Yale Daily News — Week of Jan. 28, 2022

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, JANURY 28, 2022 · VOL. CXLIV, NO. 10 · yaledailynews.com

CHUN TO STEP DOWN One-term dean to serve until June, return to teaching

YALE NEWS

BY LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTER Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun announced on Thursday that he would step down as dean after five years in the position.

In an email to the Yale College community, Chun stated his intention to leave the position following the end of the spring 2022 semester. A professor of psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science, Chun served as head of Berkeley College from 200716 and was the University’s first Asian American dean.

Chun’s term will officially end on June 30, after which he will return to full-time teaching and research.

“The institution has given me so much, and maybe as dean, I was able to give back a little, but I think I still got more from Yale than I'm able to give back,” Chun told the News.

“I just love this institution so much. I love all the people here, and that's why I'm not thinking of leaving the place. I look forward to engaging with students and my colleagues in different ways, especially back in the classroom.”

In his email, Chun noted that he had informed University President Peter Salovey of his decision in November, but waited until now to alert the rest of the community due to deteriorating public health conditions. Although five years is the standard term length for Yale’s deans, Chun cited several factors that influenced his decision not to seek reappointment.

For one, Chun said he was proud of what he had accomplished during his term alongside students and faculty, in particular expansions to financial aid including the creation of the Summer Experience Award and Yale Safety Net and the expansion of the First-Year Scholars and STARS programs. Chun also empha-

Zoom University returns “A very expensive podcast”

BY LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTER

weeks of student advocacy following an abrupt switch to remote instruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chun also introduced Yale College Community Care in April 2021, an expansion to

A national rise in COVID-19 cases in late December and early January led administrators to delay the start of the semester by a week, move the first two weeks of instruction online and shift to grab-and-go dining services until further notice. Students had the option to return to campus between Jan. 14 and Feb. 4, opting to start their classes for the semester either in residence at Yale or from home.

The News spoke to eight students about their first days of the semester, many of whom described a widespread sense of uncertainty as they returned or planned to return to campus.

“I almost felt better being home because my therapist is there and I had a lot more free time and there wasn’t this issue of having to figure out when I was going to eat meals,” said Lawrence Tang ’25, who returned to campus before classes began. “My parents were being parents and taking care of me. Being here, not only am I separated from this very safe safety net, but there’s also a lot more uncertainty.”

Rhayna Poulin ’25 said that she returned to campus on Jan. 14, the first day students were permitted to move back into their dorms, and that she is satisfied with her decision to take classes from Yale rather than from home.

SEE CHUN PAGE 4

SEE ZOOM PAGE 4

YALE NEWS

Chun served as Head of Berkeley College from 2007 to 2016 and was the College’s first Asian-American Dean. sized the success of Yale’s certificate programs, adding that he looked forward to faculty introducing new certificates in years to come.

In April 2020, Chun oversaw the adoption of a universal pass/fail grading policy for the spring 2020 semester after

STUDENT LIFE

ADMISSIONS

Yale’s “fake middle class” 50,000 apply in record pool

TENZIN JORDEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Low-income students at Yale describe a pressure to “cosplay as a different class character.”

BY LUCY HODGMAN AND JORDAN FITZGERALD STAFF REPORTERS At Yale, whose undergraduate population is overwhelmingly above the national income average, Suzanne Brown ’23 noticed a phenomenon in which many higher-income students play down the extent of their wealth, while some lower-income

students also face pressure to “cosplay as a different class character.”

Brown used clothes shopping as an example. She might be told by her mother, she said, not to wear a particular pair of jeans because “they look old and you don’t want people thinking you’re poor.” Wealthier students, on the other hand, might outwardly pretend

to have less money, thrifting clothes that they could afford to buy new.

Brown described it as students often “cosplay[ing] as a different class character. Logan Roberts ’23 echoed Brown’s observations, suggesting that skewed income distribution at the University results in students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds trying to emulate their idea of “middle class”— a standard which does not represent the experiences of most students on campus.

“I think there's this issue at Yale where all the really wealthy kids try to act as though they're not wealthy and all the kids who are low-income try to fit into this very clearly elite community,” Roberts, who is SEE FGLI PAGE 13

ADMINISTRATION

U. to evaluate Chinese holdings

BY PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH STAFF REPORTER

The committee that recommends areas for divestment to Yale’s board of trustees will begin investigating companies in China to determine whether some may be deemed ineligible for Yale investment in light of the Chinese government’s widespread human rights violations.

Both Matthew Mendelsohn ’07, Yale’s chief investment officer, and University President Peter Salovey declined to reveal how much of Yale’s endowment is invested in Chinese companies.

However, according to the Investment Office’s 2020 report, it allocates 6.5 percent of the portfolio, or just over $2 billion, to emerging markets, which includes China. The New York Times further

revealed that, as of 2015, part of the endowment’s emerging markets portfolio had gone toward two major Chinese companies, Tencent and JD.com.

Both Mendelsohn and Salovey did not respond to a request to guarantee that the companies receiving investments from the University were entirely uninvolved with human rights violaSEE CHINA PAGE 5

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1983.

STUDY ABROAD CANCELLED AMID OMICRON SPIKE

A fire breaks out in a Trumbull College suite after a teapot boiled dry. The fire is put out by Trumbull fellow Jack Hasegawa before the New Haven Fire Department and Yale police officers arrive.

PAGE 11 UNIVERSITY

YALE DAILY NEWS

The admissions office will read through more than 50,000 applications to decide the class of 2026.

BY JORDAN FITZGERALD STAFF REPORTER Yale received 50,022 applications to join the University’s class of 2026, the most in the school’s history.

The record-breaking pool includes the 7,313 early action applications prospective students sent to New Haven in December. The 2021–2022 cycle yielded seven percent more applications than the year

prior and 42 percent more than 2019–2020.

“We do not measure success simply by the number of applications we receive,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan wrote in an email to the News. “Quality matters much more to the Admissions Committee than quantity.”

Nevertheless, the increase in applications is significant and could lead to a further drop in Yale’s acceptance rate.

Last spring, Yale accepted 4.62 percent of 46,905 applicants, and in 2020, 6.4 percent of 35,220 were welcomed to join the class of 2024.

Though Quinlan said that “it is impossible to attribute direct cause and effect relationships” between various outreach strategies and the application yield, Mark Dunn, the director of SEE APPS PAGE 13

SCOTUS weighs affirmative action

BY JORDAN FITZGERALD STAFF REPORTER The United States Supreme Court announced Monday that it would hear a pair of cases challenging race conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North

Carolina Chapel Hill. With the Court’s conservative majority, the outcome could dismantle affirmative action in higher education and set a precedent for a similar case against Yale.

The plaintiff in both cases is Students for Fair Admissions Inc., an organization dedicated

to engendering a legal end to affirmative action. The group holds that Harvard and UNC discriminate against white and Asian American students in their admissions practices, and asked the Supreme Court to SEE SCOTUS PAGE 13

DOMINGUEZ

OMICRON

BASKETBALL

As the city’s search for a new permanent police chief drags on, Acting Chief Renee Dominguez has been slapped with a lawsuit.

PAGE 3 CITY

PAGE 7 SCITECH

PAGE 14 SPORTS

Researchers showed that the Omicron variant might be infectious for longer than previously believed.

Azar Swain scored a career-high 37 points and nearly broke a 64-year Yale scoring record as the Elis jumped to an early lead.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 2

OPINION Save our clickbait souls T

he metaverse. Virtual Reality. Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce. We live in a time where such technologically advanced concepts are more than just facets of a futuristic fantasy.

Thinly veiled Mark Zuckerberg slander aside, this is a remarkable fact. Since the advent of the digital age, human ingenuity seems to have kicked into overdrive. However, when the average American spends roughly seven hours a day staring at a screen, this updated mode of existence feels like the norm. We forget that, in comparison to other humans throughout history, our habits are strikingly novel. The technology that makes these habits possible, while replete with shiny allure, threatens to render human nature indistinguishable from that of the tools we have created.

Computer science revised the popular understanding of both machine behavior and human behavior, as well. We saw ourselves in our creation, using anthropomorphic language to describe, for example, coding as “giving commands” to a computer. In a departure from the historically popular belief in free will, we have begun to map the deterministic laws that underlie machine learning onto the human psyche. The philosophy of the digital age is becoming such that humans’ actions are believed to be mere outputs which mechanistically follow certain fixed laws, much like the actions of a computer. This change is embedded within our modern vernacular: We now say that we are “hardwired” to perform a certain action or that we “crash” whenever our mind is no longer capable of functioning properly and needs rest. The concept of determinism predated this way of speaking, but the two achieved widespread adoption in tandem. The lesson here is that the more we use machines, the more we are convinced that we are not all that different from them.

Some would say that this is not a problem. We still treat each other like free agents in our everyday interactions. We are still instinctually averse to the belief that our actions are determined by factors beyond our control. But the metaphysics of advanced industrial society has rendered people “one-dimensional,” according to 20th-century philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse argues that technological advancement changes people such that they can only see themselves as factors in the production function of the capitalist regime, nothing more.

While I don’t subscribe to Marcuse’s Marxist framework, I think his point that dehumanization follows modern material progress is a salient one.

Think of how many people admit to being addicted to their phones. Perhaps you are among that number; I am. The biology of addiction has been thoroughly

documented, and the general consensus among the scientific community is that it is a damn hard thing to combat. Psychologically, one’s chances of beating addiction are lowered by the lack of belief in free will. If you are convinced that your choices are actually determined by your neurochemistry, it’s much harder to imagine yourself breaking the neurochemical cycle of addiction. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a positive feedback loop with negative consequences: some technology use perpetuates further technology use, and the more technologically dependent our experiences become, the less we feel like authentic humans.

It’s because of this vicious cycle that I am hesitant to celebrate our movement into the metaverse. After all, the recent tech-driven shift towards a deterministic philosophy teaches us that our perceptions of the external world influence our understanding of our own nature.

Before we created computers that could act with no will of their own, a science that could explain our own actions with no reference to a will was unthinkable for many people. But now, we live in a world where countless moments of our lives unfold within the confines of a digital screen. When you cannot fully participate in the modern world without immersing your mind in technology, this technology begins to define your identity. Because so much of our human experience is mediated by mechanistic objects in this way, the call to make the obvious comparison and objectify ourselves seems irresistible.

The truth is, though, we are more than mere objects. Computers do not have values like dignity, responsibility and autonomy that they regard as essential to their unique metaphysical experience.

They cannot ask themselves morally binding questions like “What should I do?” and employ these values in their answers. Only people can. But the more we accept axiomatically that technological advancement is a good thing, we are at greater risk of forgetting this truth. A move beyond the metaverse to full-brain emulation would be the final nail in the coffin of our humanity, and it is already being discussed. To prevent this calamity, we must collectively acknowledge that the defining characteristic of our first-person experience is that we can view ourselves as self-determining subjects and not causally enslaved objects.

To write this off as clickbait, and claim that our decisions are determined not by ideals and values but ones and zeros, is to lose everything by losing ourselves.

ELIJAH BOLES is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College. His column runs every other Tuesday. Contact him at elijah.boles@yale.edu .

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COPYRIGHT 2022 — VOL. CXLIV, NO. 10

I Never Said No TW: This essay deals with sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised. never expected this to happen.

I didn’t even know it was happening. I have sometimes wondered what I would ever do in this kind of situation, and I have always thought I would do something, say something, at the very least realize that it had happened. I thought it had a shape and form that I knew how to recognize. But that’s not what happened.

When I realized what was happening, there was no anger, no panic. What registered was alarm and confusion, and maybe the need to stop, but I didn’t want to ruin the mood or seem like a prude. I felt reckless, spontaneous, desirable. I never stopped it, I never removed myself from the situation.

I never said no.

Apparently, there are stages to this just like there are the five stages of grief. Apparently, it’s very common for you to not even realize what you’re experiencing. Apparently, it’s shock, it’s denial.

When I met up with a friend the day after, it was a funny story to share, something to laugh about. I knew it was somewhat outrageous, what-the-f***, canyou-believe-it. But her reaction was beyond what I had expected, and when I went to Yale Health, both the nurse that I spoke with to make the appointment and the doctor I saw — both women — advised me to do the same thing.

The doctor, who looked like she could be the same age as my mother, even gave me a pamphlet.

Scared and confused, I broke down in the examination room.

There are still so many questions about consent, important questions that were brought into

I

the spotlight by the #MeToo movement.

I ’ve ta ke n workshops and training sessions that specifically emphasized the nuances of consent under HYERIM the effects of BIANCA peer pressure or alcohol and NAM drugs. We nod, we ask polite Moment’s questions. notice When asked to share what we learned, we offer thoughtful, appropriate, cookie-cutter answers.

But outside the carefully controlled, censored atmosphere of the workshops, I hear men grumbling that they can no longer lift a finger without being called rapists; I hear them joking about making their partners sign contracts stating that they fully consented to everything. I read upvoted answers on online forums declaring that consent can’t be retroactively retracted.

Sometimes, social learning can be more powerful, more convincing than anything we learn in a classroom.

Why is it so much easier for me to recognize the violation of consent in other women’s stories than my own? Why is it so easy for me to label myself as an attention-seeker? Is all of this indicative of subconscious self-hatred, some dismally low self-esteem?

I would be instantly outraged on the behalf of another woman, and I have been multiple times.

Why me?

Coming into Yale as a wide-eyed first year, I had idealistic expectations about the student body, and now, in the spring semester of my sophomore year, I think about how I have memorized a list of Yale men who are facing Title IX complaints and sexual assault allegations. I think about how long the list is, and those are just the names whispered in the circles that I run in. I hear about how those men take gap years, how they blame the women and gain the support of their friends, how they move on with their lives.

The thing is, even with all the resources Yale offers us, even with the more liberal leaning of our student body, I don’t think Yale is a safe space for women or for sexual assault victims. There is too much procedural kindness and consideration and not enough action. Why are these men still allowed to return to campus, why are they transferred to another residential college — where they continue to assault an entirely new community — instead of being expelled completely? Why is Yale a playground for the wealthy, privileged and powerful? Why is Yale a space where the victim is forced to hide and evade?

This is a lot for me to say when I’m still so confused myself. But now the shock is wearing off, and I am furious. Maybe rage is just an easier emotion for me right now than shame or fear or regret or self-hatred. But right now, through all the conflict, I feel brave. And that’s something I think I can be proud of.

HYERIM BIANCA NAM is a sophomore in Saybrook College. Her column ‘Moment’s Notice’ runs on alternate Wednesdays. Contact her at hyerim.nam@yale.edu .

Give us back our lives T

he defining characteristic of our current pandemic is perhaps its crushing circularity.

Diseases crash through a population in waves; cities and countries open and shut like refrigerators; and here we go again. It is the first day of the spring, almost one year after the last spring semester. We are vaccinated and boostered; we are armed with oral treatments for a disease that seems to be no longer as lethal; we are wiser from the lessons we have learned in a difficult year; we are even heady from the cautious successes of a riveting fall; and yet, we are back on Zoom.

As much as I’d like to open the semester on a more optimistic note, I cannot help but acknowledge how defeated I feel. I have listened to science. I have prostrated myself in front of deities of public health and still been vanquished.

I have been instructed that “current public health conditions” — a murky conglomeration of statistical variables — preclude my being able to eat with my friends, by a shapeless body that I neither know nor understand. But wait — this is not my failure.

Let me clarify, before I am accused of being an entitled reactionary, I am not proclaiming that this is Yale, the government, or some public health apparatus’ failure either. But the question of why we are where we are certainly warrants some investigation.

I want my life back. I want to swarm WLH and LC and every acronym on this campus, donning surgical blue masks and Yale blue sweatshirts, and hug my classmates or shake hands with my professors. I want to perform on stage again, to hear my friends sing and cheer them on at games, to sit next to my writing tutor as she tells me to restructure my thesis. More so, I need to do these things. But I know this is a battle I will not win.

Why? Because this is a battle of me against the illusion of statistics.

Whenever public health decisions are made, neither my nor Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will ever be considered because they are not numbers. Administrators standing in ivory towers cannot see the tears, screams or the tired resignation of the subjects standing miles below them, even if they represent the mental health of a generation.

Student “happiness” is as murky a category as “public health conditions” — it matters little if it is not a sterile data set. COVID numbers are so much more versatile. They

can be counted, added, multiplied, regressed, Fourier transformed, funneled i n to complicated formulas with 1000 variables that PRADZ public health SAPRE officials invent to scramble at Growing some semblance of certainty. pains Throughout the pandemic, I have understood the need to protect our physical health. But now, in a community of triply vaccinated individuals, with a dominant disease variant that some have even hailed as a natural vaccine, COVID-19 hardly constitutes the kind of threat it did one year ago. Again, they will cite immunocompromised individuals and older professors — undoubtedly, important community stakeholders. And yet, I am hard-pressed to imagine that in fully ventilated classrooms of fully vaccinated students who are fully masked standing more than six feet away from professors, there is substantial risk of breakthrough transmission and subsequent severe illness.

And what lies on the other side of the scale? Happiness. The Yale Experience. The intangibles that define our time here. Caution comes at a cost. I’m sure I don’t need to remind anyone that physical illness is not the sole cause of death. I will refer skeptics to this guidebook. We are the subjects of your cost-benefit analyses, but we are more than a collection of vital signs and transmission rates. We are a collection of dreams and aspirations that are crushed by reversions to Zoom. Mask and vaccine mandates are necessary goods for our community health, but we need to recontextualize what we are missing before we go any further.

Too often, college health policies often draw a false dichotomy between learning and socializing. Education is far more than the moderated discussions of a classroom. I want my philosophy seminar to be able to debate Spinoza at each Berkeley lunch after Friday class. A semester of in-person instruction with not much else, then, cannot be a complete one.

We may be vaccinated but we are yet in the darkest days of the pandemic, for our response to this disease will chart the trajectory of

decades to come. If we choose to deny the gifts of life — serendipitous encounters at an extracurricular mixer, dancing with a new love at an impromptu party — if we choose to reduce our relationships to a set of Zoom tiles — we will retreat further into the darkness every time a variant emerges.

The only way to step into the light is to accept the inevitable uncertainties of a new world; to balance the wisdom of living with the sanitized abstractions of community health.

A community devoid of joy, liberty and hope is no healthier than one overrun by a virus.

Policy, by nature, is as susceptible to optics as it is to reality. Returning to normalcy in the middle of Omicron’s uncertainties is unlikely to be a frictionless move, among conflicting data about the new variant. Universities will be accused of neglecting student health.

I only hope that Yale is a pioneer in its approach to this delicate balancing act, particularly in understanding that the student body’s feelings and desires matter more than the viral loads in our feces. I will not pretend this is an easy task. Yet, I am filled with pride when I think of the school’s courage in going forward with the Game this past fall, of understanding that the opacity of “public health risks” sometimes matter less than the traditions that define the highest moments of our lives.

It is that Yale model that I hope we continue to follow, not its more recent avatar.

I am not afraid to admit that the spring semester pushed me to my breaking point, and I was not the only one. The fall felt like we got our lives back. Going back to the days of March 2020 is a dangerous game. We are the collateral damage of the decisions the shapeless body makes. I only hope that when they decide to shut down dining halls, to cancel sporting events, to leave us with just one week of continuous break in the middle of our longest semester, that they can imagine our faces when we read their emails.

Public health gods, I give you my freedom. Test us twice a week, slap masks on our face, jab our arms and test our feces. And once you’re done with that, give us back our lives.

PRADZ SAPRE is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College. His column, titled ‘Growing pains’, runs every other Monday. Contact him at pradz.sapre@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 3

“The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.” THOMAS A. EDISON AMERICAN INVENTOR

NHPD Acting Chief sued for staying on as search continues

BY HANNAH QU AND SOPHIE SONNENFELD STAFF REPORTER As the city’s search for a new permanent police chief drags on, New Haven’s Acting Chief Renee Dominguez has been slapped with a lawsuit alleging she’s occupying the role illegally.

The suit, filed by First Calvary Baptist Church Rev. Boise Kimber and Way of the Cross Pastor Donarell Elder, hinges on differing interpretations of a portion of the City Charter that dictates how long someone can hold the chief position in an acting role.

The Charter states that the mayor cannot pick someone to hold an acting position for more than six months “without being submitted for confirmation by the Board of Alders.” In early December, alders rejected Dominguez after Mayor Justin Elicker submitted her name for the role of permanent chief. Elicker argues that the Charter doesn’t require her name to actually be approved, only submitted to the Board of Alders. So now the question hangs: according to the City Charter, was it sufficient for Elicker to simply submit the name, or must the Board of Alders actually approve the name?

“We’re saying give us a legal opinion that will tell us who is right and if the mayor is right then the Board of Alders needs to look back at the charter again,” Kimber told the News. “If the mayor is wrong then that means the charter has spoken for itself.”

Kimber and Elder filed the lawsuit in early January and are being represented by New Haven lawyer Jerald Barber. They are scheduled to appear in Connecticut State Superior Court over Zoom on March 4.

“It’s important to keep the PD stable while the search is conducted and also to allow for a smooth transition between myself and the next Chief,” Dominguez wrote in an email to the News on Wednesday afternoon.

Elicker said Dominguez should remain Assistant Chief as the search for a permanent chief continues.

“We’ve begun the search process and hope to make an announcement about an executive search firm shortly,” Elicker wrote in an email to the News before the Request for Proposal was issued.

“In the meantime, Chief Dominguez will continue to lead the department. I’m charged with the responsibility of protecting the public safety of this community,

and that is what I’m doing with this decision. Dr. Kimber seems to be more interested in press conferences and attention than the best interests of the city. His lawsuit is a nuisance, costs the city time and money and does nothing to make our community safer.”

The News reached out to City Spokesperson Kyle Buda for the mayor’s further comments. On Jan. 25, Buda responded that the city will not comment on matters that are part of on-going litigation.

According to Corporation Counsel Patricia King, the City’s position is that the suit’s claim “is based on an incorrect and incomplete reading of the Charter and ordinances.”

“As has been said in the past, the City will vigorously defend the Acting Chief’s right to remain in the position until her successor has been chosen and duly qualified, as provided in the City Charter,” King said.

Dominguez has been with the New Haven Police Department since 2002 and has served as acting chief since March. Throughout her time in the position, Kimber has publicly called on Dominguez and the mayor to boost diversity in the top ranks of the Department.

Since 1993, either the police chief or assistant chief for the NHPD have been Black. Both Dominguez and Assistant Chief Karl Jacobson are white. When she was initially nominated for permanent chief in November, Kimber held a press conference to request Dominguez and Elicker commit to appointing a Black assistant chief.

“The mayor could not commit to it neither could she commit to it,” said Kimber. “So how do you not commit to an assistant Black chief when this community is made up of Black and brown people?”

In her response, Dominguez told the News she has discussed her agreement that a diverse command staff and department were a priority for her.

In December, some alders echoed Kimber’s concerns over department diversity and Dominguez’s plans to reduce crime.

Following Dominguez’s rejection, the Board of Alders leadership said in a statement, “When we are confident that there is a real strategic plan that includes the recruitment of diverse employees training and advancement of officers to all levels in the department, action on improving closure rates, successful efforts toward

decreasing homicides, and tackling the violence afflicting our city, then and only then can we move forward together.”

After being rejected by the Board of Alders, Dominiguez withdrew her name from police chief consideration and announced her intention to retire from the force.

The mayor then decided to keep Dominguez in place as acting chief as he launches a nationwide search for a new permanent chief.

“So now the mayor had an opportunity to bring her name back to the Board of Alders, he failed to do that and he’s standing on the fact that he feels as though his interpretation of the law and of the charter is right and he’s standing in his rightful place,” Kimber said.

Kimber also argued that the mayor is dragging his heels in the hunt for a replacement.

“The mayor insists that he’s going to keep her until he finds a new chief,” Kimber commented.

“And he’s not working on finding a new chief.’”

Elder, the second plaintiff, told the News he thinks it is important for the city to make the transition “as soon as possible.”

“The group, the clergy that brought forth this lawsuit are just trying to say, hey, look, you can’t just do it any old way,” Elder said.

“There are too many pieces, too many people, too many concerns within the city for us just to sit by and let you break the rule of law.”

Elder said the lawsuit is aimed at ensuring transparency in the selection process and addressing differing interpretations of the city charter but is not specifically commenting on Dominguez’s ability to serve as chief.

Kimber said he thinks there is a “silent majority out there” supporting him in the lawsuit. “I don’t think that it is pushing the issue,” he said. “I think that there needs to be a ruling and interpretation on the charter besides the mayor’s interpretation. So, let’s get a legal interpretation. Don’t tell me that I gotta believe what the mayor is saying only because he said it.”

The city released a Request for Proposal through for Police Chief, or RFP, on Jan. 16 to look for an interested and qualified professional consultant to identify, recruit and recommend qualified and viable candidates for Chief of Police. Chief Administrative Officer Regina Rush-Kittle was

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

After Kimber filed a lawsuit against the city for keeping Dominguez as acting chief indefinitely, the city issued a request to recruit a search consultant company. appointed by the mayor to lead the search process.

“I’m looking forward to identifying a well-qualified firm who can assist the city in finding a strong leader for our department,” Elicker said in the press release on January 24. “The selection of a permanent police chief is critical to our city’s future. Once a firm is in place, we will gather input from the public and key stakeholders about the qualities they feel are most important in an individual filling this role — and we will incorporate that feedback into the selection process.”

The city is looking for a company which has worked with cities of comparable size and culturally diverse communities similar to the City of New Haven, according to Rush-Kittle.

While the search for police chief is national, NHPD Captain David Zannelli told the News that he personally “always likes to see somebody from inside the police department become the chief.”

“I have to be honest, I’m partial. I do think we have folks here that can qualify just as much as anybody from the outside.”

Zannell said, “but I do understand why the mayor is doing [a national search], because you have a piece of the community that is asking for an outside search… I’m not against that, either. But I just hope it’d be [someone] that shares the same model of community policing that we’ve come accustomed to.”

In response to why it took the city 41 days to issue RFP after Dominguez’s appointment was vetoed, Rush-Kittle wrote to the News that before issuing the RFP the city went through a planning phase which included input from stakeholders with experience hiring chiefs of police and discussions to identify keys to a successful search.

Dominguez said that though an outside company will be hired to run the selection process, she would offer input if requested. She said it’s hard to know what exactly the transition process will look like once a new Chief is selected, but that she is “confident” she will be able to provide information and documents to the next chief for a smooth transition.

As for pulling from within the NHPD for the next chief versus bringing in an outsider, Dominguez said there are “many capable, competent, amazing leaders” in the department. “I would love for one of them to be named my successor as they understand the needs of the community, the needs of the officers, and have been involved in reorganizing and refreshing the NHPD over the past few years.”

24 members of the Board of Alders could not be reached for comments by the time of publication.

The RFP submission closes on Feb 1.

Contact HANNAH QU at hannah.qu@yale.edu and SOPHIE SONNENFELD at sophie.sonnenfeld@yale.edu .

Faculty committee eyes incoming endowment funds

BY ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTER Yale has $120 million in extra spending available for the current fiscal year — and professors want more say in how it will be used.

A new Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate subcommittee will push for windfall from last year’s endowment returns to be allocated toward initiatives that support faculty, including increased hiring across FAS departments and expanded opportunities for postdoctoral candidates. Yale saw $11.1 billion endowment returns last year — $120 million of which is available for extra spending this year according to the University’s usual spending rules. Those funds, professors say, should be spent with input from faculty and departments. University Provost Scott Strobel announced several, broad spending priorities in November — including increasing faculty size and creating new childcare benefits — but Strobel is still filling in details of the budget, which is typically released in July.

“The FAS Senate thinks faculty should be consulted about budget decisions every year, and particularly with the new endowment income, which can fill so many needs that have been on hold since the austerity program of the previous provost,” FAS Senator and German professor Paul North, who co-chairs the subcommittee, wrote in an email to the News.

The Senate formed the subcommittee, which is tasked with

determining spending priorities, in December. Though the group’s role is purely advisory, its creation represents one of the Senate’s stronger formal attempts to exert influence over spending in recent history, though many faculty members have raised alarms about decreased spending in the past. Fiscal flexibility and the collective power of the FAS, Senate Chair Valerie Horsley wrote in October, are top Senate priorities this year.

The subcommittee’s main goal is to prepare a set of recommendations to Strobel, who oversees the annual budget. To do so, members are soliciting input from faculty across the University on spending items that may have fallen by the wayside in previous budgets.

This group is an extension of the existing FAS Senate’s budget committee, which typically advises on the budget along with the provost’s own budget advisory committee. Its nine members include North and professor of African American Studies and economics Gerald Jaynes, who also co-chairs the Senate’s permanent budget committee.

The members are all tenured professors, roughly evenly divided between the humanities, social sciences and sciences.

Each member will continue to meet several times a week with various department and program chairs in their divisions to solicit feedback on which spending items should be prioritized. They will convene over the next month before sending a list of recommendations to the full Senate.

“My hope for the outcome is a report highlighting issues that run across different departments in the university that would benefit from significant financial investment if there are new funds available,” professor of computer science and subcommittee member Holly Rushmeier wrote in an email to the News.

“The goal is to make sure that opportunities for improving the university are not missed.”

The committee, Horsley said, emerged out of ongoing concerns that departmental discretionary funds were insufficient in meeting students’ needs. Austerity measures implemented in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis had decreased general appropriations budgets, the effects of which continued to be felt for the next decade. This depressed departments’ abilities, Horsley said, to pay for smaller initiatives that support students and faculty, such as research opportunities or social events. She added that this is particularly concerning for departments that do not maintain their own separate endowments.

Several professors and department chairs, including Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations Chair Shawkat Toorawa, told the News that they would appreciate new funding lines — or money that fully funds a ladder faculty position. Professor of American Studies Greta LaFleur, another subcommittee member, said that early feedback from department chairs has included priorities like increasing faculty ranks and pay, as Strobel has recently committed to

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

An ad hoc group of nine faculty members convened by the FAS Senate is preparing recommendations on how Yale should spend its windfall. doing. Her own department, she noted, has lost several star faculty members in the past decade.

“We’re hearing the same story from all the departments — everybody wants more faculty,” LaFleur said. “To my mind, there’s a lot that has been persistently underfunded. The overarching ethos of spending, at least in my experience, has been something akin to using austerity to justify not hiring and not spending.”

LaFleur said that while she is still hearing from more faculty, other suggestions have included building out the Whitney Humanities Center and increas-

ing postdoctoral positions. The latter, she said, is particularly pressing because faculty hiring in higher education has shifted from tenured faculty to more shortterm lecturers in recent years, decreasing the pool of overall jobs available for doctoral candidates.

LaFleur said several faculty have also suggested that more money be directed towards the city of New Haven and “acknowledging Yale’s total indebtedness to the people of New Haven.”

The University’s next fiscal year begins on July 1, 2022.

Contact ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu.

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

" Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self."

MAY SARTON BELGIAN-AMERICAN POET

Yale College Dean to leave post in June CHUN FROM PAGE 1 University mental health services that offers short-term treatment with licensed mental health clinicians as well as wellness specialists. The change came after student pressure to expand Yale’s mental health offerings, which have struggled to keep up with student demand.

“I feel really good about what my team — my colleagues, the faculty, the students — what we’ve all accomplished across the duration of my term,” Chun said. “President Salovey will generously describe a lot of them

and I feel very good about what has been achieved over the past through years, including getting through this pandemic.”

In addition, Chun emphasized the responsibility he felt to return to his cognitive neuroscience laboratory, explaining that while Yale College could be run in his absence, his lab required his personal attention.

Finally, Chun told the News that he was hopeful that public health conditions would allow for a return to in-person classes and campus life this semester, which returned in full force in the fall 2021 semester before an interna-

tional surge in cases of the Omicron variant necessitated a check on in-person gatherings.

“I know things are difficult right now with Omicron, but I actually feel pretty confident that we're going to get through this within this semester,” Chun said. “Knowing that there's an end to this difficult period also makes it easier for me to think about stepping down.”

Nevertheless, Chun told the News that leaving the post had been a “difficult decision.”

Chun emphasized the sense of “purpose and reward” he felt working alongside administrators, faculty and students as dean.

YALE NEWS

Chun will not seek reappointment as his five-year term as dean comes to an end.

“Everyone is so dedicated to our mission, everyone is really good at their jobs and all my colleagues are so good natured,” Chun said.

“I actually love the day-to-day being in meetings with them. I always learn from my colleagues and running the college together with so many smart people has been a really rewarding part of the job. The faculty are extraordinary, and they're creative and they care so much about students that I just am inspired by working with them. And, of course, I love working with students.”

Salovey also wrote to students on Thursday, emphasizing his appreciation for Chun’s commitment to the University in his time as dean.

In particular, Salovey emphasized Chun’s development of support systems for students through the expansion of peer mentoring programs and leadership throughout the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I am grateful for Dean Chun’s steadfast championing of Yale’s educational mission and his commitment to the success of our students,” Salovey wrote.

“Although this is bittersweet news, I am excited for the many students who will benefit from his award-winning teaching. I am also happy for all the cognitive neuroscientists who will begin their careers in his internationally renowned laboratory, which has advanced the use of brain imaging to study the mind and behavior.”

Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd described Chun’s enthusiasm as the “hallmark of many of his signature projects,” specifically pointing to events like the Bulldog Bash and the Sophomore Brunch.

Initiatives like financial aid expansion and the addition of YC3, Boyd said, were evidence of Chun’s broader investment in student well-being.

“Working for Dean Chun has been wonderful — I’m sorry that won’t continue past this year, but I’m so grateful to have already benefited from years of his mentorship and leadership,” Boyd wrote in an email to the News. “Even in these difficult pandemic times, Dean Chun brings an optimistic energy to every conversation. He has been determined to create the best conditions possible for undergraduates to thrive, and to have fun along the way.”

Students echoed Salovey and Boyd’s sentiments, and pointed towards qualities they hoped to see in the next dean.

Mahesh Agarwal ’24 told the News that he thought Chun would be “remembered positively” as a dean who took a meaningful interest in student perspectives, pointing to his enthusiasm for Credit/D/Fail grading policies.

“I definitely see him as someone who cared a lot about students, and at least wanted to try to listen to students as much as possible,” Agarwal said.

Rhayna Poulin ’25 also emphasized Chun’s support for Credit/D/Fail grading policies, adding that “he seemed to really listen to what the student body was asking for.”

As the University begins the process of appointing Chun’s successor, Poulin suggested that the University prioritize finding a dean who is accessible to students, and who has experience in the classroom.

“I think, ideally, the dean should strive to make academic life more accessible and accommodating for students and a huge part of that is actually listening to us when we express our needs,” Poulin said.

According to Salovey’s email, the process of selecting a new dean of Yale College has already begun, and students should expect updates about the appointment of an advisory committee.

Although Chun told the News that he was not involved with the search for a new dean and did not know when someone would be selected, he noted that he had been named as dean in April 2017.

In the remainder of his term as dean, Chun reiterated his commitment to resuming normal life on campus in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I feel confident that we are going to get back to normal, but that’s my top priority, over break and now,” Chun said. “This announcement, of course, is about my stepping down in the summer, so it’s not like I’m stepping down and leaving next week or anything. I’m fully energized to bring things back to our normal, glorious state as soon as possible.”

Chun was preceded as dean of Yale College by professor of history and African American studies Jonathan Holloway.

Contact LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgman@yale.edu .

“A very expensive podcast”: Students return to online classes ZOOM FROM PAGE 1 Although Poulin said that the absence of in-person events and classes meant that campus felt different, the atmosphere in Morse College, where she is living, felt similar enough to last semester that she would opt to take classes there rather than from home.

“In reality, even though I can’t physically go to class I can still see my friends and walk around campus,” Poulin said. “I feel like being at home and having to do Zoom classes would be significantly worse than being here and having some semblance of normalcy.”

Emma Polinsky ’25 concurred, explaining that while Branford College feels much quieter now than it did last semester, the sense of community is still palpable. Polinsky still sees friendly faces in the dining halls and in the basement, she said, emphasizing the warmth of the dining hall staff.

But for students who tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival and were relocated to isolation housing, this sense of normalcy has been harder to maintain.

Emily Zenner ’24 tested negative when she first arrived on campus, but she received a positive test a few days later — she hypothesized she contracted COVID-19 while traveling.

In isolation housing, Zenner said, she receives a daily delivery of frozen food and is sometimes allowed to go outside in a fenced-off yard that she compared to a “zoo exhibit.”

The Yale COVID-19 dashboard reports that isolation housing is currently at 76 percent availability, and Zenner and Suzanne Brown ’23, who is also isolating in McClellan Hall, both

said that isolation housing feels relatively empty.

“I can tell that a couple of people have moved into my floor over the past couple of days that I've been here, but for the most part, it's silent,” Brown said. “It's almost eerily silent. I could hear when people were in their Zoom classes earlier today.”

Zenner agreed that social connection was limited in isolation housing, expressing her concern for students, particularly first years, who might not have close friends checking in on them in isolation.

For Zenner, attending online classes from isolation housing has been “kind of a blessing” because she has ADHD and might be more distracted in her own room, she said. However, she emphasized that remote learning apart from other students could heighten feelings of loneliness.

“There really isn't anybody to get out the nervous jitters with,” Zenner said. “I'm kind of just alone in the room with my classes and scary thoughts.”

The first week of remote learning has also been trying for students who are not in isolation housing.

For Poulin, who lives with four other people, coordinating schedules with suitemates has been the greatest challenge of remote learning so far. Poulin said that her suitemates were on completely different schedules, and sometimes had to leave the suite so that others could take participation-based classes.

Karley Yung ’25 has faced similar challenges. She lives in Lanman-Wright Hall, where all four of her and her suitemates’ desks are in the common room.

“One of my suitemates is still at home, so another one of my suitemates stays in the common room, and my roommate and I have gone out when we have seminar or discussion-style classes,” Yung explained.

“My roommate and I are both in a lecture together so it's been funny sitting next to her and reacting at the same time like when the Zoom freezes.”

For other students, taking classes online has made staying present in class and engaging with course material more challenging.

Tang, who compared his experience of remote learning to “a very expensive podcast,” has struggled to stay focused in classes, especially because he finds it hard to pay attention when learning from his bedroom.

“Zoom classes are really, really bad,” Tang said. “I cannot focus. I do literally every single thing they recommend: I take my meds, I find something to fidget with with my hands, I turn all of my devices, except what I’m Zooming in on, onto airplane mode. But I don’t know. I still can’t pay attention.”

Mahesh Agarwal ’24 also added that remote classes have the isolating effect of discouraging students from leaving their suites and moving around campus.

When classes are in session in-person, Agarwal said, campus social life is often spontaneous, driven by unexpected run-ins. But the switch to Zoom has temporarily halted that aspect of social interaction, especially because the cold weather discourages students congregating outdoors.

“I think it’s the combination that it’s winter, there’s some people that are on campus and some people that

aren't, and the two places where you usually see people — in classes and dining — are not functioning as normal,” Agarwal said. “I think that makes it definitely feel isolated.”

During the first week of classes, many residential colleges began permitting students to assemble their own grab-and-go meals rather than picking them up from dining hall staff, which Agarwal said had felt “a little Oliver Twist.”

Nevertheless, such a drastic change to dining routines can still pose a challenge to many students as they return to campus.

“Even first semester, it was hard for me to finish all my food or tell myself to eat,” Tang said. “Now, with the takeout containers, it's sometimes borderline impossible. I have to put on a Netflix show, and as a result, I kind of cannot have a social meal even with my suitemates because it'll distract me and I end up not eating anything.”

Miriam Kopyto ’23 noted that other students might rely on dining with their friends to maintain a healthy eating schedule. Grab-and-go dining, Kopyto suggested, could pose challenges to students who struggle with disordered eating or getting enough nutrition in their diets.

Kopyto, the director of the Yale Student Mental Health Association, emphasized the toll that limits to in-person engagement can take on student mental health.

“I feel like at this point, Yale is taking away from the opportunity to have meaningful social interactions, especially at the beginning of the semester when a lot of the time you rely on friends to help you organize your classes and help you be on track and you just don't have that right now,” Kopyto said. “It’s a million times harder to be alone.”

Kopyto suggested that the University provide students, especially those in isolation housing, with available mental health resources, suggesting that students automatically be granted an appointment with Yale College Community Care upon their admission to isolation housing.

Looking towards the rest of the semester, students’ outlooks were largely divided between anxiety and cautious optimism.

“I cannot confidently say that we will return to in-person classes on the scheduled date, but I can confidently say that the University is working towards that goal as best they can,” Polinsky said.

Polinsky also said that the vaccination and booster requirements at Yale generally made her feel safe on campus, especially when compared to her home state of Florida.

Zenner, however, pointed to how easily she had contracted COVID-19 before coming to campus and worried that courses would remain remote if cases in the Northeast increased. Changing positivity rates, Zenner said, would be the only way to predict the rest of the semester.

“I do feel fairly confident that classes will go back to in-person,” said Poulin. “However, I do sometimes worry that the administration will announce another two weeks of virtual learning at the end of this period and that pattern will just continue until most of our semester is online. I don’t see that happening, necessarily, but I do worry about it.”

In-person classes are set to resume Feb. 7.

Contact LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgman@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

" Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." ARISTOTLE GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Applications break 50,000 for the first time APPS FROM PAGE 1 outreach and communications at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, credited virtual outreach methods with the record applicant pool.

“The consistent increases in applications are a positive sign that our pivot to a virtual outreach strategy has been successful,” Dunn told the News. “Although there is no substitute for visiting campus — and we hope that we can continue welcoming campus visitors as soon as possible — it is clear that new virtual events have allowed us to connect with more prospective students and to feature amazing Yale students in a new way.”

The admissions office has employed virtual tours, online information sessions and video and poster campaigns to showcase the University. But Dunn also credited current students as the office's “most valuable asset” in outreach.

Dunn noted that the increase in international student applicants outpaced domestic application growth this year, though both have risen in the past two application cycles. Last year, international applicants also accounted for the majority of the historic rise in applications.

“We are impressed by the variety of students throughout the world who are seeking the opportunity to study at Yale next year,” said Keith Light, associate director of admissions and director of international admissions. “We are truly seeing the very best prospects from more than 150 countries and territories from all four hemispheres.”

Regular decision applications were due on Jan. 2.

Contact JORDAN FITZGERALD at jordan.fitzgerald@yale.edu .

Yale received 50,022 applications to join the University’s class of 2026, the most in the school’s history.

LUKAS FLIPPO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Amid human rights violations, U. investigates Chinese holdings CHINA FROM PAGE 1 tions in China. Since 2017, the Chinese government has been engaged in a process of systemic oppression of the Uyghur Muslim population in western China, drawing widespread condemnation.

“We’re in the process of [probing possible Chinese investments],” law professor Jonathan Macey LAW ’82 said. “We’re going to be starting to do that early in the semester.”

The University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, or ACIR, is responsible for ensuring that Yale allocates its investments in accordance with social and political standards, and works in tandem with the Yale Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility, or CCIR, which makes final decisions on investment practices. Both committees were heavily involved in implementing the University’s new fossil fuel investment principles in April.

Macey, who chairs the ACIR, explained that the committee had not undertaken this investigation until recently because it had been

predominantly focused on the question of divestment from fossil fuels. Though the committee has not yet started its review, Macey said he suspects that some companies will not meet Yale’s principles for investment.

“My intuition is that there’ll be a range of activities among companies and that some might be eligible for divestment,” Macey said.

When asked in an interview, Salovey would not guarantee that any company that Yale is invested in is not involved in any of the ongoing human rights abuses in China. However, he said that when the University uses a hedge fund manager in China, the Investments Office “makes our principles clear to that fund manager” and requires transparency in the investments.

He added that there is a mechanism by which students can raise concerns over Yale’s investment practices.

“In any geography, we partner only with investment managers who meet our sterling ethical standards, and our relationships in China are no exception,” Mendelsohn wrote in an email to the News.

Some members of the Yale community have previously called for Yale to sever all of its financial ties with China, including with private businesses, due to ongoing human rights violations.

According to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Security, “the [Chinese Communist] Party’s overall aim appears to be to ensure that a wide range of businesses are under the influence of the CCP and willing to work with it to achieve national strategic objectives.”

Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer focused on the Uyghur crisis in China and former Yale World Fellow, wrote in an email to the News that while private companies have been instrumental in Chinese economic growth, the government has begun to crackdown on them, especially when they “get in the way of the Chinese government’s specific goal.”

Macey, however, disagreed that Yale should divest from all Chinese companies.

“I don’t think that doing business in China or having a relationship with the Chinese gov-

AMAY TEWARI/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Since 2017, the Chinese government has perpetrated a genocide against its Uyghur population.

ernment is something that is automatically grounds for divestment,” Macey said. “They have to be associated with a particular human rights abuse or some grave social harm.”

Salovey agreed with Macey’s view of the relationship between private and public investment, saying that there is a strong delineation between stateowned enterprises and private businesses. He further agreed that a company must be actively engaged in causing social injury to warrant divestment.

Salovey also noted that Yale is not unique in investing in Chinese companies, pointing to both other university endowments and mutual funds that are invested in emerging markets.

The investment, like any other foreign investment, comes with risk which the University is monitoring, he said.

“We are watching social and political developments in China,” Salovey added. “We are certainly cognizant of relations between the U.S. and China. And particularly with any kind of foreign investment activity there’s geopolitical risk. And we have to assess that as part of whether it makes sense to be investing in other parts of the world.”

Still, Asat argued that Yale should hold itself to a higher standard.

“Regardless of the financial imperative to invest in Chinese market funds, Yale should abide by a basic moral standard,” Asat told the News. “That moral standard demands that even, and especially, when circumstances encourage and reward harmful investments, we must seek other solutions. There is always a choice, and Yale must make the right one based on its principles, even if it is not easy.”

The University has grappled with similar issues in the past. In apartheid South Africa, the University divested from a company that was involved in producing identity cards that were used to segregate society, according to Salovey. The University also divested from an oil company operating in Sudan, where the government was determined to be comitting genocide in Darfur.

In January 2021, the U.S. State Department labeled China’s repression of the Uyghur muslim population a ‘genocide.’

The worsening of relations between the U.S. and China have placed U.S. universities in a precarious position, as they aim to continue collaborative work with Chinese academics while remaining within the law. In December, nearly 100 Yale professors protested the U.S. government’s response to the worsening relations, denouncing the Department of Justice’s China Initiative as a threat to academic freedom and as discriminatory towards academics of Asian descent.

In August 2020, the State Department urged university endowments to divest from Chinese holdings, pointing to the human rights abuses occurring in China and suggesting that certain firms may be delisted from stock exchanges.

“The boards of your institution’s endowment funds have a moral obligation, and perhaps even a fiduciary duty, to ensure that your institution has clean investments and clean endowment funds,” Keith Krach, the former undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, wrote in the August 2020 letter.

Krach continued, saying that “consequently, the boards of U.S. university endowments would be prudent to divest from PRC [People’s Republic of China] firms’ stocks in the likely outcome that enhanced listing standards lead to a wholesale delisting of PRC firms from U.S. exchanges by the end of next year.”

While Yale did not follow the State Department’s recommendations, Mendelsohn made clear that the University is continuously watching this issue.

“We are monitoring social and political developments in China, including and especially U.S.China relations,” Mendelsohn wrote in an email to the News.

“Geopolitical risk is necessarily a consideration in all foreign investment activity, and China is a top focus at the moment.”

The ACIR determines grounds for divestment based on the principles outlined in the 1972 book “The Ethical Investor” written

by Yale professor John Simon and former Yale professors Charles T. Powers and Jon P. Gunnemann.

Contact PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH at philip.mousavizadeh@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Three Yalies awarded prestigious Churchill Scholarships

BY ABE BAKER-BUTLER AND ELIZABETH DEJANIKUS STAFF REPORTERS Three Yalies, who are working on revolutionizing kidney care, repairing the polluted atmosphere and enabling new depths of data science, have been awarded Churchill Scholarships for the 2022-23 academic year.

Sarah Zhao ’22 is one of 16 recipients of the Churchill Scholarship in science, mathematics and engineering, while Megan He ’22 and James Diao ’18 are the only two national recipients of the Kanders Churchill Scholarship in Science Policy. Yale has become the first institution ever to have three Churchill Scholars in a single cohort.

“This was the first year we were able to award two Kanders Churchill Scholarships in science policy,” Winston Churchill Foundation Executive Director Mike Morse said. “This year’s cohort has an interesting balance of disciplines and of institutions of origin from across the country.”

The Churchill Scholarship, awarded to 16 American students annually, provides funding for one year of master’s study overseas at Churchill College in the University of Cambridge.

The award was founded in 1959 at the request of Winston Churchill, after whom both the college and award are named, to further research and collaboration between American and British scientists. A committee of Yale STEM faculty selects two nominees, who polish their applications and submit them to the Churchill Scholarship national competition in November. The Churchill Foundation then selects 16 Churchill Scholars from among the nominees of over 120 participating institutions.

The Kanders Churchill Scholarship for science policy, launched in 2017, does not have a university-level nomination process.

Instead, students express interest when applying for the Cambridge Master’s in Public Policy program.

The scholarship is awarded annually to one or two recipients who join the cohort of 16 Churchill Scholars at Cambridge.

Zhao, who was selected from a pool of 110 nominees, is completing a joint bachelor’s and master’s in statistics and data science at Yale, while also majoring in mathematics. At Yale, she has worked on research in quantum computing and information theory with professor Liang Jiang, theoretical statistics and optimization with professor Zhou Fan and geometrical and topological data science methods in the Summer Undergraduate Math Research at Yale program with multiple mentors, including Professors Smita Krishnaswamy, Jeffrey Brock and Ian Adelstein.

“I’m excited to explore both the theory and applications of machine learning,” Zhao said of her upcoming year at Cambridge.

“I’m looking forward to learning more about the computer science view of the field.”

W h e n n o t wo rk i n g o n research, Zhao volunteers with the Yale Education Tutoring Initiative (YETI) and dances with Yale Movement.

Megan He, one of two winners of the Kanders Churchill Scholarship in Science Policy, is double majoring in environmental engineering and global affairs. Her research at Yale has focused on the emissions of organic compounds into the atmosphere.

Outside of research, she is the chair of the environmental engineering departmental club, a peer tutor in the physics department and an Engineering tour guide.

While at Cambridge, she will pursue a master’s degree in science policy, focusing on how it relates to climate and air pollution.

Diao, the second Kanders Churchill Scholar, graduated from Yale in 2018 with degrees in statistics & data science and molecular biophysics and biochemistry. He is now a third-year medical student at Harvard Medical School, while also dual-enrolled at MIT in the Health Sciences & Technology program.

While at Yale, Diao worked extensively in the lab of Yale School of Medicine professor Mark Gernstein, focusing on developing extracellular RNA analysis tools. Diao also volunteered as

COURTESY OF MEGAN HE, SARAH ZHAO AND JAMES DIAO

a peer-counselor for Walden Peer Counseling and danced on Yale’s Ballroom Dance team.

Diao’s work focuses on using technological tools to improve health for diverse populations.

He was named a 2022 Forbes “30 Under 30” in the healthcare category for his work eliminating the use of race in kidney function tests.

“My goal is to better understand the bits and gears through which data and innovations have to flow in order to reach the bedside,” Diao said. “Whether that means understanding clinical guidelines, what kind of things clinical guidelines should think about when considering population health or how best to bring new technologies to patients in a way that does that.”

Rebekah Westphal, assistant dean of Yale College and director of the Office of Fellowship Programs, views the students’ distinction as “a reflection of the strength of Yale’s STEM educa-

tion and research possibilities, but also of the incredible support Yale students receive from their faculty and other academic advisers.”

Morse urges the Yale faculty to “keep it up!” and to continue giving students the chance to be creative and to push the boundaries of knowledge. “Let them continue to surprise us,” he said.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to see Yale students who are absolute top scholars in STEM fields recognized for their work and potential through this fellowship,” Westphal said. “The difficult part is always that we have more stellar applicants than we can nominate each year.”

Morse told the News that each year, the Churchill Foundation’s national selection committee, which is composed of former Churchill Scholars, is blown away by the research accomplishments that the nominees have amassed at such a young age. He says many committee members wonder if “they them-

selves would…have won against this kind of competition.”

Westphal encourages potential applicants to start thinking about the Churchill Scholarships early, in the spring of their junior year, and to meet with her as part of that process.

Morse emphasized the unique nature of the scholarship as an enabler of scientific exploration, characterizing the year at Cambridge as an “opportunity to do something risky” without the typical pressure to design a conservative, working experiment that will land a postdoctoral position. Morse encourages Scholars to “embrace that opportunity.”

Applications for the 2023-24 Churchill Scholarship will open on Yale’s Student Grants Database during summer 2022.

Contact ABE BAKER-BUTLER at abe.baker-butler@yale.edu and ELIZABETH DEJANIKUS at elizabeth.dejanikus@yale.edu .

Med students rally for abortion rights on Roe v. Wade anniversary

NICOLE RODRIGUEZ/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

BY VERONICA LEE STAFF REPORTER The Yale chapter of the Medical Students for Choice organization rallied Saturday in support of the protection of reproductive care, as the Supreme Court seems poised to dismantle Roe v. Wade nearly a half-century after it was first decided.

On Jan. 22, the 49th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, first-year medical students and co-leaders of Medical Students for Choice Siddhi Nadkarni MED ’25 and Kate Callahan MED ’25

gathered fellow organizers, students and faculty members on the green outside of Cafe Med to call for the provision of reproductive care. Medical Students for Choice, a national organization, has chapters at medical schools across the country and seeks to raise awareness about abortion and reproductive healthcare.

“Although it was originally founded to raise awareness during a time when abortion wasn’t taught in the medical curriculum, Medical Students for Choice has expanded its reach in recent years,” Nadkarni said. “Something [Callahan] and I are passionate

about for our chapter is thinking holistically about how reproductive justice intersects with racism, public health and gender issues.”

At the center of the event were three speakers, including physicians at Yale New Haven Health and local community activists.

Nancy Stanwood, section chief of family planning and associate professor at the medical school, said that her ability to provide “compassionate” reproductive care was integral to her role as a physician.

“I live out my values every day as a doctor by providing abortion care to my patients when they

need it, how they need it, centered on their reproductive lives and their hopes and dreams,” Stanwood said. “Abortion care is healthcare. It is critically important for people to be able to direct their lives and dream and live and thrive.”

Stanwood also addressed the physicians and future physicians in the crowd, highlighting the new challenges they will face if Roe v. Wade is overturned, which she believes will happen soon. According to Stanwood, as medical students go out into the world and serve patients across the country — some of them in states where abortion may soon be illegal — they may come face to face with laws that punish providers and anyone else involved in providing abortions to patients.

Stanwood encouraged the assembled crowd of medical students to “be brave” and keep fighting for reproductive rights.

The Supreme Court is set to decide by this summer on Mississippi’s abortion law in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health by this summer. Given the current conservative majority in the Court, Stanwood and many others believe that this decision will overturn Roe v. Wade, essentially knocking down the foundation of legalized abortion in the U.S. Liz Gustafson, state director of Pro-Choice Connecticut, also spoke on the day about her personal experience with abortion and how both legislation and societal perceptions of abortion should change.

“My decision to have an abortion was not a difficult one; Being pregnant when I did not want to be was,” Gustafson said. “Abortion is not merely a concept or debate topic. It is healthcare. It is freedom. It is normal. And our stories deserve to be respected and heard.”

Gustafson continued, saying that even the protection of Roe v. Wade is not enough. She highlighted the fact that systemic racism, economic injustice, documentation status and the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes over the past 49 years have kept abortion access out of reach for people of color and other marginalized groups. In response, she argued, states like Connecticut must continue to fight for public policy changes and work to destigmatize abortion.

Last to speak at the rally was Complex Family Planning Fellow Blythe Bynum, who was raised in Mississippi, a state with some of the most aggressive anti-abortion laws in the country. During her speech, Bynum described the difficulty of growing up and receiving her medical training in a state that openly challenges Roe v. Wade. However, it was these experiences that pushed her to become a provider who advocates for her patients and their bodily autonomy.

“To be a clinician these days honestly is to be an activist. It’s unavoidable,” Bynum said. “If my patient comes to me and tells me they don’t want to be pregnant, I’m there to make them unpregnant. And that’s because I trust my patients. This is the same trust that legislators should have in their constituents.”

The rally also raised money for the Lilith Fund, the oldest abortion fund in Texas, and Pro-Choice Connecticut, a grassroots organization dedicated to pro-choice advocacy. By supporting organizations like these, Nadkarni and Callahan hope to help change the future of reproductive rights in the US. In 2019, over 600,000 legally induced abortions in the United States were reported to the CDC. Contact VERONICA LEE at veronica.lee@yale.edu and

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

Yale researchers receive grant to develop novel epilepsy brain-computer chip treatment

BY VALENTINA SIMON STAFF REPORTER An interdisciplinary team of Yale researchers has designed brain-machine interface chips that, when implanted in humans, can reduce the rate of epileptic seizures.

More than three million people experience epileptic seizures in the United States, with 60 to 70 percent of patients able to successfully treat the condition with medicine. For the remaining individuals, surgically removing the parts of the brain where seizures arise, regardless of their role in everyday function, has been the only path toward mitigating the issue. A team of Yale computer scientists, engineers and surgeons have found that short-circuiting the path neurons fire during an epileptic seizure can successfully reduce the rate of seizures in patients. The Swebilius Foundation recently awarded the team a grant to continue its research.

“When the signature traits of a seizure are observed, the device stimulates that part of the brain, and it is not curative, but over time 60 percent of patients will get 50 percent fewer seizures than they had before,” said Dennis Spencer, professor emeritus of neurosurgery, who implants these brain-computer interface chips in patients.

The team is still working to increase the success rate. Currently, each chip contains two electrodes with four contacts. When attempting to short-circuit a seizure, a surgeon can only stimulate the brain on the linear path between those two electrodes.

The chips are uniquely targeted, both spatially and temporally, mak-

ing them superior to medication or surgery for seizures that extend into critical regions of the brain. However, the chips’ targeted nature makes them inadequate in many cases when sei-

need to do a lot more real-time processing, and the algorithms are more sophisticated and demanding, but we need to deliver all this on a tight power budget.”

JESSAI FLORES/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

zures follow a network of connections, moving quickly around the brain.

“There are multiple nodes we need to monitor and modulate in order to manage a seizure,” said Hitten Zaveri, assistant professor of neurology. “We

The team is working to increase processing power through hardware-software synergies. Concrete subroutines, such as algorithms that store information, are hardcoded into the chips and are combined to cre-

ate new treatment plans specific to the disease in question. It is similar to how a set of chords, or subroutines of a piano, can be joined together to create a beautiful composition.

“At the power budget that we have, which is 10-15 milliwatts, you really need to optimize down to the wire what you keep on board. It is literally a matter of life and death,” said assistant professor of computer science Aurag Khandelwal, who is a collaborator on the project.

Many patients have comorbidities associated with their epilepsy.

These can include severe anxiety and depression. According to Spencer, such disorders often follow the same neural pathways in the brain as epileptic seizures.

The Yale chips have been designed to be multipurpose, meaning that the programs can be coded and uploaded to target other neurological and psychological disorders as well.

“The networks for anxiety and depression overlap a great deal with the networks we see responsible for seizures,” Spencer said. “Ultimately, the attempted treatment to help patients with horrible epilepsy may be a simultaneous attempt to control their anxiety and their seizures. That is the long term mission.”

The team’s paper outlining its design for the chip, “Hardware-Software Co-Design for Brain-Computer Interfaces,” was selected for inclusion in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, Micro’s Top Picks in Computer Architecture magazine as one of the top computer architecture papers published in 2020.

Contact VALENTINA SIMON at valentina.simon@yale.edu .

Joint Yale and Harvard study shows people may be infectious beyond five-day isolation

BY MANAS SHARMA STAFF REPORTER New research from scientists at the Yale and Harvard Schools of Public Health suggests that the commonly-accepted fiveday isolation period for those who test positive for COVID19 may end when people are still infectious.

The study, which is currently prepublished — meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed — investigates the time period of viral proliferation and clearance for the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. Researchers analyzed PCR COVID-19 tests of 537 individuals and found that many samples remained positive for between five and 10 days following the initial positivity.

“This study demonstrates that the current 5 day isolation period may well be too short for a significant number of infected individuals,” Howard Forman, professor of economics, management and public health policy wrote in an email to the News. “If our intention is to stamp outspread, we should reconsider a time-based process to exit isolation and reconsider using antigen testing to test out.”

The Omicron COVID-19 variant is highly transmissible and infects a higher proportion of individuals who are vaccinated or have prior immunity than other variants, research conducted on the variant over the last several months has shown. These traits of the variant make it necessary to research how long the virus takes to clear up and how often it proliferates in individuals, according to Nathan Gru-

baugh, an associate professor of epidemiology.

“Over the past two years, we have been collecting data on the PCR values from very dense samplings. … Our goal was to

PCR test samples from 537 individuals for analysis. The testing program periodically tested symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, and tested positive individu-

on isolation for individuals who test positive, as it describes the general period of time that an individual could be infectious.

“These findings and others indicate that there is much

EMILY CAI/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

use the data we had collected to determine what is the potential fraction of individuals in our sampling that still might be infectious on day five, day six, or day seven so we might better inform our isolation protocols,” Grubaugh, a senior author of the paper, said in an interview with the News.

Through its occupational health program, the National Basketball Association provided the research team with

als daily in order to obtain this dense sampling.

Through this analysis, the researchers were able to measure viral RNA, or the genetic material of viruses. An analysis of the viral RNA allowed for a deeper understanding of the extent of viral shedding of the Omicron variant. Viral shedding is the rate and intensity by which the virus reproduces inside host cells. Rates of viral shedding help inform policies

variability in the period that people can infect others,” Harlan Krumholz ’80, professor of medicine and public health policy, wrote in an email to the News. “Some people may clear the virus rapidly and others continue to spread it to others for 10 or more days. Setting a time amount and applying it to everyone will promote the spreading of the virus.”

Through the PCR tests, the researchers analyzed the Ct

values, or cycle threshold values, of individuals. Ct values represent how many cycles of DNA amplification it takes for the COVID-19 genetic material to be detected within the sample. Ct values less than 30 usually correspond to a positive COVID-19 rapid antigen test, while values above 30 indicate non-infectiousness for COVID-19.

The study showed that most individuals tested reached high viral RNA after initially testing positive, with many individuals having Ct values less than 30 even five days after the initial positive test result. This meant that those individuals would still be testing positive on the rapid antigen test five days after their initial positive result. Per the study’s findings, positivity does not persist beyond day 10, as all individuals in the study had Ct values above 30 by day 11.

Grubaugh’s lab and colleagues aim to replicate the study in a larger, more representative population in order to best model the viral shedding and infectiousness, leading to better creation of isolation policies. Currently, the CDC recommends that positive individuals quarantine for five days if they are asymptomatic and then strictly wear a mask around others for five days after.

Yale requires that students who test positive quarantine in isolation housing, and, if by day five they have waning or no symptoms, they may test and be released from quarantine if they test negative.

Contact MANAS SHARMA at manas.sharma@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.”

LIV TYLER AMERICAN ACTRESS

Gerken re-appointed as Dean of Yale Law School

COURTESY OF YALE UNIVERSITY

Heather Gerken, Yale Law School’s first female dean, weathered multiple crises during her first term.

BY EDA AKER STAFF REPORTER Heather Gerken has been appointed for a second term as dean of Yale Law School, University President Peter Salovey announced last week.

Gerken has served as Dean for the past five years and is set to begin her second term on July 1. She is the first female dean of the Law School, and in her first term she aimed to bring together “theory and practice,” launching a new leadership program, running a government law clinic and increasing the diversity of the Law School community.

Gerken also faced criticism for her handling of several high-profile incidents throughout her tenure.

An eight-person faculty committee reviewed Gerken’s accomplishments during her first term as Dean and recommended her for reappointment. Salovey made the announcement in a Jan. 19 email to the Law School community.

“I think that this is such a joyous job,” Gerken said in an interview with the News. “The magic

of our intellectual environment is that it isn’t just something that takes place inside the classroom, but takes place in those exchanges between students and faculty on ideas, when the students meet each other out in the courtyard and when students interact directly with clients.”

Gerken graduated from Princeton University in 1991 and received a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1994. She clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit, as well as Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Prior to assuming her deanship, Gerken was a professor who specialized in constitutional and election law.

She began teaching at the Yale Law School in 2006.

Gerken said that she is especially proud of her initiatives to allow 70 percent of law students to receive scholarship support in 2020-21 and to create the five most diverse classes in the school’s history. Over half of the students in the Law School’s class of 2024 are female, and 54 percent of the students identify as students of color.

“Members of the YLS community remarked on Dean Gerken’s dedication to the mission of the School, her record of building new innovative programs, her advocacy for scholarly and clinical work, and the inspiring passion that she brings every day to her job,” Salovey wrote in his Jan. 19 message. “She has already accomplished an ambitious agenda in her first term, and I am confident that the Law School will continue to benefit tremendously from her vision, talent, and energy in the years ahead.”

Saja Spearman-Weaver LAW ’23 and Adam Gerard LAW ’23 shared with the News their respect for Gerken and their excitement for her second term.

Gerard added that Gerken has done an “excellent job” making herself available to students as both an academic and an administrator, highlighting that she took the time to meet with him individually, despite not being his professor.

During her first term, Gerken has led the school through several scandals that drew extensive media coverage to the Law School.

In October, the Law School was thrust into the spotlight after administrators pressured a student to apologize after sending an email that some saw as racially charged. Some saw the administration’s handling of the incident as an infringement of free speech, and Gerken later apologized for the administration’s actions. In the following month, two students sued Gerken and other Law School administrators for allegedly pressuring them to lie last year in an investigation on law professor Amy Chua’s misconduct.

“The lawsuit is legally and factually baseless, and the University will offer a vigorous defense,” University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote in an email to the News.

“I think the one thing that we all agree on is that we love this

institution,” Gerken said. “And you can’t be an academic and can’t be a lawyer without thinking that it’s important to engage with people with whom you disagree.

So in a lot of ways, the core values of Yale Law School depend on differences and disagreements. The fact that we’re all knit together by a deep commitment to the school makes those interactions easier rather than harder.”

Gerken added that the Yale Law School community has a unique set of tools that enables them to “get more out of those disagreements” and to move forward.

“YLS faces a lot of challenges, but not because of a lack of steady hand on top,” law professor David Schleicher said. “The reality of the school is like working unbelievably well. … It’s a real pleasure to work in the Law School due to Heather.”

During her first term, Gerken was also forced to face the COVID-19 pandemic, including virtual instruction. Schleicher said that Gerken’s “can do” attitude and “industry and capacity” have been especially crucial to maintain the “heart” of the school during the pandemic.

Schleicher said that Gerken was a “steady captain in troubled waters” for both students and faculty through the Dean’s initiatives — such as her leadership program — and her navigation of the in-person and online classes.

“I was incredibly moved by the way that the faculty and staff and students took care of one another, even on the most exhausting day in the middle of the worst moment of the pandemic,” Gerken said.

“That’s what gave me the energy, seeing the sort of love and affection that everyone has for each other and for this place.”

All of the professors and alumni that spoke with the News noted that they were “unsurprised” with Gerken’s reappointment and noted her drive

to build on the Law School’s legacy and provide more opportunities for students and faculty to thrive.

“Heather determined that while it was the case that Yale Law students have gone on to become great leaders and have acted admirably, there was still a need for the Law School to absorb the best teaching and learnings about leadership in particular and impart that to the next generation of law students,” said Rakim Brooks LAW ’16 SOM ’16, president of Alliance for Justice, an organization that provides nonprofits with the tools they need to be advocates. “I think that the folks who are attending the Law School now will have been spectacular in any case, but they’ll be ever more prepared for the positions that they almost necessarily will take up in the world.”

Brooks stressed the weight of Gerken’s accomplishments of leading the school, despite carrying the “burdens as the first woman to occupy that particular seat.”

Gerken said that she is “always thinking” about the generations of womewn who came before her and the challenges they encountered during their professions, adding that she is “so grateful” to have the chance to lead the Law School for another term.

Law Professor Scott Shapiro said that Gerken’s “theory and practice” goal in leadership supports his research as an academic without “static,” while simultaneously allowing him to make a community-based impact by running a clinic for documentary filmmakers.

“I just think that more than anything, she just lets me do my job,” Shapiro said.

Gerken has been dean of the Law School since July 1, 2017.

Contact EDA AKER at eda.aker@yale.edu .

Conklin takes over as Title IX Coordinator

BY SARAH COOK AND TIGERLILY HOPSON STAFF REPORTERS Elizabeth Conklin, the inaugural associate vice president for equity, access, and belonging, stepped into the role of Title IX coordinator earlier this month.

Conklin will serve as Yale’s leader in sex and gender discrimination and harassment prevention.

Conklin’s new role was announced in mid-December by University Provost Scott Strobel and Secretary and Vice President for University Life Kimberly Goff-Crews. Stephanie Spangler, who currently serves as the University’s COVID-19 Coordinator, previously held the role for over a decade. Spangler will continue on at Yale in her current COVID-related position, while Conklin will take on the duties of the Title IX coordinator while continuing on in her equity and inclusion role.

“I have a big vision that guides my work,” Conklin told the News.

“Which is to work towards a campus environment where there is no longer any form of discrimination or harassment.”

Title IX is “a federal law that protects people from sex and gender discrimination in educational programs and activities,” according to the Title IX page of the University’s Sexual Misconduct Response and Prevention website.

As Title IX coordinator, Conklin is responsible for overseeing the deputy Title IX coordinators, organizing resources and designing campus-wide training to prevent sex-based discrimination and sexual misconduct.

There were 94 complaints of sexual misconduct on campus between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2020, the most recent dates available on the Yale Provost’s website. Conklin said that she wants to make sure there are “robust” resources and clear policies and procedures in place so that any student who is met with discrimination or harassment can feel supported and heard.

Strobel and Goff-Crews wrote in their December announcement that the beginning of the year provided an “optimal time” for Conklin to transition into the

new role, due to Spangler’s growing responsibilities as Vice Provost for Health Affairs & Academic Integrity and University COVID-19 Coordinator, and Conklin’s “impressive progress” on programs to address harassment and discrimination.

Goff-Crews told the News that she is grateful for Spangler’s “exemplary Title IX leadership” and that there has been “significant progress” under her direction. Goff-Crews added that Spangler helped form the University-wide committee on sexual misconduct, raised awareness about SHARE and began the Community Consent Educator program for Yale College. Spangler also led the University’s participation in the Association of American Universities’ 2015 and 2019 surveys on sexual misconduct which provided evidence that sexual harassing behaviors have reduced on campus.

“She helped create and enhance the infrastructure we know today: an infrastructure that is set up to maintain and strengthen educational, working, and living environments founded on mutual respect. As a result, campus awareness is very different today,” Goff-Crews wrote to the News.

The announcement also said that Assistant Provost and Senior Deputy Title IX Coordinator Jason Killheffer will continue to work on the University’s Title IX programs while also continuing to collaborate with Spangler on “other academic integrity matters” in his role as assistant provost. “[I am] really thankful for the extremely strong foundation that Stephanie Spangler built, and really excited to continue to work closely with Jason Killheffer,” Conklin told the News. “He has been helping to lead this work for a decade at Yale and he is a really important resource and leader in this work.”

Killheffer wrote to the News that his main responsibilities include overseeing the deputy Title IX coordinators, addressing concerns from the community, collaborating with campus partners and evaluating current programs.

He is looking forward to “continuing and expanding” on his work with Conklin. According to Kill-

heffer, he and Conklin have worked together before on the Connecticut Title IX Coordinator Coalition and in bringing together the Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility with the Title IX Office.

Conklin came to Yale in 2020, but she previously worked as the associate vice president of the University of Connecticut’s Office of Institutional Equity and as their Title IX coordinator and Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator, according to a Yale News press release.

Before arriving at Yale, she also co-founded the Connecticut Title IX Coordinator Coalition alongside Spangler.

Spangler wrote to the News that it had been a “pleasure” to work with Conklin over the years, and that they often shared ideas and experiences with each other when they had been fellow Title IX coordinators, Conklin at University of Connecticut and Spangler at Yale. Spangler was “delighted” when Conklin arrived as associate vice president for equity, access, and belonging, and is now excited for her to step into the Title IX position at Yale.

“I am so grateful — the university is so fortunate — that [Conklin] will now assume this additional important responsibility,” Spangler said.

At Yale, like at the University of Connecticut, Conklin is now responsible not only for Title IX issues, but also for discrimination and harassment of any kind, including in regards to race, religion, sexuality and disability.

Conklin said that she feels it is important to recognize that students do not fit singly in any one of these boxes.

“We’re thinking about folks of intersecting identities, and that really impacts the approach to any individual student, how best to support them,” Conklin said.

In assuming her new role, Conklin’s initial priority is to create conversation about identity, community and important issues on campus by meeting with students, faculty and staff to hear their perspectives and experiences. Developing a base and relationships with those who are already involved with Title IX

YALE NEWS

Elizabeth Conklin will serve as Yale’s leader in sex and gender discrimination and harassment prevention. work will be key in deciding where programming must be enhanced or clarified, she said.

One thing that is special about Yale, Conklin added, is the level of student engagement on Title IX-related issues. Conklin recalled that a highlight in her work so far has been having conversations with students and working with students involved in these efforts.

“Learning will really guide how I approach the work moving forward,” she said.

An initial project Conklin hopes to pursue is enhancing Title IX’s online presence at Yale. In this digital age, Conklin said, the internet is where students will most likely go first for resources. It is therefore important for the website to be as clear as possible so students have a place to turn and learn about next steps, she said.

As for any big policy changes, Conklin said she wants to wait and keep a “close eye on what’s happening nationally.” In April there are supposed to be revisions to the national Title IX regulations, which may affect Yale’s procedures and policies.

“What I can say is regardless of what happens in Washington ... our commitment to continue to provide support and prevention is unwavering,” Conklin said.

Taking on the role of Title IX Coordinator “dovetails” with

Conklin’s responsibilities as associate vice president for institutional equity, access and belonging, she said. She plans to continue to work closely with Spangler and Killheffer in aligning Title IX with Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, and Title VII, which prohibits employment discrimination.

She will also continue to work on prevention and response strategies for other forms of dicrimination and harassment, on increasing accessibility on campus and on the Belonging at Yale initiative.

She told the News she is excited for Killheffer and the Title IX staff to work closely with the staff from the Student Accessibility Services, the Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility and the Office of LGBTQ resources.

Students and faculty can find more information about the University’s Title IX policies on the Sexual Misconduct Response and Prevention website and contact the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Education Center’s 24-hour confidential hotline at (203) 432-2000 for information and support regarding sexual misconduct.

Contact SARAH COOK at sarah.cook@yale.edu and TIGERLILY HOPSON at tigerlily.hopson@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 9

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity” ALBERT EINSTEIN, THEORETICAL PHYSICIST

Board of Alders approves new inclusionary zoning legislation

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN STAFF REPORTER Years in the making, New Haven’s first inclusionary zoning law — which will require and incentivize developers to include affordable housing units in all new market-rate projects — is now set to become city policy next month.

The city’s Affordable Housing Task Force first recommended the implementation of inclusionary zoning policies in January 2019. Introducing the legislation became a major priority for Mayor Justin Elicker’s administration. The law was formally presented to the public in its current form in June 2021. After a number of contentious public hearings and debates within the City Plan Commission and the Board of Alders’ Legislation Committee, the policy finally passed with a 25-1-1 vote on the floor of the full Board last Tuesday.

The bill mandates that future market-rate housing complexes include a certain portion of units with rents set at 50 percent of the Area Median Income. This portion will be determined by the strength of the market in the neighborhood, with stricter requirements in the downtown area where luxury developments are common.

This is intended to encourage mixed-income development and combat historic redlining. The law will take effect on Feb. 18.

“This ordinance will make sure that, in the core of our city, future growth and development will benefit everyone,” Ward 7 Alder Eli Sabin ’22 said at the Tuesday night meeting. “We will no longer have segregated luxury developments. Instead, we will have mixed-income development that protects those who need it most…

Everyone deserves to live in a safe neighborhood with good access to jobs, transit and housing.”Sabin called this inclusionary zon-

ing plan “one of the most important pieces of legislation that this board has voted on in a number of years.” Many alders emphasized the centrality of the ordinance to the board’s legislative agenda, in which they pledged to address the city’s housing crisis.

Under the new ordinance, all market-rate developments of more than 10 units within the “core” downtown zone of New Haven will be required to make 10 percent of their units affordable — with rents at or below 50 percent AMI — and reserve an additional five percent of their units for housing voucher holders. For a two-bedroom apartment, an “affordable” unit under the requirements of the new bill would have a monthly rent of $1,090 or less city-wide, according to the Connecticut Department of Housing.

In the “strong” zone, which includes East Rock, Long Wharf, Dixwell and Dwight, as well as parts of Wooster Square, Newhallville, the Hill and Fair Haven, only five percent of the units must be affordable. Throughout the rest of the city, only larger-scale building projects with more than 75 units will be required to make five percent of their units affordable.

Ward 9 Alder Charles Decker emphasized that the higher percentages set for the neighborhoods with the strongest real estate markets are intended to “prevent future luxury developments in areas like Downtown and East Rock from becoming de facto gated communities,” increasing the supply of affordable housing across the whole city.

Solidifying the details of this inclusionary zoning policy was a “balancing act,” according to City Plan Director Aicha Woods ARC ’97, and required incorporating public testimony and feedback from housing justice advocates, developers and New Haven res-

idents. Woods said that the goal was to ensure as much affordable housing as possible while not “creating an environment that would potentially stifle development” and reduce the overall housing supply. In his speech of support, Decker noted that this new ordinance was progressive even in comparison to similar inclusionary zoning programs across the country, setting an unusually high threshold for affordability. Inclusionary zoning policies typically set the rent for ‘affordable’ units at “70 percent or 80 percent or even higher” of the AMI, he said.

An in-lieu fee will be available as an option to developers who do not fulfill the requirements of the policy. According to Livable City Initiative director Arlevia Samuel, the city will then use these amassed funds to subsidize housing assistance nonprofits and smaller affordable building developments across the city.

Those who comply with the inclusionary zoning requirements will receive a number of benefits, including a waiving of parking minimums, tax abatements and permission to build denser units.

These incentives were a cause of debate at the Board of Alders meeting, with Ward 10 Alder Anna Festa, who casted the single dissenting vote, arguing that the bill was too lenient on developers and would be exploited.

“I feel like we’re constantly giving developers a break,” Festa said.

“What we’re fighting for is not even enough affordable housing…

You know what the developers are going to do? They’re going to increase the market rate rental in order to make up for what they’re losing in affordable housing. And we in this city are giving them all these tax breaks.”

In response to Festa, Ward 22 Alder Jeanette Morrison argued that the incentives were the only

SYLVAN LEBRUN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The bill mandates New Haven market-rate developers to build a designated percentage of ‘deeply affordable’ units. way to be in the position to “ask these people who are building housing with their own money to make sure that there’s affordable [units] in there.”

Many alders who spoke in support of the ordinance stated that although it represents a step in the right direction, it is in no way enough to solve the affordable housing crisis. Alder Devin Avshalom-Smith shared that in his Newhallville ward, low-income residents can “barely stand” the 50 percent AMI rents set as affordable under this new legislation, calling the bill a situation in which “you get something or you get nothing at all.”

“In Fair Haven, this should have happened yesterday,” Ward 16 Alder José Crespo said.

The bill as amended at the Board of Alders meeting includes a provision in which the market environment will be re-evaluated every two years. According to Decker, this is with the hope of being able to raise the affordability percentage requirements and adjust the map to add more land to the core and strong zones in the future.

Michael Piscitelli, the city’s economic development administration, told the News that he was

“very encouraged and grateful” that the plan had been approved by the Board of Alders, believing that it will have “significant benefit” to the residents of New Haven.

His team will be working in the months ahead to collaborate with developers and begin to implement the new requirements into the zoning process. Woods shared that the City Plan Department has developed a manual outlining the procedures for carrying out the inclusionary zoning policy, focusing on specifics of the developer application process, incentives, enforcement, tenant selection and marketing.

“This is an important step forward, but is not in any way a comprehensive solution to providing deeply affordable housing,” Woods said. “However, it is really based in changing some of the legacy land use patterns in our city… to provide opportunities for residents to live in places that they formerly would be excluded from.”

On Feb. 2, the City Plan Commission will hold a special public hearing to evaluate the implementation manual for the approved inclusionary zoning bill.

Contact SYLVAN LEBRUN at sylvan.lebrun@yale.edu

City officials optimistic about falling cases

BY YASH ROY STAFF REPORTER On Tuesday, Mayor Justin Elicker and other top health city officials expressed optimism about falling COVID-19 case counts in New Haven.

Several officials communicated updates about the city’s pandemic response at a press conference outside City Hall.

As of the latest city COVID19 report from Jan. 17, New Haven is averaging 34 cases per day, according to Public Health Director Maritza Bond.

“I just want to start, first of all, by saying that we’re in a much better place than we were even a week ago, with Omicron,” Elicker said. “You look at the trends and they are very promising. Yesterday, the Governor reported a daily test positivity rate of 11 percent. So we are definitely on the downward trajectory, like many places in the country, which is great.”

Elicker added that between the tests provided by the state and tests acquired by the city, New Haven has provided 40,000 rapid tests to the community and 10,000 rapid tests to municipal employees.

Rick Fontana, emergency operations director, also shared that the city is hosting free PCR testing sites at 60 Sargent Dr. and on the New Haven Green, which are open every day but Friday. These sites reopened on Jan. 4 after staff shortages forced them to close in December.

“The tests have made a big difference,” Fontana said at the press conference. “Keeping people in work, and it’s worked really well for the Board of Education. I also want to take a minute to thank the State of Connecticut. They took a beating when those tests weren’t available back almost a month ago, but they really responded and have done a great job. We’re in good shape.”

He added that the PCR tests have had “no lines” and are “organized really well.”

Elicker also announced on Friday that the requirement that all city employees be “fully vaccinated” will include receiving a booster shot, which is in accordance with CDC guidelines.

Elicker added that under the current definition of “fully vaccinated” — which consists of two shots — 81.1 percent of city employees, excluding NHPS staff, are vaccinated. He further specified that 66 percent of the police department, 79.2 percent of the fire department and 87.8 percent of non-public safety employees are vaccinated.

The police vaccination rate was 65 percent in October which means the vaccination rate has increased one percent in three months.

At the press conference, Bond added that the state had implemented a vaccination requirement at elderly homes, which the city would be working to implement.

“I am actually elated that the Governor put in a mandate on protecting our vulnerable population and our marginalized groups, which is the elderly,” Bond said.

“My grandmother is one of the elders that lives in a local nursing home, and so the fact that we will be there verifying vaccines, and/ or testing is something that I want to just commend the Fovernor’s leadership.”

Bond added that she “encouraged all community members to continue to be vigilant and to continue to follow mitigation strategies.”

Elicker told residents that the Governor’s mask and vaccination or testing mandates are going to expire on Feb. 15, but he noted that Lamont has asked the legislature to renew the mask mandate but does not plan to ask for the renewal of the vaccination or testing mandate.

tion or testing policy in place, according to Elicker.

“The city of New Haven’s current mask mandate already covers the schools,” Elicker said. “Because the mandate covers all public indoor spaces, we will count the schools under that. The most important thing that folks need to understand is that students and school staff will continue to be required to wear masks, regardless of whether the state legislature decides to re-up the Governor’s mask mandate or not.”

Elicker also explained that since “school personnel are technically city employees,” they will continue to be covered under the municipal mandate. He added that “school employees should understand that nothing will change except who is requiring them to be vaccinated or get tested.”

The city of New Haven employs 1,430 workers.

New Haven Public Schools will keep its masking and vaccina-

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale.edu

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“We should never let a football game be determined from a coin. I think that’s the most craziest rule in sports.” DION DAWKINS BUFFALO BILLS LEFT TACKLE

Yale Athletics updates attendance policies

TIM TAI/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

All fully-vaccinated members of the Yale community, except undergrads, are able to attend games with a 50 percent capacity limit on fan attendance.

POLICY FROM PAGE 14 icies for Yale faculty, staff, and graduate students and those for undergraduates. Undergraduates have been permitted to move on campus since Jan. 14, but are currently under a campus-wide quarantine.

Zeren Toksoy ’24 has attended Yale ice hockey games since high school and plans to move in on Jan. 21, over two weeks before undergraduate students are allowed in venues.

“It’s probably a good idea to have these guidelines since cases are really bad right now,” Toksoy said. “I’m surprised that they’re letting faculty and grad students.

For undergrads, it makes sense, but I don’t think graduate students should be allowed to go.”

According to Yale’s COVID19 dashboard data on the week of

Jan. 10 through Jan. 16, 98 graduate students tested positive while 70 undergraduates tested positive for COVID-19. Many Yale graduate schools, including the School of Public Health, the School of the Environment and the School of Architecture, plan to return to in-person instruction on the same date as Yale College.

Associate Athletic Director Mike Gambardella did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Women’s basketball’s 69–67 victory over Brown on Monday was the first game of the year with community attendance.

Will McCormack contributed reporting.

Contact HAMERA SHABBIR at hamera.shabbir@yale.edu .

Five wins in a row for Yale W. BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14 scorer and rebounder, was out due to injury. With four seconds remaining, the Bulldogs called a timeout with possession to draw up a play. Christen McCann ’25 caught the inbound pass at the top of the key, driving to her right and hitting a game-winning layup in heavy traffic to seal the victory for Yale.

McCann tallied 19 points on the day. Head coach Allison Guth praised her performance and growth over the course of the season, referring to her by the nickname “Consistent Chris.”

“She is someone we can count on, not just in the game-winner against Brown, but taking the toughest defensive assignment every game,” Guth said.

In league play, Yale’s offense has come to life. Against non-conference foes, the Bulldogs averaged just under 60 points per game. Against Ancient Eight opposition, that number has increased by five points per game.

One of the key factors to the team’s improvement in conference play has been due to the performances of point guard Jenna Clark ’24. Clark is averaging 36.5 minutes per game and has taken the reins on offense. She averaged over eight assists per game over the break, consistently feeding Emsbo and Alex Cade ’22 inside and finding open shooters on the perimeter. Clark currently ranks sixth in the country in assists.

“It’s super rewarding to be up there with some of the best players in the country,” Clark said. “It’s all because my teammates are hitting shots and they’re awesome and they’re really helping me. It’s cool for

Bulldogs best Lions, 83–72 M. BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14 Yale head coach James Jones succinctly summed up how coaches and Swain’s teammates might remember Tuesday’s game after this season has passed.

“Thank you, Mr. Swain!” Jones exclaimed as he walked out of his postgame press conference.

“Appreciate you today.”

Luke Benz ’19, a Harvard Biostatistics Ph.D. student and a parttime Ivy hoops analyst, noted on Twitter that Swain’s 37 points were tied for the sixth most by any Ivy League men’s basketball player during conference play since the 2002–03 season, which is the farthest his database extends. The guard from Brockton, Mass. was just a triple away from becoming the first Yale player to score 40 points in a game since John J. Lee ’58 GRD ’59, the namesake for Yale’s arena, scored that many in 1958 against Harvard. Instead, his 37 were the most a Yale player has scored since 2019 NBA draft pick Miye Oni netted 35 vs. Princeton in Feb. 2019.

Columbia shot just 38.2 percent from the field in the first as the Bulldogs played their best opening minutes of the season, pushing the pace and knocking down more than half of their field goal and threepoint attempts in the first half.

“I thought the energy and effort that we started the game [with] was tremendous, as good as we’ve played on both sides of the ball all year,” Jones said. “We’ve been trying to play a little bit faster and play off our offense in transition, where we can just flow into our motion after a missed shot and a defensive rebound.”

The Bulldogs cooled after their ferocious start but still led 46–28 at the break.

Swain, who did not attempt a three-pointer in the second half, entered halftime with 24 points on six-of-eight shooting from deep.

His 14 made field goals also set a new career record, and he scored the ball with ruthless efficiency: a 14-of-20 mark from the field represented his highest field goal percentage this season.

“When you hit threes, it kind of just adds up,” Swain said.

“It was less than a 20-point game at the half, and we felt like it should have been more at that point,” Swain added when asked about how his 24 first-half points affected his thought process at

me, but they’re making the shots, so it’s everyone together.”

The frontcourt duo of Emsbo and Cade have been the recipients of many of Clark’s assists. The two forwards average a combined 25 points and 17 rebounds a game, while also ensuring that Yale almost always has an advantage with their physicality inside.

While Emsbo has been playing through a nagging injury of late, she has barely missed a beat, shooting 52 percent from the field in league play and nearly averaging a double-double over the course of the season. During Emsbo’s one-game absence against Brown, Cade scored 18 points and made 11 rebounds. She has also thrived in a complementary role alongside Emsbo, scoring with great efficiency while providing tough defense on the other end of the floor. “[Emsbo and I have] played together for two years. I think we work really well together. I trust her on the inside like no other,” Cade said.

Nearly halfway through league

Yale was heavily favored to win the contest, with ratings site KenPom giving the Bulldogs a 95 percent chance at victory. the break. “So we just wanted to come out aggressive again in the second half.”

In stealing the show early, Swain also masked a weaker second-half for the Bulldogs, who were outscored by the Lions 44–37 after the break. Yale effectively contained Columbia’s senior forward Ike Nweke in the first half, limiting him to two rebounds and two points on one-of-six shooting from the field. Nweke, who missed most of the nonconference slate with a pair of injuries and was averaging 18.8 points and 7.2 rebounds in his last five games, stepped up in the second.

The 6-foot-7, 248-pound forward is listed about 30 pounds bigger than Yale’s largest defender on the court, forward Isaiah Kelly ’23, and Nweke frequently found his way to the rim after halftime. He finished the contest with a teamhigh 21 points and nine rebounds.

Columbia forward Patrick Harding led all players with 11 boards.

Jones said teams with a lead can be a bit more reluctant “to do the dirty work” defensively and said he thought that was evident for Yale in the second half. He said defenders did a good job moving Nweke to make him work in the first half but allowed the forward to get better positioning in the second. “Once you allow a good player to get post position, it’s over,” Jones said.

Yale has often played much stronger second halves than first halves this season and has particularly struggled between the opening tip and the first media timeout. The opposite was the case on Tuesday, though the Elis’ lead

never returned to single digits. Yale was heavily favored to win the contest in the first place, with men’s college basketball ratings site KenPom giving the Bulldogs a 95 percent chance at victory.

“We can’t play one half of basketball,” Gabbidon said. “That’s been somewhat of a theme for us … Starting to learn to put those two halves together is key. Obviously we’re figuring a little out — we came out strong [in the first]. But continuing to be physical and not worrying about fouls and just playing our brand of basketball regardless is really important.”

Yale coaches wore sleek black quarter-zips and white Under Armour sneakers in support of Coaches vs. Cancer and its annual Suits and Sneakers week, which runs from Jan. 24 to Jan. 30 this year.

Jones, who typically wears suits with his staff on the sideline, said he is on the Coaches vs. Cancer committee. He and Brown men’s basketball head coach Mike Martin talked to other coaches in the league, and the conference’s coaches decided to all wear three-quarter zips “as a show of pride.”

Jones’ mother’s name, Edna Davis, was inscribed on the top of his shoes. She passed away from cancer in 2010, Jones said.

“Having her name on [them] just made me feel good, like she was with me tonight which was nice,” Jones added.

Yale has now defeated Columbia in 10 of the programs’ most recent 11 meetings.

Contact WILLIAM MCCORMACK at william.mccormack@yale.edu .

Contact ANDREW CRAMER at andrew.cramer@yale.edu .

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The Bulldogs are riding a five-game winning streak into the second half of the season.

Dartmouth, Colgate no match for Elis HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14

TIM TAI/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

play, the Bulldogs find themselves in a good spot. The team is two wins above fourth-placed Harvard, and will look to preserve that lead in the standings while trying to surpass Princeton and Columbia during the second half of the season.

The Bulldogs’ youthful squad has not held them back, as six of their eight leading scorers are underclassmen. While the team’s performances have improved dramatically over the first half of the season, some members of the squad believe they have barely scratched the surface of their potential.

“It’s about keeping the momentum and not ever flatlining,” Clark said, talking about the team’s mentality going forward. “We’ve got a chip on our shoulders. We think we can be the best team in the league, and we just have to go out and prove that every game.”

The Yale women’s basketball team last won the Ivy League in 1979.

hard sixty minutes at both ends of the ice,” Meloni said. “It’s fun to play in those games when you’re competing hard and everyone buys in one hundred percent.”

After 40 minutes of scoreless play, the Bulldogs scored three unanswered goals from three different players. Emma Harvey ’25 split the Colgate defense and found Rebecca Foggia ’22 down the ice for a pass. Foggia shot one past the Raiders’ goalie on a breakaway early in the third period to make the game 1–0. Later in the third period, Tess Dettling ’22 attempted a wraparound shot. Welch crashed the net and capitalized on the rebound with a back-door, bardown shot for a short-handed goal for Yale.

The Raiders pulled their goalie less than a minute after Welch’s goal.

Hartje scored an empty net goal with under five minutes left to go in the game for her tenth goal of the season.

The next day, Yale faced off against Cornell (7–8–1, 5–5–1) for a solid 4–1 victory. The game proved to be aggressive with a total of nine penalties between the two teams.

“This was a terrific weekend of hockey for our team,” head coach Mark Bolding told Yale Athletics. “To get all the available league points was a huge success. We scored a lot of different ways and also defended well. I am excited to keep improving as the road to the playoffs gets closer.”

After Cornell took the lead midway through the first period, forward Rebecca Vanstone ’23 evened the score early in the second with a backhand shot off of a breakaway.

Claire Dalton ’23 gave the Bulldogs

the lead going into the second intermission when she scored after following up on Hartje’s initial shot.

At the start of the third frame, Anna Bargman ’25 returned to the ice after serving time in the box for her second penalty of the game.

As she went in on a breakaway that shift, she was tripped from behind

by Cornell’s Izzy Daniel. On her penalty shot, Bargman beat the Cornell goalie top shelf glove-side. Bargman got her second goal of the night on an empty net goal after the Big Red pulled their goalie with a little more than three minutes left in the game.

The Massachusetts native was named ECAC Rookie of the Week for her performance this past weekend as she now ranked seventh on the team for points with a total of seven goals and 13 points this season, leading all new Bulldogs.

After winning six of their last seven games, the Elis hope to continue their hot streak as they head into this week.

“This week, RPI and Brown should be good tests — hopefully we can keep our structures in place and earn a couple wins,” Welch said.

The Yale women’s hockey team is scheduled to face off at home against RPI on Tuesday, Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. This weekend, the Bulldogs compete against Brown in backto-back games. The team will first travel to Providence for a 6 p.m. game on Friday before returning to Ingalls Rink for their Saturday game at 6 p.m. All games will be streamed live on ESPN+.

Contact ROSA BRACERAS at rosie.braceras@yale.edu and SPENCER KING at spencer.king@yale.edu .

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The Yale women's hockey team opened the new year with a win against Dartmouth on Jan. 14.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

NEWS

“Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.”

A. R. RAHMAN FILM COMPOSER

NHPS paraprofessionals face COVID-19 quarantines without paid leave

BY YASH ROY STAFF REPORTER When Alicia Norris, a paraprofessional at the Davis School, received her pay stub for the first two weeks of January, she was shocked: she had not received pay for seven days since the return from break. After testing positive for COVID-19, she was required to quarantine and thus took seven days off from work in the first two weeks of school.

But she expected to receive paid time off, as the New Haven Public Schools system had promised staff in August.

“It’s heartbreaking because I love these kids, but I need to also provide for my family,” Norris said. “It’s scary to me to think that I might have to make a decision one morning that I have a sore throat, but I have to go to work because I’m not going to get paid but I might just be bringing this to a child who is unvaccinated.”

She’s not the only paraprofessional in this situation.

Despite reassurances from New Haven Public Schools, paraprofessionals across New Haven Public Schools who have contracted COVID-19 have received no paid leave for their period of quarantine or isolation since the start of the school year.

NHPS employs roughly 430 paraprofessionals, or paras, who include “classroom staff, assistant teachers, support staff, head start teachers, retention specialists, parent liaisons and outreach workers.” All paras are members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees local 3249.

According to Hyclis Williams, president of local 3249, since the start of the 2021-2022 school year paras across NHPS have been forced to use their personal time off or sick days instead of COVID-19 specific paid leave.

Last school year, they were able to receive paid leave. Teachers across NHPS have continued to receive paid leave this year.

“The Board of Education refuses to pay,” Williams told the News. “They had stated in their presentation before schools

opened [in August 2021] that they would have supportive paid sick leave and policies and practices that would encourage workers to stay home without fear of retaliation, loss of pay, loss of employment level. Lots of people have been in a situation where they have lost all pay because they could not return to work.”

The dispute between paraprofessionals and NHPS centers around an Aug. 23 BOE meeting where city and district leaders provided a presentation detailing the city and district’s policies on paid leave for “workers” in the district. At the meeting, city Public Health Director Maritza Bond presented slides which stated that NHPS will “allow flexible, non-punitive and supportive paid sick leave policies and practices that encourage sick workers to stay home without fear of retaliation, loss of pay or loss of employment level.”

But once the school year began, paras who tested positive and took time off did not receive this promised paid leave, and they reached out to Williams. On Nov. 23, Williams emailed NHPS Superintendent Iline Tracey about the issue. Williams was told that since paid time off for COVID-19 was not included in the paraprofessional contract, which was negotiated in 2019, the district could not provide them with the same paid time off that teachers, who had their contracts renewed during the pandemic and had included a provision on the issue, were receiving.

Norris and Williams both spoke at Monday evening’s BOE meeting during public comment and were supported by teacher’s union President Leslie Blatteau ’97 GRD ’07, who said that she “stood in solidarity” with the paraprofessionals.

After the public comment during the BOE meeting, Tracey said that she “hears the concerns of the paraprofessionals,” but that “this is a broader issue.”

“If we talk about equity, we should include workers in the other unions who have to quarantine,” Tracey wrote in an email to the News. “The only union who has such time protection for any pandemic situation

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Paraprofessionals who test positive or need to quarantine have not been receiving paid time off, despite NHPS promises. is the teachers’ union, since it is in their contract. Last year, under the governor’s executive order, this was not an issue. We are not under such an order for this year. However, it is something I can investigate from the state level.”

Williams also asked if NHPS could give some of the city’s COVID-19 relief money to cover paid time off for paras, she said.

“I did ask Dr. Tracey to look into the possibility of using some of the COVID relief money to offset any extra costs that they incur because of this,” Williams said. “She said she would look into it, and I asked her again and she said she didn’t have any feedback from it. And, so when the paras make a complaint her response usually is saying she’s sorry, but it is not in the contract.”

Tracey told the News that she knew “there were suggestions by the paraprofessionals union leader that we pay from the grant funds we received, but the funds we received were not given for this purpose.”

The paraprofessional, who was granted anonymity due to fear of loss of livelihood, told the News that they had tested positive for COVID-19 before Thanksgiving break and had not received pay for two weeks, and that it had placed a “great strain” on their ability to provide for their family.

“I’ve literally had to deplete my savings, and my checking account to make sure that I provide for my children,” they said.

“Because you’re not a teacher, you don’t get those extra benefits, you don’t get the respect that you deserve because they think, ‘oh you’re just a para.’”

Sadiyya Martinez, a paraprofessional working at King Robinson school, told the News that she could not come into work for the first two days after winter break because she had contracted COVID-19. She attempted to use her sick days to cover those days but said that her school’s secretary informed her that her sick days

would not kick in until the third week of January.

“It’s sad because I think I go above and beyond,” Martinez said.

“I do more than my contract and try to go above and beyond what’s written into my contract, but I feel like I’m not appreciated. I’m living paycheck to paycheck and this doesn’t seem to make it easier.”

Williams estimated that at least 30 paras have already been in similar situations and that there could potentially be more people who she does not know about or who will receive their pay stubs soon.

According to Williams, the paraprofessional union is looking to bargain and negotiate with the district so that her union members can get the same protections that teachers receive.

New Haven Public Schools employs approximately 4,000 people.

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale.edu

Yale bars students from study abroad programs as cases spike

ANVAY TEWARI/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Students reflect on cancellations for programs managed by the Center for International and Professional Experience.

BY WILLIAM PORAYOUW STAFF REPORTER Over winter recess, Yale’s Center for International and Professional Experience, or CIPE, announced the cancellation of all spring semester study abroad programs due to the rise of the Omicron COVID-19 variant. The decision came as many students were set to take off within weeks and much of course registration was already completed.

Although Yale does not run its own study abroad programs during the academic year, CIPE usually coordinates for and grants credit to students who

want to study abroad in external programs. However, this spring, CIPE has barred students from attending such external programs, regardless of if the programs themselves were canceled or not. CIPE makes decisions about study abroad based on Yale’s overarching travel policy, which has evolved throughout the pandemic and was updated due to the rise of the Omicron variant.

“Unfortunately, in accordance with the Yale University International Travel Policy for Yale College Students, we were unable to send any students abroad for the spring semester,” CIPE Director of Study Abroad Kelly McLaugh-

lin wrote in an email to the News.

Students were notified by their study abroad advisors of the update in December.

Luna Garcia ’23 had prepared to study in Madrid this spring, but found out a few days into winter break that she would not have the chance to do so.

“I think that the study abroad office themselves did as much as they could given the travel restrictions Yale implemented,” Garcia said. However, she added that the uncertainty of Yale’s travel policy made it stressful to navigate the study abroad process.

Garcia noted that the number of students studying abroad

during the school year is relatively low, which allows the study abroad office to provide personal assistance to those who do.

The problem, she believes, is that the staff themselves do not have enough information about what students hope to know regarding travel restrictions.

“They can’t give kids the information that they need or want … by virtue of it being such an unstable situation with Yale’s travel policy, which they don’t have any control over,” Garcia said.

For Marielena Rodas ’23, this spring’s cancellation marks her second failed attempt at studying abroad. She had previously planned to study abroad in 2020, which was ultimately canceled, and then applied again for a spring 2022 program in Paris. Although the program she intended to be part of is still operating as planned, she had to cancel her semester abroad due to Yale’s restrictions.

As a comparative literature and French double major, studying abroad to receive credit for language courses has been an important goal, Rodas said.

While she acknowledges the unpredictability of the public health situation caused by the Omicron variant, she believes students could have been prepared better for the changes.

“There was no real guidance,” Rodas said. “I wish the communication had been a little better up until that point.”

By the time study abroad cancellations were announced, Rodas had already purchased a one way ticket to Europe, paid a visa application fee and put down a $500 deposit for her program.

Rodas said she wished that Yale had been more transparent about advising students on contingency plans, which she believes were not dealt with properly in the context of Yale’s last-minute study abroad cancellations.

McLaughlin acknowledged students’ concerns about the fast-changing nature of study abroad this academic year, but said that all study abroad officers have worked to be as transparent as possible throughout students’ study abroad planning processes.

“From the outset of the Study Abroad application process, and in all of our advising and information sessions, we have been as realistic and transparent as possible that students should have backup plans and not count on study abroad being approved,” McLaughlin said. “Nevertheless, we express a shared frustration with students that these experiences abroad have been so disrupted for so long.”

While all study abroad plans for the spring semester have been canceled, Yale students have eagerly anticipated for programs to continue this upcoming summer.

CIPE hosted a webinar titled “Planning for Summer 2022” and extensive Q&A session on Jan. 19, which attracted over 100 students, according to McLaughlin. A recording of the webinar is available on CIPE’s website, and one-on-one advisors are available upon request, McLaughlin said.

“Everybody within CIPE with whom I have spoken is eagerly hoping that COVID-related disruptions to study/work/research abroad will end at the earliest possible moment,” McLaughlin wrote in an email. “We remain cautiously optimistic that we will be able to resume such activity this summer, at least in some locations, but we are advising all students to have domestic backup plans since, as we know, the course of this pandemic is proving difficult to predict.”

The deadline to apply for Yale Summer Session programs abroad is Feb. 15.

Contact WILLIAM PORAYOUW at william.porayouw@yale.edu

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

WHEN WE LEAVE

Silence.

Footsteps echo across the empty basement corridors while the wind sings a dissonant chorus from above Tables sit empty, waiting patiently for students to return The energy that once seeped and radiated through campus gone What was once so full of life reduced to an eerie shell Until we return again ZOE BERG reports.

PAGE 13

YALE DAILY NEWS · JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

"Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places." A. A. RAHMAN INDIAN FILM COMPOSER

Students reflect on campus class divides FGLI FROM PAGE 1 the president of the Yale First-Generation, Low-Income Advocacy Movement, said. “So we’ve arrived at this fake middle class that doesn't actually exist, but everyone's pretending to be in and it's just uncomfortable for everyone involved.”

A lawsuit filed in Illinois courts in early January alleged that Yale and other top universities violated federal antitrust law by colluding to cap financial aid offers. The lawsuit emphasizes the affluence that accumulates at these schools and points out the disproportionate number of wealthy students that congregate on their campuses.

The antitrust suit cited statistics describing the class composition of Yale College undergraduates.

“Yale’s undergraduate study body is generally wealthy and privileged,” the suit reads. “The median family income of undergraduates is $192,600; 19% of undergraduates come from the top 1% of the income distribution, and 69% come from the top 20%; and only 2.1% come from the bottom 20% of the income distribution.”

But these numbers apply to students born in 1991, students who would have graduated from Yale around 2013.

In the intervening years, the number of students from the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution has increased precipitously. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan noted that the number of students eligible for Pell Grants — which are awarded to students depended on their demonstrated financial need and the cost of attendance for their University — has grown to about 20 percent over the last decade and that Yale has consistently expanded its financial aid assistance.

“The admissions office strives to bring to Yale promising students from every background,” Quinlan told the News. “Creating a student body rich in diversity of experience, identity, background, and belief is essential to realizing essential educational benefits for undergraduates. Socio-economic diversity is an important dimension of this project.”

Roberts told the News that he was unsurprised by the statistics included in the lawsuit. Statistics about income distribution at Yale had already been publicly available online, Roberts said, although he thought that low-income students tended to be more aware of them than the rest of the University population.

“What I'm grateful for, though, is the fact that this lawsuit is bringing that statistic to a wider audience because I think it's important that people are conscientious of that disparity,” Roberts said. “Especially for folks who typically don't have to think about wealth, I think it's important that they be reminded.”

Universities included in the lawsuit, Roberts suggested, have developed prestigious reputations because they have historically been attended by wealthy students.

Although that reputation is changing as time goes on and Yale’s demographic evolves, Roberts said, Yale students should take these statistics as a reminder that income distribution at Yale is not representative of American society as a whole.

As of the 2020 census, the median household income in the United States was $67,521.

Although three of the students interviewed by the News emphasized the generosity of the University’s financial aid offerings, they described a range of challenges beyond paying tuition that come with being first generation, low-income students.

Brown recalled an incident in which a professor forbade the use of electronics in class, despite the fact that printing course materials was prohibitively expensive.

When Brown asked to use an iPad in the class to access the course materials — an option she explained was much less expensive than paying for printing — the professor suggested that doing so might alienate students who could not afford similar devices.

“People are trying so hard to accommodate low-income students, but it’s from a wealthy perspective,” Brown said. “If you understand the lower-income experience, you know that we rely on PDFs and we rely on Google Drives with textbook files.

Everything is digital so we can avoid buying physical items. If you don't have that experience, or don't understand that, you're not going to, but it's about being willing to listen to someone's experience.”

Karen Li ’23 is the co-president of Yale’s QuestBridge Scholars Network. QuestBridge is a nonprofit organization that matches low-income students with top schools. Li told the News that income inequality at Yale is “very apparent” to her.

She explained that she and her FGLI friends discuss the anxiety they feel when spending money unnecessarily, which contrasts with the way her wealthier peers sometimes make purchases on impulse.

“It seems like they have an endless bank account,” Li said.

According to Brown, social stratification on campus occurs not only because some students on campus are wealthier than others, but because their economic backgrounds have led them to grow up with experiences that other students cannot afford.

Matthew Elmore Merritt ’24 pointed to dining as a potential source of social segregation, explaining that because he cannot afford to eat out in New Haven, he instead eats mostly in Yale’s dining halls. As a result, he has ended up with many friends from similar backgrounds.

Brown described how many of these experiences that many students take for granted as part of college life — expenses like purchasing a daily cup of coffee or taking a trip over break — might lead to the social alienation of those that cannot afford them.

“My first year, a lot of my friends were going on vacation to London or Paris and I couldn’t go because I couldn’t afford it,” Brown said.

“That was definitely an experience that I missed out on. I think FOMO is taken to a more extreme level when it involves experiences that revolve around money.”

Luke Couch ’23, the other co-president of the QuestBridge Scholars Network, told the News that he has a “well-paying job” that enables him to afford books and travel. But, Couch explained, the need to work at all is the greatest delineation between low-income students and their wealthier peers.

Couch added that holding a job can take time away from academics or socializing, and that it is not always easy to find student jobs.

Viktor Kagan ’24 told the News that in his hometown of Philadelphia,

TIM TAI/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Jan. 9 lawsuit included statistics about income distribution at Yale, emphasizing a dramatic gap, even his wealthiest peers had some understanding of the general struggle of the low-income people around them, “being from the poorest big city in the U.S.” “Yet, here, I have met and been in class with people who I cannot relate to at all — not a fault of theirs or mine, but more so that we live and study within a system that perpetuates their wealth and segregates us in experience, wealth, and reality,” Kagan wrote.

According to Kagan, many of these students fail to understand the issues facing lower-income students, believing instead that most Americans are financially secure.

Brown concurred, adding that although some of her wealthy friends tried their best to empathize with FGLI students, they would never be able to understand her experience.

“Being around other friends that truly understand what it means to feel limited because of money, but also just live a different lifestyle because of the ways that we were raised, that's a sense of community,” Brown said. “Anyone from any affinity group, if you read the number that you’re only 2 percent of the population, especially in an insular community like Yale, that's going to feel alienating in some way.”

Groups like YFAM, Roberts said, exist to combat this sense of social alienation by providing FGLI students with a sense of community.

However, Roberts noted that the perspectives of FGLI students at Yale are not universal and can vary depending on other elements of their backgrounds and identities.

Roberts, who comes from a rural and predominantly white community in upstate New York, explained that his experience was likely very different from students at Yale from urban communities, or those mostly populated by people of color.

“Building communities around just first generation and low income identity already poses a number of challenges,” Roberts said. “But I think more fundamentally, it's just that there are common threads that people are able to use to connect with one another. Maybe the most important common thread is that we are not wealthy and elite like the rest of the institution is and that alone gives us reason to want to be together.”

Although Merritt told the News that attending Yale can be challenging for everyone, he emphasized that it was “definitely harder for low income kids,” in part because they were faced with

myriad expenses associated with student life.

Merritt added, for example, that traveling back and forth from Yale posed a routine challenge for him because it meant paying for flights both ways.

“That definitely dissuaded me from applying to many schools that were far away,” Merritt said. “Being from a small town in Alabama, where college education isn't really encouraged, it makes sense that most folks in my circumstance don't even end up applying to Yale, let alone coming here.”

Li pointed to the price of textbooks, which can accumulate at the beginning of the semester at great cost to students. She suggested implementing a textbook exchange program which would mitigate the financial and environmental impacts of purchasing new books.

Associate Director of Writing & Tutoring at the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning Karin Gosselink emphasized the stress that money puts on FGLI students.

“Navigating these daily decisions about finances and trying to figure out Yale’s hidden curriculum — the unwritten rules, expectations, and processes by which students access all aspects of their Yale education — places additional emotional, cognitive, and time burdens on first-generation and low-income students that can never be fully eliminated by university support,” Gosselink wrote in an email to the News.

Gosselink directs the Academic Strategies Program, and she supervises the Yale College FGLI Community Initiative alongside Dean Burgwell Howard.

All of the students interviewed told the News that the University would need to make major cultural and structural changes to alleviate many of these burdens.

Though Li and Couch both said they think Yale broadly serves low-income students well — specifically citing the University’s financial aid offerings — the students recommended changes. Li especially called for Yale to allocate more funds toward making the school more affordable.

“Instead of spending exorbitant amounts of money on over-the-top holiday dinners, Yale could afford to lower the fanfare a bit and invest more in its students, such as the low-income students who don't qualify as those in most need but would sincerely benefit from more aid,” Li said.

Other students want to more directly address Yale’s cashlined culture.

Roberts, who serves as the YCC Financial Accessibility Policy Director, reiterated his support for the YCC resolution, passed this November, which called for the elimination of legacy preference in Yale’s admissions policies. “[The financial aid lawsuit] sort of proves that the legacy admissions initiative was timely and relevant because the whole issue at the heart of this lawsuit is the fact that wealth and status [are] playing a disproportionate role in determining whether or not people are able to enroll,” Roberts said. “I think that the elimination of legacy admissions remains important. I think that Yale just doing what they say they do, which is maintaining need-blind admissions, is very important.”

A YCC Senator, Kagan added that eliminating legacy preference would be the minimum the University could do to “level the playing field” for FGLI students.

According to Merritt, the University needs to make cultural changes in its willingness to listen to FGLI students about the issues they face most urgently and the policy changes that would affect them the most directly.

“The administration could take the time to genuinely listen to us, not just make a small student panel and have conversations with us where they explain all of their policies, which is what often happens,” Merritt said. “You ask questions, they explain why the current system is bad, and you go about your day. There's no real conversation there. It's just an information session.”

According to Merritt, the University becoming more open to engaging with students and making structural changes would benefit students from all backgrounds.

Couch similarly emphasized how all students — regardless of their wealth — are served by the inclusion of low-income students on campus.

“Increasing accessibility allows both [low-income] students and the community at large to benefit from having their perspectives and backgrounds incorporated into the campus culture,” Couch said. “I am a strong believer that students from backgrounds such as mine have just as much to offer and share with the university as anyone else.”

Tuition at Yale costs $77,750 for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Contact JORDAN FITZGERALD at jordan.fitzgerald@yale.edu and LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgman@yale.edu .

Supreme Court to take up two affirmative action cases SCOTUS FROM PAGE 1 view its lawsuits against the two schools together in November. SFFA leveraged a similar suit against Yale in February 2021, but in May the University petitioned the court to hold the suit against Yale until the Harvard case is decided. The Connecticut District Court approved the motion later that month.

“Yale’s admissions practices adhere to Supreme Court precedent, and Yale College will continue to consider race and ethnicity as one part of its careful, whole-person review of applications,” University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote in an email to the News. “Yale will not waver in its commitment to assembling a diverse student body.”

According to the New York Times, the two cases must comply with different legal standards. As a private

university, Harvard must avoid racial discrimination if it wished to receive federal money. But because UNC is a public university, it must adhere to the equal protection clause of the Constitution and its admissions practices can be evaluated with the clause in mind.

Federal courts upheld affirmative action in the Harvard case in October 2019 and the UNC case two years later, but given the current 6-3 conservative majority on the national bench, legal experts believe the practice may fall when the cases are argued next term.

Yale Law School professor Justin Driver said that these cases “do nothing less than threaten the future of racial diversity in higher education.”

Over 40 years of Supreme Court precedent supports affirmative action, Peart emphasized.

“The Court has agreed with educational researchers, universities, major corporations, high-ranking military officers and others, who all believe that exposure to a broad range of backgrounds, talents, and viewpoints improves students’ educational experience and better prepares them for leadership in an increasingly diverse society,” Peart said.

However, President of SFFA Edward Blum has repeatedly challenged the practice. He failed to get the nation’s highest court to end affirmative action in 2016. Similar to his argument in the Harvard, UNC and Yale cases, Blum claimed that affirmative action disadvantaged white applicants in Fisher v. the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court decided 4-3 that Abigail Fisher, a white student, was not discriminated against when the University of Texas at Austin denied her admission.

“We are grateful the Supreme Court accepted these important cases for review,” Blum wrote in a Monday press release. “It is our hope that the justices will end the use of race as an admissions factor at Harvard, UNC and all colleges and universities.”

Blum has been critiqued for seeking to expand the power of white people by chipping away at race-based legal protections — such as affirmative action and voting rights laws — that counteract structural racism.

He wrote in the press release that “an individual’s race should not be used to help or harm them in their life’s endeavors.”

If the court rules against Harvard and UNC, Blum will succeed in overturning the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the court maintained that a university’s interest in diversity justified factoring race in admissions.

The bench has changed in the intervening decade, and three Trump-appointees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — have created a conservative majority that may push the nation to the right on more than just affirmative action.

‘The decision to review these affirmative action cases should not be viewed in isolation,” Driver wrote in an email to the News. “Along with pending cases involving abortion and firearms, they are but the most recent, high-profile indicators that some members of the Supreme Court wish to radically reshape the Nation.”

The Supreme Court first upheld affirmative action in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978.

Contact JORDAN FITZGERALD at jordan.fitzgerald@yale.edu .

M BASKETBALL Cornell 76 Harvard 61

W SWIM & DIVE Harvard 187 Penn 113

SPORTS

ATTENDANCE POLICIES

MELANIE HELLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale Athletics has issued a number of updates to fan attendance policies that will influence all members of the Yale community and a number of winter sports. back soon because everybody loves having them there, especially the home games.”

Under the new guidelines, all fully-vaccinated members of the Yale community, except undergraduate students, are allowed to attend games with a 50 percent capacity limit on fan attendance. Photo ID and proof of full vaccination — including a booster, if eligible — are required for entry to games at both indoor and outdoor venues. Unlike the Fall 2021 semester, when masking was not required at outdoor sports, masking is now mandatory for all guests regardless of vaccination status. Concessions will not be sold at any games and children aged 11 or under are not permitted within any venues.

Indoor sports impacted by this change include basketball, hockey, squash, tennis, track and field, gymnastics and swimming and diving. Lacrosse, an outdoor spring sport, will fall under the same rules.

While visitors from outside the

Yale community are forbidden to enter indoor venues such as Ingalls Rink or the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center, the rule is not listed for Reese Stadium.

“It is definitely upsetting that we won’t be able to have fans at our matches, especially since most of [the] big Ivy matches fall under this policy,” Women’s squash player Yuliia Zhukovets ’23 said. “Especially after more than a year without any sports, not being [able] to have our parents or at least friends is not the best. But we are definitely going into every match with our best attitude and support for each other.”

Womens’ squash joined a host of teams forced to postpone or cancel games due to COVID-19 concerns when Stanford’s squad decided against the cross-country trip for a bout with the Bulldogs. Men’s ice hockey postponed games at Princeton and Quinnipiac originally scheduled for the weekend of Jan. 7-8. The Bulldogs now will face the Tigers Feb. 8 and the Bobcats Feb. 22. Women’s ice hockey pushed back games against Sacred Heart, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Union to Jan. 18, Jan. 25 and Feb. 8, respectively.

Yale womens’ basketball against Dartmouth has been postponed to Jan. 23, while the men’s basketball team had to delay their Ivy opener until their Jan. 15 victory over Cornell. The postponed games against Columbia, Harvard and Dartmouth are now scheduled for Jan. 25, Feb. 9 and Feb. 22, respectively. Men’s’ and women’s fencing were unable to participate in the Penn State Dual Series on Jan. 16 due to complications on the Yale teams.

Some fans expressed discontent with the new rules, including the difference between attendance pol-

Swain leads Elis to victory

SEE POLICY PAGE 10

TIM TAI/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Columbia shot just 38.2 percent from the field in the first as the Bulldogs played their best opening minutes of the season.

Yale men’s basketball guard Azar Swain ’22 has led his team in scoring enough times this season — in 12 of 17 games heading into the Bulldogs’ Tuesday night game vs. Columbia — that seeing some 20-plus point total next to his name in the box score is no surprise.

MEN'S BASKETBALL In November, the senior from Brockton, Mass. entered Yale’s 1,000point club. In December, he set what was then a new career-high of 34 points at the Barclays Center, earning a Steph Curry comparison from Iona head coach Rick Pitino. A game later

vs. Monmouth, he became Yale’s alltime leading three-point scorer.

During an 83–72 win over Columbia (4–13, 1–4 Ivy) on Tuesday night, Swain added another chapter to a storied final season at Yale (9–9, 3–1), taking the high standards for his performance and raising them a notch.

As Yale erupted to an early 20–2 lead within the first seven minutes of play, Swain scored 13 of the Elis’ first 20 points and finished the night with 37 points, another new career best.

Guard and captain Jalen Gabbidon ’22 delivered his second consecutive 20-point game in the Bulldogs’ win. Forward Matt Knowling ’24 led the Elis with eight rebounds and four assists and also scored nine points. But SEE M. BASKETBALL PAGE 10

STAT OF THE WEEK

104.8

“We just keep putting in the work in practice and in games and nothing changed — just play the right away and play together. It was awesome” MATT KNOWLING ’24 MEN'S BASKETBALL

Elis jump to 5–1 start in Ivy play

BY ANDREW CRAMER STAFF REPORTER The Yale women’s basketball team (12–6, 5–1 Ivy) kicked off its seven game winter break schedule with its final nonconference win against Army (8-8, 3-4 Patriot).

The squad then opened conference play with a loss at Columbia (13-3, 4-0 Ivy), but recovered with a stretch of five consecutive victories in the games since.

W. BASKETBALL The Bulldogs currently sit in third place in the Ivy League, just one loss behind Columbia and Princeton (13–4, 5–0). Over the break, the Blue and White found different ways to win. In comfortable double-digit victories against Army, Cornell (6–10, 1–4), Penn (7–9, 2–2) and Dartmouth (1–16, 0–5), defense was the key as the

Bulldogs held their opponents to 53 points or less in each of these games.

A rivalry game against Harvard (9–9, 3–3) on Jan. 8 turned into an offensive showcase as the Eli offense erupted for its highest output of the season in an 80–73 victory. Elles van der Maas ’24 came off the bench to score a career-high 22 points.

“Elles consistently comes off the bench ready to shoot the ball,” teammate Camilla Emsbo ’23 said. “And she knows that she’s an incredible shooter and she’s ready to pull at any time. And that was massive against Harvard. She came in and she took pride in her abilities and she did what she had to do.”

Nine days later, the team found itself in a tied game late against Brown (5–12, 0–5). To make matters worse, Emsbo, the Elis’ leading SEE W. BASKETBALL PAGE 10

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The women’s basketball team was kicking off 2022 busy with the start of Ivy League play.

No. 8 Yale wins 3 straight over break

BY ROSA BRACERAS AND SPENCER KING STAFF REPORTERS The Yale women’s hockey team (14–4–1, 8–3–1 ECAC) was busy in the early weeks of 2022.

In its last five games, No. 8 Yale shook the dust off and continued its competitive play with a record of 4–1.

HOCKEY

BY WILLIAM MCCORMACK STAFF REPORTER

W BASKETBALL Columbia 57 Cornell 46

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

TENNIS SEASON PREVIEW After a productive fall season spent improving skills and building bonds, the Yale men’s and women’s tennis teams look forward to returning to the court and showing off their competitiveness in the quest for an Ivy title.

Yale Athletics changes fan policies

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the country, Yale Athletics updated fan attendance policies on Jan. 12th to go into effect from Jan. 17 through Feb. 21.

Yale Athletics released changes to their fan policy on Jan. 4 and updated guidelines further last week to flesh out restrictions regarding vaccination status, community attendance and capacity limits. These revisions impact all home games. From the start of the new year until Jan. 17, games were played without any fans in attendance and until in-person instruction resumes on Feb. 7th, undergraduate students will not be able to attend matches.

“It’s a situation we just have to get through and deal with,” Yale men’s basketball forward Isaiah Kelly ’23 said after the Bulldogs’ 96–69 triumph over Cornell. “Hopefully we can get the fans

M SWIM & DIVE Brown 194 Columbia 100

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports

M HOCKEY COMEBACK KIDS In two games on the road, the Elis defeated Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Union College, claiming their third and fourth ECAC conference wins. The Bulldogs will hope to extend this streak at the Connecticut Ice tournament this weekend.

BY HAMERA SHABBIR STAFF REPORTER

M SQUASH Columbia 7 Dartmouth 2

The Bulldogs opened the new year with a 4–2 win at Dartmouth (8–13–0, 2–12–0) on Jan. 14, marking the Bulldogs’ first game in more than a month, and the team had to work hard to stay sharp.

“The break from games is definitely long but it’s nice to have the time to recharge a bit and get ready for the second half of the season,” said forward Charlotte Welch ’23. “Because we have a uniquely larger team this year numbers-wise, we are able to scrimmage in practice which is super helpful in getting ready for games after a long time off.”

The next day, the Bulldogs stumbled against No. 6 Harvard (14–5–0, 6–2–0), losing 3–1 in Cambridge after beating the Crimson 3–1 earlier this season at The Whale in November.

Harvard scored early in the game with two goals in the first five minutes of play. Shortly after Yale went down 1–0, defenseman Olivia Muhn ’25 was sent to the penalty box for checking. Just 22 seconds later, captain Greta Skarzynski ’22 joined Muhn in the box for tripping. While the Bulldogs attempted to fight off the 5-on-3 penalty kill, the Crimson

managed to score the second goal of the night.

Three minutes later, Welch cut Harvard’s lead in half with a backhand shot from the top of the crease that went five-hole. The score remained 2–1 after the second.

After a hard fought second period, Yale pulled goalie Gianna Meloni ’22 from net with less than 90 seconds to go in the game. During the 6-on-5 play, Yale managed to secure five shots; however, their efforts were not enough. Harvard scored an empty net goal with just seven seconds left to solidify the 3–1 loss for Yale.

After the Harvard defeat, the Bulldogs looked to rebound against a Sacred Heart team (10–10–1, 5–4–1 NEWHA) they had already beaten twice: once on the road 7–0 and once on neutral ice at the Nutmeg Classic 4–1.

The Bulldogs looked to rebound against the familiar opponent, and left the ice satisfied with a 6–0 win on January 18. The Elis’ offense shined with Kiersten Goode ’24 and Elle Hartje ’24 each scoring two goals.

The Bulldogs shelled the Pioneers’ net all night, ending with 53 shots on goal. Meanwhile, on the defensive end, goalie Pia Dukaric ’25 made 17 saves for her second shutout of the season.

After the 6–0 win against Sacred Heart, the Bulldogs faced fierce competition from No. 9 Colgate (18–5–1, 8–3–1) on January 21. Meloni stood on her head to help secure Yale’s 3–0 win with her fifth shutout of the season after facing a total of 26 shots and shutting down three power-plays.

“The team was really dialed in for the Colgate game and played a SEE HOCKEY PAGE 10

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The Bulldogs go 4-1 in the last two weeks with games against Dartmouth, No. 6 Harvard, Sacred Heart, No. 9 Colgate, Cornell.

THE AVERAGE MARGIN OF VICTORY FOR THE YALE WOMEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING TEAM OVER IVY LEAGUE OPPONENTS.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2021

WEEKEND

DOJA CAT AND HER THREE STOOGES:

UNDERCOVER IN THE UNSEEN HOURS // BY LAURA ZENG You can tell a lot about a person by their email sign-off. The first time I corresponded with Logan Ledman ’24, I was treated to a Malcolm Gladwell quote about success. After we went back and forth a bit over scheduling, Joe Wickline ’24 inserted a reference to Julia Child’s penchant for onions with no semblance of pretense. Nader Granmayeh ’24, “the most outwardly-facing-normal” of the bunch, made no conspicuous indications of quirk, but he was also the first one I interviewed.

The premise of this article was to profile three guys who started a radio show on WYBC entitled “The Unseen Hours, Featuring Doja Cat,” where Doja Cat is a perennial guest who keeps on flaking. And either the show goes viral and Doja — whom the group refers to as Ms. Cat — actually makes an appearance, or the bit continues. It becomes abundantly clear after tuning in to an episode about Michael Bennet and Persian music, however, that Ms. Cat is just a MacGuffin.

Like a Horcrux or a briefcase, she’s a plot device driving the narrative, an arbitrary

choice of conceit — Nader even admitted to confusing her with Dua Lipa. So what’s more interesting than their supposed fixation with her is instead their actual obsession with each other — or, to put it more gently, the nuances of their friendship dynamic. But how best to understand the tenor of such a relationship?

This is the tale of my attempted infiltration into a friend group. No one likes to be the desperate outsider trying to worm their way into inside jokes, “proving their vibe.”

But in my case, the pretense of journalistic integrity provided the perfect cover, allowing me to don the role of inquisitive antagonist. As a reporter, my purported aim was to learn more about their show.

In actuality, my goal became to get them to acknowledge their absurdist premise. It would have no value if I got it immediately, however; rather, I needed to earn it first for the win to have any meaning. They needed to know I was buying into their bit, operating on the higher plane of comedic intellect, before I could even try to get them to break. Ultimately, of course, the score didn’t matter as much as playing the game.

Since I’m not a comedian myself, nor the quickest on my feet, my greatest asset would be catching them offguard. Throughout this process, I interviewed several people surrounding the friend group, including Philip Mousavizadeh ’24, a close friend of Nader’s, and Phil Schneider ’24, the other roommate who “probably has the most life away from the rest of the group.” I gathered as much ammunition as I could: prying into ex-girlfriends, burner Twitter accounts, obsessions with Olivia Rodrigo, run-ins with the law and other antics, along with keywords and key questions like “how has your relationship with your belt changed during the pandemic.” Armed as such, I met with each individual one-on-one before confronting them all together. *** Logan, Joe and Nader met their freshman year, serendipitously placed in the same Trumbull suite and fro-co group.

What perhaps started out as a friendship of convenience and proximity — as firstyear relationships often do — turned out

to be genuine compatibility. They currently live together in the same suite, except for Logan, who lives in a single down the hall — “down the hall” being a mere geographic technicality. They also work at the buttery, eat in the dining hall, go to the gym, talk about girl problems, and now do this show, together. They live, laugh, and love — together. Imagine Seinfeld adapted for the Yale campus, and you’ll have a pretty good portrait of their energy. Joe stars as a taller and lankier Jerry; both perform stand-up and present as a central figure, and not just because Joe was sitting in the middle of the couch when I met up with the three of them.

Nader is equivalent to George, sharing not only the height and glasses but also quiet neuroticism and a history of female troubles. Logan leans into being Kramer, the “slightly kooky” guy literally down the hall, encapsulating distinct yet sociable quirkiness.

I would say I was most prepared for Nader, my first interview. Most of my intel did pertain to his private life in particular, and I think the Cont. on page B2

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

CAT

Searching for a Rap Star or Gaming a Friendship?

Cont. from page B1 key difference lay in expectations — i.e., him having none. At first, things were cordial; he was subdued, and so the conversation was too, and to be honest, a little boring. But as soon as I mentioned I had listened to the show, making homage to a few bits, some bravado, and creativity emerged.

Suddenly, their radio show was actually very popular, owing to the charm of the hosts. And in fact, the reason Mike Bennet, the U.S. senator from Colorado, was mentioned so frequently on the show was because “he’s got this pull with girls 16-24,” a key demographic of their audience they were missing. Now we were talking, and we were playing. Every so often I’d sneak in a reference to his ex or the failure of the Yale Students for Pete Buttigieg, and I’d win a barely suppressed chortle, plus the surprise in his eyes. Reporter: 1.

Nader: 0.

Nader is, as depicted earlier, the most “outwardly-facing normal.” Though he is Persian, when asked if Nader was white, Logan replied, “I would without a doubt characterize him as a typical white man, and I think it’s my place to do that.” Perhaps glasses say more than they should for me, but I could also see a little Steve Kornacki in him.

Slightly reserved, he’s the most rational of the trio but also the truest gym bro: works out religiously, obsessed with the Philadelphia Eagles, reports on Yale football games, etc. But he’s also the Donkey to Joe’s Shrek — the “wonderfully cherubic angel of a kid,” cool with sometimes being laughed at rather than with, who can also occasionally deliver the best one-liner punchlines.

Though comedy isn’t his 9-5, being around the other two allows this side hustle of his to thrive; they form an environment outside a campaign or the gym in which to truly embrace his favorite alias, “Lord of the Idiots.”

Logan was my most memorable interview. Considering he was after Nader, I assumed there would be some collusion behind the scenes, so I was expecting a more brash personality. But I was still caught unawares: storming into Blue State with a dark hoodie and greeting me with a firm handshake, I was not expecting the distinctive mannerisms of Logan Ledman, which seemed as surreal as they did somewhat familiar. Wolverine, Zach Galifianakis, Bobby Berk, Ron Swanson, Phoebe Buffet, Hagrid, the Lorax. Here was a bona fide character. Logan speaks with a

// NADER GRANMAYEH

characteristic lull, or a measured rhythm, in which the time it takes for him to build a sentence indicates climactic suspense and some impending sagacious insight, only to lead nowhere, or land south of Dakota. He also has a predilection for adverbs and prepositions, like “wherein,” “for whom,” and “therein,” that help him tease out his prolonged statements. A few highlights: On what music means to him: “It’s the soul of humanity for whom there is not a soul without the universal language of music.”

On a thesis of their radio show: “I think it’s understanding where the unseen hours are in this moment here right now in America, in this America, in our America, wherein someone like Doja cat, for whom there is such — among all of us, serious acclaim — wherein there for her, the unseen hours are, and are not, and what those results of that would be right here, right now, and for the posterity of our audience.”

On the helpfulness of their show during the pandemic: “Does it make us heroes? Probably. But that’s more, like, for you to say.”

Other comments included comparing the three of them to the 1789 Constitutional Convention — Doja Cat being the Declaration of Independence — aspiring to be the Federal Reserve Bank, and considering his peers to be “empty blank slates.” Honestly, Logan is a master at saying so much without saying anything, a trait I can’t help but think would make him a skilled politician. But it was hard for me to take him seriously without laughing, and therefore I did lose some ground. Luckily, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve, which garnered a few rewarding wins in the form of escaped guffaws, and rolling, frantic stutters: in response to an inquiry about questionable twitter behavior, “I would say” was repeated 8 times in a row when, evidently, nothing could be thought of to say. I will concede he had a good counterattack— “why am I being asked this question”— and questioning my credibility as part of the YDN. But overall, it was a very fair match. Reporter: 1. Logan: 1.

A history major who once co-wrote a whole play about a historical figure in his hometown, and who knows the ins and outs of said hometown in Minnesota, “Logan is like [a] gem… one of the smartest people I’ve met, but also the dumbest.” He can present as dazed and confused, but it’s exactly this sort of self-proclaimed “dumb humor”

// NADER GRANMAYEH

that discloses the keenest intellect. Gruffy but lovable; awkward but at ease — these are just a few contradictions that compose the caricature that is Logan Ledman.

“Does it make us heroes?

Probably. But that’s more, like, for you to say.”

Joe “DJ Joe Wickline” Wickline, as he asked to be referred, is the editor-in-chief of the prestigious Yale Record, a satirical publication that partially fills in the void of humor on campus.

I’ll admit to having attended one of the first club meetings for the

publication myself this year, before realizing I wasn’t actually funny or willing to subject myself to be judged as such. By contrast, Joe Wickline is exactly the sort of person you might expect to head such an organization. He has the understated confidence of someone who knows they’re awkward and proud of it, the gait of someone self-aware of their own idiosyncrasies and fine with it. He also looks exactly how you might imagine someone with such an assertive, if not slightly generic, name to look. Towering at 6 foot 7, there’s a slight hunch in his shoulders as he walks, the trademark one tall people weather as compensation for standing out.

But sitting down, “DJ” Joe Wickline’s posture relaxes, as if more comfortable in this less measured realm of engagement.

Of the three, Joe is by far the hardest to read. Unlike his peers, whose boundaries between character and self were clearer to identify, I couldn’t always tell whether his answers were genuine or genuine to be funny. He seemed too normal and too professional, to the point where it was a bit unsettling. Was his passion for the show “as an audiovisual community space for dialogue, discourse and radical compassion” unfeigned? At one point, I brought up his past bouts with narcolepsy to see if I could extract anything, but then I couldn’t tell if he got truly offended, or was just skilled at ruffling my own confidence.

Looking back, Joe’s style is just more subtle, perhaps; “I bet the compass of Doja’s heart points straight toward justice, and that ain’t got no party affiliation,” dropped in between conversations. It could also be that he expected me to expect him to be funny, and so purposefully maintained an air of ordinary nonchalance. Either way, the jury is still out on “DJ” Joe Wickline. Joe: 1.

Reporter: 0.

I was warned beforehand that the suite-meet would be a lot. A giant tapestry of Jeff Goldblum, a flag of Eswatini, a lingering musk of boys and weed. But besides a jar of mayo, a book by Dr. Seuss and a CD player with “Say So” on repeat for an hour, I didn’t find the room to be that much more eccentric than any other Yale room — we do all generally pride

ourselves on our unique paraphernalia. I would characterize the overall vibes as chaotic neutral, however. It’s easy to see how their suite could be a home, a safe place for them to freely release their inner oddity. “A delightfully symbiotic relationship,” as described by Phil, one of the rotating characters in the supporting cast. Following a question about whether humor could be inherited, their conversation followed a tangent from eugenics to white supremacy to the evangelical base of the American right to the resurgence of the Labor movement—basically, it became a highly lucid discussion about the state of American politics today.

They became pundits as quickly as they fell back into debating just how Cowardly Logan would be as the Lion in Wizard of Oz, and whether Nader would be the Wizard or Dorothy — I personally would consider Dorothy Doja Cat, and Nader Toto.

At another point, Joe admitted to using “comedy as a shield, because if [he’s] making a joke [he doesn’t] have to do anything else”; but again, this seemed too on the nose. Was he saying that because it was true, or because he knows that’s what I “wanted” to hear? Was it a moment of gravity or masked levity? Or perhaps both could be true, and that’s the punchline. *** Tucked away in a corner of Trumbull College is a very peculiar group of friends. Highly intelligent, to be sure, verified excelsior by their political jargon alone. But also a breath of fresh air from the rest of Yale, where everyone is always taking themselves so seriously — myself included. I’d like to thank the numerous friends surrounding the trio for inviting me in on their jokes, indulging my inner comedian, and generally letting me be a part of the group. It was fun. And of course, to the three boys who are constantly getting stood up, unseen by both pop star Doja Cat and the masses, I’m sure you’ll continue to find solace in each other Tuesdays at 1pm on WYBC. If you ever need a shoulder to literally or comically cry on, just Say So. Contact LAURA ZENG at laura.zeng@yale.edu.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND PROFILE

POETRY IN THE DARK: the Story of Wazhma Sadat // BY BRIAN ZHANG

Wazhma Sadat is the first Afghan woman to have graduated from both Yale College and Yale Law School. But when her journey of finding a home and an education began, she was reading smuggled books and eating watermelon skins to survive.

Blanketed windows. Smuggled books. Huddled with parents and six older siblings around a lamp, listening to Persian poetry. For five-year-old Wazhma Sadat, this was what education looked like when the Taliban seized control of Kabul in 1996. The city had barely recovered from the Soviet-Afghan War and Afghan civil wars, but the streets were already finding themselves vulnerable again to torture, poverty and kidnappings. Neighbors disappeared overnight. Residents were left “dismembered” and slaughtered.

In Kabul, Sadat and her family lived in constant fear of repercussions for their “secret education” system: the Taliban had made it illegal for girls and women to receive an education of any form, let alone go to school. There was also incredible “outside pressure” on her father to join their movement, as he was from the same Pashtun tribe as the Taliban. Combined with food scarcity, these reasons eventually prompted the family to flee their homeland and move to Pakistan.

Making their new home in the city of Peshawar, Sadat and her siblings attended school in the mornings and helped earn some income sewing carpets at night. The situation had not improved by much.

“There were so many days that I didn’t have anything to eat,” she said. “We would eat … the shells of watermelons, scraping [them] off until there was very little to it.” Even today, Sadat feels hunger as a “visceral pain” that comes to mind whenever she hears about a country suffering from poverty. It is a particularly haunting feeling of “home,” she explained.

Little did she know that the relocation to Peshawar would be the first of many more to come.

Always following her around is this feeling of “starting from scratch.” After two years of living in Peshawar, her family moved to Mansehra, Pakistan, where her mother started the first-ever school for Afghan refugees. It was also around this time that 9/11 happened — the collapsing Twin Towers an image that Sadat “vividly remember[s]” watching on television as a nine-yearold. Thousands of miles away, the attack nonetheless had a tremendous emotional impact on her parents, who led a family prayer for the lives lost to violence — the violence that looked and felt too similar to what they had seen back home.

Shortly following the attack, the United States invaded Afghanistan. Sadat’s family, along with many other Afghan refugees, started relocating back to their hometown of Kabul, albeit cautiously in waves. Her return home did not grant her what she dreamed of when she was five, however. Going to a “conventional” classroom and wearing a “little backpack” would have to wait until the ninth or tenth grade.

Instead, for the first two years following her family’s return, Sadat attended school in a UNICEF tent while her school building — which had been the former headquarters of the Taliban — was renovated to remove the marks of war and atrocity. Sadat remembers walking through classrooms covered in bloodstains. “Ropes tied to faucets,” she recalled, among other torture devices, were left scattered on the floor. *** Everything changed in 2006.

A few years into high school, she received news that she was among

the 37 of 4000 student applicants selected to study abroad through an exchange program for Central Asian students. Sadat came alone to the United States, living with a host family while studying in Florida. A year later, she moved back to Kabul, where she finished high school and started working for various non-profit organizations that specialized in economic and educational development.

“The last project I worked with in Kabul was funded by USAID. My job was to represent Afghan woman-led small businesses in global wholesale markets,” she said. “I would travel internationally to represent Afghan-made products and enter into contracts with wholesale buyers on behalf of Afghan businesses.” Sadat was eighteen years old.

During one of those trips, which brought her to the New York International Gift Fair for an exhibition, a mentor recommended that she consider researching and applying to U.S. colleges. At that point in time, Sadat knew little about Ivy League universities, except that their need-based admissions policies made them the most financially feasible. That same trip, a colleague drove her to New Haven to tour Yale, where she happened to learn that the admissions office was in the process of conducting interviews for international students.

“This was my only opportunity to interview with colleges because it was very difficult to get a visa to come to the U.S. just for an interview,” Sadat explained, remembering waiting outside 38 Hillhouse in jeans as she watched other students “suited up.” “I was very, very underdressed and nervous and did not know what was going on.”

Flash forward several months.

A hand-mailed application with “I cannot pay the application fee” written on the top and a TOEFL test later, Sadat described what was the “most emotional” moments of her life. She had been accepted early action to Yale University, where she would then pursue a study in global affairs.

Sadat attributes a big part of her Yale career to her friends and the many mentors and professors who helped her navigate challenging courses. But it was also her incredible determination behind the scenes and the learned habit of “fetching for herself” that helped get her through what she described as a “steep learning curve” and a “socially, culturally, [and] emotionally” demanding environment. She never took an “office hour for granted” and put in effort to build connections with her professors. And every night, she studied five new vocabulary terms, self-learning concepts that she mentioned her peers had already covered in “elementary school.”

In May of 2014, Sadat graduated Yale College, being the first Afghan woman to have done so.

Having secured a job at home, she was excited to return to Afghanistan to “do something meaningful for [her] country,” to make “organic” change for her people.

“I wanted to go back –that was the only goal I worked toward while in college” she said. *** But her plans were suddenly interrupted by “some level of real threat and attack on [her] family [that remained] in Afghanistan.”

She described the Taliban’s targeting of her family as “deeply traumatizing and unsettling.”

WKND RECOMMENDS Waving to the people in McClellan Hall

//WAZHMA SADAT

The Taliban had noticed not only that she worked closely with Ashraf Ghani, the most recent former president of Afghanistan, but also that she went to school in the United States and was part of the USAID. The shocking news prompted Sadat’s entire family to disperse, with her parents and several siblings ultimately emigrating to Canada. Unfortunately, one of her brothers — whom she considers to be her “best friend” — could not leave Kabul.

“For a long time, I felt a tremendous amount of guilt for the price my family had to pay for my education,” Sadat said. Having family still remaining in Kabul — and thinking about the challenges confronting them — dramatically shifted how she carried herself even thousands of miles away from the Taliban’s threats.

Past conversations with peers about her private and family life were no longer ones that she felt comfortable with. “As someone who had always been vocal about my journey and the ongoing political and legal issues both in Afghanistan and globally, I felt that the only way to ensure my family’s safety was to stay silent and remain invisible,” she said.

Unable to return to Afghanistan, Sadat applied to and enrolled in Yale Law School — a decision that she had intended to make much later on. Her first week of legal education began with the sad news of losing a close friend, a fellow prospective Afghan lawyer, in a Taliban-led attack on the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. The threats to her family, along with the friends and extended family members who were murdered by the Taliban, never escaped her mind for one moment during the grueling years of her years in the Law School.

She explained that law school was among the most intellectually and emotionally challenging years in her life, as she balanced rigorous coursework and exams with the

constant feeling that the safety of her family was in jeopardy.

Trump’s election to office in 2016 only exacerbated the situation, highlighting the existing anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments, according to Sadat. “[My] optimism shifted significantly,” she said, presented with new visa and green card applications on top of her existing hurdles.

In law school, Sadat devoted a significant amount of her time to fighting against the Trump administration’s travel ban on several Muslim majority countries as part of a legal clinic that filed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the president’s executive order. “My initial years of legal education coincided with my immigration to the United States,” she said. “Although I had lost my own homeland, a place I still don’t know if I will ever be able to return to, it was not hard to see that this country, my new home, was aching too.” In the face of such uncertainty and emotional grapples, Sadat nonetheless became the first Afghan woman to graduate from the Law School. The year was 2019. *** Two years later on Aug. 15, 2021, the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan yet again. Her brother, sister-in-law and their two children were still there.

Thousands of miles away in America, Sadat could not “sleep or eat or do anything besides help them evacuate.” Sadat knew that with stampede after stampede breaking out, it was not only impractical for her brother to wait for departure at the United States.-controlled Kabul airport.

His life was on the line.

She described what she did next as “literally out of the movies.” Following at least four separate missions to evacuate them — which consisted of advocating, coordinating and code-communicating with evacuation ambassadors, human rights organizations and strangers — her brother was

escorted into the Kabul airport, successfully boarding a United States-bound flight.

“Several individuals did not sleep those nights and worked with me as I evacuated my brother’s family,” Sadat said. “I can never thank them for their heroic selflessness.”

He and his family are now reunited with the rest of Sadat’s family in Canada. *** Today, Sadat lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband Usama Qadri — a fellow Yale College graduate and former resident at the Yale Emergency Medicine department — and their two year old son, Idris.

As she reflects on her journey, she cannot help but feel “emotional.” She was forced to travel continents and oceans for an education. The word “home” was complicated to “this idea that [she] was never actually going to return home, whatever that was.” She has had sleepless nights thinking about her family, the same family that huddled with her in the dark reading poetry and the same family that wove carpets with her to make ends meet.

But through it all, she has — and continues to — remain optimistic. “I’m one of the luckiest immigrants in the U.S.,” she said, emphasizing her incredible education, the new family she has built here and the prospects of helping even more people as an attorney. Sadat just joined a law firm in D.C. following her clerkship at the Connecticut State Supreme Court, working to represent new Afghan arrivals who came to the United States following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“It [took] a lot of hard work … inspiration and encouragement from others,” Sadat said. “That got me through from the beginning until the very end.”

Contact BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND NOW

STREAMING

What The Sex Lives of College Girls Gets Right — And Wrong // BY AUDREY KOLKER AND ANABEL MOORE

// SOPHIE HENRY

Just when you were reflecting on your first ever semester at college — the classes, the people and the terrible decisions that keep you up at night — here comes a television show about the exact same thing to distract you from all that exhausting introspection. “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” a new comedy from Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble, aired November 2021 on HBOMax. It attempts to tell the stories of four young women starting school at the fictional Essex College, an elite private institution in Vermont. The show follows Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) — yes, that kind of Chalamet — a first-generation student from Arizona; Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott), a varsity soccer player dodging her politician mother’s shadow and carrying on an affair with her married, older assistant coach; Leighton (Reneé Rapp), a callous Manhattan princess and happily closeted lesbian; and Bela (Amrit Kaur), an Indian-American aspiring comedy writer — not unlike Kaling herself.

“The Sex Lives of College Girls” covers a lot of ground in its ambitious first season, with mixed success — not unlike our own first semesters. As first-years ourselves, we’ve broken down what works, what doesn’t and what we want to see more of.

Right (Audrey): Specific detail. Kaling and Noble went on “research expeditions” to Yale and Dartmouth to re-familiarize themselves with the college experience and that work has led to some of the series’ best jokes. Bela attends an interest meeting for the college humor club, along with about eighty thousand other people. Some-

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body’s sucky long distance boyfriend shows up out of nowhere. There are the requisite digs at a capella groups and disgusting frat basements. And then there is my favorite line, delivered with perfect disdain by Reneé Rapp: “Kimberly, I’m from New York.”

Wrong (Anabel): Contrary to popular belief, mature and kind young men do exist in college, and platonic male friendships are part of what make the college experience rich and exciting. Men are more than symbols of sex, power and manipulation, but beyond the affable, and caricatured, “FAF” — “faculty member and friend,” AKA Froco — I came away from each male scene with the overwhelming sense that men are entirely immature pigs. Write more characters like Canaan, Whitney’s later and kinder love interest but perhaps who don’t have a romantic interest in one of the girls!

Right (Anabel): Kimberly’s FGLI experience juxtaposed against Whitney’s senatorial family and Leighton’s New York oldmoney roots did much to illuminate a more modern experience at a school modeled after one that only introduced its generous financial aid program in the early 2000s.

Wrong (Audrey): Some of the show’s plotlines and characters make it abundantly clear how long ago the writer’s room graduated. This is most egregious in the episodes where Leighton is forced to volunteer at the Women’s Center, meeting walking queer tropes who bake “gluten-free spice free bread.” Another example is Whitney’s affair with her assistant coach, which was so dated that Whitney quickly became my least favorite of the four suitemates to watch. The

supportive Black friend in the wheelchair — TikTok famous, though — the sassy gay guy…. Surely the show is capable of writing semi-dimensional side characters. It just seems to think it’s funnier not to.

Right (Anabel): Some semblance of grounding. When Kimberly gets caught cheating on her economics exam and calls her dad, she is met with love and the imperative to fix what she has done. Moments of genuinity and sincerity like this give characters the latitude to find their ways, balancing the pressure on their personal values with their desire to become someone.

Wrong (Audrey): This is sort of a spoiler: in order to gain admission to the competitive Catullan comedy club, Bela gives six of their writers handjobs. This is regarded as a #girlpower move and then basically dropped for the rest of the series — a writing choice with dumbfounding sexual politics, and one that does not inspire confidence in the #MeToo storyline introduced a few episodes later.

Right (Anabel): The portrayal of social media and dating apps. The writers were aware of how social media can be just as important to career growth as academics; Bela’s excitement at having a piece posted on the Catullan social media feed stood out, as well as Whitney’s acute awareness of her mother’s professional reputation and Leighton’s desire to not “be known as gay.” Today, being marketable seems to be just as important as being knowledgeable; each of the main characters is hyperaware of their personas and how others perceive them.

Wrong (Audrey): Sorry, why are we supposed to believe Nico the frat boy brother

genuinely cares about Kimberly again?

Their illicit, UTI-causing hookups are just that good?

Anabel: Or is he really just grinding (sorry, pun intended) for those French tutoring hours?

One more thought (but not about sex life): Turns out Leighton is great at math, so much so that she places out of a firstyear lecture – but then that plotline ends. So much attention is given to Kimberly’s academic woes that it would be refreshing to see the other girls succeed amidst the notoriously difficult academic landscape of the Ivy League. Part of the experience at a place like Essex is learning to balance competing components of the college landscape: sex social life, academics, athletics and extracurriculars. Each needs to be given its due diligence.

Concluding: Ultimately, “The Sex Lives of College Girls” attempts to show the reality of today’s college experience. Overdone elements of the show detract from its moments of genuineness; there are too many moments of “we want more!” or “ugh, this is old” that corrupts the idealism of the show and research of the writers. It’s not something we’d recommend to the 800 early-accepted ’26ers, but it is entertainment; a more thoughtful portrayal of the sex lives of the modern-day college girl, yes, but one that still has a long way to go.

Contact AUDREY KOLKER at audrey.kolker@yale.edu and ANABEL MOORE at anabel.moore@yale.edu.