T H E O L D E ST C O L L E G E DA I LY · FO U N D E D 1 8 7 8
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 82 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
RAINY CLEAR
44 51
CROSS CAMPUS Changes on College. Bespoke,
a sometime restaurant and frequent late-night hangout for Elis, will close its doors on Saturday, according to an announcement posted on its webste. In its place, a new Morrocan steakhouse called Gilt will open in time for Valentine’s Day.
Is coffee cake a carb? In a
piece reacting to the news that celebrity chef Paula Deen has Type II diabetes, Fox News named Claire’s one of the nation’s top 10 healthiest restaurants, on the grounds that “even the most rabid rabbits would be tempted by the line-up of pies, cookies and cakes chef-owner Claire Criscuolo and her crew bake fresh daily.”
MACBETH HERO RECAST AS VIETNAM VET
DURFEE’S
ELM CITY HOSPITALS
FENCING
No more double-swiping on weekends; students confused, upset
YALE-NEW HAVEN, ST. R’S REPORT HIGH ADVERSE EVENTS
With walk-on culture and little-known rules, Elis shoot for Ivy title
PAGE 8-9 CULTURE
PAGE 3 NEWS
PAGE 5 CITY
PAGE 16 SPORTS
Witt ’12 clarifies Rhodes timeline BY GAVAN GIDEON AND CAROLINE TAN STAFF REPORTERS Patrick Witt ’12 told the News Tuesday night that he decided to play in the Nov. 19 Yale-Harvard Game before he was notified that the Rhodes Trust had asked Yale to reendorse his candidacy. In a phone interview, the former quarterback clarified his account after a story published in the New York Times last Thursday sparked days of speculation as to why Witt ended his Rhodes Scholarship candidacy. The Times reported that Witt’s Rhodes
candidacy would require reendorsement from Yale, as it had been “suspended” because of an informal sexual assault complaint filed against him in September by a female student. Without the University’s backing, Witt would have had no choice between playing in The Game and attending his Rhodes interview, scheduled that same day in Georgia, the Times reported. But Witt told the News that he had chosen to play against Harvard before he was informed that his candidacy required an additional endorsement letter. Witt said he first learned his
candidacy had been called into question when he received a phone call from Yale Director for National Fellowships Katherine Dailinger on either the evening of Nov. 9 or morning of Nov. 10. In the call, Witt said Dailinger informed him that he would need re-endorsement from Yale to remain eligible for the scholarship. By that time, however, Witt said he had already chosen to play in The Game rather than pursue the Rhodes. He told Dailinger that, as a result, he would not need University reendorsement. “I told her at that time I
had already made my decision due to a conversation that I had with the regional secretary by email, who told me on the eighth that I was going to have to choose between the two decisions,” Witt said. “Essentially it was an ultimatum. After getting that confirmation from the regional secretary, I told my parents, told my coaches, told people in the Athletic[s] Department that I was going to play in The Game. And so when Kate Dailinger called me on the night of the ninth or the morning of the SEE WITT PAGE 4
Yale-NUS seeks a president
For good. The class of 2012 will
begin accepting donations for its senior class gift today. Last year, the class of 2011 reached 97 percent participation.
It’s coming. The schedule for Sex Week 2012, scheduled to run from Feb. 4 to Feb. 14, is now available online. The keynote address from prominent lawyer and feminist Ann Olivarius ’77 LAW ’86 SOM ’86 will be at 3 p.m. on Feb. 4. Other events include “Online Dating with Christian Rudder, founder of OkCupid,” “Thought Catalog: Writing Workshop and Party” and “Latino Sexuality — A Sexual Awakening.”
Get ready, Mixed Co.! In last
night’s episode of “Glee,” Quinn Fabray, the diva queen bee and an antagonist on the show, announced that she had been accepted to Yale and will be attending.
Moving up. Democratic state
legislators proposed a series of increases in the state minimum wage on Tuesday. First, the minimum wage would jump to $9 an hour by July 1, giving Connecticut the secondhighest minimum wage in the nation. Then, in 2013, it would jump to $9.75.
Can you hear me now?
The Yale College Council announced Tuesday that it had created a new cellphone loaner program through which students can rent a phone for up to two weeks. No grilled cheese, for now. Due to “unforeseen
maintenance issues,” the Ezra Stiles buttery will be closed for the rest of the week. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1966 A group of students and faculty plan to shut down Yale to protest the Vietnam War. Submit tips to Cross Campus
ONLINE y MORE cc.yaledailynews.com
Misconduct report released BY GAVAN GIDEON AND CAROLINE TAN STAFF REPORTERS
The President will likely be more involved with undergraduates and the faculty who teach them than would be the case at a bigger institution.
We should seize the unique and exciting opportunities to make new contributions to the liberal arts education approach.
CHARLES BAILYN Dean of Faculty, Yale-NUS College
It will take a pioneering spirit and an individual who is deeply collegial … to realize the ambitions for the college.
BY TAPLEY STEPHENSON STAFF REPORTER Yale and National University of Singapore administrators say they expect to appoint Yale-NUS’ inaugural president by this summer. Officials at both schools have formed a search committee for the president of their jointly run liberal
University President Richard Levin will take on matters of Connecticut education reform in his new position on the board of directors of the Connecticut Council for Education Reform.
[Levin] will propose legislation potent enough to make Connecticut a national leader in narrowing the achievement gap. DANNEL MALLOY Governor of Connecticut Levin, along with the chief executives of several Connecticut-based companies, joined the board last Thursday, forming a growing consortium of business and civic leaders calling for changes to the state’s pub-
SEXUAL MISCONDUCT
LINDA LORIMER University Secretary
arts college, and will nominate a candidate to the Yale-NUS Governing Board in the coming months for final approval. He or she will be tasked with building the college’s faculty, curriculum and administration in a nation unfamiliar with liberal arts education, administrators said. University Secretary Linda Lorimer said the search is “global” in scope and the
president of Yale-NUS could come from an Eastern or Western institution, although all candidates under “serious consideration” have faculty backgrounds. “There is widespread interest: we have talked with those born in East Asia and in the UK as well as the
The report, released in a campuswide email from Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler Tuesday evening, marks an effort by administrators to increase transparency in how Yale addresses sexual misconduct. Twelve of the complaints were filed with the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct (UWC), which was established July 1 to hear both informal and formal sexual misconduct complaints, and the rest were brought to either Title IX coordinators or the Yale Police Department. Administrators said they were troubled by the number of cases but added that they are glad to see members of the Yale community making use of the
SEE YALE-NUS PAGE 4
SEE MISCONDUCT PAGE 7
Levin joins education org. BY BEN PRAWDZIK STAFF REPORTER
According to Yale’s first-ever report compiling all sexual misconduct complaints from across the University, 52 cases of sexual harassment, assault or other misconduct were brought to Yale officials between July 1 and Dec. 31 of last year.
TAN CHORH CHUAN President, NUS
It’s coming, too.
Undergraduates for a Better Yale College released the schedule of True Love Week, to be held Feb. 5 to Feb. 14, in a Tuesday email. Events include “The Person as a Gift” and “The State of Marriage Today” featuring professor Charles Hill.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Patrick Witt clarified his acount of his Rhodes candidacy on Tuesday.
lic school system. The CCER, a Connecticut-based nonprofit organization, was formed under a 2010 state commission created by former Gov. Jodi Rell to brainstorm strategies to narrow the state’s achievement gap — the largest in the nation. “I think having the major organizations in the state all standing behind vigorous efforts to improve education is important,” Levin said. “It could make it politically easier to make changes that are necessary, and so I was trying to do my duty as a good citizen of this area.” According to CCER spokesman Robert Townes, grassroots momentum is building in Connecticut to enact major education reform. He added that Levin’s presence on the board of directors will help the organization “shape [its] strategic direction” and that Levin’s internationally known name will give the CCER greater political clout when addressing education issues. The announcement of Levin’s appointment comes shortly SEE EDUCATION PAGE 7
Violent crime on decline
NICK DEFIESTA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
With the recent appointment of Dean Esserman as NHPD chief, the department has shifted to a community policing approach. BY JAMES LU STAFF REPORTER With January at a close, the Elm City posted its first month without a homicide since August 2009. New Haven Police Department spokesman David Hartman said violent crime around New Haven was “way down” in January. Yet despite this success, some members of the Board of Alderman, includ-
ing Board President and Ward 5 Alderman President Jorge Perez, questioned Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s anticipated proposal to budget for 40 to 45 new NHPD officers as the department implements its new community policing strategy. “I’m happy to see the [DeStefno] administration is paying attention to community policing after they almost single-handedly SEE CRIME PAGE 4
PAGE 2
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “Why is it that every single article in the YDN has to pretend that Yale yaledailynews.com/opinion
GUEST COLUMNIST KEVIN HOFFMAN
T
I’ve been around for several iterations of Yale’s sexual curriculum. This past August, in the wake of the inexcusable DKE event of last year, last year’s controversial Pundits tap party and the official filing of a Title IX complaint, the Dean’s Office formulated a new curriculum for the freshmen. For various reasons, the original plan was scrapped and replaced with a very serious lecture by every college’s Master and Dean consisting of the definitions of sexual misconduct and how to adequately respond to these acts and — hopefully — prevent them from occurring. In my group’s discussion following this lecture, I was asked a question that I can’t shake from my mind. One of my freshmen raised a hand and asked, “Do we have this event because this sort of thing happens all the time?” The report released by Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler yesterday reports 29 undergraduate complaints of sexual misconduct in the last six months of 2011, and it saddens me deeply that any of these events occurred on our campus. However, I fear that all too often, we — Yale students and administrators alike — fall into the trap of simply reacting to allegations, rumors and news reports, when in reality a main focus should be on how to rid campus of these in the first place. The new freshman workshops led by the Consent and Communication Educators have been wonderful in teaching skills on how to do this, and I applaud the efforts of the Dean’s Office and the CCEs in that regard. I hope that we all agree that communication with those with whom we are romantically involved should be clear. So this is what I ask of you, my fellow students: Lose a little personal pride and try to gain some in our Yale community. Then, ask your partner what he or she wants. It’s not easy, and by all means I have not always succeeded in doing that myself. But with everything that’s been flying around the Internet in the past few days and months — much of it throwing blame at this institution that I love — I’ve decided to step up my own act in order to make a change. I hope you’ll agree with me. Collectively, if we are not afraid to ask what our partners want (or tell them what we want) — and most importantly, if we listen — we can avoid all of the reactionary anger in the first place. KEVIN HOFFMAN is a senior in Pierson College. Contact him at kevin. hoffman@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS PUBLISHING CO., INC. 202 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511 (203) 432-2400 Editorial: (203) 432-2418 editor@yaledailynews.com Business: (203) 432-2424 business@yaledailynews.com EDITOR IN CHIEF Max de La Bruyère MANAGING EDITORS Alon Harish Drew Henderson ONLINE EDITOR Daniel Serna OPINION Julia Fisher DEPUTY OPINION Jack Newsham NEWS David Burt Alison Griswold CITY Everett Rosenfeld Emily Wanger FEATURES Emily Foxhall CULTURE Eliza Brooke
SCI. TECH Eli Markham SPORTS Zoe Gorman Sarah Scott ARTS & LIVING Nikita Lalwani Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi Chase Niesner Erin Vanderhoof MULTIMEDIA Christopher Peak Baobao Zhang MAGAZINE Eliana Dockterman Molly Hensley-Clancy Nicole Levy PHOTOGRAPHY Brianne Bowen Zoe Gorman Kamaria Greenfield Victor Kang Zeenat Mansoor
PRODUCTION & DESIGN Sophie Alsheimer Mona Cao Raahil Kajani Mason Kroll Cora Ormseth Lindsay Paterson Yoonji Woo
PUBLISHER Preetha Nandi
COPY Illyana Green Nathalie Levine
BUSINESS DEV. Lily Mu
LEAD WEB DEV. Mike DiScala
DIR. FINANCE Albert Chang DIR. PRINT ADV. Matthew Hoffer-Hawlik
DIR. ONLINE BUSINESS Max Cho
ILLUSTRATIONS David Yu
PRINT ADV. MANAGER Sophia Jia NATIONAL ADV. MANAGER Julie Kim ONL. DEV. MANAGER Devon Balicki ONLINE PRODUCT MGR. Gwendoline Tilghman SPECIALTY MARKETING MGR. Gabriel Botelho
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sam Greenberg INSIDER’S GUIDE Hai Pham
THIS ISSUE COPY STAFF: Maggie Brown, Celine Cuevas, Isaac Park, Kate Pincus ASSISTANT PRODUCTION EDITOR: Sharon Qian PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS: Anthony Fumagalli PRODUCTION STAFF: Jake Allen, Anya Grenier, Ryan Healey, Annie Schweikert EDITORIALS & ADS
The News’ View represents the opinion of the majority of the members of the Yale Daily News Managing Board of 2013. Other content on this page with bylines represents the opinions of those authors and not necessarily those of the Managing Board. Opinions set forth in ads do not necessarily reflect the views of the Managing Board. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false or in poor taste. We do not verify the contents of any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co., Inc. and its officers, employees and agents disclaim any responsibility for all liabilities, injuries or damages arising from any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co. ISSN 0890-2240
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
SUBMISSIONS
All letters submitted for publication must include the author’s name, phone number and description of Yale University affiliation. Please limit letters to 250 words and guest columns to 750. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit letters and columns before publication. E-mail is the preferred method of submission. Direct all letters, columns, artwork and inquiries to: Julia Fisher, Opinion Editor, Yale Daily News http://www.yaledailynews.com/contact opinion@yaledailynews.com
COPYRIGHT 2012 — VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 82
‘BULLDOGS344’ ON ‘YALE MODEL BACK ON TRACK’
Editors’ note: It is the policy of the News not to publish anonymous stories. For these two cases, an exception has been made. The names of both writers have been kept confidential to give them the chance to speak freely and to ensure that the people they write about are also kept anonymous. The editors know the identities of the writers and have confirmed their stories to the greatest extent possible.
Stop pointing fingers his is an appeal to every single member of this campus’ community, regardless of gender identity, sexual preference or personal romantic history. It’s an appeal to make Yale a safer, healthier, objectively better place. So, here it goes: Can we all just take a step back, look at the tone of the current dialogue surrounding the campus sexual climate, and decide as a collective body that we don’t like it? In the midst of the Patrick Witt debate, I’ve seen Yale and its students — a campus and a population that I have come to love over my three and a half years here — once again berated through editorials, online blogs and other media forms. One selfproclaimed “Yalie and owner of a vagina,” in response to a Gawker piece on the Witt story, went so far as to say that she was “not especially surprised that Pat Witt was accused of rape, or really that anyone there is,” referring to males here on campus. As a man attending Yale, I find that statement horribly offensive. But this isn’t a matter of me, as a straight male, getting uncomfortable in what all-too-often becomes a heterosexual-male-versus-heterosexual-female shouting match. I was equally offended when one of my fellow Yalies suggested on the News’ online comment board that the follow-up article to Maria Yagoda’s WEEKEND piece (“Just Say No (to awful sex),” Jan. 20) should be entitled “Yale Women Are Ugly and Impossibly Neurotic.” Really? I have difficulty understanding why responses to these issues often become reduced to reactionary rhetoric. Obviously, sexual misconduct (a term I’ll use to describe all manners of harassment, assault and rape) is a very sensitive issue. However, it kills me to see these incidents reflect poorly on us as an entire student body. I firmly believe that the vast majority of Yale students are well-intentioned people. I fear, though, that we are too proud to refine the discussion into one on how we can do better on a personal level instead of resorting to generalities. Yagoda’s article endorsed an important message of communication and consent, but I’m afraid that too many readers — myself included, upon first reading — couldn’t see the forest through the trees. Similarly, the responder to Gawker could have a valid point in questioning the Yale administration’s responses to sexual misconduct; the bigger picture just got lost in blanket statements. I’m a freshman counselor, so
kicks ass at everything?”
GUEST COLUMNIST ANONYMOUS
GUEST COLUMNIST ANONYMOUS
Why I was silent
On assault narratives
T
he recent Patrick Witt case has inspired a number of speculations about his future. Some lament the complainant’s silence: Witt can’t exonerate himself because he can’t fight charges that don’t exist. But demanding a formal procedure in the supposed interest of fairness to Witt unfortunately brushes aside the faceless, nameless person who accused him. I was raped last year by an undergraduate older and more established at this university than I. I did not press charges, file a complaint or go to SHARE, nor do I plan on doing any of these things. No matter how neatly the SHARE website lays out rape victims’ options, it would be remiss to assume that all victims file some sort of complaint. I cannot speak for other rape victims, so I will just speak from my experience. I am not silent because I think rape is acceptable. I am not silent because I want the male to get away with it, or so he can rape someone else. I am silent because a complaint not only would be unhelpful, but could even be detrimental. Comments on the News’ website accuse the complainant against Witt of sensationalism. When I told my closest friends that I had been raped, they suggested that it was “no big deal” and that I had “asked for it.” No one asks for rape. I recently recognized that I alone can be sure of what happened to me, but others cave to the pressure to feel guilty. Blame is the last thing a rape victim needs, and the intimidating prospect of recounting the experience opens victims up to that possibility. Further, filing a complaint is not just about punishing the offender. Yesterday’s report of sexual misconduct complaints released by Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler shows that many victims ultimately decide not to complete a complaint. I am no longer angry with the male who raped me, and I don’t want to press charges and ruin his life. I can come to terms with the fact that we had sex. What I can’t come to terms with is the feeling of safety that I lost. Rationally, I know not every male is out to stalk me or have sex with me. But two weeks ago, a male friend asked me if I wanted to go to his room, and I immediately blurted out, “God, I don’t want to have sex with you!” I knew he
didn’t want to, but I reacted that way anyway. As naive as this sounds, I just want back the simple idea that everyone is a good human being. Filing a complaint does nothing to allay my insecurity. I will not get my peace of mind back by ruining his life. Pure retribution and revenge are too logical and calculated for an experience as complex and emotional as rape. I know we all want to believe in heroes: The image of a star athlete with a 3.91 GPA who chose friendships and teamwork over his Rhodes interview is hard to let go. The male who raped me is wellliked, and I didn’t say anything because I feared people would assume it was my fault. After all, good people don’t do bad things. So as much as I love the idea of siding with Witt, we should be cautious about that mindset. SHARE’s website says that many find filing a complaint “empowering.” But for me, the prospect of prolonging the role this experience plays in my life is terrifying. I tentatively considered consulting SHARE or even pressing charges, but then what? I might have gotten mired in some long legal process with no assurance of emerging with a respectable reputation. It’d be my word against his. Understandably, some will call my silence selfish. But to me, it’s self-preservation. I won’t lie: I’m terrified even to publish this op-ed. Talking to SHARE or any institution about my experience is far beyond what I can imagine myself ever doing. I know nothing about Pat Witt or the female involved: There simply isn’t enough information. While I have no way to verify her claims, I think the decision to file an informal complaint has been belittled. Informal complaints are not just the product of victims seeking the easy route. But some of the discourse inspired by the Witt story is intolerable and in no way conducive to an environment that encourages people, especially victims, to talk. While it’s tempting to encourage a formal complaint in the name of what’s best for society, this mindset often slights victims. Their choice to talk should be their own. I am not at all commenting on the Witt controversy, but questioning the way we think and talk about it. We can do better. The writer is a freshman.
T
he night of my Freshman Screw, a friend attempted to rape me. To use a phrase from Patrick Witt’s press release, we had an “on-again, off-again” relationship. We’d met in front of my dorm in Old Campus in August, become closer in “Introduction to Political Philosophy,” and we kissed for the first time in the L-Dub courtyard. I had visited him when he was sick over winter break. Running down the stairs of his dorm after he had dismissed my repeated insistence that I did not want to have sex with him, I screamed at him, asking why he would do this to me. He tried to justify himself: “You’re just so beautiful.” I now have a much firmer grasp on how the reporting mechanisms at Yale work. At the time, I knew nothing. I decided to report the assault because my assailant was harassing me — texting me constantly, trying to track my location down through my roommate — and for the very practical reason that he was in a seminar with me. I chose to go before the now-defunct Sexual Harassment Grievance Board (SHGB) because it was the only mechanism my freshman counselor knew about. The SHGB encouraged me to pursue an informal complaint. In retrospect, that may very well have been the right path, and I’m glad Yale provides this option. I can understand why a survivor would prefer a quiet, short process; reporting informally to the SHGB allowed me to stop the harassment quickly, and the student agreed to measures to stop contact. I’m also not sure that I would have chosen to report at all if an informal, contained procedure had not been guaranteed, given the stigmatization of sexual violence very much alive on our campus. But I resent that I was pressured toward one specific route among many, largely because the board clearly did not think my case was serious enough for a formal or criminal complaint. I was told it wouldn’t be worth the emotional pain of going to the police or ExComm. When I presented my main evidence — a series of communications from my assailant admitting to wrongdoing and constituting, as I later learned from a lawyer, stalking — one member remarked that my assailant was clearly in love with
me. Before I left my meeting with the board, I was told to tell no one, because word might get around. I received similar responses from the small group of friends I eventually told. While some were supportive, others encouraged me not to “overreact,” insisting that other women had been through worse, as though the lack of gory details disqualified my trauma. Others later remarked they assumed it hadn’t been that big of a deal since I had only pursued informal measures. One encouraged me to get over it, like one should — as he described — forgive a boyfriend who has strayed. These friends and the SHGB accepted the premise that many writers, including Nathaniel Zelinsky ’13 (“Truth in the Witt assault story,” Jan. 30), have been using when discussing Pat Witt: There’s real, violent rape, and then there’s the other, less serious stuff. And as it has repeatedly been implied, nothing that transpires between two people who were ever romantically entangled can fall in the first category. I don’t know the alleged victim of Patrick Witt, nor do I assume that my experience resembles hers. But I do know that neither of our stories fits the popular conception of what rape looks like. We knew the men who we claim violated us. We didn’t go to the police. And many have discounted us because of this. Again, I cannot speak to the thoughts of the anonymous victim. But I can promise you that being assaulted by a friend does not rank as any less bad than being assaulted by a stranger in some set hierarchy of harms. I can promise you my reasoning for pursuing an informal complaint was not that the whole thing wasn’t that big of a deal. Being assaulted by a young man I knew and then being silenced by Yale shook my trust in my relationships and my place at this school. The dizzying nausea of running into my assailant at parties, avoiding classes I thought he might shop and losing mutual friends has unfairly deprived me of a full Yale experience. I said “No,” and a man decided it didn’t matter. That fact — whether or not I had bruises, whether or not I reported to the police — should matter to you. The writer is an undergraduate.
Ending Esserman’s honeymoon W
ell that didn’t take long. Like many marriages, the union between the city and its new police chief is going through a rocky patch just after the honeymoon, and the relationship’s future is not clear. The November swearing-in ceremony of the chief, Dean Esserman, was held in the spacious first floor of City Hall. The event was so elaborate that Mayor John DeStefano Jr. joked that it was fitting that the ceremony took place on a Friday, the most popular day for weddings at City Hall. His joke was on the mark. The hundreds of guests sat on white chairs with an aisle running down the center. The attendees were even split into two general groups: law enforcement officials and crime experts familiar with the chief’s past experiences — the Esserman family — and the community residents and activists eager for a fresh start — the New Haven family. And it was a joyous affair. City officials talked of rebirth and rejuvenation. Even usually-skeptical activists welcomed their new partner. International police superstar William J. Bratton, who turned around dismal crime situations in New York and Los Angeles, was there to preside over the union. Other than for a brief embarrassing moment when he seemed to think he was in Hartford, his gravitas conferred legitimacy and blessing on the happy couple. Yet all this pomp and circumstance obscured the basic truth: This was an arranged marriage. Even the wedding’s presider, Brat-
ton, admitted as much when he praised the wisdom of the mayor and said DeStefano had made a “wonderful selec— not COLIN ROSS tion” the wisdom of united comGangbuster amunity in deciding on a way forward, but the wisdom of one man. DeStefano picked Esserman for understandable reasons: Esserman’s service as an assistant chief in New Haven in the 1990’s and his solid record of crime reduction here and elsewhere. But he did so in a secretive, unaccountable way: The previous chief was simply sent packing on a Friday night and by Tuesday — hey presto! — the city had a new chief. The Board of Aldermen was not consulted, nor were other community leaders. City residents didn’t protest too loudly because they were wooed by Esserman’s promises of renewed community policing. Though residents were treated as the children in this marriage and kept out of the decision-making process, they trusted Daddy DeStefano’s soothing words about Esserman: You’re going to love him. But the lack of true commitment meant that when the first sign of trouble appeared, the kids would wonder what dad had gotten them into. That trouble reared its ugly
head this week when Esserman announced he was dumping all three current Assistant Chiefs and would find his own. In other words: Sorry, but the new arrival doesn’t like your friends and doesn’t want them hanging around the house anymore. These weren’t dead-beat friends either. One, Petisia Adger, is a 20-year veteran with life-long ties to the city and is the highest-ranking black female the NHPD has ever had. Several community activists who supported Esserman initially met outside police headquarters Monday to protest the decision to force her to retire or resign. In December, I saw Adger interact with residents at a community meeting in the Dixwell neighborhood, where she grew up: It was obvious that she is a local star and a symbol for many that the NHPD believes in cooperation with the community. Now she’ll soon be gone — a casualty of Esserman’s arrival.
TROUBLE BETWEEN ESSERMAN AND NEW HAVEN The forced departures revealed deeper problems in the New Haven-Esserman relationship. As the News reported on Monday, Esserman’s management style seems to have already rubbed NHPD veterans the wrong way.
In December, another Assistant Chief, John Velleca, retired and all insisted that the decision had nothing to do with Esserman. But a source told the News that the word in the department is that a dispute between the two men that led to an angry email exchange was the real reason. Esserman and New Haven need some marriage mediators. I nominate the Board of Aldermen. As DeStefano so forcibly demonstrated when he hired Esserman, the Board has no legal power to approve police leadership and so can easily be sidelined. And the alderpeople are also, justifiably, very results-oriented. As Ward 1 Alderwoman Sarah Eidelson ’12 told me in an email, she believes the real issue is whether police officials are committed to real community policing. She wouldn’t comment on increasing explicit Board authority on the process of selecting police leadership or on the Assistant Chief issue, citing lack of knowledge of the details of the situation. Results do matter, but so does the process that produces them. Until the Board asserts itself and brings some order to the process of selecting police leadership, efforts to reduce crime in New Haven will be hampered by all the drama and hurt feelings that an arranged marriage can cause. COLIN ROSS is a senior in Berkeley College. His column runs on Wednesdays. Contact him at colin.ross@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 3
PAGE THREE TODAY’S EVENTS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1 6:30 PM “When China Met Africa.” This documentary uses the personal stories of Chinese businessmen working in Zambia to discuss the implications of Chinese investments for African development. Kroon Hall (195 Prospect St.), Burke Auditorium. 7:00 PM Argentine tango class. Learn Argentine tango in a bootcamp class taught by Robin Thomas and Jenna Rohrbacher. Fee: $60, students and postdocs: $30, undergraduates: free. Edward S. Harkness Memorial Hall (367 Cedar St.)
CORRECTIONS TUESDAY, JAN. 31
The article “YUAG renovations near end” incorrectly quoted Art Gallery director Jock Reynolds as stating that the Yale University Art Gallery’s collection of African-American art has grown over the past five years. In fact, Reynolds was referring to the Art Gallery’s department of African art.
Students confused over Durfee’s policy
Saybrook College Saybrook College was opened in 1933 and was named after the Connecticut town in which the Collegiate School — later renamed Yale College — was founded in 1701. The badge of the college is the grapevine, derived from the original seal of Saybrook colony.
Saybrook dean to step down BY TAPLEY STEPHENSON STAFF REPORTER Saybrook College Dean Paul McKinley DRA ’96 announced in an email Tuesday that he will step down at the end of the semester. McKinley, who has served as Saybrook’s dean for 13 years, said he is leaving Yale either to focus on drama and film or to build on his work as dean through writing, technology and advising. Saybrook students interviewed said they would miss McKinley both for his reliability as an advisor and his dedication to enhancing the college’s community. Saybrook Master Paul Hudak said the college has not yet begun a search for McKinley’s replacement. “Dean McKinley is a stellar person and superb college dean, and we have worked together very well over the past couple of years,” Hudak wrote in a Tuesday email to the News. “It was very hard to hear the news, for all of us — students, staff and fellows. But he feels it’s time to move on, and we all wish him the best of luck in whatever path he follows.” McKinley’s announcement marks the second time that he has stepped down from the Saybrook deanship. He served as the college’s dean from 1997 to 2003, before leaving his post to work in film production. He returned to
the position in 2005. This time, however, McKinley said it is unlikely he will come back. McKinley said he does not have specific plans for his time after Yale, and expects to spend five months exploring his options. “13 years is a very long time to be a residential college dean,” McKinley told the News in a Tuesday email. “And while I consider myself very lucky to have been one for so long, I am looking forward to moving in a new direction now.”
While I consider myself very lucky… I am looking forward to moving in a new direction now. PAUL MCKINLEY Dean, Saybrook College Saybrook College Council President Cyndi Chen ’13 said McKinley was a mainstay at SCC meetings and always proposed new ideas for college trips and events, though he was best known for taking students in the college to Broadway plays and ski slopes. Max Andersen ’14 said McKinley always made an effort to be
available for students, either by being in his office or eating most meals in the Saybrook dining hall. “It was nice to eat with him in the dining hall. It seemed like he’d always go out of his way to sit with students and interact with them,” Andersen said. “He always seemed genuinely concerned about our problems.” All eight students interviewed said McKinley was an organized dean and one they felt comfortable approaching. Five students also noted that McKinley was known as a sharp dresser. “He’s definitely the most stylish dean at Yale,” said Andrew Hendricks ’14. “His suits are always tailored and fit perfectly. He always matches his colors.” After stepping down from the Saybrook deanship, McKinley said he will most miss “the bragging rights that come with being in this college.” Hudak will convene a committee of faculty and students to help choose McKinley’s successor and eventually make a recommendation to Yale College Dean Mary Miller, McKinley said. Saybrook College was established in 1933. Contact TAPLEY STEPHENSON at preston.stephenson@yale.edu .
SAYBROOK DEAN’S OFFICE
Saybrook Dean Paul McKinley DRA ’96 announced his retirement.
PAUL MCKINLEY After serving as Saybrook College dean for a total of 13 years, McKinley announced Tuesday that he will step down at the end of the semester. EDUCATION McKinley attended the Drama School after receiving a bachelor’s of fine arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. HOBBIES An avid skier, McKinley is known for taking his students on trips to the Vermont slopes. TEACHING McKinley is a lecturer in theater studies and teaches an undergraduate course called “Dramatic Theory and Criticism.”
Students grow SOM lunch options
SHARON YIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The inability to double-swipe at Durfee’s on the weekends has caused confusion over an apparent change in policy. BY MICHAEL CRUCIGER STAFF REPORTER Since the semester began, students have noticed that they can no longer use their meal swipes at Durfee’s after 12 p.m. on weekends and then eat brunch in a residential college dining hall. For the past few years, students have been able to “double-swipe” on weekends — spending up to $7 at Durfee’s with a meal transfer swipe before swiping into the dining hall for brunch. But this semester, students have not been able to eat brunch in their college dining halls if they used a meal swipe at Durfee’s beforehand. Despite the apparent switch in meal swipe regulations, neither students, Durfee’s employees nor dining staff interviewed were aware of a formal change in Yale Dining policy. Emily Briskin ’15 said she discovered something about the meal swipe rules had changed soon after she returned from winter break. Briskin said she took a routine Saturday trip to Durfee’s and then tried unsuccessfully to swipe at brunch in the Berkeley dining hall. Confused by what had happened, Briskin emailed Michael Aaronian, a Berkeley dining hall manager, who told her in a Jan. 21 email that there was no new policy in place, and students had not been allowed to swipe at Durfee’s before brunch for at least three years. “This rule has been in effect for at least 3 plus years since I was made aware of it, and you can find this information in the meal plan section on our web site,” Aaronian wrote in an email that Briskin provided the News. “I don’t know why or how long this process of double swiping has occurred.” Troy Jackson, an assistant manager of Durfee’s, said he did not know that students had encountered problems this semester with using meal swipes at Durfee’s and then
swiping at brunch. Tom Tucker, Yale Dining’s director of retail development and operations deferred comment to Jeanette Norton, Yale Dining’s deputy director of finance and administration, who declined to comment. Of 18 students interviewed, those who had been aware of the option to double-swipe at Durfee’s and then brunch on weekends criticized the apparent change in policy. Kevin Liu ’14 said he used to swipe at Durfee’s on weekends before eating brunch in the college dining halls, and thought it was unreasonable that the option no longer existed. “We are paying for a full meal plan which is supposed to be 21 meals per week, but on weekends people eat two meals,” Liu said. “Where is the third meal going to come from? It would be reasonable for us to get two meal swipes, even if we don’t wake up earlier on Saturday or Sunday.” Connor Lounsbury ’14 also said he thought students were supposed to get three meals a day, and did not understand why students could no longer double-swipe at Durfee’s and then brunch on weekends. Lucy Hui ’15 said she goes to Durfee’s several times a week, including Saturday and Sunday. She would often take her suitemates’ ID cards on weekends and combine their meal swipes to buy about $25 worth of food, she added. “The new change makes me sad,” Hui said. “I’ve always used a Durfee’s swipe and then gotten brunch. I’m hoping that the Timothy Dwight dining staff will let me still use meals swipes there after going to Durfee’s.” Durfee’s is open from 10 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. Monday through Friday, and from 12 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Ben Prawdzik contributed reporting. Contact MICHAEL CRUCIGER at michael.cruciger@yale.edu .
SAM POGOSOV
Falcon, a program started by Sam Pogosov SOM ’12 and Jennifer Mancke SOM ’12, provides lunch alternatives for SOM students. BY DANIEL SISGOREO STAFF REPORTER A growing number of restaurants are delivering meals to the School of Management as an alternative to the food carts that line Prospect Street. Donaldson Commons, SOM’s student center, closed its cafeteria for budgetary reasons in 2010, and students will remain without their own dining hall until the new SOM campus opens in 2013. To compensate for the shortage of dining options, Sam Pogosov SOM ’12 and Jennifer Mancke SOM ’12 coordinated with local restaurants last summer and finalized plans with administrators early this fall to create a website, called Falcon, where students, staff and faculty could order lunch. This semester the Little Salad Shop became the fourth restaurant to join the service, and Pogosov said student managers of SOM’s Food for Thought Café took over Falcon’s daily operations last week since Pogosov will graduate this spring. “My first year at Yale, as a student at the School of Management, I arrived to a campus that basically had no healthy food options,” Pogosov said. “My only options were the food carts.” Pogosov, who came up with the idea for Falcon in an SOM course last year called “The Innovator,” said he has been able to negotiate discounts with the some of the participating businesses. The four restaurants in the program are Nica’s Market, Café Romeo, Subway and the Little Salad Shop. Falcon users pay a mark-up in the price of the orders, and the profits Falcon generates are donated
to the SOM Internship Fund, an initiative that provides SOM students with money to pursue summer internships with nonprofit, public or social enterprise organizations.
I know there’s a lot of people at SOM that are not interested in eating from carts for health reasons. The quality of the food isn’t high, as delicious as it can be. CARLEE LEMKY SOM ’13 Pogosov said Falcon receives roughly 20 to 30 orders per day and has donated roughly $500 to the Fund, which raised approximately $275,000 in total last year. Pogosov said if the program can successfully publicize the service among members of the SOM community, he thinks it could potentially raise over $100 per day for the Internship Fund. He added that there are no immediate plans to ask other restaurants to join the service. Etkin Tekin ’12, chief operating officer of the Little Salad Shop, said the eatery intends to help advertise the service at SOM. Though Pogosov said there are currently no immediate plans to expand to other parts of the Yale community, he said he hopes the program will expand to neighboring schools in future years.
Tekin said he thinks there is would be demand for the service across Yale if the program were to expand. “Being at the [Little Salad Shop] all the time, I’ve spoken with law students and Drama School students and even people at the med school,” Tekin said. “They’ve heard of the Falcon program and they’ve shown interest in having the opportunity on their campuses as well.” Four SOM students interviewed said the program was particularly suitable for the school since there are few convenient dining options near SOM. Carlee Lemky SOM ’13, who said she orders salads through Falcon once or twice a week, said the program is more accommodating to dietary restrictions than other options currently available to SOM students. “I know there’s a lot of people at SOM that are not interested in eating from carts for health reasons,” she said. “The quality of the food isn’t high, as delicious as it can be.” Samik Basu SOM ’12 said many students attend talks or other meetings during lunch, which he said makes Falcon’s delivery service especially appealing. He normally orders a sandwich from either Subway or Café Romeo, he said, adding that he “probably would not” eat at either restaurant if Falcon were not available. People who order meals through Falcon can pick up their orders at Food for Thought cafe in SOM at 11:30 a.m., Monday through Thursday. Contact DANIEL SISGOREO at daniel.sisgoreo@yale.edu .
PAGE 4
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT Witt contests Times WITT FROM PAGE 1 10th to let me know about the second letter, it was essentially a moot point.” Dailinger could not be reached for comment Tuesday night. Witt said once he was named a finalist, “his stance all along” was to attend The Game over the interview if the two conflicted. “From day one when I was selected as a finalist, the first thing I did was call my folks to tell them the good news,” he said. “And the second thing I did was to see [my coaches] and say, ‘Look, if they make me choose between the two, I’m playing in The Game and I want you to know that.’” Former head football coach Tom Williams could not be reached for comment Tuesday night. The Rhodes Trust informed Witt that he could not reschedule his interview in a series of Nov. 8 emails from Daniel Promislow, regional secretary for the district representing Witt’s home state of Georgia, which Witt’s spokesman, Mark Magazu, provided the News. In a final attempt to reconcile the two commitments, Witt had written to Promislow earlier that afternoon requesting permission to attend a morning interview on Nov. 19 and risk
missing a “potential callback.” But Promislow responded the night of Nov. 8 saying all candidates must be present for potential reinterviews, and that Witt would “need to decide between one of [his] two opportunities.” Faced with that dilemma, Witt said he told officials at the Yale Athletics Department on Nov. 9 that he would play in The Game. At 8:58 a.m. the next morning, Dailinger told Witt she supported his decision and advised him to thank Promislow for the opportunity to interview for the Rhodes, according to an email that Magazu provided the News. Witt said the email came after he had spoken with Dailinger about his decision over the phone. “This has of course all been very difficult, but if I might be able to help in any way I would be more than glad to do so,” Dailinger wrote in the email. “I do still think that your decision to decline this interview is a good one, and the best way to preserve your options going forward.” Though Witt said he had already notified Yale Athletics and the football team’s coaches of his choice, he decided to wait until Yale competed against Princeton on Nov. 12 before publicly announcing his choice the next day.
“I will be playing in the YaleHarvard game this Saturday,” he said in a Nov. 13 press release from the Yale Athletics Department. “I have withdrawn my application for the Rhodes scholarship.” The Times article, which reported that Witt’s candidacy had been “suspended” before his official announcement, noted that his statement did not directly link his decision to end his Rhodes candidacy with his choice to play in The Game. Rather, the statement created a “misimpression” about Witt’s reasoning that neither Yale nor the quarterback attempted to correct, the Times alleged. But Witt flatly denied claims that he knowingly misled the public. “I didn’t keep it a secret from any of my friends and the New York Times’ insinuation that I was circulating a media circus is ludicrous,” he said. “I’m not talented enough to do that. I’m not a media expert.” Witt is currently in California training for the National Football League Combine, a professional recruiting event that will be held in Indianapolis, Ind., at the end of February this year. Contact GAVAN GIDEON at gavan.gideon@yale.edu and CAROLINE TAN at caroline.tan@yale.edu .
0
Murders in January 2012 in New Haven
It was a quiet January for the Elm City in terms of homicides. The last time the city saw no murders for a full month was August 2009.
Pres. search to be global YALE-NUS FROM PAGE 1 United States and those who are liberal arts colleges and also leading universities that emphasize undergraduate education,” Lorimer said in an email Monday. “He or she needs to be an articulate spokesperson for the benefits of a liberal arts education and creative enough to see how it can and should be adapted for an Asian setting.” The presidential search committee is composed of University President Richard Levin, NUS President Tan Chorh Chuan, University Provost Peter Salovey and NUS Provost Tan Eng Chye. The Yale-NUS president will have many similar responsibilities to those of Yale’s president, but will oversee a smaller institution, said Lorimer, who is assisting the committee along with Yale-NUS Governing Board chair Kay Kuok Oon Kwong. “It will differ [from Yale] since it is a small college and doesn’t have the array of professional schools or collections [and] museums of Yale or NUS,” Lorimer said. “In many ways, it will be like being the President of one of the leading liberal arts colleges in the US, like Williams and Amherst but with active engagement with the leadership of NUS and Yale.” Charles Bailyn, the inaugural dean of faculty at Yale-NUS, said the Yale-NUS president will likely interact more closely with faculty and undergraduates than the president of a larger research institution would. Levin said the position’s other responsibilities will include fundraising and shaping the college’s administrative structure. Despite the similarities between Yale-NUS and a typical U.S. liberal arts college, NUS President Tan Chorh Chuan told the News in a Tuesday email that the Yale-NUS president’s
job may differ slightly from those of his American counterparts. “We are endeavouring to develop a new model of liberal arts education, so the President would need to work creatively with faculty and students in order to achieve this,” Tan said. Tan added that the Yale-NUS president will not report directly to him or Levin, but both expect to advise and work closely with the new president. Once the search committee selects a candidate, it will present that person to the YaleNUS Governing Board, which is divided evenly between administrators from Yale and NUS. The search process for the Yale-NUS president is similar to the method used at Yale, in which a search committee recommends a candidate for final approval by the Yale Corporation. The Yale-NUS president will report to the governing board once he or she takes office, just as Yale’s president reports to the Yale Corporation. As administrators search for the college’s first president, Bailyn said they are also continuing to move ahead with faculty recruitment. YaleNUS is expected to have 100 faculty members when it reaches full capacity in fall 2016, with 36 hired by the college’s fall 2013 opening. “Obviously we are going forward now with faculty appointments, so there will be some faculty already in place when the president arrives,” Bailyn said in an email Tuesday. “The president will be a major part of faculty recruitment once he or she is in place.” The Yale-NUS president will reside on the top floor of the building that houses the college’s library and student learning center, Bailyn said. Contact TAPLEY STEPHENSON at preston.stephenson@yale.edu .
NHPD seeks to build on quiet month CRIME FROM PAGE 1 killed it,” Perez told the New Haven Independent. “[But] they raised taxes on the pretext we’re going to hire more cops. Then DeStefano laid off cops. Then he hired more cops. Less than a year later he wants to hire more cops.” DeStefano and newly appointed NHPD Chief Dean Esserman announced the new double class of officers at a press conference in Newhallville last Thursday, even as they announced that 21 officers will be moved from the investigative division to patrol. The move is one of several that Esserman has made since taking office on Nov. 18. He has implemented walking beats in each of the Elm City’s 10 districts, and on Friday announced he would be replacing the NHPD’s three assistant chiefs with his own leadership team. Esserman was “brought into the job” to implement a community policing approach that would reengage citizens in a bid to tamp down violent crime, said Richard Epstein, the chairman of the Board of Police Commissioners. As part of the push for this new strategy, DeStefano said he would bring a budget amendment to the Board of Aldermen next week that would transfer funds from other city departments to the NHPD so that it can hire new officers for its patrol division. Perez told the Independent he wanted to know more specific details before giving his approval to the measure. City Hall spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton ’04 said DeStefano would provide details about his proposal in his State of the City address next Monday.
Perez said he was not opposed to hiring more officers, but wondered if it would be possible to move more officers from other units to patrol instead. He added that he wanted to know how the city’s overall budget is faring before lending his support to the mayor’s proposal.
I’m happy to see the DeStefano administration is paying attention to community policing after they almost singlehandedly killed it. JORGE PEREZ President, Board of Alderman Ward 7 Alderman Doug Hausladen ’04, who serves on the Board of Aldermen’s public safety and finance committees, said he could not comment on DeStefano’s anticipated proposal because he has not yet seen it. But he said he supported the NHPD’s return to community policing. “[Community policing] was a refreshing take, a change of action that I was excited to see,” he said. “But walking beats are expensive, and there’s not as wide deployment of forces.” Despite 2012’s quiet start, New Haven saw two murders last January. Contact JAMES LU at james.q.lu@yale.edu .
JAMES LU/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Newly appointed NHPD Chief Dean Esserman is hoping to add 40 to 45 officers to the department’s patrol division.
438,976
VISITS TO YALEDAILYNEWS.COM THIS MONTH.
PROGRAMMERS & DESIGNERS WANTED 9PM OCT. 10 & OCT. 12 202 YORK ST. webmaster@yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
NEWS
PAGE 5
Viagra in a Condom A recent Bloomberg article reports that Durex aims to produce a new condom that will enhance erections. The product will result in firmer, larger and longer-lasting erections for men who find wearing condoms challenging, the article states.
N.H. hospitals report high errors BY MARIANA LOPEZ-ROSAS STAFF REPORTER New Haven’s hospitals fared poorly on the Connecticut Department of Public Health’s (DPH) latest Adverse Event Report, which lists the number of “adverse events” reported by the state’s hospitals. The report, released in October 2011, identified St. Raphael’s Hospital as having the second-highest count of malpractice errors that qualify as adverse events, while Yale-New Haven Hospital reported the highest number of cases in which foreign objects were left in a patient during surgery, based on data between 2004 and 2010. This is the first time Connecticut’s Adverse Event Report has listed the names of YDN the hospitals in the annual report, A Department of Public Health report ranks St. Raphael’s Hospital, above, as the hosaccording to the Department of Pubpital with the second-highest rate of malpractice errors in the state. lic Health. “[Including names in the report] doesn’t make a difference one way or this statistic is due to the hospital’s high business as usual,” Rexford said. “How another,” said Yale-New Haven Hospi- number of elderly patients. He added could we still be having wrong-side tal associate chief of staff Tom Balcezak. that St. Raphael’s has since imple- surgery or instruments left in people “The purpose of the report is to identify mented new practices to reduce this when there are so many protocols and areas of improvement so that institu- rate, such as hourly nurse rotations on procedures to prevent that from haptions can work with one another.” floors with many patients at risk of fall- pening?” By federal law since 2002, the state’s ing and installing bedroom alarms on Gerrish said in addition to reporthospitals have been required to report all patient beds. He added that in fiscal ing adverse events, the DPH reviews to the DPH any malpractice errors that year 2011 total patient falls fell 8 per- patient records to verify the no events qualify as adverse events, such as sur- cent, as measured in number of falls per remained hidden, in which case they gery performed on the wrong part of 1,000 patient days. proceed with legal action. the body and sexual assault within hosIn addition to topping the list of acute Connecticut Hospital Association pital premises, along with a corrective care hospitals with high rates of foreign spokeswoman Michelle Sharp said the action plan stating how the hospital objects being left in patients between state’s hospitals are working together dealt with such matters, according to 2004 and 2010, Yale-New Haven hos- to improve patient safety through the DPH spokesman William Gerrish. The pital reported one of the highest rates of Patient Safety Organization’s multiDPH’s Quality and Healthcare Advi- pressure ulcers and injuries from falls. hospital collaboratives and particisory Committee, in turn, is required Balcezak said that they do not shy away pation in the nationwide initiative to evaluate this information and make from reporting every case, citing pres- “Partnership for Patients: Better Care, suggestions to the hospitals in order to sure ulcers as an example, so even small Lower Costs,” a private-public healthreduce the incidence of adverse events, ulcers in the nose made by oxygen tub- care partnership that aims to improve he added. ing are reported along with larger ones healthcare for all Americans. At 19.2 incidents per 100,000 inpa- in the arms and legs. Overall, 1,637 adverse hospital events tient days, St. Raphael’s Hospital had One concern, according to Jean Rex- that resulted in patient harm were the second-highest rate of adverse ford, executive director of the Connect- reported to the DPH between May 2004 events in 2010, calculated with data icut Center for Patient Safety, is that and May 2011, including 157 cases in collected on 100,000 inpatient days. hospitals might underreport adverse which patients died. The most common The hospital recorded that the most events in an effort to lower their rank- incidents reported since 2004 were falls common adverse event were falls, ings. that resulted in injury or death. which Jim Judson, St. Raphael’s direc“Mistakes are happening but what is tor of quality improvement and patient troublesome is the fact that things get Contact MARIANA LOPEZ-ROSAS at relations, said in a Monday email that reported and everybody continues with mariana.lopez-rosas@yale.edu .
AIDS Walk New Haven fundraises BY MICHELLE HACKMAN STAFF REPORTER Thanks to a fundraiser, Yalies can send each other condoms this week for a good cause. The undergraduate community service group behind AIDS Walk New Haven has launched a fundraiser this week, “Condoms and Cocoa Grams,” to raise money for its April 15 event. Students can purchase a “gram” gift bag with a condom and a packet of hot cocoa mix for $3 during dinner hours on Monday to Wednesday in residential college dining halls and during lunch on Thursday in the Commons rotunda. The effort represents one of the group’s many sources of funding for its annual walk in April which donates its funds to nine non-profit organizations, including Planned Parenthood and the AIDS Interfaith Network. “Even though the issue is one of global significance, the work we’re doing directly affects the greater New Haven area,” said Leah Campbell ’15, the publicity coordinator of AIDS Walk New Haven. “We’re raising awareness for an international problem, but with a focus on the people affected by it much closer to home which helps make the problem much more immediate and personal.” The organization set up in three dining halls Monday and Tuesday night, and plans to solicit in five dining halls on Wednesday night, coordinators said. Other than a few samples created to show to customers, the group has not created any of its cocoa grams yet. It will do so in its Thursday night meeting, said Adam Ford ’13, one of the group’s cocoordinators, and then distribute the cocoa grams on Friday and Saturday. Ford said that he expects the fundraiser will raise approximately $350 which will go toward preparing for the walk. Ford said the idea originated last year when the group planned a “condoms and candy canes” fundraiser for the holidays that was never ultimately carried out.
“We were expecting snow and cold around the end of January, so hot cocoa seemed appropriate,” Ford said. Isaac Wasserman ’14 said he bought one because he felt it was a creative way to support something that mattered to him. “I ended up asking that a condom and cocoa gram be sent to my twin brother,” he said. “More as a joke, but also because I don’t feel like becoming an uncle yet.” The primary focus of the organization is to host an annual 5K walk through New Haven in which both undergraduates and other city residents participate. Each year, the organization raises about $20,000 to put on the walk, Ford said. The funding comes from on-campus events such as the cocoa grams and partly through deals with local restaurants and businesses, said Sheila Enamandram ’13, one of the co-coordinators of AIDS Walk New Haven in 2011. The group also works extensively with the network of organizations in the Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS. Enamandram said that last year’s event raised more money than any other in its history, with a total of $24,000 raised by the end of the summer. The unprecedented success may have been partially due to appearances by Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 (D-Conn.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.), who headlined the event. Campbell said that the organization intends to advertise its event more heavily to undergraduates this year. “In the past, we’ve been able to connect well with the New Haven community and there has always been a great turnout of locals,” Campbell said. “But we have never gotten as many Yale students as some other events like Relay for Life.” The organization will hold its other major pre-walk fundraiser, the Red Hot Fashion Show, in conjunction with undergraduate art and fashion group Y-Couture in February. Contact MICHELLE HACKMAN at michelle.hackman@yale.edu .
PAGE 6
YALE DAILY NEWS 路 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 路 yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 7
FROM THE FRONT
“Community-based policing has now come to mean everything. [P]eople who endorse it do not know what they are talking about.” JAMES WILSON AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENTIST
Admins concerned by number of cases MISCONDUCT FROM PAGE 1 resources available. “The number of complaints of sexual misconduct brought forward and outlined in the Report is a matter of deep concern,” University President Richard Levin said in an email to the Yale community. “Even though only a very small fraction of our campus population is alleged to be violating our policies, our aspiration must be to raise the bar so that no one believes that sexual misconduct is acceptable.” The University will release a similar report documenting cases of sexual misconduct twice per year, administrators said. Before the UWC formed, the Yale College Sexual Harassment Grievance Board dealt with informal complaints in Yale College but did not publicly announce its records. But the Yale College Executive Committee, which heard formal cases before the UWC’s creation, did release an overview of its cases.
Yale College students accounted for 29 of the complainants, and the others included graduate students, staff and faculty members, according to Tuesday’s report.
The number of complaints of sexual misconduct brought forward and outlined in the Report is a matter of deep concern. RICHARD LEVIN University President Thirty-six complaints were brought to only Title IX coordinators — 14 administrators across the Yale’s schools who make sure the University responds to concerns about gender discrimination — and four to the Yale Police Department. Spangler, who
was appointed in November to oversee the Title IX coordinators and ensure the University meets Title IX regulations, said she could not be sure why the the majority of the cases were handled by Title IX coordinators and not brought to the UWC, though she said she could “speculate” that students turned to the coordinators because they are “embedded in the schools” and have been established longer. Of the 12 complaints submitted to the UWC, five were formal cases, which require full investigations by external professional fact-finders and can result in disciplinary action. Two of the formal complaints were resolved with disciplinary action, one was dismissed after the committee determined it did not fall under the UWC’s jurisdiction and two are still pending. Six of the seven informal UWC complaints, which do not include extensive investigations or result in disciplinary action, were resolved after committee members, and in
some cases outside administrators, met with the respondents to reach resolutions that coincided with the wishes of the complainants. Regardless of who hears the complaints, Spangler said all parties involved with each case are expected to keep the proceedings confidential. Nondisclosure agreements — contracts that require signatories not to disclose certain
information — are not a regular component of cases, Spangler said, adding that their use “depends on the circumstances.” Margaret Marshall, who chaired the Advisory Committee on Campus Climate appointed by Levin last March, said the report gives information that is more extensive than what federal regulations require.
“I think this puts Yale way ahead of any institution in terms of providing this kind of detail to the community,” Marshall said. The next report on sexual misconduct cases will be released in July. Contact GAVAN GIDEON at gavan.gideon@yale.edu and CAROLINE TAN at caroline.tan@yale.edu .
BY THE NUMBERS SEXUAL MISCONDUCT REPORT 5 7 36 4 52
Formal complaints of sexual misconduct brought to the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct between July and December 2011. Informal complaints of sexual misconduct brought to the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct between July and December 2011. Complaints of sexual misconduct brought to one of Yale’s 15 Title IX Coordinators between July and December 2011. Complaints of sexual misconduct brought to the Yale Police between July and December 2011. Total number of sexual misconduct complaints outlined in Tuesday’s campus-wide report.
Levin joins education reform advocacy group EDUCATION FROM PAGE 1
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy plans to propose new legislation promoting education reform.
Fill this space here. JOIN@YALEDAILYNEWS.COM
before major education policy changes are expected to be introduced to the state legislature. The Connecticut General Assembly will convene for its next legislative session next Wednesday, and Gov. Dannel Malloy has said he will propose legislation “potent enough to make Connecticut a national leader in narrowing the achievement gap, and comprehensive enough to set the stage for a restoration of Connecticut as a model for creating academic excellence for all,” according to a Jan. 26 press release. Also on Thursday, the organization introduced its new executive director, Rae Ann Knopf, who served as the deputy commissioner of education for the Vermont Department of Education from 2009 until her recent appointment to the CCER. The organization announced its 2012 legislative priorities at the same time, including changing teachers’ tenure policies to reflect performance rather than seniority, as well as creating a statewide strategy for improving turnaround schools and districts, which it will send to lawmakers in Hartford during the legislative session. Townes said school performance metrics in Connecticut are complex, explaining that sometimes people incorrectly attribute the state’s large achievement gap to the fact that the top schools produce very high-performing students. He stressed that Connecticut has “huge socioeconomic stratification within a small area” and that schools in low-income districts are performing poorly. Education reform is not only important for Connecticut’s economic future, said Townes, but is also fiscally relevant now — high school dropouts use, on average, $518,000 more per person in state-funded social services than graduates. John Crawford, lead independent director of Webster Financial Corpora-
tion and another new appointee to the CCER board of directors, said education reform needs to be addressed because the current system is unfair for those at the bottom. “We have to make sure that all children have an equal opportunity to be prepared to enter the workforce,” Crawford said. “We certainly have a lot of children in Connecticut who are very well prepared and we have a big number who aren’t — the focal point is how we make sure that children who have a strike or two against them have an equal shot.”
We have to make sure that all children have an equal opportunity to be prepared to enter the workforce. JOHN CRAWFORD Member, CCER board of directors Crawford said he hopes to see greater preschool education and more exposure to reading before students enter kindergarden. He also stressed that economic incentives and proper evaluations need to be established to attract and retain talented teachers. In addition to Levin and Crawford, Marna Borgstrom, CEO of Yale-New Haven Hospital; Brian MacLean, president of Travelers Companies; and James Torgerson, CEO of the United Illuminating Company, joined CCER’s board of directors. Knopf also announced last Thursday that First Niagara Bank had donated $3 million to the CCER to support the organization’s reform initiatives. Contact BEN PRAWDZIK at benjamin.prawdzik@yale.edu .
438,976
VISITS TO YALEDAILYNEWS.COM THIS MONTH.
PROGRAMMERS & DESIGNERS WANTED 9PM OCT. 10 & OCT. 12 202 YORK ST. webmaster@yaledailynews.com
PAGE 8
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
ARTS & CULTURE “Macbeth” comes to America “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.” MACBETH BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
THIS WEEK IN THE ARTS WED. JAN. 18 - MON. FEB. 6 THREE CARD MONTE An exhibition curated by three students at the School of Art. The curators pulled works by their fellow students and past colleagues, including pieces in media such as video and decaying fish.
In ‘1969,’ tragic hero as Vietnam vet An American regicide
Green Hall, 1156 Chapel St.
BY ALEXI SARGEANT CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
7 P.M. THURS. FEB. 2
Insomnia, sleepwalking, hallucinations, paranoia: These are not just supernatural elements from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” but are also symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, said Eric Ting, director of the Long Wharf Theatre’s adaptation of the classic play. “Macbeth 1969” awakens its title character’s “black and deep desires” not through the meddling of witches but with the horrors of the war in Vietnam. Ting, the associate director of the Long Wharf Theatre, began adapting “Macbeth 1969” in late 2010. The show, which opened Jan. 18, includes an estimated 70 percent of Shakespeare’s text, but Ting rearranged and reallocated the lines to emphasize different aspects of the story: While Shakespeare’s original play has 30 characters and takes place in a variety of locations across Scotland, “Macbeth 1969” has only seven characters played by six actors and is set entirely in a small-town hospital in Middle America. Two moments of inspiration guided this substantial re-setting, Ting said. Before the genesis of “Macbeth 1969,” Ting and his colleagues at the Long Wharf Theatre had been talking about doing a production of “Macbeth” and were already considering experimenting with a small cast, he said. Then, while brainstorming the production, Ting said he read an article in Smithsonian magazine by Caroline Alexander called “The Shock of War” that discussed how WWI veterans were treated for PTSD, then called “shell shock.” Soon after, President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal window for U.S. troops in Iraq. Ting said he immediately saw how timely the theme of reintegrating soldiers into civilian society was. In Shakespeare’s original text, Macbeth and Banquo meet the three witches on their return from war, Ting noted, the encounter from which all the play’s events cascade. After reading Alexander’s article, Ting said he began to research the history of PTSD diagnosis. “During the Vietnam War, it [PTSD] was known as ‘battle fatigue,’” Ting said. “During World War I, ‘shell shock.’ In the Civil War they just thought it was cowardice.”
HAMLET AT ELSINORE A screening of the BBC’s made-for-television version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, a little-known film starring Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Roy Kinnear. With an introduction by Theater Studies professor Deborah Margolin. Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
8 P.M. THURS. FEB. 2 CONCERT FEATURING MUSIC BY STEPHEN FEIGENBAUM ’12 AND DANIEL WOHL ’12 The concert will stream live on the School of Music’s website. Morse Recital Hall, 470 College St.
THURS. FEB. 2 SAT. FEB. 4 CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF A production of Tennessee Williams’ 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play directed by Kate Heaney ’14. Calhoun College Cabaret, 189 Elm St.
7 – 9:45 P.M. FRI. FEB. 3 THE SWORD AND THE SCREEN The third in a series of screenings of rare Japanese samurai films. The “Sword and the Screen” series is the first ever collaboration between Japan’s national film archive and a non-Japanese university. Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
FRI. FEB. 3 - SAT. FEB. 4 ON TV: A CONFERENCE ON TELEVISION A conference focusing on historical aspects of televisions studies and contemporary thought in the field. Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
Realizing he had found a distinctive and culturally relevant approach to “Macbeth,” Ting chose to set the play in 1969 because he thought the current mood of the country regarding the War in Iraq mirrored public reaction to the Vietnam War. Ting pointed out that current treatment of veterans with PTSD can still be short-sighted and unfair. For instance, even though experts say it requires a minimum of two to three years to recover from PTSD, many veterans diagnosed with it are returned to combat in far less time than that, Ting said. “Men returning from Vietnam found they’d been fighting a war no one wanted to be a part of,” Ting said. “They were given no psychological help and were basically told to forget what had happened overseas — the only time attention was paid was when one ‘cracked’ and committed acts of violence. They were condemned at home for the very actions their government had ordered them to do abroad.” McKinley Belcher III, who plays Macbeth — referred to in the script as “Soldier [1]” — said the production has intensified elements already present in Shakespeare’s plays. The original script deals with issues of war and its effects on society, which this production emphasizes by reassigning lines to Macbeth and Banqo and by developing their relationship as fellow soldiers dealing with their combat experience. Banquo enters swathed completely in bandages and confined to a wheelchair, while Macbeth begins the play already up-andabout. Barret O’Brien DRA ’09, who plays the characters of Banquo and Macduff — “Soldier [2]” and “Civilian,” respectively — said the idea of playing Banquo as a severe burn victim originated in early workshops before rehearsals began. He said he appreciated having time to develop the role because it restricted his ability as an actor to express emotion through conventional means. “I was a lot more afraid of it at the beginning, because an actor’s main tools are the body and the face, and in this role, both of those are curtailed,” O’Brien said. “[It turned out to be] a beautiful gift. I was forced to trust the text, and now what I feel is Banquo’s frustration with his situation, not an actor’s frustration.” Ting said that in both workshops and rehearsals, he sought out feedback from actual veterans. The production team met with PTSD specialist David Read Johnson ’73 GRD ’80 and the veterans he works with
Saybrook College, Room WC-11
TUES. JAN. 31 - MAR. 31 MALCOLM MORLEY IN A NUTSHELL: THE FINE ART OF PAINTING 1954-2012 An exhibition featuring the work of English photorealist Malcolm Morley. Yale School of Art Gallery, 32 Edgewood Ave.
5:15 P.M. TUES. FEB. 14 SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE For romantics eager to make V-day plans: the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library will host a Valentine’s Day tour and screening of the classic 1998 film “Shakespeare in Love.” Beinecke Library, 121 Wall St.
BY AKBAR AHMED STAFF REPORTER Yalies accustomed to seeing Shakespeare’s Macbeth kilted, Celtic and far-removed from their daily lives may have to reconsider their image of the iconic killer. A new production of “Macbeth” opens this Thursday at the Whitney Theater, intertwining vignettes from American history with the plot of the classic revenge play. Sam Lasman ’12, the production’s director, said his vision stems from his desire to make the play resonate with students by incorporating historical settings that are “a natural place for horror and violence and politics,” such as scenes of presidential assassinations and terror à la Edgar Allen Poe. The show, a senior project for Lasman, Jamie Biondi ’12 and Kate Pitt ’12, is partly funded by the Shakespeare at Yale festival. Lasman said that while many directors see “Macbeth” as a show inextricably tied to the old world, he wanted his production to prove that the play reads well in an American context. Lasman is a staff columnist for the News. “[The play] is done in a way that’s creepily close to home,” Biondi said. “It’s haunting to move forward from when ‘Macbeth’ should be set to enter this weird between-Americana land. It makes you go ‘Oh dear god, look at all this that’s in our past.’” Scenes are paired with folk
Contact ALEXI SARGEANT at alexi.sargeant@yale.edu .
songs, Lasman said, while the murdered kings are recast as United States presidents. The set abandons craggy Scottish landscapes for pillars and a minimalist grunge vibe, the aesthetic seen recently in the fall 2010 production of “RENT” and last spring’s “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” said Stuart Teal ’14, a member of the production’s lighting crew.
[The play] is done in a way that’s creepily close to home. It’s haunting. JAMIE BIONDI ’12 Actor, Macbeth Pitt, who plays Lady Macbeth, said the role has a special significance for her given its historical twist. A double major in Theater Studies and History, Pitt said her senior essay focuses on an actress who played Lady Macbeth in a production of the play during the Civil War. “In the American frame, there’s always this fear of the woman behind the throne, like Eleanor Roosevelt,” Pitt said. She added that she sees Lady Macbeth’s desire to gain power through her husband as a parallel to some perceptions of First Lady Michelle Obama as influential only through her husband. The Shakespeare at Yale initiative boosted the show’s bud-
get with $1,600 in funding, enabling an especially large set, which Lasman said cost more itself than the entire budget for any other show he has directed at Yale. The show, Lasman said, is not meant to be the final word on “Macbeth,” but instead aims to give the audience a new perspective on classic elements of the tragedy. He said that Yalies’ prior familiarity with the production is an “obstacle,” but one that he hopes to work with by presenting original stagings of particularly iconic scenes, such as the appearance of Banquo’s ghost. “People aren’t going to come and say this is the be-all and end-all of ‘Macbeth,’” Biondi said. “They’re not going to say it wasn’t right — they’ll see it as a really awesome thing that had all the elements of Macbeth but was actually doing something about it.” Prior experience with Theater Studies senior projects will help audiences understand the spin the three seniors are putting on “Macbeth,” Teal said. “Older people expecting to see the standard ‘Macbeth’ will be surprised — it’ll be interesting.” Biondi said the show nearly sold out 24 hours after ticket reservations opened on the Yale Drama Coalition website last Wednesday. “Macbeth” will run Feb. 2 through Feb. 4 at the Whitney Humanities Center. Contact AKBAR AHMED at akbar.ahmed@yale.edu .
LONG WHARF THEATRE
Photorealist pioneer shows on Edgewood
8 P.M. SUN. FEB. 5 WEEKLY READING WITH THE SHAKESPEARE PROJECT Join members of the Yale Shakespeare Project for their weekly cold-reading of the Bard’s works. The group was founded in 2006 with the mission of reading through the Shakespearean canon in its entirety, an endeavor that takes approximately two years.
through the drama therapy group Homefront Theatre, which Ting said influenced the show’s direction. “There may only six actors speaking in this show, but in truth there are many, many voices present in the theatre,” O’Brien said. Hearing personal stories from actual veterans helped “put a human face” on the issues Macbeth deals with, Belcher said. “I’m excited to do a version of Macbeth that brings everything about the play really close to home,” he said. “[‘Macbeth 1969’] uses Shakespeare’s text to look at the challenges that face our world, right now.” “Macbeth 1969” runs through Feb. 12.
BY URVI NOPANY STAFF REPORTER A World War II fighter plane, a postcard of a cruise ship and memories of being bitten by a dog inspired some of the works in the latest exhibit at the School of Art’s 32 Edgewood Ave. gallery. “Malcolm Morley in a Nutshell: The Fine Art of Painting 1954-2012” opened this Tuesday as the second of five shows to be held at 32 Edgewood this academic year. The exhibit is a mini-retrospective of Morley’s progression as an artist, said School of Art Dean Robert Storr, the exhibit’s curator. The show spans Morley’s work from his days as a young student-artist to his work as a photorealist painter during the 1960s, ending with an installation he completed only a week ago, Storr said. The exhibition has no chronological progression, Storr explained, adding that the idea was rather to highlight the British artist’s tremendous range. “I basically got a list of all of his work that was in the Tri-State area that we could get,” Storr said. “I wanted to make a selection that represented the variety of what he did in terms of style and medium.” Morley, who won Tate Britain’s first Turner Prize for contemporary art in 1984, said he views the showcase as more of a “mini-survey” than a retrospective exhibit. He added that his art is strongly influenced by the ideas of self-discovery and personal evolution, and that he evolved from an artist concerned with establishing his reputation to an artist concerned with larger issues, such as the destruction of World War II. The final installation — created so recently that the paint was still wet when it arrived to the gallery,
Beinecke overflows with Shakespearean artifacts BY JULIA ZORTHIAN STAFF REPORTER
KAMARIA GREENFIELD/PHOTOGRAPHRY EDITOR
The retrospective exhibit of Malcolm Morley’s work highlights his wide artistic range. Storr said — was inspired by the second World War, Morley said. Depicting a British fighter plane called “The Spitfire,” Morley said the piece reveals his subconscious mind at work: His apartment was destroyed by a “jetpropelled bomb” when he was just 13 years old. “It made a very deep impression on me as a child,” Morley said. “If you make contact with where you bury that stuff, it can be a great source for an artist. It’s like making friends with your unconscious life.”
Morley became renowned in the art world for his realistic paintings, Storr said, calling the artist a pioneer in the field of photorealistic paintings. In a radical digression from artistic practices of the 1960s, Morley began creating crisp and lifelike paintings at a time when most artists tried to hide the photographic sources of their work, not pay tribute to them, Storr said. Anoka Faruqee, an associate professor of painting and printmaking at the School of Art, said seeing Morley’s
work in person brought out facets of the art not evident in reproductions. “It was really great to see this amount of [his] work in person because I had seen the work in reproduction before and it’s a very different experience,” Faruqee said. “There are watercolors and material qualities are not evident in the photographs.” The exhibit runs through March 31, 2012. Contact URVI NOPANY at urvi.nopany@yale.edu .
Today marks the opening of the “Remembering Shakespeare” exhibit at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and with it, the unification of books, prints and documents chronicling the Bard’s lasting impression on the world and on Yale. The exhibit, curated by English professor David Scott Kastan and Beinecke library curator Kathryn James, offers a chronological history of how Shakespeare’s plays have been documented in print and culture. It includes items from the Beinecke’s own collection, as well as from Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library, the Elizabethan Club, the Yale Center for British Art and the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library. “[The exhibit offers] this extremely rich view of how Shakespeare was read and encountered from the early 16th to the mid20th century,” James said. The exhibit is divided into eight sections, each illuminating a different aspect of Shakespeare’s legacy. Beginning on the ground floor, visitors walk through areas dedicated to subjects ranging from “Reviving Shakespeare” to “Defining Shakespeare” and culminating in “Disseminating Shakespeare.” The show is literally bookended with copies of Shakespeare’s first Folio that belong to the Beinecke and the Elizabethan Club, which the curators placed in the first and final portions of the exhibit. Other artifacts selected for the exhibition include a lute book containing Benedick’s song from “Much Ado About Nothing,” which is the first record of written music for one of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as handwritten records of salaries and itemized expenses from Covent Garden’s historic Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the 18th century. “There is an amazing amount of social historical detail here,” James said. “We have phenomenal holdings on 18th-century theater.” The upper floor is flanked by sections titled
“Appropriating Shakespeare,” a display of political cartoons referencing Shakespeare’s plays, and “Performing Shakespeare,” a series of colorful mid-20th-century photographs by Carl Van Cechten depicting actors of the day in Shakespearean roles. The final section stands against the library’s back wall and displays Yale’s first known copy of a work by Shakespeare from 1743, in addition to a 1949 syllabus from professor Maynard Mack’s full-year Shakespeare course. James said that the exhibit emphasizes Yale’s extensive collection of Shakespearean resources: All items in the exhibition belong to the University. She added that in organizing the exhibit, the library scanned most of its holdings into a digital database, which will be available on iPads placed throughout the exhibit. A Web exhibition is also online through the Beinecke’s website. In addition to the show’s digital dimensions, James and Kastan brought Matthew Hunter GRD ’15 on board to create and maintain a blog to accompany the exhibit, with posts each day about a different item in the collection. The blog launched today. “[The blog will include] description summaries and worthwhile facts for each item in the exhibit, as well as a scanned image that will be available to anyone on the internet,” Hunter said. Kastan, Hunter and James all emphasized the sheer volume of materials in the exhibit. “You couldn’t go anywhere else in the world and see this particular set of collections and you wont see it again here,” James said. “This is its moment.” The exhibit remains in the Beinecke through June 4, with an official opening set for Feb. 15. Contact JULIA ZORTHIAN at julia.zorthian@yale.edu .
JACOB GEIGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A new production of “Macbeth” opening Thursday combines elements of Americana with Shakespeare’s text.
PAGE 8
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
ARTS & CULTURE “Macbeth” comes to America “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.” MACBETH BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
THIS WEEK IN THE ARTS WED. JAN. 18 - MON. FEB. 6 THREE CARD MONTE An exhibition curated by three students at the School of Art. The curators pulled works by their fellow students and past colleagues, including pieces in media such as video and decaying fish.
In ‘1969,’ tragic hero as Vietnam vet An American regicide
Green Hall, 1156 Chapel St.
BY ALEXI SARGEANT CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
7 P.M. THURS. FEB. 2
Insomnia, sleepwalking, hallucinations, paranoia: These are not just supernatural elements from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” but are also symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, said Eric Ting, director of the Long Wharf Theatre’s adaptation of the classic play. “Macbeth 1969” awakens its title character’s “black and deep desires” not through the meddling of witches but with the horrors of the war in Vietnam. Ting, the associate director of the Long Wharf Theatre, began adapting “Macbeth 1969” in late 2010. The show, which opened Jan. 18, includes an estimated 70 percent of Shakespeare’s text, but Ting rearranged and reallocated the lines to emphasize different aspects of the story: While Shakespeare’s original play has 30 characters and takes place in a variety of locations across Scotland, “Macbeth 1969” has only seven characters played by six actors and is set entirely in a small-town hospital in Middle America. Two moments of inspiration guided this substantial re-setting, Ting said. Before the genesis of “Macbeth 1969,” Ting and his colleagues at the Long Wharf Theatre had been talking about doing a production of “Macbeth” and were already considering experimenting with a small cast, he said. Then, while brainstorming the production, Ting said he read an article in Smithsonian magazine by Caroline Alexander called “The Shock of War” that discussed how WWI veterans were treated for PTSD, then called “shell shock.” Soon after, President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal window for U.S. troops in Iraq. Ting said he immediately saw how timely the theme of reintegrating soldiers into civilian society was. In Shakespeare’s original text, Macbeth and Banquo meet the three witches on their return from war, Ting noted, the encounter from which all the play’s events cascade. After reading Alexander’s article, Ting said he began to research the history of PTSD diagnosis. “During the Vietnam War, it [PTSD] was known as ‘battle fatigue,’” Ting said. “During World War I, ‘shell shock.’ In the Civil War they just thought it was cowardice.”
HAMLET AT ELSINORE A screening of the BBC’s made-for-television version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, a little-known film starring Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Roy Kinnear. With an introduction by Theater Studies professor Deborah Margolin. Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
8 P.M. THURS. FEB. 2 CONCERT FEATURING MUSIC BY STEPHEN FEIGENBAUM ’12 AND DANIEL WOHL ’12 The concert will stream live on the School of Music’s website. Morse Recital Hall, 470 College St.
THURS. FEB. 2 SAT. FEB. 4 CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF A production of Tennessee Williams’ 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play directed by Kate Heaney ’14. Calhoun College Cabaret, 189 Elm St.
7 – 9:45 P.M. FRI. FEB. 3 THE SWORD AND THE SCREEN The third in a series of screenings of rare Japanese samurai films. The “Sword and the Screen” series is the first ever collaboration between Japan’s national film archive and a non-Japanese university. Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
FRI. FEB. 3 - SAT. FEB. 4 ON TV: A CONFERENCE ON TELEVISION A conference focusing on historical aspects of televisions studies and contemporary thought in the field. Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
Realizing he had found a distinctive and culturally relevant approach to “Macbeth,” Ting chose to set the play in 1969 because he thought the current mood of the country regarding the War in Iraq mirrored public reaction to the Vietnam War. Ting pointed out that current treatment of veterans with PTSD can still be short-sighted and unfair. For instance, even though experts say it requires a minimum of two to three years to recover from PTSD, many veterans diagnosed with it are returned to combat in far less time than that, Ting said. “Men returning from Vietnam found they’d been fighting a war no one wanted to be a part of,” Ting said. “They were given no psychological help and were basically told to forget what had happened overseas — the only time attention was paid was when one ‘cracked’ and committed acts of violence. They were condemned at home for the very actions their government had ordered them to do abroad.” McKinley Belcher III, who plays Macbeth — referred to in the script as “Soldier [1]” — said the production has intensified elements already present in Shakespeare’s plays. The original script deals with issues of war and its effects on society, which this production emphasizes by reassigning lines to Macbeth and Banqo and by developing their relationship as fellow soldiers dealing with their combat experience. Banquo enters swathed completely in bandages and confined to a wheelchair, while Macbeth begins the play already up-andabout. Barret O’Brien DRA ’09, who plays the characters of Banquo and Macduff — “Soldier [2]” and “Civilian,” respectively — said the idea of playing Banquo as a severe burn victim originated in early workshops before rehearsals began. He said he appreciated having time to develop the role because it restricted his ability as an actor to express emotion through conventional means. “I was a lot more afraid of it at the beginning, because an actor’s main tools are the body and the face, and in this role, both of those are curtailed,” O’Brien said. “[It turned out to be] a beautiful gift. I was forced to trust the text, and now what I feel is Banquo’s frustration with his situation, not an actor’s frustration.” Ting said that in both workshops and rehearsals, he sought out feedback from actual veterans. The production team met with PTSD specialist David Read Johnson ’73 GRD ’80 and the veterans he works with
Saybrook College, Room WC-11
TUES. JAN. 31 - MAR. 31 MALCOLM MORLEY IN A NUTSHELL: THE FINE ART OF PAINTING 1954-2012 An exhibition featuring the work of English photorealist Malcolm Morley. Yale School of Art Gallery, 32 Edgewood Ave.
5:15 P.M. TUES. FEB. 14 SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE For romantics eager to make V-day plans: the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library will host a Valentine’s Day tour and screening of the classic 1998 film “Shakespeare in Love.” Beinecke Library, 121 Wall St.
BY AKBAR AHMED STAFF REPORTER Yalies accustomed to seeing Shakespeare’s Macbeth kilted, Celtic and far-removed from their daily lives may have to reconsider their image of the iconic killer. A new production of “Macbeth” opens this Thursday at the Whitney Theater, intertwining vignettes from American history with the plot of the classic revenge play. Sam Lasman ’12, the production’s director, said his vision stems from his desire to make the play resonate with students by incorporating historical settings that are “a natural place for horror and violence and politics,” such as scenes of presidential assassinations and terror à la Edgar Allen Poe. The show, a senior project for Lasman, Jamie Biondi ’12 and Kate Pitt ’12, is partly funded by the Shakespeare at Yale festival. Lasman said that while many directors see “Macbeth” as a show inextricably tied to the old world, he wanted his production to prove that the play reads well in an American context. Lasman is a staff columnist for the News. “[The play] is done in a way that’s creepily close to home,” Biondi said. “It’s haunting to move forward from when ‘Macbeth’ should be set to enter this weird between-Americana land. It makes you go ‘Oh dear god, look at all this that’s in our past.’” Scenes are paired with folk
Contact ALEXI SARGEANT at alexi.sargeant@yale.edu .
songs, Lasman said, while the murdered kings are recast as United States presidents. The set abandons craggy Scottish landscapes for pillars and a minimalist grunge vibe, the aesthetic seen recently in the fall 2010 production of “RENT” and last spring’s “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” said Stuart Teal ’14, a member of the production’s lighting crew.
[The play] is done in a way that’s creepily close to home. It’s haunting. JAMIE BIONDI ’12 Actor, Macbeth Pitt, who plays Lady Macbeth, said the role has a special significance for her given its historical twist. A double major in Theater Studies and History, Pitt said her senior essay focuses on an actress who played Lady Macbeth in a production of the play during the Civil War. “In the American frame, there’s always this fear of the woman behind the throne, like Eleanor Roosevelt,” Pitt said. She added that she sees Lady Macbeth’s desire to gain power through her husband as a parallel to some perceptions of First Lady Michelle Obama as influential only through her husband. The Shakespeare at Yale initiative boosted the show’s bud-
get with $1,600 in funding, enabling an especially large set, which Lasman said cost more itself than the entire budget for any other show he has directed at Yale. The show, Lasman said, is not meant to be the final word on “Macbeth,” but instead aims to give the audience a new perspective on classic elements of the tragedy. He said that Yalies’ prior familiarity with the production is an “obstacle,” but one that he hopes to work with by presenting original stagings of particularly iconic scenes, such as the appearance of Banquo’s ghost. “People aren’t going to come and say this is the be-all and end-all of ‘Macbeth,’” Biondi said. “They’re not going to say it wasn’t right — they’ll see it as a really awesome thing that had all the elements of Macbeth but was actually doing something about it.” Prior experience with Theater Studies senior projects will help audiences understand the spin the three seniors are putting on “Macbeth,” Teal said. “Older people expecting to see the standard ‘Macbeth’ will be surprised — it’ll be interesting.” Biondi said the show nearly sold out 24 hours after ticket reservations opened on the Yale Drama Coalition website last Wednesday. “Macbeth” will run Feb. 2 through Feb. 4 at the Whitney Humanities Center. Contact AKBAR AHMED at akbar.ahmed@yale.edu .
LONG WHARF THEATRE
Photorealist pioneer shows on Edgewood
8 P.M. SUN. FEB. 5 WEEKLY READING WITH THE SHAKESPEARE PROJECT Join members of the Yale Shakespeare Project for their weekly cold-reading of the Bard’s works. The group was founded in 2006 with the mission of reading through the Shakespearean canon in its entirety, an endeavor that takes approximately two years.
through the drama therapy group Homefront Theatre, which Ting said influenced the show’s direction. “There may only six actors speaking in this show, but in truth there are many, many voices present in the theatre,” O’Brien said. Hearing personal stories from actual veterans helped “put a human face” on the issues Macbeth deals with, Belcher said. “I’m excited to do a version of Macbeth that brings everything about the play really close to home,” he said. “[‘Macbeth 1969’] uses Shakespeare’s text to look at the challenges that face our world, right now.” “Macbeth 1969” runs through Feb. 12.
BY URVI NOPANY STAFF REPORTER A World War II fighter plane, a postcard of a cruise ship and memories of being bitten by a dog inspired some of the works in the latest exhibit at the School of Art’s 32 Edgewood Ave. gallery. “Malcolm Morley in a Nutshell: The Fine Art of Painting 1954-2012” opened this Tuesday as the second of five shows to be held at 32 Edgewood this academic year. The exhibit is a mini-retrospective of Morley’s progression as an artist, said School of Art Dean Robert Storr, the exhibit’s curator. The show spans Morley’s work from his days as a young student-artist to his work as a photorealist painter during the 1960s, ending with an installation he completed only a week ago, Storr said. The exhibition has no chronological progression, Storr explained, adding that the idea was rather to highlight the British artist’s tremendous range. “I basically got a list of all of his work that was in the Tri-State area that we could get,” Storr said. “I wanted to make a selection that represented the variety of what he did in terms of style and medium.” Morley, who won Tate Britain’s first Turner Prize for contemporary art in 1984, said he views the showcase as more of a “mini-survey” than a retrospective exhibit. He added that his art is strongly influenced by the ideas of self-discovery and personal evolution, and that he evolved from an artist concerned with establishing his reputation to an artist concerned with larger issues, such as the destruction of World War II. The final installation — created so recently that the paint was still wet when it arrived to the gallery,
Beinecke overflows with Shakespearean artifacts BY JULIA ZORTHIAN STAFF REPORTER
KAMARIA GREENFIELD/PHOTOGRAPHRY EDITOR
The retrospective exhibit of Malcolm Morley’s work highlights his wide artistic range. Storr said — was inspired by the second World War, Morley said. Depicting a British fighter plane called “The Spitfire,” Morley said the piece reveals his subconscious mind at work: His apartment was destroyed by a “jetpropelled bomb” when he was just 13 years old. “It made a very deep impression on me as a child,” Morley said. “If you make contact with where you bury that stuff, it can be a great source for an artist. It’s like making friends with your unconscious life.”
Morley became renowned in the art world for his realistic paintings, Storr said, calling the artist a pioneer in the field of photorealistic paintings. In a radical digression from artistic practices of the 1960s, Morley began creating crisp and lifelike paintings at a time when most artists tried to hide the photographic sources of their work, not pay tribute to them, Storr said. Anoka Faruqee, an associate professor of painting and printmaking at the School of Art, said seeing Morley’s
work in person brought out facets of the art not evident in reproductions. “It was really great to see this amount of [his] work in person because I had seen the work in reproduction before and it’s a very different experience,” Faruqee said. “There are watercolors and material qualities are not evident in the photographs.” The exhibit runs through March 31, 2012. Contact URVI NOPANY at urvi.nopany@yale.edu .
Today marks the opening of the “Remembering Shakespeare” exhibit at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and with it, the unification of books, prints and documents chronicling the Bard’s lasting impression on the world and on Yale. The exhibit, curated by English professor David Scott Kastan and Beinecke library curator Kathryn James, offers a chronological history of how Shakespeare’s plays have been documented in print and culture. It includes items from the Beinecke’s own collection, as well as from Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library, the Elizabethan Club, the Yale Center for British Art and the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library. “[The exhibit offers] this extremely rich view of how Shakespeare was read and encountered from the early 16th to the mid20th century,” James said. The exhibit is divided into eight sections, each illuminating a different aspect of Shakespeare’s legacy. Beginning on the ground floor, visitors walk through areas dedicated to subjects ranging from “Reviving Shakespeare” to “Defining Shakespeare” and culminating in “Disseminating Shakespeare.” The show is literally bookended with copies of Shakespeare’s first Folio that belong to the Beinecke and the Elizabethan Club, which the curators placed in the first and final portions of the exhibit. Other artifacts selected for the exhibition include a lute book containing Benedick’s song from “Much Ado About Nothing,” which is the first record of written music for one of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as handwritten records of salaries and itemized expenses from Covent Garden’s historic Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the 18th century. “There is an amazing amount of social historical detail here,” James said. “We have phenomenal holdings on 18th-century theater.” The upper floor is flanked by sections titled
“Appropriating Shakespeare,” a display of political cartoons referencing Shakespeare’s plays, and “Performing Shakespeare,” a series of colorful mid-20th-century photographs by Carl Van Cechten depicting actors of the day in Shakespearean roles. The final section stands against the library’s back wall and displays Yale’s first known copy of a work by Shakespeare from 1743, in addition to a 1949 syllabus from professor Maynard Mack’s full-year Shakespeare course. James said that the exhibit emphasizes Yale’s extensive collection of Shakespearean resources: All items in the exhibition belong to the University. She added that in organizing the exhibit, the library scanned most of its holdings into a digital database, which will be available on iPads placed throughout the exhibit. A Web exhibition is also online through the Beinecke’s website. In addition to the show’s digital dimensions, James and Kastan brought Matthew Hunter GRD ’15 on board to create and maintain a blog to accompany the exhibit, with posts each day about a different item in the collection. The blog launched today. “[The blog will include] description summaries and worthwhile facts for each item in the exhibit, as well as a scanned image that will be available to anyone on the internet,” Hunter said. Kastan, Hunter and James all emphasized the sheer volume of materials in the exhibit. “You couldn’t go anywhere else in the world and see this particular set of collections and you wont see it again here,” James said. “This is its moment.” The exhibit remains in the Beinecke through June 4, with an official opening set for Feb. 15. Contact JULIA ZORTHIAN at julia.zorthian@yale.edu .
JACOB GEIGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A new production of “Macbeth” opening Thursday combines elements of Americana with Shakespeare’s text.
PAGE 10
YALE DAILY NEWS 路 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 路 yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 11
BULLETIN BOARD
TODAY’S FORECAST
TOMORROW
Showers likely. Cloudy through mid morning with a high near 57. Chance of precipitation is 70%.
FRIDAY
High of 44, low of 26.
High of 44, low of 26.
MIDWESTERN NERD AT YALE BY ERAN MOORE REA
ON CAMPUS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2 4:00 PM “Politics, Theater and Political Theater in Russia Today.” Public talk by John Freedman, theater critic for The Moscow Times. Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel St.), Lounge. 8:00 PM New Music New Haven. Featuring Ezra Laderman’s Sonata No. 5 with Amy J. Yang, piano. Also on the program are Daniel Wohl’s “One Piece” and Paul Kerekes’ “Reach” (with Lisa Moore, piano and Ashley Bathgate, cello), Stephen Feigenbaum’s Fantasy for oboe and piano, Jordan Kuspa’s Collideoscope for piano quartet and Matthew Welch’s Orbis Tertius for bagpipes and brass septet. Sprague Hall (470 College St.), Morse Recital Hall.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3
SCIENCE HILL BY SPENCER KATZ
7:00 PM The Sword and the Screen: The Japanese Period Film 1615-1960. Part 3 of 5. Screening of The Peerless Patriot (1932, Itami Mansaku, 21 minutes), Enoken’s Kinta the Pickpocket (1937, Yamamoto Kajiro, 72 minutes) and Singing Lovebirds (1939, Makino Masahiro, 69 minutes). Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.), Aud. 8:00 PM Good Goods. Yale Rep presents the world premiere of Good Goods by Christina Anderson. Amidst the cluttered shelves of a family-owned general store in a small Black town that doesn’t appear on any map, four lost souls reunite. Blurring the line between body and spirit, Good Goods is an otherworldly love story of the (dis)possessed. Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel St.).
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4 9:00 AM TEDxYale 2012. Led by a dedicated team of avid TEDsters who are bringing the TED experience to the Yale community. It is much more than a conference: we strive to support a global community of innovation by showcasing students, faculty, alumni and community leaders who are pursuing revolutionary ideas. Apply for a ticket at www.tedxyale. com/#events/apply. Sheffield Sterling Strathcona Hall (1 Prospect St.), Rm. 114.
THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT
y SUBMIT YOUR EVENTS ONLINE yaledailynews.com/events/submit DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU
To reach us: E-mail editor@yaledailynews.com Advertisements 2-2424 (before 5 p.m.) 2-2400 (after 5 p.m.) Mailing address Yale Daily News P.O. Box 209007 New Haven, CT 06520
Questions or comments about the fairness or accuracy of stories should be directed to Max de la Bruyère, Editor in Chief, at (203) 432-2418. Bulletin Board is a free service provided to groups of the Yale community for events. Listings should be submitted online at yaledailynews.com/events/ submit. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit listings.
To visit us in person 202 York St. New Haven, Conn. (Opposite JE)
CLASSIFIEDS
CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Bank heist 4 Bedframe piece 8 Beyond harmful 14 “... by __ other name ...” 15 Bare bones 16 Billiard ball feature, about half the time 17 Buzz-filled 2007 animated film 19 Brings together 20 Burdensome additional levy 22 Boldly states 23 Birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen 26 Baker’s meas. 28 “Behold,” to Brutus 29 Ball-shaped frozen dessert 30 Betty White costar in “The Golden Girls” 32 “Ben-Hur,” e.g. 33 Bedrock resident 34 “But then again ...” 35 Bug-bitten? 36 Brown who wrote “The Da Vinci Code” 37 Billion-year period 40 Brother of Judah 42 Bump off 43 Biotin, thiamine et al. 47 Blinked the sleep from one’s eyes 48 Bothersome parasites 49 By order of 50 Bigheaded sort 51 Bing Crosby’s “__ You Glad You’re You?” 53 Baseball team’s list of players 55 Balanced state 57 Behave candidly 61 Black-tie wear 62 Bardot’s “the same” 63 Breathtaking snake? 64 Began, as a lawn 65 Beachfront property? 66 Buddy DOWN 1 Boxer’s punch 2 Binary digit 3 “Bon voyage!” 4 Better half, so to speak
CLASSICAL MUSIC 24 Hours a Day. 98.3 FM, and on the web at WMNR. org. “Pledges accepted: 1-800-345-1812”
PERSONAL COACH / ASPERGERS, LD, ADD. Lifeskills for work/school. Encouraging & experienced. www.UpwardWayCoaching.com
By Robin Stears
5 Burgundy book 6 Bickering 7 Box office setting 8 Baton Rouge sch. 9 Blower of Sicilian smoke 10 Buffer between a hot plate and a dinner table 11 Built for NASA, say 12 Brief summary 13 __ Bear: Ursa Minor 18 Broadcaster of “Morning Joe” 21 Blackboard symbols in the locker room 23 Bride’s passé promise 24 Birdbrain 25 Belch, say 27 Blissful song 30 Better for enjoying the outdoors, as weather 31 “Belshazzar’s Feast” painter Rembrandt van __ 33 “Black Sunday” airship 35 Biblical prophet: Abbr.
Tuesday’s Puzzle Solved
SUDOKU HARD
7 9
37 Blond sci-fi race 38 Barrel sources 39 Bolshevik’s denial 41 Bundles up (in) 42 Bound by oath 43 Blaring siren sounds 44 Basis of morality 45 Belaying tool for climbers 46 Became edgy 47 Belonging to an ancient time
CALL (203) 432-2424 OR E-MAIL BUSINESS@ YALEDAILYNEWS.COM
ASIAN EGG DONOR NEEDED $40-50k in compensation, plus expenses. Asian couple seeking a happy, intelligent, attractive, and healthy woman with athletic abilities between the ages of 21-27, black hair, brown eyes, and 5’6”+. Please contact: info@aperfectmatch.com. 1-800-264-8828
2/1/12
4
(c)2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Want to place a classified ad?
2/1/12
50 “Blood Simple” co-screenwriter Coen 52 Bay of Fundy wonder 54 Big name in video games 56 Bald spot filler 58 Backward flow 59 Bronze coin of old France 60 Bar bill
6 5 9
6 5 8 4
5 7 3 9 5 1 7 4
3
2
7
6 1 1 6 4
PAGE 12
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
S
NATION
T Dow Jones 12,632.91, -0.16% S NASDAQ 2,813.84, +0.07%
T 10-yr. Bond -0.04, -0.184%
S Oil $98.52, +0.04%
T Euro $1.3064, -0.1986%
Romney wins Florida
S&P 500 1,312.41, -0.05%
Iran threat said to grow
VAHID SALEMI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad smiles prior to a meeting at the president’s office in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Jan. 31. BY KIMBERLY DOZIER ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHARLES DHARAPAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney stands with his wife as he celebrates his Florida primary election win Tuesday, Jan. 31. BY DAVID ESPO AND STEVE PEOPLES ASSOCIATED PRESS TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney routed Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary Tuesday night, rebounding smartly from an earlier defeat and taking a major step toward the Republican presidential nomination. Despite the one-sided setback, the former House speaker vowed to press on. Romney, talking unity like a nominee, said he was ready “to lead this party and our nation” — and turn Democratic President Barack Obama out of office. In remarks to cheering supporters, the former Massachusetts governor unleashed a strong attack on Obama and said the competitive fight for the GOP nomination “does not divide us, it prepares us” for the fall. “Mr. President, you were elected to lead, you chose to follow, and now it’s time to get out of the way,” he declared.
Returns from 79 percent of Florida’s precincts showed Romney with 47 percent of the vote, to 32 percent for Gingrich. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had 13 percent, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul 7 percent. Neither mounted a substantial effort in the state. The winner-take-all primary was worth 50 Republican National Convention delegates, by far the most of any primary state so far. But the bigger prize was precious political momentum in the race to pick an opponent for Obama in a nation struggling to recover from the deepest recession in decades. That belonged to Romney when he captured the New Hampshire primary three weeks ago, then swung stunningly to Gingrich when he countered with a South Carolina upset 11 days later. Now it was back with the former Massachusetts gov-
ernor, after a 10-day comeback that marked a change to more aggressive tactics, coupled with an efficient use of an overwhelming financial advantage to batter Gingrich in television commercials over a 10-day campaign. For the first time in the campaign, exit polls showed a gender gap in Romney’s favor. He ran far better among women than Gingrich, winning just over half of their votes, to three in 10 for his rival. Only about half of the women voters said they had a favorable view of the thricemarried Gingrich as a person, while about eight in 10 had a positive opinion of Romney. As in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, about half of Florida primary voters said the most important factor for them was backing a candidate who can defeat Obama in November, according to early exit poll results conducted for The Associated Press and the
television networks. Not surprisingly, in a state with an unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent, about two-thirds of voters said the economy was their top issue. More than eight in 10 said they were falling behind or just keeping up. And half said that home foreclosures have been a major problem in their communities. Gingrich, from neighboring Georgia, swept into Florida from South Carolina, only to run headlong into a different Romney from the one he had left in his wake in South Carolina. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, shed his reluctance to attack Gingrich, the former House speaker, unleashing hard-hitting ads on television, sharpening his performance in a pair of debates and deploying surrogates to the edges of Gingrich’s own campaign appearances, all in hopes of unnerving him.
Facebook IPO ancitipated BY PALLAVI GOGOI ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg turns up at business conventions in a hoodie. “Cocky” is the word used to describe him most often, after “billionaire.” He was Time’s person of the year at 26. So when he takes Facebook public, why would he follow the Wall Street rules? The company is expected to file as early as Wednesday to sell stock on the open market in what will be the most talkedabout initial public offering since Google in 2004, maybe since the go-go 1990s. Around the nation, regular investors and IPO watchers are anticipating some kind of twist — perhaps a provision for the 800 million users of Facebook,
a company that promotes itself as all about personal connections, to get in on the action. “Pandemonium is what I expect in terms of demand for this stock,” says Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique, an advisory firm. “I don’t think Wall Street would want to anger Facebook users.” The most successful young technology companies have a history of doing things differently. Google’s IPO prospectus contained a letter from its founders to investors that said the company believed in the motto “Don’t be evil.” Facebook declined to comment, but Reena Aggarwal, a finance professor who has studied IPOs at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, believes Zuckerberg will emulate Google’s philosophy, at least in
principle. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted an IPO accessible to all investors, and said so in their first regulatory filing. Facebook may say something similar when it files to declare its intention to sell stock publicly. Facebook is expected to raise as much as $10 billion, which will value the company at $75 billion to $100 billion, making it one of the largest IPOs. A stock usually starts trading three to four months after the filing. The highly anticipated filing will reveal how much Facebook intends to raise from the stock market, what it plans to do with the money and details on its own financial performance and future growth prospects. Along with Wall Street investment banks, Google used a Dutch auction, named for a
means of selling flowers in Holland, to sell its shares. It took private bids and allowed investors to say how many shares they wanted and what they were willing to pay. The process wasn’t smooth, though, and Google had to slash its expected offer price at the last minute. If you bought at the IPO, for roughly $85 a share, you still did well: Google closed Tuesday at $580. More recently, when it filed for an IPO last June, Groupon, which emails daily deals on products and services to its members, added a letter from its 30-year-old founder, Andrew Mason. “We are unusual and we like it that way,” the letter said. “We want the time people spend with Groupon to be memorable. Life is too short to be a boring company.”
WASHINGTON — Top U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday asserted that Iran has the means to build a nuclear weapon but has not yet decided to follow through, in contrast to Israel’s insistence that time is running out to stop Iran from developing such a weapon. But Iran is likely to strike out at U.S. interests if it feels threatened, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee in an annual report to Congress on threats facing America. Citing last year’s thwarted Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in the U.S., “some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei … are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” Clapper said. Iran has the technical ability to build a nuclear weapon, Clapper said. But he, CIA Director David Petraeus and others reasserted their stance that Iran is not building nuclear weapons, in subtle contrast to Israeli officials’ statements that Iran could have nuclear capability within a year. “There is dissension and debate in the political hierarchy of Iran” over whether to build a weapon, Clapper said. “There is not unanimity about this” as Iranian political officials weigh the regional prestige they believe they may gain by possessing a weapon against the cost of further international sanctions and the risk of retaliatory military action by Israel or the West. Petraeus said the latest round of sanctions against the regime is beginning to bite, with a run on Iranian banks in recent weeks, but he conceded that the “clock is ticking” as Iran moves ahead enriching uranium to a grade that’s below weapons-ready, but higher than normal for regular
industrial use. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in an interview aired this week that the Iranians could build a bomb quickly. “If they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon,” Panetta said Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes” program. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said last week that Iran is proceeding toward nuclear weapons capability and time is “urgently running out.”
Some Iranian officials … are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States. JAMES CLAPPER Director of National Intelligence Petraeus said he met with the head of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, last week to discuss Israel’s concerns. While he said Israel sees the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon as “an existential threat to their country,” he did not say whether Israel agreed with the U.S. assessment that Iran had not yet decided to make a nuclear weapon. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein called 2012 “a critical year for convincing or preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.” The threat of Iran lashing out as it ponders building nuclear arms is one of a potent mosaic of interconnected enemies facing the U.S., including terrorists, criminals and foreign powers who may try to strike via nuclear weapons or cyberspace, Clapper and the others said.
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 13
AROUND THE IVIES T H E H A R VA R D C R I M S O N
“The question is why haven’t we been able to do more to prevent the crisis of underage drinking? The answer is: the alcohol industry.” LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD U.S. REP. OF CALIFORNIA
T H E C O R N E L L D A I LY S U N
Students unite behind Cornell aims to reduce binge drinking Warren candidacy BY LIZ CAMUTI AND AKANE OTANI STAFF WRITERS
BY NICHOLAS FANDOS STAFF WRITER Wielding cell phones and markers, nearly 70 Harvard students helped to launch on Sunday night the first major on-campus event on behalf of Law School professor Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for U.S. Senate. While the crowd of mostly law students mingled, debated, and made posters, the majority eventually took to the phones on behalf of the candidate who just a few months ago was at the blackboard. The joint phone bank and information session was organized by “HLS for Elizabeth Warren” and was the first time a student group on campus held a large event on Warren’s behalf. The roughly 70 volunteers made about 2400 phone calls to residents of Cambridge and Newton, gauging interest and offering information about Warren and her upcoming campaign events. Warren’s husband, Harvard Law School professor Bruce H. Mann, and a friend, Law School colleague Jody Freeman, spoke briefly to the volunteers about Warren and her goals in between calls. “This is probably the marquee election in the country,” Freeman told the crowd. “The Senate is a place that often finds itself stuck.... Elizabeth is a person who can really be a game-changer.” As a nonprofit, the Law School cannot endorse a political candidate or issue, but many law professors have rallied around Warren with moral and financial support, Mann said. “She’s taught here a long time,” Mann said. “To know that she has the support of her students means a great deal to her.”
HARVARD
That the event should be hosted by Law School students came as little surprise to most students at the
event. The group’s size—roughly 350 members—and its prominence on the Harvard campus points to the unique relationship the Law School has with the woman who was an active professor last semester. Students in the College have formed their own group in support of Warren, and mainstay Democratic groups on both campuses are likely to endorse her. But the law students in support of Warren have positioned themselves as the leaders on campus, based primarily on their familiarity with the longtime law professor. “I do know a lot of people who might not support Professor Warren if they didn’t know her,” said Law School student Ben Cluchey, an “HLS for Elizabeth Warren” organizers who had Warren as a professor last fall. “But she commands an enormous amount of respect if you do know her.” Volunteers said that Warren’s personal appeal among law students is underscored by the universality of her message and her work as an academic and an advocate of the middle class. “I definitely think [support] crosses party lines. I think part of that is that she’s a professor here, but also just attributable to her,” said Law School student Alyssa Martin, one of the event’s organizers.
The University announced at a conference in January that it aims to achieve a 25-percent reduction in the rate of binge drinking. According to a new report, 61 percent of first-year students involved in the Greek system engage in high-risk drinking. University administrators and student leaders traveled to Austin, Texas, to present this goal and to discuss harm-reduction initiatives with representatives from 32 colleges across the country. The conference was the second event organized by the National College Health Improvement Project, or the “Dartmouth Collaborative” — an initiative spearheaded by Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim last summer to rein in alcohol abuse. The 18-month project, which aims to devise a plan to curb excessive drinking, urges schools to work with scientists from Dartmouth’s Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, as well as other universities, to tackle what Kim has said was “the most difficult problem I’ve taken on yet,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. According to data Cornell presented at the meeting, 61 percent of first-year students involved in the Greek system at Cornell binge drink — defined by Gannett Health Services as consuming at least four drinks if a female or five drinks for males at one time. Additionally, in
a November 2011 survey, 33 percent of undergraduates reported suffering memory loss, and 10 CORNELL percent said they have physically injured themselves after drinking. Tim Marchell ’82, director of mental health initiatives in Gannett Health Services, said that compared to many other schools in the Dartmouth Collaborative, Cornell is focusing on reducing high-risk drinking at fraternities and sororities. “Of all the campuses involved in the project, we have one of the largest Greek systems,” Marchell said. “Certainly, one of the key things [the University must do] in the Greek system is to strengthen student leadership within the selfgoverning system and provide student leaders with the data to show them the reality of what has been happening.” Despite implementing the four-quarter system in August 2011, which barred freshmen from attending fraternity parties for the first half of the fall semester, the University saw “a considerable number of first-year students drinking in fraternities,” he said. However, because there was no data available from previous semesters, Marchell said it was not possible to determine whether this represented an increase or a decrease in the percentage of
freshmen drinking at fraternities. Based on information from a November 2011 survey, 62 percent of first-year, high-risk drinkers reported consuming alcohol at fraternity houses. “At a minimum, the [new] policies did not fully achieve their aim,” Marchell said. However, University administrators said they valued the advice they received at the conference and were hopeful for future improvements. “I think working together in this collaborative setting allows us to really deal with our unique problems in higher education ... People are away from their families for the first time, going through a very demanding educational process and experimenting socially for the first time,” said Kathy Zoner, chief of the Cornell University Police Department. “Hearing different institutions in different states having problems that are similar to ours was very helpful.” Marchell added that the University received feedback from the conference that was “very valuable.” “What we learned at the meeting was that, in many ways, we are on the right track, but at the same time we have a long way to go,” Marchell said. “What was particularly useful was both the confirmation that there are many things we’re doing right and also new ideas that we can gleam from other campuses.” Cornell officials answered Kim’s “call to arms” after recog-
nizing signs of a dangerous culture of consumption, said John Mueller ’13, at-large representative of the Student Assembly. “High-risk drinking is obviously a problem here. We may not all agree on what ‘safe drinking’ is, but we can all agree that we don’t want people to drink dangerously,” Mueller said. “We have a culture here where people say, ‘Come on, you can do one more shot.’ If we can change that so we are a little more responsible and a little less the invincible college student, maybe we can all be better off.” Under the initiatives outlined by the University, administrators and student leaders will stress that fraternities will not be able to add alcohol purchases to their University bursar bills, incorporate screening for alcohol and drug dependency at Gannett and support late-night programming, including creating a late night, alcohol-free dance club on North Campus. Adam Gitlin ’13, executive vice president of the S.A., said that the “Cayuga’s Watchers” initiative is also “on the docket to really move forward this semester.” Under the program — which was first introduced in September 2011 — students paid $10 an hour would be hired to monitor the safety and well-being of their peers at parties where hosts have requested their services. “[The Texas conference] definitely renewed our commitment to furthering the Cayuga’s Watchers initiative,” Gitlin said.
T H E B R O W N D A I LY H E R A L D
Univ. focuses on veteran enrollment BY MAGGIE FINNEGAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER In recognition of the underrepresentation of student veterans among University undergraduates in recent decades, the Diversity Advisory Board is spearheading efforts to attract more veterans and provide them guidance to thrive in a college environment. The advisory board announced plans to increase the enrollment of undergraduate student veterans and create an organized support system to aid incoming student veterans as they transition from military to civilian life in their annual report released last November. A working subcommittee on veteran affairs, consisting of staff, faculty and student representatives, has been developing its recommendations. Once these are finalized, it will seek advice from the Diversity Advisory Board and the Office of Institutional Diversity on where to issue its findings, said Ricky Gresh, senior director for student engagement and a member of the subcommittee on veteran affairs. Though the board’s dialogue concerning student veterans has been ongoing for several semesters, there has been a flurry of activity in the past three months. “We’re kind of building a train
while it’s r u n n i n g ,” Gresh said. Though the process of finalizing recommendations for BROWN the University is ongoing, significant progress has already been made. At the start of the semester, an office for student veterans and ROTC opened on the third floor of J. Walter Wilson, and it will be hiring student workers this semester. The official name of the office has yet to be determined. The lack of any previous University-sanctioned support system for student veterans is largely because of low undergraduate enrollment of veterans in recent years. There have only been 11 student veterans since 2004, including those currently enrolled, said Chaney Harrison ‘11.5, a student veteran who now serves as coordinator for the new office. Until recently, the University did little to recruit student veterans. “When I came to Brown in 2007, you couldn’t find the word ‘veteran’ on the website anywhere. It wasn’t until the fall of 2009 that you finally saw any reference to
military veterans,” Harrison said. “It’s an interesting oversight considering we’ve been at war for 10 years.” Harrison is now in the process of developing a University web portal for prospective and current student veterans to navigate the application process and the adjustment to University life. While the current number of enrolled undergraduate student veterans is in the single digits , Harrison and the board believe that an increase in veteran applications and enrollment will naturally give rise to a more organized transitional support system. Though the University receives some first-year applications from veterans, the majority of student veterans come to Brown as transfers or through the Resumed Undergraduate Education program, which is designed specifically for students who have been out of school for at least six years, Harrison said. “The admission process for RUE is more catered to a non-traditional student,” said Harrison, who was part of the RUE program. “They’re looking at you more in the context of your life.” While the regular admission process is need-blind, RUE is need-aware, disadvantaging applicants seeking financial aid. “If the RUE program is one of
the likely ways to bring veterans in, and we think that’s something we want to try to do, the University should look at the fact that RUE applications are not needblind,” said Gresh. “The University is always looking at the changing demographics — the reality is that we have more college-age veterans now than we had a decade ago.” “It’s hard to justify creating something for four students,” Harrison said. “We have these organizations to support populations that are significant. Support comes with creating a community.” Anita Zimmerman, the advisory board’s vice-chair and professor of medical science, stressed the University’s commitment to increase veteran enrollment and resources. “The Diversity Advisory Board is extremely supportive of this effort. I mentioned this initiative in my meeting with the Faculty Executive Committee last term, and they are also in support,” she wrote in an email. The Faculty Executive Committee, chaired by Professor of Medical Science Peter Shank, is the small group that represents faculty interests to the administration. The board expects an update on the subcommittee’s progress this Thursday, and recommendations are expected to be announced by the end of the semester.
PAGE 14
YALE DAILY NEWS 路 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 路 yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 15
SPORTS
Media descends on Indianapolis for Super Bowl media day
Wacky questions abounded at the annual event in which members of both Super Bowl contenders are made available to the press. New England Patriots quarterback revealed that his older sisters once painted his nails when he was little, while New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning hit a cameraman with an errant toss of an autographed football.
Agostino meeting goals on ice HOCKEY FROM PAGE 16 smooth transition as the season went along last year. This year, I just feel a lot more comfortable out there. I’m always learning from the coaching staff and the older players. There is still a lot more to learn about the game, but my coaches and teammates do a great job of bringing me along.
Q
: A lot of collegiate players come from junior hockey leagues. Can you talk about why you decided to skip junior hockey and come straight to college?
A
: Originally I was supposed to be a freshman for this season, but I guess the coaches came and saw me play senior year, and they thought I was ready to come in last year. So I came straight from high school, which is a different path than other guys on the team. I have a great class around me, just because we are different in age doesn’t really change anything. We are a really tight-knit group and I think that has helped me a lot.
Q
: Since last season, you have been going to camp for the U.S. Junior National Team and you tried out for the team. Talk about what that experience was like.
A
: Just being invited to that first evaluation camp this past summer was a tremendous honor. Whenever you put on the U.S.A. uniform, it’s an unbelievable feeling. I had a pretty good camp [experience] over the summer, and I really enjoyed myself and thought I played well. Fortunately, I was called back to the final 29-player roster this December and I went out to Alberta, Canada. I played in a couple of scrimmages, and it was an unbelievable experience again. Apparently, I was the final cut and it’s never easy being the final cut for a team like that. But it was a learning experience and I’m sure I’m going to be using that as motivation for the rest of the season.
are the team’s second-leadQ:ingYougoal scorer. What makes you successful on ice?
A
: I think I’m a pretty good playmaker, and I protect the puck pretty well. A lot of my goals came when I was playing with Andrew Miller ’13 and Brian O’Neill ’12. Those two are so good together, and they make the game a lot easier for me.
Speaking of Miller and O’Neill, Q:they have been key players since last season. But the team also lost key playmakers like Broc Little ’11 and Denny Kearney ’11. Have opposing defenses started playing differently without these graduated players?
A
: Not really. I think [losing the last senior class] would have been a problem if no forwards stepped up to give us two solid offensive scoring lines. But I think we had numerous players step up this season, both young guys and older guys, to fill those roles. We are pretty deep at forwards, which has not allowed our opponents to zero in on [Miller and O’Neill].
This past weekend, the team was Q:down 4–1 against Dartmouth after
the first period, but then you guys came back and you scored the game-winning goal. What was that like for you?
A
: That was an unbelievable feeling to get that last goal. It was really a team win and such a character win for us. Hopefully, a few weeks down the road, we can say that win was the turning point of our season. We have a lot of momentum coming into this week. And now we know how we can play and how to be successful. We just need to play our game and play with passion like we did in that second and third period [of the Dartmouth game].
Before the Dartmouth victory, the Q:team went on a four-game losing streak. Can you talk about what happened during that stretch?
A
: If you look at those games, most of them were one-goal losses. It was just a tough few couple of weeks for us. There wasn’t a lot to be happy about at the rink. We’d lose because of one play or little things that weren’t getting done to play a 60-minute game and get the win.
What do you think is the biggest Q:difference between this year and
last year’s team, in terms of playing style, execution and personnel?
Fencing outshines reputation
A
: Last year, our team prided ourselves on work ethic, and we had a lot of older guys who have been there before, and they really carried us throughout last year. But this year, I think it’s going to take a greedier [attitude]. No game is going to come easy for the rest of the season. Every game, we have to play like we did in the second and third period at Dartmouth, with passion, character and intensity.
Throughout this season, head Q:coach Keith Allain ’80 has been
experimenting with different lineups. Do you think that has affected the way the team plays?
A
: I don’t think changing the lines affect too much. At the Dartmouth game, we changed the lineup before the game, and then the second and third period were just a yard sale, basically everybody played with everybody. I think it’s good for the team… and improves chemistry. I don’t think anyone ever complains. Ultimately, it’s a team effort and everyone just wants to win.
Q
: The season is coming to a close now. What’s the team’s goal for the rest of the year and the ECAC postseason tournament?
A
: Our goal is still extremely high. We still have eight games left and those are a lot of wins on the table. We are not going to look too far ahead, and we are going to take it one win at a time. We still have the same goal as day one, and that’s to win championships
: Last question: You’re a New York QJets fan, so who do you think is going to win the Super Bowl?
A
: As a Jets fan and given my hatred for the Patriots, I’m going to have to go with the Giants. Contact JIMIN HE at jimin.he@yale.edu .
HENRY EHRENBERG/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Kenny Agostino’s ’14 second goal against Dartmouth on Saturday cemented the 5-4 win for the Bulldogs.
GRAHAM HARBOE/ CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The men’s and women’s fencing teams have only two official recruiting spots per team each year.. FENCING FROM PAGE 16 upperclassmen on each team go out of their way to help younger members, team members said. “Being on the team, there was no need for me to rush for sorority since all the teammates are like my sisters,” Shaffer said. One of the most unique features of Yale fencing is the recruitment process itself. Unlike sports such as football, swimming and track, which recruit heavily throughout the season, fencing relies heavily on walk-ons in the fall. Each team typically has only two recruits come to Yale each year. Harutunian said in an email that most of the fencers who walk onto the team have some experience fencing but not on a “competitive level,” and some are even new to the sport. “[The walk-on system] is unique to Yale in the Ivy League,” Harutunian added. “The inherent learning process for both individual fencers and the team as a whole may not bring too many victories, but in the long run, we are establishing something that students can take into their later lives.” Players interviewed differed in their reasons to start fencing and join the team at Yale. Cohen said fencers have “a lot of weird stories” about how they got into fencing. He was introduced to the sport in eighth grade, when his sister, who was attending Yale at the time, brought a fencer friend, Michael Pearce ’10, home for dinner. “Recently, I beat [Pearce] in an alumni match, which I thought was funny,” Cohen said. In fencing, there is no overwhelming popularity for a specific weapon. Instead, body features and starting age usually help a player decide what weapon to fence with. For tall, lean players like Cohen, épée is the most suitable weapon, as height allows épéeists to hit when a shorter opponent cannot strike back. Unlike foil and sabre fencers, épéeists can land touches on any part of the body, so long arms allow them to gain
points while staying at a distance. Fencers who start early tend to take up foil, as they will have more time to hone their skills at this most-competitive weapon. Regardless of their weapons or the skills they come in with, Yale fencers hone their abilities with the help of a coach who is considered the essence of Yale fencing, both Shaffer and men’s captain Shiv Kachru ’12said. “Although there are famous figures like Sada Jacobson ’06 who won three medals in the Olympics, Harutunian is the true inspiration of our entire team,” Kachru said. Sparse funding for this lesser-known sport is one issue with which the coach continues to grapple. Since 1970, he has made a continuous effort to keep the team’s budget rational and economical. “We never want to go overboard, but at the same time we want to be capable of staying at a competitive level,” Harutunian said. In addition to strong leadership from the coach, the fencing captains are also an important asset to the team’s success. At the end of each season, captains — who are responsible for arranging practices, coordinating with the coach and working with the team manager — are elected by vote at a team banquet. According to men’s captain Kachru, the most successful candidates are experienced players with strong results. Developing connections with all the players and ensuring none takes disappointing games to heart are key criteria for a captain, he added. The Elis are hoping strong leadership and training will help them take the Ivy title this season. Last weekend, the No. 10 men’s team had to swallow a close loss to No. 9 Sacred Heart, at home. Both teams will compete against Vassar this Saturday in Payne Whitney Gym at 1 p.m. Contact EUGENE JUNG at eugene.jung@yale.edu .
Only transparency can ensure the integrity of college athletics WITT FROM PAGE 16 reliable sources on record in these cases is also impossible, simply because there are none willing to give their names. Even in the rare case that official statements are explicit and elucidating, no one believes they are the whole truth. We all know that the authorities making these statements on behalf of college athletes have agendas to protect their own — to uphold reputations and guard against legal ramifications. And who can blame them? Loyalty is admirable, and reputation is crucial. Alleged perpetrators refrain from comment. Their legal representation is cautiously vague. University policies keep the media at arm’s length in order to protect students. Teammates and friends close ranks around their own. The system for dealing with problems in college athletics puts a premium on silence. But that silence is becoming problematic. At Yale, in particular, even the justified firing of a coach or the tensions borne of a disappointing loss on the field are taboo subjects. No one wants to put a chink in the armor of the Athletic Department. I’m speaking as a Yale varsity athlete and one of Yale Athletics’ biggest fans. I never like to see a negative report about something that happens in our community, whether in on-field results
or off-field missteps. But if a less than positive report is warranted, avoiding the truth or euphemizing about it is, quite simply, an insult to the intelligence of players and fans. In the Twitter era, media and fans are more equipped than ever to track down the information they want, and when the media doesn’t get information from sources that are authorized, official or reliable, readers try to find it elsewhere. A lack of transparency can be dangerous, as well as belittling to a community looking for facts. And in addition to the occasional scathing, unconfirmed report, media speculation breeds frustration and distrust. Let’s be honest: in the court of public opinion, nothing sparks the imagination more than the phrase “no comment.” We may understand why the accused in cases such as Witt’s don’t say anything, and within the current climate, his reluctance to provide clarity and the administration’s strict adherence to policy is expected. But if everyone did what was expected of them, why are that polarizing New York Times story, Witt’s official response and the truth still topics of heated conversation? The reason is that doing what’s expected of you simply isn’t enough in college sports anymore, and everyone senses it. Passing the buck, declining comment or conducting investigations doesn’t
appease a curious community now empowered to hunt down information as never before. Nor should it. With the current prominence of college athletics, figures such as coaches and star quarterbacks are representatives of their schools. College communities have a right to know when these representatives make mistakes, just as they would with a corrupt professor or other prominent campus figure. In this day and age, student-athletes are visible representatives of their schools in ways most students might not experience. As they earn the support of their school communities, athletes are also accountable to them and must answer for their actions on and off the field, Whatever happened, Witt and others knew there was a problem before the Rhodes decision and before the HarvardYale game, and should have clarified all the factors going into his decision. I would never suggest that any information be revealed to compromise the alleged victim’s anonymity, but that a disciplinary issue was under investigation could have been good to know. Similarly, when former head football coach Tom Williams’s supposed Rhodes candidacy was brought up in conjunction with Witt’s, he should have corrected misconceptions immediately. At Yale, issues of on-field accountability are rarely problem-
atic. And off-the-field issues here rarely garner the major attention that they do at higher profile sports schools, if only because of a lack of national interest and resulting lack of media attention. But regardless of whether incidents gain exposure or not, I’ve always thought it takes more strength and character to admit when you’re wrong than to try to cover up or minimize the mistake. That’s the attitude college athletes and their administrators, here and elsewhere, must start adopting in this hyper-critical media age. Our ancient motto says it all: it is by shedding light on the truth that we best preserve the integrity of our athletic department and university. Creating a climate of transparency makes controversies such as the one surrounding Witt easier to resolve, but it requires commitment from all members of the community to both telling the truth and respecting those situations where anonymity must be honored. Even the most active and knowledgeable of athletic administrators (and Tom Beckett fits that description) can’t know everything going on with coaches and players in a college atmosphere. Nor do coaches always have the full picture of what their players are doing. Players may face the gravest challenge of all — knowing when to blow the whistle on teammates or even coaches when things aren’t right. No good team-
mate would “rat out” another, but players and coaches must understand when action is merited. It’s a grey area that comes into focus better if transparency is the norm, rather than the exception. Idealistic? Maybe. But when a problem is big enough to affect the reputation of a team or the athletic department as a whole — or the safety of any of its members — the onus is on every single member of the athletic community to be forthcoming. There is no doubt that sensitive situations require discretion, but whenever possible without violating alleged victims’ rights, administrators, coaches and players must lean to the side of revelation. The Yale athletic department is far from scandal-ridden. But we’ve tasted the bitterness that can surround controversy, and we must learn from our mistakes. We can’t shy away from talking about problems, and in failing to acknowledge our shortcomings, we exacerbate them. It’s not easy to commit to accountability when so much rides on college sports. But there’s neither “lux” nor “veritas” in the way we and other college programs are often afraid to openly address these issues in our community, and the cycle must be broken. It’s not attacking our own to discuss off-field mistakes, personnel changes or on-field concerns: it is, rather, a display of faith. Faith in those who make mistakes to rectify
them, faith in coaches and administrators to deal with them fairly and faith in the athletic community to judge its members intelligently. It’s like any other team: Yale athletics and college athletic departments in general (see Penn State…) are only as strong as their weakest link. And in the case of the controversy surrounding Pat Witt, it’s clear that many links broke down. Had anyone — Witt himself, an athletic department official or even an investigating member of the Rhodes committee — brought the fact that there were disciplinary issues to light during the media frenzy surrounding his decision, this would have played out very differently. The controversy would likely not be as heated, and the facts would be clearer. This all could have been done while being sensitive to all parties involved by protecting the anonymity of the alleged victim. That kind of transparency with discretion is the solution to a college sports environment struggling to balance integrity and loyalty to student-athletes and university employees. Separately, light and truth are powerful. Together, and with a dash of the sensitivity situations such as Witt’s require, they can extinguish the kind of explosive controversies plaguing college athletics. Contact CHELSEA JANES at chelsea.janes@yale.edu .
IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES
NCAA B Kentucky 59 Tennessee 40
NCAA B Illinois 42 Mich. St. 41
SPORTS QUICK HITS
JOYCE LI ’15 GYMNAST IS ROOKIE OF THE WEEK Li earned ECAC Co-Rookie of the Week award for her performance in this past weekend’s meet against Penn. Li took second place in the all-around competition with a score of 37.725, despite a fall on the beam, which she made up for with a third-place floor routine.
NCAA B Wisconsin 52 Penn St. 46
NBA Indiana 106 New Jersey 99
y
CLAIRE DENNIS ’13 FINISHES 2ND AMONG AMERICANS Dennis took 16th place in the 60-boat laser radial fleet at the Olympic Classes Regatta (OCR) in Miami, Fl. Yale sailing alumni Sarah Lihan ‘10 and Stu McNay ‘05 competed in the women’s and men’s 470 class, respectively in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games.
NHL Boston 4 Ottawa 3
FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE yaledailynews.com/sports
“I’m just trying to contribute the most I can to the team and our success.” SARAH HALEJIAN ’15 GUARD, W. BASKETBALL YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
CHELSEA JANES
FENCING
Light and truth and athletics “Lux et Veritas.” Light and truth. Hard enough to find one at a time these days in college sports. But the combination? Nearly impossible. It’s hard consistently to find integrity in college sports. Blame money. Blame the lure of professional sports. No matter how you look at it, the old adage “A lie by omission is still a lie” is proving truer and deadlier than ever. Penn State, Ohio State, USC and countless others were all brought down because people knew the truth and failed to bring it to light. Ironically enough, this is especially valid for Yale athletics in light of accusations leveled against Patrick Witt. Let’s step back: I am not and would never suggest that the Witt issue is on a scale even close to what happened at Penn State or elsewhere. And I should take this opportunity to assure you that I don’t pretend to be an expert on the Witt saga by any means. No one, perhaps except Witt himself, is an expert. But this uncertainty is precisely why the comparison to Penn State and others is apt. The root of frustration here and there is exactly the same: no one knows anything. In an age when it’s easier than ever to know all the things that might be true, it’s harder than ever to know what is. It is absolutely unacceptable to quote six anonymous sources in a biased attack, warranted or not, of someone’s character (and I’m surprised the New York Times did). But quoting SEE WITT PAGE 15
ELIS TAKE STAB AT HISTORIC SPORT
VICTOR KANG/ PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Fencing has been part of the Yale athletic tradition since 1894. The program is now directed by head coach Henry Harutunian, who has led it since 1970. BY EUGENE JUNG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER While Yale fencing head coach Henry Harutunian has coached the men’s and women’s squads for 41 years, his greatest desire for this season is to maintain the teams’ threeyear standing as the varsity teams with the highest average grade point averages.
FENCING Fencing does not have a large group of followers nationally or within the
Yale community, and Yale Athletics does not heavily fund the program. Even as an athletic coach long devoted to his sport, Harutunian often prioritizes his players’ academic endeavors over their athletic commitments, women’s team captain Robyn Shaffer ’12 said. But the team’s academic priorities have not stopped the Bulldogs from achieving distinction in this oftignored yet historic sport. This season, Yale has its eyes on the Ivy championships. The No. 10 men’s team is especially eager not to repeat last year’s disappointing Ivy finish, in which the Elis lost the title to Harvard
Rookie Halejian makes impact BY JACQUELINE SAHLBERG STAFF REPORTER The women’s basketball team may call her “Little Sarah” because of her quiet nature, but in her first season at Yale, Sarah Halejian ’15 is already a big player for the Bulldogs. On Monday, Halejian received her fourth consecutive, and fifth total, Ivy League Rookie of the Week award. And if her successes on the court continue, Halejian may join the Armenian National Basketball Team this summer. Growing up in New Jersey, Halejian said basketball was a way of life. She cannot recall when she started playing, but she credited her two older siblings for introducing her to the sport. “I would always be out on the driveway playing basketball with them,” Halejian said. “It made me tougher. I got used to playing physically.” By the time she reached high school, Halejian lead Ramapo High School in Franklin Lakes, N.J., in points, steals and assists each season and was a two-time New Jersey Player of the Year. She finished her high school career as Ramapo’s alltime leading scorer with 1,839 career points, averaging 19 points per game in her senior season. Halejian’s impressive statistics have continued since arriving at Yale. She is the top scoring freshman in the League, averaging 13 points per game in conference. Her average is second only to junior guard Megan Vasquez ’13, who also received Ivy League recognition this week on the Honor Roll. “Sarah is definitely a big spark on our team,” Vasquez said. Captain Michelle Cashen ’12
described Halejian as a consistent performer who has become one of the team’s “go to players” over the course of the season. Cashen added that one of Halejian’s best games this season was against Brown on Jan. 13. Halejian scored 18 points and lead the team to a 75-65 win over the Bears. This past weekend, Halejian took on a new role in defending the opposing teams’ best player, Vasquez said. Halejian limited the Harvard’s senior guard Brogan Berry to five points — more than seven points less than Berry’s 12.7 points per game conference average. The Elis took the game by five points, 68-63. Halejian has a strong family fan base watching her success. She said every that at every home game at least 10 members of her family and Armenian friends are present. And because of her Armenian heritage and talent, Halejian may have an opportunity to represent Armenian on its national basketball team this summer. Hrachya Rostomyan, president of the Basketball Federation of Armenia, is “hopeful” that Halejian can join the national team this summer, according to a Jan. 9 article published on ESPN’s European Affiliate BallinEurope. com. He called her potential impact “invaluable to Armenia.” Halejian said she first learned of the opportunity last summer when her older brother Eric, who played basketball at Ithaca College, played in the Pan-Armenian Games. However, her current focus is helping the Bulldogs win an Ivy League championship, she said. “By the end of the season, I just want to be able to say I worked my very hardest all of the time,” Hale-
by only one point in the final 20 seconds of the season. “If we keep up the good teamwork, we definitely have the potential for a successful season,” Peter Cohen ’14, an All-American épéeist last season, said. While students generally know that Yale has a fencing team, three team members said they feel Yalies rarely follow the varsity sport. Cohen said he thinks the main reason fencing is not dominant in campus converstaion is that the rules are so confusing. “People just say it is cool, but they
SEE FENCING PAGE 15
Agostino grows into leader of Eli offense BY JIMIN HE STAFF REPORTER
SARAH HALEJIAN
do not seem to be clear about what is going on exactly,” Cohen said. Yale fencing dates back to 1894 and began making waves in the 1920s. On the seventh floor of the Payne Whitney Gym, where the Eli fencers practice from 4 to 6 p.m. on a daily basis, the walls are plastered with 70 years of photos of Yale fencing. Unlike other sports, the men’s and women’s squads are meshed into one and practice together, which Cohen said helps foster overall team dynamics. Both teams travel together, and
Before being named Yale’s rookie of the year last season, forward Kenny Agostino ’14 was a two-time New Jersey Player of the Year, three-time state champion and school all-time leading scorer at the Delbarton School. Currently, Agostino ranks second on the team in goals scored and third in total points. He sat down with the News to talk about the transition to collegiate hockey, his try-out for the U.S. Junior National Team and the state of the men’s hockey team.
Talk about what your high school Q:experience was like playing hockey and how that helped you to be a better player at Yale.
A
: I had great time playing high school hockey for Delbarton. It was a lot of fun and it was a huge transition coming from high school hockey to freshman year here. But I think I learned a lot about hockey and the game last year, and I was able to make a pretty SEE HOCKEY PAGE 15
Sarah Halejian ’15 has earned Rookie of the Week five times this season. jian said. “I’m just trying to contribute the most I can to the team and our success.” Off the court, Halejian said she enjoyed volunteering at the soup kitchen with her team every Friday in the fall. She added that she hopes to establish an Armenian club with John Aroutiounian ’15 this spring. Halejian, a Pierson College resident, has not declared a major, but said she is interested in psychology. “She fits right in with our team chemistry,” Cashen said. “For being a freshman, she is having a big impact already.” Halejian and the Bulldogs will continue their pursuit for the Ivy League Title at Penn this Friday. Contact JACQUELINE SAHLBERG at jacqueline.sahlberg@yale.edu .
STAT OF THE DAY 1,839
BRIANNE BOWEN/ PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Kenny Agostino ’14 has garnered 18 points so far this season.
THE NUMBER OF POINTS WOMEN’S BASKETBALL GUARD SARAH HALEJIAN ’15 SCORED IN HER CAREER AT RAMAPO HIGH SCHOOL IN FRANKLIN LAKES, NJ. SHE GRADUATED AS THE SCHOOL’S ALL-TIME LEADING SCORER. Halejian has an average of 9.1 points per game.