The Week In Brief

"The response for the train was not as large as we had hoped," Assistant Athletic Director Tim Ford said. By Fri., Nov. 3, only 55 people had expressed interest in the train, far short of the 250-person seating capacity. "We needed a guaranteed number of seats by the first week of November to go through with the Amtrak idea," Ford said. "Unfortunately, not enough interest was shown."

The private Amtrak train was to depart from Penn Station early Saturday morning and arrive in Boston at 11 a.m. The intended package was to include breakfast on the train and dinner on the evening return trip from Boston.

In place of the train, the Yale Football Association will rent a luxury bus to accomodate the 50-odd passengers who expressed interest in the Amtrak plan. The bus will be open to both alumni and current students.

The Yale-Harvard football game, a contest many alumni attend yearly, ranks as one of the most popular Yale events among graduates. Both regular alumni and former football team members attend tailgates, dinners, and other social gatherings throughout the entire weekend. "The weekend is extremely popular," Board of Football Association member and alumni Donald Scharf, BR '55, said.

"The Game could sell out this year, and a host of activities have been planned around the weekend," Scharf said. "The basic purpose of renting a private train or bus is to allow Yale fans to get together and have easy transportation to Cambridge."

Contrary to this rationale, and despite the success of a similar trip two years ago, the train package met with low interest, probably due to the schedule of the trip. "We're finding out that a lot of people who are going to the game are also planning on doing a lots of other things at Harvard, like attending reunions or dinners," Ford said. "They want to leave on Friday evening, or stay over until Saturday night."

Despite the train cancellation, plans for the replacement bus trip are promising. "Those who expressed interest in the train trip were looking to travel to the game with fellow Yalies more than anything else. We had a bus trip to Dartmouth a few weeks ago and that was a success," Ford said.

—Sahm Adrangi

Drugs implicated in Yale study pulled from shelves

The FDA sent letters to 100 pharmaceutical companies on Fri., Nov. 3, asking them to "voluntarily discontinue marketing any drug products containing phenylpropanolamine." This request was issued as an "interim measure," as the FDA has begun drafting rules to eliminate PPA from over-the-counter drugs. The FDA also plans to take action to remove PPA from prescription drugs and to classify PPA as unsafe for over-the-counter use.

Despite these drastic measures, which have stripped pharmacy aisles of many nasal decongestants and diet pills, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), a trade group that paid $5 million dollars for Yale to conduct the study, has reaffirmed the safety and effectiveness of PPA. The CHPA's leading researchers called the Yale study "inconclusive," claiming that no link between PPA and stroke has been established.

—Lise Clavel

'Election' author pens book about life at Yale

The experiences of Perrotta's narrator will resonate with many modern Yale students. Obsessive-compulsive color-coded highlighting of books, physically draining Middlemarch assignments, scandalous teacher-student affairs—these are but a few of the Yale phenomena that receive treatment in Joe College.

The heart of Joe College, however, covers Danny's deeper struggle to reconcile his elite Yale status with his New Jersey working-class background. Perrotta shows that local roots can mediate much of an undergraduate's perception, even in light-hearted moments. Danny finds it troubling when his well-to-do Yale friends chant along with Bruce Springsteen's anguished lyrics. "[They] didn't sound right in this context, played for the enjoyment of people who were going to end up being the bosses of the people the Boss was singing about," the author writes.

Perrotta follows Danny off campus to reveal that his previous life has also become a source of dissonance. Over Spring Break, Danny must help his father with the family's livelihood—a lunch truck named the "Roach Coach." The jump from philosophizer to fast food server is quite unsettling for Danny. While these specific experiences may not be universal, it does not require a Yalie to relate to the clashing of two worlds in Joe College.

Perrotta conducted a book signing at the Yale Bookstore earlier in the semester. He is also the author of The Wishbones, Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies, and Election. Election was recently made into a movie starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. If Joe College does well, Yale students may soon be able to view another rendition of their lives on film, perhaps this time without a Dawson's Creek character as its star.

—Alison Smith

DAVID GEST/YH In a non-partisan demonstration on Beinecke Plaza on Thurs., Nov. 9, Yale students voiced their frustration over the 2000 election's Florida fiasco.

Ivy League Notebook

Brown

Criticisms of undergraduate teaching have recently filled the opinion pages of the Brown Daily Herald. Students are arguing that the lecture/discussion format is an ineffective means of promoting learning. One columnist has asserted that such a teaching style creates empty relationships between professors and students and students and teaching assistants. "The system," she writes, "becomes one in which students get away with things." Analysts are currently evaluating the situation to determine if there is anything left to get away with when one receives no grades.

Dartmouth

Officials at Dartmouth are negotiating the purchase of the town's high school and middle school. Little has been said of what might happen to the displaced students of Hanover's public schools, but Dartmouth is looking to gain valuable real estate from the deal. The school buildings could be demolished, or they could also be preserved for housing. Dartmouth has noted that lockers could be converted into kegerators for a very small cost.

Princeton

Students at Princeton are looking forward to a Bob Dylan performance on Fri., Nov. 17. The music legend has agreed to give a concert as part of the school's annual Senior Week. Since he had already planned on being in the Princeton area in mid-November, organizers found that Dylan was willing to perform for a reduced fee. Although neither his father, grandfather, or uncle attended the university, it seems that the process of getting Dylan through the Princeton gates was similar to that of getting the typical applicant through.

—Compiled by Alison Smith from the Brown Daily Herald, the Dartmouth, and the Daily Princetonian.

HEARD

"If anyone can hack into the Florida system and make sure Gore wins, they will get an A in this class for sure." —Arvind Krishnamurthy, Parallel Computing "I had too many humps. You know, that's always my problem—too many humps." —Jeff Kenney, Galaxies and the Universe "Now that I'm using the word `sexual,' I hope your alpha waves are rising." —Bill Deresiewicz, Modern British Novel

YALE INDEX
1. Price, in dollars, paid for domain name www.killnader.com	30
2. Prize, in dollars, promised to Publisher's Clearinghouse winners	10,000,000
3. Number of votes by which Bush is leading Gore in Florida	229
4. Approximate number of questionable Buchanan votes in Palm Beach	3,000
5. Percentage of "Buchanan voters" who've tried to cash a Clearinghouse check	50
6. Number of Kill Nader sites one of them could set up with $10,000,000	333,333
7. Personal money, in dollars, spent by Jon Corzine	65,000,000
8. Cost, in dollars, of possible voting bribe for 229 people	262,008
9. Number of votes Corzine got in New Jersey	1,463,842
10. Personal money spent per vote, in dollars	41
11. Number of inner-city kids Corzine could have put through Yale	469
12. Percent chance that one of those kids would be more qualified than Bush	100

—Compiled by Nathan Littlefield and Josh Drimmer

1) Hearsay in Stiles dining hall; 2) junk mail; 3,4,7,9) CNN.com; 5) knowing old people; 6, 8, 10) fuzzy math 11) general knowledge 12) personal bias masquerading as general knowledge

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