Week in Brief

JULIA TIERNAN/YH STALLED CELEBRATION: YCC President Zach Kaufman, SY '00, and several Saybrook administrators performed a formal two-ply tissue cutting ceremony on Thurs., Feb. 25.

"To investigate the paranormal, we should not start with an answer. We must start with the evidence and see where that leads us," he said. "There is no documented scientific evidence that ghosts exist."

Nickell attributed claims of alien sightings and abductions to a phenomenon known as "waking dreams"--when a person wakes up but his or her body remains temporarily paralyzed.

But some students were confused about Nickell's message. "Is he trying to expose the lack of scientific evidence for some people's beliefs in order to free them from them?" Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, CC '01, questioned. "Or is he hoping to come across evidence to support the paranormal?"

--Kate Feather

Grad dean lectures focus on community

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH Divinity School Dean Richard Wood spoke about strengthening Yale's graduate community.

On Wed., Feb. 24, Divinity School Dean Richard Wood, GRD '65, gave the first lecture in a five-part series aimed at fostering a sense of community among Yale's graduate and professional schools.

The lectures aim to bring students and faculty together from all of Yale's schools to discuss common interests. "It is our hope to introduce over the years a variety of exciting ideas," lecture organizer Frederick Cooke, GRD '00, said. "The Graduate and Professional Senate sees its role in the Yale community as one of unification. Future lectures will feature members of our faculty."

In this inaugural lecture, Wood defined a true "learning community" as a place in which people learn from each other by getting to know each other in social settings. He explained that in order to achieve this community of learning, it's crucial for people to get to know each other in social settings. He explained that such an academic environment is "a good place for people but a dangerous place for ideas." That is, people feel comfortable enough with each other to exchange ideas that others may criticize.

Wood's speech captured the attention of the dozens of students who attended the lecture. "I was really fascinated by Dean Wood's concept of a community of learning and his views on how you can foster a community of learning," George Raine, JE '96, LAW '99, said.

--Jane Gao

Yale-New Haven named a center of excellence
The Yale-New Haven Heart Transplant Unit has earned distinction as a Center of Excellence by Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Aetna U.S. Healthcare. While the recognition simply means that the members of these plans will receive coverage for heart transplants at Yale-New Haven Hospital, it is also a mark of the program's success.

Established in 1984, the cardiac transplant unit has performed nearly 150 transplants; in 1998 alone the unit performed 17 transplants. "The distinction is a validation of a certain level of quality recognized by those in a clinical field," Yale New-Haven Hospital spokesperson Ken Best explained. "We either met or exceeded [the insurance carriers'] requirements. There are only 155 heart transplant centers in the United States."

--Kate Feather

Gov. Rowland averts nursing home strike
A three-day strike by Local 1199, the nursing home workers' union, was averted on Mon., Feb. 22, when Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland approved a $200 million budget increase over the next three years to help underwrite the workers' wages.

"In nursing homes, a private contractor pays its workers, and then they report to the state and the state reimburses them," explained Student Labor Action Coalition member Connor Martin, TC '00. "The state only rewrites its budget every three years, so it's difficult for the union to get raises from their employers because then the contractor would be out of money."

In anticipation of a strike, Yale Hillel mobilized students to volunteer at the Jewish Home for the Aged. "Regardless of our feelings about the strike, this presents a huge problem for the home's residents, who are there because they cannot care for themselves, but who will have nobody else to care for them during those days," said an e-mail sent to the Slifka Center list.

--Alan Schoenfeld

Ex-Black Panther attacks liberalism
Talk about a turnaround. Former Black Panther Michael Horowitz attacked the dominance of leftist ideas on American college campuses when he addressed the Yale Political Union (YPU) on Tues., Feb. 23. "When universities like Yale adopt a hegemonic, leftist intellectual tradition, the real victim is the student," he said. During the 1960s, Horowitz was a Marxist Black Panther, a member of the Free Speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley, and a Vietnam War protester. In the '70s, however, he turned toward right-wing politics and adopted a conservative approach to education. Horowitz is currently president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and has authored several books criticizing leftist ideas.

Horowitz believes universities infringe upon the rights of students when they ignore the works of conservative thinkers. "The basic academic freedom of a student is to not be indoctrinated, but rather to be taught to think," he said.

--Nancy Levy

In Memoriam: Gene Siskel, PC'67

COURTESY CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Film critic and Yale alumnus Gene Siskel, PC '67, died on Sat., Feb. 20, from complications stemming from brain surgery to remove a tumor last May. A philosophy major at Yale, Siskel went on to write film reviews for the Chicago Tribune and TV Guide and co-host a popular movie review program with Roger Ebert.

Siskel and Ebert began working together in 1975 and shortly after developed their well-known "thumbs up, thumbs down" movie reviews. "We did the TV show together for 24 years. It was a strange format: two ordinary-looking guys from Chicago, sitting in a balcony talking about the movies," Ebert recalled in a Chicago Sun-Times farewell editorial. "Over the years respect grew between us, and it deepened into friendship and love."

Both Siskel and Ebert began their careers as print journalists, and although their fame came from the TV program, they remained proud newspapermen. According to New York Daily News film critic Jack Matthews, Siskel and Ebert's work gave television criticism new prestige because it combined a TV format with the seriousness of with newspaper writing. "I think that we tend to dismiss criticism done on television because of the time constraints, because they don't have enough time," Matthews wrote. "What Gene and Roger have done is show that serious criticism can be done in that short format."

"We've lost a great friend and a colleague, but, more importantly, a gentleman of the first order," Howard Tyner, editor of the Chicago Tribune, said of Siskel in a press release. "People may have thought he loved film more than anything but he loved his family most of all."

Siskel is survived by his wife and two children.

--Alan Schoenfeld

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