And you thought double helices were cool

COURTESY TERU THOMAS, BK '00 Graphic of a computer-generated representation of a fourth-degree solenoid

There is a line that divides this campus: the Mason- Dunham line. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, even if you don't recognize the name. It's the invisible line running between Mason Lab and Dunham Lab that slices across Prospect Street, Hillhouse Avenue, and Temple Street. It is the line that divides Napoleon from nanometers, Milton from momentum, and Kant from quarks.

Put more plainly, it divides the Group IV majors from the rest of us. Secluded up on their Hill, the mathematicians and physicists and biologists take half-credit labs that last for days while all us mortals stick to LC and WLH, shunning Kline Biology Tower despite its superior culinary offerings. The rift between the humanities and the natural sciences runs deep at Yale, and I for one had never thought it could be breached. Hell, I opted out of taking Physics for Poets because I couldn't deal with the idea of being in Sloane Physics Lab twice a week. But the Berkeley Solenoid Society, a vigilant, interdisciplinary group of Yalies, is blurring that line, showing number-phobic English majors that they have more in common with math and physics people than they might have thought.

What do we have in common, you ask? Well, for one thing, the solenoid.

So what exactly is a solenoid, anyway? My old and battered dictionary defines it as "a coil of wire wound in the form of a helix of one or more layers." But Drew Faehnle, BK '00, general director of mischief for the Society, explains it a bit more clearly: "It's like a slinky."

The spiral shape has implications in science that connect electricity with magnetism, a unification that was "one of the great intellectual triumphs of science in the 19th century," Teru Thomas, BK '00, Solenoid Society moral conscience, said. And its metaphoric applications in the humanities are endless: if you haven't yet heard Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta talk about the spiraling motion of angels in his Dante in Translation class as a cross between divine circles and human linear motion, you clearly haven't been listening.

The shape, which is created through a merging of opposites--circular and linear motion--is a point of connection between different academic disciplines. Yet, as one of the generators of the group, Andy Sinton, BK '00, pointed out that it is also an example of the division that exists within the academic-intellectual community of Yale.

"You can't talk about the full implications of the solenoid--as a metaphor--in a math class," Sinton said. "And you can't really talk about it in an English class, because people say, `This is mathematics, what does this have to do with anything?' So we wanted to create a space in this incredible intellectual community, which we saw as sorely lacking, that would be like the interface of mathematics and English. There are all these cool people with incredible ideas that they can't always get out. We wanted to give them an audience outside the pre-established orthodoxy."

So last January, Sinton and Thomas invited the Yale community into their common room to hear "Integral Segments and Other Discrete Fills," a speech by Chris Hillar, BK '00, who has since become the society's Director of Mathematical Proof. Hillar's presentation was hardcore math. But true to their anything-and-everything philosophy, the Solenoid boys took quite a turn for their second event. "The very next thing we did was Ashley Adams's, BK '00, magic show, which really put us on the map," Sinton said. "After that, our philosophy became: if someone has something really cool to do or say, the Solenoid Society is a means for them to do it." Adams has been crowned Director of Spatial Manipulation.

Throughout the 1998 spring semester, the Society presented events every other Thursday, including Berkeley Resident Fellow George Levesque's "You and the University: A Tour through the Hegemonic Shifts of Higher Education in America"; Dan Levy's, CC '00, and Alex Timbers's, ES '01, discussion of Psümøndylism, the "artistic movement" they started; and Professor Steven Miller's "Math for the People."

The Solenoidists also organized "The Spiral Gallery," in which they displayed art of various media through the first three floors of the entryway and the staircase that wound through them. "We took advantage of the architecture of Berkeley College," Tony Randoll, PC '99, director of cynicism, said. "Art students from all around, and people who weren't even art students, showed their work."

Events this year have included Hillar's return performance with a talk entitled "Six over Pi Squared: A Mathematical Interlude" and Serge Lang's now-controversial "Misinformation in Modern Society" speech. Plans for the future include a presentation by Physics professor Frank Firk, an African dance workshop, a performance piece on the Tripp-Lewinsky dialogue printed in The New York Times, and a multimedia presentation by Adams on how the architecture of Morse and Stiles is pure Gothic. And of course, there will always be croquet.

Oh yes, croquet. Lest you get the idea that that the Solenoid boys are a bunch of highbrow philosophers, overly satisfied with their metaphoric interpretations of mathematical figures and the interdisciplinary nature of their group, you must know that every Thursday at midnight, these boys "pull out the wickets and pull out the stops," according to Faehnle. While the game is tied to the solenoid in that it "consists of a motion of there-and-back, but not necessarily in a straight line," Sinton explained, the boys admitted that they also play the game just because it's fun. As with their formal events, everyone is welcome to show up and join in.

"Not taking ourselves entirely seriously is a very important part of the Society, because it means that we don't try to formulate our own agenda and press it on other people," Thomas said. "But we do take our speakers very seriously." Randoll said. "We're just trying to spark debate and conversation and get people's words out. And to have a blast."

The Society has a burning desire to take advantage of all the resources Yale offers. Using the printing press--first in Berkeley and now in JE because Boyd Hall has none--to print posters and certificates, and using the woodshop, which the Society transplanted from Berkeley to Boyd Hall, to handcraft their croquet mallets, are only the beginning.

"We have all these resources and all these great ideas that we simply don't take advantage of," Sinton said. "All it takes is some motivation and some formalization. You slap a name on a group, and suddenly you have this formal entity which can do things by putting resources and motivation and ideas together. We need people to make these ideas happen, but we can provide the resources and the motivation. And the publicity."

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