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www.justiceforchandra.com Justice for Chandra Levy and missing women
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fallout
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 566 Location: The Great NorthEast
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Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2003 4:06 am Post subject: Suzanne Jovin |
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This case was brought to my attention over the weekend. I look forward to your careful analysis. There is much more to the story than what appears in the Yale Daily News article which follows:
Published Monday, January 18, 1999
Jovin was upset with Van de Velde
Days before death, she expressed concerns to friends
BY BLAIR GOLSON
YDN Staff Reporter
YDN COVERAGE
Suzanne Jovin '99
()
Six weeks into the investigation of the Yale senior's homicide, details have emerged from Jovin's friends and classmates that call into question Van de Velde's role as a mentor.
Police officials announced last week that Van de Velde is in a "pool of suspects" being investigated in conjunction with the homicide. Van de Velde has not been charged with any crime.
Although he admitted to being questioned twice about the homicide, Van de Velde has formally denied any involvement in Jovin's death, both to police and to local media. His lawyer, David Grudberg, declined to comment for this article.
On Dec. 2, three days before Jovin was found stabbed multiple times a mile from campus, Yun Kim '99 was with her on the 7:30 train out of New York's Grand Central Station. Kim, a student in Van de Velde's "Art of Diplomacy" class, said she discussed the Yale lecturer with Jovin.
Kim said Jovin, a student in Van de Velde's class, "Strategy and Policy in the Conduct of War," began the year as an ardent admirer of the lecturer.
"I think that she did, to some degree, revere him at first, as many students did," Kim said.
Van de Velde has also said he was quickly impressed by Jovin.
"When I met Suzanne this past September, I was immediately taken by her deep enthusiasm for life, her infectious positive outlook, her insightfulness, and her commitment to learning," Van de Velde wrote in a statement prepared last December for the Yale Daily News. "She is someone I will always remember."
But Kim said as the semester drew on, the warm feelings began to melt away. She said Jovin complained about Van de Velde's performance as a senior thesis advisor.
"We were both pretty impressed with Van de Velde at the beginning of our seminars," Kim said. "But because of this thesis matter ... she became annoyed and less impressed with him."
Jovin had turned in a draft of her thesis paper on Osama bin Laden, the alleged international terrorist, to Van de Velde prior to Thanksgiving break. Kim said Jovin told her that she had turned in a second draft before Van de Velde had even commented on the first one.
"She seemed upset that he did not return the draft after break with an edit," said Kim. "She was upset because the paper was due, final draft, by the following Tuesday."
A source who wished to remain anonymous said Jovin was so incensed by Van de Velde's neglect that she said she wished she had chosen another advisor.
But accounts of Van de Velde's apparent apathy toward Jovin's thesis stand in opposition to reports from other students in his class who said he was a fair and thorough grader.
Alison Cole '99, who wrote her thesis under Van de Velde's tutelage, said she was pleased with the lecturer as an advisor.
"He was great," she said. "I found him extremely helpful. He's the best professor I could have gone to."
And though students say Jovin was extremely upset with Van de Velde immediately before her death, the lecturer wept and placed flowers on Jovin's seat during a lecture of his the first day after the murder.
Police have interviewed students in Van de Velde's classes about the relationship between Jovin and the lecturer. Numerous students in the class said that during questioning, police officers inquired directly into the possibility of the two having an affair.
"They asked me 101 questions about dating, Suzanne, 'Did you hear him and Suzanne interact?' and so on," said Michael Gordon '00. "Even if I said, 'No, no I never saw him interact with Suzanne,' they continued with questions about him and Suzanne."
Jovin's close friends said they believe it is highly unlikely her relationship with Van de Velde extended beyond the classroom. They did add that Jovin was independent and mature enough to be able to hide such a relationship if she had so desired.
Van de Velde's neighbors said they had no knowledge about his personal life.
A neighbor at his former Prospect Street apartment said Van de Velde kept an extremely low profile. She was not even aware that he had moved.
Neighbors at his present address said they rarely saw him. A fellow member of the political science department who lives down the street from Van de Velde said he never knew the lecturer.
Students who served as freshman counselors during Van de Velde's tenure as dean of Saybrook College said he was a private person, strict, and meticulous. They said they did not know anything about his personal life outside his administrative and academic duties.
Copyright © 1995-2003 Yale Daily News Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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rd
Joined: 13 Sep 2002 Posts: 9273 Location: Jacksonville, FL
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Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2003 7:30 am Post subject: |
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now this is an example where the thorough investigation that is required, indicated by the questioning to determine if there was an intimate relationship between the woman and this teacher, should not and does not reflect on the teacher or anyone else who is questioned or the subject of questions. It's necessary, and should be seen as such without reflecting badly on those who were close to a murder victim.
I wonder if Van de Velde answered questions or acted like Condit?
rd |
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jane
Joined: 22 Sep 2002 Posts: 3225
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Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2003 7:54 am Post subject: |
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Kind of strange that he placed flowers on her seat at the lecture after her death. _________________ "There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known."
Christ |
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jane
Joined: 22 Sep 2002 Posts: 3225
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Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2003 10:03 am Post subject: |
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I've thought some more about that lecturer. I've been around campuses alot because my husband taught at universities and a community college, plus having been a student. I see a prof attending a student's funeral as being very normal. I could see him/her pinning something up on a bulletin board (a picture, a poem, for example). Sending flowers to the family.
But I still see putting the flowers in the seat as strange. Seems like public posturing to me.
I've been around campuses when students have died in accidents or of natural causes, but never as a result of murder, though. _________________ "There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known."
Christ |
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fallout
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 566 Location: The Great NorthEast
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Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2003 11:02 am Post subject: |
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I've heard two rumors about what Van de Velde is doing now.
One that he is living in the New York area and
Two that he has "gone back" to working for the CIA.
The second comes from the friend who told me about the story which he read last Summer in Vanity Fair. I can't find that article yet but here is another concerning what happened to the case.
I'm very interested in what Ms. Jovin had written in her paper on Osama Bin Laden. The final draft was never submitted because she was killed four days before it was due. This is back in December of 1998. Was Suzanne Jovin killed because of something she found out in her research?
Here is another article:
With reputation at stake, Van de Velde fights back
BY MATTHEW FERRARO
In a libel suit filed against the Hartford Courant on Thurs., Jan. 12, 2001, former Yale lecturer James Van de Velde, ES '82, complained of "false, defamatory, and malicious" statements in an article printed exactly two years earlier. He issued a press release on Tues., Jan. 23, 2001, notifying the Courant, which reported on Wed., Jan. 13, 1999 that two female television reporters had filed complaints with the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) alleging that Van de Velde was harassing them, of the suit. The next day he issued a statement announcing his plan "to hold certain Connecticut institutions and individuals accountable for their misconduct, slander, and false statements, which wrongly propelled my name into the [Davenport senior] Suzanne Jovin murder investigation." That same day he filed a suit alleging defamation in Superior Court against Quinnipiac University, claiming that it wrongfully dismissed him from a master's degree program shortly after he was identified as a suspect in Jovin's murder.
Through these lawsuits, Van de Velde is "trying to set the record straight," his lawyer, David Grudberg, TC '82, told the Herald. According to the suit against the Courant, the "plaintiff's good name and character have been greatly injured, his ability to find and keep employment has been severely affected, and he has suffered great mental anguish and embarrassment."
Van de Velde, a former diplomat and political science lecturer, was working closely with Jovin as her senior thesis adviser at the time of her death. Police questioned Van de Velde, along with many others, immediately after Jovin was stabbed to death in the upscale East Rock neighborhood of New Haven on Fri., Dec. 4, 1998. Four days later, the police interviewed Van de Velde for several hours and, with his consent, searched his car and home. In January 1999, NHPD spokeswoman Judy Mongilo was quoted as saying that Van de Velde was in a "pool of suspects" under investigation. No other suspects were identified in the press.
FILE PHOTO
James Van de Velde, ES '82, hopes to restore his reputation in the aftermath of the Suzanne Jovin murder.
From questions to slander
On Mon., Jan. 11, 1999, Yale relieved Van de Velde of his teaching duties, explaining that his presence would constitute a major distraction for students.
The Courant reported this fact in the Jan. 13 article in question. But the lawsuit revolves around what the two authors of the story, Dave Altimari and Eric M. Weiss, wrote about Van de Velde's alledged conduct with two female television reporters.
In the statement released on Wed., Jan. 24, Van de Velde said that the paper "either wrote utterly false information to defame and slander me, information which they should have known to be false, or they were manipulated by a New Haven police officer who was bent on insinuating my guilt in the Suzanne Jovin murder case by feeding misinformation to gullible journalists. Neither Mr. Altimeri or Mr. Weiss asked to see copies of complaints against me (they could not have, since there are none), nor did they solicit my comment on their story, nor did they confirm the complaints with the alleged complainants." According to the suit, Van de Velde requested that the paper issue a retraction of the statements, but the Courant refused.
"The allegation that the plaintiff [Van de Velde] was the target of New Haven police complaints filed by women journalists has been repeated by others reporting on the story," and has contributed to the spreading of these libelous statements, Van de Velde's complaint goes on to say. The Courant sticks by its story, though. While Altimari declined to comment on the suit, Clifford Teutsch, the Courant's managing editor, told the Herald on Thurs., Jan 25, "We believe our story was accurate. We believe the story's right."
According to legal sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the Courant could be found guilty if Van de Velde's attorney proves that the article was false, defamatory, and published with some degree of fault. If Van de Velde proves that the underlying charge—that he harassed the female reporters—is false, he should win the case. Also, since Van de Velde is a private citizen, he only has to prove that the story was published with negligence rather than that the newspaper had malicious intent. The Courant may invoke a privilege, however, that allows the paper to report that complaints have been filed with the police, even if those complaints themselves are false. The paper could also exonerate itself by proving that the source cited in the article lied.
Coming after Quinnipiac
Van de Velde is suing Quinnipiac and its public relations representatives on similar grounds. He claims that they are guilty of slander—making spoken statements that they knew were untrue—and libel—writing statements that they knew to be untrue.
Quinnipiac has cited academic reasons for its decision to dismiss Van de Velde from its graduate program in broadcast journalism. In the Quinnipiac lawsuit, however, Van de Velde claims that it was his publicized connection to the Jovin investigation that prompted the university to terminate his candidacy and make the slanderous and libelous statements to the media. The complaint notes that on Wed., Dec. 9, 1998, the New Haven Register wrote that the NHPD had spent several hours interviewing the "prime suspect" in Jovin's murder. The next day, the Register reported that police had questioned Van de Velde extensively. The lawsuit claims, "When read against the backdrop of the Dec. 9th `prime suspect' article in the Register, it was clear that Van de Velde was the `suspect' referred to in that article."
That same day, Paul Steinle, the director of the Quinnipiac program and a co-defendant in the suit, sent Van de Velde a letter notifying him that he was suspended from the master's program, effective immediately. Steinle explained that the suspension came as a result of two television stations where Van de Velde worked having terminated his internships.
"Both allegations in the Steinle letter were false, and [Van de Velde], through representatives, informed Steinle of their falsity," the lawsuit alleged. The lawsuit also notes that representatives from both television stations with whom Van de Velde was interning had confirmed that he had not been fired from either internship. Several weeks later, on Fri., Jan. 15, 1999, the Register cited "sources" from a letter saying that Van de Velde was dropped from the program because he did not complete the internships. The lawsuit claims that the letter the sources mention is the one Steinle sent Van de Velde on Thurs., Dec. 10, 1999, which "was an academic record required tobe kept confidential under federal law, and therefore only plaintiff and Quinnipiac had access to it." Thus, theoretically since Van de Velde did not make the letter public, the Register could only have received it if Steinle or someone else at the university leaked it. Van de Velde claims that the letter was false and that Quinnipiac knew it, thereby disclosing defamatory information.
Van de Velde is also suing Quinnipiac and another spokesperson, Lynn Bushnell, on a second count of defamation. On Jan. 29, 1999, in an article published in The New York Times, Bushnell stated that Quinnipiac dismissed Van de Velde for "academic reasons." The lawsuit claims that this statement was "defamatory, false, and malicious" because Bushnell must have known that "Van de Velde had satisfied all academic requirements for the Fall 1998 semester in the Program." The suit also claims that this statement especially damaged Van de Velde because he was a university professor at the time and thus the article "implied academic failure by him." All that John Morgan, director of Public Relations at Quinnipiac University and a named co-defendant in the suit, had to say when reached by the Herald was, "Our policy is not to comment on lawsuits."
In order to prove that he has been defamed, Van de Velde must show that actions of the defendants lowered his prestige. Despite the fact that he is a professor, proving that he lost prestige because someone claimed erroneously that he had poor grades is difficult, a legal expert said.
How the proceedings proceed
What happens next? With these two lawsuits just beginning, and his quest to hold the institutions that wronged him "accountable," it appears unlikely that this is the last we will hear of Van de Velde. Currently living in Virginia and working for the Pentagon, he remains the only person ever publicly named as a suspect in the Jovin murder case. The police have not released new information about the homicide in nearly two years. Van de Velde told reporters on Thurs., Jan. 25, that he plans to sue both Yale and the NHPD. Grudberg, Van de Velde's lawyer, declined to confirm those reports.
One interesting aspect of the case that goes unexplained is why, if the article in the Courant was so devastating, Van de Velde waited nearly two years after the article was published to file suit. If he had waited one more day, the two-year statute of limitations for defamation suits in Connecticut State would have expired. Grudberg refused to speculate on this question, but he stressed the importance of "setting the record straight when you've been wronged." |
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rd
Joined: 13 Sep 2002 Posts: 9273 Location: Jacksonville, FL
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Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2003 11:16 am Post subject: |
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It appears he was waiting on something else to happen before suing. He finally sued just before his ability to expired.
rd |
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fallout
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 566 Location: The Great NorthEast
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 3:42 am Post subject: |
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" Currently living in Virginia and working for the Pentagon, he remains the only person ever publicly named as a suspect in the Jovin murder case."
This is crucial
_________________ "Strictly speaking, all is equally inexplicable"
P.D. Ouspensky 1943 from A New Model of the Universe |
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fallout
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 566 Location: The Great NorthEast
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 3:44 am Post subject: |
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My Hacker is hard at work tonight. I think I can type faster than his program. Let's see what this looks like.
I'm not kidding. Someone is on to our being on to them.
You know where I am. I'm waiting.
James
(After the first posting) As I was typing a bunch of small squares started to appear in between the letters (its doing it again now) I type about 90 words a minute and can hit the delete key quite quickly.
(jazz piano training!)
Who are You?
James
Sorry to sound paranoid but this is really happening right now. And it happened on my web site so I conclude that something is going on.
The truth is close at hand.
James |
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fallout
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 566 Location: The Great NorthEast
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 4:02 am Post subject: |
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A small "Bingo!"
James Van de Velde (1988)
Analyst
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence
The Pentagon
By the way, for you history buffs- Frank Carlucci (Worldwide Chairman of the Carlyle Corporation now) was Secretary of Defense under Reagan until early 1988 and (surprise) Dick Cheney (Another Carlyle stalwart) under George Bush the first 1988-1992!
After Mr. Van de Velde's departure from the groves of Academe he found shelter from the storm in familiar surroundings. I wonder if he still has a copy of Ms. Jovin's second draft thesis on Osama?
Goodnight and Sweet Dreams!
(The hacker has stopped for now)
James _________________ "Strictly speaking, all is equally inexplicable"
P.D. Ouspensky 1943 from A New Model of the Universe |
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benn
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 2136 Location: Sacramento, CA
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 6:50 am Post subject: |
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Sounds interesting.
rd, this is a case that you, or someone, might request from Legal Case Docs. I don't know how long it takes for a case to get printed up and published.
I searched at Legal Case Docs and found only one case searching for Van de Velde, and I don't think it was about the person discussed here. It was a corporations case, back in 1994 I believe. It did not sound like this Van de Velde. Even so I tried to download it. I guess the website was busy, or maybe being worked on. The download did not start in three minutes, so I canceled it.
Usually Legal Case Docs downloads fairly fast, with a 56k modem. I will try again in a few hours.
I could request the actual case we are discussing I guess, if you want me to. If it is not ready they might pdf it up when it is ready.
There seems to be a lot about murderers and victims that we don't know, or at least I don't know. More information might help potential victims protect themselves more.
Myself, I am more for hitting the enemy before he attacks, rather than waiting for disaster to occur and then reacting. A bigger army (a bigger law enforcement agency) might be able to help to protect in advance those who could become victims.
benn |
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fallout
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 566 Location: The Great NorthEast
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 4:06 pm Post subject: |
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Here is an article that clears up some of the questions:
January 28, 1999
Mystery of Slain Senior Tears at Yale
By SUSAN SACHS
When a 21-year-old Yale University senior was found slain on Dec. 4 in a residential neighborhood of porticoed homes and ample lawns two miles from campus, the New Haven police invested the crime with an intimacy that deepened its intrigue.
This was not a random act of violence, detectives said. Suzanne Jovin, stabbed 17 times in the back and neck and left to die in the moonlight on a patch of grass, probably knew her killer.
Nearly eight weeks later, no one has been arrested. As the grinding job of investigating Ms. Jovin's killing continues, the police have stopped talking about it in public.
But their initial theory -- that danger lurks, not outside, but within Yale's neo-Gothic walls -- has indelibly shaped the campus narrative of the murder mystery.
Like any unfinished story, this one has its loose ends and characters who may be central or may not belong in the story at all.
The mystery has caused many people to ponder its possible implication: that someone close at hand, someone nurtured in the Yale culture of fellowship and decorum, could murder one of its own.
"It's really disturbing to think that someone like us -- someone who took the same exams and has the same good record, or in the case of a professor, a better record -- could have done something like this," said Adrian Delmont, a senior majoring in psychology.
Just a week into the criminal investigation rumors began to swirl around a popular Yale lecturer and former residence hall dean who was Ms. Jovin's senior thesis adviser.
Two weeks ago, the police confirmed publicly that the lecturer, James Van de Velde, was "in a pool of suspects."
Van de Velde, 38, has insisted that he had nothing to do with the death of his student. The suggestion that he did "is deeply, deeply painful and outrageous," he said in a statement released through his lawyer on Jan. 12.
The police questioned Van de Velde twice, right after the killing, and have since conducted numerous interviews with his former students and off-campus acquaintances. He lives a half-mile from where Ms. Jovin was found, in the same upscale East Rock neighborhood favored by many Yale faculty members, and he has acknowledged seeing her on the day of her death when she turned in her thesis.
Ira Grudberg, Van de Velde's lawyer, said the encounter took place in the afternoon and was amiable.
"It was a 'Hi, how are you?' thing," Grudberg said. "He was in his office working. He had gone over the draft with her a couple of days before. She had rewritten a portion of it and turned it in again."
The meeting lasted less than a minute, Grudberg added. He would not discuss Van de Velde's whereabouts at the time of the killing, which the police estimated occurred between 9:30 and 9:45 P.M.
Van de Velde, who has not been charged with anything, said his life had become a "nightmare." When his name surfaced in the Jovin investigation, for instance, Quinnipiac College dismissed him from the graduate journalism program he was attending part-time. Lynn Bushnell, a college spokeswoman, said he was dropped for "academic reasons," and declined to elaborate.
But Les Gura, who was Van de Velde's journalism teacher at Quinnipiac College and is the city editor of The Hartford Courant, said he was "a good student." Liz Grey, the vice-president for news at WVIT-TV in Hartford, where Van de Velde worked as an intern for credit at the Quinnipiac program, said he also completed the assignment without incident.
Since the killing, Van de Velde's time as a budding broadcaster has come under scrutiny. A police investigator, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said detectives had taken statements from two women at the station after hearing that they had complained about his behavior. The Hartford Courant, attributing its information to a police source, reported that one of the women said Van de Velde had repeatedly phoned her after she broke off a fledgling relationship.
"I'm told this really involves one person that he had a relationship with," said Grudberg, the lawyer. "But he never did any stalking or anything."
As for his Yale position, university officials have said that while they presume his innocence, he can not teach as long as he is a suspect. They said they would continue to pay him, but they canceled his scheduled courses for the spring semester.
His presence in the classroom, said Richard H. Brodhead, the dean of Yale College, would distract students. The Suzanne Jovin murder mystery, the dean added, "is in the air as a matter of speculation."
The College Shocks to a Culture Built for Intimacy
Eight years ago, another undergraduate, Christian Prince, was shot to death at the edge of the Yale campus. A New Haven teen-ager was convicted of robbing him, but was acquitted of murder.
Still, the lesson was clear to Yale officials. Danger had invaded from the gritty city beyond the university's carved stone walls. More security guards were hired. Emergency phones were installed all over campus. The escort service was beefed up. A program to rehabilitate New Haven's slums was established.
In the wake of the Jovin homicide, there does not seem to be much that Yale can fix.
"Anytime you lose a student, it's a shock," said Richard C. Levin, Yale's president, "but it could happen at any university."
While violence can strike any institution, it resonates deeper and wider at Yale because of its carefully designed culture of intimacy.
Each of its 12 residential colleges is a small village with its own coat of arms, rituals, colors and hierarchy. The death of Ms. Jovin, many students said, pained not only her friends but also her college, Davenport. Similarly, the sudden notoriety of Van de Velde touched not only his former students, but also hundreds of others who have lived in Saybrook College, where he was the dean, monitoring students' academic work, from 1993 to 1997.
Shortly before Ms. Jovin was killed, Saybrook was shaken by the news that Federal child pornography charges had been brought against Antonio Lasaga, a tenured geology professor and Saybrook College's master, or director of social activities. Professor Lasaga is awaiting a hearing on the Federal charges, has pleaded not guilty to state charges of child molestation and is on indefinite paid leave from Yale.
"As soon as Van de Velde became an official suspect, we thought, oh my God, Saybrook is doomed," said Lisa Hopkins, a junior living in the college. "The college system is incredibly intimate and it felt personal."
The Teacher Military Mystique And Class Tricks
Ms. Jovin, a political science major, met Van de Velde when she signed up for one of his two courses last September. She chose Strategy and Policy in the Conduct of War, and eventually asked Van de Velde to be the adviser for her senior thesis on international terrorism.
The lecturer had just returned to Yale after more than a year's absence. But he already enjoyed a certain renown among the undergraduates.
Not only did Van de Velde teach exotic subjects like anti-terrorism tactics and intelligence analysis, he also engaged his students with field trips to military bases and simulations of diplomatic crises.
One of his more attention-getting tricks was to pull a realistic-looking gun out of a briefcase -- he told his students later that it was not real -- to dramatize for students in his seminar on diplomacy how a real-life extortion attempt might play out.
"When it happened, no one freaked out," said Alison Cole, a senior in the seminar who, like Ms. Jovin, asked him to be her thesis adviser. "We all walked out saying that it was so cool."
Classroom tricks like that helped perpetuate a mystique around Van de Velde. He sometimes referred to his experiences as an intelligence analyst in the Naval Reserve Force. But perhaps he was really working for the Central Intelligence Agency, students wondered, especially after stories circulated that he had strewn manuals marked "C.I.A." around his apartment.
Saybrook College residents said no one got close enough to Van de Velde to know for sure. They recalled him as a conscientious but remote dean. "He was a profoundly disciplined man," recalled Behi Rabbani, a senior majoring in molecular biophysics and biochemistry who lives at Saybrook.
What is publicly known about Van de Velde's professional background is less cryptic than some of his students might have imagined.
He grew up in Connecticut, attended Yale as an undergraduate and earned a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and International Relations at Tufts University in 1988. He went to the State Department as a policy analyst until 1993, when he was hired at Yale.
In 1988, according to Navy records, he also joined the Naval Reserve Force and received two months of training to be an intelligence officer. He now holds the rank of lieutenant commander.
Van de Velde's reservist duties have taken him frequently to the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., and on occasional overseas desk assignments, the records show. The latest was a stint as an intelligence analyst, for the first four months of 1997, at the Navy's Southern Command headquarters in Naples.
When he returned to Yale, he finished the spring semester as dean of Saybrook and quit.
But after six months as director of the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, Van de Velde returned once again to Yale. He told The New Haven Register that he had missed teaching. The university hired him as a political science lecturer on a one-year contract.
Although his students liked him, Van de Velde was not embraced by the political science department. He did not attend affairs like the graduate student lunches. Several of his fellow professors said they found him frosty.
"While our sympathy for him is genuine, there is no sense that here is one of us who is under the gun," said a senior professor who knew Van de Velde but insisted on not being quoted by name. "There is no sense of obligation to a fellow faculty member, to think the best of him. There is just the obligation to a human being to presume his innocence."
The Student Last Day Is Spent Helping the Disabled
Suzanne Jovin epitomized the ideal of the well-rounded Yale scholar. She grew up in Göttingen, Germany, where her parents are research scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, and worked summers during her time at Yale at a biotechnology company, Cerus, in California. During the school year, she joined the German club and the Bach Chorus. She tutored children in the New Haven public schools.
Other than her senior thesis for Van de Velde, friends said, her most time-consuming project was coordinating the Best Buddies program, which pairs university students with mentally retarded people for conversation, friendship and a view into another way of life.
Much of her last day was spent with the Best Buddies. With other volunteers from Yale, she brought pizza dough and toppings to the Trinity Lutheran Church near campus for an end-of-semester party for a group of about 30 mentally disabled people.
They baked pizzas in the church kitchen, animatedly debating foreign policy, recalled Rev. John J. Marschhausen, the church's pastor. Then they played Big Band music for their disabled friends and sang an old favorite, "In the Good Old Summertime."
About 9 P.M., after helping scrub down the church kitchen, Ms. Jovin returned a borrowed university station wagon. She was last seen, the police said, in the heart of the Yale campus, walking off alone, north on College Street. Within the next 45 to 50 minutes, she encountered her killer.
Here, the murder mystery is most perplexing. How did Ms. Jovin get from campus to the place where she was found? Conceivably she could have walked. But to jog to that neighborhood takes at least 20 minutes in good weather, Yale students said.
More likely, she was driven there. But was the driver her killer?
Capt. Brian Sullivan of the New Haven police, at a press conference a few days after the homicide, said the people at the church pizza party had alibis, as did Ms. Jovin's longtime boyfriend, who was on a train at the time of her death.
Physical evidence also has proved elusive. For two weeks, the police unsuccessfully scoured the neighborhood looking for the murder weapon.
After Ms. Jovin's death, The Yale Daily News published tributes. "She exclaimed to me once how good she felt simply because she was young, how much joy and optimism and wonder the sheer fact of youth brought her," one friend recalled.
Van de Velde added his own tribute: "She inspired me with her enthusiasm and her interest in making a difference in the world," he wrote. "She is someone I will always remember." |
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rd
Joined: 13 Sep 2002 Posts: 9273 Location: Jacksonville, FL
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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How did she get to where she was killed? Must have been driven, it says. If only Chandra's coverage could be as perceptive.
rd |
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benn
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 2136 Location: Sacramento, CA
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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Well, she was walking alone at, or after, 9PM, not a very good thing to do.
Going home from work late at night I two or three times ran into a security guard whom I knew, and he always seemed to be in a hurry. He said, "A lot of bad things happen at night."
That about says it. She had a right to be walking anywhere she wanted to walk, at any time she wanted to walk, which also gave her the right to take the chance of being a victim of a crime.
Some colleges have escort services. I had a paraquet once that escaped out of the kitchen window. His freedom also meant his death, because the night temperature where I lived was not made for paraquets.
The freedom that women have wanted may also mean the death of some of them. There should be better choices.
benn |
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fallout
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 566 Location: The Great NorthEast
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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HI Benn,
The time after she dropped off the college car until she met her killerseems to be about half an hour. The story doesn't say where she was living but mentions that the professor lived close to the death scene. He claims that he was home alone that evening.
I thought for a minute that the police missed the possibility that one of the retarded adults could have killed her after spending the day with her but the story by Susan Sachs mentions that they all had an alibi.
There are sure quite a few similarities to Condit's behavior including the lawsuits. But there are also simitarities to Steven Hatfill's case where it looks like he is being set up by the FBIfor some reason...
I'm still getting the run on squares like a crazed pakman but tonight I got home early and also found that my initial sign-in password screen was being "explored" by something. I had to hold down the control key with a few other things to stop it long enough to sign in. I don't think its a virus but if you or RD think it sounds like one please let me know. It looks more like anintentional attempt to hack in here. Don't know why anyone would want to do that though. I will attempt to communicate with my hacker now (Bug Off)
See ya,
James _________________ "Strictly speaking, all is equally inexplicable"
P.D. Ouspensky 1943 from A New Model of the Universe |
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benn
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 2136 Location: Sacramento, CA
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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james
It seems like maybe you have broadband and that someone is trying to hack you.
I don't know if my computer could withstand a hacker, but I do have a Norton Firewall, and I have Norton anti-virus. I don't have broadband, just a 56k modem.
I will be glad when you get back on. I am having trouble with my Windows 98. It has swollen in size to about 2 Gigabytes.
I have been getting rid of some of it, but at the risk of having Windows not work.
Cya
benn |
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