The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University.

The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers.

Comment on this article

Light & Verity
October 1998

China Succumbs to Invasion by Glee Club Vets

From the crush of fans and TV cameras at several Chinese airports this summer, you'd have thought the Rolling Stones were landing. True, the welcome was for a musical group, but its signature tune was not “Satisfaction,” but “‘Neath the Elms.” Nevertheless, the Yale Alumni Chorus, a newly formed group of Yale Glee Club alumni, sang to sellout crowds in Beijing, Xi'An, and Shanghai during a 13-day tour in July and August.

Composed of 150 alumni of classes ranging from 1936 to 1995, the group was the largest delegation ever to represent Yale abroad. The chorus was actually three groups: an all-male choir of alumni from pre-coeducation days; a smaller mixed choir of post-1970 graduates; and a combined group that also included 36 singing spouses and guests. Conducted by Glee Club director David Connell '91DMA, the chorus opened the China International Chorus Festival, where they won a prize for best performance at the event.

The organizer of the trip was Mark Dollhopf '77, a Glee Club veteran and New Haven fundraising consultant. Why China? Dollhopf says the group chose it “not only because it would be groundbreaking, but because we thought we'd get a fabulous reception.” The group held rehearsals in New York and Los Angeles before leaving on the tour, but, says Dollhopf, “the first time we saw each other all together was when we got to Beijing.”

Tour spokeswoman Anita Scheff '77 says that many of the alumni who made the trip were inspired by Glee Club tours they had taken as undergraduates. “Most of us found Glee Club tours to be life-changing experiences,” says Scheff. “We really got to be part of the lands we visited in a way that you can only do with music.”

Dollhopf says the Chinese audiences were remarkably enthusiastic, especially when the chorus sang three native folk songs in Chinese dialects. But other parts of the repertoire were more puzzling. “Some of us appeared on a classical radio station, and we expected them to ask us about Beethoven’s Ninth,” recalls Dollhopf. “But they were far more interested in why we bark in the football medley.”

According to Dollhopf, the China trip was such a success that plans are now in the works for one to India in 1999.

State Stepping in to Help Science Park

New Haven’s Science Park will benefit from a bit of state election-year largesse. Connecticut governor John G. Rowland came to the site of the financially troubled business incubator in June to announce that the state will spend more than $14 million to tear down 38 blighted factory buildings on the site and build office, laboratory, and manufacturing space in their place.

In addition to the state contribution, the city of New Haven will provide tax relief on the property, and Yale will contribute $600,000 to help cover operating losses over the next two years.

Science Park, a partnership among the city, the state, and Yale, was founded in 1982 when the Olin Corporation began pulling its manufacturing operations out of its 80-acre Newhallville factory complex. It was hoped that the park and its staff of advisers would seed new businesses and provide jobs for the surrounding community. While supporters argue that Science Park has had some success, they note that it has always been underfunded, and has consistently run a deficit. In 1997, the park’s board of directors laid off most of the staff and turned over the real estate operations to a local management company in an effort to erase the deficit.

Officials hope the improvements will help lure business and light industry to the park, thus making good on the intention to create jobs for area residents. In announcing what he called a “$100-million plan” for the area, Governor Rowland included some $86 million in previously announced Federal funds to renovate the nearby Elm Haven and Florence Virtue Homes housing projects, improvements that are expected to make the park more attractive to potential tenants.

Housing Suit Sent Packing

A Federal judge on July 31 dismissed a lawsuit against the University filed last year by a group of Orthodox Jewish students who sought exemptions from the requirement that freshmen and sophomores live on campus. “The plaintiffs could have opted to attend a different college or university if they were not satisfied with Yale’s housing policy,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Alfred V. Covello in granting the University’s motion to dismiss.

The students, who filed suit just over a year ago, argued that living in Yale residence halls would force them to violate a Jewish law requiring modesty between the sexes. (Freshmen are assigned to suites on single-sex floors, some of which have bathrooms outside the suites that are not explicitly restricted to one sex or the other.) While the students paid their term bills and were assigned on-campus rooms, they never occupied them, living at home or off-campus instead. The suit contended that Yale’s repeated denials of the students' requests violated their constitutional religious rights as well as antitrust law and the Fair Housing Act.

Judge Covello rejected the plaintiff’s claims that Yale’s historic ties to the State of Connecticut made the University essentially a public institution that cannot restrict the free exercise of religion. He also said that Yale had not violated the Fair Housing Act, since it did not deny housing to the plaintiffs and since the Act requires housing providers to make “reasonable accommodations” only on the basis of physical handicaps, not religion. Finally, he ruled that Yale had not violated antitrust law by requiring that students who want one product (a Yale education) purchase another (on-campus housing), since other alternatives were available.

The students' attorney, Nathan Lewin, says that they will appeal the decision. Meanwhile, the housing policy now affects only one member of the group, which was originally known as the “Yale Five.” One student, Rachel Wohlgelernter '01, gained an exemption by marrying prior to the filing of the suit. Two others have become juniors, and one has turned 21, making them exempt. The remaining student, Batsheva Greer '01, says she will live at home this year while continuing to pay her term bill.

Same Firmament, Different Stars

A noted pastry chef, a survivor of the war in Bosnia, a former principal dancer with the Boston Ballet, and actress Claire Danes (My So-Called Life) are among the 1,302 members of the Class of 2002 who arrived on campus August 28. Composed of 650 women and 652 men, the class boasts representatives from 43 foreign countries and all but two of the United States (Mississippi and South Dakota).

Admissions officers extended offers of admission to 2,100 of this year’s 11,947 applicants. The percentage of students accepting the offer—known in admissions circle as “yield”—was 63.1 percent. Yale’s yield has increased for four consecutive years.

Approximately 30 percent of the freshmen are members of minority groups. More than 53 percent attended public schools; the students' median SAT scores were 730 verbal and 720 math. The class includes 174 children of alumni (including one sixth-generation Yale legacy) and 108 students whose parents did not attend college.

Next year’s crop of Yale aspirants has a new way to apply. Prospective members of the Class of 2003 can apply electronically through the University’s Web site (yale.edu/admit), submitting basic biographical information and paying the application fee by credit card. Essays, recommendations, and high-school transcripts must still arrive at Yale on paper, but the necessary forms can be downloaded from the site.

Arts, Ideas, and Little Richard

Rock-and-roll legend Little Richard pounded the piano for some 22,000 people on the New Haven Green on June 27. But his high-energy performance was just one piece of the third annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas, a four-day series of events that also included such diverse attractions as the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the Royal National Theatre of London, and journalist-cum-political consultant David Gergen '63.

The festival, whose principal sponsors are Yale University and the Southern New England Telephone Company, attracted 100,000 people and brought in more than $3 million in direct spending in the city, according to festival director Paul Collard. Especially successful were the festival’s paid events, which included the American premiere of Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen at the Long Wharf Theater, a performance by Cirque Baroque at the Shubert, and a poetry performance piece by Tracie Morris (commissioned by the festival) that dealt with Yale–New Haven relations. Collard said that revenue from the paid events was two-and-a-half times last year's.

This year’s festival also lived up to the “ideas” half of its title more than in past years by including a number of talks, readings, and a three-day conference on the future of cities. “The ideas strand was much greater this time, especially since we’re working with Yale,” says Collard.

Climbers Clue to Headache Cure

Scientists at Yale have gone to great heights—the upper reaches of Mount Everest—to investigate one of humankind’s most vexing ailments, the headache.

Last spring, a group of researchers at the Medical School, led by Ronald C. Merrell, chairman of the department of surgery, conducted an ingenious experiment on the world’s tallest mountain. By using portable ultrasound equipment, they were able to examine the blood-flow patterns of 38 climbers who were taking part in various expeditions. The researchers were hoping to document for the first time under such harsh conditions the changes that take place in the circulatory system at low oxygen levels.

Many mountaineers—along with people who travel on jets, drive through the mountains, or even travel to the top floors of tall buildings—are prone to what physicians call “high-altitude headaches.” Researchers have long thought that the ailment was the result of less oxygen reaching the brain, but the Yale scientists learned that the headaches were actually caused by an increase in cerebral blood flow.

The discovery could not only help save the lives of mountaineers—the headache is often a precursor of a fatal, brain-swelling condition known as cerebral edema—but it could also lead to better treatments for conventional and migraine headaches. In addition, researchers are intrigued by the increase in blood flow in response to low oxygen levels because it resembles a condition that can occur in the womb that results in children who are born with well-developed heads but withered bodies. “The environment in utero is a lot like being on Mount Everest,” says Christian Macedonia, a Georgetown University scientist who was a member of the Yale team.

China Project Prompts a Bundle

Yale University Press has received a one-million-dollar grant from the Starr Foundation to help fund the Press’s ambitious Culture and Civilization of China publishing project.

Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, the first book in the projected 75-volume series, appeared last autumn (see “A New Opening to China,” Oct. 1997). Additional books on the country’s visual arts, classical writings, and language, as well as reference works, a history of Chinese philosophy, and a volume on Buddhism, are currently under development.

“This is an immense project,” says Press director John Ryden, noting that the grant—reportedly the largest ever received by a university press—will help support the more than 150 scholars, curators, translators, and editors from China, the West, and the rest of the world who are involved in the series. Ryden added that the gift from the Starr Foundation, which was established in 1955 by Cornelius Vander Starr, the founder of the international insurance conglomerate now known as the American International Group, brings the amount raised so far to $1.5 million; the fundraising goal is $5 million.

“We’re doing this for our grandchildren,” says Ryden. “For a long time, China has been a closed book to us in the West. Now there is a new willingness to open that book.”

New Life for the Harbor Boathouse

Yale’s former Adee boathouse may soon become a houseboat—at least temporarily. A preliminary plan commissioned by the City of New Haven calls for the landmark building to be floated down the river on barges from its current site, near the Quinnipiac River Bridge, to Long Wharf, where it would be the centerpiece of a $28-million waterfront development. The boathouse currently stands in the path of a proposed expansion of the bridge that carries Interstate 95 over New Haven Harbor.

The building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, served the Yale crews from 1910 to 1923, when the University built the Bob Cook boathouse on the Housatonic to avoid increased shipping traffic on the harbor. No longer owned by Yale, the building is now used for offices.

The plan, developed in a series of community workshops by Centerbrook Architects and Planners of Essex, Connecticut, would include a farmer’s market, a plaza for special events, a 259-slip marina, and a restaurant in the boathouse. Centerbrook partner Chad Floyd '66, '73MArch, thinks the Gothic revival boathouse would be a memorable symbol for people driving by on I-95. “It has a strong character and an iconographic quality,” says Floyd. “It could serve to establish New Haven’s identity on the waterfront.”

New Haven city planning director Karen Gilvarg says the plan looks financially feasible but will be subject to extensive environmental reviews. She says that the $3-million cost of moving the boathouse could be covered with funds from the bridge expansion project.  

©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu