Yale's Iron Curtain

During each of the last 18 springs I have spent growing up in New Haven, the fences around Yale have seemed to get a little taller.

My new home at 29 Garden St.--away from the safe confines of the Yard--is in the middle of Cambridge, a midsize Eastern city with many of the same problems as the very town I left. The killing of an MIT student on Memorial Drive and the attack on a fellow 29 Garden St. resident echo violence I thought I left behind.

Still, despite any superficial similarity, nothing in Cambridge matches New Haven's dramatic juxtaposition of posh and poor, professors and peasants.

Yale, New Haven's walled bastion of upper-echelon academia, has several violent, crime- and drug-filled neighborhoods no more than a few paces from many of its classrooms. From one street to the next, there is a sudden shift from heaven to hell.

Even with many upper-income professionals, like the now infamous Zoe Baird, New Haven has consistently ranked in the top 10 poorest cities in the nation. And while the newest statistics indicate that New Haven has lost its national "top 10" status, it still ranks as one of the poorest cities its size.

The New York Times examined the polarity of socioeconomic groups in New Haven--and the violence which sometimes unavoidably ensues--in the wake of the murder of Yale student Christian Prince.

Victimized by an inner-city youth, Prince's death has come to symbolize not only the centuries old clash of town and gown but also the meeting of cyclical inner-city poverty and the aloofness of those who daily walk by it.

Yet the gap between rich and poor does not fully explain New Haven's explosive mix. To the cauldron must also be added (as is true of Cambridge) a dwindling middle class of third and fourth generation Italians, many of whom trace their origins to the first stone masons of Yale.

The summer before last, a Italian student from nearby Southern Connecticut State University was shot to death at a pizza parlor near Yale in what apparently was a racial incident.

Disaster has come in varying degrees for many of those who work, live or learn in New Haven. Multiple shootings like the four on the night of October 14 of last year are no longer uncommon. As recently as December, seven shootings occurred in two days.

Yale now understands that it cannot hide from such statistics. For years, the university had been insular in its self defense, convinced that Yale could be an ivory tower removed from the life of the city.

But now, Yale finds itself reeling from the costs of operating within a violent city.

Yale's endowment wasn't invested in New Haven in any meaningful way, but in distant equity markets that would produce the greatest short-term monetary return.

The science faculty at Yale, unlike those at Harvard and MIT, didn't establish extramural enterprise zones next to the university in the fields of computer science and biomedical technology--growth industries that might have stimulated the local economy and added jobs to the inner city.

While Harvard and MIT have for decades voluntarily paid money in lieu of taxes on non-academic properties, Yale paid, and continues to pay taxes to New Haven only on its commercial properties.

Ironically, it was during the much maligned presidency of Benno C. Schmidt Jr. that Yale belatedly took the first steps to stop the decline of downtown New Haven.

Money went to city coffers for the rights to reconfigure a city street in the middle of the campus and funds were pledged to three downtown development projects.

The economic impact of Yale on New Haven is, and has always been, undoubtedly positive. If Yale ever left New Haven, the city's economy would collapse. New Haven would resembled the now bankrupt city of Bridgeport, Conn.

But this does not let Yale off the hook. The university must commit itself to active participation in insuring the future economic stability and vitality of New Haven. Instead of making taller fences, it must do something to stop New Haven's bleeding.

Since Schmidt's somewhat untimely departure, planning has begun to fix up the area immediately adjacent to the Yale Co-Op, the second largest department store in the city. This plan would improve several important commercial streets and esthetically enhance significant parts of downtown New Haven.

But the decision is still part of the old separatist philosophy. It seeks to repair the damage, but doesn't address the root cause of the problem--the economic malaise of all of New Haven, not just areas surrounding the Yale campus.

Yale is now paying a heavy price for its traditional isolationist policy. Frightened students and taller fences are only the most visible signs of Yale's reaction to New Haven's crime problem.

The Yale University Police Department now numbers 70 officers, more than many of the police forces of New Haven's suburbs. According to Lt. William Hollohan, the police department will add 10 more officers by the end of this semester. Harvard, by contrast, has fewer than 65 police officers.

The added expense of hiring and training more officers has forced substantive cuts in academic programs. Money which now provides salaries, training, benefits and pensions for police officers could now fund three mid-sized academic departments.

Perhaps more ominously, the reputation of New Haven as being a dangerous place has made it more difficult to attract quality faculty and the brightest students.

It is likely no accident that the number of students applying to Yale and the "yield" among those accepted have declined since the much publicized Prince killing. Yale, Harvard and Princeton each used to admit only about 19 percent of applicants, but Yale must now admit 22 percent to fill Old Campus.

As violence increases outside the Yard, in the Square and along the route to 29 Garden St., the lessons of New Haven should be taken to heart, and the implications of operating a university within an urban environment fully understood.

To assure the long-term intellectual vitality of any institution, administration and faculty should keep an eye as much outside the ivy-covered walls as inside.

Andrew L. Wright '96, a Crimson editor, grew up in New Haven, Conn.