Trying Harder in New Haven

Talk to Biagio DiLieto, Mayor of New Haven, and he will assert that Yale's youngest president in nearly three generations is the messiah of New Haven.

"Relations between the city administration and the university have never been better," DiLieto says. "Bart Giamatti has a great deal of affinity for the people of this community."

The president is not averse, DiLieto says by way of example, to marching in New Haven's annual parades. Only recently, at the joint-sponsored "Community University Day," Giamatti pitted himself against DiLieto in a human chess match on the New Haven common.

Judging from a recent article in The New York Times Magazine, the most revered figure around Yale University these days is its president. If he's not busy strolling across campus with minority students and female college masters as pictured in the Times, the 43-year-old A. Bartlett Giammatti is probably out blasting the Moral Majority or making statements against the Reagan Administration's defense budget. It isn't for nothing that Giamatti has earned the title "The Outspoken President of Yale."

Moreover, if Derek Bok's image among students is aloof (if not among alumni), Giamatti seems exceptionally accessible to students. No other Ivy League president has office hours for students to come in and chat, and few--other than Giamatti--respond to student-written luncheon invitations.

Yet students at the nation's second oldest Ivy League school have mixed opinions of their glamorous president. Some Yalies charge that Giamatti fails to live up to the image he has garnered from extensive media coverage--an image some student leaders at Yale charge is quite different from his everyday demeanor.

"His level of accessibility is disgraceful," charges one student, Beth Pardo, a former president of Yale's College Council (YCC). "He does not want students in power, and that's his whole approach."

Kirk Scott, coordinator of Yale's Campaign against Militarism and the Draft, agrees: "It's hard to meet with him unless you're the president of the YCC," he says, adding that it took him two months to schedule an appointment with Giamatti.

Giamatti's supporters are as effusive in their praise as his detractors are in their complaints. "He's put us in the position to help ourselves," says Bryan Blaney, president of the Black Student Alliance. "Contact with him is pretty good."

Stacey D. Modell, president of the undergraduate School's Committee, says that Giamatti managed to find time to attend an Early Action Day luncheon, even after his secretary had called to cancel. "My faith [in Giamatti] was restored," she says.

But dispute over the young president runs to other issues besides that of accessibility. Some students allege that he sports a progressive attitude towards political issues, but is actually unreceptive to student opinion.

The most controversial example of this alleged duality occurred earlier this year when the Yale Glee Club--at the insistence of Giamatti and several other administrators--turned down a State Department invitation to record the Polish Solidarity Union anthem for broadcast on Voice of America.

"I'm perfectly happy to take on political matters in what seems to be the educational context of this place," Giamatti was quoted as saying.

Equally heated issues surrounding Giamatti concern internal campus politics. Giamatti declined to be interviewed on these issues either in person or by telephone, as did David Henson, Dean of Student Affairs.

The central concern that most student leaders expressed was the lack of support--both fiscally and administratively--from the University for organizations outside the residential colleges. Yale operates on a college system similar to Harvard's house system, the main difference being that students are assigned to colleges at the beginning of freshman year. Although students do not live in the residential colleges until the beginning of their sophomore year, both students and administration officials maintain that the residential colleges are an integral part of Yale life.

Presidents of organizations outside of the colleges claim that the annual $12,000 budget allocated for the campus's 113 organizations is inadequate, and the lowest of any organization budget in the Ivy League. Harvard's organizations are funded by the Undergraduate Council, which maintains an annual budget of $60,000.

In addition, organization presidents complain that no centrally located office space exists for student organizations. "While we know that the residential colleges are the single most important aspect of college life, the university has refused to recognize the value of the campus-wide activities not affiliated with the college system," says one student leader who asks not to be identified.

Organization leaders have repeatedly made "formal and informal" requests for additional funding, the student says, but Giamatti has either refused to address the issue or claimed that there was adequate funding in the residential colleges.

Recently, Giamatti clashed with student leaders over the Ivy Group Student Government Conference in February. Although the conference unanimously passed a resolution urging Yale to provide more money to student organizations, Giamatti refused to discuss the matter.

If the battle between Giamatti and some student leaders is heated, however, it is by no means lost. The YCC is looking into the possibility of starting a course evaluation guide similar to the CUE guide here, Steve Neuwirth, current YCC president says. In addition, the Yale Corporation will vote this month on whether or not to have students sit on the board in an advisory capacity.

At this time of year, however, many students are more interested in grabbing a quick beer before finals than arguing about campus politics. Last weekend, at a corner table in Jonathan Edwards dining hall, Suzanne Ingram checked over a food list for the "existentialist" party she was planning in honor of the conclusion of spring classes. At the next table over, a representative of the residential college was attempting to sell tickets to the Moth Ball, a recently established J.E. rite in which students dance away their academic blues. Three blocks away, Andee Hochman, editor of the Yale Daily News, walked into the corner liquor store to place a final order for tonight's bash. "What's a party without ice?" she said.

With three days until reading period and only a week until exams, the only thing about Yale that appears Ivy League is its buildings. Students who less than a week ago were frantically scurrying to do last minute papers and meet "extended extensions" were now playing football and listening to the Whiffenpoofs, one of Yale's many a capella singing groups. People carefully avoided mentioning exams and blue books.

In spite of some problems with their controversial president, many Yalies seem to love their school. Although the first to admit that Yale's reputation for being a grind has validity, they unabashedly assert that the education is tops. "What distinguishes Yale from a place like Harvard is that we work harder," says one freshman.

If students at Harvard are pretentious about their status and students at Dartmouth are pretentious about their drinking, students at Yale are pretentious about their academics. Yalies, who take four more courses in order to graduate than students at any other Ivy League university, will eagerly tell you about the Directed Studies program for which Yale is academically reknowned. Students in the program--referred to by some of its participants as "Directed Suicide"--write a paper a week in addition to maintaining a heavy course load.

Students also boast of the unusual attention undergraduates receive from faculty members. Close to 100 percent of Yale's senior faculty reach undergraduates.

Says Perdo, proud of her school despite edmpaints about its president. "I wouldn't go anywhere else."