| |
Comment on this article
Light & Verity
May
2002
Heated
Corporation Race Nears Finish
Perhaps
the only thing that everyone can agree on about this year's election
for Alumni Fellow of the Yale Corporation is that there's never
been anything like it. In addition to the rarity of the petition
candidacy of the Reverend Dr. W. David Lee '93MDiv, the race has
seen unprecedented campaigning and an unusual number of public statements
about the race.
Ballots
were mailed in mid-April to all alumni of the University, with the exception of Yale College graduates of the last five years, who
are not yet eligible to vote. They will be counted on May 26. (Alumni
who did not receive their ballots can apply for one at www.aya.yale.edu
or by calling Dianne Witte at 203-432-7280.) Alumni must choose
between Lee, who is the pastor of Varick Memorial AME Zion Church
in New Haven, and Maya Lin '81, '86MArch, an artist best known for
designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The
winner will serve a six-year term on the Yale Corporation, joining
five other alumni-elected trustees and ten "successor trustees"
appointed by the Corporation itself.
Lee earned
a place on the ballot by obtaining signatures from 3 percent
of the alumni electorate. He argues that "Yale and New Haven should
become true partners" and that the Corporation needs "someone grounded
in the local community." His unusual candidacy has included direct-mail
appeals to alumni, a campaign Web
site, and endorsements from political officials including U.S.
senator Joseph Lieberman '64, '67LLB, Connecticut attorney general
Richard Blumenthal '73JD, U.S. representative Rosa DeLauro, and
New Haven mayor John DeStefano Jr. Yale's labor
unions, of which Lee has been a supporter, paid for his first
$30,000 mailing; since then, he has not accepted any union contributions,
instead raising more than $20,000 from alumni and New Haven residents.
Lin was
the only candidate chosen by an Association of Yale Alumni committee
that usually nominates two or three candidates each year. Lin has expressed publicly her eagerness to serve, but she has otherwise
declined to comment on the race, explaining in a letter to student
groups that "Yale alumni have always relied on the record of the
proven accomplishments and prior service of candidates in determining
who would be the best stewards for the entire University."
Although
Yale officials have not endorsed either candidate, some have criticized
Lee for introducing campaigning into the election process and have
suggested that he will be indebted to Yale unions if elected. The
AYA has created a Web page (www.aya.yale.edu/election)
with information about each candidate and links to selected news
and opinion articles about the race. For the first time this year, election results will be tabulated not by Yale employees, but by
the outside firm of Mellon
Investor Services.
A
Head of State for Global Center
When Strobe
Talbott '68 announced in January that he
will leave his job as director of the Yale Center for the Study
of Globalization this fall, many wondered if the new Center, which
had been built largely around Talbott, had a future. But in April,
the University announced that it had found a high-profile successor
to Talbott in Ernesto Zedillo '81PhD, the former
president of Mexico.
In Zedillo,
the YCSG gains a leader with experience in academia, economics,
politics, and international affairs. After attending college in
Mexico, he came to Yale for a doctorate in economics. He taught
at two Mexican universities and worked for the Banco de Mexico before entering government, serving in cabinet posts for six years before
being elected president for a six-year term in 1994. Most recently,
Zedillo headed a United Nations panel on financing for development.
The YCSG
was launched last year, one of several initiatives designed to make
Yale more international. It sponsors conferences and publications
that explore the increasing interdependence and interconnection
of the world's nations.
Like
Talbott, Zedillo describes globalization as neither good nor bad
but inevitable. "Globalization is not the problem itself," he told the New York Times. "The problem is that we are lacking effective
policies regarding globalization." President Levin said that Zedillo
"wants to make sure that the globalization process improves the
welfare of the poor itself as well as the rich."
Childhood
Obesity Linked to Diabetes
Americans
have long been fighting a losing battle with their waistlines, and
while medical experts routinely warn adults about the risks of being
overweight, a new study by pediatricians at the Yale School of Medicine
has shown that the hazards extend to adolescents and children.
A research
team led by Sonia Caprio, an associate professor of endocrinology
and pediatrics, found that in a group of 167 severely obese boys
and girls, around 25 percent had an impaired ability to metabolize
sugar. "Glucose intolerance," as this condition is known, is especially
worrisome, says Caprio, whose findings were published
in the March 14 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Most of these children are at high risk for Type 2 diabetes," she
says, "and if they develop it before the age of 20, they face a
lifetime of being at very high risk for complications from diabetes."
There
are two kinds of diabetes. The Type 1, or early-onset, variety typically
appears in children, while Type 2, or adult-onset, is often not
diagnosed until middle age or later. In either case, failure to
regulate blood sugar levels -- either through regular insulin injections,
a combination of diet and exercise, or both -- can result over time
in a wide range of severe health problems, such as premature atherosclerosis,
ulcers on the legs and feet, and impaired circulation that can lead
to amputation, kidney disorders, and blindness.
The Caprio
team's research establishes a connection between what public health
officials have termed an "epidemic" of childhood obesity and a disturbing
increase in the incidence of Type 2 diabetes in young people. Roughly
10 percent of all children in this country are obese, and that percentage,
along with those who are considered to be overweight, has been rising
steadily for the past 30 years. The Yale study offers another powerful
incentive for youngsters to lose weight and possibly prevent a diabetes epidemic and its potentially devastating consequences.
A
Home Base for Student Groups
For many
of Yale's 250 undergraduate
organizations, the "office" is a well-worn cardboard box of
papers stored under a dorm room bed and passed down from officer
to officer. Only a few established groups have their own space on
campus. But in February, the University opened a new Student Office
Center to give groups from the Ayn Rand Society to the Freestyle
Dueling Association a place to meet.
The Center,
operated by the Yale College Dean's Office, is located above the
J. Crew store in the University's new
Broadway retail building, but it is entered from the rear of
the building, off the pedestrian walkway behind Mory's
and Toad's Place. Designed by
architects Nelson, Edwards & Cruickshank of Branford, Connecticut,
the space includes dedicated office space for the Yale
College Council, the New
Journal, and the Yale
Herald. In addition, there are computers, photocopy machines,
conference rooms, and file cabinets for other registered groups
to use.
So far,
the traffic has been light, according to Philip Greene, the assistant
dean of the College who works with student groups. Some students
have complained that the Center's hours -- 6 p.m. to midnight --
are insufficient to accommodate student schedules, and Greene says
he hopes to expand them next year. In the meantime, some club officers
are grateful just to have a place for their stuff.
Poor
Sales End Lyme Vaccine
Venturers
into deer tick-infested landscapes will no longer be able to rely
on a Yale-developed vaccine
to provide protection against Lyme disease. Citing poor sales, GlaxoSmithKline,
the pharmaceutical company that licensed the vaccine from the University
and began offering it to the public in 1999, announced in February
that it would stop distributing Lymerix, as the product was known.
Yale
and the manufacturers had high hopes for the vaccine, which was
developed in part by School of Medicine researchers Erol Fikrig,
Fred S. Kantor, and Richard Flavell. Lymerix was the first product
to protect against infection by a spiral-shaped bacterium called Borrelia
burgdorferi, a spirochaete that can cause a wide variety
of symptoms ranging from the flu and fatigue to severe arthritis
and heart abnormalities. With the incidence of Lyme disease rising
rapidly, from nearly 8,000 cases reported between 1990 and 1996
to the Centers for Disease Control, to more than 16,000 in 1999
(the figure is thought to be very low), there was considerable demand
for the vaccine, and doctors dispensed about 500,000 doses in the
first year of release.
But there
were problems almost from the beginning. First of all, patients
required three separate Lymerix injections over a year for the vaccine
to reach its maximum effectiveness, which was only about 80 percent,
and they would also need periodic booster shots.
Inconvenience
and incomplete immunity aside, many observers feel that what ultimately
doomed the vaccine was bad publicity in 1999 and 2000. Not long
after the product was introduced, there were news reports that chronicled
an array of what sufferers, some of whom would later join still-pending
class-action lawsuits, claimed were adverse
reactions to Lymerix. Most prominent among these was a condition
called "treatment resistant Lyme arthritis."
A recent
study in the journal Vaccine seemed to exonerate the product,
but the public-relations damage had already been done. Lymerix sales
were projected to be no more than 10,000 doses next year.
While
GlaxoSmithKline spokespeople maintain that economics, not the issue
of possible side effects and safety, prompted the decision, School
of Medicine pediatrician and epidemiologist Eugene D. Shapiro suggests
that Lymerix failed for a far more basic reason. "Lyme disease is easily treated in most instances," says Shapiro. "For most people
the risk is not enough to justify the vaccine."
Yale
Index Shows Investors' Mood
The last
two years have been difficult for Wall Street, and after the terrorist
attacks, the Enron debacle, the bursting of the dot-com bubble,
and other shocks to the economy, no one would blame investors for
losing faith in the stock market. And yet, despite all the economic
bad news of the past few years, the confidence of individual investors
has remained rock steady, says Robert
Shiller, the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics.
Since
1989, Shiller, author of Irrational
Exuberance, the best-selling examination of the effect of
psychology on the market, has conducted regular surveys of both
individual and institutional investors, and the latest release of
what the economist now calls the Yale
School of Management Stock Market Confidence Indexes reveals
a number of surprises. "One of the puzzles is that confidence is
not more related to events," says Shiller, a research fellow at
SOM's International Center for Finance. "It seems to have a life
of its own."
To compile
the indices, the economist periodically asked some 100 individuals, each with a median income of about $150,000, and the same number
of brokers and analysts, four questions. The first concerned the
valuation of U.S. stocks, while the second asked respondents how
much of a change they expected in the Dow Jones average in a one-,
three-, or six-month period, as well as over one year or ten. A
third question asked for the direction the Dow would most likely
take after a three percent decline during one day, and the fourth
asked about the probability of a catastrophic market collapse within
the next six months.
Shiller's
data shows that the men and women who work for investment firms
have had their confidence shaken by the recession, the retreat of
the market from all-time highs two years ago, terrorism, and corporate
scandal. "These are people who are aware of all the tricks and know
that there are a million ways to be dishonest," he says.
However,
because of the Internet, all of the information that used to be
reserved for the pros is now available to everyone, but even with
this knowledge, individual investors remain upbeat, Shiller has
found. Nor have the recent shocks to the market system made them
rethink their assumptions. "September 11 scared everyone, but our
successful response boosted confidence," says Shiller. "There was even a patriotic element in not giving in to bin Laden."
So, despite
market volatility, money continues to be invested, and Shiller's
indices show that individuals continue to believe that their risk
of losing it is very low. This may be irrational, but it is often
hard to know what to believe. "You have to put your money somewhere,"
he says, not entirely convinced that stocks are a better place than,
say, under the mattress. "With the stock market, you're trying to
predict something that is unknowable, something whose ups and downs
have never made any sense at all."
Record Celebrates And Struggles
As the
actor Edmund Gwenn once quipped, "Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult."
But dying has proved more difficult than comedy for the Yale
Record, which has clung tenaciously to life during the last
30 years. Now, as the student-run publication celebrates its 130th
anniversary, its leaders hope to regain some of the consistency
and glory of its mid-century heyday.
Ulysses
S. Grant was president when the Record was founded in 1872
-- a good four years before the better-known Harvard
Lampoon -- as a weekly newspaper. It quickly morphed into
a humor magazine, one that by the 1920s claimed to be "the most
read collegiate publication in America." At its height, the Record had its own building (now home to the theater studies department)
and produced eight issues a year that looked to the New
Yorker for tone and format. But the magazine declined rapidly
in the 1960s, and published only sporadically over the following
two decades before Michael Gerber '91 and Jon Schwartz '92 revived
it in 1989.
Today,
the magazine tries to publish four or five times a year, says chair
Jules Lipoff '03, while also keeping up a Web site (www.yale.edu/record),
producing occasional parodies of publications, and bringing humorists
like Al Franken, George Carlin, and the Onion's Scott Dikkers
to campus for events. Last year, the magazine elected its first
woman editor, Krinka Sigurdsson '01. But on a campus where funny
people now often gravitate to sketch comedy and improv groups, it
is a struggle to keep humor alive on the printed page. Gerber, a
humor writer who heads the Record's alumni group, says he
hopes alumni can build an endowment and provide some continuity
and direction for the magazine. "What's so interesting about the Record, " says Gerber, "is that it just refuses to disappear."
Fencing
Champ Is On Cutting Edge
by James T. McElroy '95
Sada Jacobson
'04 has had a busy spring. In late March, she defended her NCAA
championship
in collegiate fencing's newest event, the women's sabre, and then,
just two weeks later, she won a bronze medal at the world championships
in Turkey. The day she returned to New Haven in April, one might
have excused her for taking sometime to relish her recent successes,
but she was looking ahead. During her stay in Turkey, the International
Olympic Committee announced that in 2004, at the Summer Olympics
in Athens, Greece, women's sabre will be a full-fledged medal event for the first time. "This is huge," says Jacobson, laughing.
"I'm so excited."
When
other members of the Class of 2004 are job hunting and applying
to graduate school, she may well be preparing to compete in the
Olympics. Jacobson first started fencing the summer after her sophomore
year of high school. Her father, David Jacobson '74, had been an
All-American fencer at Yale (under Henry
Harutunian, the same coach who now guides Sada), but had let
the sport go since college. When he discovered a fencing club in
Atlanta, he began fencing again and introduced his daughter to the
sabre.
Competitive
fencers may choose from among three weapons: epee, foil, and sabre.
With epee and foil, a fencer can only score points with the tip
of the blade. But with sabre, points can be scored with the cutting edge as well as the tip. Due to this freedom of attack, sabre bouts
are usually fast and furious, lasting less than a minute. Sada Jacobson
loves it.
"Sabre
is definitely the most aggressive style of fencing, and I think
it's the most exciting," says Jacobson. "The movements are small,
precise. You have to be able to move fast. But it's also a very
thinking sport. Sometimes, you fence bouts and you just get through
them and win the bout. And sometimes you really manipulate your
opponent -- you know what they're going to do before they do it,
and you totally control the bout. That's a really great feeling."  |
|
