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

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 99 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

RAINY CLOUDY

40 46

CROSS CAMPUS That’s why she wants Yale.

After Yale deferred her last fall, high school senior Jackie Milestone uploaded a song about her deferral to Youtube on Tuesday titled “A Deferred Student’s Appeal to Yale: White and Blue for You.” “Yale is more than just my first choice school, it is a school I know well and have dreamed of attending ever since I discovered that colleges existed,” reads the video’s description. As of early Friday morning, the video had racked up over 2,700 views on YouTube. Believe in Justice. Early

Thursday morning, New Haven graffiti artist Believe in People tweeted some recent work — a photo featuring two spray-painted signs reading “Fox News Lies!” and “Occupy Wall Street,” which someone named Neils dropped off at Occupy New Haven. The signs are meant to replace signs that, two weeks ago, were stolen when students came to the encampment one Saturday night.

A whole new Whiffs. Auditions for next year’s Whiffenpoofs began on Thursday. Some new tour guides, too.

As the Whiffs start their process, tryouts for new tour guides with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions wrap up today. Visiting. Anita Hill, a professor

of law, social policy and women’s studies at Brandeis University who gained fame for testifying against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas LAW ’74, came to campus Thursday to discuss her latest book, “Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home.”

Again. Kudeta and S’wings

both received low scores on health inspections conducted in early February, while Five Guys Burgers & Fries notched a near-perfect score.

GREEK LIFE SPACE FOR TWO NEW FRATS?

IMMIGRATION

TRANSPORTATION

M. BASKETBALL

Law School clinic fights new deportation program in lawsuit

DOWNTOWN MAY SEE ARRIVAL OF NEW TAXI STAND

Locked in battle for second, Elis pursue NIT bid in two home games

PAGE B3 WEEKEND

PAGE 5 CITY

PAGE 7 CITY

PAGE 16 SPORTS

Colleges’ designs take shape

King, faculty, conflict

BY NATASHA THONDAVADI STAFF REPORTER Half a mile northwest of their future site, the designs of Yale’s 13th and 14th residential colleges are taking their final shape. Last month, a two-story mock-up created to test potential design features for Yale’s new residential colleges was constructed in a field next to Science Park’s building 25, said School of Architecture Dean Robert A. M. Stern, the head architect on the project. Stern’s firm designed the structure to contain multiple versions of elements like windows and stonework, so that administrators and architects could analyze the benefits and costs of various alternatives, Stern said. “I think people understand that when we build something, it’s not for the next five or ten years, it’s for many generations,” University spokesman Michael Morand said. “To make the best decisions, you have give it the time, have lots of eyes and sweat the details.” After New Haven’s City Plan Commission approved the location for the new residential colleges at Prospect and Sachem streets in November, University officials, trustees and the project’s architects are working to finalize its specific, technical details, Morand said. Since its construction, the mock-up has given administrators, architects and members of the Office of Facilities the chance to weigh in on the particulars of the colleges’ technical design. On Thursday, the Buildings and Grounds Committee of the Yale Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — went to examSEE NEW COLLEGES PAGE 6

BY GAVAN GIDEON STAFF REPORTER

VICTOR KANG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Mock-ups of Yale’s two new residential colleges have helped Yale officials and architects decide the final designs for the $500 million construction project.

Class gift beats record RECORD 97.5 PERCENT OF SENIORS DONATE; SOME STUDENTS COMPLAIN OF PRESSURE BY JULIA ZORTHIAN STAFF REPORTER A rigorous three-week campaign to collect donations from the class of 2012 for the Senior Class Gift ended Wednesday with a record-breaking 97.5 percent participation rate.

After a University push to centralize administrative services came under fire at the Yale College Fa c u l t y meeting on Feb. 2, Vice President for Finance and Shared services Business Operations Shauna … will be helpful K ing defended as we all adjust her o f f i c e ’s efforts to streamto reduced staff line departmental levels. operations. E a rl i e r t h i s month, profesSHAUNA KING VP FOR sors criticized FINANCE AND BUSINESS shared services, OPERATIONS a business model intended to shift common administrative tasks in Yale’s various departments to centralized service units, as an across-the-board system that does not meet the needs of individual departments and has harmed staff. Though King acknowledged in a Feb. 16 email to all finance and business operations staff that some faculty are uneasy about shared services, King wrote that she believes her department is “on the right track” and that the initiative is in Yale’s “best long-

The participation rate of this year’s seniors edged out that of the class of 2012 by half a percentage point, though its senior gift of $31,545.47 fell roughly $10,000 short of last year’s total. At least 12 representatives of the campaign in each residential college collected donations by hold-

ing events and contacting peers individually. While most seniors interviewed expressed enthusiasm for supporting the University, several said they felt excessive pressure to donate from some members of the campaign. “The senior gift isn’t going to move mountains for Yale’s operating budget, but we’re trying to establish an early foundation SEE CLASS GIFT PAGE 6

SEE SHARED SERVICES PAGE 8

GRAPH SENIOR GIFT TOTALS, PARTICIPATION 100%

$50,000

$40,000

$30,000 80% $20,000

$10,000

0

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

60%

No homecoming yet. Members

of Human Rights Watch are working to secure the body of Marie Colvin ’78, who was killed Wednesday in a mortar blast. Meanwhile, journalists in Tripoli held wakes in honor of Colvin, who covered the uprising in Libya last fall.

Yale Police Department

officers arrested five men near the intersection of Stoeckel Hall on College and Wall Streets around 1:30 a.m. Friday. At least five YPD vehicles were on the scene, but none of the officers would comment on the arrests. A sergeant on the scene deferred comment to YPD Assistant Chief Steven Woznyk, who could not be immediately reached for comment. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1944 A total of 12, 138 Yale men are currently serving in World War II; 205 have died. Submit tips to Cross Campus

crosscampus@yaledailynews.com

ONLINE y MORE cc.yaledailynews.com

Future uncertain for affirmative action BY BEN PRAWDZIK STAFF REPORTER In its 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, the United States Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities could consider race and ethnicity in their admissions decisions for at least 25 years. But a move by the court on Tuesday could ultimately reverse that decision — ending race-based affirmative action policies at Yale and other higher education institutions across the country. The nation’s highest court announced Tuesday it would hear Fisher v. University of Texas — a case filed by a white student, Abigail Fisher, who said she was denied admission to the University of Texas’s Austin campus because of her race. Since the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger ruling, education experts said the argument over affirmative action policies

at colleges and universities has calmed, but news of the court’s decision to hear another affirmative action case has reignited debate between supporters and opponents of the policy. Since 2003, the court’s ideological center has shifted to the right, placing the future of race-based affirmative action into question, education and law experts said. As Yale takes race into consideration in its admissions process, it is possible that the court’s decision could affect the University’s admission policies. “There is value in having a class that is widely diverse and represents different racial, ethnic and religious groups,” University President Richard Levin said. “We’re bound by the law as it stands — Yale has practiced affirmative action SEE AFFIRM. ACTION PAGE 6

TOWN AND GOWN

New Haveners face stereotypes as Elis 27.6K

26.2K

27.5K

29.7K

40.8K

31.5K

Y

alies who hail from New Haven — currently totaling 30 — come from diverse backgrounds, but on campus, most find themselves defending their homeown against slights by their classmates. ANDREW GIAMBRONE reports.

Yalies live in New Haven nine months of the year, claiming the city as their home away from home. But only about 30 of those students, according to data published by the Office of Institutional Research in 2010, actually trace their roots to the Elm City. Eleven Yale students interviewed from greater New Haven — which includes neighboring towns such as Woodbridge and Hamden — said they take pride in being locals. Yet from the moment they stepped through Phelps Gate as Yale students, they said, all found themselves needing to defend their hometown from stereotypes of the city as both unsafe and dependent on Yale’s presence for its value.

Still, their experiences present varying definitions of what it means to be from the Elm City: Yale students who see themselves as local residents attended both private and public schools within the greater New Haven area, including neighborhoods such as Woodbridge, North Haven and Hamden. “We see a relatively large and diverse contingent of students from this wide range of schools,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel said. “As to backgrounds and what attending Yale for a student from the area has been like, I would be very reluctant to generalize. I think you would find quite a diversity of stories.” SEE NEW HAVENERS PAGE 8


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