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

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 124 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

SUNNY SUNNY

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CROSS CAMPUS Take caution. Today is Friday

But you can still dine out.

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society initiation rituals dominated campus Thursday night as juniors donned superhero costumes and Guy Fawkes masks as part of the University’s annual Tap Night. One junior in a makeshift diaper recruited passing students to help him find his mother as another walked down York Street in a Barbie costume. Tap Night is one of the University’s oldest traditions and marks the induction of juniors into Yale’s senior societies.

Shop until you drop. From 5

to 9 p.m. tonight, students can enjoy shopping discounts, free food, live music and prizes as part of College Night on Broadway. The event is sponsored by Yale University Properties and the Broadway Merchants Association and includes rewards such as an Apple iPad and $500 in cash.

“Spying on Students.”

The Yale Muslim Students Association held a “Spying on Students” panel Thursday afternoon that discussed the legal, practical and ethical implications of the New York Police Department’s decision to monitor various Muslim students associations across the country. The panel was moderated by Hope Metcalf, a lecturer at Yale Law School, and included Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin and New Haven Police Department Chief Dean Esserman. Bringing the bedsheets. The New Haven Police Department sent 24 staffers Thursday afternoon to deliver sheets, pillows and blankets to kids in the Hill neighborhood, the New Haven Independent reported Thursday. Staffers met at 200 Orange St. and filled five to six boxes with bedding materials, according to the Independent. But the fun isn’t over.

Sophomores expecting invitations to Yale’s junior societies will participate in their own “Tap Night” this Sunday. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1910 American studies professor Charles Henry Smith 1865 announces his retirement after 20 years at the University. Smith, who was the Larned Professor of American History, said he would leave Yale at the close of the academic year. Submit tips to Cross Campus

crosscampus@yaledailynews.com

ONLINE y MORE cc.yaledailynews.com

SCHOOL OF MUSIC

BASEBALL

Campus buzzes with initiation antics as security presence jumps

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN CONCERT SERIES ENDS

Successful season hangs in balance as struggling Elis prep for Harvard

PAGE B3 WEEKEND

PAGE 5 NEWS

PAGE 7 CULTURE

PAGE 12 SPORTS

GRAPH HOMICIDES PER YEAR SINCE 1989 40

Superheroes at Yale. Senior

TAP NIGHT

‘Back to the future’ for NHPD

the 13th. Be careful not to break any mirrors, open any umbrellas indoors or stare at any black cats.

Students who donated their meal swipes as part of the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project Fast will have to eat at one of New Haven’s restaurants or use a guest meal swipe. The Fast’s business partners include Alpha Delta Pizza, Box 63, Claire’s Corner Copia, FroyoWorld, Moe’s and Yorkside.

STUDENT GOV’T RELEVANCE OF YCC DEBATED

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BY MADELINE MCMAHON STAFF REPORTER

Though the overall level of crime was well below where it was when he left — the number of shootings had dropped by a factor of three and the number of violent crimes registered under the Federal Bureau of Intelligence’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) had halved since 1993 — residents were alarmed by the number of homicides last year, which had reached 30 by the time Esserman was sworn in. “My marching orders are firm: address the violence and connect to the community,” he said when his

Leaders of Greek organizations presented a proposal to administrators Thursday drafting preliminary details of the ban on Greek organizations’ freshman fall rush period. Since the ban was announced last month, an implementation committee composed of administrators, fraternity leaders and sorority leaders has met on a weekly basis to sketch out details of the new regulation. The proposal, which was approved by all fraternity and sorority members on the committee, marks the first time members of the implementation committee have produced a written document outlining suggested guidelines for the ban. The implementation process is still in its early stages, and administrators have yet to review the document. Fraternity and sorority leaders came together Wednesday to draft the proposal, which aimed to begin a concrete discussion of the rush ban’s details. They presented the document to Dean of Students Affairs Marichal Gentry, Associate Dean for Student Organizations and Physical Resources John Meeske, Assistant Dean of Yale College Rodney Cohen and Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs Pamela George. Gentry said the implementation committee is “moving toward” a finalized set of guidelines, which should be finalized by the end of the academic year. “We keep the conversation moving,” he said. Fraternity leaders from Alpha Epsilon Pi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and Alpha Delta Phi

SEE POLICING PAGE 4

SEE FRATERNITIES PAGE 6

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Greek leaders present rush ban proposal

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

BY JAMES LU STAFF REPORTER When Dean Esserman arrived as assistant chief of the New Haven Police Department in 1991, the city’s crime was at record-high levels.

UPCLOSE Organized gang activity and a rampant narcotics trade spurred shootings and other violent crimes — October 1991 registered six shootings a day, and that year still holds the city’s record of 36 murders. The

community demanded a substantial change in the Elm City’s policing strategy. Esserman, along with NHPD Chief Nick Pastore, answered the call. Under their leadership, the department adopted a new mentality that emphasized intelligence sharing and building relationships with the community — a novel strategy at the time known as “community policing.” Esserman answered the city’s call again last November, when he was sworn in as NHPD chief, 18 years after departing the Elm City to run the police departments in Stamford, Conn., and Providence, R.I.

Fund to honor Dufault in works

One year later, shop safety hard to measure

BY DANIEL SISGOREO AND TAPLEY STEPHENSON STAFF REPORTERS

BY DANIEL SISGOREO AND TAPLEY STEPHENSON STAFF REPORTERS Though Yale has tightened workshop safety regulations in the year since Michele Dufault ’11 died in a woodworking machine shop accident, students and administrators say improvement in safety also depends on changing the culture within the shops. The most drastic changes to Yale’s workshop safety regulations involve restrictions on which students can operate heavy machinery and when students are allowed to be in workshops, said Steven Girvin, the deputy provost for science and technology who led an investigation of Yale’s safety practices in response to the incident. While the new regulations have been in place for months, Girvin said the rarity of injuries in the shops makes it difficult to collect data on whether the policy changes have improved safety. SEE WORKSHOP PAGE 6

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Since the death of Michele Dufault ’11 in a machine shop accident one year ago, a fund has been started in her honor and Yale has tightened workshop safety regulations.

A year after Michele Dufault ’11 died in a machine shop accident on campus, those who knew her are working to establish a foundation to promote women in the sciences. Dufault’s friends, family and professors have raised a third of their target $100,000 to create an endowment for their foundation, the Michele Dufault Summer Research Fellowship and Conference Fund. The endowment will fund an annual summer fellowship for young women at Yale in the physical sciences and support conferences like the Northeast Conference on Undergraduate Women in Physics, which is regularly hosted at Yale. The

foundation’s organizers said it will help young female scientists overcome hurdles in fields dominated by men — similar to the challenges Dufault faced as a physics and astronomy double major — and that their work has been a constant reminder of Dufault’s academic prowess and enthusiasm. “Once we stopped being totally shocked and unbelieving and all of those things, it seemed like a way of honoring Michele’s passions,” said Physics Department Chair Meg Urry, who worked with Dufault. “Besides being excited about the sciences, she was the number one cheerleader and supporter of all the women around her.” The foundation’s organizers SEE DUFAULT PAGE 6

For death penalty repeal, a losing streak broken BY DIANA LI STAFF REPORTER When members of the State House of Representatives passed a bill ending Connecticut’s death penalty Wednesday night — all but ensuring the success of abolition — they also ended history of legislative failure. While the current repeal bill is en route to the desk of Gov. Dannel Malloy, who has pledged to sign it, former Republican Gov. Jodi Rell vetoed a similar bill in 2009

and another passed the Judiciary Committee in 2011, but failed to reach the House floor after two lawmakers withdrew support at the last minute, citing the ongoing trials of the infamous 2007 triple homicide in Cheshire, Conn. A combination of the surge of momentum created by both lawmakers and activists, the amendment to the bill imposing additional restrictions on those who would have previously received the death penalty, and the time elapsed since the Cheshire trials con-

tributed to the success of the 2012 repeal effort.

When I came in 2009, the only voices you were hearing… wanted to preserve the death penalty. GARY HOLDER-WINFIELD State Rep. (D-New Haven) State Rep. Roland Lemar, a

Democrat who represent New Haven, called the bill’s passage a “Herculean effort.” The recent failures to repeal the death penalty followed four other failed attempts in the past two decades, he said. Years after the Cheshire incident, in which William Petit’s wife and two teenage daughters were murdered and he was badly injured, the trials have loomed large in the debates about repeal in Hartford since 2009. “The crimes that were committed on that brutal July

night were so far out of the range of normal understanding that now, more than three years later, we still find it difficult to accept that they happened in one of our communities,” Rell said in her veto statement in 2009. “I have long believed that there are certain crimes so heinous, so depraved, that society is best served by imposing the ultimate sanction on the criminal.” The cases — in which both SEE DEATH PENALTY PAGE 6


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