Yale Daily News - Week of Feb. 4, 2022

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · VOL. CXLIV, NO. 11 · yaledailynews.com

Are Yale ’s climate goals enough?

On track for most goals, but some question ambition

PAGE 11 INVESTIGATIONS

BY ISABEL MANEY STAFF REPORTER Yale is on track to achieve 89 percent of the goals laid out in its 2025 Sustainability Plan — a plan that has been touted as building a more sustainable future but which some community members say is not ambitious enough.

At the close of the year, the University released the Yale Sustainability 2021 Progress Report to track its progress towards Yale’s 2025 Sustainability Plan.

The report weighs the University’s progress toward 38 goals.

Fifty-seven percent have been met, while Yale is falling behind on two. The plan is set and monitored by University officials, and several professors and students raised concerns that the goals fall short of addressing the scale of the climate change threat.

“Yale has effectively infinite resources, and they could throw a lot more behind this effort today than they have already,” said Yale School of Environment professor Gaboury Benoit ’76.

In 2016, the University launched its Sustainability Plan, which intends to modify Yale’s research, teaching, management of assets and carbon emission levels in order to address climate change. Yale has adopted a three-pronged approach — making campus buildings more energy efficient, increasing the use of renewable energy and investing in carbon offsets — to become carbon neutral by 2035 and reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

SEE CLIMATE PAGE 4

"I had to choose between my education and my safety: How Yale's withdrawal and readmission policies leave students no choice but to stay

COPS & COURTS

Connecticut prisons’ pandemic crackdown YALE DAILY NEWS

Halfway through its nine-year plan, Yale released a status report on sustainability goals.

Exxon, Chevron out

BY ALEX YE AND CHARLOTTE HUGHES STAFF REPORTERS The committee responsible for ensuring that Yale allocates its investments in accordance with social and political standards has deemed energy companies ExxonMobil and Chevron not eligible for Yale investment.

The Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility has added energy companies ExxonMobil and Chevron to a list of companies ineligible for Yale investment based on the recommendation of the University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility.

The committee cited Principle No. 3 on the Fossil Fuel Investment Principles, which was adopted by the Yale Board of Trustees in April 2021, as the reasoning behind the decision. As of Dec. 20, 2021, the list of companies ineligible for Yale investment did not include either company, but as of Monday, they have been added to the list without comment from the University.

“The divestment movement is incredibly powerful right now,” said Moses Goren ‘23, a member of the student-led Endowment Justice Coalition.

“Harvard has divested, most of the Ivy League has divested…and the Yale administration knows that we are going to continue putting pressure until they have completely divested.”

The ACIR does not have access to what securities are in the Yale endowment, nor whether Yale currently has capital invested in ExxonMobil or Chevron. Instead, the ACIR determines grounds for divestment based on the principles outlined in the 1972 book “The Ethical Investor” to determine whether a company’s actions cause “grave social injury.” Once the ACIR recommends a company as ineligible for Yale’s investment, the Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility can accept the recommendation, which the Investments Office must then comply with.

SEE DIVESTMENT PAGE 4

Legal visits, free time denied

BY MEGAN VAZ STAFF REPORTER In-person legal visits have been suspended in prisons and jails across the state of Connecticut, following a pattern of restrictions on life and legal services placed on the state’s incarcerated.

The Connecticut Department of Correction has implemented policies that have drastically altered living conditions for imprisoned people due to the spread of the Omicron variant in facilities.

While the new limit on legal visits makes connecting with those outside of correctional facilities challenging, lockdowns within the facilities have stripped the incarcerated of nearly all of their pre-pandemic freedoms, according to attorneys, activists and an

incarcerated person who spoke to the News. Physical and mental health conditions have worsened for much of the population, and those who test positive for COVID-19 often face complete isolation and brutal living environments.

Kristal Lis, who is incarcerated at York Correctional Institution, detailed extensive restrictions on recreational time spent outside of her cell, also known as “rec,” where incarcerated people are usually able to shower, receive phone calls, exercise and socialize. According to Lis, incarcerated people would previously receive around six hours of recreational time per day. Under recent changes, they now only receive about an hour of daily free time.

SEE JAIL PAGE 5

ADMINISTRATION

Salovey to announce At-risk Yalies concerned with COVID policies gift policy committee

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Some immunocompromised students fear for their safety and feel they are being left behind.

BY MICHAEL NDUBISI STAFF REPORTER When Abigael Parrish ’25 arrived at Yale in the fall of 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she hoped those around her would act to keep her safe.

Diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when she was seven years old, Parrish had spent years navigating the world

with a pre-existing medical condition.

When Parrish arrived at Yale in the fall of 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she hoped that those around her would do their part to keep her safe.

Expecting the sense of community she had been promised as an admitted student, she recalled her surprise when she sat in seminars where professors neglected to wear masks and classmates

skipped testing. Parrish said she often was a lone voice defending the University’s cautious approach to the pandemic against the anger and impatience of her friends, and was often met with eye rolls if she asked classmates near her to wear their mask properly. She became terrified of learning at Yale, she said.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to throw the spring semester into flux, students living with pre-existing medical conditions face an additional set of challenges unfamiliar to many Yalies.

In an email sent to the student body on Jan. 11, Yale College Dean Marvin Chun assured students that if they contract COVID-19, they will “probably have a mild case,” but reminded students that “does not mean we can disregard the threat of COVID-19,” adding to keep in mind undergraduates with other medical conditions and immunodeficiencies.

“Many students only consider how their own lives are impacted, and fail to consider those of us whose survival depends on them,” Parrish said. “And when those voices outnumber ours, the University cannot always be trusted to make decisions that protect us.”

When Parrish returned to campus on Jan. 23 after winter recess, she was exhausted. For her, time away from campus was filled with doctor’s appointments and hospital visits, as opposed to the rest and relaxation her peers experienced. Moreover, she told the

Cross Campus

Inside The News

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1971.

FACULTY REFLECT ON SEMESTERS IN SINGAPORE

Faculty members and graduate students from the Department of Political Science meet to discuss student representation in faculty selection committees.

PAGE 13 UNIVERSITY

SEE STUDENTS PAGE 5

YALE DAILY NEWS

Following months of faculty pressure to protect academic freedom, a committee will evaluate Yale’s current set of gift policies.

BY PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH AND ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTERS University President Peter Salovey will form a new committee aimed at protecting academic freedom by reviewing Yale’s policies on receiving financial gifts.

Salovey is expected to announce the committee’s membership and official goals within the next few weeks.

The move comes after months of student, faculty and alumni concerns over academic freedom following the abrupt October resignation of

history professor Beverly Gage from the directorship of the Grand Strategy program after Yale’s administration failed to stave off donor influence on the program. Soon after, the Faculty of Arts & Science Senate issued a resolution calling for an ad hoc committee of faculty and administrative staff that would survey existing gift agreements and make recommendations on revisions to general gift policy as well as to the Faculty Handbook.

In an email to the News, Salovey described a SEE GIFT PAGE 4

DIVINITY

FELLOWS

FORCE

The Yale Divinity School Dean officially acknowledged the school’s historical complicity in racism and announced plans for change.

PAGE 3 CITY

PAGE 8 SCITECH

PAGE 11 CITY

Two Yale faculty members were elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

NHPD's new useof-force policy has prompted citizens to reconsider the case of an officer who punched an unarmed man during arrest last year.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 2

OPINION About Dorothy D

orothy Merritt-Anderson was born in Nettleton, Mississippi in 1923, where she had to pick cotton instead of finishing elementary school. Her father wasn’t around, and her mother couldn’t raise her because she had to work as a nanny for a white family. Dorothy married young, coming into a plot of land that was soon illegally repossessed by a lumber company. She took a job as a waitress, serving food, busing tables and eventually earning enough money to buy that land back outright.

In the mid-1960s, she moved to Chicago and bought a house in the North Lawndale neighborhood, one of the only places Black people could buy homes at that time. She bought the home on contract, a rent-toown home purchasing agreement that targeted Black Americans, forcing them to make high monthly payments and only allowing them to receive equity in the home when all of the payments were made. If Dorothy made one mistake — missing a payment or giving the homeowner grounds to evict her — she’d lose the home. She worked in a factory making car headlights for nearly 30 years in order to afford those payments.

She never made a mistake.

ULTIMATELY, THOUGH, MY GREATGRANDMOTHER’S LIFE HAS ALSO SHOWN ME THAT LIFE’S SIMPLE PRINCIPLES ARE OFTEN THE MOST POWERFUL. She was in church every Sunday, serving on the pastor’s aide committee and offering advice to members of the congregation. She made it a point to dress well for church, putting together outfits with fancy church hats and pristine bright dresses. In true southern tradition, she spent her Sunday afternoons welcoming visitors, both friends and family, to her home. She cooked with the best of them, putting together meals of smothered chicken, dressing, greens, ham, spaghetti, cabbage and banana pudding, offering that food to anyone who stopped by.

She was a studious note taker too.

With no more than a sixth-grade education, she wrote down everything she could. Names of people, phone numbers and news events were scrawled in notebooks, bibles and on the backs of mail advertisements. She noted when someone called, when someone visited, when it snowed, when there was a heat wave, when someone’s birthday was, when someone had passed away. She even wrote down national news events, like when the first airplane hit the twin towers and when Barack Obama got elected.

Dorothy Merr i t t -A n d e rson raised seven children, three grandchildren and 51 more great-grandchildren. She was my great-grandCALEB mother and the DUNSON matriarch of my family. I spent What We my summer days with her when Owe my mother had to work. She offered me food to eat and a bed to sleep in. She told me stories about her childhood and taught me valuable life lessons. She showed me love on the most profound level, and only asked that I be good and hold onto my faith in return. She is the reason I am here, at this University, writing to all of you.

Dorothy passed away on Jan. 15, 2022.

Her death has left an irreplaceable hole in my heart. But I take solace in the fact that the way she lived her life offers me guidance on how I ought to live mine.

I often find myself somewhat obsessively focused on accomplishing as much as I can before I graduate.

But, reflecting on my great-grandmother’s life, I have realized that achievement isn’t what really matters. My great-grandmother was never a woman of means, and she couldn’t have even conceived of studying at a University like this one, but she found love and joy and purpose in the relationships she built with others.

I’ve also come to learn how important it is that we live authentically. My great-grandmother experienced the bitter racism and misogyny of 20th-century America, and still she remained true to herself. She was honest and confident in the face of prejudice, using her authenticity as a source of power. Her life has forced me to consider all of the ways that I’ve been less than authentic in my own life, the ways that I’ve presented different versions of myself to different people in order to please or succeed, and it’s made me think about what it means to live openly and honestly.

Ultimately, though, my great-grandmother’s life has also shown me that life’s simple principles are often the most powerful. By the time I was born, my great-grandmother was in her 70s — she had seen it all and done it all.

Out of all of the complicated lessons she had learned, the ones she shared with me were simple: trust God, be patient and keep perspective. Though my own life has gotten increasingly complex, those lessons have taken me the furthest.

My hope is that the story of my great-grandmother’s life has taught you something, that it has changed your perspective, even if only marginally. Because if it has, then it means that her life continues to impact others. It means that her legacy lives on.

CALEB DUNSON is a sophomore in Saybrook College. His column, titled ‘What We Owe’, runs on alternate Thursdays. Contact him at caleb.dunson@yale.edu .

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COPYRIGHT 2022 — VOL. CXLIV, NO. 11

What we forget T

he pandemic induced in me a few stages of hysteria. First, denial (“it should be okay after a week or two, right?”). Then, resignation followed by a brief sliver of hope brought on by flattening curves.

But in recent weeks, with the pandemic showing absolutely no signs of letting up, I have officially moved on to the fourth stage — nostalgia.

TRY AS WE MIGHT, THE PANDEMIC HAS DEFINITIVELY AND INEXORABLY CHANGED THE CONTOURS OF THE TRADITIONS THAT WE HOLD NEAR AND DEAR BECAUSE LINES OF TRANSMISSION HAVE BEEN BROKEN. Perhaps it is because this season marks the celebration of the Lunar New Year. By way of background, the Lunar New Year is an incredibly important occasion for many Asian people. As a temporary member of the large Asian diaspora in America, it seems to me that this holiday is especially important for people in the diaspora. Physically cut adrift from the actual Asian continent, the holiday represents an important shared experience and moment of solidarity across different Asian cultures.

It seems a little bit cruelly ironic that amidst the raging winter storm and gusts of snowy billows, I yearn for the Lunar SHI WEN New Yea rs YEO of the recent past, spent God, in the tropical cradle of Country Malaysia with and Yale my extended paternal family. One of my favorite traditions particular to where I grew up is yee sang. Just thinking about yee sang now makes me realize how it really resembles a recipe for disaster in this pandemic, and how impossible it would be to recreate. Different condiments are added to a platter to signify various well-wishes for the new year. Then, everyone each wields a pair of long, sometimes saliva-covered chopsticks and tosses the condiments in the air. The higher you toss, the better your luck for the new year is said to be.

When I spent my last Lunar New Year back home with my family, I did not know it would be the last of its kind. The last one spent at that particular location, with that particular permutation of uncles, aunties, cousins and friends to visit. But it was. It is so easy to talk about cultures and traditions dying over time.

However, the fact that Lunar New Year was only a recent memory is more striking to me, because I think I have witnessed little traditions die before my very eyes. When this pandemic is over, almost all of my cousins will be married. Will anyone remember the card games we used to play? The house rules we made up? The secret to getting the most ang paos (red packets) at Lunar New Year?

I sometimes think about the fact that my class, the class of 2023, will next year perhaps be the only class to know what a fully in-person Yale life was like before the pandemic. We did not get to have a Spring Fling, nor even a full spring break. Yet, we will be charged with a heavy burden, as the only custodians of a culture that generations before us have worked so hard to build up.

There is a sort of melancholy to this whole situation. A kind of sadness that cannot be erased. Yale simply will never be the same. There are events, student organizations, little traditions that have totally died with the pandemic. In the same way, Lunar New Year will never be the same. Try as we might, the pandemic has definitively and inexorably changed the contours of the traditions that we hold near and dear because lines of transmission have been broken.

Of course, as old traditions die, new ones will grow in place to replace them. Maybe in the future, the younger cousins will play House Party or Nintendo Switch instead of the card games with house rules. Maybe they will discover their own secret ways to get more ang paos. But today, I am just letting the feeling of nostalgia and naïve, stubborn hope wash over me. I am thinking about how I can more actively have conversations with seniors and alumni about events and traditions that used to exist before the pandemic.

About how I should probably make the long march out to the Hong Kong Market to get some snacks that remind me of home.

I am clinging to the fighting hope that we can pass on just a little glimpse of how things were.

SHI WEN YEO is a junior in Morse College. Her column, “God, Country and Yale”, runs every other Wednesday. Contact her at shiwen.yeo@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST SEMILORE OLA

Euphoria’s Trick of the Light E

uphoria this week opened with a montage of Rue and Jules as famously doomed lovers both in cinema and real life — colorful tableaus and vignettes ranging from Titanic and Brokeback Mountain to Yoko Ono and John Lennon. All of these images, though, are emotional references to those individuals’ stories of love and admiration, rather than about the specificity of the moment.

Euphoria specializes in ghosting around specificity: It seeks to make sweeping statements about love and sadness without actually revealing the motivations of its characters.

In said obsession with sweeping emotion, Euphoria can read at times as less of a study of character psychology and more of a study of emotion: a Rothko gradient of splattered blues and reds instead of a portrait. If there even is a face, it is entirely unrecognizable, lacking any unique wounds. In this episode, for example, there’s a minute-long shot of Cassie sitting in a room filled with flowers, tearyeyed, favoring a weeping Virgin Mary. The shot is gorgeous, but I can’t help but wonder what exactly it adds.

The characters here feel more stale than last season so far. The Maddy-Nate-Cassie dynamic is an interesting premise that gives each episode a tension-riding pulse, but it never feels emotionally fruitful at the end of each episode. Nate, previously the villain of season one, is more mild tempered and now simply skulks around in the background. He does this despite being the center of the most tense dynamic of this season.

Maddy barely shows up beyond modeling new outfits and discussing getting back together with Nate. This episode was set at Maddy’s birthday party, but was focused on Cassie instead.

Kat, however, is done a disservice and has absolutely nothing to do. She appears for about two minutes an episode to tell

someone she hates her boyfriend and herself, then disappears in a moodily-lit fog. She’s been static for four episodes now. For what’s more, McKay has been cut from the season entirely.

In fact, multiple characters are denied screentime in favor of Nate’s father, Cal, and his baffling storyline. It feels less like the youthful montage it tries to be and more like wasted screentime on an old drunk’s manic episode. Cal’s arc ends with him abandoning his family in an even more baffling monologue in which he blames his family and his children for his misdemeanors — as if he did not lead his family and raise his kids himself. This feels like an attempt to redeem Cal, but redemption of a parent was never a pressing issue for a show that’s supposed to be focused on teenagers.

Rue and Jules, the perceived emotional heart of the show, are not substantially present in this episode’s heartbeat. They’re confusing as a couple. In the first season, Jules did not seem to care much for Rue in a non-platonic way; Her attraction to Rue seems dependent on attention, but resistant of responsibility. It seems the only purpose of Elliot’s character, new to this season, is to drive them apart, if not to expose the flaws of their relationship. Where has the anxiety that led Rue’s decisions in season one gone? Who is Jules this season outside of her relationships with Rue and Elliott? Nate and Jules’ dynamic has been left behind this season. This is unfortunate as it was one of the most interesting of season one because of its confusion and tension, as well as because of what the existence of the dynamic at all revealed about both characters.

Individual arcs feel muddied.

Whatever moments in the first season were meaningful, they’ve been left behind. At the end, we get nothing but hints of character resolution, sweeping images of emotion, and moody, chiar-

oscuro-drenched frames of characters weeping, dazed and camera-ready, in the light like bereaved moths.

SO FAR, EUPHORIA SEEMS TO BE A LITTLE BIT TOO IN LOVE WITH THE IMAGE OF DEEP EMOTION THAN ITS GORY SPECIFICITIES. The best sequence of this episode was the moment with Rue in a church, serenaded by Labrinth. It was gorgeous and poignant, especially after Rue imagines herself swaying in her father’s arms despite her claims to be indifferent to the grief of her father’s recent death. However, there was no traceable arc for Rue within this episode that led the audience to suspect Rue’s mental state. I wish we had glanced at echoes of her mental state, or received a fuller sense of isolation before the reveal. So far, Euphoria seems to be a little bit too in love with the image of deep emotion than its gory specificities. After what feels like the fiftieth montage of Rue’s eyes glazing over as she rushes into a high, the repetitive nature of her arcs is more pessimistic than feels necessary. It seems like, for Rue, the only option other than recovery is death. But what would death solve? With Euphoria writer Sam Levinson’s direction, the scene, perhaps, would be visually arresting. It would be beautiful, but useless.

SEMILORE OLA is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at semilore.ola@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 3

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — ‘tis the difference between the lightning-but and the lightning.” MARK TWAIN AMERICAN WRITER

Divinity school commits to inclusivity

BY TIGERLILY HOPSON STAFF REPORTER In December, Yale Divinity School Dean Greg Sterling officially acknowledged the school’s historical complicity in racism and announced plans for change. But, according to students who spoke to the News, there is still a long road ahead for true inclusion.

Sterling’s video announcement on Dec. 16 presented a number of main actions, including the allocation of $20 million of the Divinity School’s endowment to fund 10 full scholarships for students pursuing social justice, and asked for “forgiveness” for the school’s darkened past. The announcement came as a result of recommendations made by the Divinity School’s anti-racism task force, set up by Dean Sterling after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. “[We] ask for forgiveness [as] a way of signaling ... that we’re serious about trying to make changes, to indicate that we recognize things have not always been what they should have been,” Sterling told the News. “I don’t think you can ask for forgiveness without a form of repentance.”

For the past 10 years, the Divinity School has embarked on a mission for inclusivity. Honoring leaders of color in the institution’s history, increasing diversity in faculty and staff and attempting to promote a sense of belonging for all students have been pillars of the school’s work so far, according to Sterling.

In 2020, these efforts were amplified, and the anti-racism task force was established. Led by associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies Willie Jennings and professor of New Testament criticism and interpretation Laura Nasrallah, the task force included a diverse array of students, faculty, staff and administrators — including Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Lynn Sullivan-Harmon, who spoke about the school’s long term equity plan in the video announcement.

The group produced 27 recommendations to increase belonging on campus, four of which were addressed in Sterling’s announcement, although he told the News

that many of the others have already been put into place.

But, for some students, these actions left them wanting more.

Jyrekis Collins DIV ’22, the acting president of the Yale Black Seminarians, a faith-based Black student group devoted to justice, told the News that he believes that historically, the University has always tried to do the bare minimum, and students are left to lift the heavy burdens for change. While he commended the work Sterling, Jennings and Nasrallah are “striving” to do and believes they are doing an “amazing job trying to address the issues at hand,” Collins said he feels there is still a long way to go.

“I think that I echo the sentiments of Yale Black Seminarians and people of color and YDS students as a whole, that we really want to see more.” Collins said.

“While [Dean Sterling’s] response was a start, it’s not enough.”

In addition to the social justice scholarships, Sterling announced that $2,000 research grants will be given to 10 students each summer to pursue research related to social justice. There will also be funding for students to attend the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, a group of clergy, thought leaders and seminarians committed to social justice who gather annually. The Reverend Frederick J. Streets Prize will be established and awarded to a graduating student each year who has been deemed to have made a significant contribution to the advancement of social justice.

Nasrallah emphasized that scholarships and stipends were a “high priority” for the anti-racism task force and told the News that these scholarship and funding opportunities fit in with the idea of reparations.

“The economic structures in this country are still being lived out with the racist after effects of slavery,” Nasrallah said. “I really think that the scholarships and stipends are incredibly important, and that they can be a reparative act.”

For Sterling, the $20 million social justice scholarship fund is an act to welcome Black students to the Divinity School. He said that in taking this action he thinks back to Mary Goodman, a Black wash-

erwoman and entrepreneur in the 1800s who left her entire estate — $5,000 — to the Divinity School

namesake of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale — who donated a farm worked on by enslaved

PRANAV SENTHIVEL/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The Divinity School recently recognized its historical complicity in slavery and racism and laid out concrete steps to move forward. But students long for more. so Black students could attend, enabling the first Black student to graduate in 1874.

“There’s a sense in which this is an attempt to imitate what Mary Goodman did in the 19th century.

And, but to do it now in the 21st century,” Sterling told the News.

However, for Jathan Martin DIV ’21 GRD ’27, framing the scholarship fund in terms of social justice gave him “pause.”

Martin explained that for the precedent to be that Black students have to pursue social justice to earn these funds is one that puts an “undue burden” on Black people, one that white students do not have to bear, since they are not expected to center their work “around their livelihood.” Martin said that this “saddens” him, especially as Black students come to the Divinity School with a wide range of interests.

Sterling’s announcement also focused on the acknowledgment of the Divinity School’s historical ties with slavery and racism. He spoke about Jonathan Edwards, an alumnus of Yale and a distinguished American theologian, who owned several enslaved people, including a three-year-old child named Titus. Additionally, he referenced George Berkeley — the

labor to Yale, which funded the University’s first scholarships.

“Graduates of Yale College and then eventually of the Divinity School were largely participants in the owning of slaves,” said Kenneth Minkema, Executive Editor of the Jonathan Edwards Center and professor at the Divinity School.

“So people like Edwards ... were definitely a part of this network and they defended the institution of slavery as a biblical institution.”

Minkema, who leads research on the Divinity School’s history, and now is a member of the Yale and Slavery Working Group, also spoke about the strong presence of colonizationists — those who believed that after slavery Black people should be sent back to Africa — at the Divinity School in the 1800s. According to Minkema, Yale was a center of the colonization movement.

Martin, who served on the anti-racism task force, said that it is “awkward” to call the Divinity School’s ties to racism “the past.”

He and Collins said that racism is still a present force on campus, and is still something students of color are faced with today.

“It seems like we have these lofty goals for the future, but we haven’t really sat with the ways that racism is very much alive,” Martin said.

Professor Nasrallah said she aims to bring “active critique and concern” to her work, especially as she and her fellow members in the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts think more about what underrepresented students and faculty need. It is critical, she said, to be open to transformation.

Nasrallah also said that it was important for her to make sure that this work continues, and that the task force’s recommendations are implemented, even after the dispersion of the task force.

This is where the long-standing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging committee comes in, which, made of task force members and others, will be the next step for implementation.

“The Task Force was appointed for a specific charge and for a limited period of time. The DEIB committee is a standing committee that is charged with monitoring our progress towards the plan that we have formulated,” Sullivan-Harmon wrote. “Our collective commitment to the implementation and careful assessment of our recommendations, remains our highest priority.”

Collins told the News that it is his “hope” and “prayer” that the Divinity School will stay true to its commitments, and that one day those who are Black and Brown can feel that they belong and are supported in the walls of the Divinity School, something Collins was not always able to feel.

“My hope for anyone coming to YDS, or any school at Yale University, if they are Black or they’re a person of color, is to know that even though the environment, the world, the broader community may not agree with their blackness, even though the histories of the University testifies to the fact that they don’t belong,” Collins said. “My prayers are … that they will know that their leaders at least stand with them and believe in them and support them.”

The Divinity School announced earlier this month that it will cover the tuition cost for all students with demonstrated financial need.

Contact TIGERLILY HOPSON at tigerlily.hopson@yale.edu .

DOJ weighs China Initiative as Yale faculty sign letter

BY ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTER A month after Yale faculty members signed a letter decrying the U.S. Justice Department’s China Initiative, two high-profile court cases have brought fresh scrutiny to the anti-espionage campaign.

In December, 100 members of Yale’s faculty signed an open letter to the Justice Department condemning the initiative, which they saw as an invasive and discriminatory campaign to root out Chinese spies at American universities. Since then, the federal district court of Massachusetts has heard two cases tied to the controversial program. The first, decided by a jury on Dec. 22, found Harvard chemistry professor Charles Lieber guilty of lying about ties to China, marking a win for the Justice Department. Meanwhile at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, charges against mechanical engineering professor Gang Chen were dismissed.

Though the Justice Department’s legal efforts have not come to New Haven, professor of applied physics Yu He, one of the letter’s co-organizers, said that the letter, along with the two cases, has raised awareness on campus of both the initiative’s discrimination against scientists of Chinese descent as well as its chilling effect on academic research.

“This [initiative] has been silently taking funding away from faculty, all done beneath the table,” He told the News. “It is very heartwarming and encouraging to see this many faculty at Yale voicing their support to the values that we all cherish.””

The Yale letter was sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland as well as local members of Congress on Jan. 10. It ultimately garnered nearly 200 signatures, many from the School of Medicine and engineering departments. Signatories also included three Sterling

professors and six heads of colleges, as well as several prominent scholars of Asian American studies and U.S.-China relations. Garland has not responded to the letter.

of fear for scientists of Chinese descent across academia.

Since 2018, the Justice Department has declared a string of victories related to the China Initia-

SOPHIE HENRY/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

Recent decisions at Harvard and MIT confirmed professors’ concerns about the Justice Department’s campaign against academic espionage.

Though only one of the recent Massachusetts cases resulted in a dismissal, both have been held up as examples of the advocates’ main criticisms of the China Initiative as ineffective and discriminatory. In Lieber’s case, charges were brought for false statements and tax offenses, rather than the initiative’s stated target on espionage. Chen’s year in court, meanwhile, greatly damaged his research activities at MIT, he wrote in a recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, and further stoked an environment

tive, convicting multiple Chinese nationals of academic and economic espionage. The initiative began due to concerns that the Chinese government would use non-traditional methods to spy and steal information from companies and laboratories in the U.S., including targeting universities.

But in far more cases, the MIT Technology Review’s data analysis found, cases were not brought to court due to espionage charges.

Instead, many scientists like Lieber were arrested on charges of “research integrity” for failing

to disclose ties to universities on applications for federal grants. A majority of cases remain pending or have had charges dropped.

Meanwhile, however, research on university campuses has become “collateral damage”, according to He. The News previously spoke to several graduate students of Chinese nationality who described an environment of anxiety and difficulties accessing education at Yale.

“The anxiety accumulates day to day because you don’t want to fall behind,” Yizhi Luo GRD ’23, who studies applied physics, told the News in December. “It makes me wonder what it’s all for — we spent so much time trying to get into these American universities just to then get blocked by visa issues.”

Professor He added that numerous “deeply impacted” Chinese students reached out after the letter was published asking for help. He noted that he and other faculty often feel “helpless” in addressing the administrative barriers those students face, which he says demonstrates a need to further support international researchers, both at Yale and elsewhere.

Calls against the China Initiative piled up from academic institutions around the country, including Stanford, Temple and Princeton Universities. Colleagues at Harvard have voiced support for Lieber, and Chen saw an outpouring of support during a webinar held by the Asian American Scholar Forum on Jan. 30.

He said that he anticipates an announcement from the Justice Department on the China Initiative soon. The Biden administration is expected to announce changes to the China Initiative “in the coming weeks,” the New York Times reported on Jan. 20, with the Justice Department “considering steps such as retiring the name and reclassifying the pending cases.”

But that may not be enough to resolve fears about lingering discrimination.

“At the end of the day, everybody is worried that nothing of substance changes,” He said. “We want to take this opportunity and look forward to a time when these policies are based on facts and sufficient communication with experts instead of typecasting or tying a problem to a group of people based on nationality.”

He applauded Yale administrators, who he said have protected the University’s researchers to a greater degree than counterparts at peer institutions.

Vice President for Global Strategy Pericles Lewis wrote in an email to the News that Yale advises faculty on complying with China-related regulations. He also noted that Yale has “lobbied various government agencies for clear and fair interpretation of such policies as they affect university researchers and students,” and added that both he and University President Peter Salovey believe in a “broadly open attitude towards academic exchange.”

For now, He said that he, as well as the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology professors Yongli Zhang and Jing Yan, will continue outreach efforts to lawmakers and University affiliates. Alex Liang ’22 and Mirilla Zhu ’23, two students whose November op-ed kicked off the recent round of advocacy, said that they are encouraged by the show of support and look forward to both the China Initiative’s end and to further advocacy at the intersection of research and equity.

“We’re mobilizing and coming together from a Yale community standpoint,” Liang said.

The Yale letter to the Justice Department has 192 signatories.

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

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

"If lightning is the anger of the gods, then the gods are concerned mostly about trees." LAO TZU CHINESE PHILOSOPHER

University releases update on climate goals CLIMATE FROM PAGE 1 Yale’s waste diversion goal, which looked to “divert 60 percent of materials, while maintaining or reducing the overall volume of waste” by 2024, is currently behind schedule. The University is also not on track to meet its green cleaning goal to make over 40 percent of chemicals used green or green- certified.

According to the progress report, Yale diverted 26 percent of its waste in 2021 and decreased overall material usage from pre-pandemic usage by 34 percent. The University was unable to provide data on its green cleaning goal because of the pandemic, the report said.

“Progress towards these goals was heavily impacted by the pandemic,” said Lisa Noriega, sustainability data analyst at the Yale Office of Sustainability.

Katie Schlick ’22, the former president of the Student Environmental Coalition and Silliman sustainability liaison, told the News that she is generally optimistic about the plan. While she said she appreciates that the plan does not limit its focus to just carbon emissions, instead addressing a variety of environmental issues on campus, Schlick was critical of the University’s carbon neutrality timeline.

“I really don’t understand why they’re doing 2035 instead of 2030,” Schlick said. “It just doesn’t align with science.”

Guidelines set by the Paris Agreement dictate that countries aim to transition to clean energy by 2030.

Benoit was also skeptical of the Sustainability Plan’s commuting goal, which is to increase commutes to campus using sustainable transportation by 10 percent from 2015 to 2025.

“With the impending doom that climate change suggests, we should be thinking about changing things by factors of two, going 50 percent,” Benoit says. “10 percent.

It just seems very, very incremental. And they feel they’re on track.

You know, it’s like really?”

According to the progress report, over half of the 38 goals have already been met, and another third are on track to be completed on schedule. The report also revealed that Yale updated and expanded upon some of its original goals.

“More than halfway through the nine-year timeline, we have achieved 22 of the 38 original goals, are on track to achieve 12 more and have announced two new goals to reflect changing context and priorities,” said Noriega.

Stormwater and water management is marked as an “achieved goal” in the progress report. But

Benoit questioned the extent to which the University had met the standard it set in the report.

“The plan makes sense. And if they were aggressive about it, it would lead to good outcomes,” he said of the stormwater and water management goals. “But they’re not being aggressive about it… The goals are ambitious enough, but if you don’t implement them, the outcome is not going to be substantial.”

Benoit said that part of the problem with the University’s stormwater management sustainability methods is the focus on new projects instead of retrofitting old buildings.

Sena Sugiono ’25, an energy liaison with the Office of Sustainability, agreed that older buildings on campus will have to be renovated to meet efficiency standards, but has observed substantial logistical difficulties relocating people and equipment when renovating older buildings, especially when lab equipment has to be moved.

“People in lab spaces are hard to move around the technical equipment,” Sugiono said. “It’s hard to move around. And so I think they’ve done considerable work when it comes to making changes with regards to moving people and labs.”

Jonathan Gewirtzman ENV

’26, a graduate student representative on the Sustainability Advisory Council, praised the fluid and long-term approach that Yale has adopted in sustainability planning.

“It is nice to see the University thinking in the long term,” G ew i r tz m a n sa i d . “ T h i n king about how sustainability is going to mean more than reducing our own carbon footprint on campus, but also thinking critically about how … Is New Haven going to be affected by rising sea levels and extreme weather? And how can the University work with the city in order to try to mitigate some of those challenges?”

Schlick, however, said that more could be done to consider New Haven in the University’s Sustainability efforts. She emphasized the need for further discussions around how the city and University could work in concert to benefit residents. “ We ’re l o ca te d i n New Haven,” Schlick said. “So what does that mean for all of the New Haven residents? So they also benefit from that energy usage? I don’t know, and I don’t think that there’s many conversations that are made visible around that.”

In the future, Gewirtzman hopes there is more collabora-

tion between the University and its students. When the Sustainability Advisory Council, which is “tasked with offering guidance and inspiration on Yale’s Sustainability Plan,” was presented with the progress report, “there was no debate or discussion,” Gewirtzman said.

Shlick added that the University should be investing more resources into campus education, especially as a way to reduce energy and campus emissions. She suggested that new students receive sustainability orientation.

“At the end of the day, we have 6,000 undergrads. We have tons more grad students. We have faculty members and staff.

And we have everyone else who works for the University,” Shlick said. “And we have to implicate everyone in this challenge. And we need to give people the tools and the resources and the education in order to be able to contribute to this.”

A campus-wide sustainability survey conducted in October 2021 will also be used to measure Yale’s progress in meeting its sustainability goals. The results of the survey will be published on Feb. 8.

Contact ISABEL MANEY at isabel.maney@yale.edu .

Yale judges two fossil fuel companies ineligible for investment DIVESTMENT FROM PAGE 1 In April 2021, the Yale Board of Trustees adopted the Fossil Fuel Investment Principles, which help to apply lessons from The Ethical Investor to investments in the fossil fuel industry. The ACIR cited Principle No. 3 on the Fossil Fuel Investment Principles as the rationale behind divestment from ExxonMobil and Chevron, flagging the two companies as “undermin[ing] sensible government regulation and industry self-regulation addressing climate change.”

The news comes after years of student pressure to divest from the fossil fuel industry as a whole. Since as early as 2016,

student activists from Fossil Free Yale and the Endowment Justice Coalition have pressured the University to divest from ExxonMobil in particular, arguing that the company has a history of climate change denial. In 2020, the State of Connecticut sued Exxon and accused the company of facilitating “deceptive acts” in order to “create uncertainty about climate science.”

“The evidence strongly suggests that Exxon and Chevron have violated principles 3 and 4 [of the Fossil Fuel Investment Principles] on many occasions and are almost certainly still violating them today,” Kenneth Gillingham, a professor at the Yale School of the Environ-

ment and a member of the committee that developed Yale’s new fossil fuel investment principles, wrote in an email. “This is a great first step in applying the principles to remove unethical parties from eligibility for investment by the Yale endowment.”

The ACIR did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication. However, the Committee had previously maintained that ExxonMobil had not engaged in any activity that would qualify it for divestment.

“Exxon does not appear to be engaging in any conduct or activity that would warrant divestment,” ACIR head Jonathan Macey LAW ’82 told the News in 2017. “[Exxon] seems to

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Both Exxon Mobil and Chevron have been deemed not eligible for investment, but Yale retains fracking holdings.

be certainly no worse than any other fossil fuel company, with respect to their position on climate change. There doesn’t seem to be any basis for singling them out for divestment.”

However, under the new, more stringent principles for fossil fuel divestment — which were unveiled last April — both ExxonMobil and Chevron are found to be in violation of Principle No. 3, which makes them ineligible for University investment.

The decision to prohibit investment into ExxonMobil and Chevron comes at a time when the two oil giants have been placed in the national spotlight for their role in lobbying against government climate policy. According to research done by the thinktank InfluenceMap, the two companies top the list of lobby offenders due to their “prolific and highly sophisticated” lobbying tactics. The research concluded that the companies are influencing the government to take “incredibly dangerous paths” with regards to climate change.

“We are pleased, as always, to ensure that Yale’s investment portfolio complies with the [Corporate Committee on Investor Responsibility]’s independent decisions as to the permissibility of investments on ethical grounds,” a representative from the Yale Investments Office wrote to the News.

Goren, a member of the Endowment Justice Coalition, a student organization that calls for Yale to divest fully from the fossil fuel industry, expressed concerns about the Investment Office’s lack of transparency. Goren said that he would “love to hear” why ExxonMobil and Chevron have been added to the list as of January 2022, and “what kind of conversations [the ACIR] had that led up to this.”

Jos i e S te u e r- I n ga l l ’ 2 4 , another member of the EJC, thought that the lack of an “enforcement mechanism” for ensuring that the Yale endowment does not invest in ExxonMobil or Chevron was “also really troubling.”

In response, a spokesperson from the Investments Office said that “the notion of a ‘lack of an enforcement mechanism’ is quite misleading. The Investments Office, as an arm of the University, is compelled to follow the CCIR’s decisions and is pleased to do so.”

It is unclear how much of Yale’s endowment is invested directly into fossil fuels. According to the 2020 endowment report, 3.9 percent of the $31.2 billion endowment at the time was invested into natural resources — which includes oil and gas, timberland and agriculture.

The EJC analyzes Yale’s tax forms, including the SEC 13F and IRS 990 forms, to determine some of the companies that Yale invests in. The group maintains that Yale had holdings invested in the fracking company EQT, effective as of Nov. 22, 2021, though the SEC has not reviewed and verified Yale’s filing.

However, Goren is hopeful about the future of Yale’s endowment. Despite the concerns raised, Goren acknowledged that prohibiting investment into Exxon and Chevron was a “big and exciting step.”

According to October 2021 data from Statista, ExxonMobil and Chevron were ranked as the number one and number two largest oil companies by market capitalization in the United States, respectively.

Contact CHARLOTTE HUGHES at charlotte.hughes@yale.edu and ALEX YE at alex.ye@yale.edu .

New gift policy committee to evaluate academic freedom GIFT FROM PAGE 1 vision of the committee that resembled one laid out in the Senate’s demands. The committee, when it is officially convened in the coming weeks, will be run separately from the Senate.

“The committee will be charged with reviewing the current gift acceptance and review policy, recommending any beneficial modifications, and recommending how best to ensure that faculty can easily communicate concerns to the administration about

gifts or prospective gifts,” Salovey wrote in an email to the News.

Salovey himself will appoint the members of the committee, which will contain a mix of faculty and administrators. According to FAS Senate Chair Valerie Horsley, she provided Salovey with a list of candidates deemed appropriate by the Senate’s executive committee. In line with the Senate’s resolution, Salovey confirmed that the committee will be chaired by a faculty member.

The committee’s members, however, will not oversee individual gifts

to the University, Salovey stressed, but rather will provide input on the “clarity” of the University’s policies concerning gifts and academic freedom, as well as what faculty members should do if they feel that policies are not being followed.

Horsley did reiterate, however, that the Senate hopes the committee will survey existing gift agreements. The agenda of committee meetings will be up to its members, Salovey wrote.

The committee was first announced at a December faculty meeting. History professor John Gad-

dis, who founded and led the Studies in Grand Strategy program for almost two decades before handing control over to Gage, praised the committee’s formation as an “encouraging development,” but declined to comment further until Salovey reveals more information.

Professor of computer science Michael Fischer raised concerns about the protocol for appointing committee members, suggesting that Salovey’s role as the appointer of members of the committee places him in a difficult conflict of interest.

“My perspective is that a faculty committee whose purpose is to serve as a check and balance on the administration cannot possibly function if it is appointed by the administration. … It puts the President in an impossible conflict-of interest-position,” Fischer said. “I would much prefer to see that the faculty choose a committee [itself] to investigate the issue.”

Contact PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH at philip.mousavizadeh@yale.edu and ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

"Lightning has no mercy." VICTORIA AVEYARD AUTHOR

Connecticut jails unleash new constraints JAIL FROM PAGE 1 “They have us locked down 23 hours a day, where we are only coming out 30 minutes during the day and 30 minutes at night,” Lis said.

“Some staff will tell us that we can’t have our rec… just because they don’t feel like giving it to us.”

The DOC postponed a hearing for Lis due to the spread of COVID19, even though it was to be held over video conference a short walk away from her cell. Lis is incarcerated at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, the only women’s prison in the state. York’s web page states that “in person professional visits are postponed until further notice.”

Lis’ defense attorney, Alexander Taubes LAW ’15, received an email from the warden of the New Haven Correctional Center on Jan. 30 informing him that in-person legal visits with his clients could no longer take place. The message stated that “although in person legal visits has [sic] been suspended, we… make other arrangements such as legal calls and legal mail to accommodate any matters in which you need to address with your clients.” However, Taubes claimed there was no video call option for meetings with his clients, either.

“Legal visits are the last to be put on hold and will resume as soon as we are safely able to do so,” Andrius Banevicius, public information officer of the DOC, wrote in an email to the News. “In the meantime, the Agency will continue to accommodate phone calls with legal representatives, and access to legal documents/mail.”

Even before the January suspension of in-person legal services, defense attorneys still faced challenges as they attempted to meet with their incarcerated clients during the pandemic. Christine Rapillo, the state’s Chief Public Defender, wrote to the News that legal visits were still difficult to obtain previously, making it hard to prepare for cases or to

discuss depositions. Sometimes, defenders would arrive for scheduled time with their clients only to find no staff able to facilitate their visits.

“DOC has also tried to increase the number of legal calls,” Rapillo added.

“All the remote access requires DOC staff to facilitate it, so the virus surge and the wave of retirements make those methods of communication difficult as well.”

Taubes explained several legal issues he took with the limitations put on visits between incarcerated clients and their attorneys, including violations of due process.

“For the people who are incarcerated pre-trial, it’s a gigantic due process violation,” he said. “Imagine having to decide whether to plead guilty to something you didn’t do and get out of this torture chamber, or continue to maintain your innocence and be stuck there without any ability to get out.”

According to the DOC, as of December 2021, 42.6 percent of individuals incarcerated at DOC facilities around the state have not yet been convicted of a crime. At the New Haven Correctional Center, 82.25 percent of the incarcerated have only been accused of crimes, as of Jan 1.

Limited access to lawyers has left incarcerated people scared, frustrated and sometimes inadequately prepared for trials and hearings, Rapillo, Taubes and Maddy Batt ’19 told the News.

Rapillo shared that while most of her staff received access to phone calls with clients, calls are a poor substitute for visits when discussing case resolution. Batt, Community Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School’s Schell Center, emphasized the impact of the visit policy on legal services as a whole, referring to it as a human rights issue.

“To not have video visits means it’s much harder to go through the documents that people who are incarcerated need to understand in order to make informed decisions about their

ROXANNA ANDRADE/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

With in-person legal visits banned, advocates are discussing prison conditions.

cases,” Batt said. “Attorneys need to hear their clients’ opinions in order to advocate properly for their clients.”

Batt pointed out that legal phone call services are also difficult to schedule and provide lawyers with little room for communication. She recounted her own experiences attempting to schedule legal calls, where she would often have to persistently call and email facilities in order to schedule time to talk with incarcerated people. Sometimes, calls were cancelled without notice.

Time limits on phone calls with incarcerated people, which Batt said often last 15 minutes, make communication even more difficult in the absence of in-person visits.

The News’ phone call with Taubes and Lis was cut short when Lis’ call minutes expired.

Life behind bars Banevicius told the News that the new cuts made to recreational time “coincide with the increase in the number of COVID-19 positive staff and inmates.”

When someone tests positive, according to Lis, they are forced into cramped quarantine spaces without basic necessities.

“They put five people in a tiny room on little beds on the floor,” Lis said. “They don’t have any of their belongings. They give them state stuff, which is barely any hygiene stuff — the deodorant doesn’t work.”

Lis added that one of the most prominent issues affecting women incarcerated at York is the inability to socialize with others, as they spend nearly the entire day with only the company of their cell roommate.

Although they are distinct, lockdown protocols at York and other prisons worldwide share many features with the practice of solitary confinement — those experiencing solitary confinement usually spend up to 23 hours a day in their cells, without the ability to exercise or socialize, and they have restricted access to medical care. Lis emphasized that isolation at York has caused a mental health crisis, and said that one woman died of suicide a few days earlier.

“People are having panic attacks, anxiety attacks,” Taubes said.

“They can’t handle it, being stuck in the cell for 23 hours a day. It’s not healthy. We actually know very well that keeping people in isolated conditions for over 20 hours a day, for over two weeks, is well known to cause psychological damage.”

Barbara Fair, lead organizer of Stop Solitary CT, receives letters from incarcerated people in the state “all the time” during the pandemic.

She shared that these people have detailed similar experiences to those of Lis, including spending almost full days and entire weekends in cells without the ability to shower or receive standard calls.

Fair also said she received information on living conditions in the prisons and jails through Freedom

of Information services, where she learned about suicides and attempted suicides among the incarcerated.

She echoed the connection Lis drew between poor physical and mental health and prison conditions during the pandemic.

“It’s just so disheartening, reading that, knowing that the conditions are so bad that people are taking their lives,” Fair said. “I just can’t imagine what it’s like to be in these kinds of situations where you’re just a sitting duck to a disease that’s going around that could kill you.”

The Omicron variant triggered a surge in COVID-19 cases in Connecticut prisons. Four incarcerated individuals in the state have died of COVID-19 this month, according to DOC press releases. As of Jan. 28, a total of 7,648 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Connecticut prisons during the pandemic, including 27 people who died due to the virus. Lis claimed that about three people in her building test positive daily, and Banevicius reported that there are 22 incarcerated individuals and 31 employees currently recovering from COVID-19 at York.

Lis noted that she has seen several people put Vaseline in their noses to avoid testing positive and going into isolation.

Batt said she believes that many incarcerated people attempt to hide symptoms of COVID-19 to avoid facing complete isolation. While isolation within their own prisons and jails is the current protocol for those who test positive for COVID-19, they were previously sent to the Northern Correctional Facility, the state’s only supermax prison, which closed last July.

“People had been advocating for Northern’s closure for over a decade because of how atrocious the conditions are there,” Batt said. “It’s built to isolate people, it’s built to break them psychologically, essentially. And so I think the DOC kind of showed their hand when they used that as their first option for sending people for COVID isolation.”

Banevicius claimed that incarcerated people who test positive receive medical care from “the approximately 600 dedicated correctional healthcare professionals” employed by the DOC, despite conditions detailed by imprisoned people and advocates.

Incarcerated people who have spoken to Taubes, Fair and Batt have said they believe the behavior of DOC staff poses a health risk in itself. Lis claimed that corrections officers do not enforce mandates when prison wardens are not present, and that they rarely wear masks themselves.

Fair and Batt both said that incarcerated people have expressed concerns over how many corrections officers have chosen to not wear masks or get vaccinated against COVID-19. 3,345 DOC staff members at state prisons have received at least one dose of the vaccine as of Jan. 31, accounting for approximately 56.47 percent of total employees per the staffing count

given to WFSB on Jan. 10.

According to Batt, Lis and Taubes, corrections officers have retaliated against incarcerated people who speak out when safety measures are not observed. Lis recalled times when she had witnessed corrections officers give women at York disciplinary tickets for telling them to wear masks. Batt said that when incarcerated people demanded access to hygiene products and the enforcement of mask mandates early in the pandemic, they were sent to Northern Correctional Facility.

Nevertheless, the DOC maintains that it has taken several measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

Banevicius listed precautions taken by the DOC, including “separating new inmates from others to prevent new inmates from introducing COVID-19, isolating inmates who test positive for COVID-19, vaccinating all inmates willing to be vaccinated, educational efforts to reduce vaccine hesitancy, and regularly testing inmates and staff.”

Although the Department of Corrections names the surge in COVID19 cases as the source of lockdown protocols, Fair and Batt both expressed doubts that the pandemic was the sole reason incarcerated people in the state faced severe restrictions on movement. Fair’s work with individuals placed in solitary confinement before the pandemic has led her to believe that the DOC can “hide behind COVID” as they strip incarcerated people of their freedoms. Batt accused the DOC of using isolation for “administrative convenience,” posing a problem under both domestic and international law.

On behalf of the DOC, Banevicius wrote, “The restrictions although inconvenient are warranted, as the Agency’s adherence to the phased operational plan has consistently resulted in a Covid-19 positivity rate among the incarcerated population well below that of the general public.”

Looking forward, incarcerated people, their lawyers and prison reform advocates will continue to fight for changes to life inside prisons and jails. Rapillo and her team hope to work with the DOC to expand remote communications between lawyers and incarcerated clients.

Taubes shared that one of his clients is circulating a petition at the Hartford Correctional Center advocating for better living conditions, and he said that Lis is working to hold state officials accountable for sexual abuse she experienced when she was incarcerated pre-trial. At the legislative level, Fair said that Stop Solitary CT and other activist organizations continue to push for the passage of the PROTECT Act, which would extensively limit solitary confinement and increase oversight of the DOC and corrections staff.

As of Jan. 31, there are a total of 636 active COVID-19 cases among individuals incarcerated at DOC facilities.

Contact MEGAN VAZ at megan.vaz@yale.edu .

Immunocompromised students detail COVID fears STUDENTS FROM PAGE 1 News, she was exhausted at the prospect of another semester in which she had to be an advocate for herself and fellow at-risk students every day.

At a Jan. 20 COVID-19 town hall sponsored by the Yale College Council, Chun had suggested that concerned immunocompromised students consider taking a gap semester.

“When I heard Dean Chun say that at-risk students should take a gap semester, I was horrified and so, so angry,” Parrish told the News.

She believed the statement to be “ableist” and explained that with his words, he erased any confidence that she had in the University’s desire to keep her and other immunocompromised students safe.

In a subsequent interview with the News, Chun explained that during the town hall, he did not mean to suggest that a leave of absence was the only option immunocompromised students could take. Students with weakened immune systems who wish to stay enrolled can seek medical accommodation with the office of Student Accessibility Services, he said.

“My intent during the town hall was to point out the option available to all students who wanted to spend time away from Yale during the pandemic for any reason and without penalty,” Chun said.

Still, the News spoke to three immunocompromised students, including Parish, who still feel that the University and their fellow students have disregarded them as the spring semester begins.

Ahead of students’ return to campus, the administration sent a flurry of emails informing the student body of updated COVID-19 safety measures. New guidance included two weeks of remote learning and facilities restrictions, arrival testing requirements and updated masking guidelines. For many at-risk students, the restrictions come as a welcome relief to the anxiety surrounding the upcoming semester.

Priya Vasu ’23, an at-risk transfer student, told the News that she is happy the restrictions exist at Yale even as other schools reopen without significant changes to student life. Yale’s COVID-19 policies are among the strictest in the Ivy League. Most other schools, including Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth and Brown, have all started their semesters in person as planned, while Columbia, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania have begun with hybrid classes.

“It definitely came as a relief to me,” Vasu said, “but I think they need to be stricter.”

Vasu expressed concern about rising case counts due to the more transmissible Omicron variant and

thought it would be “ridiculous” for campus to continue operating under the same restrictions it did in the fall semester. As cases rise due to the new variant and breakthrough cases appear to become more common, Vasu said, she felt “back in a riskier position” even after receiving the vaccine.

Between 19 and 50 percent of non-elderly Americans have some type of pre-existing medical condition and are at risk for the most serious cases of COVID-19. Yale students with respiratory conditions are especially afraid of COVID-19’s effects on their health. Worried that catching COVID-19 could lead to severe pulmonary complications from their already-impaired respiratory systems, many take extra precautions and safety measures to ensure their well-being.

“I still regularly disinfect surfaces, double-mask and wear masks in the dorms and in my home,” Diego Bolanos ’25 said.

Bolanos has had asthma his entire life and told the News he remembers feeling “different” as a child because of his medical condition. For him, COVID-19 has resurfaced some of those feelings of alienation, especially when he expresses concern about his health.

Bolanos noted that he feels “really anxious” whenever he comes into contact with anyone

who has contracted the virus. He shared his anger for people who hide their COVID-19 symptoms and dismissively claim they are fine.

“They may be fine, but I really don’t know what will happen if I get it and I’m terrified,” Bolanos said.

Yale College Provost for Health Affairs and Academic Integrity Stephanie Spangler told the News that during the YCC’s COVID-19 Town Hall, University administrators sought to reaffirm Yale’s commitment to the health and safety of all students, including those with pre-existing medical conditions.

Spangler separately pointed out the importance of being fully vaccinated and getting boosted as a way of preserving campus safety.

“Although breakthrough infections do and will occur, and maybe more frequently with the highly infectious Omicron variant, vaccination that includes boosters provides substantially enhanced protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19,” Spangler told the News.

Ilan Dubler-Furman ’25, who has Crohn’s disease, was among the first to get the booster vaccine when it was made available at Yale in October of last year. However, Dubler-Furman tested positive for the virus upon his return to Yale in January.

Aside from experiencing flu-like symptoms, he is “thankfully, fine” and

attributes mildness of his symptoms to the booster shot. He hopes more students will get the vaccine to keep themselves and others on campus safe.

But even with COVID-19 safety rules, as well as mask and vaccine mandates, some still worry about the pandemic’s effect on their longterm health and wellbeing. LongCOVID is a poorly understood condition that affects 15 to 80 percent of all COVID-19 patients and presents itself uniquely in individuals depending on their immune system. While most people who contract COVID19 will recover in a matter of weeks, those afflicted with long-COVID may continue to experience symptoms for months and even years after their diagnosis.

As most students look to the future with a return to in-person classes and relaxed restrictions, students like Vasu worry that a rushed return to normalcy could put her and others like her in danger. Instead, she favors a semester-long remote learning option for the immunocompromised because of the threat of infection and long-COVID. “At-risk students deserve to feel safe in a classroom, and I do not feel safe,” Vasu said.

Yale College is scheduled to begin in-person instruction on Feb. 7.

Contact MICHAEL NDUBISI at michael.ndubisi@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

INVESTIGATIONS “I had to choose between my education and my safety” How Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies leave students no choice but to stay.

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

BY SERENA PUANG INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR Content warning: This article contains references to suicide and self-harm.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 1-800-273-8255.

Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support.

To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7 and confidential.

To talk with a counselor from Yale Mental Health and Counseling, schedule a session here.

On-call counselors are available at any time: call (203) 432-0290.

Students who are interested in taking a medical withdrawal should reach out to their residential college dean.

Additional resources are available in a guide compiled by the Yale College Council.

As is explored in the following story, Yale’s systems for withdrawal and reinstatement are surrounded by misconceptions and confusion. For clarity, much of the policy for Yale College — which differs from policies across the University, is included at the bottom of this story.

Before the start of the spring semester in 2o21, Serena Riddle ’21 and her therapist were at an impasse. Riddle had been living with depression since her sophomore fall, and she wasn’t doing well. Her therapist voiced concerns about her wellbeing and laid out her options: do an intensive outpatient program, start medication or go to the hospital.

“She said that preferably, more than one of these things would need to be true,” Riddle recounted.

If she chose none, her therapist said she would hospitalize her involuntarily. So, Riddle looked into her options. Could she do the intensive outpatient program while being enrolled? Absolutely not — it is impossible to do both, she realized. What if she started new medication? Her therapist felt she was too unstable to gamble on the possibility of side effects.

Several people recommended that she withdraw from school, but that didn’t seem like an option for financial reasons. Riddle decided to enroll and spend the first few days of the spring semester in the hospital, hoping that she would be okay afterward to power through her last semester at Yale.

Had she known that she would later have to completely withdraw from the semester, and navigate the murky waters that would come with that decision, she may have chosen differently, she said.

Last semester, I spoke to six students about their experiences with Yale’s withdrawal policy and spent over two months retracing their steps, searching for answers to their lingering questions about what Yale’s policy actually is.

Whether because of specific University policies, failure to communicate these policies to students or longstanding rumors, many feel they have no choice but to remain enrolled, even when it might not be in their best interest. As a reporter, I’m trained to find and sift through documents, to comprehend and explain them to people.

Still, despite hours spent on policy websites, calls and long email exchanges, I was constantly redirected and confused by the contradictory information I was finding.

At one point I was attempting to determine whether students can receive financial assistance for funds spent on community college classes necessary for reinstatement — Riddle is still unsure if she can get reimbursed for the $1,200 she said she spent on Gateway Community College classes.

But when I called the financial aid office to clarify their policy, the representative who answered the phone redirected me to the withdrawal policy website. She said that the financial aid office could not answer questions about how students would be billed in case of a withdrawal or if their aid would cover those bills. According to her, that is a question that would involve contacting the registrar’s office, bursar’s office, Yale hospitality and a student’s residential college dean. When asked how a student could find out what specifically would happen with their financial aid if they withdrew, she said, “you wouldn’t know that until you withdraw.” When I sought to clarify further, she hung up on me. Alexander Muro, the associate director of financial aid, declined to comment about the lack of information.

The hoops I jumped through seeking information about Yale’s policies are just one element of the issue, though. Because once someone does come to understand the policies, they are often more intimidated.

A 2018 paper for the Ruderman Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on disability advocacy and inclusion, graded schools’ leave of absence policies with the help of national college mental health experts. No school received above a D+, and Yale received an F, which was one of the worst grades in the report.

“This is a problem that’s plaguing higher education in general,” explained Miriam Heyman, one of the coauthors of the paper and senior research associate at Brandeis University’s Lurie Institute for Disability Policy. Heyman and her coauthor concen-

trated on the Ivy League hoping that as leaders in higher education, if they started making strides on this issue, other institutions would follow.

Taking a break from Yale At Yale, students can take time off in two ways: through a leave of absence or withdrawal. Students “in academic good standing” can petition to take a leave of absence for any reason on or before the fifteenth day of each semester.

According to the Yale College Programs of Study, students who opt for a leave of absence may return at the beginning of the next semester without further application and have the right to stay on the Yale Health Plan during their time away. But after the 15th day of each semester, students who need to take time off must withdraw, and they’re permitted to do so for disciplinary, financial, personal, medical or academic reasons.

As soon as the withdrawal is in effect, students have 72 hours to move out and are barred from reentering campus during their time away unless they have explicit permission from their residential college dean. According to the Programs of Study, students are required to remain away for at least one semester, not including the semester during which they withdrew. When a withdrawn student wishes to return, they are subject to a reinstatement process which involves taking two courses at another college or university as well as submitting an application, a personal statement, letters of support and a letter from a clinician in the case of medical withdrawal.

They must also be interviewed by the Committee on Reinstatement.

A wide variety of unforeseen circumstances can leave students with less emotional or physical capacity to do the work needed to continue their studies. Death in one’s family, accidents, sexual misconduct/stalking, mental health symptoms and chronic illness diagnoses don’t operate on the academic calendar. For many students, the circumstances which make it hard for them to stay in school happen in the middle of the semester, so they can’t choose to take a leave of absence. These students have to navigate a complicated process to take time off.

Choosing between Yale and your life “It totally freaked me out,” Griffin Wilson ’24 said of the reinstatement process. As an international student from Canada, he worried that he wouldn’t make the grades he needed during his time away to be reinstated. Grades of B or higher are required for reinstatement.

“I felt like I had to choose between my Yale education and my safety — my Yale education and my life,” Wilson said. After he

was hospitalized following a panic attack, his father flew to New Haven to stay with him. At this point, he was severely depressed.

“I was self-harming and suicidal,” he said. “I felt like if I was going to keep going with school, then there was a good to fair chance that I would end up dead.”

But after looking into his options, he realized that he’d missed the leave of absence deadline, and he didn’t want to withdraw. On top of the reinstatement process, he would be required to remain away for an entire year, which was longer than he thought he needed. “I couldn’t do what was in my best interest without risking something that I had worked so hard for,” he recalled.

“I FELT LIKE I HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN MY YALE EDUCATION AND MY SAFETY — MY YALE EDUCATION AND MY LIFE.” Last March, after a first-year student died by suicide, many students expressed grievances with Yale’s medical withdrawal policy. Students shared their fears about involuntary withdrawal and how that impacted the ways they sought treatment, the financial barriers created by Yale’s policies, their worries about not being able to return and their experiences of having their reinstatement applications denied.

Melanie Boyd, dean of student affairs, declined to comment for this article, but she wrote in an email to the News last semester that involuntary withdrawals are “exceedingly rare.”

“Stepping away from college to focus on mental health is the right decision more often than not, even if it may not seem so at the time,” Risa Sodi, assistant dean of academic affairs and chair of the Committee of Reinstatement, wrote in an email to me. “Yale College wants all withdrawn students to return to Yale when they are ready.”

But students can only return from withdrawal once. Yale’s policy stipulates that “A student is eligible to be reinstated only once; a second reinstatement may be considered only under unusual circumstances, ordinarily of a medical nature.”

Authors of the Ruderman Foundation’s white paper criticized minimum leave time policies and the capped number of with-

drawals and reinstatement. “Trajectories of mental illness vary from one person to the next,” said Heyman, the paper’s co-author.

Many students, she said, “get their sense of identity and purpose from being students. If that’s taken away, then it will take away a guiding structure in how you see yourself…. Any sort of finite number of three leaves or three months is completely arbitrary. And it’s counter to what we know about the individualized trajectory of mental illness.”

Tweaks but not comprehensive reform Yale College Dean Marvin Chun oversees withdrawal policy. He isn’t directly involved with setting reinstatement policy, but major policy changes for both withdrawal and reinstatement are only made with the help of college-wide input in the form of a committee appointed by the dean.

When asked if there were any inconsistencies or problems he saw with the current policy, Chun said that he worries that “there’s this perception out there that withdrawal is scary and that reinstatement is scary, and I think students feel discouraged from taking a withdrawal because of these perceptions.” Chun asserted that over 90 percent of students who apply for reinstatement are reinstated. I was unable to independently verify this statistic, but in an email, Sodi put the figure at approximately 80-90 percent.

“I’m very willing to keep thinking about improving our policy so that students don’t feel that,” Chun continued.

In his time as Dean, Chun has never made major changes to withdrawal policy — though there were some tweaks due to COVID19 — nor appointed a committee to review the current policies.

The last committee formed to review the policy was appointed by Jonathan Holloway, Chun’s predecessor, in the fall of 2014. After meeting 11 times, the committee produced a 4,300-word report with recommendations to clarify and refine the process, including changing the name of the “readmittance process” to the “reinstatement process” to clarify that temporarily withdrawing does not nullify one’s initial acceptance.

But the committee didn’t address the root of current student complaints. For example, the committee proposed “a clarification of the time such students have to leave campus, which is no more than 72 hours” but didn’t address the more fundamental requirement that gives students three days to pack, move out, arrange travel — in some cases internationally — and leave.

When asked for the reasoning behind this 72 hour policy, Mark Schenker, dean of academic affairs

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

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ISAAC YU/PRODUCTION AND DESIGN EDITOR

A 2018 paper graded schools’ leave of absence policies with the help of national college mental health experts. and member of the committee, declined to comment.

“I don’t think we would extend the time,” said Chun. “It’s just good to have deadlines, so that students can know what to expect, and so that we know what to expect.” Extending the time, Chun said, “just drags on the move out process.”

According to a 2018 article about Yale’s reinstatement policies, Holloway endorsed all the 2015 recommendations, which means they could be enacted as policy, but while some changes were put in place immediately, others are still to be implemented.

For example, the committee recommended that withdrawn students be given the right to petition for the use of the University library. But in 2021, this is still absent from the withdrawal policy website. The committee also recommended that all materials for the reinstatement application be made available on the Yale College website. As of January 2022, the application form is only available upon email request.

When asked about further implementation of the now sixyear-old recommendations, Chun pointed to the progress that had already been made. In response to the committee’s findings, Yale College extended the last day to take a leave of absence from ten to 15 days, eliminated the $50 reinstatement application fee, offered a teleconference option for reinstatement interviews (which students previously had to fly to New Haven for), and altered the role of the residential college deans in the reinstatement process. He said, “If there were to be further changes to be made, I think we would appoint a new committee.”

The need for transparency “Regardless of how fantastic or horrible things are on the ground, knowledge is power,” Heyman said. In response to the white paper, many administrators told her about specific support they have for students, like a point person who could answer questions about the withdrawal process. “If that stuff isn’t written out in a transparent way, then students don’t know that they have the right to access those things,” Heyman continued. “And then [the universities are] not doing all they could to empower students.”

At Yale, the policies are anything but clear. Before starting to report this piece, I spoke to friends, three professors, a dean, and Amelia Davidson ’24, who wrote the News’ piece on medical withdrawal in March 2021, just to see where I should start looking. In ten separate attempts to get answers from administrators, I was repeatedly referred to either the reinstatement FAQs or the leave of absence, deferral, withdrawal, and reinstatement policy webpage. These are considered the authoritative and current documents for what taking time off from Yale will look like. However, they conflict — both internally and with each other — and don’t contain some vital information.

For example, several changes made due to COVID-19 are displayed at the top of the reinstatement FAQs, but those changes are not reflected on the policy website. The website says that online courses “do not fulfill” the reinstatement requirements even if they’re taken at Yale Summer Session. However, the FAQs say that synchronous online classes

do count. According to the FAQs, students seeking reinstatement for Spring 2022 whose withdrawals were processed through Yale Mental Health & Counseling should have their clinicians submit a clinician’s letter to Amy Perry of MH&C. The next section in the FAQs directs those same students to have their clinicians submit letters to Paul Hoffman, director of MH&C. According to Chun, withdrawal is primarily processed through the residential college dean’s offices.

Their role, according to Chun, is to be a “portal” to connect students with campus resources and help them find the answers if they don’t know it themselves.

For Riddle, the student who opted to spend the first week of what was supposed to be her last semester in the hospital, the lack of clear information was a deterrent to even considering withdrawal in the first place. From the time she was diagnosed with depression as a sophomore, she’d heard from other students that she wouldn’t have financial aid when she came back, or that she would

to make my decision in one day,” Riddle said. “But instead it was dragged out over like two weeks or three weeks.”

When asked about how deans might help students find answers to the questions like the ones Riddle was asking, Chun said, “To make it easier for students, deans usually have all that information.” I emailed Riddle’s dean twice and called the residential college office multiple times and never got a response.

Riddle started calling and emailing around. Yale Health Insurance Member Services told Riddle she could stay on her insurance plan provided that she purchased it for “some thousands of dollars” but she doesn’t recall the exact amount. And after many redirections and incomplete or inaccurate information, she was told in an email by Muro, the associate director of undergraduate financial aid, that she would have financial aid when she got back and wouldn’t have to pay for the semester she withdrew from.

“I was misled at literally every step,” Riddle said. After filling out all the paperwork and not doing

at Yale Health Member Services, I found the policy laid out online, but it’s not easy to find.

When asked about the discrepancy in information, Perez wrote in an email that he “could not speak to specific instances” but explained that while “the process for petitioning for a leave or withdrawal are similar…the coverage pathways and termination periods are significantly different.”

“When my office receives call [sic] from students we find that at times a student presents with questions about a leave, but it is really a withdrawal or vice versa.”

‘Horror stories’ deter students from even asking questions about withdrawal Gaps in written policy which necessitate these phone calls sometimes act as a deterrent to students who are not ready or able to dedicate time and energy to call around in the first place.

When a student, who is currently a junior, was in her first year at Yale, she went to a cast party for a play and drank for the first time. She doesn’t know what happened after that, but she woke up in the hospital with abrasions on her chin. Her doctor told her she might have fallen and ordered a CT scan to make sure she didn’t have a concussion.

She didn’t. She had an unusual growth in her brain.

The student, who has been granted anonymity due to fear of professional repercussions for her health issues, took a week to process and grieve before telling her parents. They wanted her to come home for treatment immediately.

She looked into the policy online and felt intimidated about asking her dean for help or taking time off.

“My hope was just that I could take a leave until Christmas break and then come back in January,” she explained. But under the withdrawal policy, that wasn’t possible. “I was worried about coming back. I’ve heard so many horror stories of people that had issues that were even worse than mine and then being asked not to come back.”

Concerns about her financial aid, the reinstatement process, and not being able to live with her suitemates in the next year swirled in her mind as she went through a

doesn’t happen there. Financial aid only determines how much aid students receive to help with the bill.

According to Heyman, the researcher at Brandeis, needed changes include removing the prohibition on visiting campus during students’ time away and allowing withdrawn students to access campus resources.

Students and alumni are pushing for change. And according to Jasmine E. Harris, a professor and expert on disability and antidiscrimination law at the University of Pennsylvania, the changes that have been made were student-driven.

“The reason we’re doing much better is because students have made it a priority,” she explained.

Students, she said, are “best positioned” to understand their needs and know if proposed modifications would be helpful, so solutions should start with them and keep the lines of communication as direct as possible. Playing a “game of telephone” with administrators to change or even just clarify policy can be a huge disincentive for students to seek help and is “completely inefficient,” she said.

“By the end of that game of telephone,” she said, “you’ve wasted time that the student may not have.”

Editor’s Note: Here is the information we could find to clarify Yale’s withdrawal and reinstatement policies.

When a student withdraws from Yale College, their financial aid is adjusted proportionately to the adjustment of their tuition.

These adjustments are determined based on the time in the semester when the student withdraws, and more information can be found in Section D. on the Financial Services page of the online publication of the Yale College Undergraduate Regulations. This may or may not result in a balance due to Yale depending on their financial aid package and the point in the semester they withdraw.

Once a student has withdrawn, they have 72 hours to leave campus. Withdrawn students cannot visit campus without permission from their residential college dean.

Withdrawn students cannot stay on the Yale Healthcare plan.

LUCAS HOLTER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

When a withdrawn student wishes to return, they are subject to a reinstatement process which includes taking two courses at another college or university. be required to pay for the time she spent at Yale before withdrawing for the semester. As a student on full aid, that was not feasible.

Riddle’s health insurance, therapy and psychiatric care were covered through Yale. But could she stay on the Yale Health Plan if she withdrew? That information is nowhere to be found on the Programs of Study website or in either of the documents I was referred to.

After returning from the hospital, Riddle felt worse, not better, so she looked into medical withdrawal just a few days too late to take a leave of absence. After meeting with her residential college dean and spending over three hours with her housemates reading the policy online, she still didn’t have answers.

“If I could have gone to my dean and asked all my questions or got them all answered, I could have had all the information I needed

her school work in anticipation of withdrawing, Riddle had a meeting with Paul Hoffman to make sure she understood what withdrawal would entail. He informed her that she couldn’t stay on Yale insurance after all, contrary to the information she had received when she called.

When I called Yale Health Member Services to inquire about students’ ability to stay on the health plan during a withdrawal, I was told that once students have withdrawn, “their plan ends at the end of the term.” This is not only different from what Riddle says she was told, but it’s also not what happened. Instead, Riddle lost her therapist and psychiatrist almost immediately — she saw them each one last time — and spent two months without insurance or treatment during the pandemic.

After digging around online, two phone calls and an email exchange with Ariel Perez, assistant manager

month of MRIs and doctor’s visits to try to diagnose what she now knows to be a cyst in her brain. At the time, she didn’t know if it was malignant or benign, how big it was, if she’d need surgery, or what signals to look for to indicate that her situation was serious.

“Every time I had a headache or brain fog or anything, I would get really worried,” she said.

Bureaucracy and change As the chair of the reinstatement committee, Sodi does not handle or influence withdrawal policy. These are separate processes. Yale University also doesn’t have a unified policy. Yale College, the graduate school, and each of the professional schools have their own individual policies.

The representative from the financial aid office who hung up on me said she couldn’t speak to how withdrawal would impact what a student pays because billing

According to Yale Health’s website, students who withdraw from the University after the fifteenth day of the semester will be covered by Yale Health for 30 days after their withdrawal date or through the last day of the term, whichever comes first.

“Fees will not be prorated or refunded. Students who withdraw are not eligible to enroll in Student Affiliate Coverage.” the website continues, “Regardless of enrollment in Yale Health Hospitalization/Specialty Coverage, a student who withdraws from the University will have access to services available under Yale Health Basic Coverage (including Student Health, Athletic Medicine, Mental Health & Counseling, and Care Management) during these thirty days to the extent necessary for a coordinated transition of care.”

Contact SERENA PUANG at serena.puang@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Two Yale faculty members elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

YALE NEWS

Professors Donald Engelman and Debra Fischer were recognized by the AAAS for their contributions to science.

BY YASH ROY AND GIRI VISWANATHAN STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Last week, two Yale professors were elected as fellows to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society.

Donald Engelman PhD ’67, professor of molecular biophysics & biochemistry, and Debra Fischer, professor of astronomy, were named fellows to the AAAS in recognition of their contributions to their respective scientific disciplines. They are counted among 564 “scientists, engineers and innovators” from around the world in the 2021 class.

“I am thrilled that the AAAS has recognized Professors Engelman and Fischer,” Tamar Gendler GRD ’67, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote in an email. “Professor Engelman’s work has illuminated complex mechanisms at the cellular level, while Professor Fischer has discovered countless planets beyond our galaxy. Both are deep thinkers and brilliant methodological innovators. Together, they represent the incredible breadth of scientific inquiry in the FAS.” During his career at Yale, Engelman has previously served as a former acting dean of Yale College for the academic term of 19921993 and chair of the Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry in 1991.

Alongside his research focus on biological membranes, he teaches MB&B 105, Biology the World and Us — a course he teaches because

of its “important mission” in communicating scientific knowledge to primarily non-science majors.

Engelman, who is originally from California, said that he received an undergraduate degree in physics from Reed College in Oregon before pursuing a doctorate in Molecular Biophysics from Yale.

During his doctorate days, he developed a fascination with biological membranes. After postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco and King’s College in London, Engelman returned to Yale in 1970.

Approximately 10 years ago, Engelman notes, researchers in his lab accidentally discovered a water-soluble membrane protein — a peptide — with interesting properties. Ordinarily, the peptide binds reversibly to the surface of cells. In acidic cellular environments, however, according to Engelman, his pH Low Insertion Peptide (pHLIP) forms a “trans-membrane helix” that inserts itself across the membrane.

According to Engelman, that finding is “significant” because researchers can attach “passengers” to the peptide, like diagnostic imaging agents or therapeutic molecules that are normally unable to enter those cells. When attached to pHLIP, those target biomolecules can be delivered to cells in selectively acidic environments characteristic of cancer.

By taking advantage of the high cell acidity found in tumors, Engelman believes that the pHLIP mechanism “is very likely to be useful in treating and diagnosing” numerous diseases, including cancer.

Using his research, Engelman started a company, pHLIP Inc., which is currently running phaseone clinical trials for cancer treatments that could precisely diagnose and remove tumors. In those trials, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center employ pHLIP to highlight the acidic cells of breast cancer tumors by attaching a fluorescent molecule to Engelman’s peptide.

Engelman’s company has also licensed the technology to New Haven-based biotechnology start-up Cybrexa Therapeutics for clinical trials, which Engelman describes as “promising.”

As pHLIP binds to the tumor cells, it causes them to light up underneath an infrared imaging device. “[The device] superimposes a color image on top of the normal light image that the surgeon usually sees,” Engelman said. “So the surgeon can see exactly where the tumor is and isn’t. And that means that you can do very conservative removal and it might help women who otherwise might be more disfigured by the surgery and a radical mastectomy.”

According to Tal Woliner, the chief communications officer of the AAAS, the implications of Engelman’s research forms a main reason why the AAAS recognized him for his “pioneering efforts in understanding of principles of membrane organization.”

Previously, Engelman has also been named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

“This is right up there as an important landmark for me,” Engelman said. “I’m particularly gratified

because it reflects the evaluation of my colleagues and so there is nothing better than enjoying the good regard of your colleagues.”

Branford Head of College Enrique De La Cruz, the chair of the Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry, said that Engelman “epitomizes the classical Yale scientist.” He characterized Engelman as a “very deep thinker” who is “extremely rigorous in his research,” yet “incredibly creative and innovative.”

De La Cruz also added that a “good fraction of people at peer institutions who went through Yale have gone through his lab or classes.”

“Members of the scientific community have gone out of their way to nominate him into this group of individuals,” De La Cruz said. “[Members nominated to the AAAS] have left a pedagogical and scientific footprint in the scientific community, as well as the broad general community. That reflects his contributions, but also members of the community’s willingness to go out of their way to ensure that he’s recognized for it.”

Yale’s other 2021 AAAS Fellow, Debra Fischer, is currently on a three-year leave of absence to direct the National Science Foundation’s Division of Astronomical Sciences and could not be reached for comment. According to Wolimer, Fischer’s induction as an AAAS fellow stems from her “distinguished contributions over many years to the search for and discovery of exoplanets, and the communication of science to the wider community.”

Fischer has also been recognized as a member of the National Acad-

emy of Sciences and the American Association of Arts and Sciences.

At Yale, she taught undergraduate and graduate students, including ASTRO 130, Origins and the Search for Life in the Universe.

“Debra Fischer, is one of the most authoritative astronomers when it comes to searching for exoplanets,” said Sarbani Basu, chair of Yale’s department of astronomy. “She was the first person to discover a multiplanet exoplanetary system.”

When Fischer came to Yale, she developed EXPRES, or the EXtreme PREcision Spectrometer, with the Yale Exoplanet Laboratory. According to Basu, EXPRES is “one of the highest resolution spectrographs that currently exists in the world.” The device could allow Fischer and her team to find an “Earth 2.0,” or smaller exoplanets similar in size to Earth, and at distances from stars similar to Earth’s distance from the Sun. Engelman and Fischer will receive an official certificate and a blue and gold rosette pin to commemorate their election. They will be celebrated later in the year during an in-person gathering if the public health situation allows, according to the press release from AAAS. Previous AAAS fellows have included author and activist W.E.B DuBois, Admiral Grace Hopper GRD ’34, and Former Obama Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu. AAAS Fellows have been elected annually since 1874.

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale.edu and GIRI VISWANATHAN at giri.viswanathan@yale.edu .

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SPORTS

“We continue to honor and represent the Burgundy & Gold while forging a pathway to a new era in Washington.” DAN SNYDER WASHINGTON COMMANDERS CEO AND OWNER

Late-game turnovers doom Elis in matchup against Princeton

ZOE BERG/PHOTO EDITOR

Princeton’s suffocating defense and clutch late-game scoring proved enough to stop Yale’s upset bid.

BY ANDREW CRAMER STAFF REPORTER The Yale women’s basketball team (12–7, 5–2 Ivy) entered its Friday night matchup against the Princeton Tigers (14–4, 6–0) hoping to stake its claim on the top of the Ivy League standings. However, Abbey Meyers and Julia Cunningham combined for 41 points to lead the Tigers to a 61–49 victory.

W. BASKETBALL The Bulldogs trailed for nearly the entire first half, but a Avery Lee ’25 jump shot and a Camilla Emsbo ’23 layup gave them a

three-point lead heading into the halftime break. The teams traded runs throughout the third quarter and ended the period in a tied ball game. The game remained close until halfway through the fourth quarter when the Tigers went on a run to put the game out of reach.

“We’re all disappointed,” head coach Allison Guth said. “I truly believe that we had no offensive flow in the second half, and that’s not something you can do against a good team like that … We had no execution of our defensive gameplan in the second half so that’s something we have to be accountable about and get back in the lab and work on.”

Turnovers, an Achilles’ heel for the Elis all season, reared its ugly head again against Princeton. The Bulldogs gave the ball up 24 times, leading to 25 transition points for the Tigers. Yale also struggled with getting the ball inside to Emsbo. The junior forward, who leads the team in scoring, scored 11 points on just eight shots.

Guth and Emsbo both credited Princeton’s defensive scheme. The Tigers’ post defenders tried to deny her the ball, and when she did catch it, defenders often arrived to double-team her right away.

“It’s frustrating,” Emsbo said.

“They did a great job. I think I

need to do a better job of getting open and finding other ways to score because we had a really tough time getting it into the paint today. It’s going to be a lot of film, and I’m going to try to figure out how I can get open for my teammates because that’s a pretty important part of the game.”

Meyers, the Ivy League’s leading scorer, finished the game with 22 points, six rebounds, three steals and one assist. Beyond the numbers, she seemed to control the flow of the game throughout, and also seemed to fluster Yale’s Jenna Clark ’24 with her defensive presence.

15 of Meyers’ points came in the first half, but her second-half

scoring came at timely moments.

She hit a 3-pointer with just over six minutes left in the game to give the Tigers a one-point lead, and then banked in another 3-pointer with two minutes left on the clock to put her team up by eight, essentially putting the game out of reach.

Cunningham, who currently sits fifth in the Ivy League in scoring, also had a big game, including 13 second-half points.

Even with their bench contributing just one point, Princeton scored the ball efficiently all game. The shot-making from Meyers and Cunningham alone seemed to cover up any flaws in the Tigers’ offense. “[Meyers and Cunningham] are great players, all respect to them,” Clark said. “They’re amazing shooters. Abbey has some of the best pull-ups I’ve ever seen. We just missed some assignments and they made some really tough shots.”

The Bulldogs were shorthanded for the matchup, as Christen McCann ’25 missed the game with an injury. Her presence was missed greatly, as McCann often guards the opposing team’s best scorer, while also providing some scoring punch.

Klara Aastroem ’24 picked up some of the slack, pouring in 13 points, but ultimately it wasn’t enough for the Bulldogs. The defeat means that the Blue and White have now lost to the top two teams in the league, but still remain solidly in third place in the Ivy League standings. The game snapped a five-game winning streak for the Bulldogs.

“I think it was a chance to prove what our identity is and who we are as a team,” Emsbo said. “And I don’t think we completed that goal today … We know that not only are we up there with those teams, we can beat those teams, and we can be at the top of the league and we just let it go. That’s really frustrating.”

The Bulldogs will look to rediscover their winning ways on Feb. 4 at Dartmouth.

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

Yale beats Fairfield, Buffalo by seven point margin

BY GRAYSON LAMBERT CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Last weekend, Yale’s men’s tennis team (2–0, 0–0 Ivy) had a successful outing with 7–0 wins against Buffalo University (0–3, 0–0 Mid-American) on Friday and Fairfield University (1-1, 0-0 Metro-Atlantic) on Sunday.

M. TENNIS The team was also originally slated to play Temple University on Saturday, but the match was postponed due to the inclement weather brought by the Nor’easter. Prior to this weekend, the men’s most recent regular season match was a 7–0 victory against Fairfield on Mar. 7, 2020. This weekend brought the first collegiate regular season matches for the team’s four freshmen and two sophomores: Shervin Dehmoubed ’25, Luke Neal ’25, Walker Oberg ’25, Aidan Reilly ’25, Theo Dean ’24 and Renaud Lefevre ’24.

“It was exciting to see so many guys get their first wins in team competition with the Yale jersey on,” men’s tennis head coach Chris Drake said. “The guys played with a lot of enthusiasm, and they were really excited to represent Yale in team competition and I think that showed in their play.”

According to Drake, the team’s priority this season is to increase its competitive level both within the Ivy League and on a national level. With a quality squad and months of consistent drilling and practice matches, the team is optimistic of a winning season. Standouts include Michael Sun ’23, who ranked 69th in the ITA Collegiate Tennis Division I Men’s National Rankings in December. Sun, currently playing the top line of singles, noted his pride in his current ranking, but recognizes the constant room for improvement.

LUKAS FLIPPO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

After almost 23 months away from regular season competition, the Yale men’s tennis team kicks off its hopeful journey towards an Ivy title and national recognition.

In an interview, Sun also said he missed his team’s camaraderie and “was especially excited for all of the underclassmen who got their first college wins this weekend.”

Luke Neal ’25 expressed that the team’s entire year has been building up to these dual matches, where he appreciated the competition and his team’s energy. This weekend, Neal was sixth in the ladder. However, he noted that the line-up is constantly changing, which incentivizes players to keep their skills fresh and continue to improve throughout the season.

Aidan Reilly ’25 attributes the team’s success this weekend to their “willingness to push each other to improve.” He also recognized his teammates’ dedica-

tion to putting in extra work as a driving factor in their success.

Reilly identified head coach Chris Drake and assistant coach Eduardo Ugalde’s focus on each player’s individual tennis needs as a primary driver in the team’s wins.

Walker Oberg ’25 echoed the same gratitude held for the coaches, particularly the team’s volunteer assistant coach Ryan Cheng.

Even with the team’s success this past weekend, the players are still determined to continue improving their abilities. Reilly, who played in the second line of doubles with Theo Dean ’24 this weekend, said that the team has a long way to go to be in a position to compete against and “put pressure on some of the top teams in the country.”

According to Neal, the team’s goal is to accumulate at least four wins in the Ivy League season. Reilly suggested that in order to see the results that he and his team are hoping for, each player must “maintain individual improvement.”

Coach Drake shares that this upcoming weekend will be a test for the team. “Different environments bring new challenges, and [the team] will be tested against both Butler and Indiana.” However, Drake has full confidence in his players and is eager to see how the team responds to their upcoming challenge.

Next weekend, both the men’s and women’s tennis teams will be travelling to Indiana. There, the men will take on the Butler Bulldogs (2–2, 0–0 Big East) on Friday,

Feb. 4 at 2 p.m. and Indiana (2–0, 0–0 Big Ten) on Saturday, Feb. 5 at 11 a.m. The women will compete against the Hoosiers on Friday at 5 p.m. and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (3–2, 0–0 Atlantic Coast) on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. The men’s team’s first conference match will be on April 3 at Brown (4–1, 0–0 Ivy) and their first home conference match will take place on April 16 against Cornell (4–0, 0–0).

Last weekend, the Yale women’s tennis team (2–0, 0–0 Ivy) opened its 2022 spring season with a 6–1 victory over Boston University (1–2, 0–0 Patriot) and a 7–0 triumph over Quinnipiac University (0–2, 0–0 Metro Atlantic).

Contact GRAYSON LAMBERT at grayson.lambert@yale.edu.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“Fame and fortune are as hard to find as a lightning strike.”

P. N. ELROD AMERICAN NOVELIST

Shortlist for Breyer successor includes three Black female YLS grads

BY EDA AKER AND DANTE MOTLEY STAFF REPORTERS Last week, Justice Stephen Breyer announced his plans to retire from the United States Supreme Court after the Court’s 2020-21 term, leaving a vacuum that could potentially be filled by a Yale Law School alum.

Following Breyer’s announcement, President Joe Biden publicly stated that he intends to nominate the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court as Breyer’s replacement — a promise which he first made on the 2020 campaign trail. A speculated shortlist for Breyer’s successor includes three Yale Law School graduates: Leondra Kruger LAW ’01, Candace Jackson-Akiwumi LAW ’05 and Eunice C. Lee LAW ’96.

“Breyer was a tremendous justice, his presence will be missed,” said former Dean of Yale Law School Robert Post LAW ’77. “He was a Harvard law professor, and that allowed him to have a good relationship with justices like Justice [John] Roberts, who respected Breyer’s confidence and respected his insights. Of course they divided on political spots, nevertheless, at the margin, that was important. I hope and I trust that whoever Biden nominates will be equally qualified and influential.”

Kruger is currently a member of the California State Supreme Court and served in the Justice Departments of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Jackson-Akiwumi is a circuit court judge on the Seventh Circuit. Lee sits on the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals, overseeing New York.

Former Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse LAW ’78 told the News that Breyer’s age made his retirement likely, and his decision to retire during Biden’s presidency allowed the Democratic Senate to have the opportunity to fill the seat.

Nevertheless, Greenhouse said that having a Democratic Black woman replace Breyer will likely not make a difference due to the “dominance of the six conservatives” on the Court.

“He has been a voice of reason and rationality who modeled the importance of paying attention to facts

rather than slogans,” said Greenhouse. “The reality is that the Court has been politicized, and while Justice Breyer certainly hoped that would not turn out to be the case, he is smart enough to realize that his hope was not fulfilled.”

Post said that he found it “courageous” that Breyer opted to retire when he could still perform a job that he loves, and said that he believes Breyer’s decision “was the right thing.”

Post told the News that the Court has been an “object of political mobilization by the Right” for decades, and that it has served as a “policymaking institution.” He added that presidential administrations have historically aimed to create harmony within the judiciary, and have done so by having the makeup of the court reflect the demographics of the country.

“I’ll select the nominee worthy of Justice Bryer’s legacy, excellence and decency,” Biden said in his Sunday address. “While I’ve been studying candidates’ backgrounds and writings, I have made no decision except one. The person I will nominate will be someone of extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.”

Biden’s announcement has sparked controversy. In an ABC News/Ipsos poll, over three-quarters of U.S. adults who responded said Biden should “consider all possible nominees,” rather than only considering nominees who are Black women.

Sara Campbell ’22, who has previously worked on judicial nominations at an advocacy organization, said she feels that the announcement further politicized the nomination process.

“The idea that the concept of nominating a Black woman, or being committed to nominating a Black woman, is somehow a denial of the qualifications of people who belong to different racial or ethnic groups, or people who have different gender identities I think is logically laughable but is obviously a headline,” Campbell said. “That’s been very frustrating to hear.”

TIM TAI /STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Following Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement, the speculative shortlist to replace him contains three Black female YLS graduates.

Campbell said that she has been keeping up with the whole process as she is a Black woman who wants to go into law, and highlighted the importance of representation on the bench.

Biden’s promise recognizes the barriers that Black women must overcome to join the small group of elite federal judges. With 4.7 percent of lawyers in America being Black and 37 percent of lawyers being female, both groups are disproportionately underrepresented in legal professions.

“I think it’s important to have people in the court who have lived experiences, or who can understand these lived experiences, of the people who have the most to lose in these big upcoming court cases that we’ve seen in the last couple of years that really impact the lives of Black women,” Campbell said.

Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge, was confirmed in 1966. Since then, only 3.7 percent of federal judges have been Black women.

Biden said that the nomination of a Black woman to the Supreme Court is “long overdue.”

“I’m inspired,” Abi Ndikum ’24 said. “I come from Prince George’s County, Maryland, a predominantly African-American community. I grew up seeing Black people assume high positions, but when I went to boarding school in Massachusetts, this became an anomaly. Suddenly it seemed a ‘privilege’ to see Black women in such high positions. It seemed as though Black women had to put in double the effort to be recognized.”

Ndikum added that seeing successful Black women be recognized for their accomplishments and be considered for the Supreme Court encourages her to “keep working hard to open up space for others like [herself] to go even further.”

However, with every Supreme Court Justice currently holding a degree from an Ivy League institution other than Amy Coney Barrett, many still have concerns about the academic diversity of the nation’s highest court. All of the shortlisted

candidates except for one also hold Ivy League degrees.

Campbell emphasized that many people from a wide range of schools are qualified for judgeships. However, she said that these more wellknown institutions teach students how to “play the game” and provide easy means to be put on shortlists in the first place. Campbell said this is indicative of larger issues in the nomination process.

“Yale is an extremely elite Law School in the sense that the students who graduate here become leaders in whatever field they go into,” Post said. “We produce a lot of outstanding graduates. We punch way above our weight and so the students who go to the Law School, far more than statistically, have gotten acquainted with high positions.”

A total of 11 Yale Law School alumni have served on the Supreme Court.

Contact EDA AKER at eda.aker@yale.edu and DANTE MOTLEY at dante.motley@yale.edu .

NHPD approves more progressive use of force policy

BY HANNAH QU STAFF REPORTER The New Haven Police Department’s updated use of force policy has prompted city residents to reconsider the case of a police officer who punched an unarmed man during arrest last year and was promoted earlier this month.

Justin Cole was promoted to Sergeant on Jan. 18 during an online Board of Police Commissioners meeting. This promotion came a year after he was involved in allegations of excessive use of force against Shawn Marshall, who Cole arrested during a commercial eviction.

After being struck first, Cole repeatedly punched Marshall in the head until another officer intervened. The new policy, written by Captain David Zannelli and city Police Commissioner Tracey Meares, was approved by the Board of Police Commissioners last month. In response to Bill 6004 Police Accountability Act and community feedback, the policy emphasizes that the use of force must be “necessary” and “proportional” to the cause, and that police officers should employ de-escalation and mitigation techniques to the greatest extent practicable.

Cole’s promotion sparked debate as to whether his use of force fit with the new policy.

“We are a community policing agency.” Zannelli said, “officers do deescalate, but that’s not going to solve every use of force scenario…

And we do our best to have the policies that not only the community wants, but policies that are going to keep police officers safe.”

Does the new policy explain Cole’s behavior differently?

A Youtube video shows that after being kicked by Marshall, Cole grabbed Marshall by the neck, punched him three times in the head and pepper sprayed him. Officer Ashley McKernan intervened to stop Cole from attacking Mar-

shall further. Security guard Jolisha Troutman, who was on the scene, shouted, “that’s not fair.” After the video circled widely on social media, an Internal Affair investigation against Cole was launched on Feb 3, 2021. After seven months of investigation, the report shows that the “the alleged act did occur, but the officers engaged in no misconduct because the act was lawful, justified and proper.” Cole was determined to be exonerated.

However, the new policy requires officers to “use only the level of force necessary to achieve legitimate, lawful purposes,” and only use it to the proportional level of threat.

“What necessary means is that the force was necessary because there’s no other alternatives.” Zannelli told the News.

According to Zannelli, during the IA investigation, NHPD brought in the use of force experts that were trained at Police Officer Standards and Training Council. The experts looked at the two hours of body camera footage and transcripts from the officers, and they decided the use of force was reasonable and not excessive.

Zannelli told the News that many people did not watch the two-hour camera footage before making the comment that Cole did not try to de-escalate. According to Zannelli and the IA report, Cole and his partner tried to appease Marshall, carried his bags out and offered to document his complaint, while Marshall’s behavior was deemed unstable and non-compliant.

“Was it necessary? Well, you know, Officer Cole was struck first. ” Zannelli said. “We have a diverse [group of use of force experts], men, women from all backgrounds, and they look at it and they say this is what officer Cole was trained to do, and given the facts and circumstances of this scenario. It was reasonable…it was necessary at the time based on what was going on. So it’s our opinion that he attempted to de-escalate, and the

force that was used was only after he was struck.”

McKernan, who intervened and stopped Cole, told investigators she thought Cole’s level of force​ “wasn’t necessary at that time.”

The new policy also states that “the use of a choke hold or neck restraint may only be used when the use of deadly physical force is necessary.”

However, in the IA report, the city use-of-force trained expert Robert Hwang stated that “it was not a choke hold when Officer Cole placed his hand on Marshall’s neck.”

Barbara Fair, a longtime New Haven activist, was disheartened but not surprised by Cole’s promotion.

“To see Officer Cole with several publicized incidents of what most would describe as police brutality be promoted is not uncommon within NHPD history.” Fair wrote to the News. “Due to the lack of transparency and the department’s inability to police itself and hold brother officers accountable for rogue behavior these incidents of police violence will continue.

The city’s response to police brutality has always been paying settlements, silencing victims and never holding officers accountable for their behavior.”

Police officers who violate the new policy will face consequences from suspension to termination on a case-by-case basis.

Other aspects of the new policy and how effective it might be Zannelli told the News that the new policy prioritizes the sanctity of human life. Therefore, deadly force and firearms will be prohibited for the purpose of protecting property.

The policy also states that officers are prohibited from creating Jeopardy, namely situations created by the officers in which they needlessly put themselves in a position where they must use deadly force to protect themselves.

“We’re not out there to hurt people.” Zannelli said. “We’re there to

YALE DAILY NEWS

The promoted officer hit and pepper sprayed the unarmed man after being kicked while NHPD new use of force policy requires necessary cause. help them. And we want the community to know that as well. So working together with the communities, we just hope that’s better community policing relations.”

In addition, the new policy requires police officers to render aid to the extent that their training allows and request an emergency medical service. Officers are also required to intervene in any manner they can when they witness other officers use excessive or unreasonable force. Officers are advised to be mindful of their body language and tone of voice upon arrival at a scene and throughout their interaction with subjects, complainants and witnesses.

Fair expressed frustration with the fact that the updated guidelines “carry language which remains open for officer interpretation.”

“It continues to allow too much discretion to officers to decide when force is necessary,” Fair said.

“Instead of the goal being non-violent and community safety policing, its focus remains on measuring how much police violence is allow-

able under the law. I expected more from this new commission and so it is disappointing.”

John DeCarlo, professor and director of the masters program in criminal justice at the University of New Haven, agreed that while New Haven is among the cities that have more progressive policies, and that the new use-offorce policy is a good start, more changes to regulations on the state level are needed.

“I would go a step further,” DeCarlo said. “if we want to be really progressive, we cannot simply depend on municipalities… the state of Connecticut makes regulations that train officers. Unless we are regulating the use of force from the very beginning, we.. are waiting until an officer does something illegal or harmful, and then we have a victim.”

Seven officers and detectives were promoted to the level of sergeant on Jan 18.

Contact HANNAH QU at hannah.qu@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

PHOTOS BY ZOE BERG AND LUKAS FLIPPO

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

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PAGE 13

“They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.” CLINT EASTWOOD AMERICAN ACTOR

Professors reflect on time at Yale-NUS

BY MIRANDA JEYARETNAM AND ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTERS Yale’s partnership with the National University of Singapore is coming to an end, taking with it the island country’s only liberal arts program. Half a world away, Yale professors are looking back on their stays in Singapore with a mixture of sorrow and fondness.

With the announcement of Yale-NUS’ disaffiliation from Yale and the subsequent decision that the replacement, tentatively named NUS College, will not retain its liberal arts core curriculum or requirement, it is likely that the school’s tradition of hosting various United States-based Yale faculty will eventually come to a close.

“It was the most interesting thing I have ever done or will ever do,” said astronomy professor Charles Bailyn, who served as the inaugural dean of faculty at Yale-NUS. “I made a wider range of friends and had more interesting and surprising conversations in three years at Yale-NUS than I have in thirty years at Yale.”

The News spoke to six professors who have either taught as visiting faculty or gave lectures at Yale-NUS since its establishment in 2011. All said that they were initially surprised about the partnership’s dissolution, and several praised the school’s strong grounding in the liberal arts. Many said they would like to return as visitors before 2025, when YaleNUS will officially merge with the University Scholars’ Programme at the National University of Singapore, or NUS. Partnership with Yale A regular flow between New Haven and Singapore was part of the partnership’s founding vision, with visiting professors playing a particularly crucial role during the school’s early years as Yale-NUS grew its own faculty ranks.

Throughout the pandemic, Singapore’s strict entry quarantine laws made visiting near impossible. Philip Gorski, chair of sociology and director of the New Haven-based Yale-NUS office, said that arrangements are being made for faculty visits to resume next fall. Three Yale-NUS faculty are currently taking sabbaticals studying at Yale, he added.

“One thing we are really committed to is, until 2025, keeping the ‘Yale’ in the Yale-NUS experience, and part of that is keeping travel open in both directions,” Gorski said. “We’re going to do whatever we can to keep the partnership vital.”

Professors said students at Yale-NUS were as committed to the liberal arts education, if not more, than Yale students. Gorski described his students as “voracious” readers. Tina Lu, head of Pauli Murray College and professor of East Asian languages and literature who visited Singapore in 2015, said her students were “full of a pioneer spirit”, noting that many of them had chosen the fledgling school over top universities across Asia.

A sense of community “Yale-NUS is a much tighter community than Yale, among both students and faculty/staff,” Bailyn wrote in an email. “I think this stems both from its relatively small size and because it is somewhat embattled within the society — there’s a sense of ‘we’re all in this together’ even when people disagree.”

Yale-NUS students, many of whom come from across Singapore as well as other Asian countries, arrive with a different collective knowledge base than their American counterparts, several professors said. Gorski, who taught the sociology of religion, noted that students were more familiar with the intricacies of Buddhism and Islam than American Yale students are, for example.

Many visiting professors teach courses within the College’s core curriculum, though some also create adapted versions of their offerings at Yale. Lu, for example, taught an undergraduate version of her graduate-level seminar on Chinese novels.

Life in Singapore For several professors, Singapore’s cosmopolitan and multi-racial culture were big draws. Yale-NUS arranges for visiting faculty to live in apartments in Kent Vale, a de facto expat enclave situated right next to campus at the heart of Singapore’s Clementi district. Most sights are within walking distance, and the island’s sprawling mass transit system makes travelling around the city relatively simple. Singapore is also particularly suitable for short-term faculty visits, several noted, because English is universally spoken.

Faculty sometimes visit alone, though the school accommodates spouses and children as well. Bailyn moved to Singapore for three years with his family when the college officially opened in 2013.

When Lu headed to Singapore to teach a semester-long course in Chinese literature, she brought along her husband and five children. Lu remembers her family’s

YALE DAILY NEWS

In light of the August announcement that the Yale-NUS partnership would be dissolved, New Haven-based faculty who have spent time in Singapore spoke about their experiences teaching and living in another country. time with fondness, noting that the experience afforded her kids a special sense of independence.

“It was great to travel, go abroad because [my children] got to see their parents jump on the wrong bus, be the fumbling incompetents they are, getting used to a new country,” Lu said.

“Being a stranger even if for just a few months is a great experience for grown-ups and kids.”

Singaporean cuisine was also a “high point” for Lu, who recalled lining up early in the morning at food stalls for fish congee and laksa. “It’s almost like you can’t find bad food,” she said.

Short-term faculty visits Family life and administrative appointments in New Haven can make it difficult for interested faculty to commit to semester-long visits in Singapore. Some, however, make the nearly twenty-hour journey for just a few weeks, often right before the start of Yale’s fall semester. During that time they can conduct short-term research in collaboration with Yale-NUS faculty, or give lectures or college teas similar to those held in New Haven.

Shawkat Toorawa, chair of the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department who grew up in Singapore, jumped at the first chance he got to visit his home country after coming to Yale in 2017. His two-week mini-course about medieval Baghdad, he said, was “fabulous.” Though taking his course amounted to an intensive class added on top of regular semesterly coursework, enroll-

ment was surprisingly high, he said. Students seemed “hungry” for knowledge to a degree that he felt wouldn’t have been cultivated in other environments.

Scott Holley, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale, was invited by Yale-NUS in March 2019 to hold a lecture and attend a tea. Holley visited both YaleNUS and NUS, where he visited a lab specializing in a new microscopy technique.

The future of the partnership All six faculty said that they were disappointed with the dissolution of the Yale-NUS partnership. Several added that they were surprised by the announcement; Gorski recalled that by many metrics, the partnership was developing quite successfully with a growing group of quality faculty. He lamented that the partnership’s conclusion would make professor exchange between Yale and NUS more complicated and also expressed sadness at NUS’ decision to ultimately move away from a liberal arts education.

Several professors, including Toorawa, noted that they would try and visit again before the school’s closure in 2025, though those with administrative posts like Lu may find it more difficult to leave New Haven for extended periods of time.

Benefits of the exchange could have gone both ways, Gorski added. Students and faculty conceived of philosophical and liter-

ary canon differently than their American counterparts, adding more Asian and global influences to typical syllabi of Shakespeare.

“Had the college stayed open, it might have begun to have an effect on Yale,” Gorski said.

“They were re-thinking the canons, the lines between various disciplines that would accommodate a truly global community and perspective.”

Elihu Rubin, an associate professor of urbanism at the Yale School of Architecture, echoed Gorski’s sentiments. Rubin taught a week-long “short course” on American Architecture and Urbanism at Yale-NUS and said he was “saddened” at the closure of Yale-NUS, specifically because it cut short the growing partnership between Yale and Yale-NUS’ Urban Studies programs.

Bailyn concurred, noting that the partnership’s dissolution may eliminate opportunities for future Yale-NUS students.

“I think it is very sad that future generations of students and faculty will not have the opportunities we had over this past decade to experience what I think was a remarkable institution,” Bailyn said.

As of this month, there have been nearly 50 visiting faculty members from Yale to Yale-NUS, according to the Yale-NUS website.

Contact MIRANDA JEYARETNAM at miranda.jeyaretnam@yale.edu and ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

Yale taps top Lamont aide to spearhead entrepreneurship

BY SARAH COOK STAFF REPORTER Josh Geballe ’97 ’02 MBA has spent the last two years attempting to modernize Connecticut’s state government. Now, he’s headed to Yale to push entrepreneurship and innovation at the University and in New Haven.

Geballe, who has served as a top aide to Governor Ned Lamont as the state’s chief operating officer, will become the University’s first associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation when he begins his new position on Feb. 14. His post in the Lamont cabinet included extensive involvement in the state’s pandemic response. Geballe formerly worked as an executive at IBM and at Thermo Fisher Scientific as vice president and general manager of the digital science division.

“Josh Geballe has been an extraordinary leader for this state, an extraordinary leader at DAS, extraordinary leader in chief operating officer and a really important friend for me during an incredibly complex time,” Lamont said at a press conference on Tuesday.

“One of the things that makes him so special is that he put together an extraordinary team of his own, and that’s the mark of a real leader.”

According to a press release from the University, as part of his new associate provost role, Geballe will act as the managing director of the Office of Cooperative Research and “partner closely” with the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking and its executive director Clare Leinweber.

Geballe said in the Tuesday press conference that the new position was created in the fall, and it was a “dream job” for him. He told reporters that he hopes to provide support to existing efforts at the University.

“This role is intended to help enhance and provide additional support to the faculty and the students and even people in the broader community to help them take that innovation and launch it out into the world and have the greatest impact,” Geballe said. “This will often take the form of new startup businesses being created in and around New Haven and create jobs and import talent and capital and help grow the local economy and create opportunities.”

Leinweber wrote to the News that she is looking forward to working with Geballe in “expanding and deepening innovation pathways” through the work of Tsai CITY. Garret Sheehan, the CEO of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, wrote to the News that he is also excited to see Geballe in his new position.

“Josh has had a tremendously positive impact on our state over the last two years as he steadily supported Governor Lamont through the pandemic, but I actually believe Josh will be even more impactful to Connecticut’s future in this new role.” Sheehan wrote to the News.

Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Howard Forman told the News he is excited about how the new role Geballe is filling will centralize entrepreneurship and innovation efforts at the University.

Forman told the News that while there has been a managing director for the Office of Cooperative Research in the past, the office has historically contained entrepreneurs who were not “100 percent” working for the University.

“I think it has been desperately needed for a long time,” Forman told the News, “I mean, you know, I’ve been here 26 years right now, and during that time, entrepreneurship has been scattered around the university in different places.”

According to the University’s press release, OCR has generated $3.7 billion in venture capital investments and over 6,000 patents. The press release also cited the University’s entrepreneurship efforts with the 101 College Street bioscience tower and the founding of Alexion pharmaceuticals and Arvinas Inc. by Yale faculty as recent successes upon which Geballe is excited to expand.

Forman noted that significant work has been done in recent years at Yale to promote entrepreneurship and innovation, including the establishment of Tsai CITY, the development of the Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology and the recruiting of Kyle Jensen at the School of Management.

However, Forman said the new position will allow for a point person for anyone wanting to work in entrepreneurship, which Yale has never before had. Forman hopes that in his role Geballe will be able to advance the University’s work with startups both at Yale and in the city of New Haven.

“Yale has attracted enormous dollars of investment and research funds for a lot of these startups and we’re going to continue to do that and if we want to be successful in University, if we want to continue to support the city of New Haven, and the state of Connecticut, it really helps a lot to have somebody with his talents in his role,” Forman said.

Leinweber echoed that this new role will help centralize the University’s vision.

In announcing Geballe’s departure, Lamont emphasized the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation in the state of Connecticut, and he said Geballe’s work at Yale could help the area become more like areas such as the Research Triangle in North Carolina and Silicon Valley.

“We have some work to-do as a state to make sure we keep our entrepreneurial juices going,” Lamont said.

“That often starts with an amazing education system and an extraordinary university system. We have one of the best in the world at Yale University and Josh is going to be making sure those extraordinary ideas have an innovative aspect to them, have a commercial aspect to them.

What you see at the Research Triangle, what you see at Silicon Valley, you’re going to see the next generation platform right here in the state of Connecticut and Josh Geballe has an opportunity to play a key role there.”

But Patrick Hayes ’24 noted to the News that there is already significant entrepreneurship in New Haven, pointing to BioHaven as an example. Hayes said he hopes to see Geballe focus his attention on support-

ing inclusivity and equity within New Haven’s entrepreneurial scene.

“It’s not a challenge that we need to have this big industry, it’s kind of here, but there’s a serious lack of opportunity for people that aren’t in the Yale bubble,” Hayes said.

Hayes worked for Data Haven, a non-profit focused on economic development, this past summer, where he worked on projects to raise funds for businesses run by people of color.

He told the News that he sees the benefit in using faculty research for entrepreneurship, but he hopes that Geballe will also engage with New Haven organizations working on economic development, especially those supporting Black communities.

“If you’re really trying to engage with the city as a whole, which is also something it seems like the University claims they want to do, there are a lot of other partners in the city that they really need to engage with,” Hayes told the News.

Hayes pointed to the University’s recent voluntary contribution increase to the city of New Haven, as well as its creation of the Center for Inclusive Growth to address long-term inequity in New Haven and promote sustainable economic development, as recent progress towards these efforts and signs that the University might be moving in the right direction.

Geballe left the private sector to begin his role in the Lamont administration in early 2019.

Contact SARAH COOK at sarah.cook@yale.edu .

W BASKETBALL Columbia 65 Dartmouth 46

M HOCKEY Brown 2 Cornell 1

SPORTS W HOCKEY MAKING IT PRO In the growing market for professional women’s hockey, the Elis will hope to profit from a salary increase in the Premier Hockey Federation. Five former Bulldogs currently play in the league — the most of any other Ivy.

W SQUASH Princeton 5 Columbia 4

W SWIM & DIVE Princeton 202 Harvard 98

M BASKETBALL Penn 78 Harvard 74

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

M HOCKEY BULLDOGS IN BEIJING Former Yale men’s hockey players Brian O’Neill ’12 and Kenny Agostino ’14 were named to the U.S. Olympic Team for the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games. The pair currently play for the Kontinental Hockey League.

“I was able to just wedge in [and] get to a space where I was comfortable… That’s a shot that I work on a lot, so that’s a comfortable shot, and I’m just glad it fell and we got the win.”

AZAR SWAIN ’22 M BASKETBALL

‘It Feels Like Flying:’ Iszac Henig ’23 soars on women’s swim team ISZAC HENIG

COURTESY OF YALE ATHLETICS

Iszac Henig ’23, star sprinter of the Yale women’s swimming and diving team, speaks about his journey to the water and navigating the swimming landscape as a transgender man.

BY TIGERLILY HOPSON AND TOIA CONDE RODRIGUES DA CUNHA STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER When Iszac Henig ’23 dives into the water he feels like he is flying. When he was young, he spent most of his time by the ocean near his home in Menlo Park, California. He loved playing in the sand and looking for the creatures in the tide pools. As he grew older, he fell in love with the feeling of cold water rushing around his body as he sped through the pool.

Now a student-athlete who swims the “short, fast stuff ” on the Yale women’s swimming and diving team, Henig has been a star

player throughout the season. For the Bulldogs, he swims the 50, 100 and 200-yard freestyle events as well as the 100-yard butterfly. He has already set several program and pool records despite the cancelled 2020-21 season.

This past weekend, against Harvard and Princeton, Henig won the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 48.37 seconds, starting off the team on its path to victory, where they defeated Harvard 21189 and Princeton 182-118. But for Henig, it is not so much about the wins as it is about the joy.

“Swimming has just brought me so much joy, so much community,” Henig said. “I think everyone deserves access to those things.”

STAT OF THE WEEK

1.59

This season has been an unprecedented one for Henig — both as a swimmer and as a person. Not only has he been a key player in rocketing the women’s swim team to win after win, but he has also had to navigate coming out as a transgender man.

This was something Henig came to terms with when he took a gap year over the pandemic.

During his time away from New Haven, he continued to train as well as self-reflect. From home, he sent a video to his team, coming out. Henig said he was met with a “phenomenal” response and was sent resounding love and support from his teammates and coaches.

“Iszac Henig is an outstanding person, student, athlete and teammate,” head coach Jim Henry wrote in an email to the News.

“We are all fortunate to have him on our team. He leads by example every day with his commitment to the sport and this team.”

Women’s captain Ashley Loomis ’22 emphasized that Henig brings a “tremendous amount of positivity and support” to the team.

According to Loomis, Henig shows up to meets and practices “ready to do the best for the team,” while also fostering confidence in his teammates.

“We as a swim team strive to create a supportive and safe environment for every single member.

Iszac has been on the forefront of that goal,” men’s captain Nathan Stern ’23 said. “The team culture would not be as strong as it is if it weren’t for Iszac’s presence.”

Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who competes on the Penn women’s swim team, made headlines after a string of record-breaking performances, sparking debate over the fairness of transgender athletes in competitive sports.

Henig found his own name in national news after beating Thomas in a race on Jan. 8. The attention has been difficult, Henig said, but the love and embrace of his team and other support networks, such as family and friends, has helped get him through challenging times.

According to NCAA guidelines, a transgender man who is not taking testosterone in relation to gender transition “may participate on a men’s or women’s team” as a student athlete. However, a transgender man who undergoes testostrone treatment can then compete on a men’s team, but is “no longer eligible to compete on a woman’s team.”

Henig is in full compliance with these rules.

“It is tough existing as a man on a women’s team,” Henig said.

“I think that it is difficult in two ways. I think people’s perceptions of it are not necessarily understanding right away. And, on the other hand for me, there’s a piece of it that feels a little bit incongruent. But, my team has been incredibly supportive.”

The California native found his love for swimming at a local rec center, where he first came across a summer swim team called the “Dolphins.” Henig, enraptured by the dolphin suits which the team members wore, begged his mom for one. When his mom told him he had to be on the team to get a suit, he quickly signed up. Henig started swimming competitively over the summer at the age of four, and at nine started competing year-round, falling more in love with the sport every day.

In middle and high school he continued to swim, practicing six days a week. With Dana Kirk, a former Olympian, as his coach, he led his high school team as captain and set school records in the 50, 100, 200 and 500-yard freestyle races.

Henig also qualified for the 2016 Olympic Trials in the 50-meter freestyle event. The nerves got the best of the 15-year-old, who flinched after taking his marks during the preliminary round. He was disqualified from the race and Olympic contention.

When Henig visited Yale, he said he “couldn’t stop smiling.” By his senior year of high school he knew he was recruited and set his mind on swimming for the Blue and White.

He said he loved the team, the coaching staff and the University’s academic and athletic rigor, which he mentioned are both incredibly important to his life and served as the deciding factor in his decision to enroll at Yale.

Outside of the pool, Henig spends his time working in a paleobiology lab where he examines “60 million year old fish teeth and shark scales.” He first fell in love with marine biology in high school, recalling the California beaches and his adoration for the waters and creatures within them. The University lacks a Marine Biology department, so he majors in Earth and Planetary Science and is a part of the energy studies certificate program. According to Henig, balancing academics and athletics ultimately comes down to “really solid time management.”

“I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t sacrifice things for my sport, you know, like the Friday nights out.

But, it is so worth it to have this team around me and the opportunity to swim at this collegiate level which I’m incredibly grateful for,” Henig said.

In the pool, Henig had a successful 2019-20 season, when he finished in third place at the Ivy League Championships in the 100-yard freestyle and second in the same category at the annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet.

But it was this season that he really came to play.

Last month, Henig set a new pool record at Penn’s Sheerr Pool in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 22.76 seconds, breaking a record set 32 years ago.

Earlier in the season against Columbia, he also delivered a strong performance by completing the 100-yard freestyle in 49.30 seconds, setting a Kiphuth Pool record.

He went on to improve his personal best in the event with a time of 48.03 seconds in a meet against Brown in Providence.

Recently, he was also a key player in this season’s HYP meet with a performance that allowed Yale to seal the victory, with a time of 48.37 seconds in the 100 yard freestyle.

“Those were some pretty cool moments for me,” Henig recalled.

“I had done a lot of work in the fall this whole season, just trying to get faster and I think seeing it pay off was absolutely incredible.

And being able to put my name but also put Yale’s name up on the wall and then to have my name in the Yale record book is really special for me.”

But, Henig maintains that his favorite memories at Yale are the small moments. He said what he remembers is not what his times were but getting out of the water and hugging his teammates.

Throughout the past year, Henig said that he has learned the importance of living life authentically, and how by doing so he helps other people do the same. He wishes this is something he could have told his younger self, and he now hopes to pass along the message to younger swimmers, younger trans people and younger trans swimmers, “to not be afraid of living their own lives.”

Henig said that getting in touch with that part of himself for his own life, “made everything easier.”

“It made getting dressed in the morning easier. It made me feel better about myself as I walked through the world ... I think being able to live my authentic life was incredibly important. And also being able to live my authentic life in sports,” Henig said. “For me, that was life saving.”

But, at the end of the day, Henig said he is “really just some guy.”

A guy who loves the ocean. A guy who loves swimming. A guy who loves to fly.

Contact TIGERLILY HOPSON at tigerlily.hopson@yale.edu and TOIA CONDE RODRIGUES DA CUNHA at toia. conderodriguesdacunha@yale.edu.

THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF POINTS ELLE HARTJE ’24 RECORDED PER GAME THIS SEASON, RANKING HER SIXTH IN THE COUNTRY IN THIS STAT.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022

WEEKEND // FERESHTEH GANJAVI

YOU CAN CALL ME “ANIMAL HEART”

// BY BRIAN ZHANG Dec. 19, 2016 Dear America,

When I saw you for the first time, I was 24 and pregnant with my third child.

I had nothing on me except my sister’s old Abercrombie T-shirt, but your highways full of Hondas and your cotton candy breath made me feel as though I had the entire world. A world for me and my children to gather, wade our feet into and call our very own.

You pulled me in, wrapped me so tightly in your imaginary California king bed that for just a few moments, I forgot what it had taken me to get here. What it felt like to carry a starving baby in one hand and hold a second child in another, covering his eyes as patrol guards beat my husband black and blue. I almost forgot what it felt like to cross Atlantic storms on a wooden boat, spending every minute I was not seasick praying that it would stay afloat.

At least I survived, I tried telling myself. At least I made it this far.

Little did I know, survival wasn’t a box for me to check off, be done with and put aside forever. It was far from over. Survival would be spending the next eight years living in your shadows, and survival would be dropping off love letters for you at the post office knowing that you were never going to write me back. And yet through it all, I still forgave you. I forgave you because you made sure my three kids went to school with the little backpacks they’ve always wanted, and I forgave you because you gave me friends whose shoulders I cried on when it got too much. They were other immigrants, refugees and emigrants that you had forgotten about, and they were people whose words and stories

stayed with me, kept me alive on nights I wanted to give up.

On nights like tonight. *** I’m rubbing my eyes. There is a loud banging outside my apartment door, and a voice is hollering that the police are here with a court order to arrest someone inside.

Groggy and half asleep, I stumble to the door in pitch blackness, unlocking it and turning the knob halfway before their words finally start to sink in. My blood curdles.

These are not the police. These are immigration officers. I freeze – my instinct to immediately relock the door – but it’s too late.

Two men barge in without warning, swinging the door open with incredible force and slamming it into my face. I feel my nose starting to bleed.

One of them tells me that it is time to leave, and I look down at my watch. It is currently 4 a.m.

In between constant “fucks,” “goddamns” and what I think is my name, I cannot process most of what the officers are saying, but I don’t need to. My hands, though numb, know exactly what to do.

They reach for my winter coat, working in silence but trembling ever so slightly at the thought of bullet against warm flesh. I dare not say a word, and I gesture for Tommy, Jordan and Liam to remain quiet. It is a moment that I have rehearsed a thousand times before in my sleep, but today I am unprepared. The sight of an officer grabbing my kids by their collars finally breaks me, and I cry. My kids.

It’s 4:03 a.m., and I am thinking about my three boys. I am sitting in the backseat of a car about to pull away, handcuffed. My hands and arms no longer have feeling in them, but that’s okay — touch isn’t the most important sense right now. Sirens are blaring, deafen-

ing me, but that’s okay too — hearing isn’t the most important sense right now either. All I care about is that I can still see the silhouettes of my children standing on the streets outside the car window, and I do.

Despite the blue and red lights, I see that Tommy, Jordan and Liam are holding hands, and they never looked more beautiful. My kids.

4:06 a.m., and I have no idea where I am being taken, no idea how the officers managed to find out about me. I start wondering if any of this would be happening if my husband hadn’t died.

4:12 a.m., the officers are slowing down the car at what seems to be a police station or a jail. It’s hard to tell the difference when I can’t think.

It’s 4:17 a.m. and I am praying in an empty prison cell. Every few minutes, these people in suits come in with their heads cocked — noses arched — asking me a bunch of questions and shoving papers in my face. I refuse to say or do anything, and one of them calls me “a cryptic.” He’s not wrong.

He doesn’t know that for people like me, our identities are animal hearts, ready to be hunted and served fresh, because everyone visiting the meat market today wants their foot in something “exotic.” Something a little veinier, soggier and more Frankensteinian than usual. But it doesn’t matter what he knows, or what everybody else knows. It never matters anyway, because I fight my battles alone. They will never know what my heartbeat feels like.

4:18 a.m., 4:19 a.m., 4:20 a.m. — the minutes tick by and I think I am dying. I can’t die. I need to be here for my kids. I need to keep going. I must keep going like all the other immigrants who made it. I must keep going — like my friend, Chen.

4:21 a.m. I am trying to remember the first time we met. Chen’s story starts playing in my head — at first in pieces, but now very clearly: *** Chen, a 31-year-old undocumented woman living in the U.S., wants to keep her first name anonymous for fear of deportation and other repercussions. All quotations were originally in Mandarin and then translated to English. 蛇头 was what her people called them. The phrase meant “snakehead” — used by Chinese undocumented immigrants to refer to those who helped “move” them along the many stops of their trek to the U.S. As a little girl, Chen was confused by why her older family friends, who immigrated illegally before her, were using such a condemning phrase for people who supposedly risked their own lives to help them. She explained that it wasn’t until journeying to the U.S. herself that she realized that these snakehead “helpers” were oftentimes the same people who raped, robbed and left immigrants murdered in the “middle of nowhere.”

Their help was far from voluntary, and they frequently turned their backs on the immigrants for little other reason than the fact that they were in a physical “position” to do it, according to Chen.

“We were helpless. Impregnated when we had nothing. All we could do was close our eyes and just bear it. But that was actually considered lucky,” she said. “Though I was only sexually assaulted, I have heard stories of people who were killed even after paying the snakeheads the full amount they requested. The snakeheads just randomly demanded more.”

For Chen, the “turbulence” she encountered in her immigration is something that she will

never forget: plane rides took her from Guangzhou to HongKong to Amsterdam to Honduras, where she was then driven to the border of Mexico. Her last stop was Houston, Texas. The entire way, the word 相 信, or trust, did not exist — and it still does not today as she continues living in the “shadows” of the country with her husband and two daughters. At 22, she left her rural home in China with nothing, in search of new “opportunities” in the States. She was dragging along a debt of “tens of thousands of dollars in travel fees,” a sum that made up her single father’s life savings and more. He needed to borrow from at least ten other families in the village, according to Chen.

For Chen, this sum had a “ticking time bomb slapped on top,” and it was a sum that needed to be paid back within the next two years of her arrival in the U.S. if she didn’t want her father “beaten” — her village house mobbed. Money was not an “easy thing to come by” in the villages, and villagers took “things like loans extremely, extremely seriously,” Chen said.

“I was always stressed, but my own health was not something that could cross my mind one minute,” she said. “My biggest priority was then finding a husband and paying back my debt.

Taking care of my father.”

Despite everything, Chen considers herself among the more fortunate within the undocumented immigrant community. She mentioned villagers who had crossed by boat. Fearing that U.S. patrol officers were waiting at the docking point, ready to arrest the entire crew of immigrants and snakeheads on board, the said villagers decided to jump off when they saw that America was in view. They wanted to try “swimming the rest of the way” instead of risking getting caught, she Cont. on page B2

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ANIMAL

HEART

Our identities are animal hearts, ready to be hunted and served fresh, because everyone visiting the meat market today wants their foot in something “exotic.” Something a little veinier, soggier and more Frankensteinian than usual.

Cont. from page B1 said. Unfortunately, the distance was much, much longer than they had initially thought, and every single person who made the jump drowned.

A few days later, their bodies laid bitten, battered — “unrecognizably human” — in World Journal photos. The images didn’t come as a “shock” to Chen, however, who had accepted that this was an “everyday reality” for people like her. All she did was sit for a moment to process everything, and then it was back to “waiting tables again.”

“Our lives are not human lives.

We are pigs.” she said. “But if it means making sure that my children have everything I don’t, it is worth it.” *** The time is now 4:30 a.m.

The sentence “We are pigs. We are pigs. We are pigs.” is darting through my mind, making it hard to breathe. Why am I so weak? I cannot be weak.

4:31 a.m., and an officer strides in, telling me that because I already have an existing order of removal, I will be deported without a hearing in front of the immigration judge. “Looking at your records, in 2008, you had appealed to your right to asylum in court, but here you are — having decided to stay anyway in the U.S. after losing your case,” she says. “You made this complicated for yourself.” At least it wasn’t a fucking crime on my record, I want to say.

4:32 a.m., and I check my pockets. They’re empty. My bank accounts are empty. There is no money for an immigration attorney to defend me. All of a sudden, I feel the urge to scream. Words are foaming at my mouth, choking me, but they refuse to come out. I want to call the officers bitches, but I remember that immigrants don’t have the right to say the word bitch. Or fuck. Or shit. Or mine.

I don’t have the right to scream.

Instead, I sit and I look pretty and I nod and I say yes and I smile and I rot. I rot. I bleed. And I fall apart, crease and press the pieces of myself into a paper crane. Except something about this one looks deformed. Broken. It’s a little more Frankenstenian than usual.

4:33 a.m., I am told that the time scheduled for my departure is 7 a.m., in another two hours and 27 minutes. Every minute, every second is pulling me apart at the edges, telling me that my life is on the line. Every minute, every second is slipping away, reminding me just how powerless I am.

4:34 a.m., I ask the officers what will happen to my kids. They tell me that they will be taken care of by foster families – and I want to resist. I want to fight back,

but the sight of guns innocently tucked in their pockets keeps me quiet. I make the officers promise me that they won’t split Tommy, Jordan and Liam between three different families. “I want them together,” I say.

4:35 a.m., and I am still thinking about my kids. I wonder what it is like for them to grow up with that one Mom who never went to any parent teacher conferences or birthday parties because she is always watching out for immigration officers at every corner. I wonder what it is like to not have a Dad — to not know what we are going to eat today. Any day. What it is like watching all their other friends go on beach vacations and having to stay at home because I don’t have a green card. I can’t go anywhere outside of the States — take a plane without getting arrested. God, how much I wish I could bring them to Cancun or China or even just …

Colorado.

4:36 a.m., and I ask myself if their life is anything like Gina Mijin Kim’s. *** Gina Mijin Kim ’25 grew up hearing the phrase: 지나야 이것 좀 읽어줘. It means, “Gina, please read this for me.”

The eldest of three children born to Korean immigrants, Kim was translating documents for her parents as soon as she started learning English. It’s something that she always “hated,” but seeing her parents struggle in the workforce with their broken English pushed her to take on these additional responsibilities.

“My parents immigrated here because they were hoping for something bigger than what they had back at home,” Kim said.

The America that her parents thought was brimming with “promises of wealth” did not exist, however. From side comments picking on their pronunciation at the McDonald’s drivethrough to every “Go back to your country” thrown at them at the local market, they were quick to learn that opportunities were hard to come by — masked underneath racial violence and subtle xenophobia at best. Kim’s father worked several odd jobs before starting a fabric-dyeing company with his brother, while her mother manages a small video shop.

Kim described living as a second-generation immigrant as walking the fine line between enjoying the opportunities made possible by her parents’ arduous journey and bearing the expectations of “making up” for their struggle. There is a pressure to study “something that makes money,” and everywhere she goes,

she carries “this feeling that [she] can’t fail,” she said.

A niche definition of success is not the only weight that the second-generation label carries, however, according to Kim. In her art and prose pieces, which frequently explore themes of home and family, she touches upon the intergenerational, language and cultural walls standing between children and their immigrant parents. 하나, 둘, 셋 1, 2, 3 is a photo series that speaks to an “unsaid hierarchy” between sons and daughters in conservative Korean culture, a gender disparity exacerbated in immigrant households. Sons are “prioritized” in a dynamic that Kim writes “is both entirely personal and universal” at once, a dynamic that should not have any “reason” to exist today — when men and women have potential to achieve the same.

“Between You and Me” features a selection of intimate dialogue with her mother. Lines highlighting intense barriers, such as “I can’t understand you when you speak to me in English / I can’t understand you when you speak to me in Korean,” juxtapose with lines that suggest compromise and harmony between the generations: “We are lost, but we are found in each other.” The lines compete for our attention as readers, capturing a real-life dichotomy between an immigrant parent and their child living at the edges of two very different cultural galaxies.

“There [are] things outside of [us] pulling [us] in certain directions,” Kim said. “More so than if [we] were not a child of immigrants.” *** It’s 4:40 a.m., and I can’t help thinking about how much my boys liked art, too — just like Gina. I remember this one time Tommy showed me a drawing of a person he made in kindergarten class. The person was lifting up what looked like the Earth, wearing a shirt that said: STRONGERR DAN SPYDERMAN. When I asked Tommy who that was, he grinned with all eight of his missing teeth and said: “It’s you, Mommy. That’s you.”

4:41 a.m., and I’m tearing up.

There are these moments in life that I just want to lock away in a tiny little golden box in my heart.

I would swallow the key and burp it out whenever I needed to feel okay and swallow it back down when I am done. No one would be able to take it away from me — not these officers, not my last boss at the restaurant who shoved a metal fork in and out my vagina until the floors turned

// GINA MIJIN KIM

WKND RECOMMENDS Reading the rest of Brian’s story on the YDN website.

a scarlet black. Not that lady at Target who told me to go back to my country before screaming that a savage slut was trying to steal from her.

4:42 a.m., and I remember coming home from Target that day and telling Jordan about what happened. The PG-13 version, of course. He said that he wanted to become a lawyer and time traveler when he grew up — just so he could go back in time and take that lady to court.

4:43 a.m., and I’m smiling for reasons I don’t understand.

I just know that if Edward were still here, he would be proud of our three little boys. I hope he is resting well up there.

4:44 a.m., two hours and 16 minutes until deportation.

4:45 a.m., and I’m smiling again. I’m not sure if my little

in comparison to the rest of Chinatown, she realized that “there was a difference between how our communities [of color] were treated and how white communities were treated.” This would not be the last instance of social injustice that she would come to understand — or face, however.

Yeampierre “grew up amidst racial violence and brutality.” She was frequently on the move, attending five schools in eight years and witnessing family members endure intense factory jobs while facing displacement. Her grandmother lost four children to hunger and disease in one of the worst slums in Puerto Rico after having her land taken away for industrial purposes. She also commented on what it meant to be the child of poor working-class parents.

// NABILA CHOWDHURY

baby actually wants to be a lawyer one day, but if he does, I’ll be taking the first seat at his law school graduation cheering him on. Screaming out his name like the embarrassing soccer mom I always wanted to be. At that point, he would be the first in our family to have graduated college, and he would go on to be the first legal worker I’d ever trust.

My baby. He would be the Elizabeth Yeampierre of our family. *** For Elizabeth Yeampierre, a first-generation Puerto Rican emigrant of African and Indigenous ancestry, the sight of Asian grandmothers dancing salsa is a highlight of living in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, New York. She sees it as a hopeful symbol of “solidarity” — of celebrating cultural differences — in a neighborhood where relationships between minority groups are otherwise not as “intimate” as they once were in the 1970s.

Today, the two racial groups that dominate Sunset Park — Asian and Latinx — grapple with a culture of “segregation” and tension. Despite many shared struggles as primarily working-class immigrants, the two communities see each other as competitors more often than as allies in the same oppressive regime favoring “white communities.” According to Yeampierre, the result of this attitude is not only increased racial violence and discrimination on both ends, but an exacerbation of systemic problems that confront both groups. Human trafficking.

Domestic violence. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on the undocumented — among others.

“We have to lock arms and take each other’s backs to make sure that none of us are vulnerable to those kinds of prejudice,” she said.

Yeampierre said that one of her first lessons on social justice came from a walk she took to Chinatown with her stepfather as a child. After seeing how clean Little Italy’s streets were

As the first person in her family to attend college, Yeampierre said that she juggled her family’s increased financial dependence on her with the need to serve as their constant mediator, translator and communicator.

At the end of the day, however, these were the same challenges that made her realize that she “was clearly Puerto Rican and proud to be that,” Yeampierre said. “Com[ing] from struggle,” she emphasizes her motivation to learn, to “change everything,” to leave “fingerprints” on the future.

She also reminisced on parts of her childhood that made her “world … so much bigger than [being Puerto Rican],” such as going to school together with her chino-latino neighbors. Dancing with her brothers’ friends, who came from different backgrounds. Learning about the Asian and African diasporas.

These memories are among the reasons why she urges the Sunset Park community — and others around the world — to educate ourselves on the unique contributions that all groups of color have made to the social justice movements. That we are part of the same “legacy of community building” and “defiance.”

This theme of solidarity follows Yeampierre throughout her career, which saw her as an attorney and the dean of Puerto Rican Student Affairs at Yale. Today, she serves as the executive director of UPROSE, an intergenerational, primarily BIPOC female-led organization working at the intersection of racial justice and climate change. Despite UPROSE’s unique environmental angle, Yeampierre always brings her mission — and story — back to “cultural brilliance as a solution.” “This build[ing] of relationships across ethnicities and across languages,” she said.

To continue reading, go to yaledailynews.com where the rest of the piece will be published.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND IN

PAGE B3

THEATERS

IS IT WORTH CONSUMING?

Thoughts on HBO’s “Euphoria” and Hulu’s “How I Met Your Father” // BY CHRISTION ZAPPLEY If you live in the technological age you are aware of two very important people: Zendaya and Hillary Duff. At the beginning of 2022, both these objectively iconic women of our generation either premiered or returned to their highly anticipated series, the second season of “Euphoria” and the sitcom “How I Met Your Father” respectively.

I have to be honest. I am an incredibly big fan of “Euphoria.”

When I watched the pilot episode back in 2019, I was immediately impressed by the performances, music, cinematography and narrative all somehow wrapped up neatly in a neon blue bow. The series follows the drug-addicted protagonist, Rue, as she and her peers navigate the dark world the show presents. The intensity of the series and its boldness caught audiences’ attention in what seemed to be the climax of entertainment before everything went downhill at the start of the pandemic. The series was so highly anticipated that it had to be pushed back even further and with that, many changes were made.

“Euphoria” has a heavy burden to carry seeing as season one was such a commercial hit. Zendaya won an Emmy, Leonardo DiCaprio gave it a shout-out, its music began to trend even more and HBO had become an even larger streaming giant than it already was with the introduction of its new platform: HBO Max. The question is whether or not its second season was able to live up to expectations. As much as it pains me to say it, I must admit the second season has lost something that made the first season so special. The first season was one of the most masterful presentations of world-building that I had ever seen in a drama series. From the composed music for each individual character, background introductions and actors’ involvement in building their characters, the series had successfully presented people with beauty and pain in a world that is controlled by technology and media.

This is not to say under any circumstances that the series has not maintained and even improved on many of its elements in the first season. One of the elements that have improved even though I did not believe it to be possible is the cinematography. The way in which the director of photography has taken great liberty to emphasize the characters’ tumultuous emotions visually has been nothing less than amazing. In the second season’s premiere, there was one shot in particular that spotlighted each character from the entire cast in quick succession. The fact that the show has somehow been given the budget to shoot the entire season on discontinued — and I emphasize discontinued — Kodak film is frankly astounding.

The last prop that I will give to the series is its incredible commitment to narrative pacing. Regardless of whether you are a fan of a certain character or storyline, the show almost effortlessly weaves in and out of the characters’ lives just as quickly as they experience the plot. It’s an incredible feat to accomplish seeing how much talent there is on set — because I know you have seen the amazing “you better be joking” line delivery by Alexa Demie.

This season feels as if the fun and exciting high of the party has faded, and we as the audience along with the characters are forced to shuffle through the damage that has been done as a consequence. And when I think about it, there was really no other direction in which “Euphoria” could have gone. There was no way it could ever replicate the effect it had in the first season. Some things just cannot be repeated.

Speaking of things that cannot be repeated, the series “How I Met Your Father,” a spinoff of the 2005 sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” has also been a talking piece in the grand scheme of series being streamed in 2022. I must preface that I never finished “How I Met Your Mother.” If you are a HIMYM superfan, I apologize and please do not email me about it — I’m not

that sorry though. I know who the mother is, and I don’t agree with it — I couldn’t commit to watching almost 10 years of television for that ending. I’m sorry. But I did enjoy the fleeting time during which I watched it ,and it was an incredibly unique sitcom for its time. That’s why I have such complicated feelings about “How I Met Your Father.”

The spinoff uses the exact same framework as “How I Met Your Mother” where an older version of the protagonist, Sophie, is FaceTiming rather than telling in person — because if we have not learned what television has been saying for the past decade, it is that the most unifying element about this generation is technology — her son about the day she met his father. Unfortunately, this framework just doesn’t fit the modern lens it is set in. It is almost — and I hate this word — corny. But that is not really at the fault of the show. It is almost

impossible to have lived up to the quality of a show’s framework that depended on a man dating many different women that he meets in person because that was the way in which people met. The difference between Sophie’s narrative voice talking about Tinder and Ted’s narrative voice talking about meeting a woman at a bar is just too polarizing for original fans of HIMYM. That being said, I watch the show every week because although the odds are stacked against it, it is good. The character dynamics and chemistry are actually tremendously amusing to watch — and dare I say it — better than the original cast’s chemistry from the beginning of its run. The character of a hopeless romantic seems even rarer in a culture that is used to ghosting and failed interactions on dating apps which makes for an interesting character to watch. It has a set of diversely comical situations

and backgrounds for all the characters living in New York, and rather than depending on characters to have their lives professionally figured out like they were in “How I Met Your Mother,” the audience can watch a cast of people that are truly likable from all different walks of life figuring it out which, in my opinion, echoes what this generation’s audience truly want to see.

In all honesty, both of these series have predecessors that are too influential to escape. But in all their faults and minor shortcomings, they have produced incredibly consumable content. And what are we without good content to collectively talk about at length every week?

“Euphoria” airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on HBO Max and “How I Met Your Father” airs on Tuesdays on Hulu.

Contact CHRISTION ZAPPLEY at christion.zappley@yale.edu .

// CATE ROSER

Confessions of Typhoid Mary // BY SOLENNE JACKSON When I tell people I had COVID-19 this Christmas they say they’re “jealous.”

Returning back to campus, there’s a sense of security when you’ve had COVID-19.

I’m exempt from testing for three months.

I don’t have to worry about getting contract-traced. I can attend larger gatherings without going against my conscience –– colluding with some super-spreader devil instead of the K95-equipped angel sitting on my other shoulder, waving her staff to form a perfect two meter radius.

Life feels… freer after having caught the Omicron variant. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have your mind waiver to “is it COVID?” every time you cough. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to not assume the worst when you have a mild sore throat or raging headache, more rationally from sleep deprivation. I’ve forgotten what it feels like, well maybe not quite yet, to have that teeny tiny sting inside your chest every time you see a new test result in the MyChart app.

I feel fortunate, I really do, to have caught

// WINI ABOYURE

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the Omicron variant over other variants, for a few reasons. The first is that I had very mild symptoms. More importantly, infected loved ones have also been okay. Having been isolated in a log cabin in Orlando, I was fortunately able to test negative after 5 days and made my flight home to London. However, I also feel lucky because Omicron does not have the same stigma around it as Delta.

With the advent of Omicron, the sense of morality around never having had COVID19 has finally left us.

As a student coming home for breaks, I was ridiculed by my family in Brooklyn. They live extremely COVID-19 cautious lives, and my life compared to theirs seemed like utter insanity. They — lovingly, I hope — used to call me Typhoid Mary, known for spreading typhoid fever through her signature dish: peach ice cream.

Then, my friend at Yale caught Delta a few days after Halloweekend. As she made her way into the isolation housing, her friends’ first reactions were “Oh, you idiot, you seriously got COVID?” They were sympathetic, sure, but they couldn’t even envision themselves in her place even though they’d been at the exact same parties that weekend.

Before Omicron, people would all go out to social gatherings and one or two people might get COVID-19. Immediately, they’d be viewed as somehow less responsible than everyone else. However, it was far more likely that their immune systems were simply in a different place. People had to face jokes and judgment even though across campus, we’ve been engag-

ing in maskless social events, desperately seeking normalcy in a college student’s life. We only have four amazing and expensive years here and don’t want to see the time and opportunities pass by on a computer screen.

It’s hard to expect college students to be satisfied by a life lived online. We hear stories of our parents’ or friends’ college experiences and want those memories for ourselves. College can already be a lonely place and Zoom links read like Dante’s inscription above the gates of hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

And after having dealt with this for over two years, most people aren’t willing to give up normal aspects of everyday life anymore.

And fortunately, I never gave my family COVID-19 the few times I’d come back from college. And even more, fortunately, I’ve now lost my nickname as Typhoid Mary. I think they’ve come to terms with the inevitability and universality of COVID-19. No longer can one feel like they’re invincible against Omicron.

Of course, people shouldn’t go out of their way to get COVID-19. Religiously engaging in COVID parties is no better than religiously avoiding social gatherings.

However, it’s time to get boosted and treat this bad boy like a mild flu.

So maybe, the correct response to someone having had COVID-19 over break isn’t so much “jealous.” Rather, it’s something like “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Contact SOLENNE JACKSON at solenne.jackson@yale.edu .

PAGE B4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND DISSATISFACTION

Window Shopping on College Street // BY MAHESH AGARWAL Eleven days after classes began last semester, your Canvas homepage was probably crowded. It was the middle of shopping period and you had 36 more hours to run between buildings, email professors and decide which classes were worthy. This week marks the same point in the spring term, but the energy on campus is decidedly different. Instead of scrolling through Course Search, we’re staring at Zoom. The add/drop period ended and our schedules have been locked ever since.

At first, the new academic calendar struck me as an inconvenience more than an outrage. The change blended in as part of a deluge of policies that transformed campus at the end of 2021 and, unlike online exams or a shortened spring break, the new add/drop period arrived without any formal announcement. Furthermore, I, like many of my peers who entered Yale after the pandemic, never fully developed the shopping period mindset. Upperclassmen use the phrase, “I’m shopping X,” comfortably and view two weeks of academic flexibility as a cultural keystone alongside Camp Yale and Spring Fling. But those institutions were lost before my class experienced them and, somehow, so too was the luster of shopping period. One friend texted me several days ago, “Why is everyone complaining about the death of shopping period? Is it that big of a deal?”

The answer, it seems, is yes.

The origins and history of shopping period elude Google but, for at least three decades, Yalies have spent the first two weeks of every semester rushing to as many classrooms as they’d like before committing to a final schedule. This

practice was vaunted in admissions brochures as a distinct part of Yale; meanwhile, both critiques and celebrations of shopping period have appeared perennially in this newspaper. When I asked older classmates for their opinions on shopping period, I received paragraphs in return.

Yale may have quietly dismantled shopping period with a handful of keystrokes, but the passion surrounding the tradition suggests it was anything but a technicality. Before we say goodbye, it’s worth asking what shopping period represented and why it attracted so many admirers.

There is a utilitarian side of shopping period’s appeal: it allows students to make more informed decisions. Although the Blue Book defines courses with summaries and syllabi, the atmosphere of a class hinges on the people who choose to teach and take it. A junior writing for Yale Admissions’ Blog in 2014 described signing up for a comparative literature class with four different sections only to realize, “even though the title of these classes were the same, [she] could have four different experiences.”

For two weeks, the a u t h o r

bounced between each section in order to gauge which professor’s style matched her own. With a trial period, students who planned ahead could minimize risk and make their schedules more comfortable.

There’s only so much that can be anticipated, however, and many students relished shopping period precisely for its spontaneity. Several seniors shared with me that their favorite Yale courses were ones they wandered into during shopping period without knowing the class existed.

These students explained that, while the course catalog may be vast, the parameters we use when selecting classes on paper are limited. By default, you’ll fulfill major and distribution requirements and even “wild cards” will be the product of preexisting interests or the recommendation of a friend. Shopping period, by removing an element of calculation and adding a dose of discovery, could turn a philosopher who’d never thought to look up at the sky into a passionate astronomer.

But while shopping period helped students craft more satisfying schedules, its fundamental charm was to encourage l ea r n i n g t h a t was irreverent toward

the future. Last semester, a friend sat beside me for two weeks in a Latin American history class and then disappeared.

When I asked the junior if COVID-19 had imprisoned him on Old Campus, he shrugged, “I was never taking that class.

I was just shopping it.” It was the tone of a tourist walking down Fifth Avenue to ogle at clothes they’ll never buy and snag free samples from the Lindt store. What was a strategic tool to select classes for some was, for others, a chance to go window-shopping.

Shopping period may have imbued some Yalies with a deeper fondness for the liberal arts but, for others, it was a legitimate source of frustration. In a 2018 Op-Ed, Adwoa Buadu ’18 describes how stampedes overwhelmed her 20-person seminar and made her anxious as to whether she’d keep her place. That shopping period foments uncertainty and excludes eager students from seminars is a common charge. But even the critics who quibbled with shopping period’s details almost universally valued the system’s ethos. Buadu herself advocates for specific changes to the pre-registration process but ultimately declares, “shopping period really is a unique part of the Yale experience.”

Yalies can be future-oriented creatures, but shopping period let us revel in curiosity.

It’s unclear whether that spirit will survive — will we remain explorers, or will Yalies withdraw into spreadsheets in the absence of a system that asks us to improvise?

Contact MAHESH AGARWAL at mahesh.agarwal@yale.edu. // MARK CHUNG

Enough of Enough Is Enough Is F*cking Enough (Is That Enough Enoughs?) // BY WILLIAM GONZALEZ The pandemic has been a lot of things: stressful, challenging, tumultuous and — dare I say — unprecedented. COVID-19 has taken a toll on all of us as we grapple with disorienting news cycles, inaccessibility of testing and confused messaging from our health officials. However, as with much in our collective history, certain peoples and communities have been — and continue to be — overlooked during this pandemic. They’ve been left to fend for themselves amidst the squabbles over mandates and vaccines and restrictions.

But these folks aren’t some disembodied, far-away group. No. They exist right here within the stone walls of Yale and in the larger New Haven community, and it’s about time we started including them in these conversations and listening to their needs.

I’m talking, of course, about me.

COVID-19 sucks! Like a lot.

Sure, maybe it sucks for some people more than others: for those who have elderly family members, who are immunocompromised or who actually care about other people. But, have you considered, for even the tiniest moment, how I feel? Let’s unpack that! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that kind of behavior was … selfish? Boom! I said it. It’s out there! Tough pill to swallow, huh?

Look, when I was in high school, I dreamed about what my life in college would be like all the time! I had visions of late nights spent with my roommates, eating meals in the dining halls and going to “social events” on the weekends and definitely not drinking because that is a big no-no. As the only person to ever have such dreams, it is incredibly frustrating to have the Yalebranded rug ripped out from under my feet.

// CECILIA LEE

For no reason whatsoever, Yale decided to shift classes back online and ban all social gatherings at the end of last semester. I feel like I’ve traveled back in time to spring 2021. In fact, I would argue that the circumstances are exactly the same then as they are now, and there is absolutely no evidence or external factors that say otherwise. After a semester of feasting in the dining halls,

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I am now forced to scarf down grab-and-go meals in my room.

You know where else people have to eat meals in their heated and furnished rooms? Prison!

Yep, that’s right! Welcome to Jail University, where they make me eat freshly cooked food at my desk while watching Netflix on my computer. And as if that weren’t bad enough, classes are online again. Spending the past

two weeks on Zoom has been absolutely terrible, and I don’t think I can do it anymore. Yet, despite countless facts I’ve cherry-picked to support my own views, Yale continues to impose these oppressive policies on me with no end in sight.

Now, I know what you’re all thinking: What about immunocompromised students? What about Yale employees? What

about the greater New Haven community? To that, I point to the many health experts like Vanessa Hudgens who show us that all of these issues and problems have a very simple and effective solution: stop caring!

I’m sure there must have been many studies showing that the less you care about people, the more you can focus on yourself and your own happiness. Being at college means being part of a community which means sacrifice for the common good, and I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely willing to let other people sacrifice a lot more than me so I can get shitfaced at Woads — hypothetically shitfaced, of course. I mean, there’s no way I’m missing the “High School Musical” vs. “Camp Rock” night.

Even though I’ve barely been here for two years, I want my college back! I miss the days when I could force myself to sit through a friend’s a cappella show or stroll into my seminar 30 minutes late with a Blue State iced coffee in my hand — you know, the true Yale experience. Instead, this school has pulled the Canada Goose fur over my eyes and prevented me and only me from having the college experience that would worry my campaign team when I run for office. All I want is to sit in classrooms, eat meals in dining halls and start a new cryptocurrency club for some reason. Is that so much to ask?

Enough is enough! It’s about time Yale wakes up and starts giving its students what I want.

But until that day comes, I will keep the fight alive, one Op-Ed at a time. Because at the end of the day, I’m not just doing this for myself. I’m doing this for God, for country and for Yale.

Contact WILLIAM GONZALEZ at william.gonzalez@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND IN

PAGE B3

THEATERS

IS IT WORTH CONSUMING?

Thoughts on HBO’s “Euphoria” and Hulu’s “How I Met Your Father” // BY CHRISTION ZAPPLEY If you live in the technological age you are aware of two very important people: Zendaya and Hillary Duff. At the beginning of 2022, both these objectively iconic women of our generation either premiered or returned to their highly anticipated series, the second season of “Euphoria” and the sitcom “How I Met Your Father” respectively.

I have to be honest. I am an incredibly big fan of “Euphoria.”

When I watched the pilot episode back in 2019, I was immediately impressed by the performances, music, cinematography and narrative all somehow wrapped up neatly in a neon blue bow. The series follows the drug-addicted protagonist, Rue, as she and her peers navigate the dark world the show presents. The intensity of the series and its boldness caught audiences’ attention in what seemed to be the climax of entertainment before everything went downhill at the start of the pandemic. The series was so highly anticipated that it had to be pushed back even further and with that, many changes were made.

“Euphoria” has a heavy burden to carry seeing as season one was such a commercial hit. Zendaya won an Emmy, Leonardo DiCaprio gave it a shout-out, its music began to trend even more and HBO had become an even larger streaming giant than it already was with the introduction of its new platform: HBO Max. The question is whether or not its second season was able to live up to expectations. As much as it pains me to say it, I must admit the second season has lost something that made the first season so special. The first season was one of the most masterful presentations of world-building that I had ever seen in a drama series. From the composed music for each individual character, background introductions and actors’ involvement in building their characters, the series had successfully presented people with beauty and pain in a world that is controlled by technology and media.

This is not to say under any circumstances that the series has not maintained and even improved on many of its elements in the first season. One of the elements that have improved even though I did not believe it to be possible is the cinematography. The way in which the director of photography has taken great liberty to emphasize the characters’ tumultuous emotions visually has been nothing less than amazing. In the second season’s premiere, there was one shot in particular that spotlighted each character from the entire cast in quick succession. The fact that the show has somehow been given the budget to shoot the entire season on discontinued — and I emphasize discontinued — Kodak film is frankly astounding.

The last prop that I will give to the series is its incredible commitment to narrative pacing. Regardless of whether you are a fan of a certain character or storyline, the show almost effortlessly weaves in and out of the characters’ lives just as quickly as they experience the plot. It’s an incredible feat to accomplish seeing how much talent there is on set — because I know you have seen the amazing “you better be joking” line delivery by Alexa Demie.

This season feels as if the fun and exciting high of the party has faded, and we as the audience along with the characters are forced to shuffle through the damage that has been done as a consequence. And when I think about it, there was really no other direction in which “Euphoria” could have gone. There was no way it could ever replicate the effect it had in the first season. Some things just cannot be repeated.

Speaking of things that cannot be repeated, the series “How I Met Your Father,” a spinoff of the 2005 sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” has also been a talking piece in the grand scheme of series being streamed in 2022. I must preface that I never finished “How I Met Your Mother.” If you are a HIMYM superfan, I apologize and please do not email me about it — I’m not

that sorry though. I know who the mother is, and I don’t agree with it — I couldn’t commit to watching almost 10 years of television for that ending. I’m sorry. But I did enjoy the fleeting time during which I watched it ,and it was an incredibly unique sitcom for its time. That’s why I have such complicated feelings about “How I Met Your Father.”

The spinoff uses the exact same framework as “How I Met Your Mother” where an older version of the protagonist, Sophie, is FaceTiming rather than telling in person — because if we have not learned what television has been saying for the past decade, it is that the most unifying element about this generation is technology — her son about the day she met his father. Unfortunately, this framework just doesn’t fit the modern lens it is set in. It is almost — and I hate this word — corny. But that is not really at the fault of the show. It is almost

impossible to have lived up to the quality of a show’s framework that depended on a man dating many different women that he meets in person because that was the way in which people met. The difference between Sophie’s narrative voice talking about Tinder and Ted’s narrative voice talking about meeting a woman at a bar is just too polarizing for original fans of HIMYM. That being said, I watch the show every week because although the odds are stacked against it, it is good. The character dynamics and chemistry are actually tremendously amusing to watch — and dare I say it — better than the original cast’s chemistry from the beginning of its run. The character of a hopeless romantic seems even rarer in a culture that is used to ghosting and failed interactions on dating apps which makes for an interesting character to watch. It has a set of diversely comical situations

and backgrounds for all the characters living in New York, and rather than depending on characters to have their lives professionally figured out like they were in “How I Met Your Mother,” the audience can watch a cast of people that are truly likable from all different walks of life figuring it out which, in my opinion, echoes what this generation’s audience truly want to see.

In all honesty, both of these series have predecessors that are too influential to escape. But in all their faults and minor shortcomings, they have produced incredibly consumable content. And what are we without good content to collectively talk about at length every week?

“Euphoria” airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on HBO Max and “How I Met Your Father” airs on Tuesdays on Hulu.

Contact CHRISTION ZAPPLEY at christion.zappley@yale.edu .

// CATE ROSER

Confessions of Typhoid Mary // BY SOLENNE JACKSON When I tell people I had COVID-19 this Christmas they say they’re “jealous.”

Returning back to campus, there’s a sense of security when you’ve had COVID-19.

I’m exempt from testing for three months.

I don’t have to worry about getting contract-traced. I can attend larger gatherings without going against my conscience –– colluding with some super-spreader devil instead of the K95-equipped angel sitting on my other shoulder, waving her staff to form a perfect two meter radius.

Life feels… freer after having caught the Omicron variant. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have your mind waiver to “is it COVID?” every time you cough. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to not assume the worst when you have a mild sore throat or raging headache, more rationally from sleep deprivation. I’ve forgotten what it feels like, well maybe not quite yet, to have that teeny tiny sting inside your chest every time you see a new test result in the MyChart app.

I feel fortunate, I really do, to have caught

// WINI ABOYURE

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the Omicron variant over other variants, for a few reasons. The first is that I had very mild symptoms. More importantly, infected loved ones have also been okay. Having been isolated in a log cabin in Orlando, I was fortunately able to test negative after 5 days and made my flight home to London. However, I also feel lucky because Omicron does not have the same stigma around it as Delta.

With the advent of Omicron, the sense of morality around never having had COVID19 has finally left us.

As a student coming home for breaks, I was ridiculed by my family in Brooklyn. They live extremely COVID-19 cautious lives, and my life compared to theirs seemed like utter insanity. They — lovingly, I hope — used to call me Typhoid Mary, known for spreading typhoid fever through her signature dish: peach ice cream.

Then, my friend at Yale caught Delta a few days after Halloweekend. As she made her way into the isolation housing, her friends’ first reactions were “Oh, you idiot, you seriously got COVID?” They were sympathetic, sure, but they couldn’t even envision themselves in her place even though they’d been at the exact same parties that weekend.

Before Omicron, people would all go out to social gatherings and one or two people might get COVID-19. Immediately, they’d be viewed as somehow less responsible than everyone else. However, it was far more likely that their immune systems were simply in a different place. People had to face jokes and judgment even though across campus, we’ve been engag-

ing in maskless social events, desperately seeking normalcy in a college student’s life. We only have four amazing and expensive years here and don’t want to see the time and opportunities pass by on a computer screen.

It’s hard to expect college students to be satisfied by a life lived online. We hear stories of our parents’ or friends’ college experiences and want those memories for ourselves. College can already be a lonely place and Zoom links read like Dante’s inscription above the gates of hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

And after having dealt with this for over two years, most people aren’t willing to give up normal aspects of everyday life anymore.

And fortunately, I never gave my family COVID-19 the few times I’d come back from college. And even more, fortunately, I’ve now lost my nickname as Typhoid Mary. I think they’ve come to terms with the inevitability and universality of COVID-19. No longer can one feel like they’re invincible against Omicron.

Of course, people shouldn’t go out of their way to get COVID-19. Religiously engaging in COVID parties is no better than religiously avoiding social gatherings.

However, it’s time to get boosted and treat this bad boy like a mild flu.

So maybe, the correct response to someone having had COVID-19 over break isn’t so much “jealous.” Rather, it’s something like “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Contact SOLENNE JACKSON at solenne.jackson@yale.edu .