Light & Verity
April 2002

Law School Launches General-Interest Journal

From Court TV to John Grisham novels, Americans seem to have an insatiable interest in what journalist Lincoln Caplan calls "the drama of ideas" associated with the legal system. But what's been missing, says Caplan, is a publication in which ideas about the law are explored for a literate general-interest audience. This month, though, a new magazine born at the Yale Law School will attempt to fill that gap.

Caplan, the Knight Senior Journalist at the Law School, is the founding editor of Legal Affairs, a bimonthly, not-for-profit publication headquartered in offices above Barrie Ltd. at York and Elm streets. Caplan says that Legal Affairs is aimed at readers of magazines like the Atlantic or the New Republic, along with "lawyers who are having a hard time keeping up with the things that fascinated them in law school." Its first issue includes a cover story by senior editor Emily Bazelon '93, '00JD about the Israeli supreme court, an excerpt from a novel by Christopher Buckley '75 about lawyers in Washington, D.C., along with reviews, critical articles, and reporting.

The magazine began with a suggestion by Sterling Professor of Law Emeritus Boris Bittker. Noting that academic legal journals have become too esoteric to be of use to most practitioners, Bittker proposed that Yale undertake a more accessible journal. When Law School dean Anthony Kronman met Caplan, a Harvard Law-trained journalist who has written about the law for The New Yorker and other publications, Bittker's journal evolved into a general-interest magazine. The Law School raised the seed capital for the magazine and has provided what Caplan calls "intellectual and spiritual support." Although the magazine is owned by an independent corporation and has what Kronman calls "complete editorial independence," it is identified on its masthead as "a magazine of Yale Law School," and Law School faculty hold a majority of seats on the board of directors.

While the magazine includes paid advertising, subscriptions will be the main source of revenue. "If we have 10,000 subscribers by the end of the first year," says Caplan, "we'll be happy."

Air Force ROTC cadet Robbie Berschinski '02 says he often gets smiles when he walks across the campus in uniform now -- a change from the days before September 11. Berschinski, this year's national Air Force ROTC Cadet of the Year, is one of 11 Yale students who travel every week to Storrs to an ROTC detachment at the University of Connecticut. Now, an alumni group says that Yale's cadets deserve more University support.

"Advocates for Yale ROTC" was founded this fall, modeling itself after a similar group at Harvard. Lien Johnson '01, a research assistant at the Heritage Foundation and one of the group's leaders, says that through its Web site (www.yalerotc.org), the group has collected the names of hundreds of supporters, including New York governor George Pataki '67 and former U.S. senator David Boren '63. A group from the Class of 1937 is also backing the effort.

Johnson says that "a chapter of ROTC at Yale is the long-term goal," but the group would also like to see Yale restore course credit for ROTC and support cadets with room and board. (The military pays all or part of cadets' tuition in exchange for a four-year commitment after graduation.) In December, the Yale Daily News came out in favor of a campus ROTC chapter. Opponents of the idea include gay-rights activists, who object to the military's ban on avowed gay men and lesbian women.

To date, the Department of Defense has not expressed interest in forming a Yale detachment. Berschinski -- who says that he has been "wholly satisfied" with the University's support of ROTC -- doubts that Yale could provide the 60 students necessary for a working detachment of its own. But Hiram Cody '37, one of the leaders of his class's effort, says that if the program were more visible, it might attract more interest. "It's not in the catalog, and it's not promoted by the University," says Cody. "Freshmen have to find out about it by osmosis."

"We support Yale students who are involved in ROTC and continue to explore possibilities of ways to improve their experience," says President Richard Levin. Although Levin would not say if he supports the restoration of course credit for ROTC work -- a decision that rests with the faculty -- spokesperson Helaine Klasky says that "there has been a tremendous effort to engage the faculty with military leaders" since September 11.

Danger on Board The School Bus?

Youngsters who complain that school buses are hazardous to their health may not be exaggerating. According to a study released in February and led by John Wargo, professor of environmental risk analysis and policy at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, "children are exposed to diesel exhaust from school buses at levels far above those predicted by current government monitoring efforts."

Researchers are concerned, because "components of diesel exhaust can damage genes, cause mutations, and produce symptoms of allergy, including inflammation and irritation of the airways," says Wargo. "There is no known safe level of exposure, especially in those with respiratory illness."

In a project sponsored by Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI), a nonprofit Connecticut research group, Wargo and colleagues from Yale, EHHI, and the University of Connecticut monitored buses and 15 school-aged children in the state throughout the day. They found that exposure to soot and other particles was highest when the children were onboard the buses, or waiting to get on and off them at school, where the buses were parked and idling their engines, often in violation of a state regulation that limits idling times to three minutes or less. The concentrations of diesel pollutants was sometimes ten times above that in unpolluted air.

Some public health advocates have suggested that the exposure to the 40 or so components of the exhaust, one of which, benzene, is a known human carcinogen, may help explain the mysterious and rapid rise in asthma. The incidence of this airway-blocking, potentially fatal condition has increased 75 percent between 1980 and 1994, and it currently affects 4.8 million U.S. school children, many of whom spend an average of 180 hours a year on buses.

While advocates for the diesel industry point out that there has been a steady decline in engine emissions, even as asthma cases have increased, Wargo and his colleagues stress that any exposure can't be good. In their report, they advocate a reduction in bus idling time; the use of low-sulfur, cleaner burning fuels; and filters to cut emissions and thus minimize any potential harm.

"We're not telling parents to keep kids off the bus," says Wargo. "We are saying the ride to school could be healthier."

Yale-Berkeley Tie To Continue

On March 6, the University and the Berkeley Divinity School agreed to continue their affiliation for another ten years, bringing resolution to a conflict over the School's financial practices. Berkeley also announced in February the appointment of an interim dean to fill the vacancy left by former dean R. William Franklin, who resigned in December after a Yale internal audit revealed that he had received benefits from Berkeley -- including payment of his daughter's medical-school tuition -- that did not conform to Yale policies.

Although the new agreement essentially retains the existing relationship between Berkeley, an independent Episcopal seminary, and the Divinity School, it differs from the previous affiliation agreement in that either institution may now remove the dean of Berkeley unilaterally. The power to appoint Berkeley's dean has always been shared by the Divinity School and the Berkeley board of directors, but only Berkeley could remove the dean. The pact also makes more explicit Berkeley's obligation to conform to Yale personnel policies.

The Right Reverend Frederick H. Borsch, a former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, has been appointed interim dean of Berkeley while a permanent successor to Franklin is sought. Meanwhile, state attorney general Richard Blumenthal '73JD is still investigating Berkeley's finances to determine any contributions were misappropriated.

A Better Car Buy On the Internet?

One element of that "new car feeling" is the suspicion that the car dealer got the better end of the bargain. Studies have shown that among women and minority car buyers, this widespread perception has some basis in fact.

But according to research conducted by Fiona Scott Morton, the James L. Frank '32 Professor of Private Enterprise at the School of Management, the Internet can be a "great equalizer" in the hunt for the best price. In a recent, as-yet unpublished study Scott Morton and her colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley business school discovered that consumers using an Internet auto-buying service paid less for their cars than people who shopped for vehicles the traditional way. Women experienced slightly better than average savings by using the Internet, and minorities did the best of all.

Analyzing data compiled in 1999, the researchers showed that minorities paid a "race premium" of about two percent above what the general public paid for the same make and model of car. The premium was less than one percent for women. But minorities who used autobytel.com, a free Web-based service that refers users to a network of low-priced dealers, wound up paying the same price as white consumers who used the Internet -- about two percent below average.

"With the cost of a car averaging $20,000, this three- to four-percent difference can be a significant amount of money," says Scott Morton.

Other researchers, among them Yale law professor Ian Ayres, have documented discrimination among auto dealers and suggested that the Internet's utility lies in the anonymity of the buyer. Scott Morton, though, has a different explanation: the ease with which autobytel.com and other services allow buyers, particularly those without the means to visit numerous dealerships, to gather information and compare prices.

The result, she says, is "more uniform pricing" -- and less likelihood that a salesperson will base a deal on the customer's sex, skin color, or shoes. "If you've been online, you're an informed consumer and dealers know it," says Scott Morton. "They also know it's not worth trying to exploit you."

College Offers Comfort Food

After a few months at college, wouldn't it be nice to walk into your dining hall and smell the familiar aroma of home cooking? That's the idea behind a new program in the Berkeley College dining hall called "Recipes From Home."

Cornelia Pearsall, the associate master of Berkeley and wife of master John Rogers, got the idea from a similar program at Smith College, where she is an assistant professor of English. Last fall, Rogers asked Berkeley parents to send recipes for their children's favorite foods. About 100 responded -- most of them parents of freshmen, Rogers says. Those that could be adapted to dining-hall scale -- including Italian sausage soup and chocolate chip pumpkin cake -- have been placed in a regular Thursday night rotation.

Pearsall says the program has helped to make the college feel more like home to students. "We work hard to integrate the freshmen into the life of the college," she says, "and this really helps bring them in."

John Turenne, the campus's executive chef, says the program may be extended to other colleges. And Rogers plans to gather the recipes together in a college cookbook. Says Pearsall, "The only problem we've had was when a student's mother's recipe was so successful that they ran out of it before she got there. But then she knows where to get more."

Poll Changes Views on Taxes

Ask suburbanites in an opinion poll if they think they ought to share their towns' tax revenue with the center city, and you get a resounding "no." But what if you invite urban and suburban citizens to discuss the question with each other and with experts over a weekend? Last month, Yale political science professors Donald Green and Cynthia Farrar led a "deliberative poll," inviting New Haven­ area residents to campus to talk about property tax revenue sharing and the controversial proposal to expand Tweed­New Haven Airport.

The idea of the "deliberative poll" was developed by University of Texas professor James Fishkin '70, '75PhD, who taught at Yale in the 1980s. Fishkin's theory is that people's opinions may change when they are exposed to more information than just "sound bites and headlines." Since 1988, 18 such polls have been conducted around the world on various topics.

The results in New Haven bear out Fishkin's theory. In the beginning, 80 percent of the 150 participants opposed property tax revenue sharing. But after hearing detailed arguments on both sides, that figure changed to 42 percent. "We entered on this challenge with the assumption that we would get a different picture than if we just took an opinion poll, and, indeed, that is what happened," says Farrar.

Student Helpers Go National

Just three short years ago, it seemed that every undergraduate was carrying a start-up business plan in his or her backpack. While the recent economic slowdown has cooled some of this entrepreneurial energy, at least one Yale start-up from those days is now going strong and expanding nationally -- but its founders don't plan to make a dime on it. National Student Partnerships, a non-profit group that pairs student volunteers with people in need of employment, housing, or social services, now has nine regional offices and a national office in Washington, D.C.

The organization, founded by Brian Kreiter '00 and Kirsten Lodal '01 in 1998, grew out of work Lodal and Kreiter did with unemployed people around the campus. "We talked to a number of people who were stuck because they had never had work experience," recalls Kreiter. He and Lodal helped their "clients" find volunteer work to build a resume, pointed some to job training programs, and helped them figure out the array of social services available to them. Lodal says that working as "personal navigators" for people in need is a good job for college students because they are "bright, they have flexible hours, and they're good at mastering the system."

A year later, Lodal and Kreiter began to spread the idea to other campuses, and with the help of a seed grant from Marne Obernauer '65, they established a national office, which Lodal now heads. Just last year they received a two-year, $900,000 "capacity-building" grant from the Labor Department.

Although NSP is a non-profit organization, Kreiter and Lodal have applied the principles of for-profit management to their work. "We want to be as accountable, as aggressive, and as ambitious in what we do as any entrepreneurs," says Lodal.

A Share of the Title for Men's Hoops

The last time the men's basketball team won a piece of the Ivy League title, none of the players on this year's team had been born. Neither had the coach.

But James Jones led the Bulldogs to unlikely success. After upsetting both Clemson and Penn State in non-conference action, the team moved into first place in the league in February after beating perennial Ivy powers Penn and Princeton on consecutive nights in New Haven. They lost to both teams on the road two weeks later, though, and finished the season in a three-way tie with Penn and Princeton -- their first championship since 1963. (They beat Princeton but lost to Penn in a playoff for the Ivy slot in the NCAA tournament.)

The Bulldogs won a bid to the National Invitational Tournament, where they upset favored Rutgers 67­65 in the first round, notching Yale's first-ever postseason win. An 80­61 second-round loss to Tennessee Tech in a packed New Haven Coliseum on March 19 ended the season.

[Next month's Yale Alumni Magazine will include a feature about the team.]

Sporting Life: Sailing Takes a Varsity Tack

The Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, home to the Yale sailing team, is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world. Since 1882, Yale undergraduates -- with the help of Yale sailing alumni -- have run the club themselves, guiding the team to great success: Yale sailing has produced three Olympic medalists and a slew of All-Americans. Currently, the women's team is ranked fifth in the country and the co-ed team is ranked ninth.

All the while, the University has given Yale sailing only the same small amount of money and direction it provides for all undergraduate club sports. But in February, President Richard Levin announced that the two teams will be elevated to varsity status.

With the help of an anonymous grant, the University will now pay for general operating expenses of the team, as well as the salary and benefits of a full-time coach. But with these benefits come regulations -- of eligibility and recruiting in particular -- as well as a partial loss of student autonomy.

"Becoming varsity means the University is fully behind you," says YCYC commodore Michael Renda '04. "But we hope very much to maintain the student-run system."

Athletics director Tom Beckett says that students will still have all the opportunities they have had in the past to run the YCYC. Only now, the team's head coach will oversee the students and will report to the athletics department.

Yale has added mostly women's sports to its varsity offerings during the past 30 years to comply with federal Title IX regulations, which mandate gender equity in collegiate sports. The last club sport elevated to varsity status was the women's volleyball team in 1986. Beckett acknowledges that the fact that roughly three quarters of Yale's sailors are women influenced the decision to grant them varsity status.

"But the overriding reason," says Beckett, "was that Yale has had a lot of success with this program and that sailing has been a very strong part of this community."

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