Yale Daily News

T H E O L D E ST C O L L E G E DA I LY · FO U N D E D 1 8 7 8

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 67 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

SUNNY CLEAR

37 42

CROSS CAMPUS A forsythia grows in Branford.

Eric Larson, manager of the Marsh Botanic Gardens on Science Hill, confirmed that yellow flowers blooming in Branford are forsythia. The flowers caught the eye of English prof. Leslie Brisman.

“Is this a horticultural reminder to all students that what is about to start is the ‘spring’ semester?” Brisman asked. “Or is it Yale’s own answer to Republican deniers of global warming?”

Silliman College has revamped its laundry system

to include baskets in which students can place laundry from washing machines whose cycles have finished, Master Judith Krauss told students in an email. The program, conceived by the Yale College Council, includes numbered baskets and a white board on which students can write notes specifying which basket holds clothes from which dryer.

No leasing. New Haven has the lowest apartment vacancy rate in the nation, according to a ranking released last week by Reis Inc., an organization that conducts studies on real estate markets. New Haven’s 2.1 percent vacancy in the fourth quarter of 2011 beat even New York City, which posted a 2.4 percent vacancy.

A panel tasked with assessing Connecticut’s response to Hurricane Irene and the snowstorm of October 2011 filed its report on Monday, recommending 82 changes, including an increase on utilities taxes to finance stronger infrastructure, and higher standards for utilities companies.

SUGARY CEREAL ADS TARGET KIDS, HURT MINORITIES

UNEMPLOYMENT

OCCUPY NEW HAVEN

SWIMMING & DIVING

Hiring expands as the Elm City’s economic picture brightens

DOZENS PERSEVERE AS OCCUPIERS FEEL WINTER CHILLS

Men and women dominate Cornell on senior night

PAGE 8 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

PAGE 3 CITY

PAGE 5 CITY

PAGE 14 SPORTS

Search for coach still unclear

BY JIMIN HE STAFF REPORTER Despite heavy speculation by numerous media outlets, Yale may not be close to naming its next head football coach.

Both the Hartford Courant and New Haven Register reported Monday afternoon that University of Connecticut defensive coordinator Don Brown was expected to take the job left vacant by former head coach Tom Williams, who resigned last month following reports that he had overstated his record as a Rhodes Scholarship candidate. However, by late Mon-

day night, two sources familiar with the search process independently confirmed that Brown has withdrawn his name from consideration, forcing the Bulldogs to continue the search for the 34th head coach of the football program. The New Haven Register reported that Yale offered the job to Brown before he turned it down.

N e i t h e r Ya l e D i re c tor of Athletics Tom Beckett nor Brown could be re a c h e d fo r c o m m e n t .

The 56-year-old Massachusetts native was previously the defensive coordinator at Yale under former head coach and Hall of Famer Carm Cozza

from 1987 to 1992. In 1989, the Bulldogs won a share of the Ivy League Championship, surrendering an average of 17 points a game.

Brown was considered a strong contender for the Yale job due to his previous head coaching experiences — 12 seasons as head coach at Plymouth State, Northeastern and the University of Massachusetts, where he compiled a 95–45 career record. By comparison, Williams had no head coaching experience before taking over at Yale.

With Brown out of contention, Yale will likely to consider three other candidates who are known to have inter-

Gender-neutral revisited GRAPHS STUDENT OPINION ON HOUSING If given the opportunity to have genderDo you support a gender-neutral option for neutral housing junior year, would you Yale College juniors? consider living in a gender-neutral suite?

Indifferent 10.8% Indifferent 10.8% Oppose No 32.9% 7.2%

Oppose 7.2% No 32.9%

Yes 67.1%

Not so free. Occupy New

Haven has cost the city over $60,000 in police overtime pay since its tents first went up on the New Haven Green last fall, NBC Connecticut reported. Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said while he thinks taxpayers are concerned about costs, they are also concerned about preservation of free expression.

Low expectations. In PLSC 271: Gateway to American Public Policy, prof. Jacob Hacker opened with a joke about keeping his first lecture short, quoting an evaluation he once received from a student: “Professor Hacker, if I had 15 minutes to live, I’d want to spend it in your class. That way it would feel like an hour.” A student walked out.

Fun, fun, fun, fun. English

120 prof. Ryan Wepler started the seminar with a 30 minute analysis of what makes Rebecca Black’s “Friday” bad art. He introduced her as America’s “new prophet of art” and provided students with a copy of the lyrics.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1963 Students and professors from the first intensive Directed Studies program reunite for dinner and sherry.

Submit tips to Cross Campus

crosscampus@yaledailynews.com

ONLINE y MORE cc.yaledailynews.com

viewed to fill the vacancy: Georgetown head coach Kevin Kelly, Lehigh offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini and former Yale assistant coach — and current Harvard assistant coach — Tony Reno. According to a Jan. 7 report on the National Football League’s website, the Univeristy also reached out to former UCLA head coach Karl Dorrell.

Brown had been considered a favorite for the Yale job in 2009, when Jack Siedlecki retired as the 32nd head coach of the program. Brown decided to remain at UMass, however, and Williams instead won the job If Brown were hired, it

BY MADELINE MCMAHON AND TAPLEY STEPHENSON STAFF REPORTERS If the newest Yale College Council effort is successful, juniors will be eligible for gender-neutral housing beginning next fall.

In a 13-page report to the administration, made available to members of the Yale community in a Monday email, the Yale College Council asserted that genderneutral suites foster a more comfortable social environment and

incentivize students to remain on campus. Though the Yale Corporation turned down a similar proposal by the YCC in February 2011, the new report includes more data and was written in consultation with members of the Yale College Dean’s Office — giving it a better chance to succeed, YCC President Brandon Levin ’13 said. University President Richard Levin and Yale College Dean Mary Miller will present the latest report to the Yale Corporation in February, according to the YCC email.

would have been his third coaching change in just four years. He left UMass in 2009 to become the defensive coordinator for Maryland. But when longtime Maryland head coach Ralph Friedgen was fired in 2010, Brown left the school to take his current position at UConn.

In 1992, Brown was named the interim head coach for the Yale baseball team, leading the Bulldogs to a 26–10 record that season.

Contact JIMIN HE at jimin.he@yale.edu .

Graduate school class to grow APPS RISE; NEW FELLOWSHIP TO LURE TOP SCIENCE STUDENTS

BY ANTONIA WOODFORD STAFF REPORTER

A new fellowship program in the sciences will allow the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to admit more doctoral students this year.

Because the endowment plunged in the 2008 recession, the Graduate School has sought to reduce the size of its incoming Support 81.9% classes in recent years, but a gift from the philanthropic Gruber Foundation will help support growth even as the endowment is Support 81.9% still recovering. The school aims to have 531 first-year Ph.D. students this fall, an 11 percent increase over last year’s target class size, Director of Graduate Admissions Robert Colonna said in an email.

SOURCE: YALE COLLEGE COUNCIL Still, the increase will not be distributed evenly across departments. Because the gift supports graduate students in the biomedical and biological sciences and in The proposal cites positive feedastronomy and astrophysics, those proback from students who have pargrams will see the largest growth, while ticipated in gender-neutral housing admissions in the humanities and social and includes data from a survey the sciences will remain relatively stable, said YCC conducted in November with Richard Sleight, an associate dean of the the classes of 2013 and 2014. Last year’s YCC proposal made simiGraduate School. lar arguments, but was based on Applications to the Graduate School’s just one year of data, which Brandoctoral programs rose by 1.9 percent this don Levin said the Yale Corporayear to 9,462, Colonna said. But because the University guarantees five years of tion determined was inadequate for financial support — a stipend plus tuition assessing the initiative. and fees — to all its Ph.D. students, the “That’s precisely [the role] the SEE HOUSING PAGE 4

SEE GRAD SCHOOL PAGE 7

Snyder seeks global ties for SOM

BY DANIEL SISGOREO STAFF REPORTER Unlike most elite American business schools, the School of Management has not prioritized partnering with international business schools — until now.

SOM Dean Edward Snyder, who took office this fall, is working to assemble a group of global business schools with whom to collaborate on a variety of academic projects.

The first is a new Master in Advanced Management degree program, which was approved by the Yale Corporation Dec. 9 and will begin next fall. Snyder told the News that the new network will deviate from the traditional “partnership

model” since it will include several business schools in developing countries and will not consist solely of bilateral partnerships.

It’s important for us to think about developing leaders in an innovative way.

EDWARD SNYDER Dean, Yale School of Management “It’s important for us to think about developing leaders in an innovative way,” he said, adding that SOM must

not “neglect emerging economic powers.”

Snyder said INSEAD, an elite business school with campuses in France, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, and the National University of Singapore have already joined the network. He added that over five other schools, which he declined to name, have also agreed to take part, and several others are considering membership.

The degree program will take place at SOM with enrollment limited to Master of Business Administration students from participating international business schools, who Snyder said will SEE SOM PAGE 4

SNIGDHA SUR/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

SOM’s dean, Edward Synder, is seeking to expand its international ties.

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “Next they will pay non-home owners more money because they don’t get a yaledailynews.com/opinion

The periwinkler’s dilemma D

espite unseasonably warm weather, the water temperature in the Essex marshes was hovering just above freezing, and slivers of ice floated out with the tide. I had just finished Michael Pollan’s food-sourcing bible “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and had been inspired to go on a local foraging expedition of my own.

After a few minutes of sifting through the water and weeds, our hands had lost feeling, and we had to rely on the uncertain coordination of eyes and fingers to catch our prey. Not that periwinkles are especially nimble quarry — small, plodding sea snails, they’re just a step up from sedentary — but fishing them out from the glacial pebbles was challenge enough.

For the holidays, my parents had taken a firm step in the locavore direction, buying only beers and snacks that had originated 10 miles or fewer from our house.

Their current fixation with localities and ecosystems was not the direct cause of my periwinkling expedition, but it did create a context for our catch and suggest a compensation for our pains beyond the meat itself. That was delicious — briny little corkscrews of escargot plus a small handful of mussels and a single hard-fought clam – but hardly the point. We had scraped the periwinkles off the algae that they were scraping off the rocks, and the whole drama had happened about a mile from the places where each of us, snail and student, had grown up.

Yet by reveling in the brevity of the food chain connecting me to each morsel, I was perhaps celebrating less the origin of my catch and more the purity of my intentions. Catching or growing your own meat is a little eccentric in our culture, and it tends to come with a side of smug superiority. For those who identify with the movement, free-range is better than industrial, local more glorious still, and if you raised the beast in your own backyard, you have reached the carnivorous Holy Grail. The fate of the animal is not the point; rather, it is the consumer’s image, defined by his particular relationship to creature, place, and politics.

This conundrum is not limited to food. Anyone who caught Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse” and was able to look past the story’s treacly implausibility may have noticed the film’s comment on animals and human endeavor — that people look especially absurd when we try to drag other creatures along in our work, our wars and yes, our movies. (John Mulaney’s “Saturday Night Live” comment on Secretariat seems apt: “I love to watch any movie that stars an animal because the animal does not know that it is in a movie. As far as that horse knows, there were a bunch of people hanging around him, and now they’re all gone.”)

This may be an apt description of all human-animal interactions, though who remains and who disappears can vary from case to case. I wonder, though, where the line lies between real concern and

fetishization.

We can’t help but politicize our fellow fauna. I’m not referring to the two symbolic herbivores about to face SAM off in thouLASMAN sands of op-ed cartoons for Beartrap rest of the year. I mean flesh-andblood animals, from the whales at the center of an Australian-Japanese extradition debate to the rapidly expanding list of endangered Texan reptiles and amphibians. The former were the intended prey of a whaling fleet boarded by Australian activists, who were subsequently detained in Japan. The latter have become poker chips in a highstakes contest among environmentalists, government regulators and industrialists.

Neither of these are particularly novel stories — they occur every year, with people and nations and species shuffled around, but the message and the battle lines remain firm. In neither case, of course, are the animals themselves the newsmakers. That happens incredibly rarely, and when it does it’s usually either sensationalist (shark attack!) or actually about humans (horses are not naturally inclined to run on narrow tracks with small people perched on top of them, after all).

Rather, the whalers and the anti-whalers, the conservationists and the oilmen, are all embroiled in debates that ultimately have less to do with animals and more to do with identities, policies and values.

This is how the tragically nonsensical situations of modern ecopolitics arise. In Gloucester, Mass., fishermen and marine biologists spar endlessly over cod populations, each side depicting the other as a gang of clueless, heartless villains. Across the country, environmentalist groups oppose deer hunting, though our elimination of all other large predators has made such culls an ecological necessity. Again, cod and deer are not really the point; or, if they once were, the animals and their welfare have long been eclipsed by the bitterness of human conflict.

Animals were once our prey and predators. They became our gods, our companions and finally our property. Now, for most of us, they are fashions — the cats we will keep, the cattle we won’t eat, the free-range chicken we will, the polar bears we will mourn, the countless others we will ignore (ever heard of the baiji? Po’ouli?

Alaotra grebe?) as they drift out of existence.

I was proud of my catch and its provenance. But is that environmentalism, or narcissism?

tax deduction.”

‘REDMAN’ ON ‘YALE TO PROVIDE TAX RELIEF TO SAME-SEX COUPLES’

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST H A R RY L A R S O N

R.I.P., Blue Book A

s we rush back and forth among 20 classes during the first two weeks of this semester, we will be aided by the classic, hardcopy, sometimes moldy Blue Book for the very last time. Last year, only freshmen were automatically sent Blue Books. Older students had to request them through SIS. Next year, Yale will cease publishing the book entirely.

Most of us rely far more on OCI and OCS or yalebluebook.com — online sites that let us link directly to syllabi and evaluations, list updated room locations and cancellations, and can be accessed by laptop or phone from anywhere with an Internet connection. The Blue Book, on the other hand, is clunky and heavy and contains only limited information that may be out of date. It has become increasingly irrelevant.

Nonetheless, the Blue Book still plays a key role, and Yale will be worse off once it’s gone. I believe this out of more than sentimentality (though I do have fond enough feelings for the physical course catalogue to keep all my old ones).

Online course browsing provides a host of advantages but it also tends to limit us or, more accurately, to enable us to limit ourselves in ways that stifle intellectual curiosity and diversity.

Once on the OCI website, you can

type in the class or teacher about which you want information, or you can go directly to the department whose offerings you would like to see. You don’t skim through pages full of information on different departments and classes before getting to the one you’re looking for. You have a particular goal of finding particular information — you don’t browse mindlessly in the way you might with the Blue Book, turning to random pages and reading the course descriptions.

When I’m on OCI, I usually think of four or five departments to look at, but when I have a Blue Book in hand, I’ll often look at the course offerings of the departments right before and after the one I’m flipping to. This doesn’t mean I find courses I like — Engineering and Applied Science, which directly precedes English, isn’t exactly my cup of tea — but at the very least, it leaves me with a better though still very limited sense of the very different academic paths my peers may be pursuing.

My freshman year, I took a course on the first millennium of Catholicism that was one of the most interesting courses I’ve taken at Yale. I found it by accidentally flipping to the Religious Studies section in the Blue Book — a section I probably wouldn’t have

chosen to look at on OCI. I may have come across it elsewhere, as it was cross-listed in the History Department, but I’m not sure that I would have.

There are a number of tiny but fascinating departments and offerings at Yale (Near Eastern Civilizations and Languages — hieroglyphics, anyone?) which you would never think to type in or scroll to on a website but which might just catch your eye when you skim past a page in the Blue Book.

If I were the only student who felt this way, I could understand Yale’s decision to discontinue the Blue Book’s publication. But last year, when Yale required that students opt in to receive a Blue Book, 1631 non-freshmen requested one, and more have said they would have liked a hard copy of the Blue Book but forgot to request one. That’s over a third of the nonfreshman undergraduate population, a pretty significant chunk.

Moreover, the people for whom the physical Blue Book is most important are, in fact, freshmen, none of whom will receive a Blue Book next year. These are the people we should most encourage to browse and skim through dozens of different departments with hundreds of different courses.

As older students settle down into majors, it becomes less likely

that they will take classes on a whim. But freshman year is the opportunity students get to take random classes that don’t fit together in neat, coherent ways but that offer them a smattering of what Yale has to offer. If Yale actually means what it says each year when deans tell freshmen not to take too many courses in any one department and to try their hands at different and new things, it should not be forcing all its students, freshmen included, into a course selection system that encourages students to segregate themselves academically.

I would never advocate for eliminating our online course information and selection systems. I, like all Yale students, make heavy use of them — more than I make of the Blue Book. But why eliminate something relatively inexpensive — Dean Mary Miller claimed the decision was not made for cost reasons — which a large portion of the student body wants and which may push even a few students in directions they never otherwise would have considered? Shopping period, for the most part, won’t be very different next year. But the first step of choosing classes will be.

HARRY LARSON is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at harry.larson@yale.edu .

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T PA U L L I N D E N - R E T E K

Remembering Vaclav Havel

SAM LASMAN is a senior in Berkeley College. Contact him at samuel.lasman@yale.edu .

AUBE REY LESCURE/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

YALE DAILY NEWS PUBLISHING CO., INC. 202 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511 (203) 432-2400 Editorial: (203) 432-2418 editor@yaledailynews.com Business: (203) 432-2424 business@yaledailynews.com EDITOR IN CHIEF Max de La Bruyère MANAGING EDITORS Alon Harish Drew Henderson ONLINE EDITOR Daniel Serna OPINION Julia Fisher DEPUTY OPINION Jack Newsham NEWS David Burt Alison Griswold CITY Everett Rosenfeld Emily Wanger FEATURES Emily Foxhall CULTURE Eliza Brooke

SCI. TECH Eli Markham SPORTS Zoe Gorman Sarah Scott ARTS & LIVING Nikita Lalwani Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi Chase Niesner Erin Vanderhoof MULTIMEDIA Christopher Peak Baobao Zhang MAGAZINE Eliana Dockterman Molly Hensly-Clancy Nicole Levy PHOTOGRAPHY Brianne Bowen Victor Kang Zeenat Mansoor

PRODUCTION & DESIGN Sophie Alsheimer Mona Cao Raahil Kajani Mason Kroll Cora Ormseth Lindsay Paterson

PUBLISHER Preetha Nandi DIR. FINANCE Albert Chang DIR. PRINT ADV. Matthew Hoffer-Hawlik

COPY Illyana Green Nathaline Levine

BUSINESS DEV. Lily Mu

LEAD WEB DEV. Mike DiScala

DIR. ONLINE BUSINESS Max Cho

ILLUSTRATIONS David Yu

PRINT ADV. MANAGER Sophia Jia NATIONAL ADV. MANAGER Julie Kim ONL. DEV. MANAGER Devon Balicki ONLINE PRODUCT MGR. Gwendoline Tilghman SPECIALTY MARKETING MGR. Gabriel Botelho

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sam Greenberg INSIDER’S GUIDE Hai Pham

THIS ISSUE COPY STAFF: Maggie Brown PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS: Jake Allen, Anya Grenier, Ryan Healey, Rebecca Levinsky, Annie Schweikert EDITORIALS & ADS

The News’ View represents the opinion of the majority of the members of the Yale Daily News Managing Board of 2013. Other content on this page with bylines represents the opinions of those authors and not necessarily those of the Managing Board. Opinions set forth in ads do not necessarily reflect the views of the Managing Board. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false or in poor taste. We do not verify the contents of any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co., Inc. and its officers, employees and agents disclaim any responsibility for all liabilities, injuries or damages arising from any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co. ISSN 0890-2240

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

SUBMISSIONS

All letters submitted for publication must include the author’s name, phone number and description of Yale University affiliation.

Please limit letters to 250 words and guest columns to 750. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit letters and columns before publication. E-mail is the preferred method of submission.

Direct all letters, columns, artwork and inquiries to: Julia Fisher, Opinion Editor, Yale Daily News http://www.yaledailynews.com/contact opinion@yaledailynews.com

COPYRIGHT 2011 — VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 67

V

áclav Havel was laid to rest last month. Since his death, Czechs and others from around the world have been slowly saying goodbye to a man who profoundly inspired them and whose moral presence the world desperately needed. We began to comprehend the immensity of our loss and recognized Havel’s great gift to us: not only the courage to hope and to see a future brighter than the present, but also the promise that politics can be humble and honest — that politics can be humane.

The gift of a humane politics is a project Havel began but of course never finished. He gestured at it, but this humanity can always only be gestured toward. Like all ideals, it is unachievable by our flawed and finite selves, the imperfection and vulnerability of which Havel understood so very well.

But humane politics, our inheritance from a great and kind man, is worthy of our reflection and, ultimately, our support.

On the morning of Dec. 21, three days after Havel’s death, my mother and I — along with thousands of others — followed behind Havel’s body with hushed voices and solemn steps, from where he had lain in the Old Town, across the Charles Bridge and climbed to the Prague Castle. As Havel’s cas-

ket was moved from the hearse to a horse-drawn military caisson — the same used for Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk— the procession spread into the square beneath the palatial gates, awaiting the final leg of Havel’s journey before his state funeral.

The morning had begun gray and dim, but the clouds momentarily receded before a brilliant winter sun. The tones of Chopin’s “Marche funèbre” drew closer, and, just as Havel’s casket reached us, the sky once again darkened and an icy rain began to fall. We spontaneously began to applaud.

Even those who might have thought applause has no place at a funeral clapped. People jingled keys in remembrance, a wonderfully apt reversal of a symbol of the Velvet Revolution: “Goodbye, it’s time to go home” was the old saying reserved for the Communists in 1989. This was an authentic, human moment, Havelian in its theatricality, rebellion and ironic play.

Havel would be the first to admit that he was not a systematic thinker. While he had no formal higher education in philosophy or literature, Havel did possess an innate, brilliant intuition for the world and its hidden dimensions.

Perhaps of all of his writings,

the essay “The Power of the Powerless” is his finest, an exemplary articulation of modern ideology’s inner workings. If nothing else, the salience and insight of this text will be Havel’s greatest intellectual legacy, all the more so in our contemporary supposedly postideological world. For Havel, the insidiousness of ideology lies in its playing with a person’s desire to be given easy answers. In so doing, however, ideology frees one from thought and thus from responsibility. The ideologically paralyzed person is demoralized, living in a lie.

Havel’s work captured the concrete acts that ensnare individuals and societies in ideological cruelty or hypocrisy. He wrote of a woman killed by a falling stone window ledge, her fate brushed aside in the Communist press by emphasizing the dignity of the collective human mission over mere individual matters. He described the ridiculous but ideologically essential posturing by the greengrocer putting his “Workers of the World — Unite!” sign among his vegetables. In a political climate that denied freedom of speech, Havel sought to preserve his and others’ freedom of thought, to peel back the ideological layers of received values, to exercise — amid the grayness — some form of moral responsibility.

Havel reminds us that a democratic legal order must be coupled with a robust moral order, an everevolving set of civic virtues that tie the individual to his community. Havel’s politics was small and personal. It was, in this sense, ill suited for larger democratic processes or modern republics. But it was always an ideal to be incorporated in the judgment of existing systems. We might disappoint in our efforts to be democratic and humane, but we could do so intelligently. We could learn, as Beckett wrote, to “fail better.”

The articulation of this guiding ideal took on a charming form in Havel’s skilled literary hands.

Through his language and his sincerity, he reintroduced us to our own dreams of better things to come, to dreams we once had for ourselves.

Václav Havel’s absence will be felt, and he has left us at a time when we are ill prepared to be without him. Let us hope, then, that we will for a long time to come continue to call to all he has left of himself among us. After all, Havel’s injunction to “live in truth” was always only a beginning. Going forth, let us embrace it as our own.

PAUL LINDEN-RETEK is a thirdyear student in the Law School.

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

PAGE THREE TODAY’S EVENTS

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS STEPHEN SUSMAN ’62 Susman, who lives in Houston, graduated magna cum laude from Yale. After getting a law degree at the University of Texas Law School, he clerked for a U.S. Supreme Court justice and is now a partner at a law firm specializing in commercial litigation.

Gift to finish work on gallery

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10 4:00 PM “Deep Mutational Scanning to Analyze Protein Function.” Douglas M. Fowler will speak. Sponsored by the Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry/Chemical Biology Institute. Bass Center for Molecular and Structural Biology (266 Whitney Ave.), Room 305.

5:30 PM End-of-Life Issues Study Group. Kenneth Goodman of the University of Miami will speak. Dinner will be served. Free admission, but make a reservation by emailing carol.pollard@ yale.edu or lori.bruce@yale.edu. Institution for Social and Policy Studies (77 Prospect St.), Room A002.

8:00 PM Tokyo String Quartet. The renowned quartet will perform. Tickets $25-$35, students $15. Sprague Memorial Hall (470 College St.), Morse Recital Hall.

Use of college liasons grows

BY CAROLINE TAN STAFF REPORTER An increasing number of Yale organizations is placing liaisons in the University’s 12 residential colleges, marking a growing trend in bringing resources directly to students.

One semester after Undergraduate Career Services introduced peer advisors, UCS has noticed a significant increase in the number of students using its peer counseling resources. But Yale Health’s Mental Health Fellows program, which also launched at the start of the fall, is still in the works and has had a less clear impact on how students use the center’s services. UCS and Yale Health are among an increasing number of University groups that have turned to peer liaisons in residential colleges to increase support services for students and direct more traffic toward already available resources.

Before UCS established its new peer advising system, peer advisors held office hours at the center’s office on Whitney Avenue. But since peer liaisons were placed in residential colleges last semester, the number of students seeking advice from peer advisors has “more than doubled,” UCS Director Allyson Moore said in a Monday email. Only 293 students sought peer counseling in fall 2010, Moore said, while 629 students used the resource in fall 2011. The number of students meeting with peer advisors varies from week to week, she added.

Joanna Cornell ’12, a peer adviser for Saybrook College, said she thinks students are taking advantage of the resource and that the program has been a success. Cornell said the program has been particularly helpful for freshmen, who she said often find setting up appointments at the UCS office to be more intimidating than meeting with someone in their college. More than 35 students attended a fall workshop she helped organize on summer opportunities, she added.

“I definitely have been booked the entire time and have had people waiting to see me,” she said.

While the UCS peer liaisons provide students with career advice and internship counseling, the mental health fellows have focused on improving student awareness of what resources Yale Health offers.

Lorraine Siggins, chief psychiatrist of Yale Health, told the News in December that the presence of mental health

fellows in the residential colleges would encourage more students to take advantage of Yale’s counseling resources.

In a Monday email, Siggins said the number of students who visited Yale Health during the fall semester was greater than it had been in fall 2010. The increase is not necessarily related to the new program, Siggins said, but more freshmen and sophomores may have decided to visit Yale Health after meeting their mental health fellows during orientation. The college liaisons structure also makes the program more “personal and accessible” for students, Siggins said.

The UCS and Yale Health peer advising programs are the latest additions to a growing number of student advisory groups that offer student counseling services in the residential colleges.

Lincoln Sedlacek ’13, a fall semester co-coordinator for LGBTQ issues counseling group Queer Peers, said the organization has seen an uptick in student visitors since it placed liaisons in residential colleges in fall 2010.

Queer Peers liaison Eric Morrison ’12 said he had never received a walk-in appointment before Queer Peers established residential college liaisons, though he has worked with the organization for five semesters. Morrison said having college liaisons gives students more anonymity and flexibility in setting up appointments.

Co-coordinator Kati Moug ’13 said she hopes to expand the college liaison program this semester because it has successfully encouraged students to approach the program for advice.

S t u d e n ts i n te r v i ewe d expressed mixed opinions about the success of the new programs. Leland Whitehouse ’14 said he has never sought counseling from mental health fellows or UCS peer advisers, and finds Yale’s large number of resources overwhelming and unnecessary.

“There is an initial tendency in the University to solve every problem by creating a new bureaucratic organization, but I don’t see myself taking the initiative [to use the resources],” Whitehouse said.

UCS peer advisors are available on the center’s website, and the list of mental health fellows for the spring semester will be released later this week.

Contact CAROLINE TAN at caroline.tan@yale.edu .

P R O G R A M R E P R E S E N TAT I V E S IN THE COLLEGES UCS PEER ADVISORS

Last fall, Undergraduate Career Services established undergraduate peer advisors linked to each college. The advisors provide advice on finding summer opportunities, writing resumes and cover letters, and applying to internships.

YALE HEALTH MENTAL HEALTH FELLOWS

To raise awareness of the University’s counseling resources, Yale Health and the Yale College Council worked to dispatch representatives to each college beginning last fall. The program builds on the former system of “health liasons” affiliated with the colleges.

EARL LEE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale University Art Gallery received an $11 million dollar donation from Stephen Susman ’62 that will finalize the 11-year construction project.

BY TAPLEY STEPHENSON AND URVI NOPANY STAFF REPORTERS A major donation to the Yale University Art Gallery announced in December will put the final touches on an 11-year construction project.

The $11 million donation from Stephen Susman ’62 will fund the Stephen Susman Galleries on the museum’s newly created fourth floor, part of the ongoing renovations to Street Hall and Swartwout Hall that began in 2008.

The renovation was one of seven major projects stalled by the economic recession that year but one of two to be revived and funded entirely by donations.

Susman’s gift came at a “critical time,” University President Richard Levin said in a Dec. 21 press release: With the donation, the Art Gallery renovations will be complete for its reopening, scheduled for December 2012.

While the art gallery had raised

enough money to complete construction on its building, Susman’s donation was necessary to cover the costs of reinstalling of the gallery’s artwork, Levin told the News on Monday.

Yale University Art Gallery Director Jock Reynolds added that the Stephen Susman Galleries will add flexibility to the display of the gallery’s collection. “[No gallery] will be more spacious and flexible in function than the Susman Galleries,” Reynolds said in an email. “They will be unique in their ability to host a constantly rotating programs of temporary exhibitions developed by the Gallery’s eleven curatorial departments and others borrowed from museums extant throughout America and abroad.”

The art gallery renovation was one of two projects able secure enough donations to continue during the recession without University resources, Levin said.

The other, construction of the new School of Management cam-

pus, received separate donations of $50 million and $10 million in 2010.

When the recession hit, Levin said, Yale assessed each of its major projects in terms of fundraising potential. Those for which donors would be harder to find, Levin said, were delayed or funded by the University where possible. Such projects included the 13th and 14th residential colleges, renovations on Hendrie Hall and construction of a new building for the School of Drama.

“The art gallery has a very substantial number of benefactors with the capacity to support it, who are interested in their programs,” Levin said. “In part, we seek to fund their project without using university resources, because there are donors out there who will support the art gallery.”

Susman, the vice chairman of the art gallery’s education committee, said he developed a lasting interest in art during his time

as an undergraduate at Yale when he met artist Josef Albers while enrolled in a small art history class. He added that he wanted to give back to the university that “transformed” his life.

“Yale has been a major influence in my life,” Susman said. “I owe it my success. Fifteen to 20 years ago when I first had a little money, I began giving gifts.”

The $11 million donation is Susman’s third gift to the gallery, he said. He first donated $1 million to the art gallery in 1997 while his first wife was a member of the museum’s board. He donated another million in 2001 after becoming a board member himself in 1998.

The current renovation will be the art gallery’s first major upgrade since its 1953 expansion.

Contact TAPLEY STEPHENSON at preston.stephenson@yale.edu and URVI NOPANY at urvi.nopany@yale.edu .

Economic picture brightens

BY BEN PRAWDZIK STAFF REPORTER In the darkening days of winter, things may be brightening up for the New Haven economy.

The latest jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department released Jan. 6 said that employers across the country added 200,000 jobs in December, pushing the national unemployment rate down from 8.7 percent to 8.5 percent by the end of 2011. In line with the national trend, recent data from the Connecticut Department of Labor shows that New Haven is experiencing job growth, signaling growing momentum in the Elm City’s recovery from the 2008 recession.

Although New Haven employment statistics have not yet been released for December, the DOL’s latest report — released in November — said the city unemployment rate dropped from 13.8 percent to 12 percent between September and November 2011 — an addition of roughly 1,000 jobs.

“While the current economic situation is still shaky, this is an encouraging sign,” said Michael Piscitelli, the city’s deputy economic development administrator.

“We didn’t have a huge employment dip following the recession, and we have a high concentration of jobs held by New Haven residents.”

New Haven unemployment remains significantly greater than the national average, Piscitelli added, but given that the jobless rate reached 14.3 percent in New Haven and 17.1 percent in Hartford last January, New Haven’s current

12 percent is a significant improvement.

Piscitelli said the recent economic vitality has been driven by strong manufacturing, health care, education and creative industries.

He added that these sectors form the city’s economic base, and that they have expanded hiring over the past few months.

Over the past year [Governor Malloy] has improved the economic outlook for the state.

ANTHONY RESCIGNO President, Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce Anthony Rescigno, president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, said employment statistics for December look as though they will continue the positive trend. At a Dec. 20 press conference, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said December is usually a strong retail month due to holiday shopping, and that 2011 brought the strongest retail market “in recent memory.”

Piscitelli said the city’s economic base and the retail industry are intertwined — when fundamental sectors like health care and education grow, retail tends to expand as well.

Both Piscitelli and Rescigno said the positive employment developments can be attributed to local

and state government policies as well as “strategic decisions” from core employers in New Haven.

Such policies, they said, include improved incentives for businesses looking to locate in the area as well as more accessible loans and state grant funding.

“Over the past year [Governor Dannel Malloy] has improved the economic outlook for the state and sent the message that Connecticut is open for business,” said Rescigno.

Piscitelli added that both Malloy and DeStefano have worked to bring startups and creative industries like information technology and media to New Haven. He said these businesses are attracted to the Elm City because major research universities, such as Yale, allow for “cross-pollination of ideas” and collaborative study.

Rescigno said he predicts that New Haven will see continued employment growth over the next six months, though it will not be

the “gang-buster” job creation necessary to return New Haven to pre-2008 employment levels.

Anne Haynes, CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of New Haven, said that some of New Haven’s large-scale institutions and developments are acting as “magnets” for the city, fueling consumer-driven businesses such as restaurants and retain stores. She cited projects including the newly constructed 360 State Street apartment complex and the retail outlets that have sprung up around the building as one example of this phenomenon.

Haynes added that the Gateway Community College campus currently under construction downtown will be a key magnet for new business when the $198 million project is completed in fall 2012.

Nationally, the unemployment rate peaked at 9.6 percent in 2010.

Contact BEN PRAWDZIK at benjamin.prawdzik@yale.edu .

BY THE NUMBERS UNEMPLOYMENT 12 14.3 8.5 9.6

Most recent unemployment rate released for New Haven, in November 2011.

New Haven unemployment rate as of January 2011.

Unemployment rate nationally at end of 2011, according to U.S. Labor Department.

Peak unemployment nationally, reached in 2010.

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

Gender-neutral housing The term gender-neutral housing is today used in place of what was previously referred to as co-ed housing. The term co-ed operates on the assumption that there are two genders: male and female. It leaves little room for more progressive theories on gender, and instead the term gender-neutral shows more inclusiveness and room for diverse identities.

Yale Corp. to review report HOUSING FROM PAGE 1 report aims to play, providing more qualitative and quantitative data suggesting that this is indeed a good move,” Brandon Levin said Monday.

Joseph Yagoda ’14, co-chair of the Gender-Neutral Housing committee, said that 445 juniors and 443 sophomores responded to the survey the YCC conducted. Of those students, 92.7 percent said they either supported or were indifferent to gender-neutral housing and 67.1 percent said they would considering living in a mixed-gender suite.

Last year’s report was not made public, and only surveyed students already involved with gender-neutral housing rather than entire classes of students, Brandon Levin said.

The Yale Corporation first approved gender-neutral suites for seniors in February 2010, and the class of 2011 became the first in Yale’s history to have the housing option.

In a February 2011 interview, Richard Levin told the News that he did not think the Corporation would approve genderneutral housing for juniors in the 2011’12 academic year because administrators wanted to “run the experiment” of

senior gender-neutral housing for more time. He declined to comment on the latest YCC proposal Monday night, since he had not yet read it.

Brandon Levin said the YCC only asked that the University extend gender-neutral housing to juniors to encourage them to remain on campus: Unlike freshman and sophomores, juniors can opt to move off campus and live with the opposite sex.

Melanie Boyd, assistant dean of student affairs, wrote in a letter attached to the report that several respondents to the YCC survey expressed concern that gender-neutral housing would increase the risk of sexual harassment or assault.

But Boyd said in the letter that these concerns misunderstood the nature of sexual misconduct.

“The assault of a suitemate would be a very risky act, legally as well as disciplinarily,” Boyd wrote. “What we know of sexual offenders suggests that they are more likely to seek out other, less risky targets.”

In fact, the YCC report claims that gender-neutral housing would improve sexual climate on campus by reducing the sexual implications of male and female students socializing in a suite.

Christina Marmol ’12, a senior who

currently lives in a gender-neutral suite, said she supports the YCC proposal and would have liked to move in with members of the opposite sex during her junior year. She said her senior year experience in gender-neutral housing has been a positive one.

[The report] aims to ... [provide] more qualitative and quantitative data suggesting that this is indeed a good move.

BRANDON LEVIN ’13 President, Yale College Council “I think you’re mature enough as a junior to make a decision about whether or not you want to do it,” Marmol said.

The Yale Corporation meets next on Feb. 24 and 25.

Contact MADELINE MCMAHON at madeline.mcmahon@yale.edu and TAPLEY STEPHENSON at preston.stephenson@yale.edu .

New degree to emphasize flexibility SOM FROM PAGE 1 be pre-screened for admission by their respective institutions. The program will have flexible academic requirements based heavily on electives not typically available at international business schools, which are often not connected to Universities. Participating students will be able to take electives outside the SOM, Snyder said.

While the network has not finalized the other components of the partnership, Snyder said he also hopes faculty will collaborate on projects and share curricular information, adding that he also expects student groups to exchange ideas. Snyder added that he hopes members of the network will shape the partnership over time.

“One of the things I don’t want to do is micromanage it,” he said. “I think once the infrastructure is in place, it will run itself.”

A similar degree has existed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and is open to all MBA graduates of foreign business schools. Like Yale’s degree,

the program at MIT is based on electives, allowing students to specialize in an area of business, Program Manager Chanh Phan said. Many international schools whose MBA programs last only one year and are limited to core classes, he explained.

One of the things I don’t want to do is micromanage [the network].

I think once the infrastructure is in place, it will run itself.

EDWARD SNYDER Dean, Yale School of Management “[International MBA students] might not have as much time to take electives and really dig deeper to gain a really good understanding of one area,” Phan said. “They might not enter the job market with the specific knowledge that some employers are looking for.”

Bernard Ramanantsoa, the dean of

HEC Paris, a French business school that has partnered with several international schools including Sloan and the National University of Singapore, told the News in French that the cultural familiarity his students could gain through an American program like MIT’s or Yale’s would help his students learn to approach management issues from diverse perspectives.

He added that Yale’s reputation would likely draw student interest in the new degree program.

Though the SOM is creating the new network, it remains a novice in the realm of global partnerships. Snyder said that while SOM students can take part in several exchange programs, administrators in previous years have focused primarily on developing internal aspects of the school, such as its integrated curriculum.

Snyder said he expects to unveil the full details of the network in April.

Contact DANIEL SISGOREO at daniel.sisgoreo@yale.edu .

Fill this space here.

JOIN@YALEDAILYNEWS.COM

recyclerecyclerecyclerecycle

YOUR YDN DAILY

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“Every mile is two in winter.”

GEORGE HERBERT POET, ORATOR AND PRIEST

Winter chills test Occupiers Summers urges stimulus

BY TOM STANLEY-BECKER STAFF REPORTER In the middle of their camp, Occupy New Haven’s protesters are building a solar panel.

Constructed of wood, glass and metal coils, the panel will capture sunlight to heat their kitchen tent.

The panel is one of several new measures that occupiers on the New Haven Green are undertaking to address falling temperatures as winter sets in. Many are opting to spend their nights at home or in friends’ houses to escape the cold. Of Occupy New Haven’s 30 regular demonstrators, about half have stayed the night in the last few weeks, according to Jillian Tupper, one of the movement’s leaders.

While many Occupy movements across the country have been shut down or attenuated, the Elm City’s protest has lost comparatively few members in the past month. Occupy New Haven has sustained support from the Center Church on the Green — which owns the property on which their camp sits — according to occupier Justin Van Horn, who is currently unemployed and moved from Wallingford to the camp Jan. 1. The camp also receives donations of food and clothing from local businesses and churches, New Haven residents and the Occupy Supply Fund, which provides supplies to the movements across the nation. Municipal services provided the movement with portable toilets and dumpsters and

comes every day to clean.

“I have not been here much at night,” Tupper, whose home was recently foreclosed upon, said, explaining that she has slept at a friend’s house in Hamden most nights.

On particularly cold evenings, the Occupy camp’s security team patrols the grounds each hour to verify occupants’ safety, Tupper said. During the day, she added, nearby community members invite occupiers into their homes to warm up.

I will make an igloo. The Egyptians made the pyramids. We can make an igloo.

JUSTIN VAN HORN Member, Occupy New Haven Occupiers have also modified their living accommodations to keep out the cold by placing wooden pallets insulated with burlap sacks and blankets underneath their tents, Tupper said. Still, she and 10 other demonstrators walking around the camp agreed that the rain and wind have been difficult.

Tupper said the movement still holds demonstrations and regular meetings in the mornings with the goal of diminishing corporations’ influence on politics. She said she believes that the cold will strengthen the

occupiers’ unity.

“We are never hungry,” Van Horn said. “If it is going to be a cold night we help each other out and make sure everyone has blankets. We are using radiant barrier insulation and bubble wrap in the tents to protect against the cold.” In case of sickness, the camp is stocked with Vitamin C pills and other medicines.

Occupiers admitted that there has been a slight reduction in their numbers because of the weather, but many protesters are coming during the day between jobs and school. Hatun Biyikli, a student at Career High School in New Haven, said she comes to the camp almost every day and joins demonstrations.

While occupiers spend much of their time in their tents, each night they screen a movie or documentary and sometimes play music.

Although Occupy New Haven has only faced one snowfall, its members claim that weather will not pose a threat to the movement.

“It will be crappy but I think we can manage,” occupier Kevin Swingle said.

Van Horn was more optimistic. “I will make an igloo,” he said. “The Egyptians made the pyramids. We can make an igloo.”

The Elm City’s “occupation” officially began Oct. 15.

Contact TOM STANLEY-BECKER at thomas.stanley-becker@yale.edu .

JOYCE XI/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Larry Summers spoke Monday about the state of the U.S. economy at the first YPU debate of the semester.

BY DIANA LI STAFF REPORTER

TOM STANLEY-BECKER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

As the winter progresses, the members of Occupy New Haven are finding ways to deal with the cold weather.

Accused killer begins trial

BRANFORD, CONN. POLICE

Lishan Wang is accused of the 2010 murder of School of Medicine clinical fellow Dr. Vajinder Toor.

BY JAMES LU STAFF REPORTER The accused murderer of a Yale doctor will begin his pre-trial hearing in New Haven Superior Court today, following 21 months of arguments over his proposed self-defense and his mental state.

Lishan Wang, charged with killing School of Medicine clinical fellow Dr. Vajinder Toor in Branford on Apr. 26, 2010, is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday after Judge Roland Fasano ruled Dec. 14 that Wang will be allowed to represent himself at trial. That decision followed Fasano’s ruling last March that Wang is mentally fit for trial, and came after 14 months of requests by Wang to represent himself.

Fasano deemed Wang “highly intelligent” and “highly capable” of mounting his own defense at the Dec. 14 hearing, accord-

ing to the Branford Eagle, though he appointed a public defender on standby if Wang needs legal advice during his trial.

Fasano made his ruling after several deliberations and a formal hearing last July, concluding that after four separate investigations, Wang understands his case well enough to waive his right to counsel.

Wang is charged with murder, carrying weapons in a motor vehicle, criminal attempt to commit murder, possession of a handgun with no permit and unlawful discharge of a firearm.

In 2010, he allegedly shot Toor multiple times in the parking lot outside Toor’s Branford condominium and attempted to shoot Toor’s wife, who survived unscathed. When police arrested Wang, they also found three handguns, more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and

Google Maps directions to Toor’s home in his vehicle.

In May, Wang admitted to Branford police officers that he was at the scene just before Toor was shot and apologized for what had happened. The statement is admissible in court, though not a legal confession.

Toor and Wang met in 2008, when they both worked at the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. Toor and two other employees reportedly confronted Wang about allegedly shirking his responsibilities, and Wang was fired from the center shortly afterwards.

At the School of Medicine, Toor was a first-year fellow in infectious diseases at the Department of Internal Medicine.

Contact JAMES LU at james.q.lu@yale.edu .

Larry Summers, former director of the White House National Economic Council, told students Monday night that the American economy requires more stimulus funding.

In front of a overflowing crowd in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, Summers argued in a Yale Political Union debate that the United States should rely more heavily on Keynesian economic policies, which call for government interventions to counter fluctuations in the economy. Even though many people worry about the increasing national debt, he said government spending and expansive monetary policy could effectively stimulate demand necessary for growth.

“Relative to what the American economy was achieving just five years ago, we are now 12 million jobs short,” he said.

Summers said that because of job losses, every family of four is now $18,000 poorer. If employment were at its normal level, Summers said, the budget deficit would be between $3 and 4 billion less.

Low consumer demand has created a poor job market that is limiting the number jobs available to recent college graduates, Summers said.

“Some of you, when you graduate, will not get the jobs you want,” he said. “That is because the firms you want to work at are not going to hire as many as you want them to hire.

There is no reason for firms to hire workers for customers they do not have.”

Some of you, when you graduate, will not get the jobs you want.

LAWRENCE SUMMERS Former director, White House National Economic Council He dismissed the fear of rampant inflation triggered by fiscal expansion, arguing that low demand was a much more serious and pressing problem.

Some students in the audience challenged Summers’ advice. When one student claimed that the Obama Ad m i n i s t ra t i o n ’s s t i m u lus efforts and other government interventions were futile because of Congress’ corruption, Summers laughed and summarily denied the student’s portrayal of Congress.

“I would challenge this gentleman here to demonstrate that Yale University is able to construct projects with as little corruption and as much

efficacy as was demonstrated in the stimulus project,” Summers said. “To suggest that the money went somewhere that did not create jobs is a suggestion that is supported by neither logic nor evidence.”

Summers similarly dismissed other questions, at one point saying he found it difficult to take seriously a student who questioned the merits of capitalism.

Three students interviewed who attended the debate said the talk reaffirmed their support of Keynesian economics, often complimenting Summers’ ability to succinctly present his positions.

“Summers’ speech made the policies he supported under the Obama Administration make a lot more sense than when they were depicted in the media,” said Julian Debenedetti ’15, who also described Summers as “testy” because of his sharp responses to students’ questions.

Summers received the John Bates Clark Medal in 1993 for his work in economics, and he served as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.

He currently teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Contact DIANA LI at diana.li@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

NEWS

YALE DAILY NEWS 路 TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 路 yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

18

6000

9462

9224

8421

7833

7289

FROM THE FRONT

7775

8000

PAGE 7

9283

10000

Percent increase in applications to master’s programs

Master’s applications to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences increased this year to a total of 1,795 applications.

4000

Graduate School apps increase 2000

0

GRAPHS DOCTORAL APPLICATIONS AND PERCENT CHANGE 10000

2008

2009

9462

9283

9224

8421

7833

7775

7289

6

4000

4

2000

2

2006

2007

GRAD SCHOOL FROM PAGE 1 10 number of doctoral students Yale can admit is constrained by the value of the endowment.

Science programs depend less on the endowment 8 than humanities and social science programs 7% because so much of their funding comes from federal training and research grants.

6 Science FelThe new Gruber lowships will provide $2.5 million annually, which will allow the University to recruit more top students in the fields it sup4 ports, said Carl Hashimoto, an assistant dean of the Graduate School who coordinates the fellowships. The fellowships will cover recipients’ 2 tuition and pay them a slightly higher 1% stipend than what students typically receive. Forty-nine stu2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

dents received fellowships for this first time this 10% fall, but in the future the Graduate School will probably offer the fellowships to between 20 and 25 students per year as a recruiting 8% tool during the admissions process, Hashimoto said.

Meg Urry, chair of the Physics Department and director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, said offering stellar students a “name” fellowship like the Gruber might make Yale’s offer of admission more attractive.

“It adds prestige, and it makes us more competitive [in the sciences] than we might otherwise have been,” she said.

Two directors of graduate programs sci1% in the biological1% ences interviewed said they think the Gruber Fellowships 2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

0

will help them admit more international students. Federal training grants, which fund many science Ph.D. students in their first years of study, can only be used to support U.S. citizens, so Gruber funding will make it easier for Yale to support qualified students from abroad, said Charles Greer, director of the graduate program in neuroscience.

Recent changes in how federal training grants are administered will also allow Yale to boost its numbers of graduate students in the sciences, Sleight said. Training grants used to support students for their first three years of study, but now they will only support 1% students for two years.

If Yale continues to win the same amount of training grant money from the government, the money can be spread across a larger 2012

2010

2011

2012

M A ST E R’ S A P P L I C AT I O N S RISE

10%

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences received 11,257 applications overall this year, a 4.2 increase from last year, Director of Graduate Admissions Robert Colonna said in an email. Applications to master’s programs surged by 18 percent to 1,795, while applications to doctoral programs increased only 1.9 percent to 9,462.

8%

8

6000

0

2007

10

8000

0

2006

7%

1% 1% 2006

1% 2007

2008

1% 2009

2010

number of students, he said.

Beyond the effects of the Gruber Fellowships and the new rules for training grants, some programs will admit more students this year because they had low yields last year, administrators said. Because of what administrators called normal fluctuations in yields, only 443 doctoral students accepted offers last year even though the Graduate School’s target was 478, according to data from the admissions office.

The endowment earned a 21.9 percent return in the last fiscal year, but the income that will be available from the endowment this year and next year will be about the same as it was last year, Graduate School Dean Thomas Pollard said. In the absence of new funding sources

2011

2012

such as the Gruber Science Fellowships, graduate programs cannot grow back to their previous levels unless the endowment continues to perform well. Yale decided to reduce its number of graduate students by about 10 percent after the endowment dropped three years ago, Deputy Provost for Academic Resources Lloyd Suttle said in an email.

“If the value of the endowment increases further, we can hope in the future for more funds to support additional graduate students,” Pollard said.

The last applications to Yale graduate programs were due Jan. 2. Applicants will be informed of admissions decisions in February and March.

Contact ANTONIA WOODFORD at antonia.woodford@yale.edu .

Graduate School Dean Thomas Pollard said that applications to Ph.D programs “seem to have leveled off” while applications to master’s programs grew, but he added that he is not aware of the forces driving these trends.

Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, said that applications to master’s programs and professional graduate programs tend to increase when the economy is weak as college graduates seek additional education to improve their job prospects. He added that even though doctoral applications have increased in recent years as well, he does not expect this trend to continue thanks to a “great decline” in tenured and tenure-track positions in academia.

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Minorities tend toward unhealthy cereal GRAPHS CEREAL CONSUMERS BY TYPE 12000

PENIEL DIMBERU is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Immunobiology. Contact him at peniel.dimberu@yale.edu .

Number of people who buy certain kinds of cereal (times 100)

O

ver winter break, I had the opportunity to visit Iceland. Besides partaking in the usual revelry that is an integral part of any vacation, I also learned a great deal about this island that is oft described as the land of fire and ice. As one of the newest landmasses on Earth, Iceland features a geologically active landscape that continues to be shaped by volcanoes, earthquakes and glaciers. Surely you remember that unpronounceable volcano that erupted in 2010, grounding commercial flights around the globe?

(If you don’t, it was Eyjafjallajökull. Have fun with that one.)

Although its activity made international headlines because of its toll on air travel, it’s not the only active volcano to be found. In fact, there are approximately 130 volcanoes in Iceland with an average of one eruption occurring every five years. So what makes this land so restless? As it happens, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, PENIEL where the North American DIMBERU and Eurasian tectonic plates are diverging, slices right Technophile through Iceland. In fact, the island itself was formed by molten rock seeping through this crack in the Earth’s crust. Currently, the two tectonic plates are racing away from each other at a rate of about two centimeters per year. And every so often, an eruption releases pressure in the form of lava and ash from deep within the Earth and puts on a spectacular show — or annoys you by ruining your travel plans. It’s all about perspective, really. But credit the ingenuity of the Icelandic people to make the best out of a land many would deem inhabitable by humans. Consider this: one of the top-ranked scuba dive sites in the world can be found in Iceland! Situated in the serene Thingvellir National Park, the Silfra fissure is where you can see the diverging tectonic plates.

Century-old glacier water that has been slow-filtered through the surrounding lava fields fills the fissure with some of the purest water found on our planet. This purity results in breathtaking clarity as you dive through the fissure, sometimes passing through gaps so narrow that you can literally have one hand on each continent.

Besides creating unique tourist attractions, the Icelandic people have also made practical use of their land. One of the advantages of sitting on top of a crack in the Earth’s crust is the vast amount of geothermal energy that can be harnessed there.

Geothermal energy is simply thermal energy or heat that originates deep in the Earth’s core.

Though it’s normally trapped thousands of miles underground, it finds its way closer to the surface where there are tectonic plates diverging. This energy can be used to heat water and create steam that turns turbines for generating electricity. And this is precisely how most of Iceland is powered and heated. According to the Nordic Council of Ministers, about 66 percent of Iceland’s energy needs are met by geothermal energy. Besides generating electricity, geothermal energy also creates an abundance of hot springs around the country, many of which have been turned into spas where people can soak in the warm and mineral-rich waters.

In addition, the presence of many powerful bodies of rushing water has allowed Iceland to generate an additional 15-20 percent of its energy needs through hydropower, though this is slated to expand significantly in the coming years. Currently, the burning of fossil fuels provides only a small fraction of the country’s energy, and that is mainly in cars and ships. Even here, Iceland is at the forefront of utilizing hydrogen to power its cars and hydrogen filling stations can be found in a growing number of areas. The nation has set a goal for itself to be completely energy-independent by 2050, which seems feasible. So while the rest of the world continues to race through whatever oil and gas reserves it has left, Iceland is quietly churning along, powered by nothing more than an indomitable spirit and an abundance of clean energy sources.

11,165

African-American households with children are more likely to buy unhealthy youthoriented cereals than any other demographic group, a recent study by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has revealed.

The study, published on Oct. 25, 2011 in the scientific journal Public Health Nutrition, found a negative correlation between the nutritiousness of the cereal and the likelihood of minority families purchasing it.

Jennifer Harris, the Rudd Center’s director of marketing initiatives and one of the study’s three co-authors, attributed the discrepancy in the consumption of these unhealthy cereals to television advertising targeted at children, which has a disproportionate effect on the habits of African-American families because television viewing rates are 50 to 60 percent higher for children in African-American homes than in white homes. Harris said that African-American and Latino homes bought more unhealthy cereals because they were more heavily exposed to advertising for unhealthy children’s cereals.

“Our study shows that marketing really does affect sales,” Harris said. “Unfortunately, this seems to be having the biggest effect on black households.”

Harris said the study found cereals marketed specifically to kids were 13 times more likely to be purchased than cereals that were not marketed at all, and three times more likely to be purchased than cereals that were only marketed to adults.

The Rudd Center conducted the study by using data from the market research group the Nielsen Company. Harris said the company produces a device that grocery shoppers can use to record information about their purchases at the time of sale by scanning the bar codes of the products. From there, the Nielsen Company made a database compiling information about the purchases

made by participants with those participants’ demographic information, she said.

Among other factors, the study made note of the ethnicity, income and education level of participating shoppers.

Harris said that the Rudd Center compared the purchasing data collected by the Nielsen Company with information about cereal marketing and nutrition collected by a previous Rudd Center study. Using this cross-reference, researchers were able to reach conclusions about how exposure to marketing affected purchases, and about which types of cereals were most heavily marketed. Nutrition was rated on a scale based on the healthfulness of the cereal, and all of the cereals primarily marketed to children scored in bottom two tiers nutritionally.

“The most surprising thing to us is the effectiveness of marketing,” Harris said. In addition to the thirteenfold increase in sales for cereals marketed directly to children, the study also found that cereals marketed to families as a whole were 10 times more likely to sell than nonmarketed cereals.

In the study’s conclusion, Harris and coauthors Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center, and Katia Castetbon, head of the Nutritional Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit at the French National Institute for Health Surveillance, said making cereals marketed to children more nutritious could lead to an increase in the health of all young people. More broadly, Harris said the study is part of an ongoing effort by the Rudd Center to raise awareness about the harmful effects of marketing unhealthy products to children.

In a November email to the News, Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy organization, said her group and others like it use Rudd Center studies like this one to persuade food companies to advertise healthy alternatives more heavily.

“We’ve used the studies to show that

companies need to do a better job with food marketing to kids,” Wootan said. “The Rudd studies show that companies continue to market a lot of unhealthy beverages, fast food and cereal. I think their studies do make an impact — they draw attention to the issues, put pressure on the companies and inform policy makers.”

The Rudd Center released a previous study on the effect of unhealthy cereals advertising in October 2009.

Contact ROBERT PECK at robert.peck@yale.edu .

RACE AND CEREAL Based on the amount of money they spent on cereals, as well as the total percentage of the population they represented, the study measured the likelihood of various demographic groups to purchase unhealthy cereals using a “volume index.” A value of 100 on the index was considered an average amount of purchasing: for example, if a specific group scored a value of 120 on the index, they would be one-fifth more likely than the average person to purchase a particular cereal.

LAB

6000

Back from the dead

4000

3,354

CREATIVE COMMONS

BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER

2000

869 Targeted at children

Targeted at families

Targeted at adults

No target buyer

2,170 2000

1,627 1500

1000

731 526

500

0

Very Poor

The study found that, though white families scored at least 27 points higher on the index than black families in all cases, the score black families received on the index was some 38 points higher for unhealthy cereals than for healthy ones, compared to a drop of 12 points for white families.

Poor

Fair

Good

Nutritiousness Rating

Adolescents who experienced abuse or neglect as children have fewer brain cells than teens who did not undergo childhood maltreatment, a new Yale study finds.

A study conducted by scientists from the Yale School of Medicine, published in the Dec. 5 edition of Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, found that adolescents who were exposed to maltreatment as children showed a reduction in gray matter in areas of the brain that control emotions and impulses, though they had not been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. It found that the specific brain areas affected may differ according to whether adolescents reported experiencing abuse or neglect, whether the maltreatment was physical or emotional

and whether they were male or female.

Experts cautioned that the results of the study were only an association, and longer-term studies were needed.

“Though these kids do not have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder, they are still showing physical signs of maltreatment,” said Hilary Blumberg, associate professor of psychiatry in the Child Study Center and the senior author of the study. “The results could explain possible difficulties in school or future depression or behavioral issues.”

Forty-two adolescents filled out questionnaires that measured their perceived exposure to physical and emotional abuse, as well as physical and emotional neglect as children. Structural MRI scans found reductions in the prefrontal cortex, important in emotional and behavioral regulation, across all cases of maltreatment. Other areas affected depended on

the type of maltreatment reported.

Those who reported physical or emotional neglect, for example, showed reductions in the cerebellum, which controls motor functions and regulates pleasure and fear. Those who had been exposed to physical abuse in particular showed reductions in the insula, an area that controls self-awareness — which may explain why so many people who have been abused as children report outof-body experiences, Blumberg said.

The study also found gender differences in the grey matter losses. In girls, the reduction was concentrated in areas important in regulating emotion, while in boys, the reduction was seen in areas important in impulse control. Because depression is associated with an inability to regulate emotions, this finding highlights the fact that the rate of depression is much higher in women than men,

according to Jennifer Pfeifer, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, who wrote an editorial on ScienceDaily.com, a major science news website, critiquing the study.

Blumberg said that despite the physical symptoms of childhood maltreatment, some adolescents in the study remained more resilient than others. Pfeifer and her colleague Philip Fisher, also of the University of Oregon, speculated two possible reasons for this apparent resilience in their editorial. The structural decreases may have left adolescents vulnerable to future psychological problems — which just haven’t occurred yet, or the adolescents tested have found alternative mechanisms to adapt to their difficult surroundings.

Because it only shows correlation, the study cannot prove that childhood maltreatment precipitated any structural

changes in the brain, said Everett Waters, professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

“It is also possible that brain problems led to the kids being abused,” Waters said, “or more likely, that some third factor led to both the brain problems and the abuse.”

Waters and Pfeifer both emphasized the importance of conducting a longitudinal study that would track children from infancy, in order to better understand the development of structural differences in the brain. Linda Mayes, a coauthor of the study, said she will continue to track this group of adolescents and monitor them to see if they develop psychiatric disorders.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Contact MICHELLE HACKMAN at michelle.hackman@yale.edu .

Using light stimuli on newborn mice, Yale researchers have illuminated how the nervous system linking the eyes and brain develops.

Research by a Yale team led by Michael Crair, William Ziegler III Associate Professor of Neurobiology, suggests that before a baby is born, brain development is affected by activity in immature neural circuits.

The study, published Dec. 18 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, revealed that the closed eyes of a unborn baby produce messages that hold the key to proper wiring of the visual system prior to birth. Crair said the development of other brain pathways in embryos might follow a similar pattern, and the research could help scientists better understand the causes of neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism.

“There was speculation based on theories about how activity might shape brain development,” Crair said. “[But] nobody has previously manipulated the temporal pattern of activity in the two eyes in vivo, and examined the consequences on brain wiring.”

Using newborn mice with certain cells in the retina engineered to respond to light, the team flashed bursts of light to activate each eye. The experiments simulated spontaneous waves of activity that are known to be generated within the eyes before the baby leaves the womb.

The researchers found that when both the eyes were simultaneously activated, the wiring of the eyes to parts of the brain responsible for vision went awry, while activating each eye in succession improved the wiring of the eyes to the brain.

“Our work suggests that, even when a human baby is still in the womb, neuronal activity, whether spontaneous or sensory-driven, can shape brain circuit development,” Crair said. He said the brain development that occurs in newborn mice is analogous to that of late-term human embryos, so they were likely to have similar mechanisms of neurological development.

Crair said similar rhythmic spontane-

ous activity exists in many other developing neural circuits, including the spinal cord and parts of the brain, and that this experiment suggests that timing patterns may also be important for proper wiring in these other areas.

Marla Feller, neurobiology professor at UC Berkeley, called the discovery an “incredibly exciting” result, because it demonstrated that pre-birth neurological activity effected brain development.

“It used to be thought that when a baby is born and when it’s exposed to the environment, that’s when neural activity becomes important for the brain’s development,” Feller said. “Although people have known for a while that there was periodic and spontaneous activity [before birth], nobody knew how important it was.”

Crair said this discovery could have implications in neurodevelopmental diseases such as autism, which Crair thinks is a result of brain miswiring, and could be caused by abnormal patterns of spontaneous activity in the developing brain. He added that that possibility is “completely unexplored right now.”

Calling the experiment technically impressive and well-controlled, Feller said it will have a huge impact on the field. She agreed with Crair’s suggestion of its implications for diseases such as autism.

Daniel Kerschensteiner, ophthalmology and visual sciences professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said the study’s findings have potential to counteract faulty wiring in brain disorders or help re-establish neural connections after injury to the nervous system.

Crair said his lab is now trying to learn more about the precise nature of the spontaneous activity.

The research was funded by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Research to Prevent Blindness and the family of William Ziegler III, late chairman of Swisher, a cigar company.

Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .

Yale professor named ‘woman physicist of the month’

BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER Helen Caines, an associate professor of physics, was recently named the American Physical Society Woman Physicist of the Month for January. Professor Caines researches relativistic heavy ion collisions, which try to recreate the instant after the Big Bang. Apart from her research, which takes her as far as the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Caines teaches the fall semester of Physics 120: Quantum Physics and Beyond.

Abused teenagers show mental scars

BY MICHELLE HACKMAN STAFF REPORTER

NEW $249 TABLET COMING SOON CNET.com, a tech news website, reported that the technology company Nvidia was designing a new “tablet” to compete with the Kindle and Nook tablets. Nvidia did not specify when it would be released, but the company’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Haung, said it would take advantage of a “ninja” computer chip to run more efficiently and preserve battery life.

FROM THE

8000

2500

BY ROBERT PECK STAFF REPORTER

UPDATE

L E A KS

8,646

Advertising Style

CREATIVE COMMONS

Brain activity before birth crucial

10000

0

Number of people who buy certain kinds of cereal (times 100)

The Land of Fire and Ice

“I won’t eat any cereal that doesn’t turn the milk purple.” BILL WATTERSON AMERICAN CARTOONIST

area of physics do you QWhat work in?

A

I work in a crossover between nuclear and particle physics, which is called relativistic heavy ion physics. I do work at the accelerators RHIC [Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider] at the Brookhaven Laboratory over on Long Island and at the LHC [Large Hadron Collider, in Geneva].

Q APS

Associate professor Helen Caines, who studies relativistic heavy ion collisions, was named American Physical Society Woman Physicist of the Month.

What does your research in relativistic heavy ion physics involve?

A

What I do is instead of colliding protons together … we collide gold nuclei together, or lead

nuclei. A lead nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons are made up of quarks and gluons. And what we try and do is collide them at very high energies so that they essentially melt into just free quarks and gluons and make a new state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma. First of all, we were trying to show that this is what happens.

We think we have shown that, and now we are trying to learn more about what this new state of matter is like and then about how it cools down and expands and forms back into the particles that we see around us today.

water, which was surprising to us at the beginning. We still don’t fully understand how the matter interacts, but we are slowly getting there. you anticipate staying in QDo this area of research in the near future?

A

For now I am probably going to stay in mostly this area because the LHC has only just turned on, so we are just getting our first data from there. It’s going to take us a few years or several years to take the data and digest what we have learned.

these collisions simulate a did you become interested QDo QHow natural phenomenon? in this subfield?

A

We are trying to simulate what you would expect to see in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang.

Q

What have been your most significant research findings in this area?

A

First of all, we showed that the quark-gluon plasma exists, and surprisingly it turns out that it is almost what we call a perfect fluid, that is, it has zero viscosity. This is much less viscous than

A

I did it for my Ph.D., and one of my graduate professors got me interested.

there anything else that you QIswould like to add?

A

I’d like to say thank you again to the [past and present students] that nominated me. It was a really great Christmas present!

Contact DAN WEINER at dan.weiner@yale.edu .

A tortoise species studied by Darwin and thought to be extinct for 150 years may still be alive. Yale researchers found evidence that the C. elephantopus turtles may be living by analyzing the genetic samples of over 1,600 Galapagos turtles. According to the scientists, this is the first time any species has been rediscovered through the analysis of ‘genetic footprints’. Researchers hope to establish a breeding program to restore the species when they return to the Galapagos later this year.

-Jacqueline Sahlberg

Think your healthy body can handle stress? Think again.

Even in healthy people, stress can lead to reductions of gray matter in parts of the brain that control emotion and physiological functions according to a Yale study published in January. The decrease in the brain size may make it more difficult to manage stress in the future. Additionally, the changes can serve as ‘warning signs’ for future mental and social disorders.

-Jacqueline Sahlberg

Death rates may mislead One statistic that all hospitals publish is their death rate, or proportion of patients who die during their hospitalization. A new Yale study suggests that this statistic may be misleading, because it understates the deaths that occur within 30 days of the hospitalization. Researchers looked at deaths from heart attacks, heart failures, and pneumonia, finding that one-third to one-half of deaths within 30 days occur after the patient leaves the hospital, but with varying rates depending on the hospital.

-Yale Daily News

Double whammy of unhealthy habits Turns out we should heed our mothers’ warnings about playing with our food.

Branded food company’s computer games that promote junk food, called advergames, increase children’s consumption of unhealthy snacks and decrease consumption of fruits and vegetables according to a Yale Rudd Center study. Despite food company’s pledges to decrease junk food marketing to children, the advergames target kids according to the study. Over one million children visit advergame sites each month.

-Yale Daily News

Bacteria battle toothpaste Yale researchers have discovered a mechanism by which tooth bacteria frequently resist the cleansing effects of flouride, a chemical used in many toothpastes and mouthwashes. Fluoride is an essential element to most toothpastes and to the prevention of tooth decay, because it strengthens teeth enamel but also is toxic to bacteria in high concentrations. The study, published in the Dec. 22 issue of the online journal Science Express, found that bacteria activate certain genes when they detect high levels of flouride. The surprise came with the fact that RNA was used as a sensor to detect the flouride. Ronald Breaker, the Henry Ford II Professor and chair of the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and senior author of the study, said “Scientists would argue that RNA is the worst molecule to use as a sensor for fluoride, and yet we have found more than 2000 of these strange RNAs in many organisms.”

-Illyana Green

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

NATION

T

Dow Jones 12,392.69,+0.27%

S NASDAQ 2,676.56, +0.09% S Oil $101.77, +0.43%

Huntsman seeks N.H. boost

S S&P 500 1,280.70, +0.23% T 10-yr. Bond 1.96%, +0.00 T Euro $1.2791, 0.1762

Obama’s top aide resigns

BY BEN FELLER ASSOCIATED PRESS

ELISE AMENDOLA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Republican presidential candidate and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman campaigns at Mary’s Bakery and Cafe in Henniker, N.H. on Monday Jan. 9, 2012.

BY STEVE PEOPLES AND HOLLY RAMER ASSOCIATED PRESS SALEM, N.H. — No group will shape Jon Huntsman’s political future more than New Hampshire’s independents.

Notoriously late to decide and difficult to poll, roughly 40 percent of the state’s voters is not registered with any party. And election law gives them a prominent role in Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary, a contest in which Huntsman has staked his candidacy on a top-three finish.

The former Utah governor, unsuccessful in a months-long appeal to traditional conservatives, recently shifted strategy to make an aggressive play for independents.

What he says and where he says it now suggests he thinks he’s found a path to relevancy in the race for the GOP nomination.

The message was on display Sunday as Huntsman struck a distinctly moderate tone during a nationally televised debate while rebutting rival Mitt Romney’s criticism of Huntsman’s role as ambassador to China in the Obama administration.

“He criticized me while he was out raising money, for serving my country in China, yes under a Dem-

ocrat, like my two sons are doing in the United States Navy,” Huntsman said. “I want to be very clear with the people here in New Hampshire and in this country. I will always put my country first.”

Romney, the New Hampshire front-runner, countered that the Republican who stands against Obama in November shouldn’t be someone who served him as ambassador to China.

Huntsman followed up: “This nation is divided … because of attitudes just like that.”

While Huntsman may be a factor Tuesday, any strategy that depends upon the independent vote is risky at best.

Romney and Ron Paul, the libertarian-minded Texas congressman, have support among unaffiliated voters as well. But it would be a mistake to assume that all unaffiliated voters here are moderates or pure political centrists. Many simply don’t like party labels.

A sampling of the audience at a recent Romney event in Salem turned up unaffiliated voters who leaned toward Romney, Huntsman, Paul, and even Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator whose political career has been driven by social conservatism — hardly a pri-

ority for the stereotypical independent.

Cindy Goucher, 42, an unaffiliated voter from Derry, said she liked Romney and Huntsman.

“I’m more of a moderate,” she said, noting her interest in candidates who are more willing to compromise. “I think as Americans, we all need to work together and be flexible, work as a team.”

Huntsman will need a lot of people like Cindy Goucher to vote Tuesday — and to vote for him instead of Romney.

Huntsman unveiled signs bearing a new campaign slogan late Monday — “Country First” — borrowing a phrase from one of New Hampshire’s favorite independent-minded presidential contenders, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Romney, too, has an aggressive strategy to win over independents that includes mass mailings and holding events in independent strongholds in the southern part of the state, according to adviser Tom Rath.

Huntsman has intensified his attacks on Romney in recent days during campaign stops in moderate strongholds along the seacoast and western part of the state. An outside group, Our Destiny PAC, run by his

allies is already running anti-Romney ads across New Hampshire and will expand the advertising campaign this week to South Carolina, which holds the next Republican primary on Jan. 21.

Romney’s poll numbers appear to have fallen slightly amid attacks from virtually all his rivals, but he still held a commanding lead heading into Tuesday’s voting. Huntsman’s numbers, which hovered in single digits for months, have begun to show a moderate rise.

Huntsman received more good news Monday when former state GOP chairman Fergus Cullen greeted him outside a bakery in Dover.

Cullen said only Huntsman or Romney could beat Obama, but that he had decided to support Huntsman for his experience and temperament.

“I like that he’s a positive person,” Cullen said. “He’s not angry … The party can’t give in to its anger.”

The stakes are high for Huntsman Tuesday. He doesn’t need to win, but will struggle to stay in the race if he finishes outside the top three.

“I don’t think that would be in the realm of beating market expectations,” he told The Associated Press recently when asked about a belowthird finish.

WASHINGTON — In a jolt to the White House, President Barack Obama announced Monday that chief of staff William Daley was quitting and heading home, capping a short and rocky tenure that had been expected to last until Election Day. Obama budget chief Jack Lew, a figure long familiar with Washington’s ways, will take over one of the most consuming jobs in America.

Daley’s run as Obama’s chief manager and gatekeeper lasted only a year. It was filled with consequential moments for the White House, like the killing of al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, but also stumbles with Congress and grumbles that Daley was not the right choice to coordinate an intense operation of ideas, offices and egos.

Obama said he reluctantly accepted the news and at first refused to accept Daley’s post-holidays resignation letter last week.

Daley did not waver, expressing to his boss a desire to get back to his family in Chicago, where Daleys have dominated city politics for decades. But he offered no explanation on Monday about what accelerated his decision; he had committed to Obama that he would stay on through the election.

It apparently became clear that the fit was no longer working for either side. Senior adviser Pete Rouse had already taken on more of the day-to-day management.

Stepping in is the mild-mannered Lew, who began his career on Capitol Hill, where he spent nearly a decade as principal domestic policy adviser to the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Lew, 56, has worked for Obama as a deputy secretary of state before becoming budget director, the same position he held in the Clinton administration.

Daley had been brought in for his political savvy, business ties and experience as a commerce secretary. Yet as an outsider, he did not personally know Obama well, meaning he was forced to figure out the president and run his operation simultaneously. He did not seem to mesh as the one, more than anyone, charged with ensuring a smooth operation.

The president delivered the other side of the story, describing Daley as highly influential and effective.

White House officials said that to the degree Daley gets blame for any missteps, he also deserves credit for his work during a remarkably demanding year that ended on a high for Obama, with a political victory over House Republicans in getting a payroll tax cut extended.

“No one in my administration has had to make more important decisions more quickly than Bill. And that’s why I think this decision was difficult for me,” Obama said in a State Dining Room that was nearly empty except for the assembled media.

U.S. condemns Iranian death sentence for American

BY BRADLEY KLAPPER ASSOCIATED PRESS WAS H I NGTO N — T h e Obama administration Monday rejected Iran’s charge that a young Iranian-American man used a family trip to Iran as cover for espionage, after the Tehran government issued the first death penalty against a U.S. citizen since the Islamic Revolution 33 years ago. The U.S. suggested the decision was a political ploy.

In a case that surely will heighten tensions with Tehran, Iran charged Amir Mirzaei Hekmati with receiving special training and serving at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before traveling to Iran on an intelligence mission. A court convicted him of belonging to the CIA and trying to inculpate Iran of involvement in terrorism, according to a state radio report Monday.

The United States denied the accusations. The State Department called them a “complete fabrication” and White House spokesman Tommy Vietor added that “allegations that Mr. Hekmati either worked for or was sent to Iran by the CIA are false.”

“The Iranian regime has a history of falsely accusing people of being spies, of eliciting forced confessions and of holding innocent Americans for political reasons,” Vietor said in a statement.

The case sheds light on the legal but risky travel of U.S. cit-

izens to Iran, common among many first-generation and second-generation Iranian-Americans but a practice largely hidden to the larger American populace. Thousands are believed to make the trip each year, though the State Department doesn’t have firm figures because people must travel through third countries and most dual nationals enter the Islamic republic using Iranian passports.

The Iranian regime has a history of falsely accusing people… of eliciting forced confessions and of holding innocent Americans for political reasons.

TOMMY VIETOR White House spokesman But the State Department has warned that U.S.-Iranian citizens aren’t necessarily any safer than others from the threat of arbitrary arrest. Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. has issued a series of travel warnings for Americans, with specific references to those holding both U.S. and Iranian citizenship.

“We urge Iranian-Americans to take particular care,” Nuland told reporters. Because Iranian

authorities don’t recognize dual citizenship, they treat any such people arrested as they would other Iranians. The latest U.S. travel warning says IranianAmericans face “the risk of being targeted” by Tehran and notes that “Iranian authorities have detained and harassed U.S. citizens of Iranian origin.”

Hekmati, 28, is a former military translator who was born in Arizona and graduated from high school in Michigan. His family is of Iranian origin, and Hekmati claims dual citizenship. His father, Ali, a professor at a community college in Flint, Mich., has said his son was visiting his grandmothers in Iran.

The Marine Corps said Amir Nema Hekmati served between 2001 and 2005, including a deployment to Iraq in 2004 and a stint at the military language institute in Monterey, Calif. The Marine records do not indicate any deployment to Afghanistan.

It was not clear why the middle name was listed differently.

Behnaz Hekmati, Amir’s mother, said in an email to The Associated Press that she and her husband are “shocked and terrified” that their son has been sentenced to death. The verdict is “the result of a process that was neither transparent nor fair,” she said.

Her son did not engage in any acts of spying or “’fighting against God,” as the convicting judge has claimed in his sentence, she said. “Amir is not a criminal. His very life is being exploited for political gain.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. citizen Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, accused by Iran of spying for the CIA, in Iran’s revolutionary court.

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

TOMORROW

Mostly cloudy, with a high near 39. Calm wind becoming south between 5 and 8 mph.

THURSDAY

High of 41, low of 33.

High of 42, low of 32.

DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU

ON CAMPUS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11 12:00 PM Yale-New Haven Yiddish Reading Circle. Yiddish readers at any level of proficiency are welcome. Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale (80 Wall St.).

4:00 PM Opening Celebration for Center for Science & Social Science Information. This event celebrates the opening of CSSSI, the new collaborative home for the Kline Science Library, ITS StatLab and Social Science Library. Kline Biology Tower (219 Prospect St.), concourse level.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12 12:00 PM “Improving Communication with Your Teen.”

Clinical psychologist Mary Newall will talk about how you can improve your communication with your teen. Open to the general public. Free, but register in advance. Contact worklife@yale.edu.

Sterling Memorial Library (128 Wall St.), lecture hall.

MIDWESTERN NERD BY ERAN MOORE REA

7:00 PM “Richard III” and “Henry V.” These film adaptations of Shakespeare’s histories will be screened for the public at no charge. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.).

8:00 PM Piano recital by Wen-Yin Chan. The Yale School of Music presents Chan, who has performed around the world, in a Doctor of Musical Arts recital. Free admission. Sprague Memorial Hall (470 College St.), Morse Recital Hall.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13 11:10 AM “Tomato Thinking: Innovation, Affiliation, and White Masculinity in the Mechanization of California’s Tomato Harvest.” Carolyn de la Pena of the University of California - Davis will speak. Sponsored by the Program in Agrarian Studies. Institution for Social and Policy Studies (77 Prospect St.), Room B012.

WATSON BY JIM HORWITZ

5:00 PM “Hard Knocks: Communicating Science to the Public.” Dr. Paul Offit will speak at the 447th meeting of the Beaumont Medical Club. Sterling Hall of Medicine (333 Cedar St.), historical library.

y SUBMIT YOUR EVENTS ONLINE yaledailynews.com/events/submit ZERO LIKE ME BY REUXBEN BARRIENTES

To reach us: E-mail editor@yaledailynews.com Advertisements 2-2424 (before 5 p.m.)

2-2400 (after 5 p.m.)

Mailing address Yale Daily News P.O. Box 209007 New Haven, CT 06520

Questions or comments about the fairness or accuracy of stories should be directed to Max de la Bruyère, Editor in Chief, at (203) 432-2418.

Bulletin Board is a free service provided to groups of the Yale community for events. Listings should be submitted online at yaledailynews.com/events/ submit. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit listings.

To visit us in person 202 York St. New Haven, Conn. (Opposite JE)

CLASSIFIEDS

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Stops stalling 5 Concert souvenirs 10 Spongy ball brand 14 It’s often fenced 15 Toys that need wind 16 Electric co., e.g.

17 Cosmopolitan piece 20 Without help 21 FDR’s successor 22 Milo of “Ulysses” 23 Nothing at all 25 Inner Hebrides isle 27 “This can’t lose” 32 Sinbad’s transport 33 Part of SASE: Abbr.

34 Support at the meeting 37 Somewhat wet 40 Caesar of comedy 42 Do over, as a bow 43 Island greetings 45 Whole bunch 47 Stein filler 48 Los Angeles Times piece, e.g.

52 “Show Boat” author Ferber 53 School since 1440 54 McCartney bandmate 57 Signal for immediate assistance 59 Cooks cakes 63 Stipulation from a wealthy purchaser 66 Banquet hall vessels 67 Plant in Greek legend 68 Productive start?

69 Pest in a swarm 70 Nautical speed units 71 Heath-covered wasteland DOWN 1 __ mater 2 Shade of black

CLASSICAL MUSIC 24 Hours a Day. 98.3 FM, and on the web at WMNR. org. “Pledges accepted: 1-800-345-1812. Tuesday is Opera night!

HOUSEKEEPING. Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly.

Detailed, dependable.

Earth-friendly products used. English-speaking staff. Fully insured. Free quote. 203 647 0383 www. bellehome,net.

CALL (203) 432-2424 OR E-MAIL BUSINESS@ YALEDAILYNEWS.COM

Monday’s Puzzle Solved

SUDOKU MEDIUM

3 8 1 5 5 6 3 1 4 5 1 (c)2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

41 Deduces, slangily 44 Hyphenated ID 46 Table tennis table divider 49 Relay, as information 50 Lyndon Johnson’s sonin-law Charles __ 51 Experiencing serious traffic

NEWLY RENOVATED New Haven apartments: 4 bedroom washer/drier hookup $ 1300, 1 bedroom $ 650, flexible lease terms, Kensington St. off Chapel, 1.2 miles to Yale. 516404-6703, 718-868-4181, Judith27@aol.com.

1/10/12

By Gail Grabowski and Bruce Venzke

3 Like many lunch orders 4 Song section 5 Do a downhill run 6 Two-bit gamblers 7 Colorado natives 8 “Vamoose!”

9 Outdated geopolitical letters 10 Pain in the neck 11 Carve in stone 12 Make hopping mad 13 Dog bugger 18 Snazzy duo?

19 More stylish 24 Wish one hadn’t 26 Cries of surprise 27 “__ la Douce” 28 Chisel, e.g.

29 Offspring 30 Musical with the song “A New Argentina” 31 Was able to reach 35 River through Sudan 36 Consider 38 Most diaphanous 39 Cheap and gaudy

Want to place a classified ad?

6 3 8

1/10/12

54 Self-satisfied 55 Undecided 56 “The King and I” role 58 Not snookered by 60 Numbers game 61 Prefix with plasm 62 Ruckus 64 Class 65 WWII espionage gp.

1 4 2

7

6 2

8 4

3

8 2

7

PAGE 12

NEWS

YALE DAILY NEWS 路 TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 路 yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

SPORTS

Media takes fan seats At the Allstate BCS Championship Game between No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama last night, dozens of fans who had paid for their seats discovered that the media was using them. One fan said he had paid $300 for his seat. The incident echoed last year’s Super Bowl, when fans were denied their seats because the bleachers had not been properly inspected.

Friends at home, captains at Yale CAPTAINS FROM PAGE 14 how she is and what she’s doing — she was their mentor.”

On the other hand, Sharp was

a newcomer to field hockey when a friend convinced her to join the team in ninth grade. Though Sharp said she always figured she would play soccer in college,

by 12th grade she felt burnt out.

Paula Conway, her field hockey coach, and Nick Conway, Paula’s husband who has assisted the men’s and women’s U.S. National

Teams, suggested she create a highlight tape of field hockey to send to schools.

“I knew she was one of those players who would only get bet-

ter in college,” Paula Conway said.

In December of 12th grade, Sharp visited Yale for a short recruiting trip. Sharp said she remembered immediately grow-

SARAH ECKINGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

ing attached to the field hockey team. She added that the benefit of continuing her education alongside Kayali made it that much more appealing.

Meanwhile, Kayali, already accepted to Yale, attempted to make her friend a Bulldog as well.

When Sharp received her admission to Yale, she remembers that Kayali was one of the first people she called. “[Sharp] mentioned to me that she was talking to the Yale field hockey coach,” Kayali said.

“I naturally got really excited and encouraged her to pursue that path.”

At Yale, both have excelled at their respective sports. Kayali finished third among the Bulldogs in both Heptagonals and NCAA Regionals this fall. On the track, Kayali joined Yale’s all-time lists seven times last year, including a second place finish in the outdoor 1500m. Sharp, who plays forward, started all 17 games this season, scoring a career-high 10 points.

Though Kayali and Sharp pursue different interests academically — Kayali is a political science major while Sharp is a environmental studies major and plans to attend medical school — the two try to stay in touch while at Yale.

“It’s always nice to see a familiar face around campus and reminisce about how nice the weather is back home,” Sharp said.

Contact MASON KROLL at mason.kroll@yale.edu .

Nihal Kayali ’13 and Maddy Sharp ’13 were close friends on their high school soccer team and are now both captains of their sports at Yale.

Athletes return early to compete ATHLETES FROM PAGE 14 away from home [after just three days], but it was great to be around my teammates again,” Agostino said.

Varsity swimmers agreed that their trip to Florida was thoroughly enjoyable, helping to give them a further boost in their training, which Cristina Teuscher, head coach of women’s swimming, called a “battery recharge” for the team.

“Swimming in the fresh air, with the sun warming your back — there’s nothing like it,” said Teuscher. “It makes the intense training that much easier to swallow, and [being] in a setting away from school gives the team a chance to bond in a more relaxed atmosphere.”

Swimmers Cynthia Tsay ’13 and West Cuthbert ’14 added that going to Florida rather than New Haven, where the training had been held in the two previous years, gave the swimmers “phenomenal” energy as they could swim outside in the sun and had many outlets of relaxation.

For swimmers, the intensive training paid off as both teams

trounced Cornell soundly in a meet on Jan. 7.

On the other hand, Sarah Halejian ’15, who trained in New Haven with women’s basketball, said that although the lack of classes allowed athletes to devote all of their time to their training, the monotony of the schedule made it challenging to stay motivated.

It certainly wasn’t easy to be away from home [after just three days], but it was great to be around my teammates again.

KENNY AGOSTINO ’14 Men’s ice hockey To help counteract this boredom, some teams sought entertainment in their surroundings.

Allie Messimer ’13 said the basketball teams arranged game nights and movie nights, while Cuthbert said swim teams took afternoon trips to the beach and

toured the Swimming Hall of Fame.

Besides going to the mall and watching movies, Anthony Day ’15 said the hockey team also engaged in hotel pranks such as leaving water-filled bags on doorknobs.

Beyond recuperating, socializing and bonding over meals, squash player Neil Martin ’14 said he spent some of his free time reading. Tsay added that she also got a head start bluebooking and filling out summer applications.

Most teams had modest celebrations for New Year’s Eve — not even a 4:45 a.m. wake-up call stopped the men’s basketball team from going downtown in Gainesville, Matthew Townsend ’15 said.

With a match the day after, Allie Messimer ’13 said the women’s basketball team played Taboo and had cupcakes before going to bed soon after midnight.

Athena Liao ’12 said the swimming team cooked together and held a white elephant gift exchange. Both swimming teams tried to stay up to watch the ball drop, although Jared Lovett ’13 said that with practice at 6:30 the next morning, “not everyone made it,” and Teuscher said she

BRIANNE BOWEN/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The men’s ice hockey team compiled a 3-1 record during the winter break, playing three of its games at home. went to bed at 9:30. Both swimming teams also went to the beach on New Year’s Day. As for the fencing and track teams, many athletes continued to train individually over the break,

receiving guidance from their coaches. “The coaches understand that none of us would skip a workout over break,” distance runner Thomas Harrison ’15 said.

“We all want to be sharp for the

upcoming meets.”

Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .

Replace current BCS with 20-team playoff PLAYOFF FROM PAGE 14 seeded using the BCS rankings formula (and for any champions not ranked, using overall record).

The BCS rankings would then select eight or nine more teams to fill the bracket out to a grand total of 20.

The top 12 seeds would get a bye in the first round, and seeds 13-20 would play in bowl games that also serve as first-round games, boosting the importance of several lower-tier bowls. The second round of games would feature the winners of these games, as well as seeds 9-12, playing at the top eight seeds. The quarterfinal games would be played at the four bowls which currently make up the BCS. The semifinal games and title game could be played in stadiums across the country chosen on a yearly basis, much like the NCAA Basketball Final Four. Let’s take a brief look at what this year’s bracket would look like.

First-round games Gildan New Mexico Bowl (Dec. 17): No. 15 Arkansas vs. No. 18

South Carolina Winner plays Dec. 24 at No. 2 Oklahoma State This would be an interesting pair of games — Arkansas and South Carolina are two very strong Southeastern Conference teams, and the winner of that game would duel Oklahoma State, the team many thought was snubbed from this year’s title game.

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (Dec. 17): No. 13 Alabama vs. No. 20 Baylor Winner plays Dec. 25 at No. 4 Wisconsin The matchup everyone would want to see — Alabama, possibly the number-two team in the country, battling a Big 12 powerhouse, with the winner playing at Wisconsin on Christmas. That’s right, a team from the South playing AT Wisconsin, in December.

This is part of why conference championships are so important in this model.

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl (Dec. 18): No. 14 Stanford vs.

No. 19 Virginia Tech

Winner plays Dec. 24 at No. 3 Oregon A showdown of one of the best Pacific-12 teams and the losing Atlantic Coast Conference finalist. If Stanford wins, it gets the chance for payback against Oregon, otherwise the Hokies get to prove themselves against two Pac-12 teams in a row.

CHANGE THE SYSTEM AND CROWN A TRUE NATIONAL CHAMPION Beef O’Brady’s Bowl (Dec. 18): No. 16 Boise State vs. No. 17 Kansas State Winner plays Dec. 25 at No. 1 LSU Who wouldn’t want to see this?

The two best coaches in college

football squaring off in a firstround matchup, with the potential for a Boise State-LSU duel in the second round. Both the Broncos and Wildcats were probably BCS snubs this year as it was, so a road to the title that goes through LSU in Round 2 seems like a fair test.

Other second-round matchups No. 12 Louisiana Tech at No. 5 Clemson (Dec. 24) — The Western Athletic Conference champions face a stiff test from ACC winners Clemson. Louisiana Tech probably doesn’t deserve this much, but in this system you get that chance when you win your conference.

No. 11 Brigham Young University at No. 6 Texas Christian University (Dec. 25) — Independent BYU takes its skills to the test at TCU, which shockingly was denied a BCS Bowl spot this year despite beating otherwise unbeaten Boise State and winning a tough MWC. No. 10 Northern Illinois at No. 7 Southern Mississippi (Dec. 24) – An interesting game in which

the Mid-American Conference champs get to take on the surprise champs of the Conference USA. Likely a tough game, but the winner is unlikely to make it much further.

No. 9 Arkansas State at No. 8 West Virginia (Dec. 25) — The Sunbelt winner takes on the winner of the Big East in a matchup between two champions of relatively weak conferences.

The last three rounds would be played in the Jan. 2-3 BCS bowls, the Jan. 9 semifinals, and a Jan. 16 championship game.

Who wins? Everybody. Alabama (or Oklahoma State) could become a real national champion, not one people can question. Boise State, Kansas State and Arkansas would get to play in games that matter. The fact that 20 bowl teams would fill the slots of nine existing bowl games means that two more bowl-eligible teams would get to play (this year, Western Kentucky and Ball State were eligible but not selected).

This system avoids the prob-

lems that come with most proposed playoffs. Conference championships retain their importance: now if you don’t win your conference, you cannot get a home game in the playoffs, plus you have to play an extra game.

Bowl games not only retain their importance, but eight bowl games (the BCS bowls and the four that become first round games) actually become more important.

The other bowls remain roughly unchanged. Finally, you don’t extend the season and take players away from class. Most teams actually end their season sooner under my playoff; under the current system, most of the 20 teams will be playing in January. Under mine, only eight will.

So let’s make the Bowl Championship Series actually a series of games in which every game determines the national champion.

Make “Every game counts” a fact, not a slogan. It’s time for a playoff.

Contact MICHAEL GARN at michael.garn@yale.edu .

IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES

NCAA BBALL Connecticut 64 West Virginia 57

NCAA BBALL Okla. St. 72 Oklahoma 65

SPORTS QUICK HITS

GREG MANGANO ’12 IVY LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE WEEK Mangano, a center on the men’s basketball team, was named Ivy League Player of the Week for the second week in a row following his outstanding performances against Holy Cross and St. Joseph’s of Long Island. Mangano averaged 31 points in the two games.

NBA Chicago 92 Detroit 68

y

NBA Atlanta 106 New Jersey 101

NHL Florida 2 Vancouver 1

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE yaledailynews.com/sports

SARAH HALEJIAN ’15 IVY LEAGUE ROOKIE OF THE WEEK Halejian, a guard on the women’s basketball team, was named rookie of the week for the second time this season. In last week’s games against Bucknell and Baruch, she averaged 13.5 points per game. The Elis will face Brown this weekend in Providence.

“To do that [beat Cornell] in my senior year, at home, on senior night, was an incredible feeling.”

CHRISTOPHER LUU ’12 M. SWIMMING AND DIVING YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

Captains, high school friends

BY MASON KROLL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

JIM HUDSON

Nihal Kayali ’13, right, raced to 19th place overall at a snowy Heptagonal championship race in Princeton in October.

BRIANNE BOWEN/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Maddy Sharp ’13 had ten points last season for the field hockey team.

Passion for soccer united Nihal Kayali ’13 and Maddy Sharp ’13 at La Jolla High School in San Diego, Calif. The pair spent four years together on the varsity soccer team, ultimately reaching the California state championships senior year. Now at Yale, both have defined themselves athletically — but no longer on the soccer field.

Last December, Kayali and Sharp were elected captains of the 2012 women’s cross country and women’s field hockey teams, respectively. Both teams excelled this season: The field hockey team won its first Ivy League Championship since 1980 and the cross country team saw its best Heptagonal performance in five years and NCAA Regional performance in six years.

Their friendship developed on the varsity soccer team in ninth grade; Kayali played left midfield, while Sharp played center midfield. That year, they also participated in club soccer and track and field together, setting a school record in the freshmen 4x400m that still stands to this day. Off the field, they remained close, fueled in part by a strong connection between their families.

Over this winter break, the Sharps invited the Kayalis to their house on Christmas Eve. “Our families are tight,” Kayali said. “They spent four years together in the stands.”

While their families cheered them on in soccer games throughout high school, senior year their families supported them in another endeavor: enrolling in

For a BCS playoff Y

It’s always nice to see a familiar face around campus and reminisce about how nice the weather is back home.

JACOB GEIGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The men’s basketball team played five games, including one at Florida, during the winter recess.

BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER

MADDY SHARP ’13 Captain, field hockey “I knew if I came here there were good things awaiting me, so I felt very comfortable choosing Yale,” Kayali said Her track and field coach in high school, Roger Karnopp, said Kayali had a “tremendous attitude” towards the team. “[Kayali] was a very strong leader — very creative, smart and willing to help,” Karnopp said. “Our girls always ask SEE CAPTAINS PAGE 13

While many athletes had shortened winter breaks in order to train for their sports, many found their time in New Haven, or, in some cases, Florida, beneficial to their team’s performances and mentality.

Nearly every winter athletic team spent part of its winter break training in New Haven, most facing two- to three-hour routines twice a day. Men’s and women’s basketball and swimming also went to Florida before arriving on campus, while hockey, squash and gymnastics returned straight to campus, and fencing and track and field arrived only once residences opened. For many athletes, the demands of their sport cut

short any notion of winter break, but they all agreed that it was an essential part of their training and a great opportunity for the team to bond.

“The training is much more intensive than during the school year,” said gymnastics captain Mia Yabut ’12. “But it’s definitely necessary for us to be ready for the season.”

The men’s ice hockey team arrived in New Haven the day after Christmas, which gave Kenny Agostino ’14 just three days to spend with his family, after training with and almost making the U.S. team for the world junior hockey championships during the beginning of the break.

“It certainly wasn’t easy to be SEE ATHLETES PAGE 13

Seniors go out with a bang

MICHAEL GARN

ou can’t fix a problem by making it worse.

That’s just common sense, but that’s exactly what some Bowl Championship Series critics are trying to do. For those who haven’t seen it yet, the current BCS agreement expires in 2013, and will be subject to change at that point. One proposal for its replacement is to have the BCS handle only the national title game, and make all of the other BCS bowls independent again, selecting their own teams. This would only make things worse.

Now, teams from outside the top conferences can only make an impact by reaching a BCS bowl as at-large teams. But with the BCS only handling the title game, even this option would be denied to mid-major programs, since all bowl invites would be conference-specific. We would have no chance for 2006-’07 Boise State to showcase its unique brand of football against Oklahoma or for 2008-’09 Utah to beat Alabama.

No, what college football needs is a playoff. Not the lousy “Plus One” model, where the top four teams in the BCS rankings would play a single-elimination four-

the Yale Class of 2013 as athletes recruited for the cross country and field hockey teams, respectively.

Running was always a part of Kayali’s life. Her father ran track in college and her brother Murat Kayali ’09 ran cross country and track at Yale. After a childhood of road running races, Nihal Kayali joined the cross country and track teams at La Jolla High. On the teams, she distinguished herself, breaking three school records in track and field. Kayali cited her brother’s positive experiences on the Yale team as a big influence for her to accept Yale’s offer of admission.

Teams bond during break

team playoff, either. That would be an improvement on the current system, but it would only make debates over which oneloss team was the most “worthy” even worse than they currently are. In response to the unusually lopsided BCS bowls of 2007’08, I began constructing my own playoff model for college football’s FBS division. (That season featured BCS games in which the winners won by 32, 31, 20, 14 and 3 points.) This model was built around the idea of answering every possible objection to a college football playoff and crowning a true national champion.

This system would begin by taking the 11 conference champions of the Football Bowl Subdivision conferences and giving them an automatic spot in the playoff, then comparing the best record of an independent team to each of these champions’ records. If the independent team has at least as many wins as at least one of those champions, the independent will also receive an automatic spot.

Those 11 or 12 teams will be the top 11 or 12 seeds in the playoff, SEE PLAYOFF PAGE 13

BY MONICA DISARE STAFF REPORTER Ya l e sw i m m i n g and d i ving dominated Cornell at the Kiphuth Exhibition Pool on Saturday.

It was senior night and the last home meet for the Bulldogs. Members of both the men’s and women’s teams helped the seniors put a convincing stamp on their Yale careers. The men’s team defeated the Big Red 204.5–95.5 and the women’s team won 189.5–93.5.

SWIMMING & DIVING “To do that in my senior year, at home, on senior night, was an incredible feeling,” said Christopher Luu ’12, captain of the men’s team.

The men’s team (3–0, dual meet) won 12 of its 14 events. For Luu, the meet’s high points were the beginning and the end. At the beginning of the meet, Luu and the other seniors ran through a tunnel made by underclassmen and were recognized for their contributions to the team.

Luu said that “just going through the tunnel and realizing it had been such a long road” was a highlight.

At the end of the meet, Yale took the top three spots in the last three individual events, the 500 freestyle, the 100 butterfly and the 200 individual medley. First-place finishers were Rob Harder ’15 (4:44.02) in the 500 freestyle, Gokso Bicer ’12 (48.98) in the 100 butterfly and Mike Lazris ’15 (1:55.86) in the 200 individual medley. Luu added that this was a fitting end to the meet.

The beginning and end of the meet may have been special, but throughout the entire meet the Bulldogs outswam Cornell. The team finished first in relays such as the 200-yard medley where Lazris, Andrew Heymann ’15, Bicer, and Pat

STAT OF THE DAY 2,200

YDN

The women’s swimming and diving team defeated Cornell 189.5-93.5 on Saturday.

Killian ’13 took first with a time of 1:32.87.

Underclassmen and those swimming different events than usual stepped up as well and contributed to the team, said Luu. Josh Ginsborg ’15, for example, swam a 9:29.70 to win the 1000-yard freestyle.

Just like the men’s team, the women’s team (1–1, dual meets) won 12 of its 14 events. Early in the meet, the girls posted a 1, 2, 3 sweep in the one-meter diving event. Captain Rachel Rosenberg ’12 won the event and qualified for the NCAA zone diving championships in March.

In the events that followed, Molly Albrecht ’13 won the 1000-yard freestyle by over 20 seconds, with a time of 10:26.76, which she said is a “good place to start going forward.” The team also swept the 200-yard freestyle event with Joan Weaver ’13 (1:52.74), Cynthia Tsay ’13 (1:55.25) and Cassidy Lapp ’15 (1:56.98).

The typical team leaders performed well, said Christina Teuscher, head coach of the women’s team, but more impressive was

the strong effort “across the board.”

Teuscher said the highlight of the meet was seeing the swimmers enjoying themselves.

“That’s something they need in the dead of winter and coming off of a training trip,” she said. Teuscher said the next two months are “critical” to the team’s success at the Ivy League Championships at the end of February, She added that the momentum to do well was present at the meet.

The success of the meet was particularly meaningful as it came on the heels of a training trip to Florida. Teuscher said the training trip had more rigorous practices than those faced during the semester when classes are in session.

The next meet for both teams is against Penn and Dartmouth, at Dartmouth, next Saturday, Jan. 14.

Contact MONICA DISARE at monica.disare@yale.edu .

NUMBER OF MILES, ROUGHLY, THAT THE MEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM TRAVELED DURING A WINTER BREAK ROAD TRIP TO NORTH CAROLINA AND FLORIDA. The team lost 72–71 to Wake Forest and then lost 90–70 to the then-No. 10 University of Florida.