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Light & Verity
March
2003
Campus Mourns
Loss of Four Students
"This is as black a
day as I've seen."
That is how Yale College
dean Richard Brodhead described the day a highway accident killed
four Yale undergraduates. And nobody on campus could disagree.
"I will never forget
this," said sophomore Meera Shankar, voicing the sentiments of many.
"It will never leave me."
On January 17, members
of the Yale community received the cruelest education a university
can offer. At around five o'clock in the morning, a sport utility
vehicle carrying nine students -- eight of them current or former
varsity athletes -- was returning from a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity event in New York. As they hit an icy, unlit stretch of highway
near Bridgeport, the car slammed into a tractor-trailer that had
jackknifed on the slick road. Investigators have concluded that
drugs and alcohol played no role in the accident.
Kyle Burnat, a sophomore
from Atlanta, and Sean Fenton, a junior from Newport Beach, California,
were pronounced dead at the scene, as was Andrew Dwyer, a sophomore
from Hobe Sound, Florida, and the son of Andrew T. Dwyer '71. Nicholas
Grass, a sophomore from Holyoke, Massachusetts, died at an area
hospital the next day. The other injured students were Zachery A.
Bradley, Eric Wenzel, Brett Smith, Cameron A. Fine, and Christopher
W. Gary.
The crash occurred
during the first week of spring semester, a time when students customarily
reconnect with friends after the holiday break and choose their
spring courses. But this year, the return to campus and the weeks
that followed were marred by the full range of emotions -- shock,
sadness, anxiety, and guilt, to name a few -- that are typically experienced by those struggling to come to terms with a traumatic event.
On the steps of the
DKE house, candles surrounded photographs of the brothers who died
in the accident. Elsewhere on campus, students found other ways
to channel their sadness. Some wore blue and white ribbons, others
attended vigils and services, and the athletics department organized
a blood drive.
University Health Services
opened its doors to students who wanted counseling. "Even for those
students who didn't know the boys, one feels it personally," says
chief psychiatrist Lorraine Siggins. She said the death of a peer
is something many students are facing for the first time. "It really
is a loss of innocence."
"It feels like someone
blocked out the sun, and you just don't know where to go and what
to do next," says director of athletics Tom Beckett, who knew most
of the accident victims personally. As supportive and sympathetic
as the Yale community has been, Beckett knows that grieving is a
personal thing, and that for some it will take longer and be more
intense than for others. "We just have to be mindful of that and
do all we can to help."
Information about memorial
funds can be found at www.yale.edu/opa.
Few
Good Signs In Labor Talks
It's a good thing union
and University negotiators didn't have to agree on the shape of
the bargaining table, because they'd probably be bickering over
that, too.
A year after labor
contracts expired for Yale's nearly 4,000 clerical, technical, service,
and maintenance workers, negotiators for both sides are still far
apart on settling a new labor pact. In fact, the only thing they
seem to agree on is that chances of reaching a settlement anytime
soon are remote.
In a January letter
to the Yale faculty, staff, and students, President Richard Levin
wrote that there's been little progress in the negotiations and
that "looking forward, there is cause for concern." Local
35 President Bob Proto was even more blunt. "We're headed toward
another train wreck, another strike," he says.
What are the major
sticking points? As with just about everything else concerning these
two historic adversaries, there is disagreement on this. The University
says it's the union's insistence on linking contract talks to the
organizing drives of Yale-New Haven Hospital workers and the Graduate
Employees and Students Organization. "If that weren't on the
table, we'd have a contract now," says University spokesman
Tom Conroy.
Wrong, says Proto:
"There's the pension plan, which hasn't been adjusted in over
18 years, parking relief, training and placement, workers' comp.
It's a lot more complicated than just the hospital and GESO."
On the positive side,
both parties seem satisfied with the benefits package, and unlike
the battles being fought by other employers and unions around the
country in these lean economic times, there's no talk of give-backs
or concessions.
"Compared to last
time, when everyone was so worried about subcontracting, there's
no horrible problem, no line in the sand, so a settlement shouldn't
be that hard to reach," says Conroy. Proto is less optimistic.
"This is about as discouraged as I've been in the process."
Profs,
Courses Rated Online
Those full-throated
student gripefests about courses, instructors, and teaching assistants -- usually conducted over slices at Naples -- just got a little more structured.
Now students can fill
out an online evaluation that asks their opinions on such things
as the course's format and teachers, how the class compares to others,
and whether it would be recommended. The evaluations will initially
be available to instructors and other Yale faculty, but starting
this fall, students will be able to use them when choosing their
classes.
The Yale College Committee
on Teaching and Learning ran a small-scale trial run last spring.
Based on those results, the new system was implemented campuswide
for the first time last semester.
"The response
has been really great," said committee chairman Charles Bailyn.
"I'm very pleased that the students took this as seriously
as they did." He said roughly 24,000 evaluations were submitted.
A total of 86 percent of Yale College students filled out the anonymous
survey, with only three percent declining. The remaining evaluations
were incomplete and won't be used, Bailyn said.
Students who chose
not to participate were able to skip the evaluation form and go
straight to their grades, which are also available online. Bailyn
says that in the future, professors will be able to see their evaluations
online, rather than waiting for them to be printed.
Andrew Klaber '04 wrote
the Yale College Council resolution that supported the switch to
online course evaluations. "Up until now, there was no formal
means to evaluate a course or to find out what students who had
already taken it thought of it," he said.
Under the old system,
a critique of a sampling of courses was published by the Yale
Daily News, or professors independently asked their students
to evaluate their classes.
The Yale faculty unanimously
approved the move to an online evaluation system last November.
More
Room for Campus Cops
There's no place like
home. Yale Police chief James Perrotti
would surely agree, but he might put it a little differently: A
home is no place for a police department.
For the last 16 years,
the Yale University Police Department has been headquartered in
a two-family house on Sachem Street. Perrotti says the building
is so small and ill-suited to its purpose that three desks are crammed
into one room, the dispatchers are off-site, barricades used for
special events have to be stored in an old FedEx truck behind the
New Haven Police Department building, and there's no place to service
the cruisers.
"It was never
designed for police use," says Perrotti, "and now, with
the evolution in policing in general, there's much more equipment
we have no storage space for."
But that's about to
change. Plans are underway to build a new police station and community
center on a two-acre lot behind the Grove Street Cemetery. Perrotti
says the new building will accommodate the 80-person force with
room for growth. But what he's most excited about is sharing the
space with the neighborhood. "It's invaluable for us to have
day-to-day contact with folks in the community," he says. "We
want them to see us as good neighbors and friends."
The $10 million facility
is a partnership between Yale and New Haven. Besides the Yale police,
the building will house the Dixwell-Yale University Computer Learning
Center, where Yale students will teach computer basics to neighborhood
residents. The facility will also have a meeting room for community
functions and offer athletic programs for children.
"We see it as
providing an important linkage to Yale and the neighborhood,"
says University Secretary Linda Lorimer. "It will be occupied
24 hours a day, providing life and vitality to both the campus and
the neighborhood."
Groundbreaking is scheduled
for the spring, with a ribbon cutting expected about a year later.
Professor
Earns Fuzzy Namesake
Scholarly achievement
is often acknowledged by naming something after the accomplished
academician: a lecture series, an endowed chair, maybe even the
wing of a building.
But when Jacques Gauthier's
colleagues wanted to pay tribute to him for his contribution to
the field of paleontology, they named a dinosaur after him: Incisivosaurus
gauthieri.
"It was very gratifying,"
said Gauthier. Although he already has a lizard named in his honor,
Gauthier says that doesn't have "quite the same cachet"
as a dinosaur. This time around, "my son was duly impressed;
dinosaurs will do that."
Incisivosaurus gauthieri is a small, bird-like dinosaur that had feathers and walked
on two legs, but couldn't fly. It lived 128 million years ago, during
the early Cretaceous era in what is now known as the Yixian Formation
in northeastern China.
Gauthier received the
unusual honor because of his groundbreaking work on the evolutionary
link between birds and dinosaurs. "Our view of the dinosaur
world has changed so radically," he says. "We used to
think dinosaurs were giant lizards, but we now know T-rex had feathers.
Imagine a giant fuzzy chick that was able to bite a Volkswagen in
half."
Gauthier says the data
makes it very clear that birds are living dinosaurs. "Many
people believe that dinosaurs are extinct, but they're still out
there entertaining us at the bird feeder," he says. "What
would Thanksgiving be like if they actually were extinct?"
Gauthier came to Yale
seven years ago and has appointments in the departments of geology
and geophysics and ecology and evolutionary biology. In receiving
the eponymous honor, Gauthier joins renowned Yale paleontologists
O.C. Marsh and John Ostrom, who also have dinosaurs named after
themselves.
"I'm gratified
to join the giants," he said. "It's an honor just to be
mentioned in the same breath with them."
Frosh
is Big in Squash
by James
McElroy '95
Like most freshmen,
Julian Illingworth ended his first semester at Yale by studying
for and then taking four final exams. Unlike his classmates, though,
he managed to work in three squash tournaments on three continents
before and after finals. And how did it go? "On the squash side,
it went well," he says. "And on the studying side, it was a little
tougher."
As reading period began,
Illingworth was in Chennai, India, competing in the World Junior
Men's Championship. The number-one seed on the U.S. team, he led
the Americans to a seventh-place finish, their best ever, and also
cracked the top ten in the individual championships. After returning
and taking his exams, he competed in the U.S. Junior Squash Racket
Championships, besting 460 players from 16 countries to become the
first American ever to win the event. After that, he flew home to
Portland, Oregon, for four days, celebrated Christmas, and then
took off to Sheffield, England, where he competed in the British
Junior Championship, considered the most competitive international
squash tournament because it draws the best players from the major
squash powerhouses, including India, Pakistan, Egypt, England, and
Australia. There, Illingworth knocked off the tournament's number-two
seed and finished seventh, the best-ever finish by an American.
Already, Illingworth
is drawing comparisons to Mark Talbott, the Yale women's squash
coach who held the number-one U.S. professional ranking for 15 years
and is widely considered the greatest-ever American squash player.
Dave Talbott, the Yale men's squash coach and Mark's brother, says,
"Physically and mentally, Julian and Mark have a lot of the same
characteristics, very free-flowing, very natural physically, with
a very patient demeanor. They're both fiercely competitive but always
focused on the court."
It has only been in
the last few years that young stars like Illingworth have strengthened
the American presence in international squash. Until 1992, U.S.
squash players used a harder ball and a smaller court than the rest
of the world. Eleven years ago, however, the U.S. junior circuit
and the American collegiate system officially switched over to the
softer ball and larger court, and now young players like Illingworth
are emerging -- players who grew up with the softer ball.
Illingworth's future
in the sport certainly appears rather promising. But he's also got
backup plans.
"I'll probably pursue
it professionally for a couple of years," he says. "Then go into
something in medicine maybe, or something to do with Wall Street."
There's plenty of time
for him to figure that out. First, he has to decide on a major. 
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