From campus scandal to housing shuffle

The Year in Brief: a quick recap of the stories Yale students were talking about during the school year.

Call it the Year of the Yale Professor. Profs took center stage as this year's headlines covered everything from the FBI raid of a professor's house to the new faculty diversity plan.

However, the year's news began far from the hallowed halls of Yale academia. In early September, Steve Shapiro, owner of the Daily Caffé--a popular, local coffee shop in the Broadway area--was forced to close down when he could no longer pay his rent. Local New Havenites and Yale students protested the eviction; Yale (the Daily's landlord) was accused of kicking out local restaurants and retailers in the downtown area to make way for national chains like Barnes and Nobles and Au Bon Pain. The current empty storefronts on Broadway and Elm Street testify to the Yale Office of Properties' attempts at revitalizing the downtown by bringing in new stores and restaurants.

Berkeley became the first residential college to live in the Swing Space, a dormitory that Yale created to house sophomores, juniors, and seniors while their college is being renovated. Berkeleyites had to brave a year without an actual dining hall or library, but the University compensated with bonus Flex dollars, and the displaced students will return to a new and improved college next fall.

As the months passed, the University saw several changes in graduate school programs. Architect Robert Stern, ARCH '65, became the new dean of the School of Architecture, and United Nations Development Programme administrator James Gustave Speth, JE '64, LAW '69, took the helm at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The Yale School of Management switched from a Masters in Public and Private Management (MPPM) to an Masters in Buiness Administration (MBA) degree and built an International Center for Finance.

Meanwhile, a federal judge dismissed the 1998 lawsuit filed by the Yale Four--a group of Orthodox Jewish plaintiffs who alleged that Yale had discriminated against them by refusing to let them live off-campus. The students vowed to appeal.

Fall Fest, the Yale College Council's (YCC) attempt to create a Spring Fling-like celebration in the fall, attracted somewhat disappointing student attendance,
but bands at the event saw promise for the future.

November marked the beginning of a year of scandal at Yale. Saybrook master Antonio Lasaga unexpectedly resigned in mid-November after the FBI searched his office and home. Within a few weeks, Lasaga, a renowned expert in geology, faced federal charges of downloading and possessing child pornography, as well as state charges of sexual assault of a minor. Lasaga pleaded not guilty at the trial's first hearing and was still on paid leave as of May.

On a more positive note, Yale football (6-4, 5-2 Ivy) capped a remarkable turnaround season with a 9-7 victory over Harvard at The Game and a second-place finish in the Ivy League, even though the Bulldogs were picked to finish dead last following last year's winless season. The Yale police union and the University finally hammered out a contract in December after two and a half years of stalled negotiations. The political science department pledged to restructure and begin a search for new professors, and 1998 seemed to be quietly coming to a close.

However, tragedy struck when Davenport senior Suzanne Jovin was brutally stabbed multiple times in the posh East Rock area on Fri., Dec 4. The well-liked Jovin was a native of Germany and coordinator of the Best Buddies program for mentally challenged adults, and the Yale community came together to mourn her loss. Scandal erupted when police admitted political science lecturer James Van de Velde, ES '82, Jovin's senior essay advisor and a former Saybrook dean, was an official suspect. The University canceled Van de Velde's classes in the spring, claiming his presence would be a distraction in the classroom, and recently announced that he will not teach next year. Van de Velde vehemently denies any involvement in the murder.

At the start of the spring term, New Haven grabbed the spotlight with its "Empowerment Zone" title. It was selected as one of 15 cities to receive millions from the federal government--specifically, $100 million in cash and $130 million in tax credits over the next decade to create jobs in poor neighborhoods. In early February, Yale also received millions. Wealthy benefactor Paul Mellon, Class of 1929, heir of steel magnate Andrew Mellon, died and left a large donation to the Yale British Art Center, which he had created with works from his own collection.

The Class Day Committee snatched campus headlines in mid-February when it revealed that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan had canceled his Class Day speaking engagement a month before. Finally, in April, the committee approached Yale Corporation member and U.S. News and World Report Editor-at-Large, David Gergen, PC '63. His acceptance drew mixed reactions from members of the senior class who had hoped for a more prominent speaker.

At the end of February, President Richard Levin, GRD '74, and Provost Alison Richard decided to do something about Yale's dismal number of tenured minority and women faculty members. They announced a faculty diversity plan that created new resources for departments with few women and a new position in the Provost's Office to support department efforts to recruit women and minority candidates. Nevertheless, student diversity activists, led by the Student Coalition for Diversity, were skeptical of the plan's effectiveness because it lacked a specific time frame and did not revamp the internal structure of academic departments at Yale.

In April, athletic director Tom Beckett announced that James Jones, a former Ohio and Yale assistant coach, and Amy Backus, a former Northwestern assistant coach, would lead the men and women's basketball teams in the fall.

As Yalies returned to campus after Spring Break, the on-campus housing situation exploded into controversy. The rest of the residential colleges felt the ripple effects of the Berkeley renovations as annexed juniors and freshmen were switched to new locations on Old Campus in order to accommodate next year's Berkeley freshmen and sophomores in Durfee Hall. Due to an increase in rising seniors who wanted to remain in the college, Berkeley had originally planned to annex rising juniors, but that would have resulted in rising juniors living in their colleges for only a year. In an unprecedented move, Yale decided to annex sophomores instead, and gave Berkeley Durfee Hall to keep sophomores close to the college.

Saybrook finally got some good news when Mary Miller, GRD '81, an art history professor, took over as the new Saybrook master, replacing Interim Master Harry Adams in April.

The Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO) gained
national attention with its "Casual in Blue" report, which claimed that Yale was increasingly drawing upon graduate students and non-tenured professors for undergraduate teaching. Administrators rushed to discredit GESO's statistics. In a letter to the New York Times, Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, contended that GESO's method of "measuring teaching" was inaccurate and also detailed the Administration's own method of number-crunching.

Yalies partied hard and long at Spring Fling in late April. The YCC snagged the rock band Rusted Root to headline the event after Levin increased the amount of money allocated to the band budget. In a return to tradition, Spring Fling moved back to Cross Campus, since the lawn on Old Campus (the locale for the event for the past two years) had recently been resodded. Finally, in what has become yet another Yale tradition, Branford began to pack and prepare for the move to Swing Space during the upcoming school year.

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