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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 76 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SUNNY CLEAR
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CROSS CAMPUS
TEMPTATION IT FEELS BETTER TO BE GOOD
TRAVEL
MENTAL HEALTH
GYMNASTICS
City officials eye growth for Tweed after record passengers in 2011
YALE, CITY PARTNER TO WIN GRANT FOR MATERNAL CARE
Elis beat last season’s high score in seasonopening sweep
PAGE 8 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
PAGE 3 SECTION
PAGE 5 NEWS
PAGE 14 SPORTS
Bard’s history at Rep traced
Dining changes. Stiles and Morse dining halls will be closed tonight to host the sophomore dinner. To compensate, Branford, Saybrook and Calhoun will all be open until 8 p.m. False alarms? Davenport students were roused from their beds (or futons, or desks) at 3 a.m. on Tuesday by a fire alarm. The alarm subsided after about 10 minutes. Later, at 1:30 p.m., an alarm forced students out of Sterling Memorial Library and brought two firetrucks to Cross Campus. Both Davenport and SML are still standing.
FIRST OF THIS WEEK’S WORKSHOPS DRAWS OVER 300 STUDENTS
2011
BY CAROLINE TAN AND ANTONIA WOODFORD STAFF REPORTERS
1973 2005
Strategy pays off. History
Professor John Lewis Gaddis was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award on Saturday for his biography of American statesman George F. Kennan.
As part of renewed efforts to engage students in creating a safe campus environment, the Yale College Dean’s Office has enlisted high-level administrators to speak to student leaders at this week’s leadership training sessions.
1982
SEXUAL MISCONDUCT
Brustein, Drama School dean from 1966 to 1979 and the founder of the Rep as well as the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. Smith said the show features nationally recognized productions from the Rep’s past, including photographs from the Rep’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1975, directed by Alvin Epstein, associate director of the Rep under Brustein, which starred Meryl Streep DRA ’74. “[Epstein’s] show has been well-noted in American history as a landmark pro-
Attendance at one of the three 75-minute sessions, which began Monday night with a crowd of over 300 students, is mandatory for at least three representatives from every registered student group and varsity sports team. The training includes presentations about effective leadership as well as ways to address hazing and sexual misconduct. Although students expressed skepticism about the sessions when they were first announced in late December, the majority of attendees interviewed Monday said they thought elements of the training were useful for their groups. “We hope to encourage students to lead actively in the groups they’re representing and in their other social circles,” Hannah Peck DIV ’11, a student affairs fellow who coordinated the training sessions, said in a Sunday email. “Such active leadership will help us address challenges we face as a community.” The idea of training student leaders originated last March in a report by the Task Force on Sexual Misconduct Education and Prevention, which was convened after Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges shouted offensive chants on Old Campus in fall 2010. As of Sunday, 276 students were signed up for the Monday session, 185 for the Tuesday session and 156 for Wednesday, Peck said. By Friday, 271 of 392 regis-
SEE SHAKESPEARE PAGE 4
SEE LEADERSHIP PAGE 6
2004
Who’s Eidelson backing? A
1990
number of high-ranking New Haven Democrats attended a gathering of around 80 people at the East Rock home of U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro to support U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy in his run for the U.S. Senate on Sunday afternoon. Sixteen aldermen, including Ward 1 Alderwoman Sarah Eidelson ’12, were present.
New face. Jeanie O’Hare, the in-house dramaturg of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, will be the new chair of the School of Drama’s playwriting department, the school announced in a press release Monday. O’Hare has been with the Royal Shakespeare Company for the last six years. During O’Hare’s tenure, the Company commissioned 75 new writers and launched 40 world premieres, including the launch of “Matilda: the Musical.” The Way We Live Now. Marc
Cendella ’88, the founder of a popular job search website and a candidate for U.S. Senate in New York, has come under fire for racy posts to a blog under his name. The webpage featured “random observations about sex, women and drugs,” with references to jockstraps, marijuana, various sex acts and Donald Trump’s “Apprentice,” according to the New York Times.
A house divided. In two weeks,
the New York Giants will face off against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. On Game Day, Gov. Dannel Malloy, a native of Stamford who went to Boston College, will be rooting for the Giants, but his wife, a native of Massachusetts, will be pulling for the Patriots, according to CBS New York.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1918 Calling the coal situation “very serious,” Dean Frederick Jones encourages students to move out of Berkeley College and onto Old Campus to preserve heat. Berkeley is to be closed in just over a week. Submit tips to Cross Campus
crosscampus@yaledailynews.com
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Training sessions launch
SHAKESPEARE AT YALE
“Shakespeare at Yale Rep,” with 28 photographs of shows at the Rep, is currently on display at the Whitney Humanities Center. Clockwise from top left: The Tempest, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Trolius and Cressida, King Lear, The Comedy of Errors, and Romeo and Juliet. BY AKBAR AHMED STAFF REPORTER Yale founded its Repertory Theatre in 1966, exactly 350 years after William Shakespeare’s death. As a new exhibit shows, the relatively young Rep has embraced and reimagined the Bard’s works since its inception. “Shakespeare at Yale Rep,” a collection of 28 photographs of the theater’s past productions of Shakespeare’s works, opened at the Whitney Humanities Center on Monday as part of this spring’s Shakespeare at Yale initiative. The exhibition, which draws on prints from the
School of Drama’s archives, tracks the role of the Shakespearean canon at the Rep from the theater’s early years to the present, said Rachel Smith DRA ’08, the Rep’s associate director of marketing. The show focuses on the historically expansive range of Rep interpretations of Shakespeare and includes shots of notable actors and actresses who were involved in Shakespearean productions during their student days at the School of Drama, Smith said. The exhibit runs chronologically down a central hallway and into the Whitney’s gallery, beginning with an image from 1971’s “Macbeth,” directed by Robert
Broadway Liquor shut out by Yale BY BEN PRAWDZIK STAFF REPORTER Yalies will soon be forced to look beyond the Broadway shopping district to buy alcohol, as the Univeristy has refused to renew the popular Broadway Liquor’s lease, forcing the store to relocate. Yale University Properties — the office that manages Yale’s portfolio of residential and commercial properties — acquired Broadway Liquor’s current space in November and decided that month not to allow the store to renew its lease with its previous landlord, which is set to expire later this year, UP director Abigail Rider said in an email to the News. “We will not be seeking a liquor store tenant for that location as we do not feel that liquor stores are the best use of UP’s locations near campus,” Rider said. The property in question is abutted on three sides by Yale-owned parcels SEE BROADWAY LIQUOR PAGE 6
Clinic contributes to high court case BY DANIEL SISGOREO STAFF REPORTER The inaugural brief filed before the U.S. Supreme Court by students in Yale Law School’s new Ethics Bureau clinic has brought an inmate on death row closer to a second chance at an appeal. Cory Maples, who was convicted of of committing two murders in 1997, missed the deadline to appeal his death row sentence in 2003 because his two lawyers at prominent New York City law firm Sullivan & Cromwell left the firm in 2002 and failed to pass the case along to their colleagues or inform Maples. No one had been designated to handle the appeal when it arrived at the firm, and Maples sought a second chance to appeal his case. His efforts drew the attention of the Ethics Bureau at the Law School, and seven of its student members drafted a brief advising the Supreme Court to let Maples appeal his sentence since Sullivan & Cromwell had failed to address his lawyers’ departure. The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Maples should not be blamed for missing the appeal deadline,
and Lawrence Fox, a securities litigation lawyer who oversees Yale’s Ethics Bureau clinic, said the brief impacted the court’s decision.
We have a client who may be a great evil-doer, but even so, great evil-doers have rights in our system. TERESA COLLETT Law professor, University of St. Thomas School of Law Maples’ case attracted national media attention and rose to the Supreme Court in October because of the circumstances surrounding his failure to appeal the case. The mailroom at Sullivan & Cromwell had returned letters sent to Maples’ attorneys because the two first-year associates left the firm without transferring the case to other attorneys. Meanwhile, Maples had 42 days to file his appeal, and the clock was ticking, said Lawrence Fox, a securities litigation lawyer who oversees Yale’s
Ethics Bureau clinic. “There are just a lot of cases of capital defendants in similar situations, where they can’t always get courts to hear their claims by no fault of their own,” said Stephanie Turner LAW ’12, who helped draft the brief. “In this case, this client’s lawyers basically totally left him hanging — he had no idea and there was nothing he could do about it.” The clinic’s brief highlighted that Sullivan & Cromwell as a firm shared responsibility with its lawyers for ensuring that Maples’ case was handled properly, Turner said, adding that the two first-year associates were inexperienced in handling a death penalty case. Ramya Kasturi LAW ’12, who also worked on the brief, said in an email Monday that the brief was notable for addressing the ethical responsibilities of all parties involved. Kasturi said she believed the brief, which was cited in the majority opinion written by Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Ginsburg, had a “noticeable impact” on the ruling. “Beyond her direct citation to it, a lot of her argumentation resemSEE SUPREME COURT PAGE 4
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “This used to be a university with an administration. Now it’s an adminisyaledailynews.com/opinion
G U E ST C O LU M N I ST H A R RY L A R S O N
Bring back funding for community policing When Dean Esserman was welcomed back to New Haven as the police department chief, he was hailed as a prophet of community policing, a crimefighting strategy that prioritizes preventing crime as much as responding to it. Esserman announced that his mission was to bring community policing back to New Haven, saying, “In my day [New Haven] was the center of the country for community policing. It is time to regain that reputation.” The theory underlying community policing holds that citizens’ trust in the police is a fundamental prerequisite for law and order. Policemen should walk the streets rather than sit behind desks or drive cars so that communities can get to know them. Law enforcement’s place as a familiar and even friendly neighborhood fixture makes people feel safer and would-be criminals more isolated, which in turn helps reduce crime. Experts seem to agree that, for whatever reasons, community policing works. New York, Los Angeles and even Providence, Conn. have employed some form of it over the past 20 years and are generally thought to have achieved positive results. And as the News reported in November, New Haven made use of community policing tactics when Esserman was deputy police chief in the early 1990s. Violent crime plummeted, with murders falling from 34 in 1990 to below 20 for several consecutive years. With last year’s homicide count at 34 once again, Mayor DeStefano is hoping that Esserman can bring back the gains of the 90s. But why did a tactic that worked so well ever stop in the first place? Over time, the New Haven Police Department, facing budget cuts, failed to replace retirees. Community policing is a man-intensive proposition. It requires enough policemen to walk around, not just rush to crime scenes. It costs money. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay for it. I don’t know nearly enough about crime, policing or New Haven to say why the city saw over 30 murders last year. But if the city had a policing strat-
egy that seemed to work but was cut for financial reasons, I’d think that 34 homicides might make finding the money at least a question for public debate. The little I heard of the community policing debate during last fall’s mayoral and aldermanic elections, however, focused on what strategy the police should employ, not on whether the city has the money to capably implement a good strategy. The slump in tax revenue after the recent recession forced cuts in city budgets. But the News reported that New Haven’s community policing tactics had already lapsed by February 2009, before the effects of the recession had even been fully felt. Economic slump aside, we’ve become so accustomed to calling government spending wasteful that we simply accept cuts without thinking about their consequences. Even on a federal level, most of the talk about reducing our fiscal deficit has been about our historically low tax rates or our growing entitlement spending. The bulk of cuts that are set to go into effect over the next decade, however, come from either the military or the domestic discretionary budget, which pays for infrastructure, schools, disaster relief and other necessary expenses. Of course, this budget funds programs that could be more efficient, but across the board cuts don’t improve government’s efficiency. They eat away at government’s ability to perform necessary tasks well. Obviously, raising more tax revenue implies a host of distributional and economic concerns. But I would certainly pay a bit more if I thought it meant New Haven could have 20 rather than 30 murders, and I would pay more than that if that meant we could bring the number down to 15 or 10. Not all government works, but we can’t fix that problem by eliminating the government that does. HARRY LARSON is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at w harry.larson@yale.edu .
CORRECTION MONDAY, JAN. 23
Nathaniel Zelinsky’s ’13 column “Advisers should care” included the incorrect title of the communication and consent educators program.
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‘GRADSTUDENT16’ ON ‘PAYING FOR OUR VIBRANT FUTURE’
The real, complex Iran Whenever I tell people that I’m studying Persian, the response is often some variation on the same question: Does studying Iran’s language and culture give you a different perspective on what’s happening there now? “What’s happening there now” is usually left vague, but I can assume it’s shorthand for everything that makes the Islamic Republic top the list of America’s worst nightmares: Islamic fundamentalism, support for terrorists, anti-Zionism and nuclear ambitions. Implicit in the question is a second one: Are things really as bad as they seem? Before I attempt any answer to that second question, I can reply to the first with an unequivocal yes: Studying Iran as a historical and cultural entity, rather than as a political vigilante, does make me see things a little differently. It means I can pay attention to linguistic subtlety. In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad made a speech in which he proclaimed that the “occupying regime” in Israel “must vanish from the page of time.” Confounded by this threat, translators opted for “Israel must be wiped off the map” — bombastic enough to fit the popular image of Ahmedinejad in the West, if not entirely accurate. The mistranslation is interesting on its own, but few noted that the Iranian government enthusiastically embraced the false rendering. Log onto the Iranian presidential website, and there it is: a call for the “Zionist regime” to “be wiped off the map.” It’s a near-perfect illustration of how American and Iranian paranoia
feed on each other. Studying Persian means I do not confuse Persians for Arabs or the Islamic Republic for SAM the Taliban. LASMAN The Taliban massacred Beartrap thousands of Shiites and forbade women to work or study; Iran’s constitution protects minorities, and Iranian women have held office as high as the vice presidency. This is not to obscure the innumerable abuses that occur against women and minorities in Iran. It is merely to suggest that the country is a place of contradiction and complexity, not rigid fundamentalism. It means I can understand why the Iranian public overwhelmingly supports the acquisition of nuclear capabilities, even while I dread the thought. But it also means that I can appreciate the irony of our alliance with nukestockpiling, Al-Qaida-sheltering Pakistan and our enmity with Iran. It means I take notice when, in the midst of great diplomatic tension, Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” wins the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. This drama about a divorce between middle-class Tehranis is only the latest film of the Iranian New Wave, a remarkable genre that has emerged since the Islamic Revolution and met with critical acclaim almost unprecedented for the output of a sin-
gle nation, let alone one so diplomatically isolated. These films share an intimate focus on characters adrift in urban jungles or unforgiving wildernesses. Their politics are interpersonal, sexual, moral, but never national or international. This is likely due to strict censorship on artistic production, but it also makes the films appear like oases of humanity in the otherwise bleak face of the Islamic Republic. The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott exuberantly proclaimed, “If 10 years hence there are American tourists on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan and peace reigns in the region, perhaps we will all look back at films such as Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’ and think: That helped.”
THERE IS MORE TO IRAN THAN YOU READ IN THE PAPER Kennicott may be overstating the import of a film that only a handful of Americans will ever see. Moreover, looking at the personal struggles of Iranian families in no way diminishes the deadly seriousness of Iran’s challenge to regional stability. For decades, Israelis and Palestinians have produced films and novels calling for peace and understanding — if these have had a significant impact on the conflict, I have missed it. But Iran sees itself as an
embattled nation that interacts with an aggressive world through valorous resistance and cultural production. Alexander the Great swept aside the Persian armies but then adopted Persian customs. For centuries, Turkish emperors and Arab sultans across the Middle East addressed each other in ornate Persian prose. Rumi and Omar Khayyam have entranced Victorian Orientalists and New-Agers alike. Iran does not see a contradiction between its bellicose announcements and its critically acclaimed works. Rather, these constitute a twopronged assault on what many Iranians, no matter how progressive, perceive as Western imperial power — be it aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf or Hollywood movies on the Tehrani black market. So that second question — are things as bad as they seem? — may have less to do with the specifics of uranium enrichment than with competing visions of the future. One stresses unification and global openness — the other, national pride, cultural distinctiveness and a reflexive fear of extinction. This conflict exists within America and Iran as well as between them. When citizens and media outlets rephrase this struggle as a fundamental clash of civilizations, then things may be as bad — worse, even — than they seem. SAM LASMAN is a senior in Berkeley College. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays. Contact him at samuel.lasman@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST MICHAEL MAGDZIK
Scrutinize private lives Last Thursday’s Republican debate featured a prime instance of one of the most pernicious movements in modern American politics — the attempt to divorce the private and public lives of politicians and to make the former illegitimate fodder for voter scrutiny. Americans, and conservatives in particular, should resist this folly. For those of you who have been buried under mounds of reading that you are just now starting to realize you are obliged to complete (alas, the downside of the illusory freedom of shopping period), a brief explanation is perhaps in order. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich cheated on two of his wives, and his second wife, Marianne Ginther, alleged in a Jan. 19 ABC Nightline interview that Gingrich had suggested an open marriage to her. That evening, CNN anchor John King asked Gingrich if he wanted to respond to the situation. Gingrich’s response: “To take an ex-wife and make it, two days before a primary, a significant question in a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.” Wrong, Newt. Personal morality is one of the most relevant
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tration with a university.”
issues during a presidential campaign. In the American system, we don’t vote directly on policies but on people. Presidents make all sorts of decisions in secret or with little accountability. The field of national security is perhaps the best example; because of the need for secrecy in security, ordinary Americans cannot have a great deal of oversight. Decisions about drone programs, shadow courts authorizing assassinations and terrorist holdings are left to the discretion of our commander-in-chief.
VOTERS SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO CANDIDATES’ LIVES We cannot possibly predict everything the president will run up against, so we are left to choose someone we think has the best judgments and morals that conform to ours. Analysis of policy track records can only take you so far because campaign promises and the policies someone fought for as a senator or
In defense of Bahrain’s government Faisal Husain (“Terror in the dark,” January 19) presented a grossly distorted account of what has been happening in Bahrain. Nowhere does he mention that King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and the government of Bahrain responded to the tragic events of last year by calling for a national dialogue on constitutional reform and establishing an independent commission of inquiry led by human rights expert Dr. Cherif Bassiouni of the DePaul University College of Law. When the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry produced its report in November, the King accepted its findings in full and created a task force to implement its findings. Judicial oversight is being strengthened; cases are being re-tried in civilian courts; the Ministry of the Interior has signed an agreement facilitating Red Cross inspection of detention facilities; students have had their scholarships restored; public sector workers suspended on full pay are being reinstated; and Bahrain’s laws are being reformed to protect the rights to freedom of speech and expression. Bahrain is taking all the steps necessary for it to meet its treaty obligations to uphold human rights.
governor are never really binding. Consider the hypothetical example of a female conservative candidate who loudly proclaimed that she absolutely believed abortion was murder and planned to overturn Roe v. Wade — and turned out to have had five or six abortions over the course of her life, including one during the campaign. It would be a bizarre spot of cognitive dissonance to just ignore that fact because it concerns her private life, wouldn’t it? Examination of private life lends insight into the character and nature of a candidate. Shockingly, someone who cheats on two ailing wives may not in fact be the best leader for a new moral majority based in part on the sanctity of marriage. Herman Cain’s campaign fell apart under the same logic of personal accountability in politics — it wasn’t that he advocated misogynistic federal policies, but his private behavior seemed to indicate that his morals did not sufficiently conform to our collective expectations for us to choose him as our national figurehead. There is the added element of international prestige to consider. Diplomacy is a game conducted largely according to
established rituals and admittedly petty practices. How long a president meets with someone or whether he bows or shakes hands the right way — all these things have an impact on foreign relations. Buffoonery is generally perceived very poorly by foreign dignitaries. An elected official with serious ideas can make critical missteps. Candidates’ characteristic failings in judgment might warn us about those potential future political missteps. The Italians just got rid of their philandering egomaniacal leader. Let’s not install our own. Of course, personal life should not be the only characteristic voters consider — charisma can blind people to policy flaws, for sure. But it should certainly be balanced against other considerations, not considered too sacred to touch in a campaign. The presidency is the most important job in America and perhaps still the world. It should be subject to the ultimate scrutiny. If that is unpleasant for the candidates, that’s unfortunate — but the practice remains necessary.
Truth and reconciliation are required for wounds to heal and mutual misunderstanding to no longer be obstacles to progress. The government took the lead by apologizing for its mistakes and accepting the findings of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. For their part, leading elements of the opposition and NGOs such as Physicians for Human Rights have not.
the Yale College Democrats faced off with various campus conservatives Friday in a game of ‘Partisan Pong,’ bringing the parties together.” In addition to its factual inaccuracies, this reporting demonstrates liberal media bias at its worst. To set the record straight, the Yale College Democrats did not “face off with various campus conservatives” at last Friday’s “Partisan Pong” — they suffered a shocking, decisive, and humiliating defeat at the hands of the event’s co-hosts, the Yale College Republicans. One-party rule has ended at Yale. Those “various campus conservatives” have built a strong, energetic organization. The News would do well to remember its name.
SAQER AL-KHALIFA JAN. 23 The writer is the media attaché of the embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain in Washington D.C.
Smashed GOP smashes Dems I read with great disappointment the News’ coverage of “Partisan Pong,” a beer pong game jointly hosted by the Yale College Republicans and the Yale College Democrats. The News reported, “In a step away from their usual ‘Progressive Pong,’
MICHAEL MAGDZIK is a junior in Berkeley College. Contact him at michael.magdzik@yale.edu .
MICHAEL KNOWLES JAN. 23 The writer is a senior in Davenport College and Chairman of the Yale College Republicans.
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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PAGE THREE TODAY’S EVENTS
232
York St.
The address of the Association of Yale Alumni is 232 York St.
Alumni mixed on new tailgate rules
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24 4:00 PM “What is the EU Crisis About? Just Needing Germans in the South.” Ana Palacio, former foreign affairs minister of Spain, will speak. Sponsored by the Jackson Institute for Global AFfairs. Open to the public. Sterling Memorial Library (120 High St.), International Room. 4:00 PM “Globalization and the Common Good: The Challenge and the Promise.” The Sarah Smith Memorial Conference on Moral Leadership will focus on the work of the United Nations Global Compact, which is made up of 6000 member companies in 140 countries. Oliver Williams of the University of Notre Dame will give the keynote address, followed by respondents and open discussion. Reception to follow in the Sarah Smith Gallery. Sterling Divinity Quadrangle (409 Prospect St.), H. Richard Niebuhr Hall. 4:30 PM Yale-China Fireside Chat: “The Globalization of Chinese Cuisine.” The Yale-China Association presents fireside chats: conversations that consider China’s heart and hinterland. Refreshments will be served. Yale-China Association (442 Temple St.).
CORRECTIONS YDN
MONDAY, JAN. 24
The article “Open Yale seeks stability” misstated the amount of external funding that Yale has received from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The program has received 3 consecutive grants since 2006 that together total $4 million.
Alumni expressed a mixture of reactions to new tailgating restrictions announced by the University last Thursday.
A caption for the article “Focus returns to Hendrie” incorrectly credited the renderings of Hendrie Hall to the Yale Office of Development. In fact, the renderings were completed by the Canadian architecture firm Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg.
A f te r the U n i ve rs i t y announced a stricter set of tailgating rules last Thursday, members of Yale’s alumni community have voiced mixed responses to the changes. Two of the new regulations — restrictions on the duration of tailgating and the creation of a vehicle-free tailgating area — apply solely to students, but bans on kegs and most oversized vehicles at future athletic events will impact all attendees. Though several alumni interviewed said they believe the new regulations will make Yale’s football tailgates safer, others were either unsure the new policies would have any impact or concerned that they would take away from the alumni experience at Yale’s games. A d m i n i s t ra to rs issued changes to Yale’s tailgating policies after one person died and two others were injured at November’s Harvard-Yale game when a U-Haul carrying kegs bound for the Sigma Phi Epsilon tailgate at the Yale Bowl crashed
The article “Occupiers protest Citizens United” mischaracterized the ruling in the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case. It held that unlimited independent express advocacy by corporations and unions is constitutional, but campaign donations of this kind may not be coordinated. The article “Yalies join abortion protesters in D.C.” incorrectly implied that Josh McCormick DIV ’12 believed abortion protests to be competing with Occupy protests for attention.
State’s bond rating downgraded BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER Doing business in Connecticut may soon become more expensive after state bonds received poor marks from Wall Street. Moody’s Investor Service, one of the three major credit rating agencies, announced Friday that it had downgraded its rating of Connecticut’s $14.6 billion in outstanding bonds from Aa2 to Aa3, citing an unbalanced budget and the state’s lack of a “rainy day fund” in case of emergency. As the state faces a growing deficit despite implementing the largest tax increase in its history in May, the downgrade may slow the state’s economic growth by increasing interest rates and thereby borrowing costs. “The [general fund balance remains] deeply negative … due to decades-old liabilities that have never been repaid,” Moody’s wrote in a Jan. 20 press release. “Over the course of the recent recession, Connecticut depleted its [reserve fund] and issued deficit bonds to fill budget gaps.” Moody’s key criticisms include Connecticut’s high expenditures on post-employment benefits for state workers including pensions, its vulnerability to financial market fluctuations and its weak balance sheet with low, debt-ridden funds. Ward 7 Alderman Doug Hausladen ’04 said the entire state will likely experience repercussions as a result of the downgrade. “[New Haven] has seen a lot of education, transportation and infrastructure projects,” Hausladen said. “[But with the downgrade], it’s going to cost more to do business [and it] decreases the amount of capital projects that we can afford.” Hausladen added that he is “extremely impressed and supportive” of Malloy’s management of the economy thus far. City Hall spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton ’04 said Malloy has been supportive of New Haven’s economic growth. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature were very good to cities [in the state’s biannual budget released last year], which allowed us to balance our budget and do
things we care about here in New Haven,” she said. Hausladen said New Haven will likely suffer less severely than the rest of the state from the downgrade because it has already completed major state-funded projects, and the city is an important component in Malloy’s attempts to enhance tourism in the state and curb its “brain drain.” Still, New Haven officials said they are optimistic that the city will escape the worst of the downgrade’s consequences. Ben Barnes, secretary of Connecticut’s Office of Policy and Management, delivered a scathing criticism of Moody’s in a Jan. 20 press release. “Moody’s is wrong in its analysis of the state’s finances, and wrong to change Connecticut’s credit rating,” Barnes wrote. “Connecticut has done all the right things to shore up our finances, and Moody’s has responded with a downgrade intended to satisfy their internal corporate need to deflect attention from their historic lack of credibility.” Despite the downgrade, Moody’s simultaneously revised the outlook for the state from “negative” to “stable,” acknowledging “the positive steps the state is taking to address its longstanding balance sheet weakness.” Moody’s said it expects that Connecticut’s revenue trends will improve as it emerges from the recession, and expressed confidence “that the state will maintain its new commitment to structural budget balance and replenish its rainy day fund over time.” Moody’s also promised a new valuation as the state continues to reduce spending on postemployment benefits and rebuild its fiscal health. The Aa category, which includes the Aa2 and Aa3 ratings, is defined by Moody’s as “obligations judged to be of high quality and subject to very low credit risk.” The other two major credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, rate Connecticut bonds as AA, equivalent to Aa2 from Moody’s. Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .
BY ANDREW GIAMBRONE STAFF REPORTER
into a crowd of people in the Bowl’s D-Lot. Robert Abare ’09, a former captain of the football team, said he “fully supports” the new policies and does not believe they will reduce the number of students and alumni that attend games. The stricter tailgate policies could even increase attendance at football games, Abare said, because they will help draw the focus of Yale football fans to the games themselves. “While a player, I always heard of the days when attendance at the bowl would be 30,000-plus on a regular basis,” Abare said. “Although those days are now few and far between, hopefully this new ruling will put a few more people in the stands.” Though Abare said the new regulations will not prevent all students and alumni from sometimes drinking too heavily, he said the new rules will make the overall tailgating experience safer. Gary Townsend MED ’66, who was present at last year’s Harvard-Yale game, called the new polices “naturally good
ones,” noting that they will make the events safer and “probably improve” the alumni experience of football games. He said most alumni do not bring kegs or large U-Haul trucks to tailgates. But Brandt Hollander ’08 said the new regulations — specifically the ban on kegs — will impact alumni’s ability to socialize at tailgates, though Hollander said he understands the administration’s obligation to keep attendees safe at athletic events. “I personally plan to keep attending football games,” Hollander said. “It’s really tragic what happened this past year, and whatever the school needs to do to make sure people are safe is what’s important. I’m sure the students will still find a way to have fun.” Two of eight other alumni interviewed said they had not heard that Yale announced stricter tailgating polices, while four said they do not attend University football games. Previous attempts by the administration to tighten tailgating policies have not gone
uncontested. In 2005, Hollander said he remembers alumni protesting an administrative decision to end tailgating at halftime. Two years later, arguments by the Yale College Council convinced University officials not to ban U-Haul trucks, he added. Yale spokesman Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93 said alumni attend sporting events primarily to see the games, and will continue to do so despite the stricter tailgate regulations. Stephen Blum ’74, the Association of Yale Alumni’s senior director of strategic initiatives, deferred questions about the tailgating policies to AYA Executive Director Mark Dollhopf ’77. Dollhopf did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The 2011 Harvard-Yale game drew more than 55,000 attendees to the Yale Bowl, according to Yale Athletics. Michael DiScala contributed reporting. Contact ANDREW GIAMBRONE at andrew.giambrone@yale.edu .
Tweed poised to build on record year BY JAMES LU STAFF REPORTER Last year, Tweed New Haven Regional Airport posted a record passenger count, which could bode well for the development of new air routes to the Elm City. The local airport processed 39,791 commercial airline passengers in 2011 — an 11 percent increase over the previous year — in a strong performance that City Hall spokesperson Elizabeth Benton ’04 said mirrored the city’s improved economic performance. Although Tweed is only serviced by one airline, US Airways Express, Mark Volchek ’00 GRD ’00, chairman of the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority, said that frequent local flights are “key” for the Elm City’s economic growth. “We are very excited about the great year we had in 2011,” Volchek said in a Monday email to the News. “Convenient air service is key for economic development in [New Haven.]” In 2011, Tweed saw more commercial traffic than in 10 of the past 11 years, according to a Tweed press release. That result, along with the steadily increasing passenger numbers over the past several years, is due to a number of factors, airport manager Lori Hoffman-Soares said. Those include an improved marketing plan adopted in recent years as well as increasingly “competitive” fares for flights from the airport, Hoffman-Soares said. She added that the airport’s convenience — Hoffman-Soares touted the airport’s “easy parking,” its fiveto 10 -minute travel time from downtown New Haven and its relatively quick security procedures — has also led to the airport’s passenger growth. “What this means for the airport is when we try to attract new air service with other carri-
ers and with US Airways we now have numbers to back up the usage of the airport,” she said. “This [record passenger count] will help us attract new service.” Currently, US Airways Express operates four flights every day between Tweed and Philadelphia International Airport, a US Airways hub with service to over 100 destinations. Delta Air Lines, which began operating at Tweed in 2003, ceased operations at the airport in 2006 after the company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. That move cut the airport’s commercial passenger volume by a third. In 2009, following a $26 million expansion project, Tweed officials and Mayor John DeStefano Jr. told the News that they would attempt to convince “four to five” airplane carriers to fly in and out of the airport in the next few years. Plans for expansion have met resistance from East Haven residents as recently as last summer, with complaints that the airport is too noisy, especially during its evening flights. Although Tweed has yet to attract any additional carriers, Tweed is poised to grow in tandem with the city, Benton said. “New Haven is seeing record low retail vacancies, the most competitive residential rental market nationwide, and the strongest grand list growth in the state,” she said. “New Haven is becoming a destination for start-up businesses and entrepreneurs, and Tweed both benefits from and contributes to that growth.” Tweed is one of two Connecticut airports with commercial service; the other is Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn. Contact JAMES LU at james.q.lu@yale.edu .
GRACE PATUWO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Tweed New Haven Regional Airport saw a record number of passengers in 2011, and is poised for growth in 2012.
TIMELINE TWEED NEW HAVEN REGIONAL AIRPORT 2004 Delta Air Lines begins service between Tweed and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. 2006 After filing for Chapter 11 bancruptcy, Delta ends its operations at Tweed. 2011 Tweed processes a record 39,791 passengers, up 11 percent from the previous year.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
Capital punishment in Connecticut. Connecticut is one of only two New England states with a death penalty. Death row inmates are housed in Somers, a town in northern Connecticut. The state has executed only one person since 1976.
Exhibit shows Shakespeare at Yale, through the ages SHAKESPEARE FROM PAGE 1
SHAKESPEARE AT YALE
On display now at the Whitney Humanities Center is an exhibit of archival photographs from performances of Shakespeare’s plays at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
duction of the play,” Smith said. New interpretations of Shakespeare’s works have been a hallmark of the theater’s engagement with the playwright, Drama School dean James Bundy DRA ’95 said in an email. Epstein’s 1975 production, for instance, incorporated music from Henry Purcell’s semi-opera “The Faerie Queene.” The production was restaged multiple times after its Rep debut to what Bundy described as “tremendous popular acclaim.” “Contrary to what many people think, the Western tradition of Shakespearean production is one of experimentation, not of codification,” Bundy said. Audiences at the Rep have been exposed to variations on the Bard’s original text ranging from the inclusion of music to single-gender casting rare in the modern theater scene. The first Rep show after Bundy took over as artistic director in 2002, for example, mashed up the plot of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” with Euripides’ “Medea” and “Cinderella.” Because the photographs on display span decades and often feature multiple productions of the same Shakespeare text, Smith said the exhibit’s curators decided to place photographs of the same show from different time periods close to each other, to highlight stylistic differences linked to the culture of the times in which they were produced. Associate Director of the Whitney Humanities Center Mark Bauer said the show’s layout enables viewers to identify trends in staging decisions across the years. “What is most interesting and striking about the exhibit is the sense of style marching through the decades you get as you go through the gallery,” Bauer said. “Styles sometimes come back, talk to each to other across the decades.” The exhibit shows the ways in which Shakespeare has challenged artists and audiences to identify with centuries-old subjects and engage with modes of production that render the works relevant in
contemporary culture, Bundy said. Bundy added that he believes the Bard’s works will be part of each wave of theater to come in the years ahead, and that the School of Drama and the Rep will continue to pay serious attention to the dramatist, based on the interests of the faculty, students and guest artists at the Rep. Under the umbrella of this semester’s Shakespeare at Yale initiative, the exhibit brings together the resources of the Rep and the Whitney, said Shakespeare at Yale coordinator Kathryn Krier DRA ’07. She added that the show will introduce those familiar with the work of the Rep to the Whitney and vice versa.
Contrary to what many people think, the Western tradition of Shakespeare production is one of experimentation, not of codification. JAMES BUNDY DRA ’95 Dean, Yale Drama School “[The show gets] audiences moving back and forth between the Rep and the Whitney,” Bauer said. Smith said she was surprised when looking through some of the exhibit’s photographs. “What’s interesting [about] photographs from so long ago is that they can be good quality but fairly small,” she said. “So for instance, one photograph is like a little Mona Lisa — look closer, and it’s such a surprise because you go, ‘Oh my God, that’s Meryl Streep!’” The Yale Repertory Theatre’s next Shakespeare production, “The Winter’s Tale,” opens March 16. Contact AKBAR AHMED at akbar.ahmed@yale.edu .
YLS clinic brief influences case SUPREME COURT FROM PAGE 1 bled sections of our brief and her opinion certainly touched on many of the same issues,” Kasturi said. Signatories of the brief said they thought the case addressed important issues of professional legal ethics. Robert Cochran, a Pepperdine University School of Law professor who signed the brief, said the arguments raised in the brief cast doubt on the legal services Sullivan & Cromwell provided Maples, and that without the brief, the Supreme Court might have dismissed Maples’ claims. Teresa Collett, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and another signatory, said she supported the brief because it honored Maples’ rights as a defendant. Collett added that she “could understand but not excuse” Sullivan & Cromwell’s failure to handle Maples’ case with care. “We know we have a client who may be a great evil-doer, but even so, great evil-doers have rights in our system,” she said. Turner called the final ruling a “victory” because it both
acknowledged Maples’ right to another appeal and recognized “problems with the system.”
We have a client who may be a great evil-doer but even so, great evil-doers have rights in our system. TERESA COLLETT Law professor, University of St. Thomas School of Law Still, Gregory Adams, a law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and signatory of the brief, said the case was unlikely to have a noticeable impact on the law because it pertained to a specific and extreme situation — lawyers abandoning their client. Turner said she hopes the Maples case’s prominence will bring attention to the Law School’s Ethics Bureau clinic and attract similarly important cases in the future. The Maples trial has set a high standard for the clinic’s future work, Fox said.
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I N S U M M A RY THE CASE
Was Cory Maples responsible for missing the 42-day deadline to appeal his sentence? THE RULING
Maples was not responsible for missing the deadline because the lawyers he thought were representing him had abandoned his case without following standard procedure. THE OUTCOME
Maples must prove in court that his lawyers’ abandonment of his case harmed him before he can pursue an appeal.
The Ethics Bureau clinic launched in fall 2011. Contact DANIEL SISGOREO at daniel.sisgoreo@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 5
NEWS
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health. The mission of the OWH is “to provide leadership to promote health equity for women and girls through sex/gender-specific approaches” and “by developing innovative programs, educating health professionals and motivating behavior change in consumers through the dissemination of health information.
Yale-city partnership wins mental health grant BY MARIANA LOPEZ-ROSAS STAFF REPORTER Thanks to a federal grant, New Haven mothers will soon have access to more mental health services. Last Friday, the Mental Health Outreach for Mothers Partnership, known as MOMS, received a five-year, $2.5 million federal grant to begin offering programs to support New Haven mothers’ mental health needs, according to a Jan. 20 press release. MOMS — a partnership coordinated by the Yale Department of Psychiatry, the
city of New Haven and local mothers — has brought together several New Haven-based organizations to provide mental health support and resources for mothers in the community. “Over the next five years, we will implement evidencebased mental health interventions in community settings,” said Megan Smith, who founded MOMS in December 2010 and serves as assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. “This work would not be possible without the dedication and passion of our community partners.”
Smith said she decided to start MOMS after researching the mental health of mothers in New Haven. Her studies identified several sources of stress among New Haven mothers, including the threat of losing custody of their children and deportation, and found that poverty increases stress levels and can eventually lead to mental health conditions. Smith’s research also showed that only a third of New Haven mothers in need of mental health care were receiving it. The MOMS partnership, she said, will focus on addressing
these needs by providing support groups for mental health and other topics such as managing a limited budget. Once a month, for instance, mothers will be able to receive group counseling in the common room of the Stop & Shop supermarket on Whalley Avenue, she said. Other MOMS projects include training mothers in mental health outreach to serve as “ambassadors” in the community, Smith added. Jessica Sager, founder and CEO of MOMS partner All Our Kin, a New Haven-based nonprofit organization that focuses
on expanding access to childcare and education, said MOMS is one example of how Yale is both a research institution and an activist in the community. Sager said All Our Kin will contribute to the MOMS partnership’s efforts by sharing its network of mothers whom other programs do not usually reach. All Our Kin will also train family childcare providers to be better prepared in supporting families who require mental health counseling, Sager added. The New Haven MOMS Partnership consists of the Clifford Beers Child Guidance Clinic,
New Haven Healthy Start, New Haven Health Department, All Our Kin, The Diaper Bank, Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families, and the Housing Authority of New Haven. The grant is one of ten annual grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health, and the only one that focuses on mental heath. Contact MARIANA LOPEZ-ROSAS at mariana.lopez-rosas@yale.edu .
TV producer hails medical journalism BY DAN STEIN STAFF REPORTER In an afternoon away from the studios of “World News with Diane Sawyer,” Emmy-nominated ABC producer Susan Schwartz SPH ’80 shared her belief in the value of reporting about medical issues. Schwartz, who focuses on medical topics for the nightly news program, spoke to a group of about 20 students Monday evening in the Branford Common Room about her hope to educate people about medicine through the stories she produces. As students asked questions about the evolution of journalism and TV news, she frequently emphasized the power of “storytelling” to influence how people behave. “When we do a health story, it’s particularly gratifying because you can save a life,” she said. Schwartz, who is a registered nurse, said sheshared a clip of a story she produced for ABC News in May 2011 about a woman who lost her voice for four months after getting over a cold. When the woman’s friends heard a National Public Radio story featuring a person with a similar condition, they recommended that she see a doctor, who was able to identify her ailment and treat her condi-
tion in a few minutes. Once the story was aired on ABC News, Schwartz said, she heard that another woman decided to seek help for the same condition.
When we do a health story, its particularly gratifying because you can save a life. SUSAN SCHWARTZ SPH ’80 ABC producer Schwartz said telling stories about cancer research can have a similar effect by informing those with cancer about anticipated advances in treatment. Still, “it’s a delicate dance — you don’t want to give false hope,” she said. Schwartz said she takes pride in producing content that is “solid and accurate,” since she believes viewers are looking for something more credible than many of the news sources that are widespread on the Internet. Schwartz pointed to the January 2011 shooting of 19 people including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who will be stepping down from her seat this week, as an example of ABC producers working hard to ensure accurate informa-
tion. While the other news sources reported Giffords as having died, she said, ABC chose to wait until they could verify their information. Schwartz called herself “a catching producer” who works in New York, rather than out in the field for assignments. She described TV producers as those who develop a “nugget of an idea” and find the pictures to tell the story. Schwartz said during her 20 years at ABC, she has seen resources for foreign news bureaus decrease, but she encouraged students to go into the “burgeoning field of medical journalism.” “We try to give a voice to those who don’t have a voice around the world,” she said. Three attendees interviewed said they were impressed by how a single news story could have a real affect on people’s lives. Aly Moore ’14, who said she is often skeptical of information presented by the media, said she could see from Schwartz’s words how “news presentation can actually affect public opinion.” Schwartz was nominated for an Emmy in 2011 for “Outstanding Investigative Journalism in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast.” Contact DAN STEIN at daniel.stein@yale.edu .
JOYCE XI/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Susan Schwartz SPH ’80, an ABC producer, stressed the value of medical journalism at a Branford master’s tea Monday.
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PAGE 6
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
Liquor stores in New Haven. There are liquor stores on Orange Street at Eld Street, Orange Street at Cottage Street, Whitney Avenue at Cottage Street, Whalley Avenue at Orchard Street, Crown Street at Temple Street, Chapel Street at Park Street, Elm Street at Howe Street, Church Street at Grove Street and Chapel Street at Center Street.
Attendees laud sexual harassment training LEADERSHIP FROM PAGE 1 tered student groups had signed up for the training, according to an email from Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd ’90. Though Boyd said she was concerned that many groups would lose their registered status by failing to attend, administrators said they were pleased that 76 unregistered groups had also signed up. Boyd said she recognized students were “not thrilled” with the idea of additional training and “generally resent being told what to do,” but she said administrators worked to address this concern by focusing on student needs when developing the training schedule. “It’s been my experience that students genuinely value substantive engagement with tough issues,” she said. “This week’s training begins with that presumption.” In her opening remarks at the training session, Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler, who is in charge of Title IX compliance at Yale, urged students to “speak out more directly and forcefully” to promote healthy relationships, adding that student leaders in particular can make a “tremendous” impact. Yale College Dean Mary
Miller, who will introduce the third session, told the News Monday that including top administrators in each of the sessions demonstrates the University’s commitment to improving campus culture. Provost Peter Salovey will open the Tuesday night meeting. After presentations about leadership strategies, such as identifying and upholding a group’s values, Peck and Benjamin Flores ’10, another student affairs fellow, advised students to avoid hazing practices that make group members feel “devalued,” a feeling Peck said students do not expect to experience when joining an organization. In a poll of the audience conducted using electronic clickers, 57 percent of students in attendance said they knew someone who had felt uncomfortable during an initiation — a statistic Peck and Flores said students should find worrisome. Nine of 13 attendees interviewed said they thought the training was helpful, and some said the sexual harassment and hazing discussions were particularly relevant to their organizations’ activities. Emma Schindler ’14, a representative from Elm City Echo, a publication that features work writ-
ten by homeless individuals, said Peck and Flores were “asking the right questions and asking the hard questions” in their discussion of hazing and sexual misconduct. But she said she thought the presentations on leadership were “fluffy,” adding that it was unfortunate that the sexual harassment discussion
began at the end when students were getting ready to leave. Four students interviewed said they thought parts of the presentation were irrelevant to their specific organizations since some of their groups do not hold initiation ceremonies. One student, who asked to
remain anonymous to maintain a positive relationship with the Dean’s Office, said he thought the session was “ineffective” because it failed to address sexual harassment directly and used analogies that “masked” the real issue. The next two sessions will take place at 6 p.m. on Tuesday and 7
p.m. on Wednesday in Room 114 of Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall. Contact CAROLINE TAN at caroline.tan@yale.edu and ANTONIA WOODFORD at antonia.woodford@yale.edu .
POLLS CONDUCTED AT MONDAY’S LEADERSHIP TRAINING SESSION 57 percent said they knew someone who participated in an initiation that made them feel uncomfortable. 31 percent said they have been in a situation where someone was becoming “dangerously drunk.” 85 percent said they have ideas for how to respond in situations of hazing or sexual misconduct.
EARL LEE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Yale College Dean’s Office is holding training sessions which are mandatory for at least three officers from every registered student organization.
Yale declines to renew Broadway Liquor lease BROADWAY LIQUOR FROM PAGE 1 and it was the only space in the block adjacent to Payne Whitney Gymansium not owned by the University before November. Rider said that it was a logical step for the University to purchase the property when its former owner put it up for sale. She added that the property will undergo significant repairs before Yale seeks a new tenant to move in. The liquor store is currently seeking a new storefront location to reestablish the business. Acquiring property and making selective tenant decisions are not new practices for Yale. UP is known to have specific selec-
tion criteria when attracting new retailers to occupy Yale-owned storefronts, and the office is tight-lipped about which prospective tenants they are negotiating with.
It’s Yale’s property, so I’m fine with them doing what they want with it. DEREK WALKER ’12 “To me [UP’s selectivity] is a mystery,” Bill Kalogeridis, the former owner of Copper Kitchen
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on Chapel Street, told the News in Feburary 2010, eight months before his Chapel Street restaurant was not allowed to renew its lease with the University. According to its website, University Properties has over 500 residential properties in its portfolio and over 85 retail tenants. Yale is one of the largest commercial property taxpayers in New Haven, paying over $4 million annually. Student reaction to the news of Broadway Liquor’s relocation was mixed. Of nine students interviewed, six said that buying liquor would become more inconvenient for them without a retailer in the Broadway area.
Students also expressed diverse opinions regarding the amount of influence Yale has in downtown’s New Haven retail development. “I think Yale has a done a nice job targeting tenants to fill the retail spaces along Broadway, and I’m guessing they’ll do fine with this space, too,” Derek Walker ’12 said. “It’s Yale’s property, so I’m fine with them doing what they want with it.” Other students said they took issue with a percieved lack of input that non-Yale-affiliated city residents have on the development of their city. Eric Caine ’14 said that permanent residents of New Haven should be represented in the decision-mak-
ing process, as they “have more [of a] stake in the city” than Yale administrators. Elm Campus Partners, Yale’s real estate management arm, is working with the University on its plans to renovate the property. Rider said Yale wants to have a modernized space in which a retailer or retailers can operate so that the streetscape will not “go dark.” University Properties was established in 1996 as an extention of the University’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs. Contact BEN PRAWDZIK at benjamin.prawdzik@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 7
BULLETIN BOARD
TODAY’S FORECAST
TOMORROW
Mostly sunny, with a high near 49. West wind between 7 and 13 mph.
THURSDAY
High of 41, low of 28.
High of 43, low of 34.
MIDWESTERN NERD AT YALE BY ERAN MOORE REA
ON CAMPUS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25 7:00 PM “Fear, Inc.”: A Panel Discussion. “Fear, Inc.,” a 2011 report published by the Center for American Progress, describes the orchestrated propagation of Islamophobia in America by key groups and figures. Panelists will include: professor Muneer Ahmad (Yale Law School), professor Zareena Grewal (American studies) and professor Andrew March (political science). LinslyChittenden Hall (63 High St.), Room 317. 8:00 PM Wei-Yi Yang, piano. Ravel’s “Valses nobles et sentimentales,” the composer’s elegant tribute to the waltzes of Vienna, and his enigmatic symbolist collection “Miroirs,” will be played by Yang at this concert, in addition to Schubert’s monumental late “Sonata in A major, D. 959.” Yang’s playing is “untiring, passionate and poetic … a job to behold,” according to Classics Today. Sprague Hall (470 College St.), Morse Recital Hall.
WATSON BY JIM HORWITZ
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26 3:30 PM Dale Jamieson Talk and Discussion: Animal Ethics. Dale Jamieson, director of environmental studies and professor of philosophy at New York University, will lead this event. Jamieson is a contemporary pioneer of animal ethics. He will be giving a short talk followed by an open discussion. The event will be hosted by the Yale Animal Welfare Alliance and the Yale Philosophy Review. Branford College (74 High St.), Trumbull Room. 8:00 PM “Improvised Shakespeare.” The Purple Crayon will perform a new Shakespearean play. Tenative location: Ezra Stiles College (19 Tower Parkway), Crescent Theater. Final location TBA.
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FRIDAY, JANUARY 27 7:00 PM “Touch of Zen.” Directed by King Hu. Part of the Taiwan Film Festival. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.), Auditorium.
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37 “The Wire” airer 38 Dadaist Jean 39 Derided 41 Orangutan or chimp 44 Prefix with sphere 46 Rubberneckers 48 Trees used for shingles 50 Discipline with kicks 51 “Kick it up a notch!” chef
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1/24/12
52 Floored with a haymaker 55 Depression era pres. 56 Down Under gem 57 McEntire sitcom 59 Corp. cash mgrs. 60 __ earlier time 63 Opposite of ’neath 65 River blocker
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PAGE 8
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” CHARLES DARWIN ENGLISH NATURALIST
SOM finds benefits of temptation BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER According to new research from the Yale School of Management, even health food stores should stock a few indulgences. The study, entitled “Self-Signaling and the Costs and Benefits of Temptation in Consumer Choice,” is the first to find empirical evidence that resisting temptation can provide psychological benefits. The study, which will appear in the February issue of the Journal of Marketing Research, demonstrated that subjects felt better acting virtuously when tempted by a vice than when no vice was present, and both of the study’s authors said the findings have important implications for product marketing. The researchers ran five trials, each examining how subjects’ satisfaction with the items that they did select changed with the items they did not select. In one setup, half of the subjects indicated whether they would be happier choosing a virtuous item like prunes when the prunes were surrounded by either a mix of prunes and tempting cookies — a vice — or just prunes. The other half of the subjects considered an opposite scenario, choosing between consuming cookies alone or cookies surrounded in part by prunes. In all five trials, subjects said it would be more satisfying to consume a virtue in the presence of a vice and to choose a vice without a virtuous option available. Because the physical effect of consuming an item does not change depending on the goods surrounding it, Klaus Wertenbroch, a co-author of the study and professor of marketing at INSEAD, said the study is evidence that the ability to resist temptation heightens overall satisfaction through the “self signal” of restraint. While the psychological theory of self-signaling — that individuals learn about their own characters from their decisions — has existed for more than a decade, Wertenbroch said this study is the first to provide empirical evidence for its existence.
I think it’s a very intuitive finding, yet one that people had not really predicted before. KLAUS WERTENBROCH Professor of marketing, INSEAD “We are showing, essentially, that giving in or resisting temptation has either costs or benefits that are of a psychological nature going beyond the utility that you might actually get from the product that you consume,” he said. “When you chose a vice in the presence of a virtue, you have to tell yourself that you fail to resist temptation, that you didn’t have enough willpower. That feels much worse than if you chose a vice when there is no virtue in the choice set.” Both Wertenbroch and co-author Ravi Dhar, a professor of management and marketing at the SOM, said that the ability of individuals to gain utility from resisting temptation has important implications for marketing goods to consumers. “We say by strategically putting some unhealthy food in a health food store,
Hurricane damage to surge BY JACQUELINE SAHLBERG STAFF REPORTER
EXAMPLE OF THE TRIAL COOKIES VERUS PRUNES
Imagine you often have an afternoon snack from a vending machine. On some occasions, you choose tasty, less healthy snacks, and on other occasions you choose less tasty but healthy snacks. Now consider the following two scenarios. Fe\ X]k\ieffe# k_\ dXZ_`e\ _Xj both healthy, less tasty snacks such as prunes and dried raisins and great tasting but less healthy snacks such as chocolate chip cookies and salted peanuts. You have some prunes. 8efk_\i X]k\ieffe# k_\ dXZ_`e\ has only less tasty, healthy snacks such as prunes and dried raisins. You have some prunes. On which occasion does choosing the prunes give you greater satisfaction? [___] When the snack machine offers both great tasting but less healthy snacks and healthy but less tasty snacks. [___] When the snack machine offers only healthy but less tasty snacks. [___] It makes no difference. you could actually make people feel better about themselves and charge higher prices,” Dhar said. Dhar added that the idea for the study arose from a comment that Wertenbroch made about how he felt better about not smoking on days when other people around him chose to — a form of a selfsignaling. For Wertenbroch, the appeal of the project comes from the fact that so many people experience the benefits of temptation self-selection. “What I like about the basic effect is that I have yet to come across someone who basically didn’t share the same intuition,” he said. “I think it’s a very intuitive finding, yet one that people had not really predicted before. [Ravi and I] were just throwing thoughts around and we hit upon this intuition of [prunes and cookies].” Nathan Novemsky, a professor of marketing at the SOM, said that the study raises the interesting question of whether individuals will put themselves in situations with temptations just to achieve the self-signaling benefits of rejected temptation. “When people are facing choices, do they want a choice set that includes a chocolate cake? Do they intuit this effect? Maybe I want to walk into that place that has chocolate cake knowing that I can reject it,” Novemsky said. One of the trials was conducted at both Payne Whitney Gymnasium and Yankee Doodle Coffee Shop, which was located at 258 Elm St. and closed in 2008.
CREATIVE COMMONS
Yale researchers have found evidence that a species of giant tortoise on the Galapagos Islands may not be extinct, as previously believed.
Galapagos tortoise back from extinction? BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER After finding the descendants of a species of giant tortoises believed extinct from the Galapagos Islands for 150 years, Yale researchers are hoping to save the species. In an expedition to Isabela Island led by Adalgisa Caccone GRD ’86, senior research scientist in ecology and evolutionary biology, the researchers found 84 tortoises whose genes show that one of their parents is a member of the supposedly extinct species, C. elephantopus. Published Jan. 9 in the journal “Current Biology,” the subsequent report stated that at least 38 purebred individuals of that species are still alive, and Caccone said she hopes to return to the Galapagos to find them. “We can bring back
a species from near extinction,” said Caccone. “If we can find these individuals in a larger expedition, we can return the species to its [original state] and reestablish the ecological equilibrium.” Thirty of the turtle descendants were younger than 15 years old, and since giant tortoises often live over 100 years, this data suggests some parents are still alive. Carefully breeding the hybrids may also allow scientists to revive the C. elephantopus species even if the purebreds cannot be found, Caccone added. The study claimed to be the first to rediscover a supposedly extinct species by analyzing the DNA of its offspring, though Caccone said in an interview with the News that her team simply applied standard
Contact DAN WEINER at daniel.weiner@yale.edu .
analytical techniques. “We had access to a large database that included the genetic fingerprints of [diverse giant tortoise] species, including extinct data,” Caccone said. “It was a huge effort, and a lot of undergraduates helped us with the project [to analyze all the samples].” The team accumulated blood samples from over 1,600 tortoises, around 20 percent of the total tortoise population on Isabela Island, and compared the DNA to a genetic database of tortoise species. They found close similarities to the extinct species, identifying 84 direct descendants. W h e n C h a rl e s Da rw i n explored the islands in 1835, he found fifteen species of giant tortoises. Since only eleven species remain in the Galapagos today, Caccone said it is important to halt this rapid extinction. The differentiation Darwin saw between similar species on different islands, such as finches, was crucial in the development of his theory of evolution. The giant tortoise is the only grazing herbivore native to the Galapagos, and plays an important ecological role, Caccone said, by helping to keep vegeta-
tive growth in check. On some islands where tortoise populations have dwindled, invasive plants and overgrowth have become a problem, she said. On Floreana, the “extinct” species’ native island, the ecosystem is out of equilibrium. Caccone speculated that the tortoise was likely transported to Isabela aboard a ship as food, and then left on the island. Meanwhile the population on Floreana was wiped out due to hunting by whalers, pirates and local workers during the 19th century. University of British Columbia biology Professor Michael Russello, who contributed to the study, said he looks forward to a future expedition to the Galapagos that will allow conservationists to establish a breeding program and restore the species to Floreana. “The return of tortoises to Floreana would [help] to restore the native flora and fauna of the island,” Russello said. George Amato GRD ’94, director of the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History, called the study “exciting” and “very significant.” He added that he is optimistic about the likelihood of finding the parents and hopeful about seeing the research translate into measurable conservation initiatives. Even if purebred members of C. elephantopus cannot be found, Russello and Amato said the 84 offspring found
may cumulatively have enough genetic variation to design a breeding program that would revive the species. Ths project could provide a case study of how to restore extinct species from their close descendants.
Success with this one species will give hope and a practical example for future conservation efforts. BRITTNEY KAJDACSI ’11 Lab assistant to Adalgisa Caccone GRD ’86
JACOB GEIGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A School of Medicine professor led a study disputing that socioeconomic factors affect hospitals’ readmission rates.
A Yale professor has rebutted a recent academic study finding that hospitals that treat more low-income patients tend to have higher readmission rates. Kaiser Health News published a cumulative analysis of 3,119 different hospitals in December 2011, using readmission for congestive heart failure, the most common cause of rehospitilization within 30 days for Medicare patients, as its metric. According to Medicare’s data and the analysis, 11.7 percent of the hospitals that treat the poorest patients had an above-average readmission rate, compared to 4.3 percent for other hospitals. Citing his own, contrasting study, Harlan Krumholz ’80, a Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, said he does not believe socioeconomic factors are causing hospitals to have higher readmission rates. Krumholz said that while his research supported the idea that hospitals with poorer patients
have slightly higher readmission rates, it differed from Kaiser Health’s analysis on the cause of the disparity. He led a study commissioned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a government agency, which found that the cause of higher readmission rates is misguided incentives for hospitals. He is the director of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, a national research center which focuses on assessing healthcare quality, evaluating decision-making and comparing effectiveness of different healthcare interventions. “We need to rethink the way in which we are providing health care, and we have to reassess that convinces us someone is ready to go home,” he said. “We have strong incentives to get people out of the hospital quickly, but we have to start making sure that the patients are ready to leave.” There is also reason to believe that socioeconomic status has nothing at all to do with hospital readmission rates, Krumholz said. He explained that readmissions rates are roughly identical across the income scale,
with patients from “entitled backgrounds” being as likely to end up returning to the hospital as patients from poorer backgrounds. Krumholz’s study found that the vast majority of hospitals with many poor patients had similar readmission rates as hospitals with fewer such patients did. Because of that, the study concluded that hospitals with a higher share of lower-income patients can perform at least as well on readmission measures, and the problem lay with the medical approach of certain hospitals. “It’s dangerous thinking, since you’re basically accepting that hospitals that care for those patients of a certain backgrounds are not going to do as well,” Krumholz said. Krumholz said the best approach is to rethink the entire health care system, and to change the focus of hospitals from doctors’ convenience to patients’ safety. Thomas Balcezak, vice president of performance management and associate chief of staff at Yale-New Haven Hospi-
We make living in a dangerous place on the coast much, much cheaper than a free market would assume is reasonable. KERRY EMANUEL Professor of atmospheric sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The results of the study indicate that while climate change will have little impact on small storms, large hurricanes may become more frequent and more intense. The model predicted that the hurricane landfalls in East Asia and along the North American coast will account for 88 percent of the forecasted damage. Both regions are characterized by dense population clusters in vulnerable coastal areas. The researchers determined that even without the anticipated climate change, the annual economic damages from hurricanes may more than double from $26 billion per year to $56 billion per year by 2100 as the global population increases to nine billion. With climate change, the researchers concluded that the damage may quadruple to $109 billion. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote in an email to the News that the paper serves as a “warning” to those who advocate for action against man-made climate change while ignoring social factors. He added that the study is “consistent” with the conclusions of his previous research: In a 2007 study Pielke concluded that climate stabilization policies, such as emissions reduction laws, have less potential to reduce future disaster losses than adaptive policies that could help to
limit our vulnerability to hurricanes. Emanuel also discussed the relationship between American policy and the forecasted damages, concluding that current policy encourages people to live in risky areas. “Through capped insurance premiums, through federal bailouts in the form of disaster relief, through the provision of cheap insurance that covers floods, we make living in a dangerous place on the coast much, much cheaper than a free market would assume is reasonable,” Emanuel said. “We have guaranteed through policy that we will have a long string of Katrinas going forward in the United States.” Since releasing the study, Emanuel has been criticized by a number of climate bloggers, including Steve Milloy, a commentator for Fox News and founder and publisher of junkscience.com, for failing to disclose a potential conflict of interest. Emanuel is a board member of the AlphaCat Fund, a subsidiary of the Bermuda-based Validus Managers Ltd. that invests in reinsurance transactions and catastrophe bonds. Emanuel called the allegation a “baseless charge” and said that “there is no conflict of interest” because the board has not discussed climate change. Milloy did not respond to a request for comment from the News. Both Mendelsohn and Emanuel acknowledge that the integration assessment model has room for improvement. For example, the current study does not account for the impact of rising sea levels or government adaptation policies. Mendelsohn stated that he plans to refine the model to study whether the United States’ policies make it more vulnerable to hurricane damage than other areas of the world. Hurricane Irene, which struck New Haven on Aug. 28, 2011, is estimated to have affected at least 55 million people and caused between $7 billion and $10 billion in damages in the United States, according to the New York Times. Contact JACQUELINE SAHLBERG at jacqueline.sahlberg@yale.edu .
“Success with this one species will give hope and a practical example for future conservation efforts, maintaining public interest in conservation that is essential for [receiving] funding and [influencing] political or community organizations,” said Brittney Kajdacsi ’11, a lab assistant to Caccone. The giant tortoise is among the largest reptiles and longestliving animals on Earth, thought to have arrived on the Galapagos Islands from Ecuador about 1 million years ago.
tal, agrees that hospitals should take on more responsibility for high readmission rates, but does not think it is entirely their fault. “At our core, hospitals that work in communities have a responsibility to care for patients in those communities, and we have a mission to take care of our community,” Balcezak said. “Whenever you measure things like mortality or readmission, you have to adjust for factors that are beyond the hospital’s or physicians’ control.” Balcezak said that Yale-New Haven, which has a higherthan-average readmission rate for congestive heart failure, has been trying to decrease the number of patients readmitted by giving discharged patients clearer instructions and advising patients to schedule an appointment with their primary care provider within a week of release. One of the factors that hospitals cannot control is the resources patients have to live healthy lives, Balcezak said. For example, the poor nutrition and health choices of poorer patients
F R O M T H E
LAB
Mechanism of hypertension identified A team of researchers at Yale may have finally found the answer for people who suffer from high blood pressure. The researchers who used a DNA sequencing technique known as “whole exome sequencing,” to analyze the makeup of every gene, found new information about two genes which were previously unsuspected of playing a role in blood pressure regulation. If either of the genes is mutated, the kidney cannot stop the reabsorption of salt, resulting in hypertension, or higher blood pressure.
Autism becomes more exclusive The American Psychiatric Association (APA), is looking into revising the definition and diagnoses of autism, and a Yale Professor is helping them do it. Fred Volkmar, director of the Yale Child Study Center, is helping narrow the criteria for being diagnosed with autism. The changes are expected to decrease the number of autism diagnoses in the United States. The revisions are being considered for the newest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
More volunteers needed for studies Yale is recruiting thousands of volunteers for clinical trials and experiments held at the Yale School of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health. Yale is using a variety of means for advertisement, such as brochures, flyers, radio spots and newspaper ads. The campaign, “Help Us Discover,” was launched to increase the number of volunteers in trials and to generate more excitement for research at Yale.
Cheaper textbooks on the way? Yale isn’t the only institution striving to expand higher education in the United States, or so it seems. On Jan. 19, Apple Inc. launched its “iBooks 2” software, after working on digital textbooks with publishers such as McGraw Hill and Pearson. The launch puts Apple products in the same neighborhood as Amazon and other device makers who are actively involved in distributing electronic textbooks.
Hope for dementia sufferers glimmers Patients suffering from dementia might have newfound hope. A study done by researchers at Yale found that some anti-depressants could trigger the development of cells in an area of the brain where cells have historically had stagnant growth. The study contradicted a study done by Carolyn Sterke at the Erasmus University Medical Center, which concluded that taking certain antidepressants could result in patients having an increased chance of falling.
Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .
—Mohammad Salhut WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Climate and demographic changes may increase the frequency of serious storms.
Studies contrast on hospital readmission BY MOHAMMAD SALHUT STAFF REPORTER
The impact of climate and demographic changes may make serious storms like Hurricane Katrina more frequent occurrences, according a recently published study. The economic damage from hurricanes may quadruple by the end of the century as populations, global wealth and the temperature of the earth increase, according to research conducted by professors from Yale and MIT. The study, published Jan. 15 in Nature Climate Change, also concludes that the United States is uniquely vulnerable to the forecasted cyclones. The study’s authors cautioned that more research should be done before implementing any specific policy changes to deal with the increased destructiveness of hurricanes. “This is the first real attempt to understand the influence of both demographic and climate change on hurricane damage,” said Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT and a coauthor of the study. Robert Mendelsohn GRD ’78, a co-author of the study and economics professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, added that unlike previous studies which separated economic and scientific analysis, this study established a new integration assessment model to best incorporate the scientific and economic data. Emanuel led a team of researchers to predict how climate change might impact hurricane activity between now and 2100. They planted potential storms called “seeds” in four established climate prediction models that measure meteorological data to forecast where hurricanes will develop. The computerized models enabled the researchers to track the development, intensity and landfall site for each of the storms. “A tropical storm is an engine that is based on the difference in temperature and humidity between the sea level and the upper atmosphere,” Mendelsohn said. “The sea is going to get warmer and the difference is going to get bigger.”
Mendelsohn’s team at Yale then used current data and demographic forecasts to calculate the economic damage of each hurricane. They also calculated the financial impact of forecasted hurricanes without climate change as a control group.
LEAKS
Neglecting science has its costs may contribute to the higherthan-average readmission rates. Gladys Block, a nutrition expert at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved with the study, attributed the higher readmission rates to poorer health — resulting from unhealthy eating — among people in lower income brackets. “Sometimes there is low vegetable intake and low micronutrient intake, and as a result of local corner stores charging much more for healthier food options such as fruits and vegetables — cheaper alternatives tend to be unhealthier,” she said. While Kaiser Health’s analysis did not take racial or ethnic status into account, a study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that many of the hospitals where there is a high volume of African-American patients are also more likely to have high readmission rates. Contact MOHAMMAD SALHUT at mohammad.salhut@yale.edu .
M
y first reaction to Michael Magdzik’s Jan. 17 editorial lamenting the science distributional requirement was one of anger. The poorly constructed piece hammers home the worst Ivy League stereotypes of entitlement and grade grubbing, making this proud ’07 Yalie cringe. Magdzik criticizes science classes for being full of grade-addicted pre-meds but then hypocritically admits that one of the major reasons nonscience majors like him avoid “real” science courses is the courses’ “potential for devastating a semester GPA.” Last I checked, hard work is an admirable quality and if you came to Yale expecting to rack up all A’s, then you came for the wrong reasons. Additionally, in complaining about the paucity of quality science classes for non-science majors, the author apparently neglected to use the OCI website — MCDB 105 already closely matches what he conceives as “Public Science.” So to say this editorial made me — and many others, judg-
ing by the comments — upset is an understatement. But upon further reflection, I felt profoundly sad. SAHELI a g d z i k ’s SADANAND M dismissiveness toward Technophile the value of sc i e n ce — h e w r i te s “the science credit often gets in the way of classes the student would find more interesting and derive more intellectual stimulation from” — is unfortunately representative of the attitude of many people at Yale and in the world generally. According to a 2009 Gallup poll, only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution. A significant minority do not believe in man-made climate change, more parents are choosing to skip essential childhood vaccinations, there are growing concerns about the necessity for antibiotics in livestock — I could go on and
on with scientific issues that every citizen should be aware of. The lack of scientific literacy is not confined to any particular demographic and some of the blame can and should be placed on scientists, who are often poor communicators. But if Yale students who aspire to be the future leaders of the world — and who always claim to be good citizens — cannot muster enthusiasm for science, something is wrong. I have always been befuddled by how high-achieving high school students with several AP/IB science classes under their belt enter Yale and suddenly develop a fear of all things science. The easy scapegoat is Yale’s science curriculum, but I can attest to the efforts Yale science faculty have made (both in my time as an undergraduate and now as a graduate student) to improve the offerings for non-science majors. As Magdzik himself notes, education requires some level of engagement. However, his article is far from engaged. He complains about how horrible science classes for non-sci-
ence majors are while refusing to actively participate — or to seek out more challenging and “intellectually stimulating” science courses. That’s called whining. Magdzik may have hoped that his editorial would provide a compelling argument to eliminate the science requirement, but in my view it achieves the exact opposite. The Yale science requirement should stay as is, for the sake of a balanced education. Scholarship encompasses more than English, history and political science classes — and for the record, I took and enjoyed classes in all three of those subject areas. If you are choosing your courses solely based on your future career then I respectfully suggest that you are missing out, limiting your education and undermining Yale’s aspiration to build “a company of scholars.” SAHELI SADANAND is a graduate student in the Department of Immunobiology and an Ezra Stiles College alumna. Contact her at saheli.sadanand@yale.edu .
PAGE 8
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” CHARLES DARWIN ENGLISH NATURALIST
SOM finds benefits of temptation BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER According to new research from the Yale School of Management, even health food stores should stock a few indulgences. The study, entitled “Self-Signaling and the Costs and Benefits of Temptation in Consumer Choice,” is the first to find empirical evidence that resisting temptation can provide psychological benefits. The study, which will appear in the February issue of the Journal of Marketing Research, demonstrated that subjects felt better acting virtuously when tempted by a vice than when no vice was present, and both of the study’s authors said the findings have important implications for product marketing. The researchers ran five trials, each examining how subjects’ satisfaction with the items that they did select changed with the items they did not select. In one setup, half of the subjects indicated whether they would be happier choosing a virtuous item like prunes when the prunes were surrounded by either a mix of prunes and tempting cookies — a vice — or just prunes. The other half of the subjects considered an opposite scenario, choosing between consuming cookies alone or cookies surrounded in part by prunes. In all five trials, subjects said it would be more satisfying to consume a virtue in the presence of a vice and to choose a vice without a virtuous option available. Because the physical effect of consuming an item does not change depending on the goods surrounding it, Klaus Wertenbroch, a co-author of the study and professor of marketing at INSEAD, said the study is evidence that the ability to resist temptation heightens overall satisfaction through the “self signal” of restraint. While the psychological theory of self-signaling — that individuals learn about their own characters from their decisions — has existed for more than a decade, Wertenbroch said this study is the first to provide empirical evidence for its existence.
I think it’s a very intuitive finding, yet one that people had not really predicted before. KLAUS WERTENBROCH Professor of marketing, INSEAD “We are showing, essentially, that giving in or resisting temptation has either costs or benefits that are of a psychological nature going beyond the utility that you might actually get from the product that you consume,” he said. “When you chose a vice in the presence of a virtue, you have to tell yourself that you fail to resist temptation, that you didn’t have enough willpower. That feels much worse than if you chose a vice when there is no virtue in the choice set.” Both Wertenbroch and co-author Ravi Dhar, a professor of management and marketing at the SOM, said that the ability of individuals to gain utility from resisting temptation has important implications for marketing goods to consumers. “We say by strategically putting some unhealthy food in a health food store,
Hurricane damage to surge BY JACQUELINE SAHLBERG STAFF REPORTER
EXAMPLE OF THE TRIAL COOKIES VERUS PRUNES
Imagine you often have an afternoon snack from a vending machine. On some occasions, you choose tasty, less healthy snacks, and on other occasions you choose less tasty but healthy snacks. Now consider the following two scenarios. Fe\ X]k\ieffe# k_\ dXZ_`e\ _Xj both healthy, less tasty snacks such as prunes and dried raisins and great tasting but less healthy snacks such as chocolate chip cookies and salted peanuts. You have some prunes. 8efk_\i X]k\ieffe# k_\ dXZ_`e\ has only less tasty, healthy snacks such as prunes and dried raisins. You have some prunes. On which occasion does choosing the prunes give you greater satisfaction? [___] When the snack machine offers both great tasting but less healthy snacks and healthy but less tasty snacks. [___] When the snack machine offers only healthy but less tasty snacks. [___] It makes no difference. you could actually make people feel better about themselves and charge higher prices,” Dhar said. Dhar added that the idea for the study arose from a comment that Wertenbroch made about how he felt better about not smoking on days when other people around him chose to — a form of a selfsignaling. For Wertenbroch, the appeal of the project comes from the fact that so many people experience the benefits of temptation self-selection. “What I like about the basic effect is that I have yet to come across someone who basically didn’t share the same intuition,” he said. “I think it’s a very intuitive finding, yet one that people had not really predicted before. [Ravi and I] were just throwing thoughts around and we hit upon this intuition of [prunes and cookies].” Nathan Novemsky, a professor of marketing at the SOM, said that the study raises the interesting question of whether individuals will put themselves in situations with temptations just to achieve the self-signaling benefits of rejected temptation. “When people are facing choices, do they want a choice set that includes a chocolate cake? Do they intuit this effect? Maybe I want to walk into that place that has chocolate cake knowing that I can reject it,” Novemsky said. One of the trials was conducted at both Payne Whitney Gymnasium and Yankee Doodle Coffee Shop, which was located at 258 Elm St. and closed in 2008.
CREATIVE COMMONS
Yale researchers have found evidence that a species of giant tortoise on the Galapagos Islands may not be extinct, as previously believed.
Galapagos tortoise back from extinction? BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER After finding the descendants of a species of giant tortoises believed extinct from the Galapagos Islands for 150 years, Yale researchers are hoping to save the species. In an expedition to Isabela Island led by Adalgisa Caccone GRD ’86, senior research scientist in ecology and evolutionary biology, the researchers found 84 tortoises whose genes show that one of their parents is a member of the supposedly extinct species, C. elephantopus. Published Jan. 9 in the journal “Current Biology,” the subsequent report stated that at least 38 purebred individuals of that species are still alive, and Caccone said she hopes to return to the Galapagos to find them. “We can bring back
a species from near extinction,” said Caccone. “If we can find these individuals in a larger expedition, we can return the species to its [original state] and reestablish the ecological equilibrium.” Thirty of the turtle descendants were younger than 15 years old, and since giant tortoises often live over 100 years, this data suggests some parents are still alive. Carefully breeding the hybrids may also allow scientists to revive the C. elephantopus species even if the purebreds cannot be found, Caccone added. The study claimed to be the first to rediscover a supposedly extinct species by analyzing the DNA of its offspring, though Caccone said in an interview with the News that her team simply applied standard
Contact DAN WEINER at daniel.weiner@yale.edu .
analytical techniques. “We had access to a large database that included the genetic fingerprints of [diverse giant tortoise] species, including extinct data,” Caccone said. “It was a huge effort, and a lot of undergraduates helped us with the project [to analyze all the samples].” The team accumulated blood samples from over 1,600 tortoises, around 20 percent of the total tortoise population on Isabela Island, and compared the DNA to a genetic database of tortoise species. They found close similarities to the extinct species, identifying 84 direct descendants. W h e n C h a rl e s Da rw i n explored the islands in 1835, he found fifteen species of giant tortoises. Since only eleven species remain in the Galapagos today, Caccone said it is important to halt this rapid extinction. The differentiation Darwin saw between similar species on different islands, such as finches, was crucial in the development of his theory of evolution. The giant tortoise is the only grazing herbivore native to the Galapagos, and plays an important ecological role, Caccone said, by helping to keep vegeta-
tive growth in check. On some islands where tortoise populations have dwindled, invasive plants and overgrowth have become a problem, she said. On Floreana, the “extinct” species’ native island, the ecosystem is out of equilibrium. Caccone speculated that the tortoise was likely transported to Isabela aboard a ship as food, and then left on the island. Meanwhile the population on Floreana was wiped out due to hunting by whalers, pirates and local workers during the 19th century. University of British Columbia biology Professor Michael Russello, who contributed to the study, said he looks forward to a future expedition to the Galapagos that will allow conservationists to establish a breeding program and restore the species to Floreana. “The return of tortoises to Floreana would [help] to restore the native flora and fauna of the island,” Russello said. George Amato GRD ’94, director of the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History, called the study “exciting” and “very significant.” He added that he is optimistic about the likelihood of finding the parents and hopeful about seeing the research translate into measurable conservation initiatives. Even if purebred members of C. elephantopus cannot be found, Russello and Amato said the 84 offspring found
may cumulatively have enough genetic variation to design a breeding program that would revive the species. Ths project could provide a case study of how to restore extinct species from their close descendants.
Success with this one species will give hope and a practical example for future conservation efforts. BRITTNEY KAJDACSI ’11 Lab assistant to Adalgisa Caccone GRD ’86
JACOB GEIGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A School of Medicine professor led a study disputing that socioeconomic factors affect hospitals’ readmission rates.
A Yale professor has rebutted a recent academic study finding that hospitals that treat more low-income patients tend to have higher readmission rates. Kaiser Health News published a cumulative analysis of 3,119 different hospitals in December 2011, using readmission for congestive heart failure, the most common cause of rehospitilization within 30 days for Medicare patients, as its metric. According to Medicare’s data and the analysis, 11.7 percent of the hospitals that treat the poorest patients had an above-average readmission rate, compared to 4.3 percent for other hospitals. Citing his own, contrasting study, Harlan Krumholz ’80, a Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, said he does not believe socioeconomic factors are causing hospitals to have higher readmission rates. Krumholz said that while his research supported the idea that hospitals with poorer patients
have slightly higher readmission rates, it differed from Kaiser Health’s analysis on the cause of the disparity. He led a study commissioned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a government agency, which found that the cause of higher readmission rates is misguided incentives for hospitals. He is the director of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, a national research center which focuses on assessing healthcare quality, evaluating decision-making and comparing effectiveness of different healthcare interventions. “We need to rethink the way in which we are providing health care, and we have to reassess that convinces us someone is ready to go home,” he said. “We have strong incentives to get people out of the hospital quickly, but we have to start making sure that the patients are ready to leave.” There is also reason to believe that socioeconomic status has nothing at all to do with hospital readmission rates, Krumholz said. He explained that readmissions rates are roughly identical across the income scale,
with patients from “entitled backgrounds” being as likely to end up returning to the hospital as patients from poorer backgrounds. Krumholz’s study found that the vast majority of hospitals with many poor patients had similar readmission rates as hospitals with fewer such patients did. Because of that, the study concluded that hospitals with a higher share of lower-income patients can perform at least as well on readmission measures, and the problem lay with the medical approach of certain hospitals. “It’s dangerous thinking, since you’re basically accepting that hospitals that care for those patients of a certain backgrounds are not going to do as well,” Krumholz said. Krumholz said the best approach is to rethink the entire health care system, and to change the focus of hospitals from doctors’ convenience to patients’ safety. Thomas Balcezak, vice president of performance management and associate chief of staff at Yale-New Haven Hospi-
We make living in a dangerous place on the coast much, much cheaper than a free market would assume is reasonable. KERRY EMANUEL Professor of atmospheric sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The results of the study indicate that while climate change will have little impact on small storms, large hurricanes may become more frequent and more intense. The model predicted that the hurricane landfalls in East Asia and along the North American coast will account for 88 percent of the forecasted damage. Both regions are characterized by dense population clusters in vulnerable coastal areas. The researchers determined that even without the anticipated climate change, the annual economic damages from hurricanes may more than double from $26 billion per year to $56 billion per year by 2100 as the global population increases to nine billion. With climate change, the researchers concluded that the damage may quadruple to $109 billion. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote in an email to the News that the paper serves as a “warning” to those who advocate for action against man-made climate change while ignoring social factors. He added that the study is “consistent” with the conclusions of his previous research: In a 2007 study Pielke concluded that climate stabilization policies, such as emissions reduction laws, have less potential to reduce future disaster losses than adaptive policies that could help to
limit our vulnerability to hurricanes. Emanuel also discussed the relationship between American policy and the forecasted damages, concluding that current policy encourages people to live in risky areas. “Through capped insurance premiums, through federal bailouts in the form of disaster relief, through the provision of cheap insurance that covers floods, we make living in a dangerous place on the coast much, much cheaper than a free market would assume is reasonable,” Emanuel said. “We have guaranteed through policy that we will have a long string of Katrinas going forward in the United States.” Since releasing the study, Emanuel has been criticized by a number of climate bloggers, including Steve Milloy, a commentator for Fox News and founder and publisher of junkscience.com, for failing to disclose a potential conflict of interest. Emanuel is a board member of the AlphaCat Fund, a subsidiary of the Bermuda-based Validus Managers Ltd. that invests in reinsurance transactions and catastrophe bonds. Emanuel called the allegation a “baseless charge” and said that “there is no conflict of interest” because the board has not discussed climate change. Milloy did not respond to a request for comment from the News. Both Mendelsohn and Emanuel acknowledge that the integration assessment model has room for improvement. For example, the current study does not account for the impact of rising sea levels or government adaptation policies. Mendelsohn stated that he plans to refine the model to study whether the United States’ policies make it more vulnerable to hurricane damage than other areas of the world. Hurricane Irene, which struck New Haven on Aug. 28, 2011, is estimated to have affected at least 55 million people and caused between $7 billion and $10 billion in damages in the United States, according to the New York Times. Contact JACQUELINE SAHLBERG at jacqueline.sahlberg@yale.edu .
“Success with this one species will give hope and a practical example for future conservation efforts, maintaining public interest in conservation that is essential for [receiving] funding and [influencing] political or community organizations,” said Brittney Kajdacsi ’11, a lab assistant to Caccone. The giant tortoise is among the largest reptiles and longestliving animals on Earth, thought to have arrived on the Galapagos Islands from Ecuador about 1 million years ago.
tal, agrees that hospitals should take on more responsibility for high readmission rates, but does not think it is entirely their fault. “At our core, hospitals that work in communities have a responsibility to care for patients in those communities, and we have a mission to take care of our community,” Balcezak said. “Whenever you measure things like mortality or readmission, you have to adjust for factors that are beyond the hospital’s or physicians’ control.” Balcezak said that Yale-New Haven, which has a higherthan-average readmission rate for congestive heart failure, has been trying to decrease the number of patients readmitted by giving discharged patients clearer instructions and advising patients to schedule an appointment with their primary care provider within a week of release. One of the factors that hospitals cannot control is the resources patients have to live healthy lives, Balcezak said. For example, the poor nutrition and health choices of poorer patients
F R O M T H E
LAB
Mechanism of hypertension identified A team of researchers at Yale may have finally found the answer for people who suffer from high blood pressure. The researchers who used a DNA sequencing technique known as “whole exome sequencing,” to analyze the makeup of every gene, found new information about two genes which were previously unsuspected of playing a role in blood pressure regulation. If either of the genes is mutated, the kidney cannot stop the reabsorption of salt, resulting in hypertension, or higher blood pressure.
Autism becomes more exclusive The American Psychiatric Association (APA), is looking into revising the definition and diagnoses of autism, and a Yale Professor is helping them do it. Fred Volkmar, director of the Yale Child Study Center, is helping narrow the criteria for being diagnosed with autism. The changes are expected to decrease the number of autism diagnoses in the United States. The revisions are being considered for the newest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
More volunteers needed for studies Yale is recruiting thousands of volunteers for clinical trials and experiments held at the Yale School of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health. Yale is using a variety of means for advertisement, such as brochures, flyers, radio spots and newspaper ads. The campaign, “Help Us Discover,” was launched to increase the number of volunteers in trials and to generate more excitement for research at Yale.
Cheaper textbooks on the way? Yale isn’t the only institution striving to expand higher education in the United States, or so it seems. On Jan. 19, Apple Inc. launched its “iBooks 2” software, after working on digital textbooks with publishers such as McGraw Hill and Pearson. The launch puts Apple products in the same neighborhood as Amazon and other device makers who are actively involved in distributing electronic textbooks.
Hope for dementia sufferers glimmers Patients suffering from dementia might have newfound hope. A study done by researchers at Yale found that some anti-depressants could trigger the development of cells in an area of the brain where cells have historically had stagnant growth. The study contradicted a study done by Carolyn Sterke at the Erasmus University Medical Center, which concluded that taking certain antidepressants could result in patients having an increased chance of falling.
Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .
—Mohammad Salhut WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Climate and demographic changes may increase the frequency of serious storms.
Studies contrast on hospital readmission BY MOHAMMAD SALHUT STAFF REPORTER
The impact of climate and demographic changes may make serious storms like Hurricane Katrina more frequent occurrences, according a recently published study. The economic damage from hurricanes may quadruple by the end of the century as populations, global wealth and the temperature of the earth increase, according to research conducted by professors from Yale and MIT. The study, published Jan. 15 in Nature Climate Change, also concludes that the United States is uniquely vulnerable to the forecasted cyclones. The study’s authors cautioned that more research should be done before implementing any specific policy changes to deal with the increased destructiveness of hurricanes. “This is the first real attempt to understand the influence of both demographic and climate change on hurricane damage,” said Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT and a coauthor of the study. Robert Mendelsohn GRD ’78, a co-author of the study and economics professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, added that unlike previous studies which separated economic and scientific analysis, this study established a new integration assessment model to best incorporate the scientific and economic data. Emanuel led a team of researchers to predict how climate change might impact hurricane activity between now and 2100. They planted potential storms called “seeds” in four established climate prediction models that measure meteorological data to forecast where hurricanes will develop. The computerized models enabled the researchers to track the development, intensity and landfall site for each of the storms. “A tropical storm is an engine that is based on the difference in temperature and humidity between the sea level and the upper atmosphere,” Mendelsohn said. “The sea is going to get warmer and the difference is going to get bigger.”
Mendelsohn’s team at Yale then used current data and demographic forecasts to calculate the economic damage of each hurricane. They also calculated the financial impact of forecasted hurricanes without climate change as a control group.
LEAKS
Neglecting science has its costs may contribute to the higherthan-average readmission rates. Gladys Block, a nutrition expert at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved with the study, attributed the higher readmission rates to poorer health — resulting from unhealthy eating — among people in lower income brackets. “Sometimes there is low vegetable intake and low micronutrient intake, and as a result of local corner stores charging much more for healthier food options such as fruits and vegetables — cheaper alternatives tend to be unhealthier,” she said. While Kaiser Health’s analysis did not take racial or ethnic status into account, a study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that many of the hospitals where there is a high volume of African-American patients are also more likely to have high readmission rates. Contact MOHAMMAD SALHUT at mohammad.salhut@yale.edu .
M
y first reaction to Michael Magdzik’s Jan. 17 editorial lamenting the science distributional requirement was one of anger. The poorly constructed piece hammers home the worst Ivy League stereotypes of entitlement and grade grubbing, making this proud ’07 Yalie cringe. Magdzik criticizes science classes for being full of grade-addicted pre-meds but then hypocritically admits that one of the major reasons nonscience majors like him avoid “real” science courses is the courses’ “potential for devastating a semester GPA.” Last I checked, hard work is an admirable quality and if you came to Yale expecting to rack up all A’s, then you came for the wrong reasons. Additionally, in complaining about the paucity of quality science classes for non-science majors, the author apparently neglected to use the OCI website — MCDB 105 already closely matches what he conceives as “Public Science.” So to say this editorial made me — and many others, judg-
ing by the comments — upset is an understatement. But upon further reflection, I felt profoundly sad. SAHELI a g d z i k ’s SADANAND M dismissiveness toward Technophile the value of sc i e n ce — h e w r i te s “the science credit often gets in the way of classes the student would find more interesting and derive more intellectual stimulation from” — is unfortunately representative of the attitude of many people at Yale and in the world generally. According to a 2009 Gallup poll, only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution. A significant minority do not believe in man-made climate change, more parents are choosing to skip essential childhood vaccinations, there are growing concerns about the necessity for antibiotics in livestock — I could go on and
on with scientific issues that every citizen should be aware of. The lack of scientific literacy is not confined to any particular demographic and some of the blame can and should be placed on scientists, who are often poor communicators. But if Yale students who aspire to be the future leaders of the world — and who always claim to be good citizens — cannot muster enthusiasm for science, something is wrong. I have always been befuddled by how high-achieving high school students with several AP/IB science classes under their belt enter Yale and suddenly develop a fear of all things science. The easy scapegoat is Yale’s science curriculum, but I can attest to the efforts Yale science faculty have made (both in my time as an undergraduate and now as a graduate student) to improve the offerings for non-science majors. As Magdzik himself notes, education requires some level of engagement. However, his article is far from engaged. He complains about how horrible science classes for non-sci-
ence majors are while refusing to actively participate — or to seek out more challenging and “intellectually stimulating” science courses. That’s called whining. Magdzik may have hoped that his editorial would provide a compelling argument to eliminate the science requirement, but in my view it achieves the exact opposite. The Yale science requirement should stay as is, for the sake of a balanced education. Scholarship encompasses more than English, history and political science classes — and for the record, I took and enjoyed classes in all three of those subject areas. If you are choosing your courses solely based on your future career then I respectfully suggest that you are missing out, limiting your education and undermining Yale’s aspiration to build “a company of scholars.” SAHELI SADANAND is a graduate student in the Department of Immunobiology and an Ezra Stiles College alumna. Contact her at saheli.sadanand@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
NATION
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Romney looks to hit back at Gingrich in Florida BY STEVE PEOPLES ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHARLES DHARAPAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney talks to reporters in Tampa, Fla.
TAMPA, Fla. — Rocked in South Carolina over the weekend, an increasingly aggressive Mitt Romney looked to take the fight to Newt Gingrich in debate Monday night as the combative Republican presidential contest shifted farther south to Florida. The fireworks began before they walked onto the debate stage. Romney began running an ad that said Gingrich “cashed in” with home-loan giant Freddie Mac while Floridians were being crushed in the housing crisis. Gingrich mocked Romney as someone campaigning on openness “who has released none of his business records.” Gingrich, the former House speaker, has suddenly seized the nomination momentum, following weak finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire with the solid victory over Romney Saturday in South Carolina. And recent Florida polls suggest he may have erased Romney’s lead here. While the fight has largely become a two-man contest, they will share the stage with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron
Paul. The GOP rivals were clashing at the University of Southern Florida Monday night and will meet again Thursday night in the run-up to the Florida primary on Tuesday, Jan. 31. The winner of the nomination will face Democratic President Barack Obama in November.
While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in. TELEVISION AD Romney for President, Inc. Before the Tampa debate started, Romney went after Gingrich in person and on the Florida airwaves. At a campaign stop, Romney likened Gingrich to a pinball machine and suggested the former House speaker engaged in “potentially wrongful activity” in his consulting work over the past decade. Romney then released his first negative ad of the campaign.
“While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in,” the TV ad says, noting that the former speaker made more than $1.6 million working for Freddie Mac. “Gingrich resigned from Congress in disgrace and then cashed in as a D.C. insider.” Gingrich never registered as a lobbyist, but said he was a consultant for Freddie Mac, the federally backed mortgage company that played a significant role in the housing crisis. It remains to be seen if Romney can effectively use his newly aggressive stance on the debate stage, a forum in which Gingrich has excelled so far. Underfunded and overmatched by Romney’s massive ground game across the country, Gingrich has relied upon strong debate performances to build support. It appears Romney has brought in outside help to improve his debate technique. Veteran debate coach Brett O’Donnell was spotted at a Romney campaign stop on Monday. He previously advised President George W. Bush and GOP nominee John McCain and was a senior adviser and speech writer for Michele Bachmann’s abbreviated campaign.
Obama to address anxiety in State of the Union address BY BEN FELLER ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Eager to command center stage in a year dominated by Republican infighting, President Barack Obama is polishing a State of the Union address that will go to the heart of Americans’ economic anxiety and try to sway voters to give him four more years. He will speak Tuesday to a nation worried about daily struggles and unhappy with his handling of the economy. Obama’s 9 p.m. EST address before a politically divided Congress will be built around ideas meant to appeal to a squeezed middle class. He is expected to urge higher taxes on the wealthy, propose ways to make college more affordable, offer new steps to tackle a debilitating housing crisis and try to help U.S. manufacturers expand hiring. Designed as a way for a president to update the nation and recommend ideas to Congress, the State of the Union address has become more than that, especially
during that one window when the address falls during the re-election year of an incumbent. It is televised theater — and Obama’s biggest, best chance so far to offer a vision for a second term. He will frame the campaign to come as a fight for fairness for those who are struggling to keep a job, a home or college savings and losing faith in how the county works. The speech will be principally about the economy, featuring the themes of manufacturing, clean energy, education and American values. No matter whom Obama faces in November, the election is likely to be driven by the economy, and determined by which candidate wins voters’ trust on how to fix it. More people than not disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy. The overarching political goal is to give voters a contrast between his vision of a government that tries to level the playing field and those office-seekers who, in his view, would leave people on their
own. Without naming them, Obama has in his sights those after his job, including Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
[Obama] wants to turn America into a Europeanstyle entitlement society. MITT ROMNEY Republican presidential candidate The presidential campaign sets an unmistakable context for the speech, right down to the nation’s income gap between haves and have-nots. Obama will speak on a few hours after Romney, a former governor and businessman whose wealth is the hundreds of millions of dollars, will release tax records for 2010 and 2011. The lines of argument between Obama and his rivals are already stark, with America’s economic insecurity and the role of government at the center.
The president has offered signals about his speech, telling campaign supporters he wants an economy “that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.” Gingrich, on the other hand, calls Obama “the most effective food stamp president in history.” Romney says Obama “wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society.” Obama’s tone will be highly scrutinized given that his address falls smack in the middle of a fierce and frenzied Republican presidential nomination process. He will make bipartisan overtures to lawmakers but will leave little doubt he will act without opponents when it’s necessary and possible, an approach his aides say has let him stay on offense. The public is more concerned about domestic troubles over foreign policy than at other any time in the past 15 years, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Some 81 percent want Obama to focus his speech on domestic affairs, not foreign ones; just five years ago, the view was
evenly split. On the day before Obama’s speech, his campaign released a short Web ad showing monthly job losses during the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration, with positive job growth for nearly two Obama years. Republicans assail him as failing to achieve a lot more. House Speaker John Boehner, responding to reports of Obama’s speech themes, said it was a rehash of unhelpful policies. “It’s pathetic,” he said. Obama will offer economic proposals for this year, despite long odds against getting the help he would need from Republicans. Presidential spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that Obama is not conceding the next 10 months to “campaigning alone” when people need economic help. On the goals of helping people get a fair shot, Carney said: “There’s ample room within those boundaries for bipartisan cooperation and for getting this done.” For three days following his
speech, Obama will promote his ideas in five states key to his re-election bid: Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan. He speaks on Friday about college affordability at the University of Michigan. Meanwhile, the Republican race is suddenly a race again, given Gingrich’s resounding win in the South Carolina primary over the weekend. Romney, who appeared the strong front-runner coming into that primary, is now focusing on Gingrich more than Obama as the GOP contest unfolds in Florida. Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview with radio host Ryan Seacrest, said Monday there is no ideological difference between any of the Republicans seeking to challenge Obama. He said the campaign will offer the clearest choice in which direction to take the country since the era of the Great Depression. Polling shows Americans are divided about Obama’s overall job approval but unsatisfied with his handling of the economy.
Ground zero building struggles to find tenants BY CHRIS HAWLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — An 80-story skyscraper under construction at ground zero will have to stop at seven stories unless the developer can line up more tenants, planners said Monday, adding to problems that have plagued the $11.7 billion World Trade Center project. Silverstein Properties Inc. said it is still looking for tenants to fill the first 10 floors of Three World Trade Center, the third-highest building in the planned office complex. Without those leases, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will not guarantee the financing that Silverstein needs to finish the building. Construction would end at the socalled “podium” level on the seventh floor, with the option of building up later on, and the floors below would be filled mainly with retail stores. Many companies in New York are reluctant to invest in new offices because of the poor economy, and dozens are negotiating lower rents as five-year leases signed before the housing crash begin to expire. But both Silverstein and the Port Authority said they are confident the developer can get enough tenants lined up. “We are currently speaking with a number of potential tenants and remain fully optimistic that we will sign a lease in time to complete the tower as scheduled in 2015,” Larry Silverstein, the company’s chief executive, said in a written statement. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he would be disappointed if Three World Trade did not go higher, but that the city would not extend any
aid to keep it going. The most important part of the project, he said, is laying the infrastructure for future construction. “If you did that and you couldn’t keep building up, I think that’s a shame,” Bloomberg told reporters. “But there are things that should depend on the marketplace and investors. That should be up to them.” The 10-story “pre-lease” requirement is included in a 2010 agreement between Silverstein and the Port Authority. The difficulty in finding tenants comes amid other problems that have dogged the project. Work on a museum at ground zero has stopped because of a dispute between the Port Authority and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum over who should pay for infrastructure costs. The Port Authority says the foundation owes it $300 million, while the foundation says the price tag should be closer to $140 million. Planners had hoped to open the museum on the 11th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, but Bloomberg has said that’s no longer possible. Work has also slowed on One World Trade Center, the spire formerly known as the Freedom Tower. Workers had been averaging a floor a week in mid-2011, but photographs have shown little growth in recent months. The Port Authority’s executive director, Patrick Foye, blamed rainy weather and high winds at the top of the building, which is now 90 stories high. He spoke to reporters following a panel discussion on infrastructure at Fordham University. The authority also says it is having trouble finding space for the trail-
ers that move upward with the workers. As the tower narrows, there is less space on each floor, and transferring the trailers upward takes more time. DCM Erectors, the New Yorkbased company that is laying the steel, has also had financial problems, Foye confirmed Monday. He said the authority has had to step in and pay some of the company’s bills. Steel deliveries have continued, he said. “They have made arrangements with their financing sources,” Foye said. “The thing that’s important to us is they continue to fabricate steel and deliver it, and we continue to install it.” DCM did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. Foye said that One World Trade Center is 60 percent leased and that the authority is still aiming for a completion date in the fourth quarter of 2013. The Port Authority is also fighting a lawsuit filed by AAA, the motorists’ club, over its decision to raise bridge and tunnel tolls in September. The Port Authority said it needed the extra revenue to improve its creditworthiness, allowing it to borrow money more cheaply for projects like the World Trade Center. After the toll hike, the governors of New York and New Jersey ordered a review of the Port Authority’s finances. The Port Authority plans to release the first results of that review before the end of the month, Foye said. “It’s going to be a foundation and a platform for reform of the Port Authority and growth going forward,” Foye said. He would not elaborate.
MARK LENNIHAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
One World Trade Center, centerright, glows in the lower Manhattan skyline,
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 11
AROUND THE IVIES
The longest phone call in history? According to the Internet, Sunil Prabhakar of India talked on the phone for 51 hours in 2009, breaking the 40-hour record set by Tony Wright of the United Kingdom in 2007.
T H E C O R N E L L D A I LY S U N
T H E H A R VA R D C R I M S O N
Mayor to investigate Ithaca cop
Students dial in longest phone call ever
BY QUINTIN SCHWAB STAFF WRITER Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 announced Friday that he will personally look into the investigation of Marlon Byrd, a lieutenant in the Ithaca Police Department who faces allegations that he had assisted drug dealers. The accusations arose during the arbitration of another IPD officer in 2010 and 2011. Deviating from the stance of former Mayor Carolyn Peterson, who left the investigation of Byrd to the IPD, Myrick emphasized the need for the Mayor’s office to oversee the investigation. “These are very serious allegations,” Myrick said in a statement released on Jan. 13, almost two weeks after he took office. “I welcome further investigation by the District Attorney’s office.” During the arbitration of IPD officer Chris Miller, several witnesses testified under oath that Byrd, a veteran of IPD for 20 years, gave local narcotics dealers information about pending drug investigations — including the times and locations of drug raids — and held substances for them, according to documents originally obtained by The Ithaca Journal. Police reviewed the same claims in 2008 and cleared Byrd of any wrongdoing, but allegations reemerged during the recent arbitration. Convicted local drug-trafficking suspects, including Debria “Ney-Ney” Beverly, who said she dated Byrd for four years, testified that Byrd assisted them in eluding police. One time, Beverly said, Byrd warned her that police were about to raid a Titus Street resi-
dence where she was staying, thus allowing her to flee to Philadelphia, according to the docuCORNELL ments. Beve rly sa i d that Byrd met her on multiple occasions in his police vehicle to hold drugs for her during the day before returning them to her at night. Beverly said that she is confident that the assistance she received from Byrd and another unidentified officer, “Mo,” allowed her to deal drugs for years without consequences, according to court documents. At last July’s arbitration hearing, Officer Bob Brotherton testified that suspicions about Byrd hampered IPD’s efforts during drug cases. He said superiors started to “wait until the the last minute” before informing officers about warrants and investigations, the documents state. Byrd said he was unaware of the allegations until last July, about three years after several officers claimed they first notified their supervisors of their suspicions. IPD Chief Ed Vallely said he is “confident that Lt. Byrd’s name will once again be cleared,” according to The Journal. Myrick said he hopes to maintain a positive relationship with IPD throughout the investigation. “We must get the facts straight,” he said. “And we must stand by those members of our police department who loyally serve the city. I fully intend to do both.”
BY ALYZA SEBENIUS STAFF WRITER Eric R. Brewster ’14 and Avery A. Leonard ’14 fought off drooping eyelids and the urge to sleep last week as they held a phone conversation that lasted for 46 hours, 12 minutes, 52 seconds, and 228 milliseconds—potentially setting a new world record. The performance art installation was the premiere creation of the Harvard Generalist, a new student arts cooperative. Stage Manager Ginny C. Fahs ’14 said that the performance was much like an athletic competition because it required extreme endurance from Leonard and Brewster. “This explored deterioration—physical, mental, and emotional,” Fahs said. “Because of that deterioration, the balance between art and sport was explored.” Brewster and Leonard had to follow a strict set of rules outlined by the Guinness Book of World Records. Brewster and Leonard were allowed five minutes of break for every hour spent on the phone. In addition, Speakers could not use prompts or lists of talking points in an effort to keep conversation “natural,” and were not allowed to remain silent for more than ten seconds. The conversation has yet to be officially declared a new world record, however. In the coming weeks Guinness will review the two-day conversation, which was filmed in its entirety, to verify that the performers abided by Guinness’s regulations. At least two “stewards”—other members of the Generalist—kept watch over the performers at all times, ensuring that they stayed awake and were coherent. Two official timekeepers were also present to monitor the call’s length. “For the first eight hours I was here, they were very excited and had original topics,” timekeeper Christian M. Trippe said. “Now you can see their fatigue, and they’re ready to sleep. You could see them rambling as time progressed.”
JENNIFER ZHU/THE HARVARD CRIMSON
Two Harvard students conducted what may have been the longest-ever phone conversation as part of an art project. The phone call took place in two separate spaces: the Adams Pool Theater and a small room off of the theater which featured a bed of pillows. HARVARD The “pillow room” was intended as a stark contrast to the bareness of the Adams Pool Theatre. The room was inspired by “the theme of threats and the question of what would be a threat,” Fahs said. Generalist members said the temptation to sleep and to read aloud in lieu of genuine conversation posed the biggest threats to the performers. Therefore,
the room was filled with pillows, books, and blankets. The Generalist encouraged spectator participation. Audience members engaged in activities such as decorating the space, braiding Leonard’s hair, massaging Brewster’s feet, and playing Bananagrams and poker with Brewster and Leonard. “What we wanted was to focus on was having the audience interact with them to hopefully, verbally and physically, inspire new topics,” said Mariel N. Pettee ’14, the director and set designer. “These two people weren’t allowed to read words so the audience was the liaison to the body of knowledge they didn’t have access to.”
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Housing battle on historic site drags on BY EMILY TSENG STAFF WRITER The battle over the Institute for Advanced Study’s plans to build housing on land immediately adjacent to the Princeton Battlefield is reaching fever pitch. Armed with a housing plan fully compliant with zoning requirements and environmental standards, the Institute went to the Princeton Regional Planning Board on Dec. 1 seeking approval for the project. After four hours of testimonies, cross-examination of expert witnesses, presentations and public comment, the board agreed to extend discussion to a Dec. 8 session. When the clock ran out on that session, too, before all witnesses had been called, the Board agreed to extend the discussion again to another public hearing on Jan. 26. The Institute has been trying for nearly a decade to build additional faculty housing on a 7.3-acre lot situated directly between the Institute’s main campus and the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The Institute’s first proposal before the board in 2003 was rejected because of a disagreement over the size of a buffer zone between the park and the houses. The buffer zone has since been enlarged, but concerns over zoning ordinances, environmental protection and historical preservation have stalled the project. Much of the discussion has centered on the historical consequences of building on top of land that may have been critical to the Battle of Princeton, a bat-
tle that, along with the earlier Battle of Trenton, many h i s to r i PRINCETON ans agree was a turning point in the Revolutionary War. Historians and preservationists led most vocally by the Princeton Battlefield Area Preservation Society have been working to make a case against construction. Some experts contend that the Institute’s proposed lot was the site of then-Gen. George Washington’s crucial counterattack. A 2009 report commissioned by the Society and conducted by John Milner Associates, an independent historical preservation firm, analyzed soldier’s diaries and topographical maps in conjunction with earlier archaeological digs. Robert Selig, a historian who worked on the Milner Report, spoke with the ‘Prince’ in October 2010. “We now have a very good idea of where [the counterattack] was,” he said at the time. “It goes across the property where the Institute wants to build dormitories.” The Institute, however, disagrees with the findings of the Milner Report. Mark Peterson, a history professor at UC Berkeley, analyzed the report on behalf of the Institute and found that it misrepresented the location of Saw Mill Road, the line Washington’s troops followed on their counterattack. He presented his findings at the Dec. 8 meeting. The debate attracted the
attention of James McPherson, a Civil War historian and history professor emeritus, and David Hackett Fischer ’57, a Revolutionary War specialist and a current professor at Brandeis. Fischer won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 2005 for “Washington’s Crossing,” a book on Washington’s winter 1776 campaign, a campaign that included the battles at Trenton and Princeton.
It is now pretty much universally held that the way one commemorates a battle is to preserve the battlefield land, not just up a monument. JERRY HURWITZ President, Princeton Battlefield Area Preservation Society McPherson says that the right flank of the American counterattack “probably took place, to the best we can determine from contemporary maps and archaeological evidence,” on the Institute’s proposed site. He estimates the Institute’s lot is one-eighth of the area where the climax of the counterattack occurred. McPherson and Fischer worked with the Institute over the last year and a half on a compromise plan that McPherson presented at the Dec. 8 hearing. Under the compromise, the Institute would set up a screen of trees on the immedi-
ate west side of the housing and allow public access to the land between the housing and the park under a permanent conservation easement that would preserve 14 acres in perpetuity. McPherson’s plan also advocates that the Institute put up a walking path with interpretive signage, in effect adding those 14 acres to the Battlefield Park. “In the end, while we were not entirely happy with the decision to go ahead and build, we signed off on the compromise because of what appeared to us to be a willingness to compromise as far as they could consistent with their needs,” McPherson said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “In a perfect world, we would’ve liked to preserve almost all of the land, but this was the best deal we could get, and we thought it was a pretty good deal,” he added. For some, though, memorializing the battle with a monument or marked pathway is not enough. “It is now pretty much universally held that the way one commemorates a battle is to preserve the battlefield land, not just put up a monument,” said Jerry Hurwitz, president of the Princeton Battlefield Area Preservation Society. “The idea is to be able to walk the battlefield and see the way things happened, to really be there in the moment. You can’t do that when you put up housing and root up tons of dirt to level the land.” Hurwitz says the extended process has hurt his organization’s case. The Society has two experts with “intimate knowledge of the situa-
tion at the battlefield,” Hurwitz says, but because of confidentiality agreements, neither can be called to testify without a Board-issued subpoena that has yet to be issued. Some of the Society’s key witnesses had also expected to speak at the Dec. 1 hearing and scheduled flights accordingly. When time ran out on Dec. 1 and the Board decided to extend, these witnesses had not yet spoken and were unavailable for the next hearing. Still, Hurwitz remains confident that the Board will block the Institute’s plan. “I don’t think the Institute is going to be able to build where they want to build,” he said. “Of course we are motivated by historical concerns, but we’re going to show evidence that it doesn’t conform to zoning standards either. It’s not a great site to begin with.” “We believe the Institute has other alternatives, for example the Einstein Circle,” Hurwitz said. “It’s ironic — they say they can’t build there because it’s part of their historic district.” While the Institute has worked to preserve battlefield land in the past, it does not believe historical factors are “strictly relevant to the current application in front of the Board,” IAS spokeswoman Christine Ferrara said in an email. “The Institute has done its best to look after its own needs and objectives while still respecting the historical record,” IAS director Peter Goddard told the ‘Prince’ in November. “But you can’t reverse history and reconstitute every blade of grass on which somebody might have fought.”
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SPORTS
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS DANICA PATRICK Danica Patrick announced yesterday that she would not compete in the 2012 edition of the Indy 500. Instead, she said she will race in the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in Concord, N.C.
Gymnasts excel
Elis finish third
BRIANNE BOWEN/ PHOTOGRAPHRY EDITOR
Captain Matthew Bieszard ’12 won both the 200-meter dash and the 500-meter. BY JORDAN KONELL STAFF REPORTER
JENNIFER CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Elis earned the highest scores on the floor routines last weekend. Four out of five scoring routines earned above a 9.6. GYMNASTICS FROM PAGE 14 off with a bobble-free routine that earned her a score of 9.55, good enough for fifth place in the event. Li and Traina followed later with first and third place finishes. Li scored 9.7, while Traina earned a 9.65. Although the team was not completely satisfied with its performance on these first two events, the Elis excelled on the floor exercise. Four of the six competitive routines earned over a 9.6. Feld took first with a score of 9.775, while Stephanie Goldstein ’13 came in close behind with a second place score of 9.75. Li and Nicole Tay ’14 took fourth and sixth with scores of 9.7 and 9.65 respectively. On vault, the Elis were not advanced or ambitious enough to compete routines that would score high if executed successfully. As a result, the Bulldogs did not earn any places in the top three spots. But Traina placed fourth with a score of 9.525.
Li and Traina had an impressive one-two finish in the all-around competition. “Joyce’s face was sheer shock when they called her out [as the all-around champion]” Tonry said.
Joyce’s face was sheer shock when they called her out [as the all-around champion]. BARBARA TONRY Head coach, gymnastics Li scored a 38.05 to beat out her teammate Traina, who scored a 37.8. Traina said she did not find out she was competing in the all-around until a few days before the meet, but added that she was excited about the result. Katherine Lucas ’15, who is out with a shoulder injury but attended
the meet, said she was enthusiastic to see her teammates continue to improve in the future. “The most important thing is helping the team win,” she said. “But first and second as freshmen is totally awesome. I’m so proud of them, and even with some mess-ups, imagine what they could do if they hit [their routines] perfectly.” The team is preparing to tackle its next challenger, reigning Ivy League Champions Penn. While Penn has about 20 healthy gymnasts, Yale only has 12, Tonry said. But she added that even with that disadvantage, she thinks her team has a good chance to win. “We know that we have to hit [the routines],” Tonry said. “Penn’s not going to give us anything.” The Bulldogs will take on Penn this Saturday at home at 1 p.m. Contact MONICA DISARE at monica.disare@yale.edu .
W. hockey drops two
After showing promise against nonIvy competitors at the Yale Invitational last Saturday, both the men’s and women’s track and field teams came up short against Ivy opponents this week. Both teams ended Saturday’s meet against Columbia and Dartmouth in Hanover in third and last place. The men’s team scored 46 points, shy of Dartmouth’s 62 and Columbia’s 60. The women’s team scored 41 points and captured 8 second place finishes, but the team could not manage to take any of the events. The team’s performance was highlighted by Captain Matthew Bieszard ’12, who won both the 200 and 500meter dash. Mike Levine ’13 took first place in the weight throw for the first time this season. Levine’s performance qualified him for the ECAC DI Indoor Track and Field Championships in early March. “Personally, I did what I had to. But at a scored meet like this, wins are more important than [personal records],” Levine said. “Our team did not perform as well as we could have. I feel like we have a much better team than what we showed this weekend.” Dana Lindberg ’14 also was successful at Saturday’s meet. Lindberg placed second behind Bieszard in the 200meter dash and won the long jump. He was also part of Yale’s fourth place 4 by 400 meter relay team, along with Maria Kranjac ’15 and William Rowe ’15. In long-distance runs, the Bulldogs competed favorably against the Big Green and against the Lions, a team ranked 22nd in the nation earlier in the season. Timothy Hillas ’13 and Julian Sheinbaum ’12 took second and fourth respectively in the mile run. Sam Kirtner ’13 was bested by three Columbia runners, but his fourth place finish in the 3000-meter run at 8:29.47, his personal record, was good enough to land him a spot in the Track and Field Championships along with Levine. Middle distance runner Chris Ramsey ’12 finished third in the 800meter run, but he echoed Levine’s sentiments that the team effort could have improved. “I think we were disappointed with
the team results of the meet,” Ramsey said. “Our coaches challenged us to bring more intensity and energy to our competitions, and if we can do that I’m confident we’ll have better results.” The women’s team also ended Saturday’s meet in a disappointing third place. Alexa Monti ’12, who finished second in the 200-meter dash, said she and the Elis will use this meet as a learning experience and a motivator for meets to come.
Our team did not perform as well as we could have. I feel like we have a much better team thatn we showed this weekend. MIKE LEVIN ’13 Men’s track and field Elle Brunsdale ’15, who competed in the long jump, was the first Bulldog to claim second on Saturday. She also placed third in the triple jump. Amanda Snajder ’14 was the only Eli to compete in the high jump and placed second. Emily Urciuoli ’14 added to the collection of silver medals when she took second in the pole vault and she tied her season best of 3.60 meters. “Dartmouth and Columbia had a few standout girls, but overall, we had the ability to keep up with them,” Urciuoli said. “While I am glad to be more consistent with my heights, I know there is a lot of room for improvement. As the season progresses, and more competitive events arise, I think I can fix my mistakes and be a more effective point scorer.” She added that in the coming weeks, injured runners such as Nihal Kayali ’13 and Melissa Chapman ’14 are planning to rejoin the team. Both the men’s and women’s team will travel to Boston University on Saturday for the Terrier Invitational. Contact JORDAN KONELL at jordan.konell@yale.edu .
W. tennis returns TENNIS FROM PAGE 14 BRIAN CHANG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Bulldogs had a 1-0 lead going into the second period against RPI, but fell behind after RPI scored 4 goals in 15 minutes. HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14 knew that we needed to play desperate hockey, and we did at times, but it’s tough when the bounces don’t go your way at either end of the ice.” Forward Paige Decker ’14 agreed, adding that she thought the Bulldogs were the better team on Saturday against Union and should have won that game. The Bulldogs made a season-high 34 shots on goal, and for the first time this season outshot their opponent, 34-24. But in an ironic twist of fate, senior Union goalie Kate Gallagher stopped all of Yale’s shots in her first shutout of the year. Yale played a strong defensive game, as Union was unable to take a shot until 11 minutes into the first period. By then the Bulldogs had already racked up nine. Head coach Joakim Flygh said that the Bulldogs carried the play for long stretches in Saturday’s game — an improvement for the team which is usually outshot by large margins. The Dutchwomen scored their two
goals early in the second period and halfway through the third period. “It just didn’t go our way,” Decker said in an email to the News. “They capitalized on their opportunities, and we weren’t able too.” Decker added that she felt the Bulldogs played well in the first and third periods of Friday’s game against RPI, but that they suffered a “really rough” second period. And that’s no exaggeration on her part. Up 1-0 at the beginning of the second period, the Bulldogs fell behind 4–1 within 15-minutes during which RPI scored all of its goals. The last RPI goal came just three seconds before the end of the second period. Raines’s third period power play goal could not pull the Elis out of their second period grave, nor could the five-on–three man advantage that Yale held for over a minute early in the final period. Yale was outshot 44–20 overall, with Ladiges making 40 saves. “Throughout the season our second period has been our weakest period of the three, so we defi-
nitely need to focus on playing to our potential for a full 60 minutes for the remainder of the season,” Decker said. Yale, Union, and RPI were ranked 12th, 11th and 10th respectively in the 12-team conference going into the weekend. But with one more win under its belt, RPI has jumped up to ninth place — one point out of the eighth and final playoff spot in the ECAC. “Overall nobody was happy with how the games turned out this weekend,” Decker said. “We are still trying to stay positive and enjoy the time we have left of the season. I’m hopeful we can get a win against Brown on Tuesday, and we definitely have the potential to win some more games in the coming weeks.” The Bulldogs will take on Brown Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in an away conference game. Contact LINDSEY UNIAT at lindsey.uniat@yale.edu .
unranked Auburn and singles against No. 22 Tulsa. Despite completing only four practices before the weekend, the team tied Tulsa, 3-3, in singles on Sunday. Although the Bulldogs gave three matches away, Annie Sullivan ’14, Hanna Yu ’15 and Sarah Guzick ’13 played effectively to even out the score. In the doubles matches against Auburn, the Bulldogs secured two wins and conceded two defeats. Vicky Brook ’12 and Hanna Yu ’15 kicked off the first match and lost 8-2, and Sullivan and Amber Li ’15 failed to turn the tide with a 7-2 (8-7 tiebreaker) loss. However, the Bulldogs rebounded with two consecutive wins in the third and fourth matches. Stephanie Kent ’12 and Elizabeth Epstein ’13 took out their respective opponents with a score of 8-2, and the duo of Guzick and Blair Seideman ’14 closed the match with an impressive 8-1 run. (Seideman is a staff photographer for the News.) “Auburn was definitely a strong team and has very talented doubles,” Brook said. “It was a tough match.” Danielle McNamara, head coach of women’s tennis, said she was satisfied with the results given the fact that it was the first match weekend of the season. She added that the Invitational demonstrated the team’s potential for
the upcoming schedule. The team will now travel to Ann Arbor, Mich. to take on Notre Dame for the season’s ITA kick-off. Brook said next week’s match will be extremely important for the team since it could gauge how it might fare in the ITA rankings. As the team plans a more intense practice schedule, Brook added that the upcoming ITA competition will be the perfect chance to see where the team stands on the national level. McNamara said she has her mind set on achieving two goals for this season: strengthening her players’ mentality and improving in the doubles. “From this spring season, we want to make sure that we focus on the mentality of the players,” McNamara said. “The mental part of the game is very crucial to the players, so we want to focus on the minds of each player. Moreover, since we have demonstrated some strength in the singles, we want to especially focus on the doubles, which turns out to be a bit weaker compared to the singles.” The Bulldogs will take on Notre Dame on Jan. 28. Depending on the outcome, the team will either face Michigan or Maryland as part of the ITA kickoff tournament. Contact EUGENE JUNG at eugene.jung@yale.edu .
IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES
NBA Philadelphia 103 Washington 83
SOCCER Man. U. 2 Arsenal 1
NHL Toronto 3 N.Y. Islanders 0
SPORTS QUICK HITS
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 fourth time this season yesterday. She had 13 points in last weekend’s game against Brown. Halejian has shot in the double figures six games this season.
y
JOE PATERNO BROWN MOURNS COACH’S DEATH The legendary Penn State football coach, who died Sunday morning, played quarterback and defensive back for the Bears. The school’s career interception record still belongs to Paterno, who graduated in 1950 and whose first coaching job was as at his alma mater.
NCAA BB Syracuse 60 Cincinnati 53
M. BBALL Brown 67 Bryant 60
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“It was a great start, and I believe the team has the potential to do well this season. DANIELLE MCNAMARA HEAD COACH, W. TENNIS YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
Elis sweep season opener BY MONICA DISARE STAFF REPORTER Yale gymnastics started its season with a sweep of three teams at Springfield College last Saturday.
GYMNASTICS The Bulldogs finished with a sore of 189.475 to beat Southern Connecticut State University (188.825), Brockport (186.475) and Springfield College (184.55). The team’s score bested last season’s high by more than two points. Freshmen Joyce Li ’15 and Morgan Traina ’15 provided hope that the season opener might be a sign of things to come for the Elis when they finished first and second in the all-around with scores of 38.05 and 37.8 respectively. “It was a good start, getting the first one under your belt.” head coach Barbara Tonry said. The team started off on bars, an event in which teammates said they are much improved from last year. Both scoring 9.775 out of 10, Lindsay Andsager ’13 and Morgan Traina ’15 tied for second in the uneven bars. Despite this success, the event was not without its share of mistakes. Of the top five Yale competitors for bars, two fell during their routines, Traina said. Tara Feld ’13, who competed all four events, said the sweep on the bars helped the team start off on the “right foot.” When the gymnasts finished on bars, the team moved to beam, an event which caused several mishaps for the Bulldogs. After watching her team swallow two more falls into its overall score, Tonry said the team will need to train harder on beam in the future. But even beam was not without its bright spots Tonry added. Feld started the team SEE GYMNASTICS PAGE 13
JENNIFER CHEUNG/STFAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The gymnastics team beat Southern Connecticut State University, Brockport and Sprinfgfield College to claim first in its season opener at Springfield on Saturday.
No second win for Elis
Opener brings mixed results
JENNIFER CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The women’s hockey team had a season-high 34 shots on goal against Union but could not clinch the victory. BY LINDSEY UNIAT STAFF REPORTER Even the return of the Bulldogs’ highest-scoring forward, Jackie Raines ’14 — back on the ice after missing two games due to a concussion — could not bring salvation from bad luck and bitter defeat to the women’s hockey team this weekend.
W. HOCKEY Raines, who has scored a
total of seven goals this season, scored both of Yale’s two goals this weekend. But that was not enough to earn a win for the Bulldogs (1-19-0, 1-12-0 ECAC), who lost 4-2 to RPI (6-16-4, 3-9-2 ECAC) and 2-0 to Union (4-18-4, 2-10-2 ECAC) in back-to-back away conference games. “We’re pretty disappointed after dropping both games this weekend,” goalie Genny Ladiges ’12 said. “Going into it, we
UNION 2, YALE 0
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Vicky Brook ’12 and the women’s tennis team will start ITA play next weekend against Notre Dame. BY EUGENE JUNG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
RPI 4, YALE 2 RPI
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SEE HOCKEY PAGE 13
STAT OF THE DAY 9.6
At this weekend’s Bulldog Invitational, the women’s tennis team proved it has not lost its competitive edge.
W. TENNIS A total of four teams, including Yale, com-
peted in the tournament held at the CullmanHeyman Tennis Center. At their spring season opener, the Elis demonstrated strength in singles all three days while showing some signs of struggling in doubles during the last two days of the Invitational. On Sunday, the final day of the tournament, the No. 30 Elis played doubles against SEE TENNIS PAGE 13
THE SCORE FOUR MEMBERS OF THE GYMNASTICS TEAM BEAT ON THEIR FLOOR ROUTINES SUNDAY AS YALE TOOK FIRST AMONG FOUR SCHOOLS IN ITS SEASON OPENER. Freshmen Joyce Li ’15 and Morgan Traina ’15 led the way by claiming the top two spots in the all-around.