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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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