Jennifer Grossman and Dante scholars-in-training, on a field trip to tne Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park.
Learning

STUDENTS DISH OUT DIVINE JUSTICE

ON A WARM SPRING EVENING AT HARLEM'S Countee Cullen library, a half-dozen teenagers, all wearing their school-mandated navy--in headbands, baseball caps, ties--are dragging plastic chairs into a circle. Here in this seminar-like setting, complete with seltzer and breadsticks, these almost disquietingly sober juniors from Frederick Douglass Academy are meeting for their sixth weekly installment of "Digital Dante."

Led by two Columbia University research associates, Jen Hogan and Jennifer Grossman, the class applies text analysis of The Divine Comedy to city government and uses the Internet as a primary research tool. Dante's language of redemption and punishment is not just the course's subject but also its form: The poet's ideas provide a scale for measuring the actions of contemporary political figures.

One recent assignment was typically high-flown: Place a local political player in one of purgatory's or hell's circles, and then write to the subject explaining why.

"Mr. Mark Green, I have decided to place you in Purgatory in the Valley of the Rulers," began Zelini Hubbard. "My rationale is that, although you did many great things for the city of New York, you did not do enough for the students of New York City." Hubbard--a glamorous 17-year-old who plans to major in computer science at an Ivy League school and then become a corporate lawyer--provokes a murmur of appreciation. "The Valley of the Rulers contains rulers of yore that did not do as much as they could have, with their power. I feel that you did not put up enough opposition towards the cutting of school funds. Like Dante, I have tremendous faith in you, since I placed you in Purgatory and not Hell." The room is briefly silent.

"Dear Ruth Messinger," writes Njeri Olatunji. "I have studied your political background and can see you are a real down-to-earth person that citizens can relate with. I am pleased with your fight for more employment opportunities, because as a young student trying to get experience in the working world, I know how bad it is. But I am troubled by your investment of $900,000 in the diamond industry. Thus, I place you in the highest level of Purgatory, Earthly Paradise. You didn't belong in any lower section of Purgatory, and definitely not in Hell."

"You bring up this issue of the diamond investment," says Hogan, whose vast knowledge of the Dante oeuvre sometimes makes for pedantic speeches. "Then why wouldn't you place her in the category of the avaricious and the prodigal?"

"It seems like she tries to do good for the people," Olatunji responds. "She's pro-choice, and she's supporting the welfare-to-work program."

"But justice, for Dante, is not nice," says Hogan. "It's very harsh. Should you settle for anything less?"

At the end of class, the students pick parts of The Divine Comedy from Hogan's L.L. Bean bag for their term project, a similar ranking of players in the Empowerment Zone project.

"Inferno! Oh, brother."

"Can we trade?"

"Oh, dag Paradise."

VANESSA GRIGORIADIS

20 NEW YORK MAY 5, 1997