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Light & Verity
November
2002
University,
Military at Odds Over Law School Recruiting
Threatened with causing
the loss of about $350 million in federal funds to the University,
the Law School allowed recruiters from the Air Force Judge Adjutant
General Corps to participate in its fall job interviewing program
last month, making an exception to a longstanding policy that bars employers who discriminate from participating in the program. But
President Richard Levin made it clear that the decision is an "interim
measure" and that the University plans to "pursue a determination
of whether the Law School's current policy satisfies the legal requirements."
The Solomon
Amendment, a federal law passed in 1996, denies any federal
funds -- except student financial aid -- to universities that prevent
military recruiters from access to student information or from "gaining entry to campuses, or access to students on campuses." While the
Law School itself receives very little federal funding, the University
is highly dependent on federal funds for research and other initiatives.
The Law School's Career
Development Office organizes interviewing programs twice a year,
matching its students with firms, government agencies, and other employers for interviews at the Holiday Inn on Whalley Avenue. The
office requires employers who wish to participate to sign a statement
affirming that they do not discriminate on the basis of several
factors, including sexual orientation. Because of the military's
policy on homosexuality, their recruiters have been unable to participate
in the program. Military recruiters do hold information sessions
at the Law School, and are permitted to conduct interviews there.
"At no point has the military been barred from our campus," says
Law School spokesperson Elizabeth Stauderman '83.
Until recently, military
officials had agreed that the Law School's policy was consistent
with the law. But in May, the University was notified by the U.S.
Army that its policy was not in compliance with the Solomon Amendment.
Several other law schools have received similar notifications this
year, and some, including Harvard, have changed their policies.
But Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy says the University will "pursue
the matter further in talks with the military," as Law School officials
believe that their policy conforms to the law.
Unions
Take Their Case to the Street
Civil disobedience doesn't
get much more civil than the Yale
unions' demonstration on September 25. Frustrated by protracted
talks with the Yale
administration and eager to show support for the organizing efforts of hospital workers and graduate teaching assistants, members
of Locals 34 and 35 and their supporters stood in the middle of
Elm Street at rush hour to show their solidarity and were promptly
arrested by New Haven police and charged with creating a public
disturbance.
The 675 arrestees,
who each received an $88 citation, had pre-registered with police
before the event and wore special stickers to indicate their status
as arrestees. They were taken to a table on the New Haven Green
where they stood in line to receive their summonses.
The demonstration came
as the parties in the current contract negotiations seemed far from
a settlement. As of early October, Yale was offering annual wage
increases of 4 percent for Local 34 and 3 percent for Local 35.
The unions unilaterally pulled back from their initial proposals,
moving from 10 percent to 9 percent for Local 34 and from 7 percent
to 6 percent for Local 35. The University has brought in a federal
mediator to oversee continued talks, to the consternation of union
officials who wanted to continue working with the facilitator who
had led the two sides in "interest-based bargaining" sessions in
the spring. The possibility of a strike still exists, as the unions
approved a strike authorization vote in September.
A
Who's Who of Poets on Campus
It was like Woodstock
for poetry lovers: In September, the Whitney Humanities Center and
the Beinecke Library brought together nine winners of the prestigious
Bollingen
Prize for two days of readings and panel discussions. The Prize, established by Paul Mellon in 1948, is awarded every two years either
for the best volume of poetry published during those years or in
honor of a poet's lifetime achievement. In attendance were John
Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Louise Gluck, John Hollander, Stanley Kunitz,
W.S. Merwin, Gary Snyder, Mark Strand, and Richard Wilbur.
A reading by all the
poets at Center Church on the Green proved so popular that the church
had reached its 600-person capacity well before the 8 p.m. starting
time, and 300 people were diverted next door to Trinity Episcopal
Church, where the program was simulcast. Joe Loewenstein '82PhD,
who had come all the way from St. Louis for the event, managed to
squeeze into Center Church at the last minute. He had come especially
to see Hollander, who was his dissertation adviser. "It's an act
of piety," he said.
The next day at the
Whitney Humanities Center, the poets participated in panels on
"American Traditions in Poetry" and "The Craft of Poetry Today."
Topics ranged from how American poets are to identify themselves
as distinct from the British ("It hasn't really been worked out,"
said Ashbery), to the value of multiculturalism in literature (Creeley
looked at his fellow panelists and said, "We're all white males
and one woman. That's not good enough."), to poetry's current popularity.
Moderator J.D. McClatchy, editor of the Yale Review, offered
guarded optimism on the last point. "Poetry is among the top eight
subjects on the Internet -- ahead of football and tennis," he said,
"but below Pamela Anderson."
Timothy
Dwight Moves Back Home
The cries of "Ashe!"
-- the Yoruban rallying cry of Timothy
Dwight College -- are even more robust this fall after the college's
denizens returned from a year in the Tower Parkway "swing dorm"
to a fully renovated college. With the concurrent renovation of
Rosenfeld Hall as annex space also completed, TD becomes the fourth
residential college to be overhauled.
The program for the
TD renovation is similar to those of Berkeley, Branford, and Saybrook
before it: The building's mechanical and electrical systems were
upgraded, the exterior was restored, the kitchen and serving areas
of the dining hall were updated for more modern service, and the
college's squash courts were converted into a multipurpose activity
space. TD's "Town
Hall" structure was reconfigured as a three-story library and
computer center.
Rosenfeld Hall, which
was originally the St. Elmo's fraternity house and more recently
housed the language laboratory, will now be used exclusively as
Timothy Dwight annex housing. By expanding the attic of Rosenfeld,
new student rooms were created to eliminate the need for annex housing
across the street at 370 Temple Street, which has been renovated
for the Center for Language Study and the linguistics department.
The renovation of the
colleges is on hiatus this year as Vanderbilt
Hall gets an overhaul. With that freshman dormitory out of commission,
freshmen from Ezra Stiles, Morse, and Berkeley colleges are being
housed in the "swing dorm."
Pierson College will be renovated in the 2003-2004 academic year.
Anti-Drug
Ads Lower Drug Use
In 1987, the Partnership
for a Drug-Free America (PDFA)
debuted one of the most famous advertising campaigns of all time.
The "brain
on drugs" commercials were powerful and inescapable, and a study
published in the August edition of the American
Journal of Public Health concludes that they were also effective
at reducing drug use among teenagers.
"Anti-drug advertising
works," says Subrata K. Sen, a researcher at the Yale School of
Management and one of the lead authors of an investigative team
from Yale, Baruch College, NYU's Stern School of Business, and the
London Business School.
The scholars analyzed
survey data compiled by the PDFA from 1987 through 1990 when the
"brain on drugs" public service campaign was going strong. During
that time, media financial support for these messages, most of which
are donated by television networks, newspapers, and magazines, more
than tripled, from $115 million to $365 million.
Sen's study found that
among those teens who had seen the ads but had not yet experimented
with marijuana, nearly 10 percent "got the picture" and said they
were unlikely to start. The number who believed the ads dissuaded
them from trying cocaine or crack was about 4 percent.
"For the entire population
of teens, this is a significant effect," says Sen, the Joseph F.
Cullman 3rd Professor of Organization, Management, and Marketing.
"The more adolescents perceive themselves to be susceptible to the
negative consequences of drug abuse, the less likely they are to
use drugs."
While studies of more
recent ad campaigns have shown a similar impact, the approach remains
controversial, as was evident earlier this year during the debates
in Congress that preceded the approval of additional funding for
government-sponsored antidrug messages. One problem, says Sen, is
that the ads don't seem to have much of an effect convincing teens
who are already experimenting with drugs to stop. Another is that even where there is a demonstrable correlation, it's impossible
to separate cause and effect.
"Still, the correlations
we've found are very strong and give plenty of reason for hope,"
says Sen. "Funding for antidrug advertising appears to have been
a worthwhile investment."
Thinking
Globally, Eating Locally
Last year, the Berkeley
College dining hall served up "Recipes
from Home," large-scale versions of favorite recipes submitted
by students' families and friends. On October 2, Berkeley and Yale
Dining Services introduced the Yale Sustainable Food Project, which
will bring 32 seasonal menus of fresh, organic, and locally grown
foods to the Berkeley dining hall beginning in fall 2003. "We're
pretty lucky," said Berkeley senior Elizabeth Tang. "They're always
trying out new foods on us."
The Project was launched
with an organic
feast prepared and served by Dining Services staff under the
supervision of chef, restaurateur, and "proud Yale parent" Alice
Waters of Chez
Panisse. The menu included Italian bread salad, olives, roasted
chicken, marinated portobellos, baby stringbeans, fingerling potatoes,
garden lettuces, pickled carrots, apple cobbler, and lemon verbena-mint
herb tea. Diners over the age of 21 were also served organic wines.
The evening's speakers
provided food for thought, explaining that the Project is more than
just tasty meals. Berkeley master John Rogers announced that a portion
of the courtyard will be reclaimed for organic gardens and composting.
James Scott, director of Yale's Agrarian
Studies Program, encouraged diners to savor the "pleasures of
the table and of friendship" as practiced by the international Slow
Food movement.
Waters agreed. "I hear
that the hamburger was invented
here in New Haven," she said, "so we are responsible for the fast
food nation. Slow Food is an experience that is really what the
juice of life is about," from ecologically sound food production
to the revival of the kitchen and the table as centers of conviviality,
culture, and community.
Fortunoff
Archive Marks Anniversary
Twenty years ago, Yale
took in a small local project that was gathering video testimony
from Holocaust survivors and turned it into the
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Today, the
archive has 10,000 hours of video from 4,100 people worldwide --
more than a year's worth of eyewitness accounts of one of history's
darkest hours.
The Archive marked
its 20th anniversary in October with a conference on "The Contribution
of Oral Testimony to Holocaust and Genocide Studies." Nobel Peace
Prize winner Elie
Wiesel gave the keynote address; other speakers included novelist
E.L.
Doctorow and Hadassah
Lieberman, the wife of Senator Joseph
Lieberman and the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
Wiesel spoke about
the difficulty in communicating stories of the Holocaust. "The experience
defies language," he said. "It was easier for an inmate in Auschwitz
to imagine themselves free than it is for someone in New Haven to
imagine themselves in Auschwitz." Still, Wiesel said, he feels an
"urgent obligation to bear witness."
And after 20 years,
the Archive continues to help people fulfill that obligation. Comparative
literature professor Geoffrey Hartman, the faculty adviser to the
project, says the Archive's original plan was to collect just one
thousand testimonies. "But we decided that any survivor who wanted
to tell his or her story should be heard," says Hartman.
Strong
Kickoff for Soccer Season
In the first game of
the season, a Yale men's
soccer team travels to a tournament at Brown and upsets the
defending national champion. Sound familiar? The Bulldogs did it
to Indiana in 1999 and went on to have the best season in Yale history,
going to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1991. This
year they did it again, surprising North Carolina with a 2-1 win
on September 13.
"A win like that puts
a good breeze into your sails," says coach Brian Tompkins, and indeed,
the team won four of their next five games, losing only to nationally
ranked Hofstra. At the season's halfway mark, the Bulldogs were
7-1 and ranked 24th in the nation, a far cry from last year's disappointing
season.
The big difference,
says Tompkins, is the return of three players who sat out all or
part of last season. Senior forward Jay Alberts, a former Ivy League
rookie of the year, was red-shirted last year due to mononucleosis;
sophomore forward Lindsey Williams missed part of the season due
to injury; and sophomore goalie Geoff Hollington hurt his back after
only one game last year. Their absence was noted as the Bulldogs
went 6-9-2 and finished last in the league.
"We actually played
pretty well last year," says Tompkins, "but in high-level competition
there are key moments that can win or lose the game for you. This
year, we have an experienced team, and we've been able to get a
key goal or a key save when we needed it."
Alberts, who was a
key player in his freshman year (Yale Alumni Magazine, Feb.
2000, p. 37), had yet to score a goal by midseason but had racked
up a team-leading seven assists. Williams led the scoring with six
goals and also had two assists, and Hollington had 31 saves and
a 6-1 record in the goal. Last year's leading scorer, sophomore
Andrew Dealy, had five goals at midseason.
The rest of the season
promised more challenges for the team. In addition to playing the
bulk of their Ivy opponents, the Bulldogs' schedule includes national
powers Connecticut and Boston College. "This is where we see if
we're championship caliber," says Tompkins.  |
