Yale Daily News — Week of March 26

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, MARCH 26, 2021 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 21 · yaledailynews.com

Communities mourn Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum ’24 ple/staff, or call (203) 432-1128 during business hours. Walden Peer Counseling is available from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. every night. To speak with a trained peer counselor, call (203) 432-8255.

To speak with Dr. Eunice Yuen from the Asian American Cultural Center, schedule an appointment at aacc. yalecollege.yale.edu/resources/emotional-wellness. Good Life Center Woodbridge Fellow Alex Vaghenas offers 30-minute non-clinical wellness chats to support students in coping with stress and anxiety, and to hear about whatever else is on their mind. Email alexa.vaghenas@yale. edu to schedule a one-time session or a recurring time to chat.

Additional resources are available in a guide compiled by the Yale College Council at bit.ly/3w0fgBf.

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

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

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

Careline (carelinealaska.com) is a statewide hotline available at 1-877266-4357 (HELP) and staffed by Alaskans for Alaskans from 6 to 11 p.m. weekdays, and overnights on Friday and Saturday. During other hours, calls are automatically referred to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-8255.

To talk with a counselor from Yale Mental Health and Counseling, schedule an appointment at yalecollege.yale.edu/getting-help/drop-sessions-mental-health-counseling.

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

The Chaplain’s Office staff are also available: schedule an appointment at bit.ly/3d5pAzj, write directly to any of the staff, a list of whom is available at chaplain.yale.edu/peo-

*** Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum ’24, a first-year student in Branford College, recently died by suicide at the age of 18. She is remembered by her friends, family and teachers for her kindness, wit, musical talent and willingness to take on challenges.

Born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Shaw-Rosenbaum was involved in a range of music, debate and community organizations in

Lee sues Yale over firing

COURTESY OF YALE UNIVERSITY

Lee tweeted that Trump supporters suffered from a “shared psychosis” in January 2020.

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND BEATRIZ HORTA STAFF REPORTERS Bandy Lee MED ’94 DIV ’95, a formerly Yale-affiliated faculty member in the School of Medicine, filed a complaint against the University on Monday alleging “unlawful termination… due to her exercise of free speech about the dangers of Donald Trump’s presidency.”

University spokesperson Karen Peart declined to comment on the specifics of the case. Yale was the only named defendant.

Lee’s complaint alleges that Yale fired her in response to a January 2020 tweet that characterized “just about all” of former president Donald Trump’s supporters as suffering from “shared psychosis” and said that Alan SEE LEE PAGE 4

high school and participated in the Directed Studies program at Yale.

She dreamt of studying constitutional law and eventually sitting on the Supreme Court, like her idol, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She adored her poodle Teddy, short for Theodore Teddy Roosevelt Shaw, and became a vegetarian due to her love of animals.

“She’s all about seeking justice, finding fairness and justice in so many avenues,” said her mother, Pamela Shaw. More than two dozen of Shaw-Rosenbaum’s family members, friends and community members shared with the News the ways she touched their lives, from Alaska to Connecticut.

“She accepted people, for certain — never, never, never judgmental of anybody,” said her aunt, Bev Harper.

“When she’d get excited, she’d speak faster and faster … When she was serious, she wanted to be taken seriously. And she was very silly too.”

Shaw-Rosenbaum loved to read — so much so that as a preschooler, she would keep her mom awake until 11 p.m. demanding just one more story before bedtime. She would become a storyteller herself, from daycare monologues to improv shows to made-up backstories about Wal-

COURTESY OF PAM SHAW

A high school senior class photo of Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum '24, who was a first-year student in Branford College. greens customers from her summer job as a cashier.

Her childhood friend Matthew Park ’24, who attended the

same schools as Shaw-Rosenbaum from elementary school to college, SEE SHAW-ROSENBAUM PAGE 4

A look at faculty diversity at Yale

BY ROSE HOROWITCH AND ZAPORAH PRICE STAFF REPORTERS Meghan Gupta ’21 can count on one hand the number of Native faculty members throughout all of Yale, which is four, according to the Office of Institutional Research.

These four faculty members act as role models and mentors to students of similar backgrounds, Gupta said. They can tell Native stories from a perspective that has been left out of traditional scholarship, and academics from outside the community can impose harmful stereotypes on Native communities. She is not alone in how she feels. Five students and five professors underscored the lingering need for improvement in faculty diversity in interviews with the News.

In recent years, Yale has put resources and efforts toward hiring a more diverse faculty. In 2015, the University started the Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative, or FEDI, which devotes central resources to recruiting and retaining a more diverse faculty. These resources can include support for faculty spouses, research and salaries. Following a mid-decade decline in the number of diverse hires, the last two years have seen considerable growth, according to a report released to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on March 9.

JESSIE CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The FAS ladder faculty has grown by 29 people since 2015, with an increase of 12 underrepresented minority faculty members.

Though Yale has made progress toward hiring a more diverse faculty, the faculty’s composition has not kept pace with a cohort of students that has become ever more diverse, according to Matthew Jacobson, professor of African American Studies.

According to the Office of Institutional Resources, Black faculty made up 3.9 percent, Hispanic faculty made up 4.6 percent, American Indian or Alaska native faculty made up 0.001 percent, Asian faculty made up 19.7 percent and white faculty made up 63.3 percent of University faculty in 2020. In that same year, the student body was 7.7 percent Black, 13.3 percent Hispanic, 0.4 percent American Indian or Alaska native, 19.3 percent Asian and 52.7 percent white.

“The undergraduate admissions is light-years ahead of the rest of the University when it comes to diversity questions,” Jacobson told the News. “Here we are with almost a 19th-century faculty that is still just egregiously white, but this really diverse student body that is completely different from the student body of a generation ago. That gap between who the students are and who the faculty are has become more and more problematic.”

In an email to the News, Desir pointed to FEDI’s success in recruiting diverse faculty members in recent years. During the first five years of the program, FEDI helped recruit 101 ladder faculty members and 46 Presidential Visiting Fellows. But he acknowledged that the SEE DIVERSITY PAGE 5

Community supports Oriental Pantry after break-in

BY DOMINIQUE CASTANHEIRA STAFF REPORTER

DOMINIQUE CASTANHEIRA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Yoon-ock Kim prepares bibimbap in the kitchen area of Oriental Pantry. Kim is the owner of the store.

Around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, Oriental Pantry — an Asian market on Orange Street — was broken into and robbed. The community has since rallied to support the family-owned establishment.

Oriental Pantry is run single-handedly by Yoon-ock Kim, who had left for the night when the business’ glass front door was broken and $200 was stolen from the cash register. The crime brought added financial pressure on Kim. Oriental Pantry’s business had

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1931.

YUAG

Former baseball star turned evangelist speaker Billy Sunday speaks to a full crowd of students at Battell Chapel. Sunday speaks on issues facing current college students, especially issues surrounding access to higher education.

A lecture series at the Yale Undergraduate Art Gallery titled "Pablo Picasso at Yale" came to a close on Thursday. The talks explored Picasso's work and presence at the YUAG. Page 6 ARTS

JONES

already seen a harsh drop in revenues since the onset of the pandemic, forcing Kim to delay rent payments over the past two and a half months.

A Yale student helper, Lauren Kim ’21, set up a GoFundMe campaign to cover the damages.

The effort has since surpassed its $2,000 goal to raise close to $13,000 as of Thursday evening.

“I was surprised,” Kim said of the response to the GoFundMe. “I love the community and I appreciate its support.”

When Kim arrived after the break-in, she said that the interior

Prominent altright radio host Alex Jones visited Skull and Bones to create content for his website InfoWars. com, an outlet known for spreading conspiracy theories.

Page 8 UNIVERSITY

HEALTH

Students shared their experiences with Yale Mental Health and Counseling, expressing frustration, disappointment and anger over inadequate mental health resources.

Page 9 UNIVERSITY

of the restaurant was “a mess” but that no merchandise had been stolen. However, since the business is not insured through her landlord, Kim had to cover the damages herself. She told the News she will use the funds from the GoFundMe to make repairs, including those she has already initiated to fix the storefront’s door, in addition to covering back rent and installing security cameras.

Kim has owned and operated Oriental Pantry – which offers panAsian ingredients as well as several SEE PANTRY PAGE 5 VIGIL

Around 300 community members gathered on Tuesday for an online vigil for the eight victims of the Atlanta spa shootings, which took place on March 16.

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PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION Beginning the end

GUEST COLUMNIST AMY REN

On Resilience

A

few years ago, my mother was sawing the fingernails off her last client when a young woman pushed through the entrance of the nail salon. She was no older than 20, and instead of requesting a manicure or pedicure, she kindly asked to purchase a bottle of nail polish. My mother, who saw no reason not to, retrieved an unopened bottle of Essie “Bikini So Teeny” from the storage room. The woman only had a $100 bill, so my mother returned $95 in cash to her.

The bill, she later discovered, was fake.

My parents keep their struggles to themselves. I only learn about their daily hardships by listening — through the walls, from the crevices between floors and doors, in the backseat of dark cars while I pretend to sleep. Their stories haunt my dreams. And as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that their struggles are not unique.

In 2019, a 51-year-old nail salon owner — who was also a wife, mother and grandmother — chased after a fleeing customer because of a $35 manicure and was run over by the escaping woman. She died shortly after. Most recently, a hate crime targeted three massage parlors in Atlanta, killing six women of Asian descent. These incidents are not rare, nor are they random.

When I first met the staff at my mother’s salon, I was overwhelmed by their patience and persistence. A mother, struggling to raise two sons after fleeing from an exploitative husband; a wife, who, in between clients, studied recipes on her iPhone for her family; a sister, alone in an unfamiliar country, working to send money home at the end of each month.

Despite these remarkable obstacles, they brought positivity to their stations every day — only to be met with constant microaggressions.

And most of the time, they don’t respond. Perhaps they don’t realize it, or perhaps they don’t want to cause trouble.

Being born and educated in America has granted me an advantage: being fluent in English. It has enabled me to recognize injustices, racism and forms of mistreatment. It has also protected me from frequent misunderstandings — misunderstandings that could easily escalate. Recent immigrants, on the other hand, may not be able to recognize the nuances of English, or the discrimination that exists in various forms. This lack of protection makes them, among other minorities, appear to be easy targets.

In many nail salons, workers are met with a barrage of subtle jabs, and their reaction, or lack thereof, permits customers to continue. I wonder how many belittling comments the workers file away, how many harsh words they scrub down and how much pain they paint over. Because in non-English speaking nail salons, demeaning remarks have nowhere to go. They drift in the air, settling into the cushions and floors, until someone hears

O

them and understands. It is an undetectable tension, only palpable when I am there. Unawareness, then, is a double-edged sword, one that both prevents workers from the most personal effects of prejudice and also further entrenches the problem.

A few years ago, I was in the car when we were pulled over for speeding. My father, who doesn’t speak English, sat quietly as the police officer approached.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

My father reached for his license.

“Do you understand me? Yes? Say yes. Say yes if you understand me!”

My father, sheltered by his inability to detect tone and hostility in words, smiled and handed the license over.

I listened to the way the officer, who was probably half as old as my father, talked down to him.

When my American accent interjected, the officer’s voice softened and became more understanding. It was as if my fluency changed the situation, as if it validated our presence there — on the freeway of America.

My English protected us from his patronizing tone. But even though my father couldn’t understand and I was able to stop things from escalating, it still happened. And those incidents continue to happen.

It was never about the $95. What that woman and the police officer stole from my parents was dignity.

And it was not the first time. The group of boys who shattered the front window one week after the grand opening; the man who bought a certificate with a check that traced back to an empty bank account; those who never reappeared after leaving empty gift cards as a form of currency. Perhaps they all assumed that non-English speaking immigrants are vulnerable.

This assumption could not be more flawed.

The workers at these salons may not retaliate against microaggressions, but they are strong. They work long hours despite the monotony.

They smile through sentences they can’t understand. Behind the acetone-saturated face masks and dustfilled lungs, these immigrants remain hopeful. They are here to work, to support — they are not given the voice to be victims, to cause trouble, and so they carry on.

Though my mother’s small salon on the corner of a quiet street may seem defenseless, it is actually a base of resilience. The way one is treated by others is hard to control — people will continue to scam, insult and attack. But my mother will continue to welcome new customers in, my father will continue to drive, the optimistic immigrants will continue to persevere and I will continue to be the voice they don’t yet know they have. It is how we carry on.

AMY REN is a junior in Morse College.

Contact her at amy.ren@yale.edu .

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ne year ago, the Yale community was met with an email from university administrators that we would be remaining at home for the duration of the academic year, with employment status, faculty appointments and undergraduate grading policies thrown into disarray. A year later, we remember the early pandemic with a degree of nostalgia: sourdough bread, Tiger King and universal pass seem so far away from the persistent burnout, breakless semesters and social isolation that we feel now. Even our reflections on one year of isolation — of which media sources have churned out en masse — feel insufficient to describe the loss we’ve experienced. I had family members last year that are no longer alive.

I saw my loved ones. I hugged my friends.

Still, the lasting aspects of the pandemic are policy-based as well as emotional. On March 8, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun released a statement to Yale undergraduates that Yale registration policies will undergo major changes, shifting the registration period to April rather than August and dramatically reducing the flexibility students have during shopping period — or what’s left of it. This new preregistration policy is one in a litany of policies enacted by the Yale administration to adapt to the COVID19 age, including a hiring freeze for new faculty, an altered academic schedule and relaxed policies for students taking leaves of absence. But many of these policies — rather than being temporary measures in a difficult time — aren’t going anywhere.

Yale students, faculty and staff have been impacted by a slew of new policy rollouts that have left our post-pandemic positions tenuous. Yale’s hiring freeze for faculty ends in June, but despite faculty support, there is considerable evidence that the administration will continue to restrict hiring new faculty. Additionally, some departments have seen cuts to staff and many staff members have faced

anxiety about payment, as Yale originally only agreed to pay staff members through April 30, 2020.

Yale refused MCKINSEY funding from the U.S. govCROZIER ernment for low-income Left and students when it was offered, Write but n e ve r accommodated for that refusal to low-income students who were intended to be the primary recipients of funding. Additionally, a slew of other policy changes have seemingly flown under the radar, such as a restriction on summer funding for low-income students through the consolidation of the International Summer Award and Domestic Summer Award into the Summer Experience Award with lower award values and narrower parameters even as “uncertainties remain” for undergraduates about summer opportunities.

Even policies designed to offer pandemic-era opportunities for students to relax, like break days, are so poorly enforced that many students, including myself, have spent at least one of their break days working.

Administration has been largely unresponsive to student and faculty concerns. Take, for instance, two recent emails from Dean Chun about break days and preregistration. On March 11, Dean Chun sent an email to students about the new shopping period policies. This was the first paragraph: “I am hearing from many of you who are unhappy about the timeline for early registration. What I am hearing is that you are not ready to be thinking about next semester’s classes, especially given the stresses of the pandemic. I am also hearing pleas to postpone this process until the summer, when the demands of the semester are behind you. I am even hearing questions asking if Yale College is eliminating the

shopping period. I hear you.”

Despite these claims, the rest of the email contained no concrete policy changes. Just a week earlier, Dean Chun sent an email to undergraduates indicating that he recognizes student frustration about break days by saying, “whether or not you were able to rest on the first of the five rest days, remember that you have four more ahead.” Still, this statement failed to acknowledge students’ lack of ability to rest for a longer period of time or even faculty disregard of student break days. It’s not difficult to imagine solutions — requiring faculty, for instance, to not assign students large assignments or course sessions on break days rather than merely “suggesting” it, or even having a longer break but requiring students to routinely check-in at a campus checkpoint in order to ensure that no students left the state of Connecticut — but solutions feel like a low priority.

Administrators are simply unwilling to consider the impact of pandemic burnout on top of the typical burnout already faced by a significant portion of Yale students in a typical semester, despite the fact that pandemic burnout is rife across the world.

In her excellent book, “The Shock Doctrine,” historian Naomi Klein articulates a theory of “disaster capitalism,” in which world crises pave the way for increased profit and consolidation of power.

Capital, thus, rises as the rest of us drown. Indeed, as many universities suffered due to the pandemic, Yale’s endowment continued to post returns. When the world stops, the holy endowment marches on, apocalypse be damned.

We are just weeks away from vaccine eligibility for all adults in Connecticut. But as we begin to roam freely, perhaps maskless for the first time, we aren’t going back to normal. And yet some things — like austerity — never change.

MCKINSEY CROZIER is a junior in Timothy Dwight College. Her column, “Left and Write,” runs on alternate Fridays. Contact her at mckinsey.crozier@yale.edu .

Expanding our solidarity T

he Atlanta spa shooting that took place on Tuesday, March 16 was shocking, but not surprising. That a man could be so self-important, deluded and entitled that he would murder several women instead of exercising control over his sexual “temptation” is shocking, but not surprising. That in the year leading up to the mass shooting Asian American communities endured rising hate and discrimination which went largely unaddressed by our government is shocking, but not surprising. That the lives of working-class women of color were treated as expendable is shocking, but not surprising.

Though the police and the federal government have yet to designate the Atlanta spa shooting as a hate crime, the dimensions of race, class and gender in this act of terrorism are all too apparent to ignore. And once again, we have been shown just how much violence and destruction pervade American culture — and just how often that violence and destruction is aimed at people of color and poor people.

As a Black person, I am far from qualified to speak on the racism and hate that Asian Americans endure. But I see undeniable commonalities between the struggles of Asian Americans and the struggles of Black Americans.

A brief look at history shows us how white supremacy has had similar damaging effects on both communities.

The first major wave of East Asian immigration during the Gold Rush in the 1850s was met with extreme resentment and contempt, as white people reacted violently to the perception that Asian immigrants were stealing their jobs. In 1871, a white mob invaded an immigrant neighborhood, murdering nearly 20 Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, California.

In 1885, a mob of over 100 white men invaded Chinatown in Rock Springs, Wyoming, killing nearly 30 Chinese immigrants and burning the neighborhood to the ground.

These tragedies eerily echo the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, in which a white mob attacked what wa s k n ow n as Black Wall CALEB Street, killDUNSON ing hundreds of Black peoWhat We ple and leaving the city in Owe ashes. While these events do not align perfectly, they show how both Asian Americans and Black Americans have been targets of white rage.

The intersections of race and gender in Asian and Black communities also resemble each other in several ways. Society’s hypersexualization of women has long been, and continues to be, an issue, and for Asian women and Black women that often comes with a distinct racial component. Asian women are stereotyped as passive and docile, only existing to be at the center of male fetishes. Black women are often seen as sexually aggressive temptresses who have the ability and desire to corrupt men. They are seen as exotic sexual conquests while simultaneously being devalued and discriminated against.

They must fight harder than men of color to have their voices heard.

The disproportionate amount of anti-Asian hate crimes directed at women and the ongoing fight to highlight the stories of Black women killed by police are evidence for that point.

The economic struggles of Asian Americans and Black Americans are linked, too. In 2016, Asian Americans and Black Americans were first and second respectively in intraracial income inequality, with the top 10 percent of Asian Americans earning 10.7 times as much as the bottom 10 percent, and the top 10 percent of Black Americans earning 9.8 times as much as the bottom 10 percent. These drastic levels

of inequality often lead people to draw inaccurate conclusions about the efficacy of our economic system.

Asian Americans are designated the model minority, generalized as having an innate ability to succeed. This generalization erases the profound systemic challenges that poor Asian Americans face and turns their inability to climb the economic ladder into a problem of personal drive. Black Americans are stereotyped as lazy, and examples of exceptionalism are used to claim that the struggles of poor Black people are their fault alone. Together, these misconceptions are used to uphold a culture of individualism that is powerfully damaging. They pit Asian and Black Americans against one another, and they are used to argue against expanding social assistance programs that would pull many Asian Americans and Black Americans out of poverty.

These similarities, while dark and disturbing, give me hope.

The struggles Asian Americans and Black Americans share offer a chance at collaboration, at a united effort to fight discrimination and dismantle America’s racial hierarchy. I don’t have the answers, and it will not be easy — there is a long history of tension between these communities. But there is also a growing precedent of solidarity.

But we have the opportunity to expand our solidarity. We can begin laying the groundwork for a revolutionary multiracial social movement that aims for a world in which we have economic and social equality.

By working to create a just society, we can commemorate the lives of Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng and Paul Andre Michels, as well as the lives of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

CALEB DUNSON is a first-year in Saybrook College. His column, titled “What We Owe,” runs on alternate Tuesdays. Contact him at caleb.dunson@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

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“Fame is a funny thing. I like doing normal things... I like going to Disney World or a big field on the Fourth of July and having picnics with friends. The problem is you’re either worried you’re going to be recognized, or you’re thankful you’re not. It’s always there.” CHRIS EVANS AMERICAN ACTOR

Female officers advance in New Haven Police Department

BY RAZEL SUANSING STAFF REPORTER Six female officers in the New Haven Police Department were promoted in March, coinciding with Women’s History Month.

Early this month, Renee Dominguez officially took on the role of acting chief at the NHPD. During a March 9 Board of Police Commissioners meeting, Evelise Ribeiro was elected chair of the commissioners. At the same meeting, four other female police officers were promoted to sergeant.

“It’s surreal and exciting and crazy to think that I am here, but here we are on International Women’s Day,” Dominguez told the News on March 8, reflecting on the new roles.

Dominguez said at the meeting that before this month’s promotions, only four women on the NHPD force had earned the rank of sergeant — compared to two dozen men. Now, there are eight female officers with the title.

On Jan. 5, Elicker’s office announced that NHPD Chief Otoniel Reyes will step down from his position this spring. Dominguez has now assumed Reyes’s responsibilities, but she will retain the title of acting NHPD interim chief until Reyes’ tenure officially ends in January 2022.

Dominguez has been a police officer since November 2000 when she worked with the Newtown police force. She joined the NHPD in October 2002, where she first worked as a watch beat in Newhallville. Domin-

guez continued to serve in Newhallville for 10 years, patrolling and working as sergeant and lieutenant.

She then assumed the role of district manager in Westville and Fair Haven.

In July 2019, she was promoted to assistant chief at the NHPD. “It’s what I’ve always wanted, and I can’t believe that I’m here,” Dominguez said.

Dominguez told the News that she plans to closely follow Reyes’ agenda as chief, stating that she wanted “stability” in the department during the leadership transition. Future changes to the department, she said, will mainly come from restructuring the NHPD based on promotions.

This restructuring will also entail the NHPD hiring more officers to fill vacancies left by promotions.

One of the four women promoted to sergeant was Rosa Melendez, the first woman in NHPD history to be a certified bomb technician.

In the police commissioners meeting, Melendez said she has spent most of her time in the Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Scene Unit, where she learned to have “attention to detail and organizational skills.”

Police Commissioner Tracey Meares honored Melendez’s work overseeing the transition of police academy graduates at the meeting, stating that the role is “probably one of the most important jobs you can do … That job makes or breaks the future of the members of the force.”

The other three promoted sergeants were Lizmarie Almedina, Jasmine Sanders and Savannah Smith.

Almedina was a school resource officer, where she made presentations to inform students about child pornography and sexual assault. Sanders worked in the Dwight and Hill neighborhoods for three years as a patrolling officer. She also served as a part of the high school and college recruitment teams of the NHPD. Smith served as a patrol officer in the neighborhoods of Dixwell and Newhallville.

Twenty-two percent of NHPD members are female, according to New Haven’s monthly financial report.

Talat Aman contributed reporting.

Contact RAZEL SUANSING at razel.suansing@yale.edu .

Dean Chun talks early registration, summer courses at academics town hall

COURTESY OF YALE NEWS

Chun communicated his reasoning behind the early course registration system and said he is “happy to continue talking” about its challenges.

BY LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTER The Yale College Council hosted a town hall with Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun on Friday, opening the floor to questions from students about recent developments in Yale’s academic policies, in particular the announcement that early registration for Fall 2021 classes would take place in April and May. The town hall followed weeks of discussion among the student body since Chun announced the new course registration timeline in an email to undergraduates on March 8. The Zoom event was moderated

by YCC Academics Director Saket Malhotra ’23 and First-Year Class

Council President Leleda Beraki ’24. Chun gave remarks for the first half of the hour-long meeting before taking anonymous student questions — mostly on the early registration process and Yale’s COVID-19 Courses.

“There’s a lot of confusion and I think general disunity in our response to summer plans and course selections, so we wanted to create a space for students to directly clear up confusion and implore administration to make changes that better suit our needs,” Beraki said.

Chun began his remarks by discussing the new registration schedule, emphasizing his hope that the change would reduce student stress during the course registration process.

Seeking to correct misunderstandings about the new policy, Chun said that the new schedule does not mean shopping period had been eliminated altogether.

Instead, he said it means that the administration was “only trying to make shopping better,” preserving shopping — for one week instead of two — at the beginning of term but starting the process of course registration earlier. Chun acknowledged, however, that the application process for limited-enrollment courses could be a “burden” for students, especially when the process coincides with weeks when students have classes or final exams.

“We naively thought that we were giving you a lot of time,” Chun said. “I have received feedback that you feel that it’s not enough time, or at least the timing is not good, and so I’m very happy to continue talking about the challenges.”

Chun also noted that the earlier course registration did not disadvantage students currently on leave, who would have “equal access” to the earlier process of expressing interest in limited-enrollment courses.

Bao Phan ’24 left the town hall feeling disappointed and unconvinced of the argument behind the earlier course registration schedule.

“The whole time I was surprised (and a bit appalled) at how adamantly Dean Chun insisted that the decision would ‘reduce stress’ and how ‘everyone wants to see this succeed’ when so many students and even faculty have

expressed that this would put unnecessary strain on everyone’s workload,” Phan wrote in an email to the News.

But for Bryce Morales ’23, the town hall was a helpful way to learn more about the changes to the course registration process and the reasoning behind them.

“I do think that Dean Chun did a good job explaining the reasoning behind the decision to add an early registration process,” Morales said. “I appreciated his explanation of how the new process will ultimately help more students get into their top-choice limited-enrollment courses, a benefit which I think is worth the added student effort during the spring term.”

Later in the town hall, questions arose about Yale’s COVID19 Courses, the two free credits for Yale Summer Session awarded to first-year and sophomore students who attended at least one semester remotely this academic year.

Some students questioned the equity of this policy, suggesting that it disadvantaged students who received a housing exemption due to unstable learning conditions at home and are therefore ineligible for the free credits. In response, Chun re-emphasized the position that the courses are intended as compensation for students who studied remotely and subsequently lost time living on campus.

“I still think the issue of COVID credits for students who didn’t have a choice other than living on campus both semesters needs to be

rethought and addressed,” Beraki said. “It’s a serious equity issue and it’s not sufficient to say that these credits are to balance time on campus or are not as desirable as other opportunities Yale provides.

If affected students decide not to use these credits that’s one thing, but to not have the option at all is another completely.”

Chun questioned whether students really wanted to spend their summers “doing more Zoom classes,” referencing available fellowships and summer experience awards and suggesting that students spend their summers away from the classroom.

Viktor Kagan ’24, however, said that this suggestion was “completely out of touch” with the experiences of students who felt a need to stay on campus for both semesters and were still interested in taking summer courses.

“Dean Chun relayed to us that he felt the event was a constructive discussion, and we hope that attendees feel the same,” said YCC President Aliesa Bahri ’22. “Nevertheless, we will continue to garner testimony and feedback from students around issues such as pre-registration, summer session credit and more in order to ensure their voices and opinions are heard.”

Per the updated registration schedule, the application period for limited-enrollment courses begins on April 6.

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

Two local organizations partner to distribute PPE to 56 refugee families

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN STAFF REPORTER On Saturday, 14 volunteers from Elena’s Light and PPE4ALL drove from house to house distributing masks, face shields and disinfectant products to refugee families across the greater New Haven area.

Volunteers gathered in the parking lot of the North Haven Stop & Shop on Saturday morning to pick up bags of personal protective equipment from a designated tent set up by Elena’s Light. About 350 individuals from the 56 recipient families received a total of almost 600 pieces of PPE. Elena’s Light is a New Haven-based organization that aims to build better futures for local refugee women and children through English language learner programs and health education. PPE4ALL, a nonprofit organization founded by Emme Magliato ’23, assembles pieces of PPE and donates them to at-risk communities across the country.

“A lot of families, our partners, just the refugee community in general, did not have access to reusable masks,” Hillary Jean-Bart ’24, program development coordinator and ELL coordinator for Elena’s Light, told the News. “We know that there’s a lot of unequal distribution of COVID-19 among immigrant populations, and so we wanted to make sure that they had resources to protect themselves.”

The partnership between Elena’s Light and PPE4ALL began in February, after Fereshteh Ganjavi, founder and executive director of Elena’s Light, realized the need for

access to free protective equipment within the local refugee community. At about the same time, Ganjavi said, a Yale student who volunteered for both PPE4ALL and Elena’s Light suggested that the two organizations hold a joint meeting. Soon after, the planning for Saturday’s event began.

Elena’s Light selected 56 refugee families in the New Haven area as target recipients for the PPE kits.

According to Magliato, PPE4ALL took on the task of assembling equipment kits for each member of the families — face shields, KN95 masks and sewn reusable masks for adults with smaller cloth masks with filters for children. The kits also included hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes.

At Saturday’s event, each volunteer was assigned to distribute the equipment to approximately five families each, driving from door to door. Jean-Bart said the organization also received a “surprise” donation of 100 donuts from Donut Crazy on Friday night, which they included along with the PPE bags.

“It was a complete success — every family that was on the list, we were able to get the PPE to,” said Magliato. “I delivered six packages, which was very exciting. We got to interact with some of the families, some of [the kits] we just left outside of the house or apartment. It was a really, really successful day of having volunteers that were there, and we had translations ready.”

Both PPE4ALL and Elena’s Light have a history of collaboration with

Yale students, who made up six of the 14 volunteers on Saturday.

Ganjavi, an educator and former refugee, founded Elena’s Light in 2019 after noticing the lack of support and opportunities available for refugee women in New Haven. The organization offers virtual health education classes taught by professionals from the Yale New Haven Health System, offered once every two weeks and directed towards refugee women.

They also provide free one-on-one ELL tutoring.

Through Dwight Hall, Yale students have the opportunity to intern with Elena’s Light, which is how Jean-Bart became involved with the organization. According to Ganjavi, they are also looking for more Yale students to volunteer as tutors for the ELL program.

Magliato founded PPE4ALL in March of last year, after she left campus at the onset of the pandemic. Collaborating with other college students in her hometown of Poughkeepsie, NY, Magliato began reaching out to plastic and foam suppliers with the goal of manufacturing face shields. Originally, these face shields were sent to hospitals in New York — however, Magliato said, they soon realized that the need for PPE was equally great in at-risk communities that were not “getting the headlines”.

In the past year, PPE4ALL has distributed almost 50,000 pieces of PPE across 42 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

Recipients have included homeless shelters, free clinics, soup kitchens and tribal organizations.

COURTESY OF HILLARY JEAN-BART

Elena’s Light and PPE4ALL provided about 550 pieces of free protective equipment to local refugee families.

“I think during the pandemic, communities like refugees and immigrants have been kind of left out of the story,” Magliato said. “It’s relatively easy to contact a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter, but sometimes it’s harder to find that kind of organization that’s serving refugee families that are in so much need, but can’t be as visible.”

In addition to making their own face shields and masks, PPE4ALL also accepts donations of everything from KN95 masks to gloves.

Ganjavi emphasized the importance of this collaborative effort to distribute PPE to refugee families who may not have the financial means to purchase them on their own. The roles that refugees fill within the New Haven community cause them to be dispropor-

tionately vulnerable to COVID-19, while their access to medical care is often limited, she said.

“For the refugee community in New Haven, many of the husbands — or anyone in the household — are essential workers,” said Ganjavi.

“They are working at the factories, they are working at Amazon, at the restaurants. But they are not eligible to receive vaccines …

I believe that this PPE can keep many more people healthy, protect the other people in the family and the women too.”

According to the city’s COVID19 Hub, there have been 11,931 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New Haven.

Contact SYLVAN LEBRUN at sylvan.lebrun@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“It's not fair to compare one artist to another because they all come with their own sort of elements to the picnic, you know.” ANNIE LENNOX SCOTTISH SINGER-SONGWRITER

'She was unapologetically herself': Shaw-Rosenbaum dies at 18 SHAW-ROSENBAUM FROM PAGE 1 described her as a courageous advocate for meaningful causes. Park recalled a memory of winning second place at a mock trial competition alongside Shaw-Rosenbaum.

“Outside of the heated rounds, our team spent time in a cramped storage closet engaging in random discussions and playing games,” Park told the News. “That day, I lost to Rachael in a hard-fought match of arm-wrestling, and I’m sure that if Rachael was still with us, we would be joking about it today on Cross Campus.”

Growing up in Anchorage At West Anchorage High School, Shaw-Rosenbaum enjoyed studying math and chemistry and maintained close bonds with her teachers even as she navigated a large campus and outside activities. She participated in a drama, debate and forensics extracurricular program — which according to her mother was her “favorite activity by far.”

“She was incredibly passionate and enthusiastic, a very talented speaker, and always patient and helpful while mentoring other students,” her high school debate partner, Olivia Tafs, wrote to the News. “Rachael taught me so much about strength, resilience,and being yourself, and I know I'm a better person for having met her.”

Her debate skills earned her several awards, according to her principal, Sven Gustafson. Her mother shared that Shaw-Rosenbaum was particularly talented at extemporaneous speech.

Shaw-Rosenbaum also attended Sitka’s Fine Arts Camp — a nationally-recognized youth arts and education summer program in Sitka, Alaska — for five years. SFAC is a network partner of the Alaska Afterschool Network, a statewide organization dedicated to increasing after school learning opportunities for school-age youth and families.

“Rachael was an incredibly smart, ambitious, energetic, life-loving person. She was the kind of person who loved to feel like making a difference,” said Thomas Azzarella, the program’s director. “I know a lot of people say this but Rachael was one of those people who could actually change the world.”

Shaw-Rosenbaum interned for the organization in 2019 and reflected on her time at the camp and as an advocate for afterschool programs in a blog post.

“Just last week in Sitka, I was unexpectedly thrust into my first attempt at improvised stand-up comedy during an ‘art share,’ a casual nightly event in which students and faculty take to the stage to showcase their creative expression,” Shaw-Rosenbaum’s post reads.

“But in the open, supportive atmo-

sphere of SFAC, I found the impulsive courage to raise my hand high, stand under the spotlight, and make a memory.”

Kenley Jackson and Zeke Blackwell ’13 — the SFAC’s program director and theater director, respectively — said that the camp community will miss Shaw-Rosenbaum's presence and personality.

“Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum came to Sitka Fine Arts Camp for the first time in middle school with a keen intellectual and artistic curiosity that only intensified as she got older,” Jackson wrote in an email to the News. “She was a brilliant violist and also loved theater, experimenting with Shakespeare, improv, and stage makeup.”

Shaw-Rosenbaum also served in the Anchorage Youth Court, or AYC, a diversionary program in which local youth take on roles as attorneys, judges and jurors to judge local youth accused of breaking the law.

She joined in the sixth grade as the program’s youngest member — a year before students are normally eligible to join.

According to Denise Wike and Irene Tresser, the Legal Advisor and Director for AYC respectively, Shaw-Rosenbaum volunteered over 300 hours to serve as a prosecutor, defense attorney and judge for sentencing hearings for juveniles charged with crimes. She also served on the board of directors for five years.

Alongside former AYC Executive Director Rebecca Koford, Shaw-Rosenbaum started a summer leadership program in 2018 to mentor and teach low-income youth about the law. “[Shaw-Rosenbaum was] quietly sassy,” Koford said. “She was very insightful about other people and very empathic but also pretty quiet unless you got to know her well.

She knew who she was and she was a strong person.”

A love of music Shaw-Rosenbaum was not drawn to music as a young child. In kindergarten, she rejected her mother’s suggestions of playing piano or violin. But when she listened to older students talk about their instruments as part of a sixth grade music requirement, she came home eager to learn the viola.

“I think it was a passion,” said Karyn Grove-Bruce, who taught Shaw-Rosenbaum throughout high school. “The fact that she kept doing it, despite being so busy, tells me that it really was something that she really enjoyed. And you could tell by the way she played.”

Her favorite piece, Grove-Bruce told the News, was Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata No. 3.

Shaw-Rosenbaum played in the “Alaska Youth Orchestras, home of the Anchorage Youth Symphony,”

COURTESY OF NATHANIEL PIERCE AND CHRISTINE HARDA-LI

Shaw-Rosenbaum, third from the right, plays in an octet at the Anchorage Chamber Music Festival in August 2017. where she served as principal violist, in addition to sitting on the performing board of directors for two years.

She participated in the Anchorage Chamber Music Festival for three summers, and even performed at Grove-Bruce’s daughter’s wedding with her viola quartet.

“We adored Rachael,” said AYO Executive Director Denise Brown-Chylook. “She is what organizations would love to have in a student participant. Very, very advocacy and justice-minded, very goal oriented, a hard worker — and a fantastic violist. She was skilled.”

“I remember her confidence and can-do attitude,” Will Lacy, the AYO’s acting Board Members and Performing Boards Sponsor at the time, wrote in an email. “She was always booming with ideas and possessed a maturity well above her peers.”

Nathaniel Pierce, the Anchorage Chamber Music Festival’s co-Director, said he was proud to hear that Shaw-Rosenbaum went to Yale. Her acceptance came as no surprise, he said; she was an ambitious, witty and strong-minded student.

Her time at Yale At Yale, Shaw-Rosenbaum developed a passion for ethics and philosophy — one that she explored through the University’s Directed Studies program, an intensive program for firstyear students studying texts from Western civilizations.

Four of her DS professors characterized Shaw-Rosenbaum as quick-thinking and highly

engaged. She was especially imaginative and witty, sometimes including memes in her essays.

“She wrote a couple of smart and witty essays about the role of popular consent in Niccolò Machiavelli's Prince and the imaginary ‘state of nature’ in the work of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” wrote Terence Renaud, Shaw-Rosenbaum’s DS Philosophy professor for this semester.

Shaw-Rosenbaum also found time to continue pursuing her passion for music. She took Music 115, “The Mathematics of Music,” in the spring 2021 semester.

“Eureka!” she wrote in a message to the professor, Richard Cohn, about a problem set. “I think I figured it out!”

Shaw-Rosenbaum constantly asked about problem sets, attended office hours and spoke up in lectures, despite never having met her 40 peers in person.

“Everything was processed in her own way, idiosyncratically but with deep understanding,” Cohn told the News. “From the standpoint of a classical musician, no one is better to set up to have a deep, rich, interesting life than someone who can play the inner parts of a Brahms quintet.”

Outside of the classroom, Shaw-Rosenbaum participated in the Jones-Zimmerman Academic Mentorship Program, which connects middle school students to Yale undergraduate mentors. James Mullins ’23, who worked with her in the program, said she was passion-

ate about education and excited to begin work with students in New Haven Public Schools.

Her friends fondly remember their nightly FroCo-group dinners, casual conversations about classes and Karaoke nights, where Shaw-Rosenbaum rapped Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” without missing a beat.

They shared their love for her in statements provided by their first-year counselor, Alvin Winston, II ’21, who told the News that Shaw-Rosenbaum had “a meaningful and profound impact in my life and those who surrounded her.”

“She managed to make me laugh with all her pun-filled jokes and one-liners,” said Stephanie Owusu ’24. “She was a light on what was otherwise a stressful day.”

"Yale has no shortage of intelligence, but Rachael was genuinely the most brilliant person I've ever met,” said Victoria Chung ’24.

“What struck me the most about her was how she was unapologetically herself and her unrelenting passion for the things she loved." “[Rachael] made me smile,” said Theo Haaks ’24.

There were two gatherings for Shaw-Rosenbaum on Tuesday: one for members of Branford College and another open to members of the Yale College community.

Mackenzie Hawkins contributed reporting.

Contact NATALIE KAINZ at natalie.kainz@yale.edu and ZAPORAH PRICE at zaporah.price@yale.edu .

Former professor says Yale fired her over tweet on Trump, Dershowitz LEE FROM PAGE 1 Dershowitz, a lawyer on Trump’s legal team, had “wholly taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion.”

Dershowitz responded to the tweet with a letter to Yale administrators, in which he complained that Lee’s tweet constituted “a serious violation of the ethics rules of the American Psychiatric Association” and requested that she be disciplined.

The legal action listed five causes, including breach of contract, breach of good faith and wrongful termination.

“I have done this with a heavy heart, only because Yale refused all my requests for a discussion, much as the American Psychiatric Association has done,” Lee wrote in an email to the News. “I love Yale, my alma mater, as I love my country, but we are falling into a dangerous culture of self-censorship and compliance with authority at all cost.”

Robin Kallor LLP, the firm representing Lee in the action, wrote in a statement obtained by the News that Lee’s comments are “clearly protected by the First Amendment and Yale's guarantees of academic freedom.”

According to court documents, after Dershowitz sent his letter on Jan. 11, chair of the Psychiatry Department John Krystal MED ’84 warned Lee via an email that the department “would be compelled to ‘terminate [her] teaching role’” if she continued to make similar pub-

lic statements. She continued to tweet about the mental fitness of Trump even after Krystal’s warning. Lee then met with Krystal and additional unnamed faculty members and was told that she “breached psychiatric ethics,” according to an email excerpt in the filing. According to court documents, Yale refused to hold additional discussions or investigate the accusations further. On May 17, 2020, Lee was notified that she was terminated. She appealed the decision multiple times in August and September, to no avail.

Krystal wrote to Lee in a Sept. 4 letter included in the court filing that the department’s main consideration in the termination was her “clinical judgement and professionalism” after she publicly stated her “diagnostic impressions” of Trump and other public figures. Krystal emphasized in the letter that the termination “was not because of the political content” of her statements.

“Although the committee does not doubt that you are acting on the basis of your personal moral code,” the letter read, “your repeated violations of the APA’s Goldwater Rule and your inappropriate transfer of the duty to warn from the treatment setting to national politics raised significant doubts about your understanding of crucial ethical and legal principles in psychiatry.”

The American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule states that it is unethical for psychiatrists to

comment on a public figure’s mental faculties in an official capacity unless granted permission or after a medical examination.

Lee also considers the Goldwater Rule — which the APA clarified in 2017 prohibits member psychiatrists from giving professional opinions about the mental state of someone they have not personally evaluated — a “gag order,” according to court documents. Her complaint states that she believes the rule goes against her role as a psychiatrist “in light of her belief that Donald Trump posed a dangerous threat to this country and the world.” Lee has not been a member of the American Psychiatric Association since 2007.

Lee also claims in her complaint that she was not diagnosing Dershowitz, “but rather commenting on a widespread phenomenon of “shared psychosis.’”

In an email to the News, University spokesperson Karen Peart stated that Lee was a voluntary faculty member and that “Yale does not consider the political opinions of faculty members when making appointment decisions.” According to the action, which cited the University's Faculty Handbook, voluntary faculty members are usually clinicians who “are employed outside of the [School of Medicine] but make significant contributions” to its medical center.

Dershowitz told the News that he was not aware of the lawsuit until contacted by another journalist for

RYAN CHIAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Lee has requested reinstatement and compensation for damages, which include “economic losses” and “emotional distress.” comment earlier in the day. He added that Yale never contacted him to follow up on his letter or on Lee’s termination in general. “[Lee] credits me with getting her fired,” Dershowitz said. “I’m not that powerful. I am pleased with the fact that I brought to Yale’s attention the facts that demonstrate her deviation from professional norms.

The facts are the facts, and Yale

acted on the documented facts, not on my opinion.”

Lee has requested reinstatement and compensation for damages, which include “economic losses” and “emotional distress.”

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu and BEATRIZ HORTA at beatriz.horta@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“The perfect date for me would be staying at home, making a big picnic in bed, eating Wotsits and cookies while watching cable TV.” KIM KARDASHIAN AMERICAN MEDIA PERSONALITY

The progress — and ways to go — toward diversifying Yale’s faculty DIVERSITY FROM PAGE 1 University has a ways to go in diversifying its faculty through both hiring and retention.

The FAS ladder faculty has grown by 29 people since 2015. In the past six years, Yale has added 12 underrepresented minority faculty members, bringing the total number of underrepresented minority ladder faculty members up to 69 out of 683 total ladder faculty. Underrepresented minority refers specifically to African American or Black, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander or Indigenous people, per federal categorizations.

The University also hired 27 other faculty of color who do not fall into the category of an underrepresented minority since 2015.

In the past two years in particular, growth has been strong, according to the March update on ladder faculty diversity in the FAS. From fall 2018 to fall 2019, the FAS saw a net increase of one underrepresented minority faculty member and nine other non-white faculty.

From fall 2019 to fall 2020, the FAS saw a net increase of 12 underrepresented minority faculty members and 10 other non-white faculty.

English professor Mark Oppenheimer questioned how the University was measuring diversity and where it was ultimately heading, as he said Yale has not yet clearly defined its diversity goals. Desir did not enumerate specific goals but told the News that Yale that work is still necessary to “support and retain” diverse faculty so that they thrive at Yale.

But Oppenheimer wants Yale to be more specific about its success metrics: Would success be a faculty or student body that looks “like America” — 72 percent white, 2 percent Jewish, 16 percent Hispanic, 13 percent Black, 5 percent Asian and about 1 percent Native American? Would it be a faculty that looks like New Haven? Connecticut? Like the pool of doctorate recipients in the United States? Or does success depend on acceptance, retention and other metrics?

“If the university is serious, it will answer all these questions,” Oppenheimer wrote in an email to the News. “We have to know what would count as success.”

Importance and impact of a diverse faculty According to Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development in the FAS Larry Gladney, the faculty is the constituency that is most difficult to change in the University. Yale only replaces between four and five percent of the faculty each year, compared to replacing a quarter of the undergraduate student body.

Additionally, policies handed down by administrators often stop when administrators leave the institution, Gladney said. But tenured faculty members stick around long enough to drive change — and to keep things the same.

With the nationwide end of mandatory retirement in 1986, faculty stay at universities longer than they used to. Due to the nature of the profession, older professors are more likely to be white men than younger faculty are, Jacobson said.

“Increasing the diversity of faculty should be a priority — and I would say the #1 priority –– of [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] work at the graduate level,” Stephane Andrade GRD ’22 wrote in an email to the News. “But, beyond the rhetoric,

what that actually looks like in practice is what matters to me most, and I think, the majority of my colleagues.”

Andrade, who is a doctoral candidate in sociology and African American studies, said that hiring should be focused on the departments at the forefront of racial equity and social justice work.

Gladney said that the University has made progress toward creating a more diverse faculty, but that the progress is sometimes isolated to select departments and not always visible. Last fall, the University put an additional $85 million toward FEDI. Making meaningful change: A pipeline problem In 2008, underrepresented minority faculty made up five percent of faculty in FAS STEM departments.

By 2020, that number had risen to seven percent.

A study out of Stanford University found that part of the problem with racially homogenous faculties is that there are “insufficient numbers'' of women and minorities in the pipeline to the professoriate. In 2015, only 15 percent of humanities master’s degrees and 10 percent of humanities doctorates went to people from traditionally underrepresented groups.

In 2017, The Atlantic reported that there were more than a dozen STEM subfields in which there was not a single Black doctorate recipient in the country that year. According to data from the National Science Foundation, only 5.4 percent of doctorate recipients in 2017 were Black.

Andrade added that expanding post-doctoral opportunities could possibly lead to permanent employment at the University, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. He mentioned the University’s Bouchet Fellowship, which is affiliated with the national Mellon Mays undergraduate program.

“The [Bouchet/Mellon] program is committed to supporting the development of underrepresented students, including those who may be FGLI, in their pursuit of the PhD in order to address many of the significant disparities we see at the faculty level,” Andrade, who serves as one of the program’s coordinators at Yale, wrote in the email. “By starting early and supporting undergraduate students with mentorship, research and financial support, programs like Mellon Mays, Bouchet, and the like, are important models for addressing many of the disparities we see in higher education.”

Gupta, who is a Bouchet undergraduate fellow, noted that the program addresses faculty diversity in higher education, but that more needs to be done. Because of the fellowship, Gupta has been given funding for her research, which focuses on Indigenous advocacy and storytelling, and she aspires to go into higher education after graduation.

Both Andrade and Gupta stressed that the fellowship is only one solution to a larger diversity problem at the University.

And according to the Stanford study, though the pipeline is a significant issue, it is not an excuse for a lack of action on the part of educational institutions. Rather, universities have to use more aggressive outreach and recruitment tactics.

Hiring and search process The FAS ladder faculty search process has several requirements that aim to hire more diverse candidates: First, departments develop a diversity search plan; second, Gladney and

a Title IX officer approve the search ad; third, a diversity representative serves on the hiring committee; and fourth, Gladney and the FAS dean approve the shortlist of candidates.

But the process has not always included the necessary outreach to bring in a diverse candidate pool, according to Gladney.

Even if candidates see a hiring ad, they sometimes do not apply to positions because they assume they will not get serious consideration or will not find an environment where they can do their best work, Gladney said.

Gladney added that the composition of the search committee has a significant impact on who is defined as the “exemplary candidate.”

Desir seconded the importance of including people who “champion” diversity on search committees. He added that faculty should look broadly in fields and reach out to underrepresented candidates.

People who bring “diversity and excellence” are going to get offers from several top institutions, Gladney said, and Yale has to actively compete with other institutions to recruit them.

Yale Corporation member Carlos Moreno ’70 added that Yale might have to make tandem offers to faculty spouses or help accommodate them in other ways.

But Gladney attributed a large portion of the hiring challenges to implicit bias. He said that even if the search committee members are aware that it exists, they still struggle to discount their biases. The process of faculty hiring involves judgment calls at nearly every stage, he said.

The overall process and structure of hiring is not biased against specific groups, he said. But the decisions that people make can result in biased outcomes.

A common view is that diversity comes at the expense of excellence, Gladney said. However, in his view, schools cannot have one without the other.

Retention starts on day one Along with recruiting faculty, Yale has to convince them it will value their work. A mentoring system is one way to do so — across the board, department chairs and administrators have to show a vested interest in people’s work and progress to keep them at Yale, according to Gladney.

But there is no universal rule that works for mentoring in each discipline, Gladney said.

According to him, junior faculty in humanities departments often resist close oversight by more senior professors because they fear any imperfections could work against them in the tenure process. The opposite is true for STEM disciplines — junior faculty often want close assistance to help handle any setbacks, Gladney added.

Desir said that departments can design and implement formal programs to offer mentoring advice to all early-career faculty. Additionally, Desir said, departments can offer educational programs for mentors to improve their abilities.

Most of the time, the University administration does not hear complaints from Yale faculty until they are already leaving, Gladney said, adding that the most common complaints when leaving include a perceived lack of respect for people’s scholarship and the resulting isolation.

Gladney said he receives around 20 to 30 formal complaints of bias each year. Sometimes, they are clearcut — for instance, a verbal assault or

threat of violence. Other times, it is difficult to assess whether prejudice is at play, Gladney said.

Gladney added that he often receives complaints about salary differences, but he noted that it is challenging to determine whether this is based on factors like race or gender unless there is a consistent pattern. Usually, when people receive a raise, he said, it is because Yale had to counter an outside offer.

Peart said that the FAS Dean’s Office analyzes faculty salaries each year to ensure there are no discrepancies across defined categories.

The Committee on the Economic Status of Faculty — a group of faculty appointed by the FAS Dean — concluded that there is no disparity between salaries along gender lines, according to its most recent report.

Jacobson said that people of color have reported to him their experience of “deep racism” at Yale.

“Here as elsewhere, white people are going to have to step aside and let people of color be the arbiters of what is racist, and also of what is progress,” he added.

The role of discourse Gladney explained that questions of diversity and inclusion may provoke strong reactions from people who might be affected by changes.

For example, Gladney said, the committee that drafted the Belonging at Yale initiatives considered whether to require all schools to create a plan on how they would improve mentoring for faculty, staff and students.

Gladney advocated against this directive, as he said some departments think they are doing enough, and the committee ultimately decided not to require a plan.

But Gladney explained that controversy is natural due to the topic’s sensitivity. Additionally, he said, there have not been enough of these discussions to develop a common lexicon.

“If there’s anything that you take away from this, it’s that the fact that we haven’t had these discussions over a long period of time is in contrast to the fact that many of the things that we do more or less automatically within the academy were built up literally over centuries of time,” Gladney said. “Tenure and academic freedom and academic responsibility didn’t just evolve from somebody’s original idea. They were things that took decades and decades of discussion to get to the point of having a common understanding of what those terms mean.”

Departments often try to have guided discussions about topics of race and belonging, Gladney said.

But Gladney added that sometimes these are easier planned than carried out.

In his own experience, Gladney told the News, some people question why they should talk about race and belonging if it is not related to their area of study. For different audiences, Gladney said, “You’re going to meet people who come into it with different experiences and with varying levels of expertise.”

Students and faculty might hesitate to discuss these issues for fear of going against a prevailing view and facing backlash, said David Bromwich, Sterling professor of English. “People are afraid of being misrepresented on social media,” he added.

Bromwich cited figures from a study on undergraduate self-censorship done at the University of North Carolina, which “suggest that diversity of opinion is not

thriving generally on campuses today,” he said.

Oppenheimer echoed that diversity of opinion is also crucial to students’ education. “Yale has gotten far less politically diverse in the past generation,” Oppenheimer said. He added that he does not know any faculty in the humanities who vote for Republican candidates. Less than three percent of publicly disclosed political donations by Yale faculty went to Republican groups in the past seven years, according to a News analysis.

Beyond diversifying faculty For Bayan Abubakr GRD ’25, a second-year graduate student studying history, faculty diversity is important but would not address the heart of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion issues at the graduate level.

“I've been grateful to have learned from empathetic people who show care for the communities and subjects they research,” Abubakr wrote in an email to the News. “But this isn't a universal standard. I don't think we should limit our understanding of ‘increasing the diversity of faculty’ as simply adding X amount of non-white and non-male scholars to the [History] department.”

Abubakr, whose research focuses on Middle Eastern and African history, said that many of the methodologies “fundamental to the discipline” were “wrought in violence.” She said bringing women and scholars of color into the space without changing the content would place the burden of diversifying the space on the nonmale and non-white scholars.

Abubakr added that at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, current faculty must implement “serious initiatives” to “decolonize the way history is taught, researched, and imagined.”

“The real issue at hand is not one of diversity and representation but one of the ways knowledge is produced and taught,” she wrote to the News.

Frederick Iseman professor of poetry Claudia Rankine expressed similar sentiments about the broader considerations for faculty diversity.

“I certainly promote diverse faculty, but I do think that among our faculty we want the diversity to be exhibited in the syllabus, in the interests of the faculty [and] in the capability of reading diverse work,” Rankine told the News.

“Ideally both things are happening at once, you have a diverse faculty where the burden of representing certain kinds of writers are not always on the Black faculty or faculty of color.”

Rankine, who is leaving Yale to teach at New York University next academic year, said that “in an ideal world,” students would be able to go into any classroom and have faculty who could “comfortably and accurately discuss the work of all kinds of writers, not only white writers.”

Still, she has been seeing progress. She mentioned emerging scholars who are “more diverse” in their education across time periods and genres.

According to Yale’s 2019 faculty demographics, 64.2 percent of ladder faculty are white.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu and ZAPORAH PRICE at zaporah.price@yale.edu .

Oriental Pantry robbed, community steps up support PANTRY FROM PAGE 1 Korean dishes – for over 35 years.

She is well known for her bibimbap, a Korean dish of warm white rice with assorted vegetables and meat. While running her business during the pandemic has been a great challenge, Kim said she chose to stay open because she knows many of her customers rely on her shop to buy niche ingredients for Asian cuisine.

“My purpose is I'm saving [customers’] time… they just come here and pick up everything that they need,” Kim said.

Oriental Pantry is one of the few pan-Asian stores in Connecticut; customers agree the establishment offers unique food and hospitality.

Pamela Soulos, the associate director of the COPPER Center at the Yale School of Medicine, said that Oriental Pantry is important to the community because it provides “access to a lot of different types of foods that are difficult to find at other places.”

Soulos has stopped by Oriental Pantry in the past, although she had not shopped there recently. When she heard about the break-in, she decided to go again to show her support for the small business.

“If people want these places to continue to be around, you have to support them,” Soulos said.

Despite the break-in, Kim said that she feels safe in Oriental Pantry’s current location, and she does not believe the break-in was racially motivated.

Carrie Law SOM ’21, had not heard about the burglary when she arrived at Oriental Pantry for her monthly bibimbap, but she said that there is “huge” importance in supporting local Asian businesses, especially because of recent events, including the mass shooting in Atlanta last week.

“It's infuriating that this is happening,” Law said of the surge of anti-Asian violence in the country. “It's going to encourage me to come back a little bit more often and potentially donate to local businesses.”

Oriental Pantry is located at 486 Orange St. Contact DOMINIQUE CASTANHEIRA at dominique.castanheira@yale.edu .

DOMINIQUE CASTANHEIRA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Stocked shelves show an assortment of Asian food in Oriental Pantry, a pan-Asian grocery on Orange Street.

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Robert Wood Lynn awarded the Yale Younger Poets Prize

BY MAIA DECKER STAFF REPORTER On March 11, the Yale Younger Poets Prize — the oldest annual literary award in the United States — was awarded to Robert Wood Lynn. Lynn won the award for his book titled “Mothman Apologia,” inspired by his youth in rural West Virginia.

According to Lynn, the book consists of personal poems from the perspective of the Mothman, a creature of cryptozoology in West Virginia folklore. Lynn said the Mothman has developed into folklore that people can project hopes and fears onto. In his work, Lynn imagines the Mothman as a rural inhabitant, often invisible to people.

“I am really grateful to be included and am also so aware that there are probably manuscripts submitted to the same prize that are going to go bloom in the world in a way that mine might not,” Lynn said.

When Lynn received news of his award, he was shocked. He knows the previous year’s winner, Desiree Bailey, and he had felt excitement in seeing her win and watching her get her book published. Yet, in spite of applying for the prize twice previously, Lynn was in disbelief when he won.

Typically, hundreds of poets apply to the prize every year.

The Yale University Press works closely with the series’ judge and panel to consider each submission. “Mothman Apologia” is the first book to be chosen by the series’ new judge, Rae Armantrout, American poet and professor at University of California, San Diego. The panel chooses poetry for Armantrout to read before she makes a final decision.

Ash Lago, language manager and editorial assistant to the Yale Series of Younger Poets, or YSYP, described the process of choosing an awardee as a “thrilling and concerted effort.”

Lago said that each awardee brings a unique voice and experience to the existing body of American poetry.

L a go sa i d t h a t “ Mo t h man Apologia” is a collection of poems that builds on itself through its themes and subjects.

She said to read the book is to “experience rural West Virginia’s rawness and vulnerability.”

Jennifer Banks, senior executive editor for Yale University Press, oversees and manages the YSYP. Banks said that “Mothman Apologia” was a dazzling and arresting manuscript and added that “Lynn’s distinctive voice swept [her] into a fiery consciousness.”

Lynn recounted that he grew up hearing stories about the Mothman. He added that unlike “terrifying creatures that stumble out of the woods,” the Mothman fascinated him since it “doesn’t do anything.”

The Mothman is an apparition, often visualized as a tall, foreboding and red-eyed figure. The creature’s appearance was tied to a series of tragedies in West Virginia — including a bridge collapse in the 1960s — which led to his legacy as a creature that warns of imminent danger.

Despite “tragedy after tragedy” in West Virginia following the 1960s and 1970s, after the Mothman’s original sightings, he never appeared again.

This led Lynn to wonder about Mothman’s role if he lived in the world today and ultimately inspired Lynn to write “Mothman Apologia.”

Yet, Lynn said that comparing different poets in a competitive format is “kind of antithetical to the idea of getting creative work out into the world.”

Lynn began writing poetry in 2007. At the time, Lynn felt obligated to write about serious and worldly themes rather than his youth. He advises young poets to capture the knowledge they hold while young.

“No one is an expert at being young, except for the young. We think that we remember it, but we forget it very quickly,” Lynn said. “I wish someone had told me that when I was 20.”

“Mothman Apologia” will be released in the spring of 2022.

Contact MAIA DECKER at maia.decker@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF AMANDA LARSON

YU󰉝󰉂’s 󰇴i󰇹󰈀󰈼s󰈢 󰈗e󰇸t󰉉󰈸󰇵 󰈼er󰈎󰇵󰈻 󰈹e󰈀c󰈊󰇵󰈼 c󰈗o󰈼󰈩

BY ANNIE RADILLO STAFF REPORTER On March 4, the Yale University Art Gallery launched a virtual lecture series titled “Pablo Picasso at Yale.” In the series, John Walsh ’61, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum, explores Picasso’s work and presence in the YUAG. The series consists of hourlong prerecorded lectures released by the YUAG every Thursday. On the Friday following each lecture release, the gallery hosts a live Q&A session with Walsh. This Thursday marked the release of the fourth and final lecture in the series.

“John looked closely at the works

by Picasso in the gallery’s collection to begin preparing for the lectures and said that these turned out to be fabulous teaching materials,” Keely Orgeman, associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the YUAG, said. “I hope that visitors will also find this to be true after they

have absorbed some lessons from the lectures, such as new vocabulary or a set of ideas, and then revisit the works in the gallery, and in other museums, with this new understanding in mind.”

Throughout the lecture series, Walsh discusses Picasso’s early development and invention of cubism, as well as the artist’s departure from extreme forms of cubism later in his career.

In his first talk, Walsh focused on Picasso’s evolution as an artist.

In the second and third lectures, Walsh goes on to discuss Picasso’s cubist style in the context of his painting “Dog and Cock” and how the artist approaches “the figure” — figures include lovers, portrait sitters, bathers and mythological characters — in his art.

Walsh has served on the YUAG’s governing board for 40 years. In the past, Walsh trained Yale graduate students at the YUAG as part of the museum’s

Wurtele Gallery Teacher Program, and this lecture series is the product of Walsh’s ruminations on Picasso during that time.

Through this lecture series, Walsh did not merely want to inform people about the history of Picasso’s art. Instead, Walsh said he hopes to help people overcome the “inadequacy” they often feel when viewing certain works of art, particularly pieces that “look as strange as Picasso.”

Orgeman noted that in distilling decades of scholarship on Picasso, Walsh does all the “heavy lifting” for his listeners and presents his ideas in an engaging way. She said the lectures elaborate upon aspects of Picasso’s work that either cannot be summarized in wall labels or are too insignificant to be included in these labels. “[Walsh] is just a really beautiful writer, so the prose of it is really wonderful to listen to,”

said Molleen Theodore, who organized the Picasso lecture series and is the associate curator of programs at the YUAG. For Walsh, recorded lectures do not compare to the rich experience of viewing art in person at the gallery. Yet he said that recording himself creates a degree of intimacy that cannot be achieved while delivering lectures in a larger, dimly lit auditorium like that of the YUAG. Walsh added that the Q&A sessions foster an environment in which it is easier to ask questions than in an auditorium.

Theodore said that because of Walsh’s reputation, his live lectures — which he has been delivering at Yale for over a decade — often sell out because of the YUAG auditorium’s limited capacity. In the past, staff have created overflow space, turned people away and livestreamed lectures to accommo-

date demand. But now, viewers from Japan to Norway to Africa are attending Walsh’s lectures with no attendance cap.

“There’s a luxury in that everybody can come and thousands of people have watched the lecture,” Theodore said.

“Everybody is invited — I used to feel not as free to say that.”

Still, Theodore and Walsh said that viewing works in the gallery is an experience that cannot be replicated virtually.

“The thing in the flesh is not the same as what you see on the screen, no matter how good the image is,” Walsh said. “It’s like record[ed] music versus live, it’s like reading a play and thinking what’s in the play is what’s real.”

Last week’s lecture was titled “Cubism, P icasso, and the Human Figure.”

ANNIE RADILLO/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Contact ANNIE RADILLO at annie.radillo@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Yale researchers create an app to study happiness

BY VERONICA LEE STAFF REPORTER In January, researchers led by associate professor of psychology Robb Rutledge launched The Happiness Project, an app that will help scientists study decision-making, happiness and mental health.

Created by neuroscientists working in the Rutledge lab at Yale University and at University College London in the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research and the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, the app allows users to play four different games, unlocking new levels and tracks their happiness as they continue to play.

“With this app, we’re inviting the general public to play games for science where we can see how they make decisions and how they feel about the outcomes,” Rutledge said. “We know there are certain things that affect people’s well-being and happiness, including uncertainty, rewards and learning. The data from this app will allow us to draw conclusions about how these factors are actually affecting the way people feel.”

According to Rutledge — who created his first psychology-based app, called The Great Brain Experiment, five years ago — using this developed method of collecting data comes with numerous benefits for psychological research.

One benefit is the large and diverse groups of participants that can be reached using an online platform, he said. Rather than confining the participant pool to a specific demographic or location, this app can be played by people of all ages, education levels and cultural backgrounds who may not otherwise participate in psychological studies. Rutledge stressed the importance of using diverse subjects to draw conclusions about human behavior — something that has long been an issue in the field.

Another benefit is that data can be collected easily throughout various times of the day, since participants do not need to travel or go through long processes to answer questions, as they would with research conducted in a more traditional lab environment, according to Rutledge.

Getting data on small decisions made throughout the day and how they affect people’s moods will allow researchers to make key insights into human behavior.

“There’s lots of interest in learning more about the kinds of behaviors that lead to improved well-being and happiness,” Laurie Santos, professor of psychology who taught the popular class “Psychology and the Good Life,” wrote in an email to the News. “The problem is that we make lots of small decisions all the time, and so it’s hard to know how all these individual choices integrate to form our overall well-being. This new app can help us get some important clues to this question as it will allow the Rutledge lab to test how decisions affect well-being in a very large number of subjects.”

RYAN CHIAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

In the app, participants can choose from four games, ranging from catching fish to digging for treasure. The games each try to target different underlying psychological concepts, such as risk versus reward.

Liam Mason, lecturer in clinical psychology at University College London, led the team that developed a game which investigates how people determine good versus bad courses of action based on trial and error.

According to Mason, the game focuses on how people’s mood fluctuates based on varying levels of success, and how these moods can affect their behavior.

“There’s a two-way street between happiness and experiences in the world,” Mason said. “Good things not only make us feel happier, but at times when we feel happier, we can perceive the world around us in a different way. We are more inclined to view things in a positive light, to take more risks than usual, so we’re trying to look at that.”

Ultimately, Rutledge and his team hope to learn more about mental health, an especially relevant topic given the COVID-19 pandemic. As participants play games in the app, they are also presented with questions from a range of mental health topics, including how much they sleep and if they have been feeling low recently, according to Rutledge.

By comparing the answers from people who experience symptoms of depression to those who do not, Rutledge and his team can better understand what contributes to these mental health issues.

“A lot of people are feeling more anxious and have lower moods this year because it’s a very stressful time,” Rutledge said. “While some people have really been suffering, others

have been quite resilient. So we’d like to study what factors affect happiness and mental health, and hopefully better understand how to address these issues.”

Despite the anonymous nature of the app and the lack of in-person contact, Rutledge and his team found the data to look very similar to lab data, confirming that smartphone apps can be used to test psychological hypotheses.

Claire Gillan, associate professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin and creator of the smartphone app Neureka — another scientific app that studies participants while they play games on it — is also optimistic about the great possibilities afforded to scientists by data gathered online and through smartphones.

“With online data, it’s a whole different planet,” Gillan said. “There are certainly challenges that come with not being able to control the environment. But we’ve been able to put quality checks in place and have gotten data that is consistent with information gathered in person. Overall, the online platform has greatly expanded the representation of participants and also the amount of data we can get from one person. It’s not just a step up from in-person research, it’s an entirely different planet.”

In the future, Rutledge and his team hope to expand the app, adding new features and translating it into different languages, as it is currently only available in English.

Currently available worldwide, The Happiness Project can be downloaded for free in the App Store and Google Play.

Contact VERONICA LEE at veronica.lee@yale.edu .

Yale researchers detect tumorreactive immune cells in blood

YALE NEWS

BY BEATRIZ HORTA STAFF REPORTER Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have isolated from blood samples specialized immune cells that attack tumors and could serve as a way to monitor the success of cancer treatments.

Department of Neurology Chair David Hafler, who was a senior author in the study, explained that since tumors have markers that identify them as foreign to the body, the immune system will naturally produce tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, or TILs, to attack them. These T cells will trigger an immune response by releasing inflammatory molecules, making them a reliable marker of how the body is responding to the cancer.

According to Liliana Lucca, a post-doctoral student in the Department of Neurology and first author of the study, the motivation behind the investigation was to find a way to detect the TILs in blood, isolate them and compare their characteristics to TILs extracted from tumor samples. This would allow scientists and doctors to more fully comprehend the unique characteristics of a specific tumor without needing an invasive biopsy.

“We know that in a number of circumstances, obtaining a sample of tumor is quite difficult,” Lucca said. “If you want to know how the immune system is behaving towards the tumor in general, it would be useful to have a way to identify the [T cell] population in the blood.”

The authors used tumor and blood samples to isolate T cells present in the tumor, and compared the genetic sequence of the T cells’ receptors to that of T cells found in the blood.

To accomplish this, they utilized a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing, which identifies messenger RNA molecules present in the T cell and provides information on the genes active in the cell, as well as the identity of the T cell’s receptor.

“What we discovered is that the T cells in the blood have a killer function, while the ones present in the tumor are exhausted and turned off,” Hafler explained. “We may have developed a method for following the response to the treatment by measuring the cells in the blood.”

According to Harriet Kluger, professor of medical oncology and another co-author on the study, when sequencing TILs in melanoma patients, the researchers found that patients treated with immunotherapy had a

higher incidence of the “exhausted” T cells present in the tumor. This would indicate that the body is developing a greater immune response to the tumor and producing large amounts of T cells.

Kluger and Lucca explained that one of the challenges during the research process was obtaining viable tumor samples to perform the sequencing on. Samples had to be collected from cancer patients via biopsy, which usually requires surgery.

“As with many technologies, platforms evolve rapidly while sample collection might lag behind,” Kluger wrote in an email to the News. “The COVID19 pandemic resulted in delays in [non-essential] surgeries.”

The authors explained that, while it is still very early in the research process, their findings could have important applications in a clinical setting. According to Hafler, the ability to detect T cells in the blood and identify them as TILs could help doctors evaluate whether a given treatment is working.

Overall, this method could be used to reduce the number of invasive biopsies and provide a reliable method of understanding a tumor’s behavior in the body.

“These cells can be further studied in a longitudinal fashion in additional patients

treated with immunotherapy to determine whether this … approach can be used to monitor patients on immunotherapy and determine whether they are likely to respond or not early in the course of treatment,” Kluger wrote in an email.

However, the researchers still face one major hurdle in the path toward clinical applications. Single-cell RNA sequencing is still an extremely expensive and elaborate technique and can therefore only be performed in specialized settings.

According to Hafler and Lucca, the next step in the process is to develop an easier and more cost-effective technique that could be used by doctors and scientists when treating patients. According to Hafler, it currently costs over ten thousand dollars to analyze each sample using single-cell RNA sequencing.

“That’s a big challenge,” Hafler said.

“Can we go from this incredibly complex, non-applicable to clinical use technique to a relatively simple standard one that can be done in the clinical laboratory?”

According to the Commission on Cancer, surgical biopsies can cost thousands of dollars.

Contact BEATRIZ HORTA at beatriz.horta@yale.edu .

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“Kissing a man with a beard is a lot like going to a picnic. You don’t mind going through a little bush to get there!” MINNIE PEARL AMERICAN COMEDIAN

State grant allows for extension of Mill River Trail, new green space

BY SAI RAYALA STAFF REPORTER Residents of Fair Haven may see a new green space pop up in their neighborhood soon thanks to a recent state grant meant to develop the Mill River Trail.

On March 15, the city of New Haven and local nonprofit organization Save the Sound received a $50,000 grant from the Connecticut Urban Green and Community Garden Program, which is part of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The grant will fund the development of a dead-end street at the intersection of Haven Street and Exchange Street in the southern part of Fair Haven. Nicole Davis, the Mill River watershed coordinator for Save the Sound, explained that her organization will be working with the city to replace an unused stretch of waterfront pavement with a small park aimed to provide a neighborhood entrance to a section of the Mill River Trail.

“The idea is that while people from the neighborhood normally use the [Mill River Trail], it will also bring in people who don’t normally come to Fair Haven,” Davis told the News. “To get them to really start to

embrace these neighborhoods and see what they have to offer as well.”

The development is part of the local efforts to connect the several stretches of the Mill River Trail so that it runs completely from East Rock Park to Criscuolo Park on the waterfront. One of the main groups behind the project is the Mill River Trail Advocates, a volunteer-run organization working to revitalize the Mill River Trail. J.R. Logan, one of the group’s founders, said that the Mill River Trail is currently broken up by roadways and undeveloped stretches of land. The end goal of the project is to develop a connected trail that does not include roadways.

“It’s just been building around the idea of trying to give people access to the river and to appreciate that and the water,” Logan told the News.

The Mill River Trail Project is part of the Mill River Watershed-Based Plan whose goal is to improve the water quality of the nearby Mill River which has experienced sewage spills in the past.

Davis explained that part of the problem with the Mill River water quality was the prevalence of impervious surfaces, such as hard pavements and sidewalks, that do

not allow the rainwater to sink into the soil. Much of the New Haven part of the Mill River, she added, has impervious surfaces, leading stormwater containing debris and pollutants to flow directly into the river. To make matters worse, Davis said that New Haven’s combined sewer systems allow for raw sewage to directly flow into the river during times of heavy rainfall.

“You can really see measurable impacts in the species and the diversity of plants and animals that are found in the river,” Davis said.

Davis said the addition of the green space, especially rain gardens, to the Fair Haven section of the riverfront should work toward reducing the damaging impact of polluted stormwater runoff. The rain gardens’ plants would serve to capture as much of the stormwater as possible and filter out contaminants.

Ron Walters, the president of Mill River Watershed Association of South Central Connecticut, said he hopes the development of the Mill River Trail, which would improve accessibility to the Mill River, will also foster interest among the community for protecting the Mill River.

“The Watershed Plan is looking to improve the water qual-

COURTESY OF NICOLE DAVIS

A $50,000 grant by the state government allows for the creation of a new green space in the Fair Haven neighborhood. ity and the environment within the watershed and around the river,” Walters told the News.

“And the one good way of doing that is getting people out to see what the river is and to actually appreciate it more.”

Save the Sound will manage the construction of the green space. The organization hopes to begin con-

struction in the spring or summer and complete it in three to six weeks, according to Davis. It is currently applying for state and city permits.

The Mill River Watershed-Based Plan, led by Save the Sound, was created in 2018.

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

Connecticut celebrates World Water Day with virtual community panel

BY SAI RAYALA STAFF REPORTER On Monday, Connecticut celebrated World Water Day by holding a virtual event to recognize the personal connections that residents have to Connecticut’s water sources.

World Water Day is an international event first started by the United Nations in 1993 to raise awareness of the lack of access to clean water many people face.

This year’s event was co-hosted by seven Connecticut environmental organizations and included remarks from government officials. In line with this year’s international UN theme of “Valuing Water: What Does Water Mean To You?” the event invited four panelists to talk about their perspectives on the significance of water

to humanity’s survival. The event was moderated by Alicea Charamut, the executive director of the Rivers Alliance of Connecticut — one of the environmental groups that organized the event.

“Water and its value to us as individuals often varies based on where we live, what our life experiences are and how we interact with water on a daily basis,” Charamut said. “World Water Day is a day to focus on water. This year’s theme of “What Does Water Mean To You?” makes it personal.”

The event started with brief remarks by Gov. Ned Lamont, who talked about water as a valuable natural resource to the state.

“Texas has oil. California has silicon. Connecticut has water,” Lamont said. “We have the tastiest champagne of waters. We have the

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Connecticut commemorates its annual World Water Day event with a virtual panel featuring community residents and government officials.

beautiful Long Island Sound. We got the Connecticut River. We’re going to keep them pure. We’re going to keep them clean.”

Jack Betkoski, chair of the CT State Water Planning Council, also spoke on Monday about water conservation efforts by the state government. The council was created in 2001 by the Connecticut General Assembly to address issues regarding the state’s water quality.

The council released a State Water Plan in 2019, which includes a list of recommendations for balancing the state’s water supply.

In particular, Betkoski spoke of the need for drought controls in response to the “very heavy drought situation” that Connecticut experienced last fall. For nearly six months, from last June until last December, the state experienced worsening drought conditions due to below average rainfall.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-New Haven, spoke about the value of bodies of water in her district, namely the Long Island Sound — which she said was the state’s “largest and most important natural resource.” According to DeLauro, the sound contributes around $5.5 billion to the regional economy every year and over 8 million people live around the sound’s watershed. The Long Island Sound was designated as an “estuary of national significance”

by Congress in 1987.

“These waters are a national treasure,” DeLauro said. “And we have the responsibility to ensure their protection and preservation.”

The event then shifted to a panel discussion with four panelists: Pamela “Screeching Hawk” Massey, a member of the Mohegan tribe; Hailey Baranowski, a student at the University of Connecticut; Lee Cruz, director of community outreach for the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven; and Kimberly Sandor, the executive director of the CT Nurses Association.

Massey spoke about how water was deeply connected to the traditions and survival of the Mohegan tribe. The Mohegan tribe is a sovereign, federally recognized Native American tribe situated in southeastern Connecticut. Massey said that the tribe used the nearby waters of the Connecticut shoreline for fishing, trade and transportation. She also said the waters continue to be an important food source for the tribe.

Sandor spoke about how water plays an important role in connecting environmental health to physical health. In particular, she spoke about the Flint water crisis in Michigan — which showed that water quality is not only an environmental issue, but is also a critical component to individual health.

“We know human life is affected by the state of the natural world and all that surrounds us,” Sandor said.

“The environment’s influence on not only promoting health but preventing disease is really critical.”

Cruz talked about efforts happening locally in New Haven to increase awareness about the rivers connected to the city. He highlighted the development of the Mill River Trail,

which increases accessibility to the Mill River. Cruz also mentioned how rivers can foster economic development through programs such as GreenWave’s regenerative ocean farming model that allows for shellfish and seaweed to be grown underwater with zero inputs of pesticides or fertilizers.

Baranowski spoke on the significance of actively maintaining the upkeep of water areas for both human and wildlife benefits. She said that she often sees water as providing a space for communities to come together and wanted future generations to also enjoy the recreational benefits of clean water.

“My generation deserves to know that what they are drinking and bathing in is safe and clean for them,” Baranowski said. “Decision-makers need to focus on having clean water accessible for everyone and maintaining the safety of that water continuously for my generation and every other generation after.”

The event concluded with remarks by Connecticut Sens.

Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy on domestic and international water efforts. It also included a performance by Cyril the Water Wizard, who shares messages about water conservation and sustainability through his magic shows.

According to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Connecticut has about 6,000 miles of streams and rivers and over 2,000 lakes and reservoirs.

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

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones visits Yale, Skull and Bones

BY SIMISOLA FAGBEMI STAFF REPORTER On Monday afternoon, prominent alt-right radio host Alex Jones visited Yale to create content for his website InfoWars.com, a multimedia outlet known for spreading conspiracy theories.

Jones stood outside of the Skull and Bones tomb on High Street — the meeting place for Yale’s oldest secret society — and made unverified claims that the group was involved in the founding of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. He came to New Haven with bodyguards and a cameraman; neither Jones nor those who accompanied him wore masks.

“Skull and Bones is on record helping found the CIA,” Jones said in an interview with the News.

“And it really is at the root of some of the corrupt, out-of-control elites in America. The same elites that are trying to avert the American people to class warfare are the ones that opened up China, that are involved in a lot of different types of authoritarianism.”

Jones cited the 2006 film “The Good Shepherd” as a “historical example” of this claim. The film, which references the Skull and Bones society, is about the creation of counterintelligence in the CIA during the Cold War and has been criticized by members of the CIA’s history staff for inaccuracy.

InfoWars — whose content has been restricted by platforms such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Spotify for propagating misinformation — is a leading far-right conspiracy theory website in the United States, with approximately 715,000 daily visits and video views, according to a New York Times article from 2018.

During his visit, a crowd of around 20 students surrounded Jones. He was met with significant student pushback, particularly over his past claims that victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting were crisis actors. In 2019, Jones was ordered to pay over $100,000 in a defamation lawsuit filed by the family of a Sandy Hook victim — one of several defamation suits he has faced in recent years.

Jones’ visit also comes during a period when Yale has asked visitors to stay away from campus due to the risk of transmitting COVID-19.

“It was definitely irresponsible to come on to campus during a pandemic maskless,” said Lydia Monk ’24, who is also a copy staffer for the News.

Shan Gunasekera ’24 told the News that while he disagrees with some of Jones’ views, Jones has the right to walk around New Haven.

“I think that he says a lot of problematic stuff, having said that, I don’t think people should have any problem with seeing him on the street,” Gunasekera said.

“He’s there out of his own accord in a public space where anyone is allowed to be, and I really don’t see the problem people take in that.”

Skull and Bones was founded in 1832.

Contact SIMISOLA FAGBEMI at simi.fagbemi@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF YTV

Alex Jones came to New Haven with bodyguards and a cameraman, none of whom wore masks.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

NEWS

“If ants are such busy workers, how come they find time to go to all the picnics?” MARIE DRESSLER CANADIAN ACTRESS

Students express disappointment, anger over mental health services

KAREN LIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

MHC currently employs 33 clinicians, but plans to add six to eight new positions next year.

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

Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7 and confidential.

To talk with a counselor from Yale Mental Health and Counseling, schedule a session at https:// yalecollege.yale.edu/getting-help/ drop-sessions-mental-health-counseling. On-call counselors are available at any time: call (203) 432-0290.

The Chaplain’s Office staff are also available: schedule an appointment at https://www.signupgenius.com/ go/904084baaa62fa3fb6-chat2, write directly to any of the staff who can be found here at https://chaplain.yale.edu /people/staff or call (203) 432-1128 during business hours.

Walden Peer Counseling is available from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. every night.

To speak with a trained peer counselor, call (203) 432-8255. To speak with Dr. Eunice Yuen from the Asian American Cultural Center, schedule an appointment at https://aacc. yalecollege.yale.edu /resources/ emotional-wellness. Good Life Center Woodbridge Fellow Alex Vaghenas offers 30-minute non-clinical wellness chats to support students in coping with stress and anxiety, and to hear about whatever else is on their mind. Email alexa.vaghenas@yale. edu to schedule a one-time session or a recurring time to chat.

Additional resources are available in a guide compiled by the Yale College Council at https://drive.google.com/ drive/u/0/folders/1x8HTXMwex4LT3FpqWxs1ssXj0nUkp7WW. On a campus already marked by a stressful academic environment, the pandemic has exacerbated mental health challenges for many Yale students, creating feelings of loneliness, isolation and fear as students cope with a world altered

by COVID-19.

And as the Yale community mourns the recent death by suicide of a first-year student, students have engaged in renewed discussion about mental health at the University, including aspects of Yale’s social and academic culture as well as institutional support and mental health services.

“Yale is not unique in this; college student’s mental health utilization has increased across the country and I expect the pandemic will only add to this trend,” Chief of Mental Health and Counseling Paul Hoffman wrote to the News in an email. “I would encourage any student worried about wait times to reach out [to Yale Mental Health and Counseling], students with urgent situations can receive treatment very quickly and for many it can have a profound effect on their well-being at Yale.”

But he also acknowledged that there is room for improvement.

The News spoke to 20 students about their experience with Yale Mental Health and Counseling services. All of the students interviewed expressed frustration, disappointment and anger over inadequate mental health resources for students, including weeks-long wait times for appointments and

lack of capacity for comprehensive, consistent care. Overall, students expressed feeling like the quality of their support is sacrificed in an MHC effort to get through the long line of student demand.

“The biggest problem is that there is this common understanding among students that Yale Mental Health and Counseling does not live up to par, and that has the potential to prevent people from even seeking help when they might really, really need it,” a student who requested anonymity for fear of revealing personal health records said. “Aside from students who seek support and do not get it adequately, this is a crisis in and of itself. It already takes a lot for someone with a mental illness to admit to themselves that it is time to get help and then actually ask for it. Yale has to do better to remove the barriers for students who are seeking help to receive adequate help.”

Long waits, short appointments and a lack of comprehensive care Every student interviewed complained that the chronic understaffing of MHC that has resulted in long wait times for appointments and short therapy sessions to accommodate increased demand — for those who can get appointments in the first place.

Ten students commented on how long it took after their intake appointment — the initial evaluation before a student is connected to a clinician — for them to be assigned a therapist for a first clinical appointment. Two mentioned waiting for up to five weeks.

According to Hoffman, students who seek mental wellness services would start by calling (203) 4320290 and asking to schedule an intake appointment. During most times of year, students should expect to get that appointment within a week, and during September and early October when the wait for intake appointments is usually longer, some MHC therapists are available for same-day intakes by student request. Based on their intake evaluations, students are assigned a clinician anywhere from within a couple of days “if the situation is urgent” to within a couple of weeks. However, at all times, students can request to see a therapist immediately through the on-call clinician.

MHC currently employs 33 clinicians. That number could increase by nearly 25 percent next year, as MHC plans to add six to eight new positions. Additional staff, Hoffman said, “should help reduce wait times further.”

But as things currently stand, care can be delayed for weeks after students initially seek mental health services.

The anonymous student was diagnosed with anorexia in their first year at Yale. After waiting about two weeks for their intake appointment and then nearly a month after that to be assigned a therapist, the individual was hospitalized due to their declining physical and mental state.

After not getting the individualized care, attention and support they felt they needed to be able to recover from their eating disorder, they eventually decided to seek outside care.

“I remember the weeks between steps [in MHC’s care timeline] were grueling, and not knowing when the wait was going to be up took an even harder toll on me mentally,” they said.

On the other hand, Camden Rider ’23 shared with the News that following an experience last November that put him in the hospital for 24 hours, MHC followed up nearly immediately. He expressed his utmost gratitude for having been in touch with a clinician so quickly, but he also acknowledged that the circumstances of his situation likely contributed to the speed in which he was contacted.

Hoffman told the News that MHC understands that the wait times are often discouraging to students and has been working hard to reduce them. He stated that major increases in students seeking treatment are one of the main causes of the waits. Around 70 percent more students now seek treatment at MHC than five to six years ago.

Leila Iskandarani ’22 also told the News about her history with MHC. Last semester, she sought counseling for anxiety, and after a two-week wait for an intake appointment and another two-week wait after that to be assigned a therapist, she was able to get appointments each week for approximately 30 to 45 minutes.

However, when she returned to campus this semester, MHC told her that because of increased demand, she could only make an appointment every other week for half an hour.

“I can’t imagine that a half hour every other week would be enough time to be helpful for anyone,” Iskandarani told the News. “It sometimes feels as if they’re seeing us to say they’ve seen us, but not really investing enough time in each of us to address the issue.”

Hoffman told the News that MHC sees around 800 students each week. Because of what Hoffman described as “a change in how students are utilizing mental health services during the pandemic,” clinicians are spacing out therapy appointments since students are staying in therapy for longer periods of time than ever before.

Currently, the length of time between sessions is not based on a standardized policy but on an assessment of students’ needs.

Some students may be seen weekly and others biweekly; some for 30 minutes and others for 45.

“Many students and therapists have found 30-minute appointments are better suited to teletherapy,” Hoffman wrote in an email to the News.

Despite feeling as if the 30-minute appointment every other week was not actively helping her, Iskandarani clarified that it was not harming her either.

Natalie Troy ’22 expressed similar sentiments. She sought help last year at MHC when she began experiencing symptoms of anxiety, and she explained that it took her over a year to find a therapist who was a good fit for her. She currently sees a therapist “every few weeks or so” and is content with the services.

However, she feels frustrated that it took so much time for her to get the help she needed and believes that MHC would benefit

from hiring more therapists to help reduce burdensome wait times and to ensure that students get consistent,meaningful time with their providers.

For three students, the thought of further overburdening the system has prevented them from seeking more care. One of them, Ian Homsy ’22, explained to the News how he went from years of therapy and three weeks of inpatient and outpatient care prior to coming to Yale to his current routine of five-minute phone calls with a psychiatrist every few months.

“I felt that because I thought I was doing better than I used to, going to Yale Mental Health and Counseling would help back-up a system that is already so incredibly understaffed,” Homsy wrote to the News.

Josephine Holubkov ’24 — who was originally in the class of 2023 but took a gap year — saw a therapist through MHC “semi-regularly” throughout her first year at Yale. She recalled trying to see her therapist every week or two, but that her therapist would frequently cancel her appointments and fail to reach out to reschedule.

She does not believe that this was intentional; rather, she feels she may have just “slipped through the cracks” since her therapist had “such a huge number of patients.”

“While I learned a lot from my sessions, I did to some extent feel like a cog in a machine and not a valued individual or patient,” Holubkov wrote in an email to the News. “I don’t think I would feel comfortable reaching out to my Yale health therapist if I had been genuinely in crisis, and I wouldn’t trust Yale Health to handle my friend’s mental health crisis either, which I find sobering and dangerous.”

Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun told the News that MHC realizes that many students who “are in less acute states feel that there is a wait and too long of a wait” for appointments, and that MHC continually works to find ways to improve response times.

Seeking outside care A second trend among interviewees was the feeling of privilege for those who could access mental wellness care outside of Yale.

One undergraduate, who requested anonymity for fear of revealing private medical issues, told the News that they initially sought help at MHC for their already-diagnosed depression and anxiety. But after being told to expect more than a month’s wait time for an appointment and that they could not be guaranteed a female provider — a provision that they felt would be more comfortable — they decided to seek support outside of the University.

“I am fortunate enough that I have insurance outside of Yale,” they told the News. “I just felt like I couldn’t deal with the wait — I needed help immediately — so I started looking for support outside of Yale but in Connecticut. I realize that is an extreme privilege, and a lot of other students do not have that possibility which is why this conversation is so important.”

Iskandarani similarly commented on how she decided to pay for private therapy between semesters since she was not located in the state of Connecticut and would not be able to receive counseling through Yale.

According to Hoffman, any student, regardless of location, can call to set up an initial appointment or call the on-call clinician. However, if a student is located outside of Connecticut and has Yale Hospitalization and Specialty coverage, they will be referred to a clinician in their home state and MHC will cover the cost of treatment. For students who have waived the specialty coverage — which is an option only for those who have outside insurance — MHC would consult with them on how to utilize their alternative insurance to access treatment.

Per Hoffman, clinicians at MHC cannot see students for treatment outside of Connecticut because of state licensure laws. When students were sent home in March, MHC continued to treat outof-state students when possible under many states’ then-relaxed licensure laws. Students not living in states with relaxed laws were referred to mental health providers in their states and Yale covered the cost.

Iskandarani ultimately opted to utilize Yale’s free counsel-

ing when she returned to campus this semester because “it just made more sense” since private therapy is expensive and Yale offers free services under the basic health coverage plan that every Yale student receives.

“I feel like the institution contributing to my mental health issues should pay for my therapy, so I am at least glad that the services I do get are free,” she said.

While some students have given up on trying to utilize MHC services, other people, such as Mel Adams ’24, continue to use the MHC services in order to get access to the prescribed medication that is covered under the student health plan. But in addition to this, Adams supplements the care with outside therapy to ensure they get the time with a provider that they need.

Adams similarly posed the rhetorical question of whether they are “in a bad enough situation” or “worthy of treatment” given MHC’s strained resources.

But for many students, MHC is the only mental wellness support they have access to or is the only feasible option, creating a divide between the students who can afford to outsource mental health support and those who cannot.

And because only enrolled students get health coverage from Yale, students on leaves of absence are not able to access mental wellness resources through the University. Students have criticized the implications of this policy, which they say imposes an additional burden on low-income students.

Community calls to action Over the past several days, students have taken to social media to share new frustrations and long-standing grievances with Yale’s mental wellness resources.

Students shared on Twitter many personal experiences with MHC — from describing negative interactions with MHC to saying how Yale’s failure to dedicate more resources towards mental health is indicative of “how little prestigious institutions value the well-being of their students.”

In addition to individual students’ concerns, several student groups on campus are also engaging in advocacy for better mental health resources on campus, as well as providing those services themselves.

Three members of Students Unite Now — a group fighting for full financial aid and mental health care for students— spoke to the News about their work advocating for better mental health resources at Yale.

SUN’s primary demand is reducing the wait time for counseling appointments to a maximum of two weeks. In their August 2020 report, they emphasized the need for Yale to strengthen its mental health resources.

“Hundreds of students spend their ‘bright college years’ in pain and feeling alone, while Yale has the resources and the ability to care for them,” SUN organizer Danielle Collins ’21 wrote to the News in an email. “We need a mental health system that is equipped to help the most vulnerable rather than abandon the liability. I am calling for more therapists in general, but especially therapists of color and LGBTQ affirming therapists because mental health issues are exacerbated by oppressive structures and marginalized groups also receive worse quality of care.”

Another organization, Walden Peer Counseling, provides an anonymous and confidential peer counseling service for undergraduates. The counselors are fellow Yale undergrads who are trained by the Mental Health and Counseling and other specialists on mental health issues at Yale, and they provide “non directive and non-judgmental counseling.”

One of the co-directors of Walden Peer Counseling, who asked not to be named since Walden is an organization that runs on the premise of anonymity for both counselors and counselees, expressed their belief that Walden Peer Counseling can serve as a “short-term alternative to MHC” for students who seek immediate counseling, but that Walden Peer Counseling is not a substitute for professional mental health care.

Yale Mental Health and Counseling is located within Yale Health at 55 Lock St. Contact JULIA BIALEK at julia.bialek@yale.edu .

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“The pitcher has got only a ball. I’ve got a bat. So the percentage in weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting.” HANK “HAMMER” AARON FORMER AMERICAN PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL PLAYER

A history of the Yale Golf Course

COURTESY OF COLIN SHEEHAN

The course’s rich history began in the 1920s, when its initial construction took two years and cost nearly $500,000.

GOLF FROM PAGE 14 rusher for the football team from 1881 to 1883, helping the Bulldogs to three undefeated seasons on their way to national championships. The Athletic Department’s office building — the Ray Tompkins House — still bears his name.

The Greist Estate was a 720-acre parcel of wooded land in northwest New Haven originally owned by German American manufacturer John M. Greist, whose company was the largest manufacturer of sewing machine attachments. Greist maintained the estate as a natural preserve until his death in 1916, and the estate stayed within the family. It received much interest from local developers looking to build housing for the rapidly growing city of New Haven.

When Tompkins passed away in 1918, he left the entirety of his estate — more than a million dollars — to his wife, with the condition that upon her death she would leave the remainder to Yale “to furnish facilities for extending and developing the practice of athletic exercises on the part of students of the University.”

In early 1923, the University approached Sarah Tompkins and asked her to purchase the Greist Estate with her late husband’s estate as a gift for the University, accord-

ing to a website on the history of Yale golf created by William Kelly, professor of anthropology and Sumitomo professor of Japanese studies.

Kelly is an expert on Yale’s golf history — he literally wrote the book “Golf at Yale” with John A. Godley, a retired assistant clinical professor of medicine at Yale.

Sarah Tompkins agreed, and Yale bought the entire property for a lower cost than what the private developers were offering. After the purchase, then-University President James Angell named the property “Ray Tompkins Memorial” and designated its use for “recreational sport first and competitive athletics next: i.e., the golf course, natural outdoor swimming pools, gun club ranges, cross country courses, and similar developments.”

The stage was set for Yale to have its own premier golf course, but it would take the genius of two of the most important golf architects of all time to turn the Greist Estate into the Yale Golf Course.

Enter Charles B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor.

Read more at https://yaledailynews.com/blog/category/sports/ Contact EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA at eugenio.garzagarcia@yale.edu .

Chen ’23 competes at Worlds SKATING FROM PAGE 14 Instead, the 2020 World Figure Skating Championships were canceled due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, giving Chen something he lacked while juggling an Olympic athletic career with Yale academics: time.

Over the past year, Chen has spent time on the ice working on “the basics” — time that he would have normally used up during an action-packed skating season. Off the ice, Chen, who is on a leave of absence until after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, said he has spent a lot of time by himself — situations that can lead to anxiety and stress.

To make sure he can stay as “resilient and robust” as possible — both in skating and in life — Chen has dedicated time to learning mindfulness and other techniques to improve his mental health.

“I think that’s something that I’ve found very useful,” Chen said. “It gives me more peace and helps me sort of relax and decompress at the end of each day.”

While concerns in regards to COVID-19 are still very real, the International Skating Union has set up a “bubble” environment for the competition with strict health and safety protocols — including extensive testing.

Though it will certainly look different than previous years, the most important thing to the skaters and fans is obvious: that Worlds is back.

Reigning U.S. ladies’ champion Bradie Tennell said in a teleconference last week that the one-year anniversary of the cancelation of the 2019 World Championships brought back a lot of emotions and she now feels “really ready” heading into this year's iteration of the event.

“We’re excited to be given the shot to go to the World Championships,” Brandon Frazier, who alongside Alexa Knierim is the U.S. pairs’ champion, said in a

Botthof wins with ESC Planegg

COURTESY OF TIMO SAVELA

In 2019, Botthof played in the Women’s World Championship on the German national team.

HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14 tests, notching six goals and eight assists. During the 2020-21campaign, the Yale defender nabbed 10 points in 24 games, which included eight helpers and two goals.

When asked about her best contributions to the team, Botthof credited her aggressive, physical style of play for her success on the ice.

Fellow Penguin Jacyn Reeves — one of the two American forwards on Planegg this past season — also praised Botthof’s helpful encouragement, ability to create offensive situations and tenacity.

“She always made practices better with her bubbling personality and hard work,” Reeves said.

“She would push others to be better which, in turn, helped our team be better overall. Tabea always made me laugh on and off the ice and I would gladly play with her again.”

In addition to their regular season success, Botthof and Reeves were able to participate in the Final Four Championship with Planegg.

The hockey club had previously

secured a spot in the finals last year before the match was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, Planegg not only made the playoffs but ultimately took home their eighth championship title.

In past seasons, the playoffs had consisted of the top four teams competing in a “best-of-three” series to determine the championship matchup. But this year, teams participated in “best-of-one” semifinal games before the winners of each contest advanced to the finals.

“It was awesome just having the top four teams of the league there,” Botthof said. “There was a lot of pressure to be able to win those two games because everything really just depended on those two games, but it was so much fun.”

Reeves shared similar sentiments, adding that the postseason seemed to go by “very quick[ly]” for her. The Ohio State alumnae also commended her team for their depth and support for one another over the course of the regular season and postseason.

Despite the change in playoff format, Marcel Breil, the ESC Planegg head coach, applauded the competitive nature of all of the games.

“They were fast, fair games that were always explosive," Breil told German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, as translated by the News from German. “There has been a substantial increase in this regard in recent years.”

Although the DFEL season concluded last week, Botthof’s time playing hockey in Germany did not. The 20-year-old is also a member of the Germany women’s national ice hockey team and has represented her home country at two IIHF World Championships.

Botthof is currently taking part in the first of three national team camps in preparation for the 2021 IIHF Women’s World Championships in Canada.

She described the great sense of pride and satisfaction she feels when donning the black, red and gold.

“It's just such an honor and I'm just so happy every time I'm able to,” Botthof told the News from Füssen, home of the German Ice Hockey Federation training center. “I love to just have a little bit of a change up to play with girls that usually play on other teams in the league.

Hockey is also on an up right now in Germany so it's getting much more attention, especially women's hockey, which is great to see.”

While Botthof always enjoys competing at home, she also expressed that she misses spending time with her fellow Bulldogs. She said that returning to New Haven will be “like moving from one good thing to another” and is excited to get back to Ivy League competition.

The finals of the Final Four tournament were played in Füssen, a neutral location for all teams.

Contact TRISHA NYUGEN at trisha.nyugen@yale.edu .

separate teleconference. “Especially with everything that’s going on.”

Chen noted that one of the big differences will be the lack of fans in the stands. While it is an environment he has dealt with both at the U.S. Championships and at 2020 Skate America this past October, the impact that the energy of a live crowd has is unquantifiable.

But while the seats may be empty in the Ericsson Globe Arena this week, there will be no lack of competition for Chen, as he will be joined in Stockholm by 2014 and 2018 Olympic gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan.

“It’s always just a big honor for me to compete against an idol that I watched while I was growing up,” Chen said of Hanyu. “He’s really like the benchmark or the standard of what skating looks like.”

Hanyu, the 2019-20 ISU Most Valuable Skater, has spent the season training away from his traditional training base, a difficult situation for which Chen expressed empathy.

Even so, in Chen’s eyes, Hanyu has “gotten even better” throughout the season. “[It is] a testament to how great he is,” Chen explained.

With each carrying a long list of accolades, whenever Chen and Hanyu share the ice, it is a live look at figure skating history being written — one quad jump at a time.

The Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm, with a diameter of 110 meters, is currently the largest spherical building in the world.

Contact JAMES RICHARDSON at james.richardson@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF JAY ADEFF/U.S. FIGURE SKATING

Chen has spent the past year learning mindfulness techniques to stay "resilient and robust" — both in skating and in life.

Hines '18 running in NC primary CONGRESS FROM PAGE 14 forecasting website Inside Elections, said. “I don’t think anyone thinks Virginia Foxx, at this moment, is particularly vulnerable. But we are more than a year away from any potential primaries, and we don’t know what the districts will look like, so a lot can happen between now and then.”

There is also the possibility of a Foxx candidacy for United States Senate, according to Rubashkin. Sen. Richard, R-North Carolina announced in 2016 that he will retire at the end of his term in 2022, which will vacate one of North Carolina’s Senate seats.

Foxx has been a popular representative during her time in office. In a district described by notable election forecasters as a “safe” or “solid” Republican seat, Foxx has faced primary opposition in the past few election cycles.

Since 2014, she has never gotten less than two-thirds of the primary vote, making Hines’ challenge an uphill battle. “There’s a reason why we can, kind of, name all of the [incumbents] who lost to primary challengers in the House in recent years,” Rubashkin said.

“And that reason is that there’s so few of them. It’s national news.”

Hines, notably, is running in the Republican primary, challenging Foxx. In 2016, a survey conducted by the News found that 75 percent of respondents did not think Yale was a welcoming place for conservatives. But Hines said he sought to embrace the leftward bent of the student body.

“Most people on the right would likely characterize Yale as a very liberal institution and I know that a lot of my peers were liberal, but that gave me the opportunity to have the types of debates and free exchange of ideas that

allows us all to grow and expand our knowledge of each other’s beliefs,” Hines said. “And there were certainly people on campus, particularly in the Economics Department, who were more conservative. I felt solidarity with most of those folks.”

Despite Hines’ early declaration, there is plenty of time before he officially needs to file as a candidate. For the 2020 election, the filing deadline to run for this seat was Dec. 20, 2019. As Rubashkin told the News, there is still much to be determined about the composition of the district.

Following the release of the 2020 census results, Republicans in North Carolina will begin drawing new districts as part of the redistricting process that takes place every decade.

North Carolina’s quick population growth is expected to net the state an additional congressional seat.

North Carolina’s redistricting process has been the subject of controversy in the past. The state has been in a prolonged legal battle after being accused of gerrymandering districts to maximize Republican representation despite demographic trends making Democrats more competitive at the state level.

Still, Hines told the News that his campaign is “fairly confident that our district isn’t going to change too much. We may lose a few counties here and there, but we believe that we will retain most of the constituency we have been working with.”

The last Democrat to win an election in North Carolina’s 5th District was Stephen Neal, who lost his reelection campaign to Burr in 1994.

Contact NADER GRANMAYEH at nader.granmayeh@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“I have grown up on a diet of sunrise picnics, learning the names of butterflies, planting trees.” DIA MARZA INDIAN MODEL

Student groups hold vigil for victims of Atlanta spa shootings

SANCHITA KEDIA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Three hundred community members attended the vigil, held on March 23 and organized by 15 student groups

BY SANCHITA KEDIA STAFF REPORTER Members of the Yale community convened online Tuesday to commemorate the lives lost in the March 16 Atlanta spa shootings, grieve together and empower one another to take action against antiAsian violence.

The Yale College Council, the Asian American Cultural Center, the Muslim Students Association and 13 other student groups organized the vigil. Co-moderators Karen Li ’23 and Lilian Hua ’21 opened the vigil with a moment of silence for the lives lost. There were four speakers: Dean of the AACC Joliana Yee, professor of American studies and history Mary Lui, professor of East Asian languages and

literature Tina Lu and Jun Kwak ’22. The vigil ended with time for attendees to unmute and share their feelings, thoughts and reflections.

Three hundred community members attended the vigil.

“As I’ve reflected on the events that have occurred in this past week, there’s just a compounding effect,” Yee said during the event.

“I see myself, my niece, my grandmother, my auntie in the victims of the Atlanta shooting. It can make it so difficult when you see your own family violated.”

Yee emphasized that events like the shooting in Atlanta do not happen in isolation and that she has seen “loved ones and friends taken by racialized violence.” There have been acts of violence and discrimination against Asian Ameri-

cansthroughout the history of the United States and it is difficult to continue fighting, she said.

Liu echoed Yee’s sentiments regarding the history of discrimination against Asian Americans in the United States, emphasizing that it originated long before COVID-19.

“From horrific acts of mob violence in the 19th century … to the histories of state violence in the form of immigration exclusion, detention, and deportation, the history of Asian removal and containment has sadly continued into the 21st century,” Lui said.

She encouraged attendees to think beyond the media’s coverage of what the Atlanta assailant was thinking and spend time understanding the systemic structures that enabled such violence to occur.

Caleb Kim ’21 was one student who spoke up during the event.

Kim, who is from Atlanta, said that he would often see Gold Massage Spa, one of the sites of the shooting, on the way to his usual grocery store. Recently, he learned that one of the victims was the mother of one of Kim’s childhood friends.

Kim spoke of his friend.

“I remember that he was my ‘bus buddy’ and although we weren’t best friends, the news brought up all of these memories that I had stored away,” Kim said.

“I realized that I’d forgotten about him all of this time and it brought this feeling of regret and sadness that I hadn’t felt in a long time.”

Kim said the worst part about this event is that everyone almost saw it coming.

Kwak agreed, adding that he felt frustrated and hopeless about the repeated violence towards Asian Americans.

“My initial reaction was fear,” Kwak wrote in an email to the News. “I was afraid that myself and my friends and family of Asian ethnicity could be attacked, especially given the increased hatred towards Asians during the pandemic.

Eui Young Kim ’21, an international student from South Korea, said she knew that her race and nationality could put her at risk and the shootings confirmed her expectations.

“I felt a bit more at peace [after the vigil], ” Kim wrote in an email to the News. “I needed the administration there to listen to my desperate plea for action and I think I was able to do that.”

Although members of the Yale administration — including University President Peter Salovey, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun, University Champlain Sharon Kugler and Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd — attended the event, Li and Hua felt that the Yale administration did not support them in their endeavor to plan this vigil, which was entirely student-driven. Eui Young Kim also spoke out against the lack of action from Yale administrators to support students after the shootings.

“I think Yale admin would do well to think critically about what community means, what community looks like, especially as a response,” Hua said.

Hua and Li cited Yale’s social media posts about the new Handsome Dan two days after the shooting as an example of the University’s poor response to the killings.

University spokesperson Karen Peart referred the News to President Peter Salovey’s March 18 message to the Yale community, which emphasized the importance of “finding strength in our shared purpose” and pointed to ongoing research on racism and the “Belonging at Yale” initiative.

Still, Li and Hua both agreed that this vigil provided a space for action and healing even more than they expected it would.

“Students came away with having heard the critical insightful reflections of people who spoke and people felt inspired to be mobilized and not just to stand with Asian American community and deal with violence in general, but to join movements, donate and engage,” Hua said.

The names of the Atlanta victims are Soon Chung Park, 74, Hyun Jung Grant, 51, Suncha Kim, 69, Yong Yue, 63, Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, Paul Andre Michels, 54, Xiaojie Tan, 49, and Daoyou Feng, 44.

Contact SANCHITA KEDIA at sanchita.kedia@yale.edu .

Spring Fling Committee announces 2021 concert cancelation

BY MARISOL CARTY STAFF REPORTER On Monday, March 22, the Spring Fling Committee announced the cancelation of Spring Fling 2021 on Instagram.

Spring Fling is an annual concert where Yale students celebrate the end of classes before finals begin. It is planned by a committee of undergraduates. This year’s committee chairs — Alexandra Gers ’24, Georgia Michelman ’22, Stefanie Grau ’22, Jarett Malouf ’23 and Olivia Marwell ’24 — initially discussed plans to organize a concert in hybrid format, but ultimately decided against this.

“Spring Fling is often a time for celebration and joy for the Yale community, and we are deeply saddened by the fact that we cannot deliver that this spring,” the Spring Fling Committee members wrote to the News. “We do, however, hope there will be further opportunities to gather in person safely next year, and are prepared to plan for such a situation.”

Before making a final decision, the committee conducted discussions with Yale administration — including Dean Melanie Boyd, Dean Kate Krier and Dean Hannah Peck — as well as booking agencies and

YCC leaders. They also surveyed undergraduate students.

Last November, the committee sent out a survey to gauge students’ artist preferences to all undergraduates. According to Michelman, over 60 percent of students surveyed preferred an event with in-person components over a virtual event. Michelman also said that a large number of students expressed disinterest in any form of virtual or hybrid programming.

The committee members cited uncertainty about the public health situation as the main reason for the concert’s cancelation.

Even though members were initially optimistic about the student body’s vaccination by late April — which might have allowed for an in-person event — they realized that the Yale community and professional artists would not necessarily be vaccinated in time.

The original plans for a 2021 Spring Fling included renting large screens for each residential college.

Virtual live performances would be livestreamed on these screens in college courtyards. Students would be able to reserve spots on courtyards during specified time slots.

Michelman said that Yale administrators initially supported

this hybrid format. However, the two parties ultimately recognized potential high-risk concerns with this format. The committee was mainly concerned about students independently gathering in large groups or hosting individual parties on the day, as in typical years.

To avoid being forced to cancel the event at the last minute due to concerns about COVID-19, the committee decided not to plan an event for this year.

The budget for Spring Fling 2022 has not yet been finalized, so the committee does not have information regarding whether this year’s unspent funds will carry over to next year, according to Michelman.

This year also will not have “Battle of the Bands,” a competition where student bands compete to open for the Spring Fling lineup. Committee members hope to highlight Yale artists virtually through social media concerts and Zoom events.

Dominick DeFazio ’22 said that he would prefer no concert at all over a virtual concert because it would prompt larger gatherings and create an unnecessary incentive to host parties on campus. DeFazio also said that a virtual concert would be “so obnoxiously lame.”

COURTESY OF GEORGIA MICHELMAN

After surveying students and discussing with Yale administrators, Spring Fling Committee announced Monday that Spring Fling 2021 would be canceled.

“Times are lame enough as is, I don’t need a virtual Spring Fling rubbing that in my face,” he said.

Spring Fling’s social media accounts will continue to update

students as plans for events this semester develop.

Contact MARISOL CARTY at marisol.carty@yale.edu .

Yale Golf Course to reopen for season on April 13

COURTESY OF MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Playing on the Yale Golf Course will be free after 4 p.m. for Yale students enrolled in residence.

BY EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA STAFF REPORTER The Yale Golf Course will reopen for the season on Tuesday, April 13 for the first time since the links closed for the winter last semester.

All 18 holes will fully reopen now that construction of the dam on Yale’s signature hole nine, known as “Biarritz,” was completed earlier this year, according to former Course Superintendent Scott Ramsay. The course’s general manager,

Peter Palacios Jr., announced the reopening plan on March 19 in an email to Yale Golf Course constituents posted on the course’s website.

Connecticut residents with active Yale Golf Course accounts, as well as Yale students enrolled in residence, will be allowed to use the course.

“This first session will operate through Sunday, June 27th and will follow the outlined policies listed within this announcement,” Palacios wrote in the email. “We are still facing many challenges regarding COVID-

19 and, as such, our commitment on providing a safe environment for our staff and each of you, our supporters, remains at the forefront.”

Palacios’ official announcement detailed that social distancing and COVID-19 protocols will be in effect throughout this first session of the course’s reopening. Everyone on the golf course must follow 6-feet social distancing. Facial coverings are not required when playing golf, but they are required in the golf course’s facilities or when an individual is within 6 feet of another person.

While the course will be open, not everyone will be eligible to play in this first session of golf.

Only Connecticut residents with an active Yale Golf Course account will be permitted to register for tee times. Out-of-state guests will not yet be permitted to play the course, the announcement noted.

Playing on the Yale Golf Course will be free after 4 p.m. for Yale students enrolled in residence, while the faculty and staff rate of $75 applies prior to 4 p.m. Last semester, Palacios told the News that the course was free to play on for Yale students weekdays after 12 p.m. Before Palacios started last year, Yale students

had to pay to play the course at any time of day, albeit at a reduced rate.

Other amenities at the course also remain out of commission. The clubhouse, pro shop, driving range and Widdy’s Snack Bar will stay closed. The practice putting green will be open in a limited fashion to ensure proper distancing.

Still, now that construction on hole nine has finished and the course is being maintained regularly again, golfers will now be able to play all of the Yale course’s 18 holes.

“The state of Connecticut has newer dam regulations and the work was done to satisfy those regulations,” former Superintendent Ramsay said. “The pond was originally a reservoir for the city and built with Civil War era standards.”

For some time last summer, the course was in a poor state because Ramsay said Yale’s COVID-19 protocols did not allow staff to maintain the course or golfers to use it. Even as Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont greenlighted the resumption of golf in late March, the course remained closed until late September, when it reopened under Palacios for the first time.

“The entire University shut down, every single staff person went home

and the course suffered from that,” Ramsay told the News last fall.

The search for Ramsay’s replacement is nearing a conclusion. After a year of vacancy, Palacios, who joined Yale last August after the departure of Peter Pulaski, told the News that the new superintendent’s introduction is expected to come next week. The current acting superintendent is Matthew Golino, who holds a degree in turfgrass and soil science from the University of Connecticut, and has been with Yale’s course for over nine years.

Palacios had told the News on March 14 that the course was looking to open between April 6 and 9, but that the date may be shifted “depending on the weather” — it has since shifted to April 13.

Another Palacios initiative has been the creation of the Yale Golf Course’s official Twitter account, @GolfAtYale. The account, activated in December 2020, had 245 followers as of Wednesday evening.

The Yale Golf Course was designed by Charles B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor.

Contact EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA at eugenio.garzagarcia@yale.edu .

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

“Once there was a thing called spring When the world was writing verses like yours and mine…”

- Frank Sinatra, “Spring is Here”

O

n March 20, 1976, Frank Sinatra played a concert in New Haven to a crowd of 11,000 people. Rumor is that he loved New Haven pizza and could have followed up his crooning performance with Sally’s Apizza. But I wonder what he thought about the weather?

Last Saturday, March 20, was the first day of spring. The sun burst through the clouds, and I was finally able to walk the streets of New Haven with my jacket unzipped. And there I went — bounding down the main roads, side streets and back alleyways of the Elm City, chasing Sinatra’s ghost and snapping away at the springtime sunshine.

LUKAS FLIPPO reports.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

BULLETIN BOARD ILLUSTRATIONS

ANASTHASIA SHILOV is a sophomore in Silliman College.

Contact her at anasthasia.shilov@yale.edu .

MALIA KUO is a first year in Morse College.

Contact her at malia.kuo@yale.edu .

SOPHIE HENRY is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact her at sophie.henry@yale.edu .

CROSSWORD

GIOVANNA TRUONG is a sophomore in Pauli Murray College.

Contact her at giovanna.truong@yale.edu .

DORA GUO is a sophomore in Pierson College.

Contact her at dora.guo@yale.edu .

NCAAW No. 1 UConn 83 No. 8 Syracuse 47

NCAAW No. 2 Louisville 62

No. 7 Northwestern 53

NCAAW No. 5 Iowa 86 No. 4 Kentucky 72

SPORTS

NCAAM No. 2 Alabama 96 No. 10 Maryland 77

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

HEAVYWEIGHT CREW DAN WILLIAMSON ’23 Yale oarsman Dan Williamson ’23 is set to race at the Final Qualification Regatta with the New Zealand men’s eight in Switzerland. A top-two finish for his crew will ensure Williamson’s spot on the Tokyo Olympic team.

MEN’S BASKETBALL FORMER COACH VANCISIN PASSES Joe Vancisin, who served as head coach of the Yale men's basketball team from 1956 to 1975, passed away on Mar. 22 at the age of 98. Vancisin won three Ivy League championships at Yale before serving as the NABC's executive director until 1992.

Behind the Venue: Yale Golf Course

“I still need to prove that I deserve a spot [on the U.S. National Team].

I can’t just assume that I have that spot. I still have to work for it.”

NATHAN CHEN ’23 FIGURE SKATER

Nathan Chen ’23 looks to three-peat at Worlds

BY JAMES RICHARDSON STAFF REPORTER In the spring of 2017, Nathan Chen ’23 went to his first World Figure Skating Championships with the goal of earning a spot on the U.S. National Team for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

FIGURE SKATING

ANASTHASIA STILOV AND ZULLY ARIAS/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR AND PRODUCTION & DESIGN EDITOR

The Yale Golf Course emerged out of a million-dollar estate donated to the University by the Tompkins family.

BY EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA STAFF REPORTER The Yale Golf Course is in a class of its own when it comes to the University's athletic venues. Unlike the Yale Bowl, the Kiphuth Exhibition Pool or Yale Field, the golf course challenges one of the usual requirements of a sports venue: providing a level playing field.

Golf is unique in that no two courses are the same. Unlike football, where the field is always 100 yards long, or baseball, where each diamond has identical measurements, golf courses test athletes in an idiosyncratic manner. Whereas Yale’s hockey players may not have to think about the iconic design of Ingalls Rink when speeding around the ice, the architecture of a golf course greatly influences how golfers play the game. Yale’s golfers are acutely aware of every hill in the fairways, how the grass is mowed

and rolled on the greens and the type of sand in the bunkers.

The Yale Golf Course stands alone when it comes to top collegiate golf courses. It consistently ranks as not only one of the top courses owned by a college or university, but also as one of the best golf courses in the country. “[The Yale Golf Course] should attract golfers from all around the world to come and experience that sort of quintessential Charles Blair Macdonald-Raynor architecture,” men’s golf head coach Colin Sheehan ’97 said. “Most of [the Macdonald-Raynor] courses are private. …

The Yale course, to live out its original mission, should make every effort possible to welcome and invite undergraduate and graduate students to the course.”

Yale students might not all be familiar with the gem that lies less than four miles away from Old Campus, but it was once one of the most popular sports on campus. In a list of headlines for articles that mention

the Yale Golf Course made available to the News by Sheehan, one article displays survey results of the 1926 seniors voting golf as their second most popular sport.

Golf might not hold the same place in the hearts of students today as it did when the course opened in 1926, but the course’s place in American golf architecture history will always be important.

The birthplace of the course: An estate with origins in sewing machine attachments If one were to go to the Yale Golf Course today and look at pictures before its development, they would marvel at how the woody and hilly terrain was shaped into a functional golf course.

In 1923, Sarah Wey Tompkins gave the Greist Estate to Yale on behalf of her husband Ray Tompkins, class of 1884. Ray Tompkins played as a

Tabea Botthof ’23 takes gold in Germany

SEE GOLF PAGE 14

COURTESY OF DOMINIC PENCZ

Botthof celebrates with teammate Anna Fiegert following their win in Füssen, home of the German Ice Hockey Federation training center.

While several members of the women’s ice hockey team have been spending their leaves of absence participating in internships or training at home, defender Tabea Botthof ’23 decided to dedicate her time and talents to competition in Germany. On March 14, Yale women’s ice hockey player Tabea Botthof ’23 helped her German team, ESC Planegg, to their eighth championship title.

HOCKEY The 5-foot-9 Erding, Germany native had plenty of experience playing in Europe prior to this year, after spending two seasons with ESC Planegg in the top-tier German Women's Ice Hockey Bundesliga, or DFEL. Botthof explained that her

decision to return to the DFEL was heavily influenced by the onset of the pandemic and cancellation of Ivy League competition.

“When they announced that we weren't going to have a season, I decided that it would be best to just take the year off to be at home and play there,” Botthof said.

Botthof told the News that she was surprised at how smoothly and successfully the DFEL regular season unfolded despite various lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions in Europe. She added that she was grateful for the opportunity to reunite with her “second family” once more.

In the two seasons she previously played with the ESC Planegg Penguins, Botthoff tallied a total of 14 points in 27 regular season con-

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE HOCKEY PAGE 10

31

Four years later, even with two world championships added to his resume, his mindset has not changed.

“I still need to prove that I deserve a spot [on the U.S. National Team],” Chen said. “I can’t just assume that I have that spot. I still have to work for it.”

Chen heads to Stockholm, Sweden this week to com-

pete in the 2021 World Figure Skating Championships, two months after he won his fifth consecutive U.S. championship. The Salt Lake City native will look to take gold in his third consecutive Worlds and secure his place on the 2022 U.S. Olympic team.

Chen finished atop the podium for his first world championship in 2018, and again in 2019 as a first-year at Yale. In 2020, Chen was poised to head to Montreal and become the first American man since Scott Hamilton — who won four straight world titles from 1981 to 1984 — to win three consecutive world championships.

SEE SKATING PAGE 10

COURTESY OF JAY ADEFF/U.S. FIGURE SKATING

Chen competed on Thursday and is set to compete again on Saturday at the World Championships.

Bo Hines '18 runs for Congress

BY NADER GRANMAYEH STAFF REPORTER In January, Yale graduate and former football receiver Bo Hines ’18 announced his intent to run for Congress.

CONGRESS

BY TRISHA NGUYEN STAFF REPORTER

NCAAM No. 7 Oregon 95 No. 2 Iowa 80

Hines is a North Carolina resident and freshman All-American at North Carolina State who transferred to Yale after his first year.

He is mounting a Republican primary campaign against incumbent Virginia Foxx in North Carolina’s 5th District.

North Carolina Congressional primaries are expected to take place in spring of 2022.

"Transferring was one of the toughest decisions I've made in my life," Hines told the News. "I knew I wanted to go into public service and I felt the best way to learn more about politics would be to go up to Yale and challenge myself with some of the best and the brightest and surround myself with people in the academic community that I knew would challenge me."

After transferring, Hines only played in two games of football at Yale. Hines dealt with shoulder injuries in his only season on the Bulldogs’ roster, leading to his limited action and eventual withdrawal from the team.

Yale football head coach Tony Reno described Hines’s battle with injuries at the time as “unbelievably bad luck.”

“The football program at Yale is phenomenal and obviously Coach Reno has done a fantastic job there,” Hines said.

“It was very unfortunate that I had the injuries that I did, but after two back-to-back season-ending shoulder injuries, I felt like God was telling me to move in another direction in my life.”

Hines’ decision to drop football did not surprise the NC State SB Nation blog, which described football as a “detour” for Hines. “He wants to be a politician and he is really driven about that,” NC State grad Steven Muma wrote for Backing the Pack.

T h e H a r t fo rd Co u ra n t reported in 2017 that Hines would “like to start off as a representative of the 9th congressional district of North Carolina” — the first indica-

tion of his interest in running for Congress.

Foxx has represented the 5th District since 2005. The district encompasses part of eastern North Carolina, including Caldwell County, which covers the city of Lenoir. Over the past decade, Foxx has gained prominence as one of the most senior women in the Republican caucus. After the 2020 election, Republicans have 30 women in the House, 18 of whom were elected this cycle.

“Congresswoman Foxx, in particular, is the second most senior woman in the Republican party, in the House of Representatives. … She is regarded as a heavyweight politician in the state of North Carolina,” Jacob Rubashkin, a reporter and analyst for the popular election SEE CONGRESS PAGE 10

COURTESY OF BO HINES AND YALE ATHLETICS

After earning a spot on the Freshman All-America team as a receiver at NC State, Hines transferred to Yale after his first year.

NUMBER OF GAMES (ALL) YALE WOMEN’S ICE HOCKEY DEFENDER TABEA BOTTHOF ’23 PLAYED WITH THE BULLDOGS DURING HER SOPHOMORE SEASON.

FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021

WEEKEND // BY ZAPORAH PRICE

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Difficult Conversations: Navigating politics at Yale and online

On March 12, Ryan Schiller ’22 woke up from a nap around 11 p.m. to a random ping on his phone from the app, Clubhouse. The social network, which relies on audio-chatting in themed chatrooms similar to large conference calls, notified him of a conversation with Yale-affiliated moderators entitled “Abolish the Ivy League.”

Schiller joined the chatroom, where he was invited to introduce himself to the crowd of listeners as a Yale student. In his introduction, Schiller says he briefly spoke about his co-created app, Librex — a mobile app created in September 2019 that allows Ivy League students to anonymously discuss campus culture. About five minutes after his introduction, Schiller says a few other current Yale students came to the chatroom to talk about the app’s limitations, in what would develop into a more than 2-hour debate in front of more than 800 listeners. At the helm of this conversation was questions regarding the first amendment, censorship and if college students can establish meaningful relationships with peers across the political spectrum.

All eight students who spoke with the News mentioned discussion as an effective tool for fostering relationships across political lines. But four students were wary about political polarization on campus and five students identified concerns over debates related to identity or civil rights.

Is the Personal, Political?

For Jasper Boers ’22, at the heart of polarization on campus is when the personal becomes too political. This oftentimes can lead to broken friendships, anger and lost time at the University, he said. There are people who view politics as part of their identity, but ultimately debate will not always end in compromise, Boers added.

“I don’t think we should be aiming for a political University,” he told the News.

“While it’s great that some of these students want to engage in politics, I think four years at Yale are quite short.”

Jordi Bertrán Ramírez ’24, a member of the Endowment Justice Coalition, told the News that more conversations need to be had with patience and empathy when discussing any political divides. He added that “fundamental shifts in value” don’t happen overnight, and it’s best to assume benevolence. But Bertrán Ramírez said the ability to separate the personal from the political is a privilege for some, and that “oftentimes marginalized communities turn to protest” because they feel there is “no other way to communicate with people in power.”

“When we’re talking about issues that are about civil rights and creating spaces that are accessible, focusing on debate as being the only and primary source of value… debate isn’t perfect,” Bertrán Ramírez told the News. “If I don’t know how to argue with you that I deserve my rights, that doesn’t mean I deserve my rights any less.”

Emma Knight ’22, co-Leader of the Yale Political Union, said that it was okay not to always engage in cross-partisan discussion, especially when the debate might involve civil rights.

“Not everyone wants to (or even can) seek out intense cross-partisan discussion all the time, and I honestly think that’s okay,” Knight wrote to the News in an email. “Political debate can be exhausting, especially when issues involve one’s own rights or identity.

I know that I am privileged in many ways, which has contributed to my positive experience with fruitful discussion on campus, and I want to acknowledge the fact that not everyone has had the same experience.”

Knight highlighted the parliamentary procedure debate format in the YPU, a debate society she felt has a wide range of ideologi-

cal backgrounds. Though the format — which includes student speakers giving three to five minute speeches on carefully chosen topics — may seem odd to first-timers, Knight said the unique format helped to “emphasize a high standard of conduct.” She said that the YPU also seeks to foster relationships outside of a debate setting, so that members can “learn to appreciate each other” beyond their political beliefs.

Politics in the classroom and on campus Boers — the student President of the William F. Buckley Program — thought more engagement was needed in University classrooms.

The Buckley Program seeks to expand political discourse on campus by hosting events, such as debates between two scholars from opposite sides of a given issue. The success of the program — high attendance at events and lots of programming — shows there is a real appetite for education and participation on issues that are polarized to a certain extent, Boers said. But he emphasized that the organization is not meant to replace discourse that should take place in classes or the broader University.

“The real intellectual diversity is, and sort of has always been, in the classroom,” Boers told the News. “The real thing that students, I think, if they want intellectual diversity ought to be pushing for is a greater representation in Yale classes.”

On campus, Boers said that in challenging classes, he found there to be much more of an emphasis on the collective mission of the students to engage with difficult texts. Political disagreements start to dissolve as everyone is working towards understanding the readings.

James Hatch ’23 — who is an Eli Whitney student and veteran — expressed similar sentiments about his first year around a seminar table, discussing challenging books with students who came from different backgrounds.

“My philosophy professor from first semester, he said ‘Good leaders are bridge builders,’” Hatch told the News in an interview. “That’s what I see in my classmates…

I think that academia could be and it should be the place where the example on how to conduct yourself when discussing different, sensitive and difficult issues — Yale College should be that.”

“I think generally in terms of classes with Yale professors, they’re pretty open to most ideas,” Ryan Gapski ’24, outreach director for the Buckley Program, told the News. “I think most students are pretty reasonable too.”

Jaelen King ’22, the Executive Director of the Black Students for Disarmament at Yale, echoed similar sentiments. The organization is still working to meet with campus groups who’ve traditionally opposed police abolition, which is BSDY’s main goal.

King said that lived experiences, family history and traditions all contribute to the way people think. There is no inherent hatred, King said, and even if he may not agree with one of his peers, the best course of action is to talk it out and understand where the other person is coming from.

“I’m just a firm believer in the relationships and the power of love and the power of people connecting, more than the idea of an idea being objectively right, or a universal truth,” King told the News. “But more just like caring about the person enough to work towards coming to a compromise, agreement or forgiveness pattern.”

King said it’s easy to fall into a “social niche and stay there” at Yale, and that it was up to students to be intentional about stepping out of these spaces to better empathize with others.

Censorship and Social Media Schiller has described his app, Librex, as one answer to the lack of complex conversations being held amongst Yale students. During the Clubhouse call, he introduced his purpose for creating Librex: to create conversation within campus communities. He added that he wanted people to talk about important issues and connect with one another “in an authentic and vulnerable way.”

“Those couple minutes that I was listening turned into two hours, maybe even more, of me just fully involved in this conversation,” Fatma Elsayed ’23 told the News in an interview about the Clubhouse chatroom. “[I was] explaining to them the context around Librex and having this wider discussion on free speech, which I think is definitely one of the most debated topics about college campuses. But I think sometimes when we talk about free speech, we don’t consider what that conversation means for people of color.”

Elsayed joined the call to highlight “previous harmful posts” on the app, which Schiller told the News were from last July and have since been taken down. During the call, Elsayed also opposed the idea that Librex was “a solution, or way for us to have invigorating debates that were meaningful” at Yale due to the app’s anonymity.

“College campuses don’t need Librex,” she told the News. “College campuses need classrooms, discussions and debates where people are actually talking face to face.”

But Schiller defended the app’s anonymity feature, in part because he remembered times when his friends felt the need to self-censor in classes or were excluded from social circles. “We all need social communication and want to fit in,” he added, which led some of his friends to realize “it may not be worth it” to openly express their political views. At the crux of the Clubhouse conversation, Schiller said, was a tension between “censorship” and trusting college communities to be “positive” through debate and conversation on the app.

Librex has gone through a number of changes since its first inception. From the beginning, users could only access the app with authenticated credentials such as university email addresses, and Schiller said the app has always had the ability to ban users.

Over time, the app has expanded security measures by increasing the number of student moderators on each Ivy League server.

Schiller, who doubles as a Yale moderator for the app, said the student moderators are provided with access to a moderation interface and are push notified each time a post is reported. He added that as an app with community standards if “enough people” report a post, it is automatically removed. As one of the app’s creators, Schiller said he’s in constant communication with student moderators across schools and that Librex surveys its users once per quarter.

Schiller mentioned a previous experience where the app had to reexamine its policies — the May 2020 student elections at Dartmouth.

On the Dartmouth server, only accessible by the Dartmouth community, there were reports of public attacks or condemning of student candidates on the anonymous app. Librex’s previous policy stated that private information, names or the “divulging [of] details about people’s personal lives” was prohibited for non-public figures — such as students. But initially, where candidates for student office fell in the two categories was unclear.

Schiller said that since then, the Librex team voted to remove the posts and updated the rules regarding non-public figures in the context of campus elections. He reflected that there were some posts that “went too far.” For him, addressing those posts was a learning experience to help him and others

figure out the bounds between “what’s civil” and “what’s divisive.”

Schiller acknowledged that there have also been posts on the Yale feed that have “gone too far” and mentioned the security measures currently in place and the road of development ahead.

“There’s always so much work to be done, and there’s so much we want to make and so much we want to improve about the app and school community in general,” Schiller said.

According to Hanah Jun ’23, if someone makes a hateful comment, accountability could mean the ability of other students to a) respond to the comment and/or b) disaffiliate with the person who made the comment.

Currently, students can comment underneath posts but all posts are anonymous.

Still, Jun, who also tuned in to the Clubhouse call, said that maintaining ethics on Librex —and all forms of social media — is easier said than done.

Jun recounted her comments made in the chatroom, whose audience she characterized as having a diverse familiarity with the app.

“I was commenting that accountability would be harder to enforce on an app like Librex where posts are anonymous,” Jun told the News in an interview. “Free speech should be allowed, but there should be some mechanism of accountability.”

She added that if hateful speech leads to hateful actions, there should be consequences to a degree. But she emphasized that accountability looks different for each case.

“There’s a fine line,” Elsayed said. “But I also think there are some cases were it’s very clear.”

Knight said that yes, there is a fine line between a “controversial take” and an “offensive take” but said people always disagreed on where that line landed.

Tne Bigger Picture In general, Jun said, users lose the “humanistic aspects” of discourse when it is shifted to an online platform. She added that it has some real psychological effects, like people being less respectful of each other and debates spiraling out of control.

Knight wrote that this semester leadership has been working on “systematizing” the process for “responding to harmful comments” made on the YPU debate floor.

“Given our polarized climate, people sometimes don’t know about certain dog-whistles or historical contexts,” her email read.

She added that “almost always, harmful speech is unintentional.” Four other students agreed.

But Knight noted that regardless of intent, “harm needs to be taken seriously” to preserve and advance the inclusivity of YPU spaces.

Though it is difficult and different depending on each case, doing so means, “initiating restorative and educational conversations following incidents” to “find understanding about the roots of the disagreement” at the very least, she wrote.

For Bertrán Ramírez, the origins of contention is where conversations must begin if students are to cultivate long-lasting relationships.

“When I sit and I think, what is the root, the fundamental seed of what I care about, what that is is people deserve to be treated with respect and care, and people deserve equitable treatment,” Bertrán Ramírez said.

“But that is already a contested belief, and so the very seed of my activism, the very seed of my advocacy, to some people is already contentious. That’s where the problem starts, and that’s where I think the conversations need to begin.”

Contact ZAPORAH PRICE at zaporah.price@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND EXPLORE

STRANGERS:

Writing it out with Kamiye Runsewe ’24 // KAMIYE RUNSEWE

// BY ÁNGELA PÉREZ “I think I’d be too scared to go on Jeopardy,” Kamiye Runsewe ’24 said, via a Zoom interview. “There are people who get on there and they’re so excited and then they flop. I don’t want that to be me. No offense to them, I’m sure they’re great people.”

Runsewe, a freshman in Berkeley College, notoriously watched Jeopardy every night it aired in the Berkeley North Court Mendenhall Room. She used to watch with her second oldest brother and compete against him with a point system they invented. She has kept up the tradition since arriving at Yale.

Watching the episodes last semester while on campus with her friends remains one of her fondest memories of college so far.

From her home in central Maryland, she talks about everything from the Cheez-Its she has just bought (which taste weird) to the pink notebook in which she keeps her writing. In combination with her phone’s notes app, she has all her ideas and drafts compiled into the two.

“I consider myself to be a baby poet. I don’t really know what I’m doing, and that’s okay,” she said. “I just kind of wanted to try something new.”

During her senior year of high school, Runsewe began writing poetry for fun after her English teacher, Mr. Frank, said he wanted to see some poetry from students.

She decided to give it a shot. Even after graduating high school, Mr. Frank continues to be someone she admires greatly.

“He’s probably one of the wisest people I’ve ever met … I think he’s just very in touch with himself,” she said. “He’s just the kind of person that’s super in tune with himself and with nature. And I think I want to have a similar kind of relationship with the world.”

Once she emailed him and told him she began writing poetry because of his class, he asked her to send some of her work. She refused. Runsewe says that she will not share anything with him until she feels “proud enough of it to share.”

She does not know if she will ever be fully proud of something, but says that being proud of your work might just be “a spectrum, that I need to get closer to one end of even if it’s not all the way at the very end.”

Runsewe almost did not apply to Yale, at first. She thought Connecticut was too boring to spend four years there. She laughs at the memory, saying that her mother forced her to tour the university one summer and she ended up loving it. Plus, it has Yoruba as a language, something she has been looking forward to taking while here.

After being born in Maryland, Runsewe moved to Lagos, Nigeria — where her parents are from — when she was a baby. Having lived there for a year, the family moved back to Maryland and has lived there since.

She hopes to go back to Nigeria someday and spend more time there.

She also added that while she was considering a major in English, she wishes there was more diversity in the reading material

of the classes. Some of her favorite books are “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott, “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston.

Beyond classes, Runsewe occupies her time in WORD, a spoken word group on campus, where she practices performance and receives feedback on her writing. Despite considering herself shy, spoken word was a welcome challenge that forced her to recite her poems with others and be vulnerable. Maybe someday soon she will share her writing with Mr. Frank.

“I don’t think there’s anything that I’ve written that I’m super proud of. And I’m not super upset about that,” she said. “I mean I’ll write something one day that I’m proud of, it just has not been any day so far … I kinda would like to write a novel some day.”

Contact ÁNGELA PÉREZ at angela.perez@yale.edu .

‘Make Me a Man’: Hero Magnus ’23 takes on queer history in new EP release

// LILY CANFIELD

// ELAINA FOLEY

// BY ISAAC YU Just to know you and read you from across the field / I would burn it all down to do that just once Hero Magnus ’23 has been busy.

After dropping several singles on Spotify during the early days of quarantine, the singer-songwriter released an EP on Friday, March 16. The new mini album is composed of five alternative rock singles, all written

by Magnus and produced by her long-time friend Zac Towbes. With funding from the Slifka Center, Magnus was able to focus on writing music during the summer and part of her gap year in Nashville, researching and exploring Jewish and other queer stories as inspiration. This theme became a hallmark of Magnus’ work after she took “Sexual Minorities from Plato to the Enlightenment” with Igor De Souza, lecturer in English at Yale. Though her songs are very much grounded in her own queer expe-

riences, Magnus hopes that her universal theme of love will reach all audiences.

“Queer history a grounding theme for this work, because it helped me to expand my imagination of what love and sexuality can look like,” Magnus told the News. “This is a concept that I wrote for my community, but it’s also for everyone.”

Central to several of Magnus’ singles are queer stories found in ancient mythologies. In “Iphis,” the singer-songwriter dives into the Roman myth of a child born as a girl but raised male and later transformed by a goddess into a man. Harmonized lyrics like “Make me a man / So I can marry the woman I love” unfold a plot of sacrificial love amidst interwoven layers of electric guitar, piano and bass. Magnus added that this was her first foray into gender-bent and male narrators, which has been particularly refreshing for her.

Magnus says that “Make Me a Man” is a turning point for her career in that it moves

WKND RECOMMENDS Getting vaccinated as soon as you’re eligible.

out of her “folksy, singer-songwriter era” and closer to the kind of music she would like to put out in a full debut album. Living in Nashville and performing with her favorite artists like Lauren Weintraub have allowed her to write with a renewed “dynamism,” bringing in new sonic textures and genres.

“I’ve been influenced pretty heavily by the country storytelling that I was around, giving you a clear metaphor to hang on to,” Magnus said. “There’s something refreshing about being handed the central metaphor and getting to build something clever and sweet off of that.”

This EP also differs from her previous work in that the five songs “thread together” to form a cohesive work of art, a process Magnus says she particularly enjoys. “Plato’s Song” and “Museum Person” have linked expressions of “inappropriate” love. “Yours First” romanticizes the trope of “u-hauling” in the woman-loving-woman community,

and the EP’s interlude “Body Song” takes on experiences of caring for the bodies of those you love.

With the new release under her belt, Magnus is moving to Los Angeles next month to produce even more music. She has plans to record a second EP in a friend’s home studio.

In the meantime, the indie rock artist is continuing to engage her listeners online, having gained a following of more than 16,000 fans on TikTok over quarantine. Magnus says she’s been able to hold discourse about Jewish history and anti-Semitism as well as her music through the platform.

“I appreciate the ability to share my music, and share my stories,” Magnus said.

“It is a real privilege, and I’m really happy to have this particular outlet to engage in on a more personal level.”

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND SOCIAL

Mel’s COVID-19 Report on Social Media

// DO

// BY MEL ADAMS Like many of us, I’ve spent a good deal of the last year living online. In fact, I’ve spent so much time on Zoom that I almost forget I have a physical form extending below my neck. Due to the outsized role social media now plays in all of our lives, I’ve devoted this article to surveying my social media usage across a variety of different apps since the pandemic began. Happy scrolling, readers!

INSTAGRAM: Let’s be real for a second: Instagram has always been a hotbed of insecurity. You can barely scroll for a minute without taking in images of bikini photos so artistic they might as well be on the cover of Vogue, so many “affirmation” posts it somehow feels like a personal attack, or a guy who is so buff that he looks like he’s training for the latest Marvel movie. But somehow, since the dawn of 2020, Instagram has gotten … even worse.

First off, allow me to introduce you to a new breed of Instagram-using Yalie I discovered this semester: the jet-setter. Live vicariously through them as they tour a series of tropical islands and major cities while you sit quarantined in your residential college in New Haven. Try not to judge them for doing so in the midst of a public health crisis. Fail at this, then sulk at your smartphone screen and whine to your friends about them.

Beyond that, with so many students

(including most of my fellow first-years) away from campus, scrolling through social media can feel like a slap in the face. Mere hours after I flew out of New Haven at the end of last semester, I was inundated by a frenzy of posts probably most accurately categorized as “college nostalgia.” Post after post seemed to contain dozens of Yalies (masked or otherwise) in various fun locations ranging from neon-light-adorned rooms to random beaches (does Connecticut really have beaches? I remain unconvinced).

The predominant feeling this elicited in me was acute FOMO, followed quickly by a side of salt, as I wondered how my peers knew so many people. Like, I worked so hard to have maybe five friends in my post. Give me a break! What does a college student have to do around here to look popular during a literal pandemic on Instagram?

DISCORD: Horrifyingly, I was alerted by my iPad two weeks into quarantine, over fall break, that I’d been averaging 17 hours per day of screen time, 15 or so of which were apparently taken up by Discord. What is Discord, I hear the non-gamers among you asking? One answer is that it’s the price I pay for having a gamer boyfriend. The other answer is that it’s fancy Skype. Either way, it is now what I consider to be the lifeblood of long-distance relationships.

YITTER: Today, I admitted that the most I’ve interacted with the Yale student body since coming on campus may in fact be through Yitter, what its natives affectionately dub the Yale Twitter social network. It’s messy, it’s vibrant, it’s beautiful; it provides no shortage of Handsome Dan XIX content. And it wouldn’t be the same without the Yitter Uncensoring Bot (@ytuncensorbot), who is nameless, faceless and apparently knows all our secrets. So keep tweeting, friends — you never know when you’ll get the attention of an opportunistic YDN reporter who wants to quote you in their next article!

Asian family. I think this one speaks for itself.

YOUTUBE: Is YouTube even social media? Either way, Chloe Ting has held a special place in my heart since my very first quarantine. Ah, those were the days — we were so young, so full of hope.

TIKTOK: Let’s just say that 2020 started out with me trying (and failing) to learn the “Savage” TikTok dance, and ended with me and my suitemate sending each other absurd multilingual animal and baby clips to cry and laugh at.

FACEBOOK: Although I, like most internet-savvy Gen Z, have essentially cut ties with Facebook, I hear from my mother that the Yale parents group is alive and well. Its main activities seem to be bemoaning the lack of Yale Dining options on our behalf and questioning the ethics of certain Yale colleges (I won’t name names) forcing their students to compete to win inflatable furniture. So I guess that’s a pandemic-related change in social media: our parents are apparently unionizing to help us, and I’m not really mad about it.

REDDIT: I’ve become pretty active on this one over the last year for reasons unbeknownst to me.

Is it embarrassing? Maybe. Do I want to talk about it? No.

CANVAS? Waking up to 99+ Canvas notifications really leaves me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Relax, professors! You don’t need to do this to get our attention. I miss you too.

WHATSAPP: I’m an international student. I have a large

Contact MEL ADAMS at melissa.adams@yale.edu .

Reaching my Limit // SOPHIA DESCHIFFART

// BY KEENAN MILLER Last summer, I was scandalized when my iPhone’s screen time feature reported that I had spent upwards of eight hours on Instagram in a week.

The iPhone, an impartial accountant, shared these metrics without judgement. Still, I was glad to be confronting my Instagram habit (addiction?) alone in my room. I didn’t know how I could ever justify spending eight hours on Instagram in a week to my friends, my family or a snoopy bystander in a public location.

Yes, my reckoning came in the midst of a global pandemic (yuck), but even the standstill nature of my life and my hometown’s merciless, record-breakingly rainy summer were poor excuses. Eight hours a week would add up. Annually, at that rate, I would be spending 416 hours, or 17.33 days, or about 4.75 percent of my life on Instagram.

That would be 17.33 days spent scrolling through pictures of people I barely interacted with in high school; skipping through Instagram story after Instagram story just to make the colorful rings around peoples’ profile pictures disappear; and looking at the same memes over and over and over again, because even Instagram’s highly refined algorithms couldn’t produce enough new content to keep up with my consumption habits.

That would be 17.33 days spent sharing information about my personal life, phone usage habits and interests with Facebook every time I like a post, send a direct message or search for a profile. Last December, the Federal Trade Commission sued Facebook for anti-competitive practices, perhaps the latest in what seems like the company’s endless string of scandals. Was this who I wanted to be sharing gobs of information about myself with?

And 17.33 days spent generating ad revenue for the company and Mark Zuckerberg.

As of writing, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth was $106 billion dollars. Clearly, I don’t need

to be subsidizing Yuck-erberg’s existence.

He’s far richer than I am.

Most importantly, that’s 17.33 days not spent with loved ones or exercising or sleeping or learning or volunteering or doing anything else that brings me greater peace and deeper connection to the world and people around me than scrolling and clicking my way through the app. I’m no economics major, but I think that at some point the marginal cost of my time on Instagram started to outweigh the marginal benefits.

It was time for a course correction. Time for me to fight back against my Instagram addiction. But first, I needed to figure out why I was spending so much time on the app.

Social media developers, I learned, are masters at “gamification” — a variety of design strategies that use elements of basic human psychology to keep bringing you back to their apps and websites. Like most tools, gamification itself isn’t inherently bad. Many apps, for example, use gamification to help users develop important habits like regular exercise. Gamification is used to increase engagement in classrooms and employee productivity (“For a minute there, I almost forgot I’m being paid minimum wage by a distant corporation!”). But gamification can also trap unsuspecting users, like myself, in undesirable habit cycles.

If you’ve enabled Instagram (or Twitter or Pinterest or Facebook) notifications on your phone, that’s gamification. Ding! You have a new friend request. Ding! Your_Crush_1234 liked your post. Ding! Your best friend forever DMed you “lmfao” in response to the meme you sent a few minutes ago. Social media has perfected its dopamine-releasing siren call.

You can’t be blamed for thinking that maybe you’ll open the app, just for a second.

Infinite scrolling is kind of cool, right?

That’s gamification too. Across the social media gamut, as long as your thumb keeps

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moving, pretty pictures or funny text posts will just keep appearing. And this makes it just so. darn. easy. to keep scrolling, because you never have to wait for a page to load, and there are no natural stopping points.

Gamification isn’t just luring people in, it’s also eliminating their excuses to leave. Simple designs and relatively consistent layouts between sites keep people hooked by making social media more intuitive to new users.

Building your network of friends makes social media exciting to join and, as that network expands, increasingly difficult to leave. After all, you don’t want to lose track of those people you met at an event three years ago and haven’t spoken to since, or miss out on seeing someone’s vacation photos.

You get the gist: Social media sites have become masters at capturing and holding your attention because that’s how they remain competitive and maximize their ad revenue.

This, I think, is a shame. I think of social media as a powerful tool for good, even in its current state. When we post, we post to connect, laugh, teach, inspire and more. But because promoting thoughtful and intentional use isn’t a developer focus, social media platforms have a tendency to leave people feeling worse after spending time on them. I’ve certainly left social media feeling left out, frustrated or confused as to where the last hour of my life has gone.

Which brings us back to my eight-hours-on-Instagram week. I, a fledgling adult with very little power over Facebook and its leadership, can’t influence their app design.

If Instagram allowed users to toggle off features like infinite scroll and like counts, I would have taken advantage of that. But they don’t, so I had to figure out how to manage my Instagram use in a more active way.

I started by turning off all Instagram notifications. I unfollowed 200 accounts to declutter my feed. And I pulled up a random number

generator on my laptop, wrote down the four digits it gave me, and set that number as my screen time password. Then I wrote the number down in a notebook, and forced myself to forget it. I started with a limit of 15 minutes a day, then weaned myself to five, then three, then two minutes a day. Recently, I decided to give myself just 15 minutes a week on Instagram — five minutes every Wednesday, and 10 every Saturday. I’ve calculated, and 15 minutes a week, 52 weeks a year, only adds up to 13 hours on Instagram annually. That’s… a lot less than 17.33 days.

And it’s going well. I still see posts from the people I care about. When I have a spare minute to peruse my explore page, every meme seems fresh. A quick “hey, can we text instead?” makes DMs easy to respond to, although sometimes I just log into Instagram on my computer if I’d rather respond in the app. Using Instagram on my computer might be cheating, but the Instagram website is so horrible that I’m rarely tempted to stay on it for long.

I could say that I feel more present, more engaged in my life, more confident. But there are plenty of articles like that out there in the digital universe. I’m not so sure that we need another one of those, and if I’m being entirely honest, I can’t remember how I felt one day, 30 days or 90 days into limiting my Instagram use.

But if you’re looking for guidance, the greatest endorsement I can give for limiting your social media use is simple: I don’t think I’m missing out on much. And if that ever changes, well, I’ll let you know.

Interested in learning more about gamification? Check out “Irresistible,” by Adam Alter and “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products,” by Nir Eyal.

Also, follow my Insta, @leankeenmachine : ) Contact KEENAN MILLER at keenan.miller@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND LOVE

Forsythia

Ornaments

// BY JOHN NGUYEN

Bodies are beautiful like flowers, though unlike many flowers, they are not perennial. This simile may seem obvious. The greatest distinction between these two organisms, however, is that people consider all flowers beautiful, seldom abhorring a specific type. Some flowers may be more alluring than others, but each bears its own enchanting traits. The same cannot be applied to views of the human body: handfuls of people see those of other communities and find them unbearable. Bodies are beautiful like flowers, though some bodies loathe other bodies.

The Atlanta shooting proved this comparison correct. It was another bullet point on the extensive list of Asian American hate crimes this year — a list that goes on and on and on until it runs off of the page and onto new ones, highlighting the unsurprising fact that since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, xenophobic and racist rhetoric and crimes against our community have not subsided. Asian Americans of all hues continue to be hurt, traumatized and murdered in the United States — our home.

As I hear and read news of this ongoing hostility, I recall the Lunar New Year, which many Asian Americans, including my family, celebrated this February. There are nuances to how each household celebrates, so I will speak for mine. My family adorned our Buddhist altar with an assortment of flowers and ancestral offerings in the form of Vietnamese dishes. The most noticeable decor was the hoa mai, or forsythia flowers, which created a jungle in our freezing Minnesota abode. We embellished this striking yellow plant with the typical scarlet and golden ornaments — colors that symbolize good luck and prosperity. I elaborate on all of this preparation because it instilled in us a sense of optimism: we cleaned our homes, endeavoring to rid them of bad luck, ensuring a positive, fresh year. 2021 is the Year of the Ox, an animal that symbolizes perseverance, and everyone has undoubtedly endured due to the pandemic, especially low-income and middle-class communities. After much economic hardship, this year was supposed to be better. We believed it.

A week ago, I watched “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” a movie about the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday and her fight against racism as a Black woman with power. The U.S. government endeavored to ensure she didn’t sing “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynched Black bodies swinging from the trees. Federal agents feared that the song would spark growth in the Civil

WKND RECOMMENDS Continuing to wear a mask :).

Rights Movement, making Black civil rights activists uncontrollable. Holiday, however, disobeyed and performed the protest song unapologetically in front of her audiences. I think of the Black bodies about which Holiday sang as I reflect on the hurt that Asian Americans are feeling and have felt since the first of our kind arrived to this land of seemingly unparalleled happiness.

The red and golden Lunar New Year ornaments that dangle on branches of the forsythia represent each individual that has died because of hate, that has been traumatized by hate: from the elders who are shoved viciously onto the pavement and the spa workers who are murdered to every Asian American who encounters hate but has not reported it due to language barriers. In life, everything is a symbol — an unsettling, yet true, fact of this universe.

I’ve been trying to pinpoint what emotions swim inside of me. I’m confused. I ask myself if I am wrong for not crying because I just don’t know what’s going on anymore — I’m sure that many resonate with this sentiment.

In Boulder, Colorado, 10 more people were just murdered. This country has issues, has had them since its inception. I discern leaders and public figures and citizens speaking out against the Asian American hate crimes, and they sob whilst taking action. They have to explain themselves to ignorant state representatives, like one in Texas. Asian Americans have reconciled mourning and mending.

Ultimately, there is no one right way to cope. For me, I write and eat ice cream and cuddle with my puppy, Kenzie. I’ve been trying to prioritize myself as well: that assignment can wait one or two more hours — I need, we need, both time and space to breathe. And I know that we must love, must love, must love. And I know it’s hard because we desire to hate first because it was this same emotion that ignited everything evil. We must love first ourselves and those nearby then, like a forsythia, branch out. We love because bodies are unlike perennial flowers. Perennials may perish in winter and rise in spring and repeat this cycle for years upon years, upon years, upon years, upon years, but bodies are not as blessed. They each experience a single death and then become a red and golden ornament on the forsythia — a strange, swinging fruit. Bodies die once. And then they are gone.

Contact JOHN NGUYEN at john.nguyen@yale.edu .