yajb - java-ruby bridge

i was using rjb until some of the java libraries i was using started misbehaving. now i'm giving yajb a shot which seems to behave the way i expect it to and is a lot simpler to code. my problem:

i have a class that takes a constant, which is a member of the class, so i have to do something like this to make it work:

const_accessor = jnew :SearchCriteria, "dfdfa", "dasf", 0 #we can access constants from class now search = jnew :SearchCriteria, "FirstName", "Stuart", const_accessor.CRITERIA_EQUALS #this works..

i tried this: search = jnew :SearchCriteria, "FirstName", "Stuart", :SearchCriteria.CRITERIA_EQUALS doesn't work

any ideas how to make the above work without having to instantiate the const_accessor ?? thanks