Yale Daily News — Week of Feb. 25, 2022

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 25, 2022 · VOL. CXLIV, NO. 14 · yaledailynews.com

RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE

YSPH to become independent

Ukrainian Yalies fear for families at home

BY BRANDON WU AND ALEX YE STAFF REPORTERS

BY LUCY HODGMAN AND OLIVIA TUCKER STAFF REPORTERS In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this Thursday, Ukrainian members of the Yale community spoke to the News about their experiences watching the crisis unfold from afar.

Early Thursday morning, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine with bombings in several Ukranian cities, including the capital, Kyiv. At least 137 soldiers and civilians have been killed in the attacks thus far, The New York Times reported Thursday.

United States President Joe Biden condemned the Russian invasion in televised remarks from the White House on Thursday. Biden announced new sanctions on Russia in the wake of the attacks, cutting off Russia’s largest banks and companies from Western financial markets, restricting U.S. imports of technology to Russia and freezing trillions of dollars in Russian assets.

In interviews, three Ukrainian students and one Ukrainian alumnus shared how they have experienced the escalation.

“It’s honestly been absolute hell,” said Sofiya Bidochko ’24, whose entire extended family lives in Ukraine. “There is no feeling like trying to carry on with your life here when you don’t know if your family is going to be bombed. The air sirens are going off where my family’s at, and the government issued warnings that there could be attacks tonight.

There’s just no way for me to want to study for a midterm when such a tragedy is going on.”

For Yuliia Zhukovets ’23, the escalation of conflict in Ukraine has necessitated a constant effort to stay in touch with her family, who was in Kyiv during Thursday’s escalation.

SEE UKRAINE PAGE 4

COURTESY OF UKRANIAN STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE HANDOUT

As Russia invades Ukraine, Yalies turn to Eastern Europe.

Professors weigh in

BY GAVIN GUERRETTE STAFF REPORTER As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolds, Yale’s faculty experts weighed in on factors that led to the conflict and the potential humanitarian repercussions of the aggression.

In the early hours of Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a “special military operation” into Ukraine with the intention of “demilitarizing and denazifying” the country. The escalation came in the wake of Putin’s Feb. 21 recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions from Ukraine and subsequent stationing of reinforcements in the region — an act that has been condemned by the Biden administration and international leaders. These Moscow-backed separatist republics, which are not recognized by any other European Union member states besides Russia, have made territorial claims that extend beyond their area

PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS

Yale invests in engineering

BY ANIKA SETH STAFF REPORTER

In the University’s newest push to elevate its science offerings and scholarship, administrators announced on Tuesday morning a wave of investments into faculty and facilities for science and engineering — as well as a structural change to establish a School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty distinct from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The investment includes the addition of 45 faculty positions — 30 in SEAS and 15 in FAS — as well as new construction

of control and into territory controlled by the Ukrainian army.

Yale professor of political science David Cameron attributed Putin’s recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to his frustration with the failure of the U.S. and NATO to provide security guarantees to Russia — most notably the prohibition of eastward NATO expansion, including the accession of Ukraine.

Also playing a role in the invasion, Cameron said, was Ukraine’s failure to implement certain provisions of the Minsk II Agreement, including constitutional reforms which would give special status and autonomy to predominantly Russian-speaking regions in Eastern Ukraine.

The effects of Russia’s Thursday invasion are still undetermined. News reports on Thursday evening indicated that Russia launched numerous air and missile strikes on military facilities as well as ground invasions from the north, east and

After more than a century of operating within the financial and administrative confines of the School of Medicine, the Yale School of Public Health will soon exist on its own.

Yale’s central University has granted a total of $250 million in endowment funds to support the schools of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health, with each school set to receive $50 million to support its financial aid and educational initiatives, University President Peter Salovey announced on Thursday. The School of Public Health will receive an additional $100 million to eliminate its structural deficit and aid its transition to an autonomous professional school. The announcement comes after School of Public Health community members advocated for the school to be structurally and financially independent from the medical school.

“We are creating endowment funds totaling $250 million to support medicine, nursing and public health in ways that recognize the critical importance of these fields and the critical moment for Yale to do even more in terms of educating the next generation of leaders in these fields,” Salovey told the News. “We hope that would attract potential applicants, potential faculty and potential philanthropic interests.”

In a press release to the School of Public Health community, University officials explained that the pandemic underscored the important role that public health plays in society.

“Our experiences with the pandemic and other public health crises, both past and present, make one thing clear: the world has a need for leaders educated in public health principles and practice, especially the interventions made possible through transformative research in the field,” wrote Salovey, University Provost Scott Strobel and School of Medicine Dean Nancy Brown.

SEE UKRAINE II PAGE 4

SEE YSPH PAGE 4

ADMINISTRATION

Four trustees tied to fossil fuels

and renovation projects to take place over the next ten years. Further, effective July 1, SEAS will operate “as a distinct budgetary unit” from FAS, led by its own dean.

SEAS will continue to encompass six departments in total — biomedical engineering, chemical and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science, electrical engineering, applied physics and computer science — and all other STEM departments will remain under the jurisdiction of FAS. SEE SEAS PAGE 5

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

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

BY ISABEL MANEY STAFF REPORTER

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The University plans to establish the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as a distinct faculty.

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1971.

STUDENTS PETITION FOR HYBRID SPRING

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

PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY

Four Yale Trustees with ties to the fossil fuel industry are under fire for alleged conflict of interest due to their role in approving the University’s fossil fuel investment principles.

The 83 page complaint that the Endowment Justice Coalition submitted to Connecticut Attorney General William Tong last week c that the University’s continued investment in the fossil fuel industry violates state law. The complaint names Charles Goodyear IV ’80, Joshua L. Steiner ’87, William Earl Kennard LAW ’81 and Paul Joskow GRD ’70 ’72 because

of their ties to fossil fuel companies. The complaint does not include evidence that the members’ ties have affected their input to the University’s highest governing body, but organizer Avery Long ’24 said that “it’s something that we really can’t ignore as a possibility.”

“I found it so eye opening to look into this and find direct evidence of the ties that people have to these organizations,” Josie Steuer Ingall ’24, an organizer for the EJC, said. “They’re really personally enriched at the end of the day by both the capital and the social legitimacy that Yale lends to fossil fuel related exploitaSEE CORPORATION PAGE 5

UNICORN

HOTLINE

NHPD

April Koh '16 and Adam Checkroud GRD '18 have created an entrepreneurial unicorn, or private company valued at above $1 billion PAGE 6 SCITECH

PAGE 9 UNIVERSITY

PAGE 11 CITY

As Yale stopped contract tracing for most COVID19 cases, students shared questions over COVID-19 isolation protocols

A month and a half into 2022, the New Haven Police Department is still without a permament chief of police.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 2

OPINION Waiting On the World W

hen I was in high school, there was nothing I wanted more than to work part-time at a Subway or Chipotle — somewhere with one of those cool bars where the customer moved down the line and picked out what they wanted. My mom thought I should maximize my profits by charging a competitive wage for private tutoring (“Fifty an hour!”), but I wanted something completely removed from academics, something I could do to forget about school and get some real world experience. I remember thinking it would be so relaxing and fun, like playing a restaurant or chef game.

During my second semester of senior year, opportunity came knocking, and I started working as a waitress at a neighborhood sushi restaurant. I showed up on the first day with wide eyes, excited to fulfill a long-held dream. As my boss, “Auntie,” walked me through the basic steps of setting up for my shift, I quickly realized this was a lot more complicated than I had originally thought. There was an entire ritual of cleaning, restocking and preparation that I had known nothing of — I found out very quickly that while I enjoyed wiping windows, sweeping was far from my strongest suit.

As tedious as I found the routine sometimes, working the floor was insanely fun — immersive, exhausting and exhilarating. I memorized the menu and learned how to balance a tray and use a POS system. I could listen to a customer’s preferences and recommend specific sushi rolls or entrees, and I loved to take orders on the phone, my finger tapping expertly between the options on the register screen. I would pick up receipts after the customers had left and sneak a peek at the tip to see how well I had done. Sometimes, when I wasn’t at work, I would pick up a call on my cell and automatically answer, “Hello, [restaurant].” Some days I would arrive at work feeling down, but somehow, somewhere in between carrying dishes across the floor and chatting up the customers with the chirpy customer service smile, I would realize that I felt much better. As I moved my body almost mindlessly, I could forget everything outside the restaurant and focus only on my work.

“Watch the customers,” Auntie told me as we stood in front of the sushi bar one night, looking out to the floor. “Look at whose glasses are empty, whose tables have finished dishes. What do they need?

By the time they raise their hand, you should already be there.”

The restaurant was small enough for one waitress to cover on a relaxed day, and the task of collecting orders and overseeing the tables was like juggling; once I fell into a comfortable rhythm, patrolling the shiny wooden floor as conversation and chopsticks clinked and hummed gently in my

ears, I felt like I had found some sort of dynamic peace in that small, quiet, sun-filled restaurant.

Over the next few months, I came to realHYERIM ize what I was BIANCA learning from this job. WaitNAM ing on the tables and Moment’s keeping an eye notice o n p e o p l e ’s body language and tabletops to see what they might need, communicating with the customers when there was a problem, setting up and cleaning the restaurant, even just the simple customer service smile when dealing politely but firmly with irate customers — all of these are crucial skills for anyone to have, all the more so for those in leadership positions.

It’s commonly believed that leaders stand above those they lead, by nature of their position in command, and it’s easy to think that when you lead, those who “follow” will serve you. However, I have found that it is the opposite: the most trusted and wisest leaders that I have met have been those who put others before themselves and served the people in their charge with compassion and selflessness. In the clubs that I have been a part of, or just listening to friends talk about their activities, I always admired it the most when the students in charge put themselves on the same level as everyone else and worked to understand what everyone else needed, instead of trying to forcefully carry out their own vision or thinking they knew better. Those leaders were the most successful in gathering other people around them, precisely because they understood that to lead is to serve.

Working in the service industry and all it entails — getting ignored or shouted at by customers as if you aren’t human — is nothing to look at lightly, or even glorify. Depending on the employer, the job can be miserable and exploitative, and it is always exhausting work. However, I think taking a job as a cashier, waiter or other service industry worker is an important experience that anyone can take away so much from, especially students at prestigious colleges such as ours. It’s easy to get carried away in lofty visions of ourselves as the leaders of the future, but I argue that it’s equally, if not more, important to take a couple steps back and learn how to serve others from a basic, square-one perspective.

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

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COPYRIGHT 2022 — VOL. CXLIV, NO. 13

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST O S CA R T U R N E R

Why Yale urgently needs a Native Studies major O

ver the last 50 years or more, Yale College has attempted to reckon with its historical ties to slavery in the face of mounting student protest and public outcry.

These efforts have led to several high profile victories, including the renaming of what is now Grace Hopper college and the recent public acknowledgement by President Peter Salovey in Oct. 2021, where he stated at a Yale and Slavery conference that Yale was “acknowledging that slavery and the slave trade are part of Yale’s history. Our history.” The acknowledgement came in response to a report compiled by the Yale and Slavery working group, a task force created following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Salovey continued to announce three initial measures Yale would take to “[reconcile] the information about Yale’s past with the University’s responsibility to the present.” These actions — if they are indeed actions instead of mere words — are woefully overdue and crucially needed; Yale is almost 20 years behind other Ivy League institutions in this process. However, there is another violent and insidious history that Yale must also simultaneously reckon with and act upon.

THESE ACTIONS — IF THEY ARE INDEED ACTIONS INSTEAD OF MERE WORDS — ARE WOEFULLY OVERDUE AND CRUCIALLY NEEDED; YALE IS ALMOST 20 YEARS BEHIND OTHER IVY LEAGUE INSTITUTIONS IN THIS PROCESS. HOWEVER, THERE IS ANOTHER VIOLENT AND INSIDIOUS HISTORY THAT YALE MUST ALSO SIMULTANEOUSLY RECKON WITH AND ACT UPON. The creation of the United States was founded upon two of humanity’s most egregious crimes: the forced labor and atrocities committed against Black people during chattel slavery and the forced removal and genocide of Indigenous populations across Turtle Island.

Yale directly benefited from both.

In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Land-Grant Act (The Act). The Act was part of a larger system of hundreds of violence-backed treaties and seizures that extinguished Indigenous title to over two billion acres of the “United States.” The Act set aside “federal lands” to create or fund colleges to benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts. The Act “redistributed” nearly 11 million acres, broken up into 80,000 parcels, to 52 institutions.

The State of Connecticut, namely Yale, received 180,000 acres in the Midwest, which it sold immediately in one block in 1863 for $135,000, or a measly 75 cents per acre. The land was made up of parcels stolen from 53 tribal nations, acquired through 33 ratified and unratified treaties made between the years 1808 and 1858. More than 70 percent of the grant was made up of land from the Ojibwa and Odawa Nations.

In an ensuing argument between Yale College and Connecticut farm-

THE LOSS OF LAND AND THE INSEPARABLE CULTURAL GENOCIDE THAT ACOMPANIES LAND THEFT AND FORCED REMOVAL CAN NEVER BE FULLY REMEDIED. HOWEVER, YALE CAN AND MUST PURSUE STEPS TO BENEFIT THOSE COMMUNITIES IT HAS DIRECTLY EXPLOITED IN THE PAST. ers, funding from the land grant was transferred to Storrs agricultural college, which would go on to become the University of Connecticut, or UConn. In a warped sense of logic, Yale believed it had been cheated, and therefore sued for the loss of revenue earned off of stolen Native land. Yale goes on to reach a settlement deal that awards the full $135,000 plus interests, an amount that equals $4.8 million in today’s dollars.

So what can Yale do to begin to “reconcile this information about Yale’s past with the University’s responsibility to the present”? The loss of land and the inseparable cultural genocide that accompanies land theft and forced removal can never be fully remedied. However, Yale can and must pursue steps to benefit those communities it has directly exploited in the past. The Native and Indigenous Student Association, or NISAY, is currently in the process of organizing meetings with President Salovey and other University officials to communicate the following demands.

Firstly, NISAY is pushing for a community approved land acknowledgement to precede all University events. This declaration would not only acknowledge the Quinnipiac Tribe as original stewards of the land Yale sits on, but also reckon with the fact of Yale’s existence as a result of land theft across America. Secondly, NISAY wants Yale to follow the lead of South Dakota State University and create a program similar to the Wokini Initiative. This program redirects income from remaining Morrill acreage into programming, support and scholarships for Native students. NISAY is particularly keen on providing support to students from the two major nations that made up the land grant, Odawa and Ojibwa. Finally, NISAY is calling on Yale to develop a Native Studies major program.

As one of only two Ivies — Yale and Cornell — to benefit from The Act, Yale must make an effort to become a conference leader in Native Studies. NISAY is requiring Yale to work to establish a Native Studies program with at least eight faculty and around 25 courses offered at any one time. This would put the program at equal standing with Dartmouth, which currently has the most faculty and course offerings for any Ivy League institution.

The Native Studies major is also urgently required not only as a step towards reconciliation, but as an educational tool in a community where typical stereotypes are still common. In the year and a half since starting Yale, an apparently “woke” institution, I have been asked questions such as “so the Natives still want their land back?” as well as regularly having to walk past individuals wearing sports apparel with racist mascots in my dining hall. In

one encounter, a student mimicked shooting darts out of a blow gun “like the Indians used to.” On being corrected by another student who informed him that the correct term was “Native American,” the individual then proceeded to attempt to save face by saying “It’s okay, I’m a quarter Indian.” His grandfather is Asian Indian. When approached for comment on the benefits of a Native studies program, Dean Matthew Makomenaw, director of the Native American Cultural Center at Yale, stated that “Native American studies program and courses allows Native and non-Native students the opportunity to learn about the variety of cultures and people that is often absent from education.

Native representation in the curriculum and classroom plays a significant role in countering stereotypes and misinformation about Native people. In addition, Native American Studies is a multi-disciplinary area of study that can permeate through a variety of degree programs.” While Native history is by no means the only ethnic minority absent from Yale’s curriculum, it is a glaring omission that students have advocated for for years.

THE NATIVE STUDIES MAJOR IS ALSO URGENTLY REQUIRED NOT ONLY AS A STEP TOWARDS RECONCILIATION, BUT AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL IN A COMMUNITY WHERE TYPICAL STEREOTYPES ARE STILL COMMON. IN THE YEAR AND A HALF SINCE STARTING YALE, AN APPARENTLY “WOKE” INSTITUTION, I HAVE BEEN ASKED QUESTIONS SUCH AS “SO THE NATIVES STILL WANT THEIR LAND BACK?” AS WELL AS REGULARLY HAVING TO WALK PAST INDIVIDUALS WEARING SPORTS APPAREL WITH RACIST MASCOTS IN MY DINING HALL. NISAY is looking forward to working with the Yale administration to begin implementation of these measures, realizing this will be a long term endeavor. To quote President Barry Dunn, South Dakota State University president and a key figure in the creation of the Wokini Initiative: “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start today and change the ending.”

OSCAR TURNER is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College, and the outreach chair for the Native and Indigenous Student Association.

Contact him at oscar.turner@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 3

“No one can live entirely on their own, nor can any country or society exist in isolation.” DAISAKU IKEDA JAPANESE PHILOSOPHER

Amid rising COVID-19 cases, students call for hybrid spring semester

BY OLIVIA TUCKER, SARAH COOK, MICHAEL NDUBISI AND GAVIN GUERRETTE STAFF REPORTERS In the wake of the recent COVID-19 surge across campus, students from Yale Hybridize Now — alongside almost 600 signatories — are calling on the University to “hybridize” and offer the option for students and professors to attend all classes either in-person or online.

The Yale Hybridize Now campaign, sponsored primarily by Disability Empowerment for Yale, was founded in early February. At the time of publication, the group’s petition had a total of 581 signatures, as well as endorsements from 16 Yale organizations across Yale College, Yale’s graduate and professional schools and two non-Yale groups. The primary demand of the petition is to mandate hybrid model accessibility for all Yale course offerings.

“We call on Yale to offer hybrid access to education for the remainder of the semester,” the petition reads. “Give all students and instructors the choice to attend class in-person or online, without penalties or threats to their personal safety. Support instructors to make all forms of learning accessible both virtually and in-person for all students and instructors, regardless of ability or health status.”

The petition is directly addressed to University President Peter Salovey, Provost Scott Strobel, Secretary and Vice President for Student Life Kimberly GoffCrews, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Tamar Gendler, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Lynn Cooley and the deans of all undergraduate, graduate and professional schools.

University Spokesperson Karen Peart, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun, Gendler and GoffCrews did not provide comment on Monday.

The petition presents several benefits of transitioning to a hybrid model and considers the perceived shortcomings of Yale’s current COVID-19 policies, especially with respect to high-risk students.

“Students should not have to pick between their education and their safety,” Chisom Ofomata ’25 wrote in an email to the News. “Instead, Yale can guarantee both by providing accessible hybrid classes. If both in-person and hybrid classes are offered, students will have the freedom to choose the best option for themselves instead of being forced to jeopardize their safety.”

The petition and its signatories maintain that its goal is to improve choice and accessibility for attending classes, not to reduce or eliminate existing in-person options.

Joaquín Lara Midkiff ’24, the former president of DEFY, said that he views the petition as both “complementary and supplementary” to the work the disability rights community has been doing for years. Lara Midkiff, who currently serves as DEFY’s advisor, characterized the petition as a “community pressure campaign.”

“We are trying to demonstrate to the University that there are a number of people who are interested in these issues that we have advocated for a long time now,” Lara Midkiff said. “I think this particular petition speaks more to protecting a community that has been historically marginalized — and, honestly, presently marginalized — both in the context of academia generally and also here at Yale.”

Howard Forman, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, told the News that there is a small population at Yale that is “relatively high risk,” but the current outbreak looks like it is “waning” and should be over by the time the petition would be acted upon.

However, he told the News he hopes the petition is looked at thoughtfully. Forman added that there is “good reason” the University should come up with a more consistent policy.

“I think it raises the question of how do we manage this in the future? Not so much, how do we manage it in the past?” Forman told the News. “We will have more outbreaks in future years. And we’ve got to come up with a consistent plan for that.”

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Members of DEFY are putting pressure on Yale to move to hybrid instruction in a new petition.

Lara Midkiff agreed that the rise in cases should elicit a broader conversation about future approaches.

“I think that especially as cases are growing more and more intense, we need to be having — as a University community — a much more serious and intelligent conversation around what learning should look like, at least for the rest of the term and then also moving forward,” Lara Midkiff said.

Forman said that he records his lectures only for students who have a “verified reason” to be absent from class. He said that making recordings available to everyone compromises the in-class experience, which remains a “worthy pursuit.”

Forman emphasized that he feels the University community needs to establish the “baseline expectation” of classroom instruction, in most cases.

“While it’s nice to say that freedom should be their choice, the experience of students in a classroom is vastly different from students on Zoom,” Forman said. “It’s different for the students. It’s dif-

ferent for the professor, and quite frankly, it is easier for me to teach from my office than it is from the classroom. But I know that it’s better when I’m in the classroom. And I think the same is true for students.”

Some students like Aaron Schorr ’24 support hybridization, but said they saw a potential to reduce in-person opportunities if it were not handled carefully, as professors might choose to make classes fully virtual when it is more convenient for them.

Dean of the School of Public Health Sten Vermund told the News that the University’s public health committee, with Interim Department Chair of Epidemiology Linda Niccolai leading the contact tracing efforts, has yet to find any cases that are attributable to classroom teaching.

However, Vermund said they routinely find cases attributable to social events, including off-campus events.

“So I believe that going hybrid would do little or nothing to reduce the number of cases on campus,” Vermund told the News.

“But it might give people a false sense of security.”

Vermund urged students to “be responsible in their social events” to help contain and prevent COVID-19 outbreaks.

He told the News that the University already provides accommodations for students and faculty who are immunosuppressed from undergoing cancer treatment.

Vermund also emphasized that the consequences of COVID-19 are “quite trivial” for vaccinated and boosted individuals without underlying immunosuppressive medical conditions.

He told the News that he would like to talk to the signers of the petition and start a more effective dialogue to help communicate the lack of classroom transmission. ​​ DEFY was founded in 2016.

Contact OLIVIA TUCKER at olivia.tucker@yale.edu, SARAH COOK at sarah.cook@yale.edu, GAVIN GUERRETTE at gavin.guerrette@yale.edu and MICHAEL NDUBISI at michael.ndubisi@yale.edu.

YLS goes tuition-free for students with greatest need

TIM TAI/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale Law School has become the first law institution to erase tuition for J.D. students living below the poverty line.

BY EDA AKER STAFF REPORTER On Monday, the Yale Law School became the first and only law school in the country to make a law degree tuition-free for students with the greatest financial need.

The Hurst Horizon Scholarship Program erases tuition for law students whose family income is below the federal poverty guidelines and with assets below $150,000, and awards them the entire cost of tuition and other fees. The scholarship is set to launch in the fall of 2022, and it will be available for all students who are enrolled in the school at that time — including current first and second year law students — and all students who meet the criteria

onwards. The Law School estimates that approximately 45 to 50 law students will be eligible for the program when it launches. Several students expressed excitement over the policy, but stressed that additional changes are necessary to improve equity in the legal profession.

The Program was made possible by a donation from Soledad Hurst LAW ’92 and Robert Hurst, David ’75 LAW ’78 and Patricia Nierenberg, and Gene LAW ’73 and Carol Ludwig. The lead donation from Soledad and Hurst was $20 million.

“The Hurst Horizon Scholarship Program is like a one two punch for equity,” Dean of the Yale Law School Heather Gerken said. “First, we are giving these students the freedom to do any-

thing they want when they graduate and really just throw themselves into the law school experience. Combined with The Tsai Leadership Program, we will also be able to provide training and professional networks to students who come here without those networks. And that is incredibly important.”

Gerken shared that the conversations that helped shape the program heavily involved students, alumni and faculty voices.

Over a year ago, the Law School faculty had voted to allow Gerken to make these changes to the school’s financial aid policy.

She emphasized that the Law School is committed to ensuring that generations of students are able to receive these scholarships,

particularly those students with significant financial need.

“Our focus with the Program has been on what the experience of students is like when they get here,” Gerken said. “We focus on making sure that students have a level playing field when they get to the Law School — that’s what has been in our hearts.”

Currently, only Yale Law School and Harvard Law School provide financial aid on a solely need-based basis. This academic year, 77 percent of Yale Law School students received some sort of financial aid. The Yale Law School — which practices need-blind admissions — also currently has one of the lowest student debt loads amongst law schools.

The Hurst Horizon Scholarship Program expands upon the Law School’s Horizon Grant, which was introduced in 2021 and awards $4,000 to students who fall below the federal poverty guideline and own less than $150,000 in assets.

“One of the things about the magic of this place is that when we move, others are often inspired to follow us,” Gerken said. “When we created a loan forgiveness program, other schools began to do the same.

And we’re really hoping that this is one of those moments where we will be able to start a conversation about the way legal education is funded so that more schools will consider getting financial aid to those students who need it the most.”

Melisa Olgun LAW ’24 and Arifa Ali LAW ’24 said that the Program relieves a significant portion of the stress associated with attending law school. They explained that student debt is a “big concern” for low income students when selecting which school to attend, or even whether to attend law school at all.

Olgun and Ali expressed their excitement that other schools will follow in Yale’s footsteps with regard to equity and financial aid.

“I was happy hearing the news because for the people who qual-

ify for the scholarship, their lives will be changed,” Ali said.

Sophie Clark LAW ’23, a current second-year student who qualifies to receive the scholarship when it launches next year, said that she was “personally thrilled” and that the program was “wonderful news.”

Still, some students said that there is more work necessary to make a legal education more affordable and attainable. Ali and Olgun both mentioned that relying on the federal poverty line to determine eligibility excludes some low income students who still need significant financial support but do not qualify for the Hurt Horizon Scholarship Program. Clark also emphasized that, while the program represents significant progress, the greater legal community is still full of inequity.

“The program points to this larger issue with the way universities fund themselves, which is not solved by letting a few poor students, whose families fall under the poverty line, in for free each year,” Clark said. “As if a handful of once-poor people — myself included — having a chance to grab power can do anything to undo the decades/centuries of the already-powerful maintaining their positions.”

All the students and Gerken expressed interest in expanding the program in years to come to reach a greater number of low-income students.

“I think critiques of the scholarship are essential for that push forward for equity, but not at the cost of understating its importance,” Olgun said. “Within my activism as an undergraduate, I’ve found that there needs to be a balance between demanding more equity, more accessibility to given institutions, and also recognizing the steps taken so far.”

Tuition for the Law School’s 2021-22 academic year totaled $67,108.

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

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can, and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path." SIDDHARTA GAUTAMA BUDDHA

Students express shock, sadness for home country UKRAINE FROM PAGE 1 Zhukovets was in bed when she saw the news about bombings in the city, and worried that her mother would be asleep — the first explosions were reported around 4:30 a.m. in Ukraine. Eventually, Zhukovets reached her mother, who woke up to a call from a friend who heard explosions from the airport. By that time, Zhukovets said, all of Kyiv was awake and trying to leave the city.

“When she wasn’t picking up I was like, ‘Okay, that’s it. They bombed our house. I’m never going to see them again,’” Zhukovets said. “It’s been very stressful and frustrating. The internet hasn’t been great. I’ve just been calling them and checking all the news.”

Once part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, Ukraine has sought to ally itself more closely with the West in recent years. In 2019, Ukraine amended its constitution to include the goal of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. Putin has strongly opposed the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, citing NATO’s potential westward encroachment as a pretext for an invasion. Russia has also continuously claimed that certain eastern regions of Ukraine, which contain Russian-backed separatist parties and citizens who speak Russian, are oppressed by the Ukrainian government and should be part of Russia.

Russia’s latest attempts to regain military power over Ukraine began last fall, when Russia assembled as many as 190,000 troops along the border it shares with Ukraine and Belarus.

In a public address on Monday, Putin argued that the country of Ukraine was “entirely created by

Russia” and accused Ukraine of planning hostility against Russia, justifying Russian aggression as self-defense. Shortly before the Thursday attacks began, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged peace in a televised address to the people of Russia.

In an email on Thursday evening, University President Peter Salovey condemned Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, inviting students to a virtual vigil for peace on Sunday at 5 p.m.

The escalation of tensions and the eventual violence on Thursday have consumed the daily lives of several of Yale’s Ukrainian students, including Zhukovets, whose family is among the many Kyiv residents leaving the city for western Ukraine.

Although her family was able to make it out by taking side roads to avoid traffic, the outflux of people trying to leave the Ukrainian capital has made their journey an arduous one.

“It was supposed to take them around ten hours, but it’s taking them around 18 or 20 at this point,” Zhukovets said on Thursday afternoon. “They’ve been driving since like 10 p.m. [Eastern] time last night, and they're still driving. They have five hours ahead of them.”

Armen Khachaturyan LAW ’93, the president of the Yale Club of Ukraine, wrote in an email to the News that it was “a difficult time for Ukrainians.” Khachaturyan is currently in Ukraine, and was unable to speak to the News due to the conflict’s impact on the phone lines and internet connection in his area.

“On one side, it’s good that I’m not there and my parents don’t have to worry about me,” Zhukovets said. “But on the other side I can’t do anything, and I can’t protect them.”

Oleksii Antoniuk ’24 told the News that his family is currently located in western Ukraine, so is not facing violence currently.

He further spoke about the fierce patriotism he has felt from his fellow Ukrainians. The hatred of Russia in Ukraine is intense, Antoniuk said, and he has no doubt that the majority of the Ukrainian people will be willing to “take arms, shoot Russian soldiers, throw Molotov cocktails — anything.”

“I’m studying national security and global affairs, so I’ve been watching all these war videos from Syria or from Libya,” Antoniuk said. “Watching the same videos from Ukraine wasn’t difficult because, today, the war was not that bad. … I was quite proud that it worked out well today. Tomorrow, we'll see.”

For all three current students, following news coverage and trying to get in touch with their families made it hard to focus on anything else Thursday.

Zhukovets noted that the Yale community has been attentive to the issue, be it through her professor granting her an extension on a problem set or messages of support from her squash coach, the The Office of International Students and Scholars and her friends at Yale.

“From what I’ve seen so far, Yale students pay quite a lot of attention to this issue,” Antoniuk agreed.

“I’ve received so many texts.”

Bidochko noted the importance of Yale students educating themselves on the issue as it affects their Ukrainian peers.

“Yale is one of the best places that we can go to get an education,” Bidochko said. “I just really hope that students can make an effort to be educated on this topic and the

UNSPLASH

Three Ukranian Yale College students said that the past 24 hours have brought them fear and confusion. language that they use. It's not ‘the Ukraine,’ it’s Ukraine. It's not ‘Oh, the Russians were trying to restore peace.’ They fully invaded a sovereign nation. Be educated on this to really support your fellow students.”

Zhukovets added that Yale students following the situation in Ukraine should engage thoughtfully with the media they consume about the issue, reading beyond the headline or the first few lines of articles.

Antoniuk also noted that students should avoid getting their news about the issue from Twitter or other social media platforms, emphasizing the amount of misinformation and Russian propaganda available online.

Yale students hoping to support their Ukrainian peers, Zhukovets said, should continue to follow and talk about the issue.

“All you can do is talk and keep Ukraine in your thoughts and pray for them if you’re religious,” Zhu-

kovets said. “Maybe find any figures or people or funds that you would be willing to donate to because it's not going to blow out in a few days. It's going to be a long lasting thing and we will need funds to fight them.”

Khachaturyan emphasized that the country has stayed optimistic in the face of Russian aggression.

“We are encouraged by the universal international support Ukraine receives from all over the world and by the determination of each Ukrainian to defend the country and win,” Khachaturyan told the News. “When all the turmoil and warfare is over there will be a different nation called Ukraine and I am happy to be a part of it.”

The OISS is located at 421 Temple St. Olivia Tucker contributed reporting.

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

Yale faculty explain origins of international conflict UKRAINE II FROM PAGE 1 south that appear to be targeting the Ukranian capital of Kyiv, as well as the major cities of Kharkiv and Kherson.

“Russia’s actions are nothing less than a declaration of war against Ukraine,” Cameron wrote in a commentary for the Yale MacMillan Center.

Associate professor of political science Alex Debs, whose research concentrates on global conflict and nuclear policy, noted that the consequences of nuclear proliferation likely also play a significant role in this escalation. There is little evidence that Ukraine is on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons, Debs said, but nevertheless Putin has used the potential of Ukraine joining NATO and thereby entering into an alliance with countries that do

have nuclear weapons, as a pretext for invading.

“The general consensus is that nuclear weapons deter, they convince other states not to attack,” Debs told the News. “If Ukraine were part of NATO, then it could more effectively deter Russian aggression. … And, Putin would say, Ukraine could pose a threat to Russia if it is part of NATO.” Ukraine, notably, has been in possession of nuclear weaponry in the past. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine inherited a nuclear arsenal, but willingly denuclearized in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom in an agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum. Russia first violated this guarantee when it invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

The Russian offensive in Ukraine has been met broadly with sanctions and condemnation from the European Union and the United States. As a result of these sanctions, the value of the ruble has sunk to a record low and Russian stocks have seen one of the worst crashes in history.

Yale University World Fellow Rayhan Asat said that she supported the EU’s and U.S.’ sanction measures, and noted a need for punitive measures against “Russian institutions, oligarchs, and holding companies.”

Asat, who is a human rights lawyer, also pointed specifically to the humanitarian effects of the conflict.

She noted that the invasion could lead to a mass displacement of Ukranians, and she hopes European countries would prepare to help take in and resettle refugees.

“The neighboring countries must prepare to set up reception centers like Poland and Romania as an immediate response,” Asat told the News. “In the long term, EU member states must be committed to sharing responsibility for asylum seekers and providing sustainable support.”

Asat added that governments could follow the lead of the United Kingdom and allow the Ukrainians who are legal residents or workers in their countries to remain under the same visa.

History professor Marci Shore, who specializes in European intellectual history, told the News that within this conflict, it is important to separate the ideals of Putin and his party from the ideals of the Russian people at large.

Shore noted that within the intellectual community in Russia there

is significant opposition to the war, pointing specifically to an open letter by the Russian Congress of Intellectuals — a group of Russian academics, politicians and human rights advocates. The Feb. 4 letter, which Shore said posed a great personal risk to the signatories, called a potential war against Ukraine “irresponsible and immoral” and “devoid of legitimacy.”

“The Russian writer Viktor Shenderovich was just giving an interview to the Russian station Echo Moskvy in which he said ‘This is a war by one person’ — and then the phone/internet line was cut,” Shore said. “This is Putin’s war, and it’s grotesque.”

The Budapest Memorandum was signed on Dec. 5, 1994 by the United States, Russia and Ukraine.

Contact GAVIN GUERRETTE at gavin.guerrette@yale.edu .

SPH to no longer sit under School of Medicine YSPH FROM PAGE 1 Independent YSPH Since its founding in 1915, the School of Public Health has produced several public health innovations, including recently developed saliva-based COVID-19 testing, research on health equity and insights into infectious diseases like Ebola, HIV and other illnesses.

Throughout its 107-year history, the School of Public Health has operated as an entity within the School of Medicine, which has previously led faculty and students to call for more autonomy and support. With this announcement, SPH will begin its transition to a fully independent professional school with autonomous responsibility for its own budget and endowment fund.

According to Salovey, the University plans for the YSPH transition period to occur over the next 12-18 months, with the next School of Public Health dean ultimately leading the transition.

“Yale University’s investments into both the fiscal and administrative coherence of YSPH really represents a historic day,” said current School of Public Health Dean Sten Vermund.

Announced last fall, Vermund’s term will end in June 2022. The school has begun its search for the

next School of Public Health dean, with Melinda Irwin, associate dean of research and professor of epidemiology, serving as the chair of the search advisory committee. Upon the arrival of the new dean, Yale will provide a one-time $100 million contribution to the School of Public Health to eliminate the current subsidy it receives from the School of Medicine.

The $50 million endowment fund provided to each school will support future teaching, research and practice needs. In addition, the three schools have announced their commitment to providing increased financial aid support for students and addressing the shortage of health professionals and the need for increased diversity in medicine, nursing and public health.

Funding sources According to Salovey, the 2021 endowment returns, as well as the University’s ongoing capital campaign, made the funding for the School of Medicine, School of Nursing and School of Public Health possible.

“Our endowment grew by more than 40 percent in the last fiscal year … and we are coming off the very best year of fundraising that the University has ever had,” Salovey said.

“Financially, we feel the moment is now, and it joins the saliency of issues

of health and illness that the pandemic has brought to our attention.”

Yale’s endowment reached $42.3 billion during the 2021 fiscal year, with a 40.2 percent rate of return.

In a budget update released by the Office of the Provost last fall, Strobel explained that the University’s annual target spending rate is 5.25 percent of the endowment’s value. He furthered that the significant endowment return of fiscal year 2021 will provide an increase in operating funds beginning in fiscal year 2023, which starts on July 1, 2022. According to the update, the recent gains will “provide opportunities for significant investments in University priorities.”

Financial aid Both Brown and Ann Kurth, Dean of the School of Nursing, emphasized the importance of making clinical education more accessible, especially to students of diverse backgrounds.

“In the School of Medicine, we are committed to getting to a point where a medical education can be debt free,” Brown said. “One of the goals of the campaign for us is to raise philanthropy to reduce the unit loan, eventually to zero.”

Brown added that decreasing the financial burden on students would also support the growth of more diverse cohorts. Currently, about

28 percent of students entering the School of Medicine are considered underrepresented in medicine and about 15 percent are first generation.

Kurth also highlighted efforts within the School of Nursing to support access and inclusive excellence, explaining the importance of having a nursing workforce that “reflects the populations” they serve.

“We would like to get to a place where we have a strong cohort of students who can graduate debt free, [who] can then be free to go out and serve in the world in a way that is not constrained by a burden of debt,” Kurth said. “These funds will allow us to plan for that possibility.”

Buildings Salovey also underscored the importance of improving the School of Public Health’s facilities during the transition.

“The buildings that public health has now are suboptimal,” Salovey said. “The faculty and students are spread out over many buildings across New Haven, and the spaces for student gathering, teaching and learning are quite limited.”

In a press release, Salovey, Strobel and Brown explained that University administrators will work with the next SPH dean to identify opportunities to improve the school’s facilities in order to

meet current and future teaching, research and practice needs.

According to Strobel, the School of Public Health plans to vacate three buildings and join existing public health and medical faculty at 1 Church St., decreasing the number of buildings from 12 to eight.

“In the longer term, we would like to have close proximity of the School of Public Health relative to Medicine,” Strobel said. “We would like to be able to consolidate this school into as few buildings as possible, but that plan is one that we still need to develop.”

Broader impact Salovey shared that the independence of the School of Public Health and School of Medicine and the new endowment support will further strengthen cross-disciplinary collaborations among the three schools.

He added that the aims of this investment extend beyond supporting the three professional schools, to ultimately educating medical, nursing and public health professionals who will serve the greater New Haven and global community.

The Yale School of Public Health was established in 1915.

Contact BRANDON WU at brandon.wu@yale.edu and ALEX YE at alex.ye@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

"During isolation, one can bring a different approach to the creative process." ROSALÍA SPANISH SINGER-SONGWRITER

University adds nearly 50 new science faculty SEAS FROM PAGE 1 University officials noted that Yale’s present financial situation — augmented by last year’s endowment growth to $42.3 billion — and interdisciplinary enthusiasm among faculty make this the time to launch a new wave of engineering investments. Administrators would not provide the cost of the upcoming investments.

“The excitement in various fields of study across the curriculum suggests that the moment is ripe for bringing to Yale faculty who will only make us an even stronger university,” University President Peter Salovey told the News. “And it is true that our development campaign, while only in the early stages of its public phase, is going very well. Our endowment is doing what you would hope endowments do, and that is to grow. And finally, the overall operating budget of the University is in good shape.

All three of those factors, plus the moment for scholarship and research that this represents, suggest that this is the right time to undertake this expansion.”

SEAS’ newfound autonomy will, per the announcement, further its integration with the graduate and professional schools.

Jeffrey Brock, who has served as both Dean of SEAS and FAS Dean of Science for the past three years, will continue to lead SEAS and is stepping down from his FAS role on June 30 to focus on the expanded responsibilities of the SEAS deanship. Per the announcement, Brock will oversee the SEAS operating budget, including staffing and facilities costs, starting in July. He will also be in charge of faculty salary allocations and start-up packages. SEAS currently operates within FAS. Brock emphasized that a core element of the SEAS ethos is its integration of engineering “into the larger fabric of a liberal arts institution” and said he intends to continue supporting that culture as the dean of SEAS. He specifically noted a potential for more collaborative cross-school appointments as well as increased opportunities to streamline interdisciplinary programs, such as joint degrees between SEAS and another Yale school. As an example, he referenced the new master’s degree in Personalized Medicine & Applied Engineering that will be offered by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and jointly supported by SEAS and the Yale School of Medicine starting this summer.

“A University is sustained by having connections across all different levels of interaction,” FAS Dean Tamar Gendler told the News. “I often think of undergraduates as cross-pollinators who move from one unit to another and keep us connected. But — more and more — graduate school is [also]

becoming a place where people develop expertise across more than one domain, and the kinds of programs that Dean Brock has proposed jointly between engineering and applied science and the professional schools are [a] continuation of President Salovey’s vision.”

Gendler will soon begin searching for a new FAS Dean of Science to fill Brock’s current role.

In accordance with Yale’s goal of expanding engineering and applied sciences, the University will hire 45 new faculty members.

The addition of new posts will bring the total number of University faculty to over 750 tenure track and tenured positions.

Salovey said all new hires will teach undergraduates.

“A few years ago, we expanded Yale College,” University provost Scott Strobel told the News.

“We did not at that time expand the faculty beyond the size needed for teaching coverage. This is our opportunity to do that.”

Per the announcement, about half of the 15 new faculty positions in FAS will go to data-intensive social science, in accordance with a committee report from last year.

In SEAS specifically, the ladder faculty size will increase from 92 to 122. This expansion is predominantly targeted at increasing the size of the computer science department — which, the announcement notes, is the most popular major choice among engineering undergraduates — and advancing scholarship in materials science.

As far as associated costs go, Strobel said the University is envisioning the faculty expansion more “in terms of slots than in terms of dollars.”

“Different types of faculty have different costs associated with them as to the nature of the work that they do,” Strobel explained.

“As a result, there’s actually quite a range of what those dollar amounts would be, and so I don’t think it’d be appropriate to speculate on the dollar amount at this point. We anticipate that the faculty will be hired over the next three to five to six years, and so we will adjust the budgets accordingly as those searches proceed.”

The announcement notes that SEAS’ separation from FAS will not affect the undergraduate admissions process — and Strobel further emphasized this in an interview with the News.

“This does not change how undergraduate students, for example, apply to Yale College,” Strobel said. “We will not have a separate admissions process for undergraduates who intend to major in a SEAS subject. They will follow the same admissions process as those who would pursue a social sciences, humanities, or science major. This is very much still a Yale College-centric experience from the standpoint of the undergraduate students, and the same thing is true for the graduate students…

Yale establishes SEAS with faculty distinct from that of Yale College.

Although the faculty are being divided into SEAS and FAS, the undergraduate and graduate populations remain as they are.”

Salovey also stressed that there will be “no change in the flexibility” undergraduate students currently have to pursue various courses of study while at Yale, and that undergraduate financial aid will continue to be handled centrally.

Another core part of the wave of investments is new state-ofthe-art buildings. Per Tuesday’s announcement, the University is developing “a comprehensive renovation plan to be implemented over the next decade,” which will involve redesigning the buildings on lower Hillhouse Avenue.

Currently, SEAS occupies six buildings on Yale’s campus: Dunham Lab, Mason Lab, 17 Hillhouse Ave., Watson Hall, the Becton Center — which houses the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design, or the CEID — and the Malone Center. Among the newest of these, Strobel said, are the Malone and Becton Centers. The former is a state-of-the-art facility, and the latter will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

“Those buildings need to be brought up to standards of the 21st century for engineering,” Strobel added. “And so we’re going to have to make some major investments in those spaces over the next several years. That’s the process because the buildings aren’t empty and there’s people that are occupying them. They need to continue to be able to do their work, and so it’s a long process of moves, shifts, renovations and more moves.”

Strobel said the specifics of facility development are not yet fully defined. He described, as a “key part” of the overhaul, the ongoing construction of the Phys-

ical Sciences and Engineering Building (PSEB). PSEB is set to open by 2027, and Strobel noted that its opening will allow for free space that can then be used to move departments out of buildings needing renovation.

Some of Yale’s science facilities projects have clear estimates of associated costs, while others are still being defined. PSEB, for example, is an investment of over $350 million, while Kline Tower is expected to cost significantly less as it does not include experimental laboratory research benches.

Yale’s investment in SEAS is in line with Salovey’s 2016 assertion of science as a top academic priority for the University. In the years following, the University Science Strategy Committee (USSC) released a 2018 report recommending five primary areas of investment opportunity: integrative data science; quantum science, engineering and materials; environmental and evolutionary sciences; inflammation science and neuroscience. These areas were incorporated into Yale’s capital campaign, which launched this past October and has a strong STEM focus.

In response to recommendations outlined in the USSC report, Brock released another document concerning the SEAS strategic vision last August. His report highlighted a need for cross-school collaboration, increased steps to support diversity and inclusion and several core areas of increased research potential. These areas include, but are not limited to, materials science and artificial intelligence.

According to the University’s Tuesday announcement, the new SEAS split will give the school “operational flexibility” to follow through with its strategic vision

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

report. Brock noted that certain procedures, like grant applications and “entrepreneurial opportunities,” will be made easier by the upcoming restructuring.

“When you look at the data on rankings for schools of engineering and applied science and [their] size, there’s a fairly direct correlation, and the challenge is that while growth is likely a necessary condition for rankings to improve, it certainly is not sufficient,” Brock said. “I think that our strategic vision process gives us a roadmap for deepening the excellence of the School of Engineering and Applied Science in a way that leverages the broad strengths of the University, and we need very much to adhere to this in a thoughtful way as we move through the recruitment process for excellent new faculty to bring to Yale.”

Brock said there may be some level of “anxiety” about the change in structure, noting that “change is always interesting and provocative.” However, Gendler noted that there exists a precedent for this kind of restructuring, as FAS itself was governed by the Provost until 2014 and ultimately split into a more autonomous entity.

Strobel noted that engineering is an area in which Yale strives to improve.

“In order to be a great university, we have to be great in engineering,” Strobel said. “And so what you’re seeing in this is an investment in an area where, frankly, Yale has to be better, and in order to be better, we need resources.”

According to the University announcement, SEAS was announced as a school in 2008.

Contact ANIKA SETH at anika.seth@yale.edu .

EJC accuses trustees of conflict of interest CORPORATION FROM PAGE 1 tion. And it feels like such a damning indictment.”

The four Corporation members collectively referred comment to Martha Schall, associate vice president of institutional affairs, who directed the News to previous steps that the University has taken to distance itself from the fossil fuel industry. These steps include setting new carbon reduction targets, implementing new principles regarding fossil fuel investments to guide Yale’s endowment, and launching the Planetary Solutions Project.

EJC members Ingall and Melissa Wang ’23, said that it is difficult to track direct influence that the trustees’ ties could have on their work at Yale because of a lack of transparency in the governance council — Yale Corporation meeting minutes are sealed for 50 years, they noted.

Long ’24 said the inclusion of members’ ties to fossil fuels in the recent complaint does not necessarily represent an allegation that the Corporation members were changing their behavior due to the conflict of interest.

But because of “the high level ties that do exist,” Long said, the possibility should not be ruled out.

“That’s something that we think the attorney general should

consider when determining whether or not to make an investigation,” Long added.

Goodyear joined the Yale Corporation in 2011 as successor trustee and is on the Corporation’s Investment Committee. He served as the CEO of BHP Billiton — a petroleum, mining and metals company — from 2003 to 2007, before his appointment to the Corporation. He then served on the Board of Directors of Anadarko Petroleum, now Occidental Petroleum, from 2012 to 2015.

Steiner joined the Yale Corporation as a successor trustee in 2018.

Steiner is currently on the board of Castleton Commodities International, which invests and trades in natural gas and oil.

Kennard joined as a successor trustee in 2014. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Duke Energy — an electric power and natural gas holding company — from January 2014 to May 2021. Kennard was also formerly the managing director and Global Partner in the global telecommunications and media group at the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that invests in oil and gas.

Joskow served on the Yale Corporation as a successor trustee from 2008 to 2020. Joskow has served as a member of Exelon’s Board of Directors since 2007. Exelon is one of the largest utility companies in the United States and uses fossil fuels to

power its grid. Joskow also served as director of TransCanada, a natural gas company that first proposed the Keystone XL pipeline system, from 2004 to 2013.

This is not the first time that Goodyear and Joskow’s ties to the fossil fuel industry have come under scrutiny. Eight years ago, the Corporation struck down a divestment proposal following 18 months of advocacy from student group Fossil Fuel Yale. Goodyear and Joskow both served as trustees at the time, and did not state whether they had recused themselves from conversations surrounding divestment.

Several members of Fossil Fuel Yale expressed concerns over the potential conflict of interest. The corporation’s conflict of interest policy, the News reported at the time, had stated that trustees should “recuse themselves from discussion or voting in any instance where they or their family members have a financial interest.” But the policy contained a loophole that allowed trustees to be involved in decisions if it served the University’s interest.

A conflict of interest policy specifically for trustees is currently absent from the Yale Corporation’s By-Laws, Charter and Miscellaneous Regulations. Policies for Corporation members are not mentioned in the University’s official Conflict of Interest Policy.

None of the companies that the four Corporation members have ties to are on the list of fossil fuel producers ineligible for Yale investment due to ethical concerns, which was updated to include ExxonMobil and Chevron. However, because the University does not disclose its investments, Yale may not invest in the companies the Trustees have ties to.

Still, visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School Jennifer Skene LAW ’14 said that having any interest in fossil fuels threatens the University’s progress towards climate goals, regardless of whether Yale holds actual investments in the companies associated with the Corporation members.

“When we’re talking about addressing climate change, we are talking about completely dismantling our dependence on fossil fuels and decarbonizing our economy,” Skene said. “Any kind of financial interest that is propping up those industries and holding back our disentanglement with those climate harming sectors is going to be inimical to meeting our climate goals.”

Many of the fossil fuel companies listed above have taken steps to become more climate friendly.

The Carlyle Group recently committed to being net zero by 2050,

and Exelon recently divested from coal.

But Skene said that little should be made of these changes.

“There’s been a lot of greenwashing, especially in the last couple of years by fossil fuel companies in an attempt to avoid completely losing their social license,” Skene said. “They are a little better than window dressing. They fail to address the fundamental issue, which is that we cannot continue to be burning fossil fuels.”

Changes to the election process of Corporation members have also made it harder to push for change, according to A.J. Hudson ENV ’19 LAW ’23, a board member on Law Students for Climate Action. Since spring 2021, candidates can no longer petition to be on the Corporation ballot, so trustees must be appointed through official nomination. “[Yale Corporation members’] job is to make sure the Fabergé egg doesn’t get cracked,” Hudson said.

“Their job is not to stir things up, not to shake things around. And so it’s really a depressing reality.

Successor trustees are selected and appointed by the current board of trustees from among alumni of the University to serve up to two six-year terms.

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

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY A space for healers in need of healing

BY KAYLA YUP STAFF REPORTER The 18th annual Yale Internal Medicine Writers’ Workshop served as a space for healers in need of healing. Through writing narrative nonfiction, 12 resident physicians reflected on and derived meaning from the challenging world of medicine.

During the two-day intensive writing workshop, the residents engaged in lively group discussions of each other’s pieces, revised accordingly and tackled writing exercises.

Anna Reisman ’86, School of Medicine professor and director of the program for humanities in medicine, and Lisa Sanders MED ’97, associate professor of medicine, co-directed the workshop. They provided mentoring during and after the workshop as the residents finalized their pieces for the annual reading. Out of the 12 residents, nine participated in the reading on Feb. 3. This year, the reading was hosted by residents Lena Glowka and Stephanie Wu. “Reading and writing are my first loves,” psychiatry resident Paul Eigenberger said. “I was an English Literature major in college and never dreamed I’d become a doctor. My experience with the Writers’ Workshop has certainly given me the confidence to write more, and to keep developing my voice and looking for good stories to tell. I think learning to convey powerful emotions and communicate nuanced stories will take a lifetime of trial and error, but it’s a process I look forward to.”

In his piece “Winter Solstice,” Eigenberger reflected on a powerful experience caring for a patient during his internship year. The patient was a man in his early 20s whose life had been unraveling.

Over the past month, the patient’s thoughts and behaviors had changed, reaching “a crescendo of paranoia and aggression” that landed him in Eigenberger’s care.

The narrative began with an observation of his patient’s tense body and apparent suppression of “a great and powerful anger.” One day, after continued care and a court’s decision to involuntarily commit the patient to the hospital, the patient opened up to Eigenberger. It was an unexpected moment of ease,

free of the patient’s usual tension — they engaged in casual, transparent communication. From this conversation, it suddenly clicked in Eigenberger’s mind that this man suffered from drug-induced psychosis. In a heart-wrenching conclusion, Eigenberger ended his story with the patient echoing his original complaint — “they’ll never let

that he belonged to a community disproportionately affected by the pandemic. She lamented the fact that he was in his early 40s, meaning that he fell sick before he was eligible for the vaccine.

Potent lines are scattered throughout the narrative. Following a regular checkup on his condition, Dimopoulos wrote

pared this patient to his grandmother, based on both character and appearance. After taking care of this patient for the better part of two weeks, she died.

Wood recounted feeling helpless. This occurred during the time before the world had evidence-based practices, COVID19 experts or vaccines — there was

COURTESY OF ANNA REISMAN

In a two-day writing workshop, resident physicians reflected on and derived meaning from the challenging world of medicine. me sleep,” with a cold, distant stare.

“My patients had begun to follow me home, smuggled from the hospital in unpatrolled corners of my mind, only to reappear while I prepared dinner, read stories to my daughter, or closed my eyes to sleep,” wrote Eigenberger.

This year marked internal medicine resident Christina Dimopoulos’ second time participating in the writing workshop. Her piece was inspired by a patient she took care of in the COVID-19 ICU in March 2021. The patient was critically ill at a time during which patients were not allowed to have visitors.

To cope with this, Dimopoulos would talk to the patient’s teenage daughters each day to update them on his condition. Through writing, she sought to process a challenging experience that had afflicted so many physicians during the pandemic.

“You think about all the patients for whom you were the last person they spoke to because no one else was allowed to be there,” Dimopoulos wrote.

Her piece opens with the man lying motionless on the hospital bed, face obscured, cut up by the plastic discs securing his ventilator in place. She grieved the fact

about her need to believe that the patients she cared for would get better, to cling onto a “glimmer of hope during this wave.”

Even after she had to move onto another unit, she reviewed the medical record frequently to check on the patient’s condition. But she realized that what she wanted to know was not documented in the chart. One day, Dimopoulos opened the chart and saw that he had died. She cried for him, for his family and for her own shattered hope, and then suited up for her next patient.

“Being a resident writer to me means that I am able to share my experience of being a new physician with others in the field, and hopefully create something that resonates with other healthcare workers,” Dimopolous said.

“I also write to reach people outside of medicine, so that they get a glimpse into the thoughts and emotions of physicians. Mostly I do it for myself as a way to put challenging interactions on paper.”

During the first wave of the pandemic, internal medicine resident Nathan Wood took care of a deeply faith-driven patient who fell ill with COVID-19. Throughout his narrative, Wood com-

no cure, only supportive care. As he wrote his piece, Wood continued processing this loss and the meaning he derived from it. He had learned to prioritize the ‘caring’ in medicine as much as he prioritized the ‘treating.’ Wood’s reading culminated in him tenderly singing lines from a song his late grandmother had shared with him: “Swing low, sweet chariot. Coming to carry me home.”

“As a new physician, you’ve only just been thrust into seeing patients — into feeling the weight of being responsible for human lives, into trying to preserve and restore health in a broken system,” Wood said. “Add in a pandemic, and that’s a lot to process.

Writing really helps with that.

It’s also one of the most powerful ways that we as physicians can tell stories that need to be told and only we can tell.”

For psychiatry resident Nichole Roxas, being a resident writer means making space for healers who need care too. Last year, in the span of a few days, she lost both her -uncle and aunt to COVID19. Using an orchid as an extended metaphor, Roxas reminded herself to grow gardens around her pain.

As a Filipina whose mother had

been redeployed to the COVID19 ICU, Roxas wrestled with the reality that though Filipino nurses make up only 4 percent of nurses in the US, they comprised more than 25 percent of nurses who had died of COVID-19 and its complications nationwide. She sought out the writing workshop as a community to help her pause, make meaning and reflect. Roxas wanted to “see and be seen.”

“It’s always great to see writers get onto paper an idea, an experience, a character that lives on in their mind,” Sanders said. “Getting across both the essential details of what happened, and in doing it thoughtfully, artfully, revealing what it means.

This year’s writers did an outstanding job of telling their stories.”

Each year, a doctor-writer is invited to speak at the School of Medicine’s “Writing and Medicine” Grand Rounds, which takes place the same day as the annual resident reading. Nephrologist and internist Vanessa Grubbs delivered the talk “After Interlaced Fingers: Lessons Learned Since Becoming an Author,” as this year’s visiting speaker. The residents’ pieces were collected in a booklet called “Capsules” and distributed to the medical community.

Reisman was moved by hearing the residents read their revised pieces aloud to a large audience, having witnessed the work that each writer put in during the workshop. She noted that by listening to their colleagues’ narratives, many of the other residents may be inspired to apply for next year’s workshop. Glowka views writing as a powerful way for residents to refresh mentally, avoid burnout and find meaning in their work.

“I think there’s a false sense of objectivity that is imbued in us during our medical training which we can challenge, in a way, through narrative writing — and the arts in general — which requires us to turn our curiosity inward and evaluate our own internal narratives as a starting point for asking questions of ourselves, our patients and the institutions we are embedded in,” Wu said.

The Yale Department of Internal Medicine established the Writers’ Workshop in 2003.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu .

Yale alum becomes youngest female unicorn CEO

BY NATALIE MAKABLEH STAFF REPORTER April Koh ’16 is the CEO and co-founder of Spring Health, a health startup with a valuation of more than $2 billion. At 29, she is the youngest female leader of a multibillion-dollar startup.

As an undergraduate at Yale, Koh witnessed her roommate suffer from an eating disorder. Her roommate was taking antidepressants but had to wait weeks before receiving treatment at a clinic.

In her efforts to help find treatment options, Koh came across a peer-reviewed research paper

by Adam Chekroud GRD ’18 that detailed how machine learning can outperform health care providers in matching patients to a care plan personalized to their needs. That paper laid the foundation for Spring Health.

John Krystal, professor of translational research and chair of psychiatry at Yale, served as a mentor for Chekroud when he was a graduate student in the department of psychology.

“Chekroud is incredibly bright as well as enormously creative and effective,” Krystal said. “Some of Chekroud’s work involved the application of machine learning (artificial intelligence) techniques to the analysis of large antidepressant clinical trial datasets. Chekroud’s work was some of the earliest and best work suggesting that one could predict antidepressant outcome overall and, importantly, predict the outcome to different classes of antidepressant medications.”

Inspired by his findings, Koh cold-emailed Chekroud to set up a meeting with him. The two later teamed up with another Yale undergraduate to found Spring Health, with the goal of improving the process of patient matching to particular treatments. Over time, they built a tele-mental healthcare system around a personalized healthcare strategy to provide mental health care that is both efficient and effective.

Their concept earned the duo the $25,000 Thorne Prize for Social Innovation in Health or Education in 2016, a prize awarded by InnovateHealth Yale, a social entrepreneurship program at the School of Public Health. The award provided seed capital to Spring Health, connections to its mentors and advisers and recognition as a compelling and promising social entrepreneurship venture.

“I always promoted health equity as a defining concept of InnovateHealth Yale and the reason I founded the initiative,” said Martin Klein, founder of InnovateHealth Yale. “In my talks and in my meetings with students, I encouraged them to create digital health solutions that prioritized low-income groups in the U.S. and low- and middle-income countries. I welcome the emphasis on digital health equity and hope both students and the market will recognize that we cannot truly advance as a country and global exemplar until we place the same emphasis on meeting the needs of all people as we do on maximizing profit for the few.”

InnovateHealth was founded on the premise of providing students with the space, resources and mentors to create innovative solutions. Spring Health accomplishes this mission by addressing national shortages in the access to any form of mental health care, especially access to high quality care.

Teresa Chahine Marcelo, lecturer in social entrepreneurship at Yale School of Management, believes that digital health solutions hold great promise, but there is still a need to mobilize digital solutions that treat the root causes of social and environmental determinants of health.

“Apprentice with the problem,” Chahine said. “Start with a problem that you care about and then come up with a solution. In order to solve a problem you need to have first experienced it.”

Chahine advises all students who are interested in health innovation to take advantage of the

CREATIVE COMMONS

Yale College alum April Koh ‘16, alongside YSM Assistant Professor AdjunctAdam Chekroud ‘18 founded a company called Spring Health to improve mental health care delivery. diverse courses offered across campus and meet students with different backgrounds, or get involved with Tsai CITY. Chahine teaches a course called Social Entrepreneurship Lab, which is a practice-based class for aspiring social entrepreneurs. It offers students from across campus the opportunity to work on a social challenge of their choice and provides a space to experiment and fail.

“In my experience it is often helpful to build a network of advisors and supporters when you are getting started,” Krystal said. “Yale is a special community that brings people with diverse backgrounds

and talents together in exciting new ways. The important thing is to reach out and not wait for people to come to you. The Office of Cooperative Research is a good place to start… It was helpful in organizing activities where April and Adam could present their ideas and generate small amounts of funding for their company. OCR also developed patents that emerged from Adam’s graduate work and licensed those patents to Spring Health.”

According to Director of InnovateHealth Yale Fatema Basrai, the organization offers mentorship for students working on public health innovations. She emphasized that

Tsai CITY and other partners of the Yale Entrepreneurship Collaborative have multiple mentorship resources that students can use.

Chekroud encourages other Yale students to become social entrepreneurs and commit to creating novel technologies out of their ideas.

“Do it!” Chekroud said. “Being a student is the lowest risk time in your life to try and found a company.”

At 29 years old, Koh became the youngest American CEO of a private startup company valued at over $1 billion.

Contact NATALIE MAKABLEH at natalie.makableh@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Healthcare systems should publish sustainability reports, Yale study finds

BY YASH ROY AND AKASH CHAKKA STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER In contrast to the more than 90 percent of S&P 500 companies that publish a sustainability report, almost no major healthcare organization produces a comparable publication on the environmental and social impacts of their system.

A Yale-led study highlights this disparity between major firms and healthcare companies, the latter of which make up about 20 percent of the American economy. The analysis was published on Feb. 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst and authored by associate professor of anesthesiology Jodi Sherman, Yale School of Management professor Todd Cort, Emily Senay, Jasminka Goldoni Laestadius and William Perkinson, a board certified doctor in occupation and environmental medicine.

“The health care sector, which is responsible for 18% of the U.S. economy, should be leading the rest of industry in its environmental performance.

Instead, health care organizations are lagging far behind,” Sherman told Yale News. “We’re in the midst of a climate change crisis, and the healthcare industry is contributing to the problem. … We need data, not anecdotes.”

According to Cort, since 1965, CocaCola has provided a public accounting of all the raw materials it uses. Since 2005, the company has published annual reports that conform to the framework of the Global Reporting Initiative, or GRI. These types of reports, circulated

by GRI or the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, either go by the terms Corporate Social Responsibility or Environmental, Social and Governance reporting, and require companies to publish sustainability information based on a triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit.

This accounting concept quantitatively measures the environmental, social and financial costs of doing business.

This framework places a heavy emphasis on greenhouse emissions and the three different scopes of emissions.

The first scope focuses on the direct emissions produced by corporations,

KAI NIP/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

while the second focuses on secondary sources like electricity and heat. The third encompasses emissions produced in the supply chain process.

According to Cort, companies have worked to provide information on these emissions while also recently placing an emphasis on abiding by the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

“Healthcare, even though it has an enormous amount of environmental and social impacts in the country, has incredibly small amounts of disclosure and performance measurement,” said Cort. “So the genesis of the paper was what can a healthcare delivery organization learn from these other companies that are more active and disclosing in the space.”

Cort further explained that a reason for the lack of sustainability reporting within the healthcare industry can be attributed to the fact that healthcare corporations

believe their firms are inherently socially responsible and thus are not bound by the same rules many other large companies are.

Moreover, he added that many companies view any sort of work related to sustainability to be onerous and expensive, especially within the healthcare industry. He explained that the industry has to deal with incredibly narrow margins as well as pressures from regulatory agencies to keep their accounting sheets in the green. Therefore, sustainability reports are viewed as a luxury and not a necessity.

However, he hopes that this report will push healthcare corporations to understand the benefits in publishing sustainability reports, as it allows them to build transparency with shareholders and potentially increase capital investment. This can be attributed, according to Cort, as building reputational trust for the organizations as both poten-

tial employees and investors can know exactly who they’re working with.

“There are clear social imperatives for healthcare organizations to engage in sustainable practices,” Perkinson said. “However, we also work to lay out the economic imperative for healthcare organizations to engage in sustainable practices that companies are attractive for recruiting people to their organizations and increasing confidence with shareholders.”

According to Cort, their analysis is already being used by Yale New Haven Hospital. The system is looking to use the findings of this report as well as its framework to publish annual sustainability reports.

Coca-Cola was founded in 1982.

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale.edu and AKASH CHAKKA at akash.chakka@yale.edu .

Yale and National Brain Tumor Society launch DNA Damage Response consortium

BY MANAS SHARMA STAFF REPORTER Through a new partnership between Yale and the National Brain Tumor Society, researchers will explore DNA damage response mechanisms as a potential means of treating patients with brain tumors.

The University and the society officially announced the initiative — called the DNA Damage Response Consortium — on Tuesday. NBTS is the largest nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to brain cancer in the United States. The society recruited the help of Ranjit Bindra ’98 GRD ’05 MED ’07, Yale School of Medicine professor of therapeutic radiology and scientific director of the Chênevert Family Brain Tumor Center at Yale Cancer Center, to lead the new group.

“The DNA Damage Response (DDR) is a highly conserved network utilized to repair broken DNA in the genomes of our normal cells,” Bindra told the News.

“Members of this consortium and others have discovered that the DDR is often dysregulated in brain tumor cells, which reveals novel vulnerabilities that can be exploited for a therapeutic gain, thus allowing us to selectively target tumor over normal tissue.”

DNA damage can occur easily through everyday exposures and common errors during the DNA replication process. DNA damage response is the process by which cells in the body discover and repair this routine damage to our genetic material. However, inconsistencies and failures of DNA damage response mechanisms can lead to the formation of cancerous tumors, including brain tumors.

Bindra and NBTS hope that further researching DNA damage response could unveil potential treatment options for malignant,

or cancerous, tumors. Damage response treatments could prove beneficial as they can be applied to almost any type of brain tumor.

Currently, there are only five drugs within this field of research approved for treatment, but none were specifically developed for brain cancer. DNA damage response treatments are also ver-

based combination therapies into the clinic,” Bindra said.

The consortium aims to build upon current therapeutics that block the DNA damage response of cancerous cells using the collaborative efforts of various cancer researchers. The hope is that blocking or weakening the DNA damage response of cancerous

“Our DDR Consortium will rapidly test different drugs against laboratory models and then bring the most promising ones forward to evaluate in early phase clinical trials with the goal of advancing towards regulatory review and ultimately to the market as new treatments for brain tumor patients. By rapidly conduct-

ANN HUI CHING/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

satile, as they can be used in conjunction with other treatments or by themselves; There is already evidence of their success in treating drug-resistant cancers such as ovarian cancer.

“We are assembling a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary team which spans from the bench to the bedside, across the spectrum of adult and pediatric brain tumors, with a focus on rapidly translating the most cutting-edge DDR-

cells will make them more susceptible to other forms of cancer treatment that induce damage and decrease tumor malignancy.

“With drugs designed to attack tumors’ DDR network already transforming other difficult-to-treat cancers, this strategy needs to be quickly and expertly tested for brain tumor patients,” Kirk Tanner, chief scientific officer of the National Brain Tumor Society, wrote to the News.

ing drug qualification and moving forward to clinical trials, we’re providing patients more opportunities, leveraging a treatment modality that is already showing effectiveness in other cancers.”

The consortium will leverage existing collaborative efforts between researchers at the University of California San Francisco, Mayo Clinic, St. Jude’s Cancer Hospital, New York University and other institutions, all

led by Bindra’s lab at Yale. Additionally, the DDR consortium is combining efforts from adult and pediatric brain cancer researchers, a collaboration that is rarely seen in the field. Researchers will utilize skills ranging from bioinformatics and computational modeling to CRISPR genome editing to target tumor DNA damage response mechanisms.

Originally, the consortium was expected to launch near the end of 2019, but it was delayed due to funding and organizational issues during the pandemic. The researchers and organizers of the consortium used the past two years to begin to establish DDR as a fully operational and highly translational brain tumor consortium to drive cutting-edge therapeutics into clinical usage. The consortium has also laid out plans to incentivize investment in potential new treatment outcomes from their research by encouraging biopharmaceutical companies to evaluate their drugs.

“NBTS strongly believes that possible drugs and combinations discovered and advanced by this consortium have the potential to transform the treatment landscape for brain tumor patients,” David Arons, chief executive officer of the National Brain Tumor Society, wrote to the News. “Harnessing the power of philanthropy, team science, and partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies, this initiative highlights NBTS’s commitment to funding treatment-focused research.”

NBTS was founded in 2008 and is located in Boston, MA. Bindra obtained his MD-PhD from the Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Yale School of Medicine in 2005 and 2007, respectively.

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

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective sits down with the Black Art Jazz Collective to celebrate of Black History Month

BY GAMZE KAZAKOGLU STAFF REPORTER On Friday, the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective sat down with the Black Art Jazz Collective for a joint event in celebration of Black History Month.

The Black Art Jazz Collective was founded by renowned saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, who is a lecturer at the Yale School of Music and contributor to the Yale Jazz Initiative. The sextet is dedicated to preserving the historical significance of African American musicians in jazz. Friday’s event featured the premiere performance of a tune composed by Escoffery, followed by an interview that explored the creative, philosophical and artistic processes of the band. While the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective (YUJC) filmed the conversation with the Black Art Jazz Collective (BAJC) earlier in the month, the video was released on Friday.

“Jazz is a fundamentally Black art form,” said Akeel Vitarana ’24, a YUJC board member and one of the event’s organizers.

“Black History Month is quite an important month for jazz,

because it’s a very good place to start understanding the roots and history of jazz, and the significance of the Black American voice in jazz.”

According to YUJC president Jarron Long ’23, the Collective is always looking for ways to reach out to the jazz community at

focusing on other ways of getting people involved, such as through virtual content.

Last fall, YUJC hosted a Latin jazz show to celebrate the contribution of Hispanic musicians for Hispanic Heritage Month.

On the occasion of Black History Month, YUJC felt that it was par-

COURTESY OF YUJC

Yale and New Haven. While the COVID-19 pandemic changed the ways they perform this outreach, which traditionally consists of shows and in-person performances, YUJC has been

amount to recognize jazz’s place in wider discussions on social and racial relations instead of simply reminding people of the role Black musicians have in making jazz music. According to Long,

this prompted YUJC to conduct the event in a dialogue format.

This year, YUJC aims to contribute to conversations about the role of jazz in American culture, in particular looking at how different music groups shaped important parts of jazz history and made it what it is today.

Long added that a significant portion of the interview was about the different range of perspectives that can exist among jazz composers. He emphasized that, even for musicians who are in the same collective, there is much diversity in terms of where they come from in thinking about music.

“I hope that what people get out of it is this dialogue — that Black culture and jazz music are always intertwined,” Long said. “I hope that people take away that this is an ongoing conversation and one that they can be a part of too, from whatever perspective they bring to the table.”

YUJC officially registered as a student organization at Yale in 2012.

Contact GAMZE KAZAKOGLU at gamze.kazakoglu@yale.edu .

“I and You” opens at the Yale Cabaret, featuring all-undergraduate cast

BY CAMILLE CHANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Lauren Marut ’25 and Jordi Bertrán Ramírez ’24 are actors, singers, dancers and most recently, everything from set designers to stagelight specialists in their latest show, “I and You.” On the surface, “I and You” is about two high schoolers, Anthony and Caroline, meeting to work on a school project about the use of pronouns in Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself.” More deeply, it discusses terminal illness, literature and growing up. Marut and Bertrán Ramírez’s co-proposed and self-starring play, written by Lauren Gunderson, is the third show which the two theatermakers will collaborate on this academic year. It makes sense, then, that they answer a call the same way they seem to do everything — together.

“Hey, can you hear us okay?”

Bertrán Ramírez said. “Lauren’s here with me too.”

“I and You” is likely the first fully undergraduate-produced show at the Yale Cabaret, a David Geffen School of Drama performance venue that until now has primarily featured productions by School of Drama graduate students. In contrast to past years, this year’s proposal process allowed anyone, regardless of college affiliation, to apply for a show.

Marut and Bertrán Ramírez shared that what is most important about this production is its potential for artistic freedom.

Bertrán Ramírez particularly enjoyed the ability to imagine a show from the ground up and make artistic choices so that the audience feels truly engaged with the story.

“Part of our process was making the show more about how the story was told and making audiences realize that theater isn’t just going to watch a narrative play out,” Bertrán Ramírez said.

COURTESY OF SAMUEL OSTROVE

“[We] wanted to push the audience to participate in the show just as much as the cast and crew.”

The unique and intimate space of the Cabaret venue allows for a greater sense that the audience is not only watching, but also experiencing the show in a more personal way.

Sarah Cain DRA ’22 added that what makes this production special is the opportunity for School of Drama and Yale College students to share their creativity and artistry with one another.

“We get pretty siloed here at the School of Drama,” Cain said.

“I’m glad to get to work with more undergrads. To see someone 10 or more years younger than me, coming forward with a proposal with such excitement

and interest to a place that I am everyday is so lovely and a good reminder of why we’re here.”

There is particular weight on the performance due to it being a rare undergraduate production, but Marut said that the team has enjoyed taking agency in the theatrical artist process.

Marut added that, in reality, this production, like all the productions that came before it and will come after it, is simply trying to do something new.

“Even though this specific process is history-making, it is in every way a reflection of how every production in Yale College strives to operate,” Marut said.

Striving to operate, that is, with an innovative and constantly changing lens on the

theater world, especially in the tumult of COVID-19 variants and ensuing performing arts restrictions.

“So many people on our team have never done theater before,” Bertrán Ramírez added. “It’s not only history-making on an institutional level, but also history-making on a personal level.”

When the characters Anthony and Caroline first meet, they are awkward, shy and a little afraid in the way that high schoolers tend to be. But as they start to talk about the meaning of “I” and “You” in the larger poem, it’s clear that the play perhaps is not about their group project at all, but instead a singular kismet between two people who are inextricably tied together,

through body and soul. The play tackles growth and decay, mortality and rebirth; It transforms the human body into a conduit for universal human connection.

On the phone, Marut and Bertrán Ramírez mimicked their in-show characters, finishing each other’s sentences, tacking on addendums and appendixes to each other’s comments.

“We are the first fully undergraduate team,” Bertrán Ramírez said.

Marut continued, “But by no means do we aim to be the last.”

“I and You” is showing at the Yale Cabaret from Feb. 24 to 26.

Tickets are available on the Cabaret’s website.

Contact CAMILLE CHANG at camillechang@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 9

“If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.” PAUL CÉZANNE FRENCH ARTIST

Students express confusion about COVID-19 isolation communication

YASMINE HALMANE/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

As Yale stopped contact tracing for most COVID-19 cases, students shared their questions over COVID-19 isolation protocols.

BY LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTER For students in isolation housing, the lines of COVID-19 policy communication have become tangled.

Last week, Yale College saw a spike in COVID-19 cases that University administrators described as “unprecedented,” with new undergraduate cases peaking at 87 on Feb. 15. Although cases have returned to lower levels in recent days — undergraduate cases did not exceed 25 on Feb. 19 or Feb. 20 — the uptick has sent an influx of students to isolation, either in designated housing or their single bedrooms. At the same time, the University has shifted its protocols to no longer contact trace in most cases.

For some students who tested positive, the transition to isolation housing has not been seamless.

Six students who recently tested positive for COVID-19 said that the communication they received from the University during their stay in isolation came delayed or raised additional questions.

“The actual experience of [isolation] is a little bit rough because you have no information about what to expect going in,” Bo Sergeant ’25, who isolated in Arnold Hall, told the News. “It just felt quite chaotic in the first couple of days being there.”

The Campus COVID-19 Resource Line, or CCRL, is available to all members of the Yale community from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week. Com-

posed of a team of registered nurses, the CCRL can provide clinical assessment to members of the Yale community over the phone, as well as schedule COVID-19 vaccines and tests and escalate clinical issues to Yale Health, Nanci Fortgang, the chief clinical operations officer of Yale Health, told the News. The CCRL is also available for students who have tested positive and have questions about isolation procedures. The CCRL, however, does not call students to inform them that they have tested positive — that role falls to the Yale Health Resulting Team, which is also composed of registered nurses.

Fortgang noted that the Resulting Team is also in charge of providing guidance about isolation.

She added that the Contract Tracing Team, which is separate from the other two resource teams and staffed by the School of Public Health, provides quarantine guidance to those close contacts of those who tested positive.

But on Feb. 14, the University updated its online protocols without comment — now, individuals infected with COVID-19 are required to notify their household members and those they were in contact with themselves. Fortgang made her comment about contact tracing after the policy was changed.

Students are initially contacted by the Resulting Team when they test positive for COVID-19. Afterwards, three students told the

News that they received a second call informing them whether or not they would be required to isolate in place or move to isolation housing.

An additional call from the Contact Tracing Team provides quarantine guidance and asks students to list their close contacts.

But some students told the News that the most helpful information they received about isolation policies came from outside the typical channels.

Michael Gary ’24 and his roommate tested positive at the same time. Hoping to find out if he could isolate in their shared room, he called back the number that originally called him with isolation housing instructions, which he said connected him with isolation housing staff. In the days that followed, it was not the CCRL but the isolation housing number that became the resource he most relied on for information about isolation policy.

“I’ve called them like six times,” Gary said. “I’ve needed to call them so frequently that I just keep pressing that number. I have no idea where you find that number, but it’s the original and the people are so nice. I don’t know who they are, but they’re looking out for me.”

After five days in isolation, students isolating on campus have the option to test out of isolation housing by taking rapid COVID19 tests, monitored on daily Microsoft Teams calls. For Krupa Hegde ’25, information provided by the monitor on these calls sometimes contradicted information she was receiving in emails from the University.

“The person who was testing us gave us a set of instructions that were different from the email I got after I tested negative,” Hegde said.

“They had a different protocol from the email we got subsequently.”

Although the discrepancy in information only pertained to the timing of Hegde’s departure from isolation after testing negative, it meant that she had to spend more time figuring out which was accurate before she could leave.

Sergeant told the News that his primary source of information during his time in isolation hous-

ing was simply word of mouth from other students.

“It wasn’t clear whether if you tested on day five, you could just go out on day five,” Sergeant said. “The exit process was unclear. Honestly, the only reason I knew about the testing was because I had friends who had gone through it before.”

For some students, communication from the University, or a lack thereof, posed additional challenges during their time in isolation.

Both Theo Haaks ’24 and Nanki Chugh ’22 told the News that there was a delay in between when they received their positive test results and went into isolation and when they received a call from the Contact Tracing Team. For Chugh, this delay lasted four hours, but for Haaks, it was two days.

“It seemed strange that the contacting team did not reach out to me until two days after I had tested positive,” Haaks said. “That being said, I’m sure the recent outbreak has put significant strain on the University’s COVID response system, so I understand the delayed response.”

For three students, confusion arose regarding their rooming situations, either in isolation housing or their residential colleges.

“Sometimes [the calls] were very confusing,” Jeffrey Zhou ’25 said. “They told me that when I entered I would have a roommate, when I did not. Then one day later a roommate appeared and I was not informed of this change. I was not ready for a roommate at all.”

Upon testing positive, Flora Ranis ’24 was told in a phone call from Yale Health that she would be able to isolate in place because her roommate had also recently contracted COVID-19.

“However, almost immediately after I hung up, I received an email telling me to pack my stuff and move to McClellan,” Ranis said. “That worried me a little, especially because the email told me to move right away, and I had just been told to stay where I was. There was definitely a lack of communication regarding where many students would be staying, but I called back and confirmed that I could stay in my room.”

Haaks and his roommate faced similar issues. After Haaks had moved into isolation housing, his roommate tested positive for the virus and he was instructed to isolate in place in their shared room.

“The issue arose when I was released from isolation housing, but my roommate in Vanderbilt, who still had an active COVID case, was still isolating in our room,” Haaks said. “Despite his ongoing infection and my recent recovery from one, I was instructed to join my roommate in our double. I felt uncomfortable with that arrangement and opted to sleep elsewhere.”

The University has faltered previously in its ability to communicate isolation policies — on Feb. 10, the day after the isolate-in-place policy went into effect, students reported being instructed by the University to remain in their double rooms after testing positive for COVID-19.

But when asked about the reason that discrepancies might arise in communications to COVID-positive students, Fortgang maintained that instructions from all of the University’s phone communication channels were up-to-date.

“CCRL and resulting teams adhere strictly to university policy,” Fortgang wrote in an email to the News.

Current University policy prescribes that on-campus students who test positive for COVID-19 isolate for a minimum of five days, either in their single bedrooms or isolation housing in Arnold or McClellan Halls. If students are not symptomatic after five days of isolation, daily proctored rapid testing begins until students test negative, or until 10 days of isolation housing are completed.

Students released after fewer than 10 days of isolation are instructed to mask at all times, including while in their suites, take their meals to-go from the dining hall and return to isolation housing overnight if they have roommates in residential housing.

After 10 days, since their entry to isolation housing has passed, students may resume usual public health guidelines.

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

Pandemic exacerbated city’s wealth disparities, new data shows

BY SADIE BOGRAD AND SYLVAN LEBRUN STAFF REPORTERS More than four in 10 New Haven residents lost their job, used emergency food services or suffered financially during the pandemic.

These conclusions come from DataHaven’s 2021 Community Wellbeing Survey, which collected data from over 9,000 residents across Connecticut. DataHaven, a nonprofit focused on data analysis and quality of life, released full survey results on Feb. 13. The results indicated that COVID-19 negatively impacted towns throughout the state, but that adults in urban areas — like the Elm City — were more likely to experience hardships due to the pandemic.

“Wealthier families, many people were saying they were actually better-off financially during the pandemic,” Mark Abraham, executive director of DataHaven, told the News. “People who were more likely to be renters or have lower incomes, many of them said they were actually worse off in the past 12 months, even despite all the relief programs and stimulus checks.”

Abraham said that these findings were somewhat surprising, but that they also “validate what people who work in the community see on a dayto-day basis.”

According to the survey results, 15 percent of New Haven residents experienced difficulties paying for food, while 11 percent struggled to pay for housing.

The survey also reflected disparities in race and gender. In Connecticut, 22 percent of Latinx and 20 percent of Black adults reported having experienced food insecurity since Feb. 2020; This is more than two times that of white respondents, of which eight percent reported food insecurity. Meanwhile, 14 percent of women reported food insecurity across the same timeframe, compared to eight percent of men.

These survey results align with the findings of several community organizations serving New Haven amid the pandemic. Bill Villano, CEO of

the job resource center Workforce Alliance, shared that those who had been hit the hardest economically were “disproportionately minority, disproportionately women.”

“Something like 65 percent of the people who were receiving unemployment had earned $35,000 or less [in the prior year], they were lower educated,” Villano told the News.

“Anything you can think of that could be a barrier … were the characteristics of a significant percentage of the people who were unemployed.”

According to Villano, unemployment in cities like New Haven is becoming more of a concern in this later stage of the pandemic as emergency benefits begin to run out. He pushed back on claims that unemployment compensation discourages people from finding new work, citing a New York Times study which found that states that eliminated their pandemic-time unemployment supplements earlier did not experience any improvement in job growth rates.

These federal supplements, which added around $300 weekly to unemployment benefits, ended nationwide in September 2021.

Villano shared that amid the pandemic, he still has not noticed a significant number of people coming to Workforce Alliance to seek out job training or employment opportunities. He listed COVID-19 safety concerns and the closure of many daycare providers as reasons why New Haveners may be struggling to return to work.

DataHaven’s findings regarding housing insecurity in New Haven also align with greater trends in the city since the beginning of the pandemic. According to data provided by the Greater New Haven Regional Alliance to End Homelessness, there were over 200 more evictions in 2021 than in 2020, leading to an increase in the demand on emergency housing services.

Margaret Middleton, CEO of homelessness service provider Columbus House, shared that the number of calls placed to the 2-1-1 system, which is a hotline connect-

ing Connecticut residents to critical resources like housing or healthcare, has shot up during the pandemic.

According to Middleton, housing assistance groups have seen a major influx in their funding amid the pandemic from both state and federal COVID-19 relief dollars.

However, even with this increase in funding, helping individuals out of situations of homelessness has been challenging.

“We’re in this really unprecedented moment where we have on the order of 170 people who are matched to the housing subsidy and have no unit to move into,” Middleton said. “They have done all the work and jumped through all the hoops to get rental assistance, but they can’t get a lease, either because the landlords don’t want to rent or the rents are going up. It’s really, really crushing people.”

The economic burdens of COVID19 have fallen disproportionately on urban areas with a higher proportion of residents experiencing poverty, Middleton said, while “if you look at the stock market, rich people got richer over the last few years.”

DataHaven uses a “Five Connecticuts” framework to classify towns as wealthy, suburban, rural, urban periphery or urban core. Although all towns experienced the challenges of COVID-19, urban core cities like New Haven tended to witness higher rates of housing and food insecurity. Urban core residents also reported greater feelings of anxiety — 18 percent of urban core adults, compared to 13 percent statewide — and depression — 15 percent of urban core adults, compared to 10 percent statewide.

Professor of Urbanism Elihu Rubin told the News that these findings reflect long-standing inequities between cities and wealthier suburbs.

“Connecticut as a state may have some of the highest income inequality in the country because we have so many wealthy suburban or ex-urban areas, and the cities have just been more economically and socially diverse,” Rubin said. “Cities are the places that have been the most

YALE DAILY NEWS

Survey results reveal increases in food insecurity, unemployment and housing instability. responsible for affordable housing.

The cities have been the places most responsible for social services.”

COVID-19 “reinforc[ed] and even reproduc[ed]” these inequalities. Rubin noted that there are many efforts to address these inequities, from expanding affordable housing in suburbs to pooling regional tax revenues.

Among urban core cities, New Haven is in some ways comparatively well-off. While one in five surveyed New Haven residents reported that their financial situation had worsened since Feb. 2020, this was closer to one in three in Hartford.

Abraham explained that New Haven might be “a little bit more prosperous” because of its proximity to New York and because of its educational and healthcare sectors. But he cautioned that these numbers do not paint a complete picture.

“New Haven has a fairly large affluent population in the East Rock and Westville neighborhoods especially,” he said. “That kind of masks a little bit of the disparity in New Haven. So New Haven as a whole may look like it’s fairly better off. But a lot of it is due to the fact that we have such affluent neighborhoods in the city, combined with more distressed or disadvantaged neighborhoods.”

DataHaven has conducted five of these statewide surveys in the last 10 years. In 2021, researchers held phone

interviews with 9,139 randomly-selected residents. Abraham explained that the survey questions are mainly taken from large national surveys.

This means that the questions have been “tested and validated,” and that the results can be compared with regional and national data.

The nonprofit also worked with an advisory council of over 300 organizations to identify which questions would be useful for community partners. Abraham said that a range of institutions — including hospitals, nonprofits and municipalities — can all use this survey data in grant applications, goal-setting, reporting, policy testimony and more.

“What [DataHaven] did and has done for some years now is to provide us with the facts, from surveys, from interviews, looking at what the state of things is in New Haven,” Bonita Grubbs, executive director of Christian Community Action, told the News. “Having that information coupled with our experience in our service provision guides our work each and every day.”

DataHaven conducted its first Community Wellbeing Survey in 2012.

Contact SADIE BOGRAD at sadie.bograd@yale.edu and SYLVAN LEBRUN at sylvan.lebrun@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“I think No. 8 was big. I hit a great shot. Cameron hit it just over the green. I knew it was my opportunity to come back a little stronger, and I started playing the next holes better.” JOAQUIN NIEMANN CHILEAN GOLFER AND WINNER OF GENESIS INVITATIONAL

Elis face Saints in ECAC playoffs

Yale to travel to Denton for North Texas Classic SOFTBALL FROM PAGE 14

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The NCAA expanded the women’s hockey championship from eight to 11 teams this year.

W HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14 the 2016-17 season, where St. Lawrence won in two games.

Yale has only made it past the first round of playoffs once. In the 2004-05 season, the team beat Princeton in a two-game sweep at home to advance to the semi-finals.

Harvard would later end the Bulldogs’ season in the semifinal round.

Veteran members of the Yale team remember the devastating loss to Harvard in the first round of the ECAC Playoffs in the 2019-20 season just before the pandemic hit. Charlotte Welch ’23 scored a hat trick in the second game of the series to bring the match into overtime. It was Dettling who tallied the game-winning goal to tie the series at one. However, the Bulldogs were unable to make it past the Crimson in the series tiebreaker game.

“Our experience from the 201920 playoffs is a big motivating factor behind playoffs this year and we are definitely looking to build off of that series against Harvard because we did play well, we just didn’t get

the result we wanted,” Dettling said.

The NCAA expanded the women’s hockey championship from eight to 11 teams this year. With only five conferences, there are several at-large bids in play. The Bulldogs, who won seven of their last eight games, hope to capitalize on this opportunity.

Yale ranks fourth in the USCHO PairWise Rankings, used to emulate the NCAA Selection Committee’s process to select teams for the NCAA National Collegiate Women’s hockey tournament, compared to St. Lawrence’s 13th place.

Yale’s record-breaking team this season looks to break yet another record by being the first team in program history to make it to the NCAA tournament.

“Our team is looking really strong this year and I have great confidence that we can make our mark in the playoffs,” goalie Gianna Meloni ’22 wrote to the News earlier in the season.

Meloni is a semifinalist for national goalie of the year honors with a 1.44 goals against average and a .938 save percentage. Mean-

Bulldogs Down Villanova 17–14 LACROSSE FROM PAGE 14 One of the main adjustments was in the faceoff circle, as Shay switched from Nicholas Ramsey ’24 to first year Machado Rodriguez ’25.

“We tried a different matchup at the faceoff, I think Machado Rodriguez made the most of his opportunity there,” Shay said about the halftime adjustments. “We as a team wanted to be a little tougher on the ground, in the middle of the field.”

The adjustment certainly worked and set the tone for the first of the afternoon for the Bulldogs.

Following the lead of Rodriguez, who went 10–17 on faceoffs, the Bulldogs tightened up and went back to playing the heavy style of lacrosse that many fans are used to seeing them play.

After Thomas Bragg ’23 scored on a rip from far out to tie it at 8–8 for the Bulldogs, one of the typically unsung players for Yale gave it the lead just 16 seconds later.

Following a faceoff win, Rodriguez raced down the field before dumping the ball to Johnson, who then found the streaking senior short stick defensive midfielder Luke Eschbach ’22 in the middle of the field.

Eschbach, who does most of his work on the defensive end as a bruising midfielder, dispensed a would-be Villanova hit, and buried a low to high shot to give the Bulldogs a lead that they wouldn’t give up for the rest of the game.

The Bulldogs outscored the Wildcats 9–1 in the third quarter, including two Matt Brandau ’23 goals in the final minute, which gave the team a comfortable seven goal lead

going into the fourth quarter.

“It’s lacrosse, it’s amazing.

Games of runs, they talk about that.

They came out early and jumped on us and then we responded,” Villanova head coach Mike Corrado said.

“I don’t know what the exact numbers were, but we had a really good second quarter and then they kinda did the same thing to us in the third quarter. We just didn’t quite catch up at the end there.”

The Bulldogs then took care of business in the final frame, punctuated by a stunning score from long stick midfielder Jack Stuzin ’25 on the fast break.

When the final horn blew through the falling snow, the Bulldogs had won their first game of the season, 17–14, while getting contributions from several highly touted members of their team.

Brandau, a preseason All-American, led the Elis with five goals, while Johnson, the No. 3 recruit in the 2021 recruiting class, opened his collegiate career with a hat trick.

On the defensive end, Jared Paquette ’24 got the start in goal and made nine saves while battling the snow in his eyes all afternoon.

Stuzin, in addition to his goal, also had a massive collegiate debut as he emerged as Shay’s top option at long stick midfielder. The sophomore was a vacuum on the defensive end, picking off multiple passes as part of his five caused turnovers and five ground balls.

The Bulldogs will return to action next Saturday to play Penn State at noon in Happy Valley.

Contact SPENCER KING at spencer.king@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF RICH BARNES

After an impressive season opener, Yale looks to secure their second win next Saturday against Penn State in Happy Valley.

while, rookie goalie Dukaric finished the regular season ranked second in Division I with a 1.15 goals against average. Her .936 save percentage earned her twelfth place.

Meloni and Dukaric have been splitting time this season, each playing a game last weekend. It is unclear who will be in net for the upcoming playoff series.

The puck drops at Ingalls Rink on Friday, Feb. 25 at 6:00 p.m. Friday night’s game has a White Out theme and the first 400 fans will receive free t-shirts from Yale Athletics.

The two teams will meet again on Saturday, Feb. 26 at 3:00 p.m. A fan raffle will occur during the Saturday game. Raffle prizes include: Garden Catering Gifts Cards, two free Avelo Airlines flight vouchers, a meet & greet with Handsome Dan, Yale gear and more courtesy of Yale Athletics.

If a third game is needed, the contest will occur on Sunday, Feb. 27 at 3:00 p.m.

All games in the series will be streamed on ESPN+.

Contact ROSA BRACERAS at rosa.braceras@yale.edu .

With such a young squad, we might surprise some folks.”

Four different Ivy teams received first place votes in this year’s poll, a sign of the conference’s relative unpredictability after the two-year hiatus.

“We saw that we were ranked fifth this year and I think, in all, it really just lit a fire under us to prove them wrong and to come out and win Ivies,” Papes said. “I think they are underestimating us a lot.”

Only seven of the team’s 16 players have any experience playing college softball. The roster’s young average age has inspired its veterans to step up in a leadership role.

Papes and infielder Kortney Ponce ’22 are the only seniors listed on the roster. They are joined by pitcher Nicole Conway ’23 as the team’s only upperclassmen. The trio are the only players on the team to have played an Ivy League opponent.

“I’ve been just amazed with [the underclassmen’s] determination and will to work as hard as they need to get the job done,” Conway said.

“It’s just been kind of amazing to see how far they’ve come.”

Yale will play its first game since March 8, 2020 when it travels to Denton for the North Texas classic this weekend. The Bulldogs will face off against South Dakota State (6–4, 0–0 Summit), North Texas (7–2, 0–0 Conference USA) and Creighton (7–3, 0–0 Big East) over a threeday span.

The three opponents will be the first true test for the Elis. SDSU went 43–8 last season, including 21–1 in conference play. After sweeping second seeded Omaha in a two game series to win the Summit League Championship, the Jack Rabbits lost in the second round of the NCAA Softball Championship.

The Mean Green went 38–12 (18–2 in conference play) last year while Creighton struggled and ended the 2021 season at 14–14 (8–7 in conference play).

“Oh yeah, this weekend is definitely the return,” Conway said emphatically.

Yale’s last official softball game took place on March 8, 2020, over 700 days ago.

Contact NADER GRANMEYAH at nader.granmeyah@yale.edu .

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Four different Ivy teams recieved first place votes in this year’s preseason poll, as sign of the conference’s relative unpredictability

Senior Night Against Cornell Saturday

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Yale’s three senior leaders hope to walk off their home court for the last time with a win to clinch a spot in Ivy Madness.

W BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14 Nesbitt explained that the team studied the game tape and hopes to learn from its struggles against Princeton. However, the Elis don’t plan to let one bad loss diminish their confidence.

“The weekend is in the past, so we are doing our best to channel our emotions from those games into productivity,” Nesbitt said.

“We started the week off with a very intense practice where we learned about Cornell’s tendencies and worked on our own deficiencies, so I’m excited to see how this translates on Saturday.”

While Cornell currently sits in sixth in the standings, it has won two of its last three games, with the only loss in that stretch coming in overtime against Dartmouth. The Big Red’s offense is defined by its balanced scoring, as the team features four players who average at least eight points per game.

When the two teams faced off earlier this season in Ithaca, the

Bulldogs prevailed in one of their stronger defensive showings of the year, winning 62–44. Yale’s backcourt dominated the game, as Jenna Clark ’24 had a season-high 11 assists and Christen McCann ’25 made three of her five three-pointers.

The Bulldogs know better than to overlook their conference foes, especially in a game with such high stakes. In addition to senior night and the playoff implications, Cade mentioned that revenge will serve as another motivating factor.

“Cornell kicked us out of the Ivy League tournament when we were to host it [in 2019], and they are always an aggressive team to play against,” Cade said. “So that means we have to come prepared and come hungry to beat them come Saturday.”

The battle in the frontcourt could decide the game, as the matchup features three of the top

six rebounders in the league. Cade and Camilla Emsbo ’23 combine for nearly 18 boards per game while Cornell’s Theresa Grace Mbanefo averages 7.8 per contest.

The Yale squad will hope to capitalize on its home court advantage. The Bulldogs are 4–2 at home in conference play and will try to use the emotions of senior night to fuel their performance without getting distracted from their gameplan.

“I don’t think I’ve fully processed that Senior Night is so soon and what that actually means,” Nesbitt said. “I know how emotional the night is for everyone, and I am so glad that I will be able to celebrate with [Gallagher and Cade]. For now, I’m mostly focusing on preparing for the game itself.”

Saturday’s game tips off at 2:00 p.m.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“During isolation, one can bring a different approach to the creative process.” ROSALÍA SPANISH SINGER-SONGWRITER

City provides update on police chief search and crime

BY HANNAH QU STAFF REPORTER LA month and a half into 2022, the New Haven Police Department is still without a permanent chief — but officials say the search is beginning.

New Haven hired the singular firm that put in a bid to steer New Haven’s police chief search, officials said at a Friday afternoon press conference. Officials also provided updates on crime statistics for the beginning of the year. While the chief turnover has thrust the department into administrative and legal tension, NHPD has seen zero homicides this year, an improvement from the seven that the city recorded by this time in 2021. But Mayor Justin Elicker stressed that more work needs to be done.

“It is not a time for us to pat ourselves on our back and say things are going well.” Elicker said.

New Haven nears a contract for search firm.

According to Elicker, after the city released a Request for Proposal on Jan. 16 calling for the city to hire an executive firm to lead the nationwide search for a police chief, only one firm bidded and was awarded the job. The firm, Ralph Andersen & Associates, has worked on police chief searches in Cleveland, Columbus, Ohio, Austin, Texas, Fresno, CA, Boise, Idaho and Dallas, and is currently working on developing a contract with the city. Once the agreement is finalized, the firm and the city will begin a “community engagement process,” including a survey for community members and NHPD staff.

“It’s important that we get input both from the community and members of the police department as to what we all believe important attributes are for the future chief that will lead

our city’s police department.”

Elicker said.

Elicker responded to a question regarding whether a citizen committee will be formed to aid the searching process: “I am the mayor, and people have elected me to choose the police chief.”

But public input will be considered, he noted.

The firm will also host ​several community meetings in partnership with the city and engage in “more targeted stakeholder conversations” during the process, Elicker said.

Elicker added that in accordance with the City Charter, he will present a proposed new police chief to the Board of Alders. The board then will host a public hearing process that allows residents to weigh in before ultimately voting on the matter.

Updates on violent crime in New Haven.

On Friday, NHPD Police Chief Rennee Dominguez told reporters that since the start of the year, the city has seen 15 nonfatal shootings and zero homicides, and police have seized 29 firearms and made 26 firearm-related arrests. In comparison, last year at the same time, the city had seen 13 nonfatal shootings, seven homicides, 19 gun seizures and 21 gun-related arrests.

2021 had the highest homicide rate in the city since 2011.

Jacobson said that NHPD is in constant contact with officials in Bridgeport, Hartford and Waterbury about stolen cars and shooting incidents. “This collaboration has helped our officers and detectives get on top of incidents such as this,” Jacobson said.

In response to a question regarding unsolved homicide cases, Jacobson said that the department has been partnering with the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA): “It’s working very well,

YALE DAILY NEWS

City has not seen any homicides so far in 2022. everybody is working together.”

Jacobson said. “We are hoping to have some good news forthcoming.”

Update on NHPD recruitment.

Elicker said 60 applicants applied for promotion to detectives, 44 applicants took the test and passed, though not all of them will be promoted.

In a previous interview with the News, Sgt. Paul Finch said that in last year’s recruitment, NHPD aimed to recruit more local residents to better represent the community they serve. Finch and the Recruitment and Background unit are trying to build a relationship with those that are interested in being police officers.

Efforts include hosting weekly physical training sessions for the physical agility test.

“In this past recruitment phase we did see the highest [number] for our New Haven community for people of color than in past years, so I think it is moving in the right direction,” Finch said. “I think that social media has played a major role … getting the word out and being involved in the community … having different information sessions throughout the community in different neighborhoods, walking, going door to door.”

According to the demographic statistics for the applicant pool provided by Finch, in the 2021 recruitment phase, NHPD received 523 applications, 32 percent of which were Black applicants. In the 2020 and 2019 recruitment phase, 28 percent and 26 percent of applications came from Black applicants, respectively.

Anton Sovetov update Yale Police Department Assistant Chief Anthony Campbell urged anyone who may have any information about the missing Yale employee Anton Sovetov to reach out. Campbell said that YPD has reviewed videos, conducted interviews with Sovetov’s friends and colleagues and checked hospitals and the East Rock area, as Sovetov likes hiking.

Anyone with information on Anton Sovetov’s whereabouts may contact the Yale Police Department at 203-432-4400 or the New Haven Police Department at 203-946-6316. Anonymous text tips can also be sent through the LiveSafe app.

Contact HANNAH QU at hannah.qu@yale.edu

Thirst for Education: Fereshteh Ganjavi, founder of Elena’s Light

BY SAI RAYALA STAFF REPORTER Fe re s h te h G a n jav i s t i l l remembers her first day as a teacher. She was 12 years old, in the basement of a small neighborhood building, facing a group of around six other Afghan refugee students, many her age and some even older. Her whole body was shaking, but she remembered her father’s advice: sit confidently, have a pen and paper, ask their names and tell them that you’re the teacher.

She remembered one of the students, a 17-year-old boy, started teasing her and asked, “You’re going to be the teacher?

You’re a student just like us.”

“It doesn’t matter how old I am,” Ganjavi remembers replying.

“It’s important that I know how to read and write. I can help you.”

Since that day, Ganjavi has spent much of her life empowering others through educational opportunities.

Ganjavi is now the founder of Elena’s Light, a local organization that provides education programming specifically tailored to refugee women and children — including at-home ESL classes, health education and safe spaces for refugee youth. The organization is shaped by Ganjavi’s own experience as a refugee.

“I was born as a refugee, I will live as a refugee and I will die as a refugee,” Ganjavi said.

Ganjavi’s parents fled from Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and traveled to a second country as refugees, where Ganjavi and her sister were born. Ganjavi said she grew up with a “thirst for education.” Her father taught her how to read and write when she was four years old. As she got older, she wanted to go to school like the children around her.

But much to Ganjavi’s disappointment, she soon realized that refugees in the second country were not officially allowed to go to school. She recalled not eating or drinking for two days as she cried, pleading with her parents to let her go to school in some way.

Her father registered her for an adult school for elderly women where one of their neigh-

bors was teaching. At seven years old, Ganjavi would go to class and sit with the grandmothers to learn to read and write.

“I was able to read and write already,” Ganjavi said. “But still I loved to go somewhere and learn.”

After two weeks, however, Ganjavi realized that she wasn’t learning anything new and wanted to go to a real school.

That was when the neighborhood teacher gave her father an idea: to make a fake ID for Ganjavi. She recalled the experience being “very scary” and mentioned how it was not an easy process renewing the ID every year. But the ID allowed Ganjavi to go to school from grades one through 12 and also attend university.

Her early experience as a teacher came out of her father’s desire to help the other refugee children in the neighborhood receive an education. When she was in fourth grade, her father told her that he couldn’t make a fake ID for everyone but felt bad that other children could not go to school. He told Ganjavi that he wanted to open an informal school for the children.

“I said that’s a good idea but who is going to teach these kids?” Ganjavi said. “My father said, ‘definitely you.’”

Thus began Ganjavi’s experience as a young teacher, showing children in her neighborhood how to read and write. By the time Ganjavi came to the U.S. in 2011, the informal school had about 300 students divided into five classes in the small basement. Ganjavi said she still is in contact with many of her students, and that many of them ultimately attended universities in European countries.

When Ganjavi came to the U.S., she said she was surprised that there were still barriers to education for Afghan refugees, especially Afghan women, despite the number of free public services. She said that many Afghan women come to the United States with lots of children and also face transportation issues. Ganjavi also mentioned certain cultural issues such as Afghan women not being comfortable attending classes with male students.

COURTESY OF ELENA’S LIGHT

As an Afghan refugee, Fereshteh Ganjavi had to overcome many hurdles to receive an education.

Ganjavi had the idea to start Elena’s Light, which provides at-home, one-on-one classes to women and children. They started near the end of 2017 with three Afghan refugee women and three student volunteers from Yale.

As the organization developed, the number of students and volunteers continued to grow. But when COVID-19 hit, it presented a host of difficulties as many volunteers dropped out and not many students continued online.

Out of the 20 students attending classes before the pandemic, only eight had continued.

However, the transition to online learning slowly got smoother and since then, Ganjavi said they have had around 20 students and 20 volunteers every semester.

Another aspect of Elena’s Light that has grown since COVID-19 is its focus on health education.

Rachel Schaffer, a student at Southern Connecticut State University, is the director of health and wellness at Elena’s Light.

One of the many programs Schaffer has worked on is designing health education classes for the students in partnership with the

Yale Health Education and Literacy for Asylees and Refugees.

Schaffer has also helped work on Elena’s Light’s vaccination events in partnership with the Yale Community healthcare van. She said around 90 people received vaccines at the first event, many being younger women.

“We have to start where the needs are,” Schaffer said. “So we started with the education classes, health classes and vaccination classes.

Once we have those needs met, we can expand the programming to even more. We can do the social, the emotional, the story-telling.”

Sadi Ghimire ’23 also works at Elena’s Light as an advocacy intern. She immigrated with her parents in 2010 from Nepal, and that experience has sparked her interest in becoming an immigration lawyer and working on immigrant and refugee issues.

In the fall semester, she took ‘Comparative Ethnic Studies’ at Yale; an option for the final project was to do 25 hours of volunteering at a local organization. Her professor connected her with Elena’s Light, where Ghimire later ended up obtaining an internship.

Ghimire said much of the legal advocacy work she has been doing lately has been in response to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. A recent project Ghimire has worked on is a “Know your Rights” workshop on humanitarian parole for Afghan refugees.

She said many who attended were Afghan families in the United States who wanted to help their relatives back in Afghanistan come to the U.S. Ghimire said that working at Elena’s Light has been a very rewarding experience for her and she has been inspired by Ganjavi’s dedication to her work.

“I don’t think I will ever have a boss like her,” said Ghimire. “She’s always wanting to do more to help others and is always wanting to learn more.

She really cares about the community, the New Haven community in general and especially the refugees.”

According to the Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, around 350 Afghan evacuees have arrived in New Haven.

Contact SAI RAYALA at sai.rayala@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

BULLETIN CROSSWORD Diamond in the Rough

ACROSS 1. Explosive stuff 4. It has many stations 9. Ship's head 13. Sprung into spring 19. Battery option 20. Member of the allium family 21. Shakespearean character who kills Emilia 22. Experience again 23. Dictionary whose name is hyphenated 26. Sends away 27. What spies gather 28. Baldwin of Star Wars 29. Dutch cheese 31. Actress Garr 32. Indian bread 33. Watch option 35. Ignore pointedly 37. DNA sequencing tool 40. Classroom distraction 45. Friend of Wayne in "Wayne's World" 47. _____ pole 48. Chill out 49. Least common of all blood types 53. It's caused by iron deficiency 56. Singer DiFranco 57. Archenemy 58. Grinning Squinting Face, for one 59. See 76 across 60. "Wasn't me!"

62. Wanders 64. West African capital home to the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park 66. Actress Skye of "Wayne's World" 67. Vegetable used in Southern cooking 68. Landmark whose notable crack formed when it was first struck 72. Slightly open 76. Fill with 59 across 78. One of the Middle Age kingdoms of Britain 79. Mosul inhabitant 80. Live (on) 83. "Gee." 84. Small dishes at a Spanish restaurant 87. "Uh-huh."

88. Airport scanners (abbr.)

89. Snaps 91. Places where passage onward is charged 93. Media sales team member, informally 95. Ruckus 97. Relate to 98. Pot dispensaries?

102. Scoops 106. Like Sinéad O'Connor, among others 107. To-do list item 109. Take a meal 110. Eight, in Essen 113. Attempt

Jem Burch 1

2

4

3

19

5

6

10

32 38

40

50

41

53

58

62

64 68

76 81

93

70

95 99

85

113

87

86

103 104 105

102 109

108 115

114 119

75

97 101

107

118

74

73

92

96

100

106

117

84 91

90

94

110 111 112

72

71 79

83

98

44

61

78

89

43

66

65

77

42

56

55

60

69

82

88

54

59

63

67

18

48

52

51

17

36

47

46

16

31

30 35

34

39

15

26 29

33

45

14

22

28

57

13

12

25

24

37

11

21

27

80

9

8

20

23

49

7

116 121 122

120

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

ANGELIQUE DE ROUEN is a sophomore in Grace Hopper College.

Contact her at angelique.derouen@yale.edu .

© 2021

115. Sub shop 116. "I can do it."

117. Moves on hands and knees 119. Found a shortcut, perhaps 123. Capital on the Persian Gulf 124. Taxi alternative 125. Quite willing 126. Superlative suffix 127. Evasive football tactic 128. Slippery swimmers 129. Lorna _____ 130. Greek letter DOWN 1. Activity for those working with big cats 2. 2010's dance craze with a repetitive name 3. Kilt material 4. Grow stormy 5. Actress ___ de Armas 6. Not that bright 7. Cedar Rapids inhabitant, perhaps 8. 400 meters 9. Comedian Joe of SNL 10. Chinese zodiac animal 11. Gothic arch 12. Boggle, e.g.

13. Small quake 14. Curse 15. Some 16. Cunning 17. Under any circumstances 18. He loved Lucy

24.

25.

30.

33.

34.

36.

38.

39.

41.

42.

43.

44.

46.

49.

50.

51.

52.

54.

55.

59.

61.

63.

65.

68.

69.

70.

71.

73.

74.

75.

77.

Go back (on) Don't arrive on time Tuna variety Probably gonna Retreats Painful wrench Wizards Biblical land in present-day Syria Actress Russo Rickman who played Severus Snape Small iPod option Sign given a green light?

Head covering Do for Jimi Hendrix Reserve Close to 2018 political drama starring Christian Bale Pepper ____ Star, of a sort Like many design students Letter opener?

Force / acceleration Oily substance used to preserve wood Verdant Intrigued by Texas politician O'Rourke Place on a pedestal Rapper born Shawn Corey Carter Light blue Tears Grateful customer, perhaps

79. Long Island airport 80. Forest denizen 81. Org. concerned with food safety 82. Roseanne formerly of "Roseanne" 83. Blessing 85. Wielded 86. High point 90. Location of the U.N.'s International Court of Justice 91. Did some road work, perhaps 92. Opposites of cathodes 94. Wikipedia contributors' conflict 96. Sheepdogs, e.g.

99. Rogue manufacturer?

100. Hrs. in the Midwest 101. Seasoned, perhaps 103. House watcher 104. Tangle up 105. Appear that way 108. Hello, in Hubei 110. Brand favored by a Looney Tunes character 111. Juice name part 112. One dealt at a poker table 114. Title animal of a 1995 film 116. Instrument for Apollo 118. Catholic sch. in L.A. 120. ___ B of the Spice Girls 121. I, to Ignatius 122. Member of Congress (abbr.)

JEM BURCH is a first-year in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact him at jem.burch@yale.edu .

JESSAI FLORES is a junior in Davenport College.

Contact him at jessai.flores@yale.edu .

EMILY CAI is a sophomore in Pauli Murray College.

Contact her at emily.cai@yale.edu .

SOPHIE HENRY is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact her at sophie.henry@yale.edu .

LAST WEEK’S SOLUTIONS A S F A R

C E L L O

E N R E S P T S U E N D I G U E M

T R I O S

S A M H I L O L P I E U R M A D S E N S

A G H A S M I A M O S Y A L I B A S E T E N F R Y I A K E T A G A Y B R E E D L A R M O W O S T R A N S I T O A L G B T Q R P H A S E S S T R O D E

T R I

E N G E A G N

S H O G I

R A W E G G S

T O L L P L A Z A

I N E L A S T I C

L O G A N

N O H I T

I N T R A

T E S T Y

S T E

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 13

“Isolation is a self-defeating dream. ” CARLOS SALINAS DE GORTARI FORMER PRESIDENT OF MEXICO

Pitbull for Spring Fling? Yalies say “dale”

COURTESY OF ALVARO PERPULY

Undergraduates across campus have nurtured a grassroots movement advocating for rapper-singer Pitbull as the Spring Fling headliner.

BY MIRANDA WOLLEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Spring Fling is set to return this year after a COVID-19-induced hiatus — and many students are hoping to celebrate the end of spring classes with none other than the Miami rapper-singer Pitbull.

Spring Fling, typically held in late April during the downtime between classes’ end and the week of final exams, is planned by the undergraduate-led Spring Fling Committee. This year, however, a growing group of students unaffiliated with the committee have made

clear their preference for the 2022 headliner: Pitbull, whose universally-recognizable crooning, baldheaded sunglass-goatee combo and distinctly suave oeuvre have earned him the moniker “Mr. Worldwide.”

Pitbull’s team did not respond to a request for comment on the likelihood of Mr. 305’s appearance in New Haven this spring.

“Truly, if we got Pitbull for Spring Fling, it would really unite the campus,” Hilary Griggs ’24 said. “People from different colleges and years [have found] unity around Pitbull – and that’s the most important thing about this Pitbull movement.”

The Pitbull movement’s genesis can be traced to a virtual Branford College Council meeting last spring, where Griggs and Alvaro Perpuly ’23 were in attendance. Perpuly explained that the idea arose amid a nostalgia-fueled conversation surrounding the annual Branford Crushes and Chaperones event, which is modeled after middle school dances of yore and for which the council meticulously curates a nostalgic playlist.

But the notion quickly spread outside of Branford’s quiet courtyards.

“Last year we had launched this graphic that went quite viral

[at Yale],” Perpuly said. “The idea emerged of having a Yale-wide committee for Pitbull.”

The committee was launched last week, and an accompanying Instagram account — @pitbullatyale — and GroupMe chat have spread through sectors of the undergraduate community.

Viktor Kagan ’24, a member of the Pierson College Council, described the initiative’s rapid spread amongst student representatives within other residential colleges.

“The fact that it’s spreading to other [residential] colleges is a big step,” Kagan said. “I don’t

know how far it’s going to go, but there is some strong support in my college community.”

Kagan reminisced on his first experience with Mr. Worldwide, when he discovered 2007’s upbeat “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)” on a hand-me-down MP3 player from his mother. He excitedly recounted his introduction to Pitbull’s corpus, sharing the childhood memories associated with the rapper’s swaggering drawl.

Perpuly, a Miami native himself, told the News that his strong ties to Mr. 305 are rooted in his childhood.

“He is an embodiment of the culture in Miami,” Perpuly said.

“He holds a special place in my heart. He’s become very well known – but it’s bigger than that… the reason you see this excitement on campus is because he’s not just Mr. 305, he’s Mr. Worldwide.”

The Pitbull movement’s greatest roadblock has been their interaction — or lack thereof — with the Spring Fling Committee, who have thus far honored their pledge of silence surrounding the year’s lineup. The Committee did not respond to the News’ requests for comment on the rapper’s possible appearance.

Griggs described the clash as a “classic everyman vs. elite” story, saying that she suspects the Spring Fling Committee might want someone more “hip” or whose artistic abilities are held in higher regard.

Pitbull won a Grammy for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album in 2016.

“The movement is a little bit interesting,” Griggs said. “When I first got involved in it, I thought it was a little bit of a joke. But the lines between joke and reality of our demands are blurry to me now.”

Previous Spring Fling headliners have included Playboi Carti, A$wwAP Ferg and Vince Staples.

Contact MIRANDA WOLLEN at miranda.wollen@yale.edu .

Anonymous app Librex abruptly shuts down after nearly three years of operation

BY ALESSIA DEGRAEVE AND LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTERS Librex, an anonymous and controversial online discussion forum for college students at Ivy League schools, abruptly and permanently shut down on Feb. 17.

All posts were deleted and users were notified Thursday evening through a platform-wide post by the app’s creator, Ryan Schiller ’23. The app was Schiller’s first project, and it was released in 2019 when Schiller was a junior.

He ultimately shut down the app because he is pursuing a “new endeavor,” he told the News, and did not think he had the time to maintain Librex, which he has moderated since its inception. In Librex’s absence, a number of new anonymous discussion forums are cropping up on campus. In the app’s absence, Viktor Kagan ’24 told the News that he will remember Librex for the conversations it sparked — but also for its “very toxic environment.”

It provided a space for valid communication but could also be toxic and abusive,” Kagan said.

The app began on a small scale, with about eight consistent users logging on everyday. But during its three-year run, the app grew to about 6,000 daily active users across the platform, according to Schiller. The app was initially crafted for Yalies, but quickly expanded to include the entire Ivy League, and ultimately grew to include many other colleges as well. The app took the place of YikYak, another anonymous software that spread across college campuses but infamously served as a platform for hateful conversations.

Schiller said he made the app because he thought that “extreme judgment” pervades Yale’s social sphere. His vision for Librex, he said, was to create a space in which people could escape these confines.

“I think a lot of people at Yale are looking for a group of people they can connect to, to develop their voice, and to do so in an open space they can trust,” Schiller said.

“Professors told me that they did not feel like they could speak freely about how they truly felt about campus events. Students want a place to say what they mean.”

But the app was controversial, and several students said it often fostered ad hominem attacks on members of Yale’s campus.

Under the veil of anonymity, people expressed often contentious opinions.

“While Librex promotes the idea of an anonymous, free speech platform, their lack of regulation led to a great deal of controversy and negative discourse within our Yale community,” José Marín-Lee ’25 told the News.

Some students stayed away from Librex, disliking what they saw as negative and problematic content that came from the app’s unregulated discourse.

Kagan described the Yale-specific Librex as “as positive as it was negative.”

“I remember last year, during the fall YCC elections, someone anonymously commented something vulgar about Aliesa and Reilly’s campaign,” he said.

“This in itself made Librex a toxic space, but it has served for good, too, for students to rant about Yale’s inefficacy and inability to understand student concerns.”

Still others emphasized the value of having an anonymous platform to discuss their thoughts and campus life.

Clementine Rice ’25 noted that the media source allowed new students to learn about spontaneous and unconventional campus events, such as the Bass Library naked run.

In the days following Librex’s departure from campus, multiple new anonymous discussion spaces have sprung up. Sidechat, proclaimed as a “Yale-only Yik Yak,” sent out promotional material on Instagram and in Yale GroupMes, and Fizz, another Yale-specific anonymous discussion app, sent out emails to some Yale students. Both apps follow the same general platform Librex initiated, including an “upvote” feature and a comment section.

Andrew West ’25 told the News that the “copycat” apps were likely trying to fill the niche for an anonymous student platform left by Librex’s absence.

“It’s definitely valuable to have a place where people can share their thoughts anonymously, but I feel like having one

ISAAC YU/INSTAGRAM EDITOR

Librex, a Yale start-up offering an anonymous community forum, unexpectedly shut down on Feb. 17. that’s well-moderated is also important,” West said. “It’s nice to have an environment where you can just ask stupid questions without looking stupid in front of people. It’s important for people to have an outlet — it can be anonymous, but not to the degree where people say stuff that’s offensive.”

Matthew Park ’24 concurred, arguing that there was value in having a space for students to voice opinions or ask sensitive questions to which they did not necessarily want to attach their names.

Apart from the highly public medium of Yitter — the colloquial name for Yale’s student Twittersphere — Park said

that there were few other ways for students to spread campus occurrences and opinions in real time.

“Even if some people never took Librex too seriously, I don’t think we can doubt that it was the sole platform that could really aggregate informal discussions among the student body,” Park told the News.

The Librex team — composed of eight engineers, one product manager and six designers — will continue to work together, Schiller said, moving forward on a new, bigger project. Schiller said that he and his team would not have the time to maintain Librex alongside their

new endeavor, which he said is coming in the summer and will be aimed at a wider audience.

“Our new endeavor was compelling enough to go all in on, bigger in terms of community and complexity,” Schiller said.

“This new endeavor is massive, this thing is so exciting that I needed to act on it quickly and decisively. The team has been ready for a bigger challenge for a while now.”

Creating the Librex app was the first time Schiller had ever coded.

Contact ALESSIA DEGRAEVE at alessia.degraeve@yale.edu and LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgeman@yale.edu .

M TENNIS Harvard 4 Brown 0

W BASKETBALL Cornell 57 Penn 70

SPORTS

M SQUASH Columbia 2 Harvard 7

W SWIM & DIVE Dartmouth 563 Cornell 508

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

BASEBALL BULLDOGS GEAR UP FOR AUBURN THIS WEEKEND The baseball team, ranked first in this year’s Ivy League preseason poll, looks to surpass high expectations as it returns to the field. The Bulldogs will open their season with a road series against Auburn.

W LACROSSE BULLDOGS FREEZE PIONEERS AT REESE STADIUM Snowfall and power outages didn’t faze the Yale women’s lacrosse team as it ran Sacred Heart riot, 15–4. The tilt was the Elis’ first game back after a coronavirus-induced hiatus.

Bulldogs to host Saints in first round WOMEN’S HOCKEY

“I really liked our consistent [competitive] level throughout the weekend. It showed up in the results. ... [We] look forward to carrying this momentum into our game against Quinnipiac ” NATHAN REID MEN’S HOCKEY GOALKEEPER

Bulldogs to return for first game in 23 months

BY NADER GRANMAYEH STAFF REPORTER Last week, in the Ivy League’s annual Preseason Softball Poll, a panel of media members selected Yale as the fifth best team in the conference.

The Bulldogs tied Dartmouth with 59 points, behind Columbia, Penn, Harvard and Princeton.

SOFTBALL

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The No. 7 Yale women’s hockey team will face off against St. Lawrence at home for the first round of playoffs.

BY ROSA BRACERAS STAFF REPORTER The No. 7 Yale women’s hockey team (22–6–1, 16–5–1 ECAC) is set to compete against St. Lawrence University (14–13–7, 10–8–4) in the first round of ECAC playoffs this weekend. The best-of-three series will take place at Ingalls Rink.

The Bulldogs closed out the regular season with a 4–1 loss against No. 9 Quinnipiac along with a 3–0 win against Princeton in order to claim second place in the ECAC. Yale is seeded second in the ECAC playoffs behind Harvard, who won

the regular season crown. St. Lawrence sits five spots below at the seventh seed.

“We are focused on playing our game and believe that doing so will lead to success against any opponent we have to face in the playoffs,” Emma Seitz ’23, ECAC Defense of the Year finalist, said.

“Playoff hockey is another opportunity for me and the team to keep getting better.”

The Elis have found previous success against the Saints this season.

The two teams last met on Feb. 12 at The Whale, where Yale beat St. Lawrence 3–1 during Senior

Bulldogs chase down Wildcats in opener

BY SPENCER KING STAFF REPORTER The No. 7 Yale men’s lacrosse team (1–0, 0–0 Ivy) opened its 2022 campaign with a 17–14 win over No. 20 Villanova (1–1, 0–0 Big East) in a snowy midday showdown at Reese Stadium.

LACROSSE The contest was hard fought, as the teams traded runs of goals throughout the afternoon. The Bulldogs also showcased their depth throughout the game, getting big contributions from all parts of the roster.

After falling down 1–0 to start the game, starting first-year attack Leo Johnson ’25 scored the first Bulldogs goal of the season, kicking off a big first quarter that would see Yale looking in control with a 6–2 lead entering the second quarter.

As snow began to fall at Reese Stadium, it was the Wildcats’ turn to go

Weekend. Earlier in the season, on Nov. 19, the Bulldogs played the Saints on the road resulting in a 4–4 tie after overtime.

“It definitely gives us a little bit of confidence knowing that we played well and beat a good SLU team two weekends ago,” Tess Dettling ’22 said. “SLU is a good team that seems to have peaked at the right time. If we come ready to play and play our game, I think we’ll have similar success as last game.”

The last time the Elis faced the Saints in the playoffs was during SEE W HOCKEY PAGE 10

SEE LACROSSE PAGE 10

SEE SOFTBALL PAGE 10

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Yale softball, picked to finish fifth in the annual pre-season poll, features 14 first or second-year players.

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

A spot in the postseason Ivy Madness tournament will be on the line on Senior Night against Cornell.

BY ALEX CRAMER STAFF REPORTER For a trio of Yale seniors who have faced so much adversity throughout their careers, Saturday’s final home matchup against Cornell presents an opportunity for a great sendoff in John J. Lee Amphitheater.

W BASKETBALL

YALE DAILY NEWS

The Yale men’s lacrosse team opened its 2022 season with a 17–14 home win over Villanova last weekend.

32

This weekend, Yale will participate in its first official game in almost two years. In 2020, the Bulldogs had yet to enter conference play when its season was canceled due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The Ivy League has not named a softball conference champion since Harvard went 16–5 en route to the title in 2019.

“It’s been extremely exciting to get back on the field as a full team again and to get to actually interact with all

of your teammates in the weight room and at practice as a whole,” pitcher Miranda Papes ’22 said. “We also have a lot of young talent this year so everyone is super ready to go and experience Ivies for the first time so I think it’s going to be a good season.”

This year, the Eli roster includes 14 first or second-year players. The rest of the roster is rounded out by only one junior and two seniors.

Despite the squad’s inexperience, the Bulldogs are hopeful that they will be able to perform better than expected.

“We are truly enjoying being back out on the field,” head coach Jen Goodwin told Yale Athletics.

“I’ve been impressed with how the team returned in the fall, having been apart from us for so long. They showed they are hungry and have a desire to compete at a high level.

Yale hopes to clinch postseason spot

on a run. Villanova, powered by two man-up goals and strong outside shooting, outscored the Bulldogs by five goals in the second and entered halftime beating Yale, 8–7.

Having not played a game since March 2020, the Bulldogs seemed to take a half to warm up, but after that, the second half meant trouble for Villanova.

“It’s been over 1,000 days since we’ve played at Reese and two years since Yale lacrosse has played an official contest,” Cam Coyle ’25 said. “So everyone in this program has been looking forward to finally getting out there and playing a meaningful game for the first time in a while.”

At halftime, it was time for adjustments as head coach Andy Shay and his coaching staff got to work in the locker room as the snow intensified outside on the field.

STAT OF THE WEEK

W HOCKEY Princeton 2 Brown 2

The Yale women’s basketball team (14–10, 7–5 Ivy) will look to clinch a spot in the Ivy tournament when it takes on the Cornell Big Red (9–13, 4–7). In addition to trying to realize their playoff aspirations, the Bulldogs will also be celebrating the careers of their three senior leaders, Alex Cade ’22, Robin Galla-

gher ’22 and captain Roxanne Nesbitt ’22.

In an interview with the News, Gallagher offered some insight into her thoughts ahead of her final game donning Yale’s home whites.

“Wow! Even the thought of senior night brings up a lot of emotions,” Gallagher said. “I think ‘grateful’ is the best word I can use to describe how I’m feeling right now… I appreciate everything [John Lee Amphitheater] has given me over the past four years, especially my teammates and best friends, so I think this game is about playing for them as much as it is playing for [Nesbitt, Cade] and myself to have one final great memory, one final win here.”

The Bulldogs enter the matchup against Cornell coming off a two-game road trip with

mixed results last weekend. The team defeated Penn on Friday to put itself in prime position to qualify for Ivy Madness.

Yale currently sits in third place in the standings, behind undefeated Princeton and one-loss Columbia — both of whom have already clinched spots in the tournament — and one game ahead of their rivals in Cambridge. The Crimson will host Ivy Madness this year at the Lavietes Pavilion.

The Elis need only one more win to clinch their spot in the postseason tournament. In order to book their trip to the postseason tournament, they will need to regain their form and bounce back from their heavy loss to top-seeded Princeton.

SEE W BASKETBALL PAGE 10

THE NUMBER OF POINTS YALE GUARD AND CAPTAIN JALEN GABBIDON ’22 SCORED IN A CAREERHIGH GAME AS YALE DEFEATED PENN LAST FRIDAY NIGHT IN NEW HAVEN.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022

WEEKEND // PENG YANHUI

YANZI: TO FIGHT THE SLOW FIGHT OF LGBTQ RIGHTS IN CHINA

//BY HANNAH QU

If the pandemic had not limited international travel, Yanzi would have been in the U.S. with his longterm boyfriend, getting married.

Instead, leaving his boyfriend back home in China, he is now alone in New Haven, reading in Sterling Memorial Library, and meeting Law School professors.

Peng Yanghui, commonly known as Yanzi, 39, is a visiting scholar at the Paul Tsai China Center of the Law School for the spring 2022 semester. Invited by Darius Longarino, a senior fellow at the center, he now conducts research on the topic of same-sex parenting and its potential influence on LGBTQ rights in China.

Yanzi’s research interest originated from his working experience as the founder and former director of LGBT Rights Advocacy China, a nonprofit organization that advanced LGBT equality through China’s legal system. In 2019, he met a Chinese lesbian couple seeking a divorce. The couple got married and had two children in the U.S., with one side providing the egg and the other giving birth.

The Chinese legal system, which prohibits same-sex marriage and only acknowledges the biological mother, could not decide to whom custody should be granted. Two years since the opening of the case, the court has yet to hold the first hearing. Unsure about how to proceed, Yanzi reached out to a Law School professor for legal advice.

This case exposes only one of the many lacunas in China’s society regarding LGBTQ rights. Sexual minorities are neglected in China’s legal system, and the government’s stance on the LGBTQ communitymay be best summa-

rized as “no approval, no disapproval and no promotion” — in other words, silence.

In 2016, a United Nations survey concluded that the majority of LGBTQ people in China “continue to face discrimination in many aspects of their lives, most importantly within the family, where the deepest forms of rejection and abuse reside. Access to health and social services remains difficult when one’s sexual orientation or gender diversity is known to, or even just suspected by, service providers.”

Growing up in this hostile environment, Yanzi did not come out until he was 27.

Sissy Pants and Nanny Boy Yanzi was born in 1983 in Chaozhou, a small southeastern Chinese city with a strong patriarchal tradition of wishing for boys to continue the bloodline. He is the youngest child in the family with a brother and a sister, both of whom are already married.

Yanzi’s early childhood years witnessed China’s tentative permission of research and public discourse on homosexuality, amid the continued criminalization of homosexuality. But in a conservative city like Chaozhou, homosexuality was the taboo. Not only was LGBTQ community tagged with sexual perverts, AIDS, promiscuity and mental illness, the traditional value of preserving the family lineage also added moral burden upon those violating their filial obligation.

Yanzi grew up in Chaozhou until college. He had never heard of the concept of LGBTQ in Chaozhou and never knew what was “wrong”

with himself. He just knew that he didn’t enjoy the physical education classes at all. He did not like basketball or soccer like other boys, and he would be called “sissy pants’’ and “nanny boy” if he joined the girls. He resorted to hiding himself in a corner with boredom and awkwardness. He said he felt sad.

In the sixth grade, Yanzi first realized his strong desire to become friends with a boy who he often went to school in the morning with, but he thought that would be a platonic friendship. During middle school, he began to notice that girls and boys often flirted with each other, but he only had feelings for boys. “This is strange,” he thought, but he did not dare to discuss his romantic feelings with his teachers and family. He couldn’t even talk to his best friend about this. He kept the secret in the dark, alone to himself.

“It was a lot of pressure and really depressing for a very long time,” Yanzi said. This secret put an invisible wall between him and his family, friends and teachers.

No matter how close they were, Yanzi knew that his sexuality was alienating him from the rest of the world. Self-loathing haunted him.

He grew up feeling like he was a selfish person and failed his family.

“I can’t be a sexual pervert” Things changed for Yanzi and LGBTQ community in large in 1997, when the Chinese government decriminalized homosexuality. The internet was also introduced to China around the same time. In the dawn of the new century, Yanzi headed to the burgeoning metropolis of Guangzhou,

studying mechanical engineering at Guangzhou Science and Technology University.

Yanzi first discovered the concept of homosexuality in college, but not in a positive way. The search results from online were all associated with AIDS and promiscuity. The psychology books in the library either avoided the discussion on homosexuality or catergorized it as mental illness and sexual pervert. All the information he got told him that he was sick, disgusting, a freak, a pervert. Yanzi was even more scared. “How can I be sexual pervert,” he thought, “no way. I’m not, there’s no way I can be a sexual pervert.”

Yanzi did not know that the American Psychiatric Association had already removed homosexuality from the list of mental illness in 1973. The internet and the books only pushed him to deny that he liked boys. Even though China also removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, the public continued to stigmatize LGBTQ groups. Most Chinese researches on LGBTQ from 1980-2000 concluded that homosexuality was abnormal and usually resulted from the lack of paternal love, inappropriate upbringing, introverted personality and sexual activities at an early age.

Reseachers insisted that homosexuality was unconventional, immoral, anti-social, threatening and needed to be treated to protect the society.

For a very long time, Yanzi couldn’t talk to anyone about his sexual orientation. He thought he was the only abnormal person in the world.

To be seen During his time at Chaozhou, Yanzi had always wished for a teacher to confide in. Having moved on from middle and high school, he realized that he wanted to become a teacher like that.

Studying mechanical engineering did not change his dream.

The summer of his junior year in college, Yanzi volunteered at an elementary school in Shanbei, a remote, economically underdeveloped area in northwestern China. He felt needed. He felt that his existence meant something to this world. The experience motivated him to take a gap year to be a full-time volunteer teacher. Suddenly, he was removed from daily mechanical drawings and was confronted with the heartbreaking inequality in the education system.

Remembering his experiences with bullying and alienation, he was determined to become a teacher who could see the best part of each student.

After graduating from college, Yanzi took a job at a vocational school and taught mechanical drawing. One year later, he left to work for an educational nonprofit organization, where he was exposed to even more societal issues: labor movement, sustainability, educational inequality, minority rights …

Working at a nonprofit helped Yanzi to embrace his own identity. At first, when his friends and colleagues asked him, publically or privately, “Are you gay?” Yanzi always denied out of instinct. “Of course I’m not,” he would say.

“Then how come you don’t have a girlfriend?” “I … I wanna focus on my career first.” Cont. on page B2

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FIGHTING

FOR RIGHTS

After spending 27 years trying to accept his sexuality, Yanzi now fights for Chinese government and public to recognize LGBTQ rights Cont. from page B1 That’s what Yanzi told others, and what he tried to convince himself.

In 2010, the Guangzhou government allocated 150 million yuan to build a lighting project near the Zhujiang river for the Asian Games. “It was a waste of money,” Yanzi thought. He decided to start a campaign on Weibo — China’s Twitter-like social media — for shutting down the program. The campaign gained huge attention from the public, the media and eventually the government, who admitted that they did not have a Feasibility Study Report for this project. “It’s like I achieved something,” Yanzi said. Living his whole life being rejected by others and himself, he discovered his niche for self-actualization through public service.

Another time, Yanzi participated in a two-day 100-mile fundraising hike through the mountains. It was in the middle of night when Yanzi and his three teammates hit 60 miles. They were all exhausted, and their progress was slow. Yanzi took the responsibility of pushing his team towards the destination. As his team moved across the finish line after hours of his cheerful encouragement, Yanzi suddenly felt empowered. “There’s nothing I need to run away from,” he thought.

That was the moment he decided to come out. He told his colleague that he wasn’t able to talk about something extremely important to him for a very long time, but he was finally ready. He waited for the colleague to ask “What is it?” His colleague never did. But Yanzi was already determined to tell his crush he liked him after the hike. He called him and repeated the same opening.

His crush said he knew it, a long time ago.

“You know, I watched the movie ‘I Love You Phillip Morris,’ it’s a comedy,” he said, “I think it could be interesting for two guys to be together.”

Yanzi was so moved by his support that he forgot to tell him “I like you.”

Becoming the plaintiff Ever since then, Yanzi began to cherish the experience of coming out to others. He came out to his colleagues and his friends. They responded to him well. He always felt lucky that he was surrounded by people who embraced him as who he was.

Indeed, only 21 percent of Chinese people believed that their society should accept homosexuality, according to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center.

His sexuality became more important to him as he began to embrace it. He noticed that while in recent years there were organizations dedicated to building a close-knit LGBTQ community, LGBTQ rights was still a blank area. “Someone needs to do it,” he thought. In 2013, he founded LGBT Rights Advocacy China.

The trending news at that time was about the doctors who offered drugs and electroconvulsive therapy to “cure homosexuality.” Ads of private clinics claiming that “homosexuality is a curable disease” abounded on Chinese search engines. People who survived these clinics tried to report their illegal activities. No use — the clinics were operating smoothly.

Yanzi wanted to end this torture in disguise of treatment through legal actions. He got in touch with around 30 people who had talked to some nonprofit organizations, but did not feel comfortable suing the clinics. Besides fearing to expose their homosexuality in public, these people didn’t believe that the legal actions would make any difference. The clinics kept running every day, and Yanzi couldn’t wait for a victim to come forward. He decided to go under-

cover and collect evidence — by becoming the plaintiff himself.

This means that he needed to be treated — by the electroconvulsive therapy — at least once.

In 2014, he went to Chongqing to visit one of the infamous clinics, Xinyu Piaoxiang. He told a friend to call the police if he didn’t contact her within two hours, turned on the recording device, and stepped inside. Yanzi introduced himself as a patient who was seeking help. “I didn’t come out to my family,” he said, “I want to try your treatment.”

The clinic brought a doctor to discuss the treatment process with Yanzi. The doctor told him homosexuality was indeed an illness, but luckily it was treatable, and they had cured many people. The whole treatment process would cost 30,000 yuan.

Yanzi paid 500 yuan for a onetime trial and got a receipt for “homosexuality treatment.” He was then led to a room that was carefully decorated in a cozy, relaxing way with wooden floor and meditation paintings. The doctor pulled out an electronic device and asked Yanzi to lie down and breathe deeply. He then began to hypnotize Yanzi.

“Imagine a scene of having sex with man,” he said. “Move your finger if you feel any physical or mental reaction.”

Yanzi was immersed in the imagination of what was one of the most beautiful things to him in the world when the doctor suddenly shocked his hand.

“Ah!” He immediately jumped off, screaming, “What was that? I was shocked.” The doctor put away the device and told him that was the point — to be shocked when imagining having sex with men, so that he would grow sick of it.

He explained that in a usual treatment session, the patient would be shocked two or three times in one hour. There would be 30 sessions in total.

Even though Yanzi knew he was in the clinic to be shocked, he was nevertheless traumatized by the experience. He fled. That night he stayed at a youth hotel with many people. He was scared, but he was ready to prosecute the clinic.

The doctor put away the device and told him that was the point — to be shocked when imagining having sex with men, so that he would grow sick of it.

Chinese Court Ruled Homosexuality Isn’t Illness Even today, the Chinese legal system still lacks relavent anti-discrimination law for sexual minorities. In order to protect the LGBTQ rights, the best strategy, according to Yanzi, is to file the cases with other causes admissible under Chinese law and try to bring LGBTQ rights into the conversation during the hearings.

Yanzi did not have high expectations for the court when he filed the lawsuit against the clinic for service contract disputes and also sued the search engine Baidu for advertising the clinic. This was unprecedented. To his surprise, Beijing’s court agreed to hold the hearing. Yanzi spreaded the words to media and LGBTQ organizations. When the court held the hearing in July 2014, people showed up in front of the court for support. Across from the police, the media stood with Yanzi’s supporters. Between these two rows of people, Yanzi, along with his volunteer lawyer from the nonprofit organization Beijing LGBT Center, walked into the court.

The hearing lasted four hours.

WKND RECOMMENDS Applying to be the new dean

When the judge asked Yanzi to describe what happened in the clinic, Yanzi couldn’t help but keep trembling. It had been five months since his treatment, but the shock still felt vivid. The clinic doctor’s not having a medical license became the crucial advantage for Yanzi. In December 2014, the court ruled that the clinic’s treatments were illegal and demanded that the clinic pay Yanzi 3,500 yuan in compensation and post an apology on its website.

The court rejected Yanzi’s accusation against Baidu, however.

The most notable quote in the judge’s ruling was “homosexuality is not a disease, therefore the clinic had no basis to undertake treatment.”

It was absolutely the first ruling of its kind in China. For the first time, there was a Chinese legal document that stated that homosexuality is not a disease. The ruling made a sensation among Chinese and foreign media. In the following days, not only did numerous state media oulets report on the ruling, foreign readers also saw headlines such as “Chinese Court Rules Against Clinic in Country’s First ‘Gay Conversion’ Case” from Wall Street Journal and “Chinese Court Sides With Gay Man in ‘Conversion’ Suit” from The New York Times. It was a moment of triumph and hope. After decades of stigamatization and discrimination, the silent majority of China’s LGBTQ community saw the hope that perhaps sometime in the future, they could live proudly, away from the shadow.

The news spread to Yanzi’s hometown Chaozhou. Yanzi’s brother called to tell him that his family and relatives hoped he could remain low-key about this matter and not talk about it. Yanzi’s parents didn’t want to accept that their son was gay. They have never talked about it with Yanzi. It became the elephant in the room, but at least they stopped pressuring him to get married.

“I think it’s a good thing for me,” Yanzi said, “we live in peace with each other.”

Won 6 Cases, Lost 5 Cases and 188,383 Public Opinions Urging for Same-Sex Marriage Over the years, Yanzi has worked on 13 cases for LGBTQ rights. When China Southern Airlines fired a flight attendant after he came out, when a kindergarten fired a teacher for sharing articles about LGBTQ and when companies fired employees who were diagnosed with HIV, Yanzi and his organization helped them sue their employers for employment discrimination. In addition, Yanzi and his organization also assisted students and volunteers to inquire of the government when its document described homosexuality as mental illness or sexual pervert. When the government failed to provide a sufficient reason to justify its statement, Yanzi would help file a lawsuit of an unsatisfactory response from government information disclosure.

Yanzi lost every case against the government but won some against private companies. Eleven out of the 13 cases went through the court. He won six. Even though he was never able to directly file a case based on discirimination against LGBTQ, Yanzi made sure that the attorneys would mention the discrimination during the hearings so that the court transcripts and rulings would include LGBTQ topics. When the system was trying to silence a community, the first step was to become a voice, to let people know that their voice exists and matters.

In 2019, China published the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China. When the government opened to the public for legal opinions during the legisla-

tive session, Yanzi and his organization encouraged the public to speak out. “It’s been 20 years since the marriage law last changed,” they wrote in a poster, “ if we keep silent now, most people from LGBTQ community will live in remorse.”

188, 383 people submitted their opinions to the government, and most of them urged for the legalization of same-sex marriage.

This number was unprecedented.

At a routine press conference, the government spokesperson recognized the fact that many suggestions regarding same-sex marriage were received, but did not make further comments.

This marked the first occasion in which the government officially acknowledged the topic of same-sex marriage. Later, in another government meeting, Yanzi was told that China’s traditional value of family and marriage was not compatible with same-sex marriage, and more research would be needed.

“Everyone has the right to love and be loved,” they said. “The world is colorful, why can’t love be that way” What Now? 2021 was a difficult year for LGBTQ groups in China. On July 7, the Chinese government shut down the online channels of dozens of LGBTQ advocacy groups initiated and operated by college students. In one night, all the stories about the lives of LGBTQ groups disappeared, all the articles that called for LGBTQ rights and anti-discrimination vanished and all channels were renamed as “unnamed channel.” Today, it is impossible to find any trace of their existence online, as if all the efforts were but a dream dissipated in the wind.

That night, amidst anger, frustration and hopelessness, over 400 strangers met online and held a funeral for what they fought for.

The meeting lasted around three hours. Over 400 broken hearts tried to pull together when their world was falling apart. “Everyone has the right to love and be loved,” they said. “The world is colorful, why can’t love be that way,” they said.

“I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u I love u l love u, even though I don’t know who u r but I just wanna let u know that I love u,” they said to each other.

Yanzi’s organization did not escape from this same fate. In China, all LGBTQ organizations are automatically considered ille-

“I feel like Yale is such a good school, and I don’t deserve to be here.” Yanzi said. “But I think they also value my experience. They are really, really supportive. I feel happy.” gal and cannot be registered with the government. So when the police showed up in November 2021, Yanzi had no choice but to shut down his organization.

Yanzi knew it all along that this was going to be a slow, painful fight. Sometimes he simply couldn’t understand why the psychology textbooks still called homosexuality as a mental illness after all these years. He felt that the movement for sexual minori-

ties did not make enough progress to help the suffering people.

Sometimes, he felt powerless.

But he always believed that there would be a way out, and that eventually, every member of the LGBTQ community could live with the rights endowed to every citizen. He was always trying to keep hope for himself and others. Sometimes he would intentionally ask volunteers to help with tasks that he could finish by himself. “I want more people to engage in this process,” he said, “not because the result will necessarily be better, but because this process itself will make people feel like we are still fighting, because we still have hope.”

The cases he lost did not discourage him because he had never derived motivation primarily from winning the cases. “These are important,” he said, “but I think it is more like I cannot turn away from the people I met in this process.”

The people Yanzi met include a man who called for help to rescue his gay friend who was sent to psychiatric hospital by his family and had to leave his hometown to live a normal life; a Chinese reporter in Australia who longed to go back to his hometown but couldn’t live in the hostile anti-LGBTQ environment; all the lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, queers from his generation who grew up with stigma and self-negation and never accepted themselves as who they really were.

Many of the people Yanzi met surrendered to social and family pressure, got married and had children. They pretended as if nothing had happened, all whilst they were at war with themselves each day, sunk into exhaustion and would not be further troubled by hope. All those stories reminded Yanzi that advocating for LGBTQ rights is not a profession, but a calling.

But the LGBTQ group shutdown hit him hard. For the first time, he couldn’t see himself, his career and the LGBTQ movement in China clearly. What now? What should be the next step? He didn’t know. The walls were closing in and there was no way out.

Coming to Yale is a recovery for Yanzi. “Yale gives me lots of space to explore, and it’s like, like, everyone is supporting me here.”

The past four weeks on campus have been a rare time, during which he is no longer under immense pressure and no longer need to worry about his safety.

He is happy when having hotpot with his colleagues outdoors to celebrate the Lunar New Year in a world of ice and snow. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is cold,’” he said, “but everyone is so supportive.”

He is happy to see so many people returning to campus.

“I feel like Yale is such a good school, and I don’t deserve to be here.” Yanzi said. “But I think they also value my experience.

They are really, really supportive.

I feel happy.”

Yanzi never hides his excitement when conducting research at the Paul Tsai China Center.

He cherishes every moment in his office reading scholarly publications on same-sex parenting. From his academic preparation, he has come to realize that the traditional Chinese culture doesn’t need to be a barrier, but leverage for the LGBTQ community and their movement. If he starts from the angle of samesex parenting, the public will perhaps learn to empathize with children of same-sex couples and the structure of same-sex families could become more easily accepted. Slowly, the feeling that “maybe there is something I could do” has returned.

“It’s so good, too good, all too good here,” Yanzi said, and said it again and again.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BEST

PAGE B3

AND WORST

BILL & LOUISE:

A New Haven-born Love Story // BY MEGAN VAZ

// LOUISE BEAUMONT

Last week, Bill and Louise Beaumont visited Claire’s Cornercopia for a take-home Valentine’s Day dinner. Both of them have frequented Claire’s since “around ‘78,” according to Louise. Over the phone, they told me that Claire’s has been their “happy place” in the 32 years they have been married, as well as the first spot to go whenever there’s an occasion to celebrate.

Bill first met Louise in New Haven during their time as students at Southern Connecticut State University. Although they attended college at the same time, Bill was ten years older than Louise, and they remained as friends throughout the years. While Louise started attending college soon after high school, Bill came from a blue-collar family and played in bands for several years before going to school.

“Because I came from the type of background I did, you didn’t go to college, you know — you went to work,” Bill explained.

“When I was around 28 or so, somebody talked to me about going to school, and I looked into it … and I got in!”

The couple met through a mutual friend, and Louise remembers Bill as a jokester in college. The first time he ever spoke to her, he tested out a joke for his shift on the campus radio station, where he would try to drum up “off-the-wall” material.

Unfortunately, that first joke didn’t seem to land for Louise.

“The first words he ever spoke to me were, ‘Do you know why they call it a door prize?’ And I looked at him and was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Yeah, when you win it, do they take the thing off the hinges and say congratulations?’” Louise recounted. “And so I said to my friend,

‘Leanne, I don’t know who you’re hanging around with, but you know, widen your circle because this guy’s a nut.’”

After they graduated, the two friends went their separate ways. Bill, unbeknownst to Louise and their other friends, quickly moved out to California to take care of his mother as she battled illness. Ten years later, Bill returned to Connecticut to attend a college friend’s wedding where he and Louise became reacquainted.

They went out for dinner together soon after, where Louise listened to Bill lament over a cheating ex-girlfriend. She remembers having a moment straight out of the movie “Moonstruck,” when Cher slapped her love interest in frustration and told him to “snap out of it.”

Louise said, “I just wanted to go, ‘You snap out of it! all women aren’t like that. Some women are good women, and why are you going out with these women?’ And that was, what, a year-and-a-half later? We were married.”

Louise was 29 years old when she married Bill. She told me most of her friends got married in their early twenties when they believed marriage was “like Cinderella,” then got divorced soon after. Louise said her maturity helped her prepare for the ups and downs of marriage and that one of the keys to their happiness together is knowing when to “pick your battles.” As Christians, they also turn to their faith and prayer for guidance at rocky patches.

The couple never had any children, but they had one “fur baby” for 17 years — a cat that passed away last year. This left them free to spend time together and with friends. Bill and Louise raved about their favorite things to do together over the years, including going to shows, hitting the karaoke bar every Friday and hopping in the car and getting “lost.” Laughter and “the little things” have kept them happily married for the past three decades.

Louise said, “A couple of nights ago, I was in the middle of doing my crafts, and I forgot my slippers and it was freezing. And so I was just like, ‘my feet are cold,’ and he comes in here and brings me my slippers.”

I let out an “awww,” and Louise exclaimed to Bill, “See that? That’s how women see it, you don’t understand that… this means more!”

Meanwhile, Bill said that Louise makes him laugh easily, constantly keeping him on his toes. Louise, being “shameless,” likes to break out into song when they go to the store together. He usually gives up on trying to get her to stop.

Bill and Louise know each other insideout. Although Bill is “no mind-reader by

any means,” he has the freaky ability to vocalize whatever Louise is thinking. As we chatted, Louise had a habit of finishing Bill’s sentences, and they often burst into laughter together.

Another key to their happy marriage is curiosity. Louise said she loves being with Bill because she gets to stick around for the “wackiest things” he says and does, quite like the first time they met.

For them, there’s always something new around the corner.

Bill and Louise enjoy surprising each other with new experiences or visiting places for occasions like Valentine’s Day. They don’t shop for gifts for each other because, according to Louise, they already have “more stuff than [they] know what to

do with.” Once again, they mentioned going to Claire’s for celebrations, in addition to times Louise has surprised Bill with tickets to a ball game or times they’ve traveled down mysterious roads.

Bill retired from working in customer service at insurance companies about 10 years ago, and has since returned to his roots: playing in bands. Louise started working at home during the pandemic, and she told me she loves it.

“At the end of the day, there’s nobody I’d rather be married to,” Louise said.

Bill added, “And I didn’t even pay her to say that.”

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

// ARIANE DE GENNA

WORST BOYFRIEND EVER! // BY MATTHEW ELMORE MERRITT I have the worst boyfriend ever. We’re still together, but I can’t get over the fact that I clearly just have Stockholm Syndrome. I was posting on Librex — before it got zoinked — hoping he would get the hint, but he hasn’t yet. Maybe this will work instead? Am I toxic?

At the start of our relationship, he was great. Life was simple back then. He sent me a cute t-shirt and letter,

// AMELIA DILWORTH

WKND Recommends Joining tour groups and bemoaning about how everything is better at Harvard

checked in on me and even introduced me to his friends at work. He gave me detailed instructions on move-in and encouraged me to keep myself and my friends safe during the pandemic. I don’t know what I would have done without him.

But these days, something just doesn’t feel right. And my friends seem to feel the same way. The zeal of dating one of the hottest boys in the United States and, dare I say, the world has worn off. I’ve stopped caring about the niche rankings although, trust me, his gothic architecture is a 10/10. Now, I feel like just a number to him; a distinction, or lack thereof rather.

And his money has run dry. He rejected me again last Friday, citing “limited by the fellowship funds available and the increasing per student costs associated with the pandemic.” What kind of bullshit is that? Is this the U.S. government or does he just not care about paying for the right stuff? No, I do not mean funding education and healthcare; I mean funding me.

Does he even know my middle name anymore? I use it all the freaking time. He should

know it!! Does he like the font I used on my resume? I have a personal email AND a school email. I feel like that’s indicative of my drive to help people. Does he care that I volunteer and write shitty pieces for the YDN? Does he even read my lackluster jokes and giggle anymore? Why can’t you confide in me and talk about failure? Your acceptance rate dropped below 7 percent, and all of a sudden you think you’re hot shit?

I need to talk to you, Yale. You’ve changed. Or maybe it’s not you that’s changed. It’s me. Maybe I’ve realized you and I aren’t meant for each other. You just want me to be successful. I just want to be happy. I physically cannot leave you, but, just know, we are not soul mates. We’re fuck buddies. *** A note from a friend I feel we all need to hear occasionally: “Failure is absolutely the wrong word to describe not getting something that is largely based on luck and privilege. As are all things related to getting into and staying at Yale, so much of it is out of your control and not at all a reflection of you or how wonderful and intelligent you are.”

Contact MATTHEW ELMORE MERRITT at matthew.merritt@yale.edu .

PAGE B4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND TO

THE STARS

VIVA LA LIBREX // BY AVA SAYLOR Dearly beloved friends, family and Sig Chi Brians, we are gathered here today to commemorate the life — though shortlived — of our companion, Librex.

It happened so quickly last Thursday evening. Things seemed ordinary: the birds asleep, the branches swaying, a cool breeze floating among our footsteps. Oh, how the world can be flipped upside down in an instant. One by one, our tight-knit community received the shocking news.

Librex had moved on to “bigger, better things.” It was gone, forever.

We knew it was coming. Librex had been sick for as long as many of us can remember. Tasked with the massive responsibility of promoting blatantly awful takes and protecting doxxers, all while honoring its users’ complete anonymity, the Paradise for Yale’s 4chan-displaced students was always destined to be Lost. Could any of us withstand the intense yet obviously essential pressure of keeping a gig like this going? Unlikely. And yet, its absence somehow came as a shock.

The day Librex died was likely the worst day of my life. Ever. Even worse than when I got stuck in the men’s bathroom of a Carl’s Jr. and had to call the fire department to rescue me. On this fateful day, I missed breakfast, got hit by a football player riding his electric scooter as I was walking to my 9 a.m. Astronomy gut and got contact traced by so many people that Melanie Boyd herself reached out with a needless-

ly-condescending email. All this, and I had nowhere to complain about it for anonymous comfort. It went beyond the point where friends, family and medical professionals would be enough — I needed the advice of the netizens of Librex. But alas, this was no longer an option.

Irate as I was about my morning as well as Librex’s collapse, I found my situation laughable. How come we never realized how much we took Librex for granted, until it was suddenly swept out from under our feet?

L i b rex wa s born at Yale, for Yale. As it grew to establish itself, it quickly realized the intrinsic — kidding, the literal — value beyond its

home, so long as this value was limited to within elite institutions. And so, Librex took every opportunity to visit different places. However, not once did it leave us behind; Librex always returned to its God-given, Country-livin’, Yalie-defined roots. When we were lost in our post-sex clarity, it found us. When we felt down after bombing a Physics 180 midterm, it lifted us. When we called for a crowd that could decide a professor’s DILF-factor, it answered. Without fail.

I f i rs t m e t Librex on a lonely a u t u m n eve ning. During our brief encounter, it told me that the best place to get a burrito was Tomatillo. Was it

right? Maybe not, but I valued the input.

This was what Librex loved most: information. With the wisdom of a grandfather/ questionably-related uncle, it continually provided students with advice regarding courses, events and the best times to visit the stacks. Often, Librex was the first place we got news. Rumors were confirmed, gossip was spread. It was not always the most reliable source. But neither are any of us, Yitter or the YDN, right?

Regardless, we remember the good times — Mario Kart at Beinecke, the Mckinsey-Gate mass email, the recovery of a jacket stolen at a frat party — all of which would not have lived their unintended legacy without the support of Librex.

Whether you loved it or hated it, it is undeniable that Librex will leave behind a massive hole in the Yale community waiting to be filled — M4F?. Whenever I see a paintball email from Chief Ronnell Higgins, a heated Yitter argument or a Halloween costume that definitely shouldn’t have been a Halloween costume, I will turn to the fond yet often concerning memories that Librex has left behind. Maybe, I’ll even talk about them with a name attached. *Librex is survived by its parent, YikYak and child, Yale Confessions. It also has two distant relatives that dress kind of similarly, Fizz and Sidechat.

Contact AVA SAYLOR at ava.saylor@yale.edu.

// SOPHIE HENRY

This Kind of “Once Twice Melody” Isn’t Released That Often

// BY GAMZE KAZAKOGLU

As all beautiful things do, this one too begins just like a fairytale. Harmony unites with disharmony, electronic marries synth-pop, yet it always feels peaceful. Then drum beats slowly appear on the scene as the tunes circle back and forth in between, a guitar begins to gently weep, and they, all together, elevate us to a dreamy state.

As “days go by” throughout the album from the sensual “summer sun” to a universe of darkness, we are surrounded by “Superstar”s, “P ink Funeral”s, “RunAway” lovers and “New Romance”s over and over again, until we reach the sunset in “Another Go-Around”, confront the idealized “Illusion of Forever” and accept that it indeed hurts to love, as we eventually fade away to “Many Nights” and remember what “Modern Love Stories” always show us. Sweet dreams flow through spider webs, flashing lights, a kaleidoscope of layers of unconsciousness and through the heat of love towards us in this rather bearable lightness of being that we meditate upon.

The abstract and ambiguous allure of the lyrics derive from an idyllic and imagined

past that actually never was, but rather is a neverland of a wandering mind, and celebrate the serendipitous zone of our evergreen daydreams.

In other words, Beach House is once again ready to kick us off to yet another space odyssey in a carousel with their latest album “Once Twice Melody,” whose fourth and final chapter dropped this past Friday at midnight.

Mostly known for their ballads titled “Space Song,” “Silver Soul” and “Myth,” Beach House is a Baltimore, Maryland-based dream-pop musical duo formed in 2004.

The band members are Victoria Legrand as the vocalist and keyboardist, along with Alex Scally who serves as the guitarist, keyboardist and backup vocalist. Their first album was a self-titled debut, which was followed by “Devotion” (2008), “Teen Dream” (2010), “Bloom” (2012), “Depression Cherry” (2015), “Thank Your Lucky Stars” (2015) and “7” (2018).

“Once Twice Melody” marks the duo’s eighth album. A double-album with 18 tracks, melodies were released in four “chapters” on Dec. 8, 2021, Jan. 19, 2022 and Feb. 18, 2022.

As we dissolve into “Once Twice Melody,” the stardust of songs explode like fireworks against the night sky with layers and layers of syncpop, an ounce of shoegaze and modern psychedelic rock elements. While the wistful lyrics of the individual songs deal with concepts like love, desire, nostalgia, time and memory, Beach House feels like “messing up” on some nights and “dressing up” on others — so perhaps you shouldn’t really take the end of the journey so seriously; instead “take your chances” and enjoy the ascending, spellbinding ride itself. After all, “the end is the beginning/ beginning to an ending.” For sure, there are melancholic interludes “as blue skies turn black” when the Baltimore duo recollects past times “When you were mine/ We fell across the sky,” and are reflected in the striking Lana del Ray-feel in “Sunset” and constant resemblance of Mazzy Star, My Bloody Valentine and Tame Impala in lullabies. I would say the lyrics are deliberately shrouded in mystery to prevent them from molding the subjective core of human identity into a particular shape, restructuring

our pasts, disarranging our personal histories or intermingling with our present and future. It is an accurate representation: the memory is selective as one reminiscences fragments of time — and so is “Once Twice Melody.” Beach House doesn’t forget to include psychedelic, playful and trippy imagery along with their cinematic sounds either. At the end, the cumulative effect of the echoes of sounds and illusive images bring us to an immortal and spacey sublime.

I could go on rambling about how the album feels like a warm ocean of a sonic cosmos or a surrealist starry lake with its surprising stillness, yet I would say this feeling itself is not truly communicable or nameable — you should experience it yourself, and you may not “wanna know how the story ends from now to then.” My advice would be to perhaps fasten your seatbelts beforehand, but take the trip for sure: there is a maturity behind melting into your molecules with “Once Twice Melody.”

Contact GAMZE KAZAKOGLU at gamze.kazakoglu@yale.edu .

// SOPHIE HENRY

WKND Hot Take: Leave Mr. 305 in the 305