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FEATURE INTERVIEW CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER’S 25TH YEAR Interim Chancellor All in the Family— Christoph Kimmich Learning on the BCC Campus

high school—with a Regents diploma!—and n November 24 the City University By Dr. Nancy Ritze I graduate from Lehman College with my Board of Trustees appointed Brooklyn Director of Institutional Research, O bachelor’s degree.” College’s Provost and Vice President for Bronx Community College For both, the momentum is continu- Academic Affairs, Christoph M. Kimmich, came to the College in 1980, know- ing. “I am so proud of my daughter. She as CUNY’s Interim Chancellor. Dr. ing that a degree could help give me can do trigonometry, geometry, and cal- Kimmich, a German native who came to choices. That was my dream. When I culus; she speaks and reads Spanish; she the United States in 1951, earned his his- I walked through those gates on University plays the trumpet. She is in her second tory B.A. at Haverford College and a Avenue for the first time...it was one of the year at SUNY New Paltz, where she made D.Phil. at Oxford University. He has most frightening things I have ever done.” the Dean’s list in her first semester. taught at Brooklyn College since 1973 These words were spoken by Eddice Next summer, she’s going to Spain on a (and at the GSUC since 1975), specializing Fews, who, like so many Bronx Community partial study-abroad scholarship. As for in 20th-century German political history College freshmen, enter the University with me, today I have a Master’s degree and and foreign policy. He had been Provost high aspirations and deep trepidation. At there since 1989. Just after New Year’s that time she was receiving public assistance Day, he met with CUNY•Matters Editor and had one big responsibility: “I was look- Gary Schmidgall to discuss his academic ing for a good environment for my daughter life and share his thoughts on his experi- Lanell. I visited the BCC Child Development ence at the University. This interview will Center and met the directors, Charlotte and continue in the Spring issue and focus on Photo, J.T. Miller Mary Lou. They were angels!” major challenges facing the University. and artistic development. They were wide- It was not very long before Eddice and spread and still are. My mother taught at Lanell were established in their respective GS: You were born in Dresden. What one when we arrived in Pennsylvania. In learning environments. “I’d drop her off at were the circumstances of your emigrating? fact, I pass one now on 79th Street on my the Center and then go to my classes. In CK: My family began coming to the way to the Central Office. The Nazis, of the evening, I’d pick her up. It was just she United States in the 1930s, but my mother course, disapproved of Steiner methods and and I together through the whole thing.” and I did not come until 1951, when I was began closing the schools down. Both thrived, Fews eventually being elected 12. My father, a draftee, was killed in the GS: Because they were the opposite of war, fighting on the Eastern Front. Both vice president of the College’s student gov- regimental? ernment. “I could never have been able to my parents had been teachers in Rudolf CK: Urging children to develop their Steiner schools in Germany, and I of focus on student service and my course own curiosity and their distinct artistic ex- work if my daughter hadn’t been taken such course was enrolled in one. pression did not appeal to the Nazis. When GS: That’s a special pedagogy like, good care of.” the last Steiner school closed, my parents Seventeen years after her courageous say, Montessori schools? were out of their job. CK: Yes, these private schools took a stride through those University Avenue GS: I was going to ask if some event gates, Fews reflected, with more than a Eddice Fews, left, with her daughter Lanell in holistic approach to the child’s intellectual June 1995; Fews received her Lehman College very early in life caused you to think of little pride showing, on the success she and Bachelor's degree in Business Administration. teaching as a career, but it was clearly a Lanell are currently enjoying. Making a family matter. long story of perseverance short, Fews re- am a BCC financial aid counselor and Governor CK: The atmosphere of books, learning, calls moving up the academic ladder simul- Federal Work Study coordinator. I’m music...although I didn’t go to college with taneously: “She graduates from junior high about to purchase a home, and I plan to Proposes 1998-99 the conscious intention of teaching, in ret- school, I graduate from BCC with an begin a Ph.D. program in September.” rospect it seems, if not pre-determined, associate’s degree. She graduates from Fews attributes this tale of two suc- very much headed in that direction. cesses in large part to the Child Develop- Executive GS: You chose Haverford for your under- ment Center. “Without it, I don’t know graduate studies. where I’d be today. I know how important Budget CK: Yes, for several reasons: it was In Memoriam education is, but I also know how important close by, it was small—450 students, all he 1998-99 Executive Budget it is to link things together. Child care and men in those days—and it had a Quaker Tannounced by Governor George education do go hand in hand. It gave Pataki in January provides stability tradition, which interested me. I feel enor- Lanell the ammunition to survive out there, and assistance to CUNY. The mously indebted to Haverford. and she’s doing great!” Governor's recommendations include GS: How did you come to receive the his year marks the 25th anniversary a five year plan projecting $1 billion in two Fulbright Scholarships just after gradu- of the BCC Child Development Center, capital support for CUNY campuses. T ating from Haverford? the oldest incorporated child care program Of that total, $200 million in capital CK: From my Haverford teachers—one funding is included for next year. at CUNY. During this time, more than The proposed operating budget in particular, who had taught at Oxford, 1,000 college students and their children provides an important starting point Gerald Freund. He influenced me tremen- have doubly benefited from the direct care for further discussions on improve- dously as teacher, mentor, and then as and attention given to the young children of ments with the Office of the Gover- friend. There’s a larger issue here, and that parents who are students at the College. nor and the State Legislature during is the consequences that a really influential The Center was initiated in response to the both the 30-day amendment period teacher can have on students. day care needs expressed by increasing and the Legislative review. GS: What was it about Freund that got Tuition rates and student financial numbers of BCC students who had pre- aid allocations remain constant. In- under your skin? school-age children. formation on both the proposed CK: An enormously dedicated teacher, Twenty-two youngsters inaugurated the capital and operating budgets is and a good one...a man of very high stan- Joseph S. Murphy program in 1972 in a renovated faculty available on the CUNY Website dards. He valued quality and sought it out. lounge. As it happens, the Center’s first (http://www.cuny.edu) He crystallized for me how important it is 1933-1998 and only Director and Associate Director, Continued on page 2 Continued on page 10

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Kimmich Interview, continued from page 1 not taken in this century. To this day, Ger- finding jobs within hailing distance of each nese. When they return to campus they, so to play a role—be a role model—for stu- many is considered very ambivalently by its other...when that didn’t happen Flora went to speak, have to resocialize. They are torn dents, be inspirational rather then merely neighbors. What is it about this enor- back for a law degree at the University of between two worlds. I never had to deal “telling things” in the lecture hall. He made mously industrious, productive people—yet Pennsylvania. She entered public interest with that; out in Pennsylvania, there were his career seem very attractive to me. He they are both feared and admired, emulated law and practiced for some time, but then few other immigrants, and so I quickly em- also introduced me to the idea of study and resented...like no other people? The reverted to her first love, which is foreign braced the majority culture, coming to abroad and to applying for prestigious fel- explosive central location, no doubt, is one languages. She has acquired five of them, speak the language in three months. lowships. reason; its great wealth; Germany always the most recent being Latin and Greek, GS: Another culture you have embraced, GS: To wit, the Fulbrights. Was he Eu- seems to be bursting at the seams; and of which she learned at the Latin and Greek if that is the word, is the administrative ropean? course generations of violent history. The Institute, a Brooklyn College program one. What has that been like? CK: Yes, a German Jew who fled in the nation’s strange, cumulative, collective be- housed at the Graduate School. Talk about CK: A mixture of painful, bitter mo- 1930s with his parents. havior patterns have long fascinated me. immersion—this summer program features ments, especially with the University going GS: You stayed on at Oxford for three professors who man a 24-hour through its contractions and budget difficul- years and earned a doctorate. Is that un- hotline! She also earned an ties, and exhilarating moments when I can usual? M.F.A. in poetry at the College see change for the better...or when some- CK: Yes, most Americans earn a second since leaving legal briefs behind. thing I’ve cheered for, like the new bachelor’s. Oxford’s very strong focus on GS: I studied in Stuttgart in Children’s Studies and Environmental Stud- research—much stronger than here, I the mid-60s and have not been ies programs at Brooklyn College, became a think—was what appealed to me. I was back in many years, but as I’ve reality...or helping to create the Freshman tired of taking exams and writing short pa- read the news stories in recent Year College, which welcomes students pers, and the Oxonian method of complete years, I get the distinct feeling I’d quickly and supportively into college life. immersion in a subject was very attractive. find a grimmer, much less ebul- When everything you do has the goal of nur- It really is a research degree. lient atmosphere. What is your turing a community of learners, the gratifi- GS: Any fond memories of eccentric feeling? cation can be enormous. dons? CK: The main feature of Ger- GS: What are some of the small, spe- CK: My stories would be no different from man society now, I think, is a cific victories of, say, a Provost’s job? everyone else’s. I was very happy there. I deep generational conflict. The CK: Most of the anecdotes of student found the one-on-one tutorial style very en- turmoil of the first 50 years of victories I might recall—aceing an exam, joyable; indeed, teaching this way at St. the century left the older genera- getting into medical school, being your Antony’s College, I think, settled my career tion with a conforming, don’t - family’s first college grad—come down to Chairwoman of the CUNY choice. I especially liked the Oxford custom Board of Trustees Anne A. observing a student’s sense of accomplish- of being permitted, if you were wearing your Paolucci, above, greets ment on his or her own. The privilege of black scholar’s gown, to attend any lecture Interim Chancellor watching that happen is something you or seminar at will. And what lectures! — Kimmich; to the right, can’t buy for love or money. marvelous extemporaneous 90-minute af- Kimmich and his wife GS: Has your knowledge of the great fairs that seemed like a pleasure rather than Flora at a reception given German diplomats helped to inspire your a chore to the speakers. for them at the University own administrative style? Club on December 22. GS: Such style is more prevalent there? Photos, André Beckles CK: In a college, you are dealing with CK: I think so...that fluent and yet very two structures. First, the hierarchical learned style I’ve rarely encountered else- GS: Have you visited structure of those who work for you, report where. And that fluency, by the way, carried Germany often? to you...deans, directors, staff. Then there over into the quality of my students’ writing. CK: Not recently, is the collegial structure, teachers who, I became fascinated by the coherence, the but I did research there, except for class duties, almost work for drama, the sense of language of their pa- notably in Bonn, and themselves and do their own research. The pers. And they thought nothing of it. still have friends there. challenge is to bring the two worlds to- GS: What you say reminds me of per- GS: What is your gether into a productive relationship. You haps the chief pleasure of my year studying favorite German city? have to have encouraging, nurturing, con- at the University of London: reading the CK: Favorite...well, I’ll say the most in- rock-the-boat attitude. The younger genera- sensus-building instincts. London Times obituaries, which are a real teresting one is Munich...for variety, for tion finds this stultifying and feels ambiva- GS: Bismarck is not apropos, then? art form. Beautifully written obits in the entertainment, theater, and being close to a lent about the Establishment. And then CK: Correct...you have no battalions, no New York Times, like the recent one for very dramatic countryside. My wife, Flora, there is the very sensitive problem of the heavy purse, no big stick. Collaboration, Brendan Gill, are unfortunately all too rare. and I lived for a year in little Göttingen, and country’s large population of Gastarbeiter, a mutual support are the way to success. You seriously invested, at Oxford, in Ger- that was not so great! There was nowhere euphemism for a large population of foreign That was my style at the College and it will man political history as your field. Was it, to go...it was provincial in every way. labor, mostly Turks, received during the be my style here. We should not be strug- as might appear, a question of returning to GS: Your wife has volunteered to write boom years of the 60s to do work no one gling with each other, but with the problem. your roots? for CUNY•Matters, and when I spoke with else was willing to do. GS: Is one of the problems the percep- CK: Many influences bore on this. her a few weeks ago she mentioned that GS: Yes, in my Stuttgart dormitory and tion “out there” of public education? Clearly, one was my father’s death when I you met in Germany. commons, all the menial jobs were done by CK: I’m the product of private educa- was very young. Though he only taught for CK: She had a Fulbright for study in Turks. These ethnic tensions must present tion, from kindergarten through the doctor- perhaps eight Germany and chose a very touchy problem, given Germany’s ate. It wasn’t until 1973 that I came to years—he was 30 to stay on to work Nazi past. know a public academic institution, and I when he was in the Fulbright of- CK: They do. Probing them is difficult, was deeply impressed by how much public killed—he was "Collaboration, mutual fice in Bonn. I was but I expect it will also lead to very interest- education has done and what it can do. To quite celebrated support are the way to doing archival re- ing insights into collective behavior. I find a much greater extent than in Europe, pub- and had a real gift. success. That was my search there, and the situation especially interesting because lic education has made this country what it I have run into we were introduced of my own immigrant experience. The fact is. The difficulty, not only in the microcosm people in their 60s style at the College and by a mutual friend. of my “German roots” does not matter so of CUNY but everywhere, is that higher edu- and 70s who were it will be my style here. She returned to much to me, but thinking about the effects cation has lost some of the cachet it used students of his and We should not be strug- pursue her Ph.D. in of one’s immigrant status does: going to a to have. There was a time when op-ed remember him viv- German literature far-away place, learning the language, pages called on academics. Now it’s a free- idly and affection- gling with each other, at Yale, so part of adapting, making choices. for-all of talk-show hosts, athletic coaches, ately. My teaching, but with the problem." our subsequent GS: You certainly came to the right Uni- celebrities. Opinion-making has become so I feel, must in some courtship was by versity—so many of its students having this democratized that we have lost sight of the way have come out mail. She is from a immigrant experience. high level of intellectual discourse that of a desire to recre- prominent family of CK: We mimic the nation itself, I think, good higher education makes possible. ate what he achieved. educators in North Carolina. which still honors the idea of the integration GS: Is this a sense of our having “given GS: But you wouldn’t emphasize your GS: Yes, I noticed that she earned a of all immigrants and rejects the notion of up” on education? more general ethnic roots? magna cum laude B.A. from Duke. The other the isolated American. Though I will say CK: Or of our depending on it too much. CK: I have a distanced view of Germany. Dr. Kimmich’s commitment to education, that I think immigrants today have a harder Various new social responsibilities have I don’t consider myself a “hyphenated” especially the “continuing” kind, is amazing: time than I did. At Brooklyn College, stu- been imposed on campuses—child care, American. Still, I think there’s much to be no fewer than four advanced degrees! dents often return home to a strong ethnic economic development, community issues— learned about Germany’s roads taken and CK: Yes, the difficulty of two academics setting, speaking Russian or Swahili or Chi- which by and large we have been happy and Continued on next page

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○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ BROOKLYN’S GOLDSTEIN CENTER Deputy Chancellor Assistive Resources Patricia Hassett For Disabled Students Appointed by Board By Roberta Adelman he City University of New York Board of Coordinator, Services for Students with Trustees named Patricia Hassett Disabilities Program, Brooklyn College T Dr. Gregory Kuhlman, Interim Deputy Chancellor at a special Jan. 7 Board meeting, upon the recom- had to get back to school, but I didn’t Director of the Brooklyn mendation of Interim Chancellor know how,” recalls Cheryl Spear, who College Personal Counseling and Career Services Center, Christoph M. Kimmich. The appointment lost her sight several years ago. But in I with a student at one of the is effective Jan. 20. the end—with the help of Jaws, a Dragon, Goldstein Center’s Zoom Text Hassett has served for more than two Sticky Keys, and other exotic learning computers. Photo, Steve decades in senior administrative positions aids—she found her way not only to cam- Jordan. in both public pus but to a degree. Cheryl graduates from and private Brooklyn College next month with a major and graphics up to 16 times actual printed such as maps, illustrations, or charts and higher education, in psychology. size, and text can be viewed a portion at a can be felt by visually impaired students. including, since Easing Cheryl’s journey diploma-wards time and read at different speeds. There is also software—Jaws and PW Web 1993, the office was a remarkable array of devices on the Goldstein Center students also have a Speak—that allows these same students to of Vice President cutting edge of assistive technology. These choice of keyboards. One has large keys browse the Web by reading the text aloud. for Finance and allowed her to do a statistics problem in 30 with raised Braille; another is flat and only Thus, students with different disabilities Administration of minutes instead of the seven hours it used requires a soft touch (Intellikeys). There is were able to demonstrate how the Goldstein Brooklyn College. to take. With a professor’s hand-outs en- even a special keyboard (Sticky Keys) that Center’s technology enhances their studies. Formerly, she tered on a disk, special software enabled stores computer commands and allows the One student has carpel tunnel syndrome, was Vice Presi- Cheryl’s computer to read them aloud to user to hit one key in order to activate sev- another injured his hand in a work-related dent for Adminis- her. She was able to pursue research eral commands. accident, and yet another has a learning tration at projects with very little help from others— disability: they all use Dragon Dictate to Fairleigh Dickinson University. In addition, scanning journal articles, for example, with he visitors were impressed with the help them write their papers. One student, she has extensive experience within the the Reading Edge, loading them on a disk, Tscreen readers and immediately saw like many others with limited hand coordi- CUNY system, including directorial posi- and using voice output to cut and paste her how they could be used by students with nation, uses the special flat keyboard that tions at Baruch College and City College. materials into draft form. Only then is a different disabilities, including visually im- only requires a soft touch. A partially “Ms. Hassett brings to the task a strong reader needed to help her edit. paired and those with learning disabilities sighted student does not need a reader to and long-standing commitment to the Uni- Cheryl is one of many students with a and Attention Deficit Disorder. do her tests; she simply reads them using versity and its mission, broad campus expe- disability who enjoys the rapidly expanding The Kurzweil Reading Edge is a reading Zoom Text. rience, clear intelligence and prodigious array of assistive technology now available machine that translates printed text into The Center is administered by the energies. She will coordinate University- at the College’s Mamie and Frank Goldstein speech. Books of any size can be scanned College’s Services for Students with Dis- wide projects, serve as liaison with various Resource Center. Last October, she was and read by the machine. It uses the abilities Program and currently serves constituencies, and oversee select Univer- among the speakers at a special event DECtalk voice synthesizer, which can be about 250 students. While there is now sity and Central Office operations and ad- sponsored by the Center that was attended asked to speak in one of nine voices: four ministrative services,” Interim Chancellor by Brooklyn College President Vernon E. male, four female, and one child’s voice. In Kimmich said. Lattin, Public Schools Chancellor Rudolph addition to seeing computers “speak,” the Hassett has a Master’s degree from F. Crew, and the Center’s most enthusiastic group also saw that the Center’s computers Teachers College, Columbia University, and supporter, Stanley Goldstein. can take dictation from what a student a Bachelor’s from Richmond College, now A highlight of the day-long event was a says. This is done with voice recognition the College of Staten Island. tour of the adaptive machines now available software called Dragon Dictate, which at the Goldstein Center, as well as at the prints words onto the computer screen as Library and Computer Lab. Guests saw in the student speaks into a microphone. operation, for instance, one of two screen Among the Center’s other remarkable magnification software systems available at learning aids is the Tactile Image Enhancer, member of the Brooklyn College Founda- the Center, Zoom Text. This enlarges text a device that generates raised documents tion. He also provided outstanding service to the University as Co-Chairperson of the Higher Education Task Force on Student Continued from previous page GS: You’ll be happy to know that my Longtime Brooklyn College Activity Fees in the mid-1970s. well-equipped to assume. Still, we have to alma mater, Stanford, has a German rather supporter Stanley Goldstein. Goldstein traces his interest in helping ask what our mission really is. Are we than a Latin motto, “Die Luft der Freiheit students with disabilities to two life experi- spreading ourselves too thin? The high weht” (“The winds of freedom blow”). I technology throughout Brooklyn College, ences. When he was an undergraduate he school degree is no longer what it once was, guess there is no motto for CUNY as a the Center has the largest concentration of came to know a fellow student who was and now the college degree seems to have whole to capture that mission. assistive technology and is the prototype for blind. He was profoundly impressed by this gone the same way. When I first came to the GS: By way of conclusion, I want to go the campus as well as the CUNY system. individual, who overcame his obstacles, College, I had a good student, a senior, and I back to your remark about being, in 1973 graduated, and succeeded in life. Goldstein asked him what he was going to do when he when you came to the University, a life-long he Center was renovated in 1994 as a explains, “To help students with disabilities graduated. He said his degree would get him product of private education. Looking Tresult of a gift from two alumni, is a great satisfaction to me for lots of rea- a promotion. I recognized two things here: back, what was the experience of making Stanley Goldstein and Edith Goldstein sons, not the least of which is that I still be- his employer clearly did not think his high that transition like? Isaacs, in honor of their parents. It was lieve in the old-fashioned concept of self- school had done it for him, but, beyond that, CK: It certainly changed the trajectory Stanley Goldstein who made the October help. No people exemplify the virtues of self- the college degree was also opening doors of my life. Brooklyn College was overwhelm- celebration possible, and it was his idea to help more than those who suffered disabili- for him down the line. What this confirmed ing, what with the number of students, very reach out to New York City’s public schools ties and yet persevere and attend college.” for me is how we have denigrated the high challenging...there was a bubble of excite- to inform prospective matriculants with His other motivation is more personal. school diploma and shifted the responsibility ment on campus...none of that somewhat disabilities about the assistive support they His son, who is dyslexic, went to a college onto colleges. But we just can’t expect them complacent, sons-of-alumni-coming-back-to- will enjoy on campus. that had a very good program for students to shoulder this responsibility and emerge, in Columbia atmosphere. At Brooklyn you had Goldstein graduated from Brooklyn Col- with disabilities, but he didn’t make use of some ethereal way, unchanged and as highly first-generation students with stars in their lege in 1959 with a B.S. in accounting. He these services because he felt a stigma was regarded as ever. eyes. Astonishing. That twist of fate in 1973 was a C.P.A. for most of his professional life attached. Goldstein has been eager and GS: This will take some thought about brought me completely unexpected plea- and was a founder of the firm of Goldstein, delighted to help make available—without the University’s mission. sures. I think, if I’d stayed at Columbia, I Golub, and Kessler—all three, incidentally, stigma—a core of disability programs, ser- CK: Our missions are plural at CUNY, would have gone on doing the scholarly are Brooklyn College graduates. For the vices, and assistive technology that will we can—and ought—to do many things thing...and wouldn’t be here talking with you. last 18 years he has been a private investor level the playing field for collegiate stu- well. My impression, though, is that we are GS: For which my readers and I thank for small firms. An Alumni Association dents with disabilities. “They are demon- not clear about ourselves, and we should you. Wilkommen und viel Erfolg during president for two years, he has just cel- strating that the human spirit has enor- think hard about our missions. your time in the Chancellor’s Office. ebrated his silver anniversary as a board mous and enduring power.”

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HUNTER’S PRESIDENTIAL AWARD RESEARCHER Studying the Choreography of Genes CURATOR FROM QUEENS COLLEGE By Peter Taback Met Museum Welcomes Spring hile praise has come to Dr. Jill know that not everybody is going to be With Luxurious Asian Textiles Bargonetti from just about every great friends, but we all work together. We Wcorner of New York recently— all respect each other.” because she received in November a Presi- Although the lab is very much a CUNY ictured here is one of the 60 textile dential Early Career Award for Scientists facility, you will not hear the range of lan- Pmasterpieces included in the exhibi- and Engineers—it is the undergraduates guages spoken here that is typical of tion “When Silk Was Gold: Central Asian and waiting to register outside her Hunter Col- Hunter’s student body. Bargonetti’s empha- Chinese Textiles,” which will run at the Met- lege office whose acclaim carries real sis on group learning leads her to insist on ropolitan Museum of Art from March 3 to weight. Bargonetti, the youngest faculty English in the lab. “I demand that one May 17. This panel—titled “Welcoming member of the Hunter College biology de- common language be spoken here because Spring” and embroidered in China during partment, is an emphatically student-cen- I don’t agree with a second language ever the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368)—will be tered scientist. being used as an exclusionary measure.” joined by tapestries, drawloom silks, and Bargonetti was honored for a break- In other respects, informality is “cloths of gold” dating from the 10th to the through discovery on the gene p53 and for Bargonetti’s style. She does not expect 14th centuries. her belief that a scientific laboratory students to call her Dr. Bargonetti, though Morris Rossabi, Queens College profes- should be a place for more than just cellu- her youth and easy demeanor sometimes sor of East and Central Asian history, co- lar growth. “Science is a group effort,” she bring about unexpected obstacles in the curated this exhibit with James Watt of the asserts. “In the grant application that got student-teacher dynamic. “I think it’s dif- Met and Anne Wardwell of the Cleveland me the award, one of the things I wrote was ferent for them to see me in this position. Museum of Art. It is the most important that, through what I was doing, my lab It’s also different for people to have to display of Asian textiles since World War could serve as a na- learn to respect me.” II. Many of these silks were produced dur- tional example for a She is at ease with ing the era of Mongol rule in Asia, as the multicultural scien- students, at ease with pastoral nomads from the steppes prized tific environment their occasional fail- these colorful brocades and embroideries. whereby people ures, and very com- “Welcoming Spring,” says Rossabi, “is re- learned to respect fortable—even en- markably large—84 x 25 inches—and com- each other in spite couraging—with the plicated, and it offers a charming depiction of their differences.” inventive few who can of a boy riding a goat and many other ani- Bargonetti knows modify parameters in mals, all against a background of flora, that training new search of a new re- water, and earth.” scientists is one of sult. “If they’re not Also on view will be a 13th-century cloth her chief responsi- creative,” she says, of gold featuring winged lions and griffins. bilities. So it is no “they’ll never be able (Cloth of gold was a term used by Marco surprise to find her to come up with a Polo and others for fine pontifical and epis- achievements well- hypothesis.” copal vestments and robes of Mongolian known among emperors.) All textiles have been drawn Hunter’s undergradu- argonetti knows from the collection of the Met and the Cleve- ates. They are at B what it’s like to land Museum of Art. work everywhere in conduct cutting-edge A leading scholar of the interior of Asia, her laboratory. En- scientific research a Rossabi was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and ticing newly-declared few floors above the conducts research in nearly a dozen lan- biology majors to find subway. From the guages. He has authored China and Inner Asia, Khubilai Khan, and Voyager to Xanadu, science as compel- Hunter College El- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ling as she does is Hunter College biologist Jill Bargonetti. ementary School to and among his current projects are articles purchase of the Dillon Fund Gift, among her long-term Photo, André Beckles the Bronx High School on China’s relations with Inner Asia for the 1981. career objectives. of Science, as well as Cambridge History of China and a CD-ROM “I’m here at Hunter to be a role model, to let an undergraduate degree from SUNY Pur- on the Silk Route, forthcoming from the Asia people come into the lab and show them chase and a Master’s and Ph.D. from N.Y.U., Society, and research for a book on post- what is exciting about science, that it is re- Bargonetti has cultivated strengths from Soviet Mongolia that has been funded by ally enjoyable and that the people who are nearly every educational system in New the Soros Foundation. involved in science are not boring.” York. She even did post-doctoral research at “Them,” for this professor are the under- Columbia University prior to taking her graduate and graduate students at the present position at Hunter College, where well. There’s a lot of that in understanding other side of this coin: the absolute neces- College’s Center for the Study of Gene the view from her office of all of midtown biological concepts—being able to visualize sity of creative thinking. “When you get to Structure and Function, for whom it quickly Manhattan captures whatever imagination is what’s on the page. If you can’t go beyond the lab bench, everything’s set up, and you becomes clear that scientific research is a not engaged in science. data on the page, then you won’t be able to follow the protocol in the lab book. So far collaborative process. Collaboration, The Central Casting stereotype for a do science very well. so good, but if that’s all you can do, you Bargonetti acknowledges, certainly helped scientist certainly vanishes in Bargonetti’s “Many of the things I wrote about in my won’t be going much further. You may be a to produce her findings about p53, a gene presence. In addition to being an African- grant proposal had to do with gene amplifi- very good technician, that’s all.” that produces a protein which can be used American professor in Hunter’s Biology cation.” Bargonetti explains. “Clearly, if For a relatively young scholar, to block abnormal growth of cells caused by program, she is also a former dancer with something is going to be amplified, there’s Bargonetti’s record at securing support for cancer and HIV. Such breakthrough sci- the Harlem-based Sounds in Motion com- got to be some movement. This is where her projects is exemplary. In an increas- ence is, of course, the main prize in her pany who once juggled both careers. the dancing comes in.” ingly expensive field, her lack of cynicism work, but she has pedagogical ambitions Even now that she is on the faculty of about the competition for funding is re- that go beyond mere data. the College and the Graduate School, n her mind, dance and science meet markable. “There are certain things hu- dance is still very much a part of her recre- I where precision and creativity inter- manity needs, and so there are people out tudents in Bargonetti’s lab are ex- ational life and her thinking. Every scien- sect. A dancer must be specific. “If you there who say, ‘Look, you have the skills to Spected to work together and share pro- tific maneuver, Bargonetti insists, has an think about ballet or any other dance, every- think about this problem and we need cedural information and results with each equivalent spatial movement. Those who thing is very precise. I mean, if your toe is people to think about this problem so we’re other. In her lab meetings, data belongs to understand the physical correlation to sci- not like this,” her hand gestures a dizzyingly giving away money for people to think everyone, and everyone asks questions. entific motion, she believes, have a great precise angle, “it’s not the dance at all.” about this problem.’” “It’s a group effort. A lot of people are un- advantage. “A dancer has to have good Similarly, those who fail to meet the rigid “So you think about that problem. That’s comfortable dealing with interpersonal memory skills, has to have good spatial expectations of method and language are your job. You’re a thinker. If you find re- skills in the lab; they prefer not to discuss and conceptual ability, because you must unlikely to succeed as scientists. sources to deal with a problem, it’s very problems. I have a different approach. I remember all of the steps and movements But Bargonetti is quick to point out the satisfying.”

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VISIONARY CHARETTE OF FIRE CCNY’s Design Students Board “Crosstown 116” Professor Lance Jay Brown, AIA, of the City College School of Architecture and Environmental Studies, reports on a major CUNY/AIA partnership he is co- directing that will focus visionary design concepts on one of Upper Manhattan’s main commercial thoroughfares.

he word “charette” is used by archi- time, all of SAES is devoting its energies to a tects all the time, but it may soon single design context. All 16 of its architec- Tbe on the lips of everyone inter- ture and landscape studios are working to- ested in the future of one of Harlem’s main gether to create visions for the urban com- thoroughfares. A very exciting charette munities served by the crosstown 116th took place on the City College campus last Street as a model 21st-century urban thor- At the November “Crosstown 116” charette, November, but before I explain what exotic oughfare. members of the “Street as Public Realm” team work architectural performance art a charette During the fall “Crosstown 116” also ond- through fifth-year design studios. (Cop- on their “pin-up” illustrating a series of design ideas, entails, let me first describe a remarkable presented weekly seminars that intro- ies are available for review by the public, including a “civic node” stretching the length of town-and-gown collaboration called duced more than 30 speakers on such notably through the three Community Plan- 116th Street, for a 4 p.m. presentation. Standing by “Crosstown 116.” issues as affordable housing, transporta- ning Boards—#9, #10, #11—that supervise window are Robert Geddes, FAIA, left, and Herbert “A model for how a college should func- tion, and energy-saving design. These 116th Street, or can be ordered by calling Oppenheimer, FAIA. Prof. Lance Jay Brown, AIA, tion in relationship to the outside world.” seminars were open to the public and 212-650-8745.) leans forward at rear to annotate the composite urban design drawing. Photo, Dorothy Alexander. That is how City College President Yolanda were often standing-room-only. The Phase Two, a Design Dialogue and Work- Moses chose to describe “Crosstown 116” at project has succeeded in bringing to- shop—architects call their intense, high- the project’s kickoff event on the CCNY cam- gether students, local design profession- energy workshops “charettes”—took place day was one for reactivating “lost” space pus last September. “Crosstown 116” is a als, and members of the community. At on the first weekend in November. Working around post-war public housing by reinte- year-long project that originated within the our September kickoff, the AIA’s New groups at this conference explored these grating ground plane activities into the city American Institute of Architects’ New York York chapter President, Robert Geddes, four topics: providing performance facilities fabric. Another team focused on ways of chapter; its purpose: to nurture proposals described collaborations like ours as for the enhancement of cultural life; the re- reenforcing the connections of 116th Street for revitalizing one of Upper Manhattan’s being “as significant for the planning and invention of public housing; the form of the to the east and west of Morningside Park, most critical river-to-river arteries, 116th design professions as the teaching hospi- street and its role as community amenity/ encouraging commercial development near Street. Primary funding for this program is tal is for health professions.” organizer; and the structure of community the East River, and, in the middle, creating a a $109,000 grant from HUD’s Office of Uni- Forming what Geddes refers to as a “civic and issues of cultural preservation. new “node” of public-use buildings between versity Partnerships. triumvirate,” the SAES (including the City 5th and Lenox Avenues. A third team con- A significant part of this initiative are the College Architectural Center) and the very hase Three will consist notably of an sidered “embedding” performance spaces in standards and goals that emerged from the active New York AIA chapter are also work- P exhibition of photographs, drawings, the center of existing blocks adjacent to United Nations Conference on Human Settle- ing closely with the Upper Manhattan Em- models and texts of concepts and proposals 116th Street. ments, called Habitat II, which was held in powerment Zone (UMEZ). for “Crosstown 116” created by CCNY and The volunteer design professionals and Istanbul in 1996. “Crosstown 116,” we Columbia designers and other local profes- community leaders who participated were hope, will test many aspects of the Habitat he first of the three “Crosstown 116” sionals. It is scheduled to open on Feb. 10 mightily impressed by the input of the SAES agenda, such as adequate shelter, empower- T phases began last summer with the at CCNY and run through March 4. A sym- architecture students, and the students, ment, sustainability, gender equity, environ- preparation and distribution of a briefing posium at the United Nations on Feb. 18 will some skeptical early on, gave the extramural mental justice, and partnership. book describing 116th Street as it now ex- serve to integrate the work generated by visitors high marks for their participation. We at the CCNY School of Architecture ists. Its contents were generated in part by “Crosstown 116” into the international con- At one point more than 20 people were and Environmental Studies (SAES) are par- a community event, “Partnership to Save a text of Habitat II. working feverishly to finish the “street ticularly enthusiastic about “Crosstown 116” City: A Harlem Dialogue,” that took place in Our charette concluded with each of four group” drawing by pin-up time. The net- because it will test a unique idea about how 1996. The briefing book is being used by teams presenting their work to a large audi- working and bonding produced at this best to involve architecture students in their local citizens, architects, urban planners, ence, appropriately, in landmarked Shepard charette, we think, will bear fruit in the years surrounding communities. For the first landscape architects, and all of SAES’s sec- Hall. Among the concepts floated during the to come.

PIE: A $5,000 Slice Faculty Development Spring Term Offerings

ity University Vice Chancellor for The seminar’s syllabus offers weekly ses- pring semester offerings of the Plant Biochemistry, and Biotechnology” CAcademic Affairs Louise Mirrer, left, sions on such topics as “Constructing S Faculty Development Program in- will feature interaction among botanists, and Dr, Augustine Pounds, President of Exclusion: Race and Ethnicity,” “Autobi- clude one new seminar—“Walk That chemists, biochemists, and molecular the Legal Advocacy Fund of the Ameri- ography and Contemporary Issues,” Talk: Beyond Our Stories About Race”— biologists, with the long-range intention can Association of University Women, “Women and Work,” “Heterosexism and that will offer the opportunity for in- of developing a new interdisciplinary re- flank the two winners of the Fund’s 1997 Homophobia,” “Disability Studies,” and quiry and problem-solving on racial is- search training program. Progress in Equity (PIE) Award. English “Sexualities and Reproductive Issues.” sues, as well as address difficulties The Program, under the auspices of Professor Marina Heung of teachers have talking about race. the GSUC Office of Research and Univer- Baruch College, center left, Four seminars continue from the fall sity Programs, will also present collo- and Professor Dorothy O. semester: “Current Policy Issues in quia on these topics this semester: “En- Helly of the Hunter College Economics” will focus on such topics as hancing the Content and Methodology of History Department, won the rising health care costs, the widening Teaching Sociology,” “Planning and Con- award for their work as co- gap in income, and the impact of job ducting Ethically Responsible Research ordinators of the Faculty De- loss in the U.S. The CUNY Logic Work- with Human Subjects,” “Faculty Media- velopment Seminar on “Bal- shop will convene those interested in tion Training: Resolving Conflicts in the ancing the Curriculum for mathematical logic, including set Classroom,” and “Teaching Native Ameri- Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and theory, model theory, computability can Studies at CUNY.” Class.” The Award, officially theory, and proof theory. “The Geo- Requests for Proposals for 1998-99 conferred at the reception on graphic Information System and Spatial seminars and colloquia will be available Dec. 10 pictured here, also Analysis of Urban Problems” will offer in late January; Proposals for the fall carries a $5,000 stipend for monthly lectures on the use of GIS and semester must be received by April 6. enhancement of the contextual analyses of urban issues. For further information call the Office of seminar’s future activities. Photo, André Beckles “Linking Research in Natural Products, Research at 212-642-2151.

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CUNY ON “NEW YORK CITY 100” BANDWAGON Opportunists from Manhattan had long been intrigued by Brooklyn’s plentiful real estate and 65 miles of desirable water- University Historians Tur front. Alarmists from Brooklyn f it is true, as the educator Blanche Dow wrote over a half-century ago, that “the felt threatened by New York’s past is the tense of memory and art and wisdom,” then this coming year New teeming population of immi- IYorkers will be steeped in all three. For New Year’s Day 1998 kicked off a year- grants. Contentious debate en- long celebration of the centennial of the unification of forty municipalities that, on sued, featuring chicanery, skul- January 1st, 1898, gave us Greater New York (the “Greater” soon vanished, an obvi- duggery, and hysteria. Politicians ous redundancy). More than 50 of the City’s preeminent institutions will be taking and journalists called for “non- part in a vast array of special events, symposia, a traveling exhibition, and a special binding” referendums and suc- Web page. A notable highlight of “New York City 100,” the official umbrella title for ceeded in squeezing out a major- these festivities, will be the broadcast of Ric Burns’s latest extravaganza, New York, a The Passing of Brooklyn ity vote in all districts in 1894, but barely 10-hour documentary produced by Thirteen/WNET, WGBH Boston, and the New-York squeaking through in Brooklyn. After several Historical Society. his picture of Brooklyn’s City Hall is sym- years of bickering, a bill creating the mega- Prominent among the celebrants will be the City University, which is represented T bolic of eventful happenings a century lopolis made its way through the State Legis- on “NYC 100’s” Advisory Board by President Frances Degen Horowitz of the Graduate ago. Brooklyn—an incorporated city for 64 lature. The final Albany vote, also a School, President Yolanda Moses of City College, and Distinguished Professor of His- years but in existence since 1625—was con- squeaker, was in favor, thanks to upstate leg- tory Emeritus Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. fronted with various threats to its continued islators, and Governor Frank Black quickly Clio, the muse of history, has worked long, hard, and in distinguished fashion at independence. The most visible threat was signed the bill into law. CUNY over the decade, with many of its most brilliant historians achieving careers of posed by the Brooklyn Bridge, which was It rained on Brooklyn’s City Hall on New national significance. Among these, to name but a few, have been Professor Schlesinger, completed in 1883 and suddenly made near Year’s Eve, 1897. The last mayor, Frederick John Hope Franklin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Herbert Gutman, and Richard C. Wade. neighbors of Brooklyn and New York. But as Wurster, introduced a poem, “The Passing of “The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back,” wrote Sarah Orne Jewett early as the 1860s, civic leaders like James Brooklyn,” and to the mournful chiming of in 1896, and countless City University historians have succeeded in giving us a “new” S.T. Stranahan, a fervent Bridge supporter, church bells, the City passed into oblivion City by “going back.” On these pages, several currently active CUNY historians offer and Andrew Haskell Green, a supporter of a and became a mere Borough among the oth- their views on several intriguing photographs and images drawn from New York’s past. strong centralized government, began press- ers of the outer fringe. John Manbeck, though a professor of English for 30 years, is the founder and ing for consolidation of the two cities. —John B. Manbeck director of the Kingsborough Historical Society and (since 1993) the Brooklyn Bor- Kingsborough Community College

Fighting for Queens & Country n 1948 the residents of Brownsville, a neigh- Iborhood in east Brooklyn, celebrated the The First Bro his rare photograph shows soldiers of opening of the Brownsville Houses, a six-building T the Hamilton Light Artillery mustering project constructed by the New York City Housing in Flushing just prior to their departure for Authority. The first of several projects built there Washington in 1861. As a conservative between 1945 and 1965, it replaced more than community with commercial links to the one hundred of the area’s worst tenements. Lo- South, Queens was opposed to the anti- cal leaders had lobbied for these buildings with slavery impulse which swept much of the hopes of repeating the success of the First North in the 1850s (Abraham Lincoln lost Houses on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the county in the election of 1860). But Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Houses and bringing Queens in the end responded to the onset rebirth to their once vibrant but now declining of the Civil War and the effort to resist se- community. cession and preserve the Union. Also known as “Brooklyn’s Lower East Side,” Volunteers filled the ranks of the local the neighborhood was built at the turn of the 15th Regiment, which was equipped and century, largely for Jewish immigrants leaving supported through private contributions. At Manhattan. By 1940, a large number of blacks one meeting more than 40 people donated fears prompted one of the worst riots in the and Latinos had settled in the area, and the ini- $2,000, the equivalent of $30,000 today. nation’s history. The New York City draft ri- tial mix of residents in the Houses was white, Like the men in the photo, the Union sol- ots lasted three days as gangs of predomi- black, and Latino. However, like many other diers were volunteers. A draft was not ini- nantly Irish youths attacked African-Ameri- projects in the nation, by 1960 the overwhelming tiated in the North until 1863; the South, can New Yorkers and burned several buildings. hard-pressed for men, instituted one ear- But the draft was not compulsory for all: you lier. Due to compulsory service, a large could pay someone else $300 to fight in your “The study of history issues proportion of troops from poor and immi- place. not in scientific precision nor in grant ranks were forced to fight. Their —Richard K. Lieberman moral finality but in irony.” LaGuardia Community College —Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

The Tweeding of New York he rhetorical question of the caption Tweeding of New York City as a civic den Twas attributed to William M.(“Boss”) of iniquity. But Tweed was never a “boss,” Tweed when he was confronted with the and he was indicted not for theft but for enormity of his alleged theft of public failure to audit county bills. Though he funds. However, the 1871 Thomas Nast was convicted, sent to prison, escaped to cartoon is pure journalistic invention. He Cuba and then Spain, captured, and sent never uttered such a self-destructive back to prison, where he died in 1878, statement. Tweed was a Democrat, and some of Tweed’s accomplishments were Nast, his publishers, Harper Brothers, more noteworthy than notorious. He and the editors of the New York Times, helped to charter and aid such institutions which published the cartoon, were all as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mount zealously of the Republican persuasion. Sinai Hospital, and Presbyterian Hospital. He introduced legislation to build River- Photos: The LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, Purveying such stories was politically LaGuardia Community College/CUNY, supplied the side Drive, widen Broadway from 34th to useful to them. pictures of LaGuardia circa 1947 (Fiorello H. Since 1871, the stereotype of Tweed 59th Streets, embellish Central and Pros- LaGuardia papers), the Brownsville construction in as a hallmark of corruption has been re- pect Parks, and incorporate the New York 1946 (N.Y.C. Housing Authority Collection), the Civil peated by authors, journalists, and media Stock Exchange. War soldiers and IRT (Local History Collection). commentators...and has led to a kind of —Leo Hershkowitz Queens College

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othing so recharged Fiorello La Guardia rn Facets of City’s Past N and expanded the influence of his third- term mayoralty so much as the regular radio ough Historian. He highlights the very day “GNC” became a reality. Thomas Kessner broadcasts he initiated early in 1942. The Sun- is now working on Capital Metropolis, a study of the city from 1870 to 1900, when it day programs, opening with the Marine Hymn became a world financial and commercial power, but in 1989 he published his clas- and the Mayor’s favorite salutation, “Patience sic political biography, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York. and fortitude,” attracted as many as two million Adapted from it here is Kessner’s discussion of the subjects—other than the famed listeners tuning in to their Mayor’s opinions on comics—La Guardia, the city’s first media mayor, broached on his regular WYNC politics and life. He is pictured here in 1947, radio program. Mike Wallace’s Mickey Mouse History (excerpted in CUNY•Matters in after stepping down as Mayor (his regular Fall 1996) just received the 1997 Historical Preservation Book Prize. His monumental broadcast was over WNYC). Gotham: A History of New York City, co-authored with Edwin G. Burrows of Brooklyn From a report on defense-related plans and College, is forthcoming soon from Oxford University Press. Here he highlights an event current war strategies, La Guardia would segue that shows just how far back the debate over welfare reform goes in New York City. to matters of immediate concern. “Ladies,” he Communists were the first to set children A recent arrival at the City University is Wendell E. Pritchett, the holder of a Yale advised in his unmistakable tenor, “I want you against their parents,” James Marshall, law degree. His Penn Ph.D. is of 1997 vintage, and it was titled “From One Ghetto to please to wear your rubbers when you got out president of the Board of Education, wrote Another: Blacks, Jews and Public Housing in Brownsville, 1945-1970.” Pritchett in this weather. If you don’t you may slip and the Mayor accusingly. When La Guardia tells of a crucial moment in the history of public housing in the city. Richard K. fall and hurt yourselves....We don’t like to ask saw what he said in print, he backtracked: Lieberman directs the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, a major repository of civic our doctors and nurses to take care of any more “I did not ask any boys to peach on their historical treasures, and has authored a major book on the history of the Steinway patients, so won’t you please be sensible and fathers. Whoever said that is a dirty, lousy, piano manufacturer. He captions here a rare photograph of Civil War soldiers mus- wear your rubbers?” Then the chief executive stinking, putrid liar.” tering in Queens. Joshua Freeman, who recently came to CUNY from Columbia added, “Now about fish...you should take advan- For Easter Sunday, 1943, the tone was University, is a major authority on mass transit (his In Transit: The Transport Work- tage of the low prices this week and buy fish.” considerably higher: La Guardia delivered a ers Union in New York City, 1933-1966 appeared from Oxford in 1989). He highlights From such fatherly tones he could drop into full sermon, preceded by music from another major feat of unification in the City. Finally and most senior (having served a more menacing mood. Chin taut and fist Wagner’s Parsifal and followed by selec- on the CUNY faculty for 37 years) is Leo Hershkowitz, whose Tweed’s New York: pounding, he would scream into the microphone tions from Handel’s Messiah, praying for a Another Look (1977) was dedicated to showing that “Boss” Tweed’s career was not at the city’s “no-good thieving, chiseling divinely wrought peace wherein “nations one of unalloyed dereliction. tinhorns.” “Cut it out,” he would say, naming a will not exploit nations, nor will any nation particular loan shark, “cut it out right now. be in want.” On a winter Sunday he spoke That sort of business don’t go in New York, not directly to a 16-year-old who had disap- rownsville Houses majority of tenants were black or Latino. while I’m Mayor. Get me?” peared after getting an unsatisfactory re- The neighborhood itself changed drastically as well. The broadcasts sometimes aroused contro- port card from his high school: “When your One major cause was the urban renewal program of versy. Once he issued an invitation to “little dad went away, he told you that you were to Robert Moses. Throughout Manhattan, neighborhoods boys” listening who see their fathers gambling be the man of the house. He’s coming like the Upper West Side and Lincoln Center were be- to “please let me know,” promising “I won’t tell home in a few days on furlough and you ing rebuilt with federal and local government dollars. anybody that you told me, but I’ll send the po- must be home when he gets there.” Tens of thousands of poor, mostly black and Latino lice.” This horrified civil libertarians. “The —Thomas Kessner, The Graduate School New Yorkers were dislocated, many arriving in the tenements and projects of Brownsville. Brownsville is best known among New Yorkers as Welfare Reform—19th-Century Style the focal point of the 1968 teachers’ strike, which pit the 10-acre park, among them 1,200 mem- the United Federation of Teachers against the Ocean- bers of the German Tenth Ward Working- Hill Brownsville Community Board, which had taken men’s Association. At that moment, the control of local schools under a Ford Foundation pro- Police Commissioner and a squad of patrol- gram. The strike exposed serious racial tensions men waded into the throng with clubs flail- among New Yorkers. Brownsville’s early history can ing. The crowd scattered “like wild birds,” teach us much about the ethnic and racial tensions of except for the German immigrants, who our city and about the role government policy has fought back. The New York Sun reported played in shaping present-day New York. that the police made hot pursuit on “horses —Wendell E. Pritchett galloping full speed on the sidewalks.” Baruch College Frank Leslie's Illustrated Paper pictured the event, left, with the caption “riotous communist workingmen driven from A More Perfect Union hen the collapse of the financial titan Tompkins Square.” WJay Cooke & Co. was announced on Samuel Gompers later recalled the event ommuting to Queens was a lonely busi- by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the floor of the N.Y. Stock Exchange in Sep- as “an orgy of brutality.” The Irish World Cness in 1917, when the Interborough or IRT. tember 1873, one newspaper reported that denounced the police as “Grand Bashaws,” Rapid Transit completed its number 7 line. Unifying the BMT, IRT, and city-run Inde- “a monstrous yell went up and seemed to but Mayor William Havemayer expressed Pictured to the left that year is the Rawson pendent Subway System (IND) created a literally shake the building.” Brokers were great satisfaction, and the Police Board Street stop along Queens Boulevard, a block mass transit system 554 miles long, with trampled—some even hospitalized—in the characterized the crowd as “a parcel of from the present LaGuardia Community Col- 1,237 miles of track, 6,529 cars, more than scramble to sell off vulnerable shares. vagabonds” deserving of “a sound flogging.” lege campus. 500 stations, and 32,000 employees. In its Firms failed, banks buckled, and depositors In March 1874, Havemayer announced that At one minute past midnight, June 2, first year of operation, the unified system surged to cash out at institutions with fast- the level of “destitution and suffering” did 1940, the President of the Brooklyn-Man- carried 2.3 billion passengers, making it deteriorating railroad bonds in their vaults. not seem to “warrant the interference of hattan Transit Corporation turned over his the world’s largest, most heavily-used pas- One broker moaned at the “worst disaster the Municipal authorities”—and canceled company’s properties and operations to senger railroad. since the Black Death.” all public outdoor relief as of the next July. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who in turn put Subway unification helped fulfill the As usual, working people bore the brunt. The Society for Improving the Condition them in the charge of John Delaney, Chair- promises of consolidation begun in 1898, By the winter, 25% of the area’s labor force of the Poor applauded the end of welfare. man of the City’s Board of Transportation. knitting together neighborhoods from the had lost their jobs. A shanty-dwelling popu- “Charity,” agreed the World, “rages like an Delaney promptly appointed La Guardia mo- northern Bronx to Coney Island. It also left lation on the West Side grew to huge dimen- epidemic,” and to what end? It only gave torman No. 1 of the new BMT Division of the a $310 million debt from the cost of buying sions, and thousands sought shelter on po- “impetus to worthlessness and vagrancy” New York City Transit System. After posing privately-run systems, which taxpayers’ lice station floors or in almshouses. Radical by making “begging more profitable than in a motorman’s jacket and cap the Mayor money had helped to build. Rather than politicians demanded comprehensive anti- labor.” “Free soup must be prohibited,” gave control over to regular BMT motorman ushering in a golden age of mass transit, depression programs and called on all “in declared E.L. Godkin in the Nation, and “all John Donnellan, who drove the special train unification led to a half-century of declining sympathy with the suffering poor” to rally in classes must learn that soup of any kind, carrying dignitaries from Times Square to services and rising fares, a trajectory only Tompkins Square and march on City Hall. beef or turtle, can be had only by being Borough Hall. Ten days later, the City took recently reversed. By 11 a.m. more than 7,000 had gath- paid for.” —Mike Wallace control of the subway and elevated lines run —Joshua Freeman ered on a freezing January 13, 1874, filling John Jay College Queens College

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LEHMAN’S HIGH-FLYING PHYSICIST Of Superconductors, Magnetic Bacteria, & Quantum Tunneling Annual Fall Faculty Reception By Anne Perryman Director of College Relations, Held in Lehman College Morgan Library heoretical physicist Eugene M. ing, and hexatic order in high-temperature Chudnovsky asks his students to superconductors.” T imagine a world of levitating trains Chudnovsky, whose work has focused on that travel at mind-boggling speeds and quantum, or subatomic, mechanics (as “quantum computers” a million times opposed to the “classical” physics of our faster than today’s computers. The scien- so-called “real” world), is internationally Photo, Wagner tific breakthroughs necessary to make known among physicists for his theoretical n November 19, the City University’s faculty members who have won these Star Trek fantasies a reality are the predictions of the phenomenon of magnetic distin-guished awards, fellowships, and research grants were honored focus of Professor Chudnovsky’s research poles “tunneling.” He explains, “If you look at the annual Fall Reception, which took place in the splendid public and teaching: the field of superconductiv- at north and south poles on the globe, they O spaces of the Morgan Library. Available for inspection were extraordinary mu- ity and magnetism. stay still where they are because the globe sical manuscripts of Brahms and Schubert, including the latter’s very first pub- In nature, there is resistance to the is a very large magnet. But if you radically lished piece and a page from his “Death and the Maiden” quartet, as well as a electric current that moves through a con- decrease the size of the magnet you enter dazzling selection from the Morgan’s large holdings of centuries-old illuminated ductor. “Superconductivity” refers to the the realm of quantum physics. Here, the Books of Hours, and contemporary documents and newspaper articles on the property of certain metals to conduct poles begin to jump and reverse positions. Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr duel. Trustees Chairwoman Anne A. Paolucci electricity without this resistance. Ten North suddenly transforms into south and and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Louise Mirrer spoke to the honorees, years ago, to obtain this effect it was nec- south becomes north.” among them Distinguished Professor of Physics at Brooklyn College and the essary to immerse superconductors in “Tunneling” is the physicists’ term for GSUC Fred Pollak, right. He was joined by Edward Leight, Managing Director liquid helium—a very expensive fluid— the ability of particles to disappear at one of Brooklyn College’s Office of Research Development. because at room temperature metal loses point—say, within a box—then reappear at Pollak garnered two research grants for the development of modulation its superconducting properties. A Nobel another point outside the box without go- spectroscopy into an effective screening tool for the characterization and quali- prize came to the German physicists ing through the box’s wall. Chudnovsky fication of semiconductor devices. His project will also shed new light on such Bednorz and Müller who, in 1987, discov- has applied this concept to magnetic poles. exotic device structures as heterojunction bipolar transistors, resonant tunnel- ered that certain copper oxide materials A few years ago, in tandem with Profes- ing structures, superlattice optical mirrors, and quantum well lasers. would conduct electricity without resis- sor Myriam Sarachik of City College, tance and at relatively high temperatures. Chudnovsky initiated experimental re- “The potential applications of these search in this field that helped lead to the superconducting materials are fascinat- discovery of quantum magnetic hysteresis, computer with quantum logic. The small search now and plan to seek additional sup- ing, but we are hampered by our lack of a novel physics effect reported by major magnetic particles where magnetic poles port for further work from the National In- understanding of their physics,” says general science journals such as Science, interchange can become the elements of stitutes of Health. The potential applica- Chudnovsky. “We want materials that will Natur e, and Physics Today . “We think ev- such a computer.” Says Chudnovsky, “Each tions of this research include development conduct very large electric currents—but erything in this world has a certain posi- element in this quantum computer would of magnetic methods of controlling the large currents create large magnetic tion. I am here and you are there,” he not be in a state of Yes or No but in a su- growth and division of biological cells. fields, and these, unfortunately, destroy says. On the other hand, “in the world of perposition of Yes and No.” It has been In addition to his introductory course, superconductivity. If we were able to trap small particles, there is great uncertainty demonstrated by mathematicians that such Chudnovsky also teaches an upper-level these magnetic fields inside a supercon- about position.” Indeed, this uncertainty computers could solve problems thousands course for Lehman and Hunter physics ma- ductor, the barrier to practical ap- of times faster than conventional ones. jors and advanced courses in magnetism, plications would be removed. I am superconductivity, and quantum physics at one of many physicists experiment- hudnovsky has brought a number of the Graduate School. Born in Leningrad, ing with this phenomenon.” CCUNY undergraduates into his re- he was educated at Kharkov University in search projects over the years. Last year, the Ukraine, where he received his Ph.D. in hudnovsky illustrates the po- Lehman students Joyce Williams and theoretical physics in 1973. In the 1970s, Ctential of an ideal superconduc- Ronald Japersaud worked on the DOE and his political activities led to interrogation tor to his introductory physics class NSF projects. Anthony Estrada of Hunter and eight years of surveillance by the KGB. at Lehman College by placing a College is working on the Air Force project. With help from friends, physicists, and small magnet above the surface of a Currently, in collaboration with Lehman Western politicians, the Chudnovskys were superconducting material. The mag- undergraduate Biology major, Jing Wang, able to emigrate to the United States in net levitates. “If the superconductor Chudnovsky is doing research on magnetic 1987. After a year at Tufts University, he were a road or a rail and the magnet bacteria for the NSF. “About 20 years ago, joined the Lehman faculty in 1988. His was a jet- or propeller-powered car it was discovered that some bacteria have wife Marina is now dean of students and a or train,” he says, “the vehicle could Professor Chudnovsky illustrating a law of physics. small magnetic particles, but no one really teacher of social studies and Russian at move above that surface at very high understands the significance of these par- Bronx High School of Science, just a block speed. Consider also the possibility of has its own constant, the Planck Constant, ticles,” he observes. “I wanted to study the from the Lehman campus. power lines made of high-temperature named for the German physicist Max magnetism but the particles are so tiny. We “The administration at Lehman has been superconductors. There would be no en- Planck. Chudnovsky explains, “imagine a have to grow a huge amount of culture— very supportive of my research,” ergy loss—and this would be a tremen- particle moving through a small hole in the and bacteria are hard to grow. If you have Chudnovsky says, “and I enjoy teaching. dous savings.” wall; with a certain probability it can go in too much oxygen, the bacteria die. If the My students at Lehman are determined and The U.S. Department of Energy has any direction. When I go through the door, temperature is wrong, they die.” very hard working. Sometimes they even supported Chudnovsky’s research since I go in a certain direction; this is because I Wang is growing this culture in Lehman’s surprise themselves by their interest in 1993. Since 1990, he has also been am a “classical” not a quantum object. Department of Biological Sciences, and last physics and natural phenomena, and many working on projects for the Air Force, the The Planck Constant is extremely small. If summer she and Chudnovsky took the bac- of them would make good physicists. But National Science Foundation, and U.S. it were were large, this would be a very teria to an experimental facility at the Uni- these days so many of our best science stu- industries. He has written more than 100 interesting world! You could, for example, versity of Barcelona, where they conducted dents want to become medical doctors.” research articles for physics journals and be in more than one place at one time— measurements. “We have come up with He serves on several CUNY and Lehman is a Fellow of the prestigious American having dinner with two people in different some interesting results, which may change research panels and is Director of the Pro- Physical Society—elected in 1993 for his places.” the current view that bacteria use magnetic gram for Refugee Scientists for the Human “seminal contributions to random ferro- One application of the “tunneling” phe- particles for navigation,” he says. Rights Committee of the New York Academy magnetism, macroscopic quantum tunnel- nomenon is the possibility of creating a He and Wang are writing up their re- of Sciences. He is a member of the Physics Continued on page 12

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THE WEB COMES TO CLASS ages the shyness of students about commu- distinguishing what material is relevant, nicating with their professor. sometimes including everything for fear of Psyching Up for the Internet My ever-changing homepage, or website, leaving something out. Providing them allows students to download a copy of the with some instructions about search en- Professor Bonnie R. Seegmiller of the Psychology Department syllabus (if they need an extra), ponder re- gines helped them with these problems— at Hunter College describes her r ecent experiences integrating view sheets before exams, and retrieve infor- for example, that each search engine has cyberspace r esour ces into her Human Development courses. mation I used to distribute as handouts. its own conventions for entering search Students can also learn about my own re- terms for Boolean searches and that these had hoped that the unusual announce- Second, computer literacy must now be search interests through articles I make conventions are specified on the HELP ment I made at the beginning of my considered fundamental to the pursuit of any available at the website. screen for each engine. Iclass in Developmental Psychology in college degree. A third and related reason Some students have difficulty explaining the fall of 1996 would be greeted with for, as it were, wiring my course was the n Internet project is also required to and defining their topic because of language “Wow!” or “Great!” or “Right on!” Instead, a conviction that learning should occur in con- A help students learn more about the difficulties. Because search engines, to be nervous wave of fidgeting and murmuring text, through an integration of method and Web and search techniques, the wide array effective, require the entry of precise terms, seemed to make its way around the large content, rather than in a vacuum or through of resources pertinent to Human Develop- students are forced to refine their vocabu- lecture hall. Many of my 275 students were rote memorization. Although Hunter does ment, and the skills necessary for research laries and, often, their syntax. Their e-mail taken aback by what I told them. I suspect provide an excellent basic computer skills writing (for example, defining questions, communications allow me to rephrase their that if it hadn’t been so difficult for them to course, students often told me they quickly stating hypotheses, selecting relevant ma- questions in standard English and correct/ get into any course or to find another open forgot these “skills” be- enhance their vocabulary course to replace mine, my class list might cause they only learned E-mail and the web continue to be an have shrunk considerably. them “theoretically” and integral part of my courses. For example, What was this bracing news? —simply never put them to prac- as the Undergraduate Advisor for the Psy- that I would require the class to learn to use tical use. chology Department, I teach a Peer Advis- e-mail and the World Wide Web (www) as an Finally, I felt stu- ing course. Along with other requirements integral part of their course work. dents needed as much of the class, each Peer Advisor researches a As I enthusiastically explained the practice in writing as career in psychology, counseling or social unique opportunity these resources would they could get, and this work by surfing the Web, exploring other afford, I heard, from several rows back, a writing must, as it does databases such as psych-lit, library hold- loud, clear voice announce, “ I want to in the world that awaits ings, information from national associa- learn psychology, not the computer!...This them, take diverse tions, and interviewing professionals al- computer stuff is too foreign; it’s for the forms. Incorporating e- ready in the field. future, not for me!” A student not inter- mail and the Internet The results of these projects serve as ested in the future, I wondered! into my classes pro- career and graduate school guides to fields Articulately cutting to the heart of the vided students with such as Geriatric Social Work, Clinical So- matter, the voice continued, doubtless both formal and infor- cial Work, School Social Work, Marriage speaking for others in the class, “I’ve made it mal required writing and Family Therapy, and Counseling Psy- this far in life without using computers, and experiences. chology. These guides are available in the Professor Seegmiller, right, in her Hunter College office with her former I’ll make it the rest of the way.” The voice, it psychology student Miriam Wolfson. Photo, André Beckles Psychology Advising Resource Library, a turned out, belonged to Miriam Wolfson, and here are three ma- collection of materials on reserve under you may understand her eagerness to make Tjor components to “PSYCH ADV” in Hunter’s Wexler Library. the most of the present when I add that she my use of the computer in my classes: (1) e- terials, and preparing a bibliography). This was 74 years old at the time. This bright, mail, (2) my homepage, and (3) searching project, of course, involves many of the y electronic format is not without its personable woman, who had returned to get the www. How do I start? First, by getting same steps involved in writing an old-fash- Mdifficulties. One, obviously, is that it her Bachelor’s degree after retiring from a valuable help from Hiroko Miyamoto, for- ioned term paper. is time- and labor-intensive, especially in career in accounting, explained to me later merly of Hunter’s Academic Computing of- Students must first gain my approval of the days before projects are due and before that she thought computers were all right for fice, who has always speedily delivered a their topics, which must relate in some way exams. My “office” keeps some long—and loners. But they certainly didn’t suit her gre- superb distribution list for each of my to normal development and be unique in strange!—hours then, but an hour most garious, highly social lifestyle. classes. With the extremely competent and the class. Students are required to conduct nights, answering e-mail messages, is a Ms. Wolfson immediately became my generous help of Nancy Larkin (also of Aca- a search using numerous search engines small price for the increased availability personal challenge. If she could be con- demic Computing) and Nancy Guerrero (Di- (such as Yahoo, Infoseek, and Excite) to and interaction. verted, I felt, getting the rest of the class rector of Computer Facilities in Hunter’s gather sufficient material on which to base Teaching the workshops takes time, into “web mode” would be easy. Under- Reading and Writing Center), I schedule ap- a paper. They must also turn in a detailed too—and patience, I might add. Further- standing the high level of anxiety she was proximately ten workshops within the first log of all their searches. This enables me to more, students frequently have to wait for probably feeling, I spontaneously told her I three weeks of each semester. analyze their strategies and make sugges- more than an hour to access a computer at personally would give her “private lessons.” Supervised by Guerrero, her assistants, tions for more complete searches, while Hunter. More computers and more com- She acquiesced, and I thought I had won my assistants (Melissa Klein, Cathy Ma-Chu), minimizing the possibility of getting papers puter support (in the form of real people) her over. (As she later confided, “I decided and myself, these workshops introduce stu- bought on the net. I also ask for a print-out are needed to give all our students proper to give you a break.”) dents to e-mail and Internet basics. This, in of relevant homepages they find and visit, as Web feet. Additionally, for projects such as itself, is a challenge due to the diverse com- well as a “website bibliography.” Although the Internet project I assigned, having as- ut before I reveal how Ms. Wolfson puter abilities of the students, many of whom they do not actually write a paper, they per- sistants to assist in reading and comment Bfared, let me elaborate on my decision are almost totally computer-illiterate—and form many of the same steps one would re- on projects would be extremely helpful. to incorporate the use of e-mail and the www often computer-phobic in addition. Some quire. Students can also submit multiple What does the future hold? Despite in- into my teaching, describe how the course had never even touched a mouse. Some stu- drafts of their project for my feedback, until evitable problems, I am certainly wedded to unfolded, note some problems I faced, and dents, of course, were practiced cybernauts. they earn full credit for the assignment. the integration of e-mail and the Web into explain why I continue to consider the I use e-mail in several ways: to commu- In addition, they learn much about im- all of my courses. This is not least because Internet integral to my teaching and the stu- nicate with the class as a whole; to answer portant topics pertinent to the course— those initial grumblings each semester have dents’ learning. individual questions; to draw their attention topics like the definitions of child and do- a way, at semester’s end, of turning into A number of reasons motivated my inno- to relevant articles—some required, some mestic abuse in different cultures; the ef- “excellent” on student evaluations of how e- vation. First, I frequently teach very large not—and films; and to provide additional fects of cocaine addiction on the fetus and mail and the Internet enhanced the course. classes, and this, of necessity, results in de- information and clarifications about topics infant during pregnancy; differences and Indeed, I would like some day to teach a creased individual interactions with stu- discussed in class. Once a week I pose a similarities between children raised by het- course in Human Development that is dents. Because I consider such interactions related question for discussion, and students erosexual and homosexual parents; and linked to both a computer-literacy and a crucial to learning, I began to use e-mail as use e-mail to ask me questions, find out what resources for making decisions about elder writing course, just as content courses are an additional means of one-on-one encoun- they had missed in class, form study groups, care, to name a few. linked in writing-across-the-curriculum and ter, and I encouraged students to communi- and discuss course work with each other, Clearly, some of the problems students ESL classes. Such linkage would provide a cate with me as often as they wished. In which they seem to enjoy doing. They have struggle with in doing their Internet naturalistic setting in which students could effect I was radically extending my College found e-mail particularly helpful when study- projects are like those encountered with learn content, writing skills, basic library office hours. Importantly, students did not ing for exams, since they do not have to wait any writing assignment. For example, research skills, and computer proficiency in have to disrupt their daily routine and work until the next class to ask a question and many students choose topics far too broad a practical and (one can always hope!) schedules to make contact with me. I also need not rearrange their schedules to meet (“human development,” “abortion,” “child painless way. assured them of a response within 24 hours. in person. I have also found e-mail discour- rearing”). They also experience difficulty Continued on page 12

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Child Development Center, continued from page 1 colleges, a City Department of Youth and they are opening a Georgia office that my heads of household, and more than one- Community Development grant, BBC Student daughter will head.” half required remedial reading instruc- Charlotte Bellamy and Mary Lou Br oderick, Association fees, parent fees, and in-kind One of for mer Director Bellamy’s favorite tion on entry. have both r ecently r etired. They have con- service from the College. family successes is that of Elba V elez and As the figures indicate, the academic sistently been at the for efront of child car e her son Danny. When Danny enter ed the outcomes for parents who have used the issues at CUNY and wer e recently honor ed everal studies conducted in r ecent Center , he was withdrawn and had dif ficulty Center were far better than for other by past and pr esent faculty, peers, staf f, years by the BCC Office of Institutional socializing, but he was encouraged to par - parents who did not enjoy child care. Af- students and their childr en at the Center’s S Research show an impressive positive ticipate in a special play gr oup designed to ter three years, the Center’s student- annual Golden Acor n Awar ds brunch. correlation between use of the Center’s draw him out. By the time he enter ed el- mothers had significantly higher three- Bellamy r eflects that the Center’s mis- services and academic successes. The ementary school, Danny was placed in a year retention rates (84% for Center sion has not changed substantially during gifted pr ogram. His parents, 43% for non-Center) and signifi- her tenur e: to of fer high-quality, af fordable mother went on to cantly higher three-year graduation rates day car e to poor , single-head-of-household ear n a business degr ee (16% for Center parents, 4% for non- par ents pursuing an Associate’s degr ee. at Baruch College and Center). In addition, Center parents par- “We want to enable every child to be- now works at the Cen- ticipated in clubs and student activities come a confident and caring learner, and ter herself. His to a greater extent (21% versus 11%) to enable every parent to become a bet- younger sister Felicia and completed greater number of degree ter student and caregiver.” The Center’s is attending Syracuse credits: 53% of Center parents com- guiding philosophy, Bellamy adds, is that University, and Danny pleted 49 or more degree credits, com- “there is not one minute when we are not is due to graduate pared to 20% for non-Center parents. learning. That includes the children, the from W esleyan Univer - More sophisticated statistical pr oce- staff, and the parents.” sity this spring in reli- dur es (employing logistic r egr ession analy- gious studies. ses) suggest that these higher graduation he Center , located just of f-campus, Rebecca Encar - and persistence rates r emain statistically currently operates thr ee pr ograms. T nacion—who now significant even when other important fac- The Early Childhood Program, in which holds a Lehman Col- tors—like incoming basic skill level, mari- childr en lear n through play and discovery, lege Masters and tal status, welfar e status—ar e held statisti- is licensed to serve up to 52 pr e-school and Charlotte Bellamy, center, the recently retired Director of the BCC Child works at BCC as a col- cally constant. Simply put, participants in kinder gartners Monday thr ough Friday fr om Development Center, with Mary Lou Broderick, right, also recently retired as the Center's Associate Director, and Elba Velez, mother of Danny lege counselor—vividly the Child Development Center ar e six times 7:15 a.m. to 6 p.m. A long waiting-list for pictured below. They are seen enjoying the Center's annual picnic. remembers the impact as likely to persist (that is, r emain enr olled admission to the pr ogram shows that wor d of the Center on her or graduate) at the College after 3 years, of its success has spr ead. Acceptance is College’s President, Carolyn Williams, life. “I was on public assistance. I did not and ar e four times as likely to graduate af- first-come, first-served for curr ently en- observes, “Our students with children think I was college material. When I lost ter three years as their par ent counter - rolled BCC student-par ents. Plans ar e un- enrolled in the Center benefit in sev- my baby-sitter , Charlotte and Mary Lou parts. Furthermore, these more complex derway for construction of a new and en- eral ways. They are free to pursue saved my life. My son Justin flourished at analyses reveal that Center participation larged state-of-the-art facility. BCC V ice their own academic studies because the Center . He loves to announce that he exerts a direct, statistically significant effect President for Administration, Mary they feel comfortable about the nurtur- graduated fr om College at four years old!” on student suc- Coleman, pr edicts ing environment for As welfar e refor m has r ecently become a cess as well as that gr ound-br eak- their children. topic of national inter est, for mer Assistant an indirect effect ing for the new Subsequently, they Director Br oderick suggests that the suc- on student per- facility will begin “She graduates from junior are enabled to cessful BCC model be consider ed seri- sistence through within one year . high school, I graduate from function as sub- ously: “W e’ve been doing ef fective welfar e social integra- The After BCC...She graduates from high stantial role mod- refor m for 25 years!” tion. School Pr ogram , school...I graduate from Lehman els for their chil- The overall which serves up to College.” dren. This is a hile the long-term family outcomes of findings suggest 78 school-aged —Eddice Fews classic win-win on-site collegiate child car e ar e be- that both struc- childr en, operates W situation.” ginning to become appar ent, the dir ect im- tural factors, Monday-Thursday Rebecca Martinez, now an accountant, pacts on the educational attainment of the like the need for from 3 to 9:30 p.m. Her e childr en partici- recalls that when her daughter, also named par ents who use the Child Development pate in sports, homework assistance, and Rebecca, entered the Center 18 years ago, at Center has been clearly documented. Danny Velez, above, when his mother Elba was other enrichment activities. Finally, the age four, she spoke only Spanish. One year A brief statistical summary (see illus- attending BCC and he was a Center student, and Center supervises a Family Day Care Net- below, at his high school graduation. later, by the time she entered grammar tration) shows that our parents/students work which involves 42 off-campus li- school, she was quite fluent in English. “The are characteristically similar to other censed family day car e homes which cur - Center really came through for me. Now 22, women with children who attend BCC. and availability of rently have the capacity to serve up to 225 Rebecca is completing her degree in math They are predominantly single, low-in- child care, and students fr om two months to 12 years of and statistics at the University of Orlando. come, and of minority background. More socio-cultural age. The Center also pr ovides eligible BCC The company she works for is so impressed than one-third are public assistance re- conditions, like students with placement in field work or with her that it is paying her tuition, and cipients, almost all (95%) are single enhanced social internship settings. integration, are The Center was initially funded by the significant com- New Y ork City Agency for Child Develop- ponents of educa- ment, but in the late 1970s, as a r esult of Comparing Child Care and Non-Child Care Parents at BCC tional and occu- the fiscal crisis, it was one of 49 day car e (All women with childr en who enter ed college in Fall, 1991) pational attain- centers to lose funding. Committed faculty, ment among our students and staf f, however , refused to non-traditional Child Development All Other close the Center’s doors. Funds wer e even- student population. Center Mothers Student Mothers tually obtained fr om a variety of sour ces From her dor mitory at SUNY New Paltz, Demographic Data (upon entry): ranging fr om CET A (Compr ehensive Em- Lanell recalls the good times she enjoyed as • Married 5% 15% ployment T raining Act) to Con Edison. a child at the BCC Center . “It was gr eat. It • Public assistance r ecipient 37% 48% Then, in 1983, through the efforts of New was always fun. And the food was very • Non-native English speaking 38% 21% York State legislators, funds were allocated good.” She expects to earn a Masters de- • Remedial r eading r equir ed 53% 45% to CUNY’s community colleges for child care. gree in communications and hopes one day With matching funds from the City and the to be a TV station manager . About her Three-year Academic Outcomes: support of the City Council, child care again mother Eddice she says admiringly, “She • Participated in clubs/activities 21% 11% began to thrive CUNY-wide. Currently the always wanted to make her life better. . .work- • Cumulative degr ee cr edits ear ned Center is also sustained by funds from an ing full-time. . .going to school. I look at her —mor e than 48 53% 20% array of sources: the Federal Child Care as a superwoman!” —less than 12 0% 30% Development Block Grant program, a State The BCC Child Development Center will, • Persistence after thr ee years allotment for child care at the City Univer- we have no doubt, keep such superwomen— —rentention rate (still enr olled) 84% 43% sity, a State Department of Health food pro- —graduation rate fr om BBC 16% 4% and their sons and daughters—leaping up- gram, a City grant for child care in two-year Total persistence rate 100% 47% war d at the City University.

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MAE WEST ON TRIAL the “fairies” on stage. Deputy Inspector she attended a charity luncheon given by James Bolan testified that W est had per - the W omen’s National Democratic Club and Goodness had Nothing to Do with It formed a dance that “suggest[ed] an act of the Penology Delinquency Division of the sexual inter course.” He added that the New Y ork Federation of W omen’s Clubs. If play included a scene in which a young man the suffragettes could be jailed in a good everal years before Mae West left refused. The show’s pr oducers, Jim T imony “goes thr ough the business of making love cause, if Mar gar et Anderson and Jane Heap SNew York City for Hollywood to be- and C.W . Mor ganster n, obtained a r estrain- to her by lying on top of her on a couch and could stand trial for publishing sections of come, by 1935, the highest paid woman in ing or der against police inter ference, and embracing the other .” “The language they Ulysses in The Little Review, Mae W est the nation, she made it virtually her pro- Sex went on, with a booming box office, used does not contain the wor ds ‘sexual could do no less for fr ee speech. fession—Madonna-like—to raise eye- until May 21, a week befor e the obscenity intercourse,’” he added, “but the purport Once fr ee, W est told r eporters her play brows, hackles, and, finally, the law with trial began. and tenor of the business and language is was “a work of art,” and even if it wasn’t daring, quasi-improvisational theater A grand jury indictment found that the to that effect.” exactly art, she calculated, “Considering pieces that brought sexual topics and the what Sex got me, a few days in the pen ‘n a full range of sexual preferences onto the $500 fine ain’t too bad a deal.” Like her 1920s stage. Lillian Schlissel, Director prostitute Mar gy LaMont, Mae W est had of the American Studies Program at lear ned “ther e’s a chance of rising to the Brooklyn College, has just edited Three com- top of every pr ofession.” Plays by Mae W est (Routledge), their first pany Schloss, appearance in print. The first, titled sim- had pr e- in rebut- fter The Pleasure Man of 1928, Mae ply Sex, premiered in 1926 and featured par ed, ad- tal, com- A West tried one mor e Broadway play, the 32-year-old West herself as the prosti- vertised, and par ed Sex to The Constant Sinner (1931). It closed after tute Margy LaMont. The play, Schlissel produced a A Tale of Two 64 per formances, and W est decided the only writes, “broke with Broadway moralities play that con- Cities, to Hamlet, money to be made was in Hollywood. In and made sin a domestic product.” The tributed “to the and to the Bible. 1932, she blazed acr oss the scr een for next year West prepared to make the city’s corruption of the Timony prayed over Paramount in “Night After Night” with her thriving gay cross-dressing underworld morals of youth” and his rosary beads. Mae old friend Geor ge Raft, who was building a legit with The Drag , its denouement being that was “wicked, West wor e black satin Hollywood car eer as a V alentino look-alike. a drag ball. With frissons and gossip radi- lewd, scandalous, and pr etended modest She wr ote her own dialogue, and her signa- ating from its tryouts in Paterson, New bawdy, obscene, inde- restraint. Barry ture one-liners wer e sharper than ever . Jersey, the New York police made a pre- cent, infamous, im- O’Neill, the leading By 1935, she was the highest paid emptive raid on its predecessor, shutting moral and impur e.” man, sweated pr o- woman in the United States, and W illiam down Sex and two other “sex plays.” Not The theater of litiga- fusely. Newspaper Randolph Hearst, who tried to keep her coincidentally, Schlissel notes, the State tion was about to begin. reporters printed as much as they name out of his newspapers, was the high- Legislature in March 1927 passed a law could, and r eaders ar ound the city est paid man. T o a hatcheck girl’s admiring banning all depictions of homosexuality on n May 28, defense lawyer enjoyed the fun. Variety published “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds,” came the stage. Adapted here from Schlissel’s O Norman Schloss opened the names and addr esses of the all- the memorable Mae W est quip, “Goodness introduction is a description of the raid on the case for the defense, point- male jury, every one an upstanding, had nothing to do with it, dearie.” Sex and its occasionally hilarious judicial ing out what must have been middle-class businessmen. aftermath. (A second trial, in 1930, was obvious: Sex had alr eady run for On public display, the jury took evoked by the third play, The Pleasur e 339 performances, and it had only five-and-a-half hours to r each a Man of 1928, which had, thanks to the been seen by mor e than 325,000 guilty ver dict. W est and T imony BMCC Chess Team Triumphant police, a run of one-and-a-half evenings. patr ons, including members of the wer e sentenced to 10-day jail ter ms This trial is also amusingly rehearsed by police department and their wives, and fined $500 each; Mor ganster n (Ben Franklin Cheers) Schlissel.) by judges of the criminal courts, also received jail time. by seven members of the West concluded that time n 1786 Benjamin Franklin published a n February 9, 1927, with Jimmy district attorneys’ in jail was part of the cost of I char ming short essay, “The Morals of Walker out of the city on holiday, staffs, and by citizens doing business on Br oadway. Chess,” in which he praised the several ODeputy Police Commissioner Jo- of the city who showed She had herself driven to “valuable qualities of the mind” the game seph B. McKee or der ed a raid on The Cap- no moral impairment. prison in a limousine, smiling instills in its players, among them for esight, tive, Sex, and Virgin Man. The intention A Broadway “play jury” for photographers, carrying circumspection, and caution. The final les- was clearly to get Mae W est wher ever they had pr eviewed the armloads of white r oses. She spent son Franklin notes is especially valuable: could catch her . If she wer en’t on the show, and belated pr os- eight days on W elfare Island, dined “Lastly, we lear n by chess the habit of not stage in The Drag, then the police would ecution was unr easonable. with the war den and his wife, and told r e- being discouraged by present bad appear - close Sex even though it had been running The pr osecutor ar gued with passion that porters she wor e her silk underwear all the ances in the state of our affairs, the habit of for almost a year . The anti-vice societies the play was obscene and called a series of time she was in prison. hoping for a favorable chance, and that of were sending a war ning to this burlesque detectives who became courtr oom actors. On her r elease, Liberty magazine paid persisting in the search for resources” dancer , vaudeville hoofer and upstart ac- Sergeant Patrick Keneally of the Mid T own her $1,000 for an interview, and she do- (Franklin’s italics). tress from Brooklyn, daughter of a corset V ice Squad, r ecited ribald lines fr om the nated the fee to establish a Mae W est Me- If Franklin was right—and he was most model and a two-bit boxer , that she was play, and imitated the walk and gestur es of morial Library in the women’s prison. Then of the time—Bor ough of Manhattan Commu- not to expect a car eer as a Br oadway play- nity College now has good r eason to cel- wright. ebrate. For its chess team r ecently r e- The police raid itself was like a Buster gained its #1 ranking in the nation at the Keaton comedy. The acting mayor sent a THE WISDOM OF MAE WEST 53rd Pan American Inter collegiate T eam limousine for Helen Menken, star of The Chess T ournament, held at Bowling Gr een, Captive, a highbr ow play on a Sapphic “Between two evils I always pick the one I haven’t Kentucky, on December 27-29. (In 1994 theme, and he sent a Black Maria to pick tried before.” BMCC became the first community college up Mae W est and the entir e cast of Sex. team to win the tournament, and it won Everybody cr owded into the van and then again in 1995.) “Men like women with a past because they hope tumbled out at the 18th Pr ecinct in Hell’s One in a field of 27 other college teams, Kitchen. At night court, W est gather ed her history will repeat itself.” BMCC defeated the University of Illinois to ermines and told waiting r eporters that, win the championship. Members of the unlike Menken’s “lesbian play,” the cast of “Marriage is a great institution—but I am not ready team included Sharif El-Assiouti, John Sex wer e all “nor mal.” After a night in the for an institution.” Easton Esjanov, Kasson Henry, and Jefferson Market women’s prison, W est Alexander Stripunsky. In 1995, BMCC won arranged bail—$1,000 each for six princi- “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.” its first championship, defeating Harvar d pals and $500 for sixteen others named in and NYU. the complaint. “Every man I meet wants to protect me. Can’t figure BMCC Pr esident Antonio Pér ez said of Menken announced she would have no out from whom.” the victory, echoing Franklin, “W e congratu- mor e to do with The Captive, and the court late our team members on their victory and of fered to dismiss all char ges if W est and thank them for the perseverance that led to “I am proud to be 82 because I know I don’t look it.” her company would close their play. They their success.”

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Seegmiller, continued from page 9 And what of Miriam Wolfson? One of my best rewards that semester was that, at its BROOKLYN COLLEGE’S LATE PROFESSOR end, she announced she was actually buying her own computer! Talking to her recently Celebrating Allen Ginsberg about her experience a year ago, she ex- plained: “Before I actually touched the com- puter, it seemed a lot more complicated than it really was. Just following the different steps, even though I had them written down n 1973 Queens College English Professor John Tytell trav- in front of me for my ease of use, was over- eled to Allen Ginsberg’s Cherry Valley farm near Cooperstown I whelming. But once I got it, I loved it. In in upstate New York to gather material—and green beans—for his fact, the possibilities are almost too much.” definitive history of the Beat Generation, Naked Angels (the poet’s I know what she means. Almost a year benevolent advice was to call it Naked Humans ). The moment was has passed since she conquered her fear of captured by Tytell’s wife, the noted photographer Mellon. On Oc- flying on the information super-highway in tober 17, under the auspices of CUNY’s Center for the Humanities, the sky, and she is traveling more than ever. directed by Professor Morris Dickstein, several distinguished speak- A serious convert, she has even hired a com- ers gathered at the Graduate School to honor Ginsberg, who died puter instructor for weekly visits and says last April. He was a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College that e-mail and the Internet have opened a and had taught there since 1979. The audience was also treated new world for her. to several archival tapes of the poet reading and singing his works. It may all be about modems, pentium Among the celebrants was Professor Tytell, whose study of an- chips, and megabytes of RAM, but it sure other countercultural phenomenon, The Living Theatr e: Art, Exile, looks like good old-fashioned Human Devel- and Outrage , appeared recently from Grove Press. Following here opment to me. is the moving conclusion of Tytell’s tribute:

ur principal spokesman for candor and Photo, Mellon Ospontaneity in an age of secrecy and de- nial, Ginsberg offered his remarks on censorship Board of Trustees or psychedelics to Congressional committees or be both avant-garde and Old Master simulta- People magazine. But Allen’s ambition was not neously. I find it so charming that, in Venice in The City University only political: because he believed in poetry, he 1965, Ginsberg chose to play Bob Dylan and the supported a number of poets, accommodating Beatles for Pound, then 79 and locked in his de- of New York some of them and their families at Cherry Valley. cade of silence, because he felt the older poet With his “palsied lip,” as he put it in a poem on should hear the new sounds. Ginsberg jammed teaching at Brooklyn College, he was still the with Dylan and John Lennon just as Kerouac had most passionate reader of poetry since Dylan with Lester Young, because a great poet, as Anne A. Paolucci Thomas...It is no wonder that no poet in our time Pound taught, first of all was musician. Chairwoman has been so memorialized—in Brooklyn, Berlin, “When the mode of the music changes,” Allen Herman Badillo Barcelona and Calcutta, in San Francisco and once told me, “the walls of the city shake.” And Vice-Chairman Los Angeles, in Central Park and City Island and his life was spent shaking those walls with his own on Times Square. music....Our Zeitgeist poet in a particularly dark Satish K. Babbar Ginsberg was always able to Make It New, as time, Allen Ginsberg was the main singer of our Ezra Pound had urged, and to make his poetry generation. The songs he sang for us will continue John J. Calandra relevant to our general spiritual needs. Both to be sung as long as we have the voice and the Kenneth Cook Pound and Ginsberg had the rare capacity to heart to sing them. Michael C. Crimmins Alfred B. Curtis, Jr. Edith B. Everett Chudnovsky, continued from page 8 Ronald J. Marino His fondest r ecent accomplishment, John Morning Panel of the National Resear ch Council and however , was recr eational: a 26-mile hike What Austen Craze? Susan Moore Mouner the National Boar d of Dir ectors of the Com- in the Grand Canyon on a hot day in Au- James P. Murphy mittee of Concerned Scientists gust, after meetings in San Diego and Santa “When I take up one of Jane Austen’s George J. Rios Fe. And he also enjoys flying and has a books, such as Pride and Prejudice, I Nilda Soto Ruiz he pr ofessional life of a theor etical pilot’s license. “Our world is thr ee-dimen- feel like a barkeeper entering the king- T physicist requir es a good deal of travel. sional space, but we spend our lives walk- dom of heaven. I know what his sensa- Richard B. Stone Last summer Chudnovsky attended meet- ing on the flat gr ound,” Chudnovsky ob- tion would be and his private comments. Sandi E. Cooper ings in Australia and Germany and worked serves, adding what could well be a He would not find the place to his taste, Chairperson, University Faculty Senate on the magnetic bacteria pr oject with his physicist’s cr edo, “Flying allows you to and he would pr obably say so.” Mizanoor Biswas long-time collaborator Dr . Javier T ejada in move in thr ee dimensions— thr ee-dimen- Mark Twain Chairperson, University Student Senate

Barcelona. sional space is much mor e beautiful!”

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