviews from portfolio managers, but in late January it attracted
attention of a very different sort in Colorado when yaleinsider.org
-- a Web site maintained by the Federation of Hospital and University
Employees -- revealed that Yale was a partial owner in the Baca
Ranch, a 100,000-acre expanse of sage brush and sand dunes south
of Denver. Several years ago, the ranch was at the center of a controversial
plan by its consortium of owners to "mine" water from a deep aquifer
below the largely arid site and sell the valuable commodity to growing
communities near Denver. Residents of the San Luis Valley feared
that the plan, which required the passage of a state referendum,
would deplete their own sources of water, and environmentalists
registered concern that water-mining would destroy an adjacent, ecologically unique area known as the Great Sand Dunes National
Monument.
After
a bruising battle, the development plan was defeated, as were subsequent
court challenges, and the partners decided to sell the property,
which they had bought in 1996 for $15 million, to the Nature
Conservancy for $31.3 million. The organization then planned
to sell the ranch to the U.S. government to create the Great Sand
Dunes National Park.
The FUHE-researched revelation that the Yale had played a part, albeit a silent and, according to the University, an inadvertent one, in the bitter controversy prompted angry denunciations of Yale and its policies. But when U.S. senator Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) called President Levin demanding an explanation and an apology on January 24, he came away with something better. Noting that Yale had "no intention of harming the citizens of Colorado," Levin dropped the asking price for the land by several million dollars and agreed to donate the University's profits on its sale for conservation use.
Senator Allard was pleased. "President Levin was willing to listen, and he
understood the issues," he said. "We're saving the San Luis Valley's water,
and we're saving the taxpayers money. This is a good deal for everyone and the environment."
Lin
to Face Lee in Corporation Race
The University
committee responsible for nominating candidates for alumni fellow
of the Yale Corporation has selected Maya
Lin '81, '86MArch, to share the ballot with the Reverend
Dr. W. David Lee '93MDiv, who is mounting the first petition-based
candidacy for the office in 37 years. Alumni of the College (excluding
those who graduated after 1996) and of the graduate and professional
schools are eligible to vote in the election and will receive their
ballots in the mail this month.
Lee submitted
a petition with 4,870 alumni signatures in October, more than the
3,252 required to secure his place on the ballot. In a typical year,
the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee of the Association
of Yale Alumni chooses two or three candidates to put before
the alumni. At its meeting last month, the committee chose Lin as
its only candidate.
Elections
for alumni fellow are usually conducted without formal campaigning.
The ballots, which are customarily the only election materials,
include only a biographical note on each candidate and a photograph.
Lee has campaigned openly, sending brochures to alumni, promoting
his candidacy on a Web
site, holding fund-raising events, and securing endorsements
from local politicians, including New Haven mayor John DeStefano
Jr. and New Haven-area congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.
Lee,
a former football player at Syracuse University, holds a doctorate
in theology from United Theological Seminary. Pastor of the Varick
Memorial AME Zion Church on Dixwell Avenue, he has urged Yale to
increase its attention to New Haven's problems. He has received
financial backing for his candidacy from Yale's unions, whose cause
he has long supported. He was quoted last year in the newsletter
of locals 34 and 35 as telling a union rally that "a ten-billion-dollar
corporation like Yale cannot continue to pay poverty wages and exploit
its workers," and that "Yale has met its Waterloo" in the alliance
of the University's unions.
Lin,
an artist who lives in New York City, is best known for winning
the competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington,
D.C., while still an undergraduate. She also designed the Civil
Rights Memorial in Birmingham, Alabama, and the Women's
Table, a monument on the Cross Campus that is dedicated
to women at Yale. She received an honorary doctorate from the University
in 1987. "It would be thrilling to come home to Yale and help with
the unfolding design of our alma mater," says Lin.
Lasaga
Sentenced To 20 Years
Former
geology professor Antonio Lasaga
was sentenced to 20 years in prison on February 15 after he pleaded
"no contest" to charges that he sexually assaulted a boy he had
met through a mentoring program. Earlier that week, a federal judge
gave Lasaga a 15-year sentence on child pornography charges. The
sentences are to be served concurrently; Lasaga will remain in federal
custody until he completes that portion of his sentence. Lasaga's
lawyer Diane Polan '73, '80JD, says he will appeal the federal sentence,
which is more severe than the 9 to 11 years that federal guidelines
recommend.
Lasaga is a leading geochemist whose colleagues described him at his sentencing hearing as "brilliant" and "Nobel Prize material." He was master of Saybrook College from 1996 to 1998, when he was discovered to have downloaded images of child pornography on his computer in the geology department. A subsequent FBI raid of the Saybrook master's house and his office turned up nearly 150,000 such images, including explicit video tapes of the boy apparently taken over a six-year period.
President
Levin, acting on advice of a University tribunal, revoked Lasaga's
tenure last year. Lasaga appealed
to the Yale Corporation, which upheld Levin's action. Meanwhile,
the victim's mother has filed a lawsuit against Lasaga, Yale, and
the New Haven Board of Education, which ran the mentoring program
through which Lasaga met the boy.
Ancient
Science, Winter Blues
More than 2,000 years ago, physicians had a surprisingly modern prescription for a common complaint, the winter blues. People afflicted by what is now known as "seasonal affective disorder," or SAD, were often told simply to go south to combat a buildup of "humors" -- components in the blood thought to influence mood.
Migrating
south, at least temporarily, remains a kind of self-medication against
the depression that affects as many as one quarter of all residents
of northern climates. In an upcoming issue of Biological
Psychiatry, associate professor of psychiatry Dan Oren and
his colleagues at the School of Medicine and the Department of Veterans
Affairs have shown that the ancients were on to something.
Oren explains that SAD is a response
to decreased levels of light. If a Caribbean holiday isn't an option (there
are more hours of winter sunlight in the south than the north), doctors now
prescribe early morning exposure to strong fluorescent lights to trick the body
into believing it's actually spring.
"I've been curious about the chemistry
of the process," says Oren. "There had to be a molecule that was mediating the effect. It couldn't be voodoo."
In plants, a substance called phytochrome
is known to play a key role in helping them track changes in daylength, and
Oren believes he has found a similar time-keeping chemical in animals. Ironically,
the light- measuring molecule appears to be one of the ancient humors, a yellow
pigment in the blood called bilirubin.
Modern researchers have long believed
that bilirubin was "a useless waste product," says Oren, but its chemical similarity
to phytochrome prompted the researcher to theorize in 1996 that bilirubin helped
set the body's biological clock. He also suspected that changes in bilirubin
levels might somehow be setting the stage for SAD.
In the current study, Oren and
his colleagues measured the night-time bilirubin concentration of nine men and
women with SAD. It was significantly lower than that of seven volunteers who
did not have winter depression. However, after two weeks of light therapy, the
SAD patients experienced significant improvement in their symptoms; their night-time
bilirubin level also increased toward the normal range.
No one knows how the molecule might
work in the body to influence mood, and Oren is quick to label his
findings as preliminary. But while he and his colleagues conduct
a larger investigation, the researcher has a prudent suggestion
for how anyone feeling, well, bilious, in winter might raise their
bilirubin levels -- just in case. If neither a southern journey
nor light therapy is possible, certain vegetables are known to increase
the body's production of bilirubin. "You could always eat more broccoli,"
says Oren .
Sporting
Life: Tennis Star's "Guilty Pleasure" Pays Off
Andrea
Goldberg '02 is the number-one singles player on the women's tennis
team and an activist for women's reproductive rights. But she also
has a dark secret. "My guilty pleasure is fashion magazines," says
Goldberg. "I read them all the time while I'm working out."
Lucky
for her. Paging through an issue of Glamour last year, Goldberg read about a scholarship competition that would
choose "Ten Women Who Could Change the World." Goldberg applied
and won, earning $2,000, a spread in the magazine, an appearance
on the CBS "Early Show," and a chance to network with powerful women
at a luncheon in New York.
Goldberg's
own plan to change the world is as a future president of Planned
Parenthood -- after a year at Oxford (as the winner of Yale's Henry
Fellowship) and medical school. The Albuquerque, New Mexico, native
says her pro-choice stance is intimately linked with her athleticism.
"As an athlete, I'm used to having control over my body and the
way it performs," she says. "And I chafe at people telling me what
decisions I should make about it." She also intends to champion
universal health coverage.
Despite
the distractions at hand, Goldberg says she is focused on her final
season on the team. Last year, the women had their best season in
12 years, taking second place in the Ivy League and beating Harvard
in Cambridge for the first time since 1979. Coach
Meagan McMahon left on that high note at the end of the season
to spend more time with her family. The new coach, Chad Skorupka,
inherited all of last year's starting players. But Goldberg says
that while the team is experienced, Harvard and last year's champion
Penn are stronger than last year, too. The team's conference schedule
begins this month. 
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